Take the Key and Lock Her Up (44 page)

He suddenly shoved his gun in his holster and scooped Emily out of the SUV. After
setting her on her feet, he took her place, sitting beside Pierce.

“Can you give me a minute with my brother? Alone?”

Since his request sounded more like an order than a question, she didn’t bother to
reply. She marched toward the trees.

“Don’t go far.”

Right. Like she had anywhere to go. She sat on the ground and crossed her arms to
wait.

The two men spoke in low tones. At first, Pierce shook his head, wincing as he did
so. But a few minutes later, Devlin must have worn him down because he stopped shaking
his head and gave his brother a glare.

Emily understood the emotion behind
that
response.

When Devlin hopped down, he headed straight to her and hauled her to her feet. She
was still sputtering in surprise when he clamped his mouth down on hers. His stubble
brushed against her burns, making them throb all over again. But she didn’t care.
Relief and passion played a tug of war inside her as she clung to him, pouring her
feelings into her response.

I’m sorry.

Thank you for sacrificing for me, for showing mercy when you wanted revenge.

I love you.

That last thought was an epiphany, startling her as much as she imagined it would
startle him if she said it out loud. But she knew, deep in her heart, that it was
true. She didn’t know how they would make a relationship work with all the obstacles
in their way. But she didn’t see how they could fail, not with the passion that flared
so hot between them, or the love that was strong enough to grow in spite of the horrible
things they’d had to endure.

Or maybe because of them.

In just a few days they’d endured more tragedy and crises than most couples would
in a lifetime. Anything after this would be easy.

By the time he ended the kiss, her heart felt like it would gallop out of her chest.

“Wow,” she breathed.

His sexy grin, the one she hadn’t seen in far too long, tilted his mouth up at the
corner. Then it was gone and the shadows returned to his eyes.

“You’re a good, decent woman, Emily O’Malley. I don’t deserve you.” He kissed her
tenderly on her forehead, then jogged into the forest.

Right where Ace had disappeared moments ago.

She stared after him, one hand pressed against her lips, swollen from his kiss, the
other covering her aching heart.

Pierce joined her and, in halting words, explained the agreement he’d made with his
brother.

“. . . that even though you don’t technically qualify for the program, I can pull
some strings, call in favors . . .”

“. . . you’ll be safe and can even exchange letters with your family through the Justice
Department. WITSEC—Witness Security—has a system for that without endangering . . .”

“. . . unfortunate that you’ll have to quit your job, of course, and leave Savannah,
but . . .”

He paused, his face etched with sympathy. But even before he dealt the final blow,
Emily knew what he was going to say.

Devlin wasn’t coming back.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Two weeks later

A
LAMP FLIPPED
on, flooding the room with light. Pierce dove out of bed and grabbed the pistol from
the top of his nightstand. He came up in a crouch, leveling his gun at the intruder
standing just inside the open window, a window that had been closed and locked when
Pierce went to bed. But the man standing there wasn’t an intruder. He slowly lowered
his gun.

“Devil, how did you get in here? That’s a two-story drop, straight-down.” He climbed
to his feet. “And what were you thinking, surprising me like that? I could have shot
you.”

Devlin plopped down on one of the two wing chairs by the window. “Not without bullets
you couldn’t.”

Pierce hefted the gun and grinned. “Should have known by the weight. But I’m half
asleep, or at least I was.” He stowed the gun inside the top drawer of his nightstand
and discreetly pressed the red button on the device hidden inside. “Madison and Nikki
are in Florida, visiting her brother Logan. But you already knew that or you wouldn’t
have barged into my bedroom.” He crossed to the other side of the bed and sat on the
mattress across from Devlin. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again. Did you . . .
find what you were looking for?”

“Don’t you mean
who
? Ace has gone underground. He’s hiding, like the coward he is. But that’s not why
I’m here.”

He pulled a folded piece of computer printer paper out of his shirt pocket and flung
it onto the bed. “I’ll save you the trouble of reading it. That’s an article from
today’s
Savannah Morning News
. Want to tell me why Emily’s picture is on the front page in a story about up-and-coming
detectives with the Chatham County police? What happened to keeping a low profile,
to getting her into the Witness Security Program? You promised you’d pull some strings,
move mountains, do whatever it took to give her a new
life
, to keep her safe.”

Pierce raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Let me explain.”

“My God, Pierce. If something happens to her, I don’t . . . I couldn’t . . .” He shot
up out of the chair and paced back and forth like a caged animal. “If you couldn’t
get her into WITSEC right away, why couldn’t you at least keep her hidden somewhere?
Hell, I’m shocked her boss even let her have her old job back after the way I barreled
into her life and ruined everything. Still, you shouldn’t have let her do it. EXIT
could still be gunning for her.”

“You act like you care about her.”

“
Care
about her? Of course I care about her. I care about her more than . . .” He shook
his head. “Why would you think I didn’t?”

Pierce shrugged. “Maybe because you left her?”

Devlin wrapped a hand around the top rail of the footboard. “I had to. She could never
be happy living the kind of life I’m now forced to live. And I wouldn’t want her to
try. She’s far too good for that. She deserves better.” He waved his hand in the air,
as if to wave away what he’d just said. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is keeping her
safe. Don’t you realize the danger she’s in because of that article, that picture?
It’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Cyprian is bound to send someone after
her again. How could you let her do that?”

“It wasn’t his choice. It was mine,” a soft voice called out from the doorway.

Devlin’s eyes widened in shock.

Emily gave him a tentative smile. “Hello, Dev. Miss me?”

E
MILY WAITED UNTIL
Pierce had shut the door behind him before moving farther into the room. Devlin stood
a dozen feet away, frozen like a statue, by the window.

“You left me. You hurt me.”

Pain lanced his features. “I know.”

He walked toward her slowly, as if she were a mirage, as if she might disappear if
he moved too fast. When he stopped, he was so close she could feel the heat of him,
so close that her body tilted toward him, a flower turning its face up to the sun.

His greedy gaze devoured her, drinking her in, like a man who knew he was going blind
and wanted to imprint the image of a glorious sunset in his mind to take out and treasure
when everything went dark.

He feathered his fingers across her cheek. “I’m so, so sorry about
this
. About what Ace did to you.”

Embarrassed at her unsightly burns, she pulled his hand away. “I heard you when you
told Pierce that Ace got away.”

“For now.” His brows drew down. “Why are you here, in my brother’s house? And how
did you know I was here?”

“I’ve been staying in a guest room down the hall since . . . the day you left. Pierce
sent his wife and daughter on an extended vacation, using a made-up excuse about one
of his cases being dangerous. They don’t know that I’m the danger part. As for knowing
you were here, there’s a transmitter in the side-table drawer, by the bed. It rings
a buzzer in my room. Your brother was supposed to press it if you showed up.”

“The article. It was a plant to draw me out. Pierce’s idea?”

“Mine.”

He grinned.

She smiled back. “Drier would never consider hiring me back, even if I wanted to go
back—which I don’t. Pierce took care of the details. I wasn’t sure you’d be monitoring
the news here. But he was confident you would.”

“He would know. He was bit by the bug a long time ago. I’m not sure why I fought it
this long. I was doomed the moment I stepped into that basement.”

“Bug? Doomed?”

“Never mind. Doesn’t matter. You said your boss would never want you back. What about
your partner, Tuck? Did I destroy that for you too?”

Unable to resist the temptation any longer, she lifted a hand to his chest, reveling
in how his muscles bunched beneath her fingertips. She longed to unbutton his shirt
and slide her fingers beneath the fabric, to feel the wiry roughness of his hair,
the warmth of his skin.

“I hardly think you can take credit for destroying my life as I knew it. EXIT Inc.
gets full credit for that. My friendship with Tuck is an unfortunate casualty. When
Pierce and I called in the scene at Jackson’s Island, we made up half-truths to keep
your name out of everything. Drier was only too happy to accept that Kelly and her
ex-cons were responsible for the abductions. He was happy to believe our story that
another man, one of Kelly’s thugs, is the one who shot Gage and burned my face. We
simply inserted Pierce in the equation instead of you and . . . well, case pretty
much closed. Except for the last missing woman Hawley swears is still out there. Who
knows if she’ll ever be found.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

She nodded sadly. “Tuck wasn’t satisfied with our story since we couldn’t explain
Kelly’s motives. And since he couldn’t talk to you. He’s convinced you’re in this
up to your neck.”

“Smart man.”

“He’s an excellent detective. I hated lying to him. He refused my calls when I tried
to talk to him last week.” She shrugged. “It is what it is. Pierce said he hit bureaucratic
walls when he inquired about EXIT at work. He was ordered to back off, without explanation.
Cyprian has powerful friends trying to keep this fiasco quiet, and to keep anyone
from digging into the true nature of what they do. So what happens now? With EXIT?”

His silence had her fingers curling against the front of his shirt. “You’re going
after the whole damn company, aren’t you?”

He gently pulled her hands away. “My entire life was built on a lie, Em. I thought
by joining EXIT I could avenge my fiancée’s murder and protect others from horrific
crimes like she suffered. But all along, it was
because
of EXIT that she died. And after I spent over a decade being loyal to the company,
Cyprian gives me a death sentence over a breach of security. I would have expected
if he ever found out about me breaking into the system that he would have at least
asked me about it so I could explain why I’d done it. Slap on the wrist. Don’t do
it again. But to issue an EXIT order? There’s something else he’s hiding, something
big, and I’m going to find out what it is.”

“We can work together as a team to bring them down. We can go to the Justice Department,
make
them listen, tell them what happened, tell them—”

“Emily.” His voice was whisper soft, his gaze intent. “Who do you think created EXIT
Inc. in the first place?”

Her mouth dropped open. “What are you saying? That the government is involved? That
they know what EXIT really is?”

“Yes and no. It’s complicated. Em, promise me you’ll do whatever Pierce thinks is
necessary to keep you safe. Don’t take any chances with your life.”

“You’re leaving me again?”

He winced. “I don’t want to. I have to.”

“Like you did in the bunker and later, after stitching me up? And again at Jackson’s
Island? You’re leaving me again?”

“I. Have. No. Choice.”

He grabbed her shoulders, his fingers tight to the point that it was almost painful.
Almost. But he knew his strength, and he was careful. He was always careful with her,
because he didn’t want to hurt her. Wasn’t that the point of all of this? The reason
she’d had Pierce put the fake article in the paper? The reason she forgave him for
abandoning her even though he hadn’t asked and didn’t even know she’d forgiven him?
Everything he’d done since the moment they’d met had been driven by his desire to
keep her safe. It might not have been anything more than an intense attraction in
the beginning, an instinctive yearning and pull toward each other. But somewhere along
the way, it had turned into something more.

Something wonderful.

Something beautiful.

Something too rare to throw away.

She shook off his hands and raised her arms to slide her fingers through the hair
at the back of his neck.

He shuddered and grabbed her hands. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“For you to catch up. It’s been two weeks, Dev. Two long weeks since we last saw each
other. I’ve thought about everything that happened between us, every single minute.
I’ve mulled it over and over in my mind, and I realized something. You’re in love
with me.”

His eyes widened with panic. “I can’t . . . I don’t . . .” He stepped back, forcing
her to drop her arms.

She followed, stalking him across the room. “Can’t? Don’t? You’re scared. That’s all.
This is new for you. Heck, it’s new for me too. But at least you’ve been in love once
before. You know what it’s like. You have to know this is real, this thing between
us.”

She stepped forward again, but this time she didn’t touch him. “Look at me and tell
me you don’t love me, Dev. Tell me you don’t want me.”

He surprised her by ducking away, sliding between her and the wall. He put his hands
on the windowsill, prepared to slip away.