by Jenna Mills
She wasn’t sure how she stayed standing. She did need, but he needed, too. “Liam—”
With his hands on her face, he urged her closer. “Yesterday you asked me what kind of mother you were—”
“—and you told me I was a good mother,” she reminded him. “Strong. Courageous. That I was only human.”
His mouth flattened into a hard line. “Don’t you see? It’s not you, damn it. You’re not the one in question. It’s me.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself.”
“Am I?” This time when his thumb skimmed her lip, it dipped inside her mouth. “Do you have any idea what I want to do to you right now?”
She gazed up at him, saw the answer in his eyes. Felt it quicken through her. “Kiss me.”
A hard sound broke from low in his throat. “That’s just the beginning, honey.” He hesitated, almost seemed to drink her in. “You’re hurting and in trouble, out of your mind with worry over your son, but here I am, touching you, imagining what it would be like to take you right here and right now, to see you standing naked in the night, to feel you, touch you, taste you. To be inside of you.”
The melting started deep within her, slow at first, then picking up speed with every beat of her heart.
“But I know what will happen if I do,” he said, and before she could b, he dropped his hands from her face and stepped back, packed the man away all neat and tidy, locking him behind the hard veneer of the FBI agent. “You’re not mine to have,” he said very coldly, very matter-of-factly. “You’re a temptation, a complication I can neither afford nor want.”
“But you can’t go, either, can you?” she returned. It wasn’t hurt that drove her, she assured herself. It wasn’t the sharp sting of rejection. It was just the plain and simple truth. “You can’t walk away, not until your job is done and my son is home.”
But then he would, she knew. Then he would.
His lips curled into a cruel mockery of a smile. “It won’t be much longer,” he said. “The tide is about to turn. I feel it in my bones.” Then he spun and walked inside the house, leaving her standing there in the darkness of her backyard, staring at a truth she wasn’t ready to see.
She’d never known a man who could stand so very, very still, for so very, very long. She’d never known a man who could withdraw so completely, who could be present in body only. Who could go hour after hour without uttering one word.
Her brother certainly couldn’t. Anthony had too much of their mother’s hot Gypsy blood pumping through his body. His temper was legendary. He could brood but he wasn’t one to keep what he felt inside. It exploded out of him with a force that could frighten.
Ty hadn’t been volatile like her brother, but lively. Jovial. Always one to clown around, make jokes and play tricks. That had been part of the appeal, part of the fascination. He’d been so fundamentally different from everything she’d known.
It was also why she hadn’t married him.
Theirs hadn’t been that kind of relationship. They’d cared for each other, but their love had been a young, fun love, a carefree friendship. He’d lit up her world, but he hadn’t rocked it, hadn’t sent her heart into a dizzying tailspin.
And Jeremy, he was the closest thing to a father she’d ever had, and like her brother, like Liam, he was an intense, passionate man. But unlike Liam, he didn’t hold back. He laid what he thought, what he wanted, right out on the line.
But Liam… He’d barely said two words since turning his back on her several hours before. He’d stayed, just as she’d challenged him to do, but she might as well have been alone. He’d stared at the postcard for a long time, then he’d taken up residence at the window, with his back to her.
And she hated it. She hated the wall of tension stretching between them, the silence that pulsed as thickly as the night.
“I don’t understand,” she said, exhausted from turning over all the stones in her mind. Different pieces to the puzzle hid beneath each of them, but none of them went together.
Slowly Liam turned toward her. “Neither do I.”
Surprise hit like a quick chop to the throat. She’d wanted him to look at her, to talk to her, but now that she saw him, the lines of his face and darkness in his eyes, her breath faltered.
“Sometimes it’s best not to even try,” he added.
Safest, maybe. But not best.
She glanced at the coffee table, where crude but distinct drawings of Alex sat in a neat row. “That little girl saw him.” The chill swept over her once again. When Violet talked of Alex, it was as though she’d been there with him. Trapped. Alone. Except she woke up safe and sound in her own bed.
Alex did not.
“She’s never met him, never seen him before. She lives halfway across the country. But she knew.”
Liam stared at the pictures. “Not everything can be explained,” he said quietly, and finally the edge to his voice was gone. “That doesn’t mean it can’t be real.”
It was hard, but she bit back the sound of frustration. Do you hear yourself? she wanted to ask. But didn’t. Throwing his hypocrisy in his face wouldn’t get them anywhere. They were talking again. For now, that was enough.
“What do we do next?” she asked, and before she could stop it, a yawn slipped free.
“Get some sleep,” Liam said, then stunned her by crossing the room and squatting down beside the sofa. “You’re exhausted.” He reached for the wine-colored fleece blanket Liz had once given her for Christmas, then draped it over her legs. “Staying up all night isn’t going to bring Alex home any faster.”
Fatigue pulled at her, but she didn’t want to close her eyes. Didn’t trust herself to let go. “You make it sound so simple.”
His smile was so subtle, so pained, she almost missed it. “Not everything has to be complicated.”
The old anniversary clock showed the hour pushing toward three. He should be tired, he knew, and maybe he was, but when he’d turned from Danielle and walked into the house, he’d turned off all feeling, as well. Mental, emotional and physical.
Now there was only restlessness. He wanted to pace or prowl. Wanted to go for a long, hard run. But she was right, damn it. She was right. He couldn’t walk away, no matter how badly he wanted to.
No matter how badly he did not want to.
Frowning, he turned toward the sofa, where finally she slept. She’d fought him, resisted him, but in the end the fatigue shadowing her eyes had won. She lay there now, her features softer and more relaxed than he’d ever seen them, making her look younger, achingly vulnerable, with dark hair spilling around her face and her mouth slightly open.
The need to touch her slammed in hard and fast, just as it did every time he saw her. Earlier that night he’d indulged. Earlier, he’d touched and felt. Too much. He’d slid his finger inside her mouth and felt the moist heat there, had imagined the moist heat he might feel somewhere else.
There was desire, too, not just the desire to have her naked and twisting in his arms, but to tear away the last of her defenses and bare the woman inside, the courageous woman who’d been hurt and abused, neglected, abandoned, but who never gave up. Who met life head
The woman who made his heart thrum and his blood heat.
“Don’t go,” she murmured, thrashing in her sleep, and the urge he felt to slide beside her, to pull her to him and hold her tight, to make promises he could never keep, almost gutted him. “Come back…Alex.”
Alex.
The softly spoken name was all the permission he needed. When he’d thought she was dreaming of him, Liam, he’d forced himself to stay away from her. Refused to let himself touch.
But she wasn’t dreaming of him. She was dreaming of her son, and the pain in her voice, on her face, was real. No matter how well he’d trained himself not to think, not to want, not to indulge, he couldn’t just stand there and watch her suffer.
“He’s coming home,” he promised, sliding down beside her. She moaned softly and turned into
him, buried her face against his throat. “He’s coming home,” he promised again.
And then Liam would have no choice.
He would leave.
Dawn whispered through the miniblinds. Liam blinked gritty eyes against the soft intrusion of light but couldn’t bring himself to leave the sofa. Soon he would have to. Before she awoke, before she stretched lazily and found him holding her, running his hands idly through her long, tangled hair.
But not now. Her breathing was still deep and rhythmic, her body languid. They’d been this way for hours, hours during which Liam had occasionally nodded off, only to force himself awake before the images in his dreams became too strong, too real. Images of Danielle, in his arms as she was now, but naked and wanting, urging.
Just the thought had his body going hard all over again.
The ringing of his mobile phone changed everything. In an instant Danielle was awake, jerking upright with her eyes wide and drenched with dread. He sprang into action, disentangling himself from her and reaching for the small phone sitting by the hand-drawn pictures of Alex.
“Brooks, here.”
“Liam, thank God I reached you. It’s Gretchen.”
His heart, hammering cruelly from the abrupt invasion of sound and sensation, damn near stopped. “What is it?”
Danielle was by his side, tugging on his arm, watching him with those wide, imploring eyes of hers. He knew she wanted him to share the conversation with her, let her hear, but until he knew what Gretchen had to say, there was no way in hell he would let Danielle listen.
“There’s another picture,” Gretchen said. “I found it just now.”
“Of Alex?”
Danielle’s grip on his arm tightened, her short fingernails digging deep.
“No,” Gretchen whispered. “Of a hospital.”
He stiffened. “A hospital?”
Danielle grabbed his wrist, pulled the phone toward her facehe hurt?”
“I don’t know,” Gretchen said. “Vi doesn’t know why she drew the picture. She just keeps saying over and over that it’s cold and empty, that there’s no one there to hear the cry in the dark.”
Once, the upper-north-side building had teemed with activity. Lives had begun there, others had ended. Tears had been shed, some in joy, others in sorrow. Prayers had been uttered in the incense-laden chapel, some answered, others seemingly unheard.
Danielle whispered her own prayer, tried to ignore the tightly coiled band of dread and fear and horror that wrapped tighter around her throat with each beat of her heart.
By her side, holding her clammy hand as he’d been doing since the moment they’d disconnected from Gretchen, Liam surveyed the landmark hospital that had lost its battle with the cancer of funding. The old structure, abandoned to time and fate, endless zoning requests and heated redevelopment arguments, stood stark and desolate against the dove gray sky of early morning.
Dark clouds gathered on the northwest horizon. Thunder rumbled quietly, the silent echo of drums on a faraway battlefield. There would be no sun this morning, not until noon passed and the gathering storm washed the sky blue.
“Come on,” Liam said, leading her toward the south entrance. He moved with a stealth that fascinated her, this bold man who cut through life like a sickle through the harvest. She was seeing the highly trained graduate of Quantico, she knew, the FBI agent who could find her son.
The man who could bring her—
No. She wouldn’t let her thoughts go there.
Secured doors barred their entrance, and with a wrench of her heart, she thought of her vibrant sister, Liz, who’d not met a lock she couldn’t jimmy through sheer concentration, and of Anthony, who could deactivate the most elaborate security system through nothing more than acute force of will. They’d made quite a trio, with Danielle’s ability to sense danger before it snared them guiding the way.
But her siblings weren’t here now. There was just Liam and her, and the swishing of a cool breeze blowing in ahead of the storm. And Alex, she silently amended. Please, God. Alex.
“Through here.” Liam guided her to the gaping darkness behind a shattered window. “Kids,” he amended. “Come midnight, this is probably quite the place to be.” He brushed away the shards of glass. “When I was growing up, spending the night in the abandoned St. Mary’s Hospital was tantamount to a badge of courage. If you could withstand the morgue—”
The intuitive chill hit her the second she slipped inside the darkened corridor. She went absolutely still, the sickly sensation washing over her and through her.
The morgue.
“No,” she whispered, but wasn’t sure the word made it past the wedge of horror. Dear God, no.
Liam was beside her in a heartbeat, sliding his arm around her waist and drawing her to his side. “Jesus,” he muttered, “I’m sorry.”
She looked up at him slowly, blinked to bring him in focus. Once, the hall would have been bright and white and sterile, but now only shadows remained, the faint, nauseating smell of leftover antiseptic.
Sadness swept in on a nonexistent breeze. It pressed down on her like an oppressive weight making each breath a battle. Sorrow crowded her throat.
“Liam,” she whispered, and all the lectures she’d given herself, the new cardinal rule she’d created during the long, still hours of the night, didn’t matter. She reached for him, grabbed his hand and held on tight.
Because deep in her bones, she knew. The inner voice she’d tried to silence clamored loudly. “There’s no one alive here.”
He swore softly. “You don’t know that, honey.”
She swallowed hard. “Yes, I do.”
Last night he’d run his hands through her hair. She knew he thought she’d been sleeping, and she should have been, but the gentle sensation had awakened her. She’d lain there, acutely aware that she should spring to her feet and demand that he not touch her, that he leave, but it had been too long since someone had touched her, since she’d let someone, and the sensation had turned her warm and languid.
Now those hands tightened around hers. “We have to look, anyway.”
At one time, she would have fought him. Now there was only the cold echo of acceptance. “I know.”
They started on the ground floor, quietly canvassing the corridors. He guided her through the hallways, much as he’d guided her through the past few days. Warmth greeted her in some rooms, a chill in others. No one lived within the deserted facility, but auras lingered, those of happiness and laughter, of tears and joy and devastation. Of exhaustion and exhilaration. Of dedication and despair.
From floor to floor they went, guided by the beams of two flashlights. Not much light seeped in from outside. From the droning of the wind and the increasingly loud growl of thunder, she knew it would rain. Soon the storm would break.
And then there was only one place left to check. The one place they’d been avoiding.
“We have to,” Liam said, and though she knew that, her heart rebelled at the thought, the reality.
“I know.” She held his hand tighter. “I know.”
She’d been instructed to keep Alex’s abduction to herself. She’d been ordered to tell no one. She’d been warned of the consequences. But as Liam led her down the darkened stairwell toward the basement morgue, she couldn’t imagine going through the past few days and nights alone. He’d buoyed her when she’d wanted to fall, supported her when she’d started to crumble. He’d given her his strength and his faith, and in the process she’d found herself starting to lean.
The fall would be long and hard, she knew. And he might not be there to catch her. He would want to, but she’d learned enough about FBI Special Agent Liam Brooks to know that rarely did he indulge himself in what he wanted. Duty, honor, a burning sense of responsibility and guilt—that was what drove him.
But here, now, he was holding her hand, and for moment that was enough.
Complete darkness blanketed the basement. Liam directed his flashlight down the l
ong hall, and Danielle did the same. She swallowed hard, braced herself for what the two narrow beams of light would reveal.
Death. So much of it. Like a slimy sludge it crowded in from the ceilings and the walls, pushed up from the floors. She’d always been sensitive to auras, had read people and places with an accuracy that had creeped out even Liz and Anthony.
That was how she’d first detected the secrets circling Liam. His was a dark aura, one of blackness that covered him like a thick cloak.
But in the days and nights since then, the cloak had parted on occasion, revealing the widower, the son of an abusive father, who’d grown up determined to be a better man, a better husband, but who’d been unable to protect his wife from the ugliness that was Titan.
The aura swirling beneath the cloak, tattered and bruised but still intact, much like Liam himself, was red and vital, that of strength and passion. Just as Magdalena had said. There was a primal energy, a pulsing life force of both mind and body.
And it was that aura that drew Danielle, even as the ever-present cloak of darkness warned her away.
In the basement the first room was large and spacious. Most of the contents had been removed, but a few stainless steel tables remained, coated in dust not blood. Against the back wall a row of stainless-steel doors concealed the vaults behind. Liam ran his flashlight over them, one at a time.
“No one’s been here,” he said.
She tried to tear her gaze from the vaults, but thoughts of what could be behind any one of the doors paralyzed her. “How can you be sure?”
He directed his flashlight toward the floor. “No footprints.”
Behind them, where they had walked, a faint trail announced their presence. Ahead of them, where they had yet to venture, sprawled an even thicker coating of dust and neglect.
The breath left her body on a violent rush. Alex, her little boy who put on a brave face but insisted upon sleeping with a night-light on, did not lie cold and abandoned in one of those sterile, impersonal vaults.