Seduced by a Dangerous Man (2 page)

I wondered why I was back on the investigators’ radar, if it had something to do with Zachary, or Corbin, or something else entirely. Whatever the reason, it couldn’t be good.
 

I unlocked the front door and turned to glare at Henry, parked under an enormous oak tree. I hoped one of the boughs would break off and land on his skull, although the car he was in belonged to Stroop Finders. There hadn’t been company cars when I worked there. I doubled down on my wish and slammed the door behind me.

Rob’s condo covered three floors. The first was the entryway and the garage. A second doorway led to steps that accessed the units above Rob’s.
 

I untied my boots and walked up to the second floor. The kitchen was through the small and seldom-used dining room on my left. To my right was the largest room in the condo by far, the living room. Despite its small size, Rob’s place wasn’t bad. Clean lines, bright during daylight hours. With piles of unopened mail on the dining room table and recycling piling up, it wasn’t the neatest of homes, but it was still pretty nice.
 

Rob had dropped a lot of money on furniture, including a state-of-the-art entertainment system, and he had a cable package that meant I spent more time trying to decide what I wanted to watch than actually watching anything.

The third floor was two small bedrooms and the single bathroom. Rob was lucky to have the bottom unit. There were two people above him, one on each floor. I’d never been up there, but Rob said they were studios, which made sense. The owners with lower-level units also had better access to the back yards.

I peeked out the living room window and scowled at the sight of Henry sitting across the street.

Why wouldn’t he go away?
 

At least I wasn’t about to walk in on him rifling through my things again. It had only happened once, a few days after I came to stay with Rob, but it had made an impression.
 

Our father was still recovering from his heart attack and extensive surgery of two months earlier, and then he’d had a small stroke. Dad hadn’t finished transferring ownership of the company before all that happened, and it sounded to me like things were chaotic. Rob hadn’t been in a position to deny Henry’s request to come over for “a friendly chat” about the future of Stroop Finders. Then Henry kept drinking glass after glass of water and, of course, wanted to use the bathroom often. He’d told Rob he was doing a detox cleanse. I came home and surprised Henry on his knees next to my bed, his entire right arm swallowed between my mattress and box spring, his face creased in furious determination as he rooted around. Like I had hidden Corbin under my mattress.
 

I screamed so loudly that my throat was raw for two days.

The incident added a whole new dimension to my nightmares. I’d dream about Zachary’s death, then I would wake up to Henry hovering over me, then I would wake up to the worst nightmare of all—my arms flailing in the cold, empty sheets, desperately grabbing for Corbin, who wasn’t there. And that nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.

No, I didn’t want to be home alone. But that was how it was.

I trudged up to my tiny, not-so-temporary bedroom. It faced the street, and I glanced outside to see if my wish had been granted. It had not.
 

I pulled off my shirt and tossed it onto the small bed. Except for the white walls and the wooden desk and bed frame, everything in the room was some shade of yellow. Even the carpet, technically mauve, seemed yellow-tinted. I continued to undress, intending to wash away the cigarette smoke and the slime of Henry’s angry leers. My shift at the diner started at 4:30—yes, in the
morning
—and I was usually so groggy that getting my socks onto the correct limbs was a challenge; morning rituals and hygiene were far beyond my ability at that hour.
 

But instead of showering I found myself booting up my ancient computer, my fingers drumming impatiently on the small desk until the webpage loaded.

There he was, topping the Most Wanted list. Corbin Lagos. I stared longingly at the grainy photo, wanting to brush his dark hair away from his face, to kiss and lick every inch of his broad jaw and full lips. The familiar wrenching, sick feeling twisted through my gut. Our time together had been intense, but too brief. And I couldn’t get over him.

It had been over eight weeks since Corbin had left with a promise to return to me. I had no idea where he’d gone, but I knew his assignment was particularly dangerous. Not because he’d said so, but I could tell by how somber he’d been whenever it came up. He should have been back a month ago, and in fact around that time, he had returned. I hadn’t seen or heard from him, but who else could have gotten my bogus arrest warrant reversed? Who else even cared? Plus the timing was too perfect.

But there hadn’t been any sign of him since then.

If Corbin were out of commission, if he’d been killed or arrested and his organization had decided to leave him twisting in the wind, someone ambitious would have updated the Most Wanted list. Corbin’s wasn’t the only name that seemed to have taken up permanent residence there.

One final, though smaller, bit of proof that he was fine: the gas card I had found in Corbin’s SUV still worked. Someone was paying the bill.
 

Plus, I just
knew
. I felt it in my gut. Corbin was out there.

I blinked until the sudden stinging in my eyes lessened. To say that I missed Corbin was an understatement. I had been through so much since meeting him, most of it rather horrible. But Corbin himself? He was…

I shook my head, but the image of his amused, electric blue-green eyes wouldn’t waver. He was every bit as vivid as if I’d seen him that morning.

What if he’d returned since my last trip to the hidden cabin? What if he was lying low for some reason, waiting for me, trusting me to show up?

Oh, I knew better, but hope springs eternal and all that. Or maybe it was desperation that had me grabbing my jeans and a clean sweater, my hands moving mechanically. Telling myself that I would just go for a drive, I turned on the entertainment system in the living room and arranged the curtains so my psycho stalker would assume I was spending some quality time with the television.
 

I grabbed my small duffel bag of necessities—thank goodness Henry hadn’t found
that
—and headed for Rob’s back door.

I had gotten my escape down to a science. Each of the back yards had its own character. I knew which neighbors had motion detector floodlights and which ones were likely to leave toys strewn in the dark where I could easily twist an ankle.

As I darted between hiding places, I dipped into the bag. I worked the blonde wig over my curly hair and put on wire-rimmed, round glasses. Now that the weather wasn’t always bitingly cold, I had a greater selection of outerwear to choose from, and I’d picked a knee-length dark gray raincoat. It was so cheap and frayed that I had nearly stuffed it into a clothing donation box several times over the last few years.
 

But it had a large hood, which I pulled over my head. With the blonde hair trailing out of the hood’s shadow, it was unlikely anyone would recognize me.

Statue-like, I paused next to a wide brick garage and scrutinized the darkness behind me. If I was caught in disguise, that was bad enough, but if Henry found out about the truck, that would put a stop to my stolen moments of freedom.
 

Everything was quiet behind me.
 

Across the street, next to a six-story apartment building, Corbin’s SUV waited patiently as ever, the hulking shape familiar and comforting. Sometimes I could almost believe that Corbin was inside.

Within minutes, all pretenses that I was just going for a drive fell away. The truck ate up the miles between the city and the mountains, and soon I was driving carefully up an unpaved trail, my mouth dry, my palms slippery on the steering wheel.

The headlights showed plenty of snow still at the edges of the forest, but the dirt roads had turned to brown mush after a warm spell in late February. Nights like tonight, it was much colder in the mountains, freezing the mud in deep furrows. It wasn’t easy driving, but Corbin’s SUV didn’t seem to mind.

I parked where the so-called road succumbed to boulders and shrubby trees. And there I sat. Just because I had driven up here didn’t mean I needed to go inside. Didn’t mean I had to undo a week of sane thinking, good behavior.
 

If I walked away now, I could still count it as a win.

But… as long as I avoided Corbin’s luxury mountain house, I was still in control, right? The cabin was just the cabin. It was his hideaway, a secret hidden from everyone except me. Going there wasn’t intruding because, unlike the luxury mountain house, he’d never told me to stay away from the cabin. Going there didn’t make me a stalker.
 

So I slid out of the truck and headed up the path, my heart foolishly pounding, my breath stuck in my chest. “Come on,” I whispered, pleading with every molecule of my being that a light would be on, a ribbon of smoke spooling from the chimney.

Of course there was nothing. The cabin was just as deserted as it had been a week earlier. That was supposed to have been the last time I would come up here. As was the preceding trip, four days before that.

At least my visits were getting more spread out.

I opened the door and stepped into the darkness, heavy with the familiar scents of sawdust, burned wood and slightly stale air.
 

There was no need to turn on the light; I had spent over four weeks here with nothing to do. I could have navigated it blind, which was what I did. The cabin wasn’t complicated, just an enormous, subdivided main room with a smaller bedroom in the back. When I reached the bedroom, I switched on the light and sat on the bed. The oversized, cockeyed clock on the wall told me it was after one in the morning. Even if I left immediately, I wouldn’t get back to Rob’s place, and to sleep, before 2:30. It would be another sleepless night. Then a double shift. Then interrogations, compliments of Henry.

The utter horribleness of my life suddenly overwhelmed me. I was trying so fucking hard to keep it together, to be optimistic, and for what?
 

I grabbed a pillow to me, clutched it to my stomach. Even though the bedding had stopped smelling like Corbin weeks before, the memory of his aftershave wafted toward me. I closed my eyes and could see him standing there after a shower, his sculpted torso glistening, water dripping from the ends of his dark hair. I could hear his deep voice, hear him saying, “You keep looking at me like that, baby, and you’re gonna find yourself full of hard cock.”

I shoved my face in the pillow and sobbed, my body curled so hard into the fetal position that my spine ached.
 

So I had failed. I had returned, and this was my punishment. Here, in this godforsaken cabin, the truth rang out. I fell onto my back and tried to breathe through my congested nose.

It was another hour before I gathered up the shards of my broken heart and staggered to my feet. This had to end. I couldn’t keep falling apart every few days. It wasn’t cathartic; it was a masochistic attack on my psyche.
 

When I finally drove away, I promised myself that it was truly the last time. I wouldn’t come back.
 

If Corbin was at all interested in finding me, in getting a message to me, he could have done it a million times already. This wasn’t like before, when we weren’t a couple. Corbin had said he’d be gone a month, but he would communicate when he could. Then he disappeared for two months and counting.

At some point I needed to face the facts. He wasn’t interested in getting in touch with me.

I set my jaw and turned up the radio, hoping for a distraction. I didn’t want to think about the valid reasons Corbin had for cutting me out of his life. Didn’t want to admit that I should have kept my big mouth shut during our last afternoon together.
 

Something occurred to me. I could leave town for good. I had my apartment deposit, and the SUV had to be worth something. The title wasn’t in my name, but it would sell fast on the black market. It had a certain drug overlord appeal. And to sweeten the deal, I could promise it wouldn’t be reported stolen anytime soon.
 

How long could I live off that? A few months for sure. It would buy me time to get somewhere else, to reinvent myself.

And that was the most appealing part. Reinvention. I didn’t have to be Audrey Stroop anymore. I could be someone better. Someone I could stand to look at in the mirror.

I thought about it all the way home, and after I parked the SUV, I sat there, the engine still running, and worked out the details. I knew who to visit for a fake driver’s license. He’d probably charge me extra, a tax for having hauled him in twice when I was a bounty hunter, but he wouldn’t turn away the business. I could see it now… maybe California. Warm air, warm sand. I’d get a tan. And a job. Maybe in that order. New friends. A new life.

Of course, if I left, I’d never know if Corbin ever came back. Well, so what? He clearly didn’t care. My parents would be upset, but they’d get over it. And as a bonus, I wouldn’t have to face my father. He’d been hinting that he wanted to speak to me alone. I wasn’t one for emotional conversations, so I’d been avoiding him. It was easy because he was still recovering at home while the doctors adjusted and readjusted his medications.

There was nothing for me here. Just eviscerated dreams and a past littered with my failures.

Well… there was Rob.
 

A chill traveled down my spine. Leaving would mean deserting him. My twin. My original roommate and the person I was closest to. I would miss him like hell…

And then I remembered Henry’s face in the bar the night before. …
Give us Lagos.
It’ll be better for your brother, too
.
 

I would be abandoning Rob to deal with Henry, who would certainly lose his mind if I vanished again.