Stella watched them, tension coiled tight in her gut. The two on the ground remained there, not trying to get up or move. After a couple of minutes, she had the feeling Sam knew all three men, or at least the one he had the gun pressed up against. Suddenly, Sam dropped his arm and stepped back, releasing his prisoner.
The man he’d hit with the gun remained seated on the ground, his head in his hands. The younger one, who Sam had originally swept the feet out from under, jumped up and put distance between them. Dressed in jeans and a sweater, his entire body posture screamed belligerence.
The third man, the one with the impeccable suit who had had the gun at the back of his skull, seemed unfazed by everything. He did all the talking. It was very clear he was in charge. He seemed to have a lot to say, gesturing toward the lake and then up at the sky, shaking his head once. He waited as if for a response from Sam and then went on, moving his hand as if to include the entire resort, marina and Sam’s cabin. Then he gestured toward her house.
Sam remained very still, not moving a muscle. She’d seen him like that hundreds of times. She could have predicted the look on his face. Expressionless. Those eyes, flat and cold. Lifeless. He listened, but he wasn’t going to give anything away.
Stella had watched him for over two years, secretly studying Sam’s every move. She knew by the loose way he held himself that he could explode into action, just as he had when he’d taken the younger man’s weapon from him. There had been no reaction from him to anything the older man was saying until he’d gestured toward her house. Sam hadn’t looked toward the house, hadn’t followed the gesture in any way, but there was a slight difference in the way he held himself. She had the feeling he had gone from being neutral to being a threat, but the change in his demeanor was so subtle she couldn’t say why she thought that.
The man sitting on the ground must have felt the threat too because he suddenly looked up and then climbed to his feet, moving away from Sam and back toward the older man almost protectively. The younger man circled around behind Sam warily. Sam didn’t deign to glance at him. He kept his attention fixed on the older man. The younger man gave Sam a wide berth as he made his way to the older man’s side.
Stella tried to puzzle out what it all meant. She forced air through her lungs. Sam had known those men were out there. He hadn’t thought a serial killer was out there watching the house. He had her get the gun out because he knew who was out there and he didn’t want them coming into her house and talking to her.
This wasn’t the first time he had gone out alone into the night when she’d been certain someone had been watching them. Had these same men been there then? Had they been watching her and her friends camping out at the lake? She suddenly wanted to lock Sam out of her house and just sit alone with Bailey and her wildly beating heart. Unfortunately, Sam had the code to get in. Was she afraid of him?
Sam’s head suddenly came up alertly and all three men turned toward the path leading to the boathouse. Stella swung her binoculars in that direction. Sonny Leven sauntered along the trail on his rounds, patrolling the compound at night. He generally stayed away from the main house, but did make a pass along the marina several times a night. He was still a distance away, but he was coming at a fairly rapid clip. When she looked back at Sam and the others, they had completely disappeared.
Stella searched everywhere, moving the night-vision binoculars carefully along trees and shrubbery, but not a thing seemed out of place. There was no evidence that the men had ever been on her property or that they’d met with Sam. So much for her two security guards. They had no idea of secret, clandestine meetings in the middle of the night.
“What do you think, Bailey? Should I shoot Sam when he walks in and tell the sheriff I thought he was an intruder?”
She hung the binoculars back where she always kept them and retreated to her bed, her hand finding the reassuring grip her palm was familiar with.
“This is the very reason I don’t let people close,” she told the dog. “Now we’re in this big mess. I’m blaming you. You liked him right from the start. If you’d growled and gotten all protective, I would have passed on hiring him.”
At least she knew the killer wasn’t watching her. That was a relief. And Sam had a chance to tell her the truth. He might come in and tell her he met with three men he obviously knew and had a little chat with them. What were the chances?
Minutes crept by, but it seemed like hours. Stella imagined all sorts of things, including the three men murdering Sam and hauling his body away with them. She had no idea how they got onto her property or how they were leaving without either Sonny or Patrick Sorsey, the other security guard, knowing. Still, she was grateful neither guard had confronted those three men. She had the feeling they were lethal.
Bailey’s head went up alertly. The dog went to the door of her bedroom and stood right at the entrance, looking into the hall. She glanced at her device and saw the back keypad had been unlocked. Her fingers tightened around the grip of her gun. No one had murdered Sam—yet.
He came into her space looking coolly confident and, as always, composed, calm and completely relaxed, as if he’d been on a midnight stroll. His dark eyes moved over her face, drifted lower, took in her body and then her hand on her weapon before coming back up to meet her eyes. Bailey nudged him and he automatically scratched the dog’s ears, never once taking his gaze from hers.
Stella waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. She should have known he wouldn’t. Sam was all about silence. He’d never been big on talking. He didn’t give himself away. Usually, the silence had been companionable between them. Not this time. The tension stretched until it could have been cut with a knife.
Sam shook his head and then sank into the chair across from the bed, reaching for the water he’d left on the small table there. “You going to put the gun away or use it, Stella?”
The little note of male amusement annoyed her enough that she deliberated on the benefits of putting a bullet in the wall right next to his ear, but she knew he wouldn’t even flinch.
“I’m still considering.”
He swallowed water, his gaze never leaving hers. He didn’t look in the least worried, but then he never did. He remained silent, not offering her anything, not even an explanation.
Stella went over his every action— or rather inaction— as he’d stood under the trees with the three intruders. He hadn’t seemed bothered by them until the older man had gestured toward her house. That was when the subtle change had come over him. It hadn’t been just her that knew it; the others had as well.
She studied Sam. There was so much there she didn’t know. She’d never asked. She’d taken him on faith and he’d never once let her down. She’d been shaken tonight because she’d had a nightmare and they’d been sorting it out when they both knew someone had come on the property— someone was watching. Sam still hadn’t let her down. He hadn’t done anything to change her opinion of him.
She didn’t ask him what had happened out there because she was afraid he might lie to her. He wasn’t her mother. He wasn’t her father. He wasn’t the friends in school abandoning her the moment they found out who she was. He was Sam.
Stella unloaded the gun and locked it in the safe. “I really did feel like nearly clipping you for that stinking superior male sense of humor you have.”
“I’m well aware you have a bit of a temper, Stella.”
The dark eyes glinted with humor, catching the light off the lake. She didn’t get to see that very often and the sight gave her a ridiculous melty feeling in the pit of her stomach. She rolled her eyes.
Again, there was a silence. Her silence. He was going to make her ask. She didn’t know if she had the courage. She couldn’t bear it if he lied to her. If he let her down. His silence was normal. He didn’t tell anyone— including her— his business. He would consider those men his business.
She gathered the sheet between her fingers, looking down at it, twisting it back and
forth, telling herself she needed to know now, before it was too late. Another part of her whispered she was being silly, Sam didn’t tell lies. More than likely, he wouldn’t answer if he didn’t want her to know something, but he wouldn’t lie.
“Woman.” He sounded exasperated.
“Man.”
“Spit it the hell out.”
She lifted her lashes and looked him directly in the eyes again. “Who was out there?” She could feel her heart pounding too hard. Too fast.
“I’ve been contemplating whether it’s a good idea for you to know or not.”
She blinked. She hadn’t expected that answer. He’d already been considering telling her. That was something. And no, he wasn’t going to lie to her. Relief swept over her. She had trust issues, big ones. Him. Her friends. She needed to get past them.
“Were they here before, Sam?”
“No. This is the first time. Because they were out there, I couldn’t be sure someone else wasn’t watching the house as well. It felt like it when I first went out.”
That frisson of fear crept down her spine. “Do you think those men were the ones I felt spying on my friends and me when we were camping? Because someone was.”
“I don’t know.” There was a distinct edge to his voice. “I told them not to come here again and definitely not to go anywhere near you or your friends.”
Her stomach was suddenly in knots. “They didn’t threaten any of my friends, did they?” She was more worried about her small circle of friends than she was about herself.
“One of them mentioned meeting Raine. He was offhand about it, but I didn’t like it and I let him know.”
Sam had only spoken to the older man, but he’d swept the legs out from under the younger man when he’d been talking. It had to have been him, the younger man, and Sam had retaliated, taking him down and then taking his weapon. Stella had thought it was because the younger man had held a gun on him.
Protectively, she put her hand to her throat. “Why would he say anything about Raine?”
Sam shrugged. “He was testing me. It didn’t work out in his favor.”
A sudden thought occurred to her. “Do they know who I really am like Raine does?”
He sighed. “No, Stella, they have no way of knowing. Even if they did, they wouldn’t say anything unless they thought it would get me to do something they wanted me to do.”
She pressed her lips together. “They wanted you to leave, didn’t they? That man, the older one, he wasn’t trying to get you to take another job somewhere. He wanted you to leave.”
In one of those rare Sam moments, his lips curved into a real smile. It was breathtaking. At least for her. He just didn’t smile that often. It changed his entire demeanor.
“You were watching.”
“Someone had to back you up just in case you got in over your head.”
He laughed. That was even more exhilarating. The sound was beautiful. “Yeah, sweetheart, we had a little argument over that.”
“It didn’t look so little to me. Sam, who were those people?”
“I give you this, Stella, you give me your word first that you stick with me.” All humor had vanished from his face, leaving him completely expressionless again.
“My father is a serial killer, Sam. I had to confess that to you and I’m still having to come to terms with telling my friends.” She already knew he’d worked for the government in some capacity. It wasn’t like she was going to be shocked.
“You better keep your word, because I’m holding you to it.”
She’d never seen Sam tense. Never. She almost didn’t want him to tell her. She knew what it was like to protect secrets and keep them hidden for very good reasons. Some secrets didn’t need to come to light. Sam traveled around, looking for a new life, a new beginning. He had just wanted to be left alone.
“Were they government agents, Sam?” She gentled her voice, trying to convey to him that no matter what, even if they were trying to convince him they wanted him to come back and work for them, she would understand.
Sam shook his head. “No, not even close, Stella. The older man you saw out there, that was my father, Don Marco Rossi. The one I put on the ground was his underboss, and the mouthy one was a bodyguard.” He fell silent, his dark eyes on her face while she absorbed his statement.
Stella frowned. “Sam. I’m not going to pretend I haven’t heard of him, but why would you be so upset over telling me who your father is when my father is sitting in jail right now for what he did?”
“Your father killed how many victims over four years? Five? Who do you think taught me most of what I know, Stella? Do you think I learned to be what I am from the training I was given when I joined the military? That was my father’s training. That was what I was taught from the time I was in the cradle.”
Sam took another long drink of water and rubbed Bailey’s fur while Stella thought about the tense way everyone had acted when his father had gestured toward the house. Had he threatened her? What had Sam been close to doing? Surely he wouldn’t have attacked his own father.
“What went wrong between you and your father, Sam?” she asked.
Sam screwed the cap onto the bottle and then pressed the bottle to his forehead. “My family owns quite a few strip clubs, and my father saw no reason not to partake in the joys of the back rooms there. He did so often. My mother was sweet, Stella. The best. Loved big gatherings with lots of friends and food. She cooked meals herself. We had money obviously, but she did everything herself. She poured love into everything she did. And she loved him. She made everything in that house perfect for him.”
Stella couldn’t help noticing that he spoke of his mother in past tense. Her heart hurt for him. He looked alone and too far away from her. She suspected that, like her, he’d spent most of his life alone.
“She asked him to stop so many times or let her divorce him. He told her it wasn’t her business, there was no divorce, that he gave her a nice home and he came home at night. That should be enough. I tried talking to him when I was really worried about her, but he had a couple of his men beat the hell out of me for interfering in what wasn’t my business. He said I didn’t have any right when I was often at the clubs, and that was true enough. I was doing a lot of business for him at that time. Too much. Doing things that I look back on now and realize how easy it was to become what he shaped me into because as a kid I admired him and wanted to be like him.”
Stella knew what it was like to want a parent to love you, to seek their approval. She had done so time and again. It was natural.
Sam shook his head. “They had a terrible fight one evening. He was going to the club after she’d made a special dinner. It turned out it was her birthday. She wanted him to stay home with her, but he said no. There was some new girl at the club he wanted to try out. He didn’t tell her that, but he refused to stay and Mom got very upset. The fight turned physical, at least she slapped him and he slapped her back. I interfered and he left.”
Stella pressed her lips together to keep from giving him sympathy. He needed her to listen, not talk.
“I held her while she cried and then she got very quiet. She told me she was tired. So tired. She told me to please never treat a woman like he treated her— that if I found a girl, to make certain I really loved her enough to stay with her and only her or don’t bother. I made her that promise. She told me she loved me and then she went upstairs.”
Stella felt her heart start to accelerate. She had a bad, bad feeling.
“My father didn’t come home for the first time that I could ever remember until that next morning. I had just gone upstairs to call Mom when I heard him come in. I knocked on her door and she didn’t answer. I pushed open the door and I could see her sitting in her favorite place by the window. It was a window seat overlooking the garden. She was slumped over and still in the clothes she’d been wearing the night before. There was blood on the bench and cushions as well as pooled on the floor. It looked
like it was everywhere.
“I ran to her, even knowing it was too late. She’d sat there and quietly bled out after cutting her wrists. I picked her up and held her to me, rocking her, and when he came in and tried to take her, I wanted to kill him. I told him it was his fault. He had done that to her as surely as if he had made those cuts himself. I left right after her funeral, joined the service and made it into the Rangers. After that I was offered a job that was high risk, lucrative, but much more satisfying if you were looking for redemption, which I was. It also kept me impossible to find, even with my father’s resources. Once I got out, I drifted, mostly needing to figure out how much of me was him. I’ve done so many things, Stella, things that I can never take back. I don’t want to be anything like him.”
“Come lie on the bed with me, Sam. We might not get any sleep, but at least we’ll be close. Tonight, for the rest of the night, we need close. At least I need it.”
“I told him to stay the hell away from you.” He bent to remove his shoes.
Stella scooted under the covers but left the comforter for him. When he lay beside her, one arm around her, she put her head on his shoulder. “Why was he so upset?”
“He found out about the killer trying to drag me underwater. He wanted me to come home.”
She was silent, thinking that over. “He must care for you, Sam, or he wouldn’t have come in person to try to persuade you.”
“I have no doubt that he cares for me. He cared for my mother. He can sit down to a meal with you and your friends, Stella, and then go home and order one or all of you tortured to demonstrate that it isn’t a good idea to fuck with our family. The worst part is, I’m totally capable of doing the same thing.”
Murder at Sunrise Lake Page 18