Skin Tight (32 page)

“That, you mean?”

Søren swept aside her hair, biting at her neck. “Tease.” “Because I made you want it raw?”

He shuddered. “Can’t.”

“I bet you could.” She loosened her thighs enough that he could move.

He did. Back, and then forward, a slow slide between her slick lips. “Christ, Mia. I want to be inside you.”

Conscience got the best of her then. She didn’t want to tease him into doing something that would make him hate her—and himself—once it was done. Rolling to face him, she curved a thigh over his.

“Better?”

He exhaled shakily. “Somewhat. You destroy my higher brain functions.”

“Thank God you’re making all our plans,” she said dryly.

Søren propped himself up on one elbow and regarded her with a sort of sweet incredulity. He brushed a fingertip down her cheek, staring into her eyes. “I could do this all night. Nothing else. Just this.”

“Then you’ll probably notice my left eye is a little higher than my right.”

“Did you verify your findings with a ruler and a level?”

“Maybe I just made it up.”

“You maddening woman.” He pulled her to him and buried his face in her hair. “Thank you.”

“What for?”

“For not tempting me more than I could bear.” There was devastation in his voice.

She understood. Sex was a life-affirming act, one that carried within it the potential for creation—and he feared nothing more. How could he bear the idea of more loss when he’d already lost everything? Mia wished she didn’t understand so well.

Oh God, how she loved him. The feeling hummed like a live wire, and Mia wrapped her arms around him, stroking his back while she comforted him through a silent grief so deep there were no words to assuage it.

He’s going to break my heart.
The truth sounded in her head like a bell, but she couldn’t have left him if her life depended on it.

Lust and sorrow shared their bed like phantoms; she could not touch the latter, but she could sate the former. Her gaze on his, she reached between their bodies and curled her fingers around his rigid length. He sucked in a harsh, shallow breath, but he didn’t move. Mia took that to mean he wanted it; he trusted her to touch him and give pleasure.

There was more intimacy in this moment than she could readily process. Søren lay back as she squeezed, feeling her own juices on his skin. A moan escaped him the first time she pulled upward. He was sleek and hard in her fist; a frisson of shared pleasure tingled between her thighs.

“Tell me if I’m doing this right,” she murmured.

“The fact that you’re doing it makes it right.”

But then he covered her hand with his and showed her how he liked it, guiding her in terms of pressure and rhythm. For the first time, she glimpsed the pure vulnerability in his arousal. In offering her free rein over his body, Søren offered her the most beautiful gift: his trust.

His breathing roughened, but his eyes never closed, as if he couldn’t bear to lose sight of her even for a moment. Bringing his knees up, he thrust into her loose fist, his movements quick and shallow. Orgasm overtook him, and Mia gloried in his pleasure.

Still breathless, he shoved her onto her back and hooked two fingers inside her. With his other hand, he stroked her clit. Tremors still rocked through him, and his eyes shone silver in the dark. She arched and whispered his name as she came.

When she awoke in the morning, he was gone.

“This is becoming an unpleasant habit,” she muttered.

To her delight, he had left her more honey and oat porridge and a pot of camp coffee. Before the sojourn here, she’d never seen a tin percolator like the one he used on the woodstove. Mia had to admit the coffee was good and strong, just the way she liked it. With a little sweetener and powdered milk, she could almost say she had all the comforts of home.

If said home were in the middle of a forest.

In the predawn light, the trees loomed enormous outside the window. She could barely catch a glimpse of sky through the pine needles. Whatever he was doing, it was doubtless important; he took her safety seriously. She just wished he knew he could count on her.

The minute he walked in the door, she would tell him.

“I’m
not
a victim,” she said, practicing aloud. “I will not prove a liability.”

She suspected that bit of shared history had given him a skewed impression of her level of vulnerability. If she hadn’t trusted him, she would never have gotten into his car. And yes, that had been a mistake, but she wouldn’t go quietly if it were anyone else.

With a faint sigh, she ate the porridge. But that wasn’t quite enough. She wanted something more. Maybe she could toast bread on a skillet? Though she didn’t know how to light the oven, it was still warm. How hard could it be?

Thus occupied in the kitchen, she didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary until it was too late.

 

 

The answering silence filled Søren with foreboding.

He’d gone to check the traps and make sure everything looked all right. None of the snares had been tripped, so he reckoned they were safe enough. Then he’d paused to see if any of his feelers had borne fruit. One of them had, in fact, and he’d called out to her because he now had a game plan. Her lack of response couldn’t be good.

Rounding the cabin at a run, he found his worst fears confirmed. The window was smashed and the door stood wide open. Based on the scattered bread and broken jam jar on the floor, it looked as though someone had come upon her while she was making something extra for breakfast.

Ice trickled in to replace the fear. Søren stepped inside to take a look around. The radio was smashed, along with a kerosene lamp. Whoever had her, Mia hadn’t gone quietly. A knife that didn’t belong to him had been stabbed into the table, holding a note in place.

If you cooperate, she won’t be hurt. Answer the pay phone in Exeter at 10th and Washington tomorrow at 9 P.M
.
If you miss the call, the woman dies.

They wanted him back within easy reach of Micor. He’d known the Foundation had to be responsible; only
they
had the reach for this. He had no other enemies.

Accepting Mia was gone—that he’d failed to protect her—hurt worse than anything since Lexie. There was no point in asking how Micor had found them; though if he had to speculate, he’d say they must have become suspicious after he fled and run some tests on DNA material left in Thomas Strong’s office. Now they’d made the necessary—and terrifying—connection. He had to get her back. Once, he would’ve considered her acceptable collateral damage and gone on with his mission.

Søren had changed.

The time frame offered plenty of time to make the drive. There was no rush. Instead, he cleaned up the broken glass. His jaw tightened when he saw a dark smear. Leaning close, he inhaled and recognized the sweet, coppery tang. She had been bleeding when they dragged her out. Tactically, it was smart that they’d taken her after finding her alone. It forced him out of hiding, and who wanted to face the enemy on his home ground?

Methodically, he set out two ceramic mugs, a box of cornstarch, a candle, matches, and a roll of tape. After lighting the candle, he applied the flame to the bottom of the mug until it began to scorch. He scraped it off into the first mug until he had equal measures of dark and light powders. Søren mixed them and then went to Mia’s purse. She had a clean makeup brush suitable for his purposes.

Dusting carefully, he came up with a perfect print on the knife handle. He picked up the tape and carefully collected it. There was no point in sticking around. Taking the evidence, he headed for the car at a run.

It took only a minute to get his satellite uplink in place, and while the network initialized, he went to work with his portable scanner. In less than a minute, he had an image of the fingerprint. Now he needed access to the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, more commonly called IAFIS; fortunately, he’d used it before and he had a list of valid logins.

Soon he knew the man’s name: Bruce Travis. He had a number of aliases, including Mr. Smith and Michael Hunt. His record indicated a history of theft convictions before gradual escalation to violent crime. There were several outstanding warrants in the system, one for attempted murder in Milwaukee. Søren memorized the information, took a screen shot, and then shut down the connection. The longer he stayed in the system, the greater chance someone would notice.

Time to go.
He disassembled the gear, stashed it in the trunk, and headed out. The Toyota bounced as he went back down the mountain. Twenty minutes later, he was on the highway heading east.

The drive passed in a blur of desperate focus. He couldn’t think about what Mia might be suffering or it would drive him mad. Instead he made plans.

He had to assume this was a trap—the bastard responsible for Mia’s abduction wanted to face Søren on Travis’s turf, Travis’s terms. There would be no phone call. It wasn’t a kidnapping. When Søren showed up at the pay phone, they’d shoot him, and then she was dead, if she wasn’t already. She was bait in the trap.

Can’t think along those lines. I’ll get her back.
He didn’t know why it mattered so much, but if he couldn’t save Mia, then something would break inside him irrevocably. Søren had thought there would never be any pleasure in life again, but she made him laugh. She
saw
him.

He took comfort in the fact that there hadn’t been enough blood in the cabin for her to have died there. No, she’d walked out under her own power. That had to mean something.

It would help if he knew what he was up against. He hadn’t been this frightened in years. Before, it had been a game with nothing but his life at stake—and it had been years since he’d cared about that. The tires on the highway seemed to echo his bleak thoughts:
They know, they know, they know.
Fear spiked through him. Did they know about Lexie, too? Jesus, he’d come so far, only to have it fall apart because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Søren slammed his hand against the steering column and cursed aloud in a vile mix of English and Danish.

Eight hours.

He stopped once for gas and once to stretch his legs. The Toyota bore the high speeds like a champ, despite its age. By nightfall, he was back in Exeter, only this time he carried with him the stink of failure.

Tenth and Washington.
It didn’t take long for him to find the pay phone, and once he did, he immediately understood the choice. In this block alone, there were at least five suitable sniper blinds. When the appointed time came, he wouldn’t see the gunman before the bullet hit him.

He had to think like Bruce Travis. What would the man expect? He could use his gift here. Since Bruce was a thug, he would expect others to be governed by fear. Therefore, he wouldn’t expect to find Søren here early. He’d expect his target to comply with his instructions, because that was how normal people operated. They didn’t take risks with a loved one on the line.

In a flash, Søren knew what to do.

There were three motels within a one-mile radius of the meeting point. All of them appeared to be the no-tell type, where you could rent the room by the night or by the hour, depending on your need. Travis would be holed up in one of them, waiting for the meet. Since he’d doubtless seen the Toyota when he was up at the cabin, Søren had to ditch it.

The distance wasn’t far enough to bother him if he covered it on foot. He wrote down the addresses, copied the screen shot of Travis’s file to a flash drive, locked the vehicle, and took off at a jog for a copy shop where he could print the picture. Next, he headed for the first place on the list.

It was a rundown two-story structure with a guttering blue neon sign. Inside the place, the manager looked almost as seedy as the exterior: he was an unshaven middle-aged man wearing a sweat-stained wifebeater. The bristling dark hair on his back made him look particularly ursine.

“You want a room?”

“I’d rather have information.” He slid a fifty over the counter. “Can you tell me if this man checked in here?”

After giving it a good look, the man said, “Nope,” and palmed the money.

“Thanks.”

The second motel yielded similar results, but at least it only cost him twenty bucks. Over the years, Søren had gotten good at calculating someone’s price, down to the penny. At the third motel, it took forty, and then the old woman at the front desk nodded vigorously. “He’s a real piece of work. If I didn’t need the income, I’d have turned him out. His neighbors have already called down here twice to complain about his TV.”

To drown out a woman’s cries? Somehow he managed not to flinch. “Did he have a girl with him that you saw?”

“No, he said he was alone. If he’s brought a prostitute up in here, he needs to give me more money. I charge more by the hour than for the night.” She scowled at the idea someone might be having sex in her shitty motel without paying her for it.

“Will you tell me what room he’s in?”

“You gonna arrest him?”

“I’m not a cop, ma’am.”

She narrowed her eyes, nearly lost in a sea of liver-spotted, wrinkly flesh. “Are you gonna bust up the place?”

“If I do, I’ll pay for damages. Want me to leave a hundred bucks as a deposit?”

Satisfied, she extended a gnarled hand for the bill. “That will do fine. The lummox is in 214. Try not to break the lamps.”

This was a
nightmare.

It had to be.

The cut on her forearm ached, and so did her head. Mia remembered nothing after being dragged from the cabin; by the cottony taste in her mouth, she could tell she’d been drugged. Now she didn’t know where the hell she was, but it couldn’t be good.