Lisa Jackson's Bentz And Montoya Bundle Part 170

"Maybe a little too pa.s.sionate."

"Didn't think that was possible."

One side of his mouth lifted into a knowing half grin. "Pa.s.sion can run hot and cold, Kris," he said. "When one person can't get what he or she wants, that pa.s.sion can turn into brutal frustration and anger. I figured I was better off without a woman who would tell me she loved me one second and try to kill me the next." His gaze touched hers. "I think that's all you need to know about my love life. So, spell it out. What do you want me to do? Copy all the personnel files, grade reports, loan applications, social security numbers of the girls?"

"That would be great."

"And illegal. Forget it."

"Okay, okay, so just look through the information and let me know if you see anything that looks suspicious, anything that links the girls besides their choice of cla.s.ses and the fact that their families gave new meaning to the word dysfunctional. You're a cop."

"And I could lose my job."

"I'm asking you to do a little research, not break the law."

His lips compressed as a waitress came by and asked if they wanted another round. Jay nodded and Kristi said, "Sure," then drank half her beer while still waiting for an answer. Finally she said, "If you find anything, we'll go straight to the police. Or the campus security and leave it to them."

"You'd do that?" he asked, skepticism tingeing his words. "Just hand over everything you've got?"

"Of course."

He snorted in disbelief.

"Come on, Jay, I'll play you a game of darts. If I win, you'll look through the records."

"And if I win?" he asked.

"You won't."

"So sure of yourself?" he asked, his eyebrows slamming together. "No dice. I want to know what the stakes are if I win."

The waitress came back with the new round, scooped up Jay's empty and left Kristi with a beer and a half in front of her. "Okay, Professor, Professor, if you win, then you name it." if you win, then you name it."

"That's pretty c.o.c.ky."

"Just confident." She finished the first beer and stood. One dartboard wasn't being used. She walked over to it and plucked one set of darts from their holder.

He slid out of his side of the booth and said conversationally, "I'll expect you to pay up when I win and, trust me, you're not going to like what I want as pay-back."

She felt a little thrill sizzle through her blood, ignored it, and concentrated on winning. She didn't like the stakes at all. G.o.d only knew what he would want from her.

But it didn't matter.

She wasn't about to lose this match.

CHAPTER 12.

As he sat in the driver's seat of his truck, the engine cooling and ticking in the parking lot of Kristi's apartment building, Jay decided he was a moron.

A bona fide, dyed-in-the-wool moron.

Kristi was gathering her bag together and reaching for the door handle. He'd lost at darts to her. Not once, but the best of two out of three, then three out of five. He'd only won one of their matches and he suspected that she'd intentionally mis-thrown so that his bruised masculinity wouldn't be completely destroyed. Though that wasn't really Kristi's way. For as long as he'd known her, she'd been a compet.i.tor to the nth degree. Throwing a match just wasn't her style.

He could have blamed it on the beer, but he'd only drunk three over the course of as many hours. She'd kept up with him and showed not one sign of having been affected at all by whatever alcohol existed in light beer.

So he'd lost the d.a.m.ned bet, but she'd agreed, albeit reluctantly, that he could take her home. So here they were in the parking lot of her apartment building, which was really an old three-storied clapboard house that showed influences of Greek Revival architecture with its ma.s.sive white columns and wide portico. However, even in the poor light cast from a security lamp, he could see that the building had lost much of its original l.u.s.ter. Far from its once grand beauty, the old home was now cut into individual units, the ma.s.sive front porch and veranda above now converted into walkways between the apartments.

A shame, he knew, but kept his mouth shut.

Kristi cast a glance in his direction. "Come on up," she suggested, opening the pa.s.senger door and stepping out of his truck. "I'm on the third floor."

Big mistake, he thought. he thought. No, make that impossibly huge mistake. No, make that impossibly huge mistake. And yet his hand was on the door handle as she slammed the pa.s.senger door shut. He stepped outside, pocketed his keys, and mentally chided himself for agreeing to this. And yet his hand was on the door handle as she slammed the pa.s.senger door shut. He stepped outside, pocketed his keys, and mentally chided himself for agreeing to this.

He comforted himself by thinking it might be a good idea to look around and ensure that she was safe. But that was just an excuse; he was rationalizing and he knew it. The truth of the matter was that he wanted to spend more time with her and, it seemed, she did with him.

He followed her past a row of overgrown crepe myrtles and some shrubs that looked like sa.s.safras. Under the portico, on the far end of the building beneath the porch light, a single guy was seated in a plastic chair smoking, the tip of his cigarette glowing in the night. He turned to watch them head up the steps but didn't say a word.

Kristi was already on the stairs and Jay followed.

Don't trust her. Sure, she might have grown up in the last nine years or so, but what was it Grandma used to say? "A leopard doesn't change his spots overnight." Or in this case nearly a decade.

She led him up two flights to the third floor, and with her a step or two ahead of him, he couldn't help but notice the way her jeans hugged her.

Holy Christ, she had a tight little a.s.s.

He remembered all too well and hated himself for it.

d.a.m.n it all to h.e.l.l.

He dragged his gaze away, tore his attention from her to the apartment building. On the third floor they reached a single unit tucked under the gables of the once-ma.s.sive home. Thankfully, his gaze was centered higher now, over her crown as she unlocked the door. It appeared that the uppermost story housed only one unit whereas the lower two floors had been cut into two or three units. There was less square footage up here as the roof angle was sharp, and he guessed that the third floor might have originally been servants' quarters.

From the landing at Kristi's door, he was able to gaze across the small backyard of the apartment house, then over the ma.s.sive stone wall surrounding All Saints. He could make out the tops of trees and the bell tower and steeply angled roof of the church. Other buildings, illuminated by watery street lamps, were visible through the trees. He recognized the portico of the library and a turret of Wagner House.

The lock clicked and Kristi shouldered open the door. "Come on in," she said, stepping over the threshold. "It's not much, but for the next year or two, if I can stomach dealing with the Calloways, it's home."

Still thinking this was a major mistake, he entered her apartment and closed the door behind him.

Kristi dropped her backpack onto a battered couch, stripped off her jacket, and hung it on a hook near the door. "Isn't this place kinda funky-cool?" she asked with obvious pride. The hardwood floors were beaten and scratched, full of character. A fireplace with painted peeling bricks dominated one wall and peekaboo windows peered from dormers. The kitchen was barely a counter with holes cut into it for a sink and stove. There was a smell of age to the building that the candles and incense she'd scattered around the rooms couldn't hide. Kristi's home looked like it needed the kind of facelift he was giving his cousins' bungalow, but she seemed to love it.

"Definitely funky. I'm not sure about the cool part."

Amus.e.m.e.nt glimmered in her eyes. "And what would you know about cool?"

"Touche, Miss Bentz." He smiled. She had a way of putting him into his place. "Cool is something I'm not into."

"Well..." She'd already dismissed the topic and was on to the purpose of why she'd invited him up. "Here's what I've got so far," she said, pointing to a table covered with papers, pictures, notes, and her laptop. A chipped cup held pens and a small bowl contained paper clips, tacks, pushpins, and a roll of tape. On the wall she'd tacked up posterboard that included pictures of the four missing girls. Beneath the photographs, she'd listed personal information that included physical and personality traits, family members, friends and boyfriends, employment information and schedules, addresses for the past five or six years, cla.s.ses taken, and various other information in the form of notes that looked like she'd printed them off her computer.

"Do you give this much attention to your studies?" he asked, noting the colored overlining on some of the information.

Kristi snorted. "Want a beer-? Oh, wait, I don't know that I have any. d.a.m.n." She walked to the kitchen alcove and peered into a narrow, short, obviously barren refrigerator. "Sorry. Didn't know I'd have company. All I've got is a hard lemonade. We could split it."

"I'm okay," he said as she extracted the drink, slamming the refrigerator door shut with her hip. She opened the bottle, poured it into two gla.s.ses, and found a bag of microwave popcorn in a cupboard. "I missed dinner," she explained, placing the bag onto the rotating platter.

She set the timer, switched the microwave on, and handed him a gla.s.s of lemonade that he didn't really want. Her shoulder brushed just above his elbow as she studied the intricate charts she'd created. He smelled a hint of perfume over the lingering scent of smoke from the bar. She took a swallow and said, "I've a.s.signed each of the missing girls a color-for example, Dionne, the first girl that we know went missing, is in yellow." All of Dionne's information had been highlighted by a neon yellow marker. "Then there's Tara, who, incidentally lived here-"

He jerked his gaze away from the charts to stare at her. "Here? In this apartment?" he asked, even though he saw the address listed in her information. He couldn't believe it.

She was nodding, her gaze turned to his. "This very unit."

"Are you kidding?" But he could see she was serious. Dead serious. "Jesus." She had all of his attention now and he didn't like what he was hearing. One of the girls who'd disappeared had lived in this very studio? What kind of weird twist of fate was that? He studied Tara's chart as if it were the key to salvation. He held up a hand. "She lived here right before she disappeared? Did you know that when you moved in?"

"No, it was just a strange coincidence." She set her drink on a side table, then reached onto the desk, grabbed a rubber band and twisted her hair onto her head before snapping the band in place.

Her hair was a messy knot, her neck long, and she looked d.a.m.ned good. He took a swallow from his own gla.s.s.

"I don't like this." He felt an uncomfortable anxiety creep through him as the kernels began to pop and the smell of hot b.u.t.ter filled the room. "If the girls were really abducted-"

"They had to have been." She nodded. Certain.

"And you're living living here." here."

"Hey, I didn't know, okay?" She gave him a hard look as the muted sound of corn popping increased. "But it doesn't matter anyway. I've changed the lock on the door and fixed the broken latches on the windows. I'm as safe here as anywhere. Maybe more so. If someone is really behind their"-she motioned to the pictures on the charts as the corn popped wildly-"disappearances, and I believe someone is, then he won't show up here again. Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same spot."

Jay shook his head. "We're not talking about some freak of nature."

"Aren't we?" she asked, her voice suddenly low.

Her tone arrested him. "What do you mean?"

She picked her words carefully. "I think whoever's behind the girls' disappearances is into something really dark. Evil."

"Evil?" he repeated.

She nodded and he saw her s.h.i.+ver. "I think we're dealing with something so vile and inherently depraved that it might not even be human."

"What are you saying, Kris?"

"I've been doing a lot of research. On vampires."

Jay's breath expelled on a laugh. "Okay. You had me going there."

"I'm dead serious."

"Oh, come on. You don't believe in all that pop-culture-fiction-romantic-"

"There's nothing romantic about this," she cut in. "And do I believe in vampires? Of course not. But some people do, and you know what? If a person believes something is true, then it is. At least for him or her."

"So whoever's behind the girls' disappearances believes in vampires. Is that what you're saying?"

"I can hear you laughing inside."

"I'm not. Honest."

"What I'm saying is: this guy believes in vampires, or maybe he believes he's he's a vampire. I don't know. But a person like that, Jay? Someone deluded or obsessed...They're dangerous. This guy is dangerous." a vampire. I don't know. But a person like that, Jay? Someone deluded or obsessed...They're dangerous. This guy is dangerous."

A whisper of something slid over Jay's skin. Fear? Premonition? "Maybe you've let your imagination carry you away," he said, but could hear the uncertainty in his own voice.

Kristi simply shook her head.

"Just listen to me, Lucretia," he said angrily from his end of the wireless connection. "I know that you're concerned. h.e.l.l, I even know that you've been trying to sort all this out, wrestling with your conscience, but you can't have it both ways. You either trust me or you don't."

"I trust you," she said, her heart thumping with dread as she imagined his handsome face, remembered their first kiss, a gentle, tender meeting of lips that had promised so much more. They'd been standing on the back porch of Wagner House, in the dusk while rain poured from the dark heavens. Some people claimed the house was haunted; she thought of it as magical. The only light had been the strands of tiny Christmas lights strung over the building. Each bulb seemed a miniature candle, glowing softly in the December night. She remembered the smell of the rain on his skin, the tingle of her nerves as he'd brushed his mouth over hers so tenderly.

She'd ached to give herself to him and he'd sensed it.

Hours later, in her room, they'd made love, over and over again, and she'd felt a blending of her soul to his.

And now he was ending it?

"I don't understand," she said weakly, and they both knew it was a lie.

"If I can't have absolute faith-"

"You mean power, right?" she said, finding some of her old s.p.u.n.k. "And obedience. Blind obedience."

"Faith," he said in a soft voice that reminded her of his breath whispering over her ears, his lips working magic on her naked body. How he could make her sweat and tingle all at once...

How willingly she'd lain beneath him, staring in wonder at the power of his body as he raised himself on his elbows and kissed her nipples. She'd watched as their bodies had moved, his c.o.c.k sliding in and out of her.

Sometimes he'd stop for a heartbeat, pull out and flip her over, only to take her from behind more forcefully. Often he would nip at her, biting a bit, leaving the sheerest of impressions upon her neck, or breast or b.u.t.tocks, and she'd spend the week being reminded of their long, sensual session.

"I said I trust you."

"But I can't trust you. That's the thing. We both know what you did, Lucretia. How you betrayed me. I know you were confused. Frightened. But you should have come to me instead of going outside the circle."

"Please."

"It's over." The words rang in her ear. Hard. Final.