by Linda Verji
“What about you?”
He kept quiet.
“Nic, I-”she started but the sudden ringing of his phone interrupted her words.
“A minute.” Nic removed his phone from his pocket and pressed it to his ear. He listened to the person speaking for a few seconds. Suddenly, his eyes flashed with anger. “What? Are you kidding me?”
The person on the other end of the line spoke some more. Then Nic nodded curtly. “Fine.”
“What’s wrong?” Melanie asked once he was done with his phone-call.
“They found Vance at the church,” Nic started. That was good news right? The scowl on his face said it wasn’t. “But though they caught a boatload of Runners during the raid, Vance somehow escaped the dragnet.”
“What?” Melanie gasped. Vance must have the luck of the devil. Twice he’d been almost captured and twice he’d escaped. “Do they have any idea where he might’ve gone?”
“No!” Nic let out a frustrated growl. “I can’t just stand around here and wait for cops to get their act together.”
“But there’s nothing you can do if you don’t know where he is.”
Nic began to pace the length of the living room aimlessly. With each stride he ran his fingers through his hair, ruffling the already unruly strands. Melanie racked her brain thinking of a way to find Vance but no suggestions came to mind. She’d been away from The Section too long to know any more of his haunts.
Nic stopped suddenly. “I need to talk to Park. You’ll be all right here, right?”
“Yeah, but-” She didn’t get to complete her sentence or even ask him what he needed to talk to Park about.
He cut off her words with a peck, an “I’ll see you later,” and made an abrupt exit.
Later, turned out to be really late.
By the time Nic eased his car back into the estate, it was after two in the morning and he was pissed. He and Park had spent the night begging the heads of DEA and FBI to activate their team. But the thick headed, pompous fools were too scared of being shown up. They’d insisted that they had everything in hand and didn’t need help. They didn’t even want Nic in their war-room. Vance was their collar. They’d bring him in.
Fucking bureaucrats. Fresh anger pumped through Nic’s veins as he walked to the front door. Let them pump their chests. But if they didn’t have Vance by the time Melanie left, they’d need a bulldozer to keep Nic from getting involved.
The house was dead silent. Nic followed the light into the den and found Diego on the couch reading. Diego took in his expression then asked, “They refused?”
Nic nodded.
“We’re still going in.” It wasn’t a question, merely a statement of fact. The man knew Nic too well.
Nic confirmed, “Yeah, but tomorrow. First we need to get Lanie and her family out of here.” He looked upwards toward the ceiling. “Are they asleep?”
“They retired about an hour ago.” Diego turned his attention to his book. His eyes on its pages, he said, “We set her brother up in one of the other rooms.”
“Where’s Rafaél?”
“Doing a quick patrol of the perimeter.”
Though Nic was sure that his men had Melanie’s safety well in hand and that she was already asleep, he still wanted to see her. All was quiet on the upper floor and his own steps barely made a sound as he crossed the hallway to Melanie’s room. He paused for a second outside the closed door then turned the doorknob.
The bedside lamp had been turned off, but the bathroom’s night-light was on giving the room a soft glow. Melanie was on her back on the king-sized bed. Sly was sprawled half over her; his head was on her breast while the rest of his body was almost parallel to the pillow. Though asleep, Melanie was the vision of motherhood. Her hand cupped the back of the little boy’s head as if protecting him from unseen monsters.
Nic felt a pang of regret. That could’ve been their son and he could’ve been in bed with them; protecting them. He acknowledged the unvarnished truth that without her his life was an empty shell.
All the money he’d inherited from his grandfather.
All the praise he’d received for capturing criminals using said inheritance.
It all meant nothing to him because the one thing he wanted most he could never have. Melanie. He’d never known a warmer, more honest and compassionate woman and there was no denying that he was still completely and irrevocably in love with her. But that did not change the fact that theirs was a love destined to remain unfulfilled. No matter how badly he wanted her, his situation was too complicated for him to do anything other than salivate from afar.
She would always be the one who got away.
He turned to leave the room, but on second thought strode towards the bed. He stood over the bed watching for a few seconds, taking in her lax features. The long lashed eyes, her small nose, the lush lips; and tattooed them into his memories one last time.
He would miss her.
He propped his palms on the pillow, bracketing her head between them, and bent his head. He touched his lips to her soft ones for one brief second. But as he began to straighten, her eyelashes fluttered. She opened her eyes. For a moment her gaze was unfocussed and hooded as she stared at him. Then she smiled; a soft sweet smile that went straight to his heart.
“Hey.” Her voice was a sexy rasp that curled around his heart like a vice drawing him towards her for another quick peck.
“Hey,” he returned when he lifted his head.
Turning towards the bedside table, she reached out to switch on the lamp. She squinted as brighter light filled the room. “What time is it?”
“Just after two.” He straightened to his full height. “Sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep.”
“No. Don’t go yet.” With practiced ease, she moved Sly from her breast and rearranged him next to her. The boy never even stirred. She sat up. “Did you find Vance?”
“No.” He settled on the edge of the bed alongside her covered legs.
“Surely someone must know where he is,” Melanie commented. “RayRay?”
“Nah, all the places he suggested were a bust.”
“Iona?”
“We haven’t found her yet.” Nic took in a deep breath and wiped his palm over his face. “I wish we could find him so this thing can be over.”
Melanie reached for his hand and squeezed. “You’ll find him.” She tilted her head back as if studying his features then moistened her full bottom lip. “I need to apologize.”
“For what?”
“For how I’ve treated you since you came back.”
His brow furrowed in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
Instead of responding, she released his hand and pushed back the bed covers. He swallowed a groan when she revealed smooth, bare and perfectly shaped legs only partially hidden by gray thigh-high shorts to match her gray t-shirt. Swinging her legs to the floor, she turned her eyes towards him.
“I was angry with you and I treated you like crap. I said a lot of things I shouldn’t have when all you were trying to do was help me out.”
“Melanie, you don’t have to-”
“Nic, please, let me finish,” she interrupted. He was surprised when she moved from the bed and sat on his lap, yet his arm automatically went around her waist. “I should’ve trusted you more; known you’d never leave unless you had a good reason.”
“I didn’t exactly give you any choice other than to assume the worst.”
“Actually you did.” She slid her hand up his chest to encircle his neck. “Nic you were the most honorable, loyal, loving man I knew… you still are. When you disappeared it never even crossed my mind that you’d walked out on me. I was sure Vance had killed you.”
“You were?” He was surprised.
“I was.” She nodded. “My aunt and Marcus tried to convince me that you’d pulled a runner, but I didn’t believe them. In my heart I knew you weren’t that kind of man.”
Somehow the thought that she prefe
rred to think of him as dead than as a coward warmed him. Showed how crazy he was for her.
“But when you appeared, alive, well….rich, I lost it.” She looked at him through the thickness of her lashes. “I chose to forget who you really are and instead took out my pain on you. I’m sorry,” she ended in a throaty, feminine whisper that left him longing to take away the frown on her face and replace it with a smile.
“I can’t take your apology. I should be doing the apologizing. I’m the one who left without even telling you I was going.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I want to say it’s because they came for me the same night…” He smiled ruefully. “… but I know that if they’d given me more time, I probably still wouldn’t have told you. You would’ve tried to stop me.”
“You’re right. I would’ve stopped you.” Her eyes softened even further as she lifted her hand to cup the back of his neck. “This isn’t the life you’re supposed to be living. You’re supposed to be an FBI agent, climbing the ranks. You’re supposed to have a four bedroom mansion in Manhattan, three kids…”
“You still remember.” He chuckled.
“I remember everything.” She stroked his hair. “Tell me it’s not too late for you to get everything you wanted. Tell me I didn’t ruin your life.”
“You didn’t,” he reassured. He didn’t want her feeling guilty over the choices he’d made. “My contract won’t last forever.”
“How long?”
“I’ve still got six years.” There was a long pause after his words. Melanie’s gaze suddenly turned contemplative, and he knew exactly what she was thinking. He protested, “Lanie, No. Don’t. Don’t even think about waiting for me.”
Without hesitation she blurted out, “Why not?”
There were so many reasons why she shouldn’t wait for him, but before Nic could even gather her thoughts, she released a sharp breath. Sudden awareness dawned in her eyes and her arm fell away from his neck. “You don’t love me anymore.”
“Of course I do.” Nic scoffed at the ridiculousness of that assertion. “But you’re not giving up your life for me.”
“Why not?” she repeated. “You traded fifteen years of yours for me. Six years doesn’t even begin to cover what I owe you.”
“This isn’t a scorecard we’re keeping of who owes who what.”
“I know that, Nicolás.” Her firm lips tightened, and she shot him a glare. “This has nothing to do with scorecards. This has everything to do with how I feel about you. I love you enough to wait.”
His heart lurched at her words, but he refused to be seduced by the promise in them. “And I love you.” His voice hardened as he added, “I love you too much to put you through the hell of pining away for me while I’m doing God knows what, God knows where. Do you know the kind of people I rub shoulders with everyday? People who’d kill me in a heartbeat if I don’t watch my back!”
“I don’t care about them.”
“You should.” He removed her arm from around his shoulder and unbuttoned his shirt. She watched him in silence as he shrugged out of one sleeve. He twisted slightly and pointed to his back. “They did this.”
She arched to see what he was pointing to. He was unsurprised by her shocked gasp. “Nic.”
He knew what she’d seen. Scarred, dark and sunken flesh courtesy of a bullet. The bullet was a gift from a rival who thought taking out Cabrera would solidify his reputation as a bad ass. If it wasn’t for Rafaél and Diego, Nic would’ve died that day
When Melanie straightened back to sitting position, her eyes were wide and her hand was over her mouth. He hated to scare her but if that’s what it took to make her see common sense then all was fair in love and war.
“As we speak there’s a price on my head in Columbia by the same people who killed my uncle and forced my mother to run away.” He sighed. “I could die and you’d never even know.”
“If you’re trying to scare me, it’s not working,” she said. But the fear in her eyes belied her words.
“If you love me then make me happy by being happy.” Desperate to convince her to his way of thinking, he clasped a firm hand over her thigh. “Live your life, Lanie. Don’t waste it on a dead man.”
“Don’t talk like that.” She punched his chest. “You won’t die.”
He wanted to press his case, but she looked close to tears. He lowered his arm to her waist. He tightened his hold around her to draw her closer but she resisted, her eyes shooting angry sparks at him. She repeated, “You won’t die.”
That wasn’t up to him. Only fate could control that. He sighed and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
It took a while for her to relax enough to rest her head on his shoulders. But even when she did, she didn’t go back to sleep. They sat in silence for what seemed like hours in each other’s arms, each buried in their own thoughts. It was his phone that interrupted the troubled silence. And with its ringing came more trouble.
“We have a problem,” Brett said. “Cece Scott’s family was attacked.”
CHAPTER 21
Aunt Honey was dead and Cece was in the hospital in critical condition.
“… Her cousin came in late with a friend. He’s one of the regulars who crush at Cece’s house sometimes so my people didn’t flag him. But a couple of minutes later they heard gunshots,” Nic explained. “Unfortunately, he attacked Cece and her grandmother before my guys got to him.”
Melanie heard his words but her mind refused to process them. She couldn’t even summon tears to accompany the deep sadness and guilt clamped around her heart. As she stood at the window staring into the darkness, her arms wrapped around her body, only one mantra rang in her head, It’s my fault.
“The doctors are doing everything they can to keep Cece alive.” Nic stepped behind her. He slung his arms around her torso, holding and comforting her. He whispered, “I’m sorry, Lanie. About everything.”
It occurred to Melanie that he might blame himself for the attack. But she couldn’t muster the energy to remind him that if it wasn’t for her, they wouldn’t even have needed to guard Cece. This was her fault. She killed Aunt Honey.
Without a word, she turned from the window and walked to the side of the bed. She crouched next to the green valise, extracted a bra, t-shirt and jeans from its recesses before throwing the clothes on the bed next to the still sleeping Sly.
“Lanie?” A puzzled Nic called out when she shrugged out of her t-shirt and clipped the bra beneath her breasts. “What are you doing?”
She didn’t even turn as she drew the padded cups over her breasts. “Going to the hospital to see Cece.”
“You can’t.” Nic strode over and grabbed her upper arm. “Not with Vance still out and about, and clearly on the war path.”
“Good. Let’s hope he’s waiting for me there.”
Nic’s voice softened. “You’re angry right now and not thinking clearly. Why don’t we-”
“Actually, I’m thinking quite clearly.” She reached for the fresh t-shirt with her free hand. “You’re looking for Vance and I’m a guaranteed way of drawing him into the open.”
Nic’s eyes flashed with anger. “We’re not using you as bait.”
“It’s not really your choice is it?” She unclamped his hand from around her arm one finger at a time then pulled the t-shirt over her head. “Do you know how many friends I have that Vance could go after? The rest of Cece’s family, The Robinsons next door, Mrs. Williams, Jo and her mum, the waitress at Purple Lotus…”
Her breath hitched at the thought of how many people were in danger because they knew her. These were the people who had helped her out when she needed it most. And she was supposed to fly off to New York, happy as a magpie and leave them to deal with the consequences of her choices?
Nic offered, “We can get people to watch them too.”
“Yes, because that’s worked out so well so far,” she ridiculed. She paused then checked herself. “I’m sorry this isn’t a
bout you or your men. This is about me and Vance.” She stripped her shorts down her legs then grabbed the jeans. “I’m done with his bullshit and he’s done terrorizing me and the people I love. He wants me? Let him come for me.”
“Lanie, don’t be foolish.”
“Foolish?” She raised her chin and shot a glare at him. “Nic? You’re the last person who should call me foolish. You’ve been placing yourself in danger, playing these cat and mouse games with Vance just so you can destroy the Runners.”
“That’s different.”
“Different how?”
“What I was doing made sense.”
“And this doesn’t?” she snapped at him. “Think about it. You’re the one who said that the only thing keeping Vance here is vengeance. Tempt him with it and he’ll come out of the hole he’s crawled into. My play makes more sense then sitting here and waiting for him to kill someone else. Besides that I’m not stupid enough to go alone.” “You and your men are coming with me.”
“We are?”
“Unless, you think Vance is too much for you to handle,” she taunted. When Nic didn’t even blink at her dare, she sighed. “I’m doing this whether you agree to watch my back or not.”
For a while, he didn’t speak. When he did his voice was full of tired resignation. “I don’t like this.”
Neither did she, but then who said standing up for yourself was an easy job.
Melanie had no intention of letting Marcus know what her plans were. And she wouldn’t have had to if it hadn’t occurred to her that waiting until night before going to the hospital made more sense. Most criminals preferred working by night, right? The darkness would give Vance false courage to attack. Anyway, she tried to act the same throughout the day but her brother picked up on it. He kept pushing and pushing and pushing until finally she broke.
Marcus was just as pigheaded as Nic when she told him.
“Whoa, hold up, hold up!” He shook his head as if trying to clear his head and he paced the length of the patio. “You telling me they’re gon’ use you as bait to catch that crazy ass nigga?”