The Killing Edge (15 page)

A soft flush darkened her features, the contrast turning her eyes greener. But she didn’t speak, only turned to leave.

He should have let her. But he couldn’t.

“Don’t you see, Chloe, I wasn’t as strong as you were. When things got tough, I left. Stuckey and Jimbo are the closest I have to real friends, and I usually talk blood and guts and murder to Stuckey, and bait and beer to Jimbo. I
can put on a facade, convincingly be someone else when I need to be for a case, but I’m not really sure anymore of who I really am, who I want to be or where I’m going. I drift through life, waiting for the next interesting case, and if I’m not in the mood, I sail away somewhere.”

She stared at his hand, which still lay on her arm, then met his eyes again. “I came looking for sex, Luke,” she said bluntly. “I didn’t offer you a marriage proposal.”

“I do like you, Chloe,” he said.

“I like you, too. I see someone who refused to compromise, and who has dealt with way more in the past than I ever imagined. That’s not running away. And it doesn’t sound like a death wish, either. I guess I just thought that having sex with someone you like wasn’t a bad thing.”

He had to laugh. She sounded so earnest.

“I don’t do it often. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time—” She broke off, embarrassed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to share that much.”

Later, he would blame it on her eyes.

At that moment, he blamed it on the fact that he was touching her, that she smelled so clean and sweet, fresh from the shower, that her skin beneath his hand was soft, and her very presence seemed to scream of heat and sensuality.

Maybe it was simply because somewhere along the way he lost the towel.

In his mind, the voice of reason was muted by the sudden smoke of desire, and he pulled her into his arms. He found her mouth, the lips he had admired, and found that they
parted beneath his with liquid sexuality. When he kissed her, it was as if he breathed her vitality into himself. When he held her, he felt her fire and strength, everything that was vibrant and alive about her, flow into him. He cradled her face between his hands as he lingered over that first kiss, savoring it, but then the fusion between them turned hot and wet. He slid his hands inside her robe and down her torso, feeling the silk of her skin, the curve of her hip. Their lips never parted as she pressed her body flush against his. He gripped her harder, his hand running down the length of her back to the base of her spine and around her buttocks, pulling her still closer. Conscious thought fled. They fell onto his bed together, limbs tangling, their embrace urgent, frenzied. Her breasts were full, her body so perfect that he gasped in sheer amazement. Somehow he forced his now-aching erection to be patient as he bathed her throat and collarbone with his kisses, savoring the hollows and rises, while he cupped her breast and felt a new surge of desire sweep through his body, leaving him shuddering in its wake. His mouth replaced his hand on her breast, then moved on to her ribs, her hip. He savored the sensation of her moving beneath him, with him. He felt her palms on his back, the whisper of her breath against his ear, and he groaned, moving lower against her, as if in this one night he was driven to know her completely. Her hands were a sweet torment against him, fingertips teasing with featherlight caresses, then stroking more boldly.

He feathered his own fingertips down over her abdomen and between her thighs, and he followed each caress with his
lips and tongue. He felt her lips against his shoulder, the miraculous undulations of her body, and was aware of a thunder that was the beating of his heart. They rolled together, and then he was above her, thrusting into her at last, sinking into a tight and burning velvet heaven. He didn’t know how long the world rocked, aware only of the pulsating need between them, as beautiful as soaring above the world and as basic as the grinding of flesh against flesh. Bathed in a sheen of perspiration, he felt the explosion of his climax and was momentarily embarrassed, but was then gratified instead as he felt her buck beneath him, then shudder as her own orgasm carried her over the edge. They remained locked together as they came down from the pinnacle, until finally the thrumming of the air conditioner drowned out the thundering of his heart, and he eased off her, one arm still holding her close. For what seemed like a very long time they simply lay there together, and he was gratified that she, too, didn’t feel the need to speak right away.

At last she shifted against him and looked up to meet his eyes, a teasing, still-sexy look in her own. “I don’t usually have to work harder to win a guy’s interest than to turn him down, but you were definitely worth it.”

“Thanks—I think,” he joked back, grinning.

He kissed her again then, because he had to. She kissed him back, but finally they broke apart and she started to rise.

He pulled her back, shaking his head. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t want to impose and take up your entire night.”

“Get back here.”

“You want me to stay?” she whispered.

“All night. I mean, we’ve gotten past the awkward preliminaries.” He spoke lightly, even as he found himself smoothing back a lock of her hair. “Seriously, what do you take me for? Someone you can just use, then walk away from? Excuse me.”

“No, I just thought that you might like…sleeping alone.
Actually
sleeping, I mean.”

“Not tonight,” he told her. “So…my turn to beg. Yes, please stay. I confess I’m fascinated by the prospect of waking up beside you.”

“Is that all?” she murmured.

“Of course not.” She smiled

Maybe it was her smile that did it, that and the little dimple that formed in her right cheek. Or maybe it was the feel of her body against his.

He never wanted to move.

He never wanted
her
to move.

They were quiet for a while after that, almost dozing. But then she moved, just an adjustment of her body against his, but that adjustment hit him like instant lightning. He pulled her into his embrace, and they made love again.

Impossibly, it was even better the second time. He realized, as he fell asleep, that it could never be just sex with this woman.

They overslept, filling the morning with swearwords when they finally awoke.

They took separate two-second showers, and then Luke
insisted on watching Chloe until she was safely back in her own room, so she could dress. That took five minutes, and then they were back in the car, heading north.

They were lucky. The traffic was light.

At one point, Chloe’s phone rang. It was Leo, upset that she hadn’t called him to say that they weren’t coming home. Luke could only hear half of what Leo was saying, but he watched Chloe’s face as she first defended herself—“But, Leo, I didn’t say we were coming back last night!”—and then apologized up and down.

Luke found himself liking the fact that though she was twenty-seven, she still felt responsible to the man who had raised her.

She blushed as she closed the phone. “I don’t think I’ll forget to call him again,” she said ruefully.

“It’s good to be responsible to someone,” he said.

She nodded, watching the road. “Luke, seriously, what could Maria’s situation have to do with anything on the island?”

“I don’t know, but I think I’m going to start doing my own searches—more thorough than what the police were able to do—on the people involved with the agency. I think it’s more apparent than ever that Colleen didn’t just run away, but it’s still an island, and the only way off is by boat. That’s the trick—finding out how she was spirited away, and by whom.”

“Can it really have anything to do with the Church of the Real People?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s possible that someone knows
Maria is here. Maybe they came for her and realized they weren’t going to get her back, but they spotted Colleen and targeted her instead, for some sick reason of their own. Whoever they are, they must have an in with the agency to have access to the island. All I know is that for the time being, I don’t want you going anywhere alone. Any woman associated with the agency and the island could be in danger. Unless…”

“Unless it really was a publicity stunt. Colleen could have arranged to slip away—but she still would have needed someone with a boat to get her off the island without being seen.”

“But there’s always a guard on the docks. The guy with the boat could have come in through the mangroves, though he would have needed to know the area well to make it without bottoming out. Anyway, it’s a possibility, but to be honest, I don’t think it’s probable. So
you—”
he smiled warmly at her “—need to be careful. Very, very careful.”

“I’ve spent my life being careful, trust me,” Chloe told him.

He laughed. “Oh, yeah, that was real careful, following me over that balcony and chasing me down in the sand when I was following Rene.”

She flushed. “I thought you were going to hurt her.”

“So you call security, or the cops. That’s what you do from now on, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“I shudder to think what you might have been up to in years past.”

“Nothing dangerous, I promise you.”

He got her to her gate by nine forty-five, giving her a shot at making it to work more or less on time. Despite her worry about being late, she didn’t get out of the car right away. He was afraid she was thinking that she had made a mistake, being with him. But when she spoke, she startled him.

“Colleen is dead, isn’t she?”

“I believe she is, yes.”

Chloe hesitated for a moment, then said, “Luke, I keep seeing her.”

“Remembering her, you mean?”

She shook her head. “No.
Seeing
her. Her…ghost.”

She was serious, he realized.

“Chloe, you’re involved in trying to find out what happened to her, you believe she’s dead, it’s only natural that your imagination is working overtime.”

She shook her head. “I know it sounds…as if I’m crazy—but I’m seeing her. For real.”

He hesitated. If there was one thing he’d developed in the time he’d spent with her, it was complete respect for her honesty and intelligence.

“Just when and where have you seen this ghost?”

She closed her eyes, looking miserable but unable to deny what she believed. “Twice in my room. And last night, at the docks. She’s all wet, as if she’s been in the water. But not as if she’d been swimming, because she’s wearing a dress, a white dress.”

She was simply under too much stress. One too many terrible things had happened in her life.

He didn’t want to mock her, but he did want to lighten her mind.

“So you came to me for sex because you were afraid of a ghost?”

She looked at him, eyes wide and clear and beautiful. “I came to you for sex because I’ve been dying to touch you ever since I met you.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything.

“It terrified me at first, seeing her, but I’m not afraid now. I think she’s asking me for help,” Chloe went on, as if determined to ignore his silence in the face of her last admission. She inhaled deeply, still looking at him. “I wanted to give you an out. I mean, if you think I’m a nutcase, I don’t want you to think you have to see me again.”

He cupped her cheek in one hand. “If I thought that I’d never see you again, never sleep with you again, I’d probably implode here and now.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

“But, Chloe…”

“What?”

“Ghosts don’t exist. I believe that
you
believe you’re seeing one. But what’s haunting you now is fear, and sadness for a young woman you knew, even if only casually, and your desire to find justice for her.”

She was suddenly all business. “Sure. Right. Well…I have to get to work.”

He hopped out and quickly opened the passenger door. She stood and kissed him by the car. Slowly, sensually. Too sensually for comfort. He stepped back.

“I don’t think we have time to make love again right now. Not to mention that I think we’d be arrested if I suddenly ravished you on the road in broad daylight.”

She grinned, broke away and hurried toward the house.

He waited until the gate was safely closed behind her before driving away.

Feeling both touched and disturbed, he headed straight back to the
Stirling
.

Despite his best efforts, he was involved with her now. And he was worried about her. Every word she had spoken, she believed.

His boat was just as he had left it.

And yet it was different somehow. He searched the boat carefully, but everything was where it should have been, just how he had left it.

He realized then that no one had been aboard his boat.
It
hadn’t changed.
He
had. He’d liked being alone here, but now he wanted her here with him. He wanted to keep her from being haunted by ghosts, from being torn apart by both the past and the present.

Impatiently, he put on a pot of coffee and logged on to his computer.

He was willing to admit that he was worried about her, and he didn’t even mind. In fact, it was exhilarating to care for someone so much, to remember the scent of her perfume, the silken texture of her skin, the memories so real that he felt as if he could reach out and touch her.

But right now he had to put those tempting memories aside and get on with the search for the truth.

Because he couldn’t—wouldn’t—give her up, and that meant he had to learn to function normally with her in his life.

He set his mind on the task, and for an hour and a half, he surfed from site to site, looking for information on the Bryson Agency and everyone associated with it, though pretty much all he got was press drivel.

He went onto Facebook and MySpace, and read the pages of everyone he could think of.

A link to Myra led to an article about her accident, which mentioned that she hadn’t been with the agency long when it occurred, and that she was a very religious woman, whose faith in God had gotten her through her trials. She went to St. John’s every Sunday then, as she did now. In an interview, she mentioned that she had converted to Catholicism as an adult. “As converts, we believe exactly what we have sworn we believe. Those born or raised in a religion aren’t always as devout.”