“She needs to dress,” Megan told them in a voice that refused to entertain any objections, “and pack a bag. We won’t be but a few minutes.”
The men looked at each other, hesitation emanating from their expressions. But, one by one, they left the room without arguing.
Megan took a pair of jeans and a shirt from one of my dresser drawers and handed them to me. “Go get dressed. I’ll pack your bag.”
She gave me this look that was once again filled with compassion. I stepped into the bathroom and the dam simply broke as I caught my reflection in the mirror. I sank down to the floor and cried, pressing the heel of my hand into my mouth to keep Megan from hearing my sobs.
When would it stop?
It wasn’t so much the attack by that asshole. That had frightened me. I could still feel that man’s hands on my wrists, could still smell his breath as he fought against me. But it was more than that. It was Hayden coming into the house and pretending like I wasn’t sitting there on the couch with a bruise on my cheek. It was having all these strangers in my house. It was the loss of control over my own life.
I wasn’t sure I could do this anymore. But then the thought of not going forward on this same path frightened me more than a stranger breaking into my house.
I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea what the right thing was. But I couldn’t walk away and I couldn’t stay …
Chapter 8
Hayden
I balled my fists up and shoved them into the front pockets of my jeans, wishing I had someone or something to punch right about now. Mostly though, I wanted to punch myself. Waverly was okay. Thank God, she was bruised, but otherwise intact, apparently. But I didn’t have the balls to go pull her into my arms in front of everybody and make sure for myself that she was whole and hale.
We were about an hour from dawn, but this night was far from over. Vincent was talking in my ear about the investigation, about how the cops couldn’t find fingerprints anywhere. I found myself wondering if anyone had noticed the disarray on Waverly’s desk.
“Someone’s gone through her research materials.”
“What?” Vincent asked, a slight annoyance in his voice because I’d interrupted him mid-sentence.
“Someone disturbed her desk. Waverly wouldn’t let her desk get like that.”
Vincent swung around and studied the desk for a moment. “How do you know that?”
“I worked with her for four years. And I was over here earlier.” I touched his arm. “Call tech. Have them send someone over here to make sure there’s not a virus or anything that’s been placed on the hard drive.”
“Why would someone do that?”
“I believe whoever did this was part of the same group of people who put a virus on my phone that turned it into a listening device.”
Vincent spun around to regard me closely. “And I’m just now hearing about this?”
“I was handling it.”
“Clearly you were handling it!” Vincent’s eyes narrowed. “Does this have something to do with Amelia’s attack tonight?”
“It probably does.”
“And you didn’t feel the need to tell me that, either?”
“I wanted to tell Megan first.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
Vincent shook his head as he turned back to look at Waverly’s desk. “What was she investigating?”
“A string of murders that were similar to a murder that took place thirty years ago. The murders of my parents.”
I saw Vincent’s shoulders slump slightly. He sighed heavily as he pulled a phone out of his pocket. He spoke quickly when the call was picked up, repeating himself several times before he finally got his message through to the obviously sleepy individual he was speaking to.
I walked over to the couch and sat on the coffee table, my hand brushing the couch cushion where Waverly had sat until twenty minutes ago. I tried not to think of how she’d looked when I first walked through the door, but the image was burned into my memory. In the office, dressed in her sexy skirts and tight blouses, she always looked so tall and strong. Sitting here on the couch with a blanket resting on her shoulders, she’d seemed small. Vulnerable.
I’d never seen Waverly as vulnerable before. It shook me to my very core.
“Where is Megan taking her?”
Vincent threw himself down on the loveseat, exhaustion clear in every line of his face.
“She’s sending you both to Galveston.”
“Galveston?”
“She has a beach house there. She sent Quinn and me there once.”
I knew about the beach house. But there were safe houses here in the city that would be quicker to get to and easier to defend. The only reason I could think of that Megan would send us so far away was because she was afraid our safe houses were still compromised.
And that was more than likely.
It also suggested that Megan was genuinely worried about this situation. Somehow that frightened me more than all I’d already known about the situation.
“How is she planning on getting us out of here?”
Vincent gestured toward the door. I turned just in time to see Luke walk through the door, his eyes scanning the room, taking in everything that was going on. When his eyes fell on me, it was pretty clear he was annoyed to be there. But then Megan came breezing in and his entire expression changed.
“Thanks for doing this, darling,” she said, reaching up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “I appreciate it.”
Luke’s hand came around her waist and he pulled her close. “Anything for you.”
It was so sweet that I thought I might fall into a damn coma.
I got up and wandered down the hall to the master bedroom. Waverly was sitting on the edge of her bed, dressed now in jeans and a loose-fitting blouse, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. She looked up when I stopped in the doorway, my shadow falling over her. She’d put makeup on, her signature eyeliner making the slight almond shape of her eyes seem more dramatic. But it didn’t quite cover up the redness that spoke of tears.
I couldn’t imagine Waverly crying. Not alone, not out of anything other than anger.
“You okay?”
She shrugged, anger in the movement. That was more like the Waverly I knew.
“Do you care?”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”
I said it casually, but I didn’t really mean it that way. One minute I was standing in the door staring at her, the next I was crossing the room and running my hands over her body, checking for other injuries, frantically trying to reassure myself that she really was okay. And I was apologizing, not just for tonight, but for everything I’d ever done and for what had happened to her because of my presence in her life.
Only … she wasn’t reacting the way Waverly usually did. When I lifted her face to trace the bruises on her cheeks with my lips, Waverly suddenly pushed away from my questing hands and stood up.
“I’m fine. No need to pretend that you care.”
She snatched a packed bag off the end of the bed and turned toward me, her eyes darkened by emotion as she studied my face, searching for something I was pretty sure she wouldn’t find.
“I do care—” I began, surprising myself, but Waverly was already walking down the hall before I got the words out of my mouth. And all I could think was that I deserved all her anger and a whole lot more of it.
I followed her back up the hall where Megan was waiting.
“I’m going to have Luke drive you to one of the safe houses. There’ll be a car waiting that you can take to Galveston.” She looked at me, that motherly expression back on her face. “Do you need coffee or whatever?”
“I’m good.”
She inclined her head slightly like she wasn’t sure if she could believe me or not. But the urgent need to get us out of there was clearly stronger than her lean toward not to believing me when I’d been drinking.
She took Waverly’s h
ands in her own. “We’re going to have the techs remove your hard drive and take it to the office so we can try to figure out what they were looking for and whether he intruders put anything on it.”
Waverly frowned. “I know my own system better than anyone—”
“Yes, but someone tried to hurt you tonight. We need you to be in a safe place. You won’t do us any good if you’re hurt or killed.”
She glanced at me, but then nodded.
“We’ll keep the two of you informed on our investigation. Just hang tight and try not to get too bored out there on the beach.”
Megan smiled at her own joke, but she was the only one.
“Don’t take too long,” I said.
“We’ll do the best we can.”
“Let’s go,” Luke barked from the back of the house.
We followed him out through Waverly’s generous backyard to the alley that wove around behind the rows of houses in this neighborhood. A black SUV—one of Dragon’s company cars—was waiting behind a house two blocks down. Luke had us lie down in the back, hidden from view, as the sun slowly began to come up.
We rode side by side, on our backs, listening to the hum of the engine and nonsense of some early morning radio show as we drove out of the city. I glanced at Waverly, wanting to take her hand and reassure her, but it was if she could read my mind and she was cutting me off. Her hands were clutched between her breasts, making it clear she didn’t want to be touched.
I closed my eyes, the events of the night playing out against the dark backdrop of my lids. What a long fucking night! First Amelia, then Waverly, then Waverly again.
None of it made a lot of sense to me.
If we could just figure out who had a reason to want revenge on me, if we could figure out who Rosalie Matthias was in the scheme of things, then maybe we could figure out who was behind all this. And I could go back to life as normal.
It seemed simple at the same time that it seemed incredibly difficult.
The last thing I’d wanted was for any of this to splash back on Dragon. I hated having to rely on other people to do what I should have been able to do on my own. I hated watching people I cared about hurt. I hated that Amelia was in the hospital now, that Waverly had that damn bruise forming on her cheek. I hated that both of them would have to live forever with the memory of their separate attacks. And I hated that I was completely helpless in keeping it from happening again.
The SUV stopped after some time. Luke came around the back and opened the doors, letting us out.
“Here’s the keys. Drive straight to the house in Galveston.”
“Thanks, Luke,” I bit out.
He touched my shoulder, holding me back as Waverly walked to the car.
“My wife thinks very highly of you, Hayden. Despite everything that’s gone down between the two of us, I respect that relationship and I’ve refrained from interfering. But it you put my wife in danger—”
“Don’t worry, Luke. She’s in no more danger from me than she normally is in the course of a day at Dragon.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You’ll let me know if that changes.”
“Definitely.”
I turned and walked away, more annoyed than anything. Luke and I had been friends once upon a time. That’s how I’d come to work at Dragon. But when he changed his appearance and his name to work anonymously at Dragon, all to cover up the fact that he was helping a rogue CIA agent by keeping us from learning the man’s identity and intentions, my opinions of him changed. Megan forgave him his duplicity, but I wasn’t sure I ever could.
I got behind the wheel and pulled out, watching Luke standing in the dust we left behind. The drive to Galveston was slightly more than an hour from where we were. My stomach grumbled as we crossed the bridge, the nausea of too much tequila finally passing.
Waverly didn’t speak on the ride, but she also didn’t give in to the exhaustion that was pretty clear on her face. She just sat up straight and stared out the window, watching the scenery fly by.
We pulled up to the house a little after eight, the sun still new and bright in the sky. I could feel Waverly’s curiosity as she studied the glass and wood façade, taking in the massive front doors and the deck that disappeared around both sides of the wide house. I didn’t think anything impressed her, but I was wrong. She seemed impressed with this place.
“I’m sorry you’re stuck here with me,” she said as she reached into the backseat for her bag. “I suppose you’d much rather be here with anyone else.”
“It’s not like any of this is a choice.”
She snorted softly, a sound that was less crass and more feminine. “Don’t I know it. Like falling in love with you wasn’t really much of a choice.”
She got out of the car before her words had a chance to sink in. When they did, I felt like I’d been punched in the throat, the breath stuck there for a long moment as my inhalations did nothing to make the air reach my lungs. I was suffocating in my own shock.
Even though I’d known it, hearing the words still floored me. How could this woman—any woman—love the cold shell of the man who was left behind after Sam’s death?
And then I was moving, grabbing my own bag—Luke had apparently gone to my place and packed for me on Megan’s orders—and rushing into the house behind her. She was standing in front of the massive fireplace in the living room, staring into nothing. Why she chose that spot when there was an amazing view of the beach just a few feet to her right, I had no idea, but …
“What did you say?”
She didn’t acknowledge me and didn’t so much as turn to look at me. She continued to stare at the fireplace, her arms wrapped around her chest. She seemed tiny again, vulnerable in a way I wasn’t accustomed to seeing. The sight of her brought out something protective in me, making me want to stand between her and all these damn windows. I wanted to hold her and—
“Waverly?”
“Why are you acting so surprised? Surely you’ve known all along.”
“Known what?”
“That this wasn’t just a game to me. That being with you wasn’t just sex to me.”
“We had an agreement,” I said lamely.
“You had an agreement. I just went along with it because I knew it was all I’d ever get from you.”
“If you knew that—”
“A person can’t always control the way they feel, Hayden.” She turned and regarded me. “And now you hate me because of who my biological father was, because of something else I couldn’t control.”
“I don’t hate you, Waverly. But I can’t deny that I hate the connection. I don’t believe in coincidences.”
I crossed my own arms over my chest and leaned back against the wall, watching her with more curiosity than I dared show. She watched me, too, reminding me of Megan in the determination on her beautiful face. I wanted to touch that face, to smooth the exhaustion back, to wipe away the pain. But I stayed right where I was.
“Why did you want to work for Dragon?”
“I wanted something new. A challenge. Someone told me about tech work they’d done for a security firm and it sounded interesting, so I applied to half a dozen agencies. Dragon was just the first to offer me employment with a package I could accept.”
I shook my head, dismissing that as simple fact.
“I don’t believe you. I think you came to Dragon intentionally.”
She turned back to the fireplace. “Believe what you want to.”
“Is it a coincidence that your father killed my fiancée just a year before you went to work there? Or that these copycat killings began while you were employed at Dragon?”
“If you’ll check the dates, you’ll see that my whereabouts are easily traced during each murder.”
“Just because you didn’t commit the murders doesn’t mean you weren’t involved in some way.”
“Perhaps. But what’s my motive?”
“You want revenge for your father, just like he wan
ted revenge for what he saw as his wrongful conviction.”
“Or his murder.” She glanced at me. “I know you had something to do with that. I worked with you too long not to understand what you’re capable of.”
I inclined my head slightly. “If I told you I arranged his death, would that make a difference?”
She shrugged. “If I told you I honestly didn’t know my father and your parents’ killer was the same man, would that make a difference?”
“How could you not know?”
She laughed a humorless laugh, her arms moving around her chest again like the movement was painful in some way.
“If you grew up with three different stepfathers, not even aware that the first was not your biological father until you were ten and your sister began telling you stories about your real father, would you want to embrace the criminal who provided nothing more than his biological material to your upbringing?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it would depend on what kind of stories my sister told.”
Waverly snorted again. “She idolized him. She was convinced he was innocent. She even moved him in with her and her husband when he got out of prison, despite having a newborn home at the time.”
“Did you meet him?”
“I stayed as far away as I could. I’d just sold my first smartphone app. I didn’t want him coming around, begging for money.”
“Convenient.”
“Yes, everything about me is convenient,” she said. “There is such a thing as coincidence, Hayden. Sometimes things just are what they are.”
I shook my head. “No, they aren’t. You are connected to this whole thing somehow. Why else would the copycat break into your house and search through your research?”
She inclined her head slightly. “The killer must have heard us talking about it over the virus on your phone. He must have worried that we were getting too close.”
“Or you set it up to make yourself look innocent so that I would trust you again.”
That seemed to break her a little. Her shoulders sank and something like a sob slipped from between her lips. Again, I wanted to go to her, hold her up and protect her from everything, even me. But, again, I resisted the urge.
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