by Lexi Blake
What if he didn’t want her now that Michael Evans had used her?
She’d changed her whole life to be with Alex. She loved their life together. What if it was all over?
“I can’t have a baby.” Maybe that was what had put that dark look in Alex’s eyes.
He shook his head. “That is not what the doctor said.”
No. He’d been very clinical about the whole thing. He’d talked about damage to her uterus and losing one of her ovaries in the accident. He’d nearly performed a hysterectomy. The internal bleeding had been worse than he’d thought at first, but one of the nurses fought for her. It had been touch and go for a while. “It’s unlikely.”
“Unlikely isn’t never. And I don’t care about that. I’m just happy you’re alive.”
He didn’t seem happy. He seemed grave and grim. The only time he became animated was when he was running down a lead on Evans. Then his face was flush and a passionate anger would seep into his eyes.
“It’s going to be all right,” he promised. “You’ll see. I’m going to catch him and you’ll feel safe again.”
She might never feel safe again. “I don’t want to talk about him. I want to forget him.”
She knew she couldn’t forget, but she needed to try to find some normalcy again and she couldn’t do that without her husband. She caught another glance of herself in the mirror and the deep need to argue with him fled. She couldn’t help but notice the way his eyes slid away from her. He didn’t want to be here.
He didn’t want to look at her.
Suddenly the ache inside her had nothing to do with her bones.
Alex hung his head as he grabbed his laptop. “You’ll see. You’re going to feel so much better when you know he can’t hurt you again. I’m going to give this to you. I screwed up and you paid the price, but I’m going to make this right.”
She reached out to him, but he was already at the door. She pulled her arm back before he turned. How could she tell him that he couldn’t make it right again? She wasn’t sure at this point that she could even come back from what she’d been through. It was so close. Every time she closed her eyes, she could see that face looming over her. She needed Alex to take those visions away from her.
“I need you.” She hated how small her voice sounded.
“I’m here, angel.” He set the papers down and moved toward her. He crossed the space between them. The space between. There’d never been space between them before. Even when they were miles apart, she could feel him. They were married in every way—their hearts and minds and souls melded together. But now she felt every inch of air and distance that separated them.
He reached out, his fingers brushing her, and she flinched because every piece of her skin was still sensitive.
Alex nearly jumped back, his whole face flushing with horror. “I’m sorry.”
She was making it all worse. “Please give me some time.”
She couldn’t lose Alex. She would heal. She would work. She would make her way back to where she’d been before.
Alex was at the door again. “I’ll give you all the time you need. I’m going to find him. I’m going to get him for you.”
“I don’t need that.” She didn’t want him out in the field now. Tears streamed down her face, making the world a blurry mess. “I don’t want you out there with him. Please, Alex. Stay with me.”
“I will if you need me to.” He hesitated, his fingers curling around those files that meant so much to him. “Warren can handle it. And Ian’s looking into things on the side.”
But he wanted to handle it himself. He wanted it so bad. It was right there on his face. Her heart fell. He wanted his revenge. He could say it was all for her, but it was really because he could control this part of his life. Chasing after Michael Evans was active. Sitting at her bedside and hoping she healed was not.
“I’ll be fine.” Maybe when the scars were gone, he could forget that she’d been such a victim. Maybe she could forget. Maybe they could find normal again.
“Are you sure?”
She wasn’t sure of anything. Nothing. Her world had flipped, and she hated where she’d landed. She’d learned so much about herself. She’d learned that she could break, that she was fragile.
Now she was learning that her marriage was fragile, too.
“You should go and help Ian.” Perhaps being with Ian for a few days would be good for him. Ian would watch out for him.
She trusted Ian with Alex’s life. Though Warren had been his partner for the last few years, she preferred knowing that Ian was watching his back. Perhaps Ian could talk to Alex. Ian hadn’t hesitated around her. Ian had reached for her and when she’d flinched, he’d growled at her. He’d told her he wasn’t that “motherfucker who hurt her” and he demanded that she accept his comfort.
Ian didn’t feel the guilt Alex did. Maybe he could help Alex.
She needed her husband. God, she needed her Dom so badly.
“I love you, Eve.” He whispered the words. “I’m so sorry.”
She closed her eyes as though she was going back to sleep. She heard the door close.
She didn’t need his sorrow. She didn’t need his guilt. She needed his strength, but she couldn’t ask for it because she’d changed on a fundamental level. She wasn’t his sweet little innocent sub anymore.
Time. She needed time.
She let her hand find the bandage over the spot where he’d nearly split her throat.
Did time heal all wounds? Perhaps not. Perhaps it just brought scars that proved she’d survived on a physical level.
But she might have lost her soul because she wasn’t sure her marriage had survived at all.
Eve closed her eyes and prayed for dreams of yesterday.
Chapter One
Dallas, Texas
Present Day
Alex McKay felt his stomach churn as he stared at the projection in front of him.
“Do you know how dangerous this could be?” Ian Taggart asked.
The conference room was quiet. Not one sliver of early morning light made it past the tightly drawn shades. The sun was coming up. He knew it because of the time, but in the dark conference room, it still felt like night, utterly dark, the only illumination a series of slides that depicted his life in tragic photos.
He sighed and simply clicked to the next slide. The last thing he needed was Ian telling him how dangerous Michael Evans could be. He knew that up close and personally. Michael Evans had cost Alex McKay just about everything he cared about in the world. His job. His future. But most of all the fucker had cost Alex his wife. And that was why he was going to find him no matter the cost.
“The last time I had a source contact me, they believed Evans was in Argentina, but that was over a year ago. This is the first time he’s surfaced since then.” He kept his voice moderate, like he was just going over another Tuesday morning case file and not the most important events of his life.
Adam Miles slipped into the room, sliding into the seat to Alex’s left. “Is there a reason we’re having a meeting at six in the morning? I don’t think I should have to be awake before the sun is.”
Jake Dean rolled his eyes as he followed his partner. Jake and Adam always worked together, but then they pretty much did everything together—including their wife, Serena. “He’s bitching because I refused to let him wake up Serena this morning.”
“I don’t do well without a good-bye kiss,” Adam said, sulking a little.
Ian groaned, sitting back in his massive leather chair. Dressed for business, the early morning hours did not seem to faze Ian at all. Unlike Alex, who was still in sweat pants and a T-shirt, Ian had come into work in a designer suit. It would make most men look civilized, but Ian just looked like a well-dressed gangster, the kind who could kill a man and never even wrinkle his clothes. “Adam, dude, get out from behind Serena’s skirts.”
“I spend all my time trying to get into her skirts, boss,” Adam shot back.
“If you’re all done here, I would like to continue.” Alex really didn’t have time to sit and listen to how fucking happy Adam was. “Or we can just close this thing up right now and I can handle this on my own.”
“What crawled up Alex’s butt and died?” Jake asked in a whisper that absolutely everyone in the building could probably hear.
“Shut up, Jake.” Ian leaned forward. “Michael Evans seems to have surfaced.”
“Fuck.” Jake looked up, and even in the dim light of the predawn conference room, he could see the solidarity in Jake’s eyes. “Anything you need, man. We’re here. Where’s Li, by the way? Tell me he didn’t kill the English asshole?”
“Like he bloody well could.” Simon Weston was damn quiet. He’d slunk into the room without anyone noticing. As the newest member of the McKay-Taggart Security Service’s team, the former MI6 agent hadn’t much tried to fit in with anyone past Ian. Ian seemed to have taken the man under his wing despite the fact that Simon had nearly blown up their last assignment. He’d been fooled by Eli Nelson, and didn’t Alex know that feeling. Despite his surly attitude, Alex felt a bit of a kinship with Simon. He knew damn well what it was like to get his ass handed to him on an operation. “Liam had other plans this morning, and this is just a friendly little info share. I can fill him in later.”
He’d pointedly not invited Liam this morning, and he’d lucked out because this was Liam and Avery’s weekly breakfast with Eve. Liam and Eve had gotten close over the years, and she adored Li’s new wife, Avery. They were the perfect distraction. Eve usually came in early, but Tuesdays were spent at a local café.
“Who’s Michael Evans and why does everyone look like their best mate just got run over?” Simon asked. He stood in the back, not bothering with one of the four seats left.
Alex directed his attention to the projection on the wall. It was a picture of a man he knew far too well. “This is Michael Evans, thirty-seven. He’s a homegrown terrorist. He ran a small commune in the northern section of Idaho. No name. Just two hundred acres and a belief that the United States government has grown corrupt. I’ll admit, it’s not just the US government Evans has a problem with. It’s mostly all of society. The FBI didn’t pay much attention to him until we discovered his ties to jihadist leaders in Mexico. Between 2001 and 2005, Evans made over fifty trips to Central America. The CIA marked him as a potential stateside contact for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and other associated groups.”
Simon nodded. “Yeah, I remember him now. He was all over the news a couple of years back. I was actually in the States when he was arrested. He grew drugs on that land of his and funded small cells. They bombed low profile sites, if I remember correctly. I found it rather odd that they didn’t choose high value targets.”
“Evans considered them to be very high value targets. Allegedly, he was the money behind fifteen clinic bombings across the US,” Alex murmured. Evans had managed to kill doctors, nurses, and patients, most of whom had only walked into the clinic for routine exams, but they made Evans’s hit list because the clinics were government funded and offered family planning. “He also targeted domestic abuse shelters. He liked to set those on fire. Evans isn’t really big on women’s rights.”
“He specifically targeted clinics where women got routine care and could procure birth control. In twelve of the clinics he targeted, no abortion services were provided,” Ian continued. Ian knew the file as well as Alex. It was this very case that had brought Alex to Dallas to found the company with his best friend. Ian was a head case half the time, but Alex owed him everything, and that was his only reason for having this briefing. If it weren’t for Ian, he would be on his way to the meet site right now.
“What’s his motivation?” Jake asked. “I know the case files, but I never really understood what he wanted. Obviously he’s a misogynist pig, but terrorists usually have a point they’re trying to get across.”
“Evans is a deep believer that modern America has stripped men of all their god-given rights. He wants to go back to the times when a man owned everything. When a man had full rights to his property and could enforce his own laws on that property, and part of the property included a man’s wives. Yes, I said wives,” Alex explained. “He had several wives across the country. He killed one when she turned state’s witness against him. He left behind the corpse of another woman when he fled his Idaho compound. Wherever he is now, we should be prepared that he likely has a wife or two and he won’t hesitate to throw them in the line of fire.”
“Charming,” Adam muttered.
“Yeah, well, he’s no prince.” Alex clicked through to the next slide. It was the one of Evans being hauled in. Evans was smiling at the camera, his handsome face looking more like a movie matinee idol than a mass killer. Those good looks had brought him hoards of women who wrote to him in prison or did an enormous amount of his dirty work.
Evans is a charismatic killer, Eve had written. He uses charm to draw his victims in, but in the end, he can’t consider himself a winner unless he beats a male he considers of equal worth.
God, if he’d just listened to Eve. “Evans was placed in prison awaiting trial. He had excellent lawyers, naturally. They managed to push the trial out almost two years and to have Evans held at a medium security prison to await trial.”
“He escaped in a mattress, right?” Simon finally moved in, sitting down and starting to glance through the material in front of him.
“Yes, right before the state was set to present opening arguments. He had a long-term issue with his lungs. They were damaged from a fire in his childhood, and he was on oxygen therapy from time to time. He had a breathing episode, very likely faked or purposefully brought on, and, not only did the prison doctor give him a small oxygen tank, he prescribed new, allergen-free bedding. Almost two years to the day that he was arrested, Evans was smuggled out in the bedding. It had been hollowed out. One of his most loyal followers took his place in jail with a duplicated oxygen tank. Because of the mask over his face, no one noticed until almost twenty-four hours later, not even his cellmate. They took him in for questioning, but he wouldn’t say a thing. He’d been taken out of the cell at the time, so the authorities couldn’t link him to the escape. As far as we know, Evans joined his jihadist friends in Central America shortly thereafter.”
“You said the FBI arrested him? Don’t you mean you arrested him?” Simon asked, his icy blue eyes coming up from the file folder.
“Yes, I was the arresting agent.” He said the words through clenched teeth.
“You were the Special Agent in Charge? I believe that’s the local lingo,” Simon said. “How long after this case was it before you quit?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ian pronounced.
But Simon had a right to know. “I quit two months after Evans was arrested. That was five years ago. I packed up my life and I moved here. Ian and I started this company. Make no mistake. This is personal for me. This isn’t a payday, and anyone who doesn’t want to volunteer time should feel free to walk away. I’m not going to ask for much beyond some behind-the-scenes support, and even that will be in an informational fashion. I don’t need muscle on this one.”
He usually was the muscle.
Simon frowned, obviously unwilling to give up. “Why isn’t O’Donnell around? I can’t imagine he would willingly miss this meeting. Is he already working on the case? And where is our lovely shrink? I suspect she would be helpful in this case. She used to be in a behavioral analysis unit, correct? Did she work on the Evans case with you? Could we see her files on him?”
A tense silence filled the room. They were all perfectly valid questions, and Alex resented the shit out of them.
“Yes, Eve used to work with the BAU. She was a profiler, but she doesn’t need to be involved in this case.” None of them really needed to be involved. Just him and Evans and whoever the hell this mystery contact was. He glanced at the clock. Four and a half hours. Just four and a half hours before he could meet his c
ontact and start up the nasty game he and Evans hadn’t quite finished.
“What do I not know?” Simon asked. He looked around the table, studying every man there. “I obviously am the only one not in on the joke.”
“It wasn’t a joke, asshole,” Adam said. “And Eve should be here. She has a right to know if the man who raped and brutalized her is back in the States.”
“Eve isn’t coming anywhere close to this case,” Alex stated flatly. “And if I get even a hint that Evans is close to us, she’ll be on her way to a safe house and under twenty-four seven cover.”
“Ah, no, not a joke at all.” Simon closed the folder. “I assume this is of absolutely no use. It’s going to be sanitized. I’ll research it myself. I’m rather surprised they allowed you to stay in charge.”
Simon was right about the file. He’d sanitized the thing because he couldn’t stand the thought of anyone knowing what had happened. The Bureau had kept things very quiet and the press had only gotten the merest hints of what his wife had to go through. They had enough other evidence on Evans to burn the fucker five times over.
“I was taken off the case, but I didn’t stop working,” Alex admitted. The Bureau had granted him a leave of absence, but he’d simply used it to track down Evans. He often wondered if Warren resented him for that. Warren Petty had taken over for Alex, but Alex had gotten the arrest.
“Do you think he’s going to come after her again?” Simon asked.
He lived in terror of that very thing happening. He dreamed at night of her being gone and the days that passed until she’d been discarded like a used up tissue, tossed on the side of the road in the middle of the night. She’d had to make her way to a gas station, her body naked against the snow and frost.
Had Evans intended for her to live? Alex thought he had. Eve was supposed to be a reminder of everything Alex had done wrong, of how much he’d lost and how much more powerful Michael Evans was.