Afterglow (32 page)

There was a dull roar in her ears. His tone barely changed, but the hair on her body felt as though she’d just gone through a surge of electricity. “What surveillance video?” Her lips felt numb as every fight-or-flight response urged her to run, not walk, away. Horror thrummed through her system, making her skin tight and itchy.

His small, cold smile disappeared. “We have a date-stamped tape of you going into the lab and appropriating the files only hours before the explosion.”

The day she’d been fired. And those files had been found a year later on her iPad. Proof and more proof. All of it planted. “Impossible.”

“Everything is possible, Doctor. A good thing for you to remember.”

THEY DIDN’T SPEAK FOR
the fifteen minutes it took Rand to drive back to the hotel. She preceded him into the room. He slammed the door behind them, making her flinch. “There was a damned good reason I didn’t want you to go near him. You baited him,” Rand accused, dark eyes flashing fire. His mouth was a tight, grim line. He didn’t approach her, just stood on the other side of the large bed situated in the middle of the room.

She didn’t need Rand’s anger on top of her encounter with his father. Her mind was spinning, trying to assimilate all that Paul had told her. She tried to regulate her breathing, but her chest hurt too much to draw a proper breath. Fear was a cold, hard lump making her body shake. “
I
baited
him
? You must be kidding me! I have a right to face my accuser!”

“From a safe distance.”

“There were guards everywhere.”

“He can do a number on you without lifting a finger.”

“I’m perfectly aware of that.”

The enormity of her predicament overwhelmed her, and she couldn’t handle Rand’s anger right now. “I had to talk to him myself.” Still shaken, her heart racing and her nerves stretched to the breaking point, she wanted time and space to process everything that just happened. Rand losing his temper was overkill, and likely to tip
her
temper over the edge.

“There was a reason why I didn’t want you to go with me. I think that’s pretty damn obvious. You being there achieved nothing.”

That was so unjust, so unfair, so damned Rand, that she lost it. “Here’s a thought. Did it ever cross your mind, even a
flicker
, that Catherine’s death was no accident? That in fact your father killed her on
purpose
? That he brought her here to Italy, away from her friends, away from
you
, to do exactly what he did?”

He rounded the bed, his face filled with fury. She took a defensive step back, coming against the door. “Who the hell do you think you are?” The deadly edge to his words flayed her, as intended.

To hell with him. To hell with all of them. She glared at him, her cheeks hot with reciprocated anger. “I know what I’m
not
. A money-grabbing, dishonest
whore
. Isn’t that what you called me when you told me to go to hell?” Those words yelled at her two years before when he’d called to break up with her still stung. Still wounded. The son of a bitch.

Her blood pressure throbbed behind her eyeballs. “I’ll tell you who I
know
I am.” Taking an aggressive step forward, she slapped a hand on his chest. “I’m Dakota North, I have a super-cool sixth sense that brought us this damned far. I’m a daughter to parents who think an A is for low achievers. I’m a freak. I’m a friend who’s there when my friends need me, and I accept help from them when I need it. I’m a good if not
great
cook, and I’m claustrophobic. That’s who I am.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets, clearly in an effort to keep them off her neck, and snapped, “Thanks for the résumé.”

“I’m not done.” She gave him another shove. “I pay my taxes on time, I haven’t had a lover since you told me to take a hike, and I sold my condo to pay my medical bills. I’ll say this for the last damned time:
I did not give Paul drugs
—either approved or declined by the FDA. No. Drugs. Not even an aspirin. Whatever he did, he did it on his own. Which is why I’m not in prison and he is! Did I leave anything out?”

For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer. His face was a hard, expressionless mask, but his hazel eyes glowed with … what, she had no idea. She was grateful that he’d missed the reference to the medical bills; no way she wanted to go there.

“The box containing the vial and wafers was postmarked Seattle,” he said. “
Your
return address. With a fucking handwritten note telling him and my mom to enjoy their second honeymoon. I saw the note, on the custom notepaper your girlfriend Lucy gave you for your goddamn birthday.”

“Her name’s Lilly.” Dakota had no idea who could’ve gotten their hands on one of the beautiful cards her best friend had made for her. “Where did you ever see anything I handwrote? Tell me that.”

“Your fingerprint was on the vial.”

“I worked for four years in that lab.” She threw up her hands. “Of course my fingerprints were on the vial. My fingerprints were on
hundreds
of vials.”

“And one just happened to travel all the way to Italy?”

Her hands dropped to her sides, and her stomach did a nauseating roll and lurch. She was sick of defending herself to him. Sick of trying to prove to the people she loved that she was worthy. Fuck them all. “Fuck you.”

He narrowed his eyes, temper simmering in the glittering depth. “You don’t ever say fuck.”

“I’m saying it now. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck
you.
”

He grabbed her upper arms. “Just look me straight in the eye and tell me the truth.”

She didn’t shake him off because her body felt too brittle to chance moving. Locking her knees, she stayed in his steely grip, meeting his hot gaze with one of her own. “I’ve looked you in the eye and told you the truth all along. It’s not my fault or responsibility if you’re too pigheaded and blind or too beaten down by your issues with your father to hear what I’m saying. I’ve tried to rationalize, to excuse your behavior. There are all sorts of abuses—but you’re a big boy now, and your abuser is feeding you so much bullshit you need waders.”

His fingers tightened like manacles on her arms. “Why would I believe you? The evidence was damning.”

“
Faith
, Rand.” Her throat tightened and her eyes started burning. “Talk about liars. You claimed to love me more than you’d ever loved anyone. You should’ve had faith that I wouldn’t lie to you.” But his pattern of mistrust started way before his father claimed she’d given him the wrong drug.

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “You didn’t tell me about your sixth sense.”

“God, Rand …” She didn’t know where to begin with
that
one. She took a deep, painful breath into her restricted lungs. The knot in her chest reached critical mass and she felt tears welling. Damn damn damn. She blinked them back, staring at the ceiling, willing them to stop. This wasn’t the time or place to unravel the entire spaghetti bowl of lies he believed to be truths. “Frankly, that’s the least important part of all this.”

His lips tightened. “A lie is a lie. It’s a matter of moral fiber. If you’re dishonest in the small things, then you’ll be dishonest in the big things, and I won’t tolerate being lied to.”

“How damned sanctimonious of you. As if you’ve never withheld something or told a damned fib in your life.” Dakota had never felt so fragile. Rand was the only person on earth she’d let come close enough to truly wound her. Being vulnerable right now infuriated her. She didn’t want to be weak when she needed desperately to be strong and forceful. She’d done nothing wrong, damn it. “You won’t tolerate being lied to? Really? With
your
parents? My God, they both fed you nothing
but
lies!”

“Now it’s
both
my parents? Jesus, Dakota, really? You get caught in your web of lies time and time again, and your only defense is that
everyone
lies?”

“I didn’t mention my tracking ability because
it wasn’t relevant.” I couldn’t bear for you to look at me like my parents do.
She’d been afraid; Dakota thought bitterly, he’d leave her. And he had anyway. But not because she had this stupid, freakish sixth sense. Because he’d believed every damned lie his parents had fed him. “Let me go. You hate me—it should be easy.” His hands tensed for a second; then he released her and stepped back.

With effort, she controlled the trembling in her hands as she picked up her bag from the floor where she’d dropped it. “Tell you what. I’ll give you the coordinates and location of your men, and the man carrying the vial. Then I’m done. You’re on your own. I won’t traipse all over the world to help someone who denigrates me and calls me a liar at every turn.”

She felt adrift and afraid, and ridiculously,
infuriatingly,
she still wanted to hold on to him because he was big and solid and invincible. More fool her. She glared at him again instead. “I won’t explain myself to you or anyone else, ever again. I am who I am. And if that isn’t good enough, fuck you.”

FOURTEEN

S
he looked magnificent with her red, orange, and gold hair a messy tumble around her face and shoulders. Her eyes looked larger and shimmered like rain-drenched spring leaves. She was furious, and she was deeply hurt. Seeing the pain she was trying hard to mask dismayed him. Her tears unmanned him, ratcheting his temper back under control.

Dakota was usually pragmatic, sensible, and even–tempered. It was one of the things he’d liked best about her. She was soothing in the storm of his life. But he’d never seen this vulnerable side of her. He’d never seen her cry. He felt a pang of remorse for coming down that hard on her. All his anger and frustration at the situation was spilling into every aspect of this aborted venture.

He reached out and brushed his fingertips across her hot, wet cheek, and said with aching tenderness, “Don’t cry.”

She jerked her head away, putting a hand over the rapid pulse at the base of her neck as her throat worked. Her eyes were hot, her mouth swollen and vulnerable. It took a moment for her to snarl, “I
never
c-cry.”

She tilted her chin pugnaciously, her tear-filled eyes daring him to say one more damn thing. She didn’t cry pretty. Her face grew progressively blotchy, and her nose was pink as tears streamed down her cheeks. She fought hard to control the sobs tearing through her chest. The sound made Rand’s own chest ache, and something twisted knife-sharp inside him at her pain.

Her tears ripping him up, despite his determination not to be taken in by her. Dakota never backed down from anything. She confronted life head-on; hell, she’d go toe-to-toe with King Kong if she felt she was in the right. She stood there, braced—for what, he wasn’t sure.

He’d cut off his own hands before he physically hurt her. But sometimes one didn’t have to use physical violence to wound.

Furiously, she turned her bag upside down on the floor and crouched beside it to rummage through the mountain of contents. “W-wash your own damned un-underwear!” She tossed several clumps of black fabric in his general direction.

Sobbing so hard it was a wonder she could see anything at all, she continued digging through the pile, tossing out items as she went.

Rand sank to his knees beside her, putting his hands on her cheeks to lift her head so he could look into her eyes. She fought him like a wildcat, clawing at the backs of his hands, her nails scoring his skin. Sliding his hand around her nape, he gripped the back of her neck under the tangled mane to hold her still. “Don’t.” Just saying that one word ripped at his throat.