Her Forgotten Betrayal

by Anna DeStefano

  “The lights went out in the kitchen,” she said, “and I was scared.”

  “I brought you in through the front.” He nodded toward the enormous mahogany door. It led to a porch encircling the entire first floor. “The lights seem fine in this part of the house.”

  “The front door was open?”

  Beyond the man, she could see that it was ajar. The outer screen was all that stood between the parlor and the brittle night air.

  She kept her windows locked. Inspector Dawson had given the central alarm system a once-over when she moved in, and it was always on. Even though she’d been assured it was still operational and that she was perfectly safe moving into a home the locals continued to think was vacant, she was obsessive about checking the alarm’s control panel before going to bed each night. She kept every window and entrance securely locked.

  “How did you get in here?” she asked.

  “You should keep things better secured, as far away from town as you are.”

  “I…I do.” He hadn’t answered her, she noted. She sat straighter. “Someone… Someone was here. He was stalking me. Upstairs, then in the dining room and kitchen. And you’re the only person besides me who’s stepped foot in this house in nearly a month.”

  “Am I?”

  She tensed, waiting for a sign, some signal from her damaged brain telling her whether she was sitting inches away from a person she could trust…or from the very threat she’d run from. The man raised one of his too-dark brows and gently took her hand again, helping her to her feet.

  And for the life of her, she couldn’t resist him. It felt as if she were slipping backward in time. As if they’d already shared a moment like this, many moments like this. Yet she’d swear to her grave that, as compelling and dead sexy as his features were, they’d never met.

  “Who are you?” she demanded again, telling herself to be terrified of this man but finding it impossible to let go of his hand…or of the feeling of security flooding her in response to his presence.

  “You mean, am I the source of whatever’s scaring you?” he asked, daring her to deny what she’d been thinking. When her lips parted wordlessly, he said, “Let’s go see.”

  …

  Cole shouldn’t have touched Shaw again. He shouldn’t still be here at all. Her unconscious mind had begged for his help, asked him not to leave her. But awake, Shaw clearly found his presence anything but reassuring.

  He was already at risk of being pulled from the mountain simply for making contact with her—a suspect who was a hair’s breadth away from being indicted on felony charges for espionage and treason. What was he thinking? Once he’d made sure she was awake and unharmed, and when she hadn’t recognized him, he should have backed out of the house and left her alone to heal.

  Except healing wouldn’t begin to resolve the rest of her problems, not unless she could remember what he needed her to so he could clear her name.

  Someone was trafficking in Cassidy Global’s DOD intelligence secrets, selling them to unfriendly governments, mostly in the Middle East. Too many people believed that someone was Shaw Cassidy. From the start, Cole had insisted she be treated as a witness in need of protection. In reality, she was at the top of an FBI watch list. The U.S. Attorney’s Office had spent the last six months, via a task force armed with both Bureau agents and Justice Department officers, building a case against Cassidy Global. All that had protected Shaw from indictment so far was that there was no hard evidence of her involvement, no direct links between Cassidy’s CEO and the top-secret research material cropping up on the intelligence black market.

  At first, the leaks had pertained to state-of-the-art web and Internet coding, advanced fiber optics, and the latest discoveries in nanotechnology. None of which was handled at Shaw’s nuclear research offices in Atlanta. Then, three months ago, the Iranians had gotten their hands on schematics almost identical to Cassidy’s groundbreaking designs for the semiconductors, transistors, and other high-speed elements used in nuclear instrumentation. That jump in technology, if not checked, would accelerate Iran’s march toward developing nuclear weapons. The research had come from one of Shaw’s pet projects.

  From then on, the direction of the task force’s efforts had shifted firmly toward her. Her late-night attack at her office had solidified suspicions that she was up to no good.

  The conference room where she’d been found bleeding from a superficial head wound had been wiped clean by the time security arrived. There’d been no forensic evidence of the shooting or of the meeting she said she’d overheard. There’d been only Shaw, holding the bag for everything, looking as if some under-the-table transaction had gone bad, and she’d been left for dead while her lowlife associates cleaned up after themselves and disappeared.

  Cole didn’t buy it.

  Shaw’s exile to High Lake was Rick Dawson’s show, set in place because of the slim chance that she might turn out to be merely a high-profile witness in need of protection by the Federal Marshals Office. So far, the task-force leader was going through the motions of giving Shaw a chance to clear herself. Yet every power-that-be involved with the situation saw her as a traitor who was being given a temporary reprieve while legal grounds could be secured to pry the details of her latest clandestine activities from her impaired memory.

  The wolves were circling. And Cole, the only person who fully believed in her innocence, was sitting front-row-center, powerless and watching the hammer come down.

  God, he really shouldn’t be in this house, leading her away from her grandmother’s overly decorated parlor. But she’d woken dangerously disconnected and paranoid, just as she had at the hospital. She was still seeing more of her nightmare world than she was their reality. No way he could leave her alone, not until he was certain she’d merely spooked herself, and that no one had in fact broken into the mansion.

  He’d checked the place’s dated security system while he waited for her to regain consciousness. Something had shorted it out. He couldn’t find any obvious signs of tampering. But it was still an argument for reconnoitering the place as soon as he got the chance. Before he reported her latest episode to Atlanta, he needed to see for himself what had happened. With Shaw along for the ride, he needed to investigate where it had occurred. Presumably somewhere near the kitchen, the last place where the lights had flickered on after she’d left her bedroom.

  Except there were still shadows swirling in her soft brown eyes. She was terrified, which made him wish he could slay every dragon for her until her fear went away. The fairy-tale image was laughable, but he was an honest enough man to admit that it was partly why he’d stayed, even if he was leaving himself open to an interpersonal dynamic that had nearly destroyed him as a teenager. Not that she remembered him at all. Which was as it should be. She had enough shit to dig herself out of without their past adding more trouble to the mix.

  But, good intentions be damned, Cole couldn’t stop himself from holding tight to her hand as they walked deeper into the house. When he steered her down the well-lit hallway toward the kitchen, she tried to pull back. He kept his grip firm on her hand, and on his instinct to shelter her from what had to be done. He needed answers that would make Rick Dawson see her late-night sprint as something other than an attempt to escape the task force’s clutches.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded as he drew her forward.

  “Finding out what scared you, and showing you it wasn’t me.”

  “Why? Who are you? Why are you here?”

  The tremor in her voice gentled his touch, but he didn’t let her go. “Let’s stick with one question at a time, shall we?”

  The thing about dealing with skittish suspects and witnesses was that they tended to want to be reassured, no matter how hard they fought attempts to help them face what was scaring them. Cole ushered her through the dining room and the swinging d
oor into the mansion’s dated kitchen. A frosted shade covered the overhead light that dimly illuminated the room. It cast shadows across the storage area beyond and its open door to the outside world.

  “The lights went out…” Shaw said haltingly. She raised a hand and rubbed the scar on her right temple, looking even more confused as she glanced about. “I know they did. I was heating cocoa, and I heard footsteps…” She pointed toward the dining room. “When I turned to see who it was, the lights went out.”

  “You took the cocoa off the burner first?” He crossed to the stove.

  “No, I…” Shaw stared at the pan that had been set neatly aside. The burner was turned off. Her forehead wrinkled. “I left it heating when something crashed in the dining room.”

  “What crashed?” He shoved open the swinging door to the dining room.

  Everything seemed to be where it should be. He tested the wall switch. The crystal chandelier burst into shimmering glory. He checked the carpet for footprints. It was muddy outside. Someone might have tracked in dirt or leaves.

  “There’s no sign that anyone’s been here but you,” he said. Which would be seen as another strike against her when he reported her nocturnal activity.

  Shaw peeked over his shoulder, then whirled around to stare into the storage room connected to the kitchen. The soft, lavender-colored robe she wore swirled around her like a formal gown, resettling with a sigh along the soft curves of her body. “I crawled into the back room. It was pitch black, but the footsteps were behind me there, too. I think…”

  She rubbed at her scar again.

  “Are you certain that’s what happened?” He steered her toward the storage room. As far as he’d seen, the lights hadn’t gone out at all. So at least a portion of what she’d experienced had occurred solely in her mind.

  She accepted his touch more easily this time. Her trust left Cole battling a compulsion to tell her everything he knew about how much legal trouble she was in. But even if the parameters of his assignment had allowed him to do so—which they didn’t—the doctors didn’t want the details of her situation, or her memories, forced onto her.

  And the guarded place inside Cole that a younger Shaw had trampled warned him not to identify any more personally with her situation than he already had.

  “You heard more footsteps?” he prompted when she didn’t respond. “The lights were out. You crawled in here. Then what?”

  She shook her head. “A gunshot?”

  She looked up at him. Her expression begged him to believe her. Staring into the room’s shadows, she curled slender fingers around his wrist. Her gaze turned toward the outside door. Her body tensed as if she might run.

  He flicked on the lights and squinted into the glare. The fuse box was set into the wall beside shelves that dominated the tiny room. Crossing to it, Shaw in tow, he gave the unit a thorough appraisal, checking for signs of tampering that he didn’t find. He realized his thumb was rubbing circles across Shaw’s soft palm, making soothing sweeps that he was taking as much comfort from at the moment as she was.

  The only legitimate thing she seemed to have to fear was the dissociation that was making Swiss cheese out of her mind. Which meant he needed to secure the house, then disappear from her life again. Only he was no longer certain of his ability to let her go.

  “There’s nothing wrong with the lights, is there?” she asked bleakly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. Her sweet features were hardening with self doubt, and he couldn’t stand it.

  “There was never anything wrong with them. You’re telling me that I was wandering around in the middle of the night, scared out of my mind, and there was nothing wrong. Except that now I’m managing to frighten myself when I’m awake, too, even more than when I’m having nightmares.”

  “Shaw, don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  She paced the few feet to the other side of the room. She kept her back to him, her gaze on the floor.

  “Don’t face facts?” she asked, her dispassionate tone betraying the analytical, just-the-facts scientist lurking within her. “Don’t admit that what startles me most in my dreams, the only things I can remember clearly once I’m awake, are the blast of a gunshot and trying to stop a man with no face from killing me? And, oh yeah, there’s evidently a fire now. And my mind’s decided to project a phantom attacker into my waking world.” She lifted her gaze to stare out the open door. “After this, how am I supposed to know what’s fact and what’s not? How do I trust anything, when every sound in the night freaks me out? Nothing happened this time, either, but according to you I panicked and ran anyway. And none of it was real.”

  “Shaw…”

  She swallowed. Then she turned to face Cole. Her chin came up.

  “How do you know my name?” she demanded like the queen she’d been raised to be. “Tell me who you are, damn it.”

  Her show of courage and the delicate curves of her heart-shaped face, the honey-colored hair floating around the shoulders of her soft, pale nightclothes, were mesmerizing. He wanted to tell her he’d been watching over her ever since she came back, the same as he’d protected her every long-ago summer of their youth. That there was something still inside him willing to stand between her and whatever harm she encountered. Especially after she mentioned fire being a new facet of her dream.

  That definitely fell under the heading of new information. Someone would need to investigate further what it meant to her case. Currently, that someone would seem to be the task-force agent on site. Him.

  Suddenly, Shaw flinched. She brushed him aside to get a better look at the wall past his shoulder. He watched incredulously as she traced her finger over a bullet hole. A bullet hole he’d overlooked because he’d been too damn caught up in her emotional breakdown to properly do his job.

  “You did this,” she whispered, her voice shaking with the same near-hysteria as when she’d first woken up. “You scared me to death and shot at me, then you brought me in here, for some sick reason, to convince me it never happened.” Suspicion clouded her features. “You actually had me believing you just wanted to help. You almost got me to trust you. Tell me who the hell you are, damn it, and why you’re screwing with my mind!”

  Chapter Five

  Shaw still didn’t even know this guy’s name. Who walked around a secluded house in the middle of the night with someone who refused to tell her his name? Just because she liked his eyes and his voice and touch and nearness had made her feel secure for a few lonely minutes…

  She felt her tenuous hold on sanity slip a notch further. She’d let him lead her around her house as if he belonged there. Had he brought her to the kitchen to toy with her some more? To flaunt how he’d terrified her in her own home, lie to her face, get her to believe him, and then…

  Then what?

  She’d been freezing since she’d awoken in the parlor. But now her body felt as if it were on fire, especially where this stranger had touched her. Because he didn’t feel like a stranger, regardless of how just the sight of him made her heart want to beat its way out of her chest.

  He ignored her tirade and scowled at the ugly hole a bullet had made in the wall.

  If he’d really meant her harm, why hadn’t he finished her off when he found her in the woods? Instead, he’d taken care of her until she woke. He’d been trying to reassure her ever since. And in the process, he’d managed to look drop-dead gorgeous and perfectly at ease amidst her grandmother’s ultra-feminine world.

  As if this were exactly where he belonged.

  A soft meow announced Esme’s appearance through the back door. She scampered toward Shaw, her tail twitching in irritation. The cat must have followed her outside when she’d run. Thank God her pet hadn’t been shut out in the confusion. Halfway across the room, the Siamese spotted their intimidating visitor for the first ti
me. She froze and crouched, ears back, her slanted eyes assessing her unexpected adversary. Then she sniffed, edged closer, and without dropping a beat began to rub shamelessly against the black denim of the man’s jeans.

  The little hussy.

  Shaw tried to remember a single time since her return to High Lake when the aloof creature had showed her half as much unsolicited affection. Irritation sifted through her.

  “Who are you?” she asked the man for the umpteenth time. “Why are you doing this?”

  He was fingering the bullet hole, as if he could tell something about it by touch alone. He took his time looking away, reaching down to scratch under Esme’s chin, and only then confronted Shaw.

  “Doing what?” he asked.

  It was a fair question, even though he’d never gotten around to answering any of hers. What exactly was she accusing him of? Trying to shoot her, then forcing her to discover evidence of his crime?

  “Being so smug and pleased with yourself that you make me want to smack you?” she groused. “Charming my fickle cat into liking you, when I want to throw you both out on your tails?”

  He smiled at her scowl, then chuckled. He stepped toward her. His grin fizzled when she edged closer to the same door she’d run through earlier. She snatched up her Siamese and cuddled Esme close. The charm on the cat’s collar jingled, drawing his attention. He reached up to finger the gold trinket, his jaw hardening. His friendly expression cooled to a guarded mask. The transformation left her desperate to hear him laugh again.

  “You never were the nervous type, Shaw.” His arm dropped to his side. “I figured playing it loose and easy might help you settle down a bit. Evidently nothing’s going to do that until I leave you be.”

  He brushed by her, heading toward the outer door.

  “Don’t go!” she said to his back, the surprising words flying from her mouth.

  He stopped and turned around, and she was suddenly able to take her next breath. Was she so desperate not to be alone for one more second of crazy, that she’d latch onto a complete stranger to distract herself?