Making him crave more.
“Next time.” His words were whispered against her lips. “I’ll…go easy…” He’d try to. He’d seduce. He’d—
“Why?” Her head tilted back. Her hips surged against him, riding the hard arousal thrusting against her. “I like you this way.”
His control shattered.
If she liked this…
He’d make her love what came next.
His hand pushed between her spread legs. Felt the dampness already coating her panties. Then he ripped them away. The rip of fabric seemed too loud in the darkness.
It made him even wilder for her.
Kyle pushed his way down her body. Spread her legs wide. Knew he had to taste before he took.
When he put his mouth on her, Cadence’s body arched. He locked a hand around her hips, stilling her and forcing her closer to his mouth.
He’d thought her mouth was heaven. Her sex—yes. Even better. Even. Better.
He licked and wanted more. She was gasping now, pushing her hips against him, and he wasn’t stopping. He wanted deeper. Wanted more.
Wanted everything Cadence had. Everything she’d ever have.
Her nails sank into his shoulders. He liked the sting of pain.
He liked it even better when she came against his mouth, gasping his name.
Tasting her pleasure was the best rush he’d had in years.
When the trembles eased from her body, he pulled back. Gazed up at her.
Her eyes were wide, gleaming. Still hungry.
Staring at him, she lifted her shirt. Tossed it aside.
Her nipples were tight. Pink. So perfect.
He slid between her legs. He still had on his jeans, the fabric stopping him from sliding deep into her.
She reached for him.
He caught her hands. Pinned them on the bed.
He liked the faster pants of her breath.
He hadn’t expected this from her. Cadence liked it when he took her control away. It turned her on. Anything that turned her on—
He loved it.
His mouth took her breast. He let her feel the score of his teeth. The blood seemed to be boiling in his veins, and he knew he couldn’t wait longer to take her.
He’d waited too long already. His tongue licked. Sucked.
“Kyle!”
His name was breathless, desperate.
He yanked for the protection he’d shoved in his back pocket after he’d jumped from the shower. He ditched his jeans and had his cock at the entrance of her body in seconds.
All that wet heat. Just waiting for him.
He held his body still, even though all he wanted was so close. “No going back,” he told her. The words were a promise. A warning.
He thrust into her and was lost.
Control was gone. Thought was gone. There was only Cadence. Beneath him. Around him.
He grabbed her silken legs, opened her wider. Thrust deeper.
His heart thundered. In and out, in and out.
Her sex squeezed him. Tight. Heaven. Too good.
He couldn’t last.
Couldn’t—
Cadence cried out beneath him.
He wanted to roar.
Instead, his mouth took hers as he erupted, a flood of release stronger than anything he’d ever felt before.
A release that left him gasping, desperate—and ready for fucking more.
More was what he’d have.
Kyle wasn’t going to stop, not until he’d taken everything Cadence had to give him.
Every. Damn. Thing.
The ringing of a phone woke Kyle. He stretched and realized he wasn’t alone.
Cadence was curled next to him.
Naked, tangled in the sheets with him. Exactly where she was supposed to be.
The phone rang again. The sound was faint, drifting to him through the connecting door he’d left open.
Carefully, he slid from the bed. Cadence kept sleeping.
He stalked toward his room. Found the phone he’d left on the bed. A quick glance showed that the call’s ID had been blocked. What the hell?
Maybe it was James. Had to be.
Who else would be calling at four thirty in the morning?
“McKenzie,” he said, answering the call even as his body tensed. He knew a call at this hour couldn’t be bringing good news.
A whisper came over the line. A click of sound.
“Kyle…” The voice was distorted, far away.
His brows pulled low. “This is Agent McKenzie.”
“Kyle, save me.”
His grip almost shattered the phone. “Who is this?”
“Help me!” The voice had risen to a scream. “Kyle! Kyle! I want to go home!”
Ice crystallized in his veins. Staticky, distorted, but he knew that voice. There were some voices a man never forgot. “Maria?”
She was screaming on the phone now, her words no longer intelligible.
“Maria!” he shouted.
But she didn’t answer. There was only silence on the other end of the phone.
“Maria?” His voice was low, lost, even to his own ears.
There was no answer. The line was dead.
Frantic, he tried to call the number back. It just rang and rang and rang.
“Kyle?”
His head whipped up. Cadence, wearing her FBI T-shirt again, stood in the doorway. She turned on the lights.
He could see the worry on her face as she asked, “What’s happening?”
“She’s not dead.” His voice was a rasp.
Cadence stepped toward him. “Who isn’t dead?” There was a strange note of hesitation in her voice.
“Maria.” He had to get a trace on the call. Had to pinpoint the location. “It was Maria’s voice on the phone.” He was staring into Cadence’s eyes when he said his sister’s name.
Shock rippled across her face even as she shook her head. “Kyle, that’s not possible.”
She still didn’t have hope. Even after they’d saved Lily, she still couldn’t hope.
“I know my sister’s voice.” She’d called him. She was hurting. Maria needed him. “She’s alive.”
“He’ll be coming soon, Maria,” he whispered as he tossed the phone into the woods. It would be found, eventually. “But the agent won’t find you.”
Maria had been his too long. There was no going back for her.
He slid into the driver’s seat. Turned up the music. Music silenced the screams and he hated the sound of screams. You could drive right through town, your radio blaring, a girl in your trunk screaming, and no one would hear.
They’d just pay attention to the music.
Not the screams.
It shouldn’t have been time to find new prey. Not so soon. Hunting now wasn’t right.
Lily should have stayed with him longer.
As long as Maria had stayed.
He turned up the radio. The driving sound seemed to beat in his blood. Loud, so loud…
Not like in the caves. When he had silence with his girls. That perfect quiet.
Soon, he’d have his new prey within his sights.
The agents would be so fucking lost, so busy, they’d never even notice his attack.
And too late, they would understand just how powerful he was. He’d outsmarted the FBI. He’d hunted for years…and they’d only discovered the truth…
When I let them.
He was the one who should get the glory. He was the one with the power. It was time everyone realized that fact.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The burner phone was lifted and carefully placed in the evidence bag. Early morning sunlight drifted through the trees, glinting like the fingers of a ghost in the woods.
The phone had been ditched just twenty feet from Death Falls.
Cadence shook her head. Twenty feet. After their discovery of the entrance to the caverns—the entrance behind the roaring water—guards had been stationed at the perimeter. Someo
ne should have seen something when the phone was ditched.
No one had.
“He wanted me to know she was still alive.” Kyle stared down at the evidence bag. “The bastard has had her, all this time.”
Even in the rising heat, Cadence shivered. She didn’t think Kyle was right about what was happening in Paradox. Fifteen years was a long time to hold a victim prisoner. She’d heard of it happening, just a few times, but the perp didn’t usually take other prey when he had a living victim.
He only took a new woman when the other victim died.
The thirteen tally marks had been carved on the wall for a reason. “Kyle, are you absolutely sure it was your sister’s voice?” She wasn’t sure. She’d just caught the end of the call. Heard his shout. Seen his fear.
Kyle leveled his stare at her. The same stare had burned with passion hours before, but now, it was almost like she was looking into the eyes of a stranger.
Part of him had shut down. He was too focused now.
Obsessed.
With a ghost.
“I’m sure,” he said, certainty cracking the words.
Cadence shook her head, even as she handed the evidence bag to the tech next to her. With word of Lily’s rescue, reinforcements had arrived courtesy of the FBI and the task force that was forming to capture Lily’s abductor.
Lily’s abductor—the man they suspected had taken and killed eleven other women.
“It’s been fifteen years.” She tried to keep her voice emotionless. “You said yourself the connection wasn’t good. It could have been some kind of recording, a trick to make you believe you were talking to your sister.”
“She called my name.” A muscle jerked along his jaw. “She was begging for me to help her. To take her home.”
“Maybe that’s what he told her to do. Maybe…” It had to be said. “Maybe he’s already got another victim. Maybe he made her call you, got her to pretend to be Maria.”
Kyle stalked toward her, closing the small distance. “Why?”
“So you’d lose your focus. So you’d make this investigation just about her.” It hurt to tell him these things, but they had a case to work. Eleven cases. “So you wouldn’t be able to do your job.”
When emotions were involved, the job always suffered. And the obsession Kyle had? You can’t catch the killer when you’re like this.
Their boss and Dani were both flying down to Paradox. Geologists and an excavation team were already trying to make their way into the caverns.
This killer hadn’t just splashed his way into the media. He’d exploded.
Paradox was about to come under a serious deluge of nonstop attention.
“I can do my job,” he gritted. “I’ve always done it.”
She knew he’d never stopped looking for Maria. That was who Kyle was. If their positions were reversed…
I’d do the same thing.
Which made it even harder for her to say, “I think he’s screwing with you.” Blunt words.
He shook his head. “He took her.”
“Yes, he did.” She believed it with every fiber of her being. There were too many signs pointing to the killer. Lily’s abductor and the man who’d taken Maria—Cadence definitely thought they were one and the same. “When Lily wakes up, she’s going to give us a description of the perp. We’re going to post his picture everywhere. We’re going to track him.” She waved behind her, to the caves. “They’re going to get inside that sick freak’s torture chamber.” What was left of it. “We’re going to find a fingerprint. DNA. Something we can use in there. We are going to get him.”
“Maria—”
“If we get him, then we find out what happened to Maria.”
Kyle stared at her. No, glared. “I know her voice.”
She licked her lips, hurting for him.
“I never forgot her voice.” He glanced away, as if he couldn’t meet her stare any longer. “She was crying, then she was screaming.”
Cadence had to touch him. “Kyle.” Her fingers curled around his arm. It wasn’t enough.
“I should have been with her. If I’d gone on the trip like I was supposed to, she’d be with me now.”
“You can’t change the past.” Hadn’t she wished her own past would be different, again and again? “You didn’t hurt her.”
“I could have saved her. I didn’t.” He pulled away.
“We can’t save the world.” He should have known that truth by now.
But he kept walking, heading toward the excavation team.
“Sometimes,” Cadence whispered after him as she felt the ghosts from her own past slide around her, “we can’t even save ourselves.”
The agent had taken the bait.
You won’t find her.
It must be absolute hell to spend so much time searching for what he’d never have again.
A life lived like that might just drive a man to the edge of sanity.
He would enjoy watching Kyle McKenzie fall into madness. The great agent. The hunter of killers. You’re nothing compared to me.
The bastard deserved to suffer.
And you will.
He planned to make Kyle McKenzie suffer more than any other man had.
McKenzie had started them all down this path.
McKenzie’s name was the one that had ripped through too many nights. Maria’s big brother. The hero.
You think you’ve lost everything? Not even close. Not yet. But you will.
It was time to prove that McKenzie wasn’t as damn smart as he thought he was. McKenzie didn’t deserve the fame and the attention in the papers.
McKenzie was nothing. Not compared to me.
When the FBI agent crumbled, he would be there to watch.
He’d be smiling the whole time.
“What are you doing?”
Cadence stiffened at the question. She’d shut the office door for a reason, but it looked like Detective Marsh had ignored the not-so-subtle cue for privacy.
She glanced over her shoulder and found him lounging in the doorway.
A few scrapes lined his cheek. A bruise skirted under his jaw. Otherwise, it looked as if he’d escaped the cave-in without any serious damage.
He stepped into the room. Left the door open behind him. “I was worried about you.” His voice had dropped. All warm, southern charm. His brown eyes glinted with his emotions. “I tried to crawl back to you.” He held up his hands, and she realized he did have more injuries. Cuts, lacerations, bandages. His hands had been ripped raw. “But I couldn’t get through. I ran out, got help, and we were going to dig our way to you. We weren’t going to stop, not until you were out.”
But they’d gotten out on their own. Brought Lily to safety.
“I didn’t leave you. Don’t think that.” His voice roughened.
Cadence shook her head. “I didn’t think you had. The stones fell so suddenly, Kyle and I were afraid you had been hurt. Killed.”
Jason shook his head. “It takes more than a bit of darkness to take me out.”
He was standing right in front of her. Staring at her with far too much intensity in his eyes.
“Jason.”
The cry was sharp, annoyed, and coming from the open doorway.
Cadence glanced over and saw Heather Crenshaw glaring at them.
“We’re needed back at the caverns,” Heather told him. “Captain said for us both to go.”
There was something in her voice, her gaze.
Heather’s stare cut to Cadence.
Jealousy.
So Heather and Jason were more than just partners on the force.
“On my way,” Jason murmured. But his eyes drifted back to Cadence. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
“I wish the same could be said for all his victims,” she told him. Dani should be sending an updated missing-persons list to her at any time. Cadence needed to start matching victims to those tally marks. Because as soon as she understood the victims, then she could better under
stand the killer.
“If there are more bodies in that place,” Jason said, beside Heather now, “getting them out is gonna be hard. We can get to the one in the Statue of Liberty chamber, but any others…” He exhaled on a rough sigh. “You’re talking months of work. Maybe years, if it’s even possible.”
The cave-in had been so complete.
The killer had intended to cover his tracks. And he had.
“It’s a good thing I don’t give up easily,” Cadence said quietly.
He glanced back at her. “I don’t either.”
Then he and Heather were gone.
Cadence booted up her laptop. The Wi-Fi in the office was perfect. One good point for Paradox. She immediately opened her e-mail because Dani had told her that the files were incoming…
They were. As she scrolled through the information that Dani had sent to her, Cadence’s heartbeat felt too heavy in her chest.
Twelve names were listed, including Lily’s. Twelve women. Four states.
Alabama.
Georgia.
Twelve old missing cases. But when you add Lily Adams to that list…
Thirteen. A perfect match to the tally marks that had been carved into the dirty cave wall.
“Did you get the intel from Dani?” Kyle asked as he came into the room.
Cadence didn’t look up at him. Right then, she couldn’t take her gaze off the screen. “Yes.”
Tennessee.
Mississippi.
The disappearances had been over such a vast amount of time. Across state lines.
The dots hadn’t been connected before. No one had put these women together.
She tapped on the keyboard. Her fingers were trembling.
Their cars had all been found, abandoned. These women had never been seen again.
According to the police reports, the women had gone missing at night, estimated at times between midnight and three a.m.
Her cheeks went cold as she read through the case files. The cars of the last two women taken—Laura Lassiter and Wendy Crighton—had been found on the side of the road, their gas tanks empty.
She’d been right when she thought the perp had done this before. Cadence just hadn’t realized how many times he’d committed the same attack.
She scanned the next victim file. Elizabeth Jennings. Elizabeth Jennings had disappeared after leaving her shift at St. Mary’s Hospital in Clydale, Georgia. Her car had been found, with a busted radiator, on the side of an old, two-lane highway.