Hot in Handcuffs

by Sylvia Day

  A shiver danced along her spine and she shot a quick look over her shoulder, saw that Colby had finally opened his eyes.

  And he was staring at something.

  The sound of a car door slamming had her swinging her attention back to her partner, though. Ex-partner, she told herself. She was having it out with the captain very shortly. She was off the clock, on personal time…

  Working the case with somebody not your partner, a dry, cynical voice pointed out mentally.

  Shit.

  “We have company,” she said in a flat voice as Colby glanced in her direction. Those blue eyes were all but glowing. What had he seen?

  But it would have to wait. He wouldn’t discuss it in front of somebody else, and somehow, she didn’t think she could get Phillips to go merrily on his way.

  She slipped outside just as Colby opened his mouth to say her name. Her mind was spinning as she tried to come up with a plausible scenario.

  Phillips stood by her car, staring at it with disgust all over his lean face. It was a damn shame the guy was such a jerk, she thought absently. Then his dark, liquid eyes cut in her direction and she saw the typical aggression reflected there. Planting her feet, she cocked her head and studied him.

  “I’d ask what you’re doing here, but I bet I already know,” Phillips said.

  “Oh?”

  He sneered at her. “Don’t try and act like you didn’t get the same anonymous tip I did.” With his lip curled and animosity flashing in those dark eyes, he continued, “When in the hell did you get it? How long have you known about this place?”

  Anonymous tip?

  “I just found out about this place.”

  “Just found out—as in earlier today? Before or after we called it quits? Before or after we spent a wasted afternoon doing interviews?” He started toward her, shaking his head. “The message on my voice mail came earlier this afternoon. I answered after we finished our shift, because you were so fucking set on doing those interviews.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him she hadn’t gotten any fucking anonymous tip, but what was she supposed to do? Tell him her psychic pal had led her out here?

  Dancing around the subject, she said, “I didn’t find out about it until after we’d finished up for the day, Phillips. You need to throttle back.”

  As the door behind her squeaked open, she saw Phillips’s gaze shoot to the man at her back. Colby rested a hand on her shoulder. She gave him a tight smile. “Colby, this is my partner, Barry Phillips.”

  * * *

  COLBY’S BRAIN WAS a rush of blood and pain. Screams all but sounded in his ears, and as he stared at the man approaching them, he had a hard time separating himself from the visions in his head. Blood-splattered flowers. Lifeless women. And that single woman…who danced to the music.

  Shifting his gaze toward the house, he stared at it, searching for answers. But they weren’t there.

  Or maybe they were—he just couldn’t hear the whispers over the roars.

  Resting a hand on Mica’s shoulder, he reached for that steady peace—it was insane how they fit. Without each other, they were both chaos. But when they linked…harmony. When she let it happen.

  And this time, she let it. As the voices in his head faded to a dull rush, he opened his mouth to tell Mica he needed to talk to her. But the asshat masquerading as her partner turned on his heel, heading toward the house. “I’ll fucking find out what’s here myself,” the man snapped over his shoulder. “You two keep on playing whatever game you’re playing.”

  Under Colby’s hand, Mica tensed. He felt her anger whisper along that connection. Then she pulled away, stalking after her partner. Phillips. The guy’s name was Phillips—Barry Phillips. Colby lingered a moment, watching as they mounted the steps.

  Phillips banged on the back door. Walked around, peering inside windows, with Mica trailing after him.

  Uneasy, Colby let his shields lower.

  Death. Death. Death.

  It was all around him. But it was so fucking heavy, and everywhere. He couldn’t focus on any one line just yet. Especially without Mica standing there. She’d cut herself off when she stepped away, and although he could reach out to her, reestablish that connection, he didn’t want to do it. Not yet. He needed her focused on what she was doing. Not on him.

  As the two of them disappeared around the corner of the building, Colby slipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out his iPhone.

  The wonders of technology, he mused as he pulled up the map.

  MICA SWORE WHEN Phillips paused by the doors of the storm cellar. She knew that look. Damn it, she knew that look. He crouched down, peering at the lock and then looking at her.

  “Somebody busted inside here.”

  Lifting a brow, she said, “Could easily be the owner.” Yeah, she could see the signs that somebody had broken inside. Saw the shiny new lock. She wasn’t blind. “We have no reason to enter a private residence.”

  “Oh, yeah. I know that. I just…” He cocked his head. Frowned. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  She glared at him. She hadn’t heard anything.

  “It sounded like a voice—muffled.” His eyes narrowed and he stood up, swearing. He started to kick around in the grass.

  “Damn it, Phillips, I didn’t hear—” Mica stiffened as something drifted across her shields. Incomplete. Fragmented. A plea…

  But she didn’t know if it was real. Shifting her gaze from Phillips to the cellar doors, she swallowed as her heart started to race away. She couldn’t focus it, couldn’t make it connect. But what if Phillips was right?

  The killer is a cop, Mica. Colby had told her that. In the dead of night, only hours earlier as they sat side by side in the hotel room.

  A cop.

  She wanted to scream. Wanted to reach out to Colby.

  She couldn’t not go in there. But she couldn’t walk in blind, either.

  He wants you dead—

  Was it Phillips?

  THE PHONE BUZZED in his hand and Colby read the text from Jones. Too long for text—sending e-mail.

  Swearing, he hit the icon for e-mail.

  The e-mail was still loading when he glanced up.

  It was too quiet.

  His gut in a tangle, he started toward the house.

  The e-mail finally loaded and all he needed to see was the first few lines.

  By then, he’d heard the heavy clang of metal on metal.

  And he felt the whisper of Mica, her mind reaching out to his, unsteady and erratic, but determined.

  SHE’D ALREADY DESCENDED into the darkness, but her gut was screaming it was a mistake.

  There was the smell of death in the air. Fresh death. Old death.

  Phillips’s voice came back to her, soft, quiet. “Smell that?”

  “Yeah.” How could she not smell it? “We need to call this in.”

  “And what if it’s just a dead animal?”

  As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she watched as he came to the bottom of the steps, fiddling with the door there. It was too fucking dark and his body blocked the door. The skin along the nape of her neck started to crawl and she swallowed the spit pooling in her mouth.

  Mistake—fucking mistake—

  He kept his back pressed to the wall as he eased the door open. There was no screech of rusty metal, no squeak of untended wood. It glided open smooth and easy—too easy. “I’ll go high,” he murmured, sotto voce.

  “We need to pull back,” Mica replied. He wouldn’t, though.

  So did she?

  Indecision screamed in her mind. Going in that house alone…

  There was a brush against her mind. It was a wordless reassurance and an insistent demand, all at once. Colby. He was coming and he wanted her out.

  Out…

  Her skin continued to crawl. Yeah. If she backed away now, that would be a big, fricking red alert, letting Phillips know she’d figured out something was wrong. If she was lucky—ass
uming she was reading her instincts right—he’d just follow them out of here and then slip back, ditch whatever evidence was here. If she wasn’t, she’d be facing her partner’s gun the second she inched backward.

  There wasn’t much question.

  She had to go forward. And she went forward with her weapon ready, knowing Colby was coming along quietly at her back.

  The best she could hope for was that Phillips didn’t know much of anything about Colby.

  Well, that…or that she was just plain wrong.

  THE SMELL GOT stronger with each step into the darkness. Unable to take standing in that dark hole, not knowing what was around her, she pulled her flashlight out. “I’m turning on my light,” she warned, keeping her voice casual.

  There was a faint light from behind them, where the door lay, and she wanted to be away from it so Colby’s shadow wouldn’t give him away any second.

  Phillips just grunted. “There’s a door here. It’s jammed…there. Got it.”

  In some part of her mind, Mica kept thinking, What the hell are we doing? How do we explain—

  The other part of her was too focused on Phillips to worry about explaining anything. He was no longer moving through the place like a cop. In the bright, vivid beam of the small light she’d pulled from her pocket, he strode around with way too much confidence, absolutely no caution. Straight down the middle of the floor.

  Mica had her back pressed against the cool concrete behind her and she checked the ground carefully with her toes before setting her foot down.

  He wasn’t acting right—

  “The smell is coming from here,” he said. But he wasn’t bothering to whisper now. And there was something in his voice…a sly, almost smug laugh dancing under the words.

  Mica stiffened. Watch out—the voice in her mind warned.

  And then he hit the lights.

  Mica jerked her weapon up even as she saw he had his pointed square at her.

  INSTINCT GUIDED EVERY step.

  Colby didn’t dare go the same way they’d gone. He didn’t question how he knew better than to do that, and he didn’t hesitate, either.

  He just moved. He had his lock picks, and the door opened under his hand with ease. Through a kitchen that looked unused, down a dark and dim hall—the doorway at the end. It all but pulsed. Red and evil and angry—

  He went to put his left foot down and stilled, shifted it to the left a few more inches. The board would squeak. He could hear it in the mind of the killer—the cop who was downstairs alone with Mica. Alone with his cop. He continued down the hall, placing each foot carefully, taking too much time but managing to avoid any noises that would have given him away.

  There were stairs—he could see them in his mind. The first, third, seventh, and eighth steps squeaked. Somebody, a woman—Colby could hear her voice—had wanted to repair them, but there hadn’t been money. And then there hadn’t been her.

  He eased the door open, one bare inch at a time, staring down. There was light, very faint. At the bottom of the steps, he should find the washer and the dryer, except it had been taken out. There was just a bare space now…

  Focus, he told himself, viciously jerking his mind under control.

  Down the steps, bypassing each one that made noise, his attention spread out, locked on any small sound.

  He heard voices now…

  THERE WERE DEAD flowers.

  Everywhere.

  And lying on a bed, tucked against a wall, there were the skeletal remains of a woman. Dark hair. An ivory dress…a wedding dress. And in her hands there were the crumpled, dried stalks of flowers.

  There was a table by the bed. Mica saw that, saw the glint of light on crystal. She took it all in through her peripheral vision, keeping her gaze focused on Phillips.

  “If you’re going to shoot me, you better do it fast,” she advised, going against everything she knew she should say. She’d already screwed this up enough, no reason to start playing it by the book now, she figured. Besides, the one thing she knew about Phillips…he was about as likely to do what she told him to do as he was to sprout wings and fly.

  Maybe he’d even avoid shooting her for just long enough.

  “Why?” He smiled at her. “You want me to think you have people coming? Other than that pretty-boy consultant?”

  “That pretty-boy consultant is a problem. You can’t convince him that I shot myself.” If it had been anybody but Colby, she wouldn’t have dared risk them. But this was Colby…and it wasn’t a risk for him. If he couldn’t handle this…she didn’t know a soul who could.

  Phillips just smiled. In his eyes, she saw the light of madness. Not just a sick bastard, but a crazy one. They weren’t one and the same, she knew. Okay, this is bad…If he was convinced it didn’t matter if he killed her, well, she’d end up dead.

  Something stroked across the edge of her mind. A calm, cool presence. Although there were no clear words, she felt Colby’s response clear as day. Stop. He wanted her to stop. No thinking about dying.

  Stall.

  She needed to stall.

  Colby was coming. They were deep enough in the other room that Phillips couldn’t see the door now.

  Colby would come. He would…but if he didn’t, and she saw Phillips’s finger so much as twitch on that fucking gun, she was going to blow his damn head off.

  She felt another brush from Colby. A stronger, almost clear thought this time…Don’t die, Mica…

  She had no plans on dying anytime soon—she had too many reasons to live.

  ONCE HE HAD the hard, solid concrete under his feet, Colby felt better. It wouldn’t squeak, creak, or make any other fucking sound. Keeping his back pressed to the wall, he held the weapon he hadn’t touched in months—it was a Glock 26, light and small, easily concealed…deadly as hell.

  It was also a reminder of the life he’d left behind, whether it was his personal weapon or not, and he hadn’t wanted any reminders.

  Now he just hoped he hadn’t gotten too fucking rusty, because when Colby saw that bastard, he was going to put a bullet between his eyes.

  Calm—be calm—

  He eyed the distance between him and the end of the wall. Eighteen inches. He could see shadows. Hear voices—and that fucking song. Damn it. The air was the heavy, cloying stink of rotting flesh. He could feel Mica’s horror and rage battering at him—and her determination.

  Fifteen inches. She had a gun on her—the man had pulled a gun. It was another instinct, nothing Colby saw clearly, but that was because he wouldn’t let that connection click.

  Couldn’t, not if he wanted to get her through this—

  Twelve inches.

  He was sweating. Hotter than hell under the layers he wore. That putrid stench made him want to gag, but he shoved it all aside. Focus…focus…

  Harder, though, to shove aside everything he felt coming from Mica. Especially when it solidified into one bright, vivid spike—

  INSTINCT.

  It can save a life—Mica knew that. It could also cost lives—and it just might cost her life, she realized, as something flashed through Phillips’s eyes.

  Knowledge.

  Some sort of knowledge. He knew—

  She dropped her shields, a desperate measure that just might be the end of her, she knew. But she had to—

  He was full of hatred, rage, and need. It was a twisted need, though. One she couldn’t fully understand. She also felt the one thing she needed—the warning just before he could squeeze the trigger.

  “You shoot, I shoot,” she cautioned softly. “You know that.”

  “You shoot, I shoot…” he echoed. Then he smiled. “But I think I want to go first.”

  COLBY CAME UP behind him. “I think I want to go first,” he said, pressing the muzzle of his gun to the base of Phillips’s head.

  But if he’d hoped that would throw Phillips off, he’d been dead wrong. Phillips swung around, already dropping.

  Colby compensated, pulling the trig
ger. He saw the neat little hole appear in the man’s forehead—then an explosion of red as the bullet tore through the other man’s brain and ripped out the back of his skull.

  At the same time, he felt the massive pain rip through him. It spun him around and the world went dark.

  MICA SCREAMED.

  She didn’t notice. She ran to Colby, not even pausing by Phillips’s side. He was dead—beyond dead, his brain and blood leaking out on the floor.