Vision of Darkness (D.I.E. Squadron Book 1)

by Tonya Burrows

  When he finally forced himself to pull away for air, she gazed at him with bewildered wonder. He felt dazed, himself, and slightly dizzy. He stared into those blue eyes and lost all intelligent thought to heady primitive instinct. He’d known her a little less than a week, yet he knew he wanted this woman more than he’d wanted any other, in ways beggaring description. He watched the tip of her tongue trace over pale lips as if she was still savoring the taste of his kiss. Inside his chest, his heart galloped. Inside his pants, his cock hardened to the point of exquisite pain.

  Tears spilled over Pru’s cheeks. Her sexy lower lip quivered.

  Did she have any idea how enchanting she was?

  “You jerk,” she whispered. “That was low, using sex to manipulate me.”

  Alex jolted and the fog of lust instantly lifted from his brain. “Whoa, that’s not what—I didn’t mean—”

  Shit. He had been manipulating her, even though it hadn’t been a conscious decision. He let her back away and made no move to keep her close, sensing she needed the space.

  Forget the doghouse. He was in the outhouse.

  “I’m not turning you away,” Pru said after an agonizing moment. “God knows I should, but—well, I’m not.” She met his gaze and fire lit her blue eyes. No lingering hint of dazed lust. “I am way pissed at you right now. You can stay in the room upstairs, but keep away from me. I’d rather not see you again tonight.” She turned, climbed the porch steps, and disappeared behind the slapping screen door.

  Feeling like an ass, Alex rubbed a hand around the back of his neck. What the fuck had happened to his impulse control?

  CHAPTER 13

  Alex bolted upright in bed with a gasp, jolting out of a dream that began fading from memory the moment his eyes popped open. Reflexively, he grabbed for the thin gold cross that hung around his neck. The nightmares were getting more gruesome, more detailed, more disturbing.

  God. He must truly be one of the damned.

  An impatient woof drew his attention to Triton, who sat on the bed next to him, sloppy pink tongue hanging from the side of his mouth.

  “Hey there, boy.”

  The dog’s tail beat against the mattress. Alex gave an unsteady chuckle as Triton flopped over, offering up a hairless belly for scratching. No wonder Pru adored the pooch.

  “Guess I’m not a threat anymore, huh. What are you doing in here?” He checked his watch after petting the dog. It was after ten in the morning.

  “Aw, hell.” He jumped out of bed. The excitement of yesterday must have taken a bigger toll on him than he’d realized; he’d been out for over twelve hours. He padded to the bathroom, relieved himself and showered. When he got back to his room, he discovered Triton amusing himself by chewing a hole in a pair of dirty boxer shorts.

  “Aw, man, Tri. Those are new. Or, they were.” He dressed in his favorite pair of jeans and a UMass Boston T-shirt, then tried to pry the underwear from the dog. “C’mon, leave ‘em alone.”

  Triton tugged and play-growled, his butt up in the air, his tail wagging. Alex let go of the boxers. “Okay, you win. But I bet there’s something tastier for breakfast downstairs.”

  He whistled and the dog bounded off the bed, zipping past him to thunder down the stairs to the front door.

  On the stairway landing, Alex paused and studied the photograph of Lovie True. A lump of dread took up residence midway between his heart and Adam’s apple. She seemed to have a bigger smile today, as if she knew about his dreams and mocked him for them.

  There was something about that smile….

  The lighting in the stairway changed, dimmed. It was dark outside, and a candle lantern hung from his hand, casting soft triangles of yellow onto the wall.

  What the hell?

  He blinked, rubbed a hand over his eyes, and gazed around. The house looked the same, but the photo’s frame had morphed from glossy bronze to faded pine. The print looked newer. Fine cracks caused by time had filled in, with every shade between black and gray defined to highlight the beauty of the smiling woman.

  Floorboards creaked overhead. “Where are you going?”

  He whipped around, his heart leaping into his throat as his gaze jumped from the photo to the woman at the top of the stairs. She stood there, blonde hair bobbed and curled up around her cheeks, eyes heavily painted with black liner, and lips smeared a wild, racy red.

  Lovie.

  The hem of her green dress barely covered her to mid-thigh and a spike of hot resentment shot through him. Was she trying to look like a vamp? Didn’t she know what they whispered about her in town?

  It doesn’t matter, he reminded himself and sucked in a breath. After tonight, what she did would no longer be his concern. Soon he would be rid of her.

  “You got wax in your ears?” Lovie demanded.

  “The light needs tending,” he said. The voice was his, but without a hint of his Boston accent. “You know this.”

  “God, you and that damn lighthouse. Don’t futz around up there all night. Dinner’s almost finished.”

  Triton barked. Alex staggered as pain tore through his skull and caught himself against the railing. Blinking, he touched his temple, half expecting blood, the headache was so bad. Everything was normal. No blood. Daylight poured through the windows. He no longer carried a lantern. Nobody stood at the top of the stairs scowling at him.

  Great. It was happening while he was awake now. Dreams he could brush off, but hallucinations….

  “Goddammit. I’m not crazy. I’m not.”

  You sound like Theo now, his inner cynic taunted.

  Theo.

  Jesus, he hadn’t heard from Theo in—three, four days? No, that couldn’t be right. He dug his phone out of his pocket and, blinking against the pain in his head, he scrolled through the missed calls. Several from Sully and Nick, one from Kai and one from Trisha, his ex-lover in Boston. None from Theo. Strange.

  Alex called up the hospital’s number from his phone’s memory. He waited through several rings then a chirpy woman answered. He asked for Romano. The doctor was in a meeting.

  “Is there someone else available?” he asked. “This is Alex Brennan. I’m calling to check up on my brother, Theo Macartan. I haven’t heard from him in a couple days.”

  “One moment. I’ll see if a nurse can take your call.”

  Alex waited, listening to sleepy hold music, and felt eyes burning holes in his skull. His gaze landed on the smiling photo of Lovie True.

  “Creepy-ass picture.” He turned his back on it and walked down the stairs as someone picked up the line.

  “Mr. Brennan?” The new voice was older and thick with a smoker’s rasp. “This is Lilith Morgan. I’m an RN here at Our Lady. I understand you have some questions regarding your brother?”

  “I haven’t heard from him in several days,” Alex said. “He calls me at least once a day, usually more. Last time I talked to him, on Wednesday, he had a bit of an episode.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that. He sent one of the aides to the emergency room.”

  Alex swallowed hard. “Have there been other episodes since then?”

  “I can’t go into the specifics about his condition over the phone without Dr. Romano’s okay, but I can tell you we’ve had to segregate him from the rest of the patients. If you’d like, I can have Dr. Romano call you when he has some free time to discuss the matter further.”

  “Please. I’d appreciate it.” After a wooden goodbye, Alex disconnected the call. He pressed the phone to his forehead, squeezing back the tears blurring his vision. Theo was getting worse. The nurse hadn’t said so, but she didn’t need to. It was all in the way she’d handled the call.

  Triton whimpered and scratched at the front door’s frame.

  “Yeah, I’m comin’.” Alex yanked himself back together. He dropped the phone into his pocket and pushed the door open. “You’re not gonna run off and chase cars on me, are ya?”

  Triton streaked by in a flash of black fur and danced around the yar
d until he realized Alex hadn’t followed. The mutt circled around and raced back to the porch to wiggle around his feet.

  “Okay, okay. Sheesh, I’ll play with ya.” He sighed and bent over, scooping up a well-worn tennis ball from the empty flowerpot by the porch steps. “Here you go.” He threw the ball, and the dog bounced after it, kicking up clouds of dead leaves.

  Alex scanned the yard. Chilled air filled his lungs, so salty he could taste it with each breath he took. Triton’s happy barking and the rhythmic crashing of waves against the rocky beach below the house punctured the heavy autumn silence.

  Where was Pru?

  The old rocking chair behind him creaked and groaned, as if someone had settled into it. He turned, expecting Pru, but the seat was empty, moving gently on its sloped legs. That old Boston rocker seemed to have a mind of its own. He hadn’t once seen it motionless since he arrived.

  He reached out and stopped the chair and a faint wisp of cigar smoke touched his nostrils before the wind carried it away. An icy shudder rattled through him.

  What was it about this place that set his nerves on edge?

  Triton returned and dropped the slobbery ball into Alex’s hand. He sucked in a breath and gazed down at a goofy doggie grin.

  “Thanks, boy,” he said and meant it. He’d needed the distraction.

  He strolled to the end of the porch and chucked the ball far over the embankment onto the beach beside the house. Pru was down there. Dressed in a dark green windbreaker jacket and jeans with her hair loose and dancing on the wind, she strolled along the beach, occasionally picking something up to add to the red bucket she carried. Silhouetted against the sky and ocean, she looked almost mythical, a hazy figment of the sea’s imagination.

  It was all so…familiar.

  He snorted at his thoughts. “Get a grip, man.”

  The ball landed several feet from her. She looked up and waved. “Hey!”

  His hands tightened on the porch railing as he remembered her flat-out rejection of him last night after he kissed her, and the ache in his heart returned with a raging vengeance. He watched her climb the creaky wood steps up the embankment with Triton, ball in mouth, trotting at her side.

  “Hi,” he called back.

  “I was wondering when you’d wake up,” she said, breathless from the hike up the stairs. She set the shell-filled bucket on the porch step and sat down next to it, brushing dirt off her feet. She had her jeans rolled mid-way up her calf and, for the first time, he noticed the delicate rose above her right ankle. It looked familiar too, but he couldn’t put a finger on where he’d seen it before.

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh.” She stretched out her leg and studied the tattoo. “I got it when I decided to make the move here. I’ve always sort of wanted a tattoo but Owen, my ex, hated them. When he left me and I pulled myself back together, I—” She shrugged and laughed. “Well, I guess I rebelled like a teenager. I wanted to start over, do something out of character. Kind of immature of me, huh?”

  “Nah. I did it too after my granddad died.” He lifted his pant leg to show her the stylized bulldog tattooed to his calf, and she arched a brow.

  “A bulldog?”

  “It’s a Marine thing.” He dropped his pant leg. “What about yours? A rose in a glass case?”

  “It’s a Disney movie thing. The enchanted rose from Beauty and the Beast.”

  He snapped his fingers. “That’s where I’ve seen that before.”

  Pru stared at him for a second, then laughed. “You watch Disney movies?”

  “Uh…” Shit, his inner cynic said. Now what, genius? “No. I mean, not regularly. I had a friend with a daughter who loves Disney Princesses, and I babysat her a couple times. Enough to know each of the Princesses by name.” It was the truth, sort of. Only the “friend” was notorious in the Irish mafia and he’d used the babysitting gig to help gain the guy’s trust and climb the ranks closer to Nolan O’Shaughnessy. But she didn’t need to know that part of it.

  Triton brought the ball back. Grateful for the distraction, Alex tossed it again, as far out into the yard as he could manage.

  Pru linked her hands over her knees and smiled, watching her dog catch the ball mid-flight. “I see Triton has conned you into playing his favorite game.”

  “Yeah, I suppose I’m no longer the enemy.” He leaned on the porch railing and said nothing more for several minutes, hoping to let the words sink in. See, Pru? Your suspicious pooch trusts me, so why can’t you?

  The silence became uncomfortable.

  “All right.” She unlinked her hands and turned toward him, her gaze direct. “I get it. You’re pissed off because of last night.”

  “No, I’m not.” He sighed and scrubbed his face with one hand, beard stubble rasping his palm. He hadn’t shaved in three days and probably looked like a caveman. Rather felt like one too with the way he wanted to grab Pru, toss her over his shoulder, and find the nearest bed.

  “I’m…” He searched for the right word. This civilized, talking-about-your-feelings shit was hard. “Frustrated.”

  “Because I won’t hop into bed with you?”

  Lying probably wouldn’t win him any points. “Partly,” he said.

  “I had a right to react the way I did. Wade died—” Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat. “And Sheriff Forbes put you in jail. Then when you came back, you tell me my worst nightmare may be coming true. It was a hell of a day.”

  “I’m not arguing that.”

  “Then what?”

  Damn, he didn’t want to say it. She’d no doubt think he was nuts, but he couldn’t find another way to make her understand.

  “What?” she prompted.

  Alex tunneled his hands in his hair. “Okay. I get these…feelings…about things sometimes.”

  She stared at him for a long time. He waited, dread churning in his gut, sure she was going to burst out laughing.

  “You do?” Her tone was curious rather than sarcastic. It fortified him. He exhaled in a rush.

  “Always have.”

  “You mean like a psychic?”

  “No. Shit, I’m not crazy enough to think I’m psychic.” He dropped to the step next to her and rested his elbows on his knees. “Just feelings. Intuition. I don’t know how else to explain it, but I’ve never been wrong.”

  Pru looked away from him, out over the yard. He could see her throat work under her creamy skin as she swallowed. “And you have one of these feelings about me?”

  “Not you. Not like that. But I’ve felt…wrong since I came into town and it’s driving me bonkers. Hell, I don’t even know what prompted me to come here in the first place. I was headed west when I left the city, but I got as far as Albany and had this urge to go north. I drove here like—like I knew where I was going.”

  Alex paused, waited until she turned toward him, and held her gaze. “I’ve never been this far into Maine before. There’s no way I could have known.”

  Her teeth sank into her lower lip, drawing his gaze to her mouth. Such kissable lips. He wondered if her nether lips—and all her soft, pink woman parts—were just as kissable, then immediately cursed himself for the thought. Not the time for a hard-on. Of course, his cock didn’t listen. He shifted away from her body and ignored the strawberry scent of her shampoo as the wind played through her hair. His fingers itched to touch the black silk, wind it around his hand and drag her mouth to his.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid to sit down so close to her.

  Pru hugged herself, pushing her breasts up with her arms. Under the windbreaker, she wore a V-neck shirt and he caught a glimpse of cleavage as she moved. He almost groaned. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she was torturing him on purpose, but she was so oblivious to her own sexiness, she had no idea how much she tantalized a guy’s fantasies.

  “The other night you asked me about murders in the lighthouse,” she said. “Is that because of this feeling you’re having?”

  The only feeling he had rig
ht now was raging lust.

  Hah. She’d slap him if he said that. Alex jerked his gaze from her chest and tried to focus on the question, but it took a moment for the blood to pump back to his brain.

  “Maybe,” he hedged. “I don’t really know what prompted me to ask that. At the time, it seemed important.”

  “So we should check it out.” She climbed to her feet and dusted off her ass, right at eye level. Alex’s mind went blank and all of his blood rushed back to another, more southern portion of his anatomy. The spit dried in his mouth. Man, those blue jeans were sinful the way they hugged that round bottom like a second layer of skin.

  He gave himself a mental kick. Mind on the task at hand, Al—though he would very much like to have her ass at hand instead. He shook his head and struggled to pick up the thread of the conversation again.

  Murders. Lighthouse.

  Right. She wanted to investigate.

  “We should?” he asked.

  “Well, you don’t know why you came to town, but it felt important so you did. You don’t know why you asked me if there had been any murders, but it felt important too. So we should at least research it. What can it hurt?” She shrugged and held out a hand to help him up. “And I happen to know the perfect person to ask.”

  ***

  Charming in a way Alex couldn’t immediately explain, the one-story cape cod had the look of a pair of timeworn, well-loved boots. Yellow paint peeled off the sunburned siding to show specks of gray underneath. The front yard boasted a wild tumble of flowers and a menagerie of stone animal figurines behind a white fence badly in need of painting. A woman with a long braid tossed over one shoulder sat on the front porch, waving at them with the ear of corn she had been husking when they pulled into the drive.