Explosive (37 page)

Joseph rose from his desk, incensed.

“You worthless piece of shit,” he raged, spittle shooting from his mouth. “I should have left you to the orphanage. I should have left you on the streets with the trash, where you belonged.”

“I should have been so fucking lucky!” Thomas roared. “Instead I was lured into the house of a monster . . . played at his feet, ate his cursed food.”

Asked for his love . . . been so proud when I mistakenly believed it was given . . .

The truth burned.

He was barely aware of the door opening behind him. His words were flying out of his throat now like boiling drops of acid, scalding him to his very core. “You asshole . . . you
devil
—” He struggled when Garnier put him in a restraining hold, locking his arms down next to his body, but his baleful stare remained locked with the man who had transformed into a monster before his very eyes. “I’m going to send you away forever, do you hear me? I’m going to see you roast. You’re
finished
.”

In a fit of wild rage he dropped the Glock and broke free of Garnier’s restraint. Spinning, he clocked Garnier on his square jaw, the solid punch splitting the skin on his knuckle. He followed with a left to Garnier’s solar plexus that made the big, gray-haired man double over and gasp for air.

Thomas snarled and put all of his pent-up rage into a vicious kick to Garnier’s face.

“You’re going down with him, asshole,” Thomas seethed. “You worked for him back then. Did he send
you
to my parents’ house that night? Were you the
big man
who murdered two helpless people in their bed while their kid slept in the other room?” Garnier started to stand—blood gushed out of his nose and ran down into his gaping mouth.

Thomas sank another punch to his gut. Garnier gasped and then howled with fury.

“Thomas? Joseph? What in the—
Oh my God
.”

Iris Carlisle stood in the doorway to the den wearing a green robe, her usually meticulously coiffed brown hair mussed and slightly greasy, the skin of her face looking like pale parchment paper stretched thin over the delicate bones. Her familiar light green eyes pinned Thomas with a bewildered, anxious stare.

“Mom . . . I’m sorry,” Thomas whispered gruffly.

Garnier took a measure of revenge while Thomas was distracted by the sight of Iris. Light flashed in front of his eyes and then air rushed by his ears.

He hit the floor before pain shot through his head like a jolt of electricity.

He must have passed out for a moment; he couldn’t be sure. Garnier had nailed him on the temple. The next thing he heard through the dense haze of pain and confusion that encompassed him like a thick cloud was his mother’s frantic, fearful voice, and then Joseph’s roar, cutting through everything else.

“Leave him alone, you moron; that’s my wife standing there. Just get him out of here!”

Thomas realized that Garnier had hauled him into a sitting position, and that one of his fists was cocked, ready to strike Thomas again. Garnier growled at Joseph’s order, but he did his boss’s bidding. Instead of hammering Thomas again, he jerked him up off the floor. Thomas staggered when Garnier shoved him toward the door.

His memory of leaving the house was spotty. He vaguely recalled his mother’s frightened face, her calling out to him, and Garnier’s snide insults and threats as he shoved Thomas out of the house he’d grown up in.

It’d been a living nightmare . . . Worse, an acid trip choreographed by the devil.

Thomas couldn’t even recall most of his drive from the Carlisle’s home back to the city. Garnier—and likely Joseph—had probably hoped he’d crash, he was so out of it. By the time he’d pulled over at a gas station just before the junction of the Kennedy and Edens expressways, however, Thomas was thinking more clearly. He wasn’t himself; not by any means. He was an automaton, moving and thinking, but not feeling. In the past few days, feeling had grown dangerous.

In the past hour and a half, feeling had become agony.

He’d walked into the gas station, bought a bottle of water and some Tylenol, and asked for quarters with his change.

Then he’d used the pay phone in the parking lot to contact the FBI. He’d had a long conversation with an agent named Fisk. He’d told Agent Fisk that he was in possession of a tape that incriminated his adoptive father, Joseph Carlisle, in multiple crimes, including the murder of his real parents, James and Marion Nicasio. At the conclusion of their talk, Fisk had told him about some leaks at the Bureau and warned Thomas not to speak with any other agent about the information. Thomas had agreed for no other reason than through the haze of his shock he’d made an assessment of Fisk, and decided he seemed all right.

Thomas’d explained that he’d turn over the evidence to Fisk within a few days. He’d hung up to the sound of Fisk asking him repeatedly where he planned on going following their conversation.

“You’re in danger, Nicasio!” Thomas had heard the agent shout right before he’d replaced the receiver in the cradle and walked away from the pay phone.

He’d lingered at the gas station, ensuring himself that he wasn’t being followed. Joseph and Garnier must have been nearly as discombobulated by his unexpected visit as Thomas had been. They’d regroup, though. Eventually.

When he was convinced that he hadn’t been followed, Thomas got into his car and removed the battery from his cell phone.

He drove, longing for distance from a terror that Joseph Carlisle had just confirmed as a reality—desperate for something to hold onto while his life careened wildly off balance.

He thought he’d been driving aimlessly, but now, as he sat at the side of that country road, the roar of the blue Buick’s engine still humming in his ears, Thomas knew he’d traveled with a single-minded focus. He’d seen a luminous face in his mind’s eye, said her name silently like a mantra that might save him.

Dr. Gable.

Sophie. Sophie.

And somewhere in the monotonous process of driving down a strip of interstate for miles and miles, a fever of forgetfulness had settled upon him. The toxic memories became distant. They faded.

Then they were gone.

Until two seconds ago, when that blue Buick topped that rise, and Thomas had a flashing image of Newt Garnier’s rocklike profile, his gaze trained with focused intensity on the road that led straight to Sophie.

He shoved the ignition into reverse, but someone slapping their palm against the window stopped him from stomping on the gas.

What he saw outside the window caused a sensation as though all the blood in his head had rushed to his legs.

He lowered the window.

“You left Sophie alone?” he bellowed.

You’re the one who left Sophie alone
,
you asshole
, he admonished himself.

“I’m here to protect you, not Dr. Gable,” Agent Fisk said, clearly set off balance by Thomas’s greeting.

“Fuck.”

He started to back up, but Fisk held onto the window frame and staggered after him.

“She’s there all alone,” Thomas shouted. “I just saw Newt Garnier pass in a car.
Just now.
He’ll kill her without thinking twice.”

He thought Fisk might have let go of his car willingly then, but Thomas was too agitated to even notice. The vision of Sophie looking up at him with those dark eyes . . . eyes that were pleading with him to remember.

It was the wrongness of accusing her, of forsaking Sophie that had caused all the memories to explode to the surface. How could he want to block out that night in his father’s office if it meant erasing a single second with Sophie?

Which is exactly what he’d done.

He saw her standing there in her kitchen, her breasts looking so soft and firm beneath the thin bikini top, her dark eyes full of compassion and concern as she handed him a glass of lemonade. He remembered holding her in the guest bedroom, her scent filling his nose, soothing him and arousing him to a fever pitch at once.

Sleep with me, Sophie. I need your cleanness so much right now.

She’d rebuffed him then, but later, when he’d awakened after hours of healing, dreamless sleep, he’d staggered down the hallway to her bedroom, Sophie’s presence calling out to him like siren song.

He’d opened the door and murmured her name. A lamp from the living room cast enough light down the hallway for him to see her curled on her side at the edge of the bed. Her eyes shone in the dim light. She didn’t look surprised or startled at his intrusion into her private sanctuary.

“Do you feel better?” she’d asked quietly.

He’d just nodded, unable to remove his gaze from her face.
How the hell had he ever succeeded in staying away from her before
?

“Let me feel your forehead,” she’d whispered.

He’d gone to her and knelt next to the bed, a supplicant before her beauty. Her hand had felt cool on his skin. Her scent enveloped him: sex and flowers and clean cotton.

When their gazes had met, she’d put her hands on his shoulders and silently urged him toward her.

And now, as he hurtled down the road toward her lake house in rising panic, he recalled how later they held each other fast as their tears mingled on their cheeks and his cock grew soft in the snug, warm sanctuary of Sophie’s body.

It’s going to be all right, Tom. I promise you. Someday, it’s all going to be okay again.

He’d made love to her again and again on that night, and she’d given herself repeatedly, let him restrain her, let him find solace from his anguish in her sweet, soft flesh. Those hadn’t been wet dreams he’d been having about Sophie; they’d been reality.

He’d never spoken to her of what had happened to him; his mind had blocked it from him even as he sought her out like a wounded animal. But somehow, she’d sensed the parameters of his fury, his loss . . . his grief.

Somehow, Sophie had known.

“It’s going to be all right, Tom. I promise you. Someday, it’s all going to be okay again,” she’d whispered.

Oh God
.

God, please let that be true.
Not for him, who had ripped into her peaceful world like a torrential storm.

For Sophie.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO

Sophie had resisted an urge to go after Thomas in her car. It would be a useless exercise. It’s not as if she could somehow overtake him on the road.

She couldn’t force him to trust her . . . couldn’t make him come back to her.

Would he be all right? Surely not. He wasn’t safe. Her only comfort was that Agent Fisk was there, guarding him. Fisk would have tailed Thomas. The FBI agent would protect him—maybe even help him come to terms with his poisonous memories—better than Sophie could.

She wandered out to the boathouse. Perhaps Guy sensed her helplessness and misery, because he didn’t start and go wary when she entered. The fox had been snuggled into a nest of blankets near his feeding dishes. When she sank down onto the dusty concrete floor of the dim boathouse and began to cry, the fox stood and began to inch toward her slowly.

The little animal finally stopped, his nose just inches from her knee. Laughter mixed with her sorrow when Guy lowered his head, allowing her to pet his neck and rub just behind his ears.

He backed away after several seconds, but Sophie had never appreciated a gesture of sympathy more.

It gave her the strength to stand and brush off her dusty shorts.

“It’s going to be okay,” she murmured to Guy, attempting to brace herself. “It’s not over yet.”

A shadow moved across the sunlight shining through the opened door. She saw Guy flinch. Sophie started to turn.

Someone—someone large—came up behind her and pinned her right arm against her ribs and pushed her body weight back against his solid length, setting her off balance. The hard, ungiving bone of a forearm pressed against her trachea.

“It might be over sooner than you think,” a man rasped near her ear.

Thomas peered through the dusty window of the boathouse, struggling to see inside the shadowed interior. He saw a movement—Sophie’s pale T-shirt as she jerked in Newt Garnier’s hold. The dark outline of Garnier’s gun showed up starkly against Sophie’s belly. The sight sent a jolt of electricity through him. But what he heard made it worse. Garnier spoke in a low, rough voice while Sophie made choking sounds as she struggled.

He knew Garnier would just as soon strangle her than leave the evidence of a bullet behind.

Spots began to appear before her eyes. The intruder was cutting off her oxygen supply with his strangling hold. Just when she thought she would lose consciousness, however, he lessened the hold slightly, restoring a minimal amount of air to her burning lungs.

He began to question her again.

“Where’s Nicasio?” Sophie felt him press the hard barrel of a gun between her ribs. “Better tell me, Blondie, or I’ll shoot you point-blank in the gut. Very painful way to die, and it takes forever. You’d die out here all alone—”

A loud thwacking sound exploded into her ears. The hold on her trachea lessened, but then she was being pulled backward by a heavy weight. She twisted to get out of the man’s hold, throwing her elbow into his ribs. He cursed viciously. Just as she was lunging for freedom, he grabbed at her hair and pulled her back once again.

Sophie found herself staring at Thomas’s rigid face. Her heart leapt in her chest at the unexpected, welcome sight of him. Dread settled when she recalled the man’s gun. Thomas held one of the paddles from the canoe in both hands, his biceps flexing tightly beneath the arms of his T-shirt. He looked furious, but focused; his glare not on Sophie but on the man who held her and pressed the barrel of his gun to Sophie’s temple.

“You shoulda hit me harder, Nicasio,” the man behind her taunted. Her positioning was different than before, and she had a little more room to maneuver. She glanced up to see the face of the man who held her and saw the profile of a man in his fifties with steel-gray hair, a rough-hewn face, and a swollen nose. From her angle, she could see that blood trickled out of his right ear, a result of what had sounded like a vicious blow of the paddle against the intruder’s head.