Sweeter Than Sin (11 page)

His muscles tensed, went rigid.

Breath sawed in, out, of his lungs.

Jerking his fist harder, fast, he clenched his teeth against the ragged groan that rose in his throat, choking him. Her cool grey eyes going smoky with hunger, her mouth parted on a broken cry.

He could picture himself sliding his palms up that slim torso, cupping one small breast in his hand. He’d always loved those pretty, elegant tits, the way they curved under the tanks she’d wear in the summer as she worked the garden. Just enough to fill his hands, and he’d spill her onto her back, discover her taste, the color of her nipples—

A hot, twisting chill raced down his spine and he arched his hips up, meeting the thrusts of his fist. A second later, hot pulses of semen splattered across his belly.

Sucking in a breath, he tried to calm the erratic beating of his heart, tried to catch his breath.

Then, reaching down for the shirt he’d dropped down on the side of the couch, he couldn’t resist the bitter laugh that bubbled out of him. How long had she been home … a few hours? A day?

And here he was, already in a hot, miserable mess, just like he’d been twenty years ago.

“Welcome home, Lana.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Every morning, Margaret Troyer got up and took a long bath, then got dressed and put on her face. She did love her baths. She also took a nice long, hot soak before she went to bed. After Harlan had put in this fancy bath with the jets, she sometimes thought she might spend a little too much time in here, but he spent so much of his time in his office, she didn’t see the harm.

She’d enjoy her baths and her books, as long as she didn’t have to deal with his temper, and it was awful. Especially the past few weeks. She understood, of course, that most people in town were feeling a little snappish, what with everything going on in town, but she didn’t see why that had to affect her.

It had nothing to do with them, as far as she was concerned, but Harlan certainly did seem worked up over something.

She simply put it out of her mind as she soaked in the tub, head on a little specially designed pillow she’d ordered from the Internet. None of that nastiness needed to darken her “me” time, not as far as Margaret was concerned.

A woman who worked as hard as she did deserved her me time, after all.

Halfway through the bath, it occurred to her, though, that it was still rather quiet in the house. He hadn’t so much as come bothering her for coffee, hadn’t nagged her for a shirt.

A mild frisson of worry slid through her, but she pushed it aside. He was probably just worn-out. He’d spent so much time brooding the past few weeks, it must have caught up with him. Worrying about the town. Just like everybody else.

She swallowed, suddenly chilled in the water as a familiar, unwelcome thought pushed itself into her mind. His boys. Harlan used to talk about his boys a lot. The weekends he planned once a month, weekends for just him, the other guys and the boys they mentored.

But … that was
mentoring
. Nothing else.

None of this had anything to do with Harlan.

It couldn’t.

Her enjoyment gone, she hurried through the rest of the bath and climbed out, drying off with a fat, fluffy towel, ignoring the body that had gone plump over the years. Her once blond hair had turned gray and it was just … well,
hard
to see how old she’d gotten.

A lot of things were hard these days. Just thinking about Harlan made her worry anymore.

The club.

The boys.

“Stop it,” she told herself, her throat tight and thick. Sniffing, she grabbed a towel from the rod and started to rub at her hair. “Don’t be silly. Harlan is hardly the sort of man to be involved in this.”

The sudden surge of ragged emotions eased back and she calmed herself enough to finish her hair, fix her face and dress, settling on a bright, cheerful dress of red checks. She’d make them a big breakfast, see if he wanted to go out for the day. They could both use it.

He hadn’t been in bed when she woke up, hadn’t even come in to sleep with her, but that wasn’t unusual. Sometimes he slept in his office, and that was getting more and more common, the fool man. He needed to take it easy, rest. She’d see that he did it, she told herself as she pushed the door open.

For the first few moments, she was able to tell herself he was still sleeping.

But then she saw the blood.

And the knife in his chest.

Margaret Troyer passed out, striking her head against the doorjamb as she hit the floor, her pretty red-checked dress billowing out around her in a crazy circle.

*   *   *

“Their housekeeper called it in.”

As the paramedics rolled Mrs. Margaret Troyer away on a stretcher, Detective Jensen Bell continued to study the note that was none too subtly stuck to Mr. Harlan Troyer’s chest. The knife was just a plain, simple hunting knife. She’d be able to buy that thing at any Walmart or sporting-goods store—she even knew the brand, although she didn’t know if this was this year’s model or last year’s. It wasn’t anything special or unique, and that would make finding the buyer a problem, unless of course they were lucky enough to find prints.

And that wasn’t going to happen.

She already knew it. Jensen was a small-town cop, but she was still a cop and she already knew what she was dealing with—a killer who had thought this through all too well.

There was no sign of a struggle.

Harlan had been sitting down when he was attacked.
Knew him, didn’t you?

There was a bottle of scotch on his desk—Crown Royal—and she suspected that was what was in the glass, too. She’d get a sample of the whiskey, from both the bottle and the glass. It was possible the whiskey had been doctored. Either that or Harlan had been really plastered, because it didn’t look like he’d so much as put up a fight.

One would think you’d struggle a bit when you saw somebody with a big-ass knife pointed at your chest.

And the knife went through both his chest and the note.

“Think he was drugged?”

She looked over her shoulder at the newly minted Detective Thorpe. To say he had been rushed into his position as detective would be a bit unfair, but they definitely hadn’t taken their time. A few weeks ago, he’d been a uniform, brushing up and hoping he’d hit detective.

And now she was training him.

To be fair, she’d been working with him for a while, but it had been more on an as-time-allows basis because, they were short staffed even in the best of times and they couldn’t take one of the uniforms off the streets so he could
play at being a detective,
as a former asshole—now dead—had liked to complain. Of course, Sims had a reason to worry about real cops. He hadn’t liked her and she knew a lot of that was because she was a good cop. He’d written her off because she was female, sexist son of a bitch.

Thorpe would have been harder for Sims to handle.

Rubbing the back of her neck, Jenson studied their dead man.

“Well, what do you think?”

Benjamin took the question seriously. He was wearing a suit, bless his heart. She barely managed to get out of bed and stumble into a nice pair of pants and a not-too-wrinkled shirt and jacket—granted, Dean had been busy fucking her brains out half the night, so she could write it off to that, but she never bothered to put herself together as well as Thorpe did.

She wondered how long it would last.

His blue eyes squinted as he continued to study Troyer, and then Thorpe looked at her.

“No signs of struggle. No bruising.” He pointed to the floor where there was just a minimal amount of blood. “He died here and I imagine we’ll find out the knife went straight in, killed him almost instantly. If he had been awake and aware of what was going on, wouldn’t he have struggled some?”

She smiled at Thorpe. “Not bad.” Nodding at the liquor on the table, she said, “We’re already having that analyzed. We’ll get his bloodwork, too, see what happens there. But whoever did this knew him. Of course, this is Madison. Harlan knew plenty of people. But Harlan knew this man, was friendly with him. I say our killer came in here planning to kill him. Especially considering that note.” She grimaced and added, “We’ll have to reach out to the state for help and we need to check the paper, but I bet the note came from here.”

She looked over and took a second to study the paper. Heavyweight and a soft, pale cream. Not something you’d find up at the Walmart. She pulled open a drawer on the desk, then another and another, and wasn’t surprised when she found a supply of paper that was identical to the paper used for the note.

Jensen took a moment and read it again.

It sent a shiver down her spine, and she was small enough to admit, some part of her was almost viciously happy with what she read. She wouldn’t admit it, though. Well, maybe to Dean.

Harlan was just the beginning. Cronus must die.

“And he’s not done,” she murmured.

Then she looked down at the picture that had been left on the table.

Like the man wanted them to know
why
.

Like he had to make them understand.

I’m not just a killer. I have to do this,
he seemed to be telling her.

She picked up the picture, the bile rising in her throat.

It was old, one of those Polaroid type of pictures. The edges of it were burned. She eyed the fireplace, bits and pieces of paper, even a few photos, still partially visible.

Had her man pulled it out of the fire?

There was no way to identify anybody in the photo, but she didn’t have to know them to be disturbed.

There was a bench. An older man—she had a bad, bad feeling it was Harlan, although she didn’t know if she’d ever known for sure. The image was cut off so all she could see of him was the shoulders down. There was a scar bisecting his left biceps.

His flesh was male and toned.

And he was raping a teenage male, a skinny young man tied up and bound to a bench. Scars, both old and new, marred his narrow back. He was faceless, nameless, head turned away from the camera.

Whoever that man in the picture was …
yeah
. Her personal thoughts were that death just wasn’t good enough. But her personal opinion couldn’t come into play here.

“Think it’s Troyer?”

She looked at Ben as she slid the picture into an evidence bag. “I don’t know. If he has a scar like that, we’ll know after the ME looks him over. If it’s not, we need to figure out who it is, because he’ll be one of the next victims.”

Her stomach twisted even thinking it. She didn’t want to help save a man who’d rape a child.

She wanted to kill him herself.

*   *   *

She dreamed.

Arms closed her around and she wasn’t afraid.

You came back.

The voice wasn’t familiar, low, rasping in her ear, and the sound of it made something low in her belly go all tight and fluttery.

As a hand opened low on her hip, she tried to turn, but he nipped her shoulder.

Be still.

I want to look at you,
she argued.

No … I’ve waited, too long. I get to do what I want now.

What he wants.
The promise of that made her shiver. Made her want to whimper with want and need.

Squeezing her knees together, she tried not to moan as he nudged his cock against her ass and started to rock against her, the rhythm unmistakable. Warmth rushed through her, preparing her.

He slid his hand between her thighs and she gasped, arching.

Take a breath,
he said.
You’ll need it.

She almost laughed. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t even think—

Then he flipped her onto her belly and her face was shoved into a pillow. A hand tangled in her hair, held her pinned there.

You think you can come back now?
His voice was an ugly, hateful snarl.
How many lives will you ruin
this
time?

She struggled against his fist, tried to claw against his hands.
Please. I only wanted—

But she couldn’t speak.

Couldn’t even breathe …

*   *   *

Lana came awake, choking the scream back by shoving a fist against her mouth. She’d learned, long ago, how to hide the sounds of her nightmares. It had been ages since she’d shared her bed with anybody—not since Deatrick, years ago. But even if she woke screaming, people talked and word got back to him and he started worrying.

Before him, it had been problematic in other ways.

Eventually, she’d learned to hide it for other reasons. It was just easier. Better this way.

But as the screams died inside her throat, tears leaking from her eyes while the nightmare faded, she lay shivering on the bed, feeling more alone than she’d felt in her entire life.

She was home.

Just as she’d wanted for so long.

But nothing was the way she’d hoped it would be. She’d come back under a lie. And nothing was any different than it had been a year ago. Six months ago. Rolling onto her side, she curled her knees up and hugged them to her chest, waiting for the ache to fade, the raggedness of her breaths, the erratic beat of her heart.

As it faded, she grew aware of the serene, blissful silence.

It was another brutal blow that Lana hadn’t been prepared for. For years, her life had consisted of routine, routine and more routine. She’d wake to the sound of the L, the rush and clattering of the trains on the elevated railroad that cut through Chicago. She’d smell the familiar scents of the bakery across the street, fried food lingering from the store she managed and other scents she associated with the city. She’d wake in the dark, because she woke up early.

She knew her routine.

But her routine was broken and she felt broken along with it.

The scent of coffee filled the air. Golden streamers of sunlight slanted through the window to fall across her face, and as she lay there she could hear the music of birdsong. She hadn’t heard anything like that in far too long. It almost hurt to think about it. It almost felt like a dream.