Tasting Fear (25 page)

“You don’t need to shoot,” Duncan said quietly. “Who hired you?”

“Some stupid fuck. Shut up. Don’t talk to me.” The guy backed away farther. “Back off. Everybody. Get the fuck back.” He turned, suddenly, and ran like a double-jointed cheetah, his legs a blur.

Nell sagged down onto the sidewalk. Duncan sank to his knees to break her fall, held her up. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and realized, embarrassed, that his finger shook too much to punch in the number. Shit. He was getting soft. Going civilian.

It took a few tries, but he finally got Gant’s phone ringing. Then the car pulled up, and Gant himself unfolded his long, lanky self from the seat, holding up the ringing phone. Duncan stopped the call and dropped the phone back into his pocket. The asshole was long gone, but he relayed the info with weary precision. “Three of them. One’s rabbiting down Great Jones Street. Blond, six one, jeans, gray sweatshirt, goatee. Armed and dangerous. Glock 9mm. The other two are long gone. One was a black man, tall, thin. He ran, too. The car was a silver Jeep Cherokee. Busted front passenger window. Didn’t get the plates. Didn’t get a look at the driver.”

Gant relayed the info his radio. He was a square-jawed guy, with cold blue eyes and sandy hair, buzzed off short. He looked down at Nell, still curled up on the sidewalk. “This is her?” he asked.

Duncan pulled Nell to her feet. “Nell, Lt. John Gant, of the NYPD.”

She swallowed, coughed. “Ah, hi.”

“You okay, miss?” Gant asked.

“Been better,” she croaked. “I’ll be fine. I think.”

“Did he hit you? Hurt you?”

“She broke his nose,” Duncan announced, in ringing tones. “She broke that pig-fucking son of a bitch’s nose.”

Gant blinked at the fierce pride in Duncan’s voice. “Uh, wow. Hot damn. How’d you do that, miss?”

Nell held up the plastic shopping bag, and fished out a massive volume that she could not even hold in one hand alone. “The complete works of E. E. Cummings,” she said. “Just picked it up at the Barnes & Noble. Ten percent member discount.” She startled to giggle. “Oh, God. I had no idea what a good deal I was getting.”

Her face crumpled, her hands covered her face. Duncan stared at her in helpless dismay. Fuck. Again. Gant gave him the hairy eyeball, and jerked his hand toward Nell, snapping his fingers sharply.

“Hug her, you asshole!” he mouthed.

Duncan scowled at him and grabbed Nell, wrapping his arms around her. She stiffened against him, but she didn’t jerk away.

And her soft body felt amazingly good next to his. He was panting, raw and zinging with combat adrenaline, bruised and pounded and scraped and generally fucked up, but still, she felt so goddamn good.

His arms tightened. He inhaled the smell of her hair and then focused on the blood and imbedded grit and grime on his own filthy knuckles. She shook in his arms. A fine, high-frequency vibration.

Don’t get yourself all excited, butthead. She’s traumatized.

Gant harrumphed. “Fucking cretin,” he muttered. “Have to tell you everything.”

Duncan flipped his friend the bird behind Nell’s back, and pressed his nose into those perfumed curls again. Inhaling her.

The next couple of hours were long and hard, down at police headquarters. She spent a long time on his cell phone, pouring her heart out to her sisters, first one, then the other. Hashing the whole thing out and filing the report took a tediously long time, and after a while Duncan started eying Nell’s pale, stiff face and staring eyes and wondered uneasily if he’d been stupid not to insist that she get medically evaluated. She’d said she was fine. Maybe a bruise or two. But he hadn’t considered psychological damage. He was as tough as boot leather himself. Used to rough treatment. He’d forgotten what a tooth-rattling shock violence was to normal human beings.

Her hand was icy cold. He rubbed it between his. “I need to get some food and a good stiff drink into her,” he said to Gant. “Can we finish this up another time?”

Gant studied Nell with narrowed eyes. “Miss D’Onofrio, do you have someone to stay with tonight?” He shot a keen glance at Duncan. “A family member, maybe?”

She looked lost, chewing on her soft, cushy lower lip. “Ah…”

“She’s staying with me,” Duncan blurted.

Nell blinked at him, startled. He stared back, willing her not to fight it. It seemed so obvious to him, so inevitable. So right.

She let out a long breath, in short, jerky segments, and nodded. “With him,” she murmured to Gant.

A jolt of hot triumph shook Duncan. Urgency, too. He wanted to get her home now. Trap her into his lair. Before she changed her mind.

He made sure the car service was waiting before he let her leave the building. Snipers could be after her, for all he knew. He bundled her hastily into the car and gave the driver his address.

“Wait,” Nell said. “My place, first.”

He rounded on her, ready for battle. She put her fingers over his mouth. “Shhh. Don’t start. I need to touch base. I need fresh clothes.”

“I’ll buy you clothes.”

“Not at one in the morning, you won’t,” she said. “And I need to check my answering machine. And pick up my laptop.”

“Those guys know where you live,” he growled. “I don’t want to come across like I’ve got no balls, but I wouldn’t mind avoiding any more mortal combat this evening. If it’s not too fucking much to ask.”

She tapped his lips again, gently. “Don’t be sarcastic. I am very aware of your big balls. But I doubt very much they’ll be lying in wait for me there tonight. We’ll park right outside the door, we’ll see if anyone’s there, we’ll only be inside for a few minutes. Please, Duncan.”

He settled back against the seat, defeated but disapproving. Her hand was no longer on his mouth. He missed it. It was almost worth goading her, to see if she would try to silence him again.

Then another possibility occurred to him. He reached down and took her hand. A long and cautious minute later, her fingers curled around his. The city slipped by, but they were fixed in space. A hub, the unmoving center of the universe, and the rest of the world was a shifting illusion swirling around them. But she was so warm, soft. Real.

“Thank you,” she said finally. “For saving my life.”

“Anytime.” He punctuated that statement by sliding his thumb into the warm recesses of her hand. He thought about the conference room table, and blood pounded in his ears. He fought it down. “I was, ah, wondering something.”

Her fingers tightened around his. “Yes? What?”

“If that earns me enough points to cancel out whatever the hell it was that I did to piss you off before.”

He braced himself, but she didn’t freak out. She just made an impatient gesture with her free hand. “That’s it, Duncan. That’s exactly the problem. This idea that you have, that everything can be reduced to an economic exchange. Human emotions don’t run on a point system.”

He sighed. “It’s a figure of speech, Nell,” he ground out.

“No, it is not. Not with you.” Her voice was soft but stubborn.

Aw, fuck. He drew comfort from the fact that she was still squeezing his hand. “It’s been a really hard night,” he said wearily. “This shit is complicated. Just show me some fucking mercy, already.”

She grabbed him, gave him a quick, awkward hug. “Okay,” she whispered. “I hereby grant you points. Lots of them. Happy now?”

“Very,” he said. And he was. He was hard, too. Like a diamond. He wanted to roll her onto the cushy leather seat and just have at her.

“One question,” she said. “How did you happen to conveniently be there when they attacked? Were you following me?”

Tension gripped him. Here was where he tiptoed over blown glass.

“Yeah, I was,” he said. “I, uh, wanted to apologize. But I’m not great at it. And you were crying, and that intimidated me. And I didn’t even know what the hell I was apologizing for. So I stalled.”

“Until I got attacked,” she said.

“You have to admit, it was a great opening,” he offered. “Works like electroshock therapy. The woman forgets what she’s mad about.”

She snorted with laughter. “Uh, yeah. Right.”

“No, really,” he said. “If not for those guys, you’d still be pissed as hell, and I’d still be as confused as ever.” He paused. “I’m still confused,” he admitted. “And you’re probably still pissed. But at least you’re talking to me. That’s progress.”

She harrumphed. “Talk about looking on the bright side.”

“I might as well,” he observed.

The car stopped outside her door. He told the driver to wait and got out, peering around the street before he let her out. He blocked her body with his as she unlocked the metal warehouse door, and peered around every twist of the echoing stairwell before letting her proceed.

Her apartment was so full of books, there was barely space to move. The bathtub in the kitchen was covered with a wooden top. A mini water closet occupied the corner of the room. A half refrigerator was tucked under the sink. There was a two-burner gas range, a toaster oven. He’d never seen a place so miniature.

He peered at the photos on the wall while she hustled around, pulling a suitcase out of her closet. Most were pictures of two young women and a distinguished-looking elderly woman in varying combinations and settings. “This is your mother, and sisters?”

She glanced around from where she knelt in front of a small chest of drawers. “Yes.”

He studied them. Pretty, like Nell, but in very different ways. “They don’t look anything like you,” he observed.

“We’re all adopted,” Nell said. “Lucia took us in as foster children when we were teenagers.”

That teasing bit of info made him curious. About who had made her, what had forged her. How she’d gotten to be so smart and pretty and difficult. But not tonight. There would be other chances. He hoped.

She looked exhausted, staring down at two different T-shirts in her hands as if she couldn’t decide which one to bring.

“Pack both,” he advised. “You’re not coming back for a while.”

She shot him a narrow glance. He walked over to her, and knelt. She swayed back, her eyes going big and wary as he pulled her first drawer open. He grabbed a big fistful of silky stuff. All colors. Panties, stockings. Things made of lace, ribbons, silk. He dropped the tangled wad of stuff into the open suitcase. “Pack a lot,” he repeated softly.

Her eyes dropped. Color rose in her face. Her nipples were tight, nubs poking against the stretchy fabric of her stained, rumpled dress.

That white-hot episode in the conference room hung between them in the silence, complete in every heart-thudding erotic detail. She was licking her lower lip until it gleamed, enticing him. The look in her eyes was cautious, but there was a smile hidden in it.

He scoped the room with his peripheral vision. The bed looked uncomfortable with those heaps of books, but the beanbag chair behind her had possibilities. He could wedge her into that and pin her down with his weight, juicily rocking and sliding. Her pussy doing that fluttering clutch around his cock every time she came. Yes.

He reached out, let his fingertips slide down her cheek, her soft throat. Over her breastbone. He spread out his whole hand, felt the quick, hard throb of her heart against his palm. He slid his other hand up her thigh, to the top of her stockings, gripping her where the fabric ended, and soft, hot skin began. The energy grew, swelling into something huge and inevitable. She bit her lower lip, breathing hard.

It happened again, as it had on the street. That feeling brushing by. A cobweb breaking across his mind, as his guard went down.

He froze, and his grip tightened on her thigh. He looked around the small apartment. Nothing moving. Nothing had changed. It was silent. Just the sounds of the street outside.

“What is it?” Nell asked.

“Shhh,” he hushed her, feeling around with his subtlest senses.

Two steps brought him to a barred window that looked out on a blind courtyard full of garbage cans. Empty. Just a couple of rats on the scrounge. He looked for a reason for the feeling. There always was one. By now, he trusted it blind. He was being watched. His neck crawled.

His eyes fell on the smoke detector attached to the low ceiling. He reached up and carefully detached it.

“Duncan, what are you—”

“Shhh.” He didn’t want to talk, even to explain himself. Not with unfriendly eyes watching, unfriendly ears listening.

It was almost too easy. The tiny vidcam was taped to the side of the black smoke detector, virtually invisible. The device had been gutted of its usual contents, the space inside the shell used to house the wiring and battery and radiofrequency transmitter of the camera. He stared at it, wishing that he had not touched it. Fingerfucking the evidence. Gant would lecture him. His friend never wasted an opportunity to give him hell.

“What on earth is that thing?” Nell’s voice was thin and high.

“A vidcam,” he said. “Someone’s been watching you.”

She made a strangled sound. Put her hand over her mouth.

Shit-eating bastards. Violating her hard-earned private space. Watching while she undressed, bathed, ate, slept. Probably watching her now, being hurt and scared. That infuriated him.

He laid the thing down on her table. “Don’t touch it,” he said. “It might have prints.” He looked around the room again, trying to imagine where he would plant spyware, if he were one of them.

She had an old-fashioned phone. He grabbed the horn, unscrewed the mouthpiece. Bingo. He shook the listening device onto the table without touching it, and answered the question in her eyes. “A drop-in bug,” he said. “They’ve been monitoring your phone conversations.”

Her eyes were huge. “I…but I talked to Vivi just this morning—”

“We’ll discuss it later,” he cut her off. “Not here. Let’s just get the fuck out of this place. It’s making my flesh creep.”

“Ah, y-y-yes,” she agreed, flustered. She looked around herself, wildly. “Um…what was I—”

“Laptop. And clothes,” he reminded her. “Quickly.”

It didn’t take her long once he started helping, scooping stuff out of drawers at random. That perked her up. She shoved him away with an irritated sound and finished packing clothes, but then came the shoes, the toiletries bag: vials and bottles and tubes, packets of this and that. And then the books. Fuck a duck. She heaved eight of them into the huge suitcase. Big motherlovers, too. The trolley wheels were probably going to collapse.