Never Coming Home

by Evonne Wareham

  She shivered and turned up the thermostat on the shower.

  Devlin sat on the end of the bed, his jeans and shirt over his knees, wondering what he’d done. He’d just given Kaz something out of his past. There were maybe three, four people who might remember, who went that far back with him, but he hadn’t seen any of them in years. It had only been a tiny shard he’d given her, but it was still his past. He’d offered it up, unadorned. And she’d accepted it. Strangest of all, he didn’t care that he’d done it. He’d wanted to. He welcomed her curiosity. He just hadn’t expected … that.

  With most women, and there hadn’t been that many, it was the scars. She’d seen them, too. Even with his eyes closed, the heat of her exploration had prickled his skin. It had made him feel vaguely ashamed, as if he ought to cover himself. But she hadn’t asked about them, and she hadn’t run.

  She’d touched him. Not the scars, him. And she had asked, just a small question, and he had told her. And now he wanted to tell her it all. The whole sad, sorry mess that had been his life. Just pour it into her lap. He wasn’t going to. But he wanted to. Looking for what? Absolution? Understanding?

  A small sound from the bathroom made him turn that way. Kaz hadn’t shut the door properly. He could see her, standing under the spray. Sated and satisfied to the last atom of his being, he could just watch her and enjoy the sight.

  Water ran down her body as she turned and twisted. A body he’d caressed, kissed. She was lovely. Not perfect. She wasn’t a girl and she’d borne a child. She was a woman. She was the woman. Devlin felt every muscle in his body melt into stillness

  He was in love with Katarina Elmore.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Bobby woke slowly.

  Cold, darkness, pain, thirst. The last bothered him the most. He was in bad shape. The most economical of movements revealed that he was handcuffed to some sort of pipe work. His shoulder and his upper arm throbbed when he was still, screamed when he moved. Or maybe that was him. Clamping his teeth, he got himself up into a sitting position. Then he just sat like that for a long time, while the sweat cooled and the pain eased back from excruciating.

  Christ, he wasn’t used to this. He’d been in worse places, with worse injuries, but he was just so unprepared. He had to focus. This was a kidnap. O’Hara had been a scam. Someone had set him up. He took a second to curse himself. Babes and mega bucks. Greed and stupidity. Reeled in the suckers every time. Then he pushed all that away. Unproductive and a waste of precious energy.

  He had to figure this out. He knew how. He couldn’t do much with who. Unless he was meant to die here of dehydration, he’d find out soon enough. Which would probably give him why. He spared a moment for that. Forewarned was forearmed. As armed as you could be, sitting on your ass in the dark, with your legs cold and your shoulder on fire.

  Anyone he and Devlin had pissed off lately? He leaned his head back, gingerly, to rest against the wall. No one. The guy from Wisconsin hadn’t much liked the accidental CCTV pictures of his golf partner teaching his wife the meaning of swing, but he wasn’t going to be doing this. Which meant it was something from the past. Shit.

  Fear flickered in his body and he squelched it. He’d got out of worse than this, and Dev was still out there. Thank Christ he was in Italy, or they’d both have been here, chained to a fucking pipe. Sooner or later Dev would come looking. Sooner, please God.

  Bobby opened his eyes. He hadn’t realised they were shut. Maybe he’d drifted a little. The only question he could do any work on was where. Where the hell was he? He couldn’t see much, but there was light of a sort, just ahead of him. A long, narrow strip. Coming under a door. So, the escape route was that way. Hah! Behind him, and under his buttocks, the wall and floor were icy. He could feel the cold seeping into the damaged shoulder, doing it no good at all. No point in going there.

  He explored with his good hand, stretching the fingers as far as he could. Smooth, cold and shiny – tiles. There was a familiar acrid smell, but it was faint, just teasing his nostrils. Urine. The uncomfortable fullness of his bladder told him that he hadn’t wet himself, so the smell was part of the regular ambiance.

  Put together with the pipes he was cuffed to, it gave him a bathroom. No – washroom, he decided. He could vaguely make out stalls beyond the door and sinks opposite. At a guess, he was tethered to the wall next to the urinals. The place was clammy but dry. No sound of any water. Disused? A washroom in the centre of a disused building? Old office block? The darkness made sense. This place would always have been lit artificially. Great. He was in an unused office block, somewhere in London. Did he know anyone who owned one, rented one? He dredged his memory, but there was nothing.

  He listened, concentrating. Was there any sound that wasn’t him breathing? Anything that would tell him something? There was a distant, periodic rumbling, that he could feel rather than hear, but it made no sense. Other than that, zilch.

  He held his breath and shifted his position slightly, easing the cramp that was threatening his right leg. He had to keep the uninjured bits of himself in working order. When whoever it was came back, if they moved him, then he would have his chance. He needed to be ready. He sifted the evidence, looking for patterns.

  Whoever had done this wasn’t too worried about damage but didn’t want him dead, or he’d never have made it this far. Comforting thought. He was useful alive. That was a bargaining chip. He needed all he could –

  Noise. He stiffened, wincing as pain shot down his arm and across his back. Fighting nausea, he held himself still. Footsteps. Outside.

  The door swung open and bounced off the wall. He couldn’t make out the figure silhouetted against the light that stabbed into his eyes.

  ‘Hello, Bobby. It is Bobby, now, isn’t it? Nice to see you. After so long.’ The soft drawl, with its distinctive lisp, curled into Bobby’s ears. Pain and nausea flared together. With miserable desperation he fought to control the muscles of his bladder. It was a very small victory.

  Was his voice going to work? He cleared his throat. ‘Hello, Luce.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Kaz folded her sunglasses and tucked them into the pocket of her jacket. An assortment of bags was lurching unevenly around the carousel. None of them was hers. Devlin’s carry-on was between his feet. His sunglasses were still in place, so she couldn’t see his eyes. He’d seemed – distracted – on the plane. Withdrawn. And being here in the airport was making her itch.

  She might as well ask the bloody question. ‘Are you going to be disappearing any time soon?’

  ‘Eh?’ Devlin swivelled towards her. What she could see of his face had a blank why-would-I-do-that? look. Impatient, she tipped his glasses out of the way. ‘Last time we did this, you walked away and never came back.’

  It took her a few seconds to decode his expression. Surprise. Followed by something. Uncertainty? Devlin?

  He gave her a twitch of the shoulders that wasn’t quite a shrug. ‘I didn’t think …’ She saw him swallow. ‘Because of me, you’d lost Jamie all over again. I didn’t think that you’d ever want to see me again. Getting the hell out seemed to be the best thing – I guess I called it wrong.’

  The soft uncoiling of relief surprised her. She hadn’t realised she’d been holding herself tight in anticipation. She splayed her hand on Devlin’s chest. Warm, firm, strong. And therefore dangerous. Oh, what the hell.

  ‘I never blamed you.’

  ‘I guess I thought you should.’ He put his hand up to cover hers. ‘You were hurting. I didn’t want to make that worse.’ The puzzled look in his eyes almost made her smile. ‘I didn’t know how to help, so maybe it was easier to go,’ he acknowledged softly. She could see it was a new thought.

  ‘If you need to leave any time, you just have to tell me.’

  She watched him blink. ‘Okay.’

  They sto
od for a moment. Something undecipherable hovered. Devlin’s mouth moved. Was he going to –?

  His eyes shifted. He pointed past her, to the rumbling carousel. ‘That’s your bag.’

  It was almost dark. Devlin looked up at the neat, well-kept house. The window boxes had been changed. The flowers now were smaller, pink and white, just coming out. With trailing stuff. Ivy. He knew that much.

  ‘You’re not coming in.’ Her voice was matter-of-fact.

  ‘Er. No.’ The pressure in his gut had started to gnaw again during the flight – for once nothing to do with the asshole who might be flying the plane. Now it was building higher. He needed to get somewhere alone and quiet, to look at the papers that Rossi had given him, that were just about setting fire to the bag at his feet. The patterns that were forming … He had to get it straight in his head, to make calls, and he couldn’t, wouldn’t, do that from Kaz’s house. He wasn’t going to bring all that into her home.

  And he needed to think. About … that thing he’d just discovered. Him and … her.

  ‘I’ll get a hotel.’

  There were circles under her eyes, but she was smiling. ‘You trying to protect my reputation, Devlin?’

  He summoned up an answering smile. ‘Something like that.’

  She didn’t push it, just turned her cheek into his chest, head under his chin, hugging. Which made him want to stay. This woman had all the weapons, even when she didn’t know she was using them. No bloody prisoners. Christ, he really had to deal with this, or the thumping of his heart was going to give him away.

  She raised her head, smiled, and turned his knees to water. ‘It probably won’t hurt either of us to get some sleep. I do have a business to run.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘My team is absolutely the best, but they’ve had to manage without me much too often these last few weeks.’ She flexed her shoulders, as if shaking off unwelcome memories.

  He frowned. ‘You going to call your mom, get her to come over?’

  Kaz shook her head. ‘I knew we’d be late. I told her I’d ring her in the morning.’ She tilted her head. ‘Will I see you tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’ He dropped his lips to her forehead, then let her go. ‘You will.’

  Kaz dumped her bag in the hall and wandered through the empty house, leafing through the post and checking on the health of her pot plants. Finally coming to rest in the kitchen, she brewed a mug of cherry-and-cinnamon tea and stood drinking it, eyes on the colourful drawings on the door of the fridge. Someday, soon, it would be time to take them down and store them away, but she wasn’t ready to do it yet.

  She turned to stare at her reflection in the glass of the window, sipping tea. Jamie was gone. For the second time. Her daughter would never run through the house laughing, chased by her grandmother in the guise of a wolf. Never kick her shoes across the room in a fit of temper. Never paint any more pictures to join the bright daubs that hung behind her.

  Kaz turned, touching the paintings with her fingers. Not daubs, there was real talent there. She swallowed down the tears that threatened. There was a time, however great the pain, when somehow you had to move on. Everything she’d had with Jeff was gone, as if it had never been. Her marriage and her daughter were just memories now. No more possibilities. But she still had years of her life left to live. Years that still might have something good in them. Tonight – she was bone tired, too tired to think, but the thoughts kept coming anyway.

  Was she ready to change?

  She’d had the strength to let Devlin go, to do whatever it was he needed to do tonight. If he came back …

  She sat down at the kitchen table. She wanted Devlin in her life. Especially in her bed. Even knowing that he’d been things, done things … things she didn’t want to hear about. Or maybe she did? Was it better to know? He’d said she could ask. If she didn’t ask would there be imaginings or would she be able to pretend none of it existed? What they had was powerful sexual attraction. Powerful sex. To hell with being a nice girl, that mattered.

  Devlin was possibly the most complicated human being she’d ever come across – except maybe her father. No, that’s wrong. Oliver likes to think he’s complex, but he’s only writing his own hype and believing it. Now where had that one come from? Kaz tilted her head. Dangerous ground here, kiddo, thinking about your father and your lover in the same sentence. She smiled. One thing Devlin wasn’t was a father figure. There was so much more to him than he gave out. She sensed that he was struggling with that himself. He cared about that child – Sally Ann. And he’d kept looking for stuff about Jamie, even after he’d left. So what was that about?

  Kaz drifted a finger down the mug. She trusted Devlin. The thought made her hesitate, but she faced up to it. She did trust him, but could she accept him? She’d have to take Devlin as he was, baggage and all, and accept that he would come and go in her life. That he might not always be there. Is that what you want?

  She had to be able to trust herself, too. To take whatever Devlin was offering, and not expect anything more.

  Kaz yawned. It was too late, and she was exhausted, which was probably why all this was oozing up now. She wasn’t going to resolve anything, sitting here.

  She crossed to the sink, rinsed her cup and left it on the draining board. At the door, with her hand on the light switch, she turned, for one last look at the pictures on the fridge. She would take them down. Soon. But now –

  Heart cracking, she raised her hand to blow a kiss. ‘Night-night, sweetheart.’

  Devlin stared down at the bank statement. The columns of figures blurred and danced. He wasn’t taking in any of it. Promises. Shit.

  They were starting to come much too easily when he was around Kaz. To her. To himself. He stared morosely at the cheap print hung over the bed, a mess of lines and circles. They called that art. He blotted it out by shutting his eyes.

  He shouldn’t have left. Maybe she was in danger. Maybe he should go back.

  He all but clambered off the bed. Hold it! You want to go because you want to be with her, you jerk. No pressure, just like breathing.

  The room had suddenly got very hot. He yanked impatiently at his collar. That little epiphany in another hotel room, a few hours ago – shit.

  What he was thinking had to be wrong. The smell of her, the touch of her, the feel of her – the woman was a great lay. The best. Absolutely. Why couldn’t his body just leave it at that? Why did there have to be all this extra, in his head and his heart? He didn’t know what the fuck love was for Christ’s sake, so how could he tell if this was the real deal? How could it be … oh Christ … how could he be thinking a word like love?

  It had to be just some overstretched hormone thing. Oh yeah, hormones that made him want to rip down the moon, and every last star, and hang them around her neck. Or get some magic, voodoo or something, that would give her her kid back. Christ, some hormones. Oh yeah, and while they were at it maybe they’d rip his own tongue out too, before he burdened her with all this.

  The woman had enough going on, without him dumping this on her. ‘So, hey babe, I’m the guy with no past – I’m not offering anything – except a CV that’s full of all the natural talents you could ever hope to avoid in your worst nightmares, but I’d be proud if you’d take my name – it’s not mine, by the way – I stopped using my real name a long time back.’

  Name. Marriage. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He gritted his teeth. The old values that his grandmother had hammered into him really were crawling out of the woodwork now. Love, fidelity, marriage. He scrambled off the bed, as if the coverlet was on fire.

  He needed alcohol.

  Three of the whisky miniatures from the mini bar lay in the glass, like so much poison. He put it down after one sip. His gut was squirming and there was an evil little voice in the back of his head telling him how much he wanted to feel like this. That the churning, aching, unsatis
fied need, that had nothing to do with lust, was something he wanted to be happening to him. Like how bloody twisted was that? Could you really enjoy tormenting yourself like this? Well yeah, you could. Like poking a half-healed wound, knowing it was going to hurt, but not being able to help yourself.

  He looked frantically round the room. If he still had his gun, he could put it to his head and just pull the trigger and that would be that.

  No.

  Abruptly the freewheeling stopped. Never that.

  Life was too damned precious, too easily thrown away. Sobered, he looked again at the whisky. He took a mouthful, then another, then set it to rest on the night stand. He would keep all this to himself. He would do for Kaz whatever needed doing, using whatever of his miserable talents that were required. God help him. To the extent of his worthless life, if it came to that.

  With the precision of long practice, he took the bundle of emotions he had let ride him, rolled them up and stuffed them into the back of his brain. With ruthless control, he forced himself to look at the heap of papers dumped on the pillow. Those from the package Rossi had given him and a few of his own, new stuff that he’d shoved in the bottom of his bag when he’d left Chicago for Dublin. About half-a-century ago. He hauled in a breath. Dublin. In the morning he had to track Bobby down and fix that. Right now …

  Starting the familiar rhythm, the professional machine took over as he sorted and sifted the papers into piles across the bed.

  Bank statements, phone accounts. If Elmore had come into serious money, where had it come from? Was all of it from an insurance payment? Was any of it? There were phone calls, three in particular, that caught Devlin’s interest. One was to a number that Devlin recognised. One, when he checked with the service provider, was to a defunct cell phone. And then there was the last one, on the morning that Jeff had died.