by Maggie Price
Her gaze flicked to Bran before she stepped to the table with George. He settled into the chair across from hers, knowing they were both wondering if the professor was the expected gentleman.
Two hours later, the chair beside Bran was still empty. And the pile of chips in front of Tory looked like a miniature mountain.
No one had to tell him she played poker with a combination of impulse and skill. Still, the men gathered around the table weren’t slouches, so he had to figure a small measure of her success was due to that attention-diverting red dress. And all that creamy skin. Then there was that little mole that relentlessly pulled his gaze to her red-glossed mouth.
George shuffled the deck, then plunked it in front of her. “Okay, Tracy my love, cut ’em thin so I can win.”
Her laugh was low and carelessly sexy. “You sure have a way with words, George.”
The salesman’s response to her comment was a smooth chuckle that ran along Bran’s nerve endings like a dull razor.
“I’ve got a lot of words for you, sweetheart,” George said as he dealt the cards.
“And I bet they’re all equally clever.”
Bran gathered up his cards. And tried not to mangle them while a possessiveness coiled deep within him, a fierce, primitive thing that shocked him with its strength.
Mine, he thought. Dammit, she’s mine.
At least she had been until he walked out. Broken his vow to stay through better or worse.
Tossing his cards onto the bone pile, he reminded himself his main concern right now was keeping her safe. Alive. He rolled his right shoulder against the ache from the bullet that had nearly ended his own life years ago. He couldn’t afford to divert his attention by examining the feelings he’d walled inside him the day he’d left her. Or those that had begun avalanching down on him after he and Tory had moved into the safe house.
“How about we take a break?” the short, rotund man to Bran’s right suggested after the hand played out.
Raking in the pot, Tory nodded. “A break sure sounds good.”
Although several of the men rose and wandered off, Bran made no move to do the same. Not as long as George seemed so entranced with the way Tory’s breasts strained against the dress’s glittery red material.
She took her compact out of her small beaded purse and checked her makeup. Bran knew that while she powdered her nose, she surreptitiously snapped the shutter of the camera hidden in the compact, taking several up-close photos of George.
Dipping one hand into her purse, she retrieved a lipstick tube. “I guess whoever Jazz is holding that empty chair for isn’t going to show tonight.”
“Bet it was the professor,” George said.
“I don’t know him.” With an expert swipe, Tory applied another coat of gloss that made her mouth look pouty and moist.
Although his system was on the brink of going haywire over the memory of those sensational, relentless lips driving him close to madness, Bran shored up his willpower and forced his attention to George. “This professor,” he said evenly. “Where does he teach?”
“He’s no teacher—I’m not sure why he’s called that. I get the impression he mostly hangs at this yuppie club in Bricktown where his girlfriend waits tables. The place features good music and strong whiskey.” George craned his head and checked the players at the other two tables. “Kandy didn’t make it tonight, either, so she must be working.”
Tory snapped the compact closed. “George, didn’t I tell y’all when we sat down that I’m new in town? I’ve been looking for a nice club where I can have some fun, and here you are talking about one. The….” She furrowed her brow. “I don’t guess you said the name of the place where this Kandy works.”
“Chappell’s.” Easing closer, George lowered his voice. “I guarantee you’ll have lots of fun if I’m there with you.” He slicked a finger across her knuckles while studying the rings of glittery stones and twists of gold. “Before we get anything started, I guess I should make sure none of these is a wedding ring.”
“You’re in the clear,” she said without missing a beat. “I sure don’t have a reason to wear one of those.”
Chapter 9
While Tory and Bran played poker in a well-lit hotel suite, a pudgy man with pale skin and narrow-set eyes sat in a dim, dank basement on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. He shivered from a combination of cold and fear.
“You told me you were going to scare those people.” Trying to force his voice to remain steady, Carsen Irons stared down at the four names circled in blood-red ink on the printout he’d hacked a week ago from the police department’s database. “Not kill them.”
Vic Heath leaned an elbow on the computer monitor that sat on the card table before Irons. Heath was a tall man with heavy shoulders and deep-set black eyes, shaggy brown hair and a beard over hollowed cheeks. Although it was late January, the prison escapee and murderer wore a muscle shirt that displayed the full-sleeve tattoos that covered both arms. At the end of those arms were hands with fingers as thick and tough as hickory sticks.
“Well now, Mr. Invisible Man, I pride myself on always keepin’ my word.” The makeshift cast on Heath’s left wrist looked eerily white in the monitor’s glow. “So I guarantee you those folks got real scared right before they died.”
Irons felt a shiver whisper down his spine. What had started out as a typical job for him—hacking into some heavily secured database and selling the information for a tidy sum—had turned into a horrendous nightmare. He, and a good amount of his high-end computer equipment, had been snatched from his house, tossed into this dank, cobweb-shrouded basement and chained to an iron spike in the floor. Beneath the card table that rocked on one shortened leg, he shifted his right foot. The shackle that the man he knew only as the professor had clamped around his ankle was a constant reminder of his imprisonment.
“Yeah, you’ve got to figure the husband and wife of those cops got scared when they realized their time was up,” Irons agreed, then cleared his throat. No way could those victims have been more frightened than he was himself. After all, they’d experienced quick, relatively painless deaths. Heath had been terrorizing him for days. Threatening him. Threats that had turned vicious after the fiasco with the McCall woman when she’d somehow lucked out and killed Easton Kerr instead of winding up dead herself.
Irons gripped the edges of the keyboard in front of him so hard that his knuckles turned bone-white. He could still see the stone-cold violence in Heath’s dark eyes when he’d forced him to hack into the M.E.’s database and pull up the coroner’s report on Kerr’s death that gave all the details on the guy’s demise.
Including that Victoria McCall had killed him with one blow to the head.
Over the past days, Irons had heard enough to figure out McCall’s husband had made the arrest that initially sent Heath to prison three years ago. The same cop’s involvement in the credit-union shootout where Heath’s brother and cousin had gotten gunned down was some twisted hook of fate. An unfortunate one for the cop.
Not to mention the cop’s wife.
As an in-your-face payback to McCall, Heath had wanted the cop’s wife strangled with the shackles he’d worn when he’d murdered the prison guard. Heath’s plan to kill her personally had been sidetracked when he’d fallen during his escape and broken his wrist. Without the use of both hands, he couldn’t cinch the chain that connected the manacles tight enough around the throat of what would no doubt be a fighting, struggling woman who made her living as a private investigator. So Kerr had volunteered to do the murder. And had died instead.
Thinking about his own situation had the fast-food hamburger Irons had eaten for dinner threatening to come back for a return visit.
Even if Heath kept his promise to release him when he “got good and ready,” Irons knew there was no way he could go to the cops. Providing Heath the contact information on police spouses made him an accessory to murder. Two murders, and one attempted murder…so far. If he survived this
ordeal, he could never go home. Never use his real name again. He truly would have to become invisible for the remainder of his life. Lucky for him he’d already established several fake identities.
Irons’s gaze drifted through the murky dimness, past the sagging couch he’d slept on for countless days to the set of wooden stairs on the far side of the basement. The stairs shot up to a heavy door, its coffee-colored paint peeling in strips. If he could only figure out a way to get free to use those identities….
“You got the bugs worked out of that software you wrote?”
Irons looked up. If his software worked—and he knew it would—the police would probably have cause to add another murder count against him.
“Yes, the voice-emulating program’s ready.”
“About damn time.” Heath pulled a cell phone off the waistband of his jeans, slapped it on top of the printout. “Do what you have to do so I can make the call.”
Irons’s fingers trembled as he plugged the cord already connected to his computer into the phone. He typed a few commands, waited for the program to load, then nodded to Heath. “Ready.”
Heath dug a piece of paper out of the back pocket of his jeans, glanced at it, then looked at Irons with eyes devoid of both conscience and soul. “Your software screws up, you and I are gonna have big-time problems, Mr. Invisible Man.”
Irons felt the fast-food burger rise a couple of inches. “The software’s gold. I loaded the captain’s voice off the tape of the press conference he gave after the two killings. I guarantee you’ll sound just like him. The thing I can’t control is what you say and how you say it. Bottom line is, you have to talk like a cop. I’ve got no control over that.”
Sneering, Heath picked up the phone. “I’ve been dealing with cops most of my life. You think I don’t know how the hell they talk?”
Cool sweat slipped clammily down Irons’s back while Heath punched in the number. He could almost hear the snap of equipment when the long-distance connection clicked in, imagined beams relaying to a satellite somewhere in space, locking onto a bank of switches, then a phone in a hotel in Honolulu ringing.
“Room forty-twenty-nine,” Heath said. “Yeah, Unsell, this is Captain Everett. What are you doing in your room instead of out on the beach?” While he spoke, Heath pinned Irons with a cold, merciless stare. “That much of a time difference, huh? Look, I’m calling to let you know we popped Heath. We’re keeping word of his arrest under wraps from the media because there’s one more of his guys still on the street. But Heath is locked in a cage. Yeah, we’re all relieved. Figured you’d want to know the coast is clear so you can bring your wife home when you’re ready.”
Panic pounding like an anvil at the base of his skull, Irons glanced down at the printout. Drew Unsell, wife of Sergeant Fulton Unsell, was one of the four names circled. The woman had lucked out and lost a filling an hour before Heath strode into the store where she worked, intending to put a bullet in her head. If her husband brought her back to Oklahoma, Irons didn’t think she’d be as lucky a second time.
And he had no reason to believe Heath would let him go after the killer carried out his vendetta against the cops. Irons nibbled at a thumbnail, ripped off a piece of nail, spat it out, tasted blood. Somehow, some way, he had to get himself out of this mess.
Heath ended the call, jerked the cord off the phone and clipped it back on his belt. “Unsell bought it. Thought he was talking to his boss. Now, you just gotta watch the airlines to see if they book a flight.”
“Right.” Irons fiddled with the neckline of his heavy sweater. “Uh, are you sure you want to do this? It’s only going to take another day or so for me to finish building your new identity, then get the fake IDs from my contacts. You lay low until then, the cops’ll wind up chasing their tails. You and Ms. Quest could be in Mexico this time next week.” And maybe by then he’d figure out a way to get himself out of the basement. Alive.
“I’ll lay low after my work here’s done.” Heath stabbed a finger at the printout. “I could live without gettin’ the Unsell woman.” His finger moved up the list. “This Victoria Lynn McCall’s another matter. It was her old man put me in the joint. Now she’s killed Kerr. Getting her’s like a mission for me.” Heath’s eyes narrowed. “One I can’t complete until you find her.”
“I’ve been trying, you know that.” The acid in Irons’s stomach churned faster. “The last time she used her cell phone was the night of the attack. She hasn’t used a credit card since. Same goes for her husband. Utilities on their house don’t show spikes like someone turning lights, appliances and TVs on and off. The newspaper’s been stopped with no start-up date given. No one’s there. You have to figure the cop’s got his wife off somewhere. Only they didn’t fly because I’d have found them in the search of the airline databases when I got a hit on the Unsells. The McCalls are just gone.”
“So you’ve said.” Heath clamped his good hand on Iron’s shoulder. “You’re gonna find them for me, right?”
Despite the chill of the basement, Irons’s skin turned hot. “The minute one of them uses their phone, a credit card, something that I can track, I’ll find them. Until then…”
“You’re staying right where you are,” Heath finished and settled his right hand on the printout.
Irons stared down at the black crow tattooed on the web between Heath’s thumb and index finger. It was easy to imagine those thick fingers clenched around his own throat. Sitting there, sheer black panic almost overwhelmed him.
He’d spent desperate days searching databases for the McCalls. Surely one of them would surface soon. Good God, one of them had to surface!
“The McCall bitch dies first,” Heath said. “Slow. That’s what she gets for killin’ Kerr. Once that’s done, I’m gonna make sure her old man knows how she died. Eat his heart out. Eye-for-an-eye, for his killing Andy and Kyle.”
Irons nodded. He figured Heath’s brother and cousin were scumbags, just like Vic. “So, after you kill the McCall woman, it’ll be over?”
“Hell, no. It won’t be over until I put a bullet through Bran McCall’s brain.”
One hour after he left the poker game, Bran was back at the safe house, the sleeves on his dress shirt rolled up, his hands jammed in the pockets of his slacks as he prowled the living room. Though he’d left the hotel after Tory, the intricate switch-off he’d set up with his soon-to-be brothers-in-law had timed his own arrival here before hers.
Which was good, since he needed time to get a handle on himself. On the situation. On what he would say when she walked through the door wearing that glittery red excuse for a dress and the catch-me-do-me heels. On the anger that layered over the frustration when he thought about their in-shambles relationship.
For months he’d done a good job of blocking thoughts of their marriage, of their separation, of her.
His eyes narrowed. When Patience had died, he had wanted to share the grave with her, had missed her as much as a man would miss breathing. Three years later he’d met Tory and she’d rocked him back on his heels. And when he’d left her, he hadn’t let himself miss her. He’d intentionally kept himself too busy with the job because he’d been too mad, too frustrated, too…a lot of other things he couldn’t put his finger on to allow himself to think about her.
Now, after having spent several days with her in the close confines of the small safe house—and nights lying awake, picturing her in the bed in the next room while her maddening scent filled his lungs—thoughts of her threatened to swallow him.
As did the realization that his abrasive, contrary, I-don’t-need-you, sexy wife was quickly slipping through his fingers.
And maybe, just maybe, that was the last thing he wanted to happen.
I sure don’t have a reason to wear one of those. The cop in him knew her comment about a wedding ring had been a smart one, meant to try to coax George-the-salesman into revealing more information that might lead them to the professor.
The man in Bran wanted to kill
the slimy lech just for touching her—for no longer allowing him to ignore the fact that if their divorce went through, she would be free to let any number of men put their hands on her. Take her to bed.
Swearing, he jerked the knot on his tie loose. His emotions were so jumbled he wasn’t sure what he wanted the future to hold. But he was damn sure that wasn’t on his wish list.
When he heard the purr of an engine in the driveway, he pulled his Glock from the holster against his spine, strode to the front door and eased back the curtain’s edge. In the buttery glow of the porch light he saw Tory slide out of the passenger seat of Alex Blade’s sedan. Clad in the black wig, coat, sheer smoky hose and spiky heels, she had the look of a thoroughbred: dark, lean, fit and sultry.
His fingers tightened on the Glock. Right this minute, he didn’t want to think about why he’d left her. Didn’t want to ponder their questionable future. God help him, all he wanted to do was get her naked, sink his teeth into her and brand her his.
Shivering beneath the wool coat, Tory scaled the porch steps, thinking that in the dead of winter, only idiots wore half dresses like the one Carrie had shoehorned her into. Then there were the four-inch stilettos that had her arches screaming.
She had a gloved hand on the knob when Bran swung the door open.
“Welcome home,” he said. He waited for her to move inside, then he stepped out onto the porch, holding the Glock against his thigh.
Across her shoulder, Tory saw him nod in the direction of Blade’s car, already reversing out of the driveway.
She pulled off her gloves, slanting Bran a look while he closed the door and set the deadbolt. He seemed almost lost in his thoughts, his profile hard, unyielding…and gorgeous, as always. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, but he’d had time to strip off his suit coat, unknot his tie and roll the sleeves on his dress shirt up his forearms. Gone was his fake beard and mustache; his sandy hair was mussed, as if he’d shoved his fingers through it numerous times.