“That’s no problem. I’ve got a satellite account,” he murmured as he reached for the bag.
Caitlyn didn’t dare speak as he powered up the machine and logged onto the web.
With a search engine open and his brother’s name typed into the “find” box, Marcus hesitated, his finger hovering above the enter key. Hovering and shaking.
“I check for my own name from time to time, just to see if there’s any news related to a manhunt.” He turned his wounded gaze toward her. “But it was just too painful, looking for Samantha’s. The one time I did, I came across a tribute page, and… I never hunted for my brother. I thought I knew where he was.”
She laid her hand over his. “It’s time, Marcus. Time to learn the truth, whatever it is.”
One fingertip atop the other, they pushed the “enter” button together.
And in two clicks found confirmation of everything the detective had told her.
Chapter Nineteen
Summed up in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s news archives, the facts had a finality that made the blood drain from Marcus’s face.
“I’m so sorry.” Caitlyn’s words came as a dim echo, a message of comfort from a distant galaxy.
Four years. Theo had been dead for almost exactly four years.
And worse yet, he had killed again, which meant, Marcus realized, that his sister had continued trying to care for their younger brother on her own to save money. To steal money, in spite of their decision and what Theo had done to Samantha. In spite of how he’d shattered Marcus’s own life.
Stacey might as well have murdered the second victim herself, a young mother whose toddler daughter had been asleep in the next room. And she would have died, too, had she not been rescued before the fire spread.
Just as surely, Stacey’s selfishness had cost their brother his life, as well. A life that, damaged as it was, they had both been sworn to safeguard.
He thought of their last conversation, how she had pushed him for more money for Theo’s care. How she always came up with exactly the right thing to tell him—like her story about the promising new medication, one just shy of FDA approval.
He swore viciously before he burst out, “Stacey—it’s been my sister all along. Lying to me. Using me for money. Telling me the funds had to flow through her to keep me safe. The only—only—family I have in the whole world, and she…”
Betrayed me. Betrayed all of us…
Caitlyn shook her head, her green eyes rimmed with moisture. “I can’t imagine how horrible this must be for you.”
“Right before the murder, Stacey found out she was pregnant. Her boyfriend ran off to work overseas—never heard from the deadbeat again. And she’d lost her scholarship to school, too. She must’ve thought she couldn’t make it, couldn’t keep the baby, without—”
Caitlyn squeezed his hand until she got his attention.
“There’s absolutely no excuse for what she did to you. No matter what her situation was.”
Fierceness underscored her words, her expression telling him that if Stacey were to turn up right now, the normally gentle storyteller had enough warrior in her to rip his sister’s heart out.
For his part, he hoped never to see Stacey’s face again, or hear her lie her way through another conversation. His sole regret was for her daughter, a little girl doomed to grow up with a selfish liar for a mother.
Marcus wondered, too, about his brother’s final actions. What had been going on in his mind, that he would attack another woman? Had he slipped out and seen a stranger who reminded him of Samantha? Or had he enjoyed that first killing so much that he’d grown fixated on repeating the experience?
Even if Theo had lived, Marcus doubted his brother would have been able to explain the impulses that moved him, impulses more mysterious and less natural than the moon’s pull on the tides.
Gently and carefully, Caitlyn pushed down the lid of his laptop and moved the computer to the coffee table in front of them. “I think you’ve had enough for now. Maybe you should try to rest, unless…”
At that unfinished sentence, their gazes came together like magnets, with an almost-audible click.
“Unless I could get you something,” she added, rising to take a step toward the kitchen. “Do you need aspirin for your arm, or are you hungry, maybe? I’m sure Natalie has something in the house.”
“Yes,” he whispered in answer as he took her hand and gently pulled her back to the soft cushions beside him. “There is one thing, Caitlyn. Something I’ve been wanting ever since I met you.”
As she settled on the sofa, her eyes flared with awareness, reflecting the blue water from across the room. In the depths of her dark pupils, he saw the tiny fish swimming swift as thought beneath the current of her tension. A current that was primed, expectant, as she grew cognizant of the turn of conversation.
The moment drew out, lengthened, like a gossamer strand of spider silk lifting on a breeze. In that charged hush, she nodded, a movement so subtle it was barely perceptible.
Marcus reacted at once, grabbing her shoulders with both hands and pulling her close enough to claim a kiss. Wanting desperately to lose himself completely, to find a place of shelter from the turmoil raging inside him.
From the moment their mouths met, passion arced through the connection. He lost track of pain, of where he was, even who he was, as her hand stroked his chest beneath the stretched fabric of his T-shirt. Taking her move for permission to do the same, he began to explore the slender curves that had been driving him insane for days.
As he trailed kisses down her neck, he unhooked the front closure of her bra. She tipped back her head, her catlike, closed-eyed smile and soft moan all the encouragement he needed to peel back the soft cotton and feast on the taut buds of her small but perfect breasts.
Caitlyn arched her back, raw tension pouring from her as she sighed with pleasure. Desperate to see, to touch, to taste more, he undressed her completely, making short work of her top, her capris, the silky-soft bikini panties.?…
Then he took the time to kiss every inch that he exposed, finally moving between her legs to bring her to a shuddering climax, his name torn from her lips almost before he’d started.
But he wasn’t finished yet, not by half. Inflamed by her response, he pulled off his own clothing, freeing a rock-hard erection that had Caitlyn gasping, “Yes, please, Marcus. Please hurry. I need to…need to feel you…”
Every remaining bit of self-control shattered, the pieces raining down around them as he took her there on the couch, then took her a second time with the two of them sliding down to the rug. There was nothing slow or gentle in their coupling, nothing but the power of raw instinct, the need to vanquish past and present, to forget the impossibility of any future as he poured all his pent-up tension into the moist heat of her body and heard his shout of passion mingle with her cry.
When they were finally both spent, they lay there in stunned silence. In all too short a time, he felt the worry stealing back into his body, his muscles tensing one by one. When he felt Caitlyn, too, begin to stiffen, he suspected that, like him, she must be realizing the enormity of what they’d just done, the insanity of her surrender to a man without a single thing to offer…a man who’d forgotten himself—and Samantha’s father’s threat against his life—so completely that he hadn’t even thought about the risk that he might leave her pregnant and alone.
THEY WOULD IMAGINE themselves safe by now. He knew it. Felt it as clearly as he felt his building fury.
Because after he’d risked so much to separate her from her guardians, Villaré had once more claimed his bride and spirited her away.
Only this time he was no rank kid intimidated by a rich man, a kid so pathetic he hadn’t even fought for his fiancée.
This time he was taking back what was his, killing anyone who dared to stand in his way.
And this time his beautiful blond lover would damned well pay the price of her betrayal.
At the
sound of an electronic beep, he tapped the brakes, slowing to a stop in the quiet residential street. At first he saw nothing, but once he backed up, his headlights glinted off the chrome bumper of a vehicle parked behind the old Victorian house—a house whose faded blue paint took him back to the very first house in his memory, the one where Grandmother’s dolls came into his life. Came to life to advise him, to offer the friendship a lonely boy lacked…
This house was far larger than that long-ago shack, with multiple entrances that told him the old structure had been cut up into apartments. In some of them windows glowed with light, light that whispered that someone had come home. A wicked smile pulled at his lips as he wondered if one of those someones drove the old pickup…beat up except for that shining bumper someone must have recently replaced.
A bumper to which he had been wise enough to attach a tracking device as a measure of insurance before he’d lain in wait outside the cemetery.
CAITLYN’S EYES FLASHED OPEN in the near-darkness, a darkness deepened by the knowledge of exactly what she’d done.
I’ve fallen in love.
Or had she fallen down a hole with no escape? A flush of heat brought with it a bloom of sudden perspiration. Feeling trapped, she wriggled from beneath the heavy arm that held her and climbed to her feet, still nude.
Looking down at the well-formed muscles of Marcus’s bare chest and powerful thigh, she felt a pang of loss overriding pure, animal hunger. Regret deepened when his dark eyes slitted open and he smiled like a rousing lion, surveying her from head to toe—his personal gazelle.
Reaching out for her, he offered a wordless yet unmistakable invitation. Let’s pretend a little longer.?…
Shaking her head, she blinked back welling tears. “I can’t do this, Marcus. Shouldn’t have done it in the first place.”
He moved from the rug back to the sofa, his wince betraying the cost of the sudden movement to his bandaged arm. “Ow, forgot about that. You made me forget.?…”
“You made me forget, too,” she said. “Forget this is impossible. We’re impossible.”
In the long pause that followed, they heard noises from the neighborhood: the passing of a vehicle, the deep-throated barking of a dog.
“You could be right,” he finally admitted. “But if we both want more, if we both work for it, maybe there’s still some way.”
Feeling herself blush with her awareness of her nudity, Caitlyn shook her head. “There’s so much to get past, Marcus. For one thing, the police still want to question you about the murders and the accident tonight. Detective Davis seems so fixated on his theory that you must have been involved, even if he has to insist you must have had an accomplice to explain it. He won’t listen to you.”
“I’ll make him see the truth. Make all of them understand I was just a man in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ll explain why I was there, in that cemetery at that hour.”
“So you are a professional photographer?”
He nodded. “That’s right. I’m, ah, assisting with a series on funerary art. I can give them the name of the gentleman I work with. You, too, if that’s what it takes to make you believe.”
“I do believe you, Marcus. I’ve believed in you for some time. I couldn’t help but believe.”
“Then why’s it so impossible to imagine we might have more than one night?”
She faltered through a smile. “I suppose you mean other than the psychopath who’s been shooting at us both?”
“I’ll find him, stop him somehow.” Marcus promised, his voice rumbling with a dark determination.
Caitlyn felt her heart melting just a little more. Still, she was afraid for him. “What about your fiancée’s father? You said yourself he’ll kill you,”
“It’s worth the risk. You’re worth whatever risks it takes to fix this.”
Still, she shook her head, gathering her cropped pants and tee to hide her nakedness, to hide her fear that loving her could cost him his life. “I have a lot of things to work out, too. Too many.”
“Like what, Caitlyn? Tell me, what’s pushing you away?”
“We have a legacy, my sister Jacinth and I. The bequest might look like a grand one, but the mansion’s nothing but a money pit. Even if we somehow scrape together the funds to pay the back taxes before the place is seized, we’ll be digging ourselves out of the hole for years to come. The place needs a new roof and plumbing and every kind of repair you can imagine. I’ll be working all the time, doing everything I can to make sure my business turns a profit—providing it recovers from what’s been happening this week.”
“Have you ever thought of leaving it? Leaving everything and jumping into your car—”
Caitlyn laid a hand over her heart. “May her rusting bones rest in peace.”
Marcus smiled. “Or how about jumping in the front seat of an old Dodge pickup and heading out on the road? Keeping one step ahead of whatever trouble Samantha’s father might cause.”
Caitlyn let her imagination take her on an endless highway, rootless, seeing the world unspool before them. Sitting beside Marcus, never knowing where they would rest their heads come nightfall, but certain that wherever it might be, their evening would explode with sweet, mind-blowing sex.
But unlike the fantasy she’d had of Marcus and their children playing in the mansion, this one didn’t feel real. It had no form or substance, contained no stories in the making. No sister nearby. No Crescent City thrumming through her blood, her very soul.
“No,” she told him simply. “I won’t run with you. I can’t. I have a responsibility to my sister, to my father and grandfather, and every Villaré who ever lived in that house before us.”
He nodded his approval. “Your family matters to you.”
“Would you…respect me if they didn’t?” Her face heated anew at the realization that she had been about to use the word love.
“I have nothing but respect for you,” Marcus said sincerely. “Enough that I’d risk anything.”
But out of fear for his safety, she was already turning from him, saying, “I’m off to try the shower.”
“We’re not finished talking.”
She shook her head. “I need to clean up and get dressed. It’ll be light in a few hours, and I want to be waiting at the hospital to see Reuben.”
“Caitlyn.”
“I’ll be right out,” she said before she turned and walked away from him, from them. From a dream so precious to her that she couldn’t risk imagining it had the slightest chance of coming true.
WHAT INFURIATED MARCUS was the sound of the lock clicking behind her. Locking him out so she could think in privacy.
But she was right, he knew, smart to distance herself from a man she clearly considered a mistake to be forgotten so she could return to her real life.
He pulled on his clothing, and stalked into the kitchen to splash water on his face and shove his hair from his eyes. There was a groan in the old pipes, and he could hear the shower running.
Washing every trace of him from Caitlyn’s gleaming body.
He banished the image, cursing himself and wishing he had thought—that his brain had engaged for the few seconds it would have taken to pull a condom from his wallet. Caitlyn had made it clear she wanted no entanglements, and he wasn’t the type to risk leaving an unwanted child in his wake.
Whether she wanted him around or not, he would find some way to keep tabs on her, to make certain that no kid of his arrived to feel unloved or unwelcome, even for an instant.
Maybe once he resolved his issues back in Pennsylvania, assuming he survived Samantha’s father, he could even try to—
As he stared out the dark back window, a movement interrupted his thoughts. Shading his eyes to focus his attention, he confirmed it. Something—someone—was inside his truck, though he was absolutely certain he had locked it.
He looked around the kitchen for a potential weapon and chose a six-inch blade from the knife block. Against a bullet, it would do noth
ing, but, he assured himself, he was most likely dealing with a petty thief hoping to find some stray cash or a GPS he could hock, not the twisted killer of young women. And not the man—most likely one of Josiah Paine’s leg breakers—who had twice tried to kill him tonight.
At least he prayed that was the case, as he crept toward the front door. Before slipping out that way so he could surprise the thief in the backyard, he hesitated for a moment, then decided that knocking on the bathroom door, shouting over the running water, might alert the person outside. Better to deal with the trouble quickly, using the element of surprise.
Slipping outdoors, he quietly closed the front door behind him. His focus narrowing to the potential dangers of the situation, he melted into the darkness armed with nothing but stealth, determination and a single borrowed blade.
Chapter Twenty
When Caitlyn emerged from the bathroom, she didn’t find Marcus on the sofa. Nor did she come across him in the kitchen, though a brief glance out the window told her that the truck was still there.
After rushing through the apartment and checking both small bedrooms, she realized he was nowhere inside. Slipping on her sandals, she rushed back to the kitchen, not knowing where else he might have left a note.
Or had her rejection hurt him too badly for him to give her even that much? Had he simply walked away from her, drifting away like smoke on the wind?
Panic clawing at her throat, she couldn’t even cry out his name. Couldn’t find the words to apologize for her foolish attempt to push him away, despite the instincts of her heart.
And then she realized that the dome light was on in the pickup and someone was inside. She released a long sigh, relieved beyond measure that he was only readying the vehicle for their departure. Or his departure, she thought, her stomach clenching at the thought that he might be leaving without even saying goodbye. Ending a relationship she had so forcefully reminded him had no chance.
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