by Snow, Nicole
By the time Mark leaves, I’m calmer—until I realize I’ve lost sight of Zach again.
God damn it!
He’s smart enough to know his talents as a little escape artist scare the bejeezus out of me. Quick as a little ferret, half the time I turn around and he’s just gone.
Thankfully, I only have to go a few steps to find him this time. He’s right around the corner of the building, a bit off from the street and talking to another contractor.
Wait.
Another contractor?
I feel my breaths stabbing me as I stare at the massive man in coveralls and a huge helmet masking his face. Oh my God, if Nash touches my son, I swear I’ll—
But I only have to take two steps to realize it’s not him.
Leo lifts his head. Those dark amethyst eyes catch me, glittering with warmth and amusement, gentle like last night’s shouting match never happened.
The high neck of his coveralls hides half his face and the helmet does the rest, but damn, he’s still too recognizable.
I could kill him.
Looking over my shoulder quickly, I duck into the alley, holding my words in by the barest thread until I’m close enough to hiss at him without being overheard.
“Are you crazy? There could be Feds in town after what happened in the plaza! And just because you won’t tell me why you hide doesn’t mean I don’t know. Are you that fu—” I stop, cover Zach’s ears, then scowl and finish. “Are you that fucking eager to get caught?”
Leo eyes me thoughtfully, then smiles—and this time I actually see the hint of his lips above the collar. His beastliness in full glory turns his smile absolutely wicked.
“What? You worried about me, Rissa?”
Ohhh, that look stirs hot things in my blood.
Makes me aware of just how large he is, how his shadow nearly blocks out the sun. His shoulders stretch from side to side of the alley, filling it completely, and the coveralls look ready to burst off him when his muscles strain against them, those powerful shoulders tapering down to a thick, rock-hard waist and those insane tree trunk thighs.
All parts I’ve felt caging my body, flanking me, pinning me to the bed while he makes me suffer with pleasure.
All things I totally can’t be thinking with my kid looking up at me curiously, wondering just what dirty words I’m saying that he can’t hear.
Surprise, what I’m thinking is far dirtier than anything I might say.
That’s how I wound up with Zach in the first place.
“Of course I’m worried.” Flushed down to my neck, I duck my head and clear my throat, letting my hands fall away from Zach’s ears. “Zach’s worried, too. People like to catch monsters and put them in cages, don’t they?”
Zach bites his lip, nodding, and looking up at Leo with wide eyes. “Please don’t get caught, Mr. Nine. I don’t want anyone to lock you up.”
Leo’s eyes soften, and he rests a hand on Zach’s head. “I’m not going anywhere, kid.”
The way he says it feels like a promise to both of us. My heart leaps in my chest as Leo catches and holds my eyes.
“I’m planning to stay around for a good, long while,” he says, soft and deep and striking to my core. “But right now, we’re gonna find Deanna, come hell or high water.”
12
Just Around the Bend (Nine)
I can’t stop thinking about Nash.
Or the sneaking suspicion Deanna’s kidnapper strutted right out from under my nose, just because he could, and there’s fuck all we could do when you can’t call the cops on someone for being a bit smarmy and strange.
The question is, why?
Why toy with Clarissa like that?
Why does this psycho bullshit feel familiar?
Here’s the thing with serial nutjobs: they like to self-insert into their own crimes. Normally, it’s with the police.
A typical serial killer—or even just a repeat murderer, there’s a difference—will act like someone trying to help law enforcement. It’s to keep an eye on the investigation and to get the insider scoop that lets them know how best to confuse the cops more and stay one step ahead.
A twisted fuck might be someone in authority, or he might just be playing at an average citizen with some connection to the case, acting as an informant with misleading tips.
But he enjoys it, too.
He loves the risk of standing right there next to the people looking for him.
And he enjoys seeing the frustration and dead ends cops keep running up against. It tells him he’s smarter than they are. If there’s anything a true psychopath relishes, it’s demonstrations of his own evil intelligence.
We’re not cops, no, but we’re the only ones trying to find Deanna Bell.
The only ones with a real damn stake in this.
Now we’re Nash’s prey. He can’t even think the hunter might also wind up being the hunted.
If I’m working the psycho angle, there’s a definite possibility Nash is a Nighthawk. Especially with how massive he is, but mostly it’s the mental clues.
After what they did to us, it’s a miracle I’m not as batshit crazy as the rest of the soldiers who survived.
Or hell, maybe I am, and I just don’t realize it.
I must be nuts, coming into town in broad daylight, standing on public streets like no one’s going to question a tattooed giant in coveralls and a hard hat.
Rissa’s worth it.
I hadn’t even meant to follow her. Just wanted to check the shop for more clues.
The fact that she and Zach are here just means I can breathe easy with them in my sights.
Nothing’s been touched, not really, save for some glass kicked around by stomping feet.
I pick my way through it, scanning slowly, looking for something that catches my eye. Something that seems off, something overlooked.
Every human action leaves a trail, makes a pattern.
Smash in a window, and glass falls down in a way that tells you how much force was applied, the angle of the blow, whether it was done with a blunt object or a closed fist. Even the shape of the shards tells a story. A crowbar strike will cause it to fracture in a different pattern and different pieces than a hand wrapped in a glove.
You can even tell the height of the person, based on the point of impact, the force, the leverage, the angle.
It’s all there. You just have to be able to put the puzzle together.
And I can, assembling it in my mind, tracing backward from the scattered glass across the floor to the moment when...yes, it was a closed fist.
Someone punched the fucking window. Someone huge.
High angle, driving downward.
Extreme force, more than most adult men could muster.
My spine tingles.
There’s no blood, no drag path, so Deanna wasn’t hauled through these shards. She’d have been fighting if she was conscious, and if he’d lifted her off her feet, even at his size, her kicking and struggling would’ve surely caused him to leave skid marks in the glassy scatter while he forced her to heel.
So the perp smashes the glass window to catch her off guard, instead of coming through the front door. She runs in the opposite direction. She’s likely behind the counter.
I sniff, my mind racing. I study a few more shards kicked out farther than they should’ve gone on landing, falling under the edge of the front counter. Then I see it, plain as day.
A man lunging forward, kicking glass, vaulting over the counter. The napkin dispensers are crooked, a little thing of toothpicks knocked over.
He lands, divebombs her. Catches her.
I circle the counter to the point just before the swinging gate where he’d have caught her.
Shit. There’s a fresh dent in the plywood, a matching divot in the wall. They slammed into it together, combined weight.
No other signs of impact.
If he’d hit her head against the wall to knock her out, there’d at least be a faint smear on the pa
int from fear-sweat smudging it.
My nostrils flare. Yeah, there’s a faint scent, but what?
“Chloroform,” I mutter a second later, glancing back at Clarissa, who’s watching me tensely from the doorway, letting me do my thing, holding Zach tight. “You said the office was tossed?”
“Yeah.” She nods, then swallows. “What do you mean, chloroform?”
“He needed her zonked out so he was free to search around without her interfering. He used chloroform to knock her out, then searched the office and left with her.” I frown. “You’re sure nothing was taken?”
“Pretty sure, but not a hundred percent.” She grips Zach’s hand, then steps gingerly inside, guiding him around the glass carefully. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
She’s looking at me oddly, though, almost warily. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s just...strange how you do that. Almost supernatural.”
I smile, realizing it’s not wariness putting that expression on her face.
It’s wonder.
Embarrassed, I look away, clearing my throat. “It’s just math,” I mutter.
“I like math!” Zach pipes up.
How am I not surprised?
A chip off my shoulder. I wonder if he sees the world the way I do.
Arcs of trajectory, paths of probability, subtle clues that tell stories in the traces people don’t even realize they leave behind.
Does he feel alienated and isolated when he realizes other people don’t see things that way?
They see the surface and nothing else.
For a second, I reach over, ruffling the boy’s hair, before turning to follow Rissa into the back.
The office is a wreck. It’s obvious this was the attacker’s ground zero.
It’s also clear he was frustrated from how the room’s been torn apart.
Desk tipped over. Papers everywhere. File cabinets ripped open.
He did a cursory search, then got angry.
Psychos don’t like to be frustrated. They don’t like when their assumptions are wrong.
So they lash out, destroying everything around them, trying to force what they expect to be true.
He was damn mad when he tore this place apart. Convinced if he just destroyed enough, he’d find what he was after. And then when he didn’t, he took Deanna.
She was always Plan B.
I think Plan A was kill her once he had the data.
Smart Deanna, not keeping it here.
The safe on the wall catches my attention. I frown, creeping through the mess to the far wall.
Then I see what’s inside, and my stomach twists.
A crumpled bouquet. Dead flowers. Probably a few months old.
I already know what the note card attached to it says. I’ve written the same damn thing on every bouquet for all these years.
I’m sorry, Clarissa.
She’s quiet at my shoulder, looking inside. “You left those, huh?”
“Yeah.” I take a harsh breath. “I...yeah.”
There’s a heavy, hurting silence between us till she says, “That’s new.”
It actually takes me a second to realize what she’s talking about. There’s another note, buried among the shriveled petals, almost hidden except for a tiny corner of pink.
Bright fuchsia pink.
Aw, hell. I feel a groan coming on even before I fish the note out and unfold it.
You’re too slow!
This bouquet’s prettier than the last, Clarissa.
You should see all the ones he’s left you over the years.
Such a big sap.
See if you can catch up to me, lovebirds.
It’s Fuchsia’s knife-like handwriting again, and I sigh. “She enjoys playing cat and mouse too much for someone who’s supposed to be on our side.”
“Hasn’t she always been like that, though?” Rissa leans in, her shoulder brushing my bicep, and her maddening scent rises up.
It’s something soft and creamy and dangerously sweet. Like she’s one with her own confections. My dick going hard only adds to the confusion storming in my head.
Her gaze flicks side to side over the note, before she lifts her clear, curious green eyes to mine. “What does she mean by 'years,' Leo?”
Fuck. One soft word nearly shatters me. I clear my throat, fixing my gaze on the bouquet because it’s too hard to look at her.
“Nothing,” I growl, shrugging. “Maybe a small part of me kept hoping one day you’d come back and see them.”
“You’ve been apologizing to me all these years?”
“Yeah, that.”
...and loving you.
It kills me because I can’t fucking say it. Not right now.
But it’s rooted in me so deep it must be etched on my face as I turn my head to look at her. She’s so close.
So close I feel her breath on my skin, make out every tiny curling eyelash framing those large, beautiful jade eyes. No denying I remember her fingers buried in my hair the other day.
The way she touched me without the revulsion, the disgust I’d expected. She just looked up into my unguarded face and kissed me with a light and a passion and a fever that didn’t flinch in the slightest from the burn scars crisscrossing their way up my throat.
I could lean down right the fuck now and relive it. Claim her like I’m dying to.
But before I can give in to the heat tugging at me with such fierce need, a little voice pipes up between us.
“Hey, Mom? What do those numbers mean?”
We break apart, both of us gasping softly, and look down. Zach’s standing on his toes, peering up into the safe and at the card where I’d written my message.
There’s something else in the corner.
Something I didn’t write.
Numbers. Two groups of three.
They look like degrees, minutes, maybe seconds of latitude and longitude.
Rissa cocks her head, staring at me. “What is it?”
“New. Nothing I ever wrote,” I say, reaching in to snag the card and pull it free from the bouquet. “They’re coordinates.”
Clarissa sucks in a breath. “Leo. I think...yeah, that’s Deanna’s handwriting!”
“Then it looks like there’s somewhere she wants us to go.”
Her eyes beam like the sun. For the first time in eons, I see her gorgeous smile. “She really did leave us messages. She knows we’re going to find her,” Clarissa breaths, her smile practically dancing.
There’s no way in hell I won’t do anything to see that sunrise smile again and again.
Zach watches us intently, cocking his head too much like his ma. “Are we looking for buried treasure?”
“Not quite, little man.” I ruffle his hair gently. “We’re looking for something better.”
I hold Rissa’s eyes as I say it, and see the spark of eagerness there, rousing an answering spark inside me.
Hold on, Deanna.
We’re coming, and to hell with psychos who want to play games.
The hunt is on.
13
Up the Lane (Clarissa)
I feel like I’m driving around with a bear in my back seat.
That’s kind of what it feels like with Leo’s hulking weight in my car, hunched down so he’s not easily visible through the back windows.
It’s about keeping a low profile, but when this is a compact car and Leo’s not a compact man? He’s as subtle as a big brown grizzly stuffed into a shoebox back there.
But he’s enduring it with patience. Far more patience than I have when, for the tenth time, Zach twists in the back seat to stare at Leo with bright eyes.
“You really grew up here with Mom, Mr. Nine?”
I wince. I can’t believe Leo let that slip, but it came out while we were sneaking him into the car—telling Zach we have to keep things quiet. Everyone here has known Mr. Nine for a long time, and not everybody likes him.
“Zach, sit down,�
�� I say sharply. “Seat belts don’t work if you don’t sit right.”
He lets out a deep sigh, but obediently plunks down again, folding his arms over his chest to sulk.
Leo’s deep chuckle doesn’t really shake the growly man-bear thing.
“Listen to your ma,” he says, and racks up a couple more Dad Points. “But yeah. I’ve been around these parts for a long time. Ever since I was a kid.”
I frown, glancing at Leo in the rear-view mirror. “Really? I don’t remember that.”
Weird. I grew up with all the kids around here. I didn’t meet Leo until I was out of high school, I’d always assumed he was from out of town, brought here by the hush-hush scary business.
Leo gives me a long look in the mirror. He seems to be talking to Zach, but I feel like the next words are for me.
“I lived in a sort of special foster place here,” he says, long and slow, words chosen carefully. “I wasn’t allowed outside much, but sometimes I’d find my way out to play with my friends down by the creek. You know Mr. Warren, don’t you? He was my friend back then, and our pal Blake, and his brother Holt, and Warren’s sister, Jenna. And sometimes these two sisters would come running along with ’em. Clarissa and your Aunt Deanna.”
Wow. I’m so lost. So confused. Something pricks and teases inside me, some buried memory, taunting the edges of my brain.
I remember playing by the creek, watching the boys wrestle, laughing when Jenna joined in, making flower crowns with her, and a boy I used to think was so sweet. But his name wasn’t Leo. He hadn’t been a lion, he’d been a—holy hell.
“Tiger?!” It bursts out of me before I can stop it.
I stare up in the mirror. Under that hood, there’s no mistaking the slow, feral grin that spreads across Leo’s lips. “Growl,” he purrs mockingly.
Holy Toledo. It’s a miracle I don’t spin the car right off the road.
Zach tilts his head. “I don’t get it. Leo means lion, not tiger?”
Chuckling, Leo says, “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Tell that to my buddy Blake. He was the oldest kid there, and he still didn’t know a word of Latin.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I whisper, my heart knotting up. “I mean, when you came to the house, after all those years...”