Terms of Surrender (10 page)

He'd held onto his job in construction by the skin of his teeth, the only other thing keeping him sane next to the chase. Besides which, he had to have some form of income, needed money to fund the efforts of the private detectives he'd been hiring over the years.

None had been as obsessive as him about finding Lorrie, of course, many of them quitting after little more than a month of dead ends, some after weeks, and all after Jeff's funds had dried up.

This latest one was young, driven, and as hungry for closure and justice as was Jeff.

Perhaps he had suffered a similar loss in his past, something that made him take Jeff's case more personally than the previous detectives had, though it was hard to tell. Matt Wilcox was the typical strong-and-silent type. A sharp, good-looking kid with a perennial poker-face that made it hard to know what was going on behind his dark blue eyes, Wilcox was the determined hard-nosed lawman of yore, scrupulous and with an entrenched moral code that put Jeff in mind of a young Clint Eastwood.

Still, there was a limit to what one determined man could do—Jeff ought to know—and his resources weren't boundless, far from it. He was sure there was a limit to Wilcox's patience, as well, a limit to how long the man was willing to work practically
pro bono
, accepting a fraction of his regular fee.

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Terms of Surrender

Wilcox was getting close, though, his last call confirming he was following a lead in Syracuse on someone who might have had something to do with Lorrie's abduction. He'd sounded confident, had gotten more accomplished in weeks than the other private detectives had gotten accomplished in months.

"I'm not going to lie to you, Lennox. This guy is smart and a real slippery bastard. So
what I've found isn't conclusive. I'm actually looking at two men."

When Jeff asked for names, Wilcox hedged. He said he didn't want to get Jeff's hopes up with yet another dead-end, didn't want to release any more information until he was sure and had definitive evidence to take to the police. He wanted to increase the chances that whoever was responsible for Lorraine's disappearance would be taken in and punished for what they did.

As tough and hard-nosed as Wilcox was, he wasn't conscienceless, was more clean-cut than his long hair, and as the five o'clock shadow might imply, wanted to do things by-the-book and let the police do their job, drawing a firm line at breaking the law.

A wonder Wilcox had made it in the business this far, but then, he was new to the game and, for most intents and purposes, inexperienced—one of the main reasons for his affordable fees. Jeff was lucky to have found him.

He'd known from the beginning he wouldn't get the type of eye-for-eye justice he sought on Wilcox's watch. He'd gone to Wilcox more out of desperation than anything else, resolved to use the young man for basically one thing and one thing only: to find the individual responsible for taking Lorrie away from him.

Jeff decided he would play the rest by ear, take care of whatever came up once the individual was located.

With the way the justice system operated these days, he had little faith that Lorrie's abductor would be punished the way he deserved. The way Jeff wanted him to be.

He remembered the OJ case all too well—about as open and old as Lorrie's abduction—

and there had been bodies and loads of evidence involved in that one. In Lorrie's case, the evidence was…Jeff swallowed hard, choking on the thought of his daughter a decade dead,

"remains" the only testament to her existence at all.

Normally, he would have gone by the book, too, followed Wilcox's instincts and lead, but not this time.

He didn't want the guy brought in with the possibility of him getting off
if
he went to trial for what he'd done,
if
any charges were brought against him at all.

If what Wilcox dug up was solid and pointed to a definite culprit, the individual who had taken his blood away from him, Jeff wanted that person dead.

* * * *

49

Gracie C. McKeever

She locked the door behind her, a habit of a native New Yorker, despite the suburban feel of her Queens neighborhood, then paused on the threshold of the living room, smiling at the tableau.

Peyton was curled up in a corner of Slany's cream velvet sofa, with Coco cuddled beside her, both gently snoring.

Slany burst out laughing, and her friend opened her eyes, drooling slightly, looking supremely chagrined and disoriented as she rubbed her eyes before staring up at Slany.

"Damn, busted." Peyton picked up the remote and pressed the Mute button.

"You bet your sweet bippy you're busted. The both of you."

Coco barked and leaped off the sofa, tale wagging as he trotted over to his mistress, as if to beg forgiveness for his transgression.

"You've got to believe I didn't invite him up here with me," Peyton said, uncurling her long legs and planting her bare feet firmly on Slany's cushy Persian rug.

"I know how sneaky he is. Aren't you, boy?" Slany bent to cup her Lab's face, nuzzling his muzzle before standing to hang her trench on the oak coat tree behind her and slipping out of her pumps. She tossed the mail onto the smoke-glass coffee table, and joined Peyton on the sofa.

Coco planted himself at her feet, begging for a pat. Slany obliged, glanced at her friend. "I would have thought you'd seen enough of me for one day."

"I never get enough of seeing you, kid." Peyton put her in a one-armed hug. "And no, that doesn't mean I've got sexual designs on your lush, sexy body. It just means no way was I leaving before getting the low-down on things between you and the Stallion."

Slany laughed. "Now it's the Stallion? We've gotten that comfortable?"

"After seeing him, I'm thinking the title fits even more."

"God, you're incorrigible."

"So you say." Peyton peered at her. "Well, don't front. Tell me."

Slany shrugged. "There's nothing to tell."

"Slany Breeze, I do believe you're blushing!"

And if you knew the offer the Stallion made me earlier, you'd be blushing, too.

Or maybe not. With Peyton, it was hard to tell.

Though her friend was gay and had a high tolerance for the outrageous, and things shocking to most people didn’t shock her, Slany didn't take her friend's sexual preference to mean Peyton was freaky in bed. She was sure there were as many straight-laced gays as there were heterosexuals.

"What’s going on between you two? Granted, you've got more melanin than the average redhead, but I don't think I've ever seen this much color in your face before."

"I'm, uh…he asked me to…" Sheesh, how did she tell someone that the one man she couldn't stand on this earth had made her an offer she couldn't refuse—but refuse she had, practically throwing it back in the man's face?

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Terms of Surrender

Peyton would go through the roof. She was the kind of person who never hesitated to open the door to opportunity, especially if it was the opportunity she'd been waiting for her entire life.

Her friend sat up straight and took both of Slany's hands in hers, as if sensing her tension.

Compassion lit her slanted brown eyes. "He wasn't mean to you, was he? Insult you?"

Slany chuckled, knew her friend was thinking about Ron and his verbal mistreatment, ready to nip any similar abuse in the bud before it had a chance to bloom out of control. "He didn't insult me, not really."

Peyton frowned. "Either he did, or he didn't."

She knew her cloak-and-dagger responses were starting to get to Peyton, but she didn't know how to come right out and tell her what Nick had said. To some women, his comments might have been misconstrued as insults, but to Slany, they were like an aphrodisiac, a sexual balm.

Slany didn't know why she was having such a hard time relating what happened between her and Nick. At thirty-three, she wasn't a complete ingénue. She had some experience, though not as much as some of her peers.

Sure, Ron had been her first, breaking her in righteously a little more than a decade ago, and she'd had very few lovers since then, though enough to know what she liked, what she preferred. Enough to know what went on between a man and a woman behind closed doors, and that the deep longings she had, the things she wanted, weren't things of which her mother and father would approve, weren't totally within the realm of normal.

"Deviant" was what Ron had called her, and at the same time, he was screwing her and attempting to fulfill her "aberrant" wants. He'd fallen woefully short, Slany realized now, peppering his sexual antics with insults and a scorn he couldn't hide, scorn that counteracted the effects of any orgasm Slany might have had.

Plainly, the man had had no qualms about fucking someone he didn't even like or honor, a circumstance Slany realized was probably more common between couples than anyone wanted to admit, individuals too concerned with getting off than whether or not their partners respected them in the morning. Slany never wanted to be part of one of those couples, never wanted to go to bed with someone she detested or who detested her.

Was that why she was having such a problem with Nick's offer? Did she detest him?

Peyton squeezed her hands, and Slany glanced up to see the worried look in her friend's eyes. She averted her own gaze, afraid of what it might reveal, and bit her trembling bottom lip, on the verge of tears. Damn.

Had something in her gaze, her body language, emitted her real feelings to Nick? Is that why he had been so confident in making the demands he had so far?

"Hey kid, it's nothing to cry about." Peyton pulled Slany into her arms, and that's when the floodgates opened. "I didn't mean to grill you like that, but you should be used to my ill manners by now. I didn't mean anything by it."

51

Gracie C. McKeever

Slany pulled away, chuckling as she wiped her eyes. Despite them being the same age, Peyton had the endearing habit of referring to her as "kid" or "kiddo." But what did Slany expect when she was acting like a big baby?

She wasn't a weepy female. Never had been, never had the luxury, since she'd always had to be the strong one, the go-to sister and daughter. How could she be weak and powerless when she had so many people counting on her ability to get things done, to get things right?

She sniffed, looked at Peyton. "I'm sorry. I don't know where that just came from."

Though she had a vague idea it might have had something to do with Kate Delaney and the awful idea of that woman having no one, not a sister, brother, or parent in her life, to care about whether she lived or died. The idea made her appreciate what she had that much more, made Nick's offer seem that much more attractive.

"Wherever it came from, I'm more curious than ever to know what sort of head trip the Stallion laid on you so that I can avoid coming across it in my next girlfriend."

Slany shoved her in the shoulder. "Don't make me laugh. I'm trying to have a serious moment here."

"Or a nervous breakdown." Peyton grinned, patiently waited as Slany wiped her eyes and gathered her nerve.

"I know when you hear this, you're going to wonder why I made such a big deal about it."

At least, Slany hoped Peyton would wonder.

She took a deep breath and decided to deal with the least shocking part, at least to her.

Sex in virtual public, almost getting caught with her hand in the cookie jar, she could deal with. It was the other psychological trip on which Nick wanted to take her that had Slany turned inside out. "We almost made it in his office this afternoon," she finally murmured.

Peyton didn't blink. "Was that before or after you called me?"

"Believe it or not, before."

"I would never have guessed from the way you sounded on the phone, and after I arrived, you seemed like your usual composed, workaholic self."

Good. Maybe no one else noticed she had been a total basket case the rest of the day, remembering how Nick's neatly manicured fingers had brushed her vulva. The way he'd thrust them inside her pussy, his commanding words igniting unfamiliar wildfires inside her and making her more wet than she'd ever been in her life.

"So, when you say 'made it,' I'm assuming he initiated sexual contact with you."

Slany nodded, knew she was blushing more than ever, and averted her eyes again.

"Should I call EEOC?"

Slany shook her head. "Don't you dare."

"I'm assuming you welcomed his attention, then?"

More than you could ever realize.
"But it's wrong."

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Terms of Surrender

"What he did, or that you enjoyed it? And I don't mind telling you I'm a step away from asking you exactly
what
sort of move he made on you to make you blush so hard. Not that I'm a voyeur, or anything like that."

Slany grinned, "Of course not."

Peyton arched a brow, leaned forward. "I'm listening."

"He wants us to be…he wants me to…" The words stuck in her throat like stray popcorn kernels, choking her, and she couldn't for the life of her imagine why his proposal seemed so repugnant to her when it tapped into her deepest and most inborn inclinations.

Peyton's eyes lit with sudden realization. "The Stallion's a Dom!"

Slany gaped, wondered how her friend could know, wondered what had given her away.

"Did you get that from me or—?"

"I have to admit, the blushing and stuttering were giveaways. But the rest?" Peyton shrugged. "I know Ron, remember. Besides, I've met a few Doms in clubs and stuff."

"And?"

"They all carry themselves a certain way, male and female, walk with a bold, supple strut you'd notice if you're paying attention. Nothing obvious, but when it's there, you can definitely see it, feel it." Peyton vigorously nodded and smiled. "Nick has the walk, the confident stance, the this-is-my-world-and-you-ain't-nothing-but-a-squirrel-trying-to-get-a-nut attitude."