Chapter Sixteen

Three days had passed since Eve had merged Alex into Cade’s body. Three days of her wondering if he was going to leave them alone like he’d said he would, or if he would come ‘knocking on her door’ as he’d put it, feeling she was a liability. The constant fear was driving her crazy—if he was going to come she wished he would get it over with. But she hoped that he would come for a different reason altogether. Her face heated slightly at the idea. There was more than that, she missed him, actually missed his company.

She shook her head and cursed him again as she climbed the stairs to bed. This was becoming a nightly ritual. Working a little, then getting distracted and thinking about Alex, before finally blaming everything on him and carrying her knife and rolling pin to bed.

She reached the top floor, quietly checked on Noelle, then closed her door and walked slowly to her own room. Who was she kidding? He wasn’t coming back. Her stomach dropped like a rock. She came to a halt just inside her room. She needed to come to terms that she had feelings for a murderer and that she might not see him again. “How can I feel that for him it doesn’t make any sense?” she asked out loud.

“Depends on what you’re feeling and who you’re feeling it for,” the voice came from behind her in the hall. Without looking back she jumped into the room reaching for the door blindly behind her in an effort to swing it shut. She then cleared the height of the bed landing in the centre, then quickly turning she faced the door holding out both knife and rolling pin while she shifted back and forth, her feet almost getting tangled in her sheets thanks to her nervous tizzy.

The door opened and Cade…Alex walked into the room. She froze as she stared at him, her mouth dropping open. He was in her house and she hadn’t heard him enter, he had walked behind her almost into her bedroom and probably up the stairs and she hadn’t heard him. A part of her was terrified but there was a part that was happy and excited to see him.

“You’re dropping your rolling pin.” He nodded to her hand. She jerked it up still gawking at him. “Don’t hold the knife like that,” he suggested calmly. “Hold it so it faces up towards your attacker, the movement is harder to stop.”

He slowly closed the door.

She adjusted the knife in her hand.

Alex casually approached the bed and stopped, crossing his arms. “Now,” he began fixing his blue eyes on her. “What feelings are we talking about here? Warm and fuzzy or”—he gave her a wicked grin—“hot and wet?”

Eve felt her mouth drop open again. “I…I… What are you doing here?”

“Rolling pin,” he pointed out.

She jerked it up and pointed it at him. “How did you get in here?” She noticed he had shaved the other side of his head so that his hair was all the same length, and though the stitches were removed she could see the scar running across his head, which looked to be healing nicely. Cade’s body looked good, Alex had done a good job healing it.

“I saw you activate your alarm system at least a dozen times.” He shrugged. “It wouldn’t have mattered though, I would still have gotten in.” Then, straight faced, he divulged, “It’s what I do.”

“Get out!”

“No.” He edged closer to the bed, his gaze trailing over her face.

Eve took a step to the side, keeping a tight grip on the knife and rolling pin. “Please get out.”

“No,” Alex answered with a lop-sided smirk. He stared at her for a few minutes while she thought of a way to get him to leave. Finally, he sighed out loud, “I don’t get you. You’ve bitched about me for three nights now. You want me here, don’t want me here. I’ve caused all the problems and I’m not here to help you and now that I am here, you want me out.”

Eve felt her mouth drop open again and her face burned. “I…I… No I didn’t say that.”

She watched as he took another step closer, she didn’t move this time, just followed his movement.

“Yes you did.” He grinned up at her. “I think you want me here. What I don’t know is why you’re fighting it.”

She didn’t answer his question. She just stood there like an idiot, feeling her heart pound in her chest and her face burn. Three nights. He’d been in her house listening to her…for three nights and she hadn’t even noticed.

“I’m not going to lie. There is something that attracts me to you, it makes me want to throw you down and fuck your brains out. I wish I knew what it was, because you’re really not my type. I like my women blonde and I like them tall so they can wrap their legs around me. Your hair is curly and you’re a little on the short side.”

Alex raised his brows when she put her hands on her hips.

“I’m not one of your women. So you don’t have to worry about me wrapping anything around you.” The bite in her voice suggested she was about two seconds from throwing the knife and rolling pin at him.

He kept on with his attack and pointed to her hair again. “And the auburn. It has a lot of red in it, I’ve heard redheads—”

She didn’t let him finish—“Oh wait, let me finish this one. Redheads have bad tempers and are bitchy. Thanks but I’m not a redhead.”

He studied her auburn hair. She wasn’t a redhead in the conventional sense of the word but her hair was reddish and he actually liked it. “That wasn’t what I was going to say. What I was going to say was that redheads are supposed to be fantastic in bed, so you do have that going for you.”

He leaned to the side as the rolling pin flew past his head and thumped against the wall. They both paused waiting to hear if Noelle would call out. When the house remained silent, Eve hissed, “You are an asshole.”

“Sometimes,” he confessed. One down, one to go.

Alex planned on insulting her skills as therapist next. She didn’t oblige and turned, huffing out loud as she jumped off the bed. The second her back was turned he moved, coming around the bed fast. He grabbed her arm holding the knife, locked her elbow straight and pulled the knife from her grip.

He loosened his hold and glared down at her. “Don’t ever point a knife at me again.” He then pulled her stiff frame up against his chest. He lowered his voice, “I never want a reason to hurt you.”

Eve looked at his chest. She tried to hide her fear but he saw it the second she looked up at him. “But you are going to hurt me? That is why you came back isn’t it?”

Sighing he tossed the knife on the bed and lightly took hold of her other arm. “Is that what you thought? That I would came back here and kill you and Noelle?”

She looked him in the eye. “Yes.”

He gave her a hard look.

“What do you expect? You’re a trained killer that belongs to a unit of trained killers that no one is supposed to know about. Yes, I thought you would come back and kill me and Noelle.”

He squeezed her arms so she understood. “I am not going to kill you or Noelle. My unit doesn’t just kill random people. I told you, we track and kill people that are a danger to you and Noelle and every other good person.”

“You keep saying people, what people?” Her voice became a little high.

He pulled her to the bed and sat her down.

She looked up at him with big expectant eyes.

“You want an example?”

“Yes please.” Her response was polite and curt at the same time.

He began pacing in front of her trying to think of an example that she would be familiar with, but wouldn’t scare the crap out of her. It didn’t matter which example he thought about, all of them were bound to scare her.

“Two years ago, hookers started going missing from all major cities in the Prairie Provinces. No one thought there might be a connection. It wasn’t until the girls from smaller cities started disappearing that police seemed to take notice. The girls that went missing all had two things in common. One, they all had tongue studs. Two, they all had their own car.” He stopped and looked down at Eve. She was sitting crossed legged on the bed listening to him intently.

He sat down facing her. “This was a public case and quite a few details never made the papers because of how violent these acts were.”

“Okay.”

“Eve, I don’t want to scare you.”

She blinked as her cheeks flushed. “I’m…” She nodded. “Okay.”

Alex sighed at her reaction. For some reason she was embarrassed that she was attracted to him. He didn’t even need the blush to know what she was feeling. Her pupils always grew large and took over the pretty hazel of her eyes whenever she looked at him.

“When the police from each city found no trace of the girls, we were called in. There was one detail that no one picked up on. Each of these girls had a car and in almost every case the car was also missing.”

“Oh, I remember that case. The Used Car Murders. But the police caught that guy.”

“They caught that guy. But not the others.”

“Others?”

“Wait for it,” he ordered. “We focused on the cars. Even though they had been unregistered, they’d been easier to trace, and not one car had been found. Miles and I had thought that odd, then had wondered if the cars were hiding in plain sight. We’d come up with a theory. What if the girls had been lured away by the promise of big bucks but had had to drive to meet their john at an isolated meeting point?” He clenched his jaw remembering the grisly details of the hunt.

“We dressed up in suits and ties and went…”

“Wait,” Eve interrupted him. “That can’t be right. How could the police miss an important fact like each of these girls had cars and they too were missing?”

He frowned at her question. “Some of the cars were never registered, a few were stolen and the others… Well let’s just say that’s still being looked in to.”

She gasped lightly, “You mean a cop might have…”

“It’s still being looked in too.” He ended the discussion. “Do you want to listen to the rest?”

She snapped her mouth shut and nodded silently.

“Like I said Miles and I got dressed and went up to random girls and told them we couldn’t do anything at the time but would like to call them later and meet up. Every girl gave us her cell number. When we’d called them later that day and suggested a place to meet, everyone with a car had shown up. That was when we met Amy. As it turned out the last john that had asked her to meet him at a later time, jumped in a waiting car and taken off when she’d shown. When I asked why, she’d thought it was because her pimp had driven her to the meeting point. That was when we’d realised we were right about the isolated meeting point and learnt there were now two targets to hunt. This made sense, because in every case no body or car was found.”

“One to drive the first car and one to drive her car,” Eve pointed out as she began toying with the handle of the knife.

Alex casually slid the knife away from her and stood, crossing to her dresser. “Yes.” He put the knife down and walked back to the bed. “We focused on the cars again. We scanned the net for several makes and models of cars we knew were missing and got several hits from a couple of dealers. We ended up searching the entire list and most of the cars were at one of two dealerships. After that Miles and I each went to a dealership and had found the cars on their lots. All VIN numbers were different, but the make and models were identical.”

He sat down on the bed again. “Are you convinced yet?”

“It’s too soon to tell, keep going.”

He scowled when he heard the interest in her voice.

“We called in a trace for both owners of the dealerships. As it turned out they were both from the same small town in Serbia and both had fought in Bosnia during the early nineties. And both of them placed a number of calls to a wrecking yard midway between their dealerships. We traced the owner of the wrecking yard and he was also Serbian and fought alongside his two partners. Everything fell into place after that.”

Eve had a horrified look on her face. “They hunted down girls, killed them and then sold their cars. How does the wrecker fit in?”

“He chopped up the cars they couldn’t sell, for parts and disposed of the bodies. Initially, we didn’t find any remains, only the tongue studs and DVDs with each of the girls mur—”

Eve cut him off shaking her head. “I don’t want to know anymore. I believe you.” She stood and moved around him in a wide circle.

“I told you it wasn’t nice,” he said following her to the bathroom.

“I know,” she answered quietly. “The other two? What happened to them?”

He didn’t answer her, he didn’t have to. “You killed them,” she stated, her back still towards him.

Before she could enter the bathroom, Alex grabbed her by the waist and turned her to face him. “You okay?” he asked, slowly pulling her closer.

“I…I think so.” Her thin brows puckered together. “I’m feeling a little confused.”

“Why?” He shifted her back from the door. She didn’t seem to notice.

“The thought of people out there like that scares the shit out of me. Now, I know about you and your unit, and how you protect us from evil people like that. I think that scares me more than the murderers, because you are better than they are, yet I’m glad you’re out there protecting us.” She looked at him as he continued to lead her away from the bathroom. “See…confused.”

Stopping next to the bed Alex pointed out, “You’re not scared of me now.”

Eve glanced around. “Wait…how did you do that?”

He held tight when she tried to pull away. “You’re not scared of me now, or you would still be on the bed.”

“Yah and you would still be insulting me.” She crossed her arms in a huff.

“I’m not sorry about that. I needed you to lose the baking weapons. I didn’t come here to get beaten into a pie,” he teased.

“Why did you come?” She threw her arms in the air.

He felt like laughing at her dramatic gesture but didn’t. He slid his gaze over her face. Enjoyed the way her cheeks turned pink like her lips. He then focused on the green flecks in her eyes. “I told you I would come knocking on your door if you were to break the law and you did.”

Her eyes grew wide when she remembered their conversation. “But I didn’t…”

“Yes you did. When you left Memorial.” He pulled her closer and slid his hand through her curls to the back of her head. “You should know better than to run out into traffic, that white hatchback almost turned you into road kill.”

Eve gasped, “You saw that?” He smirked at her. “But I…that shouldn’t count…”

“It counts.” He looked at her lips and as though she knew he needed to see it, she ran her tongue along the seam.

“But you didn’t knock.” She pushed lightly against his chest, a pathetic last attempt to save herself. He lowered his mouth brushing his lips against hers feeling the tingle that only she caused. “This is me knocking.”