Awakened (11 page)

“Good night,” he whispered.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

Barrett woke up long before Nick did. She made coffee in
the in-room coffeemaker, not liking the sour smell. The self-serve packet couldn’t be fresh. And there was only powdered creamer.

Welcome to reality, she told herself. She poured a cup anyway and wandered back into the main room of the suite. The champagne bottle was upside down in the silver cooler. They’d finished that after the final round of unbelievable sex. The strawberries, too. There was still a half of one. The top half. No chocolate. She picked it up by its slender green stem and nibbled the sweet, juicy flesh absently.

This was breakfast. She wanted to be out of here before Nick woke up. She peeked in at him. Snoring like a tiger. Legs apart, pillow in his arms instead of under his head.

Dreaming of her, maybe. Dream on, she told herself. He’d had more women than there were pillows in this hotel.

Still, it had been great, a total release for both of them, multiorgasmic satisfaction, and something like oblivion when they were spent and finished. The homicidal creature that had attacked her had stayed out of her dreams. In one night, Nick Maltese had vanquished the incomprehensible loneliness of a year without him. When it came to sexual healing, he had all the moves.

In the cold light of dawn, she knew that she never wanted to need him for that. Needing him, period, was just plain dangerous. If he helped her find Jane, then great. But she wasn’t setting herself up for heartbreak ever again.

His eyes opened. He’d always had a sixth sense about being watched.

“Hey, angel. What are you doing?” he asked drowsily.

“Drinking coffee. It’s terrible. I gotta go.”

“Where?” He patted the wrinkled sheet beside him. “Come back to bed.”

“Nope,” she said calmly. “Just got a text. There’s an early meeting in D.C.”

Not quite a lie. Carly did like to get them over with before noon. Nick made no reply.

“Taxi’s waiting.”

It would be. She could be dressed and downstairs in five minutes if she skipped a real shower and made do with a wet washcloth instead. He buried his face in the tangled sheets and groaned.

“Call me later.” She wasn’t going to not talk to him.

“Okay.” He yawned hugely and rolled over.

Barrett thought he had fallen asleep by the time she had made herself presentable in the adjoining room and collected the few things she was taking back with her. She went past his bedroom without looking in—and stopped short when she turned. He was standing right in front of the suite door.

Naked. No longer sleepy. And morning-handsome, with dark stubble edging his jaw and adorably scruffy hair.

“Good morning,” she said crisply, reaching around him to open the door.

He didn’t catch her wrist, just stood there. “You look nice.” He smiled encouragingly.

“Don’t get ideas.” She pushed the latch down hard and pulled at the door, bumping it against his bare butt. Nick didn’t budge. He folded his arms across his chest. “And don’t get a hard-on. Think about vampires.”

“Won’t work. You’re too close.”

Barrett stepped back several inches. “Move, Nick. I have to leave.”

They both heard a housekeeping cart rattle down the hall and stop not far away.

“Do you want the maid to see you like this?”

“No.”

He unfolded his arms, standing behind the door as he opened it for her. Barrett moved past him in her gift shop outfit, the rest of her things in the plastic bag meant for guest laundry. She stopped on the sill to get in a parting shot. “Bad enough I have to do the walk of shame.”

“Hold your head high,” he instructed, lightly slapping her on the butt before wrapping his hand around the back of her neck and pulling her in for a kiss.

She’d just started to lose herself in it and in him before he pulled away.

“Be careful, Barrett. And touch base soon.”

Hours later, Barrett had taken a cab to the Atlanta airport, caught a flight to Dulles, and made the meeting at Belladonna where she’d updated Carly on the destruction of her rental car and the “thing” that had attacked her. Now she was in yet another rental car heading to western Maryland.

During the meeting at Belladonna, she’d listened to the discussion of what the other agents were working on. Collette had flown to New York after wrangling an invite to a board meeting at a big pharmaceutical company, hoping to spin that into an insider’s look into their blood-bank subsidiary. Ty and Ana were doing all right, according to Peter, but weren’t ready to appear at the meeting, even though Ana’s turning process was nearly completed. Barrett had kept quiet until the end. She had said nothing about the attack on the mountain. Just that she’d talked to Nick about Jane. All preliminary. Nothing to report.

Only Justine had looked hard at Barrett’s atypical attire. But she hadn’t commented on it. For a former exotic dancer who liked to obsess over clothes and shoes and hair, it was a rare example of tactfulness, for which Barrett had been grateful.

She really hadn’t had anything to report that would convince Carly the case was a worthwhile use of Belladonna’s resources and time. There still was nothing specific that linked Jane to the original mission: taking down vampires that sexually enslaved underage girls.

But Powell’s involvement aside, something had told her from the second she’d stared into Jane’s frightened eyes that there was a connection. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel.

Nick hadn’t challenged her on that. She knew he wouldn’t have offered to help otherwise. He believed in intuition. His own and hers.

He’d listened. Offered some good advice. She couldn’t expect him to drop everything and ride to the rescue with banners flying. Even though he’d done it for those two girls and their mother. What had he said at the time? That it was a miracle everything had gone off without a hitch.

One miracle, once in a lifetime. Maybe that was all anyone got.

She reached toward the dashboard console, scanning radio stations for something to listen to. She hummed along with a forgettable song, her mind elsewhere. The western section of the Beltway had much less traffic than the rest of it. But she knew from experience how easy it was to zone out and go in a giant circle, ending up where she’d started, crawling along in the usual jams to I-95 north and south.

She wondered what Nick was up to. He hadn’t gotten around to telling her anything more about what he was doing on the mountain or why he had to be so isolated. She supposed that wasn’t unusual. As he’d said, he’d tell her what was relevant, and apparently his work wasn’t relevant to her or Jane’s situation.

He’d been secretive about his work when they were stationed in Eastern Europe, too, sometimes disappearing for a week or more, supposedly at forward operating bases on assignments he refused to discuss.

It was common knowledge that black ops personnel operated under neutral cover identities. He really was a tech wiz. But she’d gotten more than one glimpse of the amazing weaponry he designed and used.

If the evil thing that had attacked her came back, Nick wouldn’t miss a second time. Partly because she wouldn’t be there to fuck up his aim. Least she could do.

Barrett was less tense than she had expected to be. Which might have to do with her and Nick and crazy sex. What a night. It had been
intense
. As a lover, he was one of a kind.

The only one she’d ever really wanted to keep. Probably just as well she’d been booted out of the service, she thought, even though it had been an honorable discharge. She would have hung around him for too long, wanted more than he seemed to want to give her.

She had other things to think about.

Barrett pulled at her constricting seat belt, not wanting to wrinkle her clothes. The conservative navy blue suit and sky-blue blouse she’d changed into for the trip to see the Prescotts looked kinda FBI.

She wasn’t going to tell them she actually worked for the FBI as an agent, however, nor was she going to explain why she hadn’t given them warning she was coming.

It wasn’t polite to show up unannounced but it had been a deliberate decision. Barrett wanted to catch them off guard.

She was going to get some answers. Especially after reading brief but heartbreaking personal stories on the websites she’d visited while looking for Jane. There were only a handful of happy endings and reunions when it came to abducted girls. Most were the victims of violence. And not all of the missing had loved ones searching for them, or even names.

The unidentified dead were duly recorded and buried after a while. Morgues filled up. New victims arrived.

Barrett changed lanes when a big truck started tailgating her. It zoomed past. She saw her exit and sped toward it.

The Prescott house was a solid brick mansion set in beautifully landscaped grounds. The houses in the new Maryland subdivision had been constructed on two-acre lots to provide maximum privacy for their well-heeled residents, who probably didn’t know their neighbors at all.

Barrett stretched out her hand to press the polished brass doorbell. The door swung open before the sound of the chimes died away, revealing a fiftyish man. Barrett noticed that his graying hair was a shade lighter than the charcoal shirt he wore with a dark tie. Dark pants and black wingtips completed what seemed to be a carefully chosen ensemble, on the conservative side. She would have pegged him for a professor even if she hadn’t researched him online and read a few of his published articles in psychology journals. He specialized in adolescent dysfunction. “Mr. Prescott? I’m Barrett Miles. A friend of Sarah Small’s. I’m sorry to just drop in like this, but I was in town and wanting to see if you’ve gotten any new information about Jane.”

His brow furrowed for several seconds, then cleared. “Of course. Ginny said you’d spoken. Please, you can call me Malcolm. We’re almost like family, after all.” Somehow the words sounded rehearsed, and his face had become expressionless.

Barrett smiled politely.

“Please come in.” He stepped aside to let her enter.

“Thanks.”

His gaze stayed on her, but suddenly Malcolm Prescott smiled back, as if he had just remembered he was supposed to. Barrett tried to think nothing of it. The few shrinks she knew personally—though not well—were all a little nutty.

She walked into a double-height foyer. The arched window above it was covered with drawn curtains that made the entrance rather dim.

A slender woman with cropped brown hair rose from a modern beige sofa as they entered the living room. Barrett’s first impression of the room was of absolute tidiness.

The space had been decorated in neutral tones, none of which stood out or caught the eye. The four throw pillows on the sofa hadn’t been thrown but placed diagonally on their points an equal distance apart. The magazines on the sparkling glass coffee table had been arranged with similar precision and looked unread. Across from the sofa was a glass-doored fireplace stacked with never-to-be-burned birch logs.

The message was Don’t Touch. With a postscript: Don’t Breathe. The vibe was startlingly similar to her mother’s showplace houses. Barrett couldn’t imagine Sarah’s creative, gentle daughter being happy in this environment. She felt a renewed wave of guilt that made her sick at heart.

“Ginny, I’m Barrett.”

“Barrett. Of course. I remember you from the pictures Sarah showed me before she died.” She wrung her hands. “Do you have any information on Jane?”

“I’m afraid not. I was hoping you …”

Closing her eyes briefly, Ginny shook her head. “Nothing.”

Malcolm summoned a housemaid using a bell mounted in the wall and turned to Barrett. “What would you like? A drink? Soda?”

“A cold ginger ale would be very nice. Thanks.”

Once seated, they got through the requisite small talk—and nervous apologies on both sides for not being in touch over the years.

Ginny gave Barrett a mournful look. “My poor little half sister,” she said in a watery voice. “We were so many years apart and we never lived in the same house. But I did care for her and I wanted to do right by her daughter.”

“I’m sure you’ve done your best for Jane,” Barrett said, thinking it was more than she could say about herself.

The older woman composed herself, pulling her navy blue dress down over her knees. “Yes. Of course.” She glanced somewhat nervously at her husband.

“Jane has tremendous potential but she also has multiple issues,” Malcolm said vaguely. “Unresolved grief for her deceased mother is one, of course. It manifests as inappropriate rage and threats of self-harm, that kind of thing.”

He sounded almost bored, as if Jane wasn’t his foster daughter, but more like a subject for an article. He confirmed Barrett’s take on the situation by looking through the magazines on the table and holding up a professional journal with his photo on the cover.

“As you may know, I’m an expert in the field of adolescent psychology. Jane’s case is atypical but her behavior isn’t far from the norm. If you’d like to read it, I wrote up her case.” He handed the journal to Barrett. “Of course I changed her name and other identifying details.”

Big of him. Some expert. More like a pompous ass, Barrett thought. Just listening to him was bringing back unwelcome memories. Her own rebellious streak had been managed, if that was the right word, by her mother’s pet shrink, Dr. Agee. He’d echoed every single one of Mrs. Miles’s negative opinions of her daughter and prescribed pills that Barrett refused to take.

“Mal, she knew you were talking about her,” Ginny said sharply. “That was when she began to withdraw. And she didn’t always come home, though that was nothing new.”

Years ago, Barrett had heard Sarah say the same thing. “What did you do when that happened?”

“I waited here,” Ginny began. “Right by the phone. Waited and waited, just in case—”

Her husband interrupted her. “Jane never called. Simply put, she was developmentally unable to take genuine responsibility for her actions. But I took the time to drive around and look for her—I knew her favorite haunts. She usually would come back with me if I spotted her.”