by Jami Alden
The girls’ screams died as the security goons swung the guns in their direction.
“What the fuck was Roman thinking?” David circled the girls, scanning them up and down like he was searching for redeeming features. He shook his head. “They’re not even worth trying to move ourselves.”
“But the loss—” Carl broke in.
“We’ll eat it,” David said. “And then we’ll let Roman know what happens when he misrepresents his merchandise.” He paused then. “You.”
Tension snapped down his spine as his uncle pinned him with a cold stare.
“Take care of them.”
He shook his head. His hands started to shake.
“What’s the problem?” Carl sneered. “This should take the edge off for at least a couple of weeks.”
He swallowed hard, tried to control the tremors coursing through him as he struggled to keep the beast caged as it foamed at the mouth, urging him to wrap his hands around Carl’s throat and squeeze until his eyes popped from their sockets. They didn’t understand how it worked. Girls like Evangeline, Bianca, Stephanie had chosen their fates, chosen to let men use their bodies because they were too lazy or too stupid to do something worthwhile.
All whores, just like his mother. He had no trouble unleashing the demon on them.
But these girls, they were innocents, staring at him with their big, wide eyes, pleading for help. “They haven’t done anything wrong. They don’t deserve any of this.”
His uncle stared at him as if he’d grown a horn from the center of his meorehead. “After all I’ve done to help you, now you’re going to try to take the moral high ground? You have a job—now do it!”
“No.”
Even in the dim light of the parking lot, he could see the vein pulse in his uncle’s forehead, the frustration he couldn’t contain making the muscles in his jaw pulse. “How can you expect me to protect you when you won’t fucking listen?” he asked, his tone that of a parent struggling to keep it together while dealing with an obstinate child. David pinned him with a look full of disgust and disappointment and held out his hand. “Gun.”
His thugs exchanged a look, but the AK was handed over without protest. A metallic click pierced the rain, and David took aim.
Bam. The first girl went down, followed by the other four in quick succession.
He swallowed hard and kept his gaze locked on his uncle so he wouldn’t have to look at their wide death stares.
“I gave you a place, protection, and even a means to deal with your need to do things no sane man can wrap his head around,” David said in a low whisper. “In exchange, you do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it. Got it?”
He nodded mutely, swallowing against the acid burning his throat.
“Now get this cleaned up.”
The cars disappeared into the rain. As he dragged the limp forms back into the truck, he fought away the memories of Sarah—another girl, another innocent he couldn’t save. But he still had Megan. He closed his eyes, called up her image and clung to it.
He moved his mind away from the grisly scene in front of him. Soon all of this would be over, and he would be with his Megan. He would be saved.
Megan sat on Cole’s couch, sipping coffee and checking her voice mail as if it were just another February morning, the sun hidden behind bullet-dark clouds as rain smacked against the skylight above her head.
Right, just another Thursday, she thought as she listened to a voice mail from Devany, the second in two days. The meeting with Devany, her mother, her aunt Kathy and the social worker hadn’t gone well, and Devany had been inconsolable. And it didn’t help that Devany had been put through another round of questioning by the police about Bianca’s work at the mission. But Megan had been so distracted she hadn’t even called her back.
Okay, distracted was a bit of an understatement. She made a mental note to call Devany in a couple hours. The next message was from Nate, who had called yesterday evening when she was still being questioned by Petersen. She hadn’t had a chance to check her messages before she’d been otherwise… distracted.
As she thought of the man sleeping down the hall—the reason for her distraction—her guilt took on the bitter cast of shame. Nate was so freaking nice. “Just calling to see how you’re doing and let you know Im here if you want any company.”
Perfectly nice guy out there to lend a comforting shoulder, and she’d spent the better part of the night coming her brains out with a man who two weeks ago she would have sworn up and down she hated with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.
Now, as she sat on his couch, her emotions in a hopeless tangle, she knew it wasn’t that simple. It’s a thin line between love and hate. Megan immediately shied away from that thought, not even wanting the L-word to so much as enter her consciousness in relation to Cole.
Yet she couldn’t deny the truth, that Cole’s appearance in her life had unearthed a whole host of emotions she thought she’d buried, and hatred wasn’t even close to the top of the list. She closed her eyes, picturing him as she’d left him. The sheet pulled down to his waist, one muscular leg flung out to the side. His broad, tanned chest dark against the white, rumpled linens. His craggy features were soft with sleep, the dark shadow of beard on his jaw tempting her to trace her finger along the delicious roughness.
It would be so easy to slip between the sheets with him. He was right here, so close…. The desire to go back down the hall, climb back into bed with him and shut out reality for another precious hour pulled at her until it was like a physical ache.
Her nipples tightened under her sweater, and her thighs squeezed against the knot of desire that pulled tight at just the memory of him inside her.
But their relationship was complicated enough before she’d given in to temptation. Now, thanks to her weakness, things were a whole lot messier.
When they had been together years ago, she’d known sex with Cole would change everything.
How stupid of her not to realize that was still true. After last night, she felt rocked to the core, like she’d been broken apart and put back together with enough cracks in the facade she would never be the same. Left with a need that gnawed at her, a yearning so powerful it threatened to consume her.
But it wasn’t just about the sex. Her feelings for Cole would be so much easier to manage if they were all about scratching an itch, finally satisfying her curiosity about what it was like to sleep with him.
What she felt was so much more complicated than that.
Yearning. That’s what he made her feel, an emotion so absent from her life for the past three years she’d forgotten what it felt like. The helpless desire for something different, the useless wish that their lives had taken an entirely different direction.
She sank back onto the couch and swallowed back tears as that yearning mingled with the bitterness of guilt. What kind of person was she, sleeping with Cole, wallowing in thoughts of what could have been, while Sean was in prison?
While she was rolling around Cole’s king-size mattress, shutting out the rest of the world, Sean was locked in a cell, destined to die in four days if she didn’t find some real evidence that someone else was guilty of Evangeline Gordon’s murd lo/font>
A possibility that was dwindling by the minute as she sat on the couch mooning over Cole. She needed to focus, face reality, and follow every last lead, no matter how tenuous.
Stephanie’s death was a morbid indicator that Megan was onto something. Too bad she didn’t know what.
She swallowed a sip of coffee, the pain in her throat a stark reminder of her own brush with a violent end. She shivered a little, wondering if the police had picked up Jack yet, or if they even took her suspicions seriously.
She heard a door open and heavy footsteps on the hardwood floor. She quickly dialed Devany’s number, using the phone call as an excuse not to face Cole head-on just yet. The call went to voice mail. “Hey, Dev, it’s Megan. Sorry I didn’t get back to yo
u yesterday.” A pair of large, tanned feet appeared in her view. Megan tried to ignore them but found her gaze drawn involuntarily up. “I know you’re angry but…”
She completely lost her train of thought as her eyes were dragged up a pair of strong legs covered in green plaid flannel, past the substantial bulge in his groin, giving way to a symphony of tawny skin sliding over six-pack abs and powerful pecs. Her brain froze as Cole’s body called to her, tempting her to lean just a few inches forward and run her tongue along the grooves of his abs, trace the silky line of hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his pants. She would take him in her mouth, run her tongue around the thick head of his cock, savor the hot, salty taste of his arousal….
“Who are you talking to?” Cole’s voice was neutral, but the molten look in his eyes told her he could read her mind as if it were a billboard.
It was enough to jerk her out of her sensual haze. She rose to her feet and brushed past Cole on her way to the kitchen, trying and failing to ignore the sleep-warmed scent of his skin as she passed. She kept her gaze forward as she strove to put as much distance between them as possible. “Anyway,” she said into her phone, fumbling to reclaim the thread of her message, “you don’t need to worry about the cops. They’re going to protect you. As for your mom, it’s going to work itself out.”
“Good mor—” Cole started, cutting off when Megan raised a silencing hand. “What, no good morning kiss, no thanks for the amazing sex? I feel so used.”
Megan’s fingers tightened around her phone, not wanting him to see that it was taking all of her restraint not to throw herself into his arms.
He shook his head and followed her into the kitchen. He poured himself a cup of coffee, ignoring her as he gathered bread and eggs for breakfast. Desperate to get some distance between them, Megan retreated to the adjoining family room and curled up on the couch. She shoved aside the pinch of shame at blowing him off as she responded to Nate’s message. More guilt there as she tapped out a quick text. Thanks for ur call. Sorry I’ve been MIA. Too much going on with Sean and work!
The text was a cop-out, but she didn’t have the energy right now to risk talking to Nate, knowing what he wanted from her when she’d just left Cole’s bed.
She closed her eyes, bracing herself to face reality in the form of six-foot-three inches, two hundred twenty or so pounds of half-naked male whose irritation she could sense from across the room.
He’d turned on the radio, and she could hear the clank of utensils against the pan mixed with the voice of the newscaster. She snuck a look at him in the kitchen. She could see the thick slabs of muscle shifting under the skin of his back as he worked at the stove. Her fingers tingled at the remembered feel of smooth, sweat-slicked skin as he moved over her….
She shoved herself up from the couch, afraid if she stayed a second longer she’d spend the next twenty-four hours back in bed with him instead of doing whatever she could to help Sean. “I’m going to take a shower—”
He caught her by the arm before she’d taken two steps. “Have some breakfast first.”
“I’m not hungry,” she said, and tried to pull her arm from his grasp. At that moment, her stomach rumbled, foiling her attempt to get away.
He gently steered her to the table. “Fighting crime burns calories, and you haven’t been taking care of yourself.” He guided her to the chair and pushed a plate of eggs and toast dripping with butter in front of her. “Come on, I scrambled them with cheese, just how you like them.”
Megan froze with her fork in her hand, afraid she was going to burst into tears. Why was it so easy for him to work past her defenses even when she was telling herself to be careful? To not fall for the lure of depending on him again, for anything, because he’d shown her how easy it was for him to turn his back on her.
But right now all she could think about was that they could have had a thousand mornings like this, sitting across the table from each other, if things hadn’t gone so horribly wrong.
“Did you ever wonder what might have happened if—” It was only Cole’s stare, freezing her midsentence, that made her realize she’d asked the question out loud.
“If I hadn’t arrested Sean?” he finished.
Heat seared her cheeks and she fixed her eyes on her half-eaten eggs. “Never mind—it’s a stupid question and this isn’t the time.”
“No,” he said.
Megan’s stomach bottomed out and she wanted the floor to open up and swallow her. She closed her eyes, wishing he would disappear instead of sliding his hand across the table to cover hers.
“I never let myself think about it because it hurts too much,” he continued in a rough voice. “I knew it was over, and the only way I knew how to deal with it was to shove what I felt for you away and pretend it didn’t matter.”
Shock washed through her, and she opened her eyes to meet his fierce stare. His fingers curled tighter over hers.
“You’re a really good actor, because I genuinely thought you couldn’t care less about me.”
Cole squeezed his eyes shut as though in pain. “It kills me that I made you feel that way.” His phone rang, and he cursed softly under his breath. “It’s Petersen. I need to take it.”
Megan nodded, still reeling, trying to figure out what it meant. Trying to convince herself that whether or not he had actually cared about her didn’t matter. It didn’t change how he’d treated her after Sean’s arrest.
And it didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of doing it again.
Yet as she thought of the weight of his hand on hers, the look of dark regret in his eyes, everything he’d risked for her in the past week, it was becoming harder and harder to hold his past mistakes against him.
“Really? Within the next forty-eight hours? No shit.” A pause. “No, I understand you can’t. I appreciate you giving me this much.”
The snippet of conversation dragged Megan back to reality. There was a murderer to catch. Now wasn’t the time to navel gaze and reevaluate her twisted knot of a relationship with Cole.
Another pause and then he chuckled softly. “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll do my best. Thanks for the update.”
“What did she say? Did they find Jack?”
“Brooks’s alibi checks out,” Cole said as he wandered back into the kitchen.
“Let me guess, he was at the club when it happened, and Talia Vega is the one covering for him.” There was something about that woman, a coating of dishonesty that clung to her like a bad smell. Many had cast off Megan’s assessment of Talia as the by-product of bitterness against the woman who’d been a key witness for the prosecution in Sean’s trial. But Megan knew there was more to it; she had always felt Talia knew something more than the story she’d told on the stand. Megan wouldn’t put it past Talia to cover for the man who had murdered Stephanie and attacked her and Cole.
Cole gave a soft chuckle and set his phone on the table. “Nope, turns out when Jack’s not working security at Club One, he teaches martial arts down at the Southwest Community Center. While we were at the Hillside Motel fighting off the bad guy, Jack was teaching Tae Kwon Do to a bunch of five-year-olds.”
Megan shook her head. “Are the parents trying to scare their kids to death?”
Cole shrugged. “From what Petersen told me, aside from a scrape with the Portland PD a couple years ago—he beat the crap out of some guy but was never charged—Brooks has been clean since he left the military two years ago.”
So despite the hostile vibe Megan picked up whenever she was around the former Green Beret, it looked like her suspect pool for the Slasher had just shrunk by one.
Megan was still processing that when Cole threw out another stunner. “They’re also working a solid lead on the guy from the hotel room and expect to make an arrest in the next couple of days.”
“Who?”
Cole looked at her as though she’d lost her mind. “You really think she’s going to tell me that?”
Megan’s face
heated, her stomach churning at the memory of Petersen’s accusations. “They think they’ve found the Slasher?” Megan’s heart skipped a beat at the thought.
“We’ll see,” Cole said as he got up and crossed to the kitchen to pour himself another cup of coffee. “The MO is nothing like his recent kills. None of the degree of ritual or preparation. Of course, if he knew you were coming, he knew he didn’t have time for all that.”
Megan shivered, the small hairs at the back of her neck standing on end at the memory of the killer’s voice. He had been watching. He had known.
“But based on the preliminary examination,” Cole continued, “the knife he sliced me with is similar to, if not the same as, the one used on the Slasher victims.”
“I hope they get him,” Megan said, but she could tell by Cole’s raised eyebrow that he’d picked up on her lack of conviction.
Of course she wanted the killer caught. Whoever had brutalized those women was a monster, not to mention Megan would live in constant fear until he was caught, constantly looking over her shoulder, waiting for a stalking killer to emerge from the shadows.
But with no information linking the Slasher murders to Sean’s case, Megan and her brother would be stuck exactly where they were right now. And if Megan couldn’t find anything, the police and the prosecution weren’t going to go digging around looking for a connection to a case they considered not just closed, but also nailed shut.
She began pacing across the living room, wracking her brain as to where to start. “The other victims,” Megan said abruptly, “did you find out if there were any more cases where they found evidence of a video recording?”
Cole shook his head. “If there was, it didn’t make it into the report. Devany’s eye witness account is the first we’ve heard that he might be filming himself.”
Megan grabbed her laptop from her bag, set it on Cole’s coffee table, and powered it on. “He might have posted it,” Megan said, almost to herself. “Do you know if they’re looking at anything like snuff film sites?”
Cole nodded. “Tasso had a team of people combing the Web, looking to see if videos of the victims showed up. As of two days ago, they hadn’t found anything.”