Flick wasn’t conscious of leaving the car. She didn’t feel the rain or the cold. One stride followed another, then she launched herself up and into his arms. His embrace clenched around her, crushing her ribs, squeezing her heart and the life in her into him. When her mouth struck his, she sucked in the welcome breath his body expelled.
‘Rushe! Oh, Lover!’
Flick clamped her legs around his waist, locking her ankles; she didn’t want to ever pry her body from his.
‘Rushe,’ Flick caught his tongue in her teeth, and with a gasp she released him and screamed out. ‘You bastard! You fucking bastard!’
‘What the fuck are you doing out here? What the fuck do—‘
‘You’re alive!’ she shouted. ‘I really thought...’
‘I ain’t never getting rid of you, Kitten.’
‘Not even in death!’
‘What the hell are you doing out here?’ he asked. ‘Where are you going? What is your plan? How did—‘
‘Shut up,’ Flick said. ‘Oh, Rushe, kiss me. Please, oh baby, don’t ever stop kissing me.’
Again she enclosed her mouth on his, the wetness of him merging with her in this mire of torrential rain that swept her woes away in the wash.
Just as she believed him lost, just as she was giving up hope, here he was. She didn’t care if she was dead. She didn’t care if she’d somehow joined him on the other side. Their location was miserable, and the weather vicious, but she would live here forever in this horrible place, like this with him. If it was a choice to live without him, or here like this for the rest of her existence, she’d take the latter in a heartbeat. Life burned through her body, through his, through this alliance of their mouths.
‘It’s not safe here, Kitten,’ he said. ‘Why are you out here?’
Flick reluctantly slithered down his body and took his hand to maintain their contact. ‘I’ll show you.’
She guided him around her car and popped open the trunk. With a quashed scream, Rosa tried to kick and move, but her bindings kept her under control. Rushe examined Flick’s captive, and then his attention gradually rose. Flick braced for his response.
‘What the fuck did I do to you?’
He’d said this to her before, but instead of the shock she’d read when he first uttered the words, pride shone from his expression. Rushe seized the back of her neck and pulled her up against him. Meeting his mouth caused an explosion of grief and delight to burst from her, and locking her arms around his neck, she pulled back enough to snag his lower lip with her teeth.
Rushe smiled, which was unusual for this type of scenario, but Flick growled. ‘I’m gonna fucking kill you for scaring me like that,’ she snarled.
The role reversal would have tickled her if it wasn’t for the groan that sounded from the still open trunk beside them.
‘We have business to take care of,’ Rushe said.
‘Then I’m gonna fuck you ‘til you beg for mercy.’
Rushe bared his teeth and swooping down he hooked his forearm under her ass and hauled her up against the hard want in his jeans. ‘Think you can break me, Kitten?’
‘Nothing but bareback from now on. You’re mine and only mine,’ Flick said, launching in to consume him again.
Their battling tongues were ready to wage war now, and Rushe twisted their entwined frames to lean on the dimmed brake light. Flick could have him here; she’d mount him in this public place without a care... if it wasn’t for the bound body next to them.
‘Business first,’ she said, steadying herself using the stability of his unyielding form. ‘Pleasure comes next... I’ll fuck you back from the dead.’
‘Good girl.’
She didn’t know his plan, or why he was here, but she didn’t care. Flick’s heart screamed so loudly that her ears heard the song. Rushe took her to the passenger seat of his car, and then she watched as he transferred Rosa from her trunk to his. The hostess thrashed around but Rushe was unaffected, and Flick wondered if that was the same picture they painted when he was manhandling her.
A few seconds later he was back in the driver’s seat. ‘What about our—‘
‘That car is linked to our previous address,’ Rushe said, taking them around in an arc to continue the drive Flick had assumed she would be taking alone. ‘Eric will get rid of it.’
‘Eric? But I... what are you doing out here?’
‘Put your seatbelt on.’
By the time Flick fastened the restraint they were slowing to pull into a narrow alleyway, so his request had clearly been a ruse meant to distract her. The alley widened by a few feet when they reached a vehicle-sized entrance. Rushe drove into the middle of the gloomy place and turned off the car.
‘This is it, isn’t it? The Rosebud Ballroom.’
‘This is facility built on the footprint of the original building, yeah. This area has undergone a few transformations over the years.’
‘You read about it in my notes.’
‘Yeah,’ Rushe said. ‘Why did you snatch her?’
‘She hurt you,’ Flick said. ‘Without you, I had nothing to lose. I had to know where you were, what they did to you. If there was any way I could’ve helped you... and I couldn’t let them continue to get away with killing women. Last night couldn’t have just been the end of it for them, or for me. We went into this job to help one woman, and she might be lost, but that doesn’t mean we should forget the others who could be at risk. You wouldn’t have left it undone.’
‘I know what I’m doing.’
‘I’ve been doing alright so far,’ she said, and lifted her hips to take the phone from her back pocket. Flick tossed it into Rushe’s lap.
‘What’s this?’
‘Richard Davis, and his wife, admitting to what goes on there. They laid out the full story.’
‘How did you get this?’ Rushe frowned.
‘That’s not important,’ she said. ‘I sent a copy of the audio to Liam’s computer, with instructions that if I didn’t contact him within twenty-four hours that he should send it to the police.’
‘You’ll implicate yourself and me and—‘
‘I didn’t use any of our names,’ Flick said with a smile. ‘I made sure to use his, and the full names and details of everyone else. One way or another, there’s going to be pressure on the Waterside now. At least that was the idea; I heard about the carjacking and—’
‘Come on,’ he said.
Rushe got out of the vehicle, forcing her to do the same. Flick expected them to retrieve their prisoner, but Rushe strode forward. She snagged his back pocket and scuttled on behind him until they reached a passage. Rushe opened a door and Flick passed him to enter, but she quickly came up short.
In the centre of this otherwise bare room were Joseph Galante Senior and Evan Whyte, tied to chairs, back to back, bound, gagged and rightfully terrified.
‘You did this?’ Flick asked Rushe when his forearm came around to rest on her upper chest.
A splice of light appeared in the corner, and Flick watched it widen. Eric appeared in the opening with Scott in tow, and Flick examined the whole scene again.
‘What’s going on?’ Eric asked.
‘We need another chair,’ Rushe said, pinning the captive men under his triumphant glare.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rushe ushered her across and over to the room that Eric and Scott occupied. He spoke to his colleagues quietly and then they left, closing the door and sealing Flick in this chamber with her lover.
‘What is going on here?’ Flick asked, looking around the oblong area. The worn yellow walls oozed mould, a foam mattress was on the floor in the corner, and a threadbare couch in the centre of the space was aimed at a small portable TV on a stack of boxes.
‘Hijacking the car got those bastards here tonight, quick and clean.’
‘That’s it?’ Flick asked, turning to face her lover. ‘What happened to you? I saw you there, she injected you...’
With a slow inhale, F
lick looked at him properly for the first time. His skin was clammy and his eyes were heavy, and he didn’t quite have his wits about him in the obvious way he usually did.
‘What did they do to you?’ she whispered and crossed to him, levying herself upward to stroke her fingers through his damp hair.
‘What was your plan?’ Rushe asked, not reacting to her fawning; apparently he didn’t think this was the time or place for an intimate reunion.
‘Rosa was the ringleader. She kept those men on their knees, and not one of them stood up to her.’
‘She manipulated them all.’
‘It wasn’t right,’ Flick said. ‘None of those women would’ve died if it wasn’t for her.’
‘She gets off on the power.’
Putting the pieces together, the two of them working together, was a great buzz. But it was nothing to the high of being in the company of this man, her love, whom she thought she would never share space with again.
‘She killed the women because she wanted the three men to herself,’ Flick said. ‘She controlled them all, the Galantes with love, and Whyte through blackmail. But if she was faithful—‘
‘She was never faithful to either of them. Rosa loves the attention of men.’
‘Hence Michael Lewis,’ Flick said. ‘Was he one in a string of relationships?’
‘Looks like it,’ Rushe said. ‘We’ve turned up evidence of her affairs with dozens of men.’
‘She wanted you, too,’ Flick said. ‘When you told her you wouldn’t be loyal... how could you do that to me, Rushe?’
He took her hand out of his hair, but Flick withdrew and stepped back. ‘I saved your life.’
‘At the expense of yours. You left me alone... without you, I’m all alone.’
‘I took a risk, a calculated risk. I’d do it again.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘That’s what scares the hell out of me. How did you get out of there? How could you think that was calculated?’
‘That needle was meant for you, the dose was meant for you.’
‘To overdose me!’
‘They want it to look like an accident,’ Rushe said. ‘It wouldn’t look like an accidental OD if the dose was off the charts.’
‘But Rosa... when she...’
‘It’s ok,’ he said, curling his fingers into her dripping hair. ‘I was willing to take the dose, ready to take it. Getting you out of there was all that mattered.’
‘They could’ve killed you,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand how you could take that drug, how you could be willing to take the risk of having it in your system. You told them to give it to you, and you couldn’t have known that Rosa would approach you, that you would be able to get hold of her.’
‘You did that for me, Kitten,’ he said. ‘I told you I trusted your instinct.’
‘To come to you,’ she murmured, inching in as close as she could as steam rose from their rain-drenched clothes.
‘To stick me she had to get close, but I knew if you thought...’
‘That I would come to you,’ she exhaled, closing her eyes to press her face to his chest.
‘Thanks for that.’
‘Don’t thank me,’ she said, pounding the side of her fist to his chest, as his other hand found her crown and stroked downward. ‘I left you there. I ran and I... I couldn’t get back in.’
‘You did what you were supposed to do,’ he said.
‘They drugged me, and I... I thought I’d lost you.’
Tears bled from her eyes into the fabric of his tee-shirt, but she wouldn’t separate them, not even by an inch. ‘I’d have murdered every man there to get you out.’
‘I know,’ she whispered, rubbing her face side to side slowly.
The swallow in his throat was audible, and at the same time his fingers untangled from her hair to curl around her breast, though the other kept place around the back of her head to hold her forehead to his heartbeat.
‘I had to get rid of the threats to you, the gun and the drugs. Once that syringe was empty... all I knew was that there was no way that liquid was going into you. You’re a tiny thing, Kitten; I wouldn’t watch what that would do to you.’
‘But I was expected to watch it in you?’
Pushing against his cradling hand, she looked up at him, aware that the ache in his eyes was caused by the wetness brimming her eyelashes. ‘I knew Eric was close by,’ he said. ‘We knew drugs were involved, we’d discussed that already and had a plan. Naloxone is easy to get your hands on. It counteracts the effects of an OD.’
‘You let them dose you, on the hope that Eric would be able to get to you in time? That he would know you needed help?’
‘They panicked; nothing last night went the way they thought it would. Joey came back in, and... I heard Whyte holler. You hurt him.’ Flick nodded and Rushe’s expression relaxed. ‘Good girl.’
‘I couldn’t see, and... I hit my head, and—‘
‘You did what you were supposed to,’ Rushe said. ‘I know now that Scott had already followed you to the hospital. I told them to stay put inside, Rosa gave me cover out as far as the alley. But outside I went down, and I was out. She ran, and Eric picked me up, and...’
‘You could’ve died,’ she murmured.
‘The dose would never have killed me, Kitten.’
‘Then you left me out there, alone. I was sure that... if you were alive, you’d have come to find me.’
‘You were meant to be in the hospital,’ he said, lowering his tone to a gnarly grump. ‘The notes said you were to be kept in overnight.’
‘You came to the hospital? And left me there?’
Rushe shook his head. ‘Eric and Scott dealt with that, and the carjacking too,’ he said, and then nodded toward the mattress. ‘I spent most of my day over there. I only got up when...’
‘When what?’ she asked, letting her hands drift upward.
‘We heard you split from the hospital. Where do you think I was driving to right now? You were supposed to stay there safe until we were done here.’
Flick relaxed. ‘You were coming to find me? You were leaving Eric and Scott alone to deal with those guys, and... you were coming to find me?’
‘I should’ve known better than to assume you’d do what you’re told,’ he said, placing his palm flat on the top of her head. Instead of just the usual affectionate gesture, this one seemed to steady his balance too.
‘It’s my instinct to come to you.’
‘You were safe in the hospital,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want you to be a part of this. You don’t need to see any of this.’
‘I need to be with you. We’re doing what is right.’
‘I can’t believe you snatched Rosa.’
‘She hurt you,’ Flick said again, and when her lips parted she craved their intimate reunion, though with his compromised system it could probably be viewed as taking advantage. Rushe would never touch her while there were drugs in her system. ‘I planned to hurt her right back. I’d have found Eric to deal with Whyte and Galante, but I was with Davis when I heard about the carjacking. I couldn’t figure that one out, but I kept working. I wasn’t going to give up.’
‘We know the story. All that’s left is for them to tell us about Susan... then we fulfil the initial goal of the mission.’
She knew from the way he monitored her expressions that he was judging her reaction to what may occur tonight. But until it happened, she couldn’t say how she would react. All she knew was that those people out there, their prisoners, had caused pain to people who didn’t deserve it, and they had believed it was their right to do so. Rushe wasn’t a man who would stand for that.
The door opened, and Eric came in alone. ‘Rosa’s set up, and I sent Scott for the car. He’s ready, Rushe.’
‘Not yet,’ Rushe said.
‘You can’t ask him to hold off,’ Eric said. ‘Do you know how long he’s been waiting for this?’
Flick stayed against Rushe but surveyed the details of this r
oom. A pizza box lay in a corner. Open Chinese food containers sat on the floor around the couch with beer bottles intermingled. A canvas sheet covered what she assumed from the odd sizes and shapes were a pile of various different items.
‘They killed his woman,’ Eric said.
‘And threatened mine,’ Rushe said. ‘If anything had happened to her they wouldn’t be the only ones tied to chairs out there.’
‘What do you plan to do?’ Flick asked, chiming in.
‘We do things my way,’ Rushe said.
Flick saw a glimmer of something in him that she didn’t recognise. His rumpled clothes and dazed appearance might not be quite the Rushe she knew, but that awareness within him was all aimed at her.
‘What way is that?’
‘We wait,’ Rushe said.
‘Let them torture themselves,’ Flick said.
‘That’s right.’
‘She really is your girl,’ Eric said.
‘Yes,’ Rushe said, with an abnormal glow of admiration. ‘She really is.’
‘Is there a restroom?’ Flick asked, struggling to tear her gaze away from Rushe’s.
‘I’ll show you,’ Eric said. ‘The water runs cold, but at least it runs.’
Taking a few minutes to herself to wash up and mentally regroup was required, but Rushe was her comfort, her rock, and she wouldn’t be parted from him for long.
Scott had returned an hour later. They all drank beer and watched TV, but said very little to each other. The three men sat on the couch, and Flick hadn’t objected when Rushe took her hand and pulled her into his lap. Now that she had him back, she could let herself think about what had happened or what might have happened.
Any anger she had left over his abandonment of her, or his risk-taking, was quelled by Rushe’s actions now, or rather his lack of them. Since before they were together, when they were putting on a show for the criminals in that shack, every time she was in Rushe’s lap he touched her and fondled her with entitlement. But not tonight.
Nobody said a word. They stared at the screen, but none of them watched. Jokes prompted no laughter or communication. Not one of them made any attempt at contact; they simply sat and stared.
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