Pitch Black (42 page)

Anger tightened his features as he stalked over, grabbing her shoulders. “Don’t you say that. Don’t even think it.”

“Then take off your coat, stay here, and prove me wrong, damn it.”

His hands dropped. The coat remained on. An invisible veil of determination separated him from her as finitely as one of the fences from that hellish prison.

She stared up at him, searching for the truth, needing to understand why he was trying so hard to walk away when he sounded like he wanted to do anything but.

God knew Sam had a lot of reasons not to trust men after what her loving husband had done. But she trusted him. She trusted them—what they could have together, if only he’d let them. Lifting a hand to his face, she cupped his cheek. “I’m falling for you, Alec.”

His eyes closed.

“I’m not some inexperienced kid who confuses lust with love. I’ve had relationships. I’ve been in love. I’ve been married and I’ve been divorced. And I’ve never felt for anyone—even after years—what I feel for you now, after less than a week.”

He finally looked at her again, but that emptiness remained. “In that time you’ve seen someone you love brutalized, your own mother targeted. You’ve been kidnapped. You’ve had to stand by and watch an injured man bleeding at your feet. And you’ve learned about the death of a woman you were coming to like. All in less than one week. So where’s this newfound gladness for life gotten you so far?”

The truth dawned. She finally began to see. Alec wasn’t intending to walk out on her because he didn’t care, but because he did. He’d decided she should be happy and had the crazy idea that his job, his life—the way he lived it—meant she wouldn’t be.

“Alec . . .”

“You’ve lost a lot of people you loved, Sam. Your father. Your grandmother. Hell, even your slimeball of a husband. Those losses nearly crushed you. So why on earth would you want to keep going down this dark road with me when you’ve seen over the past several days just how easily it could happen again?”

Sam licked her lips and tried to make him understand. “I know you’re aware of how I’ve lived for the past year, hiding out here, licking my wounds. But I’m not a weakling, Alec.”

“I didn’t mean—”

She cut him off. “I know you didn’t. Let me finish. Honestly, it wasn’t fear that kept me here, safe inside these four walls.” She shrugged helplessly, knowing she had to admit everything if she wanted any kind of future with this man. “It was humiliation. Sadness. The desire not to get hurt again, not the
fear
of it.” Stepping closer, she slid her hands around his neck, and pressed her body against his. “And you wouldn’t hurt me.”

He remained stiff. “You can’t know that.”

“You wouldn’t hurt me on purpose,” she clarified.

“Christ, Sam, you could be hurt just by association.”

She leaned up on tiptoe and brushed her lips against his, feeling his hands move to her hips as if unable to help himself. He didn’t push her away, though his body remained stiff and unyielding. “Do you really think my mother regretted being with my father? That she would change anything, lose the years she had with him, so she could avoid the lonely ones that came afterward?”

He slowly shook his head.

“Do you think Detective Myers’s wife is right now sitting by his bedside wishing she’d never married him so she wouldn’t have to go through the pain of wondering if he’s going to make it?”

“Of course not. But—”

She kissed him again, stopping him from saying more.

“I know you were shot a few months ago. I know there are risks. And I know the shooting made you question everything about yourself, your job, your future. It made you wonder if you are even worthy of having any of those things.”

He eyed her in shock, as if wondering how she could know him so well when he hadn’t confided so much in her.

He hadn’t needed to. She already knew this man well enough to know how his mind worked. The conversations they’d had about the incident had made it very clear that a part of him thought he had deserved to feel those bullets tear through his body.

“People die. Lily died. And that other agent down in Atlanta. It’s very sad, but it wasn’t your fault.”

“You don’t know—”

She put her fingers over his mouth. “I do know. So do you. Deep down, you know he could just as easily have checked that woman for weapons. Could have asked you to, could have been more suspicious.”

His reluctant nod confirmed her words.

“It comes down to this: You didn’t pull the trigger. Just like you didn’t put Ryan and Jason on that ice or trick that poor woman onto that rooftop. None of it was your fault.”

It seemed to take forever but was probably only half a minute before his tense shoulder muscles eased. His body relaxed against hers, the stiffness in his jaw disappearing. The flint disappeared from his eyes, replaced by tenderness…and gratitude.

He might not have accepted it entirely, but Alec knew she was right.

“I’m not proposing here. I’m not saying we’re going to be together forever. But I think I’m falling in love with you.”

He sucked in a surprised breath that she’d so baldly put the words out there. Heck, she’d almost surprised herself, but she didn’t regret saying them.

Nor did she regret adding, “I think you’re falling in love with me, too. If I’m wrong, and you’re not, then yes, you should keep that coat on, turn around, and walk out of here.” She leaned up again, stealing another soft kiss, exchanging another tender breath. “If I’m right, though, please tell me you’ll stay so we can figure out what happens next.”

She didn’t kiss him again. The ball was in his court, their future in his hands. Whether that future included a passionate affair or a lifelong commitment, she didn’t yet know. She knew only that she wanted the chance to find out.

Alec didn’t reply, not with words, anyway. Instead, he stepped away from her, with a smile on his lips and emotion in his eyes.

And then he took off his coat.

*  *  *  *  *

Don’t miss the other titles…available NOW!

Fade to Black

Black At Heart

And coming in 2014:

Black Out!

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Here’s a sneak-peek at the next book in the Black CATs series…available NOW!

Wyatt Blackstone, the enigmatic leader of the Black CATs has been on the trail of an elusive killer who is targeting pedophiles, leaving behind a single lily as his calling card. Unsure if the case could possibly have anything to do with his own former agent, Lily Fletcher, he knows he’ll do just about anything to find out…and to stop the killer before he strikes again.

S
upervisory Special Agent Wyatt Blackstone
had never had to attend the memorial service of one of his own team members before. After today, he hoped to God he never attended another one.

Especially since it was his fault Lily Fletcher was dead.

Against his better judgment, he had allowed a woman he knew shouldn’t be in the field to participate in a sting operation with another Cyber Action Team. She’d had no business being there. Lily had been an IT specialist, a computer nerd, young, untried, sweetly enthusiastic. But also haunted by her own demons. Those demons had driven her to secretly work a case she should never have been involved in, had pushed her to be in on the takedown of a suspected pedophile whose twisted cyber fantasies had haunted her dreams.

And then, everything had gone straight to hell.

One agent dead on the ground. Lily wounded, trapped, and bleeding to death in a vehicle driven by a desperate madman.

The thoughts of those awful, desperate hours he knew she had endured still tormented him.

The service had been small and quiet. The FBI had not made the event a media circus, as they could have. Wyatt hadn’t wanted it that way; none of the group had. Because of the fuckups that had led to her death, and his team’s recent successful capture of a serial killer known as the Professor, the bureau acceded to his demands.

She’d had no surviving family, few non-work friends. Though many agents and FBI supervisors had attended the service in the nondenominational chapel, few had continued on to the cemetery. Rather than at Arlington, Lily’s grave was at a small, private cemetery, beside her sister’s and her nephew’s, as she would have wanted.

He hadn’t even realized her parents had died on the same day during Lily’s childhood until he read their headstones, too.

An entire family. Gone. Plucked off one tragedy at a time.

The graveside service had been simple and brief. Only Wyatt and the other members of his team, who had formed a pseudo-family of their own, had remained after the chaplain’s final prayer. Afterward, they’d all drifted away, lost in their own sadness, wondering how things might have turned out differently.

He didn’t think he would ever stop wondering.

Even now, hours later, as he sat in the dark in his own house, nursing a tumbler full of whiskey, Wyatt found it hard to believe. Sweet, quiet Lily, so eager to please despite being so visibly wounded by the horrors that had befallen her, was gone. Senselessly killed by someone who hadn’t been fit to touch a single strand of her golden hair.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, lifting his glass to his mouth. “I should have protected you.”

He sipped once. Then again. He needed the fire to spread through his body, burning out the anger, the helpless frustration. The sadness.

Wyatt never allowed himself to grieve. He’d learned as a child how futile it was to wish someone back from the dead, to ask why horrible things happened, to give in to sorrow.

But Lily? He could grieve for Lily.

Realizing it was almost midnight, he finally rose, needing to go to bed. The past several nights had been sleepless ones. Tomorrow was another workday, another chance to keep moving forward, stopping whatever ugliness he possibly could.

Before he even reached the stairs, though, his cell phone rang. Wyatt pulled it from his pocket and answered. “Blackstone.”

No response at first, but a hollowness told him the line wasn’t dead.

“Hello?”

Another long pause. Then a soft voice emerged from the silence like a specter appearing out of his own memories.

“Wyatt?”

He froze, haunted by the pain in that one whispered word. “Who is this?”

“Help me, Wyatt. Please help me.”

Don’t miss BLACK AT HEART available in ebookstores now!

And watch for BLACK-OUT coming in 2014!

In 2017, the United States suffered the worst terrorist attack in history. Now, five years later, the country is at peace and prosperous…but they’ve paid a heavy price, giving up freedom and privacy in the name of security.

Veronica—Ronnie—Sloan is a D.C. police detective. She’s tough, she’s smart, she’s dangerous. She’s also part of an experimental program in which microscopic cameras are imprinted into the brains of willing test subjects. Now she needs to find out if the implant can do what it was designed to do: help catch a killer! And her very first case starts in the basement of the White House…where a woman’s dismembered corpse has just been located.

Read an excerpt from DON’T LOOK AWAY

“T
his is gonna take forever.”

Detective Veronica Sloan glared out the windshield of her car, mentally cursing the heat, and the crowd. Though traffic in the nation’s capital was always a bitch, the lines to get through the Pennsylvania Avenue checkpoints were longer than usual on this wickedly hot summer morning.

A queue of pedestrians wound from each of the heavily-guarded entrances, through Lafayette Park, all the way to H Street. Throngs of other people milled around them, selling cold drinks, packaged food or souvenirs. Some held protest signs, some formed prayer circles.