by Terra Little
“I don’t have all of the details, but no, it’s not. And she’s not crazy—she’s just...in a lot of trouble.” That was an understatement, if there ever was one.
It was also a lie. A necessary one, but still a lie. She’d read enough about Shannon’s life in Cooper’s file to know better, but Harriet didn’t need to know that. In all of her retelling, Olivia hadn’t even mentioned that part of the tragic saga that was her life to Elise. Nor had she told anyone that she’d visited Shannon at the federal lockup a few weeks ago, mainly because she couldn’t bring herself to talk about the experience just yet, but also because she wasn’t quite ready to hear Elise say I told you so.
She’d been relieved to see that her friend was physically okay, but the state of Shannon’s mental health was a completely different story. Just as quickly as her name had changed from Shannon Bridgeway to Karen Lewis, her personality had seemingly undergone a drastic transformation, as well.
Throughout the entire visit, Shannon had talked in riddles, laughed at her own jokes and repeatedly asked Olivia for a cigarette, even though, as far as Olivia knew, neither of them had ever smoked. Seeing her that way had unsettled Olivia so much that she hadn’t been back to visit again since. It was one thing to understand, in theory, that psychotic breaks were possible, that they happened to other people, in other places and at other times, but it was quite another to watch such a break happen right before your very eyes, to someone that you knew personally and cared about. If she never witnessed something like that again for the rest of her life, it would be too soon.
Frankly she couldn’t imagine what she could possibly do or say, particularly on the witness stand, of all places, that would help Shannon’s case in the slightest.
“At this point all we can do is keep Shannon in our thoughts and prayers,” she told Harriet. “Now, could I please have a little privacy?”
“You’ve got five minutes,” Harriet said, glancing at her watch as she pivoted on her heel and headed for the bedroom door. “That’s when my afternoon soaps come on, and you know I don’t like to be disturbed when they do,” she called over her shoulder on her way out of the room.
* * *
In mid-October, Cooper’s evening flight to St. Louis, Missouri, landed on schedule at Lambert International Airport. After deplaning and checking in with airport security, he retrieved his suitcase from the luggage carousel, slung the strap of his carry-on over his shoulder and swung through the nearest exit door, out onto the sidewalk. Buttoning his gray trench coat against the chilly fall air, he scanned the busy driveway fronting the gate, his gaze bouncing from one taxicab to the next in the long line of idling vehicles, until it came to rest on a black Buick sedan. Recognizing its driver as the same one who’d picked up his team from the airport once before, he met the man halfway with his luggage. Then he opened the back door himself and got in.
“I’m registered at the downtown Hilton,” he said, after the driver had settled in the front seat and shifted into gear.
“Yes, sir.” He met the man’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “How was your flight?”
“I sat next to a screaming baby the entire time,” Cooper quipped, grinning. “You tell me.”
“I hear you. I got four boys at home, all under the age of ten.” The Buick eased out of the pickup lane and merged into traffic. “It gets too quiet around there and you better start praying.” They chuckled together. “You got kids?”
“No.”
“Nieces or nephews?”
“Uh...no.”
“Damn, you’re lucky. Apparently all I have to do is breathe on my wife and we’re pregnant again. But holding my breath isn’t really an option, is it?” Cooper understood that the question was a rhetorical one, so he sat back against the leather seat and kept his mouth shut, letting his lopsided grin speak for him instead.
After a stretch of silence, the driver chuckled out of the blue. “I figure we’ll slow down when we finally get the little girl we’ve been trying for.” He flipped the visor down against a ray from the setting sun and gave the heavy sedan more gas. “All right, enough of my life story. Let’s get you to your hotel. You want the radio on or...?”
“On works for me,” Cooper agreed and loosened his silk Hermes bow tie. “Thanks.”
When he’d been subpoenaed as a witness for the prosecution at Shannon Bridgeway’s trial, he was tempted to contact Olivia to let her know that he’d be in town. But since he hadn’t heard so much as a peep out of her in nearly two months, there didn’t seem to be any point in stirring up past drama now. And this was just an overnight, quick-turnaround trip, anyway. By this time tomorrow, he’d be back in Knoxville, at his desk. In the meantime, he was determined to keep his impulses under control.
It wasn’t long before the Buick pulled into the Hilton’s drive-up and rolled to a stop. Cooper thanked his driver with a generous tip and, after checking in and ordering a room-service dinner, went up to his room. His dinner arrived just as he was getting out of the shower. Suddenly starving, he settled down with an expensive beer from the minibar, in front of the flat-screen television in the sitting area. Tuning into an early X-Men flick that he’d seen at least a dozen times before, he took a huge bite of the grilled-chicken sandwich that he’d ordered, chased it down with a mouthful of beer and thought about calling Olivia.
When he did, fifteen minutes later, she answered on the second ring, which caught him off guard. He’d been expecting to get her voice mail like he always did, so it took him a second to shift gears. “Uh...hi...it’s Cooper.”
“I know.” She sounded warm and fuzzy and close, intimate. “How are you, Cooper?”
“I’m good. You?”
“I’m good, too.”
“Did I catch you at a bad time? If so, I can—”
“No, no, now is fine. It’s actually good that you called because I was planning to call you soon, anyway.” His eyebrows shot up and a million questions raced through his mind, but he kept quiet and waited. “I, um, I think we need to talk.”
“You haven’t returned any of my calls or texts for the past two months and now you think we need to talk? What the hell about?”
She sighed into the phone. “Come on, Cooper. Please don’t be like this. You called me, remember? I hope it wasn’t to argue, because—”
“As a matter of fact, it was, Olivia, and do you know why?”
“Cooper...”
The pleading in her soft voice stopped him cold. “You’re right,” he eventually blurted out, catching himself before he could lose it completely and make even more of an ass of himself. “I told myself that I wasn’t going to do this, and here I am doing it anyway,” he murmured into the phone several seconds later. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” They were silent for a few seconds more, both holding the phone and breathing into it rhythmically. “This was a bad idea, wasn’t it?”
“What? Sleeping with you? Falling for you? Never.” He picked up his beer, took a long pull and then set the bottle back down on the tray in front of him with a click. “Calling you when I’m tired and angry and I haven’t had sex in damn near two months, well, that probably wasn’t the best idea that I’ve ever had. We can likely agree on that.”
“Why don’t I give you a call tomorrow evening and we’ll try this again?”
“Fine.” I want you. I miss you. “I guess I’ll talk to you tomorrow then.”
“Um...okay.”
“Wait, what time tomorrow?”
“What?”
“I said, what time tomorrow? You said that you were going to call me tomorrow, so I’d like to know what time you’re going to call.”
“Okaaay,” she hedged. “How about around four?”
“Around four o’clock or at four o’clock?” He knew he was being a dick, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. It was hard to think rationally when you’
d been walking around with a perpetual hard-on for the past two months. “Which one?”
“At four, I guess.”
“Fine. I’ll talk to you at four o’clock tomorrow.” Hopefully by then he would have come up with the words to convince her to take him back. “Good night, Olivia.”
He didn’t realize until after he’d already hung up that he never got around to mentioning that he was in town.
* * *
Four o’clock tomorrow, Olivia mentally confirmed as she set a next-day reminder in her cell phone for the same time and then set it down on the nightstand. Better safe than sorry, she told herself, throwing back the bed covers and sitting up on the side of the bed. Lately she was just as likely to nod off at a moment’s notice and sleep most of the day away as she was to walk into a room and forget why she was there. As a result she’d been reduced to making lists for everything, leaving sticky notes all over the house to help jog her memory and relying on scheduled electronic signals to tell her if she was coming or going, like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Having to add Cooper’s promised callback to an already ridiculously long list of reminders was an embarrassing but sadly necessary evil.
Since pregnancy was apparently capable of scrambling your memory, she didn’t want to risk having it turn her into a liar, too. Plus now that she’d finally found the courage to tell Cooper that she was pregnant and planning to move to London next month, she wanted to get it over with before she lost her nerve.
Pushing her bare feet into her slippers, Olivia stood and shrugged into her robe. Then, with visions of the pot roast, honey-glazed carrots and garlic mashed potatoes that Harriet had made for dinner earlier dancing around in her head, she tucked her cell in her pocket and took the rear stairs down to the kitchen, all but skipping over to the subzero refrigerator across the room.
That was the last thing she remembered doing before a sharp pain suddenly radiated across the back of her head and she passed out.
Chapter 17
When Olivia came to, she was lying on her face on the kitchen floor and her head was pounding viciously. It felt like someone was attacking her skull with a jackhammer. Also, her right cheekbone was screaming, having taken most of the impact of her fall. Moaning in agony, Olivia touched a hand to what felt like a wet spot at the back of her head and gasped in shock as a fresh stab of pain radiated across her cranium.
“Get up.”
It took three tries before she successfully rolled over onto her back and cracked her eyes open one at a time. As soon as she did, the blinding glare from the overhead lights made her squeeze them closed again. But not before she noticed the gun that was pointed straight at her and the woman holding it.
“Oh, that’s bright!” She threw up a hand to shield her eyes and slowly pushed up into a sitting position.
“Don’t make me tell you again, Olivia,” Shannon warned. “I said, get up!”
With the room spinning the way it was, that was easier said than done, but Olivia eventually managed it. Using first a stool and then the edge of the center island for leverage, she slowly pulled herself up to her feet and wobbled dangerously. “I’m dizzy. I need to s-sit down.” Her knees threatened to buckle. “Please.”
“All right, fine, but you’re going to sit in the study, not in here. Let’s go.”
“The study?” A sharp pain lanced through her head, stealing her breath, and she sobbed. The hand that she pressed to her mouth was covered with blood. Seeing it, she did a double take. “Oh God, I’m bleeding. I’m not sure I can make it that far. Just let me sit right he—”
The gun cocked. “I said move!”
Olivia jumped a full foot across the tile floor. “All right! I’m going. Just...please calm down, okay, Shannon? You haven’t done anything so far that can’t be undone.”
“Look, I really don’t want to hurt you, Olivia, so if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop trying to counsel me, shut your mouth and walk.”
Olivia started walking, but she refused to shut her mouth. As long as she kept Shannon talking, there was still time to come up with an escape plan.
* * *
She was asleep, lying on her stomach with a pillow underneath her head and one knee bent, when he slid across the mattress toward her and covered her from head to toe from behind with his body. Her breathing was soft and even, rhythmic. She was completely unaware of his presence...until the moment that he reached down, gripped his cock in his fist and eased its head into her slick tunnel. She groaned and her walls contracted, sending his eyes rolling to the back of his head and his hips rocking forward to sink a few more inches of his flesh into her slick heat. He stroked her once, twice, three times and grit his teeth to keep from shattering the middle-of-the-night quiet with a savage battle cry.
It was late and pitch-black outside. In the wide shaft of moonlight that slanted across a portion of the bed, he reared back and braced himself on his palms on the mattress, watching his cock slowly glide in and out of her as if he were doing push-ups with just the lower half of his body.
Waking Olivia from her sleep just to take her a third time, which would ultimately only put her right back to sleep again, was selfishness at its finest. But Cooper couldn’t get enough of her. Something happened to him when he was inside of her, something primal and raw, and like an addict he wanted to experience the high that making love with her gave him over and over again.
“I know you’re awake,” he leaned down and growled in her ear. “I can feel you coming around me.” She was trying to come in silence and failing miserably, but he was too far gone to take pity on her. Lowering himself flush on top of her, he took her hands in his and stretched her arms out above her head on the mattress, while his legs rode the length of hers and his toes pointed her toes in the opposite direction. She turned her head and he rested the side of his face against the side of hers as he rocked his hips forward and gave her everything he had to give in one powerful stroke.
They cried out at the same time, and then his hips began dancing against her jiggling butt cheeks. Wildly, savagely, as if a live wire were streaming currents of electricity through his bucking body. A burst of semen shot out of his drilling cock before he realized that he was climaxing in earnest and his mouth went slack. “Aw, baby... I’m coming. I’m—”
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep...
Cooper’s head shot up from the pillow underneath it and his eyes slammed open. He looked around his hotel suite wildly. His cock was hard and lying against his abdomen like a felled log, a sure sign that he’d been in the middle of yet another erotic dream.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep...
His eyes flew to the bedside alarm clock. It was 3:30 a.m., which meant that he’d only been asleep for a couple of hours when the alarm—he frowned. No, wait, the noise that had awakened him hadn’t come from the alarm. Where was it coming from?
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep...
Spotting his vibrating cell phone on the dresser across from the bed, Cooper jumped up and caught the thing before it slid over the edge and fell to the floor. Flopping back across the bed with it, he touched a finger to the screen and put the phone to his ear. “This had better be good, Olivia,” he growled into the phone. She was silent. “Olivia?” He was just about to hang up when something told him not to. Instead he switched on the mute function and put the phone back to his ear.
“If you’re not going to put the gun away, Shannon, then could you at least stop pointing it at me?” he heard Olivia say. “It’s making me nervous and I’m already an emotional mess as it is.”
“Oh, you’re nervous. First thing tomorrow morning, I’m supposed to stand trial for bank robbery, and you’re nervous? That’s rich, coming from someone like you, Olivia. That’s really rich.”
“I wasn’t trying to offend you, Shannon. All I meant was that I want to help you, but I can’t do it with a gun pointed at my head. Why do you even have a gun,
anyway? And how did you get out of jail?”
“Stop asking so many questions!”
“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to help.”
A whistle of fear curled out of Cooper’s mouth. I hear you, baby. Hold on. I’m coming.
Already on the move, he tucked his cell between his head and shoulder while he got dressed and found his glasses. At the door to his suite, he slipped his wallet and room key card into his back pocket and checked to make sure that his holstered Glock was in safety mode. Then he swung the door open and hurried out.
In the lobby he leaned across the check-in counter and waved his badge and agency ID in the sleeping clerk’s face. The young man’s eyes cracked open and widened as he spotted the badge underneath his nose. He sat up so quickly in his chair that he almost fell out of it.
“Justin, is it?” Cooper asked, glancing at the other man’s name tag. He couldn’t have been a day over twenty-one. “Hi, Justin, my name is Cooper Talbot and I’m a special agent in charge with the FBI. I’m sorry to disturb your nap, but I need a car—preferably one with GPS—and I need it now.”
Embarrassed at having been caught sleeping on the job, Justin scrambled to his feet and roughly scrubbed his hands back and forth across his reddened face. He looked slightly more alert when his eyes found Cooper’s across the desk again and he cleared his throat. “Uh...yeah...okay. Let’s see...would you like me to call you a taxi?”
“I don’t have time to wait for a taxi to get here. What else can you do?”
“Uh... I could order a rental car for you but—”
“But I’d have to wait for it to be delivered,” Cooper finished for him. “Not an option.”
“Well, uh...”
“Fuck that. We’re wasting time. What do you drive, Justin?”
“Um...a Ch-Chevy Camaro, sir, but—”
“Tell you what. I’ll make a deal with you. You let me borrow your Camaro for a few hours and you get to keep your job.”