Midnight Man (26 page)

“John.” Her voice was a languid sigh and it raised the hairs along his forearms. The red sweater, molded to her firm breasts, rose and fell. She was breathing rapidly, almost panting. And he lost it.

He knew—he knew—what he should do next. He should pull that sweater off her slowly, get rid of the bra and lick and suck her breasts. She had small nipples that grew even smaller and rock hard when she was turned on. She liked it when he sucked hard and even when he bit lightly. She’d bucked the first time he did that, as if no one had ever bit her nipple before. He loved the thought that he was doing things to her no man had ever done before.

His hand would move down and he’d enter her with one finger, then when she softened up a bit, he’d put in a second. He’d spread his fingers slowly, getting her ready for him. She’d come fast this way and her cunt would pull at his fingers. He knew how to keep it going for a while, make her cry with her orgasm.

When she stilled, he’d slide down her, kissing her stomach along the way, and finally taste her, something he hadn't got around to yet. Going down on women wasn’t something he did often, only when he got tired of having his cock in the woman and by that time he was usually bored enough to call it off.

He knew Suzanne would be somehow different. Spicy and warm and exciting. So yeah, he’d bury his tongue in her until she came again. Whenever she came for the second time, she pulled harder and it lasted longer. While she was coming, he’d bury his cock in her, thrusting in time with her contractions, keeping it up until she went into meltdown.

Yeah, that’s what he should have done.

What he actually did was climb on top of her, open her with his fingers and thrust in, hard. She gasped and squirmed under him. He could feel her, frantically trying to adjust to him, to his size and length.

He’d skipped the extensive foreplay; the least he could do was stay still while she adjusted. Though he wanted to start moving—hard—he lay still on top of her, face buried in her neck. His back was tense and his ass tight as he held himself deep inside her. She was softening slowly, by degrees. Her legs opened wider and she hooked them around his, sleek and slim and strong. When Suzanne pushed her pelvis up against him, rocking gently, he let out his breath. Oh yeah. She was ready.

How could he keep from fucking her blind? He wanted some control, some way to keep it gentle, for the first time. As he held himself still, the buzzing in his head quieted enough to hear the radio, still playing soft music. That’s what he’d do. He’d make love to her to a slow beat. That should give him a modicum of control.

The strains of “Amazing Grace” filtered in, and he began to move slowly, in time with the music. A leisurely, languid in and out. Suzanne sighed in his ear, giving him goose bumps, rising to meet his slow strokes.

John slipped his hands under her hips to pull her more tightly against him on the downstroke. The music was working fine, helping him keep a slippery clutch on control. His mouth fastened on the skin behind her ear, where a hickey wouldn’t show, while his hips pumped in measured strokes.

Suzanne moaned and started shaking under him. His back was bathed with sweat from the effort of keeping from pumping hard and fast into her. He felt raw and open, fighting to keep the reins of control from slithering out of his grasp. The music helped, a little, but then it stopped and a smooth baritone voice started talking. The news.

Suzanne gasped and stilled. When she started coming, he’d be a goner. He waited for her contractions to start and for him to lose control. He jolted with surprise when her legs slipped down onto the mattress and she pushed at his shoulders.

“Get off me, John.” What? “Get off me now.”

She pushed again and he reared up and pulled out of her, his cock red and inflamed and wet. He was puzzled and frustrated. What the fuck?

Suzanne was sitting up, shivering, reaching for the covers. She pushed her hair back out of her eyes.

“What the hell are you doing? Why did you stop me?” John didn’t even try to keep the anger out of his voice when he saw from her body language that the sex was over. She was already reaching down beside the bed for panties and pants. In seconds she was dressed and standing. When she looked down at him, there was nothing in her face to show they’d just been making love. Her breathing was loud, chest rising and falling, eyes wide with emotion. When John realized that emotion was fear, he rolled off the bed and started walking toward her.

“Dear sweet God in heaven.” Her voice was shocked, breathless. “I think I know what’s been going on and who’s after me.” She drew in a deep, shaky breath. “I think I witnessed a murder.”

Chapter Fourteen

The trembling wouldn’t stop. Suzanne put a hand to her mouth, and then wrapped her arms around herself. She was cold down to her core. She looked helplessly at John. He was standing against the open doorway, his big naked body outlined by the light. She could see the gleam of his erect penis, still wet from her.

It had happened so quickly. One moment, she’d been tensing against his penis, feeling the waves of an orgasm building and the next, she’d been pushing at John’s shoulders, eager to get him off her. Just like that, a switch had been thrown.

She could still hear the smooth baritone of the announcer’s voice. She wouldn’t have paid any attention, normally, but it had been so lovely to feel John’s body moving in hers, while the graceful notes of “Amazing Grace” moved in her head. When the music stopped, she was still listening.

“This is Loren Bannister with some breaking news. The brutally beaten body of a Portland woman, Marissa Carson, was found today. The authorities say she was murdered sometime in the afternoon of the twenty-second of December. The woman lay unnoticed in her apartment until a neighbor, returning from a business trip, noticed her dog barking constantly. The neighbor called the police.

“Marissa Carson’s husband, businessman Peter Carson, who has just returned from a two-week vacation in Aruba, is cooperating with the authorities.”

John had pulled on his jeans, leaving them unzipped. He walked barefoot toward her, clutching her arms in a grip that almost, but not quite, hurt. He shook her. “What’s going on, Suzanne? What the hell do you mean—you saw a murder?”

Suzanne opened her mouth, but felt a sob about to come out. She snapped her mouth closed and shook her head. I will not cry, I will not cry, I will not cry. It was a mantra in her head. She swallowed heavily, bile rising in her throat. “I haven’t seen a TV here. Do you have one?”

His jaws clenched, but he didn’t blink at the change of subject. “No.”

“Oh.” Suzanne thought furiously. She needed to know—“Do you have a computer with internet access?”

He studied her for a long moment, then gave a sharp nod of his head. “Follow me.”

Follow me sounded odd when applied to a tiny shack. Still, she followed his broad back into the living room then watched, astounded, as he moved a throw rug aside, put his thumb to a screen and a piece of the floor simply rose up on silent hydraulics. It was connected to a steel ladder angling downwards.

He had another room downstairs, and she hadn’t even suspected. He took the lead and she followed him down the rungs of the ladder to stand under a harsh neon light, blinking. The room’s perimeters were the perimeters of the whole shack, so it was fairly large. It was bristling with electronics, blue steel, brushed aluminum. Suzanne didn’t know much about computer technology but she knew enough to realize that she was looking at tens of thousands of dollars of top-of-the-line equipment. No wonder upstairs had felt so bleak and abandoned. The heart of the house was here, gleaming metal, blinking lights, the hum of technology.

John was unfolding a sleek ultra thin laptop. He punched a few keys and with a beep, the screen was filled with the logo of a famous search engine. He looked at her, waiting. His expression was still.

“Can you find a news site, something local?” Suzanne doubted whether the murder would have made any of the major news sites, like CNN. It had to be local.

John nodded and logged onto an unfamiliar site. It had what she wanted, though.

“Click here.” She pointed at the screen and John obeyed. She was glad he wasn’t plying her with questions, because she wasn’t sure how cogent she could be. A new page blinked on and there it was—Portland Woman Bludgeoned to Death. Suzanne pointed at the screen again. He clicked and up came a studio portrait of Marissa, which she recognized, from having seen it in Marissa’s living room.

“I was in that woman’s apartment the afternoon she was murdered. She was a client. I might be the last person to see her alive.” She reached past John to scroll down to the photograph of the husband, Peter Carson, being interviewed at the airport on his arrival from Aruba. “Except for him. He wasn’t in Aruba, John. He was in Portland, and I saw him going into Marissa’s house the afternoon she was killed.” She laid a hand on his massive shoulder and squeezed. “He killed her.”

* * * * *

Fuck.

John stared at the computer screen. He was used to tactical and strategic thinking and he saw it all, plain as the chart of a Civil War battlefield. He saw every move and what every move entailed. He saw the steps that had to be taken and the consequences.

He also saw that this was the end of her life, as she knew it. And his. He leaned back, feeling old and tired, knowing what was ahead.

“Peter Carson.” He looked up at Suzanne. She was pale, a few lines of stress etched on her forehead. There’d be more—lots more—before this was over. “What do you know about him? And about his wife?”

Suzanne took one of his camp chairs, unfolded it, and sat down. “I don’t know Peter Carson at all. I never met him, except for on the twenty-second, as I told you. His wife is—was—a client of mine. I was called in to redecorate her home and we spent some time together going over the design. She was difficult, always changing her mind, so I probably saw her a few times more than I would have a normal client. She wasn’t a particularly nice woman. I never saw her husband. I just saw photographs of him everywhere in Marissa’s apartment. Or rather…his pictures were everywhere until the last time I was there. On the twenty-second. The day she died.”

“All the photographs were gone?”

“Yes. And Marissa was…I don’t know. Agitated. She couldn’t sit still. She kept making comments and hints, and then looking at me as if I should understand what she was saying. The only thing I really grasped was that she thought she was going to come into some money. A lot of money.”

It couldn’t have been clearer to John if he’d had a diagram drawn for him. “She was blackmailing him. She was hoping for a big divorce settlement otherwise she’d go public with what she knew about his business dealings. Or go to the police. It doesn’t matter. The point is she was going to expose him unless he paid her.”

“Expose what?”

John sighed and stood up. She might as well know. While he talked, he was planning. In fifteen minutes they could be packed and out of here. What would be a good place to fly out of? Not Portland, not Seattle. Maybe Boise. They could make it to Boise by morning. Abandon the Yukon with another set of false plates. He had two sets of false identities here, but not for a woman. He had to get them to a small town outside St. Louis where a master forger he knew could get a new set of papers for Suzanne. They’d lay low somewhere in the Midwest for a few weeks, then take the next leg of the journey.

There was a tug of regret at having to abandon the shack. He had a lot of good material up here. An even greater tug of regret at having to give up his new company. But he’d learned the hard way not to dwell on regrets. This was the way it was.

“Paul Carson isn’t a businessman, honey,” he said as he started climbing the ladder. She was following him up, puzzled. He headed into the bedroom and pulled his duffel bag out. “He’s the point man on the West Coast for the Russian Mafia. He’s got his hand in all sorts of nasty stuff, including human trafficking. He’s also under suspicion of counterfeiting airplane parts. You remember the crash of Flight 901?”

Suzanne nodded, wide-eyed.

“The FBI traced the sale of defective washers to Carson, to a company he owned, but they couldn’t prove it. Not something that would hold up in court. Their inside witness was found hanging from a meat hook. The guy’s ruthless as hell. Get your stuff together.”

“All right.” Without arguing, Suzanne quietly set about packing her bag. Good girl, he thought. “Do you want to tell Bud that we’re coming?”