Savage Alpha (Alpha 8)

by Carole Mortimer

  Seth’s answer to that protest? Diana would never forgive him if he didn’t take her home with him. And he obviously had no intention of upsetting his wife.

  Lily had reluctantly agreed to the idea, while inwardly deciding that if Diana showed the least resentment at her presence, then she would politely make her excuses and go to Gabriel’s after all.

  Diana Armstrong proved to be a warm and capable woman, and after spending six days in her company, Lily knew she and the other woman were already close friends. They would continue to be so even after this was all over, although quite how that would work when Jonas was also a friend to both Seth and Diana, Lily had no idea. But she would make it happen, even if she had to check each time she met up with Diana as to whether or not Jonas was anywhere near. Diana was too good a friend already for Lily to ever willingly give that up.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Lily told Jonas dismissively. “I’m sure the two of you will be able to work something out.”

  “You—”

  “I really need to finish getting ready, Jonas,” she dismissed evenly, needing him to go before she broke down and told him how much she’d missed him.

  That she loved him.

  A love Jonas didn’t want or need.

  Chapter 13

  Jonas’s lids were narrowed as he stood by one of the emergency exits at the front of the theater, his gaze roaming restlessly over the audience that filled it to capacity. A bejeweled and designer-label audience, all here by invitation to attend this gala performance in memory of the two men who had died at the theater the previous week.

  Only two of the private boxes in the dress circle of the theater had people sitting in them, one on either side of the stage.

  In one were two couples, the women red-eyed and pale—Charlie Driscoll’s two daughters?—the stoic men seated beside them no doubt their husbands.

  There were four people in the box opposite, the older couple would be Evan Butler’s parents, the teenage girl his sister: their likeness to their deceased son and brother obvious. Seated beside them was Todd Shaw, Evan’s heartbroken boyfriend, his eyes red and bloodshot, expression grim.

  Jonas glanced back to the stage as the director, Giles Fowler, came on to make his introductory speech to the evening. Jonas was too busy keeping a watchful eye everywhere to have any idea what the other man said, but the audience seemed to appreciate it as they clapped long and loudly.

  He turned his attention to the stage as the play began. Lily seemed slightly nervous to begin with, but, like the professional she was, quickly threw herself into her role, despite the fact she had a different leading man playing opposite her.

  Jonas had never admired her more, loved her—

  Jesus Christ!

  Love? Who the fuck mentioned love?

  I did, he acknowledged incredulously.

  Was he in love with Lily?

  Was that what these feelings of anger and frustration were all about? Was that the reason he had to come back to town? Because he simply couldn’t stay away from Lily any longer?

  Wonderful.

  Fucking wonderful.

  He was in love with a woman who would never see him as anything more than a bodyguard, or maybe a sexual diversion, during a scary part of her life.

  “I would have appreciated a heads-up you were coming here.”

  Jonas’s hands clenched into fists at his sides as he turned to confront Seth. “I’m not answerable to you for my actions.”

  The other man looked unperturbed by Jonas’s aggressive tone. “Let’s take this outside.”

  Several people in the audience closest to them had turned to look at them, their conversation obviously a distraction from what was happening on the stage.

  Well, let them fucking look, because Jonas wasn’t going anywhere until Lily was safely off that stage. “Later,” he told the other man grimly, narrowed gaze once again roaming over the audience for any sign one of them might want to harm Lily.

  “Jonas—”

  “Get the fuck out of my face, Seth,” he spoke vehemently under his breath.

  “You’re disturbing the audience.”

  “Then leave me the fuck alone,” he advised harshly.

  Seth gave him a searching glance for several long seconds before nodding abruptly and striding to the back of the theater.

  Leaving Jonas to continue his vigil as he watched the woman he loved give the performance of her life.

  Lily had no idea how she got through the first half of the play. On autopilot, probably. She couldn’t so much as glance at those two occupied boxes in the dress circle, knowing that if she did, she would probably break down at the utter despair she knew Charlie’s and Evan’s families must be feeling.

  As for that encounter with Jonas in her dressing room earlier…

  It had been both thrilling and heartbreaking to see him again. The former because she had hungered for just the sight of him these past six days. The latter because she knew the only reason Jonas was here now had to be so that he could complete his obligation to Gabriel.

  She was an obligation to him.

  And it was breaking her heart knowing that.

  Lily had never been so grateful to be able to escape off the stage and go to her dressing room during the interval, breathing a sigh of relief as she shut the door behind her, eyes closed as she leaned back against it.

  “Hello, Lily.”

  “Why are you really here, Jonas?” Seth demanded.

  The two men had met again backstage, by Seth’s design, as Jonas made his way to Lily’s dressing room.

  Jonas scowled darkly at this delay in getting to Lily. “You know why.”

  “Do I?”

  “I’m not in the mood for a third degree—”

  “Then what are you in the mood for?” Seth said scornfully. “You dumped Lily on me six days ago as if she was a piece of hot coal. You did deal with the police, apparently, but after that, you disappeared. Now you turn up again—”

  “I came to see you this morning, and you refused to tell me where she is.”

  “—six days later,” Seth continued pointedly. “Expecting…what?” He raised dark eyebrows.

  “Expecting not to have to explain any of my actions to you, for one thing.” Jonas’s voice was a low growl.

  “How about Lily?” the other man challenged. “Don’t you think you owe her an explanation?”

  “None of your fucking business.” Jonas continued in long strides down the hallway to Lily’s dressing room.

  Seth gave a heavy sigh as he accompanied him. “We’ve been friends for a long time and—”

  “I’d like it to remain that way.” Jonas came to a halt in the middle of the hallway. “But if you continue to push and probe like this, I seriously doubt that’s going to happen.”

  “Diana really likes Lily.”

  “I had a feeling she might.” Jonas’s expression softened slightly before hardening again. “What I don’t appreciate is the way you kept Lily’s whereabouts from me. Gabriel isn’t happy either.”

  “So I gathered. He’s at the front of the theater,” Seth explained at Jonas’s questioning glance. “Along with all the other Knight brothers.”

  The other man’s expression told Jonas that meeting hadn’t been pleasant. “I called him earlier and told him about the performance this evening.”

  Seth grimaced. “And did it occur to either of you that Lily was free to call one or both of you at any time? If she had wanted to.”

  If she had wanted to.

  There was no escaping the fact that Lily obviously hadn’t wanted to speak to either Gabriel or Jonas.

  Because Gabriel was a controlling jerk, and Jonas— Jonas had let her down by walking away when she still needed him.

  “Fine,” he snapped as he continued down the hallway. “Well I’m back now so… Where the fuck is Liam?” He came to an abrupt halt as he saw there was no one standing guard outside Lily’s dressing room.

  Lily’s locked
dressing room, Jonas discovered as he turned the handle and the door wouldn’t open.

  “Todd,” Lily greeted him warmly as she saw him sitting pale-faced in the chair across the room. “It’s so good to see you. I—I’m so sorry about Evan. It’s such a terrible thing to have happened.” Ready tears blurred her vision; she had done a lot of crying this past week, for both Charlie and Evan. She would have cried for herself too, for this unrequited love she felt for Jonas, but she had never been one to indulge in self-pity.

  “Yes,” Todd acknowledged as he rose slowly to his feet, dressed in a black evening suit, as was the rest of the male audience for this evening’s gala performance.

  “I’ll be attending the funeral, of course—”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Lily gave a pained wince. “Look, I know we argued the last time we met, but it was a tense time for both of us. I loved Evan as much as—”

  “Don’t,” he rasped.

  Lily blinked at Todd’s vehemence, a feeling of unease stirring in the pit of her stomach. “Of course I cared for him. Evan and I were friends.”

  “And your friendship ruined our relationship.”

  She gasped. “No—”

  “Yes,” he hissed, blue eyes glittering, hands clenched at his sides. “I asked him not to see you again. Begged him not to. He claimed the same as you, that the two of you were friends.”

  “Because we were. Todd, Evan loved you.” Lily’s feelings of unease were deepening by the second. Especially as she now realized—belatedly—that Liam hadn’t been standing guard outside her dressing room just now. Her thoughts had been too preoccupied at the time to notice.

  “Not anymore.”

  “The two of you were getting married.”

  “Evan had second thoughts about that.”

  “Not because of me.”

  He gave a disgusted snort. “He claimed it was because of me. That I was too jealous. Too possessive. That I was suffocating him with that obsessive jealousy.”

  “He didn’t say anything like that to me…”

  “It’s enough that he said it to me on the day he died!”

  Lily’s unease blossomed into full-blown panic. “You said you hadn’t seen Evan that day…”

  “I hadn’t. The little coward left a message on my cell phone saying that it was over between the two of us.” His nostrils flared. “He wouldn’t take any of my calls to him either, despite the dozen messages I left for him to call me back.”

  Messages left on Evan’s cell phone…

  The cell phone that had been destroyed.

  Because of those damning messages?

  Surely Todd wouldn’t have, couldn’t have attacked Charlie and Evan? Killed Charlie and Evan? No, the idea was too preposterous.

  Wasn’t it?

  Why would he do such a thing? Surely not because Evan was having second thoughts about their relationship?

  Oh God, where was Liam?

  Where was Jonas?

  “I tried to distract you from Evan, thought you would be flattered to have a secret admirer,” Todd continued conversationally. “I sent you those letters telling you how much I liked you. How much I wanted to be with you. But it made no difference. Evan felt even more protective of you. So I decided to stop being nice and give him a reason to feel that way,” he added in a hard voice.

  “You were the one who wrote those disgusting letters and delivered the white roses?”

  “Yes.” His mouth turned back in a sneer. “I thought the blood dripping from the petals was a nice touch. At no little cost to myself, I might add.” He looked down to where an inch-long cut had recently healed in the palm of his hand. “But you wouldn’t listen, would you? Wouldn’t back off. Why couldn’t you just leave Evan alone? He didn’t need you when he had me.” He bared his teeth in a snarl.

  Lily felt nauseated. All this time, they thought she had an admirer who had become an obsessive stalker, and instead it had been Todd’s reaction to and jealousy of her friendship with Evan.

  A jealousy that had led him not only to writing and sending those obscene letters, but also to spray-painting her dressing room, calling her those disgusting names?

  To breaking into her apartment and destroying her bed, before plunging a knife into her pillow?

  To killing both Charlie and Evan?

  If that was true, then Todd had to be completely mentally unbalanced.

  And Liam was missing, leaving Lily alone in her dressing room with a man who had already killed twice. Perhaps a third time, if he had harmed Liam.

  “Move away from the door,” Todd now instructed pleasantly.

  Lily tensed. “Why?”

  He gave her a pitying look. “Because I don’t want that big guy, the one who follows you around, to interrupt us.”

  Jonas. He meant Jonas. Except Jonas hadn’t been following her around, he had been protecting her, and for the past six days, he hadn’t even been doing that. But he was here now, she reminded herself. Somewhere in the theater. As were Seth and a dozen of his men.

  She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “You don’t want to do this, Todd.”

  “I don’t?” He no longer waited for her to move away from the door but pushed her roughly to one side and turned the lock before taking a knife from his breast pocket.

  Lily backed away. “Jonas and his men are outside.”

  “Exactly, they’re outside, on the other side of a locked door,” he said with satisfaction. “This room doesn’t have any windows or other doors, and the bathroom window has bars over it on the outside. I know, because I checked when I decorated your dressing room for you.”

  She moved slowly sideways. Away from Todd and the knife he held. “Did you attack Evan?”

  “It was an accident,” he snapped. “I came back from my business trip after receiving his message, only he hadn’t arrived yet, and he was still refusing to answer any of my calls. I’d been to the theater dozens of times with Evan, so it wasn’t too difficult to persuade Charlie into believing I wanted to leave a surprise present in Evan’s dressing room.”

  Instead, he had left a message for Lily…

  Todd really had killed Evan. Charlie too. And maybe Liam. As he was now about to kill her?

  Todd shrugged. “I intended waiting in Evan’s dressing room and having it out with him face-to-face. But I saw some spray paint in one of the workmen’s bags as I walked through and decided to leave a little message for you instead. Several little messages,” he added with satisfaction. “Did you like my artwork?”

  What was she supposed to say in response to that? To a man who talked so calmly of killing two people? A man she realized would have no qualms about killing her too.

  Todd didn’t wait for her to answer. “I remembered later that I had signed into that stupid visitors’ book the doorman kept in his room, so I came back before the evening performance, intending to destroy the evidence I had ever been here that day. The stupid old man caught me doing it. Ironic, don’t you think, that he died by being hit over the head with his own walking stick? Unfortunately, Evan had forgotten to take his cell phone with him after the afternoon performance, and when he came back for it, he literally caught me in the act. I had no choice but to silence him too.”

  He spoke so dismissively, as if he wasn’t talking of killing two people—one of them the man he’d professed to love and wanted to marry.

  Not only that, but he had returned to the theater a third time that day, giving the misleading impression he had recently returned from his business trip.

  He’d pretended he had no idea what had happened to Charlie and Evan, and all the time—

  Lily was too horrified to move now, felt as if her legs were frozen in place. “But you loved Evan.”

  He scowled darkly. “I told you, he’d change his mind about me.” A nerve pulsed in his jaw.

  “But you don’t kill people you love!”

  Todd’s eyes flashed. “He said he was going to call the pol
ice. He gave me no choice.”

  “Everyone has a choice, Todd.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t.”

  “But what if Evan had survived? What if he’d regained consciousness and named you as his attacker?”

  “That wasn’t going to happen.”

  “You don’t know that—”

  “Of course I fucking knew that!” His eyes became feverish. “If I couldn’t have Evan, then no one else was going to have him either. It took Evan’s family some hours to travel down from Scotland, and in the meantime, I had convinced the nursing staff that Evan and I were engaged, that I was effectively his next of kin until his family arrived. They very kindly allowed me to sit with him.”

  “What did you do?” Lily gasped. “Oh God, what did you do?”

  He smiled slightly. “The police were guarding the outside of Evan’s room rather than the inside. He was unconscious and too weak to fight anyway, so I put my hand gently over his mouth and nose and waited until he stopped breathing. The nursing staff tried to revive him, of course, but they failed. I believe the death certificate says he died following blunt force trauma to the head.” Todd’s eyes gleamed with malice. “And now it’s your turn.”

  “My turn?”

  “You’re the reason all this happened. The reason Evan ended our relationship. The reason Charlie is dead. The reason Evan is dead.”

  No, she wasn’t. No matter how much Todd might have twisted this around in his insane mind, she wasn’t responsible for any of his actions. “If you kill me now, you won’t be able to get away, and then the police will add two and two together and know you killed all of us—”

  “You think I actually care?” he said scornfully. “Now that Evan is dead, I have no reason to live anyway. I have every intention of killing myself as soon as I’ve disposed of you,” he explained in that calm, unemotional voice. “The only reason I’m not already dead is because I had to wait for you to come out of hiding so I could kill you first. And tonight, you did.”

  “It doesn’t have to be this way.” It was difficult for Lily to speak when her mouth was so dry. When her brain was frozen with the horror of Todd’s confession. When he obviously intended to kill her too. “You’re…unwell. I’m sure the police will understand that you were distraught at the ending of your relationship. That you suffered a temporary insanity.” Except Lily didn’t think it was temporary at all, and she doubted a psychiatrist would either.