Forbidden Territory & Forbidden Temptation: Forbidden Territory / Forbidden Temptation

Detective McBride’s stormy eyes stared back.

* * *

MCBRIDE CROUCHED IN front of Lily, trying to be angry. But she looked ready to collapse. Purple smudges bruised her eyes—headache, he guessed. “Walters says you think it’s a hoax.”

She hugged herself. The room was warm, but chill bumps dotted her bare arms. “I wish he’d kept that to himself.”

“Why?” McBride lowered his voice to a gentle murmur.

Her eyes narrowed. “Aren’t you angry I’m here?”

Tiny lines etched the skin around her eyes and mouth. Pain lines. He couldn’t stop himself from touching a tiny crease in her forehead, gently smoothing it. “You have a headache?”

Her eyes drifted closed and she nodded, turning her head to give his fingers better access. Her body arched toward him, like a kitten responding to a gentle caress.

He dropped his hand with difficulty. “What did you do, fight your vision?”

Her eyes fluttered open. “I wanted to tell Andrew Walters about the hoax as quickly as possible.” She stumbled over some of the words, as if she couldn’t quite make them all fit together. “I fought to leave the vision before it was through.”

And paid the price, he thought, then chided himself for letting himself get sucked into her delusion. Whatever had caused her headache, it damn well wasn’t a psychic vision.

But she was right about the call being a hoax. Though smart enough to block his caller ID and keep his call too short for a trace, the man had blown it by not getting his business done in one shot.

Tomorrow he’d phone back and they’d get him.

“Can I go home now?” Lily leaned forward, bracing her hands on the sofa cushion. McBride stood to give her room to rise, but she moved faster than he did. Their bodies touched for a long, electric moment before he backed out of her way.

Maybe she was a witch, he thought, his body responding to her presence like fire to oxygen. He seemed entirely at her mercy, no matter how he tried to fight it. “Are you okay to drive?”

“I’m fine. The medicine’s already working. And don’t worry, officer. It’s the non-drowsy formula.” She gazed up at him, her eyes wide and glowing in the lamplight. Her body swayed toward him before she pulled herself up and slid past him, moving toward the door. McBride remained where he was, watching with clenched jaw as Andrew Walters closed his hand around Lily’s arm and bent toward her, their faces intimately close as they spoke. Walters’s grasp on Lily’s arm became a gentle stroking, almost like a lover’s caress.

McBride’s chest tightened with anger.

“Lieutenant?”

McBride tore his attention away from Lily and Walters to look at the detective who’d contacted him after the call.

“Do you want to take the tape with you or do you want me to bag it and send it by courier?” the detective repeated.

“Courier,” McBride answered.

As the two technicians headed out, McBride’s eyes swung back to the door.

But Lily was gone.

He crossed to Walters. “You okay?”

Walters blinked as if startled. “Yeah. It’s all just so crazy. Some creep playing with our minds.” He shook his head. “How could someone do that?”

It’s a big, bad world out there, McBride thought. Bigger and badder all the time. “We can’t be sure it’s a hoax.”

“Lily’s sure of it. That’s good enough for me.”

McBride’s stomach sank as he dropped his hand from the other man’s shoulder. “You know, Mr. Walters, we can’t know for certain without a thorough investigation. I know Ms. Browning seems confident of everything she says, but—”

“She doesn’t seem confident. I’d worry more if she did. But she’s been right about everything so far.”

“Like what?”

“She knew what Abby was wearing the day she disappeared.”

McBride shook his head. “That was reported in the paper.”

“Not the yellow rabbit.”

“She knew about the rabbit?” Acid gushed into McBride’s gut. The police had released a description of Abby’s clothing—the blue overalls and white shirt—but held back the yellow rabbit decal to divide the crank calls from the genuine tips.

If Lily Browning had really described what Abby had been wearing, there was only one way she could have known.

She’d seen Abby Walters the morning she disappeared.

And he’d just let a person of interest walk out the door.

Chest tight with growing anger, McBride moved toward the exit. “I’m going to head out now and let our technicians handle things. Are you going to be okay?”

Walters looked exhausted. “I just want my daughter back.”

“We’ll find her.” McBride heard the words, recognized his own voice, but couldn’t believe what he’d said. He’d been raging at Lily Browning for giving Walters false hope, and here he was, adding his own lies to the mix.

He didn’t believe the real kidnappers would call again, because Abby Walters was dead. Too much time had passed, with no sightings, and no clues but a harsh voice on Lily Browning’s answering machine. Who knew whether that phone call was the real thing or just another of Lily’s lies?

But he couldn’t say that to Walters. Not yet. The man had to go through this part of the journey, the hopeful part. Next would come uncertainty, then despair, then the black anger that churned in the gut like a feeding frenzy of piranhas.

McBride didn’t know what came after that.

* * *

AVOIDING THE CONGESTED perimeter highway, Lily took Black Creek Road home. It was a longer drive, but the winding road was lightly traveled, especially on a rainy night, and Lily was in no state of mind to deal with heavy traffic.

At least the migraine was almost gone.

But McBride’s touch lingered like a fiery brand on her skin. She could still conjure up the tang of his aftershave, the intensity of his gaze sweeping over her as if he wanted to strip her bare of her defenses and find out what lay underneath.

Idiot. Trying to guess McBride’s thoughts was a fool’s game. If he thought of her at all, it was as a calculating con artist taking advantage of a wealthy but vulnerable man.

Whimsy wasn’t Lily’s style. She wasn’t the fanciful sister; that was Rose, the hopeless romantic. She wasn’t impulsive and daring like Iris, either. Lily was the eldest, the one with her head screwed on firmly. The one who’d taken care of her younger sisters when their mother died six years ago.

Lily didn’t form ridiculous crushes on men who’d never return her feelings.