Triple Dare

by Candace Irvin

  Five excruciating minutes later, he did.

  Hope ripped in as the bike jerked to a halt, only to sear off as she opened her eyes to find not one, but three flashing police cruisers and an ambulance parked haphazardly in front of her friends’ house—with Marlena herself barreling through the open door, off the porch and down the sidewalk. By the time Dare had removed the helmet he’d secured to her head at the Tristan, swung her off his bike and set her on shaking legs, Marlena had reached them. Marlena grabbed her arm, half guiding, half dragging her back up the walk as she babbled out the night’s terror.

  “He’s upset, but he’s fine. It all happened so fast. He came up the fire escape. By the time we knew, the phone line had already been cut. Thank God the guard and that cop were here. Who knows what that monster would have done? The guard’s giving his statement and Stephen’s with Brian in his room. He’s upset, but he’s f-fine— Oh, God, I’m repeating m-my—”

  “It’s okay. I’ve got her.”

  Abby wrenched her gaze from Marlena as Dare gently disengaged her friend’s hands. Dare’s dark, reassuring stare captured hers, calming her own blistering fears.

  He nodded down at her. “Marlena will be fine. Go to Brian. She’s right. Physically he’s okay. But he needs you.”

  Maybe it was her overwhelming need to see for herself that Brian was in one piece or maybe it was the peace already smoothing Marlena’s brow as Dare eased her friend to his side and guided her into the house. She didn’t know. She only knew she was grateful to him again. She managed a shaky nod and bounded up the stairs. Seconds later she was standing in the doorway of her brother’s room. Brian was lying on his side, huddled against the far edge of his twin bed, oblivious to Stephen’s soothing voice as he methodically knocked his forehead into the wall over and over. Dare and Marlena were right. Physically he was okay. But emotionally?

  Her heart broke on the answer.

  Two steps in, her heart completely shattered as Stephen reached out to pat her brother’s back—and Brian mewled like a terrified animal caught in the steel teeth of a hunter’s trap. She vaulted across the room. Stephen moved aside as she eased herself down on the bed and tentatively placed her hand where his had been. “Hey, bro, I’m here.”

  No response.

  Worse, he continued to rap his head into the wall.

  But at least he hadn’t made the god-awful whimper. She stroked her fingers through his hair, losing a strip off her heart each and every time that chilling knock reverberated through the room. “Brian? It’s Abby. I’m here. I’m…home.”

  Sweet heaven, she didn’t know what to do, what to say. Did he think she was still in Europe or did he remember her at all at this point? Dammit, where was Dare? She needed him. And not just for what she now knew he could do. She scrubbed the tears from her cheeks and turned to Stephen.

  “What happened?”

  “I’m still not really sure. Some cop showed up asking questions. The guard Dare left went ballistic. I thought they were going to go at it right there in the living room when Brian let out a bloodcurdling scream. We damned near killed each other trying to get up here first. Thank God those two were here.” He shook his head, as if to clear the gruesome memory. “He climbed the fire escape while the guard was inside, and tried to come in through the windows. The brute was twice my size. I never could have taken him. As it is—” Stephen shuddered.

  She followed his stark gaze to the double windows. The miniblinds were drawn, but she could make out the faint murmur of voices and shuffling forms behind them. Something about not being able to move the guy because he was past help. Some part of her probably should have felt guilty the man was dying, despite the fact that he was a murdering thug, but she couldn’t.

  All she felt was relief.

  Unfortunately, horror still filled Stephen’s face as he turned back. “I closed the window when I couldn’t calm Brian enough to move him. It’s…pretty bad. The EMTs and two of the cops are still out there. We called nine-one-one from the neighbor’s but we couldn’t reach you. I guess you were on your way. Abby, I don’t know how you knew we needed you, but—”

  “Sir?”

  They both turned to the doorway.

  A uniformed cop stood in the hall. Ironically, she recognized him from that night outside Avery Fisher Hall. Officer Ryder nodded to her first. “Ms. Pembroke.” He turned to Stephen. “Mr. Kane, I know this is a bad time, but I really need your statement.”

  Stephen glanced at her. “You going to be okay?”

  “Yeah.” It was Brian she was worried about. “Could you please ask Dare to come—”

  He was already there. Standing in the hallway to the left of Ryder, patiently waiting. No, she couldn’t see him. But she could feel him. Not because he’d violated her internal space, but because she had reached out to him somehow.

  The connection should have unnerved her. But it didn’t.

  She felt comforted by his presence.

  And so much more.

  Stephen squeezed her shoulder as he stood. “Yell if you need me.”

  “I will.”

  But she wouldn’t. The only man she needed entered the room as Stephen and the cop left. Dare approached the bed and stared down at her brother. She could feel his tension and his uncertainty. His fear. It wasn’t that Dare didn’t know what to do. He did. He even knew she wanted him to do it.

  But he was afraid to try.

  She reached up and took his hand. “It’s okay. You won’t hurt him. You can’t. What happened last time wasn’t your fault. I know that. You know that.”

  He nodded.

  “Dare, I trust you.”

  He lowered his frame down to the bed. She pulled her breath in deep, pulling Dare in even deeper as he reached up to smooth his fingers across her cheeks. He wiped the tears she’d shed from her skin, then cupped his hand to her cheek as he closed his eyes. Though the first soothing touch had been for her, she somehow knew this second was for him. To help restore whatever part of him he’d taxed as he’d helped calm Marlena. She only wished she could do more. His eyes still closed, he inhaled slowly, then opened them.

  “I’m ready.”

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  He shook his head. “Stay. Please. I’ll need you again when I’m done.”

  She nodded and stood. There was barely room for Brian on the bed, much less all three of them.

  By the time she’d moved into the center of the room, Dare had stood as well, but only to bend down and scoop her brother’s quaking form into his arms. He settled them both on the bed, closing his eyes once more as he cradled her brother to his chest as gently as a newborn babe. She wasn’t sure what she expected. While she knew now he’d performed this miracle for her several times, she was now on the outside looking in.

  At first she didn’t see anything.

  But somehow she could feel it. Them.

  The faint whispers of the acute emotions tearing through her brother as Dare brought them into himself.

  She watched as Brian’s initial confusion, anger and then outright horror played across Dare’s face. The more his features tensed—the more Dare absorbed—the calmer Brian became. Soon her brother was lying peacefully against Dare’s chest, his breaths gradually lengthening until they were no longer short and rasping but pulling in and out in a slow, steady wash. She had no idea how long Dare sat there, leaning against the wall, holding her brother in his arms. All she knew was that she’d been so very wrong. So was Dare. This extraordinary skill he possessed was not a curse.

  It was gift.

  A precious gift he’d shared with her and her brother.

  God willing, Dare would give her another gift. The one of forgiveness. She never should have doubted him. She still had a lot to sort out, true. A lot of questions to ask and even more answers to understand, but she knew in her heart Dare had never bent her emotions to suit his own. If he could have affected someone’s mind and changed it against his or her will, surely he’d
have done it with his parents a long time ago. Instead, he’d put up with the worst kind of abuse a man with his gift could endure. The emotional kind.

  But there was more.

  She knew where that scar on his lip had come from now, the other one he’d gotten that same night Janet died. The scar he’d refused to discuss. Duane Randall hadn’t split his lip; his father had. But the rent to his heart had hurt much more. Despite Dare’s denial to Liam Brooks earlier, it still did.

  She refused to add to it. She couldn’t.

  She—

  “Sir?”

  Abby flinched as Officer Ryder returned, stepping through the doorway before she could head him off. The opportunity already lost, she shifted her own stance, deliberately shielding Dare and her brother from the cop’s view.

  “It’s okay, Abby. He can come in.” Dare stood and settled Brian on the bed. He took a moment to draw the quilt up to her brother’s chin as his soft snores filled the room. Exhaustion tinged Dare’s features as he stopped beside her to murmur, “He’ll sleep the night. But when he wakes in the morning, he’ll be ready to remember everything. Until then, let him rest. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He nodded, then faced the young cop. “What can I do for you, Officer?”

  “I gave him your message.”

  Ryder crossed the room and raised both sets of blinds, revealing the backs of two more uniformed cops flanked by a pair of hunkered-down EMTs. It was then that Abby noticed Ryder had fetched an IV bag for the EMTs. Ryder passed the bag to Dare and lifted the window, then retrieved the bag. The two cops already out on the landing parted as the third slipped out, revealing a scene that caused Abby’s stomach to roll faster than all the twists and turns she and Dare had taken on the bike combined. Somehow the thug had been thrown up onto the metal spikes that fenced the far side of the landing. Three had impaled him through his back. But that wasn’t the most horrifying part. It was the body.

  It didn’t belong to that thug.

  It couldn’t. The man might be wearing a suit, but his torso was half the size she remembered. Nor did those limp arms and legs come close to the tree-trunk girth she’d seen. As the second of the uniformed officers raised the poor guy’s head, Stephen’s comment made sense: Some cop showed up asking questions. Not just any cop. A NYC detective.

  Pike.

  Abby swung around to Dare. “You knew?”

  He nodded. “Marlena told me. Stephen and Pike arrived in the nick of time. Pike pulled the bastard off your brother and ended up getting tossed out of the open window for his efforts. The detective lost his gun during the struggle. Stephen recovered it, scared the bastard off, but it was too late. Pike had already landed on the spikes when he fell.”

  She stared into those dark, tortured pools of green. Though she already knew the answer, she couldn’t help asking. Hoping. “They can’t move him, can they?”

  “No.”

  She nodded. “And your message? You offered to help him, didn’t you? To give him peace in his final moments?”

  “Yes.”

  Why didn’t he go out there, then? Why wait in here with her? Brian was fine now. Dare had assured her of that himself—and she trusted him more than her brother’s doctor. But, again, she knew. Dare had already given her the answer in his penthouse. “It’s up to him, isn’t it?”

  “It always is, Abby. Whether it’s accepted subconsciously or not. Always.”

  They weren’t just talking about Pike anymore.

  They were back in that penthouse, back in her apartment, back in that police interrogation room and every other time Dare had slipped inside her. He hadn’t violated her. Not once. Whether or not she’d been consciously aware of what she’d been doing, she’d welcomed him each and every time. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand. That I accused you of—”

  “It’s okay.”

  Shame swamped her as she shook her head. “No, it’s not.” She pushed the humiliation aside. Now wasn’t the time for her to wallow in her own selfish emotions. Dare had just led her brother out of yet another hell. The evidence was all there for her to see, just as it had been each time before. The haunting exhaustion still lingering in those dark emerald eyes, the Atlas crush to his shoulders. His dusky cheeks were flushed, too. And he was sweating.

  He was running a fever again, but not because of some viral bug. Because of what he’d done for her brother. And for some reason touching her helped him.

  She didn’t wait for him to reach for her as he had after he’d helped Marlena; she reached for him. But as she drew him in, she heard the window sliding open. She turned in Dare’s arms, dismayed as the cops and EMTs ducked silently through the opening and into the room, past her, Dare and her sleeping brother one by one as they headed out into the hall.

  Ryder was the last man in.

  She swallowed hard. “Is he…dead?”

  The cop ignored her in favor of Dare. “He wants to see you. Alone. He said you’d understand. You’d better hurry, though. He doesn’t have a lot of time.”

  Abby released Dare’s hand, hoping it had been enough as Ryder followed the subdued procession out into the hall and down the stairs. “I’ll be right here.”

  Her heart in her throat, she sank onto the bed beside her brother as she watched Dare slip through yet another window. But this time he wasn’t escaping to his penthouse. He was headed out to ease the suffering of the one man who, because of his mentor’s word, had all but convicted Dare of the most heinous of crimes—a man who was about to learn the true measure of Darian Sabura for himself.

  Sadly, for Pike it was too late.

  God willing, it wouldn’t be for the two of them.

  Letting Pike go was one of the most difficult things he’d ever done—and Dare knew why. The twin reasons were roughly thirty feet away, on the opposite side of those French doors and down the hall, in the guestroom of his penthouse.

  Abby. Brian.

  The relationship they shared with each other. The complete, unconditional love and support they had for each other. He didn’t need his empathic sense to know it was real. All he had to do was walk into his guestroom to see Abby sitting beside her slumbering brother, grateful simply to be near him again, looking forward to the moment when he woke so she could tell him she loved him and feel it in return.

  Would he ever know that love for himself?

  Dare turned, bracing his forearms against the balustrade of his balcony as he stared out over the glittering lights of the city. As much as he hated admitting it, Liam Brooks was right. He had no friends. Other than Charlotte, nemesis or not, Pike had been the closest thing to a friend he’d ever had. And now Pike was gone. But in the true form of relationships, however twisted theirs had been, he and Pike had been able to offer each other a parting gift. Dare’s had been twofold. First, to put to rest the detective’s fear that he was leaving behind a murderer to walk the earth as a free man. And second, the physical and emotional surcease he could offer Pike in his final moments as he prepared to meet his maker. Pike’s gift had been equally as precious, at least to Abby and him.

  Pike had given them a name.

  The bastard who’d attempted to take Brian’s life for the second time, but had ended up butchering the detective instead, was none other than Zeno Corza. Pike had recognized the thug from his early days working vice. It made sense, given the connection Liam and his FBI associates had been able to establish between Corza’s elusive boss and the illegal-drug markets. From what Pike had been able to relay about Corza, the butcher’s nonexistent moral code and grisly fascination with knives were a perfect match for Titan’s leave-no-witnesses-behind mindset.

  Dare had called Liam with the identification shortly after Pike had slipped away, only to learn why Pike had been attempting to reach Liam at his penthouse earlier. Just before Pike had knocked on Marlena and Stephen’s door, Stuart Van Heusen had woken from his coma. Dare was torn between sharing the news with Abby when she took a break from her bedside vigil or wa
iting until tomorrow. Abby had enough to worry about without adding on the fears that Stuart would accuse her of blackmailing his mother.

  Or perhaps not.

  He straightened as he felt the whisper of Abby’s essence slipping around the edges of the glass doors and the blind-drawn windows that spanned the exterior walls of his bedroom. She was searching for him. He turned his back on the city and answered her call, guiding her down the hall and across the rug of his dimly lit bedroom with his heart. He lost her essence as she stepped directly in front of the French doors, only to be bathed in her serene beauty moments later as the buffer parted. She smiled softly, bathing him with her physical beauty, as well.

  “Hi.”

  He returned her husky greeting with one of his own. “Hi.”

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “Please.”

  Her warmth teased him as she crossed the balcony, resting her slender forearms within inches of his on the balustrade as they stared out at the city lights together.

  “It’s gorgeous up here.”

  He smiled. “I thought you didn’t particularly like heights, especially after this morning.”

  She laughed softly and shrugged. “Who said I was referring to the city?”

  His pulse thrummed. Because she meant it.

  Unfortunately, though she’d accepted his offer for her and her brother to stay with him until Liam located Corza, he hadn’t yet had a chance to explain why he hadn’t been honest with her, much less see if he could get them back to where they’d been that morning before that boulder had come crashing down. Nor had she invited him to commingle his essence with hers. He missed it. He missed her.

  Especially standing this close to her.

  “How’s your brother?”

  She snapped her gaze to his. “Don’t you know?”

  Dare nodded. But he’d felt the need to say something. To try and fill the void between them. If he couldn’t fill it the way he wanted to, he would take her voice.

  She seemed to understand.

  “Brian’s still sleeping. I can’t believe he didn’t wake during the taxi ride. I swear every other car we passed blared their horn.”