Dylan studied the boy in front of him, then his notepad. Precious little to go on, the clothes she was wearing, hell, he described those down to a tee, save for undergarments. But no new job, no new friends save for the ones she had started hanging out with she started dating him the past summer. Nobody particularly angry with her for leaving the crowd she’d left behind, no dumped boyfriend.
“What did you see in her, Jake?”
“Don’t talk about her like she’s dead, Mr. Kline.” Jake’s face paled a little and his mouth firmed out. “Don’t. She’s not.”
Dylan rubbed a hand over his face. It didn’t exactly look good. “Sorry, Jake. I was talking when you first started seeing her. She wasn’t exactly your type. What do you see in her?”
“She had sad eyes,” Jake said distantly. “But if you told her that, she’d spit fire. She’s such a brat, so fiery. Wouldn’t accept help from anybody. So proud. Hell, every girl I’ve ever dated just wants what you can give them, and she wouldn’t accept a hand off the bus.”
“How long have y’all been sleeping together?” Dylan asked casually, sliding it real easy like, glancing at Beau, who just closed his eyes and shook his head.
Jake’s eyes flew to Dylan and his mouth twisted in a sneer. “We haven’t. Not once. I told her it would be special, and I meant it. And I’m gonna tell ya what, I don’t think she’s ever had sex. I think it scares her. We can only go so far when we…ah…”
“I bet the term you’re looking for is making out,” Beau supplied. “Unless it’s called something different now.”
Jake’s face flushed. “Yeah, well. Anyway, then she gets tensed up and nervous. And I don’t want to push her. She’s special to me. I meant it when I said I love her. And I don’t plan on messing it up for anything.”
Dylan studied the kid in front of him with appraising eyes. Hell, did they still come that…pure? With a small smile, he tucked his notepad away and wondered if he had ever been like that.
No. Never.
He had been out for everything he could get.
And more.
****
Kris settled into the sunken bathtub with a deep sigh of satisfaction. The jets had bubbles dancing around her, working the stiffness from her muscles with a steady, soothing motion that would no doubt put her to sleep if she wasn’t careful.
The past year had been the most exhausting one of her life.
And the best.
Wiggling her toes, she fought the urge not to grin like a loon.
Then she gave up and let the smile take over.
“He loves me,” she murmured in the quiet room.
Music played from the radio in the other room, the strains floating just barely to her ears as she leaned her head back against the pillow. Staring up at the ceiling, she said softly, “He loves me.”
“Yeah, he does.”
Shrieking, she sat up, water splashing over the side as her eyes flew to the door. “Damn it, Dylan! Are you trying to scare me to death?” she asked, her heart pounding like a drum in her chest, her entire body shaking. “I’m going to put a bell on you or something. Rig the floor so it makes a noise when you walk on it.”
He grinned at her, his mouth curving up in a hot, slow smile as he studied her in the tub. “Sorry,” he lied easily. Moving across the bathroom, he knelt by the tub and eased her back against the lip, rolling his sleeves up and settling his hands on her shoulders. “You’re strung as tight a bowstring, you know that?”
“Worn out,” she murmured. “Busy couple of months.”
“Hmmm.” His thumbs dug into the muscles at her neck and Kris moaned, her head falling forward.
“I’ve got a new case. Not going to getting much money though. Guess it’s a good thing that last guy was so happy about getting his daughter back as quick as he did.”
Kris rolled her eyes. Happy was an understatement. He’d given Dylan a bonus in the neighbor of fifty thousand dollars. Dylan had been in the middle of declining when Kris had breezed in, smiling and thanking him in one sentence. “What exactly is the case, and how much is not much?”
“Not much is none. A girl came in about her sister. She’s been missing for almost a month and her dad didn’t go to the cops, the sister had to. But the cops aren’t doing much,” Dylan said.
“None.” Kris took a deep breath. “No money?”
“It’s a missing kid, Kris. And I can’t tell the girl no,” Dylan said flatly. His hands moved to her shoulders without breaking pace, but she knew there wasn’t any argument.
“Hell, I know that. But that mean when somebody offers you a bonus, you don’t even think of saying no,” she said in a voice just as flat, leaning her head back and glaring up into his eyes. “Got it? You’ll do this, too often. And you have a living to make.”
He slid his hand down in the water as he stared into her eyes, cupping her breasts. “You mean I can’t be your love slave and you take care of me?”
The spit in her mouth dried up and Kris swore the bones in her body melted. “Ahhh…”
A smile curved his mouth as he arched his head around and covered her mouth with his. “No? Okay. I guess I’ll have to do it your way then.” Pushing his tongue in her mouth, he drank down her taste and massaged her breasts as the water pummeled her body.
Kris reached up, twining her arms around his neck, plastering her wet torso as close to him as she could.
Damn it, you drive me nuts…
****
Dylan was slowly going insane a week later. Pounding his head against the wall.
Vanessa had simply vanished on the face of the earth.
After a week of searching, there was nothing. Her old friends hadn’t seen her. Her new friends hadn’t seen her.
Her father…well, he hadn’t seen her, and his words had Dylan burning at the core. “She is paying for all her wicked ways, I will tell you that,” he had intoned in a deep, sorrowful voice, with eyes that gleamed maniacally.
Dylan had offered him a pitiless smile. “No, sir. God doesn’t punish kids. He punishes the bastards who abandon those kids to wolves. Have a good night.” Walking away at that point had been necessary. Otherwise he would have killed the miserable fuck.
A girl just doesn’t disappear into thin air.
Then there was the phone call he had just gotten, totally unrelated to the case, but very related to him. Raintree had just gotten pulled from Kris. He’d no longer be watching her, and neither would Luciano.
Dylan swore softly. He didn’t know what to think of that. Max had been in hiding for close to two years now. He could be dead for all they knew. Damn it all. You can’t expect Uncle Sam to do it forever, but he didn’t like it either.
Too soon.
It just felt too soon.
The door swung open and Kris sailed into, a sunny smile on her lovely face that wine red mouth curved up in satisfaction, her green eyes glowing with smug pleasure. Strolling over to the chair, she dropped into it and kicked both legs over the arm in a movement that had Dylan closing his eyes and shifting against the desk where he had settled before he decided to pace the carpet threadbare.
One leg, naked of hose, smooth and gleaming, swung free, her sandal hanging from her red slicked nails as she slanted a smile his way. “Hmmm…I’ve got some interesting news.”
“What are you doing in this neck of Kentucky, darling?” he asked, swallowing tightly. He hadn’t expected to see her for a day or two.
She smiled, a hot little smile that seemed to whisper secret…Dylan licked his lips. “Hmmm, well, that’s more news. For later.”
He was rather enticed by the bare length of leg her position was revealing and the words coming from her mouth took a minute to penetrate his head, especially since he still had the problem with his IQ dropping those fifty points any time he looked at her. Finally, he blinked and dragged his eyes up the length of her leg, over her curled up torso and met those sparkling green eyes. “Ahhh…ummm, more news?”
“Yes,
more news. But the interesting news, first,” she said, grinning at him.
Swallowing, he shifted again, as his cock pressed uncomfortably against the fly of his jeans. “We wouldn’t want it to be uninteresting news, I guess,” he said dryly, meeting her eyes and forcing a half smile out while he tried to make himself think. He had been doing a decent job of that. Until she strolled in. Damn it.
All he had to do was think of her and he lost all thought.
He hated this—her living half her time in Louisville, the other half in Lexington. He wanted her with him, all the time.
A smile, hot and female, curved that mouth, and her eyes dipped lower, as though she knew damned well exactly what he was thinking. Like a caress, that gaze moved over him, but she never moved that lazy cat’s pose in the chair. Cocking a brow, she said, “I met an unusual woman today. She seemed to know everything about everybody. But nobody’s name. She has newspapers from thirty ago. A memory like nothing I’ve ever seen. Damned near photographic. She quoted damned near half the original Constitution to me…and that was before tea.”
Dylan tensed. “You’ve been out asking questions again,” he said softly. “Darlin’, don’t you have an editing job? A boss who might get upset with you if you aren’t working?”
She smiled. “Well, that’s part of the news,” she said, grinning.
Damn. He didn’t like the sound of that. She was sliding too seamlessly into this part of his life and he didn’t know half the time if he wanted her in this with him or not.
It didn’t help that she had fit so smoothly. So perfectly. That she seemed to follow everything so damned well. Damned it, he was doing this by the seat of his pants.
And so was she.
And look how far it had taken them.
“So this old lady is what has you smiling like a loon?” Dylan mused, scratching his chin. He wouldn’t ever understand women.
“No. What has me smiling is what she saw a few weeks ago. ‘...that pretty girl, used to act so trashy, just acting out, that was all. You could tell. She had a good heart…’” Kris voice had deepened as she spoke, raspy, like an old smoker’s. Studying the ceiling, she sighed in satisfaction. “She watered her plants every day at three-twenty p.m. And do you know who she always saw?”
“Nessa,” Dylan murmured, shaking his head. “I’ll be damned. You did it again.”
“Nessa,” Kris repeated with a smug smile. “That day, she recalls seeing a van in the area, one she had seen before. A old, non descript blue Chevy. One that seemed to have been in the area before, why…around the same time as Nessa, come to think of it. She was looking down, remembered seeing Nessa on the corner as the van was slowing down. When she looked up, the van was driving away. And Nessa was gone.”
Dylan’s eyes narrowed with the hot, urgent need to hit the trail and go hunt, go find his quarry. “A blue non descript Chevy van. That’s more then we had before.”
Not as much as he’d like…but still. A license plate would have been nice.
“Oh ye of little faith…”
Glancing up, he saw Kris studying his face from under her lashes with an amused smile on her lips. Then she said in a singsong voice, “Ten e four-two-zero-one. Kentucky plates. Jefferson County.”
Shaking his head in admiration, he said, “You did it again it, girl. Damn it all.”
“Why, thank you,” she said, fluttering her lashes. “I’m telling you, that old woman has a mind like a steel trap. She’s scary. I bet she knows what color underwear she wore on May Twenty-Sixth, 1972. Hell, I bet she knows what color underwear I’m wearing right now. The FBI needs to hire that woman. She’s a gold mine.”
Striding over to the computer, he said, “Give me that license plate again.” In under five minutes, he had a name and an address. Jotting it down, he handed it to her and said, “While I’m gone, see if you can find anything interesting out about this guy. And later, I’ll find out what color underwear you’re wearing.”
“While I’m riding with you, I’ll be more than happy to.” Kris tossed her legs over the arm of the chair and stood, meeting him in the center of the room, toe to toe. “I’m getting a little tired of being left behind while you go and have fun.”
“Fun.” Dylan ran his tongue over his teeth and studied her porcelain face, the green fire that was suddenly blazing in her eyes. “You consider talking to scum fun?”
“Why not? You do. You’re dying to get up to Louisville and see if you can pound some information out of that guy about that pretty girl. And leave me here. Again. Doing all the legwork. Which I don’t mind, except for it means leaving me out of the action all time. Damn it, this is about the fifth time I’ve gotten something good for you and you want to just leave me out of it.”
“That’s what you’re good at.”
“Yeah, well. I was really good at showing up at the right time for that little girl in Litchfield a month ago, wasn’t I?” Kris demanded, shoving a frustrated hand through her hair. Storming away, she strode to her desk, the one set by the window, instead of the larger one they most often shared and settled into the chair, flipping open her lap top and waiting for it to come on, ignoring Dylan as he moved closer.
“I want you safe.”
Kris snorted. “I spent most of my life in New York, pal. Safety is a fool’s paradise. After 9/11, you ought to know that. Hell, after what Max pulled that night in New York, you ought to know that. I can take care of myself against anybody who isn’t an Army Ranger or armed lunatic. I’m a brown belt in karate, Dylan, and you haven’t been taking me to the firing range so I can file my nails and work on my social skills. And I’ve got two yahoos who like to…what…what is that look for?”
Dylan felt his face freezing over as he studied her. “I got a call earlier. They are pulling them off. Max hasn’t shown his face and it’s been too long. They need the men for other things. Raintree tried to argue, but he…well, he’s under orders,” Dylan said quietly.
“So I’m alone again,” Kris said softly.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Kris,” he said softly.
Her eyes met his for a brief second and she nodded. “I can accept that. And I believe you. I didn’t expect them to keep it up this long. But I want to be alone right now. Go away.”
“Kris-”
Lifting glacial green eyes his way, Kris said through clenched teeth, “Go fuck yourself, Dylan. I’m too pissed off to talk to you right now.”
Then she focused her eyes on the computer as the familiar pages of the web came up and she started her search. Oh, yes. She was very good at this. It was second nature now.
But was this all he ever planned on letting her do?
Hell, maybe she should rethink what she planned on telling him.
****
Sliding into the black Jeep, Dylan slid on his sunglasses and stared broodingly at the window, half-waiting to see if Kris would come and look out. Of course, she didn’t, though. Damn it. Nothing wrong with wanting to keep her safe.
Except if he knew a damned thing about Kris, she just might go and find trouble all on her own.
And that was a very disturbing thought. Especially since Luciano and Raintree weren’t going to be around to help watch her butt anymore.
Dylan didn’t like it. Blessett wasn’t dead. Rats like him just had the damnedest luck, and tended to turn up in the most unlikely places. As he spun out of the parking lot, he wondered if maybe it wouldn’t be a better idea to keep her with him. The better to watch her with, my dear.
Of course, the point of having a partner was to split the work. Not worry about her pretty, sweet little ass all the time.
Partner.
Sweet hell. How had she ended up in that position? Of course, she was supposed to be a silent partner, providing him with a little more money than he had ready, once he had bought his house. Although taking money from her, even as a loan, had grated on him, and he had only done it because she had stared at him with injured green eyes when
he had just said he’d go to the bank.
“So you’d rather pay interest than borrow money from me?” she asked, her lower lip protruding just slightly.
Hell. He should have just done that and told her about it after the fact. Dylan wondered as he sped down the highway. Bad enough she had kept having dreams off and on. Then she was taking a few names and researching, finding out little bits and pieces of information while he was out talking to people, handing him a rather useful sheet of details that would have taken him several days or weeks of phone calls to try to get. If he had known where to look and who to call.
It wasn’t until she actually took some of that information though and started talking to people that he discovered just how damned good she was at this. She had a knack for handling people. He suspected it wasn’t exactly…a normal skill, either.
She had known with a non-custodial parent abduction case that the grandmother knew where the mom was. But she hadn’t told him a damn thing. Not the boy friend’s name, who had bought the tickets, nothing.
Kris had waltzed in, while Dylan was out trying to get the information from somebody else, and had basically tricked the information out the old cat in under twenty minutes. The lady was still convinced that Kris was a high school friend who had fallen out of touch with her daughter. And while Dylan was en route to Tijuana to pick them up, she had settled back down in her office in Louisville, like she had done nothing more than taken a long lunch break.
Oh, she definitely had a talent for this.
Working people, solving puzzles. And just a pure and simple knowledge. But he couldn’t see risking her.
****
Kris rubbed the bridge of her nose. Jadus Monroe had a few petty things, marijuana, resisting arrest, soliciting sex from a minor. That one…maybe. Didn’t feel right, though.
Mandy Chasteen said that Nessa and Jake loved to chat online when they weren’t able to go out. All of their gang did. One room in particular, letnloose. Going to the screen names, she picked a different one from her normal KTE1970, goofing off with until she came up kyteendreaming90, making her seem that ripe old age of fourteen, just the youngest edge of those allowed into Nessa’s group.
ALWAYS YOURS Page 14
