by Gina Wilkins
She hadn’t given him a chance to help her. To help them both. She hadn’t trusted him to take care of himself, or her. And that lack of faith slashed at some deep, primitive male part of him that had expected his wife to turn to him for protection. To see him as her champion, strong and fearless and invulnerable.
Instead, she’d seen him as a helpless target. A victim. And she’d taken it upon herself to leave him alone, groping cluelessly for answers, blaming himself for her desertion.
She hadn’t believed in him then. He would damned well make her trust him now...even if he died trying.
“I’m calling Blake,” he announced in sudden decision. “He seems to have a great deal of experience that could prove helpful to us now.”
“You’ll just be endangering him, too.” There was desperation on her face now, mingled with resignation. She’d finally accepted that he wasn’t going anywhere until this mess was resolved—one way or another.
“I’ll tell him everything. Give him the chance to decide for himself whether he wants to stay involved. That’s more than you gave me,” he added with a bitterness he didn’t try to conceal.
She flinched as if he’d struck her. “I thought I had no other choice,” she whispered.
He stood and turned his back to her. Now wasn’t the time to get into “should haves” or “would haves.” First, they’d see about tracking the demented killer Page claimed was after them. Then they would decide what to do about their marriage.
PAGE STOOD for a long time in the middle of the kitchen, hardly able to breathe.
Gabe hated her. Even after hearing the whole story, after she’d told him she’d acted out of love for him, he was still bitter and angry that she’d left without an explanation.
She thought of all she’d done for him, all she’d sacrificed to keep him safe. Her home. A job she’d loved. Companionship. Security. She’d tossed it all away. For him. Because she loved him. She always had. Always would.
And he hated her for it
For the first time since he’d brought her here, he’d left her alone in a room with a door to the outside. She heard the low murmur of his voice in the other room, knew he was occupied on the telephone, telling her story to Blake. She looked longingly at the kitchen door.
She could run. And this time, she might even get away. For a little while.
But Gabe would follow. She understood that fully now. He wasn’t going to let her walk away again. He would keep following her until he found her...or until the stalker killed him for daring to get close to her. And there wasn’t a damned thing she could do to stop him.
Suddenly overcome with exhaustion and despair, she sank into her chair and buried her face in her hands. She couldn’t run any more. At least now, with Blake on his side, Gabe had a fighting chance. He’d finally been given his choice, and he’d decided to stay with her until it was over. She didn’t try to tell herself he stayed out of love.
No, this time Gabe intended to be the one to walk away... when he was good and ready, and not before.
She only prayed that he would live long enough to have the satisfaction of leaving her.
THE WOOD-HANDLED kitchen knife, a four-pronged fork and a dented spoon danced through the air as if they had a life of their own. Up and over, around and across. Dancing, spinning, falling. Page found herself half mesmerized by their movements, her mind numbed by fear, weariness, heartache and despair.
Blake seemed to pay little attention to the sharp instruments he juggled so casually. Leaning against the kitchen counter, he’d started juggling them almost absently as he listened to Gabe repeat the story Page had told him. He wore pearl-gray slacks with a soft, pale-blue shirt and he looked more like a handsome lounge performer than the clever detective Page knew him to be.
Blake glanced at Page. Seeing her staring at his busy hands, he stopped his juggling and nodded toward the barely touched burger she held loosely in front of her on the table. “Eat,” he prodded gently. “You must be hungry.”
She wasn’t, actually, but she forced herself to take a small bite of the rapidly cooling burger. Blake had brought fast food when he’d arrived, and Gabe had managed to consume his dinner while he’d talked. It was all Page could do to choke a few morsels past the lump of fear in her throat.
Blake looked at the penknife lying on the table, close to Gabe. The knife Gabe had taken from her outside.
“If you’re going to carry a knife, Page,” Blake commented, “you need one a bit more effective than that puny little thing.” He grinned and lifted one leg of his loose-fitting slacks, exposing a leather knife case strapped to his ankle. His knife was anything but a “puny little thing.”
She swallowed and looked away, uncertain whether he’d been trying to reassure her as to her safety or intimidate her into cooperating with him and Gabe.
Blake frowned when Page suddenly set her burger aside, her appetite completely gone now, but he didn’t insist that she eat it. Instead, he began to question her, just as Gabe had earlier. “You have no idea why anyone would do this to you?”
“None,” she answered tightly, her patience strained. “I only know that this man has killed once—twice, if you count my kitten—and that he’s willing to do it again. He has an uncanny ability to find me wherever I go, and to get within photographing range of people I care about.”
Even empty, Blake’s hands seemed restless as he plucked at the crease in his slacks, picked a minuscule dot of lint from his shirt sleeve, straightened his collar. “No jilted lovers?” he asked. “Ex-boyfriends who had reason to resent your marriage to Gabe?”
Feeling her cheeks warm, she shook her head. “No ex-lovers,” she muttered. “I...didn’t date much in school. My parents were very strict when I was in high school, and I was rather shy and studious in college. I concentrated on my schoolwork, and had very little social life.”
Something made her glance at Gabe. She found him watching her with an expression that made a shiver of reaction run through her.
Gabe could have told Blake that there had been no jealous ex-lovers. Page had been a virgin when she met Gabe—something she’d shyly told him on their fourth date. He’d been almost primitively pleased by the idea, and quixotically old-fashioned enough to insist that they wait until their wedding night to consummate their relationship.
And then he’d insisted impatiently that they be married very quickly.
Their wedding might had been perfection.
“The professor who harassed you in college,” Blake continued, apparently unaware of the new tension that had developed between Page and Gabe. “Could this. possibly have anything to do with him?”
Forcing the memories away, and hoping her cheeks weren’t as red as they felt, Page turned her attention back to the P.L “Gabe told you about that?”
Gabe shook his head. “He found out on his own.”
“Professor Wingate is dead,” Page said flatly. “He shot himself, his wife and his only child four years ago, over a year after he was fired by the university where he’d taught for more than twenty years.”
“Because of your charges against him,” Blake murmured.
“Yes,” she said, glaring at him. “I suppose you could say that he, too, died because of me.”
“That’s not what he meant, Page,” Gabe said.
“No, it’s not,” Blake agreed. He looked at her with a sympathy she didn’t want to acknowledge, because it frightened her too much to consider that she was no longer alone, no longer without friends.
She couldn’t afford to let her guard down after all this time. For Gabe’s sake, for Blake’s—for her own.
She nodded curtly. “Whatever. He’d dead. He couldn’t possibly be behind this.”
Blake tugged at his lower lip. “Tell me about him.”
She grimaced, reluctant to rehash the sordid debacle. “He was a computer science professor, nearly forty years my senior. I took his class the first semester of my final year, needing one more credit towar
d my degree. I don’t know why, but sometime during that semester, he...well, he seemed to become obsessed with me,” she said uncomfortably.
“He started asking me to stay after class, ostensibly to discuss my work, but treating me in a way that made me uneasy. He asked me out. I knew he was married, and I turned him down—which I would have done even if he had been single. He started writing me notes. Love letters. Calling me. Following me around the campus.”
“Had he ever done anything like that before?” Blake asked.
“Not that I know of. No one wanted to believe me when I told other students what was going on. He was eccentric, even a bit weird, but he seemed to genuinely like his job. He was a popular instructor, and his students didn’t want to hear anything negative about him. I tried to deal with it without turning him in. I dropped the class before the semester ended. He didn’t give up. I finally had to go to the dean. I took the letters and a message left on my answering machine to prove my claim.”
“They fired him immediately?” Gabe asked.
Page shook her head. “They warned him to stay away from me. He’d never done anything like that before, and he promised it wouldn’t happen again. Two days after our meeting with the university administrators, he started calling me again. Begging me to run away with him. Telling me he would...he would kill himself if he couldn’t have me.”
“What did you do?” Blake asked, when Gabe only growled something beneath his breath.
“I went back to the dean,” she replied, rubbing her forearms against a sudden chill in the room. “I asked for his help. That’s when Professor Wingate was fired. It was a deal he made with me and the administrators. We all agreed to keep the matter as quiet as possible, on the condition that he never contact me again. He took early retirement, kept his reputation relatively intact, his legal record clean—and I was able to finish my last semester of college and earn my degree in peace.”
“Did his wife ever learn about you?” Blake wanted to know.
Page winced. “I’m afraid so. She called me, the day after he was fired. She asked me to recant my story. She told me he loved his job, and wouldn’t be able to survive without it She...she told me she was sure I’d misunderstood. She said he loved her deeply, and would never leave her for anyone else. I felt so sorry for her, but I told her there was nothing I could do. I asked her to please not call me again, and I hung up.”
She could still hear the woman’s sobs, haunting her. Making her wonder if there hadn’t been some other way to have handled the mess.
But Page had been so young, and had no experience in dealing with anything like that Her parents were both dead, and she’d had no one else to turn to during the ordeal, except her young friend, Jessie. She’d just wanted to be left alone.
“A couple of years later, after I earned my graduate degree in Houston, I received a congratulatory note from a friend in Alabama. She mentioned in the letter that Professor Wingate had shot himself and his family. My friend thought I already knew, but I hadn’t heard, since I’d deliberately distanced myself from that whole experience. I was upset, but I convinced myself it wasn’t my fault. Even if Professor Wingate’s suicidal depression developed when he was fired, there was nothing else I could have done at the time.”
“There’s no way anyone could consider it your fault.” Gabe sounded as though he would hear no argument
Blake didn’t seem as certain. “You said the caller told you he didn’t want you to have a family. That he wanted you to be alone, as he was. Wingate shot himself, his wife, and a son. You’re sure there was no surviving offspring?”
“From what I know, there was only the one son. He would have been in his late teens when he was killed. I was told that the boy walked in on the scene just after his mother had been killed, and that Wingate then shot his son before turning the gun on himself.”
She shuddered, trying not to imagine the gruesome incident. The terror and betrayal the boy must have felt in those last frightful moments.
“There has to be a connection,” Blake muttered, still lost in thought. “A man kills his entire family because of you, and now someone else wants you to suffer. To be alone. It’s too much of a coincidence to overlook.”
Page almost felt her cheeks blanch in response to Blake’s careless wording. Because of you.
Professor Wingate had lost his job. Because of her.
Wingate, his wife, and his son were dead. Possibly because of her.
James K. Pratt was dead. Because of her.
Gabe was in danger. As were Jessie and her children. And now, very likely, so was Blake.
Because of her.
“It’s not your fault, Page,” Gabe said, staring at her with narrowed eyes, as though he could read her thoughts. “You had no control over Wingate’s actions, and you can’t take responsibility for this lunatic who’s been stalking you. The only mistake you’ve made was to run away without giving me a chance to help you.”
She knew he meant the words to comfort her. He probably wasn’t aware of the accusation laced beneath them. She bit her lip.
Blake glanced sharply from Gabe to Page. His expression softened. “You believed you had no other choice,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.
Page felt her eyes moisten. Blake understood, she thought.
Why couldn’t Gabe see that she had left him, not because she hadn’t loved him, but because she’d loved him more than anything else in her life?
Gabe stood abruptly. “I’ll get the photographs,” he said, moving toward the doorway. “You can look them over, Blake, and see if there’s anything you can learn from them.”
“Good idea,” Blake said:
Page remained silent
Without looking at her again, Gabe left the room.
“You can’t blame him for being hurt,” Blake said softly when he and Page were alone. “I know you’ve been through a difficult time the past couple of years, but he has, too.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“Do you really?” Blake didn’t look convinced. “Everyone he knows thinks his wife deserted him three weeks after the wedding. He wasn’t joking when he said there was some suspicion that he had harmed you. I heard a few rumors to that effect.”
She caught her breath. “No one who really knows Gabe could believe anything like that of him.”
“I have a feeling he’s changed since you left,” Blake murmured. “He has gained the reputation of being a hard man. Driven. Cold. He lets his guard down only with his immediate family. And even they say he’s not the same man he was before.”
Page frowned. “You interviewed his family?”
“I wanted to make sure he hadn’t killed his wife and hired me to cover his tracks.”
Page caught her breath at Blake’s phlegmatic statement “That’s a horrible thing to say!”
Blake shrugged. “He wouldn’t be the first who’d tried to dupe me.”
Page would bet that few had succeeded. Something about Blake made her uncomfortable, even as it reassured her to have him on her side.
Hearing Gabe moving around in the living room, Page looked a bit wistfully in that direction. “He hates me now,” she murmured, hardly aware that she’d spoken aloud.
Blake’s expression gave little clue to his thoughts. “Is that what you believe?”
She swallowed painfully. “I see it in his eyes when he looks at me.”
“Then maybe you’d better look again.”
Blake straightened, and pushed a hand through his heavy fall of blond hair. “Gabe’s not the only one who has changed during the past couple of years,” he said. “Could be he’s in there asking himself what you feel about him now.” she bit her lip. She didn’t want to examine her feelings for Gabe too closely. It hurt too badly to consider that the giddy, desperate, all-consuming love she’d once felt for him might no longer be returned.
As she’d discovered during the past two and a half years, there were times when it was infinitely more comfo
rtable to feel nothing at all.
BLAKE DIDN’T STAY long after he’d examined the photos. He seemed to think the best plan of action would be for Gabe and Page to stay safely hidden, at the cabin while he dug more deeply into the Wingate murder-suicide case. He still believed, he told them, that there had to be a connection between that incident and Page’s tormentor.
“I’ll stay in touch,” he told Gabe as he took his leave, tapping the cell phone clipped to his belt. “You keep your guard up.”
Gabe nodded. “I will.”
Page couldn’t help wondering if they were referring to her or the lunatic who’d been stalking her. She suspected that Gabe was almost equally wary of both of them.
Blake turned to Page before stepping out into the night. “Get some rest, blue eyes,” he murmured; touching the worry line between her eyebrows with the tip of one finger. “You aren’t alone in this anymore.”
A pang shot through her heart. He had no idea, she was sure, of how much his words meant to her. Or how badly they frightened her.
“Be careful, Blake,” she whispered.
He flashed her a high-voltage grin. “Careful is my middle name,” he assured her.
It occurred to her then that she didn’t even know his last name—at least his real last name. He was gone before she could ask him.
She turned to Gabe and saw that his face was dark, his eyebrows drawn into a fierce scowl.
“Blake is on my payroll,” he said curtly. “That’s the only reason he’s involved with this.”
She lifted her chin, stung by his tone. If he was warning her not to take Blake’s interest personally, he needn’t have bothered. She’d spent two and a half years distancing herself from others. She would not change that habit now—not until she was absolutely certain that anyone she called a friend would not be automatically targeted by a madman.
And didn’t Gabe understand that friendship was all she could ever offer any other man except him? Gabe was the only man she’d ever truly loved. She had been willing to give up her life for him, despite his doubts. Nothing had changed—not her feelings, nor her determination to keep him from harm, whatever she had to do.