Come Hell or High Desire (20 page)

Chapter Twenty-nine

Sloane’s fingers felt brittle as they curled around the railing for support. Perhaps
one tap against the warm metal and they would shatter. Maybe her whole body would
shatter. Fall to a million pieces on the stairs where Zack had doubtless climbed hundreds
of times.

Though the temperature sweltered in the back stairwell, she shuddered, wondering when
she’d ever feel warm again. She looked up at the man preceding her. From the short-clipped
hairs on his head to the polished shoes that made merely a whisper on the steps, Ross
was attractive in an older, clean-cut sort of fashion. So very different from Zack,
who was rough-around-the-edges. Raw, elemental and…

Comforting.

She wanted to be with him. Should have made him take her with him.

When he called, she was going to demand he come back for her.

No.
She was going to call him the minute she reached John’s office and make him turn
around.

Damn, how long does it take to climb three flights, anyway?
She regarded Ross again. He’d been so silent. Would he turn them in? Zack seemed
to trust him. She should really try to talk to him. After all, he was helping her
out. “Uh…I know this is really…awkward, but I appreciate your help.”

Ross paused on the stairs and looked over his shoulder at her, one hand going to a
white gauze patch on his neck. The unexpected humor in his eyes was a surprise after
his earlier tension when Zack was still around. “It’s okay. Sometimes you have to
draw outside the lines. Not everything is black or white.”

Huh.
She supposed he was right. Rules and laws don’t take everything into account. Still,
what an odd comment. “What should I tell the staff if they see me in John’s office?”

“We’ll just say you’re a temp.” He turned around and continued up the stairs, his
footfalls softly swishing in the stairwell.

When they reached the third floor, he stepped aside to hold open the metal door. In
the back draft, his cologne washed over her. She shivered again, hesitating on the
landing. Her gaze shot to his. She’d never seen such a pale shade of green. Did he
even have pupils? It wasn’t
that
bright in here that they should be so constricted. Looked like those eyes belonged
to a unicorn or some other mythical being. A dragon maybe?

I’m losing it.
She put a hand to her temple. Fingerlike fringes of red began seeping into her peripheral
vision.

He smiled tentatively. “Something wrong?”

Only everything.
“Oh, no. Sorry.” But as she passed him, a sudden blast of energy surged through her.
Black, black, it’s black!
The energy scalded, excruciating pain, boiling alive—
acid, acid!
—skin peeling back. Nothing left but a bloody pulp.

Red eyes gleamed from black shadows. Blood demon eyes. Mesmerizing.

Perfectly, beautifully evil.

In her head she was screaming. Screaming at those eyes that would do so much worse
than destroy her body. They’d pillage her soul, and she’d scream forever.

A violent wind swirled between her and the glowing orbs.

Then the vision was over.

She stumbled against the door jamb, then shuffled into the hallway. She leaned her
hands against her knees for support, gasping for air.

“Please say you’re not going to be sick.”

She looked up at Zack’s dragon-eyed CFO. She eased herself upright but couldn’t muster
the energy to glare at him. Her heart rate refused to settle, though. “Gosh…just…
whew!
… All those stairs. Just trying to catch my breath. That’s…that’s all.”

“
Good.
John’s office is this way.”

Lord, she felt ill. What the hell was going on with her? And that stupid furrow between
his brows just cranked her anxiety up another notch. She bent over again, feeling
his glower on the crown of her head. The carpet had come alive with its busy geometric
pattern. Her stomach pitched, her cheeks and ears suddenly on fire. “On second thought,
can you direct me…to the nearest bathroom?”

She glanced up to see his jaw clench. A trickle of sweat rolled down the side of his
face even though it was probably twenty degrees cooler in the hall than it had been
in the stairwell. He pointed to a door on the left.

Inside the small, square bathroom, she locked the door and leaned her butt against
the dark wood, pushing the heels of her hands into her eye sockets.

Breathe in. Out
.

At the faucet she splashed cool water on her face, feeling the nausea abate slightly.

What the devil had gotten into her? At this point, she wasn’t ultra-concerned with
giving Ross a good impression, but this was ridiculous.
Red eyes
. Where had
that
come from? It was as if the gates of Hell had opened for that brief instant as she’d
passed in front of him. Why?

I learned to trust my gut at a young age,
Zack had said. And given his sad upbringing, look how wonderful he’d turned out.
Maybe she needed to start trusting her own shadow side.

But where did that leave her right now? Clearly, her gut was telling her to be on
guard, yet she didn’t want to sell Ross short since Zack obviously trusted him.

He wouldn’t have left her with Ross if he didn’t.

She turned off the faucet, dried her face and hands, and opened the door. Down the
hall, a woman was reading Ross the riot act, her arms flailing near his face. Snatches
of her impassioned speech floated toward Sloane.

“—gave you what you wanted, you’d better not flake out on my part—”

“Enough, Morgan!” When he raised his arm, she quieted. And spotted Sloane. She rapidly
composed her face.

But not her eyes.

A shiver shot from Sloane’s feet to her shoulders, leaving gooseflesh in its wake.
Ross moved to stand in front of the petite younger woman. Sloane felt unaccountably
drawn to her, as if she should know her or had met her before. She came toward the
pair, angling her head to try to look at the woman behind Ross.

Then she saw it. Blood seeping through his bandaged neck.

Two stripes of blood.

Time slowed. Her vision narrowed. She heard the rush of her own blood zinging through
her veins.

Zack’s words coming back to her.
I learned to trust my gut at a young age
.

Sloane reach out to tear the bandage from Ross’s neck. Two parallel, severe scratches
sliced diagonally across his neck, the pattern too narrow to be human.

Had to be an animal.

Claws.

Two.

Cat
.

Two-clawed cat.

Tomcat.

Ann
.

She gaped at him.
Dear God
. “You?”

Lunging away from him, she tripped on a snag in the carpet and went down hard. Her
elbow exploded like an IED, searing pain radiating up her arm. She scrambled to her
feet, cradling her elbow. She looked around, but the woman was gone. Her only option
was the staircase they’d climbed, but she was afraid to turn her back on him again.

“Help!
Help!
” She inched backward toward the exit stairwell.

He smiled, his perfect white teeth gleaming as he strolled toward her. “Save your
lungs. No one can hear you. We got rid of everybody, and this cracker barrel’s built
like fucking Fort Knox.”

She cradled her arm and eased up from the carpet. “What have you done with Ann?”

He stopped, put his hands on his hips. “Ah yes,
Ann
… Would you believe I actually thought she was mine until last month?”

He actually looked
sad
. It took a moment for his comment to register. “
Yours?
You mean like,
your daughter?
”

“Your surprise is not very flattering, I’m afraid.” His voice was soft.

“But…Serena was so much…
older
.”

His laughter made her heart pound.

Oh, man, that sounded naïve. But just,
wow
.

His full-bodied laugh was an honest sound you might hear anywhere on the street.
This can’t be happening.
How could he be so crazy, yet seem so normal?

He’s an honest to God sociopath.
The man was a walking terror in his calm derangement. And she needed to get
the hell
away.

She took a subtle side step toward the exit.

His laughter stopped abruptly, and she froze. “Serena was actually my professor. And
as such, she gave me twenty glorious nights between her alabaster thighs. Told me
she loved me, and that if she ever had a child, she’d want it to be mine. And then
she was just…
gone.
All because of
John
.”

A fresh wave of goose bumps flashed across Sloane’s skin at his hoarse delivery. “But
you started sending her hate mail.”

“To make her turn to me, you idiot. I told her I’d keep her safe, but—”

“But she turned to John instead.”

His nostrils flared and he took an awkward diagonal step, moving closer to the exit,
too.
Shit!
Warning bells sounded a five alarm fire in her head.
Keep him talking to distract him.
“Did you kill Dallan because you thought Ann was your daughter?”

He wiped at the sweat that had started oozing down his face like he’d finished an
extended race. His other hand fluttered at his thigh. “I was ready to tell her. I
would have made her so happy! But then I found some of John’s old medical records.
At first I couldn’t believe he had the same rare blood type that Ann does. But when
I used one of her office cups for a DNA paternity test…”

His words trailed off, his eyes so
haunted
she knew she’d have to reconsider her old mental illness stereotypes.

If she made it out alive.

Less than twelve feet to the stairway.

Between his pale, sweaty face, bloody neck, and distraction with his leg, he looked
quite sick.
Or coming off a high.
One of her cousins had looked like that when he’d been forced to dry out. Maybe with
the element of surprise she could knock him over on her way to the exit. “Serena’s
been gone for twenty years. Why didn’t you claim Ann sooner?”

Eight feet to the exit.

“This is how much time it’s taken!
Fuck!
” His arms flailed in an arc, and something metallic flashed on his wrist.
A watch.
“When John brainwashed Serena and sent her away, I was young and undisciplined. My
rage spilled over onto a worthless piece of humanity no one would ever miss, but they
caught me and locked me up for six goddamn years! All those years, all those years
wasted,
I thought. Until I began to see that it was my time to strategize.”

She stretched her leg to the side, trying to put more space between them without his
notice, every shift a knife jab to her elbow. “You mean time to find Serena?”

“
No
. My plan to destroy—piece by deliberate piece—everything John ever cared about. I
didn’t know about Ann until after I got out. At that point, I had three goals—take
John out, find Serena, and make my daughter proud. Making Ann proud meant going to
school. I received both a law degree and a CPA to make enough money to rescue Serena,
provide for Ann, and infiltrate John. It was going to be
perfect!
Then he had to go and have a fucking heart attack!”

The pasty white of his face filled with explosive color.
Oh, God.
It was all falling into place. He was truly mad. But this was his time on stage.
Her mother had said sociopaths enjoyed having an audience when they eventually unveiled
their brilliant plots. It was part of the payoff for their patience. But his carefully
cultivated composure was eroding bit by bit. Ferocity struggling against civility
for dominance.

And he was going to kill her unless she thought of something fast. “Where’s Ann?”
Maybe she was still okay since he’d obviously had feelings for her for so long.

“The trust fund waif will be fresh meat when the bomb explodes in…” He glanced over
her shoulder at the wall clock. “Less than two hours now.” He made a mock explosion
sound, gesturing expressively with his hands.

Bomb?
The word wrapped around her consciousness slowly, like weeds choking out a stagnant
pond. She slumped against the wall. Where? Where would he have taken her?

Touch him
.

She gasped.
Can’t! I’d rather die than see inside his mind
.

But
Ann.

Bile backed up her throat. She looked at her watch and confirmed the time on the wall
clock. Eleven-thirty-four.
Two hours.
The bomb was going to detonate around one-thirty if what Ross said was true. “Why
Tori
? She had nothing to do—”

“Wrong again! Tori was a mildly entertaining pastime whenever I ‘happened to be in
town.’” His fingers came away from his thigh for a moment to curl in the air for quotation,
his sing-song voice trailing off as he paused for effect.

When it hit her, her vision crashed and rebooted. “Oh
my God!
You’re
Teddy?”

“When Zack found Dallan’s dead body didn’t you fools wonder why he was there? Tori
told me about Ann’s diary, and Morgan fed me information on Zack’s whereabouts, so
the set-up at Ann’s worked out better than I had even planned.” His TV anchor smile
made her shiver. “Dallan flipped when we told him about the diary. He rushed right
over there. Too early, but it worked out.”

“But why frame Zack?”

His eyes narrowed. “You really are slow, aren’t you? Zack will suffer more than anyone
because John loved him. He’s done nothing to deserve what he has.”

“You’re wrong!”

“Zack is a nauseating blot on humanity. Now I see you’re stupid
and
blind!”

Her heartbeat pounded in her injured elbow. It was so hard not to bolt. But he’d be
like a wolf on its prey, his predatory instinct activated.
One more minute.
Three more side steps, and she’d probably be able to make it to the stairs before
he pulled her down. She blinked to refocus on his words.