A Cry in the Dark

by Jenna Mills

  Not cared, he amended. He didn’t care about her, only about the hunt.

  “Do you have a permit for that?” Liam asked.

  “You really think a permit matters?”

  “Yeah,” he said slowly, confidently. “I do.”

  She angled her chin, jabbed the gun closer. “You don’t need a permit where you’re going.”

  No, he didn’t. That much was true. But he didn’t need a bullet hole through his heart, either. He looked at her standing there and wondered if she had any idea how provocative she looked, a tall, beautiful woman with streaks of dark hair slipping from her barrette and falling against her tear-streaked face, her pale lips trembling, a damn fine gun in her shaking hands. Her body screamed fear, but her eyes glittered with a fierce determination he recognized too well.

  Deep in his gut, the truth sunk like a deadweight. “Jesus, I’m too late.”

  She blinked. It was the first chink in her armor. But then she rallied, narrowed her eyes. “That depends upon what you have in mind.”

  The words were tough, gutsy, but they hid a pain he didn’t want to hear. Didn’t want to know about. He was too late. Again.

  Frustration lashed at him. He’d left New York the second he’d received the scribbled note, used all his resources to find her. But just as he’d been for the past three years, he was one step behind.

  The senator lying cold and dead in a New York morgue bore silent testimony to that

  “Look, Danielle.” It was his voice that wanted to shake now, his hands that wanted to tremble, his past that wanted to leak through. “You don’t need to be afraid,” he said, and for a change, he didn’t strip away the emotion. He changed it. Glossed over the hard edges, sanded down the splinters. “I’m here to help.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I suppose that’s why you were asking questions about me this afternoon at work? Watching me? Because you want to help?”

  “That’s right.” Slowly, he released the edge of the black wallet he’d been holding in his hand, allowing one side to fall open and reveal the tarnished badge. “Special Agent Liam Brooks,” he said very slowly, very deliberately. “FBI.” He paused, watched the shock, the disbelief, the horror, wash over her face. “Now lower the damn gun before I do it myself.”

  Chapter 2

  Danielle was a smart woman. Not the learned, book smart that came from school and study, but street smart, the kind that came from hard knocks and foster homes. She’d learned how to read between the lines. She knew how to recognize trouble, how to know when to stay and when to go, how to take care of herself. Her sister had insisted Danielle could make a nice living setting up at carnivals, charging a fee for the intuition that came to her naturally.

  There wasn’t much that got by her, wasn’t much she didn’t understand.

  But standing there with a gun pointed at this grim-faced stranger, with her heart racing and her knees trying not to knock, she watched his mouth move, heard the deep tenor of his voice, but didn’t understand. She didn’t understand what he was saying. She didn’t understand why his badge looked so real. Didn’t understand how her life could shatter in the space of only an hour, not after all the measures she’d taken to protect her son. He was just a little boy. Only six. Innocent.

  But worst of all, most damning of all, she didn’t understand the dizzying desire to believe this man, to trust him, to think that the badge was real, that somehow he could help.

  One word about this to anyone, and your son will pay the price.

  “You’re lying.” That had to be it. He was fabricating a story to gain her trust, her cooperation. Or maybe he was testing her, trying to trick her into disobeying his instructions.

  His eyes locked onto hers, dark, commanding. “Why would I lie?”

  The gun grew heavier, like a weight on her heart, but she kept her hands steady. “You tell me.”

  He answered not as she’d expected, as she’d hoped, but with a low stream of curse words. “I’m too late,” he said again, and this time his voice cracked on a hard edge of frustration and disgust and remorse.

  Danielle wanted to step back from him, from the crazy way he made her feel, the confusion, the hope. But she forced herself tand very still, even as he took a step closer, so close that the barrel of the gun jammed against his chest.

  “What has he done to you, Danielle?” The question was soft, laced with a vehemence that chilled her blood. “Tell me what that bastard has done to hurt you.”

  The walls, the certainty, started to crumble. “No one has hurt me.”

  His face hardened. “Don’t lie to me, damn it.” The words were hard, not at all preparing her for the way he lifted a hand to skim a finger beneath her lashes. “I see it in your eyes.”

  Naked. She suddenly felt completely exposed, as though she stood before this man without a stitch of clothing on. The way he looked at her, with that dark, penetrating gaze, made her feel as though he could see beyond the fabric of her uniform, deeper than the flesh, to the fear snaking through her like cold slime.

  “You don’t need to be afraid,” he said in a voice that no longer resonated with anger but soothed like a warm summer breeze. “Not anymore. Not of me.”

  Her throat tightened. For almost two hours she’d been holding all the jagged pieces together, the fear, the uncertainty, the desperation, willing herself to be strong, to stay in control. For Alex. But now, in the face of this man with the hard eyes but soft words, who offered her a gift she couldn’t accept, the gift of help, everything started to slip, and it sliced to the bone.

  “What do you want?” she asked with a valiance she no longer felt.

  His dark eyes narrowed. “Right now,” he said very slowly, very softly, “I want you to put that gun down.” The hand at her face, the fingers that feathered along her cheekbone, lowered, dropping to the Derringer.

  No! someplace deep inside screamed. Fight him. Don’t let him have his way with you. But she could no more move, no more look away from him, than she could push time backward and bring Alex home.

  “I’m going to help you,” he murmured, uncurling her fingers and taking the weight of the gun from her hand.

  She watched him, saw his square palm, his long fingers, the bronze of his tan against her pale wrist, but just like earlier at the hotel, when she’d stared at the patrons milling about the lobby, she couldn’t bring the moment into focus.

  “See?” His voice was low, soothing. “We’re putting the gun down.” In a svelte move he removed the clip and shoved the barrel into the waistband of his jeans. “Good.”

  A trap, she told herself. A trick.

  No, came the voice deep inside, the voice she’d once staked her life on but could no longer trust.

  “Now we’re going to go inside,” the man was saying, and before she could pull away, he had a hand at her waist and was guiding her into the cool confines of her small foyer. She knew she should fight him, stop him, but lethargy stole through her, numbing like a sweet, forgotten drug.

  The man, Liam he said his name was, an FBI agent, led her into the cluttered family room, where the puzzle of the United States she and her son had been working lay unfinished on the old pine coffee table. guided her to the denim sofa, the one Alex had picked out, and encouraged her to sit.

  She did.

  He sat beside her, didn’t release her hand. She hadn’t realized how cold she was, hadn’t known she could be so cold while the sun still blazed outside and blood still pumped through her body.

  Ty.

  Ty had been this cold. But then, her son’s father had been dead. She’d stared at him in his casket, a tall, lanky man in dark gray trousers and a black dress shirt, sandy-blond hair combed obscenely neatly for such a perpetually unkempt man, the soft lines of his face, the whiskers she’d begged them not to shave. Ty wouldn’t be Ty without his scruffy jaw.

  Anthony had been by her side, strong and protective as always. He’d stood to her left with a steadying arm around her waist, Elizabeth to h
er right, also lending an arm in support. They’d held her up, tried to stop her when she stepped forward with a picture of her son in her hand. She’d meant only to lay it on Ty’s chest, but she’d lifted her hand higher, skimmed it over his mouth, his cheek.

  Cold. So horribly cold.

  But there was no cold now, not from the man seated next to her. The heat of his body blanketed her, soaked through her palm and into her blood, fighting with memory and reality.

  The desire—the need—to lean into him stunned her. It would be so easy. There wasn’t that much space between them. She had only to let go, lean against his chest.

  She pulled back abruptly, putting as much space between them as she could while he still held her hand.

  “Talk to me,” he said in that darkly magical voice of his, the one that both threatened and coerced. “Tell me what’s going on. Tell me what he’s done to you.”

  She wanted to. God, against every scrap of sanity and caution, she wanted to. The forgotten force of need burst through her like a punch. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes,” Liam said, never releasing her hand, her eyes, “you do.”

  She watched him, much as he’d watched her earlier, noting the lines at the corners of his eyes, laugh lines on some men, but not this man. These lines carved deeper, screamed of life and lessons that had nothing to do with humor. His face was tanned, not quite leathery, but not smooth like Alex’s. At his jaw she saw the gathering of whiskers and wondered when was the last time he’d shaved.

  He wasn’t her friend. He wasn’t her ally. No matter how strong the temptation to lean on him, trust him, the possible consequences screamed through her. She didn’t know who he really was or what he really wanted. Badges could be faked. Compassion forced. He could be involved.

  Or he really could be FBI. Which would almost be worse. The caller had made it clear what would happen if the authorities got involved.

  “It’s just been a long day,” she hedged.

  “And that’s why you pulled a gun on me?”

  The question landed with unerring accuracy. Pulling a gun on a str was not the mark of a calm, content, rational woman. “I…I thought you were someone else.”

  “Who?”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He let out a rough breath and looked away from her, staring at the half-finished puzzle on the coffee table. Just beyond, a pair of dirty sneakers lay near the back door. “You have a kid?”

  Her heart jumped. “A son,” she admitted, because she knew the safest lies grew from the truth.

  “Where is he?”

  “At day care,” she lied automatically.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I talked to them less than an hour ago.” The truth.

  “Why didn’t you pick him up on the way home?”

  The questions just kept coming, one after another. “I was hoping to rest for a few minutes, get rid of my headache.” Hoping the phone would ring and she would receive her next set of instructions.

  Before Liam could fire off another query, she launched one of her own. “Maybe you should tell me what’s going on,” she suggested. “You say you’re with the FBI. What could you possibly want with me?”

  From the time she’d pulled the gun on him, something had changed. His stony expression had softened, the hard edges to his voice had vanished. He’d been almost human. But that all changed now. The man from the lobby returned, and with his arrival, the oxygen fled the small family room.

  “I—” He hesitated, swore softly, rolled to his feet. He paced to the window overlooking her shady backyard and just stood there, with his hand braced against the frame. The sinking sun cut in around him, casting him in silhouette, forcing Danielle to wonder what he saw. She didn’t need her intuitive Gypsy blood to realize it wasn’t her son’s deserted jungle gym.

  “Look,” she said, standing. Part of her wanted to take his wrist and drag him to the front door, just as he’d led her to the sofa. Another part of her wanted to step closer, put a hand to the wrinkled cotton shirt stretched across his wide shoulders.

  She did neither. “I really need to start dinner—”

  He swung toward her. “Three days ago Senator Gregory of New York was found dead in his hotel room.”

  Danielle went very still. She wasn’t a news junkie, but she’d have to be a hermit to have missed the story that had dominated the media for the past several days. Gregory was a young man, a political golden boy lauded as the next great hope for the country. And he’d been in prime health.

  Until he turned up dead.

  The hotel room had been locked from the inside, Danielle recalled. They’d had to break down the door to get to him, after he failed to answer the phone. The coroner estimated he’d been dead for several hours before they found him. There were no marks on his body, no signs of trauma or physical distress. The autopsy had revealed nothing.

  The man’s and healthy, with valves not the least bit blocked, had simply stopped beating.

  Her own heart kicked up a notch. “What does that have to do with me?”

  Liam scrubbed a hand over his face. “I— Christ, I don’t know.”

  It wasn’t the answer she was expecting. Somehow, she hadn’t figured Liam Brooks, allegedly special agent of the FBI, was a man to admit he didn’t know everything. “Then why are you here?”

  He closed the distance between them, making the room shrink with each step he took. She stood fascinated, wondering how he could cover in three steps the same territory that took her at least six.

  “A note,” he said roughly. “I received a handwritten note with your name on it.”

  Her breath caught. “My name?”

  “Your name, and the mention of Chicago.”

  And now her son was gone. “I don’t understand.” She’d never met the senator from New York, had no idea how her son’s disappearance could be connected to his alleged murder.

  Liam’s expression hardened. “Neither do I,” he admitted. “Neither do I.”

  The dark clouds she’d sensed all afternoon rolled closer. She swallowed against a horrible sense of inevitability and reminded herself nothing had changed. This man’s story didn’t change the instructions she’d received, instructions she intended to follow.

  “You can see everything is fine,” she said, overriding the voice inside, the one that scraped against her throat, screaming for her to tell him what she knew. Let him help. She’d never been one to play by the rules, after all. She’d always preferred following her own path. Finding a loophole or a workaround.

  But with her son’s life on the line, this time she had no choice. “If anything happens, I’ll—”

  “Damn it.” He moved so fast she never had a chance to back away. He took her shoulders in his hands, his big, strong, surprisingly gentle hands, and held on tight. “If anything happens, it will already be too late, don’t you understand that?”

  She swallowed hard. “I’m sure it’s all just some misunderstanding,” she forced herself to say. She needed him to leave, damn it. “Maybe there are two Danielle Caldwells in Chicago.”

  His mouth flattened into a hard line. “You can hope.” He put her Derringer onto the table, then flipped open the wallet with his badge and handed her a small embossed card. “I’m staying at the Manor. Call me if something changes.”

  She ran the tip of her index finger along the raised, blue letters of his name. “I will.” The words hurt, because she knew they were not true. She would not call him, would not ask for his help. “Thanks for checking on me,” she said with a casualness at complete odds with the tension arcing between them. Forcing a smile, she led him to the front of the house and opened the door.

  He stepped into the hazy shades of early evening. A warm breeze blew in from the lake several miles away. “You’d better go get your son.”

  They were simple words. Easy. Casual. And yet they destroyed the tenuous hold on her emotions. “Yes.” />
  He held her gaze a moment longer than was comfortable, his dark, penetrating eyes lingering on her face, much the way he’d held her hand longer than necessary. “Just be careful,” he said at last, then turned and walked away.

  Come back! The words vaulted from deep inside her, but Danielle refused to give them voice. She stood there in the open door of her small home, watching Alex’s neighborhood buddies across the street shoot hoops, as FBI Special Agent Liam Brooks, and any help he might be able to offer, drove away.

  She was hiding something. That much Liam knew. She put up a good front, played a good game, but Liam was too well trained to miss the clues. He’d spent years watching people, studying them, analyzing them. He knew how to read between the lines, the lies. And even though Danielle Caldwell pretended valiantly that her life was in perfect order, he’d seen the truth in the way those startling green eyes had glittered, the way her fine-boned hands had trembled.

  Liam pushed away from the window of his fourteenth-floor suite at the Stirling Manor and stalked toward the bottle of scotch he’d ordered from room service. He poured the single malt into a tumbler and lifted it to his mouth but didn’t throw the warm liquid back. He wasn’t ready to numb himself. Wasn’t ready to take a short cut and stop thinking.

  Wasn’t ready to turn his back on Danielle.

  She didn’t trust him, didn’t want his help. She’d made that abundantly clear; he just didn’t understand why. He was one of the good guys, but she’d looked at him with abject horror, as though she’d expected him to suddenly grow horns and do horrible, lewd things to her.

  Or her son.

  The thought stopped him cold. Her son.

  A child changed everything, introduced vulnerabilities sick and sinister and powerful enough to turn even his stomach. When someone became a parent, their personal welfare fell to the background, replaced by that of the child. There was no better way to hurt a parent than to hurt his or her child.