Cole craved having her in his arms again. But keeping her safe was more important. That had to remain his only priority.
“Let’s take a look.” He leaned in to her caress, lifting her other hand from the bowl.
“It doesn’t look so bad.”
He grunted, relieved to see that the bright red that had marred her skin had temporarily faded. “I’ll remind you you said that. It’s going to hurt like hell for a while.” He returned her hand to the water. “Keep it in there as long as the ice holds up.”
Her uninjured hand squeezed his fingers, and that’s when he realized he’d grasped it where she’d continued touching his chest. He squeezed back and let go.
“The hot water heater’s back there, right?” he asked.
She nodded. He could feel her agitation mounting as he headed to the storage room. She wasn’t the only one. The last two times he’d let her out of his sight, her screams of pain had sliced into him, making it clear just how strong his compulsion still was to ensure her well-being. He left the door to the kitchen open and crossed to the dated unit he’d seen earlier. The control valve for the monstrous thing was near the floor, almost completely around the back.
He pulled out his penlight and shone it on the setting for the heater, careful once again not to touch anything. What he saw had him mentally counting down to his next check-in with Dawson, debating whether or not he could afford to wait.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. A cold sweat broke out all over his body.
“What?” Shaw asked. She was standing in the doorway, her hand wrapped in a towel. “What is it?”
He ushered her back to the kitchen, his palm firm at the base of her spine, his fingertips brushing across the flash of exposed skin between her sweatshirt and pants. Possessiveness flooded him as he took that moment, that touch, for himself. It was hell, having to resettle her in the chair and make himself step away. Thank God the kettle started whistling. He took it from the burner, carrying out the homey ritual that was driving him nuts, even as he hoped it would soothe her.
Shaw dipped her hand back into the ice. He took tea bags from the cupboard, opened and draped them over mugs, then doused them with hot water. He brought the steaming tea to the table along with the sugar dish, a spoon, and the over-the-counter pain meds he’d found beside the tea bags. She watched him steep and discarded the bags, then add sugar to her drink. She took her first sip. So did he, even though he detested the stuff—another memory she’d yet to reclaim.
He shook two white tablets out of the bottle and handed them to her. For a second he thought she’d balk, but she sighed and flipped both into her mouth, washing them down with more of her drink.
“You’ll be glad you did that,” he said. “You need to rest. It’s almost noon, and you got no sleep last night. Plus your hand will start throbbing without something to dull the ache.”
She took another swallow, closing her eyes with the pleasure it clearly brought her. Not that he believed for a second he was off the hook.
“What is it, Cole?” she demanded. “What don’t you want to tell me now?”
He grunted again, thinking of the truckload of things he wanted to tell her and couldn’t yet. “When was the last time you used the hot water?”
“Last night, when I washed the dinner dishes.”
“And it was fine?”
“It was the same as it always is. Sulky, because the pipes in this place are older than God. But it warms up slowly. That’s why I didn’t think twice about putting the stopper in my bath without first checking the temperature of the water.”
“The heat on the unit has been pushed to its hottest setting.”
Her mug paused halfway to her mouth. “What?”
“It’s an industrial level a house like this should never be set for. If it’s been heating that high for hours—”
“Ever since I heard someone in my house last night?”
Cole nodded, catching the whisper of fear behind her question. “The water in your bath was probably close to boiling when it came out of the tap.”
“But…how?” Her mug clunked to the table. “I don’t suppose there’s any way the setting could have slipped on its own.”
“Not likely.” Actually, it would have been impossible. “You haven’t been fiddling with it at all?”
“No. I honestly didn’t care enough to mess with the water heater. I’ve had other things to obsess about. As long as hot water eventually trickles out of the tap, I’m happy. I figured I’d get around to tweaking the plumbing later.”
She’d started rubbing her temple again. Her eyes were clouded, their lids beginning to droop. The sugar in her tea was counteracting the shock of her latest injury, helped along by the pain medication. He sat forward, wishing he could have done more than make her favorite drink to soften the blow he had to deliver.
“Here’s the thing,” he said. “Someone shot you over a month ago, possibly trying to kill you. After today, I think we can safely assume that wasn’t a random occurrence. Which means, because of where the shooting happened, it was most likely about your business.”
She slowly nodded. “Okay.”
“But you’re not at Cassidy Global now. You’re not doing anything that would be causing a problem for anyone in your company. You haven’t been for at least a month. So, tell me, why would someone be doing bizarre things like this to you here, way up in the boondocks?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it, staring at him mutely.
“Shaw. What the hell kind of trouble are you in?”
…
Shaw shook her head.
She’d been doing that a lot and felt childish. Clueless. And hunted. How did she find the words to express the horror of knowing someone was honest-to-God stalking her?
The first investigators who’d interviewed her in the hospital had wanted to know mostly the same things as Cole. Did she have any idea why she was attacked? Why at Cassidy Global, in the middle of the night, and why was there no evidence at the scene? What had made Shaw the target instead of her other corporate officers? She’d had no answers to give them then, just as there was nothing to tell Cole now. Including why someone might have tracked her all the way up here to take another crack at her.
Or at least to go after her water heater.
She wanted to shove the endless search for answers from her mind again, as she had when the authorities in Atlanta had decided not to continue actively investigating her shooting. But now she didn’t dare, not if someone was really trying to spook her or hurt her or whatever he was trying to do to her in the mansion.
If Cole hadn’t been sitting beside her while she was forced to accept the truth that deep down she’d suspected all this time, she was certain she’d have dissolved into a puddle of fear. But there he was, caring for her in ways—like making her tea—that she guessed were as foreign to him as repeatedly having to soothe a hysterical female. She gazed back at her former friend. Her former lover. He felt more like a bodyguard now, standing like an impenetrable wall between her and whatever was going on.
She lifted her tea without responding to his question. Her grip shook so much, his hand came up to steady hers as she drank. Then he took the mug and set it in front of her. She dropped her head into her free hand. He lifted the other one from its ice bath and gently dried it.
“Everything’s spinning,” she mumbled.
She had to call Dawson. She should keep talking to Cole until she recalled something that would help the authorities get to the bottom of what was going on. She needed to fight harder to get her memory back, now more than ever. But her mind was turning to mush. Then the world itself was tilting.
Strong arms were helping her stand. Not bothering to censure herself, she leaned into Cole’s strength, needing the sense of belonging he’d b
rought into her solitary life.
“Let’s get you to bed,” he said, lips she knew she’d dream about at her temple. “You’re crashing, and I want to get a better look at the house. But I don’t want to take you back to your room. Where were you going to have me stay?”
“Downstairs.” She pointed in the direction of the first-floor guest room. Then she added, chagrined, “There are plenty of rooms upstairs near me, but I didn’t trust myself. You feel too good every time I touch you. Why do you feel so good…?”
She was babbling. She’d regret it later. But she closed her eyes, concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, and let the worry go as they left the kitchen behind.
When he eased her onto a bed, she realized he’d guided her to the guest room and was already stepping away.
“Don’t go,” she said, not for the first time.
“I’ll be here when you wake up.” He kissed the scar at her temple, where her head hurt most, and pulled the blanket over her. “Don’t worry about anything. I’ll lock the door from the inside as I leave. No one will be able to get in but me. You’ll be safe.”
She was already nearly asleep, relaxing into his promises. Letting go and trusting him felt like a different way of taking control. One that would allow her to finally relax and get the rest she needed, so once she woke she could work with him to resolve whatever was going on.
She felt him slip away.
Turning into the pillows, not afraid of her dreams for the first time in a month, she sighed and allowed herself to drift.
Chapter Eleven
It was working.
The bitch had lived like a cloistered nun since she was a teenager. Now she was close to whoring herself out to Marinos again, after less than a day together.
The man smiled in satisfaction.
She’d been hell-bent for years on proving she was strong enough to run her empire and the lives of everyone associated with it. She’d cultivated the reputation of an executive who could conquer any challenge. She’d sacrificed everything for the power she’d thought she was entitled to. Then, once she’d caught a clue and realized he’d been screwing her pristine image to the wall, she’d thought she could catch him herself.
Not killing her that night had been the most rewarding decision he’d ever made. She was falling apart so predictably now. So satisfyingly. He wouldn’t have missed this for the world.
He flipped a key on the electronic panel before him, switching away from the audio sound of Shaw sleeping in the first-floor guest room, back to the view from the microscopic camera he’d installed in the kitchen’s overhead light fixture. Marinos appeared on cue, a hero without a clue, heading to the adjoining room no doubt to adjust the water heater to a pre-nuclear level.
As if that would be the end of this, since the man could at any time use his master key and the tunnels running from his location across the lake to carefully camouflaged access points not far from the Victorian, to get back inside and make even more mischief. As he had last night after Shaw ran outside. He’d incapacitated the Victorian’s security system, then he’d tweaked the hot water supply, finishing up quickly enough to catch the last of Cole and Shaw’s touching reunion in the woods.
Hidden in his secret lair deep inside the mountain now, he surveyed the array of electronics spread out before him in the abandoned-mine-turned-bunker that passed for his home. He had the most state-of-the-art intelligence-gathering equipment on the planet at his disposal. Much of it wasn’t yet available to the U.S. government—at least not to the law enforcement branches. With it, he could jam all attempts to detect his surveillance, and send command signals to the remote-controlled weapons and other fun gadgets he’d concealed about the property. Including the high-powered sniper rifle he’d used to shoot at the storage room. The remotely fired weapon was installed over a mile from the mansion, near the bunker.
Even a highly skilled agent like Cole Marinos, his country’s pride and joy, wouldn’t get far until he called in some help to dig for the very real threat behind Shaw’s string of “accidents.” The man could pump any sound he wanted into the house, play with the power and other utilities, and trigger booby traps. And no one would be the wiser. He could continue messing with Shaw’s mind indefinitely, undetected, if that’s what he wanted.
Not that merely panicking her could come close to satisfying him now. She was the evil one. She’d killed his mother. She’d gotten away with her crime her entire life. It was his responsibility, it always had been, to make sure she paid. First by destroying her business while his thrived beyond his wildest dreams. Then by destroying her mind.
His adjusted plans were playing out even better, and more quickly, than he’d hoped. Cole’s reckless determination was a delight to watch. The looming deadline of Marinos’s next report to Atlanta, a pattern that had been pathetically easy to detect by the regular timing of his cell call signals, was serving nicely.
Compromising Marinos’s integrity within his tight-knit intelligence community was a worthy goal unto itself. Sacrificing everything else for that lovely prize might just be worth it. As long as Shaw’s memories were forever silenced in the process. And as long as the cause of her death, if it came to that, fell at Cole’s feet. After all, Marinos had been nursing a nasty grudge against the Cassidy family for over a decade. The Marshals Service must have been crazy to allow an FBI loose cannon like him anywhere near a prime suspect in a felony investigation.
But would crushing Marinos’s life once again really be enough? The man felt the darkness within him building, a growing need for revenge against the other nemesis from his past who’d yet to pay for the brutal pain he still endured on a daily basis.
He’d already proven he was smarter than Shaw. He’d run circles around her, both professionally and personally. The twit. He could walk away a free man any time he chose, with the added bonus of seeing her take the fall for his crimes. But mere freedom was no longer enough.
She needed to realize exactly who had custom-designed her fate, and why she deserved every consequence he’d dealt out. He had the chance to watch the two people responsible for destroying his life pay, the way he had. In blood. He wasn’t going anywhere until this was finished, his way this time.
He’d already pitted them against each other. He’d been listening. And he had no doubt his star-crossed lovers would be screwing once more by nightfall. Then it would be time for him to make his most ingenious move yet. Something that would position his pawns precisely at the very flash point that would ensure their destruction. Soon, Shaw’s haunting would either become permanent, or she’d be dead. Either way, she’d be forced to stare into his grotesque face and know he was her tormentor. And Marinos would have the rest of his life to feel guilty over how he hadn’t been able to stop Shaw’s destruction.
On the monitor, Marinos returned to the kitchen, his expression murderous.
The man ran his hand over his hairless, disfigured head, his mind spinning with possibilities. His body was nothing more than a shell of what it had once been. But thanks to him, from the moment they’d met in the woods, Marinos and Shaw had been doomed to a fate of his choosing.
Could any plan be more beautiful?
Chapter Twelve
Cole had never in his career felt more like an idiot. Someone was terrorizing Shaw right under his nose. Someone undetectable by his equipment and off the radar in every effort the task force had made to ferret out a suspect. Someone intimately familiar with Cassidy Global’s operations and assets, who’d gained access to the mansion itself and knew his way around. Someone triggering Shaw’s fears like a Svengali.
It was only a hunch, a long shot really, based on what a less-experienced agent might dismiss as an insignificant string of minor accidents. But Cole had profiled enough lunatics in his career to know he was on the right track. And that the guy he was after was now
here near finished.
Shaw’s stalker was starting to make this personal. Maybe it had been personal since the shooting. Hell, since before then. Almost as if whoever was behind her company’s treasonous activity had ultimately wanted his illegal deeds to come to light, and Shaw discovering what he was up to had been a catalyst to everything that had happened since.
But why hadn’t she been killed that night at her office? Maybe so the bastard could move on to tuning up her brain even more, with all the unexplainable, unprovable bumps in the night and voices and odd happenings she’d endured here. Whoever it was definitely had an ax to grind. For someone to take the time to gaslight her this way, rather than simply taking her out and moving on, he had to be getting a sick pleasure out of each strike.
No doubt about it.
Someone was carefully orchestrating Shaw’s demise, both professionally and psychologically.
Cole hammered a final nail into the top of the sagging step he’d repaired, then turned and sat on his handiwork, knowing he had time. The type of bastard who would carry out a scheme this elaborate and sick would want to savor his latest victory before triggering another episode.
While Shaw slept, Cole had first gone over the house again, inside and out, with the handheld scanner he’d brought back with him from his place. He’d done a thorough visual check of every room and entrance, looking for signs of electronic monitoring and more traps that might have been set. He’d turned up nothing out of the ordinary. And even though he’d planted several more sensors that would report back to his computers if anything suspicious were to happen in or around the house, he was betting they’d pick up nothing, either. Regardless of what occurred next.
His technology was obviously inferior to the equipment being used by the unsub who was terrorizing Shaw. There was no other explanation. And unfortunately, no clear-cut remedy. Overtly ripping the house apart looking for hidden clues wasn’t an option. It would throw away the element of surprise, and likely their shot at catching this guy. So Cole had instead spent the last half hour beating away at the stairs, after digging up tools, spare lumber, and nails in the storage room. He’d been determined to come up with something he could do to catch this maniac the next time he tried to get to Shaw, without prematurely tipping his hand that he was onto the guy.
Her Forgotten Betrayal Page 12
