Face of Danger (27 page)

They went to Mercedes’s apartment together, without even stopping for water, which she desperately needed. The woman opened her door with a look of sadness, and as soon as she saw the soot and dirt on Vivi, her shoulders slumped in resignation.

“Who was he?” Vivi asked before Lang could even get in there in his damn official capacity.

Mercedes clasped her hands, wringing them, pain distorting her face. “A farm worker.”

Behind her, she felt Lang tense. A Laotian farm worker, exactly as he’d predicted. But so far he’d stayed quiet, and Vivi took the lead.

“Did you kill him?” she asked.

Mercedes backed up, silently inviting them into her cold, drab, dungeon of a world.

“No.” She swallowed hard. “Joellen did.”

“Why?”

She brushed an imaginary hair from her face, glancing from Vivi to Lang. “Could I talk to you alone?” she asked Vivi.

“No,” Lang said, his tone leaving no room for argument. “Just tell us what happened.”

She shuddered a little and perched on the edge of her sofa. Vivi sat next to her, fighting the urge to reach out and calm the waves of dread and terror and pain rolling off her.

“Just tell us, Mercedes,” she said softly. “Please.”

Putting her hands to her mouth, she closed her eyes, obviously gathering scattered, wild thoughts. Her whole body trembled, all her cold control evaporating more with each passing second.

“I know you’re their mother, Mercedes.”

Her eyes flashed open for a second, then closed again. “I kept a shotgun for the possum and animals. Jo came home from school, and… shot him.”

Vivi stifled a slight gasp. “Why?”

“Because he was…” She barely managed a breath. “He attacked me.”

“Oh.” Vivi let out the word and lost the battle not to take Mercedes’s hand.

“I was alone in the house and he came in off the bog—it was out of season, just a few workers. He was looking for water and I got him some, even though I never liked to give the workers anything because—well, my husband was dead, and they could take advantage of me.” She ran out of breath.

Vivi squeezed her hand, her own throat closing, her stomach tightening, her intuition warning her to brace for the worst.

“He raped me.”

That was the worst. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, vaguely aware that her voice cracked.

“Joellen walked in while he was…” She looked down at the ground.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to say.”

“But I do,” she whispered. “I have to say it because my girl killed him with that shotgun and she shouldn’t be in trouble for that. But we had to hide him. And we had to leave because I was so scared and so… so…”

So ruined.

“We left. I took the girls and we left the bog and let the farm die out and then… I had to come back. It was the only place I could just hide.”

“But did you sell it while you were gone?” Lang asked.

“No.” She looked up at him. “I would never sell it.”

“So you still own the property.”

“I put it all in Cara and Joellen’s name years ago. Lawyers handled it. But it’s still in our family.”

Vivi and Lang shared a look. Could Chessie’s information be wrong? Why would Roman Emmanuel’s name be on the deed for the bog house and farm?

Mercedes took a long, slow breath. “Are you going to make me… go somewhere? Because… I can’t go outside.”

“Not tonight,” Vivi said gently, grateful that Lang didn’t contradict her. “When did you stop going outside, Mercedes?”

“It happened little by little,” she admitted. “Every day, after… that day… I could do less and less. Face less and less. I tried to get help, but the fears won out. When Cara became a star, she made it so I never had to go anywhere. I just do whatever my girls ask of me, because they made me safe.”

“Why don’t you tell anyone you’re their mother?”

“If it ever comes out, I’m afraid the bad publicity could ruin Cara. Her career, her life, her ability to watch out for Jo.” Mercedes tried to swallow. “Jo has her way of dealing with what she did.”

Booze. Everybody compensated somehow. Vivi hid, too, in her own way. Hid from the pain and fear, letting them win.

Wasn’t that what she’d done every time a man ever tried to get close to her?

She looked up at Lang, her heart filling. Every man except this one. He would be the one to break her out of
her prison. She would not live like Mercedes, old and alone and without sunshine and air. Or sex and love. They were just as essential.

“It’s okay,” he said, holding up a hand as if he thought Vivi was about to launch into an argument. “She can stay. For tonight.”

He’d misread her expression. He thought she was pleading for Mercedes. But she was pleading for herself.

“Thank you,” she said to him, turning to the other woman. “Just rest now, Mercedes. Don’t worry. There’s no reason anyone in the world needs to know your secret. I promise.”

For the first time since they’d met, Mercedes smiled, her blue eyes blurred with unshed tears. “Thank you.”

Vivi reached out and hugged her stiff shoulders, and got a loose, light, partial embrace in response.

“Don’t let him win,” Vivi whispered into her ear.

And it was time she took that advice for herself.

A
s they left the basement apartment, Vivi took Colt’s hand, threading her slender fingers between his, her gaze full of gratitude, affection, and intimacy. Or maybe that was just a reflection of everything he felt for her that moment.

“I
really
like it when you don’t fight me,” she said. “Thanks for letting me take the lead with her, when I know that’s not what you wanted to do.”

“You were very… gentle.” Masterful, in fact. Which only made him admire her more. “I don’t know why it took me so long to see it.”

“To see what?” she asked as they walked down the hall, toward the stairs.

“To see your tender side, your feminine side.” All the things he craved in a woman and had been so certain Vivi lacked.

She laughed softly, tugging him up the stairs. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, baby.”

He slowed his pace, then stopped with her two steps above him. She turned to meet him eye to eye.

“What happened to you in the last hour?” he asked.

Her smart-ass expression flickered away, and her whole face softened. “Other than finding a dead body and unearthing old secrets?”

“Yeah.” Because something was suddenly different in her. “You came… alive. Is that just because you love the search so much? The investigation and interrogation and digging up the truth?”

She smiled. “I’ve always liked that stuff—that’s why I do what I do. But, no, that’s not what changed in the last hour.”

“Then what did?”

She answered by putting her hands on his cheeks, bringing him closer until their lips nearly brushed. “You’re right,” she whispered. “I came alive. And you know what’s going to happen now that I am well and truly
alive
?”

Of course he knew what was going to happen, like he knew he was going to take his next breath. And he was going to love every single minute and deal with the aftermath later. Hell, maybe there wouldn’t
be
an aftermath.

“You’re going to kiss me?” he asked.

She let their lips touch just enough to spark. “And then?”

“We’re going up to your room?”

She opened her mouth, let their breath exchange. “And then?”

“We’re taking a shower?”

She laughed into the kiss, flicked her tongue over his, added enough pressure to almost knock him backward off the stairs. “No dirty sex with you, ever.”

He pulled her into him, wrapping his arms around her and returning the kiss with maximum force. Her hands slid from his face, down to his neck, clinging for life as their tongues entwined and teeth touched.

“Plenty of dirty sex,” he said gruffly, his whole lower half hardening against her. “In the bathtub.”

“The bathtub?” She leaned back to get a good look at him. “Is this my rule-following, golf-playing, old-school traditionalist Colton Cautious Lang?”

“Yes, Vivi Poison Angelino. That’s who’s about to make love to you and damn the torpedoes.”

She giggled in his mouth. “
Damn the torpedoes?
Yes, this is definitely my Lang.”

Her
Lang. “Move it.” He backed her up the stairs.

“We’re going to do it in the bath?”

“In the bath.” Two more steps. “On the floor.” One more step. “In the closet. On the bed. Against the wall. Hanging from the damn chandelier, if we can.” They reached the landing and he pushed her toward the door, his mouth on hers again. “Wherever the hell I can get inside you and stay there all night long.”

“Oh, yeah.” She practically melted in his arms, surrendering to the kiss and nearly tripping as he guided them into the room and locked the door behind him. “I love the way you roll, big bad Fed guy.”

He had to laugh at that, grabbing at her shirt to pull it up. She raised her arms and he stripped it off, reaching around to unhook her bra.

A grunt came from deep in his chest at the sight of her creamy, womanly body, his hands covering her instantly. He wanted to touch everything, kiss every inch, own every cell in Vivi’s body.

She gave it right back, electrified and hungry. They kissed and undressed, laughed, groaned, and gave each other assistance all the way to the bathroom, leaving a trail of T-shirt, shoes, jeans, underwear—the Glock he left on the dresser. The only thing he took was his wallet, for the condom he knew he had in it.

Fire shot through his body as he caressed her breasts, suckled her neck, and dragged her toward the bathroom. Moaning with appreciation, she fondled him with trembling hands, stroking the length of his hard-on, curling her fingers into his nest, cradling his sac, killing whatever shreds of self-control he hoped he might have.

“Turn the water on,” she said as they reached a tub that could seat seven, the wall behind it still missing the mirror but everything else exactly as they’d first found it.

He flipped both knobs full force and they stood kissing while the water rushed through a wide-mouth faucet that made a waterfall down the back of the massive marble tub.

She broke their kiss, lifting her hands to his chest, examining her fingers and palms. “We are filthy,” she said, stepping back to show her breasts blackened from the soot and ash on his hands.

“We need soap,” he said.

“Right there.” A wicker basket next to the tub was overloaded with high-end bottles of bath stuff, sponges, and brushes. “Pick one.”

He grabbed two plastic bottles, one filled with aquamarine liquid, the other a golden amber. “Cucumber and aloe or warm vanilla sugar?” he asked, turning the labels toward her like two bottles of fine wine.

“Definitely vanilla.”

“Good choice.” He dropped the green bottle back in the basket, twisted the cap off the vanilla, and poured it over her chest.

“Ahh!” She jumped back, surprised and laughing, but he kept pouring, covering her with the honey-colored soap, letting it drip over her stomach, between her legs, down her thighs to the floor. “You are officially out of control, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of Soap.”

“Shhh. You’ll ruin my reputation.” He tossed the half-empty bottle on the vanity and laid both hands on her breastbone and dragged them over her goo-covered flesh.

“Oh my God,” she whispered at the sensation, dropping her head back and letting him caress her. He followed the trail of soap over her flesh, sliding his hand down her belly and right between her legs.

She almost buckled at the touch.

“In the bath,” he ordered, helping her over the ledge.

It wasn’t full yet, but they tumbled into the water, and he leaned her back on the sloping marble designed for just this kind of bathing. He braced himself over her body as clouds of bubbles erupted under the cascading water.

Her hair floated like seaweed as she inched down into the water, her skin slippery and sexy and so, so perfect against his.

“You look like a mermaid,” he said, dragging his fingers through the locks, pushing them away from her body so he could see it before the bubbles covered his view. “No, an angel. A goddess. A water nymph.”

“Pick a metaphor, Lang,” she said with a laugh. “And kiss me before I drown.”

He started to, then lifted his head, looking at her
again. His body was a lost cause right now, so why not just tell her what was on his mind and lose that, too? “I don’t know the right comparison, but you’re beautiful, you know that? I don’t think I tell you that enough.”

Her laugh faded to surprise, and a little wonder, her mouth in an O as she drew in a breath. “No,” she said softly. “You really don’t. Ever, actually.”

“I should,” he admitted, stroking hair from her face. “Because you are, Vivi. You are utterly beautiful.”

“Oh, Lang.” His name was just a sigh of pure astonishment.

“Don’t be surprised,” he said. “You are beautiful.”

“I’m surprised that”—she glided soapy fingers over his cheeks, searching his eyes with her dark, intense gaze—“I just never imagined you’d be… the one.”

The one? Was he the one for her? He tried to swallow, tamping down the disagreement that rose. She didn’t like when he fought her on something, but… he did
not
want to be the one. For anyone.

“The one who’d pour soap over you and throw you in a tub? That one?” He tried for a joking voice, and almost succeeded.

She just smiled, like she knew he was attempting humor, making light of what really wasn’t light at all.

So he kissed her again, stopping the conversation, putting his full concentration where it belonged: finally making love to this woman who constantly surprised and baffled and intrigued him. Her mouth tasted like vanilla and Vivi, a taste getting all too familiar and delicious.

The bubbles blanketed her now, so he used his hands to appreciate her body, moving them everywhere he could touch, making her close her eyes and rock under him.
Heat oozed through him, his erection swollen against her stomach, his legs trapping hers between his.

She reached between them and closed her hand over him, stroking slowly, every breath more of a struggle than the one before. He kneeled up to give her full access, reaching back to turn the water off.