Authors: Blush
"Frances doesn't scare me, you know, " she said now, pointing the toe of each foot in turn as she walked toward him. "I just let her think so. It's important to her. "
He nodded, suppressing laughter. "I'm sure it is."
"When's Gus coming back?"
The child didn't know yet, he reminded himself. She'd been at a summer school session when the kidnapping had occurred that morning, and Frances had managed to keep her away from the television since.
"Gus had to go away for a couple of days on modeling business, " he explained, repeating the story they'd all agreed upon.
"Yeah, I know, " she said with a careless shrug, kneeling on the bottom step and gazing up at him. "She told me yesterday she was going away, but I thought she meant the weekend. I just wondered if she was coming back soon. She said she'd bring me a Wacky Wall Walker. "
"A w-what?"
She peered at him and grinned. "Oh... you do that, too, huh? You get stuck on words like Gus does. "
"No, actually I don't. I was just wondering what a Wacky Wonker is. "
"A Wacky Wall Walker?" She climbed up and sat on the step next to him. "You throw it at the wall and it walks down like a spider. My friend at school has one. They're cool!"
Now he couldn't help himself. The excitement was so unlike her, he found himself laughing softly. She was usually fairly remote toward him, though he'd often wondered if it was a reflection of his own feelings more than anything else. "I don't doubt it for a minute, " he said. "And I'm sure Gus will bring one back with her. What do you say? Want to go to bed now?"
"Can I wear my leotards?" He nodded and she beamed. "Will you piggyback me, too?"
"Up the stairs?" He slipped his hand in hers and felt a shadow press his heart as they rose together. So much wreckage, he thought. So many haunting regrets. Too many. "Why don't we just walk and hold hands?"
She had him riled.
Not too many women could have accomplished that. Few would have dared try. There was a time when he wouldn't have needed much more reason than that to pull the trigger. Hell, there was a time when he wouldn't have needed
any
reason. He still harbored the impulse to do violence, but it no longer ruled him. Random bloodshed wasn't the point anymore. Finding them, the ones who executed his baby daughter and destroyed his wife's sanity, that was the point.
Jack Culhane couldn't sleep. He'd stretched out on the floor of the shack over an hour ago, thoughts of Gus Featherstone cluttering up his head. He'd grown used to hard floors
and
hard women, but she was something else, a piece of work, as they said. He couldn't make up his mind if she was fearless or bogus. He did know he'd never run into a crazier female, and he'd crossed paths with some crazy ones in his travels.
He was lying flat out on his back, his jeans undone, his shirt hanging open, even though the cool air gliding through the window gave him goosebumps. He'd rested his head on his folded arms, and his shoulders ached against the rough pine slats, but he wasn't inclined to move. The cushion of his linked hands allowed him to tilt back his head and observe her through lowered lids.
He wasn't concerned about keeping an eye on her. She wasn't going anywhere this time of night, and he'd rigged the place to go off like a five-alarm fire if she did try to escape. It was purely curiosity that had him hooked, or maybe disbelief. He wondered what the media would think of her now, bent over her own filthy feet, muttering four-letter words as she gingerly dug slivers from her soles.
The lantern that glowed next to the cot lit her up like a street urchin sitting by an alley campfire. Her dark hair was a rat's nest of tangles, and the grime that coated her face did nothing for her famous bone structure. Incandescent little blobs of hot-pink nail polish gleamed through the dirt that streaked her feet and ankles. No, the beautiful brat didn't look either beautiful or bratty tonight. She looked pathetic.
"Shit," she whispered, grimacing as she twisted this way and that, trying to squeeze a stubborn splinter from the ball of her foot. Her eyes welled with tears. "Shit, shit, fuck— shit!"
"You all right?" He was careful not to let any genuine concern soften the sardonic question.
She didn't even bother to look up. "If I didn't hate you so much, I'd be fine."
"You can hate me, just keep your clothes on while you're doing it."
That brought her head up. Her dark eyes glittered dangerously, whether with tears or anger he couldn't tell.
"What's your problem?" she asked. "Is it women in general, or is it merely the female body that bothers you?"
"I have no problem with the female body, except when
yours
happens to be in my face. Naked."
She shook back her hair. "Nakedness? That's what disturbs you?
My
nakedness? That could only mean a couple of things. Either you prefer men, which I sincerely doubt, or—"
"You're right to doubt."
"Then what... it's me? You don't find me attractive?" That seemed to astound her. She
was
a piece of work. "Apparently I'm the first?" he said.
"Oh, never mind."
She went back to her grimy surgery then, and Jack realized something. He was going to have to find a way to get through to this nutsball because she had what he needed. Information. Five years ago a priceless Van Gogh still life had been stolen from a vault within a secured government warehouse, and that theft was linked directly to the tragedy with his wife and child. The theft involved black-market art smuggling on an international scale, and he had reason to think her stepfamily, or someone connected with them, was involved.
Gus Featherstone could help him with that. She might be the only one who could. There were things he needed to know about the logistics and security of the Featherstone mansion, which was where the family's art collection was housed. He didn't want to have to force the answers out of her at gunpoint. However, if that's what it took.
"That idiot security guard is lucky I didn't kill him," he said softly.
She was nearly bent over double now, working away, and she didn't seem to have heard him. He rather admired her agility and considered telling her there was a makeshift shower behind the curtain near her bed that she could use— if the well wasn't dry—but then he'd have to roust himself and pump the water. Tomorrow was soon enough, he decided. She wouldn't have gangrene by then.
"Got it!" she exclaimed with real pride, holding up a nasty-looking shard. Her expression flashed from triumph to slow-dawning perplexity as she zoomed in on him. "What idiot security guard?"
"How many idiot security guards do we know? The one who tried to stop me from taking you, of course. "
"He was only doing his job."
She was going to defend the idiot. Excellent. Jack rolled to his side and propped himself up with an elbow. "I don't think I've ever seen worse security. The guard shouldn't have let me through the gate without checking my story, and then he got suspicious and compounded his mistake by sneaking up behind me. "
"What's wrong with that?"
"I had a
gun.
He had plenty of time to see it before he committed himself. One whiff of my Magnum, and he should have been on the horn to the police. But no, he had to be a hero. "
He loaded his heavy sigh with contempt. "Anybody could have pulled off that kidnapping, including Beavis and Butthead. "
"Hardly. " She proceeded to enlighten the Philistine. "Maybe the guard was negligent, " she admitted, "but the security at the mansion is excellent, leading edge. The entire kidnapping is probably on video. "
Yes, exactly why he'd stayed out of range of the camera at the guard gate, and why he'd put on a ski mask once he got through. "I didn't see any cameras at the pool. "
"Of course you didn't. It's all done with fiber optics. They're in the pool lights. "
Bingo. This was going to be easier than he thought. Her technical expertise was questionable, but the point was to keep her talking. "If it's fiber optics, then they must have run wires into the pool lights that feed information to the cameras. "
"Well, yes, I suppose that's how it's done. But that's kid stuff compared to Lake's control room. There are banks of screens, and—" She went quiet suddenly, and alert. "Why do you want to know about the mansion's security?"
He shrugged off the question. "AH I said was the guard was an idiot. You're the one who brought up the rest of it. "
She went back to her grooming then, wadding the hem of the T-shirt and using it to dab at dirt smudges. Finally, as her efforts led up her thigh, revealing more and more skin, she hesitated and looked up at him. Her brows knit. "So, what is it you don't like about me? Specifically. My legs?"
He looked her over. "I'm sure your legs are fine when they're not covered with scuzz. "
"My breasts then?"
"I'm sure they're fine, too. "
"You saw them, " she reminded him.
"I could hardly miss them. "
"I've been told they're incredible. "
He shrugged indifferently. "Are they real?"
She sniffed at that and began to pull up her T-shirt as if another look would verify their authenticity. On the way she inadvertently gave him an eyeful that nearly took his breath away. A beaver shot, he marveled. That's what they would have called it in his horny high school days. Her legs were folded Indian-style, and her creamy white inner thighs made him fantasize how she must look on a runway. All legs, he imagined. Her inner thighs were just about the only part of her not smudged with something, except for the black satin delta that sat enticingly at their center. Christ! He'd done plenty of things outside the law, but this was his first kidnapping. It would also be his last, and she could take the credit for reforming him.
His hand shot up to stop her from exposing anything else. "Once was sufficient, thanks. "
"Aren't we polite?" she told him hotly. "You're not exactly Mr. January, you know. "
She corkscrewed around and kicked his blue jeans off the bed, then pulled the trench coat over her and flopped down as if to go to sleep. There was a lot of twisting and sighing involved until she got herself settled, but she finally ended up on her stomach, her face smashed into the tattered mattress.
Maybe she'll smother, he thought.
The possibility had a certain macabre appeal, and much as it pained him to admit it, so did she. It wasn't just her physical appeal, it was her style. She wasn't a woman, she was an event. Like fireworks on New Year's Eve, she was more noise and flash than gunpowder, but she was incredibly shrewd under all the pyrotechnics. And cute, too, though he loathed that word. He didn't want to think about what sex with her would be like. No, he did
not
want to think about that.
Staring up at the ceiling now, he was aware once again of the aching soreness in his shoulders and the gooseflesh on his naked skin. His body was humming with an inner expectancy, readying itself for some physical encounter. His hands had that restless, empty feeling he'd noticed while driving the car and the hot spark in his jeans was kindling into something hungry and dangerous. How long had it been since he'd been with a woman? How much longer had it been since he'd wanted to be with one?
Don't contaminate the work with personal feelings, Culhane. You did that once before and everyone you loved got killed.
The litany stormed his thoughts, warning him, reminding why he was here and what he'd been doing the last five years. It had kept him straight all that time, that and a rage for justice.
Even so, he couldn't deny what was happening to his body tonight. Hunger? Shit, he had a need that hadn't been fed in years. If he was being truthful, he was ravenous, starved for a woman's touch. He rolled over on his side, facing away from her and felt the sharp ache in his shoulders as it flared lower, in the depths of his groin. The muscles were on fire, aching to be flexed, to be used. There would be damn little sleep tonight, he realized.
Gus stirred several times during the night, and each time she opened her eyes she saw something more startling and dreamlike than the last. He was awake, or so it seemed, and doing things that didn't make sense. The first time she woke he was sitting in the rocker, cradling a can of beer in his hand. He wasn't drinking from it. The can wasn't even open. He was simply staring at it and rocking as if he were slowly dying of thirst and the beer was laced with poison.
Odd, she thought, that he would bring beer he didn't intend to drink. Odd that he wouldn't even allow himself that.
The second time she came awake, it was as if she'd never drifted off, as if she'd only been dozing fitfully. She saw him bathed in the green glow of a liquid crystal display. He was sitting at the table, caught in the eerie, electronic light of a computer screen as if it had cast a spell over him, and he couldn't break away. His fingers worked the keyboard without making a sound, and the intensity of his focus frightened her. There was something sinister about it, something she didn't understand, like his palpable obsession with the can of beer.
When she woke the last time that night, she saw him as if through a drowsy, heavy-lidded golden mist. He was still sitting at the table, but this time there was a silver knife flashing in his hand.
Whittling, she realized. He was whittling.
Gradually the strange scene came into focus. The piece he was working on was a small and delicate yet very elaborate structure made up of tiny pieces of wood, some of them not much thicker than the sliver she had extracted from her foot. It looked like a fairy tale castle. Yes, he was building a castle in miniature, but what fascinated her as much as his creation was his machetelike knife. It was the same ferocious killing tool he'd strapped to his thigh when he'd gone out that day. The huge, gleaming thing glowed yellow in the firelight from the lanterns and made her think of the raw power of the outdoorsmen in Marlboro ads. He might have been one of those men himself except that there was a quality haunting his rugged profile she'd never seen in a cigarette ad. Traces of melancholy shadowed his concentration, turning him into a stoic, a man so inured to the pain he barely recognized it as his.