“The nightmare was awful.”
Kellee spoke the words so softly, he wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. She wiped her face with a tissue. Her eyes were clear, not hazy with tears or sleep or fear.
“Take your time,” he coaxed. “Don’t force anything.”
Pink splotches mottled her nose and cheeks. To Egan, she looked stubborn, strong and unwilling to give up. The startling urge to pull her into his arms and kiss her punched him hard. Warmth radiated off her half-covered body, making it hard to focus. Disheveled and enticing, he realized she was far too close. He scooted a few inches away. The distance offered little defense from the temptation she presented, but helping her feel at ease was more important than his discomfort.
Kellee took a quivering breath. “I dreamt about my apartment just before the hurricane struck.” Her eyes widened. “I remember my apartment.”
“That’s a good sign.”
Kellee shook her head. “No. It’s not. I don’t ever want to go back. Please. Don’t make me go back.”
“It’s all right.” He was unable to keep from touching the back of her hand. “You’re safe with me. Can you tell me what happened? Take all the time you need, sweet Kellee.”
“What did you just say?”
Egan leaned back, silently cursing himself for the unconscious slip. If he wanted to hear what she remembered, then he had to give her a reason to trust him. He confessed, “I used to call you ‘sweet Kellee’ while we trained. I also called you ‘brat.’ I supposed it depended on your behavior. Maybe you don’t remember.” In my mind, you’ve always been sweet Kellee.
She smiled, and recollection lit up her eyes like the sun breaking through a rainstorm. “You called me that when you wanted me to do something.”
“Not always. Although, I do want something now.” She drew him in like a slow tide. His palms skimmed down her arms. How could her skin feel like ice when he felt on fire? He pulled his hands away. “Tell me anything you can recall, no matter how insignificant you think it is.”
Her face sobered. He thought she might start crying again and almost told her to let it go. As hard as it was, he had to let her continue. Only she had the information he needed to assess the danger they faced.
“The storm blew in fast.” Her words were hesitant as she began to relay her story. “I was late evacuating because I had been out on a case. As I was packing, someone pounded on my door.”
She paused for a long moment. Egan’s chest tightened. “Was this your dream, or what really happened?”
“I’m sure it’s what happened. Until now, I didn’t realize I’ve been dreaming the same thing over and over since I woke up in the evacuation center.”
“That’s good,” he said. “We’re making progress.”
“When I answered the door, a stranger rushed in.” She seemed to stare through Egan, as if she was seeing something far beyond the walls. “At first I thought he was looking for shelter,” she continued. “Then he told me he was taking me to meet my father.”
“Your father?” Byron never mentioned he’d sent someone to her apartment before the storm.
“Except, it wasn’t me he wanted,” Kellee said. “He called me Katya.”
“Katya?” Egan searched his mind for everything he knew about the O’Neals, but couldn’t place the name. “It sounds like he was looking for another woman.”
“That’s what I thought. But, he kept insisting I leave with him.” She shivered.
Egan was ready to tell her to stop. He wished he could take away her trauma. Instead, all he could offer was encouragement. “Do you remember what happened next?”
“I refused to leave with him.” Her gaze shifted as though searching her memories. “He showed me a picture of a woman and said she was my mother. He said he was taking me to my real father.”
Her hands clenched and knuckles grew white. Where she drew her strength from, Egan couldn’t imagine—but she continued as though her life depended on finishing this story.
“The strange thing was the woman in the picture looked like me.”
Egan tried to piece together Kellee’s story with the information O’Neal had given him. The details didn’t fit. “Looked like you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you recognize her?”
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. “I’m sure she wasn’t my mother.”
“Did the man hurt you?”
“Not…not at first.” She lifted the tissue and caught another tear before it fell.
He clamped down on the urge to lash out. Sliding closer, he gathered her into a hug. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “Don’t think about it.”
“I can’t help it.” She rested her head on his shoulder. Her ragged breath pulled like a dull saw against wood. “He was looking for someone else, and I killed him. If he had left when I asked, he’d still be alive.”
“It’s possible this was all a strange coincidence,” he said.
“I looked like the woman in the picture. How can it be a coincidence?”
He stroked her hair. “You’re still healing. Your memories may be a bit disjointed. In time, it will make sense.”
Her breath tickled his neck, sending warmth throughout his limbs. He held her close and it took all his will power to stay focused. “Can you remember anything else? Do you know how the man died?”
“When I told him to leave, he grabbed my arm.” Her breathing quickened. “Somehow I got free and then he came at me with a knife.”
“Is that how you got this cut?” He tilted her chin to look at the small wound beneath her ear.
“He didn’t stab me. I side-stepped his first attack.”
“Your training took over,” Egan said, glad he’d been able to teach her something to help her avoid the attack. The thought of the man touching her…hurting his sweet Kellee brought anger to the surface again. He struggled to keep from letting unbridled fury burrow through him. If the man wasn’t already dead, Egan would have finished the job. It was a good thing she couldn’t see his face. She didn’t need to see his temper. Not now. Not ever again. “What happened next?”
“I tried to disarm him—” She stopped. A tremble racked her entire body. Her skin lost its warmth, and he thought she was going to faint.
“Kellee?” He held her tighter.
“He was big and too strong. I couldn’t direct his movement. The blade went into his stomach.” Her voice cracked at the horror of reliving the moment. She lifted her head and looked at Egan. “His name was Petre, and I killed him.”
Egan sucked in a breath. The dead man in Kellee’s apartment finally had a name. Petre. “It was self-defense.” He reassured her. “You had to save yourself.”
Guilt spread across her face. “My fingerprints are on the knife.”
He grabbed her shoulders. “It was self-defense,” he repeated.
She didn’t respond.
He gave her a light shake. “Listen to me. You didn’t mean to hurt anyone. You didn’t murder him.”
“I wish I hadn’t remembered.”
Egan almost wished that, too. “You did good.” He reassured her. “You remembered something that will help us.” They were that much closer to knowing who they were dealing with. “One thing I don’t understand. If you stabbed this Petre person, then how did you hurt your head?”
She touched her forehead. “I…don’t remember.” A lone tear escaped down her cheek. Before he could catch it, she wiped it away with a tissue. Dark smudges of exhaustion underlined her eyes.
This was enough for tonight—too much, in fact. “Get some rest,” Egan said. “Maybe you’ll remember more in the morning.” Listening to her talk about the attack was torture. How must it feel for her?
Kellee wadded the tissue in her fist. “No, I’m okay. I want to finish this.”
Part of him wanted her to remember everything. They were so close. On the fringes of her mind dangled the answers he needed. He feared if he pushed too hard, too soon, tho
se answers might slip into a crevasse and be lost forever. “Are you sure?”
She nodded.
“Good girl,” he said with a flash of admiration. Tough woman.
She took a deep breath. “I ran out of the apartment after…” She stopped. “After I got free. I wanted to get as far away as I could. The next thing I remember was waking up on a cot in a building where they’d gathered the evacuees.”
“That’s it? Nothing between leaving your apartment and waking up?”
“No.” She shrugged.
“Something must’ve happened to you while you were out in the storm.” He moved his hands up and down her arms again to ward off the chill on her skin. “At least you’ve remembered some important things we can use. I wonder what triggered your dream?”
“I don’t know…” That far-away look came into her eyes again.
“What?” he asked. “Do you remember something?”
“The TV”
“What about the TV?”
“He was Russian,” she whispered.
He frowned. Was she losing it? Maybe he shouldn’t have pushed her. “What makes you think he was Russian?”
“He had an accent.”
“Lots of people have accents.”
“That movie on the TV…” She shook her head more vehemently. “I’m positive. He called me Katya. That’s a Russian name.”
“I’m sure the name is used in other countries, too.” The tension he’d felt while Kellee talked had eased a little, but it was still hard to think clearly while sitting so close that her scent filled his brain.
He stood and walked over to the closet. Grabbing a blanket, he unfurled it and draped it over her shoulders. It gave him the breathing room he needed—before he did something he’d regret.
“Thank you.” She tugged the blanket around her exposed shoulders and looked at him. “What are you thinking?”
He glanced at her, hoping she couldn’t read his face. “I’m wondering why a Russian would be searching for you, especially in the middle of a hurricane.”
“I wish I could remember more.” Her chin dipped to her chest.
Her hair caught the light and gleamed with rich reddish-brown hues, reminding him of Katherine, Kellee’s mother. He swallowed, knowing that he had to keep her safe. He couldn’t let anything happen to her. “Me, too. We’ll just have to work with what we have.”
O’Neal believed his daughter was in enough danger to have Egan hide her. He’d said his past had caught up to him. If Petre was after Katya, not Kellee, then it was clearly a case of mistaken identity. O’Neal would have nothing to worry about. Unless…
Had something surfaced from O’Neal’s past? If so, why didn’t these people confront O’Neal directly? Was the attack on Kellee meant to send O’Neal a message? If that was true, then Egan had to consider everyone around them a threat.
Chapter Eleven
Kellee sat on the motel bed, curled into the blanket Egan had placed around her shoulders. Finally! The burden of trying to remember the awful nightmare that had plagued her for days lifted. The knowledge wasn’t something she wanted, but at the same time, some of her memory was returning. It gave her hope she’d recover all her lost memories.
The chill she’d felt earlier eased, but nothing was as warm as Egan’s arms had been. What concerned her was his withdrawal. He’d become distant, pacing along the foot of bed as though his mind had left the room entirely.
“What’s wrong?” She wanted to go to his side, wrap her arms around him, and bury her head against his chest. She wanted the shelter he represented. As much as she hated his rules, she longed to cling to something solid. Egan had become all that was familiar. He was the one thing holding her world together.
He glanced at her. The warm glow in his dark eyes that had encouraged her to talk was gone, replaced with a cold, flat stare. “What do you remember about your father’s work?”
She couldn’t remember anything specific, only what Egan had told her. She drew her knees to her chest and hugged them. “You said he ran a security firm. Right?” It wasn’t her own recollection because she hadn’t put together a complete picture of her previous life.
“Do you remember anything? Any impressions? Feelings?”
“No.” She shook her head. His questions were starting to worry her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Remember I told you that I worked for your father?”
She nodded.
“He’s the director of Northstar Security Firm.” Egan said it as though it held significance.
“So?”
“Before that he was with the CIA.”
The bottom of her stomach dropped and she clutched her legs tighter. Her father was a spy? “Was he a double agent? Did he work for the Russians?” The unexpected turn in conversation made her wish she could remember more about her past, but when she tried, a black void yawned before her.
“No.” He shook his head emphatically. “He wasn’t. Your old man is as straight an arrow as they make ’em.”
“How can you be so certain? If he didn’t tell you who was chasing me, then how do you know he didn’t send some Russian goon to retrieve me? Maybe his cover is blown, and he’s trying to escape the country. Maybe Petre showed up at my apartment to get me out of the country with him.”
Egan laughed and shook his head. “That’s about as wild a story as I’ve heard in a while. I’m pretty sure your father’s not a double agent. He didn’t send Petre. I may have my differences with O’Neal, but I’m positive about where his loyalties stand.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but Egan interrupted.
“When he asked me to find you, all he’d say was that his past and yours had caught up with him. I know that sounds bad, but he never worked for the other side. You’ll have to trust me on that point.”
Trust Egan. She had no choice but to trust him—not if she wanted to find a way home. “What do you think he meant when he said my past and his were catching up?”
“That’s the bigger question. I wish I knew.” He rolled his shoulders, making the muscles under his skin ripple in the most fascinating way.
Her brain was shutting down. She should be listening to what Egan said. Instead, her attention landed on his chest. The man exuded raw, masculine energy that kept distracting her.
“You’re certain about the incident in the apartment?”
His question reeled in her wandering mind. The images of that night washed to the front of her brain. “I’ve remembered. It may have been the dream that triggered the memory, but it’s different from when you told me things I should know. I know it really happened.” She rested her forehead on her knees, reality dropping her down to earth. Hard.
The mattress dipped with Egan’s weight as he sat. She raised her head and looked into his face, surprised to see him so close.
“You need to sleep.” He unclenched her arms from around her legs and urged her back against the pillows. Then he untangled the covers and tucked her in—a gesture meant to comfort, yet it had the opposite effect.
“I’m worried that the attack in your apartment wasn’t random.” He sat back a little. “If it’s not a case of mistaken identity, and this Petre character was after you, then something isn’t adding up.” He frowned. “We just have to keep digging until we figure out what.”
“The woman in that picture looked like me,” Kellee repeated, “but I’m certain she wasn’t my mother.” She shuddered at her next thought. “Maybe she was a Russian spy who had an affair with my father.”
Egan shook his head and an unexpected look of affection entered his eyes. “I knew your mother. Katherine treated me like family when I started with Northstar. She loved your father very much. And he loved her. It tore him apart when she died.”
“But maybe that’s why my memory won’t completely return. I don’t want to believe he’d been unfaithful.”
“Byron and Katherine were married a long time before you were born. He wasn’t unfaithful
,” Egan stated. “No way would he have an affair with a Russian spy.”
“You don’t know what happened over twenty years ago.”
“Not Byron.” He insisted. “I’ve never seen a man more in love.”
Kellee wasn’t convinced. The thought of being the offspring of an unfaithful man squeezed coldly around her heart. Maybe some memories were better left alone. “I don’t want to remember the rest.” She pressed her fingertips to her temples to ease the growing headache. “Isn’t there a way to make this stop?” She closed her eyes, afraid to look at Egan. Afraid of his pity, or worse, his disgust at her weakness. When she finally looked up, she saw warmth in his expression, a compassion that made his pupils expand. His unruly hair and shadowed jaw accentuated an untamed sensuality.
Heat built from the inside out. The sensation swirled through her—intoxicating and heady. She recalled thinking how butterfly kisses would soften that jaw, how his touch made her skin hum. Did the man have any idea what he did to her?
Egan could make her forget. She needed to forget, if only for tonight. “Help me forget.” Whispering the words, she discarded the blanket and rose onto her knees. She touched his shoulder and felt his muscles jump. His response bolstered her courage, and she grazed her palms over his heated skin.
He leaned away. “Stop.” His voice was ragged, filled with restraint. Vise-like fingers circled her wrists and pushed her hands away. “You need to stop. Now.”
She found the courage to continue. “I know what I need,” she said.
Breaking free of his grip, she sidled closer. Her breast brushed his arm. The shock of that single touch rushed to her core. “I can’t go back to sleep. I don’t want any more nightmares.” The time for tears was over. She needed to start the rest of her life. “Please, Egan. I’m not a child.” Her hands skated around his waist, and she nuzzled his neck.
“No, you’re not,” he said with a harsh groan.
Something seemed to unleash within him. He took her chin in his fingers and angled his head. She registered his hot breath as the urgent crush of his mouth met hers. Light burst behind her closed eyes in a rainbow of colors. A surge of wild, savage hunger overwhelmed any reason.
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