Secrets and Sins: Raphael: A Secrets and Sins novel (Entangled Ignite) (15 page)

“Who’s this ‘he?’” Rafe snapped.

“Huge dude. Big-ass tiger tattoo on his neck. Name’s Adam Morgan. They call him Tag. That’s all I know.”

Frustration coursed through him like a tidal wave. Damn, he believed the little shit. Which meant their job just got a whole helluva lot more complicated.

“What does he look like? Hair? Height? Age?”

“Black hair, brown eyes. About as tall as you I guess, a little heavier. I don’t know how old he is, man. Maybe about thirty? A little older?”

“Where do you meet Adam-slash-Tag?” Chay asked. “Where does he deal?”

“Usually over on Blue Hill Avenue.”

Rafe nodded and shifted backward, as did Chay. Justin’s skinny, stooped shoulders lifted and lowered on a soft sigh. Relief slackened his features, and he slumped against the van.

“It goes without saying this conversation didn’t happen, right?” Justin frantically bobbed his head up and down. Rafe reached in his back pocket and removed his wallet. He flipped through the plastic sleeves until he located a card. Plucking it free, he extended it between his fingers. “I can’t make you get off that shit, but if rock bottom finally kicks you in the ass, call this number. They’re good.”

Justin accepted the card for the crisis center Rafe volunteered with, but he doubted the younger man would take him up on the offer. At least any time soon. Already the sullen, hungry mark of the addict was making its reappearance, replacing the fear. Resentment curled his lip, shaded his eyes, nerves twitched in his nearly emaciated frame. Heroin had its claws deeply entrenched in him. Rafe just hoped he reached out for help before he turned up in a vivid eight-by-ten across some vice detective’s desk, another statistic.

Weariness pelted him like a steady rainfall against a cracked window just shy of splintering.

He could’ve been Justin.

At fifteen, he’d been filled with rage, self-destructive, and in so much pain. His mother had just kicked his father out of the house, after he’d thrown a beer bottle at Rafe. He’d ducked in time, but the glass had shattered on the wall behind him, and a shard had sliced him across the eyebrow. Absently, he rubbed the scar. The same one Greer had kissed the night before.

The mark reminded him he’d survived, that he hadn’t been entombed by the fury that had almost taken him out. He’d started drinking heavily, had gotten his first tattoo illegally. Fought to inflict the agony eating him alive on someone else. He’d been on a fast track to juvie or worse.

His friends had saved him, dragged him back kicking and fists flying from the edge he’d danced on. His friends and Mr. Langston, his computer science teacher. While others had given up on Rafe, Mr. Langston hadn’t. Even after he’d busted him using one of the computers in the lab to change his history and language arts grades. Instead, the teacher had recognized the hunger for acceptance and affirmation under the defiance. Then he introduced him to a world of code, script, and algorithms.

Discovering his passion had granted him purpose. Either no one had invested in Justin or he had yet to find his.

“Take this, too.” Chay handed the kid his business card. “If this Tag reaches out to you again, make sure your next call is to me. Got it?”

“Yeah, man. Sure.” With a jerky bobblehead nod, he scooted past Chay and Rafe, snatched the driver’s door open, and clambered inside. Seconds later the truck coughed to life and peeled out of the parking space.

They stared after it, silent.

“You think we’ll hear from him again?” Rafe murmured.

“Not about this. One can only hope about the other,” Chay replied referring to the card Rafe had handed Justin. Turning around, he retraced their steps toward the rear of the lot. Rafe fell into step beside him.

“In the meantime,” Chay continued, “I’ll call Leah and see if she can charm any of her cop buddies. Maybe they can give her something on a dealer named Adam Morgan, street name Tag with a tiger tattoo on his neck. I’m thinking that kind of identifying mark can’t be so difficult to pinpoint.” Leah had resigned from the police force a year and a half earlier after an injury on a B&E call. Rather than ride a desk, she’d resigned and entered the private investigation field. After her employer’s death a few months ago—at her hand, since he was a murderous psycho—she’d joined his and Chay’s firm as one of their security personnel. Her police training and experience made her an excellent employee. But the running joke around the office was, “Don’t piss her off. Remember what happened to her last boss.”

“Yeah, do that, and I’ll see what I can come up with, too.” They halted next to Rafe’s rear bumper. “With just a name, street name, tattoo, and no DOB or social, it’ll be like trying to find a needle in the proverbial big-ass haystack, but…”

Chay didn’t comment. Wouldn’t have done him any good anyway. Rafe had the nagging suspicion that time was speeding up on this whole deal. Too much was happening. When the menacing acts had started, the letters had been spaced a couple of weeks apart. Now, in the matter of three days, there’d been letters, fucked-up dolls, and a dead bomb. The level of aggression and the lapse in time had escalated at a rate that had him agitated, restless. He had no clue what the stalker’s next move would be, but it set his Spidey sense to tingling.

As a matter of fact… He glanced down at his watch. “I need to get to the restaurant and pick Greer up from her lunch date.”

“Date?” Chay smirked, fishing his keys out of his pocket.

“Shut up, smart-ass. It’s with her brother and—” His mouth twisted as if he’d just tasted something incredibly rotten. “Noah.”

“Methinks that’s jealousy I detect.”

Rafe flipped him off and ignored his friend’s evil chuckle.

“Call me if you come up with anything,” Chay called over the hood of Rafe’s truck.

“Will do. Hey.” Rafe frowned, rubbed a knuckle over his eyebrow. “What do you think the chances are of all this ending easily?”

All traces of humor evaporated from Chay’s features, leaving behind a sober stare and a flat, unsmiling mouth.

“None to not a chance in hell.”

“Yeah.” Rafe nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

Chapter Sixteen

“I’m surprised your guard dog let you out of his sight today.”

Greer set her spoon on the plate her bowl of soup rested on and met Noah’s glower across the table. She shot a look at Ethan, who slowly shook his head and resumed eating his salad. A sharp retort jumped on her tongue, but she swallowed it down along with the sip of water with lemon she’d ordered with her bowl of potato soup. Noah had been brooding since she’d arrived at the restaurant for a lunch date with him and Ethan. If the snide complaint had come from anyone but him, she wouldn’t have curbed her equally caustic reply. But it was Noah. Her best friend. And besides, beneath the surly attitude she detected the hurt and worry. And love.

“Raphael isn’t my keeper, Noah,” she said calmly. “Or jailer.”

“I can’t tell,” he snapped. “He escorted you here and ordered you to stay put until he returned. If that doesn’t sound like he has a leash on you, I don’t know what does.”

“Noah, back down,” Ethan murmured. “Greer is here for lunch, not an interrogation or to defend her choice.”

“I understand my decision hurt you, Noah,” she murmured.

“Do you?” he asked. “No, I don’t think you truly understand. You trusted a stranger over me, your friend who’s been there for you since third grade.”

“‘Stranger’ is stretching it a bit, no?” Ethan scoffed.

She shot a glare in her brother’s direction, but he smirked in return. Across from her, Noah’s scowl deepened until his dark-blond eyebrows nearly met over the bridge of his nose.

Noah closed his eyes, flopped back in his chair. Slowly, his eyelashes lifted, and his unwavering scrutiny was neither mean nor kind. “He doesn’t even believe the baby is his,” he gently reminded her, inflicting damage to a wound that wasn’t close to healing.

Do you want to know why that story about Gavin agreeing to a period of abstinence was so hard to swallow? I’ve been inside you, Greer. I know how sweet you are. How you can squeeze the breath out of a man, make him believe he’s died, and thank God for it. No man willingly walks away from that. Definitely not by choice.

Raphael’s words from the evening before flooded her mind, and images of them straining together on the rumpled bed covers accompanied it. She’d been helpless to his kiss, his touch. If the phone hadn’t rung, she would’ve allowed him to remove her clothes and—how had he put it? Put his mouth on her and make her come on his tongue. Yes, God, she would’ve let him. And she wouldn’t have stopped there. Wouldn’t have stopped until his cock stretched her, filled her, throbbed within her.

How could he know she’d never been that uninhibited, wild—hell,
free
—with another man before? That wild sexuality that was as much a part of him as his blue eyes or I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude elicited a hidden, secret passion she hadn’t realized existed until that December night when he’d called it forth with a tug of his lips on her nipple and long fingers plunged deep in her sex. Almost as if his mouth and hands had been the key to unlock the door where her sexual self had been imprisoned.

Gavin hadn’t walked away from it; Gavin had never tasted it. He’d never glimpsed the desire only Raphael had witnessed.

“His belief or disbelief doesn’t change the danger of my situation,” she said. “And I couldn’t bring the same trouble to your doorstep like I did with Ethan. And Rafe…well, his profession is guarding people.”

“’Cause he’s doing such a bang-up job of it,” he bit out, his arctic tone mirroring the chips of ice in his flat brown stare.

“Noah.”

“I have a call to make,” he bit out, the chair screeching as he shoved it back and shot to his feet. In seconds, he‘d wended his way through the tables and exited the restaurant.

“Give him some time, Greer,” Ethan murmured. “He’s worried and hurt.” He patted his mouth with a linen napkin before tossing it on the table next to his half-eaten salad plate. “And in love with you.”

She started to shake her head, to scoff, but then Raphael’s assertion from the previous evening returned to tease her like a high school mean girl.

He’s in love with you.

Her lips snapped shut, and suddenly weary, she bowed her head, massaged her forehead between her thumb and forefinger. As if she could somehow coax the solution to this convoluted mess out of her head. Like a silent movie, memories of her and Noah passed through her mind in a vivid slide show. Except now she viewed them with new eyes, from a different perspective. Damn. How could she have been so blind? What did it say about her that she hadn’t discerned his feelings? Acknowledged them? Was she so selfish, so self-absorbed? Or deep down in her soul where secrets rattled like bones in a dark closet, had she known and opted to take the coward’s way out and not recognize it?

“I never noticed. Or maybe didn’t want to notice,” she admitted on a low breath. God, Noah had been in her life more than he’d been out. Kind, loyal, funny, trustworthy…
there
. She counted on him as the one constant in her life that never changed, never left. Now even that stability was gone, ripped away with the opening of her eyes. Loss yawned wide in her chest like the maw of a lion, roaring in protest. Anger—unfair anger—seethed inside her that he’d flipped the script on their relationship. He had no right, damn it. She needed him to be Noah—loving, dependable Noah.

And the other side of her grieved. Their friendship would change. She loved Noah. But she couldn’t reciprocate his feelings. He deserved her honesty. And afterward, she feared losing him.

“Don’t worry, honey. He’ll cool off,” Ethan soothed, encircling her fingers with his. “Give him some time. Then try to talk to him.”

“Yes, okay,” she whispered, throwing another glance toward the restaurant’s door. His blond head and lanky build was nowhere to be seen through the large storefront windows. Maybe he’d taken a walk to calm down…

“Greer.”

She stiffened. Her heart thudded, the beat sluggish and dull in her ears. The ice-cold casing she’d become adept at building around her emotions slammed into place.

“Hello, Aubrey.”

The regal redhead whom Greer had once considered a friend was still lovely, still perfectly stylish in a blue wraparound dress, and still reed-slender…except for the noticeable mound beneath her breasts.

Pregnant. Aubrey was pregnant.

It shouldn’t have hurt.

Gavin was gone, and his and Aubrey’s betrayal had occurred months ago. Greer had been the one to break off the engagement; she’d walked away. So no, the pain of catching her former friend with her fiancé shouldn’t still possess the power to hurt her.

Yet staring at the pronounced bump beneath Aubrey’s shirt, the bitterness, the disillusionment, the heartache of their deception rushed in as if it’d been gleefully waiting at the edges of her conscious to make a reappearance. She hadn’t been “in love” with Gavin, but she had loved him, had been ready to pledge her life to him, had honored and respected him. And he hadn’t considered her worthy enough to offer her the same.

That
hurt most of all.

And this woman embodied all the na
ï
veté, grief, and rage that had tormented her. And apparently still did.

How could you?
The scream ping-ponged against the walls of her mind, rising in volume and velocity until the three words looped in a cacophonous wail. Part of her wanted to leap to her feet and slap the hell out of Aubrey.

And the other half yearned to crumple to the floor and cry until she was a dry, empty husk.

“Congratulations on the baby,” Greer murmured, thanking God her voice remained steady and didn’t reflect the chaotic, confusing emotional jumble whirling in her brain and chest.

Aubrey’s hand fluttered over her stomach, resting there, reminding Greer of how she often mimicked the same unconscious gesture.

“Thank you. I—” She bit her lip, her lashes sweeping down before lifting and meeting Greer’s gaze. Quiet pleading filled her pretty dark eyes. “I’ve tried calling you since…” Her voice faltered, fell, and a spasm of pain contorted her delicate features. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, and in spite of the pain gnawing at Greer, the regret in the soft apology pierced the hard shell around her heart.

“Greer,” Karen Wells said, appearing next to Aubrey. Where Aubrey’s greeting had been gentle and remorseful, Karen Wells’s contained an unmistakable venom. The last time she’d seen Karen had been right after Gavin’s death at the police station on one of the occasions Greer had been brought in for questioning. The woman’s patrician features had been ravaged by grief, her once-straight shoulders sagging with the burden of it. Now, months later, deep lines bracketed either side of her thin mouth. Paper-thin skin pulled taut across stark bones, lending a gaunt, tired air to her. But her eyes…her obsidian eyes gleamed with a fervent hatred that sent a fissure of unease down Greer’s spine. “It appears I won’t be patronizing this restaurant any longer. Not when they’ll allow trash and murderers in.”

“Now wait just one goddamn minute,” Ethan growled, half out of his seat, fists clenched.

“It’s okay, Ethan,” Greer rasped, struggling to breathe past the shocking pain of the verbal punch.

“The hell it is,” he barked, drawing curious eyes of the other diners. An uncomfortable silence descended over the immediate circle of tables surrounding them. Anxious to avoid drawing any more attention, as well as avert the ugly confrontation brewing, she laid a restraining hand on one of his balled fists.

“Please, Ethan. Sit.” Maybe he heard the desperation in her voice. Maybe he, too, noticed the captive audience they were engaging. Or maybe he retained enough of his upbringing to realize he couldn’t deck a woman—an older woman at that. Either way, he lowered into his chair, encasing Greer’s hand in a firm grip. Greer returned her attention to her ex-fiancé’s mother. “Karen, once again, I’m sorry about Gavin. You’ll never know how much.”

“Save it,” she hissed. “If you were really sorry, you’d confess to killing him and give his father and me at least a little peace. But instead you’re out here, free, getting away with the murder of my son.” She edged closer, nudging Aubrey aside. “God, I’m so glad he found a few moments of happiness before he died. But not with you. With Aubrey. You took him away from all of us, because he’d finally found joy in his life, didn’t you, you selfish bitch?” she spat.

“Karen, please,” Aubrey pleaded.

“Oh, and your mother told Gregory and me about your pregnancy.” She emitted a hard, brittle crack of laughter. “As if we would ever accept whatever it is you’re breeding. This”—she wound an arm around Aubrey’s waist, tugging her forward and into her side—“is the mother of our grandchild. I have no clue what
that
is.” She stabbed a finger in the direction of Greer’s stomach. “Or who fathered it. But it wasn’t our Gavin.”

“You’re right,” Greer said quietly, interrupting her vitriolic diatribe. “Gavin is not the father of my baby. And I’m happy for you that even though he’s gone you will still have a piece of him with Aubrey’s child.”

Karen’s eyes narrowed, her fingers curled until the pale-pink fingertips resembled claws. “You’re nothing but a whore—”

“Aubrey, get her out of here now,” Ethan snapped. Ice unlike anything she’d ever heard infiltrated his tone, and for a moment, she feared for Karen’s safety. “Now, damn it.”

Aubrey nodded, hooked an arm around the older woman’s back, and guided her from the restaurant with hushed whispers. Silence followed them out, the noise level in the room having dropped until the tinkle of a fork scraping over a plate could be heard. For several awkward moments, Greer focused her gaze on the unappetizing bowl of soup in front of her. Soft whispers and uncomfortable coughs filled the deafening quiet. Gradually, the area filled with conversation again, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

But the relief was short-lived. Shame, humiliation, and helpless fury bombarded her, and she almost broke under the deluge.

“Greer, honey,” Ethan rasped. “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have had to endure that shit.” He scrubbed a palm down his face. “Damn you, Mom. I can’t believe she told Karen about the baby. How could she even have anything to do with them? Unbelievable—”

She shot from her chair and clutched the edge of the table, granting her trembling legs a moment of reprieve to settle. But only a moment. She had to get out of there. Just…get away. “Don’t worry about it, Ethan. If you will excuse me.”

She tried to ignore the furtive glances and outright stares as she wended a path through the tables toward the rear of the restaurant. Each pair of eyes pricked her skin like visual pinches. Only once she entered the woman’s restroom and closed the bathroom stall door behind her did she allow her composure to wilt. Her shoulders slumped as she flipped the toilet lid down and sank to the top of it. She covered her face with her hands, and finally,
finally
, surrendered to the emotional typhoon wrecking her apart inside.

Hoarse sobs ripped free. Minutes later when the restroom door squeaked open and the hinges on a stall farther down the row squealed in protest, she muffled the seemingly endless sobs by pressing the heel of her hand to her mouth. With every breath she drew, every cry she loosed, her throat, her ribs, her heart—her spirit—ached. No bruises darkened her skin and limbs, but her insides throbbed with the blows from Karen’s attack.

Shit, the need to smash something vibrated beneath her skin. To kick, scream, have the mother of tantrums at the injustice of it all. To plead her innocence to Karen. But what would it have served except to throw gas on the almost fanatical fire burning in Karen’s gaze? And she wouldn’t have believed Greer anyway. Nothing Greer could’ve said—or could say—would change her mind about her role in the death of her son.

So instead she remained in the bathroom stall scrambling to scrape together the scattered shreds of her pride after Karen’s attack. Eventually she would have to emerge. And when she did so, it would be with her head held high, cloaked in a composure that was one fat lie.