Her Forgotten Betrayal

by Anna DeStefano

  Shaw gasped. Her head was throbbing so hard she felt it in her toes. Her body’s tantrum this time was from the shock of discovery, not pain. Her sight line was still several feet away from the ceiling. But she was close enough.

  Not that she wanted to believe what she’d found—something that had no business being in a run-down estate in the middle of nowhere that didn’t even have Internet access. It would be easier if she could close her eyes and imagine she was again seeing things that weren’t there.

  Instead, she stared at the tiny object.

  “What the—” She reached up to grab it from its nest behind the molding. She was betting there was something similar in every room in her house. “Oh my God.”

  …

  “Are you certain?” Dawson said.

  “That we have an on-site unsub, yes.” Cole had double-checked the damage to the staircase. Then, for what it was worth, he’d once more ensured that every entrance to the house was secure. Afterward, he’d headed through the kitchen and the storage room, straight through to the backyard.

  If Shaw’s stalker was somehow tracking what was happening in the house, Cole was going to do his best to keep him from overhearing this conversation. He once again cursed the sophisticated technology he wasn’t in a position to challenge.

  “But you have no idea who it is?” Dawson asked.

  “There’s no way to know.”

  “Or he doesn’t exist.”

  “He exists. I doubt there are any fingerprints besides mine, and I don’t have the equipment to scan for whatever electronics he’s using, or to even know if he’s listening in to what I’m saying now. And I can’t tear the place apart looking for how he’s tracking us, without tipping him off that we finally know he’s here. Once we do, we’ll lose our shot for a strategic strike to nail the bastard. But I’ve seen his handiwork for myself. Shaw’s not imagining this. He’s gone quiet again. If my hunch is right, she’s safe for now while he enjoys his latest victory and regroups. But he’ll resurface. And then, if we play this right, he’s mine.”

  Dawson grunted. It was quite possible he smiled. Cole could almost imagine the marshal rubbing his hands together with glee. He heard what sounded suspiciously like a match being struck and a long drag being taken from a cigarette.

  “So we finally have our break,” the chief inspector said, exhaling slowly.

  “Only because the guy’s getting reckless. He could have set up the other accidents when she was in the woods with me, or even before. But I was in the house this time. He knew it, and instead of staying away, he waltzed in right under our noses and made it look like I caused her fall. If Shaw hadn’t remembered about us and the barn fire when she did, if she hadn’t instinctively accepted that she could trust me, he might very well have gotten his wish.”

  “You keep saying he,” Dawson pointed out. So far, he hadn’t asked how Shaw’s memory had been jarred so miraculously, after a month of nothing. Or where Cole had been, precisely, when he’d missed his check-in after the unsub had outsmarted him again. “Is there anything tangible to base your gender theory on?”

  “Instinct.” Cole ran a hand through his hair, then along his chin. Damn, he needed a shave. “This is obviously personal. Maybe it’s always been personal. It feels like anger to me. A man’s anger. Rage. Maybe even revenge. If it was a woman who was that pissed off, hell, we’d both be dead by now.”

  “That’s a very scientific analysis, for one of your garden-variety hunches.” Dawson laughed.

  Cole was happy to entertain.

  “Look into Shaw’s past,” he said. “For someone with an ax to grind. Someone who’d know the ins and outs of her corporation and the manor house. And also the best ways to screw with her mind.”

  “She’s had no long-term relationships that we could find. The woman’s a workaholic loner, and her family’s gone. There are no spurned lovers panting to even an old score, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Look for ties to the crimes at Cassidy Global. The illegal sales of research. The timing of all this is too much of a coincidence for everything not to be linked. Our unsub is somehow involved in the treason and espionage, not Shaw. He’s setting her up to take the fall for his crimes. Making her look crazy is just part of his game.”

  Actually, it raised the hairs on the back of Cole’s neck to realize just how long this situation had been going on, while no one had believed a word Shaw was saying—exactly as the asshole had planned. Well, Cole believed her, and he’d have her back from now on.

  “I’m going to tell her about the task-force investigation, and that she’s been the prime suspect until now,” he said. “And about the security leaks at Cassidy Global and the pending charges against her.”

  “You’ll do no such thing, Marinos. That’s way outside your discretion on this assignment.”

  “She’s already figuring it out on her own. And I need her complete trust.”

  “If she’s guilty, she’ll run. If—”

  “She’s not our suspect any longer. You can take that hunch to the fucking bank. She’s a victim, a witness, and it’s the Marshals Service’s job, Chief Inspector, to protect her until the felon responsible for the Cassidy leaks, her injury, and the stalking that’s now endangering her life can be brought to trial and convicted. I intend to make sure all of that happens. Even if I have to tell her the truth to do it.”

  “And how, exactly, are you going to do that for a witness who’s spitting mad, once she finds out her ex-lover-knight-in-shining-armor is actually a fed who’s had her under surveillance the entire time he’s been pretending to be her friendly, helpful, aw-shucks-ma’am neighbor?”

  It was the very question Cole had asked himself a hundred times over the last several hours.

  “I’ll make Shaw understand the direness of her circumstances,” he said. “I won’t give her a choice.”

  “Damn it, Marinos.”

  “I’ll deal with her while you square things with the task force and the Bureau. I need a forensics team here by morning, with better equipment than I have. Something that will outsmart whatever technology this guy’s using to block mine.”

  “Sure, why not?” Dawson said, sounding furious and sarcastic, but not altogether unaccommodating. “Anything else I can do for you in my spare time, in the middle of the fucking night?”

  “Dig into Shaw’s past,” Cole repeated. “Even though her memory’s recovering, we can’t afford to wait for her to tell us who this guy might be. We’ve got to find evidence to put him away before he decides terminating her is a better solution than merely freaking her out.”

  “You know the football field of crap that’s about to land on your head if you’re wrong about this, right? Once I start the wheels in motion, you’re on the record, Cole. There’s no backing away from this one if it goes south. You could be making some career-ending miscalculations.”

  “Or I could score one hell of a promotion. I’ll be in touch again once I talk with Shaw.” If the worst happened, he could live just fine without his career. But he couldn’t live at all if he didn’t save Shaw. “Get ready to send our people up here, but tell them to come in quiet, and to keep themselves and their vehicles at an undetectable perimeter. I have no idea how powerful this guy’s surveillance is.”

  “Will this help give you an idea?” a cold feminine voice said behind him.

  Cole spun, his gun drawn and leveled on where she stood in the doorway leading to the storage room. He lowered his weapon, his fingers actually shaking at the shock of not knowing Shaw had been there. She’d tunneled so far under his radar, God knew how much of his conversation with Dawson she’d heard.

  But the only thing Cole could get his mind to focus on at the moment, the only thing he cared about, was that he could have shot her. Jesus. He holstered the weapon before his trembling fingers
could press the trigger by accident.

  His heart was beating out of his chest. His stomach was in a knot. That proved it without a doubt. He was a total goner.

  He loved her.

  God, he loved Shaw Cassidy as much as he had as a teenager. More than a shut-down, rusty heart like his should still be capable of loving anyone. And from the hurt, brittle expression marring her beautiful face as she stared back at him, holding out a piece of electronic junk as if it were going to bite her, his worst fears had come true.

  He’d just lost her for good.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Shaw slapped the tiny electronic device she’d found into Cole’s hand, while he told Dawson, her Marshals Service contact, that he’d call back.

  She couldn’t believe she’d been rushing to show him her discovery and to fill him in about Dawson. So he’d be with her when she called in the good guys to report that she finally had something concrete to prove she wasn’t crazy. Turned out, Cole was the good guys. Whatever that meant.

  She’d believed that he was on her side again, that they were in this together, just as when they’d been kids. She’d believed he loved her again. And she’d fallen all over herself feeling grateful for her second chance to keep him, to be good enough this time, strong enough, to be worthy of his renewed faith in her. She’d begged him to stay with her. She’d bought in to each of his promises. All while he’d been playing a part and manipulating her.

  She’d been prepared for there being something more from their past that he needed to get off his chest. She’d have forgiven him for anything, after how easily he’d accepted her apology for her mistakes.

  Anything but this.

  He was an agent for the same government that had banished her out there, evidently knowing all along she was in danger and willing to use her to lure out her stalker. Cole, the man she’d been pining to fight beside and then spend the rest of her life with, had been using her from the start—a man who’d said he’d accepted his own part in giving up on them as a teenager, and who’d promised never to let go again.

  That man hadn’t really existed at all.

  No wonder her subconscious had plopped him in the middle of her latest dream, where he’d prodded and manipulated her into risking her life to get him the information he wanted about her attacker. And then there was his odd concern about fingerprints, and his repeated insistence that he needed to look around the house—meanwhile he hadn’t been able to hunt too carefully or he’d have tipped off his unsub. Her thoughts shifted to the bulging duffel bag he’d brought back from his place, full of whatever equipment he’d thought he’d needed. And then there was his cryptic questions about her supposed phone call that morning to the electric company, and how he’d relentlessly controlled their conversations since… While, like a nitwit, she’d been so cautious up till now not to tell him about her Marshals Service contact.

  The fragments of her friendly neighbor’s not-quite-right behavior, his effortless empathy for her situation, and why it had been so hard to believe any of it, now made perfect, horrible sense.

  She motioned to the device. “I found that hidden behind the crown molding in the guest bedroom.”

  Her statement came out as emotionless as his voice had in the parlor, where he’d first lied to her. She felt another part of her forgotten self click into place. The cold, professional core that kept her going when business was at its toughest.

  “When Inspector Dawson’s forensics team arrives to analyze your evidence,” she said as he kept staring, “my guess is these things are everywhere. Someone besides your team has been listening to or watching my every move.”

  Cole studied the electronic gizmo. “Listening to,” he said with what sounded like relief. “This is an audio device.”

  He pocketed it and stepped closer, stalling when she pointed an imperious finger at him and backed away.

  “Yes, my job was to watch you,” he admitted, his even tone making a mockery of the heated promises he’d given her before he’d left the bedroom. “You’re—”

  “A suspect? I heard. And you’ll deal with me. You’ll make me understand how important it is to remember my attacker, before Dawson charges me with whatever crimes you think are happening at my company.”

  “Dawson’s Marshals Service. He can’t charge you. That’s the FBI’s job. And I don’t think someone’s selling classified Cassidy research to unsavory foreign nationals. I know he is.”

  “And that makes you what, exactly?”

  The Marshals Service. The FBI. Treason? How much trouble was she in?

  “I’m the point person for a multiagency task force,” Cole said.

  “Marshal Marinos?” It didn’t fit.

  “Special agent. I’m FBI. Though Dawson did deputize me before I came up here, so technically for the time being I’m also a Special Deputy Marshal. I’ve been mostly a floater since I came out of the Academy.”

  “The academy?”

  “FBI Academy. My job on this case was to secure and monitor your perimeter.”

  “To protect me?” That was something, anyway. Not enough to keep her heart from shrinking just a little more with each revelation that calmly tumbled from his mouth. But at least somewhere along the way, he’d started to think about her as something more than a national security threat. Had any of what they’d shared actually been real to him?

  “To keep you from leaving,” he corrected, dousing her faint hopes that her situation wasn’t as bad as it appeared. “As far as the task force was concerned, that was my top priority. But I accepted the assignment because I didn’t believe you were capable of what they suspected. Then when you ran into the woods the other night—”

  “You had your opportunity to prove to your superiors just how smart you are?”

  “I couldn’t let you hurt yourself, and I couldn’t be sure you were safe until I got you back inside. I had no intention of staying, of—”

  “Lying to me? Manipulating me? Working me—isn’t that what the intelligence people on TV do with their assets?” He’d been so smooth, bandaging her up and taking care of her after the tub water had scalded her, holding her while she let her guard down and showed him her fear, her desperation, and her passion for him. He’d become her dream again. “And then there’s you sleeping with me to force my memory to return. Or was it to tempt whomever’s screwing with my mind to show himself? Well, gee, score one for the good guys. Job well done on both counts, Special Agent Marinos. You almost have your man. You played your cards perfectly.”

  Shaw turned and headed inside, fuming.

  She’d been left completely exposed to the danger circling around her, while Dawson and the rest of Cole’s task force had assumed she was a neurotic or a liar. And he had let it happen. What did any of them care, as long as they nailed their felon in the end?

  And that device she’d discovered. It might just as easily have been a camera. Someone could have been watching Cole and her the whole time they were in the bedroom, talking, dealing with their personal history. And making love. She shivered. Someone had listened to them loving each other. No, having sex, she angrily corrected herself.

  Still, what did it matter, really, when the person who’d violated her most was the federal agent following at her heels?

  “I was protecting you.” Cole grabbed her, sounding as if he really did care, just like he’d said when he’d left her in the bedroom. He forced her to stop and turn back before she got to the kitchen. “The only way I could.”

  “You could have trusted me.” She wanted to believe him so badly, even now. “You could have really worked with me, the way you promised you were, instead of putting your job first.”

  “You could have forced my hand at any time and told me about Dawson yourself. I haven’t been the only one withholding the truth.”

  “You’
re right,” she agreed with a tight nod. “I didn’t completely believe in you, either. Not enough to risk looking like a head case because my government handlers didn’t care enough to actually leave someone here to help me. I was so grateful you were willing to. That you were going out of your way to help me, for no other reason than our past. But all along, you were one of them. Dawson sent you here.”

  “Yes,” he said simply. “Because I made an ass out of myself six months ago, scoring a spot on the task force.”

  “And you stuck out your detail like a pro until you had your answers.”

  “Until I could prove for sure someone was threatening you.”

  “And only then did you decide to come clean. That doesn’t change how you used me to get what you wanted, just like everyone else, while I was in danger. You’ll get one hell of a promotion, isn’t that what you said, if you nail this bastard? You never gave me the chance to deal with this on my own terms. How can you stand there and try to make it sound as if you’ve been on my side all along? A part of you never could forgive me, could you? Not after what I did to you when we were kids.”

  “I did what was best. I had no idea what was really happening here until after you were hurt with the bath water, and then—”

  “Then you took time out of your busy task-force duties to fuck me. Isn’t that against some regulation where you come from, sleeping with a prisoner?”

  Cole’s anger dissolved into the blank expression they must drill into agents at his academy. There wasn’t a messy emotion to be found in his ice-blue eyes. Gone was the man she’d fallen in love with for the second time in her life.

  She’d been such a fool.

  “All right,” he said. “If that’s how you insist on seeing everything I’ve said and done. Let’s talk facts. Try and keep up without resorting to more hysterics, okay? I’ll hog-tie you to keep you beside me from here out, now that you know the score. Or at least you think you do. You’re under investigation,” he said, “not a prisoner. The U.S. Attorney was about to throw a net over you.” His lips thinned. He pocketed his cell phone and braced both hands on his hips. Every drool-worth muscle in his exposed chest and washboard abs flexed, reminding her that she was still wearing his T-shirt. “When you were shot, then told the local authorities your story about overhearing something that night that had made someone try to kill you, it was enough to postpone the charges until we knew more. But you couldn’t be allowed to return to work or to associate with anyone we couldn’t vet.”