Tasting Fear

by Shannon McKenna

  Gant studied Nell with narrowed eyes. “Miss D’Onofrio, do you have someone to stay with tonight?” He shot a keen glance at Duncan. “A family member, maybe?”

  She looked lost, chewing on her soft, cushy lower lip. “Ah…”

  “She’s staying with me,” Duncan blurted.

  Nell blinked at him, startled. He stared back, willing her not to fight it. It seemed so obvious to him, so inevitable. So right.

  She let out a long breath, in short, jerky segments, and nodded. “With him,” she murmured to Gant.

  A jolt of hot triumph shook Duncan. Urgency, too. He wanted to get her home now. Trap her into his lair. Before she changed her mind.

  He made sure the car service was waiting before he let her leave the building. Snipers could be after her, for all he knew. He bundled her hastily into the car and gave the driver his address.

  “Wait,” Nell said. “My place, first.”

  He rounded on her, ready for battle. She put her fingers over his mouth. “Shhh. Don’t start. I need to touch base. I need fresh clothes.”

  “I’ll buy you clothes.”

  “Not at one in the morning, you won’t,” she said. “And I need to check my answering machine. And pick up my laptop.”

  “Those guys know where you live,” he growled. “I don’t want to come across like I’ve got no balls, but I wouldn’t mind avoiding any more mortal combat this evening. If it’s not too fucking much to ask.”

  She tapped his lips again, gently. “Don’t be sarcastic. I am very aware of your big balls. But I doubt very much they’ll be lying in wait for me there tonight. We’ll park right outside the door, we’ll see if anyone’s there, we’ll only be inside for a few minutes. Please, Duncan.”

  He settled back against the seat, defeated but disapproving. Her hand was no longer on his mouth. He missed it. It was almost worth goading her, to see if she would try to silence him again.

  Then another possibility occurred to him. He reached down and took her hand. A long and cautious minute later, her fingers curled around his. The city slipped by, but they were fixed in space. A hub, the unmoving center of the universe, and the rest of the world was a shifting illusion swirling around them. But she was so warm, soft. Real.

  “Thank you,” she said finally. “For saving my life.”

  “Anytime.” He punctuated that statement by sliding his thumb into the warm recesses of her hand. He thought about the conference room table, and blood pounded in his ears. He fought it down. “I was, ah, wondering something.”

  Her fingers tightened around his. “Yes? What?”

  “If that earns me enough points to cancel out whatever the hell it was that I did to piss you off before.”

  He braced himself, but she didn’t freak out. She just made an impatient gesture with her free hand. “That’s it, Duncan. That’s exactly the problem. This idea that you have, that everything can be reduced to an economic exchange. Human emotions don’t run on a point system.”

  He sighed. “It’s a figure of speech, Nell,” he ground out.

  “No, it is not. Not with you.” Her voice was soft but stubborn.

  Aw, fuck. He drew comfort from the fact that she was still squeezing his hand. “It’s been a really hard night,” he said wearily. “This shit is complicated. Just show me some fucking mercy, already.”

  She grabbed him, gave him a quick, awkward hug. “Okay,” she whispered. “I hereby grant you points. Lots of them. Happy now?”

  “Very,” he said. And he was. He was hard, too. Like a diamond. He wanted to roll her onto the cushy leather seat and just have at her.

  “One question,” she said. “How did you happen to conveniently be there when they attacked? Were you following me?”

  Tension gripped him. Here was where he tiptoed over blown glass.

  “Yeah, I was,” he said. “I, uh, wanted to apologize. But I’m not great at it. And you were crying, and that intimidated me. And I didn’t even know what the hell I was apologizing for. So I stalled.”

  “Until I got attacked,” she said.

  “You have to admit, it was a great opening,” he offered. “Works like electroshock therapy. The woman forgets what she’s mad about.”

  She snorted with laughter. “Uh, yeah. Right.”

  “No, really,” he said. “If not for those guys, you’d still be pissed as hell, and I’d still be as confused as ever.” He paused. “I’m still confused,” he admitted. “And you’re probably still pissed. But at least you’re talking to me. That’s progress.”

  She harrumphed. “Talk about looking on the bright side.”

  “I might as well,” he observed.

  The car stopped outside her door. He told the driver to wait and got out, peering around the street before he let her out. He blocked her body with his as she unlocked the metal warehouse door, and peered around every twist of the echoing stairwell before letting her proceed.

  Her apartment was so full of books, there was barely space to move. The bathtub in the kitchen was covered with a wooden top. A mini water closet occupied the corner of the room. A half refrigerator was tucked under the sink. There was a two-burner gas range, a toaster oven. He’d never seen a place so miniature.

  He peered at the photos on the wall while she hustled around, pulling a suitcase out of her closet. Most were pictures of two young women and a distinguished-looking elderly woman in varying combinations and settings. “This is your mother, and sisters?”

  She glanced around from where she knelt in front of a small chest of drawers. “Yes.”

  He studied them. Pretty, like Nell, but in very different ways. “They don’t look anything like you,” he observed.

  “We’re all adopted,” Nell said. “Lucia took us in as foster children when we were teenagers.”

  That teasing bit of info made him curious. About who had made her, what had forged her. How she’d gotten to be so smart and pretty and difficult. But not tonight. There would be other chances. He hoped.

  She looked exhausted, staring down at two different T-shirts in her hands as if she couldn’t decide which one to bring.

  “Pack both,” he advised. “You’re not coming back for a while.”

  She shot him a narrow glance. He walked over to her, and knelt. She swayed back, her eyes going big and wary as he pulled her first drawer open. He grabbed a big fistful of silky stuff. All colors. Panties, stockings. Things made of lace, ribbons, silk. He dropped the tangled wad of stuff into the open suitcase. “Pack a lot,” he repeated softly.

  Her eyes dropped. Color rose in her face. Her nipples were tight, nubs poking against the stretchy fabric of her stained, rumpled dress.

  That white-hot episode in the conference room hung between them in the silence, complete in every heart-thudding erotic detail. She was licking her lower lip until it gleamed, enticing him. The look in her eyes was cautious, but there was a smile hidden in it.

  He scoped the room with his peripheral vision. The bed looked uncomfortable with those heaps of books, but the beanbag chair behind her had possibilities. He could wedge her into that and pin her down with his weight, juicily rocking and sliding. Her pussy doing that fluttering clutch around his cock every time she came. Yes.

  He reached out, let his fingertips slide down her cheek, her soft throat. Over her breastbone. He spread out his whole hand, felt the quick, hard throb of her heart against his palm. He slid his other hand up her thigh, to the top of her stockings, gripping her where the fabric ended, and soft, hot skin began. The energy grew, swelling into something huge and inevitable. She bit her lower lip, breathing hard.

  It happened again, as it had on the street. That feeling brushing by. A cobweb breaking across his mind, as his guard went down.

  He froze, and his grip tightened on her thigh. He looked around the small apartment. Nothing moving. Nothing had changed. It was silent. Just the sounds of the street outside.

  “What is it?” Nell asked.

  “Shhh,” he hushed h
er, feeling around with his subtlest senses.

  Two steps brought him to a barred window that looked out on a blind courtyard full of garbage cans. Empty. Just a couple of rats on the scrounge. He looked for a reason for the feeling. There always was one. By now, he trusted it blind. He was being watched. His neck crawled.

  His eyes fell on the smoke detector attached to the low ceiling. He reached up and carefully detached it.

  “Duncan, what are you—”

  “Shhh.” He didn’t want to talk, even to explain himself. Not with unfriendly eyes watching, unfriendly ears listening.

  It was almost too easy. The tiny vidcam was taped to the side of the black smoke detector, virtually invisible. The device had been gutted of its usual contents, the space inside the shell used to house the wiring and battery and radiofrequency transmitter of the camera. He stared at it, wishing that he had not touched it. Fingerfucking the evidence. Gant would lecture him. His friend never wasted an opportunity to give him hell.

  “What on earth is that thing?” Nell’s voice was thin and high.

  “A vidcam,” he said. “Someone’s been watching you.”

  She made a strangled sound. Put her hand over her mouth.

  Shit-eating bastards. Violating her hard-earned private space. Watching while she undressed, bathed, ate, slept. Probably watching her now, being hurt and scared. That infuriated him.

  He laid the thing down on her table. “Don’t touch it,” he said. “It might have prints.” He looked around the room again, trying to imagine where he would plant spyware, if he were one of them.

  She had an old-fashioned phone. He grabbed the horn, unscrewed the mouthpiece. Bingo. He shook the listening device onto the table without touching it, and answered the question in her eyes. “A drop-in bug,” he said. “They’ve been monitoring your phone conversations.”

  Her eyes were huge. “I…but I talked to Vivi just this morning—”

  “We’ll discuss it later,” he cut her off. “Not here. Let’s just get the fuck out of this place. It’s making my flesh creep.”

  “Ah, y-y-yes,” she agreed, flustered. She looked around herself, wildly. “Um…what was I—”

  “Laptop. And clothes,” he reminded her. “Quickly.”

  It didn’t take her long once he started helping, scooping stuff out of drawers at random. That perked her up. She shoved him away with an irritated sound and finished packing clothes, but then came the shoes, the toiletries bag: vials and bottles and tubes, packets of this and that. And then the books. Fuck a duck. She heaved eight of them into the huge suitcase. Big motherlovers, too. The trolley wheels were probably going to collapse.

  He dragged her out the door after that, scanned the stairwell landing, and stuck his head back inside her door. He made an obscene gesture, for the benefit of any hidden cameras he hadn’t found.

  “You’re not getting her,” he told the bug that lay on the table. “Fuck off and die, shithead.” He slammed the door, for emphasis.

  Nell was alarmingly quiet in the car, staring ahead, throat bobbing. He knew the feeling. She was trying to swallow it. It wouldn’t go down. But the silence was so heavy, it was making him twitch.

  He reached for the first thing he could think of to break it. “Do you have a copy of that letter your sister found?” he asked.

  “I have it scanned onto my computer,” she said. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I’m just—”

  “Interested. Yes. I’ve noticed.” There was a touch of acid in her voice that silenced him again.

  He stared out the window, wondering what his next move should be. He saw a Korean deli coming up on the corner, with banks of multicolored flowers on display. “Stop the car,” he told the driver.

  Nell looked startled, as the car braked and he flung the door open. “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “This’ll just take a second.”

  He stared at the flowers, at a loss, and grabbed a bunch of the best-looking long-stemmed roses out of a bucket. He handed the boy sitting next to the flowers a couple of twenties, and got back into the car.

  “Here.” He handed her the flowers, realizing too late that the long, thorny stems were still dripping. He hadn’t even had them tied, wrapped, trimmed, anything. But she was looking wide-eyed, charmed. She sniffed them. Smiled at him. It had worked. Praise God.

  After a moment, she groped for his hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I appreciate the fact that you’re interested. I’m probably alive because of it. I just don’t get it. Why is this happening? It’s senseless.”

  “Money,” Duncan said.

  She looked over at him, blankly. “Huh?”

  “Money is why this is happening,” he repeated.

  She looked doubtful. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, Duncan, but I don’t have very much of it. Practically none, to be honest.”

  He shook his head. “There’s a short list of probable motivations for crimes like this. Insanity, revenge, or money. It doesn’t look like you girls have pissed anyone off that badly—”

  “We haven’t,” she cut in. “We’re goody-goody pussycats.”

  “And there’s the murdered jeweller and his whole family, too, so I’d strike personal revenge as a motive. We could consider revenge against your mother, but that falls pretty flat, since she’s passed on. Insanity’s a possibility, but there are the references in those letters, to maps, searches, keys, secrets. Whoever this dickhead is, he’s invested time and money watching you, and probably your sisters, too. Whatever Lucia wanted you girls to find? It means big bucks. Very big. And they’re not going to stop till they have it.”

  Nell hid her eyes and massaged her temples. “It’s so ironic,” she murmured. “If that’s true. We don’t need this money, wherever it comes from. We don’t give a shit about money. None of us do. All we want is to live our lives in peace. Oh, God. There’s so much to freak out about, I’m in tilt.”

  “Don’t think about any of it,” he suggested.

  “Slick solution. Neat trick.” There was a smile in her voice. “And just exactly how do you suggest I do that?”

  It had been such a weird evening already, he decided one more crazy risk wouldn’t change anything. He lifted her hand, and gave it a long, lingering kiss. “I’ve got a few good ideas,” he said.

  She laughed behind her hand, and the vibrations in her shoulders went on for so long, he got scared she was crying again.

  “I had no idea I was so damn funny,” he said. “Who knew.”

  Her shoulders shook harder. She threw her head back, and wiped her eyes. “It’s not you. I just can’t believe it. I felt safe, in my place, after I put the alarm in. The thing cost a fortune. And the whole while, they were watching me. God, it’s disgusting. How did they get in there?”

  “They probably wired the place before you put the alarm in.” He handed her his phone. “Call your sister. If she’s told you where she’s going on that telephone, tell her to change her plans.”

  “Oh, God, you’re right,” she whispered. “Vivi.”

  She called, and he listened to her garbled, one-sided conversation for the rest of the drive to his Upper West Side condo. The driver pulled over at the lobby entrance. She was still talking as he paid the driver.

  “…can’t stay with me there any longer, Viv. Haven’t you been listening? They’ve been watching us all along! We can’t go near the place until we fix this mess. Go to Liam and Nancy’s…Yes, I know, but be a grown-up, Viv. Being a fifth wheel is better than being stuffed into the backseat of a car…. Oh, no, don’t worry about me. I’m staying with a friend.” Her eyes flicked to Duncan. Her voice got defensive. “No, you don’t know him…. Yes, it is a him, okay? And so? What of it?”

  Duncan heard a shrill, tinny burst of female verbosity from the telephone, and Nell rolled her eyes and snorted. “If you must know, he’s the one who clobbered the kidnappers for me…. Of course I knew him before! He’s my new boss.” Another impassioned burst from the phone. “Look, Viv, I
know it’s crazy, but can we thrash this out another time? Come to the seisìun at Malloy’s tomorrow night with Nancy and Liam, and we’ll talk there, okay?…Of course. You be careful, too.”

  She ended the call and handed the phone back. “She’s staying with an old art school friend she met at the fair by chance, so we never discussed it on the bugged phone. Thank God. The Fiend has no line on her there.”

  “Could you folks work this out once you’re outside the vehicle?” the driver asked, his voice plaintive. “I got another call. I gotta go.”

  Duncan led her into his building, dragging her huge trolley behind him into the elevator. Up thirty-five floors, and he closed the door after her, engaged the chain, the dead bolts, the alarms.

  He let out a long, relieved breath. Finally. He had her right where he wanted her.

  Chapter

  6

  Nell looked around, impressed. His apartment was huge, almost empty. Austere to the point of chilliness. Blond wood on the wide expanse of gleaming floor. Three gray couches, grouped in a square around a low table with a vast plasma TV and entertainment console. A big, shadowy kitchen, back in a distant corner. Picture windows with stunning, brilliant cityscapes on two sides. A big terrace. A scattering of black-and-white photographs hung on otherwise blank walls.

  “Wow,” she murmured. “Is this place, uh, yours?”

  He nodded.

  Um. This apartment answered any questions a person might have about how lucrative the business of intelligent data analysis program design had been for him. It beat academia and poetry writing all to hell. Not that it mattered. She hadn’t chosen to be a scholar for money.

  He disappeared into the kitchen. Lights flipped on. She heard water running, clattering and clinking. When he came back out, he was holding out a big glass of wine, so densely red it was almost black.

  “This stuff will knock you out on an empty stomach, so sip it slowly,” he said. “I’ve got some water on to boil for some artichoke ravioli, and some red sauce. That work for you?”