Flirting with Disaster & Fanning the Flames

by Victoria Dahl

  “But that’s not all you know about Tom.”

  She clenched her hands into fists. “Isn’t it?”

  Mary’s hand sounded like a shot when it hit the table. “No, it’s not. He’s going to let you leave. Did you know that? He’s going to help you leave, and if he does that, he’ll be fired. Over nineteen years as a marshal down the drain. For some woman he met a week ago.”

  For one quick beat, Isabelle’s heart softened toward him. But Mary could say anything; that didn’t make it true.

  “I’m not even sure that part matters,” Mary said. “He’s already in big trouble. He kept you a secret, and he got personally involved with you, a woman who’s neck deep in a murder investigation.” She leaned forward until she was halfway across the table, her eyes blazing now. “So when I say you can trust us, I mean that Tom Duncan, a good man and my very good friend, will probably lose his lifelong career because he wanted to help you. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

  She leaned back and took a seat in one of the chairs, but her eyes never left Isabelle.

  Isabelle blinked, shocked into silence. Had he willingly put his career in danger? Or was this another ploy? Why would he take those kinds of chances? It made no sense. “I didn’t ask for help,” she finally said.

  “Right. I know you didn’t. But doesn’t it mean something that you didn’t have to ask?”

  The door opened again, and it was Tom. Isabelle felt a little numb watching him. A little removed. Her whole world was foggy and confused.

  He collapsed into the chair next to Mary and started filling her in, but Isabelle didn’t hear much of what he said. He wasn’t looking at her now, so she could watch him. He didn’t look sincere or convincing or earnest. He didn’t look as if he was trying to talk anyone into anything, and God, she’d seen that look a hundred times on the faces of a hundred cops.

  Tom looked tired. Worried. He looked like a man who was trying to solve a problem. The problem of her.

  She hated him. She really did. But she’d trusted him from the start. Either her instincts were good or she was completely broken, in which case, what did any of this matter?

  And she didn’t want to run anymore. She wanted this over. She wanted to be done with it for good. Maybe she could trust him. And if she couldn’t, there’d never be anyone to trust. Ever.

  She licked her lips, but her mouth was so dry it didn’t work, so she swallowed hard and licked her lips one more time so she could speak. “He gave me a gun,” she said.

  Tom stopped talking, and they both turned to her. “What did you say?” he asked.

  Isabelle wasn’t sure she could speak the words again. She never thought she’d say them even once. But she looked into his green eyes, so new and so familiar, and she said it one more time. “My dad. He gave me a gun. He told me to get rid of it and never tell anyone. I hid it instead.”

  “This was after the shooting?” Tom asked, his body straining closer, face intense.

  “Yes. Just before he ran.”

  “You still have it?” he asked.

  “Yes. At first I thought it was his, but then I realized they already had the gun he’d used in the shooting. Why would this one be so important? Why was everyone looking for it?”

  “Isabelle—” he started, but she couldn’t stop talking now.

  “Who was I supposed to give it to?” she rushed on before Tom could interrupt. “Who could I trust? If I chose the wrong person and the gun disappeared, I’d be the last one who knew it had ever existed. I’d be a loose end.”

  She gulped in a breath, embarrassed at the strained, high sound of it.

  His hand curved around hers and squeezed. “Listen. Isabelle. If you give me the gun, you won’t be the only one who knows. I’ll know. Mary will know. My boss will know. My whole team. You can tell your friends, too, and you won’t be alone.”

  She nodded, and when she spoke again, she couldn’t produce more than a whisper. “I think it’s the gun used to fire the first shot. I think it belongs to whoever wanted that cop dead in the first place.”

  Tom nodded. He was squeezing her hand too hard, hurting her fingers, but when she looked down, she realized it was her hand wrapped around his. Her knuckles were white.

  “We were the same age, you know. Me and that girl my father killed. It was one of her first big busts, and she was protective. That’s all. That’s why she noticed the drugs missing from holding. She was trying to do her job, and she didn’t know yet that she wasn’t supposed to.”

  She let go of Tom’s hand and wrapped her own fingers together to hold tight. “He still treated me like his little girl, like I was still too precious and innocent to take on the world, and he shot that girl in the back while she was running for her life. My dad did that.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Tom murmured.

  She nodded. “I just want it over. I don’t care anymore. Just keep them away from me.”

  “Is it at your cabin?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Mary,” Tom said softly. “Can you handle things here while I drive Isabelle home?”

  She heard them discussing something quietly, but Isabelle didn’t pay any attention. She couldn’t be bothered. Nothing mattered except getting this over with.

  She’d known the gun was key to everything, but it had also been the thing keeping her alive. If she had the gun, or even if she only knew where her father was with the gun, then she was both dangerous and valuable. Without it, she was nothing. Just a possible link that would be safer to eliminate than ignore.

  Making her disappear would’ve been the easiest thing in the world. A few people would’ve suggested to the press that she’d run away to live with her fugitive father, and no one would’ve even looked for her body. That was what her dad had left her with. No protection. No security. No love.

  She realized Tom was speaking to her and looked up. “What?”

  “I won’t put the cuffs back on you, but we’re probably going to pass Gates, so wear your coat loose and hold your hands together.”

  She nodded and shrugged on her coat. There were no marks on her wrists. The cuffs had been loose enough that she probably could have slipped out of them if she’d been willing to hurt herself. But she could still feel them there, the cool steel of them on her flesh. She clasped her hands together and let Tom take her arm.

  She heard Gates yell something at Tom as soon as they hit the parking lot. The FBI agent popped out of a parked car with his cell phone to his ear.

  Tom’s hand on her arm kept her moving, but she stared at Gates as he strode across the lot, trying to discern some evil on his face, but he looked like anyone else. Maybe he hadn’t been bought out. Maybe he was only a dedicated federal agent. If so, she didn’t have to feel the least bit guilty. He’d be thrilled to have the case solved.

  When he was almost on them, his foot slipped on an icy patch of slush, and Isabelle looked down to his shiny brown dress shoes. They weren’t practical here. They weren’t practical in Chicago at this time of year. And they looked very, very expensive.

  Tom opened the back door of the SUV, and she slipped in without looking at Gates again. He kept yelling at Tom, asking where the hell Tom thought he was taking her. Tom remained calm. “I’m booking her into the county jail. You can see her in a few hours, I’m sure, once she’s out of processing.”

  Gates shouted about making sure Tom lost his job, but Tom just got in the SUV and pulled away.

  Isabelle bit her lip. Maybe he really was going to lose his job.

  His phone rang, but he only glanced at it. “My boss,” he murmured.

  “Does he know what you’re doing?”

  “I’ll call him as soon as I have the gun.”

  She didn’t want to ask, but she did. “Will that be okay?”

  “It’ll be fine,” he said. She didn’t press for the truth.

  She stared out the window at the mountains she passed every day and still felt humbled by. It was cloudy today, and she wa
s thankful for that. The typical azure Jackson sky would’ve been too much to take when she felt like a mass of open gray wounds.

  “Why did you sleep with me?” she asked, her breath fogging the window. “After you found out who I was.”

  He didn’t answer. After a dozen heartbeats of silence, she looked up to see him watching her in the rearview mirror.

  “Why did you sleep with me?” he asked. “When you knew I was the last person you should be around?”

  She turned her head to hide the tears that sprang to her eyes. She hoped he couldn’t see, because she couldn’t stop them this time. She’d slept with him because it had made her so happy. His body, his mouth, his need. Because it had felt so right, and she hadn’t known that he was gathering information about her with every touch.

  It had felt real.

  She didn’t say anything else. Instead, she used the last ten minutes of the drive to numb herself again and make sure her eyes were dry by the time they pulled onto her lonely little road.

  It hadn’t been real.

  Reaching for the door before Tom could open it for her, she got out and walked toward her porch without a word. He followed her into her house and down the hallway to her bedroom. She didn’t look at the twisted covers and rumpled sheets of her bed as she moved to the bathroom and her closet beyond.

  She tossed her coat on the floor and pulled the attic door down, then got the ladder secured just as Tom was reaching to help. She didn’t need help; she just needed him to do his job. “There’s not enough room for both of us,” she muttered before heading up the ladder. It wasn’t strictly true, but there wasn’t enough room to be in the tiny space without bumping into each other with every movement. She couldn’t touch him that way.

  She climbed up to the small finished area of the attic, but within ten steps, she was walking on beams. She passed the chimney and carefully put her foot onto one of the joists that angled up from the floor, then grabbed a rafter above her head and pulled herself up. Eight feet up, where the chimney was flush with a rafter, sat the bundle she’d put there on the day she’d moved in.

  Dust clouded around her as she pulled the awkward package down. She tucked it under her arm, then reached blindly back with one foot to find the wood beneath her. Hands circled her waist. She didn’t even jump in surprise. Of course he’d come up to help. He couldn’t keep away from her secrets.

  “Try not to step through my ceiling,” she muttered as she turned and shooed him away, but her skin still tingled from his grip. How could she want him when she hated him so much?

  He descended the ladder first then reached for her again. She couldn’t scream at him not to, because she didn’t want him to know how much it affected her, so she gritted her teeth at the way his hands framed her hips before they slid up her waist in a torturous imitation of lust. In that moment, she wanted him to push for more. She wanted him to press her to the ladder and push his cock against her ass to show that she’d made him hard. She wanted his mouth on her neck, kissing her even as she cursed and screamed for him to get his hands off her. She wanted him to ignore all her hatred and force her to do what she really wanted. Because she did want it. And she despised herself for it.

  She’d never understood angry sex. She’d never been able to fathom how you could want someone you were pissed at. But she got it now, because with some people it was about the animal that lurked beneath the civilized being you showed the rest of the world.

  She never wanted to speak to him again, but she’d fuck him at the drop of a hat.

  His hands had left her, and she was standing with her forehead pressed to one of the rough wooden rungs of the sliding ladder. He took the package from her and set it aside.

  “Isabelle? Are you okay?” She felt his body heat hovering so near. He wanted to touch her. She wanted him to.

  She shook her head, feeling the wood press into her skin as a tear dropped straight from her eye and landed on her wrist. “No,” she whispered.

  His fingers brushed her neck. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured. She tipped her head, wanting him to touch more, and then his mouth was there, warm and whispering, “I’m sorry,” against her skin, and she sobbed.

  “Don’t cry,” he said. “Please.” But he didn’t stop kissing her neck, and his hands were at her waist again, and this time they kept sliding up to cup her breasts as she pressed her ass to his hips.

  He was hard for her and she groaned, pain and need all mixed up in her chest, the tendrils of it brushing between her legs.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, but his cock didn’t regret anything. His cock was thick and long and eager against her ass as she rubbed into him.

  His hands slid down again, reaching for the button of her jeans, and she could feel the way his fingers trembled against the bare skin of her stomach. He whispered her name, asking for permission, maybe, but she wouldn’t give it to him. She wouldn’t ask for this.

  In the end, he didn’t wait for her word. His hand slid inside her jeans and into her panties, and she was soaked and slick beneath his fingers. “Oh, fuck, Isabelle.”

  She nodded as another tear dropped to her hand. She put that hand over his and moved him lower until he could curl his fingers into her.

  She didn’t say yes, but she moaned and ground her ass tighter to his cock.

  Tom cursed beneath his breath, and for a moment she was worried he’d stop, but he didn’t stop. He drew his hand free and pulled down her jeans with two vicious tugs that left her skin feeling raw. She heard his zipper open. Heard the crumpling sound of a condom wrapper. She reached behind her and found his hip as she shifted her feet back and watched his stance spread wider behind hers. His cock rubbed against her aching pussy. Isabelle held tight to the ladder and arched back to tilt her hips higher.

  He pushed slowly into her, stretching her carefully, trying not to hurt her. Didn’t he know she was hurt already?

  She dug her fingers into his hip and pressed her ass back hard, and he sank deep into her, setting off exactly the ache she wanted. But he was still too careful. Still trying to read her. His hand rose to her neck, fingers spreading gently up her jaw to her tear-wet face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Isabelle, please...”

  She turned her head and bit his wrist, making him hiss and jerk away from her. “I hate you,” she growled as she pulled his hips back to her and sank his cock deep again. “I hate you.”

  “Goddamn it, Isabelle,” he said, but he finally gave her what she wanted. He fucked her. Hard. No sweet words or caresses or care. He sank his cock into her over and over as her hands went tighter and tighter on the ladder.

  His hands joined hers, gripping the wood just above her hands, and he pounded into her. She focused on those lovely hands, his knuckles turning white, tan skin and golden hair disappearing beneath the white cuff of his dress shirt. She watched the tendons strain beneath his skin, and she took his cock, and it was exactly what her body wanted.

  The anger and lust built inside her until she couldn’t take it anymore. “Come,” she ordered, the power of it intoxicating. The power of making him want her past all his good intentions and morals and guilty feelings. “Come for me,” she moaned.

  This time he didn’t hold himself still. There was nothing subtle about this. His thrusts grew short and brutal and fast, and then he grunted against her neck, his breath hot and heavy on her skin as he came.

  Every muscle in her body trembled. Her pussy ached. Her forehead hurt where she’d scraped it on the wood.

  His breath calmed a little. He loosened one hand from its hold and slid it down her shoulder. “Let me make you come,” he whispered, his fingers trailing down her stomach.

  “No,” she said, straightening until his cock was free of her, one last, long slide of unexpected pleasure. “I don’t want to.”

  “What?”

  She tugged up her jeans and swiped at the tears on her face. “I don’t want to come.” Not with him here. Later, when she was al
one, she’d think of this and get off, but she couldn’t do it in front of him. Not now.

  “Isabelle—” But she ducked under his arm and left him there. He followed her to the bedroom a minute later. “If you didn’t want—”

  “I wanted it,” she said tersely. “But I don’t want to come for you.”

  He looked hurt and confused, as if she’d slapped him hard. She tipped her head toward the package under his arm. “You have the gun. You can go now.”

  “Jesus,” he breathed.

  “I don’t want to see you again,” she said.

  He stared for a long moment before he seemed to snap from his shock. He stood a little straighter and wiped the confusion from his face. “We’ll need statements and—”

  “Then send Mary to talk to me. Or someone else. Just not you.”

  He looked around, his gaze jumping over the room before he shook his head. “It might not be safe for the next twenty-four hours or so. Gates won’t know—”

  “I’ll stay with Lauren,” she said. “Sophie’s there, too. I’ll be fine.”

  He opened his mouth then closed it. Finally, he took a deep breath and shook his head. “All right. If that’s the way you need it to be. But this isn’t what I want. All of this...” He waved a hand toward her sad, rumpled bed. “All of this was...”

  “Goodbye, Tom.”

  His hand fell to his side. He watched her. He watched for so long that she was afraid her mask would crack and she’d lose it and let out all the tears inside her. But she held tight to her control, and he finally gave up.

  “Goodbye, Isabelle,” he said.

  He walked out, but he didn’t leave. He sat outside in his truck for nearly thirty minutes, making phone call after phone call. Finally, a marked sheriff’s truck pulled up next to him. They spoke for a long moment while Isabelle watched through the window, afraid she’d made Tom so angry that he’d changed his mind and was going to have her taken to jail after all.

  But then the sheriff’s vehicle pulled away and parked on the road just below her driveway, and Tom finally drove off. He’d left someone to watch over her.