Kylie wasn’t sure she could move. Her legs were like wet noodles and her heart pounded too hard in her chest. She lay there, managing to tilt her head and stare at Perry’s perfect naked body in the darkness while he stood in the middle of his bedroom on the phone.
“She did what?” he growled, sounding bewildered.
It took some effort to push herself to her elbows and then even more effort to clear her vision from the blurred state it had been in for the last twenty minutes at least. Every inch of her pulsed and the heat between her legs still smoldered at a temperature she could barely control. In spite of how sated she was, just admiring the well-defined muscles throughout his body created a tingling inside her that grew the longer she drooled over him.
“Okay, Megan, calm down. I don’t understand. She wouldn’t just run away.”
Kylie’s attention snapped to his face. Even in the dark she noticed his strained expression, and the heat inside her turned to something more numb. Her antenna went up as reality kicked in with a mean punch. She sat up, easing herself to the edge of the bed, and draped her legs over the side, watching Perry.
“Well, hell. You’re positive… Okay, calm down… No. It’s fine. Just tell me this. Did she walk out the door or did someone come get her?”
Kylie jumped off the bed, grabbing her clothes and untangling them while her heart started racing all over again. This time, though, it wasn’t from passion but panic.
“Is it Dani?” she asked, keeping her voice low, when she figured out what the conversation was about. Megan didn’t need to know Kylie was over at her brother’s house.
Perry glanced at her as if he’d forgotten she was in the room. He didn’t nod or shake his head, though, but instead continued listening.
“All right. I’ll head over that way. Have the girls check her room, her computer, anything you can think of. I want all the information you can gather that will help us determine where she might have gone.”
“What about her cell phone?” Kylie whispered.
Perry mouthed to her that she had left it at the house.
“Check recent messages and text messages,” Kylie whispered.
She barely remembered getting dressed and hurried after Perry when he continued pulling his shirt over his head while heading through the dark house. When he paused in the living room and checked his gun before hooking it in its case to his belt, Kylie patted her waist where her gun would usually hang if she was going out in the field.
“I don’t have my gun,” she told him, meeting his intense gaze when he turned and looked down at her.
There was something unreadable in his expression, something that caused her insides to quicken as he searched her face without saying anything for a moment. Then without commenting, Perry turned, pulled open the top drawer to a cabinet against the wall next to his gun display, and pulled out a nine millimeter and handed it to her.
She didn’t have her security belt, but it wasn’t the first time she ran down someone with only her purse and all she needed inside. Quickly checking the security, then pulling it back to see if it were loaded, she met his gaze again when he handed her ammunition.
“Tell me what’s going on,” she said, feeling an awkwardness grow inside her that mixed with several other emotions she didn’t have time for right now. Anxiety crept over her flesh, leaving damp gooseflesh, but the tightening of her gut was usually what she felt when it was time to make the cut. They weren’t bringing in their guy tonight but going after an obstinate teenager. At least that was what Kylie gathered.
“Dani and Megan had a fight. My sister is pretty upset right now and honestly she wasn’t making a hell of a lot of sense. I guess Dani got mad again when she was accused of agreeing to meet someone online.”
“But we already know that is true. Dani admitted as much to me. She’s got a guy online she refers to as a boyfriend, yet they’ve never met in person. And he’s got a screen name that is spelled funny but pronounced ‘Peter.’ ”
“You told me.” Perry’s voice was deep, gruff, almost pissed sounding when he finished putting his shoes on, then grabbed his keys and headed for the door. “Apparently Dani stormed out of the house, calling her mother a few choice names, and when Megan stormed out after her Dani took off running. They can’t find her.”
“Megan hasn’t called in to Dispatch, has she?” Kylie was already around Perry’s car, reaching for the door handle on the passenger side when he climbed in behind the driver’s wheel.
He met her gaze when she slid in next to him. “Nope. And she won’t unless I ask her to. Why? Are you worried about going on a call with me?”
“Are you?” she challenged. The way she saw it right now, he was putting himself more on the line than she was with the two of them leaving together like this. No one on her side would know about this circumstance, especially if Megan didn’t call it in.
“Nope.” Perry’s profile showed his determination and his jaw was set the way he always held it when he was hell-bent on seeing something through.
As he backed the Jeep out of the driveway the quickening returned in her gut with a vengeance. They’d just made incredible love to each other. She could feel the dampness between her legs, and for the first time since dressing and hurrying out the door she imagined she probably looked like hell-or like a lady who’d just gotten the shit fucked out of her.
Now they were headed out on a call, working together. This was almost as good as rolling over and fucking him again. And if it weren’t for the dire circumstance and the possibility that Dani could run into trouble out at night alone and pissed, Kylie would probably be reveling in the moment, inspired by the opportunity to work by his side, even if it was just this one time. She would get to see him in action. Once she kicked Dani’s obstinate ass, she might just have to hug her for giving Kylie this opportunity.
“You’ve got your cell phone,” Perry said, not making it a question as he headed down the road with his high beams creating lines on the road ahead of them.
“Yes,” she said, again studying the strong features of his profile.
“Good. We won’t have radios. If we have to comb the neighborhood it will be the only way we can communicate.”
“Works for me.”
Perry obviously didn’t give any thought to how Megan would react when she learned Kylie was still with him. Megan opened the front door the moment he knocked but then gawked at Kylie before quickly regaining composure.
“Which way did she head?” Perry asked, ignoring Megan’s reaction to seeing Kylie.
Megan pointed out the door and down the street to their right. “I followed her for about a block before she lost me, I hurried back home to call you.”
“Did she change clothes after we left?” Kylie asked.
Megan searched Kylie’s face, as if drawing her own conclusion about something, and took a moment before her face lit up. “Yes. She did change. She’s wearing a white T-shirt. Are you going to help look for her?”
“Yes.” Kylie didn’t hesitate in answering.
Diane pushed her way next to her mother in the front door. Although an older version of Dani, Diane also held strong features very similar to her mother’s. Diane focused on Kylie but then glanced furtively from her mother to her uncle.
“I’ll help look, too. With all of us we’ll have her back in no time.” Diane rubbed her mother’s shoulder, looking worried.
“No.” Perry spoke so firmly all the women looked at him. “None of you are leaving this house. Is that understood?”
Diane looked ready to argue, but Megan put her arm around her daughter and backed her into the house. “Bring her home, Perry, alive and well so I can kill her.”
“You’ve got a deal.”
Megan looked so distraught, torn between outrage and pain that created hard lines around her pretty eyes. For a moment, Kylie was ripped back thirteen years and saw her own mother, worried sick while waiting to hear word from the police that her oldest daughter was alive and safe. That message never arrived.
“Here’s what I need from you,” Kylie said, and both Megan and Diane gave her their full attention. “I want you to go through her computer. Find any chats with this boy she was supposedly going to meet.”
“But,” Diane began, immediately chewing her lower lip.
“Do as she says,” Perry ordered.
“I know you don’t want to violate her privacy.” Kylie would snap at Perry later for being so gruff with both of them when they were obviously worried sick. “But it could save her life. Call us immediately if you find anything indicating she planned to meet him tonight. Or if you find her agreeing to go anywhere. Do it now. There isn’t any time to waste.”
Perry turned from the door, taking her by the arm. Kylie hurried down the path with him, not bothering to say goodbye to either of them but hearing the door close behind them.
An hour later, Kylie and Perry had combed the neighborhood and been on the phone with Diane and Megan more than a handful of times. Kylie got stubborn with Perry, aware that he worried about the rest of the women in his life when Dani was missing but insisting they would cover more ground and learn more faster if the two of them split up. Reminding him he wanted to know if she carried her cell phone so they could communicate didn’t seem to help much, but when Kylie pointed out she’d taken on many killers in the past, all alone, Perry’s gaze darkened over, his expression bordering on violent.
“Fine,” he growled.
“Diane is calling Dani’s friends now,” Kylie reminded him. “I say we head to all hangout spots where she might have gone to regroup and be alone. We check out every one of them that is open at this hour.”
“Bowling alley is still open,” Perry said. “We can go there together.”
Kylie nodded. She needed to get to her car, but they would figure out how to do that if the investigation continued into the night. She stared into the darkness, scanning her attention across the large, empty parking lot. It was the fifth or sixth one they’d cruised around and then through. Dani wasn’t anywhere.
Worse yet, Diane couldn’t find anything on any of the computers at the house that helped them. “She’s password-protected her cell phone,” Diane told Kylie in her most recent call.
“Try thinking of her password. Anything you can think of,” Kylie suggested.
“Try ‘Peter,’ ” Dorine said in the background, doing what the fourteen-year-old did best, eavesdropping.
“No luck.” Diane was obviously trying every password she could think of while they talked on the phone.
“Wait a minute,” Kylie said, sitting next to Perry in his Jeep while they drove across town to the bowling alley. “The screen name she was talking to when she told me about Peter… it was spelled funny.”
“I’ve got it!” Diane laughed in her ear. “It was Petrie, not Peter. Way to go, Dorine, for being queen eavesdropper.”
Kylie didn’t smile as she listened to the two girls laugh. She wondered what Megan was doing, and felt her pain as her stomach twisted when they pulled into the bowling-alley parking lot. The building had a sign on it that lit up a lot of the parking lot, and streetlights lining the lot added to the visibility. She remembered coming here when she was supposed to meet Peter, and Perry interrupting the meeting. What she wouldn’t do for that to happen again tonight.
“Kylie?” Diane’s soft-spoken, serious tone didn’t sound good.
Kylie’s heart moved to her throat and beat furiously as anxiety created a sheen of perspiration over her body. “Yes?” she asked.
“She went to meet him.”
“Crap,” Kylie hissed, meeting Perry’s dark gaze when he stared at her after parking his car. “Please tell me they discuss where and what time.”
“The bowling alley,” Diane said, and then paused, her breathing coming hard through the phone. Dorine obviously felt the need to keep her mother apprised of the conversation, as she yelled in the background. “And ten minutes ago,” Diane said, her excitement level dropping drastically. “At eleven. You need to get to the bowling alley now.”
“We’re here,” Kylie informed her.
“What’s going on?” Perry demanded.
“Dani agreed to meet her boyfriend, Petrie, here at the parking lot ten minutes ago,” Kylie told him without ceremony.
“Goddamn it,” Perry howled, slamming his fist into the dash hard enough to make the car shake. He jumped out, slamming the door, without another word.
“I’ll call you back,” Kylie told Diane.
“He won’t hurt you,” Diane whispered.
“I know that,” Kylie assured her, forcing her tone to remain calm. “We’re going to go find Dani. You go take care of your mother and sisters and be calm for them. Okay?”
“Okay, Kylie,” Diane said, and said goodbye reluctantly before hanging up.
Perry had stormed off in one direction and Kylie opted to take the other, wishing she was more properly equipped but patting her purse and feeling the small handgun inside. She stared into the darkness, her heart pounding so hard it was damn near deafening.
There weren’t many cars in the lot at this hour, most of the stores closed except the bowling alley and the donut shop on the other side of the lot in the adjacent strip mall. She could see into the shop through its glass windows, and a few people sat at tables inside while one employee stood behind the counter. The best she could tell, everyone inside eating pastries were men. She didn’t see any women or teenage girls. Nonetheless, she sprinted across the lot to the wide sidewalk and then strolled down it, past the donut shop, and confirmed Dani wasn’t inside.
Petrie hadn’t picked her up and taken her for a bite to eat so she could unload the woes of her home life on him. But then the sickening feeling inside Kylie’s gut told her Petrie wasn’t who Dani believed him to be.
“Please let me be wrong,” Kylie muttered under her breath, combing her hair away from her face with her fingers while staring across the parking lot.
She didn’t see Perry. Her cell phone rang, though, and she jumped, then damn near attacked it as she dragged it out of her purse and stared at the unknown number.
“Hello,” she said, answering on the fourth ring and praying whoever it was wouldn’t hang up, and would be someone she wanted to talk to right now.
“Kylie?” a small voice said, sounding broken and terrified.
For a moment Kylie couldn’t breathe. “Dani?” she asked, praying she was right.
“Yes.”
“God, tell me you’re all right.”
“I’m not all right.”
Kylie was hightailing it back to Perry’s Jeep before thinking about it. Perry must have spotted her, because he appeared out of the shadows at the far end of the bowling alley, and she gestured to him frantically as she raced around the truck to the passenger side.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart? Where are you?” She forced herself to remain calm, take deep, soothing breaths. If the son of a bitch had Dani and was using her to lure Kylie in, she was more than game to take the motherfucker on.
“I’m at a pay phone. I need you. Please come get me and don’t tell anyone. Please? Promise? I’ve done a very, very bad thing and my uncle will kill me for sure.”
Kylie slid into the passenger side at the same time Perry slid into the driver’s side. His wild look was frantic as he stared at her and then her phone.
“What?” he demanded.
“Oh my God, Uncle Perry is with you. Kylie, you’ve got to lose him. Please.” Dani was crying now and harder to understand.
“Where are you?” Kylie asked, remaining calm as she stared into Perry’s dark, fierce eyes.
“I don’t know,” Dani wailed into Kylie’s ear.
“Are you hurt?”
“I don’t think so. I’m scared. And I’m the biggest fucking idiot.”
Perry started the car, continuing to look over Kylie’s way. “It’s Dani, right. Where is she?” he asked with a baritone so cool sounding it gave Kylie chills.
“She’s scared and isn’t sure,” Kylie told him, hearing Dani hiccup in her ear as she continued crying hard. “But she sounds as if she’s okay.” Then putting the phone close to her ear, Kylie covered it with her hand, needing only to hear Dani. “You know your town, Dani. Look around you. Tell us where you are.”
“You’re bringing Uncle Perry. He’s going to kill me.”
“We were both out looking for you, so we’re together, and yes, he is bringing me to you. You have my word he won’t kill you.”
Perry grunted and she ignored him.
“You don’t know my uncle that well then.”
“Dani, where are you?”
The sobs continued before Dani finally answered. “On the south side of the bowling alley parking lot. I ran back here. But I think there might be a problem. God, Kylie, please come by yourself. I’ve done something really, really bad and I might be in some serious trouble.”
“The south side?” Kylie looked outside, getting her bearings. “I’ll be there in a second.”
“Okay. Where are you?”
“Don’t hang up, Dani. Stay right there and do not hang up the phone.” Kylie pulled the phone from her ear just far enough to focus on Perry. “She’s on the south side of the parking lot here at a pay phone,” Kylie whispered. “She keeps repeating she’s done something terrible and doesn’t want you to come get her, just me.”
“Damn the luck,” Perry growled, making a sharp turn back into the parking lot instead of turning onto the street.
“Kylie, I think he’s coming back. He’s going to see me. I’ve got to go,” Dani hissed into the phone.
“We’re right here. Don’t hang up,” Kylie said frantically, and then heard the hum in her ear. “Damn it,” she snapped, tossing her phone into her purse but then quickly reaching for her door handle. “She was on a pay phone on the south side of the bowling alley but just panicked and said she is afraid he’s coming back and that he’ll see her. She hung up on me.”
Perry didn’t answer but accelerated hard enough that the tires squealed. He raced across the parking lot but then hit the brakes so hard Kylie slammed her palms against the dash. Making a sharp turn, he drove only a bit slower through the dark side of the back of the building toward the other side.
“She kept saying she’s done something really terrible.”
“She agreed to meet that bastard she’s been talking to online,” Perry hissed, sounding mad as hell.
“I think so. But something happened and it caused her to call me from a pay phone crying her eyes out and begging me to come get her. Yet then she hangs up in a state of panic. I think she got away from him and he’s coming back for her.”
Kylie didn’t have to voice her thoughts. Obviously Perry was thinking the same thing. He turned the corner sharp enough that Kylie swore he did it on two wheels instead of four.
“There!” Kylie pointed at a small figure racing down the length of the building.
At the same time another car turned around in the back lot-a black Suburban.
“Drive!” Perry ordered, slowing the truck and undoing Kylie’s seat belt at the same time.
“What?” She looked at him, confused.
“Drive!” he yelled. “Go get her now!”
He barely brought the truck to a stop and at the same time dragged Kylie across the seat toward him. She didn’t have time to question the madness of his actions before he jumped out of the truck and ran around the back side. The Jeep kept rolling forward and she quickly adjusted herself in the driver’s seat, which was set back way too far for her to sit comfortably.
There wasn’t time to adjust it. “What the hell are you doing?” she howled, shifting it back into drive and pressing her toes against the accelerator pedal while gripping the large steering wheel.
Perry raced faster than a man his size looked like he could run. And another time she might have admired the view, and easily gotten hot as hell doing so. Even in the dark she could tell how muscular he was, and in shape, as he sprinted toward the Suburban. When she noticed his gun in his hand and that he pointed it at the Suburban, she cursed out loud and gunned the engine similarly to how Perry had a minute ago. It took no time at all to catch up with Dani.
The teenager looked terrified and makeup streaked down her face when she looked at the Jeep and took a minute to register that Kylie was driving her uncle’s vehicle.
“Get in,” Kylie ordered, easily finding the right button to roll down the driver’s-side door window. “Dani, hurry. In, now!”
Dani didn’t argue and raced around the front, then climbed in. Kylie grabbed her before Dani could react and used one hand on the side of her head to force her down into the seat.
“Stay low and don’t move,” Kylie demanded, turning the large steering wheel and making the tires squeal just as a gun went off.