Ultimate Kill (Book 1 Ultimate CORE Trilogy) (CORE Series)

by Kristine Mason

  “Speaking of which,” Ric said and set his cup on the table. “If she is stupid enough to have an affair, please let me just kill her and her lover. I really don’t want to cut another man’s dick off. Aside from being a bloody mess, I wasn’t bullshitting Liliana. The homophobe in me really couldn’t stomach touching a man.”

  He laughed and pushed his chair back. “Ric, if you’re going to eventually follow me to the White House, you’re going to have to learn to become politically correct, as well as more accepting of our fellow Americans.”

  “Like you?” Ric asked.

  “I’m very accepting,” he said and feigned insult. Race, sexual preference, age, religion…he didn’t care who he killed to obtain what he wanted. “And by Monday afternoon this country will be in chaos.”

  “They’ll be looking for answers.”

  “No. They’ll be looking for a savior.”

  “Amen,” Ric said with a chuckle and made the sign of the cross. “If only they knew their lives depended on one woman.”

  He grinned. “True. But she will know and that’s all that matters.”

  “And what will you do with her once she comes to you?”

  “Everything and anything I want.” She belonged to him and once he possessed her, he’d never let her free.

  *

  Naomi pressed a hand against her nervous stomach and looked around the kitchen. She’d sliced fruit, made blueberry muffins and had Jake’s favorite egg casserole warming in the oven. The table was set and the coffee brewing. The only thing missing was Jake.

  Nothing new there.

  She’d been missing him from her life for too long. After last night and the way he’d held her and kissed her, she didn’t want to force him to leave. Eventually she’d have no choice. For now she would, as she’d told herself last night, enjoy the moment. Savor his touch, his smile and the familiar comfort his presence gave her. God, and his rock hard body and all the wonderful things he could do with it.

  Awareness settled in her core and brought her sex drive back to life again. Making love would be fulfilling and sensually satisfying. It would also be the best mistake she could make at this point in her life. In her heart she knew she’d have to deal with the aftermath of Jake’s absence all over again. But she could refill the well with the love she’d suppressed for five years and in the process feel whole again. At least for a little while. Because once he left and the past was shoved back where it belonged, she’d be left with a loveless, lonely future.

  A future that couldn’t include Jake.

  If she was going to enjoy the moment and the weekend they could have together, she needed to stop feeling sorry for herself and deal with the present. After the way he’d kissed her and made her body come alive, she had no doubt they’d finish what they had started last night. Only she’d seen the determination in his eyes before he’d left and she had to prepare herself for whatever questions he might ask her.

  As she’d lain in bed last night, completely turned on and frustrated he’d chosen to leave, her mind had begun to spin. In between fantasizing about how the evening should have ended, it occurred to her that if Jake had run a background check using her social security number, he might have discovered that Naomi McCall didn’t exist until eight years ago. Then again, knowing Jake, if that were the case he would have brought up her false identity right away. She couldn’t imagine he’d have kissed her the way he had—hot, passionate—knowing she’d lied to him about her past.

  Or would he?

  “Damn it,” she muttered and stared out the kitchen window. She had to prepare herself. If he wanted answers, she owed it to him to be as honest as possible without placing him in danger. But how?

  With more lies.

  The doorbell rang. Her stomach tightened with eagerness and trepidation. She had two more days with him and wanted to spend today and tomorrow in his arms. Not fighting or dredging up the past. As she left the kitchen and headed for the front door she decided to wing it. If he asked about her fake name, she’d give him enough information to satisfy his curiosity. If he asked why they couldn’t try and make things work between them again…

  She opened the door and drank in the sight of him. Every reason why they shouldn’t be together fled from her mind, along with the lies she’d tell to protect them both. Instead, last night came back in a rush. The heat and hunger in his eyes. His hot open-mouthed kisses. The way he’d pressed her against the door and filled her with his fingers.

  “Good morning,” she managed, and motioned for him to come inside.

  He closed the door behind him. With the same heat and hunger that had darkened his eyes last night, he cupped the back of her head and crushed his mouth against hers. Her heart raced and her body melted against his as she kissed him back. When she slid her hands over his tight ass, he quickly tore his lips away. “Morning,” he said and holding her hand, took a step back. “You smell delicious.”

  “I smell like sausage.”

  “My favorite kind of perfume.”

  She chuckled and led him into the kitchen. “I wish I’d known that a long time ago. Instead of spending money on expensive perfume, I could have rubbed sausage all over my body.”

  “Eau de sausage. Now there’s a sexy image.”

  Laughing at the ridiculousness, she let go of his hand and poured him a cup of coffee. “We can start a whole new perfume line. Eau de bacon or maybe eau de steak.”

  “Eau de Budweiser,” he suggested, a grin playing across his kissable mouth. “I think we might be on to something.”

  “Maybe, but I’m not going to quit my day job yet. Hungry?”

  His gaze raked over her bare legs, short shorts and tight tank top. She’d dressed with purpose this morning and, based on the desire in his eyes, it had worked. “Starved.”

  “Good. Take a seat. I made your favorite.”

  After she set the fruit and muffins on the table, she dished him a large slice of the casserole. “How’d you like your room at the Rainbow Lodge?” she asked and sat across from him.

  He shrugged and picked up his fork. “The bed was lumpy and the room smelled like nicotine. The hot water lasted all of two minutes before I just about went into hypothermia.”

  “I’m sorry to hear,” she said, a part of her satisfied. Maybe tonight he’d decide to forgo the Rainbow Lodge and crash at her place.

  “You sound all broken up about it,” he said with a smile.

  Busted. “Hey, you’re the one who insisted on leaving. My bed has no lumps, my room smells like lavender and I have a large hot water tank. You could take a twenty-minute shower without freezing.” She picked up a muffin and eyed him. “Imagine the possibilities.”

  His smile fell and the look in his eyes turned carnal. “I did. All night long.”

  “So maybe you should consider your options tonight.”

  He looked down at his plate and dug into the casserole. “That depends.”

  “On?”

  He set his fork down and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “You.”

  Oh, shit. He knows.

  “Me?” she asked and played dumb. Maybe what he was hinting at had nothing to do with her false identity.

  “Yeah. What’s your real name?”

  She froze. The muffin she’d just bitten into tasted like sawdust. So much for hinting at anything. Although she’d suspected he might question her about her identity, she hadn’t expected him to be so blunt. With her mind quickly racing, along with her heart, she held his gaze. “Lisa Monroe,” she lied. If he knew her real name, he could find out about her parents and brother, and about the circumstances surrounding their deaths. Knowing Jake, he’d go after the bastard who’d ruined her life and murdered her family. And Jake couldn’t go after him. If he did, he’d die and she’d rather have lying on her conscience than his death.

  “Lisa,” he echoed, and she inwardly cringed at the distaste rolling off his tongue.

  “But no one has called me that in eight years,”
she said. “And I’d like to keep it that way.”

  He picked up his fork again and pierced a chuck of the casserole. “Why the name change?” he asked as if they were discussing the weather.

  She stared at him. Stunned. And worried. While he ate his eggs, his posture had gone from relaxed to rigid, his shoulders were now tensed and his biceps flexed from beneath his short sleeve shirt as if he were ready to pounce.

  “I had issues with a stalker,” she answered, giving him the skeletal version of the truth. “His threats had become so bad, I was forced to change my identity.”

  “Changing your name is one thing, but getting a new social security number? That’s not easy to do.” He plopped a grape in his mouth. “How’d you manage to keep your nursing license and college transcripts?”

  Deep sorrow meshed with the anxiety churning in her stomach. Her brother, Thomas, had taken care of her identity change when she was twenty. But she’d lied to Jake when they’d first met and told him she was an only child. Thomas’s career with the FBI was not something she would or could share with Jake. Her brother had insisted that if she were to go into hiding, she had to cut all ties. That included him.

  “When I changed my name, I’d already spent a couple of years earning my nursing degree. So, I started from scratch as Naomi McCall, switched colleges and breezed through the program.” Before she’d become Naomi McCall, she’d also claimed the life insurance benefits and inheritance her parents had left for her and Thomas. With a half a million dollars and a new name, she’d been lulled into thinking she’d escaped her stalker, met Jake and thought she could have it all. Love, family, career. Until Thomas had been brutally murdered because of her.

  “You’re right though,” she said. “It wasn’t easy to do, but it was something that needed to be done. I was tired of spending my life looking over my shoulder.” She still was, but left that to herself. She’d answer Jake’s questions, would likely compound the lies, but refused to tell him who had driven her off the grid. Jake had no problem with confrontation and sometimes lived in a fantasy world where justice always prevailed. In her world, justice would not come to the man who had destroyed her family and her life. His power stretched too far. His wealth was limitless. Bottom line, Jake, as much as she hated to admit it, couldn’t stand up to him. Well, he could, but she knew firsthand how that would go. Thomas’s crooked smile and laughing eyes filtered through her mind, along with his headstone.

  “Where’s this stalker now?” Jake asked and helped himself to a muffin.

  “How can you keep eating while asking me questions I guarantee most people do not ask over breakfast?”

  He shrugged. “I’m hungry and I miss your cooking. Where’s the stalker?”

  “You just asked me that,” she said, growing irritated. Her insides were a mess. She was damned tired of the way the past continued to haunt her. And it pissed her off that Jake could continue to eat when all she wanted to do was vomit.

  “So answer.”

  “Last I heard, Virginia.” Another truth.

  “He lives there?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “What did he do to you?” he asked, his voice nonchalant but his eyes hard and probing. She was so onto him. He was trying to keep her at ease, but he had no idea how this conversation tore her apart. He had no idea how much she’d lost, and she’d make sure he never did. She remembered a quote that went something like, “There is no wealth like knowledge.” In this case, knowledge would bring Jake death.

  “Like I told you, he stalked me.” She crumpled the napkin in her fist as disturbing memories punched her from the inside out. “He harassed me at my apartment, at my parents’ house, at work and school. He called and emailed me constantly. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve changed my number and email address.” She shook her head. “But then the threats started.”

  Jake set his fork on the table and clenched his jaw. “And?” he asked, the single word harsh, demanding.

  Her hand moved to her neck and her mouth went dry. That night had been one of the scariest of her life and one she didn’t want to relive. But there were some things she could tell Jake without really telling him anything. This was one of them. “One night I was cocktailing at a club and had just gotten back to my apartment. It was late, about three in the morning. I hung up my coat, got myself a glass of water…everything was normal, fine. When I went into my bedroom to change, he attacked me.” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “He wasn’t alone.” The man who left death in his wake always had an entourage with him. The Columbian man who had been with him that night at her apartment had always been a staple and at one time she’d thought he was his bodyguard. Although he probably was, she’d suspected Santiago also handled the dirty work. Like holding a knife against her throat. “The man he was with held the knife, while my stalker tore my shirt from my body and told me that if he couldn’t have me, then no one could.”

  Because he’d robbed her of her family, she’d become numb to what had happened that night. She no longer experienced nausea when she thought about it, no longer cried. She saved her tears for those who mattered—her parents, brother and Jake.

  “I was terrified, not because he’d kill me but because no one would know for sure it was him who did it. I kept thinking about my family, about what they’d go through. Pictured them standing in the morgue viewing my dead body.” She drew in a deep breath. “I couldn’t let that happen. So I screamed, loud and long, even when he and his friend tried to silence me with their fists. Thank God the walls to my apartment were paper-thin. My neighbor came banging on my door yelling that he’d called the police. The two men left through the window.” She shrugged. “It was only a ten-foot drop.”

  “Did you report the attack?” he asked, his tone low and menacing, as if he had murder on his mind.

  She shook her head. “You have to understand, he came from money and his family had a lot of influence. No one was going to believe me, a nineteen-year-old cocktail waitress, over him. Besides, he was very careful and covered his tracks. Even though I could’ve had him arrested for attacking me at my apartment, he probably would’ve gotten out on bail and then…finished the job.”

  His forearms and biceps remained flexed, tense. His eyes narrowed and filled with hatred. “Who is he?”

  She’d already told him too much. “It’s in the past and I want to keep it there. I haven’t been Lisa Monroe for eight years.”

  He leaned back in the chair and looked to his half empty plate. “Who is he?” he repeated.

  “Someone you can’t touch.”

  His eyes quickly captured hers. “Why?”

  “Let it go, Jake.” She stood, grabbed her plate and moved toward the sink. “I have.”

  His chair scraped against the tile. In seconds, he gripped her arm and spun her away from the sink. “Bullshit.”

  “Think what you want. I don’t care.”

  “That’s the problem. I do care,” he said, his voice still harsh, but his eyes softening. “And I can’t believe that you’d willing allow yourself to be bullied into being someone else, instead of fighting. Honestly, I can’t believe your parents went along with it.” He tightened his hold. “Are your parents really deceased? Did they know your plans?”

  Tears filled her eyes as her mom and dad’s faces swept through her mind. If only Jake knew the half of it. After she’d been attacked at her apartment, both she and Thomas had tried to talk their parents into changing their identities, too. Her mom and dad wouldn’t hear of it. They were both in their late fifties, were zeroing in on retirement, had a ton of friends and refused to give up their lives. Although they were terrified on her behalf and wanted her safe, they’d wanted to go through the legal channels to end the stalking. Only her mom wound up dead in a car accident and her dad passed away two weeks later of a heart attack. But their deaths hadn’t been accidental or natural. They’d been murdered. He had contacted her, showed up at both funerals and had made it crys
tal clear that if she didn’t come to him, everyone she loved would end up like her parents. Dead.

  “Yes,” she said on a sob, resenting Jake for reopening old wounds, the past, her mistakes, her regrets and guilt. “They knew, but died before I went through the process. Satisfied?”

  Jake tried to reign in his hatred and rage for the asshole who had forced Naomi to change her identity and life. He pulled her closer and caught one of her tears with his thumb. “No.” God, he was a dick. He hated himself for making her cry, but he’d come here to put the past to rest and had needed answers. He’d spent three years loving a woman who had been nothing but a lie, and then the next five years pining over her.

  She jerked her head away and her arm free. “Too bad. If you’re looking for an apology, then I’m sorry I lied to you about my name. I’m sorry for a lot of things. But enough. I’ve answered your questions, hopefully soothed your ego and—”

  He crowded her against the counter, her earthy, flowery scent invading his senses and bringing back memories of last night, of the many nights he’d spent loving her body. “I’m not gonna lie. I was pissed you didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth about your past. But my ego has nothing to do with it.”

  “Now who’s throwing out a line of bullshit?”

  “Damn it, Naomi, I loved you. I wanted to marry you, grow old together and make a bunch of kids. And that’s no bullshit.” When more tears spilled down her cheek, he pushed away and turned his back on her. He didn’t want to see her cry, didn’t want to be the cause, but she had to understand. “Turn it around. How would you feel in my position? Wouldn’t you want to know?”

  He flinched when her hand touched his shoulder. “Yes,” she said, her voice raw, pained. “I would. But now that you do, what’s next?”

  Running a hand through his hair, he shook his head while trying to come up with an answer. “Is this stalker the reason you left me?” he asked instead, hoping that was the case. Leaving him out of fear, he could handle. But if she’d left because of him, because she’d no longer loved or wanted to be with him…yeah, that would definitely be a blow to his ego.