Relentless

by Vanessa Dare

  “Hey!” she muttered, but I could tell she was secretly pleased by the affection.

  Anders didn’t say anything, but got the gear bag he needed and held the door for Grif.

  A minute later, we watched them come into camera view, joining Stormy Dawn. They stood staring down at Todd’s prostrate body.

  “Okay, what pose do you want first?” Anders asked.

  Stormy Dawn walked over to Todd, undid the zipper on his pants. “Let’s get him undressed.”

  Grif’s head dropped in front of the camera, his image slightly distorted from the lens. “Anna, I’m turning the camera. No way can Elizabeth see this. Turn off the sound. If we need you, I’ve got my phone.” He held it up for me to see. “Text me that you hear me.”

  I dashed for my phone, sent him a quick note back, watched the screen. I heard the beep and Grif looked down. Read my note. Grinned. “Yeah, later.”

  The camera turned into the wall.

  I hit the button on the laptop enough times to drop off the sound.

  “I want to hear that,” Elizabeth said moodily.

  “No, you don’t.” Grif and Anders were going to take pictures of Todd and Stormy Dawn together and it wasn’t something for her to see. They had to talk each shot through, so their conversation was going to be XXX as well. I wasn’t too keen on Grif seeing Stormy Dawn naked, but any interest he probably had would be ruined by her having fake sex with Todd. A naked Todd.

  “What do we do while we’re waiting?”

  I hated waiting for other people, to be out of control, but I trusted the three of them to handle this part of the operation. My job was to keep my little sister safe and from being corrupted. “Cards?”

  “Fine, but let me go to the bathroom first,” Elizabeth said.

  Once she’d closed the door behind her, I went to the laptop and nudged up the volume.

  “—don’t have to show it all the way in your mouth, just maybe put your tongue near his dick,” Anders said.

  My eyebrows shot up.

  “That’s better for me, like this?” Stormy Dawn asked. I could only imagine what she was doing.

  “Good, now what if he fucked your tits?” Grif asked her.

  My blood started to boil.

  “Shit, I hate this,” Grif mumbled.

  “Let me get in position. Are you ready?”

  “Yeah,” Anders replied. “Tilt your head back so I make sure to keep it out of the shot. “Good. One more. Okay, done. What now?”

  “Sixty-nine,” Stormy Dawn said. “My hair will cover up—”

  I heard the toilet flush, the sink turn on. I quickly hit the mute button and tracked down the cards.

  After an hour, Elizabeth and I were settled on the couch playing Gin, a cushion between us with the discard pile on top. Grif and Stormy Dawn came back, both completely dressed as if they hadn’t been involved in something shady, and naked. He came over to me and dropped a kiss on the top of my head before going to the big table and taking out the digital camera. Popping the memory card from it, he slipped it into the port in the side of the laptop.

  “She’s not going to ask, because she’s too polite, but I’m not. How’d it go?” Elizabeth asked.

  Stormy Dawn sat down in the comfortable chair where she’d read earlier, tugged off her stilettos and propped her feet up on the ottoman with a sigh. “Grif’s putting the email together now. Give me the details behind what happens next. Anders filled me in a little, but this all somehow has to do with you.”

  She had her head turned toward me.

  “And me,” Elizabeth added.

  Anders came into the suite, gave us a little wave of hello. “He’s all set,” he told Grif, who was focused on the laptop. “All tied up and waiting to be found.”

  “I killed Todd’s brother for him. I hadn’t realized I’d been set up until years later. You’ve heard this part?”

  Stormy Dawn gave a little nod.

  “Back when I was arrested, there’d been one reporter among the many who had believed my innocence. Her pen name was Jane Doe. She’d kept the media spin, the suppositions and plain lies out of her articles.” I took the cards from Elizabeth and started stacking them. “When I disappeared, I followed the media frenzy. I followed everything, afraid he’d track me down. She was the only one who had even considered my disappearance was actually an escape. That exact word—escape—hadn’t been in her articles, but the subtext was definitely there. I remember her specifically because of that. I looked her up this week and she’s now an editor at one of the city papers, still using her pen name.”

  “This one?” Grif pointed to the screen. His brow was furrowed, his gaze serious as he talked with Anders.

  “Yeah. That one, too.”

  The men were focused on their work, most likely culling the images to give to Jane Doe. I had no doubt they were also listening to me.

  “I want to confront him. It’s all I’ve wanted to do for years. Get him to tell me to my face that he used me to kill his brother. But that won’t work. We can’t get him to confess anything. Even if he was tied naked to that bed in his suite and video taped an admission. He’s too smart for that. I could threaten violence, but he wouldn’t believe me.”

  “I’ll torture the guy for the fun of it, let alone get the truth out of him,” Anders muttered as he cracked his beefy knuckles.

  It felt good knowing the big giant would beat up Todd for me. “It would be coerced and nothing would be admissible in court. It’d be back to he-said-she-said and he could spin it so I’d be arrested for conspiracy to commit murder or something for what Anders would do. It would be a stronger case since I disappeared for twelve years, then held him hostage and threatened him. I’d be the one in jail, not him.”

  “He’s squeaky clean,” Elizabeth added. “The jury would side for him. Even if I were to testify on Anna’s behalf, I have nothing on him. He’s done nothing to me.”

  “It’s not illegal to marry the eighteen-year-old sister of your in-hiding ex-wife,” I said.

  “There should be.” Anders winked at Elizabeth.

  Was that corner of his mouth curling up? Was that a smile? He’d kill Todd without thinking twice, but winked at a vulnerable girl. He was a softie.

  “So you’re going to share these pictures with this Jane Doe woman,” Stormy Dawn said.

  “Plus the information I collected about David’s insurance policy. That’s Todd’s brother.”

  “Plus the asshole’s room number and a keycard downstairs for her,” Anders added. “He’s trussed up like a Christmas turkey in there. By the time she shows up, he should be awake and in need of rescue.”

  “It’s not punching him in the face, but it’ll be closure.”

  “Insurance paperwork, illicit photos, naked in a hotel room, a press rescue and most likely a media scandal to follow. Not bad.” Stormy Dawn seemed impressed.

  “Done.” Grif pushed back from the table, ran his hand over his face.

  Grif

  We set and baited the trap. All we could do now was wait. Anders and Stormy Dawn left, I assumed to hotel rooms of their own, but I didn’t really care. The plan went off without a hitch. Stormy Dawn was impressive in dealing with Todd and her job was finished. Watching that asshole paw all over her was enough to make me want to go down the hall and beat the shit out of him, but the woman knew what she was doing. And it had worked. The GHB she’d slipped into his drink had knocked him out quickly enough. The rest—incriminating photos with Stormy Dawn—was easy.

  One thing was for sure, I’d never look at another porno or Playboy the same way again. The whole photo shoot had been clinical and a little repulsive, aside from completely illegal. I’d done it all for Anna, but I felt dirty. Lawton lived in the borderlands, the space between civilized people and the underworld. Getting mixed up in it, even for the night, was like wading through shit. That was saying something with the undercover work I'd done.

  “Are you okay?” Anna was in the bathroom, standin
g at the vanity. She’d put on the white hotel robe after her shower, her hair damp and her face scrubbed clean. I smelled toothpaste. She looked so sweet and clean and I wanted her. Needed her.

  I moved to stand right behind her, pressing my cock into her back. There was no doubt she felt how hard I was; it was a permanent condition around her. We made love often enough, but I’d shown her the down-and-dirty fun of a good fuck too, which she enjoyed immensely if her breathy little moans were an indicator.

  I wanted to take her to bed, savor every soft inch of her, but I couldn’t. Not now. I was too over the edge. Lawton had riled me, amped up every protective instinct I had. Here she was, right in front of me, safe and whole. I needed to reassure myself she was with me in this, that this constant want was elemental for her, too.

  Leaning forward, I nipped at her neck. “Now, Anna. It has to be now.” Undoing the belt on her robe, I pushed the whole thing off her shoulders, let it drop to the floor. “Hang on to the counter.”

  She said nothing, just looked at me in the mirror. Her skin was a soft shade of pink from the shower. I ran my hands over the soft skin of her ass, looked my fill of her. I tugged at my belt, my zipper, then pulled myself free. With one thrust I drove deep with a groan, buried to the hilt. She was scalding hot and wet.

  I watched Anna in the mirror, saw her skin flush red, her eyes slip shut. Her long hair—which she kept curly now because I demanded it—ran down her back in a thick, damp mass. “I can’t get enough,” I murmured in her ear, my hips bucking up and into Anna. We were slick and wet between us, her body primed for fucking just as much as mine. Just as often.

  Anna arched her hips, pushing herself back into me, driving me that little bit deeper. “Please move,” she pleaded, a little cry escaping as I slowly slid out, hitting that spot inside that lit her up.

  Reaching around, I held her gently by the neck, my other hand on her hip, keeping her right where I wanted. Her inner muscles clenched me like a fist and I had to move. The instinctual need to mate, to bury my cock, empty my seed into her drove me. I was more animal than man and Anna loved it. Her body quivered with every thrust, a sign she was close to coming. Reaching down, I found her clit, ran my thumb over it in small, slippery circles, knowing I didn’t have long. “Now, Anna. Come now,” I demanded, watching her as she succumbed.

  Intense pleasure built at the base of my spine, pulling my balls up and tight, readying for an all-consuming release. Sweat dripped from my brow as my hips pumped, one, two last times before I was engulfed in the deepest, most intense orgasm. I couldn’t contain the shout as I emptied myself, all the while Anna’s own pleasure had her pulling, gripping me within her. It was as if her body wanted to possess me. I know her heart already had.

  I don’t know how long it took for the aftershocks to wear off, for me to catch my breath. I released the tight grip on her hip, stepped back and slipped from her body. My seed slowly trickled down her thighs.

  “What’s the smirk for?” Anna asked, tucking her wayward hair behind her ear.

  “Now we both need a shower before I take you again.”

  Anna

  Jane Doe’s paper ran a front page spread on Todd’s late-night activity. It showed a few very embarrassing images with Stormy Dawn, with strategically placed black bars over areas that were illegal to show in the press. Grif and Anders had done a good job to keep Stormy Dawn’s face out of the picture, so only Todd was easily recognizable. It had gone on to describe how he’d been found tied up with alcohol in the room, but there was no mention of GHB or the insurance policy.

  Neither could be confirmed in such a short time, but the damage had definitely been done. We were dressed and watching the local morning shows with their individual spins on Todd, his supposed philanthropic endeavors and the exposure of his secret side. Anders let himself in the suite. Although we looked up from the TV and greeted him, we didn’t say more. He joined us by sitting in the chair Stormy Dawn used the night before.

  Flipping through the channels, we spent an hour surfing the various newscasts, but they all said the same. In the eyes of the media, Todd Lawton was a fallen man.

  “Is Stormy Dawn gone?” I asked Anders.

  “She was on the first flight out this morning. Don’t worry, she looks completely different when not dressed like a call girl. No one would connect her with the photos.”

  Good. She’d done her job, done it well and was safely out of the spotlight. I’d have to thank Frank Carmichael for having her help us.

  “Now what? You didn’t get a chance to confront him. He doesn’t even know you were involved last night.”

  I shrugged.

  “Is that going to be enough?”

  I hadn’t been able to face Todd like I wanted. Was what the media doing to him enough? Could I live with this attack on his character alone? Perhaps, once Jane Doe worked through the insurance angle, the police would look into his involvement in his brother’s death. But it wasn’t a guarantee.

  “I don’t know actually. Maybe. I think—”

  There was a knock on the door. Anders stood, pulled his gun from a shoulder holster and went to see who was there. He turned to look at us, his face grim. Grif stood and the men did some kind of mental telepathy because Grif nodded and Anders beelined for our bedroom and shut the door behind him.

  Grif looked through the peephole, opened the door.

  “We’re looking for Olivia Edwards. Is she here?”

  I stood, moved to see who spoke. There were three men in the doorway. Police. Two plainclothes and one in uniform.

  Grif stepped back, let them in.

  They saw Elizabeth and me easily.

  “Miss Edwards, it’s been a long time,” one of the plainclothes cops said to me. He held up a folded piece of paper, flipped it so I could see a black-and-white copy of an old photo of me.

  “What do you want with her?” Grif asked.

  “I’m Detective Roberts,” he said instead of answering.

  “Detective Hosanski,” the other replied. Both men’s badges were clipped to their belts at their hips. “This is Officer Gomez.”

  The men were all in their thirties, clean cut, conservative.

  “You need to come with us, please.”

  “Is she under arrest?” Grif asked them.

  “Can I see your IDs please?” Roberts asked of Elizabeth and Grif as he held out his hand.

  Grif pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans, handed it to the man.

  “My wallet’s in the other room,” Elizabeth told him.

  “Gomez, go with her.”

  Elizabeth looked to Grif who gave her a quick nod. She left, followed by Gomez.

  Roberts looked up from Grif’s ID. “Mr. Griffin, we—”

  “Detective Griffin.” Grif made his title very clear, that they couldn’t walk all over us with their cop crap. Grif wouldn’t stand for it, and neither would I.

  Roberts eyebrows went up. “Detective? Out of where?”

  “Denver.”

  “Well, Detective, we have some questions for Miss Edwards in relation to a murder.”

  “A murder? Who was killed?”

  “David Lawton.”

  “I understand, Detective, that David Lawton was killed in self-defense. Not murder.” They’d started already, insinuating murder.

  Elizabeth returned, the officer giving her license to Detective Roberts. He looked down, read the ID, then looked back at Elizabeth. “Another Miss Edwards. Sisters?”

  “Yes,” said Elizabeth, her chin up as she looked at me. She wasn’t going to say half-sister. To her—and to me—we were definitely real sisters.

  “Aren’t you engaged to Todd Lawton?” he asked, then looked to me. “You were married to him, weren’t you? This is very interesting.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes. The man was an ass. “One thing is a constant in what you just said. Todd Lawton. Perhaps you’re looking at the wrong people?”

  “David Lawton was killed twelve y
ears ago and Miss Edwards was found innocent of any crime. She moved on with her life. Is she under arrest?” Grif asked again, cutting into my war of words with Roberts. I wasn’t going to win this one so I pinched my lips together.

  “Not at this time,” Hosanski replied. “Even though she moved on, went completely off the radar for all that time—”

  “There’s nothing illegal in walking away from the public eye,” Grif cut in. He wasn’t giving these men an inch. It came down to a battle of legalities, and I knew who was going to win.

  “No, there’s not. Since she’s returned, we’re within our rights to take her to answer some questions. This shouldn’t take too long.”

  Yeah, right. Like forty-two days.

  “You are, but I’m coming with her.”

  Hosanski shook his head. “Obviously, she’s a flight risk, so she’ll be riding with us. You can meet her there.”

  I was nervous. I didn’t have butterflies in my stomach, but hornets instead, vicious and nasty. This was all Todd’s doing. It had to be. He was twelve years older, but so was I. I wasn’t that lost, alone teenager. I had people on my side. Todd couldn’t do anything besides drag me to the station and make my life hell. This was payback. If he was going down, he wanted to take me with him. The difference between the two of us is that I’d been down for years.

  “It’s okay, Grif. I’ll be fine.” I walked over to him, went up on my tiptoes and gave him a kiss on his warm cheek. He hadn’t shaved so his stubble was scratchy against my lips. I glanced at Elizabeth, gave her a small smile.

  Grif didn’t look too convinced. His hands were clenched as tightly as his jaw as if trying to keep himself from grabbing me. I knew the feeling. “You handled Gossing and Werbler in Denver. You can handle this,” he whispered.

  ***

  I held on to Grif’s words like a lifeline, knowing I could tackle whatever Todd decided to throw at me. I was being brought in for questioning and accused of something new he’d made up. It didn’t matter anymore. I had enough proof to prove reasonable doubt and I had Grif and Elizabeth on my side. Carmichael, too, although I wasn’t sure how often he’d get mixed up with the police.