Officer out of Uniform (Lock and Key Book 2) (20 page)

Henry’s stomach clenched as the information washed over him. It wasn’t exactly unexpected, but it sure as hell wasn’t welcome, either. “Who?”

“They haven’t been positively identified yet,” Liam said, “but one was a male and the other a pregnant female. Civilians, as far as anyone knows. Investigators think that if they’d been involved in law enforcement, he would’ve made a show of their murders, like he did the warden’s, instead of hiding them.”

“Pregnant? Jesus!”

“Yeah. They were buried about half a mile from your house, in the woods. Somebody dug a shallow grave beneath a rocky little ridge and covered it with stones to keep animals out.”

“That’s all they found – no sign of Levinson?”

“Afraid not. If he left any tracks, the rain washed them away. It’s been torrential.”

“He was bleeding when he fled.”

“There was a little blood spatter on a tree trunk not far from where the confrontation took place, but that’s all.”

“Damn it. If I’d just—”

“You and Sasha are both alive. No major harm done. That’s the important thing, trust me. Levinson is hurting, and he lost the rifle he stole from the warden. He’ll be caught soon.”

“Yeah, but how many other people will he kill first? If the police had just called the prison into the search from the get-go, as soon as the warden was found—”

“Yeah. Maybe we’d have found him. And maybe not. That doesn’t matter now – there’s no going back. Anyway, I gotta get ready for work. The morning news is about to come on – a reporter trekked into the woods yesterday evening and got some footage from the crime scene. Turn the TV onto channel 7 if you want to see the report.”

Henry hung up and didn’t bother to switch on the TV. Whatever they had to report, Liam had already filled him in on.

“Who’s pregnant?” Sasha stood in front of Henry, her hands on her hips. “And what did the police find?”

With a sour taste in his mouth, Henry told her everything. By the time he finished, she was pale.

He took one of her hands in his – he hadn’t gotten to touch her much since shit had hit the fan the evening before. The heat of her fingers curled up inside of his hit him like a tidal wave, submerging him in a bittersweet mixture of delayed emotions: relief that she was okay and fear that he’d still lose her, admiration for her and shame directed at himself.

Slowly, she met his eyes, then held his gaze for several seemingly endless seconds. Though her face was still pale, it was beautiful. Her golden hair was backlit by the sunrise, and her black eye didn’t look that bad anymore.

“Admit it,” she said softly, “you were wrong about me and my Shun.”

He snapped his gaze from her mouth back to her eyes. “You attacking Randy Levinson with that kitchen knife was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I thought it was pretty incredible, myself. I mean sure, I almost had a heart attack at the time, but in retrospect, I think I was pretty badass.”

“Why did you take your dress off?” It was a question he hadn’t bothered to ask until now, but one he’d been wondering about ever since she’d come charging onto the scene in nothing but her swimsuit.

“I tripped over it and didn’t want it to get in my way again.”

“Oh. I thought maybe you were trying to create a distraction.”

“That was just a lucky side-effect. I
wish
I’d thought of that. You have to admit, it was pretty effective.”

For a split second, he thought he might actually laugh. Then his good humor crashed and it all came back down on him: the guilt and the anger, the fear he still couldn’t shake, even though she’d come out of the confrontation without any serious injuries.

“You saved my ass,” he admitted. “Don’t think I don’t know that, and don’t think a part of me isn’t impressed by how crazy you can obviously get on behalf of the people you care about. But Jesus, Sasha, you could’ve been killed. You’re lucky you weren’t.”

“I would’ve done the same for anyone I love, and it’s not crazy. It’s what people do.”

“Do you really think I would’ve wanted you to come to my rescue if it would’ve meant you getting hurt or killed instead of me? Fuck that – I’d rather be dead than alive and living with that kind of guilt.”

She tried to protest.

“I mean it,” he said. “Every word of it. I wish you’d never set foot in those woods. If Randy Levinson didn’t have you on his hit list before, he does now. I’m sure of it.”

“That’s not fair,” she said. “I care about you. I love you. I’d do it all over again, if I had the chance.”

He didn’t know whether or not to be furious. A part of him was absurdly happy to hear her say she loved him, no matter what the context.

“If what you said is true,” she continued, “and you love me too, then you know how I feel and you know I couldn’t have done anything differently.”

He squeezed her hand, hard. “I do love you – I just didn’t expect you to love me back. At least not so soon. I definitely don’t feel like I’ve done anything to deserve it.”

“I don’t love you because you’ve checked every box on some sort of secret list of heroic acts,” she said, “although you
are
the bravest person I know. I’ve loved you almost since I met you, and I swear up and down I’ve never said that to anyone before. Up until recently I’ve been trying not to let you know how crazy I am about you, because I didn’t want to scare you off.”

“Jesus. All along you’ve been trying
not
to let me know how much you like me?”

She grinned, and her cheeks turned pink. “You have no idea how hard it’s been.”

She just sort of melted into him then, somehow wrapping her arms around his neck without touching the bandage that covered the stitches running over his collarbone and down his chest a short way. When her lips touched his, his dick jumped to instant attention. It was hard to believe how bad he wanted to take her, right there on the hospital bed.

“Come on,” he said, pulling away before he could lose control, “let’s get out of here before they try to serve us hospital food.”

“Going to cook breakfast for me?” Her tone was teasing, and she still held his hand. Tightly.

“I have a better idea: let’s go to IHOP. It’s just down the road from here.” Between his injury and what she’d just told him, his head was spinning. He needed coffee ASAP and he was hungry enough to stop at a restaurant.

“Sounds good to me.”

She slid slowly off of him, her gaze drifting to the call-a-nurse button on the side of the bed.

He kept his hold on her hand, meeting her eyes. “Promise me one thing, Sasha.”

“What?”

“I know you care enough to put yourself on the line. But if you love me, don’t ever put yourself at risk for my sake again. If it comes down to it, I don’t want to be saved. When I say I’d rather die than lose you, I mean it.”

* * * * *

“Does anyone ever actually use the strawberry syrup?” Henry poured some of the original old fashioned flavor over the pancakes that’d come with his omelet.

“I’ve always wondered that,” Sasha replied. “I like the butter pecan.”

She leaned forward in the IHOP booth, taking a long sip of her coffee. Henry sat across from her, the hospital band shorn from his wrist, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt Grey had brought to the hospital for him.

Sasha wore an outfit a friend had brought for her too – Kerry had a spare key to her apartment, and had gone there to retrieve a clean top and pair of shorts for her.

But Sasha hardly thought of that now. All she could think about was Henry – the deep line between his eyes, and what he’d said to her before they’d left the hospital.

Of course, there was no way she’d do as he asked: abandon him in a time of danger to save herself. If she had to go back in time, she’d charge into the woods and face Randy Levinson a thousand times over. But she’d heard real anguish in his voice when he’d told her he’d rather die than lose her, and it was written all over his face now.

In light of the fact that she was perfectly fine, it seemed obvious that he’d lost someone else he cared about before and was thinking about it now. She could practically see that person haunting him – whoever he or she was. She thought of the scars on his back, and it wasn’t hard to put two and two together.

“Henry, you seem really upset.”

He looked up from the full cup of black coffee he’d been staring into. “Shouldn’t I be? Randy Levinson is on the loose, and it’s my fault. He wouldn’t be if I hadn’t fucked up yesterday.”

She shook her head. “I know you’re furious about Randy, but that’s not what I’m talking about. What you said to me at the hospital, about not wanting me to help you… What made you say that?”

She wanted to reach out and take his hand, but he had both of his under the table. It was kind of sad that they’d told each other they loved each other less than an hour ago, and now the table between them seemed like an insurmountable barrier.

She didn’t doubt his love for her, but this wasn’t exactly how she’d imagined things going after declarations like the ones they’d made.

“What do you mean? Is it really a surprise that I don’t want the woman I love starting knife fights with a psychopath on my behalf?”

Hearing him refer to her as the woman he loved sparked a glow inside her, despite the context. “You’d do it for me. Why shouldn’t I do it for you?”

He sighed, and finally took a drink of his coffee. Then, for a while, he said nothing at all.

“Henry, I—”

“For fuck’s sake, Sasha, can’t you just agree to this one thing?” He kept his voice low, but there was an edge to it – one that hurt to hear.

“No. Because I’m afraid of losing you too. You don’t have a monopoly on worry, no matter how justified it is.”

He met her eyes, and his seemed darker than usual, a deep gunmetal grey, like the Atlantic Ocean when the sun was tucked away behind hurricane clouds. “You’re not going to lose me. I have an incredible ability to survive, even when I shouldn’t.”

His words hurt, not in the way cruel words did, but because she could sense the deep well of pain he’d drawn them from. “You mean in Afghanistan, right? You’re talking about whatever gave you those scars on your back.”

“It was an IED. One of my friends stepped on it. It tore him apart, and he died. So did my other friend, who’d been right behind him. Piece of shrapnel hit him in the neck, sliced right through an artery. Me though – I’d turned away to check something else out. All I got were a few scratches on my back. I was fine.”

Sasha certainly wouldn’t call his wounds scratches, but in that moment, she could see that they were shallow compared to the marks the event had left on his mind. Survivor’s guilt, and memories he’d have to live with for the rest of his life.

“I’m not going to look at you and turn away because everything seems fine,” he said. “I’m not interested in being the last one standing. Not again.”

“Fucking hell on a stick.” Randy’s hand shook as he squeezed the rubbing alcohol bottle, and he ended up dumping most of it all over his shoulder and chest.

He splashed the rest of it onto his face and bit his tongue in order to keep from crying out. The last thing he needed was for someone to hear him.

“God damn it.” He shoved the empty bottle back into his backpack, the one he’d stopped by the trailer to retrieve before fleeing into the woods again, in search of a new hiding place.

The trailer wasn’t safe anymore – the police were sure to find Sean and Chloe’s bodies, now that they’d be combing the woods behind Dryden’s house. It was only a matter of time before they identified them and went to the trailer to notify Joseph Reynolds.

This place – where he was now – had called to him. He’d stumbled upon it last night coming out of the woods, and it had promised secrecy, shelter. Maybe it was the fact that the shadows around it had seemed a little darker than all the rest, but he felt in his bones that this was somewhere where he could regroup, figure out what he was going to do next.

The contents of his bag shifted, and he heard the rattle of what little bit of food he had in there: nuts and beef jerky, enough to last a couple days, if he rationed it out.

He’d eaten a few pieces of the jerky for breakfast, though his face was so busted up he’d had to suck on it instead of chewing. The backpack held his essentials for survival on the run: money and a little food, first aid supplies, gloves and a flashlight. A couple knives, of course, and a 9 mm, among other things.

He’d lost the Blaser in the fight with Dryden and his girlfriend, and damned if that didn’t grate on him worse than his wounds did, even with the alcohol burning his lacerated flesh. The dog had bitten deep, but the crazy bitch’s knife had cut deeper, laying open his arms and face.

The gash on his right arm was the worst. He could tell it’d hit muscle, because he couldn’t move it right anymore. Other than that, he was pretty sure Dryden had broken one of his cheekbones. It hurt like a bitch, and he burrowed a hand into his backpack, reaching for a certain bottle. He had to go by feel because it was pitch dark, and the batteries in his flashlight had gone dead the night before, though they’d been a fresh set.

Unfortunately, they’d also been his only set.

After dumping three times the recommended dosage of painkillers into his mouth and swallowing, he drew in a deep lungful of damp air. This was how he’d spent the night before, and how he’d spend the day: in the dark popping pills, healing and figuring out how he was going to pull off all that he’d planned.

* * * * *

Sasha ran her fingers over Henry’s scars, feeling every ridge, every twist in the raised tissue that ran over his back. Now that she knew how he’d gotten them and what they meant to him, laying hands on them was different. Before, she’d seen them and known that they’d hurt him, once. Now, she felt them and knew that they still did.

“Fuck.” His breath made her hair flutter when he swore.

“What?” She looked up at his face, then down at his naked body. Was it too soon – was this hurting him?

It’d been about 24 hours since their encounter with Randy Levinson, and she was sure the doctor wouldn’t have recommended sex so soon, if they’d asked.

Of course, they hadn’t.

“I wanted to put your legs up on my shoulders.”

She tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a breathless gasp. “Oh, really?”

“I’ve been thinking about it ever since last time we fucked.”

“You mean
fantasizing
about it.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’ll give you some incentive to get better. Remember, if you go charging off into the face of danger again, you could get hurt. And wouldn’t it be a shame if another injury delayed us getting to live out your fantasy?”

She wasn’t really joking – now that Henry had put the idea in her head, her core was clenching up tight. She was naked, and could feel the resulting dampness warming the folds of her pussy, warding off the chill of her apartment’s central air. She’d talked Henry into coming here after they’d left IHOP and visited Wolf at the vet clinic earlier that day.

Hopefully Randy Levinson had no idea where they were. And even if he did, Sasha’s apartment was well within Cypress’s town boundaries – there was no forest stretching behind the building, just other homes. Of course, the best case scenario would be if Randy was lying dead somewhere.

But if he was, why hadn’t the police found him?

A nagging sense of uneasiness told Sasha that even if he was badly injured, he was still alive, and he probably hadn’t gotten far. A burst of shock hit her along with the memory of cutting him with her knife, carving red lines in his arms and face. The blood had welled up so fast, it’d dripped off of him like rain and stained her skin with spatter.

“Hey, everything all right?”

Sasha blinked up at Henry. “Yeah. I was just spacing out.”

“Thinking about yesterday?”

She nodded.

His mouth turned down at the corners, leaving him looking suddenly angry, bitter.

“I hate rehashing it over and over in my head,” she said. “Let’s forget about it, for now.”

He must’ve been exhausted by the memories too, because he didn’t protest. Which was a huge relief – you didn’t just tell someone you loved them and then stay up all night keeping watch, listening to a police scanner and cleaning your Glock, which was what she’d feared he’d insist on doing.

But no – when she ran her hands down his back, all the way to his hips, he didn’t say anything. She could practically see the previous day’s events swirling in the blacks of his eyes, but the way he kept his gaze riveted to her body anyway said that he really wanted to forget, for a while.

She knelt, a hand slipping over the ridge of his hip bone and below. His balls were hot against her palm, and she played with them as she pressed her lips to the head of his dick. Whatever else his injuries had done, they clearly hadn’t affected his ability to want this.

She took him deep, all at once, until the back of her throat ached and her tongue was flattened beneath the broad shaft of his cock. He tasted faintly salty, was so hard and hot that her mouth began to water. When he rocked his hips, she moaned and moved, running her tongue up and down his shaft, tracing the ridge that defined the edge of the head.

His balls were still cradled in her hand, and she touched the soft skin behind them, rubbing in a circular motion while she gripped his thigh with her other hand. She liked holding onto him like that. It meant she could feel him getting all tense and hard, could feel how badly he wanted to come already. Knowing made her pussy tighten, made her even wetter than she’d been before.

When she thought about how it always felt when he first thrust into her, a sharp burst of sensation flared inside her, so good it hurt. She moaned and held his balls a little tighter, exerted a little more pressure against that tender skin.

He moved his hips again, rocking into her mouth. He went hard for a few strokes, then stopped, pulling out before she could react.

Half a second later, he had her pressed onto her back on the bed. The weight of his body between her thighs made her want to moan again, and when his hard cock – still wet from being inside her mouth – brushed her inner thigh, she did exactly that.

He pressed his face against her breasts, let his breath stream hot over their curves before he closed his mouth around a nipple. Instantly, it was diamond-hard against his tongue. It stayed that way as he sucked, bit it lightly, and sucked again. It was enough to drive her crazy.

Then again, so was just about everything he did. She was pretty sure he’d blown a circuit in the pleasure center of her brain when he’d first locked her up in those cuffs, licked her pussy from behind and then fucked her the same way. Now, she was aching for him all the time, and when he laid hands on her getting off always felt imminent.

Maybe it was a little shallow, but she couldn’t stand the thought of losing this – the sex. To experience absolute bliss with someone as perfect as Henry and then have it taken away forever… There were no words.

Of course, it was far from her only worry, or her biggest one. But it was a very real fear. As much as she’d always appreciated the opposite sex, she knew that no one would ever compare to Henry, in bed or out. She’d meant it when she’d said she loved him – she loved him so much it hurt to think about. She ached physically at the thought of never being with him like this again, but the thought of losing him altogether hurt her heart, the intangible essence of her very being.

When he raised his head from her breast and met her eyes, something inside her snapped.

“That knife almost hit your axillary artery.” The words were tumbling out before she knew it. “Another millimeter, and you would’ve bled to death before I ever could’ve gotten you out of the woods.”

He didn’t move, didn’t blink. “It didn’t, though. I’m fine. All that’ll come out of this in the end is another scar.”

“It almost did, though. It could’ve. I thought of that then, you know.” She couldn’t help it, she shook. And she knew Henry felt it.

“I got lucky. No sense in worrying about it now.”

“Yeah, well…” He could’ve just as easily been unlucky – she could be sitting in her apartment alone right now, knowing she’d never see him again. “I’m afraid you won’t be lucky next time. I know you’re even more obsessed than ever with catching him now. Don’t try to deny it!”

He didn’t, and his gaze seemed to say that he wouldn’t. “I’ll be back on the search as soon as I’m cleared to return to work. That should be soon.”

The prison had deployed the PERT officers. She knew it was killing him that his friends Liam and Grey were searching Riley County while he was left out because the prison had forbidden him to go into work that day.

“What if I lost you?” she asked. “What if you were gone, and I was left to know that no matter how much or how hard I thought about you, you wouldn’t be able to think of me. And all I’d have to hold onto would be memories that’d fade over time. I can’t stand to think about it.”

She knew this was an absurd time to bring this up, but finally speaking her fears out loud felt empowering somehow. Like she was shedding light on a monster that’d been lurking in the shadows, feeding on secrecy and growing stronger.

“The risk is just part of my job, Sasha. Always has been and always will be. If we’re going to be together, you’re going to have to deal with it.”

The truth of his statement hit her where it hurt. Maybe it showed on her face, because he frowned.

“I’m not trying to be an ass about it. And look – statistically, I’ll probably reach retirement age someday and be just fine. Randy Levinson is a freak of nature. Stuff like this doesn’t happen very often.”

“Yeah, but when it does … you’re not afraid, are you?”

“There’s no point in being afraid. You have to do what you have to do regardless.”

“Yeah, but…” She knew that was true. Hell, she wasn’t an idiot. “What I mean is that you seem to like it. It’s not just a job to you – you
want
to catch him. More than you want anything else, it seems like, sometimes.”

For a moment, he said nothing. Then he shrugged. “What can I say? I fucked up before. I survived when I shouldn’t have. I’m alive, and I need that to have meaning … I need to do something that means something. What was the point of it all if I don’t?”

She shrugged. “Does everything have to have a point? Some people say everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe that.”