A Cold Day in Hell (18 page)

“And the first bullet went off the rim of the tub right beside my head,” she said, gradually pulling the towel from her wet hair. “Why would someone want to kill me?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “There’s nothing logical about it. Have some more brandy.”

She did, and she observed the way his throat moved when he followed suit. Whatever happened, she would not be a ninny and lean on him.

He had strength, both physical and mental. Leaning on him didn’t sound so bad.

“Nothing much gets done till someone dies,” she said and heard the flatness in her own voice. “I mean, it’s like when someone’s missing. You have to wait first to make sure they don’t come back. Then it’s just as likely they’re never found and if they aren’t there’s no body and the killer gets away—”

“Yes,” he said firmly, rising to his knees. He rested his forearms on the arms of the chair and his face was very close. “Don’t forget I’m here. This isn’t the first time…I’ve had some experience with criminals. They come in all shapes and sizes and they’re always mean and often stupid. I don’t mean completely stupid, just that they make mistakes and get caught.”

“But not till after they kill someone.”

Fury surged through him. He wanted to get his hands on whoever was doing this. “Often they get caught before they pull anything off. And this one’s not a pro.” Best not to tell her that was the reason he had become certain she and Aaron were the targets rather than either Sonny or himself.

“I’m okay.” She was whining too much. No one liked a whiner. “A good night’s sleep and I’ll be a new woman.”

His grin let her breathe again. He didn’t have her pegged as a scared, would-be victim. She swallowed more brandy and savored its aromatic burn all the way down.

Angel really was close to her. His thighs were a scant inch from her legs and he didn’t make any attempt to back off, even when he tilted his glass. He lowered his brandy and peered through it. “I like being with you,” he said. “A lot. More than a lot.” He put his glass on the floor and played his fingertips over her collarbones. “I’d like to stay here with you tonight.”

Her stomach flipped and that tingling she’d begun to know so well started all over again. “Mmm. You’re going back to your place.”

“No, I’m not. Matt’s got a cruiser going up to the house regularly. If someone wants to find me, they’ll call.”

Eileen glanced at his mouth and away. She fidgeted in the chair.

Angel leaned slowly until he could kiss her and when their lips finally parted again she was breathless. She looked at the open neck of his shirt, at his chest.

“Look at me,” he said.

She shook her head no.

“Why?”

“Because I want you.” She covered her mouth and mumbled, “I can’t believe I said that.”

Neither could he, but he’d handle it. “I’m glad you did,” he said, preparing to kick himself if she agreed and backed off.

“Me, too,” she said, and returned his kiss, slowly, deeply.

Angel held her by the shoulders and gave as good as he got. Better.

She muttered into his mouth and he arched his head back.

“Brandy,” she said, her eyes huge, dark and shimmering. “My glass.”

He smiled and took it from her to set beside his own. “Don’t they say good loving is a cure-all?” Homing in, he nipped at her bottom lip, sucked it lightly into his mouth. “I think they do. And if they don’t, I do.”

They kissed for a long time. Eileen knew she couldn’t do anything to stop what would happen. She didn’t want to.

Keeping hold of her shoulders, Angel studied her. She looked kissed. She looked sexy, but not the relaxed sexy of aftermath. His lady was on alert as much as he was.

Briefly, he considered how deep he was getting with her. Only very briefly. The answer was—real deep, and he was okay with that.

She didn’t try to stop him pulling her legs from beneath her, sitting on the floor and massaging her feet. Each touch made her jump, and not because she was ticklish. He rubbed the bottoms of her feet with his thumbs, worked toward her ankles and smoothed softly but firmly over her calves and shins. The brush of his fingertips behind her knees zapped her nerves.

“It’s getting late,” she said.

“You sound hoarse.” He gave her another heavy-eyed, provocative grin. “It must be almost time for bed.”

“I didn’t know you were so traditional,” she told him. This new woman she’d discovered in herself was a little wild, at least in comparison with the old Eileen.

“I like the pink,” he said and she didn’t doubt he could see her nipples, hard inside the soft cotton.

His hands traveled her thighs. Her bottom slid forward and he smiled that knowing smile. Fingertips in her groin sent her against the back of the chair again and she grabbed at his hands.

“You don’t like that?” he said.

A slow throbbing contraction and rush of dampness made her hot.

“Don’t you know?” Angel said and spread his fingertips over her belly. His thumbs settled in slick folds. “You still don’t know if you like it?” His voice sank low.

“I like it,” she told him.

With her lips parted and her breath coming in short spurts, she undid the buttons on his shirt. Leaning just a little nearer to him intensified the pressure on her clitoris. She couldn’t concentrate. The buttons slid through the holes by feel. She bowed her head and tugged the shirt open, kneaded his pecs and used her fingernails on his flat nipples.

“Gimme a break,” he said. “Let me…hell, that’s good. You feel so good, so sweet. You’re wet, honey. You’re driving me mad.”

Eileen panted. His thumbs moved harder and faster and she hung on the edge, waiting to tip over, urging him to tip her over.

He took one hand away to open her robe, and fastened his teeth and lips on a nipple. The erotic pulling through wet fabric speared her.

Pushing to the edge of the chair, gripping his shoulders, Eileen whimpered when release broke over her. She all but fell on Angel and he held her while her climax wracked her in waves, and while she tore her robe and nightie over her head.

“My God,” he said. Looking up at her he pinched his thighs together, willed himself not to come like that. With her hands above her head, her breasts swayed, full and rounded, the nipples distended. Big, dark, distended nipples. He covered them, reared up and flicked them with the tip of his tongue. Every sound she made drove him wild.

On his feet, he shucked his pants and lost the shirt fast. He twirled her around and sat on the chair, pulled her down astride his hips and sank into her so hard he watched her face for signs of pain. Eileen’s eyes were closed and she smiled.

Angel tensed every muscle, pushed on her knees to get as close and as deep as he could. Eileen caught him around the neck to keep her balance and do her part to drive them both to a mad seeking.

He jerked, jerked and poured into her. His grip on her slackened as his head fell back against the chair and he flowed into hot, dark mindlessness.

“Angel,” Eileen moaned, her voice high. “Don’t stop.” He felt her body locked around him and bent toward her again.

He felt her rapid build, the convulsive urging in strong, slick places. She tried to kiss him and Angel opened his mouth against hers. He took her sobs into his throat and with one last, huge effort, stood up, staying inside her, and half ran, half staggered the length of the corridor to the small bedroom.

They landed, locked together, on the mattress, and immediately climaxes shot through them. Through a haze, Angel wondered if either of them would survive this in one piece, but Eileen was already pushing a hand between them, touching him again.

“Are you a sex addict?” he murmured into her ear. She nodded and he said, “What a relief.”

T
he back of Eileen’s neck was soft and smelled of soap. They lay on their sides, her bottom tucked into his pelvis, on the bed in the room where he’d only slept alone before. Holding her in his arms, smoothing the undersides of her breasts, he decided he never wanted to face the bed again without her.

Warm, soft, she revolved to face Angel and held him. In the darkness he could see the glitter of her eyes. She kissed him. Angel rose over her and took her face in his hands. He made the kiss leisurely and explorative. When their mouths parted, she trailed her tongue to his ear and nipped at the lobe.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Grateful,” she said, and chuckled. “Mmm, I didn’t mean that to sound the way it did.”

“You didn’t?” He liked her rapid comebacks.

She thought about it. “Yes, I did.”

“Me, too.”

A cell phone rang, hers, and they fell together in a heap on the mattress.

Angel kissed her. She traced the outline of his mouth with the tip of her tongue.

The phone rang a third time and they kissed hard, clung together as if they would never let go. Eileen pulled away and went for her phone. “It could be Aaron,” she said as she flipped it on. “Hello?”

She listened and repeated, “Hello.”

“Who is it?” Angel asked.

“I don’t know. They hung up on me.”

“It could have been a wrong number,” Angel said. “If it was Aaron and he wanted to reach you, he wouldn’t hang up like that.”

He was right. “Mmm.” Eileen snuggled into him again and he held her. She felt safe.

She felt sleepy. “Are you tired?”

“Exhausted,” he said and she felt him smile against her shoulder. “But getting stronger. And stronger.” His head slipped beneath the sheet and he kissed her breasts with little kisses and big, open-mouthed kisses—closer and closer to, but never quite touching, her nipples.

“You’re a tease,” she said. “I’m not tired anymore.”

Her phone rang again.

On the fourth ring she answered, “Yes?”

“Hi, darlin’, please don’t hang up.”

“It’s too late for calls, Chuck.”

I
f he was a nice guy, he’d leave the room and let her talk to her ex in private.

Angel didn’t like nice-guy odds.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Eileen hadn’t said a word since she’d told Chucky boy it was too late to be calling. She found the switch that turned on a nightlight and threw an indistinct beam across the sheets.

He got up and walked to the only window. Fumbling, he lifted one side of the shade and peered out. Over the rooftops, vapor lights let him see the back of the parking lot in front of Eileen’s store, and a new condominium complex. Fog gathered, almost obscuring the colored lights looped around the entire perimeter of the property and festooned in every tree and shrub. It was past time when anyone was moving about in that eerie world that seemed to mock any celebration.

“Are you drunk?” Eileen asked abruptly.

The corners of Angel’s mouth twitched. Chuck Moggeridge was taking too long to get the message that Eileen didn’t want him.

Turned half-sideways, he studied her. Her hair still looked damp and it fell past her shoulders in dark tangles. A frown pulled her fine brows together and downcast eyes threw the curved shadows of her lashes onto her cheeks. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her.

Eileen felt Angel looking at her. He smiled. She didn’t. “I don’t think you believe a word I say,” Chuck said to her on the phone. And he did sound as if he’d been drinking. “I don’t have any rights. Don’t deserve any. But I’m still askin’, will you marry me again, sweetheart?”

She kept her eyes on Angel. Big, solid and very real, having him with her was keeping her sane while Chuck babbled.

“Eileen,” Chuck said softly. “I love you, baby. I’ve paid for my mistakes. Look, I’m only working for Duhon’s because I don’t like too much time on my hands. You know I’m a doer. I’ve got plenty of money. If we need to be together all the time for six months…a year, to really get to know each other again—” he laughed “—we can afford to do that. Let me take you away somewhere. You can hire someone to look after the shop. Hell, that brother of yours worships the ground you walk on, let him take care of things. You love it here and I like it, too. But we could go to one of those places in the Caribbean for a week or so. Or to Hawaii. Sun, sand. You and me and a chance to—”

“No!” She found her voice and heard the way it croaked. She couldn’t believe he’d suggest such a thing. “We’re divorced.”

He sniffed.

Please don’t let him cry.
Chuck had always been tough, especially with her, and she wasn’t sure she could take it if he shed tears, not that she’d believe they meant anything.

“I want to be a father to Aaron.” He choked on the words. “I was lousy, ever since he was born, but I love him and I know how important a good father is to a boy. Especially now when he’s had trouble and could go either way.”

Eileen closed her mouth before she could tell him that Aaron was only going one way—up. The hellish times were over for him. She sighed.
Let it all be over
,
including the shooting spree someone was waging against them.

“Eileen,” Chuck said. “Forget I mentioned getting back together. It’s too soon. Sure it is. Too soon. Just remember what I’ve told you about looking after you if you need money. You and Aaron. I’ve got to find a way to make it all up to you.”

A shooting spree against them.
The enormity of the thought smacked Eileen. How could she even walk around knowing that bullets had already been fired at Aaron and at her, at Angel, probably at Sonny, too?

“You still there?” Chuck was saying.

“Yes. But I don’t want to be,” she said sharply.

“You’ve gotta do this for Aaron,” he said. “And for us, but mostly for Aaron. He never had it good before.”

Angel’s gray eyes had turned black, as they did when he thought deeply. His tanned body glistened from wide shoulder to narrow hip and from his muscular thighs to his feet. A paler band swathed low on his hips. He’d been hard the whole time she’d been talking. He’d been hard while they cuddled in bed. She straightened her back and pressed the heel of a hand into the juncture of her legs. A quick tingling response caught her off guard. So did the possessive stare he gave her.

“Eileen,” Chuck said. “Talk to me.”

“There’s nothing to say except stay away from us. I’m going to hang up now.”

“Wait! Just hear me out. I had to go to the medical examiner’s office a couple of hours ago,” Chuck said rapidly. “Leland Garolfo—he’s the foreman at The Willows—he asked me to go with him because he couldn’t find any of the other guys. I think he just wanted moral support.”

“Get to the point, Chuck.”

“They wanted him to identify a body.”

Eileen shivered. She didn’t need to ask which body he was talking about.

“It was that Bucky Smith. They already knew because of his ID being on him, but they needed a visual, or so they said. God, what a mess. His eyelids were gone.”

Chuck didn’t sound horrified enough to Eileen. And she didn’t need his laundry list of the insults to that poor dead man’s body.

“They know it’s Bucky Smith?” Eileen said, meeting Angel’s eyes and swallowing. “I wonder if he has any family.”

“I think he was a loner,” Chuck said, conversationally. “Leland said he never talked about anything personal. I don’t know about this stuff, but I bet shock took him out before the boiling oil.”

“Yes,” she said.

Angel suppressed an urge to take the phone from her and tell Chuck to get lost. He might do it if he could predict Eileen’s reaction. She liked to do things her own way. He settled a hand low on his belly, the side of his small finger pressing into his penis. He locked his thighs. How the hell would he ever get past this erection without homing in on the object of arousal?

He wasn’t a stranger to cold showers.

Movement outside the window caught his attention. He looked through the glass at thickening shrouds of fog. The vapor lights had sunk into soft halos of gray. The movement was beyond that. He frowned and got closer to the window. A long shadow bounding along the road?

Shadows didn’t bound.

There wasn’t anything there.

“Matt Boudreaux said you and DeAngelo were out at the landfill when they found the corpse,” Chuck said to Eileen.

“No. After they found it. Matt thought Christian might be able to identify the body. He couldn’t.”

“Who’s Christian?”

She was tired of this. Sleep was all she wanted, sleep and Angel. “Good night, Chuck.”

“Please don’t hang up,” Chuck begged. “I don’t have anyone else to talk to. Leland knew the man, even if he did look like boiled pig. All he needed was an apple in his mouth.”

“Damn you,” Eileen said. “Speaking of pigs—”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay? Some people say inappropriate things when they’re upset. You can’t look at a thing like that and not be upset.”

Eileen thought Chuck sounded like a ghoul who relished being on the inside of this one. “That
thing
was a man. I’ve got to go now.”

Whatever he saw wasn’t that far away, Angel thought. He tried to listen to Eileen, but his skin had become cold. Inside he turned absolutely quiet. His mind had stilled. No, not now, he couldn’t have a disconnect now.

A shadow took shape—long, a head, a tail, and outstretched legs. Where trees should have lined the road, the fogbank hovered like a pale canvas behind the apparition instead.

“Look,” he heard Eileen say. “I appreciate you sharing this with me, but—”

“Cher,” Chuck said to Eileen. “They think they narrowed down the date when the killing happened. There were newspapers on top of him. Whoever did that wasn’t thinking. Unless he didn’t care if everyone knew the time line.”

Two shining, polished slits glowed in Angel’s direction. He couldn’t have closed it out if he’d wanted to. The perspective was all wrong. If the glowing slashes were eyes, and they seemed to be, he shouldn’t be able to see them so clearly.

The thing faded, or snuffed out.

Angel turned his back on the window. If he hadn’t had the experiences that plagued him while he was a CIA operative, he’d dismiss the whole thing.

The auras were back—the second sight, the visions of figures that foretold things to come.

“Angel?”

He wanted to look over his shoulder.

“What’s the matter?” Eileen asked.

“What was all that?” he said, dodging her question. She’d put her phone aside. “You’re really upset. I’ve got to get rid of that bastard.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Eileen said. “There’s been too much violence already.” Tears hung in her eyes. She slid down into the bed.

“What did he say to you?” Angel asked. His spine tightened. Even if there had been some kind of a creature out there, it couldn’t have seen him from so far away.

He didn’t know how far away it had been.

He didn’t know how big it was.

He didn’t know
if
it was.

She had hauled the sheet all the way over her head. Angel sat beside her and found his way to stroke her naked back. “Speak to me.” They had gone from a simple friendship, even if he’d always known he wanted more, to a complex entanglement.

“Please go and check on Aaron and Sonny.”

“What’s happened? What did Chuck say to frighten you?” He snatched the sheet from her head and pushed her hair away from her face. “Eileen!”

“You didn’t hear what he said. I didn’t think…I don’t know what I think. He said things about Bucky—and Emma.” Her voice rose.

Angel kept rubbing her back. He couldn’t begin to see what Bucky and Emma had in common. He kissed Eileen’s forehead. “Settle down. It’s okay.”

“It’s not. Chuck reminded me how I got to know Emma. We both belonged to a club for women called Secrets. It was just to support each other and share problems, and good things, too.”

“A women’s club?”

The interest had left his voice and manner at once. “Don’t dismiss it like that,” she said, sitting up abruptly with the sheet held to her breasts. She detested talking about Secrets. All of them had tried to forget about it. “Other people dismissed it as silly. Then one of the members died. It was horrible.”

He listened closely again. “What does the club have to do with things now?”

“I don’t know. I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with it. Chuck said Bucky was probably killed the night Emma was attacked in the parking lot at Out Back.”

Angel didn’t see any connection with this club she’d mentioned and said so.

“Chuck said the club made a lot of men mad because it changed the women who were in it. We got pushy, that’s what he said. And it was Emma’s fault that I changed because she was the one who got me to join.”

He had to let her make her way through this.

“Chuck and I would still be married if it hadn’t been for Secrets. That’s what he said.”

“Take it easy.” He tried to recall if he’d talked one-on-one with Chuck. Had they looked at each other directly? He couldn’t remember, couldn’t visualize the other man’s eyes other than their being very dark, like Aaron’s.

“No wonder someone tried to hurt Emma outside Ona’s,” Eileen said, breaking down. “He shouldn’t have said that. He’s had too much to drink and he’s stupid. I’m sorry to make a fuss. I feel so shaky.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He pulled her into his arms. “The guy’s mad because you aren’t buying what he’s selling, so he’s lashing out.”

“He’s Aaron’s dad and Aaron wants to spend time with him. But I don’t want him to.”

Angel felt out of his depth. “I guess that’s all normal.”

“I shouldn’t want to keep my son from his father. They should be able to get together and Aaron’s hoping for that. I know he is. I could ruin that for him.”

Her ex-husband might be smashed, Angel thought, but he still knew what strings to pull. Eileen and guilt were old friends and Chuck was using the fact. “If Chuck wants to be a good father to Aaron, he will be. If he wants to use Aaron to get to you, he’s not a good father or a good man.” He screwed up his face. “I’m way off base interfering. I told myself I wouldn’t go there. I don’t know beans about being a father—or a husband.”

But he knew a lot about being a real man, Emma thought. She couldn’t stop herself from trembling. “Chuck as good as said it would have been a good thing if Emma died that night. He wonders if something went wrong and she was supposed to be the one in the landfill.”