CRAVE - BAD BOY ROMANCE (14 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I woke up in a panic. It was nearly seven
in the morning and my sleep had been almost dreamless. Except for the last few
minutes. I knew very well that slumber could be a tricksy beast. The dream you
think you were just having could have been hours ago. Sometimes you'll be sure
you wake up in the midst of something and you fight desperately to hang onto
it, only to grasp nothing but smoke.

But this was different. This had been
as strong and as frightening a dream as I’d ever had because it consisted of
one thing and one thing only.

Thrace. He'd watched me from across
the darkened room of my mind, and every time I looked away or shuddered at his
gaze the image of him had drifted minutely closer. I couldn't run. I couldn't
get away. I was locked in that place with that man, sliding closer and closer
and closer like a snake.

Until at the end he was in my face. I
could feel his breath on my cheek. He reached out to stroke my hair, and that
was when at last I was able to wake up.

I was sweating, and it wasn't from
the heat. My body felt sore from trying to get away from him, and I was
breathing hard. I leapt out of bed and made sure the deeds were still there.
They were, thank God. If they'd been gone I’d have never have been able to
forgive myself.

But seeing them there made me realize
just how exposed they were. They'd been safe in their hiding place for however
long. The smartest thing to do would be to return them there. The backyard was
private enough that no one would see me replace the box, and so I gently put
the folded deeds back in their place and then laid the key ring on top of it
before closing the lid.

I scooped the box up and hurried
through the kitchen to the backstairs. In the cold light of day, I could see
the mess I made last night. The stairs were shambles. More wood and nails than
anything that had a right to the name stairs. I wanted just to kick the wood
into the corner of the yard, but if I did it would have been obvious that I'd
been digging beneath them. There was so much dirt scattered around that it
looked like I'd buried a corpse.

Besides, the whole was still there,
and so I placed the wooden box back inside it and pushed topsoil in to fill it
up. After that, I went inside, grabbed a broom, and came back out to tidy up.

Cade wasn't obviously still in police
custody. I knew that for sure. If he’d gotten out he’d have probably already
been sitting in my kitchen waiting for me, even though what I really wanted him
to do was visit me in bed.

If the police hadn’t come for me yet,
maybe they didn’t know I’d been holding the crowbar too. Should I go and visit
the jail? Would I be able to bail him out?

Surely if he were able to he’d have
used his one phone call to contact me, until I realized that I've never given
him my mobile number. Did Grandma even have a phone installed? If she had, I
hadn't seen it. It would be just like her to not have bothered with the hassle.
After all, she didn't have the Internet.

Hell, she didn't even have
electricity, and I was beginning to wonder whether that wasn't by choice. It
would've done a lot for her voodoo Queen image if the only illumination people
have ever seen from inside was candlelight.

If Cade couldn't come to me and I didn't
go to him, how could I help?

I frowned, wiping my hands on my
jeans and staring down at my handiwork. I wouldn't be able to replace the
stairs, and any repair I did would be more death trap than usable equipment.
Still, this was too obvious. If someone did see it, it would be clear where I’d
been digging, so I reassembled the stairs as best I could. They might never
hold anyone's weight again, but they looked the same way they always had.

I'd have to remind Cade not to use
them, lest he break a leg as soon as he got back.

Once I'd finished making everything
back here look as close to normal as possible, I carefully stepped over the
rotten wood and went back into the kitchen. My heart had stopped pounding and
my breathing had slowed, but that didn't mean that I knew what to do next.

Knock, knock, kno
ck. Someone was at the door. My blood
ran cold and my knees grew stiff. Who could it be? To the best of my knowledge
I didn't have any appointments for today. Hell, half of the appointments I had
yesterday had been unable to attend. Death had gotten in the way of Jessica,
and I didn't think Jonathan would return so quickly once he found out.

It had to be someone else. Cade? I
was sure he had a key to the house. The police? Maybe, though the knock didn't
sound as if it was someone who wanted me to go to the police station the way
they would've.

No, this was the sort of knock that
asks ‘are you home?’ The sort of knock you hear before a thief decides the
place is empty and kicks your door down to steal everything you own.

I hurried to the front door and put
my eye to the peephole as quickly as I could. If there was someone out there
willing to break in, I was determined to get a good look at them before they
tried it.

It was Thrace. And just like in my
dream, even though all I could see of him was his face, it kept getting closer
and closer. I watched in terror as he leaned in and pressed his eye against the
other side of the same peephole I was watching him through.

Would he see me? Was that how these
things worked? I couldn't believe they were intended to, but what did I know
about optics and lenses and things designed to look one way and not another?

The answer was nothing. I knew
nothing about how they worked, which meant there was every chance that he was
staring into my very soul even now. I became incredibly concerned that he could
hear me breathing. I saw his pupils flare and my heart skipped a beat. As if in
answer to my unspoken question, Thrace leaned back a little and whispered, “I
know you're in there. Open up.”

The gun. That was all I could think
of. I'd been so taken last night by the idea of searching for grandmother
secret that I'd abandoned it on the kitchen table. Even though it was only in
the next room, it felt like it was miles away. May as well have been back in
Michigan for all the good it was going to do me if Thrace decided to bust down
the door right now.

The doorknob turned. It was locked,
but that didn't seem to be stopping it. I hadn't heard him pick it or put a key
into the lock, and I reached down to wrap my hand around the knob in an attempt
to stop it from letting him in.

Except I could feel that it was still
locked, and I realize that he tricked me. He’d only been turning the handle a
little bit to see what I do, and I wasn't familiar enough with the door to
realize that the knob had a little play in it. Now, he could feel that someone
was on the other side holding on for dear life.

And that was all he needed to know…

“I won't hurt you,” he said with a
smile that would've put a wolf to shame. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

I closed my eyes and drew a long,
slow breath that filled my lungs with the warm swamp air I knew I should be petrified.
He was a dangerous man, and the even more dangerous man that protected me was
nowhere to be found.

I should be scared, but in reality I
was just pissed off. Before I knew what I was doing, I yanked the door open and
confronted him. “What?” I asked, staring daggers at him.

“Hold on now,” he said with a smirk. “I
heard the voodoo Queen's Granddaughter was setting up the old shop and I wanted
to come see for myself if it was true.”

“Well, you've seen.” I pointed past
him at the street that would take him back into town. “Now get out of here
before I call the cops.”

Thrace laughed. “Do you really think
that would work?” He asked. “Do you really think, even with as little as you
know, that the police didn't call me the moment they locked your boyfriend up?”

The sinking feeling in my gut told me
that he was speaking the truth. Of course the police would be on it. Wasn’t
that always the way in these small towns? Local sheriffs and deputies with axes
to grind and favors to sell saw themselves not as officers of the law. They
were
the law. And it seemed that I was
on the wrong side of it already.

“Mind if I come in, Rachel?”

I didn't like the way my name sounded
in his mouth. He said it short and sharp, the way a cruel owner would tug on
the leash of a disobedient dog. I recoiled, most likely just as the dog would
have. “No way,” I said. “I'm far too busy for this sort of shit.”

His smile got even bigger, but the
emotion didn't make it all away up to his dead eyes. “I'm afraid I'm going to
have to insist,” he told me as he peered past me. “I'd make an appointment, but
it doesn't seem like you're busy now.”

He had me there. What could I do?
Darting past him, running down the street and screaming for help was most
likely rash at this stage. Besides, with the reputation the Gravediggers Union
enjoyed, I doubted there would be people lining up to help me anyway. Nobody
would be calling the police, not if they knew what was good for them. No, I was
at the mercy of Thrace and my best bet would be to humor him until I could talk
him into leaving.

But what if he wanted me dead? Cade
had never come out and said so for sure, but I think we both know that if my Grandmother
had been murdered she'd more than likely met her and at the hands of the man
stood before me.

“Come in, then,” I said to him curtly.
“Take a seat on that chair over there and let's see what you have to say.”

I stepped out of the way and he walked
past me amicably enough. Thrace sat down in the chair I'd pointed out to him
and made a show of making himself comfortable. He went so far as to put his
feet up on the coffee table, clearly trying to prove that he was the King here
and I was the servant.

“You’ve got it turned around, Rachel.
It's me that wants to hear the answers to questions,” he said. “Or haven’t you found
out that that's how it works yet?”

“Very well,” I growled, sitting down
across from him on the couch. “Then what do you want to hear?”

“I've lost something,” he said. His
steely gaze ripped right through me and I could almost feel the ice in my veins
as I sat beneath his glare. “I was hoping you could help me find.”

I swallowed hard and fought to keep
my voice under control. “And what have you lost?”

He shrugged. “Well, perhaps lost isn’t
the proper term. It was taken from me, although it was never in my possession.
It should have been, but it wasn't. And I need you to change that.”

“If you're just going to talk in
riddles, they're wasting my time and yours, Thrace.”

“No riddles. No games. Your Grandmother
somehow found a way to own my clubhouse, and I need you to change that.
Somewhere in this house is a piece of paper that represents everything I've
spent my entire life working for. And you my dear, are going to find it for me.
Once you do, I'll go. I promise.”

“And if I can't?” I asked, inwardly
patting myself on the back for saying
can't
instead of
won't
. A slipup like that
would be the end of me.

“If you can't, I'll call my boys and
the three of us will make you wish you had. It's as simple as that.”

Of course. Just like that I felt the
pieces of the puzzle falling in the place. They hadn't been able to bully my Grandmother
into giving them their precious deed so they killed her, knowing that she'd
leave her property to me.

But how had they known? The most
obvious answer was the one I didn't want to be true. Cade had known. Cade
could've told his old gang, either on purpose or over a few beers and amidst a
drunken moment of indiscretion. He was the reason I was here anyway, by his own
admission. How easy would it have been to convince my Grandmother that he'd
seen a vision of me, even if it was only to give his own club the deed to the
clubhouse?

Too easy. And once he had, it
wouldn't have taken much prompting for her to get me here.

And then Thrace could spring his
trap.

I didn't want to believe Cade was
capable of that. I trusted that what he and I shared was special, but now I
didn't know what to think. I was lost. And I was alone, more alone than ever.

“I don't have your deed,” I told Thrace
with force. “And threatening me isn't going to make me find it.”

“We’ll have to see about that. We can
blast a few more of your prospective clients, if you prefer. That is, if that
bitch Jessica’s body isn’t warning enough to the rest…”

I shook my head, unwilling to let him
go down that road. At the end of it lay nothing but unhappiness for everyone
around me. “No, we won't. I don't care if you believe me or not but I won't be
helping you. Not today or any other day. Now you and I both know that I know that
I’m no more of voodoo priestess than Miss universe, but if you want to sit and
have a reading we can do that. Otherwise, I suggest you leave.”

“Okay,” he said, standing. I was
suddenly aware of how tall he was, looming over me as he did. “Have it your way.”

I stood up too, only to have him
reach out and put his hand on my shoulders to force me back into my seat.