Hidden Fire
Page 3
“Never mind. Just relax and enjoy the ride.”
He’d follow his own advice. People who panicked made mistakes, and he’d do well not to make them.
He’d become a skilled hunter, and the best, most vulnerable prey was to be found in places like the bar tonight. Risk versus reward.
The rewards were positively divine.
Recalling the man watching them, however, dampened some of his satisfaction. A skittering along his nerve endings set him on edge, intrusive and unwelcome. He enjoyed being the one to do the observing, not the other way around. And this particular man’s observation had been rather . . . intense. He’d been much more focused and purposeful than the oblivious patrons around him.
While he, the Collector, had carefully selected his seat at the bar to remain in shadow, the man had been seated in a pool of light. The stranger’s dark eyes had studied them intently, sensual mouth drawn into a frown, brows furrowed. He was Hispanic or maybe Italian, his angular face blessed with classic male beauty belonging on the cover of GQ. Raven hair fell in longish wisps over his brow, the length brushing his neck just past his ears.
All these features he memorized out of necessity because it was his business to do so and, goddamn, he could swear he’d seen their pursuer somewhere before. He had an excellent memory, but no matter how he scoured his brain, the man’s identity eluded him.
Calm yourself. By God, it would come.
When it did, the Collector would simply have one more loose end to snip.
Julian discarded the condom and rejoined his lover in bed, sated in body if not in spirit. His morose mood wasn’t Carmelita’s fault. He just couldn’t seem to fill the hollow ache in his chest these days, especially after sex. Even great sex with his closest friend.
Still, going home to stare at his empty bedroom was worse. Right?
Flopping onto his back with a sigh, he linked his fingers behind his head. Carmelita wasn’t much of a cuddler, at least not with him. Cuddling implied something more than friends with benefits, a stronger bond than either of them wanted or needed. Except lately, he found himself longing for a connection he’d never experienced before. A simple touch not related to sex.
Comfort.
“Julian? What’s wrong?”
He turned his head to meet her brown gaze as she rolled to her side, propping her head in one hand. Lush cinnamon hair matching the curls at the apex of her thighs spilled around her shoulders and over her naked breasts.
“Nothing, dulce.” He grinned, knowing she loved the endearment.
“Don’t try to distract me,” she fussed. “You haven’t been yourself for weeks, my friend.”
Months, to be exact, but he saw no need to correct her. “I’m fine. Really. The meeting this afternoon to go over the plan for our captain’s intervention was intense. The real thing is going to be brutal.”
“I can only imagine. That poor man.” Reaching out, she gently brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes, her expression full of compassion. “But I don’t think that’s all, Jules. Are the ghosts bothering you?”
Ghosts. Her tactful term for those dark days when most teenage boys were discovering the world and Julian had wanted only to die. For the secrets he’d left behind in that other life, the one where his family buried an inconvenient truth along with the corpse of the young man he’d been. The awful mistake Carmelita alone knew about, and even she didn’t know the whole story behind why he’d almost thrown his life away. Nobody did, outside his family. No one else would. Ever.
He’d told Grace all he could.
And now tell Carmelita that Derek Vines was here, when she could do nothing except worry about things that couldn’t be changed?
“No,” he lied. The ghosts never rested. Never would. A partial truth, however, seemed in order to ease her fretting. “I . . . met someone.”
Her jaw fell open and her eyes widened. “Really? When?”
“A few months ago.” That revelation earned him a punch in the arm. So much for the nice caressing.
“You rat! Why haven’t you said anything, and what the heck are you doing here, then? Who is she?”
He smiled at his friend. This was why he loved her so much. He could tell her anything, and she never judged him. No inconvenient jealousy, either, to muddle their relationship. “She’s a lawyer in Nashville, and I haven’t said anything because she doesn’t even want to breathe the same air as me.”
“Oh. Ouch.”
“Yeah, sucks, huh?”
She sighed. “How well I know the feeling.”
“That little computer dweeb at work still hasn’t gotten a clue?”
Carmelita worked at Fossier, an accounting firm here in Sugarland, not far from his own condo and the fire station, and a short twenty minutes from Nashville. His knockout friend looked like she’d be more at home modeling for Victoria’s Secret than crunching numbers, but whatever. Her job sounded like a sexless vacuum slowly draining a person’s libido, leaving one in a zombielike state. No wonder she occasionally let off steam in the sack with him, because she sure wasn’t getting any from her nerdy pencil pusher.
“He’s not a dweeb and my guess is he’s definitely not little,” she defended. “He’s just sort of . . . understimulated.”
His brows lifted. “Uh-huh.”
“Oh, shut up.” She gave him a wistful smile. “We’re pathetic. Why didn’t we elope years ago?”
He grinned back. That was an old, safe topic of conversation. The question didn’t need an answer because they both knew it by heart. He gave one anyway.
“Because I squeeze the toothpaste in the middle, I snore, I won’t trade in my Porsche for a minivan, and I’m always right.” There were many more reasons, but those would suffice.
“And I’d smother you in your sleep during a fit of premenstrual rage.”
“Prison would clash with your hair and nails.”
“So I guess we’ll have to remain friends,” she said happily.
“With benefits.”
“Absolutely.”
Her smile took on a predatory quality. She crawled between his spread thighs and his cock reawakened in response to the unspoken demand. He saw no reason to deny them mutual pleasure and spread his legs wider, placing himself at her mercy.
Crouching, she gave the flared crown an experimental flick of her tongue. Her hair tumbled over his groin, tickled his balls. “You want this?” Another lick.
He sucked in a harsh breath. “Shit, yeah.”
“Tell me.”
“I want your mouth, dulce. Suck me.”
She did, exactly the way he loved. Hard and deep, laving the ridge underneath his cock while her fingers played with his sac. Relentless, suctioning him with moist heat, bringing his blood to a steady boil.
Second to fucking a woman from behind, this was the finest way to orgasm. To watch his rod disappear between a woman’s lips, to enjoy being hers. To feel the awesome tingle, the gathering at the base of his spine. Ready to explode.
Like now. His orgasm rolled his eyeballs back in his head. He let go with a hoarse shout, pumping his cum down her throat. Shuddered as she drank every drop.
At last, she released his softening cock and moved to lie beside him. Not touching, as was the norm.
But tonight, he shivered from the absence of warmth.
“Carmelita?”
“Mmm?”
“Can I . . . hold you?”
She patted his chest, giving him an odd stare. “Sure, for a while. You’re like a furnace, you know.”
A confusing wave of sadness and unfulfilled desire swelled inside him, smothering any reply as he rolled to his side, spooning her body against him.
As he tried in vain to drift to sleep, a pair of sparkling violet eyes refused to allow him to rest. Mocked him with the inescapable truth.
Wrong as it might be under the circumstances, he burned to have Grace McKenna underneath him. The flames licked at him, hotter than ever before.
Stupi
d bastard, forget about her.
He had no choice.
Grace didn’t want him, had made it perfectly clear she never would. Her loss, he told himself . . . and knew he was lying.
The loss, it appeared, was all his.
Brett awoke to a god-awful pounding in his skull and a grungy taste in his mouth. Like he’d single-handedly attempted to drink the city dry and he shouldn’t be awake to relive the experience. “Awww . . . shit.”
Agony lanced his brain again, a knife blade burrowing deep into his gray matter to scramble what little was left. He panted, managing not to get sick, but not by much.
The bathroom. Yeah, he needed to crawl there. Splash some water on his face, brush his teeth. Then he’d feel more human.
Cautiously, he uncurled himself from the fetal position and rolled to his hands and knees. He blinked to clear his vision. Frowning, he blinked again. Total darkness. As in can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face pitch fucking black.
“What the hell?”
That’s when he noticed the dirt under his palms. Not linoleum or smelly, beer-drenched carpet as he’d expected. Tentatively, he raked his hand over the surface to confirm his finding—dirt and pebbles.
The stench invaded his awakening senses next. It hung in the stagnant air like a shroud, nearly overtaking the natural, pungent smell of rock and earth, of old minerals and decay. No, a rancid smell like that didn’t belong here, wherever here was. Didn’t belong anywhere. He knew what label to give the stench, but his brain recoiled from going there.
“Hello?”
Brett inched forward, feeling his way, not trusting his surroundings. Falling over the edge of a cliff or something would suck, and he had to get away from here. Find help. He crawled until his fingers brushed something hard and chilly. Wet and a little slimy, too. Instinctively he snatched his hand back, then tried again.
A rock wall. A natural formation, not a man-made structure. A round, small space, he realized as he pushed to his feet and his fingers explored the surface, moving slowly to the right as it curved inward. His shoe kicked something hollow, but he kept going, his mind becoming clearer with every passing moment.
“A cave,” he whispered, fear setting in at last. “A freaking cave. What the fuck is going on?”
Willing down the panic, he struggled to remember what he’d done last night—if it was last night. He went downtown to party, and his friends took off club-hopping, promising to come back. He’d been content where he was, people-watching, taking up a conversation with a man at the bar.
Who bought him a drink, which he accepted, even though he shouldn’t have. But it was free and his fake ID passed muster, so why should he refuse?
What happened after that was a huge, yawning black hole.
Jesus, the bastard must’ve slipped him a Mickey. Don’t think about it. Just get out.
Abruptly, the rock face ended—and cold metal took its place. Hands shaking, mind whirling in horrified disbelief, he frantically explored the vertical bars. Kept groping, moving to his right, until he met where the rock resumed on the other side. He stumbled to the left again, rattled the bars.
“Oh, Christ . . . oh, God.”
Imprisoned. He’d been locked up in some sort of goddamned cage. Underground. “Hey! Let me out of here!”
Terror overrode the pounding in his skull, the sickness. He yelled, kicked the unyielding bars for several minutes, until he slumped against them, exhausted. “Help, somebody,” he moaned.
“Won’t do you any good, you know,” came a voice from the darkness. A girl’s voice, weird and singsongy, making her sound about one card short of a full deck.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “Did you put me in here?”
“Me? No.” She giggled as though he’d said something really funny. “No, I’m waiting, just like Joey. Just like you.”
Brett gripped the bars, heart knocking against his ribs, certain he’d gone insane. Right down the rabbit hole. “Waiting for what? Who are you, and who’s Joey?”
“Joey’s next. He doesn’t talk anymore.” She sounded sad about that.
“Next for what?” The trembling spread from his hands throughout his body. He couldn’t stop.
“I’m after Joey. They come back a couple of times, then they don’t come back—they don’t come back,” she sang, the eerie crooning echoing down the chamber. She sounded nearby—perhaps in another cell?
“Who doesn’t come back, us or the bad guys?”
“Us. The generator comes on. They scream and scream like Sarah did, like piglets gone to slaughter. Then they don’t come back.”
Holy Mother of God. Think, Brett. “What’s your name? Mine’s Brett.”
“Kendra. Keeen-dra, Keeen-draaa—”
“Listen to me, Kendra,” he snapped. “There’s got to be a way out of here, right? When the bastard comes, fight, bash him in the face. Just throw him off enough to be able to run, then get away.”
“Can’t get away when they hold you down, give you the nice drugs, make you float, float. . . .”
So Kendra wasn’t just crazy. She was stoned. Out of steam and out of options for now, he slid to the ground and ran a hand down his face, wishing he could see jack shit, but aware he should probably be glad he couldn’t.
Down the rabbit hole and straight into a nightmare.
“Hey, Brett? The screaming isn’t the worst part,” she said, as though making a curious observation.
He barked a laugh, a little hysterical to his own ears. “No shit? Then what is?”
“It’s when they stop.”
3
Grace McKenna snapped her newspaper closed with a sound of disgust and reached for her mug of coffee. Another missing person, vanished without a trace. The sixth one from the Nashville area in ten months, this time a young man of nineteen with a nice family and his entire future ahead of him. Missing as of one week ago.
No bodies, no leads. Zilch.
Except for a man who wished to remain anonymous claiming to have seen two men leaving a club in downtown Nashville last Friday night, the younger one matching the description of Vanderbilt freshman Brett Charles.
What a sorry-assed, totally messed-up world it was. Sure, the innocent needed a defender, but headlines like these made her burn for the day she would make prosecutor. She’d garnish her Wheaties with the testicles of men who preyed on the weak. Figuratively speaking.
If she weren’t attractive, she might’ve achieved her goal by now. Okay, that sounded like a sexist view, but she had no illusions about the field of law still being a predominantly male, good ole boy environment. It wasn’t sour grapes on her part in the least, just simple fact. Not only did she have breasts instead of a penis, but she wasn’t one of those mannish, gruff career women who stalked around trying to act as though she sported a pair of balls bigger than her male comrades’.
Her father, who happened to be her boss at McKenna and Associates, the law firm he’d built from the ground up, was fond of saying she possessed a “quiet beauty with a core of inner strength” and was, therefore, exactly where she needed to be—at his firm, under his supervision. Grace, Champion of the Innocent. She loved her job, but worked hard against being typecast into a role she might never be able to rise above, even if it meant bucking Daddy on occasion. Preconceptions could stall a career.
In any case, she certainly wasn’t going to defeat all of the world’s bad guys today. She spent an hour reviewing her current cases at the kitchen table, and had just laid aside a mountain of file folders when her cell phone blasted Elton John’s “The Bitch Is Back.”
She jumped, heart giving a little lurch at hearing the song that usually made her smile. Julian Salvatore hadn’t tried to phone her in almost four weeks, even in the wake of their chance meeting last Thursday, so she’d sworn he’d given up. Spying the number on the caller ID, she heaved a sigh of annoyance. And, yes, felt a tiny stab of disappointment, as well. Seemed he’d finally thrown in the towel after all.
He laughed. “You’re my lawyer, Grace. How do you think?”
She didn’t like his tone. Or his presumptuous familiarity, considering she didn’t know him very well. “I don’t have anything new to tell you. At this point, Mr. Vines, we’ve barely started on your defense.”
For a crime she wasn’t entirely certain he hadn’t committed. A first for her. Family alliances could be hell on a girl’s scruples.
“I thought we were past the formalities. Please, call me Derek like you did the other day. We’re family friends, for God’s sake. I used to see you every summer when you came to visit your aunt Penny, remember?”
Which was how she’d ended up taking on Derek Vines as a favor, via a bit of pressure from her own father. Warren Vines had phoned Daddy about Derek’s trouble a couple of weeks ago, citing Aunt Penny as a reference, to plead his son’s case. Penny had vouched for her former neighbors.
And shit, as they say, flows straight downhill. As much as she hated to admit it, she feared Julian might be right about this one.
“Of course I remember.” What she didn’t recall was being particularly impressed with Mr. and Mrs. Vines or their son. Then again, as a flighty teenager she’d pretty much thought anybody over the age of twenty-one was lame.
In any case, her instincts urged her to maintain a polite, professional distance from this man, even more so than she normally would with a client. Her gut feelings had never steered her wrong. “I called you by your first name because I was introducing you to someone else in a social setting. Again, what can I do for you this morning? Did you have a specific question?”
His pleasant tone evaporated. “I’m being accused of sexual harassment by someone in my own father’s company, and I can’t refute the charges. Do you have any clue what this is doing to me? How humiliated I am? My God, I’m not even gay!”
Standing, she walked to the sink to rinse out her mug. “The burden of proof is on Mr. Madison,” she reminded him. “He has no video or audio evidence, nor does he have a witness. It’s his word against—”