“Now, hold on—”
“I’m sorry.” Her cheeks flushed. “You didn’t deserve that.”
No, he didn’t. But that didn’t matter right now. “What about you?”
“Me?” she asked, and a shimmer of tears came to her eyes. “I tried to protect Justin. But I wasn’t strong enough.”
“You were a kid. You did your best.” But her best hadn’t been enough. He could see it in her eyes. And more.
Nick’s hands fisted. “Did Collins beat you, too?”
“No. I was older. And I was a gir—” Erin stopped, and something at the core of Nick’s body iced over.
“Jesus, Erin. What did he do to you?”
“Nothing,” she said, and stepped from Nick’s hands. “Not really.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“He only threatened.” She turned her back to him, crossing her arms tight over her middle. “He negotiated with me, to leave Justin alone.”
“Negotiated.”
“At first, when I was twelve or thirteen, it was little things. He wanted me to sit with him on the couch and watch TV or come to the basement to watch him work out. Then it got bigger. He’d want a goodnight kiss, or want me to wear a certain outfit he bought for me. If I didn’t, he’d take it out on Justin. If I hesitated, all he had to do was go toward Justin’s room and I’d give in. Then, when I turned sixteen, he came into my bedroom and laid down with me in my bed. My mother was out.” She began to tremble, her voice fraying like a thin strand of silk. “He touched me. I said, ‘no.’ And he said, ‘No? Is that really your answer?’ And when I didn’t give in, he left my room and dragged Justin out of bed. He was ten. Jeffrey beat him unconscious while I listened from behind the locked door.”
“Holy Christ.”
“He said that if I told anyone, he’d kill Mom and Justin and have me to himself whenever he wanted. And that he would never, ever take ‘no’ for an answer.”
Nick tasted bile. He tried to swallow it back and walked up behind her. He was afraid to touch her, afraid she might shatter like blown glass and that he wouldn’t be allowed to hear anymore. But then she turned around, the sheet knotted tight between her breasts and her eyes hard as emeralds.
“The next day I took my mother’s gun. It was this little pearl-handled Derringer she carried in her purse for show. A fashion item,” she quipped, but there was nothing light-hearted in the tone of her voice. Nothing fragile, either. “When he came into my room that night, he asked if I’d changed my mind. We talked about what he’d done to Justin and he said he’d do it again. I gave in. I let him get in bed with me.”
Dread congealed in Nick’s chest. And rage and fear and the overwhelming desire to hunt down Jeffrey Collins and make him pay.
“And when he was settled in bed beside me, I drove the pistol into his balls and told him if he ever came near me or touched Justin again, I would shoot them off, one at a time. And I pointed under the desk to the cassette tape player that had recorded everything.”
Pride washed over Nick.
Erin let out a shaky breath. “He left. I mean, really left. He left my mother and never came back. A year later, he filed for divorce.”
“Where is he now?”
“The last we heard, he’d remarried. In Bismarck, North Dakota, where he was developing a new mall.”
Bismarck. Nick had never been there. Soon enough, he vowed, he would go.
He brushed a hand down Erin’s cheek. “And you slept with the gun under your pillow after that.”
She closed her eyes. “I was afraid he’d come back. I jimmied the lock on Justin’s door so it wouldn’t latch. For weeks, at night I would sit with my back against my bedroom door and the gun in my hand, listening for his car to come in the drive, or for the front door to open. When I went to bed, I’d lie there thinking every sound was his
footsteps. Sometimes I’d wake and my hand would be cramped from holding the gun so tight.”
She rubbed at her hand and Nick took it in his, unfolded her fingers and kissed her palm, first on one hand, then the other. “No more,” he murmured into her hands. “I’ll protect you now.” He abandoned her hands and trailed kisses her arms, backing her up until her ass hit the dresser. He cleared the surface with a sweep of her hand then took her by the waist and set her butt on the dresser. Unfastened the knot of the sheet.
“Do you know how proud I am, you crazy little fool?” he asked, lowering his lips to her neck. He watched in the mirror behind her as her back arched in pleasure and her hands shot out against the dresser like buttresses. He pressed her knees open with his body and clasped one ass cheek in each hand.
“No,” she said, on a breath that was almost a sigh. “Show me.”
L
ATER, THE FRONT DOOR
opened with an excessive amount of clatter. D.D. trotted in first, sent in as a scout, Nick supposed, and Hannah followed a long minute later. She ran into the kitchen, sniffing the air. “Rosemary potatoes,” she said. “What else? I’m starving. Uncle Luke and Grandma just kept talking and talking and talking…”
Nick looked at his brother. Luke was making it hard to nurse a grudge.
“You’re just in time to do the salad,” Nick said, plopping Hannah on a barstool at the island. “Here’s the goat cheese. I already pureed the raspberries for the dressing.”
“Yum, my favorite. You have to reach the red wine vinegar for me,” she said, and he did. “Did you toast the macadamia nuts?”
“Oh, shi—I forgot.”
“That’s a quarter,” Hannah said. She looked at Erin. “I charge him a quarter every time he cusses.”
“You must have a thriving college fund by now,” Luke said.
“He owes me thirty-eight dollars and twenty-five cents,” Hannah said. “Fifty cents, now.”
“Like hell I do…”
“Seventy-five. Daddy, how could you forget to toast the macadamia nuts?”
“I’ve been busy,” he said, with a glance to Erin.
Luke caught it and Erin’s cheeks flamed red. “Come on, Chef Hannah,” Luke said. “Show me what goes in this raspberry stuff. I’m hungry.”
Nick stifled a growl but felt great. He couldn’t remember the last time he and Luke had had an exchange that was beyond civil, couldn’t remember the last time his body had been used so thoroughly and yet straining for more. Having Erin in his world—in the kitchen with his family—seemed right.
So right he could almost forget it scared the shit out of him. She was his now, to keep safe.
He dumped a bag of macadamia nuts into a dry skillet and caught Erin eyeing Luke. “You two both know your way around a kitchen, don’t you?”
Luke said, “ ‘
Der
Mann
Jungs
…”
“Will cook.’ ”
Nick finished for him. Our mother’s credo. I can drive a sewing machine, too.”
Erin’s eyes popped. “You cannot.”
“Is that a challenge I hear?”
Hannah chimed in, “Grandma says he flunked sewing.”
“No one asked you,” Nick said.
Eight o’clock came too soon. Dinner done, Hannah giving Erin a lesson in herbs, Nick’s stomach pleasantly full while his body and mind both existed in a state of flux: exhausted from a distinct shortage of sleep and a few mind-blowing orgasms; charged by the chase and the case and the mystery Erin had brought to Hopewell.
He grimaced. Thought he might have a topic for the
next time he had to do staff development.
A Cop’s Guide to Kicking Tobacco and Emotional Gratification: Serial Murder.
The shrink in L.A. had accused him of possessing a twisted need for intensity, to handle the worst cases and go beyond what was fair and orthodox to nail the bastards of the world.
“Detective Mann, how does it make you feel to know that Bertrand Yost will never walk again as a result of your actions?”
she had asked.
And Nick was supposed to say,
“I feel torn and guilty.”
Instead, he’d looked her in the eye and said,
“I wish he would never breathe again.”
Twice a week for ten months Nick sat in her designer office rehashing the fate of the man who had murdered his wife and wounded his daughter—not to mention the list of crimes that had set Nick’s task force after him and his boss in the first place. At the end, the shrink reported that Nick’s “fervency bordering on obsession puts not only the targets of his investigations in danger, but has the potential to pull the entire department and even the city’s innocent citizens into the cyclone of vengeance Nick Mann calls justice.”
His phone rang, and Nick realized his hands were fisted. He shook them out and answered. Dispatch.
“Sheriff, we just took a call from police in Elyria. They got Ace Holmes in a bar picking a fight.”
His heart kicked up. “Rebecca Engel with him?”
“I don’t know. Do you want to talk to them?”
“Patch me through.” She did, and a couple of clicks later a husky voice came on.
“Sheriff Mann? This is Gavin Stone. I’m a patrol officer with the Elyria City Police Department.” Elyria was
a suburb of Cleveland, about an hour and a half from Hopewell. “You wanted to talk to Ace Holmes?”
“Absolutely,” Nick said. “What’s going on?”
“He’s drunk, sitting in a bar up here and owing the manager a couple hundred dollars in damages.”
“You know what we’ve got going down here?”
“Yes, sir. And I asked him about Rebecca Engel. He says he hasn’t seen her.”
A sliver of fear slid under Nick’s skin.
Ah, Christ, Rebecca, where are you?
“Is he telling the truth?”
“I don’t know. He’s pretty messed up. Hard to tell when they’re like that.”
“I need him. Sober him up and hold him until one of my guys gets there. If he doesn’t cooperate, bust his ass for something and lock him up.”
“We can do that.”
“And search his truck. I’m looking for any sign of Rebecca Engel.”
“Will do.”
Nick punched out and looked at Luke. “Ace Holmes is drunk near Cleveland. Rebecca’s not with him.”
“Uh-oh,” Luke said.
Nick walked back in to where Erin and Hannah were talking.
“Honey,” he said. They both looked up and something in Nick’s chest went
thmp.
“I have to go out for a little while.”
“Daddy,” Hannah whined, “do I have to sleep at Grandma’s again?”
“Nope.” Nick shook his head. “I won’t be long. I’m just going out to talk to a couple college students. Uncle Luke can stay with you.”
“Actually, I was thinking I’d tag along,” Luke said
from behind him, “if Erin doesn’t mind staying with Hannah. That okay?”
Erin looked between Nick and Hannah, considering. Trust, again. It was always a matter of trust.
“Okay,” she said, in the end. “So long as you tell me what you find out.”
Nick stepped into the hall where Hannah wouldn’t hear and asked for Fruth to come keep an eye on the house. Looked at Luke and wondered when it had started to feel good to have him around. He’d harbored a grudge against him for sparing Yost for all these years, and now had a feeling his warmer attitude had nothing to do with a change in Luke’s character, and everything to do with a change in Nick’s. He wasn’t sure when that had happened either, but if he stopped to analyze it, he wagered he’d find Erin Sims in there somewhere.
He went back and kissed Hannah on the head, gave in to the urge to plant a very different sort of kiss on Erin, and pointed a finger at Hannah. “In bed by nine-thirty.”
“Okay,” she grumped, but her eyes twinkled.
The Angelmaker drove by Mann’s house. Found a deputy parked there.
“Shit.” A shot of anger rose up—this wasn’t what Mann was supposed to do. Getting an extra pair of eyes to keep watch? But a moment later, the Angelmaker laughed.
All right, Sheriff. Two can play this game
. If anything would be more enjoyable than sending his house into a ball of fire, it would be doing it under the nose of a deputy.
The Angelmaker veered a block out of the way and headed back home, thinking about the cheap, simple things in life. Like a seventy-five-dollar stun gun and a hundred-dollar motorcycle.
E
LIZABETH
K
UNKLE WAS
a slim twenty-two-year-old with blond hair and inch-long dark roots. She wore a tank top with no bra and indecently cut jeans that displayed a gold loop through her belly. When she bent over to clear junk off the sofa, the tattoo above her butt was like a slap in the face. Nick had the urge to cover her with a blanket, then run home and go through Hannah’s closet and trash anything more revealing than sweats.
Getting old,
he thought. Luke eyed the tattoo.
Shea Blaurock was Elizabeth’s opposite. Chunky, with wine-colored stripes in black hair, wearing tight leggings and a baggy sweater that she probably thought disguised her size. She had a nervous habit of pushing her glasses up even when they hadn’t slipped, and Nick decided she wore them to hide the stupor in her eyes.
“Go ahead and sit down,” Elizabeth said, dropping a stack of magazines to the floor. “Sorry, it’s kind of a mess.”
“It’s fine,” Nick said, sitting down. Something poked his butt and he scooted over a little, making room for Luke on the sofa. A couple of candles burned on the end
table, but the smell of vanilla spice didn’t quite mask the odor of marijuana that oozed from the upholstery.
“You said on the phone you wanted to know about Shelly…” Elizabeth said, dropping into a bean bag chair. Shea sank into a fuzzy WalMart-brand mushroom chair, hot pink. “We never really knew her that well,” Elizabeth continued. “I mean, we lived together for a couple of months, but she was…” she looked at Shea—no help there—and concluded, “… weird.”
“How do you mean?” Nick asked. Elizabeth’s nipples puckered under her shirt. Too chilly in November for a tank top with nothing over it. He glanced around for that blanket.
“She wanted to be a music major—voice. Music people have their own worlds. She never wanted to rush or anything—I mean, go Greek.”
“I know what ‘rush’ means.”
“She went out some, but she never said much about where she was or what she was doing. We didn’t really know who she hung out with.”
“Did she ever go to Hilltop House?”
Elizabeth’s brow wrinkled. Then she got it and her eyes grew big. This was exciting. “Omigod. Did that Calloway freak get her?”