Explosive

by BETH KERY

  His memory of leaving the house was spotty. He vaguely recalled his mother’s frightened face, her calling out to him, and Garnier’s snide insults and threats as he shoved Thomas out of the house he’d grown up in.

  It’d been a living nightmare . . . Worse, an acid trip choreographed by the devil.

  Thomas couldn’t even recall most of his drive from the Carlisle’s home back to the city. Garnier—and likely Joseph—had probably hoped he’d crash, he was so out of it. By the time he’d pulled over at a gas station just before the junction of the Kennedy and Edens expressways, however, Thomas was thinking more clearly. He wasn’t himself; not by any means. He was an automaton, moving and thinking, but not feeling. In the past few days, feeling had grown dangerous.

  In the past hour and a half, feeling had become agony.

  He’d walked into the gas station, bought a bottle of water and some Tylenol, and asked for quarters with his change.

  Then he’d used the pay phone in the parking lot to contact the FBI. He’d had a long conversation with an agent named Fisk. He’d told Agent Fisk that he was in possession of a tape that incriminated his adoptive father, Joseph Carlisle, in multiple crimes, including the murder of his real parents, James and Marion Nicasio. At the conclusion of their talk, Fisk had told him about some leaks at the Bureau and warned Thomas not to speak with any other agent about the information. Thomas had agreed for no other reason than through the haze of his shock he’d made an assessment of Fisk, and decided he seemed all right.

  Thomas’d explained that he’d turn over the evidence to Fisk within a few days. He’d hung up to the sound of Fisk asking him repeatedly where he planned on going following their conversation.

  “You’re in danger, Nicasio!” Thomas had heard the agent shout right before he’d replaced the receiver in the cradle and walked away from the pay phone.

  He’d lingered at the gas station, ensuring himself that he wasn’t being followed. Joseph and Garnier must have been nearly as discombobulated by his unexpected visit as Thomas had been. They’d regroup, though. Eventually.

  When he was convinced that he hadn’t been followed, Thomas got into his car and removed the battery from his cell phone.

  He drove, longing for distance from a terror that Joseph Carlisle had just confirmed as a reality—desperate for something to hold onto while his life careened wildly off balance.

  He thought he’d been driving aimlessly, but now, as he sat at the side of that country road, the roar of the blue Buick’s engine still humming in his ears, Thomas knew he’d traveled with a single-minded focus. He’d seen a luminous face in his mind’s eye, said her name silently like a mantra that might save him.

  Dr. Gable.

  Sophie. Sophie.

  And somewhere in the monotonous process of driving down a strip of interstate for miles and miles, a fever of forgetfulness had settled upon him. The toxic memories became distant. They faded.

  Then they were gone.

  Until two seconds ago, when that blue Buick topped that rise, and Thomas had a flashing image of Newt Garnier’s rocklike profile, his gaze trained with focused intensity on the road that led straight to Sophie.

  He shoved the ignition into reverse, but someone slapping their palm against the window stopped him from stomping on the gas.

  What he saw outside the window caused a sensation as though all the blood in his head had rushed to his legs.

  He lowered the window.

  “You left Sophie alone?” he bellowed.

  You’re the one who left Sophie alone, you asshole, he admonished himself.

  “I’m here to protect you, not Dr. Gable,” Agent Fisk said, clearly set off balance by Thomas’s greeting.

  “Fuck.”

  He started to back up, but Fisk held onto the window frame and staggered after him.

  “She’s there all alone,” Thomas shouted. “I just saw Newt Garnier pass in a car. Just now. He’ll kill her without thinking twice.”

  He thought Fisk might have let go of his car willingly then, but Thomas was too agitated to even notice. The vision of Sophie looking up at him with those dark eyes . . . eyes that were pleading with him to remember.

  It was the wrongness of accusing her, of forsaking Sophie that had caused all the memories to explode to the surface. How could he want to block out that night in his father’s office if it meant erasing a single second with Sophie?

  Which is exactly what he’d done.

  He saw her standing there in her kitchen, her breasts looking so soft and firm beneath the thin bikini top, her dark eyes full of compassion and concern as she handed him a glass of lemonade. He remembered holding her in the guest bedroom, her scent filling his nose, soothing him and arousing him to a fever pitch at once.

  Sleep with me, Sophie. I need your cleanness so much right now.

  She’d rebuffed him then, but later, when he’d awakened after hours of healing, dreamless sleep, he’d staggered down the hallway to her bedroom, Sophie’s presence calling out to him like siren song.

  He’d opened the door and murmured her name. A lamp from the living room cast enough light down the hallway for him to see her curled on her side at the edge of the bed. Her eyes shone in the dim light. She didn’t look surprised or startled at his intrusion into her private sanctuary.

  “Do you feel better?” she’d asked quietly.

  He’d just nodded, unable to remove his gaze from her face. How the hell had he ever succeeded in staying away from her before?

  “Let me feel your forehead,” she’d whispered.

  He’d gone to her and knelt next to the bed, a supplicant before her beauty. Her hand had felt cool on his skin. Her scent enveloped him: sex and flowers and clean cotton.

  When their gazes had met, she’d put her hands on his shoulders and silently urged him toward her.

  And now, as he hurtled down the road toward her lake house in rising panic, he recalled how later they held each other fast as their tears mingled on their cheeks and his cock grew soft in the snug, warm sanctuary of Sophie’s body.

  It’s going to be all right, Tom. I promise you. Someday, it’s all going to be okay again.

  He’d made love to her again and again on that night, and she’d given herself repeatedly, let him restrain her, let him find solace from his anguish in her sweet, soft flesh. Those hadn’t been wet dreams he’d been having about Sophie; they’d been reality.

  He’d never spoken to her of what had happened to him; his mind had blocked it from him even as he sought her out like a wounded animal. But somehow, she’d sensed the parameters of his fury, his loss . . . his grief.

  Somehow, Sophie had known.

  “It’s going to be all right, Tom. I promise you. Someday, it’s all going to be okay again,” she’d whispered.

  Oh God.

  God, please let that be true. Not for him, who had ripped into her peaceful world like a torrential storm.

  For Sophie.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Sophie had resisted an urge to go after Thomas in her car. It would be a useless exercise. It’s not as if she could somehow overtake him on the road.

  She couldn’t force him to trust her . . . couldn’t make him come back to her.

  Would he be all right? Surely not. He wasn’t safe. Her only comfort was that Agent Fisk was there, guarding him. Fisk would have tailed Thomas. The FBI agent would protect him—maybe even help him come to terms with his poisonous memories—better than Sophie could.

  She wandered out to the boathouse. Perhaps Guy sensed her helplessness and misery, because he didn’t start and go wary when she entered. The fox had been snuggled into a nest of blankets near his feeding dishes. When she sank down onto the dusty concrete floor of the dim boathouse and began to cry, the fox stood and began to inch toward her slowly.

  The little animal finally stopped, his nose just inches from her knee. Laughter mixed with her sorrow when Guy lowered his head, allowing her to pet his neck and rub just behind
his ears.

  He backed away after several seconds, but Sophie had never appreciated a gesture of sympathy more.

  It gave her the strength to stand and brush off her dusty shorts.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she murmured to Guy, attempting to brace herself. “It’s not over yet.”

  A shadow moved across the sunlight shining through the opened door. She saw Guy flinch. Sophie started to turn.

  Someone—someone large—came up behind her and pinned her right arm against her ribs and pushed her body weight back against his solid length, setting her off balance. The hard, ungiving bone of a forearm pressed against her trachea.

  “It might be over sooner than you think,” a man rasped near her ear.

  Thomas peered through the dusty window of the boathouse, struggling to see inside the shadowed interior. He saw a movement—Sophie’s pale T-shirt as she jerked in Newt Garnier’s hold. The dark outline of Garnier’s gun showed up starkly against Sophie’s belly. The sight sent a jolt of electricity through him. But what he heard made it worse. Garnier spoke in a low, rough voice while Sophie made choking sounds as she struggled.

  He knew Garnier would just as soon strangle her than leave the evidence of a bullet behind.

  Spots began to appear before her eyes. The intruder was cutting off her oxygen supply with his strangling hold. Just when she thought she would lose consciousness, however, he lessened the hold slightly, restoring a minimal amount of air to her burning lungs.

  He began to question her again.

  “Where’s Nicasio?” Sophie felt him press the hard barrel of a gun between her ribs. “Better tell me, Blondie, or I’ll shoot you point-blank in the gut. Very painful way to die, and it takes forever. You’d die out here all alone—”

  A loud thwacking sound exploded into her ears. The hold on her trachea lessened, but then she was being pulled backward by a heavy weight. She twisted to get out of the man’s hold, throwing her elbow into his ribs. He cursed viciously. Just as she was lunging for freedom, he grabbed at her hair and pulled her back once again.

  Sophie found herself staring at Thomas’s rigid face. Her heart leapt in her chest at the unexpected, welcome sight of him. Dread settled when she recalled the man’s gun. Thomas held one of the paddles from the canoe in both hands, his biceps flexing tightly beneath the arms of his T-shirt. He looked furious, but focused; his glare not on Sophie but on the man who held her and pressed the barrel of his gun to Sophie’s temple.

  “You shoulda hit me harder, Nicasio,” the man behind her taunted. Her positioning was different than before, and she had a little more room to maneuver. She glanced up to see the face of the man who held her and saw the profile of a man in his fifties with steel-gray hair, a rough-hewn face, and a swollen nose. From her angle, she could see that blood trickled out of his right ear, a result of what had sounded like a vicious blow of the paddle against the intruder’s head.

  Sophie also noticed that despite the man’s bravado, his speech was slurred. The blow to his head was having an effect, even if the man didn’t realize it. He blinked several times, as though trying to clear his vision.

  “Most men’s heads aren’t quite so thick, Garnier,” Thomas muttered. His eyelids were narrowed so that Sophie could see nothing but two crescents of gleaming dark green. His focus on Garnier seemed absolute. “Let go of her. She’s got nothing to do with this.”

  Sophie gritted her teeth in pain when the man shoved the barrel of the gun farther into her skull.

  “Who says she’s got nuthin’ to do with this? She was here, wasn’t she? She got in my way. Just like your ma did all those years ago, huh Nicasio? I didn’t go there for her. Joseph just wanted James Nicasio dead. But seein’ as how she was stupid enough to throw herself in front of Nicasio, it was no sweat off my back to do her like I did your dad. Now . . . drop dat paddle, or I’ll do the same to this little girl—”

  Several things happened at once. Garnier tried to shake Sophie in front of him for emphasis, but he stumbled slightly on his feet in doing so. Sophie seized the moment and put all of her energy into another backward jab with her elbow. She heard an animal growl from below and Garnier squalled.

  Apparently, Guy had chosen the precise same moment to attack and bit Garnier’s leg.

  “Don’t move, Garnier!” Fisk barked. The agent swung into the doorway, his weapon drawn and aimed near Sophie’s head.

  The various attacks on Garnier caused him to lower his weapon from Sophie’s temple. The second he did, Thomas didn’t swing the paddle, he jabbed the handle straight into Garnier’s face, one hand guiding the weapon, the other providing the forceful forward shove from the end of the paddle.

  Thomas never flinched. In that fleeting second, Sophie glimpsed the incredibly tight focus, the sheer fearlessness of a man who had faced off with a live bomb time and again.

  She heard a sickening crunch of wood against bone and suddenly the tight trap of Garnier’s steely arms went slack. She spun away in time to see Garnier sinking to the floor in slow motion, a surprised look on his face. When his knees hit the floor, he slumped over into complete unconsciousness. Thomas had lanced the handle of the paddle into Garnier’s right eye socket.

  One thing was for sure: Garnier would never use the eye—or what was left of it—again.

  The paddle fell to the concrete floor with a clack. Thomas came up behind her. He encircled her in his arms, hugging her to him, before he let go and turned her to face him.

  “I’m okay,” Sophie said when she glanced up and saw the palpable anxiety on his features as his gaze ran over her, searching for wounds.

  His nostrils flared when she spoke. The expression she saw in his eyes made her touch his jaw, and then wrap her arms around his shoulders.

  “I’m okay, Thomas. I’m okay,” she repeated.

  His arms came around her and her feet came off the floor when he lifted her. He held her to him so tightly it squeezed the air out of her lungs for a few seconds.

  “Sophie,” he spoke roughly near her ear. “Sophie . . . I’m so sorry—I . . . I didn’t remember.”

  A spasm of emotion tightened her face when she heard how his deep voice cracked.

  “It’s okay. Everything is going to be all right. Are you hurt?” she asked in a rush after he’d set her back on the floor and she’d caught her breath.

  He lifted his head and shook it. She saw his muscular neck convulse as he swallowed.

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Nicasio.”

  Sophie pushed her way out of Thomas’s arms—although he seemed hesitant to let her go—and stared at Fisk. The agent knelt next to the fallen giant, his fingers on Garnier’s neck.

  “Is he dead?” Thomas asked woodenly.

  “No. I’m surprised after that shot you gave him with that paddle. In fact, I’m shocked the damn thing isn’t still in the guy’s skull,” Fisk finished wryly under his breath before he stood and removed some handcuffs from the back pocket of the jeans he wore.

  “He killed my parents,” Thomas said, his lip curling in hatred as he pinned the unconscious Garnier with his stare. “He killed them under Joseph Carlisle’s order.”

  “Yeah, I heard that part. And even though you should have let me handle things with Garnier—” The agent rolled his eyes at his unintentional double entendre. “—I not only need to thank you for saving Dr. Gable, but garnering us that confession,” Fisk admitted with a small smile. He extricated his cell phone and began to dial emergency services.

  Sophie turned her attention to Thomas. He must have noticed the way she was staring at him. His arms were still slightly outstretched from when he’d been holding her a second earlier. His glance at her was regretful.

  “I remember, Sophie. I remember all of it.”

  He lowered his eyes and his arms at once, but Sophie flew over to him, flinging her arms around his shoulders. When he realized she wasn’t rebuffing him for his earlier behavior, he hugged her to him just as forcefully. He lowered his
head and she pressed her face to the side of his neck.

  “I’m so sorry, Thomas. I’m so sorry,” she murmured, hating the idea of him experiencing so much anguish.

  “No,” he said gruffly. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m the one.”

  She heard a plaintive whine and looked down to see Guy looking up at them with black, anxious eyes.

  “Look at that,” Thomas murmured. “A three-and-a-half-legged hero.”

  “Four-legged. He’s pretty much healed. Thank you for helping me, Guy,” Sophie whispered to the little fox. Guy whimpered and sat on his haunches, looking completely comfortable for the first time since Sophie had begun taking care of him.

  Thomas’s arms tightened around her. Sophie just stood there in the dim boathouse, telling herself to focus on the feeling of holding a vibrant, whole Thomas in her arms. She tried like hell not to consider what came next . . . now that he no longer needed her to help him forget all of his pain.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Sophie sat in front of her laptop computer and scowled at the screen. It was a hopeless cause. She might as well face it. She would not be turning in her journal articles on the holistic treatment of Type II diabetes.

  Not this year, she wouldn’t.

  She glanced over at Collin Fisk, who sprawled on her couch and was reading The New England Journal of Medicine as though he actually found it interesting. Sophie had gotten to know the young agent very well over the last three weeks—ever since Newt Garnier had attacked her at her lake house; ever since Joseph Carlisle had been arrested on multiple criminal accounts, including conspiracy to commit murder.

  Thomas had returned to Chicago with several federal agents who had been charged with protecting him. The FBI had offered to put him in a witness protection program until he was able to testify against Joseph Carlisle, but Thomas had refused.