Obsession (The Plus One Chronicles) (13 page)

And she trusted him now to handle retrieving her laptop without making things worse with her parents.

Realizing there was no need to stand there like a mindless statue, she started toward her car while clicking open the locks. As much as she ached from her parents’ reaction, that didn’t mean she had to give up entirely. Reaching to open the door, she decided she’d email Marshall the file of David’s formula and talk to him.

Hearing the soft fall of footsteps, relief rolled through her. Sloane was already back. “Did you get—?”

“Katie, it’s me.”

The hair on her arms stood up. Not Sloane, but David. Kat whipped around to face the man circling the front of the car. Why was he wearing his lab coat? Forget that, she didn’t want him too close to her.

“Stop.” Quickly she glanced at the front door. Judged the distance of maybe ten yards.

She’d never make it with her damn leg.

He hesitated a couple feet away. “I need to talk to you and your parents. I fixed this.”

The low lighting from the planters caught the lenses of his glasses, magnifying the left eye twitching. His lab coat hung from his thin shoulders.

“Fixed what?” All she had to do was stall for time. Sloane would be out any second.

He jerked forward and grabbed her biceps. “I’ll explain inside.”

Kat yanked on her arm. “Don’t touch me.” But he had a tight clamp on her. The trapped sensation sent panic flashing across her chest. Her pulse jumped wildly as the memory exploded.

A car sliding to a stop, someone holding the door open. Finn stepped out.

David’s fingers locked around Kat’s arm. Confusion and fear tripped through her. Why was David shaking? Kat looked down.

Finn’s thick fingers closed around David’s wrist, then slowly turned white as they squeezed.

David let go. The other men grabbed her…

The sound of a door opening shattered the flashback. Old anger erupted from her cell memory. Ignoring the door opening, she glared at David. “You let go. You let them have me.” His wrist had been barely sprained, not broken.

He blinked frantically, his fingers digging into her arm. “I thought they were just scaring me!”

All this time, she hadn’t known why his touch triggered something in her. Now she knew.

A bellow of rage split through the night. Sloane came at them with the deadly speed of a panther.

David leaped behind Kat and hooked one arm beneath her chin, forcing her head up. The yard lights gleamed off the scalpel held tightly in his fingers.

“Stay back! I’ll cut her!”

Chapter Nine

Sloane pulled up short. Dickhead held something—a box cutter?—too damned close to Kat’s throat. Quickly he calculated the distance between them.

Six feet.

Completely doable. The fucker was dead.

“Sloane.”

Kat’s voice throbbed. He didn’t take his eyes off that blade, but he could hear the mix of fear and anger boiling in that one word.

“Right here. Don’t move.” Sloane kept his voice low and reassuring. She needed to trust him, let him work around her so she didn’t get cut.

“I’m not tapping out.”

Kat’s weight shifted slightly, just enough to alert Sloane that she was realigning her body exactly as he’d taught her. A powerful sensation slammed straight into him. He didn’t need words, he knew what she wanted.

To fight back herself.

Each cell he had screamed
No! Fuck no!
Adrenaline rushed to dump more power into his muscles and bones. Everything in him primed to attack. To rescue his woman. Get her safe and kill Dickhead.

“Please.”

The soft plea undid him. Kat needed to fight back, and Sloane understood it right to his soul. It was like his need to kill Lee Foster. “If he hurts you, he’s dead.”

“Shut up.” David rocked on his feet, twitching that blade too fucking close to Kat’s throat.

Sloane heard the commotion behind him. Kat’s parents came out of the house. “David, what the hell are you doing?” William Thayne bellowed.

David shifted his gaze, his arm going lax around her neck.

In the same instant Kat linked her hands and shoved them under David’s arms, forcing the weapon away from her. The blade bounced on the driveway.

Sloane leaped forward to assist but stopped short, utterly entranced. Fierce determination flashed across Kat’s face. She had this, and it was fucking beautiful to see his kitten explode into a lioness.

Kat spun to the side, slamming her left elbow into David’s ribs.

“Oof!”

Seamlessly, she followed that move by shoving the heel of her other hand into the base of his nose.

The impact knocked David back into the car with a satisfying thud.

Kat stumbled from the momentum. Sloane caught her upper arms, steadying her.

David slapped his hands over his nose and curled over his bent knees. “You hit me.”

“You threatened me with a scalpel.” She bounced up on her toes.

“I wasn’t going to cut you.” He bunched the end of his lab coat and held it to his gushing nostrils. “You broke my nose.”

“What the hell were you doing?” William stared at David like some foreign creature had dared to slither onto his driveway. “I saw you with that scalpel at my daughter’s throat.”

“I don’t… What’s happening?” Diana looked between David and Kat, her eyes glazed with shock.

Sloane was so done with this. “Dickhead attacked Kat, and she fought back.” Pulling her back to his chest, he looked down at her face. “Beautiful, Kitten. Exactly as we trained.”

She leaned into him, tilting her head up. “He let go of me. When Finn and his thugs showed up that night, David grabbed my arm. But when Finn applied pressure to his wrist, he let go. Let them have me. I guess part of me always remembered that he wouldn’t fight for me, and I panicked when he touched me.”

Sloane locked his arms around her to stay in control, but he turned his gaze on David.

The man flinched, trying to get to his feet.

“Go ahead. Run.” Menace flowed from his mouth disguised as words. “Give me an excuse to break your bones exactly like you let them break Kat’s. Do it.”

David slumped back to the ground.

“It wasn’t a mugging.” Diana wrapped her arms around her middle.

Over Kat’s head, Sloane stared at David. “Tell them everything. Now. The truth.”

David’s eye twitched. “When I was working on my PhD, the grants and scholarships were running out. I needed money.” He shifted positions, groaning. “Finn approached me about helping his clients beat testing on steroids. The challenge of that caught my interest, and the money was enough to get through school. So I started working with him.”

“Money. This is about money?” Kat’s voice went shrill.

“What would you know about money, Katie? You grew up with it, had everything handed to you.”

Sloane had thought that once too. That memory shamed him now. Kat had been born into wealth, but she had a bigger heart than anyone he knew. He laced his fingers with hers and brushed a kiss over her pink-streaked hair.

“You hated me for that?”

“No. I loved you. You were so beautiful then. So graceful and lovely with a need to please. You looked at me like I had all the answers to your questions. When I took you to events, I was so proud. And then when you danced…everyone commented on how beautiful you were. I never meant for you to get hurt. Never.”

Kat stiffened. “Why did they come after me?”

David leaned his head back against the car. Blood dripped down his mouth and chin. “When I asked you to marry me, I told Finn I was done. I had gotten what I wanted, you, and with our marriage, I’d get a percentage of SiriX. That was the meeting with Finn you barged in on that night when you brought me dinner.” David wiped the back of his hand across his face, smearing blood. “Finn figured out who you were.”

A new flash of killing anger shot up Sloane’s spine. “He made threats against Kat, didn’t he?”

“I thought he was bluffing.” It came out a nasal whine. “Then they showed up that night and went after you.” David dropped his gaze to the cement beneath his bent legs. “When they were done, I thought you were dead. I couldn’t bear the sight of you crumpled there, your leg bent wrong, you face beaten…all the things I loved about you destroyed.” He swallowed thickly. “But when I took your ring off, I saw you were breathing. I panicked, so I hid the ring, then I locked myself in the car and called the police.”

“We trusted you.” Diana’s voice was hoarse while her husband’s face had turned a dark red.

David shifted his gaze to Kat’s mother. “I kept her alive. It was sheer luck that she didn’t remember the attack. I went back to work for Finn, creating better and better designer steroids to keep him from finishing the job with Katie. And it all worked out…until she hooked up with Michaels.” David sighed heavily as he lifted his gaze to Kat. “Why couldn’t you leave this alone? Finn was going to kill you once the steroid scandal broke. You became too much of a liability.”

“He won’t get near her.” Sloane would make sure of it.

For the first time, David met his gaze dead-on. “No he won’t. He was determined to kill her, so I stopped him.”

Sloane heard the gasps. Felt Kat’s involuntary jerk in his arms. But his attention was on Dickhead. “What did you do?”

“Lethal injection. He never saw it coming.”

* * *

“You killed him in cold blood?” Kat had been in love with David, she’d had sex with him, planned to marry him. She hadn’t known he was capable of using his pharmaceutical knowledge to commit murder.

David reached out a bloody hand toward her. “He would have killed you.”

“That’s your excuse?” She pulled Sloane’s hands off her and took a step closer to the man slumped on the ground against her SUV. Ignoring that Sloane stayed glued to her side, she glared at David. “You didn’t kill him for me. If you were concerned about me, you’d have told the truth when we were attacked. Finn would have been arrested, and I’d be safe. But you lied so you could keep your involvement with steroids a secret. You killed him for that reason too. Or maybe you feared he’d come after you.”

David’s eye twitched violently. “No one else has to know. We can still fix this. Finn’s dead. You don’t want to destroy SiriX and all your parents’ work, do you? Or Marshall’s work on the Lupus drug?”

“So I should ignore what you’ve done? That you’re involved in the steroids that ruined a young man’s career and left him with permanent heart damage? Or that you murdered Finn?” Tremors started in her chest and radiated outward. Anger, or a reaction to the adrenaline surge she’d had when David surprised her?

“They aren’t important. We have to protect SiriX.”

Not important?
That’s what David believed. She didn’t care that Finn was dead except that David hadn’t had the right to kill him. But she cared about Ethan. “Ethan is more of a man than you’ll ever be. He made a mistake, and when he got caught, he admitted it straight up with no excuses. He thought Sloane was going to throw him out on the street, but he accepted that too as his punishment. While you snivel and—”

“You destroyed everything.” Her mom’s frosted voice cut off the rest of Kat’s tirade. “All the years of research and work, it’s all gone.”

Her mom had her arms wrapped around her stomach, her face bleached white as she stared toward them with hatred.

The old dread crept along Kat’s skin. “Are you blaming me? Or David?”

Diana dropped her arms. “David. But I’m sure you feel vindicated now, Kathryn. You were right, we were wrong. We’ll be ruined by this scandal, and you can say you told us so.” She spun and headed toward the house.

“Damn it, Diana,” her dad exploded. “You’re making this worse.”

Her mom swung around. “How much worse can it get?”

He rocked side to side with agitation. “Katie could have been killed. Either six years ago or now. And if you keep treating her like the enemy, we’re going to lose her forever. She doesn’t need us anymore.”

Diana closed her eyes, her shoulders sagging. “I’m going to call the police.”