Shock Waves (20 page)

His sisters had been charmed by his dark eastern European looks and accent. “That’s when he met Allison.”

They were running, but he felt Brenna tense. “The girl in the picture.”

The
memories twisted harder, surging forward after years of
exile. Guilt sliced deep, jagged. Sweet, sweet Allison. He’d known her
forever. His mother had made it annoyingly clear
she’d welcome Ally as her daughter-in-law. Tall and blond, she’d exuded a radiant innocence that was more seductive than a centerfold in a string bikini. He’d always felt protective of her, hadn’t thought twice about introducing her to his friend. To Dimetri.

The man who would ruin her life.

“They hit it off immediately. Ally had a heart of gold, and the second she heard his story, about the cruel slaughter of his family, he had her.” Wholly and completely, without reservation. “He pretended to love her, too.”

Brenna said nothing, just kept running alongside him.

“They married a few weeks later.” And sometimes when Ethan lay alone in the cloying darkness of his bed, it was Ally’s face he would see, on her wedding day, when he’d stood by Dimetri’s side and watched his friend walk down the aisle, the bright smile to her face, the beaming light to her eyes, the off-the-shoulder silk dress of white. She’d been a virgin until she met Dimetri. She’d been untouched. She’d been saving herself.

A fresh surge of disgust churned through Ethan, but again he forced it aside, as he’d trained himself to do. Feelings got him nowhere. Feelings only blurred his focus, distorted his ability to see black for white, truth for lie.

Feelings destroyed.

“What happened?” Her breathing was hard, but her question was soft, laced with an empathy he did not deserve.

“A few months went by. Everything seemed normal. I had no idea—” A loud shrill sound aborted his words.

He stopped dead in his tracks, listening to the noise pitch lower, wobble, drone like a warped storm warning. “Took longer than I thought,” he muttered, tugging her forward. He had to find somewhere to hide her, damn it. Somewhere Jorak would never find her, never touch her, never destroy her the way he’d destroyed Allison.

“It was March,” he forced himself to continue, focusing on the past rather than the growing cesspool within. “I got a phone call.” Much like the ones Brenna had placed. Vague. Allegedly urgent. Requesting a meeting by the James. “I’ll never forget how damn cold it was.” He’d always tested himself, dressing in shorts and T-shirt to run, even during the dead of winter. He’d shown up that night clad in his normal attire, not at all prepared for the bone-chilling cold cutting through the shivering trees. The river had continued to trickle over the slabs of rock, but crusts of ice caked many of them. “And that’s when everything changed.”

“You learned the truth?”

“The informant met me there.” A hooded figure had stepped from behind a sycamore and, with a few whispered words, yanked the world from under Ethan’s feet. “I learned the truth about Dimetri, that he was living in the States under an assumed name. That he wasn’t a war orphan, wasn’t trying to build a better life for himself.”

The siren continued to wail, droning, relentless.

“He was really the son of a deposed eastern European military leader, who was wanted in conjunction with heinous war crimes.” A man who’d single-handedly and cold-bloodedly ordered the execution of entire villages, including the rape of innocent women, the slaughter of children. The man who’d seven years later gone after Ethan’s sister Miranda.

“He’d planted his son in America to learn everything about our culture, our value system, that he could—how we think, how we play, how we fight.” And as his primary instructor, he’d chosen none other than the son of a United States senator.

A low sound broke from Brenna’s throat. “Ethan, I’m sorry.”

For years he’d kept the truth bottled up inside him. His father knew, but no others. Not even Elizabeth. He’d never been able to force himself to spit out the words, the truth. The shame was a black stain that could never be erased, only learned from.

“That Thanksgiving, when I invited him into my home, he hacked into my father’s computer and gained access to crucial military information.” Ethan bit back another surge of disgust. “Information he used to order the execution of an entire team of Navy SEALs.”

Around him, through the thick tangle of vegetation overhead, the sky was lightening into a grayish peach, but Ethan saw only black. Dark, punishing. It pushed from all directions, spilled through him, pooled in his lungs.

“Oh, God,” Brenna said, and her voice was low, sad. “Ethan.” She stopped abruptly, holding on tight to his hand and forcing him to stop, as well. There in the darkness, with the alarm blaring over the sounds of the night and the sun trying to lighten scars that would never go away, she looked up at him with those incredible fairy eyes of hers, eyes that made him long to slip back in time to his childhood, to the boy who’d been enchanted with the lore of Ireland.

Her movements registered in slow motion, the step toward him, the press of her body to his, the lifting of her arm, the hand against his face. Her voice then, soft, strong. “It wasn’t your fault.”

But it was. Totally and completely. Because of him, because of his inability to see Dimetri Pasquel for the monster he was, men had died. Families had been destroyed. And Allison—

Jesus.

He could still see her, lying so horribly still. He’d never seen so much blood…

He moved without thinking, crushed Brenna in his arms without realizing his intent. He just needed to hold her, hold on, feel that she was warm and alive and vital, that he’d gotten her away from Jorak in time, but then she was holding him, too, and some forgotten place inside him thrummed hard and deep.

“It’s okay,” she murmured, running her hands along his back and pressing her face to his neck. “It’s okay.”

But it wasn’t okay, and he knew it. There was only one way to make it okay.

He pushed from her—when he wanted only to drag her to the muddy ground and take more—ran harder, not holding her hand, but freely against the night that wouldn’t stop slipping
away.

“Ethan!”

But he kept running, pumping his arms and lengthening his strides, breathing hard, no longer from Jorak’s men, not from Brenna, but from a darker vigilante, one that had eroded the core of who he was for seven long years.

“Ethan, wait!” she called again, this time from not as far behind him, and in a blinding flash, sanity returned, and he knew it was time to quit running. He slammed to a stop and bent forward, braced his hands against the hot damp skin of his thighs and tried like hell to breathe.

Couldn’t.

And then Brenna was touching him again, running her hands over his sweaty arms and back in a compassionate gesture he didn’t come close to deserving. But God, how he wanted.

“I went to the FBI.” The need for justice, to punish, had nearly blinded him. Hell, that was a lie. It
had
blinded him, totally and completely, just like the illusion of friendship had. “We arranged a sting.”

Brenna kept touching him, kept murmuring softly, but he didn’t look at her, couldn’t, not when the soft light of dawn would let him see what was reflected in those whitewashed sapphire eyes.

“It was at night.” The dead of night. And Ethan had sat outside in his car, oblivious to the bite of the cold, knowing only that in minutes Dimetri’s lies would come to an end, and he’d never hurt anyone ever, ever again. “A SWAT team moved in just after midnight. They kicked in the door, and even down on the street I could hear the gunfire. The shouting.”

The scream.

“They told me to stay in the car and wait.” Somewhere in the distance, the alarm went quiet, as though the entire island was braced for what came next. But for as long as Ethan lived, he would never be braced, never be prepared. “But I couldn’t. I got out of the car and ran.” It was the longest hundred yards of his life. “And then there she was.”

Brenna sucked in a breath. Her hands stopped moving. “No…
”

He stared down at the mud sloshed up over his shoes, the
streaks
of slime on his legs, and no matter how badly he wanted to twist around and see Brenna, tell her to keep her hands moving, touching, he couldn’t. Wouldn’t let himself.

“The son of a bitch got away,” he rasped, and the hot surge sluiced back through him. “Allison was the one left lying in a pool of blood.” Allison who’d been fourteen weeks pregnant.

For a moment everything stood still. Brenna, Ethan, the island. But then she was there again, not just touching, but draping her entire body over him, as though she could somehow change the truth. “God, Ethan, I’m sorry.”

All at once he pushed upright and stared blindly ahead, noticing for the first time what appeared to be a road cutting through the jungle. “So am I,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her forward. “So am I.”

* * *

Finally it all made sense. A horrible, twisted sense. From the moment she’d met Ethan Carrington, from the moment he’d looked at her through those piercing eyes, searching for a link between her and Jorak Zhukov, she’d seen his scars, and she’d wondered. Something had twisted this man, she remembered thinking. Something had shaped him. Something, someone, had destroyed his ability to trust.

She’d thought it a woman, and now, watching the tall man with the raven hair walk ahead of her, a man who exuded strength and confidence even as guilt gnawed away at him, she realized she’d only been partially right. Yes, the loss of Allison had hurt him deeply. But she hadn’t been the only one to die that night. Far from it. Part of Ethan had died, as well, the youthful confidence she’d seen in the picture of him and Allison, when he’d looked ready to take on, to conquer, the world.

And it was Jorak Zhukov who had killed him. Jorak Zhukov who had betrayed him. Jorak Zhukov who had taught him not to trust, not only others, but worse, far worse, himself.

The truth staggered her. And finally she knew why Ethan Carrington demanded fact and evidence, why he had to feel and see and taste before he could believe. She knew, and she understood, and deep inside, on a level she’d tried to destroy, to wall off from the world, she hurt.

“Here’s an opening,” he said, and his voice, low, urgent,
yanked
her back to the muddy path circling what looked to be an abandoned resort. Morning shimmied around them, the soft hazy light of dawn, the cry of an island full of birds. She looked
through
the mist and focused on the chain link fence, where Ethan stooped near a tear.

“You go first,” he said.

She did as he instructed, moving on autopilot to crawl through the hole in the fence. There was nothing all that discernable about the other side, more overgrown vegetation and puddles of mud, but excitement whispered through her.

“My God,” she said under her breath, and stared at the massive structure in the distance, Mayan in design, steadily
being reclaimed by nature. “Do you think it’s safe?”

Ethan joined her. “Safer than the compound.” He took her
hand, and instinctively she curled her fingers around his. The
ease with which she did so shocked her. For so long she’d avoided human contact, but now she couldn’t get enough. Not with this man. The need to touch, to run her hands along his body and take away the pain, smooth the hard lines, took her breath away.

“What do you think happened?” she asked.

He started forward. “Who knows. They could have gone bankrupt, I suppose.” They passed under a stunning concrete
archway,
next to which sat a crumbling sign which read Palacea de Maya. “Maybe a hurricane.”

Brenna breathed in
deeply,
despite the strong smell of decay surrounding them. The main hotel building loomed about a hundred yards down the path, a weathered stucco structure that looked like an ancient palace. There were columns and arches, small windows, and as they grew closer, she noted intricate carvings in stone.

“This was a happy place,” she said, and deep inside she felt it.

Against hers, Ethan’s hand tightened. “How do you know?”

She stopped walking and glanced to the right, where a structure that looked eerily like a temple rose up through the dense vegetation. “Places carry memories,” she said. “Every bit as real and vital as humans.” The sensations would hit her, wash over her, just as they did with people. “When I was in high school, a group of kids I wanted desperately to be friends with invited me for a night of joyriding.” All it took was the memory, and her throat went tight. “I went, never questioning their motives. We drove and drove, until finally they stopped the car in front of an old house and all started to get out.”

But Brenna had just sat there, gasping for breath. The sensation, the cold, the darkness, had pushed down on her like a wet wool blanket. “I couldn’t get out of the car.”

Ethan turned to look at her, lifted his free hand to brush the sweat-dampened hair from her face. “Why?”

“The house,” she said, and even to her own ears her voice sounded distant. Mechanical. “It was the scene of a murder. A man took out his own family, killing one child at a time in their beds where they slept.” She paused, forced herself to swallow, felt herself sway.