by Jenna Mills
A protest rose to her throat, but she bit it back. Now was not the time to engage in a battle of wills.
Shooting him a sharp, sideways glance, she took her place at the table and stabbed her fork into the egg, brought the bite to her mouth. “Why me?” she asked, chewing, refusing to acknowledge the growl low in her stomach. “Why Alex?”
For such a tall, shadow-shrouded man, he looked jarringly comfortable in her kitchen. He made up his own plate then strolled toward her. “I got a tip.”
She brought a piece of bacon to her mouth. “A tip?” The thought chilled. “About Alex?”
“About you.” He sat across from her and picked up a quart of orange juice he must have put on the table before she’d joined him. “In my hotel room in New York.”
Danielle watched him pour, watched him bring the glass to his mouth. His hands were big and strong, his fingers wide, making her wonder how he could hold such a dainty glass without shattering it to bits. “I don’t understand.”
He set down the glass, now empty, and met her eyes with his own. “Neither do I.”
The admission surprised her. She was used to those in authority clinging tightly to the reins of control, never admitting when they were wrong, when they didn’t know something. “What did the tip say?”
He gestured toward her plate. “Eat.”
She glared at him, but when he just kept watching her through those penetrating eyes, she picked up her fork and brought another bite to her mouth.
His gaze never left her face. “Do you do drugs?”
Her fork clattered to the table. “Excuse me?”
“Drugs,” he said again. “Marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, the basic street stuff.” He rattled off the list as if they were discussing a shopping list of fruits and vegetables. “Do you dabble?”
Everything inside of her went tight. Memories flashed of a subculture that consumed everyone who stepped t
She’d never stepped too close.
Because of Jeremy. He’d intervened before she and Elizabeth and Anthony had been absorbed by the anonymous streets on which they’d once lived. But later, when they were older, there’d been those times when Jeremy had sent them back onto those streets, and she’d realized, starkly and horribly, how close she and her siblings had come to never making it out.
“I’m a mother,” she said, working hard to keep the grinding emotion from her voice. “I have a child who depends on me.”
Liam poured more orange juice. “What about before Alex was born?”
“What kind of woman do you think I am?”
Slowly Liam lifted his eyes to hers. “I have no idea what kind of woman you are.” His gaze flitted down her face to her mouth, lower still, along her neck, to her chest, covered by the ratty Philadelphia Eagles shirt, making her grateful she’d not slipped into her robe.
Abruptly he looked back up. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
Heat rushed through her, as unexpected as it was unwanted. “I don’t do drugs,” she said coldly. “Not now, not ever.”
The lines of his face, hard and unreadable moments before, softened. “I didn’t think so,” he said, and even his voice was softer. “But I had to be sure.”
She sat there, breathing deeply, wondering how this man could jerk her emotions around so easily. The Gypsy blood she’d inherited from her mother didn’t require much provocation to flame, but this man seemed especially skilled.
“What about Europe?” he asked. “Know anyone there?”
She blinked. From drugs to over the pond in under three seconds. “No.”
He took another sip of orange juice. “Ever been?”
She watched him swallow, saw his throat work. “No, but—” Another memory washed over her, this one sweet but fractured, hazy, not quite in focus. The music, lively and joyful. The colors, bright and vivid.
“But what?”
Emotion surged through her, despite the passing of twenty-eight years. It had never made sense to her that she could mourn something she’d never really known, didn’t fully remember. “When I was a little girl, I used to dream of going to Romania.”
“Romania?”
She indulged a small smile of memory. “Not quite what you were expecting?”
He brought a piece of toast to his mouth. “Hardly.” She hadn’t thought it possible, but the corner of his mouth tilted up in something oddly close to a smile. Rusty, but a smile all the same. “Got some kind of latent vampire fantasy?”
Her breath caught. “Not vampire,” she said, fighting the ridiculous urge to lift a hand to her neck and ward off an invisible attack. Across the table, he wasn’t close enough to touch, much less bite. “Gypsy
Just saying the word filled her with warmth and regret.
“Ah.” It was more sound than word. “Now it makes sense. The hair, the coloring…” His eyes glimmered like black diamonds. “The temper.”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed. It was a quick lapse, a burst of emotion and memory. She had a temper, that was true. Like fire, Jeremy had always teased, quick and volatile and prone to flare out of control.
But it was nothing compared to her brother’s.
A quick stab of guilt killed the moment, because her son was missing, and this man, this FBI agent, had coaxed a laugh from her.
“My mother’s from there.” The heaviness to her heart returned, thicker and more constricting, like a wet wool coat ten sizes too small and shrinking. “She immigrated to the States a few years before I was born.”
The sun glinted in from the window, playing with the highlights in Liam’s hair and drawing her attention to the whiskers along his jaw. But the shadows she sensed about him, the dark aura that consumed him, deepened. He was quiet a moment, but she could see his mind working, see him chewing on what she’d said as thoroughly as he’d chewed his breakfast.
“It’s a possibility,” he muttered after a few tense moments. Then he met her gaze. “I’d like to talk to her.”
“So would I.” The words slipped free before she could stop them, followed by a quick slice of emotion. It had been twenty-eight years, but sometimes the wound gaped as raw and fresh as though the murder had just happened. “But she’s dead.”
Liam winced. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she lied. It took effort, but she kept her voice level. “I was young.” Three years old. “I barely remember her.” She felt her, more, alone in her bed at night, in the whisper of the breeze. “Just vague impressions of stories from the old country, the old ways.” The bright flashing eyes and thick raven hair, the loud vibrant music, bright colors and festive clothes. The laughter. The love.
“That’s why you wanted to go to Romania.”
It was a statement, not a question. “Sentimental journey,” she acknowledged. But then Alex had been born, and Ty had died, and things like sentiment and dreams had quit meaning anything.
Because it hurt to remember, she shoved everything back under the heavy carpet of her mind. “Drugs, Europe, what does all this have to do with Alex?”
Frowning, Liam looked at the scraps of fried egg still on his plate, but didn’t lift his fork. “Does the name Titan Syndicate mean anything to you?”
A chill whispered down the back of her neck, along her spine. “Should it?”
He sat close enough to reach out and touch, just across the old farmhouse table she’d found at a garage sale, but the few feet separating them elongated, gouging out a distance of time and space. He never moved, but as she watched him, his expression, the tight lines of his big body, she saw him travel far, far a
“It’s a European-based organization,” he said in a low, tense voice, and she was suddenly glad he no longer held a glass of orange juice. He would have shattered it, and the shards would have cut to the bone.
But even without the cuts, this man bled. “Vague, elusive, linked to black-market drug deals.”
“And that’s why you asked if I did drugs?”
“Tit
an deals in the big-time. He moves in elite circles. Politicians, old money, fallen royalty… There was even talk of an alliance with the Rebelian dictator DeBruzkya.”
Her blood ran cold. She’d heard about DeBruzkya, his thirst for blood, his hunger for power. He’d been linked to the World Bank heist several years back that had nearly destroyed the American economic system.
“What would someone like that want with my son?”
Liam’s eyes met hers. “I don’t think he wants your son,” he said calmly. “I think he wants you.”
She tried not to wince. She tried to be just as impassive and matter-of-fact as he was. But her heart leaped and her breath caught, and there was no way she could just sit there calmly while he speculated that a European criminal mastermind had designs on her.
“That’s ridiculous.” The legs of her chair scraped against the linoleum as she surged to her feet. “I’m nobody.”
Now it was Liam’s turn to wince. He stood and stepped toward her. “Not true,” he said, and before she realized his intent, he was around the table and lifting a hand to her face. “Everyone is somebody.”
She tried to breathe but couldn’t. Tried to step back but couldn’t. The counter blocked her. “That’s not what I meant,” she said, but his eyes, so deep and dark and all-knowing, weren’t so quick to let her off the hook. “All I meant was there’s no reason a man like that would want me.”
His gaze heated. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” he muttered. “Maybe he saw you somewhere. At the hotel. The Stirling does a strong international business, doesn’t it? Maybe he liked what he saw.”
Denial vaulted through her. Disgust chased close behind. “You think my son has been kidnapped because some sicko saw me—” The words jammed in her throat. Her heart jammed in her chest. The room started to spin. “Oh my God.”
Liam took her by the shoulders, held her, those big strong hands of his bracing her against the memory, but the room, the world, wouldn’t slow down. Wouldn’t focus.
Crazy. It was so crazy.
“Danielle.” His voice, low and strong and sure, was an anchor.
She grabbed for it, held on tight. “There was a man,” she whispered, and the memory almost sent her to her knees. But Liam was holding her, and instinctively she knew he would not let her fall. “At the hotel.”
A hard sound broke from his throat. “Tell me.”
She closed her eyes anused on the evening barely a week before. The tall, salt-and pepper-haired man with the graying goatee. The vague, cutting sense of familiarity. She’d felt him before she’d seen him, the old awareness she’d quit listening to surging with renewed force. There’d been a tingle within her, a rip. Something not quite right. “He was…watching me.”
“Christ.” Liam’s grip on her tightened. “At the hotel?”
Numbly, she nodded. “Last…Wednesday, I think.”
“Did you talk to him?”
She could still see him, dressed in a European-cut black suit, a swagger to his walk. “He had an accent,” she murmured, unable to break the trancelike state of her voice. Her mind. “He…” She gulped in a deep breath, drew in the forgotten scent of man. “He had an accent.”
A vicious curse echoed through the kitchen.
“He asked me out,” she said, looking into Liam’s eyes, not understanding what she saw. Interest, yes. Concern. But there was a hunger there, as well. A complex hunger she didn’t understand, which stirred her blood. “He was very persuasive.”
“Did you go?”
She met his gaze. “After I got off, he was waiting in the lobby. He—” Horror kicked in with the memory. “He offered me a drink.” She’d stood there, acutely aware of her co-worker’s amused interest, staring at the benign-looking drink in his hand. Tonic and lime, he’d said. Her favorite.
And it was.
“I didn’t take it,” she whispered. Lucky, lucky, lucky. The long-ago childhood chorus, the one Liz and Anthony had always harassed her with, ran through her mind like a warped record. “I don’t know why.”
But that was a lie, and she knew it. She hadn’t taken the drink because of the hum deep inside, low, insistent, persuasive.
“Thank God,” Liam muttered, then stunned her by lifting a hand to her face. “It was probably drugged.”
She absorbed the words, the implication. “You think it was him.”
“I’d bet my life on it.” His eyes, so dark and unreadable moments before, suddenly glowed with life. “If it was, you can identify him.”
She stepped back from him. “No.”
“Yes, you can,” he went on, faster now, more intense. “Don’t you understand, Danielle? I’ve been hunting this man for years, but no one knows what he looks like. There’s a very real chance you could provide the first big break.”
She swallowed hard. “I can’t do that,” she said, backing away from him. “Not if he’s the one who has Alex.”
“When did he check out?” he asked, as though she’d never denied him.
“I don’t know. The next day he was just…gone.” Ruth had teased her incessantly about her mystery man with the charming, continental manners. “It was asd never been there to begin with.”
Liam scrubbed a hand over his face. “Danielle,” he said, and suddenly the brisk tone of the FBI agent was gone, replaced by a gentleness she didn’t want to hear. “I know you’re scared. You have every right to be. But playing Titan’s game isn’t going to bring Alex home.” He stepped toward her. “Only I can do that.”
She didn’t want to believe him. She didn’t want to admit he was right. But standing there in her small kitchen, with the sun spilling so cheerfully around them, the buzz started again, the hum deep inside, and she realized her choices were limited. She didn’t have Jeremy and Anthony anymore. They weren’t standing by, ready to fight, to defend—
The memory hit her hard and fast, almost sending her to her knees.
“Are you out of your mind?”
Danielle stared at her brother, so tall and strong and wounded, the green of his eyes flashing with a contempt that scorched deep, and felt her heart crack wide open.
“Maybe,” she whispered. “But it’s a chance I have to take.”
“I won’t let you,” he barked, as he always did when one of his sisters went against his wishes. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I’m a big girl,” she returned. She knew he loved her, but he didn’t understand. She couldn’t stay, not one second longer, not without being suffocated beyond repair. “I can take care of myself—and my son.”
“You think so?” His voice was acrid now, nasty. “You think you can just walk away from what we’ve been doing? What if someone finds you?” He stepped close and lifted his arms to her as though he meant to grab her, but at the last minute he exhaled roughly and let them fall to his sides. “What if someone discovers you broke away? What if someone finds out where you are? What if someone decides to use you to punish us all?”
“Danielle?” Liam’s voice broke the memory, but the sick feeling lingered. “What is it? Did you remember something else?”
She looked up at him, saw the ferocity of his gaze and wanted to tell him. Wanted him to know. To help. But this was her battle. What she and her siblings had done, the potential consequences, had nothing to do with the FBI or Liam Brooks or some power-starved lunatic in Europe.
“Just thinking,” she said, not lying. Not really. The possibilities kept roiling through her. She and Anthony and Liz had made their share of enemies over the years. Some of them were bound to be out of jail by now. Many of them had sworn revenge.
He touched her again, a hand to her face, a quick slide of damp hair behind her ears. “You look ready to drop.”
She looked up at him and felt her throat go tight. “You don’t look so good yourself,” she said with a strained smile, but that was a lie. He looked exhausted, but on him the signs of strain and exhaustion only heightened his masculinity. His eyes gleamed darker. The lines of
his face were sharper. The whiskers at his jaw made his mouth look softer. The wrinkles in his shirt destroyed that aura of imperviousness about him and made him seem totally, dangerously approachable.
She wanted to touch him, too.
“You should go,” she said, ripping away from him. “Sleep would help us both.”
He didn’t move at first, just stood there and watched her, his gaze lingering on her face and making her heart thrum a darkly erotic rhythm. The longing blasted in from nowhere and streamed thickly through her blood. The desire to ask him to stay, to let him help. Because he could, she knew on some instinctive level. This man was like a big, strong, gorgeous dog with a bone. A Great Dane, maybe.
Once he staked a claim, made a promise, he didn’t back down.
So long, she thought with a stab to her heart. It had been so long since she’d let anyone close. Let anyone help. What would it feel like to have those arms of his close around her and hold on tight, to feel the vibration in his chest as he promised her everything would be okay? That he would make it okay, through sheer force of will alone?
“I’ll…I’ll call you if I remember anything else.”
His eyes darkened, gleamed like black diamonds in the rough. “You’re not alone anymore, Danielle,” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse and raw, tired. “I’m here now.” As though to prove his point, he spread his hand along her jaw, slid his fingers up against the side of her face. “You’ve got to trust me, work with me. Lean on me.”
The words did cruel, cruel things to her resolve. Outside the kitchen window, the old air conditioner rattled noisily, but rather than fill the sunny kitchen with cool air, the oxygen was being sucked out, molecule by painful molecule.
Why, she wanted to ask, but refused to let the question slip past. Yes, Liam had said he wanted to bring her son home, and she believed him, but she also knew she and Alex were just a means to an end. Something else drove this man, chased him. He wanted something, needed something, that extended far beyond bringing home a little boy he’d never even met.
What would it take, she wondered fleetingly. What would it take to chase the shadows from this man’s eyes?
