Keep Me Close (Lazarus Rising Book 2) Read online

Cecelia yanked her hand away from Flynn. “No. No.”

  “It’s contaminated evidence now,” Jay continued as he rose from his chair and strode around his desk. His eyes dropped to the rope. “If we turn it in to the FBI, well, they’ll just get Flynn’s DNA and prints off it. Then, of course, we have two problems. One—they’ll think that Flynn is the killer.”

  Sonofabitch.

  “And two…” Jay’s gaze rose to meet Flynn’s. “Then we have the problem of explaining how a dead man—a man who is supposedly buried in Arlington National Cemetery—is walking around the streets of D.C.”

  “Hell.” That rough exclamation came from West. “We are screwed. That bastard is playing with us.”

  Elizabeth had moved closer to the desk. Her head tilted as she crouched to study the white nylon rope. “I can test the rope. Um, the lab that Jay has set up for me—”

  Because the richer than sin tech billionaire was now funding all of Elizabeth’s research. He also had Sawyer and Flynn on his payroll.

  “—I have the equipment there. I can check it for DNA. I can find out if it is the murder weapon, I can—”

  “We are turning that rope over to the FBI.” Cecelia’s voice was flat.

  Sawyer had moved to Elizabeth’s side. He shook his head at Cecelia’s words. “Don’t think that’s a good idea. They’ll just come hunting for Flynn.”

  Cecelia’s lips parted and she seemed to struggle for words. But then she found them. “The rope could have been used in a murder! A murder! Didn’t you hear what Jay said? A woman was killed! We could be jumping to a million conclusions, and the best way to deal with this situation is by going to the authorities. They can help us. I can call Aaron. He’ll check the rope, he’ll—”

  “Throw me in jail?” Flynn finished for her. Shit, he should have been more careful in that garage, but he’d seen the rope, and he’d just reacted. He’d thought it was a threat from Bryce. Not a murder weapon. The tricky bastard. “That’s what your ex-lover will do. I am a dead man, Cecelia. Gonna be a little hard to explain that.” And she was also overlooking another very, very serious problem with her plan. “And do you think the FBI is going to be able to handle Bryce? If it’s him, then they are way out of their league, and you know it.”

  No way would the FBI be equipped to handle a super soldier. Especially not someone like Bryce.

  “He’ll get into their heads,” Sawyer added grimly as his eyes flashed fire. “The bastard can send out his emotions to overwhelm others. The FBI can’t handle him.”

  No, they couldn’t. She might think her FBI ex was all that, but he couldn’t match a super soldier’s power. “Bryce King is our problem. And we’ll deal with him.” Flynn tried to make his voice sound soothing, but he knew he’d failed when Cecelia jerked at his words.

  He didn’t do soothing very well.

  “You mean…” Cecelia licked her lips. “You’ll kill him.”

  He didn’t like the way she stared at him. As if he were the monster. As if she needed to fear him. He wanted her to look at him differently. The way, shit, the way that Elizabeth looked at Sawyer.

  Not going to happen. And he also wasn’t going to lie to her. “Bryce isn’t someone who can be tossed in a jail. If I have to kill the bastard to stop him, then, yes, I will. And I won’t hesitate.” Didn’t she get it? Bryce was a threat that had to be eliminated.

  Elizabeth turned away from the rope and her gaze swept over everyone in the room. “How about we all just take a breath first? I’ll get this rope back to my lab, run some tests, and see what I can figure out. For all we know, Bryce isn’t involved.”

  He knew otherwise. Flynn and Sawyer shared a grim look.

  They both knew the fuck otherwise.

  ***

  The sun was too bright. Cecelia shielded her eyes as she walked out of Jay’s home—or rather, his mansion. The man had a mammoth house, one that looked more like a stone castle than anything else.

  “You can’t go to the FBI.”

  Her head turned. Elizabeth Parker was behind her, and Elizabeth looked worried.

  Only fair since Cecelia was damn worried, too. Worried, scared. Correction, terrified.

  “Flynn is a dead man.” Elizabeth’s voice was low. “But so is Bryce King. Even if his DNA is on the rope, the FBI won’t be able to do anything. I mean, they can try exhuming his remains, but then they’ll just find an empty grave. They’ll be chasing a ghost, and while they run all over looking for him, Bryce will be hunting. He’ll be killing.”

  Cecelia glanced back at the house. Flynn was still inside, talking with Sawyer. Planning their hunt? “So we let the super soldiers take care of things? Is that what you’re saying? We ignore the law and we let—”

  “Normal laws don’t apply here. If Bryce is killing again, the only ones who can stop him are Flynn and Sawyer. They’re the only ones who can match his strength level.”

  Cecelia gave a bitter laugh. “Don’t be so sure of that. I think a bullet would match Bryce’s strength level pretty well.”

  Elizabeth stepped closer to her. “Then you keep yourself armed.” Her voice was low. “Because I know that he was obsessed with you back at Lazarus. Bryce King was locked on you.”

  Yes, he had been. So locked that he’d snuck into her room and watched her at night. Goosebumps rose on her arms.

  “I have this hypothesis,” Elizabeth continued quickly, “I think that extreme emotional connections and extreme emotional responses create the memory flashes for the Lazarus subjects. Sawyer remembered me because of our shared past—because of the connection we had. Because of the things…” Her words trailed away as sadness flashed on her face.

  “Elizabeth?” Cecelia prompted.

  Elizabeth inhaled sharply and the sadness disappeared from her face. “What if Subject Five remembered you?” Elizabeth asked, voice low but intense. “What if…if Bryce is the Midnight Strangler, then he might have remembered you. When he walked into your office at Lazarus for the counseling sessions, maybe he had a memory flash. Maybe he remembered you. If you profiled the case, then you—”

  “I-I was on the news,” Cecelia stammered. “At all the news conferences.” Her heart beat faster. When she’d made the profile of the killer, she’d theorized that he would be highly invested in the investigation. That he’d be keeping track of all the stories about him because they would feed into his ego. Bryce could have seen her, but… “We’re jumping to conclusions.” Her shoulders straightened. “I don’t believe in doing that. Analyze the rope. Get evidence that points to Bryce, and then we’ll go forward.”

  Sawyer and Flynn appeared at the entrance to the house. Flynn’s stare immediately zeroed in on Cecelia.

  “I don’t think Bryce King is interested in going forward,” Elizabeth murmured. “I think he just wants to go back.”

  Flynn hurried down the stone steps and reached Cecelia’s side. Sawyer joined him, and the guy’s dark blue gaze drifted over Cecelia’s face. Subject One. Sawyer had always been an enigma to her. The wall he’d put up around himself had been impenetrable, until Elizabeth came along.

  Sawyer raised one brow at Cecelia. “Flynn is going to stay with you.”

  Right. Back to bodyguard duty.

  “But Jay said if you wanted, you could take his jet and leave town. You could—”

  “I’m not running.” Cecelia was proud of the fact that her voice sounded so calm. “That’s not an option for me. I just started my practice again. I just started getting my life back on track.” She shook her head. “I’m not going to rush away in fear.”

  “Good.” Sawyer rolled back his shoulders. “Because I think Bryce would just follow you.”

  Her eyes widened. “You do not mince words.”

  Elizabeth frowned at her lover. “No, he doesn’t.” A sigh slipped from her. “But I think he’s right. With the fixation that Bryce had on you back at Lazarus, he won’t just let you go. He won’t just walk away.”

  She wouldn’t let them see her fea
r. Her heart was about to burst out of her chest, and her hands were slick with sweat, but Cecelia pasted a cold smile on her face. “I have connections, too, you know. Elizabeth, while you’re checking the rope, I’m going to find out more about the recent strangulation victim. For all we know, the authorities have already arrested her boyfriend, and this case is closed.”

  Elizabeth didn’t look convinced. But she did give a nod and a few moments later, Cecelia was watching as Sawyer and Elizabeth drove away.

  “I don’t want you to be afraid.” Flynn’s voice was low and rough. Sexy. She shouldn’t find it sexy. But then, she shouldn’t find him sexy, either.

  She did. “Who said I was afraid? I’ve dealt with killers for years. They don’t scare me. I scare them. I make the profiles on them. I help the authorities find them. I—”

  His hand was at her throat. His fingers—slightly callused fingertips—pressed to her neck. “Your pulse is racing too fast.”

  It was racing even faster now that he was touching her. “That’s because I’m angry. A woman is dead.”

  “Your heart was beating too fast the entire time you were in Jay’s office.”

  His hand was still at her throat. She should back away from him. Break that contact. She didn’t. “You could hear my heart beating, couldn’t you?”

  “Just like I could smell your fear.”

  Fear had a smell? Um, okay. Not so nice to know. “You kept that from me at Lazarus. I mean, I knew your senses were enhanced, but I didn’t realize just how much.” Enough to hear a person’s heart beating.

  His fingers slid down her throat. “We all have secrets.”

  His phrasing was off. Have. Present tense. “What else aren’t you telling me?”

  His golden stare held hers. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”

  “I’m not.” Total lie.

  His smile came, a quick flash. The smile made him look inviting, charming. “Liar, liar.”

  She swallowed. “Flynn…”

  “You were afraid of me from day one.” His fingers finally slipped away, but Cecelia swore she could still feel his touch, like a brand on her skin. “I could tell from the first moment that we met, you feared me.”

  “All of the Lazarus subjects were unknowns. I was told of your increased aggression levels, of the dangers you faced on the missions.”

  “But you weren’t told that we were dead men.”

  No, she hadn’t been told that part at the beginning. Her bosses at Lazarus—Wyman Wright and his assistant, Dr. Landon Meyer—had kept that tidbit from her. She’d believed that the test subjects had just been given a formula that changed them. She’d had no idea that the men had died before they were given that serum.

  “That scares you even more, doesn’t it? That you’re staring at a dead man.”

  It was her turn to touch him. To put her hand on his chest. To feel the drum beat of his heart beneath her fingers. His heart rate was always faster than normal. His body was always a little warmer than normal. “You aren’t dead.” As her hand lingered on him, his heart rate kicked up even more. She saw his nostrils flare, as if he were drinking in her scent, and the gold in his eyes burned even hotter. “Flynn?”

  “I sure as hell don’t feel dead when you touch me.”

  She snatched her hand back as if she’d been burned. And Cecelia sure felt as if she had been. “You…we weren’t going to talk about that, remember?” The sun was glaring down on her. She glanced toward the house and thought she saw movement near the large window on the lower level. The window in Jay’s office.

  “Right. Not supposed to talk about the fact that I dream about fucking you every single night.”

  Her mouth dropped, and her stare snapped back to him. “We’re definitely not.”

  His gaze burned hotter. “And we’re not supposed to talk about the fact that we almost kissed the night we escaped from Lazarus.”

  “Almost. Almost.” They’d been resting in a motel room together, a motel in the middle of nowhere. She’d been coming out of the shower. He’d been undressing, and, yes, they had almost kissed. But she’d pulled away. She’d stopped. But then last night… “I’m your psychiatrist. There’s a line there that we can’t cross.”

  “Cecelia…”

  He said her name like he’d just said sex. Sliding out the syllables and sounds, making them sound hot.

  “Cecelia, sorry, baby, but you’re fired.”

  She blinked. “What?” They should move. Get into the car. Get out of there. “I don’t work for you.”

  His smile flashed again. “Exactly. You never did work for me. You worked for Lazarus. And, yeah, I came to your office. I sat on your couch. I let you poke into my head. But Lazarus went down in flames, and your job went with it.”

  He towered over her. Big, strong, and decidedly dangerous.

  “You’re not my shrink any longer. I’m not coming to your office so you can poke around in my head and see all of my dark places.”

  He had dark places, she knew it. But then, so did she.

  “So if we fuck, it won’t be me fucking my shrink.”

  Okay, the guy was ridiculously blunt. Her cheeks flamed. Big down-side of being a natural redhead—she flushed way too easily, and her embarrassment was too readily apparent.

  “If we fuck,” he continued in the voice that she was going to stop finding sexy, she was, “then we do it because we’re two people who want each other.”

  He said it so confidently, so casually. But this was a man who didn’t remember his past, and so he didn’t remember the lovers he’d had. He didn’t remember his sexual experience at all. So… “Have you had sex since you’ve been outside of Lazarus?” Cecelia blurted the question.

  His eye lashes flickered. “We should get going. We’ve already given Jay enough of a show.” He motioned toward the house. Toward the big window.

  “You knew he was watching?”

  “Could feel him.” He took her arm and led her to the waiting SUV. Not her car. Not his, either, but some new ride Jay had given them to use. The guy had said it was fully loaded, and the safest thing on the road.

  She had on a jacket, but Cecelia could still feel the warmth of his fingers. “You touch me a lot,” she noted as he opened the SUV’s door for her. She slid into the vehicle, grabbing for the seatbelt.

  He leaned over her. “That’s because I like touching you.”

  Their relationship was wrong. It was a confused mess. It was—there is no relationship.

  She didn’t speak until he was in the SUV with her. Until they were driving away. “I’m not having sex with you.”

  “Right at this moment, no, you’re not. We’re driving down the road.”

  Smart ass. He did that sometimes, let a rough edge of humor slip out. She thought the humor whispered past the mask that he often wore. Or…maybe the humor was the mask. With Flynn, she was never sure, and that was part of the problem.

  “And, for the record, no.”

  Um, what?

  He didn’t say anything else. Just drove.

  “No, what?” Cecelia prompted when the silence stretched too long.

  A sigh slipped from him. His hands seemed to grip the steering wheel a bit too tightly. “No, I haven’t had sex with anyone else. Why the hell would I?”

  Because he was sexy as hell. She was sure that—before Lazarus—he’d never had a shortage of female companionship. The guy was an ex-Navy SEAL, for goodness sake. Certain women would have been all about that dangerous appeal. The guy’s golden eyes were hot, his body was nothing but muscle, and his smile…okay, fine, he had a really great smile. “You’d have sex because you’re a normal male.”

  A sharp bark of laughter escaped him. “Thought we agreed, I’m far from normal.”

  Yes, actually, he was. “Is that why you haven’t had sex? You’re afraid that your…ah… enhancements might hurt your partner?”

  “I wouldn’t hurt you.” An instant response. “I’d take care of you.”
>
  She was flushing again. And her heart was racing too fast.

  He slanted a glance toward her.

  “Stop it,” Cecelia commanded. “It’s not fair that you can read me like that.”

  “You want me. I want you. Don’t see where anything is fair or unfair about that. No playing. Just what is.”

  She was having trouble breathing. “Why haven’t you had sex with anyone since Lazarus?”

  “Because I don’t want just anyone.” He slowed the vehicle and glanced at her, pinning her with his stare. “I only want you. And I can wait, until you’re ready. Until you come to me.”

  OhmyGod. “Flynn…”

  “You’re not my shrink. I’m not your client. There’s nothing to stop us. You want me, and I want you.”

  “Sometimes, it’s not a good idea to have the things we want.” Her voice was low. “Sometimes, it’s too dangerous to want those things.”

  “You think I’m dangerous to you.”

  “I know you are.”

  He didn’t speak again. Neither did she. The miles rolled past as the tension between them deepened.

  Chapter Four

  “Dr. Gregory!” Mark jumped up from his desk as soon as he saw her. His eyes were wide. “You have a visitor in your office!” He hurried toward her and dropped his voice to a dramatic whisper as he revealed, “The FBI.”

  She stopped, freezing. Flynn—who’d been just steps behind her—didn’t stop. He kept heading right for her closed office door. “Flynn!” She grabbed his arm. “You can’t go in there!”

  He frowned down at her.

  Mark squared his shoulders. “Right. You can’t go in there. Hardly a meeting for your boyfriend to attend.” His eyes gleamed with excitement. “It’s Special Agent Aaron Barrett. I recognized him from your previous work with the FBI. He arrived just a few minutes ago. I-I told him that you weren’t due to be in the office until ten, but he insisted on waiting.” He smiled at her. “Good thing you arrived a bit early.”

  Aaron was in her office?

  “The FBI must want to consult with you again.” Mark rocked forward onto the balls of his feet. “Just like old times, isn’t it?”