Unspeakable

by Elisabeth Naughton

  “Trust you?” She stumbled back another step, and her eyes grew so wide the whites were visible even from ten yards away in the dark. “Trust you? So you can try to kidnap me too?”

  “That’s not—”

  “You’re sick. All of you. Even her. Trusting sick fucks like you almost got me killed.”

  For the first time since that gun had gone off, Rusty remembered Blake had shown up. He glanced over his shoulder and spotted Blake motionless on the ground against the wall.

  Fuck.

  He didn’t know if she’d been shot. He was pretty sure he’d only heard one gunshot, but he couldn’t be sure. And in the dim light—and from this distance—he couldn’t tell if she was bleeding.

  His gaze darted to the motionless guy in a pool of blood in the middle of the tunnel, the one who must have charged the girl in the dark, not knowing she’d found the other guy’s weapon. Dumbass bastard. Then his gaze swung to the second guy, the one against the wall that he’d pounded to the ground with his fist.

  Double fuck. Mihail was gone.

  “Look, we don’t have a lot of ti—”

  Before he could even swivel back the girl’s way, the pounding of footsteps against the hard ground met his ears. He looked in her direction just as she darted around a corner and disappeared from sight.

  “Motherfucker,” he muttered. “Don’t be stupid!” he yelled. “Come back here before you get yourself lost!”

  Silence echoed back at him.

  He needed to go after her. There was no telling who else was in these tunnels. But he couldn’t. Not until he made sure Blake wasn’t dead.

  “Son of a bitch motherfucker,” he muttered louder, crossing quickly back to Blake, avoiding the body in the middle of the passageway and the pool of blood he was not about to let stain the soles of his boots.

  That would just make his fucking year. Yeah, his parents would be super proud to know their son had been arrested for murder.

  Stop thinking about that shit.

  He dropped to one knee beside Blake. The woman was sprawled on her back on the dirt floor, her head tipped to the side, her dark hair fanned out around her, eyes closed as if she were sound asleep. Shining the light of his phone over her, he glanced down her body but couldn’t see any obvious signs of injury. No blood staining her clothing anywhere. No bullet holes in her slim jeans. He tugged one side of her fitted black leather jacket open and checked her torso but still saw no wounds. Her two-inch chunky-heel gray boots weren’t even broken.

  Frowning because this was a delay he didn’t need, he lifted his hand above her face and snapped his fingers. The dead guy must have shoved her against the wall when the lights went out, and in the chaos she’d bumped her head. Yeah, she was a tough one, all right. Couldn’t even handle a single scuffle. “Wake up, Blake.”

  She didn’t respond. Didn’t even move a muscle.

  His irritation shot up another notch. Tossing a glance over his shoulder, he listened to see if he could hear the girl. No sound met his ears. Not even an echo.

  “I don’t have fucking time for this.” He looked back at Blake and snapped again.

  Still no response.

  He scowled. This woman was not his concern. The girl running scared through the tunnels was the only thing he cared about. And if he lost her . . .

  “Dammit.” He pressed his fingers against the far side of Blake’s jaw and tilted her head his way, giving her chin a small shake. “This is—”

  His words died away when he saw the gash in her temple and the blood covering the whole left side of her face. “Shit.”

  Frustration turned to a sickening feeling in the bottom of his gut. He had two choices now, and neither one was going to get him the girl he’d come after tonight.

  And neither one, he had a strong hunch, was going to end well for him.

  A groan roused Harper from the darkness. A groan she belatedly realized had come from her.

  She blinked to clear the blurriness from her vision and tried to catch her bearings, but nothing in her line of sight was familiar.

  A lamp. A side table. Something slightly swaying near a watery blue light. Curtains?

  She blinked again, trying to figure out where she was, how she’d gotten here, and what had happened to her, but her mind was in a fog, memories and thoughts disjointed and out of order.

  She rolled onto her back, groaning again with the movement. Her body was stiff, her muscles not moving right. What was wrong with her?

  “Try to stay still,” a voice said somewhere to her left.

  A male voice.

  She froze and stared wide-eyed into the darkness, trying to see who’d spoken, trying to figure out who was with her and where the hell she even was. All she could make out was the dark outline of a man looming over her.

  A big man.

  She shot upright only to regret it as pain stabbed at her skull from every direction like a thousand knives slashing right into her brain.

  Her hands darted to her pounding head, and her eyes slammed shut. A groan—this time a groan she knew had come from her—echoed through the room, louder than the first two.

  A heavy sigh met her ears. “You don’t listen. Why am I not surprised?”

  Footsteps sounded, and Harper desperately wanted to open her eyes and see where the mystery man was going—who the mystery man was—but the pain slicing through her gray matter was too intense for her to do anything but sit still and whimper.

  “Here.” Thick fingers wrapped around her left hand, pulling it away from her forehead. Two small round objects dropped into her palm. “Take these.”

  Pills. He was giving her some kind of pills. She hesitated, still unable to open her eyes and look up at him because the pain was too intense.

  “Don’t worry,” he said in the darkness. “It’s just acetaminophen.”

  She managed to pull her eyes open enough to look down at the pills in her hand, confirming what he said. Small white pills stamped with a familiar logo. Her instincts said not to trust him, but she was in too much pain to do anything but pop the pills in her mouth. As soon as her hand came away from her lips, he pressed a cool glass into her grip, and she lifted it, grateful for the water.

  She swallowed the meds, and he took the glass from her before she could decide what to do with it. Something clicked to her left, and then a rustling sounded at her back. “You need to relax,” he said from somewhere above her. “You’re not going anywhere anytime soon in your condition.”

  Tearing her eyes open once more, she looked up at his silhouette not more than a foot away and realized something about him was familiar. Something about his shape and the sound of his voice. And the instant his woodsy scent hit her senses, the panic she’d felt inside before instantly melted and was replaced with a warmth that came out of nowhere and only confused her more.

  It hit her all at once—who he was, when she’d last seen him, and what he’d been doing. Hit her hard like a swift punch to the gut, stealing her breath.

  Russell McClane.

  She should have been disgusted—her last memory of him was catching him in those tunnels trying to kidnap that underage girl. She should have been scared—he was the lead person of interest in another underage girl’s disappearance. But she was neither. Her blood was continuing to warm, and her muscles were relaxing under his watchful stare one by one.

  His silhouette moved closer, and realizing he was leaning toward her, she tensed. Not from fear, though. No, instead of reacting like a normal person in this situation, she was tensing at the thought of his big, masculine hands touching her—everywhere.

  “Relax,” McClane said in a low, irritated tone. A tone that shouldn’t be sexy but was. Really was. “I’m just checking the stitches.”

  His last word echoed in her pain-riddled mind, and as she tried to make sense of it, something tugged at the skin on the left side of her forehead.

  “These are fine. You need to keep the stitches covered for a few days, though.”


  He smoothed something back over her forehead, and belatedly, she realized it was a bandage.

  “Stitches?” she managed to say as his fuzzy silhouette moved away from her and that intoxicatingly refreshing scent of his faded. “What stitches?”

  “The stitches you needed when you cracked your skull open. Don’t worry. I’ve stitched up wounds before. You might luck out and not even have a scar.”

  She blinked and stared after him, trying to make sense of his words. She was having trouble processing. Why was she having such trouble processing?

  “You should try to get some sleep.”

  Sleep?

  The word revolved in her head, and without even realizing what she was doing, she reclined back against a trio of pillows.

  She was in a bed. Her gaze darted around the dark room, and she spotted the lamp and table she’d first seen when she’d awoken, a dark window with watery blue light covered by swaying thin curtains, a dresser opposite the queen-size bed, and to her right, a door that led . . . she didn’t know where.

  She still didn’t know where she was. The only thing she knew for certain was this wasn’t her bedroom. And she had no idea how she’d gotten here after she’d seen McClane in those tunnels with that girl.

  “Wh-what happened?” she asked, struggling to remember. Why the hell couldn’t she remember?

  From the dresser where he was doing something she couldn’t quite see, he turned and folded his arms over his chest. Then stared across the room at her as if she were a fly he wanted to squash against the window. “What happened?”

  This time she didn’t hear annoyance in his voice. She recognized the tone as anger. Very restrained anger. An anger that dampened the wicked attraction she had been feeling and reminded her she was in a very precarious situation. With a man she didn’t know. Who could, in fact, be a killer.

  “I’ll tell you what happened. You fucked things up for me. Badly. And I’m not happy about that.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Rusty frowned, hating the way Blake seemed to shrink back into the pillows at his words.

  He drew a deep breath, forcibly relaxing his shoulders so he wouldn’t scare her any more than he already had. He knew he intimidated people with his size and presence. He was used to people avoiding him. But for some reason, he didn’t like seeing that reaction from Blake now. And he disliked even more that he even cared what she thought of him.

  Man-hater, he reminded himself. She’d pegged him as guilty from the moment she’d met him in Renwick’s office. And he was sure she’d only followed him into those tunnels because she’d expected to catch him in the act.

  He leaned back against the old dresser and crossed one foot over the other, hoping it made him look relaxed, but he couldn’t keep from clenching his jaw when he said, “How long have you been following me?”

  “I . . .” She glanced around the dark room again, only a sliver of moonlight shining over her on the bed. “I’m not sure.” She lifted one hand to her forehead, careful near her bandage, and winced. “I can’t quite remember.”

  Convenient excuse. He fought back a frown. “Could be the concussion. Could be a lie.”

  “Concussion?” Her head came up, and confusion clouded her hazel eyes when they locked on his. Hazel eyes that weren’t the least bit alluring, dammit. “What concussion?”

  Man, she was really drawing this out. “The one you got when you smacked your head against the tunnel wall.”

  Her gaze skipped over the room once more, then drifted back to his. “How . . . ?” She lowered her hand to her lap and drew her knees up under the thin blanket. “How did that happen? I don’t remember.”

  He wasn’t buying her act. She might not have seen the guy who plowed into her—even Rusty hadn’t seen him until after the fact—but she’d seen Rusty in the tunnel just before the lights had gone out. “Let’s cut the crap, why don’t we? I know you were following me. I know you’re a former cop and you probably have buddies still at PPD. Were you hoping to pin shit on me? Is that why you were down in those tunnels?”

  She stared at him and slowly blinked. “No, I . . . I was trying to find Melony Strauss. I work for Renwick, remember? The easiest way for me to prove you had nothing to do with her disappearance is to find her.”

  “And you thought you’d find her by following me?”

  “No, I . . .” She looked around again, and he could tell she was fighting hard to remember . . . or maybe just to find the right words to cover her ass. “I talked to a couple girls on the street. Showed them Melony’s picture. They hadn’t seen her, but one of them mentioned a man—you,” she said, looking up, “having just been there asking about another girl. She’s the one who told me you’d gone to that strip club.”

  Shit. Rusty drew a breath and stared at Blake across the room. The hookers had ratted him out. He needed to be more careful about covering his tracks, obviously.

  “Who was that guy in the tunnel?” she asked. “The one with the gun?”

  He was thankful she wasn’t asking what he’d expected—like what the hell he was doing chasing an underage girl or what he planned to do with her when he found her. “Someone you don’t want to run into again, trust me.”

  “What happened to him?”

  Rusty shrugged. “Don’t know. After the lights went out, he ran.”

  It wasn’t a complete lie. He figured a half truth was better than nothing.

  “Is he the one who hit me?”

  “No.” He was a little surprised she wasn’t assuming he’d hit her. Considering what she already thought of him. “That was one of his business associates.”

  “And what happened to that guy?”

  Since that guy was probably still lying facedown in that tunnel, Rusty decided to sidestep that question. A shooting—even if it was in self-defense—wasn’t something he was about to implicate himself in with a former cop. “I don’t know.”

  She blinked at him across the space, looking small and just the slightest bit fragile. Which was an asinine thought considering she’d been a cop who’d been fired for sexual harassment. “And what about the girl? Where is she now?”

  “That I also don’t know.” With an edge of annoyance, he added, “When you showed up unexpectedly, everything kind of turned to shit.”

  Silence met his ears, then quietly she said, “Wait. Were you trying to help that girl?”

  Why the surprise in her voice irritated him more than anything else, he’d never know. All he knew was that she was the last person he needed to waste time explaining himself to.

  He pushed away from the dresser. “It’s late. I’ll arrange a ride for you in the morning.”

  He reached the open door before her voice stopped him. “Ride? From where? Where are we?”

  Someplace he shouldn’t have taken her. “My house. Since you didn’t have any ID on you, I didn’t have a whole lot of options.” He tugged the door closed behind him as he left. “Don’t cause any more trouble tonight. I’ve pretty much reached my limit.”

  The click of the door closing echoed in his ears in the dark hallway, as loud as that gunshot had sounded in that tunnel.

  Shit. This was the dumbest thing he’d ever done. He should have dumped Blake at an ER and been done with the woman. No, better yet, he should have left her in that tunnel and gone after the girl. Thanks to tonight’s antics, Blake was now a witness in her disappearance, and he had no doubt the woman wouldn’t hold back from fingering him as the suspect if questioned. She’d decided long ago he was guilty. The skepticism in her question just moments ago told him loud and clear nothing she’d seen tonight had changed her opinion.

  Shaking his head at his stupidity, he bypassed his bedroom—too close to the guest room where Blake would soon be sleeping—and instead headed down the stairs of his farmhouse and into the basement where he’d set up his study. He wasn’t getting any sleep tonight. The smartest thing he could do was start researching where the girl from tonight might have gone
.

  Or which girl he was going after next.

  Harper couldn’t sleep. She’d tried clearing her mind. She’d tried the relaxation breathing technique her therapist had taught her. She’d even tried counting sheep, but nothing worked. Her brain couldn’t stop spinning with thoughts of McClane and why he’d brought her to his house.

  The man did not like her. She didn’t need to be clairvoyant to pick up on his distaste. Then again, she hadn’t done anything to earn his approval. Including, she realized, asking him if he’d been helping that girl tonight.

  She threw back the covers so cool air could wash over her body. She was hot. Hot and bothered, and not just because she couldn’t figure out McClane’s motives. Now that her head wasn’t so foggy, she remembered more of what she’d seen in that tunnel. McClane hadn’t been touching that girl. He hadn’t been the one holding a gun. The hooker on the street had said he was a good guy, not a bad one. Even the stripper he’d taken down to that room beneath the club had said . . . What had she said?

  Harper stared up at the dark ceiling and racked her brain, thinking back to her conversation with Destiny. She’d said he hadn’t done anything with her. That he’d just been after information. About a young girl. And Destiny had told him about the tunnels. That—

  A memory flashed in her brain. “That’s how Mihail gets them out.”

  Slowly, Harper sat up. The pounding in her skull was more a dull throb now, but she didn’t let it deter her. Replaying that entire conversation again, she combined it with what she’d seen in that tunnel. And realized . . . “Shit.”

  McClane hadn’t been transporting that girl out of the club for himself. He’d intercepted the bald guy with the gun who’d been taking her out for something—or someone—else.

  She still wasn’t sure why. She still didn’t know what McClane had been doing there or how he’d known something like that would go down tonight. But she planned to find out.

  A buzzing sound echoed through the room. Brow lowered, Harper glanced around, only to realize it was coming from her jacket, which was thrown over a plush chair in the corner of the small room.