by Marie Harte
Only she knew the truth. She could smell every metallic drop of fear in his blood. Agony and dread that spiked every time Yun twisted the pistol against her head.
“Put the gun down.” His intonation was pure military police, careful yet commanding. Again, Charlotte could sense every tremor through his muscles and every scream of his senses. She breathed deep and forced a shell of her own composure, vowing to be strong for him. The last thing the man needed was a weeping wuss to distract him from Yun’s instability. “Sam—whatever your name is—you’re going to stand a much better time of getting out of here if violence doesn’t slick your path. And I swear to God, if you break one damn hair on that woman’s head, you’re going to have violence.”
Yun’s chuckle vibrated the edge of her ear. “Oh, I don’t doubt that, Ensign. And as much as I’d enjoy watching a demonstration of all your delicious, vicious prowess, I need you pretty and perfect right now.”
To Charlotte’s surprise, the force of Kade’s fear subsided by half. “Then we’re agreed. You’re letting Charlotte go.”
“No. I’m letting her live. In exchange, you’ll agree to come along peacefully with me.”
Kaden’s eyes narrowed—while his stance stiffened. Charlotte tried to determine if Yun perceived the change, but the task was hard. She had an added layer to consider. Kade’s scent had intensified, dominating the air so thoroughly, her lungs raced to match the cadence of his. Was he…excited? Sure enough, she breathed in the musk of a hunter’s thrill, salted with the anticipation of closing in on prey.
“How about you agree to drop that thing, sparky, and I’ll decide not to decorate the wall with your brains tonight?”
Wick. She’d forgotten all about him. Stress was good for that selective amnesia stuff, she supposed.
“Oh, God!” she rasped—filling the two seconds it took for Yun’s attention to be thrown off. In that moment, Kaden flipped across a table and lunged for her. Yun bellowed in Korean, his ferocity making translation unnecessary, before whirling on Wick with a series of moves that made Charlotte wonder why he hadn’t ever been picked up by an MMA rep. The guy was a whirl of physical force. He turned Wick into a groaning ball on the floor in a dozen moves and thirty seconds.
Kaden wasn’t so unprepared. After tucking her into a corner behind one of the tanks, he commanded her to stay there with the power of his stare alone. He turned and launched atop a table, using the platform as a jumping point for a flying tackle at Yun. As Kade and Yun wrestled and rolled, Yun’s gun slid across the floor, bumping into Wick’s.
Charlotte eyed the two pistols from her vantage point. Wick still writhed against the opposite wall, face contorted. Hell. It looked like Yun had really messed him up.
The conclusion led to a decision. “Punish me later, squid,” she muttered, dashing out and scooping up both the guns.
The weapons were identical nine millimeter Smith and Wessons, leading to the conclusion Yun had stolen his out of base police storage. The insight irritated her. No; it infuriated her. The imposter couldn’t call anything his own. He’d taken advantage of her trust, her friendship, her honesty—and now he was determined to take her man? Back to North Korea?
Over her damn dead body.
Or maybe his.
After jamming one of the guns into the back waistband of her jeans, she wrapped both hands into the proper grip on the other. “Stop,” she screamed. “Back off of Kade now, Yun, or I swear to God, your balls will be gone.”
Yun froze. Kaden didn’t waste a second to roll free, gain his feet then ram the guy into the storage locker where she’d just been pinned. Yun slouched, almost as if relaxing beneath Kade’s hold, another patronizing smirk sliding out of him as he swiveled his head in an eerie figure eight. “Ohhh, Charlotte…at the risk of repeating myself to gaucheness, I am so disappointed in you. Isn’t this exactly what you’ve dreamed of? A scientific breakthrough that will speak all the way to the heavens, so your mother and father can hear?”
“Shut up.” She lowered the gun but still kept it in hand, safety on. Something about Yun’s voice still made her gut clench. “You don’t know a damn thing about me.” Sorrow added an extra stab of grief. “Just as I never knew a damn thing about you.”
Yun stared as if she hadn’t spoken. “It’s not too late. You can reconsider. Lottie, listen—”
Kade turned his forearm into a restraint bar across the guy’s chest. “Don’t call her Lottie.” His anger smelled like an approaching storm over the Pacific. Charlotte wished it wasn’t so damn intoxicating.
Yun returned the glare with calm intensity. “It’s not too late for either of you.” Again, his tone vibrated with something so sinister, Charlotte checked her skin for scorpions. “But it might be…very soon.”
She was able to mask her sudden shiver from the words—barely—before observing Kade had given the comment no more than a subtle stiffening of shoulders. “I think we’ll be okay with the consequences.”
“Hmmm.” Yun all but rolled his eyes in emphasis—injecting more trepidation through Charlotte’s blood. “As you wish.”
Her heartbeat pounded, becoming pure thunder. Not right. Something wasn’t right again, dammit. Physically, Yun was a man cornered. But in his gleaming gaze and evil smirk, he was a king on his throne, an emperor on the same level as the dictator who’d once shown him such favor, confident he’d be restored to his glory any moment now.
A memory, sweet yet strange, surged at her. A couple of months ago, Kade had taken her for an impromptu picnic at the beach. As they walked along the pier, he’d talked about the patterns of the ocean, and how a person could tell so much by looking at the currents with their eyes. He’d also told her how the calmest waters often hid the biggest dangers.
Yun’s face was awash in calm waters.
Her breath clutched as she watched the same recognition take over Kaden’s face. It stopped completely when he dared a glance at her, his eyes burnished with warning. “Charlotte,” he growled. “Get the hell out of—”
He choked. Grabbed his neck—and the syringe still protruding from it, the plunger shoved all the way in. His jaw clenched. His gaze lost focus.
Charlotte screamed. Allowed Wick to take over on the gun as she grappled for Kade, cushioning his head just before it hit the floor.
A minute later, Wick lowered the pistol. Yun was gone, his body convulsing into death, the white foam from a cyanide pill dribbling from his lips.
And Kaden…
Still breathed. If that was what it could be called. Air left him in bursts of serrated panic that chopped apart the harsh grunt as he jerked the needle out and hurled it away. “Fuck,” he rasped. “Lottie? Wh-what’s happening? What is that shit?”
“Ssshhh.” What a joke, this act of comforting him, when a waterfall of tears cascaded off her lips with the utterance. “Don’t—try to—talk.” That was what people said when they couldn’t think of anything better, right? When the whole damn world was falling apart?
Correction. When the whole world had suddenly gotten stuffed back into a vat of cotton balls. When she couldn’t smell anything except her own dread. Couldn’t hear anything beyond the horrified throb of her heart. Couldn’t sense anything about Kaden except the answering fear in his gaze.
The bond was snapped.
Yun had stolen him from her, after all.
*
SHE WAS A numb participant in the chaos of the next few hours. Turning herself off was the only way to face how the world itself had been cut off, like the focus button skewed to a blur then every frame of the movie flipped upside down. Somehow Wick radioed for help, causing the lab to be swarmed with other MPs. Faces flashed before her, some familiar, many not. Everyone bought the story that she and Kade had taken the run-off-to-Vegas plunge, so she couldn’t protest when they insisted she be transported to NMCSD for overnight observation. By the time she was admitted and settled into her room, she almost begged them to just open her up and carve out her heart. Or maybe th
ey’d do so and find out the job had been accomplished already.
She rolled toward the wall, her spirit as blank as the white surface she pressed a hand against, struggling to comprehend this was her reality and not an awful dream. Part of her begged the universe to wake her up. With every blink, she prayed to open her eyes and find herself gazing at the sage-colored walls of Kaden’s bedroom once more. Inhaling his warm morning scent. Watching his brows crunch right before opening his dark caramel gaze to her. Feeling her heart flip as the edges of his lips curled up in greeting…
Where was he? What were they doing to him? Was he aching for her, fighting through each minute as his veins screamed for her? Even worse…was he just as lost as this? Were his senses wrapped in endless gauze, too?
The other part of her took over then. Forced herself to call up the memory of the second Yun had driven the syringe into Kade’s neck. She heard herself whimper as she replayed the incident, second by agonizing second. The pain in Kade’s lips. The shock on his face.
Then the horror as he dropped away from her—in all senses of the word.
The break had been mutual.
The agony crashed over her like a tidal wave. Burst out of her on a wet, wailing roar, a beast of grief she could no longer fight, or even want to.
The darkness shrouded her so completely, it was a strange feeling to realize that she hadn’t been alone. Sometime in the middle of the night, she woke up for a moment, astounded when her hand smacked someone else in the face. She peered around to observe that Giselle was curled onto the hospital bed next to her. At the foot of the bed, sprawled with more abandon than a toddler and therefore crunching everyone’s legs, was Dreah.
“Hey,” she whispered.
Giselle lifted a sleepy smile. “Hey. How you feeling, babe?”
She ignored the query. “Why are you in here? Where’s Wick? Oh, God. Did that shit from Yun affect you two, as well? Were you—”
“We’re fine.” Giselle patted her hand. “There’s a cute supply closet just down the hall. We’ve gotten well-acquainted with it a few times.”
“Oh.” Her friend’s news brought on a squirm-worthy moment mixed of complete relief and utter jealousy. “And…Kade? Is he—”
“Surrounded by a posse of his own. Wick and Shark are with him, along with his big sister.” Giselle sat up and handed her a cup of water. “Drink. Aimee threatened to slice our nipples off if we didn’t make you.”
The water was cool and felt like heaven. “And where is that stinkbutt?”
“In the lab at the villa. She couldn’t go to Spectrum. The feds are already crawling all over it. God knows what they’re going to find out about us now.”
Charlotte reached for the water pitcher and poured herself another cup. “What’s she doing in a lab at,”—she glanced over at the clock—“three-thirty in the morning?”
“Analyzing the shit Yun shot into Kade.”
She spurted up some water. “Okay, I’m awake now.”
Giselle smiled. “My man managed to baggie up the plunger from the syringe before the investigation team noticed. He told them that part went missing because Kade yanked it out so forcefully.” She let out a telltale sigh. “Damn, Wick’s a stud.”
Charlotte raised chastising brows. “Go to him, Giselle. I’m fine.”
“Uh-uh. No way.”
“Oh, for the love of—”
“Shut up and go back to sleep. This is what family does, chica.”
Family.
A lead brick of a gulp went down her throat. So this is what that “family” shit felt like.
When she spoke again, her words were tight and shaky. “But I’m—not family—anymore.”
“Bullshit.”
The commanding drone of an answer came from the foot of the bed. After issuing the word, Dreah immediately started snoring again. Charlotte shared a soft giggle with Giselle, filled with a tiny ray of hope.
Maybe in the morning, she’d go look for Kaden.
Maybe…he’d want to see her as badly as she did him.
*
IT WASN’T DIFFICULT to find his room. The medical staff placed him only a few doors away since everyone at the hospital assumed they were newlyweds. The nurse who prepped her discharge papers even expressed condolences that her wedding ring had somehow gone missing in the incident aboard the Sparta. Charlotte almost gave in to a little guilt while making her way around the corner, toward the room where they’d told her he still rested. Since he’d been the one stabbed in the neck, they were keeping him admitted for another few days.
She almost got to the guilt—but not quite. Instead, her steps pumped in other feelings… uncertainties she’d never felt about Kade before. For the last three months, being within a fifty foot radius of him meant immediately picking up on the energy of his mindset, as well as inhaling the corresponding scent. Now, nothing hit her nostrils except antiseptic, plastic, and cold leftovers from uncollected breakfast trays.
A smile spread across her face when she came across the identical boys who battled their Transformer toys at each other in the waiting area. When they felt her looking at them and glanced up, her heart dissolved for a moment. They had bright, mischievous eyes that matched Kade’s like custom-mixed paint buckets. They also shared his proclivity to jut their chins in a mixture of silent challenge and friendly greeting.
“Well, hi.” She lifted a little smile. “You must be Jake and Fitz.”
The taller—by just a fraction—of the two boys stepped forward. “Are you the mind-altering geek bitch?”
Her throat clenched shut. She took a step back, insecurity soaring into the beginnings of defeat.
“Ummmm!” The other boy’s voice rose. “You said the ‘b’ word, Fitz! I’m telling mo-ohm!”
Fitz shrugged. “Go ahead. Mom said it first.”
As if the line were her stage cue, a woman rushed up bearing a couple of juice boxes and dual sets of cheese crackers from the vending machine down the hall. Even if Charlotte hadn’t seen those distinct features in pictures on Kaden’s dresser, she would have recognized Betsy Tiernan-McCall.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman rushed out. “Were they bothering you, miss? Boys, I want you to—” She halted, her eyes narrowing. “It’s you.”
Charlotte scooted back again. She looked down, wondering if Giselle had accidentally brought her hooker clothes to change into, instead. Betsy’s tone had her seriously wondering. “Uhhh…me?”
After thrusting the food and drinks at her kids, Betsy turned back with arms folded. “Charlotte, right?”
Charlotte felt her chin raising at the woman’s underscore of challenge. No matter what happened now, she had a right to be here. “Doctor Charlotte Sinclare,” she clarified. “Yes. I was with Kaden on the Sparta when—”
“Oh, I know all about how you’ve ‘been’ with my brother, Charlotte.” Betsy shored up her stance, taking a moment to draw a deep breath. “For months and months and months, you’re all we’ve heard about.”
Charlotte felt her brows scrunching. “He’s…talked about me?”
That was a good thing, right? What the hell was she missing?
“Oh, yeah.” The woman still pulled an attitude worthy of reality TV in its weirdness. “And now it’s all going to stop.”
“Excuse me?”
Betsy came at her with determined stomps, grabbing her by the elbow and pulling her away from her sons’ earshot. But when she spoke again, the words were shockingly gentle. “Look. I can see you care for him. But Charlotte”—she dug her grip in a little tighter—“you’re not good for him.”
The words turned her chest into a glacier. When she swallowed, the whole thing cracked and tumbled into her stomach, filling it with slabs of sickening ice. “Oh,” she whispered. “Okay.”
“He’s lying in there babbling like he’s got a damn fever, babbling on and on about letting you down, about not being good enough for you. I’ve never seen him this miserable before.” She dropped her hand
and shook her head, sadness glinting in her eyes—a gaze so similar to Kade’s, Charlotte had to look away. “I have no idea what crazy shit went down during this ‘adventure’ between you two but I do know that it didn’t start well three years ago. Kade always used the words ‘different worlds.’”
Charlotte wrapped both arms around herself, everything so tight inside that even the tears refused to break loose. “Yes,” she rasped. “That’s about right.”
And in the last three months, he erased the lines between those worlds. Meshed us into something so beautiful and wonderful…
An illusion.
Because of the chemicals.
The pheromones were his rulers, not his heart. Not his heart.
“Listen to that logic again now, Charlotte. Please leave him be. Give him peace.”
She felt herself nodding before she wheeled around and somehow made it out of the hospital. Mist still rolled in over Balboa Park, gray and gloomy and gauzy, like a physical manifestation of everything in her senses. As she tromped through the park, struggling to summon the sobs that throbbed at her chest, all her mind manifested were memories. Brilliant, Technicolor, top-of-the-roller coaster visions of the man who changed her life and soul…forever.
“Be at peace, Kaden,” she whispered into the mist. “Because I don’t know if I ever will be again.”
*
“YOU ARE THE most stubborn woman on the face of the earth!”
Aimee’s accusation, while good-natured, grated on every nerve like unfinished glass. Charlotte already entertained blissful visions of her pajamas, a few DVR’ed episodes of CSI, and a very long interlude with her pillow—not a loud downtown bar, drunk sailors, and Aimee singing Happy Birthday to her with a “candle” comprised of a swizzle toothpick stuck in a martini olive.
“One drink,” Aimee persisted.
Charlotte groaned. “It’s just another day. You didn’t even know about it last year.”
“No shit. Thank God for Kaden, who snuck it into my phone reminders.” Her friend winced and smacked her forehead. “Ahhh, shit. I’m sorry. He-who-must-not-be-mentioned—on your birthday, no less.”
