Beth Kery

by Sweet Restraint

  He pulled her into the tub with him a moment later, kissing her neck ardently.

  “Let’s go inside,” he whispered hoarsely. “I want inside that hot little pussy.”

  “Yes, yes,” Laura murmured in mindless agreement before their lips met and fastened in a heated kiss. “I need you, too.”

  Shane awoke hours later to the sound of a snowplow in the distance. He blinked dazedly. Morning light peeked around the curtains. He usually didn’t sleep so heavily, but a combination of the wine last night, the steamy early morning hot tub foray with Laura, and a sense of profound contentment must have kept him in the clutches of deep sleep.

  He immediately knew something was wrong . . . something was missing. He leaned up on his elbows, instantly alert. His quick survey of the bedroom told him he was alone.

  “Laura?”

  The only sound to answer his strained query was the scraping of the metal snowplow on the frozen road. His gaze shot over to the side of the mantel where he’d set aside Laura’s leather boots. The corner was empty.

  “No.”

  He flew up out of the bed and scuttled into a pair of jeans. When he stormed into the great room a second later he instinctively knew it was empty. By the time he fumbled barefoot down the front porch steps, nearly falling on his face in the deep drifts of snow, Tim Brandt’s dark blue pickup truck was already fifty yards down the rural route. He saw the figure in the passenger seat of the truck turn and look back at him.

  Frustration coursed through him when his frantic gaze landed on his snow-covered car. Thanks to Brandt’s snowplow, a five-foot-high wall of snow barricaded the exit of the driveway. Until he shoveled himself out, he was as trapped as a tiger pacing in its cage.

  “Fuck,” he muttered viciously.

  After the way she’d given herself to him last night . . . after she’d told him she was his, Laura had tricked him.

  Left him.

  Shane thought he’d explode clear through his skin in a blast of helpless rage.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Shane had cleared the driveway, showered, packed, and dressed within an hour and a half of Laura’s departure. Under the guise of wanting to purchase firewood, he found out where Tim Brandt lived from the clerk at a gas station in Eagle River.

  “Doubt he’s at home, though,” the clerk had added as he’d rung up Shane’s bottle of water and mints. “Just saw him headed for the highway a little over an hour ago and haven’t seen him come back this way since.”

  Shane had grunted his thanks and headed for his car. He’d hidden Laura’s purse at the cabin, so she didn’t have any credit cards or money. He had little doubt, however, given the way Tim Brandt was staring at her yesterday, as if he’d just been gifted with the vision of a goddess, that he would have volunteered to take her anywhere she wanted to go.

  On his drive back to the city he checked Laura’s cell phone for received messages over the weekend. Her incoming included two calls from a blocked caller identification and one from an unlisted number with a 312 area code. He tried to access her voice messages but she had them password protected. He tried Laura’s and Joey’s birth dates, but came up short. The blocked caller didn’t pick up when Shane dialed the number, nor was there any type of voice mail message.

  The unlisted call looked like an institutional number, the kind that a caller needed an extension to access. He already had a suspicion of what that institution was before he called it.

  Sure enough, it was the main trunk line for a myriad of Cook County institutions—including the Cook County Jail. He made a quick call to Mavis Bertram. When she told him that Telly Ardos was out of the Cook County Jail on bail, Shane pressed harder on the accelerator.

  “Do me a favor, will you? Wait outside Laura Mays’s house until she gets home, then make sure she’s okay until I arrive? I have a feeling Telly Ardos might try to go after her again.”

  A long silence ensued.

  “Yeah, okay. But Dom . . . is there anything you need to tell me about Laura Mays? Does this really have to do with our case? Or is it personal?”

  “It has everything to do with the case. Not only did Ardos break into her house and pull a gun on Laura the other night, he implied he wanted to take her to someone who wanted to talk to Laura specifically. That won’t have changed just because Ardos got thrown in jail. I told you yesterday I think Ardos was Huey’s connection to the jewelry industry.”

  “So you think Laura Mays is somehow involved, as well.”

  Shane’s knuckles went white on the wheel. “She knows something but she’s not talking.”

  “Yeah, there’s a lot of that going on around here.” Mavis grunted. “We did have a bit of luck though, Dom. I was about to call you about it.”

  Shane listened for the next minute as a weight seemed to grow heavier and heavier on his chest.

  “So what do you think? Should we bring him in for questioning?” Mavis asked finally.

  “Questioning? The evidence you have is pretty damning, Mavis. It justifies arrest. ”

  “I realize that,” Mavis said uneasily. “But I know Vasquez was a friend of yours from way back. I thought—”

  “The evidence speaks for itself,” Shane said dully. “Bring in Joey Vasquez. If you can’t locate him, just have a couple agents wait at his house. He and his family are on a ski trip in Wisconsin but they should be returning anytime now. Wait until I get there to question him, though. I’m not going to be involved. I just want to hear what he has to say . . . see his face when he says it.”

  The sky had grown dark by the time Shane finally walked out of one of the interrogation rooms at the First Precinct. He’d chosen John McNamara and Andre Lorenzo to question Joey.

  The weight of dread pressing down on Shane’s chest since Mavis had mentioned Joey’s name this morning seemed to magnify tenfold when he saw Shelly and Carlotta Vasquez sitting in the waiting area by the precinct front desk. Shelly rose from her chair when she saw Shane.

  “Dom, what’s going on? They said I needed to call our lawyer. Where’s Joey?”

  Shane inhaled slowly, his gaze falling to Carlotta. The teenager looked as drawn with anxiety as her mother.

  “I need to talk to you a moment in private, Shelly.”

  “No, Dom! I want to hear what’s happening to my dad,” Carlotta exclaimed. “Mom?”

  Shelly swallowed convulsively and nodded once, mutely granting her permission to hear. Shane grimaced.

  Christ, this whole situation sucked.

  “Joey’s being booked on a federal charge of racketeering conspiracy. I’m sorry, Shelly. I wish I could spare you this.” He grasped Shelly’s elbow when she swayed on her feet and gently urged her back on the plastic chair. Something behind him thudded dully on the dingy tile floor. Coffee seeped around his shoes. He turned around.

  “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you arrested Joey.”

  Laura stood there, her green eyes looking huge in her shocked face. Mavis had reported to him hours ago that Laura had been dropped off safely by Tim Brandt at her home and then left again soon afterward. Shelly had likely called her about Joey being picked up and Laura had come down to the police station to offer support.

  Her hair had been pulled back into a ponytail. She wore jeans and a form-fitting dark green sweater. He saw the gold chain on her neck and knew the pendant nestled between her breasts. Despite the fact that the incandescent lights and anxiety washed out every trace of color in her face, her beauty struck Shane anew, feeling like a kick to the gut. She still held one full cup of coffee in her hand. He bent and picked up the now empty paper cup from the floor.

  “Let me get you another cup.”

  “We don’t want anything from you,” Laura muttered between clenched teeth.

  Shane paused in the action of throwing the cup into the garbage when he heard the sheer fury in her tone. He met Laura’s eyes.

  “May I have a word with you for a moment, please?”

  “What’s goi
ng to happen to Joey? Where will they take him?” Laura demanded, ignoring his request. A movement at the entrance caught Shane’s eye. Blaine Howard, that vulture reporter from Channel Eight News, entered the police station with one of his cameramen. Jesus, this just kept getting better and better, didn’t it? How’d that asshole get tipped off so quickly?

  “Excuse me for a moment,” Shane murmured. He talked to the sergeant at the front desk. The sergeant stood and approached Blaine Howard. He noticed the reporter looking over the sergeant’s shoulder at Shane, and then glancing at Laura hungrily. The sergeant shooed them out, but Shane knew Blaine Howard would be outside the precinct doors waiting to pounce. He’d tell the sergeant to show Shelly and Carlotta out a rear entrance.

  He’d prefer if Laura came with him right now. Shane sighed tiredly when he approached her again and realized the unlikelihood of that occurring, however. Her scowl hadn’t diminished. He’d been expecting this reaction from Laura—dreaded it. Still, no amount of preparation could have readied him for the hurt and anger in her eyes.

  “Like I said, I need to talk to you privately,” he said.

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you in private. Just tell us what’s going to happen to Joey,” she replied stiffly.

  “He’ll go before a judge at the Dirksen Federal Building for a preliminary hearing in the morning. You’ll need to think about posting bail,” Shane said, glancing at Shelly. Tears spilled down Carlotta’s cheeks.

  “Mom?”

  “Shhh, it’s going to be all right, honey,” Shelly murmured shakily. She hugged the girl and rocked her in her arms as Carlotta sobbed.

  “You bastard,” Laura hissed softly, so only Shane heard.

  “Do you think this is easy for me?”

  “I don’t care what it is for you.” Laura held his gaze as she sat down in the chair next to Carlotta and rubbed her niece’s back as she cried. “You got what you wanted, Shane. Now leave us alone.”

  Shane bit back a sarcastic reply when he glanced over and saw Carlotta’s wet cheeks and crumpled face. He left the station, accepting defeat for the moment only because he knew he had no other choice.

  Just as Blaine Howard noticed him coming down the precinct’s front steps, Shane’s cell phone rang. He glanced down at the number and hit the receive button.

  “Hi, Dad,” he mumbled quietly as he sidestepped Howard.

  “You okay, Shane?” Alex Dominic asked.

  “Yeah. I’m fine. No comment,” Shane said when Howard asked him if the rumors were true about another police officer being arrested in the CPD corruption case. Shane’s pointed, furious glare caused Howard to hesitate. Shane strode past him.

  “Sounds like you’re in the middle of something,” his father commented. Having been a corporate lawyer, Alex Dominic was always sensitive to what might be happening with Shane’s work, sometimes more so than Shane wanted him to be.

  Shane’s brow furrowed. “It’s not a problem. What’s wrong? You sound tired.”

  “Now I don’t want you to worry too much—the doctor says your mom is going to be fine—but we’re down here at Rush St. Luke’s Hospital. Your mother had another stroke, son.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Shane peered at the entrance of Laura’s Fulton River District gallery as a middle-aged couple exited the front door and walked down the sidewalk holding hands. He’d been sitting there in his car for more than two hours and he’d grown stiff. Neither muscles nor his patience were in practice anymore for doing surveillance work, although he’d been doing his fair share of watching over Laura in the past few days.

  The Lake Street L train rattled loudly as it passed. Laura’s gallery was located on the West Side of Chicago in an area that had been the city’s meat-packing district and which had recently been revitalized by fashionable restaurants and the art community. Still, Laura’s gallery was on the fringes of the neighborhood. In Shane’s opinion, the area was distressingly desolate, even at one o’clock in the afternoon. It made him nervous knowing she was in there all alone with the front door of her gallery open to all comers.

  He hadn’t spoke to her for three days—ever since her dismissal of him in the police station waiting room. If he wasn’t the Special Agent in Charge at the Chicago offices of the FBI, he’d probably have been written up by now for missing so much work. Good thing he had a reputation for spending too much time at the office versus not enough or people would have started questioning his sporadic work schedule. If anything, however, his staff just assumed he was frequently absent and preoccupied because of his mother’s most recent stroke, and they wouldn’t have been entirely wrong in that estimation.

  He did visit his mother in the hospital in the evenings, but she grew tired easily after her therapies and was usually asleep by eight P.M. Her stroke had been a minor one, thank God, especially in comparison to the one she’d suffered last year. She was on the rehabilitation ward currently, doing physical, occupational, and speech therapy to address the new impairments caused by her stroke. She was doing well, however, and was supposed to return home tomorrow.

  It’d been like acid icing on a poison cake, as far as Shane was concerned, to have so many shitty things happen at once—first Laura’s hurt and fury following Joey’s arrest, and then his mother’s stroke. They said bad things happened in threes.

  He was as wired and jittery as he’d ever been in his life waiting for that third thing.

  He’d contacted Shelly the day after Joey’s arrest to tell her about the time for Joey’s preliminary hearing and what to expect. While Joey’s wife had been chilly with him on the phone, her reaction had nowhere near equaled Laura’s fury. And her tone had even softened infinitesimally when he’d asked her confidentially if she needed any money to post Joey’s bail.

  Shane was left to face the fact that taking Laura to his cabin had been a mistake. His whole intention had been to encourage her to let him in, to trust him. But as things stood, Laura was keeping him at a distance more than she ever had before. She’d refused to return his calls and had even hung up on him twice when he’d reached her at her house. He knew she was upset about Joey’s arrest. Still . . . Shane couldn’t help but feel the opportunity also provided her with the foothold she required to push Shane away again after having allowed herself to become vulnerable to him over the weekend.

  He’d misjudged her. He’d known she was stubborn, but hadn’t realized the extent of her sheer bullheadedness.

  Meanwhile he grew increasingly nervous about her safety with every passing minute. He couldn’t watch over her constantly and couldn’t ask Mavis or one of the other special agents in the Organized Crime Squad to do it for fear of raising suspicions that Laura was somehow implicated in the theft ring.

  Shane still wasn’t sure just how Laura was involved, but there was little doubt in his mind that she kept something from him. He could only pray that his suspicions were correct and she wasn’t guilty of colluding with Huey, Moody, or even Joey in anything illegal. He didn’t know how he’d react if he found out he was wrong in that assumption . . .

  Didn’t even want to think about it.

  Movement across the street caught his eye. He cursed under his breath when the man turned his face slightly in Shane’s direction before he entered Laura’s gallery.

  When Shane burst through the front door a few seconds later he saw nothing but Laura’s paintings and sculptures in the main showroom. He raced toward the rear of the building, his gun drawn. A doorway behind the desk at the back of the showroom led to a narrow hallway, which opened up on what appeared to be a studio, given the kiln Laura used to fire her sculptures and the blank canvases stacked against the wall.

  “Raise your hands and move away from her.”

  Telly Ardos looked over his shoulder.

  “Do it,” Shane barked.

  Ardos lifted his hands, but not before Laura took a piece of paper from him. Shane saw her shove the paper into her skirt pocket.

  “Shane—what in the
world?” Laura exclaimed. “Put that gun down.”

  “Move away from her,” Shane demanded.

  “Shane, you have no right—”

  He crossed the room in three long strides, putting himself between Laura and Ardos. He grabbed Ardos’s collar and shoved. “I said to get away from her.” Ardos stumbled on the leg of an easel but righted himself. He glared at Shane as he pulled his shirt back into place. Shane saw that he wore a cast on his forearm and recalled that he’d snapped his wrist when he’d been coercing Laura on the street. The memory gave him a grim feeling of satisfaction.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Laura asked from beside him.

  Shane looked at her incredulously. “Don’t tell me you want this scum here.”

  “That’s none of your business. You’re the one who’s trespassing, Shane.”

  “Forget it. I was just leaving anyway,” Ardos said contemptuously. Shane followed the man out to the main showroom to ensure he truly vacated the premises.

  “If I see you near her again I’m going to shoot first and ask questions later,” Shane promised.

  Ardos glowered at him before he forcefully pushed open the heavy wood and glass door, making it bang on the outside wall. Once he’d stalked down the street Shane closed the door and reached for the lock. Laura caught his hand.

  “The only way that door is going to be locked is if you’re on the other side of it,” she challenged.

  His nostrils flared as he looked down at her. He unintentionally caught a hint of her fresh floral perfume and the singular scent of Laura just beneath it. A potent mixture of adrenaline, anger, and lust pumped through his veins.

  Goddamn it, he was sick of it. Sick and tired of Laura Vasquez denying him. Denying them.

  “Come here,” Shane bit out as he grabbed her hand.

  “Shane? Let go of me. What are you doing? If you think I won’t call the police on you this time because I didn’t before, you’re mistaken.”

  She stumbled behind him as he dragged her back to her studio. He pulled on her hand, bringing her around in front of him and pushed her back into the only seating in the room—a wooden armchair.