The Reckoning (8 page)

Go to the terror, the blood. Find the body because the smells told him there wouldn't be anything happy at the end of this trail.

Another corner, and he found himself in an empty room. A figure stepped out of the shadows. Emmett jerked his gun toward it.

“Christopher!” It was his brother. His big brother. Dead Christopher. “What are you doing here?”

The ghost that was Christopher didn't answer. Instead, he held out a cassette tape.

“I don't want it,” Emmett said. “I don't want that.”

Christopher shook the tape, insisting.

“No,” Emmett said, backing off. “I don't want that. I want her. Where is she?” He tried remembering who
she
was, but it wouldn't come to him.

Then the tape was in his hand, and Christopher was holding out something else now—a small cassette player. He wanted Emmett to play the tape, that was clear, but Emmett wouldn't. He couldn't.

Christopher grabbed the tape from Emmett's hand and slapped it into the player. Horrified, Emmett could only watch as his brother's thumb hovered over the buttons. Then he found his voice again.

“Don't play it!” he yelled out. “Don't play the tape! Don't play the tape!”

“Emmett.” A hand was on his shoulder, jostling him. “Emmett, wake up.”

It was dark like before. He couldn't see like before. But then he was jostled again and he opened his eyes. It was still night, but unlike a few moments ago now he could easily make out his surroundings. He was in a different room, with a dresser and a mirror and a bed and a…woman.

He was in bed with a woman. Linda.

With a groan, he rolled onto his back. “I'm sorry.” He threw an arm over his eyes. “I'm sorry I woke you up. How are you feeling?”

“Better. A little fuzzy, but better. The pills do that to me. How are
you
feeling? You were yelling in your sleep.”

“A dream,” he muttered.

“A
bad
dream.” She smoothed his hair as if he were a child.

Embarrassed, he made to roll off the bed. “I'll get out of here and let you get a good night's rest.”

She caught his elbow. “Let me apologize first.”

“What?” That was his line.

“I'm sorry about…earlier. The headaches still hit me sometimes.”

“I know. Your doctors told me to expect them.”

“Yes, well, I'm sorry nevertheless.”

“Not necessary.” He rolled off the bed until he was on his feet, more than half a mattress away from her. She was sitting up, the sheet pressed to her chest, her hair a long fall of lightness over her bare shoulders. The dream still clutched at him, as well as the humiliation that he'd been caught crying out in his sleep. “Good night.”

“Emmett…” Her hair swished as she shook her head. “Let me just say one more time that…that I'm sorry I'm such a failure.”

“What?” He stepped forward, his knees bumping the side of the bed. “What are you talking about now?”

“I thought I could be a real woman tonight.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “Instead, I get a screaming headache and then I send you into a screaming nightmare.”

Oh, no. No.
“My dreams have nothing to do with you.”

She made a little noise, and he replayed what he'd said, realizing too late how it sounded.

“That didn't come out right.” He sat down on the mattress and found himself reaching for her hand. “It's not easy for me to admit, but it—it was a nightmare. A nightmare that I've had more than once. That I have often. It's not your fault.”

She frowned. “But why is that hard for you to admit? Don't you think you're entitled to your demons?”

“I—” He sighed. “I suppose I don't want them to feel entitled to
me.
”

She squeezed his fingers. “I always heard you macho FBI men couldn't admit to being mortal like the rest of us. But everyone has bad dreams, Emmett. It doesn't mean you're weak. Now, weak…weak is me.”

“Weak? No.”

“Incomplete, then. Not all here. Wimpy.”

“Linda.” Emmett moved closer to her on the bed so that he could touch her face. He tucked her hair behind her ear. “You can't believe that. The fact is, you astonish me with your strength and bravery.”

She made another little sound, a disbelieving one.

“Really,” he said. “It's funny, I've been around more than my share of hardened male warriors over the years, but it's women who bowl me over with their fortitude and courage every time.”

“That's nice of you to say, but—”

“I'm not just saying it.” He found her hand again. “I know what I'm talking about. What I dreamed about tonight—my nightmare—is about another young woman whom I admire.”

“Who is she?”

“Was. Who she was. She was the last case I worked before I went on leave from the FBI. Her name was Jessica Chandler.” He heard the words come out of his mouth and wished them back too late. That case, Jessica herself, was never far from this thoughts. But bringing it up wasn't going to lay any of the ghosts to rest. It was better to keep the thoughts and the ghosts inside himself, where they couldn't bother anyone else's sleep.

“Tell me about her,” Linda said.

“No.” He hadn't spoken of Jessica to anyone since the investigation ended. And before that, while it was ongoing, he
had
listened
to what others had to say about her, letting her mother Leanne and her father John tell him every detail they wanted to relate. He knew her favorite color, her favorite stuffed animal, her favorite hymn. Her little sister shared the name of the first boy who'd ever kissed her. Her older brother told him about the time she'd scratched the family car and he'd covered for her.

Emmett had gotten to know Jessica through the eyes of those who had loved her most. “It's not a bedtime story,” he said. “I shouldn't have mentioned it.”

“But you did,” Linda pointed out. “Maybe you need to talk about her.”

“No.” He only needed to bury the details of that case deeper inside himself. Then maybe he could sleep without the terrible dreams. Maybe then he could begin to forget the terrible memories.

“Emmett—”

“She was only eighteen,” he heard himself tell Linda, the words bursting out. “Only eighteen years old!”

“Tell me about her,” she whispered. “It's all right. I want you to tell me about her.”

Despite his wishes, the outrage, the despair, the utter sense of futility that always overcame him at the thought of Jessica Chandler swept through him. Maybe it was because of the recent nightmare, maybe it was because of Linda's sympathetic, soft voice, but this time the barriers he'd erected months ago to wall the pain inside him didn't hold. He had to let it out.

He closed his eyes, squeezing them tight. “She was on her way home from her part-time job. She stopped at the mailbox at the end of her long rural lane. Her brother found her car there less than half an hour later. The door was open, her purse was on the passenger seat, but Jessica was nowhere to be found.”

“Kidnapped.”

He nodded, his eyes still closed. “That's what brought the FBI in. A beautiful young woman abducted—the situation is chilling. It's hard to have much hope. But her family did. A most remarkable family. They believed in Jessica and her ability to overcome the odds.”

Linda stroked the top of his hand with her free fingers. “You got to know her family.”

“Yes. Know them, and through them know Jessica. When her kidnapper started calling, I almost began to believe she'd make it out of her nightmare, too.” He'd been at the Chandler house 24/7, waiting with her parents and siblings for the phone to ring. From them, he'd learned what a close, loving family could be like and he'd wanted, with increasing desperation, to bring about the happy ending to their appalling ordeal.

“The kidnapper liked to play games with us, though. No straight answers, no putting Jessica on the phone, just enough information for us to know that he did, indeed, have her. He never slipped up by staying long enough on the phone for us to pinpoint his location.” Jason had been like that when he held Lily Fortune. In both situations, the too-short, too-taunting calls had eaten at Emmett from the inside out.

“But you did find him?”

“Later. After we recovered Jessica.” Emmett opened his eyes. It was edging toward dawn now, and the room was taking on a pearly tone. It had been dawn when the last call from Jessica's abductor had come. His stomach burned with the memory of it. “After a solid week of those teasing phone calls, he gave us GPS coordinates. We found Jessica where he said we would—only she wasn't alive and waiting for us. She was three feet below, in a shallow grave where he'd placed her after killing her two days earlier.”

Linda didn't jerk, she didn't cry out, she didn't break away. Instead, she moved in toward Emmett, wrapping her arms around him. She tucked her head in the curve of his neck and shoulder. His cheek found its way against her silky hair. He placed his hands on her warm, sleek back.

There was more, and it was worse, but the walls inside of him were gone and he couldn't keep these words in, either. “She was buried with a cassette tape. On one side he'd recorded— Never mind. On the other, he'd let her tape a final message to her family and friends.”

Linda held him tighter.

“It was the most loving last words you could imagine. She asked them not to think of her in the final hours of her life but in all the ones that had come before. Christmases, birthdays, the happy every days that they had shared. Then she sang. She sang the old Simon and Garfunkel song, ‘Feelin' Groovy.' Can you imagine?” His voice broke, surprising him. He cleared it. “By all reports, she had a terrible voice and could never stay on key, but everyone will tell you that in that recording she sounds like an angel.”

His voice broke again. “Just like an angel singing ‘Feelin' Groovy.' I heard it myself.”

“Oh, Emmett. She must have been quite a young woman.”

“I told you. Brave and strong. Not being able to save such a bright, shining star sent me to a very dark place.” His body had retreated to a cabin in New Mexico, but his spirit had already been nearly extinguished by layers of blackness and despair. “You've shed some light for me, though.”

She lifted her face and scooted back to look at him. “Me?”

He nodded. “I've had the tendency to see the world in shades of black and white. Loser, winner, victim, criminal—”

“Dead, alive.”

“And asleep, awake.”

Holding the sheet against her chest, she tilted her head. “But I've made you see it's not so simple as that.”

He agreed. “You've made me see it's not as simple as that. You're alive and well. Fighting back. Fighting to get your life back. And I know you will.”

The room was even brighter now, the pearly gray light taking on the rose and yellow tones of a Texas dawn. Linda looked like the sunrise, with her golden yellow hair and soft pink skin. He could look at her all day, he thought. Because she was bringing daylight into the unrelenting night that had been his existence.

“Your bravery, your fortitude make me believe in goodness again. That it can win.”

She was in his arms then, in a flurry of warm skin and crispy sheets. He held her against him, half smiling at the strength of her arms as she squeezed him.

“I think that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” Linda whispered against his neck.

It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him, Emmett thought. She'd made him feel almost human again. A man. In the last few months, he'd been trapped in the darkness during the daylight hours just as surely as he was trapped in it during his nightmares. He'd been as much of a ghost as those who peopled his dreams.

But Linda had brought him back to life.

Beneath his cheek, the silky strands of her hair were wet. He touched them as she lifted her head. “I'm sorry,” he said. “You're crying.”

“It's all right.” Her fingers brushed his face. “You are, too.”

L
inda saw a disbelieving expression cross Emmett's face as he reached up a hand to feel his tears. She could kick herself for having told him he was crying; no man would appreciate hearing that. But as sometimes had happened since her recovery, her mouth had bypassed a brain check. However, he'd sideswiped her, too, with his talk of strength and bravery.

She almost believed him.

He dried his cheek with the back of his hand. “I don't know whether to hide my face,” he said, his voice hoarse, “or kiss yours.”

He was beautiful, rumpled and rough and male, looking dark and dangerously sexy in their nest of white sheets. There was something about this hard man revealing glimpses of his soft heart that made her eyes sting again.

His hand reached out to catch the falling tear, and she turned her cheek into his warm palm to brush her mouth
against his fingers. “Kissing sounds good to me,” she whispered.

He lifted her chin and pressed his lips to hers, soft as a butterfly. Then his hand moved to cup her bare breast, again, soft as a butterfly. She looked down, surprised by her nakedness. In the midst of their conversation, the covers had slipped and she'd been unaware of it. That happened to her sometimes, too—with her head so busy taking in one thing, she could easily lose track of another.

But now her focus honed in on this. Mesmerized, she watched his big hand on her soft skin, his thumb bumping over the hardening crest of her nipple. The touch affected her twofold—the sight of his darker skin against her pale flesh was almost as arousing as the rub of his calloused fingers against her sensitive nerve endings.

“You'll need to keep breathing, sweetheart,” Emmett said.

Her eyes lifted to his. His gaze burned, that yellow flame brightening the green irises like the sun rising outside this very room. She yearned for him, her skin flushing hot as she realized how very, very much she yearned for him.

“I'm not sure I remember how,” she whispered, and she knew he knew she wasn't talking about breathing.

With gentle hands he pushed her back against the pillows. He stripped off his T-shirt and then came over her, his bare chest against hers. “You let me worry about that. I'll jog your memory anytime I think you need it, okay?”

She hardly heard him, lost in the wonder of his hard, naked muscles against her. “Okay,” she said, and wiggled so that her nipples brushed against him.

He groaned.

“Does that hurt?” she asked, all innocence. “Did I get it wrong already?”

“Tease.” His mouth descended, brushing hers. “But two can play that game.”

And oh, he played it well. He teased her all right, pressing just the lightest of kisses against her mouth, one, then two, then lifting on three so that she tried to follow his mouth to make the kisses longer, deeper,
more.
But that tempting mouth was already on the move, sliding down her neck, licking a hot path from behind her ear to her collarbone to the shallow valley between her breasts.

He plumped one with his hand, and she held her breath, waiting for the delicious heat of his mouth, but instead he gently brushed his stubbled cheek against her hard nipple, the prickly sensation raising goose bumps from her forehead to her feet. As he moved to the other breast, her muscles tensed. She wanted his mouth there. She wanted that ticklish tantalizing of his beard. She wanted
more.

Her gaze trained on his face, she waited to see what he would do next. Hovering over her left nipple, his tongue reached out.

He glanced at her, then lifted his head.

She wanted to scream or cry or beg.
Please.

He must have known. A little smile played over his mouth. “I think it's time for one of those little memory jogs. You can ask for what you want, sweetheart. As a matter of fact, it's a requirement.”

“Words…” Linda swallowed. “Words aren't always easy to come by.”

“Then show me.”

She figured he already knew. She figured this was more of that teasing he wanted to treat her to, but he'd said it was a requirement, and she didn't want to take the chance of getting anything wrong. So she slid her fingers into the short strands of his hair and brought his lips to her breast.

They opened over her nipple and sucked it into the wet heat of his mouth. Linda cried out. “Yes,” she heard herself say. “Yes, yes, yes.”

He sucked at the other one, too, making them both hard and wet and so sensitive that her body arched off the bed as he drew his thumbs over the tips. “Now is when I take your panties off,” he said. “Now is when I get to see all of you.”

Her hips fit perfectly between his palms. He drew his hands over their curves, taking her underwear with them.

Struck by a sudden bout of modesty, she brought her naked legs tightly together. The sun had risen and the room was morning-bright. “I've only done this in the dark,” she said, not sure why she was feeling so nervous again.

His big hand sat warmly on her upper thigh. “Then I'll be your first daylight man.”

Daylight man. Dark and troubled Emmett, who had so many of his own demons, had come into her life to help her. And here he was again. Her daylight man. Maybe they could bring the sun to each other.

She parted her legs and opened her arms. “Please.”

He slipped out of his boxers, rolled on a condom and then came between her thighs. Closing her eyes, she reveled in his heat, his weight, the exquisite feel of his body, so male and hard against hers.

“Memory jog,” he said against her mouth. “Open your thighs wider, sweetheart, and tilt your hips.”

“Oh.” His erection slid against her sensitive flesh, the way slickened by her arousal. He came a little way inside her and held there, his weight balanced on his elbows.

She wiggled her bottom a little, but he didn't make a move. “Memory jog,” she said, her voice sounding tight and a bit desperate. “Don't stop now.”

He smiled down at her. “I'm just enjoying the view. Your
eyes are so blue right now. Your cheeks are flushed and your mouth and your nipples are the exact same shade of raspberry.” He leaned lower to brush his tongue along her bottom lip. “Delicious.”

She grabbed his head and brought him down for a proper kiss. He let her arrange the alignment of their mouths but then took over again, his tongue entering her even as that other part of him pushed inside.

Linda whimpered, her body quivering around his slow and steady penetration.
Good,
she thought to herself.
So good.

He pulled his hips back, and then did it again, opening her to him with another sure and patient push. Linda felt her skin flush hotter, and her fingers bit into his scalp. He grunted, his body grinding against hers. His mouth lifted and he whispered in her ear, his breath hot against the sensitive shell.

“You remember this now, right? You remember how we try to hold out as long as we can, teasing each other, letting the tension build?”

She nodded her head, even though she didn't think it had ever been like now for her before. How could it have been, when Emmett had never before been in her arms, in her body, his heavy erection sliding in and out of her, touching her inside, pulling against the little knot of nerves at the apex of her sex?

He rolled, and she found herself on top of him. It had never been like this, for sure it had never been like this, because there was sunlight in the room and sunlight added another layer of heat to her skin. It streamed in one of the windows, washing over Emmett's torso and washing over hers as she sat up on her knees. He covered her breasts with his big hands, and his hips arched into hers.

It had never been like this, because every thrust tightened her arousal and took it higher, to a place she'd never seen be
fore. It was a wild rainbow of colors that she saw behind her closed eyelids as she tried to keep herself on that fine knife-like edge of erotic tension.

She heard herself whimper because it was so good, too good, and she didn't know what the next step was, how to take it, what would happen when she fell.

“Linda.”

Her eyes opened, and Emmett was looking up at her, his features hardened by the same passion she was feeling. He drew one hand from her breast, over her stomach, to the place they were joined.

“Memory jog,” he said, touching her there. “It's time to come.”

His fingers pressed again, rolled, and she did fall, her body shuddering around his. It was a free fall of delight through the rainbow, only made brighter, sweeter by the guttural sounds of Emmett's own climax.

As she touched back down, she collapsed onto his body. His arms came around her.

Her daylight man.

And in the sunshine of that thought, she slept.

 

On his way out the door for his morning coffee, Jason stuffed his pockets with some of the ransom cash from the Lily Fortune kidnapping. One of his bigger problems in this game of cat and mouse he was playing with his brother was that he had to lug the damn money around. He couldn't get a safe-deposit box in a bank, even using one of his fake IDs, because it might mean getting caught on a surveillance camera. It also would mean he couldn't take off the instant it suited him. And he wanted twenty-four-hour access to his money.

After picking up the two million from the ransom drop,
he'd sped away from the site and sped into a collision with a farmer's daughter and her load of eggs. That unwelcome snag was smoothed out, though, when a Lexus had happened upon the scene. Jason had carjacked the suit who was driving and then taken off in his luxury automobile, leaving the egg woman duct-taped to the dude in Armani. Jason and his duffel bags of money had looked good in that borrowed sedan, but he'd been forced to dump it. No doubt at some point, the suit would have freed himself and called it in as stolen.

At the outskirts of the next little town, he'd left the Lexus behind and then paid cash for a wreck from some wiry old man who only spoke Spanish. Since the guy had met him at his front door with a shotgun, Jason figured he wouldn't be much friendlier to any cops that came around. So he thought it was semi-safe to leave one of the duffels stuffed in the trunk of the rusted Buick, where the spare was supposed to sit.

The other he had been forced to carry around with him. The rent-by-the-week motel room he'd found in the next little town after that had had flimsy locks on the doors and the kind of clientele who didn't look you in the eye. His new place was better, though. He felt okay about leaving for short periods of time with the Do Not Disturb sign on the door and the duffel stashed in the space behind the TV in the cabinet that held it.

Two duffel bags worth two million in cash shouldn't seem like an inconvenience, but they were. Just something else to blame on straight-arrow Emmett.

Jason walked a few blocks for his coffee, passing a convenience store and a Starbucks that he'd already visited on other mornings. People tended to remember regulars, and he wanted to be as unmemorable as possible.

At the next location of the ubiquitous chain, he shuffled
into the line of others waiting for their morning fix. A woman in a tailored business dress and pumps glanced back at him, then smiled and nodded toward the others ahead. “Every morning I think that I should save the almost four bucks and the hassle of getting up an extra fifteen minutes early to stand in this line, and every morning I get up and do it all over again.”

Jason smiled at her. Women liked him, they always had. “I know what you mean. It makes it a little easier when you own a substantial chunk of stock in the company, though.”

Her brown eyes widened. “Is that right?”

He nodded to affirm the lie. “With every cup I order, I feel as if I'm paying myself.”

She was at the front of the line now, so he walked up to the counter with her. “I'll be buying for both of us,” he told the clerk behind the cash register. The businesswoman gave him another smile. “What'll you have?” he asked her.

They took their coffees to one of the small round tables. She said she had a little time before she had to be at her desk. Jason thought appearing as part of a couple would throw off anyone who might come around looking for him. Besides, the woman was pretty and he hadn't had a pretty woman to talk to since he'd killed that bitch Melissa.

“So what is it you do?” the woman asked. Her name was Joanne and she was an architect.

“I'm a private eye,” Jason told her.

“You're kidding!” Joanne had gullible blue eyes.

“Nope.” After all, he
was
detecting. “I'm working on a case right now involving a missing person.” He couldn't leave the country until he found his brother Emmett and neutralized him.

“Fascinating. Just fascinating.”

The way Joanne the architect was looking at him made
him think the private-eye line was a damn good one. Wherever he ended up, Mexico, or Belize, or Brazil, he was going to have some cards made up. Jason Jamison—no. He thought of the name on his new passport, Francis Dixon. He'd bought one under Jordan Collins first, but it had reminded him, unpleasantly, of his law-and-order cousin, Collin Jamison, so he'd put out the cash for another. Frank Dixon, private detective. The chicks would love it, would love
him.

The chick across the table took another sip of her coffee. “What made you choose that line of work?”

Jason let his expression turn sad and his gaze grow distant. “My wife…My wife was murdered.” Not far from the truth, except that Melissa was merely posing as his spouse. And he had killed her.

Joanne gasped, then reached her hand across the table to cover his. “My God. I'm so sorry.”

He turned his hand and grasped her fingers. God, this line was a babe magnet! Maybe he should get himself a computer before he headed out of the country and use it to write a book.
The Best Love Lies.
Or
Fib Your Way into the Sack.
“The experience was wrenching, needless to say. Now I'm committed to…” Getting back at his sanctimonious little brother. “…justice for all.”