She nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt his warm, rough hand on her feet.
“Your feet are swollen,” he muttered.
“Yeah, I was just noticing that.”
“Are they sore?”
She shrugged. Yes, they were. But she didn’t want to give him yet another thing to worry about where she was concerned.
He set his book aside and started rubbing one of her feet.
“But now you can’t read if your hands are occupied,” she protested weakly. She desperately wanted the foot rub. But his touch was intoxicating and she was about half a second away from pushing him down and riding his face.
“Let’s watch something then,” he said in a low tone.
Naomi turned on the TV and idly flicked through the channels. She stopped on a nature show about sharks. She glanced at Sequence and he looked interested enough, so she set the remote control down and tried to relax.
His thumbs moved into the arch of her foot and circled her heel. He stretched each one of her toes, wiggling them between his fingers and making Naomi smile. She let her eyes close as she relaxed into the feeling. The world went fuzzy and quiet around her.
When she woke up in the morning, in her bed, with no memory of how she’d gotten there, Naomi remembered the dream. She’d dreamt that Sequence had held her against his chest. That she’d clutched at him, unwilling to let him go. She’d dreamt that he’d laid her down on a bed and she’d whispered his name. All she’d wanted was for him to lay down alongside her. She’d breathed into his neck and wrapped a leg around his waist. He’d groaned her name into the skin below her ear. For one delicious second she’d had his weight. And then he was gone, the blankets were up around her shoulders and the dream was over.
Blinking into the morning light however, Naomi had no idea how much was a dream and how much was real. She wondered if that would always be the problem where Sequence was concerned.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Well, you can extrapolate anything you want from that evidence. But it’s circumstantial at best. Unfortunately.” Agent Randall, a dense little bulldog of a man, leaned back in his chair and crossed his stubby arms over his chest.
He wasn’t trying to be an asshole, Sequence reminded himself, but he certainly wasn’t being helpful either. Rook had managed to call in a favor and get a meeting with a member of the FBI team that had been investigating Bastone for years. Apparently the issue with the other women whom Bastone had pursued was not a new one to Agent Randall. They’d been trying to pin the women’s murders and disappearances on Bastone for at least half a decade.
“How is a connection to three different murder-slash-disappearance cases circumstantial?” Sequence tried to keep the rudeness out of his voice, this guy was doing them a favor by being here. But this guy was also an asshole and every cavalier, dismissive second with him felt like a wasted moment in terms of Naomi. She was as safe as she could be, locked up in the bunker. But Sequence needed the entire world to be safe for her.
Sometime in the last few months, she’d become the most precious thing on earth to him. And that was before he’d found out she was carrying his baby. Now, he felt as if she were made of spun sugar. Intricate and delicious and completely breakable. He’d become obsessed with putting Bastone behind bars.
Randall turned his attention away from Rook, the only other person in Rook’s office, and turned toward Sequence. “Because those three women knew one another before they knew Bastone. They were friends from where they’d grown up in Connecticut. There were plenty of people who knew all three of those women. And to be honest, Bastone wasn’t the only man who’d pursued all three of them either. They were attractive women.”
“Shit.” Sequence raked a hand down his face and leaned back in his chair. He’d been so hoping that the information he’d found about the jewelry store records would be something the FBI could move on.
“What can you tell us about Blue Eyes?” Rook asked after a moment, his hands folded over his stomach where he sat back in his chair.
Randall raised his eyebrows. “What can you tell me about Blue Eyes?”
Rook smirked, but played the game. “Former cop. Good heart but crooked enough to take an early retirement option before the force started investigating where he was getting all his extra playtime money from. Then he was a bouncer and bodyguard for a while before he got brought up on embezzlement charges and spent some time upstate. We didn’t even know he was out before he started tailing our client.”
“Yeah, he got released unexpectedly. Just like he got charged unexpectedly.”
“What do you mean?” Sequence asked Randall, his eyes narrowed.
“I mean that the entire embezzlement case against Blue Eyes got dropped into the lap of the NYPD with a neat little bow. Airtight. Open and shut. It basically came with a gift-wrapped judge’s gavel.”
“Someone did their own investigation to put Blue Eyes away? Why?”
Randall looked back and forth between the two men. He seemed to be debating something. “You know Blue Eyes personally?”
Rook nodded. “Personal security world isn’t that big, even in New York. I’ve met him a handful of times.”
Sequence nodded as well. He’d played poker once with Blue Eyes a few years ago.
“Either of you ever meet his girl?”
Both men shook their heads.
“Pretty young thing,” Randall continued. “Went by the name of Rachel Harris.”
Sequence straightened up immediately, all the blood leaving his face. “The third woman, the one who disappeared.”
“Bingo,” Randall confirmed.
“You think Bastone personally investigated Blue Eyes in order to get him out of the picture so that he could move in on Rachel Harris?” Rook sounded disgusted and horrified and unsurprised all at once.
“That’s the working theory.”
“And once Blue Eyes got out, he went straight to work for Bastone?” Rook asked, trying to put the rest of the pieces back together. “Doesn’t seem very likely.”
“Maybe Bastone is blackmailing him. Maybe Bastone is dangling information about the missing woman as some kind of carrot. Maybe Blue Eyes is a stone cold dumbass and doesn’t realize who put him away or who disappeared his girl.” Randall ticked off the possibilities looking more and more sour with each one. It was obvious that there was only so far that the FBI had gotten.
Randall didn’t give up much more information on Bastone, and they didn’t expect him to. Rook Securities was a private firm and the FBI was… the FBI. Randall gave up just enough for them to be able to keep Naomi safe. And then he interviewed Naomi for a good four hours.
When Rook had first brought up the idea of bringing Randall in, Sequence had initially been resistant for that very reason. He hadn’t wanted to put Naomi through the stress of an FBI questioning. But eventually, he hadn’t been able to deny the merit of the idea. Only good things could come from Naomi’s situation being on the radar of the FBI. They needed to know that Bastone had his sights set on someone new.
After Randall left, Sequence sought out Naomi, wanting to make sure she was all right. Eventually he found her in the bathroom adjoining her room. He paused against the doorway and watched as she, in spandex shorts and that cotton robe she loved so much, sat with her feet in the bathtub, soaking them.
She smiled down at a piece of paper in her hand.
“You all right?” he asked her.
Naomi jumped six straight inches in the air and immediately held the piece of paper behind her back as she whirled to look at him.
Sequence couldn’t help but laugh. Naomi was the worst at hiding things. The absolute worst. He always knew the second she was attempting to keep something from him.
Like the way she was attempting to hide the fact that she was horny all the time. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to follow that particular trail of clues. Sequence had read in several of the pregnancy books that she might start to feel that way.
So it hadn’t been a total surprise to him when she’d started to follow him everywhere with her eyes. When she’d started to bite her bottom lip and watch his mouth when he spoke to her. When she’d started sliding her legs against one another and taking deep draws of his scent whenever he was near her. He’d felt her press against him for just a second or two longer than was strictly friendly.
And, yeah, he’d hacked into her kindle account and knew exactly what smut she was constantly reading.
The woman was hard up.
And so was Sequence, for that matter. He hadn’t slept with anyone since Naomi. The longest drought of his adult life. But that wasn’t what had his blood humming in his veins. No, it was Naomi that did it. He wanted her. Badly. There was something about her that was just so unbelievably delicious. He was pretty sure it was her colors. The red of her hair, the blue of her eyes. Her colors were somehow royal and friendly all at once. She was unattainable and approachable at the same damn time. He wanted her so freaking badly, and in many ways, he had her. But not all ways.
Sequence wanted her in all ways.
But he’d seduced her once. It was her turn now. He figured if she was resisting him, it was for good reasons. Most likely ones she’d laid out involving the kid she was currently bringing into this world. If she wanted him, she was going to have to take him. He refused to be the one to take her.
“You scared me!” she gasped, one hand on her chest and the other hand still hidden behind her back. Her eyes were as big as half dollars and all the color had leeched from her face.
Sequence couldn’t help but chuckle at her over-the-top reaction. “What are you hiding, Fancy?”
“Nothing!” she squeaked. Which was always her answer when she was doing something she thought she wasn’t supposed to be doing. Sequence thought it was really damn cute that she’d never learned to lie better than that.
He stalked two steps into the bathroom and Naomi squeaked, reaching down to the floor and sliding something behind the toilet where he couldn’t see it.
Hmm. What was she hiding? Sequence wanted to know, but he didn’t want to force it out of her. He wanted her to tell him. It was the difference between picking a flower bud and waiting for it to bloom on the stem. He was a patient man.
Plus she’d had an intense afternoon and there she was, looking a little wild eyed.
“How was the interview?” he asked, his hands in his pockets as he leaned against the sink.
Naomi looked impossibly relieved that he wasn’t questioning her further about whatever thing she was hiding behind the toilet.
“Tiring,” she admitted, wilting a little bit. “But, I guess encouraging too. I’m glad that there are more people trying to make sure that Bastone doesn’t get carried away.”
God, she was just so dang cute. In her world, she didn’t want Bastone to get carried away. In the real world, they were talking about murder and kidnapping.
Sequence took another step closer to her, desperately wanting to stroke down the slumped curve of her back as she drew circles in the bath with her feet.
“Dry off and I’ll give you a foot rub.”
She turned back to look at him and he wondered if she could possibly know just how much of her heart was always in her eyes. She said nothing but he knew everything she was thinking. She bit her lip and looked up at him through her lashes and he knew that she wanted that foot rub. Her feet were swollen and aching, of course she wanted it. But also, he knew that she just plain wanted his hands on her.
And she also didn’t.
She had her own set of personal reasons for holding back from Sequence. He wasn’t pressing her on it. She sat on the edge of the tub, wanting him and resisting him at the same moment.
“A foot rub is a good idea for the baby. It’ll help you sleep if you’re relaxed,” he said in a low voice. They were words that meant almost nothing, but he knew that she needed to be convinced to do what was good for her in that moment. She was getting in the habit of denying herself what she wanted the most and Sequence didn’t like that. He wanted her to have everything her heart desired. Especially if it was his body. But not wanting to push her past the point of no return, they’d both have to settle on a foot rub.
She paused for another moment and then nodded her head, her lip still between her teeth. She stepped out of the tub and sat on the closed toilet to dry her feet off before she followed him into the other room.
He sat on the sofa under the window and waited for her to join him.
“Seek?” she asked, standing ten feet away and playing with the tie of her robe. Her eyes were on her fingers. “Do you think a lie of omission is still a lie?”
“Yes,” he said immediately, mostly because he wanted her to tell him whatever it was she was hiding from him in the bathroom.
She wilted a little bit before she slowly gave him those sweet, sapphire eyes. “Do you think it’s okay for you and me to keep secrets from one another?”
Sequence laughed and dragged a hand over his face. He’d never imagined building a life with a woman, it had always just been off the table for him. But somewhere, in the back of his head, he’d known that any woman who could ever handle him for any period of time would have to be a hard ass. He’d pictured tattoos and bleached hair and a leather jacket. He’d pictured cigarettes and world-weary and hard, feral sex.
Never in his life would he have imagined wanting this blushing, smiling, innocent jewel of a woman. And god, he wanted Naomi.
“Fancy, regardless of what I think, it sure seems like you’re not comfortable keeping secrets from me.”
“Atlas said I shouldn’t show you.”
Sequence rose up from the couch he’d plunked down on. Naomi and Atlas were keeping a secret from him? Fuck that. “Naomi…”
She let out a big breath and went back into the bathroom. A second later, she emerged with a shoebox in her hands. “He said it would upset you. But then you caught me looking and I don’t want to keep things from you. So. Here.”
She strode across the room and shoved the shoebox into his chest with hands that trembled. She plunked down on the couch and brought her knees up to her chin.
“I’m so sorry if it upsets you,” she whispered.
Sequence glanced down at the shoebox and saw his own face looking up at him. He and Atlas, six years old, identical looks of surprise on their faces as the Polaroid was being snapped.
Sequence slowly sat down on the couch. This was a box of photos from his childhood.
He frowned. He didn’t have a single memory of a photo being taken of him. They’d never been that kind of family. But here was a whole box of evidence to the contrary.
“Atlas gave you this?” Sequence asked through a throat full of gravel.
She nodded. “Yes,” she whispered. “He thought I might want to see baby pictures of you, considering we’re about to have one together. He said that he found it when you guys moved out of your old house, but he never showed it to you because you wouldn’t have wanted to see it.”
“He was right.” Sequence pressed the box into Naomi’s hands and turned away, needling his knuckles into his forehead.
Long seconds passed and Naomi barely moved. “I’m so sorry,” she eventually whispered.
Sequence rolled his head, resting his temple against his closed fist. He watched her for a long minute. “It’s not your fault, Naomi. You’re entitled to be curious about the man you’re having a baby with. It just fucking sucks that his childhood was so goddamn terrible.”
“Yes,” Naomi nodded resolutely. “It does fucking suck that your childhood was so goddamn terrible.”
He laughed in startled surprise.
“No one deserves that,” she summed up.
Sequence eyed her for a long second. “Show me one.”
“What?”
He nodded toward the box. “Find a picture of me as a kid and show me. I don’t want to look through the box because I don’t want to see a picture of my father. But pick
one or two without him and show me.”
Naomi nodded immediately, obviously eager to succeed at what he asked her to do. He watched her face carefully as she leafed through the box. Minute emotions passed over her face. There was confusion and concern, but also softness and delight. Sequence had absolutely no idea what pictures she was looking at, never having seen them before. But he waited patiently for her to find one for him.
Finally, grinning, she held out a Polaroid. Sequence’s lips twitched when he looked at it. It was him and Atlas, age two or three, engaged in some sort of battle royale. The boys were rolling and dirty in the grass, their faces halfway between ultimate joy and ultimate rage.
“Which is you?”
“The one winning the fight, of course.” He pointed to the boy on top. Although, to be honest, Sequence had no idea which one he was. They were identical and he couldn’t remember ever seeing a photo of himself at this age.
“Is…?” she paused and needled her bottom lip with her teeth, obviously curious about something but not wanting to push him.
“Go ahead, Fancy,” Sequence said on a sigh, passing the photo back to her. He was relieved that the photo showed a good time between him and his brother, but also, looking at it was like standing barefoot on concrete that was just a little bit too hot. It was too emotional to let himself stay with it for too long. “You can ask me whatever you want. I… might not be able to answer. But you can ask.”
He desperately wanted this to be true. He knew that, despite the weeks of therapy he’d undergone, there were still huge blank spots in his ability to verbalize his feelings, his experiences. But he wanted her to at least feel comfortable asking.
She released her bottom lip and gave him a wobbly smile. “Is Sequence your real name?”
He groaned. Of course that was the question she had to ask. “No.” He sighed and scraped a hand over his short hair. “Our neighbor, this old lady who babysat us sometimes, gave us our nicknames. She called me Sequence because I was always obsessed with these number games that she gave us to do.”
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