It was the tenderness that was almost my undoing. With Sean, the sexual fascination between us had always been so fierce, so intense, that at times it almost seemed like confrontation.
But Parker revealed himself completely in the brief longing of his touch. It lit along my nerves like ice and fire and drew responses I wasn’t prepared for, including the urge to meet him more than halfway.
This wasn’t just sex. This was love.
Confusion reigning, I broke the kiss, stepped back. But, glancing into his face I saw anguish in the realisation of what he might have given away of himself in that evanescent moment. Of what it might mean – for all of us. He took a breath.
And I realised with a flowering dismay that I could fall for him. If I let myself. They might share many traits, but he was not Sean. I would not open my eyes every morning and see an echo of what I had lost. This could be something else completely. If I let it.
I reached up, touched his cheek, murmured, ‘Don’t.’
He captured my hand with his own, held it while he turned his head and pressed his lips into my palm. ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I never meant for—’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Neither did I.’
He gave a rueful smile that did nothing to quiet the chaos of his gaze, and let go of me. With distance, we could both regain some semblance of sanity.
In a voice that was still woefully inadequate, I said, ‘Wow, it must be bad news if you’re prepared to go to those kind of lengths to distract me.’
He knew what I was doing, of course he did, but he let it ride. Eventually, with great reluctance, he said, ‘I had a call from Epps.’
‘Conrad Epps?’ It was a stupid question, but the connotations knocked me sideways into stupidity. Conrad Epps held some high-grade position within the US security services. I could only guess at the scope of his power, but when my father had found himself in serious trouble over here the previous winter, only someone with Epps’s clout had been able to disentangle him.
The only trouble was, once you turned over the kind of rock men like Epps liked to lurk under, it could never quite be turned back again. He didn’t do favours for nothing – he kept score. And because of that, we were sucked into his private war with the Fourth Day cult in California, during which … Well, let’s just say that if Epps had left well alone, Sean would not be in his current condition.
I had very mixed feelings about Conrad Epps.
‘What does he want now?’ I demanded roughly. ‘And what’s it going to cost us this time?’
Parker raised an eyebrow. He was regaining his poise, but there was still a tension about him that I mistakenly put down to our encounter, rather than the news he had to impart.
‘He called with an apology – and a warning,’ he said. ‘Charlie … they lost him.’
‘Lost … ?’ It took me a moment to put the correct meaning on that word. Lost as in misplaced, as in escaped. As in free and clear …
And this time, I didn’t need to ask who he was talking about.
I knew.
The man who had put Sean in his coma, who had lied and cheated, and murdered, for no more desperate reason than his own desire to possess something that didn’t belong to him. For greed. For power.
Shit!
‘I should have killed that fucker when I had the chance.’
‘Then we wouldn’t be here,’ Parker said quietly.
‘No,’ I agreed. I tried to raise a smile and only got halfway. ‘At best, I’d probably be on Death Row.’
Parker shook his head with a hint of sadness. ‘Epps wouldn’t have let you die, Charlie,’ he said. ‘How could he just let someone with your … talent go to waste? But he would have owned you to the grave.’
I didn’t respond to that. It’s always hard to counter an argument you recognise to be bloody impregnable.
‘How?’ I said then. ‘How did he get away, I mean?’ I couldn’t even bring myself to say the man’s name. It was easier to be coolly objective about the whole thing. To speak about him as an abstract concept, rather than an utterly worthless human being.
‘Epps was not forthcoming with details,’ Parker said dryly.
‘Yeah, no surprises there.’
He sighed. ‘Look, I know how you feel. Trust me. I was there. I saw what that bastard did – and not just to Sean.’
I swallowed down the sour taste in my mouth, recognised that Parker had been as hurt by what had happened almost as much as I had. We’d both lost Sean, however permanent or temporary that might turn out to be. Perhaps it was the solidarity of loss that had just brought us together – or so I tried to tell myself.
‘I thought Epps would have used him up and spat out the empty husk by now,’ I said instead. ‘It’s not like him to be merciful.’
Parker leant his shoulder against the glass wall, his face bathed in soft reflected light from the last of the evening sun. ‘Well, I guess the guy could be pretty persuasive, you have to give him that.’ And if he sounded regretful, it was perhaps because we’d both been taken in, at one time or another. ‘In this case, all I know is he persuaded Epps he could give him a lead into various militia groups Fourth Day had ties to. Offered to go undercover.’
I stared at him. ‘Jesus H Christ,’ I muttered. ‘Epps just bloody let him go and he did a runner.’
Another twisted smile. ‘That would be my guess.’
‘When?’
‘Six weeks ago.’
‘He’s been on the run for six weeks?’ I repeated. ‘And Epps is ringing you now?’
Parker’s eyes flicked to mine. ‘Apparently, he believed he might still be able to retrieve him without making the fact public,’ he said solemnly. ‘The guy’s dropped right off the grid.’
‘I’d lay odds I could find him.’
Another flicker. ‘Maybe that was another reason he didn’t tell us.’
‘Parker, I—’
He moved closer and all the spit dried on my tongue, but all he did was look down at me, eyes roving my face. I don’t know what he was searching for, or if he found it.
‘Revenge is a poor servant, but a worse master,’ he said. ‘Don’t let it rule you, Charlie.’
I won’t. Not yet.
‘In case it’s escaped you,’ I said, forcing a lightness I was a long way from feeling, ‘we’re up to our necks in a situation here. How can I think of going after anyone when we don’t know if Dina is alive or dead?’
If Parker saw through the blatant evasion in my words, he didn’t get a chance to call me on it. Footsteps in the hall had us both turning. Landers entered, gaze taking in our tension, if not – I hoped – the reasons behind it.
‘Pathologist’s here, boss,’ he said.
Parker nodded and turned away, pulling on a set of gloves to pick up the gruesome package. By the doorway he paused, glanced back.
‘And when we know – one way or the other,’ he said, ‘what then?’