A Kiss of Revenge (Entangled Ignite) (11 page)

Now she forced herself up to change into her nightshirt, slip into the bathroom to brush her teeth and stuff, and slip back into her room. She’d been operating on a couple of hours of sleep a night for a few days now and had been up close to twenty-four hours, so her entire body sighed its thanks as she climbed into bed, closed her eyes…

And an idea popped into her head, rendering her suddenly wide awake and mad at herself for not thinking of it sooner.

She could go back to the Alpine house. She had the layout now, and had seen enough on her reconnaissance and visits to be reasonably certain Skav and the boys weren’t staying there. The dog wouldn’t be a problem. She could drive right up to the gate in the alley, climb over, sneak inside, and inspect that room. The locked one, the one that must hold all the secrets.

If she got inside and found what she needed, she wouldn’t have to go back tomorrow night.

Instinctively knowing Griff wouldn’t approve even with that in the plus column, she got dressed, quietly left her room, and went into the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of juice, making light noise. Enough to draw him out if he was awake, not enough to wake him if he wasn’t. Nothing. Not a sound. So she eased out the back door with both her keys and his—he was parked behind her—and left. He would probably hear his car start, but he had no way to follow her.

The first sign that this was a horrible idea was the cop car she passed halfway to The Charms. It wasn’t Andrew, luckily, and in the glimpse she got of the officer driving, it didn’t look like he was paying her any attention. But the car, nondescript as it was, might still be noted. And what if the same officer spotted her again near the Alpine house?

She hesitated at the next stop sign. Maybe she should go back. Follow the plan again tomorrow night, with Griffin as backup. But the phantom stroke of hands on her body made her gag. If there was a chance she could avoid that scene again, she had to try. So she drove on, passing two regular cars but no more cops. No one saw her pull into the little alley next to the wall. She drove around the circle so the car pointed outward, ready to leave in a hurry if she had to, saving her from trying to back out if she didn’t. The gate was still unlocked. She frowned at it. Why wouldn’t it be locked
now?
Cautiously, she went through and eased it closed. Maybe they’d forgotten, arguing with each other over how badly the night had gone.

The yard was dark, the air still, no breeze. Sound carried, so she stepped slowly, making sure she avoided leaves or twigs or anything else that would make noise. She eased up to the front door and examined the lock.

Dammit
. She’d half hoped her quick inspection of it the first time she was here had been wrong. But no. She wasn’t going to be able to use a credit card or knife to open this one. The dead bolt would require true lock-picking skills, and though she’d ordered a kit online and followed the instructions that came with it, the most she’d gotten open was a tiny padlock, the kind people used on shed doors and little fire safes. Dead bolts were impossible.

She sat back on her heels, thinking. Maybe a window. Since there were no lights here, and no way the guys would come back—

A shadow crossed the narrow window in front of her, making her gasp and jerk back. She lost her balance and fell over, catching herself with her hands and bent elbows to soften the sound of her fall. Rolling, she pressed herself against the wall of the house, along the porch floor, in case anyone looked out.

They hadn’t left
.

She was fucked.

Her heartbeat counted out the seconds with a helpful throb in her ears. The door never opened. No vibrations of the wall behind her or the porch under her indicated anyone walking just inside the front door. Minutes went by. Nothing.

Holy
crap
, that was close. What the hell had she been thinking? Fatigue and desperation had made her stupid, however logical her reasoning had seemed back at home. And now, as adrenaline ebbed, she felt herself beginning to crash. She’d be lucky to make it home, even if no one spotted her sneaking out of here.

Spots danced in her vision as she eased half upright and across the porch to the steps. Risking standing to get circulation moving properly, she started down to the ground level. Her right foot didn’t clear the first step and she pitched forward. The ground, three stairs below, rushed toward her.

Braced to hit the slate walkway, she went completely dizzy when she stopped a foot above it. Then she became conscious of the solid arm around her midriff and the ripe scent of a man who’d been up for almost as long as she had.

She let her head rest on Griffin’s shoulder as he pulled her upright. “What the hell are you doing here?” she whispered. He held a finger to his lips and guided her back to the gate, then out to his car in the alley. Hers was nowhere in sight. “Scratch that. How the hell did you find me?”

Griff propped her against his car and reached under her hair. The slight snag of rough fingers on the strands created a pleasant tug against her scalp. His warm fingers stroked up her neck, and she closed her eyes, sinking into the sensation. They slid behind her ear, then—

“Ow!” She slapped her hand to the stinging patch of skin. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” Griff held the transmitter up between his forefinger and thumb. “It’s traceable. I just had to drive around until I picked up your signal—which didn’t take long since I guessed where you were going—then follow until it reached peak strength. Are you completely insane?” Anger darkened his voice, though the volume didn’t rise. “They could have killed you.”

“I didn’t think they’d be here.” She rubbed behind her ear and frowned. “Where’s my car?”

“Somewhere else. I’ll drive you home in mine and we’ll get yours tomorrow. There’s no way you’re safe to drive now.”

She couldn’t argue. She’d been too tired to walk, for cripes’ sake. She fell into the car when he held the door open, weakly buckled her seatbelt, then closed her eyes for the drive home. The car didn’t start, and she opened one eye. Griffin held his hand out expectantly, palm up.

“You got here in my car without them,” she grumbled, dragging the keys from her pocket and slapping them into his hand.

“This is easier.” He started the car and drove slowly onto the empty street. Next thing she knew, they were pulling into her driveway. She was trying to summon the strength to open her door when Griff did it for her, then scooped her up and carried her toward the house.

“I can walk,” she said, snuggling into his neck. His pulse beat rapidly against her forehead. She thought she tilted her head back to press her mouth against it, almost tasted the salt of his skin, but when he spoke, his voice rumbled against her ear and she realized she’d started to dream.

“No, princess, you can’t. I’ve got you.” He shifted her weight to unlock the door, somehow managing it without dropping her. She drifted in his arms through the house to her bedroom and marveled, somewhere, that he didn’t bang her against the walls. He set her on her bed and she transferred her snuggling to her pillows while he took off her shoes. He stopped there, and part of her was aware enough to be disappointed.

“Griff?”

“Yeah?” His voice came from the doorway.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Wake me at five, ’kay?”

He chuckled. “Sweetheart, it’s almost that now. You sleep late. You need it.”

“Nuh-uh. Hafta open the bakery.” She cracked a yawn and tried to roll over. “Running out of dough.”

“Sarah can handle it.”

Usually Reese prepared the dough and batter, and Sarah did the baking every morning. Reese felt guilty about how much she’d put on Sarah lately, but right now she was far too tired to think about getting up again in an hour or two. “’Kay,” she said again. “I’ll call her.”

“It’s taken care of,” Griff said from near her ear. “Sleep, now.”

Reese decided she was dreaming again when he kissed her good night.

Chapter Seven

Reese woke late, lethargic, and let Sarah handle the bakery all day. Sarah was glad to have the extra hours, saving for her big Hawaiian vacation. Every time she talked about it, Reese cringed. She’d never be able to set foot in a plane again.

Reese napped and modified some recipes she found on the web. Griff went out for a while and came back with her car, ignoring her when she asked where he’d left it. Trusting it was nowhere stupid—she held the monopoly on “stupid”—she didn’t push.

Honestly, she didn’t push because she was trying to avoid him. He’d pass through the living room and she’d remember his strong arms cradling her body against his chest, and the light next to her made a crackling sound. When she tried to convince herself the warm press of lips on hers last night was a dream, her whole body tingled and called her a liar…while shorting out the outlet in the wall next to her.

Jumping up to finish doing the laundry, she forcibly refrained from remembering the
real
kiss in the Artsfest parking lot lest she fry the entire house.

She didn’t know what to say to him, how to apologize for her impulsiveness or thank him for rescuing her, and was completely afraid of how their relationship was changing. The damage she could do, both emotionally and physically, seemed limitless.

What if she stopped? Forgot about vengeance?

The thought didn’t creep up on her, a slow consideration. It popped into her head with a tiny burst of happiness that made her drop the towel she was folding.

She could do it. Put a halt to her quest right now. Run her bakery, fully integrate with the town, and fall in love with Griff. It was like a commercial for life insurance running through her brain, with soft-focus lighting as they laughed over a tray of scones and chased tiny, perfect children across the field by the lake.

But a cloud quickly passed over the utopian images. How would that be any different from how every other relationship in her life had begun? She snatched up the towel and folded it with three quick jerks, slamming it onto the pile on the dryer before yanking another one from the basket.

It would be unfair to blame Griff. He wasn’t trying to convince her to make those choices. Hell, she didn’t even know what he wanted from her. Maybe he’d kissed her because it seemed the thing to do at the time. Okay, he’d said he could wait…but for what? For her to be free of Brian? Or of her quest?

She thought of her determination to give Brian closure, not to fail him- or herself.

She thought of Kimmie and all the other young, gullible girls the scumbags would surely take advantage of.

And she knew she couldn’t stop now. Whatever vague crime Brian and Big K had done originally had been enough to put her on this path, and her sense of self-worth had sustained her. But how could she abandon it, now that she knew the terrible cost to innocent people?

Griff appeared in the archway, a mug of coffee in each hand. He set one next to the towels.

“Do you still intend to go through with this tonight?”

“Of course.” She dumped the pile of towels into the now-empty basket, set it aside, and started on a pile of socks. Matching and folding required focus so she didn’t have to look at him. “Are you okay with that?”

“No.”

Surprised, she twisted to look at him. He was slumped against the doorway, shoulders drooping, and the light in his eyes had dimmed. “But?”

He shrugged his free shoulder and stuck his empty hand into his jeans pocket. “But we’ll do it anyway, if you’re sure.”

“I am.”

There was silence while she dug through the sock pile, looking for mates. A question pressed to the front of her brain. She tightened her tongue against it until the pressure became too much.

“Griff?”

“Yeah.”

“How come you’re not married? Or engaged or something.”

He snorted. “Where did that question come from?”

“Oh, you know.” She waved a hand. “Random thoughts.”

He straightened and turned so his back was to the wall, but fastened his eyes on his feet instead of her. “I was engaged once.”

She inhaled silently against the sudden stab in her chest. “What happened?”

Griff’s inhale was long and loud, the breath he let out slow and tired. “It’s a long story, but she had a brother who was trouble. DUI, reckless driving, speeding. He couldn’t obey rules at work so he kept losing jobs over taking excessive breaks and nicking food or product or whatever. Small stuff, not enough for them to press charges over, but enough to put him in a downward spiral. He lived with her and she made excuses for every damned thing.” A touch of anger had come into his voice. “She didn’t think he ever did anything wrong. And I couldn’t stay in love with someone with selective morals.”

The last words rang into the silence. Reese’s hands had stilled, bunched around fistfuls of socks. She couldn’t turn, couldn’t offer the commiseration or comfort that he deserved.

“So you broke it off,” she said quietly.

She heard him swallow a mouthful of coffee. “Eventually. I tried hard—
so
hard—to make her see. But then he and his friends went too far, hazing one of their little brothers.”

He sounded so cold, removed, and yet somehow so tormented. She grabbed her own mug to give her a reason to turn around and watch him as he finished his story.

“You know how it goes, the weaker sibling worships his brother and the older guys, even though they’re fucking morons, so they push to see how much they can get him to do. He wound up in the hospital, near death. Her brother claimed he didn’t have anything to do with it, but that wasn’t what the police report said. When she defended him over that, it spelled the end for us.”

Reese didn’t know what to say, besides, “I’m so sorry.”

He pushed himself off the wall and unkinked his neck. “It was a long time ago. A decade. Seems like three times that.”

That would have made him in his early twenties. She admired and respected his ability to put his convictions, his belief system, above his more immediate needs. She’d never been able to do that, until now. He’d helped her develop that strength.

And now she’d lose him because of it. She took another swig of her coffee, wanting to drench the bitter irony in the back of her throat.

Griff frowned up at the light fixture over her head. “Did that just pop?”

She sighed and turned back to her socks. “Probably. I’ll check it later.”

But he dragged a stepladder out of the corner and set to work replacing the bulb, apparently oblivious to how close certain parts of his body were to certain parts of hers. She grabbed the basket of towels and took them to the linen closet to get some distance.

When she returned to the laundry room he wasn’t there, and she didn’t see him again until dinner. But she could still feel exactly where in the house he was at any given moment. Instead of trying to squelch that awareness, she used it, tying it to her similar awareness of the electricity around her, focusing on turning it around until she finally brought it under control.

By the time Griff dropped her off in The Charms that night, she was calm and confident again.

She walked down the alley and went in the side gate, noting the BMW was already there. Skav met her at the door, just like last night, and showed her the same dress to put on. She asked to use the bathroom first.

“Cripes. Fine. Down there.” He pointed down the hall to the door across from the locked room. “Hurry up about it.”

She scurried down the hall and closed the door noisily behind her. She listened until she heard Skav talking to someone in the filming room, then opened the door the tiniest crack, slowly widening it until she saw the back of his shoulder in the room they’d been in last night. This would be very risky, but she might not get another chance.

She dashed across the hall, her card already in her hand, and shoved it between the door and the jamb at the level of the latch. It jammed. She pulled it out, turned it so the unbent side went in, and tried a little more finesse. It still wouldn’t budge.

“Where’s that bitch?” came the trick’s normal voice. “I don’t have all night.”

“In the can. I told her to hurry.”

Any second now Skav would come after her. She pressed harder and the latch gave, the door clicking open. She pushed inside and shut it behind her, making sure it was locked.

Swiftly she scanned the room. Desk, cabinets, shelves, computer. No time to look into any of it. Crossing to the desk, she shuffled through the mess on top. Names scrawled on what looked like draft invoices. Packing slips for DVDs and bills for electricity. A few pages of columns of numbers, maybe what they took in and paid out. She whispered what she was doing to Griff but didn’t give him a play-by-play, worried about being overheard.

Then she found it. A telephone buried beneath the paperwork, just like the one she’d seen in the filming room. Taped to the top of it, a number matching one she’d noted on the redial the night before. Above the number, “Big K.” She recited it to Griff, but just in case, quickly scribbled down the number on a sticky note from the desk and shoved it into her pocket. She also repeated it to herself in a constant stream so she wouldn’t forget it. Even just the area code and exchange should take her a huge step closer to the man himself.

She could leave now. There was no reason to go any further with the filming. But Skav was coming down the hall, griping about something. She ran across the carpet and stopped at the door to listen.

She missed some of what they were saying in the hall, because her gaze landed on a framed photograph leaning against the wall a few feet from the door. The photograph the suit had bought at Artsfest. He’d been here. So why wasn’t he directing all this? Why leave it to Skav? Unless the suit oversaw other ventures. This could be just one of many.

“…Tomorrow night?” Bark asked.

She tuned in to the conversation outside. The voices didn’t sound agitated. Yet.

“No, I gotta meeting with Big K in two days. I don’t have time. You two will have to do it. But first,” he lowered his voice, “I wanna piece’a that in there.” Reese pictured Skav pointing at the bathroom. “We can all have a turn. But you can’t let her go tonight. Keep her locked in once the client’s done with her.”

The hell with that
. There was no way she’d be able to just sneak out. She’d have to get ready now and hope she could hold it together in the film room until she could escape. She began to siphon electricity into her body.

“You got it,” Bark said out in the hall, his voice stronger. Closer.

“And get her out of the crapper, for God’s sake.”

She heard footsteps on the stairs and a thumping on the door across the hall. Thank God she’d closed it.

“Hurry up, kid. We gotta get filming.”

Her luck held, because he didn’t wait for an answer. She listened hard, trying to determine when he left the hallway, and dashed back across to the bathroom. She flushed, washed her hands, shook out her hair, and went back to the changing room, where she quickly changed into the red dress and heels before crossing the hall to the bedroom. Her heart raced enough the whole time that she began to fear cardiac arrest, but instead of letting electricity go haywire around her, she sucked it in, containing it for later.

To her surprise, as soon as she entered the bedroom, Ripper trotted over, tail wagging, bearing a panting grin.

She bent to pet him. “Hello, you sweet thing.”

“He’s a guard dog.” Dob, looking disgusted, snapped his fingers and the dog reluctantly left her.

She stood. “He’s not in the video, is he?”

“Of course not.” The client greeted her with the same smooth smile and snooty demeanor he had the night before. “I don’t know why he’s in here.”

“Too hot outside,” Dob muttered, adjusting the camera angle. “When he’s inside, he stays with me.”

“He won’t get in the way.” Bark shoved her toward the bed. “We’re ready. Get into position.”

Reese’s mind raced as she tried to come up with a plan to disrupt things without getting herself into trouble. Maybe she could use the dog. She didn’t think she could blow the equipment again without them suspecting her of some kind of sabotage. Griff wouldn’t care, but she didn’t want to make enemies here, this close to home. Not yet.

As she lay back against the pillows and the client fastened the cuffs to her left hand and the headboard, her mind raced. What could she disrupt that was more discreet, less directly tied to electricity?

“Rolling.”

“Action.”

She closed her eyes and ignored the guy taking off her dress, his muttering when he couldn’t figure out how to get the sleeve off with the handcuffs on, and the tearing when he yanked apart the seam. She mentally felt for the equipment around her, seeking something she could control, though she’d never tried. The ringer on the phone? Could she make a connection there? She concentrated hard, trying to pinpoint the mechanism.

“Hey!”

Reese’s body jerked as the client slapped her across her face.

“I’m not paying for you to just lie there.”

She clenched her fists to avoid punching him. Handcuffed, there was no way she could win a fight.

“What
are
you paying for, anyway?” she asked, glaring.

He bent over her, his teeth clenched, and hissed in her ear an inch from the transmitter Griff had reinstalled earlier, “I’m paying for a hot piece, you slut. And then you’ll pay for your whorish ways.” He raised a hand, clearly intending to hit her again.

A moment later, all hell broke loose. Crashing noises came from downstairs and the windows down the hall, followed by shouts and running feet.

Jesus.
A
raid?

The three men in the room scrambled, trying to get out the door, but they jammed, tripping over wires and bumping each other out of the way. Dob fell, knocking against the camera, which toppled between the other two guys and into the doorway, further blocking them. Ripper barked louder and louder, dancing around the group.

Reese panicked. They were going to burst in here, and she was naked and handcuffed to the bed. No one would believe why.
Fuck!
How could she have such unlucky timing? Had someone heard the john through her transmitter?