by T. K. Leigh
“Yeah,” I said, fixing my expression to hide any unease or concern I had. “But he never knocks.” Spinning around, I grinned playfully at him. “Completely different.” I winked and continued toward the bedroom.
“He still makes me nervous,” he said, following me.
“He shouldn’t. Charlie is the furthest thing from a threat out there.”
Stopping abruptly as I approached my bed, I faced him, my eyes remaining glued to his. The light in the bedroom was dim, the only source from a few tea candles I had lit before he arrived. The soothing sound of Ella Fitzgerald filtered through the room, creating a romantic ambience.
“Now…” Slowly and sensually, I pulled at the tie of my kimono and allowed it to drop to the floor.
Tyler swallowed hard and his eyes were no longer focused on my face but on the rest of my body, which was precisely what I had hoped.
“Tell me,” I said in a sultry voice, sauntering up to him and running my fingers down his firm chest. My hands grazed over his heart, the intensity of its beat increasing with each drawn out motion. Keeping my eyes glued to his, I leisurely unbuttoned his shirt, taking my time, teasing him with my deliberately passive movements.
“Do you want me?” I whispered.
His hand pressed on the small of my back, drawing me against him so there was no air between us. “More than you can imagine,” he murmured.
This was a different Tyler than the man who had been in my bedroom earlier in the day. This was the Tyler who thought he lost me. He was soft, tender, gentle, loving. I saw it in the way he admired me. I felt it in the brush of his fingers against my cheek. And I tasted it in the way his lips met mine, his kiss soft and pure, trying to tell me what words alone could not.
He led me across the room and delicately lowered me onto the bed, his eyes never leaving my body. He drank me in as if he would never gaze upon me again.
“Make me feel, Tyler. Make me feel you.” My voice wavered, the intensity of the moment almost surreal. Our eyes locked and I swore I could see everything through those brilliant green eyes. I saw his pain. His happiness. His past. His future. His heartache. His despair. His triumphs.
His lips met mine, his hand roaming my body as he gently moved against me. It was so tame, so passionate, and so fucking perfect that I wanted to cry. A lump formed in my throat and I had no idea how this man I didn’t even know a week ago could have caused such a change in me.
He stood up and slowly shrugged out of his unbuttoned shirt and jeans, his underwear falling on top of the pile of discarded clothes, and I couldn’t stop looking at him. I couldn’t stop feeling what I did for him. Jenna’s description of what love was rang in my head and I knew I was in it. One second, I was ready to give everything to Tyler. The next, I was terrified that, one day, he would open his eyes and think I wasn’t worth his time or energy. The pendulum swings were manic, just like love was supposed to be. And this, I knew, was love.
He returned to me, his eyes full of the same emotion covering my body.
“You, too?” I asked.
“Me, too,” he said, and without saying the words, we communicated our love to each other. Words were insignificant and unable to properly convey the depth of what I was feeling, what we were feeling.
His existence covered me and he gently pushed into me, his motions slow as he filled me to the brim and withdrew before repeating the same benevolent movement.
“Say you’re mine forever.” His voice was pleading and a tear trickled down my cheek.
“Yes,” I exhaled, matching the delicate rhythm he set. “I’m yours.”
He had possessed my mind, my soul, and my heart. It was all-consuming and narcotic, my addiction to the man moving on top of me blinding me to everything else in my life.
“Promise you won’t leave me, Mackenzie.”
I peered at him and I saw the brokenhearted man who had lost so much in his life. I would do anything to assure him he didn’t have to worry about me abandoning him. I couldn’t if I wanted to. Our course had been charted and, for the first time in my life, I was letting my heart, not my brain, make all the decisions.
“I’ll never leave you, Tyler.”
My life had been a constant race and I was always trying to be the leader of the pack. I was always looking ahead and nowhere else, never belonging anywhere. But then Tyler came along and I knew I had finally found a place where I belonged.
“I love you.” The words I had refused to speak for years flowed so naturally out of my mouth.
“I love you, Mackenzie.” He pressed his lips to mine and breathed into my mouth, as if breathing life into me even more than he already had. “God, I love you so much,” he said, quivering on top of me. He buried his head in my neck, his breath hot against me as he skillfully worshipped my body.
His teeth clamped onto my neck and I yelped from the surprise. The way he moved inside me was slow, loving, reverent. His teeth dug into my skin, the contact harsh, unrelenting, jarring, and I burned for my duplicitous mystery man even more. He sucked on my neck, the pressure building between my hips and on my skin, and I knew exactly what he was doing. He was branding me, labeling me as his. I should have been livid he was marking me like he was, but I wasn’t. I was his and wanted everyone to know.
Everything grew fuzzy as sensation overwhelmed me. My body began to spasm from the intensity and my orgasm rushed forward, taking me by surprise and making me come completely undone in a matter of seconds. Tyler followed, his low moan signaling his own release.
Once his breathing slowed, his mouth released the hold it had on my neck and he pulled back, gazing down at me. He tenderly brushed my sweat-drenched hair from my forehead, his eyes glued to mine.
“Mackenzie…”
I briefly closed my eyes, delighting in his low and guttural voice saying my name in such an adoring way. “Yes?”
“I was so lonely before you. And I liked it. I liked the lonely. I considered it my punishment for not…” He paused and I could tell how difficult it was for him to share his past with me. I reached up and ran my fingers against his face, the slight stubble comforting on my hand.
“For not doing everything I could to prevent what happened to Melanie,” he continued, surprising me with the ease with which he could finally speak her name. “I remember lying awake on my bunk on the carrier during deployment, staring at the ceiling as I listened to fighter planes land on the deck, thinking to myself that this was the best it would ever get. The despair and numbness I felt is now a distant memory. And I never want to feel that again. I refuse to go back to that Tyler. I’m a better Tyler now and it’s because of you, but I need to tell you the truth.”
“What do you mean?” I asked hesitantly. After the strange conversation with Eli, I was waiting for Tyler to drop some sort of bomb that would make me question everything I thought I knew about him.
“The truth is, I was watching you long before I approached you.”
“You were?” My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach and I didn’t know what to make of his confession, memories of everything I had been through with Charlie flashing through my mind.
The silence was deafening in the room, despite the sound of Ella Fitzgerald’s voice singing the song that would forever make me think of Tyler and the one dance that had led to such a fierce and passionate attraction.
“I was,” Tyler admitted. “You were so poised, so put together. You’re probably the most intimidating woman I’ve ever met, and I’ve met some pretty fiery women.”
I laughed at the memory of our first meeting.
“I knew I would only get one chance with you. I just… After everything I had been through, after living with the lonely and then seeing you, I knew I would regret every hour of every day if I didn’t open my heart to something and try to find a life after the lonely.” He leaned down, nuzzling my neck as his soft hand skimmed the contours of my body, my skin sensitive to his touch.
“To try to find love after the lonely,”
he murmured, his tone serene and unwavering. “I know it hasn’t been long, but the heart wants what the heart wants, and my heart has been searching for you all my life. You’re my lightning strike. I lo−”
“Just shut up and kiss me,” I interrupted, grabbing his face in my hands. Our lips met and we shared a kiss unlike any I had ever experienced. I poured my heart and soul into the innocent gesture, declaring my love for him with my body. I never expected to fall in love with him, but loving him wasn’t a choice. It was something I couldn’t stop doing, even if I wanted to.
He flipped onto his back, pulling me on top of him.
“You’re insatiable,” I commented. “I’ve never met a guy−”
He grabbed my hand in his. “I’m not most guys, Miss Delano. You should know that by now.”
“I’m starting to realize that, Mr. Burnham,” I said coyly, raising my hips and taking him inside me once again.
“Tell me,” he begged as I moved against him, wanting to live in the moment of our passion.
“I love you, Tyler Joseph Burnham.”
“And I love you, Mackenzie Sophia Delano. Always.”
“Always,” I whimpered against his mouth.
Tyler
HUNDREDS OF THOUGHTS SWIRLED around my head as I lay wide awake for the second night in a row. I stared at the ceiling in Mackenzie’s bedroom, listening to the hum of the refrigerator down the hall. Every so often, I would hear Meatball crunch on his food or scratch in his litter box. Other than that, everything was peaceful…except for me. I was at war with myself, with my assignment, with my heart.
I traced my fingers across Mackenzie’s skin, delighting in how soft and smooth it was. She was perfect. Everything about her had spoken to me even before we exchanged that first word. She was forceful, but timid. She was uncertain, but confident in that insecurity. She was broken, her outer shell cracked in places I didn’t even think she knew about.
And I loved her.
I fucking loved her.
I loved the way she murmured in her sleep. I loved the way she furrowed her brow when she was nervous about something. And I loved the way she fit me…my body, my heart, my entire being. I had never been so sure about anything in my life.
Love was supposed to make a person feel whole, as if they finally had a place in the world. Not me. I was as confused as ever, except about my forbidden love for the beautiful woman sleeping peacefully next to me.
A soft knock echoed and I glanced at Mackenzie, still sound asleep without a care in the world. I pried my body from hers and grabbed my jeans, pulling them up my legs. Hiding my pistol in the back of my pants, I walked quietly down the hallway and toward her front door, checking through the peephole. My chest tightened when I saw Eli standing in the hallway, a frenzied air about him.
Opening the door, my hands grew clammy from the troubled look on his face.
“What’s going on?” I whispered, stepping aside to allow him to enter the condo. A slight glow began to filter into Mackenzie’s living room, the sun beginning to make its slow ascent in the predawn hours.
“Your phone’s been off. I tried calling. I wouldn’t have come over if it wasn’t important.”
“What is it?” I asked, gesturing toward the couch for him to sit down. He removed a laptop from his computer bag and turned to me.
“It’s worse than we thought. The police began their investigation into Whitman’s death and, well… They found something.” He furiously typed at the keyboard, pulling up file after file.
“What?”
“There’s no physical evidence connecting him, but they found a whole lot of circumstantial evidence.”
“Connecting who?” I asked, my leg bouncing up and down.
“Charlie,” he said, turning the laptop in my direction, an image of Charlie in his uniform popping up on the screen with the word “Wanted” printed above it. “Local police are working with the FBI and CID on this one. Now that it looks like he’s killed someone, the army has finally gone public with his escape from Walter Reed.”
I swallowed hard, rubbing my chin. “He killed someone?”
“And conspired to kill a whole slew of other people, as well. Charlie was the one who hired Whitman. The feds got visitation records from Walter Reed. Charles Montgomery barely had any visitors…except for Justin Whitman once a month for the past eight years.”
“So Charlie hired Whitman to…?”
He nodded slowly, remaining silent as I tried to wrap my head around this.
“How did he know Whitman?”
“It appears their relationship predates his institutionalization. It’s unclear how they first met, but the feds claim there’s evidence supporting the theory that Charlie hired Whitman to eliminate a long list of people.”
“All the photos we found at the apartment yesterday?”
“Not all of them, but some. The FBI is combing through every database known to man. They never connected the dots before. All of these cases cross jurisdictional lines and the causes of death are lacking a strong similarity. There was no reason to believe they were related, but they’ve identified a handful of the people in the photos as victims in previously unsolved murders and other cases marked down as suicides or accidents, including this one…” He brought up a photo of a woman of Latino heritage and I couldn’t believe I didn’t realize who it was earlier. Mackenzie’s mother. She was walking briskly through a large parking lot toward what looked like a church, glancing over her shoulder.
I swallowed hard, fear rushing over me.
“Don’t worry,” he placated me as I stared blankly at the photo. “I thought she looked familiar so I took this from Whitman’s apartment. The feds never saw it so Mackenzie will stay off their radar but, considering this photo was found in Whitman’s ‘kill box’, it leads to the conclusion that the car wreck that killed Mackenzie’s mom was anything but an accident.”
“She always thought Charlie killed her mother…,” I said, shaking my head.
“Well, it appears he didn’t directly. He hired someone… Someone skilled enough to make it look like an accident. The same goes for nearly all his victims. Most of the people in the photos died in some sort of accident, or suicide. Only a small number of them were actually found murdered.”
“Why is he doing this?” I asked, a burning pain in my chest.
“I’m sorry we didn’t find out earlier. Nothing about this came up in our initial search on Charlie’s background, probably because he was a minor when it happened.”
He brought up a photo of the charred remains of a large ballroom.
“What is this?”
“The U.S. embassy in Liberia… Well, what used to be the U.S. embassy in Liberia.”
“Shit…”
“The official reports of what happened are classified, but at nineteen hundred hours on August third, the embassy came under attack. As I’m sure you know, a group of approximately twelve heavily-armed militants descended on the building, taking it with ease. They all had advanced military training. Everyone was assembled in the grand ballroom. Employees, dignitaries, aid workers… Four of those aid workers had the last name Montgomery.”
At a loss for words, I stared at Eli.
“All sixty-seven people were gathered together in the center of the room, gasoline encircling them.”
A rush of realization washed over me and I swallowed hard.
“And when I say gasoline, I’m not just talking about a few drops here and there. Reports indicated they used enough gas to light this island on fire. They poured it over everyone. The ringleader gave a speech about a ‘circle of trust’.”
“Galloway…” I said in understanding.
Eli nodded his head. “Apparently, he had set up a large weapons deal in exchange for some diamonds from questionable sources and paid off some officials to turn a blind eye, including the U.S. ambassador to Liberia.”
“Let me guess. They didn’t turn a blind eye.”
“No. Much of the i
nformation is unclear, but what the CIA determined after an investigation is the ambassador used the information to set a trap for Galloway who, in turn, sniffed out the trap before he could get caught, then decided to send a message to anyone else who thought of double-crossing him…a very deadly and gruesome message. There was only one survivor… Charlie.”
“And now they think he’s seeking revenge for his parents’ death?”
Eli nodded. “And his sister’s.”
I tried to soak in what I just learned. I had wanted to believe Charlie was trying to find Mackenzie’s dad to prove his innocence. Now I knew the truth. He wanted revenge. It was the only explanation that made sense.
“And Whitman? How did you connect Charlie to Whitman?”
“They looked into everything this guy was doing,” Eli said softly, the sun now shining brilliantly into the living room. “They found a yearly payment to an underground web blog. It was heavily protected and encrypted, but their computer team broke through the encryption. There are journal entries between Whitman and Charlie going back nearly ten years. It’s how they communicated while he was at Walter Reed. All mail was searched, but Charlie did have timed and supervised access to computers. This was how Charlie told him who was next on the chopping block.”
“And Mackenzie?” I asked with a quiver in my voice. “They dated. If he wanted to kill her, he’s had more than enough opportunities to do so.”
“I thought the same thing.” He lowered his voice. “All I could think is that Charlie was using her the same way−”
I shot my head to him, my eyes on fire.
“I mean−”
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s true, isn’t it?”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Eli offered and I wished I could believe his words.
“So Charlie kept her alive with the hope she would lead him to her dad. What changed? Why do you think she was marked for death now?”
“To draw Galloway out of hiding. That’s my working theory, anyway.”
I stood up and paced the room, my mind like a vacuum as it scanned through all the information I had amassed over the past several months. I had originally thought, or hoped, that Charlie was a victim in everything. I wanted to believe he was getting too close to uncovering some big governmental coverup, but that wasn’t it at all. He was killing people, using his intelligence connections and the skills he had learned from the government. He was a danger and was locked away, his sanity discredited. Now he was out, ready to finish the job he had started all those years ago.
