"I don't understand what's happening here, Hope, but I'm no stranger to you," he growled before he reached to claim her .. .
... And hissed in monumental frustration when his hands closed on empty air.
Ryan charged into his bedroom down the hall still naked and damp, but impervious to the chill in the hulking old house. He swung open the wardrobe door and stared at the image of himself in the antique mirror. His wet hair spiked up from his head at haphazard angles. His cock and balls hung heavy between his thighs, still semi-aroused .. . still expectant.
"Hope?" he demanded. After he'd repeated her name several times, each time the volume of his voice escalating, he closed his eyes in profound frustration. Christ, what did he think he was going to do? Scold her into the year 2008?
He shouldn't have tried to touch her. Since when did he let his cock rule his actions? How was he going to reach her now? How the hel
l was he going to keep her from being murdered?
And did he really believe such a thing was a possibility?
Ryan thought of the dazed arousal in Hope's dark eyes when her hand had hovered above his chest.
It didn't matter what he believed. He knew he'd just spoken with a woman named Hope Stillwater. He knew danger and death hovered over her.
He knew he'd do anything in his power to stop her from being harmed.
When it came down to it, belief and bone-deep knowledge were two very different things, Ryan realized for the first time in his life as he stared blankly into the looking glass.
His gaze sharpened on the outer edge of the mirror. Was it his imagination or had an inch or so of the fogginess cleared? He touched the cool, hard surface and cursed. No give to the solid ect. No be No Hope.
***
Ramiro looked pissed off enough to bite through metal the next day as he and Ryan left the Immigration and Naturalization Ser-vice Detention Center in Chicago's Loop.
Although he doubted his expression gave away much, Ryan was every bit as furious as Ramiro after interviewing the twenty-year-old kid who would be extradited back to Mexico within the week.
"My grandparents live in a village about the size of that kid's! So do my aunts and uncles and cousins. It could have been their vil-age Donahue sent Chirnovsky and that other asshole Gutierrez to rape. One of my cousins could have been lured with all their lies into doing slave labor for Donahue, just like that kid was. A woman from my family could have been kidnapped for their white slavery ring. Saturday night can't come quick enough for me," Ramiro exclaimed heatedly, referring to their sting operation to finally collar Jim Donahue.
"Donahue's done," Ryan stated flatly.
Ramiro took a deep breath and nodded as they walked out onto Monroe Street, seeming partially mollified by Ryan's steadfast assurance.
When Ryan parallel parked on Eighteenth Street at eight p.m. later that night, he just sat for a moment and stared out the car window at the imposing French Chateauesque-style limestone mansion he now owned, the multiple towers and cupolas, the ornate ironwork, the sloping mansard roof. Ryan couldn't imagine a more unlikely place for him to live or a house more perfectly suited to Hope Stillwater's elegant, lush American beauty.
He'd been preoccupied all day with the final details of Jim Donahue's downfall but thoughts of Hope had never really left him. It felt a little bizarre to be entertaining concerns and worries about such an ephemeral woman when the very real details of his job demanded his attention. But just behind the scenes of his awareness he'd been forming a plan to try to contact her tonight.
Just like he had last night, he took another hot bath in the deep claw-footed tub. He had to admit he was getting used to bathing, the hot water loosening his muscles after his daily workout in the gym beyond what a shower could do. He was hyperalert the entire time for sounds of Hope, but she remained distressingly absent.
Afterward he opened the wardrobe door wide and stared into the antique mirror. He willed Hope to appear, but only his tense face looked back at him.
He left the wardrobe door open so that he could keep an eye on the mirror and sprawled on the newly assembled brass bed, watching the ten o'clock news on the portable television that used to sit on the kitchen counter in his loft.
Once he looked back at the television after glancing at the mirror for the hundredth time only to see Jim Donahue's beefy face filling the screen. He spoke at a local charity event for Children's Memorial Hospital. Ryan sat up slightly in bed, his attention narrowing to a sharp focus like a predator's when it sights prey.
Donahue still carried the vestiges of handsomeness, but his body and face were going to fat. He was already a big man—maybe an inch or two shorter than Ryan—but the rich foods and alcohol that his lifestyle afforded him and which he partook of liberally were finally taking their toll. At forty-eight years old, Donahue was a heart attack waiting to happen.
Maybe a prison diet would tack on a few extra years to his worthless life, Ryan thought with a sense of grim satisfaction as Donahue flashed a sharklike smile at the end of the sound bite. It really steamed him to see scum like Donahue being kowtowed to by the press as a community leader and respectable businessman.
For Ramiro's sake, Ryan hoped his partner wasn't watching the sickening display.
He irritably clicked off the television and stood to look into the mirror again.
"Hope. I need to speak with you. You're in danger," he said, feeling like an idiot for talking to himself but just desperate enough not to care.
Two more nights. All he had was two more nights.