Dark Legacy: (Dark Falls, CO Romantic Thriller Book 3)

by Trish McCallan

  She expected him to pull back after Mason had caught them practically in flagrante delicto. Well—maybe not literally. But who knows where things would have led if they hadn’t been interrupted. Only Rhys hadn’t retreated.

  Oh, he hadn’t dragged her off to the bedroom and had his way with her in private—mores the pity. But he hadn’t retreated either. He hadn’t avoided her. And this place was plenty big enough that he could have hidden from her, if he’d wanted to.

  Of course, it would be mighty hard to guard someone if you were hiding from them. She worked that realization over for a few minutes before shaking it off. Maybe she was reading him wrong, but she didn’t think so. It seemed almost like he was waiting, waiting until the situation was more amenable to emotions…aka…lovemaking.

  She understood that. He couldn’t afford to be distracted. Couldn’t afford to lose his senses or his focus. A lapse in judgement could get him killed—get them both killed.

  The man after her had proved his resourcefulness by tracking her down twice now. They couldn’t afford to assume he wouldn't find her a third time.

  So regardless of Mason’s teasing comments about the “porn chair” and the banked heat in Rhys’s eyes, she’d held her distance. Kept her libido in check and did everything she possibly could to help Rhys do his job.

  But once this case was finished? All bets were off. She was going to lasso and seduce the man. He had her word on it.

  Footsteps sounded in the dining room behind her. The floor in that particular room was wood, so it was easy to hear someone approach. Although you wouldn’t know it from the way Mason had caught them earlier.

  She grinned at the memory. To be fair, as hot and heavy as they were going at it, they probably wouldn’t have noticed a herd of buffalo stampeding around them.

  The footsteps in the dining room paused. They had to belong to Mason. She would have heard Rhys open the front door. Mason must be wondering where she was at.

  “I’m in here,” she called out, listening to the footsteps start up again, and head in her direction.

  If she had any modesty at all, she’d feel uncomfortable around Rhys’s partner. Embarrassed by what he’d walked in on. But she wasn’t. It wasn’t like he’d caught them naked, in the middle of the act, so to speak. And intimacy was natural, a part of life. Besides, they’d been fully clothed. Maybe not fully in control, but certainly clothed. There really hadn’t been anything there for Mason to see.

  Now if he had caught them naked and going at—

  She frowned and sniffed. There was the oddest smell drifting into the room, almost sweet, like—

  Rotten fruit

  Holy hell.

  Her breath blasted the air. She ducked, rolling out of the armchair and onto the floor. She kept rolling and ended up under the coffee table.

  A crackling, buzzing noise sounded above and behind her, where she’d been just moments before and the acrid smell of smoke filled the air. Her heart slammed against her ribs as she kept rolling.

  What the hell?

  Where’s Mason?

  She spun on her knees once she cleared the coffee table, just in time too. Craig Patel lunged at her, a stun gun in his hand. She hefted the coffee table and threw it at him, then leapt to her feet.

  A grunt broke from him as the table struck. But he didn’t lose his grip on the stun gun. Damnit.

  Keep him talking, keep him distracted, buy some time.

  “So it was you all this time,” she said, carefully backing away from him.

  “Glad someone finally figured that out.” He huffed and took a lurching step toward her.

  He was between her and the sitting room door, at least on this side of the arm chairs. But if she could draw him closer and dart around the back of the chairs, she might just have a chance to get away. Her gaze dropped to the gun holstered against his side and back up to his face.

  He obviously wanted to incapacitate her and take her alive. But he still had that gun available…he could lose patience and pull it on her instead.

  She ran strategies as she took another careful step back.

  Keep him talking…

  “What did you do to Mason?”

  The crash of the coffee table, and smell of smoke, should have brought Rhys’s partner running.

  If he was capable of running.

  “I took care of him. That’s what I did.”

  “What does that mean?” Had the bastard killed Mason? Tased him? Tied him up? Was Mason still alive?

  “It means shut your fucking trap.”

  She could tell he tried to sound mean, aggressive, but his voice was too weak to carry it off. She scanned his eyes, his greasy face. And her pulse slowed. The man did not look well at all. She could use that to her advantage.

  “You killed Rhys’s sister, framed my dad.” Another stealthy step back.

  Come on, come on you bastard, follow me.

  He moved forward with a heavy step. “You always were the smart one.”

  “Why?” This time she took a giant step back. If he followed her this time, she could make her move, make him pay.

  “Why, what?”

  Come on…come on…

  “Why my dad? Why Rhys’s sister?”

  Please…take that damn step.

  “Why your dad? Because he was your father, and you were Rhys’s girlfriend. Why Rayne? Because she was Rhys’s sister.”

  So it all went back to Rhys?

  “But why?”

  “Because he needed to be taught a lesson. He needed to be cut down to size. He needed to learn that he’s not Dark Fall’s golden boy. Sure, he could play ball. Big fucking deal. So he beat some records and picked up some awards—that will get you a job at Burger King, if you’re lucky.”

  Ariel froze, staring across the room in disbelief. Good Lord, he actually sounded jealous. Something niggled at her, something about football and high school heroes. Patel had played football back in the day. He’d been his generation’s most valuable player. But Rhys had smashed through every record Patel had held. She thought back to those long ago football games, the jubilant partying afterwards. Patel had been a friend of Rhys’s coach. He’d come to every game. Joined in on the partying afterwards. He and Rhys had heckled each other constantly, back and forth taunting about who was the better player.

  It had become a post-game tradition.

  But it had been all in good fun…

  …Hadn’t it?

  She stared at the rage twisting his face. Apparently Patel had taken the heckling personally.

  “You were jealous,” she said slowly, the connection clicking into place. “That’s why you killed Rayne?” Her voice rose incredulously. “You killed Rayne and framed my dad because you were jealous that Rhys played ball better than you?”

  Could it be that simple? Could it be that crazy?

  “He didn’t play better than me!” Patel’s voice flattened, turned ugly. He took a threatening step forward, as though rage gave him strength. “He broke my records—so what? He got fucking lucky, that’s all. But I took that luck away.” He took another step. “I proved who was better. Who was smarter. I took you and Rayne away from him. I’ve been playing him every fucking day since.”

  Yep. Crazy. That described him perfectly.

  As he advanced on her, she swung around, grabbing the tall, round table with the heavy copper kettle on top and threw both at him.

  When this was over, she was going to owe the owner of this house some new furniture and knickknacks.

  She didn’t wait to see what happened, just darted around the corner of the armchair as a horrendous crash split the room. She fled down the path behind the chair. Book spines and shelves flew past her on the right.

  She hit the wood floor of the dining room with her sock covered feet, and her legs slid out from under her. One moment she was on her feet, the next her back, still sliding across the floor.

  And then that overripe stench of his enveloped her. She rolled. A buzzing
crackle flooded her ears, followed by a heavy whack.

  Burning wood charred the air.

  The instant Rhys opened the door and walked into the house, he smelled smoke. Beneath the scent of something burning lingered another scent. Sweeter this time. Cloying.

  Sonofabitch.

  His blood surged, his lungs tightened. His heart tried to hammer its way out his chest. He shoved Ariel out of his mind, along with his fear for her, and grabbed hold of his training, yanking it over the panic.

  Calm fell. Cold focus returned. He reached for his weapon, unholstered it, and took it in hand. Without his cell phone, there was no way to call for backup. He and Mason were in this on their own. Hell, where was Mason?

  How the fuck had Patel found them?

  Didn’t matter; he had. End of story.

  Easing over to the right side of the entryway, Rhys hugged the wall and listened. He heard voices one room over, but couldn’t hear what they were saying. A metallic crash hammered the air, and he jolted forward a few steps.

  Suddenly Ariel flew into view. Patel was hard on her heels, with a Taser in his hand. He jabbed it at her as Rhys raised his weapon.

  She skidded on the wood floor and lost her balance. As she hit the ground, Patel pounced, thrusting the Taser at her again. He missed, but only because Ariel rolled out of the way in time.

  The Taser struck the floor with a solid thunk, and burning wood joined the smell of smoke.

  “Patel!” he yelled, sighting his weapon on the older detective…his mentor…his friend.

  His suspect, he reminded himself coldly.

  When Patel spun—his hand diving for the weapon holstered against his ribs—Rhys pulled the trigger.

  The shot reverberated through his head, ringing in his ears as he watched the X-Factor Killer slump to the floor.

  Before he had a chance to move forward, Ariel reached out to snatch the Taser up, and then rolled onto her ass and scooted across the floor.

  “Is he dead?” Her voice was eerily calm. Her gaze fixed on the still form across from her.

  Rhys looked from the big red splotch spreading across Patel’s white dress shirt, to his sightless, open eyes. “Looks that way.”

  But he bent, pressing a finger to the flaccid throat to make sure.

  The bastard must have come straight from the station. He was still wearing his business casual attire, with his holstered weapon strapped to his side and his badge clipped to his belt.

  “We need to find Mason.” For the first time Ariel’s voice shook. “Patel said he took care of him.” Her voice shook harder, so hard her chin even trembled. “But he never said what that meant. Maybe he’s still alive?”

  Maybe. But Mason wasn’t here. He wasn’t backing Rhys up—which meant he was either dead or incapacitated.

  Damnit, they needed a fucking phone. He froze as a thought occurred to him. Patel had a phone. A quick search of the front pockets on his mentor’s pants proved fruitless. But then Patel had always carried his cell in his back pants pocket, stuck there halfway exposed, as though he were just daring someone to snatch it.

  A wave of …something…some strong emotion … hit him, muddying his mind. He set his jaw and rolled Patel’s body over. This time he hit pay dirt.

  After pulling the exposed cell phone loose from Patel’s back pocket, Rhys rose to his feet, and walked over to Ariel. He grasped the hand she offered and pulled her upright.

  He wanted to hold her. To lock her in his arms and keep her there forever, to taste the sweet honey of her lips and gaze into the forever of her eyes. But there wasn’t time. They needed to find Mason.

  Now.

  Every second might matter.

  They split up to cover more ground, which played hell with his mental health. If he wasn’t worrying about Mason bleeding out in some dark corner of the house, he was worried about Ariel searching the house on her own.

  She’s not in danger. She’ll be fine on her own. Do your fucking job.

  The words rolled round and round in his mind, and did nothing at all to still the anxiety. True there was every indication that Patel had worked alone, but that’s all they had to go on. Indications.

  Which were hardly scientific and often wrong.

  He alerted dispatch and Scanlon, on Patel’s phone, as he searched from room to room.

  “I found him,” Ariel hollered from the back corner of the house.

  He headed in the direction of her voice at a run, trying to decide what emotion had been in her voice.

  Had it been joy? Which would mean she’d found Mason alive. Or despair, indicating he wasn’t.

  “Ariel?” he called out as he reached the back of the house.

  “Here.” She yelled back.

  He bolted to the end of the hall and took a hard turn left, into the laundry room. A quick scan showed the laundry room doorframe splintered and torn, and Mason sitting up, rubbing his temple. A lumpish, brackish bruise was already forming.

  Rhys checked him from head to toe for blood. Nothing. He relaxed.

  “I thought I heard something back here. So came to check it out. The bastard tased me from behind.” He rubbed his hair again, his green eyes furious. “It was Patel. The bastard.”

  “He’s dead.” Ariel offered quietly, her voice neutral.

  Rhys had to hand it to her, she had every right to sound jubilant. Patel had been responsible for destroying her family. But there was no joy in her voice. No regret either. But than regret would have been pushing it.

  “The paramedics are en route,” he told Mason when his partner tried to climb to his feet. “Why don’t you stay put?”

  Mason ignored him and staggered up. With a shrug, Rhys turned away. His partner was a big boy. If he wanted to ignore common sense and protocol, that was his business.

  Besides. He had more important business to attend to.

  And she was called Ariel.

  When he stepped toward her and opened his arms, Arie stepped right into them. Instantly, the tight achy tension across his chest evaporated. His breathing eased. He bent, taking her lips in a slow, relieved kiss, smiling against her lips as she instantly responded.

  That was his Ariel for you, matching him step for step. Kiss for kiss. One thousand percent.

  “Um…guys…I hear tires. The first responders are here.” Mason informed them in a cautious voice.

  Rhys leaned deeper into the kiss, opening his lips to the stroke of Ariel’s tongue. Pleasure hummed through him.

  “Seriously Rhys—”

  Rhys tuned Mason out. He was a big boy too, capable of making his own decisions. His own choices.

  And he chose Ariel. Above his career, above his life.

  Above everything.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A week later, to the day, Rhys settled on the couch next to Ariel and draped an arm around her shoulder. Ariel grinned, sliding a quick, anticipatory glance toward the swelling in his crotch. Yep, he was full of anticipation too.

  In fact, he was feeling so much anticipation, his jeans couldn’t hide it.

  Tonight was the night, she could sense it. They were going to have wild monkey sex. They were going to break all of her very high expectations. Every. One. Of. Them. And she could not wait.

  But first they needed to have some fun.

  The past week had been rough, dawn to dusk kind of rough. They’d been questioned about the events at the second safe house countless times. Rhys far more often than her. He’d been the one to pull the trigger. The one to shoot and kill a fellow detective…Another cop.

  The top brass didn’t like cops killing cops.

  Even with Mason and Ariel’s accounts backing him up, Rhys had been put through the ringer. He’d been questioned by everyone from the chief of police to the police commissioner.

  “Has any evidence surfaced that he was the X-Factor Killer?” she asked, before remembering she was planning to keep things light. Their conversation was supposed to avoid subjects like crime, or law enforce
ment, or serial killers.

  Rather than answering he tapped the side of his nose, which was his less than subtle way of telling her to keep her nose out of it.

  She rolled her eyes before reaching for her wine glass on the coffee table in front of the couch.

  While Patel had confessed to her his reasons for killing Rhys’s sister, and framing her father, nobody else had heard his confession. She’d told her police interrogators over and over again, word for word, exactly what the ugly detective had said—

  Her glass of wine froze in midair.

  The ugly detective…

  She could use that.

  Setting her wine glass back down on the coffee table, she dragged her purse over and scrabbled through it for pen and paper. Once she’d acquired both, she jotted the title down.

  “Let me guess: you thought of something you can use in your book.” His voice was dry, but the blue eyes watching her gleamed with amusement.

  She made a face at him. “I don’t understand why your buddies on the force won’t believe what I told them.” She complained, ignoring the fact that her outspoken animosity towards Patel might possibly be construed as giving her an ulterior motive to lie about what he’d said…as Rhys had informed her. Repeatedly. “He admitted it, damnit. He told me he was the X-Factor Killer.”

  “No.” A shadow slide through Rhys eyes, erasing the amused gleam. “He admitted killing Rayne. He admitted setting up your father. But you said he never mentioned any of the other murders.”

  “Semantics.” She waved a hand dismissing his argument. “He planted the mementoes, so he must have taken them from the women he killed.”

  Rhys shrugged. “There’s no evidence to support that theory.”

  Ariel glowered back. Rhys and his evidence. Since Patel was dead, they could hardly interrogate the bastard and force the admission that he was the X-Factor Killer from him. Which meant the police were piecing together the case against him slowly, if they were even building a case.

  When she’d asked him earlier in the week about the scratches on her dad’s gun safe, he’d shocked the crap out of her by admitting his captain had sent the crime lab down to take fresh samples. Of course he’d immediately doused her excitement at that news by informing her the new tests had been inconclusive.