Beyond Innocence Read online

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Beyond Innocence

  ISBN 9781419919299

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Beyond Innocence Copyright © 2009 Nikki Soarde

  Edited by Sue-Ellen Gower

  Cover art by Syneca

  Electronic book Publication April 2009

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing Inc., 1056 Home Avenue, Akron, OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Beyond Innocence

  Nikki Soarde

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Batman: DC Comics Inc.

  Beretta: Fabbrica D’armi P. Beretta, S.P.A.

  Boy Scout: Boy Scouts of America Corporation

  Chevette: General Motors Corporation

  Coke: The Coca-Cola Company

  Colt 45: New Colt Holding Corporation

  Cosmo: Hearst Communications, Inc.

  Dodge Ram: Chrysler Corporation

  Ford Falcon: Ford Motor Company

  Ford Taurus: Ford Motor Company

  Formica: The Diller Corporation

  GQ: Advance Magazine Publishers Inc.

  Holiday Inn: Six Continents Hotels, Inc.

  Hell’s Angel: Hell’s Angels, Frisco, Inc.

  Honda Civic: Honda Motor Co.

  Jockey: Jockey International, Inc.

  Little League: Little League Baseball, Inc.

  Marlboro: Philip Morris Inc.

  Monte Carlo: General Motors Corporation

  NASCAR: National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, Inc.

  Oldsmobile Cutlass: General Motors Corporation

  Pepsi: Pepsico, Inc.

  Philadelphia Penguins: Pittsburgh Hockey Associates composed of HBMB, Inc.

  Ritz: Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, LLC, The

  Smith & Wesson: Smith & Wesson Corp.

  Star Trek: Paramount Pictures Corporation

  Starbucks: Starbucks U.S. Brands

  Technicolor: Technicolor Trademark Management

  Toyota: Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha, DBA t/a Toyota Motor Corporation

  Tylenol: Tylenol Company

  Valvoline: Ashland Licensing and Intellectual Property LLC

  Vogue: Advance Magazine Publishers Inc.

  Volvo: Volvo Personvagnar AB Corporation

  Chapter One

  Late May, Banff National Park, Alberta

  He no longer felt the blows. But he had felt the bullet.

  There had been no mistaking the pain as the 9 mm shell pierced his gut, forcing him down to the bed of the truck and rendering him impotent and defenseless. He had remained defenseless as he watched them destroy the only thing that he had ever truly loved without reservation or doubt. Part of him died in that moment. Perhaps the best part. And then they came to finish the job.

  They dragged him to the ground, took up their weapons and vented their rage and their frustration. They rained their blows on his head, his shoulders, his back, his legs—nothing was immune to their evil. Evil.

  He had always suspected as much, but now he knew for certain. They were evil. Both of them.

  Goddamn them. He should hate them. He should but he didn’t. Perhaps it was the looming specter of death that put it all into perspective. Hate was futile now. It served no purpose. Or perhaps it was the knowledge that, in truth, he was no better. He had more than his share of evil staining his soul. He had glimpsed it and seen its destructive force in his life. But, like a fool, he had refused to acknowledge it—had refused to purge it. There had always been time. But time had just run out.

  He coughed and retched and felt the warmth of his blood against his cheek, against his chest. He heard rather than felt the crack of wood hitting flesh and bone and sinew. It was as if he were watching himself from another realm—watching his own death scene as it played out in vivid Technicolor. The unlikely finale to a cheap B movie with a hideous villain and a questionable hero. He never thought it would be quite like this. He always knew he wouldn’t die old and decrepit in his bed, breathing in the fumes of Lysol and urine in some nursing home. He always knew he wouldn’t die warm and safe, snuggled up to a wife he had known and loved for fifty years. He always knew he wouldn’t live to see his grandchildren, but he had hoped to see his child grow and mature. He had hoped for so little.

  He always knew he would die young—and violently—but somehow it was still too soon. Still too brutal.

  The blows ceased. All he was aware of was the uncertain pounding of his heart and the erratic rush of air in and out of tortured lungs. Helpless for the first time in his life, but too weak to care, he resigned himself to his fate.

  He felt himself being lifted and he caught one fleeting glimpse of blue—the searing blue of a sky he doubted he would ever see again. It was a deep blue. It taunted him with its beauty and its irony.

  He felt himself fall. The blue gave way to black. And, too late, he understood.

  * * * * *

  “Christ, that felt good!” breathed Faye as she flopped back in the seat of the old Chevy truck.

  Calvin sidled in behind the wheel and flashed her that wicked grin that never failed to send a rush of excitement between her legs. “You’ve got some of his blood on ya,” he growled as his eyes lingered on her breasts.

  She looked down at the spatters that decorated her brand-new white silk T-shirt. The sight of his blood on her clothes sent a flood of adrenaline through her that she was hard-pressed to explain. “No shit,” she mused. “That bastard always could ruin just about anything. I just bought this.”

  “I’ll buy you a new one. God knows we can afford it. He can’t ruin that anymore. Neither of them can.” Calvin’s voice was low and husky, just like it was after a steamy session of sex and cocaine. She wouldn’t be surprised if blood turned him on and killing made him come. She guessed he’d had a hell of a lot more experience at it than he’d let on, even to her.

  She looked up at him from beneath hooded eyes—eyes still wild with her own greed and hate and bloodlust. “What are we gonna do with him?” She jerked her head backward to indicate the body in the bed of the pickup. A pool of blood had congealed beneath his head. His hair was matted with his essence, his eyes wide and sightless, the bullet hole gaping and deadly.

  She found it odd, but even in death he was still gorgeous. She felt the briefest pang of regret at the loss of two remarkable physical specimens. But the regret was soon swept away on waves of drug- and power-induced euphoria.

  “Should we dump him here too?” She had difficulty dragging her gaze away from his bloody fo
rm.

  “Nah. Better to separate ‘em. We’ll take him up the mountain a ways. I know another good spot with a two-hundred-foot drop. Nobody’ll ever find him there.”

  For just a moment a sickening thread of worry laced through her. She glanced at the cliff where they had just dropped their other victim. “You sure he’s safe down there?”

  In a flash, her partner’s eyes turned hostile and threatening. “You questioning me, bitch? You think I don’t know what I’m doing?”

  She hurriedly reached out a hand to stroke and placate. “No. ‘Course not, honey. I’m just paranoid, I guess. It’s my first time, you know.” And despite the high, she desperately hoped it would be her last. “Of course I trust you.” Her hand dropped to the front of his jeans. Calvin might not be as attractive as either of their two victims, with his greasy black hair and hawklike nose, but he had a cock that could drive railway spikes, and a body that could stop a steaming locomotive. She quickly sensed his reaction to the deft movements of her palm against his ridge.

  He closed his dark gray eyes and whispered, “There’s miles o’ nothing down there. And even if somebody finds him he’s got no ID, and he’s too far from home. They’ll never identify him.” He opened his eyes and jerked a thumb to the back. “Him neither.”

  She withdrew her hand and reached for her seat belt. “Okay, then, let’s get this over with. I wanna get back and make sure Tanner is okay.”

  But her cohort wasn’t quite so eager to leave. He grabbed her arm and wrenched her against him. Before she could catch her breath her blood-soaked T-shirt had been peeled off, and his mouth was sucking her breast hard enough to make her wince. But she knew better than to push him away. In fact, his enthusiastic and rough approach to sex was a welcome change from her usual fare. “Shouldn’t we wait until we get rid of him?” But the protest was feeble, and she lost more resolve as his hand reached inside her jeans. “It’s kinda creepy doing it right beside a dead guy.”

  “You started it,” he muttered against her nipple. “‘Sides,” and he lifted his head to meet her gaze, “I think it’s a turn-on.” His fingers slipped inside her and she arched against him, already swollen and eager for his thrusts.

  “Turn-on?” she moaned, even though he was merely confirming what she already suspected. She began to wriggle out of her jeans.

  “Yeah, baby. We did it. They’re dead. We killed ‘em both, and now there’s nothing to stand in the way of everything we dreamed of.” He undid his jeans and she mounted him, her fingers clutching at his shoulders as she rode him hard and fast.

  “And Goddammit, it’s…” He groaned as her fingernails raked across his back. He sucked in a breath and murmured, “It’s about time.”

  She cried out in climax and her fingernails drew blood. Her eyes fluttered open and she caught a glimpse of the blood and death that lingered just a few feet away. As Calvin bucked and heaved in his own orgasm, she recalled the look on her husband’s face when his eyes had flickered open and recognition dawned.

  She had betrayed him, and he had loathed her for it. Not that it mattered. She had a future with Calvin and the wad of money they were going to retrieve. She was well rid of Tate. She had never loved the son of a bitch, anyway—not that first night when he had rescued her from a crackhead john with a switchblade, not through the years as they had struggled to stay afloat in a sea of poverty and crime, and not ten minutes ago when she had pulled the trigger. He hadn’t been anything more to her than a means to an end. He didn’t beat her and he’d been a pretty good lay. If it hadn’t been for his damn obsessions maybe he would have meant something to her. But the fact was, he hadn’t. Calvin knew the score. He knew what was important, and how to get it. Tate had just never learned that lesson. Calvin had tried to convince him over and over, but Tate was stubborn as a mule and blind as a bat. Tate was at once smart and stupid. And he’d finally paid for his stupidity and his misdirected faith in his friends. He had paid with his life.

  * * * * *

  “Melanie!” Allan’s voice echoed across the valley, bouncing endlessly off the rugged rock faces that soared above them like a great, granite cathedral. “Slow down,” he chuckled. “This isn’t a race, you know.”

  “Face it, Dad,” called back his thirteen-year-old bundle of energy, “you’re over the hill!”

  “Well, that was never in question,” he muttered to the woman beside him.

  Janice slapped her husband’s shoulder playfully. “Speak for yourself, old man. I have no intention of hauling out the old walker quite yet.”

  She stopped and breathed deeply of the warm spring breezes. She swept her gaze across the vista spread out before her. To her right rose a majestic cliff of slate and granite, and to her left was an expanse of water, the color so vibrant that it rivaled the sky—a rich blue-green that sparkled like sapphires trapped in jade. The Rocky Mountains and glacier-fed lakes in Banff National Park were unrivaled for their pristine beauty and untouched serenity.

  “I’m so glad you talked me into this,” she said. “That trail was boring. It’s much more exciting to forge our own way.” She cast him a sidelong glance. “You won’t get us lost, though, will you? You can find the trail again, right?”

  He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Of course. I was orienteering champion three years running. I’ve got my trusty compass, my map, and, if all else fails, my GPS.” He tapped his pocket where the coveted Global Positioning System unit was safely secured. It had been a present from his daughter for his forty-third birthday, and he had immediately insisted on this trip to try out his new toy.

  “Yeah, that’s all well and good, but what I want to know is whether you can find your way back to the car.”

  “Skeptic,” he chided, then directed his attention to the blur of motion ahead of them. “Don’t get too far ahead, honey. Stay within earshot!”

  “Okay, Dad,” she called back.

  “I don’t trust her,” he grumbled as he led his wife through the maze of pines and cedars. They were close to the treeline here, and despite the warm spring sunshine they still encountered the occasional persistent snowdrift nestled in a shady spot against the cliff. “Okay, Dad,” he mimicked, “just doesn’t cut it.”

  “You mean like the time you told her not to climb too high in the maple tree?”

  “Uh-huh. She said ‘Okay, Dad’ and two minutes later she was nursing a broken arm because she climbed too high and a branch broke.”

  “Right. Heaven knows where she gets it,” said Janice with a mournful shake of her head. “God knows you would never take an unnecessary chance, or go out on a limb. God knows you would never go flying when the weather looked bad and the tower warned you against it.”

  He scowled at her. “That was different.”

  “Oh? I bet JFK Junior said the same thing.”

  His burning retort was caught on his tongue as a piercing scream cut through their banter.

  “Daddy! Oh, my God! Mom, come quick!” Melanie’s shrieks rose to a panicked pitch.

  They sprinted toward the hysterical cries on the other side of a grove of cedars.

  “Over here.” Melanie stepped out so they could see her, and Janice could already see that tears stained her cheeks.

  She reached her daughter and grasped her hands. They were cold and trembling. “What? What is it, honey?”

  Melanie blinked furiously. “In the bushes— He—” She squeezed her mother’s hands until they ached, and Janice saw Allan already forging through the foliage. “I think he’s dead.”

  Janice went numb. “He?” She briefly entertained visions of an unfortunate elk, or perhaps even a wolf that had fallen from the cliff and met a grisly fate on the rocks below. But in her heart she knew her daughter wouldn’t react like this to the death of an animal.

  Melanie nodded. “He’s—”

  “Janice,” called Allan. His voice was subdued but she could sense the tension. “You better get in here.” He stood straight and leveled his gaze at h
er. “I doubt there’s anything to be done, but you’re the one with first-aid training.”

  “Stay here,” she said to her daughter, knowing full well she would be ignored. She stepped toward the bushes and sensed Mel’s presence behind her. Allan crouched down as she approached and, with hesitant steps, she reached his side.

  “Sweet Jesus,” she breathed. Janice had worked for years as a receptionist in a busy trauma unit. And while she had never had a part in treating patients she had seen the horrors of car accidents and fires and beatings from a firsthand vantage point. This, however, rivaled the worst images that her memory could dredge to the surface. Her stomach clenched and her heart beat double-time as she took in the tableau at her feet. One side of his face was almost unrecognizable as human. It had been crushed and mutilated by unimaginable forces. He was bleeding from his ears, his nose, his mouth and his abdomen. One leg was bent at an unnatural angle, and she had to look away when she thought she caught sight of a rib peeking through the rust-stained remnants of his T-shirt.

  She was kneeling beside him and she didn’t quite remember getting there. There was no chance, but instinctively she reached out and touched his neck, pressing firmly against his carotid in a pointless gesture of hope.

  “Is he? Is he dead?” Melanie demanded, her voice tight with anguish.

  Janice blinked slowly in concentration. She thought… Just maybe… She pressed a little more firmly. “I don’t believe it. He has a pulse. It’s weak but it’s there.” Instantly she felt empowered and her actions had direction. “Allan, did you bring your cell phone?”

  He scowled at her. “Are you kidding? Those things don’t work up here. You can’t even get a decent radio signal in these mountains, let alone—”

  “Okay, okay,” she said impatiently. “Then you’ll have to run back to the car and call for help from the emergency phone in the parking lot.”

  He just looked at her. “It’s got to be two miles!”