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once again, he hadn’t worn a condom. Hadn’t one of his friends laughingly said that all his women complained because no matter how protected or safe they were, Ethan always wore latex?
Until her.
Until now.
“Oh God! You just sucked the life out of me.” He collapsed beside her and once again dragged her across his chest. “Go to sleep, you little wildcat. I’ll feed us later. We’ll have to eat before I can giddyap and go again.”
His hands were on her back. Stroking her, easing her. He was holding her. Sarah let her lashes drift closed; she let the weariness set in. Just for a minute, she told herself. She would get up in a minute. Because she didn’t want to wake up in his arms, screaming in pain.
Sometimes, the nightmares were as brutal as the past itself had been.
* * *
“What did you find out?”
Cooper stood on the deck, cell phone in hand, a bottle of beer in the other as he watched the kitchen. Evening was darkening over the house, and Sarah was still sleeping. And Cooper wanted answers.
“You’re not gonna believe this shit,” Jake, his bartender, stated in surprise. “Man, when I finally tracked that little girl down and cut through all the bullshit, I ’bout flipped my wig.”
“Fine, now flip mine,” Cooper ordered him.
Jake sighed. Cooper could almost see him running his hand over his bald head as he sat back in the leather chair of the office of the bar.
“Remember that Italian mafia guy? Oh, ’bout eight years ago. Suddenly turned himself over to the Italian authorities, spilled his guts and his evidence on all the families, which caused that split through the crime families?”
“Fredrico or something like that,” Cooper nodded.
“Well, man, get a load of this. What the news services didn’t get an earful of is what I found out when I contacted a few friends over there at the embassy. Seems ole Giovanni Fredrico, alias Gio the Giant, had a pretty little sixteen-year-old daughter who was kidnapped when she slipped out to meet with a rival’s son. She was taken, held for Gio’s good behavior as they set through Italy killing off some of his strongest allies. Each time good old Gio tried to get back his baby girl, they sent him a video. A video of this tiny little teenager held down, naked from the waist up, a razor blade slicing across her breasts. The old man was going insane. Turned to the authorities. Promised them everything, but they had to get his daughter, like pronto.”
Cooper lowered his head and closed his eyes. The scars across Sair’s chest. Fuck.
“Okay, so get this. From what my embassy buds say, they rescued the girl quick enough, turned her over to her daddy for a few days, then Daddy was arrested, too. Whole big trial. Threw him in prison, yada yada. We know all that. Well, six months later, little Sarita Fredrico was killed in a car bombing that took out three more of Old Man Fredrico’s rivals. Or so the reports say. Start digging, and you find out that six months later, Sarah Fox emigrates from Italy by way of our good ally, Australia. Arrives with her uncle, Martin Corelli. Martin takes a security-guard job in Los Angeles, and little Sarah Fox is taking college classes. They move again a year later to Dallas. Sarah Fox goes into computer programming and graphics, and good old Martin is playing security guard again. Until four years ago. Martin dies. I talked to the coroner. He remembers the case, not because the death was anything less than natural, but because the dudes who collected the body were Italian. One grieving little mother dressed in black and a big, tall, somber young boy who managed only scattered English. They were accompanied, our coroner swears, by the Secret Service, who flashed some pretty impressive ID. The boy with the mother asks if old Corelli had other friends or family. Coroner says no, then asks the boy, How did you know he was here? The boy states, A call from a friend. Nothing more. End of story, everyone goes away. Six months later, you acquire a new neighbor. Miss Sarah Fox.”
Cooper could hear the “but.” It was there. Tightening in his gut.
“So?” he said carefully, glaring at the boards of the deck now.
“So, we met Corelli,” Jake informed him. “Me and you, while we were in Dallas a few years back during leave. We were carousing the bars that week. Remember?”
Cooper had to sit down. Fuck, he remembered. “He just called himself Martin.”
“Righto,” Jake ground out. “We all drank, had us some laughs, and the dude gets up to leave, says he has to meet his niece and walk her home from nearby. Then when we left and those thugs tried to jump us outside the bar, he was there with that switchblade like hell on fire.”
“And said one day he’d take a favor in turn for the help,” Cooper sighed. “That one day, if he died, he’d send me the only thing that meant anything to him. And I was to protect it.” They’d been drunker than hell, Cooper remembered that. He’d laughed, told Martin he’d protect his firstborn son in exchange. And Martin had told him that what he had was much more important than his firstborn son.
“Well, here’s some more good info,” Jake snorted. “Corelli was here in Simsburg a few months before he died. I just got some info when I was talking to the Realtor who sold her that little house. Corelli arrived for two nights with his niece Sarah Fox. When the Realtor asked why they were looking in Simsburg, Miss Fox told her they knew someone in town.”
“There was a girl there that night,” Cooper mused. “After the fight. She got off the bus on the corner while we were leaning against that bar laughing our asses off.”
He remembered it now, as though it were yesterday. Blue eyes in the night, the small figure, her coat hood pulled over her head. Her face had been hidden by the hood, but she’d held keys in her hand. He remembered the glitter of those keys, one sharp point held between her fingers, a laptop bag looped over her neck.
She’d been wary. On guard. But he remembered feeling her gaze go over him.
Son of a bitch.
“Corelli was her guardian. And she came here because of me.”
“Actually, Martin was my uncle. And yes, I came here because I couldn’t forget you.”
