Pure Hell (Seventh Level Book 1) (2 page)

“I mean, really?” she said, finally unable to stay silent a second longer. “I can’t even die correctly. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

She pressed her palms to her eyes and tried to concentrate on Liam’s questions but numbness filled her mind. Giving it up as a bad job, she spent the rest of the day following in Liam’s footsteps in a shocked and surreal haze. She felt drawn, as a bug would, unable to resist the lure of a lit porch light. When he went to leave the scene, she scrambled into his car after him. There was an uncomfortable moment where she straddled his lap as she crawled over into the passenger seat.

“Excuse me,” she said unnecessarily. It wasn’t as if he realized her crotch was grinding against his but she felt obligated to say something. She needed to find a better way to do this if she was going to be stuck following him around for long. She spent half a second attempting to pull the seat belt across her shoulder before realizing how ridiculous the action was. Being dead was hard.

A sick feeling twisted in her gut as she watched her body disappear into the back of a coroner’s van. A cold breeze skittered across her shoulders. Automatically she reached up to touch the gold cross around her neck only to have it remind her that the real one was still around the neck of her real body. The one heading to the morgue. Panic swept through her. Despite no longer needing oxygen, she panted heavily as her throat began to swell closed. She was dead. She was defenseless. She couldn’t do this. So much for compartmentalizing. Liam threw his arm over the back of her seat and twisted to look behind him as he backed out of his parking space. Although he wasn’t really touching her, the terror subsided with his close proximity.

“I’m okay. Everything is going to be fine.”

It was an outrageous lie of course but lying to herself had become the foundation of her life. Concentrating on his profile, she attempted to clear her mind as he drove. If she was going to be stuck living out eternity attached to someone, she could have done worse. She snuck a peek at this left hand. There wasn’t a ring. That was good. This was better. When she concentrated on him and not her circumstances, the muscles loosened in her neck.

Speaking of muscles
, Kylie thought with a smile. Liam’s forearm flexed as he made left turn. She ran a finger over the deep ridges and a trail of goose bumps formed over his skin. He turned the heat on.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

It was as if she was living one of those conversation starter questions. “If you could do anything you wanted and no one would ever know, what would you do?” Apparently, she would touch a sexy unsuspecting man at every opportunity.

Chapter Two

Liam lived in a small house in Harvey about ten miles outside New Orleans. The neighborhood wasn’t what Kylie would call cute He obviously didn’t believe in cutting his grass very often, but it was immediately obvious he lived alone. The inside was clean and sparsely furnished. It seemed he wasn’t one to enjoy the comforts of home. It looked as if he slept, showered—possibly ate there—but nothing else. A workaholic, she surmised. She recognized the signs since she had been one too.

After emptying his pockets and unsnapping his gun’s holster, he headed straight for the bathroom. He left the door standing open just as she always did when she was at home.
Had done
, she reminded herself. It was a perk of being single. You were free as long as you were in your home. With the open floor plan of the house, she could see from one end to the other from where she stood. The walls were all eggshell with the exception of one of the walls in his dining room. That one appeared to be made of stone.

It was a gorgeous little starter home perfect for a single man. A good job and a pleasant home, so why wasn’t this guy married yet? If she had met him sooner, he’d have been beating her off with a stick. She hovered at the edge of the bathroom door keeping him just out of her line of vision. She possessed not an ounce of desire to witness this part of his daily routine, except instead of hearing the toilet flush as she’d been expecting, the shower fired to life.

Shifting position, she peeked around the corner. His back was facing her as he reached over his head and pulled his shirt off, exposing the upper half of his body to her view. It was a glorious work of art—wide muscular shoulders flexed and rolled, hardening as he worked on the belt of his jeans. Her eyes dropped to his narrow waist and she held her nonexistent breath in anticipation.

She didn’t have the energy to care if she was being a voyeur. She’d died today. She reasoned she was entitled to at least this much compensation. The tinkle of his belt buckle sounded loud in the otherwise silent room and if she had any air, it would have whooshed from her lungs as his pants slipped over his hips and down his long legs. He was delicious perfection. Even though she no longer possessed a corporeal body, her mind obviously did not care. It reacted as if everything functioned properly because her mouth filled with water at the sight of his tight ass.

Unfortunately, she didn’t get to enjoy it for it long. He stepped into the shower hiding his yummy body from her once more. The shower curtain screeched on the rod as he yanked it closed. She didn’t roll her tongue back into her head until steam was billowing out around it. He’d left a big enough gap she could squeeze through if she tried, but she decided to give the man his peace.

She let out a happy sigh when she noticed he’d closed the lid on the toilet and left his towel resting on top. She crossed the room and sat down. No sooner had her ass touched the towel than a low moan drifted out from behind the curtain. She shot to her feet again. She craned her neck and looked in through the gap. The sight that met her caused a moan of her own to slip past her lips. His head was tossed back and the water ran over his face before sliding down the rest of his body. With one of his hands braced against the wall for support, his free one fisted a massive erection.

She fancied the stem was as big as her forearm and ended in a bulbous head. It was almost purple in his throes of passion and as his fingers pulled at the water slickened skin she pressed her knees together on a wave of lust.

“Holy shit. You’re ten shades of hot,” she sighed.

She’d never witnessed something so erotic and with a pang of longing, she realized she had also never wanted a man the way she wanted this one. In the midst of the mind-blowing scene taking place a mere three feet from her, she felt more alone than ever before. She could reach out, wrap her fingers around his cock. She could stroke him to completion but he would never know she was there. The knowledge made her death more real than anything else had.

With her mind heading to such a dark place, it took her a second to realize his face was no longer hidden beneath the flow of water from the showerhead, instead he was staring straight ahead, directly at her. His sky blue eyes were honed in on her. A muscle ticked in his jaw as if he’d locked his back teeth together. Her gaze was transfixed and even as a jet shot from the head of his cock, she couldn’t look away from his eyes. She could swear that he could see her.

*

Liam dressed as quickly as possible. He had only dropped by the house long enough to take a quick shower and get a clean change of clothes. He had been passing by the bus stop on his way home when he saw the patrol officers gathered around Kylie’s body. It had been tempting to pretend as if he hadn’t seen anything since he had already been on duty for over twenty-eight hours, but this was his job. It was a calling. Running on pure adrenaline, his body and mind were wound up tight. His cell phone rang, interrupting his thoughts. Seeing Mark’s number on the caller ID, he hit the phone icon placing Mark on speaker so he could finish pulling on his clothes.

“Yep.”

“Is that how your momma taught you to answer the phone?”

Liam smiled at the familiar lecture. The only reason he always answered Mark’s call in such a way was to annoy him. “We had servants for this sort of thing,” he answered by rote.

“Un-huh. Anyhow, I found out some interesting things about Kylie Trace,” he said, fully snagging Liam’s attention.

“Go on.”

“Initial indications from the medical examiner are that her neck was broken, but there wasn’t a single mark on her body.”

“How odd.”

“Yeah, that was my thought too,” Mark agreed. “Also, it turns out, in addition to her day job at the phone company, she also worked on the side moonlighting as a medium for Madame Curion’s. It’s a spiritual advising company. It’s right around the corner from where she was waiting for the bus. I talked to
the
Madame Curion. According to her, Kylie possessed a genuine ability to speak to the dead. She said Kylie was the strongest psychic she’d ever met.”

Liam’s mind stuttered to a stop before racing off in a million directions. The possibilities were endless down that road. “Did you get a list of clients?”

“I did. I thought I would get started on interviewing them tomorrow.”

Liam nodded even though Mark couldn’t see the motion. “What about family?”

“I’m running into a bit of an international problem there, but I don’t think so. Here is what I have stateside. Kylie Marie Trace was born twenty-seven years ago in some tiny village in Scotland and at age seven, both parents were killed in a freak fire. She was sent to Nashville, Tennessee to live with her aunt. At the age of seventeen, her aunt died of a sudden heart attack. Since Kylie was considered a legal adult in Scotland, the trust her parents set up for her was released. She wasted no time moving here to New Orleans two weeks later.” He paused and Liam heard the shuffling of papers in the background and ice tinkling in a glass as if Mark was taking a drink before continuing. “According to both her supervisor at the phone company and Madame Curion, Kylie claimed she had no living relatives.”

“Friends or boyfriends?” Liam barked.

Mark sighed at his tone but answered. “There is no man I could find and only a friend named Cindy.”

Ignoring the odd relief shooting through him upon learning there hadn’t been a man in her life, Liam tugged on his running shoes without untying them first.

“Give me the friend’s address and I’ll work on that tomorrow.”

Silence rang through the line and Liam checked to make sure the call hadn’t dropped. The timer was still clicking by and his temper began to rise.

“Address,” he growled.

“You have that weird tone you get when you’re planning something on the side.”

Sometimes he hated that Mark knew him so well, or at least he knew him better than others did. Sighing heavily, he admitted, “I’m going to check out her place.”

“Landlord’s not opening it up for us until the morning.”

“Yep,” Liam agreed. “The friend’s address,” he reminded him.

* * * * *

Dread ate at Kylie’s gut as Liam popped the lock on her tiny two-bedroom apartment. She’d once loved her slice of the world, but that was before evil had moved in. Fear seeped into the very walls surrounding her.

The door swung wide and without thought, Kylie gripped the back of Liam’s shirt and jumped behind him for protection. Liam froze at her touch as if he felt her tugging at his clothes but after a moment, he continued inside. She kept her pace slow, looking right then left, searching for any hint of sulfur in the air. She didn’t care if she was slowing Liam down or even if she was alerting him to her presence. She didn’t want him rushing into a trap and she didn’t know what to expect. After all, she’d ended up dead.

“I’m so glad you’re tall,” she whispered as she blatantly used him as a shield.

The air seemed heavy and ominous just as she feared it would but she couldn’t decide if it was a lingering feeling from past events or if they weren’t alone. When after a full minute, no flames erupted around her and Liam’s flesh was not torn from his bones, she let go of his shirt.

Liam’s footsteps slapped against the hardwood floors and bounced off the walls of the otherwise silent room as he moved to stand in front of the couch. She knew the bland tan stripes of the overstuffed sofa weren’t what captured his attention but the giant words etched into the wood above it. With his hands clasped behind his back, he leaned closer inspecting them.

“Kylie Trace full of grace”

Despite the fact the words tore completely through the drywall, each letter was perfectly shaped. Liam stared at the words for so long Kylie wondered what he could see that she didn’t.

As if the silence was some form of masterful questioning technique on Liam’s part, Kylie found herself telling him things she’d never confessed to anyone.

“It was his way of torturing me,” she explained. “I sat in that chair,” she said, pointing to the recliner adjacent the couch even though Liam couldn’t see the motion. “I was frozen with fear and shaking so hard I thought my teeth would shatter.”

She paused as the memory of that night caused her stomach to clench. He’d cut into the wall slowly, taunting her in a sing-song voice.

“I’m not sure why he didn’t kill me right then. Not that it matters now,” she added absently as Liam straightened away from his inspection before trailing through the other rooms. To her mind, there wasn’t much to see. Her coffee mug sat half-empty by the sink. In the laundry room, a basket full of freshly folded clothes waited to be put away. The bright yellow paint and book-lined shelves showed hints of a once peaceful home, but those things were marred by his arrival into her life.

Liam opened her cabinets and sifted through her mail. In truth, Kylie was getting bored with the whole thing until he headed for the bedroom. She trailed along in his wake as he crossed into her private territory. She tried seeing things through his eyes. Her full-size bed was unmade. Kylie wondered if he could tell she didn’t sleep by the way her covers balled up at the foot of the bed and her pillow sat on the floor. Liam went straight to the picture sitting on her dresser and lifted the frame. Holding the eight-by-ten photo between his hands, he inspected it thoroughly. Kylie felt a pang of regret as she stared at the picture of a much younger version of her smiling face frozen forever in time. It had been sunny the day the picture was taken. She stood arm in arm with the sister who no longer acknowledged her. Why hadn’t she tried harder to reconnect with her before it was too late?