Tall, Dark and Paranormal: 10 Thrilling Tales of Sexy Alpha Bad Boys

by Opal Carew

“The money will be in your account in the next few days.”

  “I can’t take the money for doing nothing,” Franklin replied, pride evident in his tone.

  Mick laughed to ease his friend’s ego. “Who said you were getting it for nothing? I need you to help me out with some things. Are you game?”

  “I’m five-by-five with that. I’d rather work for you than Edwards.”

  “Good. Do you still have that secure e-mail account?”

  When Franklin confirmed that he did, Mick said, “I’ll send you some instructions and a cell phone number where you can reach me. Keep your ear to the ground on this case. If you find out anything, send a message to my secure account or call me. Roger that?”

  “Roger, Mick. I’ll be watching your back.”

  “I’m counting on it. Don’t disappoint me.”

  Mick hung up and rose from the chair, needing to stretch his legs after the many hours of sitting at his desk. He hurried to the kitchen to prepare some breakfast for his captive and then returned upstairs.

  As he reached the door to the bedroom, he paused when he realized Caterina had somehow made a tangle of the sheets which had once covered her body. The shapely length of one leg was now exposed along with her breasts.

  Rather nice, perfectly shaped breasts, he thought, dragging his gaze from them because to continue looking would create too many problems.

  He couldn’t think of her as a woman. Especially not an attractive and strong woman who someone had obviously abused.

  She was his assignment.

  She was a violent murderer.

  Best to keep those two thoughts first and foremost, he reminded himself as he tightened his hands on the edge of the tray and walked to her bedside.

  Placing the tray on the nightstand, he grabbed the edge of the sheet and with his eyes turned away from those too womanly breasts, he carefully raised the sheet back over her upper body.

  Not carefully enough.

  Caterina snapped her eyes open and seeing him, strained against her bindings, yanking on them and twisting her body from side to side, the calm of the night before lost.

  He held up both hands in a gesture meant to calm her and crooned, “Easy, Cat. Remember. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  * * *

  Caterina recalled that voice, offering peace and comfort in the dark of the night. The deep timbre of his voice resonated calm within her and slipped into her consciousness. It was a pleasing tone, reminding her of something musical.

  Focus. Focus, she urged herself even as she tugged at the bindings keeping her prisoner.

  His words in that musical timbre finally penetrated into her brain.

  “I won’t hurt you.”

  Something else registered as well. The smell of food.

  Her stomach grumbled loudly and she stopped tugging at the bindings.

  She was hungry. Incredibly so.

  Caterina dragged the words into her consciousness and said it aloud.

  “Is that food?”

  He chuckled and smiled. “Yes, it’s food. If you stop struggling, I’ll help you sit up so you can eat.”

  She did as he asked and he became all action guy, bending to allow her greater slack on the ties on her left arm. When she moved that appendage, the motion brought a painful reminder that she had been shot the night before.

  She glanced at her shoulder, noting the clean white gauze bandage taped to her skin.

  A second later, the ties loosened on her other arm and she tried to sit up, but the room spun and tilted unsteadily as she did so.

  He was immediately there, providing a solid place for her to rest her head until the wave of dizziness passed.

  He took a moment to drag the sheet upward so she could hold it to her and cover her nakedness before he was in motion once again, returning to the other side of the bed and the chair that sat there.

  The sight of the chair stirred a recent memory.

  Him sitting in the chair, the dim light from the lamp casting harsh shadows across his face, making him look too fierce and too scary. But then she remembered his gentleness as he held her hand and calmed the fears that plagued her.

  Who was the real man? she wondered, but that thought was immediately replaced when a fork laden with scrambled eggs came into her line of sight as he began to feed her.

  She snapped forward, removing the bite of food from the fork, but then he offered another and another until the final clink of metal against china.

  With the retreat of the fork came a second desire.

  “I’m thirsty,” she rasped, suddenly aware of how parched she was and how long it had been since she had drunk or eaten anything substantial.

  He raised a bright red plastic glass. “Can you handle this on your own?”

  The ties were loose enough for her to drink with the cup, which prompted her to realize that he hadn’t trusted her with the fork because it would make an effective weapon.

  Considering that she had risked so much to be free of the lab, he had probably been right not to trust her with the fork. She wanted to be free. Wanted to be safe from Wardwell so she could find out what they had done to her. Why someone had killed Dr. Wells.

  But first, she needed to get control and regain her strength.

  She bopped her head up and down emphatically, incredibly thirsty, and when he offered up the glass, she took it and peered at the liquid within.

  Bright white milk.

  She must have seem confused to him since he said, “I know you’re probably used to champagne, but – “

  “I like milk,” she said as a memory popped forth in her mind. One of her as a child sitting beside her mother and eating wonderfully nutty cookies with ice cold milk.

  She drank down the milk almost greedily, and then returned the empty glass to him.

  He placed it on a small tray sitting on the nightstand, then braced his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers together.

  He had large hands. Nicely shaped with elegant fingers. Along the knuckles of one hand were a series of scars from old nicks and cuts. He wore no rings or other jewelry. Only a large black watch with lots of buttons.

  She watched him, uncertain.

  * * *

  Mick watched her, equally puzzled. She had eaten like a bird, literally pecking the food off the fork. The action instinctive.

  The milk, however, had created some kind of thought process within her. A small smile had inched across her lips and her eyes – those amazing cerulean blue eyes – had widened with remembered pleasure.

  “Do you know who you are?”

  “Cat,” she immediately answered but with a hint of question in her voice. It made him worry that the response was merely a repetition of what she had been hearing from him since last night.

  “Do you know what you did?”

  Her eyes narrowed and she looked away from him, down to where her hands clutched the sheet to her body. After a quick shake of her head, he pressed forward.

  “Do you remember Dr. Wells?”

  She nodded and began to pluck and wring the sheet with her fingers.

  “Do you remember what happened?”

  He leaned forward until she couldn’t avoid meeting his gaze, confronting her with his presence and the question she needed to answer.

  “No,” she said and closed her eyes. She mumbled something unintelligible before she started a rhythmic rocking.

  She had used his last ounce of compassion last night and this morning he didn’t have time for a Rainman act. Grabbing her forearms, he lifted her toward him as far as the restraints allowed and brought his face close to hers.

  “Open your eyes, damn it.”

  She did as he commanded, but averted her gaze, only glancing at him from the corner of her eye. As she did so, the blue hue of the sheets immediately bled onto her skin.

  “What happened that night? Why did you kill Dr. Wells?”

  She shook her head and struggled against his grasp, surprisingly stronger than
the night before.

  He held on tightly, bracing his legs on the ground. Maintaining his balance and control even as she attempted to break free.

  “Please let me go,” she finally said, but he held on, needing to break her and get an answer to her questions.

  “Who killed Wells?”

  “I don’t know,” she cried and fought him, twisting from side to side as she attempted to break free.

  A sharp piercing trill broke into their battle.

  His cell phone.

  He tossed her onto the bed, so forcefully that she bounced up for a moment before turning onto her side and curling up into a fetal position. Small, indistinct noises escaped her lips as she nearly became lost on the sheets, blue on blue, except for the dark wealth of her hair.

  He looked at the caller id and mumbled, “Shit.”

  Liliana. Hopefully with some news.

  Chapter 11

  “Tell me you’ve got something. Anything.”

  Mick had expected sisterly chiding. That none came was worrisome.

  “DNA analysis will take a day or two, but the tox screens came back. She’s been medicated with an assortment of hallucinogenic drugs, including some dissociative ones.”

  Meaning that maybe she wasn’t a raving loon, Mick thought. Maybe something was scrambling the signals to her conscious mind from other parts of her brain accounting for her erratic behavior.

  “I’d ask why, but unfortunately I think I know why – someone wanted to control her,” he said.

  “As in mind control?” his sister asked.

  He shot a quick glance at Shaw. Her knees were drawn close to her chest, her arms around them as much the restraints would allow. Her earlier cries had subsided, replaced by incoherent mumbling. Some parts of her were beginning to lose their camouflage, returning to the normal color of human skin.

  Interesting. A fight or flight response?

  He shook his head, wondering, and left the room to keep the discussion with his sister private. Leaning against the wall in the hall he said, “CIA experimented with LSD and other psychedelic drugs in the fifties and sixties. The MK Ultra Project. Maybe someone took a cue from that.”

  “If that project involved an assortment of alkaloids, that’s a possible scenario. The tests showed small traces of LSD, larger amounts of ketamine, and some other spikes of unknown origin, although they contained nitrogen, like most alkaloids.”

  Mick walked back to the door and examined Shaw as she rested fitfully on the bed. With a heavy sigh, he said, “Shaw could have coded last night when we medicated her. The sedative together with all that crap might have clobbered her heart rate and breathing.”

  “We can’t administer anything else until these other drugs are out of her system,” Liliana said.

  Another voice intruded from a distance. “Dr. Carrera. You’re needed in the ER.”

  When his sister replied, her words were muffled, as if she had covered the mouthpiece with her hand. Then she came back on the line. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Roger, sis. Call as soon as you’ve got anything else,” he said and hung up.

  He stalked back to the side of the bed and glanced down at Shaw. She had quieted somewhat, but he didn’t trust that she wouldn’t become agitated again, especially considering the mix of drugs someone had pumped into her.

  The LSD alone could have residual effects that might linger for some time depending on how much of it she had received and for how long. He’d even heard of cases where people went tripping years after receiving the drug. Since Liliana had mentioned that the traces of LSD had been small, he hoped the effects might be gone within a few days.

  With the drugs out of her body, Shaw might become more coherent and cooperative, although doubts lingered about her condition. And about the weird traits she was exhibiting.

  Extra-human strength.

  Skin that went all camo when she lost control.

  Which she did often, but was it only due to the drugs? he wondered. And had she committed Wells’ murder during one of those incoherent and possibly violent times?

  As if on cue, she began to mumble and rock back and forth. When her eyes opened, they widened in fear as she saw him there. Almost immediately, the pale blue color of the sheets spilled onto her skin, blurring the lines between animate and inanimate objects.

  Forcing him from the room.

  He had to figure out what was going on.

  And he had to figure out what had actually happened with Wells before he turned Shaw over to Edwards.

  Shaw might be a drug-crazed lunatic, possibly even a murderer, but that still put her higher on his list than the urbane Dr. Edwards. Even if the physician hadn’t actively participated in what had been done to Shaw, he’d had a hand in it as the owner of the company.

  He didn’t much care for people who took advantage of those who were weaker.

  * * *

  Mick tossed down his pen, frustrated by his enforced confinement.

  Although he had taken care of more than one wounded comrade and enjoyed his time as an EMT, being a nursemaid was an entirely different thing. Especially when combined with the continued outbursts from his captive.

  He’d been listening to them for the better part of the morning as he attempted to obtain more information on Wardwell.

  He surged from his office chair, determined to put an end to the noise when he spotted his IPod sitting beside the computer.

  Music quiets the savage beast, he reminded himself.

  Maybe it could accomplish something, especially considering that Shaw was a musician. If she connected with the music, she might also make some kind of association with who and what she had been which in turn might trigger more recollections about the night of the murder.

  He snagged the IPod and bounded down the hall to the guest bedroom.

  As she had before, Shaw immediately reacted to his presence, her skin transforming before his eyes. He tempered his actions, measuring his pace as he neared the bed. Keeping his actions non-threatening and his voice even.

  “I won’t hurt you, Cat.”

  He slipped the IPod into the unit on the nightstand. Turned on the system and with a push of a button, Shaw’s music spilled from the speakers.

  Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in B minor. She had played the piece at the Kimmel Center last year.

  “That’s you, Cat. You playing the cello,” he said in soft tones and crouched down so that he would be eye level with her.

  “Do you remember? Do you remember what you were? Who you are?”

  * * *

  Who she was? Caterina thought and suddenly knew.

  “I’m Cat,” she said brightly, but her answered seemed to displease him.

  “My name is Cat,” she repeated more forcefully and tapped a spot close to her heart with her fingers.

  He reached out and took hold of her hand. His hand was hard, the pads of his fingers calloused, but as he had been the night before, his touch was surprisingly gentle.

  “I wish I could believe that you weren’t just repeating what you’ve heard. I’m Mick,” he offered and tapped a spot above his heart, mimicking her actions, but then seemed to regret the gesture.

  He shot upright, his manner hard once more. “You’ve been drugged, Cat. It may take some time for the drugs to wear off.”

  She recalled the young woman with him. The one who had stuck her with the needle. The one who had drugged her, only . . .

  The music coming from the machine by the bed was so beautiful. The tones rich and melodious.

  Soothing.

  A smile came to her face as the music wrapped itself around her. Tangled with her thoughts to drive away some of her fear.

  The man beside her – Mick – grudgingly smiled as well.

  “Glad to see that you like it,” he said and then walked out of the room.

  She did like it. Something about the music was . . .

  Comforting. Familiar.

  She closed her eyes and fragment
s of images spilled from her brain, filling up her limited consciousness. The black and white of notes on paper. Honey-gold wood, cold and smooth against her skin. Coarse hair, sticky with rosin.

  His words repeated in her brain.

  “That’s you, Cat. You’re playing the cello.”

  Like two pieces of a puzzle coming together, the pictures in her mind joined with the words.

  A cello. She used to play the cello and it had brought her joy. It had to have made her immensely happy before because it was bringing her a great deal of peace now.

  She shifted her position, turning on the bed. Yanking on the restraints to get closer to the music.

  With the notes embracing her, she released herself to the melody washing over her.

  * * *

  “You left the condo very early this morning or maybe it’s more accurate to say late last night,” Harrison said. From the corner of his eye, he shot a look around to see who might be in the hall in the surgical wing before he laid his hand on her sleeve.

  Easing his index finger beneath the edge of her jacket, he inched it up to reveal the first hint of a bruise. “Was it because of our fight? I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said, leaning toward her and speaking in hushed tones, the gesture seemingly non-threatening.

  Unfortunately, Liliana knew what would usually follow.

  He used his size, coupled with his proximity, to intimidate. When that failed, his fists reinforced who was lord and master in his domain. In their relationship.

  It hadn’t always been that way. At first he had been a caring and solicitous fiancé. Then a few months ago, he had withdrawn, seemingly worried about something. Not that he had revealed the source of his concern to her no matter how hard she had tried to reach him.

  The depression had cemented itself in him and with it he had become more possessive and increasingly angry and prone to violence. She had considered leaving him more than once recently, but feared his reaction and that of his fellow colleagues in the hospital.