CORE Shadow [1] Shadow of Danger

by Kristine Mason

  “Fine, but—”

  She slammed the door in his face. She stood for a moment and he had no idea what the hell to say.

  Tell her or wait until she asks?

  “Okay,” she began, resting her forehead against the door. “That ruined the mood.”

  Tell her.

  “Celeste, what Lloyd said—”

  She held up a hand behind her. “Were you planning on telling me?”

  “Eventually,” he answered honestly, and wished she’d face him. He wanted to read her eyes to know where he stood.

  “Good.” With a curt nod, she pushed off the door. “Now or later?”

  “Now.”

  She faced him then. There was no accusation, no wariness in her eyes.

  He knew then and there that while he’d been over what had happened with Renee a million times, tonight was different. What he’d tell her wasn’t about saving his career or his reputation, but about saving his relationship with Celeste.

  *

  Instead of flooring the gas pedal like he wanted, he slammed his hand against the steering wheel and stuck to the speed limit. How the hell was he going to find a way to catch Celeste alone when her fucking house had a revolving door?

  After he’d learned Hoyt—that stupid prick—fucked up and got himself killed rather than taking care of Garrett, he’d needed a release. And he couldn’t think of a better release than gutting Celeste while he fulfilled his wildest fantasy. And she would fulfill his wildest fantasy.

  Not tonight.

  He considered the bitch at his home. Worthless. Pathetic. In no way, shape or form, could she satisfy him. Well, he thought with a small smile, not anymore. He’d seen to that, and he’d eventually put her out of her misery when he was good and ready to tie up that loose end.

  As for Garrett. He scrubbed a hand along his jaw. Images of him, of what they’d shared crept through his mind. He loved Garrett, more than a brother should, but he needed him dead. A coma was nice, but when Garrett woke—if Garrett woke, he amended—he could be screwed.

  Garrett might be arrogant, self-serving, and blasé at times, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d know who had signed his death warrant. And he’d tell. Everything. He knew first hand Garrett was the most vindictive son of a bitch he’d ever met. Knew it the moment...he didn’t want to think about the past. Those memories weren’t worth dick, and were better left where they belonged.

  In the past.

  As he drove through town, he smiled despite the situation. He’d find a way to take care of Garrett. This time, it wouldn’t cost him ten grand. An ICU nurse, with a penchant for drugs, would do the trick. And he knew just the one.

  Grinning now, he headed for home. Yes, he’d take care of Garrett, and in the meantime, he’d find a way to take care of Celeste. She hadn’t been part of his plan until that jackass, hotshot, Kain showed his GQ face in town, and he’d learned she was working with him.

  Damn, he couldn’t wait to see the look on Kain’s face when he discovered what he’d done to his pretty little girlfriend. He’d at least stick around for that, then he’d tie up his last loose end, and he’d be off to...maybe Brazil, or Canada. No, Canada was too cold. The Philippines? Bangkok? Hell, it didn’t matter. He had plenty of passports, IDs, money. The world was his. He could go anywhere. Be anyone.

  And the women? After what he had planned for Celeste, he’d have to become more...creative. After all, how do you top the ultimate fantasy?

  His smile widened. With the ultimate kill, of course.

  Chapter 17

  As Celeste plopped on the couch next to him, John’s stomach balled into a knot and made him want to reach for his antacids. He was about to reveal one of the darkest moments of his life. A betrayal that, even two years later, made it difficult to trust.

  But there wasn’t any heartburn, now that he thought about it. Maybe Roy was right. There wasn’t any room for heartburn, not with Celeste sitting by his side, willing to hear his story, and filling his heart with emotions he still had a hard time defining.

  “So…” She twirled a curl around her finger. “Your last partner ended up dead and you were left to blame.”

  He released a nervous chuckle. “Sarcastic and blunt. What else could I ask for in a woman?”

  Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. We could...stop whatever is going on between us and—”

  He tensed. “That’s not what I want. At all.”

  “What do you want?”

  You. Every day, every night. “Right now I want to clear up what Lloyd accused me of, because the last thing I want is for you to even think that I could be that kind of man.”

  “If I thought you were, I would have already kicked you out of my house,” she said with a deep sigh. “I mean, come on, John, I trust you. More than I’ve trusted anyone in a long time. To help make this crystal clear, I don’t have sex with just anyone. Until you, I haven’t been with a man in over three years. That relationship soured when I found out he was cheating on me. I don’t trust easy, but with you, I felt it immediately.”

  “Me too,” he said and meant it. Maybe it was the instant connection they’d shared, or maybe it was as simple as her openness and honesty. Whatever the reason, he did trust her and wanted to set the record straight.

  Leaning back into the sofa cushions, he ran a hand through his hair. “My partner’s name was Renee Toth. I was paired up with her when I was transferred to the FBI field office in New York City. We spent a lot of time together. Neither of us had a spouse or lover, but we had each other.”

  “She became your lover?” she asked, without a flicker of jealousy.

  “Yes, eventually. Some cases...sometimes there was a need to just release the stress and I found that release with Renee.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “No. Not to sound callous or cold, but Renee and I had an understanding. We came together when it was...necessary, if that makes sense. Afterward, we’d talk about whatever case we were working on.”

  She nodded her head. “I get it. You were blowing off steam.”

  “Pretty much. But it was more than that. I trusted her with my life. We were agents first. She had my back, and I had hers, only...”

  “Only…” she prompted.

  “She set me up.” He fisted his hands. Even two years later the bitterness, the regret still clawed at him. “She’d played me for over a year and I had no idea.”

  “What did she do?”

  “About a month before things went bad, she told me an FBI agent out of the Newark, New Jersey field office had asked for assistance on a case they’d been working. Renee knew the agent, Wes Foster, from her academy days. She briefed me on the case and asked if I was interested.”

  “Newark, Wissota Falls, your job takes you to some pretty glamorous places,” she said, her tone light, teasing and not matching the concern in her eyes.

  He gave her a reassuring smile, appreciative of the way she was trying to make what he had to say a little easier. “Yeah, all part of the perks. Anyway, Foster was trying to find the man suspected of murdering eight prominent figures in the Newark community. They’d been linked to one man, Vito Pappeli, a wannabe mobster who’d probably watched the Godfather way too many times. Pappeli was trying to run a bunch of neighborhoods, extort businesses into paying him and in return give them protection.”

  “Really? Why wouldn’t those people just go to the police?”

  “They did, then they ended up dead. And while Foster knew Pappeli was behind those deaths, they couldn’t pin anything on him. He was squeaky clean. But the word on the street was that he had a thug working for him who took care of his dirty work, only Foster and his people couldn’t figure out who. I thought the case sounded interesting, and a day later, after our superiors cleared our involvement, Renee and I were in Newark trying to get a fix on this guy.”

  He released a deep sigh, hating this part of the story, hating his stupidity
. Why did everything have to be so clear in hindsight? Maybe if he’d consulted a psychic before heading to Newark, he could have saved himself a world of shit. He stared at Celeste, her patient, concerned eyes. No, it was a good thing he hadn’t known Celeste then. He’d been full of himself. Renee had taken his ego down more than a couple of pegs, though. While he still regretted what had happened, what he hadn’t paid closer attention to, he knew he was a better man today than he was two years ago.

  “A couple days in,” he began, “after reviewing all of the evidence I suggested the man we were looking for was well trained...former military or a former cop. Renee argued with me about my assessment, which never had happened in the past, and changed the profile. At the time, I’d shrugged it off. After all, she’d been in the field longer than I had, but as the days passed, I’d realized something wasn’t right. Renee started blowing off any suggestions I’d make, and would closet herself inside Foster’s office leaving me twiddling my thumbs.”

  A wry smile shaped her lips. “I can’t imagine you twiddling your thumbs. Let me guess, you started doing your own investigating without her.”

  He tried to smile back, but couldn’t, not with the guilt still weighing on him. He shoved off the couch and moved to the fireplace. “I did. And about ten days later, I ended up finding the one guy that could take Pappeli down. Tony D’Angelo had worked for him for years. They’d grown up together and at one time, had been as tight as brothers. Tony was a screw-up though, and Pappeli had grown tired of bailing him out of his problems, not only financially, but with the Newark police. I happened to catch him after Pappeli balled him out, and threatened not only him, but his wife and kids. Tony was scared. He wanted out of Pappeli’s organization, and he wanted protection. He’d told me he had evidence that would lead us to not only Pappeli’s assassin, but prove Pappeli wasn’t as squeaky clean as he appeared on paper.”

  In the reflection of one of her framed pictures, he saw her rise. He wanted to turn and take her in his arms, wash away the memories, but he couldn’t. Not yet. Not until he finished the painful story he’d started.

  “Tony died that night, and it was my fault. I’d gone to Renee and Foster, told them what he’d told me, and the next morning they found him dead. A bullet to the head, and his tongue cut off.”

  He turned to her then, and didn’t bother to mask his emotions. Not after the way she’d defended him to Lloyd. And not with the way she stared at him now. Her eyes filling with tears, her beautiful face tight with pain...for him.

  “I’d gotten him killed, because I’d trusted the wrong people. The next day, Blake Thatcher, a friend of mine from my academy days who also worked out of Newark, called me. He said my DNA was found on Tony’s body.”

  “Yours?”

  “Forensics found my hair. But it gets better. The bullet that had killed Tony had come from a gun similar to the one I’d carried. Blake warned me that I was about to be detained for questioning, especially because they’d just discovered that the day Tony was killed, a deposit of one hundred thousand dollars was placed in my bank account.”

  She moved toward him. “Oh my God, John.”

  The smothering, claustrophobia that had swamped him that day didn’t consume him like it had each time he’d told this story. Instead, he felt...liberated. The woman that had captured his attention, his heart, looked at him with raw, utter faith. With her, there was no room for regret, for the pain he’d endured. Just being near her, close to her, made him feel whole. She barely knew him, but was ready to defend him, to deny what his fellow agents had prepared to accuse him of...murder.

  “I went to my hotel and discovered my weapon was missing, I also found out that Renee had checked out of her room. As the pieces began to fall into place, I drove back to New York. At that point, I didn’t know what to do. I knew I was being framed, and didn’t know who to trust. But I suspected who’d set me up.”

  “Renee.”

  He nodded. “I went to her apartment. Late. Two in the morning. When she opened the door she held my gun in my face and told me to walk inside. As I stepped into her apartment I asked why. And she smiled.” He grimaced at the memory. “I’d trusted her. She’d been my partner, my lover, and she laughed in my face. I’d been a pawn, she said. Then she went on to tell me that she and Foster were lovers, that they’d been working with Pappeli for a year, that she had a plane ticket to Argentina and a shitload of money in some off-shore account. She’d killed Tony, and Foster had been Pappeli’s assassin. But what she didn’t know was that I’d been recording everything on my cell phone. What I didn’t know? Before Tony died, he had sent his lawyer enough evidence to bury her, Foster and Pappeli.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, then pulled at the ends. “She’d taken hair from my brush and planted it on Tony after she’d killed him and severed his tongue.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “At that point, I’d never felt more betrayed in my life.”

  “H-how did she die?” A tear slipped down Celeste’s cheek and he wanted to capture it. Own it. No one had ever cried for him before.

  “Tony’s attorney contacted Blake, thankfully. If he’d gone to Foster, I’d probably be in prison right now. Blake called it in to our superiors and as Renee waved my gun at me, sirens were screaming up and down her neighborhood. She knew she was finished. And I...I told her she had two options.” He gulped around the knot in his throat, petrified of what Celeste would think of him once he told her what he’d never told another soul.

  She took another step closer. “And they were?”

  He caught her vanilla and cinnamon scent, and wanted to wrap his arms around her and lose himself in her body. Forget everything that had happened. But not yet. He’d started this, and would finish it, and he hoped to God she still respected him when he was through.

  “Either she faced prison—not a great place to be as a former FBI agent—or kill herself.” He choked back the memory of those words and gripped Celeste’s shoulders. “She...she looked out her window, then back at me.” He squeezed Celeste tighter. “She shoved my gun into her mouth, then pulled the trigger.”

  She jerked beneath his hands, tears spilling down her face. “John, I...”

  “I went through hell after that. The questioning from my superiors, the hours with their psychologists, even after the evidence pointed in my favor. And when all was said and done, and I was exonerated from having anything to do with Renee and Tony’s deaths, there was still that stigma.”

  “Which was why you left the FBI.”

  “Yeah, my boss might be a bit manipulative, but he saved me the day he asked me to join CORE. He gave me a second chance. And I owe him, which was why I came to Wissota Falls, and why I ended up working with a psychic even if it wasn’t what I’d wanted.”

  Her breath caught. “And now?” she asked, her eyes glistening with tears.

  “I wish we’d met under different circumstances, but I’m glad to have been given the opportunity to know you. And if you asked me to leave, it would hurt like hell.” He cupped her cheeks and grazed his thumb along her lower lip. “You’ve shown me what I’ve been missing in my life.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, breathless, as another tear slipped down her cheek.

  “You. But I don’t deserve someone as special as you, Celeste. Because of me, Tony died. And I can’t help, but feel guilt over Renee, even with her betrayal. Damn it, I told her to kill herself.”

  She gripped his wrists tight. “You didn’t kill Tony or Renee. She did it. She pulled the trigger both times. Stop punishing yourself for something you didn’t do. Stop letting your guilt control your life, and don’t you dare let it interfere with what we have.”

  “And what do we have? I have a life in Chicago, and you have one here. It will hurt when I walk away from you once this case ends, but I will walk away. I won’t drag you into my life and watch the sparkle in your eyes dim once you realize I’m not the man you thought.” God, he hated himself. Hated that he couldn’t man up an
d admit that he didn’t want to walk away, that he wanted to drag her back home with him and cherish her the way she deserved. With her, he’d become a better man, a different man. She’d become the best part of him. But he worried he couldn’t live up to her expectations, that if he gave his heart and soul to her she might eventually reject it once she realized how hardened and tainted those parts of him had become.

  A half-smile tilted her lips. “You’re so full of it. I have a feeling you’ve been using Renee and Tony’s death as a crutch. As a way to shut people out and keep the real John Kain locked in his own personal prison. Don’t shut me out, too. I’m a big girl, and I’ve walked into this relationship with my eyes wide open. You want to walk away, then walk.” Breathing hard, she looked away and released his wrists, then moved toward the foyer. “There’s the door. You know how to use it. Keep in mind, though, I don’t want you to leave. You’re the one who’s already making up excuses and reasons why what we have shouldn’t work. Make it easier on yourself and go now.”

  She’d given him an ultimatum. Man up or walk. He didn’t want to do either. He wanted to time travel back to the moment she was straddling his thighs before Lloyd dropped by and forced him to face his past. At that point, he hadn’t fully opened himself up to her. At that point...hell, even then he knew he’d have to face the reality, the fact that he’d either have to cut bait or own his feelings for Celeste. Then, though, he’d still had time to figure out what to do. Now, she wasn’t giving him any time at all.

  She gripped the door knob. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

  Before she could turn the brass handle, he was on her, pinning her to the wall, and her hands to her hips. His heart pounding hard, he stared into her wide eyes. “I can’t.”

  “You can’t what? Leave? Or take a chance?”

  The challenge in her eyes, in her husky voice had him hard, ready, and aching to confess more than he’d already done tonight. He couldn’t walk away from her. He couldn’t risk losing the one woman, the only woman, who’d captured his trust, his heart, and his soul.