Nonplussed, Esmeralda began cleaning her front paws, ignoring Shaw. As the regal blue point Siamese moved, her gold charm sparkled, a pendant Shaw had discovered in a drawer in the downstairs parlor and spontaneously attached to Esme’s collar. If anything really were wrong, certainly her cat wouldn’t be lounging around taking a relaxing bath.
Inhaling, Shaw willed her racing pulse to settle to a more sane pace.
After the shooting, at first it had been only the nightmare filling her mind with jumbled images and voices, and then with anger and violence and hate. She never recalled anything of substance about the dream or that night, not once she awoke. And even if she had, she couldn’t trust that the memories would be real. It was entirely possible, her neurologist had warned, that her nightmares were the spinning nonsense of a still-broken consciousness. It could be simply her brain’s attempt to repair the damage done to her psyche. Or her sanity could finally be unraveling for good.
Because, these last few days, she’d started hearing noises and bodiless whispers and even footsteps while she was awake and bustling about this alien-feeling, Victorian monstrosity that was supposed to be making her feel safe.
As much as she could within the physical restrictions of her recuperation, she’d been digging through the mansion’s contents for answers. Who was she, really? What was she? She hadn’t been cleared to drive yet. There was no Internet access or cable TV up there. What else was she going to do with her time but organize and clean each and every room until she’d convinced herself there was nothing of importance to discover? No matter how hungry she was to know something, to be someone, that moment of enlightenment never came.
Except there was something, some memory, lurking nearby. It was as if she could sense an elusive piece of her mind’s puzzle just beyond her grasp, so close it nearly maddened her. Each time she failed to capture it, she fought off a fresh wave of helplessness. Helplessness, giving up, was something she was certain the real Shaw Cassidy never allowed herself to feel. She hadn’t always been like this. She was certain of it. She hadn’t forever been this apprehensive, unsure creature. She had to find a way to make it stop. Whoever she’d been, this was not who she planned to remain from now on.
She flung a pillow across the room and ran her hands through the honey-blond hair that was curling into her eyes. She caught herself smoothing her fingers over the side of her face, brushing her temple and the gunshot’s lingering scar. It would heal completely, the doctors had promised. The rest of her would, too—if she could find a way to relax and stop trying to force her memories to return. Relaxing, evidently, was something else she didn’t do terribly well.
She pushed herself off the enormous bed. Her legs shook, forcing her to cling to the carved mahogany post beside her. Smooth swirls of inlaid botanicals teased her fingertips. The same floral motif adorned the four bedposts, the headboard, and the bed’s foot rails. Nature’s glory had been captured along the embroidered hem of the coverlet. On the walls, faded paper offered glimpses of wood nymphs and tree sprites peeking around bushes.
She sighed. This luxurious room had been her sanctuary ever since the hospital released her and the U.S. Justice Department had convinced her to convalesce at this lonely hilltop estate. She wondered if this room had once been a childhood haven. Very little of anything in the mansion made her feel safe now. A part of her had started to wonder if it ever truly had.
Her slippers on, her chenille robe wrapped warmly around her, she scooped up Esmeralda and confronted the closed bedroom door. Gritting her teeth, she yanked it open. She escaped into the hallway without incident and flipped the switch to light the chandelier at the top of the split-landing stairwell. From there, staircases led to both the front and back of the house.
She headed down to the middle landing’s picture window, ignoring the way her knees wanted to wobble. By daylight, the window was a wall of brilliant glass, flaunting an unrestricted view of the steep hill that rose gently from the surrounding woods. But in these hours just past midnight, the world beyond became an abyss of ominous black.
The chandelier’s glare had turned the window’s beveled panes into an eerie sort of mirror. In its reflection, Shaw appeared no more substantial than a ghost. Her skin was too pale. Her brown eyes too haunted. Her hair was just long enough for a man to grab…
Without warning, she was struck by the mercurial memory of being dragged from the closet.
She pounced on a set of switches that fired the first-story lights to life. Esme meowed, then struggled from Shaw’s grasp and scampered down the back staircase, presumably to find somewhere less unsettling to sleep for the rest of the night.
This was stupid. Shaw was perfectly safe at the top of High Lake Mountain. No one in the small Georgia town below even knew she had returned for the first time since her father’s funeral ten years ago.
“So knock it off,” she ordered herself.
She headed down the front stairs. At the moment, the visual disarray of the chintz furniture in the parlor was more than her nerves could handle. A tin of hot chocolate awaited her in the kitchen. An old-fashioned sugar high was what she needed to obliterate the gooseflesh still rippling across her arms.
The butler’s door leading into the kitchen gleamed with the oil she’d polished into it. It opened at her touch with a worn, disgruntled creak, swinging wide to reveal an unwelcome sea of darkness yawning before her. She’d turned the light off earlier, convincing herself that this time she’d sleep until dawn. That she wouldn’t be coming back down as she was now, scared and needing her path illuminated like a trembling child longing for a night-light.
She stretched out her hand as she inched toward the oak table that dominated the room. A lifetime seemed to pass. The Victorian settled around her in a cacophony of creaks and groans, as if it were somehow going out of its way to spook her.
Her fingers curled around the chain dangling from its overhead fixture. A quick yank doused the room in a sepia-tinged hue.
She glanced around, feeling more foolish by the second. No unearthly creatures and certainly no deadly men lurked in the corners or under the table or beyond the door that swooshed shut behind her. She might not remember the family who’d once lived here with her, all of them now dead and gone. But her grandmother’s house wasn’t a threat to her.
No one was really after her, Chief Inspector Dawson had explained when the U.S. Marshals Service decreed Shaw wasn’t to be assigned a witness security team. Most likely, her shooting had been a random act of violence. In case there was more to it, and due largely to her highly visible position as CEO of Cassidy Global Research, Dawson had extended her the courtesy of having his Atlanta Federal Marshals’ office keep a long-distance eye on her recovery. But formal WITSEC protection was for people whose lives were in immediate danger because of something they’d witnessed. Not for head cases like Shaw.
Dawson had told her that, besides her injury, there’d been no evidence of a shooting at her crime scene or of the meeting and the men in her nightmare. Until she could give the authorities a reason to investigate further, she needed to calm the hell down. He’d said it in slightly more diplomatic terms as he’d driven her up here. But the gist was the same. If she wanted protection, she had to remember enough for the authorities to build a solid case and make an arrest.
She forced herself to take her first full breath since waking. The kitchen never failed to soothe her nerves. Over the last three weeks, she’d spent countless hours there, cooking and thinking, trying to remember something of her life. Anything at all. Unlike the grander decor of the rest of the house, the kitchen and its adjacent storage room had remained utilitarian workspaces that spoke of a simpler, more humble beginning she’d like to think she’d once admired.
She plucked milk from the sixties-era Frigidaire and told herself to get a grip as she poured the liquid into a copper saucepan. She set the pan on the
gas stove to boil and found the container of cocoa in the oak cabinet above the range top. The sugar was in the crock beside the burner. The drawer to her right held a mismatched collection of stainless and silver-plated utensils, castoffs of various patterns. She rummaged carelessly through the silverware that she would meticulously re-sort in the morning. Her fingers curled around a spoon with a rose-patterned handle that made her smile.
She took her teacup and saucer from the dish rack, then stirred the warming milk with a wooden spoon. Her nightly routine began to work its magic. The muscles in her shoulders unclenched to a mere ache. Her erratic thoughts cleared. The compulsion to run eased, returning to her the confidence and composure she’d apparently been legendary for as she’d navigated the unforgiving complexities of her career.
She’d overreacted.
Again.
She had to get a hold of herself. She was the only person who could mend her mind’s confusion, doing the daily yoga and Pilates the doctors agreed she could continue to practice, and grounding herself more to the reality of this house by poring over photo albums and sifting through closets and drawers and cupboards. After she figured out her personal life, she’d find a way to reconnect to her professional identity. If she was patient, she’d been promised, it would all come back in time.
A crash beyond the kitchen’s door jolted her from her thoughts. The wooden spoon rattled from her fingers to the stovetop. She whirled toward the dining room.
“Esme?” She raised a hand to cover her heart.
She was scaring herself senseless for nothing. She was going stir-crazy, that was all. She’d simply been alone for too long. The unexplained rattles and noises and sometimes even voices she kept thinking she heard were merely symptoms of cabin fever.
Right?
The house answered her with silence, except for the soft hum of the refrigerator. She took an uncertain step forward, determined to conquer her fear. No one had broken into the house, she told herself firmly. No one was ever there. There was no threat, except from her own panic. All she had to do was turn on the dining room lights, and there’d be no one lurking around the next corner, waiting to attack her.
She reached for the door.
Sorry, Shaw, the faceless, scratchy-voiced man whispered from her nightmare.
She clenched her hands into fists, digging her nails into her palms.
“Don’t be such a child,” she said out loud. “Stop this.”
Fear and the amnesia it fed had stolen everything from her. She had no recollection of the four high-tech research centers she was said to oversee. Or how she’d come to be the sole living heir to an estate that included not only this mountain house near the North Carolina border, once used by her family as a summer retreat, but also a loft in Atlanta and homes on several other continents. And to add insult to injury, no one had yet been allowed to tell her more. Doctor’s orders.
She wanted her life back, damn it. She smoothed her hand against the dining room door and braced herself to push it open. She could do this. She had to.
Sudden darkness swallowed the kitchen.
Her thoughts were immediately swamped with the panicked claustrophobia of being trapped in a closet, waiting to be discovered.
“No.” She blinked, willing the lights to come back on. Her imagination was merely playing tricks on her, anticipating the worst.
But regardless of how many times she tried to force the room into focus, there was nothing to see. Someone had killed the power for real. Her nightmare was coming true. It was waiting for her in the very next room.
She backed away.
Fell over one of the kitchen chairs.
Landed hard on her backside.
“No one’s there,” she insisted. “The electricity’s gone out. That’s all.”
Something else crashed in the dining room, followed by the distinct sound of a man’s footsteps, inching closer. She covered her mouth with her hand. She scrambled backward on the floor, her nightgown and robe twisting around her legs. Disjointed dream memories swirled through her mind. She lurched to her feet. She felt her way along the wall, blindly heading for the storage room and its back door to the outside world.
She was a fool, a weak, clueless fool. But she couldn’t control her panic.
Kill the bitch… the night whispered.
Shaw clawed at the back door’s stubborn deadbolt until it gave way, then forced herself to stop. A glimmer of sanity kept her from running into the freezing, moonlit darkness. If she really were in danger, heaven only knew what waited for her outside the mansion’s protection. And there was suddenly nothing but silence behind her, no movement whatsoever.
She tried to believe this was just like all the other times when she’d freaked herself out and then realized how ridiculous she’d been. She was running from phantoms. She tensed to turn back, to confront her paranoia. And heard footsteps again. Closer than before. Behind her. Coming for her. And there she stood, paralyzed, trapped between the shadows beyond her family’s home and the nightmare crowding closer within.
A hand clenched in her hair. A gun pressed into her temple. When it fired, the deafening roar of the blast shattered her reality all over again.
Chapter Three
Cole stared out the window toward the Cassidy mansion, a house he knew as intimately as the faded scars on his back. A trail of light had spread through the place, the same as on each of the other twenty-one nights since he’d returned to High Lake, Georgia. He’d tracked its progress until it had flooded the Victorian’s first floor, then its kitchen.
His own family’s excuse for a homestead was a shack in comparison to the manor house. But the cabin had been all his drunk of a father could maintain, sitting amidst acres of north Georgia woods that belonged to someone else. Cole’s dad had once been the caretaker for the Cassidy property. Among other things, he’d tended the currently leafless pecan grove that the January moon was now illuminating, setting a moody backdrop for the mansion and the lake beyond.
As a very young boy, Cole had earned two dollars a bushel from Old Man Cassidy, collecting the nuts that fell from those trees. And he’d loved every second of the chore. Almost as passionately as he’d resented returning to this place now.
He’d kept up the cabin, once his dad finally killed himself with alcoholism and liver disease. It had become a safe house to land in sporadically between the various federal task forces Cole rotated through. Technically, he worked for the FBI. But almost from the start of his ten years with the Bureau, his tendency to circumvent regulations and his reputation for closing impossible cases had led him to specialize. He’d become the closest a federal officer could get to a free agent. He was on near-continuous loan from the Bureau doing undercover work for state and local law enforcement, infiltrating gangs and organized-crime syndicates, collecting evidence and turning marks for federal stings.
Ten years of living on the edge had left a slew of enemies in his wake. His High Lake cabin was an off-the-grid stronghold during rare patches of downtime. Ramshackle-looking on the outside, inside he had everything he needed to protect himself from nearly every type of threat. Every threat, that was, except for his present responsibility to keep an eye on the woman who had once again taken up residence in the Cassidy place.
It didn’t matter that the Victorian estate house had seen better days since Cole first left the mountain as an angry young man. The mansion was still as impressive as when he’d stared across this same stretch of woods as a boy. And it continued to represent his very first lesson in how twisted life could become when you bought into dreams as if they were real.
After Matthew Cassidy’s death, Cole had made his way back whenever he could, only because Matthew’s heir, the estate’s new owner, had never once returned herself. An insignificant bit of intel had assured him each time that he’d have the mountain entire
ly to himself.
Now his first—hell, his only—dream, the only woman he’d ever loved, was back on High Lake Mountain to torment him. And it was his job to keep track of her every move.
Six months ago, he’d pushed as hard as he’d dared to take part in this investigation—in an advisory capacity, consulting from afar as an expert on the principal suspect. Because he’d flat-out refused to believe Shaw was guilty of the charges being drawn up against her. That day at the hospital, when Federal Marshals Service Chief Inspector Rick Dawson had proposed this new assignment, Cole could have declined. Instead, a glutton for punishment, he was a newly minted special deputy marshal, responsible for being Shaw’s High Lake watchdog. He’d accepted the detail, because any other agent would have considered ensuring her security here less of a priority than collecting additional evidence that she was guilty of treason. Alleged treason.
In the Bureau’s eyes, this was a light babysitting detail. One that was going nowhere. But regardless, Cole had been farmed out to Dawson. He was to monitor the isolated environment Shaw had been restricted to in her house, with orders to intervene only if someone other than the marshal who delivered her groceries every five days approached from the surrounding acreage. Cole’s own network of electronic sensors, installed on the property years ago to ensure his personal safety, gave him a leg up. He could detect anything that moved beyond the house’s perimeter. But just as important to the U.S. government, Cole could be certain that Shaw herself didn’t leave the premises or contact anyone the task force hadn’t vetted.
Being certain was Cole’s forte. So was cutting emotional ties, once a place or person had ceased to be useful to him. He was an ace at it, thanks to Shaw.
After losing her and the future they’d promised each other, he’d ruthlessly hammered away at an uncompromising world until he’d put himself through college and been recruited into the Bureau. He’d built a career out of becoming whomever he had to be next in order to get away clean from whatever he was leaving behind.
Her Forgotten Betrayal Page 2
