by Cynthia Eden
“After my dad died, Charles brought in a partner to help revamp the business. Devin Donley.” And a wide smile split her face. “Of course! If you were working as a bodyguard, then Devin would know about it! I can call him, and he can come meet you. He’s in Atlanta now for the holidays. It won’t take him long to get here.” She squeezed John’s hands tighter. “Devin and Charles didn’t have secrets. He’ll know you. He’ll know about your past.”
“Shelly…” Her name came out as a growl, but she could see the hope finally flickering in his eyes.
“I’ll call him,” she said. “Just let me make the call. Let’s see what happens.”
John nodded.
She threw her arms around him. “We’re figuring this out,” Shelly whispered.
His hands closed around her hips. He lifted her up against him, held her tightly. So tightly. The warmth of his body pressed against her. For an instant, she remembered what it was like be skin to skin with him. To have his body covering hers. To feel the hard thrust of his cock into her.
He held her up with his easy strength, and her feet dangled over the floor. Her hands were on his shoulders, and their eyes were just a few inches apart.
“My past…” His voice was so deep and rumbling. “It won’t change what’s happening between us.”
The words sounded like a warning.
“I want you. You want me. There’s no going back from that.”
No, there wasn’t. “I should make the call.”
His lips pressed together. He lowered her back to the floor, and she hurried toward the door.
“You’re pretending it didn’t happen.”
Her hand rose, and her fingers curled around the doorframe. “No, I’m not.” She didn’t look at him. “I can still feel you against my skin. Still remember what it felt like when your mouth was on me.” Her voice broke a bit. “I’ve never had a lover like you before.” Someone who’d possessed her so completely. Someone who’d seemed to mark her very soul. She wanted to ask if sex was always that intense with him but…
He wouldn’t know. He wouldn’t know if the intensity they’d shared was just typical for him and his lovers. Or if it had been something special.
For her, it had been special. And that scared her.
“I should call Devin before it gets any later.” She still wasn’t looking back at him. “This is what you need, John. This is what you wanted. The key to your past.”
She hurried back up the stairs, but his low words followed her.
“No, baby, you’re what I need.”
***
Blane read the Miami-Dade ME’s report—he read the thing three times. The medical examiner had faxed the report to Blane’s station.
According to the report, John Smith had been stabbed multiple times and left to bleed out in a dirty Miami alley. There’d been no evidence left behind. Nothing unusual discovered during the ME’s exam.
“No next of kin,” Blane muttered as he flipped through the papers. His eyes narrowed. “John’s former commanding officer claimed the body.” And the records didn’t indicate exactly when the body had been claimed. Just that it had been.
Blane had checked and double-checked the fingerprints. The guy currently staying with Shelly was the same man who’d been stabbed in Miami. The same man who should have been dead and buried. Only he wasn’t.
And he was a guy who had fucking super speed, super strength, and from what Blane could tell…super senses.
“Sir?” A light rap sounded from nearby.
Blane’s head lifted up. His door was open, and his newest deputy, Nolan Hoover, stood in the doorway. Nolan’s fist was still against the wooden doorframe, and his red hair shot out from his head at stiff angles.
“Sir, do you want to go over the schedule for the patrols at Ms. Shelly’s place?” Nolan asked quietly.
Blane’s eyes narrowed. He had an active shooter in his town. A freaking nightmare with the holiday season and all of the tourists in Discovery. He needed this nightmare to end, and he needed it to end now.
***
“John Smith?” Devin Donley repeated the name. Static crackled over the line. “He’s dead.”
Shelly hunched her shoulders as she curled her fingers around her phone a bit more. “You know him, though, right? He worked for my brother.”
“I know him.” Devin’s voice was measured. “But the guy is a dead man.”
“He isn’t.” She was staring at the dead man. “He survived the attack in Miami. He’s here with me right now.”
Silence.
Had she lost the connection? Dammit, her phone was always going out in the mountains. “Devin?”
“Say it again, Shelly. Very, very slowly.”
She blinked. “I said John Smith survived. He’s here with me right now.”
“Get the hell away from him.”
What?
“Is he in the room with you?”
He was. He was less than five feet from her, and Shelly knew he could hear every single word that Devin spoke.
“The man is dangerous. The federal government is looking for him right now. Jesus, Shelly, you have to get away from him.”
“The federal government? What are you talking about?”
“I had FBI agents come to my place in Atlanta just a few days ago! Guys in dark suits who made me nervous as hell. Didn’t understand why they were asking about a dead man but, shit, guess he’s not dead, is he?”
“No.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “He’s not.”
“You’re at the family place in Discovery? That’s where you are?”
“At the cabin. I wanted you to talk to John, to tell him about his past—”
“The man is a fucking ice-cold killer, that’s what he is. I told your brother it was a mistake to hire him, especially to tail you. Guy got obsessed.”
No, no, this wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right.
“Look, you’re still friends with the sheriff, aren’t you? Get to him. I’m leaving now. I’m still in Atlanta so it’s going to take me a little while to reach you…”
John was stalking toward her. His face looked even harder, even more dangerous than it normally did.
“Get away from him,” Devin blasted in her ear. “Trust me on this, the guy is trouble, he’s—”
John took the phone from her. He swiped his finger over the screen, turning on the speaker. “I’d never hurt her.”
Static crackled. “John?” Devin’s voice seemed strangled.
“Shelly is safe with me.”
“Don’t you touch her!” Devin was practically screaming. “Your prints were all over Charles’s home—I suspected you all along. Faking your damn death—I should have suspected something like this. You faked it so you couldn’t be charged with Charles’s murder!”
Shelly shook her head. No, no.
“Stay away from her!” Devin snapped.
“I’d never hurt her,” John said again, voice roughening.
“I’m coming. Shelly, do you hear me? I’m coming to Discovery. Get away from that bastard. Get to the sheriff, now!”
The line went dead.
CHAPTER NINE
She was terrified.
Fear rolled off Shelly in waves. Her heart was beating far too fast, her body was trembling and…
“Breathe, baby,” John whispered.
Her breath left her in a hard rush.
His hand rose, and she took a step back. Her retreat pierced John right in the heart. “I was just giving your phone back to you.” His voice was quiet, without emotion. Mostly because he had put a stranglehold on his emotions. Rage and fear pounded through him—rage at the man named Devin who’d just wrecked the bond John had tried so hard to form with Shelly. And fear—gnawing, twisting fear because John was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to convince Shelly to trust him again. “Go ahead,” he urged when she made no move to take the phone. “Call the sheriff. Get him out here.”
Her gaze dropped to the
phone. No spots of color stained her cheeks. In fact, she was far too pale. Her trembling fingers reached for the phone.
He expected her to immediately call the sheriff. Instead, her hand fisted around the phone and her eyes—fearful but also angry, so angry—rose to his. “Have you been playing me all along?” He’d never heard that tone in her voice before. The cut of rage. The rasp of betrayal.
John shook his head. “I wouldn’t—”
“I must have seemed so stupid to you.” She took another step back. “Buying that whole story about you not having a memory. About you waking up in some kind of lab.”
He wanted to take her into his arms. To hold her tight. “It’s not a story. It’s the truth.”
“Is it?” She shook her head. “I’ve known Devin for over five years. He was my brother’s best friend even before they became business partners. Hell, that’s why they became partners. Charles wanted someone he could trust to help him run the company after my dad died. And Devin just told me that you were a threat.”
“I’m not.”
She retreated another step. His gaze slid over her shoulder and toward the front door of the cabin. Was she planning to run out? He couldn’t just let her run away. It wasn’t safe out there. The shooter—the attacker who’d been stalking her—he could be lying in wait. “Call the sheriff,” John urged her.
“Do you remember your past? And tell me the truth!”
His lips pressed together. His past…
Waking up strapped to an exam table. Men and women in white lab coats, whispering. Whispers that he’d heard so clearly.
“He’s back!”
“Another successful experiment.”
“Will he be as strong as the others?”
“John!” Shelly cried out. He blinked. For a moment, he’d slipped away in his mind. “Talk to me! Tell me the truth.”
“I only remember pieces of my past. Flashes.” He kept his hands loose at his sides, kept his body relaxed. He didn’t want her to see him as a threat. “Flashes of you.”
Her chin lifted. “Because you were hired to watch me.”
“Yes, I think so.” His temples began to pound. She was too pale. He wanted to slip into her mind, to see what she was thinking, to see if any part of her still trusted him.
“Did you kill my brother?” The question seemed torn from her.
And, fuck, he couldn’t lie to her. “I don’t know.”
Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them away. Staring straight at him, she slid her fingers over the screen of the phone. Then she put the phone to her ear. “Blane,” Shelly whispered a moment later. “I’m coming to town. I know you still have a deputy watching the house. Let him know that I’m leaving.”
“Is everything all right?” Alarm sharpened the sheriff’s words.
Shelly was still staring straight at John. “I don’t think so.”
John stepped toward her. He had to do it. “Come and get her,” he barked to the sheriff, knowing he was close enough that Blane would be able to hear his words. “Don’t let her drive alone. Come and get her.”
Her lower lip trembled. “I’m coming to town, Blane. I’ll see you soon.” She ended the call and held her phone tightly in one hand. Shelly still didn’t look away from John. “I want to trust you. I look at you, and I swear, I feel this…this connection. Like there is something pulling me toward you.”
“Shelly, you can trust me.”
Her hair slid over her shoulders as she shook her head. “You just told me that you don’t even know if you killed my brother. How do you know I can trust you?”
“Because you are my life.” Truth. Stark. “When I woke in that lab, when those bastards in the lab coats killed me again and again, you got me through those days. They told me that my past was gone. Dead and buried, the way I should have been. But it wasn’t. You remained. You slipped into my head. Appeared in my dreams. You gave me hope. You made me believe that I was more than just some freak who’d been locked away from the world. You were out there, and I just had to survive long enough to find you.”
The tears she’d tried to blink away before were back. One slid down her cheek. He had to touch her. Had to do it. John closed the distance between them, and Shelly stiffened. She didn’t back away, though, and when his hand lifted to her cheek, when his index finger caught her tear, she didn’t flinch away from him. Her eyes slipped closed. He bent and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “I found you,” John rasped. He’d found her, and he’d give his life—over and over again—to keep her safe.
“John…”
“I don’t know what kind of man I was before I woke up in that lab.” His voice was too rough. “I just know who I am now. And right now, I fucking live for you. I would do anything for you. You don’t have to worry about me hurting you because, baby, I never would.” But everything had to be her choice. Everything.
So he stepped back.
She still gripped her phone. Her eyes were wide and dark. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured. “Have I told you that?”
She looked over her shoulder at the door.
“I can walk you out, baby,” he told her. Don’t run, let me walk with you. “I can make sure there is no threat out there. I’d hear a threat coming, you know that. I didn’t feed you a bullshit story. Everything about Lazarus, everything about me and the powers I have—all of that is true. Let me protect you.”
“Even though I’m running from you?”
Dammit. “Yes.”
She bit her lower lip. “I don’t know what to do.”
Trust me. He didn’t say those words. Instead… “Let’s go to town. Both of us. Let’s go see the sheriff. Let’s wait for this Devin fellow to arrive. We can figure out everything together. Or…” He rolled back his shoulders. “You can go alone.” He didn’t like that idea. Not one bit. What if the shooter tried to get her while Shelly was alone in the car? “You can go to the sheriff’s station, but at least get the deputy to drive you.” The guy who was out there, keeping an eye on the cabin. “I’ll stay here. I can—”
Her left hand caught his. Such a soft, silken touch. “I let you make love to me because I trusted you.”
Make love. Is that how she’d seen it?
“You saved those people in town. The mom and her son. You saved me. And when I look at you, I see a good man.”
Only Devin had told her that he was a monster.
“We’ll go to town together.” She nodded briskly, as if she’d just made the decision. A done deal. “We’ll talk to Devin together. We’ll figure this out. If my brother hired you, if he asked you to look out for me, then that means Charles trusted you. He wouldn’t have hired someone that he thought was a monster. Charles had good instincts about people.” She let out a slow breath. “So let’s get out of here. Let’s go to town. Together.”
He nodded. Damn, but she was something. Beautiful, sexy, and she was trusting him. Did she realize what a gift that was? How incredibly grateful he was to her?
“I’ll get some shoes and my bag,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” Shelly brushed past him and headed up the stairs.
He stood there a moment, feeling the tension ease from his body. She was giving him a chance to prove himself. And he would do it.
I wish I could fucking remember.
John stalked toward the front door. Before they left, he wanted to make sure the perimeter was secure. He flipped the locks and a few moments later, he was striding outside. The mountain seemed so still and quiet. The sun had vanished, and darkness swept across the mountain. The snow crunched beneath his feet as he walked.
He turned in a slow circle, letting his gaze sweep around the area. He didn’t see anything suspicious. Didn’t hear anything that set off his alarm bells. He strode around the cabin, making his way toward the garage. He wanted to take a look at the SUV before Shelly got into the vehicle, just to be on the safe side. He didn’t smell anything suspicious in the air, but he wasn’t going to take a chance with her. H
e unlocked the side door to the garage, slipped inside…
And a faint click reached his ears.
Just a click. Such a soft sound.
But it was a sound that didn’t belong.
John whirled around, his gaze sweeping over the garage.
And then the place exploded.
***
Shelly was on the stairs when she heard the explosion. It boomed like thunder, and she could have sworn that she felt the whole cabin shake. “John? John!” Shelly raced down the stairs and scrambled outside. She almost fell on the icy ground, but then she was shuddering to a stunned stop as she stared at the blazing remains of her garage. About twenty feet away from the cabin, the old garage was a mass of flames. It had once been a workshop for her father, a place for him to tinker for hours. And now…
“John?” Shelly whispered.
The flames shot into the sky. Red and orange. Swirling. Scaring the hell out of her. Black smoke billowed in the air.
“John!” Now she was screaming his name, but John wasn’t answering her. She didn’t see him anywhere, and she knew, she knew he’d been in that garage.
Shelly rushed toward the flames, slipping and sliding across the snow. The smoke battered at her, and the heat from the flames lanced her skin. She coughed, choking on the thick, dark smoke. Chunks of the burning garage littered the ground. The fire was so hot, and in her mind, she saw John trapped in the wreckage of the garage, burning.
Even he couldn’t come back from death if he was burned alive. Could he?
She didn’t hesitate. Shelly yanked up her sweater to cover her mouth, and she ran into what was left of the garage. Tears streamed from her eyes as she dropped to her knees, trying to find better air, trying to crawl through that hell and find—
Her left hand touched him. She’d thrown her hand out, groping wildly, and her fingers hit his arm. She dropped the sweater she’d used to cover her mouth and both of her hands grabbed him. “John!” Her scream came out as a wrenching gasp.
He wasn’t moving. Blood trickled from his mouth. From his forehead. Burning boards were over his legs and she could see the ravaged skin of his arms. Covered in blisters. “I’m getting you out,” she whispered. She kicked at the boards on his legs, making sparks fly and flames dance. She kicked and kicked until he was free. Shelly grabbed his arms as the fire raged, and she hauled him back, dragging him across the floor as she pulled with all of her might. She fell twice. Felt the rush of flames all around her, but Shelly didn’t give up. She kept dragging him, dragging and dragging until she hit the ground—only this time, she fell into the icy safety of snow.