Explosive (38 page)

Sophie also noticed that despite the man’s bravado, his speech was slurred. The blow to his head was having an effect, even if the man didn’t realize it. He blinked several times, as though trying to clear his vision.

“Most men’s heads aren’t quite so thick, Garnier,” Thomas muttered. His eyelids were narrowed so that Sophie could see nothing but two crescents of gleaming dark green. His focus on Garnier seemed absolute. “Let go of her. She’s got nothing to do with this.”

Sophie gritted her teeth in pain when the man shoved the barrel of the gun farther into her skull.

“Who says she’s got nuthin’ to do with this? She was here, wasn’t she? She got in my way. Just like your ma did all those years ago, huh Nicasio? I didn’t go there for her. Joseph just wanted James Nicasio dead. But seein’ as how she was stupid enough to throw herself in front of Nicasio, it was no sweat off my back to do her like I did your dad. Now . . . drop dat paddle, or I’ll do the same to this little girl—”

Several things happened at once. Garnier tried to shake Sophie in front of him for emphasis, but he stumbled slightly on his feet in doing so. Sophie seized the moment and put all of her energy into another backward jab with her elbow. She heard an animal growl from below and Garnier squalled.

Apparently, Guy had chosen the precise same moment to attack and bit Garnier’s leg.

“Don’t move, Garnier!” Fisk barked. The agent swung into the doorway, his weapon drawn and aimed near Sophie’s head.

The various attacks on Garnier caused him to lower his weapon from Sophie’s temple. The second he did, Thomas didn’t swing the paddle, he jabbed the handle straight into Garnier’s face, one hand guiding the weapon, the other providing the forceful forward shove from the end of the paddle.

Thomas never flinched. In that fleeting second, Sophie glimpsed the incredibly tight focus, the sheer fearlessness of a man who had faced off with a live bomb time and again.

She heard a sickening crunch of wood against bone and suddenly the tight trap of Garnier’s steely arms went slack. She spun away in time to see Garnier sinking to the floor in slow motion, a surprised look on his face. When his knees hit the floor, he slumped over into complete unconsciousness. Thomas had lanced the handle of the paddle into Garnier’s right eye socket.

One thing was for sure: Garnier would never use the eye—or what was left of it—again.

The paddle fell to the concrete floor with a clack. Thomas came up behind her. He encircled her in his arms, hugging her to him, before he let go and turned her to face him.

“I’m okay,” Sophie said when she glanced up and saw the palpable anxiety on his features as his gaze ran over her, searching for wounds.

His nostrils flared when she spoke. The expression she saw in his eyes made her touch his jaw, and then wrap her arms around his shoulders.

“I’m okay, Thomas. I’m okay,” she repeated.

His arms came around her and her feet came off the floor when he lifted her. He held her to him so tightly it squeezed the air out of her lungs for a few seconds.

“Sophie,” he spoke roughly near her ear. “Sophie . . . I’m so sorry—I . . . I didn’t remember.”

A spasm of emotion tightened her face when she heard how his deep voice cracked.

“It’s okay. Everything is going to be all right. Are you hurt?” she asked in a rush after he’d set her back on the floor and she’d caught her breath.

He lifted his head and shook it. She saw his muscular neck convulse as he swallowed.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Nicasio.”

Sophie pushed her way out of Thomas’s arms—although he seemed hesitant to let her go—and stared at Fisk. The agent knelt next to the fallen giant, his fingers on Garnier’s neck.

“Is he dead?” Thomas asked woodenly.

“No. I’m surprised after that shot you gave him with that paddle. In fact, I’m shocked the damn thing isn’t still in the guy’s skull,” Fisk finished wryly under his breath before he stood and removed some handcuffs from the back pocket of the jeans he wore.

“He killed my parents,” Thomas said, his lip curling in hatred as he pinned the unconscious Garnier with his stare. “He killed them under Joseph Carlisle’s order.”

“Yeah, I heard that part. And even though you should have let me handle things with Garnier—” The agent rolled his eyes at his unintentional double entendre. “—I not only need to thank you for saving Dr. Gable, but garnering us that confession,” Fisk admitted with a small smile. He extricated his cell phone and began to dial emergency services.

Sophie turned her attention to Thomas. He must have noticed the way she was staring at him. His arms were still slightly outstretched from when he’d been holding her a second earlier. His glance at her was regretful.

“I remember, Sophie. I remember all of it.”

He lowered his eyes and his arms at once, but Sophie flew over to him, flinging her arms around his shoulders. When he realized she wasn’t rebuffing him for his earlier behavior, he hugged her to him just as forcefully. He lowered his head and she pressed her face to the side of his neck.

“I’m so sorry, Thomas. I’m so sorry,” she murmured, hating the idea of him experiencing so much anguish.

“No,” he said gruffly. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m the one.”

She heard a plaintive whine and looked down to see Guy looking up at them with black, anxious eyes.

“Look at that,” Thomas murmured. “A three-and-a-half-legged hero.”

“Four-legged. He’s pretty much healed. Thank you for helping me, Guy,” Sophie whispered to the little fox. Guy whimpered and sat on his haunches, looking completely comfortable for the first time since Sophie had begun taking care of him.

Thomas’s arms tightened around her. Sophie just stood there in the dim boathouse, telling herself to focus on the feeling of holding a vibrant, whole Thomas in her arms. She tried like hell not to consider what came next . . . now that he no longer needed her to help him forget all of his pain.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE

Sophie sat in front of her laptop computer and scowled at the screen. It was a hopeless cause. She might as well face it. She would not be turning in her journal articles on the holistic treatment of Type II diabetes.

Not this year, she wouldn’t.

She glanced over at Collin Fisk, who sprawled on her couch and was reading
The New England Journal of Medicine
as though he actually found it interesting. Sophie had gotten to know the young agent very well over the last three weeks—ever since Newt Garnier had attacked her at her lake house; ever since Joseph Carlisle had been arrested on multiple criminal accounts, including conspiracy to commit murder.

Thomas had returned to Chicago with several federal agents who had been charged with protecting him. The FBI had offered to put him in a witness protection program until he was able to testify against Joseph Carlisle, but Thomas had refused.

It had been driving Sophie mad to think of Thomas up there in Chicago without her, giving testimony against a man he’d once loved and respected. She was worried sick that despite FBI protection, the mob would find a way to silence the man who had the power to kill the many-tentacled criminal organization once and for all.

Thomas had insisted that Sophie stay away from him, however, at least until he’d been able to give his testimony and the dangerous players, like Joseph Carlisle, were rendered powerless. He’d also insisted on one other thing before he’d left Haven Lake. Thomas would not accept another bodyguard for Sophie other than Collin Fisk.

That’d all been weeks ago now. So much had happened in the interim. Newt Garnier had agreed to come clean on other members of the criminal organization in exchange for a lighter sentence.

Four days ago, Joseph Carlisle had died of a massive heart attack while under police custody at the Dirksen Federal Building.

Sophie felt as if she’d been dying a slow death of her own being cooped up there in the lake house and watching the heart-wrenching footage of the Carlisle funeral . . . of Thomas holding up his very frail-looking mother, Iris, as she collapsed on the way to the burial of her husband.

God, she couldn’t imagine what Thomas was enduring. She hurt so much for him.

“You said you wanted to stop biting your nails,” Collin said as he flipped one of the pages of the journal and continued to read without looking up.

Sophie grimaced at her fingertips.

“Now isn’t the time to give up bad habits,” she mumbled. She set aside her computer and stood. “What’s taking them so long?”

“It does take
time
to drive from Chicago to here, Sophie.”

“I know, but they’re past due,” she said, checking her watch.

She nervously went to the window over the sink and checked the driveway. It’d been three long weeks since she’d seen Thomas in person. When he’d said good-bye to her, the two agents who had arrived from Chicago to guard him were standing annoyingly close. They hadn’t gone much farther away when Thomas had barked that they needed a little privacy.

He’d called her on the phone several times, but once again, she got the impression he was either distracted by the stress of giving evidence at FBI headquarters or by tending to his mother, who was not doing well at all since her husband had been charged with so many crimes and taken into custody.

At other times, she got the impression that Thomas wasn’t alone when he called. She imagined from the terse, slightly irritated quality of his tone that his bodyguards were standing nearby.

At least Sophie
hoped
those were the reasons that Thomas had been so unrevealing in their brief interactions. It might also be that he felt guilty for the way he’d behaved with her during his emotional crisis. Now that he was starting to accept the brutal facts of his life—that the man he’d loved and called “Father” had, in fact, been the man who had murdered his own parents—perhaps he was embarrassed by his acute need for Sophie during his trauma.

She knew from experience that it wasn’t uncommon for people to feel ashamed of their vulnerability during an acute stress response. Thomas was even more used to dealing with his stress in a private manner than most. He’d been accepted, trained, and then had excelled in a military unit that required a high degree of tolerance to stress and danger. He’d been used to overcoming his personal demons in a private manner.

How did he really feel about the fact that his mind had shut out a part of his life that had caused him so much pain? Would he forever associate his short-lived vulnerability with Sophie? Had he called to tell her that he wanted to meet with her this evening because he wanted to apologize once again . . . and then proceed to exit her life once and for all?

The anxious ruminations caused a surge of nausea in her gut. When she heard the gravel snapping beneath the wheels of an arriving vehicle, Sophie couldn’t be sure if she was experiencing intense anticipation or dread.

She flew to the back door, but then stopped several feet away, not wanting to seem too wildly eager. She veered over toward the window, instead. She saw that it was Thomas’s car, and that Thomas himself drove with two agents in the passenger seats.

As soon as the dark green sedan came to a halt, the driver’s-side door flew open and Thomas sprung out of the driver’s seat. He left the door hanging open, just like he had on that first night he’d come to her. His brown hair was slightly mussed and hung on his brow in the fashion in which she’d grown accustomed while he was with her at Lake Haven. He must have come from some kind of meeting, however, because he wore a pair of dark gray dress pants that fell elegantly on his tall, powerful frame and a striped dress shirt with the sleeves rolled back and the collar open.

When she saw how he walked purposefully toward the house with that familiar long-legged stride, Sophie forgot her self-consciousness and barreled out the back door.

He stopped abruptly at her appearance, his leather dress shoes causing the gravel to pop and scatter beneath them. Their gazes met across the fifteen feet that separated them. Sophie stood frozen, one hand on the screen door. He seemed just as disarmed by the sight of her.

“Why don’t you try hugging him?” Collin asked wryly from behind her.

Sophie glanced back, a smile pulling at her lips. She saw that Thomas didn’t seem as amused as he took in Agent Fisk standing behind her. Her foot hit the sidewalk when Fisk gave her a soft shove from behind.

Thomas came toward her as she approached him. She studied him but she couldn’t decipher his expression.

Then he wrapped her in his arms and the familiar feeling of being encompassed by Thomas Nicasio—of coming home—overwhelmed her. She wasn’t sure how long they remained like that—just hugging, pressing their bodies close, so that Sophie could feel his strong, steady heartbeat pounding next to her own.

Eventually, she turned her face into him, covertly wiping her tears on his shirtfront.

“You’ve lost weight,” she said shakily into his chest.

“I haven’t had the benefit of your good cooking,” he replied in a low voice near her ear.

Sophie leaned back and felt herself sinking into the depths of Thomas’s fiery green eyes. Someone cleared his throat from behind them.

“Agents Hargrove and Ellis and I will occupy ourselves out here for a while,” Fisk said levelly. He stepped out of the screen door and waved Thomas and Sophie inside the house. Sophie smiled gratefully at Fisk and grabbed Thomas’s hand.

“Wait,” Thomas said gruffly from behind her when they neared Fisk. He addressed the young agent. “I told you that I had something for you, many weeks ago. I want to give it to you now.”

Fisk’s brows rose in interest. “The tape of Bernard Cokey?”

Thomas nodded.

“We have enough evidence to put away the major players for good, thanks to you,” Fisk told Nicasio. “But if that tape exists, it’d be the icing on the cake.”

“It exists. It’s what my brother and nephew died for,” Thomas said soberly. Much to Sophie’s surprise, he tightened his hold on her hand and led her into the kitchen. He stopped once Fisk had followed them into the house and the screen door had closed behind him.