Tempt Me (34 page)

“They weren't as big an issue as I thought they'd be.” She explained how she’d been aware of the pheromones physically, but how her mind had skimmed over them, like a surfer riding a wave.

“Because you love Rafe.”

“Yeah,” she admitted. In hindsight, Wyatt had done her a massive favor with his unwanted kiss. Between her smidgen of succubus blood, and her love for another man, she now knew she had some very effective natural defenses. She stood, nodding briskly. “Go tear out those damn cameras. I'm going back to The Bunker.”

Jack stood, too. “You're sure you won't come to Rafe’s with me?”

“Not right now. I...have an idea I want to flesh out.”

He eyed her warily. “You and your ideas. You frighten me sometimes.”

“That’s why you pay me the big bucks.” She hugged him, then kissed his nicked-up knuckles. “Thank you, kind sir, for avenging my honor.”

“It was long overdue.” He kissed the top of her head, and then tapped her temple with his finger. “Don't get all wrapped around the rails in there, okay?”

“Okay.”

Jack’s mini vibrated. “Lukas and Chico are on their way to Rafe’s.” He glanced up. “Sure you won’t come with me?”

It was tempting, so tempting. “No.”

“I hope you know what the hell you’re doing.” He walked towards the door.

“Jack?” He turned back, eyebrows raised. “Tell him that... tell Rafe I'll see him soon.”

“When?”

She thought about everything she had to do. “What day is it?” Between hacks and hospitalization, she’d completely lost track of time.

“Today is Wednesday.”

“His gallery show, at the latest.”

“You’re going?”

“Of course.” Even if everyone there would be looking at her nude body. A snort of laughter escaped. If Wyatt had uploaded any of those files, people might already be doing so. Searching for the files was Job One.

“I’ll check in with you later,” he said, his hand on the doorknob. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

She jerked her head to the door. “Go.”

No, she wasn't about to do anything stupid. Actually, the idea sparking to life might be one of the best she’d ever had.

Now, she just had to find the courage to follow through.

––––––––

R
afe stood near the bathroom door, arms crossed, fuming as Lukas leaned out the open bedroom window to shout something to Chico. After explaining everything that had gone down at Chadden’s a couple of hours ago—including the fact that Jack had smashed in Cooper’s pretty nose—Chico was out on the fire escape removing a small, blocky device from his satellite dish.

Apparently his satellite dish did more than translate airborne signals into subscription-based entertainment.

That fucker. The thought of Wyatt Cooper watching them in bed, catching even a glimpse of Bailey’s bare skin, made him want to smash something.

Lukas and Chico talked and gestured, but individual words didn't register. He didn't know what to do with the killing fury streaming through his body, as vicious as the cold front shoving into the region.

Lukas crawled back in again, closing the window behind him with a swirl of snowflakes. “Chico thinks he sees another camera one floor down.” His brother was watching him closely. “He'll check it out, and then come in downstairs.” Sheets rustled as Lukas climbed off the bed Rafe hadn’t used in days. Other than showering, and bolting back a quick meal standing over his kitchen sink, he’d spent nearly every waking and sleeping moment down in his studio.

One positive thing about not having seen Bailey recently? The fucker hadn't gotten any decent film in days. He gestured to the cameras. “Does Bailey know about this?”

“Yeah,” Lukas sighed, swiping a hand through his hair. “Come on, let’s go downstairs. Jack's on his way.”

“But not Bailey.”

No answer from his brother. Of course not.

As they walked downstairs, the door buzzed. “I'll let him up,” Lukas said.

“Fine.” Rafe stalked to the kitchen. If any situation called for a few medicinal shots, finding out his bedroom had been a secret movie set qualified, but he didn’t have any hard liquor in the house and a civilized bottle of wine just wouldn't cut it. There was nothing civilized about the primeval rage pounding through his veins. As he assessed the pitiful contents of his refrigerator, he heard Jack climb the stairs with a heavy tread. Lukas greeted him, and they held a low-volume conversation.

He reached into the refrigerator. They’d have to make do with two six packs of Heineken.

“I'll take one of those,” Jack said from behind him.

He glanced back. Lukas had buzzed Chico up, too. Twelve beers shared between four guys wouldn't provide anywhere near the oblivion he sought, but Lukas could always go buy more.

Rustling in a drawer for his church key, he popped the tops off four bottles and passed them around. Several drops of blood adorned the chest of Jack’s dress shirt, and his knuckles were scuffed and red. He would have preferred throwing the punches himself, but no one had told him about the op—not even Chadden, that son of a bitch. “How is she?” he asked Jack.

Jack shook his head. “She's going to sprain her brain thinking so damn hard.”

“What happened?” Lukas leaned on the big island separating the kitchen from the living room, sipping at his beer.

“She gave notice.”

Lukas's head snapped up. “Again?”

Again?

“I think I talked her down for now.” Despite his words, Jack didn't look certain of success. Bailey could do that to a man.

So, Bailey had tried to quit her job, more than once? Good for her. When were Lukas and Jack going to wake up and smell the burnout?

“I took the tracking device off your Jeep,” Chico said. He looked none the worse for the wear after climbing around on his fire escape in a snowstorm wearing nothing but jeans and a shirt.

“Thank you.” To be honest, he’d forgotten about the damn thing. “So, tell me how things went down at Chadden’s.”

Jack described how Bailey had sauntered into the bar, dressed to kill, and played Wyatt Cooper like a fiddle. “She followed the sequence we rehearsed, and got most of the information we needed.”

“She was completely chill, a total bad ass,” Chico added. “Even when he kissed her.”

Rafe straightened from his slouch. “He kissed her?”

“Not for long.” Lukas smiled coldly. “That's when Jack took him down.”

“With a fist to the face and a knee to the junk.” Chico lifted his bottle in a toast. “Nicely played.”

Jack took a sip of his beer. “She distracted him long enough so we could enter the restaurant unobserved and then arrest him.”

Distracted him? What the hell did
that
mean?

“She, Jenny and I went to Cooper's place to look at his technology set-up while these guys took him in.”

“He lawyered up as soon as we got there,” Lukas said. “He's not talking.”

Jack’s expression was hard enough to chip rocks. “Seeing Cooper's film collection really knocked her for a loop.”

“You didn't let her watch them?” he snapped.

“No, of course not. But there was a video paused on his desktop when we walked in, and...” He shrugged. “He had five or six DVDs lying on the desk next to the computer.”

“They were taken into evidence? Jesus.” The thought of cops, techs and lawyers watching the films—

“Jenny tagged them limited access.”

His head was pounding so hard his eyeballs might pop.

“Calm down, Rafe.”

He whirled toward Lukas. “
You
calm down.” He didn’t know what to do with the anger, the sense of violation. The incendiary hours he and Bailey had spent in his bed, lost in each other, were
theirs
, no one else’s, damn it.

Was he going to be left with nothing, not even memories?

Jack took a slug off the bottle, his expression grim as he swallowed. “What concerns Bailey most right now is the possibility that Cooper uploaded them to the Internet.”

“That son of a bitch.”

“Throttle back. We don't know that he did. But the thought of it was enough to make Bailey offer her resignation so she could go scorched earth if she had to.” Jack looked at Lukas. “She's concerned that her presence at Sebastiani Security poses a risk to the companies, to the Sebastiani family, to the Council—”

Lukas cursed under his breath.

“—and she’s right. You know she is. But risks can be managed. Mitigated. I urged her to find some data, to determine the actual scope of the problem, and then find a solution.” Jack finished the last ounce of beer in the bottle. “I have no idea what she's going to come up with, but she wants to be alone to do it.”

“She's been alone her whole fucking life!” he yelled.

“It's how she copes,” Jack said with a shrug. “It's how she's always coped. She needs time to think, to work things through.” Opening the refrigerator, he pulled out what remained of the first six-pack. “Anyone else ready?”

Chico nodded, lifting his empty bottle. Lukas shook his head.

His own bottle was nearly full, and dewy with condensation. The one gulp he’d taken roiled uneasily in his stomach. With a sound of disgust, he set the bottle down on the island.

Jack picked it up and drank. “Bailey said she’ll see you at your show Saturday night.”

Not until then? “That’s just great.” He glanced at his key ring, hanging on a hook by the door. He could drive to The Bunker in ten minutes, and be shaking her until her teeth rattled in eleven. Kissing her in twelve—

“She loves you, Rafe,” Lukas said.

Jack nodded in agreement. “She told me so tonight. I heard her say the words.”

He
hadn’t heard the words. He walked blindly away from the island, thinking about the sculpture firing in the kiln downstairs, the final work in the sequence Brooke had urged him to envision—him on one knee, asking for her hand in the human tradition.

What would Bailey think—what would she
do
—when she saw the sculpture?

“Hell.” He stared out the window, watching the snowflakes swirl. Whether Bailey realized it or not, she was no longer alone. She’d never be alone again.

But the more time that passed without contact, the more nervous he got.

***

B
ailey made sure the hushed, darkened hallway was completely empty before slipping into the back entrance of one of the glass-front rooms rimming the balcony of her father's mega-church. The rooms had always made her uncomfortable, reminding her of the high-buck private skyboxes at Target Center or The X, but today, the dark, private rooms served her purpose perfectly. She’d promised her sister she'd attend her wedding in person, but Mel didn’t need a big family blowout ruining her wedding day.

As the door closed quietly behind her, she cast a worried glance to the ceiling, half-expecting a lightning bolt to crash down from the heavens. She’d arrived as part of a crowd, and being the day was bright and sunny, the Jackie O. sunglasses covering a third of her face didn't look too radically out of place. The man checking invitations at the door hadn’t looked at her twice. Lukas would have fired him on the spot.

She pulled out her mini and sent Mel a quick text message letting her know she’d arrived. Leaving the lights off, she flipped the speakers on, slipped out of her coat, and set it on one of the padded theatre seats. Under different circumstances, she'd be in the East Wing dressing room with her sister and her bridesmaids right now, giggling, sighing, and making last-minute adjustments to Mel’s dress before she walked down the aisle.

But circumstances weren’t different, and they hadn't been for a very long time.

Sharing this day with her sister was one more thing her father's decision had taken from her, but it was a waste of energy feeling resentful. She and Mel had managed to stay in touch over the years, exchanging birthday and Christmas gifts at restaurants or coffee shops—and if she wasn't mistaken, Mel found the covert contact more than a little exhilarating.

Not so surprising, given Mel also had succubus blood.

Which of her parents had brought a sex demon’s libido into their oh-so-pious marriage? She looked at the altar, dominated by the towering pulpit her father mounted every Sunday, so frequently railing against the sins of the flesh.

He must be a very conflicted man indeed.

As the festively-dressed guests socialized down on the main level, she lowered herself into one of the comfortable padded seats with a sigh. She was tired—exhausted, really—but it was a good kind of tired, not the zombie apocalypse type. Since she'd walked out of Wyatt's apartment, she’d been hyper-productive, fielding the occasional question from Gideon’s e-Team as they examined Wyatt’s computers. As one of the victims in the case, he’d vetoed her direct involvement, but she’d compensated by dissecting her working copy of Wyatt’s hard drive. Jenny had informed her that the DVRs they’d taken from Wyatt’s desk were blank, which squared with her own analysis. She hadn’t found any indication Wyatt had copied the video files, and nothing had shown up online, either. There’d been no snide back-channel chatter about The Queen Bee’s new porn sideline out on the hacker boards. Even if Wyatt had planned to make copies or upload them somewhere, he simply might not have gotten around to it.

Who knew? Wyatt wasn’t talking—and if his blackmailer had ever existed, he or she had dropped off the face of the Earth. 

She and Cheyenne had also hammered out the bare bones of a proposal that, if accepted, would mean a shift in roles for them both. If Elliott and Lukas signed off on their plan, three people from Cheyenne’s team would assume more responsibility at Sebastiani Labs, freeing Cheyenne up to take over some of
her
day-to-day tasks at Sebastiani Security. This, in turn, would allow her to focus full-time on the Council’s strategic objectives.

If the proposal wasn't accepted, she’d quit, and make it stick.

She’d also put her condo on the market for a bargain-basement price, never dreaming it would sell in a day. The new owners wanted to move in quickly, so now, in addition to everything else, she had about a month to find another place to live.