Beverly Barton 3 Book Bundle

by Beverly Barton

  “Yvette came to my room because I sent for her. I needed to talk to her about you.”

  “Oh, so you want me to believe that talking to her about me was so urgent that it couldn’t wait until after breakfast.” She jerked away from Griff.

  “Yvette is my friend. We are not romantically involved. The only reason she is here at Griffin’s Rest is to help you. And the only reason she is in my bedroom is because Doug Trotter called me at five thirty to tell me that Rosswalt Everhart had contacted him and demanded that you turn on your cell phone and—”

  “Oh, my God! I barged in on you because when I turned on my phone just a few minutes ago, I had a message from him.”

  Griff grunted. “What did he say?”

  “He told me leave my phone on if I wanted to play the game and not miss my first clue.” Nic glanced past Griff to where Yvette stood just beyond the open doorway. Their gazes met for a split second and Nic knew why the woman was in Griff’s room. He had wanted to ask Yvette, as Nic’s therapist, how a call from the Hunter would affect Nic and if there was any way he could protect her from Everhart.

  “You don’t have to take his calls,” Griff said.

  Nic nodded. “Yes, I do. You know I do.” Don’t cry!

  “Nic, honey …”

  “I’m okay. I’m okay.” She slipped her cell phone into the pocket of her pajama bottoms.

  “No, you’re not.” He reached down and took her hand. “Come on back into my room and talk to me or talk to Yvette.”

  “Not now. Later.” She pulled away from Griff. “I need to grab a shower and get dressed. We’ll talk after breakfast.” She glanced from Griff to Yvette. “Maybe we won’t wait until Monday to start my therapy. There’s no rule that says we can’t start sessions on a Sunday, is there?”

  “We will begin whenever you are ready,” Yvette said.

  Just as Nic turned to go back to her bedroom, a phone rang. All three of them froze instantly.

  “It’s my cell phone,” Griff said.

  “Answer it,” Nic told him.

  He strode hurriedly into his bedroom, picked up his cell phone from the desk, and answered it. Nic hesitated, and then, avoiding eye contact with Yvette, walked straight to Griff, who was speaking in monosyllables. She knew it was the Hunter. Rosswalt Everhart. Cary Maygarden’s distant cousin and partner in a murderous killing spree that had lasted five years and had spanned from Texas to Virginia.

  Nic waited, holding her breath, Yvette Meng standing nearby, until Griff ended the conversation by slamming his phone down on the desk.

  “It was Everhart, wasn’t it?” Nic asked.

  Griff nodded.

  “What did he say?”

  Griff glanced past her and looked at Yvette.

  “No, don’t do that,” Nic told him. “This isn’t her decision to make. It’s mine. Damn it, Griff, tell me what he said.”

  “He gave me a couple of clues.”

  “Which were?” Nic’s pulse rate increased dramatically.

  Before Griff could reply, Nic’s phone rang. She tensed instantly, then thrust her hand into her pocket and yanked out her cell phone. She flipped it open.

  “Hello, Rosswalt,” she said.

  “Hello, Nicole.”

  “I got your message. And the answer is, yes, I miss you. I wish I were with you right now so that I could stab you over and over again with my makeshift knife. How did it feel, Great White Hunter, having your prey attack you and nearly kill you?”

  Silence.

  “What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” Nic taunted him.

  “She won’t be as clever as you. She won’t be able to escape. Her only hope is for you and Griff to find her before the last day of the hunt.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to play your game anymore. Maybe I don’t want to hear your damn worthless clues.”

  “Very well, if you really don’t want to play.”

  Damn son of a bitch! He knew she wouldn’t be able to resist the chance to help another victim.

  Silence.

  “Say ‘please,’” Everhart said.

  “No, never again.”

  Laughter. The memories of that sound sent shivering chills along Nic’s nerve endings.

  “Hail the conquering heroine.”

  “What?” Nic asked.

  The line went dead.

  Nic flipped her phone closed and faced Griff.

  “Nic, honey—?”

  “ ‘Hail the conquering heroine,’” Nic said. “I’m not sure if he was giving me a clue or making a statement.”

  “We’ll consider it a clue and add it to the ones he gave me.”

  “Which were?”

  “Why don’t you let the Powell Agency and the Bureau work together on these clues and you concentrate on your therapy sessions with Yvette?”

  “What were the clues?” Nic demanded.

  “ ‘Boot camp buccaneer.’“

  Nic recited the three words silently, then added them to her clue.

  “Boot camp buccaneer and hail the conquering heroine,” Griff said aloud.

  “I’m going to take a shower and get dressed,” Nic told him. “Then as soon as we grab some coffee, we’ll compare notes. You start thinking now and I’ll do the same. Separate boot, camp, and buccaneer, then put them all together, and then try two words together. And we’ll do the same with my clue.”

  When she turned to go, Griff called to her. “Nic?” “Yeah?” She looked back over her shoulder.

  “We’ll do this together, on one condition.”

  “Okay.” She eyed him questioningly.

  “You start your therapy sessions with Yvette today.”

  “You’ve got a deal. When we take a break this afternoon, I’ll let Yvette get a sneak peek inside my head.”

  Chapter 25

  Clasping his stomach as he made his way up the stairs from the cellar to the screened back porch, Pudge cursed Nicole Baxter for the millionth time since she had stabbed him in the gut and fled Belle Fleur. Once he stepped out of the dungeon darkness and into the light of the Sunday-evening twilight, he lifted his hand from his belly, inspected his palm, and groaned when he saw the bright red blood. Goddamn it! Carrying an unconscious LaTasha Davies from the speedboat to the house and then down into the cellar had put too much strain on his incision. He would have to clean up, use an antiseptic, and change shirts.

  But why was he bleeding? His incision was practically healed, wasn’t it? Maybe those damn Mexican doctors at the clinic had screwed up somehow. Maybe infection had set in or maybe the wound had healed from the outside first and was still open beneath the newly formed scar tissue.

  He didn’t want to leave the island tomorrow to seek medical attention, but if it became necessary, he would do it. He much preferred his original plan—to begin a new hunt with his recently acquired prey.

  Getting into and back out of the U.S., using his fake passport, had been even easier than he had anticipated. He’d flown into Tampa on a commercial airliner, but had returned via a private plane. After all, he didn’t want any delays in getting his precious cargo home as quickly as possible.

  Now, back in the house, he went directly to the small bathroom off the kitchen, stripped out of his shirt, and inspected the healing slash across his abdomen. The pink scar appeared the same as it had yesterday, except for a fine stripe of blood that coated half the surgical line. After removing his ruined shirt, he wiped the blood off his belly and noted that a small tear in the center of the incision was oozing blood and some sort of clear fluid.

  This was all her doing. He had suffered terribly because of her. And even now, weeks after her escape, his life was still affected by her vicious attack on him. She might think she was safe, that Griffin Powell could protect her, but the time would come when he would exact his revenge against her.

  If only that time was tonight.

  If only Nicole Baxter was in the basement, chained to the wall, awaiting his punishment.

  For now,
he would have to content himself with LaTasha. He knew she would not disappoint him. She would take to the hunt like the trained solider she was and give him many days of pleasure. And in the end, he would reward her for pleasing him by shooting her only once.

  Nic waited with Griff in his home office, counting the minutes until they heard back from Doug Trotter. They had spent most of yesterday trying to decode the Hunter’s clues. And when Griff had suspected that Nic was growing tired, he had insisted she go to bed.

  “Let me just take a break,” she’d suggested. “I can talk to Yvette for a little while, then you and I—”

  “Talk to Yvette tomorrow. You’re asleep on your feet.”

  “But Griff…”

  “You had an hour session with Yvette this afternoon. So, either I walk you to your room or I carry you. Take your pick.”

  Knowing when she couldn’t win an argument with Griff, she had allowed him to escort her upstairs. But if she’d thought that would be the end of it, she’d been wrong. He had returned thirty minutes later to find her talking on her cell phone to Josh Friedman.

  “Do I have to strip off your clothes, put you into your pajamas, and tuck you into bed?” Griff had asked.

  When he checked on her again, he had found her in bed, feigning sleep. She suspected that he knew it would take her hours to fall asleep and that her rest would be interrupted by nightmares.

  This morning, she’d had her second one-hour therapy session with Dr. Meng and the honest truth was she felt today’s little talk had been as useless as yesterday’s. Their discussion had been more like a conversation, each of them contributing information. Nic now knew where Dr. Meng had been born, who her parents had been, and where she had attended medical school. And Nic had shared similar info with the woman she still refused to call Yvette.

  By early afternoon, she and Griff had put together a possible description of someone who might be Everhart’s latest victim. But they couldn’t be sure they were right about anything. And to make matters even worse, they had no idea when the Hunter would strike again.

  Boot camp implied military training. A soldier or a sailor? A woman in the armed forces.

  Hail the conquering heroine implied that this soldier or sailor had done something heroic, something that might have put her in the spotlight, even if only briefly.

  Buccaneer had taken longer to figure out, simply because there were more possibilities. But in the end, Nic and Griff had agreed, as had half a dozen other FBI and Powell Agency minds. More than likely this final clue indicated a location. And with Griff’s penchant for sports, his first thought had been Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which translated to Tampa, Florida.

  They had surmised that Everhart’s next victim was a female soldier from Tampa, Florida, and she had recently been heralded for some type of bravery, probably in the line of duty.

  “I wish Doug would call,” Nic said as she paced back and forth in an open area of the office.

  “He’ll call as soon as he has any news.” Griff sat on the edge of the large conference table. “In the meantime, why don’t we grab a bite of supper—?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You barely touched your food at lunch.”

  “I’ll eat a big breakfast, I promise.”

  “I’m not trying to be your warden,” Griff said. “I don’t want you to feel like a prisoner here at Griffin’s Rest. Not after … Damn, Nic, all I want is to take care of you.”

  Her fingers itched to touch him, but something inside her held her back. “I know, but I need for you to just let me be me. You can’t help me any more than you already have. Some things, I have to do for myself.”

  Griff nodded. She hated that solemn expression on his face. She knew she was the cause. But if she lied to him and told him she was perfectly all right, he wouldn’t believe her and would worry about her even more.

  “If Everhart has abducted another woman, you cannot allow yourself to become obsessed with the case,” Griff said. “Your first obligation is to yourself. You have to be your top priority.”

  “Logically, I know you’re right. If I don’t find a way to completely recover emotionally and forget what happened to me, I won’t be able to do my job.”

  Griff looked at her, his gaze oddly sad. She knew he wanted to pull her into his arms and comfort her, and a part of her wanted him to. But if he touched her, she might crumble into pathetic, weepy, hysterical pieces. She couldn’t allow that to happen. It would be like pulling the pin on a grenade. Losing herself in Griff’s comfort might destroy her.

  “Nic, honey, you’re expecting too much of yourself if you believe you will ever forget what happened to you. Don’t set yourself up for defeat.”

  “I can tell you’ve been talking to Dr. Meng about me. You just quoted her, almost verbatim.”

  “Actually, I haven’t talked to Yvette about your session today. And yesterday, all I asked her was whether the first session had gone well and she said that it had. If I sound as if I’m quoting her, it’s because Yvette has been my therapist for a long time.”

  “She’s been your therapist?” Nic frowned. “I don’t understand. Why would she—?”

  The office phone rang. Nic gasped. Griff picked up the receiver and motioned for Nic to grab one of the two extensions.

  “Powell, this is Doug Trotter.”

  “Yeah, Trotter. Nic is on the extension,” Griff said. “She’s anxious to hear what you’ve found out.”

  Trotter cleared his throat. “Nic, are you sure you want to hear this?”

  “I’m sure I need to know the truth,” she told him.

  “Okay, here goes. This morning around seven, Corporal LaTasha Davies went for a walk around her old Tampa neighborhood. Sort of a last good-bye before she reported back to active duty. She was scheduled to report in first thing tomorrow morning and was to be shipped back to Iraq within a week.”

  Nic held her breath.

  “And?” Griff prompted.

  “Corporal Davies disappeared. She never returned home to spend the rest of the day with her daughter, mother, and other family members.”

  “Is it possible that she simply went AWOL?” Griff asked.

  “Not likely. Davies has an exemplary record and—”

  “He’s got her!” Nic said as nausea burned a path up her esophagus.

  “We have no evidence that she was abducted,” Doug said. “But considering the fact that the clues Everhart gave you match up with Davies’s ID and she’s now missing, the odds are he has kidnapped her and has taken her to only God knows where.”

  “If we don’t find her, he’ll kill her,” Nic said, her voice quivering slightly. “But before he kills her, he will put her in chains and he’ll starve her and beat her and—” Nic dropped the phone and ran out of the office.

  “Nic!” Griff called to her.

  She raced to the nearest bathroom, about ten feet down the hall and on the left. She just made it to the commode and managed to flip up the lid before she upchucked. After lifting her head and taking a deep breath, she fought the tears threatening to overtake her. Salty bile rose to her throat. She bent over and threw up again.

  She saw Griff in her peripheral vision. He filled the powder room doorway, his shoulders as broad as the opening.

  “Nic, honey …”

  He reached out and placed his hand on her back.

  She tensed, then gagged and dropped to her knees on the floor before vomiting again, this time emptying her stomach. While she struggled to calm her agitated nerves, she heard water running.

  Griff knelt down beside her and wiped her face with a soft, damp cloth, washing away the perspiration from her brow and the spittle from her mouth. When he slid his arm around her waist and helped her to her feet, she started to protest, to tell him she neither wanted nor needed his help. But for the life of her, she couldn’t manage to pull away from him or form the words of protest on her lips. Instead, she leaned on him.

  “Better?” he asked.
<
br />   She nodded.

  “Do you want to go upstairs and lie down for a while?”

  “No. I’ll be all right.” She tried to smile, but the effort failed. “What about Doug? Did you hang up on him? You need to call him back and get all the information—”

  Griff tapped his index finger on her lips. “Trotter gave us all the relevant information he had. Right now, he’s doing what he can.”

  “We need to—”

  He tapped her lips again. “At this point, there is nothing we can do.”

  Nic heaved a deep sigh. “Everhart is going to put her through a living hell.” Nic turned and buried her face against Griff’s chest. “Oh, God, Griff, you have no idea what it will be like for her.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and held her.

  That night, long after everyone else had gone to bed, Griff sat alone in his study, the dying embers of a warm fire glimmering in the fireplace. Tonight would be one of those nights when he wouldn’t sleep. Before Nic had been kidnapped, he had reached a point in his life where he seldom had nights like this.

  He knew that if Nic could cry, the emotional release would help her. But she hadn’t cried. Wouldn’t cry. Wouldn’t let go. She was so all-fired determined to be strong, to hold the anger and frustration inside her. And that self-control damned her to a self-inflicted purgatory.

  He understood. They were so much alike, his Nicki and he.

  Griff had managed to persuade her to eat some saltine crackers and drink a little ginger ale after her bout of vomiting. When he’d suggested she talk to Yvette again, she had refused.

  “Not another session today,” she’d said. “Maybe two sessions tomorrow.”

  Instead of talking about what she was feeling, of working through the reason she had reacted so violently to the news about LaTasha Davies’s disappearance, Nic had decided she would help Barbara Jean with plans to decorate Griffin’s Rest for the upcoming holidays. Christmas was just around the corner.

  Griff knew that Nic was grasping at any excuse not to face the reality of her situation. She wanted to believe that by acting in a normal way, doing normal things, she could prove to herself and everyone who cared about her that she was back to normal.