Especially when he turned and looked me. When I saw the hell in his eyes. When I saw the fury.
“I knew she was seeing him,” he said, his voice still soft. Still level. “Keilani told me. Didn’t tell anybody else and I didn’t know up until three weeks before she disappeared. I knew there was somebody. Lani had a thing for guys who were just no good for her and I was already making plans to come out here, see what she was up to. I could tell by her conversations with Mom, the way she was online, her Facebook page, that she was caught up in somebody again. It went on for months and I’d call, try to get her to talk. And…nothing. Then she calls me one night, tells me that there’s this guy. She loves him.” He laughed, and the sound was raw. So raw and ugly. “Tells me his first name and how she thinks there’s never been a guy who could make her feel that way. My gut is already crawling and I push for more but she won’t tell me. She hangs up and I start digging. Find out there’s a Stefan at one of the galleries where she works. I put two and two together and figure out it’s him. Not that anybody can help me pin anything down. They were never even seen together.”
“He was always careful,” I said when he fell silent, turning his head to look out the window. Unwittingly, my hand went to my arm, rubbed it. I could remember a hundred times when he’d left me all but ready to beg for the end. But when morning came, there wasn’t even a bruise. If he was that careful with me, he’d be just as careful with everything else, especially anything that had to do with his public image. He had always been rather particular about that.
Jenks didn’t even seem to realize I’d spoken. “The last time I talked to her was the day before she disappeared. I was booking a plane to come out here. I knew something was wrong. She’d called, crying. Wouldn’t tell me what was going on, but something damn well was wrong. I tried like hell to get her to talk to me, but she just wouldn’t.” His lids drooped low, shielding his eyes. “Her best friend was trying to call me while I was in the air. I touched down and there were a dozen emails. They’d been trying to get hold of her since the night before. She hadn’t shown up at work. Wouldn’t answer email, her phone. She just vanished.”
He looked at me.
I knotted my hand in the sheet, unable to speak or think.
“I took a few days leave, stayed while the cops opened the case. But then the storm hit…” He rubbed his face. “You got any idea what it’s like trying to solve a missing person’s case in the middle of a natural disaster? Lani more or less got pushed to the back burner. She was young, flighty…had skipped out on her rent twice and although there weren’t any money issues at the time, they all assumed that was what she was doing. Her apartment showed no signs of a struggle and she hadn’t reported anything weird.”
“They let it go.”
He shifted his eyes to me. “They completely let it go. And my baby sister was just gone.”
“What did you do?” I stared at him. The man in front of me wasn’t the kind of man who’d just let something like that slide by. He’d drag the answer out of the earth’s bedrock if he had to.
For the longest time, he just stood there, staring at nothing.
Then he shifted his attention to me. “I was in the hospital, one day. Where you were.”
I tensed.
My hands curled into the sheets and my heart started to race while my gut twisted in a vicious fury.
“I thought maybe I could talk to you, see if you knew anything.” His gaze locked on mine.
All I wanted to do was look away.
And it was the last thing I could do.
“But then somebody went in there, while I was still trying to figure out the right way to talk to you.” He skimmed a hand back over his hair, turned back to the window. “It was the rape advocate. I moved closer, started to listen. You told her you didn’t want to talk. You had just spent too much time in hell and you weren’t ready to go back there, not for anything.” His jaw clenched and I watched as a muscle pulsed, twitched there. “She kept trying to get you to talk and I just wanted to tell her to shut the fuck up and leave you alone. After about five minutes, you did that and she left.”
My breath hitched and I was finally able to look away. “You had no right,” I said, squeezing the words out through my tight throat.
“No. I didn’t. And I’m sorry.” A dull red flush crawled up his neck. “I did more than that, though. Because if I thought you might know about Lani, I would have talked to you. I didn’t want to put you through anything but if she…” He stopped, shook his head. “I had to know. I followed the counselor to the elevator, bumped into her. She was making all these little notes and I swiped her notebook.”
Unable to breath, I shot up off the bed and half-stumbled, half-ran into the bathroom, wrapped in the sheet.
It took ten minutes of splashing my face with cold water before I could come back out. I’d left the sheet in the bathroom and pulled on my robe. Jenks had pulled his jeans on at some point, but he was in his spot, staring out into the night.
“You son of a bitch.”
The only sign I had that he heard me was the way his shoulders tightened oh so minutely.
“You son of a bitch!”
I grabbed my shoe from the floor and hurled it at him. It hit the back of his head.
Slowly, he turned around and his face could have been carved from stone. “I’m sorry,” he said, the words curt and harsh.
“You think that’s good enough?”
“No.” He inclined his head. “But that’s all I got. And I will tell you now, if I had to make the choice, I’d do it all over again. Once I read what had happened, I knew you didn’t know anything so I moved on, tried other avenues.”
“You moved on?” I gaped at him.
“What was I supposed to do?” He crossed the distance between us, staring down at me. “Especially after I read what he’d done to you. He could have my sister out there somewhere. I had no idea where she was, what he could have done to her. I wasn’t just going to let her be abandoned like that.”
I hated that he made sense. I hated that those words managed to trickle through the veil of fury that held me. I hated that I understood.
Turning away from him, I moved over to the suitcase I had yet to fully unpack. One of the thousand little rebellions I’d continued throughout my life. Everything had its place—and naturally, I refused to put anything in its place unless I had to. Digging through the jumble of clothes, I found a T-shirt and jeans. Without looking at him, I pulled them on, painfully aware that I was naked beneath them, but I needed more than just a robe to face him now and I couldn’t take the time to find anything more than that.
“So you’ve spent the past three years looking for her.”
Silence was the only answer.
Pulling my hair out from under my collar, I turned to look at him.
He had gone gray. Gray. And it was as if he’d aged ten years since he’d climbed from my bed. “No.” He shook his head. “No.”
His hands were trembling.
I felt sick as I saw that fine tremor. He pulled his wallet out, pulled out a neat square of newspaper—folded up and tucked inside the compartment where he keep his cash.
He held it out to me and turned away.
Dismembered human remains found beneath the floor of building set to be demolished
My belly felt hot, tight and greasy.
Blood roared in my ears, pounded.
My eyes were tight and dry.
Instinctively, I bent over and breathed shallowly, waited for the black dots crowding my vision to pass and then I started to read, skimming everything but the important bits and pieces.
My lip curled instinctively as I saw the area.
I knew it. Province. Not too far from Cape Cod. Stefan’s family owned land there and we’d spent time there each summer. I hated it, but it was part of being a Stockman, so it had been my life.
The building has sat vacant for years….
…freshly poured concrete�
��
…steel drum…
My vision fuzzed out on me, briefly, as I read about the grizzly contents. Human hands.
He’d taken her hands.
The cruelest thing you could do to an artist.
“You’re certain it’s her?”
“She had a tattoo. A dolphin that wound around her thumb.” He took the clipping, folded it up, tucked it back into his wallet. “I’m sorry. And I know it’s not enough because I’d do it again if I thought it would help me save her.”
I didn’t know what to do.
I didn’t know how to answer that.
My legs felt awkward and stiff, but I couldn’t stay where I was.
When I wrapped my arms around him, for the longest time he didn’t touch me back.
When he did, it was to clamp me against him.
We stayed like that for a very long time.
Dawn found me awake.
I hadn’t slept since he’d told me the truth.
Everything inside me was a jumble.
I understood what he had done.
Maybe not from his viewpoint, but I could understand it from mine. If I had a brother, a cousin, a father, anybody who could have saved me from Stefan, I hoped they would have done it.
Jenks had tried to do just that.
I could understand.
But in my gut, I knew he wasn’t done.
Staring out into the coming morning, I pressed one hand against the glass and tried to still the ache in my chest.
Sometime soon, I might have the chance to face my demon, once and for all.
And then, I would walk away from him.
Once and for all.
I’d claim all those broken and ragged pieces he’d taken and I’d find a way to make them fit.
If Jenks continued to chase after this, I wasn’t going to have the peace I needed.
Maybe it was selfish of me.
I don’t know.
And I realized I couldn’t let it matter.
Not now.
Not anymore.
They had taken too much. Not just Stefan, although he’d stolen damn near everything. It had started with the death of my parents, continued with my aunt’s careless guardianship and gone on for years.
It was time to make myself matter.
And if I didn’t put myself first, now, it wasn’t ever going to happen.
If he chased after the answers to his sister’s disappearance, I wasn’t going to be first to him.
I would probably never be first.
Where had he been the past month?
Had he called?
Had he made sure I was okay?
A soft, low sigh came from behind me and I tensed in the moments before he touched my back.
“You think heavy thoughts,” he murmured.
The bed shifted as he moved around and sat up behind me. He pulled me against him and I let him, sank against him and enjoyed the sensation of it, his chest against my back, his skin hot against my own, his body so strong and steady.
I’d miss this, more than I could probably imagine.
“What are you going to do now?” I asked him.
“What do you mean?”
Staring down, I focused on my hands, the way they looked at they covered his. Mental snapshot, so I could draw this. Absently, I glanced up and realized I could see the mirror, the way we looked together in the coming light. Another sketch to draw. Another memory.
“You found me on the beach for a reason. You never did tell me what it was.”
His arms tensed slightly. “I didn’t find you. I live there…not on the beach. That was my parents’ cottage. They left it to us, but Lani liked it more so she was there more than I was. I was out there six months ago. It was her birthday…and I saw you. Recognized you from the start.”
The knot around my heart eased a little. It never occurred to me that he might lie.
That it was an accident, how he’d come into my life this time made it easier.
“And?”
He turned his face into my neck. “And…I don’t know. I watched you. Followed you to your house once…and I saw the guy across the street. So I decided I’d go back. And he was there. Again. I got his name, tracked him to your husband. Figured I’d keep an eye on you. Then it got to be more than that.”
He fell silent and I had nothing to say to break that silence. It was awkward and weird and deep inside, my heart was like a stone in my chest.
“Weeks went by,” he finally murmured. “I told myself I needed to approach you. Then I’d tell myself maybe that fucker was going to show up and I could make my move then. I was torn between an obsession with you…and my hate for him. It froze me. Then you left that sketchbook on the beach.”
Blood climbed up my neck. “You must have thought I was pathetic.”
With a hand tangled in my hair, he tugged on my head until our eyes met. “No. I thought a lot of things, but that one never entered my mind. And that obsession just got worse. You’re inside me, Shadow. In so many ways. I…”
His gaze held mine.
I thought maybe I saw what he wanted to say.
Before he could, I lifted a hand, touched his lips.
I couldn’t hear it now.
Slipping from the bed, I moved to the window and looked outside. In three hours, I had to be at the police station, had to talk to Neely, the detectives who’d handled my case all those years ago. Who knew how many times I’d have to go over this?
“Are you going to try to get them to reopen her case?” I asked.
“It’s now or never.”
I nodded. Yes. Now or never.
Looking back at him, I clenched my hands into fists, so tightly my nails bit into my skin.
“Until you came into my life, I was only a shadow,” I said softly. “That’s all I was. I used to think about the time when Stefan had me—both the marriage and the months he held me trapped—as some sort of bad movie, or a nightmare. If it wasn’t real, it was easier to think about. It’s a little easier, now, to think about it. Which is good, because it’s time to face it. Face it, then put it behind me.”
Jenks watched me, his gaze so focused, so intense. I couldn’t blink without him noticing.
“I have to do this,” I said, forcing myself to open one hand as it started to ache. “It’s going to be hell, and I have to do it anyway.”
Jenks came off the bed, came to a stop in front of me. He reached up, cupped my cheek. “I’ll be there with you.”
My heart shattered. Closing my hand around his wrist, I tugged it away.
“You can’t.”
Confusion lit his eyes.
Turning away, I stared at the glass. I saw nothing beyond it. The tears blinded me now. “I need somebody who can give me everything,” I said, my voice shaking. “And half of you is going to be focused on what happened to your sister. It’s not fair to you if I make you choose.”
Because I was trying not to be a coward, I made myself look at him as I said, “But it’s not fair to me if I have to settle for any less.”
Jenks had gone rigid, his eyes black in his face. “Shadow?”
“If you do this, he’s going to be between us. He’ll be a shadow in our lives until you find answers. And if you never find them, then I settle for nothing.” I blinked until my vision cleared, forced myself to breathe. “He made me nothing once already. He stripped me down to nothing, until there was no light, no sound, no voice, no hope. I deserve to be somebody’s everything. I can’t be that if you spend half your life chasing after revenge.”
“You think I don’t need to find answers?” he rasped.
Lifting a hand, I touched it to his heart. “No. You need those answers. And if you ever find them, I’ll be waiting.” Then I turned away.
I didn’t make it two feet before he caught me, caging me by the small table, his mouth to my ear, his long, powerful body shaking. “Don’t do this, Shadow.” His voice was a desperate plea in my ear. I wanted so badly
to listen. I wanted so badly to give him everything.
“I don’t have a choice.”
Chapter Twenty
“He says he’ll take a plea bargain.”
I stared at Neely, at Detective Barry, then looked at the lawyers, my heart slamming away in shock.
It had been more than a year since that awful night in Tony’s apartment and each day I expected to wake up and find out that it had all been a horrid, awful joke.
That Stefan was still out there, that he would still come for me.
Or worse, that the jury would mess it up and he’d walk.
A plea bargain.
This was… I couldn’t understand it.
Beneath the table, I laced my hands together. My chest ached and I realized I hadn’t taken a breath. Forcing myself to do just that, I waited until the ache subsided and then looked at the lawyer.
“A plea bargain.”
“Yes. We’re looking at twenty years in jail, although…” Quincy Kestler pursed his lips, frowned as he shuffled the papers. Then he set them down and looked at me. “Well, it’s complicated. He’ll do his twenty years here. Whether he does any time in Massachusetts depends on what happens there. But there’s a stipulation. He wants to talk to you.”
My mouth went dry.
My heart knocked against my ribs.
For one painful minute, I couldn’t breathe at all.
Twenty years.
That was a very, very long time.
It wasn’t long enough.
“What about the cases in Massachusetts?”
“There’s nothing to stop us from trying him.” Neely shrugged. “And we’ve got a lot of time to look for evidence.”
Twenty years was a lot of time for evidence to disappear.
“How long do I have to talk to him?”
Neely watched him with understanding eyes. “That’s completely up to you, I’d think.”
Quincy leaned in, folded his hands. “The bottom line is, things don’t look good for him. He relied on his family and his money too long. People here aren’t as impressed with the Boston bluebloods. Money is fine, but power matters more and he just doesn’t impress people as much in this state as he thinks. There’s too much evidence against him and he knows it. You give him a few minutes, he agrees to the deal and we’ll tell him you can give him a few more after it’s all said and done. Might be the best way to do it. If he waives his right to appeal, then it’s all over for him.”
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