Pitch Black (29 page)

“Yeah. Really.”

“I’m not much into the seduction game,” she whispered, “and I know I should retreat to my separate corner and let you keep this barrier in place. But I can’t deny a big part of me just doesn’t want to.”

“Ditto.”

A helpless moan emerged from the back of her throat when he touched her neck, sliding the side of his thumb against the vulnerable flesh beneath her earlobe. Sam closed her eyes, remembering what it felt like to have a man’s hands on her body. Acknowledging how much she’d missed it.

It had been so long. A year since her divorce, months before that since she’d realized how thoroughly her husband had betrayed her and had cut him out of her life. She’d grown cold and hard. Her nerve endings had dulled, her skin desensitized during all that time without any type of human connection.

All those sensations came roaring back with a vengeance, warmth turning into fire, want becoming desperate need.

“This has never happened to me before,” she said, unable to resist lifting one hand to his chest, running her fingers as lightly there as he was on her neck. “I mean, something this physical, this soon.”

She wondered if he could say the same. Alec’s innate charm and the glimpses of flirtatiousness she’d witnessed said he had a lot of experience with women. But his tension and aloofness also said that part of his life might have changed when he’d nearly died.

“It’s not just physical,” he admitted, not sounding exactly happy about it. “I want you, but I also like you, Sam. I think I could like you a lot. I don’t want anything to happen to you, especially not on my watch.”

She understood. He wasn’t stopping her, wasn’t pushing her away. With a few more whispers, the soft press of her mouth on his throat, perhaps, she could probably have what she wanted. What they both wanted.

Tempting. Oh, God, so tempting.

“So would you do me a favor?” he asked, even as he leaned down, his face so close to hers they exchanged breaths that further dispersed the chill. “Would you walk back over there and sit down?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. Instead, he leaned even closer, until that last sliver of space between them disappeared and their lips touched.

No frenzied, frantic kiss like last night, this was a soft caress, a gentle plea. Even a promise that there would be more to come, later. When the time was right.

He lifted his mouth from hers far enough to whisper, “Please?”

Breathless and every bit as aroused by his tenderness as she’d been by his hunger the night before, she still somehow managed to nod. “Okay.”

“Thank you.”

On shaky legs, she retreated. Part of her should have resented that he’d done the unimaginable and kissed her before shooing her away. Another recognized that he’d been unable to stop himself, any more than she’d been able to refuse.

Resuming their previous positions, they descended into silence for a few minutes. She could only think how lucky it was that they were in a two-room suite. If there had been a big, king-size bed between them, she didn’t know that she could have come down off of red alert back to just orange.

Finally, when she felt like she could speak without sounding like she hadn’t drawn breath in twenty minutes, she said, “I could probably use something to eat now, if that’s okay.”

He nodded, glad for the distraction. “Yeah, sure. Check out the room service menu.” Glancing at his watch, he added, “Maybe we should order something for Lily, too.”

“Do you think she’ll be back so soon? What if this creep shows up and wants to talk?”

Alec, who had stridden to the desk to retrieve a leather-encased room service menu, tilted his head in confusion. “What creep?”

“This pedophile she’s after.”

He still appeared puzzled.

“I guess it’s another case you guys are working on? She said she was going into a chat room posing as a little girl to try to lure a pedophile.”

With a frown, he admitted, “Doesn’t sound like something Blackstone’s team is supposed to be dealing with.”

“Don’t you mean your team?”

Sheepish, he nodded. “Right. I guess I’m just not used to that yet.”

Again, she wondered about the reason for his transfer. He had never come out and said exactly why he had taken it, but from the few things he had let drop, and Lily’s brief comments earlier tonight, she sensed the topic was a sticky one.

Things had been sticky enough tonight. So she avoided even going there.

“Why wouldn’t your group work on a pedophile case? Isn’t that exactly what the Cyber Action Teams do?”

“Not this one. Their—
our
focus is a little narrower. We look at murders with an Internet connection.”

“Oh.” She blew out a soft breath. “Then this pedophile, he must be someone who . . .”

“Yeah, he must.”

Though the idea that a sick degenerate was out there trying to find a child to molest and kill filled her with revulsion, Sam didn’t ask any more questions. She was in an odd position: a civilian, yet so wrapped up in an investigation she’d started feeling right at home with the investigators. She wasn’t one of them, however, and had no business being inquisitive.

Nor was she sure she really wanted to know any more. The one ugly corner of the world she had been sucked into was enough. She didn’t want to visit any more of them if she could help it.

Taking the menu, she glanced over it, told Alec what she wanted, and watched him call in an order. The tension eased, the simple act of deciding on dinner cutting through some of the physical awareness. It wasn’t gone, merely banked for now, set aside to deal with at a more appropriate time.

And that turned out to be a good thing. Because their evening together stretched out a lot longer than either of them had anticipated. A whole lot longer.

“It’s eleven o’clock;
where the hell is she?” Alec asked later that night. They had expected to see Agent Fletcher back by nine and had easily filled the first couple of hours with dinner and some casual conversation, back-and-forth chitchat more appropriate to a first date than a night at a safe house.

Of course, given the tension simmering between them, they had moved far beyond first-date territory. At least,
her
first-date territory, though it had been so long since she’d had any kind of date, she couldn’t be sure.

“Isn’t this good news? I mean, doesn’t it mean she was successful in trying to get the guy she’s after to talk to her?”

“I suppose,” he said, not sounding convinced. The tension that had slipped away over the last couple of hours had eased back, evidenced by the tense set of his jaw and the stiffness of his shoulders.

“Still no answer on her cell phone?” she asked as she watched him try to call again, then slam the phone shut.

“No.” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I don’t like this.”

“I’m okay staying by myself, really.”

He looked at her like she’d said something utterly ridiculous. “I mean, I’m worried about Fletcher.”

“Oh.” Noting the lines on his brow as his frown deepened, she knew he meant it. He wasn’t frustrated about having to sit here with her and pretend they hadn’t kissed a couple of hours ago. He was genuinely concerned about his colleague. Which increased her concern about the other woman too.

“This pedophile investigation, what else did she say about it?”

“Nothing more than I already told you.” She racked her brain, trying to recall every word. “She got a call, said she couldn’t help out with it because she had to babysit me;. Then you showed up and she realized she could go after all.”

“Who called?”

Sam closed her eyes to concentrate.

“Taggert and Mulrooney were with me all day. Jackie went home to her kids. Was it Brandon? Wyatt?”

She shook her head. “No. I would have remembered if she had said one of their names. It was something else—Anderson? Wait, I think she said Anspaugh.”

“There’s nobody named Anspaugh on our team.”

“Well, she certainly didn’t sound like she was making it up,” Sam said, truly confused.

About to go on asking why another agent would conceal her investigation from her own coworkers, she was interrupted by a brief knock on the door. As Lily had before him, Alec approached it carefully, flinging it open only after he peered out and obviously recognized whoever was on the other side of it.

“I’m so sorry,” Lily Fletcher said as she pushed past him into the room.

“Where the hell have you been?”

The blonde’s eyebrows shot up. “I didn’t mean to inconvenience you. . . .”

“It’s not the inconvenience. It’s you dropping off the face of the earth, not answering your phone. And a pedophile investigation? Why haven’t I heard about it? What is going on?”

Lily looked back and forth between Sam and Alec. The other woman certainly hadn’t asked Sam not to say anything about the mysterious errand she had to run, yet Sam still felt a little embarrassed, as if she’d betrayed a trust.

“I’m helping another CAT, trying to track a pedophile who operated at Satan’s Playground. He slipped through the cracks then. We think we have a line on him now.”

Alec crossed his arms and leaned against the small kitchen counter. “Why did you say you could cover Jackie’s assignment here then? Wyatt could have called one of us back sooner.”

Seeing a slight flush in Lily’s cheeks, Sam suddenly rose. “I’ll leave you two alone,” she said, heading into the bedroom. The aura of secrecy surrounding Agent Fletcher was undeniable. The other woman’s color was high, her eyes bright. Excitement and nervousness had wafted off her from the minute she’d returned, and, though they were close to the elevator, she had been out of breath, as if her heart was racing after a run.

Sam shut the door behind her and stayed in the bedroom, trying not to hear the voices. It wasn’t difficult; there was just a low, dull hum, indistinguishable as anything more than brief conversation.

Then Alec’s voice grew a lot louder. “You mean Wyatt doesn’t know? He didn’t approve this? Damn it, Fletcher!”

More mumbling. Sam winced, feeling sorry for Lily. Because as intimidating as Alec probably was right now at having been kept out of the loop, their boss, Wyatt Blackstone, would be much worse. Sam found his very presence intimidating. Strong and intense, serious and intuitive, he didn’t look like someone who even knew how to crack a joke. She suspected a mind like his was always going, always working. As if he could read the thoughts of everyone around him, anticipate their actions.

Well, one thing was sure: He hadn’t known what Lily Fletcher was thinking, and he apparently hadn’t anticipated her actions.

Which, she suspected, meant some very serious trouble was heading straight at the pretty young agent.

Though there were
three state penitentiaries in Maryland, James T. Flynt was incarcerated in the closest, in a town just south of Baltimore. Since they didn’t have to leave too early for their one p.m. meeting, or allow much time for the drive, Alec spent much of the morning planning his interview with the convicted felon.

Well, that, thinking about Sam, worrying about how deep she was getting in this, angsting over how little they had discovered about their unsub, and wondering what the hell he was supposed to tell Wyatt Blackstone if he was asked about Lily’s unexpected departure from the hotel last night.

To say he had a lot on his mind this morning would be an understatement. Which would probably be pretty obvious to Sam. Not to mention to Lily, who opened the door to him, looking as tense and nervous as she had the previous night.

“Morning,” she said, her tone subdued.

“Good morning.” Alec didn’t pull any punches. “You’re still planning to talk to Wyatt while Sam and I are gone, right?”

That had been their deal last night. Alec wouldn’t make an issue of Lily leaving her post for so many hours as long as she brought their boss in on what she was doing.

Not that Wyatt should mind. Cooperation between CATs was a cornerstone of the division. Another group reaching out to Wyatt’s was a sign that maybe they were on the road to being accepted. At least, that was one way to interpret it.

Lily, however, was nervous as hell. Which meant she did not think Wyatt was going to approve of her extra duties.

Obviously there was more going on here than he knew; something was at work beneath the surface. Maybe even between Lily and their boss, though, from what he’d seen of Wyatt so far, the man would never allow anything personal to develop between him and one of his employees.

“I’ll talk to him, I swear.” She ran a weary hand over her eyes, drawing attention to the dark smudges beneath. Her face pale, her eyes bloodshot, she looked like she hadn’t slept at all.

“Are you all right?”

“It’s this case. I’ve been working on it for so long, I just didn’t expect it to come together so quickly. Despite his responding on the message board yesterday, I half expected him not to show up in the chat room last night and still can’t quite believe he did. Boggles the mind that I actually talked to this bastard.”

Lily had told him a little about what she was doing last night, though nothing in depth. “And you really think this is the same guy you were after last summer, from the Reaper case?”

“I do. I’ve gone over all the transcripts from this site, checking it against everything we saw Lovesprettyboys say. And I believe we’re dealing with the same man who tried to hire Seth Covey to rape and murder a young boy for his own viewing pleasure.”

He shook his head in disgust. “So hopefully this will be over soon.”

She nodded. “God, I hope so. Once Wyatt finds out . . . once I tell him I truly believe we’re getting close to that sick degenerate, I’m sure he’ll understand.”

Alec didn’t respond, knowing she was trying to talk herself into it.

“Why wouldn’t he?” she mumbled.

“I don’t know. Why wouldn’t he?”

She sucked her lip into her mouth and shook her head, hinting that there was a lot he didn’t know. Frankly, he didn’t want to. He had no time to deal with any other conflicts right now. He just wanted to stop the Professor before he hurt anyone else. As much as he wanted Lily to help in that effort, he knew her quest was just as important to her.