Lethal (46 page)

“The bastard who did this to me.”

“The back door was standing open when we got here. Your assailant got away.”

Wallace was struggling to sit up while the pair of EMTs were trying to hold him down. “I need to talk to the cops.”

“They’re searching the property, Mr. Wallace.”

“Go get them.”

“You can talk with the officers later. They’ll want your statement. In the meantime, we’ll transport you to the ER and let them X-ray—”

“You’re not transporting me anywhere.” Wallace knocked aside the young man’s arm, and this time his aim was perfect. “Get off me. I’m all right. I’ve got to warn Tori. Bring me my phone. It’s on the bedroom chair.”

The two EMTs consulted each other with a look. One got up and disappeared through the doorway. Seconds later, he called back, “No phone on the chair.”

Wallace gave a low moan. “He took my phone. My phone has her number in it.”

“Whose number?”

“Jesus! Whose do you think? Tori’s.”

“Sir, please lie back and let us—”

He grabbed the young man by the front of his uniform shirt. “I told you, I’m fine. But if anything happens to Tori, I’m coming after you first, and I’ll make your life a living hell. So you had better get a cop in here
now
!”

Coburn had been trained to sleep as efficiently as he’d been trained to do everything else. He woke up after two hours, feeling revived if not completely rested.

Honor was still lying as though welded to him. His right arm had gone to sleep. It tingled, but he left it where it was, sandwiched between her breasts. He didn’t want to wake her up until he had to. Besides, his arm felt good there.

Her right hand was on his chest, and he was shocked to realize that, in sleep, he’d covered it with his left hand, keeping it there, directly over his heart.

He had to admit: She’d got to him. This demure second-grade schoolteacher, who’d been faithful to her husband, but who had fucked him with the same fervor with which she’d fought him two days ago, had crawled under his mean ol’ hide.

Her features were soft and feminine, but she was no creampuff where and when it mattered. Even those times when he’d been ready to strangle her for doing something reckless, he’d admired her courage. He believed she would have killed him, or died trying, if he’d harmed her kid.

Thinking of Emily caused him to smile. The little chatterbox. It relieved him to know that she was safe, but he wasn’t as glad to be rid of her as he had thought he would be. He probably wouldn’t see her again, but he would never look at one of those red bug-eyed things without thinking about her. He also knew that whenever he recalled her kissing his cheek with such unqualified trust and acceptance, it was going to ache just a little in the vicinity of his heart.

It ached now.

But he pushed those thoughts aside. Lately, he’d been thinking a lot of stupid shit, and he couldn’t explain the sentimentality except that this was one crazy, mucked-up mission and had been ever since he’d fled the warehouse. No wonder he’d gone sappy. No wonder that, instead of planning what he was going to do next, he was lying here soaking up the warmth of Honor’s nakedness, letting it seep into his body like a healing balm.

Damn, she’d been sweet. Tight and hot and slick for want of him. Go figure.

And when he realized that he was the first lover she’d
taken since her husband died, he’d felt like Superman. But that was also when it became confusing, when it had evolved from straight screwing into something else, when he’d wanted to feel her hands on his body, when he’d wanted her to know that it wasn’t a memory or a ghost, but a flesh-and-blood man who was rocking her world, making her come. He had wanted her to know that it was him.

And that scared him.

Because never before in his life had he needed or wanted anybody needing or wanting him.

Good thing that this setup was short-term and when it was over he could walk away, no strings attached. They would return to their previous lives and never see each other again. He’d made it clear that’s how it would be, and she’d accepted it.

So, okay, yeah, he had let her snuggle up next to him to sleep. If she wanted to hold him, fine. Fine. As long as they both understood that the intimacy was temporary.

But there was no denying how good it felt having her against him. Each breath she took wafted across his skin. The soft, smooth inside of her thigh was resting on top of his. Her breasts pillowed his arm. The back of his hand was nestled in the V of her thighs, and if he turned his hand and cupped her with his palm…

His cock woke up and stretched.

They could do it just once more, right? What could it hurt? He wasn’t going to tell anybody. She sure as hell wasn’t. If he turned his hand into her and began stroking her
there
, she would wake up smiling and drowsy and ready for him again.

They would kiss. Erotically. Her mouth would be so damn enticing, he’d dip into it again and again to gather the taste that was now familiar to him. He would touch
his tongue to her nipples, and she’d rub her thumb around the tip of his cock and feel that he was about to burst, and then he’d be inside her, moving.

Or maybe not. Maybe he would do something he’d never done with a woman. Maybe he would just…
be
. Be still. No movement except their heartbeats. Not working toward something so it would be over with and he could move on to the next thing, physically sated maybe, but unaffected.

No, maybe this time, he would just savor being joined to another person as tightly as two people could be. He would savor being joined with Honor.

Maybe, while they were fitted together like that, he would kiss her. And if she kissed him the way she usually did, he would probably lose it. He’d have to move. He’d have no choice.

Afterward, he would tease her about how easy she was, and she would pretend to take exception. He would tease her about her tattoo, so wickedly positioned between twin dimples just above her shapely ass.

He’d say the tattoo artist had been one lucky son of a bitch to have had that luscious view while he plied his trade.
I’ll bet he took his sweet time
, he’d say. Then he’d tell her that’s what his vocation would be in his next life. He would be a tattoo artist who specialized in primary school teachers who went on Hurricane binges and got tattooed in places that weren’t—

Seen by just anybody.

His lazy train of thought suddenly derailed.

He pushed her off him and leaped from the bed. “Honor, wake up!”

Startled out of her deep sleep, she came up on her elbows and shaded her eyes against the glare when he
turned on the ceiling light. “What’s the matter? Is someone here?”

“No. Turn over.”

“What?”

“Get on your stomach.” He planted his knee beside her on the bed and flipped her facedown.

“Coburn!”

“You said ‘persuaded.’ ”

“What? Let me up.”

He placed his wide hand over her bottom and held her down. “Your tattoo. You said you got tipsy and were easily persuaded. Persuaded to get tattooed?”

“Yes. I didn’t take to the idea at first, but Eddie—”

“Insisted?”

“Eddie never
insisted
I do anything.”

“Okay, he
persisted
.”

“Sort of. He double-dog dared me. I finally gave in.”

Coburn was on his knees beside her, examining the intricate design. “And he chose the spot.”

“He said it was sexy.”

“It is. Sexy as all get out. But I don’t think that’s why he wanted it here.” Coburn squinted down at the swirling pattern while tracing it with his fingertip. “What does it say?”

“It doesn’t say anything.” She was watching him from over her shoulder. “I told you, it’s a Chinese symbol of some kind.”

“It’s gotta mean something or else why’d you choose it?”

“I didn’t. Eddie did. In fact he—”

Coburn’s head came up.

Her eyes connected with his. “He designed it.”

They stared at one another for several seconds, then Coburn said, “We just found the treasure map.”

For the umpteenth time Tori considered her empty cell phone. And for the umpteenth time she was sorely tempted to replace the battery and call Bonnell. She longed to talk to him. So what if he wasn’t extraordinarily handsome and well built? He wasn’t an ogre. She liked him. She knew his adoration for her was genuine and might have advanced from infatuation into—dare she think it?—full-blown love. He would be concerned over her sudden departure, wondering why she’d taken off to parts unknown without an explanation, why she wasn’t answering the calls he was surely placing.

If he’d put two and two together, he would have figured out that her leaving town was connected to the friend she’d told him about, the one who’d been kidnapped. Maybe he had late-breaking news regarding Honor and the search for her and Emily.

After sending the one short text to Bonnell informing him that she was leaving town, she had heeded Coburn’s instructions to the letter, even though she’d questioned the necessity of taking such precautions. A half hour after arriving at the house, she and Emily were making mud pies on a playground near the lakeshore. She’d been enjoying herself so much that it was easy to forget for short periods of time why the two of them were on this excursion.

But whenever she was reminded of the grim circumstances, she experienced a pang of longing for Bonnell’s solid presence. She also felt a touch of resentment for Coburn and his strict orders. Tori had an innate aversion to rules and had spent most of her life defying them.

Her resentment had mounted with each passing hour, until now, lying alone in bed and wishing for Bonnell’s
raunchy company, she decided that no harm could come from one short conversation just to assure him that she was all right, as horny as ever, and desperately missing him.

She sat up and was about to reach for her phone on the nightstand. Instead she screamed.

A man wearing a ski mask was standing at the foot of her bed.

He lunged and clamped his gloved hand over her mouth, trapping her scream. She fought him like a swamp panther, shaking his hand off her face, then baring teeth and nails as she went on the offensive. Her incredibly muscled and toned body wasn’t just for show. She was as strong as most men and had the reflexes to utilize that strength effectively. Her attacker narrowly escaped a heel aimed at his testicles with the impetus of a pile driver.

She tried to yank the ski mask off his face, but he got his fingers around her wrist and jerked it so hard she heard bones snap. In spite of herself, she screamed in pain.

Then he knocked her in the temple with his pistol grip. Darkness descended like a velvet blanket. Her last thought was of Emily and Honor and how miserably she had failed them.

Doral whipped off his mask and bent over Tori’s sprawled form, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath and sniff back the blood dripping from his nose. The bitch had landed at least one good punch.

He would show her the stuff he was made of. He would show her that he wasn’t the kind of man who’d take crap like that from a woman. He still owed her for that time in high school when she had not only turned him down, but had done so laughing at his fumbling attempts to seduce her.

The thought of finally teaching her a lesson delighted him and got him hard. He reached for the fly of his pants.

However, even as he grappled with his zipper, he stopped and reconsidered. The Bookkeeper wouldn’t like it. Not because of scruples, but because of the timing.

The Bookkeeper was impatiently waiting for his call, and this time the news had to be good.

The car bomb had failed to dispense with either Coburn or Honor. The Bookkeeper had received that bad news with even more fury than Doral had anticipated, and he’d anticipated something along the lines of Hitler getting news of the Third Reich’s defeat.

“You goddamn idiot! You told me he was there.”

“He was. I saw him myself.”

“Then how could he have got away?”

“I don’t—”

“And why didn’t you check to make sure he was dead before you left?”

“The car was in flames. There was no way to—”

“I’m sick of your excuses, Doral.”

It had continued that way for several minutes. But Doral preferred the ranting to the cool, distant tone of The Bookkeeper’s final words. “If you can’t do any better than this, I don’t need you, do I?”

In that moment Doral realized that unless he delivered Coburn and Honor, he was a dead man.

Or
.

It occurred to him that he did indeed have another option. He could kill The Bookkeeper.

That treasonous thought had wormed its way into his mind and coiled around his imagination. He fantasized about it and found the prospect enormously appealing. Why not?

The main
why not?
was because the end of The Bookkeeper would spell the end of his livelihood. But who was to say that he couldn’t take over the whole operation, now that the groundwork had been so meticulously laid?