Amy did her best to digest that nugget. Darcy had to give her sister credit. She was holding it together far better than she had when Scott had disappeared. Perhaps that crisis practice had prepared her for this one. “You're pregnant? Oh honey, no wonder you're so upset. I bet that's why you threw up. Congratulations.”
Whether it was or not, Malcolm's deception had triggered it. “Thanks. It took me a little time to get used to the idea. Whatever happens, I don't regret that.”
“I think cleaning out Scott's stuff is a good idea. Even if you subtract Malcolm from the equation, it's time for you to close the book on that chapter in your life.” Amy closed her hand over Darcy's. “Hon, I know it's hard, especially because you don't know for sure what happened. But you have to say good-bye to him.”
Darcy nodded. Her relationship and the pregnancy had spurred her to make that decision, but it was the right choice. Packing up his things would give her a chance for some kind of closure. It was likely all she would ever have. “I know. I need to do that. But it doesn't mean I'll be building a life with Theo.”
“No, it doesn't. Those should be separate events anyway. Malcolm isn't replacing Scott. Nobody can replace Scott. But I still think you need to give him another chance.”
Darcy shook her head. She couldn't even think of forgiving Malcolm. Yet she couldn't imagine never luxuriating in the strength of his embrace again, never burying her face in his neck to inhale his comforting scent.
Amy continued, ignoring Darcy's silent protest. “You're not looking at this objectively. If this was just an undercover assignment to him, he wouldn't have slept with you. He risked this entire operation, which they had to have spent months planning, and his job by doing so.”
She shook her head harder and remembered Amy's blind rage over Darcy's long depression after Scott's disappearance. “You're one to talk about being objective.”
“Yeah, I am one to talk. Malcolm—I have to call him that because I firmly believe he wasn't playing a role when he was with you—showed me how to be objective. I judged you and Scott without even trying to understand the nature of your relationship. Malcolm talked to me a lot about being dominant, what he did for you, and why.”
Darcy stared at Amy. She hadn't been aware of more than a handful of conversations. While they would have given Amy some insight, they wouldn't have generated this level of acceptance.
“From the first time you brought Scott home, I loved him like a brother. We all did. That's why we were so shocked and appalled when you started showing up with bruises and welts. I can't pretend to understand this need for pain you have. But Malcolm actually spent time trying to help me figure this out. He sends me links to articles and Web sites, places that have objective information.”
Darcy pressed the back of her hand to her hot eyes. Scott hadn't seen the need to reach out. Instead he had taken steps to insulate them from the harshness of the misunderstandings. Darcy had reacted the same way.
Malcolm had gone out of his way to help repair her relationship with her sister. He'd taken steps to deepen the tenuous strands of their fragile bond.
“I'm so fucking confused.”
“You have every right to be. You don't have to sort this out tonight. I have ice cream and chocolate and a ton of movies awaiting our beck and call. Let's watch a sappy tearjerker and avoid thinking for the rest of the night.”
That sounded good to Darcy. She was exhausted, physically and emotionally. Letting her hand drop to her lap, she faced Amy. “I love you. Thanks for always being here for me.”
Amy smiled, a brilliant, beautiful thing. “I love you too. I'm warning you right now that I get to have the next meltdown and you have to supply the comfort food.”
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Chapter Fifteen
The front door closed softly, and that defeated sound pierced Malcolm's heart more than if she'd slammed it. At least if she took out some of her anger on the door, it would tell him that her feelings were still strong.
“I told you not to sleep with her.”
Leave it to Keith to cut right to the core of an issue. Malcolm glanced up to see that Keith hadn't stopped methodically tearing apart the inner workings of the dishwasher. Their friendship, forged in the stress of combat duty, could withstand pretty much anything.
Even so, Malcolm wasn't in the mood for Keith's smug superiority. He rubbed the inside of his wrist across his forehead and nodded to the piece of equipment in Keith's gloved hand. “What do you think of that huge processor?”
Keith held it up and turned it around several times. “I can't say I've taken apart many dishwashers. I'm the planning genius. You're the tech geek.” He handed it back to his partner.
Malcolm studied the large chip and admired Scott's resourcefulness. Nobody would think to take apart a dishwasher to hide something there. It explained why someone who was supposed to be such a talented technician couldn't seem to fix a dishwasher. He likely had disabled it in the first place.
“Bag it. I need to strip the information before we turn it over to forensics for fingerprinting.” Yataines had spent several summers working as a lifeguard at a community pool, which meant his fingerprints were on file with the state. That would be enough evidence to connect him to the processor.
He continued looking through the skeleton of the dishwasher, but he knew he wouldn't find anything else. Most of the hardware was in the front, and they'd pretty well dismantled the entire thing. The search was over. He should leave, follow Keith downtown, and get to work on the first solid lead in the case.
But he didn't want to leave without knowing Darcy was safe. Even then, he didn't want to leave.
“Give her time, Mal. You lied to her. She has to come to terms with that. It was a necessary part of the job. You had to do it.” Keith gathered some of the mechanical guts together. “We're done here, right?”
Malcolm nodded. He was done here in too many ways. If he hadn't slept with her, if he hadn't dominated her, if he hadn't asked for the gift of her submission, his subterfuge wouldn't matter so much. They had built a relationship that relied on trust and communication, and he had knowingly laid a weak foundation. His earlier optimism faded.
“I'm going to put it back together, see if I can get it to work.”
Keith shook his head. “You're going to wait here until she gets back. Mal, she left because she needed to get away from you. Give her time. Let her grieve, and let her come back to you on her own. If you don't, you're always going to doubt whether she's with you because she loves you or because you tapped into her submissiveness and forced her to stay with you.”
While his buddy's advice had merit, Malcolm couldn't bring himself to walk out the door. Besides, Darcy wasn't weak-minded. She wouldn't stay in a relationship unless she wanted to be there. He nodded, accepting the wisdom and rejecting the action. “I'll just be a few hours.”
The click of a lock and the sucking sound of a heavy door pushing open woke him faster than a cup of black coffee. Malcolm sat up from his slumped position on Darcy's sofa. He rolled his neck, and the aching joints crackled.
Darcy came in, set down a bag, and turned to wrestle the lock for possession of the key. She won, closed the door, and turned, stopping cold when she saw him.
He took advantage of her silence to cross the room and enter the front hall. She wore sweats and a simple cotton shirt. Her face was bare of any trace of makeup, and her hair was pulled back into a single tail. The skin around her eyes was a bit puffy, but her blue eyes were clear.
He stuck his hands into his pockets and offered up his excuse for still being there. “I didn't know when you were coming back.”
She dropped her gaze to the floor, avoiding him the easiest way she could. He wanted so badly to draw her into his arms. He ached with the need to hold her close.
She swallowed twice before she spoke. “Did you finish in the kitchen?”
He nodded. “I put your dishwasher back together
and hooked it up. It works now.” It had taken him most of the night and a trip to the parts store, but he'd delivered a working appliance.
She didn't thank him, but he hadn't expected gratitude. A broken dishwasher had been a memento of Scott. She took a step backward, putting more distance between them. The gulf already felt too wide.
“You shouldn't be here.” She scratched out the admonishment, and her low volume didn't hide the lingering pain from him.
“Darcy, please hear me out.” He couldn't help it. The need to be near her overrode his good sense. He took a step closer.
She held up her hand, a small but effective barrier. “I listened to you. I understand why you did what you did.”
His heart soared. Taking another step put her hand against his chest. When she didn't move, he took that as a good sign. He lifted his hand and rested it on the side of her face. She trembled at the familiar touch. He didn't know whether brushing his thumb over her brow and her lip would make her submit to him, but he did know it was too precious to force, so he didn't make the move.
She moved her hand, sliding it up his arm and stopping when she reached the point when it covered his. She caressed the back of his hand. “But I don't know who you are. I thought I did, but it turns out I didn't even know your name. And you're not even close to being a tech geek.”
Closing her fingers around his hand, she squeezed it lightly, and then she lifted it away from her face and pushed him away. He wanted to reach for her, to chase her, to tackle her to the ground, but he knew it would only kill any chance he had with her.
“My name is Malcolm Legato. I am a tech geek. I'm also an FBI agent. Nothing else I told you was a lie. It should have been, but I couldn't bring myself to invent a past or a different life—”
She put her hand over his mouth. “Malcolm, I can't do this right now. You feel bad about hurting me. I can see that. I don't have the energy or the will to say or do anything to make you feel better about what happened. Please, I need you to leave.”
Keith had been right. It was too soon. He couldn't force this, and he had to give her the space she needed to come to terms with the situation.
DARCY LOCKED THE door after him, but she didn't look out the long windows flanking the solid door to watch him go. She blocked the image of pain clouding his eyes and tightening the lines around his mouth. She believed he was sorry he'd hurt her, and she would deal with that, but not now. The plan of action she and Amy had devised provided guidance now. She picked up the phone and called Scott's parents.
She and Scott had made wills as part of their preparation for marriage, so when he went missing, his parents hadn't been able to take any of his things. When they had turned on her, Darcy had kept everything from them. She had felt justified at the time. Now she felt a hollow pang for the loss of not just Scott, but of the closeness and support of his family. There was a time when his parents and siblings had been a second family to her.
It was time to release all that pain and anger, pack it up with Scott's clothes and a future that wasn't meant to be.
She let Scott's mother know she was going to box up his things, and his mother agreed to send his father and brother out later that day to pick up whatever Darcy wasn't keeping or donating to charity. She also felt they needed to know the FBI hadn't given up on closing the case. While they weren't overjoyed to hear from her, things were less tense once they understood the new focus of the case.
She spent the day packing, and she helped load the boxes in the back of the pickup truck Scott's father brought. As she watched the truck pull away, a sudden wave of exhaustion nearly knocked her off her feet. She went inside, washed her hands and face, and crashed on the sofa.
The phone rang Monday afternoon, pulling her from deep in the closet of an empty bedroom where she'd been sorting through clothes. She had never realized how many clothes she'd accumulated. In the past year, she'd completely changed her wardrobe, opting for a bland style that matched her bland mood. Her other clothes, more colorful ensembles Scott had liked to see her wear, had been shuffled off to closets she never visited. Though she had been wearing more colors lately, those had come from new clothes she had purchased with Malcolm in mind.
While she debated answering, the phone went to voice mail. It wasn't Malcolm's ring tone, but she really didn't feel like talking to anyone. Now that she'd begun the clean out, she threw herself into it with a manic sense that catharsis waited at the end.
Around four in the afternoon, she hit the same wall she'd hit for the past few days. An hour's nap had done the trick the night before, though when she woke up, she'd spent time fighting waves of nausea. The intensity and duration varied, but it had come in the evening. So much for the idea of morning sickness.
When the landline rang that evening, she was at her computer, working on the Future Beat project she needed to present in the morning. A package of opened saltine crackers beckoned. She hated such bland foods, but the Web sites she'd surfed for answers recommended them and they did help.
She picked up the phone without looking at the handset to see who was on the other end. “Hello?”
“Darcy, you missed our appointment today.”
Her stomach clenched at the sound of Malcolm's voice. She reached for a cracker and reminded herself to breathe. “I thought we were done with that. You got what you wanted.”
He cleared his throat. “I'm not sure what we have yet. We're still analyzing it. However nothing we find there will help us find evidence of what happened to Scott. We can't drop the act yet. I need you to come into Theo's office at Snyder's and check over his work on the foundation's Web site.”
Hearing him talk about his cover identity like that threw her for a loop. In her mind, she struggled to figure out the difference between Malcolm and Theo. Malcolm had told her there wasn't one, not really. Yet he attributed his work to Theo.
“Darcy?”
She had been quiet for too long. “Yes?”
“This will fall apart without your cooperation. I wish I could do this without involving you, but you're the key to infiltrating Snyder's inner circle. We need you.”
Longing wrapped around her core, and she wished he was there to hold her in his arms. She ached for him, but she wasn't ready to have him in her life. “I don't know if I can do this.”
“You can.” He used his Dom voice, the one that had carried her through that first speech. “You are the strongest woman I've ever met. It won't be easy and I'm sorry for that, but you can't give up now. You can't let him win.”
No, she couldn't let the person who'd hurt Scott win. However she still hadn't seen evidence of Victor's guilt. Based on nothing but suspicion and probability, the police had hounded her. She couldn't do that to another person, especially not someone who had helped her so much. “Malcolm, how can you be so sure Victor is the one? What if you're wrong?”
“I'm not wrong.” His confidence came through loud and clear. She wanted to cling to his surety, his strength, and his body, just to inhale his scent.
But what if he wasn't right? What if Victor was guilty of money laundering and all those financial crimes, but he had nothing to do with Scott's disappearance?
“Darcy, come in tomorrow. Meet with me. I'm working my ass off to extract data from the processor we found. I'll bring over what evidence I can show you on Wednesday.”
It sounded like a good compromise, but she wasn't free on Tuesday. And the longer she put off meeting with him, the longer she put off having to confront the tattered state of their relationship. “I have a meeting tomorrow, and I'm busy the rest of the day.” She still had more clothes to clean out, and she hadn't begun to pack up Scott's workroom. Plus she had to schedule in her daily nap and bouts of nausea. The next seven and a half months had better not be like this.
“Come after your meeting. Just stop by for twenty minutes, enough to keep up appearances.”
She munched the cracker. “I'll try.”
When she missed their meeting the
next day, Malcolm wasn't surprised. She hadn't exactly committed to the appointment. He headed to Victor's office for their meeting. He would present the finished Web site for Snyder Foundation, and if things went well, Snyder would offer him more work.
Victor's admin, Georgie, waved him inside. She spoke into her phone, pausing long enough to flash a friendly smile.
The inner sanctum looked exactly the same, but the stakes were much higher. This was the point where Malcolm either became a trusted associate or was shown the door.
Victor shook his hand and clapped him on the back, but he declined to see the Web site. “I looked it over this morning. Nice work. Darcy approves?”
“Of course.” He lied smoothly. Mickey Halter slunk forward, and Malcolm nodded in greeting as he conducted a silent threat assessment. Though the thug was bulkier than Malcolm, he was a little shorter. Despite the ease with which Malcolm had overpowered Halter in the stairwell, he suspected it wouldn't be so easy to win a fight Halter actually wanted to win.
Halter handed Malcolm an envelope. “And how is Darcy? I haven't seen her around this week. She usually finds a reason to stop by at least every other day.”
Victor poured two brandies and set one in front of Malcolm.
“She's been busy.” He examined the outside of the manila envelope.
Victor took a sip and leaned back in his chair. “So I saw.”
Malcolm didn't know what that meant. Darcy's recent radio silence had cut him out of her life. He had no ready response, so he said what Victor needed to hear. “She'll be there. I'll make sure of it.”
How, he had no idea. If she refused to go, they couldn't very well force her to cooperate.
Victor nodded sagely. “I'm impressed, Stevenson. I drove by Darcy's house yesterday afternoon, and I saw something that's been a long time coming. She's spending the days clearing out evidence of her former relationships and her nights with you. There was a time when I thought she'd never move forward.”
Clearing out evidence of former relationships? She had said she wanted to clean out Scott's things, but he didn't think she would feel she still had a reason to do it. No wonder she sounded so tired and worn when he'd spoken with her the night before. She shouldn't have to go through that alone. Struggling to not show how Snyder's statement affected him, Malcolm reached for his glass. He sat back and lifted the corner of his mouth into a smirky smile. “Her triggers took some time to find, but they were a pleasure to uncover.”
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