He’d gradually increased his speed as he drove, and he tapped on the brakes as he approached the houses on the edge of Eagle Ridge. Any man who could try to rape a high school kid was capable of a lot of ugly things. From now on, Bobby Duvall was going to feel like he was living underneath a microscope, Holt thought savagely. He wouldn’t be able to go to the bathroom without Holt knowing about it.
Holt pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building, eased out of the truck and headed for his door. He needed a hot shower and cool sheets, in that order, but first he’d call the station and tell them to keep an eye on Bobby. He was tired enough that he just might be able to sleep for a few hours.
His message light was blinking as he reached to pick up the phone. No one ever left messages for him, and he paused as he watched it. Dialing the number of the station, he stared at the red light as he gave the officer on duty a brief message about Bobby.
After a pause, he punched the play button and waited while it rewound. “Adams, this is John Kelly in Chicago. I’ve got some information for you that’s interesting, to say the least. Give me a call.” The machine whirred in the silence of his apartment as Holt felt himself tensing. What kind of information could Kelly have that he would find interesting?
He couldn’t quite keep his hand from shaking as he punched in Kelly’s number, and the clerk who answered the phone seemed to take forever to locate Kelly. Finally his friend’s weary voice came over the line.
“Kelly here.”
“John, this is Holt Adams in Michigan. You’ve got some information for me?”
The silence from the other end of the phone was deafening. “Yeah,” Kelly finally said, “I do. Are you asking for personal or professional reasons?”
“Both.” Holt’s voice was clipped.
Kelly sighed. “I was afraid of that. It’s not a pretty story, but here it is.”
Fifteen minutes later Holt let the phone drop into its cradle and stared into the distance as he tried to tame the murderous rage building inside him. No wonder Tory had looked at him like he was the devil incarnate. Kelly’s story sure as hell explained a lot of things.
His first instinct was to drive to Tory’s clinic and confront her about what he’d learned. He was halfway out of his chair before he forced himself to sit back down. She would be busy with her clients and her clinic right now. It wasn’t the time to discuss what had happened to her in Chicago.
He sat in the chair until the rage had passed, leaving him feeling drained and helpless. He was the one person Tory would be unlikely to accept comfort from. Hell, when it came right down to it, he was surprised she’d even given him the time of day.
Finally, stiff and sick at heart, he rose and stumbled into the shower. Afterward he lay on his bed, knowing he should sleep but unable to do anything but stare at the ceiling.
Ten hours later, he gripped the steering wheel of his police Blazer tightly as the headlights of an oncoming car blinded him momentarily. His eyelids felt like sandpaper when he blinked, and his nerves were strung out from lack of sleep. But his exhaustion didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except making sure that Tory was all right.
When he turned into her driveway he saw no cars in her small parking lot. The lights in her clinic still blazed, though, and her house was dark and still. At least she hadn’t tried to go home by herself.
The front door to her clinic was locked. His stomach tightened as he knocked on the door, then relaxed as he heard her call out, “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Tory.”
A moment later the door opened, and she stood there with a tentative smile on her face. It faded just a little as she noticed his grim face. Stepping back, she said, “Hi, Holt. Come on in. I’m glad you were a little later than usual tonight. I had a lot of paperwork to do.”
“I’ll go check the rest of the clinic while you finish it up.”
“I already locked both the doors.”
“I know.” He turned and tried to smile at her. “I just want to double-check.”
Nodding, she headed toward her office. He watched her go, battling the urge to pull her into his arms and promise her she would be safe with him, that never again would she have to endure pain and terror. But he didn’t move. He couldn’t.
Even if he had the right to comfort her like that, he had no assurance that what he said was the truth. Whoever had committed these murders and was now stalking her was both smart and clever. As he shoved through the door into the kennel, he vowed that no one would get to her unless they went through him first.
The back door was securely locked, as were all the windows. He stood in the semidarkness of the kennel, listening to the rustle of the animals in their cages, and looked at the woods that surrounded the building. They just looked like trees to him, but Tory was terrified of them.
He watched them sway in the wind for a while, listening to their sighs. The trees had comforted him when he’d first arrived in Eagle Ridge, his spirit battered and nearly broken. They’d been a symbol of endurance and hope. They had survived countless storms, weathered fires and the constant punishment of the seasons, and still stood straight and proud. He should be able to do the same.
He’d thought he’d been recovering, because his pain and guilt weren’t constant companions anymore. They snuck up on him at night, when his guard was down, but during the day he could keep the memories away. He’d taken it as a good sign.
Until he met Tory. Met her and wanted her with a passion he couldn’t remember ever feeling before, not even for his wife. It scared the hell out of him and brought all the pain crashing in on him. And the guilt had returned, too, along with the pain.
Now another kind of guilt ate at him. Was Tory a target for the murderer because of him? Had he somehow drawn the murderer’s attention to her?
He had to keep his distance from her, emotionally if not physically. It was his only hope of keeping her safe. But first he had to make sure she realized that he wasn’t a threat to her, at least not the way the cop in Chicago had been.
The swinging door behind him creaked, and he turned to find her standing in the doorway. “I was beginning to worry,” she said, and he could hear the effort she made to keep her voice light. “You came back here and never came out.”
“I was communing with nature,” he said, walking toward her. “Trying to figure out what bothers you about the trees.”
Her face tensed and her hand tightened on the door. “I thought we’d agreed I was just imagining things.”
“I never said that, Tory.” He watched her as she turned off the lights and shrugged into her jacket. “I told you to trust your instincts.”
“My instincts tell me that I’m out of my mind to be afraid of a bunch of trees,” she said lightly. Bending her head, not looking at him, she snapped her fingers and called, “Come here, Spike,” and the dog came running out of her office.
“Spike?” He looked from the small dog to Tory in disbelief.
“It suits him.” Giving him a look that dared him to contradict her, she reached for a leash and snapped it on a red harness around his chest. “We’re ready,” she said.
Holt looked at the dog, who stared at Tory with adoration in his eyes, and felt his heart crumble just a little. Bending down, he scratched the dog’s head and realized that Tory had changed his bandage and given him a bath. “He looks like a different animal.”
She skimmed her fingers over the strips of white adhesive tape around the dog’s neck. “He is. The wound on his neck is healing very nicely. In a few days he probably won’t even need the bandage anymore, and his feet look like they’re almost back to normal.”
“What are you going to do with him?” He held his breath, waiting for her answer.
“Keep him, of course.” She looked at him as if challenging him to tell her otherwise. “I always wanted a dog when I worked in the city, but didn’t have the room for one. Now I do.”
“I’m glad,” he said simply. A strange surge of emo
tion washed over him. He’d become attached to the dog from the moment he saw him lying in the woods, and it seemed right that Tory was going to keep him.
He opened the door and they stepped into the early evening air. Tory clutched the leash in her hand and avoided looking at the woods. It didn’t take a genius to feel the fear that rolled off her in waves as she hurried to the refuge of her house. When they walked up to the front door, he noticed that she avoided looking at the porch.
It only took a few minutes to check the house. By the time he’d finished, she had hung up her jacket and poured out a pan of food for the dog in the kitchen. When he came down the stairs, she stood waiting in the living room, her hands clasped in front of her.
“Thank you for checking the house for me,” she said softly. “I know you can’t stay tonight, because you must have gotten very little sleep last night. I appreciate you coming all the way out here when you must be wishing you were sleeping in your own bed.”
“I’m not going anywhere, at least for a while,” he said bluntly. “We need to talk.”
“About what?”
“About what happened in Chicago.”
Chapter 9
Tory felt herself pale as she stared at Holt. “What do you mean, talk about what happened in Chicago? You don’t want to hear about the practice I worked in while I was there,” she said desperately.
He held her gaze as he took a step closer to her. “You’re right, I don’t. I want to hear about what happened with Ed Barber.” He took another step and reached for her hand. “I want you to tell me about that evening on the expressway.”
“You know.” She could barely get the words out of her mouth.
“Yes.” His hands were gentle on hers, cradling her suddenly cold fingers between his two large, warm palms. “I know the official story. I want you to tell me what happened.”
“Why?” she whispered. “Why did you pry into my life? I didn’t intend for anyone here to know about Chicago.”
“Because I needed to know, Tory. I knew something was frightening you, and I wanted to know what it was.” His hands shifted, and he laced his fingers with hers. “The last thing I wanted was to scare you.”
“So you went behind my back and got all the sordid details? You had no right to do that, Holt.”
“I knew something was wrong. If I had asked you, would you have told me yourself?”
Tory knew she wouldn’t have. Holt read her answer in her face and he gripped her hands harder. “I knew you wouldn’t. No one else will find out, Tory, believe me. I won’t tell a soul.”
God help her, she believed him. Deep down, she knew Holt could be trusted with her secrets, because he was a man with secrets of his own. But that didn’t change anything.
“I know you won’t tell anyone else. That’s not why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“Why, then?” She’d never heard his voice so gentle.
Pulling her hands away from his, she turned her back to him and stared blindly at the wall. “Because it’s so humiliating. And because I don’t like to be reminded how little control I have over my own life.”
“There’s nothing to be humiliated about, Tory.”
She whirled to face him. “Isn’t there? How would you know, Holt? You’ve always been the one on the other side of the baton.”
“Don’t put me in the same category as Barber. Most cops are decent people who would be appalled by what he did.”
“Most cops would defend one of their own,” she answered bitterly. “I know.”
“Tell me what happened, Tory.”
She stared through him, seeing dusk on a Chicago expressway once again. “Have you ever been beaten on the side of the road, knowing that people in their cars were slowing down to watch?” she whispered. “Knowing that none of them would stop to help you because they all thought you’d done something to deserve it, that you were a criminal of some sort?”
He took a step forward, but she moved away from him. “You want to know what happened? I’ll tell you. Ed Barber pulled me over because he thought I was speeding. I was going the same exact speed as everyone else, and I didn’t notice him behind me because I was thinking about work. When I finally noticed him and stopped, he told me to get out of my car. I tried to talk to him, but he started yelling that I was fleeing from him and resisting arrest. The next thing I knew, he yanked out his baton and hit me in the face.” She swallowed as she brought her hand up to instinctively cup her left cheek. “When I fell down he hit me again. I tried to grab his baton, and he bit me.”
She would never forget the sight of the policeman standing over her, licking her blood from his lips. It was the scene that had haunted her dreams and made her shake every time she saw a policeman.
“How did you get away from him?” Holt’s hands were clenched into fists, his knuckles showing white.
“A state police officer drove up and saw what was happening. He was able to subdue Barber.” She fingered the small scar on her cheekbone. “I was lucky. He could have killed me before anyone stopped to help.”
“Do you know what happened to the bastard?”
“Didn’t you find that out, too?” Suddenly sick and shaking inside from remembering, she wrapped her arms around herself and wanted to tell him to stop. She didn’t want to talk about this anymore.
“He was fired, Tory. You know that, don’t you?”
“They wanted to put him on disability and let him draw his pension,” she said bitterly. “Because he was obviously a sick man, they said.”
“That didn’t happen. He’s gone. No pension, no benefits, nothing.”
She closed her eyes. “I didn’t want to know,” she whispered. “I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to handle it if I found out he was still getting paid by the police force.”
“He was a bad cop. There are a few of them, Tory, just like there are a few bad veterinarians. It doesn’t mean that every cop is going to abuse his power.”
Drawing a deep, shuddering breath, she opened her eyes and looked at Holt. “I know,” she whispered. “In my head, I know that. But in my heart, it’s hard not to be scared.”
Slowly he lifted his hand and traced the scar on her face. “I know. And I’ll try not to do anything to scare you.”
His touch lingered for a moment, then he dropped his hand. Turning, he shoved his hands into his pockets and stared out her window.
Watching the back of his head for a painfully long moment, she asked in a low voice, “Why did you bother, Holt? Why did you want to know?” Suddenly it was important that she find out.
He was silent for a long time. Then, without turning, he said, “I won’t lie to you, Tory. It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted anyone like I wanted you. But I knew you were frightened of me, and it didn’t make sense. That’s why I called my friend in Chicago. I wanted a weapon to break through your fear.”
“And now do you think you have it?”
He turned to face her. “Now I expect you to say you never want to see me again. Hearing about what happened from another cop isn’t the same as hearing it from you.”
This was it. She could tell him to disappear from her life, and he would do it. Oh, he would protect her from the murderer in Eagle Ridge, but there would be no more kisses, no more brief touches of his hand. He wouldn’t look at her with that heat in his eyes, burning her inside.
She couldn’t do it. Her heart swelled with fear, then began pounding in her chest. She could send him away and he would go, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
“I’m not sure I want to tell you to leave.”
Her voice was barely audible in the quiet of the house, but he jerked around to look at her, his eyes blazing. “Tell me to leave, Tory.”
“I can’t.”
“I’m not what you need,” he said, his voice harsh and raspy. “There’s nothing left inside me to share with anyone, and you need more from a man than mere physical pleasure.”
“You’re right, I
do.” She didn’t even blink at his brutally frank words. “And I’m scared to death of you. Not because you want me, but because you make me want more than just sex.”
“For me it would be sex and nothing more. Don’t try to fool yourself.”
“I guess I’m willing to take a chance and find out for myself.”
“Why, Tory? Why are you saying this?”
“Why did you go to the trouble of finding out what happened to me in Chicago?”
“To get you into bed.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think there was more to it than that.” Biting her lip, she forced herself to meet his eyes. “I was angry at first that you’d invaded my privacy. I’m not anymore. Now I’m touched that you went to the trouble.”
He stared at her with a mixture of wariness and sadness. Then he sighed and looked away. “I’m not the person you think I am, Tory. Don’t make me into a paragon of virtue, because nothing could be further from the truth.”
It was time to lighten up, or she would say things neither of them wanted to hear. “All right, you’re the scum of the earth. Incredibly sexy, but still scum. Are you satisfied now?”
One of his rare smiles flitted across his face, then faded. “It’s closer to the truth, at least.”
She watched him for what seemed like a long time, then turned away. The order she’d been gradually rebuilding in her life was looking very shaky right now, and she needed to take a deep breath and regroup. Trying to keep her voice light, she changed the subject. “I was going to make spaghetti for dinner. Would you like some?”
She could feel the struggle in him behind her, could almost hear him shrug. “Thanks. Since I’m going to be here anyway, I guess it would make sense.”
Whirling to face him, she said, “What do you mean, you’re going to be here anyway? You’re dead on your feet. You need to go home and sleep.”
“How much sleep do you think I’d get, wondering if that madman had managed to find a way into your house? No, I’m staying here. If you don’t want me on the couch, I’ll sit in the truck again.”
The Dark Side Of The Moon Page 13