Relentless

by Vanessa Dare

“Now?” He’d just walked in the door. I was happy he asked, but surprised.

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  I took a sip of my drink to wet my suddenly parched mouth. I’d wanted help, needed Nick to save Elizabeth from Todd, but now that he was ready to do so, I was at a loss. “Um, okay. Sorry, I don’t know where to start.” I flicked my gaze to Carrie. It was one thing to talk with Nick, another to bring his sister into it, too.

  “How about her name?” Nick prodded.

  I ran my fingers over the glass nervously, realized what I was doing, then clenched them tightly in my lap. I’d only talk about Elizabeth. Nothing else. Only general specifics when it came to her. Nothing more. When Nick and I were alone, maybe I’d share something more.

  “Elizabeth. Her name is Elizabeth and she’s engaged to marry a very bad man. I need your help getting her away from him.”

  “Why don’t you tell her the guy’s bad for her? She’d believe a friend,” Carrie said. She pulled the bag of chips closer to her on the table, took one.

  “I’m not really her friend. She’s actually never met me.”

  Nick crossed a leg over a knee. “You know her fiancé, then.”

  “Yes.”

  Nick was a quick thinker. “He hurt you?” His voice had dropped to a deeper timbre.

  I flicked my gaze between Nick and Carrie. They looked back at me with identical expressions, the only difference was the eye color.

  “Yes.” The word dropped like a bomb, so I hurried on. “She can’t marry him. He’ll hurt her, in ways she probably never imagined.”

  Nick looked grim; a muscle ticked in his jaw. He looked to Carrie.

  “Why don’t you just tell her what happened to you? Don’t you think she might believe you?” Carrie asked, her voice soft, concerned.

  I shook my head. “Like I said, we’ve never met and I doubt she even knows who I am. Would you listen to a strange woman telling you bad things about your fiancé?” I questioned Carrie.

  She thought for a moment. “If I really loved him, it would be hard to believe a stranger. I’d wonder her motive.”

  Nick listened intently, but every line of his body was tense, every look he gave me dark and very brooding. “Police then. Tell them what he’s done.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t. They wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Why?” he asked, as if he didn’t believe I’d said that was possible, or that I could mean it.

  “Because—” I stopped there. I looked between Nick and Carrie. My heartbeat quickened, I could feel the throbbing at the base of my neck. Nerves plucked at the very thought of revealing things I’d held as secret for so long. “You’ve pushed your way into my life, into my apartment and it’s a little overwhelming. But you’re here, listening, and I can’t do it.” I’d been insane to think Nick would help me without having to reveal anything. “I’m sorry, Carrie, but I just met you and I can barely trust Nick.” I tucked my hair behind my ear.

  They glanced at each other, then back at me.

  “Is it because you work for Frank Carmichael?” Nick asked, his voice sharp, harsh.

  I turned to stare at Nick. Confused. What did this have to do with Elizabeth? “Who’s Frank Carmichael?” I glanced at Carrie, then back.

  “I’ve got to ask.” Nick ran a hand over his face, heard the rasp of his stubble. “Did you kill Bobby Lane?”

  If he’d hit me in the head with a bat I would have been less surprised. He thought…holy shit. He—I stood up, paced the space. After this, he still thought…? Really? We were back to this again? I was royally pissed off. “You think I killed Bobby Lane? That’s why you’re here?”

  I waved my arm in the air, indicating my apartment. God, he wasn’t here to help me. Sure, he wanted sex, but that was just a typical guy. Sleep with me, then what? He was such an asshat he was willing to sleep with me thinking I killed Bobby Lane. I’d wasted my time worrying over sharing the truth about myself with him. I’d wasted my time, period.

  “No,” Carrie said, shaking her head. “Nick does not think you killed Bobby Lane.” She looked at him as if she could shoot lasers out of her eyes.

  “I don’t think you killed Bobby Lane,” Nick repeated.

  “Then why did you ask?” I shouted, completely fed up. “Look, never mind. I think it’s time you both left. God, I’m such an idiot! You’re not here to help me. I know who you work for. That’s why I went to Scorch that night. I need your expertise in…whatever the hell you bad guys do. Your connections.”

  Carrie looked at her brother in a way I couldn’t decipher.

  “I even let you spend the night knowing what you do. At the same time, you thought…wow.” I shook my head in disbelief. “You…you think I’m a murderer.”

  “No. I don’t,” Nick replied.

  “You do. You just don’t think I killed Bobby Lane. There’s a difference. What are you going to do, take me to the police? Kill me? Fine, but at least do it knowing the truth instead of wondering. You know what? You’re right. I did kill someone. Just not Bobby Lane. Now get out.”

  My blood was pumping. I was so mad I couldn’t think straight. I’d said it. Out loud, and someone had heard. It felt good, like leaching poison from a festering wound, but it didn’t matter. Nick didn’t care about helping me. About the truth. About anything. He especially didn’t care about me.

  Carrie and Nick just sat there, stared. Nick had shifted positions so he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees as if he hadn’t heard me clearly and had to get closer. He looked ready to pounce, his look almost feral.

  “Give me a dollar,” Carrie said, holding her hand out. She was the calm one of the two.

  “What?” I asked, staring at her. My mouth had fallen open, but I didn’t care. “Are you insane?” I put my hands on my hips. “Get out of here. Both of you. I was stupid to involve you.” I pointed at the door.

  “Just give me a damn dollar. Do it.”

  Rolling my eyes, I stomped over to my bag, pulled out a bill from my wallet, not even seeing what kind it was, walked over to Carrie and slapped it into her palm.

  “Good. Now, I’m your lawyer. Everything you say is privileged.”

  I glanced at Nick, because I couldn’t figure him out.

  “Don’t worry,” Carrie said. “If he does anything with what you share, I’ll shoot him.”

  I laughed dryly, shook my head. “No wonder the twenty questions earlier. Professional hazard of a lawyer.” I was a dupe. A patsy. An idiot. She just waltzed right in to my apartment and I shared potato chips with the woman. All under the guise of getting me to talk. I’d been so careful for so long and now, a stupid bag of chips and I turned into an open book.

  “Seriously, Anna. You wanted help. You wanted Nick, now you’ve got me, too.”

  “Do you think I killed Bobby Lane? Do you even know who he was?” I asked Carrie. If she was my lawyer, I had to know if she was on my side.

  She gave a little shrug. “I know what Nick told me about him, and no, it doesn’t matter whether I think you did it or not.”

  “It matters to me,” I responded.

  Carrie looked at me with her light blue eyes for a moment, then nodded. “No. I don’t think you killed him.”

  Could I trust them both? These siblings who looked at me in the same way. Guarded, questioning, concerned. I’d been kidding myself, thinking I could tell someone about Elizabeth, get her away from Todd without anyone discovering who I was, what I’d done. These two were going to yank every last secret out of me. Everything intertwined, which meant my entire life had to unravel.

  Trust. Nick wanted me to trust him, but right now, I didn’t even like him. I closed my eyes. I’d told him my body already trusted him. That had been easy. Elemental. If I shared my secrets, I’d have to trust him with my very soul. Because that would be what I’d expose.

  A thought came to me, so blatantly obvious and yet scary. It blew the issue of trust away like a hurricane, ripping it from me with a painful quicknes
s. “Why did you come to New York?” I asked Nick, putting my hand over my eyes for a moment. “God, I’m blind and stupid. I can speak three languages, went to Harvard, for Christ’s sake, and it took me this long to figure it out. You didn’t come here to help me.”

  I saw Nick’s mouth thin into a line.

  “You still think I work for Moretti. No, that’s not right because we’d be working for the same guy. As Moretti’s lackey, you’d have heard of me.”

  Nick winced.

  “You think I work for this guy, Carmichael. As a hit man. Right?”

  Carrie looked to her brother, surprise etched on her face. “Are you fucking kidding me?” she asked him.

  I shook my head. “After you pretty much told me to fuck off that night in your office, you still came here, still think I’m a murderer. Then you got in my bed.” I looked into Nick’s dark eyes, held his stare. He’d used my attraction against me and that hurt in a way I’d never experienced before. “Tell me Nick, the truth for once. Why are you really here?”

  He looked at me with his brooding intensity and said, “Moretti sent me here to kill you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Grif

  Anna looked at me with such loathing, such hatred, I winced. Shit. Shit, shit. I’d blown it. I didn’t think she’d killed Bobby Lane, didn’t think she worked for Carmichael, but I had to hear it from her. It was the detective in me. I couldn’t take it on faith alone. She hadn’t seen it that way, hell, she didn’t even know I was a cop. But it was true, all of it.

  The worst was, she thought what we’d done together—kissing, holding each other as we slept—was done as part of an agenda. I’d told her last night that the chemistry between us was the only truth we shared. I hadn’t been wrong. It had been me, Jake Griffin, in bed with her. I just couldn’t tell her. Everything I felt for her was true, pure.

  I ran both hands through my hair. It didn’t matter anymore. She’d never trust me again. This whole situation was fucked up.

  I glanced over at my sister. She hauled back her hand and wailed me in the arm. “You little shit.” Carrie turned to Anna. “He’s not going to kill you. Why would he bring his sister to meet you if he was going to kill you?”

  Anna’s eyes looked just as they had back at the police station in Denver. Shuttered, flat, empty.

  “Finish your sentence, Nick,” Carrie continued, accenting my fake name.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I had two pissed-off women in front of me. I’d grown up with three older sisters, so I could handle emotional women. But this? I had no idea how to handle damage control of this magnitude. I just stared at Carrie and rubbed my arm. She had a strong right. In a different situation, I’d be really proud of it.

  She rolled her eyes, tossed up her hands. “Fine, I’ll start it, you finish. Anna, Moretti sent me here to kill you, but…?”

  Ah, okay. Carrie was helping. Thank God, because two homicidally justified women could make a man disappear forever. “—but I never was going to do it,” I finished, glancing at Anna. She was still shutdown, but her eyes darted to look at me.

  Carrie nodded as if to prod me along even further.

  I took a deep breath. “Moretti sent me here to kill you,” I repeated. “He sees you as a loose end since you drove the car that had Lane’s body in it. I told you in Denver, I don’t hurt women. I told you I’d keep you safe.” I ran my hands through my hair. “I’m here because if I didn’t come, he’d send someone else. Moretti thinks I’m here to kill you, but I’m really here to save you.”

  Carrie smiled. “Now that’s a lot better. You’re a complete idiot for the way you handled this whole thing, but a lot better.”

  “What happens when you don’t kill me?” Anna asked, her voice soft.

  “That’s the problem. I figure I have a week to come up with a plan before Moretti sends someone else. To kill you, and probably me, for not following through on his order. I do want to help your friend. The reason I didn’t bring her up sooner is because my first priority is you. I just have to figure out how to get us out of this mess. I can help your friend while I come up with a plan.”

  Anna relaxed, her eyes became watery. Oh shit, she wasn’t going to cry, was she? She had me by the balls already. I didn’t know if I could handle her tears, too.

  “Really?” She moved close and loomed over me. “Wait. Moretti is going to kill you, too? You can’t be here! You have to leave, get away from me. I’m nothing but trouble for you.”

  “Say that again,” I replied, my voice rough, very dark. She wanted me to leave to save myself? I slowly stood up so we were about a foot apart, but I towered over her. I tried to keep calm and remember I didn’t hurt women.

  “I can’t let anyone get hurt because of me. I’m not worth the chance that Moretti’s going to shoot you and dump your body in the trunk of a car.”

  “What about you?” God, she was a beautiful, stupid woman!

  “I’ll get a new identity. I did it once, I can do it again. I can just disappear. I have a go bag I can grab and be gone.”

  I knew what a go bag was. Military, Special Forces and anyone undercover had them. A packed bag with everything needed to go on the run. Cash, clothes, forged documents.

  I moved just a few inches closer. “You’re going to go into hiding, change your name…again, just to protect me?”

  She nodded. I heard Carrie sigh.

  “My brother’s an idiot, but he’s not an asshole,” Carrie shared.

  “Thanks, sis,” I said, but didn’t take my gaze off of Anna’s as I took her hand and tugged her back down into her chair. Her fathomless brown eyes held mine, and I could see so much. She was so brave, protecting others while sacrificing herself. “The last thing I’m going to do is walk away. We do this together. We’re together. Those kisses, Anna? What we did last night in bed?”

  “Your sister is sitting right here!” Carrie practically yelled, pointing at herself. “I don’t want to know about your sex life. I’ll be scarred for life.”

  I sighed and shot her a look. Carrie was not helping anymore. At all. She was supposed to have gotten some girl time with Anna before I arrived, to learn something about her, but from what Carrie had said, it really had been just that, girl talk. Now, I wanted her to go away. “We didn’t have sex. Jesus.” I picked up my glass. “Here, go get me another drink. Pretend you can’t find the soda in the fridge for about two minutes.”

  With a little huff, she took my glass and went into the kitchen. I could hear her opening and closing cabinets with a little extra aggression than necessary.

  I shifted so I faced Anna in her chair straight on. Our knees bumped, her eyes darted up to mine. She felt the little zing then, too. We were close enough I could smell her shampoo. Floral and feminine. “This chemistry we have is the most honest thing between us. When I kiss you, it’s me. The real me. I’m not faking. I’m not fucking walking away just so you can save me from Moretti. That’s bullshit. Not going to happen, so I don’t want to hear anything more about it. I want you so bad, I ache, too. That’s why we didn’t do anything last night, no matter how much I wanted—want—to. I don’t want just to fuck. Sorry, but that’s the only word for it. There’s more to it, to us, than that.”

  A smile broke the corner of Anna’s mouth. Her color was better; she wasn’t quite so angry. I reached out, took her small hand. She was so tiny, so fragile in comparison to me, to the big, bad world. Her fingers closed around mine and I knew, with that quick squeeze, that she’d forgiven me. I exhaled a deep breath. My eyes dropped to her mouth. “I’m going to kiss you,” I whispered, giving her warning like I had the night before.

  Anna’s eyes flicked toward her kitchen, then back to me. I may have given her warning, but I wasn’t asking her permission. I leaned forward, ran my hand through her hair, cupped her nape in my palm and brushed my lips over hers. Gently, softly.

  Kissing Anna was like coming home. It felt right, as if it was the most perfect thing to do
.

  “Can I come back in now?” Carrie called from the kitchen.

  I felt Anna’s smile on my mouth before she pulled back. “Yes.”

  I wasn’t quite ready, but there was no putting off my sister. Once I got rid of her, however—

  Carrie came back with a can of soda. “Here.” She shoved it at me, grumpily.

  “Your brother has redeemed himself,” Anna said.

  “That’s good to hear. Better than hearing about you two having sex.” She cringed. “But we have bigger problems to deal with than how to burn that image from my brain. How are we going to keep the two of you alive?”

  I’d given it a lot of thought, but hadn’t had too many good ideas. I hadn’t known exactly what I’d been up against. I still didn’t. We were short on information only Anna could share.

  “I had to ask if you killed Bobby Lane because you made me doubt. Last night, you admitted you’d done something bad. Jesus, woman! I assumed it was killing Bobby because I couldn’t imagine what else it could be.” I cracked the top on my new soda, took a big swig, wishing it was a beer. “I need to know what the real story is. If that asshole who hurt you is still out there, is involved with whatever you did, I’ll help you. I’ll protect you, Anna.” I’ll kill him. I wouldn’t let the bastard within ten feet of her. Hell, no man was going to touch her from now on but me.

  Ten days ago, my life had been simple. It had totally sucked, but it had been simple. Now, I had a woman—yes, she was mine. She wasn’t simple. Far from it. She had more issues than anyone I’d ever met, and she’d accomplished that while rarely leaving her apartment. What she’d already shared with me was like a tip of an iceberg. There was more, so much more than what she’d said, but it was beneath the surface. Hidden, yet so overwhelmingly big. And deadly.

  “What I did has nothing to do with what happened in Denver. It’s not relevant,” Anna replied, picking up her glass, taking a sip.

  “We’ll deal with Moretti in minute. Tell me what you did.”

  Whatever she had to say wasn’t going to be good. Of that, I had no doubt, since the little bit we’d heard included the phrase I killed someone. Solving the problem wasn’t going to be easy. Or safe. Or simple. That didn’t even include dealing with Moretti. Carrie had been smart making Anna a client. God bless her career choice. Lawyer or not, I didn’t need her involved in this. It was going to be dangerous, I felt it in my gut, and I wanted Carrie nowhere near the fallout.