by Kay Hooper
“Yes,” he said. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
It was a Monday evening, but it was also in-season for the beach community and surrounding areas, so the restaurant Ash had chosen on the outskirts of Castle was doing brisk business. The good news, as far as Riley was concerned, was that the majority of that business consisted of summer visitors, most of whom didn’t know one another.
Knowledge or memory?
She wasn’t sure. Dammit.
In any case, if the restaurant’s customers on this night even knew a body had been found only a couple of miles away, it didn’t appear to be hampering their enjoyment of the quiet music and excellent seafood.
Riley did, however, catch at least a couple of glances and smiles aimed toward them as she and Ash were seated in a semisecluded back corner booth and left alone with their menus, and she murmured, “Nobody looks too panicked.”
“Yet,” he said. “But you can bet word of what was found this afternoon is spreading. By morning the summer visitors will be uneasy, some to the point of packing up early. The locals will be worried and demanding answers. More calls to my office, that’s for sure. But I don’t envy Jake, since he and his people will get the brunt of it.”
“Part of the job.”
“Probably not what he signed on for, though. Not in Hazard County.”
“You either, I guess.”
“No,” Ash said after a moment. “I didn’t sign on for it either.”
Riley was looking at her menu but not really studying it. Something else was nagging at her. “Jake said nobody’d been reported missing.”
“Yeah. You think who the victim is—or was—might be more important than how he was found?”
“At least as important, surely.”
“No random sacrificial victim?”
“I’ll have to do some research,” she said, hedging her bets since she couldn’t remember just what Ash knew of her background, “but offhand I can’t think of any sort of black-occult ritual centering around the sacrifice of a victim chosen at random or just because he happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. Rituals tend to be very controlled, very specific. Especially when they involve anything as extreme as a blood sacrifice.”
“So I take it all the urban legends about homeless people disappearing, to be used in satanic rites or as part of a black market for organs, are just that. Urban legends.”
It was at least half a question, and Riley nodded in response as she met his intent gaze. “The vast majority of stories like that are about as real as leprechauns. The Bureau conducted an exhaustive investigation years ago, when half the country seemed convinced there were devil worshippers on every corner, and didn’t find a shred of evidence to support all the scary claims of ritual human sacrifices during black sabbats.”
“Yet there are genuine satanic rites practiced.”
“Even genuine satanic rites don’t involve murder. You have to get beyond…conventional…Satanism and really out on the fringes to find that sort of thing.”
“Seriously? There are fringes beyond Satanism?”
“You’d be surprised.” He really did have the most amazing eyes. She hadn’t known eyes came in such a pale shade of green. Not human eyes, at any rate.
“So if we have occult activity here that involved a ritual murder, it isn’t likely those responsible are satanists?”
“Some fringe groups call themselves satanists. So it’s still possible. Or it’s some other group calling themselves something else. Or it’s window dressing to hide a murder.” Riley sighed. “And then there’s rumor, and speculation, and people with their own agendas who keep fanning the flames, who do their best to take a spark of truth and build it into a bonfire of trouble.”
“For instance?”
She shook her head. “I once opened my front door to find a young woman who was attempting to raise money for her church. The spiel was that our children were being threatened by devil worshippers and her church needed money to fight this evil army. She was deadly serious about it. It was in a sweet little town where the worst I ever saw happen was egging a few houses at Halloween, and that poor woman was jumping at shadows and imagining that demons straight out of hell were a breath away from grabbing her babies.”
“People will believe in the damnedest things.”
“Especially if the authority figures in their lives tell them something is real.”
“Which is why,” Ash said, “I still believe our best bet is to treat all this as a series of bizarre hoaxes.”
“Even the murder?”
“You said the killer could be using all the occult trappings just to throw us off the scent.”
“I said it was possible. And it is. But until we know who that victim was, we can’t know who might have wanted him dead.”
“Are you going to suggest that to Jake?”
Riley once again had the vague sense of undercurrents, of some kind of long-simmering tension between Ash and the sheriff, but couldn’t bring it into focus enough to even be sure whether it was professional or personal.
Something there, though. Definitely something there. And strong, if she was aware of it even with all her senses out of whack.
Mildly, she said, “I imagine Jake’s cop enough to know the basics without needing to be reminded.”
Ash returned his gaze to his menu. “Jake’s a politician.”
“I can’t tell him how to do his job, Ash.”
“No, I suppose not.”
His tension was still there. She could feel it.
Barely.
Where’s my clairvoyance when I need it? Hell, where are any of my senses?
They were still dulled, blurred, as if she saw and heard and touched and smelled her surroundings through some kind of wispy veil. It felt weird and cold and scary, this sensation of being distanced from the world.
Being unconnected.
She was alone, that much she could sense.
Even stranger, her head was hurting again, but not in any way that was familiar to her. Not a dull ache of tension or weariness, nor the rare “hangover” head-in-a-vise agony of having pushed herself way beyond her limits, but sharp little bursts of pain every few seconds, one after the other, in random spots from just above her eyes over the top of her head and back to the nape of her neck.
Riley’d had a tooth go bad once; it was that sort of pain, like a nerve or nerves pulsing.
In her tooth, the nerve had been dying.
She was afraid to even think about what might be happening inside her brain.
And here she was, in the middle of a tangled situation she didn’t remember or understand, painfully aware that a killer or killers on the loose almost certainly knew a hell of a lot more about what was going on than she did.
As independent and self-reliant as she was, Riley had never felt so unsure of herself. She was adept at role-playing—it was one of her strengths—but this? This was a very, very dangerous game of blind man’s bluff, and the one wearing the blindfold—her—had cotton in her ears and a clothespin on her nose as well.
With the exception of Gordon, she didn’t know who to trust, and he could offer little more than moral support since, if she had even reached any conclusions or formed any theories since arriving here, she had not confided them to him.
As for the other man she was intimately close to…
“Riley? Ready to order?”
She looked across the top of her menu at this pale-eyed stranger whose bed she apparently shared, and ignored the cold knot in the pit of her belly to say calmly, “I’m ready.”
It was the second time she’d said that in the last couple of hours. She only hoped it was true.
3 Years Previously
“You realize what this will mean?” Bishop said.
A little amused, Riley said, “You’re a telepath; you know I realize what it will mean.”
“I’m serious, Riley.”
“Are you ever anything else?” She got
a sudden flash of a strikingly beautiful face and electric blue eyes, understood in an instant who the woman was and what she meant to Bishop, and her question suddenly didn’t seem so funny anymore.
“Never mind,” he said. “We all have our ghosts. And not many secrets between a telepath and a clairvoyant.”
“You really must believe we can do some good,” she said slowly. “To…willingly expose yourself to so many of us.”
Deadpan, he said, “I didn’t think it through.”
Riley had to laugh, but she shook her head and got the conversation back on its original track. “I do understand what you’re asking of me. I know it could take months. Will, probably.”
“And you’ll have to work alone, at least to all appearances.”
“Well, if you’re right about how this killer chooses his victims, and right that the first sign of a task force or police focus is what causes him to change towns, then the only way to track him is alone and off the official books. Assuming I can do that.”
“I believe you can. I believe you’re the best-equipped of anyone in the unit to track him. And to make sure he’s caught. But, Riley, you don’t get too close. Understand?”
“He only kills men.”
“So far. But a cornered animal can kill whatever’s threatening it. And he’s smart. He’s very, very smart.”
“Which is why I hide in plain sight. And don’t threaten him.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s what I do best,” Riley said.
Present Day
In the small part of her mind not occupied with the strain of pretending everything was normal, Riley had struggled to come up with some reasonable excuse for ending up, at the conclusion of this date, in her beach house alone. Short of telling Ash the truth—which she still wasn’t ready to do—nothing seemed likely to work without rousing either his suspicion or his anger.
Her senses might be AWOL, but that earlier brief flash of memory plus her instincts as a woman told her he had every reason to expect to spend the night with her—and, despite his calm and almost detached manner during their date, quite definitely the desire to do so. Still, right up to the moment they walked inside the house and he closed the door behind them, Riley believed she might yet come up with a reasonable, acceptable excuse.
She was going to offer coffee or a drink but never got the chance.
Ash picked her up and carried her to the bedroom.
The sheer suddenness of the action, never mind its high-handedness, should have roused some sort of negative reaction in Riley. She was almost sure it should have. Instead, what she felt was an overwhelming sense of familiarity and the first flush of sensual heat sweeping her body.
There was, she realized dimly, something incredibly seductive in the certain knowledge that a man not only wanted you but wanted you now, with no patience for small talk or any of the other social niceties. He wasn’t interested in coffee or conversation, he was interested in her, and she was left in absolutely no doubt of that fact.
He was just a little bit rough, more than a little bit urgent, and Riley found the combination impossible to resist.
So she didn’t try.
And she didn’t try to pretend a response to him, because she didn’t have to. Whatever else he was or might be, Ash Prescott was a skilled lover, and her body remembered his touch even if her mind didn’t.
She’d left a lamp burning low on her nightstand but kept her eyes closed because the only senses that mattered were the ones he was bringing to life. For the first time since waking up in the afternoon, there was no veil, no distance—and no questions.
Not about this.
Their clothing seemed to just vanish; set on her feet by the bed, Riley almost instantly felt the erotic shock of flesh on flesh, and then the cool smoothness of the sheet beneath her. She had no idea which of them had thrown back the covers and didn’t care.
His body was amazingly hard, with the packed muscle of a man who was very athletic, genetically blessed, or both. His skin was smooth and hot beneath her fingers, and the thick, springy hair on his chest teased her breasts with a raw sensuality that only intensified the heat building inside her.
His mouth on hers fed that fire, as hard as his body, as urgently demanding as the hands stroking her flesh. That mouth-to-mouth connection was more than a kiss, more like a melding, a merging, and she had the dim understanding that this was why she had tumbled into bed with a relative stranger.
Because he wasn’t. Because they weren’t.
Their bodies strained together to be closer than they were, closer than they could be, and she heard herself make a wild sound that would have astonished her if she’d been able to think about it. But there was no time to think or wonder about anything, there was only pleasure that built to an incredible peak and a stunning wave of emotion she’d never known before and couldn’t begin to define.
When it was over, Riley felt both exhausted and curiously shaken. What had just happened? It was more than sex, or at least more than she knew sex to be. And she wasn’t at all sure she’d be able to pretend otherwise. But she gave it her best shot.
When he pushed himself up on an elbow beside her, she finally opened her eyes and murmured, “Wow. Good thing I had that second dessert.”
Ash laughed. “You never say the expected, do you?”
“Probably not. Is that a bad thing?”
“Not as far as I’m concerned.” He reached across her to draw the sheet over their cooling bodies, pausing to briefly nuzzle the curve of her neck.
Riley felt her eyes starting to cross at that pleasurable caress, and hastily closed them. “Mmmm.”
“If you go to sleep, I’ll just wake you up,” he warned.
Her laugh ended on a sigh. “You have only yourself to blame.”
“Open your eyes and talk to me.”
“I thought men always wanted to sleep after,” she complained mildly, opening her eyes.
He was smiling faintly. “You should know by now not to lump me in with a group. Neither one of us runs with the crowd.”
Now, what in the world does he mean by that?
She couldn’t ask, of course.
Instead, she said, “Well, you should know by now that I either sleep after—or grab a snack. Fuel, remember? The tank’s empty here, pal.”
“Okay. I promise you a midnight omelet. How’s that?”
Riley turned her head to look at the alarm clock on the bedside table. “That’s more than an hour away.” She allowed her voice to fade pathetically. “I may not make it.”
Before she could turn her head back, she felt his fingers at the nape of her neck.
“What’s this?”
It was a sore spot; she realized that when he touched it.
“What does it look like?” she asked, holding on to the sleepy murmur even though she was, now, wide-awake.
He rubbed very gently. “A burn, maybe?”
Just at the hairline at the base of her skull, an area normally covered by her short hair. An area she hadn’t checked visually when she examined herself that afternoon. And a sore spot that would have been both hidden by her hair and masked by the headache she’d had almost continually since waking.
Riley fought not to react in any way he’d notice, fought not to reveal the sudden questions and fears tumbling through her mind.
“I’m all thumbs with a curling iron,” she said casually. “It happens so often I forget about it, usually.”
“Have you considered maybe not using a curling iron?” Ash inquired dryly.
She turned her head back and met his gaze, smiling. “From time to time. But it’s a girl thing, you see, and I clung to those when I was in the army.”
“What, you were afraid of ending up butch?”
“That is not a politically correct term. And—yes.”
Ash grinned at her. “Not a chance in hell. You are utterly and completely female, my love, from the top of your head down to the tips of your toes.
It practically oozes from your pores.”
Riley ignored the lurch inside her at the unexpected endearment and pulled on a considering frown. “I’m not at all sure that’s a compliment.”
“It’s disarming, that’s what it is. Dandy camouflage for the razor-sharp mind behind those big eyes.”
“Mmm. But you weren’t disarmed, huh?”
“I wasn’t fooled,” Ash said. “Not like Jake was.”
A little surprised and very curious, she said, “You think he was fooled?”
“I think he’s badly underestimating you. And I think if he hadn’t done that from the moment he met you, he might be here with you instead of me.”
Wry now, she said, “I really stepped in something between you two, didn’t I?”
“Maybe.” He shifted position to lie more fully on his side, his head propped up on one hand and the other resting warmly on her stomach. “But it had to happen eventually.”
“Why?”
Ash’s shoulders moved in a faint shrug. “Because letting Jake have what he wanted most of our lives was easy for me. Until what he wanted was something I wanted more.”
Riley thought about that. “Me?” she half-guessed.
“If you have to ask,” he said, “you haven’t been paying attention.”
She managed a laugh. “Oh, I was paying attention. Just trying not to feel like a trophy between two jocks.”
“You know better than that.” He leaned over to kiss her, the caress a lingering one. “At least as far as I’m concerned. This is not about Jake. This is about you and me.”
Riley was trying her best to think straight despite the lips playing with hers. “Mmm. But if all Jake sees…is that trophy…he might still want it.”
“Then he’ll have to learn a lesson I probably should have taught him when we were kids.” Ash pushed the sheet back down so his seeking hand could find bare flesh. “He doesn’t always get what he wants.”