Freefall (16 page)

Totally drained—physically, mentally, and emotionally-—Sabrina hadn't argued. But deep down inside, she secretly wondered if she would ever feel normal again.

"As the so-called miracle of the Paradiso Angeli, I suddenly had this huge spotlight on me. I couldn't so much as walk to the
mercato
without people staring at me. Whispering about me."

Or wanting to touch her, as if to transfer a bit of her miracle power to themselves.

"One morning, just as we'd gotten out of the car that Eve's husband, Gabriel, had rented, a woman held up her baby for me to bless."

The infant had been wearing a long white lace dress and a frilly bonnet, like a baptismal gown.

"That was when I decided to come home."

"Good call."

"So." Sabrina exhaled a long breath and realized she felt a bit better for having shared the story. Not good. But better.

Enough so to garner the courage to ask him the question she'd been wondering about all evening.

"Having shared my darkest experience, I have to ask—is it true what Brad's telling people? That you were court-martialed?"

"Now, why am I not surprised he was in such a hurry to tell you about that?" he said dryly. "The subject of a court-martial
was
mentioned. But the whole thing ended up being dropped when I agreed to leave the team."

Which couldn't have been easy. "Why was there a
thing
at all?"

"Maybe because the military brass gets a little annoyed when a noncom threatens a superior officer." As he took his arm from around her shoulder, his hand unconsciously folded into a fist. "In my case, the officer in question was a general."

"You said 'threatened.' Does that mean you didn't try to kill him?"

"I didn't lay a finger on him."

"I didn't think so." The teenager he'd once been had possessed a temper. From what she'd seen of the man, Zach had acquired a great deal of self-control during the intervening years.

"But only because I knew that if I allowed myself to punch him in his supercilious face just once, I wouldn't have stopped until I'd killed the son of a bitch."

"I don't believe that." She hadn't bought the idea when Brad had thrown it at her, and she didn't buy it now.

"That's where you're wrong, New York."

The man who had quietly stroked her hair, her shoulder, and nuzzled the top of her head with his chin while she'd shared her story was gone. Replaced by the hardened SEAL she was beginning to recognize.

"The only reason I didn't send the bastard to hell, where he belonged and will hopefully someday end up, was that I didn't want Dad to have to spend the rest of his days visiting his son on Fort Leavenworth's death row."

Sabrina didn't believe Zach capable of such an act, but she decided against arguing.

"What happened?" she asked instead. "To make you want to kill him in the first place?"

His exhaled breath was longer, deeper, than hers had been. He also had gone inside himself. Sabrina could see no trespassing signs posted all around him.

"It's a long story. And it's late."

"I told you mine."

A ghost of a smile appeared at the corner of his lips. "If you want to play that game, I can think of a lot more fun ways to show and tell."

"Good try. But I'm serious."

"Yeah. I could tell that." He rolled his broad shoulders. "But, like I said, it's a long story. For another time."

Seeming uncomfortable by the direction the conversation had taken, Zach stood up and held out his hand. "Where's your key?"

"This is Swarm Island," she said. "No one locks doors here."

"I'll bet the house was locked when you first arrived."

"Well, yes, but I assumed that was because it'd been sitting empty."

"More likely because things have changed around here. When you were at Titania's, how many people did you recognize in the restaurant?"

She paused a moment to consider that. "None."

"I rest my case. It's not just locals anymore. I'll bet you never left your doors or windows unlocked in Florence."

"Well, of course not. It's a big city."

"Like I said, with all the strangers, there's no point in taking stupid chances."

"Are you calling me stupid?"

"Sorry." The mood had definitely changed. "Bad choice of words." He opened the heavy door. "But you of all people should know that the world isn't always safe."

"True." She lifted her chin. "But I'm also not going to run around like Chicken Little waiting for the sky to fall in on me."

"Maybe you could shoot for a middle ground," he suggested. "I'll see you in the morning. Meanwhile, lock this door behind me."

"Yessir." She shot him a quick salute, closed the door in his face, and twisted the lock.

"And don't forget to latch the chain," he called out.

Cursing beneath her breath, she slid the chain into the slot, kicked off her heels, and headed upstairs to bed.

Where the hell had she hidden it?

The problem was, the task was like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. It had been bad enough before the granddaughter suddenly showed up on the island before he'd had time to find the envelope, which could be hidden anywhere in this obscenely massive house.

Now he was forced to spend his nights creeping around in the dark like some second-story man from a bad jewel-theft movie.

But what he was seeking was far more valuable than diamonds or emeralds. Because if Sabrina Swann found the damning evidence before he did, he would end up strapped to a gurney in the Broad River Correctional Facility's death chamber with needles in his veins.

He had to find it.

Or, he thought as he moved the flashlight over the library walls, trying to figure out which, if any, of the hundreds of books Lucie Somersett Swann had hidden the envelope in, perhaps there was an easier way out of this problem.

He could kill the granddaughter.

Like he'd done with the old bitch, who'd had the bad luck to die before he could learn where she'd hidden the damn photos. Proving that it was true what they said about best-laid plans…

He'd always known the photographs and tapes were a risk. But, dammit, wasn't that half the fun? Being able to look back and remember the good times?

Books and movies about serial murders were all the time alleging that serial killers were insane because they kept trophies, or souvenirs, of their crimes.

But the profilers, who thought themselves so damn smart, had it wrong. It wasn't crazy to want to document good times. Why else did people take videos of themselves having sex, or bore everyone at work with their snapshots of Disney World vacations?

Everyone needed a hobby. Some people played golf, others went fishing, some liked to needlepoint, and others got off on traveling.

He liked having himself a hot little sex slave. He liked bending her to his will. Liked making her do things she'd never, ever, imagined doing in her darkest dreams.

He especially liked punishing her, not because she'd disobeyed him but because that was the way she learned that he was the Master. And as such, he could treat his slave any damn way he wanted.

Even forcing her to have sex with other men. And afterward, making her watch him kill those men in front of her.

Hell, he didn't need photographs. Not when just the memory of watching the blood gush from that homeless loser's jugular all over her chained, naked body, then feeling the hot, slick, wet slide of it against his own flesh as he'd taken her hard and fast, was enough to make him hard even now.

Too horny to wait until he got home, assured from the stillness in the house that the granddaughter had gone to sleep, he sprawled in one of the bark brown leather chairs and unzipped his jeans, releasing his throbbing dick. He wrapped his fingers around it, felt it jump beneath his touch like a downed electrical wire in a thunderstorm.

With the sound of Hallie Conroy's terrified screams reverberating in his mind and urging him on, he leaned his head against the chair and arched his back. It only took him three quick strokes to come.

His body stiffened, then jerked as the orgasm, nearly as powerful as that first time, exploded. With erotically violent visions flashing in his mind like strobe lights, he allowed his mind and his body to empty.

The crash was deafening, yanking him back to reality.

Shit. His foot had kicked the base of a floor lamp, knocking it over, breaking the stained-glass shade.

And damn it all to hell, if that wasn't bad enough, from upstairs, in her bedroom overhead, he heard Sabrina Swann's feet hit the floor.

Zach had always been able to sleep anywhere. Anytime. He'd learned during his first week of SEALs BUD/S training to take a "combat nap" standing up. Even that helo going down hadn't changed things. Oh, his sleep might be tortured with memories of the aftermath of the crash in nightmares, but he still possessed the ability to fall like a rock into sleep the minute he hit the rack.

Until tonight.

Because, dammit, he kept imagining Sabrina in that pink fairy-tale-princess canopied bed. But, unlike when he'd inadvertently seen her, she wasn't alone. In his
Penthouse Forum
fantasies, he was with her.

Her long blond hair flowed over her bare shoulders, reaching nearly to pert breasts that, unlike so many pumped-up silicone ones that were a dime a dozen these days, fit perfectly in his hands. Her rosy nipples pebbled like berries beneath the erotic onslaught of his lips. His tongue. His teeth.

In his fantasy, her lean body was warm and welcoming; her arms and legs wrapped around his hips as she urged him, "Please, Zach, take me now."

He could picture her as clearly as if he were lying with her now. Her flesh would be silvered by the moonlight streaming in through the open window; her soft lips, swollen and dark from shared kisses, would be parted as she murmured his name over and over; and her remarkable green eyes would widen as he surged into her, claiming her. Totally.

"Shit." He glared down at the erection that, if he didn't manage to get his mind on something—or someone—else, was going to cause him to spend the rest of the night in a cold shower.

She's just a woman
. He repeated the words that were quickly becoming his own personal mantra over and over again in his sex-hungry mind.
Just like any other
.

Yeah. Sure.

He could try to convince himself of that from now until doomsday, but it didn't stop the erotic images of Sabrina Swarm, hot and naked and
his
, from burning in his mind and his loins.

He splayed his right hand across his chest and felt the increased beat of his heart beneath his fingertips as he imagined her straddling him, her lush pink lips trailing hot, wet kisses down his body. Zach was about to cave in to the woman hunger ripping away at him and take care of things himself when the sudden shrill demand of the cell phone on the bedside table shattered the sexual fantasy.

The caller ID said "Lucie Swarm." Which was, of course, impossible. Which would only mean one person.

He snatched it up. "You're supposed to be sleeping." His voice was rough with need. "Though if you're calling for phone sex, I'm certainly up for that."

Literally.

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. A special kind of quiet that had the hairs at the back of his neck standing on end.

"Sabrina?"

"I'm sorry." She sounded very far away. "This was a mistake."

"What?"

"Calling you. For some reason, maybe because of our conversation earlier, you were the first person who popped into my mind. Which I know is going to sound foolish, but I was scared, and—"

He erection instantly deflated. He sat bolt upright. "What happened?"

"It's not important." Her shaky tone said otherwise.

"Are you in any immediate danger?"

Out of bed in a nanosecond, he scooped up the jeans he'd dropped earlier and yanked them up his legs.

"Of course not, but—"

"Where are you?"

"In the house. In my bedroom. Which was another stupid thing. If someone
was
in the house, going upstairs was not the brightest idea I've ever had."

Someone in the house
? "Lock the bedroom door. Then call 911."

"I'm sure it's nothing. I was just edgy after our talking about the bombing, and I overreacted when that crash downstairs woke me up."

"Call 911," he repeated, pulling out his do-not-fuck-with-me SEAL tone. "And lock the door. It'll take me ten, fifteen minutes to get there."

"Really, Zach—"

"Ten minutes," he repeated. Then hung up before she wasted more time by arguing.

He made it in eight. By the time the red Viper came tearing up in front of the house, Sabrina was already regretting having called him. What was it about the man that had her behaving so impulsively?

She left the bedroom, went downstairs and out onto the veranda. "I'm sorry. I never should have bothered you."

"Of course you should have." His long legs ate up the driveway. "What happened?"

Could she feel any more foolish? "A lamp broke. And there are some books scattered around on the desk and some tables that I could've sworn weren't there earlier."

"In the library?" If he was surprised to have gotten an emergency SOS over a broken lamp and some clutter, he didn't reveal it.

"Yes. As I said, I was asleep, and I heard this loud crash, and when I came downstairs a floor lamp was on its side. The glass had shattered."

"That explains the blood on your feet."

Blood? Sabrina looked down and saw the crimson smears. "I must've stepped on a piece of glass."

"That'd be my guess." He scooped her up.

"I'm perfectly capable of standing on my own two feet," she insisted.

"Wouldn't want you to push it in deeper," he said reasonably as he carried her back into the house. "You could slice a tendon."

He plunked her down onto a wooden chair. "Sit. And don't move from this spot while I search the place."

"Do you have a dog?"

"No." He seemed surprised by the question. "Why?"

She gave him a sweet, false smile. "Because you certainly seem to have the vocabulary down.
Sit. Stay
. If we do end up sleeping together, I hope you won't expect me to fetch your paper in the morning, because I'm afraid you're going to be very disappointed."

His grin was a quick slash of white that made her think of the pirates that used to sail the waters around Swann Island.

"Believe me, New York,
when
I wake up with you wrapped around me, reading the news is going to be the furthest thing from my mind. Meanwhile, wait here for Nate while I start searching the house."

"Don't you think this is overkill? I obviously overreacted."

"That could well be what Hallie Conroy thought. Or Cleo Gibson."

Sabrina's blood suddenly turned as cold as it had when she'd first heard that crash downstairs. "You don't think their killer was in my house?"

"I've no idea. It's unlikely." He pulled an ugly gun from the back of his jeans. "But how likely is it that a serial killer would show up on the island in the first place?"

Having no idea what to say to that, Sabrina decided against arguing.

"Be careful," she said instead.

"Don't worry." He winked, although his expression remained sober. "I'm a professional, remember?"