Undercover Hunter (12 page)

“Oh, my...” The rest of his exclamation stopped behind clenched teeth. “You wicked, diabolical woman!”

She gave him a hazy smile as she pressed herself into his hand. “I’m a control freak sometimes.”

“Have at it.”

He was loving it. A sorceress held him in her grip, enthralling him with pleasures beyond imagining. He bucked a little at her touches, and smiles flitted across her face. Their eyes locked, his so blue-green, hers so black, and he felt as if he were being sucked into a fantastic, incredible black hole.

Enslaved to her, he wanted nothing more than to be enslaved forever. She ground herself against his hand, encouraging him to deepen his touches. He complied readily, sliding one finger into her while he rotated his thumb over the swollen knot of nerves.

Her smiles faded. Her breathing accelerated. She rocked. He rocked. Not quite coming together but not needing to. He reached out with his free hand to cup one of her breasts, feeling the hard pebble of her nipple in his palm.

She groaned and suddenly her head arched back. Her movements against his hand sped up, her stroking of his member keeping pace.

They were climbing this mountain with frightening ease, higher and higher until they soared over the pinnacle in an explosion of shuddering bodies, then drifted weakly back down.

When he found strength, he wrapped his arms around her again and held her to his chest.

She continually surprised him. In every way.

* * *

Later, clothed again, they made their way to the kitchen and the inevitable fresh pot of coffee. The atmosphere in the house had changed dramatically, however. The tension that had been between them, alternating from subtle to not so subtle, had vanished. In its place had come a kind of relaxed familiarity. A sense of promises half-made rather than potential declarations of war.

The files and photos still lay on the table. DeeJay gathered them up and tucked them away, out of sight for now. Cade brought them coffee and a couple of sinful slices of Danish.

“What?” she asked. “No doughnut for the cop?”

“This cop deserves more than a doughnut.”

The joke was so old she was almost embarrassed to have made it. But then they were facing each other across the table again, and their jobs were returning to the forefront. Driving away memories of pleasure in worries about the future.

“So was it hard being a woman in the army? Or were there good guys, too?” he asked.

The question was so far from her train of thought that it took her a moment or two to corral her mind and answer. “That depended.”

“A lot of misogynists?”

“Well...” She hesitated. “Some were, of course. With some guys it was just youthful testosterone, you know? I don’t think they were really aware of it. Most kept in line the way they would with their sisters or I wouldn’t have stayed in for so long. Occasionally, I had to prove I had brass cojones, or that I could outfight them. I learned a lot.”

“I hope some of them did, too.”

She laughed. “You bet they did.” She lifted an arm as if flexing his biceps. “Like I said, it’s mostly muscle. But there was a lot of quick thinking involved, too. If I could defuse a situation, I would. I didn’t have anything to prove, really. Except to a few idiots, anyway.”

He nodded, sipping coffee and leaning back with a contented sigh. “At first when we got together, you seemed loaded for bear. I was wondering how we’d get along.”

“I was awful and I know it. But you seemed so reluctant to work with me I thought you might fall in the classification of misogynist. So I was protecting my turf in advance, I guess you could say.”

“Your point was taken. But the truth is, I’m not a misogynist. Never was. My mother would have kicked me from one end of the barnyard to the other. Or my dad would have. Funny story.”

She leaned toward him eagerly. “Yes?”

“When I was about nine or so I was all full of being a guy. Hanging out with the guys around the ranch, picking up a lot of bad habits. Anyway, one night my mom wasn’t feeling well and my dad told me to do the dishes. Macho idiot that I was, I announced that was woman’s work.”

“Ooh.” She couldn’t help smiling.

“My dad read me the riot act and made me do the dishes for the next month. One thing he said really stuck—There’s no men’s work, there’s no women’s work, there’s only
honest
work.”

“I wish I could have met him.”

He half smiled. “He’d have liked you. He wanted to hire a woman to help with the horses, but the ranch owner wouldn’t hear of it. Dad fumed for days. A man ahead of his times, I guess.”

“He raised a good son.”

“Time will tell. Okay, then, do we work or play?”

She thought longingly of climbing back into the bed with him, accompanied by discomfort as she realized how close she had let him come. But apart from that, the inescapable reason for their presence here wouldn’t let her go. Somehow they had to get ahead of this killer. Find some key, some way, to get at him.

“Are you asking me what I want or what I think we should do?” she finally said.

He sighed and straightened in his chair. “That was my answer.” He reached for the files and pulled them back to the middle of the table. “You found one clue we missed, that web thing. Let’s see if either of us can find another.”

“I wish I could get online. I’d be studying the habits of spiders.”

“I think you already gave us a lot. I agree, he knows these kids. They trust him. That last boy had probably confided that his dad was going to pick him up after school. For most kids, that would be a special event, rather than taking the bus. Maybe they even planned to stop somewhere and get a treat. Whatever it was, our killer knew about it. I think you’re a hundred percent right about that.”

She looked down at the papers beneath her fingertips. “It could be a cop.” She hated to say the words, but the possibility couldn’t be ignored.

“Of course it could. That’s why Gage has told so few people who we are. He’s not just worried about gossip. Right now he’s worried about a lot of people who work for him.”

“Thank God I’m not him.”

But while speaking of Gage, and finding his position unenvious, another unpleasantness was creeping through her: she’d broken her major rule not to become involved with a coworker, however casually. A beer after work was one thing. Tumbling into the sack was another, and she’d gone and done it. Broken the rule. And she didn’t know what had caused her to cross that hard-and-fast line. So much for her bold comment about no regrets.

She moved papers around her, keeping her gaze fixed on them as if they were all that held her attention, but now that the glow had worn off, reality was crashing in on her.

She’d acted, reacted, without thinking it through, without weighing the dangers, without even pausing to stop for one clear minute of consideration. That was unlike her, and scary all by itself. Strict rules of conduct, whether her own or the army’s, had gotten her through a lot of tough spots, had kept her out of messy situations, and now this. God, had her brains gotten scrambled?

She’d known attractive men before. She’d had flings and relationships before, however truncated, and they always followed the basic rule: never with a coworker.

She’d acted like a woman possessed, without a single rational reason for busting the rules wide-open. There’d be a price to pay for this, she was sure. Cade seemed willing to put things back on a professional footing, but she didn’t think that was going to work now.

How could it? They’d just had amazing sex. She wanted to do it again, and she was almost positive he did, as well. Hadn’t he just given her a choice between work and play?

How was she going to handle this? She didn’t want to make him feel rejected, but she had to get back to the professional distance that had been her creed for so long. Work and pleasure shouldn’t mix, and when they did, trouble brewed too often. She hadn’t created this rule for herself out of thin air.

“DeeJay?” Cade reached out and touched the back of her hand. “You’re...nervous.”

She lifted her gaze glumly and decided she needed to be truthful, even if it meant admitting her own shortcomings. “We shouldn’t have had sex. It was wrong. We’re colleagues. That’s always messy.”

His fantastic eyes narrowed a hair. He drew his hand back and studied her. “Sex is always messy,” he said finally. “But I’m not going to wish it away. So the question is, Agent Dawkins, are you capable of separating the professional from the personal? Because I am. I made love with you and it was wonderful, and I’m not going to act like it never happened. I want to make love with you again. But I think
I’m
capable of focusing on the case and working with you without letting that become a major problem.”

It was a challenge. She couldn’t mistake the tone of his voice. “Are you sure?” she asked finally.

“Hell, yeah. I don’t know how you factor all these things, but I know myself. I can work with you and save everything else for appropriate times. Or not at all, if that’s what you want. I’m sure as hell not going to force myself on you.”

That stung a bit, but she took it in and made herself think about it. He was willing to agree not to have sex with her again if that’s what she wanted. Not words she liked hearing, silly as it seemed to her. She wanted him to want her. Just that simple. She even kind of needed it.

But he was saying he could turn it all off if she preferred. While that didn’t make her feel very good, it also made her feel safer.

“I’m confused,” she said finally. “Sorry.”

“It’s confusing only if we let it be. I can draw a line between business and personal. Can you?”

A fair question. “Since I’ve never done this before, I guess I’m going to find out.” The bald admission should have embarrassed her but it didn’t. “I wasn’t thinking about other things,” she admitted. “Just about...you. Us.”

She half feared she might anger him, but he surprised her with a laugh.

“Well, thank God for that,” he said. “I’d hate to think our lovemaking was a cold, calculated decision.”

He had a point, she realized, and then surprised herself by laughing, too. “Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?”

“It’s no molehill,” he said firmly, “but it’s also not a mountain. Don’t ever call what we enjoyed a molehill. But I can multitask. Can you?”

She nodded slowly and let go of her concerns, glad she’d talked about them. He’d made her feel better, as if she hadn’t just committed a crime of her own. And he’d given her permission to enjoy what had happened instead of carrying a whopping load of guilt and self-recrimination.

Now she just needed to give herself the same permission. That might be harder. It usually was. But at least they’d talked it out like two adults who knew where the lines still lay. A good thing, right?

“Relax,” he said. He reached out once again and this time clasped her hand. “We’re grown-ups. We can do this.” Then he paused. “I guess the military made you used to living with rules, huh?”

“It kept things cleaner and clearer sometimes.”

He nodded. “Nothing in life is clean and clear, DeeJay. I think you already know that. Whatever rule we just broke, it doesn’t have to keep us from being good partners on this case. That’s up to us.” He squeezed her hand, then released it.

“Back to work?” he asked.

She wanted to sigh, because truthfully she wanted to make love with him again. But the case lay spread out before them and someone’s life was on the line. Sooner or later this guy would strike again, probably sooner, and if there was any way humanly possible, they had to find him first. Or find a way to draw him out. Before someone else died.

* * *

Calvin hated the storm. It kept him from going out to look at his boys, which always made him feel better, and without them the nagging urge to act was growing stronger...just when he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

He paced the small ranch house, seeking the control that was so important to him. Control was everything. Control of his victims, control of their lives and, yes, control of himself.

He couldn’t become a slave to his desire to cleanse and purify or he’d become a useless tool, one that got itself caught. No spider would be stupid enough to get caught in its own web.

His thoughts kept drifting back to that travel writer, though. He should just dismiss her, but for some reason he couldn’t. She somehow drew him as much as any of his boys.

Trying to rationalize the urge, he decided she’d make a great red herring. If he broke his pattern with her, it might be possible for him to stay longer in this county before the law sniffing around caused him to head elsewhere.

And she vaguely reminded him of his mother. He pushed that aside quickly. He didn’t like the confusion that overtook him when he thought of a potential victim that way. Love, anger and hate warred in him when he thought of his mother, muddying the straightforward mission she had left him with: purification.

His purifications in other cities had never been as satisfying. Working here was his great need, to teach the people of this county something they’d never forget. They’d turned a blind eye to what was happening to him, and now he was teaching them a lesson about fear. About loss, about anguish. And at the same time he was purifying those boys, saving them from the sins they’d inevitably commit. It was a noble purpose.

But the urge crawled through him, like a million bugs under his skin until he scratched himself hard enough to bleed. The sight of his own blood didn’t repel him. It relieved him. It was a sign of his own purity. He’d learned that very young.

But the urge to go hunting again was apt to drive him insane. Since the beginning it had been trying to egg him on to take more, take them faster, but he was smart enough to hold back until he felt safe in his power. Just as his mother had been smarter. If she’d beaten him carelessly even the dullards in this county would have taken notice eventually.

But maybe he could take that woman.

He stopped in the back bedroom, which he never used, and turned on the lights. A spider was still laboring to build a web in the corner. Pickings were slimmer in the winter, so the spider just kept building. Walking close, he studied the gleaming web and a new realization struck him.