“If she says it,” Chay said flatly, “it’s because it’s true.”
“Yeah. I didn’t mean…” The officer heaved a sigh. “No sign of a break-in. No other men in her life. I mean, you know, we can file a report. Hand this to the detectives, they’d maybe come by, check things out, but…There’s not really anything to go on, you know what I mean?”
Chay knew exactly what the cop meant. In a city with more than its share of killers, thieves and gangbangers, a condom lying in a drawer, filled with what appeared to be semen, wasn’t going to be high on anyone’s priority list.
“What about a DNA test?”
“Sure.” The younger cop shrugged. “Problem is, we’ve got hundreds of DNA samples waiting to be tested. Rapes, murders…”
Chay got the message. Compared to rapes and murders, this would almost be a joke.
“I understand,” he said as he shook hands with each man. “Thanks for coming so quickly.”
Both cops nodded. “You might want to see to it the lady changes the lock on this door.”
“Yeah. I’ll take care of it.”
The policemen left. Chay closed the door and turned the lock.
What now? His head was spinning. If this were Santa Barbara, if he were at Camp Condor, there were things, effective things, he could do. He could get a DNA test run—he had contacts he could turn to and the units had access to the most up-to-date resources.
He could get a look at the medical records of the patient who’d harassed Bianca a couple of months back, do a background check on the nut who’d been a problem at Cuppa Joe’s yesterday, accomplish both things without the nonsense of court orders. Computers were wonderful things, if you had the right skills. And if you didn’t have those skills, guys like Declan Sanchez did.
But this wasn’t Santa Barbara.
Okay. There were things he could tap into long distance…
A phone rang. Not his, which was in the pocket of his jeans. Bianca’s, in the kitchen.
It rang again.
A funny feeling came over him, that sense that something wasn’t right, and he held up his hand as he reached her.
“Baby,” he said, “wait…”
But she already had the phone at her ear.
“Hello?”
“Bianca. Give me the phone.”
“Hello?” she said again.
The phone shook in her hand. Chay rushed to her, grabbed the phone and put it to his ear.
“Who is this?” he snarled.
Soft laughter, and the whisper of a male voice.
“Did she like my little gift?”
“Listen, you sick bastard…”
“I hope she didn’t give it away to those two fine representatives of the law.”
Chay hit the disconnect button. Then he all but lifted Bianca to her feet. His face gave nothing away; his tone was brisk.
“Pack some clothes,” he said.
“Who was that? Chayton? Who was on the phone?”
“Bianca.” Chay gripped her shoulders. “Listen to me. Pack whatever you think you’re going to need for a few days.”
“Chay. Please, what’s happening?”
He pulled her to him. Kissed her hard and deep.
“Do you trust me?”
Tears were on her cheeks. He wiped them away with his thumbs.
“Yes,” she said. “With all my heart.”
“Then let me take care of you. Will you do that, honey? For me?”
Her eyes searched his. Then she took his hand, brought it to her lips and kissed it.
Twenty minutes later, they were in a taxi heading for his hotel.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Chay’s hotel was just off Central Park.
His room was almost the size of his entire place on the beach back in Santa Barbara.
Well, okay, maybe not.
But it was big, with a separate sitting area, a picture-postcard view of Manhattan from the floor-to-ceiling windows, a bed that could have slept his whole unit on bivouac, and a bathroom that was all granite, stainless steel and glass.
Aidan Maguire, one of the guys in his unit, had a sister who was a travel agent. When Aidan found out Chay was heading to New York for a couple of days, he’d offered to call her and let her put the wheels in motion.
“She’s three years older than I am and she owes me,” he’d said with a grin, “considering all that I tolerated from her when we were growing up. No, seriously, dude, she’s great at this shit. She’ll get you one hell of a room at a price that’ll make your jaw drop. I promise, you’ll come back spoiled.”
The niceties of a room had never mattered much to Chay.
When he was growing up, his home had been a falling-down trailer where you froze in the winter and boiled in the summer. College had been an improvement, but living arrangements went on the back burner when he made it into the SEALs and then into STUD.
Running water, soap and a roof over your head were luxuries.
Most often, all you needed was a place to put your head that was out of the line of fire.
He figured Bianca was accustomed to luxury.
Her Manhattan apartment was fairly conventional, but he’d been to El Sueño, the Wilde ranch. He knew she’d grown up in Italy, but if the Bellini branch of the family had lived a life comparable to the Wilde branch, he’d have bet she wouldn’t have been comfortable in the kind of cheap hotel he’d probably have ended up with on his own.
Now, as he inserted his key card into the lock on this hotel room door, he reminded himself to send flowers to Aidan’s sister when he got back to California.
Not that the room seemed to matter to Bianca. She hadn’t said a word since they’d left her apartment, and it worried him. Still, he figured that a pleasant room, with flowers on a little table in front of the windows, handsome furniture, and high ceilings, might be good for her.
Maybe all of those things would help mask the image that had to be lodged in her head, as it was in his.
The open drawer. The neatly stacked bras and panties.
The condom.
The condom was in his pocket now, encased in a plastic baggie.
He closed the door, locked it, tossed the key card on a table.
Then he opened the wall-length closet. It contained a safe, and now he squatted before it, set a combination, hustled the baggie inside and shut the safe door.
If Bianca had noticed what he’d done, she gave no indication.
In fact, she gave no indication of anything.
She was still standing where he’d left her, her arms at her sides, everything about her tightly contained and unmoving. He knew only the ways to handle guys who were back from a mission gone bad and seemed to be falling into darkness. Some you left alone. Others you cracked jokes with, the kind of jokes that only men who’d faced death and worse could handle.
Still others you treated as if nothing had happened.
It was the method he figured he’d try first.
So he walked briskly to the windows and drew open the blinds.
“Some view, huh?”
She nodded.
“The room’s not bad, either. Just look at that bed. It’s the size of a football field. And wait until you see the bathroom. A double sink. A tub that’s got to be three feet deep, and a shower big enough for a party.” Hell. He sounded like an advertising brochure. “All in all, it’s not much to look at, I admit, but it’ll have to do.”
Now he sounded like a bad late-night comedian.
No matter. She didn’t smile. She didn’t even nod. As far as he could tell, she might not even have heard him.
“So,” he said in that same brisk voice, “let’s get you settled. I’ll put your stuff away in one of the draw—” Crap! He was an idiot. “—in the closet. Then we’ll o
rder something to eat. How’s that sound?”
Still nothing.
“What would you like? Breakfast? Early lunch? What’s that ridiculous word for it? Brunch. What jerk came up with a word like that? Sounds like something you’d plan for a party of three-year-olds.” Silence. “Coffee, then. And we don’t even have to wait for room service. There’s this little tray—see it over there? It’s got everything we need. A coffeepot. Little packets of coffee. Containers of cream and sugar and—” And now he was babbling. Chay took a long breath, then puffed it out. “Honey. Look, I know this isn’t easy, but—”
“Why?” She spoke in a shaky whisper. “Why would someone do these things to me?”
Good question, he thought grimly. Hell, she was the shrink. If she couldn’t figure it out, how could he? Although the truth was, he didn’t care about the why. It was the who that mattered.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But we’re going to find out.”
“Whoever it is, he is sick.”
The twenty-first century excuse for everything. For war. For torture. For abusing puppies and mugging old ladies. People were sick. Maybe so, but what had become of responsibility?
But he knew better than to argue with her. Not at a time like this.
“Sick or not, baby, we need to figure out who might want to hurt you.”
She looked at him as he walked towards her. “I have tried. And tried. I cannot think of anyone who would want to—to frighten me like this.”
They’d moved beyond the frighten stage. Chay could sense it. The crazy who’d been satisfied with scaring Bianca at a distance was changing the rules. Whoever it was needed to get closer to her, and he’d moved the game up a notch.
What Chay had to do was stop the game and make sure the guy would never play it again.
Bur for now—for now, all that mattered was getting his Bianca back.
The question was, how?
The answer was instinctive.
Chay gathered her gently in his arms.
“You’re safe now,” he said softly. “You’re safe with me.”
A quick little dip of her head. It was a start.
He drew her even closer, stroked her cheek, dropped kisses on her hair.
“Tomorrow we’ll come up with a plan.”
“We will?”
He nodded. “Yes. I have some ideas already.”
Ideas he’d bet she’d veto, but he was the guy with the final vote.
“You do?”
“I do.” He tilted her face up, smiled into her eyes. “But we’re not going to talk about that now. I’m too tired.” He turned his smile into a grin. “For some reason, I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
For a second or two, she didn’t respond. Then she offered a hesitant smile and he felt as if he’d won the lottery.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“For what?”
“For everything. For being so kind and so patient with me.”
“Me? Patient? You’ll have to put that in writing so I can show it to my unit.”
A tiny, very tiny laugh. Not just the lottery. The Powerball lottery.
“Chayton?”
“I’m here, sweetheart.”
“I feel so useless.”
“You? Never.”
She sighed. “I am a trained clinician. I am supposed to know how to deal with such a thing as this.”
“And you have been dealing with it. You handled those telephone calls you got in Texas. And that asshole yesterday… You were great.” He gave it a few seconds. If he could get a little information now, why not get it? “What was his name? That guy at Cuppa Joe’s.”
“Noah.”
“Noah what?”
“Collins? Clinton.” She sighed. “I can look in my… Why? Surely you don’t think—”
“What I think,” Chay said, clasping her face between his hands, “is that anything is possible in this world. That’s Life Lesson Number One.”
“Noah clearly has problems, but his personality is not that of a man who would—who would invade a woman’s space in such a personal way.”
Bullshit, Chay thought, but this wasn’t the time to tell her that.
“Honey. We’re going to order in some food. And coffee. We can discuss this later. Tonight. Or tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t know what we’ll discuss. I don’t know. I can’t think of anyone who would do these things.”
“Still, someone did. And we’re going to find out who.”
“How?”
They were heading into a conversation he wanted to avoid until she was stronger.
“You have access to your files on your laptop? Patient records? Whatever notes you’ve taken about the participants in your study?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“Excellent. We’ll go through all of it.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I can’t open my files to you. To anyone. It would be unethical.”
Shit. “Bianca,” he said calmly, “the odds are good we’ll find the answers we need in those files.”
Bianca stepped back. Her chin lifted.
“What I have is privileged information between clinician and patient. As for the study—I promised all who participated anonymity.”
“I’m not going to take out an ad and make their names and their problems public, honey.”
“Still, such a thing would be wrong.”
The good news was that she was back. No more stilted English. No more awful silence. No more emptiness in those beautiful eyes.
The bad news was that she was as intractable as ever. Or as determined as ever, depending on your point of view.
His point of view was that if getting into those files meant grabbing her laptop and breaking into it while she hammered him with her fists, that was what he would do.
But there was time. Not much, but some. She was with him, she was safe, and she needed enough breathing room to recover from what had happened a little while ago in her apartment. She was better, but she was like a guy crossing a mountain gorge on a shaky rope bridge.
Go slow. Go steady. One false move and you might fall.
It wasn’t just that he wanted to make sure she was okay before she set foot on that bridge; it was that she—she was important to him.
Important? That wasn’t really the right word.
She meant everything to him. Everything, in a way no woman ever had before.
A chill danced along his spine.
“Time to order lunch,” he said, because thinking about food was a lot safer topic than what was tiptoeing through his head.
• • •
He ordered whatever he thought might tempt her. No rhyme or reason. Just whatever seemed like comfort food.
French toast. Omelets. A couple of small steaks. Soups. Chicken salad.
Rice pudding.
Bianca laughed when she peeked into one of the covered serving bowls and saw the rice pudding.
“Universal comfort food,” she said.
Her laugh was what comforted him. It was the final assurance that his woman was beside him and in the world again.
They ate at the table next to the window.
He was determined they would only talk about upbeat, noncontroversial things. Movies? Yeah, but he wasn’t much for movies. Travel? The last place he’d been wasn’t high on anybody’s let’s-talk-about-interesting-places list.
Anyway, what he really wanted to talk about was her.
He wanted to know more about her. Everything about her. How she’d grown up. If she missed Sicily. All he knew was that she’d been raised there, which didn’t make much sense, considering that her old man was a four-star general and her family’s Texas ranch was
the size of a small kingdom.
And the double surname. What was with that? What little he’d gleaned about the Bellini-Wilde thing had come from listening to Tanner and from the conversation that had swirled around him when Alessandra had been kidnapped and the entire clan had descended on Camp Condor.
“You have a big family,” he said, when they were eating their French toast. “All those Wildes and Bellinis…”
She smiled. “Three half-brothers. Three half-sisters. Two full brothers and one full sister.”
“And the Wilde part of it is John Hamilton Wilde. General John Hamilton Wilde. Your father.”
Her chin lifted. “My father by blood, not by choice.”
Chay laughed. “Trust me, honey. Lots of us have fathers we’d never have wanted if we’d had a choice.”
“Yours too?”
“Mine too,” he said, but he sure as hell wasn’t going there. He swallowed the last bite of steak and reached for his coffee. “And you and Alessandra were born in Italy?”
“In Sicily, yes. Alessandra and our two brothers.”
“Didn’t the general want to raise you in Texas with the rest of his children?”
Bianca stared at him. “Tanner did not tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
She sighed. “It is a complicated story.”
There it was. That little touch of English formality in her speech. Chay reached across the table for her hand.
“Honey. If it upsets you—”
“My father—our father—never told his American children about us and he never told us about them.” She took a breath. “He married the mother of my half-sisters while he was still married to our mother. ”
It took a few seconds for it to sink in. When it did, Chay could hardly believe what he’d just heard.
“You mean—you mean he’s a bigamist?”
“I mean,” Bianca said, each syllable encased in ice, “he is a disreputable, lying, cheating pezzo di merda.”
Whatever that was, Chay knew it was not good.
A couple of seconds went by. Then he snorted.
“Excuse me,” she said, even more coldly, “but what is so amusing?”
Chay snorted again, and then, despite his best efforts, laughter burst from his throat.
“The four-star general who wears starched shirts and, I’m fucking certain, starched shorts is a bigamist?”
Privilege: Special Tactical Units Division: Book Two Page 16