“Amy needed you and you stayed away from her.”
“To protect her, Gia,” I argue, hearing the accusation in her voice. “Is that what this is about? You think I’ll leave. I’m not leaving you.”
“Chad.”
I squeeze my eyes shut at the sound of Tellar’s voice. “Now isn’t a good time.”
“Make it a good time.” The hardness in his voice has me releasing Gia, who immediately retreats, hugging herself.
Frustrated, I turn to face Tellar, finding his spine erect, his expression pure stone. My brow furrows, and I don’t have to ask if there’s a problem to know that there is, nor do I miss the irony of having sworn I would end this, sparing Gia and me nothing in the worst of moments.
I look at her, willing her to look at me, but she doesn’t. Amy exits the side door again, a well-timed companion to Gia, and for reasons I can’t explain, it feels almost too well-timed. But as I step toward the living area with Tellar, and Amy moves toward Gia, I frown when she doesn’t look at me. What the hell is going on?
Following Teller to the kitchen, I find Liam sitting at the same spot that he’s occupied for days, but his eyes are not on his computer screen. They’re on me. Silently, he motions to the seat beside him, giving me the impression he wants me closer than in the past, the conversation tighter. I join him, and Tellar claims the seat across from us. They share a look, and unease has me snapping, “What the hell is going on?”
Liam’s lips press together a moment before he asks, “How much do you know about Gia?”
Just the question punches me in the chest with dread. “Why?”
Tellar answers: “Because looking at the files again made me realize we didn’t have one on Gia.”
“I had it on my computer that disappeared from the SUV,” I reply. “Jared pulled it for me when we were in the city.”
“So you reviewed Jared’s file?” Liam asks.
“Yes. Completely.” I narrow my gaze on him. “Whatever you aren’t saying, just get to it.”
“Does the name Madison Cook mean anything to you?” Tellar asks.
“That’s the man who created the cylinder,” I reply.
“That’s Gia’s father,” he says.
“No,” I say, rejecting that bomb. “That’s impossible. Her last name is Hudson, not Cook, and she told me that her father was a chemist at the university. Cook was a scientist at NASA, who worked on the cylinder there until funding was cut and Sheridan offered him private support.”
“And the files that Jared gave you confirmed that Gia’s father worked at the university?”
“No,” I say, a knot forming in my stomach. “He gave me her employee record from Sheridan’s company records.”
Tellar slides an iPad in front of me, showing me Gia’s birth certificate. “Gia Hudson. Mother: Gia Marie Hudson. Father: Madison Cook.”
Barely believing what I’m seeing, I run my hand over my face. “Her parents were never married,” Tellar says, pointing out the obvious. “And Jared seems too good to miss what I’ve found this easily. Did he know her before you did?”
“No,” I say, praying that answer is right. “She doesn’t trust Jared.”
“Or she was afraid that he’d tell her secrets,” Tellar offers.
“I don’t trust Jared,” Liam says. “I never did, but right now, Gia’s the one we need to focus on. We don’t know what she wants done with her father’s cylinder. If it’s the same as us, we don’t have a problem on that end. We need to know for sure, though, and I’m not sure how we make that happen.”
“She wants the same as us,” I say. “I’m sure of it.”
“You didn’t know her history,” Liam argues. “You can’t know her motivations.”
I scrub my neck. “I was an asshole to her. I played up being a treasure hunter when I thought she was working for Sheridan. I told her that I would do anything for money, including selling her back to Sheridan, to scare her into helping me.”
“Since she kept her mouth shut about her past,” Tellar says, “I’d say you were convincing, which leads to another problem.”
“What problem?”
“Records show that her father died in a car accident a month before your house burned down,” Tellar explains. “I did some digging and someone was sloppy. Her father was in Alaska the day he was supposed to have been killed in a car accident in Texas.”
My anger rises swiftly, barely contained. “Be careful where you’re going with this, Tellar.”
He holds up his hands. “Hey man, I don’t believe it was you. I’m simply stating facts here. You told her you’d do anything for money and she knows you got the cylinder from somewhere and her father was obviously murdered.”
Liam’s gaze jerks to the right and I follow it to find Gia and Amy standing there. “Gia,” I say, rising to my feet, but she has already taken off.
NINETEEN
“STAY BACK,” I shout as I dart around the table and follow Gia, exiting the kitchen into the living area just in time to catch a glimpse of her disappearing behind the curtains and onto the porch. Running after her, I exit to find her already down the stairs to the right and fading into the darkness of the beach.
“Gia!” I shout, going over the top of the railing and landing hard on the ground, my body jolting with the impact, but I don’t pause, afraid of losing her in the darkness. “Gia, wait!” But she keeps moving and I launch into a run, aware Gia is wearing nothing more than I am; her jeans and T-shirt are no match for this cold even if she wasn’t still weak from being poisoned.
I watch her turn left, stumbling on the sand, and it’s all I need to catch her. She tries to catch herself and before she recovers, I shackle her wrist, pulling her around to face me.
“Yes,” she hisses. “I’m his daughter. You said you’d do anything for money. You said—”
“I didn’t kill him.” She jerks against me and I pull her to me, shackling her leg with mine, holding her wrists between us. “I swear it on everything I love or have ever loved that I didn’t do it. My family. My sister. You, Gia. I’m falling in love with you. I didn’t kill your father.”
“No. No, don’t say that word. Did you know he was murdered?”
“Yes, but I didn’t get the cylinder from your father.”
“Liar!” She jerks and twists and trips us both. She falls backward and I end up on top of her as she squirms wildly.
Pinning her hands by her head, I straddle her. “Stop, Gia. Stop and listen to me. I got the cylinder from Rex Lenard, your father’s former college professor. He retired in Alaska.” She pants several times, breathing deeply, but she isn’t fighting me anymore and I use that opportunity to explain. “I don’t know what made your father feel he had to hide the cylinder, but he was too obvious. I followed him to Alaska.”
“So you were there when he was there.”
“Only to see Rex, and I got to Rex too late. Someone in a ski mask, who I can’t help but think was Rollin, was there when I got there. I fought him, but he’d stabbed Rex and Rex was bleeding out. Rex told me where he had hidden the cylinder and why it had to be protected. With his last breath he begged me to protect it, and I promised I would.”
“What happened to my father?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. I knew he’d been killed. I knew it was probably murder, and I wanted the hell out to protect my family.”
Her face crumples and she bursts into tears. I release her arms and hold her, burying my face in her hair. “I’m sorry, Gia. If I’d known who you were, I would have told you sooner.”
Her arms wrap around my neck, and relief at the acceptance in the act washes over me. “I didn’t really believe you did. But you kept talking about regret, and how bad you are, and it’s my father, and I was tormented and scared because—”
I lean back, trying to see her face in the darkness. “Because?”
“Because I was afraid I was blinded by what I feel for you.”
“Which is what?”
“Too much. Too much.”
“Not enough,” I say, lifting myself off of her and scooping her up. She curls into me, shivering in my arms. I quickly cover the stretch of beach, walking up the steps to the empty porch. Eager to warm her up, I track through the living area and down the long hallway. I enter our bedroom, kicking the door shut, the moon finally peeking from behind the clouds, illuminating the dark room through the sheer blinds.
Bypassing the bed, knowing we need to talk and figure out where this has led us, I settle Gia on a chaise near the double doors leading to our private patio, grabbing the blanket on the back and covering her. She curls her knees to her chest, and it’s torture, but I do not touch her. Even so, the enormity of the situation is starting to hit me.
“Were you plotting revenge against me?”
“Oh, God. No, Chad! I didn’t even know my father was murdered. I didn’t know Sheridan was a bad man until the day I helped you escape. He was—this is so hard to even say now—Sheridan . . . is my godfather.”
“He is what?”
“Yes. He and my father were friends, I thought. When my father died, I was in Austin, in college. Sheridan was in Austin, of course, because of his company, so it was logical that he came to me to deliver the news and comfort me. He told me my father had asked him to look out for me. He paid for my education, and on the day I graduated, he gave me a special gift: my father’s journal with partial equations and notes about his dream for a universal clean energy solution. Sheridan knew I’d spent a lot of time in a lab with my father, and he encouraged me to take those notes no one else could decipher and use them to continue my father’s work and finish it.”
“I’m guessing you have the legal rights to your father’s work.”
She nods. “Yes. All intellectual property. I’m not sure how or when that would have come into play, but that has to be why he hired me and kept me close.”
“I’m guessing you signed legal paperwork that somehow signed away your rights, and you didn’t know. And I assume he thought you might know more about your father’s work than you said you did or even realized you knew, thus making you a good investment all around. You did say you were onto something.”
“I told you that because I didn’t want you to figure out who I really was. You didn’t trust me. I was sure you’d think being my father’s daughter would make me look worse to you, or make me a bigger treasure to a treasure hunter.”
“And I threatened to sell you to the highest bidder! I wish you would have told me sooner.”
“There was never a right time, and then Jared came into the picture. I was sure he’d figure out the truth, and was relieved when he didn’t because I didn’t trust him. But the fact that he didn’t made me wonder if he knew and didn’t tell you.”
“You were right to distrust Jared,” I say, hating the truth, hating it so fucking bad. “He’s too good not to have known. Where’s that journal now?”
“I have a copy, and I’m sure Sheridan does as well, but the original was in the lab the day I overhead Sheridan’s conversation and helped you escape. And—it hurt, but I burned it.”
My hand comes down on her leg. “Why burn it, if you knew he had a copy?”
“Because not long before that day, I’d found a key sewn inside the journal cover and ripped it open. I didn’t want him to see I’d torn it open.”
“And the key goes to what? Do you know?”
“I knew immediately it was to a jewelry box that once belong to my mother.”
“And?”
“And inside, I found a piece of paper with an equation scribbled on it. It had my name on it and it said For your eyes only. I played with it being a part of the formula to create the cylinder, but it didn’t even make sense.”
“But you never gave it to Sheridan?”
She shakes her head. “No. It said for my eyes only, and I kept it that way.”
“Where is that piece of paper?”
“I burned it as well, but I kept the equation. She turns and lifts her hair, showing me the tattoo on her neck.
“Holy fuck, Gia!” I grab her arms. “That could be the answer everyone is looking for. We’re getting it removed.”
“It’s all I have left of him, Chad. I can’t lose it, and you didn’t even notice it. I have a lot of hair.”
“I should have noticed it. It has to go. We’ll find a place to keep it safe, carve it into a mountainside somewhere or whatever, but you can’t have it on your body. And no one but you and I can know. Not even Amy. For their protection, and yours.”
“Yes. Okay. But that really sucks, Chad.”
“I know, sweetheart. Believe me, I know, but it has to be this way.”
“Yes. Okay.” She squeezes her eyes shut a moment and then looks at me. “That day, at the car lot. Do you remember you told me your family died six years ago?”
“Yes. I remember.”
“That was when it hit me that my father was murdered, and the man I’d known as my godfather had done it. That’s why I went into the bathroom. I melted down. I tried not to, but it doubled me over.”
I pull her to me, holding her close. “I’m sorry. I was an ass to you that day.”
“Yeah. You were. A really big ass.” She inhales and lets it out. “Do you think . . . could my father be alive? Maybe they have him in a lab somewhere?”
I don’t know what to say to her. They killed my family. I know they killed her father. She shakes her head. “Never mind. I know he’s dead. Sheridan wouldn’t need me if he wasn’t.” She buries her face in her hands and murmurs, “I just don’t want him to be.”
I cup her face, forcing her gaze to mine, and I dare to say what I have not even allowed myself to think. “I know, Gia. I want my family to be alive, too. But we have each other, now. I know I pushed you away. I told you not to trust me. But it was only because I wanted you too much. And because I was, and am, falling in love with you.”
“I am too,” she whispers. “I’m falling—”
I kiss her, deep and slow, and when I finish, I murmur, “Don’t tell me you feel the same as I do. I don’t deserve that yet, but I swear to you, Gia, I will.” I try to kiss her again and she presses her fingers to my mouth.
“Don’t try to be what you aren’t. That never works for people. They wake up and realize they can’t do it, and they leave.”
They leave. It hits me then why she’d thrown my leaving Amy in my face earlier. She’s lost everyone in her life. Her mother and father, her unborn child and even the godparent she thought she’d had. And all I’ve done is tell her I’m leaving her, over and over and over again. “I’m not leaving.”
“Until you do.”
“Gia, I know you see how I left Amy. I know you heard how many times I said that we didn’t exist. I realize now that I’ve spent six years of my life aspiring to be a man worthy of the blame I felt I deserved for my parents’ deaths, filling the holes inside of me with everything wrong, not knowing everything right was out there. And I know what’s right is you.” I roll her to her back and she tangles fingers in my hair. “I can’t breathe when I think about losing you.”
Her fingers curl on my jaw. “Then don’t talk yourself into leaving.”
“I’m not going to take that fear from you with words. I’m just going to stay.” My lips quirk. “No matter how many times you call me an asshole, or how irritated I make you. We’ll fight and we’ll make up. And it’ll be good.”
“You could just not be an asshole,” she suggests.
“I’m still me, sweetheart—so maybe I should just practice apologizing.” I brush my lips over hers. “By doing what I’m going to do, and what I should have already done. Make love to you for all the right reasons, instead of fucking you for the wrong ones.”
“Chad,” she whispers, and I swallow my name on her lips, kissing her passionately, intensely—licking into her mouth, tasting her, and then slowly undressing her, reveling in each new spot my tongue can travel. She moans, delicate
, sweet moans that thicken my cock and soften my heart.
By the time I toss the last piece of her clothing away and settle between her legs, finding her clit, lapping at it, then sucking, she is already coming unglued. This is power. The only kind I need. I lift her legs over my shoulders, dip my fingers inside her, take her to the edge and back, and do it again. And finally, when I am hard and hot, and in need of her body wrapped snuggly around mine, I carry her to the bed, spreading her legs again and settling between them. I watch the pleasure ripple over her face when I bury myself inside her. Brushing my cheek against hers, I roughly promise, “I am definitely not going anywhere. And neither are you,” thrusting into her a moment later.
That’s when the wildness starts, the frenzied hot need that has my hands under her hips, lifting her to drive deeper, to take more. Now we are fucking, and it’s the best damn fucking of my life. Because she’s the best damned thing in my life. The woman who has pulled me back from the edge of hell, where I wasn’t burning alive, but raising hell of my own. Now, I’m putting it to rest.
But when I finally pull Gia into my arms and she falls asleep, I stare at the ceiling, with Jared on my mind. And I keep thinking about Gia disappearing at the coffee shop, and how I never once questioned her. Never once did I think she’d left and betrayed me. But I have always held back with Jared, telling myself it was about protecting him. He walked away from treasure hunting for honor. He was better than me. It doesn’t make sense. It just . . . doesn’t.
And yet, while I could reason away many things, no one else knew where I was when Meg found me. No one else. It’s then that I know we can’t just wait anymore for something to happen, digging through paperwork, waiting for answers. Hell can’t be put to rest until we shove Sheridan and Rollin Scott inside the hole.
“Gia, wake up.”
She shifts and lifts her head and then jolts upright. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just the opposite. Get dressed. We need to make plans.”
“Plans?”
“Yes,” I say, grabbing my jeans and pulling them on. “I said we were going to end this, and we are. Can you make a flawed but convincing prototype of the cylinder?”
Forsaken Page 23
