The Salvation of Vengeance (Wanted Men #2) (21 page)

She turned and looked at him, a sweet wrinkle in her brow.

“Does that sound messed up to you? God, I could sleep for a year,” she murmured, closing her eyes.

“You’re not messed up, babe,” he said gently, covering her hand where it rested on the console. “You’re doing things just as you should.”
Sort of
, he added silently. She shouldn’t have been on her own tonight.

He turned the radio on and left her to snooze the rest of the way to the apartment.

Rather than go underground, Vincente pulled up when he spied a spot out front. He got out and scooped Nika’s pliant body into his arms. He stood there for a second and allowed himself to enjoy the feel of her, then got his ass in gear and headed in, nodding to a yawning Tyson before stepping into the elevator.

Making it into the apartment without jostling her too much, he went straight into the bedroom and gently laid her on the huge bed. She rolled until she was almost on her stomach and snuggled into the pillow he normally used, her contented sigh twisting something inside him.

Now she’s where she belongs.

Fan Boy’s contented whisper drifted through his mind as he stood over her. The soft glow from the bedside lamp illuminated her skin so that it looked as if it were shimmering over her delicate bones. How could someone willingly damage such a fragile creature?

Going down to his knees, he removed her boots and then sat back on his haunches, his eyes suddenly drooping with a bone-weary fatigue. Not surprising since he hadn’t slept much in the past few weeks.

His jaw cracked on a yawn as he pushed himself to his feet and went out to double-check that they were locked in. He disarmed before going into the bathroom to wash his face with frigid water, use the facilities, and return to the bedroom to kick his boots off and shrug out of his newly replaced duster. He placed the leather over the chair on top of Nika’s robe and felt the mattress dip as he laid himself out next to his sleeping beauty.

What was he doing? He should be in the other room.

She might need something in the night.

The fact that they were both fully clothed did nothing to lessen the intimacy of being in bed with her, and it was all he could do not to reach out and pull her against his suddenly cold body. He shifted onto his side with a deep sigh and moved his hand to her hair to take a few strands between his thumb and finger.

His gaze went to the door as he yawned again, his lids coming down, the feeling of contentment and peace slowly seeping inside him so unfamiliar it was disconcerting. What was it about her that made him feel so connected? He didn’t feel like a spectator in life when he was with her, watching and yearning—when he allowed himself the luxury. He felt like a participant. When she looked at him, her vibrance pulled him in and engaged him. It was as if she saw . . . him.

The unfamiliar ease slowly spreading through him was so comforting he couldn’t help but savor it as he drifted off.

CHAPTER 13

The loud, incessant chime of her cell going off had Nika groaning, feeling as if a few dozen little men were jackhammering directly onto her brain.

Shit.
She’d just fallen asleep.

Hadn’t she?

Heaving herself to her knees, she kept her eyes closed, hoping that might stop her head from exploding—her stomach from rebelling. She slapped around on the nightstand and had to crack an eye when all she felt was her purse. She dug the offending instrument out and was appalled to see that she’d slept in her clothes.

She closed her eye again, slid her thumb over the slider on the screen, and flopped back down. “Hel—”

Her grumpy greeting jacked into a shriek when her head hit something hard. She jerked up, eyes flying wide—tried not to vomit at both motions—and gasped at what she saw.

Vincente lying beside her. Watching her with those dark eyes.
Amused
eyes. One of his arms was tucked behind his head, bicep bunched; the other rested across his hard stomach. His long legs where stretched out, socked feet crossed at the ankles.

Relaxed.

For the first time ever, she was seeing him relaxed.

Moving forward, feeling zero responsibility for her actions, for the moment at least, she bumped his arm out of the way with her head so she could use his stomach as a pillow, sighing as her forehead came into contact with hot muscle.

The action seemed familiar for some reason, and she didn’t care why.

“Nika!”

The buzz of Eva’s now-panicked voice came from the phone, reminding her why she was now awake. She brought it back to her ear. “Yeah, yeah, sorry,” she croaked. “Please whisper, Eva. I can’t take any more than that.”

“Are you okay? Where are you? Why did you scream?”

“I’m not okay. At the apartment. ’Cause Vincente is in bed with me.”

A pregnant pause lengthened in her ear. “And you screamed because . . . ?” Eva asked slowly. She sounded so interested it was almost funny.

“Because I didn’t know he was here until just now. Wanna talk to him?” Without waiting for an answer, she reached her hand up. “It’s for you.”

He took the phone from her. “Hey, squirt.”

His voice rumbled, deep and soothing. Willing to take just about any sort of relief she could get, Nika curled her legs up and settled in for the long haul. She slipped her hands between the mattress and Vincente’s back.

God, he felt so good. How could one man feel so good?

You shouldn’t be finding comfort in him.

Oh, why not?
she thought tiredly. It’s wasn’t as if she was going to become attached to him just because of a simple cuddle. She was hungover; he was handy.
Big deal.

Not to mention, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually lain in bed and cuddled with a man. Didn’t even know how much she’d missed that little bit of harmless normalcy until now.

She turned her head to the side and listened to Vincente’s strong heartbeat. The rhythm was soothing.

“Yeah, I brought her home last night,” he was saying. “Didn’t feel comfortable leaving her alone in the shape she was in.”

Aww.
Her rolling stomach got all gushy.

“No problem. Yeah, I will. Tell them I’ll be home later.”

A
snick
sounded, letting her know he’d ended the call. She heard the phone land on the bed behind her where he must have tossed it. “Eva said you should have known better.”

“No kidding,” Nika muttered. “I’ll have to remember to tell her off when I see her.”

She’d barely gotten her words out when she felt his fingers run through her hair. He started at her temple and pushed them slowly through the thickness, stopping just short of where her stitches had been.

Absolute. Heaven.

“Mmm, that’s sooo good,” she breathed, feeling otherwise too shitty at the moment to wonder why he was being like this with her. He was always nice enough, but this seemed almost affectionate.

She groaned at her next thought.

“Did I say anything to embarrass you last night? I’m sorry if I did. My filter tends to disappear when I drink. Which is why I normally don’t.”

“Why did you last night?”

She vaguely noted he hadn’t answered her question. And as if she was going to tell him she’d been drinking in an effort to get him out of her head. To get the way he’d avoided her, as if she was damaged goods, out of her head.

“I needed the oblivion. Hence the margaritas. Tequila is my brain eraser,” she admitted. “And before you start, I already know it was stupid that I was there on my own. Irresponsible. Kind of immature. And really dumb. Did I miss anything?”

“Dangerous?”

“Good one. But like I told my brother, Kevin could be long gone, and, again, I just really needed the break in my head. I didn’t want to be that girl who brought a bottle home and drank alone. I know,” she said quickly, snuggling in a little closer when the AC kicked on and blew a chill over her. “I ended up drinking alone anyway, but at least there were other people in the room. It felt slightly less pathetic than the alternative.” Was she slurring? Frig, she was tired.

“Other people in the room?” he questioned, his voice changing. “You mean the two guys who were minutes away from taking you out of the club to who the fuck knows where?”

She was pretty sure he was mad now, but she was far too comfortable to lift her head to check.

“But you came for me,” she murmured, wanting to give him a pat on the back for that. “Why were you there, Vincente?”

Vincente’s residual anger drained away at the question. Why had he been there? To do exactly what he’d done. Save her from a situation that could have been the average hookup—if you considered a threesome average—or he might have saved her from the type of nightmare that made the eleven o’clock news. Who knew which it would have turned out to be?

And all because she’d needed . . . What had she said? The oblivion?
Fuck.
He should have joined her. Would’ve been nice to get out of the fucking mess in his own head for a couple of hours. He knew all about needing to shut down. Had used the bottle in the same way she had last night too many times to count, but he had cut the shit out before it became a problem. Most times he’d gotten a few hours’ peace from his guilt and failings, but not always.

Sometimes the drinks made his mistakes even more glaring.

He finally answered her question. “Maksim’s club is a few blocks from Pant, so I stopped in for a drink on my way home.”

“Oh.”

Did she sound disappointed? “You want something to eat, Red?”

“Ugh. God, no.”

A smile kicked up at her barely audible response. Dammit, he’d smiled more in the past twelve hours than he had in the past year. “How about some coffee?”

“Mmm”—she seriously had to stop making that sound—“coffee. My weakness. A latte right now, and it wouldn’t even have to be from Starbucks? Mmm . . .”

That. Sound.
Fan Boy was standing, his forehead pressed against the wall of Vincente’s mind, eyes closed, a look of utter peace on his face.

Definitely should have left when he’d woken up this morning. But as many times as Vincente had told himself to do just that, he hadn’t been able to move a muscle. Instead, he’d lain beside her, reveling in the feel of her curled into him while she slept. Such a simple contact. But one he’d been powerless to move away from.

For more than an hour he’d watched her breathe. Nothing more. Time he could have been in Crown Heights. Though, he figured if Nollan was killing prostitutes, he’d get them during the girls’ working hours, which most times wasn’t nine a.m. The fucker had to sleep sometime, and, like most of them, that time was probably during the day.

Okay.
Enough was enough. He had to move.

Pretty sure she’d fallen asleep, he grabbed a spare pillow and carefully went to shift to the side, intending to slide the pillow under her in place of his body. He never got the chance.

Her fingers curled under his back, fisting his T-shirt, while her head pressed into his stomach, effectively trapping him right where he was. “Please,” she protested weakly. “Not yet. It’s weird, but your body heat is all that’s helping right now. I know I should probably just go throw up, but I hate doing that. Reminds me of high school. Our senior year, Eva and I used to go to the dances they’d hold in the gym. We’d mix up a bunch of alcohol, a little from each bottle from the cupboard next to where we kept the cat food—that way my dad wouldn’t know we’d taken any, or so we thought.” She chuffed softly. “He knew. Anyway, we drank it, probably smelled like hell, and danced our asses off. Caleb was always waiting outside to bring us home after, proud that we’d chosen alcohol over popping E or something equally stupid, like everyone else did.” She smiled. “It was so much fun. Until morning. Then we’d hold each other’s hair while we vomited, while my brother stood at the bathroom door laughing at us. Can’t be sick now without remembering that.”

Vincente smiled as he pictured her and squirt, young and happy. “You two are close, huh?”

“The closest. I hope Gabriel doesn’t mind that I need her so much.”

He frowned. “Gabriel doesn’t mind, Red,” he assured her as he went back to sifting his fingers through her hair. She needed some comfort. She was feeling sick. “I think he likes that you two have each other.”

“That’s good. Because I can’t leave her. What do you do for a hangover, Vincente?” she asked faintly.

Fuck it away?
“Sleep it off, or sweat it out in the gym.”

“You’re crazy. This is the best. You’re so warm . . .”

She was asleep within seconds.

And he had to get gone. Had to dig as deep as he could for the strength to do what he knew was right.

Leave her alone. Because this . . . thing he was feeling where his heart should be had nothing to do with simple physical attraction. That connection he’d felt last night seemed that much more solid this morning, which meant she was getting into what he was pretty sure were his emotions and screwing with him.

He could not allow that to happen. Because if he failed her and then lost her, he didn’t think he could climb out of that black hole again.

Lore pulled the sheet back over the face of who he was pretty damned sure was victim five. He’d flown to the crime scene, arriving ahead of the FBI only because he knew the streets better than they did. He was no doubt about to get his ass kicked off scene, so he’d better think fast.

This case, more than his others, bothered him, but he couldn’t figure out why. It was true that they couldn’t buy a fucking break, but that happened more often than not.

Maybe with this last victim, a break had just occurred and they didn’t know it yet.

Because there was a problem with the discovery of unlucky number five.

For every girl they’d found, there had been five identifying factors to tie them to the same killer.

One, they’d all been young redheads—bad dye jobs, wigs, whatever; they’d still had red hair.

Two, all prostitutes, but that could be attributed to them being plentiful and easy to pick up.

Three, strangulation had been the cause of death. Why? A clean means of killing? No blood? Less evidence in the way of no murder weapon?

Four, they’d all been brutally violated
after
death in the same sadistic, cruel way—with a blade that was messy, resulted in blood, and could be used as evidence; that kicked the foresight assumption on his previous point out on its ass.

The problem, though, in murder number five lay with the fifth similarity that had connected the ones before. The previous Jane Does had all been found within a six-block radius in the Crown Heights area.

This one had not.

Lore’s phone buzzed, and he took it out of his pocket to check the text, already knowing what he’d find considering what time it was on this Sunday morning. He read his brother’s message.

Will you be at the service?

He hated to do it, but he replied with another put-off.

Sorry, bro. Found another. Can’t get away.

I’ll pray that she’s your last. Call me if you need me.