Mine to Keep

by Cynthia Eden

  The answer was there, stark and chilling between them.

  “I can’t live like this.” Grim finality had entered her voice. “You were right. I-I should’ve seen someone after the attack. My mind’s jumbled. The nightmares won’t stop, and I’m not even sure who I am anymore.”

  “I know who you are.” The only woman he’d ever loved.

  She pulled away from him. “I can’t do this.”

  No, no, she had to do this. But she was walking away from him.

  “I’m very good at killing, Skye.” Those weren’t the words he’d meant to say. They sure as hell weren’t words that were going to reassure her. “The military taught me how to be good. How to get close to the enemy. How to take out my prey swiftly and silently. My main job was infiltration. Infiltration and hostage rescue.”

  Rescue of military personnel who’d been taken by the enemy. Rescue of dignitaries. Of rich corporate CEOs who’d been taken because they’d been at the wrong place. Because they’d trusted the wrong men.

  Some of those rescued men had been grateful. They’d remembered him when he left the military. They’d jumped at the chance to use Weston Securities for their corporations.

  He’d kept their secrets.

  But he was spilling his own.

  “I saved lives, but I took lives, too. The lives of the enemy, the captors who’d taken the hostages.” Tell her. “And the lives of-of those on my team who turned against us.”

  Very slowly, she faced him again.

  He hated the strain on her face. His past had done this to her. “I thought it was better if you didn’t know.” He looked at his hands. “I still have the blood here, and you know the only time I ever feel clean? It’s when I’m touching you. You make me feel like I can be someone else.” And not just the lie that he presented to the world.

  “You’re telling me this now?”

  “You need to know.”

  She shook her head, hard, and the last of her hair broke free from the knot, tumbling around her shoulders. “First I get that crazy phone call. I-I thought it had to be Reese, wanting me to help you, and then—”

  He zeroed right in on that. “What phone call?”

  “I race to that alley. I find him—”

  “What phone call?” Trace snarled.

  She stumbled back a step.

  “Skye.” He tried to soften the harshness of his tone. He failed. “Please. What phone call?”

  “Your number. It was your ring. Your number on the caller ID. But the voice didn’t sound like you.”

  Fear was a living monster inside of Trace.

  “He told me to go to that alley. That you needed me. That I had to help.”

  “And you went?” Claws ripped at his insides.

  “I tried to call you back first. But I couldn’t get you, and I was so afraid something had happened. I knew Parker was out—”

  I knew I’d do anything for you.

  “So I ran to the alley.” A sad shrug of her shoulders. “And I stole evidence.”

  “Give me your phone.”

  She blinked at him.

  Trace didn’t wait for her to comply. He rushed to her discarded bag. He searched fast and yanked out the phone.

  He scanned through her received calls list. Saw his name. His number. “I didn’t call you then.”

  “Reese—”

  “Reese was visiting his girlfriend earlier today. They have a standing lunch date each week.”

  She blinked. “I didn’t—”

  “He hacked into my account.” Smart SOB. “And he called you.” She could have walked straight into a slaughter. Her own. Trace wouldn’t have been able to do damn thing to save her.

  “Who?” Skye was beside him now. “Who did this?”

  Tell her everything.

  There would be no going back now. “After a while, after we’d served our tours, the team knew we were good at what we did. Very damn good. We started our own rescue service. That’s what Weston Securities was, in the beginning.” And it still was, when the situation demanded it. “I tried to get Reese to join me back then, because he’d served with us, but he wanted to come home. He’d said that he’d had his fill of blood and death.”

  Smart bastard. Reese hadn’t joined them, but later Trace had told his friend all about the nightmare that had destroyed the team.

  Trace continued, because there was no stopping now. “So when the team started, there were five of us. Noah, Drake, Ben, Tucker, and me.”

  Her shoulder brushed against his. “Tucker?”

  “Tucker Hawk.” Tucker had always seemed to be the most easy-going of the group. The one who’d laughed the easiest. Loved the easiest. “Tucker had a girl. Anna Jean. She’d just finished a tour with the Air Force, and she wanted to join our team. She could fly like a dream, so I knew she’d be useful.” Back then, he’d always thought in terms of usefulness. “But Anna had other plans. On our last run together, she decided she could get more money by playing both sides. She set us up, telling the enemy our extraction plans. Telling them our weaknesses. Telling them everything.”

  “But you made it out. You survived.”

  “Ben was hit hard. Drake…Drake was captured. Tortured. I carried Ben out and left him at the chopper with Noah. Then Tucker and I fought like hell to get Drake out.” The gunfire had blasted. A continuous thunder that shook his world.

  “We killed every man between us and Drake.” He couldn’t look at her as he revealed this. “Blood soaked me, and I just wanted to get out of there. I wanted to get home again.” His eyes closed. “I wanted you.”

  She twined her fingers with him.

  “We got to Drake. Pulled him out. We were almost home free, then Anna Jean appeared. She’d slipped up behind Drake, and she was about to shoot him.” There’d been a knife in Drake’s hands. His only weapon.

  “Drake spun to attack. He stabbed her, and she fell back.” But they just hadn’t counted on one thing… “You can know some people are evil. You can know that they’ve betrayed you, but if you love them, if you really fucking love them beyond reason, then, sometimes, I don’t think you care about what they’ve done. You only see them. Nothing else.”

  That was the way it had been for Tucker.

  “He screamed,” Trace recalled. “When Drake’s knife went into her chest, Tucker cried out her name. He blasted two bullets into Drake, and Tucker ran for Anna Jean.” That anguished scream had frozen them all.

  Tucker had known than Anna Jean betrayed them.

  He hadn’t cared.

  She’d been what mattered most to him, and when he lost her… “He broke right before my eyes,” Trace said. Tucker had fought, shot, attacked—and gotten to Anna Jean on that snow covered field.

  They’d been in Russia. So far from home. Cold. Frozen. The white snow had been stained red.

  Skye watched him with her big, solemn stare. He didn’t want to see himself reflected in that stare. Because the part that was coming…

  Man up and tell her everything. “Drake needed medical attention. We had to get out of there, but Tucker wasn’t just going to let him walk away, not after what he’d done to Anna Jean.”

  “But he was protecting himself—”

  “It didn’t matter. Anna Jean died in Tucker’s arms, and the man he’d been before vanished. He attacked Drake. Tucker shattered Drake’s wrist and took Drake’s knife. Then Tucker went in for the kill.”

  Trace had shouted then. Yelled for Tucker to stop. “I could’ve taken a shot at them, but they were so close. Tucker and Drake were fighting, rolling around in the snow. So I ran forward. I grabbed Tucker, and I pulled him off Drake.”

  Her gaze seemed to see straight into Trace’s soul. You won’t like the darkness there, baby. “Tucker had his knife. I had my gun. I told him to stand down. To get his control back.”

  Even as he’d said the words, Trace had known that wouldn’t happen. If I’d lost Skye, I would’ve reacted the same way. “She was everything to him, and
Anna Jean was dead at his feet.” The blood had spread beneath her in that snow, looking like bloody angel wings.

  She hadn’t been an angel.

  Tucker hadn’t cared.

  “He said Drake had to die. Tucker lunged at me. He wouldn’t stop.” Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  The memories were so sharp.

  Tucker, stand the hell down! We’re your friends!

  But Tucker had stared him straight in the eyes. You’re dead men. Every single one of you. You did this—you could’ve brought her in alive. You. Did. This!

  “The last time he came at me, I fired.” Close-range, one shot right to the chest. “He grabbed my dog tags, and when he fell back, they were still in his hands.”

  “Trace…”

  “We didn’t even get to bring his body home. Anna Jean’s reinforcements arrived. Blasting from the east. I could’ve carried Tucker—he was still alive then—or I could’ve gotten Drake out of there. I made the choice.”

  Her fingers curled around his. “Would Tucker have been able to survive his wounds?”

  That was the same damn thing he’d asked himself that day. And every day that followed. “I thought I’d hit his heart.” He should have hit it. That close… “But there wasn’t exactly time to stand there and do an exam. I grabbed Drake. Threw him over my shoulder, and I dodged fire as I ran. Noah brought the chopper in because without an aerial extraction, we were dead.” He stared down at their hands. His looked big, rough.

  Hers were so delicate.

  “Heavy snow started falling. In that part of Russia, the snow can drop from the sky for days. It can bury everything and everyone in its path. I thought…I thought the snow became their graves.” After Ben and Drake had been secured and patched up, he’d gone back to try and retrieve the bodies, but it had been hopeless. He’d searched, nearly getting hypothermia, but there had been nothing to find.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

  Trace knew his laughter held a bitter edge. “Why didn’t I tell you that I shot my best friend and left him to die in the middle of a snowstorm? Maybe because I didn’t want you thinking I was a cold-blooded killer.”

  She flinched. Her hands pulled from his.

  Oh, right. “But then, you do think that now, don’t you? So confessing to my kill in the past hardly matters at this point.”

  Trace turned away from her and paced toward the window. The glittering lights of the city stared back at him. At least it wasn’t snowing. He hated the snow. Every time he saw it, he thought of blood.

  “Tucker is the one who attacked,” Skye said, voice soft. She hadn’t followed him to the window. “You were protecting yourself. Your other teammates.”

  The lights were so bright. “I understood, that’s the worst part. I knew exactly how he felt. He loved her so much that nothing else mattered, and without her, there was no control for him. He was desperate, hurting, and I left him there.”

  Only the ghosts from his past had come back to wreck his life. “Tucker liked the up-close attacks. They were his specialty.” His…and Trace’s. “He could get close to anyone without his prey ever knowing. Slip right up and slip his knife into his enemy’s heart.”

  He heard her sharply indrawn breath.

  “A-a knife to the heart?” Skye asked. “Just like—”

  “Like Sharpe and Parker? Yes.” And there was more. “Slicing the throat is a personal way to kill. We saw attacks like that during our time together. When you wanted to send a message, when you wanted to be sure that your prey—and their family—didn’t talk, the killers slit their victims’ throats.”

  In the glass, he saw her reflection. Skye walked—very tentatively—toward him. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that my dog tags should’ve still been in a grave outside of Siberia. But I found one in Parker’s apartment, and you found the other on his dead body. When it comes to messages, I think that’s pretty clear.” He faced her. “Maybe I didn’t leave a dead man out there after all. Maybe Tucker survived, and now he’s come back to make sure that I suffer for what I did to him.”

  “You think…you believe he’s going to kill you?”

  His hand lifted, and he stroked her cheek. Such smooth, silken skin. “I told you that I understood how he felt.”

  She nodded.

  “Killing me would be too easy. Death won’t be quick for me. He’ll want me to suffer.” He and Tucker had been too alike, in many ways. “At the end, he made me a promise.”

  “What sort of promise?”

  “He said, ‘You’ll know…you’ll lose…all.’” And Trace knew exactly what Tucker meant. Tucker had wanted Trace to feel the same agony that he experienced.

  “H-how will he do that?”

  Trace stared back at her, and he forced himself to tell her the terrifying truth, “By hurting you.”

  Chapter Ten

  Alex Griffin shone his flashlight to the left. Then to the right. He was in another alley. One that reeked of piss and garbage.

  He had a small team of uniforms with him. Grumbling rookies who weren’t happy to be on the backstreets of Chicago searching through dumpsters.

  Like he gave a damn if they were happy or not.

  Trace Weston hadn’t needed to carry on about the arterial spray from Parker Jacobs. Alex had seen the splash of blood before at crime scenes. He knew how death worked. His job gave him an up-close and personal look at death each day.

  Even before Weston had spoken, Alex knew that Parker’s killer would’ve been hit by the spray of blood.

  And I also knew that the killer would need to ditch his clothes.

  Because when you walked around, covered in blood, peopled tended to notice.

  “He wouldn’t have gone back to the main street, not right after the kill,” Alex said.

  The uniform closest to him, Sean Coleman, gave a quick nod. “So he ran away through the alleys.”

  “I don’t think it was a panicked run.” Alex stopped next to another big, green dumpster. “I think he planned to kill Parker all along, and I think he had back-up clothes waiting.” The better to blend in with everyone else.

  Sean raised his brows and glanced at the dumpster. “Hell, another one.”

  “Up and in,” Alex told him, shining the light.

  Sean hefted himself into the dumpster. “It’s like finding a microscopic needle in a—” Sean broke off.

  Alex grabbed the side of the dumpster. “What is it?”

  Sean rose. His gloved hands held a shirt, and when Alex’s light hit that shirt—blood. “I’ve got you,” Alex whispered. That shirt was his key. The techs could scan it for DNA, for evidence…this was it.

  He was going to stop the killer. No more victims would fall on Alex’s watch.

  ***

  The shower water thundered down on Skye. After Trace’s confession, she hadn’t exactly been sure what to say.

  She’d survived the attack of one maniac before. Now she was supposed to just wait, knowing that some other crazy jerk wanted to come after her?

  Sometimes, life could just be a hard kick in the face.

  You think you’re happy. You think you have a chance…

  And then the chance is ripped right from your hands.

  She leaned forward, putting her face under the spray. All of the blood was gone now. It should be. She’d scrubbed herself until her skin felt raw.

  Tendrils of steam floated in the air around her. The glass that surrounded the walk-in shower had completely fogged over.

  She put her hand on the glass. It was hard. Cool.

  The water pounded down.

  Her fingers swiped over the glass. She cleared a small section so that she could see—and, through that glass, Skye saw Trace.

  Standing on the other side. Watching her.

  She opened the door. The shower had been so loud that she hadn’t heard him come inside the bathroom.

  He was still dressed. In his too expensive designer pants and the shirt that sh
e knew must’ve been cut just for him.

  The faint lines on his face were deeper. The shadows under his eyes were darker.

  “Why were you just standing there?” Skye asked him. She didn’t try to cover her nudity.

  “I wasn’t sure you wanted me with you.”

  Ah, that was the part he just didn’t seem to get. “I always want you.” That was the problem. She lifted her hand to him, inviting him closer.

  He took a fast step forward, then stilled. “I don’t want any more secrets. If you stay with me, I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Don’t make a promise you can’t keep.”

  “I’ll keep it. I swear.”

  She kept her hand up. “Tell me that you didn’t kill Parker.” Skye hadn’t asked for the words before because she’d been afraid of his answer. But now…

  “I didn’t kill Parker.”

  Her lips trembled, then curved. “I need you.”

  Skye thought he would strip before he joined her. The clothes had to be worth a small fortune but—

  Trace didn’t strip.

  He came straight into the shower, the water—pumping from two shower heads—poured down on them. His mouth took hers. The kiss was deep and hard. Consuming.

  Exactly what she wanted.

  Her hands closed around his shoulders. The water soaked his shirt, making the fabric cling to him. Her bare breasts pressed against his shirt-front, her nipples pebbling.

  Trace.

  Only Trace.

  He was the one man who’d always been able to get past her defenses. The one man who could make her want and need more than anyone else.

  His fingers slid down to her waist and he lifted her up against the marble wall of the shower. His mouth didn’t leave hers. His tongue thrust past her lips, and Skye arched toward him. In that moment, she was greedy and desperate for all that he’d give to her.

  He was aroused. Trace’s thick cock pushed against the front of his pants, and she felt the ridge against her. She wanted that ridge in her.

  Her hands shoved between them. She unhooked his belt. Fumbled enough to get the button and zipper undone, and then that thick, strong cock spilled out.

  Two seconds later, his cock was just where she wanted it to be. Driving deep inside of her.

  She cried out when he filled her because it felt so good. He thrust deep, as far as he could go. His hips pinned her, her legs clasped his hips, and his hands caught hers.