Ace of Spades (Aces & Eights Book 3)

by Sandra Owens

  “Off.” When she pulled the sweater over her head, he huffed a drawn-out breath. “Leave the bra on,” he said, his voice sounding raspy even to his own ears. “Damn, tiger, you’re just full of surprises.” Did her panties match the transparent, lacy red bra? Only one way to find out. He unbuttoned her jeans, then pulled the zipper down. Red lace peeked back at him. “You’re killing me, woman.”

  “I aim to please.”

  He laughed. “You’re nailing it.”

  “Four.”

  Puzzled, he glanced up at her. “Four what?”

  “Nothing. I was just thinking out loud.” She put her foot on his lap. “Boots next? They have to come off before the jeans can.”

  Forgetting about strange numbers, he went back to undressing her. When she was standing in nothing but her sexy bra and panties, he twirled his finger. “Turn around.” Thongs were the greatest invention ever. He’d always known she had a nice body, even when she wore her work uniform of loose pants and buttoned-up blouses, but his imagination on how she would look naked had failed him. Forget nice. She had a killer body.

  Why, he wasn’t sure, but the sexual tension that had sparked between them earlier, before the demise of Henry, had eased somewhat. When they’d first arrived back at her place, he hadn’t been sure they’d get all their clothes off, much less make it to her bedroom. Now, it seemed the edge was off and neither wanted to rush things. That was good, because he planned to savor every minute with her.

  “Do you wear a thong every day? Because if you say yes, that’s all I’m going to think about, and I’ll be one useless FBI agent.”

  “Should I lie, then?” She looked over her shoulder, a flirty smile on her face.

  “God, yes. Lie.” It wouldn’t matter, though. Her perfect ass was seared into his brain, and yes, he was an ass man. Breasts were great, legs were worthy of attention, but a woman’s ass did it for him every time. He hooked a finger into the waistband of the thong, pulling her to him.

  She landed on his lap, and he put his hand under her chin, tilting her face up. As he kissed her, he vaguely wondered if he was going to be the one who wouldn’t be able to walk away.

  “What’s this?” she said, her finger pausing from caressing his shoulder, then circling over one of many such scars.

  “Nothing.” The burn mark from a cigarette wasn’t something he wanted to talk about.

  “He did this to you, didn’t he?” Her fingers went on a quest, stopping for a moment on each one she found.

  “Don’t go there, Taylor. He doesn’t belong here with us. Not tonight.” There were even more than the ones she’d found. His father hadn’t spared his legs either, but if she persisted in wanting to know the reason for the burn marks, he’d walk right out the door before he’d tell her they were in retaliation for trying to kill his father.

  She smiled up at him. “You’re right, he doesn’t. Tonight it’s only you and me in this bed.”

  “Yeah, just us.” He brushed her hair away from her neck, then pressed his mouth to the sensitive spot below her ear. She let out a little gasp when he nipped and sucked on her skin, the sound going straight to his groin. He closed his eyes. It didn’t seem real that she was on his lap, in her bra and panties. He’d dreamed of her like this so many times that he wouldn’t be surprised if he opened his eyes to find this was just another dream.

  She ground her bottom against the zipper of his jeans, and he slid his fingers under her bra, flicking her nipple with his thumb. When she fumbled with his belt buckle, he stood with her in his arms.

  If he didn’t get his jeans off, he was going to bust right out of them. He dropped her on the bed, smiling when she bounced and giggled. Her eyes followed his hands as he pulled the zipper down. After removing a condom from his pocket, he pushed his pants and boxer briefs down his legs, kicking them aside.

  “God, you’re beautiful,” she said.

  For her, he wanted to be, which was new. He’d never much cared what women thought of him before. He had a moment of worry about that. They were friends first, above all else, and he didn’t want to screw that up. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her, and he was bound to do that. This really wasn’t a good idea.

  “Don’t.”

  He didn’t have to ask what she meant. The light in her eyes dimmed as she watched him, probably expecting him to get dressed and leave. And he should. She pushed up onto her knees, reached behind her back, and unhooked her bra, letting it fall to the bed.

  “Don’t think,” she said.

  He’d stopped thinking the moment she kneeled in front of him and bared herself. If they wanted to argue beautiful, she’d win, hands down. Her nipples pebbled from him only looking at them. He didn’t know why she wanted him, but since he was no longer thinking, his male brain moved on to more interesting things. Like touching her breasts and tasting those pretty pink nipples. And that was just for a start.

  “You’re making me crazy, Taylor. I’m going to taste you from head to toe.”

  “Yes, please.”

  He laughed as he fell onto the bed, bringing her down with him. “That’s much too polite for what I have in mind for you.”

  “Do tell.” She rolled over and straddled him.

  “You can be in charge later.” He flipped her onto her back. “This time I am. Should I start tasting you here?” He palmed a breast, circling the nipple with his thumb.

  “Yes. And that wasn’t polite. I left off the please.”

  “So you did.” He kept his word, tasting her from head to toe. Sometime later, he crawled up her body. “I could spend hours touching you, finding all your sensitive places, but I need to be inside you.”

  Nate loved women. Loved their minds, their smells, their soft bodies. He couldn’t say how many women he’d been with. But he’d never felt like he was where he belonged the way he did now, joined with Taylor. He stared down into her eyes and swallowed hard. He wasn’t supposed to feel this way, like he’d come home, wasn’t supposed to want what he couldn’t have.

  “You got any moves in you, or are you just going to stare at me all night?” She waggled her eyebrows, wrenching a smile from him.

  “Oh, I got moves, baby. Hold on tight, and I’ll show you a few.”

  Whatever worries his mind was trying to stir up, he’d think about later. She felt too damn good to resist. He withdrew, then slid back in, slow strokes at first, until her whimpers and moans drove him crazy, and he couldn’t hold back.

  He loved her until they were both too exhausted to move. When she cuddled up to him, he expected to feel caged. He wasn’t a cuddler. Surprisingly, he liked having her wrapped around him. Another thing he should worry about. But not tonight.

  “I concede that you got moves,” she said, sounding half-asleep.

  “Told ya.” He smiled against her hair, laced his fingers around hers, and allowed himself to enjoy the soft press of her body against his. With her as his inspiration, he could probably move mountains.

  “Go to sleep, tiger.”

  “Kay.”

  And just like that, she was out. He should be sleepy, but left alone with his thoughts now, his mind was busy thinking again.

  The man punched his steering wheel so hard that a sharp pain shot up his arm. He wanted to destroy the motorcycle parked outside his angel’s apartment. She belonged to him, but he would forgive her since she didn’t know that yet. It was obvious the longhaired man was spending the night. As much as he wanted to tear the motorcycle apart with his bare hands, he resisted. Someone would hear him and call the cops.

  The piece on the news informing him that his last angel had been a mother to two young girls had sent him into a rage. Mothers were sacred. They didn’t need saving. The bitch should have told him she had daughters. He wouldn’t have taken her away from them the way his mother had been stolen from him. It had taken hours to regain his control after the news story, and if there was anything he hated, it was losing control. That happening was unacceptable. Mistakes
were made that way.

  The woman inside the apartment was his true angel, not like the others. The girls under her care weren’t her real daughters, so they didn’t count. They didn’t make her a mother. He’d tried to save Raisa Collins, but she’d rejected his offer of marriage, hadn’t understood the honor he was bestowing on her, that he’d chosen her to love. When he’d followed her back to her pitiful room, it was with the intention of making her understand that he was her savior, there to take her away from the squalor and the life of a whore.

  She hadn’t wanted to listen, was furious that he’d followed her. He hadn’t meant to kill her, but she wouldn’t stop screaming. To get her to shut up, he’d wrapped his hands around her throat. It wasn’t until she’d taken her last breath, finally going quiet, that the roaring in his ears had cleared and he’d heard a child crying.

  When he’d seen her, so beautiful in her innocence, he’d stroked her face and neck. Her skin had been soft and flawless, her blue eyes wide and frightened. He’d known then that it wasn’t her mother he was meant to save, but her. He would take her with him, raise her to be pure and untainted. She would be his perfect little angel, and he would give her the chances his mother had never had.

  Then that bitch had come in with her baseball bat, and he’d fled. But he’d only gone down the hallway, where he hid around the corner. After the woman had taken the girl across the hall to another room, he’d gone back to Raisa’s to make sure he hadn’t left any evidence behind. While wiping his fingerprints from anything he thought he might have touched, he’d found an old Polaroid camera. Without stopping to think why he was doing it, he’d taken pictures of her body.

  After he left the building, he’d waited across the street in the alcove of a closed neighborhood grocery for the police to arrive. But they never did. Instead, a short time later, the woman and girl had come out, carrying bulky trash bags. He’d followed them to a motel a few blocks away. All it had taken to learn their names was a few bucks handed over to the motel clerk. From then on, it had been easy to keep an eye on them.

  As time passed, he often looked at the photos he’d taken of Raisa Collins. Then six years ago, on the anniversary of his mother’s death, while looking at the pictures of Raisa, so pure in death—a beautiful angel like his mother—it had come to him, his life’s work. He had been too young and helpless to save his mother, but he could save others like her by making them angels. He hadn’t been able to make Raisa his bride, but his angels would arrive in heaven as brides, pure and virtuous. The way his mother had. He’d chosen his first angel the same night.

  As for Taylor Collins, she belonged to him. He’d known that from the moment he’d seen her. It was time for her to come home. He needed to get her attention, and he knew just how to do it. Before going, he left her a little present.

  Nate lay on his side, watching Taylor sleep. The low glow of the lamp cast a golden light over her—he’d insisted they leave it on so he could see her face when she came. She was so beautiful. What would it be like to wake up to her smile every morning?

  She was pleasured, sated, and sleeping. This was when he left a woman’s bed, dressing in the dark and then tiptoeing out. Always. But he couldn’t bring himself to slide out from under the covers, careful not to wake her so he could make his escape without awkward words. So he stayed. This time.

  At the sound of Rothmire’s ringtone, he came instantly awake. A call from the boss at this time of night wasn’t good. He grabbed his phone from the nightstand, eyeing the clock. They’d only been asleep two hours, and it was likely the only sleep they’d get tonight.

  “Yeah?” He listened, then said, “I’ll collect Taylor, and we’ll head that way.” She was already up and dressing by the time he hung up. “A prostitute was murdered. Some kids found her body.”

  “I guess we’re headed to the Everglades, then.”

  “No, she was found behind a grocery store in Hialeah. She’s ours, though. She’s wearing a white dress and there’s a wedding ring on her finger.”

  “Damn.”

  That about summed it up. “We’ll have to take your car,” he said as he pulled on his clothes. He gave her a summary of his phone call with Rothmire.

  Although the night hadn’t ended the way he’d wanted it to, he’d enjoyed their date more than he’d thought he would. But he suspected that was because of her. She was a happy person, and he liked being around her. Dancing with her, holding her slim body against his . . . He was getting aroused just thinking about it. Unfortunately, duty called.

  “I’ll make us some coffee to go.”

  He yawned. “That would be great. I’m going to check my bike, make sure it’s locked up good.”

  At his bike, he took a ball cap with the FBI logo on it out of the saddlebag and put it on, then slipped a lightweight FBI jacket on over his gun and holster. After working undercover for so long, it went against everything ingrained in him to advertise that he was an FBI agent.

  After making sure his alarm was on, he walked over to her car. The woman who exited her apartment was all business now, her walk and expression her FBI persona. She’d put back on the jeans and black sweater from earlier, but had added a jacket with “FBI” emblazoned on it, under which he knew she had a holstered gun.

  When she neared the driver’s door of the car, she paused, glancing down, and then bent over and picked up something. “Someone dropped their good-luck angel.” She held up a small angel on a chain, the kind he’d seen people hang on their rearview mirrors.

  “Do people really believe those work?” To Nate it seemed silly to think a plastic replica of an angel would protect you.

  “Maybe it’s a question of faith.” She dropped the angel into her pocket. “I’ll put it in the lost-and-found box in the complex’s office.”

  After she hit the remote, unlocking the car’s doors, he slid into the passenger seat. “Start it up, and I’ll put the address in the GPS,” he said when she was seated next to him.

  “It doesn’t make sense that he’s suddenly changing his M.O., leaving a victim behind a grocery store.” She glanced over at him. “Unless he was scared off. If so, we might have a witness.”

  “Or the newscast messed with his head.” The piece about Linda Harding having two daughters had run on the evening news.

  “That’s a possibility, too. We need to catch this guy, Nate. His kills are getting closer together. He’s losing it.”

  “Which means he’ll start making mistakes. That’s what we want.”

  Her fingers curled around the steering wheel. “Not at the cost of another woman’s life.”

  He got that. Their job was to save lives, but it worried him that Taylor was letting this case get to her. He needed to have a talk with her, judge for himself how much of a problem that was going to be. He’d do that tomorrow.

  A police car was parked close to the body, the officer leaning against the hood, guarding the scene. On the other side of the crime scene tape, a group of kids milled about, laughing and pushing each other around.

  “No respect for the dead. The little buggers should be home in bed,” Taylor grumbled as they exited the car.

  The area behind the store was well lit, so Nate took out his phone and snapped pictures of those standing around. While Taylor headed for the body, he made a wide circle, taking more pictures, watching for anyone who seemed nervous. Movement at the corner of the lot caught his attention, a man standing in the shadows. The man pulled the ball cap he was wearing down over his forehead. Nate took another photo, and just as he did, the man slipped around the building adjacent to the grocery store.

  Was that their killer, or just a curious bystander? Nate ducked under the crime scene tape and jogged over to the other building. The man wasn’t in sight, but halfway down the block, a car pulled out of a parking space. Because of the pinkish glow of the streetlights, it was hard to tell the color of the car other than it was something dark. He snapped several more pictures as it drove away, hoping Court c
ould pull up the license plate.

  A van pulled up next to Taylor’s car, and two crime scene technicians got out. Nate walked back to where the man had stood, turned on the light in his phone, and searched the ground, seeing two fresh cigarette butts and what looked like a photo folded in half. He took a picture; then, not wanting to leave possible evidence unattended, he called Taylor.

  “Send one of the techs over here,” he said when she answered her phone.

  She lifted her head, searching for him. At seeing him, she said, “Find something?”

  “Not sure. Maybe.”

  After saying something to one of the techs, she came back on the phone. “I have something to show you when you’re done there.”

  When their tech walked up to him, he said, “Hey, Laura. How’s Daniel?” Her son had suffered a severe concussion in a high school football game.

  “Much better, but now he’s mad at me because I said no more football. Seeing him lying on that field, not moving? Not going there again.”

  “Can’t say I blame you.” Although if he were Daniel, he wouldn’t be happy either, so he could sympathize with both sides. “A man was standing here, watching us when we arrived. As soon as I spotted him, he took off. Might be nothing, but let’s bag these butts and whatever that is.”

  She took some of her own pictures, then snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and pulled a baggie out of her jacket pocket. “It’s from a Polaroid. Who even has one of those anymore? Do you want me to open it?”

  “Yeah, let’s see if it’s anything of interest.”

  After dropping the two butts into a bag, she picked up the photo, prying it apart. He leaned over her shoulder to see the picture. “Shit,” he muttered. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen the woman staring up at him with dead eyes.

  Laura frowned up at him. “What?”

  He glanced over at Taylor. He’d been worried about her taking this case too much to heart, and now, she was going to have every reason to.

  “That’s her mother.” He’d pulled up the police files of Taylor’s mother’s case. Had seen the crime scene photos. The file had been thin, as apparently the police at the time hadn’t cared about a dead prostitute.