by Sylvie Kurtz
“Why?” The brackets around his eyes and mouth became frozen and still, giving him an air as cold as the night. “They’ve talked to the police. They’ve talked to me.”
“Maybe they’ll tell me something they wouldn’t say to an investigator.” She drew in a breath and softened her voice. “They feel stupid, Dom. They know how they look to all of you. Gullible women, desperate for love. I’m one of them. I have a six-year-old boy. I’m trying to save my sister from their fate.”
He didn’t answer right away. He yawned and stretched his arms behind his head. But all the pretense of relaxation wasn’t fooling her one bit.
“It’s worth a shot,” he said.
Adrenaline splashed through her system. This would lead to something. The thrill of the hunt echoed all the way to her bones—just as it had all those years ago when the team got a call-out. “Are these addresses and phone numbers current?”
“As current as the last time I talked to them.”
Luci glanced at her watch. Three hours difference with the west coast. Ten o’clock here meant it was only seven o’clock there. The perfect time to catch someone at home.
Chapter Nine
The next morning, rain pelted the roof and banged at the windows with a power that rattled and deafened like a train in a tunnel. Dom had changed out of his barn clothes after helping Luci with the morning chores and had donned his respectable office suit, minus the navy jacket currently draped over a kitchen chair.
He was fiddling with the hated red power tie, waiting to make sure Luci was safely home before he left. She would take his concern as overbearing. Tough. She’d just have to deal with it. She’d dropped off Brendan at school and was now pounding through the back door, Maggie at her heels. Dog and mistress shook the rain from their coats and sought refuge in the kitchen. Maggie headed for him, tail wringing like a flag caught in a twisting wind. Luci went for the coffeepot, poured and sighed as she took the first sip.
“No wonder you don’t sleep well,” he said, trying to hold a wet Maggie at a distance so he wouldn’t end up with damp paw prints on his dress pants. “All that caffeine jogging through your system at all hours.”
“The caffeine doesn’t bother me.” Steam formed a mask over her face as if to couch her lie.
Did she think she could escape her nightmares by avoiding sleep? They both needed to talk about what had happened, about Cole. Whether she liked it or not, that time would come soon. “Then you can quit cold turkey right now.”
“Tomorrow.” Leaning her backside against the counter, she sipped and savored. “Maybe.” She eyed him up and down and the vain part of him wanted to straighten out of a slouch to give her his best angle. He didn’t.
“Are you off to the office?” she asked.
“Got to play the part. You’ll be okay with this storm?”
A secretive smile tipped her lips. “This rain is nothing. Have you lived through a New England winter yet?”
“A couple.”
Surprise jumped in her eyes. He’d taken Falconer up on his offer to join Seekers eighteen months ago. Having Luci this close and keeping his promise to stay away from her had proved a special kind of torture. And he couldn’t help himself. Once in a while, he’d driven by the farm on the off chance he’d catch a glimpse of her.
“I’m going to try calling those women again,” she said, no hint of possible disappointment tainting the business tone of her voice. Her gaze strayed to the clock on the stove, calculating time zones, no doubt. She’d reached two answering machines last night and a disconnected number. Her foot tapped the linoleum and he could almost hear her cursing the clock. He liked her this way, confident and determined.
“I called Mom earlier and she gave me the three names on Warren’s invitation list,” Luci said. “I want to see if they lead to anything.”
“Call me if you hit pay dirt.” Warren wasn’t about to tip his hand in any way. The short lead time to the wedding and the distance of his supposed Florida friends gave him a built-in excuse for an empty groom’s side at the ceremony. “I’ll run down Carissa Esslinger’s current information for you.”
Victim number three’s phone number had been disconnected.
Luci refilled her mug. “That’d be great.”
A loud crack split the warm solace of the house, followed by a resounding boom. Maggie sprang toward the door and barked.
Luci plunked her coffee mug on the counter and spun to face the back door. “What was that?”
He didn’t know, but his feet were already moving him in the direction of the noise before its concussion stopped shaking the house. “Stay here.”
The Seekers team hadn’t arrived yet, and Dom couldn’t tell if the splitting rent was man-made or natural.
Luci dogged his heels, slipping and sliding in the mud-mired yard. The woman was too stubborn for her own good. He couldn’t hear anything through the cacophony of rain. The power of the downpour forced him to slow his pace to keep his balance. The cold strafe of rain drove right through his clothes, chilling skin. The unavoidable pools of water seeped cold water into his shoes.
Maggie’s muffled barks from inside the house reverberated with fear.
Dom put his hand back to keep Luci behind him as he rounded the barn. The scent of her peppermint-and-rosemary soap enfolded him, penetrating the rain. His compulsion to protect her, even though she could protect herself, surprised him with its strength. Wiping rain from his eyes, he peered around the corner. The wedge of woods beyond the barn appeared like black pickets in the blurring sheets of rain. And the big oak that had shaded the barn was now down.
Her breasts were pressed against his back, scrambling his thought process. “A tree. The wind must have knocked it down and crashed it onto the barn.”
The oak was perched at a precarious angle along the tip of the roof. The wind gusts and slashing rain tossed the trunk back and forth like rocking knuckles, allowing its crooked branch fingers to strike the electric wire strung between the barn and the house with a discordant plunk, plunk.
Luci assessed the situation and started for the barn. “Go call the power company. I’ll get the goats out of the barn.”
But before she could rescue the goats, the gray finger branches snapped the wire, allowing the trunk to roll right onto the power box attached to the barn and right through the roof. Another crack rent the air, its echo tolling through the yard and into his bones. Sparks flew, igniting tree and roof in spite of the rain.
Wrapping his arms around Luci’s head and using his body as a shield, he covered her. As burning bits of exploding branches fell all around them, he maneuvered her away from the fall zone.
The electric fireworks snapped, crackled and popped and lit up the gloom of the day with unnatural brassy light. Eyes rounded and fixed on the sparking flames, she gripped his dress shirt. “The goats!”
“I’ll get them.” He didn’t want her inside a burning building that could crash around her, so he pushed her toward the safety of the house. “Call the fire department.”
Once he was sure she was heading back toward the house, he raced inside the barn, smoke already starting to thicken, and carried each frightened goat to the outdoor pen. As he lowered the bleating Fiona into the pen, Luci ran back outside, heading for the barn.
Coughing the smoke from his lungs, Dom caught up to her short of the sliding door and needed to use the advantage of his greater weight to stop her. “The goats are all safe.”
“Let me go! I have a growing season’s worth of stuff in there,” she said, fighting his hold on her.
“You can’t go in there. The roof could collapse. And if that doesn’t get you, then the smoke will.”
“This is my living.”
“It’s replaceable. You’re not.”
“You don’t understand.”
He did. For six years, she’d fought to gain her balance, to prove her independence and now her proving ground was going up in smoke. Her sense of loss twisted in his chest
, made him ache for her. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, love and heartbreak tearing through him. Quick, shallow puffs of her breath panted against his throat, making him wish he could swallow her sorrow. “I understand.”
She wouldn’t go inside the house and insisted on watching the barn, part of her world, burn. Torrents of rain poured over them, icing raw emotions, making the scene waver like some sort of horror show.
By the time the volunteer fire crew arrived, flames, fed by dry wood and straw of the barn, had engulfed the building.
After the fire was out, only the charred skeleton of the barn remained. The roof was gone. The firemen stowed their gear on their truck, then one of them approached. “Any reason you’d use explosives to take that tree down?”
Luci stiffened in his arms. “Explosives?”
“Someone drilled a hole, stuffed it with explosives and gave that tree a hand in coming down.”
“That’s crazy. This is a working farm. I have—had—animals in that barn. Why would I risk hurting them? Why would I blow up a tree on a day like this?”
The fireman didn’t seem convinced. “The fire inspector’ll be wanting to talk to you.”
“And me him!”
The felling of the tree was intentional, not something Mother Nature had intended.
Uneasiness tightened Dom’s gut. The tracking device he’d planted on Swanson’s car had shown no movement since last night when Swanson had returned home to his Nashua apartment, one floor above his office. The P.I. Seekers had hired for surveillance downtown said he had a visual on Swanson in his office. If Swanson wasn’t responsible for this, then who was? And why?
GETTING LUCI OUT OF the rain and inside the house took more effort than he’d expected. Her gaze was glued to the blackened barn, now roofless, as if she could rebuild it with the strength of her will alone.
He sat her down in the kitchen, poured her a cup of coffee—still hot, despite the power failure—and molded her hands around it. The last thing she needed was caffeine, but the warmth would stop her shivers. Her fingers gripped the stoneware with white-knuckled ferocity while rain ran down her cheeks like tears.
He found clean towels in the linen closet and wrapped one around her shoulders. He unplaited her braid and proceeded to dry her hair with a second towel, wishing he could make the world right for her. Hadn’t she suffered enough already? Hadn’t Cole’s death shattered her world enough? Swanson would pay for the grief he’d added to her already overloaded burden. “It’s okay to cry.”
“I don’t want to cry.” She bit the words out as if they were tough leather. “I want to scream.”
A roar exploded out of her, launching her to her feet and unseating the towel draped around her shoulders.
“I want to break something.” She flung her coffee cup against the refrigerator, where it shattered and dripped dark brown rivulets against the pristine white door. Maggie cowered in her bed, eyeing them both with worry. Luci paced the kitchen floor like a wild animal, the strands of her wet hair a crazed cat-o’-nine-tails. “I want to punch something. I’ve put my whole life into creating this safe place for Brendan, then that jerk—”
He put himself in the path of her fist aimed at a wall, cushioning its pummel. The force of her stinging blow bruised his deltoid and drove in her anguish. He caught her wrists in his hands. “I’m sorry I brought you into this. I should’ve found a different way to get to Swanson.”
Her hands clutched his shirt painfully. Her throat worked around the buildup of heartache she was fighting to hold back. Her voice splintered as if someone was shredding her alive. “I put my soul into the soil. All I wanted was a second chance. Was that too much to ask?”
He cupped her face in his palms. Tears shone in her eyes, and he wanted to tear Swanson apart. “No, darlin’, it wasn’t too much. And you’re not going to start giving up now. You’re a fighter.”
“It’s all gone. The herbs, the packaging, the equipment. The whole damn barn…” She shook her head. “I can’t start over. Not again.”
“You don’t have to go through this alone. I’m here for you, Luci. I’ve always been.”
Her chest heaved and she shook her head. Her despair tore at him. He dragged her closer, breathing his invitation into her ear. “You’re a fighter. We’ll nail Swanson. We’ll rebuild your barn. I love you. I always have. I can help you make the life you want for Brendan.”
HE LOVED HER?
Pulling back, hands knotted into the wet cotton of his shirt, Luci stared into Dom’s eyes. Blue, so pale, like a soft spring sky, clear, pure. True. He loved her. He was there for her. For an instant, those words stabilized the rough currents blustering through her.
He’d been there for her from the first day she’d met him. He’d negotiated a peace between her and Cole and the rest of the men on the team that led to acceptance. He’d boosted her confidence through the hell of training. He’d stood at her side at Cole’s funeral. He’d coached her through Brendan’s birth.
And he was there for her now. Dom, always Dom. Why had she not seen this before?
She could lose herself in him and still find her way out. The shock of the realization stirred up the deluge inside her waiting to burst. Like wind in a tunnel, anger, pain and guilt whipped inside her and twisted into a funnel.
“Why?” Always why. That question was a cry from her soul, ripping out of her like a volcano that had stood dormant for too long. “Why did Cole have to die? Why does Brendan have to grow up without a father? Why did you have to show up now when my life was just beginning to settle down? Why does Warren have to hurt Jill? Why did the barn have to burn with half my life inside it?”
And why was she turning to Dom yet again to find her footing?
“Because, because, because.” The calming rhythm of Dom’s voice, the steadiness of his hands on her back, the solid mass of his body allowed her to find her way through her inner storm.
He knew her inside out. He took her as she was and never asked her to change. He encouraged her to be true to herself.
He was there for her.
Always.
Now that the tempest had been unleashed, she couldn’t seem to stop the coming tornado.
Tears climbed up her throat, vibrated their pain against his neck. Her fists struck at his shoulders even as her mouth sought solace from his. He took it all in, her torment, her sorrow, her rage.
And then she wanted more. She was tired of cold and death and destruction. She wanted heat and life and restoration.
Her hands stopped beating at the hard flesh of torso, sought warm skin beneath the wet cold of his shirt. She liked the feel of his skin under her palms, hard and smooth. She liked the clean smell of him, like summer rain. She liked the taste of him, blistering with heat. She needed the reassuring beat of life drumming in him to pound in her.
“Luci,” he said, breathless, his turbulent pulse pushing her deeper into her inner maelstrom.
“I want to feel again, Dom.” The kiss she pressed on him was brutal. “Let me feel.”
She backed him toward the guest room, teeth nipping at his earlobe, down his neck into that wonderfully tender hollow of his throat. His heart kicked against hers, spurring her on.
She clawed at his shirt, at his pants, shed her own wet clothes. They tumbled onto the futon. He tried to slow her down as she pressed him flat against the navy blue comforter and rose above him, but his efforts only stoked her need to reach the calming eye of the hurricane that was in him.
She drank in his heat. With greedy hands, she feasted on the hard planes of his body, shoulders, pecs, flat stomach, lower. His groan came like the thunder, stirring hot bolts of anticipation. Regrets could come later. She had no room for them now when she was once more fighting for her survival.
She joined herself to him, threw back her head at the rightness of the fit, rode him until her system roared with the impending detonation of release. Then a hint of fear kicked in. But he didn’t let her fall. As always, he ca
ught her, holding her hips cradled in his big hands. Safe. Each stroke, each touch, each kiss a reminder she could surf the wild sea and make it home. The wave of pleasure heightened until the tension, the fury, the soul-deep anger ripping through her, crested, crashed and broke, leaving her drained, limp and dazed, the horror of the morning nothing more than mist.
He loved her.
“Luci.” Fingers gripped into the tangle of her hair, he rolled her under him. The tenderness softening his features, the deep longing so open in the blue of his eyes mesmerized and she could not pull her gaze away. Above her, his pupils widened like the lens of a camera, giving her a glimpse into his soul, taking her breath away.
The eye of the hurricane. Peace.
In that instant, she wanted to give him the world, wanted him to take what he needed, wanted to erase the edge of sorrow that flitted into his eyes. Framing his face in her hands, she kissed him deeply, let down the barriers she kept against the world, offered herself to him in a way she never had to anyone before.
“Luci.” The waft of his harsh whisper in her mouth echoed inside her. And when he emptied himself in her, her body thrummed with purpose reborn.
REGRET DIDN’T TAKE long to gallop in. By the time Luci had crawled out of his bed and climbed into a blistering shower, she couldn’t help wondering if she and Dom could truly put the past behind them. Could they leave Cole behind when seeing him in Brendan brought him alive every day? Was a relationship with Dom a betrayal of Cole?
Making love to Dom seemed to have heightened his protective instincts toward her. Convincing him to continue his investigation of Warren and leave her alone in her own home had sapped away most of Luci’s energy. He’d refused to leave until he’d documented both the barn and the tree, taken samples to send to Seekers and done a thorough check of the house. She’d pointed out that with two Seeker sentinels watching the house, no one was likely to come after her and his time would be better spent getting something on Warren than babysitting her. He hadn’t denied he was having her watched. And after what had happened to the barn, she couldn’t say she was sorry he was.