Hunted (30 page)

“Fine.” She headed for the table, where he’d put his gun, still in its holster. Since the table was out of reach of the bed, she presumed he’d left it there so that, handcuffed to his bulk while they slept, she couldn’t get her hands on it.

Well,
surprise
. Putting the key down on the table, she picked up the gun, pulled it out of the holster, looked at it reflectively, then glanced at him.

“You know you’re going to have to unlock these handcuffs eventually.” He sounded like his patience was starting to fray around the edges.

“Probably.” She restored the gun to its holster and put it back down on the table. It occurred to her that he absolutely knew that she wasn’t going to shoot or arrest him, so he had no need to fear her getting her hands on his gun. Therefore, last night’s handcuff act had not been about keeping her away from his gun. What then had he been trying to keep her away from? That, she decided, was important. The look she turned on him was speculative.

“No
probably
about it. You really want to try to find your way back through the swamp without me?”

He said that like he thought he was holding a trump card. Well, he was, but no need to admit it to him yet. “I could phone for help,” she pointed out. “One little 911 call, and I bet half the cops in the state would be out here within—what?—fifteen, twenty minutes?”

“More like an hour or two. Anyway, we both know you’re not going to do that.”

She flicked him another look. He’d lost the tranquil expression in favor of a frown.

“Probably not,” she conceded. “But I could. Not to rub it in, but this is the second time I’ve gotten the drop on you, and both times it was incredibly easy. You might want to be a little more careful in the future.”

“Believe me, I will be.” His tone bordered on grim. “Come on, Caroline, I get it: you don’t like being handcuffed. Suppose I agree that I won’t handcuff you anymore?”

She smiled mockingly at him. “I don’t know. The thing is, now I’m finding out that I kind of like handcuffs—on you. Who knew I was kinky like that?”

“Don’t make me break my bed to get free,” he threatened.

“See, that’s the thing about iron. It’s hard to break.”

“Think I can’t do it?”

She shrugged. “You haven’t yet.”

He didn’t reply. Which she thought made the answer pretty self-evident.

The bag of groceries was still on the table. She started pulling items out just to see what was in there. A loaf of bread. A jar of peanut butter. Some packaged trail mix. A couple of apples. A hunger pang assailed her at the sight of the food, and she picked
up one of the apples and bit into it. It was tart and juicy.
Yum
. Looking at him, she took another bite.

He was watching her. “How about bringing me one?”

She laughed—she was
so
not falling for that—and tossed the other apple to him. He made a good one-handed catch and, with his eyes on her, sank his teeth into it.

She looked at the table next to the grocery bag and was surprised to discover not one, but two phones. One was the prepaid cell phone he’d used to call her father. She knew enough about them to know that when its minutes were used up, it was worthless. The other—she picked it up. Day-glo blue, it didn’t look like anything that could possibly belong to Reed. It was connected to a charger, which was plugged into an outlet via an extension cord.

“You know what I’m asking myself right now?” She took another bite of apple as he chomped hungrily away at his. “I’m asking myself just what you handcuffed me to keep me away from. I don’t think it was to keep me away from your gun.” She paused to swallow.

“Yours?” she asked, picking up the blue phone.

His face told her nothing, which was interesting.

“Stolen,” he replied, then when she lifted her eyebrows at him added, “Holly’s got a bad habit of ripping off tourists.” At Caroline’s expression he shrugged. “Hey, I never claimed he was a saint.”

“How did you get mixed up with him, anyway?” The phone was turned off. She turned it on, and the screen lit up: a picture of a fuzzy white kitten was the screen saver. Verdict: it most likely belonged to a teenage girl. Who hadn’t bothered to password protect it.

“I’ve known him since he was a little kid. I knew his and Ant’s mother.”

“Knew?”

“She’s dead.” His tone changed as she started pushing buttons, calling up, respectively, e-mails and messages and texts and photos. “You know, there was a reason the phone was turned off. So nobody could track it.”

“Hmm.” She quickly pushed a button. The screen went black. She put the phone down on the table like it was hot. The last thing she wanted to do was to draw somebody to them who might be tracking the phone. “Why did you even bring it?”

“In case I needed to make a call that couldn’t be traced back to my phone.” He grimaced.

Throwing the quilt aside, he moved so that he was sitting on the side of the bed. The position left his manacled hand stretched behind him, but it was incrementally more dangerous looking than his reclining posture against the pillows. The only thing he was wearing was a pair of dark green boxers, and the sight of so much nearly naked male flesh was distracting. Stripped down, Reed was nothing if not eye candy.

Taking another bite of her apple, Caroline put the half-eaten piece of fruit down on the table and looked at him reflectively.

The thing was, she didn’t think Reed was worried about her calling for help, either. In fact, she was almost entirely certain of it.

So the question remained: what was he trying to keep her away from?

Gun. Phones. Groceries. Possibly his backpack? A glance around located it: it was right beside the bed. Even handcuffed to Reed as she had been, she could have reached it if she’d wanted.

So, no.

Why would Reed have a phone that Holly had stolen?

Unless Holly had given it to him. Reed almost certainly wasn’t a fan of Holly’s thievery. In fact, she could tell from his tone when he’d spoken about it that he wasn’t. Holly wouldn’t have given Reed proof positive that he had done something Reed disapproved of without a reason.

And Caroline was willing to bet the reason had something to do with why Holly had been arrested. The reason Reed had basically destroyed his life to get Holly out of jail. The reason she and Reed were at that moment looking at each other measuringly across maybe twelve feet of shadowy space.

The suspicious murders.

Watching Reed closely, she picked up the stolen phone again.

His eyes narrowed. His jaw hardened.

Unless someone knew that the stolen phone was in Reed’s possession, no one would be tracking it to find him. That wasn’t what he was worried about.

He was worried about her finding something on that phone.

She pressed the button to turn it on again. He stiffened. His shoulders visibly tensed.

She smiled triumphantly. “There’s something on this phone that you don’t want me to see, isn’t there?”

“Put the damned phone down, Caroline.”

“I take that as a big fat yes.” She clicked from the fuzzy kitten to the menu.

“It’s got a locator on it. Every minute you have it turned on increases our chances of being found.”

“Bullshit,” she said. “We both know you’re not worried about that. What is it, Reed? What’s on this phone?”

She clicked on the e-mails. The phone’s rightful owner, she saw just from scrolling down through the messages, was named Elizabeth.

“Porn. Assignations with drug dealers. A Justin Bieber video. How the hell should I know?”

A jarring scraping sound brought her gaze back to him in a hurry. He was on his feet now, standing behind the bed, and the scraping sound had been him thrusting it away from the wall.

“You know what’s on it.” She was positive now. “It’s something to do with those suspicious murders, isn’t it?”

“Fine,” he said abruptly. “You want me to tell you about the murders? I’ll tell you about the murders.”

Her initial rush of satisfaction didn’t last much longer than it took her to look at him. His face was dark and hard. His cuffed left hand gripped the back of the headboard as if he wanted to crush it. His whole body radiated tension— Plus, his capitulation had come way too easily.

“You’re going to lie to me.” Her voice was flat. “Forget it, I’ll figure it out for myself.”

She clicked on the text messages, skimmed them. Nothing but things like
, where do you want to get lunch?
and
OMG, did you see that cute guy?

“Put down the damned phone.” He was starting to sound really angry. “I mean it.”

“How to put this? No.”

“This isn’t some game we’re playing, Caroline.”

“The phone belongs to a teenage girl,” she said. “What would
she know about suspicious murders? Did she see something? Witness something?”

A loud scraping sound made her jerk a look toward him. At what she saw, her eyes widened, and she took an automatic step back.

Looking all dangerous and threatening, he stalked toward her, his hand gripping the headboard as he dragged the bed behind him. All dangerous and threatening, that is, except for the bed, which kind of took the intimidation factor out of play. The iron headboard was, as she had rightly calculated, apparently unbreakable. What she had not taken into account was how light the bed itself seemed to be.

“You look ridiculous,” she said with a quick, condemning frown.

“Think I give a damn?” He was shoving furniture out of the way, clearing a path for himself plus the bed. She backed up some more, confident that she had some time. He might reach her, but it wasn’t going to happen fast.

She said, “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Goddamn it, Caroline, don’t do this.”

“She witnessed something. I bet she took a picture.” She clicked on the Pictures icon.

“Put the phone down, Caroline.”

She glanced up again as, with multiple shrieks of metal on wood and wood on wood, he plowed through the obstacle course of the sitting area, shoving aside furniture as he came. Everything about him said that he was deadly serious in his mission to stop her from learning more, and she experienced a brief but measurable qualm. If he thought what she was going to find
was really so terrible, maybe she shouldn’t . . . But a picture was already filling the phone’s screen, and she couldn’t help herself: she had to look down at it.

It
was
terrible.

“Oh, my God,” she said, staring at a close-up of the corpse of a boy of maybe thirteen or so, lying on the ground in the dark with a bullet hole between his eyes.

“Stop right there!” Reed roared, but she ignored him to click through to the next photo. Cursing a blue streak, he was making a terrific amount of noise with the bed as he struggled to get to her, but she was too transfixed by what she was seeing to pay any attention. A woman with a bullet hole between her eyes. Two more corpses killed the same way, both men. The yellow streak of a gun being fired through the darkness, less than a yard away from the head of one of those dead men, taken in what must have been his last split second of life. Those same four people alive, standing huddled together in a dark cemetery, obviously terrified. A man flashing a badge at them—

Her heart lurched.

“Goddamn it, Caroline!” Reed jumped her, grabbing her by the arm as he snatched the phone from her hand. His long, strong fingers bit into her flesh. Looking up at him almost blindly, still caught up in the hideous truth painted by the photos, she barely felt his grip.

“They were killed by cops,” she said to Reed, who was looking down at her with a combination of fury and dismay. “Weren’t they? That’s what’s up with the suspicious murders. That’s what Holly meant when he said it was the cops. Police officers killed
these people, and this girl—Elizabeth—witnessed it and took pictures.”

She felt cold all over as she tried to assess what that meant. An isolated murder by rogue cops? But Reed had taken what he knew to her father and—

“The department’s covering it up, aren’t they? And my father’s part of it.” Then another truly terrible thought struck her. “What happened to the girl—Elizabeth?”

Reed tossed the phone onto the counter and gripped both her arms as if he never meant to let go. That was when she registered that he had somehow freed himself from both bed and handcuffs—right, she’d left the key on the table. He must have managed to reach it while she’d been looking, horrified, at the pictures.

“She doesn’t know anything about those killings. If she did, she’d be dead. Holly stole her phone, was on the scene with Ant when this went down, and used it to take the pictures. He brought me in. I went to your father. And then the whole damned thing went straight to hell.” He gave her a hard little shake that had her glaring at him. “I told you to leave it alone. Why the hell didn’t you listen?”

“Maybe because I don’t have to listen to you?” Her voice dripped sarcasm. “Maybe because I’m a cop, too?”

“To hell with that. You should’ve listened.”

His eyes as they stared down into hers were dark and turbulent. That look was because he was afraid for her, Caroline knew. If Reed was afraid for her—well, he wouldn’t exhibit that kind of fear lightly. But the knowledge that he cared enough
to be
afraid for her made some small part of her that wasn’t appalled and
scared and sick to her stomach feel—good. Rallying, she took a deep breath.

“I needed to know what was going on,” she said.

His mouth twisted and he pulled her right up against him. She felt the hard strength in his hands gripping her arms, the solid wall of his chest against her breasts, the warmth of his skin everywhere they touched, the sense of barely leashed power in his body. Being pressed so close to all those nearly naked masculine muscles made her heart beat faster. Her pulse rate speeded up. And she realized that no matter what, where she found herself was just exactly where she wanted to be: up close and personal with Reed.

“No, you damned well didn’t.” His voice was rough. His eyes were alive with anger and distress. “If they find out you know, they’ll hunt you down just like they’re hunting Holly and me. They’ll kill you. The only thing you can do now is put the damned pictures out of your mind and pretend you never saw them and trust in the fact that you’re the superintendent’s daughter to keep you safe.” Something in her face must have alerted him that she wasn’t exactly with the program, because he blew out an exasperated sigh. “Goddamn it, Caroline, do you even realize how much danger you’re in?”