by Cindy Dees
He couldn’t help himself. He slid into the darkest shadow he could find and crouched, pressing his back against the trunk of a huge sycamore. He let his gaze roam, his peripheral vision taking in a wide angle view of the woods. The night sounds had gone dead silent. Maybe he wasn’t so paranoid, after all. The crickets never lied.
Who else was out here? And why?
The motion sensors at the house would warn of any human-sized intruders…if he hadn’t turned the alarm system off before he came out here. He swore at himself. Laura and the kids were unprotected. He had to get back to the house. Get the alarms back on. Protect his family.
He stood up and was stunned to discover his feet wouldn’t move. Literally. By sheer force of will, he overcame his panic, ignoring the hyperventilation, ignoring the wild imaginings of being kidnapped again, crammed in another box. His family came first, dammit. He’d die for them!
His stumbling walk turned into a jog, and finally into a full-out run. Whether he was running toward Laura or away from the bogeyman in the woods, he couldn’t say. But either way, his long legs devoured the distance with powerful strides and his lungs burned with exertion by the time the mansion came into sight. Its Georgian grandeur was dark. Quiet. Undisturbed.
The silliness of his terror struck him forcefully. His mind was playing tricks on him. It was only his past pursuing him. A figment of his imagination. With a last look over his shoulder into the shadows of the night, he let himself into the house and turned on the security system.
Shaken to his core, he climbed the stairs quietly. No sense waking everyone because he’d had a panic attack. He put his hand on the doorknob to let himself into the master suite, but he couldn’t bring himself to enter. He was still too wired to lie down beside Laura as if everything was perfectly normal.
Instead, he headed for another door farther down the hall. A small, walk-in linen closet. About six feet by eight feet inside, its tight quarters felt like a comforting embrace. He slid down the wall and sat on the floor, his elbows on his knees and his head on his arms. He had to get over this. Get a grip on himself. But how? If anything, he was getting worse, not better.
As understanding as Laura tried to be, she couldn’t begin to comprehend what he’d been through, what the past few years had been like. It was his own private hell, and no one could climb into it with him and lead him out. He was lost, and getting more lost by the day. Oh, the shrinks said all the right things, but they had no more clue what he’d been through, really, than Laura did. They had a little more book learning about it, had a list of suggestions to offer out of some counseling text, but their psychobabble was mostly crap.
How could everything be so perfect and yet so screwed up? He ought to be insanely happy. But instead, he was marching at a brisk pace toward the mental meltdown he’d been falsely accused of having six years ago.
There hadn’t been anyone in the woods. A deer or some other creature had moved, and the crickets had gone quiet for a minute. He’d flipped out over nothing. So why was his fight-or-flight response still in full readiness? He took several deep, calming breaths, the way the yoga instructor had taught him, breathing out the fear and stress.
It accomplished exactly nothing, dammit.
He sat there, panting in terror for who knew how long when, without warning, the door swung open. He started to surge to his feet when a little voice whispered, “Daddy?”
Nick sank back down to the floor, his heart about pounding through his rib cage. “Hey, buddy. What are you doing up at this hour?”
“I dreamed a bad man was coming for me.”
He held out an arm to Adam, who wasted no time climbing into his lap. “No bad man will ever get you. Mommy and I will always protect you and keep you safe.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Cross your heart and hope to die?” Adam added.
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” he repeated. “Need a pinkie swear on it, too?”
Adam held out his right pinkie finger, and Nick hooked his much larger finger in his son’s. They shook on it soberly.
“Why are you in the closet, Daddy? Are you hiding from the bad man, too?”
“I didn’t want to wake up you and Ellie and Mommy, and I needed some time to think.”
Adam’s little palms rested on his cheeks. “Is your heart hurting again?”
Since when were five-year-olds so damned perceptive? “I guess it is, a little. I’m so happy it hurts. I think about all the ways it could go wrong…”
Adam nodded wisely. “And then you’re not so happy anymore.”
He stared down at his son, but it was too dark to make out his face. “Nothing’s going to go wrong, Adam. Not if I can help it.”
“Don’t be scared, Daddy.”
“I won’t if you won’t. We can be brave for each other. Okay?”
Adam nodded against his chest. They cuddled in the dark for several more minutes, and predictably, the boy drifted back to sleep, his nightmare long gone. Nick stood awkwardly, careful not to wake his son, and carried him back to his rocket-ship bed. He tucked the little boy in and kissed his forehead, memorizing Adam’s face in that peaceful moment.
He was going to defeat his own demons if it killed him. No way was he about to let his paranoia bleed over to his children and damage them. And furthermore, his past wasn’t going to hurt them, either. He knew what he had to do. And he had to do it alone. Leaving no note that Laura could use to track him down, he treaded quietly back down the stairs, this time being sure to reactivate the alarm from the panel in the garage, and headed out into the night.
Laura woke up to Ellie’s fussing amplified through the baby monitor, disoriented at how well rested she felt and that the first light of dawn was peeking in around the curtains. She looked at the clock. Six o’clock? Nick must’ve taken the 2:00 a.m. feeding, bless him. She rolled over to thank him and was startled to see his side of the bed empty. He hadn’t struggled with insomnia for months, now.
Shrugging, she got up, threw on a bathrobe and headed for her daughter. Ellie was hungry, and nursed for longer than usual. Laura carried her into the bathroom and laid her on a big soft bath towel on the heated floor while Mommy jumped into the shower. She dressed herself and Ellie and headed downstairs in search of Nick.
He wasn’t in the kitchen watching the financial news and drinking coffee, as was his habit. She strolled through the entire downstairs and didn’t find him. Had he crawled into bed with Adam sometime last night? He did that now and then when Adam had a particularly scary nightmare. The boy had had periodic bouts with them ever since a team of killers had broken into the house after Nick’s rescue in search of her and Nick. Thankfully, the babysitter had gotten them into the mansion’s panic room and locked it down before Adam was hurt or worse. But the incident had left its mark on the little boy.
She headed upstairs and peeked into Adam’s room. He was sleeping alone. A low-level hum of alarm started in Laura’s gut. She checked the linen closet and Nick’s walk-in closet. No sign of him.
She pulled out her cell phone and dialed his. Not in service? What was going on? She ran down to the garage to check the cars—they were all in their places. The alarm system was still on, too. Where had he gone? He hated being outdoors. It wasn’t like he’d have gone for a morning stroll.
Starting at one end of the house, she searched it methodically, checking every place a grown man could possibly hide. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
Memories of Paris flashed through her head with horrifying clarity. How he’d just disappeared. No trace. No evidence. No ransom call. Nothing. He’d just been gone. Please, God. Not again. She couldn’t live through losing him again. Not like that.
An hour later, she was on the phone to the police and local hospitals. Nada. And then she started calling their friends and associates, the early hour of the morning be damned. No one had seen or heard from him overnight. Panic hovered, vulture-like, waiting to close in o
n her.
Adam came downstairs and didn’t help matters one bit by immediately picking up on her stress. The child was far too observant for his own good sometimes. “What’s wrong, Mommy? Where’s Daddy?”
“I don’t know, honey. But there’s nothing to worry about.”
Adam frowned. “His heart is hurting again.”
She turned on the child quickly. “Why do you say that, sweetie?”
“He was in the towel closet again last night.”
“When last night?”
Adam shrugged. “It was dark. I had a bad dream and was coming to sleep with you. I heard him breathing funny in there.”
“What did he say?” She tried not to sound hysterical but suspected she’d failed when Adam frowned worriedly.
“He promised he’d keep me safe from the bad man. He pinkie swore.” The little boy started to cry. “The bad man got him, didn’t he?”
She gathered him into her arms. “Daddy? Are you kidding? He’s big and strong and smart. No bad man has a chance against your daddy.”
But the bad man had gotten Nick once before. Had history sickeningly repeated itself? Had he been ghosted out of their lives yet again?
Chapter 4
“May I help you, sir?” The receptionist at the swanky Boston law firm was predictably beautiful and efficient.
Nick replied, “I’m here to see William Ward.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No, and please don’t tell him I’m here. It’s a surprise.” He flashed his most charming smile at her. He wasn’t vain about his looks, but very few women could resist him when he turned the charm all the way up.
She simpered something about being delighted to help. He waved off her offer to show him the way and strode down the familiar hallways. A feeling akin to déjà vu passed over him. This place was from another existence, another life, familiar and yet entirely strange to him.
He stepped into Ward’s office and the man glanced up. “Sweet Jesus!” he gasped, falling back in his chair heavily. “Is that really you?”
Nick closed the door and stepped up to the desk. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, William.”
“My God. Where have you been? The things they said about you—”
Nick propped his hip on a corner of William’s expansive desk. “What did my kidnappers say to explain my absence, anyway?”
“Kidnappers?” The lawyer stared, aghast. “The reports said you had a mental breakdown. Had to be institutionalized. There were doctor’s statements. Psychological evaluations. Pictures. You looked like hell.”
“Lies. All of it,” Nick said shortly.
William’s shocked pallor was giving way to a sickly shade of green. “Was our power of attorney over your estate illegal, then? What about your signatures on all those sales documents?”
“What documents?”
“The ones signing over your company to the new management group? Were those real?”
“I never signed anything, to my knowledge.” He hoped. Surely he never would have signed away Spiros Shipping under any circumstances.
It took William a few seconds to quit spluttering and form words. “Please forgive me for asking, I mean no disrespect. But have you been in a sufficiently…alert…mental condition for all of the past six years to know for certain that you never signed any legal documents?”
Nick swore under his breath. God only knew what he’d done during the blackout years. “I’m actually not here to talk about my company. And to answer your question, I was kidnapped and imprisoned for five years. It has taken me most of the past year to recover physically from the ordeal.”
The lawyer devolved into a shockingly uncharacteristic bout of mumbling to himself. Poor guy must really be shaken up. Eventually, William collected himself enough to go into attorney mode. “I’m going to need an affidavit from you describing exactly what happened to you in detail. I don’t have any idea how we’re going to contest the sale of your company. It’s going to cause a massive uproar to try to get it back—”
Nick interrupted the man sharply. “I don’t want it back. That’s not why I’m here.”
William stared blankly. “Why are you here, then?”
“I need you to tell me about the last two years before I…disappeared.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Nick sighed. “It’s a long story, but I’ve experienced a memory loss as a result of a blow to the head. I need your help to fill in the gap.”
“Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
William nodded dubiously. “I’ll do what I can.”
The lawyer started talking and Nick listened grimly. He’d thought if he heard about the lost time it would jog his memory, but none of the names or places or dates rang any bells. His memory wasn’t just buried. It was truly gone. The danger of the black hole loomed even larger as the true depth of it became clear to him.
“I can get all these facts off the internet, William. Tell me what I was like. How I was acting.”
The lawyer spoke of Nikolas growing bored with running a company that functioned like a well-oiled machine pretty much on its own. Of his forays into ever more dangerous hobbies—skydiving, extreme skiing, boat racing, Formula One car racing. He’d apparently blown through a string of beautiful and ever wilder women as well. He’d become a regular on the pages of the European tabloids. And there’d been the partying. Ward didn’t say if he’d dabbled in drinking or drugs, just that the lawyer had been very worried about his longtime client.
Finally, he fell silent.
Nick didn’t even know where to begin processing the information dump he’d just received. It was odd to hear about his own life and feel so completely disconnected from it. Nothing the man had described would account for the pervasive terror that was the only thing he’d carried forward from that time. Nick asked grimly, “Was I—Did I…get married?”
William looked surprised. “There were rumors of a quickie wedding just before you disappeared. But I hadn’t seen you for a few weeks prior to that. I couldn’t say.”
Rumors of a wedding? Nick swore under his breath. “Do you know how I came by the Nick Cass identity?”
The attorney cleared his throat. “During that time, you occasionally preferred to travel under an alias to avoid the publicity and scandal you were generating.”
He had no memory of being assaulted by paparazzi. “Where did the fake ID come from?”
William visibly squirmed at that one. “For the record, I arranged no such thing. I put you in touch with a gentleman who was expert at facilitating replacement of lost identity documents. Perhaps he was the source of your…alter ego.”
Nick dismissed the lawyer’s double-talk with a flick of his wrist. If he was going to keep up the charade of being Nick Cass and no one but Nick Cass, he had to know everything there was to know about the man. Had someone of that name really existed at some point, or was Nick Cass an entirely made-up entity? “I need to get in touch with the fellow who made those documents. I need to know more about the identity he provided for me.”
William frowned. “It’s my understanding he’s no longer in the business. He ran into some legal troubles. Last I heard, he left the country in a hurry. I would have no idea how to get in touch with him.”
Damn. Frustrated, Nick moved over to the floor-to-ceiling glass window to stare down at Boston Harbor. His kidnapper surely knew who he really was. But did the people who’d held him captive? Did the powers-that-be at AbaCo? Had it been an inside job, or had his kidnappers merely had a sick sense of humor to have imprisoned him on one of his own ships?
If AbaCo’s lawyers penetrated the Cass identity, they would come after him with both barrels, and the sum total of what he knew about his last years before his capture he’d just heard from the man behind him. He turned to William. “Can you recommend a top-flight private investigator to me? Someone thorough and discreet.”
“Of course.” William
looked close to puking in relief that Nick didn’t pursue the fake ID thing any further. As Nick recalled, William had been paid plenty well enough back then that he could darn well suffer a little for the cause now.
“Oh, and one more thing, William.”
The lawyer looked up sharply from the sticky note on which he was copying a name and phone number.
“Don’t tell anyone you’ve seen me. Consider this little visit a privileged interaction between the two of us. As far as you know, I’m still sitting in a padded cell somewhere, staring at my toes and drooling down my chin. Got it?”
The attorney frowned. “I understand. Actually, I don’t understand, but I will abide by your wishes.”
“Thanks, William.”
“Will you tell me the whole story someday?”
“If things go well, you’ll never see or hear from me again.” As the finality of that struck Nick he made brief eye contact with the attorney who’d been a friend and confidante for many years. “Thanks for everything. You’re a good man.”
“You, too. If you ever need anything, just let me know. And good luck.”
Nick turned and left the office. Good luck, indeed. He’d probably need a bona fide miracle before it was all said and done to avoid the clutches of his past.
He waited until he was back in Washington D.C., leaving Reagan International Airport to drive home, before he called Laura. She had too many scary resources with which to track him down for him to risk calling her any sooner. She would be completely freaked out by now, but he’d had no choice. He had to deal with his past on his own. And after hearing what William Ward had to say about his last years leading up to his capture, it had turned out to be a damned good call to keep Laura and the kids far away from the mess he’d apparently made of his life.
Laura answered her cell phone on the first ring with a terse hello.
“Hello, darling. It’s me.”
“Thank God, Nick. Are you all right? Are you hurt? Where are you?”
