In the Air Tonight

LIE WITH ME

NIGHT MOVES
IN THE AIR TONIGHT
PROMISES IN THE DARK
LIE WITH ME
HOLD ON TIGHT
TOO HOT TO HOLD
HARD TO HOLD

BY STEPHANIE TYLER
CO-WRITING WITH LARISSA IONE
AS SYDNEY CROFT

TAKEN BY FIRE
TEMPTING THE FIRE
TAMING THE FIRE
SEDUCED BY THE STORM
UNLEASHING THE STORM
RIDING THE STORM

ANTHOLOGIES

HOT NIGHTS, DARK DESIRES

(including stories by Stephanie Tyler and Sydney Croft)

This book was written during a very special—and very trying—time in my life. The following people helped to make it easier, so thanks to Mom and Dad, Lisa, Mary Beth, Katie, Steph G., Maria, Larissa, Jaci, Sharon, and Patricia … and, of course, Zoo, Lily, and Chance.

T
he gun pressed to the side of Paige’s bare neck, the cold barrel barely registering against her skin. She’d gone numb. Her hands gripped the beefy arm across her throat—it was close to choking her, pulling so hard her feet were nearly off the floor.

She tried to balance on her toes, but Wayne was moving backward, dragging her into the bowels of the ER and away from security.

The smells accosted her. Stale air. Rubbing alcohol and air freshener. Fear and death. No matter how well it was cleaned, those odors would never cease, embedded into the hospital as surely as they were into her senses.

In the background, she heard the cacophony—sirens and the screams of the patients and her coworkers—heard someone trying to reason with the man who’d taken her hostage.

“Mr. Wallace … Wayne, please, you don’t have to do this.”

Jeffrey, please—put the gun down, don’t do this
.

The echo in her head threatened to take over everything, even as she told herself fiercely that this wasn’t the same situation—that the man holding her wasn’t her brother and that none of this was remotely personal.

Less than an hour ago, EMTs had brought in Cindy Wallace—she’d been beaten and at first insisted that she’d fallen down stairs. Paige had worked here long enough to recognize the signs, the excuses, the fear etched into the fine lines in the woman’s worn face.

After a few moments alone with Paige, Cindy had admitted her husband had been abusing her for years. She hadn’t offered up much more than that, but it had only taken Paige one touch with a bare palm to know the full story, her gift of psychometry working overtime—and she’d called the social worker down immediately. And the police.

And then she’d put on exam gloves so she wouldn’t have to feel more of Cindy’s pain.

But she hadn’t realized the extent of Wayne Wallace’s anger, hadn’t taken it seriously enough when Cindy told her that Wayne had gone so far over the edge that he would do anything not to be separated from her.

The police were searching for him. And Paige had been so intent on taking care of Cindy that neither of them had noticed Wayne sneaking into the curtained area.

They’d noticed when he grabbed Paige and held his gun on her, though.

“I’m not leaving here without you,” Wayne was saying now as he dragged her, Cindy following along, until they reached an empty room where he herded them inside, ordering his wife to shut the door behind her.

Time and space shattered inside Paige’s head when the door closed—everything slowed to the point of nearly stopping and her heart throbbed in her ears.

You’ve done this before—stay calm
.

And suddenly she was fourteen again, the ER was the high school cafeteria and the man doing the shooting wasn’t an overweight bully who abused his wife, it was her brother, Jeffrey, and he would make headlines for the school shooting.

She forced her mind to the present. One wrong move—by anyone—and things could get ugly fast. Especially because the police were here—she’d heard them calling out to Wayne to answer the phone in the room, which he ignored. Cindy was screaming at her husband, the three of them trapped together and Paige wished Cindy would be quiet, wished everyone would shut up and stop talking.

But nothing ever stopped in the ER—especially when it was a matter of life and death.

If she could get the examination gloves off her hands, she might be able to help herself. Or she might make things worse. But there was no way this could end well. She refused to let it drag on for hours.

Her gift was both a blessing and a curse, sometimes both at once. She’d been using it for as long as she could remember—inadvertently when she was a child; later, when she’d begun to dread its intrusion, she’d taken to wearing gloves or pulling the sleeves of
her shirts well past her fingertips as a defense. She’d even gone as far as to tattoo symbols of protection on the insides of both wrists, although they didn’t seem to be much help at the moment. She was alive, yes, but the symbols were there more to keep the evil she touched from invading her.

This time, it might be her only hope for surviving.

Sliding her hands along his arm as if trying for a better grip, the latex began to roll off her palms. Halfway off and the images came through—ones she didn’t want to see. Broken bones and blood and screams nearly shredded her with pain … this was all a part of Cindy’s daily life.

Shoulda killed the bitch when I had the chance
.

God, was there anything Paige could see that would help her?

“You beat her yesterday and again this morning,” Paige said, her voice hoarse and breathless, and his grip went slack for a second before tightening.

“Shut up, bitch.”

She tightened her own grip on his forearm, letting her hands take in the violence and pain that threatened to shatter her. It was why she worked a job where no one considered it odd that she wore gloves all the time. “You lost your job again yesterday. And you were so angry that you came home to Cindy, tried to have sex, and then you hit her when you couldn’t get hard.”