Blamed (3 page)

“Oh, didn’t you?” Too calm, too innocent.

“
Casey.
”

“What?”

“Who do you have watching me now?”
Please say it wasn’t the FBI this time.

“No one.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes momentarily shut. “Damn it, I don’t need you keeping tabs on me anymore.”
Footprints on the balcony.
“I’m good here, inconsequential chapped lips and all.”

His voice was suddenly serious, the stern and authoritative soldier breaking through his brotherly demeanor. Whenever Casey used that tone, it meant that orders were forthcoming and argument would not, under any circumstances, be tolerated. “No, you’re not good, Bethie, and that’s why I’m calling.”

Crap, but she
hated
when he went all bossy-britches on her. She’d worked under his command for a decade, back when her role in the family business had been her reason for breathing, and old habits died hard. Stalking through her unlit living room to the front windows, she peeked through a slat in the teakwood blinds at the night outside, dark and cold. No sign of life on the street below...or in the window across the way. “If you guys are so concerned about me, why isn’t one of you here yet?”

“Tobias is on his way to you.”

“
What?
” Her other older brother—the fussy lawyer—was probably the last family member she’d expect to show up on her doorstep in Chicago. “Why?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We’ve got trouble.”

“Then why...why didn’t you call my cell?” Her cell was secure, but anything they said on the landline could be overheard, and likely was, given her storied past. It was why Casey had demanded she get a landline in the first place, so anyone listening would witness Beth being a normal—capital “N” normal—civilian when she spoke to the cable company or one of her coworkers at the Institute.

“Because I want them to know we know.” Casey’s voice was brutal and as cold as the weather outside her apartment. “A hit’s been put on you.”

She froze, her stomach cramping. “You really
are
in Belfast, aren’t you?” she whispered as everything clicked into place. Tobias flying to see her. Human footprints on Bob and Keith’s balcony. The dark window across the street.

Wait.
Not so dark, not anymore. Flashes of light, the kind that signaled discharge by a firearm, lit up the bay window that hadn’t shown any sign of life in nearly forty-eight hours.
His
window. “Shit.”

The Beretta was back in her hand before she took her next breath, dropping the cordless phone to the rug on her brother’s concerned shouts. Not bothering to find shoes, she dashed down the stairs and out into the street—an empty street that held new menace, every shifting shadow a possible threat—in nothing but her socks. The freezing winter air cut through her thin blouse, sharpening her senses as she sprinted up the shoveled sidewalk.

She had to save her friendly neighborhood spy.

Chapter Two

The front door handle depressed with a quick
click
, and Beth moved into the dark stairwell. The turn-of-the-century limestone mansion with its gorgeous wrought iron detailing had been rehabbed into a nouveau three-flat much like hers, meaning that the door to her left was the entrance to the main-floor apartment. Taking the stairs as silently as possible on feet frozen from her run, she ascended to the third floor.

Routine was one thing, but this necessary stealth, this adrenaline rush...it was a different beast entirely, shoving her back into her past with all the subtlety of a bomb blast.

Her palms grew slick when she reached the top of the stairwell and saw his open door, her pulse a heavy drumbeat in her ears. Three seconds. She had three seconds to get her brain and body under control. No freaking out or flashbacks allowed, not when she had no idea what waited for her inside that apartment.

One
.
Two.

She might be out of the family business, but she refused to stand by and watch lives be lost when she had the power to save them.

Three.

Keeping her back to the wall as she entered the open-plan living space, Beth gave her eyes a moment to adjust before taking in the black shapes of his oversized couch and large club chair facing a sleek, wall-mounted television. The dining table to her right would seat six comfortably, and on its surface sat a closed laptop and a briefcase that had fallen open on its side. Papers spilled from it onto the floor, next to a forgotten suit jacket.

Other out-of-place details caught her eye as she cleared the front room. The huge print of Manet’s
Music in the Tuileries
over the fireplace hung askew, and a plush faux-fur cushion had fallen halfway off the piano bench in front of a baby grand. The chic, moneyed interior, so clearly provided by a professional decorator, lent few clues as to the personality of the man who’d lived here for the past six months.

There was no noise in the place, nothing at all. Even the soft hum of heat through the ventilation was absent. Beth frowned, noticing for the first time that it was definitely cold in here, the uncomfortable kind of cold that meant the furnace had been turned off for an extended vacation, the owner returning from balmy Tahiti to a meat locker instead of a living room. Except she doubted this particular owner was currently taking vacay on a tropical island.

Three bullet casings in the corner snagged her attention, indicating the shooter had been hiding behind the piano. Whoever it had been hadn’t bothered to bus the scene, which meant—

Which meant the shooter either didn’t care about getting caught...or was still here.

That was when she saw the blood. A trio of droplets marred the hardwood floor, leading away from the piano. More red appeared in the massive kitchen, and she flowed silently past the marble countertops, rich wood cabinetry, and huge appliances.

Overcompensating much?
She let herself smile as she passed the laundry room and half-bath. It would be absolutely karmic if a guy as gorgeous as the one living here packed a peanut beneath his belt.

The hall split off into two rooms, one of which appeared to be an empty office. To her left, opposite a linen closet, was the partially closed door to what looked like the master bedroom, and from deep within, she heard the first noises since entering: the steady
drip-drip-drip
of a faucet not turned all the way off.

Blood marked the door.

Dread curdled her stomach as she inched inside, noting the wide-open balcony as she cleared the room. With the muzzle of her gun leading the way, she skirted the armoire and entered the attached bathroom. The dripping grew louder, angrier, more ominous, and the Beretta shook in her hands. Chest tight, lungs pumping, she stared at the closed shower curtain circling the elegant claw-foot tub. At the streaks of blood on white fabric.

Oh,
hell
no. She’d seen Hitchcock movies—she knew how this shit went down. If anyone was still in the apartment, process of elimination said that person was behind the bloodstained shower curtain.

Options, she needed options. The Beth of one year ago would have already mentally articulated half a dozen actions and outcomes, but the Beth of one year ago had gone to ground, and for very good reasons. This Beth, the Beth with shaking hands and choppy breathing, was more than out of shape physically—she was out of shape psychologically, as well. She wasn’t made for danger and intrigue any longer.

Damn it. She should have let Mark feed her dessert tonight.

The infamous Faraday nerves of steel having long since deserted her, Beth made her decision and prayed it was the right one. If not, she’d be dead, and that would piss Tobias off like nothing else: flying halfway across the world for nothing.

She shifted the gun to her left hand and exhaled. Knowing she’d only have a split second in which anyone in the tub would be surprised and blinded, Beth smacked the light switch on the wall before lunging forward to fling back the shower curtain.

And came face-to-face with the business end of a nine-millimeter Ruger.

Her man was sprawled in the tub, pale-faced and bleeding from a gunshot wound in his side, but his aim was confident, his arm steady. “Neighbor,” he drawled casually, but there was a hard glint in his ice-blue eyes.

Beth had almost had herself convinced, before this very moment, that the man on whom she trained her gun
wasn’t
a spy. She’d almost believed that those little zings down her spine whenever they’d nodded a greeting to one another had been basic attraction, not like recognizing like. Perhaps the quirked half-smiles when they ran into one another at the Starbucks two blocks over weren’t because Beth had caught him following her, but merely because they were in the same place at the same time,
again.
Maybe when he had come into the Institute gift shop to buy the print of the painting that even now hung haphazardly in his living room...maybe it had been pure coincidence, when he’d seen her walk past the shop on the way to her office and waved to her through the glass.

And all the nights she had sat curled in the cozy armchair in front of her window, staring out across the street instead of focusing on curatorial paperwork, and seeing him quietly staring back at her? Maybe it had been a meet-cute waiting to happen, and her life was less Thriller Drama and more Romantic Comedy. Maybe her neighbor really
was
a normal, handsome, suit-wearing thirty-something: Preston Barnes, Commercial Real Estate Developer, just like the card she’d glimpsed when he’d dropped his wallet one Saturday morning at the nearby Whole Foods.

Commercial real estate developers, as far as she knew, didn’t make a habit of bleeding out in their bathtubs, or holding a gun on their neighbors. “Neighbor,” she intoned wryly. “How are you this fine evening?”

He smiled, different from the half-smiles in the coffee shop. The coffee-shop smiles were more a cute twist of firm lips, a flash of humor permitting a dimple to appear in his smooth cheek. This smile, on the other hand, was all white teeth, feral and sharply amused and far more threatening to her peace of mind than the pistol he had pointed between her eyes. “Dandy. Can’t you tell?”

Surprised to find her gun hand steady—finally—she swept her gaze over him, noting his shiny black dress shoes, tailored charcoal trousers, now-ruined white button-down, and buttery yellow silk necktie, loosened ever so slightly at the unbuttoned collar. He’d obviously been caught unawares by the shooter, his clothing showing all the signs of a businessman just home from a long day at the office. She remembered the jacket on the floor next to the open briefcase. “Rough night?”

He huffed out a pained laugh, wincing when it affected his wound, and clamped his free hand against his side. “You could say that.” As she allowed him movement, he did the same to her, letting her grip the Beretta in both hands. “Beth, isn’t it?”

She smirked at his attempt to maintain cover. But her smirk faded when he grimaced again. “You need a doctor, pal.”

Expression tight, he tilted his head slightly to the side, assessing her with that intelligent blue gaze, and she allowed herself a leisurely look at him for the first time since he’d moved in across the street six months ago, instead of quick, stolen glances. His pale eyes were thickly lashed beneath slashing black brows, the contrast of his neatly trimmed ebony hair against fair skin incredibly striking. He possessed an angular face, with the faintest of hollows beneath its contours, and the sharp lines of his jaw and chin and nose, not to mention the prominent cheekbones, gave him a harsh, masculine beauty. Without a doubt, he was one of the most gorgeous men Beth had ever seen, and the day’s worth of rakish dark stubble only made him more so.

“I can’t go into an ER with a gunshot wound.” When she merely arched an eyebrow, he gave her a pitying look. As though he expected her to be better at playing this game than she was. “Mandatory reporting.”

She blinked innocently. “You mean you don’t want the police to look into your shooting tonight? You don’t want your attacker brought to justice?”
Justice.
Now there was a word she hadn’t so much as thought in a year. It made her shiver, and she realized he was right to look at her with pity—she couldn’t play the spy game anymore, too out of practice and out of patience, not tonight and certainly not with him. “I can’t let you bleed to death in your bathtub, Mr. Barnes. It’s undignified.”

His shoulders rolled in a faint shrug. “This? Just a flesh wound. Relax.”

That
made her teeth clench. “I’ll relax when you’ve handed me your weapon.”

He seemed to consider that for a long moment. “Was the rest of the apartment clear?” When she nodded, he sighed. “Good. I thought I heard him go out the back.”

“The balcony door was open when I got here.”

As though it were just that simple for him, Barnes spun the Ruger on one long finger and handed it to her, grip first. Seeing her no-doubt shocked expression, his smile changed again, back into the cute, lopsided Starbucks grin that never failed to set butterflies loose in her stomach.

God, what was wrong with her, that this lying liar-face of a man’s smile got to her when Mark the Sous Chef’s didn’t? Why was it, she wondered, mind suddenly frantic, that she had been unable to shed her danger-junkie approach to men, as she had shed her old life? Beth wanted
normal
, damn it—not just a year of it, but a lifetime.

The only conclusion left to draw was that she was too broken from all her bad deeds to understand normal. To
deserve
it.

Swallowing her bleakness at the thought, she snatched the Ruger and tucked it into the back waistband of her jeans. Hesitating only a moment, she extended a hand to help haul him out of the tub. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“No.” But he took her hand anyway.

Boy howdy, was that a mistake. The second they touched, Beth’s skin sizzled, her breath catching in her throat as her gaze locked on his. She watched his pupils dilate and a hectic flush flag those too-pale cheeks, mesmerized by his visceral reaction to her touch.

Which made her wonder what he saw in
her
reaction, to make his eyes dart over her features as if he were drinking her in, memorizing her. “I—I don’t—” She cleared her throat, trying to rid herself of its suddenly husky quality. “I can probably dig out the bullet if I have to, and I can stitch and clean you, but I don’t have anything on hand to replace the blood you’ve lost. And, buddy—” she surveyed the bottom of the tub, his stained clothing, “—you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

Tightening his hold on her, he levered himself up with a groan. “Looks worse than it is, I promise. Just do what you can.” Once standing, he released her, planting his hand on the counter when he swayed.

She moved to steady him without thought, one arm looping around his waist. He was a big man, at least six-two and a solid two hundred pounds, maybe more. Under her arm, his torso felt muscled and firm, and Beth fought against the instinctive urge to lean into him, regardless of the fact that she was the one holding
him
upright. “Any idea who your late-night visitor was?”

His chuckle was completely without humor. “Oh, yes, I’ve got an idea.”

Pulling his heavy arm across her shoulders, she led them through the bathroom, into the master bedroom. “Care to share with the class?”

“You won’t like the answer.”

She rolled her eyes, kicking shut the balcony door before urging him out into the hallway toward the living room. “Try me, anyway.”

“Now there’s an invitation.” His voice was softer now, slightly wheezy, as if he was having difficulty taking a full breath. Beth worried her bottom lip, wondering—hoping—her rudimentary medical skills would be enough to fix the damage to his side. They would have to deal with things between them eventually, things such as who he was and why he’d been watching, yet never truly approaching, her for the past six months. For now, though, she had to make sure he didn’t up and die on her before he gave her the answers to those questions.

They halted in the front room, Beth leaving him leaning against the kitchen counter as she slid the laptop into the briefcase. She tossed him his suit jacket from the floor and collected the scattered papers before slinging the case’s strap over one shoulder and returning to him.

“I quit my job today,” he informed her as they hurried out the front door. He dug in his pocket and produced a key, fitting it to the lock, which she found ridiculous—someone had already broken in, for goodness’ sake. “My boss is...unhappy.”

“I had no idea commercial real estate was so cutthroat,” she quipped, supporting as much of his considerable weight as she could as they made their way down the stairs.

“Do you need me to spell it out for you, Elisabeth Laïla Faraday?”

She nearly lost her footing on the steps at his use of her real name, a name that wasn’t on her door buzzer across the street, or her long-term lease, or her paychecks from the Art Institute, or her State of Illinois driver’s license. Every aspect of her new life carried the name Beth Ann Bernard, a name she had taken great pains to keep secure. Her evening routine, the gun she slept with, it wasn’t for fun—it was for life. Her life, precious and fragile, silly though it might be when compared to the life she once led.