Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
“Have you ever committed a B&E before?” Atlas asked, truly curious because there were depths to Lily that kept surprising him. Delighting him, too.
They were in his parked SUV. One of the many vehicles that had waited in his garage. They were behind Benedict’s home, not directly, but near the woods that marked the edge of the property. The better not to be seen.
“Once.”
His brows rose at her confession. “Aren’t we the naughty one?”
Her head turned toward him. “Sometimes I can be. But since my experience is so limited, let’s just treat it like my first time, shall we? I’ll follow your lead.”
It will be your first time when you put that sweet mouth around my dick. His hands tightened around the steering wheel. Now was not the time to think about her mouth and his dick. Or to think about how fantastic she’d tasted. Or the way she’d come when he’d had his lips and tongue on her.
She’d broken apart beneath him. Shattered and trembled and all he’d wanted to do was get her to come over and over again.
Definitely on his to-do list.
After the break-in. Work could be such a pain in the ass.
“Atlas?” Lily prompted.
“I’ve got a bit of experience in this area,” he allowed. And by “a bit,” well, he meant that he’d been breaking into places he shouldn’t be in since he was a teen.
“I hate to be the rain on your parade,” she began.
“I enjoy the rain.”
“Me, too.” She peered through the passenger side window. “But don’t you think it will look highly suspicious if you and I are caught here? And won’t it basically destroy your reputation if the world finds out you break into other people’s homes when the mood strikes you?” Such a very polite tone.
She hadn’t been polite when she’d been coming for him. She’d been fierce and hot, and she’d finally let go of her control. He liked uncontrolled Lily.
He was afraid though, that she was scared of uncontrolled Lily. You fear yourself, don’t you, sweets? What you will become?
It also seemed she feared what would happen to him, if the world learned the truth about who Atlas truly was. He could put her mind at ease. “I’ve never been particularly worried about my reputation. Besides, when you have as much money as I do, you can buy forgiveness for a lot of things.”
“That’s…an asshole thing to say.”
“Guilty.” He forced himself to ease the grip on the wheel. “You should know, though, that I don’t intend to get caught. If I thought there was any chance of being caught, I wouldn’t have brought you along with me.” This part, she needed to fully understand. “I won’t jeopardize you.” Not ever.
“And how are you so confident?”
“Because the annoying detective…” The dead detective.
“He used a security system that was created by my company. I have a back door into it.” He also literally had a key to the detective’s place, an easy enough item to obtain.
“His only neighbors on this dark stretch of road have been in Europe for the last week. They will stay in Europe for two more weeks. There are no patrols, no cops sweeping this area. I suspect your Fed will be here to search tomorrow at an appropriate hour, but for now, the place is all ours. Though, uh, do open the glove box and put on gloves, if you don’t mind.
No sense advertising our presence.” He already had on leather gloves.
He’d pulled them on before getting into the vehicle.
“My prints will already be in his house.”
His eyes narrowed on her.
“You don’t need to get so tense, Atlas.”
Not like it was something he could help.
“I wasn’t selling you out to him,” Lily continued. “Benedict had some research that he wanted me to see, so I came here one night for dinner.”
The research was BS. “He wanted to fuck you.”
“Perhaps, but that did not happen.” A delicate clearing of her throat.
“But since I have been here before, I know exactly where to look for the material that might interest you—you are looking for additional background intel he’d gathered on you, yes?
Intel that was not kept at the police station.
You’re searching for it because you want to see how many crimes he’d tried to link to you? How much he knew about you?”
He’d confessed to killing two men, just told Lily the brutal truth.
And she was still with him. She hadn’t run away, and she hadn’t reached for the phone in order to report him to her Fed ex.
His instinct to trust her had been dead on target.
“I don’t strike first.” Why did he feel compelled to keep offering her up chunks of his blood-stained soul?
“I never have hurt an innocent. They all came at me, Lily. They tried to kill me.” But he’d known what they intended.
He’d known what they were. Had he set traps for some over the years? Yes.
“I didn’t strike first, either,” she whispered.
Lily, are you going to tell me about your kill?
“Okay, we should go. In and out, right?” She grabbed gloves. “I’ll follow your lead.”
He took out his phone. With a few taps, he disabled the security at the ranch-style house.
Made sure the cameras went offline. A camera at the front door.
A camera at the back door. Then he led the way to the rear of the house.
A quiet, unassuming home. The detective had lived there alone for two years.
He put the key in the lock. Opened the door. Stepped inside.
All the blinds were drawn, he’d noticed that as he approached. No one can see in. His gloved hand hit the light switch.
And he found chaos. The same chaos that he’d seen at Lily’s place, only the destruction at Benedict’s wasn’t limited to one room. Everywhere he looked—smashed, destroyed, slashed.
Lily bumped against him. “Atlas?”
He hadn’t reviewed the security feeds from the house. But he sure as hell would be reviewing them all, ASAP. If the intruder had come in via a side window, though, the person wouldn’t have been caught on the two cameras at the doors.
Obviously, the perp had gotten in without setting off the alarm. He’d just needed to disengage the system. Something any good thief could do. But this doesn’t look like theft. This looks—
“This is bad,” she said.
Yeah, it was.
She darted away from him, and he threw out his hand, grabbing her wrist automatically. When she hissed out a breath, he realized that he’d curled his finger around her bruised wrist, and he immediately eased his grip. “Stay with me.”
A nod. “I was just…” Her voice was whisper soft. “The files that Benedict had were in the room to the right.”
He went first because if there was a threat waiting, he’d face it. He had a gun tucked into the waistband of his pants. He didn’t think she’d even seen him grab it from beneath the driver’s seat. He’d grabbed it while she’d been busy putting on her gloves.
But there was no threat waiting. Just like everywhere else in the house, the blinds were drawn in the room Lily had indicated.
He turned on a lamp, and the pool of light showed more destruction in what appeared to be a small office.
Empty files. A smashed desktop computer.
A shredder that had overflowed, and its thin strips of paper had been littered across the floor.
A wide, brown cork board hung askew on the wall beside the desk, half torn papers still on it, as if someone had ripped them away.
He eyed the board with vague interest. “Guessing that was his crime board, huh? And was I prominently featured on it?”
“That board wasn’t up when I was here before.” A soft reply. She pulled open a drawer in a black filing cabinet. The drawer screeched. She peered in the drawer. So did he. No files inside. “Someone took everything.” Lily’s voice held worry.
Atlas was betting that someone hadn’t been the friendly local cops. They would have no need for such destruction. “Let’s get out of here, now.”
“You think…do you think there could be another bomb?”
Only if the killer had anticipated that he and Lily would come to that place. And as Lily had said, few would expect him to commit a B&E personally. No, if anything, people would figure that he would send his team to do the dirty work for him. His security personnel.
But there were just some things you liked to handle yourself.
Without another word, he took Lily’s hand.
Turned off all the lights. They left the house, didn’t look back.
Tension knifed through him as they used the shadows and the darkness to cover their steps and then they were back at the SUV.
He put her in the vehicle first. Atlas shut the door on the passenger side before he stalked around to the driver’s side and entered the vehicle.
Quickly, he pulled out his phone and reset the cameras at Benedict’s place. He turned the security system back on.
Lily pulled off her gloves and stuffed them into the glove box while Atlas cranked the ride. He did not turn on the SUV’s lights, not until they were a bit away from the house. The silence in the SUV was intense.
They traveled a bit more down the road.
And a pair of headlights flashed on behind them.
Lily inhaled and flipped around. “Oh, no, is it—”
“It’s Desmond. The guy always has my back.” He forced his jaw to unclench. “I told you before, you would have an army guarding you.”
She turned to face the front of the vehicle.
“I mean it, Lily. I will keep you safe.”
Her breath shuddered out. “I’m not worried about myself.
I’m worried about you. You’re the target, don’t you see that?
He’s trying to destroy you. He has my files.
He has Benedict’s files. He set the trap with the bomb because he wanted to take out your guards.
Your team. Your friend Desmond. He knew Desmond would be the first one in the door to save you.
Just like Desmond has your back right now. I don’t…” Lily stopped.
He kept driving. “Don’t leave me in suspense.” Come on, tell me more. Atlas needed her to keep talking. “You’re the expert on killers. You’re the one with the degree that lets you get in their minds. Tell me more.”
“I think the other kills in the area were practice runs.” Softer. “I think he was working up to his real target. And I think that real target is you. I think he wants to punish you…”
They’d reached a red light. Atlas angled his head toward her. He found Lily staring straight back at him.
“He wants to destroy everything that you have. Eliminate the people closest to you. He wants to take everything away, and when nothing is left…that’s when he plans the end for you.”
His teeth had clenched. With an effort, he eased the tension in his jaw. “I could have died in the blast at that damn cabin, Lily.”
“I thought so, too…but now I wonder…” Her voice turned considering. “I wonder if putting us in the basement was part of the plan.”
Obviously, it had been part of the plan. The better to hold us captive.
Only he didn’t think that was what Lily meant.
She confirmed his suspicions when she added, “I think we need to see that crime scene. We need to see if the basement was destroyed or if somehow, it was saved. Because you were right when you once asked me if I knew how to set bombs. I know a great deal about them, thanks to Richard Hawthorne.”
The bomber she’d interviewed. Lily and her killers.
“The thing about Richard is that he always directed his explosions. He could stand ten feet behind them, he could watch the destruction, and he would never get hit. He liked to be up close, you see. He liked to feel the heat on his skin but never get burned.”
The light had changed. He saw it from the corner of his eye. His head turned toward the front, and he advanced, but he felt Lily’s stare on him.
“Richard told me that it was all about the positioning. That if he wanted, he could have an impact that would take out one room of a house but leave everything else untouched.”
Sounded to him like Richard had been incredibly cooperative with Lily. Do you always get your killers to reveal all their secrets to you? Atlas had certainly revealed all with her, very, very quickly.
Voice still musing, she noted, “The explosion at the cabin looked so big. I thought for certain the whole place was engulfed, but…what if that fire didn’t touch the basement?”
“It destroyed everything there, Lily.” He could still see the high flames in his mind. “It was so hot the firefighters couldn’t even get close. The place was nearly obliterated.”
“Appearances can be deceiving. I think we should get back to that cabin.”
Yeah, they damn well would be going back. If she had a hunch, an instinct—whatever, he’d listen to her. They’d follow her lead. But not that night. He wasn’t going to the scene of their near deaths then. He was taking her home. Locking her inside his house.
Because if she was right…if the killer truly wanted to punish him by taking away the people close to him…
Fuck me. I thought telling the world that she was my fiancée would keep her safe. That she’d be under my protection. Instead, I might have just put an even bigger target on her.
“Don’t even think about taking back my ring,” Lily said, as if reading his mind. He was starting to wonder if the woman could do just that. “We’re a team, remember? We will take him down together.”
“He’s not going to kill you, Lily.” I won’t let him. “If you leave me, if you go far away, you could be safe. You haven’t committed any crimes that he thinks you need to be punished for—”
“You don’t think murder is something that requires punishment?
” A casual question, but tension beat in her words.
“Because most people do. And you see, I murdered a man once upon a time. David Warren. The name that Gage tossed out as a threat to me? I killed him. I killed David Warren. I watched him fight for survival in his last minutes, and I stood there, and I did nothing. I am my mother’s daughter.
I am as cold and uncaring. And I smiled when he died. ”
He could not speak.
“But, by all means, please continue thinking that I am some sweet, innocent person who needs protecting. When people think that about me, they underestimate me at their own peril.”