Carla Cassidy - Special Agent's Surrender

Where was Brittany now? And where were the other women who had disappeared? There had been some speculation that one of the women had simply left town, but the others had seemingly vanished into thin air.

She moved away from the picture and turned off the bedroom light. Instead of getting into bed she moved to the window. It was a perfectly clear night, the moon a gigantic silver orb in the sky.

Her thoughts were momentarily consumed by the man in the next room. What had happened to Jacob Grayson? What had brought him to this cabin, living like a hermit with dark shadows bruising his eyes?

Something had happened to Jacob, something terrible, and she couldn’t help but be intrigued. She also couldn’t help but remember those brief moments when he’d held her in his arms. It had felt so safe and yet had held just a little bit of dangerous attraction.

And somebody out there in the darkness tried to kill you tonight . Once again the reality of what had happened slammed into her.

As she finally climbed back into bed, she prayed whoever it was wouldn’t find her again.

Brittany Grayson awoke suddenly, her heart beating frantically. She remained unmoving on the cot, eyes open to the utter darkness that claimed the shed or whatever structure they were held in.

How many days had it been? How many weeks or months? She’d lost track of the time that she’d been held captive. There were now four of them, four women held in jail-like cells. The last one had been brought in earlier in the week. Casey Teasdale had hung over her captor’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes as he’d carried her in and placed her on the cot in the fourth cell.

“Almost time,” he said to Brittany as he’d locked the door to assure Casey’s imprisonment. The ski mask he wore effectively hid all his features, making it impossible for Brittany to identify him.

He gestured toward the empty cell. “One more and then the real fun begins, and I’ve got a special woman in mind to fill that one. A pretty blonde who is a bit feisty and managed to escape me once. She won’t escape the next time.”

He’d whistled as he’d strolled out of the shed, leaving her with a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the building. One more and then the real fun begins .

One woman taken was a crime. Two had been a pattern and three made him a serial offender, but four was a collection. The monster who held them was collecting them like fancy figurines and she had a feeling once his collection was complete he’d take great pleasure in smashing his figurines.

She sat up, unsurprised to hear Jennifer’s sobs. Jennifer Hightower had been crying off and on since the moment she’d arrived.

Say something to comfort her , a small voice whispered inside Brittany’s head. But, as she reached inside herself for the right words she realized she had no more comfort to give.

For the first time since she’d been kidnapped she was without hope, her very soul had been depleted.

Initially she’d been so sure that her brothers would find her. She knew they’d move heaven and earth to find out what had happened to her. But with each day that had passed without rescue, her fear had grown stronger and now it was screaming like a banshee in her head.

Enough time had passed since her disappearance that her brothers probably thought she was already dead. Maybe they’d even stopped looking for her. She lay back down on the cot and squeezed her eyes closed. No, they wouldn’t stop looking, but she’d lost the hope that they might find her in time.

One more and then the real fun begins .

She knew in her gut that the real fun meant death to all the women that were in the cells.

Dawn was just beginning to break when Jacob awakened. Instantly his head filled with a vision of Layla. When he’d burst into her room the night before in response to her screaming, he’d been ready to protect her with his life.

As he’d seen her in the bed, the sheet at her waist and the top of the sleek animal print nightgown barely covering her full breasts, a fist of desire had slammed into his gut. When she’d awakened and pulled him into an embrace, that fist had punched him over and over again as he’d held her in his arms.

He now got up from the recliner and threw a log and some kindling on the hot coals from the night before. Once the fire was blazing nicely, he decided a shower and a change in his thoughts were in order. Stepping into the bathroom he caught his reflection in the mirror above the sink.

You look like hell .

Layla was right. He did look like hell. He scraped a hand across his whiskered chin and then turned away from the mirror in disgust.

Half an hour later he left the bathroom clean-shaven and dressed in a freshly laundered navy turtleneck shirt and jeans. He made coffee, then carried a cup to the living room window and stared outside, his thoughts still on the woman who slept in the next room.

She was so full of life and seemed determined to bring him out of his isolation by talking him to death. She probably had dozens of men lined up waiting to spend time with her.

And somebody had tried to kill her.

He turned away from the window and wished he’d been paying more attention to what was going on in town. He knew his sister and somebody else had gone missing, but whenever his brothers had talked about it, he’d tuned it out, preferring his own drama to theirs. Now he wished he’d listened more carefully to them.

He glanced at the closed bedroom door and wondered how late she would sleep. Not that he cared. As long as she was sleeping she wasn’t talking.

She reminded him of Sarah and that was a time in his life he didn’t want to remember, a time when he’d had hopes and dreams and everything had seemed possible. When Sarah had walked away from him she’d stolen his dreams. The final case in his career had shattered his hope.

It was just before nine when Layla finally emerged. Clad in her nightgown and a short matching robe and her hair sleep-tousled around her head, she gave him a heavy-lidded glance and a quick smile. “Coffee, then shower,” she said as she disappeared into the kitchen.

His stomach muscles knotted with a tension he recognized. It surprised him that the first real emotion he’d felt for so long was lust. Her long slender legs had looked sleek and sexy beneath the short robe and he hadn’t forgotten how her full breasts had looked spilling over the top of her nightgown the night before.

He’d assumed she’d grab a cup of coffee and then join him in the living room, but as several minutes went by he realized she wasn’t coming out of the kitchen.

Leave her be , he told himself. After all, that’s what he wanted from her. He should be enjoying the fact that she was awake and not talking to him.

Before he realized what he was doing he was on his feet and headed into the kitchen. She sat at the table, her dainty fingers wrapped around a stone coffee mug and her eyelids still lazy with sleep.

“You’re obviously not a morning person,” he observed as he refilled his own coffee cup. He sat across from her at the table, wondering what in the hell he was doing.

Her face wore a slightly pouty expression that he found oddly charming. “Mornings should be banned,” she said, then lifted the coffee mug to her lips. She took a sip and eyed him over the rim of the cup. “Nice to see you have a chin beneath all that hair.”

He rubbed a hand across his smooth jaw. “It was starting to bug me,” he replied. The last thing he wanted her to think was that he’d shaved for her.

“You have a nice chin. You shouldn’t hide it under all those whiskers.” She took another sip of her coffee and then lowered the mug to the table. “Did you sleep well?”

“As well as I always do.” There was no way he’d share with her the kind of nightmare images that haunted his dreams. “What about you? Any more bad dreams?”

“No. Thankfully I slept like a baby once I finally went back to sleep. Is there a phone in the house? I left my cell phone at my office last night and I need to call Tom to see if he took care of the favorite man in my life,” she said.

“The man in your life?” He shouldn’t be surprised that she had a boyfriend. What did surprise him was the unexpected sharp edge of disappointment that stabbed him. What was that all about? He sure as hell didn’t want anything from her.

“Yeah, he’s sixteen pounds of calico fur and his name is Mr. Whiskers.”

“Any men of the human variety in your life?” he asked.

“Passing ships, not that I care.” She lifted her chin slightly as if in defense of whatever he might say. “What about you? Is there some woman pining for you back in Kansas City?”

“Nope, I was too devoted to my work to have any real relationships.” It was the easiest way to reply and it was somewhat the truth. After Sarah he hadn’t wanted anything that might somehow involve his heart. “I’m not a relationship kind of man.”

He could tell Layla wanted to ask him questions about what had happened in his work, about what had brought him back here, questions that he didn’t want to answer. He stood and motioned to the old harvest gold phone hanging on the wall. “Feel free to make whatever calls you need. Just remember you aren’t supposed to tell anyone you’re here.”

He got up and left her alone in the kitchen. He told himself it was so she could make her call in private, but the truth was something about Layla West had him off balance.

From the moment she’d breezed into the place the night before she’d brought a spark of life that had been missing. He felt the spark deep in his soul and he wasn’t sure whether he liked it or not.

For the last six months he’d been immersed in his self-imposed isolation, bitter with memories and drowning in guilt and remorse. He didn’t want to be rescued from himself by anyone.

He’d just gotten settled back into the recliner when she came out of the kitchen. “Mr. Whiskers is now in the care of Larry Norwood, so all is right in my world, and I’m going to take a shower.”

The minute she disappeared into the bathroom Jacob was visited by images of her naked body standing beneath a steamy spray of water. He closed his eyes as he imagined the slide of the soap down the hollow of her throat, across her delicate collarbone and then on to her full breasts.

He could easily imagine himself stepping into that spray of water next to her and taking her into his arms. A vision of their hot soapy bodies sliding together tensed all the muscles in his stomach.

He jerked out of the fantasy as his cell phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and saw from the caller ID that it was his brother, Tom.

“I just talked to Layla and she didn’t sound too worse for the wear so I figured I’d better check in with you and see how it’s going.”

“It’s going,” Jacob replied, irritated by where he’d allowed his fantasy to take him. “You have any clues as to who attacked her?” Hopefully the crime would be solved and Layla could get out of here.

“Nothing. I was hoping to get some DNA off the shoe she used to whack him with, but we’ll have to wait to see what comes back from the lab. Same thing with the hypodermic needle the perp dropped.”

Jacob felt as if he’d entered an alternate universe. Layla hadn’t mentioned anything to him about hitting her attacker with a shoe or a needle being involved. “Whoa, take it from the top. Layla didn’t tell me much about the attack on her.”