Turning her back on the shadows, she watched as Nick pounded on the door.
To her amazement, the door swung inward.
Nick glanced over his shoulder and motioned for her to stay put. When Carrie shook her head, he rolled his eyes and stepped across the threshold.
“Stone? You in here? Nick Draco. I’m a federal agent. I’d like to ask you some questions.”
Nothing but silence.
Nick found the light switch and flipped it. Carrie blinked at the sudden brilliance, then gazed around. The layout and furnishings were almost identical to the space downstairs. It was neat and clean with the barest trace of bleach clinging to the air.
Where was Trey? He had to be here somewhere. As they moved down the hall to the bedroom, Carrie could already smell the cloying scent of his cologne.
Nick walked into the bedroom and turned on the light. “Doesn’t look like he’s here.”
But he hadn’t gone far, Carrie thought. His keys, watch and pinkie ring lay on the dresser. Something sparkled amidst the cache of metal, and as she walked over to take a closer look, she caught her breath. It was Tia’s engagement ring.
“That’s Tia’s ring,” she whispered. “She had it on at the church, so that means—”
A sound came from somewhere nearby, and Trey put a finger to his lips. Weapon still drawn, he slipped out of the room and a moment later, Carrie heard his footsteps pounding down the stairs.
He must have spotted Trey, Carrie thought as she started to go after him. Then her attention was caught by something on the floor underneath the edge of the bed.
A woman’s white shoe. And it was covered in blood.
Dear God, it was Tia’s shoe.
Her chest tightening in trepidation, she knelt and peered under the bed. Nothing…
But Tia had been in here. Carrie was certain of it now.
She went over and pulled open the closet door. Trey’s clothes were lined up neatly on the rod, but what drew Carrie’s attention—what made her gasp out loud—was the huge roll of plastic lying on the floor.
And through the clear layers, Carrie saw something that might have been a face….
Chapter Twelve
She screamed and as she tried to scramble away, she fell against the bed and slipped to the floor.
Oh, God, Oh, God, Oh, God, she silent prayed as she struggled to her feet and rushed through the apartment. She’d left the front door open and now she saw someone standing on the threshold blocking her way.
Carrie screamed again a split second before she recognized Nick.
Then she launched herself toward him and he caught her by her arms. “Are you all right? Sorry I left you alone like that, but I saw someone in the courtyard. It was only Alma—” His voice broke off when he saw her face. “My God, Carrie, what is it?”
She was trembling so hard she could barely speak. “A body…in the closet. Oh, God, I think…I think it’s Tia.”
NICK USED HIS SATELLITE phone to summon the police. It took less than an hour for a marine patrol boat to arrive from the Collier County Sheriff’s office, but another two hours before a forensics team and a criminal investigator were on the scene.
In the meantime, Nick had led Carrie downstairs to Tia’s apartment and sat with her while she gave her statement to the responding officer. He hadn’t left her side for a moment, and now as Carrie watched the body, still wrapped in plastic, being carried downstairs, she felt his arm slip around her shoulders.
“You okay?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I am.”
“Just hang in there a little longer,” he said.
They placed the body in the courtyard by the pool, and one of the deputies came over to knock on the door. Nick left Carrie long enough to let him in. “We need to see if one of you can identify the body,” he said.
“I’ll do it,” Nick said quickly.
“No, I need to do this,” Carrie said.
“You sure?”
She nodded and stood. She was still a little unsteady, and Nick took her arm. In the time between her finding the body and when the police arrived on the scene, she and Nick had called an unspoken truce. His earlier deception didn’t seem to matter much now in light of her grisly discovery.
Tia was dead.
She was dead because Trey Hollinger had followed her to Cape Diablo and killed her.
Carrie still couldn’t believe it, and yet a part of her had always known what the man was capable of.
Outside, one of the deputies had already split open the plastic. Even in the open night air, the smell was overwhelming, and Carrie had to hold back her retching reflex as she slowly walked toward the body.
As she neared, the deputy who had been kneeling over the plastic stood and moved out of her way. Carrie braced herself and glanced down.
It wasn’t Tia.
It wasn’t Tia.
Her legs went weak with relief and she couldn’t seem to comprehend anything else for a moment.
It wasn’t Tia.
It was Trey Hollinger.
She hadn’t recognized him at first. His handsome face had been badly disfigured by decomposition and by the killer’s knife.
“Oh, my God.” She put a hand to her mouth, choking back a wave of nausea.
“Do you know this man?” one of the deputies questioned her.
She nodded weakly. “His name is Trey Hollinger. He’s from Miami.”
“Do you have any idea what he was doing on Cape Diablo?”
“He must have come here looking for Tia.”
“The missing friend? The one you thought was in the plastic?”
Carrie nodded again.
“You said she came here because she was running away from this guy,” the deputy said slowly.
“That’s what I thought.” Carrie was shaking so hard she could hardly speak.
“And now he’s dead and she’s missing.”
Something in his tone made Carrie glance at him in outrage. “You can’t think she did this?”
The deputy’s eyes were on the body. “Whoever killed this guy had one helluva a grudge. The body’s practically cut to ribbons.”
Carrie’s stomach lurched. “It wasn’t Tia. She could never do something like that.”
“Not even if she was threatened?”
“No!” Carrie put a trembling hand to her mouth. “I should have said something earlier, but I wasn’t thinking—”
The deputy gave her a puzzled frown. “What are you talking about?”
“I know who did this.”
The deputy’s voice sharpened. “You know the identity of the killer?”
Carrie drew a shaky breath. “I don’t know his name. Fourteen years ago he called himself Nathaniel Glover.” As quickly as she could, she told them the rest of the story.
When she finished, Nick had moved up behind her. He wasn’t touching her, but she could feel his presence just the same.
Don’t worry, he seemed to be telling her. I’ve got your back. Nothing’s going to happen to you while I’m around.
But it was only a false sense of security, and Carrie didn’t want to trust it. She was better off not trusting it.
“He’s come back for us both,” Carrie said in a whisper. “He already has Tia. And now he’s using her to get to me.” Whether they believed her or not, Carrie had no idea. But she knew. Somewhere on this island, he watched and he waited.
“I always like saving the best for last.”
“We’ll leave a boat to patrol the perimeter overnight,” the deputy was saying. “No one’s leaving the island without us knowing about it. First thing in the morning, we’ll bring a K-9 unit and search every square inch of this place.”
“What about Tia?” Carrie asked fearfully.
“Don’t worry. If she’s still on the island the dogs will find her.” He paused. “Shouldn’t take that long, either.”
BACK INSIDE THE APARTMENT, Carrie paced in front of the windows and Nick watched her
from his place on the couch. She was still badly shaken and would be for hours.
And she was still in denial, too. The deputy had made a good point, one that Nick had thought of almost instantly. Trey Hollinger was dead and Tia was missing. Her belongings were still in the apartment, leading any good investigator to conclude that she’d left the island in a hurry.
He said none of this to Carrie, however, because she wasn’t ready to accept the possibility that her friend could be a killer. Carrie’s judgment would probably always be clouded where Tia was concerned because of the past and what they’d been through together. But sooner or later she would have to face the fact that the Tia she knew might never be coming back.
“Why don’t you go to bed and try to get some sleep,” he said. “Tomorrow will be a long day and you already look exhausted.” If the police found Tia’s body, Carrie would need all her strength to get through the ordeal, and if they found her alive—
“I don’t want to go to sleep,” Carrie said. “I don’t want the nightmares to come back.”
He got up and went over to the window where she stood. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She shook her head. “You heard everything outside. There’s nothing more to tell.”
He had a feeling that was far from the truth. “The offer stands. How about something to eat?”
“I’m not hungry.” Carrie folded her arms across her middle as if she were suddenly chilled. Her eyes looked lost and haunted. “I left her there, Nick. I ran away and left her with that monster. When I think about what he did to her…what he might be doing to her even now…” She put her hands to her face and squeezed her eyes closed.
Nick took her hands and gently pried them away. “You were just a kid. You did what you had to do. If you hadn’t gotten away, he would have killed you both.”
“I know that. Logically, I know that, but what happened that day was all my fault. I’ve never been able to forgive myself for what I caused. And now if I can’t find her in time…” She broke off. “I have to find her, Nick. I have to.”
“We will.” One way or another, he thought grimly. She turned back to the window. “Tell me about your job, your past, anything. I don’t care. Just talk.”
“I have a brother who’s in prison,” he said. “How’s that for starters?”
She turned in surprise. “What’s he in for?”
“Cocaine trafficking and possession with the intent to sell.”
Carrie’s eyes widened. “But you—”
“Yeah. We don’t really get along,” he said dryly. “In fact, I haven’t seen him in years. I used to drive out to the prison once a week, but he never would see me so I stopped going.”
“Why wouldn’t he see you?”
Nick’s voice hardened. “Because I’m the one who busted him.”
He could tell she was taken aback by that little revelation. “What happened?”
“I used to be a cop in Miami,” he said. “I was an undercover narc. I was working a sting operation on some local dealers. We’d engineered a big buy and my brother arrived with the sellers. I didn’t even know he was still in Miami. We’d lost touch years earlier, and last I’d heard he was working down in the Keys. Anyway, he showed up, recognized me and blew my cover. So much for blood being thicker than water,” he muttered.
“So you sent him to prison,” Carrie said.
“I made the arrest and testified against him at his trial. He’s the one who put himself in prison.”
“Of course. I didn’t mean to imply…” She trailed off.
Nick shrugged. “It’s okay. I used to blame myself for what happened to him. Told myself I should have looked after him better because I was older, more experienced. Our parents were killed in a wreck when we were kids and we went to live with our grandmother. She was too old to have to deal with two teenage boys, and she pretty much let us run wild. Matt got in with a bad crowd. He dropped out of high school, started using drugs. I caught him stealing money out of our grandmother’s purse when he was sixteen years old. She’d just cashed her social security check that day, and he didn’t even care that the money was all she had to live on for a month. All he cared about was his next fix.
“Instead of trying to help him, I kicked him out of the house and washed my hands of him. He was arrested a week later on his first drug charge. After that, it was just one thing after another.”
“You shouldn’t blame yourself,” Carrie said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know that now. Just like what happened to Tia wasn’t your fault.” He came over and put his hands on her shoulder. “You have to let the guilt go. It’ll eat you up inside if you don’t.”
“But how do I do that,” she whispered desperately. “How do I let it go? It’s all I know.”
“You have to tear down some of the walls,” he said. “Let something else in besides guilt.”
“Is that what you did?”
“Took a while but yeah, I finally figured it out.”
Carrie moved away from him for a moment. “Have you ever been married, Nick?”
He shrugged. “No.”
“Engaged?
“No, why?”
“Maybe you haven’t torn down as many of the walls as you think.”
“Or maybe I just haven’t found the right woman.”
His eyes seemed to deepen as he watched her, and Carrie caught her breath. “Nick?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want to make love to me?”
One brow lifted in surprise. “Oh, yeah. But I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Maybe tonight’s not the best time to start tearing down the walls,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot today. Your emotions are still ragged. You shouldn’t act on impulses.”
“But I want to act on impulse,” she said softly. “And I want to feel something tonight besides guilt.”
She cupped the back of his neck and pulled him toward her. She was afraid at first that he might resist, but when his lips touched hers, something seemed to explode inside both of them. Nick groaned, drawing her to him, and Carrie wrapped her arms around his neck as he lifted her and carried her into the bedroom. They undressed each other between kisses.
When they were naked, Carrie lay back against the pillows and Nick stood at the foot of the bed, gazing down at her. Then kneeling, he slid his hands up the insides of her legs, stroking her gently until Carrie began to tremble all over.
She wasn’t so sure about this now. She’d never liked losing control, and now she found herself perilously close to the edge.
He moved over her, his body touching hers so erotically that Carrie could hardly breathe. “Nick—”
“Shush.” He feathered his lips across hers. “Don’t talk. Just feel.”
His mouth moved down her throat, pressing against her pulse and then finding her breasts. Desire shot through Carrie and she arched her back, moaning softly.
He slid downward, his lips skimming lower and lower until he was kissing her where his fingers had stroked earlier and Carrie responded in a way she’d never believed possible.
She moaned again, a low, erotic sound that both thrilled and scared her. She couldn’t seem to stop shaking. She’d never let anyone do this to her before. Intercourse could be a sterile undertaking if one chose it to be, but this…was too intimate. It made her too vulnerable. She wanted to push him away, but she couldn’t because already the pressure was building and building.
When her climax erupted, Carrie was rocked all the way to her core. She grabbed Nick’s shoulders and pulled him up to her so that she could hang on to him for dear life as the shudders continued to shatter her.
He slid inside her, and when she became tense, he smoothed back her hair and murmured against her lips, “Relax, okay? We’re just getting started….”
He moved slowly at first so that Carrie had time to adjust to his body. And then as she began to respond, as her groa
ns became more frenzied, his thrusts deepened.
They exploded together this time, and Nick collapsed on top of her, his breathing as ragged as hers. She could feel his heart beating against hers, and she wondered if it had been as good for him as it had for her. For some reason, she didn’t dare ask him. She didn’t want anything to ruin the moment.
After a bit, he slid off her and pulled her against him. He pushed back her hair and kissed her neck. “You okay?”
She sighed. “I’m good.”
And she was. For the first time in a long time, she wasn’t even afraid of the dark.
SOMETIME LATER they got up and showered and then climbed back into bed. Carrie had never spent the night with a man before. If a boyfriend was at her place, she always sent him home. If she was at his, she always got up and slipped quietly away while he slept.
She wasn’t about to send Nick away, and he seemed in no hurry to go. He climbed under the covers and pulled her to him again. “You smell good,” he murmured. He sounded half-asleep.
Carrie was relieved she wasn’t expected to make small talk. She just wanted to lie in his arms and savor the quiet. After a bit, she drifted off, and when she woke up, she caught Nick slipping out of bed.
Disappointment darted through her, but when he saw that she was awake, he put his finger to his lips. Bending over the bed, he said in her ear, “I heard something outside. Stay put while I check it out.”
Carrie’s heart started to pound in alarm as she watched him glide through the darkness. He’d already pulled on his jeans, and now in the moonlight, she saw that he had his gun drawn. He opened the French door and slipped like a shadow into the overgrown garden.
Pulling on her robe, Carrie padded over to the door. She drew it open slightly, peering out into the darkness. There was moonlight in the garden, but the shadows were so deep she couldn’t make anything out. As she stood listening to the dark, she heard a groan, followed by the thud of a body hitting the ground.
Secrets of His Own Page 14
