Dangerous Obsessions

by Capri Montgomery

  Capri Montgomery Dangerous Obsessions

  Chapter One

  Clair frowned at the incessant pounding on her front door. “Hold your water,” she yelled. She had just finished her shower, just put on a pair of black fitted pants and a light yellow tank top, just managed to put her wet hair up in a bun and she didn’t appreciate somebody banging on her front door to no end. Normal people knocked once and then waited for a response. Obviously whoever was at her front door was far from normal since they hadn’t stopped knocking yet.

  She made her way down the cherry wood wide spiral stair case, through the hall and to the front door. God help whoever was trying to take down her door with all that pounding because she had her boots dug in, not literally because she was barefoot as the proverbial river duck, but she still had her boots dug in and she was determined to tell off whoever was standing there when she got the door open.

  She looked out the side window. Agent Gregory Harland. Her heart skipped a beat. As she lived and breathed he was just as sexy, just as gorgeous as the last time she saw him. He was older, but he still had that dark hair, broad shoulders and firm body. Whoa, her heart wasn’t the only thing pulsing.

  She hadn’t seen him in at least ten years, since he’d dropped her in Manitou Springs and proclaimed her hellish nightmare over. She had known him for longer, much longer, since she was fourteen and at that time he was her father’s fishing buddy. She had loved him from the beginning, but even after she came of age he never noticed her, not as a woman. He was ten years her senior, then and now, but as of the last time she’d seen him, he looked at her as if she were some kid to be protected. Of course back then she did need protection.

  With him was agent Duvall, Janet Duvall, his highly beautiful partner. Janet was tall, proportioned in all the right places, blonde hair, long legs, horrible sense of fashion, but that didn’t seem to slow her ability to attract every man in a fifty mile radius. Clair never liked her. Part of that was sheer jealousy because Duvall and Greg were intimate, she knew that, and she hated it because she wanted to be the one he loved and the one he made love to, and she wasn’t. Greg had always been her friend, never her lover. No matter how much she wanted him to see her as a woman, he never had. When he looked at her he always seemed to see this teen who needed his protection, no matter how hard she tried to show him otherwise, he never took the hint. Then, one day, like magic, he vanished from her life.

  She swung open the door. “Agent Harland, agent Duvall; to what do I owe this immense honor?”

  “Why the hell are you so skinny?” He barked in that rough tone of voice she hadn’t heard in…well, ten years actually, maybe a little longer because he hadn’t used that tone of voice with her in the past. She had heard him use it before; he had been on the phone talking about a case at the time. She didn’t know what the case was about, but by the way his brows lowered, his lips pursed tight together in a grim line and the tone in his voice grew harsh she knew he wasn’t happy.

  She frowned. “You came all this way to bark about my weight,” she stepped aside letting them enter. She knew Greg hadn’t gone far. Denver wasn’t exactly thousands of miles away from Manitou, but you wouldn’t know it from how often he came to visit, or more like never came to visit.

  “Are you eating?”

  Exasperated she plastered on a fake smile and said, “I like my body.” She taught hip hop and country line dance aerobics along with Pilates and yoga three days a week. That was four classes a day, three days a week, plus prepping for classes during her days off and hiking when she could. Yes, she ate; she just burned the calories fast. Since when was it a crime to be in shape?

  “Why are you here?”

  He folded his arms across his broad chest. “David Levins escaped from prison last night.”

  Suddenly her world seemed to close in around her. There was no need to utter the stupid question, “are you kidding me,” because Greg wouldn’t joke about something so serious. He was there, after ten years he had come back to her. No, something deadly serious had brought him back to her, made him break his ten year hiatus to warn her. David Levins, the man who had kidnapped her and her little sister, Amy, raped them, tortured them for ten hours and ultimately killed Amy, was out of prison.

  They both knew what Levins’ escape meant. He had made promises that fateful day in the courtroom, and even after ten years he was going to come back to make good on those promises.

  She tried to tell herself he wouldn’t come for her, but she knew he would. She had been the reason he served time; her testimony at his trial when she was sixteen and then again two years later at his appeal had solidified his death row sentence. Ten years ago he had promised her he would come back for her. Until now she didn’t think that threat would ever be a reality.

  Levins didn’t know where she was. She had left Denver and was unlisted in Manitou. God she hoped that would be enough, hoped he wouldn’t come back and find her. She should have left Colorado, but she needed to be near her family in case, on the off chance, they ever forgave her.

  She struggled to hold herself upright. “I’m not listed; I should be okay.” She forced the words out of her mouth as if she were trying not to choke on them.

  “I took some personal leave time to make sure of that,” his tone was that of a man who was certain of his position. “We’ll head south—”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Clair,” he snapped.

  “I told you she would say that,” Duvall’s words ate at Clair’s reserve.

  “Look, I have classes to teach, responsibilities to manage. I won’t let him scare me into hiding.” She wasn’t a child anymore. She was a woman. He had destroyed her life once, he wouldn’t do it again. Amy was ten when he killed her and her parents never recovered. Her mother was tucked away in a mental hospital, and her father could barely stand the sight of his surviving daughter. They blamed her because she was watching Amy when Levins grabbed them. She blamed herself because she should have died instead of Amy.

  Instead of killing her, although she had no doubt that he would have if the police hadn’t found her, he left her pregnant. She made the decision to have an abortion. She didn’t regret that decision, not then and not now. She would have regretted having to carry any part of him inside of her, bring any part of him into this world. Her life had been shattered, that precious innocence was gone and the only thing left was hate, not just of Levins, but of herself.

  Then slowly, very slowly, she started to come to terms with the fact that she had survived. She started to allow herself to look in the mirror again, to live a normal life. She got her degree in exercise physiology with a minor in nutrition and she built a career and a home for herself. There were the occasional moments when she thought of Amy. Amy would be nearly twenty-two now. She thought of the life Amy could have had, college, boys, maybe even a family. She thought of her parents and she thought of the life they had had, the one they no longer had.

  Her mother was useless. She had shut herself away the moment they learned Amy hadn’t survived. Amy was her mother’s heart, her dad’s heart too, and both had dealt with the loss differently. Her mother stopped talking, stopped functioning, stopped acknowledging the world around her. In her own mind Amy was still alive and that’s where she tucked herself away, in that moment when her heart was still beating.

  Her dad had carried on with work, with the responsibilities of paying the bills, but he hadn’t talked to her since it happened. He wouldn’t even look at her. When she turned eighteen she left, or more like he asked her to leave. She would have left because she couldn’t stand the pain of his accusing silence.

  She was responsible for Amy. She was supposed to make sure she brought th
eir little girl home from the park safe…alive. She hadn’t.

  Levins had grabbed them both. It happened so fast she didn’t have time to think, time to react. They had gone to the park. It was her day to take Amy to do something she wanted to do and Amy had insisted on going to the park to play on the swings. She had things to do on her spring break too, but her parents had to work and she had to babysit. She hadn’t planned on spending the day playing, but Amy was ready to leave for the park by eight that morning and by eleven o’clock she showed no signs of being ready to go back home.

  “Just a few more minutes,” she had begged. “Dad did say this was my day,” she reminded her. As if she could forget. Her father had been clear to remind her that Amy needed to have fun on her days off from school. Fun wasn’t in Clair’s schedule because she was too busy trying to do her regular courses at school combined with the college program she had enrolled in through her high school. The plan was to get most, if not all, of her remedial coursework out the way before graduation, and then she could go on for her bachelors in fine art in photography. That had been her plan at least, back then. She needed to study, but Amy was happy playing and while there were several things she could have been doing for herself, she liked having the time out with her sister.

  Amy was playing on the swings. She was wearing a bright yellow short set, her favorite, and a pair of white Barbie inspired sandals. She had been playing for hours and having fun, and while Clair was ready to go home, Amy wanted ice cream.

  Clair walked over to the little cart to get an orange sherbet push pop. She could see the swings from where she was, and she was only gone a couple minutes. She had to dig through her purse for the fifteen cents she was short, but that hadn’t taken her attention from Amy for too long. At least she hadn’t thought it had, but when she turned around Amy wasn’t on the swing anymore.

  She panicked, screaming for her sister. The vendor, a grandfatherly older gentleman with deep-set gray hair and a grizzly bear beard, helped her look. A few concerned mothers kept a tighter watch on their own children. And then she thought she saw Amy, and instinct took over as she ran to the beat up blue Ford truck. That’s when he grabbed her, forced her in the truck and made her drive off. He told her if she stopped he’d kill her sister, so she kept driving.

  Luck was on her side because there was a park full of witnesses and the cops had been notified right away. Unfortunately, luck didn’t help them much because Levins still had ten hours to do what he wanted to them. He had ten hours to kill Amy.

  “Fine,” Greg’s words pulled her back to the here and now. “Then I’m your shadow from here on out. Where you go, I go. Got it?”

  “And I’m his shadow.”

  Great, she was stuck with both of them. “Going to be crowded with all those shadows,” her sarcasm was notably discernable in her voice.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate Greg. She did appreciate him, and everything he’d done for her. He was the one who sat beside her in court. He was the one who had dropped everything to help find her. And when she found out she was pregnant, he had been the one who came to the clinic with her when she ended the pregnancy. He had sat by her side, held her hand, told her everything would be okay one day. She believed him because she needed to. But things were never okay. Her parents were still gone to her. They had locked themselves away from her because they hated her. She needed them and they hated her.

  Greg was the one who tried to tell her dad to be thankful for the daughter he had left; though that had caused a rift between the two men. Her dad was stubborn under normal circumstances. He hated to be wrong, hated to be told he was wrong, hated for anybody younger to be wiser. Greg’s insistence that her dad stop treating her like the plague had ate away at the relationship they had. By the time she turned eighteen Greg was no longer her dad’s fishing buddy. But, Greg had been there for her despite the growing rift between the two men. He had never insisted she talk to him, though he had tricked her into meeting with one of their psychologist. His heart had been in the right place, but at the time she hadn’t really wanted to talk, she hadn’t wanted to do anything.

  “Agent Harland—”

  “When the hell did you start being so formal?” The scowl on his face told her he was obviously oblivious to how long it had been since they had seen each other; or maybe he just didn’t care.

  “We haven’t seen each other in ten years. I was unaware that we were on familiar terms.” The distance had been entirely his fault. She had called him a few times, but he never returned the calls. She sent him a letter that went unanswered too. She could take a hint, especially one that was written so clearly. He had obviously wanted her out of his life. The truth was he wouldn’t be standing in front of her now if Levins hadn’t escaped from prison.

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “For ten years?” She shrugged. “Well, agent—”

  “Greg,” he supplied in a curt tone. “Just in case you forgot.” The thin line his lips were starting to form told her he was angry, very angry, about her formality.

  “If you insist—”

  “I do.”

  “Greg,” she stressed. She didn’t remember the man being so annoying, but right now he was working her nerve. “I can’t take you and your shadow with me everywhere I go. I have work.” He did know what that was right? Just because she wasn’t a federal agent saving the world it didn’t make her job any less important than his.

  “So do I.”

  He saw her as work. Great, this wasn’t even a friend helping a friend, this was work for him. “I…”

  “After Janet insisted you wouldn’t go willingly I made some calls. I’ve already arranged being at your gym. I came prepared.” He seemed rather satisfied with himself. She didn’t doubt his preparedness because the Greg she knew was always prepared for the possible outcomes, no matter how numerous those possibilities were.

  “And I’ve arranged getting into your classes.”

  Clair started laughing; in fact she started and she couldn’t stop. She was nearly doubled over and on the floor trying to catch her breath when Greg roared, “You think this is funny!”

  “Right, Duvall, in my classes.” She kept laughing.

  “I’m in shape,” Duvall added.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to offend you, it’s just that…well you’re not in shape for my classes.”

  “I went through Quantico. How hard can a little dance class be?” Her last statement wasn’t so much a question as it was a flippant remark about the complexity of her work and Clair didn’t like that at all.

  “Well, Miss Quantico, try to keep up because I don’t slow my classes down and I won’t have time to babysit.” Her words were a little edgier, carried more bite, than she would have normally intended. The truth was there were times when she would slow her classes down. She had always told any of her students how to modify the moves if they got tired. She always broke down new steps, but she was three weeks away from the end of the advanced routine they were working on and all of her students had the moves already.

  There were a few more moves to add on, but that didn’t mean she was going to go over each step half tempo so the new girl could get it. Her students hated slowing down. She knew that from the upset glances she got when she slowed down for the last new girl, so she stopped doing it for the most part. She would, however, leave an advanced student, one who had the moves and was comfortable leading the class, up front while she would work her way to the back to help out anybody struggling.

  The back row was always full of people who struggled. They seemed to gravitate to the back as if that would hide them. She always thought that was funny given the floor to ceiling mirrors on all three walls. The fourth wall was just a window looking out into the main gym, so those on treadmills, bikes and weight machines, had no problem seeing inside the dance room. Somebody would see the missed steps, the off beat movements, and the overall awkwardness that learning a new routine when you’re not a dancer generall
y causes.

  “We’re going to keep you safe,” Greg’s tone was a mix of condemnation and authority. “You can like it or hate it, but we’re here to stay.”

  She basically hated the “we” part of his statement, but she figured she wasn’t getting one agent without the other so she shrugged. “I’m going to do my job and live my life;” she stated, mirroring his tone. “You can like it, or hate it, but it’s not going to change.

  “Tomorrow is Friday and I have work from six in the morning until three in the afternoon. After that, I have to be at Remote by seven.”

  “Remote? A club. You’re going clubbing?”

  “It’s not really a club, although I guess you can call it that. I’m not going clubbing. You can call it work…” It was kind of work. She went to Remote on Friday nights to keep in step with the latest hip hop moves for her class. Some instructors preferred to just do a continuing education course and nothing more, but she liked to stay abreast to what was going on in the dance world. Tony B had helped her with some new routines and she would often return the favor by dancing with his troupe at Remote, which now that she thought abut it, really was a club, just a little classier than some.

  “On Saturday nights I’m at Austin’s Steak House,” she said. She held up her hand when he started to protest. “I teach a dance class at six. It’s really just a beginner class for those who plan to stay for the seven o’clock open dance floor. I stay.” She quickly added the part about her staying so he didn’t get any ideas. “I’m there until at least ten, and then I come home.” She had a routine, a tiring routine, but she loved it. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were her days at the gym. Fridays and Saturdays were her nights at the dance venues, Tuesdays were her days for errands, cleaning, and in the event of a continuing education course for continued certification, she’d sign up for the Tuesday courses. She didn’t have any of those coming up as she had already finished her required courses for the year. Sundays and Thursdays were her days to try out new routines and yoga and Pilates move combinations to teach in her classes. Although on Sundays she liked to go hiking with a nature group whenever she could. She didn’t reckon Greg would be thrilled with that idea.