The Promise He Made Her (12 page)

Truth was...he probably didn't have problems with erectile dysfunction. There were things he could take for that. He'd just been using her to act out his fantasies because he wanted to. Because he could...

It was getting late. They should get back. Get some rest. She had a seven o'clock appointment in the morning. And an eight and a nine, too. Chantel's soon-to-be sister-in-law, Julie Fairmont, was coming in.

And something was nagging at her. She fought it off as they climbed the path back toward the house. She didn't want to deal with anything else that night. Didn't want to...

“I might as well return home,” she said as soon as the cottage came into view. She couldn't keep using him. Inconveniencing him. “With the divorce thing we can assume that I'm not in physical danger with Kenneth. He's going to drag me through the court system. My physical safety isn't at risk, my security is. The house. My car. My money...”

Sam didn't respond. She hadn't really expected him to, not until he thought about what she was saying. He wasn't going to like letting her live alone so soon after Ken's release, but there was no longer any justification for the money being spent on guards. For Chantel to be away from her family every evening. Or for Sam to be eating dinner out instead of at home. And sleeping in his guest bedroom.

There was also no reason for him to be pushing her down into the brush at the side of the path. “Stay here.” His voice was a harsh whisper. “Stay down and don't move. I'm taking Lucy with me. I don't want her giving away your position.”

Heart pounding, she stared at him. Doing as he said without question.

“Someone's in the house.”

He pulled a knife out of his pocket. “Use this if you have to,” he said. “And don't move unless you have to use it. I'll be back.”

Shaking, more frightened then she'd ever been, Bloom watched as, gun in hand, he headed toward the cottage.

 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

S
AM
KEPT
TO
the tree line, shimmying along with his gun trained on the front door of his cottage, Lucy at his side. Several yards away from Bloom, he told the dog to stay. If anyone came around the house, they'd think Lucy was Bloom. And he'd be alerted when he heard the dog bark. Or squeal.

He prayed he'd hear neither and moved forward.

With no idea how many people he was dealing with, and a helpless woman in the weeds, he couldn't just send Lucy in to fight off the danger. In the first place, she wasn't a trained police dog. And in the other, she could be shot in a heartbeat, leaving him who knew how many alerted bad guys on his hands.

Where was the property guard?

He'd noticed the opened front door the second he'd seen the cottage come into view. And had seen a head pass by the front window in the next second. There were no cars in the yard, but he quickly circled around to the back, which would be reached first coming from the road.

The cottage faced the ocean. Not the road.

It was clear, as well. Closer to the building itself now, he thought he heard his name being called in a male voice he recognized. Tom Sherman, one of his previous partners, was taking some of the night duty shifts as a favor to Sam while his wife and kids were visiting her mother in Wisconsin.

Night shift didn't start until eleven.

Was it that late? He and Bloom had been down at the beach so long there'd been a change of guards?

Where was Tom? Was he in trouble?

Thinking of the property between him and the road, he knew he had to leave Tom down there to fend for himself while he found out what was going on in the house. Bloom was out there by herself. His first duty was to her.

He saw a shadow of light in the spare bedroom window. From the beach path he'd seen a head in the front room. So were there two of them? More?

“Sam?”

He heard his name again. Clearer. Was Tom coming closer? Or not in the woods at all?

Hurrying around to the front of the cottage, keeping his back to the wall of the house, he sought out the head of the path. All seemed calm. Lucy sat, ears perked, right where he'd left her.

He had to go in.

“Sam?” The call came again just as the front door of the cottage opened. “Sam!” His ex-partner said, rushing down the steps toward him. “My God, man, what the hell are you doing? You're supposed to be in the house. With the woman. Where's the woman?”

Tom's urgent tone didn't calm him much.

“She's safe for now. What's going on? Where's Williams?”

“Down by the road. Keeping watch. I got a call from one of the uniforms on night duty,” he said. “As you know, I'm down as night watch contact tonight so they called me instead of you.”

So Sam could rest. As well as a guy rested when he had a person in possible danger sleeping in the next room.

“As soon as I heard what was going on, I came straight here, told Williams to stay put and came up. Where the hell were you?”

“At the beach.”

“At this time of night? You never go down after dark.”

“I was already down there,” he said, impatient now. “What's going on?”

“Ricardo Gomez called me,” Tom said. “He's been roughed up. Came to in a Dumpster less than an hour ago.”

* * *

B
LOOM
LIKED
T
OM
S
HERMAN
. He was younger than Sam, but not by much. A little less lean. Reminded her of a big teddy bear. With a gun.

She liked being back in Sam's cottage, sitting on the couch with Lucy next to her. Her palm against the dog's fur was the only sensation she could focus on. Lucy laid her head on Bloom's thigh. She liked that, too.

She didn't like anything else about the turn the evening had taken.

No one had talked to her yet, other than Tom's brief introduction to her as he and Sam came to get her from her hiding place and walk her up, one on either side of her, to the cottage. Sam had been on the phone. Tom had been focused on him and watching the yard.

She'd gleaned that Tom had come to find Sam, to discuss how they wanted to handle a situation. And to be on hand if Sam wanted to leave or needed more coverage. And that a uniformed police officer was at the hospital waiting to talk to Ricardo Gomez, the young man who'd been watching out for her all week.

The young man who'd been absent when she'd left work that evening.

Poor guy. His one night off and he ends up in the hospital.

Sam had just hung up from him.

“The uniform is just getting in to speak with Gomez,” he said. “He'll call back with a report as soon as he has one.”

He stood by the wall of movies, looking underdressed in his jeans and boat shoes. Tom sat at the kitchen table, between Bloom and the door, hands on his uniformed thighs, just inches from the belt that held his holster.

He had a radio on that belt, too, and it had just crackled as Brad Williams checked in with an “all clear.”

Something more than she knew was going on. She had to deal with it. But didn't want to.

“Did you notice anything odd about Gomez when you left this evening?” Sam spoke to her directly for the first time since he'd come back to get her. He got preoccupied when he was working. She'd seen him in action in the past.

“Gomez didn't work tonight,” she said. “He had the night off.” Surely he'd have known that. It was her understanding that he had a list of who was working and when on her case. Chantel had said, and he'd probably told her, too, that he was in charge of arranging the guard detail.

“What do you mean he had the night off?” Sam bit out. “Of course he didn't have the night off.”

“He wasn't there when I left.”

“And you didn't think it important to tell me that?” He didn't move closer. Didn't even sound menacing.

But she knew he was more than a little upset. Things were not going according to his plan. It was a control thing.

“He'd sent a replacement, Sam. Or rather, I assumed you had.”

He straightened. Came over to sit on the edge of the couch, forearms on his knees. As though he was trying to look relaxed. She felt more like he was ready to pounce.

“What did the guy look like?” She recognized the tone from the past. She'd been sitting up in bed in a little cubicle in the emergency room, having just been told that she had prescription medication in her system without a prescription, and he'd been sitting in a chair, leaning forward in almost the same way, asking her where she'd gotten the drugs.

“It wasn't a guy, Sam. It was a woman. She told me good-night just like Gomez always does. Held the door open for me and stood there while I headed to my car. You were in the parking lot. You watched it all happen.”

“I saw the beige shirt on the arm that opened the door. I didn't actually see the guard. I was watching...”

He shook his head. Definitely angry. But not at her.

“Can you describe her?” Tom asked, an odd look on his face as he glanced between Sam and Bloom.

“She was my height. Not overweight, but not model skinny. Dark hair. Long, but she had it pulled back tight. Hispanic, I think. She didn't really say much. Just good-night, as I recall,” Bloom told them. Lucy lifted her head. Sensing Bloom's agitation? She stroked the dog slowly. Letting her know everything was fine and she could go back to sleep.

But was everything fine?

Ken was likely going to petition to reopen their divorce case. She could be back to square one, facing the possibility of losing a lot of her security. And with Ken out of work...could she be made to pay alimony?

He was doing just what she'd known he'd try to do—show his power over her. Make her afraid. She'd been prepared for that, and he was still finding a way to beat her.

And now something had happened to Gomez and... Could that really have something to do with her?

“Chantel's highly intelligent,” she said, trying to clear her mind. “She speaks with intelligence. But she still has a tone about her...a command that comes through when she speaks...”

“The streets have a tendency to roughen up anyone regardless of intelligence or social stature,” Tom said.

“Right.” Bloom looked at Sam. “This woman didn't have that...tone. Is it possible she wasn't a cop at all?”

“Other than Chantel, there is no female on my list,” he told her. And looked at Tom, whose expression clearly answered some unspoken question between them.

“What?” Bloom asked, looking at Tom briefly, but then pinned Sam with an unyielding stare. “I'm an adult, Sam. If this has something to do with me, you need to let me know.”

“We have no idea what's going until we hear back from the hospital,” Tom started.

“Sam?”

“Someone who isn't supposed to be there has taken Gomez's place, then he turns up hurt. It's pretty obvious that this has to do with you,” Sam said. “Freelander might be planning to go after you in divorce court, but he probably intends to see you suffer in other ways. He's joined a new league since you were married to him, Bloom. He's got thugs who are willing to do him favors. If terrorizing you gives him pleasure, we can assume he has the means to do it. The tip I got implied that he was going to make you hurt physically.”

Things he'd been about to tell her when she'd made her bold statement that she was going home? Before they'd been interrupted by their “intruder”?

His phone rang then, interrupting them. Like Tom, Bloom watched Sam as he took the call. Listening to his terse questions. Trying to glean the parts of the conversation that were unheard to them.

“It appears Gomez was hit on the back of the head, had a rag soaked with chloroform put over his nose and mouth and then at some point was thrown in the Dumpster. He doesn't know how or by who. He'd been walking down the hall, checking alcoves after everyone had left for the day when it happened. He's bruised, has a concussion, but doesn't appear to be seriously hurt.”

“It's a warning.” Tom was standing now, too.

“Gomez is a big guy,” Bloom pointed out. “The woman who was there, posing as the guard, even if she could have somehow knocked him out and gotten him to the Dumpster, there's no way she could have lifted him by herself.”

Sam was nodding. “Which is how we know we're dealing with a group here. Whoever they are, they're working at the behest of your ex-husband. It's too much of a coincidence to think that someone is suddenly out to get you the week that Freelander gets out of jail. And you are the only reason Gomez was in the building.”

She was a grown woman who'd learned how to wear big girl panties all by herself. She would stand up to this. “You really believe he's going to make good on his supposed threat to come after me?”

“I think that seems pretty obviously the case.”

“I agree,” Tom told her, still maintaining a position close to the front door.

“What do we do?” She already had three of Santa Raquel's finest right there guarding her. There was a whole city to protect.

“Exactly what we are doing,” Sam told her. “While I didn't see the thing with Gomez coming, we're all in place because we expected Freelander to come after you...”

True. But she'd thought it would be her he'd try to get. Not...

“Why didn't the girl hurt me then? Why take out Gomez and then just hold the door open for me and let me walk out?”

But even as she asked the question, she knew the answer.

“He's letting me know he's in control.” She didn't look at either man now. Ken played head games. It was like Sam said—Ken wanted to terrorize her.

“And that you're vulnerable,” Sam added. “He wants you to know you're safe only because he chose to let you be. He's also trying to scare you into thinking that the guards you think you have protecting you are easily dealt with.”

Her head shot up. She stared at the detective she'd somehow begun to see as larger than life. Maybe this was more than just transference. Maybe she'd also seen him, at least a little, through the eyes of hero worship. Considering her odd upbringing, latent hero worship was a plausible diagnosis.

“He's going to get me, isn't he?”

“Hell, no!” Sam didn't hesitate. “What happened to Gomez tonight...that works in our favor, Bloom.”

Now she was confused. Frowning, Bloom asked, “How?”

“You might be able to take a good cop by surprise once. You won't be able to do it again. Freelander just wasted his one shot.”

She wanted to believe him. Prayed that she could believe him.

But Sam already caught her out with one promise he couldn't possibly keep. She wasn't going to let him do it to her again.