by Karen Rose
He tore his mouth away, panting. ‘I’m one breath away from dragging you to the bed and fucking you blind. So if you don’t want to smell like hospital soap, you’d better hurry.’
She pulled him down for another kiss, ending it with a teasing nip to his lip. ‘I’m still half dressed, Agent Davenport.’
He growled at her then, dragging her borrowed sweatpants down her body, tossing them aside before she could protest – not that she’d planned to – then grabbed her lace panties and tore them in his haste. On one knee, he looked up, found her staring at him, her cheeks flushed with arousal. ‘All night I’ve been picturing you commando under Keith’s sweats,’ he said, his voice husky. ‘Where did these come from?’
‘Jeremy’s daughter left them at his house. They were still in the package,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Never been worn. Never will again now.’
‘I’d apologize, but I’m not sorry.’ He pressed an open-mouthed kiss on the inside of her thigh, drawing in the luscious scent of her need. ‘But I will replace them.’
Her laugh was half moan. ‘It’s all right. I’ve never had my panties torn off me before. That was really hot, Decker.’ She backed into the shower and crooked her finger. ‘Are you coming?’
He closed his eyes for a second. ‘You could have just said you didn’t want slow.’
She laughed then, low and sultry, and he damn near came right where he knelt. ‘I said I liked slow sometimes.’ She held out her hand. ‘Just not tonight.’
He rose on his own power, then followed her into the shower and flattened her against the wall, thrusting against her and making her moan. ‘Hurry. I need to be inside you.’
He took the soap from her hands and lathered her up quickly. Too quickly, but he needed her too much. That he’d thought he could actually go slow . . . Ludicrous. He lathered himself, conscious of her eyes on his chest, following his hands down as he washed lower.
He threw the soap into the dish, rinsed, turned off the water and grabbed the towel to do a cursory job of drying them off. Then he pulled her out of the shower, slowing only enough to take a condom from the pocket of his pants before dragging her to the bed and following her down, covering her with his body and thrusting against her, nearly coming again from the friction alone.
She pushed at his shoulders, turning him on his back, and snagged the condom out of his grip. She straddled him as she had done the night before, but this time she rolled the condom over him with quick, efficient fingers. ‘Okay?’
His gaze bounced from her hand on his cock to her breasts and finally her face. ‘Huh? Is what okay?’
She grinned down at him. ‘This way. With me . . . you know.’
He closed his eyes, tried to find a sliver of sanity. She was protecting him again, giving him time to heal before expecting him to be on top. He dug his fingers into her hips, flexing restlessly. ‘Kate, I swear t’God, as long as I get inside you in the next five seconds, I don’t care if you’re hanging from a fucking trapeze.’
‘Now that . . .’ She kissed him softly, drawing a groan from his throat that sounded more like a whine. ‘That sounds very interesting.’
‘Kate.’
‘Sshh.’ She lifted her hips . . . and took him deep. Finally. He groaned again, but she’d covered his mouth with hers, swallowing the sound. Then she started to move, and he could swear he’d died and gone to heaven she felt so good.
He exhaled raggedly. ‘Faster. Please.’
She pushed up so that she sat upright, taking him even deeper, then let her head fall back and rode him hard and fast and dirty, her breasts in constant motion. He wanted to watch her body, wanted to see her face, but his vision blurred and his hips jerked up, trying to get more of her. Needing to fill her, to take her . . . to possess her so fully that nobody else, past, present or future, would ever matter again.
He blinked hard, needing to see, something inside him relaxing when she met his gaze, never pausing as she rode him, the only sounds in the room the slapping of flesh and the harsh breaths sawing in and out of their lungs. He planted one foot on the mattress so that he could thrust higher, and she made a keening sound, her back arching like a bow.
She covered her mouth with her hand, muffling her cry as she came, her orgasm triggering his. He pulled her down, kissed her hard, rolled them so that she was on her back. Closing his eyes, he snapped his hips, driving into her, matching the rhythm that pounded in his head.
And when he came . . . it was electric, little lights sparking behind his eyelids. It was a deluge, sweeping away everything in its path. And then it was . . . quiet.
Peace. He carefully lowered himself to his elbows, burying his face in the curve of her shoulder, shivering at the feel of her hand lightly stroking his back, setting a new, slower, richer rhythm.
Peace, he thought again. He shuddered, pressing his lips to the side of her neck, rousing himself enough to kiss her temple, then her forehead. Then he opened his eyes and found her smiling at him.
This. This was what he wanted. What he’d hoped for all those nights he’d spent alone. Her, smiling up at him. He wanted to see her smiling like this every day for the rest of his life.
‘You are incredibly beautiful,’ she whispered.
His lips curved. ‘I thought that was my line. Except it wouldn’t be. A line. You know.’
She touched his face with a quiet reverence. ‘I know.’
He didn’t want to leave her, never wanted to pull out of the warmth of her body, but he had to take care of things. He was gone only long enough to deal with the condom, but when he came back, her eyes had drifted closed.
He slid his arm around her, lifting her so that he could pull the covers down. Then he settled her on the pillow, pulling the pins from her hair and arranging it around her shoulders, giving himself a pretty picture to dream of when he went to sleep.
Twenty-three
Cincinnati, Ohio,
Saturday 15 August, 4.45 A.M.
‘Are you actually human, Davenport?’
Decker looked up from his computer screen to see Troy stumbling into the kitchen wearing boxer shorts and rubbing his eyes. ‘Last I checked, yes,’ he said mildly.
‘I don’t believe you. Why aren’t you dead from lack of sleep?’
Because sex had him all juiced up, but he wasn’t going to say that to Troy. ‘I slept for a frickin’ week in the hospital. I’m good for a few days. Why are you awake?’
‘Goddamn ulcer,’ Troy muttered. He turned on the electric kettle and opened cabinets until he found a mug. ‘Tea. Chamomile. It helps.’ He pressed a palm to his stomach with a grimace. ‘Dinner would also have helped. I forgot to eat.’
‘There’s food in the fridge. Keith O’Bannion sent it with us. He’s an awesome cook.’
Troy scowled. ‘Can’t eat awesome stuff. If it tastes good, I gotta spit it out.’
‘Maybe not. I told him that we had an agent with an ulcer, and it turns out Jeremy has one too, so he’s used to cooking ulcer-friendly food. It’s in the fridge, labeled UFF.’
Troy looked surprised. ‘That was nice of you, Davenport. And nice of O’Bannion.’ He found the bowls in the fridge, filled a plate, and put it in the microwave. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Going through the files Diesel brought me this afternoon. Well, yesterday now.’
Troy grimaced again, this time in sympathy. ‘More photos?’
‘Yeah, but I had a thought. I kept wondering when—’ He cut himself off as Kate walked in, thankfully dressed in her T-shirt and sleep shorts. She had her yarn bag over her shoulder. ‘Why are you awake?’ he asked.
‘I heard voices and didn’t want to miss out on all the fun,’ she said lightly, but Decker wasn’t fooled. She had that haunted look in her eyes.
You had the nightmare again? he asked with his eyes
, and she nodded wearily.
‘What did you just do there?’ Troy asked suspiciously.
‘Private talk, Uncle Luther,’ Kate said. ‘Cute shorts, by the way. Glad you’re a Cap fan or I might have to ask for a new new partner.’
Troy blushed. His boxers were covered with Captain America shields. ‘I’ll go change. I thought I was the only one awake.’
Kate waved her hand and sat down at the table. ‘I was raised with four brothers, and those are the most modest shorts I’ve ever seen. I’m okay if you are.’
‘I’m not,’ Troy said. ‘Some lines should not be crossed.’ He disappeared into his room and returned less than a minute later wearing sweats and an FBI T-shirt. ‘I’m heating some food. You two hungry?’
Kate tilted her head. ‘Yeah, I am. I didn’t eat dinner at Keith’s . . . not like some people.’ She eyed Decker.
‘Hey, I slept for a week and starved for a week. I’m starving again.’ Decker nodded at Troy. ‘So please and thank you.’
Troy busied himself with plates and silverware. ‘What were you doing again, Davenport?’
Decker returned his attention to his computer screen. It was covered with photos, but not the kind that would give him nightmares. ‘I was thinking about something that Stone said tonight – that he started buying from the Professor when he was in middle school. It pissed me off so much when he said it that I didn’t think about anything other than the Professor being a predatory asshole. Then I calmed down and could think. Now we know how the Professor recruited his kids – he crossed their paths when they were young through the schools, or gyms and college campuses when they were older.’
‘I still have that list of male teachers in the entire Tri-State area,’ Troy said. ‘I can go back to sifting the records to match height and body type.’
‘Please do,’ Decker said, ‘but I also wondered again how he crossed paths with McCord.’
Kate bit at her lip. ‘We lost that thread somewhere, didn’t we? So our dealer is connected with school-aged kids, selling them drugs, and McCord is connected with kids as their teacher. But he was buying kids for his porn through Alice and her father.’ She lifted her brows. ‘Were all of McCord’s victims purchased? That seems very expensive. How would he have turned a profit?’
‘Good point,’ Decker murmured, noting it down. ‘I hadn’t gotten to the profit aspect. I may have to turn in my CPA card.’
‘Or tell us what you were thinking instead,’ Kate said, subdued. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to derail your train of thought.’
He gave her a look of reproach. ‘You don’t have to walk on eggshells around me, Kate. Profit is a good point. Following the money is always relevant.’ He pointed to the flash drive plugged into his computer. ‘But back to this. I gave a copy of this drive to Zimmerman when we met up at Alice’s apartment yesterday, and he’s got national task force members checking photos, comparing them to known victims . . . all the stuff they do as part of a routine investigation. But I’m still wondering where McCord and our dealer crossed paths. Even if both were teachers, it’s not like you just walk up to a colleague one day and say, ‘You like baseball? I like baseball. You make kiddie porn? Me too. Let’s go into business together.’ That’s just not going to happen.’
Troy put hot plates of Keith’s warm-ups on the table and sat down. ‘Too much risk. There has to be another connection. So speak while I eat,’ he said and started shoveling food into his mouth. ‘Oh, wow.’ He closed his eyes in bliss. ‘This is really good. And it won’t kill me?’
Decker grinned at him. ‘I sure hope not, but if it does, you’ll go out happy.’
Troy pointed his fork at him, his scowl now all show. ‘Talk. How do they cross paths?’
‘Well, going back to Kate’s point, that McCord didn’t always use victims purchased from Alice and her father. His files start about ten years ago, about the same time the files on that PC in the closet end. I only scanned them,’ Decker admitted. ‘I . . . I couldn’t make myself study each one.’ Kate squeezed his arm encouragingly. ‘They’re . . . American-looking kids at the beginning. Not so many as I feared. Most had the appearance of a lower socioeconomic level. Used clothes, hungry faces, and just a defeated look, if you know what I mean.’
‘McCord taught at a school in the inner city,’ Troy said, straightening in his chair. ‘Former students maybe?’
Decker nodded. ‘That’s what I was doing when you two came in. Going through yearbook photos, seeing if I recognized any of the kids. So far, I’ve matched one.’ Kate and Troy started to speak, but Decker raised his hand. ‘He’s dead,’ he added, and both Kate and Troy slumped.
‘How?’ Kate asked.
‘Suicide. OD’d on pills.’
They all got quiet. Troy pushed his plate away. ‘Dammit.’
Kate sighed. ‘Maybe we can talk to his family. Find some connection there. When did he commit suicide?’
‘Five years ago. That’s also when McCord started using teens he’d purchased from Alice. His victims go from poor American-looking kids to poor Southeast Asian kids. Thai and Vietnamese. Also Filipino and a few from India. Stills and videos.’
Kate swallowed hard. ‘Where are they? Where are these kids?’
Decker rubbed the back of his neck, where pain had suddenly spiked. ‘I don’t know. No children were found in McCord’s house after he died, and there are no other properties associated with his name.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’m assuming he either resold them or killed them. If he resold them, Alice and her father would have known. All their victims wore ankle trackers, which were recorded in a notebook kept by Alice’s father, locked in his desk drawer in his home office. I saw the book once.’
‘It wasn’t in the desk when we searched it,’ Kate said. ‘Or in his briefcase.’
‘Sean – Alice’s brother – might have taken it. But we don’t know where he’s hidden his files. I know you guys searched the traffickers’ compound, but if it wasn’t in the car when he died, it has to still be somewhere in that compound. We need to search it again.’
‘We also haven’t finished searching Alice’s apartment yet,’ Troy said. ‘We bring in the X-ray machines for the walls today. Maybe the files are hidden there.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ Decker said fervently. ‘I didn’t count all the kids in the photos, but he bought at least ten over those five years. Maybe more.’
‘We’ll keep searching,’ Kate said firmly. ‘In the meantime, five years ago the Sunshine Suzie films changed location. Five years ago McCord switched to foreign kids. Five years ago a former victim committed suicide. Coincidence?’
‘I’m gonna say no,’ Troy said. ‘The young woman that Corey Addison called Suzie was seen in the same car that was later used in the attack on Dani. It’s all connected. What if we assume that McCord formed a partnership with the Professor five years ago? What does that contradict?’
‘Nothing so far.’ Kate pulled her knitting from her yarn bag and her needles began their soft clacking. ‘The Suzie films went on for two more years, but with a different look. Different studio. I assumed there was something identifiable in the first location, because those films aren’t available online any longer.’
‘You could still be right.’ Troy got up, refilled his mug, the scent of chamomile mixing with the aroma of the food still on their plates. ‘McCord and the Professor have separate businesses until something drives them to work together. McCord’s student that he victimized kills himself. Suzie’s abuser – who I think we all believe is the Professor or someone associated with him – changes his studio and yanks a year’s worth of popular videos, denying himself the sales. But they still have to come across each other. The Professor is local – or at least local enough to be selling drugs to local kids for twenty years. McCord lived in the same town where he grew up. They had to have met here in Cincinn
ati.’
Decker finished the food on his plate. He was heartsick over the victims but still hungry as hell, and had been raised to never waste food. Wordlessly Kate pushed her half-eaten plate in front of him. ‘Thank you,’ he told her. ‘So what makes a person start making kiddie porn? I mean, I guess some might do it for money, but it’s a dangerous thing to get involved with when an Internet search can flag you to the Feds. Seems like the urge to see it, make it, has to be worth the risk. Seems like the Professor – and McCord too – were probably fans before they started making their own.’
‘Makes sense,’ Troy said, blowing on his tea to cool it. ‘And? Go on.’
Kate took up Decker’s line of reasoning, allowing him to eat. ‘What if,’ she said slowly, knitting all the while, ‘the Professor’s watching one day and recognizes a kid he already knows, because he’s sold him drugs? He’s making the Suzie films, but has to change locations for whatever reason. The early Suzie films have an amateur look to them. What if he got scared that his place would be identified and wanted a partner with more experience? He approaches the kid he’s recognized from the films and gets hooked up with McCord.’
‘That works,’ Troy said, ‘except the Professor was selling to rich kids.’
‘That Stone knew of,’ Decker said. ‘Stone was a rich kid himself. He probably wouldn’t have had any contact with poor kids. Doesn’t mean the Professor wasn’t selling to them. Stone said he was selling to middle-aged women, too.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Troy grimaced. ‘Where’s he meeting the women?’
‘Don’t know,’ Decker said. ‘But the woman Stone saw wasn’t poor either. Stone remembers she said that her husband would be home soon and she’d take the cash from his wallet to pay for the drugs. If he had enough cash for her to sneak for her drugs, he wasn’t poor.’