by Karen Rose
“I…” Need to tell you. But fear bubbled up and he blurted the first thing that came into his mind. “We were careless.”
She bit her lip. “I know. But it’s the wrong time of the month for any… pregnancy.”
He blinked, stunned to find himself disappointed. The wrong time. Suddenly, desperately he wanted it to be the right time.
“I’m… It’s just that…” He closed his eyes, unable to find the words. He made his living with compelling arguments, but right now he was as scared as a small boy.
As the small boy he’d been.
She kissed his forehead, next to the bandage. “What’s wrong, Grayson?”
“I need to tell you.” He forced the words out. “I need you to know.”
She stilled. Then let out a slow breath. “What can I do to make it easier for you?”
His chest swelled, emotion swamping him. I could love you, Paige Holden. Now he was even more scared. He opened his eyes. She was watching him with a mix of compassion and tenderness.
“Let me finish. And if it makes a difference…” He filled his lungs with air. “If it matters, if you need to go, then go. But please, promise me you’ll keep it to yourself.”
“I promise,” she said solemnly, and he believed her.
He nodded, wondering where to start. Then he shrugged. “Once upon a time there was a boy in Miami. His name wasn’t Grayson Smith.”
Her eyes shifted, something indefinable moving in their black depths. She said nothing, so he continued.
“The boy had a mom,” he said. “A great mom.”
“Judy.”
“Yes. But that wasn’t her name then, either. I had a dad. I thought he was great, too. Until one day we found out that he wasn’t.” He drew another breath and took the plunge. “My name is Antonio Sabatero. I was named after my father, who tortured, raped, and killed fourteen young women. Most of them were college age. A few younger. By the time we found out, he’d been killing for years.”
For an interminably long moment she said nothing, then finally spoke. “I didn’t think you looked like a Smith,” she murmured. But there was no disgust in her eyes.
And no surprise. Realization was like a fist in his gut. “You already knew.”
She nodded. “I was putting your monitor away this afternoon. I bumped my head on your shelf and knocked your pictures down. I was fixing them when I found the one with you and your mom. Standing in front of the school. I really wasn’t intending to snoop.”
His mind was reeling. “How did you find out?”
“You were standing in front of a bus that said ‘St. Ig.’ There were palm trees. I did the math, then did a search. I needed to know, because I was about to break my own rule and sleep with you. I needed to know if you might be… mine. Someday. Maybe.”
Mine. That he understood.
Her brows furrowed. “Are you angry that I knew?”
“No.” He swallowed hard. “Relieved. Incredibly relieved.”
“Good. I was worried. I only know what I read in an old newspaper article. That you found one of the bodies. That more bodies were found later and your father was arrested. And that you and your mother disappeared. You were only seven years old. I… I can’t imagine that.”
He didn’t have to imagine. He remembered every detail with brutal clarity. “The paper didn’t print everything,” he said quietly.
Her eyes shifted again, steeling herself for something bad. “Tell me. If you want to.”
He tugged her head back to his shoulder and she cuddled against him, her hand splayed on his chest. Over his heart. Which clenched again. She’d known. And yet here she is. In my bed. She knew and still she trusted me. She wanted me.
“I’d seen a pirate movie,” he began. “They’d found a treasure map between some stones in a stone wall. I knew about a stone wall, in a barn on a neighbor’s property. The neighbor was old, mostly deaf, and didn’t see well. My mother visited her every week, brought her food. I didn’t think the lady would mind if I played pirate in her barn.”
“But your dad had ‘played’ there first.”
“Yes. I found a loose stone. I worked it free, thinking I’d find something wonderful behind it.” He stopped, the memory as fresh, as frightening, as if it had been yesterday.
“You found the body then?” she prompted gently.
He stared at the ceiling, the self-hatred clawing inside him. “She wasn’t dead yet.”
He heard her sharp intake of breath. Felt her tense. “Oh God. Grayson.”
“He’d beaten her. Cut her. He had her shackled to a wall. She turned her head to look at me and started to… gurgle. It was…” He swallowed the bile that rose to burn his throat. “It was the most terrifying sound I’d ever heard. I’ve seen more murder victims than I want to remember, but that sound… to this day it makes my blood run cold.”
“You were only seven,” Paige breathed, shaken. “What did you do?”
He hesitated, not wanting to speak of it. Tell her. “I ran,” he admitted. “I ran away and hid in my closet. The girl was trying to ask for help. I found out later that my father had cut out her tongue so she couldn’t scream. I was terrified. So I ran.”
“Of course you did. You were seven,” Paige repeated protectively. “Most adults would have run and hid.”
He’d always known that, but it never helped. “My mother came looking for me, found me in my closet. I kept stammering about the hole in the stone wall. I couldn’t say more, couldn’t find the words, but she knew something was terribly wrong. She found the girl, but she was dead by then.” He swallowed hard, remembering the guilt. The nightmares. “I hid too long. If I’d found my mother, told her… the girl might have lived.”
“That she didn’t live isn’t on your head,” she said. “But knowing that doesn’t help, does it? I feel responsible for Thea’s death, even though her husband was to blame.” She sighed. “What did your mother do?”
“She called the police. They found knives with fingerprints.” He swallowed again. “Semen on the body. In the body. He’d assaulted her. Repeatedly. It was the eighties—before DNA profiling. But the prints matched my father’s. The semen matched his blood type. And… he kept souvenirs. Jewelry. He gave some of it to my mother.”
“Monster,” she whispered and his mouth twisted bitterly.
“I remember her wearing it. He’d make a big production about getting a bonus at work and spending it on his ‘beloved.’ My mother couldn’t get past having worn the girls’ jewelry for a long time. Some people thought she knew, that she’d helped him.”
“Some people are stupid,” Paige declared fiercely.
“The woman I’d found was identified as a college girl missing from the University of Florida. The police found evidence there’d been others in the room where he’d tortured her. They arrested him and started digging around the barn. They found his burial ground not far away. Thirteen more bodies.”
“Why did you and your mother disappear?”
“Because we feared for our lives. My father was furious that my mother had discovered his secret, that she’d called the police. So he made her pay. His defense was that he was a loving family man. He could never have done such a thing, he said. He had a son of his own, after all. Later, when the evidence began to mount and he knew he was truly caught, he claimed that my mother knew. That she’d helped.”
“Surely the police didn’t believe him, did they?”
“The police didn’t, but enough other people did to make our lives hell. One of the fathers of the victims went off the deep end. He was one of the ones convinced that my mother had known. He came after us, me and my mother. He was going to kill Mom for her involvement. He was going to kill me as an ‘eye for an eye,’ because my father still insisted he loved me. He came damn close to succeeding.”
“The police didn’t help you?”
“At first, yes. We’d had to move. Our house and the old neighbor’s property were crime scenes for months
while they searched for bodies. The police put a protective detail on the house my mother rented and she got a restraining order on the victim’s father. But a few weeks passed and they decided we were safe and left us on our own.
“There were constant picketers protesting that my mother hadn’t been arrested. She got death threats from multiple sources. This went on for weeks. The reporters had swarmed, too, microphones and cameras every time we left the house. It was a circus, but ironically they’d protected us. One night some other news happened and the reporters left us alone for a few hours. The victim’s father broke into the house and grabbed me out of my bed, stuck a gun to my head, and started to drag me away.”
She tensed. “What happened?”
“My mother grabbed a baseball bat and slammed him with it. Knocked the guy out.”
“Good for her. I like her even more now.”
“He was going to kill us. She knew he would never stop until we were dead. Or he was. I remember her standing over his body, his gun in her hands, pointing at his head. She stood that way for a long, long time. Her hands shook and she cried.”
“But she couldn’t kill him,” she murmured.
“No. That’s not who she was. Is. He’d tried to hurt me, but my father had brutalized this man’s child. My mother had… compassion. And fear. She could have called the cops, but she’d done that before. They would have arrested the victim’s father, but there were so many others who hated us. So she took all the cash she had left, filled the tank with gas, and we headed north. We left everything behind.”
“Except for one picture,” she said softly.
“I hid it,” he confessed. “My mother told me to bring nothing, but I couldn’t leave the picture behind. It was my favorite of her.”
“She was happy in the picture. She wasn’t scared yet. You could look at it at night and pretend that you were still a little boy in Miami and that none of this had happened.”
That Paige understood didn’t surprise him. “She’ll be unhappy that I kept it.”
“She already knows.”
That surprised him. “You told her?”
“She wanted to know how I’d found out. She told me if I ever used the truth to hurt you that she’d make me pay. I believed her before you told me that she could wield a ball bat.” There was a dry smile in her voice. “Now I’m doubly afraid.”
“My mother is tough.”
“And so proud of you.” She pressed a kiss to his chest. “How did you end up here?”
“The car broke down and Mom was running out of money. We lived in a cheap hotel for a few weeks while she tried to find work. We were desperate when she answered an ad for that nanny position with the Carters.” He thought of the story Paige had told, earlier that evening. It seemed like a million years ago. “But she never left me. Somehow she got us new ID and kept me fed. I don’t know how. I’ve never asked.”
“Your mom said you were telling them tonight—the Carters. What did they say?”
“They already knew.” It had shocked him then. Now he was wondering how many people knew the secret he thought he and his mother had kept so well. “Jack and Katherine Carter had known from the very beginning.”
Paige was quiet a moment. “Your mother didn’t know that. She was worried about what they’d say. Well, not really worried. More… sad, I think.”
“She hated lying to them.”
“She did what she had to do to protect you. If the Carters are as wonderful as you’ve said, they will understand.”
“They did. They protected us.”
“I like them even more now.” Paige hesitated. “Your mother also said your boss had threatened to expose all of this if you didn’t back off the Muñoz case.”
“Yes, he did,” Grayson said.
“Is that why you told me?”
“No. That’s why I told the Carters. But not why I told you. I needed you to understand who I really was because I knew that you…” He let the thought trail.
She lifted her head, her dark eyes intense. “When your mother told me about your boss, I wanted to tear his head off. And then I saw you in my mind, standing at Rex’s door, knocking. Even though you knew the cost. That’s when I knew.”
His heart stumbled. “Knew what?”
“That the secret you kept didn’t matter. What mattered was the man you’d become. That’s who I wanted. I don’t care who you were. I don’t care who your father is. I care about you. I want you.”
He stared at her, at the face that had entranced him from the moment she’d run toward a bullet-riddled minivan when any sane person would have run away. His heart squeezed in his chest, so hard it hurt. “Say it again,” he whispered.
She traced his lips with her fingertips. “I want you.” She kissed him sweetly, then nipped at his lower lip. “I want you,” she murmured, the words turned sultry. Sensual.
His body sprang to life. He cupped the back of her head and brought her close, taking her mouth with all the emotion churning inside him. She lifted her head again, this time her eyes hot. Greedy. She swiveled her hips against him, making him groan. He rolled, trapping her under him while he searched his nightstand drawer for another condom.
She grabbed it from his hand. “Does it hurt to lie on your back?”
“Depends. What will I get?”
Her lips curved. “On your back,” she ordered. “It’s my turn.”
He obeyed, ignoring the bruises as she straddled him. He watched, mesmerized, as she made quick work of the condom wrapper and covered him. Silently he cursed the condom, remembering how it had felt to come inside her. How hot and slick she’d been and how her muscles had squeezed him.
Later. When they’d sorted everything out, he’d throw that box away and feel her skin to skin again. For now… He gritted his teeth as she teased him, lowering herself onto him, but only an inch. “Paige.”
She smiled, a cat-in-cream smile that had him lifting his hips, trying to grind himself into her. “It’s my turn,” she repeated. “I get to do what I want.”
What she wanted was to torture him. She took him in an inch at a time, wriggling her hips, her swaying breasts driving him insane. Finally he broke, pulling her down, filling her. She gasped, then laughed, the sound full of joy. Then she began to move.
She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She leaned over him, one hand on either side of his head, meeting his eyes in the darkness. “You made me beg.”
“Twice,” he panted and she licked at his lip.
“Can I make you beg?” she whispered against his mouth.
“You can make me do damn near anything. Just don’t ever stop.”
“I can’t.” She was moving faster. He could feel his release coming, a dull throb at the base of his spine, but he controlled it. He needed to see her. Needed her to get there first. Abruptly she pushed herself back so that she sat upright, driving him deeper into her. She cried out, her face… unforgettable.
His control snapped and he rolled her beneath him, his hips hammering hard as she looked up at him, dazed. He hooked one arm under her knee, sending him even deeper into all that hot, wet heat. His body went rigid. His vision grayed. And he fell.
He wasn’t sure how long they lay there, panting. He buried his face in the curve of her shoulder, let out a quiet breath. “I never told her,” he whispered.
She stroked his hair. “Told who what, Grayson?”
“My mother. I never told her that the girl was alive when I found her.”
She went still. “Do you want her to know?”
“No.” He looked up at her, desperate. “I never want her to know.”
Her mouth bent sadly. “Do you really think she’d love you any less?”
“No. But it would hurt her. Knowing that it’s been eating me up, all these years.”
“Then why tell me?”
“I needed you to know it all. So you could decide.” He hesitated. “If I’d be yours.”
Her eyes softened.
“You were a child. If I held that against you, I wouldn’t be worth your time. Let little Antonio keep his secret. He did nothing wrong. He was a victim, too.”
“Not Antonio.” The words came out harsh and angry. “My mother called me Tony.”
She caressed his cheek. “Grayson, you could have taken your past out on anyone weaker than you. But you didn’t. You stand for the victims. You are an honorable man, whatever name you choose to call yourself. Your mother is proud of you. And so am I.”
His throat closed. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now go to sleep. We have a busy day tomorrow. I want this over so we can walk my dog without worrying about you being shot.”
Seventeen
Thursday, April 7, 3:00 a.m.
Stevie exited the Peabody Hotel’s elevator, planning to check on Grayson and Paige before heading home to catch a few hours’ sleep. Just to make sure they got here okay. It was paranoid, she knew. And a lot overprotective. But Grayson was her friend and seeing his car smoking like that had left her more shaken than she cared to admit.
Stevie put her ear to the door of the suite he’d gotten for Paige. Either they were asleep or not there. She heard a TV in the adjoining room, so somebody was awake.
She knocked lightly. Then had to stop herself from taking a step back when the door opened. It wasn’t Grayson Smith. And she wasn’t prepared.
Stevie looked up, face-to-face with the man she hadn’t seen in almost a year, but had not forgotten. He’d lied to her, hampered her investigation. He’d falsified federal documents and probably done ten times worse, but they’d caught a killer with his help.
He’d unwittingly put her daughter in danger, but had done the right thing as soon as he’d known. And her daughter was safe today.
Clay Maynard had intrigued her then. And now, here he was. Again.
“Mr. Maynard,” she said softly. “I didn’t expect you to be here.”
He frowned, but she barely noticed. His chest was bare and the sweats he wore rode low on his hips. She wasn’t in the market, but looking was free. Oh my.