by Rita Herron
“Tell me, Damon. Please.”
His clipped nod wasn’t comforting. “You traveled with your father, taught English in Mexico.”
Yes, that was right. No wonder she had connected to little Maria. She was a teacher of sorts.
“Tell me more.”
“That’s all I know so far.”
She stood, gripped Damon’s arm. “Don’t lie to me, Damon. I have to know the truth. What caused my father’s car to explode?” She hesitated, then forged on, her chest tight with pain. “Why do I feel like I’m somehow my father’s killer? Did I see the man do it? Was I involved with him?” Her voice choked. “Am I responsible for my father’s death?”
* * *
DAMON BATTLED THE WAR raging in his body. Part of him wanted to comfort Jacqueline, hold her, tell her no, absolutely not, there was no way she could be involved in any way in her father’s murder.
He knew she couldn’t have hurt one of her parents. She didn’t have a mean bone in her body, only a loving heart that beckoned him to help her, a heart that was quickly stealing his own….
Dammit, he should have kept his resolve not to become involved with her. She was the kind of woman who could rob a man’s sanity. The kind of woman that tempted him to bury himself inside her until he couldn’t find his way out.
The kind who ignited his desire to be a better man. To be the hero that his family and the town thought him already.
Even Jean-Paul didn’t know the truth about what he had been.
So many secrets…Tell and you die.
The brotherhood of the E-team had lived by that code. To tell Jacqueline the entire truth about her injuries, about Bolton, he’d have to break that code.
An impossible situation. Doing so would endanger others’ lives. Jeopardize important government missions.
If she had been involved with Diego in any way, if she had known of his plans for her father, then she was an accomplice to murder. No, he couldn’t believe she was involved. The guy must have seduced her, tricked her, used her….
Then again, she might have been different before, might have agreed with Diego’s tactics. Would she revert when her memory returned?
“Damon?” Her voice quivered with nerves.
“I don’t have all the answers,” he said. He had to protect his family, the E-team. And his heart from her.
She sank back down into the hard metal chair and rubbed her temple.
“Maybe seeing your mother will trigger more memories,” Jean-Paul offered in a sympathetic voice.
“Will you take me to visit her, Damon?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yes, of course, but first I want to find out more about your father’s accident. Give me a few minutes to make some calls, see if the feds know anything.”
She nodded, her trusting look wrenching his gut. He was lying now. The feds knew very little because the E-team had covered up Diego’s murder, as well as all the evidence they had about the man’s crimes, that he might have killed the ambassador. All they knew was that Diego had died.
But there was someone he could call about Jacqueline. His fellow E-team members. Cal and Max had been in the house, had seen the woman and assured him she was dead. Why would one of his friends have lied?
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said. “Try not to worry, Jacqueline. We’ll get to the truth.”
He and Jean-Paul left the office at the same time.
“I’ll check on Antwaun,” Jean-Paul said. “Tell him we’re working on the case, that it’s moving along.”
Not fast enough for any of them, Damon wanted to say. Especially for Antwaun. He must be going crazy inside, feeling helpless, angry.
Jean-Paul frowned. “I also may have a lead on the dirty cop.”
Hope lurched in Damon’s chest. “Who? Smith?”
“I don’t want to say yet, in case I’m wrong. But I’ll fill you in as soon as I know for sure.”
They parted, and Damon stepped onto the blistering hot sidewalk for privacy and punched in Max’s number, but he didn’t respond, so he dialed Cal’s, a knot in his throat. While he waited on his old buddy to answer, he prayed that Jacqueline wouldn’t know Diego. That she really was as innocent as he thought.
Cal’s raspy voice came over the line—his vocal cords had been damaged in a bombing in Kuwait, leaving him with a permanent smoker’s voice. “Dubois, good to hear from you. Have you decided to come back to the team?”
Damon shifted. Cal and Max had been furious when Damon had turned FBI. He’d also taken the E-team to a different level when he and Max had gotten out of the service. Now they conducted missions on their own, private contract work for the government that no one claimed to know anything about.
“No, Cal. But listen, I have some questions for you.”
“Any way I can help you, buddy. All you gotta do is ask.”
Damon sighed. “I guess you read about my brother Antwaun’s arrest.”
“Yeah, he guilty or what?”
“No, he’s not guilty,” Damon snapped. “Someone’s trying to set him up.”
“Whatever you say, man.”
“I’ve been investigating the murder of the reporter he’s accused of killing,” Damon continued, biting back a barbed reply. “And it’s led me down some interesting paths.”
“Yeah?”
He explained about Kendra’s mother’s murder, the photos of the original Mutilator’s victims, and his trip to see Dr. Pace. Finally, he wound back to Jacqueline and explained how he’d traced her identity, and that Jacqueline was Ambassador Braudaway’s daughter.
“We always wondered if Diego had help on the inside,” Cal said with a curse. “Must have been screwing the man’s daughter.”
Damon gritted his teeth at the very idea that the vile man had touched Jacqueline. Yet he had to know. “It’s possible, I suppose. She lost her memory and she’s been in the hospital for months.” He paused, letting the information register with Cal.
Damon gripped the phone, knowing he walked a fine line. Exposing Jacqueline as the woman who might have info on Diego and their mission was dangerous to both him and Cal. If she remembered, and if she’d seen them, she could blow their secret group all to hell.
Leave no witnesses behind.
And if Jacqueline had been the woman in the explosion he’d set, Max or Cal or a newer member of the team, might feel the need to off her.
“What are you implying, Dubois? That this Braudaway chick was the one in the fire with Diego that day? That she survived?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Goddamn it, Dubois. That’s impossible. I told you the woman was dead.”
Right. Damon closed his eyes, trying to remember that fatal day, the one he’d been trying so hard to forget. He’d panicked when he’d realized a woman was inside the house, had tried to abort the mission, had tried to run in and save her, but Max had dragged him away. He would never have left a potential witness behind. If he’d found the woman breathing, he’d have killed her himself.
“Maybe Bolton had another girl on the side besides Braudaway’s daughter,” Cal suggested. “There’s no way the one in the house survived. I stayed and watched the building crumble to ashes.”
The thunderous roar of the house crashing around them echoed in Damon’s head as if it had happened yesterday. The wood splintering, glass shattering, flames shooting up in the sky. The burning embers. He’d watched, too. No woman had crawled out….
Although, God knows how many times he’d prayed that she had.
“You’re probably right.” Damon kicked at the weeds choking the crack in the sidewalk. He must be trying to convince himself that Jacqueline was that woman to assuage his guilt.
Still, the instincts that had kept him alive during the most dangerous of his missions niggled at him—he’d show Jacqueline a photo of Diego Bolton, see if she recognized him.
Find out for sure if she and Diego had been involved. If she was the woman in the fire with him, that d
amn baby rattle had belonged to her. Which meant that not only had she been involved with the assassin, she might have been carrying his child.
A child he’d killed as well.
* * *
LEX VAN WORMER STROLLED the halls of the hospital, struggling for enough energy to give his spiritual form physicality. He understood some spirits could move things, touch surfaces, create noise. He wanted that gift, that power so he could stop Pace from scheming to hurt Crystal and Dubois.
Pace was insane. Lex had heard him mutter that if he couldn’t have Crystal, no one would.
Lex had to protect her. Let her and Dubois know that Pace had lied…
Frustration filled him as he remembered the virile soldier he once had been.
A warrior who’d wielded a machete, a machine gun—what he could do with even a goddamn switchblade, if needed. Now he was not only dead but fucking helpless.
He shouted in rage and went to pound at the door with balled fists, but his hands slid through the wood and no sound came from his mouth. Instead, flaky, dry, dead skin fell from his hands and arms like ashes.
He screamed again, knowing that if he was alive, blood might spurt from his cracked skin as he clawed at the wooden door. Dying was worse than he’d expected. It should have brought relief from the unbearable pain of his skin affliction, but a different raw emotional pain had replaced it.
Yet he clung to the gray realm anyway, that invisible bridge between the worlds that left him in limbo. Still in pain, not quite dead, not quite living.
Granted, he deserved this punishment. He’d inflicted suffering on others more times than he wanted to remember, but had justified his actions through the notion of war. He was a soldier for the good and well-being of others.
His one downfall had not been his conscience. Not like Dubois who’d been haunted by the vile evil of their justified murders.
No, his downfall had been the fact that he’d trusted his own men, the secret soldiers of the E-team. Now, the fiery gates of the world below had a burning stake with his name on it. But a sliver of hope for redemption had stolen into the darkness. Crystal. In the dead zone, she had floated from her earthly body for a bit and they connected in the spiritual realm.
If he had still been alive, he’d have thought she was his soul mate.
Yet his time had already ended, the life had been sucked from him in agonizing currents caused by the chemical that had eaten away his surface. And now as his body lay in the casket six feet under, his flesh was rotting away. Sliding off the bone and crumbling to dirt and ashes.
Yet God had granted him a reprieve by allowing Crystal to see him, which had given him a chance for redemption. He had completed part of his mission. He had kept Crystal alive in her darkest hours. His voice, his encouragement, his whispers that she had hope of loved ones waiting on her had helped her fight for her life. Keeping Crystal alive and helping her find her soul mate was the only way he could redeem his own soul, and avoid burning in hell with Satan for eternity.
Now she was gone, and her fate lay in Dubois’s hands.
But what if Dubois failed?
Lex had to find a way to help him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DAMON’S PALMS FELT SWEATY as he clutched the photo of Diego in his hands. Curses sputtered off his tongue as he mentally reviewed the heinous crimes the man had been responsible for. Not only men’s lives taken, but innocent women and children’s, and more than once. Diego had dropped a bomb in a village near Beirut and killed thousands. Then he’d wiped out an orphanage in China as a vendetta against one of his enemies. He’d also instigated a plan to attack numerous schools in the States just to remind the Americans of the power of terrorism and the vulnerability of their state. Thankfully, the E-team had intercepted those last plans and thwarted the plot.
The thought that Crystal—Jacqueline—had been involved with a man as coldhearted as Diego, that she might have slept with him, fueled Damon’s rage.
The fact that she might have known who Diego was and what he did and had supported him, even loved him, turned Damon’s stomach.
No—it was impossible that she’d known the truth about Diego. Jacqueline would not hurt anyone. She had volunteered in Third World countries, had taught kids in need. She could never harm a soul.
She triggered every protective instinct in him, every yearning to be better himself, every desire to be her hero and have the life with her that he could never have.
Because of who he’d been in the past.
He dropped his face into his hands. For God’s sake, she might be the woman he thought he’d killed. Might have been burned and undergone months of mental and physical pain, surgeries and rehab therapy because of him.
If she knew, she’d hate him.
Steeling himself against his guilt, and the emotions and desire Jacqueline unleashed in him, he strode back in the room. Her pale green eyes searched his, the strain of remembering that her father had died a horrible death evident in her tightly set mouth.
He reined in the need to go to her and kiss those lips until they were soft and pliant against his, until she relaxed and forgot about her grief and could only feel the pleasure he would give her. Pleasure that would never end as his fingers massaged and teased her sensitive skin, as his lips glided against her mouth, neck, breasts, and her hidden secrets. Pleasure from their bodies joining together until both of their nightmares disappeared forever, until they were fused together as one—
“Damon?”
He forced himself to place the picture on the desk. “This is a photo of Diego Bolton. Do you recognize him?”
Jacqueline bit down on her lip and looked at the photograph as Damon described the man’s dossier.
Diego Bolton was a terrorist who killed countless innocents. Silently, Damon added that Diego was a different breed of hired killer than the men of the E-team. Even though they’d used violence as their means, they had fought for justice, to protect the citizens. Diego had no affiliations with any group that wanted justice. No conscience at all.
A strangled sound suddenly escaped her. “God…” Then she clutched her stomach, ran from the office and down the hall.
Damon followed, but paused at the door to the ladies’ room.
Her choked sobs and the sound of her violent retching came through the closed door, giving him his answers.
* * *
JACQUELINE DROPPED HER HEAD against her arms atop the toilet lid, sobs wracking her body. She’d lost the contents of her stomach but still roiled with nausea.
The man in the photograph—she had known him.
A series of brief flashes invaded the dark spaces in her mind like lightning strikes splitting a cloudy sky. A mental picture of her dancing with Diego Bolton at a ritzy party. Then one of her lying beside him in bed, kissing him, letting him touch her body.
Then a feeling of dawning horror that he was not the man he’d portrayed himself to be. Hints here and there that he might be violent. His hand gripping her arm too tightly. Photos of Diego with suspected terrorists.
The camera in her mind rolled forward in fast motion. Kendra…Kendra meeting her in private. Telling her that she suspected Diego might be trouble, that he might be using her to get to her father. Dear God, had he? And if so, why? Where was Diego now?
“Jacqueline?”
Damon’s gruff voice sounded through the closed door. Jacqueline couldn’t face him yet.
“Are you all right?”
She swallowed, struggling to pull herself together. “Yes. Please, give me a minute.”
Heaving to steady the nausea still rising in her chest, she dragged her weary body up and shuffled from the stall to the sink. She leaned against it, splashed cold water on her face, dampened a paper towel and pressed it to the back of her clammy neck, then rinsed out her mouth and retrieved a breath mint from her purse. She stared into the mirror at her face.
Rather, the face of her cousin.
Like a camera out of focus, the picture b
led from Kendra’s face to her old one, then blurred somewhere in between.
“Kendra…Oh, God, what did I do?” She lifted her fingers and traced over the delicate new skin, more tears welling in her eyes, blurring her image, yet the face of her cousin still shone through. A strong face that had belonged to a brave, gutsy woman.
A woman who’d been on the verge of exposing a dirty cop and Swafford.
And Diego, her lover.
Why had Kendra needed to die?
Why not her? And how had she wound up with Dr. Pace, a man who’d later stolen her cousin’s skin and given it to her?
The fact that Kendra had questioned her about Diego and that Kendra had been murdered seemed too much of a coincidence.
Her lungs constricted.
Wasn’t she somehow responsible for her cousin’s death?
Guilt clouded her vision again, and the image of her own face returned to float in front of the mirror. Like a slide show of the past, a glimpse of her and Kendra at age five wearing fuzzy bathrobes standing before a Christmas tree, holding identical baby dolls. Another snippet of them playing tea party when they were six. Then making mud pies in the woods. Stringing beads to make friendship bracelets. And later, as teens, when they’d joined a mission trip to Africa together. Kendra taking notes in her journal, talking about investigative reporting. Her collecting information on the schools and the needs of the children.
Then a frame of her and Kendra beside her father’s coffin.
Cousins linked now by a common face and the horror that had ended Kendra’s life.
Jacqueline’s throat clogged. How could she live like this? How could she go on wearing Kendra’s face while her cousin lay in the ground, her life stolen?
She trembled; grief, guilt, fear, anger colliding in a firestorm of determination. If she had caused Kendra’s death, she didn’t deserve happiness for herself. But she would find out who had killed her cousin if it was the last thing she ever did.
And she’d make sure the killer rotted in jail for the savage violence he had inflicted on her cousin and aunt.
* * *
