“Oh.”
“I could have looked into it and called in a few favors. But I didn’t. I was hoping you would come talk to me about it on your own.”
“I prefer to put it behind me.”
“You were discharged?”
“Honorably.”
“But it wasn’t your choice.”
I inclined my head slightly. “They gave me an option. Said I could stay in the Marines, but I’d have to take an administrative job. They couldn’t clear me for combat. And I couldn’t do that.”
“Why wouldn’t they clear you?”
I was a fucking mess, but I didn’t want to say that to him. I glanced at him, reminding myself that David was my boss. He held my future employment in the palm of his hand.
“There was an incident. A village was attacked by ISIS rebels. My unit was destroyed, the villagers killed. I was the only survivor, completely unharmed in the fight by some miracle. I…I didn’t handle it well.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I wasn’t depressed or anything, just a little screwed up in the head for a while. But I’ve worked all that out with the help of the psychiatrists at the hospital in Germany.”
“That’s good.”
David was quiet for a moment, staring out the windshield. “You ended your engagement after it happened?”
He clearly had heard Caryn and me talking about it. “I did.”
David fell silent again, rubbing the top of his head with both hands. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, checked the screen for anything he might have missed in the full minute since he last checked it. I’d almost forgotten that his ladylove, his wife, was still in the hospital, receiving antibiotics for her kidney infection. I felt a little bad for pulling him away from that, but it had been his choice to come along with me today.
“My father was in politics my entire life,” he said almost to himself. “He was a state senator, working diligently to make Texas the kind of state he could be proud to live in. Then he set his sight on the country as a whole, running for Congress after my brother and I were grown and had gone off on our own. Ash was in the military. I was working in Los Angeles with the FBI. It seemed the perfect time to him, I suppose. He wouldn’t have to uproot our lives then.
“On the night of the election, my brother was supposed to fly in and be with the family, but he was delayed. It was just me and my parents in the hotel room after the final tally came in. He’d won. There was champagne and booze flowing freely, enough celebrating going around to knock out a camel. We should have stayed in the hotel room. We should have been smart enough to see that it was the right thing to do, but Dad wanted to wake in his own bed the next morning, the newly elected congressman from Texas.”
I’d heard rumors. I knew that David’s parents were killed in a car crash. I was smart enough to see where this was going. And I was right. Partially.
“It was cold that night. I was driving and my dad, he was very excited. He was talking a mile a minute, telling me how to drive while explaining how he was going to change the world. We hit a patch of black ice—a rare thing here in November. The car rolled. Both my parents were killed and I was left in a wheelchair because of damage to my spine. They told me they could remove the bone fragments that were pressing against the spine, that they could help me walk again. But I didn’t want it.”
“Why not?”
David shrugged. “I was driving the car. It was my fault both my parents were dead.”
“But it was an accident.”
“It was. I knew that, but I couldn’t help but take all the guilt on my own shoulders. If I’d insisted that we stay in the hotel that night, if I hadn’t allowed my father to distract me, if we hadn’t hit that damn ice…but the truth was, I was behind the wheel. I couldn’t get past that.”
“But you had the surgery.”
“I met Ricki and realized I wasn’t much good to her in a wheelchair.”
I couldn’t imagine David in a wheelchair. I also couldn’t imagine a man choosing to be in a wheelchair when he had another option. I liked my legs. I wouldn’t give them up just because I felt bad about something that had happened.
“You gave up a lot when you walked away from your fiancée.”
I glanced at him, seeing where he was going with this.
“It isn’t the same. I just realized that I’d changed.”
“No, you pushed her and your father away because you felt guilty for what happened. But just like my accident, it wasn’t your fault.”
“It was my idea to hit the village. It was my idea that brought them there.”
“But you had no way of knowing that you’d been set up.”
He knew. He’d investigated it despite saying he hadn’t. I gripped the wheel a little harder.
“I changed. I wasn’t the man Caryn had signed up to marry.”
“But you never gave her a chance to get to know the new you.”
“I’m not good for her. She deserves better.”
“And Pepper? What does she deserve?”
That was the question, wasn’t it?
I’d looked at Caryn and saw the same girl I met in high school when my dad finally settled down to one place. I saw the girl who befriended me before anyone else would even talk to me, the girl who stood by me when I made a fool of myself with all those cheerleaders. She was the girl who told me she loved me on the day I signed up to join the Marines, the girl who assured me she could wait for me. The girl I’d made all those plans with.
But it wasn’t the same. I didn’t feel the same when I looked at her.
“This thing with Pepper is new, but it already feels so much different than things had with Caryn. I can’t really explain it, but…I care about her. I want to find her. I want to do things right with her.”
“But you have to deal with your past before you can move on to the future.”
“I know.”
“And so does she.”
I glanced at him. “What do you know about her?”
David just shook his head. “You both have baggage. You have to work it out.”
“We have to find her.”
“There’s that, too.”
I was determined to find her. I would find her. And we would be together no matter what baggage we had. When I was with her, I felt human again. I felt like I had a right to be happy again. I didn’t want to give that up.
Chapter 24
Pepper
He dragged me into the house with his hand on my upper arm. I remembered when his touch—anywhere on my body—brought shivers of pleasure to my soul. This wasn’t like that. This felt more like it had when my father looked at me a certain way, acknowledging my presence after a long time of ignoring me, a wicked smile on his lips.
I knew what he was thinking. I’d only been eight when Ricki left, but I knew what my father was doing to her. And I knew he was just waiting for me to get big enough before he did it to me. That’s why he never hit me, why he ignored me. He was waiting. But he got sick before the wait was over.
Should I be grateful for that, or sickened?
Both, maybe.
He didn’t bother with the living room. He dragged me to the back of the house and tossed me onto the bed.
“Were you sleeping with him? I figured by the fact that he went all the way to Dallas to check out your story that you must have been sleeping with him.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“You’re mine, so it is my business.”
I shook my head, but he didn’t notice. He was busy looking for something in a chest of drawers. I slipped off the bed while he was distracted and snuck to the French doors at the back of the room, trying the handle as deftly as I could. But an alarm went off the second the door parted from the latch. I covered my ears and cried out as much with frustration as with surprise.
Colin rushed over and tugged the door closed, touching something on his phone to shut off the alarm. Then he backhanded me, sending me fall
ing back against the bed. He grabbed my arms and lifted me onto the bed, hitting me again.
“I want to trust you, Pepper,” he said breathlessly. “But you’re making it really hard.”
“Get off of me!”
“You used to like this.”
He rubbed himself against me, this leer on his face once again reminding me of my father. Is that what it was that had drawn me to him? Was it the same charm that he shared with my dad?
I felt sick.
He ran his hand over my face, pressing the hair back from my scalp.
“I really like you, Pepper. I might even love you. But I can’t have you doing things like this.”
“Let me go, Colin. I don’t want to be here.”
“That’s not an option.”
He climbed off the bed, pulling his phone out of his pocket again even though I hadn’t heard it ring. He went out into the hallway. I was instantly off the bed, moving around the room, trying to find a way out, a weapon I could use, anything that would get me away from him. But there was nothing.
He stepped back into the room, a smile on his handsome face.
“Just like I’d hoped, your boyfriend and his boss are following our trail. Falling right into my plans.”
“And what are your plans?”
“It’s brilliant, really,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “You’re going to rob a bank, show the cops that you were a willing participate in what we did together and that you were lying about everything you told them. Then we get out of here, go on a cruise on my friend’s yacht.”
“I won’t.”
“You will, darling,” he said, pushing me back against the dresser. He pulled an iPad out and handed it to me, stepping away again. I’d been so convinced that he was going to hit me again that I didn’t realize I was holding the iPad until he gestured for me to look at it.
“Do you see what your boyfriend did? Do you see the faces of the women and children he killed? He was on the rebels’ side. He led his people into an ambush because he was tired of being on the wrong side of the conflict. He murdered all those people and the proof is right there. And that proof will go to all the news outlets in the country if you don’t do what I say.”
I scrolled through the article he’d pulled up, quickly identifying it as ISIS propaganda. But that didn’t mean that some small outlet here in the United States wouldn’t take it seriously and give credence to it by publishing it here.
That would ruin Nolan.
“If you want to protect your boyfriend, you will do everything I tell you.”
I nodded. I had no choice.
He started for the door. I went to hand him the iPad, but he waved his hand at me.
“Keep it. Read up on your boyfriend.”
That was his first mistake.
The moment he was gone, I minimized the article and pulled up the email function on the iPad. I was worried he might have somehow disabled it, but it was working just fine. I entered the password for my personal email and composed a message that I sent to every email address I could think of. David. Nolan. Kipling. Annie. David had given me a laptop to use while I was at the house, and it had all the Gray Wolf people’s emails taped to the lid. I stared at it all day long it seemed like. I just hoped I remembered them all correctly.
Chapter 25
Nolan
We walked into the building, not quite sure what to expect. Detective Snider had sent a message to the Corpus Christi cops, but we didn’t know if they would take it seriously, if they would even respond. We didn’t even know this was the right place. All we could do was go forward and hope.
I saw her first. She walked in, a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes, but I would have known her anywhere. She walked slowly to the front counter, her hands in her pocket. I nudged David. We were immediately on our feet, moving around to sidle up on either side of her.
I took her arm.
“We’re getting out of here.”
“He’s right outside. He has a gun.”
“We have a few guns, too.”
She shook her head, her hands shaking. She lifted the corner of the jacket she was wearing. There were wires.
He’d wired her like a suicide bomber.
“It’s okay,” I said softly next to her ear. “It’s going to be okay.”
I pulled her away from the counter and David took her hand, leading her out a back door. Then I gave the signal.
Kipling and the others—Alexander, Elliott, Knox, and Ingram—rushed in on the car where Colin Pierce waited. A Lexus. I could only imagine that his mother’s pimp had owned a Lexus like that and that was why he held onto the damn thing for so long. The car was registered in his real name back in Detroit. It was the first big ticket item he bought when he began finding success at his criminal ventures. Once Detective Snider had the name, it didn’t take long to begin piecing things together. He’d found him without too much trouble once Kipling was able to send him the partial plate on his car.
They’d all flown down in the private jet I hadn’t known David had. We could have been here hours sooner, but the drive had its purpose.
I watched as the cops arrived, just in time. That solved the only problem we’d been worried about—what to do with Pierce once he was apprehended.
And, just like that, it was over.
***
“I thought you said just one night,” Pepper whispered softly against my ear.
“Yeah. One night. This night. And then tomorrow night. Then the night after. They’re all just one night, just one moment, begun over and over again.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“The world doesn’t make sense.”
She smiled, curling against my bare chest in the warm bath. David had sprung for hotel rooms for the whole crew, mostly, I think, because he could see that Pepper needed time before she went back to face everyone at the compound. But she was grateful, thanking everyone over and over again.
The bomb had been a fake. A stroke of drama on the part of Colin Pierce. He wanted to frighten her, to make her obey him. And she did. I didn’t understand why, but I wasn’t about to ask. We all had our reasons for the things we did, and it didn’t always have to be discussed.
I ran my hands over her belly, tugging her tighter back against my chest. She sighed, rolling her head against my shoulder.
“I could lay like this for the rest of my life.”
“Might get a little uncomfortable when the water gets cold.”
“We’ll just have to turn the warm water back on.”
“What happens when it starts to overflow?”
“We’ll pop the plug just long enough.”
“Brilliant.”
She giggled even as she reached between our bodies and touched me, running her hand along the length of me.
“Or we could take this into the bedroom.”
“I chose the latter.”
She immediately stood, wrapping herself in a big, thick towel. She disappeared through the door into the bedroom and I followed, not bothering to dry myself off. I pushed her onto the bed and stole her mouth, remembering that it was just a few hours ago when I thought I would never see her again, let alone taste her in this way again. What a long, horrible day! But now…I was determined that this would not be the last time I touched her.
She opened herself to me and we moved together, our breathing changing almost instantly as pleasure burst through our nervous systems. I couldn’t imagine anything better. But that was before she whispered against my ear.
“I love you.”
There were a million reasons to argue against those words. It was too soon. It wasn’t the right time, the right place. It wasn’t the right woman.
But it was. It was all too perfect. She was too perfect.
“I love you,” I said, despite the argument that automatically rose to the forefront of my mind. And that felt right.
Chapter 26
Pepper
The bruises on
my cheek looked worse than they felt, but I saw the way Ricki flinched when she saw them.
“You look a little worse for wear.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, as I took a seat beside her hospital bed.
Her eyebrows rose to show her surprise. “Why are you sorry? You were the one taken hostage by a crazed thief, not me.”
“I lied to you. I should have been honest from the very beginning.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.” She took my hand in hers. “I was sixteen when I left that house, so filled with anger and hatred that I couldn’t see past my own nose. I never should have left you, and I knew that. But by the time I realized it, it was too late. You were already the same age I was when he first began doing what he did.” She shuddered a little. “I thought it was too late. And, honestly, it was easier to do nothing than to go back and help you.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. You didn’t deserve to be left behind like that.”
“You know what?” I said, squeezing her hand lightly. “We need to forgive each other. We weren’t the ones who did the horrible things that caused the situation in the first place. That was my father, and he’s in an urn somewhere in Mom’s bedroom closet.”
“That’s an appropriate place for him.”
“I always thought so. There, or riding down someone’s toilet.”
Ricki laughed. Then she touched my face, drawing me closer to her.
“You grew up okay, kid. I’m really glad you came and found me.”
“Me, too.”
Chapter 27
Nolan
Pepper reached over and took my hand. I squeezed hers, smiling down at her as we walked—side-by-side—down the sidewalk. It’d been so long since I’d last been here that things no longer looked as they had. The trees were taller, more mature. The old house on the corner had been torn down, and the one across the street had been painted a garish green color. But the house we were walking toward, the one where I’d spent three years at the end of my childhood, was still the same. A little, two-bedroom place that was painted a sickly yellow, the front porch slanted to one side, the front window shattered in the lower corner and patched with a piece of cardboard. I found myself wondering why he’d never had it fixed. I’d sent him more than enough money while I was in the Marines.
CHASING PEPPER (Gray Wolf Security, Texas Book 5) Page 15
