Saved by a Dangerous Man (15 page)

It didn’t matter now. I flipped back to Corbin outside the warehouse. His problem was that he was too attractive. It made him memorable. His proficiency with the disguises was a necessity, then.
 

I traced the strong line of Corbin’s nose. Seemed like such a shame to destroy all of these. Did other photos of him even exist? Hard to imagine he had albums tucked away somewhere.

With a sigh, I shoveled the pictures back into the envelope. A narrow escape. Dad thought the Most Wanted lists were a waste of time, and I doubted Smile had seen it in decades. The fact that I wasn’t being interrogated by either my dad or the police was proof of that.
 

Something… I cocked my head… had I heard a noise from the front of the office?

There it was again, a soft scraping.

Dad
. Rob must not have contacted him fast enough. Or Dad hadn’t believed him. I hoped for Rob’s sake that it was the former.

The door closed with a half-muffled click that sounded… furtive.
 

I switched off my penlight and rose.

The lights hadn’t been turned on. Not Dad… he wasn’t the type to sneak around his own office. Dad would have thrown the door open, demanded that the trespasser step out and face him like a real man. He could be territorial, and sexist, like that.

If not Dad, then who?

There was a quiet thud. Then,
click, click, click
. The intruder—the one who wasn’t me—had either bumped into Katrina’s desk or found office gadgets irresistible.

I pressed up against the wall. The urge to close my eyes was overwhelming, but I kept them open, my focus sharp on the doorway.

A circle of light swept across Dad’s office, then a dark figure entered, went to the desk and looked underneath it. Searching for me.

When he turned, he would see me in the bathroom mirrors.

Now or never.
 

I dashed for the door.

The shadowy figure lunged at me, crashed me into the corner of the doorframe. The envelope went flying. We spun out into the main office together, went down in a heap, me on the bottom.

Definitely a man; I felt it, smelled it, caught glimpses of his face as we struggled. I was outweighed, and he had… moves. Oh, I had moves, too, but they were useless when I was on my stomach, my attacker sitting on my back.

Light flashed in my face. “Audrey. Henry thought it might be you.”

“Let me up,” I gasped.
 

His laugh said that he wouldn’t. And wasn’t that just my luck? I finally went up against a man who knew to take me seriously, but he got lucky—if I’d been half a second faster, I could have gotten outside, leaving the jerk behind to bump into desks and chairs—and I had no backup. Only Rob knew where I was, and he wasn’t expecting to hear from me. Corbin wouldn’t be getting into town before midnight at the earliest.

I was on my own.

The trespasser redistributed his weight, his knees punching into my shoulder blades, then he grabbed me by my hair, heaved himself off me. We both struggled to our feet.
 

He jerked me to a nearby light switch, his grip on my hair so tight that I imagined I’d be an inch taller by the time he let me go. If he let me go.

“What do you want?”

“Looking after the business,” he said.
 

“You don’t work here,” I said.

“Henry got a call from the alarm company, asked me to check things out. Almost blew him off, but the paranoid bastard was right.” He spun me so that I faced him. Took a good look at me.

I did the same but without the lecherous expression. He was in his late twenties, around six feet tall, and had shaggy brown hair. He seemed familiar. An off-duty cop? Maybe I’d seen him around. Because who else would Henry ask to investigate the alarm?

He pulled a phone out of his pocket.

It rang. A man answered.
 

“Caught myself a girl Stroop.” He waited, then looked at me, disappointed. “You sure?” Another pause. “It’s your show.” He hung up and released my hair, clearly against his will.

Fantom fingers still gripped me, and I pedaled backward, moving far out of this man’s reach.
 

“Your lucky night,” he said, making a fist and flexing his hand as if yanking me around by my hair had caused
him
pain. “Henry said to let you go. Me, I woulda marched your game-playing, tease ass down to the police station.”

Game-playing tease ass
? Whatever that meant. “Take me in for what?”

“Breaking and entering.”

“
Your
lucky night. My dad would have had your head on a stake if you did that.” My bluff seemed to make a slight impression, betrayed by briefly widening eyes. So, not a cop, then.

My new friend slicked his hair away from his face, and I suddenly remembered him. “I took you in!” He’d had a shaved head before. His name didn’t come back to me, but I remembered the capture. Small-time drug dealer. It had been about two years ago. The friend he’d been mooching off had called us on the sly. Demanded fifty bucks, as I recalled.
 

He crossed his arms over his chest and jerked his head at the front door. “Get on, now.”

Leaving sounded like a very good idea, but I didn’t move. The envelope with the photos… couldn’t leave them in the middle of the floor in Dad’s office.
 

“Does Henry know you were in jail?” Stupid question, meant to distract him. I edged around him, back toward the office.
 

“I did my time,” he said, eyes narrowing. “Are you going to leave, or will I get to take you in?” He smiled. Revenge fantasy, apparently.
 

“Dropped my stuff in there. I’ll grab it and be on my way.” I hurried into the office without waiting to see if he was following me. Trying to get the photos out would be too dangerous. Chances were my new felon-buddy wasn’t so dumb that he’d let them walk out the door.

But if I left them behind, he would certainly take a look. Maybe show them to Henry.
Game-playing tease ass.
Yeah, he’d definitely show Henry.
 

The envelope had slid partially under Dad’s desk. Chewing on my lower lip, I looked around the office for a safe place to stash it for the night. There was enough of a gap under the main bookcase. And since the envelope was already on the floor, I gave it a healthy shove with the side of my foot. Apparently my soccer skills had degraded since high school, because the envelope barely moved.

“Hold up there.” The man barreled in, turned on the light, shoved me aside and grabbed the envelope. “What’s this?”

“Photos. My boyfriend is married, and he’s worried about blackmail.”
Thank you for the inspiration, Rob.

“Yeah?” A licentious grin split his face, and he dug into the photos.
 

I sighed, tried to project impatience rather than the roaring panic I actually felt.

“Looky here,” he drawled. He leered at a photo of Rob in the back of a car with a female companion. It seemed like there was an extra pair of breasts, but I didn’t look long enough to make sure.

He went through the photos. “Married man, huh? I told Henry you were leading him on, Stroopette, but he didn’t want to hear it. Henry’s a fool. You women are all alike.”

“Screw you.” I snatched the photos out of his hand. He tried to grab them back, but I’d darted into the main office. I continued backing up until my butt hit the edge of my desk. Former desk.

He came after me, lunged for the photos. I moved to the side and pushed his grasping hand away. That extra touch—so light, a gentle brush, almost a caress—pushed him off-balance.
 

He staggered, tried to right himself, but he was too far bent over, too unsteady, had too much momentum. His center of gravity swung to the left, and he over-corrected, maybe planning to turn quickly and tackle me.

It was lighting fast, but it happened in slow motion. I knew he was going to hit the sharp corner of the desk, but there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. The side of his head slammed into it, bounced off. There was a loud crack, and his neck twisted so far that his ear nearly touched his shoulder. He swayed a moment, his head doing a fast bobbing nod, like he was having a muscle spasm.

And then he collapsed. He didn’t moan, or scream, or have a seizure. He just… went still.

I stared, stunned. He’d gone from grabby to… nothing. In a blink.
 

All fun and games until someone gets hurt.
That was how it felt, like we had just been playing, and then things got heavy. I couldn’t walk away, even if he’d been a perfect asshole moments earlier.

“Hey… you all right?” Of course he wasn’t. That didn’t stop me from asking again, louder.
 

For too long I stood there, afraid to turn him over. That horrifying crack seemed to echo, making me queasy. Finally I summoned my courage and approached him.

“Hey…” I slid the photos on the far side of the desk—noticed a wet smear on the near corner—and touched his shoulder.

Poked him instead of rocking him over.
 

I grabbed his arm by the elbow, pulled his hand toward me and pressed two fingers against the inside of his wrist.

Moved my fingers to his neck and still didn’t find what I was looking for.

His skin was warm, and while I understood, logically, that even if he was dead, he wouldn’t have cooled down so quickly, I took an inordinate amount of comfort in that little detail.

I needed to call an ambulance.

But maybe he needed CPR.

I flipped him on his back, and when I saw his eyes, I knew. Bile rose in my mouth, and my eyes filled with unexpected tears for this man, a virtual stranger who had exhibited no redeeming qualities, but who, as a fellow human being, deserved dignity.

It was impossible to look away from his sightless stare. I kept expecting him to blink, groan, struggle to his feet. He was only a few years older than me. And what had he done that merited
this
?
 

A strange, high-pitched keening filled the room. Only after several seconds, when I tried to breathe, did I realize that it had come from inside of me. Air choked in and out of my chest. Standing was beyond my current abilities, so I remained crouched over, my knees wide, my shaking hands pressed into the rough carpet.

Corbin. He could fix this. He could make anything better. If I could hold it together for a few minutes, everything would be fine. My hands trembled so violently that I dropped the phone twice.

Right to voicemail.

I turned away so that I wouldn’t have to look at the dead man’s face, then crab-scuttled back until I hit a wall. I slid down it.

Other than the near-silent buzz of the two illuminated lights, the office was so peaceful, the situation so bizarre, so
ridiculous
, that I had difficulty believing I was truly awake. I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them wide. Instead of my bedroom, I saw the office, the familiar shapes mutated by a blurred mass of shadows, the cumulative effect a smothering blanket. When I blinked, the shadows seemed to draw closer.

I pushed at them, tried to shove the darkness away, bladed my arms over my head until my knuckles smacked the wall so hard that I went still, jolted by the sharp pain.

A phone rang from under the body. Henry. Had to be. He would come with the police, and I would be arrested for murder.

Then everything… shut down. The numbness that settled over me was a blessing, soothing, and I relaxed into it. Shock. I was in shock. But understanding that didn’t help me shake it off. My body was not my own, as if I had also died.

Sometimes I would startle, about to slide off into another reality. But always, I ended back there, in the office, late at night, alone with a… corpse.
 

My phone rang. It rang again, and again, and then suddenly Corbin’s deep voice exploded from my unanswered phone and filled the room.

“Audrey? Where are you?”
 

“He’s dead,” I mumbled, my words so faint that Corbin couldn’t have possibly understood what I’d said.

“Where are you?”

I began crying, each inhalation a shuddering gasp that strangled me and left me panting, my lips numb from lack of oxygen.
 

“Don’t move,” Corbin might have said. “I’ll find you,” he definitely said.

And through the darkness and the despair, despite the shadows and the dead man not eight feet away, the little voice deep inside me had only one thing to say:
It will be ok. Corbin will fix everything.

And then he was there, pulling me into his arms, telling me not to worry, that he would take care of everything.
 

I saw what he did. How he searched the body, emptied the pockets, wrapped the body up. He wiped the corner of the desk, cleaned blood out of the carpet, his movements efficient.
 

He’d done this many times before, and heaven help me, I was glad. I wondered if the dead man had a wife, kids, a sister he was close to. But I didn’t care.
 

At that moment, I knew I was lost, a despicable human being, only interested in saving her own skin.

But even that…
It will be ok. Corbin will make it better.

Somehow.

~ ~ ~

Curious about Cleo? Swing by my blog for the latest news, to join the mailing list or to contact me.

http://cleopeitsche.wordpress.com/

Or
click here
to go directly to my New Releases mailing list. (Note: I love releasing books at a temporary lower price to thank my readers, so if you want in on that, sign up!)

Please visit your favorite online bookstore for these and many other stories!