by Sharon Sala
He left, leaving Mac and Caitlin alone. She refused to look at him.
“Caitie, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Her chin was trembling as she lifted her head.
“Well, you did. It’s rather startling to know that my value as a woman is based on my monetary worth. All this time I thought—”
“You’re twisting my words.”
“Oh sure, and you’re breaking my heart. Here comes the doctor. Go see Aaron. I’ll just sit here and count my money while you’re gone.”
He turned away, furious with himself and the whole situation.
Fifteen
Caitlin walked into her apartment without waiting for Mac, leaving him to disarm the security system and lock the front door behind her. The relief of knowing Aaron was going to be okay was wonderful, but her heart was broken. Her father had spent a goodly portion of her growing up years reminding her that there would be men who would pretend to love her to get to her money. She’d been prepared for that to happen since puberty. But she hadn’t expected to fall in love with a man whose pride was stronger than his love for her. She wanted to kick and scream and curse at the fates for dealing her another harsh blow.
Instead she stalked into her bedroom, slammed the door behind her and began stripping off her clothes. Damn Connor McKee to hell and back. He had made her feel dirty and shamed, as if the simple act of being born to wealth was something for which she should apologize.
“Stupid, bullheaded, macho, testosterone-loaded male.”
She kicked off her shoes and tossed aside her coat.
“Major ass, anal-retentive twit.”
Her slacks and sweater went flying.
“Hairy, subhuman, directionally deficient primate.”
Out of invectives and insults, she dropped her lingerie into the hamper as she entered the bathroom, then turned on the shower, letting the water warm as she twisted her hair up in a knot to keep it off her neck. Grabbing a clean washcloth from the cabinet, she stepped into the shower and then slammed that door, too, just because she could.
The warmth was welcoming, and the water coming out of the jets was like thousands of tiny fingers kneading her skin. Groaning in quiet ecstasy, she turned her back to the water and closed her eyes, letting it wash over her body in a warm, cleansing spray.
She stood for what seemed like forever before turning her face to the showerhead. But the cleansing she needed wasn’t happening. No matter how long she stood there, she couldn’t wash away the images of the women who had died, their faces butchered, their battered bodies sprawled lifelessly against the snow.
She inhaled deeply and then exhaled slowly, trying to move herself into a meditative state. Instead she saw Aaron lying in the midst of fire and broken glass, bleeding like the women in the snow.
Her lower lip trembled as she pictured the office exploding and swordlike shards of plate glass flying outward and then down from the tenth floor. Knowing that as it did, it ended the life of a man who had done nothing more sinister than take a cab ride uptown.
Pain rose within her in waves, pushing and shoving like an incoming tide. Knowing it was there and not being able to stop it only added to her feelings of guilt and helplessness.
She opened her eyes. The shower stall was filled with steam, and the bathroom looked as if a fog had rolled in. She had to wash and get out. If she lingered much longer, the paint would start coming off the walls.
As she reached for her washcloth, she noticed color beneath her unpainted nails.
“What on earth?”
Using her fingernail, she dug it out and then rubbed it between her fingers.
Crayon.
A slight smile moved across her face. The smile widened as she started to laugh, but the laugh came out as a sob.
Poor Katie.
That a child should have been thrust into terror at such a young age was obscene. It had taken Caitlin Bennett twenty-nine years to learn that life could and would kick you in the teeth, even when you were down. But Katie Bridges had learned it before she was old enough to go to school.
The floor tilted beneath her feet. She grabbed at the walls, but the room wouldn’t stop spinning. She sank to the bottom of the shower stall, her head bent, her hands braced on her knees. Everything within her was coming undone.
The first tears came slowly, burning her eyes and the back of her throat, sluiced away by the shower as quickly as they fell. Then came the harsh, choking sobs that ripped up her throat and echoed within the shower stall like an animal in pain.
Already heartsick about the fight they’d had and mad at himself for hurting Caitlin once again, Mac went straight to the phone to check for messages from Atlanta, figuring the best way to deal with their latest dispute was to give it some time. If he filled his head with work, he wouldn’t have to think about what he’d done. But the messages were brief, nothing more than updates on investigations already in progress. It would seem that his office was running smoothly, even without him there. If only his personal life were in such good order.
Tossing aside the cell phone, he kicked off his shoes and began changing his clothes. The least he could do was be comfortable in his favorite sweats. As he came out of his room, he glanced at Caitlin’s door. It was still shut, adding to the solidity of the wall he’d put between them.
He paused, laying the flat of his hand against the wood, as if touching her in the only way he had left. Suddenly he heard a strange, painful cry, and he jerked. Had she fallen? Was she ill? Had the killer been hiding in her home, awaiting her return?
“Caitlin? Caitie? Are you all right?”
No one answered.
He knocked on the door and called out again, still getting no response.
Worried, he opened the door and hurried inside, only to find she was nowhere in sight. The door to her closet was closed; the clothes she’d been wearing had been tossed aside like garbage, waiting to be picked up.
He frowned. Caitlin could be distracted when in the middle of her writing, but she wasn’t a messy person. Chalking it up to her state of mind, he looked toward the bathroom, wondering if he dared intrude. Then he heard the sound again. The hair rose on the back of his neck. Without thought for what she would say, he bolted inside.
One moment Caitlin was on her knees, the water pounding against the top of her head, and the next thing she knew Mac was between her and the flow, lifting her to her feet and then into his arms.
“Baby…don’t cry. God. Not like this. I’m sorry…so sorry.”
The tenderness in his voice was her undoing. Instead of making her feel better, it made it that much worse. This was what she’d been missing—a man willing to stand between her and the world, and still love her as she was.
Her cries were breaking Mac’s heart. Moving swiftly, he carried her out of the shower, then set her down and began drying her off as he would have a child. All the while, she kept sobbing.
“Caitie…Jesus…don’t cry,” he pleaded as he turned off the shower and stripped off his own wet clothes.
She inhaled on a sob and went limp.
He caught her before she hit the floor. The lack of expression in her eyes was frightening, almost as frightening as the sounds of her despair. He carried her into her bedroom and laid her down on the bed.
“Caitie, I didn’t mean to hurt you. Please stop crying.”
“No more,” she mumbled, then rolled into a fetal position and closed her eyes.
Mac yanked the covers from beneath her, then crawled in beside her, pulled her to him and covered them up. He was afraid to let go. He wanted to ask her what she meant by “no more,” but he was scared of the answer. In a normal world, Caitlin Bennett was not the kind of woman who would take her own life, but the world had gone crazy on her, and he didn’t know her anymore.
He thought of Aaron, unconscious in the intensive care unit, of the woman in his arms who was at the mercy of an unidentified killer, of three families who were mourning their women, of a man
who’d died because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and of a little girl who’d seen her mother’s murder. It was enough to make anyone crazy, and so he held her, because it was all he could to.
Somewhere between the time he’d taken her to bed and the next passing hour, Caitlin hushed. Now and then the aftershock of a shudder would rip through her body as a reminder of what she’d endured.
He rose up on one elbow, thinking she had fallen asleep. She was staring blankly at the wall.
“Caitie?”
She didn’t respond.
He kissed the side of her face and then her neck, then held her that much closer.
“This will pass,” he said. “We will find the man who’s doing this and put him away where he’ll never hurt you or anyone else again.”
She shivered, as if the mention of his existence was more than she could bear, but it was her only response.
Mac’s belly knotted. “Talk to me, Caitlin. Call me horrible names. Tell me I’m a fool. Tell me I’m crazy. Just talk to me.”
She drew her knees up toward her chest, curling her body in upon itself, and in doing so, pulled herself away from him.
The knowledge that she was both physically and mentally withdrawing was too frightening to let pass. Mac sighed. He’d been wrong a few times in his life before and realized it later on, but nothing that amounted to the knot he’d put in his own gut today. The thought of never seeing her again was too awful to consider. If the least he had to do was swallow a little pride, then what the hell had he been thinking?
He rose up on one elbow and then laid his face against the side of her cheek.
“I love you, Caitie. Whatever else you may believe, know that I love you. And I was lying when I said I couldn’t deal with all your money. It’s really because you snore.”
He felt her stiffen and he held his breath. Moments later, she rolled over on her back and stared him in the face.
“Say that again.”
“What, darling? That I love you. Okay…I love you. Madly. Deeply.”
Life was back in her eyes in a big way, right down to the glare he was getting.
“I don’t snore.”
Thank God…I made her mad. “Oh, that. Well, actually, you do.”
Caitlin sat up in bed, naked as the day she was born. Her hair was in damp, heavy tangles, her eyes swollen, her lips puffy from crying.
“Is this your stupid macho way of trying to make up with me?”
Mac sat up, too, afraid to be lying too close should she decide to attack. He nodded.
“Well, it sucks,” she said shortly. “You can’t keep doing this to me. You make love to me, then you insult me. Then you watch over me as if you really cared about what happens to me, and then you tell me that we have no future because I’m too stinking rich. And then you tell me you love me and that I snore.” She hit the bed with both fists. “I won’t have it. Do you hear me? I won’t have it anymore!”
“Would it make it all better if I told you I didn’t want to live without you?”
All the fury in her posture went south. Mac reached for her hand, uncurling her anger as he uncurled her fingers, then threaded them through his own.
“Would you forgive me for hurting you if I told you that I’m so scared of losing you I can’t sleep at night?”
“Damn you, Connor McKee, you do not fight fair,” Caitlin said as a fresh set of tears threatened.
“Don’t cry,” Mac growled, pointing at her face. “Do you hear me? Whatever you do, do not shed another tear…at least for today. My heart can’t take it.”
She pulled her hand away, and then clasped both hands against her breasts, afraid to trust his about-face for fear he would slap her down again.
“Yes, well, at least you still have a heart,” she muttered. “Mine, I think, is on the bottom of your shoes.”
Mac slumped. He’d smiled too soon. What if she didn’t forgive him this time? He’d said some pretty unforgivable things.
“I said I’m sorry.”
Caitlin glared. “Easy enough to say. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll wait and see if it sticks.”
Mac nodded. “Fair enough,” he said, then reached for her, pulling her down and pinning her between the mattress and his body. “In the meantime, I think I’m going to make love to you.”
Caitlin arched an eyebrow as she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“You think? Mister, if you can’t do better than that, then I placed my bet on the wrong damned horse.”
He grinned. “You still love me, don’t you?”
Her eyes welled with tears. “Yes, but don’t let it go to your head.”
He nuzzled the side of her neck, then raised himself up on his elbows, pausing to look at her.
“It’s not my head that’s in need, it’s my heart. How much do you love me, girl?”
“Enough to make a fool of myself at least one more time.”
“I’ll take what I can get,” he whispered, then stole her breath with his kiss.
Buddy sat in darkness while the world around him was spinning. Voices came and went in his head like magpies at a feeding, squawking and shrieking but saying nothing at all. His little package had been successfully delivered. That fag Aaron Workman was right where he’d sent him. Caitlin Bennett had to be mourning the injuries to her friend. The guilt to her soul had to be growing daily.
He closed his eyes and slapped his hands to his ears, trying to drown out the noise. It didn’t make sense. He was doing everything right, but it was getting harder and harder to sleep. What was the problem?
Suddenly he bolted to his feet, ran into his bedroom and turned on the lights. She was everywhere in here. Sometimes he imagined he could even smell her perfume. It was expensive and exclusive, like the woman herself, but he knew who she really was, and he knew she didn’t belong. She’d stolen everything that was his, and he wanted it back.
“It isn’t fair,” he whispered, his lower lip trembling like a child’s.
His gaze centered on the blowup of her photo hanging over his bed. No matter how many times he slashed and marked the surface, he could still see the contours of her face.
“Don’t you see? Don’t you understand? What you have should be mine.”
She didn’t answer, and she wouldn’t stop smiling. In a fit of rage, he threw the first thing he could grab. Then he jerked back in shock, staring in disbelief as his alarm clock shattered into pieces all over his bed.
“See what you did!” he cried, pointing toward his bed. “See what you did? It’s your fault. It’s all your fault.”
He spun away, searching for something else to throw when his gaze fell on the surveillance equipment. That was it. That was what he would do. It had been days since he’d listened to the tapes. He settled down at the table and switched on the machine, then sorted through the dates, searching for the one he’d heard last. Ah yes, here it was. Even though only one room had been bugged, he could tell from their conversations that the bodyguard had taken her to bed. He tossed the cassette aside, his eyes narrowing angrily. The bitch. He was in pain, and she was fucking the hired help. What was wrong with this picture?
He found the tape he wanted, popped it into the machine and leaned back in his chair. An hour came and went, and then another and another. He paused long enough to make himself a sandwich, then came back to listen, eating it as he sat, now and then making notes, reminders to himself that there were weaknesses in her life he had yet to probe.
It was some time later when he heard something that made him smile. McKee was talking to Caitlin, asking her something about a woman named Delarosa. Buddy knew the cops were trying to find her. They wanted to talk to her about Devlin Bennett’s past, but it wasn’t going to happen unless they got themselves a psychic. One who could talk to the dead.
Feeling better, he turned off the machine, stretching wearily as he headed for the bathroom to get ready for bed. Juanita Delarosa had been a strong woman for her age. It had taken
her far longer to die than he would have believed.
He glanced at his watch as he stepped out of his shoes. It was well after one in the morning, and he had to be at work before nine. He wanted to be rested and ready for the day when he walked into the office. It was the best way to make the voices go away.
Aaron was coming to. He had no idea where he was or how he’d gotten there. All he knew was that he hurt and that it was dark. He started to move and then moaned from the pain. Almost instantly, he heard the sound of chair legs scraping the floor and then his brother’s voice.
“Aaron, it’s me, Mac. You need to lie still.”
“Where…?”
Mac touched Aaron’s shoulder, giving his brother something concrete on which to focus.
“You’re in the hospital. Do you remember why?”
Aaron didn’t answer, instead lifting his hand toward his face.
“No, don’t,” Mac said softly. “You have bandages on your face. But the doctor said you’re going to be okay. It’s just going to take some time.”
“Can’t see,” Aaron mumbled.
There was a slight hesitation in Mac’s answer. “Yeah, I know. Your eyes are bandaged, but it’s just until the flash burns heal.”
“Burns?”
Mac hesitated again, gauging how much of the truth Aaron needed to know.
“Some, but not too bad. You just rest. They won’t let me stay with you until you get out of ICU. But I’ll be here as often as possible, okay?”
Aaron’s mind was spinning. Burns? The ICU.
And then it all came flooding back in a series of images, out of sequence and out of control. His heartbeat accelerated, setting off a pattern of rapid and irregular beeps on one of the machines to which he was hooked.
Mac started to panic when Aaron grabbed his arm.
“Caitie…”
Instantly Mac understood his brother’s concern.
“She’s fine, just worried about you.”
“Letter,” he muttered.
Mac patted his arm, breathing a sigh of relief when Aaron’s heartbeat resumed a normal rhythm. Aaron was remembering.
