by J. A. Dennam
Damn, there were so many.
“Whose place is this?” Ty asked, watching her carefully.
Rena frowned, that familiar dread seeping in after losing a large chunk of time. It helped, though, knowing Ty was there. “How did you find me?”
The laugh lines around his mouth deepened in frustration. “My phone you stole has an app for that,” he barked. “Answer my question.”
With a heavy sigh, Rena decided it was time to come clean. “Congratulations. You found Isak Frost.” Something changed in his countenance. She felt him shut down more than saw it, and a strange feeling stole over her. “Ty?”
His response was stiff, just like the set of his shoulders. “So, Derek was right. You brought the bullet to Frost on your own.”
Rena swallowed back the building lump of apprehension in her throat. This would not go well for her. “It was better that way.”
Instead of responding, Ty stood up, reached into his pocket and retrieved his phone, which he must have found in the back seat of Isak’s car. While she watched him dial a number, Rena found she favored his smile much more than the look of cold indifference she received as he spoke.
“We’re at Frost’s place.” Ty disconnected the call, bent and yanked her from the floor by her arm. “You lied to me.”
She stumbled to her feet then backwards as he pushed her toward the bed. “About a lot of things,” she admitted with genuine regret.
When she landed on the mattress with a bounce, he boxed her in the corner. “You need to start telling some truths before I haul you back to prison myself.”
Would he? The Ty she knew wouldn’t, but Rena felt she hadn’t met this man yet. “You’re hurt. I’m sorry.”
His blue eyes blazed with fury. “I don’t give a shit how you feel, Rena. Did you give the bullet to Frost?”
“Yes.”
The tidal wave of misery must have spilled into her eyes because his anger visibly cooled. “No good?”
She blinked against the moisture clouding her vision. “Derek won’t be cured.”
Emotions swirled between them, but Ty broke eye contact first, straightened and combed a hand through his hair. “I still want to see Frost. Where is he?”
While Rena searched her memory, she wiped her cheeks dry. “Last I knew he was upstairs nursing a sore ankle.”
“I’ve already been through the house. You’re the only one here.”
No Rafferty, no Isak…. Rena got up, walked to the window, scanned the shoreline. “He might be in the lab,” she said absently.
Ty spun her around by the shoulders, narrowed his look. “Lab?”
Bracing herself for more fury, she hugged her arms. “I forgot to mention, he’s also our basement chemist.”
After an incredulous pause, Ty laughed and dropped his hold on her. “Goddamn you, Rena!”
“I couldn’t bring you here, Ty,” she argued with conviction. “It wasn’t safe.”
“You mean there’s someone here more dangerous than you?” he fired back with malice.
The accusation stung, no matter how true. “Not anymore,” she admitted with a slight lift to her chin. “He’s gone.”
“Who?”
“Rafferty.”
Ty’s entire body tensed as he took on the weight of her answer. A myriad of emotions played with his eyes until they darkened with dawning. “It was you, wasn’t it?” he said finally. “You broke him out of Austin’s basement.”
She nodded again, went back to the bed and sat down on the edge. The truth would come at a hefty price, but it needed to be told. “He drugged me last night as soon as we got him back here. I guess he was too weak to stop me from leaving, though, and somehow I ended up at your place.”
Disbelief flashed over Ty’s face before he masked it. “You put a lot of work into convincing me I was wrong about someone drugging you.”
“Because I wasn’t sure yet,” she implored. “I didn’t think Rafferty had access to drugs, which would have meant I wasn’t completely right yet. But when I came back here, Isak said he suspected the same thing. And, finally, the proof is in that syringe. Rafferty tried to use it on me earlier, but I got to him first this time!”
An eyebrow rose. “Doesn’t look that way from here.”
Of all people, Ty was the one who always defended her actions. She knew good and well what it looked like, but that never seemed to matter to him in the past.
“I gave him the poisoned pill I stole,” she said with a desperate need to make him understand. “He was paralyzed and dying right there on the floor.”
Ty nodded, but it lacked the support she needed. “So, you killed him.”
“Yes!”
“Did you also kill that kid, River?”
Oh, shit. Rena closed her eyes. “Rafferty ordered me to,” she confessed. “River was a ghost. He needed to die just like the others. I knew that, but it didn’t make the job any easier.”
Ty nodded again as he paced and processed her answers. “That explains the bloody butcher knife,” he said, almost to himself. “So, if Rafferty’s dead, where is he?”
She indicated the floor by the stairs. “He was right there before I blacked out. I honestly don’t know what happened to him.” But she could plainly see he didn’t believe her. “Ty, I’m telling the truth. All of it. No more lies. He’s gone. It’s done!”
His answering bark of laughter begged to differ. “I don’t know if it will ever be done with you.”
A passive calm stole over her. “I just didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“What part about ‘full disclosure’ didn’t you get? If you were honest from the start, maybe I’d believe you, but right now it just looks like you were partnered with Rafferty from the beginning.”
“I was.”
More shock as Ty closed his eyes, hissed, “And I helped you!”
“Yes, you did. More than you know.” Old springs groaned beneath her weight as she moved off the bed.
Ty put his hand up indicating she keep her distance. “No, Rena.”
But she’d make him listen. His support had become much too important to her not to try. “When Derek brought me back,” she explained, “I remembered some things that would make Rafferty very nervous. I had to tread carefully, but it’s hard when you don’t know what’s real and what’s not. I had to be sure. You helped me see what was real, and you were right!”
She smiled a little, stepped closer. “I’m giving you full disclosure, Ty. Rafferty’s been drugging me since the day I nearly drowned in the river with Danny. That was the day Sophie sent him—the big guns—to remind me what was at stake. But he decided my mother’s methods were too soft, so he improvised and used his own.”
A muscle in Ty’s jaw twitched ever so slightly. “So, Rafferty was the ghost who hurt you. How?”
Rena watched him carefully. “How do you think?”
“He raped you?” came the foregone conclusion.
Rena relayed the details without blinking. “I think he meant to be careful at first. To not leave any evidence. But when Rafferty takes a woman, he always leaves his mark.” In more ways than Rena could count. “When he was through with me, there was no hiding what he’d done. Austin would know, Sophie would know, and he was afraid of the fallout.
“So he injected me with a hallucinogen of some kind. I only remember bits and pieces of what happened that night at the river. From that point on, my life belonged to him.” She indicated the basement around them. “He kept me here the nine months I was believed dead.”
A spark deepened the burning anger in his eyes. “And Frost let it happen.”
She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “He thought Rafferty was taking care of me. Everyone did.”
Only a few feet separated them. Ty reached out, briefly felt the collar of her terrycloth top. “I wondered where you got the clothes.”
Encouraged by his touch, Rena stepped closer. “My mother trusted him to nurse me back to health, but he secretly hated he
r. All he did was use me for his closet revenge. I became more important to him than the missing sample, and as long as it was still out there, he could keep me here.”
When Ty’s silence prodded her to continue, she sighed heavily. “Isak told me that without my meds, I became unpredictable. Rafferty experimented with some meds of his own so he could manage me. He taught me how to stay out of sight, how to break in and out of places so that I wouldn’t get caught. But I was obsessing over the wrong thing and I applied what I learned to spy on Austin. I guess I lost it when I saw him with Danny.”
“Mel suspected you’d had more training than everyone thought,” Ty murmured, fully engrossed in her story. “And she was right.”
“When it came time to break me out of prison, Rafferty was counting on me being in a catatonic state. He wanted to control my recovery in order to keep his secrets. Derek helped me break that cycle.”
Ty continued to stand there, arms crossed. It was clear he was waging an internal battle of some kind. “If you knew what he did to you, why did you free him last night?”
All she could do was tell the truth and hope he believed her. “After I killed Sophie, I came straight here. I needed answers and Isak was the only one who could provide them. We talked. Decided that, together, we could coax the truth out of Rafferty. Get it on tape. Not only would I have proof that he and Sophie were behind my condition when I committed those crimes, Isak would have proof he was being manipulated as well.”
“What made you think Isak was trustworthy?” said with a hint of ridicule.
“He and my father were good friends.”
Ty shrugged. “So?”
The tone of her voice raised a notch. “He was a victim of IGP just like the rest of us. And with Sophie dead and Rafferty missing, he feared the ghosts would be scrambling to control him and the drug he produces. All he wanted was a way out, even if it meant going to the police with evidence that would expose IGP.”
“Didn’t you tell him the ghosts were all dead?”
She put a hand to her forehead, blew out a frustrated breath. “They aren’t all dead.”
Ty backed away slightly, pointed a finger. “Derek isn’t a threat. Not like the others.”
But he was still a threat to Isak. Until she knew Isak’s reasons for turning a blind eye to Rafferty’s abuse, she wasn’t ready to let him go as an ally. “I’m not as sure of that as I’d like to be, Ty. Isak is my last connection to my family.”
Ty moved around her, ran a hand through his hair. “So, you’re on his side. But what makes you think he’s on yours?”
“What do you mean?”
When he reached the far window, he turned back toward her. “If Rafferty was drugging you, Isak probably supplied the drugs.”
“No, he didn’t. He wouldn’t. I’m telling you, he wanted to help prove my innocence.”
Ty produced the empty syringe. “Think about it, Rena. If Rafferty’s been here the whole time, where would he have gotten this?”
It was something she’d already considered at great length. “It must have been left over from before. Rafferty had a stash Isak didn’t know about.”
“If we were talking pills, it would make sense,” he said, driving his point home. “But this is an injectable. It would have spoiled a long time ago.”
Rena stuck out her hands in a helpless struggle for answers. Isak wouldn’t sell her out like that. If nothing else, the lone ladder-back chair he’d saved for her proved it. “Maybe it was something he took from Isak’s lab, Ty. I really don’t know.”
The notion brought a cool challenge to his tone. “Why don’t we find out?”
CHAPTER 14
The instant Rena led him outside, Ty couldn’t shake the feeling they were being watched. Lake water, warm and odorous, reflected the orange spotted clouds above and lapped softly at the seawall just inches from their feet. He thought it odd, a house on the lake with no dock, but as soon as they reached the shoreline, the stone path veered left and into the mouth of a cave.
Then it all made sense. The cave was more like a modified boathouse complete with wooden walkway and small raft tied to algae-covered moorings. He looked back, took note of how the trees and foliage had been allowed to grow wild, blocking out his view of the light boat traffic in the distance.
She led him deep inside where they entered a narrow tunnel he would have never noticed otherwise. The dank air became surprisingly cool there, keeping the smell of wet dirt a mild, pleasant odor. Deeper they went, until it became pitch black. Finally, she pushed on a door and revealed a room that was bathed in a blue incandescent light. It was like science fiction housed in a primal setting, completely hidden and virtually undetectable from the outside world.
The perfect location to produce an illegal drug.
Rena called out Isak’s name. There was no answer, just the light hum of a hidden ventilation system.
“He isn’t here.”
Ty was drawn to a strange network of tubes and hoses, which were connected to various gas cylinders, cooking vats and sealed glass containers. “So, this is the infamous basement lab,” he murmured. The only place where Nexifen was made.
A glass-front refrigerator occupied an alcove to their left. Rena opened a cabinet beside it and produced a plastic caddy housing everything needed to draw blood.
He took it from her and ordered her to sit down on the counter. As he swiped a pair of latex gloves from a box, he kicked a rolling stool into position and sat down. The arrangement put him eye-level with her ample chest.
“Isak already did this earlier,” she said, presenting her bare foot.
Struggling to focus, he ran a finger over the red dot above a vein between her dainty white toes. “Is that what this is from?”
“Yes.”
“Why the foot?”
“The arm was too noticeable. If I had a fresh injection site, Rafferty might suspect we were testing my blood.”
She sounded so sure Isak was clean. For her sake, Ty hoped he was. “I’ll take several blood samples. We’ll give them and the syringe to Kelly. She can send them off to be individually tested if the routine tests come back negative.”
He wrapped a stretchy band around her bicep and ordered her to pump her fist. She looked at him thoughtfully as she did. “How long were you an EMT before you became a fireman?”
“I drove an ambulance for two years before my application with the fire department went through. It’s a highly competitive field.”
“Is that when you met Kelly?”
Ty could sense her wheels turning as he selected two vials and laid them on a gauze pad beside her. “Yep.”
Her toes flexed when he opened a packet containing a small needle with plastic wings. “Last time you played doctor,” she said in a husky voice, “it was between my legs.”
His mouth quirked at the memory. It had been just two days ago, when he first laid eyes on her since the court hearing. He’d been taken aback by how different she looked, though his man card forced him to be discreet about it. Damn, she was a knockout, all sane and fiery, piercing him with those sapphire eyes of hatred. But he could tell she was in pain before Melanie divulged the information about the flesh wound on her inner thigh. And, of course, it had been his pleasure to order her out of her pants.
Choosing a vein, he carefully inserted the butterfly needle. Rena didn’t so much as flinch as she continued to watch him.
“You said you wouldn’t go between my thighs again,” she teased.
“You were being a bitch,” he said candidly, disengaging the full tube and replacing it with another.
Her smile was cat-like as she opened her knees a few inches. “But you want to.”
The stretchy band was removed. “Yes, I do,” he admitted easily enough. “Doesn’t mean I will.”
Soft raven hair spilled over one shoulder as she cocked her head. “You never fully trusted me, Ty, but that didn’t stop you from relieving my anxiety last time.”
On the
bare apartment floor and in the shower. He chose to ignore her provocative reminder… until she spoke again. The tone of her voice changed into something smaller.
“Is it because you know Rafferty’s been there?”
When he looked up, the raw pain in her eyes grabbed him. She’d done so well to hide it before, he almost believed she was immune to pain. “That’s not why,” he answered thickly. “I would never judge you for what he did.”
The pain shifted into sadness. “What if I told you I need you right now? Just like before.”
Oh, shit. “There are other ways to relieve anxiety, Rena.”
Lithe fingertips dove into the hair at his temples. “Who says I’m anxious?”
Fighting back the thrill of her touch, Ty caught her wrists, held them away. A thought occurred. “Are you a sex addict?”
She opened her mouth, closed it again and appeared to really think about it. “I seem to be lately, don’t I?”
Why did he want to laugh all of a sudden? This was hardly the time or place. “I don’t know if I should be flattered or if you’re working another angle,” he accused, though he couldn’t tear his focus away from her luscious mouth.
Rena pulled on her arms and brought him closer in the process. “Your touch helps erase the memory of his,” she whispered, bending to brush her lips over the crease of his frown. “Ty… please. I need him cleansed from my soul.”
He discovered an unfamiliar floral scent infused in her hair and he inhaled deeply. “It’s not a good time, Rena.”
With her hands free, she wrapped them around his neck, tilted his chin upward with her thumbs and mimicked his words to her earlier that morning. “Tough shit.”
Ty swallowed, closed his eyes. “We still don’t know where Rafferty is….”
“He’s dead.” She trailed more soft kisses over the curve of his cheekbone. “Isak probably moved him. Just take your clothes off.”
“Frost could walk in….”
“We’ll hear him way before he does.”
“…and I still don’t have protection.”
“Just pull out like you did before.”