Identity--A Tale of Murder, Mystery and Romance

by H. D. Thomson

  Skye cried out as he plunged into her. She arched up and wrapped her legs around his hips, meeting each thrust with equal fervor. Her hands scaled the rippling muscles of his back, moved lower to grip the powerful thrust of his hips.

  “That’s it.” His breath whispered against her temple as he cradled her throat with a hand and scraped his teeth against her earlobe. “Come for me.”

  His words wrenched her into a whirlwind of ecstasy. She scratched her fingernails across his sweat-slicked shoulders. Every muscle grew rigid as she dove into a vortex of sensation again. She buried her face in the pillow to her side, muffling the cry that ripped from her lungs.

  Then he came into her, his big body convulsing above her, his arms banding around her waist and shoulders, and a low moan rumbling from deep in his throat.

  David slumped against her, his weight pressing her into the mattress. Then he swung them both on their sides with his arms never slipping from her body.

  His heart thundered against her breast as Skye tried to regain some semblance of sanity. She was afraid to draw away and crush the moment, afraid the wonder and satisfaction would disintegrate once she slipped from David’s arms.

  “I’ll be right back,” he murmured against her hair.

  When he withdrew from her body, she flinched at the sudden cool air that rushed across her skin. Feeling awkward and unsure, she slipped under the covers. She detested both emotions; they only magnified frailties she’d tried so hard to smother.

  The mattress dipped, and David disappeared into the adjoining bathroom. A moment later, the muffled sound of dogs barking filtered into the room. She sat up and started to slip from the bed, but David stepped back into the bedroom.

  “They’ll stop in a minute.” He paused on the edge of the bed and rested one knee on the mattress. “It’s nothing. They’ve been doing that all night.”

  “Are you sure?”

  The barking stopped as abruptly as it started.

  “See? Absolutely nothing.”

  She curled her fingers around the edge of the bed sheets. “I should go.”

  David sank down on the bed and urged her back down amidst the rumpled bedding and pillows. With one quick move, he pulled her up on top of him. “Not yet.”

  She clutched his shoulders, unable to dampen the excitement lacing her blood as his hard-muscled body and legs brushed against her. His arousal burned against her belly and sent her pulse leaping wildly. One touch, and she wanted him all over again.

  Skye curled her arms around David’s neck and let herself be consumed by the sexual hunger quickly blinding her to all but the moment. She was rapidly finding out she couldn’t say no. Not to David.

  ~~*~~

  Flat on her back, Skye opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling fan. The blades cut through the air slowly, silently. Sunlight streamed through the blinds and across the thick-beamed, mahogany bed. She shifted, sending a protest through most of her muscles and twisting the white, cotton sheets around her legs. The air conditioner kicked on and sent a chill across her naked body. Shivering, she pulled the covers up to her neck. With her gaze locked on the ceiling, she slid a hand across the mattress and found the place beside her empty and cool to the touch, confirming what she already knew.

  David had left long before. Yet, his scent clung on her skin and the bedding, while the imprint of his body lingered on her flesh. Shifting, she noted the dark, wood dresser, and deep, chocolate lounge chair in the corner of the room, which spoke of masculinity and money, and a man who liked casual elegance. A book of poetry rested on the nightstand. The man was an enigma, hoarding his thoughts and his past, leery of intimacy, yet at the same time, Skye sensed he desperately craved it.

  She closed her eyes. Memories and images of the last night filtered through her mind, causing her to stir restlessly.

  Now that she’d reclaimed her sexuality with a man she found not only intelligent but wickedly handsome and completely distracting, she craved sex that much more. Not good at all to her way of thinking. The distraction would only impede her from focusing and uncovering the secrets from her past. Subconsciously she must have known that, having avoided her attraction to David until last night. She sighed with resignation. This hunger for David didn’t involve just a physical fascination with the man, no matter how much she wanted to tell herself otherwise.

  Sorrow shadowed her thoughts and banded around her throat. She blinked the sudden moisture from her eyes. This morning she would leave with Tyler. She couldn’t avoid or delay the inevitable. Really, there was no point in remaining even if David wanted her to stay.

  David would continue to spurn her questions and the mystery behind his adoption. She couldn’t change him, and with his father grasping precariously to life in the hospital, David wouldn’t start unearthing answers now.

  She tugged his pillow into her arms and stuffed her nose into the mass. His scent intensified and for a moment she let herself indulge in the idea of hope, of pretending she was normal, of thinking she could have the luxury of falling in love.

  She didn’t dare start caring for the man. Not now. Not when she was going to be walking out his front door for good. That would be completely asinine.

  She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Nine o’clock. Thrusting the pillow away, she jerked into a sitting position. By now Tyler would be up and having breakfast. Her son might have already gone to her room to check on her.

  How the hell was she going to explain this to Tyler? She’d done things before she’d considered foolhardy, but this one ranked up there with the best of them.

  She stared at the closed door and the empty bed beside her. Somehow she’d have to slip from David’s room and make sure Tyler didn’t catch her on her way to her room.

  After shoving her arms and legs into her clothes, she eased open the door. Seeing no one, she slipped into the hall, then moved down the hall on silent feet. The cool tile seeped into her skin.

  At the thick silence enveloping the house, Skye frowned. She would think Tyler or David would be making some type of noise. Not even the murmur of the television echoed through the rooms.

  When she reached the hall to their rooms, she paused. Tyler’s door stood closed. Odd. She’d never known him to sleep this late. Normally he’d be up for a good two hour by now. Unease prickled across her nape as her gaze locked on the door and she inched across the last few feet. With trembling fingers, she grasped the cool, metal doorknob. She turned the knob. The latch clicked open. The door swung open on silent hinges.

  She stared across the room. The bed, covers flung aside, was empty. The impression of Tyler’s body curved into the mattress and wrinkled sheet. One pillow lay discarded in the middle of the floor while the other rested against the floorboard.

  The sliding glass window yawned open. The screen had been ripped out. A hot, desert breeze flicked at the cotton drapes.

  She backed away from the room, her heart crashing against her ribs.

  Someone had taken Tyler.

  Chapter 16

  A loud splash from outside brought Skye running into the backyard. She blinked from the glare of the sun’s rays against the pool’s sparkling water. Seeing someone swimming, she quickened her pace, and delight bubbled into her chest. The emotion quickly fizzled and turned rancid.

  David speared through the water, his broad shoulders and dark head unmistakable. Not Tyler’s like she’d hoped. She blinked back tears.

  The fountain’s gurgle joined the spray of David’s hands and feet hitting the water’s surface. From the mesquite tree overhead, a mockingbird sang a litany of musical notes. The scene portrayed an image of normalcy and tranquility, but nothing was. Nothing ever would be.

  Had it ever been?

  She stepped further into the backyard, only half-conscious of both dogs snuffling for attention. She absently stroked the head of one. Tyler had always wanted a dog.

  And now...

  She folded her arms across her middle and pressed them again
st her stomach, but nothing curbed the painful twisting of her insides.

  David vaulted from the pool. Water streamed down his chest and stomach and pasted his navy trunks against his hips and upper thighs. He wiped his hands over his face and frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  Skye blinked, struggling to focus. She opened her mouth. Words didn’t come.

  David’s frown deepened. He grabbed a towel from the lounge chair, rubbed the water from his arms and chest with quick, rough hands, and strode across the pool decking. Unease darkening his eyes, he stopped in front of her and cupped her elbow, his hand damp against her arm. “Skye, say something. I can’t do a damn thing unless you talk to me.”

  “They took Tyler. There can’t be any other reason. Tyler’d never leave on his own violation.”

  “They?”

  “The pigs who tried kidnapping him before. The ones who followed us from Boston. The ones—” Her voice rose and frayed with growing hysteria. “Oh, God. I don’t have a clue who they are.”

  “That’s impossible. The neighborhood’s got the best security system in the city. Plus, there’re the dogs... Shit.” Color leached from his face. He flung the towel back on the lounge chair and rushed past her.

  Skye hurried after him and stumbled to a halt when she reached the doorway to Tyler’s bedroom.

  As David stepped into the room, she peered inside, wild hope rippling through her body on the chance she’d hallucinated the last few minutes. But no. The bed in the corner of the room remained barren with the sheets ripped away and tossed onto the floor. She grabbed a discarded pillow from the carpet and inhaled Tyler’s distinct scent of soap and shampoo, innocence and wonder.

  David leaned out the window and checked right, then left. The ceiling fan shifted hot air from one place to the other. The heat closed in around her. He pulled back inside and turned to face her. At the bleak look in his face, her vision clouded. She clutched her throat. The muscles in her legs quivered and drained of strength.

  The fan sped up, whirling faster and faster as the panic rose inside her. The blades cut a path through the air again and again until they blended together in a circle of motion as the motor cried in protest, the volume rising—

  “Skye, stop it! You’re going to kill someone if you don’t get control of your telekinesis.” David stared at the fan with narrowed eyes. Abruptly, the motor stopped humming and the blades slowed.

  She blinked.

  “Here. Sit down.” David caught her around the waist before she landed on the floor and urged her down in a plush, navy chair by the side of the bed. “Put your head between your legs.”

  Gentle fingers pulled her hair from her face as she bent over and rested both hands on her knees. She took in large, heaving gulps of air. The sudden oxygen tore into her brain. A brief, black rush of nothingness closed in around her, but somehow she managed to shove it aside and let the moment pass.

  Skye raised her head and found David on his knees in front of her. His large hand gripped the arm of the chair, and she smothered the urge to touch him. She should never have stepped within two feet of him. The guilt wouldn’t go away. How could it? “While I was having sex, someone grabbed him. What does that make me?” A note of hysteria crept into her voice. “Can you tell me that!”

  “Skye, the man was a professional. How else can you explain it?” A muscle pulsed along the ridge of his jaw while he stared back with raw, pain-filled eyes. “He got through security. He knew about the dogs. He played me. By getting both animals so worked up over the course of the evening, he knew I’d ignore them eventually. So don’t start blaming yourself. I’m guilty more than anyone. Tyler was under my roof and my protection.”

  “Words don’t get my son back,” she shot back, digging her nails into the arms of the chair. She stared at the carpet where she superimposed Tyler’s image on it. If she could just make him materialize in the flesh... “I don’t understand. His telekinesis. Why didn’t he use it to fight back?”

  David slipped a lock of hair from her cheek and curled it around her ear. “I’m sure he had a reason.”

  When realization dawned, Skye dragged in a rattling breath of shame. She folded her hand into a fist. “Because I told him not to.” Bitterness thickened her voice. “Isn’t that just perfect? Time and again I’d nag at him not to use his power. I made it so damn easy for them to take Ty.”

  “Don’t say that, Skye. You did what you thought was best. You were trying to protect him.”

  “But don’t you see? I didn’t protect him.” The pain in Skye’s chest accumulated until it became an unbearable crushing pressure. David’s silence told her more than any hollow attempt at consolation. Who could argue against the truth?

  David stood and stepped away from the chair. Skye frowned, noticing a sudden stillness in his expression. “Look at the mirror,” he ordered.

  The odd note in David’s hushed tone snapped her head around. She glanced above the oak dresser. Letters were scrolled in bold, black marker across the top.

  You can’t run from your past. You were a bitch then, and you’re a bitch now.

  Skye’s stomached twisted and rolled. She gagged and barely managed to keep the contents inside her body.

  “Do you know who wrote this?” David asked, his voice thick with anger and outrage.

  “No.”

  “Whatever they have against you, it has something to do with your past. It’s almost like they’re sticking it in your face, the way they came in while you were in the house.”

  Skye gripped the arms of her chair. Tension cracked up her spine. A new wave of nausea rolled inside her stomach.

  “Are you sure it’s the people who tried to kidnap your son?”

  “I don’t know. There’s so much anger in the words. The only person who I’ve truly pissed off was my ex, Jay.” Despair swelled into her voice. “But I thought that was all in the past. Unless he’s somehow involved in the kidnappings... After all, he’s shown up and threatened blackmail, but to kidnap your own son? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Maybe you’re making it more complicated than it is.” David stepped toward the dresser and with a finger, he traced the line of black marker underlining the word bitch.

  “You might be right. He did show up earlier at the casino wanting money.”

  “Blackmail.” He said the word as if it tasted foul on his lips. “I’ll call the police.”

  “They’re not going to do anything.”

  David turned and stared at her, his eyebrows clashing. “Why?”

  “Because Jay was a cop.” She ignored the shock that flashed across his face. “I don’t care what you say. They stick together. He might have been kicked off the force, but he’s still one of them.” She pushed her hair away from her face, and turned away, unable to look at him directly in the eye. She found it impossible to shake off the feeling of shame that settled across her shoulders at how she’d fought just as dirty as Jay during the divorce. “Boston police don’t particularly like me either. With what I uncovered through Jay’s illegal activities, I forced them into a departmental investigation. The media loved it and the police hated it.”

  She attempted a smile. “Who wants a scandal? They surely didn’t, and they particularly didn’t want to blame themselves for their ineptness, so they decided to blame someone else, and I was the perfect target. A single, white female lacking power and a voice.”

  “I’m sure if we talk to someone, they’ll listen.”

  Skye tightened her grip on the arms of the chair as she blinked the moisture from her eyes. “There’s more.” Even knowing his expression would mirror her own feelings of disgust, she forced herself to return David’s gaze. “Under my divorce decree, I’m not supposed to leave the state unless it’s approved by the court. By leaving Massachusetts, I’ve broken the law and stand to lose custody of Tyler. No one in their right mind is going to take my side of anything.”

  David strode across the room and sank on the arm of the chair.
With unmistakable tenderness and a face void of disgust, he cupped her cheek and rubbed a tear from under her eye with a thumb. “We’ll find him.”

  A quiet and welcome resolve enveloped her. Anything was better than the guilt and despair that corroded hope, because she needed hope. Without hope...

  Before her thoughts turned darker, Skye sprang to her feet and away from David. She paced the room, needing to refocus and reclaim the strength and resolve she’d always prided herself on. Both characteristics she’d relied on since the day Tyler had escaped death and a kidnapping attempt. Her son desperately needed a mother who would fight for him, not a weak-willed woman wallowing inside an acid glass of despair.

  “I know I’ll find him.” She lifted her chin. “Because I know where he is.”

  Still seated on the arm of her chair, David looked up at her. “And that’s?”

  “Boston of course, where Jay slithered back to. Right there on the mirror it says I can’t run from my past, and my past is all in Boston.”

  Skye’s chin dipped as her icy resolve wavered. She glanced at his hands gripping the chair’s arms. Capable, far stronger than her own. By leaving Las Vegas, she would be leaving David. She quailed at the idea of never seeing him again. The feelings she’d tried so hard to keep at bay when it came to David threatened to tumble free. Less than a month and he’d burrowed his way into her life. “Come with me. I don’t want to do this alone.”

  David’s eyes darkened. Silence draped the room and indecision flickered across his face.

  “I need your help, David.”

  “My father.”

  Her jaw tightened, and she struggled to keep her face neutral. The last thing she wanted was for him to see how his words bruised those vulnerable places she tried so hard to keep hidden. She might understand his need to take care of his own, but that didn’t dampen the pain.

  Head raised, shoulders rigid, she stared at him across the few feet that separated them. Feet? Hardly. They were miles. Too many miles to cross without her son.