As soon as the ground stopped shaking, Wyatt lifted me up. “Are you okay?”
I couldn’t really hear him with all the bells, but I understood what he was saying. I nodded and yelled back, “You?”
He pointed at my chest. “You’re bleeding.”
“You’re one to talk.” His shirt was cut from the pieces of falling debris.
He tenderly lifted the shreds of my blouse and swore. Hatch marks scored the front of my shoulder. I’d probably scratched it during my dive to the ground. I shrugged off his touch. “Paul. We need to help Paul.”
“Stay here. Your chest is bruised. You need a doctor.” With a press of my shoulders as if he was planting me in place, Wyatt took off to find his friend.
On shaky legs, I followed him. My first step shot pain up my ankle. I must have twisted it going down.
Paul’s body lay like a grotesque mannequin in the middle of the parking lot. His black shirt and black pants were torn off. The blast had torn his back apart like raw meat by a wild beast. His left arm was gone and had landed somewhere on the other side of his truck. Incongruously, his black shoes were intact on his feet.
I couldn’t look. I couldn’t avert my gaze. Only a minute ago, Paul had been alive, determined to make things right. And now, all because of this damn HART chip—because I’d bluffed Glenda into coming to this meeting—he was dead.
I shouldn’t have underestimated Glenda. I shouldn’t have given her the chance to prepare to destroy the evidence of her treason. She might not have planted the bomb herself, but she’d let someone know there were some loose ends that needed taking care of tonight.
Shouts for help rang through the night. Patrons spilled out of the bar. The police arrived, their sirens piercing through the ringing in my ears. EMTs swarmed around what was left of Paul. Everything seemed unreal and far away.
I hobbled over to Wyatt who stood by Paul, his friend’s voice now that he had none.
“Anyone else hurt?” I wished I could slip my arm around Wyatt.
He shook his head.
That was something at least. Only one victim when the crowded parking lot offered so many more. “Was he the target or were we?”
“Good question.”
Pain swept through the veil of adrenaline, holding me upright, and pulsed from my head to my toes. I couldn’t just stay here and watch all this destruction. I had to do something. “I’m going after her.”
“What the hell are you thinking? You need to see a doctor.”
No time for a doctor. Glenda could have left town by now for all I knew. I turned to the EMT and exposed the raw scrape. Who knew how many germs I’d picked up on this dirty asphalt. “Can you clean me up?” I pointed a thumb over my shoulder. “And him, too.”
I guess the EMT had seen scars like mine before. He didn’t even blink—just went to work on my cuts and ankle.
By the time the police took our statements and released us, it was past midnight. Most of my hearing had returned but my ears still buzzed.
With curt sentences, Wyatt directed the uniform driving us home past his mother’s house to a much smaller building farther out on the property. It was late. He probably didn’t want to wake up his mother or have her see us looking like war refugees with our torn shirts and bloodied jeans.
“Are you okay?” I asked him as the police cruiser disappeared down the lane.
He unlocked the front door and strode through the darkened house while I bumped my way behind him, my sprained ankle making me wince with each step. In the kitchen he turned the water on full blast and filled a glass. He swallowed it down in one shot and banged it on the counter, waves of hot anger steaming off him. Then he turned to me, eyes overly bright in the dim light eking through from the living room. “I’m not okay. I just saw a friend blown to bits. We could have died out there tonight.”
Like Paul. Like Sofia. The words remained silent but vibrated between us.
“How can you do this?” He shook his head as if he was trying to understand. “How can you live like this?”
“I don’t think about it. I just do what I have to do.”
“Liar. You think about life and death all the time or you wouldn’t be so hung up on germs.”
Pupils wide and open, breath quick and shallow, body like a spring wound too tight, he moved closer, invading my space, until I was pressed against the counter. “Do you ever think about me, Sierra? Us?”
Sofia gasped. No!
But her fury faded to nothing more than white noise, covered by the hard hammer of my heart as he lowered his head, his mouth close enough to mine to feel the fast puff of his breath. “You’re not Sofia, and I want you. Right here. Right now.”
His hazel eyes pitched his pain at me like a dare. Did he expect shock from me? Denial? Outrage, so he could rein in his own raging impulse?
There was no us. This was a chemical reaction. A flood of dopamine. Normal after having witnessed a body blown apart. He’d just lost a friend. This meant nothing. He just needed to feel alive. So did I.
I moved in closer, my lips skimming Wyatt’s. “Then take me.”
Butt balanced up on the counter’s edge, I opened my knees, allowing his tense thighs to thrust up against me. “You’re not my type. You’re too stiff, too meddling, too controlling.”
“Stiff is good.” He rubbed himself hard against me, scrambling my pulse.
“Control is good.” The thorough exploration of his hands over my skin sent a heart-stopping shock ripping through me.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, panting. “Definitely good.” You could learn a lot more than reading, writing and arithmetic in high school. The fine art of kissing was one of them. “But try this.”
I breathed him in as I threaded my fingers through his hair. Cradling his nape, I urged him to deepen the kiss, pushed him to let go of his iron control. When he did, I could taste the wildness of his hunger and it flooded me with a hot rush of need.
Hands splayed on either side of me on the counter, Wyatt tried to catch his breath, regain his fraying control. “Where did you learn to kiss like that?”
My mouth lingered on the mad beat pulsing at his throat. “Ryan Marks, behind the bleachers, high school, freshman year.” Brother Gregory had caught us and called Van.
“No fourteen-year-old kisses like that.”
“He was a senior.” Van had threatened the poor guy with hauling him in for statutory rape, even though he’d never made it past first base. Ryan might have been a good kisser, but he had no intention of spending the prime of his life in jail. He never so much as said hello after his talk with my brother.
“You’re crazy.” Wyatt made it sound like a good thing. His mouth trailed hot and hungry over my cheeks, throat, shoulders. His fingers worked the buttons of my blouse but something wicked in me needed to push the boundaries of his restraint.
“Let me.” Filled with a powerful surge of energy, I pushed his hot hands away and slowly unbuttoned what was left of the silky material of my blouse.
“You’re killing me,” he groaned.
I laughed. “If you’re hurting, you’re alive.”
“Not for long if you keep this up.”
Never letting go of his gaze, I unhooked my bra, and let it fall to the floor.
“I want my breasts against your chest.” My voice came out on a harsh whisper. The jump of his pulse at his throat jogged mine, and I practically purred with pleasure.
He ripped off his shirt and took one of my breasts into his mouth, palming the other in his hand and rubbing his thumb against the nipple. My knees went weak, and I clutched him so that I wouldn’t fall off the counter.
He traced the scar bisecting my chest with his tongue, then pressed a delicate kiss along the pink line. He cradled his head there, cheek to my heart, listening to its frantic beat. I swallowed hard.
“Sofia’s heart.” My voice was scratchy. My eyes burned, angry that jealousy for a dead woman could rip me like claws. I should stop this before it got
too far. But I didn’t want to. I needed this heat to burn out the sight of Paul’s blood.
“Your blood,” Wyatt said, his voice night-dark. “Your mind. Your body.”
Suddenly much too vulnerable, I listened for Sofia, but couldn’t hear her.
Wyatt kissed me again. Possessively. Purposefully. A match flared in my chest. For tonight, all that mattered was that raw hunger, that need to forget, that need to feel alive.
My hand went to his zipper. He groaned as I tugged the denim and briefs over his hips and wrapped a hand around him, stroking him. The heat of his arousal throbbed in my palm.
“Shit,” he ground out and wrangled my jeans free.
With a guttural roar, he slipped into me, hot and thick. I wrapped my legs around him, taking him in deeper and it felt so right. I drank in his appreciative moans as if I’d just found an oasis after a long desert trek. I was alive. Drunk with aliveness. Powerful with it. And I gave myself up to the moment.
Our shadow on the wall moved as one in the dark. A rough cry rasped out of him and he clutched me as if I was the only thing holding him up. And maybe I was.
The climax rolled through me, a gasp of pleasure so intense it made the world fall away—like pulling on a parachute cord and having the chute open, jerking you up and up before you floated down again. Loose and boneless, I had nowhere to go but deeper into his arms and they held me safe against his heart until our combined internal inferno cooled and our breaths evened.
“That was—” he started.
“What we needed.”
“More than that.” His mouth claimed mine again, gentler now, as if, possession complete, he could afford to take his time. He carried me to the living room and the yielding couch. We came together like old lovers, touching, tasting, lingering, smooth and easy until my senses were filled to overflowing. I came around him, calling his name as if he’d been gone a lifetime and I’d just found him after an unbearable separation.
“I’ve got you, Sierra,” he growled into my ear, the sound too close to triumphant conqueror.
Sometime during the night we moved to his bedroom. After a shower we ended up in his bed. That’s where I woke up at the first light of dawn poking through the open curtains. My arms and legs tangled with his in a way that should have been uncomfortable, but somehow wasn’t. His hair was tousled. His jaw was slack in sleep. The lines of worry ironed out, as he lay relaxed and content.
In a few minutes I’d have to slide out of bed and hunt down Glenda. But I couldn’t make myself move just yet. I’d missed waking up next to someone in my bed, missed the warmth, the closeness. I hadn’t realized how alone I’d felt since Leo had left.
Fear—the kind that jolted through me when I woke up from a nightmare—drummed in my chest. I didn’t want to fall for Wyatt. My hands went cold. My head went light. I used to think I was having a heart attack when that happened, but Dr. Katz, my shrink, said it was just anxiety. A battery of tests confirmed his diagnosis. Didn’t make the symptoms easier to swallow.
Wyatt’s eyes fluttered open. A smile tugged at his lips. “Hey there, sexy.”
In the time Wyatt and I had made love, Sofia had been the furthest thing from my mind. I’d been able to shut her out completely. What did that say?
A pit formed in my stomach. I was feeling too much, too fast. Nothing that came that fast lasted.
Fingers closed around my heart. My eyes teared. This wasn’t like me at all. I never cried. I rubbed at my chest and the scar throbbed.
“Hey, there,” I finally managed. I reached across him and pulled up the alarm clock on his bedside table, showing him the glowing red numerals. “You should call your mother. If she sees your half-blown-up truck on the early news, she’ll worry.”
He ground the heels of his hands at his eyes and grumbled. As he reached for the phone, it rang. He answered and shot up on the side of the bed.
A wall fell over his features, hardening them, masking the intimate connection we’d shared all night long.
I drew the sheet high over my breasts and glanced around the bedroom. A picture of Sofia on the walnut nightstand next to his pillow was all the reminder I needed that this wasn’t my life and never would be. I’d known that all along. I shouldn’t be disappointed.
Wyatt’s spine cranked up, stiff and straight, as if it had been rammed with iron bars. “I’ll be right there.”
“What is it?” I asked as he hung up.
He strode to the closet and started yanking out clothes. “Glenda. Sounds like she’s been drinking all night. She says she wants to talk.”
Saturday, April 29
Glenda’s call had saved me the trouble of tracking down her address. We found her hunched over a card table in the nondescript apartment near the Allied Defense plant where she’d lived since her husband had asked her to leave their home. The place reeked of alcohol. The walls, carpets and furniture were all in shades of beige. The only spot of color was Glenda’s disheveled auburn hair and the discarded green wine bottles on the carpet.
“Glenda?” Wyatt said.
Glenda moaned, not bothering to look up from the juice glass she held in both hands. Black smears of mascara pouched her eyes. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”
Needing to rest my still-tender ankle, I took the chair opposite Glenda. “What happened?”
Tears gurgled in her throat. “I’m not sure. One day I was living my life. A perfect life. The next I was in a nightmare.” She wiped the run of tears on cheeks red and puffy from crying. “Jack got everything. Justin. The house. He even got the fucking dog.” She tunneled one hand through a pile of papers, sending it shooting up like a geyser. Papers fell all around her. “I got all the bills.” She knocked back the inch of red wine in her glass and filled the glass again. “I thought that I could fix it. Everything. But I just fucked it up more.”
How could she admit anything was wrong when she was so identified with living the perfect life?
Wyatt crouched and picked up the papers, making a neat pile once again. “You said you wanted to talk about Paul.”
She burst into ugly, wet, openmouthed sobs. “I never thought they’d kill him.”
“They, who?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I waited a long time to have Justin. Put it off to break through the glass ceiling. I thought I could have it all. I had it all. But the manipulative son of a bitch used my success against me. He lied to get what he wanted.”
“Who?”
“Jack. He knew this would kill me. That’s why he did it.”
Love and betrayal. Why did they seem to walk hand in hand? Another reminder not to depend on anyone for anything.
“What does your divorce have to do with hiding the fault in the HART?” I asked Glenda.
“Everything.” She choked on the word. “I did it for love.”
“You hid the fault for your husband?” I asked, confused.
Glenda wiped the back of her hand under her nose. “For Jack. For Justin. For our life.” She shook her head. “I made one mistake. And it kept getting bigger. I needed that bonus to erase it.”
Why hadn’t this mistake shown up on the financial? Maybe it wasn’t financial. Maybe it was personal.
“There were rumors of an affair,” Wyatt said. “Is that it?”
Glenda sobbed louder.
I swallowed my frustration and forced my voice to stay calm. “Who is behind Paul’s death?”
“You,” Glenda said, spittle flying. “It was supposed to be you. You were supposed to die. If you’d minded your own business, none of this would have happened.”
“The jets would have still fallen out of the sky.”
“I was on it,” Glenda said. “It was getting fixed.”
“Not fast enough,” Wyatt said. “My sister flies the F-117.”
“It wasn’t personal.” Glenda reached for the bottle. Wyatt took it away from her. “I’m going to lose everything I have left. My clearance. My job. It was all for nothing.�
�
I wanted to slap her sober. Didn’t she realize how many lives her selfishness had already cost? “Who do you work for?”
Her brown eyes were bloodshot and couldn’t quite focus as she looked up at me. “If I tell you I’m dead.”
“If you don’t tell me—” I reached forward to strangle the truth out of her, but Wyatt stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.
“What makes you think whoever is holding this over you can afford to let you live?” I pushed Wyatt’s hand away. “This isn’t a game. Lives are at stake.”
Glenda shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.”
“The truth matters,” I insisted. “There’s still time to make it right.”
“They have leverage.” She lifted her glass at the ceiling and panned across the room, sloshing cheap burgundy over the lip and down her arm. “They’re listening.”
Wyatt and I shared a look over the table. Drunken paranoia?
“They who? What leverage?” Temper made my words hard and choppy.
“Who’s listening?”
I envied Wyatt’s evenness, given how she was jerking us around. She didn’t want to help, and I suddenly sensed a trap. She’d called Wyatt to snare us in her web so her assassin could take care of the last pests who could expose her secret. She’d said I was the intended target, and alive I was still a threat to her. We had to get out of here before she added two more bodies to her count.
Glenda grabbed a napkin and scribbled what looked like an address. “I don’t have anything left.” She handed the napkin to Wyatt. “That’s it.”
“There’s going to be an accounting,” I said. “You still have a chance to redeem yourself by telling all you know.”
“Please leave.”
“Glenda—” Wyatt started.
She gave him a sad smile. “I’m sorry. I truly am. I never thought it would get this far.”
She got up on shaky legs and disappeared into the bathroom. “Leave!”
Wyatt stared at the door Glenda slammed. “We can’t leave her like this.”
Detour Page 20