SYD WOKE TO THE SHRILL SOUND of the telephone ringing.
The clock on the bedside table in Luke’s guest room read 3:52. It was nearly four in the morning. Who could possibly be calling now?
She knew instantly, sitting up, her heart pounding.
The rapist hadn’t taken the bait. Instead, some other poor woman had been attacked.
She could hear the low murmur of Luke’s voice from the other room.
His voice got louder, and, although she couldn’t make out the words, she could pick up his anger loud and clear. No, this wasn’t good news, that was for sure.
Luke had come home just after two. He’d been unnaturally quiet, almost pensive, and very, very tired. He’d made a quick circuit of the house, making sure all the doors and windows were securely locked, and then he’d gone into his bedroom and shut the door.
Syd had climbed into the narrow bed in this room that had probably once been Luke’s sister’s, and had tried to sleep.
Tried and failed. It seemed as if she’d just drifted off when the sound of the phone jerked her back to consciousness.
From the other side of the wall, she heard a crash from Luke’s room as something was noisily knocked over. She stood up, uncertain as to whether she should go make sure he was all right, when her door opened with a bang.
Luke stood there, wearing only a pair of boxers, breathing hard, backlit by the light from the hallway. “Get your clothes on. Fast. We’re going to the hospital.” His voice was harsh, his face grim. “Lucy McCoy’s been attacked.”
SYD HAD TO RUN TO keep up with Luke as she followed him down the hospital corridor.
Lucy McCoy. God, not Lucy….
Whoever had called Luke to give him the news hadn’t known any details. How badly had she been hurt? Was she even alive?
Bobby appeared at the end of the hallway, and Luke moved even faster.
“Sit-rep,” he ordered the chief as soon as they were close enough to talk without shouting.
Bobby’s face was somber. “She’s alive and she wasn’t raped,” he told them as they continued down the hall. “But that’s where the good news ends. They’ve got her in ICU—intensive care. I…persuaded a doctor to talk to me, and he used words like massive head injury and coma. She’s got a broken collarbone, broken arm, and a broken rib that punctured her lung, as well.”
“Who’s with her?” Luke’s voice was tight.
“Wes and Mia,” Bobby reported. “Frisco’s taking care of the paperwork.”
“Has someone tried to reach Blue?”
“Yeah, I’ve tried, Frisco’s tried, but we’re both getting a lot of static. Wherever Alpha Squad is, they’re in deep. I can’t even get anyone to tell me which hemisphere they’re on.”
“Call Admiral Robinson,” Luke ordered as they stopped outside the entrance to the intensive care unit. “If anyone can get word to Alpha Squad, he can.”
Bobby moved briskly off as Mia Francisco pushed open the door and stepped out of ICU.
“I thought I heard your voice.” She gave Luke a hug, her eyes red from crying.
“Should you be here?” Luke asked her, putting a hand on her enormous belly.
Mia hugged Syd, too. “How could I not be here?” she said. Her lip trembled. “The doctor says the next few hours are critical. If she makes it through the night—” Her voice broke.
“Oh, God,” Syd said. “It’s that bad?”
Mia nodded.
“Can I see her?” Luke asked.
Mia nodded again. “She’s in room four. There’s usually a family-members-only rule with patients in ICU, but with Blue out of the country, the doctors and nurses are letting us sit with her. I called Veronica and Melody. They’re both flying in in the morning. And Nell and Becca should be here in about an hour. PJ’s already over at the crime scene.”
Luke pushed open the door to the intensive care wing, and Syd followed him in.
Nighttime didn’t exist in ICU. It was as brightly lit and as filled with busy doctors and nurses as if it were high noon.
Luke stopped outside room four, just looking in. Syd took his hand.
Lucy looked impossibly small and fragile lying in that hospital bed. She was hooked up to all kinds of machines and monitors. Her head was swathed in bandages, her face pale—except for where it was savagely bruised. She had an angry-looking row of stitches above her left eyebrow, and her mouth looked scraped and raw, her lips swollen and split. Her left eye was purple and yellow and completely swollen shut.
Wes sat next to her bed, head bowed as he held her hand.
He looked up as Luke slowly went into the room, Syd following him to the foot of Lucy’s bed.
Wes’s eyes were as red as Mia’s had been. He was crying.
Wes—whom Syd still thought of as a potential suspect. God, wasn’t that an awful thought? Was it possible Wes could have done this to Lucy and then come here to sit by her bed—to make sure that she died? It was like something out of a bad movie.
“Hey, Luce,” Luke said, trying his best to sound cheerful, but barely able to do more than whisper. “I don’t suppose you want to wake up and tell me what happened, huh?”
Lucy didn’t move. On the wall, the screen monitoring her heart continued its steady beeping.
Wes gave no guilty starts. His eyes didn’t move shiftily. He didn’t start to sweat or shake at the thought of Lucy opening her eyes and giving out information. He just sat there, crying, holding Lucy’s hand, occasionally wiping his eyes with his T-shirt sleeve.
“Well, you know what?” Luke said to her. “I’m going to come back later and we can talk then, okay?” Nothing.
Luke was holding Syd’s hand so tightly, her fingers were starting to ache from lack of blood.
“Just…hang on, Lucy,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Blue will be here soon, I promise. Just…hang on.”
LUCKY STOOD IN BLUE AND Lucy McCoy’s second-floor bedroom, grimly taking in the crushed and twisted lamps, the knocked-over rocking chair, the mattress half off its frame, the blood smeared on the sheets and the pale yellow wall, and the broken bay window that had looked out over the McCoys’ flower-filled backyard.
Dawn was sending delicate, fairy-like light into the yard and, as he stepped closer to the window, the bits and pieces of broken glass glittered prettily on the grass below.
Syd stood quietly by the door. He’d heard her slip into the bathroom after they’d first arrived and seen the evidence of the violent and bloody fight that had taken place in this very room. He’d heard her get sick. But she’d come out almost right away. Pale and shaking but unwilling to leave.
PJ Becker came into the room, followed by one of the FInCOM agents who’d been assigned to the task force. PJ’s recent promotion had pushed her way high up in FInCOM’s chain of command, and the agent who was with her looked a little dazed at her presence.
“Dave, you already know Lieutenant O’Donlon and Sydney Jameson. Lieutenant, Dave Sudenberg’s one of our top forensics experts,” PJ said. “I thought you’d be interested in hearing his take on what happened here last night, since Detective McCoy’s not yet able to give us a statement.”
Lucky nodded and Dave Sudenberg cleared his throat. “As far as I can tell, the perpetrator entered the premises through a downstairs window,” he told them. “He managed to bypass a portion of the security system without shutting the whole thing down, which was good, since the system’s lights and alarms later played a large part in saving the detective’s life.”
He pointed to the door that Syd was still standing near. “He entered this room through that door, and from the pattern of blood on the sheets, we can assume that Lucy was in bed at the time, and probably asleep when he landed the first blow—probably the one that broke her nose. He struck her with his fists—there would have been far more blood had he used something other than his hands.
“Lucy came up swinging. She was probably trying to get to the weapon she kept just under the bed, but he wouldn’t let her near it. She hit him with this lamp,” he said, pointing to the twisted wreckage of what had once been a tall, freestanding halogen. “Preliminary tests already show that the blood on this thing isn’t Lucy’s.
“So she clobbers him, and he goes ballistic, throws her against this wall, battering the hell out of her, and delivering what I believe was the worst of Lucy’s head injuries, and wrapping his hands around her neck. But somehow, she breaks free. Somehow she doesn’t lose consciousness right away. And she does the one thing that I think saved her life. She dives out the window, right through the glass, setting off the alarm system, waking the neighbors. Perp runs, and the police come and find her, half dead in the backyard.”
Lucky met Syd’s eyes. Dear God, now he was going to be sick. Lucy had to have known that a fall like that could have killed her. Had she thought she’d have zero chance of survival by staying in the room with the attacker? Fight or submit. Had she believed either would have gotten her killed, and opted to flee, despite the health risks of jumping out a second-story window?
There was a real chance he’d never find out, that Lucy wouldn’t live through the night, or that, even if she did, she’d never awaken from the coma she’d slipped into.
There was a real chance Blue would come home to bury his wife.
PJ moved to the window and looked all the way down at the yard below. “Dave thinks her broken collarbone and arm were from the dive she took out the window,” she said grimly. “But the broken rib, broken nose, bruised throat and near-fatal head injuries were from your guy.”
“We’ve got enough of his DNA to see if it matches the semen and skin samples he left behind with his other victims,” Sudenberg told them. “I’ve already sent samples to the lab.”
“What’s it gonna take,” Lucky asked, his chest and his throat both feeling so tight he had to push to squeeze his voice out, “to get the police or FInCOM to actually pick up the likely suspects on the list Lucy helped compile?”
“It’s getting done, but these things take time,” PJ told him as she headed for the door. She motioned for Sudenberg to follow her. “I’ll see that you’re given updated status reports as they come in.”
Lucky nodded. “Thanks.”
“See you back at the hospital,” PJ said.
LUCKY STOOD IN HIS kitchen, his vision blurring as he stared out the window over the sink.
Lucy had made it through the night but still showed no signs of waking.
Blue could not be reached, not even with the help of Admiral Robinson. The admiral had known where Alpha Squad was though, and had been willing to break radio silence to contact them, but the mountains and rocky terrain were playing havoc with the signal. Lieutenant Mitch Shaw, one of the Admiral’s Gray Group operatives, had volunteered to go in after them. To find Blue, to send him back out and to take his place on this critical mission.
Best-case scenario had Shaw taking a record four days to walk into the hostile and nearly impenetrable countryside and find Alpha Squad almost right away—another highly unlikely possibility. Another four days for Blue to get out. Best-case scenario didn’t have him reaching his wife’s side in fewer than nine or ten days.
Nine or ten days.
Damn it. Damn it.
He heard Syd in the doorway, but he didn’t turn around. “Maybe I should go,” she said quietly. “You probably want to be alone, and—”
He spun around, interrupting her with a very salty version of no. “Where would you go? To your apartment? I don’t want you even to think of going back there alone, do you understand? Not unless I’m with you. From now on, you don’t make a move on your own, is that absolutely clear?”
He was shouting at her, he realized. He was standing in his kitchen, blasting her for being considerate.
But she didn’t shout back at him. She didn’t recoil in horror. She didn’t spin on her heel and walk away in a huff. Instead, she took a step toward him, reaching out her hand for him. “Luke, this isn’t your fault. You know that, right?”
There was a solid lump in his throat, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t swallow it. He couldn’t push it down past the tightness in his chest. “I should have made her listen to me,” he whispered. “I tried to talk her into staying at the police station, but she had such faith in her damned security system.”
Syd was gazing at him with such compassion in her eyes. He knew that if she touched him, he’d be lost. If she touched him, everything he was fighting so hard to keep inside would break free, all the guilt and the anger and the fear—God, he was so afraid. It would escape, like water pouring over a dam.
He took a step back from her. “I don’t want you doing this anymore. This bait thing. Not after this. No way. All bets are off. You’re going to have to stay away from me from now on. I’ll make sure Bobby’s with you, 24-7.”
She kept coming. “Luke. That doesn’t make sense. This could well be the only way we’ll catch this guy. I know you want to catch this guy.”
He laughed, and it sounded sharp and brittle. “Understatement of the year.”
“Maybe we should both get some sleep. We can talk about this later, after we’ve had time to think it through.”
“There’s nothing more to think about,” he said. “There’s too much that could go wrong. In the time it would take us to get inside the house, even from the backyard, you could be killed. You’re smaller than Lucy, Syd. If he hit you the way he hit her—” His voice broke and he had to take a deep breath before he could go on. “I won’t let you risk your life that way. The thought of you being alone with that guy even for one second…”
To Lucky’s complete horror, the tears he was desperately fighting welled in his eyes, and this time he couldn’t force them back. This time they escaped. He wiped at them savagely, but even that didn’t stop them from coming.
Ah, God, he was crying. He was standing in front of Syd and crying like a two-year-old.
It was all over. He was completely unmanned.
Except she didn’t laugh. She didn’t give him one of those “wow, you are both lame and stupid” looks that she did so well.
Instead, she put her arms around him and held him tightly. “It’s okay if you cry,” she told him softly. “I won’t tell anyone.”
He had to laugh at that. “Yeah, but you’ll know.”
She lifted her head to look up at him, gently pushing his hair back from his face, her eyes so soft. “I already knew.”
The constriction in his chest got even tighter. God, it hurt. “I’d die if anything happened to you.”
His voice broke as he thought about Blue, out there in some jungle somewhere, being told that the woman he loved more than life itself was lying in a hospital bed, maybe dying, maybe already dead.
And then Lucky wasn’t just crying anymore. He was experiencing emotional meltdown. He was sobbing the way he hadn’t done since Isidro had died, clinging tightly to Syd as if maybe she could save him.
His knees gave out and he crumpled, sliding down to sit on the kitchen floor.
And still Syd held on to him. She didn’t say a word, didn’t try to make him stop. She just sat next to him, rocking him gently.
Even if Lucy woke up, even if she opened her eyes tomorrow, she would have only survived. Blue could never go back and erase the trauma of what she’d been through. He could never take away the fear she must’ve known in what should have been the sanctuary of her bedroom, as she’d fought for her life, all alone with a man who wanted to violate her, to kill her. There would always, for the rest of their lives, be a permanent echo of that fear in her eyes.
And that was if she survived.
If she died…
How would Blue live, how would he even be able to breathe, with his heart ripped from his chest?
Would he spend the rest of his life haunted by the memory of Lucy’s eyes? Would he be forever looking for her smile on a crowded street? Would the scent of her subtle perfume make him turn, searching for her, despite knowing full well that she was gone?
Lucky wasn’t ever going to let himself be in that place where Blue was right now. He wasn’t ever getting married. Never getting married. It had been his mantra for years as he’d struggled with the concept of commitment, yet now it held special meaning.
He didn’t want to walk around feeling the fear that came with loving someone. He didn’t want that, damn it!
Except look at him.
He was reduced to this quivering bowl of jelly not simply out of empathy for Blue. A solid part of the emotion that had reduced him to these stupid tears was this god-awful fear that tightened his chest and closed up his throat.
The thought of Syd spending even one single second with the man who had brutalized Lucy made him crazy. The thought of her being beaten into a coma was terrifying.
But the thought of Syd walking out of his life, after they’d caught and convicted the San Felipe Rapist, was nearly as frightening.
He loved her.
No! Dear God, where had that thought come from? An overdose of whatever bizarre hormones his emotional outburst had unleashed.
Lucky drew in a deep, shuddering breath and pulled free from Syd’s arms. He didn’t love her. That was insane. He was Lucky O’Donlon. He didn’t do love.
He wiped his eyes, wiped his face, reached up for a napkin from the holder on the kitchen table and blew his nose. He lived up to his nickname by tossing the napkin directly into the trash container all the way on the other side of the room with perfect aim, then sat leaning back, exhausted, against the kitchen cabinets.
No, he didn’t love her. He was just a little confused, that’s all. And, just to be safe, until he was able to sleep off this confusion, it would be smart for him to put a little distance between them.
Now was definitely not the time to act on his raging physical attraction for this woman. As much as he would have given for the comfort of losing himself in some highly charged sex before slipping into mind-numbing sleep, he wasn’t going to do it.
Of course, there was also the not-so-small matter of his taking advantage of her.
Assuming that she’d even let him take advantage of her after he’d revealed just how completely pathetic a wimp he was.
Syd was silent as she sat beside him. He couldn’t bring himself even to glance at her as he attempted an apologetic smile. “Sheesh. I’m sorry about that.”
He sensed more than saw her turn so that she was sitting on her knees, facing him.
But then she touched him. Her fingers were cool against the heat of his face as she gently pushed his hair back from his forehead. He looked at her then—he couldn’t really avoid it, she’d leaned forward and her face was about two inches from his.
Her eyes were so warm, he had to close his, for fear he’d start crying all over again.
And with his eyes closed, he didn’t see her lean even farther forward. But she must have, because she kissed him.
She kissed him.
Here in his kitchen, where no one was watching, where no one could see.
It was such a sweet kiss, such a gentle kiss, her lips featherlight against his. It made his knees go even weaker, made him glad he was already sitting down.
She kissed him again, and this time he was ready for her. This time he kissed her, too, catching her mouth with his, careful to be as gentle, tasting the salt of his tears on her lips with the very tip of his tongue.
He heard her sigh and he kissed her again, longer this time, deeper. She opened her mouth to him, slowly, exquisitely meeting his tongue with hers, and Lucky threw it all away. Everything that he’d been trying to convince himself about putting distance between them went right out the window.
To hell with his confusion. He liked confusion. He loved confusion. If this was confusion, then damn it, give him more.
He reached for her, and she slid into his arms, her fingers in his hair, on his neck, on his back, her body so supple against him, her breasts so soft.
He’d kissed her before, but never like this. It had never been this real. It had never held this promise, this achingly pure glimpse of attainable paradise.
He kissed her again and again, slowly, lazily losing himself in the soft sweetness of her mouth, deliberately taking his time, purposely not pressuring her for anything more.
These kisses were enough. He wanted her, sure, but even if they only spent the next four hours just kissing, that would be good enough. Kissing her for four hours wouldn’t be taking advantage, would it?
But Syd was the one who pushed them over the line.
She moved onto his lap, straddling him. She started unfastening the buttons on his shirt. She kissed him possessively—long, hard, deep, hungry kisses that lifted him up and made him tumble with her into a breathless, passionate, turbulent place. A place where the entire world disappeared, where nothing existed but the softness of her eyes, the warmth of her body.
She pushed his shirt off his shoulders, still kissing him.
He reached to unbutton her Hawaiian shirt—his shirt—and was completely sidetracked by the softness of her body beneath the silk, by the way her breasts fit perfectly in his hands, by the desire-tightened tips of her nipples.
She moved forward on his lap, pressing the heat between her legs against his arousal, nearly making him weep all over again.
She wanted him as badly as he wanted her.
And still she kissed him, fierce kisses now, kisses that stole his breath from his lungs, that made his heart pound in his chest.
He gave up trying to unfasten her shirt and yanked it up and over her head.
She unfastened the black lace of her bra, and then her bare breasts were in his hands, in his mouth. He kissed her, tasted her, pulling back to gaze at her. Small but perfect, she was quite possibly the most exquisitely feminine woman he’d ever seen. Her shoulders were so smooth, so slender. Her collarbone and the base of her throat were works of art. And her breasts…what on earth had she been thinking to keep all that covered up all the time?
He pulled her close and kissed her again, his arms wrapped around all that amazing satiny skin, her breasts cool against his chest.
She reached between them for the buckle on his belt. It wasn’t easy to get open, but she had it unfastened and his zipper undone in a matter of seconds.
Lucky’s fingers fumbled at the button on her jeans, and she pulled out of his arms to kick off her sandals, to skim her pants down her legs. He did the same with his own pants, kicking off his shoes.
“Where do you keep your condoms?” she asked huskily.
“Bathroom. In the medicine cabinet.”
For some reason that surprised her. “Really?” she said. “Not in the top drawer of your bedside table, next to your water bed?”
He had to laugh. “I hate to break it to you, but I don’t have a water bed.”
“No lava lamp?”
He shook his head, grinning at her like an idiot. “And nary a single black light, either. My apologies. As a bachelor pad, it’s definitely lacking.”
She took it in stride. “I suppose not having a water bed is better than not having any condoms.” She was naked and so incredibly beautiful as she stood there, looking down at him. “As appealing an idea as it is to get it on right here on the kitchen floor, do you suppose if I went into your bedroom via a quick stop in the bathroom, I could convince you to follow me?”
The bedroom. The bedroom suddenly made this all so real. Lucky had to ask. “Syd, are you sure…?”
She gave him her ‘I don’t believe you’ look. “I’m standing here naked, Luke, about to fetch a condom from your bathroom so that you and I can have raw, screaming sex. If that’s not an unequivocal yes, I don’t know what is.”
“Raw, screaming sex,” he repeated, his mouth suddenly dry.
“Wildly passionate, deliriously orgasmic, exquisitely delicious, savage, pounding, rapture-inducing, sweaty, nasty, scorchingly ecstatic, heart-stopping, brain-meltingly raw, screaming sex.” She gave him a very innocent smile. “You up for it?”
Lucky could only nod yes. His vocal cords had seized up. But his legs were working.
Somehow she managed to beat him into his bedroom. She tossed the condom on his bedside table and knelt on his bed, her gaze skimming his nearly naked body. She looked rather pointedly at his briefs. “Are you planning to keep those on?”
“I didn’t want to scare you,” he said modestly.
She laughed, just as he’d hoped she would.
“Come here,” she said.
He did, and she kissed him as she pulled him back with her onto his bed.
The sensation of her naked body beneath his, of the silkiness of her legs intertwined with his was one he’d fantasized about often. Lucky had been with many, many women and found fantasy better than reality. But that wasn’t so with Syd. In his fantasies about her, he hadn’t even scratched the surface of how good it would feel to be with her this way, because it went so far beyond mere physical pleasure.
He loved the way her eyes lit up, the way she smiled at him as if making love to him was the most fun she’d ever had in her entire life.
He ran his hands down her back to the curve of her rear end. She was all his, and he laughed aloud as he touched her. He couldn’t get enough of touching her.
He parted her legs with gentle pressure from his thighs, and as he kissed her, he ran his hand from her breasts to her stomach and lower, cupping her, touching her lightly at first. She was so slick and hot, it was dizzying. She opened herself to him, lifting her hips and pushing his exploring fingers more deeply inside her.
“I think now would be a very good time for you to lose the briefs,” she breathed, tugging at his waistband.
He helped her peel them off, and she sighed her approval. He shut his eyes as her hand closed around him.
“I guess you don’t scare easily,” he murmured.
“I’m terrified,” she told him, lowering her head and kissing him.
Her mouth was warm and wet and so soft, and sheer pleasure made fireworks of color explode behind his closed eyes.
And Lucky couldn’t wait. He pulled her beneath him, cradling himself between her legs, his body so beyond ready for her that he was trembling.
Condom. Man, he’d nearly forgotten the condom. He reached for it on the bedside table, where she’d put it, tearing open the wrapper as he rolled off her and quickly covered himself.
But he didn’t get a chance to roll back on top of her, because Syd straddled him. With one smooth move, she drove him deeply inside her.
If he’d been prone to heart attacks, he’d be a dead man.
Fortunately, his heart was healthy despite the fact it was going at about four hundred beats per minute.
Wild, she’d said. Passionate. Delirious…
Lucky couldn’t tell where he ended and Syd began. They moved together, perfectly in sync, kissing, touching, breathing.
Delicious, savage, pounding…
He rolled them both over so that he was on top, so that he had control of their movement. He moved faster and harder and she liked it all, her body straining to meet him, to take him even more deeply inside her, her kisses feeding his fire.
He was slick with sweat, her body plastered exquisitely to him as they rolled once more, bringing Syd back on top. She pushed herself up so she sat astride him, her breasts glistening with perspiration, her damp hair clinging to her face as she threw her head back and laughed.
She looked down at him. “Is it just me, or is this amazingly, incredibly good?”
“Good,” he managed to say. “Amazingly…”
She was moving slowly now, and each stroke took him closer and closer to the edge.
She was smiling at him, and he reached up and touched her, her face, her throat, her breasts, and he felt the start of her release. She held his gaze and breathed his name on a low, throaty sob of air that was without a doubt the sexiest sound he’d ever heard.
He pulled her close and kissed her as his own release rocketed through him.
It was heart-stopping. It was brain-melting. It was rapture and ecstasy.
But it wasn’t sex.
It was making love, because, damn it, he was in love with her.