Fatal Obsession (Black Widow Book 2) (21 page)

Yeah, Tasha thought so too but… she still had this feeling of doom hanging around her. She thought the other shoe had dropped when Dale practically attacked her in the cabin and arrested her but… there was something else coming. She could feel it.

“Tasha, what’s wrong?”

She looked behind them to make sure the guys weren’t close then turned back to Ellie, “Promise you won’t say anything to Damien? It might be nothing, but my mind is playing tricks on me…”

“Tasha, what is it?”

She noticed she hadn’t promised but… “I have this feeling that something bad is about to happen. That something is going to destroy our lives… The first time I had it, it was just the three of us—Damien, DJ and me—and I thought Tom my husband would do something to keep us apart again. But now that you and Dale are in my life again, my family, the feeling has grown tenfold. I feel like…” she stopped, the hair at the back of her neck standing up.

Something wasn’t right. The corridor they’d gone down was almost empty with a few bodies moving around, but there was something else, a danger, she could sense it. How, she hadn’t the slightest clue, but she knew it was there.

“Tasha, what is it?”

She drew Ellie closer and slowed their pace and just listened. The corridor echoed with footsteps, but there was a set—no, three that moved different from the others. They’d slowed when she and Ellie had, but now… she tilted her head slightly towards the ground. They were separating, one still followed but two moved outwards. They were going to try to surround them, she could feel it.

“Ellie, slowly pull your phone out of your bag and call Dale,” she whispered, looking around for reflective surfaces. She needed to look behind them without being obvious.

“I would, but won’t that be a little obvious?”

“What?”

“My husband is an FBI Agent. I help him decompress when he comes home from tough cases. You think we are being followed. The best option right now is to pretend we haven’t noticed and join that crowd there.”

Tasha nodded, but felt her body go rigid when the footsteps quickened. “They are coming for us, I want you to run.”

“Hell no!”

“Ellie!”

“What are you going to do? Try to reenact a fight scene from a movie you watched? You might have been on the money about being followed but watching
Enter The Dragon
doesn’t make you Bruce Lee!”

“What? Who’s Bruce—”

“Tasha, honey.”

Tasha’s feet froze under her and she drew Ellie to a stop. She’d hoped to never see this man in her life ever again, but it looked like she was right and he was the proverbial shoe. She turned around to face him, keeping Ellie close.

“Tom, can’t say I was looking forward to seeing you again. Ever.”

Tom looked from her to Ellie, “I see you’ve met your twin. How did you find out about her?”

Tom knew? Of course he did, the selfish asshole. “What do you want?”

Remorsefully he said, “I just want to talk. Apologize for what I did.”

Tasha looked over his shoulder to see who the two sets of running feet belonged to. Dale and Damien, to her relief. “Now isn’t the right time.”

Tom looked behind him and his entire body went rigid. He grabbed for Tasha and when Ellie moved to interfere, a man stepped out of the shadows and held her back. Tasha turned her face away, her body that touched his itched with disgust.

When she felt his breath against her ear she tried to move away but he held her still, his hand slipping into her coat pocket. “Look at this and when you are ready to be with someone who will never betray you and love you despite what you’ve done, you have my number.” And just as fast as he’d grabbed her, he released her. He and his two goons walked away fast.

“Are you okay?” Ellie asked, coming to stand beside her and wrapping her arms around Tasha.

“Yeah,” she responded hugging her back.

Dale and Damien slowed down when they got to them, splitting her and Ellie apart and pulling them into their embrace.

“Tell me you are okay?” Damien demanded, his chin on the crown of her head.

“I’m okay,” she responded, her voice muffled by his leather jacket.

He drew her away and looked at her, bending to be eye level, “Are you sure?”

She nodded, “It was Tom. He apologized; he wanted me to give him a chance to explain.”

His hands tightened around her arms, “And what did you say?”

“That I’ll meet him at a motel in an hour. Really Damien? Anyway, you guys ran them off before I could say hell no.”

“Nothing else?”

She fingered the flash drive Tom had placed in her pocket and shook her head, “No. Nothing else.”

He drew her into his side, “Come on, let’s go home.”

“Tasha, I called my dad to come get DJ. I thought it would be nice if he joined his cousins at Disneyland,” Dale spoke and right off the bat she knew he was lying. The tightness around his mouth was a giveaway. But she couldn’t help but feel it was a good idea for DJ to be far away right now.

“Yeah, he’d like that. Thanks.”

****

It had been hard saying goodbye to DJ but he’d been so excited about spending the week with grandpa Dale, grandma Ann and his cousins, she refused to get emotional and make him feel guilty for leaving her. But she felt it would be safe for him and she needed to look at what was on the flash drive without distraction. She looked down at Damien, who was asleep next to her, his body exposed to the waist where the comforter covered his manly bits that she’d grown obsessed with. The moment DJ was out of the house, he’d attacked her, not even caring that his cousin and her sister were still in the vicinity. At least he’d had the presence of mind to wait until they were in their room to strip her of her clothes.

There was something different with how he made love to her. He’d fought to be gentle, but the fear she felt coming off him in waves made that a losing battle and with her encouragement, he’d taken her a little too savagely. But she couldn’t complain, her body still tingled from the after effect. But it did raise the question as to why he was so scared. Anger should have been at the forefront for him after her confrontation with Tom, not fear. Which begged the question, what was he so afraid of?

She powered up DJ’s laptop and plugged in the drive. A picture of her popped up, or was it Ellie?

“Ellsa Natasha Jabari,” she read out the caption below it. The names did sound familiar.
Natasha... Tasha?
“I thought my last name was Smith?”

After an hour of reading what was on the drive, Tasha felt her body begin to shake violently.

“This can’t be true! None of this is true!”

“Babe, what is it?” She heard Damien’s voice and as hard as she tried to look away from the bloody images on the screen she couldn’t move. The trance was broken when the laptop was slapped shut and it clattered to the floor when it was shoved off the bed. Damien drew her onto his lap. He rocked her, rubbing her back.

“Babe, you’re so cold,” his voice trembled, so did his hands as he drew the comforter up and around her. But she still felt cold, right to the core of her being.

“Please tell me it’s not true. That I didn’t do that?” God she felt sick to her stomach. As hard as she tried to get them out of her mind, the images were like a slide show in her head, the next more gruesome than the last. Did she really do that and to men she’d called friends once upon a time? And Ellie and Dale… Dear God! No wonder the man hated her.

Bile rose in her throat and she fought out of Damien’s arms and rushed into the bathroom. She’d barely made it to the toilet bowl when her lunch came rushing out. She felt something cold at the back of her neck, her hair was being held up and away.

“Oh babe… I’m going to kill whoever gave you that!” the last part was said with such venom, it frightened her, turning her stomach even more.

All those nightmares started to make sense. The names made sense, their faces became clearer, but her as a murderer? She still couldn’t associate herself with that mad woman. It couldn’t be her.

“I didn’t do that! I wouldn’t willingly hurt people,” she said vehemently, her voice echoing in the toilet bowl. “That wasn’t me!”

She felt Damien crouch behind her, “No babe. That wasn’t you.”

“I thought Mike was my friend? Why would he betray me like that? Why would he paralyze me through my son just to make me their guinea pig?”

“No kind of explanation can excuse what he did. I don’t want him anywhere near DJ ever again!”

She pulled away from him and fought to stand up on her shaky legs, “I need a shower, I need…
to crawl into a hole and die
, to be alone.”

She didn’t dare look at Damien because she wouldn’t be able to stand the pain on his face. She stood there until she heard the door close and felt the loneliness encompass her. Slowly she stripped off his t-shirt and stepped into the shower. She turned both faucets on and sank to the floor, hugging her knees to her chest.

She was a murderer and if what that file on the career she’d apparently chosen for herself said was true, she was too dangerous to be left alive. She felt the scar along her head that she’d always thought was a result of a car accident, gingerly with the tips of her fingers like she was too afraid it was real. That, right under there, there was a chip that tormented her nights.

Vladimir, the madman, was behind it all. It was clear no one was safe until he had her. And if his obsession ceased to exist, would her family finally be safe? Would DJ be safe?

****

“Which one of your friends did this?” Damien barged into Dale and Ellie’s room with murderous intent.

Dale quickly sat up, moving forward to block Damien from seeing any more of Ellie than he already had.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded.

“Tasha knows she’s Ellsa and everything that comes with the name. Someone sent her pictures, Dale, fucking pictures!” he gnashed out.

“Turn around,” Dale ordered calmly and Damien spun, giving them his back. A few seconds later, Ellie bumped into him as she ran out of the room. Obviously to go to Tasha because why would she ever be afraid of him with her husband around, even if he wanted to wring her neck for bringing in her friends on a family matter.

Damien turned to face his cousin. He was in sweat pants and shrugging a t-shirt on. Dale came to him, holding another tee, “Would you like a tee?”

Damien was taken aback by how calm he was about it all, “Would I—would I like a tee?” he grabbed it out of Dale’s hand, “No, what I would like is to put my fucking fist in someone’s fucking face! Whoever sent her those things destroyed her!”

Dale held his hands up, “Losing your temper isn’t going to help. She needs you calm and rational. The only thing left to do is explain everything and try and get her to understand that none of it was her fault.”

“She already knows every single detail—wait, none of it was her fault? Are you sure of what you are saying?”

Dale rubbed the back of his neck, “The only reason I caught those bullets that day was because I wanted to protect Ellie, instead I made myself a moving catcher. Kevin and Richard went through the surveillance again. She shot wide and I got shot because I stepped in the way. Ellie was never in danger.” He scratched the top of his head with a sigh. “Ellie always said her sister would never hurt her no matter what. That something wasn’t right with the whole situation. I always resented her dedication to her sister even after Ellsa was put away, always looking for some sort of explanation for her going nuts. Well, it seemed like she was right all along. And now that she’s found out someone was controlling her like a remote controlled action figure…” he shook his head, “I would need my family to help me hold it all together or I would fucking lose it!”

Damien couldn’t even enjoy the relief of Dale’s change of heart, knowing his lover’s heart was going twenty rounds in the guilt ring. He only hoped that they would be able to help her realize that even though she might have been the gun, she was not the shooter.

****

“I already told you I didn’t do it, though I wish I had!” Kris yelled like a petulant child, crossing her arms over her chest.

Ellie was ready to pull her hair out! She’d finally gotten her sister back and now she might as well not have with Ellsa sitting in a corner chanting to herself, saying it wasn’t her fault, her eyes spacing. At one point, she’d grabbed her head and screamed for her memories to stop. She could already see her losing her mind again and Ellie just couldn’t bare it.

“How about you, Daniel? Was it you?” Damien paced in front of them like a raging bull waiting to attack. Ellie wasn’t the only one ready to pull out her hair and it was comforting to share the stress with someone else who loved Ellsa. They’d had such a great day that Ellie was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and now, it was all quickly turning to shit!

“The night I left here after… Elaine’s story; I called the DA—”

“You did what!” Ellie exclaimed, shooting out of the chair she’d just settled herself into.

Daniel turned to her, “He told me if I mentioned Black Widows again I would be working as a public defender in Alaska. I have problems of my own and getting revenge against your sister isn’t exactly at the top of my list.”

Dear Lord, what had she been thinking inviting them to Elaine’s explanation as to why Ellsa had flipped. She’d wanted her friends to stop thinking her nuts for still loving Ellsa, for why she could never let go of her sister. And even though before it all they never had a great relationship, she wanted her best friends too … she didn’t know what, but she wanted it. What was so wrong with wanting all the people she loved to get along?

“Why would you want revenge against me? What did I do to you?”

Ellie’s head snapped to where her sister stood, hugging herself with the most defeated look she’d ever seen on her face. Her voice was so soft and yet so broken, it called to her. She wanted to go to her and hold her. Damien moved to her and Ellsa shied away from him.