Blood Score (18 page)

It showed on Angel’s face.

***

Hours Later

By the time Angel got home, close to midnight, she felt exhausted. Relying on the dim glow of a lamp in her living room that operated on a timer, she walked through the front door and didn’t bother to flip on any more lights. Shadows suited her mood. She kicked off her heels and tossed her shawl over the back of a chair before she headed for her dark kitchen.

Her answering machine blinked and beeped a signal, flashing a red digital number that told her she had three messages. She had a pretty good idea who had called—the same guy who had left voice mail on her cell. After she hadn’t replied, he had probably resorted to hitting her home phone, something he never would’ve done before tonight.

She punched the button for message number one.

‘
Angel, it’s me. Why did you leave without talking? Call me.
’

Gabe’s low voice felt more intimate in the dark. Angel shut her eyes as she grappled with the strange tangle of feelings that had grown more intense since the start of this case. Or maybe she’d been in denial about when everything had begun. After a deep breath, she opened her eyes again and hit the button for message number two.

‘
Don’t do this, Angel. Please. Call me.
’

Again, no name, but she knew who had left the message. With the tone to Gabe’s voice, she knew any conversation they’d have wouldn’t be partner to partner. It would be about something personal. She didn’t have the strength to deal with it tonight.

But when she punched up the last message, it kicked like a punch to the gut.

‘
Why do you still have Manny’s voice on your machine?
’

She’d forgotten about that outgoing message, and Gabe had reminded her. His intention had been a repeat of what he’d told her before when he saw Manny’s cap still hanging on her coat rack and the inflated beach ball behind her couch that still held her dead husband’s breath. Her partner—a guy who had been like a brother to her Manny—had made his point again that she needed to move on with her life.

Damn it, Gabe.

Angel knew he had a point. Her life had stopped when Manny died. She functioned and life went on, but somewhere she had lost the peaks to her mountains. Only the valleys remained. Manny’s voice on her answering machine had been one more thing she couldn’t part with. After her husband died, she’d heard the message by accident. She’d called home trying to reach her mother who had come for a visit. But when the call rolled into voice mail, the shock of hearing Manny’s voice on the recording nearly dropped her to her knees.

After that, she didn’t have the heart to delete it. She used the excuse that she didn’t want to forget Manny’s voice and played that recording over and over, listening to every word he said. She would picture his face—especially the expression that carried a hint of the little boy he used to be—and then she would imagine the glint in his eyes that had been anything but childish.

But ever since she’d met Ethan Chandler and felt the pull of attraction to the handsome and ethereal violinist, for the first time she had a glimmer of hope that she could have a future with love in it. Maybe that feeling didn’t have as much to do with Ethan as her need to believe she could be happy again and not be anchored to the past. Before now her life had been about the job. She’d buried her needs as a woman because those feelings smacked of betrayal to Manny’s memory.

Her sudden attraction to Ethan was too fresh, too new even to her. If she had a hard time grasping her feelings, how did she expect Gabe to understand? With her partner loving Manny like family, he posed a different obstacle to her moving on. If anything, Gabe would be the last person she’d want to share her feelings with.

But she’d been avoiding an even harsher truth—one that dealt with her alone—a gut wrenching reality that made her stomach clench. Angel had to admit she had strong feelings about Gabe visiting Simone Moreau—emotions that had nothing to do with the job or Gabe’s investigative tactics as a partner. She hadn’t dealt with those feelings because before tonight, she hadn’t realized she had a problem.

An undeniable pang of jealousy had been the real reason she’d left the symphony center without talking to Gabe. It confused her, made her feel out of control. It would have been simple to blame her partner’s tunnel vision and his impulsive detective’s instincts for her irritation—an old familiar argument whenever he pursued aspects of any case without her—but deep in her bones she knew it had been more than that.

She hated imagining Gabe with Simone.
Hated it.

Even though Gabe had met the Moreau woman on a case before Angel had become his partner, why couldn’t she accept that part of his past and let it go? Angel had seen pictures of Simone Moreau. She looked exotic, mysterious, and apparently she oozed sensuality from every pore, according to what other guys on the force had said. The woman had the physical perfection of Angelina Jolie with a French accent and the sensuous mystique of every man’s fantasy.

In truth, Gabe’s visit to Simone bothered her more than it should have—and it had nothing to do with the case.

“
Damn it, Angel. Why’d you have to go there?”

She deleted Gabe’s messages.
All of them.
After pouring a stiff shot of Vodka, she gulped it down as she stood in her kitchen and played Manny’s recorded voice in the dark.

Only this time she pictured Gabe’s fierce blue eyes staring back at her.

***

Outside Chicago

1:10 AM

Angel didn’t have to call Cronan back for him to get the message loud and clear. Her silence said it all. He’d pissed her off. Although he wasn’t exactly clueless on why, he hated the awkwardness of the rift between them. He’d made the distance between them worse.

He got her point. They were partners, not solo artists. Why couldn’t he get that through his thick skull? But he had valid reasons for going to Simone, too. His judgment had not been flawed. The only reason he second guessed what he’d done had been the feelings he hid from Angel—feelings he had for her since before she met Manny.

When Angel took off without saying anything after the concert, her unexpected move had left him holding the bag. That wasn’t like her.

Reporters had already camped outside the civic center and were waiting to pounce on a sound bite from Ethan. When the lead detective appeared at the side of the musician, the media jumped all over that. Cronan knew the chief would expect an ass to chew on top of the latest news of the investigation on Monday morning, first thing. He could provide the ass, but new developments would be slim pickings.

Cronan had escorted Ethan to his residence and tucked the guy in for the night like a friggin’ nursemaid. Being on the receiving end of Rachel’s snipes of unprofessionalism didn’t help his mood either. The publicist had already targeted Angel after she met Ethan for drinks. In Rachel’s mind, his partner going AWOL only justified her resentment, and she wasn’t above sharing her thoughts.

Too bad for him. The woman talked nonstop. Good thing he didn’t feel obligated to listen. After getting an earful that could’ve caused a brain bleed, Cronan didn’t feel like going home. He got in his vehicle and drove until the city lights and the interstate were in his rear view mirror. Now his high beams lit a ribbon of asphalt that he followed, unsure where the road would take him. Scrub brush whipped in the breeze as he sped by miles of fence posts, guided only by the light of the moon.

Given the late hour, he hadn’t tried texting his contact for the underground fight club. Whatever they had booked would be over. Although getting his brain hammered might have done the trick to distract him from his misery, he had his doubts that the hurt in Angel’s eyes would go away that easily. She had a way of haunting a man.

So far he hadn’t found an antidote.

After he’d left Chicago suburbs behind, Cronan drove until he saw a familiar sight, one he hadn’t realized he’d been searching for. A single red light glowed ahead, cutting through the darkness with purpose, like a beacon. When barbed wire fences turned into an impressive stone wall, an estate lit by security lights hovered in the dark on the horizon.

He made the turn onto the private drive, and after he pulled up to the guard station, Cronan didn’t hesitate. He gave his business card to the armed man in uniform who eyed him with suspicion.

“I need to see the boss lady,” he said. “Tell her it’s…important.”

He’d come to see Simone Moreau—and until he drove onto her estate, he hadn’t realized why. Cronan had to look at this case with an open mind and not assume anything. He’d been preaching that to Angel, but he could use a good dose of objectivity, too. What if Olivia had never been into ball gags and handcuffs? It made him wonder how she’d crossed paths with Simone. Did Olivia find her own way to Chez Moreau or had Ethan or someone else introduced her? He had a hunch that whoever had a vested interest in painting Olivia as a BDSM player, they’d have a strong connection to Ethan. Someone in his inner circle was either protecting him or they were obsessed with a guy who was a cog in their wheel.

Or maybe Ethan had his own motives.

Angel would argue against his leap to Ethan, but that’s what motivated him to drive to Simone Moreau’s again. He had questions that only Simone could answer. She’d cooperate with him to a point because of their history, but her real loyalty would be to her very private sex club members, many of whom were the wealthy elite of Chicago.

He drove through the gates of Chez Moreau and parked. From the moment he entered the mansion, he had an armed escort dressed in Armani. One of Simone’s security guys ushered him through the Moreau gallery of erotic art and past the parlors where her unreserved clientele indulged their darkest desires. Under normal circumstances he might have pretended he didn’t see the exotic leather and chain crowd or hear the manic rhythms of smacking flesh and the moans of pain and pleasure, but Cronan kept an eye out for any familiar faces linked to the case. The faces he could see, that is. Tonight, many of the guests wore elaborate jeweled masks.

Cronan stopped when he saw a gray-haired woman dressed in an evening gown. Alone she would not have demanded his attention, but the woman had company. She watched two men with a young woman grappling naked on the floor at her feet. The clothed woman was Evelyn Carmichael, the wealthy patron who had attended Ethan Chandler’s performance the other night. She hadn’t bothered to hide her face with a mask. Neither did her boy toy, Joaquin Salazar, who was the aggressor. He followed her orders as she gave them from her wingback chair.

The only light in the room came from a fire in the hearth and candles that surrounded them. Bare skin slick with oil reflected the light and undulated in and out of shadows. Only the young couple doing their bidding wore disguises, glittering eyewear of feathers and gold carved head gear. The girl’s skin was pale and looked luminescent in the flickering light from the fire. Salazar and the other man were darker. Both men were hard. Their stiff cocks bobbed as they moved.

The guy in the mask got to his knees and mounted her from behind. With his hands on her hips, he thrust into her hard. The smack of flesh on flesh and the girl’s breathy moans echoed in the room as he shoved harder.

Cronan turned to leave, but stopped when he saw that Evelyn Carmichael had other intentions. She had her boy Joaquin crawl up behind the guy with something in his hand.

“
Stick it in deep. Don’t rush it, Joaquin.” The older woman leaned to the edge of her chair, but when the guy reacted to the intrusion by flinching and slowing down, she yelled, “No! Don’t stop fucking her.”

The guy winced and cried out as Joaquin shoved a slick, dark-colored device into him, but that didn’t bother the old woman. She cocked her head to get a better look as her boy worked. When Joaquin was done, she smiled and spoke to the guy in the mask, who grimaced through the pain as he kept up his end of the bargain.

“Indulge us, dear boy. Do as you’re told, and you’ll be paid extra as promised.” To her consort, she raised her voice. “Improvise, Joaquin. You know what I like.”

Repulsed, Cronan turned to go, but he stopped when he saw Evelyn Carmichael look up. She caught him standing in the hall, but recognizing him didn’t stop her. In fact, it inspired her to demand more of her companion.

“She has a lovely mouth, Joaquin. Give her something to remember you,” the woman said in a low voice. To Cronan, she said, “I see you’re a voyeur like me. Care to join us? Joaquin will do whatever you ask. To them…or you.”

“
My place could use a fresh coat of paint. When can he start?”

The smug satisfaction on the older woman’s face vanished. She didn’t look pleased, and Cronan had nothing more to say to her. Evelyn Carmichael might have started the party, but her escort got to finish it with his own enthusiasm on the girl. No guy did
that
on orders to please someone else. The old woman and her money provided the private setting of consenting adults where she turned loose her dog and got off on the aftermath of his carnage.

Cronan left, wishing there was a way he could ‘
unsee
’ something.

The old woman had a twisted and cruel side to her nature that made Cronan wonder even more about Ethan. Given Evelyn Carmichael’s link to Simone, her avid interest in the violinist had to come from more than her love of the arts. Joaquin Salazar knew how to follow orders and didn’t question them, even when those orders inflicted pain on someone else. How far would Salazar go to keep his generous mistress happy?