“Who’s Telly Ardos to you, Laura?”
She gave him a glance of asperity. “You heard what I told the police. He was friends with Huey, but I barely know him. I saw him around the house once in a while.”
“What did he mean when he said he was going to take you to someone?”
She shrugged. “How should I know? The man was raving.”
Shane gave her a disgusted, give-me-a-break look. She returned his stare with cool disdain. She didn’t bat an eye when he locked the doors.
“You didn’t tell the police that Ardos admitted to being the one who broke into your house. You’re protecting that slimeball for some reason. Why?”
Her eyes flashed in the dim light, but she remained mute.
“Okay, so I’ll tell you what I know then,” he said sarcastically. “Telly Ardos worked as an assistant to a well-respected jeweler about a dozen years ago. I don’t think Telly’s boss was so respectable though. In fact, I think he was a thieving asshole who repaid his customers’ loyalty to him by keeping their rare stones for himself and returning them with a smile and thanks in a European accent, both of which were as fake as the jewels he put in his customers’ settings. I know Telly and Huey were drug and sex buddies. Huey must have had him on the payroll for the theft ring as well. Or more correctly, Randall Moody did. Am I right, Laura?
“Have you slept with him before?” Shane pressed, his fury rising when she merely stared at him. She sat forward abruptly.
“No, not that it’s any of your goddamned business.”
The artificially heated air in the interior of his sedan crackled with electricity . . . like lightning was about to strike. Or maybe it was just his prickling nerves that made Shane feel that way. He took a deep breath.
“I’m going to give you one more opportunity to tell me the truth about what you know about all this,” he said. “I think you’ve kept your silence for all these years because you’re trying to protect someone. I’d guess it was Joey and his family.”
She shook her head and smiled in the face of what she obviously considered pure audacity on his part.
“Just what is it that you think I know, Shane? Do you think I was privy to the daily activities of Huey’s job? I knew just as much about his regular routine as he knew about the process of making a sculpture. You’re engaged. How much do you know about what your fiancée does when she goes into work?”
“I know a fair amount,” he countered. “You learn about things like that when you sit down and talk to your significant other. Are you saying that you and Huey never talked?”
“What I’m saying is that I don’t know anything about what he was being accused of before he committed suicide. It’s not going to matter if you ask me once or a thousand times, the answer is still going to be the same.”
“Would you say that you and Huey were close?” Shane persisted, unperturbed.
She made a sound of disgust. “I don’t have to answer these questions. Huey is dead. You can’t put a dead man behind bars, Shane.”
“The man I’m after is very much alive. I watched you tonight at Joey’s. I think you know exactly who I’m talking about. Tell me what you know about Randall Moody. Tell me what you know about Huey’s involvement with him in the theft ring. Did Moody ever come to this house? Did you ever see him and Huey meeting anywhere other than at work? Ever hear them talking on the phone?”
“I haven’t got anything for you, Shane,” she grated out.
He leaned across the console toward her.
“I’m desperate here. That’s what you should understand. The cop that I’d hoped would give evidence on Moody is refusing to bargain. Moody must have a tighter hold on him than I’d thought. But even more important, you’re in danger, Laura. Someone broke into this house looking for you. A man pulled a gun on you tonight. I won’t sit by and watch while your stubbornness puts you in a grave.”
Her contemptuous expression faltered slightly when he slowly began to dip his head toward hers.
“Don’t, Shane,” she whispered hoarsely.
“I don’t have any choice. You’ve forced me to this,” he said before he brushed his lips against hers. She made a soft, catchy sound. She stiffened when he put his hands on her back. Her body felt slender, curvy . . . enticing.
“I know you want me, Laura. There are some things you just can’t hide from a man.”
Her lips felt cool and dry, but he could feel her heat just beneath the surface. So he pressed closer. When he slid his tongue between her lips she moaned softly, her flesh becoming more supple, bending to his demand.
He brought her closer and swept the depths of her mouth. His cock swelled tight as he surrounded himself in her taste. Time and again he sampled her sweetness. He plundered, suckled, and coaxed until she fully participated in the kiss, her lips shaping his hungrily, her tongue sliding sensually against his.
The interior of his car suddenly felt as hot and sultry as the air on a tropical night.
She didn’t protest when he slid one hand along her knee, lifting her skirt. He encountered a delicious length of silky thigh encased in smooth nylon. He paused a moment when he reached the top of her thigh-highs, sending two fingers beneath the elastic to rhythmically stroke the smooth, soft skin beneath it.
He groaned and leaned down farther over her, deepening their kiss. He probed beneath her panties, drawn to her heat. She gasped into his mouth when he worked his forefinger into her pussy. She was tight but a rush of warm liquid aided his cause considerably.
He drew his finger out only to plunge it back into her silky sheath. A considerable amount of her juices came with him when he withdrew the second time. He trailed his finger between her labia, lubricating her clit liberally. Her hips shifted restlessly against him and she moaned. Instead of giving her the pressure she wanted, however, he slid his wet finger along her lower belly, spreading her juices.
“That’s honesty, Laura,” he explained quietly. “Give me more of it.”
“No,” she whispered. She moved away from him, cloaking herself in the shadows.
He nodded his head slowly, having expected her answer. His hands slid down her arms. She gasped when he pushed her upper body forward and clasped her wrists, moving them behind her back. The sound of rattling metal broke the silence.
Her face registered mild confusion when he closed the handcuffs.
“What . . . what are you doing?” she asked, voice rising in incredulity when he leaned back into his seat. She twisted around, her eyes widening farther when she realized that she was truly bound. “Are you arresting me?”
Shane shook his head once. “I’m doing what I should have done thirteen and a half years ago. I’m taking you away so you don’t damage yourself any more than you already have.”
“That’s . . . that’s ridiculous,” she exclaimed shrilly. “That’s kidnapping!”
He shrugged. “Call it what you like. I need the truth from you, Laura, and I’m going to get it. I’ve seen how you respond to me. If Huey Mays had the ability to get you to do whatever he wanted, I believe I can do the same. In fact, I think I can do better than he did at getting you to submit to my demands.”
She went completely still. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m serious all right. You’re going away with me for a few days and I’m going to plumb the depths of your honesty!” He nodded grimly to her lap. “And you’re going to discover the wisdom in telling me the truth about Huey.”
“I can’t believe this,” she muttered slowly, clearly flattened by his actions. Just as he’d suspected, this had been the last thing she’d expected. Shane was still a little amazed himself at what he was doing, but that didn’t deter him.
Something told him this was precisely the right thing to do. He knew he was breaking the law . . . was perfectly cognizant of the fact that he may go to jail for what he was doing.
But there was a higher law at work when it came to the issue of Laura. He needed to get her away, isolate
her from whatever was influencing her. She’d been thrown back into his life again. He was convinced she was in danger because of something she knew. He would not let her go again without a fight.
Not this time.
Of course there was always the chance that he was deluding himself so that he could tie up the woman of his fantasies and have his way with her. Shane knew perfectly well that all criminals rationalized their actions, no matter how bizarre their logic had to become in order to justify what they’d done.
He also knew he couldn’t continue living with the suspicion that Laura wasn’t being honest with him because she was afraid. He’d seen how their desire for each other melted her defenses, if only temporarily. If he took her to a place where she couldn’t escape him for several days, if he dominated her mind and body, her defenses against him would crumble. Maybe then she’d tell him what he needed to know.
He leaned over and secured her seat belt, ignoring her outraged protests.
“You plan to kidnap me, rape me—sacrifice everything you stand for just so that I’ll tell you the truth about Huey’s alleged criminal activities?” she asked in rising panic as he started to back out of her driveway.
“You know as well as I do that rape will never enter the picture. And I’m not doing this as an agent for the FBI. I’m doing this because of what you once were—what was between us.”
“You’re crazy. There was nothing between us but a summer sex fling between two kids!”
He threw her a scathing look. “I took your virginity, Laura. Do you really think I’m going to fall for the idea that you were a promiscuous slut who regularly engaged in sex flings?”
“That’s what you think I am, isn’t it? A promiscuous slut? You heard those tapes, didn’t you? You heard me fucking all those men. Do you know why I did that? Because I wanted to . . . because I loved it,” she shouted, fury lacing her tone.
After several seconds of silence Shane realized that he had a death grip on the steering wheel.
“Then what I have in mind should be right up your alley,” he said eventually, forcing himself to loosen his hold.
CHAPTER FIVE
Laura swallowed and winced. She’d been alternating between shouting, scolding, and attempting to reason with Shane for the past hour and fifteen minutes and her throat had grown raw. He’d been equally impervious to every attempt she’d made. Panic roiled in her belly at the prospect of spending days alone with Shane . . . of being at his mercy.
The excitement that twined with her panic motivated her to try again.
“What about your fiancée? She’s not going to want to have anything to do with you when she finds out about this.” He rolled his strong jaw slightly as he stared straight ahead and drove.
“She’s not my fiancée anymore,” he growled.
Laura shook her head in incredulous disgust when he immediately sank back into silence after adding five more words to the dozen he’d spoken since backing out of her driveway.
“So she broke it off with you, did she? Found out the truth—that you’re stark raving mad beneath that veneer of a smart, in-control FBI agent?” Laura taunted. She’d never known Shane to be distant. Angry, yes. Furious enough to strangle her, to be sure. Intellectually preoccupied, certainly.
But never impassive.
His coldness panicked her as much as anything. He’d always been there for her in her imagination, a looming, indestructible feature of her mental landscape, a touchstone of sanity during her darkest hours. Even knowing that he planned to marry hadn’t entirely diminished the sense of his presence in her inner world.
“Well?” Laura used the last of her fading voice to try to pierce through his imperviousness with a shout. “Did your girlfriend find out that you get your jollies out of kidnapping unwilling women so that you can have your way with them?”
He merely nodded at a large lit-up billboard for a gas station on the side of the interstate. “That’ll be the last public restroom for a while. Do you have to go?”
“Yes,” she answered quickly.
“Don’t even think about trying to yell out to someone. I travel this way frequently to our satellite offices in Rockford. The bathrooms are in the rear of the gas station and I’m going in with you.”
“You are not.” He looked at her for the first time in more than an hour. She inhaled shakily in relief when she saw the message of stark irritation in his eyes. It was a fragile connection, but connection nevertheless.
“Shane, listen to me . . . please. If I’m gone for three days, someone will notice.”
“Joey’s family is going skiing in Wisconsin this weekend. You can leave a message on the answering machine at your gallery that you won’t be back until Tuesday. Who’s going to notice or care that you’re gone for the weekend, Laura?”
His piercing stare made her shift uneasily in her seat. “Surely you know how strangely you’re acting. You’re scaring me, Shane.”
“Don’t try to manipulate me,” he said as he swung his sedan to an abrupt stop behind the empty gas station. “I’ve made up my mind on this.”
Laura’s shoulders sagged slightly when she heard that. She knew Shane. Once he’d made a decision about something he was a stone. No, bigger than a stone . . . more unmoving than that indomitable, indestructible landscape that she compared him to in her mind.
“How the hell do you expect me to go to the bathroom when you have me handcuffed like this?”
He leaned over and uncuffed her wrists. Laura gasped in mixed pain and relief as she moved her hands in front of her for the first time in an hour and a half. She unobtrusively glanced into the backseat where Shane had put her purse. Her cell phone was inside it.
“If you try anything, I’ll punish you.”
“What are you going to do?” she challenged heatedly as she rubbed her chafed wrists. “Threaten me again with arresting Joey? At what point, exactly, did you become such a Nazi, Shane?”
“If Joey is arrested, it’ll be because my people discover some solid evidence against him. I’m not gunning for Joey. This is about much more than that. I won’t use anything that I learn from you in the next few days to nail your brother, but if he’s guilty, there’s nothing I can do to help Joey.”
Laura felt like all the blood in her brain dropped on an express elevator ride down to her feet at his open admission that the FBI even considered Joey as a suspect.
“Joey’s not crooked. How can you even think that, Shane? You played Little League baseball together. He spent every Christmas Eve at your house. You lived with us for two weeks when you came down with chicken pox because your mother’s health was so frail and she’d never been exposed. After that, you always had a room in our home—both at my parents’ and Uncle Derrick’s. After everything you know about Joey, how can you believe he’s a criminal?”
“Lots of things change over the years.”
“Not something so basic. Not something so elemental! People can’t change to that degree,” she stated hotly before she noticed the way his dark head tilted to the right in a silent, wry query. She paused with her mouth open, her passionate defense of her brother frozen on her tongue.
She knew why he looked at her like that. He was trying to remind her of the way they once felt about each other. His raised eyebrows asked her silently why if it was true for Joey, it wasn’t true for her.
“If Joey was colluding with Huey and the rest of them, there’s nothing I can do that will save him at this point. What’s more, if he’s innocent, no amount of convincing on your part is going to be what ultimately makes a difference. Only the truth matters now, Laura.”
She swallowed with difficulty.
“Here,” he said quietly as he reached in the backseat. He unscrewed the lid on a bottle of water and handed it to her. She hesitated only for a second before she took it and drank.
When she removed the bottle from her lips, he leaned close. She inhaled his scent—spicy, rich, and male.
“Do you reall
y have to go to the bathroom, or were you just saying that so you could pull something?”
“I-I really do have to go.”
“Okay.”
He didn’t unlock her door so she had to wait until he came around to get her. She gave him an irritated look when he put his hand around her upper arm and guided her to the bathroom door. She had to admit he’d chosen his location for a bathroom break well. The only thing she could see at the rear of the gas station was a vast frozen field. He released her arm and quickly, efficiently picked the flimsy lock on the bathroom door.
“You must be so proud of the things you’ve learned in your training,” she snapped as he held open the door for her and switched on the light.
He merely closed the heavy metal door and leaned against it.
“You . . . you weren’t serious about staying with me while I go,” she exclaimed.
His blue eyes flicked down significantly to the dead bolt on the inside of the door. “I’m not going to stand outside in the cold while you lock me out and make a fuss until someone comes. Now, are you going to go, or not?”
“Not!” Laura replied, trying to ignore the ache of her full bladder.
He shrugged nonchalantly and straightened to his full height. He looked impossibly big in the tiny room beneath the harsh fluorescent lighting. He wore a rugged leather jacket that made his shoulders appear even broader than they already were.
“Suit yourself. Either way, I want you to take off your panties.”
“Excuse me?” Laura muttered in disbelief. She took a step away from his tall, looming presence without being conscious of ever telling herself to move.
“You heard me.”
“And why would I do that?”
He took two steps into the tiny bathroom and she took two steps back before she encountered the far wall.
Beth Kery Page 7
