by Jenna Mills
And finally she knew. She knew why the ancient sensation had crawled down her spine, why unease had whispered through her. She had been followed.
By Liam.
He released her, but she still couldn’t get away from him. He had her wedged between his body and her sturdy car, his broad chest blocking the row of clapboard buildings, the rest of the world. He seemed even taller here, more imposing, the unsettling aura around him darker.
Her heart thrummed low and her hands went clammy, but when she looked up and met his eyes, she wasn’t afraid. Not really. Not in a primal, life-or-death sense.
But on another level, a deeper one.
“Do you mind telling me,” he said very slowly, very deliberately, “just what the hell you thought you were doing?”
Liam stared down at her, at her defiant eyes and the mutinous set to her mouth, at the wisps of dark hair that had escaped her ponytail and now curled around her flushed face, and didn’t know whether to expose her to the ugliness rampaging through him, or pull her into his arms, kiss her senseless and discover once and for all whether she would taste as untamed as she looked.
“I was trying to find my son,” she said in a voice that betrayed not one sliver of unease. Caught in his, her hand was clammy and her pulse point fluttered wildly, but other than that, her composure showed no cracks.
“Here?” he demanded, forcing his gaze from hers and down the seedy street south of town. He’d been parked down the block from her house when he’d called earlier in the morning, unable to suppress the niggling thought that he should not leave her alone. So he’d watched, and he’d waited, and sure enough, shortly after noon he’d realized his gut had once again been right.
She’d lied to him.
The thought, the reality, shouldn’t have tripped the fuse deep inside. Somehow it did.
During the long night before, thoughts of Danielle and Kelly had circled him like a merry-go-round out of control. They’d whirred and blurred, laughed and taunted.
Long before the sun broke over the lake he’d given up on sleep and had once again pored over his notes, the facts, the three postcards.
Danielle was the link, instinct insisted. She was the one. The one, the woman, who could lead him to his quarry. Titan.
That explained his need for her, he told himself, why thoughts of her clouded his mind. That explainhe wanted her to trust him, work with him.
That explained why he’d been so furious when he’d seen her back out of her driveway and head down Lakeshore Drive.
But God, it was all he could do to cage in the rawness creeping through him, a rawness he had not felt in a long, long time.
He wanted to be angry with her. He wanted to be furious. But the relief flooding his body was too strong.
“That man is a convicted felon,” he said. He’d run a quick check before entering the shop, had learned the owner had spent time in the state pen and was out on parole. When he’d walked inside and found D’Ambroni with his hands all over her, touching her, dragging her—
“I know.”
Her voice was quiet, resolved. Calm.
And it blasted one more link on the cage. “You know?” The information should not have surprised him. This was, after all, the woman who’d gone willingly to a deserted strip of beach in the middle of the night, armed only with a flimsy little handgun, ready to confront Titan’s men on her own. The woman who’d been willing to do anything, risk anything, to get her son back.
The woman who’d ripped at her own clothes, ready to make a trade that had the power to make Liam’s blood run cold.
He knew the answer before he voiced the question, but still, he asked. “What in the world made you come here alone?”
Her mouth twisted, into a frown or a smile he couldn’t tell. “Because I’m the one who got him convicted.”
There wasn’t much space between them, barely enough for the sunlight to squeeze through, but he stepped closer. His hands itched to touch, but he kept them by his side. “You did what?”
She angled her chin. “I was the one who got him convicted,” she said again. “I was the one who proved he was a fraud.”
And because of that, she thought he’d taken her son. For revenge. “That’s why you came here looking for Alex.”
“Yes.”
He swore softly. “Damn it, Danielle. I’ve already told you who’s responsible for taking Alex.”
“But you don’t know that,” she returned. “Not for sure one hundred percent.”
“Yes,” he said very slowly, very firmly, “I do.”
She just stared at him, her face still tilted, her mouth still tight.
“And even if I didn’t know that, even if there was a chance this Sal character was involved, you should not have come here alone.”
Her eyes flashed. “I can take care of myself.”
The words were sharp, confident, but behind them he heard the quaver of vulnerability she tried to hide from the world. Or maybe just from him. She wanted to take care of herself and her son, that was true. She was determined to prove that she didn’t need anyone, that she could walk alone.
And while Liam understood the sentiment with a precision that never quit cutting, he also recognized the danger. The danger for her. His circumstances were different. He was a trained agent. He’d survived tests and trials designed to break the ordinary man. He’d been through Quantico.
He’d been through hell.
So had she, some voice deep inside insisted. She’d been through hell, and like him she’d survived. She’d come out hardened, determined, but she’d survived.
“But you don’t have to,” he said, letting his voice go quiet. All that anger inside of him, the anger that boiled and festered, shifted suddenly, softened, like pellets of ice transitioning into flakes of snow. “That’s what I’m here for.”
The warm breeze blowing off the lake picked up, playing dangerously with the tendrils of hair curling against her face. “Liam—” she started but didn’t finish, just looked at him with a futility and longing that squeezed his heart.
Because he wanted to lift a hand to her face, to touch her cheek and ease the hair behind her ear, he curled his fingers into a fist.
“I didn’t realize you’d been in law enforcement,” he said.
She blinked. “Law enforcement?”
“You said you were the one who got D’Ambroni convicted.”
Her expression, open and seeking a moment before, instantly closed. “I wasn’t in law enforcement.”
Earlier he’d stepped closer, so close his hips brushed her stomach. Now he stepped back. “Explain.”
He hadn’t known Danielle long, but he’d already learned she wore composure like most women wore heavy wool coats on a bitterly cold day. It draped over her curves, protected her from the elements. He’d only seen it slip once, and that was when she’d stared at the image of her son lying as still as death on the narrow cot in the dank little room.
But now it faltered again, as though the wind had blown open the edges of her coat. He saw it in her eyes, the way her lower lip trembled. She held his gaze for a long moment, then looked away.
He wasn’t sure if it was a gesture of surrender or defiance, but either way it left a sour taste in his mouth.
“I’m waiting,” he said.
Frowning, she returned her gaze to his. “I don’t suppose you’re going to accept ‘it’s none of your business’ as an answer, are you?”
He stared at her mouth, the way it had quirked when she’d spoken the words. And something deep inside him lightened. “No.”
She sighed. “You’re not going to like this.”
He wanted to laugh. God help him, the rumble started low and made it all the way to his throat before he stopped it. “There isn’t much I like about what’s happening right now.”
Her eyes, normally an obscure shade of green so light and pale they were almost translucent, darkened. She lifted a hand to her face and swiped the hair back, ing
him to the sharpness of her cheekbones. Exotic, he realized, then remembered what she’d told him about her Romanian heritage, and couldn’t help but wonder if the wildness he sensed came from Gypsy blood.
“It seems like another lifetime,” she said, and her voice was soft, faraway, “but before I moved to Chicago, I used to…” She hesitated. “How do I say it?” she said, more to herself than to him. “We used to take on odd jobs. Jobs nobody else wanted or would touch.”
He absorbed the information, all she’d left unsaid. “We?”
She nodded. “My brother and sister and I. And Ty.”
“Ty?”
She looked down and away, let out a breath that could only come from memory. “Alex’s father.”
Something sharp and volatile flared through him. He’d known the child had a father. That was a given. But the assistant manager at the hotel had let it slip that Danielle was single, and she herself had told him Alex’s father was of no help to them. Now images formed he didn’t want to see, of Danielle and this faceless man, the life, the child, they’d shared.
“Odd jobs?” He ignored the dark streak within him. “What kind of jobs?”
Again her mouth twisted. “You are so not going to like this.”
But this time no laughter surged within him. “I don’t like a lot of things.” He paused, stripped the growing unease from his voice. “Tell me, anyway.”
She fiddled with her hair again, lifting a hand to slide it from her face, even though the wind had yet to blow it back. “Jeremy always called them making things right.”
“Who’s Jeremy? Your boss?”
The softness returned to her eyes. “I suppose it looked that way to the world at large, but he was more of a father than anything else.”
Interesting. Her mother was dead, but she’d not mentioned anything about a father. He filed the information away, knowing now was not the time to pursue why this Jeremy was more like a father than the man who’d given her life. One nugget at a time. “What kind of things did you make right?”
She glanced toward D’Ambroni’s shop. “Take Sal, for example,” she said, then explained about the antiquities business he’d been running. The scam. “The police saw no evidence of crime. It’s highly likely he had someone in their ranks on his payroll. So one of his customers, Margaret, who’d been taken for a bundle, came to Jeremy, asking for help.”
“For help,” Liam repeated, awareness growing within him.
“To prove Sal was a fraud,” Danielle said, looking up to meet Liam’s gaze. “That’s where I came in. I posed as an ancient-art enthusiast and quickly got a job as an assistant in his gallery.”
“But you were really snooping.” He didn’t mean for the words to come out so condemning, but they did.
“Investigating,” Danielle cled.
“Without any kind of legal sanction or protection.”
Her chin came up. “I wasn’t the one breaking the law. He was.”
God, Liam thought. What had this woman been involved with? And worse, if this was the kind of covert world she’d lived in, was it possible one of her assignments had brought her in contact with Titan? That she’d crossed him somehow? Hurt him? That now he was back, seeking revenge, just as Sal D’Ambroni had promised to do?
“You’re the one who brought Sal down,” he said, and incredulity blasted him. What kind of man was this Ty, that he let his lover, the mother of his child, operate in such a dangerous, seedy line of work?
For the first time since he’d found her in the dirty little shop, she smiled. “Yes.”
And she was proud of that fact. A little vein of pride ran through him, as well, at her courage, her tenacity, but he quickly clamped it off. “You did other jobs like this.”
She nodded. “We all did. Elizabeth and Anthony and I. We each had our own—” she hesitated “—talent.”
It was the way she said the word, more than the word itself, that grated like nails down a chalkboard. “Talent?” The bad feeling he’d been fighting grew worse. He had no doubt that this woman had talent, all kinds of talent. Talents he knew better than to let himself explore. “And what was yours?”
“Luck,” she said, and her voice twisted. “Pure blind luck.”
But she didn’t think so, he could tell. Not anymore. “The kind of luck that prevented you from taking the drink from the stranger in the hotel lobby?”
A hard sound broke from her throat. “The kind that runs out,” she said in a flat voice. “The kind that died cold and fast the night a job went bad and Alex’s father bled to death in my arms.”
Whoa. He looked at her standing there, at the shadows that had suddenly consumed her eyes, and realized he’d just stepped into a mine field. The urge to touch her, to lift a hand to her face and comfort somehow, stunned him, so he did the only thing he could.
He took another step back. “Danielle—”
“Satisfied?” she asked, and he could literally see her wrapping the thick wool coat of composure around her curvy body. “Did your little interrogation get you what you wanted?”
“This wasn’t an interrogation.” But the truth curled around his throat like a rough, braided rope. He had been interrogating, pressing for information, trying to understand. And now he did. Too well.
“Then what would you call it?” she asked.
The question landed hard, dangerously close to an area he didn’t care to explore. “Trying to help,” he said very carefully, denying the rest. Caring. Protecting. “Trying to understand how deep the waters are that we’ve waded into.”
An old El Camino rattled down the street, but she didn’t spare it a passing glance. “%">
“We.” He glanced toward the sky, no longer a deep blue but whitewashed now. The sun was in its descent, signaling late afternoon. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Go home, cool off.”
“And if I say no?”
“Wouldn’t matter.”
“Because you’re going to keep following me, aren’t you? No matter what I say, what I do? You’re not going to leave me alone.”
He gestured toward his rental, parked along the street two buildings away. “I already told you,” he said, retrieving the keys from his pocket. “We can work together or against each other, but working without me is not an option.”
The house was quiet. Too quiet. Memories crouched in every room, every corner. She could see her son camped in front of the computer or the TV. She could see his gap-toothed smile, hear his laughter, feel the tears he hated to shed, tears that came less often now as memories of his father faded.
That was why she’d agreed to dinner, she told herself, seated in the passenger side of Liam’s rental. The only reason. Because she didn’t want to spend one more minute alone in the house. She had her mobile phone, a lifeline she carried with her everywhere, even into the shower. She’d forwarded her home number. There was no reason to sit around and torture herself, let her imagination run down cruel and horrifying paths.
Alex.
She bit down on her lip, choked back tears she would not let fall. Jeremy had taught her how to narrow the world to finite tasks, not allowing the bigger picture to paralyze. It was a lesson she’d learned well. They all had.
Later, when Alex was home, safe and sound and tucked in his bed, and she stood in the doorway watching him, listening to his every breath, then and only then could she fall apart.
“What are you hungry for?”
Liam’s voice was low, hoarse, and as always it sent an electric charge through her pulse. She glanced at his profile, the way his big body dominated the seat next to her. There was an alertness to him, a readiness that defied the casual manner with which he had one hand draped over the wheel, the other resting on one of his jean-covered knees. The pose suited him. If ever there was a man born to be in the driver’s seat, it was this man.
Agent, she corrected. FBI special agent. Not man.
“I’m not sure.” She looked away from him, away from the aura that dr
ew her no matter how hard she tried to resist, and out the passenger window. And that was when she saw it. Her heart kicked hard, then slowed to a crawl. The pain was instant, blinding.
“Oh my God,” she said on a low breath. Then she turned and grabbed the steering wheel, pulled right. “Stop the car.”
Chapter 8
Tires screeched and brakes groaned. Behind them a horn blared. Liam swore softly. “What the hell—”
“Here.” Danielle’s voice was little more than a raw whisper. “Turn here.”
It was the alarm that got him. Alarm she normally hid from him. Feeling a nasty rush of adrenaline, Liam plied away the fine-boned feminine hand that had curled in a death grip around the wheel. With his other hand, he maneuvered them from the stream of slow-moving traffic and onto the dirt drive.
“What is it?” he asked, looking first at the uneven rows of cars parked along the makeshift lot, then at the stricken expression on Danielle’s face. Her eyes were wide, almost sightless. Her skin was too pale. And he knew if he touched, he would find it cool again, clammy.
“Talk to me, honey,” he said with a calm that defied the rush of his pulse. “Tell me what you see.”
“Alex…”
And his world just about stopped. “Where?” He slammed on the brakes, reached for his door handle.
Danielle beat him to it. She threw open the passenger door and ran from the car, kicking up dust behind her.
He grabbed his gun, crammed it into the waistband of his jeans and took off after her. “Danielle, wait!”
There were people everywhere, men, women and children. Young, old, everywhere in between. Some were laughing, others crying. Mothers pushed strollers while fathers held toddlers high on their shoulders. Teenagers walked with their arms draped around each other’s waists, their hands tucked in each other’s back pockets. They all stopped and stared, pointed at Liam as he tore through the crowd like a crazy man. “Danielle!”