Until You

"Miranda?"

She took a deep breath and returned to reality. "Someone sent me something."

He thought of the note that had been sent to Eva and knew right away that a woman, especially one as strong and determined as Miranda, wouldn't verge on collapse over a cryptic message culled from a half-forgotten philosopher.

"Where is it?"

She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. "Over there, on the floor where I dropped it."

He looked past her. A cream-colored envelope lay on the polished wood floor beside a folded sheet of paper and what looked like a page torn from a magazine. He went to where the stuff lay, stooped to pick it up, and felt a red flood of rage surge behind his eyes.

The magazine page was an advertisement. It was a full-length photo of Miranda in what he supposed was classic modeling pose. She stood with her head up, her hands on her hips, her legs slightly apart and a look of sultry sexuality on her face. She wore a skimpy T-shirt that hung to just below her breasts and a pair of skin-tight jeans that rode low on her hips.

Someone had drawn heavy black circles around her breasts, marked the center of each with a red X, and then torn a jagged slit between her navel and the juncture of her thighs that ended in a blob of something crimson.

He couldn't think. Hell, he couldn't breathe. The mutilated photo made him want to kill whoever had sent it, whoever had done this disgusting, terrifying thing to Miranda. He stood almost paralyzed by the emotions coursing through him, telling himself to calm down, that he wouldn't be able to do anything until he got himself under control.

When he felt his breathing begin to return to normal, he opened the folded sheet of notepaper. It was familiar: Eva's note had been written on what was almost certainly the same stuff, and the handwriting and the ink rang bells, too. But the message sure as hell wasn't the same.

It was three lines long, and in French.

As-tu passé une nuit blanche?

&nbsp

; J'ai la tringle pour toi.

Je te baiserai et je ne brûle pas les étapes.

Shit. It might as well have been written in Sanskrit. He spoke French pretty well. A couple of semesters of college French, a weekend immersion course sponsored by the Committee and a posting in Paris had done the trick. He could order a meal, deal with the snootiest of sommeliers, hold his own with any of the nut-cases who thought Paris was just one long Grand Prix racetrack. But reading this note was something else. He could make out most of the words, all right, but putting them together into something that made sense was another story.

He looked at Miranda. She had stopped shaking but her face was still drained of color. He thought of going to her, taking her back into his arms and kissing the warmth back into her flesh.

Stop it, he told himself fiercely, and forced his attention back to the note.

"Did you spend a white night?" he translated, and frowned. "I have a something-or-other for you. I'll kiss you and..."

"It says, 'Did you have a sleepless night?'" Miranda said.

Conor looked at her. Her voice was calm and color was coming back into her face but in a way that made her look feverish. She swallowed; he could see her throat working and he knew that whatever was coming next wasn't good.

"It says..." Her mouth trembled. "It says, 'I have a hard-on for you. I'm going to f-fuck you, and I won't be in any r-rush...'"

Conor crushed the note in his hand. The rage he'd fought against moments ago swept over him like a tidal wave, peaked and receded and left him taut with a deadly purpose. He knew, in that instant, that he would find and destroy whoever had sent this to her.

"So much for your locksmith," Miranda said, and gave what he figured was supposed to be a laugh.

Her words stunned him. He stared at her as she turned away and then he went after her, caught her arm and spun her towards him.

"What?"

"I said—"

"I heard what you said. What the hell's wrong with you, Beckman?" He saw the surprised look on her face, heard the barely controlled fury in his own voice, and welcomed it. That was fine. It was what he needed, something to fix on, something that was a lot safer than whatever it was he'd been feeling from the moment he'd walked in here tonight. "Are you telling me you got home, found the goddamn door was open, and went strutting on through it?"

"Of course not!"

His hand tightened on her arm. He felt the soft, yielding silkiness of her flesh beneath his fingers and in some distant part of his brain he realized he was hurting her, but he didn't give a damn.