Naked Edge

by Pamela Clare

  He sat down in the chair beside her, his gaze fixed faraway. And for a long moment, there was silence. When he spoke again, his voice was stripped of emotion, flat. "About six weeks before the wedding, she said she needed ... to get away. A camping trip with her bridesmaids. I was working."

  A muscle clenched in his jaw, some kind of battle raging beneath his skin, and Kat wished she knew what to say or do to make this easier for him.

  "She was late getting home. I'd made dinner. The doorbell rang. It was a state patrolman. He said ..." Gabe's voice broke again. "He said ... Jill was dead. Car accident in Boulder Canyon. A drunk driver had crossed the yellow line. Her car had rolled into the canyon. The coroner needed me to ID the body."

  Kat tried to imagine what it would be like to be asked to identify the dead body of someone she loved--and remembered how hard it had been to see Grandpa Red Crow lying broken on the ground. But what Gabe had gone through had been much worse. Jill had been his fiancee, the woman he loved. "Oh, Gabe! I'm so sorry."

  But he didn't seem to hear her. "The officer drove me down. I thought there must be some kind of mistake. It couldn't be her. It couldn't be. But it was. Her face ... Her face was bruised, bloodied. I touched her cheek, kissed her. She was so cold. I stood there, looking down at her. I didn't ... I didn't want to leave her there ... alone."

  His voice dropped to a whisper on that last word, his eyes squeezed shut, the sight of his anguish making it impossible for Kat to hold back her own tears. She reached out, took his hand.

  "I asked about her friends, the other women who'd been with her, but ..." He drew a deep breath, as if trying to steady himself. "The coroner told me there hadn't been other women in the car. The passenger ... had been a man."

  CHAPTER 23

  THE PASSENGER HAD been a man.

  It took Kat a moment to understand what this meant, the truth dawning slowly. If Jill hadn't been with her bridesmaids, then ...

  She'd lied to Gabe. She'd been unfaithful. She'd betrayed him.

  "That's when I noticed the other gurney, the other body. Wade was draped with a sheet, but part of his arm was exposed. I recognized his tats. My fiancee and my best friend. Killed in a car accident together."

  To lose the woman he loved and his best friend on the same day would have been bad enough. But to lose them like this ...

  Tears gliding down her cheeks, Kat held tighter to Gabe's hand. "I-I'm so sorry!"

  "At first, I thought there must have been some explanation. Maybe her girlfriends had driven separately. Maybe she'd run into Wade and given him a ride back into town." Gabe shook his head, gave a little laugh, his gaze hard. "God, I was an idiot."

  "No! Don't say that!" Kat sat upright, her words coming out with a ferocity that surprised her. "You weren't an idiot. You were grieving and in shock. You loved them, trusted them, and wanted to believe the best of them."

  It isn't easy being let down by someone you loved and trusted.

  Words he'd spoken just the other day came back to her, and she understood he'd been speaking from painful experience. No wonder it had been easy for him to believe that Grandpa Red Crow had been hiding a drinking problem or looting artifacts. After a betrayal like that, Gabe would find it terribly hard to trust anyone again.

  Especially women.

  "I spent the next couple of days half crazed, trying to uncover the truth. I went through her e-mail, her cell phone messages, her credit card receipts, and found shit I wish to God I hadn't. I confronted her girlfriends. They'd known she was going away with him and had been ready to cover for her. Then one of my climbing buddies came by. He told me Jill had been fucking Wade off and on ever since she'd moved to Colorado. Their trip together was supposed to be one last pre-wedding fling before she settled down."

  "He knew? Your friend knew--and he didn't tell you?"

  "He said it wasn't his business. He said Jill loved me but couldn't give up the single lifestyle. He called her a sex addict, and I wondered how many of my other friends she'd fucked." Gabe spoke through clenched teeth, his voice shaking with barely suppressed rage. "I told him to get the fuck out. I work with him, but we're no longer friends. As for the rest of them-I haven't spoken to any of them since."

  "I don't blame you." What kind of friends would let a buddy marry a woman they knew had already been unfaithful ? No friend worth keeping, that much was certain.

  "I didn't go to Wade's funeral, but I went to Jill's. I left the engagement ring I'd bought her on her finger to remind her of the promise she'd broken and watched as they lowered her casket into the ground, not knowing whether to hate her or..."

  Kat swallowed a sob, finished for him. "Or whether to grieve for her."

  He nodded. "My life with her was a lie. The woman I loved, my circle of close friends. None of it was real. I believed in something that never really existed."

  And Kat understood. He hadn't just lost Jill and Wade. He'd lost all of it--the people he loved and the life he'd lived.

  "The autopsy came out the day after her funeral. She'd died almost instantly of a broken neck and massive internal injuries. The coroner found semen inside her--live sperm, still moving. She and Wade were both dead, but his sperm were still alive inside her. Kind of funny when you think about it."

  "I don't think it's funny at all." Kat could only imagine how hurtful it had been for him to read through the report, proof of Jill's infidelity and Wade's betrayal spilled across the pages of a public document, a document anyone could read.

  "We were going to get married, but she fucked my best friend." Gabe met Kat's gaze, anger sharp in his eyes. But behind the rage, she saw hurt, torment, desolation. "She said she loved me, but she fucked my best friend."

  Unable to speak, Kat drew him into her arms.

  Gabe allowed himself to sink into Kat's arms, the comfort she offered a refuge from the turmoil inside him, her embrace holding the pieces of him together. He felt shattered, empty, a gaping hole in his chest where his heart should have been, the edges torn and still bleeding. He wrapped his arms around her and held on, hating himself for needing her, but needing her just the same.

  It was only then he realized she was crying, her slender body shaking with the effort to contain her tears, her breath coming in shudders. Something twisted in his chest to know she cared. But he hadn't put himself through this to provoke her sympathy, no matter how deeply it touched him. He'd done it so she'd understand.

  He drew back, looked down at her face, her cheeks wet with tears, her eyes glistening. "I'm telling you all of this so you'll understand that it's not you, it's me. I can't be the man you want me to be. I'm broken. Inside, I'm broken. Don't waste your time hoping for things that can't happen."

  She looked up at him through her tears, her gaze soft with compassion. "You're not broken, Gabe Rossiter. You're just afraid to let yourself feel because feeling hurts so much. But feeling is part of living. You can't escape it. If you try, you'll hurt yourself worse than Jill ever could."

  Gabe opened his mouth to object, but nothing came out, her words knocking the breath out of him. Then she leaned forward--and kissed him.

  Her lips brushed over his, petal-soft touches that shocked his system, made his mind go blank. Surprised, he watched, eyes open, as she leaned into him, deepening the kiss, her arms sliding behind his neck. Then her tongue flicked his, and he couldn't help but respond, her touch calling him back from the edge of the abyss, the storm inside him igniting into something even more elemental.

  He took control of the kiss, his tongue subduing hers, his body shaking with the sudden force of his craving for her. She felt warm and alive in his arms, her heart beating hard against his. He rained kisses over her face, her tears salty on his tongue, the scent of her skin making him want to devour her. "God, Kat, what have you done to me?"

  It wasn't a rhetorical question. Somehow, she knocked him off balance, getting past his guard, breaking through the wall he'd built around the pieces of his heart. He'd let her stay at his house
. He'd slept beside her. He'd told her things he'd never told anyone. And now, after he'd spent the past hour explaining to her why she shouldn't waste any more time or emotion on him, he couldn't keep his hands off her.

  He didn't wait for her to answer, kissing her again, drawing her closer. She whimpered into his mouth, melting against him in a way that sent heat shooting straight to his groin, her fingers curling in his hair. It was only when his hand bumped against her IV line that he remembered she was supposed to be resting in bed.

  He dragged his lips from hers, looked into her eyes and saw a need that matched his own, both of them breathless. "It's a good thing you're off the heart monitor, or we'd have set off the alarm. Nurse Ratched would have come and kicked my ass."

  He'd wanted to make her laugh, but she didn't even smile. Tears filled her eyes again, and she reached up to rest her hand against his cheek. "Don't push me away, Gabe. I know you're hurting, but please don't push me away. Don't ask Chief Irving to put me someplace where I can't be with you."

  He lifted her back onto the bed, then drew the covers up around her and sat beside her. "I'm not a saint, Kat. Far from it. If we spend much more time together, we're going to end up having sex. Are you sure it's worth the risk?"

  She nodded. "Yeah."

  And some part of Gabe was relieved.

  GABE ARRIVED LATE the next afternoon to find Kat sitting on her bed, dressed and talking on the phone. Given what she was talking about, he guessed she was speaking with her editor. He sat in the chair and glanced at his watch. They had a schedule to keep and needed to be on the road in fifteen minutes.

  "He said that artifacts from this area have been showing up on the black market as far away as Beijing and Riyadh, everything from pots to moccasins to human remains. He couldn't say whether they'd come from Mesa Butte specifically, but the designs on the pottery indicate that they were painted by Cheyenne during the century prior to the arrival of settlers."

  So she'd spoken with Darcangelo. His FBI contacts had put him in touch with an Interpol agent who'd noticed a sharp uptick in artifacts from this region. Apparently, he'd arranged for Kat to interview the agent. Strange that Darcangelo hadn't mentioned it--or maybe not so strange, given how busy they'd been.

  Gabe had spent yesterday afternoon and all day today with Darcangelo and Hunter, getting things ready. They'd used the time to talk over her case but hadn't gotten any closer to piecing things together than they'd been yesterday. The inipi raid. Red Crow's death. Threatening phone calls. Looting. Attempts on Kat's life. Lots of puzzle pieces, but no clue as to how they went together. Then Gabe had remembered the hunch he'd gotten just before he'd gone upstairs and seen Kat with the photo album.

  "The person who'd made those death threats knew that the phones he was calling from were beyond the city's surveillance cameras," he'd told them.

  "What makes you say that?" Hunter had asked.

  "Just a hunch."

  Darcangelo and Hunter had stared at him, then looked at each other. Darcangelo had called Irving, who'd agreed to ask the city of Boulder for a list of everyone who had access to information about the city's surveillance system. Gabe was pretty damn certain he'd see Daniels's name on that list. It wouldn't prove anything, of course, but it would be a step in the right direction.

  He glanced at his watch again, then back at the woman he couldn't seem to get out of his mind. All night long what she'd said had run through his head, permeating his dreams, waking him again and again until he'd given up sleeping.

  You're not broken, Gabe Rossiter. You're just afraid to let yourself feel because feeling hurts so much. But feeling is part of living. You can't escape it. If you try, you'll hurt yourself worse than Jill ever could.

  Well, Kat was right that he couldn't escape feeling. And his feelings for her were confusing the shit out of him. One moment he was certain the best thing he could do for her--for both of them--was to get the hell out of her life. The next he wanted her so badly that he could barely stand being away from her. It was a wonder he hadn't given himself whiplash.

  He let his gaze travel over her, unable to help himself, her femininity enticing him even from across the room. She had tucked her long hair behind her ear, her cheeks a healthy rose color once more. She was wearing the same sweater she'd worn at the restaurant with a pair of sleek jeans, her legs tucked beneath her, her toes peeking out from beneath her, her feet covered with adorable fuzzy pink girl socks.

  Adorable fuzzy pink girl socks? Damn, Rossiter, listen to yourself!

  So many things had changed since she'd come into his life. He had changed. It scared the hell out of him, and yet, he couldn't deny that when'd woken up this morning he'd felt ... lighter. Faced with the undeniable fact that Kat meant something to him--and that he was going to be holed up with her for the foreseeable future--he'd decided he had no choice but to take it day by day and see what happened.

  You know what's going to happen, dumbass. You're going to fuck her brains out, and then walk away and leave her broken, too.

  No, he'd keep his prick in his pants--or at least out of her. He caught Kat's gaze and pointed at his watch. "We need to go."

  She nodded. "Yes, but I'm only about halfway through the documents. That's as far as I made it before ... Yes, I'll try to have a story ready for you by deadline on Monday. But I have to go now. I've been discharged, so they're moving me."

  Gabe scowled at her and shook his head, wishing she hadn't said that.

  Kat rolled her eyes at him.

  They'd planned to move her in secret, without anyone knowing when she was leaving the hospital besides the three of them, Chief Irving, and the hospital's security staff. Though Gabe was certain no one at the paper would deliberately endanger Kat, the fewer people who knew, the better. The hospital wouldn't acknowledge that she'd been discharged until later this afternoon in order to keep whoever was after her in the dark for as long as possible. Hopefully, by the time the bastard found out she was gone, she'd be far beyond his reach.

  "Thanks, Tom. Tell everyone I miss them. Bye." She ended the call and slid off the bed, just as a gray-haired nurse entered pushing a wheelchair. Kat stared at it, then shook her head. "Thanks, but I'm fine. I can walk."

  The nurse shrugged. "Hospital policy."

  Gabe couldn't help but smile at the dismay on Kat's face. "Just sit back and enjoy the ride, honey."

  THEY TOOK KAT out through a basement exit that led to the employee's underground parking garage, where Marc and Julian were waiting. First they had her put on a Kevlar vest. Then she and Gabe, who was also wearing Kevlar, got into Marc's SUV, Kat sitting in the backseat and Gabe riding up front, while Julian followed in an unmarked police car.

  "Where are we going?" she asked Marc.

  He slid his Bluetooth headset into place, meeting her gaze in the rearview mirror. "That's for us to know, and no one to find out."

  They left the parking garage and emerged onto the street, Julian lagging a few car lengths behind them as they drove south on Broadway. Fifteen minutes later, they'd left Boulder behind. Forty-five minutes later, they were on 1-70 and heading into the snowy mountains.

  Kat watched the foothills give way to deep canyons and rising peaks, her thoughts drifting once again to what Gabe had told her yesterday. Now she understood why he didn't believe in love, why he thought sex was only about pheromones. How could he believe anything else when the woman he'd loved--the woman who'd said she loved him and who'd agreed to marry him-had hurt and misled him so completely? If what Gabe's so-called friend had told him was true, Jill had been unfaithful from the very beginning. She'd taken Gabe's love under false pretenses--and she'd squandered it.

  Kat might have despised her for what she'd done, but Jill was dead. It wasn't right to think bad thoughts of the dead.

  And though Kat hadn't considered it until last night, she also understood why he lived his life so completely alone, no longer surrounded by the big group of friends she'd seen in the photographs. He'd lost Jill
, discovered the truth about her and Wade, and then learned that his friends had known but hadn't been brave or loyal enough to tell him. His hopes, his dreams, and his faith in other people had been smashed with a single devastating blow. In his grief and rage, he'd cut himself off from everyone.

  I can't be the man you want me to be. I'm broken. Inside, I'm broken.

  Kat didn't believe that. He wasn't broken. A broken man wouldn't have risked his life to save hers. But she knew he hadn't healed, either. And as she considered it, she thought perhaps she understood why.

  Gabe had never let himself grieve for Jill because he was hurt and angry that she'd betrayed him, but he'd hadn't been able to express his hurt or rage, either, because he'd still loved her and had been overwhelmed with grief. One emotion blocked the next, bottled them up inside him. The grief, the hurt, and the rage were still there. She'd seen them all yesterday. Like a man who didn't know which way to turn, he was lost, trapped between irreconcilable emotions.

  Don't waste your time hoping for things that can't happen.

  Was that what she was doing? Was she hoping for something impossible, something that could never be? No. She refused to consider that.

  Kat might not uphold all the traditions of her people. She might not believe everything her grandmother had taught her--the Navajo creation stories, the tales of mythological creatures, the prophesies about the Time of the End. But she was Dine. And she knew that nothing in life was random. Things happened for a reason.

  It hadn't been coincidence when the rocks had fallen from beneath her feet, bringing to her side the one man who was both willing and able to watch over her, protect her, and save her life, a man who cared about Native people and respected the land. It wasn't an accident when she'd tried to push him away and events had conspired again and again to bring them together until she'd fallen in love with him. So it couldn't be a mistake that he'd bared his soul to her, revealing to her the shattered part of himself that he'd shared with no one else.