Chapter Twenty-five
Lake
It took precisely twenty minutes to call a cab, dress, jump into the vehicle—which had thankfully turned up straight away—and reach Baxter’s address.
I knew it had taken twenty minutes because each of those individual minutes had felt like a lifetime.
Baxter had refused to call the police, pointing out, quite rightly, that they wouldn’t send a car for someone standing on the street.
Instead, he’d agreed to lock his door and not let anyone in who wasn’t me.
There was no man standing across the street when I got out of the cab.
There was no one around at all, which wasn’t that surprising with five a.m. approaching.
Someone exited the building just as I reached it, his apparent haste and the bike he was wheeling suggesting an early start at work.
Either that, or he was a dedicated cyclist with some serious mileage to log.
Whatever his reason for being out and about, it allowed me to slip past him and into the building.
I paused in the lobby, eyeing the stairwell and the lift, calculating the relative dangers of each. Because if the man was no longer on the street, there were only two options: he’d left, or he’d found his way into the building.
I chose the lift. At least if an attack came, it could only come from one direction. Yes, there was the whole being trapped in a metal box with a single exit issue, but it beat climbing five flights of stairs where every dark alcove and bend offered another potential hiding place.
My hyper-vigilance proved unnecessary. Not a single soul appeared during the brief journey from the ground floor to the fifth. My footsteps sounded abnormally loud as I made my way down the corridor to the flat number Baxter had given me, and knocked.
Nothing happened.
The wait stretched close to a minute—long enough for a dozen scenarios to flash through my head.
What if he’d already gotten inside? The door was intact, so he hadn’t forced his way in, but what if he’d talked his way inside?
Pretended to be me. Claimed some dire emergency. Fire, gas leak, anything.
“Lake?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
The door opened a crack, the chain still fastened, and I breathed easier. Baxter wasn’t that stupid. I glanced left and right. “The corridor’s clear.”
He nodded. A few seconds later, the door opened wide enough to admit me.
Once inside, I waited for him to lock it again and refasten the chain before pulling him into my arms. He wore only a thin robe; my cheek brushed bare skin as I buried my face in his neck.
“I was so worried something dreadful could have happened to you.”
“I shouldn’t have scared you like that,” Baxter said. “I was probably overreacting.”
I pulled back to study his face. His slight pallor told that for a lie. “So there was no man?” I challenged. Letting go of him, I went into his bedroom and pulled the curtains back, staring out at the silent street below. “Where was he?”
Baxter joined me, pointing to the opposite side of the street. “There. By the red car.” He pulled his robe tighter around himself. “Maybe there was an innocent explanation.”
“You said he was staring at your window.”
“There’s a flat above me and one below. He could’ve been looking at one of them.”
“Really?”
Baxter shrugged. A car passed, and we both followed its progress until it disappeared. Dawn was just beginning to creep across the horizon. I couldn’t remember the last sunrise I’d seen, but it looked like I was about to witness one now.
“If he was staring at my window,” Baxter said eventually, “then he knows where I live.”
“Yeah, I worked that one out already. Why do you think I got here so fast I forgot to wear underwear?”
At least that brought a smile to Baxter’s face, even if it was fleeting. “How did he find me?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “None of this makes sense.”
“I bet you wish you’d never gone to that bar the night we met.”
I drew the curtains closed. “I don’t wish that at all.”
“I’m trouble.”
I rolled my eyes. “Tell me something I don’t know. I figured that out the moment you jumped on me and tried to stick your tongue down my throat when I’d only invited you back to be polite.”
“You liked it.”
“I did,” I admitted. “Far too much. That’s how I knew you were trouble. But lucky for you, trouble is my favorite flavor. I just can’t get enough of it.” I wasn’t sure how successful I’d been at being glib. I suspected no one would nominate me for a BAFTA any time soon. “Pack a bag.”
Baxter reacted to the instruction like I’d told him to perform a plié. “What?”
“You can’t stay here.” When he didn’t move, I gave him a gentle shove. “Pack.”
He crossed to the wardrobe and pulled out a rucksack. “What am I packing?”
“Enough clothes for a few days. Toiletries. Phone charger. Anything you’d take if you were going away.”
“I’m a bit rusty on that,” he said dryly. “On account of having been dead for nineteen years.”
I raided the bathroom, grabbing what I judged essential, and returned to find him stuffing clothes into the bag. “It feels like running away,” he said. “Weren’t you the one who told me I needed to face up to things?”
“There’s a time for facing things head-on, and there’s a time for retreating, regrouping, and figuring out what the fuck is happening.”
“What makes you think we’ll be safe at your place?”
“I don’t,” I admitted. I wasn’t ready to tell him he wasn’t the only one who’d felt like they were being watched.
Baxter frowned. “Then where are we going?”
“A hotel?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. That makes sense. More people around. More…” His brow knitted when he couldn’t think of any other advantages.
“My credit card is maxed out,” I added sheepishly.
A faint smile. “I’ve got money. You can thank the PPB for not cutting me off entirely.”
Preparations to leave were swift after that. I called a cab while Baxter finished packing. I’d worry about retrieving my own things later. The priority was getting Baxter somewhere safe—somewhere he didn’t have to worry about someone trying to finish what they’d started nineteen years ago.
Neither of us left the building until the cab arrived.
Even then, we both scanned the street nervously before climbing into the back seat.
That wariness followed us for the entire journey, every car that appeared in the rear-view mirror briefly promoted to potential pursuer, until it turned off in another direction.
By the time we pulled up outside a Holiday Inn, we were as sure as anyone could be that no one had followed us. The receptionist didn’t bother to hide her surprise at someone booking a room when some of their guests were probably contemplating breakfast.
“I could’ve called Calisto,” Baxter said once we were inside the room. “I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Would he have picked up at this hour?”
“Probably. Or if he didn’t, Asher would have. He gets up at the crack of dawn to do Tai Chi like a lunatic.”
I laughed at the way he’d said it. “I don’t think wanting to stay fit makes someone a lunatic.”
Baxter dropped his bag onto the bed. “Even if they choose to do it at an ungodly hour?”
“Even then.”
“Even Calisto thinks it’s crazy. And he loves him.” The last words were faint, Baxter having wandered into the bathroom. The sound of running water started up a few seconds later. “Hey, Lake. Want to take a shower with me?”
Is the Pope Catholic? Do bears shit in the woods? Does a one-legged duck swim in circles?
Baxter popped his head around the doorframe. “A yes would suffice.”
I grinned, already shedding clothes as I headed for the bathroom.
With everything else that had happened tonight, I’d somehow forgotten Baxter’s ability to read minds.
As we squeezed into the shower cubicle, something occurred to me.
“Did you get anything from him? From the man, I mean? Any thoughts?”
Baxter tipped his head back under the hot spray. “No.”
“Was the distance too far?”
“I didn’t try. I was only half awake and…” He shook his head, frustration clear.
“You don’t need to make excuses.”
“It would have been the obvious thing, though, right? Whoever he is, I have an advantage over him, something I can do that he can’t.
And what do I do? I forget all about it and just stare at him.
I used to live close to demons, and I wasn’t scared of them.
Sure, I kept my distance. Who wouldn’t? But I wasn’t scared of them.
They were just something to be avoided. And now I’m freaking out over one man. ”
I shook my head, convinced I must have gotten water in my ear. “I thought for a moment you said something about demons.”
“I did.” Baxter began to soap himself. “But that’s a story for another day. One you should get Calisto to tell. He’s got more experience with them than I do. One of them, anyway.”
“Right.”
His gaze dropped to where my cock had expressed its appreciation for his naked body. I grimaced. “Sorry.”
He laughed. “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t get hard. I didn’t exactly invite you in here for a chat.”
“No?”
“No.” He pulled me closer, slick bodies fitting together. “Thank you for coming to my rescue tonight. It meant a lot.”
“You’d have done the same.”
“I would,” he said, something electric passing between us. “And that kind of scares me so early in our relationship.”
“Me too,” I admitted. “Especially when I’ve kissed a lot of frogs.”
Baxter smiled. “I promise I’m not a frog.” He flicked wet hair out of his eyes. “Is this where I’m supposed to say something about you finding your prince, because I don’t know if I can manage that without throwing up.”
Instead of answering, I turned him to face the shower wall, my gaze roaming down the length of his muscled back to the swell of his firmly shaped arse.
I’d planned to say something provocative—something to distract Baxter from tonight’s events.
But my mouth clearly hadn’t gotten the memo.
“Where were you stabbed? You don’t have a scar. ”