“Son of a bitch.” He was going too fast and slammed on his brakes, barely missing the other car. “Fucking idiot,” he hissed.
Kylie and Dani didn’t say a word, which was in their best interest. Neither one of them dared cross him right now. He needed blood, needed to see the asshole suffer who had tried stealing Perry’s niece from her family.
“Where did he go?” Kylie asked. She’d taken his gun from his lap when he’d gotten in the car and had secured the safety on it, and now had it pressed in her lap.
Perry’s heart beat furiously in his chest when he blew out an exasperated breath, searching the dark lot and the exits. “He couldn’t be that far ahead of us.”
Kylie leaned against him, but when he glanced in her direction focusing on the exit at that end of the parking lot he noticed she shifted her body to put her arm around Dani. Kylie could cuddle his niece all she wanted. When they got home, the kid would be in more trouble than she’d ever known in her life. He shook from the terror of how close they came to losing her tonight. And he’d be damn sure she understood that before he left her with her mother.
“Over there!” Kylie almost yelled, her entire body stiffening when she pointed in front of them.
Dani yelped but didn’t make any further noise when Kylie quickly sunk into the seat and wrapped her arms around the teenager.
“Do you see?” she added, more quietly.
“Where?” He frantically searched the dark, way-too-still parking lot.
“At the edge of the strip mall. There is a car not moving, as if it’s hiding.”
“Not anymore,” Perry growled, cutting across the lot although this time he watched for inattentive drivers. He didn’t have lights in this truck that he could slap on the hood to keep civilians out of his way. They were on a silent run, which meant he needed to be as alert for their perp as he was for everyone else around them. “I’ve got you now, motherfucker.”
Perry drove the truck straight across the parking lot, ignoring the arrows indicating the flow of traffic and cutting across empty stalls until he reached the end of the building. His heart sunk when they pulled up alongside a parked black Ford van.
“I don’t understand how he can keep disappearing so easily when he’s in such a large vehicle.” Kylie voiced Perry’s frustration, her own voice tight with emotions he was sure matched his own. “Let’s take Dani home. I need to make some phone calls.”
“Can I stay at your house?” Dani asked, whispering.
Perry was pretty sure she wasn’t presenting that question to him and opened his mouth to give her a piece of what he had to dish out to her but didn’t get the chance to speak.
“You’re going home.” Kylie sounded stricter than he’d ever heard her sound before. Her soft, sultry tone was gone. “Your mother is worried sick.”
“None of this would have happened if-”
“Don’t even go there.” Now Kylie was pissed. She shifted more in the seat, completely facing Dani, with her ass brushing against Perry’s thigh. “None of this would have happened if you’d thought like an adult, which you obviously aren’t. And until you are, don’t you ever storm out on your mother again like that. Do you understand at all?”
“I can’t believe you’re yelling at me,” Dani said, breaking down into a serious sob session.
Perry knew his niece well enough to know when she started crying that hard there wasn’t any point in continuing the lecture. Dani wouldn’t hear a word of it. Obviously Kylie didn’t know this about her.
“I can’t believe you left every ounce of your intelligence at home when you ran away.”
Dani sniffed and then sucked in a hard, staggered breath. It was quiet for a moment and Perry chanced glancing over at the women after turning out of the parking lot. Let the two of them battle it out. He was getting some new insight into Kylie, one being that she had no problem speaking her mind when she was pissed. The other being that she obviously cared about his niece.
Kylie straightened, facing forward as Perry picked up speed, keeping his eye open for the black Suburban. He relaxed his arm on the back side of the bench seat, which he often did when he drove in the car, especially when he had more than one passenger. Dani looked at him for the first time; her black eyeliner streamed down her face, staining her cheeks clear to her cheekbones. He met her gaze, daring her without saying a word to even try to comment about his arm being around Kylie. Dani looked away first, pressing her hands together in her lap, and stared at them.
“I thought you would understand,” Dani said, stubborn and stupid enough to press the subject.
“When I was fourteen my seventeen-year-old sister stormed out of the house after fighting with my parents. She was running to her boyfriend’s house and I knew it,” Kylie began, relaxing her head against his arm. Her soft hair tortured his already-overstimulated nervous system. She didn’t seem to notice how close they were. “Karen never made it to her boyfriend’s house. She was raped and murdered. We didn’t find her until three days later. There wasn’t Internet back then, or cell phones, or media that is all over everyone’s business like they are today. We didn’t know there was a rapist in the community who’d already attacked twice. He killed one other girl after my sister and was never caught, at least not that we know. My sister’s death destroyed my parents. They never recovered from it. For three years afterward, they forgot my birthday every year. It took me years past that to forgive them for ignoring me after they lost Karen.”
“I understand, I think,” Dani said, still sniffling.
Perry slowed when they reached Megan’s house and realized as he parked that he hadn’t called his sister. “First thing out of your mouth better be an apology,” he told Dani, opening his door as he spoke.
Dani didn’t answer but opened her passenger door and slid out of the truck. Kylie hurried after her, but Perry grabbed her arm and pulled her back against him. “Tell me what she told you on the phone,” he said, wrapping his arm around Kylie’s waist.
Something soothed the tortured frenzy he’d experienced burning him alive since they left Megan’s when Kylie didn’t fight him to be free. She leaned against him, tilting her head against his shoulder so that her soft blonde hair tickled his flesh.
“She went and met Petrie. She didn’t say what happened.” Kylie looked up at him, her blue eyes clouded with her concern and her tone serious, and once again soft and sultry sounding. “I’m going to find out, and I’ll do better if you don’t go in there fully cocked and ready to tear into her. But my guess is that she had a run-in with Peter and for whatever reasons got away. If she hadn’t called me from that pay phone it sounds as though he would have snagged her.”
“And then the motherfucker got away.” He got away with a bullet nick on the side of his Suburban, something that would make it easier to identify. “I’m going to have to call this in.”
“Same here,” Kylie added, and then adjusted herself just enough to look him squarely in the eyes. “Sounds as if you and I are going to be in as much trouble as Dani.”
He doubted anyone inside was looking out the front window right about now, but he didn’t give a damn if they were. Cupping Kylie’s chin, he forced her head back just a bit more and tasted her.
Kylie was warm, moist, and breathless as she greeted him with soft, full lips. For the first time since they’d left to search for Dani he smelled his sex on Kylie. They hadn’t taken time to shower but had raced out of his house and over here without putting themselves back in order. Under different circumstances, at least one of the attentive women in that house would have noticed.
“If we hadn’t been together tonight, we wouldn’t be as close to nailing our perp,” he told Kylie, moving his mouth over hers.
“Good story, but the truth is if your niece weren’t such a willful teenager we wouldn’t be closer to knowing who our guy is.”
“Speaking of which.” Perry let go of her long enough to lock his truck. “Let’s go hear what she has to say. We can call in after we leave.”
She didn’t try getting away when he draped his arm over her shoulder and led her to the front door. Kylie put her hand on the door handle before he could, though, and turned, looking up at him. “Promise me now you won’t go off on her.”
“I’ll tell you the same thing I tell Megan. I don’t believe in babying any of them just because they’re girls.”
Kylie shook her head and it looked like she almost rolled her eyes. If she did, the action was quick enough in
