Brazen Seduction (17 page)

Richard didn’t have to be clairvoyant to know what that file would be about.

“Yeah,” Thomas spoke into the phone and looked up. He waved Richard in, closed the file, then sat back in his chair. “It’s a matter of some urgency. If you could have Mr. Fitzpatrick call me as soon as he comes in, I’d appreciate it.”

Thomas hung up the phone and gave a scoffing sound. “Must be nice. Fucking noon hour and the man isn’t at work yet. Not at home, either. Ah well. You ready to come back yet? I could use your excellent cop instincts right about now. Fucking politicians cut our budget, then cry like whiney babies when we don’t have enough manpower to do the fucking job.”

Richard laughed. “You asked and answered your own question right there, friend. I won’t be coming back to the force anytime soon, but I might be able to let you use my cop instincts.”

“Oh yeah? I’ll take what I can get.”

Richard pointed to the phone. “Jordan Fitzpatrick, owner of Reckless Abandon?”

“Yeah, how did you know? Oh, right, you know him.” Richard nodded even as his gut twisted. He never liked coincidences when he’d been a cop, and he sure as hell didn’t like them now.

“Yeah. And you know him too, though not as well, and you handled that assault on his woman a few months back.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his BlackBerry. He scrolled, then made a “writing” motion to Brady. The man passed him a small pad of paper and a pen.

Richard wrote down the number and passed it over. “Jordan’s cell phone.”

“Hey, thanks. I forget your exact relationship with the man. Goes back a ways, doesn’t it?”

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Richard wasn’t one to go around advertising his lifestyle. He figured how he lived his private life was nobody’s business. Neither did he go out of his way to lie about it.

“Yes, I’m a personal friend, have been for years. I’m also a member of his club. This about the redheads?” Brady sat back, and if he felt shocked or dismayed, it didn’t show.

Instead, he seemed to consider the new resource Richard represented to him, then nodded. “Yeah. I wanted to talk to him, pick his brains, and get a list of his membership.”

“Care to pick my brain, too?”

Brady considered for just a moment. Then he opened the file he’d closed. “Shut the door and sit back down, will you?” Richard did and then took the photos Brady passed to him. He’d seen pictures of naked dead bodies before. The cops, the people in the medical examiner’s office, and even the people at the funeral home did their best to preserve the dignity of the dead. There were even laws in most civilized places in the world against “offering an indignity to a dead body.” But by the same token, there was this—

photographs taken, objectively, almost coldly, to catalogue the flesh, the traumas, and the injuries, perpetrated in a crime that demolished dignity.

These photographs often served as evidence to arrest and convict murderers, but they weren’t pretty and shouldn’t be seen by just anyone.

Richard looked at what a murderer had wrought.

“Tell me what you see,” Brady commanded.

Because he knew Brady wanted to talk to Jordan, Richard looked at this evidence in light of the lifestyle he lived. He and Jordan practiced the D/s lifestyle differently from each other and very differently from some of the members of his club.

Richard knew for certain no one on RA’s roster was known to be cruel or overly sadistic. Jordan didn’t hold with that, and anyone found indulging in mutilation or overt brutality he dropped,
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immediately and forever. Still, he nodded as he stepped back mentally and examined the evidence at hand.

“I can see where you’d wonder. The victims were obviously restrained. Buttocks and the insides of the thighs reddened and bruised, as might happen with a disciplinary session that got out of hand, vaginal and anal bruising indicating rape, welts that might be from a belt and then others from a whip or riding crop. All on areas that would suggest a certain lifestyle—buttocks, thighs, breasts. Not the face, nothing on the face, so it’s not personal. But very exacting.

Not a mindless wailing so much as a methodical application. I’d say you’ve got one sick bastard out there.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Nothing in like crimes that I’ve been able to determine through the National Crime Information Center.

The FBI agents just left, sorry you missed them.” Richard chuckled as he handed back the photographs. He laughed because he knew Brady expected it but inside he felt sick. His lifestyle, his pleasures, twisted and perverted and used to cause harm.

Redheads as victims. His woman was a redhead.

“Anyway, the FBI agents are sending everything to their profiler.

Hopefully we’ll have something soon, but I can’t wait. I thought if I could speak to Fitzpatrick, have a look at his membership list…” He let the thought trail off. His eyes looked down, back at the photographs. “I have to tell you, I don’t understand.”

“That?” Richard nodded to the pictures. “I don’t understand either. That has nothing to do with the majority of people who simply live a different way, taking their pleasures in a different manner.”

“So, why are you here?”

Richard wondered how long it would take his old friend to ask that. Again, he played it straight. “Because of them. Because I have eyes that catch the news and these damned cop instincts that didn’t lie down and die when I left the force.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have left the force,” Brady suggested.

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“And,” Richard continued on as if the man hadn’t spoken,

“because I live a particular lifestyle and I have a woman who looks alarmingly like your victims.”

Brady’s smile faded and he sat forward. “The commissioner will probably be issuing a statement by the end of the day. I hope to hell you’re looking out for your woman.”

“Oh, I am. That’s why I’m here. I have no proof, and I can’t explain it. But I have a feeling all this is somehow connected to Molly.”

“If anybody else said that, I wouldn’t give them the time of day.” Brady reached for the phone and dialed the number Richard had given him. “Mr. Fitzpatrick, Thomas Brady here. I need your assistance with an investigation.” Brady listened for a moment. “We can be there in about twenty minutes. Who else will be coming? Someone who’s acting in the capacity of a consultant and a friend of yours. Richard Grant.”

Richard sat back and wished he could get the images on the photographs out of his mind. He had no doubt whatsoever that the injuries inflicted on both women were done by the same man, a man who took pleasure from their pain, who enjoyed what he did and did it with exacting precision.

He wished he could get those images out of his mind because his mind went ahead and did the unspeakable.

His mind put Molly’s face on the victims.

He had the unshakable feeling that someone was out to hurt, possibly murder, his woman. Richard would die before he let that happen.

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Molly locked her car, then cast a glance around the garage. She listened but could hear only the kind of silence echoing that such large, empty places engendered. Shaking off the strange feeling that came over her, she shouldered her purse but kept her keys in her hand, tucked into her fist, with her ignition key sticking out.

Classic woman-in-the-city self-defense stance, but it made her feel better. Molly keyed in her code for the elevator, and it opened immediately. No one else occupied the conveyance, and in only a minute she exited the garage into the late afternoon air and looked across the street at her destination.

Tonight she felt it more than just handy that Richard’s house sat directly across the street from the garage. She thought it a life saver.

Traffic thinned so she darted across. She didn’t want to play Ms.

Law-Abiding-Citizen right then. She only wanted to get inside the house. Inside, where she would be safe and cared for and behind the locked door and excellent security Richard provided.

As soon as she opened the door, and stepped inside, she felt safe.

Molly shook her head. Normally she wasn’t what anyone would consider “faint of heart.” In fact, one of her mother’s eternal worries about her daughter centered on what Elyse Durant called Molly’s fearlessness.

If only her mother could see her now. Well, on second thought, perhaps not.

Molly figured that her senses had been bombarded by so many stimuli in the last week, they’d overloaded and it came out in the form of skittishness.

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In the last week she’d given herself over to two lovers, one who decreed himself to be her master, and she’d uprooted her life and moved in. Oh yes, she still had her apartment but she lived here and likely would for the foreseeable future. She’d reached the point of no return with job dissatisfaction, had been forced to deal with a slimy slug of a coworker on an up close and personal level, and learned that a serial killer was stalking redheads.

Any two of the above would be enough to unhinge anyone, and
I’m dealing with all five.

Molly inhaled deeply, then let the air whoosh out of her. Now that she’d looked at the situation and her emotions in an analytical light, she felt much better.

She dropped her purse on the table in the entrance hallway and went in search of that delicious aroma drenching the air. Even as she identified it as spaghetti sauce and entered the kitchen, she remembered it was Alan’s turn to cook tonight.

Molly lifted the lid of the pot simmering on the stove and inhaled deeply.
My God
,
that smells great
. Gone were the days of a Lean Cuisine for dinner. Living here, she just might put on pounds!

Of course, their usual after-dinner recreational sessions tended to work those calories off. She smiled. She was so
lucky
.

“Hey, you, no nibbling before dinner.” Alan entered the kitchen, holding his cell phone to his ear. “She’s here now and trying to get into mischief by disturbing my red sauce. All right, I’ll tell her.” He pulled the phone down just slightly and said, “Richard instructs me to tell you you’ve already gotten into mischief by not calling him when you left the office. He said you and he and the paddle have a date tonight.”

Molly couldn’t help but notice that Alan’s eyes twinkled in merriment. For all of that, she knew that he—or more importantly
Richard
—wasn’t joking.

Alan returned to his phone conversation. “Dinner will be ready in an hour. Why yes, I think the two of us can find something interesting
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to do until you get home. See you then, love.” Alan set his cell phone down on the counter, then stood, one hand on his hip, looking at her.

The laughter and teasing left his expression.

“You didn’t call him when you left the office? I sat right here at the kitchen table this morning when he told you to do that.” Molly felt her hackles rising and mentally flattened them.

“I know. I’m sorry, I forgot.”

“You forgot because it didn’t seem important to you. You forgot because you still haven’t gotten it yet.”

“Look, I don’t need anyone telling me what to do.” Okay, forget about flattening her hackles. “I made a simple mistake. I don’t see how you can accuse me of…” Just what did he accuse her of? He’d said “not getting it,” and she supposed he was right.

Alan closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. When he opened them again, the trace of hostility she’d seen on his face disappeared. “Look, I’m not trying to pick a fight with you. And when Richard asked you to call before leaving work to come home, it wasn’t because he was telling you what to do, or wanted to see you jump through hoops for him. It’s because he wants to know where you are and that you’re safe. If you had called him, he would’ve let me know you were on your way, and I’d have walked you over from the garage.”

Molly opened her mouth, then closed it again. Point of fact, she
had
felt nervous in the garage and crossing the street. She wasn’t certain there’d been anything to really be nervous about. Personally, she doubted very much that any serial killer would target her just because she had red hair. Not that the monster wasn’t a threat to someone. He was. Just not to her.

But clearly, Richard and Alan worried, and she really couldn’t say she blamed them. She didn’t want to argue with Alan, or with Richard, either.

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“I’m sorry. No, really, I am. I’m not used to having anyone being so concerned about my safety. I’m not used to reporting to someone on a daily basis. I know you’re worried. You both are. I know that.”

“But do you understand why?” Alan asked.

Why did he look at her with such sympathy in his eyes? He’d asked her a question, but when she thought about the answer, something inside her shivered. So she stopped thinking and said, “I guess because you care about me, about what happens to me. And I appreciate that. I do.”

“Come here.”

He’d opened his arms to her and, suddenly, in his arms was the only place she wanted to be.

When he enfolded her, she felt cherished. She felt loved, but she wasn’t going to go there or let her mind dwell on that. Feeling loved and being loved were two different things.

“I really am sorry that I made you worry.”

“I know you are, but Richard is still going to paddle you when he gets home, and he likely won’t take it easy on you like he did at the club Friday night.”

Molly felt the heat curling in her belly, felt it snaking out tendrils of fire to touch her nipples and her pussy. Her nipples hardened. Alan must have felt it. He stroked his hands on her back, then caressed down over her ass.

“Come to the bedroom with me,” he whispered. “Our master told me to get you naked and enjoy you. I think we should enjoy each other.”

Molly felt Alan’s cock harden and couldn’t resist rubbing herself against it. She’d yet to have a private one-on-one bout of steamy sex with Alan.