Sweet Seduction Shield (38 page)

And then Ryan
said, "So, the fact that you're giving helpful tips must mean you
want me to succeed."

I snapped my
head back down to look at him, delighted and mischievous brown
stared back at me.

"Get a yes to
my question," he clarified, but I didn't need it. I knew exactly
what he was on about.

And a part of
me wished him luck, as the other part of me said, "In your
dreams."

He chuckled,
his face nestling into my throat, his teeth starting to tease.

I checked on
Daisy, while Ryan did a circuit of the house. Knowing he took our
safety so seriously gave me such an unusual thrill. You're not
meant to get elated about something as mundane as checking locks
and making sure sensor flood-lights work. But I did. A small smile
playing on my lips as I heard the rattle of a locked door or the
clunk of a window latch. Ryan made me feel safe.

There is
something immeasurably wonderful about that.

By the time he
made it back to the bedroom, I'd turned the lights down low and
slipped between the sheets on the bed, leaning back against a pile
of pillows. I was wearing a loose, worn Whitcomb & Associates
Ltd t-shirt, one I'd had to don at the annual Round The Bays Run
where my firm had a stand. There was absolutely nothing sexy about
it at all. But Ryan stopped, just inside the door, and stared at
me. A look of wonder and sheer delight on his handsome face.

I smiled back,
held his gaze, then swallowed thickly as he stalked across the room
towards his side of the bed. He was dressed in just his jeans,
nothing else. And I think the look on my face said a hell of a lot
more than his had.

"You're so
perfect," he whispered, undoing the top button, then the zip on his
jeans and slipping them off. New trunks in fire engine red greeted
my eyes, making my lips twitch in amusement. "You like the red?" he
asked, as he slid in beside me under the sheets.

"Love the
red."

"Thought you
might. Chose 'em just for you."

I laughed,
rolling onto my side to face him. He was already on his side,
waiting for my eyes to reach his. In his hand was his cellphone.
The laughter died quietly on my lips.

"Who are you
going to call?"

"Harvey and
Nick."

"Can't it wait
until tomorrow morning?" For some reason I didn't want anyone
bursting the bubble that existed in this house. It was bad enough
that Dominic had been in touch, but anyone else seemed an invasion,
not just an imposition.

"Nick will
need to organise his staff to accommodate us," Ryan pointed out
levelly. "And Harvey is my partner. I need to check in and I trust
him."

Of course. He
was still a cop. Still under the employ of the New Zealand Police
Force, assigned to protect a potential witness in a large scale
case. If that wasn't a bucket of cold water over the head, I don't
know what would be.

I nodded, but
conversation was beyond me now. Every single step forward into the
sunshine, seemed to come with a huge shadow of dread.

He sighed,
turned onto his back, readjusting the pillows behind him and swiped
his phone, placing the device to his ear. It didn't take long for
the call to be answered.

"Nick. Pierce.
Got anything for me?"

I sank down
further under the covers, staring at the light from the beside lamp
reflected on the ceiling.

"You still
don't know where the leak occurred? Yeah. Yeah. I get it. But it
leaves a hell of a wild-card out there, doesn't it?"

I closed my
eyes and concentrated on breathing evenly. There was no point
getting all worked up over something I had no hope of controlling.
Tell that to my heartbeat though, which was currently sitting at
ninety-seven beats per minute.

"OK," Ryan
said, running a hand over his beard in a clear show of frustration.
"Well, we're coming in tomorrow. Yeah, it's all sorted, Dom worked
a miracle. Probably about eight in the morning. Good, that'll be
good. Who will you use?"

I rolled onto
my side and curled up in a ball. By eight o'clock tomorrow morning
the bubble will have been burst. Nick will send an escort, a
security detail to shadow us in. I was hoping it would be Ben and
Abi. And then I would be facing the Crown Prosecutor with a
hand-grenade shaped like a ledger in my palm.

Facing my
past. Hopefully for the last time.

I closed my
eyes tightly, blocked out the rest of Ryan's one sided conversation
with Nick, and tried to still the panic that welled inside my mind.
Legally we were safe. Here, in this house, hidden from the world
with Ryan, we were still safe.

But I could
not
get the thought
out of my head, that out there, in the real world, danger
definitely lurked. McLaren's tattooed goon. That ex-cop who had
turned up at the Birdcage. Coincidence or not?

I'm a pretty
practical person. I knew there was nothing of chance to it, at
all.

"Babe," Ryan
whispered, his hand running down my arm and side. My back to his
chest, his face resting on my shoulder, hot air coasting over my
cheek. "Nick's all set."

I nodded, kept
my eyes closed, my back rigid. Kept counting my heartbeat as it
pounded through my head.

"OK," he
whispered. "I'll just let Harvey know."

I expected him
to move away, but he didn't. He wrapped his big frame around my
body, his thighs bracketing the back of mine, his groin nestled
into my butt, one hand encasing my nape, the other holding the
phone to his ear, right by mine. I could hear the dial tone, as it
sounded out through the speaker on his phone. I could hear him
inhale a deep breath, his nose buried in the strands of my
hair.

"Harvey, my
man," he said, softly. As though not wanting to disturb me, but he
would have known I was still awake. He was just getting himself
settled. Despite the phone call, his body was relaxing, his mind
quietening, his voice matching the tone.

I found myself
responding to the moment, relaxing, bit by glorious bit.

Ryan did this
to me. We could be standing in the middle of a tornado, and if Ryan
came close, the winds all stilled.

Ryan calmed my
storm.

"Pierce," came
his partner's voice through the line. Deep and gravelly, but clear
despite the cellphone being pressed to Ryan's ear, and not mine. I
thought I detected a note of weariness in his voice. But one word
could hardly divulge so much.

"We're meeting
with the Crown Prosecutor tomorrow," Ryan said, voice still soft.
He wasn't hiding his relaxed state from his old friend, he let
Harvey hear the contentment in his words.

"Oh, is that
right?" I waited for the judgement, for the self-righteous
condemnation he'd given at Ben and Abi's house. But he seemed
distracted, and simply said, "What time?"

"Eight
tomorrow. Nick's on security, but if you could meet us at the
District Court by nine, that would be good."

"No problem."
The words were clipped. "What did you get on McLaren in the
end?"

"Not just
McLaren," Ryan replied, a little excitement showing through his
words. "A wealth of information on shipments, payments, debts.
Photographic evidence that will tear McLaren's world so far apart,
he'll never be able to put it together again."

There was a
long, drawn-out sigh on the other end of the phone.

Then,"Fuck.
You found the ledger."

Ryan
stiffened. Just slightly. "You knew about the ledger?"

"Talks been
rife about it on radar. Church, that tattooed freak that chased
your mark down, he's been all over the fucking thing asking about
it."

"Her name's
Marie, Harvey. Use it."

"She started
out as your mark. It's not my fucking fault you got involved."

The words were
harsh, angry. Full of that condemnation I'd expected before.

Then he added, "And you weren't supposed to fall for her, you
bastard."
Those
words were almost
pained.

Ryan sat up,
pulling the phone away from where I could hear. I followed him,
sitting face to face, taking in the look of uncertainty and
confusion, and dear God, was that a little fear?

"What are you
talking about?" Ryan asked, his eyes locked on mine, but no longer
seeing.

I think that
was the most frightful thing of all. Ryan always saw. Always
watched. Now he just stared blankly, retreating into a shell of the
man I love.

"You took her
to your fucking dead mother's house, didn't you?"

I heard every
anger-filled word. It didn't matter that Ryan had the phone pressed
to his ear and nowhere near mine, Harvey was so agitated by now, he
was yelling.

"Harvey?" Ryan
pressed.

"You never go
there. You almost had me on that one. Not in a million fucking
years did I think you'd go there. I gave it up, because there was
no fucking way Ryan Pierce would go to his dead birth mother's
house. No fucking way!"

"Stone, you're
not making any sense."

But he was,
wasn't he? He was making complete and utter sense. Detective Harvey
Stone was the mole. The leak.

"I had no choice!" Harvey yelled. "I had to give them
something. And the best I could come up with was that house. Jesus,
Pierce! You go practically catatonic when you have to drive near
it. Whangaparaoa Peninsula is a dead zone to you.
And you
took her there.
It's not my fucking
fault!"

"What the fuck
have you done?" Ryan's voice was one I had never heard before.
Dark, threatening, lethal.

I heard
muffled sounds down the other end of the line, as though Harvey was
on the move.

"You weren't
supposed to be there."

"You've
already said that. What the fuck have you done, Stone?"

"I had no
choice."

"To hell with
your choices. WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE!"

"You had
Nick!" Harvey yelled back. "ASI security. There was no way he could
get through that!"

"Who?!"

"I tried," Harvey almost whined. It sounded desperate. It
sounded like a man teetering on the edge of a cliff, about to
choose to take that next step off. "I held out as long as I could.
I misdirected. I did
everything
I
could think of to give you time to catch him first. But he said
he'd kill them."

"Who said?
What the fuck, Stone?!"

I could hardly
breathe. I felt trapped by the wretched words pouring from Ryan's
phone. I felt frozen by the look of utter dread and dawning
comprehension gracing his face. I felt sick enough I might just
vomit.

But I couldn't
move. I had to keep listening. I had to know. And I think Ryan was
the same. A morbid sense of fascination, a dark desire that would
lead us into the abyss.

"You got
distracted," Harvey was saying, his words picking up speed now.
"Its your fault. Not mine. How was I to know you couldn't keep your
dick in your pants?"

Oh dear
God.

"You fucking
arsehole!" Ryan spat.

"Fuck you,
Pierce! I tried to warn you. Tried to get you to pull your head out
of the fucking clouds and do your job. But you wouldn't listen.
Fuck. You lied! Said she was just a casual coincidence. Said it
wouldn't happen again."

I felt an inch
tall.

"I lied? What the fucking hell have
you
done? What the fucking hell have you kept
from
me
?" Ryan demanded, voice
strained.

"And then you took her
there
,"
Harvey went on, not even hearing Ryan anymore. In his own tortured
moment, dragging us down with him into the dark. "Fuck! She must be
a fucking awesome lay to get you to face your murdered mother's
house like that."

"You fucking
leave my mother out of it! And don't talk about Marie like
that!"

"It's not my
fault you've gone and lost your head over a fucking criminal
bride!"

Ryan's chest
was heaving, his fists were clenched. Sweat had broken out across
his forehead.

"Just tell
me," he pleaded. Another tone of voice I did not expect to hear
from Ryan Pierce. "Just tell me, Harvey. What the hell is going
on?"

Silence. Just
the sound of air rushing past the cellphone, giving the impression
that Harvey was on the move, and moving fast.

"I haven't
dared to breathe for three days," Harvey said, so quietly I leaned
forward and Ryan immediately put the phone on speaker so I could
hear.

The sound of
air rushing past a window was louder this way, but Harvey's next
words were crystal clear.

"They sent me
Caitlin's teddy bear."

"Jesus," Ryan
muttered, reaching for my hand instinctively.

"Said it would
be her finger next."

Ryan closed
his eyes, anger warring with agony over his face.

"Said it would
be easy to snatch her from pre-school. Take Sherry as well."

"Why didn't
you tell me?" Ryan said, eyes still closed.

But Harvey
wasn't capable of hearing any longer.

"I did what I
could, you gotta know that," he pleaded.

"I don't know
shit," Ryan replied, his voice a little hollow, the words almost
said to himself. "You should have told me." His eyes opened and
there was a depth of pain there, that I had only seen on his face
when he talked of his birth mother's death.

This was
Ryan's worst nightmare. His close friend, his partner's family,
going through something as harrowing as this.

"I got
Church," Harvey said, a horn blaring out in the distance over the
line.

Ryan's gaze
flicked up to mine. He was breathing harshly, trying to contain his
emotions. But they were written all over his clenched jaw; in the
line of his tight, thin lips; in the shadows that haunted the brown
of his eyes.