Hell's Hilltop

by J. A. Dennam

  If only she could tell Mac how thankful she was he’d come into her life. Despite the fact they’d started out as foes, their short, eventful journey in finding the basement chemist had brought them together for one of the most glorious rounds of uninhibited sex she’d ever had. Her big, bald, master of doom—assigned to keep her in line—had cherished her in bed. Showed her what it was like to move beyond the motions of sex and truly bond with another soul.

  Though, in the heat of the moment, Mac had made it abundantly clear their stolen moments of passion were only an outlet for pent-up stress, the man confessed the opposite when she lay dying. “I told you things I never told anyone else,” he’d rambled on behind her, “which should have been my first clue. It was different with you. I knew it. Felt it. But I couldn’t admit it, not with you being a ghost.” Then he’d buried his lips in her hair and was silent for a long time. But words weren’t necessary. She knew what he was thinking: imagine what else they could have accomplished if only given the chance. If only they would have met sooner. If only she could roll over and kiss him one last time.

  The “if only’s” seemed to stretch on for hours before his voice, laden with shock, crackled behind her.

  “Crystal?”

  Something was off. Worried, she moved her head in order to look. It wasn’t until he rolled her onto her back that she realized what she’d done.

  She’d moved. Could she do it again?

  Her forehead scrunched slightly.

  Mac’s expressive brow smoothed out in wonder. He lifted her wrist, felt her pulse. “Good lord, woman, that’s it. Come back to me!”

  It was then she began to see the first light of hope. Very few people survived tetrodotoxin poisoning, and never from such a lethal amount. But maybe… just maybe…

  Her mouth moved ever so slightly. “Hi,” she managed, though it was barely audible, even to her.

  Mac sprang into action, rubbing her limbs, enfolding her cold hands in his and blowing warm air into them. “That’s right, Crystal, you can’t leave yet. We have unfinished business, remember?”

  Crystal knew the “unfinished business” he referred to was their plan to defile the preschool van they’d taken to Lesico that morning. She produced a weak smile. “Just sex… right?”

  “Honey, if it were just sex, I wouldn’t have felt like half my heart was dying with you.”

  And his mouth covered hers in a desperate kiss that proved every word.

  Joy had been absent the last three years of Crystal’s life. To be inundated with it in such a way filled her with doubt at first. Ever since she’d been recruited as one of IGP’s ghosts, Rafferty had taught her to find suspect in everything. But as she recovered little by little, Crystal finally believed.

  The torture was worth it in the end, brief and nearly painless compared to the slow agony and imminent death of Nexifen withdrawals. It would be easier for Derek once his time came, without the weight of uncertainty taking its toll. He’d be well informed, well cared for. And, most importantly, he’d be free.

  Crystal pushed back the heavy curtain and entered the side room where Rena curled up on another cot. Derek occupied the same bed, his back propped against the earthen wall facing Rena’s sleeping form.

  “How’s she doing,” Crystal asked him.

  He answered with a yawn. “Better since Ty quit all that caterwauling.”

  “She heard him?”

  “Oh, yeah.” His hand covered Rena’s bare foot in an affectionate manner. “She really cares for him. I don’t think either of them know how much.”

  Crystal moved to the lamp and turned on the light. “She hit him with an oar.”

  Derek shrugged. “Never get in the way of a woman and her grudge. Especially when the humanity is turned off.”

  Her blurred vision was returning now that the drug had left her system, but Crystal could easily make out Derek’s haggard appearance beneath the light beard. She knew he felt responsible for Rena, being the one who broke her out of prison.

  Frost came through the curtain drying his hands on a towel. A fresh surge of anger burst forth, and Crystal glared at the man. “How could you let Rafferty do this to her, Isak? For months under your own roof, he drugged her and you did nothing!”

  Isak halted his progress into the room. Regret deepened the lines around his eyes. “You don’t remember her as a child the way I do, Elsa.”

  “It’s Crystal,” she corrected automatically. “And how does that excuse what you let happen?”

  He held up a hand. “It doesn’t. I’m just saying it’s hard to properly read someone suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, let alone when the treatment isn’t working. You wouldn’t know because your parents protected you from the worst of her illness, by either sending you away or putting her in a hospital. Of course, it stopped once she was diagnosed and treated, but I assumed she’d suffered a setback from the trauma of her near drowning. I take full responsibility. For all of this. I can’t even blame her for burning down my house.”

  “She just found out Rafferty was your son,” Derek said. “She’s been mumbling about it in her sleep.” He leaned forward, steepled his fingers. “And if you really take full responsibility, you need to fix it. Testify on her behalf in court.”

  Isak lowered himself into a folding chair. His look turned somber. “I’d rather not.”

  Crystal felt the heat rush into her face. “Isak!”

  “Not that I won’t help her,” the old man rushed. “If she wants to go that route, I’ll comply, but there’s a better way.” He indicated another folding chair beside him. “Please sit down and I’ll explain.”

  With a tentative glance at Derek, Crystal pulled the chair around and sat down facing Isak. “Go ahead.”

  “IGP was originally your father’s security firm.”

  Shock rendered Crystal temporarily speechless. “I thought it was Rafferty’s.”

  Isak removed a cigarette from the soft pack in his pocket. “My son wasn’t exactly a go-getter,” he muttered through the filter, “certainly not equipped to start a business.” A match flared and he lit up, inhaled deeply as he shook out the flame. “Your father hired him as a favor to me. IGP was relatively small at that time.

  “I was at Pharm Corp, working on a cure for psychotic disorders with a team of scientists. We were really on to something and we knew the importance of secrecy, but Sophie learned of it. She blackmailed me and your father into stealing a sample to test with her own experimental drug.”

  “How did she blackmail you?” Crystal asked. His look told her she should know the answer to that and her spine straightened with the realization. “She took your son and got him hooked on Nexifen. Same as she did with me.”

  Smoke flowed from Isak’s mouth as he spoke. “She preyed on John and he fell for her hard. He didn’t want to be saved.” He leaned forward, planted elbows on knees. “When your father disappeared with that sample, John helped himself to IGP and used its resources to chase him down.”

  Crystal struggled to breathe as she processed everything. “My father disappeared because he didn’t have the sample. Rena had taken it.”

  “And, he was right to uproot his family and run,” Isak said with a confirming nod. “My son proved to be quite ruthless, even toward me. My involvement in the research of the cure made me a valuable asset to him and Sophie… but I also had inside information that would connect them to the Pharm Corp thefts. I used it to my advantage. Convinced Sophie to back off your father, that the sample was lost and we could work on an alternative cure. She did back off eventually, allowing your father to relax his hold on you girls. But John didn’t like it. Not because he wanted the cure, but because he wanted the power. To flex his muscles. To show your father who was boss.”

  Crystal couldn’t imagine anyone hating her father so much. He’d been a wonderful man, admired and liked by so many.

  Reading the question in her eyes, Isak explained, “John was a slacker before Sophie got a hold of him.
He had no work ethic, he was lazy, scrawny, couldn’t get an ounce of respect even from the few girls he dated. Your father dressed him down plenty of times, but he felt obligated to keep John under his employ for my sake.”

  Crystal shook her head in complete bafflement. “I can’t picture Rafferty as scrawny or lazy. That just doesn’t compute.”

  Derek chimed in from the cot. “And to think someone like that had my life by the balls for two whole years. No offense.”

  Isak blew smoke. “None taken. He’d become someone else, far removed from the boy I raised. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to feed him that poisoned pill, but I knew he’d only begin the cycle again.”

  “How did he know about Hell’s Hilltop?” Crystal asked. “That he’d find Rena there?”

  A look of lament passed over Isak’s face before he took her hand. “Rena spoke of that roller coaster a lot when they were together. He even took her there once.”

  What? Rafferty had been to their special place? Knowing the man, Crystal could imagine what his motives were. “I’m surprised she told him about it.”

  “It was one of her fondest memories and she wasn’t of sound mind.” He gave her hand a pat. “But, it helped me remember how much I adored you girls. I just hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me.”

  “Depends on how you fix their problems,” Derek remarked, his tone apathetic.

  Shadows shifted across the small room and Crystal turned to find Mac standing by the curtain, his big, burly shape blocking the light from the lab. It appeared as if he’d been listening for a while. It was weird, lacking the super senses she’d grown accustomed to. Good that her world was quieter. Bad that she could be ambushed so easily now. But, having Mac in her life was a good compromise since he made her feel safer than she’d ever been.

  He winked in answer to her appreciative gaze. Crystal’s heart flip-flopped in her chest. Ah, there he is. My big softy.

  Isak broke the moment by clearing his throat. “Actually, you have all the resources you need at your disposal.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Derek asked in a low voice.

  Isak reclaimed Crystal’s hands and her attention. “IGP was your father’s business. It’s different now. Bigger, more obscure, darker… but in all fairness, it’s yours. Take it back.”

  Crystal let out a small laugh. “Just like that.”

  “What’s stopping you? You come from an organization that makes things happen. Hell, now that John and his ghosts are gone, you’re all that’s left of it. You, your sister, even Derek, here. The three of you have the opportunity to fix all that has been broken.”

  Crystal looked over and found Derek watching her closely. “But there was more to IGP than just Rafferty and his ghosts,” she said with reservation. “He had a whole slew of personnel running it.”

  Isak held up his hand, closed it into a fist between them. “Which means it’s ripe for the taking. Clean house. If you don’t, one of those people will and you may never get the chance again.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Mac

  Mac stood with Austin in the doorway, listening as Crystal and Derek—two people who should be dead—discussed their options. The fact they even had options was a miracle Mac was afraid to trust. Since Friday night—a mere three nights ago—his structured, quiet life had exploded into an action film.

  Melanie and baby DJ went missing, only to materialize the next afternoon with her long-dead boyfriend and father to her child. Consequently, Derek brought with him a world of hell. They’d been chased, stalked, and nearly blown to pieces, which resulted in DJ’s kidnapping. Then they’d become the hunters, in frantic hot pursuit of the fifteen-month-old and the ghost who’d taken him.

  When DJ was found, it was in the arms of IGP’s only female recruit. Wearing the black hooded uniform that branded Crystal the enemy, Mac was ready to take her out like yesterday’s garbage.

  Now, forty-eight hours later, he was gazing at her like a lovesick fool. The fact they’d only been truly acquainted for a day seemed a moot point. Did time really factor in when the ride was so rich an experience?

  When she lay dying, Mac had spent the day holding her in his arms, taking in the scent of her soft, chestnut hair. Thinking about their differences, and that despite them he’d found a new level of pleasure, excitement and trust he’d never reached with another living soul. How the hell did that happen? And how the hell could fate take it away just as quickly?

  But she was back. The same woman minus the edgy glint in her big, frost-blue eyes. Hair cropped short with a curtain of bangs that frequently tangled in thick dark eyelashes, a healthy glow to her light, flawless skin, so small in stature he could easily consume every inch of her within his embrace. Mac drank his fill, almost afraid she’d be gone tomorrow.

  Bullshit. As soon as they were done here, he’d take her from this godforsaken cave, throw her in his bed and stake his claim in a way that left her exhausted, unable to resist, and without doubts as to where she belonged.

  When Mac’s focus returned, Crystal was watching him with a curious mien while Derek rambled on.

  What are you thinking?

  Instead of answering her with a look of his own, Mac pushed away from the wall, closed the distance, and yanked her to her feet.

  Together, they exited the small room leaving Derek in mid-sentence. They pushed past Austin and Isak toward the back, into a dark recess that led to a cramped crawlspace. Past that was a hand-dug passage. Mac fished his phone out of his pocket and soon the passage was dimly lit. Wooden supports, old and wreathed in cobwebs, offered rickety assurance the earth would not come crashing down around them. It was far from romantic, but it was the only private space below ground.

  “Are we leaving?” Crystal asked, as she followed him through Isak’s “back door”.

  Mac let go of her small hand and turned to face her. She was swimming in Melanie’s borrowed T-shirt and yoga pants, but the clothes were a lot better than that hooded uniform of hers.

  “Derek’s been doing a lot of talking,” Mac said, running a hand over his non-existent mustache out of habit. “I get it. Heat of the moment and all, but are you sure about this?”

  Crystal chewed her full bottom lip for a moment before she nodded. “It feels right.”

  “You just now got your life back. You can do anything you want.”

  “Mac, it’s a new life. My old one ended three years ago. My dreams have changed… except the one standing right here.” Her fingers grazed his chest. “I am starting over in every sense of the word and from now on I’m going with my gut.”

  He studied her face for a long time, noted the stubborn determination in the tilt of her chin. “Then I’m with you all the way,” he said finally, drawing her close. “As long as it’s what you really want.”

  Her look softened. “It’s been a long time since anyone cared what I want,” she whispered, a suspicious sheen of moisture liquefying the unique color of her eyes even more.

  She took the phone from his hand and set it on the floor where its light beamed upward. Soon, Crystal was in his arms. As her feet dangled off the ground, Mac met her fevered kisses with equal enthusiasm. Never again would he deny his insane desire for her, and never again would he take her with boundaries.

  “I really want to make love to you right now,” he murmured against her mouth. “Show you what it feels like to be taken that way.”

  “In a cave full of spiders and snakes?” Her small arms tightened around his massive shoulders and she smiled wickedly. “Macon Reed, I can’t think of anything more romantic.”

  Gravel crunched beneath Mac’s boots as he walked with Austin and Derek to the hidden Camaro a half-mile away. Still cantankerous over the rude interruption that ripped him from the arms of his woman, Mac scowled and picked up the pace in order to hurry the night along.

  He looked back, noticed the flashing lights above the tree line and wondered how much longer Isak’s smoldering pro
perty would be overrun.

  As they walked, Derek verbalized his new plan to free Rena from her prison sentence. It was something that would only work if every facet of the plan went off without a hitch. And when Mac met Austin’s worried look, he knew they were thinking the same thing.

  Hitch number one.

  Sure enough, Derek stumbled and Austin caught him before he ate gravel. “You’re in no condition to spook anyone, Bennett, let alone that prison guard.”

  Derek brushed off his concern. “Tell that to Rafferty.”

  “And there’s that cocky attitude we all missed so much,” Austin came back wryly. “Just because you’re still on Nexifen doesn’t mean you’re up to speed yet.”

  “I know my limitations, Cahill.” Derek followed up that statement with a fit of coughs that had him stopping to catch his breath.

  “Since when?” Mac said with a raised brow.

  Hands on knees, Derek recovered, but his words were backed with force. “This has to happen now or our window of opportunity will be gone.”

  Approaching headlights illuminated the thick growth flanking the gravel road. Mac and Austin hastily pulled Derek into the woods. When the car passed, Austin continued his bid for reason. “Heal up first. Let your drug do its thing, just a few more days. What’s the harm in waiting?”

  “Because I know this prick,” Derek answered with attitude. “It won’t take much to spook him. Sure, he’s a big fucker with a lot of influence, but he quakes in his boots at the sight of me. Our biggest problem is when he finds out Rafferty’s dead. He’ll disappear and I’ll lose my shot at getting the answers we need to move forward.” And he began to walk again. “Where the hell did you park, fucking Oklahoma?”

  Thinking back on the history of the last few days, Mac came up with a justifiable concern. “Are we really sure Rafferty’s dead? I mean, you have to admit… he survived a lot of abuse at our hands.”

  “He deserved it,” Austin murmured, flexing the meaty fist he’d used to dole out much needed punishment. “But, yeah, it’s rather uncanny how that ball-sack keeps cheating death.”