by Lora Leigh
He eased inside carefully anyway, feeling Rory move in behind him silently. They checked the apartment out before meeting back in the kitchen.
“Damn, I need more than a beer.” Rory sighed as he pulled two from the fridge and tossed Noah one. “Duncan Sykes called. He’s blaming me because you’re somehow responsible for Belle breaking their date tonight.”
Noah let a satisfied grin curl at the edges of his lips.
“I’ll take care of her.” He twisted the cap from the bottle and tossed it to the garbage can before taking a long, cold drink.
“That’s what you said the other night,” Rory bit out, his blue eyes firing in ire. “Dammit, I had to watch her cry every time she saw me for almost two years. She couldn’t stand to look at me. And now just when she was starting to get her life back together, you have to show up, and instead of telling her who you are, mess her life up worse.”
“Don’t piss me off, Rory.” Noah didn’t want to hear it. “What the hell are you doing here tonight?”
Rory snorted. “Granddad threw me out for pacing the floor. When I went outside to pace he told me he was going to shoot me.”
Noah almost grinned. That sounded like Grandpop.
“Use the spare room.” Noah shrugged. “By the way, you’re firing Timmy in the morning. Take care of it first thing.”
Rory stared back at him, the irritation growing in his eyes. “Come on, Noah. Timmy’s helping support his mother.”
“No he’s not, he’s smoking junk behind the garage when no one’s looking and he’s reporting everything Sabella does to Mike Conrad the minute she tips her head in a different direction. Get him out of there.”
“Hell. Belle hired him. She’s gonna go off on me again.”
“She doesn’t bite.” Noah shrugged again.
No, she didn’t bite, but she could make a man’s balls draw up in fear anyway when she got mad enough. When she was mad and hurt. When tears sparkled in her eyes and she started throwing things, then it was time to head for the hills until she cooled off. Way the hell off. She wasn’t violent, but damn if she couldn’t make a man miserable with just a look.
“She might not bite, but she throws a mean-assed punch when she wants to,” Rory said. “The first time I tried to drag her away from one of those cars and put her ass back in the office, she popped my jaw like it was a balloon.”
Noah didn’t show his surprise, or his shock. Sabella had never hit anything while they had been together. She hadn’t even punched her pillow when she was pissed.
“Get some sleep.” He nodded back to the bedroom. “I need to go out again.”
“I could go with you.” Rory shifted on his feet. “I know how to cover you. You taught me how.”
Yeah, he had. A lifetime ago.
“Not tonight.” Noah shook his head. Where he was going, he wanted no witnesses, no shadows, no tails. And he sure as hell didn’t want Rory dragged into this crap. “Get some sleep. You have to deal with Sabella in the morning.”
“You suck,” Rory said as he grimaced. “She’s gonna hit me again.”
“She has a short swing. Stay a few feet away from her.” Noah moved back to the door, opened it, and slid back into the night.
Mike Conrad didn’t live far away. Tehya had slipped him the program she needed installed in Mike’s computer before he left. Hopefully, getting into it wouldn’t be too difficult.
An hour later, Noah made his way through Mike’s underground tunnel and cracked open the panel that led into the office. He checked for audio and video security, read the readout on the electronic device he brought with him and shook his head. The office was wired but deactivated. Keeping the unit he carried turned on to ensure it stayed that way, Noah moved into the office.
Mike had always been an arrogant son of a bitch, but Noah had never thought he was stupid. Attacking Sabella had been stupid, and perhaps not as out of character as Noah had believed if Mike was indeed a part of BCM.
If Noah remembered correctly, when Sabella had worked at the bank, before their marriage, Mike had always been a little too friendly and Mike’s wife had always been a little too cool to Sabella. It made sense why now, when at the time, Noah had tried to push back the warnings with the excuse that he was a suspicious man. Mike wasn’t the cheating type, he’d thought. Maybe he had been wrong.
He moved to the office desk first and the laptop that sat on top of it. He slid the flashdrive Tehya had sent into the USB port, then quietly powered up the computer. The program on the drive would slide into bootup according to Tehya and take care of all their problems.
He watched as it powered up, as security protocols were bypassed, password was automatically logged and added to the drive Noah had inserted before the program itself quickly uploaded.
When it finished, the laptop powered down, turned off, and Noah slid the drive free before tucking it into the zippered pocket of his mission pants. He looked around the office, eyes narrowing as he began checking the room.
Silent in the darkness, he paused after picking the lock on the bottom desk door and stared inside coldly.
There, with an extra handgun, ammo clips, and a black hood, were three black scarves. There had been black scarves tied around the necks of all the victims that had been hunted and killed in the past months.
Noah closed the drawer, relocked it, and slipped back through the panel. After securing it, he made his way through the tunnel again, careful to clear his tracks from the dusty floor. It didn’t appear that the passage was ever used.
One thing was certain, a Black Collar Militia member was now on the short list.
CHAPTER EIGHT
What had made Sabella think she could hide from Duncan that night with the lame excuse she had given him, she wasn’t certain. Maybe it was because Duncan had never argued when she had to cancel before, maybe it was the fact that the more she thought about it, the more she realized herself how the relationship they had had was so platonic as to be laughable.
It was late when she heard his car pull into the driveway. Sitting in the living room finishing the bottle of wine Duncan had opened days before, Sabella stared at the window where the lights were reflected and realized several things at once.
One, for some reason, men thought she was a pushover. Nathan had seen her as the helpless little wife he had to protect. Duncan often patronized her over her “hobby” at the garage. And even Rory seemed to question every move she made lately. And now, she couldn’t even break a date without someone thinking they needed to question her decision.
She rose from the couch, straightened the loose T-shirt she wore over silky shorts, and then, wine glass in hand, moved to the door. Pulling it open she stared at Duncan’s handsome though irritated expression as he lifted his knuckles to rap at the door.
He was dressed as precisely and unwrinkled as ever. A white short-sleeved polo shirt and tan slacks and black loafers. He was always clean-cut and perfectly groomed and now was no exception.
His gaze took in the wine glass, then her face, before he focussed on her chin and neck. Yeah, she knew those marks were still there. One on her jaw, one on her neck. Tiny bite marks, and the thought of the pleasure they had given her was curling her stomach with guilt. And hunger.
“Can I come in?” he asked, his smooth voice suddenly at odds with her senses.
He sounded patient, warm, but she saw anger in his eyes.
“Sure.” Sabella stepped back as she sipped at her wine and he entered. “It’s midnight. Isn’t it late for you to be out?”
“I don’t have a curfew.” That vein of anger wasn’t as hidden as it had been moments before.
Sabella pushed her fingers through her loose hair before heading back into the living room. This was her sanctuary, a room Duncan rarely liked coming into. He preferred the kitchen. He had never made it upstairs.
He followed her though, stopping just inside the doorway across from the fireplace and staring at the mantel as Sabella sat down in one of the
chairs, curling her legs beneath her.
There was a hint of discomfort on his face, a quiet, flash of hurt that made her chest ache. He had been a good friend over the years, he would have made a good lover or husband. If her body, her heart, had been willing to accept him.
“You keep his pictures out like he’s coming home,” he said quietly. “As though you think he’s just going to walk in the door any day with open arms.”
Sabella glanced over at the mantel, then to the long table beneath the window where other pictures sat. She probably should have put them away a long time ago; she just hadn’t been able to do it.
“Letting him go hasn’t been easy.” She finally shrugged uncomfortably. “But I’m sure you didn’t show up here at midnight to discuss whether or not my husband is coming home.”
“Nathan’s dead, Belle,” he said roughly, impatiently. “You’ve never accepted that. It’s why our relationship never worked, isn’t it? Because you can’t accept he’s gone.”
It had taken her three years to accept that Nathan was indeed forever gone. That long for her to get past the horrific nightmares she lived through for over three years. First the ones full of blood, then those full of pain and fury. Sabella had been convinced he was alive, in pain, and in those nightmares he begged her to come to him. And then they stopped. One night, they were just gone, and Nathan had left her entirely.
“Yeah.” She finally nodded. “I’ve accepted that, Duncan. And I warned you when we started seeing each other, I’m not looking for love.”
His lips thinned angrily.
“Or sex,” he bit out. “You barely let me kiss you, yet apparently the rumors that you’re sleeping with your new mechanic are true.” He flicked a finger toward her. “I know a hickey when I see one.”
“I’m not sleeping with Noah Blake.” She had to bite back her frustration, her irritation. “No matter what the gossips are saying.”
“You’re sure as hell not sleeping with me,” he argued, moving farther into the room. “Tell me, Belle, do all these pictures keep you warm at night?” He lifted his arm to indicate the mantel, the table. “Will they give you children? Will they hold you when you cry for him?”
His voice rose, the anger building inside him. Duncan was finally realizing that the warnings she had given him over the past months had been sincere. She didn’t want anything more than his friendship.
“Do you want to hold me while I cry for him?” she asked in frustration, jerking from her seat and grabbing the wine bottle and her glass before moving to leave the living room. “Is that what you want, Duncan?”
She set her glass and the wine on the L-shaped kitchen counter that doubled as a bar before turning to face him.
“And when Noah’s marking your face and your neck, are you crying for Nathan then?” Duncan sneered hatefully, shockingly, as he followed her into the kitchen.
“Stop, Duncan.” She threw him a wary look over her shoulder as she entered the brightly lit kitchen and moved to the counter. Where she felt safer.
She had never seen Duncan upset. Actually, she had never heard of Duncan becoming angry much at all. But it was obvious he was just a little pissed off right now.
She stared at him across the counter, seeing the edge of growing anger in his face as well as his eyes. His lips were thin, his expression flushed
“Do you think I don’t know why that mechanic made it this far, and I haven’t?” he accused furiously. “You’re fooling yourself, Belle. You know you are. And you’re making a mistake.”
“It’s midnight, Duncan,” Sabella argued back. “I don’t want to discuss this with you tonight or I would have asked you over. You’re not in a position to make any type of decision for me, or to question the decisions I make.”
“He’s like Nathan.” He glared back at her. “That’s why you want him. That’s why your skin is marked by him, because he reminds you of Nathan. And he’s not Nathan.”
Sabella stared back at him in shock. “He’s nothing like Nathan,” she informed him, beginning to grow angry herself now. “Nathan was nothing like him. Nathan loved me, Duncan.”
“He loved you so much that he wouldn’t even consider leaving the SEALs.” Duncan said, sneering. “Do you have any idea how often I told him he was going to end up dead? That he’d leave you alone suffering. Did he care?”
Nathan had just been Nathan. A man and a SEAL. He would have expected her to go on, and it was that simple.
“You could end up dead climbing those damned cliffs you enjoy so much,” she shot back. “Nathan was a SEAL, Duncan. It wasn’t a job choice for him. It was who he was.”
“And you were the helpless little Southern belle to pamper his ego whenever he was home. That used to make me so sick I could barely stand it.” Disgust laced his voice, his expression, as she stared back at him in surprise.
“I was his wife,” she said, confused now by the direction of his fury. “I gave him what he needed, just as he gave me what I needed, Duncan. That was none of your business, nor was it your place to judge it.”
“ ‘Oh Nathan, the oil in the car needs changing’,” Duncan mimicked in a high-pitched, furious voice. “ ‘Oh Nathan, could you check my tires?’ You’d bat your lashes and act like you didn’t know shit. Then he died and you walked right into that garage and hit those cars like a professional. Hell, Belle, didn’t you feel just a little guilty, lying to your husband like that?”
She hadn’t. Nathan had needed to take care of her while he was with her. She had needed that single-minded focus he had given her between missions. Would it have changed as their marriage progressed? She had no doubt it would have. But the two years they had been together, it hadn’t mattered. Working on cars wasn’t her life’s work. She might have enjoyed it, but she enjoyed Nathan more. While he was on missions, she tinkered on her own car, sometimes she tinkered with his precious truck.
“I never lied to my husband,” she answered him quietly. “And I never lied to you about how I felt. I told you I didn’t want what you obviously wanted from me. I told you that a year ago and I’ve repeated it, several times.”
“But you do want it from that shiftless son of a bitch that stinks of oil and grease?” he snarled.
Sabella stared back at him, her own anger rising now. “I think we’ve both pretty much accepted the fact that’s one of my favorite scents.”
“No shit,” he snarled. “You stink of it continually. Maybe I’m sick of smelling the stuff while I’m trying to eat my dinner.”
She had never seen this side of Duncan, had never suspected it existed.
“You thought you were getting Nathan’s wife.” A bitter smile curled her lips. “The little woman that sat at home and, you thought, did as she was told.” Sabella shook her head. “You didn’t live in this house, Duncan. You have no idea how little I did that Nathan tried to order me to do. And it’s more than obvious that you never cared to see beyond the surface.”
He flicked her a furious look before turning and pacing to the window.
“Get rid of him!” He turned back to her, his voice strengthening, turning hard and cold. “Fire him, Sabella.”
Her brows arched. “Rory hired him, I can’t fire him. But I wouldn’t now simply because I don’t follow anyone’s orders, Duncan, least of all yours.”
“Get rid of that bastard or you’ll end up regretting it.” His expression twisted into lines of bitter fury. “He’s dangerous. You can see it in his face and in his eyes. That’s the only reason you want him and you don’t have the good sense to see it. He’s just as dangerous as Nathan was.”
“Leave.” Sabella straightened slowly, edging closer to the phone as Duncan glared at her. “I want you to leave right now, Duncan.”
“Because you can’t handle the truth?”
Suddenly, he wasn’t nearly as handsome as she had once thought he was, not that handsome was one of her requirements. But Duncan had always appeared sophisticated, possessing an almost male elegance that w
as now marred by a severe temper tantrum.
“Because you’re out of hand.” She picked up the phone and stared back at him. “Leave.”
He glanced at the phone. “Go ahead and call the son of a bitch,” he told her. “Go on, Belle, I dare you. How much you want to bet he’s not even there. He’s out screwing someone else because you’re not woman enough to hold a man at the house. Not a man like Nathan and sure as hell not a drifter like Noah Blake.”
That should have hurt, Sabella admitted. It should have, but she knew better. She had married a SEAL, not an accountant. She had known when she married her SEAL what she was getting. There were no guarantees and she had lost early in the game.
“Then you won’t mind walking out, will you?” she told him coldly.
“Like hell!” He surprised her when he moved for her. When she finally realized Duncan was more furious than she thought, it was too late.
She had hit the first digit of 911 when the phone went flying from her hand. She threw herself back, trying to evade the hand that attempted to latch on to her wrist.
Just as his fingers curled around her flesh, she heard a furious growl, and a larger, broader, darker hand latched onto Duncan’s wrist and, before Sabella’s shocked gaze, bent his wrist back and twisted it so that Duncan went to his knees with an almost girlish cry.
Noah was icy. Sabella stared at him in shock, taking in the T-shirt and leather vest, the faded jeans and black chaps. The motorcycle boots and the chiseled, emotionless expression.
If she didn’t do something, then Duncan was a dead man. The icy rage went deeper this time than when Noah had had his hand around Mike Conrad’s neck.
“Noah. I’m getting tired of you manhandling men around me,” she told him firmly, no anger, just a simple observation. “I could have hit him myself, you know?”
His gaze turned to her as Duncan gasped at his feet.
“Let him go.” She wrinkled her nose at him as she had done with Nathan the few times she had seen him really pissed. “He’s not worth getting blood on my floors. That would really make me angry.”