Неизвестный - 3. In Pursuit Of Justice

“Can’t,” Catherine moaned, her head throbbing and her vision nearly gone. Some small working part of her mind reminded her that they were standing in the middle of her living room, and she grasped Rebecca’s hand and pulled her urgently toward the sofa. “Sit down,” she commanded as she yanked down the zipper on Rebecca’s trousers.

The backs of Rebecca’s knees hit the edge of the sofa and she had no choice but to comply, feeling the clothes stripped from her body as she went down. She found herself nearly naked, Catherine in her lap, their mouths dancing over one another’s skin again. When fingers slid between her thighs, all she could do was drop her head against the back of the couch and moan. It had been like this that first night, her need rising so fast she’d never had a chance to contain it, but this time she didn’t resist. She welcomed the fire that burned through her blood, purging the wounds far deeper than flesh. “Please,” she begged.

Catherine slipped to her knees between Rebecca’s legs, and then leaned forward to take her with tender hands and demanding lips. No thought, no insecurity now. This—this splendor, this wonder, this indescribable beauty—this was hers for the taking, and take her she did. With certainty of touch and surety of heart, she lifted her lover on the wings of her own breathless desire to a place beyond knowing.

Rebecca sifted strands of thick auburn hair through her nearly lifeless fingers, unable to muster enough strength to lift her head from the cushions of the couch. Her thighs still trembled, and her stomach rippled with aftershocks. “Catherine?” she asked hoarsely.

“Mm…”

“I’m wasted.”

“Me too.”

“If you help me up, we can probably make it into the bedroom. You must be uncomfortable.” With effort, she slipped her palm beneath Catherine’s chin, raising her lover’s head from where it rested against her own inner thigh, and managed to focus on the deep green eyes. “If you give me a few minutes, I might be able to reciprocate, too.”

“I’m fine.” Catherine smiled. “Making love to you seems to set me off.”

“Still, I have plans for you.” She was tired, and her chest ached, and the lassitude that lingered after her release had nearly lulled her into sleep, but she needed Catherine to know how much she wanted her. She needed to show her, and there wasn’t much time.

“Hold that thought,” Catherine said warmly as she pushed herself upright and extended one hand to Rebecca. “Let’s have dinner first. We both need to eat.”

“All right. Food first, but don’t think I’m forgetting.”

“Oh, believe me, I won’t let you forget.”

As it turned out, time slipped away and it was close to midnight by the time Rebecca had stir fried the vegetables and noodles she’d picked up earlier in the evening, and even later by the time they’d finished eating and piled the dishes into the dishwasher.

“Come on,” Catherine announced, grasping Rebecca’s shirttail and tugging her away from the sink. “Bed. I’m fading and…”

“I need to go out later.”

Catherine stopped moving abruptly, letting the material fall from her fingers. “What?”

Rebecca turned and rested her hips against the counter. She didn’t want to see what was in Catherine’s eyes—she was afraid it would be that combination of hurt and resentment that had so often been in Jill’s—but she forced herself to meet the other woman’s gaze. There were questions in the depths of those green eyes, and confusion, but they hadn’t grown cold. Not yet. Drawing a deep breath, she steeled herself for the pain that was sure to come when Catherine turned from her in anger. “I’ve been away from the job a long time. I need to get a leg up on this new case, and there are some people I need to see.”

Catherine stared at her, struggling to absorb the words and place them into some context she could deal with. There wasn’t any. “Tonight? In the middle of the night—alone?”

It was Rebecca’s turn to be confused. “Catherine, I’m a cop.”

“Of course, I know that, Rebecca,” Catherine snapped, rubbing the bridge of her nose and pacing the length of the kitchen. “I thought this was desk duty. A paper chase.”

“It is—well, it is and it isn’t. It’s a real investigation, and a lot of it will be done through computer searches and whatever the hell else it is that those eggheads are going to do, but there’s real police work to be done, too.”

“What about Watts? I thought he was going to do the street work?” She forced herself to slow down. Screaming would not help, and the very fact that she wanted to scream was upsetting enough.

“He is,” Rebecca affirmed. She took a chance and walked the few feet to her, tentatively taking her hand. The slight contact eased some of the tension in her stomach, although Catherine’s response was guarded. “But he can’t talk to my contacts. It took me years to cultivate them, and they don’t talk to just anyone. I’ll just be talking. I swear.”

Catherine took a step away, but she kept her hand in the detective’s. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? When you got here—or on the phone when I called you from the car?”

The cop was silent.

“Rebecca?”

“I was…” she ran a hand through her hair, shrugged her tight shoulders. “I thought you’d be angry. I thought you wouldn’t want to see me.”

“Angry,” Catherine said softly. “Did you think that I might be worried? That I might be concerned that you’ve barely been out of bed a week and you’re already working fifteen hour days? God, Rebecca—”

She walked over and sat down at the small kitchen table, motioning to the adjoining chair with one hand. “Sit down. You look tired.”

Rebecca sat. “I meant to tell you, but when we got here—”

“I didn’t give you much chance to talk then, did I?” Catherine filled in, a faint smile relaxing her troubled expression.

“I wanted you, too. Badly.” Rebecca took her hand again, and this time Catherine’s fingers laced comfortingly between hers. “When you touch me, everything just…falls into place. Everything makes sense.”

“I know.” She brushed her fingers over the detective’s cheek. “For me, too. Our non-verbal skills are just fine. Outstanding, as a matter of fact. But we need to do a little better on the verbal parts.”

“I’m bad at it,” Rebecca said honestly. “Around my house, the job came first. My father never explained; my mother never complained. But I know there were a lot of nights he never came home. And then—well, then he never came home.”

Catherine’s heart thudded painfully, but she just nodded. Rebecca’s expression was distant, and she doubted that the detective really saw her.

“I grew up with silence. That’s the way most cops are.” The blue eyes she lifted to Catherine’s swirled with anguish. “I’ve never even said these things out loud before.”

“And that’s exactly why I love you,” Catherine whispered. “Because you’re saying them now.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

IN THE HOURS after midnight, the streets in Catherine’s sedate neighborhood were eerily quiet, but as Rebecca approached the Tenderloin in the heart of the downtown area, foot and vehicular activity picked up. Here on the neon-lit sidewalks and in innumerable rundown bars, strip joints, and cheap hotels, life teemed with restless energy. She pulled to the curb not far from an all night diner that was a local hangout for the area’s denizens—mostly prostitutes taking a break between johns, panhandlers who had been lucky enough to scrounge the price of a cup of coffee, and bar goers who hadn’t been lucky enough to find company for the late lonely hours. Stepping from the Vette into the night for the first time in nearly two months, Rebecca felt another piece of her life slip back into place. On these streets, she knew exactly who she was, and exactly what was expected of her. A strange comfort, but a familiar one. Her blood hummed with the faint stirring of anticipation that being out here, hunting, always produced. She wasn’t hunting a person, not tonight, but the information she gathered—the odd comment, the offhand observation, the bit of gossip bandied about—might someday lead her to her prey. She’d almost reached the brightly lit spot on the sidewalk in front of the diner when she caught sight of a familiar figure push through the revolving door on the way out. Quickly, she stepped into the darkened overhang of a boarded up video store and waited for the person to pass. She only had a fleeting glimpse of the leather jacketed, blue-jeaned form as the woman strode quickly by, but the sharp, clear features beneath midnight black hair were impossible to mistake. Dellon Mitchell was out very late in a very dicey part of town.