Rapid Fire (13 page)

The
muscle twitched harder and Thorne scowled. “What’s done is done.” He turned
toward the body. “Come on. Let’s get whatever information we can from the Red
Rock cops, then head back to Bear Claw. Chief Parry needs to hear about this.”
Then he glanced back toward the guard tower, and a shadow passed across his
face. “We’ll need access to a fax machine. I’d like to show Alissa’s sketch to
a few people.”

A chill
skittered through Maya’s gut. “You think the guy who snatched little Hannah and
tried to hit you with the delivery van might have been an inmate here?”

“Maybe,
maybe not. But it’s worth checking out.”

An hour
later, they had their answer. The van driver wasn’t an ex-con. He was a prison
guard named Drew Wilson.

And he
was AWOL.

IT WAS
WELL PAST DARK BEFORE Maya and Thorne headed back to Bear Claw. They had dug
into Drew Wilson’s employment records—which were scant, since he’d been hired
on at the Red Rock Pen only after Nevada Barnes’s incarceration, and they’d
ridden along as the Red Rock cops—who had jurisdiction—checked his listed
address and found a sub shop instead.

Some
progress. A few dead ends. A very long day.

Maya had
watched Thorne grow increasingly uncomfortable as the hours passed. He had
pulled a light windbreaker out of his car and used it to cover the bloody
stripes on his back, but they were clearly paining him.

Hell, for
all she knew, he was still carrying shards of cement or glass in there. He’d
waved off her suggestion that he let the ambulance attendants tend his wounds.
He’d grunted in the negative when the prison doctor had offered to take a look,
and snarled when Maya had pressed.

By the
time they finally reached his vehicle out in the parking lot, she’d had it with
his machismo. “I’m driving.”

She took
it as a measure of his discomfort that he didn’t argue. Instead, he muttered a
soft curse and levered himself into the passenger seat.

Without
discussing it, she drove to her building and parked in the underground garage.
The Bear Claw cops had bugged the phones in her condo and Tucker had called in
a favor and gotten a state-of-the-art security system installed that morning.
The place was as safe as it could be.

“Come
upstairs,” she said, and winced when the words came out in a husky voice that
didn’t sound like hers at all. She forced a stronger, more practical tone and
said, “We’ll get you cleaned up before we report in.”

She
climbed out of the car without waiting for an answer, opened his door and
reached down to help him lever himself out of the passenger’s seat.

“I’ve got
it,” he grumbled, and once he was on his feet, he slammed the door for
emphasis.

But he
didn’t argue the detour.

As they
walked across the dark garage to the locked elevator lobby, he stayed close to
her. She was aware of the tension in his frame, the protective glares he sent
into the shadows, and she realized all over again that the danger hadn’t passed
with the death of Nevada Barnes.

They had
an APB out on Drew Wilson, but he could be anywhere. On the run.

On the
hunt.

Maya
glanced into the shadows and moved closer to Thorne as she keyed them into the
elevator lobby. Even hurt, he was a formidable opponent.

But once
they were upstairs, inside her suddenly small-feeling condo, she was forced to
admit that he was formidable, period. He dominated the space, making the small
touches of decor more feminine than she’d intended. He prowled from room to
room as he had the day before, looking for an intruder. When he was done, he
faced her and raised an eyebrow. “You want me in the bathroom?”

His
expression was challenging, as if to say, This was your idea.

Yes it
was, she acknowledged, beginning to think she would’ve been better off taking
him to the ER. She’d thought she was strong enough to handle having him in her
space.

Maybe
she’d been wrong.

“I can
barely fit in the bathroom alone, never mind with someone else.” Face hot, she
turned away and gestured to the kitchen nook. “In there. Pull up a stool at the
breakfast bar. The light’s good enough for your superficial cuts.” She
emphasized the word, hoping for reassurance, or maybe an explanation.

She still
didn’t understand his collapse. If it hadn’t been from the cuts, then what?

“Will
do.” He shrugged out of his windbreaker, baring the torn back of his shirt,
which was streaked with rusty brown now that the stains had set.

When he
lifted his hands to the buttons, Maya escaped to the bathroom and let out a
long, whistling breath.

Bringing
him home had seemed like a good idea when he’d refused treatment at the prison
and turned down a ride to the ER. But as she flattened her palms against the
cool lip of the sink and stared at herself in the mirror, she had to wonder if
she honestly knew what she was doing.

She
pressed her lips together, and in the reflection, her mouth thinned to a
determined line. “I’m just patching him up so we can head to the station and
figure out what comes next. That’s all.”

But it
felt like more than that when she stripped her bathroom of first aid supplies,
and noticed that her fingers trembled very slightly. It felt like more than
that when she had to stop and take a deep breath before opening the door, in an
effort to slow her rocketing heartbeat and quell the jumpy nerves in her
stomach.

And it
felt like more when she stepped out into the main living space and saw Thorne
sitting on one of her breakfast bar stools, bare-chested.

His
shoulders were broad and well defined, carrying the strength of a man who was
naturally powerful, maybe from gym work, maybe from life. A light fuzz of
coarse hair drew her attention to the slope of his tautly muscled chest and the
contours of his ribs and abdominal muscles below, forming a washboard sculpture
that urged her fingers to touch, to trace.

He’d
turned on the overhead kitchen fluorescents, which usually felt too bright to
her, but now seemed exactly perfect as they splashed light across his torso,
washing his natural tan to a pearly white that made her think of statues and
fine art.

As she
watched, he reached behind him and scooped up a glass half full of clear
liquid. Tipped it to his lips. Drained it.

And her
heart stopped.

She saw
the bottle on the breakfast bar. Saw the knowing twitch of his lips when he
noticed her standing just inside the main room. “If you haven’t taken a drink
in five years, why’s there an open bottle of rum front and center in your pasta
cabinet?”

She
stalked to the breakfast bar and slammed the medical supplies down onto the
mosaic tile surface. “It’s a reminder. A symbol. Proof that I can be tempted
without giving in.”

He set
the glass down with a clink. “Then why is it open?”

The smell
of rum permeated the air, working its way into her nostrils like an old friend.

She
shuddered at a surge of want that carried the strength of arousal and the
disgust of nausea. “None of your damn business. You want me to clean those cuts
or not?”

He stared
at her for a long moment before he turned away, presenting his back, which was
streaked with ugly, scabbed-over wounds. “Go ahead, but do me a favor and don’t
use the rum as a disinfectant. I’m going to need it for anesthesia.”

“Nice to
see one of us still likes his booze,” she said tartly. Then she pressed her
lips together and blew out a breath. “Sorry. None of my business.”

He was
silent while she stepped into the kitchen and drew a pan of warm water, then
dumped enough disinfectant in to turn the water blood-red. She returned to
where he sat, soaked a half-dozen gauze pads in the mixture, and used the first
to wipe at the bloody streaks on his back.

She
winced. “This looks like hell.”

“Some of
it’s old.” His voice was carefully neutral, but the muscles of his neck and
shoulders tightened.

She
looked closer and saw that the bloody scabs on his right shoulder and the
palm-sized bruise along his ribs were new. But the puckered scar tissue lower
down was old, as were the dark stripes that crossed his spine and ran
diagonally down to the belted waistband of his slacks. Maya brushed the tough,
dark skin with her fingertips. When he flinched, she pulled back. “Sorry.”

“Doesn’t
matter,” he said shortly. “It was a long time ago.” But the cords of his neck
stood out in sharp relief and he swallowed hard, the sound and motion seeming
amplified in the quiet kitchen with its bright, unforgiving light.

As Maya
cleaned the shallow cuts and used a pair of tweezers to work small shards of
glass and cement out of his back, she was conscious of the warm, tight skin
beneath her hands, conscious of Thorne’s steady breathing and the scent of man
overlaid by those of rum and blood.

After a
long moment, he surprised her by saying, “I started drinking after I came down
off the mountain. I’m sure you know the story. It was more or less common
knowledge at the academy.”

“I know
some of it,” Maya said. She wasn’t sure why he’d brought it up. Maybe guilt for
laying her raw. Maybe something else. “You went undercover to infiltrate Mason
Falk’s cult up in the Wagon Ridge Mountains and something went wrong.”

He
snorted, but there was no mirth in the sound. “Close enough. They broke my
cover—maybe I slipped up, maybe someone on the force turned, we never figured
it out. They grabbed me out of my bed and chained me in what Falk called the
‘correction chamber.’ It was where he put the women and children who went
against the tenets of his so-called faith.” He shrugged, then winced when the
motion pulled at the clean, weepy cuts on his back. “He didn’t put the men in
there. Them, he killed. Except in my case, he needed me alive. He needed
information. How much the PD knew. When they were planning to raid—he knew it
was a case of when, not if.”

He fell
silent. Maya ripped open a package of butterfly bandages and winced at the
noise, which seemed too loud, too violent in the overbright kitchen.

Thorne
flinched, then, as she began to apply the bandages, he continued, “I was held
captive for two and a half days. Sixty of the longest hours of my life. Part of
Falk’s ‘religion’ involved snake venom and hallucinogens, and he pumped me full
of whatever he had on hand, trying to get me to talk.” His voice grew raw.
“Hell, there were times I would’ve talked, just to make him stop, but I
couldn’t remember the answers anymore. I didn’t even know my own name. He’d
stripped me bare, layer by layer, going deep, deeper than maybe he meant. In
the end, there wasn’t much left of me except—” His hands flexed on his
wool-clad knees and he swallowed. “Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty.”

Maya was
done with his back, but she kept dabbing with a gauze pad, unwilling to face
him square-on, unwilling to let him see the look of horror on her face.

Maybe
unwilling to see his.

When
she’d known him in the academy, he’d been maybe six months removed from his
ordeal. His eyes had been hunted, haunted and blurred at the edges by the
whiskey he drank when he thought nobody was looking.

“I spent
a few days in the hospital, then released myself. I wasn’t badly injured—some
burns and cuts, a couple of broken fingers. But the drugs and the venom had done
a number on me. I had…spells. Visions. I don’t know what to call them, even to
this day.” His voice grew raw. “Sometimes I’d see things I’d done. Sometimes
things I was going to do. Awful things.” He reached for the glass on the marble
countertop, lifted it and drained the last few drops. “I tried therapy, tried
hypnosis, tried tranquilizers, acupuncture, homeopathy…hell, I even looked into
electroshock. But for those first six months, whiskey was the only thing that
blocked the flashes.”