Dark Secrets Read online

  “God, Grace, I want you.”

  She liked a man who could say what he wanted. She liked it even better that Nate Ryder wanted her.

  Arching her back even more, she pressed her breast into his touch. She wanted more of him. Needed more of him.

  “Oh, shit.” The words fell out of his mouth with a regret she didn’t want to hear.

  She felt him easing back and tightened her legs around him. But he was pulling them apart.

  Again? She stepped down, smoothing the stupid, pastel-pink polyester shirt. He hadn’t even managed to undo the bow and really touch her. Still, she’d been on fire for him. By the time she was on her own two feet again, her eyes had adjusted to the very dim light and she could see him running his hand through his hair. She could see his blue, blue eyes darting to the side. She didn’t even have to ask. She saw regret.

  Shit. So maybe Grace Lee wasn’t going to regret sleeping with Nate Ryder, but it was a blow to think that might run the other way.

  “We can’t do this,” he whispered the words into the dark. It sounded to her as though he regretted more that they couldn’t. But what did she know? She’d thought this was going to happen…twice…and look where it had gotten her. He whispered again. “We don’t know each other well enough for this.”

  Grace disagreed, but now was not the time to say so. She knew that he would put himself between her and a door when he didn’t know who was on the other side. She knew that she’d been angry at him when she stormed his office. He could have easily gotten angry right back and kicked her out, but he’d stopped and really listened. She knew he respected her skills and her work … and her ass. She knew he kissed like sin on a stick. There wasn’t much left that she needed to know.

  Her ego hurt, and she didn’t have it in her just say, “okay.” Instead, she quipped, “What? Are you afraid that I’m psychotic? Just a bad match? That I’ll stalk you and never let go until the end of my days?”

  There was a pause in the darkness. She heard only their breath, still running a little fast from the drugging touches and the high emotion. Grace almost didn’t catch what he said.

  “No, I’m starting to become afraid of just the opposite.”

  Her breath caught suddenly in her throat and her mouth formed a small “o” as she recited back what he’d said. Noooo. He couldn’t be right. She couldn’t have come out here to find her brother’s killer and fallen headfirst for Mr. Right.

  Grace lived in Georgia. She had a job in Georgia. Her parents were on the other side of the US from here. But she put a sudden stop to that kind of sexist thinking. What if he came with her? Back to the South. Her heart kicked as she thought about her parents meeting him. She thought, too, about heading back home without him and she felt the immediate sinking in her chest.

  “Grace?” He asked.

  She must have looked stunned. Her eyes darted up and caught his, their blue piercing in the darkness. She couldn’t speak. What he was suggesting was crazy. They hadn’t known each other long enough. But she found she couldn’t shake the feeling.

  His mouth sought hers in the darkness. This time he kept space between their bodies. The kiss was simple, seeking, deep rather than demanding. She kissed him back wondering for the first time in her life if this was her last first kiss.

  Her eyes fell closed. When she leaned into him, she hugged him this time, rather than trying to touch every inch of him and think about ways to tear off his clothes.

  Nate pulled back, just an inch. “Can you do that, Grace? Can you give us some time and see where this leads?”

  She didn’t nod or shrug or shake her head. “I don’t feel like I have a choice.”

  “I’m sorry. You do have a choice. You can even just walk away if that’s what you want. I mean, I’d hate that—"

  She was talking before he finished his sentence. “I can’t walk away. I have to stay. I don’t think I could live with anything else…”

  “Me either.” He kissed her again. His hand reached out and laced their fingers together. He tugged her down the hallway, still toward the bedroom, but clearly for an entirely different purpose this time. “We both need sleep and I’m not putting a wall between us. Not with Slater and his men out there.”

  Grace nodded. She wouldn’t want that either. She was sitting on the edge of the bed when Nate’s phone lit up as it buzzed.

  The noise wasn’t a problem, but the light might alert a neighbor. He scrambled to cover it and waited for the light to go away. Then he squatted low, hid behind the bed and turned it back on.

  From where she sat, she could see his frown. He pulled a slip of paper from his back pocket, the one with the numbers Masuka had given him.

  “Shit!”

  “What is it, Nate?” Grace felt the adrenaline hit her with the alarm in her chest.

  “It’s Masuka’s brother’s number.” Then he turned the phone toward her so she could read the message.

  “GET OUT!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Nate’s heart was racing in an entirely different way now.

  “Why would his brother say that?”

  Nate didn’t even look up at the sound of Grace’s voice. “It’s from Masuka. No one will likely trace the calls from his brother to me.”

  “Gotcha.” But she was already in motion. She’d rearranged the evidence earlier, pulling it from her suitcase and putting it in her bag. Nate had insisted they use bags from the closet, so he had an old leather duffle and she had a large purse ready to go. Supposedly it was for the morning, but after that text, he was glad they’d been ready.

  Both Grace’s evidence and the money were split between them. He pulled the food bag out of the fridge, never having unpacked it. He shoved the cold food down into the bag and hoped it didn’t go bad before they needed it.

  She was ready before he was, standing at the back door, her expression stern. Shit. That was not the way he wanted to remember her face. Though they didn’t have time for it, he pressed a quick kiss to her surprised lips and watched as her expression lit up. Then, just as fast, he pushed her to one side, drew his weapon, and slowly opened the back door.

  With her hand in his this time, he tugged her out the way they’d come in, through the backyard with the high fence. Out the back of the property into the adjoining woods. He took a moment to reach over the top of the gate and feel his way around latching it on the inside. He didn’t want to leave an arrow pointing to where they’d gone.

  They were into the woods, just far enough to be out of sight when he heard a car squeal to a stop on the street in front of the house. Surely it was someone coming for them. He kept pressing into the woods, tugging Grace behind him, as he struggled to make out the noises from the house behind them. There was yelling and pounding on the door. He heard neighbors shouting about the noise. That it was the middle of the night, though it was barely eleven-thirty.

  He heard the door give way as he felt the branch crack under his careless step. But he didn’t have time to be quiet. How long before the intruders found out the house was empty and came after them this way?

  There was no car at the house. There weren’t too many ways for him and Grace to have come in on foot. He picked up what was an already fast pace and pulled at Grace to keep up.

  In five minutes, they’d moved beyond hearing the noises from the house. But they weren’t far enough to escape the explosion that came another three minutes after that.

  “Holy shit!” Grace yelped and tried to turn around. There was light behind them. He could tell, though he didn’t look himself, that the house was going up in flames. Grace’s voice came to him, close to his ear. “What was that?”

  Normally, he wouldn’t tell someone he was protecting the whole truth, but something told him that’s exactly what he needed to do with Grace. She wouldn’t forgive him lies or even filtered comments. So he said, “Bomb or else they lit a fire under the water tank and blew it up. House is in flames now, though.”

  They’d got
ten out just in time.

  He stopped then, even though Grace was pushing him forward. He shook his head at her. “We’re safely away for right now. I want to get us out of town, but it’s time to stop running blindly and go in our best direction. I just need to figure out what that is.”

  His brain rapidly shuffled through ideas. The easiest would be coming out the other side of the woods and knocking on doors until he could find a car to borrow. But he couldn’t justify getting a citizen involved in what was rapidly becoming a deadly clusterfuck. “We’ll have to go out to a main road and see if we can flag a cab.”

  “Bus station?” she posed.

  He’d been thinking of a cab, but that would be more traceable. The bus would be slower but they might be able to blend in better. Cab to bus station it was then. “This way.”

  “At this hour?”

  He saw the skepticism on her face and laughed. “We aren’t Atlanta, but we do have cabs in the main part of town. Even at his hour. Come on.”

  Nate took stock. He was smiling. He was running from a crime lord with a bombed out house in his wake. They were carrying evidence that might incriminate someone in his own police department, and he had proof that something was off at the ME’s office. He couldn’t trust anyone at the precinct except Masuka and Zaragosa …and he was smiling.

  It took forty-five minutes on foot to come out where he wanted. Then they had another thirty minutes of walking the streets and back alleys to get to where they could catch a cab. Grace didn’t complain.

  “I don’t see cabs,” she said, looking up and down the empty streets they walked. “What about a ride service?”

  Nate shook his head, the fedora showing off the motion but hopefully hiding his face. Grace’s hair was tucked down the back of the woven, multicolor jacket they’d purloined from the late Mrs. Masuka’s closet. “Right now, my hope is that they can’t find us.”

  He’d even had them both turn off their phones. Burners were their first stop when they got to the next town. He continued, “A ride share app is a phone marker, the use of a credit card is another marker and more. And since we’ll call them maybe thirty minutes before they show up, Slater’s people can be waiting for us at the pickup.”

  “Do you really think they can hack the app? It’s a nationwide service, I would assume they’d have guards in place for that.”

  “I’m sure they do, but these people don’t have to hack the app, only your phone or mine.”

  “Well, shit.” She kept her hand tucked in his and he was disturbed by how right it felt there.

  “My thoughts exactly.” Though he wondered what she was thinking, mostly he wondered what she was thinking of him. What he’d said back at the Masuka house had been a pretty ballsy thing to say to a woman he barely knew, a woman he’d only kissed for the first time moments before. But the thing was, he felt like he did know her. And she’d shown surprise at his words, not fear.

  They turned the corner and he spotted a cab with lights on about a block down the street. Raising his hand, Nate let out a whistle and hailed it. Thankfully, the driver hightailed it up the road, grateful for the paying ride and Nate wished he could tip extra. But he couldn’t; they couldn’t afford to be remembered later.

  He gave an address two blocks away from the bus station and was grateful when Grace didn’t speak or even really show her face. He hadn’t coached her. She’d just seemed to pick it up.

  His heart thumped the whole ride. He couldn’t talk to Grace. He wanted to look out the window as he passed places and see if there was anything to notice. But looking out meant someone could look in. If anyone on the street recognized him, he might be in trouble. He wanted to say he was paranoid but, in the last twenty-four hours, he’d found out that his paranoia was not unwarranted.

  He used the ride as an excuse to look at Grace. He was losing it. If he’d made love to her back there like he’d wanted to, they might not have seen the text. But the near-death experience of having the house blow up behind them made Nate rethink that decision. He would take the next opportunity he had.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t come that night. They walked the two blocks to the bus station, then sat in the corner for an hour waiting for the bus to leave. His adrenaline kept him on high alert the whole time. Though he encouraged Grace to get some sleep while they waited and then on the nearly empty bus, she didn’t even bother trying.

  By the time they stumbled into a motel room two towns over, his feet hurt and the sun was coming up. He was about to start missing work for the next day and Grace was dragging.

  He’d left her alone outside the motel while he registered, trying to keep the two of them together from getting remembered. So after he bolted the door behind them and checked the window locks, he turned to find Grace on the bed, her borrowed bag on the table beside her, easily in reach. Her eyes were almost closed, but they rolled slowly and settled on him. She patted the bed beside her where she’d left a space for him. Then her eyelids sank shut and he could tell she was asleep.

  For a moment he just looked at her. She was on top of the covers, still in the pink bow shirt. Setting his own bag on the bedside table, he rolled in beside her, thinking that both of them shouldn’t sleep at the same time. He hadn’t removed his holster or weapon. It wouldn’t be comfortable when he woke up, but he wasn’t willing to take it off. He tried to stay awake, but it lasted all of five seconds before he was out cold.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Grace woke to sunlight filtering around the edges of curtains that were synthetic enough to be blackout curtains if they’d been big enough to reach the edges of the windows. Beside her, Nate slept on. His clothes were rumpled, and his jaw bore the unmistakable shade of stubble, making him look less reputable.

  Not wanting to wake him, she pulled out her bag and started looking through it for anything she could test, anything she could re-read and find more evidence. She’d wanted to stay in town, but Nate had been right. They’d had to get out and lay low for a few days.

  Though she’d asked him if he was going into the office this morning, he’d said no. But she still wasn’t sure if that was because he wasn’t expected in or if he was simply disappearing for a while. It was possible the entire Dark Falls PD would have a BOLO on him within the hour. And one for her, too.

  She was thinking about that as Nate woke up an hour later. Had this Slater X guy come to the hotel for her? Or had he followed Nate? If she had been the target, she was going to count that as good news. That would have to mean she was onto something. She’d known in her heart from the first minute she’d been told about Jimmy’s death that something wasn’t right about it. Slater X being on her tail was proof of it. Deadly proof, but proof nonetheless.

  Nate, it seemed, was one of those people who woke up suddenly, going from dead asleep to fully alert in a heartbeat. Grace was not. She cataloged that knowledge though she didn’t know why. Aside from a few heart-stopping words the night before, there was no reason to suspect that she’d ever wake up next to him again. But she wanted to.

  “Morning—" the word cut off as it left his lips as though he’d been going to say something more but felt it prudent to not say it.

  She smiled back at him as she watched his eyes scan the room and land on all the things she’d pulled out.

  He rolled, predator-like, onto his feet and come over to examine what she was doing. The bedspread on the second bed was hardly a good table, but it was what she had. “You’ve been working?”

  He asked and then he turned away quickly, digging through the bag he’d been carrying. As Grace watched, he produced a toothbrush and toothpaste. Masuka had packed a thorough set of supplies in that bag. Though they were on the run, Grace was well set, already packed for traveling. Nate had been blindsided, suddenly unable to return home, use his credit cards, or even his phone.

  He emerged a minute later and asked again, “So, what are you working on?”

  Grace turned to the material before her. “I was just
looking through everything, trying to see if maybe I could find something more useful.”

  “Did you?”

  She shook her head. She still had five blood samples and four types. She had photos of the rooms at the motel, photos of the Luminol and more. She had the report from Jimmy’s autopsy. She didn’t have anything new, but she at least had a direction to aim. “I need to get these samples to a lab. I have a place picked out. Brad gave me a name of a tech worker there who might be able to get us a rush order.”

  “Brad?”

  Did she detect jealousy in his tone? She couldn’t tell. “We work together at GBI. He’s my lab geek.”

  “Your lab geek?”

  Yes, she definitely detected jealousy. She might have said it that way just to check. “Yes, he’s a good friend.”

  “Friend?”

  Now she laughed. “Just a friend.”

  “Please tell me you’re single,” Nate implored, the look in his eye letting her know he was thinking about the living room floor in the house of a thousand doilies. Now she was, too.

  That mesmerizing blue made her bold. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “You’re not. Not anymore.” The answer came as fast as he closed the gap between them and suddenly she was in his arms and her mouth was on his and her blood was rushing through her system.

  When at last he set her back on her feet—when had he lifted her up?—Grace realized her head was swimming, and for the first time in her life she understood why people said they lost their minds. She’d dated. She’d dated men she liked and even two she’d eventually loved. But she’d never been pulled under by a force like this.

  She’d been with men she liked, but Grace thought maybe she’d finally found a man she could need. It was a stunning revelation. With a smile and a deep breath to mask her confusion, she gestured toward the bed. “I need to get the samples to a lab. Can we do that today?”