Leslie Parrish - Black at Heart

"You can't just take her," Jackie snapped, not for the first time, as Anspaugh insisted Lily accompany him to headquarters. "If you're going to arrest her, do it, and I'll have a lawyer waiting for you by the time you arrive downtown."

Hearing the anger in Jackie's voice, Lily reached over and touched her friend's arm. "It's all right. We knew this would happen, and it needs to. I've got to clear my name. I'm innocent and I want to get that established so I can move on and make sure Jesse gets put back in jail where he belongs."

Anspaugh sneered. "Yeah, right, save it for the judge."

Maintaining her dignity, Lily eyed him without flinching. "I need to go upstairs and change," she said, gesturing toward her shorts and bare feet.

"Fine, let's go," he said, grabbing her arm.

"Whoa, whoa, big boy," said Jackie. "I'll escort her up and keep an eye on her."

"Whadda you take me for? You're her damn accomplice."

"I'm an FBI agent with more than a dozen years on the job," Jackie snarled. "I was in the field while you were still trying to pass high school algebra for the third time, boy^ and don't you forget it."

Anspaugh signaled to another agent, one of the three men who had accompanied him. All were loyal Anspaugh flunkies, from what Lily remembered. "Keep Agent Stokes here. As of now, she's a suspect in aiding and abetting a criminal."

"What the hell?" Jackie jerked away as the other agent grabbed her arm. "You touch me again, you're gonna be pulling back a stump."

"Jackie, don't," Lily insisted, sensing the situation was getting ugly. This wasn't professional, wasn't courteous.

Anspaugh was out for blood. Hers. He didn't seem to be thinking clearly and she couldn't be entirely sure he wouldn't do something crazy if he sensed they weren't cooperating. "It's fine. I'll go downtown, clear this up. It'll be fine."

"Yeah, you might want to worry a little less about her and a little more about yourself," Anspaugh told Jackie. "In case you haven't realized it, you're an accessory after the fact, just like your buddy Blackstone." He smiled in utter malice. "Where is he, by the way? I really can't wait to put the cuffs on him and take him in."

"He's not here," Lily said, hanging on to her temper by its very thin edge. "And I can dress myself." She tried to brush past him to head for the stairs.

He wouldn't let her, grabbing her upper arm and squeezing tight, then pushing her forward. "Let's go."

Keep your cool, keep your cool, an inner voice reminded her. It sounded a lot like the sarge's. Not that she was thinking along those lines, doing anything physical. She couldn't deny, however, that the idea she might be put in a position of having to defend herself had crossed her mind. Anspaugh's mood was strange, his voice thick with barely suppressed anger. And again, she suspected it had more to do with the fact that she'd once rejected him than anything else.

Or maybe the fact that she'd rejected him, and then turned to Wyatt Blackstone to be her savior. And her lover.

He crowded her as they walked up the steps, breathing his hot, heavy breaths on her neck, squeezing her arm hard enough to leave bruises. At the top of the stairs, she pointed toward the guest room. "My things are in here."

He escorted her in. Lily turned, waiting for him to leave, but he merely crossed his arms and smirked, shutting the door behind him.

She didn't get truly worried until he twisted the lock.

Lily hid her concern. If he thought she was the same timid girl he'd known, the man was sorely mistaken. Lifting her chin, not about to let him shame her, she peeled off her lightweight cotton shirt, and unzipped the shorts, pushing them off her hips. She still wore a plain white bra, and modest cotton underwear, but he reacted as though she'd stripped down to nothing. His bloodshot eyes devoured her and his mouth parted as he licked his thick lips.

Scumbag.

"You know, of course, that this is all going to go away. Proving my innocence is going to be incredibly simple once the entire Cyber Division gets involved. They'll take the computer equipment I used, confirm I was nowhere near where the unsub's messages originated from, and finally get to work looking for a real suspect." She reached for her jeans and stepped into them, knowing he was trying to peek down the top of her bra.

"Oh, yeah? Then why haven't you just come in? Why'd you have to fake your death, make everybody think something happened to you?"

Anger sparked. She dropped the jeans again, turning to show him the vicious scar on her upper thigh. "Want to hear how many surgeries it took to repair the muscles in my leg? How long it took me to walk again?" Then she yanked her hair back to display her ear. "How about this? Want to talk about how lucky I am that I didn't lose my hearing? How about the week I spent being tortured by the psychopath you said you had under control in that house?"

His face paled. For the first time since he'd arrived, he began to look uncertain.

Lily cursed herself for trying to explain a thing to the Neanderthal. She quickly pulled the jeans on, then grabbed a sweater from the top of the dresser and donned that as well. Shoving her feet into a pair of tennis shoes, she said, "I'm ready. Let's go do this. I'm sure they're going to be really interested to hear that you called an all clear on the site and told me and Kowalski to leave the van without ever even checking to see if the man you'd caught had an accomplice outside."

The man's face reddened again and he lurched toward her. "It wasn't my fault."

"I didn't say it was," she replied, "but you sure didn't help the situation."

"Goddamn it, Lil, I never wanted anything to happen to you!" He grabbed both her arms this time, squeezing, shaking a little. "Why wasn't it me? Why didn't you come to me for help afterward?"

He looked and sounded a little out of control. Lily realized Tom Anspaugh wasn't just angry; he was perhaps even a bit unbalanced, at the mercy of the emotions that had churned within him since that night.

She stepped carefully. "Take your hands off me, Anspaugh."

Funny. The thing that completely removed the last of the agent's self-control was her calling him by his last name. Spittle flew from his lips and his grip became punishing as he snarled, "It's Tom, you fucking high-toned bitch."

"Let me go, Agent, or I'll scream."

"Go ahead. You think my men are gonna help you?"

"Jackie-"

"Is in custody." He stuck one hand in her short hair, twisting it around his thick fingers, twisting and pulling. "You break my heart, you ruin my life, you oughta at least have the courtesy to call me by my first name. Just once. Or is it not good enough to come out of your perfect little mouth?"

While he'd been growing angrier, she'd pulled her anger in. Let it simmer. Let it build. Used it, just like Sarge had taught her.

Anspaugh pushed her toward the bed until her legs were backed against it. Her knees threatened to bend, putting her on her ass with him above her. It would be no more than a few steps beyond that for him to rip her jeans off, spread her legs, and rape her.

"I bet you say 'Wyatt' easily enough, don't you? You been saying it in his ear when he's screwing you? Managing to whisper it even when your mouth's full of his cock?"

He made his move. Pushed harder, trying to force her to sit. Lily had been prepared for it and when he reached down, trying to grab her crotch, she encircled his wrist in one hand and smashed his elbow in the wrong direction with the other.

He grunted.

Lily was no longer thinking, no longer coherent; she merely reacted. Having the upper hand, she punched him in the solar plexus, then kneed him hard in the groin. When he staggered back, she spun to the right and kicked up and high with her left leg, and the agent went flying. As he hit the wall and began to slide down it, Lily was conscious of two things: the voices of people calling up from downstairs, and the look of murderous rage in Tom Anspaugh's eyes.