On Dangerous Ground

by Maggie Price

  “Bitch,” he growled.

  The dim hallway swung around her; a warm haze clouded her eyes, rolled down her cheeks. Blood, she thought dully the instant before a second wave of nausea rolled through her.

  “We’re gonna have us a chat, lady chemist.”

  Keeping his fingers vised on her throat, he clamped his other hand around her upper arm. Sky knew the direction he dragged her was away from the elevators, away from where Grant would come. God, Grant, please come.

  She forced her hand into a fist, smashed it into Spider’s ankle, causing him to stagger sideways. Pain zinged up her arm when the toe of his heavy boot gouged her elbow.

  His hand tightened on her neck with vicious purpose, cutting off air in one swift clench. “Ain’t gonna do you no good to fight.”

  Her vision wavered, then went gray. Sky clawed at his hand, her short, sharp nails tearing into his flesh, collecting what she knew to be indisputable evidence. Whatever else came, she would have his skin, his blood under her nails. Swearing viciously, he jerked his hand from her throat, then slammed his palm against her cheek, snapping her head back.

  While the metallic taste of blood seeped into her mouth, Spider changed direction, dragged her sideways, then through a doorway. Against her legs, Sky felt the tile floor give way to cold, rough concrete. The air closed around her in a sickening mix of pine disinfectant and antiseptic. Weak light coming from one corner of the small room illuminated towering shelves of cleaning supplies.

  Dumping her on her back, Spider crouched beside her, pressing his knee hard into her abdomen when her fingers clawed upward for his eyes. One of his hands manacled both of hers, then his mouth curved. “I like it when they struggle,” he said, his voice full of soft malice. “Makes it more fun. Just keep fighting, lady chemist.”

  In the next second, Sky felt her body jerk when he yanked the belt from her skirt’s waistband. Seconds later, he had the leather lashed around her wrists.

  In the weak light, she caught the glint of metal; a bubble of hysteria surged through her pain when the sharp blade pressed against her throat. Just like before, she thought in wild terror while her disoriented brain shot her back in time. Suddenly she was again lying helpless in the black insides of a van with a knife angled against her throat.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, she dragged in air and shoved back the panic. This was now, and she wasn’t helpless. She knew how to defend herself. She could defend herself if she kept her mind free of fear and waited for an opening.

  “You and the cop should have left well enough alone.”

  With her head hammering and blood seeping into her eyes, Sky had the sensation that Spider’s voice came from all around the room.

  “Can’t…get…away with this.” She barely forced the words up her bruised throat, knew there was no way she could scream for help.

  “Watch me.”

  He leaned in, his knee increasing the pressure on her abdomen, his eyes filled with naked hatred. “I read your notes, remember? I know everything that’s going on,” he added while she struggled to breathe. “All I gotta do is get rid of the hospital’s records, and the cops can’t prove anything.”

  Shadows seemed to shift around the small room as Sky struggled to free her wrists. The pain of the leather cutting into her flesh seemed far away.

  “Cops…already have…proof,” she croaked.

  “Wrong. The proof’s in my old man’s file. I’d have had it sooner, but a couple of computer geeks stayed in the records office overnight. I had to bide my time hiding in this stinking closet, but now my name is gone from the computer and I’ve got the file.” His eyes narrowed. “And you. You’re the only one who knows I took it. All I have to do is dump you and the file in a trash bin, wheel you out of here and make you disappear. Easy. The cops can suspect me all they want, but they can’t prove a damn thing.”

  “You’re…wrong.”

  “You’re dead.”

  Knowing he meant it pumped her adrenaline to flash point. Sky knew she had time to make only one move before the blade ripped into her throat.

  In a quick flash of movement, she shifted her bound wrists and clamped her hands on Spider’s right elbow; using leverage and a quick sideways twist of her body, she shoved him off balance.

  His breath coming out in a cursing rush, he sprawled backward, hitting the nearest shelf. Mops, brooms and cans clattered to the floor.

  “You…bitch!” he howled.

  Bracing for the assault she knew would come, Sky rolled sideways, her lungs heaving as she fought the sickening dizziness. How could she get up when she didn’t even know which way up was?

  In the next instant the door to the room swung inward, tossing in a wedge of light as Grant burst in. On the edge of consciousness, she heard his feral snarl when he lunged past her. From somewhere behind her came a deafening crash.

  Sky ordered herself to get up, get on her feet. All she could do was lay there while pain tore through her head and jagged lights starred behind her eyes. In the dim recesses of her mind, she heard the cracking sound of bone on bone as fists hit their target.

  Then the sound changed, swelled. Closing her eyes, she fell into a roaring, buffeting darkness.

  Chapter 14

  Feeling more tired than she’d ever felt in her life, Sky walked into her apartment, dumped her briefcase and purse on the kitchen counter, then collapsed onto the couch. The fluid throb in her right temple was a solid reminder that she hadn’t fully recovered from the blow to the head she’d suffered five days ago.

  Raising a hand to her forehead, she fingered the fine line of stitches, carefully sewn by the cosmetic surgeon Grant had insisted on.

  A nurse had told Sky with a sigh of envy that “her cop” had insisted on a lot of things after he’d pummeled Spider into mush. Grant had ordered a full trauma team upstairs to that dimly lit closet. Liberally dropped the Pierce Oil name—and its annual endowment to the hospital—all over the place to ensure that no one tried to banish him from the emergency room while they treated her. Insisted on spending the night at her bedside. After the doctor released her the following morning, Grant had driven her home, set tling her into her apartment with the same care he might take with a piece of Waterford crystal.

  She’d barely seen him since then.

  Slipping off her shoes, Sky propped her feet on the coffee table and leaned her throbbing head back against the cushion.

  She knew Grant had worked day and night, writing a flood of reports and conducting follow-up interviews on both the Benjamin and Peña homicides, and on Spider’s two attempts on her life. Spider, with three cracked ribs, a broken nose and multiple lacerations from his resisting-arrest-encounter with Grant, had so far refused to utter a word. His only reaction had been to turn a sickly pale color beneath his bruises during the arraignment when a judge ordered him to give body samples to the police.

  After that, Sky had worked mind-numbing hours in the lab to get the samples analyzed and complete her report for yesterday’s hearing where she’d testified that Spider’s DNA matched that found at both the Benjamin and Peña crime scenes. Spider, it seemed, was on his way to being the next occupant of his father’s cell at the state prison.

  Grant had left for McAlester immediately after yesterday’s hearing. He’d planned to interview Ellis Whitebear and deal with the red tape required to get the innocent man released from Department of Corrections custody.

  Now Grant was on his way home.

  An hour ago he’d phoned her in the lab, told her he was driving home from the prison and asked if she would meet him at her apartment. The grim determination in his voice had started her nerves swimming. The passage of time had balled those nerves into agonizing knots in the pit of her stomach.

  Too edgy to sit, Sky pushed off the couch, roamed across the living room and switched on the stereo. After a few discrete clicks of the CD player, the Stones pumped out of the speakers.

  Driving home from the prison, she thought as she mov
ed restlessly around the room where the late-afternoon sun slanted through the windows. Had Grant passed by the exit for Ventress, the town where the man who raped her lived? Or had Grant taken that exit?

  Out of what was now old habit, Sky fell into a slow, measured pace along the length of the coffee table and back. She had accepted that Grant might never step back from his need to make Kirk Adams pay for what he’d done to her. Knew it was entirely possible Grant had already acted on that need sometime during the past twenty-four hours. Acknowledged that the future she desperately wanted for them might have slipped from her grasp.

  She loved him. She had fallen in love with him six months ago, she knew that now. She loved him, and might have already lost him.

  The buzz of the doorbell jolted her heart into her throat. In two strides she was at the door, swinging it open.

  It wasn’t the deep lines of fatigue at the corners of Grant’s mouth that made the air clog in her lungs. It was the somber look in his gray eyes. With her bare feet rooted to the floor and a lump in her throat, she stared at him, standing there in the hallway, dressed in a black polo shirt and khaki pants, his badge and weapon clipped to his belt.

  Finally he raised an eyebrow. “You going to invite me in?”

  “Sorry.” She swung the door wide, closed it behind him, then turned.

  “How you doing, Milano?”

  “Fine,” she said with a calmness that didn’t reveal the hard thudding of her heart. “Okay.”

  He hooked a finger under her chin, nudged upward and gave her forehead his narrowed-eyed attention. “When do the stitches come out?”

  “Next week.” She forced a smile. “Your cosmetic surgeon friend is a cool guy, Pierce. I’m planning on keeping his card in case I need a face-lift in about twenty years.”

  “Twenty years,” Grant repeated softly, then dropped his hand from her chin. “Hard to imagine what we’ll be doing in twenty years.”

  Because we won’t be together? Sky set her jaw against the thought. She wanted to ask if he’d done something they would both regret, that would keep them apart, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.

  He glanced toward the living room where the Stones belted out a tune, then looked back at her. “How about a glass of wine?”

  “Okay.” Wine. He wanted alcohol. Whatever he had to say was going to be bad. Her muscles were so tight, she thought she might shatter at any second. “Fine.”

  Shoving her hands into the pockets of her slacks, she willed her unsteady legs to take her to the kitchen. Glancing across the counter, she saw that Grant had moved into the living room to examine the CD player.

  “You can turn it off if you want,” she said, reaching into a cabinet for glasses.

  “Hmm.” He crouched, began flipping through her selection of CDs nested in a wicker basket. “I got a call from the DA’s office while I was driving back to town,” he said across his shoulder. “Spider’s lawyer says his client wants to plead guilty.”

  Sky turned from the refrigerator, a bottle of white wine in hand. “To all counts?”

  “Yes.” Grant continued flipping through the CDs as he spoke. “I figure the minute the judge authorized our taking body samples, Spider knew we had him. We’ll get clear ance on both the Benjamin and Peña homicides, the arson charge in McAlester and the attempted murder count on you. Spider gets a couple of life sentences with no possibility of parole, and avoids the death penalty. The DA’s making noises that sound like he’s happy.”

  Wine poured, Sky let her gaze drift to the security panel beside the front door before she carried the glasses into the living room. “I still don’t know how he got in here without setting off the alarm the night I went to the gym.”

  “I did some checking on the locksmith whom Spider pals around with.” Grant rose, ejected the Stones CD, then slid in a different one. Seconds later, a smoky-voiced singer began torching her way through a song about the man she’d loved and lost. Sky’s throat went dry. It was music to make love to. To plan a lifetime by. To weep over.

  “Turns out,” Grant continued when he shifted to face her, “the locksmith installs security systems as a sideline. When Spider wasn’t working construction, he worked unofficially for his pal. Since Spider knows how to install a security system, he sure as hell knows how to slip by one.”

  Blowing out a breath, Sky handed Grant his glass. “I paid big bucks for that alarm. Here I was, thinking I was safe and secure.”

  Sipping his wine, Grant regarded her bruised, stitched forehead over the rim of his glass. “I thought I could keep you safe,” he said quietly.

  The regret in his voice started an ache deep inside her. “What happened to me at the hospital wasn’t your fault.” She tasted the wine, knew she could drink the whole bottle and not get anywhere near to dulling that ache. “I get queasy when I think about what Spider would have done if you hadn’t been pacing the hall waiting for me when those cleaning supplies clattered to the floor.”

  “You already had him off his feet,” Grant pointed out. “You’d have survived, Sky. Just like you have for the past nine years.”

  The past, she thought, setting her teeth. Her past had come between them six months ago, driven them apart. The jerk of panic beneath her skin told her the same thing might be about to happen again.

  Keeping his gaze locked with hers, Grant unclipped his badge off his belt, laid it on a nearby table. His holstered weapon followed.

  As she watched him, Sky’s breathing shallowed. “What are you doing?”

  “There’s something I need to tell you. I want you to know that it’s the man talking to you, not the cop.”

  She nodded, swallowing around a lump of dread. “Okay.”

  “I would have gotten here sooner, but I made a stop on my way home from the prison.”

  “In Ventress.” Her voice shook with the words.

  “Yes.” The hand against his thigh balled into a fist. “The office where Kirk Adams works is right across the street from a restaurant. I got a table by the front window, ordered coffee and waited. For hours I waited.”

  “You saw him?”

  “Yes.”

  Sky felt a coldness flow over her until she was numb from it. “What…did you do?”

  A hard intensity settled into Grant’s eyes, turning them the color of tarnished pewter. “I watched the bastard strut out of the building and climb into his car. The arrogance in just the way Adams carries himself sends the message he thinks he’s above everyone. Better than everyone.”

  “He hasn’t changed.” Sky felt her palms go damp. “Then what?”

  “I went outside and got into my own car.”

  “You followed him?”

  Setting his glass aside, Grant reached for her free hand, unballing the fist she didn’t realize she’d made. “No,” he said quietly, keeping his gaze locked with hers. “It wasn’t until that instant that I knew I could walk away from Adams. Walk away from knowing he won’t pay for what he did to you.”

  Her knees going weak, Sky swallowed. Hard. “You didn’t…? You won’t…?”

  “I still want to rip the bastard’s lungs out.” As he spoke, Grant slid her glass from her trembling hand, set it beside his. “I just know now I’m not going to do it.”

  “You’re sure?” She pulled in a deep breath, forcing some calmness into her voice. “Really sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Gathering her close, he began swaying to the music’s slow, seductive beat. Moving with him, Sky tilted her head back, feeling her nerves begin to soothe beneath his calm, steady gaze. Letting out a long, relieved sigh, she slid a hand up to cup the back of his neck.

  “I’ve been so afraid, Grant. So scared…”

  “So have I.” He dropped a kiss against her forehead near the line of stitches. “At the hospital, I had a split second when I thought I’d lost you,” he said, his eyes mirroring the emotion in his voice. “It scared me to death,” he added as they continued moving to the music’s
silky beat. “So did just knowing that if I had gone after Adams, you would have walked out of my life. I don’t think I can live without you, Sky. Don’t know that I’d want to try.”

  Tears burned her throat, thickening her voice. “You don’t think you can live without me?”

  His mouth curved. “Let’s put it this way. I know I can’t.”

  Nuzzling her neck, his mouth ignited a pool of fire beneath her flesh.

  “I’ve thought too much about the past,” he said when he shifted his head to skim his lips across hers. “That’s over. I want the future. I love you, Sky. How do you feel about me hanging around the rest of your life?”

  Slowly she pulled back so she could see his face. The fierce, unrelenting love in his eyes made her heart do a slow roll. “Is that a proposal?”

  “You bet.”

  “Grant…I…” A mix of relief and happiness had tears spilling over, trailing slowly down her cheeks.

  “You’re not supposed to cry when a man asks you to marry him.” At some point they had stopped dancing. Now they stood unmoving, their bodies locked together while he thumbed tears off her cheeks. “Makes him think he’d better take off before he hears the bad news.”

  “Try to leave, Pierce, and I’ll knock you on your behind.” Rising on tiptoe, she trailed kisses along his jaw, his chin. “I’ve done it before—remember that.”

  He brushed her hair back so that his hands could frame her face. “I’m not likely to forget anything about you, Milano.”

  When he pressed a kiss at the curve of her shoulder and throat, Sky sighed. Love, she thought, had healed them both.

  “You just need to remember one more thing,” she breathed, her hungry kisses mirroring the need building inside her.

  “And that one thing would be?” he asked as he swept her into his arms, turned and headed down the hallway toward her bedroom.

  Before they even got there, his mouth was devouring her throat, clouding her senses.