“It was a long time ago, babe.”
“I know. But Kipling…the poor man.”
He pulled her a little closer, briefly thinking of what he’d do if he were in Kipling’s position. He couldn’t even imagine what his life would be like if he didn’t have Mina and the kids. He would definitely not be as sane as Kipling was.
“When you first introduced us, when you mentioned his name, the names of his wife and daughter, something about them struck me as familiar. I thought at first it was his last name. McKay. It’s common, right?”
“Fairly common.”
“But then we were downstairs, talking about the Bazarovs, and it began to bother me again.”
“Mina, all of that is over now. Dimitri and his lieutenants…they’re all gone.”
“I know. But it triggered a memory, and I finally know why the name was so familiar. It wasn’t the last name. It was the name of Kipling’s wife. An unusual name for a woman.”
“Jesse? Not really.”
“But it struck me that way. Especially the first time I heard it.”
Ash stiffened a little. “Do I really want to know when that was?”
“Dimitri said something to me once. It was when things were good between us, before he turned so violent. We were lying in bed, and I’d said something about men who take what they want without asking. He said that it was his right to do such a thing. Then he said something that should have warned me what kind of a man he would soon become.” She was quiet a moment, clearly struggling with what she was about to say. “He told me about a woman who said no to him once. Said he met her in a restaurant and he was just playing with her, suggesting a few things he’d like to do to her. She began to shake like a leaf, demanding that he leave her alone. Then her man came over and threatened to knock Dimitri out. Said he never forgot that couple. And that seven months later, he got back at them.”
“Dimitri was a big talker, babe. He might not have been telling the truth.”
“He said her name. He called her Jesse. Said he thought it was a stupid name. I remember because I came across that name when I was thinking of names for Ford. It was like a slap in the face, like that story was the moment when I should have seen what it was I’d gotten myself into and should have run for the damn hills right there and then.”
Ash pulled her closer to him, as close as he could get her.
“We’ll check into it. But the chances that Dimitri himself committed this crime…”
“It’s out there, I know. You think I’m being paranoid.”
“No. I think you know the Bazarovs better than any of the rest of us. That’s why I brought you here.”
She was quiet a moment. Then she asked, her voice so low that he almost couldn’t hear it, “When will we finally escape them? When will we finally be free of them?”
He turned her and lifted her face to his.
“As long as I’m breathing, you and the kids are safe. I will never let anything happen to you.”
She reached up on her tiptoes and kissed him gently. Then she took his hand and led the way back to the bed. They lay, side-by-side, holding hands, in Ash’s childhood home, both lost in thought.
Ash knew he’d made that promise to her once before. He promised she’d never be hurt, that he’d never let Dimitri near her or Ford. But then she walked into their camp, making him a liar forced to rush to her rescue. Would that happen again? Were they really safe from these people, or was this just one more trip down the same, familiar, dark road?
He wasn’t sure, but he wouldn’t be here if he thought he was putting his family in danger.
Chapter 7
Kipling
I lay in the dark of the hotel room, listening to her breathe. I couldn’t sleep. When I closed my eyes, I saw Jesse. When I opened them and found Harley laying there, curled on her side with her mahogany hair splayed out on the pillow, I wanted to touch her. And that made me feel this overwhelming guilt. But it wasn’t the same sort of guilt I’d felt the last time I was with someone new. It was guilt that was born from the fact that I wasn’t feeling guilty. It was as if I was betraying Jesse by not feeling bad about wanting Harley.
Jesse had been dead longer than I’d known her. That was an overwhelming thought. It felt like it was just yesterday when I first saw her, as if it was yesterday when I watched her cry as she repeated her vows to me in front of the priest. Just yesterday I watched my daughter come into the world, held her in my arms within minutes of her birth, held her close during her first illness, held her fingers when she took her first steps. Yet, here I was, ten years after the night they died, still alive, still living my life. Experiencing pleasure again.
I think that’s what it was. It wasn’t enough that I’d survived this darkness they had to suffer, but I was able to experience more, to be a part of the world, to breathe fresh air and celebrate holidays. I was able to lie with a woman and remember how good it felt to connect with someone on such an intimate and physical level.
But not just any woman. This woman.
I climbed out of bed and tugged on my jeans, not sure where it was I was planning on going, but knowing I needed to get out of there. My cell began to buzz almost the moment I stepped onto the elevator, the caller ID showing me that it was David. Probably wondering where the hell I was. I ignored it. This was my business.
I was crossing the lobby when the manager called out to me.
“Mr. McKay?”
I glanced over at him, not really in the mood to talk to anyone. It crossed my mind to ignore him, but he was frantic in his wave.
“What?”
He stepped back a little, almost as if he thought I was going to reach over that counter and pound him. I buried my hands in my front pockets in an attempt to show him I wasn’t as mean as all that. And then I wondered what he had to tell me that would make him afraid.
“There was an incident a few hours ago,” the man began, playing with a pen instead of looking up at me. “We don’t guarantee that anything out in the parking lot is safe, you realize. So this is in no way the hotel’s problem.”
“What are you talking about?”
The man snuck a look at me from under his heavy brow. He looked almost like a child caught cheating on a test.
“A couple of guys apparently busted out the front windshield on your car.”
I turned and rushed out the front door, only vaguely aware of the chatter going on behind me as the night manager attempted to keep up with me. Sure enough, the SUV’s windshield was crushed, pieces of it falling down inside the interior of the vehicle. I used my key fob to unlock the doors, checking the glove box to see if they’d taken anything. Nothing appeared to be disturbed. Just the broken windshield.
It was a message. We’d rattled someone’s cage.
“You have security footage from that camera?” I asked, gesturing to the camera on the eave of the hotel’s roof that was adjusted to cover this section of the parking lot.
“I do.”
I followed the man inside again, standing behind him in a small office as he ran the footage for me. Two men, black hoodies pulled down over their faces, smashed the windshield with bats. Not once did they look up at the camera, so they clearly knew where it was. Pros.
Definitely a message from someone.
“Do you want us to call the police?”
“You haven’t already?”
The night manager shifted on his feet, looking completely uncomfortable. I shook my head, my thoughts moving to the woman I’d left sleeping upstairs.
“If you could call a glass company and arrange for them to come quickly, we’ll call it even,” I assured him. Then I turned and rushed back to the elevator.
I grabbed Harley’s bag and tossed it onto the foot of the bed.
“Get packed. We need to go.”
“Why?” she asked, wiping the sleep from her eyes as she sat up, the sheet falling and exposing her full breasts. “What’s going on?”
“Someone
knows we’re here. They left a little message downstairs.”
“What sort of message?”
I was shoving things into my bag, clothes I’d dragged out to find something else, toiletries from the bathroom.
“They broke the windshield on the SUV,” I called over my shoulder to her.
“Did someone call the police?”
“No. And that’s probably for the best. I’d rather not call attention to our little investigation until we have something we can use.”
“We’re just going to run?”
I paused in the doorway of the bathroom, unable to pull my eyes from her incredible body. Her nipples were hard in the cold morning air, little goose pimples raised all over her arms. Her hair was a mess, tangled in wild knots as it fell against the back of her neck. And there was a crease along one cheek from the way she’d slept with her hand tucked under her face. It was the sexiest thing I think I’d ever seen.
“Get dressed,” I said, almost reluctantly. “We have to get out of here in case these people decide to come back.”
“Where will we go?” she asked, as she climbed out of the bed and turned her back to me to pull on her jeans.
Her ass…damn, she was beautiful!
“Another hotel, I suppose.”
“I think I might know a place,” she said, coming toward me, her feet silent on the carpet. “Do I have time to brush my teeth?”
“We should probably go now.”
She nodded, scooping her things up and putting them back into the toiletry bag from which they’d come. She was still topless, as she threw things into her bag, completely topless as she lifted her arms to twist her hair into a knotted bun that actually came out looking sophisticated, like she’d spent hours on it.
It was driving me nuts, watching her move around the room so casually in her partial nudity. Jesse would never have done such a thing. In fact, I’d never known a woman who was so comfortable with her own body that she would be capable of such a thing. But Harley…it was as if she’d forgotten that she was so exposed.
I grabbed her t-shirt off the floor and pressed it into her hands on my way to the door.
“Get dressed.”
I was out in the hall, checking the screen of my phone as it buzzed again, when she finally wandered out a few minutes later, bra and t-shirt in place. She didn’t seem fazed by my impatience. If only she knew how hard I was right now…
The glass people arrived a few minutes after we were checked out and ready to leave. I paced the sidewalk as they did their work, but Harley was calm, leaning against the wall, sucking from a cup of free coffee the night manager had given her.
“How can you drink that crap?” I asked on a pass in front of her.
“You’ve clearly never drank hospital coffee.”
I kept forgetting she was a doctor. I don’t know why. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I didn’t often find myself fucking a doctor in the back seat of my SUV.
“Ready,” the glass guy said a moment later, handing me a clipboard to sign the receipt. We were on the road a moment later, driving off as if nothing had ever happened. The technician had even swept out the glass that had fallen on the front seats.
“Who do you think did that?” Harley asked.
I shrugged. I had no clue, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was someone attached to the Russian gang Mickey’s killer was affiliated with.
“Where are we going?”
Her eyebrows rose, and then she remembered what she’d said up in the room.
“Katy.”
“Your place?”
She chuckled. “We’d have to go to Waco to stay at my place. And then we’d probably be better off at a hotel because I’ve only got a mattress on the floor and a flat screen television screwed to the wall.”
“You don’t live in Houston?”
“Not anymore. I moved two summers ago when I got my residency at Baylor.”
“Baylor. That’s impressive.”
“Not as impressive as what I’d wanted. I applied to Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles, but Baylor is what I got. Not that it’s a bad program. But not the prestigious one I’d wanted.”
“Surely your mother could have gotten you in somewhere better.”
“My mother stopped doing me favors when I moved out.”
She directed me through the streets of the suburb of Houston, leading me deeper and deeper into an exclusive part of the city filled with big, gorgeous houses and businesses that looked better suited to a movie set than a busy metropolis. When we pulled up to a gated community, she read out a five digit number from memory that opened the gate, then we moved through the super-clean, well-organized streets of the carefully planned community to a massive but beautiful house at the back of the community.
“Wow,” I said, as we drove up the driveway.
“It looks impressive, doesn’t it? All my friends were always intensely impressed with it.”
“You’re not?”
“When you grow up in a place like this, it’s hard to see it the way other people do.”
“And I thought I grew up in luxury.”
The three-story farmhouse where I’d grown up would probably fit in just one section of this massive house. And my dad’s house didn’t have three servants stepping out the front door and waiting on the porch for us to get out of the SUV.
“Who’s this?”
“The butler, the cook, and the head housekeeper.”
“Are they going to be a problem?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
She climbed out of the car before I could say anything else. She carried her accordion file and her bag, but the butler came over and slipped them out of her hands. There was something different about the way she stood as she looked up at the front of the house. A new tension in her shoulders, maybe, like a familiar burden had just dropped down on top of her. One of the women—the housekeeper?—came forward and offered her a brief, tense hug. Then the other woman, but this hug had more affection in it. I found myself wondering what it had been like, growing up in the home of a woman like Abigail Grant. Had it really been as difficult for Harley as she suggested?
When I joined her, the butler stepped forward and relieved me of my duffle, too. Then they moved out of the way and allowed Harley to lead the way inside the house.
It was like walking into a museum or some sort of government building. The house was so large, so ornate, that I was afraid to touch anything. There were so many corridors that shot off from the entryway that it seemed like a maze, a labyrinth meant to leave people constantly searching for the right turn. But Harley knew where she was headed. I followed her into a grand room at the back of the house that looked more like a ballroom in a massive hotel than the sitting room of someone’s home.
“This is your mother’s place.”
“This is my father’s home, but he left it to my mother when he died.”
“Your father had money?”
She nodded, as she moved through the room, touching things on shelves and tables. It was as if she was reacquainting herself with old friends.
“How long has it been since you were last here?”
“The night Mickey was arrested.”
I knew when that was. I would never forget it. I was sitting in a Motel 6, my service revolver in my hand. I’d buried my wife and daughter ten days before. I couldn’t go back to the house; I couldn’t face Jesse’s parents. I’d reported to my superiors at Fort Jackson a few days earlier and they sent me away again, telling me I needed more time to deal with my grief. When had the Army ever gave someone more time to deal with grief? I felt like I had nothing left with exception of the anger that was constantly boiling in my chest. And then they called and told me a suspect had been arrested.
I had someone to focus my hatred on. I had someone to blame for the pain and the hurt and the overwhelming outrage. I had a murder to plot that wasn’t my own suicide.
“August ninete
enth, two thousand six.”
She nodded. “He called me and told me not to bail him out. Told me that things were about to get crazy, that he’d done something much worse than anything he’d done in the past. Told me to keep my distance. But, of course, the first thing I did was to go down to the county jail to find out what the hell he’d been picked up on and how much the bond was going to be this time. That’s when they told me he was talking to detectives, confessing to something. But they couldn’t tell me more than that.”
She picked up a silver frame and studied the faces in the picture it held. “I told my mom he’d been arrested and it was bad. She said, ‘Well, he’s on his own this time. I told him what would happen if he was arrested again.’ Like he was nothing to her, just someone who’d taken up space in her life.”
“Did she ever go see him? Ever talk to him?”
“No.” She set the framed picture down and picked up another. “Never went to any of his court appearances, never answered his phone calls, never wrote him a letter. She just pretended like he never existed.”
“Well, that was just a year or so before she took Senator Grayson’s place in Congress.”
“Eighteen months. But she had already been planning her own run for Congress, she was just waiting to see how Senator Grayson’s run went.”
“Must have been something, growing up in this house, with that woman as your mother.”
“I had my brother to keep things down to earth.”
She was clearly unsettled being here in this house. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to bring her here, but again, it was an opportunity to learn more about her than she might tell me on her own.
I moved up behind her, setting my hands on her shoulders.
“Show me your bedroom.”
She glanced back at me, a playful look in her eyes. “I’m not allowed to have boys in my room.”
“Your mom’s not here. What she doesn’t know, won’t hurt her.”
“True.”
She took my hand and led the way back down one of the many corridors and to the grand staircase in the center of the entryway. I found myself watching her ass move as she led the way up, my thoughts going places that made even me blush. What the hell had gotten into me? Why was this woman—a woman I’d run into every few months for years—suddenly turning me back into a teenager? Why was it that I couldn’t get enough of her beautiful body after these little tastes she’d offered? What kind of a man found pleasure and rescue in the arms of the woman who’d fought so hard to take away the one thread of sanity, the one bit of proof that justice really does exist, that held his world together?
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