Secrets to Hide 3: Just a Little More (5 page)

She could see him now in a thousand memories, every one making her smile against the frigid stiffness of her cheeks. She was cold, so cold it stole her smile, niggled at her brain. She ignored it. She didn’t want to think about how her body felt. She’d had enough of that through the weeks of recovering from bruised wrists, ribs, even stitches where she’d smacked her head on the ground the night of her attack. No, she wanted to think about Brad, about being strong like he was strong. She was proving that right now, wasn’t she, outside in the snow she loved? Besides, she couldn’t be that cold; she wasn’t even shivering anymore. Her teeth were no longer chattering.

As she drew closer, a blinking light ahead became a caution signal. The hypnotic rhythm of the yellow flash held her in its spell until glaring headlights cut the thread between them, blinding her momentarily.

A blinding light. The hard grip on her arm. The stunning impact of the pavement.

God, why couldn’t the memories die? Why couldn’t she forget the horrible way that night had ended and just remember the good things, like her first kiss with Brad, the most perfect moment of her life. She’d walked out the door of the nightclub anticipating Brad’s return to the apartment and everything they could do to each other—and been jerked without warning into her worst nightmare.

“Don’t think about it,” she told herself. The words reached her ears in disjointed bits, but she couldn’t figure out why. When she reached up, there was nothing to block her ears, no hat pulled down, no scarf to muffle the sound. Why…?

I’m cold. Too cold.

How long had she been walking? She tried to think, but the answer wouldn’t come. Maybe she should turn back. Go home. Go back to Brad and the warmth of the apartment. She’d proved her point…hadn’t she?

She tried to close her eyes. Her eyelids protested, or maybe that was the ice crusting them. She shivered, suddenly aware of just how hard it was to move, how inadequate her jacket and tennis shoes and light pants were against the frigid air. “Go home,” she whispered behind frozen lips, the words rising to a silent scream as awareness hit her full force.

Her feet stopped. Her head turned. How, she didn’t know; her body felt detached, controlled by someone other than her. The thought throbbed in her mind, then her heart, speeding her heartbeat and allowing her to turn herself around. Then walk. Slowly.

Hurry!

She needed to, shouted the command in her head like a drill sergeant stuck on repeat, but her legs didn’t obey. They plodded. Trudged.

So tired.

Just a little more. Come on, Angel. Just get home to Brad.

She couldn’t feel her toes anymore, or her fingers. Even the thump of her heartbeat had gone sluggish despite the frantic demands filling her head. Another step was beyond her. Maybe she’d sit down for a while. Not long. Just until her strength returned, until she could catch her breath and think again.

A dark, recessed entry loomed up ahead, and Angel angled toward it. She sat on the cold concrete step with a heavy sigh of relief, the puff of white that escaped her mouth drawing her attention for a single second before her eyes closed and nothingness blanketed her tired mind.

Chapter Three

Every drawn-out minute Brad spent with a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, practically crawling through the falling snow to avoid accidents, hills, closed streets, and even the occasional lamppost as the edges of the roads became obscured, worried him more. What should’ve been a twenty-minute drive instead took an hour, an hour where he couldn’t call Angel and didn’t have much hope that she’d answer even if he could. By the time he pulled into the apartment building’s garage, his hands ached and sweat dotted his forehead despite the cold that hit him in the face when he opened the car door to go inside.

The apartment was dark. He’d expected it, but it didn’t make his heart race any less. As the weeks had passed since the attack and Angel had sunk deeper and deeper into depression, Brad had harbored a secret fear that he’d come home one day and find her dead. He’d hidden that fear as deep as he possibly could, afraid even acknowledging it might make it come to be, but standing in the foyer of the apartment they shared, faced with the complete stillness of their home, that fear leaped from its hiding place and smacked him right between the eyes. He forced himself to breathe through the nausea it evoked, to get his nerves under control and be logical before he went freaking nuts tearing through the house. Angel was fine; he just had to find her. He couldn’t do that by running around reckless.

Which was easy to say but hard to do as he began his search.

In the living room her purse sat in its usual spot on the floor by the side table. He’d teased her so many times about leaving her purse lying around. The soft pillow and fuzzy blanket he’d bought her so she could nap in comfort on the couch instead of locked away in her room lay rumpled, trailing from the extra-wide sofa cushions to the floor. He moved into the kitchen and found Angel’s phone on the kitchen counter. When he flipped it open, the screen was blank. She’d turned it off—or never turned it on in the first place. His heart cracked with the knowledge that, wherever she was, she had no purse, no phone, no way to contact him. A glance around showed her keys still hanging on the hook where she always left them. She hadn’t even given herself a way to get back in the apartment.

Damn her, what had she been thinking?

She wasn’t. That’s what scares the crap out of me.

The beat of his pulse rushed in his ears as he walked down the hall toward her room. Memories of the day she’d moved in with him played across the screen of his mind. He’d been determined to have her with him as soon as she’d graduated college. He’d never felt the kind of pride that filled him as he watched her walk across the stage to receive her master’s degree, but it hadn’t held a candle to the pride he’d felt when she agreed to live with him. Finally, no more waiting. She’d had her freedom, she’d experienced “life” while away at college, and now she was ready for him, for them—except “them” had barely gotten started before some bastard ripped it apart. Now Brad was stuck on the sidelines, clueless what to do to help the woman he loved while she seemed to disappear.

The Angel he knew was still in there somewhere, buried beneath the fear and a depression so thick he was helpless to penetrate it. She’d given him excuse after excuse, and then silence, but none of it could hide the fact that she was sinking faster than the
Titanic
, and Brad couldn’t find a way to bail them out.

God, please, don’t let it be too late. I need her. I love her!

The half-open door of her room yielded to his touch, drifting back toward the wall. His feet stuck to the floor. What would he see? Could he handle it if Angel had—

No, damn it!

He forced the fears aside and shoved through the opening, only to find nothing. His breath burned in nonfunctioning lungs as he glanced around. An empty bed. Silent TV. The iPod she used to guard more carefully than her wallet lay gathering dust on her bedside table. No music touched her, not anymore. She’d told him so late one night while he’d held her in the dark.

He pushed the thought away and allowed himself a short breath. As he approached her bathroom, he let it out. “Angel?”

The word trembled so badly it was close to unintelligible. He didn’t care; he was too focused on the nightmares flashing through his head as he flipped the light switch and flicked his gaze from one end of the small room to the other.

Empty.

Thank God.

He sagged against the door frame. Now what? He had to find her, but where? She hadn’t left the apartment since the attack. Surely she wouldn’t…

He double-checked his bedroom and bathroom just to confirm his suspicions. Empty. Shrugging on his heavier coat, he tried to think through the odd mix of relief and fear flowing through his veins. In the closet he found a jacket, extra gloves, a hat, and a blanket and grabbed those before rushing back to the living room. Wherever Angel was, she would be cold. He just prayed he found her before she got too cold.

The car still steamed in its parking place in the garage. He threw his armful in the backseat, cranked the engine back up, and peeled out of his space, barely missing the minivan next to him. Without blinking at the close call, Brad zipped toward the entrance and onto the street—the snowy, hazardous street, especially with Atlanta drivers doing their best non-Alaskan impressions. He loved his hometown, but the native population had little experience with icy conditions. Under normal circumstances he’d stay safely home. For Angel, he’d brave anything.

A half hour later his pulse was in the heart-attack range and he’d broken out in a cold sweat. How far could she have gone on foot? He didn’t even know how long she’d been out here. Was he even going in the right direction?

By the time an hour had passed, he was in no condition to drive and no longer willing to risk her. Squinting against the glare of the streetlights on the snow, he pulled the car over to the curb and put it in park. The low rumble of the engine steadied him as he grabbed his phone and punched in the numbers 9-1-1. Before the first ring could sound, he glanced toward the nearest building and noticed a shimmer in the darkness of a recessed doorway.

The Off button was punched and the phone clanking against the dash before he even had time to think. Could it be? His fingers trembled as he yanked on the door handle, grateful when the door’s icy crust finally yielded and he could push his way out into the storm.

Angel had gone to Florida State to earn her degree. He’d teased her weeks ago about the shiny coat she’d unpacked for the winter. It was the color of the Goodyear blimp, a metallic gray relieved only by the giant Seminoles patch emblazoned on the back. Tonight he thanked God and the stars and anything else he could think of for that obnoxious coat and the fact that it shone even in the gloom of a full-blown snowstorm in the middle of the night. That silver coat could well have saved her life—at least until he got her home, when he just might strangle her for scaring him half to freaking death.

She was huddled in a doorway, her feet dipped into the thick coating of snow on the sidewalk. Her head was bare.
God
. When her pinched, dead-white face finally came into view, eyes closed, his heart skipped several beats, then thundered on.

“Angel?” His last few steps were more of a leap as he covered the distance between them.
Don’t let me be too late!
But then a puff of white escaped her slack mouth, just in time to keep him from screaming out his rage at the thought of losing her.

“Angel! Angel, wake up, beautiful.” He grabbed her cheeks, shocked at the frozen feel of her skin. “Angel! You fucking wake up right now!”

Ice-crusted eyelids fluttered, and slowly the deep navy depths of Angel’s eyes were revealed. “Brad?”

He bit back another curse. The sting of tears burned behind his eyes and thickened his voice. “That’s right, beautiful. Come on. We gotta get you warm.”

“No.” Angel batted at his hands ineffectively. “Just a little…more.”

“No! No more,” he snarled, anger pouring through him like lava—or maybe that was relief. “You’re coming with me, whether you want to or not. We’re going home.”

“No.” Angel’s head lolled against his shoulder when he lifted her into his arms. “No…can’t. Gotta get out.”

Brad ignored her slurred words in favor of hustling her to the car. He managed to deposit her into the passenger seat and buckle her in without too much of a fight and adjusted the vents so a gentle flow of lukewarm air blew on her feet and torso. He grabbed the blanket from the backseat and draped it around her. Should he head to the hospital? Had she been out long enough for frostbite to be an issue? The temperature hovered in the lower twenties, but who knew how long she’d been out in this weather with inadequate covering? She had to have been walking awhile, which might’ve kept her warmer. Hell, he was from the South; everything he thought he knew about hypothermia came from
The Day After Tomorrow
, for God’s sake.

He didn’t know what to do.

Just get in the car and then figure it out, idiot.

Right. The blowing wind and snow muffled the slam of the door, stealing his need to hit or throw or kick something, anything. Damn it! He slammed his hands on the roof of the car, feeling the sting of the cold as it seeped into his bare skin just as he imagined it had Angel’s. He fisted the thin layer of snow that had accumulated there, refusing to give in to the relief stealing his strength. His palms flared with pain, then went numb as the ice lingered against them, but still he hovered there outside her window, protecting her until he could get himself together and get the hell into the car without Angel seeing how scared shitless he’d been.

By the time he slid into the driver’s seat, Angel was shaking so hard her teeth clanked together loudly in the stark silence of the car’s interior. Okay, hospital it was. He tucked the blanket more firmly around her, lingering to cup her jaw, lean over, and breathe his warm breath against her chilled cheek. He loved her so much he shook as hard as she did. He couldn’t live without her. God help him, but he couldn’t live if she left him all alone.

“I’m taking you to the hospital,” he told her.

Angel’s eyes shot open, a spark of defiance glimmering in the navy-blue depths. “No. Take me home.”

“Beautiful, you have to go. We have to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m not going,” she shouted, the sound shaky for all its volume. But there was nothing shaky about the frantic scramble that ensued. Brad was finally forced to throw an arm and leg over her to subdue her attempts to leave the car.

“Angel! You have to go. Angel!”

“No! I don’t want to go.” She burst into tears.

Despite his confusion, Brad cuddled her close, sharing his warmth, desperate to protect her, to make things right. “Shh, beautiful. It’s gonna be okay.”

She shook her head, but she didn’t argue anymore. Brad let the tears run their course, figuring she might need them as much as he did. At least the crying flushed her skin, spreading warmth and easing some of her shivers. When her sobs dwindled to shuddering sighs, he nuzzled the top of her head. Urgency continued to buzz through him, but he pushed all the calm he didn’t have into his voice. “Why don’t you want to go to the hospital?”