The Triangle Conspiracy

“But Sanborn-”

“No evidence, she said. I-I’m not quite sure what to do right now.” She lowered her voice. “But I know I don’t want to be alone.”

“I-”

“Please, Sean. Please. I need you. I need you beside me, I need to see you and hear your voice and taste you and smell you. I need you inside me, Sean. Please.”

“But I can’t-”

“I’ll be waiting for you.”

She broke the connection. Then she went upstairs, stepping around the little boombox Sean had thrown at one of the attackers. In the bedroom, she lit a couple of candles, took off her clothes, and lay down on the bed to wait.

Sean was electrified by Daryn’s words. It was too much to digest. He didn’t understand how Faith could have turned her loose. Faith had come home about an hour before, saw that he was drunk, and stalked down the hall to her room. She’d come out a few minutes later in fresh clothes, carrying her little overnight bag.

“Sober up, Sean,” she said. “We need to talk.”

Then she’d gone out again, slamming the front door behind her. She paced the front yard for fifteen minutes while he watched from the window. He wasn’t going to run after her, that was for sure. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

Just who the hell did she think she was?

Scott Hendler’s Toyota appeared in a few minutes and Faith got in, casting one look back at the house. Sean let the curtains fall back over the window.

Sean got up and wandered around the house, gripping the neck of his bottle, even though it was empty. He thought about Daryn’s words. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her, whether sober, drunk, or somewhere between. Her touch, her body, her acute sensuality, her outrage, her raw and powerful lust. They beckoned to him, and in sober moments over the last week he’d wondered if this was how the sailors in the old folk tales felt when they heard the mermaid singing to them.

He kept gripping the bottle, even using it to brace himself against the wall a couple of times. He was more drunk than he’d been the entire week, and hadn’t much cared before Daryn called.

She wanted him. She wanted him now.

And he wanted her.

But I’m so shit-faced I probably can’t even get it up, he thought, which then struck him as funny. He laughed uncontrollably, then blinked it away, wondering why he was laughing.

He thumbed through Faith’s bookshelves again. Books on the Zodiac killer, Jack the Ripper…how could his sister read this crap? Then there was the strange one, something about the Civil War. More crap. He paged through it, then it suddenly felt slippery and fell from his fingers.

Screw it, he thought. If Faith is going to be a bitch, then she can pick up her own goddamn book from the floor.

He jammed a hand, not the one holding the bottle, into his pants pocket. He felt his keys-fat lot of good they did him, since his Jeep was long gone-some coins, and…

Another key.

By itself. Not on his key ring.

His hand closed on it, and he remembered. The morning he’d asked Faith to provide a safe house for Daryn, he’d had her car. He’d stopped and had a copy made of her car key.

Just in case, he’d thought at the time.

Just in case had just arrived, he thought now.

He dropped the bottle. It shattered on the wood floor.

You can clean that up too, Faith.

He found his wallet, though he stumbled on the coffee table to get to it, and almost went sprawling. But he had to have it. Wouldn’t want to drive without a license. The thought cracked him up, and he laughed again.

He thought of Daryn’s body, of her warmth, her wetness, her lust…just for him.

So what if there was no fucking evidence of Franklin Sanborn or the Coalition or of anything else?

He made it to the door, then outside. He slammed it behind him. The gold Miata was in the driveway.

Sean smiled.

26

WHAT THE HELL WAS TAKING HIM SO LONG?

Daryn’s patience wore thin, and she had to remind herself that Sean was probably drunk, and probably hadn’t climbed very far out of the bottle for the entire week. She knew that he had come to the safe house in Edmond twice, and that the marshals had turned him away at the door. She’d heard him shouting her name.

All of which would only inflame him further, make him desire her more. He would do anything to be next to her.

It took him nearly half an hour. Goddamn fool’s probably so drunk he got lost, she thought. But he pounded on her door at ten minutes before eleven o’clock. She didn’t get out of bed to see if it was him, but she called “Come in!” at the top of her lungs, hoping he was coherent enough to hear her.

She heard the door open. “Daryn?” he whispered.

“In the bedroom,” she said. “Come up here, now.”

She heard his steps on the stairs. She positioned herself on the bed and opened her legs. She moved her hands to her breasts and began massaging her nipples. Her breathing grew heavy.

He entered the room.

“Daryn,” he breathed. “My God, Daryn.”

“Come to me, Sean,” she whispered.

He fumbled with his clothes, almost falling over twice. She continued putting on a show for him until he joined her on the bed. He thrust his tongue into her mouth. She tasted the whiskey, tasted the danger. But sex was life.

She snaked a hand between his legs, found him, held him, manipulated him.

“Roll over,” she ordered.

He rolled onto his back. She positioned herself over him.

“But I didn’t…” he slurred. “No condoms.”

She had always provided condoms every time before, and with all the other men she’d seen as Kat Hall. She smiled at him, straddling him, lowering herself inch by inch.

“No,” she said. “I want to feel you. Nothing else, just you, Sean. I’m not an escort anymore. This is just the two of us.”

She engulfed him. He moaned. They moved together.

She rode him for a few minutes. He clutched the sheets. Then she felt him begin to lose his erection inside her.

“Oh, shit,” he said. “Daryn, I-”

“Goddammit,” she whispered. “I need you. I need you all the way, Sean.”

“Maybe I’m too shit-faced. Maybe we could just-”

“No, we won’t just!” She slid off him, worked her way down, used her mouth.

It took nearly an hour, and before they were finished, he’d lost his erection twice more. But each time she brought him back. By the time he climaxed inside her, his grunt of release sounded almost like relief instead of pleasure.

She’d been on top of him again, and she rolled away. His eyes were closed, his body bathed in sweat. The sheets were as wet as if they’d been left on a clothesline in the rain.

“My God,” Sean said. “My God, Daryn.”

She rolled on her side and slapped his face.

“What the fuck…” he grunted.

She curled her lip savagely. “Guess you got what you wanted, didn’t you?”

“Daryn? What…I don’t understand.”

“No, you don’t fucking understand, Sean. Get your clothes on and get out of here.”

“But I didn’t-”

“We’re done! We had a last tumble and now we’re done! You can tell your bitch sister all about it.” Her voice rose steadily. “Get out! Get out, get out, do you hear me? Get out of here!”

She rolled off the bed, picked up a clump of his clothing, and threw it at him. Much to her own surprise, tears began rolling down her cheeks. She couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. Raw emotion built behind her eyes like floodwaters behind a cracking dam. Everything she had said and done in her life, in her entire miserable existence, had led to this moment, standing naked in a room that wasn’t really hers, screaming at a man who wasn’t really hers, either.

“Shhh!” Sean said. He put out a hand.

“Go!” she screamed.

He gathered his clothes and clumsily began dressing himself. “Daryn, I-”

All of her pain, all of her grief, all of her outrage, was right there, right then. Later, after he was gone, she would be calm again, she would accept everything and do what had to be done. But now…

She rushed him, beating his chest with both fists. She raked his chest with her nails. She slapped both sides of his face. She screamed like an animal descending onto its prey.

Sean pulled up his pants, staggering away from her. He got his shirt on, but didn’t button it. He kept his shoes in his hand and made for the stairs. He turned one last time.

“Who are you?” he said in a raw, wounded voice.

She wailed again, beyond words. Daryn vaguely remembered the fantasy, she and Sean escaping the world, moving to the mountains, to be completely different people. She would be neither Daryn nor Kat, and he would be neither Sean nor Michael. They would emerge anew with each other.

“No,” she whispered. The fantasy wouldn’t come all the way into focus, and then it was gone altogether.

She met Sean’s eyes; then he turned the corner and was gone. She heard him shambling down the stairs. She heard the door open and close. In a little while she heard a car engine start, then