“I know that he loved his sister, but I’ve seen him back out of a fight because he knew Kate was in the wrong.”
“She’s the reason—”
“He knew it was me, didn’t he?”
The reality of it sunk in the moment I said it aloud. I’d kept the truth from myself all these years, but I suddenly realized how clear it really was.
Joshua had known all along. He knew Kate and I were in love. He knew that it wasn’t just some passing crush. And he knew we’d get around to telling him someday.
He defended her that night—not because she was his sister and they had a relationship like no other siblings—but because he was defending us both.
In a way, it was my fault he was attacked that night. Joshua saw the writing on the wall, knew John Kyle was out to get anybody, and he was willing to take the heat on himself. Because he knew.
Because he was my friend.
He practically told me. Days before that night, he told me.
“It was just a prank,” I said. “One last hurrah before graduation.”
“Yeah, but to pin it on John Kyle and the others? Not smart,” Joshua said. “I heard that John was arrested last month for stealing a car. Not the kind of guy you should be getting tangled up with.”
“John’s harmless. Just a wimp trying to pretend he’s a tough guy. I can deal with him.”
“Yeah, well, I hope so. Otherwise you might have just put into motion something we’ll all regret.”
Joshua glanced toward the door, aware Kate was standing just on the other side. Then he moved closer to me.
“You’ve got more important things to worry about now,” he said softly. “A future. Don’t let one last hurrah ruin that, my friend. This, this future, is too important.”
He knew. It was so clear now.
“How could any of us have known that John Kyle would lose control that night?” I asked, trying to keep her distracted, trying to find the advantage. “I don’t think even John knew it was coming. And I think he’d be the first to take it back if he could.”
“She took away the only thing that mattered to me,” Amanda said, her voice moving closer and closer. “We were going away to school together. We were going to have a life together.”
“We were all supposed to have a different life, Amanda, but sometimes, things don’t work out the way you think they will.”
“No,” she said, more to herself than to me. “No, no, no.”
I could hear the exhaustion in her voice, the crazy starting to leak out. I remembered something else Joshua once told me. Amanda saw a psychiatrist when we were in high school. She was on medication, but he didn’t know what it was for. He said she acted strangely every time he asked, so he stopped asking.
I slipped around the trunk of the tree and peeked behind me. She wasn’t there. Then I moved again, going a quarter turn each time. I spotted her almost immediately, walking slowly toward my tree, just at the wrong angle.
I waited, held my breath lest she hear me and turn around. Then I sprang on her when the moment was right.
The gun discharged, but she was going down. I landed hard, the wind once again torn from my lungs. She struggled, screaming so loudly there was a ringing in my ears when she stopped.
Secure the gun.
I reached under her body, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe she’d tossed it aside. Maybe it fell when she fell. Maybe…I searched the debris near her hand. She wasn’t moving. I thought that maybe I’d knocked her out. But the blood. There was blood. Everywhere.
I found the gun. It was caught between our bodies, her arm twisted from the break in her humerus. The pain must have knocked her out.
So why was I feeling lightheaded all of a sudden?
Then the pain came.
Oh…that’s it…
Chapter 30
Kate
The next few days were a blur of activity. The local police sent the entire police force, which consisted of five people, toward the property when Ash called to let them know I was on the way. A grandmotherly-looking woman in a uniform took me back to the station while the rest went in search of Donovan. I don’t even remember giving a statement, but they tell me I did.
I remembered hearing the ambulance. I remembered the lights. It was so surreal, so much like the night the lights reflected off the dunes where Joshua’s body lay. They took me to the hospital, telling me about Amanda. Amanda would be okay. She’d broken her arm and likely dislocated her shoulder. She might need surgery. But she’d be okay. I didn’t understand why I should care that Amanda would be okay.
Ash was there at some point. Ash and Joss and Rose. Kirkland and David were holding down the fort, but Ash thought it would be a good idea to bring Rose and Joss along. I don’t know why.
My daddy arrived later. Maybe days later. Maybe that day. I don’t know. Time became fluid in those days just after.
I remembered seeing Donovan. I remembered thinking he looked like Donovan, but he was too pale. Too weak. And the white bandages wrapped round his chest…that wasn’t right.
Nothing about it was right.
I remembered crying a lot. Too much.
“…puncture lung. Close to the aorta. A few minutes more…”
It was just too much.
“You promised me,” I said, holding his cold hand. “You promised you’d come find me. You’ve never broken a promise, never made a promise you knew you couldn’t keep. Don’t start now, Donovan. Don’t start breaking promises now. Not to me.”
But I was so afraid that it was too late.
It was.
Too late.
Chapter 31
At the Compound
“Amanda Graham,” Detective Emily Warren said slowly. “She was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic at the age of thirteen. Her parents believed that the disease could be controlled with medication. And it was, for a time. But the death of her boyfriend, Joshua Thompson, when she was eighteen sent her on a downward spiral. She managed to hide this spiral for some time, even attended college for a while. But then she disappeared. Her parents had no clue where she’d gone. Then, one day last June, she suddenly reappeared. She appeared to have her condition under control, so her father gave her a job at his tech company in Silicon Valley.”
“Exactly what you’d expect a loving father to do,” Kirkland said.
Emily glanced at him, but didn’t comment.
“She ran into Kate Thompson, her boyfriend’s twin sister, at the cemetery a few weeks later. They began a friendship that extended to Amanda potentially moving some of the tech company’s financial accounts to Miss Thompson’s bank. But at the same time, Amanda was targeting Kate for revenge. She obtained a copy of the police reports on the murder of Joshua Thompson and came to the conclusion that Kate Thompson was the cause of the fight that ended Joshua’s life.”
“Which is completely insane,” Kirkland interjected.
Emily glared at him.
“Amanda tested at the genius level on every intelligence test she was ever administered. It didn’t take much for her to figure out how to build a couple of IEDs. She was also something of a computer genius, working as a hacker during some of her missing time—we found emails on her computer addressed to a Philistine, a known hacker active during that time, on her computer—so it also wasn’t a stretch for her to hack your system, David.”
He inclined his head without making comment. He still blamed himself for the breach because, after all, it was his system.
“The police have raided her home in San Francisco, as well as an apartment she kept here in Santa Monica. They found enough evidence to put her away for a very long time. So, as soon as she is released from the hospital in Austin, she’ll be put on a plane to California. The district attorney believes the family will urge her to take a plea deal.”
“At least Kate won’t have to go through the ordeal of a trial.” And that was the first honest and kind thing Kirkland had said in ages.
David
stared at his screens. What was done was done. Now it was time to make sure it didn’t happen again. He would not be responsible for one of Gray Wolf’s operatives…he wouldn’t let it happen again.
Not on his watch.
Chapter 32
Donovan
Pain burst through me with every breath I took. But it didn’t matter.
She was sitting in what looked like a very uncomfortable chair at my side, her hand wrapped around mine, her sweet head asleep on the thin mattress of the hospital bed. I reached around, wincing as pain sliced through my chest, and touched the top of her head with my fingertips.
She sat up as if I’d touched her with a lit match.
“Donovan?”
“Hey, baby.”
“Oh, God!” Tears welled in her eyes. “You’re awake.”
“I think I am. Or is this heaven?”
She slapped my bare shoulder. It stung, but not nearly as bad as getting shot did.
“I thought…never mind what I thought. I’m just so happy you’re awake. They weren’t sure you would wake this soon.”
“Where am I?”
“Hospital in Austin. Ash and Joss and Rose are here. And my dad. I should go tell them you’re awake.”
“Not yet.” I grabbed her hand, tugging her close to me. “I just want to look at you for a minute longer.”
She touched my face, her fingers lingering on my chin. “I was so scared.”
“It’s okay. I promised you I would find you.”
She nodded, unshed tears making her chin quiver. “So much wasted time,” she whispered.
“Too much.”
She kissed me lightly, then a little harder.
It was the best medicine I could have asked for.
Chapter 33
Kate
It was a while before Donovan got out of the hospital, but when he did, Ash sent his private jet to pick us up. I insisted that he stay with me until he was healed. Donovan didn’t complain.
“You should just move in,” I said one night.
“Here?”
“Why not? You’ll be spending most of your time here, anyway.”
“I will?”
“Yeah. That place of yours is just ridiculously small. I don’t know how David gets around inside of his. And Kirkland, all those girls…crazy.”
Donovan laughed. “Okay.”
I turned into him and kissed him. “I adore you. I don’t see why we should be separated.”
“Adore? Is that the best you can do?”
“What’s better than adore?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I can think of a few words.”
“Like?”
“Appreciate. Esteem. Desire. Worship.”
“Worship?”
“That’s a good word. Don’t you think?”
I laughed. “Only if we were in the 1940s and I was subjugated by the weaker sex.”
“The weaker sex?” he asked, his eyebrows rising even as he grabbed my arms and shook me just slightly.
“Weaker in the mind. Not the body.”
“Well, you might have a point there.”
I laughed again. But then I grew serious as I looked into his eyes.
“Seriously, what word do you think we should use?”
He ran his thumb over my bottom lip. “I’ve always been partial to love, myself.”
I nodded. “I always knew you’d be the first one to say it.”
His eyes widened, but then he just laughed and said, “I always was your puppy dog.”
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Blindsided
Prologue
Harrison
I stared out the window of the car, watching familiar neighborhoods flash by outside. I love New York! The first time I was here was the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college. I came with a group of friends for a summer of recklessness. And what a summer that was! I still have a few of the tattoos I got that summer, the first of dozens I now have to keep covered when conducting business.
Who would have imagined my life would go the way it did? Well, I suppose it was always my father’s plan. He just thought he’d be here to watch it happen.
We pulled up to the hotel and a valet arrived at my door, yanking it open and welcoming me with that rote speech all service people learn on the first day at the job. I climbed out and stretched my back a little, relieved to be out of the confines of one vehicle after another. I had some free time—thank goodness—before my meeting in the morning, so I thought I’d take a walk after I checked in. Visit a few favorite places.
The moment I stepped into my room—a nice suite with a balcony that overlooked Manhattan—I pulled out my smartphone and took note of all the emails and phone calls I’d ignored on the long flight from Oregon. I started to answer a few, but then decided it could wait. My life was a succession of meetings and emails and phone calls. Surely it could all wait for a few hours, for once.
I changed into jeans and a t-shirt, feeling halfway human for the first time all day, and slipped out of the hotel through a side door. A taxi deposited me in Brooklyn, not far from the rat infested motel where my friends and I stayed that long-gone summer. My stomach growling, I ducked into a little hole in the wall restaurant that served the best shrimp scampi I’d ever had. The maître d’ recognized me, his face breaking into a huge smile as he charged through a group of people waiting impatiently for a table to greet me.
“Mr. Philips! How lovely to see you again.”
I smiled. “Thank you, Jack.”
“Let me show you to a table.”
Those words set off a few grumbles in the people around us, but I didn’t really pay much attention to it. I was used to this sort of attention. It used to bother me, but maybe I’ve gotten a little too comfortable in the world of privilege I’d shunned as a young man. There were few perks to the job that was thrust on me eleven years ago. Shame on me for enjoying the few that did exist.
I took a seat and ordered a nice bottle of wine, enjoying a glass as I waited for my salad to be delivered. My table was in the center of the room, so I sat back and watched the other diners. I like to watch people, imagining what their story might be. Like the young couple sitting to my right. They were clearly arguing, even though they were trying hard to keep their voices down and their gestures to a minimum, it was hard to ignore the intensity in their expressions. I imagined they were fighting over another woman—or perhaps a man—who was coming between them. Or maybe it was something to do with the in-laws. There was another couple behind them who were displaying such sickly sweet affection for one another that it almost made me sick to my stomach. I watched as the man’s hand moved slowly over his woman’s wrist and tried to remember the last time I’d touched a woman like that. It was kind of pathetic that I couldn’t remember with any certainty.
My salad arrived and I tucked into it, enjoying the acidic burn the dressing offered. I sat back to pour myself another glass of wine when I caught sight of a familiar face. I had to look twice, not sure I was seeing what I thought I was, or if my eyes were playing tricks on me. I’d just been thinking about her, this woman I met during that trip to the city so long ago, so maybe…but, no. It was really her.
Her hair was shorter, a slightly different shade of blonde than it had been sixteen years ago. The shape of her face was a little rounder, her jaw softer. But her eyes were still that incredible pale blue I dreamt of for years after that long ago summer. My first love. She wasn’t my first affair, but she was the first girl who broke my heart.
I crossed the room without thinking about it, leaning against the arch that separated the lobby from the dining room with a casualness I was definitely not feeling.
“Julia?”
She looked up at the sound of her name, a smile exploding in her ey
es when she saw me.
“Harry!”
She laughed as she threw herself into my arms. I slid my arms around her waist, my mind noting the few differences in her body even as my heart noted the familiarity.
“I can’t believe it’s you! It’s been so long!” She stepped back and stared up at me, her fingers brushing my jaw. “I never thought I’d see you again.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Too long.”
“Are you meeting someone? I mean…” I stepped back and gestured toward my table, “I’d be happy for you to join me.”
“I was actually just going to make an order to go. But I have nowhere to be. I’d be happy to join you.”
I immediately slid my hand over the small of her back and led her to my table, acting the gentleman by pulling out her chair and helping her settle in. Then I gestured to the waiter, arranging for another wine glass and putting in her food order.
When we were settled across from each other, I found myself staring at her, my eyes moving slowly over her familiar face. We’d only spent two months together, but it felt like a lifetime, as those young affairs often do. I remember waiting for weeks after I went back to college, jumping each time someone called, hoping it would be her. But it never was.
“You look great,” she said, her eyes doing the same as mine, taking in every subtle change in my face.
“You, too.”
She shrugged, but the blush on her cheeks told me how much she appreciated the compliment. “I take care of myself.”
“It shows.”
She reached over and touched my arm, her fingers cool as she flipped my wrist and touched the tattoo—an infinity symbol—that she’d seen emblazoned there.
“You still have it.”
“The other one, too,” I said, flipping my other wrist to show her the cross that adorned the other wrist.
She laughed even as she reached over to touch it with her other hand. Her left hand. That’s when I saw her wedding ring and the impressive diamond engagement ring that went with it. I lifted her hand, my thumb rubbing against the jewel.
DONOVAN: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security) Page 16
