The future was not an endless series of dark days and darker nights. It held hope. She felt more clear-headed than she had in a year, as if some heavy boulder had been rolled away.
She had no idea what turns this relationship with Dan would take, but for now, it was simply delicious. This feeling of being wanted. When he turned that dark gaze on her, eyes glowing with desire like coals, it turned her inside out.
He saw her.
She’d been so used to being nearly invisible, sliding through other people’s lives like a ghost, wanting nothing, asking nothing, receiving nothing. It was as if she barely existed. Dan’s desire gave her weight and heft. He listened to her, too, giving her back her identity as someone whose thoughts were of value.
And they were of value. A gray, heavy fog had suddenly lifted, and she could see in the distance. Her mind could embrace yesterday, today, and tomorrow, instead of being able to think only in an eternal now.
It felt like she was coming back into herself. Claire welcomed this gingerly, the first hint of dawn’s light after a long midnight. The feelings were incredibly good, but so very new. Tentative and fragile.
“You okay?” He was there, by her side. He moved so quietly. He was such an immensely strong man, with dense, thick muscles. You’d think he’d make a noise when he moved, but instead he glided silently, like an insubstantial spirit instead of a very substantial man.
“Oh yeah,” she breathed.
“I like that tee shirt on you.” He grinned, sliding a hand up her thigh.
Claire watched his face and saw the second he realized she wasn’t wearing underwear.
“Oh, Christ.” His face tightened. A dull red bloomed on his high cheekbones. He closed his eyes, briefly, as if in pain, then opened them again, a fierce light shining in his dark pupils. “You shouldn’t do this to me. I have a weak heart.” He patted his chest, right over his heart.
That was nonsense.
He most certainly did not have a weak heart.
She’d felt it galloping while they’d been making love, then felt the slow, steady, strong beat of it afterward, her ear right over where his hand was now patting. Thump, thump, thump, a steady sixty beats per minute. An athlete’s heart.
It had been the most delicious sound, sexy and reassuring at the same time. Simply lying in his arms, ear over his heart, had been almost as wonderful as the love-making, though that had been off the charts.
The sheer human connection had been so wonderful.
Nighttime had been reserved for her deepest loneliness. At times, scrambling up in bed, gasping and shaking from her nightmares, Claire had had the panicked feeling that she was all alone in the world. That all of humanity had been erased from the earth, leaving only her to face dragons on her own. Achingly alone, with monsters loose.
So listening to Dan’s steady heartbeat, feeling his strong arms around her, touching him from the tips of her toes to the top of her head—well, that had been sheer joy.
She’d felt enormously safe in his arms, as if nothing bad could ever happen to her, ever again.
The look he was sending her didn’t make her feel safe now, though. Not at all. As his big, callused hand moved up the outside of her thigh, smoothing up over her left buttock, across the small of her back and down again, his eyes narrowed, his thin nostrils flared in that male predatory look that would be frightening if she were his enemy.
She wasn’t his enemy, and it wasn’t a fighting look. It was male desire. Focused like a laser on her.
He’d put on pajama bottoms, leaving that wide, hard chest bare. The bottoms couldn’t hide his desire, though. Underneath, as he touched her, his penis swelled and rose in straining jerks as he caressed her bottom.
Heat flared inside her, every animal instinct she had jolted into awareness. Heat flared from him, too, making a faint musky smell rise from his skin. He inhaled and exhaled sharply, as if his lungs couldn’t pull in enough air.
Hers couldn’t either. Her chest felt constricted, as if a big band of something had been wrapped around it. The hard calluses on his fingertips rasped across her skin like a cat’s tongue, creating goose pimples. The hair on the nape of her neck and along her forearms rose, as if she were terrified.
She wasn’t terrified. This wasn’t fear.
She glanced down at the thick solid shaft that moved with his every caress, and felt her own sex contract sharply in answer. Almost a prelude to an orgasm, just from having him touch her.
Amazing.
Dan bent his forehead to hers, hand moving slowly up her back. Claire stepped closer, so close she could feel his penis against her belly, through the material of his pajamas and her tee shirt. She angled her head in invitation, eyes on his.
Their mouths met, clung. He licked his tongue into her mouth and Claire pulled away. It was sensory overload. Every inch of her skin tingled. She stared into his eyes, the black pupils almost eating up the dark brown irises.
“Claire,” he murmured, and bent his head again.
This time their bodies met completely, chest to chest, loins to loins, one hard male thigh between hers. Heat flared, muscles contracted where they touched. Dan cupped the back of her head and she had to let her head rest in his hand because the muscles in her neck went lax.
Everywhere their bodies touched, she… glowed. With heat, excitement, arousal. He held her more tightly and she rose to her toes to torture herself, rubbing her hips against the smooth, steely column that was now fully hard, long and thick and full.
She broke contact for a moment, gasping, trying to pull in air into overheated lungs while Amazing Grace sounded in her head. Why was the song playing? Had someone switched on a CD player?
It took her almost a full minute to remember that Amazing Grace was her cell phone’s ring tone. No one ever called her. She hadn’t heard it ring all this past year. She kept it with her as a safety precaution.
She blinked, looked around. The sound of the music was muffled. “That’s my cell. I think—" Where was it? Ah, in her purse on the coffee table in the living room. “I think I should take this.”
Dan nodded, opened his arms, stepped back. He looked so appealing, standing there, strong, broad-shouldered, aroused penis making a tent of his loose pajama bottoms. She nearly flung herself back into his arms.
What did she care about a cell phone call? She couldn’t even remember who had the number. The tones of the song rang on and she finally found it and swiped it open.
“Hello?” she asked breathlessly, as if she’d just run in from the garden or something, when actually she was breathless because she’d just been in the arms of the sexiest man alive. Her eye chanced on the wall clock in Dan’s living room. Good God. It was past two a.m. Not only was a cell phone call extremely rare, she couldn’t begin to imagine who on earth would be calling her at such an unearthly hour.
Claire hadn’t recognized the number on the display, though it had a 727 prefix. Safety Harbor. Who could be calling her from Safety Harbor?
“Hello?” she said again.
A woman’s voice answered. “Claire? It’s Maisie.” There was terrible background noise. People shouting, some liquid, whooshing sound. Were those sirens? Everything was garbled, the voice sounding as if it came from deep under water.
Claire pulled the cell phone away and frowned at it, trying to piece together the words she’d heard. Had she heard crazy? Was someone from home calling her at two in the morning to say she was crazy?
This felt like one of her nightmares, only a new one.
“I’m sorry?” she asked sharply, bringing the phone back to her ear. “Who is this?”
Dan had followed her into the living room. His head turned at the tone of her voice. He took a step toward her.
Another shouted few words, drowned out by the noise. There was a loud crackling noise and the sirens sounded closer. Definitely a new kind of nightmare. “Who is this?”
Dan was standing next to her now. Claire put the cell on speakerphone so
he could hear too. He frowned when he heard the loud noises.
The roar faded a little. The caller either walked away from the source of the noise or was cupping the receiver with her hand. “Claire. It’s Maisie. Maisie Cumberland.”
“Maisie! How do you have this number?” Maisie Cumberland was a neighbour, her house a few homes down from Claire’s. She’d been a friend of her father’s.
Claire suspected that Maisie had wanted to be more than friends with her father, but Dad had been like a wolf. He mated for life with her mother. After she died, he no longer wanted a partner.
“Your father gave it to me some time ago.” Of course. This cell phone had been her father’s. She’d completely forgotten that. “I took a chance that you might be using his phone. Claire…” A loud siren, very close, drowned her out.
“Maisie, I lost you!”
“… completely destroyed. Claire, I’m so sorry.”
“What?” Claire met Dan’s eyes that mirrored the worry in her own. “What’s destroyed? What are you talking about?”
“Your home, Claire. It’s burning up. The fire brigade is here, but they’re not having much luck. Oh, honey, I am so sorry. Here, talk to the fire captain.”
Heart thudding, Claire could hear the loud crackle of a fire, men shouting, giving orders. She heard Maisie speak to someone, she heard her name spoken, then—
“Hello?” A deep, strong male voice. “This is Captain Ferguson of the Safety Harbor Fire Brigade. I understand that you are the owner of the house at 427 Laurel Lane.”
“Yes, I am, Captain.” Claire’s knees were trembling. Dan led her over to an armchair and she sank down gratefully. He crouched next to her, listening. “What—what’s the situation there?”
“I’m afraid I don’t have good news, Ms. Day. Your house is nearly destroyed. We got here right away, but the fire grew very rapidly. We suspect arson. There’s a sharp odor of accelerant and the entire house went up at the same time. Usually, when an accident happens, fire breaks out in one room and spreads to the rest of the building. In this case, the entire building caught fire at once.”
Claire brought a shaking hand to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she whispered.
“There won’t be much that can be salvaged, Ms. Day. I’m sorry. Are you insured?”
“Y-yes.” But the insurance records were in her house, burning. Right now. She wasn’t even certain what company it was, her father had stipulated the policy twenty years ago. The contract was gone. Together with her father’s collection of first editions. And her mother’s lovely watercolors.
All her own books and clothes. Every stick of furniture she owned. All her mementoes of her travels. Her collection of music. All her records and documents. Her small collection of jewelry, her mother’s wedding ring, her grandmother’s wedding ring, her father’s wedding ring. All the family photographs. Everything that was her past, everything that was her present.
Everything. Up in smoke. Her entire life. Gone.
Dan took the cell phone from her shaking hand. “Captain Ferguson,” he said in his deep voice, “this is Daniel Weston. Gunnery Sergeant Daniel Weston, USMC. I am a friend of Ms. Day’s. Can you repeat the status of the house, please?”
“More or less destroyed, Gunny. We’re slowly getting the fire under control, but it will take another hour, at least, before we can put the flames out. After which we won’t be able to enter the grounds for another couple of hours. But we’ll get the property sealed off with police tape. We’re treating it as a crime scene. Where is Ms. Day?”
“We’re in Washington DC.”
“How fast can Ms. Day get down here?”
Dan looked at his watch and at her. “We’ll be down on the first flight tomorrow morning. Save what you can of her home, please.”
“We’ll do our best. You guys get down here. Someone has pulled something really nasty. We’ll have to act fast to nail him.” The connection was cut.
It was almost too much to take in. Claire sat, shaking, in the armchair, trying to get her mind around the size of the loss. Her insides, the core of her, felt chilled again, like when she woke up from nightmares.
Only this time, the nightmare continued after she woke up.
Dan was crouching by her side. He pulled her into his arms, and with a gasp of breath, Claire went there. He surrounded her with heat and strength. She turned her nose into his neck and breathed in deeply, arms tight around his neck. She was hanging on as if she were drowning and this was her last lifeline.
Bless him, Dan didn’t mumble any platitudes about it being all right, and she would rebuild. It wasn’t all right, and there was no rebuilding what she’d lost. Her parents were gone, every memento of them was gone, and she was spinning out in blackest space. Without a past and without a future. No platitudes would help that—none.
“I’ll book our tickets online,” he said, finally. Claire had no idea how long she’d spent in his arms, leaning heavily against that broad, strong chest, arms clinging tightly to his neck. A minute, five, thirty. She’d lost all cognition of time.
His words jolted her. My God. She had to get going. Booking tickets. Yes. A lot of things were necessary now. Making plans, making lists. Filing claims. Dealing with the police. Trying to cope with the loss of everything she had in the world.
It all stretched out into an unwanted and unpalatable future. The only thing she felt even remotely capable of doing right now was lying against Dan’s chest and holding on.
A rhythmic buzzing sounded. Sort of like a cell phone ring, but sort of not. Dan stiffened and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. He looked at the display.
“Christ,” he breathed and stood up. He had a hand under her elbow so she had to stand, too. He reached a long arm out and switched on the TV. He had a big plasma screen in the living room. And small flat-panel TV screens scattered about the house.
He wanted to watch TV now? At two-thirty in the morning?
The screen sprang to life. It was split into four images. At first, Claire didn’t understand. What she saw was grainy black-and-white images, with color blobs moving. Like scenes from some science fiction movie.
“What’s—" she began, and he pulled her to the ground and reached out to something on the wall that doused all the lights.
“Men,” he said grimly in the dark. “Coming for us.”
CHAPTER 11
Back in his office, Bowen McKenzie paced the room, recognizing the behaviour as anxiety-driven. He hated that. Someone was going to pay for making him feel this way.
He never worried. He didn’t do worry. He laid his plans carefully, chose the right people to implement them, and waited for the successful results.
Failure or unplanned eventualities were not allowed.
Having Claire Day on his tail was a big, unplanned eventuality—huge—and he needed to put an end to it immediately. He needed to find where she’d gone to ground and whom she’d gone to ground with.
Whoever the man was, he was damned good if he’d outwitted Heston. Unless, of course, it had been a fluke. A casual acquaintance who happened to be there with her. But what the fuck was a casual acquaintance doing armed?
He didn’t believe in coincidences.
Where the fuck was she? And who was she with?
He turned to his computer and Skyped offtoseethewizard, uncaring that it was past midnight. He’d just had word that his man—Heston’s man, to be precise—had done what he was supposed to do in Safety Harbour.
Now it was a question of time.
He didn’t have long to wait. A small screen popped up with Wizard’s odd, triangular face and spiky dyed-black hair filling it.
“Dude,” Wizard said dreamily, lifting his eyebrows with five small silver rings piercing one. Fuck. He was high. Still, Wizard was a genius. Even high, even semi-comatose, he was better than anyone else. But the timing was tight and he needed Wizard sober and clean, goddammit!
“Snap to it.” He put some command into his voice, whic
h was usually enough to make Heston and his men snap to attention.
But Wizard came from different stock. His mouth beneath the straggly goatee stretched in a smile. “Hey.”
“Concentrate. There is going to be a cell phone call soon. The call will come from a small town in Florida.” He gave the coordinates for the area around Claire’s house. “It will be made to a cell here in the Washington area. Maybe as far as Baltimore, I don’t know. Let’s say a radius of a hundred miles. I need for you to track that call and give me the coordinates of the receiving cell.”
“Dude.” Wizard’s voice was sharp as he sat up, suddenly sober. “Oh man. We’re talking satellite time. Real time. It’s one thing to go over records a week later, it’s another to hack into a system in real time. Whoa.” Wizard shook his head mournfully. “That’s heavy stuff, man.”
A direct look into the webcam. Bowen made his voice cold. “An extra hundred K should make it lighter.”
A thoughtful look crossed Wizard’s face. Wizard was working on some esoteric software he was sure would net him a billion dollars. That was Wizard’s dream. To set up a company marketing something he called mind-blowing, sell billions of dollars of his mystery product, take it public the year after, and retire on the proceedings. Just chill out and get high for the rest of his natural life. Wizard hated Cubicle Life, as he called his job at the NSA.
But to do that, to set up that hypothetical company that was going to net him billions before he turned thirty, Wizard needed cash. Huge gobs of it.
An extra hundred thousand would definitely get him closer to his goal.
“Okay,” Wizard said, frowning. He was in some basement. Probably his parents’. An overhead neon light reflected off the brow rings. “I’ll start now.”
“You do that,” Bowen said sourly, as Wizard’s image disappeared from the small square on the screen.
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