Into the Night(42)

Then his release hit and the surge of his body in hers sent off more explosions of pleasure deep inside of her. She held him tight, holding on with all her strength. When the pleasure ended, when her body was so wrung out that she could barely lift her head, she drew in a gasping breath and her eyes opened.

His stare was locked on her. She could feel the hot weight of it in the dark.

“You’re mine, Macey.” His words had never seemed rougher or more possessive.

She wasn’t his, of course. They were just...friends. Doing the whole with-benefits thing. Partners with benefits. But she didn’t say anything because maybe right then she was thinking the same thing.

You’re mine, Bowen.

If only it were true.

He carried her to the bed. Went to the bathroom. Ditched his condom. She pulled the covers up to her chin as she glanced at the light streaming from the bathroom. He’d leave now. Go back to his bed.

Or maybe...maybe he’d stay. Until dawn came. And then the barriers would be put in place again.

The light in the bathroom turned off. Darkness surrounded her again. His shadowy form moved toward the bed and Macey found herself tensing.

He slid into the bed with her and his arms reached out to pull her close. He was warm and strong in the dark, and she slid against him. It was strange, but she could have sworn she fit against him.

Silly.

He didn’t speak and the silence stretched between them. Finally, she had to say, “I’m sorry you had to kill him.”

His fingers were stroking her arm, a light caress that she wasn’t even sure he knew that he was making.

“Taking a life is never easy.”

He kept stroking her. “You’ve never killed, Macey.”

No, actually, she hadn’t. She’d shot a suspect once in the line of duty, but he hadn’t died. And as for Daniel...

I wanted to kill him. “I could have aimed for his knee. I could have aimed for his hand. I could have shot the knife right out of his fingers.”

She shifted her body. “Bowen?”

“When you pull the trigger, time doesn’t go faster. It goes slower. A million thoughts fill your head. All of those thoughts were there, crowding in on me. Where to shoot, where to hit him.”

“He was coming at you with a knife. You didn’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice, we just don’t want to admit it.”

No, no, he was wrong. She sat up in bed, pulling the sheet with her. “You’re letting him get in your head.” Him. The twisted perp who seemed to get off on taunting Bowen.

His fingers slid down her arm.

“You’re letting the perp get to you, Bowen. That’s not the way it works. We get to him. We break him. We don’t let him play mind games with us.” And she knew that guy out there was fixating on Bowen. The way he kept calling him, taunting him.

“He knows about us, Macey.”

Her lips parted.

“He left that picture of you there on the screen deliberately. Sending a message to me. Just like when he said you’d be cut by a knife again.”

And she realized—he wasn’t just stroking her arm. She’d been so lost in him that she hadn’t even noticed... A shudder slid over her.

Bowen was stroking her scars. Lightly caressing them.

“It’s not going to happen, though,” he promised her. “I’ll do better next time. My guard won’t lower. He won’t hurt you.”

“I’m a federal agent. I know how to shoot to kill, too.” Just because she hadn’t done it yet...that didn’t mean she wouldn’t. “For the record, I don’t plan to let him hurt you, either. In case you missed it, you’re the one the guy is taunting. You’re the one he’s challenging. The focus is on you, not me. You’re the one in this guy’s sights.”

He brought her wrist to his mouth and pressed a kiss to the raised skin. “He wants someone to appreciate what he’s doing. He thinks I will. He thinks I’ll understand.”

“You’re not like him,” she whispered.

“Don’t be too sure...”

*

HE HAD A murder board in his conference room. A freaking murder board. Police Captain Henry Harwell stared at the images that had been tacked to that board. The missing...the remains that had already been dug up. Fucking hell. The FBI agents had set up that board.

Bowen Murphy had first hung up the board earlier in the day, when he’d been digging into the missing persons’ reports. When he’d started to put together the puzzle pieces and realized that a hunter had been hiding in Gatlinburg for a very long time.

And I never saw him coming.

“Um, Captain?”

He exhaled on a long sigh. It was close to three a.m., and he still had people coming to him. What did a guy have to do in order to just get quiet? To get peace? But he rolled back his shoulders and turned toward the open door.

Amelia Lang stood there, her hair tucked behind her right ear, her expression hesitant. The FBI had brought her in—a forensic geophysicist who’d found bodies buried beneath the dirt with some kind of technical shit that he didn’t fully understand.

“I wanted to let you know that I’ll be back at the cabin with the team at eight.” Her voice was crisp and her golden gaze was direct. “I just finished up a few files here and I’m leaving for the night.”