by Cynthia Eden
“Still suspended,” voices rose in the background, “until the storm passes.”
Eve curled closer to Gabe.
“You should try to get some rest, too,” Gabe told Wade. “We’ll hit hard as soon as—”
“The island is fourteen miles long. We’ve all covered those miles, again and again. The woman isn’t here. Either she left on her own—”
Damn doubtful because she hadn’t checked in with her family, and the authorities couldn’t get a link on her phone.
“—or the killer took her away. Since the cops found his dump site, it only stands to reason he had to find a fresh site for his bodies.”
Yes, it did. “I’m not giving up on her yet.”
Silence.
“You know I don’t give up. Not until we find the victim alive or—”
“Or we find the bodies.” Now Wade’s voice was soft.
Wade knew all of his secrets. Unlike Eve, Wade realized that Gabe was far from a hero.
“Are you getting in too deep on this one?” Wade asked him carefully.
He was already in too deep. “No.”
“You sure, man?”
“I’m trying to help Eve and Alexa.”
“Just . . . don’t go over the edge.” Now there was worry in his old friend’s voice. “At least not unless I’m at your side. After what happened with Amy, well, you don’t want a repeat of that shit.”
Ice coated Gabe’s skin at the mention of his sister’s name. The only place he felt warm—that was where Eve’s body touched his. “You backed me up then.”
“That bastard deserved the death he had coming to him.” Wade’s immediate reply.
But Wade had lied for him. Years ago. The secrets we keep—they can fuck up our lives.
“It was my fault.” Wade’s breath rasped over the line. “I told you I’d keep an eye on Amy. You were in that VA hospital, fighting for your life. I was supposed to keep her safe.” The guilt was there. The same guilt that had eaten at Wade for years.
Guilt because he thought he’d failed in his friendship with Gabe.
Guilt because he thought he’d let Amy die.
It wasn’t your fault. It was mine.
“I thought getting her away from Derek—I thought that was the right thing. He was trouble. He was hurting her. As soon as I found out . . . shit, I made certain they were apart.”
Derek. He’d been Amy’s boyfriend. A jerk with a penchant for pushing around women. Too much money, too little fucking sense.
When Amy vanished, the detective working her case had just thought that she’d run back to Derek. Amy had been young, only twenty-one, a nursing student who’d stopped attending her classes. The detective—a fellow named Roger Hobbs—had thought that she’d turn up in a few days.
But when the days slipped by—and when Derek had proved that Amy wasn’t with him—Hobbs had stopped looking for a live missing woman. He’d been sure that, with so much time lost, Amy was dead.
Wade had fought with the dick detective. Again and again. Conducted his own investigation. Been censured by the department because he’d been stepping on toes. Going outside of his bounds. Interfering with another detective’s case.
Then Gabe had finally gotten released from that VA hospital. He’d teamed up with Wade. Said fucking screw the police department’s rules. He’d been determined to find his baby sister, determined to make the man who took her pay.
But things hadn’t ended the way he’d expected.
Wade had left the force. He’d given up everything for him, and he . . .
Gabe glanced over at Eve’s sleeping form.
Baby, I’m so fucking far from the hero. When you learn the things I’ve done, you’ll see me for the monster I am.
He’d started LOST because he wanted to atone for his sins. For the crimes that haunted him, and because . . . because he knew that he had to channel his rage.
The darkness inside of him kept growing, with each passing day and night. Sometimes, he felt like that darkness was going to swallow him whole. Sometimes, he wanted it to.
“No matter what happens,” Wade said, “you know I have your back.”
He did. Wade had traded in his badge for Gabe’s friendship. Gabe knew he could count on the other man to walk through fire for him. And he would do the same for Wade, in a heartbeat.
Good and bad, white, black, and every shade of gray in between, Wade understood him. And Gabe understood Wade.
They’d both crossed the line before. Been pushed too far before.
And, maybe, they’d cross that line again.
Gabe put down his phone. He bent, and his lips brushed over Eve’s cheek. She whispered something when he touched her, and Gabe frowned. “Eve? What is it?”
Her lips moved again.
“Eve?”
He could just barely make out . . .
“I did it,” she whispered. “It was . . . me.”
He blinked. “Eve?”
Her breath rushed out, and there were no more words from her.
WADE SLOWLY LOWERED his phone. He was worried about Gabe. He knew his friend was getting tangled up with Eve. A looker like that, sure, hell, yes, it would be easy to want her.
But he knew Gabe didn’t just want to screw the woman. He’s falling deep.
Wade turned around and saw the police chief watching him. Hell. Just how much of the conversation had the guy overheard?
“Everything okay?” Trey asked as he lifted one brow. “Is Jessica—”
“Gabe’s taking care of her. She’s safe.”
Trey’s eyes narrowed. The cop carried a lot of anger. It was easy for Wade to see that rage because he carried the same fury within him.
Trey Wallace wasn’t exactly what he’d expected. The fellow might be a small-town cop, but he had an edge, a hard intensity that Wade had seen in seasoned veterans of the force.
“Does your boss always screw his clients?” Trey asked.
Wade shoved his phone into his pocket. “No,” he said, and that was the flat truth. “He doesn’t.”
If anything, that answer seemed to make Trey angrier.
“I don’t get it . . .” And Wade was curious about this. “You two were done, right? So why do you care if Gabe hooks up with her now?”
Trey just stared back at him.
“Not my business, huh?”
“No, it’s not.” Trey gave him a grim nod. “Search resumes at dawn. The storm will have passed by then, and we’ll be out in force.” He ran a hand over his face, and, for the first time, Wade saw a flash of weariness from the cop. “Damn National Weather Service is starting to say that we could have a tropical storm forming out in the Gulf. That shit is the last thing we need.”
Wade had already heard those reports.
“If that storm turns this way, we could lose Alexa.”
Because there would be no searching then.
“I don’t want to lose another woman,” Trey said grimly.
Voices called out then. Trey turned around. Two men had just entered the station.
One guy was young, maybe about twenty-one, and his nervous gaze drifted over the place. The other guy was older, maybe early thirties, with sandy brown hair.
“Johnny? Clay? What the hell are you two doing out here?” Trey strode toward them.
Wade followed, much slower.
“Johnny told me about the asshole move he made down at the West End.” It was the older one who spoke. He glared at the younger guy—Johnny. “I wanted to drag his ass down here so you’d know he didn’t mean that shit.”
Wade’s brows rose. The guy had dragged the kid down in a storm?
“Thanks, Clay,” Trey told him. “I knew he was just drunk, though. Gia took him home after he tangled with—” Trey glanced over his shoulder. His gaze met Wade’s. “—with an out-of-town consultant that we have working the Lady Killer’s crimes.”
Wait, an out-of-town consultant? Had that kid tangled with Gabe? With Dean? He would have to
get the story soon.
“I was out on the boat with a big fishing tour,” the one called Clay said. “I didn’t realize . . . is it true?” His voice had roughened. “Is Jessica alive? Is she back?”
Trey’s hand curled around Clay’s shoulders. “Let’s go into my office and talk.”
Trey steered him away. The kid, Johnny, stood there, looking damn out of place.
Wade took his time walking toward the guy. “You in some kind of accident?” he asked the kid. It looked like the man’s lip had been busted, and a dark bruise was under his eye.
Johnny’s jaw locked. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
Right. The kid had some serious attitude rolling off him.
Trey had closed the door to his office. “Your brother?”
“My uncle.”
Wade nodded. He’d spent years questioning suspects at the Atlanta PD, so he knew how to play the game, all nice and easy like, to find the intel that he needed. “And your uncle . . . he was close with Jessica Montgomery?”
Johnny’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”
“I work with the . . . out-of-town consultant.”
Johnny grunted. “The guy who was with Jessica at the bar?”
Sounded right.
“Tell that dude . . . he won’t catch me off-guard again.”
Johnny wasn’t exactly sounding repentant. “I’ll pass along the message.” But the guy hadn’t answered his question. “Did you know Jessica?” Because it sure sounded like he’d recognized her.
“Not as well as my uncle.” His lips twisted. “And damn sure not as well as Trey.”
Trey’s office door opened. Clay appeared, looking shaken. “We’ll be here at first light,” Wade heard him tell Trey. “You can count on us for the search.”
Clay strode toward Wade. He took the man’s measure. Tall, strong, determined.
Scared?
It almost looked like there was fear in his eyes as he said, “Johnny, we have to go. We need to secure the boats at the marina before this storm gets worse.”
Then they were gone. Hurrying out.
Trey took his time heading back to Wade’s side.
Wade waited until the door closed behind their new rescue volunteers, then he asked, “Who the hell were they?”
“Johnny . . . he made the mistake of mouthing off about the victims near your boss.”
Right. So that busted lip had been given by Gabe. I knew he was walking the edge.
“And his uncle Clay runs the marina. He can give us access to any boats that we need for the search.” A pause. “And . . . he knew Jessica.”
Knew her? There had been some definite inflection there.
“I told him not to say anything to her, not until she’s ready.”
“Just how well did the guy know Jessica?”
Trey’s jaw had locked. “They hadn’t been involved in years.”
Another lover on the island. Didn’t this puzzle just keep twisting?
“Sometimes, you can’t let the past go,” Wade pointed out.
“Yeah, you can,” Trey snapped. “Especially when the past didn’t matter.” The cop stormed away.
But what if that past did matter? To Jessica? Or to the guy named Clay?
SHE COULD HEAR seagulls. Eve couldn’t see them, but she could hear them, crying out so close by. And waves . . . crashing.
“Sweetheart, do you like the game?”
That voice—that rasping voice—made goose bumps rise on her arms.
“What are you going to do with that knife?”
She glanced down, and a knife was in her hand. The blade was bloody.
“Oh, Jessica . . . did you really think I didn’t know?”
Why did she have a knife?
“I’ve been watching you, all this time. I know your secrets.”
She dropped the knife. It fell, tumbling end over end down a staircase. An old, rickety staircase.
“You aren’t the good girl that they think. I know . . .”
She hated that rasping voice. Eve shook her head. “Stay away from me.”
“Or what? You’ll use that knife on me . . . ? You’ll use it again?”
There was blood on her hands.
“Do you like the idea of killing?”
Eve shook her head.
“Don’t lie.” Anger was thick in his voice. “I’ve seen what you do. I’ve seen it all . . . you like the game. You like the blood. Do you even like the screams?”
“I—”
Rough hands grabbed her. Shook her. She screamed.
“EVE! DAMMIT, BABY, wake up!”
Eve’s eyelids flew open. The lights were on, glowing so brightly, and Gabe was over her, staring down at her with worried blue eyes.
“You were crying.”
She lifted her hand and touched the wetness on her cheek.
“Do you remember your nightmare?”
She did. The nightmare. The man. More. Eve rose from the bed. A rush of cool air hit her body, and she glanced down, startled. “I always wear my clothes to bed.” She stumbled around a bit, found her sweatpants. Her shirt. Dressed as quickly as she could.
Gabe didn’t move from his position in the bed. “Why do you always wear them, Eve?”
Eve. The name felt wrong. Alien.
“Because I have to be ready. Because . . .” It was there, nagging at her. But something else was pushing even stronger, something that had to get out.
She turned from Gabe. Made her way out of the room. Lightning still flashed beyond the balcony and she could hear the roll of thunder in the distance.
The canvas was just where she’d left it. The paint brushes. The supplies.
She reached for the tools almost as if by rote. Her fingers were trembling again, but she ignored the tremble. An image was in her mind, and she wasn’t letting that image go.
Her breath heaved out as she painted. Gabe came to stand behind her, clad in a pair of jeans that clung low on his hips. He crossed his arms over his chest, and he just . . . watched her.
Paint soon covered her fingertips. It spattered her T-shirt. And that canvas didn’t stay blank. Color filled it. The turbulent blue-green of waves. A patch of white sand. Seagulls.
The stark, dark form of a lighthouse, one that stood—almost impossibly—in the middle of an ocean. No light shone from that place, just shadows that stretched from the inside, out. A darkness without end.
“What is that place, Eve?” Gabe asked as he came closer.
Her fingers clenched around the brush.
“There’s a lighthouse just beyond the island,” he continued when she was silent. “Is that what you’re painting? Do you remember being there?”
“Maybe. I—I don’t know.” The lighthouse was just in her mind, a hulking place that was burning in her head. She’d painted the damn thing, so that meant she must have been there.
Eve dropped her paintbrush and turned toward Gabe. “I need to go there, now.”
He shook his head. “The storm hasn’t passed. It’s the middle of the night—Trey isn’t going to send a search party out there right now—”
“Not a search party.” She was sweating. Her gut twisting. “Me. You. I want us to go out there.”
His gaze was still worried. He watched her as if he thought she was having some sort of breakdown. Maybe she was.
“You wanted me to remember. I’m remembering.” She threw her hand up toward the balcony’s glass doors, pointing to the dark water outside. “I need to get to that lighthouse. Come on, Gabe, you’re a former SEAL! That means you’re supposed to be able to do anything in the water, right?” There was no way he didn’t know how to drive a boat. She’d bet her life on it.
His jaw locked. “Let’s wait until it’s light out.”
“Please.” A terrible intensity ate at her. The image of the lighthouse wouldn’t stop burning in her mind. “I—I think something bad happened there.”
He reached out to her. His slightly callused fingertip
s slid over her arm, pulling it back down to her side. “What did you do?”
“What?”
“When you were asleep, you said . . . ‘I did it. It was me.’ ” His fingers curled around her wrist, chaining her to him. “What did you do?”
“I don’t know.” Said softly.
“Eve?”
She pulled from his grip. “I’m going out to that lighthouse. Either you’re coming with me or I’ll find a way to go on my own.”
Because something had happened there. Something terrible and dark. Something that made her cry in her sleep.
And Eve was going to find out just what the hell that something had been.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THERE’S NOTHING OUT THERE,” TREY SAID AS HE watched Gabe ready the rented boat. The cop was on the dock of the marina, not being a damn bit of use. “That place hasn’t been used in decades. More than half of that island washed away, and the lighthouse itself is barely standing.”
“I need to go inside,” Eve said. She was on the boat with Gabe, despite Trey’s protests. When they first arrived at the dock and the cop had seen them, Gabe thought the man might physically stop Eve from getting on the boat.
Trey still looked as if he wanted to grab her and make a run for it.
That would be a mistake.
From the edge of the dock, that punk Johnny was watching them. Turned out that Johnny’s uncle, Clay, actually owned the marina, but when they arrived, Johnny had quickly told them that Clay was out, already searching for Alexa.
Johnny sure as hell had acted as if he didn’t want to rent them a boat. But with Trey there, the guy hadn’t been able to refuse. Now the kid kept skulking around with his busted lip and glaring at him. Way to be a fucking help, kid.
Wade called him earlier, when Gabe had just arrived at the Marina, and warned him about Johnny’s uncle.
Looks like your lady had another lover on the island.
Gabe was planning to find Clay later that day. Men connected so intimately to Eve were automatically on his suspect list. He’d be questioning the guy soon enough.
“You can’t go inside that lighthouse,” Trey said now, stalking closer to the water’s edge. “I told you, the place is sealed off. There’s nothing in there.”