Lovers & Monsters, page 2
Her gaze drifted around Isaac’s tiny apartment, but her mind was fixated on her latest predicament. What was that old saying? Out of the frying pan into the fire?
To her it felt more like out of the fire into the flaming depths of hell.
She had plotted her escape from Damien so carefully two years ago when she laid in that hospital bed recovering from the last beating he had given her. She vowed to herself back then that she would never allow him to hurt her again. That she would kill him first.
And somehow she would have. That’s why she knew she had to just disappear. It was the only way to stay alive and out of prison. So she had planned her escape with meticulous care.
She had thought of everything, too. Taking on her grandmother’s maiden name of Stevens and cutting up all of her credit cards. Even ditching her car and purchasing a cheap used clunker with cash so that he couldn’t track her that way. She had zero presence on social media. She had even stayed away from jobs that utilized her teaching and computer programming skills.
How had he found her? How?
She needed something else to focus on, and fast. Working wasn’t an option because she knew there was no way she would be able to concentrate. She walked into the little kitchenette area of the apartment and began opening up cabinets beneath the sink, searching for cleaning supplies. Her search didn’t yield much, but she found a sponge, some old rags a small bucket, and a straw broom.
It would do.
Another search of the rest of the cabinets scored her a bottle of vinegar, which she added to some warm water in the bucket to make a cleaning solution.
She wandered around the small space sweeping, dusting, or scrubbing every surface she encountered. As she worked her thoughts gradually shifted from her own troubles onto Isaac.
In the grand scheme of things, they hadn’t known each other for very long, but he had quickly become the best friend she’d ever had. And to think it all stemmed from one wrong number phone call. Before they met in person, all of their phone conversations had been marathons where they would talk for hours. He made her laugh, and he made her think. He made her feel safe.
Then there was the giant little matter of sex.
In all the excitement of the morning — Rivas-Solis trying to kill her in the motel room; Isaac getting there just in time and shooting him; and then their discovery of Damien’s note and their frantic trip to the Rocky River police station — they hadn’t even attempted to talk about what had happened between them the night before.
Making love with him had been the single most sensual experience of Sidney’s life. The way Isaac had touched her with his hands and with his lips and with his tongue. As though she were a rare delicacy to be savored, the finest silk he’d ever felt. The look on his face had been one of wonder and reverence, like she were the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
She got it, of course.
The fact that he routinely avoided all physical contact because of his abilities and the pain that came with them. That look of wonder and reverence on his face was simply his astonishment at experiencing zero pain with her. In a very real sense, sex was all new to him, and so the experience had been heightened. That thought instantly brought her up short.
Had it been brand new to him?
Had she been his first?
No, that couldn’t be right. Could it? It certainly hadn’t felt like she’d been his first. He’d known exactly what to do with that long and hefty weapon he wielded, and Sidney was still feeling the effects of it this afternoon.
At least with him she was sore in all the right places.
Still, the way he had looked at her and touched her. It all combined to make her feel like the most desirable woman in the world, and no other man had ever made her feel that way before.
She continued her cleaning while she tried to sort out her feelings for Isaac, and in the process, she soon found herself inadvertently snooping.
Cleaning the living room brought her into contact with an old-fashioned photo album. The kind where you lift the film to place the pictures onto the sticky background and then smooth down the film over the photos. She paused in her cleaning for several minutes to leisurely flip through it.
Some of the pictures made her smile, seeing Isaac so young and carefree, playing with his older brother and the baby twins. But she noticed that the more pages she flipped, the more things changed. The older Isaac got in the photos the more sullen he seemed to become. He didn’t smile as much, and he just didn’t look happy. In many of the shots he was standing slightly apart from the others, hands folded in front of himself. As if he were trying desperately not to touch them or be touched by them.
Sidney’s eyebrows bunched together and she wondered about the shift in the little boy in the pictures. Isaac had shared some things about his childhood with her when they were back at that motel after the safe house had been raided. She knew he had been very young when his abilities first began to manifest, and she wondered if that had anything to do with the sad pictures.
She set the photo album aside and continued on her cleaning mission. Dusting the shelves, she came across a small decorative glass bowl that was full of colorful little coins. She picked up a green one and studied it. The number three was encased inside a triangle with the words unity, service and recovery on each side. Underneath the three was the word months.
It was a three-month sobriety chip.
Sidney picked up the little bowl and walked over to the coffee table and knelt before it. Then she carefully dumped the bowl’s contents out. Isaac had told her that he’d been sober for seven years, yet there were a whole lot more than seven chips here. She spread them out and examined each one of them, and then began to put them into some kind of order, like a puzzle.
There were many bronze chips that represented the years, but the majority of the chips were brightly colored, beginning with a white 24 hour chip.
She worked steadily in her task, and by the time she was done, she was surprised to discover that there were two complete sets. The first set began with a 24 hour chip and ended with a bronze eight-year chip. The second set again began with the 24 hour chip, but it only went to a bronze seven-year chip.
What had happened to send Isaac back to the bottle after eight long years of sobriety? He had obviously been doing so well before that.
Sidney frowned and her lips puckered into a rosette as she wondered about it. The Isaac she knew was so steady and confident in his sobriety, so at peace with it all. So whatever had sent him back to the bottle all those years ago must have been something major. She had no clue what that might have been, and really, it was none of her business. In fact, Isaac would probably get upset to find her looking over his things this way.
She suddenly felt guilty for snooping, and she scooped up the chips and returned them to their bowl. Then she placed the bowl back on its shelf. But the question nagged at her as she resumed her cleaning.
She was emptying out the vinegar and water solution from the bucket when she thought she heard a noise out in the hallway.
She jumped, clutching her chest.
Her heart did a very ungraceful swan dive down into her stomach, and she turned to stare at the door.
Silence.
Maybe she had only imagined it?
She took a cautious breath to try and make her heart slow down.
There!
There it was again. The noise.
She opened a drawer and grabbed a kitchen knife. Then she swallowed hard and quickly rushed to the door. She held her breath and looked out the small peephole half expecting to see Damien’s face.
What she saw was a woman juggling three bags of groceries and a little boy with a backpack. The woman struggled to unlock her apartment door and usher the child inside without dropping her groceries all over the hallway.
Once they had made their way inside and closed the door behind them, Sidney breathed a sigh of relief and leaned against the door.
“When is this going to end, Sidney?” she asked herself out loud. Talking to herself when she was frightened or worried was an old habit. “I’m tired of running and hiding.”
3
Lieutenant Gavin Hayes plopped a file on Detective Gerri Miller’s desk with a loud thwap.
“Where’s your partner?”
She looked up at him with brown eyes so deep and soulful that Gavin felt like he’d tripped and fallen into them. Gerri Miller had joined his homicide division just over two years ago, and at the time Gavin couldn’t help but take notice of her exotic beauty.
Of course, he’d been a married man at the time. A married man trying desperately to hang on to what was left of his failing marriage, dragging his wife to couples counseling when it was painfully obvious that Nadine had checked out a long time ago. His efforts had been too little, too late, and Nadine had just remarried barely a year after their divorce was final.
“Curt’s around here somewhere, sir. I think he went to the can.”
Gerri had one of those smooth and husky Kathleen Turner, Scarlett Johansson voices that was just naturally sexy.
Who the hell was he trying to fool?
Gavin thought everything about the woman was naturally sexy. She was tall and slender and moved with the gracefulness of a gazelle, and her near ebony skin was darker than even his own, fueling lust-filled fantasies of running his tongue all over it.
Gavin shook his head and forced himself to snap out of it. He was the woman’s immediate supervisor, for heaven sakes. Acting on those kinds of thoughts could end his career with whiplash speed.
“I saw your son in here this past weekend, sir. Home from college?”
Gerri smiled up at him and Gavin felt all rational thought flee from his mind. The blood drained dramatically from one head straight down to the other. The woman belonged on a catwalk modeling lingerie or swimwear or something a whole lot more provocative than a badge and gun.
“Uh, yeah. Trey was in town for his mother’s wedding this past weekend.”
“Oh boy. I’m sorry I brought it up. I didn’t realize that was happening. That must’ve been difficult for you, huh?”
Gavin grunted. “The divorce was final a year ago, and the marriage was over long before that. I wish her nothing but well.”
He said all the right things. It was easier than telling people the truth.
“Wow. That’s big of you, sir.”
“Well, I try to be a grown up every now and then.” He smiled at her. “It was difficult for Trey though. He took the divorce pretty hard.”
“Oh. Poor guy. He’s such a good-looking kid.”
Gavin chuckled. “Thanks.”
“He’s the spitting image of you.”
The laughter died in his throat and the smile froze on his face.
Did she just imply that she found him attractive?
Gavin looked at her only to find her gazing at him with what looked a hell of a lot like interest to him. Sure he’d been out of the dating game for more years than he’d ever been in it, but he still recognized when a woman was making advances.
That thought brought another, fast and furious, to his mind. He couldn’t recall exactly how old Gerri Miller was, but he knew that he was considerably older than her. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t like anything was ever going to come of this little flirtation or whatever it was that was happening here.
Her Mona Lisa smile ended with a pass of her tongue across full lips, drawing all of Gavin’s attention to her mouth. Then she looked down at her desk.
“Um, did you need to see Curt, boss?”
“What?”
“When you walked over you asked about Curt. Did you need to talk to him? I see he just went into the break room.”
She pointed in the general direction of the break room and the abrupt topic change jarred Gavin back into focus.
Yes, Gavin. Focus on your job. Not on Detective Miller’s lips!
“No. Well, yes. I mean… You two have a new case.”
He gestured to the file he’d dropped on her desk. Normally, he’d give a case of this magnitude to Isaac Taylor, but seeing as his best detective still hadn’t bothered to show up yet today he’d decided on Gerri Miller and her partner, Curt Dorn. Not that Taylor was out of line by being late. After all, Gavin had personally given Ike the morning off after dealing with killing crazy drug lord, Nacio Rivas-Solis, in a shoot out the night before at the motel where he’d been protecting the witness of a gangland-style shooting ordered by the drug kingpin.
“What is it?” Gerri opened up the file and began looking it over.
“Live shooter situation at a car wash downtown. Perps are gone but there are multiple bodies and multiple wounded. First responders are already there, and I need you and Dorn to get down there on the double.”
“Okay. We’re all over it.”
Gerri stood and grabbed her gun from the desk drawer, clipping the holster to her side just as Dorn finally joined them.
“What’s up? What are we all over?”
“Your partner will fill you in on the way. Get out of here.”
Gerri flashed a smile at him and they hurried off. Gavin watched her go and wondered what the hell had just happened. Was she actually flirting with him?
He stalked off to this office and went straight to the file cabinet where he kept the personnel files of each one of the homicide detectives under his supervision. Leafing through them he pulled out Gerri’s file and sifted through it until he found the information he was looking for.
When she’d joined his homicide division she was one of the youngest detectives he’d ever recruited at age twenty-six. That was two years ago.
“Practically young enough to be my daughter,” Gavin mumbled to himself. He shook his head and put the file, and his dirty mind, back where they both belonged.
He took a seat at his desk and laughed at himself for the foolish things he’d been thinking. The woman was closer to his son’s age than she was to his. Which meant that from now on he needed to keep his wayward desires under control where she was concerned. Not that he thought of himself as older than dirt or anything. At forty-four he was still considered young. Wasn’t he?
He rolled his eyes at himself and sighed. None of it mattered anyway. It wasn’t like he was in some all-fired hurry to start dating again. Hell, truth be told, he wasn’t sure he wanted to wade out into those shark infested waters ever again in life. To hell with dating. Maybe he’d just go the easy, no-strings-attached-one-night-stand route. Now that he was single he could do whatever and whoever he wanted.
Within reason, of course.
4
Isaac thought about Sidney all the way to the police station. Not about the trouble with her estranged husband or the fact that she was now holed up at his apartment. No, he was preoccupied with the things he’d seen when he’d wiped the tears from her cheeks back at his place.
The flash had been just like the others he’d seen when he touched her skin. It had come with absolutely no pain whatsoever. And the image. Well that had been the same too.
Her on a sun-drenched beach, looking happy and beautiful. Then she had smiled and taken his hand.
Yet another image of the two of them together. A flash of something that had never happened.
The future?
His head screamed that it couldn’t be. That’s not how this thing worked. At least, it had never worked like this before. He saw images from people’s pasts, or flashes of their present state. He did not see the future like some damn psychic. That wasn’t him.
But if that wasn’t what was happening, then what in the world could it be? He didn’t know how else to explain it, and he fretted over it the whole time he was driving. When he got to the station he knew he had to push the troubling thoughts aside and focus on the problem at hand.
He walked into the police station on a mission and headed straight for the detectives’ pit on the fourth floor. He spotted Lieutenant Gavin Hayes across the room in deep conversation with one of his fellow detectives and he hurried over toward him. The look the man shot his way might have made the other detectives quake in their shoes, but Isaac knew Hayes had a soft spot for him, no matter how intimidating he tried to be.
“Well, it’s so nice of you to join us today, Detective Taylor. I expected you in here a couple of hours ago.”
Isaac raised his hands in surrender.
“I know. I’m sorry, sir. But Sidney and I ran into a little trouble when I finally got her back to her place after breakfast.”
After the ordeal back at the motel room where Nacio Rivas-Solis had tried yet again to kill Sidney but wound up dead himself, Hayes had been kind enough to allow Isaac a couple of hours to get Sidney settled back in at home before coming in to tackle his paperwork over the shooting. Isaac had been grateful, but now Hayes was frowning at him, looking more ferocious than Isaac knew him to be.
“Not more of Rivas-Solis’ men waiting for you?”
It was a fair question, but not one Isaac was willing to answer out in the open like this. Not with a possible snitch still running loose inside their department. He glanced around the detectives section and then looked at Hayes again.
“I think I would rather not talk out in the open, Lieu. You got a sec?”
Hayes shot a glance around the room himself. “Yeah. In my office.”
Isaac followed his boss into the office and closed the door behind them.
“What’s this about, Taylor? Does it have something to do with our leak problem?” Hayes asked as he folded his arms across his chest and took a seat on the edge of his large desk.
Isaac took a deep breath and then proceeded to tell Hayes everything — all about Sidney’s past with her violent estranged husband, and what happened today when he took her home.
Hayes held up a hand. “So you’re telling me that on top of the hell she just went through with that mad drug lord trying to hunt her down, she’s also in hiding from an abusive spouse?”
