Protected (Deadly Secrets Book 3)

by Elisabeth Naughton

  “But what if . . .” Her voice grew so quiet he had to strain to hear the rest of her words. “What if no one ever finds us?”

  Something in his chest squeezed tight. Something he only felt when he was around her. He’d always had a soft spot for Kelsey McClane, though he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because she was the outcast in her family, always making choices no one approved of. Maybe it was the way she dove into her work, sometimes at the expense of her own personal life. And maybe it was the tough-girl persona she showed the world but which he sensed was a façade. Whatever the reason, he’d known there was something special about Kelsey the first moment he’d met her, even all those years ago when she’d been nothing but an awkward teenager trying to hold her own with rambunctious brothers who didn’t have a clue what to do with a little sister. Which was why hearing her so frightened now tore at something deep inside him.

  “They’re coming, Kels,” he said softly. “Don’t worry. A million people saw this building collapse on live TV. It’s just going to take the rescue workers a while to get to us. There’s probably other damage in the area from the gas main eruption, and streets might be blocked. The best thing we can do is sit tight and wait. But I promise, someone is definitely coming for us.”

  “You think it was a ruptured gas line?”

  “That’d be my guess. When I came in this morning, I noticed they’re building on the lot next door. I saw a backhoe and construction workers messing with the gas lines. There’s no fire here, which means it had to have been next door. A gas main explosion can level an entire block.”

  When she didn’t respond, his brow wrinkled. “It definitely wasn’t an earthquake, if that’s what you’re thinking. There was an explosion first. I’m not sure if it was in the basement of the building or outside, but I recognized that sound.”

  “I know. It’s just . . .”

  “Just what?”

  “Just . . . before we heard the explosion, I got a text.”

  He couldn’t see the connection between any text she might have received and the explosion, and he was just about to say so when a memory flashed behind his eyes. One of her standing in the wings of the morning show, seconds before she was about to go on, staring down at her phone. Followed by the full-on panic in her soft brown eyes when she’d lifted her gaze to his.

  “A text from who?” he asked. “About what?”

  “From Julian. Telling me that in a matter of minutes I was going to be dead.”

  For a heartbeat, Hunt wasn’t sure he’d heard her right, but then her words sank in, and every muscle in his body contracted in understanding. “Do you have the phone? Can you turn it on? Read me exactly what it says.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “What do you mean you don’t have it? It was in your hand. I saw you looking at it before you went on.”

  “I don’t have it,” she said louder. “The production assistant ripped it from my hand just before she pushed me onstage. And don’t you think I would have tried to use my phone already to call for help if I had it right now?”

  He was getting worked up. She was growing agitated because he was on the verge of freaking out. Drawing a deep breath through his nose, he reminded himself to stay calm. But, holy shit. If what she said she’d read was true . . .

  “Tell me exactly what the text said. Everything you can remember.”

  She audibly exhaled, and the sound told him she was fighting hysteria again, but he had to know. “It came through just after the hosts introduced me. It said that I think I have everything but that soon I was going to get exactly what I deserve. It said I was nothing but a disappointment. That he knew the real me, and this—I guess he meant the designer, public part of my life—wasn’t it. It said no one wanted me. That”—she hesitated—“that my own mother hadn’t wanted me.” She paused again. “Then it said the world would be a better place when I was dead, and that in a matter of minutes the world could thank him for making that happen.”

  Disbelief turned to a red-hot rage that curled Hunt’s hands into fists. “And it was from Benedict? You saw his name on your screen?”

  “No. I mean, I didn’t see his name. I blocked his number several months ago, but I know it was from him.”

  “How do you know for sure?”

  “Because he’s been harassing me since I filed for divorce. I haven’t been able to prove it because he keeps doing it from different numbers. My attorney thinks they’re burner phones. You know, those throwaway cell phones you can buy preloaded with a certain number of minutes? We’ve never been able to track the calls back to Julian, which is what I needed to get a restraining order, but I know it was him. He’s been sending me threatening texts for months.”

  Hunt wanted to jump on blaming Benedict—he’d never liked the asshole, not just because Benedict acted like he was the shit, but also because the dick had treated Kelsey like a second-class citizen all through their marriage. Only experience told him to consider all the possibilities. “Alec told me some of what’s been going on with Benedict. Tell me about the other messages he’s sent you. Were any others like this?”

  “They were pretty similar. He liked to point out how useless I was. That my business was going to fail. That my designs sucked. That no one wanted me or my clothing line. That I’d come crawling back to him like a dog before long, and that when I did, he’d have to think long and hard about how he was going to make me pay for humiliating him.”

  Hunt’s jaw clenched down hard. The urge to slam his fist through Benedict’s face was stronger than ever. So strong the muscles in his arm ached from contracting.

  “I just ignored them, you know?” she went on. “I thought if I did, the texts would eventually stop. They slowed down a little, but my brothers were still worried, which is why they asked you to keep an eye on me while they were gone.”

  Hunt knew that. Her brother Alec had told him Benedict was being an ass about the divorce and that they were worried he might do something to retaliate. But Hunt had never expected something like this. To orchestrate the take-down of an entire building, all to get back at her . . .

  His mind raced. Julian Benedict was an investment guy. He worked for some big financial company in the city. No one would suspect him of knowing anything about bombs or how to rupture a gas line. But Hunt remembered something Kelsey had told him when he’d first come home from the military and discovered she was dating Benedict. That the guy had double-majored in college—in finance and chemistry. That he’d hoped to work in pharmaceuticals but had found a job in investments that had paid too much to turn down.

  Chemists knew about bombs and gas lines. And hell, these days if you didn’t already know that kind of stuff, you could find it on the fucking Internet.

  A sniffling sound met Hunt’s ears. And realizing Kelsey was crying hit him hard, like a punch right to the stomach. Enough to calm the storm brewing inside him.

  “If he’s the one who did this, Kels, the Feds will find out. They’ll get him, don’t worry.”

  “I know.” She sniffled again. “I just . . . I can’t stop thinking about the other people who were in the building with us. The ones we haven’t heard from since everything happened.”

  Hunt’s memory flashed back to someone calling for help in the darkness, between the first shake and the second that had brought the ceiling down. Even though he knew he’d made the right choice, guilt twisted in his gut. “This wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. Do you hear me? You didn’t cause any of this to happen.”

  “I could have prevented it, though.” She sniffled again. “If I hadn’t been so hell-bent on coming back here for this stupid interview, those people would all still be alive. I-if I’d stayed on the East Coast with the rest of my family, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have felt obligated to babysit me, and you definitely wouldn’t be trapped in the dark with your legs pinned or”—her words faltered—“or broken.”

  His chest squeezed tight again. “Kels, lis
ten to me. First of all, we don’t know where anyone else is. Just because we can’t hear them doesn’t mean they’re dead. People were running toward the exits when the walls started to go. They could be buried too far away for us to hear them. They could already have been rescued for all we know. Don’t assume the worst right now, okay? I need you to think positive. Second of all, I’m fine. I’ve been through way worse than this, trust me. I could tell you stories from my time in the military that would make this look like a party. But more than that, I want you to know that I’m here with you because I wanted to be here. Not because I felt obligated. Not because your brothers forced me to babysit. Because you matter. I’d do whatever I could to keep you safe.”

  She sniffled again. And the silence that followed was more deafening than the roar of the building coming down.

  “You would?” she finally said.

  He relaxed a little because in those two simple words, her voice had sounded stronger. If he was going to get her through this, he had to keep her focused on something other than her fears.

  “Of course I would.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because you’re family. I’ve known you almost as long as I’ve known Alec.”

  “So you’d do whatever you could to keep me safe because you see me as Alec’s annoying younger sister and you feel what . . . responsible for me?”

  Relief made the corner of his mouth turn up. This was the Kelsey who could drive him wild. The smart, snarky, teasing woman he’d watched spar with her brothers more times than he could count. “Trust me, I don’t see you as an annoying younger sister at all.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. Believe me when I say you are only an annoying younger sister to your older brothers. To every other guy who meets you, you’re an incredibly attractive woman with an amazing talent.”

  She was silent so long, he wasn’t sure she was still there. “Kelsey? Did you hear me?”

  “I heard you,” she said softly. “I just . . . I never thought you noticed when I was around.”

  His stomach tightened all over again. Man, Benedict had really done a number on her. The urge to find the son of a bitch and pound him into the ground whipped through Hunt once more, but he focused on keeping Kelsey calm and distracted. Told himself that was all that mattered right now.

  “Of course I noticed. I always noticed. I mean . . .” Shit. He had to phrase this right. “When I first met you, you were only like thirteen, and I didn’t notice you were attractive then. I mean, you were cute but . . . young. Innocent.” Holy hell, this was totally coming out wrong. “I mean, I didn’t look at you like a guy would then. That would have been creepy because I was like nineteen. And I’m definitely not into, you know, that.”

  “I get it,” she said with a smile in her voice. “Keep going. You’re finally getting to the good part.”

  “The good part?” Shit, he was sweating. He lifted a hand and swiped his forehead, dragging dust and tiny bits of rock across his skin in the process. How the hell had he gotten himself on this topic?

  “Yes, the part where you tell me what you thought of me when we met.”

  “I thought you were sweet. I liked you. Like a friend,” he added quickly so she wouldn’t get the wrong idea.

  “And what about later?”

  “Later?” Fuck, did his voice just crack? He shifted uncomfortably, knowing he was screwed if he didn’t steer the conversation in a different direction fast.

  “Yes, later. You didn’t see me for a long time. After you graduated from college you joined the military. The few times you visited my family when you were on leave, I was away at college. You didn’t see me again until I was like twenty-two. What did you think of me then?”

  Perspiration dotted his spine, and he swallowed hard because he remembered exactly what he’d thought then. He’d thought she was the hottest woman he’d ever seen. Taller than he remembered, curvy in all the places she’d been straight before, with thick, blonde hair down to the middle of her back, tempting pink lips, and insanely long eyelashes framing her deep-brown eyes. The only part of her that had looked the same was the spray of freckles across her nose. Everything else had been all woman. And after he’d spent some time with her, he’d realized she wasn’t just another hot chick. She’d been smart and witty, mature in ways other twenty-two-year-old women he’d encountered were not, and as sweet as sugar.

  All of it had thrown him for a loop. Somehow, in the six years he’d been away, she’d transformed from that awkward, shy teenager with braces he remembered into his ideal version of the perfect woman. And he’d been seconds away from asking her out.

  Then Julian Benedict had blown into the McClane house as if he lived there, dropped down beside Kelsey on the couch, wrapped a possessive arm around her shoulders, and made it more than clear that she was off-limits. Which Hunt would have been able to accept if he hadn’t seen her stiffen under that arm. In a heartbeat, she’d shifted from a clever, sexy, confident woman who’d made him want things he’d never wanted before to one who was nervous, self-conscious, and afraid to do or say the wrong thing in front of Benedict.

  His jaw tightened once more because he should have realized Benedict was a threat back then. He’d been too disappointed in the fact Kelsey was already taken to waste much thought on Benedict, though. And now, because he hadn’t done a damn thing to stop the son of a bitch when he’d had the chance, Kelsey’s life was in danger, and innocent people could be dead.

  The only way he could make up for it was to ensure the fucker never hurt another person again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Hunt?” Unease wedged its way between Kelsey’s ribs as she waited in the silence for him to say something. Anything.

  Possibilities whipped through her mind. What if he’d passed out? What if the rubble pinning his legs had shifted and crushed him? She didn’t think that could have happened—she hadn’t heard any debris moving—but what if he’d been cut when the ceiling had come down and hadn’t realized it? What if he’d blacked out from blood loss?

  Worst-case scenarios filled her mind as she scooted closer to the cold cement separating them and fought against the panic threatening to drag her under. “Hunter?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. I, uh, lost my train of thought. I must have hit my head harder than I realized. What were you asking?”

  Relief filled her chest like a balloon inflating. Closing her eyes, she laid her cheek against the cement beneath her and tried to slow her pulse. He was okay. A hysterical laugh filled her chest when she realized where her mind had gone, and she only just held it back.

  She breathed deep. In and out, focusing on the whoosh and pull of air in her lungs to calm her fears. She probably shouldn’t be asking these questions, knew she was likely setting herself up for a letdown but didn’t care. She could very well die in this rubble. If this was going to be one of her last conversations, she wasn’t holding anything back. Besides, Hunt had started it, and part of her was glad he had.

  Because she knew exactly what she’d thought when he’d walked into her parents’ house that sunny July day just after she’d graduated from college. She thought she’d fallen into a dream.

  Her lips curled as she lay still with her cheek against the cold cement. Warmth spread through her chest at the memory. She’d been the only one home that afternoon. Her parents had still been at work, her older brothers hadn’t been living at the house then, and the youngest McClane—Thomas—hadn’t been adopted yet. Alec had called earlier in the day to tell her he was swinging by after work to meet Hunt at the house and to let Hunt in if he got there first. She hadn’t paid much mind to Alec’s heads-up because Hunter O’Donnell had always just been that gangly, quiet roommate of her brother’s.

  “Yeah, whatever. He’s coming by. Got it. I’ll give him a magazine or turn on the TV for him until you get here. Just don’t expect me to entertain him or anything. I have plans.”

  Then the doorbell had rung, and she’d pulled th
e heavy wood slab open to find that Hunter O’Donnell wasn’t at all what she’d remembered. Instead of gangly, he’d been tan and ruggedly muscular after six years in the military. A little bit dangerous with that thick mahogany hair, the dusting of dark stubble on his jaw, and a collection of new scars on his hands and cheek and arms that made her wonder what he’d been up to. He’d also been a whole lot enticing, especially with those dark-brown, almost black eyes that had seemed older and wiser and brimming with mystery. But it was when he’d come in, sat in the living room with her, and talked to her as he waited for Alec that she really felt like she’d dropped into a dream. Not because of what he’d said but because he’d listened. Really listened. The way guys do when they’re interested.

  That had been a good day. A really great day. Her smile widened as she remembered the way he’d laughed with her, the chemistry that had sizzled between them in that room. Somehow the conversation had drifted to the latest movies—what she’d seen and when—and for a moment she’d thought he might ask her out. Then Julian had shown up for their date—a date she’d completely forgotten about as she’d been chatting with Hunt—and everything had changed.

  Her smile faded in the dark, and that warmth inside her cooled. Hunt hadn’t asked her out that day. In fact, his demeanor had totally changed as soon as he’d met Julian. And after that, every time she’d seen him in passing he’d been nothing more than the strong, silent, standoffish friend of her brother’s—just as he’d been when she was in high school. They’d never again talked like they had that afternoon—nothing more than polite chitchat at family events. But part of her had always wondered . . . what if? What if Julian hadn’t shown up that day? What if they’d had more time together? What had he really been thinking about her before he’d realized she was already seeing someone?

  Courage swirled in her chest. If this was her last chance to find out, she wasn’t going to let anything stand in her way. She’d let too many good things pass her by over the years. “I was asking what you thought of me after you saw me again.”