Fuck that shit. He wasn’t so far gone as that. He swallowed, shut his eyes, tried to breathe. Control.
He knew how to play this game. He’d worked undercover his whole adult life. He knew how to play a part. How to make it convincing.
Nick opened his eyes, and found the three men still staring at him, a question in their eyes.
“I can do whatever has to be done.” His voice sounded, to his own ears, like a dead man talking.
Chapter
27
B ecca paced the cramped hotel room. She tried Carrie’s cell again. Then Nick. She’d been calling them an average of three times a minute, but it was always the same. Nick, for some strange reason, was not answering and Carrie’s phone was still turned off.
The memory of that squat, malevolent-looking vid cam behind the pink bunny on the shelf haunted her. Her stomach cramped with fear.
She tried to push away nightmare images of Carrie and Nick, in the trunk of a car, speeding off to some horrible fate. Leaving her hanging, obsessively punching the buttons on her phone.
Oh, stop. Nick could look out for himself. He’d probably just left his phone in the car. She hoped he either came back soon or got in touch soon, because she had a date with Josh in less than an hour to drive down to Olympia to look for Carrie. Nick would be extremely unhappy with her if she went off on a road trip without telling him.
She tried to stretch out on the bed, watch cable TV, but she was too jittery, too restless. She kept bounding up again.
The door lock clicked. She sprang a foot into the air, and lunged towards Nick as he walked in, throwing her arms around him.
“Oh, thank God,” she said. “You weren’t answering your phone!”
He felt oddly stiff in her arms for a second, but then his arms circled her. His nose nuzzled the top of her head. “Sorry,” he said. His voice sounded exhausted. “Got sidetracked. Left the thing in the truck.”
“Don’t do that to me,” she scolded, squeezing him again.
He sat down heavily onto the bed. She sat down next to him, and twined her arm through his. “So?” she prompted. “What happened? Did you see Diana Evans?”
“Yes,” he said dully, rubbing his face. “Sort of. She was dead. Someone strangled her. Yesterday, from the looks of it.”
A chilling wave of cold pumped through Becca’s body. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “That’s horrible. That poor woman.”
He shrugged. “Her own goddamn fault. Getting herself mixed up with that kind of people. She probably deserved it.”
“Maybe so,” Becca faltered. “But she was definitely regretting it.”
“She was a day late and a dollar short.”
She was taken aback by the stony, cold tone of his voice. Her stomach fluttered uneasily at the look on his face. Maybe she was reading too much into it, but his face reminded her of that awful expression he’d had when they were on the island.
And when Tam had tormented him with the ghosts of his past.
She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it. Nick was a great deal more sensitive than he let on. Probably a lot more sensitive than he even knew himself. It was probably seeing Diana Evans’s body that had disturbed him so deeply. It would have done the same for her.
“Did you learn anything else?” she asked.
“The house was tossed,” he said. “It looked like a standard B&E gone bad. Someone looking for quick drug money, and she was unlucky enough to be home. An unfortunate urban statistic.”
“I see,” she murmured. “You didn’t, um, contact Mathes, then?”
He looked directly into her eyes. “Seeing the dead lady was the sum total of my investigative accomplishments for the day, sweetheart.”
She leaned forward, pulled his head down to hers and kissed him. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “That must have been hard.”
“I’m handling it,” he said. “Enough about me. Let’s talk about you. Tell me about your day, babe.”
Mr. Super Cool to the last. She rubbed his hand against her cheek. “Well, one good thing is that I finally got in touch with Josh.”
“That’s good news. Where was he?”
“Shacked up,” she said ruefully. “With this beautiful girl named Nadia. He wants to move in with her. I have my doubts, but whatever. He’ll have to figure it out the hard way. That’s why he didn’t call. He’s been rolling around in bed for the past thirty-six hours.”
“Lucky boy,” he said. “Anything from your sister?”
“Not yet,” she said glumly. “In fact, Joshie and I are driving down to Olympia this afternoon to look for her.”
“Are you now.” His voice was cool, strangely distant.
It made her feel flustered. “Um, you could come with us, if you like,” she said. “But I assumed…you would probably want to concentrate on whatever’s happening up here. Your investigation and all. Since I’ll be with my brother, of course. I won’t be all alone.”
“Is that what you assumed?” He stroked the palm of her hand with his forefinger, without meeting her eyes. “So you talked to your brother on the phone. What else did you do? Give me a blow by blow.”
“Well, I went to my apartment. Oh, yes, and I wanted to tell you about this—I guess they, uh…they’ve found me.”
“What?” His eyes fastened onto hers, suddenly intent. “What do you mean, found you?”
“I found a video camera,” she confessed. “On the shelf. Behind the stuffed animals.” She braced herself for an explosion.
It didn’t come. He just stared at her, his eyes thoughtful and shuttered. “No shit,” he said softly. “A vid cam. How about that.”
“I was really careful afterwards to make sure I wasn’t being followed,” she offered. “And when I was at the rental place, I think I lost anyone who might have been tailing me when I got the cab.”
“Good thinking,” he said. “You’re getting slick at this stuff, Becca.”
God, his voice was so bland. So unemotional. It was unnerving.
She struggled to gather her thoughts. They were getting scrambled by a strange, staticky buzz of interference from him.
“That’s why I’ve been so freaked out about Carrie,” she confessed. “If they know where I live, then Zhoglo knows about Carrie too.”
“Don’t panic about Carrie yet,” he said. “What else did you do?”
She’d been internally debating the wisdom of confessing to her Gavin Street detour, since it hadn’t been on the trajectory she’d originally laid out to him. In his current mood, she was less and less inclined to do so. She was jittery, nervous, tearful. She did not want to be yelled at or harangued. And what did it matter, if that conversation with Josh took place on the phone in the cab, or in person?
“I think I’ve covered it all,” she said. “Bank machine, apartment, rental car place. Then I came back here.”
“That’s it?” He stared straight ahead.
“Uh, yeah,” she said.
He looked away from her, as if the blackout curtains over the window had suddenly taken on some deep significance. “I see.”
She felt so alone all of a sudden. Bereft. Which was silly. He was just depressed and stressed-out, and no wonder, for God’s sake. She should try not to be clingy and demanding. It was the kiss of death.
Still. It made her ache.
But she knew a quick, surefire way to find him again, and she had the time, before Joshie picked her up. She got off the bed, and slid her arms around his head. “Nick?” she asked gently. “Where are you?”
He looked up at her. “Nowhere,” he said.
She stripped off her clingy blue microfiber tee in one sinuous move, and cradled his face against her cleavage. “I know of a nicer place that you could be,” she murmured.
“Oh, yeah? Do you?” His voice was faintly challenging. “Show me.”
She smiled at him and unhooked her bra. She was getting more sexually confident every day that passed, and that big bulge in his jeans encouraged her. She unbuttoned her jeans, kicked them away.
Nick put his hands on her hips, and stripped the panties down, with a hard, impatient jerk. She heard a rip, felt a seam give way.
Whatever. Ripped underwear was a small price to pay for what he was always willing to deliver. She let the savaged garment fall, and lifted her ankles out of it delicately. Stood before him naked.
He nuzzled her breasts, eyes shut tight, mouthing her nipples, suckling her. Using his swirling, rasping tongue to make her shiver with anticipation. Then he got up and yanked off the fleece polo he wore. He opened his pants, and let his erect cock spring free.
He looked at her expectantly, dragging his hand slowly up and down the veined shaft. Gave her a what-are-you-waiting-for jerk of his stubbly chin. Uppity bastard. She was spoiling him rotten, if he was starting to take this sex slave business for granted.
It pissed her off, but as always, her emotions for him were a volatile, dangerous mix. Everything about him stirred and heightened her, even when he was arrogant.
But now was definitely not the time to scold him for it.
She sank to her knees and took him into her mouth, using all of her newfound skill on him. He went rigid, his fingers digging painfully into her hair. She could hear his rough, ragged breathing.
All the other times she had gone down on him, he’d melted for her, shivering and pleading. Vulnerable. This time he didn’t. He turned his face up, eyes closed, gripping her hair, guiding her head to show her how he wanted her to take him. How deep, how fast. It was much harder this way, to breathe, not to gag on his thick, broad member, not to get tired. He didn’t make a sound, didn’t look at her.
What was with him? She pulled away from his hands, alarmed as well as angry, and struggled to her feet. “Nick, I’m not—”
“Shhh.” He spun her around, and pushed her down onto the bed, hard. She tumbled onto her hands and knees. He gripped her hips. “Let’s try something different,” he said, nudging himself into her hot cleft. “Let’s try it with no talk. No sound track, for once. Let’s just fuck.”
She gasped, at his first hard, penetrating shove. She wasn’t wet enough yet. “I like the way we do it,” she said shakily. “I like the talk.”
“I don’t, right now. I’m not in the mood.”
“But I—”
“Shhh.” He actually had the nerve to put his hand over her mouth, the bastard, but when she reached up to paw it away, that left only one arm holding her up, and she sprawled onto her chest, bed bouncing, his hot, smothering weight on top of her, his thick phallus prodding deeper. He slid his hand around her hip, threaded his fingers down into the curls that covered her labia. Caught her clit tenderly in the vee of his index and middle finger.
She struggled against his muffling hands, fighting against the confinement as well as the pleasure that he drew from her unwilling body. His skill was unerring: that urgent pump and squeeze in perfect time with the deep plunge and glide of his rigid shaft.
The climax wrenched through her, long and jolting and almost painful. She flushed for shame in the glowing aftermath. What kind of head case was she, to get off like this on his freaky games?
Her body was in thrall to him. It was unbearable.
He took his hand from her mouth to jerk her hips higher, and she twisted to look at him. “Stop this,” she said. “Get off me.”
“I want to make you come with my cock first,” was his flat reply, and she started to say something sharp, but her words snarled up into a shocked, whimpering gasp as he abruptly deepened his strokes.
The orgasm had made her slicker and softer, and his sensual, rocking thrust-and-swirl technique whipped up the hot, frothy sweetness inside her till it rose up, cresting.
She couldn’t handle it. She couldn’t be catapulted all alone over the edge of the world. She needed him to go with her. Be one with her.
“Let me turn around,” she pleaded. “Hold me. Please, Nick.”
“No. Come for me,” he demanded. “Right now. Show me what you can do, Becca. Display your very special talents for me. Right…now.”
That final jarring thrust and stroke carried her away. Throbbing heat rolled over her. Oblivion. She pitched, all alone, in the blackness.
When her eyes fluttered open, her face was shoved into the pillow. She was weeping. Nick was poised over her, utterly motionless, his cock still throbbing against the mouth of her womb.
“You are amazing,” he whispered. “How the fuck do you do that?”
“It’s you who does it to me,” she forced out, through trembling lips and chattering teeth. “You know that.”
“Oh, no, babe,” he said. “I think you can take credit for this all by yourself.” He gripped her hips, to hold her in place. “I need to finish.”
She braced herself as his deep thrusts met her most sensitive flesh. He went rigid when he finally came, hips pumping against her painfully hard, in absolute silence.
He rolled off her, got to his feet, and fastened his jeans. No lingering, no cuddling. Not that she was surprised. She rolled onto her side, feeling bruised and used in every way. She curled into a ball and covered her face, trying at least to keep the tears silent.
The sadness was huge. She’d felt it before. Something was slipping away from her, something beautiful and ineffable. No clinging or pleading could hold it. The way Mom had slipped away.