Harlequin Intrigue June 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: To Honor and To ProtectCorneredUntraceable

by Debra

  She looked torn between wanting to accept his embrace and argue the point further, but then froze when her phone chirped. The same sound it had made this morning.

  Evan watched all the color leak from Juliet’s face as she stared at the device.

  “That’s the reason I know someone is still out there, still after me. He’s been sending me—well, Lisa Sinclair—messages for nearly a year.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Evan pulled Juliet to his side—she had her fist clutched against her stomach again—and grabbed the phone. It was a link to an email she’d received as Lisa Sinclair, and that had been forwarded to her phone.

  Are you thinking about me as much as I’m thinking about you? It’s so hard for us to be apart, isn’t it? Soon, sweetheart.

  There was no signature line or name. Nothing to give away the identity of the sender.

  The questions flew through Evan’s mind almost faster than he could ask them. “Juliet, what the hell is this? How long has it been happening? Why didn’t you tell anybody about it?”

  Juliet shrugged. “I was trying to handle it myself. I don’t know who it’s from—and believe me, I’ve tried every resource Omega has to figure that out. It’s someone with advanced hacking and cloaking skills sending those messages.”

  “How many have there been?”

  “Dozens. Escalating in the past few months. Here, I’ll show you.” She led him back to the room that contained her computer.

  Juliet opened the file with the emails and got up from the chair so Evan could sit there. Rage pooled in his stomach as he read.

  It’s hard to be alone, isn’t it? Soon we’ll be together, sweetheart.

  I’d never let anything so horrible happen to you. Don’t worry sweetheart, I know you’ll want me.

  I’m much better for you than that no-good husband of yours, sweetheart. We’ll get rid of him so we can be together.

  The only tears I’d ever make you cry are ones of pleasure, sweetheart.

  Don’t worry, sweetheart. When we’re together you’ll never think of your past again.

  Soon, sweetheart, soon. Be patient. I’m coming for you.

  Thirty or so more, all like that. All with the same sick use of the word sweetheart, and many with intimate, graphic descriptions of Juliet’s rape a year and a half ago. The blood pounded in Evan’s ears, his desire to put a fist through the closest wall almost overwhelming.

  He closed his eyes, tried to focus on the task at hand.

  “They’re all addressed to Lisa Sinclair, with no link to you or anything with Omega?” He spun the chair around to face Juliet.

  She sat on the couch, clutching the pillow to her chest. “No. I don’t think it’s someone who knew Lisa Sinclair was just my undercover persona. It’s someone who thinks she’s real. That I’m really her.”

  Evan leaned back in the chair. “Have you had any indication of anyone following you? Is it possible that your association with Omega has been compromised?”

  “No, I’ve never seen anyone. And believe me, I’ve looked. I don’t think it’s someone who knows me as Juliet Branson, but...”

  “But it’s someone who has details he shouldn’t have about your attack,” Evan finished.

  Juliet nodded.

  She had never made the extent of her attack public knowledge at Omega. All details had been struck from her file. Most people knew she had been hurt—she’d been in the hospital too long for that to go unnoticed—but none of them would have the sick details present in these emails.

  “It has to be someone who was there.” Juliet’s voice was barely more than a whisper.

  The Avilo brothers had taken her in the middle of the night, while she was sleeping. Knocked her unconscious, then dragged her out to the nearby boat shed. Evan and Juliet had been undercover as Bob and Lisa, staying at a local weapons dealer’s mansion, for buys that were occurring all weekend. There had been multiple third parties around, including the buyers who had become so upset at Bob and Lisa’s success.

  Evan had been playing poker with the men, trying to wring any information he could from them, and Juliet had been back in their locked room alone.

  A single lock hadn’t kept out her attackers, which probably explained her need for a half dozen on her door now.

  When Evan had gotten back to their room and found it empty, he had immediately begun looking for her. Juliet would not have left it in the middle of the night without giving him any notification, unless it was under duress.

  It was under the worst possible duress.

  Finding her haunted Evan’s dreams even now. She’d been mostly naked and tied to a post, with a broken leg, cracked ribs from brutal kicks, covered in bruises and blood. Moaning, barely coherent.

  Both her eyes had been swollen shut from punches, and she hadn’t known it was Evan when he’d first approached her. She had tried to scream, but it had come out a broken croak, barely audible.

  Evan had reassured her the best he could, untied her and wrapped her in his shirt, screaming for an ambulance. At that moment, he couldn’t have cared less that they were undercover. He’d just wanted Juliet to get the medical attention she needed. Although no one had figured out they were undercover, anyway.

  Juliet had been too traumatized to talk then, but two days later, when he found out the extent of what had happened, and who was responsible—Robert and Marco Avilo—Evan had made sure they had gone down. One was dead, the other in prison.

  But had he missed someone?

  “Was a third person there that night, Juliet?” Evan asked in the gentlest tone he could muster. He knew she didn’t like talking about it.

  “No. I’ve gone over it in my head, believe me. The Avilo brothers were only the two people involved. One who held me down and the other—” Juliet put the pillow aside and stood up.

  “The messages started almost a year ago. Honestly, at first I didn’t know what to think. Maybe that it was some twisted joke from someone inside Omega. And then...” Juliet was pacing now.

  “And then what?” Evan finally asked.

  “Remember when I took those personal days about ten months ago?”

  He nodded. They’d all been relieved that she was going to spend a few days down in Florida with some girlfriends at the beach. It had seemed a step in the direction of healing.

  “Well, actually, I went down to the federal penitentiary in Louisiana to talk to the warden.”

  Evan instantly put together what she saying. “You went to see if Robert Avilo, the surviving brother, was the one sending you the emails.”

  Juliet stopped her pacing. “Robert Avilo wasn’t the one who actually raped me, but he was there. He has the knowledge of the sick stuff in those emails. I had to know if it was him, Evan.”

  Evan didn’t blame her. “What did you find out?”

  “That it couldn’t have been him. That he had no access to any computers, nor had he sent or received any correspondence since he’d been in prison. Evidently, his brother Marco was the only family he had.”

  “Robert didn’t strike me as someone who could’ve hacked an IP address, anyway. Marco always seemed to be the brains of their little ring. Robert took orders from Marco.”

  Evan could see Juliet grinding her teeth from where he sat. She sank back down on the couch. “That was my thought, too.” She shook her head. “I know you told me Marco had been killed while resisting arrest, and I wanted that to be true with every fiber of my being.”

  “But?” Evan could hear the but as clear as day.

  “But I had to be sure.”

  He was afraid he knew where she was going with this. His shoulders slumped. “What did you do, Juliet?”

  “I got a court order and had the body exhumed. I checked it for DNA.”

  “And?”

  “And it was Marco Avilo. You were right. He had died of a bullet wound taken after he resisted arrest and shot at some officers.”

  Juliet shrugged. “So that left me back at groun
d zero. Marco was dead and Robert had no access to any computer or any visitors. I just thought if I ignored the emails long enough, whoever was sending them would give up. I never responded. But it’s gotten so much worse in the last three months. There have been so many more emails.” She looked around as if seeing the shambles her house was in for the first time. “I should’ve said something.”

  Evan couldn’t stand to hear the smallness of Juliet’s voice. She shouldn’t have tried to go through this alone, but she had nothing to be ashamed of.

  He went to sit next to her on the couch, then picked her up and settled her on his lap, his arms around her. She drew in a startled breath, but didn’t pull away.

  “Yes, you should’ve said something.” Evan put his lips against her temple. “But because this threat is real and anyone in this situation would need support, not because you’re weak.”

  “I didn’t want to bother anyone. You all had your own cases, your own problems. I didn’t want to be a burden.”

  Evan didn’t know whether to shake her or never let her out of his arms again. “Nothing about you could ever be a burden to me, Jules.”

  “I was afraid I was losing my mind.” Juliet actually cuddled in closer to him. “Look at this place, Evan. It’s not healthy. I knew that, but I couldn’t seem to do anything about it.”

  “Well, you don’t have to try to go through any of this alone anymore. That’s the first step.” He rubbed small circles on her back. “And we need to get some more people working on this email issue. Omega takes stalking seriously, regardless of the circumstances.”

  Juliet nodded. “I know. But once we tell Sawyer, Cam and Dylan, they’re going to go crazy with the overprotectiveness. They’re bad enough as it is.”

  Reluctantly, Evan shifted her from his lap. “Yeah, I should call them right now. We can let them know about this while we start working on a different plan for the case with Cady.”

  “Why do we need a different plan for Cady?”

  “Juliet,” Evan said softly, gently. “I was wrong to force you to go back undercover. You don’t have to do it. We’ll find another way.”

  She shot off the couch, turned and glared at him. “You didn’t force me to go back under, Evan. I agreed to do it because it was the right thing, and because if those drone codes get out there, a lot of people are going to die.”

  Evan looked around at the shambles of her house. “Jules—”

  “Okay, I’ll admit I’ve been having problems. Here, alone at night, my demons come out and obviously I haven’t been terribly successful at battling them. But that doesn’t change the situation with Cady. Bob and Lisa Sinclair as a couple is the only good option for getting the codes out before they’re sold to someone else on the black market.”

  What Juliet said was true, but the thought of doing any further damage to her psyche tore at Evan. He wanted to protect her more than anything else.

  Juliet was looking at him with something akin to pleading in her eyes. “Evan, is what you said in the park today true? Do you really feel like I have it in me to be a successful agent, to get the job done at Cady’s?”

  Was he making her beg to do something she didn’t even really want to do?

  “Juliet, wait—”

  “Because I don’t want to get either of us hurt or killed. And I’m scared. But I’m more scared of the drones being used on innocent people. I couldn’t live with myself if I had a chance to stop it, but was too much of a coward.”

  Evan couldn’t take any more. He rose and went to her. He gripped her biceps gently, running his thumbs along the smooth skin of her arms. “Yes, I believe all those things I said. Nothing has changed that—even though you’re now the one with the bachelor death pad.”

  Evan kissed her softly, briefly. But he knew this wasn’t the time for anything more, so he pulled away. “You can do anything you set your mind to. I’ve never doubted that for a moment.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll screw up.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll screw up, too. But we won’t. We’ll just work together and do what we do best,” Evan said with a wink. “Catch some bad guys and save the world.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Something released inside Juliet. A weight lifted off her shoulders now that the truth about the sweetheart emails, as they decided to call them, was out in the open. They took her computer to Omega to be examined. She explained to Evan that she’d tried using Omega resources before, but agreed the sheer volume of emails she’d received over the past few weeks warranted a second look. Maybe there’d be some clue about who was sending them.

  Evan also helped Juliet make a dent in cleaning up her house. It wasn’t actually dirty—she hadn’t left food out or anything that had attracted any sort of bugs, and none of it was garbage. Instead, the clutter consisted mostly of old reports, files, books, maps, mail.

  Almost as if her subconscious had attempted to build a fortress of paper around her.

  When Evan opened the drapes covering her windows, Juliet watched, blinking rapidly as her eyes attempted to adjust. It had been months since this much light had been let into this house. Letting light in being a fitting metaphor.

  They didn’t spend all day in the house, knowing there was too much other pressing business from the case. Juliet packed a bag so she could stay at Evan’s place for a few days. It would be better, just in case they were ever followed, if they seemed to live in the same house.

  Juliet knew that tomorrow they would need to move into full agent mode, including infiltrating and scoping out Cady’s house as much as possible tomorrow night. Any information they had before going in on Wednesday would only help them. Plus it would give Juliet a chance to reacclimate herself with clandestine incursion tactics.

  Surprisingly, she felt equal parts ready and scared to death.

  Dinner was nice, just the two of them at Evan’s town house. But afterward, while discussing the case and the details of Vince Cady’s residence, Juliet heard the dreaded chirp from her phone, the sound she had assigned to signify the receipt of another sweetheart email.

  She didn’t realize how relaxed she’d become in Evan’s presence until the tension flooded back through her.

  This was the third email she’d received that day. The frequency of the messages was definitely escalating, particularly today.

  “You okay?” he asked, reaching for her hand.

  “I won’t lie, I don’t like getting these. And three in one day?” She chewed at her bottom lip, but then forced herself to stop. “But I’m glad you know, Evan.” She grasped his outstretched hand. Even through the fear she could feel little sparks of attraction where their palms touched. She wondered if it was the same for him.

  “I’m glad you don’t have to go through this alone anymore. Nobody should have to.” Evan squeezed her hand.

  “I just hope receiving these emails won’t interfere with the case. I don’t want to just ignore them in case the perp slips up and says something useful that’ll help us catch him.”

  Evan nodded. “How about if we look at them together from now on when you get one. Keep everything in perspective and on an even keel.”

  “That would be great.” Juliet kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Evan. I know today hasn’t been easy on you, either.”

  “We’ll just take it as it comes. But no more hiding stuff.”

  “Deal.” She smiled, and for the first time in a long while, it wasn’t forced.

  Evan stood. “I’m going to go shower and get ready for bed. I left a towel and stuff out for you in the guest bathroom.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  He turned as he was heading out of the living room. “And Jules, I was thinking...” He seemed uncharacteristically at a loss for words. “At your house you showed me the couch and the pallet in the closet where you said you’ve slept since the attack. That you haven’t been back in a bed?”

  Juliet sighed inwardly. It must have seemed ludicrous to him, her blankets on the close
t floor. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

  “Not at all.” His smile was gentle. “You did what you had to do to get by. Nobody would think that’s crazy. But once we get to Vince Cady’s house, you can’t sleep on the floor.”

  She hadn’t really thought of that. “Right, yeah.”

  “And we’ll probably be under surveillance, so I wanted to address that now. You can’t be all tense and nervous getting into bed with me there.”

  “Right, yeah.” Juliet felt like a parrot.

  “So, it would probably be a good idea for both of us to sleep together in my bed tonight. So you’re more used to being in a bed...”

  “And being with you in a bed.”

  Evan grinned. “I promise to stay on my side, if that’s any consolation.”

  The thing was, Juliet wasn’t sure if it was or not. And she wondered what Evan would do if she told him that.

  She needed to remember that this intimacy, the heat she could feel between them, was just because of his undercover skills, not because of any real attraction. At least on his part.

  But she’d like to see some more of his “undercover” skills.

  The thought popped into her head before she could stop it. Shocked, Juliet brought both hands up to cover her mouth, just in case the words came shooting out. And she giggled.

  She didn’t know who was more surprised by the sound, Evan or her.

  “What’s going on in that head of yours?” he asked, still grinning.

  “Nothing.” Juliet tried to pull herself together. “Got it. Bed, together, for the case. No problem. I’m going to take a shower, too. Um, in the guest shower, I mean. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  She was still snickering as she fled the scene of the crime.

  Undercover.

  * * *

  SHAKING HIS HEAD, Evan watched Juliet all but run down the hallway. What the heck had just happened? He had no idea.

  But if it made her smile and giggle like that, he’d take it no matter what it was.

  Since the information about the sweetheart emails had come to light, Juliet had been more relaxed, freer, than Evan could remember seeing her since the attack. And she didn’t cringe from his touch. At least not as much. And sometimes even initiated a touch herself.