Betrayed by a Kiss

by Kris Rafferty

  “He has intel.”

  “We have all the intel we need. You wanted him to convince you he wasn’t the evil fuck he turned out to be. He came right out and told you who he is. You risked both our lives because you didn’t want to believe him.” Was that hurt he saw in her eyes?

  Dane forced himself to consider her words. “He said he and Alice were lovers.” He caught her eye. “He said the kidnapping was Alice’s idea.” Yeah, maybe she was partially right. But he was right, too. “We have a witness now, a confession. If I’d left with you, we’d have neither.”

  “He’s a liar. The files will tell us the truth.” She was mad at him. “You had no right to risk your life like that. You have a daughter.”

  “I thought I should try to save him.” He studied Joe’s face, swollen and smeared with blood, and searched for evidence of evil. Dane only saw his friend in trouble. “I still want to save him, but now it’s from me. I want to kill him.”

  “Stop thinking about it.” Marnie bit her lip, glancing at him over her shoulder.

  He couldn’t. Every time he thought of Marnie inches away from Joe, armed only with a fire extinguisher, his heart clutched and it was hard to swallow. It made him want to punch something. “You can’t do that to me again. Promise, Marnie. The next time I say run, you run. Can you do that?” He wanted to put her in a plastic bubble, like he did to Elizabeth and Harper, but Marnie wasn’t like them. He had to rely on her well-honed sense of self-preservation to keep her alive, and it wasn’t enough for him.

  “Like you ran when I begged you at the cabin?”

  “That’s different.”

  She sighed impatiently. “Of course it was. Because all this is your fault, right? You’re the only one that deserves to take risks.”

  “I don’t think that.”

  “You act that way, but it’s Folsom’s fault. Whitman gave the orders, Folsom carried them out. That we know.”

  “He needs a hospital.” Joe was still out cold, but the bleeding from the cut on his forehead had stopped.

  “We need him to disappear.”

  Dane forced himself to be dispassionate about his ex-partner, to see him as an asset rather than the open wound he was, because now was not the time to grieve. They were still in the trenches. “I need him talking or he’s useless to me.”

  “If they discover we have him, it’s tantamount to telling Whitman we know everything. Who knows how he’ll react? We can’t chance it. Our first priority has to be decrypting these files and giving them to the authorities.”

  “So no hospital and no turning him in to the police.”

  “It would require lengthy explanations and confessions on our part. Too many variables.”

  He thought about what she said. “Disappear him. I’m not bringing him to the farmhouse.” Joe wasn’t getting anywhere near his family.

  “Of course not!” Marnie glanced at him over her shoulder and then turned back to watch the road. “Never let anyone know about the farmhouse. Not now, not ever. Where would you go if you had to bug out?”

  He marveled at her assumption that people needed a bug-out place. She was a survival machine. He loved that about her. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I know someone who will keep Folsom safe until he can’t screw up our plans.”

  “Who is this someone? Caleb Smith?”

  “It’s better if you don’t know.” So, yeah. Caleb Smith.

  “For who?” When she didn’t respond, his impatience bubbled over. “You’re one big secret. When will you begin to trust me?”

  She glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “You trust people. How’s that working for you?”

  Dane sat next to Joe, pushing computer cables aside to get more comfortable. He’d trusted this man completely, like a brother. “Just say it,” he said. “I’m a fool.” Marnie took a curve tightly, forcing him to steady himself against the van’s wall.

  “You’re a good man. You want to believe others are good.”

  “You think that’s a weakness.”

  “It’s a luxury.” She was gripping the wheel so tightly her knuckles were white. “I do trust you, Dane. With my life. It’s just—if it was my secret to tell, I’d tell you.”

  “You’re protecting your friends.” Everything was upside-down. The man he’d thought he could trust with his life, whom he thought of like a brother, turned out to be the man who’d destroyed it. The woman who worked for the company that destroyed his world was helping him to piece it together again. And he loved her.

  “I’m trying to protect you.” Her words were said under her breath, as if she feared they were unwelcome. They were. She was trying to save him. Once again. Was this the extent of Marnie’s ability to connect with him? Was she even capable of loving him?

  Dane buried his face in his hands, wondering how he was supposed to explain Joe’s betrayal to Harper and Elizabeth. They weren’t like Marnie. They wouldn’t shrug this off and blame it on human nature. He feared its lasting effect on his family. How could they trust anyone ever again?

  As the van swerved and bumped along the road, Dane kept his eyes on Joe and realized…they just would. He and his family would get past the kidnapping, past Alice’s murder, Joe’s betrayal—they’d find closure and move on. It wouldn’t be easy, but they’d do it, because no other path led to happiness.

  He turned away from Joe and admired how Marnie expertly drove the van through the narrow streets of Manchester. Her accomplishments never failed to impress him. She impressed him. And she trusted him with her life. That had to mean she loved him. Right?

  He’d make her see it. He’d make her love him. Dane refused to lose her, too.

  But first…he had a company to destroy.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Marnie drove north for a half an hour in relative silence. There were a million things she wanted to say to Dane, but none of them could be said in front of Folsom, and the ass was awake. And furious. He was on the van’s floor, complaining. Gagged, kicking, and carrying on best he could while duct-taped, the man was a nuisance. But he was alive. Something he wouldn’t be if she dropped the bomb she’d been carrying since she saw him with Whitman at the office. Folsom had killed Alice, and Dane was the only one in the van who didn’t know.

  The turn was just ahead; an obscured dirt road leading to the drop-off. She drove exactly a quarter mile in, nervous and covered in flop sweat. When she parked in the clearing just off the road, she purposefully didn’t look into the thick expanse of trees surrounding them. Best not to have faces to ID, lest those faces saw you as a threat to their well-being.

  Marnie had been purposefully vague about her plans for Folsom. Dane was the loyal type. This betrayal hit him hard, but Folsom had been his best friend forever. It would go against Dane’s nature to abandon him. Well, Marnie wasn’t going to allow his better angels to be wasted on this piece of shit. No good would come from it.

  When Dane eventually discovered Folsom had murdered Alice, a clarity of purpose would take him over and there’d be no saving either man. Dane would kill Folsom, and the universe being the bitch that she was, he’d get caught and spend the rest of his life in jail. Elizabeth would lose her father. Totally unacceptable. If Folsom was going to die, someone else had to do it. Not Dane.

  Caleb’s men would put him in the right locker, the one where live people took a vacation until they were no longer a glitch in a grift. When next Folsom saw the light of day, everything would be over. Dane would know what Folsom had done but have no access to him. She didn’t suppose Dane was going to thank her for taking this decision out of his hands, but Marnie would be long gone by the time he realized what she’d done.

  She turned off the headlights, hating the pitch black outside the windshield. She found it ominous, and threatening. “Folsom will be safe with these people, held for a price. When everything’s over, when you want him back, we hand over a fee and Folsom will be delivered exactly where you want him—your front door or the steps o
f the Manchester Police Department. It’s your call.” She’d emptied Folsom’s pockets earlier and found thousands of dollars in his wallet, his phone, keys, nothing much more. She hopped into the back of the van, hunkered down next to Folsom, and put the cash into his coat pocket.

  “We might need that,” Dane said.

  “He’ll need it more.” Marnie opened the sliding side door, pressed both of her feet against Folsom’s body, and shoved him out. He landed with a grunt. She slammed the door closed and then hurried back behind the wheel. Lights on, Marnie revved the engine, peeled out, did a three-point turn, imagining dirt and stones kicking up from the tires, dusting the evil son of a bitch.

  Dane watched through the rear window as Folsom’s inert body was swallowed by the dark. Shoulders bowed, Dane didn’t look like a guy who’d won the day. He seemed defeated and she hated that.

  “This is the right thing to do,” she said. “We don’t have time to babysit the guy, and if he somehow got news to his boss we have the files, who knows what kind of heat would come raining on us? We’re under the radar now. I want to stay that way until we’re done.”

  “Joe said Whitman Enterprises was one of many. That Whitman has a boss.”

  “Not my monkeys, not my circus.”

  He hopped into shotgun, holding onto the dashboard to keep himself steady as she sped over ruts and roots along the way. “Why did you leave the money?”

  “So they won’t kill him.”

  His eyes widened. “Good to know.”

  “You want to question him. So he needs to live.” She glanced at him. “You need him to live.”

  “I want to see those files before we do anything with them. How long will it take to decrypt them? Can I pull them up on one of these computers?”

  “No.” She wasn’t ready to face Dane knowing the full truth.

  “Why?”

  “Not here. We’re in the open.”

  “When? How long will it take?”

  “Soon. And not long.” It was almost over. She refused to think of what that meant for her. Personally. So much good and so much bad mixed together, it would take years to process her decisions and figure out if she’d made the right ones. She had no more excuses to be with him. It was time to fix everyone else’s lives that she’d touched while working at WE, and Dane needed to start building a new life with his family.

  She hit a particularly deep rut. Dane winced as he braced himself. “At WE. I told you to go. Why did you come back for me?” he said.

  That was a million-dollar question. When their time clock expired, the twenty minutes were up, instincts and training screamed run. So she ran. Marnie of a few years ago would have kept going. Now, she couldn’t imagine leaving him. She loved him.

  Dane was staring, reminding her he’d asked her a question and shut up wasn’t the answer he was looking for. She felt defensive and vulnerable. It was one thing to know her feelings and fears and another to reveal them. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Something.” He had an agenda. She could see it in the set of his jaw and the intent way he was focusing on her.

  She had to protect herself, so she deflected. “Here’s something. You’re sitting there, alive, with all the evidence you could possibly need to bring down Whitman’s world. You’re welcome.” His confusion was marked. She didn’t blame him. Marnie was sure if she were normal, she’d know exactly what was expected of her in this conversation, but she wasn’t, and what she wanted to say had no business being said. She didn’t belong with someone like Dane, and he’d figure that out sooner or later. From experience, Marnie knew sooner hurt less. “Listen. It’s over. I’ll drop you off at the farmhouse, and you’ll never see me again.”

  He dismissed her words with a shake of his head. “It’s not over. I’m going to need to speak with Joe. After I hand in the files.”

  “I’ll contact you.”

  “Pull over,” he said.

  “We have to—”

  “Just pull over!”

  Marnie flinched as Dane’s booming voice filled the cabin. She checked the rearview and saw they were alone on the road. It was near midnight, and she was too tired to fight. She drove into a parking lot of a closed bike shop, stopping as far from the building as possible in case they had active security cameras.

  “What?” She threw her head back and closed her eyes. If he tried to break through her protective shell, she’d dissolve before his eyes. She needed to hold everything in—the fear, the sorrow, wishful thinking, hell, her unrequited love. She and Dane were never going to play house in a white-picket-fence community and pop out two-point-five kids and adopt a poodle. Things like that didn’t happen for Marnie.

  “Look at me.” He lifted her across the seat onto his lap and kissed her. She welcomed his heat, his arms around her. Before she could stop herself, tears overflowed. His tenderness had her chin quivering. He wiped her cheek, but more tears replaced them. “Talk to me. I’m here, Marnie. Why can’t you let me in?”

  She took a breath, but it sounded like a sob. She wanted to tell him she was fine, let’s go, but instead she rested her head on his chest and allowed him to hold her and to caress her back. “I don’t know how,” she said, “without being afraid. So I don’t.”

  He dropped a kiss on her forehead, and it made her feel cherished. She hated how much she’d come to need him, despite knowing they had no future. She wasn’t enough, and there was no changing that. How could she remake herself when the raw material of who she was had become so implacable? No move to some different locale, no purchased identity would change who she was. She was damaged, and that didn’t wash off.

  “Do you trust me?” he said.

  Marnie could count on one hand the people she trusted. That she trusted Dane said a lot about the man. “Who wouldn’t? You’re a damned hero.”

  He squeezed her. “A fool.”

  Wiping her tears, she scowled. “Stop. You were betrayed. That’s not on you.”

  “He wouldn’t have fooled you.” His smile was sad as he pushed a lock of hair off her cheek. “How do you do that? How do you keep yourself safe like that? It’s as if you’re untouchable. Shit storms come and go, but you stay steady, bulletproof.”

  That wasn’t her. He didn’t know her. “No one is bulletproof.”

  “No. I guess not.” He pulled her back into his embrace. “But your defenses are so strong it sometimes seems that way. What happened to you, Marnie? Who made you this way?”

  She wanted him to know her. On some level, she’d needed it since the first moment she saw him over Skype. In the middle of nowhere, nearing midnight, it felt as if they were separate from the world and not obliged to cater to its sensibilities. There would never be a better time or place to share her sordid story with him, and maybe this time her weakness wouldn’t hurt her.

  “My mom’s an addict. She started on heroin, ended on crack. She’s in recovery, day by day, but that’s relatively recent. She spent her life hooking to chase her next fix. Having a kid didn’t change that. Then one day when I was eight, she disappeared, abandoning me at a flophouse. I know now that I was lucky she forgot about me. She could have made a mint pimping me out.” MacLain’s hand stopped rubbing her back. His breath stilled. Whatever he’d expected her to say, she guessed that wasn’t it. “I lived there, ignored mostly, until it was all I knew. My life became about hiding in plain sight, stealing food. Then I fell into a gang of kids, and they sort of took care of me. Not many of them are still alive—ODs, gangs whittled us down to a few. Caleb is one of them. He didn’t hide as well as me. He was always getting hurt protecting someone or other. By the time we met, he was recovering from a particularly brutal attack. A group of us left the house soon after.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Ten, maybe? I don’t know. We met a guy that showed us how to pick pockets, and the rest, well, that came easy. We decided it was easier to hide if we didn’t have to duck from social services, so we cleaned up and blended.”r />
  “You went to school. I saw your high school yearbook.”

  Marnie pulled out of his arms, studying his expression. “You did a background check on me?”

  He rubbed his thumb across her lower lip. “I googled you.”

  “Planted information.” She licked where he touched.

  “It was a good picture,” Dane said. “Your favorite teacher was Mrs. Mountford?”

  He wanted to kiss her, she could tell, and she found an answering want inside. Marnie wiped her cheeks dry. “If I was to have a favorite teacher, I’m positive her name would be Mrs. Mountford.”

  “So none of it is real.” He lowered his forehead to hers, and his breath warmed her face. “I’ve never met anyone like you.”

  There were plenty like her in the world. Just not in his world. “Trust no one. Make a living.” His lips were so close. All it would take would be a lift of her chin and she could kiss him. “Is there more to life?”

  Dane angled his head, positioning himself to kiss her. His gaze never left her lips. “Yes. There is.” Marnie went still, waiting for the exquisite pressure of his lips on hers. “Has anyone ever loved you? Do you know what it feels like?” The heat of him, poised to kiss her, created a painful anticipation. Was he declaring himself? He loved her? Marnie tried on the fantasy like a robe, but it didn’t fit. It felt like a trap.

  She leaned back. “I play people, they don’t play me. Don’t pretend you love me to get me to decrypt the files.” She struggled to move off his lap, but he wouldn’t let her.

  He was smiling. “Okay.”

  Confused, she tried to read him. “Huh?”

  “I won’t pretend.” His words made her heart sink. “I’ll only tell you the truth.” He kissed her, gently rubbing his lips against hers. It was the least demanding kiss she’d ever experienced, and it had her melting against him. “I love you, Marnie Somerville. Don’t leave me. Stay and see what happens. Maybe you could love me, too.”

  His words hit her like a cold splash of water. This was happening, and nowhere in her repertoire of defense mechanisms was there any plan B to fall back on. He said he loved her. She was moments away from never seeing him again. This was not something she was willing to let pass without wringing it dry.