“You’re that worried?”
I’ve never been one to sugarcoat things, and when I try, it usually goes badly. I don’t even try now. “I’ll book the room.”
She makes a face, and I’m pretty sure she might cry. Crying requires coddling, and I don’t do well with coddling, mostly because it often forces you to lie. I’m not going to lie to Beth. “I’ll text you the reservation,” I say and walk away.
And since I can’t assign law enforcement when she’s with law enforcement, I then text Kane: Have “Jay” follow Beth.
He replies with: Done. Can you talk?
I reply with: In person.
He doesn’t push. He understands what I’m telling him. There are things to say, but they can’t be spoken on an open phone line.
Next, I text Tic Tac: FBI agent Jess Monroe. I need to know everything about him. If we miss something, someone might die.
He replies with: You really do know how to ruin a guy’s life, Lilah Love.
Maybe I do, but if I save Beth’s, I can live with that.
***
Victim number two is identified, Shelly Willit, twenty-eight, and a literary editor. Age and hair color match that of Mia Moore, career might have a creative connection but a loose one; an advertising executive and an editor. It could be some connection to a book they both promoted. I bank that idea for later use. For now, it’s Otherworld, crime scene mode. I do a walk through of Shelly’s apartment that is only a few blocks from Mia’s, directing the team in their efforts, but for me, on the surface, only one thing standing out. It’s so clean she has to be OCD. Beyond all else, that could be the connecting dots. Two women, both OCD. She also likes books, she has lots of books, which makes sense, she’s an editor but each is perfectly lined up. Each is completely dust free.
It’s ten in the morning when I drag my drenched and dried mess of an ass into my apartment building. I could have been home at eight, but somehow, I fell asleep at a desk in the morgue, and some guy thought I was dead and started screaming. Despite taking a shower at the morgue—yes, they have a shower—and then dressing in a T-shirt and a pair of police pants, I’m pretty sure his reaction confirms that my version of looking like shit right now has reached epic proportions. I’m awake now, though, and ready to shower properly, drink coffee, eat something with ten thousand grams of sugar, and get to work.
Once I’m at my door on the fifteenth floor, I unlock it to find a tall, dark drink of trouble and hot man standing in the doorway. Kane is here, in my apartment, despite the fact that I haven’t given him a key or security clearance to enter.
CHAPTER TEN
His strong square jaw is set hard, his favored Italian suit traded for a pair of black jeans and a T-shirt, his dark hair slicked back. He stands here in my apartment with me in the hallway, acting like he owns more than the moment, like he owns me. Kane is that arrogant. In fact, he personifies that damn word, so much so that those rich brown eyes of his burn me with their intensity, a dare in their depths. A dare to tell the lie I always want to tell when it comes to this man. He’s daring me to say that I don’t want him. He’s daring me to say that I don’t want him here. We both know that I do, of course, want him and want him here. Wanting Kane, wanting him in my life, has never been the problem. All the parts of us that are the same in that dark dirty way, that feed more of the same in each other, those things are the problem.
He says I pull him toward the right.
I say he pulls me toward the wrong.
He says we land in the middle.
I’m afraid the middle is still a dangerous place.
I don’t like to feel fear.
Anger comes at me hard and fast and from a deep simmering place. I pull my gun and stalk toward him. He backs up, moving deeper into the apartment with me following. “Holy fuck, Lilah. Are we really doing this again?”
I kick my door shut. I even take the time to lock my door because I don’t want to get killed by Umbrella Man while killing Kane. “I didn’t invite you in. I told you not to have Jay stalk me.”
“Lilah,” he warns softly. “You pulling a gun on me is getting old.”
“What are you going to do about it? Kill me? I’m the one with the fucking gun.”
He moves, and he’s fast, athletic, a black belt who taught me to be a black belt. He catches my hand, closing his over mine and the weapon, but we both know I let him. He doesn’t even try to take it from me. He steps closer into the barrel and presses it against his chest. “Shoot me this time or stop pointing a gun at me. Now or never, beautiful.”
“You think I won’t do it?”
“I know you and what you will and won’t do. I know you like no one else knows you and that pisses you off. You’re a killer, Lilah, of course you’ll do it, but to be clear, it’s the only way you’ll get rid of me.”
The root of my anger explodes into reality, burning through me, and I don’t even try to hold it back. “Seems like you were pretty easy to get rid of all those years that I was in LA.”
“You know why I didn’t come after you.”
“Because you were too busy fucking that blonde bimbo in the Hamptons?”
“Holy fuck, Lilah. I’m a man. I had sex. I was fucking here. You were all but living with Rich.”
“Rich was a co-worker I happened to fuck in LA.”
“Who came here and went after me? Because he was just a fuck buddy? Bullshit. He wanted to marry you.”
“And I should have married him. He was good for me.”
“And I’m not?”
“We’re not good for each other.”
Now anger flares in his eyes. “Then fucking shoot me, Lilah. Deal with it once and for all. The Society would cheer my loss.”
My cold heart isn’t so cold with those words. The idea of this man gone hurts. It hurts bad. “Don’t say that. I don’t fucking want you dead, Kane. Let go of the gun.”
“Are you going to stop pointing it at me?”
“Probably.”
“Lilah—”
“I have anger issues with you, Kane. I hate you.”
He stares at me a few beats and then releases my hand. He doesn’t back away. I don’t back away.
I stare down at the gun and then look at him. “It was easier when I didn’t hate you.”
He takes the gun and slides it into my holster. His hand settles on my hip, scorching in every possible way, in the certainty that I can’t let him go, in the certainty that we will burn alive and do it together. He steps into me. “I stayed away to keep them away.” He tangles his fingers in my hair and stares down at me. “Because I knew that if we were together, they’d see trouble. They’d come at you, and you weren’t mentally ready for that. I did everything I did, including what I did when you were attacked, to protect you. Because I fucking love you, Lilah.”
“And yet, every time I think about you staying away, that doesn’t compute.”
“There’s no in between for us. It’s all or nothing. That’s who we are together. The minute I came for you, there would be no walking away without you. And you weren’t ready for what that meant. You knew then, what we both know now. The only way for me to protect you is for me to kill them all.”
I don’t jolt with shock. This is Kane. This is the Kane I know. “Is that what you plan to do? Kill them all?”
“This is one of those moments when we both pretend that I didn’t say what I just said. When we both pretend it doesn’t mean what it means. But I don’t lie to you. I have never lied to you. So I’m going to ask you now, with that in mind, do you really want me to answer that?”
“Yes. Answer, Kane. Is that your plan? To kill them all?”
“Yes, Lilah. I’m going to kill them all. I negotiated with Pocher and made you vow to back off to buy time, to do it right. Now you know. Now what?”
I blanch. “You told me the truth,” I say stunned.
“I never lied to you.”
“Avoidance is a lie.”
“You’re lying to yourself if you think we don’t walk around things together, that I do it alone. But let’s go there, Lilah. Let’s talk about lies.”
“What does that even mean?”
“At least I’m willing to admit I need you. You need me, too, and every time you say you don’t, you do what you hate; you lie to me and us. You lie to yourself. Are you going to keep telling that lie?”
Emotion that no one but this man makes me feel punches me in the chest, and I don’t even try to name them all because what they are isn’t the point. That they exist is. I don’t feel much except with him. I feel a lot with him, so damn much, but some of those things aren’t good. He buried a body for me when I was drugged. He made a decision for me that made me like him. Or maybe I was already like him and I just want to blame him? He catches my hair and forces my gaze to his. “Are you going to keep telling that lie, Lilah?”
“The truth is that I hate you.”
“And you love me or I wouldn’t be here, but you don’t have to say it. Just show me. Show me now.” And then his mouth is on my mouth, and there are a million reasons to push him away, but one very important reason not to: I just don’t want to.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“You scared the holy hell out of me last night,” Kane hisses, dragging his mouth from mine, staring down at me. “If I would have lost you, I would have burned the damn city down. I would have kept burning cities down. You don’t get to die, Lilah. Do you understand?”
This is one of those moments where Kane and I understand each other. It’s one of those moments that all the times he has me followed, that he damn near stalks me make sense. His parents are dead, his mother was murdered over his father’s business. Ironically, I now believe my mother fell to a similar fate. It’s just one more of so many things that draws me to this man. “Just kiss me again already,” I order, because I can’t tell him that I won’t die. He knows this. I know he knows this. I’m many things, but I’m not a liar. I won’t make a promise I can’t keep.
But he doesn’t kiss me. He tightens his grip in my hair. He pushes me for more. “Say you understand, Lilah.”
Suddenly, I realize that he isn’t asking me to promise I won’t die. He’s asking me to understand why he makes the decisions he makes, but I can’t do that when those decisions reach beyond having me followed. “You don’t get a pass on all the bad things you do to protect me, Kane.”
He murmurs something I can’t make out in Spanish and then adds, “Lilah, damn it.” But he doesn’t push me again. This time, he kisses me, and this time, all the anger that was mine minutes before is now his. No, ours. We’re both angry. We’re both in a dark place, in a demanding place and for a reason. We have always fit together, two pieces of a two-piece puzzle, but our worlds haven’t.
I press my hands under his shirt and shove it up. He reaches over his head and pulls it away and comes back for mine. He tosses it aside, and when he discovers my wet bra was long ago discarded, he makes this rough sound low in his throat that I’ve missed so damn badly. There are so many things about this man I’ve missed.
He catches my leg and then he’s lifting me. I not only let him, but I pretty much climb all over him. I don’t even care that he clearly knows my new bedroom is upstairs when he’s never been here before today. It’s clear that while he waited on me, he looked around, but I just don’t care. I let him walk up the stairs without one word of objection. He enters my bedroom, bright sunlight peering through the floor-to-ceiling windows. I punch the button inside the door on the wall, and the shades begin to slide close. Kane walks straight for the chair and sits down, taking me with him.
This is another one of those moments when I know this man. This might seem like him giving me control, and he is, but it’s not that simple with Kane. Kane can be dominant. Kane can take control, but he wants, even needs to know that I’m choosing him and us. In that need is both a power play and vulnerability. If he gets what he wants, if I show him how willingly I am here with him, I can no longer shove that gun between us and use it as an emotional divider. If I don’t give him what he wants, I hurt him.
Every part of me is one hundred percent present in the moment with this man. I sink into the chair, my knees at his hips, my mouth pressed to his mouth. He holds me close, touches me, drinks me in, and when I push off of him and take his hand, urging him to his feet, he doesn’t hesitate. We finish undressing, and there’s a simmering heat between us that explodes when he drags me to him. He kisses me again, pulling me into his lap as he sits back down. He lifts me, and in one long thrust, he’s inside me, and my fingers are pressed to his shoulders.
His eyes meet mine, and I see the flare of possessiveness in their depths, feel this man’s power, and I don’t know why, but for a moment, I’m back in time drugged and covered in blood, sitting in a bathtub, waiting as he cleaned up my mess. I knew he was taking care of my mess, but I blamed him for doing so; I’ve blamed him for years for forcing that secret on me, for not calling the police.
But some part of me now admits that he was protecting my badge. That he was protecting me from me even as I tried to convince myself I needed to be protected from him. I don’t have the words to tell him, so I kiss him again, and for the next few minutes, I show him. When it’s over, we end up in the bed under the blankets, both of us desperate for sleep with me willingly pressed close to him.
“You might not like who you are outside of that badge, Lilah,” he says after several minutes, “but who you are isn’t that badge. I know you feel like you’re more like me than you want to be and that I’m more like my father than I should be, but it can’t save you from yourself or from me.”
He’s always wanted to let it go. He’s always felt it was a wall between us. “What if it’s the only thing saving us both?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Kane doesn’t answer that question. I didn’t really expect him to either. On some level, we both know we need my badge to keep us grounded. On some level, we both know my badge will always divide us, but I’m ready to see it in a new way. Not so long ago, I threw my badge away, and Kane convinced me that was a mistake. He insisted that I need the badge, we need the badge. I believe that me wearing it influences his decisions. We’re both pulled to the dark side. We’re both able to justify a means to the right end. This doesn’t bother Kane at all. It does me. Without the badge, would I become more like him? That’s the last thought I have before I do what I once thought I’d never do again: fall asleep pressed close to Kane fucking Mendez.
I have no idea how long I sleep, but I wake to the ringing of my phone that is plugged in on the nightstand. With a groan of disapproval, I roll over and grab it, glancing at the clock that reads two in the afternoon, which means I’ve had all of two hours of sleep. A good reason to ignore this caller if it wasn’t Beth. “Why the hell aren’t you sleeping?” I ask. “They have good beds at the Ritz.”
“I woke up with a nightmare: me with one of those damn umbrellas over my head. I just realized why you’re worried about me. I look like them. The women who this monster killed. I look like them. How did I not get that last night? My God, Lilah. What aren’t you telling me?”
I sit up and Kane sits with me, arching an eyebrow in my direction. I mouth “she’s scared,” and he nods, understanding in that one little action. We’re getting up. Last night’s hell is already visiting today. In unison, we each turn to our side of the bed and swing our legs off the edge. “I mean my God,” Beth continues. “How could you not warn me?” she presses.
“I have someone watching out for you,” I assure her, looking around for Kane’s shirt to pull over me. I’m fine with my nudity but somehow being naked and talking to Beth feels weird. “And,” I add, giving up on the shirt and focusing on just calming her down, “this someone will shoot first and ask questions later.”
“Oh God. Kane. You got Kane involved?”
The rumors about Kane
are all over that statement, and I purse my lips, fighting protectiveness for a man who doesn’t need or likely even deserve my protection. “Yes, but—”
“Thank you. Thank you so much. I’m going to work. I need to catch this fucker.”
“Fucker?” I ask in disbelief because Beth comes from a refined family, and unlike me, she actually uses the manners she was taught.
“Yes. This fucker doesn’t get to win. I’ll be there in an hour.”
“I’ll be there then or soon after.”
We disconnect, and Kane, now dressed in his pants and nothing else, sits my suitcase that I’d left downstairs on the bed, opening it and pulling out my robe. He motions me forward, and I stand up, slipping my arms into the robe that he’s holding open for me before turning to face him. “She thanked me for having you watch over her.”
He arches a brow. “Why do I think that’s a problem?”
“She was happy that you were watching out for her because you’re dangerous Kane, and everyone knows it.”
“Everyone doesn’t know or that piece of shit wouldn’t have played with you last night.”
I consider that a moment, setting aside where I was going with this topic for where he’s now taken me. “What if he does know? Maybe that makes this more interesting to him.”
“Him?”
“Him. Yes. This is a man.”
“And you know this how?” he asks, both of us sitting down on the bed.
“Because I know.”
“Fair enough,” he says, because Kane has done this with me enough times that he knows when that’s all he’s going to get from me. “So let’s say he knows who I am,” he adds, “and even thinks, like so many, that they know what I am, what does that say about him?”
“I keep thinking that this is the Society keeping me, and through me, you, too busy to focus on them.”
“Or?” he presses, because this is what Kane does. He asks me questions; he plays a part in my process in a way that I let no one else.
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