The Love You Crave dc-8 Read online

  The Love You Crave

  ( Donovan Creed - 8 )

  John Locke

  The Love You Crave

  John Locke

  Prologue

  When Callie Carpenter's cell phone vibrated on her nightstand a single time she leaped out of bed and threw on some clothes.

  “What’re you doing?” said Gwen, her bedmate.

  “I’m on alert.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Callie raced to the bathroom, relieved herself, brushed her teeth, grabbed her car keys.

  “It means Creed might need me. If he does, he’ll call back. If he does, he’s in trouble. If he is, I could be in trouble.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Not on your life.”

  “You can’t stop me!”

  “Get real,” Callie said.

  “What about me?” Gwen said, pouting.

  “What about you?”

  “I want to feel useful.”

  Callie sighed. “Go to the guest bedroom. Set out a scarf, a vibrator, and five random items. Doesn’t matter what they are, as long as they fit on the counter.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the car. I need to be on the street, engine running, ready to roll.”

  “Sounds like that man has you wrapped around his little finger.”

  “Don’t start with me.”

  1.

  Here’s something you don’t see every day.

  I’m jogging south on Las Vegas Boulevard, four miles south of the Strip, when a lady walks right smack into a lamp post.

  She’s on Trace Street, forty yards to my right. I stop in the middle of the intersection to look and see if she’s okay. It’s 5:00 a.m., and from my angle and distance I could be wrong about what I thought I saw. She backs up a few steps and falls to a seated position on the sidewalk.

  I wonder if she’s drunk.

  I scan the area to see if anyone else is watching this unfold, but see no one. We’re in an industrial area, no bars nearby, and no businesses are open on Trace. I want to finish my run, but can’t leave her sitting there if she’s hurt. On the other hand, I don’t want to get shot. It was just last week a Vegas woman staggered out of a bar in the wee hours of the morning when some local thug took her for an easy mark and got killed for his miscalculation.

  She’s sitting with her back to me, so all I get is the shadow view. Her handbag is lying beside her. If it contains a gun, it won’t take her long to reach it.

  Thirty yards beyond the seated lady, a van slowly comes into view at the next intersection and pulls to a stop. So it’s me at this intersection, the van at the next, and a lady sitting between us, on the sidewalk. The van is white, with the passenger side facing the lady, but it’s dark and too far away for me to make out any details.

  I don’t know how many people are in the van, but I’m guessing just the driver. I mean, a passenger would roll the window down and ask if she needs help, right?

  The van driver seems to be doing what I’m doing, staring at the woman. But he’s got a better view, the illuminated front side of her. We’re probably both waiting to see if she’s going to stand, and we’re probably both leery about getting shot. In my case, I’m unarmed.

  Well, that’s not completely true. I have my cell phone in my hand. In an emergency, I can press a button, fling it, and two seconds later it blows up.

  But I don’t press that button. Instead, I press a number that rings Callie’s phone a single time. She’s now on alert.

  I start walking toward the lady.

  “Miss!” I yell, loud enough for her to hear. “Are you okay?”

  I wonder why people always ask that. Of course she’s not okay. She just walked into a friggin’ lamp post! But that’s what people always ask. A little kid falls into a well and gets stuck twenty feet below the surface. “Are you okay?” people shout.

  She’s not okay.

  Before I cover ten yards, her head explodes.

  I stop in my tracks and instinctively drop to the ground to make myself a smaller target. I’m so stunned I hardly notice the van slowly backing out of view. But the fact it’s backing up instead of racing forward tells me whoever’s in the van had something to do with the lady’s head exploding. And the way the street light hits the front of the van as it’s backing up shows me something I hadn’t seen before: a magnetic sign on the side, above the front wheel well. I can’t make out the wording from this distance, but it’s an orange logo of some sort, with black lettering. It’s a temporary sign, designed to cover the actual logo beneath it. I’ve seen few vans with small logos painted on the front passenger side. Ropic Industries has one. And their vans are white, also.

  I look around to see if anyone’s behind me. I want to check on the lady, but the little voice in my head says, Why? To ask if she’s okay?

  Then it adds, You’re alone, miles from your safe place. What if the van circles behind you?

  I look at the office and industrial buildings around me, and decide to go vertical.

  Running down the alley between two buildings, I spot a staircase, and take it up to the second floor landing. There’s a flat roof ten feet above me. I stand on the railing and carefully raise my arms over my head, grab the roof ledge and pull myself up to about chest height. I swing my right leg up and hook my foot over the ledge and work my way onto the roof. From there, I get a running start and jump to the next roof, then the next, and soon I’m on the rooftop of a building, looking down at the intersection where the white van had been moments earlier.

  I lay flat on the roof and wait to see if anyone comes to check on the body.

  While I’m doing that, the building beneath me explodes.

  2.

  As I jump to my feet to survey the damage below, I quickly conclude the building beneath me is collateral damage. Based on my knowledge of where the woman had been sitting moments earlier, and seeing only the remnants of her ass there now, it’s clear she’d been wired with explosives.

  Which makes her a homeland terrorist.

  I press the button that speed-dials Callie.

  “Where are you?” she says.

  “Corner of Landmark and Trace. Heading north on Landmark, right side of the street. Make it fast!”

  “Give me two minutes.”

  I hang up, check the street below me, and notice several structures have been decimated.

  But why?

  I mean, why here? Why now? Nothing in the immediate area remotely resembles a terrorist target.

  I’d love to investigate the scene, try to work it out, but within minutes the cops will be swarming the area, and I need to be long gone by then. Whatever role the driver of the white van played in all this, I doubt he’s planning to hang around to deal with me. I carefully work my way down the back side of the building, thankful the blast hasn’t done too much damage.

  A couple minutes later I’m in the passenger side of Callie’s black Mercedes CL65 AMG.

  “Sweet car,” I say.

  “You’re not bleeding, right?” she says.

  “Not that I know of.”

  She turns right, makes the block, begins heading back to her place. Says, “If I knew you were this filthy, I’d have stolen a car.”

  “Sorry. I was lying on something nasty just now.”

  “You really need to upgrade your taste in women.”

  “I was talking about a nasty rooftop.”

  “Still.”

  I sigh. “There was a woman, though.”

  “Of course there was,” Callie says. Then adds, “What happened to her?”

  “You know how some people in Vegas lose their
heads, and some lose their asses?”

  “Yeah?”

  “She lost both.”

  3.

  I’m in Callie’s penthouse condo now. The lovely Gwen has changed her hair to platinum blond, and it’s working for her. She sees me and races toward me, as if she’s about to give me a big hug. But as she gets close, she stops short and wrinkles her nose.

  “You smell,” she says.

  “I know.” To Callie I say, “Can I shower in your guest bedroom?”

  “Of course,” she says.

  I enter the guest bedroom and pause to look at a group of items lined up on the dresser.

  “What’s all this?” I call to Callie.

  “Oops,” she says from the living room. Then adds, “When you called, Gwen and I were about to have a sex marathon. We set some things out we planned to use.”

  “Really?” I say.

  She and Gwen enter the room.

  The three of us look at the items on the dresser. There’s a scarf, a vibrator, lipstick, a deck of cards, a condom, three bullets, and a bird cage.

  Callie gives Gwen a look I can’t decipher.

  Gwen shrugs.

  I study the items another minute, then say. “It makes sense.”

  Callie says, “It does?”

  “Except for one item,” I say.

  Callie laughs. “The birdcage?”

  “Nope.”

  She looks surprised. “No? Then what?”

  “The condom.”

  Callie frowns at Gwen, then says, “But you understand the birdcage.”

  “I do.”

  “And the bullets?” she says.

  “What about them?”

  “They make sense to you?”

  “Of course.”

  “But not the condom.”

  “Not the condom.”

  She shrugs, looks at Gwen again. Says, “He doesn’t understand the condom.”

  Gwen says, “Go figure.”

  I look at the items again.

  “Ah!” I say.

  “Ah?”

  “The condom goes on the vibrator!”

  They look at each other.

  “Go take your shower,” Callie says.

  4.

  Two Weeks Earlier… Maybe Taylor.

  Maybe Taylor crosses the street and enters the park without attracting attention. No surprise there, she rarely attracts attention, though she’s above average cute. Her body has slimmed down this year, thanks to her strict diet and four-hour-a-day exercise regimen. Still, if she’s being honest-and she usually is-a couple pounds of teenage belly fat continues to cling to her five-five frame as tenaciously as puke on a drunk’s beard.

  Maybe entered the world a natural blond, but age has darkened her hair to the point that now, at age twenty, it matches mission brown on the wood stain color chart at Harvey’s Hardware, Jacksonville, Florida.

  Maybe wants to be prettier, but lacks the angular face and high cheekbones common to classic beauties. Her eyes are nice, she always gets compliments on those. People seem to be drawn to blue-eyed girls, even when there’s nothing else particularly special about them. Maybe’s breasts would be picture perfect…if they didn’t fan out in opposite directions. But they do, and it embarrasses her when boys do a double-take, like they weren’t expecting her nipples to be practically under her arm pits. No one looks better in a bra than Maybe. But when the bra comes off, the breasts fly wide right and left, like a field goal kicker with the yips.

  Like the rest of Maybe’s physical package, things could be much worse. A flat-chest, for example, would be ten times worse. Still, there’s no single feature she’s exceptionally proud of.

  Wait…

  Her ass is nice.

  She wouldn’t change her ass. Not that she goes out of her way to stare at it, but it must be pretty special, or the boys who’ve seen it wouldn’t make such a fuss. Not that she’s shown it to many boys.

  She hasn’t.

  Anyway, it’s not Maybe’s ass that’s caused her problems. It’s the other private place. And that part has had a huge effect on her. How huge? It’s basically turned her into a mental patient.

  Maybe walks to the area of the park where giant rocks protrude from a hill, and climbs to a spot from which she can see all around her. When she’s confident no one can hear her conversation, she presses a button on her phone. When the man answers, she says, “Hi Daddy, it’s Maybe.”

  “Hi, honey,” he says.

  She pauses a moment, then says, “You stopped disguising your voice!”

  “Do you like my real voice?”

  “Yes! Thank you! But it’s been a year. Why now?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Not so much.”

  “I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  Maybe pauses a minute to process this revelation. Then says, “I’ve been bad, Daddy.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I kissed a boy.”

  The man on the other end of the phone pauses.

  She adds, “I kissed a boy and I liked it.”

  Maybe smiles, knowing he understands what she’s really done.

  The man says, “Where is he now?”

  “His place.”

  “Did you leave any evidence?”

  “Of course not, Daddy.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “In the parking lot outside a sports bar.”

  “Any cameras?”

  “No.”

  “How’d you get to his place?”

  “I drove.”

  “Where’d you leave your car?”

  “I drove to a shopping center two miles from his house. Then I got my bike out of the trunk, attached the front tire to it, and rode it to his place. When I got close, I called and told him to open his garage door. When he did, I rode right in. Then he closed the door. You’ll be so proud of me!”

  “Tell me why.”

  “I wore a ball cap and put my hair in a pony tail. Put an extra shirt in my bike pack. Didn’t eat anything, or drink anything, and didn’t even go inside the house.”

  “Did you let him touch you?”

  “Just my boobs. He pushed me back against his car and started messing around and when he started trying to pull my pants down I reached in the back pocket, took the syringe, and stuck him.”

  “And you pushed the poison into him?”

  “Yup. At first his head went straight up, and his chin looked like it was going to hit the ceiling! He knocked my hand off the syringe, but the poison was already in him. He couldn’t reach the syringe, so I stepped out of the way and watched him dance.”

  “Which way did he fall?”

  Maybe frowns. “You don’t believe me.”

  “Of course I do.”

  She pauses, then says, “He fell forward, face first, onto his car.”

  “And was he dead?”

  “Not yet. His legs shook awhile, and he couldn’t get a full breath. Then he couldn’t get a half breath. Then he couldn’t get a breath at all.”

  The man pauses before saying, “Did you happen to take a souvenir?”

  “Of course not, Daddy! What, do you think I’m stupid?”

  “You’re far from stupid, Baby.”

  “Call me Maybe.”

  He sighs. “I don’t like the name you’ve chosen, and I don’t like what it represents.”

  “Until I decide how far I’m willing to go, I’m Maybe.”

  “I understand that. But I don’t like it.”

  “But you like me, don’t you, Daddy?”

  “I love you.”

  “Thank you, Daddy.”

  “I love you deeply,” he says.

  “I’m glad.”

  “And you?”

  “What?” Maybe asks.

  “Do you love me?”

  “No.”

  He remains quiet, obviously disappointed.

  Then Maybe says, “But I want to.”

  She tries to imagine the expression on hi
s face, but has nothing to go on but the sound of his voice. After a few moments he says, “How are things going with Dr. Scott?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that. It’s embarrassing.”

  “You can tell me anything. You know that, right?”

  “You already know. You’re the one who’s paying him to see me. You probably get updates after each visit.”

  “It’s not the same as asking you about it.”

  “I don’t like to talk about it.”

  He pauses again. “I understand. So. Are you ready for a real assignment?”

  Maybe’s face lights up. “Yes! Absolutely!”

  “I want you to…kiss…a college professor. Can you do that?”

  “Of course, Daddy.”

  5.

  Present Day… Donovan Creed.

  “When you say she lost her head,” Callie says, “what do you mean?”

  I shrug. “The top and sides of her head exploded.”

  “Where was the bomb? In her mouth?”

  “Inside her head.”

  “What?”

  “It had to be a very small explosive, either on top of her head, or inside her skull. Hard as it is to imagine, I think it was inside.”

  “Like your brain chip?”

  “Except that it explodes instead of heating up,” I say.

  “Lucky’s company?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Jim “Lucky” Peters, the famous Vegas gambler, was murdered one week ago. As it happens, Callie’s lover, Eva LeSage, was murdered at the same time. Callie’s current love interest, Gwen, is Lucky’s widow.

  Small world, right?

  Twenty feet from us, in Callie’s kitchen, Gwen’s eating a bowl of Lucky Charms, oblivious to the irony. She’s wearing boxer shorts and a scarlet UNLV t-shirt with gray lettering.

  Gwen isn’t Callie hot, but you could fry an egg on any part of her.

  Callie sees me staring at her girlfriend.

  “Down, boy,” she says.

  “I saw her first,” I say.

  It’s true. I seduced Gwen hours before Callie met her.

  “But I saw her best,” Callie says.