Deliberate Deceptions: Hauberk Protection, Book 3 (14 page)

“Tom, the woman behind me isn’t a whore. It’s my wife. You remember Lauren, don’t you?”

It was someone they knew? Lauren peered over his shoulder. It startled her to recognize their intruder. The man she’d last seen as a fourteen-year-old boy now stood at least two inches taller than Chad. “Tommy Jenkins?”

“What are you doing here, Mrs. Miller?” From the way her Sig Sauer shook he was likely to shoot one of them accidentally. “You shouldn’t be here.”

His gaze dropped to the bed, his forehead wrinkling. “You guys had sex? Didn’t you?” The gun steadied and returned to point at Chad. “Did you rape her? The way you did last time?”

“He’s never raped me!” Lauren couldn’t stop her response.

“Yes, he has. I saw it.” Tom used both hands to steady his grip. The shaking stopped only marginally. “It was on all the websites, on all the news reports. He’d tied you up and blindfolded you. He made you,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “do things. Bad things.”

“Chad never raped me,” she repeated, keeping her voice steady. How the hell could she get him to understand that she’d asked Chad to do that to her? That she enjoyed being bound and blindfolded. “He’s never hurt me, Tommy. I promise.”

“You’re just saying that to protect him. You shouldn’t do that. He’s a bad man. You need to stay away from him. You hate him, remember? He killed your baby. He killed Emily.”

“No. No, he didn’t.” She sidled away from Chad, attempting to draw Tom’s attention away so Chad could get to the drawer where he’d stashed his gun. If they were lucky, Tom hadn’t already found it.

She took another step toward him but also to the left, drawing his attention further away from Chad. “Chad didn’t kill Emily. Neither of us did.” She took a deep breath but didn’t dare close her eyes the way she wanted. “She just stopped breathing. There was nothing either of us could have done.”

“No! He killed her.” With a roar of anger, Tom swung the gun back toward Chad, who dived to the floor at the same time the gun went off.

Chapter Fourteen

Pain seared Chad’s shoulder like someone had stabbed him with a red-hot poker. Even as he fell, he saw Lauren kicked Tom in the back of the knees and grapple for the gun.

His right arm not working properly, Chad dragged himself across the floor, the six feet between him and his weapon a chasm wider than the Grand Canyon. Using his left hand, he opened the drawer and felt around inside until his fingers closed around the barrel of his Glock. He rolled over just in time to see Lauren’s head snap back. Blood spurted across the room, splattering over the sheets. Lauren’s body toppled sideways.

FUCK! Chad aimed his gun but Tom dragged Lauren to her feet and used her as a shield. “Stay back! I didn’t want to hurt her but I had to. You saw—she was fighting me.”

Lauren’s head lolled onto her chest and he couldn’t see her face properly, but from the blood trailing down her shirt, the bastard had probably broken her nose. Hopefully that’s all he’d done. “Set her down, Tom. Please. Let me look after her. Let me make sure she’s all right.”

“Uh uh.” Tom shifted Lauren’s dead weight to one arm and lifted the gun, aiming it at Chad. He tilted his head until his mouth was less than an inch away from Lauren’s ear, but his gaze never left Chad. “You shouldn’t have come back, Mrs. Miller. You should have stayed away. He was miserable when you left. I was sad too but at least I knew you were safe.”

Chad held his own gun steady but couldn’t fire without risking Lauren’s life. At least the gun was aimed at him, not at Lauren’s head. Though the rest of Lauren didn’t move, the fingers on Lauren’s right hand made the “OK” sign. It was all he could do not to heave a sigh of relief. She was all right. If they kept their heads, if he could get control of this situation, they could still get out of this. Maybe. Tom still had that fucking gun.

Tom’s eyes went unfocused, dreamy, his voice soft and distant. The arm holding the gun dropped a few inches but not enough. If Chad moved now, he’d still be gut-shot. “I loved you so much, Mrs. Miller. You were such a good mother to Emily.”

“She was; you’re right.”
Come on, Lauren, move. Drop to the floor. Something that’ll get you out of the line of sight and give me a clean shot at him.

Tom’s gaze cleared and the black barrel of the gun stared at Chad again. From this distance, a two-fingered monkey couldn’t miss hitting him. “Don’t you talk to her. You’re not good enough for her. That’s why I had to keep her away from you. Keep her safe.”

Chad held up the hand he could move, spreading his fingers wide. “All right. Let’s just calm down.”

“I kept her safe from you. I checked your mail box every day so you couldn’t get any of the letters she sent you. I deleted all her messages from your answering machine. You didn’t even know I was there. You thought you were so good with your security system. But you couldn’t stop me.”

Shit, he’d given Tom the security code and asked him to check his mail and water the plants when he was away. The whole time the little shit was the reason Lauren hadn’t come home?

With a move so fast it startled even Chad who had been looking for a sign, Lauren dropped to the ground, taking Tom with her. As Tom swung around with a curse, aiming Lauren’s own gun at her, Chad aimed and squeezed the trigger.

Chapter Fifteen

“They’ve charged Jenkins with attempted murder and aggravated assault.” Sam glanced at Lauren as she settled onto the arm of the couch beside Chad. “He’s lawyered up, and isn’t talking, but from what Andy’s been able to find out through his sources his lawyers are seeking a psychiatric review while he’s still in the hospital.”

“They’re looking for an insanity plea,” Lauren surmised. “Or at least diminished capacity.”

“They’ll get it.” Chad covered her knee with his left hand. His right was bound to his side, the bandage where they’d operated on the bullet not as thick as it had been the day before.

“What I don’t get is why he waited this long to go after Chad.”

“I talked to his mom.” The petite woman who Chad had introduced as Rosalinda Ramos, Sam’s fiancée answered Lauren’s question. “She said he’d had a breakdown at school, enough that the counselors there suggested he come home for the semester.”

Sam scowled. “Except he came home and found his mom with a black eye.” He held up a hand when Chad cursed under his breath. “Don’t worry, her rat-bastard ex didn’t give it to her this time. I checked. Patsy had been in a car accident and she got it from that. She’s fine, by the way.”

“We’re guessing that he saw the article in the Post on the weekend and that made him want to check up on you.”

“From there,” Sam picked up where Rosie left off, “we’re not sure if it was seeing you two together again that set him off. Or if he’d planned to go after Chad all along.”

Lauren suppressed a smile. The duo were completing each other’s sentences as if they’d been married for years.

“Almost forgot. Hey, Rosebud, you got those photocopies?”

Rosie reached into a voluminous purse and pulled out a manila file folder. “The police found these when they went through Tom’s apartment. I got Andy to use his connections to make some copies since they have to keep the originals as evidence.”

Lauren took the folder and handed it to Chad who placed it on his lap and opened it. Her breath caught in her throat when she recognized her own handwriting. “My letters.”

After a glance at her, Sam nodded and returned his attention to Chad. “Looks like Tom had been going through your mail for years.”

“I’d asked him to pick it up for me whenever I was travelling. I had no idea he’d been holding things back.”

The room was silent except for the sound of rustling paper as Chad flipped through the letters. He stopped at the final one, written two years after she’d left. The one pleading with him to phone her, to give her some sign that he’d give her another chance.

He stared up at her, his heart in his eyes. “I’m sorry, babe. I would have replied if I’d known.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” She covered his hand with hers and squeezed it. “But we’ve got a second chance now.”

Sam stood, holding a hand out to help Rosie to her feet. “Well, Rosebud, I think that’s our cue to leave these two alone.”

Leaving Chad to rest on the couch, Lauren showed them to the front door. “Sam, I owe you an apology. I know I blamed you for Jill’s death all these years. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

He quirked his eyebrows up. “I know. I’d say we both owe each other some apologies. I’ve been blaming you for walkin’ out on Chad. I had no idea why you’d gone or what you were going through. If I’d known…” He nodded. “Yeah, we both had our demons to fight, didn’t we?”

“So…are we friends again?”

“Yup.” He grinned. “I heard you quit your other job. If you ever feel the itch to get back in the field, I know a good firm that’s lookin’ for people with your background.”

“I may just take you up on that offer.” Once she’d figured out the rest of her life.

“You do that.” His grin faded and his gaze drifted to the room behind her. “It damned near killed him when you left. He stopped going home, started sleeping in the office for months at a time. I was afraid I was going to come in one day and find he’d eaten his gun.”

“I didn’t know. I thought…I got some bad intel and thought he’d remarried within a year.”

“Mmm. Now I wonder where you heard that?” One dark eyebrow arched up, but when she didn’t answer, Sam sighed. “Don’t leave him again without telling him exactly why, you hear? Don’t disappear the way you did last time. Or I’ll come after you.”

Without waiting for a reply, he headed for his car. Lauren stood in the doorway, until the Jag disappeared from sight.

Once she’d shut the door and rearmed the security system, Lauren returned to find Chad with his head against the back of the couch, his eyes closed. “You should go upstairs and have a nap.”

He roused and smiled at her. The look he gave her was all heat. “You coming up with me?”

“Men! Even hurt and exhausted, all you can think about is sex.” She folded her arms over her chest and tried not to smile. And failed.

“The problem with that is…?”

“As tempting as your offer is, if I lie down with you, you’ll do anything but nap.” She helped him to his feet and followed him upstairs.

Once they got to the bedroom, he started to undo his shirt left-handed. “Damn it, I’m all thumbs.”

“Here, let me.” She flicked open the buttons of his shirt, loving the familiarity of the task. Her smile dimmed when she caught sight of the bandage over his shoulder. It was smaller than the one the doctors had originally placed there, but it still looked obscene.

Chad rested his forehead on hers. “Hey, it’ll heal, babe. I’ll be fine.”

“I could have lost you again,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have left my gun out in plain sight. I should have locked it up so he couldn’t get it.”

“And I should have remembered to re-arm the security system so we would have had a warning. Hell, I should have locked the front door, but I had other things on my mind and I let myself get distracted.” He stroked his thumb over her nipple until it beaded. “Stop blaming yourself. It’s over. Harris is dead, and Tom’s not a threat anymore either. We’ve got a second chance, babe. Let’s not waste it.”

“You’re right,” she decided.

“Of course I am. Now why don’t you get undressed and join me? I’ll let you be on top.”

She had to laugh at the exaggerated leer he gave her. “You’re incorrigible. All right, I’ll lie down with you, but we’re not going to do anything more than sleep.”

She hovered over him while he took his pain pills and lay on the bed with him. Within five minutes, he was asleep and she found herself staring at the ceiling. Two weeks ago she’d only dreamt that she’d be lying here beside Chad again, and now her dreams had come true.

Yet there were still so many things unsettled between them.

Chad rolled over, his arm instinctively seeking Lauren only to find…nothing. “Lauren?”

Had it all been a dream? He opened his eyes. The dent her head had left in the pillow was still there, the side of her bed messed. No, it hadn’t been a dream. So why wasn’t she still here?

Maybe she’d gone to the bathroom? Nope, the door was open and the light off. Where the hell had she gone?

His heart clogging his throat, he jogged downstairs, half afraid he’d find her bags missing. He pulled up short when he heard her talking in the kitchen.

“I meant what I said, Coop. I’m not coming back. I’m through with the Brigade.”

Cooper was here? What the hell else did that bastard want? He’d already visited Chad at the hospital and threatened him until he’d signed a secrecy agreement similar to the one that bound Lauren.

“No, I haven’t and I’m not going to either.” There was a pause which told him that Cooper wasn’t there in person, Lauren was talking to him on the phone. “No, you can’t talk to him. He’s sleeping...No, I am not waking him up so you can talk to him. He just got out of the hospital, damn it.”

He was half-tempted to go into the kitchen and tell Cooper to go stuff himself, but he enjoyed hearing Lauren defend him. Other than Sam, he’d had precious few people in his corner. Besides, if he showed her he was awake, she’d probably insist on making him lunch—dinner, he revised having a glance at the chiming clock on the wall. He’d slept longer than he thought. While he was hungry, he preferred for her to come upstairs to wake him so he could make a meal of her.

He headed back to the stairs then saw the file folder containing the photocopies of Lauren’s letters. Maybe he should read them before they made any long term decisions. He tucked the folder under his arm and headed back to the bedroom. Once he was stretched out on the bed, he steeled himself and opened the folder. From the looks of it, Sam had arranged the letters by the date they’d been sent.

      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
April 26, 2002

Dear Chad,
 

I know you don’t understand why I left without talking to you, but I was afraid of what I might do if I didn’t get help right away. I’ve tried to be strong for you, but I just couldn’t get my head clear. I’ve checked myself into a private hospital under an assumed name so the reporters can’t attack you because of me…