by Jami Alden
“You bulldozed right over me is what you did,” Talia said. Her throat tightened at the thought of how he saw her—weak, afraid, easily controlled by someone bigger and stronger. “Did it ever occur to you,” she said, choking past the lump in her throat, “that maybe going behind my back and installing a secret security system isn’t the best way to make me feel safe?”
She held up a silencing hand when he would have responded. “I get it. I was in a bad place for a very long time and not far out of it the last time you saw me. But since David died, I’ve been taking care of myself and taking care of Rosie. I know you see me as someone who makes stupid decisions, but I’m not that girl anymore. You can’t just go behind my back and go against what I want just because you think you know what’s best for me.” She thumped her finger on his chest for emphasis.
Jack flinched, his broad shoulders slumping under his jacket. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”
But Talia was on a roll now, David’s control over her fresh in her memory after the nightmare. “Obviously,” Talia said, anger coursing through her. At Jack for going behind her back. At the way his presence brought everything bubbling back up to the surface, reminding her of the kind of person she’d once been. The kind of person he could never, ever see as an equal, worthy of his respect and lo–
She cut the thought off and lashed out. “What’s next? You going to install cameras in my bathroom so you can watch me shower? Trust me, Jack. This”—she made a gesture to her body—“is not even close to what it used to be, all scarred up and—”
“Shut up,” Jack bit out, his voice soft. He pressed his lips together and squeezed his eyes shut. When they opened, their familiar icy blue had given way to a stormy gray, dark and troubled. “I’m sorry. I never thought about it that way—”
“No, of course you didn’t,” she said, the anger draining out of her as she realized her arrow had more than hit its mark.
Jack didn’t deserve this. It wasn’t his fault she was damaged goods still trying to firm up her place in this new life of hers. “I’m sorry—that was a horrible thing to say. I had a really rough night after you left, and I shouldn’t take it out on you. Especially when you’re only trying to help. But you have to understand that all of this, being around you, having you do stuff against my wishes, it brings up stuff—”
“I get it,” Jack said curtly. “I’m hard for you to be around.” His face was carved in granite, and a muscle throbbed in his jaw. “As soon as I’m done, I’ll make myself scarce.”
Every cell in her body protested at the idea of saying good-bye again, but logically she knew it was for the best. She’d reached a good place in her life, a calm place. The emotional turmoil Jack caused just by showing up put all of that at risk.
Still, as she walked into the house, dropping her gym bag on the entryway floor, she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “That’s not what I meant. You just have to understand that I won’t be dictated to, and I won’t be walked over. No matter how much you’ve helped me in the past, you can’t just ignore me when I ask you not to do something.”
“You’re right,” Jack said as he followed behind her. “And I apologize. But—”
“No. You can stop at sorry.” When he opened his mouth to speak, she put her hand up. “And you can remove the new system.”
“Afraid that won’t be possible,” Jack said.
“Why not?” She turned to Ben. “Whatever you’ve done already, just undo.”
“Well, it’s not as simple as that,” Ben said as he rubbed a broad palm across the back of his neck. “It’s too complicated to explain, but if we rip out the new system, your entire system will have to be rewired. You’ll have to buy and reinstall a new security system.”
Talia could feel the muscles in her jaw throb. She was tempted to tell them to rip the entire thing out, but she knew it could take weeks for a new system to be installed. No way was she staying here without a working security system, even if the greatest threat to her security was the local wildlife.
“Fine. How much do I owe you?
“Nothing,” Jack said.
“How. Much.” She pinned Ben with a hard stare. When he didn’t answer for several seconds, she reached for her cell phone. “Fine. I’ll call Danny and ask him.” Somehow she didn’t think this was a sanctioned Gemini work order. “I’m sure he’d be more than happy to collect for the time and the equipment.”
Ben and Jack exchanged a look, confirming her suspicions.
She’d met Danny only a couple of times, but on both occasions it had been clear that while he was more than happy to help Rosario, the innocent victim in the mess Talia had made of their lives, he was helping Talia only as a favor to Jack. You’d better be damn careful, pulling him into this mess of yours, Danny had said the first time they’d met. No way would he be okay with Jack throwing her any more freebies.
Ben’s gaze darted between their matching glares. “Well, fully installed, this usually runs a few grand.” A warning grunt from Jack made him sputter, “B-but since I had most of the equipment already—”
“Never mind,” Talia said, and yanked her checkbook out of her purse and quickly scrawled out a check for five hundred dollars. The ripping sound echoed through the kitchen and she thrust it at Jack. “This is all I can afford right now. Have someone at the office get in touch and I’ll set up a payment plan.”
Jack crumpled the check in his hand.
“I swear to God, if that check doesn’t clear by the end of the week, I’ll rip out the system myself.”
“Jesus, Tal, why are you being such a hardass?” Rosario said. “They’re just trying to help us out.”
Talia whirled on her sister. “Because it’s not okay for anyone to come into my home and do things against my will and then tell me I should be grateful.” She winced inwardly at her shrill tone, could only imagine that Ben must think Jack was crazy for wanting to help a bitch like her. But she’d spent too long being pushed around, her entire existence under the control of one man. Now everything inside her rebelled at the idea of being manipulated, having her needs and wants ignored, even if it was motivated by the best of intentions.
“I’ve never demanded your gratitude, Talia,” Jack said quietly, his hand still fisted around the check.
Talia let out huff of laughter and felt her shoulders slump under an unexpected wave of sadness. “No, you don’t seem to want anything.”
For a second something flared in Jack’s eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared. “I know you’re not happy with the way I did this,” he said softly. He nodded at Ben, who left with a quick wave for her and Rosario. “But maybe you’ll change your mind when you see the scratch marks on your garage door lock.”
Talia’s brow furrowed, a chill running through her as the impact of his words started to sink in. “It wasn’t a raccoon?”
Jack’s head gave a quick jerk to the side. “The lock was picked. Someone tried to break into your house.”
Chapter 3
You can go ahead and file a report,” the officer, who was not nearly as nice as Officer Roberts, said in a voice that managed to convey the emptiness of that gesture. “But your landlord admitted the lock is old and the house had been previously burglarized. There’s no proof those scratches are from the other night—”
“They look fresh,” Jack interrupted. “Had they been from the previous burglary, they would have been smoothed out—”
“So being a high-priced rent-a-cop makes you an expert in forensics?” the cop said, adjusting his belt under his hefty gut as he puffed his chest out.
Ben rolled his eyes and went back into the house. Talia was pretty sure that crunching sound was Jack biting on his tongue. “What else do you suggest I do, Officer?”
“Keep your doors locked and your alarm on,” he said with a smirk, and left.
Jack muttered something under his breath.
“Tal, do you want me to stay with you for a little while?” Rosario asked, h
er hand on Talia’s arm the only warm spot on her body.
Talia shook her head. “I’ll be fine.” Rosario loved living on campus, and Talia would never take that away from her. And maybe she was being paranoid, but if someone was specifically targeting her, she wanted Rosie well away, safe in her dorm, protected by the university’s own rigorous security protocols. “Just do me a favor—no missing any curfew calls this week. Deal?” When Talia had agreed to let Rosario live on campus, they’d agreed Rosario would call her every single night, no matter what, at eleven p.m. to let her know where she was. In the eight months since school started, Rosario had gotten a little lax. And try as she did not to overreact, nothing sent Talia into a tailspin faster than not being able to get ahold of Rosie. There had even been one humiliating—according to Rosario—incident involving her dorm RAs and the campus police.
“Deal,” Rosario replied with a smile. “Eleven o’clock, on the dot, unless I go to bed early, and if I can’t call, I promise to text.” She gave Jack a quick hug good-bye and ran inside to get her stuff together.
“Talia—” Jack got cut off as his phone beeped. He let out a low curse. “I’m sorry, but we have to go.” He nodded at Ben, who emerged from her house with his bag of gear. “We need to move it if we’re going to make it on time,” he called over Talia’s head, then focused back on her. “I’m on a personal security detail over in Atherton—our client has been receiving death threats, so they’re temporarily relocating from London. It’s going to be twenty-four-seven, so the next few weeks—”
Talia held up her hand. “Jack, you don’t have to explain to me that you have a job to do. I know you didn’t come down from Seattle to see me. You don’t have to babysit me. I’ll be fine.”
He cocked an eyebrow and looked meaningfully in the direction of her garage door.
Talia shrugged and said, “Like Officer Friendly said, that probably happened ages ago.”
“You don’t buy that bullshit any more than I do.”
“Let’s move,” Ben said. “And I’m driving. You drive like a grandma.”
Jack didn’t budge. “The system is wired now to call Gemini headquarters and my cell phone if the alarm trips. I’ll get here as fast as I can, but if I can’t someone else will. And if anything else happens, you call me immediately. I’ll have my phone on and with me at all times.”
Talia rolled her eyes. “It was probably just some dumb kid looking to steal beer—”
“Immediately,” Jack bit out. “And if I don’t answer, you call Danny, Derek, or Ethan directly.”
“Or me!” Ben interjected.
“Not Ben,” Jack said with a smile so slight she wondered if she was imagining it. “He’s an asshole.”
Did the iceman just make a joke? “I promise,” she conceded. “But don’t expect to hear from me. And I won’t expect to hear from you,” she said. But she couldn’t ignore the hollow feeling that washed over her as she watched Jack and Ben climb into the car and drive away.
It was stupid, she told herself as she walked back into the house, the way seeing him left her with that strange, hollow ache. A faint yearning for him to stick around, for her to unglue her tongue and figure out what to say instead of her halfhearted efforts to push him away. A wish that maybe they could have… something.
Right, like that was possible, she thought, and gave herself a mental kick. What she and Jack had, so oddly intimate yet so excruciatingly uncomfortable, could never be untangled enough to go anywhere good.
She drove Rosario back to campus and contemplated what to do for the rest of the afternoon. Maybe she should see if Susie was up for a movie, she thought, then quickly dismissed the idea. Talia was in a weird, melancholy mood and had no business inflicting herself on anyone.
Besides, she had only a few hours to kill before she had to work. Maybe she’d do some laundry. The house phone rang, cutting off her mental meanderings. She started to ignore it—anyone she knew would have called her cell. She picked up the handset to turn the ringer off, hesitating when she saw the number on the caller ID display.
Wireless caller. Her brow furrowed as she recognized the Washington State area code and Seattle exchange.
Without thought, her thumb pressed the TALK button. “Hello?”
“Talia Vega?” an unfamiliar male voice asked.
“Who’s calling?”
“Is this Talia Vega?” he repeated.
Her grip on the phone tightened. “Who wants to know?”
The phone went dead.
Cold sweat filmed her forehead. They’d found her. Just like that, she was back down in that black hole of panic and fear, leaving the safe house only when necessary. Breath held, constantly looking over her shoulder, dreading the moment when he or one of his lackeys would snatch her from her bed or, worse, take Rosario and use her as bait to flush Talia out.
No, stop. She took a deep breath, reminded herself that David was dead, his organization blown to smithereens. There was no more “they.” No one had bothered to come after her in nearly two years. Why would they now?
But whoever called knew her name, knew her phone number.
It wasn’t like she was in hiding, the rational, calming part of her brain argued. She’d kept her information unlisted, but she knew there were ways to find out that sort of thing if someone was motivated enough.
That last thought wasn’t at all comforting. She picked up the phone and brought the number up on the caller ID. She knew it was overkill, but she could call someone back at Gemini’s office and have them trace it. She didn’t want to bother Jack—
The phone rang in her hand. It was him again.
“What do you want?” she asked sharply.
“Talia Vega?”
She didn’t answer.
“Sorry about before. I went through a canyon and my cell dropped the call. I’m trying to get in touch with Talia Vega. Can you at least tell me if I have the right number?”
“And I’ll ask you again,” she said, irritation doing its part to chase away some of the fear, “who wants to know?”
“My name is Greg Fitzhugh,” he said. “I’m working on a book for Seattle Magazine about the fallout from the Grayson-Maxwell scandal—”
“I have nothing to say on the matter.”
“Please,” he said, “if it hadn’t been for you, no one would have ever connected him to Karev’s operation,” he said.
Talia wasn’t sure if he was genuinely impressed or just kissing her ass.
“If it weren’t for you helping Deputy PA Slater, the corruption would have gone unchecked, and none of those people would have been arrested.”
Her fingers started to go numb at the tips. The last thing she wanted to do was remind all of those people of her existence and, worse, make it seem like she was bragging about her part in bringing them down. Hell, at one time she’d been as knee-deep in the shit as the rest of them. She had nothing to brag about.
“I know you took a bit of a beating in the press before,” he said at her continued silence, “but you don’t have to worry about how you’ll be portrayed.”
What, like they could somehow turn the mistress of a notorious criminal—who, among other things, had twisted her testimony to help send an innocent man to death row and stood numbly by while half a dozen women were butchered—into a heroine for justice? “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
She hung up and immediately unplugged the phone in case Greg Fitzhugh decided to call back, then realized she’d forgotten to ask him where he’d gotten the number.
You should have changed your name. Not for the first time, Talia questioned her decision not to change her identity. Jack assured her that as long as they held up their cover stories, he could create a cover for them that was all but bulletproof.
Everything in her had rebelled at the idea. David Maxwell had nearly taken everything from them. She wasn’t going to let him take their identities. Most importantly, it wasn’t fair to force Rosie to live this lie
with her.
And deep in her heart, Talia didn’t feel like she deserved to disappear into anonymity. Her own bad choices had gotten her into trouble, and part of her penance was living with that truth. For better or worse.
This, she supposed, was the worse part.
Nothing to do but move past it. What was done was done, and unless she wanted to turn her and Rosie’s lives upside down all over again, she had to accept reality: If a person was motivated to find Talia Vega, there wasn’t much to keep them from tracking her down.
He’d failed.
He hurried into the house, ignoring his mother’s demands to know where he’d been as he raced to his room. He slammed the door behind him and threw the bolt lock, the roaring in his head drowning out the sound of Mother pounding on the door.
He couldn’t think over the twisting sickness in his stomach. He was a loser, an imposter, too weak to do what needed to be done.
Too weak to kill.
He’d hoped number three would be his first. He’d done everything right; everything went exactly according to plan.
Up until the very end, when he messed it up.
Like he always did.
He stripped off his clothes and jumped into the shower, scrubbing away the stink of abject failure. He dressed quickly, tried to quiet his mind. He needed to get a grip on himself—there was still so much to do tonight.
He’d left the experiment running at the campus lab, and he needed to get back in time to analyze the samples before they were ruined. But he couldn’t go yet, not with his brain a scattered roar as he faced the reality of this latest failure.
He wasn’t worried about getting caught. He was too careful for that. But it ate at him like acid that once the drugs wore off and she recovered from her wounds, the bitch would be walking around this earth, a living reminder of his weakness.
He gulped down a glass of cold water and flipped on his computer. He checked his e-mail, and the knot in his stomach twisted tighter when he saw he’d received a Google alert about a new article mentioning Nate Brewster.
