“Nice try, slick, but no. Fun and games are for later.” The smile took the punch from her words.
He gave a heartfelt sigh that could be heard across the room and headed for the bathroom, slumped over in defeat, making sure to drag his feet.
He heard a giggle at his back and smiled secretly as he walked into the bathroom.
Yeah. He wanted more of that.
Luke was pure sinful temptation. Hope had to dig her fingernails into her palms to refrain from springing out of bed and hurling herself across the room at him. Why not? Just looking at him made her eyeballs boil. He was just so … fine. Those long lean lines, those broad shoulders and that lean waist, all muscle with not a molecule of fat on him … he was like a Platonic ideal of man. A couple of times in despair at her lack of fitness, Hope had joined a gym and there had been plenty of muscular men but their muscles had looked fake compared to Luke’s. Stuccoed on or glued on. Some were so muscle-bound they waddled.
Not Luke. Man, he moved like a panther — gracefully and without a wasted motion. And those muscles were real. He was real, too. A man with a heart and emotions he wasn’t afraid to express, unlike the nerds she knew, who had such abysmal social skills. Luke was a man, in the real sense of the term. Deep, mature, secure in himself.
But — they had things to do and they had to eat something because she knew first-hand what happened to your mind when you forgot to eat. Plus, she really did want to check in with Felicity.
And they’d be going to bed later anyway. Together. To have sex. Again. What an amazingly delicious thought. Mainly, her sexual encounters had been of the one-and-done variety. Both parties reluctant to repeat the experience. Not here. With Luke, it looked like sex was on the agenda for a long time to come. Sort of on tap. Like beer, only better.
She shivered with delight. She was uncovering such darkness, even evil, in her past. A pall cast over her life by either her father or her grandfather or both. A curse. It would take time to clear everything up and she would do her damndest to bring whoever had killed her mother and tried to kill her to justice. To shatter the shackles that had been holding her down all her life and to set herself free.
She was absolutely set on bringing the second half of her life into the open air and the sunshine and freeing herself. Because the future was going to be different. A new city, a new job, a new life and above all a new man, awaited her.
She’d been shocked by the video recording and yet she hadn’t been. Some part of her, maybe even at the cellular level, knew that something in her life was askew. Her earliest memory was of a shiny red bike in Boston for Christmas. She knew she’d been sick but she had no memory of it. She was better and had begged for a bike and there it was — under the small Christmas tree the Ellises — the Sandersons really — had erected. She’d been five and she had no memories at all before that moment.
Like lightning illuminating a landscape until then cloaked in darkness, Frank Glass’s video shed shocking light over the bleak past. But at least now she knew. Something sad and mysterious had always kept her back, kept her separate from other people. Her only friends had been Felicity, Emma and Riley, and they’d had strange upbringings too.
But the dark, sad past felt now like a heavy carapace she was shedding, pieces falling to the floor, leaving her light and free. The past couldn’t be changed, but the future could.
And there it was, her future, right there, opening the bathroom door and walking out. Rumpled, not elegant, exactly her type. She distrusted men who cared too much about how they looked.
His clothes were clean but not pressed. A slightly wrinkled long-sleeved black tee, black jeans, black boots, hair up in damp spikes. Clean shaven, without the blond scruff softening the angular planes of his face. She preferred the scruff and made a note to herself to tell him.
Heartbreakingly beautiful. And, cherry on top, a good guy. A really good guy. The kind who ran into burning buildings to save people.
Life had fucked her up and then, in a bid to gain her forgiveness, had thrown Luke and a new life her way.
Okay. Yeah, she’d take it.
Luke walked up to her, eyes fixed on hers the entire way, tilted her face up to his with a finger under her chin, and kissed her gently. Warmth coursed through her, under her skin, like honey. She closed her eyes and savored it. One of many many kisses to come.
She opened her eyes to see him looking down at her.
“My turn in the shower. And after —” She smiled. “I heard talk of pancakes. Were you serious or were you just blowing smoke?”
Oh God, when he smiled widely there was a dimple in his cheek that had been hidden by his beard! A dimple! Wild overkill! He didn’t need a dimple to be insanely attractive, but there it was.
“Yes, ma’am. Pancakes are definitely in your future. Would I lie to you?”
“No,” she whispered, looking him directly in the eyes. Suddenly serious.
He sobered, face drawn. “No. Damn right. I won’t ever lie to you. You’ve had enough lies in your life. And enough injustice.” He held out his cell to her. There was a message from Felicity. Got the vid. Forwarded to your FBI friend. Also forwarded to Bud. He’ll raise hell.
“Bud? Who’s Bud?”
“Remember I told you about my boss? How he was willing to go to the wall for me before I called him off? He never forgave me for that because he believes in justice the way other men believe in God. His name is Bud Morrison and by sending that video we are sure he will know exactly who to forward it to. Probably the FBI and certainly the state police. The Redfields are powerful in California but Court Redfield is in campaign mode and vulnerable. Bud will send it to someone he trusts and whoever is responsible for your mother’s death, trying to murder you and the death of your friend is going down.”
“I already had Felicity send it to a special agent I know at the FBI,” she said. “You can text Commissioner Gordon — er — Commissioner Morrison his name.”
Luke flashed her a blinding smile.
She showered fast, dressed in a turquoise sweat suit Summer had provided and walked into the kitchen. She watched Luke stir the pancake mix, pour it into a hot skillet and make a stack of dollar pancakes. Perfectly round, all the same size. The one time she’d tried pancakes they’d looked like the spines on Godzilla’s back. Plus they were totally inedible.
These tasted fantastic. Crisp on the outside, soft on the inside. A little like the guy who’d made them — hard on the outside and soft on the inside.
Something occurred to her. “Your friend Bud won’t have any jurisdiction in California. He might be police Commissioner in Portland but that won’t help in California. And the crime was a long time ago. Can someone still be brought to justice?”
Luke’s face turned sharp and hard. “There’s no statute of limitations on murder. It could be a hundred years ago and it wouldn’t make any difference. And no, Bud won’t have jurisdiction but he has pull. He is highly respected in the law enforcement community. The only reason he backed down in my case is because I forced him to. I saw he was going to go down with me and I didn’t want that. But it still burns and he’s not going to allow that a second time.”
“Luke.” Hope put a hand on his. Felt the strength and the tension. “Court Redfield is a very powerful man. And he is backed by powerful people. I don’t pay much attention to politics, but even I know he stands a good chance to get the nomination and win the election. That is power, more than a Commissioner can ever wield.”
“Well, Bud wouldn’t be on the front lines, but he is in a position to contact the people who will be on the front lines. And Summer is busy writing a book but she’ll know the right people in the media to contact.”
Hope smiled. “You know when I said I didn’t pay much attention to politics? Because politics never made sense to me.”
Luke nodded.
“The little I know about politics I got from reading Summer’s blog. Area8. She made it all make sense. So — she works for ASI
too? In what capacity? From what I understand she’s a journalist. Not an expert on security.”
Luke’s hand turned until he could clasp hers. “Not working for ASI, no. But her husband does. Jack Delvaux. His family was wiped out by a man high up in politics and this kind of thing is what he was born to fight. He is focused like a laser beam on politicians ruining people’s lives. Once he gets wind of this he’ll be like Bud — unable to let it go. And everyone else at ASI is like that, starting from the top. The other Big Boss, John Huntington, and the Senior will make sure the Redfields are brought to justice. It’s a formidable place, ASI. They’d protect you even if you didn’t work there, because of Felicity and now me. And when you join, you’ll be part of the family.”
Part of the family. Hope did her very best not to get emotional at those words, but it was impossible. Here, in this very comfortable, anonymous house in Sacramento, she’d found her true family. Luke and the men and women he worked with. It was really all she’d ever wanted in life, without knowing she wanted it.
Wanted was the wrong word. She craved it. Never to be alone again … it was almost too good to be true.
But there was something she had to know.
Hope pushed away the plate where the pancakes were a distant memory and brought up her cell. She squeezed Luke’s hand and let it go. “I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything,” he said.
That distracted her for a moment. “Really? What if I asked you to run up Mount Hood or … or give me a million dollars?”
“You say those things like they are impossible. I’m a runner. I’d run up Mount Hood for you, absolutely. It would probably take me about eight hours but I’d definitely do it. And I don’t have a million dollars, I told you I’m almost wiped out financially. But if you want a million dollars, I’ll just pay it to you over ten or twenty years. No problem. Whoa. Where’s this from?”
Hope didn’t know what he was talking about until she felt coolness on her cheeks and touched them. Her fingers came away wet. She was leaking water from her eyes. Or rather, she was crying. She’d cried earlier, too. Man, this was so not her.
“I never cry,” she said, taken aback. “Never. Not even at Les Mis.”
“Uh huh.” Luke wiped her cheeks with his thumbs. “Not crying. Gotcha.”
Felicity, Emma and Riley would do anything for her, but this — this was a declaration of something approaching love. Hope tried to think of a man who’d do something for her, something hard and that required sacrifice, and came up blank.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He bent and kissed her, briefly. “I have no idea what you’re thanking me for but I guess I’ll take it.” He waggled his eyebrows. “A grateful woman is always a wonderful thing.”
She knew what he was doing. She’d had a moment in which she felt raw and vulnerable. It had probably been pretty visible and Luke, notwithstanding his tough guy appearance, was really observant.
In that moment, Hope felt like she’d been flayed alive. Someone had just come along and taken away her skin and all her defenses. In that moment, a wrong word, a wrong move, and she’d have been devastated. Like the rebel base when all the shields suddenly went down and there was the Death Star, ready to kill.
Her defenses had been so high and deep all her life, all the life she could remember at any rate, that she thought they were part of her. But they weren’t. Her defenses were artificial. Her disconnection from life had been created.
She was the way she was because a greedy and cruel man, or men, had killed her mother and robbed her of her future.
Well, that was stopping, right now.
“You said you’d get me Jacob Black’s number. So can you?”
Luke blinked, frowned. “What?”
“Frank Glass told me to talk to Jacob Black. That he knows the man who is possibly my father. The man who possibly killed my mother. I want to talk to him, find out what Bard Redfield is like.”
“Whoa. When you said that before, I thought you were kidding.” Luke took an involuntary step back. “Is that — is that wise? Don’t you think we should wait until —”
“No.” Hope was as sure of this as she was of 2 + 2 = 4. She’d waited long enough. Her entire life, in fact. She wanted to set wheels in motion right now, and follow through with them up in Portland, with her team at her back. The thought of having that team shot warmth through her entire body. But whatever was going to happen, whatever her new life was, it had to start right now. Impatience bubbled under her skin. The past was dead. She was shedding her past like a snake shedding its skin and something new, previously unsuspected, was unfolding within her. That dead carapace was lying shattered at her feet and the new Hope was taking her first breaths. Whatever was going to happen next in her life, it was going to be completely different from what was before. “I don’t want to wait another moment more. If Jacob Black knows the man who is my father, and maybe tried to have me and my mother killed, I want to talk to him. There’s this huge black hole in my head where my life should be. I need to start filling in the blanks.”
Luke stood looking at her, mouth a thin line. Clearly, he didn’t agree. Hope waited for him to make counterarguments. Whatever he said, it wouldn’t sway her, but he deserved her listening to him. He swallowed and she prepared to try to listen to him over the drumbeat of impatience filling her chest, but in the end, he simply nodded as he bent over his cell. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”
Tears sprang in her eyes that she impatiently dashed away. God, a lifetime of never crying and here she was, springing leaks everywhere. Thank you, Luke, she said in her head, but not aloud. He didn’t agree with her, but it was what she wanted, so he was going to help her do it. If he’d fought her on this, she wouldn’t have known what to do. But he hadn’t.
“Wait, wait!”
He was scrolling through his contacts list and she stopped him, alarmed. Holding out her hand, she said, “May I?”
“Sure.” Without hesitation, he handed her his phone. It was a nice one but not as nice as hers which was the beta of a new type of phone. She added a stronger layer of encryption, turned off the location setting with a secret app that worked when the phone was off. And switched it from being a cell to a satphone, which a year ago would have been impossible.
“There you go.” She handed it back to him. “I added 256-bit AES encryption, plus a WPA2. Your location setting is temporarily switched off and you now hold a satphone and not a cellphone, so you’re not operating off the local cell tower. As of this moment, your phone cannot be tracked.”
He cocked his head. “So let me get this straight. You essentially cast a magic spell over my phone that makes it invisible and you turned it into a powerful wizard.”
“That’s right.” Luke was handling his phone gingerly, as if it might wake up and bite him. “By the way, as soon as we get back to Portland, you’re changing phones. This one is primitive.”
He made a choking sound. “Yeah, uh … it’s the latest model.”
“Primitive.” She clucked her tongue. Latest model if you were a caveman. “Can you call Jacob Black? I didn’t disable the ID function so he’ll see who is calling if you’re in his system.”
Luke scrolled and tapped, on speakerphone. On the second ring, it was picked up, and a man appeared on the cell’s monitor.
Jacob Black.
Hope didn’t pay that much attention to corporate gossip but Jacob Black was a living legend. Founder and owner of what was by all accounts one of the largest and most powerful security companies in the world. Also a billionaire several times over. That didn’t faze her. In tech, she’d dealt with billionaires before. Most of them were like children, only with money. Tech smart and life stupid.
Jacob Black didn’t look even remotely like a child. He had a hard, narrow face burnt dark brown by the sun and reflective sunglasses that gave him a robotic look. In the background was a harsh blue sky with a bright pitiless sun that gave an intense gl
are. Everything else was a dun color — the street, the walls of the buildings, the men dressed for battle in desert camo. There was a lot of mechanical noise in the background.
Luke had caught Black in the middle of something, but neither his voice nor his expression betrayed impatience. “Hang on, Luke, let me get out of the street.” The monitor’s images bounced up and down as Black entered a building and shut a heavy door behind him. The image again stabilized, focused on Black’s dark, hard face. “So, what can I do for you?” he asked.
Which was a remarkable statement for a multi-billionaire warrior to make. Hope had known some tech giants who answered their phones with a barked, “What?”
What can I do for you was a strange thing for such a powerful man to say. And yet his expression hadn’t changed. He wasn’t irritated or angry. Just waiting to hear what Luke had to say.
Luke didn’t mince words. “Sir, you know Bard Redfield, correct?”
If he was puzzled at the question, Black didn’t show it. “I do. He was my first commanding officer.”
“And your opinion of him?”
“Excellent.” Black’s expression changed slightly. His brows drew together and his lips thinned. “He was my XO in the darkest days of Iraq. He’s a fine man, the best. And my friend.”
The emphasis on those last words was clear. Bard Redfield was Black’s friend and Black wasn’t going to like it if someone spoke ill of him.
Hope was a little intimidated. Granted, Black was a billion miles away. In Afghanistan, would be her guess, though that background could have been any combat zone in a desert area. There were a lot of those. There was nothing he could do to her on the other side of the world. Still, she shrank back a little. Thick black eyebrows were drawn down over his blade of a nose in a scowl. He’d taken his sunglasses off and she could see that his eyes were almost black. And cold.
Luke wasn’t intimidated at all. “Okay. This is the situation. I am here with a young woman who is Bard Redfield’s biological child. By a woman Bard apparently loved, who lived in Sacramento. They —”
Midnight Kiss Page 20
