But she wasn"t Katie. She was Lauren. Just as beautiful. Articulate, talented, her own person. He knew that. And she had come to mean everything in the world to him.
Life, love...salvation.
"I fell asleep," she said. "Then Jonas knocked...and Deanna heard him first." "I"m glad to see you"re doing so well," Mark told Deanna.
"We"ve got everything under control," Big Jim told him. "In case you want to shower." He looked pointedly at Mark"s grimy clothes.
The sun would come up soon, and they did seem to be fine, Mark thought. Apparently Jonas had been in the house for a while, and nothing dire had happened. And Big Jim was there-ready to rip him to pieces if he caused any trouble.
"All right. I"ll shower." He turned to Jonas. "Then you and I are going to have a talk."
"He"s hurt!" Deanna said again.
"He"ll be just fine by the time I"m out of the shower."
"I"ve got some clean clothes you can wear," Bobby told Jonas. "You might want to wash away some of the stuff on you, too. The blood and the, uh...whatever."
Mark nodded curtly to the lot of them and started up the stairs to his own room, where he stripped off his clothing, knowing he wouldn"t wash it or have it cleaned-it was going in the incinerator. He stepped into the shower.
As he turned the water, he heard the door to his room open. And he knew who it was.
He waited, standing beneath the hot spray, grateful for the sheets of water raining down on him. And the heat. The heat seemed to cure all the little aches and pains.
"Mark?"
He didn"t say anything, just watched her come closer.
"You"re angry at everyone, but you shouldn"t be. Jonas coming into the house...was my fault."
Finally he said, "He"s in now. Fault doesn"t matter."
"But I thought you believed Jonas was...good. Not evil."
He ignored her implied question and said, "If you"re going to torment me, you might as well get in here."
She hesitated, but a second later she stepped in beside him. The water seemed to heat up a notch. Hotter, harder. No. It wasn"t the water. It was his senses. It was her.
Suddenly he didn"t care about anything but the moment and having her there and safe.
"I"m sorry," she told him, her arms encircling his back. "Honestly, you don"t know how sorry I am," she whispered. She started to speak again, but he turned into her arms and found her lips with his own.
The soot that had covered him was gone. It had washed away down the drain like a bad dream. The heat was good, and Lauren"s skin was sleek against him. The soap smelled clean, like the woods, like pine. It was a pleasant, subtle, earthy scent.
Like the lithe, supple vitality and life of her in his arms, it was completely arousing. Like the feel of her flesh, so hot and slick, it was an aphrodisiac. The pressure of her body against his was almost unbearable. The taste of her was erotic. He buried himself against her, holding her, kissing her, caressing her curves, everything heightened by the time and place, the water, the heat and the steam. He felt her lips against his flesh, felt her move against him, touch him...G.o.d, she knew just how to move against him. Knew when to keep her touch light. Knew when to make it rough.
When and where to caress and kiss and torment... He lifted her against the tile. She held tight and settled onto him, like liquid steel as she arched and moved and rode to his urging, clinging to his shoulders, legs wrapped tightly around his waist. Her fingers stroked his shoulders and back. Her whispers and kisses fell against his throat and shoulders and earlobes, and when they had both climaxed to the music of the steam and their own heartbeats, she found his lips, desperately clinging while he eased her back to the ground.
And still the spray fell around them.
He held her soaked, glistening body, smoothing back her hair, looking into her eyes.
He almost said the words he had said once before, what seemed like eons ago....
I love you.
But he held back. Instead he cupped her chin and stared at the beauty of her face, the fine lines of her profile sculpted by the water.
"We have to be more careful than ever," he said softly.
She swallowed. "It"s my fault. And I was thinking...we should leave."
He felt as if someone were squeezing his heart, but when he spoke, it wasn"t because he was afraid. It was because he couldn"t bear to let her go.
He spoke the truth.
"It won"t help if you leave," he said wearily. "He"ll follow you."
Fear lit her eyes, but she blinked it away quickly. "All right. But maybe Heidi and Deanna should go."
Maybe they should, he thought. Except that once they were gone, there would be no Sean Canady, no Bobby Munro, no Stacey and no Maggie, no Big Jim, to keep them safe.
And now Jonas was in the mix, too.
"I"m afraid this has to be solved here, now, or else you"ll all be in danger for the rest of your lives," he told her.
And it was the truth.
She lowered her eyes and nodded, her hair teasing his chest.
"I"m not lying just to keep you here," he said softly.
"I know you"re not," she told him. "So where do we go from here?"
"We find him. So you"re never in danger again."
As he listened to the half-hysterical woman on the street, Sean Canady nodded politely and reminded himself that he had asked to be told when anything odd occurred.
"I"m telling you, the two of them fell from the fourth floor window," she said indignantly. "It"s broken. Even a blind man can see that."
The window was broken. That much was for sure. The hotel manager had told him that the room was registered to a Rene Smith. She had listed her address as New York City. Sean wasn"t from New York and hadn"t spent that much time in the Big Apple, but even he knew there was no such thing as 18th Avenue in Manhattan.
"They fell from the window-and got back up?" one of the detectives with Sean inquired skepticallly.
The woman, who was in her mid-sixties and wrapped in self-righteousness, looked at the officer and inhaled deeply. "I"m telling you what I saw," she said. "With these two eyes."
Sean lowered his head, wincing. The officer who"d spoken was Jerry Merchant. Night shift. Detective Jerry Merchant. This was really his case.
And he knew Jerry. Knew what Jerry was about to say.
"I"m sorry, but do you usually wear gla.s.ses?" Jerry asked politely.
Not unexpectedly, the woman exploded. "I wear gla.s.ses to read a menu, young man, not to see at a distance. I was right across the street. Over there. And I"m telling you that two people came flying out of that window. They hit the ground. Then the man took one of those construction beams and slammed it into the woman"s chest. I saw it."
"You mean like that beam lying in the pile of soot on the sidewalk over there?" Jerry asked.
The woman pursed her lips. "Harry was right next to me. He saw it, too. Didn"t you, Harry?" She gave her husband a light smack in the arm with her handbag.
"Uh..." Harry said, looking at his wife and wincing. "I was concentrating on Harrah"s-that"s where we were headed. It"s our fortieth anniversary, right, Sonia?" He attempted a weak smile. If he"d wanted a happy anniversary, he wasn"t getting it now.
"Harry! How could you have missed it?" she demanded angrily.
"Honey, if you say they fell from the window, I know they did," Harry said gallantly.
She sniffed. "They"re going to be pulling that girl out of the Mississippi, too, you mark my words."
"Now, now, since she would have been dead if a two by four had gone through her chest, she"d have to be here, wouldn"t she?
They won"t be pulling her out of the Mississippi. I"m sure of that," Jerry said.
Sean knew that Jerry was right, but he was also feeling a fair amount of sympathy for Sonia, who had undoubtedly seen it all exactly the way she was telling it.
Which was unnerving. It looked like Mark was right. Stephan had brought an army.
"You have to find that man and arrest him," Sonia said.
"You"ll describe him for us, right?" Jerry said.
He was humoring her, thank G.o.d, Sean thought.
"Of course. Get me one of those police artists," she said.
"Just give us an overall description, if you will, please. We"ll start from there," Jerry said.
At that point Sonia hesitated. Then she sighed. "I think he was tall and dark. That"s all I can really say."
The desk clerk chimed in at that point and told them the woman who had taken the room had come back with a man, but he hadn"t been dark. He"d been young, college age, and he"d looked like an all-American football hero. Sean left Jerry and the night crew to their work. Then he started pounding the streets, even though he was afraid he was already too late. Still, it never paid to give up before starting.
Thirty minutes later, he found a tall man with broad shoulders and sandy hair sitting alone in a nearby-and nearly empty-bar.
One proudly advertising that it never closed and had remained open throughout hurricane Katrina.
Sean took the seat next to the man, whose fingers were threaded through his hair as he stared into his untouched beer.
"Bad night?" Sean asked.
The guy started and stared at Sean, fear in his eyes. "Uh, yeah. Bad night." He picked up the beer and consumed nearly the whole gla.s.s in a single swallow.
"I"m a cop," Sean told him. "What happened."
"I didn"t do anything, I swear. I"m an honor student."
"Quarterback?" Sean said.
"Fullback."
"You any good?" Sean asked.
"You bet," he said proudly, seeming a little more at ease.
"Want to tell me about tonight?"
"You wouldn"t believe me."
"Tell me."
"Can a cop buy a guy a beers?"
Sean motioned to the bartender, who set another beer in front of the blond man. "This is it," he said, wincing. "I may never drink again. Worse than that, I may be afraid to get laid for the rest of my life."
"Tell me."
"She was gorgeous. We met in some bar. Started talking, drinking. She knew music...we danced. Drank some more. Then she told me she had a room. Next thing I know, she"s trying to rip my throat out."
"And then?"
"Some guy bursts into the room and they go at it-and I got the h.e.l.l out. She was scary crazy. She"d had her teeth sharpened or something. And she must have been on steroids, because she was stronger than any guy I ever met. Stronger than the entire football team."
"What about the guy who burst in on you? What happened to him?"
"I don"t know. Like I said, I got the h.e.l.l out. That"s the truth, I swear it. Please...that"s all I know. I"ve never run so fast in my life. Please, don"t arrest me. I wasn"t doing anything illegal."
"I"m not going to arrest you," Sean told him. The kid lowered his head. "After this bear, I"ll never drink again, and I"ll never pick up a strange girl again, either. I don"t care how good she looks."
Sean set a hand on the other man"s shoulder. "I wouldn"t go telling all your buds on the team about this, if I were you."
The young man looked at him with sheer horror. "Oh, G.o.d, no!"
"Good. Here"s my card. You have any more trouble, give me a call."
"Thanks." The kid offered his hand. "I"m Nate Herman. And...thanks. I don"t know who that guy was, but...he saved my life.
I"m telling you, she had fangs. And she wanted to rip my throat out."
"Why don"t you finish up that beer and I"ll drop you off at your dorm?"
When they left, the sun was coming up.