“You don’t have to come with me.”

His dark eyes glittered at her and Flame felt a shiver run down her spine. She turned away from him, refusing to be intimidated, refusing to back down. He caught her chin in his hand. “I think we need to get something straight, cher. I love you. Straight out and I’m not afraid to say it. But you have this idea of me that isn’t quite on the mark. I’m not always nice, Flame. I don’ get pushed around, not even by the woman I love.”

She wasn’t going to react to his declaration. It was a hell of a time for him to make it and she just plain wasn’t going there, although she couldn’t stop the way her heart and her treacherous body responded. She loved him goofy and she loved him when he went all alpha on her. God, she was pathetic. “I wasn’t trying to push you around, Raoul. This is important to me. I have to do this.”

She ducked her head, looked away from him so he couldn’t read the real reason in her eyes. She was dying, and she wanted to leave something behind. She couldn’t leave children, and if Raoul was telling the truth and he loved her, he was the only one. And he’d be the only person to remember her. She was going to rid the world of one more monster before she allowed the disease eating her up to take her.

“Let’s go then,” Gator said. “I’ll send the others out to his house to back us up.”

They said little as he drove through the streets to find the Bourbon Street address she gave him. Most of the time he spoke on his cell, issuing instructions to the other GhostWalkers. The street corner was deserted with the storm battering the streets, filling them with water so fast the pumps couldn’t keep up.

Flame leaned across the seat to give Raoul a kiss, her hand on the door. The slight brush of her mouth against his sent a small jolt of electricity through him. Angry or not, he couldn’t resist her. He framed her face with his hands and held her still, kissing her the way he wanted, letting her taste his anger, the bite of his teeth, the dance of his tongue. He was wearing his damn heart on his sleeve and she gave him so little back. He was going to have to watch her walk away, stand on a corner to entice a killer to pick her up.

“The car’s shaking,” she said.

“Fuck the car.” He kissed her more. Long, drugging kisses. Hot, sizzling kisses. Dark, angry kisses. Every kind of kiss he could think of to hold her to him.

“I love you,” Flame whispered, her voice so low that even with his acute hearing, he barely heard. “I’ve never loved anyone, Raoul and I’m not very good at it.” It was a confession, the best she could give him and she could only hope he understood what she was trying to tell him.

He rested his brow against hers. “You’re good enough at it,” he said. “Don’ get yourself shot or I’ll be really pissed at you. I didn’t throw the paddle away, you know.”

She laughed the way he knew she would, the sparkle returning to her eyes. “I threw it away. And I broke it in two first so you wouldn’t get any more bright ideas.”

His hand dropped to her breast, her bruised, painful breast. He stroked her gently, lovingly, through the thin material. “You like my ideas. I think you like the feel of my hands.”

The way he touched her was reverent, not at all playful like his words, so tender and loving she wanted to melt into him. “I love the feel of your hands. Now go away be fore we get arrested.” She kissed him again and opened the door.

He caught her arm, preventing her from scooting out. “Look me in the eye, Flame and tell me you aren’t looking to die here.”

“I’d no more let Saunders kill me than I would Whitney.”

He held her a second longer, swallowed hard, and nodded.

She sauntered over to the corner, tucking back out of the rain, trying to look as if she were ready for a good time with the rain pouring down and the streets looking tawdry with the neon signs blinking through the gray haze. She didn’t have any competition that she could see so, if she guessed right and Saunders needed to work off is frustrations, she’d be the logical choice. Surreptitiously she glanced at her watch. All the days of reconning Saunders had paid off. She had his schedule. Either they would come looking in the next few minutes, or to night was a bust.

Headlights nearly blinded her as a car swept around the corner. She recognized the security vehicles Saunders used. He bit all right. Let’s see f I can reel him in.

Don’go getting too confident, Flame.

She snuck a peek to see if she could spot him, but there was no seeing Raoul when he was in hunting mode.

The window rolled down and a hand beckoned her to the car. The man handed her three hundred dollar bills without saying a word. Flame got in when the back door was opened. No one spoke as they drove her into the city to the Saunders’s estate. They looked and smirked and she could tell they wanted to intimidate her. The one on the passenger side had a crooked nose and rubbed his crotch and grinned at her.

She looked right through him and thought about Raoul. She felt him close, knew if she whispered he would hear her. When Raoul looked at her she felt sexy. When these men looked at her she just felt dirty-and angry. As they swept through the back entrance straight to the gatehouse, the front passenger window shattered. safety glass exploding inward. The men reacted, drawing weapons and crouching low. Flame kept her smirk to herself. They were all nervous and the window shattering with no clear explanation added to the strain.

The gatehouse was neat and appealing on the outside, blending in with the beauty of the landscaping, but once inside, it was easy to see exactly what the place was used for. Saunders sat by the fake fireplace, drinking a glass of whiskey. He barely looked up when the men shoved her inside. The door closed with a solid thud.

Flame looked around her. Mirrors decorated the ceiling and three of the four walls. There was a rack holding all kinds of what looked like very painful instruments. “So this is your little torture chamber. Very chic. I’ve heard about it.”

Saunders lifted his glass. “My reputation precedes mc?”

She smiled at him and wandered around the room touching the various whips. They were all real, obviously made to produce as much pain as possible. “It certainly does. I thought I’d come check it out for myself.” She leaned against the rack letting him get a good look at her figure. All the while she rubbed her hand back and forth on the spikes. “You like to hurt women, don’t you, Mr. Saunders?”

Her fingers mesmerized him. He watched the way she caressed the cold steel, almost as if it were a phallus symbol. Her voice was unbelievable, a sexy, sultry purr that made him as hard as a rock. Ordinarily he didn’t allow the sluts to speak to him, but the sound of her voice vibrated through his body and played on his nerve endings like those stroking fingers.

“It turns you on and makes you feel big and powerful, doesn’t it?”

He wanted to move toward her, but the room seemed to shift out from under him. He lurched unsteadily, wondering if there were earthquakes in Louisiana. He’d certainly never experienced one before.

The door burst open and Emanuel Parsons stumbled in. “You son of a bitch. You killed my boy, didn’t you?” He had his back to Flame, so intent on confronting Kurt Saunders that he hadn’t checked the room for other occupants. “The cabin is gone, burnt to the ground and they’re all dead. Everyone is dead.”

“How the hell did you get in here?” Saunders set his glass carefully on the table, his hand remaining casually over the top of it.

“He was a good boy until you got him into your depraved way of life. You didn’t want witnesses.” Emanuel tapped his cane on the floor. “You didn’t have to have him killed, Kurt.”

“I had nothing to do with the cabin burning. I have no idea what happened out there. I figure Vicq got pissed and went crazy. He’s always had a screw loose. As for your boy, he loved taking a woman and using her the way she was meant to be used. You always wanted to, but never had the guts. Get the hell out of here, Parsons. You make me sick. And don’t think you can try to take me down. I’ve got enough on you and your son to bury you.”

“I won’t have to take you down. The military was all over the area. Helicopters, forensic people, some pretty powerful people are shuffling through the debris and not anyone I knew. That tells me something, Kurt. They didn’t trust the police. Why wouldn’t they trust the police to investigate? Because I was under suspicion. And that means they know about you. I wouldn’t have to do a damned thing to take you down, but you killed my boy.” Emanuel Parsons slowly brought his cane up. “Burn in hell.”

The shot rang out, loud in the small room. Glass shattered behind Parsons and he stood swaying for a moment, staring at Saunders and the small gun in his hand. Saunders had swept the gun up from the small table where his glass still sat filled with whiskey. The cane dropped first, and then Parsons fell to his knees.

Saunders walked up to Parsons and pressed the muzzle of the gun between his eyes. “You lose,” he said and pulled the trigger.

Flame stayed very still as Saunders turned the gun on her.

He shrugged. “Sorry, honey. And I really wanted to play, but I’m afraid I don’t have time.” He raised the gun, ringer tightening on the trigger.

Simultaneously, a hole blossomed in the middle of his forehead, one in his heart, one in his throat and one through his mouth. Flame could barely separate the four shots they were so close together. She rubbed the metal spike with the napkin sitting on the table beside Saunders’s drink before using it to open the door.

“No, this time, you lose,” she said and shut the door.

There wasn’t a single guard in sight. She caught the glimpse of a body lying prone on the lawn and another in the flower garden. She walked to the edge of the high fence and jumped, landing in a crouch, waiting there in the shadows.

The car pulled up, passenger door open and she slid in and leaned across the seat to kiss Raoul full on the mouth.

“Great timing. Thank you.”

“I’ve got my uses.”

CHAPTER 18

The shower was hot and helped take some of the sting out of the bruises marring her body. Flame leaned against the shower stall and let the water pour over her. She’d never felt so exhausted in her life. She concentrated on the feeling she had when she witnessed Joy’s reunion with her parents. It had been an uplifting, yet incredibly sad moment. For some reason, she had shifted her attention from Joy and her weeping parents to Wyatt. He looked broken. Utterly broken. So much so that she had wanted to cry for him.

She never, ever wanted to see that same expression on Raoul’s face. She put her head back and closed her eyes, allowing the water to cascade over her. Even if she stayed with him, when she died, it was going to tear him up. What was she supposed to do? She’d actually tried to talk to his grandmother about it, but before she could confess the truth, they’d been interrupted. She had no one to discuss things with and more than anything, she didn’t want to see Raoul hurt.

“Hey! Are you planning on living in there?” A loud thump on the door made her heart jump. She swept back her hair and turned off the water.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to use up all the hot water.” She caught up a towel and wrapped it around her.

“I don’ care about the hot water, cher.” He poked his head in the door. “I just needed to know you were safe.” His sharp gaze roamed over her bare skin.

Her heart sank when he frowned. She knew she looked bad. There was no way to hide the bruises from him. They were everywhere, large black and blue patches that looked hideous. She ducked her head. “It looks worse than it really is.”

Gator stepped into the room and skimmed his fingertips over the outline of the dark bruise riding the swell of her breast. His touch was light, barely there, but her womb clenched and her stomach muscles contracted in response.