“Okay, Ferguson, now that you’re back in the living, you can tell me what’s with the boy and why he’s so different. No bullshit this time. I want the truth.” Peter smiled down at his victim. “But before you get into a long-winded discussion, I want the cash.”
“I’m not crazy,” Ferguson said through gritted teeth, his gaze wary. “The minute I tell you, you’ll kill me.”
“I don’t think you understand.” Peter forced his lips into a smile. The prick wasn’t cooperating, but Peter had been known to be very persuasive when it came to changing a person’s mind. “If you don’t tell me, you’ll be begging me to kill you at the end.”
Below the metal cuffs, Ferguson’s fingers gripped the armrests until the skin around his knuckles thinned to fragile parchment. At his stubborn silence, Peter’s patience, already worn by mishandling the kid, frayed further.
This bastard wasn’t going to get in the way of Peter’s ultimate goal of getting revenge against Skye. But he also deserved the cash. Peter hadn’t grabbed the kid and brought him here for free. Yeah, maybe he’d first just wanted to steal him from under Skye’s nose, but now Peter wanted it all. The cash, the perfect payback. He deserved both with how she’d ruined his life.
Absolutely no one was going to screw with Peter’s plans.
Without warning, he grabbed Ferguson’s middle finger and yanked it back. Bone snapped. Gasping, Ferguson arched over the chair, wrenching his arms and legs against the constraints. The metal held, locking him into the chair. With the entire length of his body quivering in reaction, Ferguson slumped against the leather cushions.
“Oh, sorry, I seem to have broken something.” Casually Peter leaned a hip against the side of the chair and peered down into the other man’s face. Sweat soaked the collar of his once pristine, crisp, dry-cleaned shirt. He didn’t look so immaculate. In fact, he looked a little wilted.
Peter lifted a brow. “You know, putting up a brave front isn’t going to help you.”
Peter had only so much patience. He needed to find the kid. That or set a trap to get him out in the open. But he couldn’t do either until he’d taken care of the old man.
This time Peter grabbed a thumb, ignored Ferguson’s quick, indrawn breath, and with one savage twist, dislocated the joint.
“Jesus!” Tears gleamed in Ferguson’s eyes and spilled down the sides of his face. “Are you crazy!”
“Possibly. I’ve been told on occasion that I am.” Peter mused aloud. “Now have we decided to tell me the location of the money you owe me? It’s all up to you whether or not you want me to go through each finger. I can also move on to your toes.”
He met Ferguson’s gaze and waited. After a brief silence, he reached over for another finger.
“Okay, okay! I’ll tell you.” Ferguson’s breath rattled inside his chest. “It’s in my closet. In the bedroom. A paper bag on one of the shelves.”
Peter caressed the other man’s forearm with an index finger, slipped lower over the thick metal cuff and tapped the back of Ferguson’s hand. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Yes. Just stop! Stop!”
“If you insist,” Peter murmured, believing Ferguson as he inched away from the chair.
Ferguson expelled a large breath of air in relief.
At the scent of peppermint and stale breath, Peter wrinkled his nose. The prick was far too weak-willed to be lying. Two more minutes with him and Peter knew Ferguson would be selling his soul, his mother and anyone else he could screw. He’d met his kind before too many times not to recognize the ink.
He patted Ferguson’s broken and twisted fingers. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”
Peter suspected his humor was lost on the other man, but he didn’t much care. Fifty-thousand sounded pretty good about now. But he wasn’t a fool. He needed to make sure the money was there before he finished up with Ferguson
Peter left the two-way mirrored room, then trotted up the stairs to the main section of the house. After easing the metal door open, Peter crept through the kitchen and around the pots and pans that littered the black tile floor on silent feet, his gaze alert to any movement. Earlier, he’d pulled open the cabinet doors in search of the boy. Every one of them gaped back almost as if mocking him at his inability to find the skinny runt.
Hell, Peter’d find him. He just had to think like the kid. And while he did that, the little shit could sweat it out.
After he found the bag in the closet, checked the amount of cash inside, and stuffed the bundle under an arm, Peter swept a hand through the clothing across the two L-shaped tiers and double-checked for a small body squeezed against the wall. Nothing but an empty shelf.
Still confident Tyler was shaking, scared and crammed in some impossibly tight corner hiding, Peter returned to the basement. Ferguson, of course, hadn’t moved, but the sweat stains around his neck had widened and new ones had crept beneath his arms.
Peter peered down at Ferguson’s damp face, the color of day-old dough. “You not only promised the cash but information on the boy.”
“There’s nothing to tell about the boy.”
“Really?” He grabbed another of Ferguson’s fingers, yanked, and ignored the man’s brief, sharp scream. “I’m thinking differently. This kid is beyond normal. He looks and acts human, but he short-circuits electrical wires and manipulates computers with his mind. Hell, I’ve never seen that done by anyone.”
“He’s nothing,” Ferguson said between a deep wheezing breath. “Just an experiment.”
With narrowed eyes, Peter searched Ferguson’s sweat-coated features, then met the other man’s eyes and stared. For several silent seconds, Peter stilled.
Those eyes.
Realization slammed into Peter with the strength of a punch to the chest. Peter now understood what he’d failed to notice for months. Ferguson’s eyes, the same shape, the same shade... He sucked in a mouthful of air, then expelled the breath in one long rush. After a moment, he recovered his voice. “You’re one crazy fuck, you know that? I thought I was bad, but I’d never experiment on my own kid.”
Chapter 23
On the second floor of the dental and medical building, David paced across the dark green carpet, eyeing the doorway to the women’s restroom where Skye had disappeared into several minutes before. Pausing, he frowned and glanced along the drab, beige walls for a clock, but didn’t find anything. The silence in the empty hallway thickened with David’s growing concern.
Skye was taking too long. An elderly woman had exited a good five minutes before, but he hadn’t seen anyone else slip in or out since.
He hadn’t liked Skye running off like that. Not when she’d been so upset. Not with a kidnapper out there with Tyler. Not when her doctor might have been murdered. Hell, someone might be intending to kill Skye next.
To hell with it. David didn’t care about embarrassing himself or Skye. Jaw clenched, he strode toward the entrance, sidestepped the wet floor sign and stepped into the bathroom.
Skye lay sprawled across the floor on her back with her hands flung out on either side of her head and her hair a dark chestnut stain on the white tile.
He sucked in a mouthful of air. “Skye!”
She didn’t move, didn’t open her eyes.
He dropped to his knees. With a shaking hand, he brushed her hair from her neck. The silken strands clung to his fingers. Panic sent talons of tension into the muscles of his back and shoulders and threatened to shatter his thoughts and leave him floundering on what to do.
Damn it. He didn’t understand. She’d been fine minutes before. Upset but still okay.
Had she fainted? Had someone attacked her?
David glanced to the right and the two visible stalls. All empty. He didn’t see a window where someone could escape, and no one had stepped from this room other than the elderly woman.
When her breath whispered across his wrist, and he saw the low rise and fall of her chest, tension across his muscles eased only fractionally, but h
e couldn’t shake off the alarm still burrowing into his body.
“Skye? Please wake up. You’ve got to wake up.” He crouched over her, his fingers now brushing the hair from her temple. His thumb glided over the dusting of freckles across the curve of one cheek. The overhead lights magnified her pallor and revealed skin free of bruising or scrapes. With shaking fingers, he probed through the thick waves of her hair and across the back of her skull.
She was so fragile, her wrists and neck easily crushed in the wrong hands, but at the same time, he’d never met a woman more fierce than Skye when it came to her son and her beliefs. A complete contradiction, but damn it, she was his contradiction.
He found nothing. No head injury. No broken skin or blood. But that hardly made him relax.
Seeing the tear tracks from the corner of her closed eyes twisted at his insides. What the hell had happened to cause them? The death of the doctor or something more?
“Come on, Skye,” he coaxed, his voice thick and unsteady. “Talk to me.”
Her lips parted to reveal the even line of her teeth. Movement flickered briefly beneath her eyelids, and a jean-clad leg shifted on the cool tile.
“That’s it.” He inched closer on his knees, cupping her shoulder with his other hand as he continued to glide his thumb across her cheek. “Wake up for me, Skye.”
He was never going to let her out of his sight again. He’d come to Boston to help her, and he hadn’t done a damn thing right to protect her yet.
Skye opened her eyes and stared directly up at him. Confusion drew a fine line between her brows and marred the perfect matte of her skin. “What happened?” Bewilderment seeped from her face. “Oh, God.”
Her expression of horror hit him in the chest. “What’s wrong? Did someone do this?”
He cupped her elbow, but as she scrambled to her knees, she hit her head against the sinks’ counter. Wincing, she grabbed her skull and pushed away his attempt to help her to her feet. “Don’t. I...”
She caught the counter with a clumsy hand, pulled herself up and hung over the sink as if she were going to heave her guts out. The lights amplified the sheen of sweat across her brow, cheeks and upper lip. He stood up beside her and waited, curling his hands into fists to keep from touching her as he watched her struggle from some invisible place inside her head.
“I passed out,” Skye finally said as she splashed water on her face, then stared at the mirror, her features a pale reproduction of her former self. She clutched the counter’s edge and leaned further across the sink toward her reflection. She seemed to be looking beyond the mirror to an unimaginable place.
A chill snaked down his spine. He didn’t like her stillness. Beyond her blank expression, he sensed a charged emotion boiling near the surface, one that was going to rip from Skye’s carefully controlled demeanor. “Here. We need to get you out of here.”
This time when he cupped her elbow and drew her away from the sink and counter, she didn’t push him away as he curled an arm around her waist. David’s lips firmed. Skye might be able to disguise her feelings behind an empty mask, but she couldn’t hide the tremors racing through her limbs as she sank against his side.
He half carried, half led her out of the building and into the passenger side of the vehicle without doing damage to either one of them. Once inside the rental, she glanced across the console and for the briefest moments her façade fractured, and he glimpsed into her soul.
Anguish.
Stark. Painful. Undeniable.
~~*~~
Skye sat in the passenger seat and plucked at the seat belt strap between her breasts. Elongated shadows clung to the ground from passing cars and buildings. Street lamps fled by, their light a beacon for the coming night, while darkness hovered, smothering the last of the sun’s rays clinging to the horizon.
When David guided the car onto the freeway entrance and melded into traffic, Skye frowned. “Where are we going?”
“I’m going to check us into a hotel room.”
“I don’t have time for sleep.”
“Jesus, Skye. You need to rest. You’ve just had another blow with the possibility of your doctor being murdered. With a couple hours of sleep, you’ll be able to focus and regroup.”
Skye opened her mouth but snapped it shut and slumped against her seat. She couldn’t find the words to argue. Shock still left her feeling numb and shivering as if her mind had been scraped raw. She wanted to be oblivious. She wanted to pretend she didn’t remember the office, the doctor, the horror, but images from the past were as vivid and bright as daylight as they slipped back inside her head. Her legs splayed, a man’s dry cold hand touching her. His rabid, knowing smile as he held what looked like a meat baster in one hand and eased it between her legs.
Squeezing her thighs together, she folded her arms against her stomach. She hadn’t believed Jay. She’d thought her ex completely crazy, spewing lies about Tyler not being his son. Jay hadn’t been lying. Not this time.
When though? When had it happened? And how could she not know she’d been impregnated by a crazy man? Skye frantically searched in the hollows of her mind for past opportunities. She dug her forearms against her stomach. Then a memory seeped from the past. A stranger knocking into her. Waking up in her car. A memory loss of eight hours.
Oh, God. She’d been so wrong thinking Jay as the kidnapper. She’d been wrong about everything. And Tyler’s biological father? What if he was the kidnapper? And if that were the case, what in God’s name did he want with her son? She wasn’t naive to think love had anything to do with it.
But why? She knew if she understood the answer, she’d find Tyler. And that’s all that mattered—finding her son. Because he was out there in the city somewhere. Another night approached with empty leads and no sign of Tyler.
Skye’s throat constricted with panic, threatening to cut off the air to her lungs. She crossed her ankles in an attempt to stop the shaking, but she couldn’t keep her heart from racing or her thoughts from churning. God, where was her strength, the composure she’d always prided herself on? She bit down hard on her lower lip.
David’s knuckles whitened as he twisted a hand around the steering wheel again and again. He threw her a dark, solemn glance. “I’m sorry about the doctor’s disappearance.”
“This isn’t about Dr. Schrimager,” she whispered. The moisture building in her eyes blurred the freeway and rental’s console. A shiver crawled across her skin. She felt dirty, used.
“Then what?” A car horn blasted moments before David hit the brakes. “Stop being so damn strong, Skye. Tell me what’s going on. How can I help when you’re holding back on me?”
She blinked away the tears. The slowing traffic in front of them came into focus. Thick, green oak trees passed them to the right along with the dark, velvety lawn of a neighborhood park. No desert brush or arid landscape in sight. Strange how much she’d missed the smells of exhaust, wet grass and dirt. But she’d gladly leave Boston forever if it meant having her son.
She glanced over at David’s profile, all hard angles and stubborn lines. He caught her gaze and she quickly turned away from the intensity in his expression and stared at the black Volvo directly ahead. To keep her nausea at bay, she dug her arms against her stomach.
“When I confronted Jay about kidnapping Tyler, he told me Tyler wasn’t his son. I didn’t believe him. I actually thought he was crazy for even saying it. He was the only man I was sleeping with. For God’s sake, I was married to him!” She pressed her arms harder against her middle. “I also thought he was just saying that to get back at me and using it as an excuse for his sick behavior of selling his son, but I remember flashes of being in a room.”
Skye swallowed down the taste of bile. The images from her past weren’t dreams or fears from her subconscious. She squeezed her eyes shut. They were far too real, too overwhelming to be false.
“Go on,” David urged, his hand on the steering wheel stilled.
“Remember how we’
ve talked about that lizard? The one that always shows up when we try to remember certain things from our past?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, somehow I managed to get past that image. I think it was the scent of peppermint that triggered this memory.” She opened her eyes and blinked away the tears as she plucked again at her seatbelt, searching for the right words and struggling to vocalize them aloud. “Dr. Schrimager dug up points in my past when it came to my childhood. None of it had anything to do with being an adult until today. This memory though, this scene I remember is when I was married to Jay. The horrifying part is that I was in a doctor’s office beside this man. The same man from my childhood. What made me remember him was his breath. The scent of peppermint.”
David swore softly. “I’ve always hated the smell.”
Skye frowned as she suddenly thought of Gordon. “Your father. I don’t know exactly when, but I remember him smelling of peppermint. Does he chew gum?”
“No. Not that I know of.” His voice grew guarded. “Why? What are you saying?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed in frustration. “He’s not a doctor, not capable of doing what this man...”
Almost a full minute passed in silence until David asked softly, “What did this man do?”
“I—”
David exited the freeway and turned north. He pulled into the driveway of a hotel and parked in a slot by the main entrance. “If this is too painful for you, Skye, I’ll understand if you don’t—”
“No. I need to say this out loud to get everything out in the open. Otherwise, it’ll just fester and get worse.” Grabbing the seatbelt and tugging the suffocating strap from the side of her neck, she twisted at the waist until she met David’s gaze. Darkness had since fallen, but the yellow artificial light from the parking lot lights and the hotel’s logo illuminated his stark features. “This man—I believe he was a doctor, the same one from my childhood. I think he’s also more than a gynecologist. I can’t prove anything yet, but I’m pretty positive he impregnated me through artificial insemination.”
“My God, Skye. I—I don’t know how to respond to something like that.” He dragged in a rattling breath. “So you’re saying Jay was telling the truth. That he isn’t Tyler’s father? But then if he isn’t—”
Identity--A Tale of Murder, Mystery and Romance Page 21
