Shock Waves (2 page)
His blood ran hot. This moment. He’d been waiting so long. “Who are you?” he asked when he stood close enough to touch.
She angled her chin. “I think you know.”
His fingers itched to see if her skin could be as soft as it looked, but he didn’t trust himself to touch. Didn’t trust her. “Ah, that’s right,” he said, and let his voice pitch low. “My guardian angel.”
She glanced around, scanning the parking area as though looking for something. Someone. “I wasn’t sure you would come.”
“Sure you were.” Certainty pulsed through him, giving birth to a slow, predatory smile. “You know how the game is played.”
Her eyes, remote until now, flared. “The game?”
And for a moment all Ethan could do was stare. He’d been studying her in totality. The woman. The pale blond hair and creamy skin, the collarbone revealed by a scoop-necked black T-shirt, the tight-fitting leather jacket and black jeans. But now, God, now he couldn’t look away from her eyes. They weren’t just blue. That was too calm a color. Too common. They were pale, distant, translucent almost, like whitewashed sapphire rimmed by cobalt.
And in them, a man could drown.
For a moment he was a ten-year-old boy again, on vacation with his family in
Ireland
, staring at a mural of fairies hiding in a dark forest. His sisters had adored the mystical creatures and legends, but they’d haunted Ethan. He’d woken up in his bed at night, drenched in sweat, breathing hard, pinned to his mattress by the memory of pale blue eyes fading into nothingness, a single arm reaching to him, reaching…
He never made contact in time.
Because the memory jarred, he shoved it aside. “Who are you?” he asked again. His voice was rougher this time, harder.
Cool air whipped blond hair against the sides of her face. “My name doesn’t matter.”
The hell it didn’t, but he let that slide for now. “Then what does matter?” He glanced around, half expecting to see the man he’d once called friend step from behind one of the oaks or sycamores. They’d met here before. Drunk here. Laughed here. “What’s so important that you tracked me down all the way in
Washington
,
“I’ve seen you on the news,” she said. “I know you’re a good man.”
Maybe she just wants a date.
“And?”
The breeze picked up, swaying the canopies and allowing trickles of the fading sun to slip through. Against her face, shadow and light played a seductive game. “I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t warn you.”
Frustration bumped against anticipation. “Look, angel.” The endearment slipped out by itself, but he went with it. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate foreplay, because I do, trust me, I do.” He let his eyes heat, linger on her face, dip lower. Within the scoop neck of her black T-shirt, a weathered Celtic cross dangled from a tarnished silver chain. “But we both know where this dance is going. So unless there’s a really good reason to drag it out, let’s just get on with it, okay?”
Her eyes went dark. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do.” He stepped closer. She stepped back. “Tell me what you know about Jorak Zhukov,” he said very softly, very quietly. It was a tactic that rarely failed him in the courtroom. “Tell me why you keep calling me.”
Tell me why your voice has invaded my sleep, luring me awake during the dredges of the night.
She looked beyond him to the river trickling over the slabs of granite. “He’s a dangerous man.”
Ethan couldn’t bite back the laugh. “Is that a fact?”
Her gaze met his. “He won’t go down without a fight.” The words came out on a rush, hard, desperate. “Men like him never do. You’ve got to be careful.”
The thrill of the hunt whispered louder. Suspects and witnesses who talked in circles were nothing new to him. Sooner or later they always tripped up and tightened the circle into a noose. “How do you know that? Personal experience?”
She shook her head, sending a strand of blond hair against her mouth, not painted pink or red or coral, but moist and natural. “No.”
The desire to lift a hand and brush back her hair had him curling his fingers into a fist. “Then how do you know what kind of man he is?”
She slid a finger along her jaw, pulling the hair from her mouth. “You don’t have to know someone personally to recognize evil. I watch the news.”
That stopped him cold. He’d tried and convicted her before ever stepping foot from his Jeep, certain she was involved with Jorak. But now he had to wonder.
Maybe she just wants a date.
Stories about Jorak Zhukov had dominated the media. Everyone knew the ruthless criminal had sworn to punish the Carringtons. A little over a month before, attacks against Ethan’s sister Elizabeth had made headlines. More recently, the coverage had been of the hunt for Z’s hideaway.
“He wants to hurt you,” she added, and the breeze whipped harder, lifting the carpet of decaying leaves into a swirl.
Ethan didn’t know how it was possible, but in the space of a heartbeat the temperature dropped ten degrees. “That’s hardly a secret.” The secret was why. “But trust me, I’d like to see him try.”
It would be the last mistake the coward made.
The woman frowned. “I can see I’m wasting my time.” Frustration and scorn riddled her normally throaty voice. She turned to leave, twisted back at the last minute. “Just be careful,” she said very slowly. Very pointedly. “Personal vendettas are the most dangerous kind.”
Everything inside Ethan went very still. Very hard. His blood, running hot moments before, turned icier than the
James River
in February. For a second there, a ridiculous second, he’d almost believed her. He’d entertained the possibility that she was no different from the others that had called him, wanting a moment of his time, a moment of notoriety, claiming knowledge of a crime about which they knew nothing.
Personal. Vendetta.
Christ, she knew. One mistake, damn it. One stupid, careless, naive mistake, a quick lethal slice of betrayal, and children were growing up without fathers. One child would never grow up at all.
He charged after her, caught her at the edge of the clearing. “Not so fast,” he said, reaching for her. She pivoted toward him, scalding him with those unusual eyes of hers; He took her arm anyway, closed his fingers around her wrist. “Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Dusk fell softly around them, the hazy shades of twilight, lengthening shadows blurring into the first hints of darkness. She held his gaze a punishing heartbeat, the blue of her eyes glowing against the disturbing paleness of her face, then she looked down at the contact between their bodies, his darkly tanned hand curled around her pale wrist. “Let go of me.”
There was a hardness to her voice, a raw demand Ethan refused to heed. “Answer my question.”
She tried to twist from him, but he held her tighter. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he growled. Adrenaline blasted him. Blood roared in his ears. He was tired of waiting, of being patient, of playing Mr. Nice Guy. He wanted—
“I had a dream,” she said softly, slowly, and then her eyes were on his again, and Ethan couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.
The evening went unnaturally still. The rustle of the breeze seemed to stop. Even the constant drone of the crickets and cicadas fell silent. “A dream?”
From the moment he’d spun around to find her watching him, he’d sensed a guard about her. A reserve. It was as though she had an invisible barrier tacked up around her, and behind it she could be as tough as she needed to be. All that was stripped away now, making her appear oddly vulnerable.
“About you,” she said in that faraway voice. “I dreamed of you.”
The simple statement flamed through him like a blowtorch. His body reacted, hardened, braced for the onslaught. The flash of heat came first, swirled cruelly. The shot of lust came next, drove deep.
“Did you, now,” he drawled, hearing the soft
In the deepening shadows, he looked at her standing there, soft pale hair tangled around her face, eyes wide and stunned. Her mouth was slightly parted, and Ethan couldn’t help but wonder what those unadorned lips would taste like, what promises she would make. What truths she would reveal.
What lies she would conceal.
The thought drenched him like a bucket of cold water. He released her arm and staggered back, stared at her as if he’d never seen a woman before. He enjoyed sex. That was true. Enjoyed it a lot. Enjoyed boldness and creativity, frequency. It was also true he hadn’t been with a woman in months. But he wasn’t a lech or a pervert. He didn’t go around mentally stripping off the clothes of the female attorneys he faced in a courtroom or the judges who presided over his cases, fantasizing about getting it on with every female witness he put on the stand or having a free-for-all with an all-female jury.
Wanting a woman who was in league with Jorak was as smart as playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun. Hoping to trade sex for information made it no better.
Angry now, more at himself than her, he grabbed the frayed ends of his control and knotted them together. He ignored the way she watched him, the sharp look in her eyes, the flickers of an emotion he refused to label as fear.
“Tell me, angel,” he drawled. “Tell me about this dream of yours.”
“It wasn’t a good dream.”
“No?” He treated her to a slow smile. “That’s hard to imagine. Just what were we doing that wasn’t good?”
She wrapped her arms around her middle, drawing her leather jacket more tightly around her waist. “I wasn’t in it.”
Frustration pushed against patience. They’d been at this longer than thirty minutes, and the circles kept getting bigger, not tighter. “Too bad.” Very deliberately he looked from her face to her chest, the swell of breasts hidden by the jacket. He saw the mosquito slip in against her neck, brushed it away before he’d realized his intent.
She jerked, as though he’d skimmed his fingers along her inner thigh, not her neck.
“A mosquito,” he tried to explain, but she skewered him with her gaze.
“I don’t like to be touched.”
“And I don’t like to be played with.” At least, not like this. There were definitely games he enjoyed, methods of playing he relished. “If you’ve got something to tell me, tell me. Otherwise, this conversation is over.”
Somewhere not far away, he would have sworn he heard the crunch of tires on gravel. He studied the parking area, saw nothing.
“The point is my dreams come true,” she surprised him by saying, and when he turned to look at her, he found the oddest expression on her face. With any other person, in any other situation, he would have called it sorrow.
“That’s why I had to come to you.” Her voice was flatter now, resolved. “Even though I knew you wouldn’t believe me. To live with myself, I had to warn you.”
He’d been so sure, damn it. He’d been so sure tonight was the night. That she was the one. Now his miscalculation burned. This woman didn’t work for Jorak. She had no vital information. She just had dreams.
Hawk was going to have a field day with this one.
“I can see I’ve wasted both our time,” he said, stooping to retie his running shoe. Night had fallen, but even with the dense cloud cover drowning out the faded moon, he could still get in his run. He knew the path by heart.
“It’s been real,” he said, straightening. Real what, he wasn’t sure, didn’t want to consider. He looked at her one last time, this blond woman all in black who’d been stalking him for days. She stood stiller than the night, watching him through those eerie, fairy eyes of hers, never blinking, never looking away.
Abruptly he turned and headed down the well-worn path.
“Contact Detective Brinker with the
Richmond
police,” she called after him. “He’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
Ethan stopped, sucked in a sharp breath, slowly turned to face her. “And just what will he tell me, angel?”
“I used to work with him on cases,” she said. “Mostly missing children. He’ll tell you about my dreams.”
A long moment passed before Ethan said anything. He didn’t know what to say, just knew he needed to get away from this woman with eyes straight from his darkest fantasies.
“I’m a lawyer,” he said, refusing to feel the sting of disappointment. In the darkness he smiled. “I need more than dreams.”
The breeze, cooler by the second, blew the hair back into her face. “Then you’re selling yourself short.”
* * *
Frowning, she watched him vanish into the darkness. The towering sycamores and oaks swallowed him, carried him into the night. But still she stood, and still she watched.
He wouldn’t call Detective Brinker, and he wouldn’t heed her warning. He wouldn’t be careful. It wasn’t in his blood. She’d learned that about men like him long ago. Learned hard. There was a storm brewing, and Ethan Carrington was going to meet it head-on.
