Bait: A dark erotic thriller (Hunter & Prey Book 2) (30 page)

I spent another night tossing and turning, sleep eluding me. If it had been anger and betrayal only, I might have found some rest, but for whatever reason, my mind kept clinging on to the somewhat disjointed things Adam had flung in my face. I wasn’t sure if he himself knew if he still wanted me. Why throw me to the wolves first? Why help me and uproot himself for months? Yet as soon as we had returned to the city and I had distanced myself from the entire team, he’d faded into the background. It just didn’t make sense. Either he had moved on, or he hadn’t, but this disjointed mess just felt wrong. Maybe that was the difference between someone like Darren, who had had years to refine his polished veneer and keep a tight leash on his madness, rather than someone who was stressed enough to crack and then tried to recover what was left of his dignity and retreat? Adam must have known that we’d never had a shot at a future together. I might have forgiven the deceit, but that he’d let me run straight into Darren’s knife was unforgivable.
 

When the sky finally started to lighten, I got up and slid into my swimsuit, ready to fall back into my daily routine. Yet just as I shrugged on the fluffy bathrobe, my phone went off—my private phone, the one that very few people had the number to. Frowning, I went over to where it sat on my nightstand, but after only two rings, the call ended, too soon for me to accept it. When I checked it, I saw Brigitte’s name flashing on the display. That was strange. It made me wonder if she’d changed her mind about her somewhat relaxed attitude about the revelations that I’d dumped on her last evening. She knew me well enough to expect me to be up and about, so the time of the call wasn’t that unusual. But why had she hung up?

I called her right back, but she didn’t pick up. Then I tried again, and the call went straight to voice mail. That was unusual, and I couldn’t help the nagging feeling that rose inside of me. Once more I tried, then I thumbed to the next entry in the call log. Darren picked up immediately, proving that although it was Saturday, the entire city was already wide awake.

“What’s wrong?” he asked rather than greet me.

I hesitated, but cut right to the chase. “Where are you?”

“At home,” came his prompt reply. “I was just about to go for a run. Something tells me this is not a booty call.”

“Did you go back on your promise not to go after Brigitte?”

That made him pause.

“Why, did something happen to her?”

“That is an evasive answer!” I bit out, suddenly anxious as hell.

“Apologies,” he replied, his tone now turning wry. “No, I didn’t. I trust your assessment of her. I merely jumped to the conclusion, seeing as you don’t seem in the right mind for banter or smalltalk right now.”

“Okay,” I offered, hating how lame that sounded. “I don’t know. She just called me but hung up almost immediately. Now I cannot reach her. It’s probably nothing.”

He chuckled softly. “But you’re concerned anyway. Why don’t you hop in your car and drive over to check on her? Then you can make sure that everything is fine and I’m not a backstabbing liar. Anymore.” He paused. “We should really work on your trust issues.”

“My trust issues?” I echoed, scoffing. “All of that is in place for very good reasons that we should maybe not discuss on a line that is likely still tapped.”

“No need to remind me of that,” came his wry reply, but he sounded almost apologetic.

“Besides, I don’t think we can exactly go to couple’s counseling.”

He answered with an affirmative grunt. Something told me that Darren generally wasn’t the kind of guy who believed in therapy. “What are your plans for the weekend?” he asked. “Or let’s make that the entire next week.”

“Why?” If I sounded cautious, that was only understandable.

“I was thinking,” he started, pitching his voice lower into registers that made me shiver with something other than fear. “We still haven’t had a chance to go on our honeymoon.”

Talk about conflicted feelings. “I’m not sure if I ever want to get anywhere near your basement,” I harked.

Darren laughed—of course, he would. “I was thinking more about something with a beach. Cocktails. Spicy food. No need for you to wear anything for the entire week—unless, of course, that hits too close to home, too?”

So now we’d transcended to joking about what had happened. Perfect. I just felt even more like a lost cause than usual when I realized that I was smiling.

“And no extradition treaty, I guess?” I said, lobbing the ball right back at him.

Another rich laugh came over the line. “The thought has occurred to me. Then again, with it being winter in the northern hemisphere, it’s hard to find all these things in what our country views as the civilized world.”

“Are you even allowed to leave the country? Not sure how that would look to Detective Donahue.”

He snorted. “Oh, I intend to inform the poor man of that trip, should we decide to take it. I would even be gracious enough to send them our entire travel itinerary, and offer up a gracious amount that could serve as bail money should anything untoward happen during our stay. Don’t worry about that. I got this covered. You should instead rack that enticingly intelligent brain of yours for possible destinations. How does Bali sound to you? The Maldives, perhaps? Or would you prefer Cabo, where you supposedly spent part of your estrangement from me?”

“Surprise me. That was always your forte,” I offered.

“Love to,” he practically purred into the phone before he got serious again. “Just let me clear my schedule and take care of business with the authorities. That should leave you ample time to check in with Brigitte. I can pick you up there, drive back to the hotel so you can pack a few necessities, and we’re off to the airport. Sounds good?”

“Sounds perfect,” I agreed.

“And, Penelope?”

“Hmm?” I prompted.

“You can trust me,” Darren assured me again. “I understand that it may take some time, but you have my word. You can trust me.”

I wondered how to reply to that. Saying that I did would have been a lie—and not even a good one. But my suspicions were slowly starting to make less and less sense to me, and I could see where maybe spending a week lazing in the sun, doing nothing but fuck, eat, and talk might help cement a foundation for something that could be built on.

I left it at a simple, “Okay” for an answer.

“See you in two hours or so,” he promised, then hung up. I had the distinct feeling that he’d debated whether he should tell me that he loved me or not, but had decided that might have pushed me a little too much. Whispering words in the throes of passion was one thing. First thing, sober, in the morning, quite another.

Rather than go for a swim now—why suffer chlorine when I could have real ocean water in just a few hours from now?—I dressed and called a cab. With Darren picking me up, it made no sense to go through that whole car shuffle ordeal. When I got to Brigitte’s building, I paused at the reception desk, smiling at the doorman. It was the same guy who had had the dubious pleasure of sending Agent Smith off the premises. He gave me a partly quizzical look but tried to be very polite.

“Do you know if there are any unusual visitors upstairs?” No need to clarify which apartment I was referring to, and I was sure that, years into this job, he had a very good grasp on what kind of business Brigitte was running from her living room.
 

He briefly glanced at the sign-in sheet that was stored behind the counter, but only to make sure what he already knew. “No visitors, ma’am. Do you want me to call up?”

“No need,” I assured him with another smile. “Thank you, and have a nice morning.”

He wished me the same and even pressed the elevator call button for me. Why did the city have to be full of nice men, and only I had to pick up the psychos?

I amused myself with that morbid thought the entire way upstairs, feeling much better about my paranoia by the time the cabin came to a halt. Darren was right. I had trust issues, and we needed to work on those. And if I could get a vacation out of it, why not? I was sure that Brigitte wouldn’t mind holding on to the business just a little longer—

The moment I stepped into her apartment, I knew that something was terribly wrong. Tables were overturned, curtains ripped off and left pooling on the floor, small knickknacks scattered everywhere. But it was the scent—a familiar, cloying, somehow metallic scent that hung in the air and immediately left a bad aftertaste on my tongue—that made every single hair on my body stand on end.

Then my eyes fell on the figure sprawled on the floor, barely covered by a satin robe that was no match for the pool of blood she was lying in, and I forgot all about being cautious.

Running across the room, I fell to my knees besides Brigitte, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. There was blood everywhere, the robe ripped where the thin material had been no match to what looked like slice and stab wounds from a knife. Most of it was clearly coming from the deep gash across her throat, the flow slowed to a trickle by now. I held my breath, searching—praying, really—for any signs that she was still alive, although the sheer volume of blood told me that it was virtually impossible. I felt something warm soak through my dress and hose at my knees, but I didn’t care. Reaching for her neck, I tried to find a pulse, but her skin was too slick with blood, my hand too shaky. At least she was still warm, so maybe there was hope.

Scrambling in my purse for my phone, I dialed 911 while I held a finger underneath her nostrils, hoping that I’d feel air moving if she was still breathing, if shallowly.

“911, what is your emergency?” the operator asked, way too chipper for someone working that job.

“It’s my friend. I just found her. She’s bleeding. Someone sliced open her throat. You have to send an ambulance, right fucking now!”

I was talking so fast that not even I could make sense of it, but somehow she understood what I was getting at. That she had to ask me twice for the address was quite another thing.
 

“What am I supposed to do now?” I asked. “I’m not sure if she’s still breathing. Oh God, there’s so much blood!”

I was vaguely aware that I was hyperventilating—the likely reason for why I was feeling woozy on top of physically sick—and panting so heavily with panic that I barely heard her reply, let alone could make any sense of it.

Suddenly, Brigitte’s eyes opened and she stared right at me. Her lips parted, but the wet gurgling sound that left her body came straight from the gaping wound in her throat.

“She’s still alive!” I shouted into the phone. “Please, you have to—“

I didn’t get farther as Brigitte raised one hand, batting—feebly—at my arm while her head lolled to the side, her eyes focusing on something behind me. Something—or someone.

My body reacted before my mind caught on to what was happening. I let myself go slack and rolled to the side, feeling movement above where I’d just been crouching. Scrambling back, I managed to get my feet underneath me, but froze in a crouch when I came face to face with the barrel of a gun. Gulping for breath, my heart slamming in my throat, I looked up—finding none other than Adam on the other end of the weapon.

He was wearing one of those white crime-scene suits that were supposed to protect the clothes he wore, but it was drenched in blood and torn in places. There were angry, red gashes across his cheek, looking like scratches inflicted by long fingernails. His hair stood up erratically, and a few patches seemed to be missing. He definitely looked the worse for wear—even if he’d come out victorious, thanks to the bloody knife that was in the hand that didn’t point the gun right between my eyes.

The moment was so surreal that, for just a few seconds, I was hoping that this was all just a bad joke.

“What are you—“ I started to ask—what, exactly, I didn’t know—but Adam cut me off.

“What does it look like to you? I’m cleaning up my mess.”

I couldn’t even begin to make sense of that. When Brigitte made a final gurgling sound before that last bit of tension left her body, my eyes snapped over to her, but Adam’s harsh laugh got me focusing on him again.

“Don’t bother with her,” he said. “She’ll be dead within the minute. Resilient old hag. I thought she would be an easy one to overwhelm, but she put up quite the fight. Very inconvenient. The point was to do it quick and clean, not leave this behind.” Using the knife, he gestured at the veritable war zone around us.

“Why? Why did you do this? What did she ever do to you?” My voice was shaking so hard that the words came out all garbled. Fear was something I was familiar with—intimately so—but it was an overwhelming sense of grief that made it impossible to breathe, let alone talk.

He still understood, judging from the snort he gave. “To me? She’s nothing to me except for a worthless piece of trash. The world is better off without the likes of her. No, she means something to you. You have to suffer.” That horrific smile grew. “And, of course, she’s your closest confidante. You told her everything. So it makes sense that she had to go.”

It didn’t. It really didn’t.

“Why?” I gasped again, fighting hard to swallow. “You murdered her just because she’s my friend?”
Was
, the small voice at the back of my mind reminded me.
 

Adam looked at me as if I was the one who’d gone crazy.

“Of course not. You and Hunter killed her because she knew too much. She became a liability. Obviously, she wasn’t cautious enough when she contacted me and told me everything.”

I knew for a fact that she would never have done something like that. Not just because it was an invitation to get a shiv in the back, but it wasn’t her style. She might have packed up her things and left, yes—but never ratted me out. Whatever small barbs she had paved my way with—she had always had my back. Our talk from last night proved that more than anything else.

“You won’t get away with this,” I hissed, grief-fueled anger latching onto my spine. “No one will believe that bullshit. Besides, your DNA is all over the place. Your word will never hold up against mine.”