Rapid Fire (25 page)

The flash
came out of nowhere, giving him no time to shield himself, no time to prepare
for the vision.

This time
he saw all of it, saw what he had done in the past.

What he
would do in the near future.

BEFORE
THE AFTERSHOCKS COULD fade, before the glow could form, Maya felt Thorne jerk
away from her. He staggered back, eyes wild, leaving her to stand braced
against the shower wall, naked and wet.

Her belly
clutched. “Thorne? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,”
he croaked, but it was clearly a lie.

Something
was very wrong.

Maya’s
sex-tingled body chilled at the panic in Thorne’s eyes. Suddenly feeling very
naked, she lifted one hand to her belly, the other to her breasts. “Thorne?
Talk to me.” When he didn’t respond, she touched his arm and shivered at the
cool wetness of his flesh, as the sultry moisture of the shower morphed to a
dank chill. “Come on. Let’s get dried off and dressed, and you can tell me what
just happened. One minute, we were—” She shook her head. “Never mind. We can
deal with it.”

But when
she exited the shower, grabbed a pair of fluffy towels and turned back to offer
him one, she found he hadn’t moved. He was still staring at her, face
frightening in its blankness.

“I
shouldn’t have done that.” He ignored the towel and bent to grab his sodden
clothing. He wrung his shirt out and yanked it over his shoulders, then did the
same with his pants, pulling them on with vicious strength. He jammed his feet
into his wet shoes and grated, “I know better, damn it.”

He
brushed past her and stalked out into the hallway. It wasn’t until Maya heard
the rattle of the deadbolt that she realized he was walking out on her.

Temper
flaring, she yanked the towel around her and folded it over, so it would more
or less stay in place when she ran across the condo and slapped a hand on the
door as he opened it. “Don’t you dare! You’d better talk to me, or else—”

“Or else
what?” He opened the door, forcing her back and emphasizing the fact that he
outweighed her by a good sixty pounds, and outmuscled her by more than that. He
started to say something more, then stopped and hissed out a breath. His voice
dropped low when he said, “I’m sorry, I know this looks bad.”

“I don’t
know what it looks like.” Realizing that her tone bordered on hysterical, she
took a breath and lowered her voice. “I deserve better than this and you know
it. If you’re walking out, you at least owe me an explanation.” Nerves
fluttered in her chest as she waited for him to deny it, to tell her he wasn’t
walking out.

Instead,
he turned back and eased the door partway shut. “I can’t do this. I thought I
could, but I can’t. I’ve just gotten out of a relationship with another cop and
I promised myself I wouldn’t go there again. It’s too messy.” But there was something
else in his eyes, something darker and more dangerous.

“I don’t
believe you.” She closed her fingers on his arm, feeling the damp material of
his shirt. “Try again.” She thought back to the last moments of their
lovemaking, to the shock of bare skin.

Bare
skin!

“We
didn’t use a condom,” she said, and felt him flinch beneath her touch. “Is that
what has you spooked? It’s okay, assuming you don’t have any dreaded diseases.
I’m on the pill.”

There was
barely a flicker of reaction in his eyes. “That’s good to know.”

She got
it then. “We were skin to skin and it triggered a vision. What did you see?”
She tightened her fingers on his forearm, feeling them dig into flesh. “Tell
me!”

He looked
down at her for a long moment, pupils so wide his eyes looked nearly black.
Finally, he grated, “I saw you die.” He took a long shuddering breath. “I heard
the gunshot. I heard you scream and I smelled your blood.”

Maya’s
fingers slipped from his arm and she stumbled back, shock buzzing through her
system. A wide, yawning pit opened up in her stomach and she pressed the back
of one hand to her mouth to hold in the cry, the nausea.

“I swear
to God I won’t let it happen,” Thorne said, voice rough with emotion. “I’ll do
whatever it takes.”

“Who—”
She swallowed hard to clear the hard lump from her throat. “Who kills me?”

He looked
at her long and hard. “I do.”

And then
he slipped through the door and slammed it gunshot-loud.

A sob
tore itself from Maya’s throat as the stress and fear of the past few days
closed in on her. She flung herself at the door and shot the deadbolt, then
activated the new security system, as though that would keep the fear at bay.

I do.
Thorne’s words echoed in her skull, vibrating with the rage she’d seen from
him, the banked violence she’d sensed within him.

Yet still
she didn’t believe, didn’t understand. Thorne wasn’t a killer.

“There
has to be another explanation,” she said aloud, and heard the words bounce back
at her from the too-close walls. She headed for the bedroom, needing to get
dressed and figure out what had just happened, what was going to come next.

She found
herself in the kitchen, instead, with the rum bottle in one hand, a glass in
the other.

“Damn
it!” Anger built. Anger at her teenage self for making stupid choices that had
taken a life. Anger at Dane for spending two years in a minimum-security
facility for vehicular manslaughter and emerging just as cocky, just as
hard-partying as he’d gone in. Anger at her grown-up self for still being weak.

She
couldn’t resist Thorne.

She
couldn’t resist the pull of the rum.

“No, damn
it. That’s not me. Not anymore. I don’t need to drink to be strong.” She
clenched her teeth and uncapped the bottle. Held it just shy of her lips and
inhaled, smelling the sharp tang of oblivion.

Then she
upended the bottle in the sink.

THORNE
HELD HIS EMOTIONS in check as he drove to his motel room, changed into dry
clothes and packed everything he’d brought with him.

He knew
he’d hurt Maya, and knew it would be worse when she learned that he’d left
without saying goodbye. But what was the alternative? She wouldn’t be safe
until he left town.

She won’t
be safe then, either, his instincts told him. The Mastermind is still out
there. He’s still after her.

True, but
if she left town, she would have only one murderer after her.

If he
stayed, she’d have two.

In the
weeks and months following Thorne’s escape from Mason Falk’s compound, he’d
talked to dozens of people ranging from his superiors to a bevy of counselors
savvy in post-traumatic stress. Their message was clear. If he hadn’t killed
Falk’s lieutenant, Donny Greek, he wouldn’t have escaped. In captivity, he
wouldn’t have survived long enough to see the Wagon Ridge PD storm the
mountain, take the militiamen into custody and bring down Falk’s cult once and
for all.

It had
been self-defense. Justifiable homicide. He could accept that intellectually,
if not emotionally.

What he
couldn’t accept, what he couldn’t discuss with the others, with anyone else in
the six years since the incident was the fact that he’d enjoyed the killing.

Even now,
he sometimes awoke remembering the feel of Greek’s throat in his hands, the
other man’s pulse fluttering beneath his thumbs, slower and slower as life
ebbed. Even now, Thorne could picture how the gloating in the bastard’s eyes
had changed to fear, then outright panic as the darkness closed in.

Even now,
he remembered the hot rush of triumph, of power.

Of
satisfaction.

Killing
doesn’t make you a killer, they had told him.

Maybe
not, but enjoying it did.

“I hated
Greek,” Thorne grated, aware that the motel room was dim and dark around him as
the day faded to night. He’d hated how Donny Greek had taken the women of the
encampment, sometimes even other men’s wives, and how the men hadn’t argued,
how they’d been too afraid to protest.

He’d
hated the women’s screams, and how he hadn’t been able to help them when he was
undercover, how he’d been even less able to help once he was captured.

“I don’t
hate Maya,” Thorne said aloud. He tipped his head back and stared at the
ceiling while her words replayed in his mind. I’m crazy about you, she’d said.

Hell, he
was crazy about her, too. So how was it that he could picture her death,
imagine the feel of the trigger beneath his fingers, the kick of recoil in his hands?

He could
smell her blood and see the look in her eyes, the surprise that crossed her
face just before she dropped to an expensive-looking Oriental carpet. And in
his heart of hearts, the horror was mingled with satisfaction.

The
feeling of a job well done.

“Which is
why I’m going to stay the hell away from her,” he said, climbing to his feet
and heading for the door. “I’m going to get out of here before I can do
anything to her.”

But, as
he headed to the car, and from there to the Bear Claw PD, a truth echoed within
his skull.

He had
yet to outrun one of his premonitions.

They all
came true in the end.

BY THE
TIME MAYA’S HAIR WAS dry, she had decided two things. One, she wasn’t staying
under house arrest. She was a cop, suspended or not. She knew how to handle
herself without Thorne’s help and she was damn well going to manage it,
starting now. And two, she wasn’t letting him get away with whatever he’d just
pulled. She was going to confront him and make him talk to her.

“I don’t
buy that vision crap,” she said aloud, forcing strength into her voice. “If he
doesn’t want to be with me, he should say so.”

Knowing
she was going into battle, she dressed carefully. Her bruises were still sore,
and her skin was tender all over from the fire, and perhaps a little from the
lovemaking—she refused to call it anything else, regardless of where Thorne’s
head was at—but she steeled herself for work clothes.

The
damned sundress had gotten her into too much trouble. More importantly, she
wanted the professional shield of her office attire. So she pulled on tailored
black pants and a white button-down shirt, and jazzed it up with a Navajo belt
and a breezy turquoise scarf.

Then she
strapped on her mid-back holster and loaded it with her spare weapon, which she’d
neglected to mention when the chief had taken her service revolver. She no
longer had a permit to carry concealed, but what was one more infraction added
to her list?

When she
was done, she checked the effect in the mirror and winced when a hollow-eyed,
drawn-looking woman stared back at her. She lifted her hand to her collarbone,
where the faint beginnings of a love bite blushed near the open collar of her
shirt.

“Pull
yourself together,” she ordered. “You knew the rules going in. He doesn’t do
love. Neither do you.”