Rain Shadow 5

by Tess Oliver

  “Superglue is a good way to seal shut a cut without stitches. I’m going to glue you back together.”

  “No needles and thread?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then glue is the only good thing that’s happened all day.”

  Chapter 8

  Angel

  I placed my hand on Cash’s forehead, and he opened his eyes. “My brain is still there if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “I’m just checking to see if you have a temperature.” I lowered my hand and looked down at him. “Do you mean you know nothing about the legendary ‘checking for fever’ mom touch?”

  “Hell, I don’t even know anything about moms, let alone the checking for fever legend.”

  I sat down next to him on the bed. “You poor thing. I knew you lived with your dad, but I guess I just always figured your mom was around.”

  “Nope,” he said in that hardened tone I was so used to hearing. “She left before I could remember what she looked like. Somehow, she’d convinced herself I’d be fine in my dad’s care. It was a fucking awesome plan.” Anger replaced the hard edge but there was no self-pity in his voice. And he’d had plenty to feel pity about.

  “Well, according to my palm, you don’t have fever.”

  He squinted toward the window. Faded sunlight filtered through the half-closed slats. “How long was I sleeping for?”

  “Three days.”

  His eyes opened wide and then he remembered the cut over his brow. “Three fucking days?”

  Now I felt guilty for messing with him. “I’m kidding. It’s been about two hours.”

  He scooted up, but it seemed that every muscle in his body ached. His chest and back were covered with bruises, and I’d been keeping a close eye on him in case he worsened, signaling possible internal bleeding. But the damage seemed to be mostly superficial.

  “I think it’s lucky you had on that padded leather jacket. It must have absorbed some of the impact of their fists. I think you’ll be feeling a lot better in a few days.” I looked down at the cuts on his knuckles that I’d cleaned and disinfected. “Looks like you got in a few good punches too.”

  “Yeah, a few.” It was dawning on him again, the bleakness of his situation. He was a man without a home or family or place in the world at the moment. And to top it off, the world appeared to be against him.

  “Cash, I’m sorry that my grandfather is such a monster.”

  “It’s not your fault, Angel. You have no control over it. I’m just glad Barringer got you out of there.” He pulled in a deep breath. “I smell food, really good food.” He sucked in another breath and looked hopefully at me. “Carne asada?”

  “Luke went out to pick up some tacos, but you’ve got a bad cut on the inside of your mouth. The whole right side of your face is swollen from it. Spicy food will be torture.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I have a left side. It will be more torturous to know that those two are out there shoveling down tacos without me.”

  I stood. “All right. I’ll bring you one, but this is definitely going against doctor’s orders.” Before I could leave the room, Jericho stepped into the doorway with a taco in one hand and a bag in the other.

  Cash lifted his head. “You fucking better not step in here with that thing unless you have one for me.”

  Jericho held up the grease-stained bag. “Now, would I stand in front of you and eat this without bringing you one?”

  Cash sat up and shut his eyes for a second.

  “Are you dizzy?” I asked.

  “Little bit.” He leaned back against the wall and opened his eyes. “Bring me that food. I’m starved.”

  “Where’s Luke?” I asked.

  “He finished eating and headed into the office.” Jericho handed Cash the bag.

  “Don’t forget about that cut,” I said. “Although I’m pretty sure you’ll be well aware of it after one bite of that taco.”

  I walked out of the room and down the hall to the office. The door was only slightly ajar. I knocked and poked my head inside. Luke swept some papers into a file and looked up from the chair. He’d been oddly quiet since we’d gotten Cash home. Of course, this latest attack was just another reminder that Dreygon was still out there.

  Whenever my grandfather grew quiet and unnoticed for a chunk of time, it was easy to wipe him out of our minds. But he was still around, lurking in those dark, cold shadows that only a man as wicked as him could produce.

  “How is your arm?” I walked over and leaned on the desk next to him. He reached up and took hold of me and pulled me down onto his lap. “It hurts but I’m sure it’s nothing compared to what Cash is feeling.” His hand caressed my arm.

  I lowered my head onto his shoulder. “What the hell are we going to do, Reno?”

  “I’m not too sure yet.” He stared down at the file folder on the desk.

  “What are you working on?”

  For some reason, my perfectly predictable question had caught him off guard.

  “Uh, nothing in particular. I put in a call to Detective Scoffield to let him know what happened. I know Cash doesn’t want any witness protection, but I’m certain this last attack will help him when he gets to his hearing. The murders were clearly self-defense, and when the department realizes that they failed to protect him, even though he didn’t help that cause at all, they’ll push to have the charges dropped. Or, at least, that’s what we can hope for.”

  I sighed. “Good. Something needs to go right for him soon. It’s rare to see Cash in such despair. That would at least help put his mind at ease about going to jail.”

  “Sonavabitch,” Cash’s curse shot down the hall.

  “Should you go check on him?” Luke asked.

  “No, he decided to eat a taco.”

  “With that mouth? That’s determination mixed with gnarly hunger and a sprinkling of stupidity.”

  I smiled. “I’ll say. Boy, when you guys want something, nothing stops you from getting it.”

  “That is so true. In fact, there’s something I’ve been wanting all afternoon, but now that we’re babysitting the biker twins again, I haven’t had a chance to get it. Go shut that damn door and meet me over there on that little couch.”

  “It’s a very small couch,” I said. “In fact, I would call it an extra wide chair.”

  “Yep, and it smells like old tobacco, but…determination, remember?” He lifted his arm. “And I have an ouchy that needs tending.”

  I reached down and rubbed my hand over the fly of his jeans. His erection pressed back against the fabric. “I’ll say.” I got up and went to the door. I could hear Jericho and Cash talking as I quietly shut it. I glanced over at Luke who was already taking off his pants. He’d pulled a foil package from his wallet.

  “Shouldn’t we hang a tie on the doorknob or something? Jericho is likely to bust right in.”

  Now naked from the waist down, and with his cock standing erect in front of him, Luke reached into the desk drawer and hastily wrote something on a sticky note. He walked over and showed it to me. It said ‘do not disturb’. He grinned smugly, opened the door and stuck it on the outside before closing it again with a bang.

  “Of course, you are assuming that Richo will take the time to read it and then actually listen to what it tells him.”

  Luke pulled me against him, and his cock pressed into my abdomen. “If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay the hell out.” He fumbled with the button on my pants as he spoke. His mouth devoured mine as he pushed my jeans to the floor. I nearly pitched sideways in my hurry to step out of them.

  Luke took roughly hold of my arm and led me to the couch. I laughed. “You are especially ravenous, Reno. It’s almost as if you’ve been on one of those long Viking journeys or something.”
<
br />   He sat in the chair and yanked me down to straddle his lap. “I don’t need any fucking journey to be this hard for you. And watching you have to constantly tend to those two out there makes me fucking wild with jealousy. I want you all to myself for awhile.” Without warning he pushed his fingers into my pussy. He smiled up at me. “And you seem to want me too.”

  “Always.” I leaned down and kissed him as his fingers probed the wet folds.

  I took the condom from between the fingers of his injured arm and rolled it on. He was right. I wanted him badly. When I’d first walked into the office, I hadn’t been thinking about this but his hunger, his need to possess me had made me just as ravenous. I plunged down over his hard cock and rocked back and forth. He was holding back, giving me a chance to catch up to the urgency that had consumed him. I moved feverishly over him, taking him deeper with each movement until we came together.

  I collapsed down, and he wrapped his arms around me. The only sounds were the deep murmurs of Cash and Jericho’s conversation pressing against the office door, and our breathing returning to normal.

  “I know you don’t like it when I act possessive, Angel. I’m sorry. It’s just sometimes I need you all to myself. Watching you play doctor and tend to Cash’s wounds made me feel envious. I was thinking back to those first few weeks at the compound when you were taking care of me, and I don’t know. . . “

  I pressed my fingers against his mouth and scooted down in his arms, draping my legs over one side of the chair. “Don’t ever apologize for wanting me, Luke. Never apologize for that.” I rested my head against his shoulder and closed my eyes, content and safe in his arms.

  Chapter 9

  Luke

  I drank down a cup of coffee, but my stomach was too knotted to consider breakfast.

  Angel’s lips and cheeks looked particularly blushed as she leaned over the counter nibbling on a muffin. Her teal blue eyes sparkled as she smiled, and as usual, it took me a second to recover from looking at the girl in front of me. I wondered if I was the only one to notice the silvery halo of light that surrounded her wherever she stood. And it was that face and that smile that gave me the strength to see this through. I needed to find out whether or not my hunch was correct, even if it meant causing some people emotional pain.

  She picked up a muffin crumb from her plate and pushed it between her lush lips. I knew her well enough to know she was teasing me with those lips. God, I loved those fucking lips. “It seems that for someone on a week’s disability pay you sure have to go into work a lot.” She licked the crumb topping off her finger, again tempting me, and damn if it wasn’t working. I was already close to jumping the counter and pulling her into my arms. “I’d almost think you were heading off to see another girl.”

  My head told me that once I touched her, it would be all over, and I’d have to take her back to bed. But it didn’t stop me from walking around the counter. I took hold of her arm and dragged her plump lips to my mouth. I kissed her and ran my tongue across her bottom lip. “Hmm, a girl that tastes like cinnamon. I like it.” I kissed her again. “How the hell am I supposed to think about another girl when I spend every minute of the day thinking about you?” I took a bite of her muffin. “But I like that you’re the jealous one for a change. Makes me feel like less of a jerk.”

  She offered me the last bite of her muffin, which I took. “Every minute of the day, huh?”

  “Every damn minute.” I held her tightly against me. I’d started it by walking over, within arm’s reach of her, and now, I was going to have to figure out a way to stop touching her. According to the information I’d gotten, Dr. Palmer’s patient hours started at nine, and I wanted to get there a few minutes before. It sucked having to lay this on the doctor at the beginning of the day, but with Cash off his feet, I hated to leave Angel and Jericho alone in the evening.

  “I have to go before I can’t leave,” I said with one last quick kiss. “God, I feel like a junkie trying to talk myself away from my favorite drug. The withdrawals will start the second I leave this house.”

  I released her, and she sighed disappointedly. “And I shared my muffin with you.”

  “I’ll be back soon. Keep those plump, cinnamon-flavored lips ready.” I pointed to the doorknob and glanced back at her. “Deadbolt this right now.”

  I fished the paper with the address out of my pocket as I walked to my car. We’d had a light flirtatious moment, but the weight of what I was about to do, hit me the second I shut the door. While so many tiny details pointed to the possibility of this notion being a reality, it still seemed too implausible to believe.

  Many times, Angel had insisted that she’d been meant to find me out there in the desert. She’d devised the romantic theory that I was her hero, the man who would save her from her cement tower. She’d saved me more than once, and I’d returned the favor. Never could I have imagined that we were destined for each other because of my connection to the missing baby, the baby my dad had spent so many years agonizing over. Those unbelievable odds stuck in the back of my mind assuring me that this just couldn’t be. But there was no way this idea was just going to disappear. I had to find out for sure, and that meant having to involve other people, people whose emotions were so deeply entrenched in this that just bringing it up would be soul ripping. And bringing it up to Angel seemed the most daunting task of all. But first, I needed to talk to Dr. Palmer, the man who’d suffered the disappearance of his daughter twenty-two years ago, and who, no doubt, still suffered.

  Chapter 10

  Luke

  It was a fairly new medical building with lots of windows between walls of brick. Feathery ferns popped out of the planters lining the walk to Dr. Palmer’s suite. He was a cardiologist, and from the information I’d gleaned on-line, he was highly respected in his field.

  A woman with a mound of curly auburn hair and a friendly smile looked up from behind the glass in front of the receptionist’s desk. “Just sign in. You’re a bit early. Mr. Dhumar?”

  “No, actually I don’t have an appointment.” I stepped up to the counter. There were several voices coming from the back room, and one was a man’s deep, somewhat authoritative, tone. I wondered if it was Dr. Palmer. My body tightened with nerves. Suddenly, this seemed harder than ever.

  The woman’s smile had faded. “I’m sorry, but you’ll need an appointment.”

  “I’m not here as a patient. I need to talk to Dr. Palmer about a personal matter.”

  “That’s not possible.” She ripped off a piece of paper from her notepad and pushed it through the slot, along with a pen. “Just leave your name, number and a brief message, and I’ll make sure the doctor receives it.”

  I’d had an inkling that this was going to be more complicated than simply walking in and talking to a doctor. It was hard to get in to see a doctor even with a scheduled appointment. I nearly had to laugh to myself thinking about leaving a quickly written note with what I had to tell the man. I reached for my wallet, and the woman’s eyes creased with suspicion.

  “I’m just getting my wallet,” I assured her. It was hard to imagine that they had a lot of trouble or armed robbers coming into a cardiologist’s office, but her expression had definitely morphed from friendly to mistrustful. A tall man in a white doctor’s coat walked into the reception area, but I only caught a glimpse of his face before he turned to the row of files on the back wall. He had distinguished looking gray tips on his sideburns and a straight, intelligent profile.

  Another case of nerves rattled me for a second. I wasn’t looking forward to any of this. More than once, I’d told myself to abandon the whole damn idea, but I knew it would eat at me for the rest of my life.

  I took a deep breath and opened the wallet to my badge. The receptionist’s eyes rounded, and she sucked in a worried breath.

  “I’m Special Agent Luke Barringer, and it’s ve
ry important I speak to Dr. Palmer.” The doctor turned around. He walked up to the window and stared through it. The hairs stood up on my neck. I wasn’t sure if I was just looking so hard for a similarity that I’d imagined it, or if it was actually there. Something about the man reminded me of Angel. It was the confident way he held himself.

  “What is this about?” Dr. Palmer asked.

  “Sir, excuse me for disturbing you this morning. I know you’re a busy man. There is no emergency, but there is something I must talk to you about.”

  He was still staring at me. Finally he spoke. “Did you say your name was Barringer?”

  “Yes, Dr. Palmer. Luke Barringer.”

  He didn’t need to ask the question. It was clear enough on his face. My dad’s name had to have been wedged in his memory like everything else from that horrible period of time.

  “Yes, I’m his son.” It was all I needed to say.

  His face smoothed, and his mouth pulled tight. He was rendered speechless for a moment. “Buzz him in, Terry. And hold my calls.”

  Without looking at me, he turned down a short hall. His white coat fluttered behind him as he walked into an office. I stepped inside, and he shut the door. I’d gone over a dozen different ways to approach this on the way to the office, but all those rehearsals had been wiped clean. Before I could start, he began the conversation in a sharp, angry tone.

  “I am sorry about your dad, but I can’t imagine what you have to say to me, Mr. Barringer.”

  “Sir, I haven’t come to cause you anguish.”

  He leaned against his desk, making it clear that he wouldn’t be offering me the courtesy of a seat, and that I wouldn’t be staying long. I was certain that even with all the work my dad had put into the case, the fact that he’d failed to find the baby had to have put an angry rift between them. This couldn’t have been more evident now than in the expression of the man whose posture reminded me so much of Angel’s, I couldn’t stop staring.