A Cry in the Dark

by Jenna Mills

  The chill started low, spread fast. “And the third?”

  All afternoon Liam had been quiet. Guarded. Almost withdrawn. He’d shown very little reaction, even when Violet Miller spoke of things there was no way she could know. He was a man of great passion but of great strength, as well. And it was the strength that was normally in control, the strength that kept him still and stoic no matter how grave a situation became. He hadn’t even flinched when she’d pulled a gun on him twice.

  There were cracks, she knew. The strength was real, but the stoicism was not. It was just a defense, a shield to conceal the passion boiling deep inside, the passion that for some reason he tried to deny.

  There was no denying it now. She saw his eyes flash and his nostrils flare. His head snapped back and his expression went stark, as though fending off a quick pain.

  She’d seen the expression before, on a big beautiful Great Dane who’d broken away from a young girl along the shore of Lake Michigan and chased after a wild goose. The dog had run full throttle, so focused on his prey that he’d been oblivious to the busy lakeside road, until he’d charged straight into traffic.

  The woman driving the red Volkswagen had tried to avoid a collision. She’d swerved, slammed on her brakes. But the car clipped the dog anyway and sent him sprawling to the side of the road.

  Danielle had seen the horrible incident unfold, had screamed and started to run in those final long seconds before impact. She’d seen the flash of panic in the dog’s eyes, the way its head had snapped back, the moment of awareness before the car made contact.

  It was a look she’d never expected from the tall, imposing man who’d walked into her life only a few days before, who’d held her up, held her together, even when she’d tried to push him away. The man who’d tracked her down in the House of Mirrors, whose image had surrounded her, buoyed her, the man who’d kissed her senseless, then pretended the whole thing had never happened.

  “Liam.” She reached for him, but before she could touch, he swore softly and pushed back from the table, striding past her and into the family room, yanking open the sliding glass door and disappearing into the night.

  Leave him alone, the voice of reason whispered. Let him lick his wounds in private. Don’t poke. Don’t prod. He’s a grown man. He can take care of himself. He’ll survive, just like the big beautiful Great Dane had survivedThe priestess urges you to trust your intuition. To act on feelings rather than facts.

  It was all she could do not to run. She found him standing on the edge of her small patio with his back to her, staring out toward the remnants of the setting sun. He stood completely still, but she heard the breath sawing in and out of him, as though he’d just run a great distance at a great speed.

  “Liam.” Even though logic told her not to take another step, she closed the distance between them and laid a hand to his shoulder.

  He flinched.

  The simple gesture should not have surprised her, should not have wounded her, but somehow it did.

  Slowly he turned to face her.

  And once again nothing prepared her for his stark, ravaged eyes, the miles of pain staring back at her.

  “Her name was Kelly,” he said.

  She swallowed hard, reminded herself to breathe. “Who?” she asked, though deep inside she already knew. “Whose name was Kelly?”

  The breeze whispered through the old trees dotting her backyard, the maples and oaks, nudging the abandoned tire swing into a slow sway. “My wife,” he said, and her heart damn near stopped. “She was my wife, and I killed her.”

  Danielle wasn’t sure how she stood there, not moving a muscle, not flinching, not staggering back, not stepping closer. She wanted to turn from him, to run while she still could. Even more, she wanted to put her arms around him and draw him to her, hold him, give him something she instinctively knew he had not received.

  Comfort.

  She did neither, just stood there, trying to breathe through the flood of horror. God, Magdalena had been right. This man had suffered much. Too much.

  The sun sank lower, the swirling streaks of purple and crimson growing darker with each heavy beat of her heart. And suddenly it all made sense, the disturbing aura that surrounded him, the secrets and shadows dwelling in his eyes, the flashes of passion he tried to deny. He’d allowed himself that passion once. He’d given in to it…

  …and it had destroyed his wife, himself.

  “No,” she whispered, and the need was too great. She stepped closer and even though she saw the wince, she lifted a hand to his face. “You didn’t kill her.”

  She wasn’t sure how she knew. She just did.

  “Yes,” he said very slowly, very coldly, very deliberately, “I did.”

  She let her fingers roam his face, taking in the feel of him, the texture. “You’re not capable,” she said. “There’s violence in you, but it’s directed at the darkness.” She paused, reminded herself to breathe. “You try to hold the ugliness at bay, to erase it, to destroy it.”

  “You don’t have a damn clue what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, I do.” For the first time since the night Ty had died, she went with the feelings inside, the ones that had guided her and directed her for so years. The instinct that had brought her and Liz and Anthony to Jeremy. The intuition that had saved her life, all their lives, more times than she could remember.

  “There’s too much goodness in you,” she whispered, and her heart bled on the words. “Magdalena was right. You’re a man of strength and passion.” She stepped closer, felt her throat go tight. “Of gentleness.” Of a tarnished nobility that ripped at her. She’d felt it in his touch, his kiss. His restraint. “Honor,” she added. “Loyalty.”

  Liam’s eyes were glowing now, hot, like the fading embers of the sun on the western horizon. “If that was true, my wife wouldn’t be dead.”

  “That’s the guilt talking,” she said, because she, too, knew what it was to lose someone you loved. “I’ve been in your shoes,” she told him, wondering when she’d stepped out of those shoes. When she’d opted to start living again. “When Ty died. I’ve stood by the grave of someone I loved and felt the sharp sting of guilt.” She hesitated, swallowed hard. “I’ve dropped to my knees and cried.”

  A little muscle in the hollow of his cheek began to thump, and she knew she’d encroached upon murky waters.

  “Have you, Liam?” she asked quietly. “Have you cried?”

  He tore away from her with a ferocity that staggered her. He strode deeper into the night, toward the empty tire swing.

  She followed, said nothing, just once again laid a hand to his back.

  Time slowed, the sounds of the night wobbling like a record played on the wrong speed. Crickets and cicadas and toads served as the sound track, the neighbor’s basset hound the accompanist.

  “We were supposed to go away,” he said, and his voice was low, as remote as the faint roar of an airliner overhead. “For just a weekend. To reconnect.”

  Danielle let her fingers widen against his back but resisted the urged to slide them down his arm.

  “She thought I cared more about my job than her.”

  She closed her eyes, absorbed his pain.

  “And maybe she was right.” Swearing under his breath, he shoved at the old tire swing. “I had my teeth in a new case,” he said, then spun toward her. “Titan.”

  The small sound of surprise escaped before she could stop it. “Titan?”

  “Several of his signature black-market drugs started appearing in the inner cities. Squeaky-clean high school kids and junkies alike began showing up in emergency rooms with symptoms the medical community had never seen before. Several died. Rumors ran rampant.”

  Danielle drew a hand to her throat. “What kind of rumors?”

  “Of designer drugs,” he bit out. “A high unlike anyone had experienced before. Addiction from just one hit. A craving that overrode caution and sanity and logic. The kind of blind need that drove e
ven hardened men to their knees.”

  And Liam, this man of honor and integrity, had found himself squareinvestigation. It must have driven him wild, she realized, filling him with an equally strong craving, not for a hit of an illegal substance but the justice that defined him. “My God.”

  “I couldn’t walk away,” he said, and this time his voice was thicker. “I knew Kelly was lonely. I knew she felt neglected, but Christ, I just couldn’t—” He looked toward the old oak at the back of the yard. “Then she turned up pregnant.”

  The dread came hard and fast, crawled over her and through her.

  “She told me it was her or the job,” Liam said, still looking off into the night. “She told me I had to choose.”

  “But you didn’t know how,” Danielle supplied for him.

  He turned back toward her. “I’d made a commitment to her,” he said. “A commitment I took seriously. I wasn’t going to be like my old man.”

  Danielle braced herself. She’d known better than pushing and prodding Liam, but here they were, and just as he’d been unable to turn away from the Titan investigation, she was unable to turn away from the questions. “Your old man?”

  “It was important to me to be a good husband,” he said, and again his eyes flashed. “It was important for me to keep promises I made.”

  Because clearly his father had not. Danielle looked at him standing there by the swing, Liam the FBI agent, the man, but for a fleeting heartbeat she saw a new Liam, the boy, the son of a father who’d let him down in the most fundamental ways imaginable. A boy who’d grown into adulthood, driven by demons of his childhood, determined not to repeat the sins of his father.

  “You do,” she said, wanting so badly to touch him that the ache squeezed her heart. But now was not the time. “You keep your promises.”

  “Not to Kelly,” he said. “She had it all planned, the weekend at the beach, just the two of us and the child growing within her.”

  Obviously, her plans had never come to fruition. “What happened?”

  Liam scrubbed a hand over his face. “There was a break in the case, a new lead to follow.” He paused, looked down at her with such aching earnesty she wanted to weep. “I could have let my partner, Lennox, follow it. I should have. He would have. He volunteered to.”

  “But you couldn’t.”

  “I knew the danger,” he went on. “Two agents in Europe had already lost their lives over the case,” he said, then swore softly. “I thought I was invincible. I thought I was better, stronger, smarter.”

  “Liam,” she whispered, and this time she allowed herself to touch him. Just his hand, her fingers brushing the backs of his. “You are.”

  “I worked late.” His voice droned low, as distorted as the crickets and cicadas. “It was after midnight when I left the office. I was tired, barely able to keep my eyes on the road.” Those eyes were dark now, bottomless, and in the deepening shadows they glistened. “I smelled the smoke first, but didn’t think much of it. Until I turned the corner and she barricade of police cars and fire engines.”

  She slid her fingers among his, curled them tight.

  “They wouldn’t let me pass,” he said, “and God help me, I knew. I got out of the car and ran toward my house, the sirens, the flames…”

  But it was too late.

  “They wouldn’t let me inside. I kept shouting that my wife was in there, that she needed help, but then they pointed to the black body bag, and—”

  Danielle didn’t stop to think. She didn’t stop to consider. Flimsy things like consequences didn’t matter, not in the face of what this man had been through. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said, pushing up on her toes and putting her arms around him. She dug her hands into his back, held him as close as she could. “There was no way you could have known.”

  “But I should have,” he ground out. He stood stiff and unyielding, neither accepting nor rejecting her comfort. “I should have.”

  She didn’t want to release him, didn’t want to let go, but the need to see overrode the need to touch. “It was a terrible tragedy.” She pulled back to look him in the eyes. “But Titan is to blame.” Finally she knew why his vendetta against the man, the syndicate, ran so deep. “Not you.”

  He stared down at her, but Danielle wasn’t sure what he saw. “I could have saved her,” he said. “I could have saved her and our baby, if only I’d come home on time.”

  “You don’t know that,” Danielle countered. “Maybe she would have lived that night, or maybe Titan would have taken you down, too.”

  The thought, the very real possibility, chilled her to the bone.

  “It’s not for us to play God. None of us knows when our time is up.”

  He muttered something under his breath. “Titan’s time is up,” he vowed. “So help me, God, that bastard is not going to get away with all the lives he’s destroyed.”

  And the ones still on the line. She closed her eyes, saw her son as he’d been the last morning she’d seen him, eating his Lucky Charms and talking about the carnival she’d promised they could attend that weekend.

  “The postcard came two days later,” he said abruptly, and she opened her eyes. “It was the first. The quaint little farmhouse seemed so serene, innocuous. Until I turned it over and read the message. ‘My deepest sympathy.’” Liam swore softly. “He slunk away after that. Like a coward, he pulled up his U.S. operation and retreated to Europe.”

  “Until now,” Danielle whispered.

  “Until now.”

  She swallowed hard. “I trust you,” she said, and the realization scraped deep. She did trust this man, wholly and irrevocably.

  And that scared her to death.

  “You shouldn’t.”

  The rough edge to his voice should have warned her. The glitte his eyes should have prompted her to turn away.

  Neither did.

  “But I do,” she said to a sudden burst of warmth. “I trust you to bring home my son, and I trust you to bring down Titan.”

  There was a light in his eyes now, fierce, glittering, as mercurial as the moon. “All these years,” he said in a low quiet voice. “All these years I’ve waited and planned, laid traps, living for the day Titan made the mistake of again crossing my path.”

  The wind gusted around her, but Danielle stood very still, not even moving to swipe the hair back from her face.

  “But I wasn’t really living,” he said. “Not here.” He drew his hand, and hers with it, to his chest. “Not inside. There I was every bit as dead as Kelly.”

  The warmth came first, a glow against the inside of her palm, followed by the steady thrumming of his heart.

  “That was the way I wanted it,” he said. “That kept me strong, focused.”

  Suspended.

  “I was ready,” he said, his voice pitched low, rough. “Eager. Excited, even. When Senator Gregory turned up dead and I went to New York and found the links to Titan, I was ready.” He paused, and once again his eyes flashed. “But God help me, I wasn’t ready for you.”

  The breath stalled in her throat. “Me?”

  “You’re dangerous. You could ruin everything.”

  The pain was fast and brutal. It cut through her, followed by an equally violent rush of denial. “I would never hurt you.”

  He laughed. It was a dark sound, distorted, torn from somewhere deep inside him.

  “It’s not me I’m worried about,” he said, then stunned her by taking her face in his hands. “Do you have any idea?” he asked. “Any idea at all what it does to me to hear you say you trust me to bring home your son, bring down Titan, when, like a son of a bitch, all I can think about is putting my mouth to yours and making the rest of the world go away?”

  Chapter 12

  The night deepened, thickened. The last light of the sun had faded, leaving only the purple hues of darkness spreading across the sky. No moon yet. No stars. Just shadows.

  And Liam.

  Danielle savored the feel of his big ha
nds on her face, rough yet gentle at the same time, much like the man himself.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, “standing here in your backyard, with the wind in your hair and promise in your eyes.”

  Her heart knocked against her chest, sending her pulse thrumming in time with the cicadas. Her yard wasn’t fenced, but she felt the edges closing in on her, the trees, big and beautiful, turning into prison wardens. The urge to turn awayak contact and run, streaked in from somewhere deep, somewhere that had not seen a man look at her like this in years.

  Ever, she silently amended. No man had ever looked at her like this, not even Ty. Theirs had been a simple love, a young love. Uncomplicated. Joyful.

  But there was nothing simple or uncomplicated about this man, or the unsettling murmurs he unleashed within her.

  Her throat was like cotton, but she managed his name. “Liam.”

  Even in the darkness his eyes glittered. “You make me feel alive.” His thumb rubbed the length of her bottom lip. “For the first time in years I want to taste and touch, to take—”

  The breath jammed in her throat. Great passion, she remembered thinking, but not even that awareness had prepared her for this. Because she wanted, too. Heaven help her, she wanted. So much. Not just the physical, either. The wants this man stirred in her had more to do with the soul than the flesh. She wanted to patch him back together, to strip away the darkness that surrounded him and bare the person inside, the real person. The man who had fallen. Who had hurt. Who still hurt.

  “Wanting to kiss me doesn’t make you a bad person,” she said quietly. It only made him human.

  “The hell it doesn’t.” The words were hard, laced with self-recrimination, but he didn’t take his hands from her face, didn’t sever the touch. “You’re vulnerable,” he said. “You’re in trouble. You need me, not in your bed or your body, but to bring home your son. You need the FBI agent, not the man who’s forgotten what it’s like to be with a woman, to look at her and want her naked and in bed.”