by Jane Godman
“I’m turning the camera off,” Marissa said.
There was a slight clicking sound. The sound of Marissa’s bare feet on the floor. It was cool and smooth. Olivia could feel it, too. And more. She felt the warmth of Damien’s body when she settled next to him. Damien leaned into her, giving her a lazy kiss.
“I have bruises on my ass,” he mumbled. “Maybe on my dick, too.”
Marissa laughed. It was smoky and thick, the sound of a woman who knew how to enjoy herself. But the laughter ended as quickly as it’d come. And Olivia heard something else.
Footsteps on the stairs.
Oh, God.
The killer was coming.
Marissa knew it, too, because she sat up, her gaze spearing toward the door. That didn’t last, either, because she turned, and even though Olivia was seeing this through Marissa’s eyes, Marissa still seemed to look at her.
“You have to stop this!” Marissa yelled.
“How?” Olivia asked though she was certain she hadn’t asked that aloud. It echoed in her head, along with those footsteps.
The killer was getting closer.
“Come to the office building,” Marissa insisted. “Come and reenact everything that happened that morning. Everything. Every detail could be important.”
“The details were Damien and you having sex,” Olivia reminded her, but Marissa didn’t seem to hear that. In fact, Marissa wasn’t hearing anything Olivia was saying. Still, she tried. “Just tell me who killed you so we can tell the cops.”
Again, no answer.
“Find it,” Marissa said. “I don’t know what it is. I didn’t see it when it fell, but when you find it, we fix this and we can rest in peace. You have everything you need to find who killed us.”
“It?” Olivia pressed. “Find what?”
Marissa didn’t answer. She tried to move in front of Damien, but he shoved her behind him. Olivia felt his grip, hard and rough on her arm. She felt the throb of his heartbeat.
She heard the door open.
But she couldn’t see because Damien was blocking her view.
“Come to the office building,” Marissa repeated. “If not, it won’t stop. It won’t ever stop.”
And the bloodcurdling scream roared through her head.
Olivia’s eyes flew open, and she reached for Lucian to tell him what’d happened, but he was already reaching for her. There were beads of sweat on his face, and the muscles in his jaw were iron hard.
“I heard it,” she said. “Saw it.”
But that wasn’t all Olivia saw. She gasped, clutching her chest and her heart that pounded there.
The words were everywhere in the room.
Help us. Or die.
The same warning Marissa had given them before. This time though it was scrawled on the ceiling, the curtains, the walls. Even the bed where Lucian and she had slept.
And each word dripped with fresh blood.
Chapter Ten
This was a mistake. Lucian could feel it deep within his bones. But he could also feel the overbearing weight pressing down on him, urging him to go to the office building.
But urging wasn’t the right word.
Along with those bloody pleas for help, Damien had ordered it, and even though Lucian knew he wasn’t Damien, in that moment he had been. And Lucian felt powerless to refuse the demand.
Especially after what Damien had told him.
“We had the same dream,” Olivia concluded after Lucian gave her the details. “But how do they know we’ll die if we don’t help them?”
“No idea.” Marissa and Damien hadn’t helped with the identity of their killer, but they’d pressured and prodded to get what they wanted. And what they wanted was for Olivia and him to go to the office building.
“Perhaps going there is the way it has to play out,” Olivia said. “By stopping their murders, we stop our own.”
Yes. But there was a huge problem with that. Marissa and Damien’s murders couldn’t be stopped. They’d already happened, exactly thirty years ago.
“We have to go,” Olivia insisted. She got dressed as if this were some kind of race. Maybe it was. But Lucian wasn’t sure if they were racing to save themselves.
Or to die.
Either way, it didn’t seem to matter.
Olivia was obviously experiencing the same urgency that he was. Still, he didn’t intend to be stupid about this. He called Salvetti and arranged for a team of PIs to meet them at the office building. No way would he let the killer have another go at Olivia.
“Marissa didn’t tell me who murdered them, and I didn’t see the killer in the images,” Olivia continued as they hurried down the stairs and to the garage. “The room was dark.”
“Same here.” But the fact that he’d heard footsteps and a door opening meant this wasn’t a suicide pact between Damien and Marissa.
Well, unless that had happened after the visitor had left. Still, that didn’t feel right. In the images Damien hadn’t been afraid of Marissa.
Lucian pulled out of the garage, but he waited until the PI was directly behind him before he drove away. He couldn’t risk Tatum using this trip to attack them again. If indeed he’d been the one to attack them with the car.
“Marissa said I had to find it,” Olivia went on. “But she didn’t say what it was that I’m supposed to find.”
“Damien didn’t say either, but I heard a sound.”
“Footsteps?” she immediately asked.
“Those, but it was something else.” Lucian had to think about it a moment and try to pull it from the dozens of other sounds and images. “It was as if something metal dropped.”
“A bullet,” Olivia concluded. “The metal casing would have made a sound when it hit the floor, and judging from Marissa and Damien’s injuries, at least two bullets were fired.”
“And the cops never recovered the casings,” he supplied. “They assumed that the killer had taken them, but perhaps one was left behind.”
The question was where would it be?
The room would have been thoroughly cleaned after the murders, and a lot of the contents of Damien’s desk and bookshelves had gone into storage boxes. Lucian had found some of the boxes, but it was a big building, and he wasn’t familiar with all the nooks and crannies. Still, it wouldn’t have made sense for the cleaning crew to have found a bullet casing and not reported it to the cops.
So, where was it?
Or it might not exist at all. Whatever they were supposed to find might not even be connected to the metallic sound that he’d heard. It could be something else. Not even something physical. Maybe something like a kind of spiritual resolution or nirvana that would allow Damien and her to rest in peace.
Hell, it was too bad his mother hadn’t been into voodoo so he could better understand this.
Lucian pulled into the parking lot of the office building, the PI right behind him, and he was glad to see two other PIs already waiting by the front door. Salvetti must have sent them right over. Just to make sure this wasn’t some kind of setup, Lucian made a quick call to Salvetti to verify that the men were his. They were. And that meant it was time to get this show started.
It was Sunday so his receptionist and his three sales associates wouldn’t be in which was a good thing. Lucian didn’t want to have to explain this.
“Go through the building and check to see if anyone else is here,” he instructed two of the PIs. “You wait outside and make sure no one tries to get in.”
Lucian unlocked the door, disarming the security system so he could let the four of them in. Then, he locked it behind him and reset the system. That wouldn’t stop an unholy spirit, but it would stop Tatum or anyone else of the human variety. And if the security system failed or was jammed again, he still had the PI in place outside guarding the door.
Olivia and he waited while the PIs did their search, and with the wait came the doubts. Without Damien’s insistent urgings, Lucian was beginning to remember that this adventu
re could fall in the seriously stupid category.
“Marissa said to come,” Olivia reminded him as if reading his thoughts. She gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “And once we know the killer, and he or she’s arrested, then…perhaps we can go on a date or something.”
Well, he hadn’t been expecting that. But it was a damn good idea. Lucian leaned in and kissed her. “I’d like very much to date you.”
“You’re sure? I’m a mess.”
“Maybe I like messes. I definitely like you.” Lucian liked the lighter moment, too. The slight smile she managed. And he would have liked to have hung on to it for a few moments longer. No such luck.
“Nobody’s up here,” the one PI called out from the second floor where Lucian’s office was. He hurried down the stairs to help his partner search through the other rooms. “Nothing.”
Good. Lucian hadn’t expected anyone since the security system hadn’t been tripped, but he’d rather be overly cautious than risk Olivia being killed.
“Ready?” Lucian asked her, his gaze drifting to the stairs.
She nodded, though he wished that she’d say for them to run like hell. He wasn’t sure he was going to like the answers he found in that room.
“Wait here,” he told the PIs, but Olivia and he had barely taken a step when one of the PIs’ phones buzzed.
“Rusty, the guy outside, spotted someone,” the PI relayed to Lucian. “A white middle-aged male, gray hair, stocky build.”
“Tatum,” Olivia and Lucian said in unison.
“He’s going after him, and I should help because Rusty thinks the guy’s armed.”
“He is,” Lucian assured him. “And he’s not mentally stable. If you find him, you need to have the cops arrest him.”
“Will do. Bennett can stay here with you, and I’ll call as soon as I know something.” The PI went to the door, and he waited for Lucian to punch in the security code before he barreled out.
“Tatum followed us here,” Olivia whispered.
Yes, or else the man was on this same wild ass goose chase of following dead people’s memories. Either way, Lucian wanted him caught.
The minutes dragged out, and because Olivia didn’t look too steady on her feet, Lucian had her sit on the bottom stair.
“We could talk about that date.” Lucian hoped that would distract both of them. “Where would you want to go?”
“Zip-lining,” she said without hesitation. “And I’d like to buy a puppy. And swim in the Pacific Ocean. All things on my bucket list,” she added.
“I’ll see what I can do.” But then he frowned. “Wait, you didn’t tell me that because you think this is the end?”
She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. “Maybe. What’s on your bucket list?”
Only one thing came to mind. Of course, it was something that’d been on his mind a lot lately. “Making love to you. Not just sex. I want it all.” But Lucian didn’t like the tears that made her eyes water. “In exchange I’ll get you that puppy while we’re on a zip-lining trip to the Pacific Islands.”
She laughed.
God, he loved that sound. It went through him, warmed him. Not like Damien’s hungry need for Marissa. This was something more. Something he wouldn’t mind feeling again once this nightmare was over.
But first they had to get past the over.
More minutes crawled by. Just as Lucian was ready to pull the plug on all of this and call the cops, the PIs phone buzzed.
“They got him,” Bennett announced. He brought his phone closer so they could see the photo on the screen.
It was Andrew Tatum all right, and he didn’t look happy about being cuffed. Tatum’s mouth was open, probably shouting, and the veins were bulging on his neck.
Olivia’s breath whooshed out, and she stood only to lean against Lucian. “Thank God.” And she repeated it a few more times.
Yes, thank God indeed.
“Tatum needs to be taken to jail now,” Lucian insisted, and Bennett relayed that to his fellow PIs.
“So, this is over?” Bennett asked after he finished the call.
Lucian wished. One more thing left to do. But at least he felt a little safer taking Olivia to the office now that Tatum wasn’t on the loose.
“Wait here. Don’t let anyone in,” Lucian reminded him. “Oh, and if you hear any unusual noises, come up and check on us.”
Bennett shook his head. “What kind of unusual noises?”
“To hell if I know,” Lucian mumbled, and Olivia got him moving up the stairs.
“You know what Marissa and Damien want us to do,” she whispered.
Yes.
They wanted them to recreate that morning thirty years ago in the hopes of finding the it that Marissa had insisted they find. And while he liked the idea of having sex with Olivia, he wasn’t so keen on screwing Marissa again.
He braced himself for the onslaught of images and sounds, but when Lucian stepped inside his office, he heard nothing. Didn’t see anything, either, because of the murky clouds outside that’d left the room dark.
“This is about the time Marissa and Damien would have gotten here that day,” Olivia reminded him.
Yes, it was the culmination of a long night of partying, and Lucian still wasn’t sure why they’d come here instead of going to a hotel. Maybe because it was closer. Plus, Damien would have wanted to avoid his wife, and Marissa might have wanted to do the same with Harvey. They’d probably thought this place was safe.
Big mistake.
Olivia stepped in with him, eased the door shut and looked around. As it always did when he stepped into the room, it took his eyes a moment to adjust. The naked photo of a live Damien and Marissa was still on his computer screen. He hadn’t remembered leaving it open like that, but he’d been off-kilter since meeting Olivia. Now, he was off-kilter again because the naked image was a reminder that he really did want to get naked with Olivia.
Even if it was what Marissa and Damien wanted, too.
“Marissa said to reenact everything,” Olivia said. “We should turn on the camera.”
He wasn’t into that sort of thing, but Lucian turned his phone toward them anyway and engaged the video function. It wasn’t the same kind of camera that Marissa and Damien would have used, but Lucian thought he had the right angle.
In fact, everything suddenly felt right.
Early morning. Barely lit room. The camera. And this fire already raging through his body.
Lucian did something about that fire.
He took out the gun he’d brought with him and put it on the desk. Within easy reach. Before he slid his hand around the back of Olivia’s neck and kissed her. It instantly upped the heat.
Not that he expected differently.
They barely knew each other, and they’d already had oral sex and attempted sex. It seemed only natural to make the real thing happen, even if it was under some very unnatural, unreal circumstances.
Still, the circumstances didn’t seem to bother Olivia. After several moments of kissing, she melted against him and made that silky moan of pleasure that gave him an instant hard-on.
“Whose sex drive is this?” she asked, her mouth still against his. “Ours or theirs?”
“Ours.” But he couldn’t guarantee it’d stay that way.
Lucian would take the moments they had before Marissa and Damien’s images flashed in their heads. He pulled off Olivia’s top to expose her perfect breasts. Well, perfect except for scars that Tatum had given her, a reminder of the hell that she’d been through then. And now.
Still, Lucian didn’t offer to stop.
He intended to push this as far as it could go. And when it ended, then they might have answers as to what the heck they were doing with each other.
Or not.
This might be just sex. Plain and simple. Maybe not even real sex if Marissa and Damien kicked in.
“No matter what you see or feel,” she said, her mouth coming to his for another kiss, “go ahead and fini
sh this.”
Before he answered her, he wet his fingers with his tongue and ran them over her erect left nipple. She arched her back. Moaned.
“Will you do the same?” he asked.
She nodded, looking plenty heated up but not at all sure that she could manage that.
Lucian went ahead and continued touching her since there likely wouldn’t be much time for foreplay. Not with the way they were already grappling for position. He shoved up her skirt and rid her of her panties. In the same motion, he took her nipple into his mouth and planned to use his fingers to bring her to a quick climax. Because at least she’d have that if things took a different turn.
But Olivia started her own battle.
His fingers had barely gotten inside her. A couple of strokes. And she escalated things even faster and went after his zipper. No fumbling. She got it right the first time. Those agile fingers freed him from his boxers and slid right over his erection. One stroke. Two. A rather skillful swipe of her thumb.
“There isn’t time,” she mumbled, anchoring her backside against his desk.
Lucian could feel her muscles tighten. Beads of sweat started to pop out on her forehead. He moved her hands, caught onto his erection and put it in her. It was Olivia who moaned in pleasure. Olivia’s eyes that met his. And Olivia who moved her hips to take him all the way inside her.
But just that like, she started to fade. He could feel Marissa trying to come into this.
“Stay with me,” Lucian insisted.
She grabbed his hands, held on. The next slam of her hips was simply that. A slam. Hard against him.
Lucian used his strength to free himself from her grip, and instead he caught onto her. Standing, he put Olivia against the wall, hooked his arm beneath her legs, lifting her, so he could put his erection back inside her.
“Look at my face, Olivia.”
She did. Somewhere amid all that sweat and fire, she was still there. “I want it hard.”
“I know you do.”
Or at least Marissa did. However, Lucian managed to stave off Marissa with some gentle strokes. The angle was good for some friction. Of course that same friction was crossing his eyes and making him want to speed up so he could finish this.