“At 2:27,” she told him, and then smiled wanly at his questioning glance. “She texted me then. See, I’m usually there to meet her—I make a point to walk her home after school—we meet at the corner. But I got a call that morning, for a job interview. So I texted Nika, telling her where I’d be. She texted me back after classes were over, at 2:27, with a good luck.”
“Where was the interview?” Bach asked.
“Downtown,” Anna said, frowning slightly. There was something bothering her about it—the interview.
So he pushed. “What was it for?”
“Does that matter?” she asked.
“It might.”
She sighed, then said, “It was for a secretarial position at Montgomery and Lowden, a law firm specializing in bankruptcies. It’s down near Government Center. I knew when I walked in that it was a waste of time. They were looking for someone older. There was confusion, too, about my appointment. I wasn’t on the list and they didn’t even have my résumé on file. So that was … awkward.”
“And yet someone called you to go in,” he pointed out.
She looked at him again, and he could both see and feel her realization. And as she suddenly turned and opened her daypack, he knew she was looking for her cell phone.
He watched her, one eye on the road, as she searched.
She was lovely, with a riot of dark curls cascading down her back, and dark brown eyes that would’ve revealed everything she was feeling, even if he hadn’t set up camp in her mind. Her face was pretty enough, with gorgeous mocha-colored skin and a smooth complexion, but it wouldn’t launch one ship, let alone a thousand—until she smiled.
When she’d smiled …
He tried to dissect what he’d seen, so that it would make sense, but it didn’t and he couldn’t. Her mouth was a mouth, perhaps slightly more generous than most, with lips that made him think a little too much about the simple pleasure of a kiss, so much so that he had to stop watching her and focus on the road.
It was strange, what he was feeling. Strange—and unwelcome.
Bach had always felt that he was lucky. He appreciated beautiful women. He enjoyed their company, their conversation, their companionship. But he’d never let himself get sidetracked or distracted by sexual attraction. He’d succeeded in shutting down that part of himself.
And if he ever did feel a glimmer of desire’s deep pull, it was never something that he couldn’t immediately control.
It made his life significantly less complicated.
Back in the monastery, there had been quite a few Greater-Thans who’d had trouble with the idea of celibacy. And, as Bach had found out tonight, Stephen Diaz apparently still struggled with their monk-like lifestyle.
But Bach never had.
His theory was that he’d succeeded, at an early age, in completely and irrevocably linking sexual attraction to the idea of romantic love. He hadn’t done it on purpose—it had just happened that way, for him. And if the war hadn’t interrupted, he and sweet Annie Ryan would’ve been one of those couples who’d married after high school and lived out their lives in deep contentment and harmony.
But the war had interrupted. The war—and a whole lot more.
And now Annie was gone, and Bach was alone. And since love at first sight was a ridiculous concept—one couldn’t love someone they didn’t know, the idea was absurd—he’d traveled through most of his life certain in his knowledge that, because he didn’t love? He didn’t desire.
Enter Anna Taylor. Whose richly complex mind Bach had entered with barely any hesitation.
Whom he certainly now knew a whole lot better than he had ten minutes ago.
She’d found her phone, and scrolled her way back to the call she’d received earlier that day. “It’s a 781 area code,” she told him triumphantly. “They called me to come in for the job interview just before noon.”
“Don’t use your phone to call them back,” he said, handing her his own phone. “Use mine. And after you input the number, shut your own phone off.”
He felt her doubt surge. Who was he, what was she doing in his car, and why should she trust him?
Joe Bach will find Nika.
Joe Bach will never hurt you.
All of your questions will be answered.…
He felt her surrender again, and she did as he’d instructed, keying the number into his phone, and then putting it to her ear so she could listen, her arms crossed, her face intense, her eyes slightly unfocused.
“It’s ringing,” she murmured, glancing at him.
Bach nodded, and activated the backup phone that was here in the car, pushing the buttons on the steering wheel that would connect him with OI. “If it goes to voice mail, don’t leave a message,” he advised her, and she nodded.
And then he could feel her disappointment as she cut the connection. “It just stopped ringing,” she reported, “and then there was a beep.”
Over at OI, Elliot picked up. “I see from your GPS that you’re on your way back in.”
“I am,” Bach said. “With Anna Taylor. You’re on speaker. We have a phone number that we want looked up. You want to connect me to—”
“Hell no, Maestro. I can do it,” Elliot said. “Piece of cake. Hello, Anna, sister of Nika Taylor. What’s the number?”
Bach glanced at Anna, who read the digits off his phone.
“I’m Elliot, by the way. I’ll meet you when you get here and … Huh. According to our computer, that number belongs to an as-of-yet unactivated disposable cell phone.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Anna said.
“It actually does,” Bach told her. “If a hacker had access to the number—”
“Hang on just a sec,” Elliot interrupted. “I’m getting a little more info.… It’s part of the Blacklight communication network, and they sell both their hardware and airware at …” He sighed dramatically. “Just about every mega-store in America. Sorry. That doesn’t help you very much at all, does it? Did you get a ransom call from that number?”
“No,” Bach answered him. “But someone used it to call Anna—Miss Taylor—to make sure she was tied up at the time she usually walks Nika home from school—which was when we believe the girl was kidnapped.”
Anna was pissed. And upset with herself. “I should’ve called the firm to verify.”
“Why would you?” Bach asked her. “It was a job interview. Whoever did this knew you were looking for work. And that’s probably not all they know about you. I think we can be thankful they didn’t use a more permanent approach to get you out of the picture, right from the start.”
The next girl’s family was probably not going to be that lucky.
From over at OI, Elliot said, “I got your ETA at about ten minutes. We’ll be ready for you.”
“Thanks,” Bach said. “Hempford’s status?” He asked, even though he knew the answer. It was kind of obvious, since Elliot was not only out by the computers, but he’d taken the time to track down the cell phone info, instead of handing it off to a subordinate.
“I’m sorry, Joseph. He didn’t make it,” Elliot told him.
Shit. “I want to know what this man had in common with every other addict who jokered at first use,” Bach said. “I want details. Nothing should be considered insignificant or irrelevant.”
“I’m already on it,” Elliot said. “His bathroom was blue. His car was a BMW. He wore silk boxers. He was married to his third wife, who was thirty-one years younger. He drank boutique merlot, shipped from Sonoma, California. He graduated from Boston College in 1985 …”
“Over and out,” Bach said, and cut the connection.
“Jokered,” Anna Taylor said as she gazed at him. She repeated his words. “Every other addict who jokered …?”
Bach nodded. Maybe this was a good place to start the explanations. “You ever watch Batman?”
“The old movie. With … was it George Clooney?”
“Clooney played Batman, too. But I’m thinking of the o
ne with Christian Bale. There’s this character, a super-villain, who calls himself the Joker. He’s particularly frightening because he’s completely insane.”
Anna was watching him, listening carefully. “And addicts who joker …”
“Are drug users who lose their minds,” he told her. “There’s something in this particular drug that makes a significant portion of the population go insane.”
“Crystal meth?” she asked anxiously. “Because I think one of my neighbors is a meth user.”
“Not meth.” Bach shook his head. “This is where,” he told her as he took the exit for Route 30, “it gets a little strange.”
Shane woke up to find himself alone in the bed, still in the dark.
Or near dark.
A little bit of light was still streaming in through that crack he’d made between the bottom of the shade and the window frame. And then he realized that there was a glow coming from the main part of the apartment, too.
From here, it looked like candlelight.
He pulled off the blanket someone—Mac—had put over him, and found his jeans where he’d dropped them. He stepped into them and was still fastening the buttons as he went into the kitchen.
Where Mac had, indeed, lit a candle.
She was wearing his T-shirt. And even though he would’ve liked to believe that she was wearing it because it belonged to him, it was probably just the first thing she’d grabbed off the floor as she’d gotten out of bed.
Still, it looked great on her. It hit mid-thigh—she was that short—and he liked the idea that she was wearing it with nothing else beneath.
Holy shit, he was hot for her. Again. Already.
Although, if they were keeping score? She’d had three orgasms to his two. Which kind of meant he was winning, didn’t it?
“Hey,” she greeted him in that husky voice that belonged to a much bigger woman. “It was getting cold, so I, um, came out here to …”
She’d gotten the heat working again. Shane reached out toward the ancient radiator, which was definitely living up to its name.
“There must’ve been some kind of power surge,” she continued. “All of the circuits in the box were thrown.”
She had the built-in microwave running, but the light was off inside of the thing, so it was just whirring as the LEDs counted down from forty-seven. Forty-six, forty-five …
“I got the thermostat and the appliances back on line,” she reported, “but the lights …” She shook her head.
“Bulbs might’ve burned out. Power surges can do that,” he said, as part of him stood off to the side and gave himself a skull-duster at the inanity of their conversation. Why wasn’t he falling to his knees before her, and pledging his unending devotion and adoration?
Why wasn’t he over there next to her, kissing the hell out of her, and lifting her up onto the counter, which was the perfect height for him to push his way inside of her again?
She wanted him to do it. He could see it in the way she was standing, breathing, looking back at him—her nipples already tightly peaked beneath his T-shirt.
But the microwave dinged, and she turned away and reached up to open the door, which made his shirt ride up and …
Yeah, she was not wearing anything under there.
As she set her mug of tea on the counter, she glanced at him and he could see his reflection along with a whole lot of heat in her eyes. But then she sighed and said, “I have to go. There’s a situation at … Work.”
Her hesitation before saying that—work—made him hesitate. Was he reading this—and her—wrong? Was it really trepidation in her eyes that he was incorrectly interpreting as heat? Was she looking for an easy excuse to get him to leave?
He kept his voice level, easygoing. “Okay. I’ll walk you over there.”
But she was already shaking her head.
“I’ll walk you to the T?” he tried, hoping that she’d say, I won’t be that long. It’s kind of obvious that you woke up with a hard-on, and since I know just what to do with it, why don’t you wait right here until I get back?
But a woman who didn’t want to give him her full name wasn’t going to be comfortable with him hanging here, alone, at her apartment—assuming it was her apartment, as temporary and impersonal as this place appeared to be.
Instead she said, “I’ve got a bike,” which could have meant Trek, but probably meant Harley, as she brushed past him with both that candle and her mug, down the hall and into the bedroom.
The fact that she hadn’t offered him some tea of his own was another hot clue that she didn’t see him as anything more than a trick—a one-night hook-up. A quick shag and then Have a nice life.
But Shane had learned that if you didn’t ask the question, the answer you got was an automatic no. So as he followed her, he said, “I’d love to see you again.”
She didn’t respond right away, and he stopped in the doorway to the bedroom, watching her as she put both the candles and the mug down on the bedside table, and then pulled his shirt up over her head.
Mac.
Naked and candlelit.
Holy shit.
He was struck, again, by the fact that her breasts were fuller than he’d thought back in the bar. And he knew from experience that her skin was smooth and soft. All over. And—as she’d pointed out—completely unmarked. Which was unusual for a woman her age.
And for some reason, even though he loved seeing art on women, Mac’s lack of a single tattoo was a turn-on. Maybe because it was part of her mystery. Why wouldn’t she get one? When he’d asked her about it, she’d shrugged it off. But, she must have had a reason, and he was intrigued.
And how old was she, really? Her body screamed early twenties, but her attitude was older. And that attitude was another pretty hefty turn-on.
Along with her size. Which was weird. Shane had always been drawn to tall, slender, willowy women, while Mac was petite and compact. But even as small as she was, she was strong. Her shapely arms and legs were muscular—her thighs a little too big because of that. Too big, that is, according to the dictates of today’s screwed-up, looking-for-perfection world, where beautiful women regularly went under the knife.
Her hair was too short—also according to the world’s current interpretation of beauty—and her face … In certain light, she was breathtaking and almost angelic. In other light, she was what some would call quirky-looking, but others would use words that were far less kind.
Still, it would be hard for anyone to claim that there wasn’t something unique and compelling about her. Something that Shane found utterly appealing.
She glanced at him as she reached down to get her panties from where she’d tossed them onto the floor. As she met his gaze, it was all he could do not to crawl across the bed toward her, pleading for her not to leave.
She smiled then, a touch ruefully, as if she knew exactly what he was thinking, as she pulled her panties on. And then she reached for something that was on the bedside table, and said the words that made his heart leap. Truly. The damn thing did a full workout in his chest. “You got a cell?”
She wanted his number. She was standing there, holding her phone in her hands, ready to input his info into her address book.
Fuck.
“I don’t,” he had to admit. Jesus, he was a loser. But she said she liked honesty, so … “It was too expensive, so I, um …” He cleared his throat, in part because she was giving him her full attention, which was pretty darn distracting since she was still bare-breasted. “But I’ve got a freemail account. You can always reach me that way. I mean, yeah, there’s lag-time, because sometimes it’s not easy for me to get online. Except I’m betting I’ll have access to the Internet at this new place, where I’m … sort of working …”
“So … you gonna give it to me?” she asked.
And Shane met her eyes and smiled, because even though he knew she didn’t mean it that way, he couldn’t not smile at the images her words conjured up.
Mac realized, too, what she’d said and how it had sounded, and she laughed. “I meant your e-mail address, Navy. But believe me, if I had the power to stop time, we’d be back in that bed, and you’d be rocking my world again.”
Thank you, Mighty Creator. He’d rocked her world. He’d suspected as much, but it was fan-fucking-tastic to know for sure.
“Doberman7580 at gmail dot com,” he told her.
She spelled doberman, glancing up questioningly as she keyed in the address.
“Like the dog,” Shane said, shrugging. He had nothing to hide. Not from her. “It’s a random word and number. I had to change my address because the men in my old team were trying to contact me, and that wasn’t healthy for them.”
Mac nodded as she stepped into her pants, and stashed her phone in one of her many pockets. “I thought it might be some cute nickname leftover from … What’s that training called …?”
“BUD/S,” he told her. “Basic Underwater Demolition slash SEAL training.” There was nothing about the SEAL teams or their insanely competitive training that was even remotely cute, but Shane let it slide as he tossed her her sports bra. It had ended up on the floor on his side of the bed.
She pulled the bra over her head, then put on her tank, but then she said, “Shit, I almost forgot.”
She hurried around the bed and past him, back into the living room, and at first Shane thought she was … going for his jacket? But she moved it aside and he saw her pick up a plastic Pharma-City bag, which she opened and …
She had a fresh box of the drug that had been nicknamed the pill. It worked as an STD annihilator, and the women’s version doubled as a powerful contraceptive. It didn’t matter when you took it—before, during, or after sex. It was good for a solid twenty-four hours in either direction. She cracked the box and tossed him one of the little baby-blue foil packets.
“Thanks.” And, huh, he just now realized that the entire box she was holding was blue—which was code for male only. The women’s pill was color-coded pink. They usually were marketed and packaged in combo packs—a pink with a blue. Of course there were blue/blue and pink/pink packs available, just as there were pinks without contraceptive, and blues that contained some bonus Viagra. He’d never paid much attention to them, other than to make sure he didn’t grab them by mistake when he was in the store.
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