Why would she come to find him? Why was she there, to finish him off?
“Valerie, I don’t think it’s cool for a man to show his frightened side. But right now, I don’t care, because I am scared shitless, and so I’m asking you to be honest with me. I didn’t come here to hurt you. I just want answers. So, tell me, do you know my name and who I really am?”
“Your name is Kincade Colter,” she said, tensing when he sat beside her.
“Kincade Colter? That’s my name?” He watched her nod slowly. “Okay, now that name I like. I feel connected to it, like I’ve said it a thousand times.”
“You’re called Cade. Now, you be honest with me. Has your memory returned?”
“Just bits and pieces, but I don’t know why I was shot,” he said, turning to her. “But you do, don’t you, Valerie?”
“I don’t know anything for certain. I’m a curious person, and I read about this missing person’s case, and it was like trying to solve a mystery…and that brought me here.”
“You were there.” He wasn’t going to let her backslide on this, not on his life.
“What? No, I…”
“You were there,” Cade enunciated slowly. “I saw you. I felt the gunshot, and I could smell my own blood and feel it seeping out of my chest and back. You were there, watching me. You just stood there. How could you do that and not help me, unless…” he said, rising to his feet and glared down at her. “Unless you were in on it.”
Backing away from the bed, another image crept to his mind. He had been dancing with her. They’d kissed many times, and he knew the feel of the curves of her body. He knew exactly where she had sprayed perfume on her body.
“Was it a setup, Valerie? Where you paid to seduce me and get me out on that road?” When she remained silent, Cade reached out and pulled her up to her feet. “You knew what was going to happen and you left me to die? What kind of monster does that?”
“No, no, listen to me. I didn’t leave you there. I didn’t. Cade, I have this ability to see things. I have this gift…”
“Bullshit. Let’s move forward and you start talking, right now.” When a knock sounded at the door, Cade stopped his tirade. He moved behind the door, then motioned for her to answer the door.
Valerie walked stiffly across the room and opened the door. As she had previously arranged, the bellhop came to collect her travel bag. She greeted the young man who passed her an envelope containing a receipt of her paid bill. He reminded her that her flight was leaving at eleven o’clock and that she needed to hurry. Mumbling that she could handle her own travel bag, she thanked him with a twenty-dollar bill Cade slid into her hand, holding the door partially opened. Closing the door, she shot him a tightlipped expression before snatching her wallet from his hand.
“So you were just going to leave tonight after opening Pandora’s Box in my head, huh? Humph. No goodbye kisses for the fuddle-minded fiancé? Or perhaps you were going to write me a Dear JD or Al or Cade, letter?”
“Yes and no. I was going to come see you this evening and have dinner with you.”
“But you overslept and visiting hours were over back at the sanitarium, so then what?”
He walked over to the bed, dismissing her mumbling. A walnut-sized crystal lying on the bed caught his attention. For an instant, he thought he was someplace other than her hotel room. He watched her coming up behind him, but the image he saw in the mirror was Valerie touching his neck and kissing him.
She was feeling me up?
How could that be when she was a part of his nightmare? He couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. When she spoke, he had to blink several times to clear his vision, and when she drew closer, he moved away as if he’d seen a ghost. She spooked him.
“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten involved at all,” she said quietly.
“Well, you did, and now you’re going to backtrack and take me to who wanted me dead.” He lifted her suitcase up to the dresser and began checking the empty dresser drawers.
Valerie pulled on his arm, turning him around. “Listen to me. I don’t know who wanted you dead. Now, please, slow down and let me take you back to the sanitarium. I’ll stay in Maine as long as you want me to.”
“Sure you will, honey.” He snorted and walked over to the table, where he scooped up everything including the hotel notepad, pen, and guest survey. “And we’ll have another Q&A session and you’ll feed me more lies that I’m supposed to believe.” He slung the words over his shoulder as he disappeared into the bathroom and gathered up everything from the vanity, which was only the small bottles of toiletries and bars of soap bearing the hotel name.
On his heels, Valerie’s pleas continued. She took the toiletries from his hands and dropped them back onto the vanity. “I won’t lie to you.” He sent her a mocking smile and cursed.
“Let’s get to the airport so we don’t miss our flight. It leaves in one hour,” he said with fake cheerfulness as he pressed his hand into the small of her back, guiding her out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom. There, he zippered her travel bag, hiked up the handle, and dropped it to the floor, all the while ignoring her indignation and her outrage.
“Oh, no we won’t, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, you need medical attention, and I’m not going anywhere with you.” When she yanked the raised handle of her travel bag, their hands touched and their eyes locked.
“What other options do I have, Valerie?” Spotting some papers and her laptop on the table by the window, he walked over and dumped everything into the satchel he always saw her carry. “Get you necklace thing there off the bed and your cell phone from the nightstand and let’s go,” he said, marching to the door. His expression was as firm as his grip on the handle of her travel bag, which he tugged from her hand.
“You can’t force me to do anything, and I’m not leaving here with you.”
“I’m not forcing you, honey. You’ve already checked out, and we’re cutting it close to your flight time,” he said. “And, by the way, I’ve got no ID or cash. So if you don’t mind, I need you to buy me a ticket to DC with one of those premium credit cards in your wallet.”
Valerie must have sensed to fight would be futile. After gathering up her things and glancing around the room, she marched over to the door he now held open. When his hand came up and cupped her cheek, he was tender, and her eyes rose to meet his.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I can’t say for sure what my life has been like before, but I don’t believe I’ve ever hurt a woman. I’m asking for your help,” he whispered, inching closer. “You’re the only one I can get answers from, and I don’t know when or where, but you promised you would help me, and I’m asking you to keep your word, Valerie.”
***
Valerie
When he touched her face, Valerie recalled the first time she’d touched him. His warmth radiated through her skin. He was a living, breathing, sexy, real man.
She knew to leave that room with him would mean crossing into a world that was all too real—the now, the present, her life.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
Dante
Dante figured putting Jolene on that inventory project would keep her busy and decided to send her an email asking about the check paid to Cade. Now, he wished he hadn’t asked. Her response after marching into his office had made his ears ring. When he’d finally been able to calm her down, she admitted tearfully that she was beginning to think that Cade was dead. She ran from his office in tears.
Ten minutes later, Dante was fighting off a throbbing headache when Jolene called to say she had to talk to him again, right away. Searching his desk for two aspirin, he prepared himself for Jolene’s new rant or, worse, her tears.
When she tapped on his door and walked in, Dante was quick to round his desk. “Hey, sweetheart,” he said, giving her a brief hug and dropping a kiss to the top of her head full of spirally black curls. He guided her to the chair opposite his desk
before returning to his own chair. He didn’t miss that she sat twisting sheets of paper in her hand, no doubt his inventory report. “Did you see the size of that turkey Mom got for Thanksgiving dinner? We’ll be eating off that bird until Easter, that is if it ever thaws out,” he said, delighted when she giggled. “You know what my favorite dish is, don’t you?”
“Uh-huh, dressing swimming in gravy and cranberry sauce,” she said. “I pray that Cade will have a Thanksgiving dinner, also.”
“He will honey. God willing, he will. So what’ve you got there?” He watched the shimmering pools in her eyes recede as she smoothed out the wrinkled papers on top of his desk.
“Okay, so I checked and rechecked, and finally I found out that check we received came from a personal account that belonged to Glen Walker. That’s Councilman Glen Walker. He died a while back of a flu bug. But get this: within a couple of weeks of him dying, his Georgetown house burned down in what has been ruled arson.”
“Makes you wonder what someone was trying to keep hidden,” Dante said.
“Well, I’m wondering what job Councilman Glen Walker paid Cade one hundred thousand dollars for,” Jolene said, meeting her brother’s eyes.
***
Valerie
At three-fifteen in the morning, Valerie arrived home thoroughly exhausted with a pale and nauseous Cade Colter in tow.
Dropping her mail onto the marble table in the hallway, she glanced up into the mirror above the hall table and grimaced. Her red-rimmed eyes, ruffled hair, and rumpled clothes told the tale of her travel experience. The flight from Maine had to be diverted around LaGuardia due to a storm, so for most of the flight, the turbulence had them gripping the armrests until the plane landed at Dulles Airport. But that wasn’t the problem.
She’d dealt with turbulence before, no big deal. The problem started when the flight took off from Maine. It was then Valerie discovered something about her travel buddy, Cade. He was afraid of heights. Funny thing, he hadn’t known it until the flight lifted for takeoff. Her forearm and shoulder ached from his death grips, and he still clutched two of the in-flight vomit bags in his hand.
I’m never again flying with this guy.
She watched him wearily drop down into the chair beside the hall table. There was little he could do but drop his head to his free hand and belch. Staring down at the top of his head, he belched again and glanced up to mumble another apology.
She didn’t miss his increased look of sickness. “Don’t you even think about throwing up in this hallway,” she snarled, then directed him down the hall to the first-floor bathroom, across from her home office. “Why don’t you go freshen up, and I’ll get you some seltzer to settle your stomach?”
She watched him carefully make his way down the hall and within seconds heard him retching. Concerned, she rushed to the opened door, hoping he’d made it to the toilet, and held back a small smile when he gave her thumbs up as he leaned over the toilet bowl.
Walking into the kitchen, she prepared the seltzer before putting on the tea kettle.
Sitting at the kitchen center island, her mind drifted back to when she’d returned the rental car at the airport. Cade had been pacing and looking out the window at the planes landing and taking off. She’d thought about calling the sanitarium and hoping his face didn’t flash on the many monitors lining the walls in the airport as a kidnapped victim. Only time would tell if she’d done the right thing by not calling the sanitarium, she thought.
On the airplane, when he wasn’t squeezing the life out of her shoulder, arm, and thigh or burying his face in the pillow, he’d used her laptop to search the Internet. She marveled at how his fingers flew across the keyboard. Now, she knew he was a computer whiz and that he worked at his brother’s company.
Mindlessly stirring her tea, Valerie didn’t know how or what to tell Cade about his family, but she suspected he may have started to remember them. On the flight, he’d talked about nameless people he kept dreaming about. When she tried again to explain her gift, his skeptical chuckle annoyed her, so she’d shut her mouth. Recalling how his throaty chuckles had several passengers looking their way, Valerie now took a small amount of delight in the fact that he was still in the bathroom puking.
Serves him right.
“Baby, I can’t imagine what you’re thinking about, but you sure are pretty,” Cade commented, having come into the kitchen, and lounged against the counter, watching her.
***
Isaac
Isaac took a break from the meeting he, Congressman Owen, and his aide Ted Baxter were having. Pouring himself another cup of coffee from the coffee station set up near the bay window overlooking the garden, he sipped his coffee, thinking about the two issues stressing him.
First was Neva. She was sitting in the great room next to the congressman’s home office. He thought she was exceptionally pretty today, dressed in a deep blue suit with her hair done up in a twist at the nape of her neck. She looked the part she played for the women who was interviewing her, aloof and quiet, but the devoted wife of an influential congressman. But Isaac knew better. He knew Neva’s other side…the huntress, the planner, and the taker…the one who’d screw him senseless while her husband was on the telephone in the next room and then slithered off of him when she was done and slipped away. He watched her nodding politely at the interviewer. But he couldn’t help recalling the reckless chance she had taken a few days ago. He should have sent her away, but he didn’t because she gave him immeasurable pleasure and he couldn’t get enough of that.
The second issue that was stressing him was the bombshell Baxter had casually dropped before the congressmen answered his telephone.
Baxter had mentioned that the CEO of a computer services company had paid him a visit at the congressman’s downtown office, inquiring if they’d had a need for computer service at any time in the past six months. It wasn’t a surprise when business owners solicited for business; the surprise was the name Ted dropped, Dante Colter.
Isaac kept his face impassive, but inside he was quaking. He knew Dante Colter must be Cade’s brother. “So, Ted, this Dante Colter you mentioned,” Isaac said, crossing back over to the small conference table, trying not to show his annoyance, “did you advise Mr. Colter of the protocol for our computer servicing?” When Ted assured him that he had followed protocol, Isaac simply ignored the man’s indignation.
“In light of what happened several months ago at the Sullivan Hotel, you should’ve reported the visit immediately and not waiting all this time.” As Ted mumbled through excuses, Isaac tuned him out because his mind riveted back to his first unresolved problem: finding Colter’s body. For the older brother to be snooping around suggested to Isaac that Dante Colter believed there was a connection between the congressman and his brother. This was not good, and he realized the easiest thing he needed to do was also the riskiest.
He needed to check on the body under the bridge, or what was left of it.
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Valerie
“So last night wasn’t a dream, huh?” Valerie glanced up as Cade stepped into the kitchen, pausing before scooping scrambled eggs onto two breakfast plates.
“No dream and good morning,” Cade replied.
Forcing her mind away from his morning sleep-laden look, which was downright sexy, five o’clock shadow and all, Valerie struggled to respond. “You really did force me from my hotel room and onto an airplane.” She watched him nod before he picked up the coffee pot and inhaled the steamy brew.
“Awww, this is the most delicious-smelling breakfast, and I slept so well sprawled out on a big bed,” he said, relieving her of the two breakfast plates and setting them on the center island. “I see you like a lot of bacon,” he said.
“I do, but I never cook a few slices. It’s easier to cook the whole package.”
“Makes perfect sense,” Cade said, biting a piece of bacon, then closing his eyes with appreciation. “I love bacon, and I’v
e missed it. I have got to kiss the hand that prepared it.”
Valerie had just placed a steaming cup of coffee beside his plate when he took her hand and kissed her palm. Staring down at the top of his head bent over her hand, she caught onto something he had said. “Hey, you said you like bacon? Is this something you just remembered?”
“I said I love bacon, and I’m positive it’s an old memory because I didn’t get any in the sanitarium. Now, how did you know that I take two sugars in my coffee?”
“I’ve had breakfast, lunch, and dinner with you at the sanitarium for the past week, so I know how you take your coffee, Cade.” She gestured for him to have a seat at the center island and passed him a plate with slices of buttered toast. Valerie thought it best that she prepare for all the questions he hadn’t asked her on the flight home or when he’d finally come out of the bathroom in the wee hours of the morning. “I’m glad your stomach finally settled. Now tell me how you are feeling otherwise?”
“Better, thanks. It’s nothing like being forced to gulp down fizzing, foaming seltzer.”
Yes, she’d had to practically force him to drink the seltzer when he’d come out of the bathroom. “I had no choice. You wouldn’t have drank it otherwise.” Feeling his eyes on her, she rounded the island with two bowls of sliced fruit, then sat adjacent to him. They ate in silence for several minutes with him noisily eating with gusto and grinning.
“You mentioned you live alone, but are you uncomfortable with me being here considering we’re strangers and not engaged or an intimate couple?” He winked at her.
Valerie chose to ignore his meaningful wink. He looked comfortable in the t-shirt and black sweatpants she’d left on the upstairs bathroom vanity for him since he didn’t have a change of clothes. “No, I’m not uncomfortable,” she finally answered.
Finding Cade (Dream Catcher Series Book 1) Page 19
