“I’m glad you aren’t as focused on your career as I can be on mine,” Darice replied caressing Chloe’s thigh. “I don’t want to lose you, so I’ll never send you away for reminding me I have more than one role in your life.”
Chloe’s lips twitched. “Oh, I won’t let you forget you’re my lover.” She kissed the corner of Darice’s mouth. “And what a good lover you are.”
Darice kissed her slowly and then broke the kiss to brush her lips along Chloe’s neck.
“My mother was content to just let my father lock himself in his office whenever he wanted to. She ignored things that I know now were signs of his unhappiness and need for change, but I won’t be that wife.”
“Good.”
“I’m going to fight tooth and nail to keep you present and accountable,” Chloe told her.
“Promise?” Darice asked, gazing into her eyes, and Chloe smiled at the love she saw shining there.
“I promise.” She started to seal the bargain with a kiss when the lights went out. Chloe tensed, and Darice set her on the loveseat.
“Dress,” she ordered grimly as she did exactly that herself. “It’s probably nothing but don’t make a sound.”
Chloe found her gown in the dark and yanked it on. “Do you think it’s his partner?”
“I don’t know, but I hope so. Then, we can this over with.”
“Darice?” Cattail called.
“Come in.”
Cattail stepped in, a beam of light dimly illuminating the room.
“We’ve got trouble,” Cattail told her angrily. “That damned woman wasn’t at the house when they picked up the other three. The guy there said she was finishing this with you tonight, so she could get her payday and get out of town.”
“What are we looking at?”
“I don’t know. Slate went cat and ripped into two attackers, and then the lights went out.”
“Take her. The generator will come on any second.”
“You want a weapon?”
“No. The crow wants to play, so we’ll play.” Darice was moving from the room so fast Chloe’s head swam.
“What is she going to do?”
“Finish it.” Cattail took her arm and led her to the wall behind Darice’s desk and ran her fingers along it. It swung open, and she pushed Chloe inside. Dim light quickly illuminated the room.
Panic room?
Two Futons were arranged facing a monitor, and a mini fridge squatted beneath a shelf with a closed door while a metal box lounged beside it.
“Take a load off,” Cattail ordered and began fiddling with the monitors.
Chloe saw Darice in the dimly lit hallway sparring with a man like they were in a boxing ring. She took a few good punches that only seemed to piss her off before she drew her knee up, smashing his balls.
He groaned, and Darice hit him so hard blood flew from his mouth as he fell to the ground. She stepped over his body and stopped, tensed and threw out her hands. Blue streams of electricity danced on her fingers before she flicked them. The light slammed the man in front of her backward.
“My god,” Chloe gasped. The power shocked her even more than the fact Darice was using it without compunction.
“Secrets and lies,” Cattail murmured.
“You bitch!” A woman screamed. Darice shoved her into the wall and the woman ran at her. Darice hit her hard enough to make her stagger back before kicking her in her knee and hitting her again.
“She hasn’t lost a step even with retirement,” Cattail said in amazement.
“She was always like this?” Chloe whispered.
“She was, obviously still is, a badass fighter,” Cattail replied with a hint of awe in her tone.
The woman’s cry drew Chloe’s gaze back to the screen. Darice had her face down with an arm up behind her back.
“Just tell me who hired you, and I’ll pay you off.”
“Liar,” she snarled.
“I have no real beef with you except you’re in my home, and you tried to kill my woman. I can let that go this time.”
She screamed. “Paul. The woman was a friend of Paul’s from when they were kids. She asked him to kill your girlfriend for two hundred thousand dollars.”
“Why?”
“I told him it was stupid, but he said it was in part a favor.”
“His loyalty deserves applause,” Darice said coldly. “But murder without a cause is never a good idea unless you’re a better shot than he was.”
The woman jerked in her hold. “Let me go.”
“The name,” Darice demanded.
“Marie St. Claire. She wanted to pay you back for screwing up her business,” she said. “Her plan was to kill your woman, get you in her bed, and then she was going to ruin your business.”
The woman grunted. “You have two choices girl,” Darice said. “You can get up, take the hundred and fifty—”
“You said—”
“The damages come out of your cut, sweetheart,” Darice cut in. “So, you can take the money and call it good, or I’ll hunt you in a few days and kill you in the most painful and bloody way I can think of. First, I’ll immobilize you with a shock.”
“Damn you,” she muttered. “Damn you!”
“If I ever see you again, or you try anything against Chloe, I will take you out.”
“Okay. You have a deal.”
Darice got off her and helped the woman up. She turned her back on her and a blade was jerked from a sheath on the intruder’s belt. It gleamed in the light as she held it aloft.
“Darice,” Chloe whispered, her stomach taut, heart stopping.
Darice turned, blocked the assault, and the woman let out a blood-curdling scream as her body jerked for what seemed like five minutes before she went limp.
“Darice, I’ve got Five-O on the way. Look sharp out there, dude,” Cattail said.
Darice gave her a thumbs up and strode out of view before appearing on another camera. Slate was naked and bloody and Darice said something to her before heading outside.
“I can’t believe it,” Chloe said. The ability to kill and the sharp instincts Darice possessed just blew her away. “I didn’t hear you call 9-1-1.”
“I texted Ace, and she did it,” she replied. “Now, let’s get out there. They’ll have a ton of questions about why we didn’t all just huddle in here and wait for the police.”
“Why didn’t you just call them?”
“This had to be done, Chloe,” she said in a hard tone. “Darice killed that woman’s partner, and she wanted blood. She wasn’t going to stop until she got what she came for. You.”
“Still—”
“There are no if, ands, or buts here,” Cattail snapped. “Some parts of this world are savage as fuck, that’s why innocents like you have people like me and Darice. We’ve walked down that road, know what it’s like to be victims, broken, and bloodied, and we damn sure aren’t going to allow those we care about to go through that.”
And killing was part of that work they did to prevent those they loved from being harmed. She almost got it. On the other hand, part of her still believed those deaths could have been prevented by simply calling the police when the attackers showed up.
The police arrived in short order and Darice had changed into casual pants and a polo shirt while Slate was freshly dressed.
Why had the woman been naked?
“Are you okay?” Darice asked, joining her in the den as Slate answered the door.
“Yes.” She nodded.
“I know this is going to be hard, so I’m not going to tell you what to say,” Darice said, and Cattail gave her a questioning look that Chloe glared at.
The cops in blue strode in before Chloe could respond, and she didn’t have time to gather her thoughts. The questions came so quickly, the doubt in their eyes, the veiled accusation in their words, all left her a little on edge.
Darice was cold as she stood next to her, an arm around her waist as they waited for the homicide de
tectives. Then it started all over again. The two detectives who’d come to her office arrived with their displeasure and censure.
“At any rate,” Darice said coolly to Detective Whitehurst. “I had every right to protect my own home. It’s not like you weren’t aware of the fact my fiancée was being stalked.”
“More like hunted,” Detective Ritzcheck muttered. “Looks more like you lured these people here with the intent to annihilate.”
“How could I do that when I had no idea who the man’s partner was?” Darice asked. “None of us knew. I’d hired an agency for protection and to find out who was behind this. They didn’t know yet.”
“All we knew was the guy, Paul Freeling, was a hitter,” Cattail said. “We were prepared here in case his colleagues decided to finish the job.”
Whitehurst studied her with a narrow-eyed gaze before saying, “You decided to take on hitters in hand-to-hand combat?”
“We’re modern women,” Darice said with a shrug. “Besides, the two guards both had weapons.”
Cattail and Slate produced their guns.
“Do you have permits for those?” Detective Whitehurst demanded.
“What agency do you work for?” Detective Ritzcheck asked suspiciously.
“Mojo,” Cattail retorted.
“The rogue agency suspected of terrorism, drug, and weapon trafficking?” Detective Whitehurst asked incredulously.
“If you want the best, you hire the best,” Darice said. “I knew Cattail and Slate could kick ass, and my fiancée needed the most dangerous protection I could buy her.”
Detective Ritzcheck snorted, giving her a disdainful glare. “Rich people.”
Darice lifted a brow at him. “Are we done here?”
“You can’t stay here tonight,” Detective Ritzcheck said, eyes snapping with irritation. “This is a crime scene, and we’ll need you to come down to the station to give formal statements.”
Chloe groaned. “Darice, I’m too tired.”
“We’ll come down first thing in the morning,” Darice told them and led Chloe to the door.
“Tonight,” Detective Whitehurst snapped. “We’ve all had a long day. We work, you talk.”
“Right,” Darice answered sharply. “Don’t worry about it. They can’t make us come down tonight. We’ve had a terrible shock.”
Chloe gave her a startled look and Darice’s expression was filled with innocence. Chloe shook her head, a bit of a smile playing on her lips. It scared her that Darice had been so efficient and merciless, but the alternative would have been her life.
Thinking about that, Chloe had to be glad Darice hadn’t lost a step, as Cattail had put it, or Chloe knew both she and Darice might be dead right now.
Chapter Eighteen
The next morning, Chloe sipped coffee in the living area of the posh hotel Darice had booked for the next few days. She had no idea how long it would take to clean up the mess Darice had left behind and didn’t even want to think about it.
Darice was already dressed for work as she looked over some files while she drank her own coffee. Nothing in her expression belied a hint of last night’s attack or the violence she perpetrated.
Chloe’s head was still spinning, and she wondered if Darice even cared about the lives she’d taken.
“Last night, I didn’t get a chance to mention this,” Chloe began fingers wrapped around her mug as if for protection.
“Mention what?” Darice asked looking up at her, her expression closed as if she expected recrimination.
“What I saw—I’m not even sure what that was.”
“What did you see?”
“Electricity on your fingertips.” She’d thought about it and tried to pass it off as a stunner, but it hadn’t worked. Her rational mind hadn’t bought the obvious.
Darice had some kind of superhuman ability to go along with the darkness inside of her which could be a bad combination.
“My mother was a telepath and it freaked her out, too, the first time the ability showed itself,” Darice replied as if resigned to the conversation. Her expression carefully bland as if she was bracing for a negative reaction. “The doctor she took me to when I was five said it was electrokinesis.”
“Electrokinesis?” she asked in a whisper. “I mean, what doctor?” There was no doctor on earth who’d casually dismiss a psychic skill.
Darice smiled. “He was an alternative practitioner,” she replied. “He believed in healing with natural things, herbs, crystals, and working with the body’s cycles and energies. But then, he had the healer’s gift of healing with his touch.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“The ability began when I was two, according to my mother,” Darice explained. “Just out of nowhere. The doctor said it wasn’t abnormal for women with psychic abilities to produce children with the same, especially if that ran in the family.”
“Did it?”
“In my mother’s family. Her great-grandfather had the same power as me, but that was rare. Most were telepaths,” Darice told her. “I think they had trouble coping with the voices in their heads and medication didn’t work.”
Chloe swallowed tightly. “Your father knew?”
“He was vaguely aware that I was an abnormal child, but he always found a way to explain most of it away as freak occurrences. My mother helped him believe it by finding some scientific evidence no matter how obscure to support his erroneous believe.”
“You said that you killed him,” Chloe said carefully. Darice had told her she’d killed her father because he’d been a cop who’d become abusive to Darice and her mother. “Was it with your power?”
“By then, Chloe, I was quite in control of my abilities. So, no. I used his gun. Though I did give him a good shock now and again to get him off me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” This was something she would have wanted to know, but never have believed without seeing it.
“I’m only telling you now because you saw,” Darice told her. “It’s not like you ever had to find out otherwise. I can’t get you pregnant so none of our children would be born with my skills unless we had one of my eggs implanted in you.”
“It could happen,” Chloe said. “I mean I want our children to reflect us. So, I’m open to that option.”
Darice gave her a frown. “Why? You see what a messed up human being I am. Do you really want to perpetuate that?”
She got up and crossed to where Darice sat to take her face between her hands. “You are perfect to me. I’d be lying if I said what I saw last night didn’t scare me, but I’m not going anywhere.”
Darice covered Chloe’s hands with her own. “Are you sure last night doesn’t change everything?”
“Well, that part about you being worth over three million … now, that might carry some weight,” she said in a teasing tone.
Darice shook her head. “I’m worth eight million, not counting my business assets, and most of that came from being an assassin.”
“I can rest easy that you won’t have to work so hard after I have our first child,” Chloe said, sinking onto Darice’s lap.
“Chloe, we can’t just dismiss this.”
“I love you, Darice,” she said. “I’m not dismissing what you are. I just don’t want to look too deeply at it right now.”
“You have to deal with the fact I’m a killer,” Darice insisted. “I don’t feel remorse for the lives I took.”
Chloe nodded. “I wondered.”
“I’m not a sociopath, but I do think wiping out a problem is the fastest way to make it stay down.”
“But you’re not a psycho,” Chloe murmured, a light coming on in the murkiness of her mind. “You didn’t just kill Marie. You tried to walk away. You didn’t automatically kill that woman last night either. You gave her a chance to leave.”
“I try not to kill in cold blood.”
“Then, we’re good,” Chloe said softly. And in her heart and her mind, that was the truth.
“We should go to the police station and get that over with, but I want you to come back here with Cattail after that. You can go back to work on Monday. Ace will have had a chance to fully assess the situation by then.”
Chloe didn’t argue. She decided she’d just ride this one out. Darice and her friends knew more about these kinds of dangers than she did. Besides, she wanted time to talk to Cattail and Slate alone about that cat thing.
****
After dropping Chloe back off at the hotel, Darice went to the office to prepare. She’d take care of Marie in much the same manner she planned to kill the cop. The meeting would come later this afternoon.
Darice wanted to kill two birds with one stone, so she could take Chloe away for the weekend without distractions.
She dialed Marie’s number, certain she’d answer.
“Hello, Marie St. Claire.”
“Hello, Marie, this is Darice,” Darice drawled as she leaned back in her chair. “I’ve been thinking about you lately. Can we meet later?” Her voice was warm and inviting, despite the chill inside her and the electricity dancing on her fingers.
“How’s lunch?”
“Name the place and time, gorgeous,” Darice murmured.
“Meet me at one at the club,” she said in that authoritative tone of hers.
“No problem,” Darice said. “I can’t wait to see you.”
“Why the change of attitude?” Marie asked carefully.
“Seeing you the other day got me to thinking that one last fling before I got married wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
“You’re marrying her?” she demanded, outraged.
“Yes, but you might be able to change my mind. Do you want to give it a go?”
There was a brief silence and then, “I would love to,” she purred.
“Great. Consider this our first date, and I’ll see you later,” Darice said and ended the call. And it would be their only one.
She wasn’t about to waste time with a myriad of questions when only one would do. Darice was sure Marie would be more than willing to brag about hiring someone to kill Chloe.
Darice had a shoot that morning and left her assistant to work on the commercial. At one, she wrapped up and headed to the club to meet Marie. Marie was waiting for her at a table by the window with a pitcher of iced tea on the table and two glasses.
Blood for Her Page 10