Vigil (2 page)

I gasped at his touch. It seemed like such an intimate place to touch me. His hand was large and warm, even through his gloves. My legs felt weak. “Why do you care?”

His voice rumbled in my ear. “What were you doing out there tonight?”

“I…” What could I tell him? Should I tell him the truth? How much of it? “I know that Hayden Barclay is the killer.”

“You do?” he said. “But according to the authorities, he’s got an alibi.”

I raised my gaze to meet his. “Bullshit. He’s the heir to the biggest organized crime family in the city. He could have paid off any number of people to swear that they were with him on the evenings in question. Besides, the fact that the bodies are found in the bay makes it tough to pinpoint the time of death with precision. He could capture the girls and keep them somewhere until he’s ready to kill them.”

It was hard to read the expression on the masked man’s face, but he seemed almost impressed. “You’re right. I’ve had similar thoughts.”

“You have?”

“The entire police system in the city is corrupt. The gangs pay off everyone. Three fourths of our fine boys in blue are taking bribes and looking the other way. They aren’t going to stop Barclay. Someone has to.”

“Exactly,” I said.

His gaze caught mine. I looked deep into his eyes. They were blue, I realized. Light blue like the sky in the early morning.

He gestured to the motorcycle. I swung a leg over it and sat down.

I felt him settle in behind me. His body wrapped around mine, taut and massive. I could feel his chest against my back, his thighs against my backside, against my thighs. Suddenly, the masked man was touching me in so many places. I felt light headed. It was hard to stay sitting up. I collapsed into him, and he was pressing against me even more.

He grasped my hips, positioning me on the seat of bike. He seemed to pull me closer to him, my ass against his crotch.

I felt hot all over. Possibly from his closeness. Possibly because I was starting to feel inappropriately turned on.

“What are you?” I whispered. “Some kind of masked vigilante, here to clean up corruption in our fair city?”

He didn’t deny it. He didn’t say anything at all. Instead, he turned the key in the motorcycle and pumped the throttle.

It came to life between my legs, roaring and purring, vibrating through me.

And the experience was suddenly violently sexual.

I made a little sound in the back of my throat, but he couldn’t have heard it over the motor.

He squeezed his powerful thighs around me, holding me tightly in place.

And the bike took off.

We sped down the street, the city streaming by us—only brightly colored lights and gleaming pavement.

My heart raced, pounding in my throat. The speed, the wind in my face, the hard male body at my back… it was an intoxicating combination.

We careened around corners, past tall buildings and parked cars. We blasted through the city, so fast that my breath couldn’t catch up.

But then, abruptly, he pulled to a stop.

“I forgot to ask where you lived,” he said.

I unfastened my helmet, took it off, and set it down. I turned to look at him. He wasn’t wearing a helmet on his head. Daredevil. I looked into his blue eyes, my heart still stuttering in my chest. I felt out of control of my own body.

“What are you?” His voice seemed harsher, like it had come down a few more octaves.

“I’m an intern.” I was still staring into his eyes.

“An intern?”

“For
The Sun-Times
,” I said.

“A reporter.” He touched my face. His gloved finger traced the outline of my jaw.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to write about Barclay?”

“As soon as I get proof, I will.”

He shook his head. “That’s very dangerous.”

I focused on his lips again, the way they pronounced his words. His voice was as dark as the summer night, and he was so close now. And his lips…

He grasped me behind my neck, holding me in place.

His lips came for mine.

I opened my mouth to him.

His tongue invaded my mouth—sweet warmth and sensation filling me. His strong arms wrapped around me, pinning me to his body, crushing me against him.

A whirlwind whipped up inside me, sweeping through my limbs and my head, robbing me of thoughts, swirling pleasure through me. His kiss was intense.

My heart hammered away, pulsing thrills over me, into me, around me.

Slowly, he stopped moving. His grip on me loosened.

He pulled away, clearing his throat.

I felt dizzy and disoriented.

And embarrassed.

What had possessed me? Was it nerves? Were more than my thoughts beginning to scatter? Were my actions becoming erratic as well?

I looked up at him.

His gaze darted away. He reached for the helmet that I’d set down and offered it to me.

I didn’t take it. I only looked at it. What had just happened?

“Let me give you a ride home,” he said.

“I can get there myself.” My voice was at least three octaves too high.

“It isn’t safe.”

“I’ll call a cab.” I jumped off the bike. “I’m sorry that I…”
Kissed you? Let you kiss me? Enjoyed being kissed?
“I don’t know what came over me.”

He set the helmet down. He hesitated. “All right. Call a cab then.”

I pulled out my phone.

He watched while I dialed. While I spoke with the cab company. While I gave my address.

His blue eyes were cold and emotionless, and he gave me a wide berth, never allowing us to get close again.

I wanted to die inside. What had just happened? This wasn’t like me. I didn’t go around letting strange masked men kiss me in the middle of the night. I was very careful about the kind of men I let into my life. I’d seen too much of the dark underbelly of male and female interaction not to be cautious.

But here I was, throwing all caution to the wind.

He still looked so good to me. And the way he’d kissed me… He’d been eager, even thorough. I remembered the iron weight of his arms as they held me in place.

“You need to stay away from this part of the city,” he told me. “You’re no match for Hayden Barclay.”

“You can’t stop me. I want Hayden brought to justice, and I’ll do whatever I can to make sure that happens.”

“I think I could stop you if I needed to.” He folded his arms over his chest.

Little thrills went through me. Something about the way he’d said that made me wish I could kiss him again.

Stop it
, I told myself.
So, he’s the most attractive man you’ve ever seen. But he’s dressed up in spandex and a mask. He’s crazy. He’s bad news.

The cab pulled up across the street. The cabbie got out. “Cecily Kane?”

I waved. “That’s me.” I turned to the masked man. “I have to stop Hayden. It’s a personal thing for me.”

“You think it isn’t personal for me?”

I hadn’t given it a lot of thought, really. Everything about this masked man was making it hard for me to think properly.

“Don’t come back to that part of the city,” he said in a voice like cold steel. He waited until I was across the street and safe inside the cab with the door shut after me.

Then he swung onto his unique motorcycle and revved the engine.

On impulse, I rolled down the window in the cab. I got out my phone, and I began snapping pictures of him as he drove away.

Even captured in a photograph, he looked larger than life, too virile and enormous to be real.

* * *

“What are these?” said Lauren Stephens, my editor and boss. She was scrolling through the photos I’d given her to accompany the story I’d turned in that morning. I’d simply pulled all of my photos off my phone, including the ones of the masked man. There he was, riding across Lauren’s desktop in all his shimmering black glory.

“Oops,” I said. “I didn’t mean to give those to you.”

“Who is this guy?” Lauren raised her eyebrows. “This some kind of kinky shit you’re into?”

“No,” I said. “He’s a guy I met last night.”

“Dressed like that? You meet him at a weird club or something?”

“No, he was just on the street.” I bit my lip. I supposed there was no real reason to keep the masked man secret from Lauren. “He, um, saved me when a guy was getting fresh with me. He seems to consider himself a masked vigilante.”

Lauren’s mouth made a tiny, round O. “You’re shitting me.”

“No,” I said.

She laughed. “A masked vigilante? What’s he vigilant-ing against?”

“Organized crime,” I said. “He said something about how three-fourths of the police were taking bribes.”

Her eyes lit up. “That’s great. That’s really great. How fast can you have…” She checked something on her computer. “Five hundred words on that?”

“What?” I said.

“You’ve got the photos,” she said. “It’s a dynamite story. Try to remember exactly what he said.”

Exactly what he said? Then I remembered that I’d switched on my recorder back when I thought he was Hayden Barclay. “Actually, I had my recorder on.”

She grinned. “Even better. Make it seven hundred words. Can you have it in two hours?”

My mouth worked. “I… I guess.”

“Great.” She shooed me with her hands.

That was my cue to leave her office. I wandered out back into the newsroom where the other reporters’ and interns’ desks were all set up.

“Oh, and Cecily?” called Lauren.

I turned.

“See if you can think up a name for him. Something catchy.”

CHAPTER TWO

I’d been working as an intern at
The Aurora Sun-Times
for two weeks now. It was the summer after my junior year at college, and—as near as I could tell—if I wanted to be successful in the newspaper business, I needed to have internships before I graduated. These days, it wasn’t easy to make a living as a reporter, what with the advent of the internet and the shrinking of newspaper circulation and the massive lay-offs of key staff at newspapers everywhere. Why pay money for a piece of paper when the news was available for free on the web?

But, unlike some people, I didn’t believe that newspapers were going to die. For one thing, the content we were providing was still relevant. The packaging was changing from paper to digital, but the news remained relevant. As far as the loss of pay from readers, well, newspapers had always relied on advertising to make it possible to fund production. Online, the revenue was simply going to have to solely come from advertising.

And, sure, that meant that there was going to be less money all around and that less people were going to have newspaper jobs.

But it didn’t mean that
no one
was going to have a newspaper job.

I was going to be one of the few who did.

The way I figured it, all I had to do was make a big enough name for myself that I was relevant no matter where I chose to do my reporting. I had to make myself a brand, and if I did that, then I had it made for the rest of my career. As long as I continued at a level of excellence, and I was head and shoulders above everyone else, I’d be successful.

Now, I guess that sounded a little arrogant. I was essentially saying that I thought I’d have a career in journalism because I could be better than everyone else.

But I didn’t really mean better.

I meant… driven, I guess.

I wanted this. I wanted it bad. It was the only thing I’d ever wanted so badly for my entire life, and I knew that I would get it, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t even know who I was.

My love affair with newspapers began when I was a very little girl. One weekend, I’d been visiting my grandparents and looking through some of their old black-and-white movies. They bought a lot of nostalgic DVDs, and one of them was for a movie called
His Girl Friday.

I liked the picture on the front, because I liked how girls always looked in black and white—their skin perfect and blemish free, their lips and eyes dark, their hair wavy and perfectly coiffed.

And I was sucked into another world. The world of newspapers in the 1940s. I was enamored with Hildy, the brash former reporter who gave it just as good as the men in the business, and who couldn’t give up her career or her hard-boiled editor ex-husband Walter. There was something transformative about it. It was the first time in my life I had seen someone passionate about a job.

My mother hardly worked, and when she did, it was only at diners as a waitress or in hotels as a maid. She was on her feet all day, and when she came home, she swore a lot and hit the bottle. To be fair, my mother hit the bottle no matter what she did. I had to cut her out of my life when I left home at eighteen. It was sad, but she had become poisonous to herself and to me and everything she touched.

I had previously thought of work as something that was only torture. It was a necessary evil, something to be endured in order to get money.

But Hildy…

Hildy was trying to quit the newspaper business, to settle down and have a family.

But deep down, she didn’t want that. All she wanted was to be a reporter, to chase the news, to be part of the excitement of a story.

I was only six years old, but I knew right then that I wanted to be like Hildy. I wanted a passion so big it consumed me. Something I couldn’t run from.

And like Hildy, my passion became the news.

I had never paid attention to newspapers before this, but after seeing the movie, I insisted on having a subscription to our local daily. I didn’t read all of it. Some of it bored me to tears. But I read enough of it that I began to understand intrinsically how to write a news story. My passion began to grow and grow.

In high school, I persuaded the journalism teacher to allow me to join the newspaper staff as a freshman. Generally, only sophomores and older were allowed into the class. She told me that she was moved by the gleam in my eye. She said that when she saw me, she knew that she had to get out of my way and let me do what I loved. I had passion. She saw it.

So, at any rate, I didn’t think that I was a better journalist than everyone out there. But I thought that I might want it just a little bit more than a lot of people did. I had already seen it amongst my fellow journalism majors at college. They had drifted into the major for various reasons. Some were aspiring novelists who thought that they’d use newspaper writing as a job until they landed a major publishing contract. Some had taken a course in high school on a whim and discovered they liked it. Still others liked sports or fashion or some other field and knew that writing about such things would keep them close to their passion.