Take the Key and Lock Her Up

by LENA DIAZ,

  Her cry of ecstasy was captured in their wet, open-mouthed kiss. She rode him in a frenzied rhythm, moaning deep in her throat with every delicious, deep stroke. And then he reached down between them and caressed the very core of her, dragging cries of pleasure from her. She’d never felt so alive, so . . . loved.

  Her climax washed over her with a suddenness and an intensity that was almost frightening. Devlin seemed to know exactly what she needed and kissed her and held her through every last convulsion, every last shiver. And then he began to move again, faster and harder, as he approached his own climax. As impossible as it seemed, she felt herself tightening and approaching that same glorious peak all over again. Her body instinctively seemed to tune itself with his, matching his rhythm, the pressure quickly building inside her as he pulled out, then sank into her again, and again, until the climax exploded over both of them and they fell over the edge into oblivion together.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  * * *

  EMILY STRETCHED HER arms above her head on the pillow, reveling in the decadent feel of the silk sheets against her naked skin. When she started to stretch her legs, her sore muscles protested, making her wince and smile at the same time. She didn’t mind the aches and pains because of the way she’d gotten them. Devlin.

  She turned her head on the pillow, expecting to see him lying beside her, but the bed was empty. Had she fallen asleep? She didn’t remember him getting up. Tossing the covers back, she grabbed her discarded clothes off the floor and saw that Devlin’s clothes were gone—including his Kevlar vest.

  A sense of unease sent her pulse pounding. He wouldn’t make such incredible, sweet love to her and then just . . . leave. Would he? She threw her clothes on and hurried down the hall to the dining room. Her stomach dropped. Empty. The chairs were neatly pushed against the table. The papers that had littered the top were gone. Even the coffee cups had been taken away, the table wiped clean and shiny, as if no one had been there.

  She ran into the adjoining family room. “Devlin? Devlin?” Panic pitched her voice higher than normal.

  “In here.”

  She almost collapsed with relief. Following the sound of his voice, she went through a pair of French doors at the front of the house into what must have been the home office. A computer sat on a long glass table against one wall, with a phone beside it and familiar-looking papers sitting on top—the EXIT dossiers.

  Devlin was writing on the enormous whiteboard that took up almost the entire opposite wall. When she stepped beside him, he gave her a quick smile, then focused on the columns he was filling out.

  The warm afterglow that had settled inside her after their lovemaking died a quick death. Her entire world had been shattered by what they’d shared, and yet Devlin was acting like nothing had happened. He couldn’t even spare her a hello kiss or a decent smile.

  Embarrassment and regret washed through her, making her cheeks hot and her eyes burn. There had been only two other lovers in her life before this, and she’d known both of them a long time before becoming intimate. With Devlin, it had taken . . . what, a handful of days? That was probably why he was so nonchalant about what had happened. He thought she was easy, a quick conquest. She tried not to let it bother—

  “Emily?”

  She blinked and realized he was facing her, amusement lighting his silver-gray eyes, his mouth quirked up at the corner in a smile that would have stolen her breath a few hours ago. But right now, it just made her resentful.

  “What?” she bit out.

  His grin widened. “Just . . . this.”

  He bent down and lifted her with one hand beneath her bottom, the other around her back, and covered her mouth with his. Turning with her in his arms, he pressed her against the wall, consuming her with a hot, openmouthed kiss that had her whimpering and clutching the front of his shirt. When he finally pulled back, she stared at him, dazed.

  “Wh . . . what was that for?” she breathed.

  He dropped a quick kiss on her forehead and stood her on her feet, supporting her elbows as she wobbled against him.

  “That,” he said, “was reassurance, to erase the frown on your face and whatever crazy thoughts were going through your head.” He kissed her again, a tender, whisper-soft caress of his lips against hers. “You were amazing.” He gave her a broad wink and followed it up with a sexy leer.

  She cleared her throat and shoved her hair out of her face. “Yes, I know. You weren’t too bad yourself.”

  They both laughed, and the dark cloud of doubt that had hung over Emily lifted. The man certainly knew how to dish out reassurance.

  “What are you trying to do?” she asked, standing in front of the whiteboard, trying to make sense of his scribbles and scratched-out names and dates.

  He crossed his arms and shook his head. “Trying to play detective, which I obviously am not. I don’t suppose you’d like to take a go at it?”

  She grabbed the eraser. “May I?”

  “Sure, erase it all and start over if you want. I’m certainly not getting anywhere.”

  “Grab the dossiers.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He strode to the desk and began gathering the loose pages.

  Once the board was a clean expanse of white again, Emily wrote headings on three columns: victims, suspects, clues.

  She filled out the victim column by memory: Virginia Hawley, Shannon Fisher, Nancy Thomas, and Kelly Parker.

  Devlin shook his head. “I can see Shannon being someone’s target, just as much as any enforcer. But Kelly is a high-risk victim.”

  “High risk how?”

  “She’s Cyprian’s right arm, his pet. Whoever abducted her had to be extremely careful that it couldn’t point back to them. That would be suicide.”

  “Or the perfect way to ensure Cyprian turned against you if they made it look like you were the bad guy.”

  He nodded. “You’re right. Risky but effective. What about the two other skeletons from the basement? And what about the three women Hawley said were with her? We’re assuming Nancy is one of them, I guess, and Kelly. But that leaves another woman unaccounted for.”

  She rested her palm against the board and held the marker in her other hand. “I’m focusing only on the identified victims for this exercise. It probably makes sense to add one more, though.” She added a fifth name to the bottom of the list.

  Devlin frowned. “Carolyn, my stepmother? She died in a car accident.”

  “A single-car accident; no reason to suspect foul play. But with everything else that’s happened, I think we’d be fools not to at least consider the possibility. Plus the jewelry on Shannon’s body was probably supposed to make us think Carolyn was the real victim. I think we have to consider your stepmother and how she relates to our suspects once we list them out.”

  “All right. Makes sense.”

  After adding approximate dates of death beside each victim, she stepped to the clues column. “This isn’t a court of law. We don’t need absolute proof. Call out anything that seems like a clue and we’ll look at it as a whole and see what we’ve got. We won’t include the obvious, like that the killer knows you and must work at EXIT. Can we assume they’re an enforcer?”

  “Based on how the victims were killed, definitely.”

  “Okay. Let’s fill up our clues column.” She started writing. “The killer is Caucasian, approximately six feet tall. That’s based on Hawley’s description, but she couldn’t give more physical details because her abductor wore a hat and covered his face. Oh, and the room was always dark.” She made a second bullet item below that. “There also wasn’t any sexual assault, and even though the victims were beaten and bruised, the only broken bone was the hyoid, meaning they were strangled.”

  She looked back at Devlin, standing behind her. “Do you want to add anything?”

  “Not yet. You’re doing good so far. Keep going.”

  She moved down a line. “There were cross-shaped bruises from the ligatures on Hawley and pote
ntially the others. The man who drove Hawley on behalf of the killer was an ex-con, as were the men who tried to kill us outside the bunker.” She stepped back and tapped the marker against the board.

  “May I?” Devlin held his hand out for the marker. She handed it to him, and he wrote a bullet about the camera that was found inside his house, and that his garrote design was used on at least two of the victims—Shannon and Nancy.

  When Emily asked him how he knew Shannon had been strangled with a garrote, he told her about the pictures Gage had brought him.

  “I wish I could see those pictures,” she said.

  “No. You don’t. Trust me.”

  “I’m just saying that if I could have seen the body, I might have seen another clue. Was she tied up?”

  “There were ligature marks on her wrists and ankles.”

  “Any unusual bruising with the ligatures?”

  “Not that I remember. Why, because of the bruising on Hawley?” He waved to her note on the board.

  “Exactly.” She tapped her marker against her thigh. “I’d like to know what caused the cross-shaped pattern. It might be important.” She slowly turned around to look at him. “Tuck could send me autopsy photos of Nancy Thomas. We could see if she had the same marks.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t recall asking permission.”

  His expression darkened. Emily had the feeling he wasn’t used to people not following his orders.

  “It’s not a good idea, Em. All he’d have to do is see the phone number come up on the screen and do a reverse trace to get this address. And what makes you think he’d want to help us anyway? He probably thinks we’re both in on the murders after the fiasco with Ace and the ambulance.”

  Ten minutes later, after arguing her point every way she could think of, Emily was sitting at the computer, pulling up the autopsy report and photos through her personal e-mail account. “Thank you for being reasonable, Dev.”

  “I can’t believe you talked me into it,” he complained, leaning over her to see the report. “Or that Tuck agreed to help you.”

  “We’ve been partners a long time. Even though he’s furious with me, and hurt because I won’t tell him what’s going on, he would never refuse me if I needed him.”

  “Sounds like you care about him.”

  “Is that jealousy I hear in your voice, Mr. Buchanan?”

  “I don’t get jealous.”

  She grinned because the way he was glaring at her told her he was definitely unhappy about her friendship with Tuck. She scrolled through the report, skimming it as quickly as she could. When the autopsy photos filled the screen, Devlin turned away and moved back to the whiteboard, as if to study the clues.

  But Emily knew better. While they’d waited for the e-mail from Tuck, Devlin had told her about Nancy, and how she was like a baby sister to him. How his friend—or former friend—Gage could think Devlin had anything to do with Nancy’s death made no sense to Emily. Anyone could look at him and see how much he cared for the young woman.

  She leaned closer to the screen, zooming in on the ligature marks on Nancy’s wrist. Then she brought up the photo of Hawley’s wrist that Tuck had e-mailed her too, at Emily’s request. Side by side, they looked almost identical—a dark cross-shaped bruise on both victims.

  “Nancy has the same bruise as Hawley,” she called out. “I think that has to be significant. The killer is using the same type of restraint on both victims. Mrs. Hawley said it was rope.”

  “What’s next?” he asked, not commenting on Nancy’s autopsy photos. “Do you want me to list all the enforcers in the suspect list?”

  She shoved back from the computer and joined him at the whiteboard. “If the size of that stack of papers is anything to judge by, that would make a very long list. Let’s see if we can’t narrow it down first. How reliable is the mission information on these dossiers?”

  He shrugged. “The dates should be accurate. The other details should be close. Cyprian runs a tight ship, makes sure the information that’s input after each debriefing matches the interview.”

  “Then let’s start by eliminating anyone who was out of the country during Nancy’s murder or Hawley’s abduction. Then we’ll narrow it down based on the approximate date of death for the other known victims.”

  He shook his head and stared at her in wonder. “You’re really good at this sort of thing. Maybe you should be a detective someday.”

  She laughed. “Daylight’s wasting. We need to get this figured out before our homeowner gets here. Let’s get our suspect list going.”

  They whittled the papers down to forty enforcers, which was still far too many. By considering who knew about Nancy and Devlin being close, or that Carolyn was his stepmother, or about his relationships with Shannon and Kelly, however brief, they got the list down to five names.

  Gage and four others.

  “Are you absolutely positive the mission dates on Ace’s dossier are correct? I hate that we ruled him out. He’s the first person I would have expected to put on our suspect list.”

  “The data came straight from EXIT’s databases. Since I had to hack my way past all kinds of firewalls and security algorithms to get this information, I would expect it’s all accurate. Why go to that kind of trouble to protect inaccurate or fake data?”

  She turned around. “You hacked in? Enforcers aren’t given access to the databases?”

  “We are, but only a limited view on a need-to-know basis, depending on our assignments. I had a close call once because Cyprian was a little too stingy about sharing data, so I hack in every few months to update my copies of the dossiers. Well, until about four months ago. Cyprian installed a new security system that closed the loophole I was using to get in. Since then, I haven’t figured out my way past the new measures.”

  She turned back to the board again. “Okay, back to our five potential suspects. Are all of these men six feet tall or close to it?” Emily asked. “Hawley estimated that was the height of her abductor, even though she couldn’t give any kind of description since his face was covered and he wore a hat.”

  “Actually, no.” He crossed one of the names off. “This guy is much shorter than six feet. Even if Hawley’s off by a few inches, he wouldn’t come close to that. You can take Gage off the list too. Gage would never harm Nancy. That leaves us with three possible suspects. And, honestly, none of these guys strike me as someone with a vendetta against me.”

  “Gage and Nancy were close?”

  His mouth tightened.

  “Devlin?”

  “They were close until this past year. They had a falling-out because she wouldn’t switch majors from criminal justice.”

  “I guess that would give someone pause in his line of work.”

  “My family’s connections to law enforcement have never been a problem for me. They could have moved past it.”

  “Except that she was killed first.”

  Again he didn’t answer, but the possibilities hung in the air between them. If Gage was fanatical about protecting his employer, maybe he saw his sister as a threat. Devlin couldn’t accept that, but Emily had seen her share of domestic violence situations and knew these things happened even in families that seemed close.

  She leaned back against the wall. “What about surveillance equipment expertise, and access to your home to plant the security camera in your bedroom?” Emily asked. “Isn’t Gage the only one with that kind of opportunity? Have you ever invited the other three over?”

  He crossed his arms.

  “Devlin, you need to be realistic. The only person who makes sense here is Gage. He’s the killer.”

  “No. He isn’t. If it weren’t for Nancy, I could see it. He checks off every box. But if he wanted me dead, he could have killed me many times over, every time he’s come over to my house. Or even the morning that Cyprian gave him an EXIT order for me.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “I think you’ve hit on something there. If one of them
wanted you dead, why not just ambush you and kill you when you aren’t expecting them? Why go to the trouble of this elaborate setup first?”

  “That one’s easy. One of the few rules we’re held to is never kill another enforcer unless they’ve gone rogue.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Okay, then there’s something else. Some piece of the puzzle we’re missing. Unless you’re willing to assume Gage is the killer since he seems the most likely. Can’t we go looking for him?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not that simple. He’s got just as many properties as me, plus a few I don’t know of, I’m sure. We’d have to have some kind of clue just to figure out where to look. Assuming he’s not in a hotel or someplace like that. Assuming one of the three is our guy, not Gage, we still have to figure out the most logical search area or it will take too long. Meanwhile, Kelly is being held and probably tortured.”

  She pulled the computer chair close to the board while Devlin brought one of the dining-room chairs in to sit beside her. They reviewed everything on the board over and over but still couldn’t narrow the list down to who and where.

  “What about the ex-cons, including Brad Robinson?” Devlin asked. “Tuck seemed to think Robinson was the key when he talked about him back at the ambulance.”

  She straightened in her chair. “You’re right. I need to e-mail Tuck again.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “—meant, I know. I can ask him to check visitor logs for those ex-cons from when they were in prison, see if the same name comes up on any of them. Makes sense that if someone coordinated them all together, they would have visited at least a couple of them and made them some kind of deal for when they were paroled. Or maybe a guard or warden was bribed as part of the deal. I’m not ignoring any possibility.”

  “Fine. E-mail him. Do what you have to do.” He stood and crossed to the doorway.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m hungry. I’ll see if I can scare us up some sandwiches.”

  “Sounds good. Thanks.”