Deadly Pursuit (12 page)

The blank expression irritated him like sand in the crotch of his trunks when he went to the beach, because she never looked at him the way she used to.

“Good morning,” she said, like she was glad to see him.

It was all part of the game, so he’d play. “How’s my baby girl?”

Part of the game was that she pretended that whatever he did didn’t bother her, and this worked to his advantage a lot of the time. Like now. He ran his hand over the soft fluff of her short and natural hair, soaking in the apple-fresh scent of her skin. And then, because that wasn’t enough, he leaned down and kissed the mocha satin of her cheek and pretended he didn’t feel her stiffen.

She wanted to pull away, but rejecting him outright wasn’t part of the game, so she didn’t do it.

One day, he knew, she would do it. When she’d finished her degree and could make her own financial way in the world, she’d ask for a divorce and try to break free. Even though there was no breaking free of Kareem Gregory for anyone who touched his life, no liberation for anyone, friend or enemy, until he said so (and he never said so; like Cosa Nostra, this was a lifetime thing with him and you didn’t just say
See ya, Kareem
and hand in your resignation letter), she would ask him for a divorce and hope he agreed.

She knew better, but she’d ask anyway.

Either way, that day was coming and the confrontation
between them was as inevitable as the Mexicans trying to short him on the latest shipment of his shit.

But today wasn’t the day.

“Coffee?” She was already up and on her feet, heading to the coffeepot.

“No, thanks. What’d you do last night?”

“Studied. I thought I’d make some pancakes, if you’re hungry—”

“Maybe later. You ready for your test?”

“Yep.”

That was the game. He asked her about school; she offered to cook him something; sometimes they mentioned the weather. That was it. Whoever dropped the illusion of them being a happily married couple first, lost. Right now, they were stalemated and had been for a while.

“Later, Baby Girl.”

He left. He was almost out of the kitchen and about to head up the back steps to the bedroom, when something happened.

“Hey, cutie.” Kira was using the voice she used to save for Kareem on the dog. Fucking
Max.
“Hey, cutie. You want some kibble?”

Kareem paused in the doorway, hot anger seething to life in his chest, and watched her bend down, scoop up the dog, and kiss his furry forehead with the same lips she wouldn’t let anywhere near Kareem.

Kissed. The. Fucking. Dog.

Time to up the stakes.

Determined to provoke a genuine reaction out of her, he wheeled around, walked back, and did something he hadn’t done in forever: gave her the onceover that let her know what he wanted.

He let his gaze heat up several notches and ran it
over her face … her titties … her hips, her crotch. Hopefully this reminded her of a couple things. That he still wanted her, for one. That she still belonged to him, for another. That he could do any damn thing he wanted to do to her and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

Nothing.

He flicked his gaze back up to her face and saw the flare of panic in her eyes before she blinked and hid it. He leaned past the dog and kissed his wife on the mouth.

If she could kiss the dog, she could damn well kiss him.

Kareem brushed his lips back and forth over hers and then slid his tongue inside the hot silk of her mouth, tasting her revulsion, her hatred, and he reveled in it. If hatred was the only true reaction he could get from her, he’d take it.

When he was good and ready, he ended the kiss, breathless now.

She was breathless, too, with a spark of heat and remembrance in her eyes.

That spark gave him hope. “How about dinner tonight?”

“I’ve got more studying—” she began, but the automatic refusal trailed off when she saw what he was doing.

“Hello, Max.” Using that same singsong, Kareem scratched the dog’s head and then under his chin. “You want to go for a walk?”

Max, the dumb canine, licked Kareem’s hand.

Kira held the dog a little closer, as though she wanted to protect him.

Unsmiling, Kareem held her gaze. “I like this little guy. You don’t mind if I take him for a walk, do you?”

Kira stared at him, comprehension making her pale. “No.”

Kareem held her gaze for an extra beat or two, just to make sure she understood. Deep down, where it counted, she needed to know who was in charge and who would always be in charge. “What were you saying about dinner?”

“Dinner sounds great.”

Bingo. The game was back on, with Kareem five points ahead.

Cincinnati

Empty.

Marian Barber shook the bottle again, just to make sure, because it was early and she hadn’t slept well and, let’s face it, she didn’t think well until she’d had her first morning dose of her pills, but the bottle remained stubbornly empty.

Oh, God. No pink tablets. No OxyContin. None.
Oh God Oh God Oh God.

Panic made her lash out. She hurled the bottle across the room, where it hit the slate shower tile and ricocheted to the floor with a clatter loud enough to wake the dead.

Frozen and panting, Marian waited and hoped Dwayne hadn’t heard.

Just wait. Just wait. Just—

“Marian?” called Dwayne’s sleepy-hoarse voice from the bedroom. “You okay?”

Shit.

Hurrying to the bathroom door, she peeked out and saw her husband levered up on his elbows in the middle of the rumpled bed, with slashes of weak sunlight across his bare chest from the drawn blinds.

“I just dropped a bottle,” she told him. “Go back to sleep.”

“Come back to bed.” He reached out a hand to beckon her.

Jesus Christ. Marian tried to tamp down her sudden rage, but it was hard because her skin was crawling and she could barely stand still. Under her armpits she could feel the steady trickle of clammy sweat, and cramps were starting low in her belly; in another minute or two she’d have diarrhea foul enough to melt the toilet. Drop dead, she wanted to say, but she kept her voice sweet and tried to sound like his offer was remotely tempting.

“Can’t.” Something invisible with icy fingers skittled up her spine and she shivered, crossing her arms over her chest and trying to conserve body heat so the shivers wouldn’t turn into shakes. “I’ve got to take my car in for an oil change this morning, remember?”

“Take it to the dealership. That quicky lube place can’t handle a Land Rover.”

“I will,” she said.

Brilliant, asshole.

Here she was, about to crawl out of her skin and quite possibly tear the house apart in her desperation for some relief, and the clueless idiot she’d married, Sherlock Fucking Holmes, wanted to get serviced, and then he wanted the car serviced, too.

If she tried, she couldn’t hate him more. For sleeping like a baby when she couldn’t keep her mind from churning about how she’d divert more money from
their accounts, how she’d cover up another diversion and then, assuming she got that far without discovery, where she’d get more Oxy.

Back in the bathroom, she clicked on the light so she could see better and caught sight of a haggard figure in the mirror. She paused, gripping the sink for support.

Was that her?

Death warmed over didn’t really cover it. She’d have to get a little color in her face to look that good. She looked sweaty and gray—yes, gray—with ringed and sunken eyes that looked like they belonged to a cadaver. Her silky brown hair was wild around her face, brittle, and she had the haunted, feral appearance of an escaped convict with bloodhounds baying at her ankles.

God, she needed the Oxy. Her hair could be fixed once she had the Oxy. Everything would be fine once she had the Oxy.

Dropping to her knees on the cold tile, she scuttled for the bottle, ignoring the protest in her aching back, the painful slipped disk that had started her down this road in the first place. She took the bottle and shook it. Held it up to the light just to be sure.

Empty. Still empty.

Crouching back on her heels, she tried to think. Dwayne. That bastard had taken her shit. That was it, wasn’t it? He knew how good it made her feel, how it boosted her through her endless days listening to Mommy-this and Mommy-that and trying to be everything to every fucking body, and he wanted some for himself.

That was it. That was what was going on here. She’d kill him for this.

She surged to her feet and lunged for the door, and then a memory hit her.

She’d come in to use the bathroom last night. She hadn’t felt so hot. She’d chewed those last two Oxys and washed them down with tap water. This was her fault.

She braced her hands on the sink again and, lowering her head, sobbed silently until long strands of spit ran from her mouth to the bowl. Maybe the pharmacy would—

No. The pharmacy wouldn’t. She knew that. The doctor had prescribed a thirty-day supply of the shit and she’d chewed and swallowed her way through the tablets in—she ran through it in her mind, trying to count—six days. Only six days? Yeah. It’d been the day she took the girls for their checkup, and that was six days ago.

If she went to the pharmacy, they’d call the doctor.

If they called the doctor, he’d know.

Help. She needed help.

This was the time to tell Dwayne that she might have a problem. That she’d been taking several tablets a day even though she hadn’t had any serious pain in months. That she might be a little out of control.

But then she thought of the look on his face when he realized that she was a druggie. He’d want to send her to rehab. And then everyone would know.

And the girls. What would she tell the girls?

This last thought galvanized her and she dropped to her knees and scurried around the floor, looking in the far corners and ignoring stray hairs and dust bunnies.

She didn’t have a problem and she didn’t—

There. Under the far corner of the embroidered rug. Was that—was that pink?

A quick flip of the edge of the rug and there it was, the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life: a little pink tablet, dropped and forgotten, just waiting for her to discover it.

Laughing, she ignored the layer of lint on it and chewed it happily.

Thank God.

No, she thought, staggering to her feet and wiping the lint off her tongue, she didn’t have a problem at all. She just needed her medication. She was like a diabetic, not a drug addict.

But … she would need to do something she’d been avoiding.

She’d have to call Jerome on his cell phone and pray he’d sell her some shit.

Again.

Jack came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist and
don’t mess with me
etched deep in his face. If Amara had any doubts about his mood, it was cleared up by the tight-lipped glower he shot her as he strode past on his way to his bag in the corner, pausing only to toss his black toiletries case on the nightstand.

She’d been lounging against the pillows, wondering if she should try to get a little sleep, but now she sat up straight and watched him, reading his body language, which was like an open book with large print, pictures and helpful commentary in the margins.

So he didn’t want to talk to her and was trying to block her out. That was just too freaking bad. She had a couple of things on her mind, and staring death in the face had a real good way of putting things in perspective. If she was going to die soon, the least he could do was answer a couple of questions and tell her the truth.

Somehow the world had shrunk down to her and Jack, the walls of this room and the experiences they’d
shared together. Sharing a hotel room and seeing his toiletries, not to mention facing down an assassin together, forced the kind of intimacies on them that would have been unimaginable a couple of days ago, back when she wasn’t certain he’d ever voluntarily looked at her and was positive that he hated her.

Her jaw opened up the way it was supposed to, but her mouth was dry suddenly, her voice tight, and it had nothing to do with any danger, which seemed momentarily far away from this cozy hotel room.

It had everything to do with Jack and his soapy-fresh scent layered over the sporty smell of deodorant. The muscular lines of his back and shoulders didn’t help. Neither did the flex of his hard butt as he stooped over the bag or the gleam of his caramel skin stretched taut over a powerful thigh where the white towel fell away.

He had the shapely calves of someone who’d played soccer at some point in the not-too-distant past, and even his feet, as well-kept as his strong hands, were nice in their flip-flops, with high arches and strong toes.

He rose and faced her, yanking another white T-shirt—he seemed to have an endless supply—down over the heavy slabs of a chest that had flat nipples and a narrow streak of hair disappearing to southern parts whose bulkiness couldn’t entirely be explained away by the knot in the towel.

He was perfection. Six-plus feet of everything a woman could ask for and more than she could dream of. The kind of man whose mere presence made other men superfluous if not outright invisible.

Jack pulled on a new pair of jeans and tossed the
towel aside without ever giving her a glimpse of what was beneath the towel, damn him. “You’re staring.”

Yeah, she was, but she couldn’t seem to stop.

If the killer knocked on the door right now, poked his head in, and announced that they had better say their prayers, Amara wasn’t certain she could stop.

Maybe it had to do with the heightened adrenaline. Maybe it was because she hadn’t had sex during the current president’s administration and the sex she’d had before that had been forgettable in the extreme. Maybe it was because Jack’s skin looked so warm and inviting and the thought of never touching it before she died suddenly seemed more tragic than never going on safari or seeing the whales off Nova Scotia.

Mostly it was because there was always something in Jack’s eyes when he did look at her, something unidentifiable but disturbing, hot and cold, untouchable and irresistible, all at the same time.