by Elle Kennedy
She’d slept with him. She’d taken him to meet her family. She’d laughed with him and kissed him, and the whole time he was pretending to be someone else. Resentment coursed through her, trailed by humiliation. At the moment, she wasn’t sure whom she was angrier with—him, for deceiving her, or herself, for falling for it again.
“Marley, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth earlier, but…”
She scowled. “But what?”
“I wasn’t supposed to make contact with you in the first place,” he confessed. “I only did because I saw you hanging from the eaves, and I didn’t want to let you fall.”
“Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“I couldn’t.” He looked at the ground. “There was always the chance that you were still involved with Grier, that you’d tip him off.”
A breath flew out of her mouth. “Involved with… You thought I was a suspect?”
He shook his head. “Maybe a little, at first. But not now. I know you’re not involved with any of Patrick’s dealings, Marley.”
She glared at him. “How nice for me! The man who slept with me under false pretenses didn’t think I was a criminal. I feel so much better.” She clenched her fingers. “So, do you have sex with all your potential suspects, or am I the only one?”
He winced. “I have never gotten involved with a witness before,” he said, emphasizing the word witness.
She shot him a cold look. “Lucky me.”
“I was desperate. My best friend was killed in that raid, and the person who murdered him is out there somewhere, going unpunished. I didn’t mean to get involved with you…it just happened…and I’ve been torn up in knots about lying to you.”
“I’m sorry about your friend, but there were other ways you could have handled this.” Her voice wobbled. “Telling me the truth would have been a good start.”
“I wanted to, really.” His claim meant little in light of his actions.
“What exactly have you been doing, Caleb?”
He hesitated. “Watching.”
“Are you recording everything?”
“Yes.”
“Recording everything,” she whispered, remembering all the special moments they’d shared. Moments she’d thought were private. “God, I can’t believe this.”
CALEB STOOD PARALYZED as he watched Marley’s feelings for him die.
Her shoulders were stiff as she turned and made a move for the bedroom door. “You’re a bastard, Caleb.”
“Marley, wait.”
He tried to grab hold of her arm, but she shrugged him off as if she’d been stung by a scorpion. “Don’t you dare touch me. You’ve been lying to me since the moment we met. I was always just a case for you. So don’t you ever touch me again, do you hear me, Agent Ford?”
“Damn it, Marley, you’re more than a case.”
She stared through him. “Right.”
“It’s true.” His heart twisted in his chest. “Something happened once we got involved. I started to care about you.”
“You don’t care about me,” she said coldly. “You’re just trying to butter me up with sweet words so I’ll forget about all the lies.”
“I’m not lying about this. And believe me, I’m not sure I even like it. My job has always been the most important thing in my life. I never wanted anything more than that. But then I met you, and now…now I realize what I’ve been missing all these years.”
Marley moved toward the door again.
“A job isn’t going to keep me warm at night, or make me laugh the way you do,” Caleb continued in a soft voice. “A job isn’t going to make me pancakes or seduce me in a car. Being with you has shown me that it’s okay to open up to another person.”
“Looks like you’re going to have to be satisfied with the job.” Marley stumbled to the door, tears coating her thick eyelashes.
“Marley, please,” he burst out.
She turned around and paused in the doorway, slowly meeting his eyes. “I will never forgive you for this,” she murmured.
Then she marched out of the room.
“Well.” AJ’s dry voice sounded from the bathroom he’d ducked into when they’d spotted Marley’s brisk walk next door on the monitors. “That was unpleasant.”
Ignoring his partner, Caleb stared at the doorway for a second, then tore out of it. He heard the front door slam as he hurried down the stairs, but he kept going. He couldn’t let it end like this. Every word he’d uttered up in the bedroom had been true. He did care about her. He’d told her things about himself that he’d never told another soul. His life in foster care, his mother’s overdose, how hard it was to talk about his feelings. He couldn’t lose her now, not when he’d finally found someone he actually wanted in his life.
He caught up to her on the front lawn at the same time a blue pickup truck came to a stop in her driveway. He bit back a groan when he saw Marley’s brother slide out of the driver’s side, pulling a tool belt from the passenger seat.
“Marley!” Caleb called after her.
She quickly ascended the porch steps. Sam must have noticed the anger radiating off his sister’s body, because he darted toward them, reaching the porch just as Caleb did.
“What’s going on here?” Sam asked, looking wary.
“Nothing,” Marley answered. She avoided Caleb’s face and glanced at her brother. “Come in, let’s work on that closet.”
“Marley, please,” Caleb said. “Just let me explain.”
“You’ve done all the explaining you need to.”
“We can’t leave things like this.”
“Oh, yes, we can.”
Sam’s eyes moved back and forth between the two of them. He opened his mouth to speak again, but Marley raised her hand and gestured for him to come inside. “Agent Ford was just leaving.”
Sam wrinkled his forehead, then walked up the steps and followed his sister into the house. “Agent Ford?” Caleb heard Sam say, and then the door shut behind them.
Caleb stood there feeling frustrated. He wanted to knock on the door, or hell, kick it open and try to make Marley understand, but he knew she wasn’t in the frame of mind to listen right now. He’d blown it. She would never forgive him for this, and at the moment, he didn’t particularly blame her.
His shoulders slumped. Slowly, he walked back next door and headed upstairs. When he entered the bedroom, AJ was at the desk, looking a little shell-shocked.
It killed him to do it, but Caleb turned to the monitors. He saw Marley lead her brother into the kitchen, where they sat down at the table. Sam leaned forward. Marley’s eyes flashed as she filled her brother in on what had just happened. Sam’s face hardened, and he tried to get up, but Marley forced him to sit back down.
He’s not worth it, he could almost hear her say.
He hoped that one day he’d be able to convince her otherwise.
He tore his gaze from the screen, noticing that AJ was tentatively holding out a green folder to him. “What’s that?” Caleb muttered.
“Hernandez’s file. Lukas from headquarters faxed it over.” AJ paused. “Read it. It might take your mind off…you know.”
Caleb took the folder, but rather than reading it, he set it on the desk and walked over to the bed. He dropped onto the mattress, feeling beaten and battered. Ravaged. The way he’d felt the night of the warehouse raid, as he held his dying best friend in his arms.
But this time, there was nobody to direct all that grief and anger at. Grier had killed Russ, but Caleb was the one responsible for bringing the anguish into Marley’s eyes.
“Caleb…look, you were just doing your job,” AJ said.
Caleb stared at his friend. “No, I wasn’t. My job didn’t require me to befriend her. Or to sleep with her.”
“She’ll forgive you.”
“No, she won’t.”
Why would she? He’d screwed up big-time. Taken Marley’s trust and whipped it out the window, along with his own code of h
onor.
“HE’S ACOP?” GWEN EXCLAIMED later that evening, ten minutes before their shift was scheduled to begin.
Marley sat down on the bench with a weak nod.
Gwen shook her head, her eyes wide. “A cop?”
“Yes,” Marley said gloomily.
“And he only got close to you to find Patrick?”
“Yep, but apparently he developed feelings for me along the way.” Right. He’d been spying on her for weeks, yet he expected her to believe that he gave a damn?
She suddenly wished she’d called in sick. She’d spent the entire day stewing over Caleb’s lies. Be rating herself for being such an idiot and yet again placing her trust in the wrong man. Sam had wanted to stick around, even tried distracting her by saying they should work on the hall closet together, but she’d ended up sending him away. She couldn’t bear seeing the pity on her brother’s face.
Caleb’s betrayal continued to haunt her. It pulsed through her veins and buzzed in her mind and pretty much made it impossible to focus on anything else. She’d come into work only because she needed a diversion from her thoughts.
“I can’t believe this,” Gwen said.
Marley’s lips tightened. “Neither can I. I thought he actually cared about me.”
Gwen tied the drawstring of her scrubs and stepped toward Marley, gently touching her arm. “Maybe he does, Mar. It might have been a case for him at first, but that could have changed.”
“That’s what he claims, but why should I believe him? He’s lied to me about everything, Gwen.”
Gwen looked thoughtful.
“Maybe you should talk to him again, try to make some sense of all this.”
“Sense of it? He lied to me.”
“He lied about what he did for a living,” Gwen clarified. “That doesn’t mean he lied about how he feels for you.”
Marley fell silent. She thought about the times they’d had sex, the emotion overflowing in his blue eyes as he’d held her tightly, as he’d told her she was beautiful. She hadn’t picked up on anything insincere in those actions, in those words, but how could she trust her own judgment after being duped. Twice.
“I don’t know.” She rubbed her forehead in frustration. “I keep thinking about all the time we spent together. It felt real, Gwen.”
“Maybe it was.”
“The way things were so real with Patrick?” she retorted.
“Patrick was a soulless jerk who dealt drugs and killed people. Caleb is a cop. A drug-enforcement cop, to boot.” Gwen sounded conflicted, a deep crease in her forehead. “He cleans up the streets, tries to make them safe—does that make him a bad man?”
“He lied,” Marley said through clenched teeth. She took a breath. “Whatever, it was just a fling and it’s over. I’ll just have to deal with it, the way I dealt with everything that happened with Patrick.”
Her friend sat down next to her and took her hand. Squeezing her fingers, Gwen searched Marley’s face, a perceptive glimmer in her eyes. “What are you really angry about, hon? Because if it really was just a fling, you wouldn’t care this much. You’d just chalk it up as another stupid mistake, the way it was with, what’s his name, the guy you went out with before Patrick.”
“Brad,” she murmured.
“Right, Brad. He was a total ass, remember? He stood you up on your birthday.”
Marley sighed. “I really pick winners, don’t I?”
“You’re missing the point,” Gwen said with a sigh of her own. “I’m just saying, some men are jerks. Brad was, and you barely blinked after you dumped him.”
“And Patrick? Are you saying I shouldn’t have been furious about him?”
“No, I’m not saying that. Patrick is different. You were with him for five months. You lived together. Of course you should have been furious. But you’ve only known Caleb a week. It’s normal to be angry, sure, but not devastated.” Gwen hesitated. “Unless you care about him more than you’re willing to admit.”
Marley smothered another sigh. “I…liked being with him,” she finally admitted. “He’s such a hard man to get to know, hardly ever talks about his feelings, but I thought he was starting to open up to me.” She swallowed. “And when we had sex, I felt really…connected to him.”
“Then you need to talk to him again,” Gwen advised. “You need to find out if he felt that connection, too.”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
She thought about Caleb’s confession, the regret flickering in his eyes, and for a moment she experienced a pang of doubt. But then the memory of all those computer monitors pushed its way into the fore-front of her brain, and the doubt transformed into anger again. She imagined Caleb sitting at that computer desk, watching her, talking about her, wondering if she was helping Patrick leave the country.
How could she ever trust him again?
Her mind was spinning, but considering she was about to start her shift, she couldn’t afford to be distracted.
Taking a breath, she stood up and said, “I can’t talk about this anymore. I need to worry about my patients right now.”
“Just promise you’ll think about what I said,” Gwen said.
“Sure,” Marley said, then kicked off her sandals. Determined to change for work, tend to her patients and forget all about Caleb and Patrick and every other headache pulsing through her mind, she walked to her locker and opened the door.
“Oh, my God,” she choked out.
“What?” Gwen rushed to her side, sucking in a gasp when she saw what Marley was looking at.
On the inside of the metal door, scrawled in the red lipstick she kept on the top shelf, was the word Whore. And underneath it, attached with a piece of silver duct tape, was a photograph of Marley.
A photograph she recognized as the one Patrick used to keep in his wallet.
A photograph that now featured a big black X directly over her face.
12
TWO HOURS LATER, MARLEY SAT on her living-room couch, stiff as a board, unable to erase the memory of Patrick’s vile message. She and Gwen had called the police immediately, and officers had turned the nurses’ locker room into a crime scene, dusting Marley’s locker for fingerprints and questioning everyone who’d been working on the floor that day. So far, none of the hospital staff had admitted to seeing Patrick.
She fought a wave of nausea as she pictured what had happened. He’d waltzed into her place of work, strolled into the locker room. Opened her locker. Touched her things. She wanted to throw up just thinking about it. Was he fearless, or just crazy?
Crazy, obviously. And apparently enraged. She shivered and wondered what on earth she’d done to earn Patrick’s rage. The disgusting message was so different from the sweet email he’d sent only days ago. Something had changed during that time, something had infuriated Patrick so much that he’d decided to paint a target on her.
Fortunately, the police had decided to take this matter seriously. Her house was swarming with law-enforcement officers. Hernandez was in the armchair next to the couch, a notepad in his hand so he could take her statement. Three other officers from the SDPD hovered behind him, while three DEA agents, including Caleb and his partner, stood near the door. Caleb’s partner had introduced himself as AJ Callaghan, and Marley had been angry just shaking his hand, especially when she learned he’d been next door with Caleb this entire time.
Caleb had reacted with a brief flash of guilt during the introduction with AJ, but now he leaned against the bookshelf, his face completely expressionless.
She couldn’t bring herself to look at him for more than a few seconds. He wore a long-sleeved black shirt and snug black trousers. The butt of a gun poked out of the holster on his hip. The weapon was a reminder of his true identity.
He hadn’t said a word to her since entering the house, but concern creased his handsome features.
How concerned had he been when he’d slept with her while pretending to be someone else?
She shoved a
side the bitter thought and focused on Hernandez’s latest question. “It’s the picture from his wallet,” she said for the second time. “I gave it to him a few days after he proposed. You can tell from the creases that it was folded a few times to fit somewhere small.”
Hernandez jotted a note, then looked up at her with hard eyes. “And you say the locker was that way when you opened it?”
“Yes.” She gritted her teeth, wondering how many times she’d have to answer the same questions. “My last shift was yesterday morning, and I didn’t go back to the hospital until eight o’clock tonight. When I left yesterday, my locker looked normal.”
Hernandez made a harsh sound under his breath. Annoyance pricked at her skin like tiny little needles. For the love of God. What would it take to convince this man she was innocent, that she was the victim?
She opened her mouth to ask him just that, only to be interrupted by Caleb’s husky voice. “Detective Hernandez?” he called from behind. “May I speak to you for a moment?”
Looking irritated, Hernandez excused himself and made his way over to Caleb. As Marley watched, the two men went out into the hall, heads bent together, voices low. Whatever Caleb had to say, the detective didn’t like it. She could tell from the way his thick black eyebrows bunched together. Then Hernandez looked at the ground and his shoulders slumped.
What was Caleb saying? Whatever it was must have worked, because when Hernandez returned, his normally frosty tone had thawed considerably.
“Ms. Kincaid, do you have any idea what this message means?”
“I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m a whore,” she said dryly.
“Yes, but do you know why he might think that? Do you have a new boyfriend?”
She forced herself not to glance over at Caleb. “No.”
“Are you casually seeing anyone?”
She hesitated. “I did have a date two nights ago.”
Hernandez leaned forward. “Where did you go on the date, which restaurant? Perhaps Grier saw you with another man and—”
