I got up to check the meat, turning it over to keep it from burning.
“What about the others. How do you know them?”
“I didn’t. Not until Ash called and said he was starting a security firm.”
“Really?”
“I’d heard of Kirkland. He was a Green Beret with another team. But, as you’ve seen, he tends to be memorable. People were talking about him over there, over here, talking about his charm and his recklessness. And, I guess, Ash reached out to him because of that.”
“What about Joss?”
“Ash knew her in boot camp.”
“Was she a Green Beret?”
I glanced at her. “Unfortunately, Uncle Sam doesn’t allow women to be Green Berets. But she would have made one hell of a team member.”
A cloud of jealousy floated across her eyes. Did she think my admiration of Joss meant something more than it did? Did she really care enough to be jealous?
She turned slightly and took another long drink from her glass. I picked up the bottle and carried it over to her, pouring her another healthy slug.
Drunk might not be such a bad thing for her tonight.
“Do you remember the summer the three of us spent at that summer camp in San Francisco?” she asked a couple of minutes later.
“I do.”
“Do you remember the sunburn I got that day on the beach? I was so arrogant; I thought I knew what I was doing when I went out there without sunscreen because I live on the beach in Santa Monica. And that counselor kept telling me it was different down there, that the overcast was sometimes worse than a bright, sunny day?”
“You spent the first night in the infirmary with tea packs on your back.”
“And you snuck in and sat with me until the pain pills the nurse gave me kicked in.”
“I stayed the whole night. I didn’t leave until I heard the nurse coming in the next morning.”
“Really?”
I nodded as I turned to lift the steaks off the grill. “I knew if I got caught, we’d both be on the first bus back home. So I climbed out the window, but my shoe got caught on the sill. I thought for sure we were screwed.”
“How did you get out?”
“Shoe popped loose at the last second.”
“Lucky.”
“Always was back then.”
I set a plate in front of her and took a seat across from her, cutting into my steak to make sure I hadn’t overdone it.
“I think that’s when I started to think of you as more than just my brother’s bad-boy friend.”
I looked up. “That was eighth grade.”
“It was.”
She blushed a little as she turned her attention to her food.
We both ate a few bites before she finally looked up at me again.
“Did you ever tell Joshua about us?” she asked.
I studied her face, wondering if she really wanted to know. Then I leaned back, setting my utensils down on the edge of the plate.
“I started to a couple of times, but it seemed like something always interrupted.”
“I did, too. But I would chicken out right before the words came out. I didn’t want him to look at you different, you know?”
I nodded. “I didn’t want him to feel differently about you.”
“Do you think he ever suspected?”
I thought about all the times we would steal kisses whenever Joshua left the room, how many times he came back sooner than we expected and found us sitting too close together. There’d been a lot of that the last few months of school. A lot of excuses and outright lies.
“He might have, but if he did, he never said anything to me.”
“Me either.” She pushed the greens around her plate as though she’d lost her appetite. “I regret not telling him.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I think he had a right to know.”
I picked up my fork and knife, slicing into the meat again.
Before graduation night, I couldn’t remember a time when Joshua wasn’t a part of my life. I knew, logically, that there were seven years before that were empty. Seven years when I was alone with my parents and the succession of nannies they hired, always seeking that one nanny that would manage to allow them to forget they’d sired offspring at all. I knew there’d been loneliness and boredom. But I couldn’t really remember it.
Joshua was outgoing and free spirited. He was the complete opposite of me those first few years. However, there was something about being in his presence that helped me become something more than the scared little boy who went out of his way to avoid his parents’ displeasure even though it was often impossible. I pissed my parents off by simply existing. Being Joshua’s friend showed me that it wasn’t my fault, that I didn’t have to define myself by my parents’ narcissism.
She was right. He had the right to know.
“Do you regret it?” I asked. “What happened between us in high school?”
Her fork stilled on the plate. “I thought I did,” she said softly. “For a long time, I was so angry at you that I thought I did. But now…I’m not sure I do.”
“For what it’s worth, I don’t.”
She looked at me, her eyes shimmering with tears.
“It’s worth a lot.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, and I got lost in those eyes, in her eyes. I remembered that she once asked me why it was that I liked to look at her so much. I told her it was because she was beautiful. But it was more than that. Looking at her made me feel like I’d found the home I’d been searching for almost since birth. Looking at her made me feel safe. The expression in her eyes when she looked at me, when she stared at me with this sort of adoration, finished whatever it was Joshua’s friendship began. She was my future, and as long as she was by my side I knew it was a good future.
For the first time since then, I felt that way again.
Chapter 23
Kate
I couldn’t stand the way he was looking at me. I didn’t deserve the naked affection I saw in his eyes. I didn’t deserve to be loved that way.
I dropped my utensils and stood, grabbing my wine glass as I made my way inside the house.
“Kate,” he called, as I disappeared from sight.
I didn’t know where I was going. There was nowhere to go. I paced in front of the massive fireplace, my thoughts so wild and unorganized that I found myself wondering why someone would need a fireplace so large. What do you burn in something like that? You could probably fit a dozen people and an entire tree trunk. What do you need with that?
“Kate,” he said again, coming into the room but staying back, not even trying to touch me. If he had, I would have lost it. I would have become a blubbering fool.
“Why are you here with me? Why are you putting yourself at risk for me?”
“It’s my job.”
I glared at him because I could hear the laughter in his voice. I drank the last of the wine in my glass—and, oh, my God! It was so good!—and thought about tossing the glass at the stone of the fireplace. But it didn’t belong to me, and I couldn’t intentionally bring myself to break something that looked so expensive, especially when it wasn’t mine. So I set it down, carefully, on the mantelpiece.
“You shouldn’t be here. After the things I said…such awful things!”
“You’ve never said anything that bad.”
I shot another glance at him, only growing more agitated when I saw the twinkle dancing in those clear sea blue eyes.
“You know what I’m talking about. I told you to disappear.”
“You were hurting.”
“We were both hurting.” I shook my head, the memory of the scar on his back haunting me. “You went to war, and you could have been killed!”
“A little dramatic, don’t you think?”
I spun around, gesturing at my own back. “I’m not blind. I’ve seen the scar.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, looking s
o formidable that it was almost hard to believe someone so strong could be wounded. And that wall that he wore when I touched a sore spot, when I asked a question he wasn’t ready to answer, came over his eyes.
“You were wounded.”
“Lots of soldiers were wounded over there.”
“But if you had died, I never would have known. No one would have come knocking on my door.”
“Would you have wanted them to?”
I groaned, that question wounding me more than anything else he could have asked me in that moment. I turned, again not sure where I was headed. I couldn’t even see where I was going for the tears that were blinding me. He caught me before I’d gone very far, grabbing my upper arm and yanking me around at the same time he pushed me backward, and shoved me up against the wall.
“Tell me what this is about.”
I tried to turn my head, but he grabbed my jaw and forced me to look at him.
“Tell me,” he said, almost begging.
“You left me when I needed you most.”
I saw the pain burst open; I saw the rawness of his heart right there in the middle of some stranger’s house. And it hurt so badly that I needed to get it out. I hit him, not because I wanted to hurt him but because I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I hit him over and over again, slamming my fists against his chest. And he let me, standing there with his arms down at his sides. I hit him until the strength went out of me and my knees buckled. He caught me, like he’d always caught me before that night, before Joshua…he caught me and carried me to the bedroom.
I think his intention was to just leave me on the mattress, but I wrapped my fist in his shirt.
“Please, don’t go.”
He stared at me for a long moment, searching my eyes. And then his lips were on mine, the weight of his body slowly settling on mine. Clothes were just an impediment. We tugged and pulled and ripped, needing to be close, needing to be one together.
It wasn’t until he was inside of me, until we were as close as we could ever be, that the pain in my chest began to dissolve. I wrapped myself around him, refusing to close my eyes, refusing to lose any connection with him. And he was there with me the whole way, his eyes glued to mine even when they filled with tears, even when he collapsed on top of me and cried like a child. I held him, cradled him against me, determined to never let go.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered hours later, as we lay in the darkness, our limbs still tangled together.
“For what?”
“For blaming you. I always knew it wasn’t anything you’d done.”
He kissed the top of my head. “It was no one’s fault but the bastards who attacked him.”
I was quiet for a minute, my finger playing in the fine hair on his chest.
“Kate?”
“I know what started the fight.”
And then it was his turn to be quiet. “What do you mean?” he asked after a few minutes.
“I went with my dad to the district attorney’s office every time they had a meeting. I know what was in the police reports, what the witnesses said. And I know what John Kyle said.”
He held his breath a moment, then took a slow, unsteady exhalation.
“You knew all this time?”
“Yeah. I know Joshua was just trying to defend my honor.”
“Because of me.”
I sat up, surprised to hear those words on his lips. “Not because of you. Because of a mutual choice we made to hide our relationship.” I touched his face, caressed his cheek. “But it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t mine. It was just Joshua being Joshua.”
“If I’d been there—”
“It might have been your funeral we attended that spring.” I settled back down, my head resting on his chest. “It’s stupid, the way fate works. But I’m glad it wasn’t your funeral.”
He tugged me closer against him. “So am I.”
We fell asleep a bit later. And we both slept soundly.
No more bad dreams.
Chapter 24
Donovan
I woke from a sound sleep and found Kate nestled against my chest, her breath warm against my skin. I watched her for a few minutes, happier than I could express to find myself waking beside her each and every morning.
If only this could translate into the real world.
I couldn’t let myself forget that we were still hiding out from some sort of threat. In fact, I was due to call and check in with Ash this morning.
I carefully slid out from under her, sitting silently as I waited for her breathing to return to that deep, satisfied breathing of a soundly sleeping person. When it did, I grabbed my cell phone and a pair of jogging pants and headed out to the back deck.
“Nothing new,” Ash said when I called a few minutes later. “The police think that the explosion was caused by some homemade device placed in the garage. Probably some small device placed near a few gas cans.”
“That seems a little risky.”
“I think this was meant as a warning. The perp was just saying, ‘Hey! Look what I can do!’”
“Yeah, that would be my guess, too.”
“Emily says they have a few suspects, but she doesn’t seem too confident that they’ll make an arrest any time soon.”
“Okay.”
“How are you?” Ash asked. “How are things going out there?”
“She’s had a few little memory breaks, but nothing significant.”
“But it’s a good sign. Means she might recover her memory before too much longer.”
“That’s what she’s hoping.”
Ash was quiet for a second. Then he said, “That wasn’t really what I was asking though.”
“I know it wasn’t.” I cleared my throat. “We’re enjoying your wine collection.”
He chuckled. “Go for it. Someone should be having a little fun right about now.”
Kate was standing in the doorway when I turned to go back inside.
“Any news?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing worth talking about.”
There was a tightness that crossed her face, a tension she was fighting.
“Are they keeping my dad informed about what’s going on? Does he know where I am?”
“Not specifically. But he knows you’re safe.”
“Okay.”
She turned to go back inside, and I watched her, wondering why someone would want to hurt her. What could somebody possibly have against her, someone who knew computers and explosives? That would have to be a unique person, someone with an eclectic background. Who, besides me, could be a part of Kate’s life and know those things?
The thing was, everyone was still fixated on the idea that the perp coming after Kate was someone who was caught in the act of robbing cars, or someone who wanted to rob the bank, who killed the security guard when he happened upon this person by accident. But it didn’t feel that way to me. Not anymore.
Kate’s car was broken into two weeks before the security guard was killed. Why? What was the thief looking for? And why her car? It couldn’t be just a coincident. Someone was looking for something. Or trying to see how hard it would be to get into her car there in the bank’s employee lot.
And then her memory of the night of the murder. She said she saw something in the parking lot and instinctively knew something was wrong. Why? What was it about what she saw that she knew it was wrong? Did she recognize something? Or someone?
Then there were her dreams. She saw herself in familiar places. The feelings of fear and dread didn’t come until later. Was that because she knew who the perp was and her subconscious mind was trying to tell her where she’d met with that person before?
It all seemed to lean toward someone in Kate’s life. And I had a list of the people in her life that Daniel gave me when we took this case. But I knew most of those people, and I couldn’t think of a single person on it who met the criteria we’d worked out.
Unless it was two people
working together.
And that opened a door I wasn’t sure I wanted to walk through.
Chapter 25
At the Compound
David studied the screens of his computer monitors, watching for the anomaly he knew was coming. And there it was.
Shit! How did he let such a big hole in the programming go unnoticed? He should have checked it, should have plugged it up long ago. Closing it now was just like closing the barn door behind the horse…a metaphor he hated.
He worked quickly, modifying the code so that no one could use that particular door to hack his cameras again. And then he ran through the code of his program, looking for any similar holes that could be used to manipulate their security protocol. He’d been going over it again and again over the last few days. He felt like the kid whose clothes were stolen during gym class. But this felt more like he’d handed the clothes over to the bullies rather than them breaking into his locker.
He was always so careful. Always. This never should have happened.
“Listen up,” Ash called, “we’ve got two new, high-priority clients coming in. So I need everyone on deck.”
David ignored him, still staring at the computer code as if it would suddenly stand up and start talking to him.
And then it did.
“Shit, shit, shit!”
“Watch your mouth, brother,” Kirkland called to him from where he was sitting at the kitchen table.
Ash stood up from his desk, his eyes moving straight to David. He knew him well enough to know that if he was cussing, there was something deeply wrong.
He crossed the room in half a dozen stride, not walking quickly, just with long strides.
“Find something?”
David almost didn’t want to tell him, but if he didn’t, he might be putting someone’s life in danger.
“There’s a breach.”
“What do you mean, a breach?”
“Whoever got into the camera feeds, also got into my program. This person…” David sighed. “He’s good.”
“You almost sound like you admire him.”
“I do, in a way.”
Ash’s eyes narrowed, but he understood. David knew he did. Ash respected his enemy. In a way, this was the same thing. This person was David’s nemesis, but also his equal.
DONOVAN: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security) Page 14