Run from Fear Read online

  “Nice work, asshole,” Danny snapped at Jack. “You woke up my wife with this shit too.”

  “Tell Caroline I apologize,” Jack said, striving to keep his own anger under wraps. “I didn’t feel I had a choice—”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Danny interrupted. “Just have your ass up and ready to focus on the job first thing tomorrow morning or I swear to fucking God…”

  It took Jack a few seconds to realize he’d been hung up on. Asshole, he thought, but without any real heat. Danny had a unique, some would say harsh manner when it came to dealing with everyone but his wife, but Jack had never known a more loyal friend.

  It made it stick that much harder in his craw, knowing he was letting down a friend who had had his back too many times to count in the last few years.

  But Jack couldn’t live with himself if he let down Talia.

  The drive to Talia’s little bungalow seemed to stretch to infinity but in reality took only about fifteen minutes. It felt like hours since she’d called in a panic, but when Jack checked his watch, he saw that it was just shy of twenty minutes since she’d called. His gut churned as he pulled up to the house. No cops in sight.

  The lights were blazing in the living room, but he couldn’t see any movement inside. He rang the bell. When several seconds passed with no response, he started pounding, then called Talia’s name.

  A light switched on next door and he heard an angry voice yelling, “Keep it down, or I’ll call the police!”

  “Go ahead,” Jack yelled back. “If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll actually show up!”

  He turned back to Talia’s door and caught a blur of movement through the small beveled windows to the side of the door.

  “Jack?”

  His knees turned watery with relief. “Yeah, it’s me. Open up.”

  There was the thunk of the dead bolt being thrown and then the door opened. “What the hell are you thinking not answering—” His harangue about his ignored calls stopped midsyllable when he caught sight of her face.

  Leached of color, her lips bloodless, her pupils dilated, she looked lucky to be breathing, much less standing on her feet. He stepped through the door, then closed and locked it behind him. A shudder ran through her and she swayed on her feet.

  He reached out to steady her, felt her muscles rippling under his hands. “What happened, honey?” he asked softly. “Why didn’t you answer when I called?”

  “I dropped my phone on the stairs,” she said. “I was afraid to come back down.”

  She was getting a dazed, far-off look in her eyes. Her hands were ice cold as they clutched his, and he feared she was going into shock. He yanked off his coat and threw it over her shoulders and gathered her close, rubbing his hands up and down her arms and back to try to get some warmth into her.

  She sagged against him and he bit back a curse as he wrapped his arm around her to support her weight. He wanted to know what the hell had put her in this state. Christ, the last time he’d seen her in such bad shape she’d been bleeding from a stab wound and multiple lacerations. But he couldn’t see any physical injury. Nonetheless, she was crashing, all systems shutting down.

  He hustled her into the kitchen and gave a satisfied grunt when he found an inch of coffee left over in the pot. He quickly heated it in the microwave and dumped in a couple tablespoons of sugar and held it out for her. “Drink.”

  When she didn’t respond, he took her hand in his, wrapped it around the mug, and brought it to her lips. She began to drink, slowly at first, then with more enthusiasm. By the time the mug was empty, her lips had some of their dark rose color back and she didn’t look so much like a corpse.

  Jack inched his chair closer to hers until their knees were almost touching. “You want to tell me what sent you so far over the edge?”

  She set the mug on the table. He watched, confused, as she bent and retrieved something from the floor. She handed him the slip of paper. To Talia. Hope you enjoy this walk down memory lane. Wish I could be there to watch with you.

  Jack suddenly felt like spiders were crawling up his back. Without a word, Talia pushed to her feet and walked to the front room. For the first time Jack noted that the TV was on, the screen a vivid blue as the set waited to receive a signal. “What did he want you to watch?” He was sure he didn’t want to know the answer to the question.

  Talia picked up the remote from the floor and pushed a button. “This.”

  No! Noo! Jack’s blood curdled at the first scream. His eyes locked on the screen. He wanted to look away, but his vision tunneled. Talia’s living room disappeared and it was like he was in that dungeon room with her.

  “Holy mother of God,” he whispered, blood roaring in his ears as he saw Nate Brewster’s naked form, rippling with muscle and covered with tattoos, enter the frame.

  And Talia, so small, her dark eyes wide with terror as she lay in a naked heap on the floor, so heavily drugged she could barely move even as Nate pressed the glowing end of a cigarette against the tender skin of her breast.

  But she could scream, loud, anguished, the sound of it ripping down Jack’s spine. Another scream joined Talia’s off camera—that would be Megan Flynn, trapped in the basement by that psycho Brewster.

  Jack’s stomach cramped and he barely swallowed back a surge of vomit as he watched Nate’s arm come down on the screen, the blade of the hunting knife flashing as it made a diagonal slice across the skin of Talia’s back.

  He turned from the screen and took two lurching steps toward Talia and grabbed the remote. He pressed at the buttons with shaking fingers.

  The TV went silent as he pulled her into his arms and collapsed with her onto the couch. He was shaking and so was she.

  He buried his head in the crook of her neck and squeezed his eyes shut, but the images were seared into his brain. Jesus. He’d been there for the aftermath, had been the one to wrap his coat around her naked body, had felt her blood soak his hands as he’d held his shirt over the stab wound in her abdomen until the paramedics arrived.

  It had been bad, but he’d seen worse. Christ, he’d been a soldier for over a decade. He’d seen and suffered plenty of bullet wounds and shrapnel and had built up a tough skin when it came to witnessing violence.

  But seeing Talia, witnessing her attack as it happened… it sent him reeling, spinning out into a black hole of memories he had no desire to go exploring.

  Goddamn you, stop hurting her! You stop hurting her or I’ll fucking kill you!

  The sound of his father’s palm hitting his mother’s face echoed across the room. He threw himself at the old man, landed a haymaker to the side of his head that sent his father staggering back. “Get out of here,” he yelled at his mother and his sister, Lizzy, who was crying in the corner. Lizzy sprinted for the front door and didn’t look back, but his mother heaved to her feet and screamed at him.

  “Jack, stop!”

  Jack turned to protest. “Mom—”

  “Don’t you dare raise your hand to me, boy!” His father’s fist caught him full in the face, knocking him flat.

  “You better apologize to your father.” He looked up into his mother’s bruised face, her eyes filled with fear as she watched his father.

  The memory curdled his stomach and Jack forced it away, focusing on the woman in his arms.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he whispered, as much to himself as to her. “I’m here. I’m not leaving. I won’t let anything happen to you.” He pulled Talia closer, his arms so tight she squeaked, but still he couldn’t let her go.

  Unlike the others, he could still save her.

  Chapter 8

  I have no idea how someone got ahold of the recording,” Talia explained to Officer Martinez, who had responded shortly after Jack had shown up. She sat at her small kitchen table nursing another cup of coffee Jack had forced on her, while he stood directly behind her.

  Though he’d released her long enough to let the officer in, he hadn’t moved more than six inches from he
r side. And while the first frame of that recording had eliminated any desire she might have had about seeing where that kiss from Jack might lead, his warm, solid presence was the only thing keeping her from splintering into about a million pieces.

  “I assume it was entered as evidence after”—Talia swallowed heavily—“after I was attacked, but David Maxwell had enough contacts in the police force for him or anyone in his organization to get ahold of it.”

  “Even if it originated with someone in Maxwell’s organization,” Jack said wearily, “all it takes is a click of a button to send it across the world. Any whacko could have pulled it off the Internet. Who knows how many copies there are of that thing.”

  The recording hadn’t surfaced in the two years since the attack, and Talia had assumed it was in the bowels of the Seattle PD evidence locker. She should have known better. “But what about the note? Doesn’t that prove it’s someone who knows me?”

  “No offense, Miss Vega,” Officer Martinez said, “but even though you’ve kept a relatively low profile, the press coverage that case garnered gave you a fair bit of notoriety. I’m sure there are lots of people who feel like they know you even if you don’t know them. And you said it just appeared in your purse?”

  Talia shivered as she felt icy fingers trail up her spine. It could be anyone. She’d thought it was bad before, when she was in hiding from David Maxwell and his cohorts, knowing that to show her face meant certain death. At least with David she knew the identity of her personal monster.

  This was worse, the idea that someone was lurking, wanting to terrify her, maybe planning to harm her, like an evil shadow that darkened every corner of her life. “Yes. Someone slipped it in there sometime today, either when I was at the gym or at the restaurant. Those are the only times my purse was out of my sight.”

  Jack’s hands came up to curve around her shoulders, and the tension in his fingers told her he was wondering the same thing. While they were sparring, while he was kissing her, at that very moment was some sick fuck slipping the DVD into her bag? Or was it later, while she was at the restaurant, alternately annoyed at Jack for not calling and mooning over him in fantasies about having something resembling a normal relationship with him?

  Whenever, however it was done, it had served its purpose, terrifying her, bringing up all the pain and fear of the past. A vivid reminder of who she was, what she’d been, and why she would never, ever be able to let her guard down.

  Why she was too broken to be with any man, even one as strong as Jack.

  “I’ll need to take the DVD with me,” the officer said. “We’ll check it for fingerprints and have our techs analyze it to see if they can pull any information from it.”

  “What kind of information?” Talia asked as the officer covered his hand in a latex glove and retrieved the disk from the player.

  “Honestly, I’m not up on all the particulars, but I think they can figure out if it’s a duplicate copy, if it was downloaded from a website, that kind of stuff.”

  “If it’s different from the original, they’ll be able to tell that too.”

  “Sounds like you know all about it,” the cop said.

  “I work in security,” Jack said, and handed the cop his card. He said it casually, but the subtext was unmistakable. I know what I’m doing just in case you don’t, and I’ll be all over your ass if you fuck this up.

  The cop studied the card and gave Jack a once-over. “Probably not a bad guy to keep around until this blows over,” he said to Talia.

  Talia forced herself up and managed to walk the cop to the door.

  “I’m sure we’ll have more questions,” he said.

  “I’ll help any way that I can.” Anything to make this stop.

  She shut the door behind the officer and slid the dead bolt home, its metallic thud echoing through the room.

  She turned to find Jack a few feet behind her, propping himself on the back of the couch. His face was grim as he studied her.

  How odd that only a few hours ago, she’d been stewing over the fact that he hadn’t called her after that shocker of a kiss. Now he was here in her living room, apparently with no plans to go anywhere anytime soon.

  What would have made her night hours before now had her as jumpy as a drop of water on a hot skillet. “You don’t have to stay, you know. I’ll be fine, with the lock on and the new alarm system.” She walked back to the kitchen and busied herself loading the empty coffee mugs into the dishwasher. “I feel like such an asshole now, giving you and Ben such a hard time about upgrading.” She’d never been much of a nervous babbler, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself as Jack continued to study her without a word, his gaze so intense it was like a hand rushing over her body. “When you talk to him, you’ll have to thank him for me because this definitely makes me feel better about staying alone—”

  “In what universe do you think I’d ever leave you alone after that?”

  Talia turned to face him as something that felt a lot like relief washed through her. No getting around it, she’d sleep a lot better knowing a big, strong, ex–Special Forces badass was in the house with her.

  Okay, maybe not any Special Forces badass. Just Jack.

  Yet the thought of him being under the roof of her small house after what had happened earlier today…“Really, I don’t want you to put yourself out any more than you have,” she said, wincing at the way she sounded like a broken record.

  “Just stop,” Jack said, holding up a silencing hand as he crossed the small living room into the kitchen. “To be crystal clear, I’m not getting more than ten feet away from you until we catch the asshole who’s doing this.”

  Part of her wanted to throw herself at his feet and thank him for, once again, taking care of her. Yet she still rankled at the idea that she needed to be saved, that once again she needed to depend on him, that she would have another obligation to add to the pile of unpaid debts she already owed. “What about work? You’re here on assignment. How are you supposed to protect your clients if you’re stuck trailing after me?”

  “I’ll figure out something.”

  “I don’t know Danny that well, but there’s no way this will go over well with him.”

  Jack shrugged and took off his suit jacket to drape it over a kitchen chair. “Let me worry about Danny. He might get pissed, but he’ll understand. I can’t let anything happen to you again. Jesus, seeing you like that…”

  Talia saw it then, the crack in his no-nonsense armor, the trauma in his eyes that mirrored her own as he remembered the horrific images. He raked his hand through his hair, and as he did, she saw it was shaking.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and when they opened again, they were once again cool, steady. Determined. “Nothing is more important to me than keeping you safe, got it? And if that means pissing off my friends or even losing work over it, tough shit.”

  She swallowed hard and blinked back the sting of tears. It was just stress, she told herself. Someone wanted to terrify her—and was succeeding—so why wouldn’t she deserve a good cry?

  But it was more than that, and she knew it. This was all new for her, having someone want to look out for her, having someone tell her she was important to them. Having someone like Jack put everything in his life on hold just to help her didn’t and would never make sense to her.

  Are you forgetting what happened this morning? I think someone finally showed his true colors.

  As though reading her mind, Jack said, “I don’t want you to worry about what happened earlier today. It was completely inappropriate and unfair of me to do that to you.”

  “Unfair how?”

  His dark brows knit as though he was surprised by the question. “After everything you’ve been through, for me to put you in that kind of position where you might feel obligated to—” He broke off, and Talia wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light, but he might actually be blushing.

  “To fuck you out of some sense of gratitude or obligation?” she asked,
her own face hot.

  “Exactly,” Jack ground out. “Especially since I know there’s no way in hell you could ever return the sentiment.”

  After this morning, she wasn’t so sure that was true. And it rankled that he thought she was so damaged, so broken that she could never recover enough to ever give a man another chance.

  Yet, as the images from the DVD drifted back through her head, she had to admit that even if she hadn’t regressed all the way back to the terror-filled weeks and months after the attack when she’d been forced into hiding, seeing herself like that was a serious step back in whatever healing she’d managed.

  “There’s been some stuff building and for a second, it slipped out of my control. But I don’t want you to worry about it. I’ve got a handle on it, and nothing like that will happen again.”

  Some perverse part of her wanted to ask, exactly, how he planned to handle it. Take matters into his own hands, as it were?

  Or find someone else to help take the edge off? He wouldn’t have to look far.

  A twist of jealousy she had no right to feel settled in her stomach at the thought.

  But the fear-induced adrenaline rush was quickly wearing off, sapping her of energy and leaving her too tired to do any verbal sparring tonight. “I’m not worried,” she said finally, and then covered her mouth to hide a jaw-cracking yawn. “You can sleep in the spare room. It’s just a twin bed, so sorry if it’s a little small.”

  “I’ll be fine. You get some sleep.”

  Her eyes drooped and her lips pulled into a smile. “You know, with you here I think I actually might.”

  Jack wished he could say the same. He watched Talia’s retreating back until she disappeared up the stairs. When he heard the door of her bedroom click closed, he breathed a sigh of relief. His face relaxed now that he didn’t have to conceal everything he was feeling.

  Rage at the sick fuck who would do this to her pulsed through him, the kind of anger that made him want to kick and punch and break a few bones. He paced Talia’s house like a caged animal, tempted to put his fist through the TV screen that had displayed such horror.