She rubbed her wrists and thought about how good she was getting at losing herself in Mace’s expert touch, despite the fact that he’d been so angry with her—she’d felt it vibrating off him in waves. She’d violated his trust without meaning to, had breached his emotions, and she would have to pay the price.
Of course, paying it meant she could keep her distance from him emotionally. She kept her barriers high so no one could get in, and she’d just doubled the price of admission.
What would happen after this, she didn’t know. For now, she was here, in his town because he said he would help, and because the police had told her to stay put. In his bed because …
The murder. She shivered and pulled the covers around her.
Her body felt sore and used and she didn’t mind the feeling. She had surprised Mace with her honesty about not wanting to touch him.
Better he knew her bottom line right off the bat. If they were simply meant to comfort each other through a difficult time, so be it.
Keep lying to yourself, Paige.
She’d gotten damned good at it over the years.
She closed her eyes, wondered if she could drift off to sleep again. But her phone was beeping—she realized that’s what had woken her up in the first place. At first, she thought it was because the battery was low, but when she flipped it open, she realized there was a voice mail message.
She hadn’t remembered it ringing, but reception around here was spotty.
Maybe it was from Carole Ann.
She sat on the edge of the bed, resisting the urge to crawl back under the covers as she dialed voice mail and brought the phone to her ear.
She immediately dropped the phone when the caller spoke his first words—words that burned through her as though they physically touched her—and then she stared at it on the floor like she was waiting for it to explode.
“It can’t be,” she said. “There’s no way …”
Hi, Paige—it’s been a while …
It didn’t feel long at all. Jeffrey’s voice bridged a long gap of space and time, and she was fourteen again with blood literally on her hands.
How had he gotten her cell phone number? God, of all the people who’d spotted her on the news, she’d hoped against hope that he wasn’t one of them. Of course, it was a pipe dream to think he’d ever forgotten about her. No, she knew his hatred for her burned inside him like a red-hot poker, that he would wait his jail sentence out patiently, looking for ways to continue to hurt her.
He’d told her as much. Promised he’d find a way to make good on it.
She would either need to hide for the rest of her life or confront this head-on. But how could she, when she couldn’t even deal with listening to the full message?
With shaking hands, she picked the phone up and replayed the message in its entirety.
Hi, Paige—it’s been a while. Remember the time Mom came in and caught us playing? I was tickling you and you were yelling at me to stop … if I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still hear you. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. And about the Kettering twins. Remember them? I do … such a shame they were never found.
She was clutching the phone so hard she feared it would break, and she heard herself cry out.
It might not even sound like a threat to anyone but her. But she knew what had really happened when her mother had walked in on the day in question—Jeffrey had torn her clothing and was preparing to make you mine.
He kept repeating that, over and over. Told her later that he intended to finish what he’d started, that he loved hearing her scream.
And the twins … God, at the time she hadn’t thought he’d had anything to do with them, hadn’t thought him capable … not until he proved to her in the cafeteria how wrong she’d been.
The Kettering family—two girls, twins, two years behind her in school, had gone missing when Paige was in eighth grade.
“It couldn’t have been him,” she whispered now, even as she knew it could’ve been. And even though he was threatening her life, threatening to rape her the way he had tried to the week before the school shooting, she knew her brother was sick enough to tell only her the location of the twins’ bodies.
She owed the town that, if nothing else.
It was all starting again, the pervasive, crippling, all too familiar fear … the prickling of the hairs on the back of her neck and, yes, as much as she tried to push Jeffrey out of her life for good, he was like a boomerang. And she would always pay the price for that.
She sank to the floor, hugging her knees with her arms, wishing she could curl up tightly enough to disappear.
Mace found Paige sitting on the floor next to the phone, staring at it like it was a land mine. Her face was pale, her body motionless and he immediately crouched down next to her.
“Hey, Paige, talk to me.”
She didn’t, but she met his gaze. Her desperate look made him want to hold her, but first he needed to figure out what the hell was wrong.
And then she shifted her gaze back to the phone. Watched as he picked it up and looked at it. She’d been calling her voice mail.
“Is it a message that’s upset you?”
“Yes. It’s …” She bit her bottom lip and couldn’t say anything more beyond repeating a number he assumed was her pass code.
He dialed in, entered the code and put the phone to his ear. He tried to keep his face as emotionless as possible as he listened to the hateful message delivered in a calm, placid voice, but he wasn’t sure he succeeded.
He couldn’t count on keeping a poker face when it came to Paige and her safety. That wasn’t a good thing. And she was watching him expectantly, not saying anything, sitting still like a statue.
He saved the message and shut the phone, even as Paige began to speak. “He used to tell me, You’ll never get away from me. We’re blood. And who knows—maybe deep down inside, you’re more like me than you care to admit. I told him that I was nothing like him, but he told me, You have to be. We share the same genes.”
“That’s bullshit, Paige,” Mace said fiercely, and then he took a deep breath. “What’s he talking about in the message? I need to know.”
“He cornered me before I could get to my room—I’d put a lock on the door so he couldn’t get to me when we were alone in the house. Most of the time, I went home with a friend and stayed there until dinnertime, but that day, I was left alone. And I was almost there, safe, when he came out of nowhere and grabbed me. He pushed me to the ground and he ripped my clothes and held me down … If my mother hadn’t come home …” She choked the words out with a deep sob, literally shuddered as she spoke. “I was touching him—I knew what he planned to do to me. It wasn’t an idle threat. And I was so distracted by that, I didn’t get a hint of what he was planning to do at school. But when he couldn’t get to me—because I told Mom and said I was going to the police if they didn’t do something about him—he moved up the time line. He agreed to see a therapist. Apologized to me, even though he didn’t mean it. And then, the next week, he murdered my friends and ruined my life.”
“And the Kettering twins?” he asked quietly.
“Sounds like Jeffrey’s taking responsibility for their disappearance.”
Grabbing the quilt off the bed, he started to wrap it around her. It was only then that she moved, shifted to allow him to drape it behind her back. She grabbed the edges and held them tight and seemed to snap out of the daze.
“Is this the first time Jeffrey’s contacted you by phone?” he asked quietly, trying desperately to keep the rage out of his voice, because she didn’t need that now. She needed him calm. In control.
“Yes, the first time in years. Since I left home. Mom always used to accept his calls,” she said, her voice sounding far away. “It’s happening, Mace. Just like he warned me all those years ago. He told me his plan was to take everyone I loved from me. And he did.” She pushed up from the floor. “I’ve got to leave.”
He ge
ntly pushed her back down and sat across from her. “Yeah, much better that you run from two trained soldiers who can kick your brother’s ass. You’re not going anywhere. And I’m keeping this.” He held up the phone. “I’m saving the message to play for the warden of Jeffrey’s prison. I want his phone privileges revoked.”
“He’s not supposed to have them in the first place. I don’t get it.”
Prison culture was an animal most people thankfully didn’t have to understand. But anything could be bought or sold for the right price—Mace had no doubt Jeffrey could’ve called in some favors to get Paige’s number and place the call. “I’ll fix it so it doesn’t happen again.”
“My number’s unlisted.”
“We’ll get a new one,” he promised, because bringing her back from the dark place she’d gone was most important now. “Come on, Paige. You’re stronger than this.”
“No, I’m not. I put on a hell of a good show.” She looked at him then, her eyes glazed with fear, and his heart was tugged in the same way it had been when she’d walked in that first night.
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” he told her fiercely. “Gray would never let you get away with that shit and neither will I.”
She blinked several times. Nodded. Pressed her lips together and then said, “I try so hard. Then I close my eyes and I know I can’t forget. And I certainly can’t ever forgive.”
“No one expects you to forgive him.”
“Not him. Me.”
“You don’t need to forgive yourself because you didn’t do anything wrong,” he told her, meaning it completely, while knowing that the words would be hollow comfort. He’d never be able to forgive himself for the mission, even though he knew he’d have to be Superman to get out of that situation.
Problem was, they’d trained him to believe he was Superman, that he could—and should—do anything necessary.
That made failure so much damned worse.
“He’s back, Mace. And there’s nothing I can do to stop him.”
“Of course you can. I’ll help you. Trust me. Please.”
“You’re doing this because you promised Gray. That’s all.”
Mace growled. “Stop telling me how or what I feel.”
“You’re suspicious. Don’t bother denying it.”
“I never deny that—I live by it. But I’m not suspicious of you, okay? I didn’t want to … Shit.” He backed off. “Did you give anyone this address?”
“Just Carole Ann, my old supervisor from work. I opened a P.O. box in New York near the hospital when I first moved there—that’s where most of my mail went anyway—and she’ll collect stuff from there and send it to me when I tell her to. I put a forward on everything to go there.”
“I’ll have Caleb look into her background, just to be certain you have nothing to worry about.”
She nodded. “I’m so sorry, Mace. You’ve got enough to deal with here. I didn’t mean to bring more problems down on your head.”
“You’re my best friend’s sister, and you’re in trouble. That makes it my problem too, okay?”
She licked her bottom lip and nodded tentatively. It was enough for now. And then she couldn’t hold back any longer. Grief and terror overtook her, and she leaned into him and started to sob.
He gathered her in his arms and she grabbed him, comfort the only thought on her mind.
She held him through the thick sweatshirt, hands balled into fists so she didn’t intrude on his feelings or invade his privacy. This time it didn’t bother him. She didn’t need any more burdens.
He’d seen a lot of shit in his lifetime, but this took the wind out of him. The filth and utter hate Jeffrey spewed was enough to make his stomach turn. No one deserved that.
“I’ll fix this, Paige. I promise you.”
“No one can do that,” she told him.
Mace came down the stairs pretty silently, but still at top speed, holding Paige’s phone.
“What’s wrong?” Caleb demanded. He’d been sitting at one of the tables, sorting through the mail and dealing with the weekend’s money, the remnants of a PowerBar next to him.
Mace noted that the heat had started up down here, heard the rumble of the generator that had been missing earlier and glanced back at the stairs to make sure Paige wasn’t coming down. “Jeffrey—Paige’s brother—left her a message. A threat, really … but he was smart about it. To anyone else, it’ll sound like a brother telling a sister things he remembers from their childhood.”
Cael’s expression was the same as when he was mission-ready and the man Mace knew as his teammate was in front of him now, sharp and ready to go. Cael reached under the table and pulled something off the empty chair across from him. He showed Mace the piece of cut tubing. “Big Harvey was killed with Paige’s knife, someone cut our generator line and then Paige’s psycho brother calls her, all only days after she shows up on the news. And I know you’ve never been a big fan of the coincidence theory,” Caleb said, and yes, he was absolutely correct, Mace didn’t believe in that or stars and planets aligning or any other bullshit of that nature. He didn’t trust enough to believe in it, because in his life and his work—hell, in all his experiences—if it walked like a duck and quacked like a duck it was a motherfucking duck.
Going in on both the offensive and the defensive made you much less likely to get burned.
He called the prison. Asked to speak to the warden and was told he would need to make an appointment to do so and hung up, frustrated as hell.
Noah could no doubt get him into that prison, but calling his CO was akin to dealing with a human lie detector, and Mace wasn’t ready to give up the ghost on what was happening around here just yet. He needed to get his own handle on things first.
Caleb was watching him carefully, like this time it was Mace’s turn to detonate. And it was.
“Call Dylan,” Caleb said just then. “He’s kind of like a career criminal, except he’s on the right side of the law. Usually.”
Mace put his phone on speaker, dialed Cael’s brother and cut off Dylan’s hello with, “I need a favor.”
Dylan would for sure recognize Mace’s number.
“Is my brother okay?” Dylan demanded.
“He’s fine. Relatively speaking,” he said, and Caleb rolled his eyes and said, “Dylan, I’m fine.”
“Yeah, define fine.”
“I don’t have that kind of time,” Caleb said. “Just help him.”
“Name it—I don’t have time for bullshit.”
Mace told him succinctly about Paige and her situation. Dylan listened intently and then said, “Send me the message so I can play it for the warden and give him Paige’s explanation.”
“I’ll do that.” Caleb took the phone and headed to the office, where Mace’s laptop was open on the desk. In the quiet of that space, he looked around the familiar room and was grateful for the chance to help Paige. He had to pay her back for having tried to force her to use her gift when she didn’t want to.
Maybe he’d always been a stubborn bastard.
He grabbed the iMac’s mouse and logged in. Connected the phone cord. A few taps on the keys and he was shaking his head. He checked the connection again, muttered a few curses. Pounded some keys.
“I forgot that this was Gray’s territory.”
“And mine.”
He looked up to find Vivi standing there, framed in the doorway. She’d come in from the outside, snow still clinging to her jean-clad legs. “I can help you with that,” she said.
He leaned back in the office chair. Wondered if his attraction to her had been there from day one, because it called to him now like a goddamned beacon.
Then again, it had been a long time since he’d gotten laid. “Right. Computer genius.”
“I’m not a genius,” she said, her tone clipped. “But I can transfer a voice mail message, if that’s what you’re trying to do, so move before you screw it up and erase it.”
He pushed off of the chair
, giving it up to her. She sat down, took the phone and tapped the keys quickly and efficiently.
She’d done this before. He had a picture of it—her head bent over a keyboard, her face a mask of concentration, and then a small smile when she succeeded.
In this case, success meant the message began to play through the speakers. When Jeffrey’s laugh finished the call, Vivi moved away from the desk as if she’d been physically pushed and Caleb leaned in and pressed the mute button on the keyboard.
“Sorry about that. I should’ve told you not to play it,” he said.
“Do you want to let me know what’s going on?” she asked, looking shaken. “The message seems innocent enough, but his voice …”
“Mace, it’s done,” he called out the open door before addressing Vivi’s question vaguely. “It’s Paige. She’s in trouble.”
Sarcasm dripped from her voice as she said, “No shit.”
He ground out, “Her brother was in jail—and hopefully still is. That’s what Mace is confirming now with the help of my brother.”
“Dylan or Zane?” she asked.
“Dylan. Do you know him?”
“Not personally. But you talked about both him and Zane when we were together. You were really worried about Zane while you were helping me. You were stuck with me while Zane was in trouble and—”
Suddenly, she stopped talking and bit her bottom lip. Couldn’t look him in the eye as a sudden swell of emotion swept over her face.
“You’re going to have to work on your poker face for the fed job,” he pointed out, because he didn’t know what else to say. Didn’t want to be responsible for making her look so damned sad. At his words, something flashed in her eyes that he couldn’t quite place, and then it was gone and she shot back, “You’re going to have to work on being less of a jerk.”
She looked at the computer again. “If she gets another message, I can try to trace it.”
That would be helpful. But it also meant she would be staying. “What were you doing outside?”
“Trying to dig out my car.”
“Again, you’re going to have to work on your ability to lie. Important part of the job.”
In the Air Tonight Page 15
