In the Air Tonight (26 page)

“How about I get a head start?” Reid asked, and Ed stared at him. “Suppose there’s more than one person out there?”

“Don’t touch anything. Don’t move anything,” Ed warned. “And wait for me there.”

Caleb had his doubts that Reid would obey, but he was good enough that Ed would never notice. Ed was no slouch, couldn’t afford to be in this environment, where he was the only cop, but Delta had taught the men tricks that even the most discerning of law enforcement officials couldn’t pick up, and he knew it.

“Thanks, Ed,” Caleb told him, and Ed nodded, got into the car and drove Adrienne away.

The men walked inside, neither of them feeling exactly at peace that she’d been caught. “She’s the tip of the iceberg,” Cael muttered, and Reid grunted in agreement.

“He won’t get much more from her. She’s not organized enough to do any of this on her own. She couldn’t keep her cool when she was talking about
Paige,” Reid pointed out. “But she was definitely part of the harassment.”

“I didn’t see signs of anyone else, no tire tracks. Maybe you’ll find something at the cabin.”

“If I can, I’ll get the generator up and running before I go, and I’ll call you from the cabin.”

He took off at a light jog around the side of the house and Caleb went back inside, shutting the door against the cold.

Vivi was quiet now, as if all the adrenaline and anger she’d shown toward Adrienne had left her drained.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Her arms were folded tightly around her body, and he tried not to think about what had happened between them just an hour earlier. Because he wasn’t fine and he suspected she was nowhere close to it either.

The hum of the generator broke through the silence, and yes, the Adrienne woman had simply turned it off, which was good news. Seconds later, the lights went on, lower than normal, and he heard the old boiler kick in.

“Great—if the cable’s not out, we should have Internet access again.” She leaned across the desk, tapped a few keys and nodded in confirmation. Then she moved behind the desk and pulled up her chair.

“The FBI’s probably really sorry you left.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Is that a backhanded compliment?”

“It’s a real one.”

She went back to her work, not convinced. “I should’ve delved into this website more thoroughly
when I first found it. Dammit. There are a lot of screwed-up women in the world and most of them appear to be on this message board. Jeffrey’s got these women obsessed with him. He’s trying to be like Manson, getting these women to prove their love by doing who knows what.”

“Like killing Harvey and trying to frame Paige for it?” he asked, more to himself than her. “We’ll have to track them down, one by one.”

“There are so many of them—it would take too long to find them all.” She turned the monitor and showed Caleb the full website devoted to Jeffrey, paging through the various features, all of which were supposedly locked unless you were a member.

“If you’re not with the FBI, are you utilizing resources you shouldn’t be?”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell, right?”

“Way to twist that slogan,” he started, but she shushed him, actually waved a hand at him, completely dismissing him in favor of the computer, and a strange sense of déjà vu rocked him. He went to the window and looked out and then he went back to the desk, lost in some kind of strange time warp, his mind going a hundred miles an hour, trying to connect everything that was happening, until Vivi’s voice broke through his consciousness.

“You’re pacing—stop it.”

“This has all happened before.”

She looked up, blinked. “We’ve had conversations like this, yes.”

“If I stop pacing, can I help with the names?”

“I’d have to let you in on a few secrets,” she mused, and Christ, forget the secrets—all he wanted to do
was kiss her, finish what they’d started. It had nothing to do with the past … no, this attraction was all in the present.

“Are you willing to do that?” he asked. “Let me in?”

After a moment’s pause, she told him, “I think I always have been.”

And he really wanted to kiss her then, would have, if Reid hadn’t chosen that exact second to call in. Worst timing ever.

Reid started talking right when he answered. “She was definitely staying here. I found her bag, her ID—Vivi had the name right. There’s also a couple of audiotapes, the same message on Paige’s voice mail, and then another.” Reid paused. “It’s more intense.”

“A threat?”

“Unmistakably so.” Reid sounded angry as hell. “I’ll play it for your voice mail in a second so you can send it to Mace. There are photos too, of Paige. I took pictures of them, or else Ed would have my ass—those can be forwarded to Mace now.”

Yes, Mace needed to be told about this development, because Cael had a feeling this storm was far from over.

M
ace took the call as Paige buried her head in her arms, the tattooist working the tender skin of her shoulder while he flirted like hell with her.

For the moment, Mace was grateful she was distracted, because he knew the news wasn’t going to be good just by the tone of Caleb’s voice.

“I’m here with Reid—we caught someone breaking into the bar. She’s one of Jeffrey’s … girlfriends, I guess you’d call her. She’s a member of this website devoted to him. It’s like he’s re-creating the Manson family, except he’s doing it from inside jail.”

“Shit. Is everyone okay?”

“We’re fine. But listen, Vivi broke into the message board on the site. They know Paige is visiting Jeffrey—there are messages about it.”

“What are they planning?”

“Nothing. It says that Jeffrey told them not to do anything.”

“Doesn’t mean they’ll listen.” Mace watched as the tattooist rubbed a thin sheen of ointment on the finished tattoo.

“There’s more,” Caleb said, told him about the audiotapes and the pictures. “Vivi uploaded the files—the pics should be there and the voice mail too.”

Mace’s head began to throb, and he wondered if he should just take Paige straight back to New York and the bar, but he knew she’d never go for it. Mainly because she felt an obligation to the Kettering family, and he understood that. The rest, well, she’d be playing right into Jeffrey’s hands. “Keep me updated.”

“Will do,” Caleb confirmed.

When he hung up, Mace didn’t cancel their hotel reservation, but he called a different one and booked a room there too, just in case. Gave Reid’s name and gave a glancing thought to what Reid’s reaction to all this would be before listening to the message and looking through the pictures.

Paige was all done about five minutes later. Mace insisted on paying, since it had been his idea, and she walked out of the shop behind him, glancing over her shoulder the way he always did and he hated that she had to worry now. She waited until they were in the truck and driving before she spoke.

“I saw you on the phone. What happened?”

And here he thought she hadn’t been watching him. He’d planned on waiting a little while to share the intel with her, hated to ruin her tattoo high. “Reid came to the bar tonight and he caught a woman trying to break in—she was looking for you. She said she
has a message, but refuses to tell it to anyone but you. Vivi found her listed here.” Mace took out his phone and pulled up the website while they waited at a light. “Her name’s Adrienne Brite—do you know her?”

Paige stared at the website, opened to a picture of Adrienne, and shook her head. “I’d heard about these women but I’ve never actually seen this.”

“The Internet allows them to be way more organized than they would be otherwise.”

“Jeffrey’s not supposed to have access to a computer, let alone the Internet, right?”

“I don’t know. He’s probably got an illegal phone.” He pulled into the underground parking lot of the new hotel.

“Jeffrey always liked to collect things. Medals. Girls in high school—he was a real charmer. Most of my friends had a crush on him and I had to fight like hell to keep them separated. Thankfully, they were too young for him … or so they thought.” She paused. “If there’s more, tell me now, before we go upstairs. Because once we do, I want to shut it all off.”

He kept the car running and pulled up the pictures Vivi had sent to his phone, watched as Paige scrolled through them.

“This is from after the news report,” she confirmed.

“How do you know?”

She pointed to her neck in the picture. With her jacket blown open from the wind, you could clearly see the ring of bruises around her neck. “That was the last time I went inside the apartment—I stayed there and then I left late at night about forty-eight hours later.”

“Because of the news report?”

“I left right after that author called me—the one writing a book on Jeffrey. He asked to interview me. It’s what finally pushed me out the door,” she admitted.

Mace tried to wrap his mind around what Paige had been going through when she walked into the bar. And he’d been such a dick. “These followers, they’ve never bothered you before?”

“No.”

“His plan is to get you in front of him so he can manipulate you.”

“I know. I have to manipulate him right back. He probably won’t be expecting that.” She paused. “I have to figure out his … what would Gray call it, his end game? Jeffrey never did anything without a reason. This time’s no different.”

“We’ve got to talk it through, then. I want to see your poker face. You need to know what to reveal—what not to.”

“You’ll teach me some interrogation techniques?”

“Sure—I’ll compress all the training into an hour.”

She gave him a wry grin. “In this case, I’m something of an expert on my subject. Is there anything else happening at the bar I need to know?”

“There’s another recording. I don’t know when Adrienne was going to play it for you. I don’t know if you even want to hear it.”

“I don’t, but I need to. So go ahead.”

She looked so strong and determined, but she no doubt died a little each time something like this happened. It was with a heavy heart that he played the second message, watched her face carefully as Jeffrey’s voice filled the interior of the car.

“Hi, Paige—I was wondering if you’d made any new friends yet. I’m hoping you have, so I can do what I promised all those years ago. Come to think of it, I should’ve finished what I started that day in your room, really marked you. Made you mine. If you’d given in, I wouldn’t have snapped like that. And I’ve never stopped thinking about you … I’m going to finish what I started, and this time you have no one to help you. Be prepared to scream, Paige. I love hearing you scream.” There was a chuckle, almost boyish, and then, “See you soon, sis.”

Mace clicked the message off and waited. Paige simply stared straight ahead, blinking hard.

Finally, she turned to face him, her eyes liquid, but she hadn’t let any tears fall. “I don’t want to think about this any more tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll have to deal with it, but not tonight. You have to help me.”

He could think of nothing he wanted to do more.

He could think of something he wanted to do less, though, and that was answer Noah’s incoming phone call. As he escorted Paige out of the car and through the parking lot, he picked up the call.

Before he’d finished his greeting, his CO was barking, “You tell that asshole I know what he’s trying to do.”

Mace knew the asshole in question was Dylan—there hadn’t been much, if any, love lost between the two men when Dylan was under Noah’s command.

Correction, when Dylan was supposed to be under Noah’s command. Dylan was pretty much uncommandable, claimed he’d been born that way and planned on dying that way.

Much to Noah’s consternation, the dying part
proved damned elusive. “He’s worried about Caleb,” Mace said, in an effort to placate the situation. He felt Paige’s eyes on him but refused to look in her direction as Noah told him, “It’s more than that, Mace. Don’t bullshit me.”

Mace wondered, for a brief second, how badly Noah would string him up if he knew just how much potential trouble both he and Caleb were in at the moment. “Look, Noah—”

“No, you look. I didn’t send you away so you could work for some merc.”

“I know,” he said quietly.

It was all he could think to say, because it was the truth. Noah obviously knew that too, because he hung up, leaving Mace with a dial tone and Paige staring at him.

M
ace was practically vibrating with tension as he led her into the hotel room.

“Do you need to go back now?” Paige asked, praying the answer was no, and he shook his head.

Relief flooded her.

“That was my CO,” he said finally, after he put their bags down. “He’s pissed.”

“Why?”

He sat on the edge of the bed, hung his hands in between his open knees, staring at them. She noted the scars on the knuckles—they were a working man’s hands, and she remembered the way they’d handled her and she blushed as her body heated, despite everything.

When he finally looked up at her, his eyes were
dark, glittering. “Cael’s older brother Dylan wants us to work with him. My CO knows, and he’s not happy.”

“What business is Dylan in?”

“Private contracting,” he said, and she looked confused. “The mercenary business.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

That made him give her a lopsided grin. “What we do in Delta’s not all that different.”

“I guess not. So are you going to work with Dylan, then?”

He shrugged. “We’ll see. After ten years of working for the government, it’d be nice to call my own shots.”

“But what about the bar?” She wondered why she’d felt such a visceral tug in her gut when she thought about him abandoning the bar. Somehow, she’d come to think of it as her refuge.

“I could hire a manager to run it when I’m gone same as I’ve been doing.”

God, she didn’t want to think about him being gone.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he told her. “Come on, let’s take that bandage off so you can get some sleep.”

Getting the tattoo had been just what she needed. It had relaxed her, taken her mind off everything and everyone—except Mace. It was one of those odd things that happened with tattooing—the pain became almost pleasurable. She wanted to feel that way again, wanted to pretend those phone calls he’d received didn’t exist.