Trial by Fire (3 page)

He led her over to the oversized sofa and sat her down, grabbing for a soft throw to cover her bare legs. His lip quirked up in a sexy grin.

“Here, honey. Put this over you. I don’t want you to get cold. Besides, if I have to look at those long legs of yours for more than fifteen seconds, we can kiss this ‘story telling’ part of the evening good-bye.”

Watching him stride to the kitchen, Erin agreed. She felt the same way about him. His worn blue jeans hugged his tight ass and strong thighs. He was a gorgeous man. A big, tall, strong man. She loved to look at him. To touch him. Revel in the way his broad shoulders and muscular chest tapered down to his slim waist and tight hips. There wasn’t an inch of fat anywhere on his body. When he came back across the room toward her she saw that the top button of his jeans was undone. She gasped at the sight of the dark gold tipped hair on his chest that arrowed down across his belly to his groin below. That sight alone sent a shockwave of sensation to her core. She pressed her legs together, startled at the moisture dampening her soft folds. Damn. As if his body wasn’t striking enough, his shaggy sun-streaked hair and scruffy beard shadow cranked up another wave of heat across her thighs. She felt her face flush, and wished she’d worn panties. She’d have to avoid siting on his lap or it wouldn’t be long before he noticed the effect he was having on her. She looked down shyly, knowing if she met that emerald green gaze, she’d have no secrets. He could read her in seconds. But then, how could he not? She was quite simply gaga over him and there was no way she could hide how she felt, or what he did to
her
body.

Erin could read Nate, as well. She saw the complicated, thoughtful man under the badass exterior. As outrageously arrogant as he was—and he was that—Erin had never met a smarter, more intuitive person, man or woman. Nate cut through the crap like no one she’d ever known. He saw through people and didn’t allow them to hide behind their masks, their carefully constructed personas. He sized them up in seconds, not minutes. It was what made him the ace detective that he was, and the most challenging and exciting lover she’d ever known.

But Nate had masks of his own and a tough outer shell that few people saw beneath. Connor, the Chief, to some extent his partner, Dan—and now Erin—saw the complicated man behind the superstar, tough guy exterior. And something was bothering Nate big time tonight. Erin saw it in his eyes, the strain on his face.

His sexy smile and the way his eyes lit up when he saw her was gratifying but his rigid jaw and furrowed brow told her this had been a tough night.

Nate deposited the wine and a couple of glasses on the coffee table.

“I decided I’d join you, Erin.” He said, as he poured her a glass of the dusky maroon Cabernet and handed it to her. “Are you hungry, baby?”

Erin shook her head but couldn’t keep her from raking her eyes over his muscled chest and landing on his bulging crotch. Peeking up at him shyly, she said in a husky voice, “No, I can wait. For later.”

Nate laughed. He sat down beside her and pulled her close to him and murmured in her ear, “Erin, it would be so damn easy to forget everything that’s happened tonight and bury myself in the sweetest, most erotic place in the world. But for once I’m gonna control myself. I need to tell you what happened tonight. You’ll be hearing about it for days and weeks to come but I want you to hear about it first from me.”

Erin forced herself to shove down the wave of disquiet his words elicited and resisted snuggling up next to him. He was too enticing. They were too hungry for each other to sit close to each other for long before their hunger drove them together. But she could tell, tonight was the time for words, not actions.

“What happened, Nate?”

“Mike Peterson was murdered.”

“The lumber man? The one who lives in the big house with, um—”

“Yeah, the asshole who owns half the town and most of the county. And, yes, Laura’s husband.”

Erin’s chest tightened at the mention of Laura’s name. She forced herself to concentrate on the facts.

“How? Did someone shoot him?”

Nate gave a deep sigh. “No. Nothing so simple as a gunshot took Mike down. I know you’ve seen some hard things in your work, Erin. But I can double-dare tell you, you have never seen a murder scene like the one we saw tonight.”

When he hesitated and rubbed his hand through his unruly hair, Erin’s heart sped up.

“Was anyone else… hurt?”

Nate snorted. “No, honey. Nothing happened to Laura, except that she found the body. It was shocking, Erin. Like something out a grade-B horror movie. Someone took the time to build a makeshift cross and strung Mike up on it. Right in the middle of his multi-million dollar mansion, in what he called the ‘Gentleman’s Room.’ I can tell you for a fact that there were no gentlemen in that room tonight.”

Nate tipped up his wine glass and quaffed the remainder of the aromatic liquid in his glass.

He reached for the bottle and refilled his glass then offered it to Erin. She shook her head. Seeing the tension in his body, she sat up straighter and began working her expert fingers into the tight muscles and knots ringing his neck. He huffed out a deep groan.

“Oh yeah, honey, you can do that all night.” He added with a grin, “That is, until we ‘up the ante’ a little and find some more sensitive places to dig our fingers in. But for now…”

Erin heard the tension in his voice that she felt in his muscles and gave him an encouraging nudge. “Tell me, Nate. Tell me what happened.”

Nate sighed. “It’s not so much that he was killed, it was how he was killed. Some sadistic bastard whipped him to death—likely with a steel-tipped cat or a flogger”

Erin jerked back, startled.

Nate nodded his agreement. “They put inch-wide slashes over every part of his body. It was amazing, Erin. It looked as though someone had drawn lines on him with a protractor. They placed each strike precisely, exactly two inches away from the previous one.”

Erin exhaled and had to force herself to take keep taking deep breaths. She shook her head when Nate turned to her and asked, “Do you have any idea the experence, the sheer expertise it takes to wield a whip like that? It’s one thing to slash a guy with a knife. Or hell, chop him up with an ax. Crude. Blunt. But, it’s quite another thing to do it with a whip. Takes years of practice. And honey, that kind of expertise doesn’t come cheap. Someone brought in the best to torture Mike to death.”

Erin saw where he was going.

“They hired someone to kill him?”

Nate grimaced. “Or, more likely,
sent
someone to kill him.”

“You mean, a professional killer?”

“Oh yeah. At least for the moment, no doubt about it. This was as professional a hit as I’ve ever seen.” He reached up and ground his fingers into the places Erin had been rubbing as if he needed to get much deeper, harder into the taut muscles and tendons. Erin pulled back, seeing that he had more to say and wanted to give him room to say it.

“Oh and there was one other little giveaway. They cut off his dick and his balls and shoved them in his mouth.”

Erin gasped. “Oh my God, Nate. When he was alive? Why? I don’t—”

“No honey, it’s damn near impossible to understand what drives a man to do what was done to Mike. And yeah, he was alive for most of it. How long he was conscious is another question. But the skillful way this was done, I have an idea that they kept him on the edge throughout. Making sure he felt every cut, every slash.”

Erin struggled to get her arms around what he was telling her. She was incredulous. It didn’t make sense. It seemed impossible that something like this could have happened in this modest upper Midwest town. Things like this happened in big cities, not in Chicadia Falls!

As if he read her mind, Nate confirmed. “I know what you’re thinking, Erin. Maybe in New York or Chicago or L. A., strongholds of the mob or the most violent gangs. But not here. In Chicadia Falls? You’re right. But even in those big cities that see a level of violence on a daily basis that we don’t see in a year, this crime was over the top. Hell, I’d be surprised if it didn’t become part of police academy textbooks of the future. One of those ‘This could happen even in your crappy little town’ stories.”

“But, but why, Nate? Why would someone do such a hideous thing? Why not just kill him. Why torture him to death. So cruelly?”

Nate heaved a deep sigh then finished off the second glass of wine.

“That, darlin’, is what I will be spending the next months of my career finding out.”

Chapter 3

Erin sat silently trying to process the thoughts and emotions swirling though her troubled mind. The niggling thought that had been tugging at her from the beginning began to take hold. On the one hand it blessedly crowded out the gruesome images of Mike’s tortured body that Nate’s words evoked. But the image that supplanted them was terrifying in its own right. The image of Laura.

Erin was a newcomer to the town, but she hadn’t been here a month before she heard the stories of the infamous Laura Peterson. The woman who used to be Nate Stryker’s wife. Erin knew how badly Laura had hurt Nate. Knowing Nate as she did, she had a hard time understanding how he could have been taken in by a woman as patently deceitful as Laura. At least in hindsight, she was to Erin. But Nate had fallen for her—hard. Probably his pride, his cocky assurance that any woman alive would be thrilled for the chance to be in Nate Stryker’s arms. He was known throughout the state. The Nate Stryker who could have any woman he wanted. But rather than choose one, he took them all. His reputation for one night stands was the stuff of legends. So was Laura’s. If anyone was more prolific than Nate, it was Laura. She slept her way through the police academy, but never worked as a cop. She bedded them instead. But she didn’t limit herself to guys in uniforms. After she’d worked her way through every guy in the county with a stud quotient of ten or higher, she went after the big dog himself. It was bound to happen. There weren’t two more gorgeous creatures than Laura and Nate. Of course they would notice each other and go in for the kill.

Laura played her usual role. But Nate didn’t. According to the stories Erin heard from Connor, Nate fell for Laura and fell hard. He loved her like no one should love a woman—or, at least a woman like Laura. What Laura didn’t understand or appreciate was that the big bad Nate Stryker had a soft streak, a do-gooder hero complex a mile wide. After 911, he and his best friend and cousin, Luke Lang, joined the army. It wasn’t long before the two young cops and mixed martial artist stars were handpicked by the shadowy elements of the military and soon disappeared from regular action. Instead, they spent the next three years fighting every evil creature known to man in the worst hellholes of the world. They were heroes to most. The town had never been prouder. At first, Laura loved the notoriety, the status of being married to the toughest guy around who was a decorated hero to boot.

But apparently ten years of hopping from one big dick to another got boring. Especially when her dick of the moment was off chasing bad guys halfway across the globe. Laura decided to change her standard of measurement. Instead of dick size, her new baseline was wallet size. Not that she gave up the carnal pleasures. But that became a side focus. For entertainment only. Her real focus was money, and plenty of it. She worked her way through every banker, business owner, doctor and lawyer, in a three-state area, until she landed on Mike Peterson. Mike’s ancestors were as close to robber barons as you were likely to see in the Midwest. Only instead of building railroads, they went after the natural resources. In Minnesota, that was trees. The fortune his family left him after generations of raping the forests, Mike’s father invested and grew exponentially. Mike Jr., now in his fifties, had nothing to do but spend it. He was a perfect target for Laura.

But Mike wasn’t a pansy. He craved public adulation as much as Laura craved physical adulation. If Mike was going to get screwed, he was going to do so at the public expense of the Golden Boy Hero. He demanded something in return. Knowing he couldn’t compete with Nate in the bedroom or anywhere else that required physical acumen, Mike played the only card he had. If Laura wanted his money, she needed to declare him the winner in the game of one upmanship. He insisted Laura divorce Nate, and marry him. For Laura the decision was less challenging than if she should wear her three-inch stilettos or her five-inch ones to the Wednesday night church supper. Nate got the divorce papers after a four month stint in a prison camp in Pakistan, a place so far off the grid no official element of the U.S. Army acknowledged it existed. According to the story Luke told his brother Connor, Nate was in an Army hospital in Germany, thirty pounds lighter and still drinking his food through a straw in his wired jaw when they gave him the divorce papers. He read through them and motioned for Luke to give him a pen. He signed the papers, handed the packet to Luke, and never spoke her name again.

But the betrayal took a toll. Nate returned from Afghanistan a hardened man, with a shell so thick it would take a sledge hammer to break through. Or as it turned out, a rookie firefighter who did the impossible. Erin captured Nate’s heart and began to sooth his spirit. But though she knew that Nate loved her, Erin was vulnerable to a past as horrific as Nate’s was. It had left her uncertain, afraid, and at heart not convinced that the man she loved more than anything in the world could possibly love her as much.

And now Laura was back. Vulnerable, needy, hurt. Ready and eager for comfort. The kind of woman that was Kryptonite to a big, tough, over-protective cop. And, as of last night, Laura became available.

Erin startled, realizing that Nate was staring at her, a quizzical frown pinching his brow.

His voice was low, concerned. “What is it, Erin?”

Not wanting him to know what she was thinking and knowing how easily he could read her, Erin jumped up and made a pretense of clearing away the glasses. She turned away mumbling something about putting the glasses in the dishwasher. She took refuge in the horrific things he’d told her.