The phone rang a third time as she moved away, tugging at her clothes.
“Parker,” she began.
“Don’t.” He knew a freaking brush off was coming and he’d be damned if he’d make it that easy on her. “I just need a minute. Don’t move.”
She conceded a nod, grudgingly if he had to guess.
“Okay.” He answered without looking to see who was calling, unwilling to take his eyes off Rae. If she decided to bolt there wouldn’t be any catching her until she was good and ready to be caught. Maybe by watching her, willing her to see that he wasn’t going to demand anything from her—yet—she’d be more likely to wait.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
The whispered feminine voice that came through the phone made his stomach bottom out.
He turned away from Rae, clamping down on his emotions before the pounding of his heart gave him away. “Hold on.”
Something in his voice must have sounded off, because Rae took a tentative step toward him. “What is it?”
He shook his head, forced the words past the tightness in his throat. “Just some profiling stuff I need to take care of.”
She turned away.
“Rae?” He was surprised when she actually stopped. “We’ll talk about this later.” He didn’t ask or plead with her, knew she’d close down on him entirely if he gave her the least bit of wiggle room. Hell, there was a good chance she would anyway.
“Okay.” She started down the stairs without looking back at him. He gripped the phone in his hand as he watched her go.
Goddamn it.
He fixed his pants then stepped back out on the roof before talking. “I told you to stop calling me.” He’d grown tired of the mystery woman who enjoyed telling him he’d been betrayed without offering any details on how or why.
At first he’d thought it might have been someone he had debriefed, someone who carried the Destroyer gene and had survived an attack by a Shadow Demon. Most didn’t take hearing the truth real well, many preferring to think the demon’s red-rimmed eyes had just been contacts, their thirst for bloodshed the deranged cravings of an everyday psychopath with a sacrifice fetish.
Some adapted, some had full-scale mental breakdowns, and some needed to lash out. Since he was often called in to debrief the victims identified as gene carriers, to prepare them for any possible gene mutation, he was used to be being the one they lashed out at.
But the woman who continued to call him didn’t seemed driven by anger or frustration. She never betrayed any emotion whatsoever, which never failed to make the hair on the back of his neck stand at attention.
“They’re lying to you.”
He didn’t waste time asking who was lying to him. The caller hadn’t answered any other time he’d asked. Hadn’t said anything specific since the calls had begun two weeks ago.
“We have common interests, Parker.”
“No, we don’t.” Not unless those interests involved tracking her down.
“She didn’t kill herself.”
Ice dripped into his bloodstream, slowing his heart to a crawl. His lips worked to form a question he was afraid would go ignored, or worse, answered. The past he’d finally made his peace with seemed determined to rattle him.
When he found who exactly it was jerking his chain, there was going to fucking hell to pay.
“Stop calling me.” He was done listening to this crap.
“She didn’t kill your sister either,” the voice pressed.
“Who?” The choked demand was out before he could remind himself not to play her head games. Because what if it wasn’t a game? What if somehow…
He closed his eyes, extinguishing that last thought before it led him down a road that once almost succeeded in swallowing him whole.
“You know exactly who I’m talking about.”
Blood pounded in his eardrums, and he leaned back against the closed door, shaken.
It was some kind of joke. Had to be. Something twisted cooked up by someone who’d accessed his file. There had been moles in the network. He was probably talking to some demon sympathizer, or a former agent who’d been tainted over time by the demon essence.
“Your mother was innocent, Parker. She didn’t deserve to die like that.”
“Who the hell is this?”
“Someone who wants you to know the truth.”
“The truth? Then why play games, dragging it out to toy with me?” Why fuck with his head?
“I had to be sure.”
“Sure of what?”
No response. Then, almost reverently, she added, “I was there that day. I know what really happened.”
Denial wedged in his throat. “You’re wrong.” It had taken him months, years, to accept that his mother, newly initiated by a storm demon, had lost control. Polluted by too much of the demon’s essence, she’d struck down his teenage sister and then, realizing what she’d done, had turned the blade of a sword on herself.
“Or you’re just afraid I’m right. Afraid the people you trusted have been lying to you all this time.”
He fell silent, refusing to demand answers from a crackpot no matter how tight the knots in his stomach were wrenched.
“I know you haven’t hung up. Your mother didn’t kill herself or your sister.”
“She was tainted. Couldn’t control it.” People initiated by storm demons rarely could. As far as he knew, Braxton’s sister Blair was one of the very few who had survived the gene mutation and learned to control and hone her abilities.
“You don’t really believe that. You never did.”
He hadn’t in the beginning, too wracked with guilt that he hadn’t been there to keep them both safe. In the months following their deaths he’d realized that denying the truth kept him from having to blame the only responsible party, the only one who he could punish for their deaths—himself.
“Why would they lie to me?” He couldn’t let himself doubt what had taken so long to accept, but neither could he extinguish the love and loyalty he carried for his mother.
“To cover up what they did.”
He shook his head as though the caller could see him. “No one did anything.”
“They murdered her.”
Chapter Seven
The second Rae shut the shower off, she knew she wasn’t alone in her apartment.
A rush of adrenaline spiked her bloodstream as she snagged a towel and wrapped it around her. The soft buzz of the overhead fan, in addition to the water rushing down the drain, made it difficult to pinpoint where the intruder was.
She palmed the dagger she’d stripped off her calf before climbing into the shower, and soundlessly cracked the bathroom door open.
No movement in the hallway. As much as she wanted to take that as a good sign, that maybe she’d imagined the sound of her apartment door opening and closing, she wasn’t banking on it. After a restless night invaded by dreams she’d thought she’d shaken long ago, she was wired enough to jump at a sound that wasn’t even there.
She had sure as hell jumped when her alarm had sounded, and the results hadn’t been pretty.
The floor creaked in her bedroom, and she pivoted, her bare feet padding silently across the hall. Not a demon. At least she knew that much. Any lingering paranoia she might have felt evaporated, replaced by annoyance.
If some asshole had thought this morning was a good time to rip her off, she was going to rip him a new one. A dagger-wielding woman wearing nothing but a towel had just as much of a chance of scaring the perpetrator straight as jail time, the way she figured it.
Rae leaned forward to check the room, catching sight of a dark sleeve close to her closet. Also right next to the overpriced flat screen television she’d let Darcy talk her into buying.
She leaned against the hallway wall, took a breath, comforted by the weight of the weapon in her hand. In her bedroom, she heard a drawer slide open, and frowned.
The bastard was going through her underwear?
Shifting her wei
ght, she made her move, stepping into her room. A blur of color to her right—and not near her underwear drawer—had her twisting around to meet him.
She jammed her forearm under the intruder’s throat, recognizing him a second before she slammed him up against the wall.
“Parker?”
“Morning,” he rasped, his voice sexy and rough as though he’d just woken up instead of suffering from oxygen deprivation.
She let up some of the pressure, but didn’t back up. Her towel had slipped and stood a good chance of hitting the floor if she moved too quickly. Modesty wasn’t usually a hang up for her, but after her lapse in judgment last night, she wasn’t about to send the wrong message.
The bulge in Parker’s pants—getting harder by the second and pressing into her hip—apparently didn’t care about any kind of message.
Suddenly, dealing with some punk out to make a few bucks by pawning her television seemed like less of a headache. At least then she wouldn’t have to worry about staring at Parker’s mouth.
She averted her gaze before he noticed. “You’re not wearing any cologne.” As far as having somewhere to place the blame for her current situation, it fit. If he’d been wearing his usual scent she would have caught it the moment she stepped into the hall.
“Forgot it this morning. Cold showers mess with my usual routine.”
She almost laughed. She’d never seen a man with such a clear lack of routine, never repeating the same steps two mornings in a row. Sometimes she’d finish getting ready to find him still lounging in bed, or in the kitchen drinking juice from the container with no shirt and his pants half-buttoned. Other times he’d join her in the shower before she was through.
Some days—few and far between—she still missed those mornings. The sex had been great, the water drenching them as he fucked her slow and hot, barely moving as he filled her, kissing her so softly her heart would nearly shatter. Other times he’d take her hard and furious, driving into her until the pleasure of it was almost too much to stand.
But mostly she missed the mornings when he’d scrub her down, teasing and laughing with her until she wished they could spend hours that way. Since things had ended, no matter how long the day or how hot the water on her aching muscles, a shower was still just a shower. Nothing special.
“I’ll see if I can get the water fixed sooner. Or you could always try a hotel.”
“If I had wanted a hot shower, I would have had one in the locker room.” A wicked grin curved his lips, and she hastily backed away.
It was a miracle Rae kept her towel intact. Not that it mattered when he raked his gaze down her front as though it wasn’t stopping him from remembering exactly what she looked like under the fabric she hugged to her chest.
He straightened, quickly eating up the space between them. “Had I known you were going to greet me like this—” he gave her another lazy once-over then whispered in her ear, “—I would have at least brought you a doughnut for breakfast.”
She shot him a dirty look. Even years apart hadn’t helped her figure out why she often wanted to kiss him and kick his ass at the same time. “What are you doing here?”
Parker crossed his arms, his expression suggestive.
Her eyes narrowed. “If you say anything about finishing what we started last night, the only way you’ll be eating doughnuts from now on is through a straw.”
He gave her a mock shudder. “Isn’t it a bit early to be making those kinds of promises, shortcake?”
She glared at his raised hand. If he so much as made a move to tug on a strand of her hair, he was going to lose a finger. Maybe two.
Sensing she was looking for an excuse to lash out at him, he held up his hands in surrender. “Rough night, huh.” What he didn’t add—what she could all but read in his eyes with the way he was oozing straight-up knock-down sex—was, “Could have been rougher.”
“Go to work, Parker.”
Turning away, she felt rather than heard him groan before she’d taken two steps. The air wafting up her backside gave her a pretty good indication of why that was, and proved maintaining her grip on the towel hadn’t been such a miracle after all. Not when keeping her front covered had come at the price of leaving her ass hanging out in the breeze.
When he made a choked sound, she glared over her shoulder at him. “Out.”
He countered with, “What happened to you this morning? Jordan said you didn’t meet her for your usual sparring session and no one else had heard from you. You didn’t oversleep because you drove a dagger into your alarm clock again, did you?”
That was one time. She glanced across the room, thinking of the clock lying on the floor between the wall and her bed. Okay, two times.
Not that it was the alarm clock’s fault that it sounded eerily like the countdown on the locking mechanism used during the experiments. When coupled with the nightmare she’d been in the midst of at the time, the alarm clock hadn’t really stood a chance.
“And you were nominated to find out where I was? Lucky me.”
Absently, she set the dagger down and dragged a robe from her closet. Covering up quickly was her best bet to get him out of the room while leaving both hands free to help him along, if it came to that. It was a sound plan, right up until she tied the sash and her nipples grew hard as the cool silk settled over her skin.
“No,” he corrected. “Lucky me.”
Feeling his gaze, she brazened out her thoughtless choice for a robe and sailed out of her room, heading for the front door. “You have heard of cell phones, right? Nifty little bit of technology. Useful for getting in touch with people without invading their personal space.”
“If I wanted to invade your personal space, I’d probably go with a more obvious approach. Like this.” He cut her off in the kitchen, herding her backward.
She bumped into the table she rarely used, and he pressed up against her.
Unsure if she could trust herself not to tug him closer, she gripped the chair at her back. “This is not you leaving.”
“Guess that means I’m staying. And I did call by the way. You just didn’t answer your phone.” His hips pushed into hers, pinning her in place. “Very lucky me.”
Not even close. She wasn’t the vulnerable woman she’d been last night. She didn’t need an anchor to keep the ground from falling out from beneath her today. Talking about the experiments hadn’t stirred up as much hurt as being in his arms last night, remembering how damn good it felt and knowing how things had ended between them before.
“We didn’t get to finish our talk last night.”
Her head snapped up. “If you came here looking for a quickie to start your day, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
“I wasn’t talking about the sex, but we can move that up to the top of this morning’s agenda if you like.”
“We don’t have an agenda and we didn’t have sex.”
“Yet,” he added, winking.
Did he really think he could just slather on the playboy charm and she’d melt for him? “You know that moment when you think you’re only one move away from taking me down in the training room? This isn’t it.”
He shrugged as though finally taking the hint and backing off didn’t faze him in the least. The flare of silver in his eyes before he stepped back said otherwise.
“How did you get in here, anyway?”
Reaching past her, he plucked an apple from the bowl on the table. “Landlady. Seems nice enough. Plays fast and loose with the vodka in her coffee though.”
“Mrs. Farnsworth?” Nice? There was a reason Rae silently referred to the cranky alcoholic as the dragon lady. “You just met her.”
He shrugged, but something in the way his gaze darted away felt…off.
“It was your first time meeting her, right?”
Shining his apple took priority. “Could be that she noticed me hanging outside one night.”
A smart woman wouldn’t ask. A really smart woman would kick both
him and the ulterior motive he rode in on out the door without blinking. Rae knew she was a smart woman, but still couldn’t let the comment slide when it would eat at her until she knew what he was talking about.
“Why were you hanging around outside my place?”
“Sometimes I get a little bored starring at the same four walls. We really need to talk about expanding the personal quarters at the field office.”
“You know what bored people usually do? Watch television, check their e-mail. Train.” She turned the last word into a deliberate dig. “Wait, what did you mean by sometimes? You said it was one night.”
He cocked his head, his expression thoughtful. “I did, didn’t I?” He took a bite of the apple, then licked his bottom lip to catch any juice.
It took her a second or two but she managed to drag her gaze from his mouth. “And she just handed over the key?” It had taken Rae three days to get a copy from her when she’d lost her keys down a storm drain a few weeks back.
She nearly winced in remembrance of the war demon with fists like Acme anvils she’d been in the process of vanquishing at the time. The asshole had nearly dislocated her jaw.
Parker shrugged, but that slick smile gave him away.
“Well, sorry that you wasted time coming over. Had you hung around the office you might have still been there when I called in my change of plans to Darcy. I’m not going in to the office today.”
“That would explain the packed bag by the door. Didn’t know you were taking an assignment.”
An assignment that involved something to slay was infinitely more appealing than where she was headed. Lawrence’s trail wasn’t any hotter than it had been yesterday, but lying in bed last night, unable to sleep, she’d realized there was a chance something in her father’s belongings could offer a clue to his current whereabouts.
She’d moved everything he’d left behind into storage when he had disappeared. There hadn’t been much in the way of personal belongings, but she remembered a small, red storage box. He’d always kept it in the bottom drawer of his desk. Since he hadn’t taken it when he disappeared, she doubted it could offer anything valuable to their search, but once upon a time he’d used it to hold his journals.
Dark Obsession: Shadow Destroyers, Book 4 Page 7