by Kara Lennox
She couldn’t stand it. She moved closer and touched him, gently rubbing his bare shoulder. “Rex, it’s all right. You’re safe.”
Gradually his ragged breathing eased and he raised his head. “Nadia?”
“You were having a bad dream.”
He pushed himself partway up, realizing he was stuck half under the bed. He extricated himself and sat all the way up. Nadia got a blanket and draped him with it—he was trembling with the cold. Her thermostat automatically kicked the temperature down during the night while she slept, then raised it just before her usual waking time.
She sat back down beside him and took one of his hands in hers, rubbing it gently. “You’ll be fine. Just take your time, get your bearings.”
“I’m sorry,” he said after she’d sat with him for a good five minutes. “I haven’t had one of those dreams in a long time. I thought I was done with all that.”
“Post-traumatic stress disorder?” she asked.
He neither confirmed nor denied.
“I know what it looks like,” she said. “My grandmother had it. It was a lifetime thing with her. Sometimes she went years without incident, then something would kick it into gear—a news report, a certain face, even the sound of firecrackers. It got much worse toward the end of her life. I can’t tell you how many times I picked her up off the floor in the middle of the night. She almost killed me once,” Nadia added matter-of-factly. “She thought I was a soldier trying to rape her.”
“You took care of her?”
“Yes, all through high school. My mother worked nights, so I watched Nana Tania. She died the summer before I went to college.”
“Where is your mother now?”
“In Michigan, still. I’ve tried to get her to move down here with me, but she refuses. She said she can’t stand the heat.”
“Your father?”
“He died when I was a child. I don’t remember much about him, but my mother told me of him. He was much older than her, a gentle bear of a man.” Nadia sensed her prattle was calming to Rex, so she continued. “I remember riding on his shoulders. I remember him slipping me Brach’s caramels when he thought Mama wasn’t looking. That’s about it, but I have a few pictures. He worked at a meatpacking plant.”
“My mom died when I was young,” he said. “The memories are so vague.”
“Do you want to get back into bed now?” she asked. “It would be warmer.”
“Actually, what I want is to take a look around, make sure everything is okay. Then I want to raid the refrigerator. I’ve got the shakes.”
“All right.”
“I didn’t mean to come here and eat you out of house and home.”
She laughed, amazed that she could do so. “I have lots of food, so that’s not a problem.”
REX COULD NOT SHAKE the humiliation that saturated his entire being as Nadia dished up some ice cream and heated chocolate syrup in the microwave.
“Now that you know,” he said, “maybe you’d like to reconsider my suggestion that you hire someone else for this job.”
She looked at him, confused. In her blue chenille robe, her hair wildly mussed and her eyelids heavy from sleep, she was just about the sexiest little wood nymph he’d ever seen. “Now that I know what?” she asked.
“That I’m a nutcase.”
“PTSD hardly makes you a nutcase. Given your history in the military, I’d be surprised if you didn’t have it to some degree.”
“Yeah, but I wigged out.”
“You had a nightmare. Is that such a big deal?”
“It is when you’re sleepwalking, too. Or, rather, sleepcrawling.” Jeez, when he thought about Nadia finding him crawling around naked, he wanted to hide under a rock.
“Do you have any of the other symptoms?” Nadia asked. “Daytime flashbacks? Substance abuse? Inability to feel or express emotion? Depressive episodes?”
“All of the above, at one time or another. But not in a long time. The nightmares persisted the longest, but it’s been at least two years since I had one.”
“The circumstances may have triggered it. You said you avoided situations where you felt responsible for someone’s safety. Now that I’ve thrust you into one, it probably acted like a trigger. It’s no big deal.”
She wouldn’t think no big deal if she felt what it was like. She wasn’t the only one around here who liked to be in control, and when your mind played nasty tricks on you, it was the ultimate loss of control.
“Anyway, no, I don’t want to hire someone else. But if you want to quit I wouldn’t blame you. I don’t want to cause you any more discomfort.”
Rex weighed her words. Yes, the stress from being in a protective role, possibly having to depend on his ability to use deadly force, was probably the catalyst for his flashback, and he hated flashbacks. On the other hand, tonight he’d had one of the most mind-altering sexual experiences of his life.
It was a fair trade-off. More than fair.
“No, I won’t quit. I’m going to get your daughter back.”
Rex ate his ice cream with gusto and even persuaded Nadia to take a few bites. He felt better when he was done. That sick, shaky feeling was gone. Then he worried about what to do with the dish. The dishwasher was clean. If he was at home, he would just set the dirty dish in the sink until he had a chance to unload the dishwasher. But he knew damn well Nadia would be grossed out.
To his surprise, though, she took the dish from him, set it in the sink without even rinsing it, took his hand and led him back toward the bedroom.
It was almost six o’clock, and he knew he should just get up. He’d never been able to sleep after a nightmare. But Nadia had other ideas.
“Come back to bed, just for a little while,” she said when he suggested he might get dressed and get on with his day. “Just until I fall back asleep.”
But when he acquiesced and got back in bed, ready to endure another cuddle and another woody that could be used to reinforce concrete, Nadia dropped her robe, pulled her nightgown over her head, and climbed in beside him totally nude.
“Make love to me again,” she said, her voice plaintive. “I’m not really sleepy, and I’m not ready to deal with reality, not yet, not while it’s still dark out.”
Rex knew making love with Nadia was dangerous. A one-off was just an interlude, a strange commingling of circumstances never to be repeated. No ties, no promises, the only way he could tolerate getting close to a woman. When he had been driving into her hot and fast and mindless, he’d been able to tell himself it was okay, it felt great, it meant nothing.
But twice was a different story. To make matters worse, when he made love to her this time, it wouldn’t be fast and hard and mindless. It would be slow and drowsy, a mysterious trip up a slow river rather than a wild, out-of-control roller-coaster ride.
Denial was on the tip of his tongue. But when he looked into Nadia’s huge, dark eyes, he was powerless to deny her anything. He walked around the bed until he was standing beside her and slowly slid his arms around her. He kissed her earlobe, then her neck and the edge of her jaw while his fingers traced delicate patterns on her collarbone. Finally he kissed her full on the mouth, delving into her sweetness with his tongue. She moved into the kiss, enveloping him with her warmth, her scent.
He picked her up and placed her gently on the bed, then made love to every part of her body, every soft inch, every intriguing hollow. He kissed the inside of her elbow and the graceful arch of her foot until her quiet moans became more strident. She didn’t beg, but she squirmed and maneuvered, stroked and kissed until she had him as bothered as she was.
This time when he entered her, he moved with lazy languor, taking his time to appreciate the feel of her body fitted tightly around him. He rolled onto his back, taking her with him until she rode astride him, pushing him more deeply into her. He watched the play of emotions over her face and wished she would smile at him. But even in the throes of ecstasy, he knew thoughts of her missing daughter were not completely banis
hed.
He felt her clenching around him. Her climax came more quietly this time, but apparently just as intensely. Tears of some mysterious emotion trickled down her face as the last of her soft mewls faded into the darkness.
Rex felt almost guilty deriving pleasure from her when her hurts were so deep, her fears so unfathomable. But there was no turning back now. With a couple of final deep thrusts he peaked, his climax less of an explosion and more of a deep well overflowing, starting slow but building until he thought it would go on forever.
When it was over they lay jumbled together, literally panting.
Rex was pleased when she fell back asleep. He wasn’t going to sleep himself—he didn’t need much, four or five hours a night was plenty. But he remained in bed, holding her, enjoying the short amount of time he had left cocooned in their newly discovered, sensual world.
It felt real, but he knew it wasn’t. Life-or-death circumstances often prompted people to make intense connections that felt very real, but weren’t. They weren’t based on the sorts of things that made for meaningful relationships—common backgrounds, shared interests, days and weeks and months of getting to know each other. The sort of burning connection he and Nadia had made was the kind that burned hot, then burned out.
Still, it was the closest he’d come to connecting with anyone since Korea, and it saddened him to think this would probably be the last time he held her like this. If this job went the way he thought it would, things would start to move very quickly.
Nadia was just starting to stir when Sophie, who’d been sleeping in the middle of the doorway between bedroom and hallway, alerted. She jumped to her feet and raced down the hall, but she didn’t bark. She’d been trained not to bark at every little noise.
“Showtime.” Rex leaped out of bed and dragged on his sweats. Nadia, instantly alert, grabbed her robe and cinched it tightly around her waist. By the time they exited the bedroom and were making their way down the hallway, Sophie started barking. An instant later, the doorbell rang.
Rex hurried to the front door and looked out the peephole. “It’s a little kid on a bicycle,” he whispered. “A boy.”
Nadia had a look. “It’s my neighbor two doors down.” He looked to be alone, and harmless.
Rex ducked around the corner and silently indicated Nadia should open the door.
“Hi, Mrs. Penn.”
“Justin. You’re up early.”
He shrugged. “Sorry. But the guy said it was important.”
“What guy?”
Again, the shrug. “The guy who used to live here. With you.” Justin reached into his backpack and pulled out a videotape. “He gave me ten bucks to deliver this to you.”
Nadia took the tape, her hand shaking. “Thank you. But, Justin, you should be more careful about talking to strange men, especially strange men offering money for anything.”
“I knew who he was.”
Nadia was repulsed by the idea of Peter involving yet another innocent child in his schemes. He was obviously not worried about getting caught. Justin knew him, could identify him. “My ex-husband is dangerous,” she explained patiently. “Stay far away from him in the future. Okay?”
Another shrug. “Okay. I have to go now.”
“All right. Thank you again, Justin.” She closed the door and turned to face Rex. “You heard?”
He nodded. “Peter thinks he’s very clever, but he’s being foolhardy now. He’s allowing us to accumulate mountains of evidence against him.”
“He probably thinks if he gets caught, he’ll just get deported or something.”
“Oh, no. It won’t be that easy.”
“Then he must not believe he’ll get caught.”
Rex held out his hand for the videotape. Nadia was almost afraid to let him have it. At last, a tangible connection to Lily—if the tape was genuine. If it wasn’t, if it was another of Peter’s sick jokes, or worse…
“Maybe I should look at it alone first.”
“No,” Nadia said fiercely. “I want to see it. But I want to wait, just a minute or two.” She held the video next to her heart. “So long as we don’t look at it, Lily is still alive.”
“He wouldn’t have gone to this much trouble if Lily wasn’t alive. Come on. Let’s go look at it together. You do have a VCR somewhere, I trust.”
“In the den.”
A small room off the formal living room had been set up as a cozy family room, with a TV, computer, comfortable furniture and a toy box. The TV had a built-in VCR. Nadia turned on the device and started to put the tape in, then hesitated. “Rex, you have to promise me something.”
“I’ll try.”
“If Lily isn’t on this tape, alive and well, you will kick out all the stops and help me find that bastard. And you’ll let me kill him.”
“I can’t promise you that,” he said quietly. “By killing him, you would kill your own soul. I know what I’m talking about. I don’t want to see you five years from now, crawling around on the floor in the middle of the night, fighting off a flashback nightmare. Now put the tape in.”
She did. And after a couple of seconds of snow, she saw the front page of a newspaper. “This is today’s paper,” said Peter’s voice. There was no attempt to disguise his identity. “And here—” the camera panned away from the paper “—is your brat.”
Nadia’s heart swelled and pushed itself into her throat. It was Lily, sitting on a wrinkled quilt on the floor, looking bewildered. She was wearing the same clothes as two days ago, and she looked in need of a bath, but basically she looked okay.
“Wave to Mama,” Peter’s disembodied voice said.
“Mama?” Lily’s face became suddenly animated, and she looked around wildly. “Mama?”
“She’s not here,” Peter said harshly. “You’re never going back to her unless she changes her attitude pretty quickly.”
Lily’s face crumpled, and she started crying. “Mama! Mama!”
Now Nadia’s heart constricted. How could anyone be so heartless? The child might not understand the exact words, but she couldn’t mistake the cruel tone in her father’s voice. Lily was just a baby, an innocent. Nadia reached out and touched the TV screen. “Oh, Lily.”
“Since you’re so fond of deadlines,” Peter said, “here’s one for you. By midnight tomorrow, you’ll have a pristine sample of the product ready for pickup. I’ll contact you then and tell you where to bring it. If you don’t answer your cell phone with your complete and utter cooperation, I’ll take it you don’t want to see Lily again. And get rid of that damn bounty hunter! That is, unless you want to see your precious Lily carved up into sausage.”
Abruptly the video ended.
Nadia squeezed her eyes closed and balled her hands into fists until her emotions were under control.
“She’s alive,” Rex reminded her, moving closer to her and slipping an arm around her shoulders. “Focus on that. The rest is just BS scare tactics.”
“I know,” she said, swallowing back tears of intense joy and fear all intermingled. “What do we do now? He knows you’re here. He’s been watching the house.” She shivered.
“Then we have to get away from here so he can’t follow our movements.” He thought for a moment, then came to a decision. “Here’s the plan. We leave here, and we make sure we’re not followed. Then we take this video to the crime lab and have them tear it apart. I have a hunch about something. We might be able to narrow down the location where Peter is holding Lily.”
Chapter Eight
At first, Nadia hadn’t been too keen on Rex’s plan to bring in a member of the Payton Police Department. But clearly Peter already knew she wasn’t working alone, and that fact hadn’t scared him off. They needed someone official to get them into the crime lab, and the only person who might qualify was Craig Cartwright, Beau’s former partner.
Rex had assured Nadia that Craig was totally trustworthy. And Craig knew people at the crime lab who would be willing to put in a little overtime
and keep their mouths shut.
“I’ve trusted you so far,” Nadia told Rex. They were still sitting on the sofa in the den, the TV screen gone to blue. “And Lily’s still alive. So I guess I should go on trusting you.” She reached a hand toward him as if for a caress, then seemed to think better of it and pulled back.
Rex felt it, too—the pull of their intimacy. But Nadia acted as if she wanted to draw the line between last night and today, and he knew that was best. So he pretended he never saw her near slip.
“Pack a few days’ clothing and whatever else you might need,” he told her.
They both took very fast showers, then packed up Rex’s Subaru. They left some lights in the house on timers so it would appear Nadia was still staying there. Knowing they might be under surveillance, Nadia got onto the floor of the back seat and Rex covered her up, then got behind the wheel and backed out of the garage.
“Do you really think we’ll fool anyone?” Nadia asked from her cubbyhole, her voice muffled.
“Probably not. But it doesn’t hurt to try. Are you sure you’ll be okay for a few minutes? I don’t want you to come out until we’re sure we’re not being tailed.”
“I’m fine,” Nadia said. “What will you do if you are being tailed?”
“I’ll call Ace and have him gather the troops. Peter might follow us, but someone will be following him, too. They won’t stop him—if we had him arrested now, he could clam up about Lily’s whereabouts. But Beau or Gavin or Ace can tail him, try to find out where he’s staying.”
Ten minutes later, after a circuitous route through several deserted neighborhoods, Rex determined that he was not being followed.
“You can come out now,” he said to Nadia.
Moments later her head popped up in his rearview mirror. She had her hair pulled back in a braid today and no makeup, but the sight of her, even in a mirror, still took Rex’s breath away.
“I’m coming up there,” she said as she wiggled between the bucket seats. “Sophie, you’ll have to move.”
“Good luck.”
But somehow, with lots of shoving and pulling and stern verbal commands the dog could not possibly understand, tiny Nadia managed to dislodge the Rottweiler, which had to weigh almost as much as she did, from the passenger seat. Sophie slunk into the back seat and Nadia fastened her seat belt. “Whew.”