Don't Say a Word (15 page)

But it was the hypnotic wail of the blues tune that he played with his own hands and lips that drew her, and made her heart clench. The song reeked of pain and loneliness, emotions she knew well.

Desperately wanting to touch him, wanting more, she slowly walked through the den. Noted the stack of jazz and blues albums he'd collected, the photos of famous New Orleans musicians, a photo of him and his brothers when they were teenagers playing in a band. Mesmerized by his hands and mouth on the instrument, she stepped outside, never taking her eyes off his fingers as he stroked the keys or his lips curled around the mouthpiece. Heat spread through her in an erotic wave of sensations. God help her, but she felt his music and pain deep in her soul. And she wanted those fingers and lips on her, bringing her pleasure just as she would do for him.

His head was thrown back, his eyes closed, his heart pouring into the music. Then he seemed to realize she was there and opened his eyes. The raw pain and need in his expression sent liquid fire sizzling through her veins.

“Damon…that was beautiful.”

“Go to bed, Crystal.”

His gruff voice reeked of hunger. A smile curved her mouth. She'd almost died tonight. She felt daring and risky and way more alive than she'd felt in months. And she wanted him. Everything he could give.

Even if it was only a kiss.

No, that wouldn't be enough. Not of this man.

* * *

D
AMON PRAYED
C
RYSTAL WOULD
follow his command because his willpower dwindled with every second she stared at him like that. But the look of desire in her eyes told him she was reckless and needy; he recognized the signs.

“I understand what you're feeling, Crystal,” he said, wrapping his hands tighter around the saxo phone to keep from grabbing her. “Danger heightens adrenalin. It's a rush that makes you want to do something wild.”

He set the instrument down on the inside of the door, and turned away from her to stare at the woods, battling for restraint. “It's not me you want, but human contact. That's all.”

“No.” She shook her head. “It's you.”

“My
chère
.” His groan of denial filled the air.

“You want it, too,” she whispered. Then she shocked him by moving up behind him, by sliding her arms around his waist, by leaning her face against his bare back and pressing kisses to his skin. He bit his tongue to stifle a moan of pleasure, willing himself to be strong.

“I can feel your hunger, Damon. Your body is hot beneath my hands,” she said softly.

“That doesn't make it right.” He cleared his throat, pointed to the shadows streaking the backwoods. “There are gators out there that would eat you alive, other monsters in the city that would, too. Both tried to kill us tonight.”

“But we're safe now, and…I want to be in your arms.”

He stiffened. Nothing about him taking her would be right. He was a federal agent working a case. She had amnesia, might have a husband or boyfriend looking for her, or even a child who needed her.

“It's my job to protect you, to help you find out who you are,” he said roughly.

“I just want tonight,” she said softly.

Bon Dieu, avoir pitié!
She was offering him a way out. He was such a bastard he wanted to take her, but he couldn't.

She threaded her fingers through the back of his hair, moved around in front of him and kissed his neck. He had to think about Antwaun. “You look like the woman my brother is accused of murdering,” he said, hating to hurt her, but determined to do the right thing. “The woman he was in love with.”

She tensed, her breath bathing his bare chest, heating his skin. “But I'm not her,” she whispered with a longing in her voice that echoed his own thoughts. “I know that. I…felt nothing when I saw your brother, not like I do when I'm with you.”

Her sultry admission shredded his resolve, and he snapped.

In one fierce move, he jerked her in his arms, kissed her savagely, ran his hands through her hair, over her shoulders, down her back. His tongue coaxed her mouth open, teased her lips, danced inside, exploring the deep recesses of her mouth. She met his thrust with her own desire, running her hands over his back, moaning into him, then pressing her heat against his rock-hard erection.

Red-hot fire ripped through him, shot through his veins, made him inch his fingers back to cup her breasts in his hands. They felt heavy, and she groaned as if aching for him. Her hunger triggered his own lust, and he tore open the robe and licked his way from her chin down to the tight buds of her nipples, which stood pouty and swollen, begging for his taste.

He licked each one, flicked them with his tongue, caught one in his mouth and suckled it until her legs buckled, and she clutched his arms and groaned.

“I want you, Damon. I've never felt so hot and needy.”

Neither had he. And it scared him to death.

But he'd been dead for months now. And she was life in his arms.

He sucked her other breast, traced his fingers down her belly to her mound. Toyed with the soft curls at the juncture of her thighs, parted her legs with his hand and thrust a finger inside her. She was wet, willing, moaning his name, pleading for him not to stop.

He plunged another finger deep inside her, then teased her nipples again, pumping his fingers in and out of her slick wet opening until she quivered, and he felt her body clench around him. She clung to him, crying his name, begging him for more, and he deepened the thrusts until she fell apart in his arms.

She kissed him frantically, pushed at his jeans to remove them. But a shrill sound cut through the night.

A gator's cry.

He paused, jerked his head around to listen and remembered where they were—standing outside in the open air of his backyard, exposed.

Dammit. What was he thinking? A shooter had tried to kill them today. He was a fool to leave them vulnerable like this.

The shrill sound cut through the silence again, mingling with her erratic breathing, and his own. This time it wasn't a gator but the damn phone.

He grabbed her and whisked her inside, his cop instincts kicking in. Then he slammed the door shut. She looked stunned, dazed, her face flushed, her hands still trying to tear at his jeans.

“Crystal, stop,” he said huskily.

“No. I want you,” she cried.

He clutched her hands, pressed them to his sides. His body ached for her, but his brain had awakened. “I have to answer the phone.”

He reached up and kissed her on the mouth, then grabbed his cell phone off the desk where he'd also laid his weapon.

“Damon, it's Jean-Paul. I just talked to the coroner. They have an ID on the woman's body. It's Kendra Yates.”

No big surprise, although it looked bad for Antwaun.

“Kendra's mother is back in town, finally. I say we talk to her in the morning, after we visit Fenton in jail,” Jean-Paul said. “Maybe Kendra told her something.”

“Right. Good idea.” He glanced at the passionate woman beside him, the one he wanted in his bed. “Any word on Crystal's identity?”

“They're still working on it.” Jean-Paul coughed into the phone. “I don't have to tell you to be careful with that one, man. You don't know who she is or what she's done in the past. So don't get in too deep with her.”

Damon nodded, although he could taste her skin on his lips, smell her orgasm in the heat still radiating between them, and knew that his brother's warning was too late. He'd been in too deep since the moment he'd laid eyes on her.

* * *

H
E HAD TO COVER HIS ASS
. He'd learned from his connections that Kendra's mother was back in town. He had to question her. See if she and her daughter had shared a mother-daughter chat before her demise. Or if she'd sent her mom a package of some kind, anything.

The rules of the game—
never leave a witness behind
. Destroy anyone who got in the way. Cover your ass no matter who had to die.

Which meant Kendra Yates's mother was on her way bye-bye.

He'd sharpened the knife blade to perfection, examined the edges to make sure they were clean. Slipped on his gloves. The silly woman had no security system. A broken latch on the laundry-room window allowed him easy entry. And the house was situated on a backwoods lot a mile from nowhere. Only God and the gators to listen to her screams.

Laughter caught in his throat, but he tamped it down as he padded silently into her room. First, the kill.

Then he'd mutilate her and leave her for Dubois to see. To feel guilty about. He might even send a picture of her bloody body to his dear old dad. Let him see what he'd learned from him.

Wouldn't the bastard be proud?

Then he'd search the old broad's place and eliminate any evidence that might tie him to her daughter or to her.

Tomorrow when the police arrived to question her, they'd find her floating in a bloody river like the one poured from Kendra.

C
RYSTAL STILL QUIVERED
with need as Damon disconnected the phone call. She ached to finish what they'd begun, wanted to see him naked and feel his body gliding against hers, his rigid length inside her, see him lose control as he murmured her name.

But when he turned toward her, moonlight played off his chiseled face, and regret flickered in his eyes.

“Damon, please…” She reached for him, determined he see that she herself had no regrets. All she wanted tonight was to forget the danger and questions. Tomorrow would throw them back in her face.

“Crystal, it's late. You need to get some rest.”

She clutched his arms, forced him to look at her. “Why don't we lie down together? Let me love you the way you did me.”

His jaw snapped rigid, and he caught her hands in his and lifted them away from him. “I've already crossed the line. Taken advantage of you when I knew better.”

“You didn't take advantage of me, Damon. I wanted you and you wanted me. It's as simple as that.”

“Nothing about our relationship is simple,” he barked. “You don't even know your name. What if you're married, Crystal? What if you have a family somewhere, a husband who wants you back?”

“If I do, then why hasn't he come looking for me?” All the pent-up emotions and anger she'd felt the last few months thickened her voice.

“Maybe he thinks you left him for some reason, or that you're dead.”

“That still doesn't explain why he wouldn't have filed a missing report on me.” She curled her hands into fists, desperate for his touch again. “There is obviously no one,” she whispered, finally admitting the truth to herself. “No one cares about me, Damon. That's why there's been no report, no search.” She pressed her hand to her heart. “I feel it in here.”

He stared at her long and hard, emotions warring in his eyes. Then a breath hissed between his teeth, and the cold, hard cop was back. “That was Jean-Paul. They have a positive ID on the mutilated woman. It
was
Kendra Yates.”

Sadness swelled in her chest although she had no idea why she'd experience grief for a woman she hadn't known. Guilt was there, too, for benefiting from the death of another woman. Fear quickly followed.

“What about my ID?”

“Nothing yet, but maybe tomorrow.” He moved to the French doors, locked them and pulled down the shades. “Jean-Paul and I plan to question Fenton, the first Mutilator, in jail in Angola tomorrow. And I'm going to see Kendra's mother.”

“Her mother is here in New Orleans?”

Damon nodded. “Yes, she flew back after the police contacted her to inform her about the ID.”

“I should go with you,” she said, although anxiety knotted her shoulders. “If I did know Kendra, seeing her mother might help trigger my memory.”
And I do have her daughter's face
.

But how would Kendra's mother react to the sight of her?

* * *

D
AMON SPENT HALF THE NIGHT
studying the files on the investigation and arrest of the Mutilator thirty years ago, researching the victims, looking for a pattern between the women he'd chosen to kill, delving into the man's past. Damon was desperate to find a material connection between the first killer and the man who'd murdered Kendra Yates. And
something
had to keep his mind off of wanting to climb into the bed with Crystal and sating himself with her lush body.

There didn't seem to be a solid pattern between the victims of the Mutilator. Fenton had first killed his mother, a savage murder that the social workers had justified as self-defense—apparently Fenton had suffered terrible abuse at her hands. As typical with other serial killers, he'd transferred his hatred of her to other members of her sex, had repeated patterns of abuse with women he'd dated as he'd aged. Eventually he'd turned murder into a game. Twelve victims in a one-year span. One woman a month.

Cold. Sadistic. The man had expressed no remorse during the trial. Some victims had been single, some married, although he'd supposedly met them all in bars—that was at least
some
connection.

Kendra Yates was a professional—she would not have fit the MO. Still, the man who'd killed her had chosen to imitate the Mutilator's crimes. Why? Did he know Fenton?

Damon searched for cell mates who had been housed with Fenton, but found none who had been recently released. According to his data, Fenton had no siblings or children either. Where the hell was the connection?

Exhausted, he finally forced himself to bed, but when he fell asleep, nightmares tormented him.

* * *

H
E WAS OUTSIDE THE HOUSE
where Diego Bolton was supposed to be hiding out. Max had landed the E-team chopper in a clearing less than a mile away. The men were in place to erase the terrorist as ordered.

Damon had scoped out the property and created a tactical plan. Lex froze the security long enough for the team to slip in and set the explosives in place. Black-faced and hiding in the shadows, they counted down the seconds until the bomb exploded.

Then the mission went awry.

Diego was supposed to be alone, but Max spotted a woman entering the house on the opposite side. Somehow she'd bypassed security, meaning she must've known the code. Probably one of Diego's lovers.

Still, killing an innocent woman was not on Damon's agenda.

As soon as Damon heard Max on the radio, he ordered the team to abort the plan. He jumped up to make sure the remote didn't go off, but Cal grabbed the device, and it clicked, setting the timer. Dammit. Damon looked through the binoculars but he'd lost the woman. Where was she? Had she gone out the back door?

They had only seconds before the house blew….

Damon ran toward the house. “I have to get the woman out,” he insisted.

Max caught him at the door. “It's too late, man. You'll expose us all if you do that.”

“I don't intend on killing an innocent woman,” Damon argued.

Max jerked him back. “Don't fuck this up. Diego is an assassin and a traitor, and she may be his accomplice. He's responsible for hundreds of lost lives. What's one more casualty of the war?”

“But what if she's innocent?” Damon hissed. Suddenly the bomb went off, knocking them both through the air. His head slammed against a tree in the woods with such force he blacked out for a second. Fire erupted instantly, the entire place going up in a blazing inferno.

Damon slowly came to. Blurry-eyed, he crawled forward, pushed himself up from his knees. Blood dripped down his face; he tasted it in his mouth. But he ran toward the house again, determined to rescue the woman.

Fire hissed and sprayed splintered wood all over the ground. The roof caved in, crashing with a thunderous roar. Flames ripped along the grass outside, swallowed the bushes surrounding the house, climbed upward, an orange-and-red dragon of a fireball coloring the dark sky. A shrill scream pierced the air.

The woman might still be alive.

Damon dodged patches of flames, falling debris, crackling wood and furniture that rained down. Smoke choked him, and he dragged out a handkerchief, covered his mouth and searched the burning rooms for the woman. Then Max rushed up beside him, cursing at him and trying to drag him out. Lex was there, too, yelling at them to all get out, that Diego was dead.

A falling beam struck Damon's neck and sent him to the floor. Heat singed his skin; smoke clogged his throat and eyes. He thought he spotted her. A female body curled on the floor. Wide, sightless eyes staring at him. Fire breathing down her hair. Then he spotted the baby rattle lying on the floor. She must have been holding it.

God, no, she had a baby. Or was she pregnant now?

He grabbed the plastic yellow rattle. “I have to get her!” he shouted.

“She's already dead!” Cal shouted.

“No, don't die,” he yelled. “Please don't die.”

Another beam crashed down, shooting flames at his feet and hands, falling into the woman, and he choked back a cry.

* * *

D
AMON JERKED AWAKE
, his heart racing, sweat pouring down his face. Or was it tears?

He felt smothered by the anguish filling his chest. He should have died that day, too. Sometimes he wished he had.

But Crystal's face flashed in his head. Crystal, the woman without a name. The woman he'd wanted to make love to. The woman who made him want to live again.

He rose, padded to the dresser and opened the drawer, then removed the baby rattle he'd found. The one he hadn't been able to leave behind, or throw away.

Cal would have a fit if he knew Damon had kept it, that he'd broken another rule—
destroy any evidence that could connect you to the scene or victim
.

He'd kept this rattle to remind him of the woman's death. And that he didn't deserve to have a family himself.

* * *

C
RYSTAL TWISTED HER FINGERS
together, scanning the scenery as Damon drove the country road toward Kendra Yates's mother's house. She'd gone to bed aching for Damon and his comforting arms, and this morning, as she contemplated the woman's potential reactions to seeing her daughter's face on another, she needed him even more.

But he had withdrawn into a silent shell, thrown up walls to keep her from getting close again and held a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel of the car Jean-Paul had dropped off. The morning had been awkward as they'd shared coffee and beignets, but she'd been grateful for the bag of clothes and toiletries Britta had collected.

Even wearing the simple cotton sleeveless tank, denim skirt and sandals in the air-conditioning, her skin felt clammy with the insufferable heat and nerves. She'd secured her hair off her neck into a ponytail, but perspiration made the unruly tendrils curl even more and cling to her neck. Damon flipped the radio to a local jazz station to fill the silence, but the blues song only let in thoughts of her troubles.

Damon veered down a graveled road past an old service station and several houses that had been nearly destroyed in the hurricane, reminding her of the lost lives and difficulties the survivors faced. She had no reason to indulge in a pity party. Soon she would have answers. Then she could move on.

If they discovered she was single and free, would Damon want to be part of her life? Was that the only thing holding him back? She sensed there was more. Something about the pain in the way he'd played that saxophone suggested that he didn't want a relationship at all. Just a night of raw primal sex…

Another memory tugged at her consciousness. A handsome man…a seduction. Lies. A man she trusted. A man who'd betrayed her. No, an involvement with this cop was impossible.

The car bumped over the potholes and uneven graveled patches, jerking her mind back to the immediate task facing her: meeting Kendra's mother.

Damon slowed the vehicle as they approached a battered two-story white Georgian home. The structure begged for paint just as the weed-filled, scraggly yard begged for landscaping. Kendra's mother had probably suffered hurricane damage and was still struggling to recover.

And now she'd lost her daughter….

Damon cut the engine then turned to Crystal, worry lining his handsome face. “This has to be difficult, maybe even unpleasant for you. Kendra's mother already endured a terrible shock, and she doesn't yet know about the transplant. Are you sure you want to meet her?”

Doubts suddenly assailed Crystal. “You think meeting me will make things worse for her?”

“I don't know. I…It's hard to say how she'll react.”

Crystal stared up at the house, her heart full of trepidation. She didn't want to hurt this woman, but she'd like to repay Kendra by easing her mother's suffering, if possible. Somehow she felt close to Kendra, felt as if being here was right, that Kendra would have wanted her to meet her mother, to console her in her grief.

“I have to,” she said softly. “Kendra wouldn't want her mother to be alone now.”

He nodded, his frown softening slightly, resurrecting memories of the night before when just for a moment he'd let down his guard.

But as they walked up the drive to the front porch, Crystal's knees wobbled, and the hair on the back of her neck bristled. Something was wrong. She could feel it.

Damon rang the doorbell, and they waited, the sultry air stirring scents of honeysuckle and the bayou around them. But no one answered.

A vulture circled the house above the chimney, sending an eerie feeling through her skin. Heat pounded her back, bringing with it another odor she couldn't define. Something rancid. Damon punched the bell again, but the house remained silent. He reached out and turned the doorknob, and her breath caught as the door squeaked open.

They stepped inside and a vile odor blasted them. “Something's not right,” she said.

Damon nodded and called the woman's name.

“What's that smell?” she asked.