Page 63 of Midnight Secrets

“Maybe.” Isabel hadn’t thought of it that way. She’d dreamed of the man almost every night, but when she woke up she could never remember what he looked like, only that he was cruel and evil. Brought darkness and violence in his wake. She’d fixed some elements of his face in her memory. She’d perhaps be able to talk Lauren through the drawing, even if the end result would probably look like a comic book villain. Manic and diabolical, like the Joker.

Joe nudged her gently with his shoulder again. “So we can plan that? Come to the office tomorrow morning and talk Lauren through the portrait?”

In the office. Talking about her nightmares in front of everyone. She suppressed a shudder. “I’d rather do it here.” Not let all Joe’s friends know about her craziness.

“I know, honey.” Joe’s voice was regretful. “But Felicity has her stuff there and we’re going to try to get back into contact with the guy—or the person who contacted us about you. Remember?”

God, yes. How could she have forgotten? So much had happened. “How does he know about me? And how does he know I live here?”

“All questions we want answered,” Joe replied, voice grim. “If I had to make a guess, I’d say he’s CIA or ex-CIA. And I’d guess he knows something about the Massacre that doesn’t fit the narrative.”

Isabel felt her eyes grow wide. She turned again to look at him. “Something about the Massacre? Like what?”

“I don’t know. But I think he thinks you have some kind of key or intel about it.”

“Me?” Good God. “I don’t have anything, least of all what you call ‘intel’. I don’t even remember it. Plus how did he track me down to Portland? That’s creepy.”

“It wouldn’t be hard to track you down. You weren’t on the run or anything. Did you file to change your name from Delvaux to Lawton?”

Isabel nodded.

“There you go. That would be in the public record. You weren’t in hiding, you just wanted a fresh start. If this guy is CIA and is secretly investigating the Massacre, he’d start with the survivors. How many survivors were there?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone has done an official count. I don’t know how many of the serving staff survived. Presumably some of them weren’t in the part of the building that collapsed. I think about thirty or forty people who were in the ballroom survived. But I’m not positive.”

“So maybe this guy is contacting them all.”

“But how would he know to get in touch withyou?”

“It wouldn’t be that hard. Your new address is on record. He’d look at the other people on the street and I’d pop up. I’m a former SEAL, that’s on the record and I am on the record as an employee at ASI, which is a well-known company. Very aboveboard. He’d add two and two. Even if I didn’t know you well, it would make sense for him to contact me and ask me to keep you safe. Maybe he’s making his quiet way down the list of survivors. We’ll know soon enough. He’s asked for someone from the FBI to be in the office tomorrow.”

“TheFBI?”This was getting more and more strange.

Joe slid down in the bed, taking her with him. She was on her side and he was curved around her.

He was also erect, but he wasn’t prodding her with it, or asking for sex. He kissed her shoulder gently. “I think we’ll be getting some answers tomorrow, but I also think you need to rest. It’s 4:00 a.m. and we should get up around 7:00, so that only gives you three hours to sleep. See if you can manage it.”

“I don’t think I can,” Isabel said, then yawned.

“Uh-huh.” Joe kissed her shoulder again. She could see his face above her, smiling down at her. “Just try. Close your eyes for a minute.”

Oh man, he didn’t know just how hard she tried to get back to sleep after a nightmare. It was impossible. She’d just lie awake, tense and frightened, until the sky outside her bedroom window started to lighten, and she’d get up to start another exhausting day.

“It doesn’t work.”

“Try,” he coaxed. “Just for a minute. For me.”

“Make me,” she said, her voice suddenly low, suddenly husky. In a flash, a switch had been thrown. That massive male body surrounding her, that enormous erect penis against her back…All those intense emotions evoked by the nightmare morphed in an instant to desire. There had never been another mechanism for her to deal with the aftermath of the nightmares before. Just silence and the endless hours of the night. But now—now there was the world’s greatest distraction wrapped around her.

“What?” Obviously Joe didn’t operate like she did, emotions flipping from one extreme to the other. He had to keep up.

Isabel turned her head to smile at the dark male face above hers. “I need help getting to sleep. So either you warm up some milk for me or make love to me. Your choice.”

He closed his eyes briefly and when he opened them his gaze was fierce.

“Put like that,” he said. “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

He turned her gently on her back and mounted her. There was no other word for it. His hands were gentle. She could see the effort that gentleness was costing him in the taut tendons of his neck, but the movements were pure sex, pure animal. His thighs separated hers and he slid into her with an ease that astonished her. She was ready for him, though. Needed him, even, and her body knew that before her mind did.

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