by Cynthia Eden
“Is there anything going on between you and the deputy?” I shouldn’t have asked that question. What in the hell am I doing? This was professional, just a case.
Just. A. Case.
“What?” She gave a little laugh, one that he liked because it was so sweet, almost musical. “Of course not.”
He didn’t think the deputy would have responded with such a fast of course not.
“Why do you even ask?” Bailey wanted to know. Then she gave a bitter laugh. “Trust me, there’s nothing going on with anyone.”
His head cocked at those words. She was so freaking gorgeous. Every man who saw her probably wanted her . . .
Maybe she doesn’t want them. He cleared his throat and said, “I just like to know where things stand.”
She shook her head and—
“Actually, if we’re talking about where we stand . . .” Asher knew he should stop while he was ahead—or at least, not too far behind—but his big mouth just kept going. “There’s something I think you should know.”
Now she turned toward him fully. He didn’t move from his position near the bed. Did she realize this room smelled like her? The whole house seemed to carry that feminine, tempting scent of lavender.
“What’s that?”
I want you. I look at you, and I ache. And I know you’re a client and I’m supposed to keep my hands off you . . .
If he told her that shit, she’d probably fire him on the spot. The woman had been through a living hell. The last thing she needed was his lust. Do the job, Asher. Do the fucking job.
So Asher yanked a hand over his face. “Just wanted you to know you don’t have to be scared,” he muttered. “I’ll be here if you need me.”
“Thanks, Asher.”
“Ash,” he told her. “My friends call me Ash.”
She gave him a slow smile. Sexy as all hell. Then she slipped from the room. He heard the faint sound of her soft footsteps as she headed down the hallway. A moment later, her bedroom door closed softly.
Damn. His first big solo case, and he was about to screw things to hell and back because he kept getting a hard-on for the client. What. The. Actual. Fuck?
She’d mentioned seeing a shrink.
Asher shut the door to the guest room then yanked out his phone. He needed someone to ground him, and he needed it fast. So he called the one person he always counted on—
And his twin sister, Ana, picked up on the second ring.
“Tell me you aren’t in trouble already,” Ana said, her voice sounding a bit sleepy, and he knew he’d woken her up.
“Might be.” He paced the confines of the room. “This case . . . this client . . . it’s not what I expected.”
“Nothing in life is.” Ana’s voice sounded more awake by the second. “You need me there?”
“Something happened tonight. A caller—some jerk who threatened her. When I went outside, the creep was in a car down the street. He came at me.”
“What?”
“Local deputies are on the case, but I didn’t exactly get blown away by them.”
“You need me there.” She was definite.
“Not yet. I’m going into the mountains with Bailey tomorrow. Let me see where the day takes us. See if I find anything—” He gave a grim laugh. “And let’s see if the deputies manage to surprise me by actually locating that jerk.”
Silence drifted over the line. Then Ana said, “Your voice sounds funny.”
His hold tightened on the phone.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
He turned to look out the window. Saw only darkness out there. “You think I could ever be . . . normal?” She was the only one he’d ever talk to about this.
“Asher.” A brisk demand. “You are normal. Screw what any bozos told you—”
“You know I’m not.” She knew all his secrets. All his pain. Better than anyone, she knew the rage he carried, too. A rage he’d tried to work out as a SEAL. A rage that never ended. “I’m sorry, Ana.”
“No, don’t. Don’t. Don’t go there again. What happened . . . you know it wasn’t your fault. Stop it! Do you hear me?”
He heard her. But . . . “There’s something about my client . . .”
Ana sucked in a sharp breath. “Asher?”
“I look at her, and I . . .” No. Just, no. “She’s already been through enough.” So she didn’t need to take the devil to her bed.
The devil. That had been the nickname given to him by his SEAL team, with good reason.
“You’re a good man,” Ana told him.
No, he wasn’t. Not really. Ana knew that.
“I’m glad you came to work at LOST,” Ana said.
He smiled. “I did it because you dragged my ass there.”
“Kicking and screaming,” she agreed, “but . . . you belong there. We both do. I know we can help people. And if anyone understands going through hell, it’s us.”
He tried not to think of the past because it just made his fury worse. But the past was always there, along with the knowledge that at just fourteen years old, he’d killed a man for the first time.
He just wished he’d been able to kill that bastard sooner.
“It’s different than bounty hunting,” Ana said with a quick laugh, “that’s for sure.”
Ana . . . small, petite Ana had been one of the toughest bounty hunters in the U.S. Gabe had lured her into joining LOST because the woman was truly a master tracker, and he’d wanted her as part of his team. Once Ana had been on board, then both Gabe and Ana had convinced Asher to come join LOST.
Different, yes.
“Different from being a SEAL, too, huh?” Ana murmured.
“Yes.” Because as a SEAL, he hadn’t spent time with victims. And maybe that was the issue. He wasn’t used to seeing someone else’s pain this way. All up-close and personal. And when he saw Bailey’s pain . . . I want to fucking stop it. By any means.
“You always wanted to save the world.”
No, he’d wanted to save Ana. He hadn’t. He’d failed his sister.
Maybe, though, maybe he could help Bailey.
“If you change your mind and want backup, I’m there,” Ana said.
She always was. “Night, sis.”
“Night, Ash.”
He hung up the phone. Asher turned off the lamp, stripped, and climbed into bed. For a moment, he just stared up at the ceiling. Bailey had said that she was tired of hearing the other woman’s screams every time she closed her eyes.
Asher had understood exactly what she meant. Hell, yes, he had. Because he heard screams when he closed his eyes, too.
Only they were his own cries. The cries of a fourteen-year-old kid. They would always haunt him.
Let my sister go! Stop it! Stop, please! Don’t hurt her.
His eyes closed. And he still heard the screams.
Chapter Three
The cabin had burned fast and hard. The firefighters had been able to stop the blaze only at the end—keeping up one wall and some blackened boards.
Bailey stared at the cabin. Or rather, what was left of it. Hardly anything at all. She could only remember the interior of that place in rough flashes. The wooden floor. The nail sticking up. The creak of the door to her room—
“Probably not going to get much from that place,” Asher said as he stared at the remains. He had on a pair of dark sunglasses, so she couldn’t see his gaze. His expression was guarded. He’d been that way all morning—guarded, careful. He’d spoken to her—very, very politely—during the journey out to the cabin. During the night, something had changed with him, only she didn’t know what it was.
She’d barely slept the night before. No big surprise. She often didn’t sleep, but this time, it hadn’t been nightmares keeping her up. Bailey had been thinking about him.
About how his touch made her heart race. How her breasts had tightened and ached when his hand had caressed her cheek. She hadn’t responded to a man in a very, very long time. She hadn
’t even been sure that she could respond. Like . . . maybe something had broken inside of her during the attack. Just shut off. Desire hadn’t been part of her life, not in so very long.
But things seemed different with Asher. She’d just met the guy, yet her body seemed to be revving to life. She was far, far too sensitive to him. Too attuned. That couldn’t be normal.
Or am I just getting desperate? Her gaze slid toward him. Did it matter? Maybe she should just be happy to feel something other than fear. Desire was a nice change for her.
“Lay out the scene for me,” Asher said, his sharp voice jerking her back to reality. “Tell me what I should see here.”
Hell. That’s what I see—I see hell. Bailey stepped closer to the cabin. She could still smell the fire—or maybe that was just her imagination, remembering that night. “They found the body, well, the remains, in the back room.” She pointed. He’d been in the room near that remaining wall. The Death Angel. The cops had never been able to identify his body, probably because there hadn’t been enough to identify. She knew the crime scene team had found teeth, but no dental records had ever matched up with the killer.
The Death Angel had taken his true identity to the grave with him.
“Anything special about that room?”
Her tongue swiped over her lower lip. “I think . . . I think that was the room he had me in.” Her head turned. “There was no electricity in the place. The guy had everything off the grid. Wyatt said that was one of the reasons why it was so hard to find the killer.” He’d built the cabin on his own, used solar panels to get light, then brought in lanterns, too. He’d dug a well—done everything on his own. A perfect prison that no one had known about.
Not until it was too late.
“Tell me more about it.”
She inched closer to the burned wreckage. “Not much to tell.” Her fingers fluttered over an old, tattered line of yellow police tape. Then, giving in to a compulsion that filled her, she slipped under the tape and went into the place that had once been her prison. Her hiking boots crunched over the ash. “The room was small. Maybe ten feet long? No window. Only a—a bed for furniture.” She’d stumbled over that part. She hated to remember being trapped in that bed. At first, he’d tied her hands to the old headboard. Her legs had been bound to the footboard. Then he’d used his knife . . .
But she’d struggled so hard when he’d been hurting her that she’d broken the headboard. He’d bound her hands together then, so tightly.
Her gaze slid to the scars on her wrists.
You shouldn’t hide them.
Royce had been horrified by her scars. You were perfect. His words haunted her. Were. In his eyes, she’d seen that he didn’t think she was so perfect any longer.
I never was perfect. It was always a lie. A great big lie.
She found herself walking toward the back of the cabin, going unerringly down what had once been a hallway, even though that corridor was long gone. Then she was there, standing in the blackened remains of her room, the wind blowing through her hair.
“Walk me back through the night you heard the other woman.” Asher had followed behind her, his steps silent. “Show me what happened.”
The bed had been to the right. Against the wall. She pointed. “I slid from the bed. Then I crawled to . . .” She moved, counting the steps. Bailey stopped and pointed at her feet. “Here. I used the nail to get free. It was sticking up out of the wooden floor.” She hurried to the door. “He’d left the door unlocked, because I was tied up and he didn’t think I would be any trouble.”
“Guess he was wrong.”
“Yes . . .” She advanced.
He followed.
“I was going to try and run out, but I heard her screams.”
Help me!
She turned then, only—nothing was left of the other room. “The other woman was in here, on the bed. He was over her. I ran at him, hit him as hard as I could.”
Asher was glancing around, bending down, touching the black soil—was it soil? Or remains of the old floor? Soot? She couldn’t tell for certain. “When he grabbed me, she ran out.”
Asher looked up at her.
“He choked me until I passed out, so I don’t know if she came back. If he went after her or . . .” Or if she kept running.
Once more, Asher surveyed the scene around them. “I read the fire marshal’s report last night.”
“You did?”
“Had a little trouble sleeping,” he murmured. “So I booted up my laptop. Gabe had sent me some files, so I just did a little reading.” He rose, brushing off his hands. “The fire marshal thinks the blaze started here, in this room.”
The other woman’s prison.
“That’s why the damage is so severe in this spot. Based on his findings, gasoline was poured all over the cabin. It wasn’t some accident. He figured the Death Angel was trying to destroy evidence.”
“But he wound up killing himself in the process.” And she was glad.
“Probably didn’t understand how fast the fire would burn. It spread out of control, and he found himself trapped.”
“In a room with no window.” She remembered that. There had been no window when she burst into that little room. No furniture—other than the bed.
“Will you show me where Deputy Bliss found you?”
My grave. “Y-yes.” She quickened her steps as she left that blackened mess behind. Had the Death Angel screamed while he’d burned? Had he begged for help?
Like his victims had?
Thick brush and trees waited just thirty feet away. Some had been burned—pines were scorched, their trunks dead. The fire had taken them, too.
She slipped through the woods. There was a trail there now, one that hadn’t existed before. The crime scene teams had made the trail when they came to dig up all the bodies. The dogs had been there, again and again as they searched for more remains. Cadaver dogs.
Asher was right behind her. She could practically feel him there. Strong. Silent.
Bailey turned to the left.
A line of graves. Well. That was what it had been, before.
The holes had been filled in since that terrible night. Probably because the sheriff had been afraid some dumb tourist would come up and fall in one. Right after the murders, a ton of folks had come out—to take pictures. To gawk at the graves.
Five graves. Four bodies had been recovered—and . . .
Me.
“My grave was the last one, over there, on the right.” She pointed.
“It wasn’t your grave.”
Her gaze whipped up to him. She saw a muscle jerk in his jaw.
“Not your grave, Bailey.” He seemed to be gritting out each word. “The bastard tried, but you are alive.”
So why couldn’t she feel that way? Dead girl walking. Yes, she’d started saying that about herself lately. Because it seemed all she was doing was just going through the motions. The Death Angel had taken something from her. She’d fought him, so long and hard, but in the end . . .
When she’d been in the ground. When the dirt had been falling on her as she tried to claw her way to freedom . . .
Maybe she had given up then. Or maybe she’d given up after . . . after she’d gotten out of the hospital, when she realized that the only people who seemed to care about her story . . . that would be the reporters who wanted to make money off her pain.
Her family was gone. The pain from her parents’ death still haunted her.
Her lover had left her.
Her friends . . . being with the few who’d visited had just become harder and harder as more time passed. Their lives were normal. They wanted her to be normal, too. And she couldn’t be.
Asher paced toward the graves. New, dark dirt marked them, barren of any grass.
“I think . . .” She cleared her throat and tried again. Like she could do much to make her voice stronger. Another scar from the Death Angel. “I think he was done with me, so he had my grave ready. H
e had another victim to play with—the dark-haired woman. He wasn’t ready to kill her, so he didn’t have a grave for her. Not yet.”
Asher’s hands were on his hips. His gaze was on the rugged terrain around them. The mountains. The trees. “It would be hard for her to get out of here on foot.”
They’d driven forty-five minutes from her home, then hiked for six miles in order to get to the Death Angel’s cabin.
“A woman scared, hurt, running desperate in the middle of the night . . .” Asher gave a low whistle. “There are some jagged cliffs up here. It would have been easy for her to fall.”
“Wyatt and his team searched—they took out their dogs but . . .” Now she stared at the mountains, too. “I feared the same thing. Maybe she is still out here. Maybe she never made it out of the mountains.” Maybe she died out here and no one ever found her remains.
He surveyed the area. “You up for some more hiking?”
“I—”
“We’ll go back to town first. Gather supplies. Then I’d like to spend some time out here, doing a better search of the area. We can get a map and you can show me the locations that the deputies searched. We’ll eliminate those and we’ll hit other targets that seem likely.”
This was happening. She wasn’t being brushed off. Wasn’t being told she needed to move on with her life. He believes me. “Yes, yes.” Bailey nodded briskly. “I’m definitely up for more hiking.”
“We should come back before nightfall.”
She hadn’t been in the mountains at night, not since her attack. Goose bumps rose onto her arms.
“If we’re here at night, we can see what she saw,” Asher continued briskly. “It was night, she was desperate—if we come back at night, we might see lights—see something that she saw, and that can give us a potential lead.”
Going out at night—yes, okay, it made sense. Bailey rubbed her sweaty palms on the front of her jeans. “I used to hike up here all the time. I knew nearly all of the trails.”
“Then you’ll be invaluable to me tonight.”
Would she? Or would she turn into a basket case? I won’t. I’m not going to be this person anymore! I hate being like this.
He strode toward her. Bailey felt her body stiffen. She did that when most people got too close. A visceral reaction. Don’t attack. Don’t hurt me!