The Perfect Victim

by Linda Castillo

  It didn't.

  She was still there, looking at him expectantly as he refilled the glass a second time and downed it in a single gulp.

  ''That's not going to solve anything," she snapped.

  "No, but it's sure as hell going to make me feel better." He felt like getting roaring drunk. Anything to dull the ache splitting his chest.

  "For an hour? For two? Until you come to your senses and realize that we don't have a choice but to do this?"

  "We always have choices," he said. "I'm merely trying to save your life."

  "Don't try to make my choices for me. I won't let you."

  For the first time since Clint left, he looked at her, astounded that he could feel so damned taken aback by those eyes of hers. "You have absolutely no idea what this son of a bitch is capable of," he said angrily.

  "Yes, I do."

  "You can't imagine!"

  "What do you suggest, Randall? Shall 1 just wait around for him to finish the job he started? Will it be a car accident, like my parents? Or will I get gunned down in the street? Or perhaps at my shop? Will they kill Gretchen, too?" She approached him, her cheeks flushed with anger. "I'm sorry, but I'm not willing to make that ultimate sacrifice."

  She was standing so close he could smell the clean scent of her hair and the subtle, feminine perfume she wore. The alcohol was messing with his brain, making him want her.

  Goddamn her.

  He crossed to her. Without preamble, he cupped the back, of her head and crushed his mouth against hers. Her body went rigid with shock. She tried to push him away, but he didn't relent. He kissed her long and hard, aware that she wasn't kissing him back, but he didn't care. He needed her. Physically. Emotionally.

  Abruptly, he released her, watching dispassionately as she stumbled back. Her face was flushed, her breasts rising and falling with each breath. "You're an idiot when you're drunk," she said, backing away. "I hate it when you drink. I won't tolerate it."

  He followed her, a predator cornering its prey. "If you get near him, he'll kill you. I won't have your death on my conscience, Addison."

  "If we don't stop him now, it'll come when we least expect it. Sooner or later, he'll get us. I'd rather do it on my terms."

  There was no right or wrong. Only danger and insurmountable risk. And ultimately safety, but it carried an exorbitant price. He looked into her eyes and wondered how much she knew about taking risks, if she realized she was putting her life on the line—and that she could lose. He thought about the plan Clint had outlined and wondered if there was a chance it would work. Maybe Tate would refuse to meet her. Maybe he'd agree and then not show. Maybe he would—

  Cursing, Randall hurled the shot glass into the sink, shattering it, splashing the last of his peace of mind over the counter. Frustration and helplessness reached their flash point. "Your life means nothing to him!" he raged.

  Before he could stop himself he rushed to her, yanked her toward him, and shook her. "He doesn't care about you! He'll kill us both without forethought, without afterthought, and without missing his son's Little League game!"

  "Stop it!"

  "He'll kill you, Addison! I won't let that happen!"

  "You're hurting me!'"

  "You're hurting me, too, goddammit!"

  She stared at him, her eyes wide and startled.

  Releasing her, he stepped back, cursing himself for touching her in anger. "Jesus."

  "I'm ... sorry," she said after a moment.

  "Don't apologize to me after what I just did to you," he snapped.

  "But I—"

  He raised his hand. "Just ... don't."

  For a moment the only sound came from his heavy breathing. Randall concentrated on calming himself so he could think rationally. He couldn't ever remember feeling so helpless, so powerless, and he hated it.

  He knew she wasn't going to back down. She was going to do this no matter what he said or did. Had the circumstances not been so bleak, her tenacity might have been admirable. It sickened him to think of what it might cost her. What it might cost him.

  He knew she was only doing what she thought was right. Dammit, he didn't have a better idea. "I'll agree to this on two conditions," he said finally.

  She eyed him warily. "What conditions?"

  "We do it at Clint's bar. And you wear a vest."

  "All right." Her voice didn't falter, and Randall wondered where the strength had come from. There was so much more to her than he'd ever imagined. So many twists and turns that made her the woman he'd fallen in love with.

  The notion shook him to his foundation.

  He crossed to her in two strides. Suddenly, the need to feel her against him, her heart beating against his, was so powerful, so urgent, that it struck a chord of panic inside him.

  The fight went out of her the instant his arms wrapped around her. Her head dropped to his chest, and she leaned, vacillating, against him. She felt so small in his arms. So vulnerable.

  "We need to do this, Randall."

  "I know," he said, furious that she was right. He pulled her more tightly against him. "But I hate it. I fucking hate it." He tilted her head up and pressed his mouth against hers, reveling in the sweetness of her breath, the taste of her lips, the texture of her skin.

  "Good still prevails over evil sometimes," she murmured.

  He pulled away from her, looked deeply into her eyes, shaken by what he saw, overwhelmed by what he felt. "I love you," he said. A tremor passed through her, but he didn't stop. "I love you too much to let anything happen to you."

  It was out. He'd said it. Christ, this was making him crazy.

  "Jesus, Talbot, you never cease to amaze me."

  "Yeah, sometimes I even amaze myself," he growled.

  She touched his face with fingers that trembled. "Please, help me do this. Everything will work out. You'll see."

  The need drove into him mercilessly, sending his mouth back down to hers, devouring. He pulled the sweater over her head, mussing her hair, making her look heavy-eyed and wild as she stared back at him.

  Helpless to stop the urgency that rammed into him, Randall crushed her body to his, burying his face in her fragrant hair. He worked the tiny hook of her bra and bent to take a taut nipple in his mouth. "Did I tell you I love you?" he whispered.

  "Yes," she panted.

  "Good." Backing her against the wall, he pinned her arms above her head and suckled greedily on her breast. Throwing her head back in abandon, she moaned and arched against him.

  "That drives me crazy when you do that." He released her hands.

  She skimmed velvet fingers down his chest, over his nipples. A powerful shudder went through him. Her hands fumbled with his zipper. He was rock-hard and each time she brushed against him, he pearly exploded. But he didn't. That kind of control was too important to him. She was too important. This moment between them too precious.

  He tugged her leggings down, and she kicked them aside. At the same time, she freed him from his jeans, touched him gently until an involuntary moan bubbled up from deep inside him. It was raw need she unleashed, primal, dark, and violent.

  With a low growl, he swung her around, lifted her onto the bar by her hips, wedged himself between her knees, and drew them wide apart. Her head snapped up. There was surprise in her eyes when she looked at him, but he moved quickly. Cupping the soft flesh of her buttocks, he pulled her to the edge of the counter and thrust himself inside her.

  He knew it was too rough for her, inexperienced as she was, but he wanted to possess her, if only for a moment, because he knew the moment was fleeting. No one would ever control her. As surely as he was hurtling himself to the edge of his own pleasure, she was slipping away.

  Without the finesse she deserved, he pumped in and out of her, driving deep, gritting his teeth against the need exploding inside him. He wanted her. Had to have her. Like this. On his terms.

  To his surprise, she began to move with him. Her fingers raked up and down his back. Her breaths ca
me quickly until she was shouting his name. He ravaged her breasts with his mouth, with his hands, part of him wanting to hurt her the way he was hurting inside.

  The orgasm was simultaneous and explosive. He held her so tightly he feared he might be bruising her, but he couldn't let go. He couldn't think, he couldn't see, he couldn't hear but for the ragged sound of his own breathing matched only by hers.

  For several minutes, neither of them spoke. Instead, they held each other for everything they were worth, knowing that tomorrow or the next day or next week, it could all be gone.

  * * *

  Clint worked by the light of his banker’s lamp, poring over last month's bank statement, wondering where in the hell he'd gone wrong. Beside the bank statement, a letter from the IRS outlined in ugly detail just how sorry his financial condition had become. It had taken him several years to reach this all-time low, and he knew there was little hope next month's financial statements would be any different.

  Somewhere along the way, twenty years of work had been sucked down the proverbial drain like so much dirty water. The nest egg was gone, along with the money for the ranch he was going to build back in Texas. He had nothing left that would prove, even to himself, that at one time he'd run a decent, profitable, aboveboard business.

  Tonight, that fleeting moment in time seemed like a lifetime ago.

  At the comer of his desk, a tumbler of whiskey sat in its usual place, a ring of moisture permanently etched into the leather surface of the writing pad. He reached for the tumbler and drank deeply, trying to quench the hunger that never seemed to leave him these days.

  He was merely an opportunist, he told himself as the liquor streamed down his throat. A businessman making the best of a bad situation. But the rationalization did little to quiet his conscience. And he was much too cynical to be bothered by that now.

  He no longer believed in right and wrong, hadn't for years. Black and white no longer existed. He lived in a gray world where wrong could be stretched into right and iniquity transformed into something he could live with.

  Finishing the whiskey, he poured another and brooded. He drank too much, he knew. And he spent too much time at the roulette tables in Atlantic City. But, Christ, that was life. A man who lived with his vices died with them. A man who denied himself life's little pleasures died unhappy.

  Clint Holsapple just didn't want to die broke.

  The climate had changed in D.C. since the days he and Talbot had run in the same circles. Clint had taken on jobs he would never admit to, wallowing in the muck with the rest of the men and women who'd sold their souls for the likes of money or power. He'd been introduced to people he wouldn't let pass through his front door. He'd been paid by nameless, faceless people for jobs he couldn't admit even to himself. He loved it and hated it with a passion that was insane, like a junkie waiting for that one big rush that never seemed to come.

  Now, after all the personal sacrifices and professional compromises, he was broke. At sixty-one years of age the thought left a bitter taste at the back of his throat. His moneymaking days were over. Damn if he hadn't waited too long for the break that just wasn't going to come his way.

  In today's world, it seemed like a man with a conscience was a man who held himself back. The men who lived and worked by the devil' s rules prospered while the honest few paid the price. Ethics and money didn't seem to mix in this crazy town anymore. Why shouldn't he have a little piece of the pie for a change?

  Talbot had come to him out of desperation, a fool in over his head, drowning in his own lust for a woman. In this case, a woman who knew too much about the wrong man. A man willing to pay megabucks for the right information, as long as it came from a discreet source.

  A discreet source like Clint Holsapple.

  Talbot had practically thrown this in his lap. How could Clint refuse an opportunity he'd been waiting for his entire life? As far as he was concerned, a man who didn't make his own luck was a man who didn't deserve it.

  Grimacing at the irony, he drained his glass in a single, bitter gulp and reached for the telephone.

  Chapter 21

  "To great expectations.” Garrison Tate drank deeply from the crystal flute, blatantly admiring the striking redhead standing next to him.

  ''To favors granted," she said and drank, leaving a red lipstick stain on the rim.

  "You're quite the negotiator, Mrs. DiRocco." Never taking his eyes from hers, he removed an eel-skin wallet from the inside pocket of his tuxedo and withdrew a never-folded one-hundred-dollar bill.

  "One of my many talents." She accepted the bill, then expertly rolled it into a tight, seamless tube. "At least that's what my husband tells me." She handed the bill back to him.

  Cradling the tube between his fingers, Tate watched as she slipped the thin straps of her dress from her shoulders. His heart strummed in anticipation. He wondered if it was from the sight of her ripe body or the drug he was about to consume.

  As the rosy peaks of her nipples came into view, he bent slightly, put the bill to his nose, and snorted the line of fine white powder laid in neat rows on a beveled glass mirror.

  An instant later, the drug sent a brilliant burst of euphoria raging through his body. It sparked in his brain and traveled through his bloodstream like a lighted fuse, exploding in his groin with a sexual power that was stunning in its intensity.

  "Your turn." He passed the bill to the eager young woman. Brenda DiRocco was naked except for the thong-back panties that left little to the imagination. She was tall and large-boned with a wonderfully rounded body that was lush in all the right places. Her breasts were ample and hung like grapefruit before him as she leaned forward to suck in her share of the drug.

  Tate reached out, sliding his finger into the front of her panties and pulling the tiny cover aside. "I've always wondered if the drapes matched the carpet." Starting with his jacket, he began to undress.

  DiRocco laughed and danced out of reach. "Red is difficult to duplicate."

  It was the first time he'd been with her and the anticipation between them was great. Her body and her appetites suited him. She was young, married, and excessively ambitious, key elements that made up the perfect lover in Washington, D.C.

  A lobbyist by trade, Brenda DiRocco had come to him like a thousand others in need of a political favor. She'd been around long enough to know how the game was played. But, unlike Garrison Tate, she was far from understanding how to win.

  She snorted delicately, then flashed him a dazzling smile. Her eyes were glazed from the barbiturate she'd consumed earlier.

  Tate smiled, then reached out to cup her breasts. "Feel good?" he asked, rolling her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.

  "I always feel good when I get what I want." She closed her eyes and arched against him. "It turns me on knowing there are four hundred people downstairs who paid a thousand dollars a plate to have dinner with you." She winced when he squeezed particularly hard. "And you're up here about to fuck me."

  He guided her to the bed, pleased when she wobbled. Nothing excited him more than vulnerability. Except, of course, absolute power.

  "Doesn't it turn you on even more knowing my wife is two floors below us getting a manicure?"

  "Is she really the bitch everyone says she is?"

  He worked the panties down her thighs. She stared at him through heavy-lidded eyes, her mane of wavy red hair splaying out on the pillow beneath her like blood.

  "She's a bitch, all right. But she'll make a terrific First Lady."

  “That's what counts, isn't it, Garrison?"

  “That's the only thing that counts."

  Sliding away from him, she crossed her arms over her breasts and sighed. "I've been waiting for weeks for this fund-raiser tonight. There are a lot of important people downstairs. People I should be mingling with."

  "More important than me?"

  She smiled coyly. "Of course not."

  "You've had one glass of champagne too many. Besides, your pr
ofessional reputation is much more precious than this dinner. There will be more dinners. And there's an endless supply of important people to go along with them. Next time, you'll have a reserved seat at the table with all the important people."

  "You're teasing me." She looked at him through the drug-induced haze and smiled, moving her hands away from her breasts. "It's important to me, Garrison."

  "I promise." He parted her knees. Slipping a finger between her legs, he found her wet and hot. His body stirred in response. "I can do things for you." He stroked her. "Introduce you to people. Make you a powerful, successful woman."