Covert M.D. (20 page)

“No.” Never. She would die if he did. “But it’s…it’s different. Hotter.”

His eyes flashed. He very deliberately shifted his pelvis away from her. Toward her. Away. Toward. Through layers of clothing, the rhythm was as old as time. But there was no frantic kissing now, no long, sweet caresses, only this, and the insistent pound of blood through her veins. “I know.”

She arched up against him mindlessly, yet acutely aware of her actions, of her body. “Why?”

Was it because of the love that chased through her heart, freed by his words? Or their shared experiences of—

His lips curved up in a rare, pure smile. “Because I’m fully conscious. No fever, no drugs. This is me.”

Her skin, already so hot, flamed another degree, from embarrassment, perhaps, or interest. “Oh.”

“Sometimes I like it slow and easy.” He leaned over her, pressing her back into the soft clean sheets, and took her lips in a soft, sweet kiss that reminded her of the night before, of seven years earlier. She curled her arms around his neck and kissed him back, tasting, questing, restless against him. It was lovely, but not enough. Not this time.

“And other times?” She scraped her fingernails down his chest, deliberately inciting, carefully avoiding the dark, angry bruises.

“I like it hard and fast.” Instead of suiting action to words, as her body demanded, he pushed himself away
and stared down at her. His expression was open, vulnerable, a bit wary, as though he awaited her pleasure. “How do you like it?”

He was asking more than that, she knew. He was asking her to make the choice she hadn’t given him. They would become lovers for real, or not at all. So she gave him the truth that was in her heart. “I like it with you. We’ll figure out the rest later.”

His smile was blinding and boyish, shot through with the charm of the child he might have been had the foster system not closed him off, had HFH not shown him the darkness of humanity. He leaned in to kiss her, to take her into the fast, hard, burning-hot vortex she could feel spinning just beyond them, but she slapped a hand to his hard chest and neatly reversed their positions.

“Fast, eh? I can do fast.” She trailed hot, open-mouthed kisses along his flat stomach while her fingers fumbled with his pants. She’d thought to tease him, to draw out their coupling until this new Rathe, the one with the open expression and joyous smile, trembled with wanting her.

But he was already hard and wanting, and she was the one trembling with need. Or maybe they both were.

On an oath, he yanked at her pants. He took her breast in his mouth and she arched against him, still working him free of his clothes. Then they were rolling, tumbling, fumbling with pants and underthings, no time for gentle words and sighs when the flames burst around them and the urgency sang through her blood.

Take me. Take me.
The chant was wordless, mindless,
assuaged only when he finally rose above her and thrust home with no preliminaries, none needed, because she was hot and wet and wanting.

There was flash and flame, heat and speed, but through it all was a sense of wonder, of tenderness. She skimmed her hands across his bruises when she wanted to grab. He thrust into her again and again, hard, fast, but when their struggles brought her up against the cool wall, he cushioned her head with a folded sheet.

This was it, Nia thought as her inner muscles grabbed on to him and squeezed. This was what she’d been seeking. Adventure. Passion. Excitement. Danger.

Need.

Then she was slammed by a wave of it all, a flurry of emotion that crested but didn’t break. It continued on and on and on. Even beyond the moment Rathe whispered her name and climaxed with such a look of heartbreaking joy on his face that she knew for certain she would never come back from this place.

Never regret what had come before or what would follow.

THE MOMENT STRETCHED into a minute, the minute into five. Eventually reality returned, and Nia started to notice the lumpy sheets tangled beneath her bare shoulders, the pants still twisted around her ankles. She craned her neck and glanced around the room, at the clothes strewn about and the mounds of sheets and towels that had formed a love nest.

Her face burned and new awkwardness tightened her
shoulders. This wasn’t what she’d intended at all. She’d figured they would talk, fight, set some ground rules or maybe agree to never touch each other again.

She hadn’t planned on them going at each other in a locked laundry room.

Thinking to turn it into a joke, she started to say,
Do you think the laundry people will know what we’ve been up to?
But instead a plaintive question leaked between her teeth. “What now?”

His eyes darkened and he sat up, dislodging her. She levered herself up, as well, and readjusted her clothes, needing the armor against the sudden chill in the room. Where moments before there had been giggles and gasps and the slap of overheated flesh, now there was an uncomfortable silence.

Finally he said, “Damned if I know.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair until it stood on end in silvery-blond spikes. “I’ve been thinking, though.”

Nia’s heart jolted. “Yes?”

Maybe he was ready to admit he’d been wrong to leave her, wrong not to come back when she’d called. Maybe he wanted to move forward, be partners, lovers, all the things she’d once wanted. But that thought brought her up short.

True, she’d once wanted those things, but what did she want now?

“I’ve been thinking that maybe you have a point about Maria. Maybe I have been using her death as an excuse for some things.” Rathe tugged his shirt on and snapped his pants as though he, too, felt the chill. Or maybe he
needed armor of his own. “Maybe I used my promise to Tony for the same purpose. You’re right, it wasn’t fair of either of us to make your decisions for you.”

She heard the reservations in his voice and knew it wasn’t that simple, could never be that simple between them. “But?”

He acknowledged her accuracy with a wry grimace. “But excuses or not, it’s how I feel. In the foster system, Father Timory taught us boys that it was our job to protect the women. Cherish them. If something happens to you on this case…” He shrugged uncomfortably, as though the shirt pulled too tight across his chest, or maybe his heart.

A lead weight settled in Nia’s stomach. “Which leaves us where?”

He looked at her then, with a wealth of regret and hope in his eyes. “In the middle of a dangerous assignment with nothing resolved.” He took a breath. “I care for you, Nia.”

It wasn’t a declaration of undying love, but coming from such a reserved man as Rathe, the words hit her like blows. She sucked in a breath and pressed a hand to her stomach to steady herself. “I…I care for you, too, Rathe.”

His eyes darkened further. “Then bow out of the case. Please. I’m afraid something terrible is going to happen to you.”

The subtext was clear.
If you care about me, you’ll drop the investigation.

When the words failed to do anything more than
twist her stomach and harden the ball of disappointment already there, Nia knew she’d expected this all along. Their problems had never been about Maria or her father. It had always been their opposing philosophies. “I can’t do that, Rathe. What’s more, I won’t. If you truly cared about me, you’d understand that.”

If you truly cared, you’d support me.

His silence was answer enough. There was no middle ground between them, no compromise.

No hope.

Tears prickled in Nia’s eyes and she stood, needing to be away from him, away from the room where they’d loved each other so well, yet not enough in the end. She opened the door, stepped out into the hall and was vaguely surprised to see that nothing had changed outside the little room.

All the changes had been internal.

When he didn’t call her back, didn’t try to convince her she had it all wrong, Nia knew it was well and truly over between them. She stumbled to the end of the hall, fogged in misery—

And stopped dead.

“What is it?” He had followed her, perhaps to give an explanation, perhaps to fight some more, but now he bristled beside her, ready to protect her from an unseen enemy.

His presence might have irritated her, might have wounded her breaking heart, but her mind focused gratefully on a number. “Twenty-six.”

“What?”

She paced back down the hall, all the way to the end
and back, Rathe a silent shadow at her side. “This hallway is twenty-six paces long.”

The hallway that ran parallel, where they’d found Short Whiny Guy’s body, was only twenty.

Rathe cursed quietly. “Nia, I don’t think—”

But she was already running toward the dead end, her sneakers nearly noiseless. She stopped when she reached the end and faced the blank wall. “It’s too short. There’s something behind it. A room, maybe.” Or worse.

“You don’t know that.” But Rathe checked the edges of the dead end, tested the doors on either side.

“I have a hunch.” Her left eyelid ticked in answer. When he didn’t argue, she knew he felt the same. Why else had they discovered Cadaver Man lurking near this hallway several times?

Gratefully, she let the information and the thrill of the hunt distract her from what had just happened between them, what would never happen again. She ran her fingers along the wall. Nothing. The back of her neck prickled in warning, but there was nobody behind her. The floor was sealed off, with a police guard near the elevator.

But there was danger here. She could feel it.

Her fingers found the camouflaged pressure pad just as Rathe touched her arm. He said, “I have a bad feeling about this. I want you to walk away.”

His eyes said so much more. They offered, promised, tempted.

But in the end it wasn’t enough. She wanted it all—both lover and career.

“I have the same bad feeling,” she agreed, “but I’m not going to quit on my dreams. No matter what.” She held out a hand. “Partners?” Lovers.
Compromise,
she wanted to say.
We can work together. We can watch each other’s backs. This isn’t my father’s life to live, it’s mine!

But he didn’t take her hand. His lips flattened to a thin, worried line. “Just push the damn button.”

Chapter Twelve

As Rathe watched, Nia pressed the button, and a section of wall loosened. A dark crack opened up between the cinder blocks, where a line of trim and a subtle change in paint color had disguised a rectangular outline. It might not have started as a hidden door, but someone had gone to great pains to camouflage the entrance at the end of the hall.

“Well? Open it!” she demanded.

Rathe glanced over his shoulder. The excited gleam in her eyes punched him in the chest. She loved this. Well, hell, so did he, but he didn’t love the sick worry in his gut or the rampaging fear that filled his mind with images of Nia shot dead in a leafy jungle or propped up in a storage room with bloody tracks where her eyes used to be.

He’d made it this long without cracking because he’d trained himself not to care too deeply. At least until now.

“Let’s get Peters.” He drew his hand away from the knob. “The police should go in first.”

“Then get him yourself. I’ll just have a quick look
around.” With an irritated, faintly disappointed glance in his direction, she opened the door. And paused.

Stairs curled down and to the left, looping behind the dead end. Old-fashioned bare bulbs lit the space with an unhealthy yellow glow. A familiar three-rayed symbol was painted on the wall in black and yellow.

“A bomb shelter?” she guessed

Rathe nodded. “Looks like. Must’ve been forgotten over the years, as the newer wings were built on top of the older building.”

“There’s no dust. No burned-out bulbs.” She descended four steps, then turned back toward him. “Someone uses this place.”

Their eyes locked, and all of his planned platitudes fell away. He didn’t bother trying to talk her out of the search. He would’ve failed, anyway. She’d made her choice, picking the job over him. And he probably deserved it.

God knows he’d done the same thing seven years earlier.

After a moment he nodded sharply. “I’ve got your back.”

They descended the long, twisting flight of stairs. Though the narrow space was no darker than the hallway above, the walls pressed in and the shadows seemed long.

“We should go back up and have the officer radio Peters,” he said unnecessarily, knowing they wouldn’t. The compulsion had snagged them both, the siren call that touched every doctor crazy enough to trade a lucrative practice for HFH fieldwork.

The lure of the unknown.

“There’s a door at the bottom,” she said, keeping her voice to a near whisper though there was no sense of another human presence. They were alone. Whispering simply seemed appropriate, just as it seemed appropriate for him to stay close behind her, breathing in their mingled scents and wishing things could have been different between them.

He lowered his lips close to her ear and breathed, “Stay to the side, just in case.”

She nodded and glanced back at him, eyes dark in her lovely face. Then she swung the unlocked door open in a smooth move and flattened herself against the wall. But no bullets assaulted them. No cadaverous murderer leaped toward them. Nothing happened.

Then a roiling, charnel stench filtered out, and Rathe swallowed a mouthful of bile. “Oh, hell!”

All thoughts of their recent sexual encounter fled in the face of the smell and the sight of the cavernous room.

There was no body, but it had been the scene of a slaughter. The walls were splashed with a macabre Rorschach pattern of rusty stains. Long rivulets streaked down to pool on the floor, dry now, though they had once been warm and wet.

Nia turned away, breathing through her mouth. “Short Whiny Guy was killed here.”

“Yes.” Rathe stepped into the small, cool room and felt the walls close in, as though he’d stepped out of the open into a dark, ominous cave. He shook off the sensation and glanced around, though there was little to see.