Run From Fear (9 page)

He gave his balls another squeeze. He would wait with the new girl as he did the others. Now was not the time to let impulse take over. If he could control himself with her, if he could continue to improve, it would bode well for when he finally had Talia under his control.

He’d make it last days, weeks, until she was begging for him to kill her and put her out of her misery.

“Thanks for meeting me.” A feminine voice pulled him from his reverie. “I really appreciate the extra time. If I don’t get at least a B in this class, I’ll be totally screwed.”

He pasted a bland smile on his face, careful to conceal the excitement twisting his insides into knots. This was just a meeting between teaching assistant and tutor. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing at all. “It’s my pleasure, Rosario.” He smiled at the beautiful, dark-haired girl as she slid into the seat across from him. “I would hate to have you lose your scholarship because you’re struggling with physics.”

As she went to order herself a latte, he marveled again at his continued streak of good luck. Discovering that Talia lived nearby and that her sister was enrolled here at Stanford.

It had been laughably easy to get placed as a replacement teaching assistant for Rosario’s Physics 43 study section. He was, after all, one of the top PhD candidates, his research in single molecule biophysics on the bleeding edge of the field. When Rosario’s teaching assistant had suffered a bad fall down the stairs, the professor teaching the lecture series was only too glad to bring him on board.

And as though the universe felt the need to grant him yet another miracle, Rosario Vega was terrible at physics. The only way she’d pass the midterm, he’d explained after he’d graded her latest problem set, was if she met him regularly for extended tutoring sessions.

She’d smiled and nodded, so eager to please, so eager to do well, it actually made him feel bad about the suffering she’d no doubt feel when he killed her sister.

Jack could read the upset on Talia’s face from across the bar, and for about the thousandth time he wished he
could have gotten here hours ago. But Susie’s call had come right as he was debriefing the Blankenthorns on the new security protocols he had developed for the entire family.

Every instinct had screamed at him to drop everything and rush to Talia’s side, but he couldn’t risk pissing off an important client for something that, according to Susie at least, might not be an emergency at all.

But he’d been assured Talia was safe, though shaken up. And judging from the look on her face when she caught sight of him in the crowd, none too excited about seeing him.

He wished he could say the same, he thought with a little inward sigh. Truth was, he’d found it hard to stay away these past few days. But after their discussion, he knew he couldn’t even do one of his “stalker runs,” as Danny Taggart called Jack’s discreet missions where he got a long enough glimpse of Talia to reassure himself she was doing okay.

All of it, including the regular reports from Susie and Rosario, had to stop. Not because he would be okay not knowing how she was, but because after her reaction to the alarm installation, he knew she would be furious if she knew he was checking up on her behind her back.

From now on, any interaction with Talia had to be face-to-face. Problem was, he didn’t trust himself to keep a lid on what was really going on inside him.

But goddamn, it was hard. Today’s meeting aside, he’d had a lot of downtime this trip and it was driving him crazy, knowing Talia was a short drive away and knowing she wouldn’t welcome him sniffing around constantly like a dog.

Even her frown at first sight of him tonight couldn’t diminish the primal, idiotic feeling he got in his gut whenever he saw her. It hadn’t started out this way with her, and he didn’t know when the switch had flipped, but somewhere along the line, Talia had gone from being someone who aroused his deep-seated protective instincts to being much more… important.

And he could fantasize all he wanted, but the idea she would ever genuinely return his affections was a big fucking joke. And even if by some miracle she felt an inkling in that direction…

Where she came from and what was between them was too twisted and fucked up for her to ever open up to him the way he needed.

But he could do this at least, he thought as he strode up to the bar. Show up when called, her personal warrior to the rescue whether she wanted him there or not.

Talia gave him a grim nod while she filled drink orders. Finally she turned to him. “Please tell me Susie didn’t call you.” Though she strove for annoyed nonchalance, Jack could see the lines of strain around her mouth, her eyes.

He curled his fingers against the urge to smooth the line between her brows with his hand. “She said you got an interesting package, but she didn’t have time to go into details.”

Her dark waves rippled as she gave her head an irritated shake. “It’s nothing, just like the break-in,” she said. But her knuckles were stark white as her slender fingers curled around the stem of a wineglass. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said again, like she was trying to convince herself.

“Show me.”

“We’re really busy right now,” she said, gesturing at the buzzing crowd.

Jack raised his hand and caught the eye of the other bartender on duty. “Hey, man, you mind covering Talia for a few minutes while we talk?”

“No problem, just don’t be gone too long.”

“Five minutes, Max,” Talia said, and wiped her hands on a rag. “It’s in Susie’s office.” She came out from behind the bar. Jack trailed a few feet behind, doing his best to keep his eyes off the rounded curve of her ass encased in tight jeans.

Eyes up
, he scolded himself. She was scared, and after everything that had happened to her and between them, he had no business looking at her in a way that was remotely sexual. But he was a red-blooded man, with big appetites, and traumatized or not, she was beautiful, dammit.

He forced himself to lift his gaze, only to have it collide with Susie, who was looking at him like she knew exactly what he was thinking.

Jack gave her a quick wave but felt the heat rise in his cheeks. Susie had called him a couple days ago, making her interest clear. Jack knew he at least owed her a drink for giving Talia a chance at the restaurant.

And for keeping secret all this time the fact that Jack had made an anonymous investment in the restaurant to make sure Talia got the job.

Goddamn it, he hoped this didn’t get messy.

He followed Talia into the office and closed the door behind him. She took her purse from a chair in the corner and pulled out an envelope. “This came in the mail today,” she said, and held it out to him.

Jack pulled the envelope open with his thumbs. Inside he could see the glint of a silver chain. He reached in and pulled it out, along with the note that accompanied it.

I thought you would appreciate having this back.

“Do you recognize it?” Talia’s voice sounded tight.

Jack felt choked with his own fury. Hell yeah, he remembered the silver chain and the diamond pendant. Imprinted in his brain as it lay against Talia’s throat, sparkling coldly against her blood-splattered skin.

“I know I was wearing it when he took me,” Talia said, “but I don’t know… I don’t remember—”

“You had it on when they put you in the ambulance,” Jack interjected. He tried but couldn’t banish the image of her, naked, bleeding, her glowing skin gone gray with shock, pain, and blood loss. Unlike most things, the trauma of that day didn’t seem to fade in his mind, the memory growing more painful as time passed and his feelings for her grew.

Now, standing less than two feet away from her, knowing she was being buffeted by the same memories, he felt like he’d taken a sucker punch to the gut.

He read the note again.
I thought you would appreciate having this back.
No signature. Who the fuck would do something like this? There had to be a logical explanation.

“It’s probably nothing, right?” Talia said. “Like the break-in. A stupid coincidence, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

Jack nodded. Of course there were several possible benign explanations. But in his experience with Talia, those benign explanations rarely panned out.

“I mean, if I was wearing it in the ambulance, and they
took it off me, maybe someone ran across it in storage or something and tracked me down. Right?” The note of desperation in her tone made Jack ache.

“I suppose anything’s possible,” he replied.

Talia stared down at the necklace clenched in Jack’s fist. Her own hand came up to rub absently at her stomach, right below her rib cage. In the exact spot, he knew, where Nate Brewster’s knife had penetrated, nearly causing her to bleed to death in his arms.

Against his better judgment, he closed the distance between them and his arms came up to wrap around her.

She froze, stiff against him, and Jack silently cursed himself. This was why he’d always been so careful not to touch her. After everything she’d been through, she didn’t welcome the touch of any man.

Not even his.

But as he was about to release her, something miraculous happened. Instead of staying stiff and pulling away, Talia let out a sigh that came from the depths of her soul and sort of collapsed into him. Timidly her arms came around his waist.

Jack slid his palms up her back and molded her against him until she was so close even a sliver of daylight couldn’t slip between them. God, she was so warm and soft against him and she smelled so good. Flowers and soap and woman.

His temperature went up about a dozen degrees and he felt heat gather heavily in his groin. Silky black hair tickled his nose and chin, and he wondered what she would do if he tilted her chin up and kissed her like he’d been dying to.

Her shudder and wet sniff brought him back down to
earth. Hard. She may have healed enough in the past two years to accept a comforting hug, but he knew better than to push it. She was only letting him touch her because she was afraid. Not because she wanted anything else.

He pulled her in tighter. Call him selfish, but he’d take whatever she could willingly give.

“I don’t want to be scared again,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest. She pulled her head away and tilted her face up to him. “Even if it’s totally nothing, just somebody being nice, the fact that it can mess me up this much…” Her voice rose in pitch. “I thought I was over it. I thought all this was over.”

Something told him she wasn’t just talking about what happened tonight.

A lock of hair fell across her cheek. Jack reached up to push it back, and when his fingers brushed her skin, he swore he saw something besides fear flash in those night-dark eyes.

“Is everything okay?”

They both jumped back at Susie’s voice.

“It’s fine,” Talia said. “I was just showing Jack the, uh, necklace.” She gestured awkwardly to the chain still tangled in his fingers. “And I should show you the envelope.” She looked around, flustered, and said, “Aha” when she spotted it on the floor.

“Here,” she said, holding it out to him so their fingers barely brushed. “There’s no return address, but if you look carefully, you can see it has a Seattle postmark.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Jack forced himself to study the faint smudge of ink, but it was hard to focus when the skin of his torso felt seared from where she’d been plastered against him. Christ, if he felt that intensely through their
combined layers of clothing, he’d spontaneously combust if he ever rubbed up against her, naked skin to naked skin…

“So is there any way to find out where it came from?” Talia’s voice was higher pitched than usual. But judging from the looks she was shooting Susie, it was more from embarrassment and maybe a little guilt than uncontrollable lust.

Jack pretended to examine the envelope as he brought himself back under control. “I can’t read the signature, and with no return address, we’re probably SOL.” He looked at Talia, watched her nervously bite her bottom lip.

Wished he could bite it for her.

“I’ll follow up with the hospital. I got you out of there in such a hurry and I never thought to see if they kept it. And I’ll call Cole—maybe they took it as evidence and it turned up when they were cleaning it out.”

“Thanks, especially for calling Cole.”

Jack nodded and gave her a faint smile. While Talia had earned back some points with Detective Cole Williams and his wife, Megan Flynn Williams, when she’d given up David Maxwell as the mastermind behind the frame job they did on Megan’s brother Sean, they were never going to be BFFs. Not after Talia’s testimony had helped put Sean Flynn on death row for two long years.

He halfheartedly held out the necklace. “I don’t suppose—”

Talia threw up her hands as though he’d offered her a poisonous snake.

Jack pocketed it. Maybe he could pawn it and give the money to a women’s and kids’ shelter.

“So…. um…,” Susie interjected.

Jack could see she wanted to ask about a million questions, but he appreciated her restraint as Talia’s body language all but screamed she didn’t want to talk anymore about the necklace or how it had ended up back in her hands.