Sizzle and Burn (10 page)

“It’s the truth, damn it.”

“How do you know? You weren’t running J&J when the Tallentyre situation went down. We both know that good old Uncle Wilder wouldn’t have blinked twice about a little thing like shading the facts for the record. They didn’t call him Wild Wilder Jones for nothing.”

“Huh.”

They both contemplated that piece of family history in silence.

Wilder Jones had gone out the same way he lived, in a blaze of reckless glory. He had been working for J&J’s unnamed government agency client at the time. He succeeded in taking down the bad guys and rescuing a number of people but it cost him his life.

In a family studded with individuals who often got involved in high-risk ventures, Wilder had been frowned upon for his penchant for taking outrageous chances. He had been addicted to fast motorcycles, fast women and cigarettes.

There were those in the Jones clan who held that he had always been unstable. Others maintained that, while it was true that he was born addicted to adrenaline, he did not go over the edge until the last few months of his life. That faction claimed that something dramatic happened to Wilder before he left on what amounted to a suicide mission. Zack’s mother had always maintained that a woman was involved but that didn’t ring true because everyone knew that Wilder changed lovers almost as often as he changed his shirts. Legend had it that he never looked back. Whatever the truth of the matter, Wilder took his secret with him to his grave.

“Do whatever you have to do to keep Raine working with you,” Fallon said eventually. “I still think she’s the key to this thing.”

Zack didn’t argue. There was no point. Everyone knew that Fallon’s hunches had an accuracy rating well over ninety percent.

Didn’t mean that he was always right, though.

Twelve

Burn, witch, burn.

Burn the whole damn lab to the ground.

Punish her. Then destroy her with fire. Got to be sure.

Get those two out of here. Then destroy everything. Can’t take any chances.

Got to be sure.

S
he came awake gasping for air, pulse pounding. Her nightgown was stuck to her back with perspiration. She was suffocating under the quilt. She had to breathe.

She sat up suddenly, shoved the covers aside, scrambled out of bed and leaped to her feet. For a couple of minutes she just stood there, trembling, trying to regain control.

She had known there would be nightmares. There always were when she came in contact with the sick psychic energy left by the freaks. She was used to living with the voices in her dreams for a few nights afterward.

But tonight there had been another voice interwoven with that of the freak, a dark voice from the Night of Fire and Tears.
Get those two out of here. Then destroy everything
.

She sank down on the side of the bed and looked at the clock. One-fifteen. She had stayed up until midnight, reading the file and learning just how notorious the Tallentyre name was within the highest circles of the Arcane Society. As far as the Master and the Council were concerned, she was the daughter of a man who had tried to create psychic vampires.

Screw them.

She did not hear the footsteps in the hall. The quiet knock on the door, when it came, made her jump. Edgy energy flickered through her. Briefly she considered pretending she had not heard the soft sound. But she knew him well enough after only a few hours to realize that he would not go away.

She went to the closet and took out the dark blue silk travel robe she had packed. She put it on and tied the sash around her waist. On the way to the door she ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back behind her ears.

She checked the peephole first. Zack stood in the hall. He was wearing the black leather jacket again but this time he had on only a black T-shirt underneath. The shadow of what would become his morning beard darkened his face. One hand was flattened against the doorjamb, just outside her narrow range of vision.

The sight of him had a very strange effect on her senses. All the unpleasant, nervy tension that had accompanied the nightmare seemed to convert into another kind of energy. Adrenaline made her shiver. Anticipation twisted inside her. She was aware of her pulse again but this time it was skittering with excitement.

She opened the door. The first thing she noticed was that Zack was barefoot. For some reason the sight of him standing there without any shoes on struck her as incredibly erotic. He had very nice, very strong feet. She had never noticed a man’s feet before.

With an effort she raised her gaze to his face.

“Hi,” she said, unable to think of anything more intelligent.

Zack regarded her with a knowing expression.

“How bad is it?” he asked, keeping his voice pitched to a low level that would not carry to the room across the hall.

No explanations were needed with him, she thought. A deep sense of longing swept through her. He understood as no one else ever could now that Vella was gone.

“Bad,” she said. “But I’ve been through worse. The girl was alive, after all.”

“Sure. But it’s still bad because you know what he intended to do. What he did in the past.”

“There is that,” she allowed. He didn’t know everything, she thought. He didn’t know that tonight there had been another voice in her dreams. “Why are you here?”

“Figured that, between reading the file and the bad dreams, you probably weren’t getting much sleep. I did some consulting work, myself, earlier today. A two-thousand-year-old dagger that had been used in human sacrifice.”

“Yuck.”

“Tell me about it.” His mouth kicked up a little and his eyes darkened with intimate mystery. “Think maybe we could both use a little distraction?”

She was suddenly a bit breathless again. Her pulse leaped. Energy crackled silently in the atmosphere.

Out of nowhere, common sense reared its boring head.

He knew she was attracted to him, knew she was vulnerable tonight. He planned to use the sexual energy that flared between them to manipulate her. If he thought she was that easy, he could damn well think again.

“What kind of distraction did you have in mind?” she asked, putting as much ice as possible into the question.

He took his hand off the doorjamb and showed her the deck of cards he was holding. “How about a little blackjack?”

Braced for a blatant seduction line, she was thrown off stride for a couple of seconds. She pulled herself together with an act of sheer willpower.

“You’re suggesting we play cards?” she asked, bewildered.

“Thought it would take your mind off other things.”

“I was going to turn on the television,” she said weakly.

“In my experience, that doesn’t work well. Too passive. You need something that makes you concentrate a little but not too much because you’re too edgy to do that.”

She pushed her initial suspicions aside. He wasn’t here for sex. He knew what she was going through tonight. What’s more, he was going through something very similar.

“You’ve been here and done this a few times yourself, haven’t you?” she asked.

“The dreams go with the territory for sensitives like you and me. When I’m on my own I usually pour myself a couple of glasses of scotch and play some solitaire.”

“I know an herbalist back in Oriana. He mixes up a special herbal tisane that I use. But I didn’t bring any with me.” She glanced hesitantly at the deck of cards in his hand. “I sometimes play solitaire, too.”

He didn’t say anything just stood there, waiting.

“Okay,” she said, feeling more reckless than she ever had in her entire life. “Let’s play some blackjack.”

He moved into the room. She closed the door. Abruptly they were enveloped in darkness. The sense of intimacy was almost overpowering.

She switched on the lamp that stood on the table near the window. In the warm glow the bed—just another piece of furniture earlier in the day—now loomed very large. She was uncomfortably aware of the tangled sheets and rumpled pillows.

Inviting him into her room had probably been a very big mistake but she could not bring herself to ask him to leave.

Zack walked casually across the room. He didn’t appear to notice the bed but she couldn’t seem to get her mind off it.

She seized the bedspread and yanked it up over the pillows. The maneuver did nothing to reduce the aura of sexual intimacy that pervaded the small space.

Zack flipped on the gas fire. Instead of sitting down at the table, he lowered himself to the carpet in front of the hearth and sat cross-legged. He shuffled the cards.

“Let’s make this interesting,” he said.

She held her breath. “How?”

“We’ll play for real money.” He removed his wallet out of his back pocket and took out some bills. “My stake is twenty bucks.”

So much for wondering if he was going to suggest a game of strip poker.

She went to the table, opened her purse and took out her wallet. She counted out twenty dollars in ones and fives. With the money clutched in her hand she turned back to him.

It dawned on her that, attired in her nightgown with only the knee-length robe for modesty, she could not assume a similar cross-legged position. After a few seconds of close thought, she sank down onto the carpet and folded her legs, mermaid-style, to one side. In that position the robe covered her in what she hoped was a decorous fashion.

Zack dealt the first cards, one each, facedown.

She peeked at her hole card. It was the queen of hearts.

Zack dealt the next two cards, one each, faceup. The jack of diamonds for her. His up card was a three.

“Hold,” she said. She shoved a one-dollar bill under the cards.

Zack shrugged and dealt himself a third card. They both looked at the red ten. He flipped over his hole card. Another ten.

“Busted,” he said

She smiled. “I’ve always been pretty good with cards.”

He looked amused. “Yeah, I can see that.”

He scooped up the cards and shuffled again.

She watched his hands, fascinated by the easy competence of the way he moved.

“Don’t you ever take that jacket off?” she asked.

Good grief, where had that come from? If he removed the jacket he would be down to just his T-shirt and pants.

He paused in mid-shuffle and gave her a considering look. After a moment he seemed to make up his mind about something. He put down the cards and peeled off the black leather jacket.

She stared, transfixed, at the gun in his shoulder holster.

“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “I see.”

He picked up the cards and went back to dealing.

Twenty minutes later she had won his twenty-dollar stake and another forty to boot. She realized she hadn’t been troubled by the freak’s voice since Zack had arrived at her door.

“You’re right,” she said, delighted. “This is working. All I can think about is winning all of your money.”

“You’re doing a pretty good job of that.”

She laughed. “You noticed, did you?”

“Good thing I put my room on my credit card.” He gave her a slow, dangerously knowing smile. “But in my own defense, I can tell you that my mind is not on blackjack tonight.”

The unmistakable heat in the words caught her completely off guard. He was watching her with a searing, undisguised sexual intensity that seemed to have come out of nowhere. A moment before he had been playing a friendly game of cards. Now he looked as if he wanted to strip her naked and take her right there on the carpet. No man had ever looked at her with that kind of heat.

Her initial suspicions had been correct. Zack had been very aware of the chemistry between them. He had been biding his time, letting her invite him into her space, putting her at ease. The blackjack game was a form of seduction. He’d used it to drive out the voice of the freak, leaving her open and vulnerable.

That knowledge ought to make her very wary, she told herself. And it did, it surely did. But it also increased the level of excitement shimmering through her.

“This is probably not a good idea,” she whispered.

His smile got a little more dangerous. Invisible energy pulsed in the air around them.

“Thought you were a gambler,” he said softly.

Not when it comes to this kind of thing, she tried to say. But for some reason she could not get the words out of her mouth. Her heart was beating very quickly now. Things inside her were threatening to melt.

Slowly, deliberately, he removed her glasses, reached up and put them on the table. Then he unfastened his holstered gun and set it aside.

He leaned toward her, giving her plenty of opportunity to avoid him. She did not even try to retreat. He caught hold of her and hauled her gently across the short space that separated them, scattering the cards.

Instead of informing him that she was not into one-night stands, she put her arms around his neck.

His mouth came down on hers, heavy, demanding a response. Her body gave it to him. The smoldering fire that had been burning inside her since she opened the door to him roared into a full-blown conflagration. She had never experienced anything like it, had never realized she was capable of such a raging response.

But what really made the blood run hot in her veins was the knowledge that Zack wanted her just as badly as she wanted him.
Not like Bradley,
she thought, elated. Zack wasn’t afraid of the voices. A glorious sense of triumph arced through her.