by Kali Argent
“I’m not the one who got shot,” Phoebe reminded him, interrupting his morbid thoughts. “I’m fine, just a little tired.”
“The nightmares will pass.” Squeezing her tight, he lowered his head to kiss her brow. “I promise you won’t feel this way forever.”
“How did you—”
“Let’s just say I didn’t have the easiest time adjusting to civilian life after the war. I know what it’s like, but I promise it’ll get better.” He kissed her again. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened.”
A single tear spilled from the corner of her eye and slid down her cheek. “I can’t stop thinking about it. I mean, obviously, she was disturbed, but I keep thinking that if I had just seen it sooner, maybe I could have done something different. I can’t help but wonder if I did something to encourage her, to make her think that I felt the same way she did.”
“Elena was sick, and she fooled us all. Even her brother.” They’d found Jonas unconscious in the bathtub of his hotel room, drugged with the same Ketamine Elena had given Phoebe. “You didn’t do anything wrong, and there’s nothing you could have done differently.”
“You’re probably right.”
“I am right. Lots of people have crushes. They don’t kidnap the object of their affection and hold them hostage in creepy basements.”
Phoebe grimaced, and her shoulders hunched. “That was awful.” Her eyes glazed, and her voice turned hollow. “There was so much blood.”
“Hey.” Sliding two fingers under her chin, he lifted her head, waiting for her to focus on him. “You saved my life, Phoebe. Remember that.”
It killed him that she’d had to experience that kind of violence. Taking a life, even accidentally, changed people. She’d never forget what had happened. It would always be with her, and the guilt would haunt her, maybe for years. Then, eventually, it would just be a part of her life, a darkness that she’d remember only occasionally. Some days would be worse than others, and when those days came, he’d be right there to remind her how amazing she was, how none of it had been her fault.
“When I was in that basement, Elena said something. I didn’t remember it when the police questioned me, but she said you’d come for me.”
“I’ll always come for you, sugar. Nothing would stop me.”
Phoebe smiled and stroked his chest. “I know, and I love you for it.” She toyed with the string on his hospital gown, her gaze focused somewhere around his collarbones. “She said something about a video? And that it couldn’t be helped. What does that mean?”
In hindsight, it had been easier to find Phoebe that it should have been. Up to that point, Elena had been careful, never leaving anything that could identify her. Getting caught on the hotel’s surveillance cameras had been careless and sloppy. Throwing Phoebe’s phone into the gutter outside the hotel instead of farther down the interstate had been deliberate, though he hadn’t realized it at the time. He’d been an idiot, and it had almost cost him everything.
“If she expected you to find me,” Phoebe continued, her voice quiet and thoughtful, “I guess I don’t understand why she went back to our room. Why not just get in the car and drive away?”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” They’d never know for sure, but he had a theory. “People saw you two together, so she needed another way to control the situation. Playing the concerned friend, getting me to look for you, that bought her some time and a pretty decent head start.”
He also had an idea where the game had taken a turn. Up until the conference, Elena had done a pretty good job of diverting their attention elsewhere, so that when Phoebe finally went missing, no one would suspect her best friend was involved. Even before the young woman at the restaurant had provided them with a description, Rayce had been convinced that Phoebe’s stalker was a man. Elena being involved had never even crossed his mind.
When Phoebe had found out about the personal information Elena had included in her novel, everything had changed. Before that, she’d been calculated, cautious, but she hadn’t been prepared for Phoebe’s reaction. When she’d thought she might lose Phoebe forever, she’d panicked, and everything from that point forward had been driven purely by emotion.
“How did you know to look at the ranch house?”
“Once I knew Elena was the one who took you, it was just a matter of figuring out where she’d go. It had to be somewhere fairly isolated, somewhere private. You guys had been talking about the ranch house for weeks. It wasn’t a big leap to assume that’s where she’d go.”
“And you thought you’d just come charging in, guns blazing, and…what?”
He was embarrassed to admit that his fear had overridden his training. All he’d been thinking about was getting to Phoebe as quickly as he could, and he’d paid the price for his mistake.
“I had backup.”
“That’s another thing. What was her plan? Shoot all of you?”
“By that point, I don’t think she had a plan anymore. She was hyper-focused on getting me out of the way, and she probably hadn’t considered that I wouldn’t come alone.”
“Do you think—”
There was a quick rap on the door, interrupting her. Keeping Phoebe close, he called for their guests to enter. When Dominic came in with a greasy brown bag that smelled like heaven, Rayce actually groaned.
“Hospital food sucks,” Dominic said, dropping the bag onto the rolling tray table beside the bed. “If you get caught with this, you never saw me.”
Rayce reached for the food but stopped short when sharp pain lanced through his shoulder. He’d hoped his slip had gone unnoticed, but Phoebe didn’t miss anything. Rolling off the bed, she hurried around to the other side and began unpacking his food, making a plate out of the bag itself, and pushed the tray closer so that it stretched across his lap.
“You are a terrible patient,” she grumbled. “Would it kill you to ask for help?”
“Phoebe?” Wren produced a white box with green polka dots from behind her back and shook it. “We brought you something, too.”
Phoebe eyed it, her lips twitching at the corners. “Brownies?”
“Turtle brownies,” Wren clarified, “from your favorite bakery.”
“Thank you.” Taking the box, Phoebe held it between her hands like a priceless treasure. “I still think you two gossip too much.”
“Does that mean you don’t want the brownies?” Rayce asked, sliding a crinkle-cut French fry through his ketchup.
“I didn’t say that.” She took a step back, holding her box protectively as if she thought someone might try to take it from her.
When everyone stopped laughing, Rayce turned to Dominic. “You said you have news.”
His boss held up a black folder with gold lettering on the front. “I do.” His gaze slid to Phoebe. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
Carefully, she placed her goodies on the table beside the bed and sighed. “Honestly? No, but I want answers, and putting this off isn’t going to make it any easier to hear.”
Rayce wiped his fingers clean with a paper napkin, pushed the tray back from the bed, then patted the mattress beside his hip. Phoebe didn’t argue or hesitate this time before circling the bed to slide in next to him. Once settled, he wrapped his good arm around her shoulders and held her tight.
“That’s my girl,” he murmured, kissing her lips when she lifted her head to look at him. “Just remember, this isn’t your fault, and I’m right here. Okay?”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“He’s right.” Sliding a sheet of crisp, white paper from the folder, Dominic passed it to Phoebe. “Marcia O’Dell, age twenty-eight, found starved to death in her own basement. Guess who her neighbor was?”
Phoebe pursed her lips and shook her head. “This says this woman died in January, two years ago. That’s right around the time I met Elena, and she was already living in Mesquite.”
“I’m sorry, Phoebe,” Wren said, taking a step toward the bed. “She d
idn’t move to Mesquite until three months after you met her at the book conference in Tulsa.”
“I…I don’t understand.”
“This isn’t the first time she’s done something like this,” Rayce explained gently. “She was obsessed with her neighbor, locked her in her basement, likely the same way she planned with you.”
“Then she met you,” Dominic added, picking up the explanation. “Her obsession changed focus, and she forgot about Marcia O’Dell.”
“She told you that she lived in Mesquite because she wanted to establish a connection with you.” Linking her hands behind her back, Wren spoke calmly, softly, her tone lacking its usual briskness. “She contacted a realtor in that area the same day she met you.”
“Oh, god. I didn’t know.”
“There’s no way you could have,” Rayce assured her. “I mean, who lies about something like that?”
“Someone mentally disturbed,” Dominic answered. He slid a second sheet of paper from the glossy, black folder. “Andrew Snyder. She hired him off Craigslist to deliver the rose to the restaurant. He thought he was helping with a surprise for her sister.”
Phoebe groaned. “Please tell me he’s not dead, too.”
Dominic laughed, a rare sound for him. “No, he’s not dead.”
“How can you be sure Elena is the one who killed this Marcia woman?”
“First off, I don’t think she meant to kill her. I think when her focus changed, she literally forgot about her.” Shaking his head, Dominic pulled three more pages from the folder. “Fourteen years ago, she lived outside of Nashville, Tennessee. Nelly Lambert disappeared from the parking lot of her gym, the same gym Elena frequented. They found her handcuffed to her bed. She had died of dehydration.”
“Derrick Haskell.” Wren provided the next name from memory. “Seven years after Nelly Lambert was found dead, Elena was living in Cleveland where she met Derrick at an office Christmas party. Six months later, he filed a restraining order and disappeared. He took a job in Europe to escape her.”
“What about this last one?” Phoebe asked, tapping her fingernail over the picture of a young woman with curly hair and a pointed jaw. “Lucinda Hernandez. It doesn’t say what happened to her.”
“Because no one knows,” Dominic answered. “She lived two blocks from Elena in Norman, Oklahoma. No one has seen her in four years.”
Rayce didn’t want to think about how close Phoebe had come to being a name and face on one of the reports in Dominic’s folder. Guilt ate away at him. He never should have let her leave their hotel room alone. He should have insisted that she wait for him.
“Why was she never arrested?” Phoebe demanded, flipping through the pages in her hands.
“There was never any evidence linking her. The restraining order might have raised some flags, but since she was never a suspect, no one checked into her past.” Wren straightened the sleeves of her blue-and-black checkered sweater, pulling the cuff down her wrist. “If we hadn’t gone digging after she kidnapped you, no one would have ever known what she’d done.”
“Although,” Dominic added, “I am surprised her brother never knew.”
“Jonas travels a lot. He probably never met these people or even knew about them.” Flipping back to the first documented victim, Phoebe shook her head. “He would have been just a kid when Nelly Lambert went missing.” Moisture gathered in her eyes, and she rubbed a circle on her forehead with three fingers. “Their poor parents. I can’t imagine how they’re dealing with all of this.”
Rayce held her as she cried, nodding to his friends when they quietly took their leave. “It’s over now, Phoebe. You’re safe now.”
“One more question,” she mumbled through her tears.
“You can ask me anything, sugar.”
She buried her face against the side of his neck and shuddered. “When can we go home?”
~ ~ ~
Two days later, the doctors finally cleared Rayce to go home, and Phoebe didn’t know which of them was more relieved. Hospitals had always made her uncomfortable, probably because she’d spent so much time in them when her mom had been sick.
“I don’t know why I can’t just go to the fitness center at WSS.”
Phoebe rolled her eyes as she walked alongside his wheelchair. “You’re going to physical therapy. End of discussion.”
“We could do some physical therapy at home,” he said, practically purring the words.
Her gaze darted to the nurse pushing his wheelchair as her cheeks flamed. “Behave yourself.”
Ryder, Tieran, and Colton waited for them in the patient pick-up area in front of the hospital, and they all whooped and whistled when Rayce rolled through the sliding doors. Phoebe had no idea why it took all three of them to drive her and Rayce to his place in the city, but she wasn’t complaining. Maybe one of them could talk some sense into him.
“Come on, grandpa,” Colton taunted when Rayce was slow to rise from his chair. “I’m not getting any younger here.”
“I’m hungry,” Tieran announced, appose to nothing.
Ryder shoved him sideways. “You’re always hungry.”
“There’s still time to call a cab,” Rayce said in a stage whisper.
His nurse clearly found none of them amusing, because her expression remained stony as she waited for him to find his balance.
On his feet, Rayce started toward the black SUV, but his right foot caught on the footrest of the chair, and he stumbled forward, going down hard on the pavement. Her heart pounding, Phoebe dropped her purse and hurried over to crouch beside him.
“Rayce, oh, crap, are you okay?” She grabbed his shoulders to try to help him up from the ground. “Hey, talk to me. Where does it hurt?”
Worried that he’d torn his stitches or injured himself in some other way, she didn’t understand when he rose up on one knee with a big grin and took her left hand in his own. When realization finally hit her, she couldn’t do anything except kneel on the ground with him, gripping his hands tight, as she struggled to breathe.
“I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life for you, Phoebe. I’m not perfect, but you make me feel invincible. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me, and if you’ll let me, I’ll spend the rest of our lives trying to make you as happy as you make me.”
Ryder stepped forward then, winking as he slid a black, velvet box into Rayce’s hand.
“Rayce—”
“Hush, woman, I’m not finished.” If possible, his smile grew even wider as he removed a gorgeous white-gold band with a petite, pink diamond from the box and held it out to her like an offering. “I’m not good with words like you are, but it doesn’t matter. There are no words to adequately express how much I love you.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Phoebe Keller, will you marry me?”
Her throat tightened with emotion as tears streamed down her cheeks. “Yes,” she breathed. “Of course I’ll marry you.”
The men behind her cheered as Rayce slid the ring onto her finger and pulled her in for a deep, scorching kiss that curled her toes. When he released her, she looked up to find Tieran standing beside them, a big, goofy grin on his face as he held out a bouquet of white calla lilies.
“Just so you know,” Rayce explained, “I am never going to buy you roses.”
Phoebe chuckled wetly. “Yeah, good call.”
“Phoebe?” Colton stepped forward and grinned. “Dominic asked me to let you know that Tucker Cromwell isn’t going to be a problem for you anymore. He very suddenly decided to relocate over the weekend.”
Yeah, Phoebe was sure he just “decided” to move. She didn’t know what Dominic had said or done to make that happen, but she adored him for it. After so long of being on her own, it felt strange, yet wonderful, to have such a unique family now.
“Out of curiosity,” she asked, “where did he go?”
A sly smirk curled one side of Colton’s mouth. “Michigan.”
Laughing, he turned back to Rayce, thro
wing her arms around his neck and pulling him into a kiss. “I love you. Can we please go home now?”
“You know, you’re probably going to regret this,” he teased.
“Probably.”
She’d written happy endings before, always struggling to get the words and emotions just right. During all those hours, alone with just the voices inside her head, she never dreamed she’d one day be living her own happily-ever-after.
Tightening her arms, she pulled him in for another lingering kiss. “You, Rayce Hawkins, are my happy ending.”
EPILOGUE
Ten months later…
“Rayce, hurry up! We’re going to be late!”
Standing in the living room of their new home, dressed in a pale-green corset gown with a wide, hooped skirt, Phoebe gripped the small wrapped box between both hands. She’d scoured the world—via the internet—to find the perfect Christmas gift for her fiancé, and she couldn’t wait to see the look on his face.
“I’m coming,” he called back grumpily as he strode into the room. “I’ve never been to the Frost Gala as a guest.” He fidgeted with his bowtie and scowled. “This feels weird.” His gaze settled on her, and his eyes widened. “You look amazing, sugar.”
“Thank you. You’re not so bad yourself.”
His hair had grown out again, brushing against the tops of his shoulders, and she loved running her fingers through it at night before she fell asleep. His black suit fit him like a second skin, and the silver vest and matching bow tie made her quiver. She was one lucky girl.
“What are you doing all the way over there?”
She shuffled to the side in front of the fireplace when he approached, eyeing her suspiciously. “I know Christmas isn’t until tomorrow, but I wanted to give you your present now. It was one year ago today that we first met. Do you remember?”
“How could I forget? You changed my whole life.”
