Hold Me (13 page)

Luc stood, rubbing his cheek, watching Katie run away from him. His face still stung from her slap, his gut was hollowed out and empty.

Why hadn’t he just told her who he was in the beginning?

Telling her on Friday would have been the right thing. But it hadn’t occurred to him to do it. Hadn’t even crossed his mind. He’d treated the whole situation like some sort of an undercover assignment. Protected his identity. Kept his secrets.

Even when she’d told him about the consequences of that fucking party three years ago, he still hadn’t thought to tell her the truth. Instead he’d kissed her when he should have been completely open and honest.

Except he hadn’t been completely open and honest since he’d been seven years old.

It was inevitable that the whole mess would come out sometime, but it had happened much sooner than he’d hoped. He’d just wanted to tease her when he’d brought up the damn car, wanted to see those blue eyes snap at him. He hadn’t thought about the fact that David knew Melanie and was well aware of her penchant for the comics. He should have figured there was a possibility the other man would mention it.

He turned and went back to the kitchen, even though facing David was the last thing he wanted to do.

“Luc? What the hell’s going on?” David demanded. He was standing, holding Spot’s collar to restrain her. Obviously they’d both been ready to rush to Katie’s rescue.

Luc didn’t answer. Instead he carefully righted the chair Katie had toppled and sat down in it. He took a deep breath, then two.

David watched him for a bit, then let Spot go. The dog snuffled Luc before racing out of the room. Probably going to check on Katie.

“Luc.” David sat next to him, his voice both gentle and hard. “Tell me what’s going on. What just happened here?”

“She’s Annie, David,” Luc said. “She’s Annie.”

They stared at each other. Luc saw realization dawn in David’s eyes, the slackness of surprise in his face. David knew about Annie. He didn’t know about the photograph. He didn’t know about the party three years ago. But he knew enough.

“Fuck,” David said quietly. There was a strange note in his voice, one Luc could not quite interpret. “Melanie’s foster sister?”

“Yes.”

“And she didn’t know who you are?”

“No.”

“And you had figured out who she was?”

“Yes. On Friday.”

David stared at him. “And you hadn’t told her?”

“No.”

David sighed. He leaned his head against the tall back of the chair. “Jesus, you’re an asshole, Vasco. Why the hell didn’t you tell her?”

Luc traced the wood grain of the tabletop with his fingertip. “I don’t know.”

“I wouldn’t have said anything if I’d realized. I’m sorry, man.”

“Not your fault.”

David looked directly at him again, his dark face drawn and weary. “There’s more. I didn’t want to say anything in front of her, but they aren’t budging on witness protection.”

Luc tensed. “Why the hell not?”

“She’s running, not testifying. You know as well as I do that she doesn’t qualify for the program.”

“Fuck.” Luc closed his eyes. “Just fuck.”

“I’m still looking into it.”

There had to be another option. Had to be.

“So, okay,” Luc said slowly. “If you can’t get her into witness protection, we’ll make her disappear ourselves.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to use Bureau funds to relocate her,” David cautioned. “First of all, I don’t have any Bureau funds. But even if I did, we can’t risk tipping someone off.”

Better and better.

“Here’s an idea. How about I just fucking find Frankie Silvano and kill him?”

“Luc,” David pointed a finger at him in warning. “You can’t go vigilante.”

Luc clenched a fist on the table and just barely resisted the urge to pound on it. “Yeah? Who says?”

“I do. Believe me, you don’t even want to know what it would cost you.”

Everything. It would cost him everything. Everything he’d struggled to build since he’d been seventeen and David, then a young policeman, had pulled him off the streets and, for whatever reason, decided to save his life.

He tried to think. “I’ll have some money soon. We can use that.” Fortunately, he’d already put in a request for the lawyers to sell a few things so he could make some much-needed repairs to the Museum.

Not for the first time, Luc fought back a wave of anger toward his great-aunt Isobel. The old bitch had put so many restrictions on this place to keep him from “squandering” the family heritage he was lucky he could flush the toilet without calling someone first. The only reason she’d left him the Museum at all was because, bastard or no, son of an Anglo waitress or no, he was the last in his father’s proud Basque bloodline. And since his father had died flying for the military before Luc had even been born, Isobel had apparently decided she didn’t have a choice.

Oh, the relational bonds hadn’t been strong enough for her to rescue him when he’d been placed in foster care after his mother died, or to make her want to help them financially before that, but keeping the Museum in the Vasco family had been important enough to force her to hold her nose and sign the papers. At least that’s what the lawyers had told him. More tactfully, of course.

“Weren’t you going to use that money to revamp the alarm system?” David asked. “And doesn’t the Museum need a new roof?”

“It’ll be fine.” The Museum was the least of his worries at the moment. The money he’d be getting from the sale of those damn antiques wouldn’t be enough to keep Katie hidden forever, but it was a start.

David smoothed his palms on the table. He stared down at his hands. “I have some savings we can use,” he said.

“No.” Luc was definite on that point. “This is my responsibility, and you are way too close to twenty years to be dicking around with your savings. You know you’re looking to retire.”

“That’s my problem. Don’t be an ass.”

“You’re doing enough. More than enough.”

David’s jaw tightened, but he seemed to sense arguing was pointless. They sat silently.

When David finally spoke again, his voice devoid of all emotion. “I want you to know that I trust you,” he said.

Luc straightened, sensing where the conversation was heading. He felt himself closing up, shutting down.

“I trust you, but knowing who she is…” David shook his head. “It’s not good. You’re too connected.”

Luc looked David straight in the eye. Looked at this man who, in a very real way, had given him his life.

“She’s staying, David.”

“Luc—”

“She’s staying because there’s no place else for her to go. She’s staying here with me until we have a better alternative for her. She’s staying so I can keep her safe. And if you can’t trust me in this, if you don’t really believe I’m going to look out for her to the best of my ability no matter what personal shit is going down, then you’re going to have to accept my resignation right now.”

“I don’t want—”

“Right now, David. What’s it going to be? Deal or no deal?”

David was silent for one long moment. “Deal.” He sighed deeply. “Deal, goddamn it. She stays.”

Luc nodded and stood. “Good.”

Katie pulled her knees up closer to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs as she sat curled in the huge armchair in Luc’s bedroom. She stared out the bay window, but the scenery was a blur even with her glasses on.

She’d cried for a while after her confrontation with Luc. She didn’t think she’d cried as much in thirty-three years as she had in the last three days. It was hard having your world reshaped while you were still in it.

Luc was Bruce. Bruce was Luc. She was really going to have to have a chat with Melanie the next time she saw her about that habit of renaming everyone she met. If she ever saw Melanie again.

Katie sat and stared out the window. She thought about everything Melanie had told her about her brother. Foster brother.

Bruce had already been at the foster home when Melanie had been placed there. Mr. Winston and his wife were cruel and abusive, but they’d fooled the overworked social workers for years. Melanie had been ten when she’d gone to live with them after her grandmother died in a drug-related shooting. Her mother had been a junkie and a prostitute who’d OD’d a few years before. She’d never known her father, so she’d ended up in the system. Bruce had been thirteen, already in foster care for six years. According to Mel, he’d lived in at least four other homes before that one.

Katie closed her eyes. Poor little boy.

Melanie had said that Winston and his wife liked to beat Bruce with a leather strap or a belt. They liked to hit her, too, but Bruce had intentionally put himself in front of her and taken most of her beatings. Katie was pretty sure he hadn’t known about the sexual abuse, at least not right away.

Melanie never talked to Katie about what the Winstons did to her. The only reason Katie knew anything at all was because a month or two after they’d met in the cafeteria, she’d come across Mel hiding in the woods on the edge of the school property. The girl had been bruised and crying, and Katie had managed to drag some of the story out of her. She’d known then that she had to try to save her. She hadn’t known about Melanie’s brother; he would have been sixteen at that point and in a different school. By the time Mel finally trusted her enough to tell her about him, he’d been gone.

Mr. Winston had turned up dead after a while. A mugging in a back alley in Allentown. Katie had always wondered if that was the whole truth.

Luc was Bruce. Bruce Wayne. Batman. The Dark Knight. Katie smiled a little as she opened her eyes and looked out the window again. Well, it certainly fit. For a while there, when she’d been younger, she’d even dreamed that he might be her knight someday.

And what would he think if he ever found out she was the one responsible for the car accident where Melanie had been so badly injured?

Katie rested her head against the back of the chair. She was so tired. Now she not only had to deal with someone trying to kill her, and the prospect of never seeing her family again, she also had to face the past. It just didn’t seem fair.

Her stomach growled loudly, startling her out of her thoughts. She glanced at a clock and realized just how much time had passed since she’d run away from Luc downstairs. And darn, she was hungry.

Uncurling her stiff body, Katie got up and stretched out her back, then paced restlessly around the room. The problem was, right now all she wanted to do was be a coward and stay in here forever. Which was stupid, of course. She couldn’t avoid seeing Luc.

Katie sighed, stopped pacing, and ran her hands through her tangled hair. The simple fact was that she didn’t have a choice. She needed Luc. So, regardless of any minor—or major—humiliation she might currently be experiencing, her options were limited. She was once again going to have to just suck up and deal. Besides, if she could handle the whole “sure as hell never want to touch her again” comment, she could handle this.

She paused. On second thought, if Luc really never wanted to touch her again, he wasn’t doing too good a job of it. That was encouraging. Maybe. Except now she’d spilled her guts to him about Bruce.

And he was Bruce.

She crossed her arms over her chest and stared blindly out one of the two tall, narrow windows flanking either side of the huge bed’s headboard.

Luc was still Luc. The fact that he was also Bruce didn’t change him. He’d always known who she was. The real problem was that now she knew. He’d changed because now she knew him too. And he knew that she knew. And she knew that he knew. And he knew that she knew that he knew.

“Aargh.” Katie smacked her own forehead hard with the heel of her hand, then rubbed it because it hurt. He was going to make her crazy. She was going to make herself crazy. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to turn into the same paranoid mess she’d been with Tom and that was so not going to happen.

Abruptly, she turned on her heel and marched across the room. It just wasn’t going to happen. She wouldn’t let it. She was hungry, and she was going to go get something to eat. If she happened to run into Luc, well, so be it.

At the door, she took a deep, fortifying breath, opened it, and stepped into the hallway where Spot immediately jumped to greet her.

“Hiya, girl,” Katie murmured, rubbing the dog’s large, soft head. “I’m okay. I’m all right. And I’m finished with hiding in that room. I think.”

Spot whined sympathetically.

“Okay.” Katie straightened and squared her shoulders. “Let’s go.”

Except for the click of Spot’s nails against hardwood floors, the old house was quiet as they made their way downstairs, which was both comforting and unnerving. For a few minutes, Katie thought both of the men had gone somewhere. Then she pushed open the door to the family room, intending to walk through to the kitchen, and saw Luc. He was alone, sitting on the sofa, hands clasped between his knees, body hunched forward as he stared at the carpet.

She knew that she should just turn around and walk away, but she wasn’t quite prepared for what the sight of him did to her. His broad shoulders stretched his white T-shirt and his strong torso gleamed golden through the thin material. His dark hair fell over his face—he really needed to get it cut—and she could see the five o’clock shadow already darkening his chin. As she stared at him, a tremor of awareness prickled through her.

He lied to you, one part of her mind screamed. He hurt you.

He’s Luc, another part answered. He’s Bruce.

You can’t forgive him, the first part ranted. He’s a man, and all men do is hurt you.

He didn’t mean to hurt me, the second part responded. And shut up.

She stood there a little too long arguing with herself because Spot walked past her and into the room.

Luc looked up, saw Katie, and did a classic double-take. Any other time it would have been funny.

“Katie.” He jumped to his feet, winced, and shifted his weight.

“Um, hi. Sorry to interrupt.” She stayed near the door.

“You’re not interrupting.”

“Oh. Good.” She risked a glance at him to find that he was staring at her, his eyes intense. His face looked drawn beneath the five o’clock shadow.