Edge of Midnight by Shannon McKenna (11)

Chapter 11

There she was. He’d circled the lake, and snagged her signal on the handheld. He coasted, hoping to gain an element of stealth.

This was no deranged stalker. This had been carefully planned, by someone with time and leisure to rig an ambush, with electronic backup, skilled in demolitions, who had studied the area meticulously.

A professional. Which wrenched open doors in his mind. Doors best left shut, if he meant to maintain a passing resemblance to sanity.

The only time Liv could have attracted the attention of a person like T-Rex was when she was hanging out with a McCloud. This was just the kind of fucked up shit that routinely happened to the men in his family. Dad had trained them for this stuff since they were born.

Orem Lake gleamed in the pink glow of dawn, its surface ruffled by the wind. It was a small, pristine lake, the ice-cold water a clear blue-green. There was only a handful of seasonal hunting and fishing cabins.

The monitor told him to bear left. He jerked up the emergency brake, and leaped out of the truck, following shallow depressions in the grass that led up into the towering forest. He passed a Jeep, its plate number obscured by spattered mud. The track dead-ended into a rock face. The cabin was almost hidden in the undergrowth. It was a ruin, siding rotten, roof almost bare of shingles. It perched on a low cliff of black granite, smeared with green, yellow and orange lichen, shrouded by vast, moss-draped trees.

No one had used this place in years, possibly decades. If not for the beacon, he would never have found her. No one would have.

If she was still alive.

He pushed the bowel-loosening wave of fear away. If T-Rex had wanted her dead quickly, he could have offed her at Chaeffer Canyon.

Doubts chewed at him. Con and Davy, bitching about how he never considered consequences. Fine and good, if it was only himself getting fucked up, but this was Liv. He wondered how far behind the cops were. If Liv’s chances were better if he waited for backup.

He could doom her by racing in like a lone-ranger asshole, or he could doom her by waiting. He didn’t want to spend the rest of what passed for his life seeing Liv’s last moments, knowing he might have saved her if he’d been quicker, smarter. Like Kev’s pickup, endlessly falling in the back of his mind. He couldn’t go through it again.

He’d rather die.

Christ, how he wished he had Davy, Seth, and Con at his back. That he was packing his H&K, or the SIG. The Ruger packed a punch, but it was an emergency backup weapon, with only five shots.

But no. It was family policy not to store firearms at the Bluffs house, since it stood empty so much of the time.

Use your brain to think with, not your glands. The stern voices lecturing in his head slowed his headlong dash to a stagger.

But his goddamn brain wasn’t offering up any brilliant ideas.

A wrenching scream from the direction of the cabin propelled him like a bullet from a gun. To hell with his useless brain.

His glands were the best thing he had going for him, so fuck it.

The cabin was propped on scaffolding to level it out on the slope, so the windows that weren’t boarded up were too high to see through.

He scrambled up the slope towards the door. Shoved and tore his way through a jungle of thorny vines and hanging moss.

The door had a warped latch, and a rusty padlock dangling from it. Sean pushed the door. It shrieked on its hinges. So much for stealth.

Two bodies struggled on a shiny black plastic tarp in the dark, moldy room. The guy whipped around at the sound, white-rimmed, bulging blue eyes, in a thick bulldog face. He was straddling Liv. He could see her jeans-clad legs, flopping beneath the guy’s bulk.

Shit. He couldn’t shoot the guy with Liv right behind him. T-Rex spun around. A gun. Bullets blasted, punching into the walls, the door. Duck, tuck, and roll. Bullets whipped through his hair, his sleeve. One scored a white-hot line across his back. Filthy window glass shattered.

When he rolled up onto his feet, the guy had the gun to Liv’s head. His arm held her chin back. Her wrists were bound in front of her. She was naked to the waist. Blood trickled down her torso from the side of her neck, shockingly bright against her pale skin.

“Drop the gun, or I’ll blow her head off,” the guy said.

Sean assessed his options in that endless nanosecond, and sent a telepathic apology to Davy and Con as his fingers loosened and let go.

He hated to make them go through it again, but they had wives, families. They would get through it. And Sean had just been marking time since Kev died, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The gun, thudding to the floor, was the sound of the shoe dropping.

“Kick it over to me,” the guy instructed.

The gun made a whispering scrape as it slid across the dirty, ragged linoleum floor. He began slowly rising to his feet.

“Stay down on your knees, asshole. Hands behind your head.”

“The police will be along real soon,” Sean said, sinking back down. “She’s transmitting a radio signal from her shoe. Want to see it?”

“Yeah, of course,” the guy said. “Of course she is. Of course they are.” He let out a high-pitched giggle. “Just look at this. Should I gut-shoot you, and let you bleed to death? Or sever your spinal column and leave you paralyzed? I oughta leave you alive, with the door open, for the animals. You can witness yourself becoming part of the food chain.” He slid the barrel of the gun down over Liv’s throat, between her breasts. “I don’t even know where to begin. I want to eat her up.”

Liv shrieked as he chomped into her neck and he sloppily licked the stinging wound. She clutched the nail she had wrenched out of the wall as the cold gun barrel made its way back up her half-bare body. He tucked it beneath her chin, jabbing it painfully deep.

“I’ve been looking forward to this for fifteen years,” T-Rex said. He shoved her chin up with the gun and kissed her, his muscular tongue poking into her mouth. She tasted her own blood, and almost retched.

“As soon as I get him squared away, I’ll put away the gun, baby-doll,” he went on. “I’ll just use the knife. Lasts longer that way.”

The world narrowed down to a pinpoint of brilliant clarity.

She did not want to die slowly and horribly at the hands of this monster. A bullet in the head would at least be quick—and it might give Sean a chance. He deserved a chance. He was magnificent. Charging in to save her, against all odds, all hope or logic.

She convulsed. The gun barrel slipped up her neck, slick with blood and sweat. She jerked her bound hands, the nail protruding between her fingers, in what she hoped was the direction of his face, and sank her teeth into his wrist. The nail hit oily, slippery flesh.

He shrieked. The gun went off, deafening her.

T-Rex tried to shake her off. His skin was slimy. His blood tasted metallic and hot. His muscles and tendons strained against her teeth.

The gun went off again. She could no longer hear it. The explosion reverberated through their struggling bodies. He tried to angle the barrel to aim it at her skull. Jammed his fingers into the corners of her mouth. He was going to rip her jaw right off, but she couldn’t have let go if she wanted to. She was locked on, like a maddened pit bull.

She opened her eyes. The heel of Sean’s boot brushed past her face, slammed into T-Rex’s hand. Her jaw loosened as the blow jarred them against the wall. The gun bounced against the wall, hit the floor.

So did she.

T-Rex swung up his massive knee. Sean barely blocked the blow to his groin, and the vicious jab to the temple. So the dude wasn’t all gym-rat muscle and ego. He was scarily quick. The glow in his wild eyes suggested drug enhancement. Whatever the shit was, it worked.

The guy came at him, howling, in a blur of kicks and punches.

Blood splattered onto Sean with each new offensive, but T-Rex was feeling no pain. He herded Sean into a corner. A kick to his face knocked him off course, but he swung back, lunging for Sean’s throat.

Sean blocked, grabbed, twisted. T-Rex didn’t even feel the torqued tendons. Bad breath, he noted with odd detachment, as they careened toward the back of the cabin. Foul. Guy should floss. They swayed, legs splayed, trying to trip each other. Barrelling towards a warped door that led to the deck. They tore it off its rusty hinges and hit the deck with a rending crash. Panes of glass beneath them shattered, tinkled. Rotten planks shuddered and groaned, bowing at the impact.

Sean ended up on the bottom, as luck would have it.

T-Rex’s face was barely recognizable as human. Sean blocked a chopping blow to the collarbone. T-Rex got his enormous hands around Sean’s neck. It became a wrestling match. Sweat dripped from the guy’s brow, stinging Sean’s eyes. He kept his neck rigid, freeing his hand for a quick, desperate jab at T-Rex’s white-rimmed eyes.

T-Rex jerked back, and Sean jabbed in a sharp uppercut that rocked the bigger man’s head back on his thick neck. That broke his concentration, but Sean hadn’t even rolled up to his knees before TRex smashed him against the sagging deck railing. Planks cracked, bowed, and gave. Nails screeched as they were torn from their long home. The deck tipped. There was nothing solid to grab. He pitched over the edge.

It was a long fall, but the cliff was not sheer, and he bounced and slid over outcroppings of granite before landing on his feet, fortunately, bending at the knees. He rolled, came to rest facedown, his nose inches from crystalline water that lapped over the multicolored pebbles.

He scrambled up. T-Rex had not fallen with him. What was left of the deck dangled at a forty-five degree angle, planks scattered on the pebbled beach. T-Rex had glommed on to a tough shrub on the cliff face, and was pulling himself up onto the rocks where the cabin was perched.

Sean looked frantically around. He was trapped in a cove, rock on all sides, thorny foliage that would take ten desperate minutes to crawl through. T-Rex would be back up there in a couple of minutes. He pried his knife out. The angle sucked, but it was worth a try. He threw.

The knife embedded itself in the back of T-Rex’s ass.

The guy yelped, slid, caught himself. He reached back, and plucked the knife out of himself. “Thanks for the blade, you shit-eating prick. You’re going to love what I do to your girlfriend’s face with it.”

He stuck Sean’s blade between his teeth and kept climbing.

Sawing through plastic strapping that held one’s own wrists together required a cool head and steady hands, neither of which she had. T-Rex’s knife was wickedly sharp, and she kept nicking herself, or maybe worse than nicking. She could be slitting her own wrists. Not that she cared. Bleeding to death was the least of her worries right now.

She knelt on the doorstep, pressing her knee to the knife handle to hold the protruding blade steady enough to saw at the cuffs. Her thighs wobbled. Her fingers were slippery with blood. The knife kept slipping to one side or the other. She shook with desperate laughter. The first time in her life that she’d actually wished she were heavier.

She found a lucky angle. The thing snapped free. She dove back into the cabin without hesitating, scrambling for the guns.

Her head rang, she saw stars, and the silence in her gun blast-deafened ears felt blank, unnatural, as if she were underwater. She scrabbled over the dirty floor. The guns, the guns. She found Sean’s revolver beneath a fold of crumpled tarp. T-Rex’s gun she found under a pile of yellowed newspapers. She could only deal with one, so she shoved Sean’s into the back of her jeans, hoping she wouldn’t shoot herself in the butt, and clutched the other gun with shaking hands.

She might not even be able to use the thing, if it came down to it. She couldn’t seem to make her numb fingers contract.

“Hey there, babydoll.”

T-Rex’s oily croon sounded small and faraway, through the ringing in her ears. Liv brandished the gun, holding the sinking, fainting horror at bay with everything she had. Oh God. Sean.

T-Rex saw the wild shaking of the gun barrel. He licked heavy, shiny lips, and grinned. His face was a shining mask of blood, which made his eyes seem pale and wild, like a maddened animal.

He held a knife. It had to be Sean’s. Blood dripped from its tip.

He followed her horrified gaze, and started to laugh, waving it in the air. “Yeah, I had some fun with your boyfriend, before I slit his throat. Didn’t you hear him scream? Want to know what I did to him?”

“Get away from me.” Her own voice sounded farther away than his. A shaking wisp. “Don’t take one step closer. I’ll blow your head off.”

“Oh yeah? That’s a Beretta PX Storm, babydoll. That’s a man’s gun. It’ll break your little lily white fingers. It’s not for a pretty fuckable doll like you. Game over.”

He stepped in the cabin door. She found herself backing up. Big mistake. She could tell from the way his gloating smirk widened.

“I’m serious,” she quavered. “I’ll shoot you dead.”

“No you won’t. You’re a good little girl. You won’t give me any trouble. I bet you’ve never given anybody any trouble in your life.”

“I will.” She swallowed over rock in her throat. “I’m big trouble.”

His big bloody hands reached for her. “You don’t want me mad at you,” he murmured. “You want me to love you tender. Come to papa. I’ll make you forget your pretty blond boy.”

Mentioning Sean was his mistake. It broke his spell, like a bubble popping. Her arms swung up. She squeezed the trigger. Bam. She heard the sound, as if from miles away. The recoil flung her arms up, and she almost knocked herself right between the eyes with the heavy gun.

A ragged hole appeared in the door.

T-Rex jumped. “Fuck!”

She took aim. “Wrong.” She pulled the trigger. A pane of glass in the door exploded. “I don’t want you to love me. Hate me. I hate you right back, you piece of shit.” She took a step towards him as she shot.

He backed up as the bullet smashed into the wall behind him. His eyes looked blank, startled, as he stumbled out the door. His retreat triggered a ferocious desire in her to give chase. She staggered after him, shooting wildly, screaming out her grief and fury. He limped away, in a lopsided jog-trot. Her shots were all over the place, she had no control, no technique. She was a mindless force of nature.

She would rip that asshole into bloody pieces for hurting Sean.

A Jeep was parked in the fir trees. He sprinted for it, leaped in. The engine roared to life. Liv shot at it, shrieking with triumph as the back window exploded. The Jeep roared into reverse, bounced backwards over the rough ground, right for her. She leaped to the side, rolling head over butt into a green hollow choked with a spiky tangle of bushes. The Jeep bounded over the primitive road. Liv gave chase.

The Jeep disappeared around a curve, the sound retreating. There was an empty click, click under her compulsively squeezing finger.

“Clip’s empty, Liv.”

She spun around with a gasping shriek.

Sean. He wasn’t dead. He was standing there, streaked with blood, hair caked with mud and leaves, but alive. Whole.

Icy doubt gripped her. Maybe she’d snapped under the strain, and he was just a wishful hallucination. She stared at him, eyes welling full.

“It’s you,” she whispered.

His eyes narrowed. “Uh, you were expecting someone else?”

She pressed her hand to her mouth, heart swelling with joy. A wishful hallucination wouldn’t mouth off at a time like this. He was the real deal. Her genuine, pain-in-the-ass Sean. “I thought you were dead,” she babbled. “He told me he tortured you. He told me he—”

“I thought he got you, too.” He sucked in gulps of air. “Jesus. My nerves are trashed.” He leaned over, panting and bracing his hands on his knees, and shot her a cautious glance. “Could you not point that gun at me, babe? I know it’s empty, but I could still use a break.”

She’d forgotten she was holding the thing. It slid from her fingers, thudded onto the springy mat of pine needles. She plucked his revolver out of the back of her jeans. Held it out to him.

Sean took it, and leaned down to scoop up T-Rex’s gun. That was when she saw the bloody scrapes on his shoulders, his arms, his back.

“My God,” she whispered. “You’re hurt.”

He waved his hand. “I’ve gotten worse playing contact sports.”

“You’re bleeding,” she protested. “A lot. You call that nothing?”

He shrugged. “Compared to what T-Rex had in mind for us, we look ready for the debutante ball.”

She doubled over, covered her face, and quietly dissolved.

“Sorry, princess,” he offered gently. “Didn’t mean to set you off.”

“It’s not your fault.” She straightened up, mopped her face. “You do tend to catch me at a disadvantage.”

“I think you look gorgeous. Sprinting through the woods, tits bouncing, bullets flying…wow. Talk about a fashion accessory.”

Her whole body started to vibrate again. “Please, don’t,” she pleaded. “Don’t make me laugh again. I warn you. I’ll fall to pieces.”

“But seriously.” He laid his hand gently on her back. “You were hell on wheels. That was fucking amazing. The nail in the face, the bite, the gun. I worship at your shrine, babe. Who knew?”

“Hardly.” His admiring tone made her redden with shame. She didn’t deserve it, after the way she’d begged and trembled like a trapped gerbil. “I didn’t put any holes in him.”

“You sent him off at a dead run,” Sean said. “Which is more than I managed to do. You rule. Remind me never to piss you off.”

“Oh, I have,” she quavered. “I do. You never listen.”

He made a harsh, wordless sound, and grabbed her.

Their hearts pounded together, like drums. Sean’s hands clutched handfuls of her hair. “I could hold you all day, but that guy’s going to be back,” he said. “I don’t know what he wants from you, but we better—”

“I do.” The words exploded out of her. “That guy killed Kev.”

Sean let go, and stared into Liv’s face, speechless. His world dipped and spun, changing shape with a violence that made him dizzy.

Kev. Of course.

“He tried to get me to tell him about Kev,” Liv babbled. “He wants to know where the tapes are, whatever that means. He thought I’d been in hiding. It was true. Kev didn’t kill himself. He was murdered. By that guy, and maybe some others. He said ‘we,’ like there were more.”

The tapes. The proof’s in the sketchbook. It’s all there. Dumb ass.

He heard Kev’s dream voice, saw the patient look in his eyes, as he waited for his lame-brain twin to get his shit together and figure it out. It was a paradox, how Liv’s words could blow his mind into total disarray, and at the same time, be the confirmation of something he’d always known. A puzzle piece, set quietly into place.

He’d split his mind apart to deal with that paradox. The strongest, best part of himself, the part that knew Kev wasn’t crazy, had been clubbed into unconsciousness and locked in a closet. The worthless garbage that was left over was what had passed for Sean McCloud.

He was paralyzed with rage. They’d murdered his brother, and fucked with his head about it. Soiled Kev’s memory. Conditioned his whole life. Everything he’d done, everything he was. Every morning that he’d opened his eyes with that wrong, sucking feeling in his gut.

And then they had tried to hurt Liv. His hands fisted, white-knuckled. Liv’s mouth was still moving, but he could not hear what she said. His ears roared like he’d just gone over a waterfall.

But his fury at Kev’s killers was nothing compared to how angry he was with himself. For giving in. Falling for it. Fucking idiot.

He wiped mud off the faceplate of his watch. He had to sharpen up, if they wanted to stay alive. He’d reached the cabin less than ten minutes ago. Davy would have called the cops maybe a half hour ago.

He pulled the cell phone out of his pocket, amazed it was still in one piece. Popped the shell, pried the beacon out, tossed it. Con and Davy would be pissed, but it would resolve their immediate ethical dilemma with the cops if he removed himself from their grid.

“Are you in need of medical attention?” His brusque question cut off whatever she might have been saying. “How badly did he hurt you?”

She blinked. “Uh…I hadn’t really thought about it yet.”

He grabbed her hands. Already clotting. He lifted her hair to check the bite, the cut beneath her ear. The cut had stopped oozing, but the bite worried him. T-Rex’s crocodile mouth had to be more toxic than most. “You look OK,” he said. “You’re not going to go into shock on me, are you? Do you feel faint? Cold? Do you have the shivers?”

She shook her head.

“Good. Then we’re out of here.” He scooped her into the circle of his arm and hustled her along beside him at a brisk, stumbling trot.

“Aren’t we…shouldn’t we wait for the police?”

“Nope. We are running for our lives. You got a problem with that?”

She pondered that. “Not exactly. But I would like to be consulted.”

“No time for consultations.” He yanked the Wrangler’s door open, tossed her in. He reached into the back and grabbed the bottle of water that had been rolling around back there. “Rinse yourself off.”

She took it gratefully, and poured water into her hands, splashing with it. He grabbed her right sandal and pried it off. Ripped the upper back from the sole and plucked out a flat cluster of wires and circuits.

She blinked. “Oh, my God.”

“Yeah, it’s a tracking device. And yeah, I put it there.” He tossed the thing off into the woods. “You going to give me a hard time about it? Go on. I dare you.”

She bit her lip, her eyes wary. “Um, maybe not right now.”

“That’s smart.” He gave her back what was left of her sandal. She held the flapping, ruined thing in her hands, bewildered.

He slammed her door, and loped to the driver’s side. “We’re sitting ducks,” he said, starting up the engine. “We can’t wait around for the cops with just five 357 Magnum bullets between us and TRex. He’s probably planning to ambush us on the road. Or pick us off from up there—” he indicated a rock above them, “—or there.” He pointed at the wall of granite that bounded the lake. “I’ve seen enough dead bodies. I will not let this guy kill you. I have had enough, you hear me?”

“OK,” she soothed. “I don’t want him to kill me, either. It’s just that…wouldn’t we be safer on the road if we were with the police?”

“We’re not taking the road.” He steered around a washed out, yawning hole in the road, and picked up speed, bumping and jouncing.

She gave him a big-eyed look. “Um, excuse me?”

“Offroad. We’ll cut across Long Prairie and hook up with Burnt Ridge Road, which will take us to Garnier Creek, towards Taggert. Don’t worry. This vehicle can handle it. T-Rex’s Jeep could, too, but hopefully he won’t be expecting us to go that route.”

“If you say so.” Her voice was small. “So we’re hiding, then?”

“Until we know who’s chasing us. Kev was smart. They killed him, and got away with it. They are not to be fucked with, whoever they are.”

“But the police—”

“The police didn’t help the last time. I don’t have any reason to think they would help me now. Get your head down.” He shoved down on her head until she sprawled sideways, and dialed Davy’s cell.

“What the hell?” Davy snarled, without preamble.

“We’re alive. So’s the fuckhead. I don’t want to meet up with him again until I have a lot more firepower. I tossed the beacons.”

“You did what? Are you nuts?”

“Tell Liv’s folks she’s OK,” Sean said. “Watch your back. Con, too. Keep Margot and Erin close. These are the guys who killed Kev. They know all about us.” He hung up, and punched up Miles’s number. “It’s Sean,” he said. “Call me back, and enable your scrambler.”

“The scrambler? Jesus, why? What’s going on?”

“Do it.” He hung up, stuck the phone between chin and shoulder as he guided the truck over the rough track. It rang again, in seconds.

“I need help,” he told Miles. “Are you still at the Rock Bottom?”

“Yeah,” Miles said. “We just loaded up the sound system. Why?”

“Is anybody listening to this conversation?” he demanded.

“Are you doing your paranoid freak-out McCloud routine on me?”

“Cut the shit. Get out of earshot. Have you got the fogeymobile?”

“Uh, yeah,” Miles said. “What’s it to you?”

“I want it,” Sean said.

“Do my ears deceive me? You’re willing to be seen in my vomit-tinted, butt-ugly piece of no-testosterone shit?”

“This is serious. I almost got killed a few minutes ago. I need to disappear.”

“Oh. I get it.” Miles’s tone was ironic. “What better way to disappear than the magical invisible car?”

“Exactly.” Sean negotiated around another gaping washout.

“Didn’t Seth give you a fake ID, like he did for Davy and Con? Can’t you rent a car under your false name? Why do I always have to be the schnook with no wheels?” Miles complained.

Sean gritted his teeth. “The rental places won’t open for three hours, I’m covered with blood, and I’ve got a naked girl in my truck.”

“No shit!” Miles breathed, impressed. “Naked? Really? Is it, you know, her? That girl you’re so nuts about? Jeez. Why’s she naked?”

Trust Miles to grasp the kernel of the situation. His own fault, mentioning a naked girl to a guy who hadn’t gotten laid in ages, if ever.

“No time to explain,” he snapped. “You know the Lonely Valley Motor Lodge, in Taggert? Behind the shopping center? Rent me a room. They get trucker business, so someone will be on duty. Got any cash?”

“I can get some at the all-night convenience store,” Miles’s voice had taken on its habitual long-suffering tone.

“Get me some. Ask for a room in back. Don’t say anything to anyone. Get me disinfectant, bandages, surgical tape. And T-shirts.”

“I’m on it,” Miles said. “See you there.”

Amazing, how the mention of a naked girl made a guy perk right up and hop to attention, any hour of the day or night.

Sean gave the truck more gas. They topped the rise out of the cleft of the valley and up onto the road that skirted the Long Prairie plateau. Dawn lit up the clouds into a fabulous range of pinks on the horizon.

Bye bye, road. “Hang on, babe.” He slewed the Wrangler Rubicon around and headed it into the waving, waist-deep meadow grass.

Liv grabbed the door handle and braced herself on the dash as they jounced and tipped. Sean’s face was tight with concentration. She hung on as they skirted trees, bushes, sometimes foundering in the grass, scraping over boulders that dotted the rough terrain.

Her arms felt like they were being ripped from their sockets.

Finally, they intersected a road, barely more than two long depressions in the grass. Burnt Ridge Crest. Thank God. The top of the Jeep was up, but the windows were open, blowing cool air over them.

She shivered, her chest and shoulders goosepimpling. Sean’s eyes swept over her body. She crossed her arms over her bouncing bosom, and almost laughed. Embarrassed about that, after what they’d just been through. Please.

She tried to organize her thoughts. A million frantic questions jostled for space. “So you guys never found any clues? About Kev?”

The dirt road had turned to smoother gravel, and now gave way to asphalt. They were passing farms and houses and mailboxes now.

“Just the clues Kev gave you,” Sean said. “Just the note.”

“What did that note say?” she asked. “I’ve always wondered.”

His face was distant. “One thing at a time. Scoot down. You’re conspicuous even when you’re wearing a shirt, let alone topless.”

She hunched, feeling slapped, and draped her hair over herself.

They headed into an older, seedier part of town, crossed the tracks with a tooth-rattling bump and turned in the parking lot of a motel. The highway roared on the overpass above. “Look,” he said. “I’m not kidnapping you. If you want to go home and paint a bull’s-eye on your chest, you’re free to go. I’ll hate it, but I won’t stop you.”

Liv nodded, almost wishing he hadn’t said it. After T-Rex, she wasn’t in any condition to make life and death decisions. It was easier to get swept along by wild floodwaters. If the floodwaters were Sean.

“Besides, you’ve got your fiancé to protect you,” he said.

It took her a few seconds to make the connection. “Oh, God, no! Blair is not my fiancé. That was just a lie my mother told, to get rid of you. You dashed off last night before I had a chance to make that clear!”

A door of one of the rooms swung open. A large-bellied, bearded man sauntered out, hiking up his jeans and scratching his balls.

The move was too swift to counter. Sean jerked her across the seat and onto his lap before she knew what he was doing. She grabbed his shirt to steady herself. “Don’t freak,” he murmured. “You need an excuse to be topless, and this is the best one I can think of.” He wound his fingers in her tangled hair, and kissed her.

It’s just theater, silly. Don’t melt for a public act.

It was impossible to heed that stern voice. Her protective layers were torn away, leaving a naked core of shivering need. His lips were so hot, soft and urgent. She clung to him, kissed him back desperately.

Someone whacked the body of the Jeep, making her jerk. “Whoo hoo! Go for it, buddy boy! Helluva way to start yer day!”

Sean stuck his hand out the window, gave the guy a thumbs up.

He slid lower in the seat, pulling her down on top of him. Their lips parted, with a moist pop that reverberated through her body. He was burning hot, radiating emotion. He vibrated in her arms. The armored chill that had encased him ever since her revelation about Kev was gone. The kiss had melted it. The look in his eyes bordered on fear.

He hadn’t shown fear when sprinting towards a bomb, or facing down a gun, or in mortal combat with a killer. But he was afraid of her.

She wanted to reassure him, but she couldn’t think of words that made sense. Only kisses could convey what she wanted to tell him.

He tugged, gently, on the back of her head. A flash of insight warned her that this wordless invitation was more dangerous than the wild sex and high drama of the night before. This was the real honey-baited trap. This soft, torn-open feeling in her chest.

But it didn’t matter. She leaned forward. He made a breathless sound, almost a whimper when their lips touched.

The kiss was almost reverent. They kept their eyes open, afraid the other would vanish into smoke. Sweet, perfect. A shining miracle, unfolding and blooming. They didn’t want to break the spell by being too eager, so they circled around it, marvelling. Afraid to breathe.

Liv had never considered herself an expert kisser, but she finally got what kissing was all about, in a flash of bone-deep understanding. It wasn’t about technique, or experience. It had nothing to do with how innately sensuous she was, or wasn’t. It was about yearning, welling up from inside. She ached to touch him, to be scorched by his heat, to feel that metallic bronze sheen of beard stubble rasp over her skin.

She wanted to lavish him with all the tenderness she had.

The guy in the parking lot had been joined by a buddy. The two of them cackled and guffawed together, shouting out coarse suggestions.

She couldn’t care less. They were dogs barking in the distance.

She clutched sodden handfuls of his shirt. He clutched her back. Lips and tongues fused. Asking questions, demanding answers. Begging for salvation, for redemption. It would take years of frantic kissing to sort it all out. Years of desperate loving to make up for the pain.

They needed to get started. Right now would be a very good time.

His hand clamped across hers where it gripped his thigh. He dragged it up, placing it on the bulge of his erection.

Their eyes locked. He offered her his body, silently asked for hers.

She didn’t know under what terms. She no longer cared. He could do anything he wanted. Right here in the parking lot, with a hooting, jeering audience. She wanted to rip his clothes open, let the broad club of his penis fall out into her hand, hot and hard, the skin suede soft, so sensitive. She wanted to lick the thick, gnarled purple veins. To suck on him. To climb on top of him and ride. Bend over and have him fill her from behind, bracing herself against the storm of pounding violence. She needed it bad. She needed it now. She reached for his belt buckle.

“I see you’ve wasted no time.” The low voice was faintly amused.

Sean jumped, so violently that he bumped his forehead against hers. “Shit,” he hissed, rubbing her head. “Sorry, babe.”

A young man stood outside the Jeep, with somber dark eyes, a memorable nose and long, shiny black hair that blew loose over his face. He gazed at her with intense curiosity. She blushed hot crimson.