Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(120)

She sat in the truck, on her tingling, tenderized bottom and sneaked amazed peeks at him as he drove. God, he was handsome.

And he was her fiancé. He loved her. Wanted to be with her forever. It was like a dizzy dream, and she never wanted to wake up.



Nick was not happy with the situation as it stood.

Another fierce, heated argument in the hotel parking lot had gone nowhere. Becca was in danger and she clearly did not yet know what the f*ck she was dealing with, despite a good, long look on that goddamn island. But he was hog-tied, for the first time in his life, by the effort to meet her halfway. To act like a f*cking team player.

To act like a fiancé. A husband, even.

He couldn’t throw his weight around now. He wanted to marry her, for f*ck’s sake. She had the upper hand. It was making him nuts.

He’d had a really bad moment when she’d driven off in her rental car, waving at him. A stab of panic, like he might never see her again.

Ease down, bozo. He had to stay mellow. No panic, no freak-outs. Things were relatively mellow right now, and he had to be too, or risk scaring her off. He would not f*ck this up. Not now that he was almost convinced that something so good might actually be in his grasp. That he might have more going for him than he’d ever dreamed possible.

That amazing, sweet woman. With him. Every day. Wow.

Engaged. His heart practically jumped out of his chest whenever he thought about it, which was every other second, if not more. It was like the positive equivalent of pressing down on a bruise. Instead of pain, he got a rush of pleasure, a tangle of random erotic images, a tingle in his balls. He wanted a ring on her finger. To marry her quick, before she had a chance to come to her senses and change her mind.

Love. He’d thought it was something that happened when a guy’s glands went nuts. When hormones tragically overtook him. A dangerous chemical imbalance that led a man into life-destroying choices.

Well, his glands were nuts. He was overtaken by hormones, and he wanted to stay surrendered to them for all time, flat on his back, crying uncle, with Becca on top of him, riding him like a cowgirl. With that smile on her face that made him laugh and cry like a f*cking idiot.

A f*cking happy idiot.

He wondered what kind of ring she would choose. That thought was quickly followed by wondering how he was going to pay for it. Maybe he could sell one of his motorcycles. Or a couple of guns.

He put all that mental noise gently aside as he approached Diana Evans’s block. He circled the big, comfortable 1930s bungalow style house, surrounded by trees, rhododendrons and hydrangea bushes. A deep-set porch girdled the entire house.

Nick parked on the next block and assessed the other houses as he walked by. Not much activity. No kids playing, no one washing cars or trimming hedges. The approach to her house was screened by foliage.

He had a bunch of possible cover stories ready on the tip of his tongue as he climbed the stairs to the front porch. But when he knocked on the door, it gave way, swinging inward at the pressure, and he had a sudden, cold premonition that he wasn’t going to need them.

One last glance over his shoulder to make sure that no one was watching, and he pushed the door open with his knuckles and went in.

The place had been tossed. Completely trashed. He walked slowly through the wreckage, careful not to touch or disarrange anything.

Room after room, the same thing. The silence was absolute.

He climbed the stairs, his neck crawling and his stomach rolling.

He found her in the master bedroom, sprawled half-in, half-out of the adjoining bath. He stared down at her slender, twisted white form.

She was naked. The length of her hair, her coloring—she did look like Becca, superficially. Apart from the fact that she was very dead.

Her face was grotesquely distorted. She had been strangled. Her face was livid, her eyes bugged out, her tongue protruding. There were marks on her throat.

He kneeled down, for a better look, although the gesture was more ceremonial than anything else. She was stone cold, her skin already taking on a greenish tinge. He found a washcloth, not wanting to leave any accidental trace of himself and lifted her wrist. Stiff as a board.

So they had come for her yesterday sometime. He thought of the conversation with Mathes that Becca had recounted, how the man had bullied Diana into doing something that scared her to death. Of her distress later in the evening. The drinking, the vomiting, the weeping.

So the woman hadn’t been mean and cold enough to suit them. This was to her credit, but he would withhold his sympathy for now.

Greed had gotten her into this, after all. It was always greed.

He had absolutely no desire to involve the cops in his problems, but he didn’t have it in him to just leave Diana Evans’s body there, without announcing her death to anyone. She’d paid the ultimate price for whatever hellacious shit she’d gotten herself mixed up in. She deserved for her mortal remains to be treated with respect. At least.

He finished his sweep of all the rooms, just to be thorough, and ran down the stairs again. He picked up the phone using his own sleeve to cover his hand, and dialed 911.

The dispatcher answered the emergency line. “I’m at Number 5958 Whittaker Street,” he said. “A woman has been murdered here.”

He laid the phone down, leaving the line open, the dispatcher’s voice still squawking out high-pitched questions, demanding more info.

He walked out the door. Still no one around. He went swiftly to his truck and got the hell away from the place. He was feeling woozy, queasy and emotional. Him, Nick Ward, the so-called ice man. Christ, what was his problem? He fell in love, and turned suddenly to slop.