Twisted (25 page)

“Is he smarter than you?” Mark asked, maybe trying to stir up some resentment.

“I don’t know, Special Agent. You tell me. I’m in here. He’s not.” He tipped his head, as if considering it. “Yep, sounds like he’s smarter than me.”

Moss’s gaze settled on Allison. “I can tell
you’re
smart.”
He jerked his head at Mark. “He’s pretty smart. But Damien’s in a whole different league.” Moss stood up, and Mark instantly got to his feet.

Moss smiled. “You won’t find Damien if he doesn’t want to be found.” He pressed the button to summon the guard. “Think I’m done here.” He nodded at Allison. “Nice talking to you guys.”

Allison stood up. It seemed like the thing to do. She glanced at the window, but the square of glass was empty. No guard.

Everything after that happened fast.

Mark grabbed her arm and shoved her just as the prisoner lunged. Moss grabbed the front of her jacket with both hands, flung her onto the tabletop, and smashed an elbow against her throat.

“One move, I’ll break her neck!”

Allison struggled to breathe. His elbow was jammed against her windpipe.

“Back the fuck off, or I’ll snap it like a twig!”

“Let her go, David.” Mark’s voice was steady, calm. “You don’t want to do this.”

Allison gasped for air. She tried to kick her legs, but he pinned her to the table with his hard body. She tried to reach for his eye sockets, but her shoulders were pinned. The face above her was red and contorted, the blue eyes wild. The edge of her vision started to blur.

“David, look at me,” Mark commanded.

Amazingly, he obeyed.

“You hurt her, they’ll throw you in the hole. You don’t want that.”

“Don’t tell me what I want!”

“Let her go.” Mark’s voice sounded farther and farther
away. Her throat burned. “You hurt a cop, they’ll make your life hell, David. Let her go.”

The door burst open with a
boom.
Moss’s body jolted. Mark hauled him off of her and heaved him against the wall.

“Stun him again!” someone barked.

Mark’s face loomed over her. Allison tried to sit up, but her limbs tingled. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.

“Medic!” Mark shouted at the guards who’d filled the room. “We need a
medic
!”

“No,” she rasped. “I’m . . . okay.”

Across the room, Moss was sprawled on the floor. Everyone was yelling. A pair of guards grabbed the convict by the ankles and shoulders and hauled him away.

Mark was down to his last shred of patience by the time he reached San Marcos. He’d spent three hours on a narrow country highway driving through darkness and torrential rain, and with every wreck and disabled car he passed, he got angrier at Allison. Finally, after his fourth attempt to reach her, she picked up the phone.

“Where are you?” he demanded. “I thought you were going to wait for me.”

“Sorry, I just . . . I had to get out of there. Every time I turned around, someone was making me fill out another report.”

He’d left her in the prison infirmary while he met with the warden. It never occurred to him she’d finish up and take off without so much as a conversation.

“Where are you now?” He tried to keep frustration out of his voice, but it came through anyway.

“I just dropped by the station. Ric and Jonah were there, and I handed off these leads so they can get going. We’ll regroup in the morning.”

She was still working the case, then. Mark gritted his teeth. He’d allowed himself to entertain the possibility
that maybe—just maybe—today’s disaster had had one positive outcome, and she’d decided to bow out. But of course he’d been wrong. He
wanted
her to drop the case, so why would she do that? Why would she do a single damn thing he wanted her to when it was so much easier to do the exact opposite?

“Don’t go anywhere,” he said. “I’m coming over.”

“What, here?”

“Are you home yet?”

“I’m pulling in right now.”

He whipped into her apartment complex just in time to see the taillights go dark on her battered pickup. The unmarked police cruiser she’d taken to Huntsville—the one he hadn’t recognized in the prison parking lot—must be back at the police station.

She turned to look at him through the back window as he slid into a space. It was still pouring. She made a dash to her apartment and waited for him under the overhang as he jogged across the lot. They stood at her door, soaked to the skin, and he gazed down at her and realized it was the first time they’d been alone since the argument in the interview room.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said over the rain. “I need to ask you something.” She unlocked the door and shoved it open. “God, it’s
wet
out there.”

He followed her inside and closed the door on the storm. Her apartment was dark and cold. She dropped her purse and keys on the hall table and made a beeline for the thermostat.

“Jonah’s digging up whatever we can on these Gillis people out of Waynesboro,” she informed him as she
switched on the heater. “Ric is going to run a vehicle check for Wayne County, see what comes up.”

“I think you should drop the case.” There. He’d said it. But by the look she gave him, he could tell the idea was going nowhere.

“Why would I do that?” She peeled off her sodden blazer and tossed it toward the armchair—which she missed—as she headed for the kitchen. She unbuckled her holster with movements that were brisk and clumsy. Clearly, she was still amped up.

Mark picked up her jacket from the floor and draped it over one of her bar stools. She put her weapon and holster on the counter and grabbed a dish towel.

“Allison, maybe you need some time off. From this case.”

She dried her face and squeezed the towel around her ponytail. The only light in the room came from the dim bulb of the fixture above the stove, but even in the meager light he could see she looked rattled.

“Time off,” she repeated.

“Yes.”

She shook her head and muttered something he couldn’t hear as she turned to her refrigerator. She took out a can of Coke, popped open the top, and proceeded to pour half of it down the sink.

“What I need is a favor,” she said, looking him squarely in the eye for the first time in hours. Her face was pale, taut. Everything about her seemed agitated. She still hadn’t had the adrenaline crash that he felt certain was coming very soon, and it pained him to see her this way.

In that moment, he would have done anything for her. But he somehow knew that he wasn’t going to like whatever this favor was.

“I already talked to the warden about it,” she said, “so now it’s up to you.”

He waited for her to finish, but instead she opened a cabinet and took down a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. She poured a few glugs into her Coke.

“Drink?” she offered.

“No.”

She took a sip and headed back into the living room with the can, pulling the band loose from her ponytail as she went.

“I need you not to mention this incident to Reynolds,” she said over her shoulder.

“ ‘Incident’?” He followed her. “Did you really just say ‘incident’? You were
assaulted,
Allison.”

“I’m aware of that.” She set her drink on the table in the foyer and stopped to unzip her boots and kick them off.

Mark tried to tamp down his temper. “You were
assaulted
on an assignment your idiot lieutenant sent you on alone. He should be out of a job.”

“Wolfe, listen.” She stepped closer and her eyes pleaded with him. “I need your help. This could unravel my career.”

“It wasn’t your fault!”

“I know that and you know that, but you also must realize how this looks. It’s the second time in just a few weeks that I’ve let a situation get out of control.” She walked down the hall to the bathroom and flipped on the light. “I can’t take another hit like this. I’ll be ostracized.
How can anyone trust me to have their back if I can’t even watch my own?” She stripped off her shirt and stood in front of the mirror.

Mark halted in the doorway, stunned by the giant purple bruise on her shoulder.

“Jesus
Christ.
” He stepped up behind her. She lifted her chin and examined her neck in the mirror. There was another dark bruise on the underside of her jaw, and Mark’s gut clenched with fury.

“It doesn’t hurt anymore.” Her gaze met his in the mirror. Then she dodged around him and walked into her bedroom.

In only her bra and slacks. Mark tried to blink away the image of all that smooth, bare skin because, god
damn
it, she’d been attacked today and—

His gaze fell on the shirt she’d tossed on the counter. The seam at the shoulder was ripped, and he got an instant visual of Moss throwing her down on that table.

He grabbed the shirt and stormed into the bedroom. “Did he cut you? Did he fucking
cut
you?”

One
scratch and she could have some deadly diseases.

She was standing there, still half undressed, but she was holding a bathrobe now.

“He didn’t cut me.” She took a deep breath. “I’m just banged up.”

Mark tried not to look at her. He looked at the shirt bunched up in his fist and felt the blinding fury all over again.

“Will you help me?”

He glanced up at her, not understanding. The only thing he grasped at the moment was rage.

“This is my career, Wolfe.”

Mark looked at her with disbelief. She wanted him to
help
her downplay her assault—an assault he’d
let
happen right in front of him because he’d feared for her life. Moss had had his elbow on her larynx, and Mark had had no doubt that he could have crushed her neck with one blow.

And now she wanted him to let that go.

“You know, I really,
really
need a hot shower,” she said. “Just think about it, all right? I’ll be out in a minute.”

Mark turned his back on her and returned to the kitchen, where he threw the torn shirt into the trash. He lifted the bag out and carried it to the Dumpster across the parking lot. It was still pouring, but he didn’t care. Maybe the rain would jar him out of this funk he’d been in for the past four hours. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so affected by something. He was furious with himself, with Moss, with Reynolds.

He was furious with Allison, too, and somehow that made the rest of it worse. He had no right to be upset with her.

He replaced the bag in her kitchen trash can and stood at the counter, listening to the pipes run. He pictured her in that plain white bra with those bruises marring her skin and he felt an overwhelming urge to just . . . just . . .

Goddamn it,
how
could he be thinking about this? It was wrong. In every way. What he really needed to do was leave, right now, but instead he found himself standing in the middle of her kitchen, imagining her naked in the very next room.

He grabbed the bottle on the counter and poured a shot of bourbon into one of her juice glasses. He slugged
it back. It burned all the way down but did nothing to ease his tension.

He heard the pipes shut off. A few minutes later, the bathroom door opened. Then he heard the faint scrape of drawers opening and closing back in her bedroom.

He should go now, while he still could. Before she walked back in here all wet and beautiful—

Too late.

“So, what’s the verdict?” She was in the bathrobe now—a white terry-cloth thing that practically swallowed her. He thought about the drawers opening and closing and wondered what else she’d put on.

If he had a decent bone in his body, he’d leave.

“I need to ask you something,” he said instead. It was possibly the worst time for him to ask this question, but he needed to know. It had been eating at him for hours.

She stepped closer and gazed up at him. All that wet, dark hair was combed back from her face, and he could really see her eyes. There was curiosity in them, and something else, too, something he wasn’t sure he wanted to put a name to.

“What happened to your father when you were twelve?” he asked.

Her expression clouded. She looked down. When she looked up again, her eyes were somber.

“He died on the job.”

Mark’s heart sank. But he’d known the answer. He’d known it from the look on her face when Moss had taunted her. For about the thousandth time that day, Mark honestly wanted to kill the man.

“You know, it’s weird.” She looked down at her bare
feet. “That—what he said about my dad—feels like more of a violation than when he was choking me.” She looked up, as if searching his face for some kind of understanding.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Two inadequate words that didn’t help anything.

“It’s not your fault.”

Mark scoffed and looked away.

“Mark.” She reached up and turned his face to hers. She stood dangerously close and he forced himself to look at her eyes. “It was my choice to be there. It was his choice to hurt me.”