“At least we agree on something.”
“You don’t want me here. I know that.”
“You want to know things I can’t tell you, Paige. The Army has classification protocols for a reason.”
“Yes, that’s what I was told when they came by my apartment to tell me Gray had been killed.” She shut her eyes to block out that memory and when she opened them again, he was staring at her, his bright blue-green eyes glittering with some emotion—but not the anger she’d seen earlier. “I just thought … he was your best friend …”
After a long pause, Mace spoke quietly. “He was.”
She didn’t know what else to say. There was so much pain here, and all she did was bring more, dragging her wreckage behind her like the unwelcome visitor she was.
God, she thought she was tougher than this, had forced herself to grow a thick skin, to shake off bad vibes, and still, here she was, shaking. She’d worked some of the roughest ERs on the streets of New York City, had her life threatened but she’d never been as frightened as she was now—only she didn’t know where the threat was coming from.
“Paige?” Mace said her name softly. “Shit, you must be freezing. I’ve got a fire going in the main room.”
“No, I’m fine,” she lied, but Mace took a blanket from the bed and wrapped it around her, then led her through the halls to the main living room.
She didn’t protest the warmth or the company. Instead, she set the lamp down on the coffee table in front of her and, still wrapped in the blanket, curled into a corner of the couch, attempting to be invisible while Mace poured her a glass of what she quickly discovered was brandy. The first shot went down hard, the second, a bit easier, and the third produced an almost immediate, pleasant buzz.
She stared into the fireplace as the brandy settled, until Mace asked, “Better?”
She nodded. And then, emboldened by the alcohol, she pointed to his throat. “Did that happen on the mission where Gray was killed?”
He downed his own third shot, his eyes glittering with some emotion, but not the anger she’d expected. And he put the glass down on the table far more gently than she’d expected as well, shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and stared at her. “I can’t tell you things, Paige. Don’t you understand? It’s for your own good … and for mine. For Cael’s.”
She stood, letting the blanket drop as she approached him. She reached out to touch him without thinking, to comfort him, but he held her wrists again so she couldn’t. Still, he didn’t stop her from standing on her toes and leaning in to kiss him, the way she’d wanted to when he held her earlier … the way she’d wanted to that morning in her apartment four years ago.
He kissed her back immediately, pulled her close even as he pushed her hands down to her sides and then behind her back, even as she rubbed her belly against his erection.
He tasted like brandy and man. She felt the danger lurking beneath the protective nature he’d shown her, and that only made her revel more in the feel of him.
She never thought she could like danger, but Mace’s was deep and dark and so rich, and the way it beckoned her like a beacon in a storm, she knew there was no way she could ever resist it. Not for long anyway.
Nor did she want to.
He continued to kiss her like a man who couldn’t get his fill and she matched him, her tongue dancing with his, the thrill catching her deep in her womb. His arousal was a hard column against her belly, proving his want, and she’d needed to know that. She wanted to be naked under him, wanted him to fill her until all she could feel was pleasure, because she’d had enough of the pain. Her pulse hammered and my God, she could unravel easily for him, detonate in seconds if he was half as talented with his other body parts as he was with his tongue.
She was willing to find out. Wanted to let him take her with an unmatched frenzy; while her feelings scared her, she was more than willing to go along for his ride.
But clearer heads than hers prevailed, because Mace tore his mouth off hers with a rough curse, then picked her up and carried her to the couch. She grabbed his shoulders, kept her hands fisted so she couldn’t read him.
He placed her gently on the soft cushions, told her, “You don’t want to start this now, Paige. Because I’m going to want to finish it, and that’s not a good idea.”
Funny, because it seemed like an excellent one to her. But the alcohol won as she settled in and didn’t push for more contact. He covered her with the blanket. Her nerve endings were still ablaze, but despite her unrelieved arousal, she drifted off, aware that there was more than one rough male voice near her. And she dreamed that she was back in the house with Jeffrey and she would see it all happen again while she slept, knew that as certainly as she knew she’d made the right decision coming here.
There was nothing she could do to stop it; she wouldn’t wake until she relived it, start to finish, every horrifying moment as real as it was the day it happened.
Early morning. She woke, sick to her stomach, as though the evil was emanating from Jeffrey and infecting her, no matter how much distance she tried to put between them.
No one will believe you … no one ever has.
Her girlfriends all had a crush on him. He was one of the cool kids, not a loner, no one you would pick out and say, This kid’s going to massacre students one day.
She’d picked up on something, though, had tried to let her parents know and had been rebuffed. Jeffrey was an A student. Popular, handsome. And a sadistic son of a bitch.
Her stomach hurt more. She pulled the covers over her head, curled up in a ball and tried to hide from the feelings.
“Paige, hurry,” her mother called up the stairs, and Paige struggled from the bed. Through her opened window, she heard Jeffrey’s car rumble out of the driveway and away from the house, and relief unfurled in her belly. She wouldn’t have to ride with her brother to school that morning.
She showered quickly, dressed and dried her hair. And still, the lingering evil remained unsettling as she headed down the stairs and into the kitchen.
Her mother, usually scattered, was beyond exasperated.
“Come on, Paige—your brother told me at the last minute he had an early meeting at school and couldn’t drive you. Grab something to eat in the car or else you’ll make me late for work.”
Neither of them had any way of knowing that it would be her last day of work. The last day close to anything normal they’d ever have again. “I’m not hungry,” Paige mumbled, picked up her backpack and followed her mom out to the car.
She wanted to talk to her mother about Jeffrey again, to tell her he’d destroyed her homework last week. That she was sure he was the one who’d killed the neighbors’ cat and left it on their car the weekend before. That he was responsible for so much more destruction. But since she’d been shut down so many times, even sent to a psychologist last year to discuss why she was out to get her brother, she had given up.
So she simply gave her mom a kiss and went to find her friends and start her day. Met up with her best friend, Mandy, in the parking lot and they walked into the caf, arms linked, giggling about something she couldn’t remember, no matter how hard she tried.
What happened next, she would never forget.
They separated, Mandy headed to a table and Paige to grab some food. That’s when things went from raucous to nearly silent in a matter of seconds and she was still holding her warm bagel when she realized how still everyone had gotten.
Mandy was staring over Paige’s shoulder, terror in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” The words echoed in the room, and then she was being dragged backward, an arm across her throat, her feet barely touching the floor.
She heard people screaming her brother’s name, but she would’ve known it was Jeffrey the second he’d touched her.
A swirl of feelings and images hit her, a dark, decaying tunnel to the deepest recesses of his mind, leading straight to hell.
It was terrifying that h
e hid all of that from the world.
Combined with the massacre going on before her eyes, she wondered if the heart-wrenching pain would ever end. It was as if each shot he fired went through her as well. She expected that if she looked down, she would find herself bleeding.
Mandy went down first in a hail of bullets from what Paige would later learn was a sawed-off AK-47 he’d bought from a local dealer. One by one, she watched her closest friends die, as Jeffrey hunted them down, under tables, behind chairs, all of that insufficient to shield them from the bullets or his rage. And he dragged her along for the ride, so she saw each killing, up close and personal.
Camillie. Sandra. Evan. Lori. Joe. Perry.
When all was said and done, seven people were dead. But at the time, she wasn’t counting—was screaming inside her mind, praying, clawing at Jeffrey’s arm.
And then Jeffrey released her, made her kneel on the floor facing him.
“Look at me, Paige.”
She didn’t want to, shook her head no, screwed her eyes shut tight, but he said, “Do you want more people to die because of you?”
Said it so quietly that no one else heard. But she opened her eyes and looked at him.
It was then that he put the barrel of the gun to her forehead and she went completely numb. He kept it there as he stared at her and she tried to remain upright, the dizzying combination of fear and the smell of blood overwhelming her senses.
Finally, he spoke—his voice a low chuckle—as he removed the gun from where it had been pressed to her forehead. “It’d be too easy to put you out of your misery. It’ll be way more fun for me to know you’ll remember this was all your fault for the rest of your life. And all because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut about me.”
“I did.” Her voice was barely a whisper and he simply smiled and she knew he was lying … and that no matter what she did, Jeffrey would still be as sick as he was now.
“You’ll have to remember all of this for the rest of your life, unless you want to kill yourself. You and your stupid magic hands.”
He’d laughed then, and it echoed in her ears, cut off sharply by a shot. For a second, she thought she was dead. But she saw Jeffrey falling backward, blood spurting from his shoulder, and she realized the police had taken him down.
God, they should’ve killed him. Why hadn’t they killed him?
Because the town would want justice. From Jeffrey. From her parents. From her.
Her closest friends, her inner circle … they were gone. She’d only kept one secret from them, how truly sadistic Jeffrey was, and in the end that secret had taken them all in a sweeping blaze of bullets, blood and hatred, leaving behind a sleepy town unable to comprehend any of it.
She was sobbing, still on her knees, unaware that she was repeating, “I knew he would do this …,” loud enough for everyone around her to hear.
It was that phrase that would damn them all, in the media … the words used in headlines and sound bites.
“His Family Admits, ‘I Knew He Would Do This.’ ”
Even the policeman who’d picked her up and carried her away from the chaotic scene had looked at her with unsympathetic eyes in civil court.
“Don’t you mention that curse of yours,” her mother said, in a vodka-fueled rage. “You’ve caused enough damage.”
She had, in more ways than anyone would ever be able to comprehend.
But at least, for now, the memory was over. And she was running out of the house, down the street and away from her mother’s harsh words. Running as if she would never stop, as if her life depended on it.
In so many ways, it did.
——
Mace had listened as Paige told Cael the story of her brother earlier as succintly as possible, and even though it was one he knew, the pain in her voice tore at him. And he did not want to be torn at or tugged, didn’t want to feel any more than he already did.
He prided himself on not feeling—on tamping down any and all emotions all the time so he could do his job. Had done it for so long that the first time a feeling peeked through it surprised the hell out of him how much it actually hurt.
His body had responded to her even before she’d come on to him. He wanted to lay her out on the couch or the floor or, hell, even the table. He didn’t know if it was his own willpower or the knowledge that Caleb was close or the fact that he still held too many secrets that could easily be revealed in the heat of the moment, but he’d stopped.
Christ, it had nearly killed him. His erection pressed the soft denim of his jeans uncomfortably and he thought about going outside and rolling in the snow.
Instead, he shoved his hands in his pockets and watched her sleep, even as Caleb wandered in.
The man slept as little as Mace did this days, and they usually ended up on the couch watching movies until dawn.
Like a fucking old married couple. Jesus, he needed a life. And Cael needed his life.
“She’s dreaming,” Cael pointed out.
“She’s having a nightmare,” Mace said grimly, watching Paige shake in her sleep, her hands fisted safely inside the old quilt. He went over to her, was about to shake her awake, when he stopped himself.
He wasn’t sure if it was the bow-shaped mouth or the dark fringe of lashes that threw small shadows on her cheeks, or the fact that those cheeks were flushed, but the response his body had was immediate—his blood heated and he forced himself not to stroke her face or her shoulder.
The feeling was nice. And he almost laughed.
It was the same reaction he’d had when he first saw her walking into the bar, before realizing who she was. What kind of trouble she could wreak here.
“Leave her, Mace. You’re not supposed to wake someone when they’re having a nightmare.”
“That’s for sleepwalking.”
“Still, leave her. She’s calming down.”
And she was. The shaking and whimpering had stopped.
“You heard us talking before,” Cael said, and yeah, his senses were definitely returning. “Why didn’t you tell me about her brother? Did I know that at some point?”
Did he? Gray didn’t talk about that part of Paige’s life much, as if it was too private to share. “Probably not.”
“She said it was on the news a few nights ago.”
Mace wondered if that’s really what propelled her here—if she’d received any threats.
He’d ask her in the morning.
CHAPTER
4
Cael woke in a cold sweat, his hand reaching out for something … or someone.
But who? The question haunted him. Fuck, everything did, no matter how hard he tried not to show it. Getting laid would no doubt take the edge off, but he somehow knew it wouldn’t satisfy the empty, gnawing feeling in his gut.
He shoved the covers off, padded naked to the window and stared out into the blinding white blanket that coated the back lot and the familiar, not back in-his-own-skin feeling began again.
Shit.
Maybe Mace was right about Paige. Maybe her showing up here was the worst thing ever.
He tried to remember if he’d had any dreams last night, but as usual, since the memory loss, there was simply a dark, gaping void where dreams should’ve been.
It was then he noticed that the heat was still out. He remembered Mace mentioning a generator that wasn’t working and he decided to pull on clothes and see if he knew anything about fixing generators. These days, he had a better than fifty-fifty shot.
As he yanked on a pair of jeans, he noted the legal pad that had fallen to the floor. Before bed last night, he’d been writing down memories of the days of the capture again, trying to put an order to them. But the page wasn’t filled with his lists. No, it was a picture—a woman’s face. The same woman he’d been drawing for the last month. Sometimes just her face … sometimes her body. Naked.
He grabbed the newest sketch of her and stared, remembered now drawing it feverishly last night before he’d falle
n into a restless sleep. These days, whenever he drew, it was in a kind of fugue state, like he was watching someone else’s hand unearth things he had no memories of.
Sometimes, it was his brothers’ faces he drew—pictures of times he couldn’t have known about otherwise, like when Zane was twelve or thirteen. When he’d gotten his hands on a couple of family albums, Cael had been shocked to realize that he’d actually been re-creating a lot of the family pictures.
He looked at the picture from last night again, tried to focus on a name, but nothing came.
Who the hell was she?
Her hair was chin length, with bangs that didn’t hide her eyes. She looked a little worried, her brows drawn together as if she was concentrating hard on something. She was really pretty; he’d made the bottom pieces of her hair darker, as though they were dyed.
He had no sisters. Not his mother—he’d seen pictures of his parents. An old girlfriend, maybe?
He ran his fingers around the perimeter of the picture and knew it wouldn’t be the last time he drew her. No, all his sketches brought out new memories, each one opening the door a little farther, inching it maddeningly slowly, when he’d much rather just kick the damn thing in and reclaim his past.
But it wasn’t working like that, and he had to at least be grateful he was getting things back.
He contemplated showing the drawing to Mace to see if he’d get a reaction and decided against it for now. Mace’s problems were racking up rapidly and he hated being one of them.
Paige took precedence now—for Gray.
Cael wondered how long it would take before she and Mace ended up in bed.
He didn’t want Paige—not in the obvious way Mace did—but he was jealous that they could both feel, when he was still mainly numb. Parts were defrosting a little, but far too slowly for his tastes, and he didn’t want to take his frustrations out on these two.
Dylan Scott flew commercial into JFK and immediately made the rest of the trip to the Adirondacks by car rather than waiting out the night at some hotel. He had been too worried about his brother Caleb for too long—and finally, Caleb was remembering his family, remembering him and Zane enough that Dylan felt a visit wouldn’t do him more harm than good.
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