“The Consul has need of your services,” said the caller cryptically.
Dale trembled as an image of the Consul sprang to mind. Stern and imposing, the man’s oil portrait hung in Dale’s meeting hall in a suburb of Washington, D.C. “Of course,” he replied, eager to serve the brotherhood in any way.
“He requires you to discover whether Eleanor McKenzie Stuart, or Ellie Stuart, has a registered e-mail account with any of the free service providers—Hotmail, Yahoo!, Juno, and so forth.”
“No problem,” said Dale, relieved that the task was one he could readily perform.
“I will call again in twenty-four hours,” warned the caller before hanging up.
With trembling fingers, Dale Robbins jotted Eleanor McKenzie Stuart on the back of a gum wrapper. He cast surreptitious glances at his colleagues, busy working at their cubicles; seeing that no one was watching him, he began his search through Telnet.
By four o’clock that afternoon, Ellie had hit a wall. She and Sean had toured two of the city’s three homeless shelters, canvassing hundreds of individuals, dispersing and collecting photos of Carl. The hopelessness and apathy, the smell of unwashed bodies, and the repeated negative responses were like spikes being driven deep into her heart.
With the sun still high in the sky and plenty of time to visit the third and last shelter, an exhausted Ellie dropped into the passenger seat of Sean’s car and closed her eyes. The throb of the engine lulled her instantly to sleep.
“Hey.” Sean shook her gently awake ten minutes later. “We’re at the hotel. You want to walk or should I carry you in?”
“What . . . why are we here?” she murmured sleepily, recognizing the hotel’s parking garage.
“You need to rest, Ellie. We’ll go back out tonight.”
“No, there’s another shelter,” she insisted, but her eyelids felt sticky, and her heart cracked with grief at the likelihood that no one would recognize Carl’s photo there, either.
Her boys would be lost to her forever.
“We’ll get there, Ellie,” Sean comforted with a squeeze of her hand. “Trust me, right now, you need to sleep.” Pushing out of the car, he collected her on the other side and led her, nearly catatonic, to their room on the fourth floor.
Trust me, he’d said. For the first time in her life, she wanted to do just that—put her faith in another human being, something she’d done only once before, when she’d trusted Carl to love and honor her forever.
“Wake me up in a couple hours,” she begged, her speech slurred as she crawled, fully clothed, onto one of the two double beds and flopped back to sleep.
Two hours later, Sean didn’t have the heart to wake her. Growing restless but loath to leave her, he watched the news on TV, scowling at the thirty-second segment allotted to the case of Ellie’s missing boys. It was just enough time for them to identify the blood smeared on the cell phone as Caleb’s and to mention that his shoe had been found in the woods nearby, suggesting he’d put up a struggle. Was that all the boys were worth now, just thirty fucking seconds?
Sean leapt off the bed and started prowling. By 9:30, he couldn’t stand to be inactive any longer. Their forty-eight-hour grace period was dwindling rapidly. Instead of waking Ellie, he scribbled her a note, saying he’d be at one of the bars just up the street. Call when you wake up, he added, jotting down his cell phone number.
He stuck his gun in the holster at the small of his back, slipped one of Carl’s photos into his back pocket, his wallet with the keycard in the other, and quietly left the room.
The jazz music pouring out of Isaac’s corner bar drew him to its open doors two blocks from the hotel. A pungent bouquet of grilled grouper, perfume, and cigarette smoke greeted him as he sauntered into the dark, cozy pub.
He sat a moment at the crowded bar, noting that the clientele ranged from yuppies to local watermen. As a pretty blonde started crooning lyrics on the microphone, he drained his Diet Coke, pulled out Carl’s picture, and started making his rounds.
But no one recognized Carl. “Are you a cop?” several people asked him.
“No, just looking for an old friend.”
Making his way toward the tables at the rear, he sidled up to two guys who looked prison-rough. Both were in their midforties, dressed in navy-blue coveralls, suggesting they’d come straight from a laboring job. One was small and wiry with a narrow black mustache that reminded Sean of Hitler. The other was fat and greasy with a crude, jailhouse tattoo on the knuckles of his left hand.
Sean knew trouble when he saw it. He even knew when the words escape and evade were apropos. He just couldn’t resist dipping a toe in to test the waters. “Hi,” he said, and the men eyed him with sullen disbelief, like, Where the fuck do you get off talking to us?
“I’m looking for a friend,” said Sean, sliding the photo between them. “You seen him anywhere?”
“No,” said the small man without even glancing down. But his partner’s curiosity got the better of him. He angled his thick head to look, and recognition flashed across his face before he managed to conceal it. He looked up at Sean with his mouth hanging open but didn’t say anything.
An awkward silence fell over the table.
“Maybe you need more time,” Sean suggested. “I’ll go use the head,” he added, intentionally leaving the photo on the table as he backed away. He ducked into the two-stall restroom and waited, his blood thrumming with anticipation. Wouldn’t it beat all if these guys could point him in Carl’s direction?
Of course, they might need a little coercion first. He checked his gun, then tucked it out of sight. With a breath of resolve, he left the restroom.
Only the men were gone.
Crap. They’d even taken the photo with them.
Sean headed briskly for the door.
“Where you goin’, policeman?” purred a brunette who’d flirted with him earlier.
He pretended not to hear her. The thugs couldn’t have gotten that far, plus the street was a better place to question them.
Pausing on the front stoop, Sean looked around. Young people thronged the sidewalk to his right. Instinct told him the men would have headed toward the waterfront, so he struck out in that direction. The dark alley on his left drew his watchful gaze, but it was too late. A brief whistling preceded the arc of a two-by-four as it made stunning impact with the side of his head.
Sean staggered but managed to stay on his feet. Two women to his right screamed and scattered. Other pedestrians gave wide berth while eyeing Sean with interest. Bent double, with his ears ringing and fighting to focus on the cobblestones under his feet, Sean felt rough hands grab him and drag him into the alleyway.
He was shoved against a stone wall and held there by the fat man’s forearm, his Glock pinned uselessly between the wall and the small of his back.
A beefy fist plowed into one side of his face, snapping his head back.
Goddamn, that hurt!
“Who are you?” The smaller man stood off to one side, glaring up at Sean’s swelling profile.
“Friend of Carl’s,” Sean gritted, waiting for just the right moment to turn the tables on them. “We went to high school together.”
“Oh, yeah? Hit him again, Grimes.”
Sean ducked, and the fat man’s fist hit the wall. He howled, whirling away to nurse his bruised knuckles. Sean whipped his Glock out and leveled it at Little Hitler. “Your turn,” he said, calmly releasing the safety. “Tell me where Carl is.”
“Fuck you,” said the little man with genuine bravado.
“That’s not the way it works,” said Sean, bearing down on him. With his free hand, he grasped the little man by his coveralls, swung him around, and pinned him to his chest, nudging the barrel of his Glock against his temple. “This is how it works,” he added in his deadliest murmur. “Grimes here tells me where to find Carl or I shoot your brains out and drop your body in the gutter.”
At the threat, the fat man ceased his howling. He swung a panicked lo
ok between the two of them. But then a smile of triumph split his broad face. “Cops are comin’,” he announced with glee.
Sure enough, a siren chirped nearby. Blue light strafed the faces of the adjacent buildings, and Sean cursed. How’d the cops get here so fast? “Tell me where Carl is,” he insisted, gouging Little Hitler’s temple harder.
“Don’t tell him shit,” the little man warned his companion. “He ain’t gonna shoot me. Not with the cops this close.”
He was right, damn it. Not that Sean had planned on killing him in the first place, but the authorities couldn’t know that. Furthermore, he didn’t have a concealed-carry permit for the state of Georgia.
With a mutter of annoyance, Sean looked around. The far end of the alley was blocked by a Dumpster and a privacy fence—no deterrent to Sean, who could clamber over just about anything.
Thrusting Little Hitler at his fat companion, he turned and bolted up the alley, putting his gun away as he went.
“Hey, where you goin’?” the fat man shouted. The smaller man gave chase, but Sean easily outstripped him. Hitting the steel Dumpster at full speed, he did a pull-up on its lip and clambered on top. With a glance back at the gaping thugs, he leapt over the privacy fence and landed on the next street over.
Brushing his hands off, Sean eased casually out of the shadows to join the knot of people cruising toward him. He circled the block with them back to Drayton Street. Glancing up the street at Isaac’s, he saw two squad cars parked with their noses in the alleyway. Police officers now interrogated Little Hitler and his fat companion, Grimes.
Huh. Who’d have thought guys like them would have stuck around? Sean mused. Maybe they had friends in the force.
Crossing the street to head back to the Holiday Inn Express, Sean cursed his bad luck. He’d come so close to discovering Carl’s location.
Unlocking the door with scarcely a sound, he realized that Ellie was already awake. The light flooding in from the hallway showed her sitting up in bed, her back to the headboard, hugging a pillow.
A vision of her holding Colton hit him like a punch in the gut. “You’re up,” he said, closing the door and flicking on the bathroom light. “I thought you would call me.”
“What happened to your face?” she asked in a dull, scratchy voice.
He touched his swelling cheekbone with his fingertips. “I came across some guys who recognized Carl’s photo,” he announced, laying his gun, his wallet, and his cell phone on the bureau.
Ellie’s gaze had snagged on the gun as if she were just realizing he was a warrior—not a regular guy. In this particular mission, he was her warrior. He watched her swallow uncomfortably before asking, incredulously, “And they hit you?”
“Yeah, well, first they denied knowing him,” Sean replied. “Then they lured me out of the pub and hit me with a two-by-four. What they didn’t do was tell me where Carl is,” he added irritably. “I might have gotten answers if the police hadn’t shown up.”
“Did you tell the police what happened?”
“No,” he said, turning toward the bathroom to keep from explaining his reasons. Cops who chatted with excons made him uneasy. “I’ll call Butler in the morning.”
Five minutes later, he came out smelling of soap, wearing just his boxers. Ellie was still in her ragged nightgown, her back to the headboard, clutching the pillow.
It hurt to look at her, to have nothing more encouraging to say. “I need to sleep some, Ellie,” he said, snapping off the bathroom light behind him, “but you can turn on the TV if you want.”
She said nothing until he’d crossed to the second bed and pulled the covers down.
“What did those men look like?” she asked with the faintest thread of hope in her voice.
“One was big and fat and went by the name Grimes. The other was small with a mustache.” He’d seen the composite sketches of the kidnappers. Only Grimes bore some resemblance to one of the sketches, but it was too much to assume that just because he was fat, he was one of the kidnappers.
Given Ellie’s relapse into silence, she realized that, too.
He sat down, wriggled under the covers, punched his pillow up, and closed his eyes.
A second later, he opened them to look at her. Ellie still sat there, staring into darkness.
He couldn’t stand seeing her like this. “Ellie,” he insisted, “Carl is somewhere in this city. Those men recognized him, and for some reason, they’re protecting him. Maybe tomorrow we’ll discover why. And if we can’t, then Butler will.”
She didn’t acknowledge his encouragement, didn’t break down and weep. Hell, she barely even breathed.
With a sigh, Sean kicked off the covers, rolled out of bed, and stepped to hers. “Move over,” he told her.
That finally got her attention. Her pale face tipped up at him. “Why?” she asked.
“Because sometimes the only way to get through a bad time is to hold on to the guy next to you.”
Her light gray eyes seemed to cut the gloom as she assessed him. “Would you make love to me?” she whispered unexpectedly.
Sean’s skin seemed to shrink. His only intention had been to console her in her desolation, but the invitation set his imagination on fire. Blood rushed to his groin. His heart started pounding.
Make love to Ellie? The woman who’d tormented his dreams since his return from overseas? The sexy mama who’d driven him into the arms of another woman in the hopes of dissipating his lust?
He wanted nothing more.
Only, not like this. Not when, for Ellie, making love was second only to suicide. What she needed was morphine or valium—not sex.
“Sweetheart,” he growled, tamping down his disappointment, “making love isn’t going to make this any easier.”
It might even make things worse. For one thing, Sean had sworn to Butler that they weren’t lovers. And it’d make him a liar if he took her up on her offer.
Silence greeted his reply. Ellie moved stiffly over, stuffed the pillow under her head, and dropped into a prone position.
Sean sighed. Now what? She’d made room for him, but on the heels of her mind-blowing invitation, how was he supposed to sleep beside her without lying there all worked up?
“You coming in or not?” she said shortly, obviously humiliated.
With the voice of reason cautioning him strongly, Sean eased between the sheets, doing his utmost not to touch her, not to succumb to the urge to scoop her up and shelter her from one more ounce of pain or disillusionment, because he couldn’t trust himself to stop there. But then she stuck her icy feet under his and wriggled closer, and he could tell she wasn’t just cold; she was trembling.
“Damn, woman, you’re freezing.”
“S-sorry,” she whispered.
He suffered a sudden, irrational desire to heat her blood to boiling. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” he muttered, starting to extricate himself.
“Don’t.” She looped a strong arm around his waist and clung to him like a life raft. “Please don’t go.”
As if he could, with her athletic body pressed up against him, her thigh thrown over his, holding him securely against her. His heart started pounding. Desire swamped him, leaving him fully aroused and wide awake. He sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep a wink like this.
He tried one last time to reason with her. “Ellie,” he said in a gruff voice, “we told the authorities we weren’t lovers.”
“They don’t believe us, anyway,” she replied.
“What happened to not needing a man in your bed, thinkin’ he’s all that and a bag of chips?”
“This isn’t my bed.”
The answer dragged a chuckle out of him. Okay. The message was pretty clear. This was just a one-time deal, something that she, in her desperation, needed that he could give her.
This might also be his one and only chance.
With his mind made up, his conscience quieted, he turned and swept her onto her back, kissing her thoroughly.
&nbs
p; Her kiss was everything he’d dreamed it would be—slick, hot, wet, deep, and delectable. Beneath the firm mounds of her breasts, he could feel her heart thudding, assuring him that she was just as enthusiastic as he was.
Dragging his mouth from her lips, down the satiny length of her neck, he sought her nipples with single-minded anticipation. They’d teased him for months, peeking coyly through her thin cotton clothing. With a groan, he sucked the succulent nubs deep into his mouth, then rolled them with his tongue, delighting in their taste and their firm, fruity texture.
Ellie moaned. She seemed to explode in his arms, writhing beneath him, raking his back with her nails. He broke into a sweat anticipating the pleasures to come. But then she started wriggling out from under him. Apparently she’d changed her mind.
With sharp regret, he let her go, only to find himself thrust onto his back, paralyzed now, because she was stripping off that pathetic, ratty nightgown and—holy hell. He’d imagined a hundred times over what she looked like naked, only reality couldn’t top this, not with a suggestion of moonlight gilding her breasts, her long wavy hair tumbling in disarray around her shoulders, her eyes glazed with passion.
He could come just looking at her.
She slithered out of her panties, and suddenly she was climbing on top of him, her shapely hips and thighs locking him into place, keeping him tongue-tied.
As she lowered her head to kiss him, he splayed his hands on her trim hips, loving the baby-soft texture of her skin, the taut firmness of her buttocks. He squeezed them with relish, giving rise to a moan that affected him like lightning. Her scent tormented him. He wanted to taste her first, but he could feel her preparing to take him inside.
“Slow down, honey,” he begged. He wanted to savor this, make it last forever.
She, on the other hand, wanted to jump straight into the storm.
With a flip and a twist, Sean evaded her assault, reversing their positions. Now Ellie lay flat on her back, spread-eagled beneath him, which put her squarely at his mercy.
Oh, yeah. He liked this much better for now.
With a groan of frustration, Ellie lifted her hips in silent invitation. “Please,” she begged. She needed him to overwhelm her now, to distract her from the agony in her heart and give her reason to draw her next breath.
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