Just then, Layla appeared in the doorway to her office, startling him from his thoughts. If Seth had a heart, surely it would have seized in his chest at the sight of her. Layla looked drawn and pale, completely unsteady. But she wasn’t reacting to him. She didn’t remember him. Couldn’t remember him. He’d seen to that. He’d buried her pleasures and joys, her ability to know herself and be known by others. And along with those lost pleasures, he’d locked away her memories, too. Even so, it still angered him that she didn’t drop to her knees in supplication.
Layla’s clothes angered him, too. The high-necked white blouse covered her well enough, but where was her modesty last night when she wore a red dress that exposed her arms and knees? When she actually kissed the cheek of that puny, pathetic, mortal man?
Disloyal whore.
“It’s fine, Isabel,” Layla said, motioning for the man to come into her office, where she’d been organizing her case files. She wanted to have everything in order when she broke the news to her patients that she couldn’t treat them anymore. Most of them would take it well, but she’d worked hard to earn Carson Tremblay’s trust. She knew the young artist was in the waiting room, and she needed a few more minutes before she could face him. She was sure that talking to Mr. Carey would be easier. He claimed to be affiliated with the government. Maybe he had something to do with the men she’d seen in the casino last night. She actually hoped so; maybe Mr. Carey could make some sense of it all.
However, just as Mr. Carey took a seat, too rude even to remove his shades, Layla was struck by something terribly familiar in the way he folded his hands. She’d seen those hands before, those bony knuckles and elegantly cruel fingers. Somehow she was certain that if she touched them, his palms would be dry.
She knew him.
He was another man risen from the ashes of her past, and his dark presence frightened her to her core. Her heart seemed to have gone dead and dull in her chest, but she wasn’t ready to admit she didn’t remember him. “It’s good to see you again, Mr. Carey,” she said with as much bravado as she could muster.
He took off his sunglasses and looked at her. He didn’t gaze at her with the gentle respect Nate Jaffe had always shown her. He didn’t even stare at her like Ray did—with primal rage and animal need. No, Seth Carey looked at her as if he had every right to let his eyes roam over her body. He took his time, his scrutiny harsh and judging, as if finding every line on her face and every unwanted spare inch of flesh on her hips. “How long has it been, Layla?”
So they were on a first-name basis, then. Layla’s mind raced. They were colleagues, perhaps, but not friends. No. They couldn’t have been friends because everything about him made her want to run. She remembered that he’d asked her a question. How long had it been since they’d last seen one another? “At least two years ago…”
He was silent, as if he expected her to simply wait patiently for him to speak. All the while, something inside her thrashed madly, like a wild animal in a trap.
“Layla, I thought you might like to know that Rayhan Stavrakis escaped prison. He’s come for revenge. He’s already attacked his jailers and—let’s just say, they wish they were dead. Now he’s likely after you. He may have killed Dr. Jaffe last night in an effort to get to you. I understand you had a relationship with the deceased…” The deceased. What a horrible word. Sadness over Nate Jaffe’s death welled inside Layla again, the tears she couldn’t cry all but drowning her on the inside. “You think Rayhan Stavrakis killed Nate Jaffe?”
That wasn’t possible, because Ray had been with her last night. She should say that. She should tell him that. Somehow, she couldn’t make her mouth form the words.
“Don’t you remember the Stavrakis case?” he asked with a smile, teeth sharp and threatening.
Layla realized he was toying with her, as if he knew she couldn’t remember. “Of course.”
“Then you know he’s a madman. There’s no telling what he could do. We don’t know who his coconspirators are, or what act of violence he’s planning here in the homeland.”
Something about the way he said the word homeland was antithetical to every ideal of the nation he was supposedly trying to protect. It set her teeth on edge and made it easier to lie. “I hope you catch him.”
“We hope you’ll use your intimate knowledge about him to help us catch him.”
Intimate knowledge? What was he implying? There was no mistaking the note of contempt in his voice when he said it. Mr. Carey leaned forward so that his bald head gleamed ruddy in the light from the window. “Just because you parted with Scorpion Group on less than amicable terms, doesn’t mean you’re not a patriot anymore, does it? He’s a monster, Layla. Do you really want more deaths on your conscience?”
Layla faltered, instinctively fingering the edge of the sixpence dangling from her neck. What exactly was Scorpion Group and just how many deaths were on her conscience? What if Mr. Carey was right? Layla had already experienced Ray’s strange powers firsthand. He hadn’t hurt her last night, but maybe that was only because he’d collapsed before he could. Ray was a huge, violent and troubled man; if everything he’d told her was true, he had every reason in the world to hate her.
“I want you to come to a safe house with me,” Mr. Carey said, reaching for her hand. “Somewhere we can protect you.” Layla had never believed that someone could make her flesh crawl until that moment, and she pulled away. Her every instinct screamed that she shouldn’t trust him. Especially when he added, “You’re not safe on your own.”
She’d studied sociopaths long enough to know that he wanted her to be afraid. He wanted her to be terrified. It fed something in him. And it fed something in her too: a wild defiance. “I’m not afraid,” she lied. She was afraid of Rayhan Stavrakis, but she was even more afraid of Seth Carey. “But thank you for the warning. I’ll be extra careful.”
“Layla, even with all the locks and bolts on your condo door, you’re not safe.”
It wasn’t an offhanded comment. She understood the subtext perfectly. I know where you live. I can get to you. He reached for her hand again and this time, she was too frightened to pull away. “He’s coming for you, Layla, and there’s going to be a reckoning.”
A reckoning. That’s what the note had said, and looking now into the sand-swept eyes of the man sitting across her, she realized that this was her stalker. This terrifying man who carried not only a gun, but a badge. The blood drained away from her face as she desperately tried to steady herself. Layla had counseled abuse victims. She would have told them to get out of this situation without enflaming it. She just never thought she’d be in a position to have to take her own advice.
“I’m sure you’re right,” Layla said with as much calmness as she could. “Can you leave me your card and contact information so we can arrange something?”
He grinned, as if she’d amused him. He took a business card from his pocket and handed it to her. It was white ink on black with a scorpion design and she recognized it instantly. She’d had cards like this once, too. “I have a lunch appointment,” Layla said, grabbing her purse and willing him not to see through her deception. “But I promise I’ll call you right after and you can take me to the safe house.”
“Layla—”
She didn’t wait to hear whatever it was that he had to say. She wouldn’t call him. Not after lunch. Not ever. And by the time he called her, she’d be long gone.
Layla murmured something to Isabel about pushing appointments back, but she didn’t break stride. It wasn’t until she was out of the building that someone caught up with her on the sidewalk. It was Carson Tremblay. “Wait! Dr. Bahset!”
Gratified to see that it wasn’t Mr. Carey on her heels, she kept walking. “Carson, I’m sorry but I can’t see you today.”
The young man kept up with her, practically running at her side. “But I have a show. My artwork is going to be on display.” He handed her a flyer advertising the exhibition, as if to prove it. “I’m worried
about what I might do.”
“You’ll be fine,” she said, with a wary glance over her shoulder. “I’ll—I’ll call you. I’ll talk you through it. But right now, I have to go.” Layla folded the flyer and thrust it into her skirt pocket, picking up her pace. She hated the look on the young man’s face as she left him standing there beside the glass windows of a bank, but it couldn’t be helped. She had to leave. Now. It was a matter of survival.
The walk to the parking garage wasn’t very far, but it seemed miles and miles too long when her cell phone started ringing. The display said SCORPION GROUP. She wondered if she should answer it. If she should stall for time. Maybe tell Mr. Carey to meet her somewhere in the opposite direction from where she was going. But to answer the phone was to risk he might hear the fear in her voice. Besides, she had to get rid of her phone. It had a GPS system that could be used to track her.
She didn’t have time to wonder how she knew this. She just threw it into the nearest trash can and hurried toward her car. She’d parked on the lowest deck, in the basement, away from the crowds. It was quiet enough for her to hear someone murmur into a crackling radio. It was probably just parking garage security, she told herself, but some instinct made her look before she took another step. Crouching low on the stairs, she peered between the metal railings down into the garage and saw the blinking blue lights of the security camera. Beyond that, two men wearing dark suits and sunglasses watched her car.
They were the same men that had been following her the night Dr. Jaffe died.
She hadn’t believed Rayhan Stavrakis when he told her that she was being followed, but now she did. What’s more, she knew that these were Mr. Carey’s men. Men who worked for Scorpion Group. The knowledge made the small hairs on the nape of her neck stand on end.
She’d leave her car behind. The only thing that mattered was escaping. She had to get out of this parking garage, out of this city, maybe even out of this country. And she had to do it today. Right now. Rising, Layla slowly backed her way up the stairs. She dared not breathe when she heard a heavier footfall behind her. Just two floors to go and she’d be back at street level. Layla increased her pace, her hand skidding along the metal railing. The footsteps behind her picked up pace, too, and Layla’s heel caught in the stairs, sending her to her knees. She yelped with pain as her hands hit the concrete, skin scraping as a pair of hands grasped her around the waist.
“I’ve got her!” the man shouted.
What happened next was nothing Layla could explain. With a violent economy of motion, she slammed her head back sharply into her attacker’s face and heard his nose break with a sickening crunch. He let out a startled cry and held his nose as red blood spurted between his fingers. Then she shoved him back and delivered a roundhouse kick that sent him tumbling down the stairs.
Layla hovered there, momentarily stunned. How had she known how to do that? Did she know martial arts? There wasn’t time to figure it out, because another of Seth Carey’s men was right behind him. This one leaped over his partner to get at her.
Desperate to find something—anything—to defend herself, Layla saw a fire extinguisher inside a glass case. Without a conscious thought, she smashed both fists into the glass case and pulled it out. She swung the cannister at her pursuer, nailing him in the forehead and making him stumble.
“Crazy bitch!”
He was after her again, but not before Layla whispered, “I’m too heavy to carry, too light to put down, a stain on your soul, a thorn in your crown.”
At hearing the riddle, he crumpled as if she’d hit him. He just lay there, moaning.
Why did she say that? And why did it give her such satisfaction to see him fall? The uncharacteristic savagery swept away her fear, and mixed with an unbidden desire to tear him from limb to limb. It was a primal instinct, something that wasn’t like her at all—but then, how well did she really know herself? She heard more footsteps coming and turned, still desperate to get away.
Instead of climbing another flight of stairs, she burst out the door on the mezzanine level. The air exploded out of her lungs as she slammed the metal door open against the wall of the parking garage. She must look ridiculous, red-faced and panting, her hands bleeding from the cut glass. But that couldn’t be helped now as she threaded her way between cars. She was disoriented. Lost in a maze of shadows and automobiles.
The sleeve of her blouse snagged on the door handle of a truck and tore, but she didn’t let it stop her. The footsteps behind her were louder now, thundering. She could hear her pursuer panting, hear his unintelligible curse. She ducked behind a large SUV and tried to catch her breath. The industrial lights overhead illuminated a shadow on the far wall. She’d thought a man was chasing her, but the shadow of a horned shape emerged in darkness like an animal come to devour her.
She heard a low growl. She smelled the musk of it mingled with the other base and earthy scents here. She could even smell her own fear, as much a lure for a predator as the blood that dripped down her wrist. She spun, frantic to find an exit. That’s when he caught her, wrenching a terrified scream from her throat that he silenced by pressing his mouth against hers.
She wasn’t expecting it. Not the way he swallowed her scream, crushing the terror beneath the fervor of his lips. Not the masculine way he tasted. Not the heat of his breath on her face, churning from his nostrils as if he couldn’t decide whether to kill her or kiss her or both. She clawed at him, her nails extending into the flesh of his forearms as if she were the predator, not he. She smelled his blood, heard his flesh tear, and still he kept kissing her. Her thoughts spun away and she tried to latch onto one solid thing to steady her, but the primal desire that flowed from his kiss crowded everything else out.
That kiss became the heated core of her, layers of civility melting away. He seemed to sense the exact moment when she surrendered to it, and deepened the kiss, his tongue capturing her own. She knew, even without opening her eyes, that it was Rayhan Stavrakis. And kissing him was a revelation. A thing of discovery. It was as if she’d never been kissed before, and maybe she hadn’t been. Not like this. Not with the promise and pain that tugged between her body and his.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said as she thrashed in his grip.
“Yes, you will,” she choked out. “You killed Dr. Jaffe last night!”
“I didn’t kill anyone last night, and you know it,” he said, his outrage at the accusation too sincere to be feigned. “Who are you running from?”
“You!” she said, still clawing at him blindly, deluged with a flood of memories, flashes of her past that flowed over her. It was as if his kiss had opened the floodgates, and it would take all her strength to close them again.
“You’re lying,” he said shaking her. “Who are you running from?”
“Seth,” she said with a sudden, heart-stopping clarity. “And if you knew better, you’d run from him, too.”
Chapter 7
With fingers like bone and a kiss like ice, it grabs
hold of strong men and turns them to mice.
Ray knew what people sounded like when they were overcome with terror and on the edge of breaking. He’d heard that same terror in his own voice when he was being tortured and in spite of everything she’d done to him, hearing Layla’s terror made him feel protective. If this Seth guy was after her, if he was going to hurt her, Ray would put a bullet between his eyes. “Where is he?”
“He’s not…he’s not here. But he’s coming for me and he’s coming for you, too,” Layla said, her nails still digging painfully into his arms.
“Stop it,” he said, grabbing her by the wrists. She’d already raked him so badly he was bleeding. Or they both were. He’d worry about that later. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” She closed her eyes against him, which made controlling her that much more difficult.
“You’d rather that I left you behind to face this Seth guy?”
He fe
lt Layla flail and then she said, “No. I’ll go with you.”
“Dude,” Missy said, leaning against the passenger door of the beat-up old junker he’d bought with stolen cash. “What happened to you? You’re bleeding like crazy!”
Ray herded Layla forward. “Didn’t I tell you to stay in the car, Missy?”
“You also told me to follow her,” Missy said. “So I figured you’d want me to keep an eye on things. There are cops, or rent-a-cops, or some kind of enforcement crawling all over the parking garage across the street!”
“You sent a young girl to spy on me?” Layla asked, trying to wrench out of his grip.
“Look,” Ray told her, catching Layla’s green eyes and grabbing hold of her mind. “I don’t need to touch you to make you do what I want to, Doc. Now get in the car.” But as he flung the passenger door open with every intention of shoving her inside, he couldn’t even stop Layla from clawing at him again. “Easy there, Kitty Kat. Haven’t you already left me with enough scars?”
It seemed to shame Layla, and all the fight went out of her. “But you’re not listening to me. If Seth sees you with me, he’ll kill you… Besides, the authorities are looking for you.”
“Really? This is my shocked face,” Ray said, dead-pan, pushing her legs into the passenger seat.
That’s when she started in on the kid. “Are you really that kind of girl? You’re going to let him kidnap me?”
To Ray’s surprise, Missy burst into tears. “He’s just a freak. He won’t hurt you. He just needs to ask you some questions.”
Dark Sins and Desert Sands Page 7