Run From Fear (14 page)

“Can’t always depend on the law to help us out,” Peter continued, “so it’s important we look after each other.”

Talia nodded, an upwell of emotion making her throat so tight she could barely push a heartfelt “thank you” past her lips. Suddenly she was blinking back tears.

She got into her car and pulled out of the parking space and waited till she saw Peter’s headlights behind her. As she pulled out of the parking lot, there was a burgeoning warmth in her chest.

From the glow of headlights behind her. From the knowledge that after so many years of feeling so alone and hating herself for allowing David Maxwell to use her, she’d found a new life with people who found her worth caring about.

It was no longer just her and Rosie and Jack, her mysterious, reluctant hero whose motives for helping her were not so mysterious any longer.

She shied away from the thought as she pulled into her driveway, as though Jack might somehow hear it and be offended. His words rang in her head.
I didn’t want you to fuck me because you felt like you owed me.

It wasn’t fair to Jack to lump him in with the amoral lowlifes she’d dealt with most of her life. Jack had proven that over and over again in the past two years. There was no doubt what kind of a man he was.

A man who wants me
, she thought with a pulse of excitement as she pulled into her garage.

She grabbed her phone from the center console and reassured herself that, no, she hadn’t missed a call or a text or a—she waited a minute for her mail to load—no e-mail either.

Nothing but a text from Rosie saying she was back in
her dorm room and didn’t want to disturb her sleeping roommate.

She slung her purse and coat over her shoulder and climbed out of the car. Once she was safely inside, she took a quick look around. She opened the front door and let out the breath she didn’t realize she was holding when she found no mysterious flowers, no envelopes, nothing. She waved at Peter and flicked the porch lights on and off to show she was in safe, and he flashed his lights in turn.

With her newly appointed posse of guardian angels, she wouldn’t need Jack around.

It was weird, but even her irritation with Jack felt kind of… good. When was the last time she’d gotten in a snit over a guy not calling? When had she actually felt genuinely attracted and interested enough to care?

For years all she wanted was for the man in her life to leave her alone. And now here she was, channel surfing on her couch while sparing the occasional glare at her still-silent phone.

In spite of everything that had happened this week, it all felt so refreshingly… normal.

She gave a little smile and entertained the morbid thought that maybe a seemingly benign stalker wasn’t a bad thing if it had gotten Jack to finally show his hand and make a move.

But what if he hadn’t called because he regretted it? Worse, what if he changed his mind or hadn’t meant it in the first place?

There was something to be said for being numb to the whole man-woman craziness, she thought as her brain futilely churned. She stood from the couch and paced
to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of wine. Maybe the alcohol would calm her down enough to sleep.

On the way back to the couch, the blanket she’d wrapped around herself to ward off the chill snagged on the buckle of her purse strap and sent it and its contents skidding across the linoleum. Talia swore, set her wineglass on the table, and bent to gather her wallet, sunglasses, lipstick, and other miscellaneous items that littered the floor.

As she reached for a small tube of hand cream, she noticed a square red envelope next to the refrigerator. She picked it up and felt something flat and hard inside. She tipped it, and a disk slid into her hand, silver, shiny, unremarkable.

Except for the fact that Talia was damn sure she hadn’t put it in her purse.

Her hand shook with dread as she turned the disk over. There was a typed label stuck to the front. Her stomach bottomed out as she read,
To Talia. Hope you enjoy this walk down memory lane. Wish I could be there to watch with you.

Watch. A video of some kind. Even as her brain screamed at her that she was guaranteed not to like what she was about to see, her hands were pressing buttons on the TV and loading the disk into the player as though on autopilot.

The scream filled her living room and turned her knees to water. Talia sank to the floor, frozen, her eyes locked helplessly on the screen.

On herself. Naked. Bound.

On Nate Brewster, naked, hulking, his almost grotesquely muscular body covered in tattoos, a wickedly sharp blade in his hand.

The hand arced down and she watched as the blade sliced into the skin of her back. The scar in her back burned, the pain as real to her now as it had been in that basement. Terror washed over her, pulled her under, and she was back there, naked, helpless.

She huddled on the floor for long minutes after the recording ended, her body racked with shudders so fierce they bordered on seizures.

Somehow she managed to crawl to her phone. Her hands were shaking so badly it took her five tries to dial. Finally there was a ring on the other side.

Normal.
Hysterical laughter burst from her chest as she held the phone to her ear. Had she really thought for one second her life could be normal?

As she waited for Jack to answer, she curled into herself, her heart shriveling at the certainty she’d never get away from her past, never get away from what happened. It would always be there, lurking, waiting to suck her under all over again.

T
he party at the Four Seasons in Palo Alto was in full swing, the crowd so loud Jack wouldn’t have known anyone was calling if not for the violent buzzing in his pocket. He pulled the phone out and felt a tightening in his gut when he saw Talia’s number.

His stomach tightened with fear. While he wished she was calling to chew him out about the way he’d mauled her at the gym today, his gut was screaming that something had happened.

He thumbed the button, praying he was about to get an ass-chewing as he practiced his apology.

“Talia?” he said when he was greeted with nothing but silence.

The choked breath sent his stomach down to his knees. Crap. Something else had happened. “Talia, what’s going on?”

“C-can you please come over?”

The raw fear in her voice made his blood run cold. “What happened?”

Another shaky breath. “I… It’s me, Jack. It was in my purse—” Whatever she said devolved into sobs, and Jack could only make out every third or so word.

Jack did a quick check on the Blankenthorn’s position and moved to a quieter corner of the ballroom. “Talia, slow down. What was in your purse?”

He heard gulping sounds as she tried to stifle the sobs. “Please, just come over.”

His heart thudded to a stop as the connection was broken. He tried to call back but Talia wouldn’t pick up.

Cold sweat filmed his body underneath the suit and dress shirt that had been required wardrobe for tonight’s assignment. He dialed Talia again, still no answer. He looked up and saw Diana Blankenthorn frowning pointedly at the phone in his hand and quietly swore. He knew what he was about to do might cost him his job and Gemini Securities an important client, but he didn’t care.

Both Alex Novascelic and Ben Moreno, senior security specialists like Jack, were covering the party. The Blankenthorns would be well protected.

But Talia was alone. Alone and terrified.

The knowledge propelled him out of the ballroom, ignoring Alex’s questioning frown as Jack brushed by him.

“Gotta go,” Jack said curtly.

“Danny’s not going to like this,” Alex called.

“I’ll deal with Danny,” Jack snapped over his shoulder. “You tell Moreno to cover the south entrance.”

Jack rushed to his car and within a few minutes was hauling ass up the freeway. He called Talia to let her know he was on his way. Still no answer. His adrenaline spiked and he forced himself not to dwell on all the reasons why she might not be picking up the phone.

Striving for some semblance of calm, he called the sheriff’s department and got a promise they’d send
someone over to check on her. He disconnected, doubting a black-and-white would make it there before he did.

He looked at the clock. After midnight, an obnoxious hour for a call, but Jack knew from long experience working with Danny—first in the Green Berets as a member of his team and then after getting hired on with Gemini—that Danny liked to receive pertinent information as soon as it came in. There would be hell to pay if he found out he’d been kept in the dark.

Then again, there would be hell to pay any way Jack cut it, but there was no sense in delaying the inevitable.

Jack braced himself as he used the voice activation to make the call. Danny’s reaction to the news Jack had switched up the security detail was met with predictable enthusiasm.

“Are you fucking kidding me? You’re bailing on one of our most important clients for Talia Vega?”

Jack hadn’t mentioned Talia by name; he’d told Danny only that he’d had to leave the Blankenthorns in Moreno’s care to deal with a personal emergency. “How did—”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Danny said wearily, “you forget how well I know you and your goddamn damsels in distress. What else could it—”

Danny cut out and Jack could hear a feminine voice murmuring in the background, one that no doubt belonged to Caroline Taggart, Danny’s wife. “Nothing, baby, go back to sleep.” Danny’s voice was muffled with an undercurrent of tenderness Jack wouldn’t have believed Danny capable of had he not heard it himself.

“Nice work, asshole,” Danny snapped at Jack. “You woke up my wife with this shit too.”

“Tell Caroline I apologize,” Jack said, striving to
keep his own anger under wraps. “I didn’t feel I had a choice—”

“Yeah, whatever,” Danny interrupted. “Just have your ass up and ready to focus on the job first thing tomorrow morning or I swear to fucking God…”

It took Jack a few seconds to realize he’d been hung up on.
Asshole
, he thought, but without any real heat. Danny had a unique, some would say harsh manner when it came to dealing with everyone but his wife, but Jack had never known a more loyal friend.

It made it stick that much harder in his craw, knowing he was letting down a friend who had had his back too many times to count in the last few years.

But Jack couldn’t live with himself if he let down Talia.

The drive to Talia’s little bungalow seemed to stretch to infinity but in reality took only about fifteen minutes. It felt like hours since she’d called in a panic, but when Jack checked his watch, he saw that it was just shy of twenty minutes since she’d called. His gut churned as he pulled up to the house. No cops in sight.

The lights were blazing in the living room, but he couldn’t see any movement inside. He rang the bell. When several seconds passed with no response, he started pounding, then called Talia’s name.

A light switched on next door and he heard an angry voice yelling, “Keep it down, or I’ll call the police!”

“Go ahead,” Jack yelled back. “If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll actually show up!”

He turned back to Talia’s door and caught a blur of movement through the small beveled windows to the side of the door.

“Jack?”

His knees turned watery with relief. “Yeah, it’s me. Open up.”

There was the
thunk
of the dead bolt being thrown and then the door opened. “What the hell are you thinking not answering—” His harangue about his ignored calls stopped midsyllable when he caught sight of her face.

Leached of color, her lips bloodless, her pupils dilated, she looked lucky to be breathing, much less standing on her feet. He stepped through the door, then closed and locked it behind him. A shudder ran through her and she swayed on her feet.

He reached out to steady her, felt her muscles rippling under his hands. “What happened, honey?” he asked softly. “Why didn’t you answer when I called?”

“I dropped my phone on the stairs,” she said. “I was afraid to come back down.”

She was getting a dazed, far-off look in her eyes. Her hands were ice cold as they clutched his, and he feared she was going into shock. He yanked off his coat and threw it over her shoulders and gathered her close, rubbing his hands up and down her arms and back to try to get some warmth into her.

She sagged against him and he bit back a curse as he wrapped his arm around her to support her weight. He wanted to know what the hell had put her in this state. Christ, the last time he’d seen her in such bad shape she’d been bleeding from a stab wound and multiple lacerations. But he couldn’t see any physical injury. Nonetheless, she was crashing, all systems shutting down.

He hustled her into the kitchen and gave a satisfied grunt when he found an inch of coffee left over in the pot. He quickly heated it in the microwave and dumped
in a couple tablespoons of sugar and held it out for her. “Drink.”

When she didn’t respond, he took her hand in his, wrapped it around the mug, and brought it to her lips. She began to drink, slowly at first, then with more enthusiasm. By the time the mug was empty, her lips had some of their dark rose color back and she didn’t look so much like a corpse.

Jack inched his chair closer to hers until their knees were almost touching. “You want to tell me what sent you so far over the edge?”

She set the mug on the table. He watched, confused, as she bent and retrieved something from the floor. She handed him the slip of paper.
To Talia. Hope you enjoy this walk down memory lane. Wish I could be there to watch with you.

Jack suddenly felt like spiders were crawling up his back. Without a word, Talia pushed to her feet and walked to the front room. For the first time Jack noted that the TV was on, the screen a vivid blue as the set waited to receive a signal. “What did he want you to watch?” He was sure he didn’t want to know the answer to the question.

Talia picked up the remote from the floor and pushed a button. “This.”

No! Noo!
Jack’s blood curdled at the first scream. His eyes locked on the screen. He wanted to look away, but his vision tunneled. Talia’s living room disappeared and it was like he was in that dungeon room with her.