Lover Beware

by Christine Feehan

  A large shape coalesced out of the thicker shadows, and a weird elongated shape slid into the room. Cold welled in her stomach when she realized the strange shape was the barrel of a gun, and the reason it was so high was because the stock was resting against a man’s shoulder.

  There was a flurry of movement. A grunt erupted, followed by a vicious curse, then Michael’s figure merged with the intruder’s as he gripped the gun and wrenched it down. The detonation of the gun firing split the air with a flat crack, and a voice sounded in her ear, distant and disorientingly normal, so that it was long seconds before she registered that emergency services had picked up her call. Sweeping the panic from her mind, she answered the voice, holding a hand over her free ear to block the sound of the two men locked in combat.

  The fighting surged toward the bed as she gave her details to the operator. She shuffled back, crouching in the corner, keeping a wary eye on the struggle as the intruder fell back against her dressing table. Glass shattered, and he reeled to his feet and lunged at Rider. The edge of the bed caught Rider in the back of the knees, and he tumbled back, off balance, and rolled to the side, evading the charge by inches, and almost landing on Jane as she scrambled to the other side of the room. Rider gained his feet and the attacker came at him again, frighteningly fast, but instead of stepping in close, Rider took a step back and jerked the shadowy figure with him. This time the attacker landed on her dressing table chair and the dainty antique snapped like kindling as the two men went down on the floor.

  She heard the soggy thud of a fist connecting, a heavy grunt, then Jane darted forward and retrieved the gun, which had been dropped on the floor.

  Backing into the hallway, she slid the cell phone, which was still connected to emergency services, into her shorts pocket, and ran her hands over the weapon. She was almost certain it was a twenty-two, the same as her gun, which was under the bed. She didn’t want to use the weapon. She didn’t want to touch it, but the alternative was trying to get across the bedroom to retrieve hers without getting caught up in the fighting.

  Suppressing a shudder, she felt beneath the gun for the magazine. From the short length, she discerned that it probably held three shots, which meant, if it was fully loaded, that there were two left. She pulled the bolt into the firing position and heard a round slick into the chamber, then fitted the stock to her shoulder and aimed, but her target was a blurred whirl of muscle and shadows and the sheer savagery of the fight rendered the threat of the gun close to useless. The two men were so absorbed in the battle that they hadn’t noticed she had a gun trained on them, and the odds were that even if she did pull the trigger, she would hit Rider.

  Lowering the gun, Jane searched the room, which was gradually lightening, and spotted the battery lantern, which was now lying on its side by the wall, miraculously still intact. Setting the gun on the floor, she retrieved the lantern, turned the knob, and light spread through the room.

  The assailant was almost as tall as Rider, and brawny across the shoulders. Something about the small shape of his head compared to the width of his shoulders, his hair cut close around his skull, was familiar. Jane was sure she knew who he was, although she’d only seen him a handful of times. Earl Sooner, one of a small number of beneficiaries who were resident in and around Tayler’s Creek. He owned a small acreage on the other side of town, although most of his block was covered in gorse and bush. According to local gossip, the only productive use Earl had ever put his piece of land to was reputed to be an illegal one, although he had never actually been busted for growing cannabis.

  The fighting surged toward her again, and she scrambled back until the wall stopped her. Locked together, the two men hit the doorframe, making the whole house shudder, then reeled back into the bedroom. With a quick twist, Rider flipped Sooner onto his stomach on the floor, then went down on top of him, his knee wedged in the small of Sooner’s back, forearm pressed up tight under Sooner’s neck, arching his head back at an acute angle. Sooner’s face went red, then purple, his eyes bulging. Spittle frothed from his mouth as he fought the hold, then abruptly his eyelids drooped and he went slack in Rider’s grip.

  Rider’s gaze found hers. Blood was trickling from a cut on his cheekbone, and he had a swelling over one eye, but otherwise he appeared to be unharmed. “Have you got rope?”

  “I’ve got plenty, but it’s in the barn.”

  “Get it. I’ll make sure he doesn’t wake up anytime soon.”

  Jane didn’t hang around to ask just what Rider had done to knock Sooner out, or what measures he’d take if Sooner came back around. Jess was crouched at the bottom of the stairs, and shadowed Jane to the kitchen, whining for assurance, keeping so close, Jane kept tripping over her.

  Jane dropped a consoling pat on her head. “Me, too, girl.”

  She collected a second torch from the pantry, because the last one was outside on the lawn somewhere, and she was almost certain she’d left it turned on, so the batteries would be flat.

  The trip to the barn was unnerving. The dawn was gray and murky, the wind still strong enough that it sounded like surf pounding through the trees, and the rain drove in ghostly sheets across the yard, instantly soaking her as she crossed the open area of lawn in front of the house.

  It wasn’t until she stepped onto the graveled area in front of the barn that she remembered that her feet were bare, but the sharp stones hardly registered as she picked her way across to the barn, set the torch down, and heaved at the crossbar that anchored the door closed. When she finally got the bar clear and wrenched one of the doors wide, the barn yawned, cavernously dark and creepy. Inside, the sound of the wind and rain was amplified, because acoustically, the barn resembled nothing so much as a steel drum.

  Jess stuck to her like glue as she navigated the piles of hay, rubbing at her legs and shivering as Jane uncoiled a length of light rope from a nail on the wall. For good measure, she grabbed a coil of baling twine as well. This much rope was overkill, but what the heck? Sooner was dangerous. It was better that he was half suffocated by rope than that he got free.

  By the time she made it back to the kitchen, her clothes were plastered to her skin and her hair trailed wetly over her cheeks and dripped down her spine. She slammed the kitchen door against the wind, the cessation of noise almost eerily abrupt. Jess shook herself, sending a flurry of droplets across the floor, while Jane selected a sharp knife from the knife block for slicing the rope. Gripping the torch more firmly, she climbed the stairs. Her pace slowed as she approached her bedroom door, apprehension knotting her belly, because it occurred to her that while she was in the barn, Sooner might have come around. Her heart thumped hard in her chest at the thought of Rider hurt or incapacitated. As a precautionary measure, she held the knife at her side so that it wouldn’t be immediately obvious, although the knife would be close to useless when stacked up against a gun.

  When she paused at the open door, for a moment the tableau of Rider holding the unconscious Sooner in a neck lock on the floor was abruptly disorienting. She hadn’t known what to expect, but the whole time she’d been out, searching for the rope, Rider hadn’t moved. He’d kept his hold on Sooner with a tenacious, rocklike patience that sent relief pouring through her.

  In stark contrast to the still tableau of Rider and Sooner, her room looked like it had been the centre of a bomb blast, and the sheer, numbing violence of what had happened hit her all over again. Her bedroom was wrecked. Her dressing table listed to one side, the chair smashed. Broken glass, shards of porcelain, and bedclothes were strewn over the floor. One of her matching bedside lamps was on the floor—the base was whole, but the shade was crumpled beyond repair. The drapes at one window had been torn down, and the metal curtain rod was bent at a drunken angle. It was odd, but she had no memory of anything happening to the drapes.

  Rider took the rope and began cinching Sooner’s wrists and ankles up tight.

  Jane studied the unconscious man’s face. He was in his forties, not unhandso
me, his shoulders bulky, as if he worked out. One eye was swollen, and his lip was cut. Other than that, he simply appeared to be unconscious. “Is he all right?”

  Rider rose to his feet, and she noticed the reddened patches on his torso where he’d been hit. “I pressed on his carotid and restricted the flow of blood to his brain. He’s not hurt, just unconscious.”

  His gaze slid over her as if he had to reassure himself that she was okay, then he pulled her into his arms. “You’re wet. What are you trying to do to me?”

  She touched the split on his cheekbone, then used the wet sleeve of her shirt to dab at the blood. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re still in the middle of a storm.”

  “I had my mind on other things.”

  “Uh-huh, and now the bedroom’s wrecked.”

  “There’s a bed at my place. Once we get rid of this turkey, will you come home with me?”

  Warmth welled inside her and she couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face. She was wet, her hair tangled—she must look like she’d been dragged backward through a hedge, but Rider made her feel gorgeous and wanted and so gloriously female she could weep. “Yes.”

  Something like relief flared in his eyes. “Good. And you’ll marry me.”

  Her smile turned into a grin. Yep, he was male. Give him an inch, and he took a mile. “I don’t remember being asked.”

  “It was in the small print. You should read the contract before you fall in love.”

  She wound her arms around his neck. “Who said I was in love?”

  “You did. Every time I looked at you.” His grin was faintly wicked. “And you did look.”

  A faint voice came from her pocket. She retrieved the phone and spoke to the agitated operator. “Tucker’s on his way.”

  Rider groaned. “Am I supposed to be relieved?”

  She handed him the phone. “You’d better talk to them. I think the Armed Offenders Squad is also on its way, which means we could be under siege at any minute.”

  Rider swore beneath his breath, and took the phone, his voice curt as he explained the situation.

  Minutes later, he put the phone down and opened a window. “Tucker’s here, along with the AOS. Hang on, while I call them off.”

  He leaned out the window and had a brief conversation, then pulled it closed against the wind and rain. It was almost fully light now, the day grey and cool.

  Jane looked at the gun, which was lying on the floor in the hallway, where she’d left it. “Yuk. I think I handled the murder weapon.”

  His arm came around her, tucking her in close against his side. “Don’t worry about it. If Tucker can’t figure this one out without eliminating your prints, I’ll personally feed him that weapon. Then forensics will have a hell of a job getting their evidence.”

  Epilogue

  BY MIDMORNING, MICHAEL and Jane were finished with statements and interviews. Sooner had been charged on a number of counts including murder, attempted murder, and rape, and had been taken into custody. In a panic, Sooner had tried to lay assault charges against Rider, alleging that Rider had attempted to murder him.

  The crime squad detective from Auckland, who was heading up the case, had looked at the faint red marks around Earl’s neck and commented that if those marks were his sole evidence he was going to have problems, because from where he was sitting it looked like Sooner had been the victim of a heavy date, not a near-death experience.

  Sooner had sputtered and argued, but they had him cold on the Dillon case. He had nowhere to go but down. His fingerprints matched the ones taken from the Dillons’ house, although they couldn’t tie him in to any of the other home invasion cases, and in any case the M.O. was different. All of the other home invasions had been carried out by a team of three people, including one woman, not a lone male.

  As it turned out, Earl’s crime had been a copycat one, designed to cover up a crime that had been not so much carried out as botched in a drunken fit. And the investigation hadn’t been helped along by the fact that their primary witness, Carol Dillon, who had been having what could only politely be called a sexual liaison with Sooner, had lied.

  Early in the afternoon, Earl’s hidey-hole at the back of Jane’s farm was located by a specialist sniffer dog, and Rider and Jane went to look at the haul.

  Tucker and Zane were in their element, cordoning off the area with police tape and helping the crime squad boys catalogue the evidence.

  They found two televisions and a DVD player, plus a forty-inch, state-of-the-art flat screen. To go with the viewing screens there were video cameras and sound equipment and some seriously good stereo gear, although most of the stuff was ruined, since the limestone cave Sooner had chosen wasn’t waterproof, and had partially filled with water during the storm.

  Sooner hadn’t limited himself to stealing the expensive chattels, he’d also taken a number of kitchen appliances, including a toaster and a sandwich maker, and what looked like a part of Carol Dillon’s blender—minus the motor.

  Zane bagged up the sandwich maker, which was stacked near piles of videos. “Looks like he was planning on snacking while he watched whatever.”

  The “whatever” turned out to be homegrown Tayler’s Creek porn, starring mostly Carol Dillon and Earl Sooner, and occasionally, just to break the tedium, Aubrey Dillon.

  Once the videos were discovered, all the facts of the case became clear. Mrs. Dillon had been raped, but it had been by a man she had regularly had sex with—on video—which was the reason she had denied knowing her attacker. She hadn’t wanted the police to find out that she and her husband were involved in producing homegrown porn movies for a small, but lucrative, mail-order business at their rural retreat on Linford Road. She’d given the police artist an incorrect description of Sooner, adding long hair, specifically so they wouldn’t find him, because she’d been frightened that Earl would come back and kill her if she reported what had really happened.

  Apparently Sooner had gotten a little too rough during one session for Aubrey’s liking and he’d been fired. Later on that night, Sooner had come back with a twenty-two, shot Aubrey, raped Carol Dillon, and loaded his truck with every appliance he could get his hands on. He’d removed all the videos, so he couldn’t be linked with the Dillons, and had trashed the house to make it look like a home invasion.

  He then drove onto the back of Jane’s property, using a reserve that bordered her land as access, and hid the gear in one of the caves. When Jane became suspicious and started snooping around the caves, he decided he needed to do one more copycat crime.

  BY THE TIME the police were finished gathering evidence, it was near dark. After feeding the hens and checking the sheep, Jane put Jess in the backseat of her station wagon and followed Rider back to his place.

  When she reached the front door, Rider unlocked it, swung Jane into his arms, and carried her across the threshold. “You’ll have to humour me, I’ve got a romantic streak.”

  He set her down in the middle of a large, roomy lounge with glossy wood floors, rich, patterned rugs, and bifold doors that opened out onto decks bordered by large areas of lawn. The sun was sinking fast, but shafts of sunlight found their way through the clouds and filled the room with a warm glow.

  The first, and only, time she’d been in this house, at a party the Riders had thrown to welcome her and Patrick to Tayler’s Creek, her world had literally been turned upside down.

  Without warning, tears filled her eyes. Rider’s hands framed her face, not allowing her to hide. “I know,” he murmured. “The last seven years have been a bitch. You loved Patrick. If I’d ever thought differently, I would have taken you away from him in a second.”

  The flat assertion sent a small shiver skimming down her spine, and if she’d had any further doubts, they were abruptly gone. From the first, she’d been overwhelmed. She’d feared the loss of control, but in stark contrast to her fears, she had never felt more female, more empowered, and she had never felt so much.

 
She rubbed her palms up over Rider’s jaw, threaded her fingers through his hair, and surrendered the last threads that tied her to Patrick. “Did I ever tell you that I fell in love with you seven years ago, and I’ve been in love with you ever since?”

  He went still, his expression controlled, remote, reminding her of the way he’d been with her for so long—still and silent. She’d thought he was cold; now she knew that he’d just been wary—and she realized how out of character that was for him.

  His gaze searched hers, a glimmer of humour surfacing. “That calls for a celebration.”

  Without warning, he swept her into his arms and started toward a hallway. He was moving fast enough to make her head spin, and she was feeling giddy anyway.

  She clung to his shoulders, catching glimpses of rooms. “Where are you taking me?”

  He grinned, suddenly looking like nothing so much as a pirate. “Where do you think?”

  Only Human

  EILEEN WILKS

  Chapter 1

  HE DIDN’T HAVE much face left. Lily stood back far enough to keep the tips of her new black heels out of the pool of blood that was dry at the edges, still gummy near the body. Mist hung in the warm air, spinning halos around the street lamps and police spotlights, turning her skin clammy. The smell of blood was thick in her nostrils.

  The first victim, the one whose body she’d seen four days ago, hadn’t had his face ripped off the way this one had. Just his throat.

  Flashes went off nearby in a crisp one-two as the police photographer recorded the scene. “Hey, Yu,” the man behind the camera lens called.

  She grimaced. O’Brien was good at his work, but he never tired of a joke, no matter how stale. If they both lived to be a hundred and ran into each other in the nursing home, the first thing he’d say to her would be, “Hey, Yu!”