True Colors (26 page)
Alex did as she was told, her movements robotic. She took a bite of eggs and chewed and watched AnnaCoreen help Richie clean up the mess on the floor. She didn’t look at Logan, afraid that seeing his concern would turn her into a blubbering mess. After the broken cup had been discarded and the patch of floor mopped up, AnnaCoreen and Richie left them alone.
Logan nodded at her plate, silently urging her to eat.
“It’s good,” she told him, though she couldn’t taste a thing. Her heart beat in her ears. She wanted to talk to AnnaCoreen. Yet she didn’t want to know what the woman thought about her empathic future . . . ignorance and all that.
She reached out and grasped Logan’s hand, closing her eyes when nothing happened except the familiar jolt of pleasure that came with touching him. She felt an almost desperate need to caress and stroke as much of him as she could in case her empathy-free time had a deadline, before fear of what might happen to her made it impossible to reach out.
Logan’s free hand covered hers. “Your hands are like ice.”
She reveled in his warmth. This was all she’d ever wanted, and if—when—her empathy came back, could Logan live with it? Could
she
?
she
?
It didn’t take a genius to notice that he hadn’t asked her about the empathy. He seemed perfectly fine with pretending it didn’t exist. After everything that had happened, what did that say about their relationship that he couldn’t even acknowledge something that was so much a part of her?
When she felt herself start to tremble, she drew away from him, aching from the thought of ever losing him, yet not wanting him to know how scared she was. She had to focus on forcing herself to eat.
“Did Charlie and Noah go home?” she asked, trying to make normal conversation.
“They went over to your place to feed and walk the dogs. Charlie brought back some stuff for you while you were in the shower.”
Alex nodded, grateful all over again. “Yep, I got it.”
“She’s been running interference with the media. Guess they were camped out in your driveway, looking for interviews. She also said she would let Mac know you’re not coming into work for a few days.”
Alex started to protest, but Logan gave her a look that said, “You won’t win this one, so don’t bother.”
She didn’t have the energy to argue anyway, which meant she
really
didn’t have the energy to haul around her camera equipment and deal with all the activity that accompanied photo shoots, so perhaps it was best.
really
didn’t have the energy to haul around her camera equipment and deal with all the activity that accompanied photo shoots, so perhaps it was best.
Logan smiled, as though pleased she let that one go. “Charlie wants you to call her as soon as possible.” Then he paused, and she sensed he was preparing to move on to a difficult topic.
He looked straight at her. “We need to talk about . . . what happened. I know you talked to Don at the ER, but you weren’t completely . . . with it at the time.”
“Can we do that later? I . . . just want to . . .” She trailed off as she stirred her fork through a pool of melted cheddar that oozed out of the omelet. She didn’t know what she wanted to do. Pretend that everything would be okay and life would return to normal.
“Butch McGee is still out there, Alex. We need to do everything we can to find him quickly.”
Sighing, she put down her fork and pushed back the plate of half-eaten eggs. He wasn’t going to let it go, so why put it off? “What do you want to know?”
“We’ve got his name and description, which matches the one your neighbor Rose Brown gave.”
Alex angled her head, wondering if she’d somehow lost memories. “Who?”
“Clarence’s mom. She saw Butch with you. He told her he was taking you to the ER because you’d fainted.”
“Oh. Sure. I don’t think I ever knew that was her name. She looks more like a Cathy.”
“Is there anything more about McGee that you might have thought of after talking to Don?”
She pictured her captor while she stared at the corner of the napkin she folded and refolded, unable to hold back the shudder that coursed through her. The details she’d shared last night had been the usual. Height. Build. Hair color and length. Eye color. No visible scars or tattoos. She’d told the detective nothing of what she’d experienced in her flashes into Butch’s frightening past, too fragile yet to go there. And leery of the inevitable skepticism. Maybe no one ever had to know about any of that.
But she knew she needed to provide Logan with as many clues to McGee’s identity as possible. “His real name is Tyler Ambrose.”
Logan’s brows arched in disbelief. “He told you that?”
She moved on without answering that question. She didn’t think he was ready to hear the truth—and maybe he wouldn’t believe it anyway. “I think his brother’s name is Brian.”
Logan scooted his chair back almost violently and stood. “That’s it,” he said, the first hint of emotion in his tone. “I’ve killed only one man in my life. In Detroit, in the line of duty. Brian Lear. He and Butch don’t have the same last name, which is odd, but they could have the same mother and different fathers.”
He pulled his cell phone out and started punching numbers. “I have a friend in the Detroit PD. Phil Packard. I’m going to ask him to check Butch out for us.”
As he pressed the phone to his ear, he turned and smiled at her. “This is good, Alex. You did really good.”
She sat back, her shoulders drooping as exhaustion invaded every cell all over again. But, thank God, Logan now knew who Butch was. It didn’t matter how she knew the details she’d just shared. They helped.
Logan covered the mouthpiece, apparently not having gotten an answer yet. “Why don’t you go lie down again? I’ll take care of this while you get some more sleep. Later, we can move to Charlie’s house. She suggested we stay there until this blows over.”
“What about the dogs?”
“We’ll figure something—” He broke off and turned away. While he talked into the phone in a low voice, Alex rose. She wanted to go to him and touch him again, wanted to lean against his back, her ear pressed to the beat of his heart. She wanted him to take her to bed and make love to her one more time . . . in case everything fell apart on her again.
Watching him for a few moments, she wished he’d glance over his shoulder at her and smile, maybe even blow a kiss. Something that told her he was the same Logan she’d fallen for . . . and he believed she was the same Alex. That’s all she really needed right now, some assurance that her psychic ability wouldn’t cost her the one thing in her life she feared she couldn’t live without.
But he kept talking, seemingly no longer aware of her presence.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
A
full thirty hours after flirting over Ben & Jerry’s, Butch McGee let himself out through the back door of Sally Blake’s house on the southern edge of Lake Avalon. Morning humidity thickened the air, and pine needles crunched underfoot as he strolled through her backyard and the lightly forested area behind her house. It would take him about five minutes to walk back to the Ford Fusion parked at Publix.
full thirty hours after flirting over Ben & Jerry’s, Butch McGee let himself out through the back door of Sally Blake’s house on the southern edge of Lake Avalon. Morning humidity thickened the air, and pine needles crunched underfoot as he strolled through her backyard and the lightly forested area behind her house. It would take him about five minutes to walk back to the Ford Fusion parked at Publix.
He should have felt rejuvenated, should have had a damn skip in his step after so long with Sally. But melancholy hooked its claws in him and wouldn’t let go. While Sally had been fun, beautiful in that pitiful, begging kind of way he loved, she was no Alex Trudeau.
He thought again about Alex’s desperate plea for Brian to run. The way she’d said it, screamed it, had sounded so familiar, and the echoes of her shout dovetailed with his own memories of that moment when he’d frantically yelled those same words. Alex’s body had convulsed almost immediately, as a seizure had claimed her, and yet the jolting movements had reminded him of his own violent loss of control after contact with the business end of the dickhead’s stun gun.
What happened to her Brian? What happened in her head that caused that seizure, so like the result of an electric shock? What about it made him feel so connected to her, as if they’d somehow climaxed together in the most intimate way?
He thought of her eyes, open but blind, such a deep, dark brown, and his curiosity spiked anew about where she went in those moments when she tensed with terror at his touch and her life force more or less faded away. Unlike any woman he’d ever known. Yet, he hadn’t gotten the chance to explore this fascinating new aspect of his work. A woman who didn’t plead. Who somehow left her body before he could transform its canvas into a work of art.
Their business was unfinished. He felt unfulfilled. Cheated.
Sally was supposed to have taken care of that, taken the edge off, with her warm, safe place inside; her thick, welling blood; and her desperate pleas that devolved into hopeless whimpers. Her kind of fear used to make him stronger. Used to make him smile. Used to make him come.
But Alex Trudeau hadn’t pleaded. She hadn’t wept. She’d gone still and silent. Eerily so. He realized now that their moments together had been so much more incredibly intimate—satisfying—than his moments with Sally . . . and even all the others. He hadn’t appreciated that at the time, too annoyed that Alex hadn’t played her role the way she was supposed to, the way every woman before her had, as though they knew the script and followed it to the letter.
Shriek here.
Writhe here.
Bleed here.
Die here.
Alex Trudeau was different.
How would she respond once he actually settled down to create? He imagined the challenge of working her, manipulating her, until he received the response he desired. How much would she take? How long could she stay out of her body until his skill with a blade brought her screaming back?
The anticipation of exploring her limits had him hardening already, as though Sally Blake had served no purpose at all.
A waste of time, of talent. He’d had the perfect canvas with Alex Trudeau, and he’d walked away. It was a good thing he had, of course, because he might have gotten caught if he hadn’t lost patience, but next time he would know better. Next time he would appreciate the challenge before him. Next time he would stick around until he had what he wanted, what he needed.
And then, once he understood how to control her, how to make her scream to be forever his, he’d invite John Logan to watch him create a masterpiece.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
A
lex rolled over and opened her eyes. She froze with fear for a second before remembering where she was. Charlie’s guest room, safe. And she wasn’t alone. Logan had tucked her in, then said he’d be only a shout away if she needed him. She’d asked him to stay with her, but he’d insisted she needed sleep more than she needed him. She hadn’t agreed, desperate to connect with him, to somehow excise the part of herself that her kidnapper’s tortured past had tainted. But she’d let him go. He had calls to make, people to talk to about Butch McGee.
lex rolled over and opened her eyes. She froze with fear for a second before remembering where she was. Charlie’s guest room, safe. And she wasn’t alone. Logan had tucked her in, then said he’d be only a shout away if she needed him. She’d asked him to stay with her, but he’d insisted she needed sleep more than she needed him. She hadn’t agreed, desperate to connect with him, to somehow excise the part of herself that her kidnapper’s tortured past had tainted. But she’d let him go. He had calls to make, people to talk to about Butch McGee.
Alex got out of bed and stopped in the adjoining guest bathroom to wash her face. The clock on the vanity read ten thirteen A.M. She’d slept away an entire day, and while the leftover bleariness of such a deep sleep made her fuzzy, she felt better on a physical level. Now, if only she could rid herself of the overwhelming dread that sat like a rock in the pit of her stomach.
The house was quiet, and she figured Charlie and Noah both had already left for work. She found Logan snoring on the sofa, his cell phone on the coffee table and a notepad resting on his flat belly, the pen still gripped in his fingers. She eased both away from him and put them on the coffee table, then sat on the edge of the sofa and listened to him breathe, deep and slow and even. God, he was beautiful, all chiseled edges and honed muscles.
Her fingers trembled some as she reached out to trail their tips over the razor stubble of his chin, barely making contact with his warm skin. She couldn’t stand the thought of losing the luxury of touching him, caressing him.
With eyes closed, she concentrated on the man-rough texture of his unshaven cheeks, the smooth glide over his temple, the fine sandpaper of his jaw. He swallowed, and she paused with her thumb resting lightly against the rise and fall of his Adam’s apple.
The entire time, she stayed in her own head. Either the empathy hadn’t returned or the statute of limitations had lapsed on the energy generated by his horror at finding her in the storage facility.
His fingers clasped hers, and she opened her eyes to see him watching her, his dark gaze sleepy and warm as he kissed her fingertips, her palm. A slow smile stole across his lips as he slid his palm up the sensitive skin on the inside of her forearm, a light, feathery massage that stopped her breath.
They said nothing as he curled his hand around the back of her neck and urged her down. Their lips met, tentative at first, sweet and soft, gently exploring, then growing in intensity and need, until their tongues danced and hands began to roam.
She loved how his breath caught as she ran her hands up under his shirt and thumbed his nipples, loved the feel of his naked chest under her hands, loved the hot silky skin that sheathed hard muscle and bone, loved the thud of his heart against her palms.
Sitting up, he cupped her face in his big hands and kissed her, hot and deep and wet, until her breath grew choppy and short. He moved one hand into her hair and drew her head back so he could spread kisses down her chin and over her neck to the hollow of her throat. His other hand cupped her breast through her T-shirt, his thumb moving back and forth over its tip until her nipple pebbled and he could work it more intensely. At her first moan, low and rough with need, he stopped and pulled back from her.
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