Fatal Fallout

by Lara Lacombe

  But the worst part of all was the expression on Thomas’s face when the woman finally pulled away.

  His eyes were glazed with lust as he stared down at her, and his tongue darted out to catch the last of her taste on his lips. The blonde murmured something to him, but Claire didn’t stick around to watch his response. She turned away and quickly walked down the hall, blinking back tears as she moved.

  Idiot! She’d been a classic fool. No wonder Thomas hadn’t waited for her as he’d practically run through the hospital. He’d wanted to get here, to celebrate Emily’s safe return with whoever this woman was. And if that was the way they celebrated in public, she could only imagine how they’d celebrate once they were alone.

  The thought of Thomas’s hands on that woman, touching her tall, slender body the same way he’d touched her last night...she shook her head, trying to dismiss the painful images.

  I don’t have a girlfriend. I wouldn’t touch you if I did.

  You know I care about you.

  His words echoed in her mind, mocking.

  Maybe he didn’t consider the blonde to be his girlfriend. But if that kiss was any indication, something was going on between them. Now his earlier tension, his withdrawal, made perfect sense. He had used her last night, and now that he was back with his “friend,” he no longer needed her warm body.

  She almost laughed at her naïveté. God, she’d actually thought she’d been helping him last night! In reality, she’d been nothing more than a fun diversion, a way to pass the time until morning arrived. She sucked in a breath as she waited for the elevator. How could she have been so stupid?

  She’d wanted to believe they had something in common—the pain of losing someone you loved. She’d dropped her guard, letting him into her heart and body in an effort to connect with him. She had ached for him and the guilt he so clearly felt over his brother’s death. Unless it was a ruse to win sympathy with the ladies. He probably told that sob story to all the girls, and she was just the latest in a long line to fall for it.

  She shook her head, blinking back tears. Once again, she had made a mistake, opening her heart to the wrong person.

  The doors opened with a faint ding, and she plowed ahead, nearly careening into Natalie.

  “Oh! I’m sorry,” the woman said. She peered at Claire’s face, her eyes narrowing as she looked her over. “Everything okay?”

  Claire sniffed, nodding. “Yes. Everything is fine. Can you please take me back to the safe house? I’d like to collect my things. Agent Kincannon has some things to take care of here, so he asked me to ask you to drive.”

  “Sure.” Natalie stepped back into the elevator, pulling the keys out of her pocket. “You sure you’re all right? You look like you’ve been crying.”

  Claire tried to smile at the other woman. “It was just so wonderful, seeing Emily reunited with her mother. I got a little teary.”

  Natalie seemed to buy the excuse. “I can imagine. We got lucky today. Things could have gone a lot worse.”

  Claire nodded her agreement, but her heart cried out its denial. All her illusions concerning Thomas, her fledgling hopes that this might be the start of something between them, feelings that she hadn’t dared to voice, even to herself—they were all gone, destroyed in a single instant.

  Things didn’t get much worse than that.

  * * *

  What the hell?

  Thomas stared down at Tanya, trying to figure out when he’d dropped into this alternate reality. She’d pressed herself against his chest and was gazing adoringly up at him, her hand stroking the hair at the nape of his neck as she whispered words of love.

  Maybe he was asleep. The past few days had been rough; it was possible he was hallucinating, or that this was just a bad dream. He blinked to clear his vision. Nope. Still Tanya.

  Moving carefully, he placed his hands on her shoulders and steadily pushed her away. A flicker of hurt danced across her face at the separation, but she didn’t try to touch him again.

  Oh man, this was going to be so awkward.

  Raising his hand, Thomas wiped her kiss from his mouth, his mind whirling. It was true, then. Jenny had been dropping hints, saying that Tanya was back in town and wanted to see him, that she still had feelings for him. He hadn’t acknowledged the news, thinking Jenny had only brought it up out of a sense of nostalgia. After all, he and Tanya had spent a lot of time with Jenny and Roger. It was only natural Jenny would long for those happier days, especially in the midst of her grief.

  Never in his wildest imaginings had he thought he would see Tanya again, and he certainly had no interest in picking up where they had left off.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Tanya smiled up at him, unperturbed by the harshness of his words. “It’s so good to see you again, Tommy,” she purred, reaching up to run her fingers down his chest. He stepped back, repulsed by her touch. When had that happened? Only a few short years ago, he had welcomed her hands on him. Not anymore.

  “The feeling isn’t mutual.”

  She stuck out her bottom lip in a little moue that she probably thought was sexy, but it only made her appear ridiculous. Claire would never look at me like that....

  “Now, Tommy, is that any way to greet an old friend?”

  “We’re not friends.”

  “I know I made a mistake, but I was hoping you’d forgiven me for my little indiscretion.”

  Thomas stared down at her, torn between the desire to laugh in her face or turn and walk away. He wanted nothing to do with her. He’d written her off after she’d cheated on him and moved to Chicago. He’d long since gotten over her and the time they’d spent together. No way was he going to take her back now, when he’d finally found someone he was interested in.

  He wanted nothing more than to walk past her, but he needed to make sure she understood that there was no future for them. The last thing he wanted was for Tanya to hang around in some misguided attempt to win him back.

  “There’s nothing to forgive, Tanya. I’m over it.”

  Her face broke into a wide smile, and he realized she had misinterpreted his words. “There is nothing between us,” he hastened to add.

  “But there could be,” she said, cocking her head to the right and lowering her lashes. “We were good together.” She stepped forward, her voice a murmur meant for his ears only. “We could be again. I still...” She blinked and swallowed hard, playing her part to the hilt. “I still love you.”

  Oh, she was good. She was turning in an Oscar-worthy performance, that much was certain. In another time, under different circumstances, he might have been affected by her words, her air of injured vulnerability. But he’d been burned by her before, and now that he’d met Claire, he understood that what he’d had with Tanya had never been real. The time he’d spent with Claire, brief though it was, had given him a glimpse of what a true partnership could be, what a relationship should be like.

  Life was too short—and too precious—to settle for anything less.

  “No.”

  She stopped, a flash of anger sparking in her eyes before she smothered it with another smile. There you are, he thought. That’s the real Tanya.

  “You’re just stressed,” she said indulgently, the way she might talk to a child who’d requested a cookie. “That’s why you’re being so unreasonable. It’s your job. Once you finish this case, you’ll be able to focus on us again, why we should be together.”

  She lifted her hand to touch his chest, but he brushed it away before she could make contact. He didn’t want Tanya to erase the lingering feel of Claire’s touch on his skin. Bad enough that she’d kissed him already—he wasn’t going to let her take any more liberties.

  “Why are you here?”

  She blinked up at him, apparently taken aback by the q
uestion. “Wh-what?”

  “You heard me.”

  Tanya took a half step back, confusion and anger warring for control of her features. “I’m here for you,” she said slowly. “For us.”

  “There is no ‘us.’ There never will be. If you’ve returned to hang around my family out of some desperate attempt to win me back, it’s not going to happen. You should just leave now, before Jenny comes to rely on you as a friend again. I won’t let you hurt her.”

  “Tommy—”

  “And don’t call me that,” he snapped.

  She lifted a perfectly arched eyebrow. “Roger used to call you that all the time. You were fine with it.”

  “Times change. I have. And you no longer have the right to use a nickname with me.” It grated on his nerves, the way she threw the childish name around like he was some kind of pet. It was a name his mother had used when he was a kid, but she hadn’t called him that in years. His brother, on the other hand, had continued to call him Tommy, but usually only when he was trying to underscore the age difference between them. It hadn’t bothered him before, but now that Roger was gone, he felt a little zing of pain every time he heard the name, like someone was pushing hard on a fresh bruise.

  She pressed her lips together, then deliberately pasted on a smile and tried again. “Thomas,” she said, stressing his name ever so slightly. “I think if you consider what I’m offering, you’ll find that it’s really for the best. For both of us.”

  Was she this delusional when we were together? It was possible, but he doubted it. She’d always been determined, but she’d never before seemed so out of touch with reality. She must be truly desperate to win him back to so willfully ignore his words.

  He shook his head, recognizing a lost cause. He didn’t have time to stand here and argue with her or to explain in very small words why he was never going to want her back. He needed to check on his mom and make sure Emily was truly okay. And where was Claire? Had she gone into his mom’s hospital room when he wasn’t looking? He took a step toward the door, being careful not to brush Tanya as he moved past her.

  “It’s her, isn’t it? That little blonde bitch who was with you when you showed up.”

  That stopped him in his tracks. He turned slowly, his temper straining to be free of the leash he held with a viselike grip. “What did you say?”

  Either Tanya didn’t realize her mistake or she didn’t care. She plunged ahead, spewing bile and hatred with every word. “I saw the way she looked at you, like a teenager swooning over a movie star poster in her bedroom.” She smiled maliciously. “She has quite the crush on you, Thomas. Pathetic, really. She doesn’t stand a chance.”

  There’s no competition. He stared down at her, his anger giving way to pity as he registered the desperation lurking behind her eyes.

  “What happened to you, Tanya?” he said softly. “You’ve changed.”

  Her shoulders dropped when she looked down. “We’ve all changed.” She fiddled with the cuffs of her shirt, deliberately folding and pleating them until they were arranged just so. She was clearly hiding something, but what?

  “Life in Chicago didn’t agree with you?”

  She smiled thinly. “You could say that. I learned the hard way that Jeremy wasn’t one of the good guys.”

  His brain kicked into overdrive, flashing a series of ugly images through his mind. Blood, bruises, the sickening thud of fists meeting flesh as a woman cried out in pain. James’s wife, Kelly, had been abused by a former boyfriend, and she’d told him a few stories about that time in her life, making it all too easy for him to imagine what she’d been through.

  He swallowed hard, suddenly seeing Tanya’s advances in a new light. Had she been abused? Had she come back to D.C. to try to find a safe place again?

  “Did he hurt you?” If she needed help, he was happy to put her in touch with people who could get her set up with a safe place to stay. He had a friend in D.C. who practiced family law. He could probably help expedite a restraining order, if it came to that. Although Thomas had no intention of becoming personally involved with her, he wasn’t such a coldhearted bastard that he’d leave a woman in distress hung out to dry.

  She looked up, and her eyes widened when she saw his expression. “Not like you’re thinking. He didn’t beat me up or anything.”

  The tension drained out of him at her words. “Then what happened?”

  Tanya sighed, the corners of her mouth turning down. “I made the mistake of falling in love with him.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “Yes, well. He didn’t feel the same about me. I’d picked up my life, moved halfway across the country to be with him, and then found out he was only interested in a casual fling. He cheated on me almost from the beginning.”

  “I’m sorry,” he replied automatically. And he was surprised to discover that he truly meant it. The residual anger he’d felt toward her had faded over the past few days, bleached to nothingness by the light of Claire’s presence in his life. The realization made him feel less weighed down somehow, as if a burden he didn’t know he’d been carrying had been lifted from his heart.

  Tanya waved her hand in dismissal. “It’s fine. I mean, can you believe him? Cheating on me like that?” She gestured to herself as she spoke, a beauty queen pointing out her best features. “It’s his loss, really. He can’t possibly expect to find someone better than me. He was lucky I was even with him in the first place!”

  Thomas blinked, biting his cheek to choke back the laugh that was bubbling in his throat. The woman had pluck, he’d give her that. Although her perspective was amazingly twisted, he couldn’t bring himself to point out the irony of her situation.

  He glanced around, searching for Claire. God, please don’t let her have seen that kiss. Even though it meant nothing to him, if she saw it out of context, she’d likely think he and Tanya were an item. He winced at the thought, recalling their earlier discussion in the safe house, when she’d assumed Emily was his girlfriend. That had been a simple misunderstanding, easily cleared up. This...this was something else entirely and would require a longer explanation. They hadn’t had a chance to talk about his past relationship with Tanya yet, and while he wasn’t trying to hide anything from her, he hoped she hadn’t seen this twisted little reunion.

  “Thomas?”

  He turned to find Jenny standing in the doorway of his mother’s hospital room. She looked from him to Tanya, her glance questioning. Had she known what Tanya was planning?

  “Are you coming in? Mom’s awake and asking to see you.”

  “Yes,” he replied shortly, starting for the door.

  “Thomas,” Tanya called after him. He stopped, mentally bracing himself for whatever she was about to say.

  “I’ll see you later.” Her tone was casual, almost subdued. She sounded like a friend saying goodbye—no innuendos or hidden promises that they’d talk again. Maybe he really had gotten through to her, and she would move on with her life. “I’m going to grab a cup of coffee and let you guys have a few moments to yourselves as a family.”

  “Thanks,” he said, appreciating the gesture for the peace offering it was. The maelstrom of emotions whirling inside him calmed somewhat, now that this little drama had been resolved. Emily was safe, Mom was recovering and Tanya seemed to understand they didn’t have a future together. Now, he just had to find Claire, confess his feelings and hope that she liked him enough to overlook his shortcomings.

  He approached Jenny, who hadn’t moved from the door. “Is Claire inside?”

  Jenny frowned at him, shaking her head. “The woman you’re protecting? No, she’s not here. Why, should she be?”

  Chapter 12

  Thomas felt the bottom drop out of his stomach at Jenny’s words. “What do you mean she’s not here?” he said, enunciating carefull
y in a bid to keep the words from tumbling out in an incomprehensible jumble of sounds. “She was with me in the elevator when I brought Emily up.”

  Jenny shrugged. “I didn’t see her. I only had eyes for my baby girl.”

  Oh, God. Oh, no. If Claire wasn’t in his mom’s room, then she had stayed in the hall. And if she’d stayed in the hall...

  He uttered a low, fierce curse. Jenny’s mouth turned down in disapproval, and she moved quickly to shut the door, lest his words be overheard by his mother or niece. Normally, he would have found her prudishness amusing, but he didn’t have time to deal with her offended sensibilities right now.

  “Tell Mom I had to go back to work. An emergency came up.”

  “Thomas,” she began, her unhappiness coming through loud and clear.

  “I’ll be back soon,” he said, already heading for the elevator. He reached for his phone, blinking at it in mild surprise when it started to ring in his hand. He debated not answering it, but Valdez might have an important update for him.

  “We’ve got a problem.”

  Tell me something I don’t know. He’d thought things were under control back at the Armory, but now with Valdez’s words, he wasn’t so sure. “What’s wrong?”

  “The guy we picked up? It wasn’t Victor.”

  Goose bumps rose on his skin, and he instinctively looked back at the door to his mother’s hospital room. Hadn’t they been through enough? How was it possible that this nightmare wasn’t over yet?

  “Kincannon? You still there?”

  Thomas shook his head. “Yes, I’m here. What do you mean, it wasn’t Victor? Who was it?”

  “Some guy he hired. Picked him up off the street, gave him five hundred dollars to take a walk. Has Emily said anything about it?”

  “No. I haven’t had a chance to ask her about it yet. We just got her to the hospital a few minutes ago.”

  “We need to talk to her. He may have said something to her, or she may have seen something that will tell us what he plans to do next.”