Rapid Fire by Jessica Andersen Page A

got a deal,” and took her
hand.
     
    The touch
of palm to palm was electric. Powerful. More damaging than it ought to have
been. His eyes darkened, the mismatched pupils widening until there was more
black than hazel, until they seemed to look straight into her.
     
    Her heart
lodged in her throat, and for a mad, crazy minute she wondered what he saw.
     
    Wondered
how many of the stories about him were true.
     
    But
before she could ask, he pulled away and strode to the door, expression
shuttered. “Bolt the door behind me. I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning and we
can get started.”
     
    And then
he was gone. His presence echoed in the air, on her skin, in the beat of her
heart. The neat condo seemed suddenly empty, though her brain teemed with
reawakened memories of the High Top Bluff Academy, where the female students
had followed Thorne with their eyes, then whispered when he was past.
     
    She set
the lock and chain with numb fingers, though she told herself she had nothing
to fear in her own home. Almost without conscious thought, she crossed the
living room and passed into the kitchen, which was separated from the rest of
the open first floor by a waist-high breakfast bar topped with green, blue and
orange mosaic tiling. Cabinets lined the other three sides of the small area,
some beginning at the parquet, others hanging above the yellow tiled
countertop. She opened the first of them and pulled out a glass bottle most of
the way filled with a lovely clear liquid.
     
    She
touched the bottle to her cheek and rolled the label across her lips.
     
    The
bottle was an old friend. Eleven years she’d had it. Eleven years it had gone
unopened in her cabinet, set front and center like a sentinel. A symbol.
     
    But not
anymore. Now the seal was broken, had been for months.
     
    She set
the bottle on the breakfast bar and dropped into one of the stools, so she
could fold her arms on the tile mosaic, press her cheek to her folded hands,
and stare at the label, where a handsome man stood in the full warrior’s
regalia of another time. His sandy hair was long and his muscles bulged across
his chest and calves. His eyes were shaded beneath the brim of a flipped-up
faceplate, but now, as always before, she swore he winked at her through
mismatched eyes.
     
    Want
kindled hard and hot in her belly, the want of a man, of a drink. Of oblivion.
     
    The phone
rang.
     
    Maya
screeched and jumped, shoving back from the breakfast bar and nearly tipping
the stool in her haste as she saw the bottle and realized what she’d nearly
done.
     
    She
grabbed the phone automatically, and licked her suddenly parched lips. “Hello?”
     
    “I saw
you climb up on the roof with him.”
     
    The
computer-modulated voice sent a sharp, ferocious slice of cold through her
midsection, where it tangled with the sick roil of temptation. She tightened
her fingers on the phone. “How did you get this number?”
     
    “That’s
not the right question,” the voice said, and tsked with disappointment. “I’ll
only answer the right question.”
     
    “What is
the right question?” she asked, heart pounding into her throat as she tried to
find her psych specialist’s calm where there was no peace to be had.
     
    “Not that
one,” he said, and for a moment she thought he’d hung up. But then his voice
said, “I saw him at your place this evening, too. Handsome fellow. It’s really
too bad.”
     
    She
cursed herself for playing along when she asked, “What’s too bad?”
     
    “Look
outside your window,” the voice said.
     
    And the
line went dead.
     
    Chapter
Five
    Thorne
jingled his keys in his hand as he crossed the underground garage, the noise
providing a metallic counterpoint to his footsteps. His personal ride—a
decommissioned police Interceptor that was neither cool nor sexy, but that went
like a bat out of hell and never quit on him—sat where he’d parked it, looking
undisturbed.
     
    His gut
tightened and a spurt of