by Lissa Ford
Rowan woke with a startled snort when the cellphone rang again insistently, and flailed toward the nightstand. Jude heard scuffles when it fell on the floor, a muttered “shit,” then a beep followed by a muzzy-sounding: “Muir.”
Jude rolled over.
In the early morning gloom, Rowan’s naked back was a pale blur as he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Jude resisted the temptation to reach out and run his fingers over Rowan’s exposed skin and down the length of spine disappearing to the inviting shadow of Rowan’s ass cleft.
“You got Cyber’s report?” Rowan was saying. He’d hunched over the phone, trying to speak quietly. “Good. The suspect is in the north hold? Even better. Give me thirty, I’ll be in.”
Jude cleared his throat. When Rowan turned inquiringly, he lifted a hand and held up one finger.
“Shit, wait!” Rowan eyed Jude’s long length. Even in the morning gloom, Jude could see a flush beginning to imbue Rowan’s sleep warmed skin “I need an hour, erm, make that an hour and a half. Tully isn’t going anywhere.”
Rowan beeped off and tossed the phone on the table before falling back into Jude’s welcoming arms.
After a quickie to take care of mutual morning wood, Rowan showered while Jude tried to figure out how to work the coffee grinder for Rowan’s special organic Sumatran coffee beans.
“Can’t you just drink Folgers like the rest of the civilized world?” Jude complained when Rowan entered the kitchen, shrugging into a dress shirt.
“I only put the best in my body.” Rowan gave Jude’s bulge, obscenely framed by Rowan’s too-small sweats, a significant look.
“Huh, well, can’t argue with that.” Jude peered into the pantry. “What the fuck is Kashi?”
“It’s good for you.” Rowan opened the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of green juice and chugged. “Stay put here today. Okay?”
Jude slowly closed the door to the pantry. “I can’t. I need to go home and feed the horses. I need a change of clothes. I need my goddamn Folgers.”
“Call that Kyle kid to feed your horses again. I’ll bring home some shitty coffee for you. As for the clothes…I like seeing you prance around my house half-naked.”
Jude gave a sputtering laugh despite his rising annoyance.
“It’s just until we figure out who was behind the hit-and-run attempt.”
“That could take weeks.”
“No, it won’t.” Rowan grabbed his keys out of a plastic blue potato chip bowl with the words “Go Syracuse!” emblazoned in neon orange. “Tully is sitting in lockup as we speak. It’s gonna take an hour, maybe a day, tops before he cracks. Cyber has Gruber’s cellphone data now. It’s being analyzed, and his last hours retraced. We’re close to solving this homicide.”
“Then there should be no problem with me going home. Today.”
“Jude…” Rowan said warningly.
“I need my meds.” There. He said it. He rubbed his aching leg. “I take more than just Xanax and Tylenol.”
“Oh.” Rowan started to say something, bit his lip, then asked, “Such as?”
“Osteoporosis-type shit to help strengthen my messed up femur, some…other stuff.” No way was he mentioning the homeopathic anti-anxiety remedies.
Jude had to admit Rowan kept a pretty good poker face, considering. “I’ll send a uniform to grab them.” He stepped closer to Jude and ran a thumb along Jude’s jaw. “I’ll have them pack a change of clothes, too. Whatever you need. Just…I need to know you’re safe while I’m gone.”
Jude’s heart began to slam at the tenderness in Rowan’s eyes. “Last night,” Jude began, then bit his lip. “Last night was…was…”
“Yeah?” Rowan asked when Jude faltered to silence. Apprehension crept into Rowan’s expression, chasing out the soft light glowing in the depths of his eyes. He stepped back from Jude, putting distance between them again.
And why wouldn’t Rowan be apprehensive? Jude was assuming something was between them that didn’t exist. He read Rowan loud and clear: keep your distance.
The foolish, vulnerable words on the tip of Jude’s tongue died. They’d only been together one night. One incredible, awesome night of the best makeup sex Jude had ever experienced. Scratch that: the best sex he’d ever had, period. Make up sex? It wasn’t like they were together and had had a fight. He and Rowan weren’t seeing each other. They weren’t even dating. They weren’t anything anymore. Who the fuck did Jude think he was to assume last night was more than one night of comfort with an ex after a scary near-miss?
Anxiety plucked at Jude and started his pulse racing. Of course Rowan wouldn’t want to get entangled with a guy who relied on meds for physical, sometimes emotional issues. Jude had almost made a huge ass of himself.
As the moment spun out, Rowan took a deep breath, as if fortifying himself to say something unpleasant. Like the dreaded, “It was nice, but” type of speech. “You have something you want to say to me, Anderson?”
So he was Anderson now. Message received. “Nope, nothing.”
To Jude’s surprise, sorrow invaded Rowan’s eyes before the emotion was quickly shuttered. “Okay. Fine. We won’t talk about it. Why would we have anything to say to each other after last night?” The last word was hurled angrily over Rowan’s shoulder as he turned away.
Jude couldn’t believe the change in Rowan’s demeanor. He gazed blankly at Rowan’s receding back, trying to process the swift mood shift. “Are you pissed off?” he asked.
“Nope, nothing,” Rowan echoed, shrugging into his coat with quick, jerky movements.
“Because you seem pissed off about something.”
“You are mistaken. Everything’s cool.”
Jude stared at Rowan’s stony face, trying to read it. “Well, good. I guess.”
Rowan had his hand on the front door knob. “Just…stay put. Okay, Jude? Please. I have to go but I’ll call you soon. About the case. I’ll call you about the case.”
Then he was gone.
Jude stood staring at the door that had closed with such finality, processing the sinking sensation that he’d fucked everything up again.
Despite the heated floorboards under his bare feet, a shiver ran through him. Actually, that wasn’t true. He’d become cold once Rowan took his warmth with him. Jude scrubbed his cheeks, feeling the stubble. Feeling a bone-deep weariness.
Feeling alone.
Jude ate a bowl of Kashi with soymilk and didn’t think much of either. His phone was nearly dead and none of Rowan’s rechargers, four in all, fit his model. Drizzling cold seeped from the atmosphere. Jude stared out over the city of Syracuse, watching the sky transition from dark gray to light gray as the sun tried to punch through the thick clouds. His bad leg ached like an old sea dog with rheumatism. Nor’easter off the starboard bow, captain. The uniform patrol officer Rowan promised would bring him his meds, including prescription-strength Tylenol and change of clothes, never showed. Jude put on his jeans and flannel shirt from yesterday.
As soon as office hours began, he used Rowan’s landline to call the vet to check on Shiloh.
Dr. Avery had good news for Jude. “She’s responding well to the treatment,” Dr. Avery told him. “She’s a tough girl. She should make a full recovery.”
Jude broke into a relieved grin. “When can I see her?”
“Give it another twenty four hours to flush out the remaining toxins and for us to get more fluids in her. Then you can take her home.”
Jude was elated. Thank God Shiloh wasn’t going to become collateral damage, after all. He’d just finished scribbling down the name of the special dog food that cost the equivalent of his weekly grocery bill when his cellphone chirped weakly. He frowned when he saw it was his neighbor, Riley’s, number. Quickly, Jude ended his call with the vet and picked up his cell.
“Your horses are out,” Riley told him without preamble, gruff and annoyed.
“What?”
“They’re out. I can see them grazing in Harper�
��s meadow from my kitchen window.”
Harper’s meadow was almost two miles from his property. “How the hell did they get all the way down there?”
“Don’t know, but there’s a storm coming. Once that lightning starts, they’ll run until they’re in the next county.”
Well, fuck. Kyle must not have latched the corral properly after he’d fed the horses last night. It flashed through Jude’s mind to call Kyle again, but after this lapse, he didn’t trust him to get the job done. Besides, the horses would just move away from someone unfamiliar, even with an enticing bucket of grain as bait. Jude would have to go catch them himself.
But Jude had promised Rowan he’d stay put.
Shit shit shit.
“Okay,” he told Riley. “Can you keep an eye on them for me in case they move? It’ll take me around an hour to get home. I’m in town.” Profound silence answered him. “Riley?”
Jude pulled his cellphone away from his ear and peered at it. Dead.
“Damn it,” he muttered. He massaged the back of his tight neck, feeling an ache in muscles that hadn’t had a sex workout in more months than he could count. Rowan was going to be livid, but Jude had no choice. Kristy trusted him to look after her beloved roans. If anything happened to Blue and Red, he knew she’d forgive him. But he wouldn’t forgive himself. She’d put up with enough from him as it was; did she have to lose her horses because of his fucked up shit, too?
From Rowan’s landline, Jude called Rowan’s cell. Predictably, it went to voicemail, where Jude left a curt message explaining the situation. The less detail he went into, the less ammo Rowan would have for bitching him out later.
Assuming Rowan was speaking to him at all now. After this morning, Jude wasn’t so sure. He got the sense that whatever had happened between them was over before it’d begun.
A miserable mist was drifting down from the foothills, shrouding the forest’s spectacular foliage in gray vapor when Jude pulled up his driveway. He got out of the truck to eerie silence. The gate to the empty corral swung gently open in the rising wind. Even the birds and squirrels had hidden away. It was fucking cold, temperature dropping in advance of the storm. Jude thought he might have even seen a few snow flurries floating gently in the wind. The yellow caution tape wrapped around the crime scene porch ruffled and snapped in the stiff breeze.
Giving the front door a wide berth, he hurried around to the back door of the cabin. He was going to need waterproof boots and his Barbour jacket for a hike down to Harper’s meadow. Gloves and hat too, while he was at it.
The cabin was dark and silent when he entered. He paused just inside the doorway, listening. Hearing nothing. Everything seemed in its place. Fly rods and tackle littered the great room, as usual. In the kitchen, the microwave’s digital clock glowed in the gloom. The air smelt stale, which was to be expected. But the atmosphere felt…off.
The back of his neck prickling, he went to the gun cabinet tucked behind the coat tree, keyed the combo and pulled out his Sig Sauer. He was acting on instinct now, going into the zone where he reacted first and thought later. He checked the ammo slide then limped toward his bedroom as noiselessly as possible. Perhaps he was overreacting. Perhaps the senses he’d honed during his years in law enforcement were playing him false…
He flicked on the light and stopped short at what he saw above the headboard of his bed.
YOU ARE MINE
Jude’s heart clobbered his chest as he stared at the lurid red lettering scrawled angrily on the plaster wall. Oh, holy fuck.
Just as he took an involuntary step backward, an explosion of pain sent stars of agony shooting behind his eyes. He dropped like a felled tree. As he lay on his bedroom floor, a pair of chucks entered his swimming vision and kicked his gun away, just before darkness engulfed him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Someone was groaning.
It took a minute before Jude realized the sounds were coming from him, and the only reason he put two and two together was each time a moan escaped, excruciating pain jackhammered his brain. Cautiously, he opened his eyes.
He was lying on the floor of his bedroom. It was still dark from the oncoming storm. He could hear the trees from the surrounding woods thrashing in the rising wind. His hands were pinned behind him; when he cautiously moved, he realized they’d been bound together, as were his feet and knees. Duct taped, in fact.
He was still processing this when he heard the sound of footsteps approaching. Tensing, he closed his eyes again and tried to will his body to go limp.
“So you’re awake? Dude, don’t try to fake it; I know you can hear me.”
Jude blinked against the sudden flare of light. The chucks came into his sightline again, as did a black duffle bag.
“Kyle.” Jude’s mouth felt thick around the name.
“I’m sorry I hit you so hard but you had a gun,” Kyle Blake said. He crouched and dropped his head until he could look Jude in the eyes. They stared at each other. Jude noted that Kyle’s expression was serene. Reasonable, even. “I knew you’d come home for those horses. You care a lot about your pets, don’t you? I hope they don’t get hurt wandering around out there.”
“You killed Travis,” Jude said.
“No, dude. You killed Travis. When you fucked him instead of me.”
Nausea rose in Jude’s throat. “You can’t be serious,” he got out. “You killed a man because you were jealous?”
“Well, he was kind of an asshole, too. I gotta say, I thought you had better taste in men than that back alley rentboy.”
Jude swallowed sickly. “How did you even know about Travis? I never told you.”
“In addition to being slutty, he was also kind of dumb. He came to FLOW and asked about you. He wanted fly fishing lessons so he could get in your pants again. Those were his exact words.”
Jude’s jaw sagged open in shock.
“I set him straight,” Kyle added, tucking Jude’s gun into the waistband of his chinos. “In a manner of speaking.”
“Why—” Jude gulped back the rising vomit. “Why did you dump Travis on my doorstep?”
“That was evil of me, wasn’t it?” Kyle grinned, his charming smile a white slash in the gloom. “I wanted to send you a message, though. Don’t fuck around. Especially if you’re gonna be with me.”
“But—but what about Amber?”
“Amber?” Kyle made a derisive noise. “Amber’s been a raging bitch lately, saying I don’t satisfy her needs or whatever. She doesn’t understand me. You do, though. You and I get along great. I thought we were feeling a connection, you know?”
Kyle leaned closer. Jude drew back as far as he could but he could still smell Kyle’s breath, tinny and rank.
“I was practically licking your dick when we went fly fishing together, but I was being a gentleman and letting you make the moves. My mistake. Now I’m the one making the moves.”
Jude stared at Kyle in horror. He had killed Travis Gruber for the most trivial of reasons, and with seemingly no remorse.
As Jude tried to take hold of his careening emotions, he thought he heard the sound of a car’s engine over the increasing wind of the oncoming storm. “Why did you poison my dog?” he asked quickly. Keep Kyle talking. Buy time.
“Dog?”
“Shiloh, my German Shepard.”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t poison your dog.” Kyle’s head cocked at the now unmistakable sound of a car powering up the driveway. “I gotta take care of some things, but I’ll be back, okay? In the meantime…” He reached into the duffle bag and pulled out a roll of duct tape.
Jude’s heart slugged his ribs. His head reared as far back on his neck as he could go when Kyle came at him with the tape, but Kyle easily wound a strip over Jude’s mouth and around his head.
Jude’s breathing sounded noisy as he tried to drag in lungfuls of air through his nose. Spots of light flecked his vision and a roaring noise filled his ears, a sign that he was on the verge of passing out.
Kyle went to the window and peeked between the blinds. “I don’t know why law enforcement has to drive ugly ass Ford sedans,” he mused. “Oh hey, it’s that dude you were having lunch with yesterday at Heid’s. Too bad I missed him. You got in the way. But you and I will be able to have lunch there together when this cop is out of the picture. I didn’t care for the way you stared at each other. I think you like him more than your average fuck.”
Kyle reached for a compound bow that had been outside of Jude’s line of vision. Jude was familiar with the model—one of FLOW’s bestsellers—aircraft-grade aluminum and cables, a type used by serious deer hunters, a bow that could fell big game like elk. The carbon rod string stop made it practically silent. Fiberglass arrows were tipped with a two-inch tungsten steel arrowheads designed to kill on the first shot.
Jude couldn’t hold back a yell of desperation, which was trapped behind the duct tape. He began to struggle against the bonds, his heart lunging into his burning throat.
“Dude, stop. You’ll only hurt yourself.” Kyle patted his shoulder as he walked past, bow in capable hand. “I’ll be back in a little while. Then we’ll have a good time.”
Kyle’s footsteps receded.
He could hear Kyle cracking open the window in the kitchen, letting in the sound of rain. That window’s sightline was hidden from the driveway but that vantage would offer a clean shot to whoever stood in the yard. Rowan would never see it coming.
Jude renewed his struggles. His bad leg throbbed and his head pounded. The duct tape cut into his wrists and he could feel blood slicking his hands. His lungs were on fire and his ragged breathing blocked almost every other sound. Fear for Rowan’s life made him lightheaded. Shit. This was not the time for a panic attack. He needed to get hold of himself, regulate his breathing and his emotional triggers, or he was going to black out from lack of oxygen and the adrenaline flooding his system. Then Rowan would be left all alone to deal with this asshole.
Kyle Blake, the fucking fly fishing clerk from FLOW, killed Travis Gruber. How could Jude have been so blind? And now Kyle was going to kill Rowan.
