by Jenna Mills
Chapter 4
The first pinkish rays of dawn stretched lazily against the horizon. The sky lightened, from a smeared, drab gray to streaks and swirls in a soft palette of pastels. The storm had moved on, unleashing its fury for a short time, then hurrying southeast, leaving an eerie calm in its place.
Through it all, Danielle had stood by the lake and waited.
But no one had ever come.
She looked at her watch now, saw the hour nearing seven, felt the scratch of inevitability against her throat.
Just a little longer, she told herself. She’d stand here, and she’d wait, by herself, and she’d prove to them that she had not intended to disobey. She’d done just as instructed, even though it grated at her. She’d never been one to follow instructions, no matter who issued them. Except her mother. She remembered so little of the exotic woman with wild dark hair and laughing green eyes, just bits and pieces. The smell of gardenia. And her voice. It had been a soft voice, gentle, filled with love. Even when she’d lost her patience with the triplets, she’d disciplined them lovingly.
And Danielle had always, always responded.
It had been a different story with her father. She remembered less about him, just his big, booming presence. He’d looked neat and tidy, and he’d smiled whenever they had company, but when no one else was around, he’d turned into a different person, a person none of them liked very much. He’d order them around, his face turning red, his eyes bulging. That was her first memory of being defiant. She’d known she should obey him, that the consequences of disobedience were bad, but even at a young age, her Gypsy blood had been strong, and she’d been unable to follow his rigid rules.
Sometimes she and Elizabeth had hidden from him to avoid the belt. Usually they wedged themselves under the bed, sometimes in a closet—like they’d done the night their mother died. She’d lost them both that night, her mother to violence, her father to a question mark. Benedict Payne had simply vanished.
That night marked a transition in her life, but patterns instilled by her parents remained. A wild child, one foster family had called her. A bad seed. A hellion. But if the names were supposed to wound, they never had. If anything, they’d encouraged her. She’d seen what happened to her mother when she bent to her father’s will like nothing more than a flimsy sapling in a gale-force wind. She remembered the arguments, the tears, and she’d resolved to never, never let anyone dominate her. To never blindly follow someone else’s rules. To follow her own path, her own calling.
And she had.
Until yesterday.
The breeze whipped off the lake, cooler now, no longer warmed by the lingering heat of the day. She turned toward the endless expanse of blue, stared at the lone red-and-yellow sail already visible in the distance. Her clothes were still wet from the rain, her hair sticky, but she wasn’t ready to leave yet. Wasn’t ready to give
The irony burned. For the first time in thirty-one years, she’d been willing to play by someone else’s rules. She’d been willing to go along with the request, do whatever was required to get her son back. With a stab to her throat she remembered the way she’d torn at her clothes, offering herself to Liam in exchange for Alex. She would have done whatever he wanted, gone down with him in the sand, let him have her, use her.
But he’d stopped her.
Frowning, she tried to focus on a lone gull dipping over the blue, blue waters of the lake. Instead she saw Liam, the way his eyes had darkened, not grimly, but like smoke. She remembered the feel of his hands grabbing hers, not cruelly or harshly, but tenderly. She felt the brush of his fingers along her breasts, the startling tingle of awareness. That was only physiological, she knew. A purely female response to the first male touch in more than two years.
“Danielle.”
The sound of her name on his voice, so low and hoarse, whispered through her like a caress. She closed her eyes to the feeling she didn’t want, didn’t trust, but her heart kicked up a notch, anyway.
His hands, big, strong, deceptively gentle, settled against her shoulders. “It’s time to go home, honey.”
She opened her eyes to the bright blue of early morning, the truth she didn’t want to see. “Not yet.”
“No one’s coming,” he said quietly. “You can wait all day, but I’m the only one who’s going to be here.”
She spun toward him, ready to lash out at him for ruining everything, for watching her at the hotel and showing up at her house, for following her to the beach and ruining her chances of getting Alex back. But when she saw him, the shadows beneath his eyes, the stubble at his jaw, the same damp clothes he’d worn the night before, words failed her. So did her breath.
“They’ll make contact again,” he promised in that low, raspy voice of his. “But you need to be home to get the call.”
She swallowed hard. “You didn’t leave.”
“Not with you here by yourself, no.”
She wanted to be angry at him. She wanted to blame him. But standing there in the hazy light of a storm-washed morning, she could find no anger, no blame. There was only the memory of the torrent of words he’d unleashed on her last night, the admissions that lingered in his gaze.
I know what terror tastes like and smells like.
Last night she’d been too lost in her private hell for the words to fully register, but they swirled through her now, dark, dangerous, unearthing the crazy desire to lift a hand to this man’s face and wipe away the shadows.
I know what it’s like to be willing to trade anything.
Even his soul. Because he had, she knew instinctively. It was there in his eyes, the aura of black that surrounded him like his own personal storm cloud.
The voice deep inside, the one that had finally started speaking to her after weeks and months of dormancy, whispered a little louder. What happened to this man? What had hurt him so? What had he lost?
But the voice of logic and reason, the one she’d forced herself to live by, refused to let the questions past her throat. Whatever had happened to this man didn’t matter. He didn’t matter. Only Alex did.
Behind him a snarl of traffic already inched its way down Lakeshore Drive, streaming south into the city, just like countless other days. Odd that life could march on in a cloud of normalcy, when with one simple phone call, her entire world had turned upside down.
“Come on,” he said, reaching for her hand. His fingers curled around hers, bringing with them a staggering infusion of warmth. “We need to get you out of these clothes—”
She couldn’t help it. Her eyes flared all by themselves.
“—and into some dry ones.”
Danielle the wild child, the hellion, the rebel, would have fought this man, his command. She would have dug in her heels and refused to go anywhere with him.
But the Danielle who’d stood on the deserted beach all night long, in the rain and the wind and the soul-shattering dark, waiting for a rendezvous that had never come, the woman who’d ripped at her blouse and offered herself to this man, who’d seen the pain hollow out his eyes, heard it drench his voice, the one who was so tired she could barely walk, that Danielle wanted nothing more than to be home again, in the small house she and Alex had picked out, where his picture sat square and center on the mantel, where the phone could ring, and she could find some way to convince his abductors that last night had been a mistake. That she really was willing to play by their rules.
Pay their price.
Whatever it was.
With one last look over the light chop of the lake, where a second sailboat had joined the first but the gull remained solitary, she let Liam lead her across the expanse of sand and rock, allowing herself to think only of Alex. She refused to think of the way the warmth of Liam’s hand seeped into her, beyond flesh and bone, to the core, where for the first time the chill didn’t pierce quite so deeply.
The little house, with its faded siding but bright window boxes brimming with petunias and impatiens, sat still and quiet,
much too still and quiet. Liam eased his rental to a stop at the curb while Danielle pulled into the driveway. He didn’t know how much longer she could function without collapsing.
He’d walked away last night, even climbed into his car and driven away, but within minutes he’d been back. No way was he leaving her there alone during the long, dark hours of the night, waiting for Titan or one of his goons to arrive. Especially not after the way she’d thrown herself at Liam, willing to trade her body in exchange for her son.
The memory sickened him, even as it sent a blast of heat licking through him. A lesser man—
He shoved the thought aside, the punishingly erotic image of her on her back in the sand, not wanting to think about what a lesser man would have done to her.
What he himself had wanted to do.
He’d come to Chicago in search of Titan, not to get laid. It wasn’t really Danielle Caldwell that fired his blood, wasn’t she who made him feel alive, made him want, for the first time in years. That was just the case, the prospect, the sweet anticipation of finally getting something long denied.
Liam shoved open the car door and stood, readjusted jeans that had suddenly become too tight. He’d never thought of his quest for Titan as sexual, but now that the thought had seeded itself, the analogy needled deeper. There was nothing like that achingly sweet moment of culmination, the moment of triumph that could come only after long bouts of denial, of wanting and hungering, burning and craving.
He watched Danielle now, the way her lithe body moved with catlike grace despite her disheveled appearance. The lake breeze had dried her hair, leaving it wild and wavy and falling loosely around her face. No makeup remained, but with her dark coloring and expressive eyes, she didn’t need makeup to make an impression. Her dark shirt and jeans were still damp, clinging to her body in a way that could make a monk’s mouth water.
Frowning, Liam followed her, reminding himself he’d slipped into this woman’s life because she represented the first active, tangible, living link to Titan he’d unearthed in years—not so that he could tangle his hands in her hair, taste her exotic mouth and chase away the fear she so staunchly denied.
“How do you take your coffee?” he asked, joining her at the front door.
With the key slid into the lock, she tossed him a look over her shoulder. “Alone.”
He refused to indulge the smile that wanted to form. “Not an option.” He put his hand to hers and turned the knob, pushed open the door. “Stay here while I check things out.”
He heard her sharp intake of breath only moments before she lifted stricken eyes to his. “You don’t think—”
“I don’t know.” But he knew Titan, knew the man with a disgusting intimacy, even though he’d never laid eyes on the bastard. It galled him to know he could walk by him on the street and never even know it. The man was shadowy and elusive. There were those who claimed there was no Titan. It was all a myth. A twisted urban legend. A phantom evil created to blame for a trail of otherwise unsolvable crimes. The authorities’ way of saving face.
But Liam knew otherwise.
He knew, even if he had no proof.
Through Danielle, he stood to gather the evidence so many in the Bureau said didn’t exist. But he didn’t want to gather it at the expense of her son.
“Everything’s probably fine,” he told her, hating the lie, the horror darkening her eyes. “Just a precaution.”
He expected her to fight him, the way she’d done from the moment he’d walked into her life. But she didn’t. At least not fully. “I’ll go with you,” she said, stepping closer to him. “He’s my son. I can’t just stand here on the porch and wait, if there’s something inside to find.”
Liam wanted to argue with her, tell her it was best for her to wait outside. But ’t. Not when he knew the frustration and helplessness of being held back. Sometimes, when he couldn’t stay awake any longer, couldn’t resist the draw of sleep, his eyes would slide shut and his heart would start racing, and he’d be on the street again, the quiet, tree-lined boulevard in a sleepy Kansas City suburb. Running. God, he’d run so fast. The flames and smoke had drawn him.
It had taken four police officers to hold him back. He didn’t want to go in there, they’d said with a grim stoicism that still chilled Liam’s blood. Whatever there was to find, he needed to let the authorities find it, do their job.
He’d tried to shove past them, the need to see and find for himself burning hotter and brighter than the fire that claimed the house he and Kelly had never quite turned into a home. But he’d been just one man, and there’d been so many cops. They’d held him back, refused to listen to his demands. Even when Lennox had shown up, with his quiet skills of persuasion, the police had held their ground.
It was hours later, when the flames had cooled but the acrid smell of smoke lingered, when the dark of night was giving way to the first streaks of dawn, that he saw the body bag.
“Liam?”
He blinked and dragged himself out of the past to see Danielle staring up at him. Her eyes still looked alarmingly dark against the unnaturally pale skin of her face, but in them he didn’t see the stark horror of moments before, only a concern that reached inside of him and touched a place that hadn’t been broached in too many days and weeks and months to count.
“You’re right,” he barked, then took her hand and led her into the quiet house. Like the exterior, the interior was dark and still, cooled by the whisper of air-conditioning. It was a comfortable house, a surprising throwback to the seventies. Brown carpet covered the floor, dark paneling the walls. On the mantel sat a red lava lamp. He couldn’t see much of the kitchen from this small room, but the mushroom wallpaper and avocado-green refrigerator were impossible to miss.
The decor charmed him, even as he wondered why a woman like Danielle hadn’t taken advantage of the numerous design magazines and television shows to update her little house.
Only the television, sleek and large, hinted at the twenty-first century.
Sunlight streamed through the uncovered window overlooking the backyard. He looked from the denim sofa to the puzzle on the coffee table, the dirty sneakers and soccer ball abandoned by the door.
The scatter of pictures on the mantel stopped him cold.
There was Danielle, younger but just as striking, beaming from a wheelchair with a swaddled baby in her arms. A laughing Danielle flanked by a young man and woman whose dark hair and flashing eyes left no doubt that they were related. Another young man, this one with thick wavy hair the color of California sand, holding a little boy in his arms—a little boy who shared his eyes, his chin and his smile.
“We need to call your son’s father, let him know what happened.”
A stricken look moved into Danielle’s eyes. “He can’t help us.”
“Alex could be with him—”he color drained from her face. “He’s not.”
“We have to be sure.”
“I am,” she said with a hard note of finality. “It’s not even possible.”
Questions snaked through Liam, but he slipped his Glock from the shoulder holster and forced them back. His interest in Danielle pertained to her link to Titan. Not her family. Not the fact that no ring glittered from her left hand, or that she claimed it wasn’t possible for a son to be with his father.
“What is it?” Danielle asked, moving closer. The soft swell of her breast brushed his arm.
“Nothing.” The word came out gruffer than he’d intended. He glanced at her, saw her staring at the gun. “Just a precaution.”
She responded by pulling the Derringer from her purse.
The sight of this gutsy, exhausted woman standing by his side in a wash of morning sunlight, holding a gun and ready to face whatever unknown evil may be lurking in her house, pulled at Liam in a way he didn’t like. “You don’t need that.”
She checked the clip, then looked up at him and angled her chin. “He’s my son, Liam. Don’t tell me what I need.”
Fr
ustration tangled with admiration. He wanted to grab the gun from her hands and shove it in his holster, to sit her down on the sofa and demand that she wait until he could make sure the house was safe and she was safe, that no nasty surprises awaited in one of the bedrooms. But he couldn’t do that to her. Not when he saw the fierce glow of a survivor in her eyes. He didn’t know what this woman had been through, what she’d endured, but on a gut-deep level he knew asking her to take a back seat was like asking her to cut off her hands.
“Point taken,” he said on a low growl. Then he thought about the bedrooms, what could be awaiting them. A message from her son’s kidnapper, a warning, or worse. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”
A grim smile curved her lips. “Like trust a strange man with a gun?”
Liam just stared. He didn’t know how she did it, made him want to laugh when only moments before a dark dread had pulsed through him. Made him want to draw her against his body and put his mouth to hers, taste the smile that wasn’t supposed to affect him but did.
“Something like that,” he grumbled, then led her from the bright light of the family room and down a small hall. Three doors greeted him, all open. The first led to a bathroom, a narrow strip of linoleum with a basic white sink and toilet and shower curtain drawn open. Poppies, he noted. Bright splashes of red and blue and yellow tumbled over the crinkled plastic.
He knew what the next room would contain before he ever looked through the open door. Danielle’s body tensed as they drew close. Her breath caught. Apprehension bled through the bravado she had erected around her like body armor.
Chaos. That was his first impression. Utter, sheer, jubilant little-boy chaos. There were clothes strewn everywhere, another soccer ball, more tennis shoes and a race track cluttered with a mismatch of miniature stock cars. Books overflowed a set of shelves, and the bed, covered by wrinkled Spider-Man sheets an matching spread, looked like a disaster area.
“How old is he?”
