Obsession Untamed (11 page)

“You open that door, and it’ll be the last thing you do.” His voice was low and deadly.

“Okay.” Delaney slowly put her hand back in her lap, her breathing tight as she watched him slash at nothing. Her eyes widened as the gashes that appeared on his face out of thin air just as miraculously disappeared.

Okay, we’rebothcrazy, right ? No, they were both probably suffering from hallucinations, thanks to those drugs.

A couple of minutes later, Tighe stopped fighting and sank back against his seat, his breathing hard.

“Did you win?” she asked conversationally, pushing back the urge to close her eyes, cover her ears, and screamthat this was not happening .

He turned his head toward her, his mouth opening as if he were about to reply, then closing again.

“Care to tell me who you were fighting?”

“Not who.”

Well, that was a point in his favor, since clearly no real person had been doing battle with him in the car.

“Then what?”

“It’s not your concern.” He straightened, his breathing already back to normal, and lifted his shirt to wipe the blood off his face. “They won’t bother you.”

She stared at him, another thought breaking through the bafflement and disbelief that had become her mind. What if he really had been battling something? Something she couldn’t see. Some kind of cloaked, supersecret weapon.

Had she accidentally stumbled into the middle of something far bigger than a psychopathic serial killer and his sexy, drugged-up twin?

Tighe turned to her as if he were reading her thoughts. “Don’t try to figure it out, Delaney. Don’t try to figureme out. You won’t succeed. And
if by some long shot you do, you’ll only endanger yourself more.”

Because then she really would know too much. A frisson of adrenaline pumped through her veins. She felt the gun at her back and wondered if she could bring herself to kill him. If she drew on him, she’d better be ready to shoot, because she’d only ever get one chance.

Her gaze studied his strong profile as he started the car and put it in gear.

No, she wasn’t ready to kill him. If her theory was even partly right, that he was involved in something big and dangerous, she needed to know more. She needed all the information she could get if the Bureau was to have any chance of stopping it.

And, disturbingly, there was a part of her that wanted to believe the angel wings that continued to whisper,Trust him . There was a part of her that was genuinely drawn to him in ways beyond the sexual. His strength. His gentleness. He intrigued her mightily.

And yes, deep in her gut, she was starting to trust him.

As he drove, questions bombarded her brain. She tilted her head against the headrest behind her, watching him.

“How did you know your twin was here, Tighe?”

He glanced at her. “You told me.”

She jerked upright. “I told you?”

“I saw him in your vision.”

Her scalp began to tingle. “Inmy vision?” She’d never told him about her visions. She’d never told himanything . Was he reading her mind now? Could this nightget any weirder? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you? I think you do, brown eyes.” He glanced at her again. “I was the one having the visions until you came along.”

She stared at him, the hair rising on the back of her neck. “What do you mean?”

He turned back to the road. “My twin and I have a psychic connection I don’t entirely understand. When he first started killing, I was the one seeing the murders. I was the one watching those terrified faces as he went for their throats. Through his eyes, I saw the death of that blonde in the basement of the Potomac Side Apartments. A couple of minutes later, I saw him attack you. I thought he’d killed you as he had her.”

No way. Her mind rebelled, yet she stared at him, her attention riveted.

He glanced at her and met her gaze. “But my next vision wasn’t of death. It was of you staring at yourself in the bathroom mirror at work. You wondered out loud why you were being forced to watch him kill others. One of your coworkers found you leaning on the sink, white as a ghost, and called your name. That’s how I knew who you were.”

Her head rang like a gong struck too hard. Yet everything he said was true. Everything correlated exactly with the events as she knew them.

“You think I’ve come between you and your twin.”

“I know you have, though I’m not sure how. Something must have happened when he attacked you and didn’t kill you. You’ve disrupted our connection. Now when he murders, I sometimes see you watching the murder, and I sometimes get tiny glimpses of it myself. But so far, the only time I’ve seen the whole thing since you got involved is the one time I held on to you while you got the vision.”

She blinked. “In your house just now. You saw it instead of me, didn’t you? Youknew he was in the Lincoln Memorial killing those people.”

“Yes.” Tighe released a harsh sigh. “But I didn’t get there in time to catch him.”

“Because something attacked you.” She pressed her palms against the roof of the car. “Is this for real, Tighe? Is this all happening, or am I seriously losing my grip on my sanity?”

He reached over and gently squeezed her knee. “I’d like to tell you you’re losing it. Or it’s all a dream, or something equally inane. But you’re not, brown eyes. You’re perfectly sane. You’ve just gotten in the middle of things you shouldn’t have.” He nodded toward her window. “Keep your eyes peeled, Agent Randall. We may have missed him, but he could still be around here preparing to feed off someone else.”

Delaney nodded, letting his words sink in. She wasn’t insane, at least. Which was definitely something. Unfortunately, the deeper she got into this,
the more convinced she became she was going to be lucky to get out of it alive.

She needed to trust her instincts and her instincts were screaming at her to trust him, to hold on to him and not let him go. Every instinct she possessed warned her that Tighe was her only chance of survival.

Tighe glanced at Delaney as he had every few minutes for the past couple of hours as they drove through the night streets of D.C. The woman drew him like a cat to cream, even in the dark where he could only glimpse her face in shadow. There was a depth to her that intrigued him. Alternating layers of strength and softness. Of fury and pain.

He was pretty sure he knew where the pain came from, but he wanted to know the whole story. He found himself wanting to know everything about her.

“Was your mother a cop, brown eyes?”

She turned toward him as the lights of a passing cab lit her face.

“No. Why?”

“I saw your expression when you saw the dead cop. I thought maybe you’d known her. Or that she reminded you of your mom.”

Delaney sighed and tilted her head back against the seat as if exhaustion pulled at her. “I saw her wedding ring. I’d be willing to bet she had kids. My mom wasn’t a cop, but I was eleven when I lost her. I hate the thought of any other kid going through that.”

“Tell me what happened. I heard you tell the cat in your apartment that a scumbag caught her on a bike path.” He wasn’t sure she’d open up to him, but they’d been traveling together in a comfortable silence for a while now. He found he wanted to understand her better.

“He raped her. Murdered her, while I was at school. I don’t know any more than that. They never found the killer.”

“I’m sorry you lost her.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Not so long. And you live with it every day of your life, don’t you? It’s why you became a federal agent. To catch the killers like the one who killed your mother. Maybe to catchhim .”

She turned back to him. Then slowly looked away. “Maybe I am a little obsessed,” she said softly. “But, blast it, Tighe, people like that need to be stopped.” She swung back to look at him. “How dare he steal her life? And not just hers.Mine . He took everything from me that day. Everything.”

Tighe slid his hand over her shoulder and gave a squeeze. “Just don’t devote so much of your life to revenge that you forget to live it.”

“It’s not revenge.”

“What is it, brown eyes?”

“It’s…a calling. Ihate the killers. All of them.” She groaned. “It is revenge, isn’t it? Every time there’s a murder, I wonder if it’s the same guy. If maybe this time I’ll get him.”

She was silent for more than a minute, as if pondering that realization. Finally, she shrugged.
“Who cares why I do it? It’s my job, and I’m good at it.”

He squeezed her shoulder. “What happened after your mom died? Did your dad raise you?”

She gave a soft sound of disgust. “No.”

That single word held a stunning wealth of emotion, emotions that trailed across his tongue. Anger. Hurt. And a deep, painful betrayal he knew the taste of all too well.

“My dad decided he couldn’t handle being a single parent. Five days after I lost my mother, he ripped me away from everything I’d ever known—home, friends, school, my cat—and dumped me on my aunt’s doorstep, more than two hours away. I guess in his messed-up logic it was the perfect solution. I needed a mother, and she needed help. She was single with four small children. Only I didn’t get a mother. I got a full-time, unpaid job. I became her babysitter, cook, housekeeper, you name it.”

“Cinderella,” he murmured.

She made a sound. “Believe me, I thought that at least ten times a day. Which was ridiculous, of course. I wasn’t abused, at least…Yeah, anyway.”

Tighe looked over at her. Her abrupt silence was loaded. He reached over and stroked her hair. “I’d like to hear it all. Though I don’t want to cause you more pain.”

“It’s not…I mean…” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “My aunt’s boyfriend moved in with us when I was sixteen.”

Ah, hell. He was afraid he knew what was coming.

“He managed to keep his hands off me for all of five months, but he watched me. I knew he watched me. He finally made a move two days after my seventeenth birthday.”

His hand clenched the steering wheel, the strength of his anger catching him by surprise. “He hurt you.”

She met his gaze, steel in her eyes. “No. He groped me and tried to kiss me. I ripped open his cheek with my fingernails, then slammed my fist in his eye.” A glimmer of satisfaction arced through her expression.

Tighe grinned, a vicious smile. “Good girl.” He tensed. “Did he retaliate?”

“Not directly. My aunt kicked me out that night and told me never to come back. I don’t know what he told her.”

“You went back to your dad.”

“No. I hadn’t seen him in years, not since I was thirteen. He came to see me a few times after he left me with my aunt, but I wouldn’t talk to him. I was furious with him for deserting me.” She groaned. “I was such a brat.”

“No you weren’t. Your anger toward him was deserved. If a man’s blessed with a daughter, he protects her. No matter what.” His grip on the wheel tightened as a sharp pain lanced his heart.

Yet he was no better than Delaney’s father. How long had Amalie cried for him? How long had she hated him?

“Thanks,” Delaney said softly. “I never forgave him. Maybe if I had, he’d have been there for me later.”

He looked over at her. “What did you do? Seventeen is young to be on your own.”

“I got a job waiting tables and rented a room from a lady down the street. After high school, I worked my way through college, my sights firmly on getting the man who’d ruined my life and all the others like him. Revenge.” She yawned deeply. “As you said.”

“You’re exhausted.” He patted his right thigh. “Lie down, brown eyes. Get some sleep.” He was suddenly glad he’d grabbed the larger of the sedans, with its bench seat.

She glanced at him, a smile hovering at her mouth. “That sounds like a line if I ever heard one. And I’m too tired to care.” Leaning sideways, she stretched out along the seat to lay her head firmly in his lap. “I don’t know why I’m starting to trust you,” she murmured sleepily. “I shouldn’t.”

He stroked her hair. “Thanks for not using that gun on me.”

She groaned in disgust, drawing a chuckle out of him, but didn’t move to reach for the weapon. Within seconds her breathing evened out, and he knew she was asleep.

He stroked her arm, feeling a warmth toward her, a protectiveness, he didn’t understand. She was a human. Yet he didn’t remember the last time he’d felt this close to another. Any other.

Human or not, she was a remarkable woman.
Determined and driven. Tough and courageous. But not without compassion. He’d seen her expression when they’d come upon the three bodies less than a dozen yards from the statue of Abraham Lincoln. She’d seen more than bodies. More than victims. She’d seen two lovers terrorized and destroyed. And a wife, possibly a mother, who would never go home to her family.

He’d tasted Delaney’s fury over the wasteful destruction of life. Yes, she might have been driven to this job of hers out of revenge, but it was a deep compassion for life that kept her dedicated.

He’d have to remember to tell her that. He brushed back a lock of hair that was trying to fall across her cheek, then lifted it and ran the softness between his fingers.