Karen Chance: Inked

But she hadn’t tried to contact Lily. Hard to arrange a bargain if you don’t let the other side know about it. No, she meant to kill him.

But she hadn’t. Not yet.

Why not? If she had Rule paralyzed, he was helpless. There were so many ways to kill a helpless man—quicker, easier ways than tattooing a spell around his neck. But Adele hadn’t gone for quick and easy. Lily knew that much, held on to that certainty. If Rule had been killed, the mate bond would have snapped. It hadn’t.

How long did it take to ink a tattoo all the way around a man’s neck?

Lily didn’t know. She didn’t have any goddamned idea, so all she could do was keep going forward and pray. And all she could manage for prayer was oh, God, oh, God, oh, God…

Mannie stopped. He looked at her and jerked his chin, indicating they went up again. This time “up” wasn’t a scramble, but a vertical climb. Not for very far, thank God—after about ten feet they’d reach a ledge. That ledge wandered off to the right, leading to a crevice.

The crevice led to Rule. Lily’s heartbeat picked up. She gave Mannie a nod, studied the rock face briefly, and reached for the first handhold.

This was where she took over the lead.

It wasn’t a tricky climb. Hard work, but not tricky. The hand-and footholds were good. But it was impossible to make it completely silently. Every scuff of a foot, every loose pebble, sounded horribly loud. Her scraped hand stung as she hauled herself up on nearly two wide feet of blessedly level ground.

Hard to say who was more startled, her or the rattler she’d disturbed.

Lily took two hasty steps back. It didn’t seem to calm the snake any. It was curled up except for the tail, which shook—and the head, which was lifted, testing the air with its tongue.

No time. She had no time—Mannie was coming up right behind her. Where was a stick when she needed it? There was nothing in sight, and she had no time.

Lily pulled off her jacket, lunged forward, and tossed the jacket over the snake just as Mannie’s hand appeared on the ledge. Then she kicked it—jacket, snake and all.

The two separated in midair. Mannie froze with his arm on the ledge, his head swiveling to watch as the snake landed below. Then he scrambled up the rest of the way.

She barely waited for him to make it safely up before hurrying to the crevice. It was low and narrow. She got on her knees, twisted sideways, and started wiggling forward.

It was about a yard long, and taller at the other end. According to Mannie, she’d come out about seven feet up from the floor of the cul-de-sac. She stopped just before reaching the end and unholstered her weapon. Her heart pounded so hard she felt it in her ear canals, yet she was calm.

He was still alive. She’d made it in time.

Slowly she peered around the rocky lip of the crevice.

Ahead of her—rock. Below was more rock, this with some dirt atop it. And Rule. He lay on his back on a bright blue blanket, his eyes closed, his head a couple feet from a small camp stove. His hands were handcuffed in front of him. At his feet was an ordinary ice chest. And those were…rose petals? Someone had sprinkled rose petals on the blanket?

No one else in sight. The cul-de-sac was about ten feet by fifteen, with no visible hiding places.

She heard Mannie coming up behind her and reached up and tapped her head once: stop. Was this some kind of trap?

She eased farther out, craned her head. She couldn’t see anyone, and no one shot at her. Always a good sign.

She twisted around and leaned closer to Mannie, barely visible in the deep shadows of the crevice. “Stay up here,” she whispered. His head moved in what she hoped was a nod.

She straightened, sat, and swung her legs up to her chest—hard squeeze to get them fully twisted around in this tight space, but she made it, letting them dangle out the opening. She dropped, weapon out.

Nothing. No one fired, no one came running out of some previously unnoticed hidey-hole. Two quick steps took her to Rule. She knelt and put her hand on his neck—his clean-skinned neck. No tattoo.

His pulse was strong. She kept her weapon out, her eyes scanning the area. What the hell was going on?

The scuff of feet. A woman’s voice, too low for her to catch the words. The sounds came from the opening to the cul-de-sac—a wide opening, not a narrow, slither-through-it crevice. From the trail beyond—and not very far down that trail.

With her empty hand she tapped her head once: stay put.

Question was, did she do the same, or try to ambush whoever was coming? She did not like leaving Rule stretched out, helpless and unaware—but logic said he’d be safest with his kidnapper caught, and the best way to catch her was by surprise.

Lily stood and started for the side of the cul-de-sac that would screen her from whoever was approaching. And stepped on a damned pebble. It slid under her, making her jerk to regain her balance—making her make noise, dammit to hell. She froze, listening.

The voice was silent. The footsteps had stopped.

Never mind stealth, then. Lily swung out around the rocky wall, weapon held out in both hands. “FBI! Freeze! Hands up!”

Two women, not one, looked back at her. One was Mariah Friar, her eyes huge in her pallid face. The other was taller, older, heavier, with dusky skin and dark brown hair in a wild froth of curls halfway down her back. She wore jeans and a snug, short-sleeved black sweater.

With one arm, she kept Mariah’s arm pinned high behind her back. Her other hand kept her snub-nose Beretta jammed under Mariah’s chin. Her eyes were tilted and smiling, as were her full lips. “Maybe you should freeze, too, FBI.”

Now it made sense. Crazy sense, maybe, but Lily knew she should have figured it out the second she spotted those damned rose petals. Adele had watched too many episodes of Murder She Wrote. She thought she could stage a murder-suicide. Lily could read the script the woman had written: Mariah lured Rule here for sex. Rule, being lupus, accepted. Mariah—for what reason, Lily wondered? — killed him instead of fucking him, then shot herself.

No doubt Adele would have supplied some kind of motive, given time.

“You’ve got a problem, Adele. Your little plan to kill a couple more people to distract me didn’t work.” Lily shook her head. “And your staging sucks. A romantic tryst on rocks? What were you thinking?”

The woman’s eyes flashed, but her smile didn’t budge. “You don’t think it’s a pretty setting? I’m crushed—or would be, but your presence here makes your opinion less important than it was. It seems we will have an even worse tragedy than I’d originally thought.”

“How’re you going to manage that, Adele? If you shoot Mariah, I shoot you. If you move that gun so you can shoot me, I shoot you. Seems like you wind up dead no matter what—unless you put that gun down.”

“Oh, you’re tough, aren’t you? Not so tough you’ll stand there and let me shoot poor little Mariah, though.” She jammed the gun harder into that terribly vulnerable spot, her face twisting with hate. Mariah whimpered. “Shut up, Mariah. God, but I’m so sick of your whiny little feelings. All that sweet, sweet neediness of yours seducing Steve…”

Suddenly she laughed. “You want to know how to lie to an empath, FBI? All you have to do is mean it when you say it. She can only read what you’re feeling right that moment, so if you keep the hate pushed down deep, she doesn’t know.”

“I knew.” Mariah’s’ voice was thin and shaky, but clear. “I knew how jealous you were, but the friendship was real, too. You know it was.”

“Shut up.” She jerked Mariah’s arm higher, making her cry out. “And you, FBI. Put the gun down. I’ve got nothing to lose. Might as well shoot this little friend of mine, eh?”