He shuddered.
Turning over, he reached out and switched on the light on the bedside table. His phone was there, and he picked it up. He dialed Siobhan.
It rang.
And rang.
And rang.
And went to voicemail.
He waited for her message to end and then for the beep. Then he uttered two words.
“I’m out.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Nash woke up to someone banging on his door.
After leaving that message for Siobhan, he’d gone into a deep and restful sleep, and rousing from it was like surfacing from fathoms down in a sweet, cold pool of placid water.
But the banging was still happening.
He managed to throw aside the covers and get out of bed. He stumbled to the door and opened it, still blinking sleep out of his eyes.
Siobhan was standing there. Her hair was pulled into a severe ponytail on the top of her head. She stuck out her chin at him, her eyes flashing. “What the hell was that message you left me?”
He dragged a hand over his face. “Good morning to you, too.”
She put a hand on his chest and shoved him backward. “Oh, don’t act like that, Nash. What the hell?”
He staggered away from the door and collided with the wall.
She swept into the room and shut the door behind her. “What do you mean, ‘I’m out’?”
“I can’t do this,” he said. “I’ve been thinking it over, and this isn’t me. I’m not a murderer—”
“Fine,” she said. “Then I want everything that you’ve been doing on this podcast, then. I want it all, every single recording, the wedding invitations, any photos you have. There is no way that I’m letting you out of this hotel room with one shred of evidence against me.”
Nash was waking up very, very quickly. He straightened. “What are you saying? You’re not going to let me out of the hotel room? What the heck does that mean?”
Her nostrils flared. “What do you think it means?”
“You threatening me?” He took a step towards her. He found that he was angry, not frightened, which was probably stupid. He’d heard that story that the Bell women had told. Siobhan could probably take him if it came down to a physical struggle.
She took a step toward him. “What if I was?”
“You going to kill me, Siobhan?” he said. “Do you want to kill me?”
She stepped closer. “I don’t want you to be dead.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
She swallowed. She put her hands on his chest. “Don’t leave me again.”
He moistened his lips.
“This time, Nash, stay with me.” She stepped even closer, and now she was touching him. Her body against his, and nothing between them except their clothes—and all Nash was wearing was a thin t-shirt and his boxer shorts, and his body was responding to their closeness in ways he couldn’t seem to control.
“Siobhan, please.” His voice came out hoarse.
“Please, what?” she whispered, peering up at him. One of her hands traveled up his chest to climb around the back of his neck. She twined her fingers in his hair. “If you don’t want any part of the killing, that’s okay. You don’t have to help. But just be there with me. I didn’t realize how much I missed you and now that you’re here—”
All the blood in Nash’s body seemed to be rushing to his crotch, and it was very hard to think. “Do you want to kill me?” he repeated.
Her tongue darted out and ran over the top of her teeth. “Maybe I’ve… thought about it,” she said. “Fantasized about how I’d do it.” The hand not in his hair was now tracing patterns on his chest.
He was hard. She was talking about fantasizing about killing him, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had an erection like this. It was pulsing. It was almost painful.
“But I wouldn’t,” she breathed.
“Not if I hand over all the evidence I have against you, anyway,” he choked.
“Just come with me. Watch me do Eddie.” She wriggled her body against his.
He groaned.
“Then we don’t even have to talk about evidence anymore.”
“Siobhan—”
She kissed him. Tugged down his head, pulling at his hair, sending sharp tingles of pain through his skull and then wiping all that out with the sensation of her soft, wet tongue thrusting into his mouth.
His hands went around her body, seizing her by the hips, crushing her body against his. He kissed her back. Forcefully, as if he was trying to take back some kind of power with his tongue, as if he could kiss his way back to some semblance of control over this entire situation.
She broke away from him, panting.
He took a step back from her. He was trembling. He touched his lips. They felt bruised.
She hugged herself, looking distraught. “It’s only supposed to be flirting, Nash. Innocent.”
Oh, God, she was crazy. She was completely unstable. He shut his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He opened his eyes.
She was twisting the edge of her shirt, looking at the floor. “Innocent,” she whispered. “Supposed to be innocent. Why can’t I ever be innocent and sweet?”
“Siobhan?”
She turned away from him, dragging in a breath. “Sorry,” she said in a steadier voice. She glanced at him over her shoulder, a little embarrassed. “I guess you must have figured that a person doesn’t turn out like me with a good bit of trauma in her past.”
Trauma. Bad things had happened to Siobhan. Siobhan fantasized about killing him. Why did he still have the erection from hell? He went over to the bed and sat down to hide it.
Now he was facing her. “I thought you said that you didn’t kill him in self-defense.”
“That doesn’t mean he hadn’t done things to me.”
Nash’s face twitched.
She laughed bitterly. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
She took a deep breath. “Fine. I’ll tell you, but not until after we’re done with Eddie.”
“I don’t know,” he said, swallowing. “I don’t know if I want to do that.”
She considered this. “Maybe you need more convincing? You want to look at me? You want to touch me?”
He looked away.
“You want to fuck me? Is that what it takes?”
“No.” He looked at the floor, and he hated himself, because his stupid penis was still throbbing during all that. Her offers turned him on. Her neediness did.
“You want me to beg?”
He looked up at her.
She reached up to her shirt and started to unbutton the first button. “Maybe you do want to look.”
He got up and stopped her hands. “No,” he said again. Siobhan was incredibly fucked up. But then, what did he expect from a woman who killed men and didn’t even understand why she did it? He’d romanticized her in his mind, turned her into some kind of superhero. But she was a disturbed woman, childish and desperate in some ways, manipulative in others. He couldn’t take advantage of her.
She extricated her hands from his and backed up. Her demeanor changed. She seemed to shed her pathetic sadness like a coat. Now, she regarded him with no emotion, and she was almost regal. “Fine, Nash. I thought we could do this the easy way, but if you don’t want to play that game—”
“What just happened?” he said. Why had she changed? All that bit about begging him, about showing her weaknesses, had that been an act? Or was she trying to cover for it, acting as if she had put it on to manipulate him when she’d really revealed herself to him?
“You’ll help with Eddie,” she said. “I want you there. If you can convince me that you’re not going to ruin everything afterward, then I’ll let you live. Otherwise…” She shrugged.
“So, you are threatening to kill me?”
She smiled a ghostly smile. “I have fantasized about it, Nash. I wasn’t lying about tha
t.” She took something out of her pocket.
It was a syringe.
Nash took a step backwards. He tripped and fell onto the bed, sprawled onto his back.
She crawled onto him, straddling his body and plunging the needle into his skin.
He gasped. Swore. Everything started to bleed around the edges.
Siobhan was on top of him, gyrating her hips against his pelvis. She was laughing.
And then he lost consciousness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Nash came to in a dark, small space. He was sitting on the floor, his legs tied, his hands tied behind his back. There was tape over his mouth.
He looked up and he saw hangers above his head. He was in a closet.
The door in front of him had a small hole where the handle used to be. It was at eye level, so he could see out of the hole and into the room outside, which was the master bedroom in the farmhouse Siobhan had rented.
The room had a floral bedspread and rose-printed wallpaper. There were dried flowers on the mantle and scented candles on the dresser.
Nash scooted forward and put his shoulder against the door. It was the kind of door that slid open on a track. He tried to slide the door.
It moved an inch.
He tried again.
Another inch.
Voices.
“I don’t see why we don’t just go out somewhere,” a man was saying. “I’d rather eat at a restaurant than wait here while you’re cooking—”
“I just have to heat it up in the oven. It’s all made. Two adorable little shepherd’s pies. I know you love shepherd’s pie. And I did make it just for you.” Siobhan’s voice.
Edward Carston came into the bedroom. He crossed to a chair where his jacket was thrown haphazardly. “We’ll eat that tomorrow night. We’re here all weekend, right?”
“Eddie.” Siobhan stood in the doorway to the bedroom, hands on her hips. “Don’t be an ass. I planned this.”
“I know that, but maybe it’s not a good plan.” He gave her a sympathetic look. “Next time, I’m sure you’ll figure out something I like better.”
She sighed. “I’m not getting back in a car and driving to a restaurant. It’s a half hour to anywhere from here.”
Nash knew that the poison that Siobhan wanted to administer to Carston was baked into the shepherd’s pie. Instead of making one big pan of the stuff, though, she’d made two little individual pies, which was supposed to be cute, but also meant that she could eat one without being contaminated by the poison and that Carston wouldn’t be suspicious. Not that he had an inkling that Siobhan wanted to kill him, anyway.
“You’ll get in the car if I tell you to,” said Carston. “I want to go out. We’re going out.”
“We’re eating here,” said Siobhan. She moved into the room with a catlike grace. “Maybe you want to work up an appetite first? I could sit on your lap, Uncle Eddie, ask if I could lick your lollipop.” She pressed into his body, taking his coat from him and throwing it on the bed.
Nash thought he might throw up. How could she play along with him, pander to his perversion?
But Carston did seem to be affected by her. He wound an arm around her waist and tugged her against his body. He kissed her forehead. “You’re sweet to offer, babe. But I’m hungry.”
Nash breathed a sigh of relief. If he had to watch the two of them together like that, he would have lost it.
God, was that why Siobhan had put him in this room? Had she thought he wanted to watch her be intimate with a creature like Carston? Because he didn’t. No part of him wanted that.
But no, Siobhan had put him here to watch Carston die. This was where she planned for that to happen.
Of course, it was supposed to look like a heart attack. What kind of activity could be doing that would trigger a heart attack?
Well, Nash was not going to stick around and find out. He was getting out of this closet, and if it messed up Siobhan’s plan, he didn’t much care. She couldn’t hold him captive here and expect him to cooperate. He put his shoulder against the closet door again.
But this time, he couldn’t manage to get it to move, not even an inch.
Carston let go of Siobhan. “Did you hear something?”
“No,” said Siobhan.
“Something in the closet,” he said. “You don’t think this place has rats?
“I’m sure it doesn’t,” she said, taking him by the hand and tugging him toward the door. “Let’s go eat, already.”
Nash watched them go.
He tried the door again.
Damn it, why wasn’t it working anymore?
He looked up at the track, and he realized that Siobhan had put something up there to jam it. The door wasn’t moving any further because it couldn’t.
He was going to have to get that thing out.
With a little maneuvering, he managed to get to his feet. He didn’t have great balance because his legs were tied together, though, and he crashed back down to a sitting position.
Damn, that had been noisy.
Nash waited for Carston to come back up and start looking for more rats.
But no one showed up. Must not have heard him.
It didn’t matter that he had fallen down, anyway. He was going to have to get untied first.
He knew it was possible to get your arms in front from the back while they were tied together. He’d have to thread his legs through his arms, and it wouldn’t feel good—probably wrench some muscles pretty bad. But he could do it.
* * *
It took longer than Nash would have liked, and it hurt like hell.
And once he had gotten his arms in front, he had to untie them, and to do that, he employed his teeth.
Which took even longer.
By the time he had made significant progress, Siobhan and Carston were coming back into the room.
“Babe,” Carston was saying, “I know you want this to be a romantic weekend and all, but I’m really not up for much right now. I was thinking maybe we could watch some TV or something.”
Siobhan shut the door and backed into it. “That’s fine.”
Nash had the knots loosened, but he couldn’t get his hands free. He worked at the string with his teeth.
“There’s no TV up here,” said Carston. He went to the door. “So, move out of the way, and—”
“No.” She shook her head.
Nash was almost there. He wriggled his fingers.
“Babe.” Carston took her by the shoulders.
She kicked him in the shin.
He howled, grasping his leg and hopping on the other foot. “What the fuck was that?”
“I want you in here,” she said. “It’ll be better if they find your body in here. I’d rather not have to drag you around. I already dragged one extraordinarily heavy man around recently, and I’m just not very interested in repeating that experience.” She shot a look at the closet door.
Nash got a hand free. Triumphant, he pulled the other hand out too. He massaged his wrists and then went to work on the knots that held his feet together.
“What are you talking about?” Carston clenched his teeth and looked her over. “You just kicked me.”
“Yes,” said Siobhan. “Yes, I did.”
Nash’s feet were untied. He stood up and felt along the track until he found the object Siobhan had jammed in there. It was a wooden dowel. He tugged it free.
Carston advanced on Siobhan. “What the hell was that?”
She kicked him again.
He screeched.
She laughed.
Now, Nash was free. He could open the door if he wanted. But he didn’t. Instead, he stood right where he was, looking out through the crack between the door and the frame of the closet, and watched.
Carston started for Siobhan again.
Her hand shot out, the flat of her palm colliding with his chin.
His head was knocked back. He grunted. He fell to his knees.
Siobhan looked
down on him. “Feeling dizzy? That’s from the little surprise I put in your shepherd’s pie.”
Carston gasped. He raised his head to her. “What? What the fuck?”
“You like to have sex with children, Eddie,” said Siobhan. “You hurt little kids. You’re disgusting.”
“That stuff that people say about me—”
“You don’t have to deny it,” she said. “No secrets here. We both know you like it. We both know you do it.”
Carston clutched his head. “What is this? Who are you?”
She knelt down so that she was eye level with him. “You fought really hard to stay out of jail, and you managed it, which is kind of ironic, because if you’d just taken the sentence, you and I wouldn’t be here right now, and I wouldn’t be killing you.”
Carston’s jaw worked.
Siobhan nodded. “That’s right. I poisoned you. It’s going to hurt. A lot. But it works fairly quickly, so that should be a bit of a comfort to you, and—” She broke off.
Because Carston had stuck his finger down his throat and was now vomiting up his entire dinner.
Siobhan’s nostrils flared. “Stop that, Eddie.”
Carston vaulted up from the floor and jammed his shoulder into Siobhan’s midsection. He propelled her backwards, into the wall, and then he punched her. Twice. Once in the face, once in the stomach.
Siobhan cried out.
Nash tore out of the closet and sped across the room. He caught Carston by the shoulder and ripped him away from Siobhan.
Carston looked him over. “What the hell?” And then he punched Nash.
Nash cried out, hand going to his jaw.
Carston scrambled out of the door.
Siobhan shook her head at Nash. “That was very brave of you, Nash, but perhaps you should leave this to me?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“I wasn’t helping you,” he said. “I’m escaping.”
“Oh,” she said. “Okay.” She gestured for the door. “Go on, then. Escape.”
He looked from her to the door and back again.
And then he ran for the door.
He careened down the hallway, heading for the stairwell.
The Feminine Touch Page 23
