Blood Shall Run (An FBI Romance Thriller Book 15) Page 26

  Because of his sickness, he couldn’t produce heme, and without that in his blood, he was dying. He may look healthy on the outside, and the world might suspect nothing, but inside, he was slowly dying.

  As he stared down at her body, at the clamps holding her flesh back, he was sickened.

  Then he thought about it.

  The blood.

  Digging around, he found two large needles, and tubing.

  He’d take a few pints to go.

  As he prodded around in her neck, he found just the right spot. Poking her a few times, the blood began flowing into a large plastic container.

  It was slow and sluggish.

  It made him nervous.

  As he stared at the clock, he knew he didn’t have much time. He needed to get the hell out of there, and fast.

  There was only so much time.

  Before long, someone would arrive, and being caught there would be a horrible mistake.

  As he filled the one container, he was going to have to take that and run. Yanking the tubes, he threw them onto the table and headed out, his head cloaked by the hood, and his hands covered in his gloves.

  He’d done it.

  And he’d left her a prize.

  Elizabeth Blackhawk had to be rattled to leave the place unattended.

  Oh well.

  That sucked for her.

  For him…he was going home to make a shake.

  A very bloody one.

  * * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *

  Boone Savage’s

  Cabin

  She’d cleaned up the dishes, walked around his home, and checked the place out. Curiosity had gotten to her, and she was helpless to stop it.

  Boone was a mystery, and she was trying to solve it without him being any the wiser.

  He’d definitely been right.

  He loved books.

  As it got later, she’d gotten bored. There were only so many texts she could send to Tony as they tried to work remotely. She needed something to do, so she headed to a shelf. Beside it, she found an odd table.

  On it, there were herbs, stones, a plate with something red on it, and a book.

  When she picked it up, she noticed it was in French.

  Yeah, that wasn’t going to help her.

  Leaning down, she sniffed the plate. It was odd. It smelled coppery, almost like blood.

  At first, she panicked.

  Then rational settled in. Boone was Native American. Maybe this was some ritual. She relaxed. The man wasn’t some killer. He had shelves of books by Shakespeare, Hemmingway, and even Edgar Allen Poe.

  You couldn’t fault a man for enjoying a little Poe. She loved it, and that made it easy to stay calm. Grabbing the book, she headed toward his couch.

  Getting comfortable, she settled in to read. When she opened the cover, she found a message.

  ‘Boone,

  I hope you enjoy it.

  Dad.’

  A part of her felt like she was snooping, but she was curious. As she flipped through the book, she found pictures inside, as if marking pages. They were of the detective.

  There were ones of him with his parents.

  There were even ones where he was a child and hunting in the woods.

  She found pictures of him dressed in some tribal wear and his body was slashed in angry red.

  She studied it.

  He was covered in handprints.

  Beads.

  What appeared to be chicken feathers.

  It was…odd.

  Still, she kept flipping.

  As she read for a while, she glanced up when the clock on the mantle chimed. She needed to check on him. Since he had a concussion, he wasn’t supposed to sleep for long.

  Heading toward his room, she stopped in the doorway to watch him. Boone was naked to his waist, his hair was loose, and he was breathing slowly.

  Well, she had to wake him up.

  Moving toward him, Merry gently touched his arm. “Boone, I have to check you,” she said, hoping she didn’t scare him.

  Slowly, his head moved toward her, and his eyes popped open. The blue staggered her. She figured it always would. It was such an unexpected color.

  “I’m sorry. I need to look at your pupils.”

  She pulled out a small light.

  He didn’t put up a fight, and as she shined the light in his eyes, she had to lean over him. Her ebony hair tickled his cheek, and he was awash with her scent.

  He couldn’t last much longer.

  Not being beside her was total hell. He wanted to beg, crawl, and weep, just to get her to stay near him.

  He was desperate.

  All night, he’d been thinking about her. She raced through his dreams, haunting him. Knowing that she was in the other room was hard.

  Boone needed to do something.

  If he didn’t get closer, and soon, he might do something stupid. Yes, she was afraid, but he had to hope she’d come to trust him. This case would only last so long.

  Maybe he’d get lucky.

  Long distance relationships sucked, but he already knew in his heart that he wanted one with her. Despite the odds being against them, he really believed she was the one.

  After all, he had their word.

  The spirits told him.

  He’d seen her in the smoke.

  “I think you’re okay. Your eyes aren’t dilating wildly, like they were earlier, so you may just survive, Detective.”

  “Boone.”

  “Sorry, Boone.”

  “Meredith?” he asked, as she got ready to leave.

  “Yeah, do you need something?”

  He wanted to laugh.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “What?”

  “You.”

  She stared at him.

  “Only I have to be honest with you first. I want to get to know you, but in order to do that, I need you to trust me. Some man hurt you, and you’re not going to trust easily.”

  She took a step back from him.

  “I don’t want to talk about him.”

  At least she’d admitted there was that phantom male looming over her life, tainting all the other males in the universe. At least she respected him enough to be honest.

  So now she deserved the same.

  “I practice Voodoo.”

  Well, that explained the altar and the blood.

  “I saw your altar, and I figured it was blood. Does Elizabeth know? If not, she’s going to kick your ass.”

  “I told her today when we were interviewing the priestess. She let me stay on the case.”

  “You lucked out.” She wanted to leave.

  “Does that scare you?”

  She stared at him. Nothing about Boone scared her. While she should be running, she didn’t want to. Why she had to move away from him was because she wanted and needed him too. Her palms were itchy, and she really wanted to play in all that Native hair.

  Now she got why Elizabeth was always touching Callen’s. It was like some obsession, growing in her.

  Who knew she liked men with long hair?

  Who knew it had to be Boone?

  “Merry? Do my beliefs frighten you?”

  It took her a second to focus. She was thinking back to the pictures in the books. Now that one with the red handprints made total sense.

  The man she lusted after practiced Voodoo.

  It almost made her laugh.

  “No, it doesn’t. There’s no such thing as a higher power, so you can pray to whoever you wish. In fact, you can dance naked with blood all over you.”

  Shit.

  She just gave herself away.

  Merry hoped he wouldn’t be angry with her for invading his personal stuff.

  He stared at her. “I see you were reading.”

  “Sorry, I was bored. If I don’t keep working or thinking, then the demons chase me.”

  Why she told him, she’d never know.

  Her mouth was on autopilot, and she was making on
e hell of a fool of herself.

  “I need you to know one more thing. Okay, maybe two,” he corrected.

  “What?”

  Surely, there couldn’t be anything more shocking than the fact he practiced a form of bayou witchcraft.

  Really?

  That was as crazy as he could possibly get.

  “I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. When you laugh, I can’t breathe. You steal my breath.”

  She didn’t know what to say.

  His words heated and scared her. She needed to focus past them. If she was going to survive, she needed to stay in control.

  “And lastly?”

  “I saw you in the smoke, so the spirits you say don’t exist, they told me you were coming. I knew it was you the second I saw you.”

  Merry’s heart skipped.

  “We’re going to start something, and it’s going to be beautiful.”

  She wanted to panic.

  “Boone, I’m leaving when this is over. There’s nothing to start. It won’t be worth the time. I won’t be worth it.”

  He hated the man who did this to her. He’d broken her spirit, her heart, and her soul. He made her think she was flawed, and less than valuable.

  For that, he wanted to hurt him.

  He understood the risks. When the time came, yes, she’d leave him.

  He knew he’d hurt, but he’d hurt less knowing she’d leave and see her value. If that’s all he was meant to give her, he was fine with that.

  He held out his hand. “Then give me now, if you can’t give me later. Let us have this.”

  She wanted to weep, laugh, and jump him.

  He was insane.

  No one should move that fast. There were things to consider—especially since he was a cop.

  They were dangerous.

  They were mean.

  They hurt you when you screwed up…

  When she didn’t take his hand, it hurt, but he didn’t flinch. Boone simply held out his hand, waiting for her. When she didn’t take it, he closed his finger.

  He saw the fear in her eyes.

  “It’s okay, Meredith, when you’re ready. Only when you’re ready, cher. I won’t ever force you. I’m not like him. That’s the one thing you can be certain of from here on out.”

  Her heart skipped.

  He’d shared with her, and she had to do the same. If they did start something, he’d see the evidence. He needed to know.

  “He’s a cop. He’s a horrible person, and I left him in Damascus. Less than two weeks ago, he found me. He wanted me to come back, and I refused. He has a temper.”

  Boone sat up.

  She didn’t move.

  “When I wouldn’t go back with him, he became enraged. He…he hurt me again.”

  Boone wanted to kill the man.

  Meredith Peyton was barely a hundred pounds soaking wet. She was so fragile, delicate, and she should be cherished, not abused.

  If he ever met this man, he’d hurt him in ways he’d never think were possible. Boone would scar him physically and emotionally.

  “We were together for five years. He wasn’t abusive at first. We didn’t live together for the first three years. Then it started to change,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself to get warm, but it wasn’t happening.

  The chill of fear was there, and it was in control.

  Boone knew she was living through Hell. He’d interviewed abused spouses, girlfriends, and lovers. They all had that haunted look.

  Meredith was terrified, but she trusted him. He needed to stay calm, even though he wanted to go out and kill the man. When he found the man, his fate was sealed. In his book, putting your hands on a woman was the lowest of lows.

  “After he moved in, he’d come home from work, and when it was a bad day, he’d yell, slam things, but I let it go. Being a cop is hard. I get it. We wade through the worst society has to offer.”

  Boone didn’t speak.

  He listened because that was what she needed.

  “Then the anger was directed at me. He shoved me the first time, and then apologized for losing his temper. There were flowers, a date night, and apologies for his behavior. I let it go.”

  Boone was afraid to stand.

  He wanted to go to her, but she might be afraid of him. He was bigger than her, and he was a cop.

  “Then it became a regular thing. It was always in places that no one would see. He’d almost never leave marks. The punches, the shoves, the anger—it would come without warning. If I spilled something, made a mistake, or was late getting home, he’d be furious.”

  Boone watched her tuck her ebony hair behind her ears. She was trying to find some normalcy.

  He could see it.

  “Derek was so angry all the time. He began following me, waiting for me after work to prove I wasn’t cheating on him. He didn’t get that my job isn’t nine to five. Hell! It’s not even nine to nine.”

  “He sounds like an asshole.”

  She nodded. “Oh, he is. Then one day, I reached the breaking point.”

  “What did he do to you, Merry?”

  I came home, and I told him I wanted him to pack and leave. I wanted to be free from this weight. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t wake up afraid, go to bed with bruises on my ribs, and stand over women who were killed the way I knew I eventually would be. That was my fate. If he was going to end my life, then so be it, but it would be with my eyes wide open.”

  He wanted to soothe her.

  Boone wanted nothing more than to hold her in his arms and comfort her.

  “He came home. He was in a good mood. I almost didn’t want to tell him. It was the first good mood in the longest time. Then he proposed. It was my worst freaking nightmare. I couldn’t imagine myself saddled with him for the rest of my very short life.”

  “So you said no.”

  “I said no, and I asked him to pack his things and leave. He lost it. He grabbed me, tossed my gun, and had his hands around my throat.”

  He noticed almost none of the techs on Elizabeth’s team carried, with the exception of Meredith. She was protecting herself. She was hunted like some scared animal.

  “What did he do to you?”

  “He choked me so hard that I must have passed out. When I came to, he’d raped me and put his ring on my finger. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t…”

  “Did you call the police?”

  She laughed. “And tell them what? That one of their decorated detectives was an abusive rapist? Yeah, that would work. They’d never come, and he’d be worse.”

  Boone wanted to kill.

  He could see himself wrapping his hands around the man’s throat and killing him.

  That was bad, especially since he was relatively calm, but seeing Merry’s fear, it rattled him.

  She was supposed to be his.

  “I took the day off, I packed his things, and I placed them outside. I had a locksmith come and change my locks, and when he came home, he told me it wasn’t over.”

  “Then?”

  “Elizabeth mentioned she was taking a job in DC. Ethan had been given the Deputy Director position, and she wanted to handpick her team. I was chosen to go. I would have begged regardless. This was my way out.”

  “But he found you.”

  “Yes, like he promised, it wasn’t over. He told me I humiliated him. He’d told everyone at work we were getting married. I was going to pay.”

  Merry took a deep breath.

  “You escaped.”

  “I did. I don’t know how, but I managed to make it out of Damascus. Flash forward two months. I’m in DC, and I just get home from work. I live in a brownstone, and it’s safe. I paid extra to be safe. A Marine lives next door, and two of Elizabeth’s agents on the other side of me.”

  “He was there?”

  “He was inside. He was waiting on my couch, that horrible ring on the table, and his gun beside it. I knew I was going to die.”

  She st
ared at him.

  “He told me I was marrying him, or we were dying—together. I didn’t have any choice. I told him I’d marry him, just to get him to leave. I figured it was better to live and be raped than to end up on Chris Leonard’s morgue table as my friends watched my autopsy.”

  Boone wanted to be sick.

  The thought of what she’d willingly do to survive horrified him. No wonder she was terrified.

  He’d be scared too.

  “He went in the kitchen to grab some wine, and I emptied his gun, and mine. I shoved the bullets one by one into the couch. I figured he wouldn’t find them there, and I’d live. I just wanted to live, Boone.”

  He didn’t blame her. The fact that she had the fortitude to think when she was in that situation proved how strong she was. Merry was a fighter.

  “What happened?”

  “He came back, and he was all smiles. I told him to get out. He flew into a rage and grabbed his gun. He pointed, and all I could think was…did I empty the one in the chamber?”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. He was so mad, he fought me for mine. I knew it was empty, and as soon as he stepped back, I ran for the door. I heard him pull the trigger. He was furious. He chased me, caught me at the door…”

  She closed her eyes.

  “What did he do to you, Meredith? You can tell me. I won’t hurt you like he did. I want to heal you.”

  She couldn’t speak. Instead, she pulled off her sweater.

  Boone stared at her body.

  She’d had the shit kicked out of her. There were the yellowing bruises all over her torso. Her ribs were a mess with them, and when she turned, her back was just as bad.

  “He used my gun on me. He didn’t touch my face, but he made sure I was a crying mess on my floor.”

  He moved toward her. Gently, he placed his fingers over one of the bruises. “How did you get away?”

  “I told him I would scream. I told him two Feds lived right next door, and they worked with me. I knew they weren’t home, but I had to hope. He got scared. I saw that fear in his eyes. I recognized it, since it’s the same fear I always felt. He grabbed his gun, wiped his prints off mine, took his ring, and left. Then we got ready for this case.”

  Boone turned her around.