He kissed her breasts so tenderly, repeatedly, light feather kisses that made her warm and she was certain she was seeing stars. She’d never felt such bliss. She sighed out loud, surprising herself at the sound that came from deep in her throat.
Sean kissed her stomach and she squirmed. His hands went under the waistband of her lacy underwear, and he slowly pushed them down until they were off, somewhere at the foot of the bed. Or on the floor. She didn’t care. She parted her legs, anticipating his maneuvering, and said, “Condom?”
She’d meant to ask a full question, but only one word came out.
He laughed softly. “Yes. But I’m not ready yet.”
She frowned and reached down, surprising herself when she brazenly grasped his penis. “You feel ready.”
“Ah, Lucy, hold that thought.”
He scooted down the bed and her hand fell away. The first flicker of Sean’s tongue between her legs had her gasp. His hands were on her inner thighs, gently pushing her open, and his kisses, so wonderful on her lips, became electric. She didn’t know what to expect; she’d never made love like this before. She’d read about it, but they were just words.
Her stomach felt as if it were sinking; her entire body went hot and cold simultaneously. Sean sucked and teased her with his tongue and suddenly her hips moved on their own, and a wave of indefinable tension contracted until she gasped louder than she intended; then everything inside twisted and churned, like a riptide pulling her under, then tossing her up, over the waves. She could hardly catch her breath. Every taut muscle relaxed simultaneously, making her feel pleasantly languorous.
Sean kissed each thigh, then her stomach, then her breasts again as her chest rose and fell, her breathing rapid. “That—” she began, then forgot what she was going to say.
“I agree,” he whispered, and she felt a smile on the side of her neck.
“Are you smug?” she asked.
“Very.” He kissed her, then rolled over and opened his drawer. He took care of business quickly, and rolled back.
Sean lay on top of her, not using his full weight, but her body began to tense up again, and not in hopeful anticipation of making love. The all-too-familiar panic rose in her chest. She willed it back, hating this awful feeling that she had no control over. She could scarcely breathe, but she’d push through. This was too important—Sean was too important—to let her past interfere tonight.
Suddenly, he reached under her waist and pulled her smoothly over on top of him, her legs straddling his. “You drive, princess,” he said.
She didn’t question; she didn’t want to analyze how he understood what she wanted without her saying a word. How he made it natural and sexy all at once. Her trepidation disappeared and she kissed him. She went slow, guiding him inside her a fraction of an inch at a time. She reached up and found one of his hands, and he clutched her fingers tightly. His other hand held her hip.
She moved to adjust her position and he groaned, his hand tightening on her waist, holding her there. She sank deeper, feeling the perspiration on her skin and his. Her mouth was open, parched, and when his penis jerked inside her, as if it had a mind of its own, a startled sound of excitement escaped; then she softly moaned as she eased herself completely over him, her sensitive spot rubbing lightly against Sean’s pelvis, the wave slowly building again deep inside her.
“Sean,” she whispered, and wondered if she had said anything out loud. Then she didn’t think, only felt as he held her hips, not letting her move.
“Lucy, you’re making me crazy.”
“How?”
“Open your eyes.”
She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to break this magic, where she didn’t have to see, didn’t have to think, only feel. All she wanted was to feel Sean, on her and inside her and with her.
His hand touched her cheek.
“Lucy.”
She reluctantly looked at him in the dark. But it wasn’t completely dark. She saw him perfectly well with the streetlight through his partially closed blinds. His square jaw was firm, but his eyes were staring back with such intensity she couldn’t turn away.
Sean took his other hand from her hip and clasped both her hands, pulling them up toward his head, so she had to lie across his chest. He arched up to kiss her, his skin slick with sweat, his muscles hard with restrained passion.
Her insides quivered and he groaned, his hands tight in hers. While looking at him, Lucy moved her hips slowly, back and forth, the most incredible sensation returning. Was this even possible? She didn’t know, she didn’t care, and she was simply thankful because her body was combustible and she needed to explode.
Sean let go of her hands and reached down to squeeze her ass, hold her still for a moment. She didn’t want to sit still—the friction was incredible, sending small shocks through her body.
She squirmed forward, Sean’s body hot beneath hers.
He whispered, “You do that and this will be a short trip.”
She stopped moving, but then her muscles involuntarily contracted, and he hissed. “I think—” she whispered.
“What?”
“The wave. Again.”
She raised her hips until he almost slipped out, then sank back down. Lucy gasped, stunned and happy all at once, and her body pulled Sean deep inside. He wrapped his arms tight around her waist, holding her close, and joined his orgasm with hers.
Lucy relaxed all at once, her body falling across Sean, limp.
Sean didn’t want to move. Lucy was as pliable as putty lying on top of him, a small smile on her face. He touched the corner of her mouth and she kissed his thumb.
“Hmmm?” she said.
He kissed her, then gently eased her onto her side. “Stay.”
“I can’t move.”
“Good.”
A moment later, he crawled naked back into bed, pulling the comforter tight around them. Lucy spooned against him, her breathing already even. His arm around her waist, he kissed her cheek, her jaw, her ear, and vowed never to let her go.
THIRTY-FOUR
The sun has not yet risen. I see snow falling lightly to the ground outside my windows as I rise from my warm bed.
I am calm, as I always am when I end one cycle and begin the next. Though this morning I am not as pleased as I should be, and I wonder about that while I shower.
One reason is that the female I currently have has potential; she learns to obey well. If I had more time, I know I could put her back together the way God intended.
But Lucy Kincaid stole my time. I cannot shake her from my thoughts and my nightmares. I am driven to teach her. She is the most ill-prepared for my instruction. She’s the most defiant. I see it in her eyes, in the way she walks. I’ve been watching her for weeks, and never would I have chosen her as one of my students.
But it is not always up to me. Greater powers are at play. Who am I to question? She placed herself in my life when she sought to send me back to prison. She overstepped her bounds, if she even accepts that she has any.
She will be a challenge for me, a test. God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, and as she is merely a woman, I can break her.
I cook my breakfast and eat as the sun rises, though with the dark gray clouds I can see but a faint shift from dark to less dark. I put the leftovers in a bowl.
I cross the worn kitchen linoleum and go down to the basement, as I do every morning. The female is lying in the corner of the cage, under the single wool blanket I am generous to provide.
She looks at me but shows nothing. No fear. No anger. No soul.
I have broken her.
I put the bowl in her cage and see if I am right. She doesn’t move, doesn’t crawl toward the food, though her nose twitches like a cat’s. She smells it. She wants it.
And she waits.
“You may eat,” I say.
Slowly she crawls across the hard-packed dirt basement. There is blood in the corner from her punishment last night. I had given her oint
ment and a clean towel—I do not want her to get an infection. I’m not inhumane.
I refill her water bowl and leave it with her food.
Her response should please me, but I am not happy. She broke far faster than the others. A trick?
I could give her to another who will appreciate my time training her to be a proper, obedient woman.
But I do not trust her. In the end, they all turn away from the Truth.
She whimpers as she eats.
I sigh. No matter. She’s going to die soon anyway. I don’t have the time to finish her training. Break them, then put them back together the way they should be.
I turn and walk back up the stairs to prepare for the next female.
THIRTY-FIVE
Noah hadn’t been so angry and frustrated with a case in a long time.
Fran Buckley wasn’t talking, and her lawyer, Clark Jager, was playing legal games to keep Noah away from her. In fact, Jager had threatened to pull Lucy Kincaid’s file and use her history as part of his case. It didn’t matter whether there was anything in her file; that it would be open and part of the criminal proceedings increased the chances that it would be made public.
Biggler was more forthcoming, but he didn’t have anything to add to Mallory’s confession. Noah sent Abigail to the bar to flash pictures of Mallory and Biggler—including the sister—to the bartender who served Prenter to see if they could get a witness to corroborate Mallory’s confession.
Abigail stepped into the conference room that had been turned overnight into the “war” room for the WCF investigation where Noah and Hans were reading statements and files. There was enough paperwork to keep them busy for weeks.
“Have a minute?” she asked.
“Sure, but I thought you were meeting with the bartender.”
“Too early, he doesn’t come on until five, but I called him at home and he’s agreed to come here to look at the photos.”
“What else?” Noah rose to stretch his legs, then make a small change to the timeline they were keeping on a large white board.
“ERT called. They’re writing up their report now, but wanted to give us a heads-up that they’re done with their preliminary investigation and said it’s conclusive: Cody Lorenzo didn’t commit suicide. Along with other evidence to substantiate murder, the trajectory of the bullet proved there was no way he could have pulled the trigger.”
“Shit.” Noah leaned against the table, his fingers pressed against his forehead.
“But you thought Mallory was lying. Why are you surprised?”
“Because I wanted to believe he was telling the truth. I wanted to believe he didn’t kill a cop.”
“There’s no physical evidence tying him to the murder,” Hans said, looking up from the report he was reading. “It’s the only murder he didn’t confess to.”
“That’s not going to sway a jury, not when a cop is a victim.”
“Without hard evidence, the U.S. Attorney isn’t going to go for the death penalty,” Hans said. “Considering all his other victims are criminals, a jury may be more lenient than if he were killing truly innocent people.”
There was evidence somewhere. A security camera that caught Mallory near the scene of the murder. Trace evidence. A witness who didn’t know what he or she was seeing. He might have to work for it, but there would be something to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mallory killed Cody Lorenzo.
Lorenzo had been a cop doing his job. There had to be justice for him. Noah couldn’t tolerate a cop killer getting off lightly.
“There’s something else,” Abigail said. “Do you remember the flowers Lucy received on Monday? She thought that Lorenzo was stalking her because when Rogan went to the florist, they had a record of a cash transaction and the sender was Cody Lorenzo. But they don’t require identification to send flowers.”
“And it wasn’t Lorenzo?”
“ERT said the card attached to the flowers and the fake suicide note were written by the same person.”
It took Noah a moment for the information to sink in. “So Mallory wrote both of them? He sent Lucy the flowers and used Lorenzo’s name.”
“Appears so,” Abigail said.
“But why?” Hans asked. “To set Cody up? To make the suicide seem more plausible?”
“He planned it,” Noah said, even more angry with Mallory now than before. “That bastard. I’m going back to the jail to talk to him. He’s been manipulating people for far too long, and he’s going to have to pay the price.” He picked up the phone.
Hans said, “Noah, I understand your feelings about Mick Mallory, but he’s a smart guy. If he wanted Cody’s death to look like a suicide, I think we’d have more doubts about whether it was murder or suicide.”
“This all came down in a few days,” Noah said. “Lorenzo was breathing down the neck of someone—Mallory? Fran Buckley? I don’t know, but he was on to something. He and Lucy were the only ones looking into the deaths of the parolees, but Lucy wasn’t out in public asking questions or pulling police reports. Cody Lorenzo must have talked to the wrong person. I don’t see how else this could be playing out.”
Hans frowned. “That all makes sense. But—it just doesn’t fit Mallory’s M.O.”
“Maybe he sent someone else to do it. That’s why it was so sloppy.” He said to Abigail, “We need someone to look into Fran Buckley’s murder of Parker Weatherby in Boston. Four years ago—”
“It was four years ago last October,” she said.
“You already looked into it?”
“Just the facts of the case, after Mallory mentioned it. No suspects; the police think robbery was the motive. A couple of paintings showed up over the last two years, but nothing that led to who fenced them.”
“We need to put Buckley in Boston that night,” Noah said. “Anything—credit card information, a plane ticket, a stray hair they couldn’t match DNA evidence to. We need something solid to get her to flip.”
“I’m on it. Can I call in Rick Stockton’s help if I need it?”
“Whatever it takes,” Noah said. After Abigail left, he said to Hans, “We can’t let Buckley walk. We can only hold her for three days, and Mallory’s statement isn’t going to be enough to keep her locked up. Her lawyer is right about that.”
“I doubt she’d flee.”
“We can’t count on that. Hans, I know how this case can be played in the media. We’ll lose a lot of ground if Jager decides to play to the cameras.”
“But we have the facts on our side.”
“Jager is right about public sentiment. No one cares if a few sick predators are dead. But what I truly fear is that if Buckley gets away with it, more private citizens will take the law into their own hands. As Lucy said, it would be anarchy.”
“I don’t disagree with you, Noah.”
Noah swore under his breath. “We’ll have to offer a plea, won’t we?”
“Fran Buckley killed a man in Boston—a man who had never been convicted of a crime. He was probably guilty, but he still didn’t have his day in court, and while our system is imperfect, it’s damn good. If our former FBI agents and cops start acting like judge, jury, and executioner, society will suffer. So yeah, the U.S. Attorney will plead. But none of our conspirators are ever getting out of prison.”
Noah was meeting with the U.S. Attorney’s office this afternoon, and he hoped he wasn’t chewed out for his aggressive warrant and investigation. But first, he had to call Kate. She had to know about Cody Lorenzo’s murder—and Jager’s threat to pull Lucy’s file in discovery.
Noah believed in the letter of the law, but he saw nothing good about opening Lucy’s records for the world to inspect and second-guess. He had a sense now of what Kate and the rest of them had gone through six years ago when faced with a trial versus a plea agreement with Roger Morton.
Except that if anyone could handle the pressure, Noah had no doubt Lucy could.
Sean slowly pocketed his cell phone.
Lucy wasn�
��t going to take this well. He had to spin it right so that she didn’t take it personally. So she didn’t heap the guilt on herself for something she had no control over.
She was asleep on his family-room couch. Sean had taken the morning to catch up on business—it was getting away from him. RCK East didn’t advertise because they didn’t need to; most of their business came from word of mouth and referrals. With only two people on staff and no admin, they didn’t need to create more business than they could handle.
But with Patrick gone, and Sean occupied with everything that had been going on, he had ignored his business emails and phone messages. He was nearly caught up when Kate called with the news of Lorenzo’s murder.
He didn’t want to tell Lucy, and he certainly didn’t want to wake her up to give her the news, but he knew she wouldn’t want him to shield her from the truth.
He sat down on the coffee table and watched her sleep. Lucy was more mature than most young women beginning their careers. Yet in sleep, she looked young and vulnerable. Her face was relaxed, her mouth slightly open, her hands together under her cheek. Sleeping Beauty. And Sean wanted her to stay this peaceful; she needed the rest.
She opened her eyes suddenly, a brief look of panic on her face.
“It’s me,” Sean said, angry with himself for staring at her for so long. Even in her sleep, she had sensed his gaze.
“What time is it?”
“Two.”
She slowly sat up, dazed. “I slept until two in the afternoon?” she asked, incredulous.
“You were up early; you needed a nap.”
She rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Three hours. I never sleep during the day.” She tilted her head and frowned. “What’s wrong?”
Sean hadn’t thought his expression revealed his unrest over the news. He was blunt. “Cody didn’t commit suicide. The FBI proved conclusively that he was murdered.”
Lucy began to shake. Cody was murdered. Because of her investigation. Why hadn’t she called in Kate earlier? Or would Mallory have killed her sister-in-law in his failed attempt to cover up his vigilante group?
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