Sixth Grave on the Edge

13

Sometimes I write “drink coffee” on my to-do list

just to feel like I’ve accomplished something.

—STATUS UPDATE

I made it home just after sunset, holding the title to my soul in one hand and a mocha latte in the other. Surely Reyes would see the bright side of that. The soul thing. How angry could he be that I’d gone to see the Dealer? I chose not to dwell on Reyes or his anger while searching for him. After checking his place and my place and everything in between, I headed for my office and finally found him outside in the alley between the bar and the apartment building, his legs sticking out from under the front end of the sweetest black muscle car I’d ever seen. I slowed my pace to take in the work of art before me. Then I checked out the car. The emblem on the side said it was a ’Cuda. Whatever she was, she melted my knees upon impact. She was stunning, and I decided right then and there to become a lesbian.

“Is she yours?” I asked him as I walked up. He was tooling around with her engine, which was clean enough to eat off of, shiny enough to apply makeup by, and big enough to make the earth shake, I was sure.

A soft thunder rumbled in the distance. I glanced up at the clouds that had rolled in, their grayness haunting against the dark sky.

Refocusing on Mr. Angry Pants, I bent over the engine to see what he was doing. He had one of those droplights, and I could see a portion of his face as he worked under the car. He ignored me and kept ratcheting something. Something that I could only hope actually needed ratcheting, because he was really into it. His signature heat wafted up and around me. I put my elbows on a shiny part and propped my chin in my cupped hands.

“Are you going to be mad long?” I asked him.

He ratcheted again, refusing to meet my gaze, so I let it drift over the front of the car to his spread legs, lean and powerful, his slim hips crafted to perfection, and his rock-hard waist, rippled and taut. His T-shirt had ridden up to reveal several inches of deliciousness above his jeans, and my mouth watered in response.

“Which part are you mad about?” I asked, realizing he could be mad about any number of things. I tended to rack up the shit-list points.

He finally spoke, drawing my attention back to him. “You are investigating what you think was my kidnapping.”

That was what he was mad about? Wait, did he just say—? “What I think was your kidnapping? You mean, the baby that was kidnapped from the Fosters wasn’t you?”

He put down the ratchet and picked up another, equally foreboding tool. “Yes, it was me, but I was hardly kidnapped.”

I leaned closer to him, trying to see him past the engine. “What do you mean?” My thoughts staggered into each other as I reviewed the case in my mind. “I don’t understand. You weren’t kidnapped?”

“Not that time.” The car dipped with the pressure he was putting on her.

“Reyes, please explain. Were you kidnapped from the Fosters or not?”

“It doesn’t matter what I tell you. You’ll take that information and do whatever you want with it. You never think about the consequences of your actions.”

“You are so wrong.” I lowered myself onto my knees and bent to look at him under the car. His biceps strained against the thin fabric of his T-shirt as he worked. “That’s all I consider. I do what I can to help—”

“Strangers,” he said, turning the wrench so tight, the car dipped again. “People you don’t know. You don’t think about the people who are closest to you. What your actions could do to them.”

I was appalled that he would even say such a thing. “Do you think I don’t care about my family? My friends?”

“I think you care for too many. You’re spread too thin. You take on too much, risk too much, and you cannot possibly win.”

He was changing the subject on purpose, bringing up an old argument to urge me off the trail of his kidnapping. “Reyes, were you abducted from your biological family or not?”

Breathing hard, he lowered the wrench and finally looked at me, his eyes glittering in the artificial light. “Yes. I was.”

“So, the Fosters are your biological family. The family you chose to be born with on earth?”

“No.” He went back to work, and I pressed my mouth together, struggling for patience.

“So, the Fosters’ child was abducted, but he wasn’t you.”

He squinted as he struggled with the car. “Wrong. And wrong.”

I found myself mesmerized by his actions for a moment. The shadows between his muscles shifted every time he flexed. “Okay, so if this is opposite day, the Fosters’ child was not abducted and—” I strained to think about how I’d put it. “—and it was you. You were the Fosters’ kid.”

“Closer.”

I threw myself onto the pavement as dramatically as I could manage without incurring injury. “Oh, my god. I will give you a million dollars if you will just tell me.”

He examined the wrench thing he was holding. “You don’t have a million dollars.”

“Fine,” I said, rolling onto my back and patting my pockets. I brought out what I did have: three ones, some spare change, and a watermelon Jolly Rancher. “I’ll give you three dollars, fifty-two cents, and a Jolly Rancher.”

His mouth softened as he gave me his full attention. “I was going to say no, but since you threw in the Jolly Rancher.” He scooted out from under the car and stood before helping me to my feet. “If I tell you, will you give me your word on something?”

“I’ll give you a lap dance. On your lap,” I said, shaking out my hair.

“Deal. I wasn’t abducted from the Fosters.”

I swiped at my butt, but stilled when he continued.

“The Fosters were the ones who abducted me.”

As I stood gawking at him, he lifted out the droplight and closed the hood of his car. While this was nothing like the times I’d tried to get him to open up about his childhood with Earl Walker, the monster who raised him, I could tell he did not especially want to talk about this part of his life either. He wiped his hands on a rag, completely ignoring the fact that he was covered in dirt and oil. He defined the word sexy.

I stepped to him, put a hand on his arm to get his attention. And, well, just to touch his arm, because damn. “Can you explain? I don’t understand.”

He studied the rag as he spoke. “I’m not a reaper. I can’t remember everything from my birth on like you. But from what I’ve been able to gather, Mrs. Foster abducted me from a rest area in North Carolina.”

“North Carolina?” I asked, taken off guard.

He nodded. “I think it was a crime of opportunity. She’d just found out she couldn’t have children. She and her husband were driving home from yet another doctor’s appointment. My mother’s car overheated. She pulled off at a rest area, and since I was napping in the back, she locked the car and walked five feet to get the water hose. When she came back, she opened the door to check on me and cover me with a blanket. She forgot to lock it back. Mrs. Foster was watching the whole thing from her car as her husband used the facilities. She took it as a sign from God that I should be hers. Any mother who would leave her child alone like that … She couldn’t believe that a mother so undeserving of a child could have one while she could not. As my biological mother was behind the hood, filling the water reservoir, Mrs. Foster walked up, opened the door, and took me. It all happened so fast. My mother stepped around to check on me again, and I was gone.”

He was talking as though he’d read it from a police report. “But you know, then? You know who your biological parents were?”

“Yes. As I got older, I started remembering more and more. Most of it didn’t come to me until I was in prison, but slowly I remembered their names. That was it. That was all that came to me.”

“Then how did you put all of that together?”

“I hacked into the FBI database and read the reports.”

“You hacked the FBI from prison?” When he simply lifted an arrogant brow, I shook my head, astonished. I’d forgotten how good he was at those things. “What happened after that? If Mrs. Foster abducted you, why did she then turn around and … and, what? Have someone else abduct you back?” I struggled to understand. “That makes no sense.”

“It was one of those cases where everything just kept going wrong. After Mrs. Foster took me, she convinced her husband it was meant to be. But they could hardly just show up with a three-month-old baby. So they left the state, moved around for a bit until they ended up in Albuquerque, which was weird on a whole other level.”

“Why?”

“Because my biological parents were supposed to move here. It was why I chose them. Then, after I’m abducted, I end up here anyway?”

I leaned against the thick lamppost. “That can’t be a coincidence. What happened next?”

“The Fosters were here for a while. They’d met the neighbors. Joined a church. Started making friends. But Mr. Foster’s family started getting suspicious. They wanted to see him. They never liked his wife and were worried she was dangerous, so they planned a trip to visit. And since the Fosters suddenly had a child the exact age of the abducted child from their state, they realized they’d get caught. So, they sold me.”

“They just … up and sold you? Like, on eBay?”

“That is one piece of the puzzle I haven’t quite figured out yet. Maybe Mr. Foster met someone who helped them. Who knows? Either way, I think the plan was just to sell me and be done with it, but a neighbor saw a suspicious-looking man leave out the back door with me. She thought I was being kidnapped, so she called the police. They showed up, the Fosters panicked and said, yes, their baby was gone, and the rest is history.”

“Reyes, this is insane. What about Mr. Foster’s family? They didn’t catch on that he’d also had a mysterious child abducted?”

“Believe it or not, it never reached them. Children are abducted all the time. How many have you seen, especially from across the country? Even today, during the age of information, we hardly ever see the faces of missing children. Did you know there are over two thousand people reported missing every single day? How many do you see in the news?”

“Still,” I said, completely taken aback, “how did the cops not make the connection? You had the markings, the map to the gates of hell on your skin.”

“Yes, but when I was born, they were very light. So light, they were impossible for the naked eye to see. They grew darker as I got older. By the time the Fosters sold me, they resembled a very light birthmark. Nothing like they are now.”

I lowered myself onto a box just as the first drops of rain fell from the sky. “This is just insane. The Fosters seemed so nice on paper and in their interviews.” I shook an index finger, remembering what Sack had said. “Agent Carson said her father got a bad feeling from that whole case, like something else was going on that he couldn’t quite put a finger on.”

“Sounds like he was a good agent.”

“You were going to end up here anyway? So that we’d grow up together and go to the same schools?”

He packed up the tools he’d carried out and looked up at the sky. Droplets of rain left tiny rivulets on his face and arms. “My biological father was going to be transferred to Albuquerque. But after I was abducted, they decided to stay in North Carolina and hope the police found me. They never left.”

I jumped to my feet. “They’re still there?”

“Yes.”

“Have you gone to them, Reyes?” I stepped closer as he looked down at me. “Have you told them who you are?”

The expression he gave me stopped me in my tracks. “Why would I do that?”

“Why would you—?” I stopped, flabbergasted he had to ask. “Reyes, they should know that you’re okay. They have the right to know that.”

“They have a right to live out their days happy and none the wiser.”

I could not believe any of this. “Why would you leave them in the dark like that all these years?”

The heat of his anger warmed the cool drops of rain as they fell softly to the ground. “They aren’t my real parents, Dutch. You know that.”

“But you chose them.”

“I chose the woman to be a vessel, that’s all.”

There was more to it than that. I could feel the mixed emotions swirling inside him. I could feel anger and resentment and doubt. “That’s not entirely true,” I said to him.

His emotions were too strong to block, and that angered him even more.

He turned away from me to pick up the toolbox, but I stopped him, took his hand into mine, brought it to my face to caress it. “Reyes, you have to tell them. You have to ease their pain. Their uncertainty.”

Raindrops dripped off his impossibly long lashes, his dark eyes glittering underneath them. “Why would they want me, Dutch? What would it do to them to know my true identity?”

While I completely disagreed, I just wanted to convince him to open up. To tell them. The rest could come later. “You don’t have to tell them what you are.”

“I don’t mean just that.” He turned away from me. “I’ve spent the last ten years in prison.”

I stepped around, forced him to face me. “For a crime you didn’t commit.”

“I still have the stench of prison on me. Inmates are different. They act different. Their social skills aren’t exactly up to par. They would know.”

“Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“I’m not.” He took hold of my arm, his demeanor changing on a dime. “And I don’t want you to tell them either. This is my life, Dutch. I do not want you to interfere, do you understand?”

No matter how much I wanted to, I had to respect that. If he didn’t want to meet his biological parents, I could not force the issue. He had every right to his privacy, but the thought of them still in pain after all these years, still not knowing what had happened to their baby, broke my heart. There was a lot to be said for closure. Leaving it as it stood was like leaving a gaping wound, well, gaping. Surely there was a way around his wishes, of just letting them know that their son was safe and doing well—very well, in fact—without giving away his identity.

“Promise me,” he said, taking hold of my other shoulder.

Before I could make that promise, another thought hit me. “Oh, my goodness, what about the son they have now? The Fosters? Is he even really theirs?”

“I have no idea.” He let go of my shoulders and crossed his arms. “I have a feeling he was abducted as well, since he is blond and they’re both dark.”

“Holy crap on Communion bread. This is just so wrong. They have to be stopped.”

“Is this your way of getting out of promising me you’ll keep that little nose out of it?”

“What? Me? Wow, look at this rain.”

“Dutch,” he said, his deep, sexy voice all deep and, well, sexy. The soft rain had molded the once-white T-shirt to him as though it were form-fitted to the expanse of his shoulders, to the tapering at his waist. “You may regret looking at me like that.”

My gaze bounced back up to his face. It didn’t help. “I could never regret looking at you.”

He frowned as though he didn’t understand. “Why?” he asked, completely serious.

And I was lost. I leapt into his arms, quite literally, and pressed my mouth to his. He fought a smile for a moment, returned my kiss enthusiastically, then backed me against his car. One hand instantly sought out the weight of Danger. He coaxed her to attention with a thumb. His mouth, so hot against mine, left to suckle her crest and only then did I realize he’d unbuttoned my shirt and released both Danger and Will from their confines.

The fact that we were outside didn’t even register. The blistering heat of his kiss engulfed me as he suckled Danger. She tightened under his ministrations, hardening so fast, I almost cried out. The jolt of ecstasy was overwhelming. He switched to Will and then back again, offering them both the same amount of attention. Each time he drew on a pink crest, I felt a cutting bite of arousal lance through me. I looked down at him as he kneaded and suckled, his exquisite mouth beautiful against my pale flesh. But it was his teeth grazing across their hardened peaks that was my undoing. In one quick burst, the bittersweet sting of orgasm rocketed through me, colliding like fire and ice during a hurricane.

A scream I could not stop wrenched from my throat. Never. Never in my life had I ever climaxed in such a way. I gasped in utter astonishment as the orgasm pulsated through me like a waterfall of pleasure. It slowly ebbed, leaving me quaking in its wake, and yet I wanted more. Always more when it came to Reyes Alexander Farrow.

His mouth descended onto mine and I wrapped my arms around his head as he laid me back, easing me onto the hood of his car. Before he could rise off me, I reached down and fondled the erection that his pants could barely contain. He sucked in a sharp breath, the air it stirred suddenly cool against my lips, causing another wave of raw desire to ripple through me. Before I knew it, he had peeled off my pants. How he managed that stuff without my notice amazed me, but I lay on his car, half naked, gasping and spent when, without the slightest bit of fanfare, he entered me in one long stroke.

I seized and clutched him to me, the sharp spike of need obliterating my self-control once again. He stayed there, buried inside me, allowing my body to adjust to the fullness of his erection until I grabbed handfuls of hair, bit his shoulder, and shoved my hips against his, forcing him even deeper.

He growled against my ear, wrapped one arm under a knee, and drove into me again and again with quick, short bursts, coaxing the heat in my abdomen to swell, to swirl and churn, building with each thrust like the pressure from a volcano of molten lava about to erupt. My nipples were still sensitive. They rubbed against his chest with each thrust, doing their part to milk me to the edge once again.

The muscles in Reyes’s powerful shoulders flexed under the strain of his efforts. His breaths grew ragged, more and more labored as he forced me to still under his viselike grip. I dug my nails into his flesh, urging him faster, begging him not to stop. Never to stop. His expression was one of agony as he bit back his own need to coerce me into another explosive climax. I buried my face in the crook of his neck as the fever inside me rose and burst like a floodtide crashing through a dam. Reyes growled again as his own climax shuddered through him. He trembled against me, his anguish just as powerful as mine, just as intoxicating. He held on to me so tight, it was almost painful and served only to send the crest of my orgasm higher. I rode it, reveling in the exhilaration that flooded me body and soul until ever so gently it ebbed, dissipating completely over the span of several heartbeats.

Reyes’s breathing slowed, as did the rain. It tapped out a soft, melodic pattern against the ’Cuda as we lay there, limbs tangled, clothes askew. What little we had on, anyway. He leaned up and kissed me then, long and hard and deep, as though to thank me. As though to reinforce the fact that he needed me as much as I needed him.

When he rose, I brushed my fingertips over his cheek and whispered, “That was somewhat amazing.”

His teeth flashed brilliant in the darkness. “You are somewhat amazing.”

I’d take it. I was totally busy staring into his eyes when I heard a chime. It registered somewhere in the back of my mind, but didn’t quite make it into conscious thought until I heard the sound again.

“That’s my phone,” I said to him.

He eased me off the hood and kept hold of me until I gained my balance. It took a moment to locate my pants, but once I did, I fished my phone out of my pocket, prayed the rain hadn’t ruined it, and checked my texts. An expletive I couldn’t repeat in public splashed across the screen. I screeched, covered my mouth with one hand, then said through my fingers, “I forgot about Uncle Bob!”