Sloe Ride (36 page)

Engrossed in studying the gaunt-featured man, Rafe failed to see Boots coming back over until his vision filled with a layer of thick leather and sole. Slamming his eyes shut was out of the question, especially when Boots’s shadow stretched over him, cutting off any light he got from the hall’s sconces and skylight.

Rafe flipped over onto his back, trying not to let the aching creaks in his shoulder and neck distract him. Boots’s meaty hands grabbed at Rafe’s shirt, scrambling to get a hold before Rafe could wiggle away. Kicking up, Rafe connected with the man’s round, acne-pocked face, rippling his jowly cheek with a blow of his foot. Boots’s head snapped back, but instead of falling away, Rafe caught the sight of a blood rage forming in the man’s rheumy blue eyes, and his stomach sank, catching sight of the gun holstered to the man’s thick utility belt.

Rafe pushed up, his sweaty hands sliding about the marble floor, but his shoes caught on the slick tiles, squealing up a desperate storm when Rafe fought to get to his feet. He was halfway up when Boots struck, kicking Rafe in the stomach with a hard-soled leather toe. The blow churned Rafe’s innards, and he gagged, choking on the bile rushing up from his empty stomach and pouring over his tongue.

Spitting a mouthful of viscous green saliva into the man’s face, Rafe gritted his teeth and backed up into the wall, using its flat surface to leverage himself up. He was dizzy, a bit groggy, and the world seemed to be brighter around the edges, a starship lens flare across his right-hand side. Rafe’s stomach argued with the movement, gurgling ominously, but for the first time since he’d been coshed across the head, Rafe got a good look at his assailant.

Boots wore a security-guard uniform, much like the ones the building’s own staff wore with one key exception—a patch embroidered with Quinn’s university logo affixed to his right sleeve. Nearly cave-fish white, puberty hadn’t been a friendly time for Boots’s face, if it had ever left. Deep scars gouged his cheeks, and a spotty, pale ginger fringe sprouted nearly straight out from his thin upper lip.

Oddly, Boots appeared to be pretty pissed off about Rafe standing up, despite his previous worry about hitting Rafe too hard. The scowl on the man’s face clicked things together for Rafe. He knew that scowl. It’d been used on him before, same amount of venom, but this time the poisonous stare made sense, especially if Boots was the killer hot on Quinn’s ass. If anything, the heat in the security guard’s eyes melted off any humanity left in his face, and Rafe slammed into the wall, trying to take a step away from the man now reaching for his weapon.

“Oh, fucking shit, you’re Sam,” Rafe blurted out.

“My name is not Sam! Quinn can never get it right!” Furious, Boots brought up the blackjack instead of his gun, swinging wildly at Rafe’s head as he screamed, “My name is
William
.”

Moonshine and ice

Bathtub swill and broken dreams

Climbing up on a stairway

Made of nightmares and pain

A slip of my hand

Wet blood on a rung

Hitting the stone down beneath me

Made me think ’bout what I’ve done

Thought about how I’ve hurt you

How deep and how long

Can’t ask to forgive me

Since I’ve done you so wrong

—Moonshine and Ice

T
HE
SAP
hit Rafe hard, slamming into his forearm when he tried to block the hit. Sam—William—wrenched the blackjack back, ready to bring it back down on Rafe again when years of dealing with bar fights and jealousy-enraged ex-lovers fired up Rafe’s survival instincts.

Hit fast. Hit hard.

Uniforms were thick, usually a cotton meant to withstand a lot of abuse. Grabbing one meant skinned-up knuckles and sore fingers, but knees, those worked the best.

Slamming his leg up, Rafe clocked the guard straight in his nuts. William went down, his fleshy body hitting the tile in a wet-sounding smack. The strike threw Rafe off-balance, and he toppled, the throb in his forehead ramping up to a full scream. Or it could have been William’s moaning hitting new heights when Rafe tried to stop himself from falling and brought his foot down hard on William’s nose.

The fall still happened. Thrown off by the wavering slosh of his brain against his skull, Rafe stumbled over William’s writhing torso, tumbled off of the man’s thick belly and onto the floor. A movement to the left of Rafe caught his eye, and he saw Merris scuttling on his hands and knees to the elevator. Rafe made a desperate attempt to get up, but the hall burst into a sea of stars and pain, something solid and fast striking the back of his head hard enough to slam his face into the floor.

Rafe tasted blood, and the edges of the room grew dark, fragmented shadows closing in until all he could see was a wavering pinprick of light. Graham’s screams grew louder, and Rafe spat out the fluid pouring down his throat, wishing he could risk shaking his head to clear his sight.

Then Graham went silent, and the hall was filled only with the sounds of their frantic breathing.

“You weren’t supposed to come out.”

William sounded mournful, but Rafe wasn’t buying any of his remorse.

“I was going to knock on the door and tell you I had something for Doctor Morgan, something from the college so you’d open up. I wasn’t ready for you. I don’t know what Merris was thinking. I locked the elevators off of this floor. You don’t even need a special key for the building. They pretty much all use the same one.”

Rafe pulled himself up, instinctively throwing his arm up when he found William looming over him. The pinprick of light expanded, easing back the shadows until Rafe could make out the guard’s face. He’d have to guess at William’s expression. His vision wasn’t quite ready to give him that much clarity, but it was enough for him to go by.

He spat again, not liking the taste of his own blood filling his mouth. Rafe poked around with his tongue, finding he’d bit not only his cheek but the inside of his lip. More blood was coming from his sinuses, probably because he’d popped his nose on the floor. It felt tender, not as bad as his head, but probably not broken. Breathing seemed okay.

Graham didn’t look good. Slumped down against the elevator wall, his breathing seemed shallow, and blood speckled his fair skin, his cheeks nearly deathly pale and his thin lips white at the edges. He seemed smaller than he should have been, and for a frightened moment Rafe wondered if William had killed him, but a flare of Graham’s nostrils reassured him the man was alive.

For now.

It amazed him the insane man could have gotten not only into the building with a reluctant Graham but also to the penthouse floor. Every thought in Rafe’s mind whispered for him to keep the guard busy, engaged at least long enough for someone—anyone—to come. Quinn would be heading back soon—a thought that sent Rafe’s heart into a panicked stutter—but when he found the elevators wouldn’t go all the way up, Rafe had faith Quinn would call for help.

God, let Quinn get back and call for help, he prayed.

“Why Quinn?” he stuttered, tripping over his thickening tongue. Sitting up, Rafe scooted a few inches back, grateful again for the wall to hold him up. His vision was spotty, speckled with dark flashes. “Why did you try to kill him with the truck? You don’t like gay men? He didn’t share his ice cream cone with you? He turned you down for a date? What the fuck was going through your head there, Sam?”

Taunting was probably stupid, but it was all Rafe had. His keys were still on the table, locked behind the front door, and the elevator was blocked off. The only one with weapons was a porcine-faced madman who seemed to have forgotten he had a gun, preferring to use the leather-wrapped sap he swung back and forth as he stalked toward Rafe.

Rafe prodded again. “Come on, Sam. Give me the rant about how stupid we all are. Not like I can go anywhere, right? You think someone like Quinn would give you the fucking time of day? Not like you’re smart enough to—”

The guard was quick. Rafe had to give him that. He didn’t even see William’s hand until it connected with the side of his face and left behind a ringing sensation in his ears.

“Do not talk about Doctor Morgan like that.” William clenched his teeth, shaking a finger in Rafe’s face. “You don’t get to talk about him like he’s one of those other assholes who don’t even see me when I say hello. Doctor Morgan
always
stops and talks to me.
Always
.”

William crouched in front of him, leaning forward so his hot breath washed over Rafe’s face. The guard’s leather belt squeaked, and the button on his pants strained against the pressure of his bulk, his shirt gaping slightly at his waist. Ironically enough, William smelled of sugar, a sweet confection of a breeze coming from a man who’d killed at least two people and seemed intent on doubling down on that number in the next hour or so.

“You’re not so pretty now, are you?” William hunkered down, resting on the balls of his feet. His boots were worn across the toes, a crease in the leather deep enough to assure Rafe the guard spent a lot of time crouched down, waiting. The man rubbed at his face, sweat dappling his cheeks and forehead. “The truck? I didn’t mean to hurt him. And his house…. God, that just went. That wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”

“You didn’t think hitting him with a truck would be bad?” The hall was sliding about again, and Rafe had to blink furiously to keep it in place. “Did you see what was left of his car? You almost killed him.”

“He wasn’t supposed to drive like that.” William’s face flushed red, his emotions running to hot frustration. “Doctor Morgan is calm… gentle… he wasn’t supposed to zip around like one of those insane kids on campus do. I was just going to bump his car and then pull over to help him. It all just… got away from me.”

“Got away from you?” Stalling seemed to be working, or at least it kept William talking. The seconds were ticking by fast, and Rafe didn’t know how long he could hold the guard there. His phone… he couldn’t remember where his phone had gone to. “What got away from you? You kept bashing his car. And then blew up his house.”

“Okay, the house… that wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know about the gas lines and stuff,” the guard protested, a nearly childlike pitch to his voice.

“You almost killed his cat.” Rafe sent a brief mental apology to Harley for using her to get under William’s skin. “If you talked to Quinn at all, you’d know he loves that cat.”

“God, I didn’t think about the cat.” His skin glistened now, a rivulet coursing down the side of his face and into the collar of his uniform. William shifted his feet, marking the floor with black rubber burns. “
That
would have made him come to me. He
loves
that cat. I should have killed the cat. But see, I kill you… well, make it look like Merris killed you, then he killed himself, and Doctor Morgan’s got no one else to turn to but me. Just me.”

“Wait, you did all this shit so Quinn would what? Be so broken up about things he’d turn to you for… what exactly?” Rafe felt his tongue go sideways, and he slurred, dribbling out of the corner of his mouth. Fighting to stay focused, he rounded in on William again. “Dude, Quinn wouldn’t give you the time of day. That why you had to go around killing people he knows? So he’d cry all over your shoulder?”

He caught William’s punch across his cheek, and Rafe gagged on another rush of blood. The blow might have hurt, but the motion took William forward, throwing him off, and he had to slam his hand against the wall to keep from falling on top of Rafe.

Close enough for Rafe to grab William’s gun.

He had it in his hand. Rafe felt the rough diamond pattern on the hilt, or whatever they called the spot someone held a gun by. It was hard, a bit cold but definitely heavy. Even as he tugged to get the gun free of William’s holster, it felt so damned heavy.

“What the…?” The guard careened over, twisting to get away from Rafe’s grasp.

They went over together, tangled in on each other in a macabre mockery of sex fueled by fear and violence.

It was a struggle. The gun wouldn’t shake loose, no matter how hard Rafe tugged and jerked. William pounded on his back, jarring his spine and getting in shots at Rafe’s kidneys. If he made it out of there alive, he’d be pissing blood for weeks, but Rafe was willing to take that chance.

Quinn was worth every single bit of blood he had in him.

William was big, nearly too big for Rafe to get around him. They rolled, slamming into the wall near the elevators, almost crushing Graham. The guard kicked, trying to get Rafe loose, but he held on, hooking his hand into William’s belt for leverage. Neither could get to their feet, not with their limbs entwined and Rafe’s hand clamped down over the gun. Twisting about, William tried to shake loose Rafe’s hold, tearing at his wrist and fingers to get his weapon free.