He pressed the remote in his pocket instead of elaborating, sending the signals to unlock the side door and raise the protective screens from the windows. He grabbed Shaw by the shoulders once the interior of the cabin could be seen from the outside, well-lit for any spectator lurking in the darkness. He shook her, his face contorting with a rage he could never in reality feel for this brave woman.
Ready? he mouthed silently.
She nodded almost imperceptibly.
“There’s only one way to find out,” she whispered back. “No more giving up, right?”
Then her arm swung back, and she slapped him. Cole shook her again, and she screamed, struggling to get away. He let her slip from his grasp. She sprinted for the side door, swinging it open.
“Leave me alone, you bastard!” she screamed. “I don’t want to hear another word. I don’t want anything from you, period. I don’t ever want to see you again. Just leave me alone.”
She took off through the forest, disappearing up the hill while Cole stayed behind, discreetly monitoring her progress on his handheld scanner, out of the windows’ sight line. He had talked Shaw into running toward more danger than ever before. And she was going in blind. It was a calculated risk, one alien to her scientific nature. But she was doing it, because she trusted him, as a federal agent if not as a friend and a lover.
For the first time since he’d joined the FBI, he was scared shitless that his instincts might be wrong. Still, none of her stalker’s shots had come close to hitting her either time he’d fired. The accidents he’d set in her path hadn’t been fatal. The faceless, scarred man from her dream was becoming increasingly careless, but he was still toying with her, and not yet out for real blood. Cole was certain of it, especially after seeing the state-of-the-art surveillance device Shaw had found. Anyone with the cash, connections, and motivation to obtain the kind of equipment that had tripped Cole up could have gotten to her anytime he’d wanted to.
This guy wanted Shaw to know he was coming for her, and he wanted her to suffer. Cole and Shaw were banking on him wanting to tell her exactly why he’d been toying with her for so long. After everything she’d been through, she was finally ready to face her nightmare. By herself, for herself, afraid but refusing to back down until she’d prevailed.
And Cole would be right behind her to finish things once she’d gotten the answers she needed. Today, for the rest of her life if she let him, he’d keep the amazing woman who’d stolen his heart safe. He followed in Shaw’s footsteps, careful to stay far enough behind that the maniac after her would assume she was an easy target.
It would be the last mistake the bastard ever made.
Chapter Eighteen
Shaw made it to the mansion faster than she’d expected. She’d sprinted like a crazy woman through the woods, away from the safety of Cole’s touch and voice. And the short journey had been like running straight into the burning maw of hell.
Just a day ago, returning to the familiar hominess of the kitchen might have been a relief. But instead of feeling comforted, her mountain sanctuary seemed hollow now. This wasn’t her home, not without Cole there warming her, watching her, caring for her in that intense way of his.
She was alone again, even with him right behind her, tracking her movements. She was facing this final confrontation on her own, just as she had the first time.
She headed upstairs, keeping to the plan, moving toward the same place she always did when things became too much for her. She sidestepped the damage on the steps and didn’t stop running until she reached her room. She slammed the door behind her and collapsed onto the bed.
Her shoulders shaking, she buried her face into the softness of her grandmother’s pillows. Was her tormentor watching? Would he strike in person, the way they’d hoped, because she was alone and upset? Or would he stick to his pattern and use an accident to take another impersonal jab at her?
She pounded the pillows with her fist, her eyes watering for real. She wanted this to be over. She was exhausted and out of patience, with herself and Cole and that jackass Dawson and the U.S. Attorney, too. Cole’s honesty, belated as it was, had given her the chance to fight for herself. But the same question as always remained. What exactly, besides her freedom, was she fighting for?
Her empty life as a corporate CEO?
She’d obviously chosen to place her faith in the safety of work and business instead of fighting through the messiness of people and relationships and love. And where had that gotten her? Her corporation could go under if the feds didn’t get the evidence they needed to stop whoever was making a travesty out of her work. And then she’d have nothing. No one.
A soft, fluted sound caused her to turn over as Esmeralda crawled out from under the bed and hopped onto the mattress beside Shaw. Shaw pulled her close and buried her face in her companion’s soft fur.
“I still have you, don’t I, old girl?”
But would she also have the love of the man who’d agreed to be her partner now and maybe, just possibly, for the rest of their lives? Was that even possible now?
A creak shattered the night’s silence. A tread on the worn floorboards beyond her bedroom door. She tensed, fighting the urge to scramble over the bed and hide beneath it. Esme’s ears flattened back to her head. She hissed, her tail growing to three times its size. She darted back onto the floor and into the darkened closet. But Shaw was done with hiding. She wasn’t letting herself or Cole down this time. She sat up, smoothed her hair back from her face, and stared as the door slowly opened. It was time to see the truth.
“Hello, Shaw,” said the faceless man from her dream.
Except his face was actually a masculine, horribly disfigured reflection of her own, scarred nearly beyond recognition.
And the man’s smile…
It was a perfect replica of their father’s.
Shaw scampered across the bed after all, backing away from him. Her stomach rolled, even though she hadn’t eaten a thing that day. She wanted to scream, but that would have involved taking in oxygen. It was possible she’d never breathe again.
“Sebastian?” she croaked out.
“What’s the matter, sister?” asked the hairless monster stepping into her room, one leg dragging behind him. His voice was scarred, along with the rest of him, scratchy and nearly unrecognizable. But she had no doubt, as she watched him draw closer, that she was listening to her brother. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No…”
It was as if her memories had been waiting for the sound of his voice to consume her, to sabotage her balance, to send her teetering into the vanity table beside her. Bottles of perfume crashed to the floor, their various scents escaping and merging in an unappealing muddle that quickly reached Shaw. An entire lifetime of thoughts and emotions and experiences closed in on her, accelerating and curling back on themselves like a black hole, an endless remembering that came so fast, so relentlessly, she felt her mind slipping again…
Losing her grandmother long before Cole and his dad had moved onto the mountain. Her summers in High Lake, becoming all she’d lived for as a young girl because of the amazing friend she’d made there, for whom she’d cried each summer when she had to leave Cole behind. Craving her father’s affection and attention and dying inside each time it was denied her, no matter how smart she was or how hard she worked or how perfect she became for him. Even Cole giving her Esmeralda’s charm after his mother’s funeral. It had been the only thing special of hers that he’d owned, and he’d wanted Shaw to have it.
Then there was warped, ever-scheming Sebastian, who’d always hated her. He had been their father’s favorite from birth. But that hadn’t been enough for her brother, not after their mother had died. He’d been jealous of anything good in Shaw’s life, dangerously so. He’d filled their father’s mind with hatred for Cole. He’d done increas
ingly disturbed things to upset her, until it had consumed all of them in an inferno of destruction.
After Sebastian’s death, after Cole left, her life had narrowed to earning her PhDs, then learning the ropes of Cassidy Global’s far-flung holdings. She’d killed herself to make her father proud. Then he’d been gone, too, and her world had emptied of everything except the demands of her job and the hollow sense of accomplishment that came with knowing how successful she’d become.
Until she began to realize something was wrong, that someone had infiltrated her personal computer and databases, secretly logging into sealed files and information across the company intranet using encrypted algorithms that only she had detected so far. There had been a flurry of unauthorized access to her research, the same time every night when the servers were supposed to be down for maintenance, often from a terminal in her father’s conference room. To discover whichever of her executives was involved, she’d hidden in the conference room closet one fateful night, to catch him in the act.
Only it hadn’t been one of her corporate officers at all.
“It was you…” She gasped, staring at Sebastian. “You were why there’ve been flames in my nightmare. They were from when you were killed in the barn…”
She grabbed for the wall behind her and came up with a fist full of air. Stumbling, her balance shot, she crashed flat on her butt. She pulled her knees under her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs, rocking forward and back.
It wasn’t possible.
Her brother was dead.
She should be glad that he wasn’t. A younger Shaw might have been. But he was the monster in her dream who’d laughed while he talked about killing her. His very existence had been the truth her mind had refused to face, shutting down everything it had to in order to hide the reality of Sebastian still being alive.
“You see?” said the man who’d once been so similar to her in appearance they’d often been mistaken as twins. He stepped closer. His nose was two holes in his face, the cartilage burned away. His ears had seemingly melted to the side of his head. His forehead and hairless scalp were roped with burns. “This is exactly what I told Father would happen sooner or later. You’re not up for what it takes to survive in the cutthroat corporate arena. You’ve been a disaster since the day you were born. You can’t even lose your mind the way you’re supposed to, even after I gave you a second chance.”
“A…a second chance?”
“I looked into your eyes that night, after you’d heard my latest transaction being finalized, and I saw your mind unraveling. It was too tantalizing to end with a single bullet, even if it would be from our father’s gun. My rather irate client threatened to pull out of our arrangement, but I had my chance to dish back a bit of the pain you’ve caused me over the years. How could I pass up an opportunity like that?”
“Me?” A part of her consciousness snapped back. “What did I ever do to you?”
“You killed my mother, for starters, you little bitch!” Spittle flew from Sebastian’s misshapen mouth. “From that day on, your life was mine to do with as I pleased. You owed me. Then you got out alive from that nasty fire I set for your stupid boy-toy, teenage lover. There wasn’t a scratch on you, after your hulking, clueless hero rushed you away from danger and left me trapped inside. You’ve gotten to stumble about for all these years, running the legitimate side of our family’s business like a prissy prima donna, while I’ve lurked in the shadows, leaching my living off the lucrative counterintelligence world that wouldn’t think twice about doing business with a freak like me.”
“You’re behind the security leaks.” She tried to crawl away, but he grabbed her hair, jerking her to a stop. “I remember now. You and those men, you were talking about a new transaction. A divestiture of information we keep safe for our government and military, and you were—”
“Doing what I do best, same as you, building my fortune off our family legacy. Only I’ve doubled and tripled your profits since Father’s death.” He pulled her head up. The muzzle of a revolver bit into her temple, aligning perfectly with the scar from his last attack.
“From my headquarters?”
“From my office here on the mountain, underground in a bomb shelter that only Father and I knew about. He brought me there to heal from my injuries, after the burned carcass of some vagrant was mistaken for my body in the barn. Using Father’s office space to close deals has been a nice touch now and again, though. While you blindly go about your work, oblivious to the rest of the world. Until you showed up that night, cowering like a pesky rodent and threatening to expose me. It was very naughty of you, Shaw, after Father worked so hard to keep my hideous existence a secret. He knew I was no good, but he set me up in business anyway. I like to think he preferred the sociopath in me to the sniveling waste of air he came to see that you were.”
“That’s not true.”
“Perverting your precious work for my own personal gain was for a while a priceless pastime. So was framing you for my crimes, once it became clear the feds were wise to my operation. And then you cooperated so beautifully, losing your memory after my shot grazed your feeble brain and limping off to this godforsaken place to lick your wounds, precisely where I could torture you further. And then, right on cue, that bastard Marinos showed up.”
The pistol crashed into the side of her skull. Pain and stars and streaks of light ricocheted through Shaw’s brain as she collapsed to the floor, grappling to stay conscious.
“You won’t get away with this,” she said, stalling, praying Cole was recording every word, and that they’d have enough evidence soon for him to pull Sebastian off of her.
“I’ve already gotten away with it.” Her brother knelt by her side and smoothed back her bangs, his thumb caressing the scar from his first gunshot. “When you’re dead, your memory of that night dies with you. Everything I’ve done becomes your fault forever. You’ve proven to be very useful, in the end. If you’d simply forgotten completely, lost your mind permanently like a good little twit, I’d have no reason to end our fun together. Now that my business is at a standstill, now that you’ll no longer be around to make trouble for, what will I do with my time?”
“But how…” She fought harder, determined to get everything Cole had said they’d need. “How did you get away, that night at the office? Investigators searched the entire complex. There was no evidence of a shooting, of a clandestine meeting, anywhere.”
“Well, that would be because I’m smarter than the lot of you put together.” Sebastian’s smile was straight from her nightmare. His pleasure at his own derangement was evil incarnate. “I know unmonitored ways in and out of Cassidy Global, the same as I’ve secretly accessed the mansion this last month. And I assure you, I can have a room swept in under five minutes, no matter what mess I’ve made in it, like I’ve cleaned up after myself every time I’ve been in this house since you returned. Watching you sleep. Setting up fun little surprises to brighten your day. Checking on the surveillance equipment I’ve left everywhere, all with technology that’s made a mockery of your boyfriend’s pathetic precautions. It’s hell to be underestimated, but I’ve learned to relish the benefits of being a consummate shadow-dweller.”
“But why? You knew the government had discovered what you were doing. You knew they were looking at me as the prime suspect. You had what you wanted. Why keep coming after me?”
“After a while, a man needs a new challenge. You’d ceased being a worthy opponent in business. I thought you should have another chance to prove yourself useful.”
“So you decided to toy with me instead of getting away clean?” He was certifiable. She could feel blood trickling from her head wound, but her thoughts were clearing. And she was growing more pissed with every new revelation. She wouldn’t have stopped now, not until she knew it all, even if Cole had barged in and beaten Sebastian into submission. “Tha
t doesn’t explain what you’re doing in here, when you know Cole is close by. You have to know his team is on its way.”
“Yes, your bedmate, Marinos,” her brother said. “Once he got you remembering, once I had a shot at destroying not only your world but his when I take you out right under his well-trained nose, how could I pass up that chance? Killing you is the right end to this, don’t you think? We’ve come full circle, sister mine. One of us dies, Cole Marinos is blamed, and the other gets to start over, clean and clear.” He shoved the muzzle of his gun against the side of her head. “Only this time, I’m the one who wins.”
She spat in his face, her defiance earning her a backhand across her own.
“I won’t let you get away with this,” she said through the gash that had split her lip.
“Like you didn’t let me get away with setting the fire in the barn? Marinos left you then with his tail between his legs, just as he’s not here with you now.” He laughed at her outraged face. “No. Your great love has never been strong enough to keep you two together. It won’t keep you alive now. You’re weak, sister. I’m the survivor in the family, and you don’t have what it takes to stop me.”
“And all you care about, brother, all you’ve ever cared about, is hurting people and the money you now make while you’re doing it.”
In the doorway beyond Sebastian’s self-congratulating tantrum, she caught a flicker of a shadow moving in the hallway.
Cole.
Thank God.
“Money is power.” The muzzle of Sebastian’s revolver pressed into her temple once more. “And power’s the only thing that matters. That’s the one lesson we both managed to learn from good old Father. It’s why you’ve slaved away, sacrificing everything else in your life for our business, even though you couldn’t possibly understand its true potential. It’s why I knew you’d never trust Marinos enough to stay with him tonight in that ridiculously tricked-out shack of his. Of course you’d come back here alone, crying and weak, picking up the pieces of your sad excuse for a life. What you really want most, just like me, is to do everything by yourself. You need to control your world, like Father taught both of us to do. How you live. How you love—or not. Even how you choose to die. This is what you wanted. It’s what you’ve dreamed of. I’m really doing you a favor. This way, no one will hurt your stupid, tender heart again, right? The difference between you and me, Shaw, is you’re too weak to make your dream a reality on your own.”
Her Forgotten Betrayal Page 20
