Jack didn’t waste a second. He went to the kitchen where Rusty was seated at the counter, and he gave him a nod. So, they’d already talked about this. Great. She hoped during that talk that they’d discussed the down and dirty details of how dangerous this was.
“The killer will be expecting this to be a trap,” Dana pointed out.
“Yes,” Jack agreed. “So, we have to give him the unexpected. I’m counting on him being so anxious to get his hands on you that he’ll be willing to take some risks, like me being there. When he calls, we’ll find out just how big those risks will be.”
“I don’t like it,” Grace said, her voice shaky.
Vince caught onto her arm, helped her to her feet and then pulled her to him. He whispered something to her, and Dana looked away, turning to Jack instead.
“I don’t like this, either.”
“I know.” He did the same ploy with her. He pulled her into arms. And Dana let him get away with it because she didn’t feel too steady on her feet and because being in his arms was better than not being in them.
“Was the bathtub sex your way of saying goodbye?” he asked with his mouth right against her ear.
She eased back a little, met his eyes. “Wow, I must have done it wrong if you think that. It was just sex.” That didn’t sound right. “Wait. No, it was more, but it wasn’t a goodbye.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Good. I’m glad it was more.”
Dana huffed. “I don’t know why. More doesn’t make this easier.”
“No. But more is inevitable. Personally, I’m not gonna to fight it.”
“No, you’re just going to go in with a corpse and face down a serial killer.” She buried her face against his neck. “I don’t want you dead, Jack. I don’t even want you hurt.”
“I feel the same way about you.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “I’m really good at what I do. If it comes down to a hand to hand or a gun fight with this guy, I’ll win.”
He sounded convincing enough, and she knew he was good. However, Dana also knew that a man who’d committed all those murders had to be good, too.
Jack’s phone buzzed. Even though it was barely audible, it seemed to echo through the room. Jack backed up and looked at the screen.
“The caller blocked his ID,” Jack relayed. And he clicked the button to put the call on speaker.
“Jack, so glad you’ve come to your senses,” the person said, but it was impossible to tell which of their suspects was speaking. The caller was using some kind of voice scrambler that made him sound as if he’d sucked in a mouthful of helium.
“Arrington, is that you?” Jack asked.
“Maybe,” the voice said. “And maybe I just gave him the number of a prepaid disposable cell where he could reach me. You might never know.”
“I will if this meeting takes place,” Jack countered.
“Oh, it’ll take place all right. With my rules. Dana is to come to the church on St. Mary’s at exactly midnight. You know the one. It’s where Alyssa and Layton were killed.”
“Sick bastard,” Vince mumbled. Dana agreed.
“I want Dana to come alone,” the cartoon voice continued. “Once she’s inside, she’s to strip off her clothes and lie on the altar. When she’s done, I want Grace to come in and do the same.”
“No way,” Vince said, not in a whisper this time. “You’re not getting both of them.”
“And Dana’s not coming alone,” Jack added. “I’ve tried to talk her out of it, but she insists on meeting you. However, she wants to be drugged first. Not by you but by me.”
“I want to be unconscious,” Dana supplied. “I don’t to feel your hands on me.”
“But that takes away some of the fun,” he answered.
“You’ll just have to forgo that kind of fun,” she fired back after suppressing a gag. “After you have me, you’re to let Jack go. And you’re never to go after them again. Swear to it--on your own soul.”
The next few seconds dragged by. “I swear. Only Jack and Dana then,” he finally said. “If I see any of your men, the deal's off.”
“Same here,” Jack insisted. “If you bring any of your grenade launchers with you, you won’t lay one finger on Dana.”
“It’s not my finger I want to lay on her,” he said. “I want my hands on her throat.”
Yeah, and then he wanted to rape a corpse. Dana hadn’t needed any reminders that they were dealing with a lunatic, but that was one anyway.
“I’ll call you if there’s a change in plans,” he said. “Oh, and Jack, there’s no reason for you to try to run and hide. You see, no matter where you go, I will find you.”
#
Vince finished his call to one of his CIA associates and glanced around the safe house. Jack was at the table, his phone against his ear while he used a laptop. He wasn’t exactly sure what Jack was doing, but he hoped like hell the man was making foolproof security arrangements for this unholy meeting with the dickwad killer. Vince wasn’t into suicide missions.
Rusty was on the phone as well in the adjoining living room. Anthony Garza, too. There was an armed man by the front door. Another by the back. And Dana was pacing in the kitchen.
“You okay?” Vince asked, going to her.
“No. I don’t want Jack to do this.”
She was wired all right, maybe even on the verge of a panic attack. Her pulse was jumping. She was chewing on her bottom lip. Every muscle in her body was tight to the point of looking painful.
Vince glanced first at the clock, then back to Jack. The meeting was still six hours away. Not much time in the grand scale of things, but Vince hoped that Jack could work in a little soothing time with Dana. It jabbed at him a little to admit it, but Dana probably just needed some good old-fashioned TLC. And in her mind, Jack was the only one who could do that.
“Jack knows what he’s doing,” Vince assured her, and he hoped that was true. Yeah, Jack was competent all right, but so was this killer.
Dana caught onto his arm. “You have to make sure nothing bad happens to him. Please.”
“That’s the plan.” Vince brushed a kiss on her forehead and glanced at Jack again.
Jack seemed to get the message that Dana needed him, and he ended the call and stood. He tipped his head in a give us a minute gesture, and Vince left them. He went in search of someone else who probably needed some calming down.
Vince expected to find Grace pacing in the family room where he’d left her minutes earlier, but she wasn’t there. He had a moment of panic himself when it crossed his mind that she might try to do something stupid--like make herself bait to save Dana and Jack. But he doubted she could get past Jack’s men who were guarding the place like hawks.
He went to the other side of the house, to the hall that led to the bedrooms. All but one door was open, and that’s the one he knocked on.
“Vince?” she called out from the other side.
Yeah, she was wired, too. That one word was loaded with nerves and fear. He went inside and shut the door behind him.
Like Dana, she was pacing. Also like Dana, there was a panic attack brewing. “What’s wrong?” she immediately asked.
“Nothing.” Well, nothing other than the obvious. He went to her, eased his arm around her waist. “The plan’s coming together. We’ll make things as safe as possible for Jack. For all of us.”
Her gaze fired to his. “We’re all going to the meeting?”
“More or less. I don’t want you to stay here. The meeting could be a trap to get Dana and you isolated.” And Vince couldn’t let his mind go in the direction of what the killer would do if he managed to get to them. “We’re planning to move Dana and you nearer to the church and keep you under guard.” Lots of guards. “That way, we’ll have all the security and resources in the same general area.”
Of course, that would put Grace and Dana closer to the killer, too, but Vince hoped that wouldn’t turn out to be a giant assed mistake.
Grace nodded
, nibbled on her lip, nodded again. “He’ll be waiting for us, no matter what we do.”
“We’ll be waiting for him, too,” Vince promised. “We figure he already has security in place at the church. Maybe men hidden. Booby traps.”
“How do you get around that?”
“We have our own men hidden. Our own booby traps.” His stomach tightened. “Trust me, I’m not very happy about this.”
“I know.” She stared at him, and Vince braced himself for the falling apart part.
But instead her mouth came to his for a kiss. Well, sort of. It was hard and punishing as if Grace was trying to work out her troubles with this mouth-to-mouth contact. Normally, Vince would have jumped right in. He liked hard, and punishing was okay, too. Under the right circumstances. But he wasn’t sure this was a right circumstance situation.
He let the kiss go on a while until he had a mean erection and just enough willpower to force himself to pull back.
“Don’t think about it and don’t say no,” Grace insisted, and she coiled her arms around his neck and went after his mouth again.
He'd cut out his tongue before he said no, but Vince did make himself to stop and think about this. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, and I said don’t think about it.” She apparently meant it, too, because she pushed him against the back of the door.
Vince groaned. This was a fantasy come true, but in his fantasy Grace didn’t need to be fucked. She wanted to be. Big difference.
She pressed her body right against his and worked her hand into his zipper that she slid down. “I can't make this perfect,” she said. “I don’t even care if I get off. I just want to be with you like this.”
Okay, those were the magic words, or maybe he just heard what he wanted to hear because she slid her way down his body and took him into her mouth.
Vince cursed.
To say he enjoyed blow jobs a lot was a lot like saying the ocean had a little bit of water in it, but this wasn’t the time for one. Even a really, really good one. If Grace licked and sucked on him much longer, he wouldn’t be able to make this last long enough to get inside her.
Vince hauled her back up to him, turned her and put her back against the door. He pinned her there so he could peel off her jeans and panties, and Vince started a kiss that would have given Grace at least some foreplay. However, she must not have wanted to waste time with that because she brought up her knee, anchored it on the side of his hip and pushed herself against him. His cock slid right into that fire.
Vince needed to take a deep breath. To settle both his heads, but apparently Grace didn’t need breaths any more than she needed foreplay. Her other knee came up, her legs wrapped around him, and she was fucking him before Vince could even get his footing. There was only one thing he could do.
He fucked her right back.
With one hand he grabbed her ass so he could control the break-neck pace. With his other hand, he caught onto her hair and bent her head so that he could go after her neck. That was to please his mouth, maybe to please her, too, while he thrust in and out of her.
“Yes,” she mumbled. Repeated it.
The yeses got faster when he moved his hand between them and stroked her clit. Her hips got faster too, and she rode him hard and fast while his fingers worked her.
“Yes,” she said. Not fast like the others, and her eyes flew open to meet his. “Yes.” It sounded a little a question that time.
And Vince knew why. He could feel her starting to cum.
“Yes!” she managed to gut out before the orgasm slammed into her with full force. She practically went limp, her head leaning against his, but Vince kept up the thrusts so she could milk every drop of pleasure from it.
He did some pleasure-milking, too. Each slide inside that slick heat was mind-blowing. The best he’d ever had. Vince pushed into her until he couldn’t last another stroke, and he let the aftershocks of Grace’s orgasm finish him off.
“You did it,” she mumbled and a soft laugh bubbled from her throat. “You really did it.”
“I’m thinking we did it,” he mumbled back, and he gave her clit a few more strokes so she could get the last benefits of those aftershocks.
She made a sound, something like a groan mixed with a purr, and once she recovered, she kissed him. “You got my body to work.”
“Again, this is a we thing. You already had all the working parts. You just needed the right touch.”
“Which you gave me. For now until eternity you’ll always be my first.” She smiled. “Hope that doesn’t cause you to run for cover.”
“I’m not running anywhere,” he assured her, and Vince was more than a little surprised to realize that was true. Even more surprised for him to discover that he didn’t want to run.
Vince glanced down at where they were still joined.
He got instantly hard again.
Oh, mercy. His dick thought he was a teenager. Maybe the rest of him would cooperate with that notion.
“I have a three fuck rule,” he told her. “More than three, and it’s a commitment.”
She stared at him. “You’re kidding?”
“Nope. I’ve never fucked the same woman three times.”
Grace blinked. “But you’ve already had sex with me twice.”
“Yeah,” Vince said, “and that’s why we’re about to do it again.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Jack went over the checklist one more time.
He had two long range snipers positioned near the church, and he was wearing the dragon skin body armor that Vince’s friend had scrounged up and a communicator so he could stay in constant contact with Rusty. There were also the cameras that Rusty had managed to get installed on the street so they could monitor every angle of the church.
But not inside.
By the time they’d arrived to do that, the killer already had one of his men inside the place who’d taken aim at his PIs. That didn’t surprise Jack. He would have done the same if he’d known the location in advance. So to compensate, Jack would use a thermal scan that would register the body heat of any living human body. It wouldn’t be a perfect solution, but nothing about this was perfect.
In addition to the cameras and the thermal scan, there were five of his PIs dotted in the area around the church, and they could respond in under a minute. They couldn’t risk them being closer because the killer might spot them and call off this whole meeting.
This had to end tonight.
“The killer’s not going in the church alone, is he?” Dana asked. She appeared in the doorway of the kitchen with two shot glasses filled with what smelled to be whiskey. She put one on the table next to him and took the other in one gulp.
Jack hoped it helped. The sex had, temporarily. But soothing nerves as raw as hers was beyond the scope of sex. Even their sex. And he was pretty sure it was the cure for just about anything else.
“My men spotted some of his men,” Jack settled for saying. He took a sip of the drink, no more, because he wanted nothing clouding his head.
“How many?” she pressed.
“Four.” But there could be more. In fact, there probably was. He didn’t think for one minute that this psycho was going in there without being full prepared and without plenty of backup.
Dana repeated it, looked even more concerned, and she skimmed her finger between the buttons on his shirt to feel the body armor.
“It’ll be enough,” he insisted, and he pulled her down to him for a kiss. It didn’t last nearly long enough because he heard someone clearing their throat.
Vince appeared in the doorway, and he had his arm slung around Grace’s shoulders. Grace looked as terrified as Dana. Thank God, Vince just looked smug and well fucked. Jack was thankful for that, too. He was counting heavily on Vince protecting Dana and Grace, and since it appeared the man had feelings for both of them--especially Grace--then maybe this plan would succeed.
Maybe.
“Everything’s a go?” Vi
nce asked.
Jack nodded. “I got a call about fifteen minutes ago that the van with Patricia’s body is at the rendezvous point.” A small detached rental house about two blocks from the church. “They’re warming up the body now.”
“Warming it?” Dana said, making a face.
“Yeah.” Jack had to pause. “In case the killer gets his hands on her.”
Dana gasped.
Grace cursed. “Could this get any creepier?”
Not creepier but it could get worse. Jack would take a whole planet of creepy as long as Dana and Grace were safe.
He stood, checked his watch and was about to turn to Dana to tell her it was time to leave with Vince and Grace. But his phone buzzed. And when Jack saw that the caller’s number had been blocked, he groaned. It was the killer, no doubt, and Jack figured this wouldn't be a friendly call.
“Jack,” the altered voice said when he put the call on speaker. Vince and Grace moved closer. “I trust you’re excited about our get-together. I am,” he said without waiting for an answer.
“What do you want?” Jack snapped.
“You sound scared. Are you?” he taunted.
“I’m impatient. What do you want?”
The caller took his time answering, probably to unnerve them. Jack didn’t want him to know it was working. Of course, his nerves had already been raw enough before this call.
“There’s been a change of plans,” the caller said.
That caused all of them to groan or curse. “It’s too late for that. I’m leaving for the meeting now,” Jack lied.
“It’s never too late, and here’s how this will work. I want Vince, not you, to come to the church with Dana.”
“Not possible,” Jack fired back. He was prepared to do this. He had the plan down pat. Vince had his own plan that he’d need to carry out at the rental house.
“It’s possible,” he argued. “Isn’t it, Vince? There’s no way you’ll let me cancel this meeting because you’re too afraid or otherwise occupied to show up.”
The muscles in Vince’s jaw stirred. “I’ll meet you.”
Dead Ringers Page 22