Deadly Desires

by Ann Christopher

  Screw it. If no rescue was coming and her time was up, then he’d kill her anyway. He might as well kill her while she was reaching for the Glock.

  She crept backward again, and her hand just closed around the blessed braided strap of her leather purse on the floor when Kareem caught up with her. Dropping the knife by his side, just out of her reach, he used his good hand to grab her hip and yank her to her back.

  Her skirt rode up, well over her thighs, stopping her breath.

  Moving with slow deliberation, his flat gaze locked on her face, he straddled her.

  No. Not that. Not again.

  “No!” Enraged, she pummeled him with her fists, which seemed to have no discernable effect. “Don’t you touch me! Don’t you touch me!”

  “Why not?” Those fingers crept north, to the waistband of her panties, and began to work them down her legs as she thrashed. “If you can fuck my lieutenant and my DEA agent, then you can fuck me, too, right? I am your husband—”

  “No,” she screamed, kicking out at him with her one good leg, and that was when she saw it.

  A flash of movement at one of the windows.

  Surprise and hope filled her up before she could stop them, and they must have shown on her face because Kareem turned just enough, twisting so he could put a knee on her throat while keeping his hand on her crotch.

  “Is that you, Brady?” he called. “Did you come to watch my reunion with my wife?”

  No. Kira writhed and spluttered, trying to speak, to warn. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, and she didn’t want Dexter to die with her. “Run, Dexter!” she shrieked in that one second before the weight on her throat threatened to crush her windpipe. “Run—”

  Dexter appeared in the window, his face mangled with rage and fear, his pistol fisted between his hands and pointed at Kareem. “Let her go, Kareem!” he shouted. “Let her go or I swear I’ll take your head off!”

  Kareem laughed. Taunted. “You’d better think again, motherfucker. I’ll crush her throat before you can squeeze the trigger.”

  Oh, no, you won’t.

  With one hand, Kira hauled off and drove the flat of her palm up and into his nose, determined to hear it break. It did. With her other hand, she twisted, grabbed the knife, and embedded it to the hilt in Kareem’s thigh just as the crack of a shot from Brady’s gun roared over their heads and splintered the wall behind them, showering them with paint and plaster.

  Howling, eyes wild and bulging, Kareem grabbed the knife, pulled it out, and kept coming at her like the indestructible demon seed she knew him to be.

  But Dexter was here now, and she didn’t have to die.

  She wasn’t going to die. Only Kareem was.

  Twisting again, she grabbed for her purse. Missed, and had a wild flashback to that horrible rock-climbing wall. If she could do that, she could do this. So she adjusted her angle and grabbed again, this time closing her fingers around the precious metal of the Glock, which she pulled out just as Kareem raised the knife to her throat.

  “No!”

  Hands fisted around the muzzle, she swung like Babe Ruth going for a homer, pistol-whipping Kareem in the temple with all of her adrenaline-fueled might.

  Something cracked.

  Yeah. She wanted more of that.

  She swung again, and again, hysterical and oblivious to everything but the need to wipe this vermin off the face of the earth, forever.

  He fell, collapsing to the floor like an anvil dropped from the Eiffel Tower, but she kept going, swinging and shouting.

  “I told you I’d kill you with this gun if you didn’t leave me alone, you bastard! I told you I’d kill you! I told you—”

  “Kira! Stop, baby! He’s gone! He’s gone!”

  “No!” she cried. “He’s never gone! He’s never—”

  Dexter was there, suddenly, catching her arm and wrenching the gun out of her hands. “He’s gone. Look. See? He’s dead. You did it. You did it.”

  She looked.

  Kareem lay sprawled on the floor next to her. His brown eyes were open but glazed, and the side of his head was a bloody mess, but that wasn’t enough. She grabbed his neck, feeling for a pulse. There was none. That wasn’t enough. She held her palm over his ruined nose, waiting to feel his breath. Nothing.

  Bewildered, she looked to Dexter for confirmation.

  “He’s dead?”

  “He’s dead, baby.”

  “Really dead?”

  “Really dead.”

  She stared at him. Looked, one last time, to Kareem.

  Then she fell apart, sobbing with relief. “Oh, my God,” she cried. “Oh, my God.”

  Being careful of her leg, Dexter gathered her close, rocking and soothing her. “It’s okay now, Kira. You did it. He’s gone.”

  “He killed Kerry.”

  “Kerry’s not dead.”

  “What? But I thought—”

  “Jayne found him last night. He’s alive. Critical, but alive. She called me a little while ago.”

  “Oh, thank God. I was so scared,” she sobbed. “I thought—”

  “It’s okay.” Dexter rained kisses all over her face and neck, smothering her with love. “He’s not going to hurt you again—”

  “No.” Pushing back a little, she wiped her face and tried to get control. After several hiccupping breaths, she managed it. “I was afraid I’d never get to tell you—”

  “Tell me what, baby?”

  “How much I love you,” she said helplessly, and then, because once wasn’t enough, she said it again. “I love you. I love you.”

  Dexter snatched her up again, burying his wet face against her neck and holding on as though he meant to keep her there forever. “I love you, too.”

  Laughter came then, shining through her tears, and she grabbed his cheeks, bringing his face up so she could kiss his smiling mouth.

  “You still love me?” she murmured against his lips.

  “I’ll always love you.”

  “I never meant to be this much trouble.”

  This time, he laughed. “You’re worth it, baby. You’re absolutely worth it.”

  Epilogue

  One Year Later

  “Come on, baby. You can do it.”

  The wind spiked just then, rustling through the trees all around them, and Dexter took a second to breathe deep and enjoy the earthy smells of pine needles, the damp ground, and sunshine. It was cool but not chilly, and he took everything in: the way the ridge gave way to a sea of purple wildflowers on the one side, and a splashing and craggy creek on the other; the white-tipped mountains in the distance; the sweet ache of hard work in his straining leg muscles; and Kira.

  Kira most of all.

  “I like Telluride,” she told him. “Good choice.”

  “Yeah? You don’t wish you were lounging on the beach in Bermuda right now?”

  “Maybe for our first anniversary.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “Come on,” she said again. “Only a few more steps, old man. You can do it.”

  Dexter glared from behind his sunglasses and struggled the last few feet up the world’s rockiest and most treacherous path. Her sunglasses blocked him from seeing the amusement in her eyes, but he knew it was there by the way her lips curled in a sorry attempt to keep her smirk to a mere smile. When he came within range, she reached out a hand and helped pull him the rest of the way to the top.

  “You did it!”

  “You know,” he said when he’d caught his breath a little, “I was going to ask you how your ankle’s doing, but there doesn’t seem to be much point.”

  “My leg is great. How are you doing?”

  He raised their joined left hands to eye level, so they could enjoy the way the plain gold bands gleamed in the sunlight.

  “I’m happy,” he said simply, kissing her smiling lips.

  “So am I. We make a great team, don’t we, husband?”

  Wrapping his free hand around her supple waist, he brought her i
n closer, for another kiss and a nuzzle.

  “We do indeed, Mrs. Brady. We do indeed.”

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  Cincinnati

  Kareem Gregory settled deeper into his leather chair and listened to his attorney do so much worthless yapyap-yapping that he wanted to shove his fist down the man’s throat. Every overpriced word that came out of the dumb-ass bitch’s mouth only made Kareem hate the man more.

  Fucking lawyers.

  But for them and their incompetence, he’d be out of this mess by now.

  Thanks to them, he was still hip-deep in shit.

  What kind of shit? Entrapped by the feds, for one. Arrested on bogus money-laundering charges, for another. All his assets, from his million-dollar estate down to his last pair of diamond cuff links—pretty much everything he’d ever worked for—threatened with seizure and currently being eyeballed by the DEA and the IRS. Convicted and sent to a phone-booth-sized cell in federal prison when he had a business to run.

  Well ... two businesses.

  His string of auto-customizing shops because, yeah, he liked to pimp rides.

  And his real empire. The drug one.

  Not that the feds had ever been able to nail him for it, because he was too slick and clever for them and he compartmentalized his organization so that the right hand never knew what the left hand was doing, and only he had both hands.

  Only a few people knew he was the top dog, and he intended to keep it that way.

  The feds’ best efforts had only led to a money-laundering conviction. Even so, he’d gone to prison—and prison was prison.

  He was lucky he’d survived one day on the inside, much less a year. Lucky for the fine wool of the suit he now wore and for the soft cotton of his undershirt instead of those coarse prison rags that scratched his skin.

  The only good thing a lawyer had ever done for him, despite the tens of thousands he’d paid in legal fees, was winning his appeal. Now, after all the suffering he’d endured, God had finally smiled on Kareem again and sent him a few blessings, no doubt as a sign of greater things to come.

  A retrial. Release on bail. The opportunity to crack a few heads and make sure everything ran smoothly within the organization. Renewed success in his hunt. The chance to expand his wine collection and screw every woman in sight.

  Well ... every woman but the one he really wanted.

  Kareem shot a quick glance at Kira, his tight-lipped wife. She sat beside him in her designer dress, looking the way she always looked: icy and beautiful.

  Funny, huh? The one woman he should be able to have at will hadn’t given him any since he was arrested nearly two years ago, and here he was, still sniffing after her. Back in the day, she’d loved him and given him that delicious body enthusiastically and often. She’d been his moon and stars. His freaking sun. Kira wouldn’t let him touch her for now, but he’d get her back as soon as they worked out the whole trust issue.

  In the meantime, there were plenty of other fish in the sea—damn sexy little minnows, too—and Kareem had several of them on retainer. Why not take full advantage? It made sense to store up a little in case his latest lawyer turned out to be as incompetent as all the rest, lost the retrial, and landed Kareem back in prison.

  Not that Kareem had any intention of going back to prison.

  Ever.

  Which was one of the reasons he’d taken matters into his own hands.

  That, and revenge, which was going to be oh so sweet.

  “The U.S. Attorney’s Office sent over their final witness list. A lot of familiar people on it.” Jacob Radcliffe, who looked barely old enough to be out of diapers but was one of the best criminal defense lawyers in the city, flipped through his thick file, found some papers, and slid them across the enormous carved desk to Kareem. “No real surprises.”

  Ignoring the sudden, slight tremble in his hand, Kareem scanned the alphabetical list for the names he wanted, ignoring the others. He found them right away, and each one jacked his blood pressure up another thirty notches, sent his thundering pulse into overdrive.

  Jackson Parker. Ray Wolfe.

  Feds.

  A searing rage rose up his neck and burned his cheeks before it prickled in his scalp. To think that he, Kareem Gregory, a world-class judge of character with enough savvy and street sense to sniff out every liar within a twenty-mile radius, had trusted them. Liked them. Let his guard down around them.

  And what had his good faith gotten him? Betrayal by the kilo.

  To add insult to injury, those men had eluded him and his inevitable retaliation for months. Months.

  That, fortunately, was about to change.

  “So that’s the plan.” Jacob showed signs of wrapping this shit up, thank God. “We’re going to do our best to get an acquittal this time and make sure you never have to go back to prison.”

  How touching. As if Kareem would leave his future in this punk’s pristine hands. Not in this lifetime. He thought of his plans, which were in motion even now. He thought of the bit of crucial information that had recently and unexpectedly fallen into his lap. He thought about how difficult it would be for his former business associates—Parker and Wolfe—to testify against him at the retrial if they were dead. He thought of their deaths, one of which was imminent.

  Best of all, he thought about doling out the punishment these men had coming, and he smiled.

  If you betray Kareem Gregory, even if you’re a fed, you pay the ultimate price.

  Simple as that.

  “I’m going to do my best to stay out of prison, too,” Kareem told his lawyer. “My very best.”

  Chapter 1

  Lawrenceburg, Indiana

  The irritating, nostril-burning smell of cigarette smoke woke Payton Jones from a sound sleep. Or maybe it was Mama’s croaking bullfrog voice, or the violent thud as the old bat rolled into Payton’s bedroom with enough force to bang the cheap door against the wall, no doubt leaving chip number three million in the puke-yellow paint.

  “Gitcher lazy ass outta bed. It’s one-thirty in the afternoon.”

  Payton pushed the covers down and cracked a bleary eye open against the bright sunlight streaming in the window above the headboard. Unfortunately, Mama’s wheelchair was parked directly ahead, and Mama, wearing her dirty red housecoat and as unavoidable as a sperm whale in a lounge chair, was in it.

  Payton groaned. It was too early for this shit.

  Muttering, head pounding due to the nine—or was it ten?—Jell-O shooters that went down the pipe last night, Payton dove under the blankets again. This resulted in a smack on the leg sharp enough to clear the sinuses.

  “Jesus.” Good and awake now, Payton sat up and glared at Mama. “Who put a bee in your freaking bonnet?”

  “I put me a list together, for the grocery.” An inchlong strip of ash wavered and fell from the end of the cigarette onto Mama’s lap, whereupon Mama brushed it onto the white sheet, one inch from Payton’s hip. Payton yelped and swiped it to the floor. “Yer gonna need to stop at Walmart, too, and pick up my prescriptions.”

  “Why can’t Al do it?”

  “Because Al’s working, like you should be.”

  “I can’t find a job,” Payton said.

  “Helps when you look for one.”

  Of all the hypocritical bullshit Payton had ever heard, this running thread about looking for a job was the worst. How a woman could take one slight on-the-job hip injury, turn it into worker’s comp benefits into perpetuity, and then have the nerve to complain about someone else not looking for a job was something Payton would never understand.

  “I’ve been looking.” This, as they both knew, was a lie, more or less, but what was left of Payton’s pride required it.

  Mama glared, her watery eyes squinched against the cigarette smoke that wafted up into them as she spoke. “You’re nothin’ but a big disappointment to me, Payton—”

  “Shit.” Payton got out of bed,
stalked over to the closet, and rummaged through shirts and whatnot, scraping the hangers across the bar in the hopes of drowning out this latest recitation on the depths of Mama’s disappointment, but the noise didn’t help. It never did.

  “—a disappointment and a burden. Never gonna amount to anything, as far as I can tell. Dropped out of college. Dishonorable discharge from the army. No job. Out all night at the Argosy, drinking and gambling away the only two cents we got to rub together. What’m I supposed to do with you?”

  “Beats the hell outta me,” Payton said from the depths of the closet.

  Payton had created this whole messed-up situation—no one else to blame there. Living at home in a trailer at twenty-four. Driving a piece of shit car that cost more than it was worth every fill-up. Saddled with the bitch here.

  The army had provided two precious years of freedom, but that hadn’t worked out in the end.

  Blowing through the money from that last job wasn’t the smartest thing Payton had ever done, but the blackjack table had been hot that night. For a little while, anyway. Still, betting ten large at once was a bad idea, so there were no real excuses.

  Now Payton paid the price every time Mama played that same old broken record—Payton Screws Up: Volume One—and every time Mama swore that Payton would still be living at home decades from now.

  Payton almost gagged at the thought.

  Over near the bed, the bitch droned on, working up a head of steam, when a miracle occurred.

  The phone rang, and it was the special ring tone—the Dixie Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice”—announcing that this was an important call, the kind that didn’t happen often enough. Payton lunged for the leather jacket perched atop the teetering pile of clothes on the chair, fished the phone out of the pocket, and flipped it open.

  “This is Payton.”

  There was a long pause, and then, “Someone’s looking to hire.”

  The surge of gratitude and relief was almost blinding. “I’m available.”

  Mama watched with sharp eyes, mouth gaping open and cigarette stub dangling from the edge of her bottom lip by what could only be spit. Trying to look casual, Payton turned and stared out the window to that lousy battered blue car, which seemed to lose a foot or more of its body to rust every day.