Sleeping With Fear (7 page)

In her tooth, the nerve had been dying.

She was afraid to even think about what might be happening inside her brain.

And here she was, in the middle of a tangled situation she didn't remember or understand, painfully aware that a killer or killers on the loose almost certainly knew a hell of a lot more about what was going on than she did.

As independent and self-reliant as she was, Riley had never felt so unsure of herself. She was adept at role-playing-it was one of her strengths-but this? This was a very, very dangerous game of blind man's bluff, and the one wearing the blindfold-her-had cotton in her ears and a clothespin on her nose as well.

With the exception of Gordon, she didn't know who to trust, and he could offer little more than moral support since, if she had even reached any conclusions or formed any theories since arriving here, she had not confided them to him.

As for the other man she was intimately close to…

"Riley? Ready to order?"

She looked across the top of her menu at this pale-eyed stranger whose bed she apparently shared, and ignored the cold knot in the pit of her belly to say calmly, "I'm ready."

It was the second time she'd said that in the last couple of hours. She only hoped it was true.

3 Years Previously

"You realize what this will mean?" Bishop said.

A little amused, Riley said, "You're a telepath; you know I realize what it will mean."

"I'm serious, Riley."

"Are you ever anything else?" She got a sudden flash of a strikingly beautiful face and electric blue eyes, understood in an instant who the woman was and what she meant to Bishop, and her question suddenly didn't seem so funny anymore.

"Never mind," he said. "We all have our ghosts. And not many secrets between a telepath and a clairvoyant."

"You really must believe we can do some good," she said slowly. "To…willingly expose yourself to so many of us."

Deadpan, he said, "I didn't think it through."

Riley had to laugh, but she shook her head and got the conversation back on its original track. "I do understand what you're asking of me. I know it could take months. Will, probably."

"And you'll have to work alone, at least to all appearances."

"Well, if you're right about how this killer chooses his victims, and right that the first sign of a task force or police focus is what causes him to change towns, then the only way to track him is alone and off the official books. Assuming I can do that."

"I believe you can. I believe you're the best-equipped of anyone in the unit to track him. And to make sure he's caught. But, Riley, you don't get too close. Understand?"

"He only kills men."

"So far. But a cornered animal can kill whatever's threatening it. And he's smart. He's very, very smart."

"Which is why I hide in plain sight. And don't threaten him."

"Exactly."

"That's what I do best," Riley said.

Present Day

In the small part of her mind not occupied with the strain of pretending everything was normal, Riley had struggled to come up with some reasonable excuse for ending up, at the conclusion of this date, in her beach house alone. Short of telling Ash the truth-which she still wasn't ready to do-nothing seemed likely to work without rousing either his suspicion or his anger.

Her senses might be AWOL, but that earlier brief flash of memory plus her instincts as a woman told her he had every reason to expect to spend the night with her-and, despite his calm and almost detached manner during their date, quite definitely the desire to do so. Still, right up to the moment they walked inside the house and he closed the door behind them, Riley believed she might yet come up with a reasonable, acceptable excuse.

She was going to offer coffee or a drink but never got the chance.

Ash picked her up and carried her to the bedroom.

The sheer suddenness of the action, never mind its high-handedness, should have roused some sort of negative reaction in Riley. She was almost sure it should have. Instead, what she felt was an overwhelming sense of familiarity and the first flush of sensual heat sweeping her body.

There was, she realized dimly, something incredibly seductive in the certain knowledge that a man not only wanted you but wanted you
now,
with no patience for small talk or any of the other social niceties. He wasn't interested in coffee or conversation, he was interested in her, and she was left in absolutely no doubt of that fact.

He was just a little bit rough, more than a little bit urgent, and Riley found the combination impossible to resist.

So she didn't try.

And she didn't try to pretend a response to him, because she didn't have to. Whatever else he was or might be, Ash Prescott was a skilled lover, and her body remembered his touch even if her mind didn't.

She'd left a lamp burning low on her nightstand but kept her eyes closed because the only senses that mattered were the ones he was bringing to life. For the first time since waking up in the afternoon, there was no veil, no distance-and no questions.

Not about this.

Their clothing seemed to just vanish; set on her feet by the bed, Riley almost instantly felt the erotic shock of flesh on flesh, and then the cool smoothness of the sheet beneath her. She had no idea which of them had thrown back the covers and didn't care.

His body was amazingly hard, with the packed muscle of a man who was very athletic, genetically blessed, or both. His skin was smooth and hot beneath her fingers, and the thick, springy hair on his chest teased her breasts with a raw sensuality that only intensified the heat building inside her.

His mouth on hers fed that fire, as hard as his body, as urgently demanding as the hands stroking her flesh. That mouth-to-mouth connection was more than a kiss, more like a melding, a merging, and she had the dim understanding that this was why she had tumbled into bed with a relative stranger.

Because he wasn't. Because they weren't.

Their bodies strained together to be closer than they were, closer than they could be, and she heard herself make a wild sound that would have astonished her if she'd been able to think about it. But there was no time to think or wonder about anything, there was only pleasure that built to an incredible peak and a stunning wave of emotion she'd never known before and couldn't begin to define.

When it was over, Riley felt both exhausted and curiously shaken. What had just happened? It was more than sex, or at least more than she knew sex to be. And she wasn't at all sure she'd be able to pretend otherwise. But she gave it her best shot.

When he pushed himself up on an elbow beside her, she finally opened her eyes and murmured, "Wow. Good thing I had that second dessert."

Ash laughed. "You never say the expected, do you?"

"Probably not. Is that a bad thing?"

"Not as far as I'm concerned." He reached across her to draw the sheet over their cooling bodies, pausing to briefly nuzzle the curve of her neck.

Riley felt her eyes starting to cross at that pleasurable caress, and hastily closed them. "Mmmm."

"If you go to sleep, I'll just wake you up," he warned.

Her laugh ended on a sigh. "You have only yourself to blame."

"Open your eyes and talk to me."

"I thought men always wanted to sleep after," she complained mildly, opening her eyes.

He was smiling faintly. "You should know by now not to lump me in with a group. Neither one of us runs with the crowd."

Now, what in the world does he mean by that?

She couldn't ask, of course.

Instead, she said, "Well,
you
should know by now that I either sleep after-or grab a snack. Fuel, remember? The tank's empty here, pal."

"Okay. I promise you a midnight omelet. How's that?"

Riley turned her head to look at the alarm clock on the bedside table. "That's more than an hour away." She allowed her voice to fade pathetically. "I may not make it."

Before she could turn her head back, she felt his fingers at the nape of her neck.

"What's this?"

It was a sore spot; she realized that when he touched it.

"What does it look like?" she asked, holding on to the sleepy murmur even though she was, now, wide-awake.

He rubbed very gently. "A burn, maybe?"

Just at the hairline at the base of her skull, an area normally covered by her short hair. An area she hadn't checked visually when she examined herself that afternoon. And a sore spot that would have been both hidden by her hair and masked by the headache she'd had almost continually since waking.

R
iley fought not to react in any way he'd notice, fought not to reveal the sudden questions and fears tumbling through her mind.

"I'm all thumbs with a curling iron," she said casually. "It happens so often I forget about it, usually."

"Have you considered maybe
not
using a curling iron?" Ash inquired dryly.

She turned her head back and met his gaze, smiling. "From time to time. But it's a girl thing, you see, and I clung to those when I was in the army."

"What, you were afraid of ending up butch?"

"That is not a politically correct term. And-yes."

Ash grinned at her. "Not a chance in hell. You are utterly and completely female, my love, from the top of your head down to the tips of your toes. It practically oozes from your pores."

Riley ignored the lurch inside her at the unexpected endearment and pulled on a considering frown. "I'm not at all sure that's a compliment."

"It's disarming, that's what it is. Dandy camouflage for the razor-sharp mind behind those big eyes."

"Mmm. But you weren't disarmed, huh?"

"I wasn't fooled," Ash said. "Not like Jake was."

A little surprised and very curious, she said, "You think he was fooled?"

"I think he's badly underestimating you. And I think if he hadn't done that from the moment he met you, he might be here with you instead of me."

Wry now, she said, "I really stepped in something between you two, didn't I?"

"Maybe." He shifted position to lie more fully on his side, his head propped up on one hand and the other resting warmly on her stomach. "But it had to happen eventually."

"Why?"

Ash's shoulders moved in a faint shrug. "Because letting Jake have what he wanted most of our lives was easy for me. Until what he wanted was something I wanted more."

Riley thought about that. "Me?" she half-guessed.

"If you have to ask," he said, "you haven't been paying attention."

She managed a laugh. "Oh, I was paying attention. Just trying not to feel like a trophy between two jocks."

"You know better than that." He leaned over to kiss her, the caress a lingering one. "At least as far as I'm concerned. This is not about Jake. This is about you and me."

Riley was trying her best to think straight despite the lips playing with hers. "Mmm. But if all Jake sees…is that trophy…he might still want it."

"Then he'll have to learn a lesson I probably should have taught him when we were kids." Ash pushed the sheet back down so his seeking hand could find bare flesh. "He doesn't always get what he wants."

Riley had thought she was completely exhausted, but her body was coming to life, and as her arms lifted to wrap themselves around his neck, she decided that she just might have the strength for this…

As it turned out, she also had the strength left for a shower with Ash afterward, but by then her energy reserves were seriously low and they both knew it.

"I'll go get started on those omelets," he said, knotting a towel around his lean waist.

"I'll get my hair dry and meet you in the kitchen. Sorry to be so high-maintenance," she said.

He tipped her chin up with a finger to kiss her. "You aren't," he said, and left her alone in the steamy bathroom.

Riley finished wrapping herself in a towel, then held her hands out and watched them shake for a moment. Damn. Between the mental and emotional demands of a Swiss cheese memory and the physical demands of a relationship with Ash, she was using up energy at a rate far faster than normal even for her.

Something was badly wrong, and she knew it.

Shaking off yet another worry, she rummaged in the vanity drawers for a hand mirror and wiped off the steamy mirror over the sink so she could check out the back of her neck. It took a bit of maneuvering, and she ended up sitting on the vanity with her back to the big mirror while she held the hand mirror with one hand and pushed her hair completely off her neck with the other hand.

It looked like a burn, as Ash had said. Like two burns, actually, very close together, just below the hairline at the base of her skull.

Even in the warm, steamy room, the chill that swept her body left gooseflesh in its wake. She had to concentrate fiercely in order to hold the hand mirror steady long enough to study the marks until she was certain of what she already knew.

They were the marks of a stun gun, a Taser.

And what they very clearly showed was that someone had held the gun to the back of her neck and discharged an electrical current directly into her body.

Into the base of her brain.

It took less than ten minutes to blow-dry her short hair, and that didn't allow Riley enough time to think much past the numb realization that in all likelihood a killer had stood over her twitching body and emptied into it from a weapon meant to incapacitate a target a potentially deadly amount of electricity.

Riley had used a Taser. She had also been Tasered herself. She knew what the weapon was capable of, and what its normal aftereffects were. There was nothing normal about this.

The marks on her neck indicated sustained contact, with both voltage and amperage considerably higher than the manufacturer had ever intended for the device.

The question was, had her attacker deliberately used an amped-up stun gun knowing it could be a lethal weapon? And, if so, was she alive by design or only by accident?

Either way, the attack could explain her headaches and the memory loss, and the dulled-or absent-senses. It could even explain her unusually frequent need for more fuel.

An electrical jolt to the brain could scramble a lot of things in the human body.

It could also cause a hell of a lot of problems, some worse than those she was coping with now. And the fact that those problems hadn't yet manifested themselves didn't mean they wouldn't.

Great. That's just great. Somebody tried to fry my brain, probably tried to kill me, and he's still out there running around loose-with a big advantage.

He knew who she was.

And she didn't have a clue who he was.

With her hair dry and no more excuses to linger in the bathroom, Riley went into the bedroom to put on one of her customary sleep-shirts. She took a moment to sort through their scattered clothing and lay Ash's more neatly over a chair, and despite everything felt a flicker of amusement when she picked up the sexy underwear she had, at the last minute while dressing for their date, chosen to wear.

She doubted he'd even noticed it.

With that wry thought in mind, she chose a football jersey sleep-shirt, exchanged her towel for it, and headed for the kitchen.

You can think about all this later. Figure out what's going on later. Right now you just have to get through tonight. You have to act normal and be Ash Prescott 's summer lover.

If that's what she was. Or maybe she was, despite his denial, the trophy he had taken away from his boyhood rival.

There was a cheerful thought. Not.

"Perfect timing," Ash said as she joined him. He was transferring the two halves of a large omelet onto two plates on the work island. He had already set out silverware and napkins, as well as poured two glasses of wine.

Riley took her place on one of the stools at the breakfast bar and looked at him with lifted brows. "Wine? You know that makes me sleepy." She hoped he knew.

"Yeah, well, I think maybe you need to sleep." Ash put the pan in the sink and brought the plates to the bar.

Riley left her brows raised and waited.

He was frowning just a little, and before she realized what he was going to do, he grasped her wrist and lifted it slightly so they could both see her fingers trembling. "Your tank's not just empty, you're running on fumes. After finishing a sizable meal about three hours ago."

"A gentleman wouldn't talk about how much I eat," she said, keeping her tone light as she reclaimed her hand and took a sip of her wine.

"That's not what this is about, and you know it. Was it the scene in the woods? Is that what took so much out of you?"

"Well…scenes like that do, usually." She started eating, hoping the calories would kick-start her sluggish mind.

Oh, I'm in fine shape, I am. If I was half as responsible as I'm supposed to be, I'd have Bishop recall me to Quantico. Tonight.

"Because of the clairvoyance?"

Riley was only a little surprised he knew about that. It wasn't something she often confided on short acquaintance-or even long acquaintance, in most cases-but the man was in her bed, after all. And at least his knowledge answered one of the questions she'd been asking herself.

One down, at least a dozen more to go.

She nodded. "It takes more energy, yeah. Especially a murder so…horrific. Everybody around me is tense, frightened, sickened-and usually worried about their nearest and dearest. Sorting through all that…"

"Takes a lot of energy." He was still frowning, still intent. "So this happens whenever you work on a case?"

"To varying degrees. I tried harder than usual today, probably because I wasn't getting anything. That happens sometimes too." Information she hoped would head off at least some of his questions.

Ash picked up his fork and began to eat, but after several bites said, "I had the impression you used your abilities as just another investigative tool."

"Generally. They often give me an edge in an investigation-but not always. This is very good, by the way." She indicated her plate and the omelet, already half-finished.
Sure, keep wolfing down food-that'll solve everything.

"High-calorie," he said in a tone of sudden amusement. "I put in extra cheese."

Riley had to laugh, albeit without much amusement of her own. "Sorry-I didn't expect to get involved with anyone this summer, much less during a full-blown investigation."

"Stop saying you're sorry. Feeding you is not a problem, believe me." He smiled, then added casually, "So business and pleasure don't mix too well in your world?"

"They both take energy." Riley lifted her glass in a small salute. "One more than the other, sometimes."

"You didn't answer the question."

It was a potential out for her. Maybe. One less pretense she'd have to keep up. If she told him the investigation would demand all her energy, all her attention, then maybe he'd step back out of her personal life for the duration.

Except that she didn't think he would.

Or maybe you just don't want to believe he would.

Finally, she said, "It's never come up for me, so I don't know. We'll find out, I guess."

He gazed at her steadily for a long moment, then smiled again. "I'll order a couple more cases of those PowerBars."

"Good idea," she said.

The wine had its usual effect on her, and she was yawning hugely by the time she crawled into bed a few minutes later. "Probably should have checked the doors," she murmured.

"I did. All locked." Ash got into bed beside her but before turning out the lamp on the nightstand paused to reach into the top drawer. "Here-I know you won't rest easy until this is under the pillow."

Riley blinked at the gun he was holding casually by its barrel, then took it from him. She checked it automatically to make sure the safety was still on, then slid it underneath her pillow.

She always went to sleep on her right side, a habit that made her turn her back to him as she lay down. It was clearly a routine he was accustomed to, since he turned out the lamp and settled down behind her without comment.

Close behind her.

He kissed the nape of her neck just below the burn and said, "Try to sleep past dawn, okay? I think you need to."

"Mmmm. 'Night," she murmured in response.

"'Night, Riley."

Her body relaxed because she told it to. Her breathing was slow and even. Her eyes were closed.

She had never been more wide-awake in her life.

The realization had been slow in coming, but now it took root in her admittedly sluggish mind and began to grow into at least one horrible possibility.

She always slept with her weapon under her pillow. Always. Ever since a very nasty experience with a predawn burglar nearly ten years ago. But very few people knew that.

She had awakened the previous afternoon fully dressed except for her shoes, with her gun under the pillow as always.

There were only two possible routes to that destination, as far as Riley could see. Both of them started with her leaving the house-after telling Ash she wanted time alone-undoubtedly armed, because she certainly would have been. Going to do whatever it was she'd gone to do, and in the process getting surprised or otherwise blindsided by someone with a stun gun. After that…

Either she had, after being stunned for God only knew how long, managed to get herself back home and to her bed, too addled to remove her bloodstained clothing but able to kick off her shoes and remember where her gun should go, or…

Or her attacker had brought her home. Removed her shoes. And put her gun under her pillow, because he'd known she would expect to find it there whenever she woke up.

Shit.

The field of suspects if that turned out to be the case had suddenly gotten very, very small.

Ash knew where she kept her gun at night. So did Gordon. If anyone else here knew, Riley would be very surprised. But maybe someone else did know. Hell, maybe everyone knew.

Oh, God, what else don't I remember?

Her car had been here, the keys in her bag. Had she driven wherever it was she'd gone last night?
Could
she have driven back here, suffering the aftereffects of near-electrocution? No evidence of blood in her car, but…Three miles to the bridge, assuming she'd gone over to the mainland; surely she hadn't walked?

I'm assuming whatever happened didn't happen here on the island. Why am I assuming that?

Because the altar-if that's what it had been used for-was on the mainland. Because a tortured and murdered man's body had been discovered there. And because she found it almost impossible to believe that a second, totally separate violent event had taken place in this small community on the same night.