by Cynthia Eden
“Julia!” But Jax called out. His voice loud and thundering.
At that shout, Julia’s body trembled, and her right foot slipped, but she didn’t fall, thank Christ. She stumbled and turned her body so that she could see them. The fear on her face made Dean’s chest ache. No sixteen-year-old girl should look that terrified.
No one should ever be that afraid.
“St-stay back,” Julia said, voice shaking as much as her body.
Dean froze. So did Kevin. Even Jax stopped advancing.
Dean knew they had to be careful with the way they handled this. One wrong word, one wrong step, and they’d lose her.
“I-I won’t go back,” Julia said, as her frantic gaze jerked between the men. “Do you hear me? You won’t get me again!”
“No one’s trying to get you,” Dean told her. “Julia, you’re safe here.”
She inched ever closer to the edge. Her toes were just dangling over space now. “Liar!”
“No, Julia, I’m not lying. The hospital is safe.” He kept his voice low and soothing. And he crept a step closer.
“You want to kill me! You want to torture me!” Julia’s voice was growing louder with every word that she spoke. “It was all a lie! I was never going home!”
“You are going home,” Kevin said. He took a step forward, too. “We just want you to tell us about the man who took you.”
What the hell? Dean’s stare snapped to Kevin. Now was not the time to be questioning her. The girl was a step away from suicide.
“You know,” she accused, as her shoulders slumped, and she looked down at the ground below. “You know everything. You just want to keep hurting me.”
It looked as if she were staring down at someone below. It was obvious the girl was confused. Probably from all the drugs the doctors had pumped into her system to help her deal with the tremendous pain her body had endured and help combat infection.
“I know what’s going to happen. I know why you came for me.”
“Julia . . .” Dean slid forward another step. She was still looking down at the street, her attention seemingly caught by something or someone down there, so he risked another step. Another. Kevin was mirroring his movements. “We came out here to help you.” He was almost close enough to grab her.
Kevin crept forward even more.
Julia glanced back at him. Her smile was broken. “I can help myself.”
Emma had said words like that once.
Julia’s gaze jumped to Dean. To Jax. Back to the ground below her. “You won’t hurt me again.”
He knew what she was going to do. Dean lunged forward even as she jumped. An angel falling.
“No!” Kevin screamed, and his upper body flew over the edge of the roof as he tried to grab her. Sonofabitch Dean snagged Kevin’s legs, held tight, and stopped the FBI agent from plummeting, too.
But . . .
“I’ve got her!” Kevin shouted. “Hold me—pull us up! I’ve got her!”
Dean and Jax started hauling them back. As he got a better grip on Kevin, Dean risked a glance over the side of the roof. Kevin had snagged Julia’s left wrist. She was dangling there, staring down, and she screamed, “You’re hurting me! You can’t hurt me again! I won’t go back!”
Dean knew the pressure of Kevin’s grip could have easily dislocated Julia’s left shoulder, but there was nothing they could do. Not then. First, they had to get her back on the roof.
“I can’t lift her,” Kevin panted out the words, “I-I can’t—”
Because his shoulder would be feeling the pressure, too.
“Dammit, Julia!” Kevin snarled down at her. “Give me your other hand.” He was trying to brace his legs now to get traction. Jax was helping to hold him in place.
Her right hand lifted, but . . . instead of grabbing his hand, her nails dug into Kevin’s wrist. “Let me go! I won’t go back! You won’t hurt me!”
Kevin’s hold on her seemed to slip. Her body was twisting and jerking as she fought to get free.
As she fought not to plummet to her death.
Dean leaned over the roof’s edge. “Julia, calm down! No one is going to hurt you. We want to help you.”
For an instant, she stopped struggling. Her head tipped back. She smiled at him. “I died . . . in that swamp . . .”
Then she yanked her left arm down, hard and fast, a move that had Dean roaring and grabbing for her because Kevin’s grip had loosened too much.
But Dean missed her, and Julia—Julia fell. She didn’t scream when she fell. Or when she hit. Then she just was on the ground, her body like a broken doll.
People were down there, staring in horror. Doctors and nurses in their scrubs were racing toward her.
“I couldn’t hold on,” Kevin said, voice thick. “I couldn’t save her.”
Dean kept staring below. A familiar figure was down there, someone who had been watching them the whole time. Agent James Elroy was about five feet away from Julia’s prone body. He eased back when the doctors tried to work on her, then Elroy glanced up at Dean.
“I couldn’t hold on,” Kevin said again as he grabbed for his shoulder. “Dammit, I think I dislocated it. I should have been stronger. That girl—”
Was gone.
Dean swallowed and forced his gaze off Julia. Blood was seeping beneath her body, and Julia . . .
I died in that swamp.
No, she hadn’t. But he knew she had just died in that hospital parking lot. Died, when he’d been helpless to save her.
SOMEONE SHOVED HER hospital-room door open. The door hit the wall with a thud and bounced back, and at that sound, Wade surged to his feet, dropping the magazine that he’d been flipping through and taking a fast, protective stance near her bed.
Emma saw a man’s tall, strong shape behind the curtain, then that curtain was being shoved aside. Jax stood there, chest heaving, face locked in tense, angry lines. His gaze swept over Wade, then locked on Emma. Relief flared in his gaze, just for a moment, then he gave a grim nod. “We’re getting out of here.” He stepped toward Emma.
Wade moved into his path. “Want to start by telling me who the hell you are?”
Jax glanced at Emma. “You’re not safe here. We need to leave, now.”
Wade tensed. A battle-ready move if Emma had ever seen one. And Jax was always a little too eager to throw punches. “He’s a . . . friend, Wade. You don’t have to worry about Jax.”
“Yes, he does,” Jax snapped right back. “If the guy is going to try and get in my way, he definitely has to worry.”
There was something about Jax’s voice that was just off. A hardness, a . . . grief? But Jax didn’t grieve anyone or anything, at least, not as far as she knew. Emma pulled her covers closer. “What happened?”
“What happened?” His eyes glittered. “I just watched a sixteen-year-old girl kill herself, that’s what happened.”
She jumped from the bed. This time, her knees held her as she reached out to Jax. She had to touch him. “Julia?” No, not her . . . please, this can’t be happening!
“She was talking out of her head. Saying that she wouldn’t be hurt again. That she’d died in the swamp. And she just jumped off the fucking roof.”
Wade took a step back, and she saw his face go slack with shock. “Dean—”
“He and some other guy—a guy with FBI stamped all over him—were trying to pull her up.” His chin lifted. “She didn’t want to be saved. She only wanted death.”
Emma hugged him. Jax had wound up on the street because his mother had committed suicide when he’d been just fifteen. He’d been the one to find her. The one who worked desperately to try to save her, but it had been too late.
Far too late.
I thought we’d saved Julia. I thought we’d helped someone.
“There’s nothing for you here, Em,” Jax whispered into her ear. “It’s not safe here. They can’t protect you. I can. I can get you out of here and keep you alive.”
The door opened again
. She looked up, and Dean was standing just beyond the curtain. Like Jax, deep lines were now bracketing his mouth. His eyes were too dark, too filled with surging emotion. Anger, grief.
They’d hoped that Julia could lead them to the killer’s true identity. They’d thought that she was safe.
Why did you do it, Julia?
“Let’s go, Em,” Jax said as he tugged on her arm. “You don’t belong here with them.”
That was her problem. She’d never felt as if she belonged. And standing there, looking between Jax and Dean, she could feel their pain. Both men were hurting, so much. She wanted to help them, but she didn’t know how.
“Julia isn’t in any more pain,” Dean said quietly.
Those words seemed to splinter something inside Emma.
She felt Jax shudder beside her.
“Oh, hell.” Now Wade sounded like he was the one suffering. “Why?”
“I think . . .” Dean’s voice was halting. “She believed he’d come after her again. She didn’t want him to have the chance to hurt her. So she just took the only way out that she could.”
Jax caught Emma’s shoulder in a tight grip. His fingers squeezed around her, as he said, “You think he’s just going to let you go, too? I don’t know what screwed-up hell this guy has planned, but you have to get away. Come with me. I’ll protect you.”
But . . .
Wouldn’t the killer just keep hunting? Keep killing? “I want to stop him.” She didn’t want to run. Emma backed away from Jax. “It’s not about protecting me. It’s about the others out there.”
“I don’t give a shit about the others.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Dean. “You think Dean over there does, either? Hell, no, he’s thinking exactly what I am. We need to get you out of here. Get you someplace safe.”
Now anger stirred within her. “Because that plan worked so well last time?” She shook her head. “No, I’m not running. I’m going to do everything I can to find this guy. He’s not going to just—just get away with what he did to me.” Or what he did to Julia and Lisa. Her voice lowered. “He locked me up in a tomb, buried me, Jax. You think I’m going to walk away from that?”
His face hardened even more. His right hand fisted, the tattoos stretching tautly.
“Would you?” she pushed.
He swore and whirled away from her. Jax stalked toward Dean. “If so much as a new bruise appears on her, I’ll rip apart your whole LOST team.”
Then he was gone.
Silence.
Wade whistled. “That’s an interesting . . . friend.”
Dean slowly closed the distance between him and Emma. “He’s right, you know.”
“Right that you want me to vanish into some safe house?”
His hand lifted, and his fingers slid down her cheek. “Right that you are the only thing that matters to me right now.” His breath shuddered out. “Too much has happened. I can’t lose you.”
Her hand curled around his. “You won’t.” Did he think she was going down without a fight? “LOST is the best, right? We’re going to find him. We’re going to stop him.”
For Lisa.
For Julia.
For everyone that he hurt.
For me, too. Because she wasn’t going to let the man give her nightmares for the rest of her life. She wasn’t always going to be looking over her shoulder, wondering if she was safe. Wondering if he would be coming after her once more.
“She was so scared that she wanted to die.” He pulled her closer. His forehead pressed to hers. “Promise me that won’t ever be you.”
“It won’t ever be me,” she whispered.
“I wanted to save her. I could have helped her.” She could feel the desperate tension in his body.
“Uh, I’ll just give you two some privacy.” Wade headed for the door.
“She wanted death more than she wanted anything else. Because of what he did to her.” Dean’s hold was desperate. “She was so sure he was coming back, coming to hurt her.”
“Maybe he told her that he would,” Emma said as her mind raced. “We don’t know what threats he made to her.” But a sixteen-year-old girl didn’t choose death easily.
“I wanted her to live,” Dean said. There was so much grief in his voice.
She wrapped her arms around him. “So did I.”
SARAH SLAMMED HER car door shut, and the clang seemed to echo in the hospital’s parking garage. She’d just gotten the call about Julia on her way there. Her insides were knotting, her hands shaking, and there was nothing Sarah could do to help anyone.
Another victim . . . gone.
“You should have told us if she needed to be on suicide watch!” The angry voice seemed to come out of nowhere.
Sarah spun around. Agent Elroy was there, glaring at her. It looked as if he’d just come from the hospital stairwell.
“We could’ve had better guards on her!”
Sarah’s shoulders straightened. “I was under the impression that you did have a guard on her. For Julia’s safety.”
Nearby, the elevator dinged. The elevator’s doors opened, and a man with blond hair strode out. Sarah glanced at him, her fast gaze taking in the hard edge of his face and the swirl of tattoos on his arms and hands. When her gaze met his blue stare, she stiffened even more.
Danger. Trouble. Back away.
That warning was instinctive, elemental.
“The guard left his post for just a few moments because he needed to report in.”
And the guy couldn’t have reported in while still watching Julia?
“He didn’t know she was a flight risk,” Elroy said with a glare. “You never told us that she would try to kill herself!”
The man from the elevator had lingered. Sarah risked another glance at him. Her gaze swept over the tattoos on his arms once more. So many of them. Beautiful, but . . . they added to his menacing appearance.
Sarah licked her lips and made herself meet Elroy’s furious stare. “I never had the chance to talk with Julia. I told you, though, victims experience a broad range of emotions after attacks, especially vicious attacks like this one. I cautioned both Agent Cormack and the local police—I told them that she would need counseling and assistance from a qualified professional as soon as possible. She wasn’t going to be able to just head back into a normal life.” Sarah was hardly the best choice for a counselor. She had a harder time working with the victims, mostly because it was the killers that she understood too well.
“I just saw a sixteen-year-old girl plummet to her death,” Elroy snarled. “And as far as I’m concerned, this is on you and your LOST team.”
Sarah stiffened.
“Stay out of the FBI’s investigation, understand? Your group is off the task force—”
“You know . . .” It was the tattooed stranger who spoke, the man who’d decided to just make himself comfortable watching them from the shadows. “I don’t think I like the way you’re talking to the lady.”
“I’m an FBI Special Agent, buddy—”
“I don’t give a shit if you’re Santa Claus,” the guy drawled, the Louisiana rolling a bit in his voice. “And I’m not your buddy.”
Elroy’s gaze raked over him. “Do I know you?”
“You probably should. If you don’t, well, that’s because you’re not that good at your job.” He took a step closer to Elroy. “You were supposed to be keeping Emma Castille safe, but when she vanished—on your watch—you didn’t send men after her. You didn’t do anything.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the man you should fear.”
“You can’t threaten an FBI agent!”
“Just. Did.” He paused. “And, for the record, my name’s Jax Fontaine.”
The name meant nothing to Sarah, but recognition flashed across Elroy’s face. The agent even took a little step back.
“I’ll remember what you did . . . or rather, didn’t do for Ms. Castille.” Now Jax’s gaze cut to Sarah. “And I’ll remember
what LOST did, too.”
Elroy huffed and stormed away. He jumped into his car, a long black sedan, and Sarah watched as he drove away.
And the man called Jax moved closer to her. Sarah didn’t stiffen at his approach. Didn’t back away. She just waited.
She knew exactly how dangerous men worked.
“I’ve been doing some research on the LOST agents,” Jax murmured. “Hello, Sarah Jacobs.”
She let her brows climb. “You know you just pissed off an FBI agent.”
“Like it’s the first time.” He gave a her slow smile, one with a wicked edge.
She knew his type all right. A man who thought he was his own law. A man who wasn’t afraid of the darkness in the life.
A man who wasn’t good.
A man who might just be . . . evil?
“Ah, see, when you look at me like that, you start to give me ideas, pretty Sarah.”
Caught off guard by that comment, Sarah blinked. “I wasn’t looking at you as if I wanted to have sex with you.”
He laughed and came even closer. “No, you were just staring at me like you wanted to get in my head.” Jax shook said head. “Trust me, that’s no place you ever want to be.”
She believed him. “You were involved with Emma Castille.” That was the only thing that made sense to her. The way he was so angry that she’d been taken, his threats to Elroy.
“Part of Emma will always belong to me.” His voice was so hard and deep. “You don’t just get to walk away from your past.” His smile came again, and she actually felt goose bumps rise on her arms. “But you know that, don’t you, pretty Sarah? You know all about the darkness of the past. The way it can sneak into you, hold you tight, and never let you go.”
She didn’t like this man. He was unnerving her more than convicted murderers ever had. Sarah stepped around him, moving determinedly toward the elevator.
Following her, he said, “You know killers.”
Her index finger stabbed the button for the elevator, and he . . . leaned toward her. Had he just smelled her? He was way too close, all in her space, and she should not be feeling that strange shiver of awareness with him.
