Wanted for Life

by Allison B Hanson

  Pudge barked and growled at their guest when Colton opened the door.

  “Mālie,” Colton ordered and Pudge ran to the back door. This was normal protocol for his dog, but he wondered if Pudge wasn’t drawn to the backyard because Angel was hiding out there, rather than an urge to relieve himself.

  No, she wouldn’t stay so close. She wouldn’t take that risk.

  Moving to the kitchen, he dropped the bags on the counter.

  “Do you have to go out?” he asked Pudge, getting a single bark in response. “Good boy.” He scratched him around the neck and let him out. “Mind if I put the cold stuff away?”

  “Go ahead.” Special Agent Markel had walked into the kitchen, and was taking in everything while acting as though he wasn’t.

  “So, who are you looking for?” Colton asked. It had been a while since he’d needed to play a part. He slipped right into character, all innocence and curiosity.

  “Surely, you recognized the woman on the news as the deputy marshal from your protection detail last year.”

  Colton nodded and put the milk in the fridge door. “I did. Sorry, I wasn’t sure if you knew who I really am.” He smiled. “It’s supposed to be a secret.”

  The man nodded. “Don’t worry. Your identity is safe. We thought maybe she’d turn up by now, but we’ve been forced to reach out to a wider circle of people she might contact.”

  “To be honest, I’m not surprised she hasn’t turned up. She seemed to know how to hide. She taught me a lot. I’ve been here almost a year now, and no one has suspected a thing.” He closed the refrigerator and looked at the FBI agent. “Am I in danger? I mean, she was off my team before I was assigned to this location. She wouldn’t even know where I am, right?”

  “I’m just being thorough, which means I’ve heard some talk about why Angel was taken off your team before the trial.”

  “What kind of talk?” This should be good.

  “There were rumors that she wanted off your team because the two of you had become intimate.”

  Colton laughed. “We can’t be the first two people who took advantage of the whole bodyguard situation, right?” He laughed again. “She was able to keep sex separate from her job. And trust me, that was all I was to her. A job.” At least that part was true.

  “Are you saying you haven’t had any contact with her since she was reassigned?”

  Colton shook his head. “Nothing until she showed up on my TV screen.” He looked the man right in the eye as he stretched the truth. It wasn’t until after the news report they’d had contact. When it seemed the agent bought it, Colton decided to do a little fishing. “I get what the San Francisco PD might think, but the FBI knows she didn’t do this, right?”

  Markel cocked his head to the side. “What makes you think that?”

  “She’s many things—tough, feisty, and a cheater at cards—but she’s not a cold-blooded killer.”

  Markel pulled out the folder he had tucked under his arm and opened it.

  He pushed two photos across the counter to Colton.

  “I assure you, Mr. Willis, she is capable of such a thing.”

  Colton picked up the photos. They were old. Not from the recent murder. The same scene taken from two different angles. Two people in bed. One was a woman, and he assumed the other was a man, but there was too much blood to be sure.

  “Angel’s parents. She stabbed her father sixty-two times and her mother eighty-seven, after slicing their throats in exactly the same way Heath Zeller’s throat was cut.”

  Colton couldn’t swallow, though he kept trying. The horror on those pictures was sickening. Blood everywhere, arterial spray and off-fall spattered the walls.

  Markel pulled another photo from the folder, and Colton’s heart stopped. It was Angel—younger—covered in blood and staring off at nothing. Markel slid the picture to the side to show a mugshot of the same girl.

  This couldn’t be. Not his Angel.

  “How did she ever become an U.S. deputy marshal if she’d done something like this?” Colton’s brain supplied the question at the same time his heart reminded him how damaged he knew Angel was. He’d seen the scars on her body.

  Had her parents been abusive and she’d simply protected herself? Eighty-seven wounds seemed extreme for defense, but she could have blacked out.

  He tried to remember if she’d ever mentioned her parents, and didn’t think she had. She hadn’t shared much about her old life.

  In fact, he didn’t know much about her, at all.

  This might explain why.

  “Her teachers said she was always shy and closed off,” Markel said. “She rarely made eye contact with anyone. No friends. As a teenager, she had a few brushes with the law. Shoplifting, fake IDs. Minor stuff. Nothing to worry about.”

  Markel tapped the photo, to draw Colton’s attention back to the tragedy. “She was eighteen when she killed her parents in their sleep. Just like Heath Zeller. She was tried as an adult, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity. She didn’t remember the incident. She said she did it in her sleep.”

  How many times had Angel wandered into his bedroom the last few nights while he’d been sleeping? At least twice he’d heard her, including just last night. How many times had he not even noticed?

  The agent pulled out another photo. This one was of Angel laughing with an older man who had his arm around her.

  “Supervisory Deputy Marshal Josiah Thorne knew her father, and used his pull to get her into a test program he was initiating. Have you heard of Task Force Phoenix?”

  Colton shook his head, but he did remember hearing someone refer to her team by that name.

  “It was a test project at first. Thorne recruited people brought into WITSEC who had more to offer than just sitting around taking it easy.” The agent glanced around his house and Colton stood up straighter. “Mess-ups who wanted to turn over a new leaf. Rise from the ashes, and all that shit.” The man shook his head as if the thought of wanting to better oneself was ridiculous. “She tested well, and even passed her psych eval.”

  When Markel pulled out the next photo Colton almost didn’t look. But it was just another photo of Angel in the arms of a man. Both with white-blond hair. They may have passed for siblings if he hadn’t been looking at her in an intimate way with his hand low on her hip. It was the embrace of familiarity between lovers.

  “Her first partner, Lucas Stone. As you can see, they were more than just partners. Until he fell off a bridge. She said he jumped, but there was blood found at the scene.”

  At this, Markel flipped to another photo. The edge of a bridge, with blood—a lot of it—on the barrier. Angel was standing to the side, her expression blank.

  Colton didn’t know how much more of this he could take, but the man continued.

  “Even after this, she remained on the team. She was known to be vicious when threatened, and unable to form attachments to others. It made her a perfect deputy marshal for WITSEC. Until she killed again.”

  Colton knew the part about being vicious and unable to form attachments was true.

  But was Angel really a killer?

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Colton couldn’t fall asleep. It was almost one, and he needed to be at school in the morning, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Angel.

  After Special Agent Markel left, Colton had checked the hiding place under his closet, as well as the backyard. The vehicle in the shed was still there, so she’d left on foot, and taken her things, including the computer.

  He might have gone looking for her, but he worried Markel might follow him. Not that he’d given the agent reason to doubt him.

  Colton had played his part well, mainly because the sick expression at seeing those photos had been genuine. As for the story, he wasn’t sure what to believe.

  He’d known men who went home every night to their wife and kids, but spent their day moving heroin into the country. They told jokes and were sociable. Guys you’d want to be friends
with, and have a beer with on Friday nights. No one would know what they were capable of.

  It stood to reason he didn’t know what Angel was capable of.

  But it didn’t matter now.

  Angel was gone.

  And he couldn’t do anything about it.

  But the part of the puzzle that kept him from falling asleep was…if she ended up killing someone else, it would be his fault. He knew how easy it was to make people believe whatever one wanted. He’d spent eight years doing just that.

  Angel was sexy, with a curvy body that could arouse a monk. And her smile could make a man overlook the fact she was a lethal adversary. Had his dick kept him from stopping a murderer on the loose?

  He glared down in the direction of his dick, wishing he was smarter than that part of his anatomy. Apparently, that wasn’t the case. It never had been, not with her.

  Exhausted from the day, he finally started to slip toward the edge of sleep when he heard the familiar jingle of Pudge’s tags. Then he felt the bed move with the weight.

  “Get down,” he ordered, not happy with his dog. Even if he had been blinded to her true nature, Pudge should have known better.

  The dog licked his hand.

  The hand that was hanging over the side of the bed. The other side.

  His heart began to pound, he could hear the blood rushing through his temples. It wasn’t Pudge who had just gotten into his bed.

  It was Angel.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Angel felt Colton’s body tense when he realized she was there.

  Not that she should be there.

  She’d taken off. She should have kept going.

  But before he’d left for work that morning, he’d said the same thing he always said. “If you’re not here when I get back, good luck and take care of yourself.”

  He’d made it sound as if she would be leaving because she had no choice, but she’d seen the doubt in his eyes. He expected her to leave him like she had the last time.

  Maybe it was because she didn’t want to let down another man in her life, or maybe it was that she was selfish and wanted to stay here with him. Whatever the reason, she couldn’t make herself go. She’d turned around and came back.

  His response to her being in his bed was not what she’d expected. She’d hoped he’d pull her close and kiss her. Maybe those kisses would even lead to more.

  It seemed she’d abandoned the plan to keep things professional at the same time she realized she couldn’t leave.

  She remembered how amazing they’d been together. Now that she had admitted her need for him, she was ready to let him know how much she wanted him. But he didn’t seem to be in the same place.

  He was still tense.

  “You came back.” His voice barely moved the darkness.

  “Yes.”

  There was some shifting, then the light came on. He looked her over.

  She hadn’t been brave enough to get into bed naked, so she was wearing a tank top and sweats. But his gaze seemed to go straight to her hands.

  Was he expecting her to have something? A cup of coffee?

  A gun?

  He let out a breath and looked at her. It wasn’t a breath of relief that she was back. He didn’t look happy to see her. He looked…frightened.

  “What is it?” she asked. He was a seasoned agent. It would take a lot to get him this worked up. Maybe he’d had a bad dream.

  “Why did you kill your parents?”

  She nearly fell off the bed at his question. Whoever their visitor had been, he’d planted doubt in Colton. Big doubt.

  It was a familiar tactic. If you wanted someone to give up the other person, you had to make them a suspect. She hadn’t thought it would work so well on Colton. But then, she already knew he didn’t trust her. And for good reason.

  She’d acted as though she’d cared for him. She’d said things to make him believe she was in the same place he was. And then she’d left while he was sleeping.

  “He told you I killed them,” she whispered.

  The only answer was a stony look while his eyes searched her face for the truth.

  “You believed him.” It wasn’t an accusation, just a sad statement of fact.

  “I don’t know what to believe. I know if you did it, there was a good reason. I hope there was a good reason.”

  “Can I show you something?”

  He nodded and she slid off the bed. She hurried to the living room to get the computer, and walked back as it booted up. Pudge followed her the whole way.

  She crossed her legs and rested the laptop on her knees as she pulled up the browser and typed in the headline she knew by heart.

  Cassandra Larson, sole survivor of heinous attack.

  “Your real name is Cassandra?” he asked. She nodded as she tilted the screen toward him so he could read the appalling story of her past. “It was your brother?”

  His whole body seemed to relax at the knowledge as she nodded in confirmation.

  “You were hurt.” His eyes flared with concern, even though it was obvious she was fine now. Physically, at least.

  She pulled the strap of her shirt down so he could see the worst of her injuries—the scar at her left collarbone. The one he was already familiar with from their lovemaking, though she’d never told him the truth about how she’d gotten it. Had the wound been a bit higher, she wouldn’t have been the sole survivor of the attack.

  “Tell me what I’m not reading here,” he said, finishing the article, and she found that for the first time in her life she wanted someone to know what had happened to her. What had really happened.

  And she wanted it to be Colton.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Colton waited as Angel closed the computer and shifted to get comfortable. Pudge jumped up on the bed by her side, and Colton didn’t have the heart to chase him down this time. He could imagine this tale would be gruesome, and didn’t mind that his dog wanted to offer her support.

  “You’ve seen my scars before,” she started.

  Yes. When they’d been naked. They’d touched and kissed each other’s scars with reverence and acceptance in those nights of passion. Neither of them had asked questions, knowing they didn’t want that darkness brought into those moments.

  “I don’t ever remember a time when I didn’t have scars on my body. My brother, Nicholas, was five years older than me. He’d always been rough. At least that was the word my parents used. Looking back, I realize they were in denial of what their son really was.”

  Without thinking, Colton reached out and took her hand. He had brothers. They’d often been rough. They’d hurt each other. But Colton could tell this was different.

  “They were good parents. They always made sure we had the things we needed. We went on great vacations. They loved us. We should have been the perfect family, and I’m sure a lot of people thought we were. But there was a darkness none of us talked about. My brother.” She rubbed her forehead and looked at Colton. “Please don’t think they were bad.”

  This seemed important to her so he nodded. “Okay,” he agreed.

  Though he’d already jumped to the opposite conclusion. Clearly, they hadn’t protected Angel when she’d needed them. In his mind, that was what parents were supposed to do. No matter the threat. But he knew that wasn’t always the case. Not by a long shot.

  Bad things happened all the time.

  “As I got older, I realized it wasn’t normal for me to be terrified of being alone with my own brother. My friends didn’t have those issues. Their siblings were more protective or annoying than anything. I never had friends stay over at my home. I was worried about their safety.”

  Pudge wiggled closer and rested his head on her thigh. He must have sensed her inner pain. She used her free hand to pet him.

  “By my senior year of high school, I was looking forward to getting out of the house. I had two months of school left. I only had to survive the summer and I’d be leaving for college.
I never planned to come back. Nicholas had gotten worse. He hid in his room a lot, but when he came out, the darkness in him manifested in strange ways. He’d take my things and break them. Things I’d loved. Gifts from my parents. I didn’t dare say anything, or he would go into a rage and accuse us of hating him.”

  She let out a breath, and Colton tensed, knowing she’d arrived at that worst part.

  “I’m not sure why I woke up. It was probably a sound, though I don’t remember it. Maybe it was because the house had grown cold. I don’t know. But I was suddenly wide awake and knew something was wrong.”

  She released his hand and wrapped it around her. Her skin was covered in goose bumps. He sat up and pulled her into his arms. Offering his warmth. But knowing the chill came from inside where he couldn’t reach.

  “When I listened, I realized there was a sound. Barely there. Muted. I didn’t know what it was, but I was compelled to go look.”

  She shook her head. “I must have known it came from my parents’ room on the other side of the house, but I don’t remember why now. I went down the hall and found their door open almost halfway. None of us slept with our doors open. That would be a silent invitation for Nicholas to enter.”

  She swallowed and leaned into Colton. He bit his cheek to keep from saying anything. He didn’t want her to stop talking.

  “There was light coming in from the street, and all I saw was blood. Blood everywhere. My brother was kneeling over my mother, stabbing her. The sound I’d heard had been the knife sliding against her ribs and my brother’s heavy breaths from the exertion.”

  “Oh, God,” he said, unable to help himself, holding her tight. He’d seen the photos, but now he felt the fear behind them.

  “I ran to my room and got the cell phone I’d gotten for my birthday. I called 911 and looked for a place to hide. I’d never been able to hide from him before. I knew he would look under the bed, or in my closet. So I went across the hall into his room and hid in the back of his closet. I’d never gone into his room before. I wasn’t even sure if his closet was big enough, but I worked my way inside and hid under some clothing.”