The Avenger

'I promise I'll tell you everything,' he repeated.

His words were so soft she almost missed them, thought he'd gone. Suddenly his hands lightly touched her shoulders. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head and ran his fingers gently up and down her arms. 'Don't be angry.'

Olivia melted into his body, feeling for a brief moment as if she'd come home. Her breath hitched and her blood pounded at her temples. God, she wanted him. Her body vibrated with the need to touch and be touched by him. He gently nuzzled her neck. His hot breath on her skin sent shivers of pleasure through her. When he turned her around and captured her mouth in a sweet kiss, she was so hungry for him that she moaned silently.

The intensity of the kiss pounded through her veins like an unleashed dam. She wrapped her arms around his neck and slid her fingers into his thick hair, pulling him harder, closer to her. The resonating pulse of his desire hummed between them. He wanted her as much as she wanted him, she thought, feeling the electric shock of need spark between them. He pulled away for a moment, dark fierce eyes staring into hers as if asking permission. She tugged his mouth down and nipped at the beautifully carved bottom lip. He responded by plundering her mouth until she couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't stop.

With a groan like a man in pain, he released her lips to trail a line of ravaging kisses down her neck and across her collarbone. He slipped his large warm hands under her shirt, up her bare back, and reached around to cup one of her breasts through the flimsy lace of her bra. Delicious tingles began in her nipples and moved down to pool between her legs as he ground his hips into her. He fumbled with the clasp at the front of her bra and she felt the sweet release of her breasts and the unbearable pleasure of his fingers caressing her nipple.

She ran her hands underneath his tee shirt, slid them up the smooth hard muscles of his back, and felt him tremble at her touch. Fumbling with his jeans, she undid the buttons and shoved at the garment until it hung low on his hips. A sigh of pleasure escaped her as she felt the texture of his skin, the furred dip below his waist. She reached for him, burning to take the hard hot length of him in her hand.

Without warning she heard him growl, a low feral sound that rumbled from his chest up into his throat. In the dim light she saw his dark eyes gleam, black slits set in even blacker pupils. As she tightened her arms around his waist, she registered the changes in him: the muscled flesh of his back and chest, the thickness of his thighs and the stockiness of his body. The heavy jutting of his groin against her stomach. He seemed different.

'For God's sake, Livvie.' He shoved away from her and she lost her balance, landing hard on the carpet. 'Don't make me hurt you!'

She gazed up at him from her position on the floor, shuddering at the changes in him. She'd always known Jack was trouble. From the beginning he'd been different from the other boys in school. Something dark and foreboding had always lingered near him, something that'd intensified during his senior year.

But she'd briefly known another Jack, the boy-man who'd saved her from the demon named Roger. As a teenager, she'd loved him with all the sentimental ardor of youth. As a grown woman, she understood the desires of her body and knew what she wanted. Even after all these years, Jack's claim on her was a giant fist gripping her heart.

With a groan that was like an animal's cry of pain, Jack knelt on the floor beside her. 'Let me go, Livvie,' he whispered in her ear. 'Let me go before something awful happens.' He pulled her to her feet, holding both her hands in his.

Unable to speak, she nodded mutely.

Jack heaved a relieved sigh and then he was gone.

Although Olivia was exhausted, she couldn't rest, and in spite of the chilly night, she opened the bedroom window and watched the shadows on the street below. A soft breeze ruffled the curtains, making the coldness inside her more chilling. A shudder ran through her, but not from the night air.

Hours ago she'd watched Jack get in his car. The temptation to race down the stairs and beg him to stay had been so intense she dug her fingernails into her palms to keep from giving in to it. He'd sat there for a long time like a man in a trance before he'd turned on the lights, put the car in gear, and driven off.

When her cell phone rang, she grabbed it from the nightstand, certain it was him.

Waylon Harris' deep bass sounded over the line. 'Uh, sorry to bother you so late, Dr. Gant, but I can't get Agent Holt on the phone, and I thought maybe… ' His voice trailed off and Olivia wondered if he'd noticed something pass between her and Jack. Had they been so transparent?

She glanced at the clock. 'Is it important?'

She could almost see his dark face blush, heard the embarrassment in his voice. 'Uh, well, ma'am, I think he'd want to have my report right away. I just got back from the Lake Tahoe crime scene.'

Where Keisha's body was found.

'I took a crime tech up there with me,' Harris continued. 'We enlarged the perimeter, and after about four hours of searching, we found another note. That's why I'm calling so late. Uh, you want I should read it to you?'

'Yes,' she answered, grabbing a pen and paper from the dresser.

Haltingly, one letter at a time, Harris read the note and Olivia carefully repeated the letters as she wrote them down.

RECTAESTFATMAINMAGNISHABITAT.

'We found the paper caught in the brush down a ways from the body site,' Harris added. 'The wind must've blown it off.'

After hanging up, Olivia examined the note. Like the note on Carl Bender's body, this message had all capital letters, no spaces or punctuation. She drew vertical lines between certain letters, dividing them into words, and then separated them into two separate sentences. The first half of the note translated to 'She has been ruled' and the second, 'Fame lives in great things.'

She jotted down the translations even though she had absolutely no idea what they meant in relation to poor Keisha's mangled body.

Chapter Nineteen

Olivia managed to pull into her campus parking space with nearly half an hour to spare before her first class. Hurrying up the concrete steps, she hurried across the crowded campus toward her office in Vincent Hall. The door was closed. Good, apparently Howard hadn't arrived yet. She slipped her key into the lock and noisily entered the room.

Howard Randolph jumped back from the edge of her desk, a guilty look on his face. Every part of her body must have showed the shock that rippled through her at Howard invading her privacy. 'Howard! What are you doing?'

Her officemate's normally unflappable demeanor slipped. He'd been caught snooping through her private materials. What excuse could he offer?

Howard made a weak attempt at humor. 'Olivia, my dear, you frightened the bejeezus out of me.' He laughed weakly. 'Sorry for the language, but you really shouldn't sneak up on a person like that.'

When she continued to stare at him, he rushed on. 'I've run out of those little yellow sticky pads. I thought you might have an extra packet in your desk drawer.'

Did he think she was an idiot? Her eyes slid to the spot where he'd let his hand linger on her in-box, and she noticed that her computer was turned on, the home page brightly lit as though someone had recently touched a random key. She hadn't left so hurriedly yesterday that she'd forgotten to turn it off, had she? No, she distinctly remembered closing it down. Anyway, the screen saver wouldn't be flickering if it'd been in sleep mode since yesterday. She frowned, enraged at both his transparent attempt to cover up the fact that he was spying on her, and at herself for questioning her memory.

'I don't have any,' she answered sharply. Better to grab the bull by the horns and confront the man straight on. 'Why did you turn my computer on?'