Deadly Sins (47 page)

She rolled over him, stretched out until every inch of them touched. Curves to angles. Sinew to softness. With her lips she mapped every inch of puckered skin, each jagged scar. And nearly wept at the thought of the pain he’d endured.

She traced the web of scars on the back of his hands, on those long sculptor fingers, capable of trailing heat in their wake. Followed the erratic pattern of nicks and creases, white with age, up his arm, where they met the long crooked seam across his throat. Jaid didn’t think of them, any of them, as disfiguring. They were badges of what he’d endured. Marks of survival.

The tip of her tongue dipped in the indentations around his heart. Journeyed over the design of scars left from a madman’s knife. Her heart was full. Overflowing with a need to have a part in healing wounds that had wrought such devastation on the outside. Had left the man unmarked within.

He withstood her ministrations for long minutes, his muscles jumping and quivering beneath her lips. But then, in a show of flagging control, he rolled her to her back and cupped her breasts in his hands. Lowered his head and feasted.

Colors pinwheeled behind her eyelids. Pleasure shimmied from nerve ending to nerve ending. With each greedy tug of his mouth, there was a corresponding pull deep in her womb. Her nails bit at his shoulders, an edgy blade of hunger twisting inside her, building to a fever pitch. It was too much. Too fast. Too soon.

And then his hand moved between her legs and rocketed her from wanting to demanding in the space of a few moments.

“Open your eyes. I want to watch you go over.” His ruined voice sounded a harsh mutter in her ear. “It’s greedy. You make me feel that way.” His quick and clever fingers had her twisting against him in just a few wicked strokes. “You make me want in a way that’s dangerous. I want to have you. All of you.” His thumb pressed against her clitoris in rhythm with his words, wringing a sudden orgasm from her that hazed her vision. Tore a cry from deep in her throat.

“And more.” He was over her and inside her in one smooth stroke, possessing her with a single powerful lunge that drove the breath from them both. Then he began to move, his thrusts hard. A bit frantic. And the passion so recently sated began to build anew.

His desperation fed her own. Her legs climbed his to clasp around his back. She met each thrust with equal demand. The night rushed in, draping them in intimacy. Desire was firing through her veins, fogging her vision.

But she kept her eyes open, fixed on his as their hips pounded together. She could see nothing but him. He filled her senses. There was only the dampness of their flesh. The beat of her blood, roaring in her ears. And when he surged against her one final time, his climax shuddering through him, it was the sound of her name on his lips that took her over the edge with him.

He was silent a long time. But one of his arms held her curved against him. His hand stroked her hair. And although there were no words, she could sense the war that was waging inside him. She said nothing, knowing it was a battle he had to fight alone. But when he finally spoke, the subject couldn’t have surprised her more.

“You know LeCroix was a pediatrician. That’s how we narrowed in on him eventually. He had treated three of the missing boys sometime in their lives. He was a doctor. Sworn to heal. And he used his skills for torture.”

He must have felt the shiver that shook her then, because he pulled her closer. “I was an adult. Could withstand more trauma and pain than his young captives. And it became a game with him, I think. To see how far the human body could be pushed. Lots of the scars . . . they were shallow cuts. A slit of the scalpel, but before the blood loss was too great, he’d stitch it up. Start again somewhere else.”

Bile filled her throat, and her eyes slid shut. She steeled herself against the rest. Knowing he had to get it out for his own reasons. “He was ecstatic over my capture, but he made me suffer, too, for costing him the escape of his newest captive. He was punishing me as much for that as anything. And he was distracted. Once he’d tire of his games, he’d go outside for hours, leaving me cuffed to a metal gurney. I could hear him hammering and the sound of power tools, but I didn’t know what he was up to. Not then.

“I thought Cleve was right in back of me. The woods along the bayou were dark. We’d called for backup before we headed in after LeCroix. By the time I’d spotted where he’d taken the boy, I wasn’t able to get an answer when I called Hedgelin. I discovered later that he’d dropped his phone. Reached down for it and caught his finger in a trap meant for beaver, I suppose. Maybe raccoon. I don’t know how long it took him to get free. Long enough to lose me.”

“For three days,” she whispered. Thirty-six hours of agony, of facing certain death.

“I thought I’d die there in that swamp.” His voice was chillingly matter-of-fact. “I’d gotten the drop on him when I surprised him in the act of savaging that boy. Knocked him out. But the place he had there, it was a rabbit warren of blind corridors that crisscrossed and led nowhere. Had them booby-trapped, too. I finally lowered the kid out a window, one too small for me to follow him through. Was trying to find my way out when I triggered a trapdoor that landed me in a cage. Lost my weapon. And I quickly learned what happened when LeCroix had someone at his mercy.”

She brought her hand up to hug his arm tight while she pressed more closely against him. Knew there was nothing she could do to ease the razor-edged memories that could never be erased.

“He’d been building a guillotine. I was to be its first victim. But he had a bit of a problem on his hands.” There was grim humor in Adam’s voice. “He had to get me out there, and the gurney wouldn’t fit through the door. So he cuffed my hands in front of me and kept a scalpel handy to move me in the right direction. I suppose he thought I’d be weak from blood loss. Shock. God knows I should have been. But I managed to catch him off guard. Got my cuffed wrists around his neck and choked him with the short chain.

“I got this in the struggle.” She felt him finger the scar across his throat. “But I killed him. And somehow stumbled far enough out of the woods to run into the agents who had been looking for me for three days.”

Nerves clashed and twisted in her stomach. She knew there was far more to the story than what he’d told. But it was also more than she’d ever expected to hear. Of more interest was the reason he’d told it. Now. Like this. And it was that knowledge that had her holding her breath.

“Paulie was at my bedside throughout.”

Her heart lurched then. She’d been, too, until he’d ordered her away, his voice weak but implacable. He’d been injured beyond comprehension, had months of recovery ahead of him. But he’d managed to convince her, once and for all, that there was nothing to be salvaged between them.

“When I was well enough, Paulie told me what he’d done. He’d been working the case, too, tracking LeCroix’s finances. The man had overseas accounts under several different names. Some of the boys he kidnapped he killed. Others he sold. I imagine those boys were the source of the money. We never figured out any other avenue for it.”

Tears welled at the thought of those faceless children whose parents would never have closure. Who might be out there, still suffering. Or dying alone. The thought nearly had her stomach heaving. When she could manage to speak, she asked, “What had Paulie done?”

“Erased traces of the accounts. Transferred the money to other banks under other names. And gradually surrounded the finances with an impenetrable firewall.” There was a long pregnant pause. “And he put all of it in my name.”

Shocked, she twisted in his arms to look at him.

“I could do good with that kind of money, he said. He knew it wasn’t safe in his hands, but together we could build something that would help bring men like LeCroix to justice. Law enforcement is constrained by finances. Case loads. Politics. But we’d be free agents. And when we took a case, we could follow up on it until it was solved.” Soberly, he returned her stare. “I knew the bureau would confiscate it. And it wouldn’t go to waste. God knows there are always unmet needs. But black-and-white had gone gray for me during those days with LeCroix. And I realized Paulie was right. We had an opportunity to help even out justice a bit in the world. So I agreed. Every dime of it was poured into our agency.”

“And that’s how Raiker Forensics began,” she said slowly.

Even in the darkness, she could feel the intensity of his gaze. “I only tell you this because you have a right to know the truth. You have a right to know who I’ve become.”

Adam’s candor was a rare gift. He’d spent his life dealing in secrets, while shielding his own. Jaid wasn’t sure what to make of the information he’d just shared with her. But she knew what it had cost him to do so. “You haven’t
become
anything,” she whispered. “You’re the same man I fell in love with nearly ten years ago.”

She stopped before leading with her heart, remembering what the words had cost her the last time she’d uttered them.

But the truth reverberated inside her. Because in reality, nothing had changed in the years apart.

She was still in love with Adam Raiker.

The church was dimly lit. It was early; there was another half hour before mass would start. But his quarry was in a pew near the back, prayer book in his hand. Utterly predictable in his daily routine. And utterly accessible.

Slipping into a pew in back of his prey, he lowered the kneeler. Waited a few moments as if he were sending up a prayer. The man in front of him finally made the sign of the cross. Sat. The silenced weapon rested against a fat hymnal, pressed to his nape.

“Shh.”

His prey froze in place.

Whisper now. Other early churchgoers would join them soon, and this was just between the two of them. “You know if you were really as devout as you pretended, it might not have come to this.”

“Who are . . .”

“Shut up. You’re a damn hypocrite. Don’t care who you hurt as long as you get all the glory, do you? Turn around now. I want you to see my face.”

The next victim turned enough to see. For his eyes to widen. “Why would you be . . .”

“I think you know.” The hymnal and silencer helped muffle the blast, but even so, the noise had the hunched over blue-haired lady coming inside looking around, confused.

Unhurried, the man rose, keeping his back to her as reached in his coat for the note card in the Ziploc bag. Dropped it over the back of the pew on the body folded forward.

Then unhurriedly, he retrieved his cane and headed for the exit.

“Apparently, you thought of everything when stocking this place.” Jaid handed Adam a cup of coffee while he picked up the remote and turned on the TV in the conference room.

“We’ll see what you say when you tire of instant oatmeal and coffee for your morning meal,” he murmured, flipping through the channels for a news program. Most of his employees were moving around the structure, here on time but still rounding up breakfast. He settled on a program that had his photo splashed across the screen. It was the one Hedgelin had insisted he have taken for his temporary ID.