The Stroke of Midnight Page 15

  “Rudy...”

  “Was with Detective Dugan when I was attacked.” She paused, bit her lip and thought back. “But so were you, weren’t you? At least you were with them until after ten o’clock when Hannah came to find you.”

  For the umpteenth time her mind scrambled backward through the time frame. No way to be sure, unless Hannah could manage to remember the exact moment when she’d knocked on Riker’s door.

  “Devon.” Riker stared at her. “I’m not a murderer.”

  “A mur—” She blew at her bangs, impatient. “It’s Rudy I’m wondering about, not you.” Not right then at any rate. “You said I should suspect everyone. Did Rudy stay with Detective Dugan after you left?”

  A light of strain glimmered in Riker’s dark eyes. “I thought he did, but apparently they both left right after me.”

  “The desk sergeant told me Rudy was retired. Why is he helping you?”

  Riker waved that question aside. “It’s done sometimes, when the police are short-handed, or a certain officer has had experience with an ongoing case.”

  “So Rudy knows all about this particular case?” Her brow furrowed. “What about you? I know you’ve worked on it before, too.”

  A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I covered the first two victims. Ron Helmsford headed the next two investigations, Frank Boyd the last three.”

  “Who caught Coombes?”

  “He was arrested by a beat cop after the seventh murder. A witness saw him kneeling next to a woman’s body. He took a scarf from around her neck and stuck it in his pocket. He ran when he spotted the uniform, but not far.”

  Whether from wine or the jumble in her head, Devon’s temples began to throb. She massaged them with the index and middle fingers of both hands. “Is that one of the reasons you think Coombes didn’t do it? Because he took the scarf and all the others had been left at the scene?”

  “You knew that.” An admiring light sparked briefly in his eyes. Before she could react, he closed the gap between them and, moving so that he was behind her, replaced her fingers with his own. “I won’t let him kill you, Devon.” He turned her, tipping her head back until she stared straight into those compelling black-brown eyes. “I swear to you, I’ll stop the bastard.”

  Why on earth should she believe such a promise? Yet despite that damnable guard of his, contrary to reason and logic and a legion of uncertainties, Devon did. Unfortunately, Rudy might not feel the same way. Unlikely though it seemed to her, he could conceivably have used his beat-up motorcycle to shortcut his way to the radio station.

  Riker’s fingers continued to work their magic on her headache. In a few short moments, a lovely drowse embraced her. She hesitated, then allowed herself to lean into Riker’s warm, lithe body. “Did you talk to Andrew at all?”

  His breath stirred strands of silky hair near her cheek. “He says he stayed home all night, waiting for you to call.”

  “And Warren?”

  “Alma insists he came in twenty minutes after she called him.”

  “But she didn’t actually see him arrive.”

  “She claims she heard the front door.”

  “From her en suite bathroom?” Devon asked doubtfully. “Well, but Warren was working in New York during the time of the first two murders. That is a fact.”

  “It’s a short enough commute, Devon.”

  “For what purpose, though? Why would he come all the way to Philadelphia to find victims? New York’s bigger, easier to disappear in. Unless he killed seven to cover up one. But then, why come after me?”

  “No reason except insanity.” Removing his fingers from her temples, Riker slid them with exquisite slowness through the golden layers of her hair. Lifting them off her neck, he lowered his mouth to the tender nape.

  Devon melted as his lips brushed over her skin. A shiver of anticipation feathered along her spine. So many more questions to ask, dinner on the verge of burning, a clash of reason and desire in her head—and a fire building in the center of her that threatened to blot out every other sane thought.

  With her fingers, she caught long strands of his hair where they tumbled across her shoulder. Beautiful, dark hair, thick and healthy with just the right amount of curl.

  His mouth shifted to the delicate curve of her neck. Sensation rocked her, creating sharp pains of need deep in her belly.

  “I want you, Devon,” he said fiercely against her heated flesh. He fisted her hair, holding it back while his mouth traveled along the smooth line of her jaw. “I want you, but I have—I need to tell you something.”

  And she wanted to hear it. But not right then.

  Twisting in his embrace, she wrapped her arms around his neck and tugged. “Tell me later, okay?” She said it softly, but didn’t feel soft inside at all. She felt hot and needful, greedy to touch every part of him. She wanted to taste him, to feel him inside her, to experience the exquisite moment of climax. She wanted to understand him, to smash through the stone wall he’d erected around his heart. But for now she did not want to think about explanations.

  Freeing one hand, she groped for the controls to the stove. Let dinner wait all night. Let more insidious problems wait forever. This was a time for more beautiful things. For candles and Christmas and making love. And as Riker’s mouth came down hard and urgent on hers, Devon knew she would take the greatest pleasure in every sinfully wonderful moment....

  THE WORLD had gone black, cold. Empty. He no longer felt the tiniest prick of warmth on his skin. His heart might have been made of lead, so heavy had it grown in his chest.

  She would not be killed. God knew, he’d tried to end it. But he’d made all the wrong choices, it seemed, employed the worst possible tactics.

  The knife had been a mistake. His fist pounded the windowsill in a gesture of stupidity. Never rummage through items in storage. Not overly bright either to inject an overdose of drugs into a rat’s blackmailing body. All that had achieved was to create another corpse. Confusion came with it, true, but with confusion came questions, and he’d heard so many of those in the past ten years.

  Ah, but he was skilled, a seasoned professional whether people realized it or not. He’d survived the onslaught and then some.

  He stared blindly at the winking lights of the city. A junkie rat, gone. Bad move. Another gone missing. He sighed a little at that one. A better move, he decided. Where the knife had probably failed, this ploy might very well succeed. Still, one never really knew how a frame would bend. The best laid plans of mice and...

  His forehead hit the sill with a dull thump. He heard the moan that rolled out of his throat. So many dead, and all because she refused to stay in hell where she belonged. No absolution before death. Oh, yes, hell was her domain. Hadn’t he caught her red-handed in the middle of committing a sin?

  Keeping his head down, he groped for his rosary beads. Didn’t use them much these days, but old habits died painfully hard, especially ones so deeply rooted.

  Devon’s face took shape in his overtaxed mind, but it was her voice that brought the old anger billowing upward. Angela’s voice, unheard for a short but happy few years, only to return and taunt him again during his bleak period of mourning.

  No surprise in that. His mourning usurped by the Angel of the Morning. Angela had brimmed with gall, and an appallingly warped sense of fair play. Given her way, she’d punish him from now till Doomsday, past it if she thought she could.

  Unable to locate his beads, he raised his head six inches and blinked owlishly into the twinkling darkness. Must focus on goals. No more wallowing in the past. Work the frame; kill the woman; pray the cat’s ninth life truly would be its last.

  The rage sneaked up on him. Before it choked him, he wondered vaguely how many others had suffered because of the Angel’s traitorous nature. More, he imagined, than he could count in his head.

  The years blurred. There’d been a brief period of clarity, of thinking the past no longer mattered. And of course the career he’d chosen had been he
lpful. Handy, too, at times like this.

  Forcing himself to his feet, he regarded the telephone. His fingers twitched. He needed to deepen the frame and at the same time unnerve Devon. A spooked cat was always easier prey.

  He dialled with care and offered a cheerful, “Hi, there, Gina. You wouldn’t be alone, would you? What? Really? A judge! Moving up in the world, huh? Sure, I’ll call back.” His smile took on an aspect of malicious cunning. “You’ll like the job I have for you.”

  Her reply sent a bolt of annoyance through his brain. “What are you talking about—you’ve gone straight? Does your judge know that?” The annoyance turned to white-hot fury. “Don’t hand me that crap, Gina. It’s a small favor, hardly worth risking your newly acquired reputation on. One little performance, that’s all. I want you to help me tear the mask off one pretender and wipe out the other one at the same time. Never mind what I’m talking about. Don’t call me that!” He inhaled deeply, forced a pretence of calm, but the rage continued to gravel his voice. “Help me, Gina, and this’ll be the last time.” Picking up a pencil he sketched a gallows, complete with hangman’s noose. His lips curved as he sketched a shapely female body. “I promise you, it’ll be the very last time I ask for anything.”

  IT WAS WRONG and every instinct, every scrap of decency Jacob possessed hurled that very basic truth at him.

  “Devon, wait.” He didn’t entirely break the contact of their lips, couldn’t quite summon the will to capture her hands and drag them from his body. The reason being—and he’d be damned for this, he was sure—he didn’t really want to do either of those things. He wanted her, with an urgency that stunned him, or would have if he hadn’t already been so involved with her.

  Her nails dug into the small of his back. Stifling a groan, he splayed his fingers around her neck, drawing her up tight against him. He felt the heat in her body, the mounting edge of excitement His teeth nipped at her lips, her earlobes and her brow before returning to her mouth. Thought was impossible. He could no more tear himself away from her than he could sprout wings and fly. Mesmerized, he explored the dips and hollows of her mouth. The taste of her intoxicated him, left him giddy and bemused, craving more of her and slightly panicky because of it

  The silky layers of her hair belonged on an angel. He breathed in her scent, woodspice and winter roses, then, on a flicker of humor, marvelled that he could breathe at all considering how tightly wound up he was.

  She rubbed his tense shoulders with the heels of her hands. “You’re like a coiled spring, Riker.” Her sea-green eyes teased. “I promise not to bite or take unfair advantage of you.”

  “That isn’t quite the problem,” he muttered through gritted teeth.

  In the mellow light, one delicate brow arched. “Oh, is there a problem?”

  His answer stuck fast. It was there, but it got tangled up in the lump of desire lodged smack in the middle of his throat.

  “No,” was the best he could manage, and at that it was a rough sound. “No problem at all.”

  And no longer an ounce of resistance left with which to fight this uncontrolled attraction.

  Eyes wide but steady, Devon disentangled herself from his arms and, taking him by the hand, led him wordlessly out of the kitchen.

  Acoustic guitars and soft brass trailed them into the bedroom. The walls here were half-papered. Dropsheets still adorned the dresser, nightstand and window chair. Only the bed stood undraped, a four-poster queen-size covered with silver-blue sheets and an intricate patchwork quilt he’d picked up from an Amish roadside stand two summers ago.

  “It’s beautiful,” Devon exclaimed when she spied it. Her eyes sparkled as she ran her palms over the stitched surface. “It reminds me of water. An ocean or one of the Great Lakes. Mysterious and unfathomable.” Her gaze came up. “Like you.”

  He’d never have believed he would have difficulty swallowing, but there it was. His throat had seized. It remained to be seen if his vocal cords would function.

  He tried again, one last, almost desperate attempt to purge his guilty conscience. “Devon, I want to talk....” She met his eyes, and his voice faded into the oblivion where voices run when emotion floods in and washes away all trace of rational thought.

  Her head assumed that prideful tilt he’d seen before. She straightened, a true Christmas angel complete with halo courtesy of the Christmas-tree lights reflecting in the picture glass behind her. “I don’t want to talk, Riker. I want to know you. I want you to know me. I want us to make love.”

  Jacob’s eyes closed in defeat. No monk could endure this torture. He was no monk, and Devon was the only woman he wanted. The only woman he’d ever wanted this badly.

  He advanced on her, a lean and dangerous cat. Her scent filled his head with thoughts of lust and love, of clothes torn off in a frenzy of unleashed desire.

  But she deserved better than that. If he gave her nothing else tonight, he would at least give her tenderness. A night to remember when the truth finally came out.

  Because it would. Truth was inevitable in the end, no matter what his great-aunt claimed to the contrary. Jacob only hoped his end wouldn’t turn out to be of the fire and brimstone variety.

  On the other hand, he reflected, reaching out to stroke Devon’s cheek with his fingers, this woman just might be worth an eternity of fire.

  Letting a tinge of fatal amusement play on his lips, Jacob bent his head and delved into the flames of her enticing mouth.

  Chapter Twelve

  She felt as if she were tumbling through the clouds, through snowflakes—white-hot ones—and the silvery stars of night. In actual fact, a distant part of her realized that he was lowering her onto his bed, into the folds of his heavenly midnight-blue quilt.

  The pattern formed a series of illusive ripples and waves that immediately brought to mind the Atlantic crossing she’d made once with Hannah and her grandmother. But those were hazy recollections, a pleasant backdrop to the feel of Riker’s hands and mouth on her body.

  Desire...she’d never dreamed it could be so intense. It was like wanting a thing so badly that it hurt.

  He drew the wanting out, as much for his benefit, she sensed, as for hers. His eyes glittered in the colored wash of light. His facial muscles were strained, his body strung as tightly as a bow.

  With a patience born of innate gentleness, he brought her from her back to her knees. Then, keeping his eyes steady on hers, he loosened her T-shirt and pulled it slowly over her head.

  A smile as wistful as it was hungry lit his normally somber features when he stared at her. “You’re incredible, Devon. Your mind and your body.”

  It should have sounded trite, but oddly it didn’t. Shaking the hair from her eyes, Devon framed his face with her hands, hesitated for one brief moment, then pushed all traces of doubt aside and pulled his mouth onto hers. She loved to kiss him. Every kiss brought with it a new and wonderfully different rush of sensation, none of it tinged with doubt.

  Her hands skimmed downward. When they reached his waistband, she tugged at his black jersey shirt, eager to touch. The heat inside her would reduce her to a pile of ashes in a minute. Did he realize that, understand it?

  He dispensed with her jeans and his in the same manner that branded all of his actions. Swift, silent and without fuss.

  Beneath the ultra-thin barrier of white silk, Devon’s nipples hardened. Then, that barrier gone, and she gasped in shock as his mouth closed over one rosy peak.

  At the same time, his hand slid between her legs to cup her. Her head arched back, her hips forward. Her fingernails dug into the sleek flesh and bone of his shoulders.

  Beautiful, she thought, and for an instant felt as if she were soaring upward through a very warm mist.

  She heard a harp, a Celtic carol, something to do with the sea and time. Her head spun as sensation rocked her. His mouth was doing the most exquisite things to her breast. And his hand...

  A shudder, born of deep longing, swept up and outward from the center
of her. Her own hands slid over the smooth skin of his ribcage and around to where he throbbed hard and needful against her.

  So magnificent. So sleek and powerful. Her breath hitched as desire poured through her in fiery waves, an ocean tide complete with dark undercurrents and whispers from the depths of emotions barely realized that suddenly begged for release.

  The harp drew her out. Riker drew her in. Or rather his clever lovemaking drew from her a response she hadn’t known she could give. Her heart expanded, blocking her lungs until she was afraid she might suffocate.

  She squeezed her eyes closed as the first wave rolled over her. Disjointed sounds swam in her head. Quiet words murmured to her, a bird singing above the harp, water surging in to shore, crashing, then finishing with a teasing lap that beckoned her to follow it out

  “Open your eyes, Devon.” Riker slid a hand over her stomach. “I want to look at you. I want you to look at me.”

  She could try, Devon supposed, her mind colored with too many emotions to count.

  Easing her lashes up, she beheld him in front of her. His body was all golden sinews and clean fluid lines. The ends of his hair skimmed his shoulders. His chest rose and fell with each labored breath. The fact that he hadn’t shaved that day only added to the air of danger that surrounded him. Black Irish with some darker ancestral blood mixed in. Something older and marginally less civilized.

  He stared for the longest time, and with that penetrating stare excited feelings in Devon that made her ache for him. He swayed, caught himself, then, as if galvanized by her expression, captured her mouth again in a kiss so deep and wrenching that it sent shock waves through her entire system.

  More gently than her feverish mind craved, he pressed her onto the quilt. “Slowly, Devon,” he murmured. But slow was not her style—or her preference at this moment. She wanted the heat to scorch; she wanted to fly straight into the heart of it and not come out until every last bit of her energy was spent.