by Dee Tenorio
“What are you doing here?” His voice sounded strangled even to him, but the gravel in it didn’t hide his confusion.
She smiled. A slow spreading of her lips stamped with a devilishness no angel could ever have known. She looked him up and down, as if he weren’t a quivering shadow of a man. As if he were still worth looking at.
“I’m a friend of the family, remember?” She glanced up suddenly, her grin disappearing in a flash.
Cade peered over his shoulder, not surprised to see Rick on the stoop, watching both of them. Glaring, really. “You aren’t supposed to be here,” Rick said, his voice lacking even the traces of warmth. He put his hand out, something small and black sticking out at her. “Take your shit and go.”
Cade struggled to focus on it. A phone. The kid’s phone? Shit.
“Last I checked, RoboCop, I don’t work for you. You don’t get to give me orders.” She took the phone, smoothly pushing it into her back pocket. How, Cade wasn’t sure. Her pants appeared painted on. Hand painted. Possibly with very tiny brushes.
“You put everyone in danger and you know it,” Rick continued. Cade tried to sort through the undercurrents flowing between them, but he was still too fuzzy to make much headway. Too unclear, too uninformed. She’d been right about that, at least.
“They were in danger way before I got here. I’m helping the only way I can.”
“By coming up with new ways for them to get attacked? That’s help they don’t need.”
“You’re going to lecture me on who I should and shouldn’t help?” Rich, husky laughter spilled out of her but her lips never curved. The wrongness of that stabbed at Cade’s mind.
“I’m telling you how to do it without getting people killed. Like not putting the weight of his mother’s life in the hands of a little boy.”
“I’m putting the chance to save himself in his hands.” She crossed her arms and pointedly glared. “It’s more than anyone else has done for him.”
It was a challenge, no doubt about it. Rick glared at her, long enough to start Cade’s dormant protective instincts twitching, before he finally sighed.
“Remind him to be more careful with that thing. If I hadn’t seen it in the kitchen, we both know Frank would have.” A softened tone, though not by much.
“He’s only a baby,” she muttered, seeming to relax a touch herself.
They had the air of people who’d been fighting a long time, Cade noted, still leaning against the steps, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. Long enough to know how far to push and when to back down while you were ahead. But Rick hadn’t mentioned any Katrina Killian in his rundown of the town. Cade’s clarity returned strong enough to wonder why.
“And Frank’s only a psychopath looking for a reason to kill.” Rick disappeared back into the house, conversation apparently over.
“Asshole,” she snarled, gaze still trained on the backdoor. “Always has to get the last word.”
“Better than when he had to have the last bullet.”
She looked back at Cade as if she’d just remembered he was there. Oddly enough, given how little he liked being noticed, he felt an unfamiliar pleasure at having her attention again.
It didn’t last long.
“I’ll be over there with Jimmy. If you go back in, tell Shana he’s with me.” Cool words, distance all over her face. She backed away, turned on her heel to start walking toward the tree where he could see the little boy still waiting on the bricks. A kid with huge eyes and no tears.
Maybe he wasn’t the only one here with feelings deadened by violence. Fuck. There was so much wrong with that, but he recognized the glaze on the boy’s face. He saw it every day in the mirror.
The woman had recognized it, too. Too well.
“Wait.” The hoarse word came out of him before he realized he was going to say it.
She paused, halfway across the yard, turning back cautiously.
“How did you know…” He couldn’t force the next words out.
The smile came back, softer, but no less teasing to his muted senses. “Maybe there’s more to me than just leather pants and a nice ass, huh?”
She headed back to the boy, pulling him into her arms and sitting under the tree with him in her lap. Cade watched them a long time, her rocking slowly, gently leading the boy back from his own brink. He watched, unable to tear his gaze away. Maybe there was…
Chapter Three
Katrina pulled the door to Jimmy’s room nearly closed, leaving the sleeping child on his side under his blankets. His little fist was curled under his still-baby-soft cheek. She gave herself a second to just look at him, just to assure herself he was sleeping peacefully. The warm breeze blew his curtains out in a wisp, gently gliding over his small army of stuffed animals on the shelf, but he didn’t so much as stir, and she released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
Jimmy had gotten under her skin right away, the first time he’d come to the bar with his mother. Those huge eyes, so afraid, unsure what he was supposed to do, where he could even stand. He was even younger than she’d been when she’d first come into this life. Ignoring him just wasn’t an option. Since Frank often kept Shana where he could see her, as if he expected her to make a run for it if the chance ever arose, that meant they came to the bar pretty often. But Cooper’s Tavern was no place for a child, so Katrina had pushed what little weight she had to allow Frank to let them set up in her back room, where Jimmy could play or sleep if nights at the bar grew long. It had been the beginning of a very unexpected love affair, and now the runt had a two-handed grip on that black hole in her chest he kept calling her heart.
And then there was Shana.
Katrina sighed, crossing the hall to start the conversation she just knew wasn’t going to go her way.
She entered the living room, trying not to grimace at the sound of glass under her boot that signaled her arrival.
Shana, straightening a dining room chair a few feet away, stopped moving, her shoulders stiffening with clear resignation.
God. Sometimes it sucked to be right.
“Jimmy’s asleep. Time to take a look at you.”
“I’m fine.” Shana moved the chair firmly under the table, reaching toward the tabletop with the rag in her hand. Would have seemed pretty dismissive if she didn’t gasp halfway over and jerk her hand to her ribs.
“Yup, fine like last time or fine like the time before that?” Katrina pulled the chair back out and gestured for her friend to sit in it. And they were that, friends, no matter what anyone else thought. Even Shana.
She sat, scowling. With half her face an angry, swollen mess, it was actually almost menacing. “I don’t need you to take care of me.”
“Says the woman who sounds like she got into a fight with a deranged dentist.”
Shana clearly didn’t want to laugh, but the puff of a scoff from her battered lips told the tale anyway. For a second, the joke did what it was meant to—gave her something nonsensical to think about. But it didn’t last. The tear streaked down from her good eye, followed swiftly by another. And another. She swiped at them with her hand, but she was shaking so bad, it only seemed to smear the moisture over her cheek until she gave up and covered her mouth with it.
Katrina ground her teeth, trying to hold back her own tears. Instead, she took hold of that shaking hand. Knelt down so Shana could lean on her shoulder and cry. So she could muffle the terrified sobs neither of them wanted to travel down the hallway and into her little boy’s dreams. All Katrina could do, for those brief broken moments, was stroke the softness of Shana’s hair and curse them both for not being able to change this situation.
“He was going to do it this time, Katy.” Shana’s horrified whisper sounded like a confession. “I saw it. He was really going to do it.”
One of Frank’s favorite games was convincing Shana he could kill her whenever he felt like it. Nothing else gave him quite the same rush, it seemed. Katrina had heard the stories, more t
han she wanted to count. More than she could possibly forget.
“The staff sergeant, he saw it, too.” Shana gulped, pulling herself together almost as quickly as she’d fallen apart. It wasn’t a true calm, Katrina knew. It was one tied together with thin strands of pride, but since that was almost all Shana had left, Katrina didn’t argue about it.
“What staff sergeant?”
“Rick’s friend, the new deputy. That’s what Rick used to call him in his letters, anyway. Staff Sergeant Evigan, right?” Shana took another steadying breath while Katrina nodded away her surprise. “He saved me.”
And paid dearly for it…
Uncharitable to her friend, maybe, but Katrina couldn’t help but think of the cost to the man she’d held outside.
Making sure Shana was steady in her seat, Katrina pulled away to try to get a better look at the damage. It wasn’t good. “We’re going to need a hell of a lot of ice before we see how bad that eye is.”
Shana only nodded, saying nothing when Katrina rose to fetch what she’d need from the kitchen—the removable icebox container, the first aid kit from the drawer by the fridge, and a few hand towels. Done gathering, she grabbed the other chair and sat while she laid out her tools. This, too, had become routine for them. Katrina treating wounds, checking for serious injuries. Counting bruises, if only in her mind.
Efficiently, she made a compress and Shana obediently held it to her eye. They said nothing as Katrina helped her out of her blouse; dried blood covered her chest, having soaked through the fabric to Shana’s simple bra. “I don’t think you’ll be able to save either of these, hon.”
“It’s not like anyone sees what I wear anyway.” Quietly. Too quietly.
“Shana—”
“Not yet, Katy, okay? Just…just a little longer.”
Katrina clenched her fists, wanting more patience and hating that she couldn’t find it. Not with the deep rose color splashed over Shana’s ribs. The dark mottled marks on her back or the clear imprint of fingers on her arms and neck. “You can’t stay here anymore. It only gets worse.”
“You know I have to.” Shana sank slowly back into her seat, hopelessness staining her trembling lips as she lowered the compress to her lap. “You know why.”
Because he’d kill her. As sure as the sun set, Frank would find her, wherever she thought to go. But not before he killed everyone she loved. Not before he made them pay for her betrayal.
He’d done it before.
Shana had told Katrina the story of what had happened to her sister. Brynn Collins had been a friend of Katrina’s growing up, the Collins family’s wild child. The reason why Shana had come into Frank’s line of sight in the first place. Once he’d seen her, he’d wanted her and simply taken her. No one had stood up to him. No one tried to help her, except Brynn.
They’d gotten as far as Barstow before Wheels of Pain caught up with them. The crew had run the car off the road, forced both women out of it and into the nearby fields. No one touched Shana except to hold her as a witness. But Brynn…
She’d been forced to watch the brutalization of her sister. The beating. Until, finally, Brynn’s end came with a single bullet from Frank’s gun. Shana had no idea where her sister’s body was buried, the only proof of her death in the grim promise Frank had made to Shana if she were ever to run again. She still had parents. Another sister, this one younger. Even Rick, though she’d never said as much to Katrina. And when Jimmy was born, Shana knew he was added to Frank’s list of ways to control her. She’d take anything to protect her son.
“But this isn’t protecting Jimmy, is it?” Katrina didn’t mean to ask the question out loud, but once the words were out, she couldn’t take them back. Didn’t want to. “Every time he hurts you, he hurts your son. Every time, Shana.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? That I don’t want to go. I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You can run. We’ll find a way.”
But Shana was already shaking her head. “Even if I could find somewhere to go, I can’t bring them all with me. I have nothing to support us. Nowhere to hide.”
“And when he kills you? What happens to them then?”
Shana swallowed, making an almost convulsive sound before shaking her head. “I don’t know.” She picked at the shirt on the table between them. “I never really thought he’d do it. He hates me, but he’s never been willing to let me go.”
Because she wasn’t a person to him. She was a thing. A thing he owned. And Frank didn’t believe in sharing.
Katrina looked into the eyes of her very desperate friend and took a risk. “I can get you out. All of you.”
“What?”
“I know people who can help get all of you out of here. But you’ve got to find something to use against him first, or he’ll keep coming after you. Something he wants more than you.”
Shana pulled her hand away. “You know how he is. He watches everything I do. Goes through everything I own. He’ll know if I touch anything of his. He’ll know.”
“Then just…” Katrina took hold of Shana’s shoulders to calm down the thread of hysteria she could hear taking hold. “Listen.” She made sure Shana met her gaze. “Listen as best as you can. He thinks he has you, that you’re no threat to him, but you’re right there next to him when he has his phone calls. His meetings with his men.”
“He acts like I’m not even there,” Shana agreed in a soft voice, as if the wheels in her mind were starting to move again.
“Listen for something important. Something he won’t want anyone to know. Something we can prove, so we can hold it over him when the time comes. Just make sure he doesn’t know you’re listening.” She didn’t have to say what the results of that would be.
Of course, if Frank caught on, if Shana in any way let it slip that Katrina had told her what to look for… Well, odds were they’d both find out where Brynn was buried. Katrina swallowed past that. “Once you have some leverage, my friends can take you somewhere Frank will never find you. Someplace safe.”
“What friends? I thought you’d burned all your bridges when you came back home.”
Katrina smiled uncomfortably. She should have known Shana would remember that detail of her cover. “Let’s just say a few of my bridges were married, not burned.”
At least the lie made Shana try to smile again. “You really think it could work?” Her gaze turned toward the hallway, toward Jimmy’s room.
“If we’re careful, yes. But promise me, don’t go too far out on the limb. If you can’t get it, we’ll find something else. Another way. Understand?”
Shana nodded, knotting her fingers with Katrina’s, a tight smile pulling at her swollen mouth. Even with all those bruises and bumps, Katrina could see the first flicker of hope in her friend in years.
She blew out a breath that was equal parts guilt, fear, and hope. Two long years of undercover work and she had finally caught a break. She just hoped it wouldn’t cost this woman her life.
…
Rick turned their truck into the driveway of the Municipal Center. Town hall, the sheriff’s station, and the library all in one large, perfectly cultivated cul-de-sac. The brand new buildings next to all the run-down others going down Main Street always sent a feeling of wrong through Cade. He sent a sideways glance toward Rick, just to see if he had the same reaction to the disparity. Nothing there.
Shana had insisted she and her son were fine and, despite obvious pressure from his partner, the woman refused to press charges, not that she needed to. Given that he and Rick had witnessed the assault in progress, they were able to take Carter in, but they all knew that would only hold him for forty-eight hours at most. A judge would let him out on a technicality or a lawyer would get him out with some kind of bullshit explanation. Shana would be lucky to get her house back to rights.
When they’d pulled out, just behind the medics she had flatly refused to allow examine her, she watched from her porch, a white-knuckled grip on the kid’s pajama s
hirt as she clutched him close to her. Cade wasn’t sure what bothered him more: the jaw-clenching fear he saw in her eyes, or the blankness he’d seen in her son’s.
More disturbing, he couldn’t quite forget the feel of Katrina Killian wrapped around him. Where the hell had she even come from? How had she known what to do for him, when Cade himself had no clue? The more time that passed since leaving Carter’s house, the more the questions nettled. That he had them at all nettled. His mind should be quiet, completely unperturbed by a pretty face or a warm body. He’d worked hard for that mental silence, needing it to hold back the storm of emotions that could tangle him worse than a fish in a net. He should at least be paying attention to the passenger in the cage behind him.
Instead, he continued to brood.
Why did he respond to her? Her touch, her scent. Her voice. He could still hear it, still feel the press of her lush breasts against his back, making his skin there itch. Made him sting.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen a woman since returning from Afghanistan. He simply hadn’t cared about the ones he’d come across. He hadn’t cared about anyone, and they certainly hadn’t given a shit about him except to stay as far away as possible.
People had become little more than noise or irritation to him since he’d come home. Small and sleepy as it was, even Marketta was like a beehive in his head. A few days here and he was already longing for his cabin and its blessed silence by the lake. Still, no one slipped through the state of numbness that had been part of him for almost two years. The last thing he needed was some woman able to slide under that layer as if it wasn’t there.
And that, he realized, was what really pissed him off.
He held tight to his mental barrier, willing it to close around him. Shut her out and forget she’d ever come near. Because when the numbness was gone, when something pierced the cotton, it might as well be lightning across his senses. Leaving him burned, raw and out of control.
Then God help everyone…
Rick parked the truck with a loud cranking noise as he pulled up the brake. They all sat in place for endless seconds before he turned to stare into the cage.
