Sex and the Sleepwalker

by Donna Sterling

  He loved her, and he would do whatever it took to allay her fears. He would change anything in his life that needed changing to make her happy. He would open himself completely to her in order to win her trust.

  But, of course, that complete openness would have to wait. Her safety had to come first. Cade had to put the Piper behind bars before he could be completely honest with her.

  Caught up now in the passion he believed came straight from her heart, he closed his mind to that one little caveat.

  And Brynn closed her mind to the doubts and fears that had ruled her for so long. She’d made mistakes in judgment, but she was wiser now. She’d been hurt before, but she was stronger now. He’d broken her heart, but he was also mending it. He’d said he loved her. And she wanted his love. Why should she let old insecurities interfere?

  “Spend the night with me, Brynn,” he said. “The whole night. I brought everything we need to camp here.”

  She met him in another blood-stirring kiss, then surfaced from the depths of passion with a deeper need than before. “We could stay here,” she whispered, “or go home. To my bed. Or yours. Anywhere you want.”

  He answered with a slow smile that engaged his dimples and beamed from his eyes with special warmth. “I’ve wanted you in bed for a long, long time…but I like you where I have you now, too. Let’s give it more thought.” And he bent to take her mouth in a meltingly tender kiss that made her heart sing.

  And she needed plenty of heart-song. She hadn’t forgotten the risk. Just because he said he loved her didn’t mean he meant forever. His definition of love might not match hers. By letting down her defenses, she might grow too accustomed to having him in her life, only to be crushed when he left. But she had to face another truth, too. If he left her right now, she’d be lost and lonely, anyway.

  So why not open her heart and let him in all the way—or, rather, acknowledge that he’d always been there?

  She’d taken risks before, and they’d ended catastrophically. This one would not, she swore. She needed to prove that to herself, if she was ever to fully live.

  She would trust him.

  12

  “UP TO NO GOOD?” Lexi tilted her head in thought, then shook it. “You have to consider the source, Trish. Antoine is raising questions about Cade out of jealousy.” Lexi stirred the apple bits gently into the batter, then poured the fragrant mixture into a muffin tin. The muffins would be ready just in time for the Monday morning buffet. Although only two guests remained at the inn, Lexi prided herself on always setting out a great breakfast.

  “I don’t believe Antoine is jealous of Cade,” Trish countered, leaning against the work island with her morning cup of coffee in hand. “He’s just suspicious of his motives.”

  “Antoine said that Brynn broke up with him, right?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “And then she left with Cade.”

  “Right. But still—”

  “Antoine must have noticed the sizzle between Cade and Brynn. Any guy would feel resentful.”

  “But the questions Antoine raised are valid.”

  If Trish hadn’t risen this early to talk about these concerns, Lexi would assume she was just peeved that a handsome, virile guy like Cade had chosen Brynn over her. Her worry over Brynn seemed genuine. “What questions did Antoine raise?” Lexi asked.

  “To start with, he said he didn’t believe Cade was a writer. So after he left, I did some research on the Internet. The web address on Cade’s business card brought up a list of his titles and a phone number to order them. But his books aren’t available through any of the online bookstores.”

  Lexi shrugged. “It’s probably one of those small, regional publishers that market their own books.”

  “But I signed on to the public library catalog, and didn’t find his books there, either.”

  “Not all books are in the library.”

  “Then I called a friend in the publishing business. You remember Mimsey Sullivan, our sorority sister, two years ahead of me? With a sort of caved-in face, bless her heart, but her daddy owns half of Manhattan? She said she never heard of that publisher. And when she checked her sources, she found that his books aren’t listed as being in print.”

  Lexi slid the muffin tin into the oven, then glanced at Trish in puzzlement. “That is strange.” She would suspect Cade of lying about his writing career to impress Brynn, but she doubted he’d have gone through the trouble of building a Web site that listed his books if he wasn’t a real author. “Maybe he’s self-published.” A disappointing possibility. It wouldn’t do them much good to have their inn mentioned in his book if it wasn’t distributed properly.

  “But that’s not the only question Antoine raised.” Trish’s fingers tightened around her coffee cup in an uncharacteristic show of anxiety. “Have you heard about that creep who sent the cops a note signed ‘The Pied Piper’?”

  Lexi nodded, hoping Trish wasn’t about to make some bizarre accusation against a guy they’d both known since college—a guy whom Trish herself had invited to the inn.

  “The police believe the man gets to know his victims and wins their trust before he abducts them.”

  “So?”

  “Antoine believes the Piper’s victims go with him unsuspectingly because he’s from their past.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re thinking that Cade is the abductor!” That was too melodramatic even for Trish.

  “I thought it was ridiculous, too, until I went online to CNN. According to the latest report, every woman abducted by the Piper has been related to an Atlanta cop.”

  Lexi stared at Trish in surprise. Brynn’s brother was an Atlanta cop. No wonder he’d been warning Brynn about the abductor. “But if that’s true,” she said, airing her thoughts aloud, “why didn’t John tell Brynn the details, so she’d know she was one of a select few he might go after?”

  “Maybe the cops were trying to keep the details under wraps, and John wasn’t allowed to tell Brynn. Or maybe he did tell her, but made her promise to keep quiet about it.”

  Lexi waved that last suggestion aside. “She’d have told us something like that. Besides, she’s not very good at keeping big secrets from me.”

  “The point is, what if Antoine is right? Maybe Cade had been planning to come to the inn, even before I invited him.”

  “I understand why you’re concerned, Trish, but…” A sudden thought hit Lexi. “Oh, my gosh. Cade majored in criminal justice.” When Trish frowned, Lexi explained, “I read that some highly intelligent criminals study police procedure and forensic science so they can pull off the perfect crimes.”

  Trish spread her French-manicured fingers across her mouth in horrified dismay. “She’s alone with him right now. She called last night to say they were camping out. But she hadn’t planned on camping out. What if he’s snatched her? The camping thing might have been a ruse to buy him time before we alert the authorities.”

  “Oh, Trish, we can’t jump to conclusions like that.”

  “Personally, I don’t think it’s too far of a jump.” At the sound of the age-sharpened female voice behind them, Lexi and Trish swung around, to find Mrs. Hornsby in the kitchen doorway. After a cautious glance behind her—as if she didn’t want to be seen meeting with them—she bustled into the kitchen, closed the door and dropped her voice to a harsh whisper. “He’s been watching every move Brynn makes. And he asks a lot of questions about her. He even took pictures of her with his cell phone.”

  Trish blinked. Lexi frowned.

  “It’s true. I saw him. Yesterday. While she was standing on the porch with her beau. Cade aimed his cell phone at them and took pictures.”

  “There are cell phones with built-in cameras,” Trish said, sounding doubtful nonetheless.

  “I think he hypnotized her, too,” Mrs. Hornsby added.

  Trish stared blankly at the older woman. Lexi drew in a breath to hold back a giggle. This was what she got for letting her imagination run wild.

>   “Go ahead and laugh,” said Mrs. Hornsby, although no one was actually laughing. “But you won’t be amused when he abducts Brynn and sends her photo to the cops. Remember how upset she was when he first got here?”

  “She wasn’t too happy to see him,” Trish agreed, eyeing the old lady with doubt, but clearly hoping to be persuaded by whatever theory she held.

  “That same night, real late, Brynn glided right past me in the hallway without seeing me. And guess where she went?” Leaning closer to them, she said with dramatic flair, “Cade Hunter’s bedroom.”

  Trish’s jaw dropped. “Why, that deceitful little witch. And she had the nerve to tell me the next day that she wanted nothing to do with him.”

  “She was hypnotized, I’m telling you,” Mrs. Hornsby insisted. “I know a trance when I see one.”

  “Sleepwalking,” Lexi said, more to herself than anyone else. “She had to be sleepwalking.”

  “Oh, I’ll just bet she was,” Trish muttered, her face flushed with vexation. “Probably snored all the way to climax, too.”

  “Trish!” Lexi admonished, on behalf of their older guest.

  “Don’t believe me if you don’t want to,” Mrs. Hornsby said, ignoring the climax comment, “but just last night, they showed those abducted women on television, and I recognized them right away.”

  Lexi felt her eyebrows raise of their own volition. She couldn’t wait to hear how the old lady connected the abducted women to Cade.

  “You recognized them from where?” Trish prodded.

  Mrs. Hornsby hesitated then, looking oddly sheepish. After a moment, though, her chin came up in a defensively aggressive manner. “You might not like this, seeing as how you own this inn, but when I realized that that young man was up to no good, I felt it was my duty to investigate.”

  “Investigate how, Mrs. Hornsby?” Lexi asked, almost afraid to hear.

  “I waited until he went out of the inn on game day, then used an old bobby-pin trick of mine to pick the lock and get into his room. You really do need to get computerized locks, you know.”

  Lexi swallowed a groan, and Trish set down her coffee to pay the fullest attention possible. “What did you find?”

  Mrs. Hornsby spoke now with unbridled enthusiasm. “I couldn’t get into his luggage, his briefcase or his laptop. They were all locked tighter than a bank vault—which, to my way of thinking, only proves he’s up to something. But I did find a portfolio in the side pocket of his briefcase.”

  She had their undivided attention now.

  “He’s got photos of those women. The gals who were abducted. And to make matters worse, he’s got a gun.”

  IT HAD BEEN THE BEST night of her life, Brynn decided. Cade had surprised her with a picnic dinner of roasted chicken, gourmet salads and other goodies that Lexi had prepared for him. They’d then spent long, languid hours making love, holding each other and talking.

  He’d told her about his house in the Colorado Rockies, just west of Denver, and they’d laughed about the quirky friends he’d made in his small mountain community. She’d talked about the ordeal of buying the sorority house and opening the inn, the antics and peccadilloes of her guests, and the complexities of her relationship with her partners.

  They’d then gone back to lovemaking. During a tender exploration of his body, Brynn had asked about his scars. He’d explained each one, most of which stemmed from the mean streets of his mother’s neighborhood. A couple of them, though, were from skiing accidents at his father’s vacation home in Utah. The worst scar—on his upper thigh—he hadn’t explained at all. It had looked to Brynn like a gunshot wound.

  He’d distracted her with insights he’d gained from growing up “on both sides of the tracks.” There are good guys and bad guys on both sides, he said. The difference is, the ones with money get away with more. At that, her age-old worry had surfaced again. How could she ever tell him her darkest secrets without destroying his respect for her? The death of that respect would hurt all the more now….

  But she’d soon forgotten her worry in another round of loving that left them sleeping exhaustedly in each other’s arms.

  The morning dawned bright, warm, fragrant with honeysuckle and pine, and humming with thrilling possibilities. She couldn’t remember being happier to have a day off to use however she pleased. She intended to spend every possible moment with Cade.

  On their drive back to the inn, she felt incredibly euphoric, as if she were soaring through the heavens, far above the ordinary world she had once occupied.

  A call from Trish on her cell phone tugged her a little closer to that ordinary world. The first words out of her partner’s mouth were “Brynn! Are you okay, hon?”

  Lexi then took the phone and instructed Brynn to “act normal,” but to casually mention her location—exactly where she was and what direction the car was headed.

  Thoroughly mystified, Brynn said, “We’re pulling into the driveway of the inn.”

  “Thank God,” Lexi exclaimed.

  That bit of oddity did not prepare her for what was to come. The moment Cade veered off toward his room to shower and change—with the understanding that she’d handle whatever problem had cropped up, and join him for the rest of the day—Lexi and Trish herded her into her private suite. Once there, they not only jerked her down from the heavens, but shoved her facedown into the dirt.

  THE MOMENT CADE REACHED the privacy of his room, he called John for an update on the investigation.

  “He’s not Antoine Moreau,” John reported, an undercurrent of excitement in his otherwise stoic voice. “We ran the photo you sent us of Brynn’s boyfriend through the database. He’s an ex-con by the name of Doyle Fontaine.”

  Satisfaction rushed through Cade.

  “Seems he did a few years in Atlanta for fraud and grand theft,” John added. “Was taken down by the Atlanta PD. Explains his animosity toward us Atlanta cops—if he’s the Piper.”

  “Oh, he is.”

  “Problem is, we don’t have anything linking him with the abductions yet. We don’t even have much to issue an arrest. Charging him for using false identification to get a hotel room and a rental car won’t hold him for long—and he’d know we were on to him.”

  “We’ll get the bastard,” Cade assured him. “At least now we know who we’re after. We’ll monitor his movements until he slips up or leads us to his victims. That means we can keep Brynn out of it. We’ll tell her what’s going on and get her the hell away from here until we have him.” He’d never been more relieved in his life.

  “But we can’t risk tipping him off,” John said. “He’s expecting her to meet with him sometime this week, remember? He’s probably planning to make his move then. I’d like him to prepare as much as possible for that move, so we can nail him in the process.”

  “Yeah…as long as Brynn is out of here. We’ll send her away today. She can leave a message for him, saying it’s a family emergency.”

  “But what if we’re wrong and he isn’t the Piper? What if he’s just a grifter out to scam a couple of innkeepers?”

  “You and I both know he’s the Piper.”

  “We’re assuming that.”

  “Brynn is out of this, John,” Cade insisted, fully prepared to take that matter into his own hands. “And Trish needs to know that this dirtbag isn’t her cousin.”

  “Just give me another hour. We’ll keep him under maximum surveillance. We’re contacting the hotel maid who saw the suspect at the hotel in Florida. Maybe she can identify him from the photo. I’ve also got a team ready to search his hotel room when he leaves it. And last night we lifted fingerprints from his car. Just one more hour. Then we’ll fill my little sister in on the facts and send her away.”

  Cade didn’t want to wait, but John’s reasoning made sense. One thing Cade would do from now until the case was closed: keep Brynn safely at his side.

  He brought the cell phone with him into the bathroom while he showered, not only in anticipation of John’s c
all, but in case his men were alerting him that there’d been contact from the suspect. The bastard wouldn’t speak a single word to Brynn without Cade listening in.

  And certainly wouldn’t meet with her.

  “THE PIED PIPER? Cade? Just because his books aren’t listed where you think they should be?” Brynn gaped at Lexi and Trish in astonishment. “What have you two been smoking?”

  “Look at these.” Trish handed her photos. “Victims of the Pied Piper. We found these photos in Cade’s room.”

  “I can’t believe you invaded his privacy like that.” Brynn tossed the photos aside, feeling as if she’d wandered into some alternate reality. “You actually stole something from a guest’s room!”

  “All we’re asking you to do, Brynn,” Lexi said, “is to call your brother. Tell him what we found. He told you to be cautious of strangers, and since this is the first time we’ve seen Cade in nine years, he’s practically a stranger.”

  “No, he’s not.” She didn’t want to listen to another word of this nonsense. She wanted to be with Cade. And she would be, very soon.

  “Oh, Brynnie, you’ve got to listen!” Trish cried. “Didn’t you hear on the news that this Pied Piper has been abducting loved ones of Atlanta cops? Your brother is an Atlanta cop, sugar. You’re walking around with a big ol’ target on your back…and Cade Hunter is taking aim.”

  The very idea was ludicrous. But Brynn hadn’t known that all the victims were loved ones of Atlanta cops. No wonder John had been warning her.

  “Call John,” Lexi insisted. “Better safe than sorry.”

  “If I call him and he tells us not to worry about Cade, will that satisfy you?”

  They replied with a resounding “yes.”

  With a stiff spine and churning stomach, Brynn dialed John’s number at the Atlanta Police Department. When he came on the line, she switched to speakerphone and told him of her partners’ concerns, with both of them adding details to build their case against Cade.