Deadly Desire (Carrington-Hill Investigations Book 2) (13 page)

Chapter 14

A noise in the dark
, unfamiliar room woke Sara from a sound sleep. Collin’s arm, pressed against her stomach, pulled her closer. She heard the sound again and, now awake, recognized the noise immediately. Her phone, that had been in the back pocket of her jeans, was vibrating. She slid out from beneath Collin’s arm and searched through the darkened room until she found her jeans and pulled the phone from the pocket. She flicked the phone open. The bright light of the screen made her squint as she glanced back at the bed to make sure the light hadn’t woken Collin up.

S
atisfied she hadn’t woken him, she glanced at the missed call and the accompanying text from Marco. “Call back ASAP. If I don’t hear from you in the next ten minutes, I’m sending the security detail to wake you.”

Sara threw on Collin’s discarded shirt and moved to the privacy of the bathroom. She redialed Marco’s number. He picked up on the first ring. “This better be important. It’s only four a
.m.”

“Sara, Maureen has escaped from the hospital.”

Sara let out a string of curse words. “How? I thought she was in police custody. Didn’t they have her guarded?”

“I don’t have all of the details yet, but it looks like she had help. The handcuffs were hanging from the rails of the bed. Someone m
ust have slipped her the key or helped her escape. I have agents on the scene along with the sheriff.”

Sara rubbed her eyes as she tried to make sense of the mess. “Any news from ballistics or from the search? Did they find anything in her apartment?”

“No word back from ballistics, but they did find another gun, some scissors, and a newspaper that was cut up sitting out on her dining room table.”

Sara sat down on the closed commode. Even half asleep
, she still didn’t feel  Maureen was the stalker. Even though she couldn’t pinpoint the problem, something didn’t add up. Maybe it was because Maureen had help in escaping, and stalkers generally liked to work alone. “I get the feeling it’s a setup. Why did she have two guns?”

“Me too. It’s all too neat and tidy, like it was staged. I want you to make sure the guys are on high alert until
she’s recaptured.”

She nodded as though Marco could see her.
There was a rap on the door. “Are you okay? Who are you talking to?”

She pulled the
bathroom door open and Collin stood under the archway, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “Everything okay, baby?”

Was she? Hell no, she wasn’t okay. The stalker was still on the loose and now had an accomplice. Not only one person was out to kill her but two. “Marco, I’ll call you back.”

She didn’t wait for Marco to reply before she flipped her phone closed and stood. “We have a problem.”

She walked out of the bathroom and switched on the bedside lamp before she started to rummage through the pile of clothing on the floor in search of her
clothes, socks, and shoes.

“
Isn’t it one that can wait until morning?” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. “If the house isn’t burning down, you can wait. Why don’t you come back to bed so we can talk about it and pick up where we left off?”

The man was insatiable
, not that she could get enough of him either. But now wasn’t the time to forget where she was or her job. No, now was the time for action, for making plans and keeping Collin safe. She pressed a kiss to his lips and stepped around him, sitting on the bed to pull on her socks and shoes.

“As much as I would love too, I can’t. Maureen’s escaped from the hospital
, and it appears as though she had help.”

Collin moved to the closet and slid into a pair of jeans. “What the hell do you mean she’s escaped
? And who the hell would have helped her?”

“Someone uncuffed her. Marco has a team on
-site, but I need to do a perimeter check and meet with my team.” She tried for her best I’m-not-worried-and-neither-should-you-be voice and failed miserably.

He lowered to his knees between her legs. “Sara, please don’t go.”

She cupped his cheek. “I’ll be fine. I promise.” She leaned over, opened the bedside drawer and grabbed her gun which she’d stuffed away last night, right next to his. She shoved the revolver into the waistband in the back of her jeans. She pulled his gun out and handed it to him. “Just in case, remember?”

He placed the gun on the bed and kissed her with the same searing heat she remembered from hours ago. “Is there any way I can talk you into staying with me? What if we go away together
, somewhere tropical, just the two of us? While the others figure this out.”

She leaned her forehead against his. “As great as that sounds. I want to give you your life back.” She stood and walked to the door before turning around one more time to look at him. “And that’s damn sure what I’m going to do.”

Sara made quick work of returning to the pool house, grabbing her comm, and donning her shoulder holster with guns locked and loaded. She could only hope that Maureen, and whoever had helped her escape, showed up. Every sound had her nerves strung tight. The team and she checked the perimeter, and she briefed them on the latest development, along with passing out Maureen’s photo.

The only threat without a face
was the stalker. She found Collin in the kitchen cooking when she returned. He took one look at her face, poured her a mug of coffee, and handed it to her. He was barefoot and hadn’t even brushed his hair. It was a sight that she wouldn’t mind waking up to every morning. “What are you doing?”

He grinned and slid the eggs onto a platter next to the already heaping
mounds of bacon. “Cooking…I had to do something. The waiting is driving me crazy.”

Sara plucked a piece of bacon from the pile as she radioed the team
s that Collin had cooked, demanding that one crew would be taking their food back out to their station while the rest ate inside. “You know…you’re safe here. They’d be stupid to make a move with so many guards on the premises.” Sara hopped up onto the counter, her legs dangling over the side. “I’ve been thinking.”

He turned off the stove and moved between her legs. “That’s dangerous. I’m not going to like this
, am I?”

She worried her bottom lip. “Probably not.”

****

Any appetite Collin had worked up
, vanished when Sara said she’d been thinking. From the looks of it, her thoughts weren’t the typical morning-after thoughts he’d expect her to have. He had to restrain himself from plucking her off the counter and turning all cave man on her by hauling her back upstairs where he could keep her safe and out of harm’s way.

He watched as she chewed on the pink flesh of her bottom lip
, the little telltale sign that she was working something out in her mind. Collin brushed the pad of his thumb over her swollen lip before replacing it with his lips. He wanted to savor the few stolen moments between them, unsure if they would even have more when this was all over. Words were left unspoken, thanks to the call she’d had this morning.

She broke the kiss and hopped off the counter. “We can’t do this here. The team will be here any second.”

As if on cue, they started piling into the kitchen, grabbing plates and loading them with pancakes, eggs, sausage, and bacon.

Collin stepped out of the way of the hungry men and moved to Sara’s side. “What were you thinking?”

She shook her head. “It’s not important.” She shrugged. “Besides, I still need to run it by Marco.”

He leaned in close to her ear. The smell of her jasmine shampoo tickled his nose. Such a delicate flower, so unlike the strong woman wearing it
. The same stubborn woman he found himself drawn to. “Don’t make any brash decisions.”

She glanced up at him and rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Yeah, sure she wouldn’t. Just like he wouldn’t worry about her when she went off half-cocked on whatever great idea she thought she had. No, not his Sara.
His? Where the hell did that come from?
The more time he spent with her, the more he was finding out that she was irresistible, not to mention sex personified. Yeah, he could get used to having her around if he could keep her alive long enough to ease her into the idea of having a relationship with him. He’d have his hands full trying to talk the stubborn woman out of doing anything crazy…as if that was even possible.

Twenty minutes went by before Marco let himself into Collin’s house. He snapped at the men sitting around the table
, not liking the skeleton crew stationed around the property. They all scurried and, after dumping their dishes in the sink, reported back to their posts.

“What did you expect Marco, they needed food?”

He harrumphed as Collin offered Marco a mug of coffee and joined him and Sara at the table. There was no way he was being left out of this conversation. Collin laid his arm across the back of Sara’s chair. Marco’s gaze watched the entire rookie move as though it was a first date and he was in a movie theater and pretended to yawn. His actions didn’t go unnoticed by Marco or Sara, but neither one of them mentioned it. Marco’s brow hitched as he glanced back and forth between Collin and Sara. It was time everyone knew what he’d just figured out himself.

“Tell me you found something on the surveillance video from the hospital.”

Marco tossed a file on the table. Sara opened it, and Collin looked over her shoulder. A figure could be seen pulling back the partition curtain to the adjoining makeshift room in the bay of the ER. The deputies on duty were chatting it up with a brunette nurse, not even paying attention to what was going on.

“It’s the same person
from the hotel.” She glanced up. “Why is Collin’s stalker helping Maureen?”

Collin had a feeling that he knew the answer to that question, even if Sara hadn’t figured it out yet in her head. They both had a few things in common. They both wanted to kill Sara as was evident by the new bandage she had wrapped around her arm.

“Oh I don’t know… maybe because they both want to see you dead.” Collin sarcastically answered her question.

“Sara love
,” Marco said, “the question you should be asking isn’t why, but how.”

Sara love.
Collin didn’t like the sound of endearment coming from her boss, but now wasn’t the time to discuss it. He pushed it to the back of his mind. “How did the stalker know about Maureen’s arrest? I looked in this morning’s paper. It wasn’t even listed yet, and it hasn’t been mentioned on the morning news. How is it even possible?”

“I bet I know.” Sara pulled her phone out of her pocket and pulled up Sanchez’s blog. “
Well, that didn’t take long.”

She handed the phone to Marco before he passed it to Collin. Sitting on the
home page of his blog was a grainy picture that was taken in the park where the shooting had taken place. It was a picture of Maureen being handcuffed and stuffed into an ambulance. The caption read;
If you can’t beat them…just shoot them?

Collin rubbed his hand through his hair as he handed the phone back to Sara. He wished he’d never even pulled her into his mess. His gut clenched as a feeling of dread settled over him. Maybe he should have tried to deal with his stalker himself. Marco rose from the table. “I think it’s time to
pay the blogger a visit. Maybe he can shed some light on who he thinks the stalker might be.”

He turned to leave but stopped and glanced over his shoulder. “Oh
, I forgot to tell you. The FBI is looking for the senator to question him about Natasha’s murder, and he’s vanished.”

Sara bit her bottom lip. Collin didn’t care how the FBI figured it out
. He was just glad that the senator was being dealt with.

“How did they even know to link
Natasha and the Senator together?”

Marco grinned. “A picture is worth a thousand words, luv.” Marco shrugged. “
The Senator is on the run and probably far too busy trying to stay one step ahead of the FBI to even worry about you. You’ve got enough on your plate.”

Sara rose out of her seat. “
Marco…”

He held up a hand, effectively stopping what she was about to say. The set of his jaw tightened. “It’s time to resort to
Plan B.”

Collin glanced between the both of them. “What’s
Plan B?”

Sara wouldn’t even look at
him. She lowered her head. “I agree, I was thinking the same thing.”

She left Marco and Collin standing at the table in the kitchen. He didn’t like the sound of Plan B. Hell
, she needed the guards just as much as he did, if not worse. The stalker and Maureen weren’t trying to kill him like they were Sara.

Marco
excused himself. No one gave Collin an official answer on what Plan B might be, but he’d figured it out. Oh, this wasn’t going to work. She didn’t want to be removed from the case and now she was just up and leaving him, just as things were getting heated between them. He rubbed his aching chest and swallowed around the lump in his throat. He wouldn’t let her; he’d talk her out of it. He had to. He wasn’t going to let her walk into more danger, danger that was his fault. No, not her too.