Love Inspired Suspense December 2015, Box Set 2 of 2

by Margaret Daley

  It hadn’t taken him long when they were in college to find out how her father controlled her life, from what she wore to the friends she had. Her one attempt at rebelling against her father’s authority had been when she’d told him she was going to marry Lucas. But that resolve hadn’t lasted very long. She and Lucas had had a fight over the fact that he wanted to wait until he’d finished his SEAL training before marrying her. Lucas had thought that they’d be able to work things out once he got back from basic training…but by then, she’d already married another man—one who had her father’s stamp of approval.

  Lucas closed the dishwasher, sat down at the kitchen table and pulled out his cell phone. He punched in the number for Scottie Murray, the computer whiz they used at the agency, and waited for him to answer. Lucas had no idea how Scottie could find even the deepest buried items on the internet with little effort. But then again, he didn’t ask. It was better if he didn’t know some of Scottie’s secrets.

  Scottie connected on the third ring. “Hello.”

  “Scottie, Lucas Knight here.”

  “Hey, man. What’s up?”

  “I have a new client. I need you to do some digging for me.”

  “Sure. What do you want?”

  “I want you to find me everything you can on a man named Kyle Lockhart and his wife, Mia. Lockhart was murdered about a month ago, and I need a full background search on him. Let me know the minute you find out anything.”

  “Okay, dude. You got it. I’ll get to work right away.”

  Lucas disconnected the call and sat at the table, thinking for a few minutes. If there was more to Mia’s story than what she was telling him, Scottie would find it. He glanced at the clock on the wall: 8:00 a.m. Scottie might not call back for several hours. That gave him time to take care of other things.

  He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Adam’s number. It went to voice mail right away. Without giving details, he left a short message that he wouldn’t be able to go to Nashville and would explain later. Then he headed to the shower.

  An hour later he walked back into the living room to check on Mia. She still lay there sound asleep but had pulled the cover up around her neck more. He watched her even breathing for a moment, before he turned and walked back to the kitchen.

  He’d just entered the room when his phone rang. He pulled the phone from his pocket and smiled at Scottie’s name on the screen.

  “Hey, Scottie. Did you find something for me?”

  “Yeah, I did. And some of it’s very interesting. This Lockhart guy was quite a character. I have everything in a file that I just emailed to you. There’s probably more, but I thought this would give you something to study while I keep digging into his life.”

  “Thanks, Scottie. Let me know when you have more.”

  As he disconnected the call, Lucas strode toward his office to turn on his computer. Within seconds he had opened his email and found the file Scottie had sent.

  Carefully, he began to read through the pages contained in the report. The first ones dealt with Kyle’s job at the import business. There was a job description, some evaluations filled out by the owner and some letters of commendation from community leaders.

  Those were followed by newspaper articles reporting Kyle’s important acquisitions and pictures of him at events, a wineglass in his hand, and surrounded by beautiful women, smiling for the cameras. As Lucas studied picture after picture, he discovered the same woman was in each one. The captions underneath identified her as Christine Abbott, heiress to her family’s hotel chain.

  Was it coincidence that Christine was in all the photos? He doubted it, but that was something Lucas could pursue later.

  He scrolled to the next page of the file. His eyes grew wide as a police report came into view. Lucas leaned closer to the computer screen and read, his stomach churning as he realized what he was looking at. A report of Kyle Lockhart’s arrest, six months before his death, for domestic abuse.

  Lucas’s fingers shook as he read the account. Teenagers having a party on the shore of the lake near Mia’s house had called the police to report hearing screams. The police had arrived to find Mia Lockhart severely injured. She had been transported to a hospital where it was determined she had a broken arm and several broken ribs, along with cuts and bruises over most of her face.

  Lucas scrolled down further and gasped aloud when a picture of a bruised and battered Mia appeared on the screen. He clamped his hand over his mouth to keep from crying out as he read that Mia had refused to press charges.

  Before he knew what he was doing, he had dialed Scottie’s number. He answered on the first ring.

  “Scottie, did you see the picture of Lockhart’s wife?”

  “Yeah, man. I saw it. But that’s just one of many.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “The investigating cop is a guy I know, so I called him and asked him about Lockhart. He said that everybody at the precinct knew Mia Lockhart was a victim of repeated domestic abuse. They tried to get her to press charges every time he put her in the hospital, but she never would. My friend said that’s the way victims are. Their abuser convinces them that they deserve what they’re getting. Most of them have nowhere else to go, so they stay. It’s sad, isn’t it?”

  Lucas’s breath hitched in his throat. “Yeah. Real sad. Thanks, Scottie.”

  For a few minutes after disconnecting the call Lucas sat still and thought about what he’d discovered. No wonder Mia had no one to turn to. She’d been the victim of the one person who was supposed to take care of her.

  He stood and walked back into the living room where she still lay sleeping. She moaned and clenched her fingers around the top of the afghan as she pulled it tighter around her neck. “No,” she murmured as her body twitched. “I’m sorry.”

  He had no idea what she was dreaming, but he knew for a certainty now that her life had been a nightmare. And when her husband was killed, she’d ended up in a new nightmare, threatened and eventually assaulted by the man who’d murdered Kyle. She had come to him for help, and he would do everything he could to find the man who’d terrorized her for the past few weeks.

  As for Kyle Lockhart, there was nothing Lucas could do about him now. But just maybe he could bring some closure to Mia for what she had experienced at her husband’s hands. If he could do that, maybe he, too, could at last put some closure to the most painful period of his life.

  *

  Mia slowly opened her eyes and stretched her arms over her head. She didn’t know when she’d slept so soundly. Her fingers brushed against the soft yarn at her neck, and she looked down at the afghan covering her from her shoulders to her toes. She trailed her fingers down the crocheted diagonal lines of muted shades of green, brown and gray that blended in with the earthy tones of Lucas’s house. Her eyes flew open wide at the thought of his name.

  Lucas! She was in his house. Asleep on his sofa.

  “Are you finally awake?”

  His voice came from the direction to her left. She bolted upright on the sofa and jerked her head around to stare at him. The sun shone through the window behind him and cast shadows across the chair where he sat. He had his ankle propped on the opposite leg and sat there staring at her, the expression on his face unreadable.

  She clutched the afghan tighter around her neck and swallowed. “Lucas. You scared me.”

  His hands clenched around the arms of the chair, but he didn’t rise. “Did I? I’m sorry. I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to wake up.”

  She swiveled her body around until her feet were on the floor, and she sat facing him. “I guess I was more tired than I thought. I’m sorry if I inconvenienced you by sleeping here. What time is it?”

  “It’s close to three o’clock. You must have been really tired.”

  She shook her head in disbelief. “I’m so sorry, Lucas. I hope I didn’t keep you from going to work.”

  “I have an office here. I had some paperwork I took ca
re of, so it was no problem.”

  She pushed to her feet and busied herself folding the afghan. “I’ll get out of here. Thank you for everything today. I’ll give you my cell phone number so you can contact me when you have any news about Tony Chapman.”

  She reached to put the afghan on the back of the sofa, but she froze at the sharp words he uttered. “And where are you going?”

  His voice had a hoarse rasp to it. Was that anger she heard? Or was she so used to hearing Kyle’s harsh tone that she looked for it in everyone she encountered? She bit her lip and laid the afghan down before she turned to face him. “I don’t know yet, but I’ll let you know when I get settled, maybe in a hotel.”

  “I thought you didn’t have any money.”

  She frowned. What was with the interrogation? She swallowed hard and tried to remain calm. “I have a little. I think I can afford a cheap motel.”

  He pushed to his feet and took a step toward her. He stuck his hands in his pockets and stared at her without blinking. “I have a few questions before you leave.”

  “Okay.”

  He advanced, and she inched backward until her legs bumped the sofa, and she sank onto it. Lucas took a deep breath as he towered over her. “I need to know more about Kyle, so I can figure out what might have made someone want to kill him. You said he isolated you from friends, he wouldn’t let you work, and in the past few years, he never took you with him to business events. Other than that, how did he treat you?”

  Her fingers shook, and she laced them together to hold them still. “H-he was my husband. H-he treated me like I was his wife.”

  Lucas’s steel blue eyes bored into hers, and she dropped her gaze. “And what does that mean? Was he kind? Did he make you happy? Did he love you?”

  Her face burned from his intense gaze, and she cast a furtive glance down at her hands. “Lucas, I don’t see what this has to do with finding the man who killed him.”

  With a sigh, he sat on the sofa next to her. When she peeked over at him, she saw him staring down at his feet for a moment before he reached over, pulled one of her hands loose from the other and wrapped his fingers around hers. She started to draw away from him, but he tightened his grip. She opened her mouth to protest, but the sad look in his eyes stopped her. “It’s all right, Mia,” he said, his gentle tone piercing the barricades around her heart. “I know what kind of love he gave you. So tell me the truth.”

  For a moment she couldn’t respond. Her mouth trembled as she realized that for years, there’d been nobody she could tell. Now a man who had been kinder to her than any other in her entire life was asking for the truth. She couldn’t refuse, but when she opened her mouth to speak, the words wouldn’t come. A keening wail drifted from her throat, and she closed her eyes as the tears began to stream down her face. She took a deep breath.

  “All right!” she sobbed. “My marriage was a nightmare. Kyle was a monster, and I lived in fear that every day would be the one when he would finally go too far and kill me.”

  She felt him move closer, and she glanced up just as he reached out and patted her shoulder. That only produced more tears. “Why didn’t you come to me?” he whispered. “I would have helped you.”

  The sorrow in his eyes pierced her heart, and she pulled free of him and turned her face into the soft afghan she’d just folded minutes before. He didn’t say anything as she sobbed but patted her shoulder from time to time and uttered some soothing words.

  After several minutes she sat up and wiped at her eyes. Her pulse was still racing, but it was freeing to finally admit to someone what her life had been like. And she was glad Lucas was the one she could tell.

  “After Kyle and I were married, I discovered very quickly why my father had wanted me to marry him. He was like my father, but worse. He didn’t allow me to make any decisions, not even about the clothes I wore. He picked out everything, provided everything and wanted me at home when he got there. The abuse wasn’t too bad at first. If I displeased him, didn’t cook a meal the way he liked it, he would slap me. Then one night things escalated.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was watching the news, and the reporter did a story about your brother, Adam, bringing in a fugitive wanted in a high-profile case. Adam told about the Knight Agency, and he mentioned that his younger brother was serving in the navy SEALs but was arriving home on leave soon. I made the mistake of saying that I was glad you had pursued your goal, and Kyle went wild. He accused me of still being in love with you and of plotting to meet you when you came home on leave. That’s the first night I had to go to the hospital.”

  Lucas’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and he swallowed hard. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  She waved her hand in dismissal. “It wasn’t your fault. I’d made the mistake of marrying him. After that, though, things got worse.”

  “Why didn’t you leave?”

  She shrugged. “I tried to once, but he found me and brought me back. That was one of the worst beatings. He told me if I ever left again, he’d kill me. He hired a maid after that to keep tabs on me. She reported every little thing I did to Kyle.”

  Lucas squeezed her hand tighter and then released it. “I’m so sorry you had to endure this. I wish I could have helped you.”

  “It’s okay, Lucas. I’ve been alone for so long that I don’t expect much from anybody anymore.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she could barely make out his image even though he sat next to her. “But, please, help me now. I’m never going to be free of Kyle and the life he made me live until his killer is caught.”

  He smiled at her, and for the first time in years she felt some hope. Maybe she could overcome the fear she’d lived in for so long.

  “Don’t worry, Mia. I’ll help you, and I promise I’ll do everything in my power to find this guy and keep you safe from him.”

  Her eyes filled with tears again. “I was so afraid to come here. I didn’t know if you’d even listen to me. I can never tell you how much I appreciate your help.”

  Telling Lucas about her life hadn’t been easy, but she felt better, almost as if a dam had burst and all the memories that threatened her sanity had poured out. Maybe this was the beginning of a new life for her. She hoped so.

  She had no idea what she’d do once Tony Chapman was back in jail where he belonged, but at least she’d be free. Free to go and do as she pleased. And free of everything that tied her to the past. And Lucas was going to make that happen.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lucas walked to the window in the living room and stared outside. The discovery of what Mia’s marriage had been like had almost sucked the breath out of him. He raked his hand through his hair and groaned. Even if he had spent the past seven years trying to come to grips with the anger he’d felt for her, he would never have wanted her to endure what she’d had to go through.

  He glanced around. She still sat on the sofa, her eyes downcast and her hands clasped in her lap. He’d thought she looked like a waif when she’d arrived. Now he realized she was a battered woman. Not only had Kyle hurt her physically, he had hurt her emotionally, and Lucas had no idea how to deal with it.

  However, he did know how to deal with danger, and, from what Mia had told him, she was in a lot of danger right now. The one thing he still hadn’t figured out was how Mia’s caller had known she was at his house. If he hadn’t followed her here, he had to have some way of keeping tabs on her. The answer hit him, and he groaned again.

  “Of course. The car.” He whirled around from the window and ran to the door. “I’ll be right back,” he called over his shoulder to a startled Mia.

  Once outside he headed straight to Mia’s car. It took only a few minutes to find the GPS tracker attached by a magnet to the inside fender of the back left tire. He pulled the tracker out, and an uneasy fear slowly curled through his body. When Mia had first begun to tell her story, he hadn’t believed the threat to her to be that severe. Now, with Mia’s account of the attack at her home, the
threatening phone calls and a GPS tracker on her car, he knew it was serious. Deadly serious.

  He stared down at the device in his hand before turning it off. Then he closed his fingers around it as he reentered the house. Mia stood just inside the front door, waiting for his return. When he walked in, her eyes grew wide. He motioned toward the living room. “Let’s go back in there.”

  He followed her into the room and stopped when she turned to face him. A puzzled expression flickered in her eyes. “Why did you go to my car?”

  Lucas opened his hand. “To look for this.”

  She took one glance at what he held and frowned. “Wh-what is that thing?”

  “It’s a GPS device that was attached to your car. That’s how your caller knew where you’d gone. As long as you kept using your car, he’d have known where you were at all times if I hadn’t found it. I think we need to go to the police and tell them Chapman is stalking and threatening you.”

  “No!” A panicked look flashed across her face, and she glanced around as if in search of an escape route. “I can’t go to the police. He said if I did, I’d end up with three bullet holes in my head.”

  Lucas reached out and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her to an abrupt stop. “We have to, Mia. My brother-in-law, Ryan Spencer, is a detective on the force. You don’t have to go to the police station. I’ll call him and have him come over here.”

  Mia tried to pull away from him. “I can’t. I’m afraid,” she cried out.

  Lucas clamped his hands on her shoulders and stared down into her eyes. “I know you’re afraid, and I understand. You’ve been through things in the past seven years that would have destroyed a weaker woman. But you’re not weak, Mia. And you’re not alone anymore. I’ll help you face this.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not the same woman you once knew, Lucas. I can’t do this. Maybe it’s better if I just let Tony Chapman finish what Kyle tried to do many times—kill me.”

  A lock of hair had fallen across her forehead, and he reached up and gently smoothed it back into place. “You don’t mean that.”