Liam's Witness Protection (Man On A Mission 4) (9 page)

Liam’s brows drew together in a frown. “Nine years ago? You couldn’t have been more than—”

“Sixteen. I was sixteen.” Self-mockery crept into her voice. “I wasn’t forced with repeated beatings, threats and drugs to service hundreds of men, like the other women. Oh no! I was Vishenko’s chosen one. He raped me, and then he kept me for himself...for two endless years.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I would rather have been among the other women.”

* * *

Cate’s despair ate at Liam, fueling his anger at the man who’d done this to her, who’d forced her into feelings of shame and worthlessness no woman should ever have to endure. He reached out to touch her, to comfort her somehow, but she shied away. “Please don’t,” she whispered. “I can’t. Not after what he did to me.”

“Cate...”

“You don’t understand,” she cried out, pain and self-loathing in her voice. “The scars you’ve seen—they’re nothing. Nothing!” She fumbled with the tie on her robe, then the buttons of her pajama top, her fingers clumsy in her haste. “At first he would just rape me,” she panted in a desperate undertone. “But it wasn’t enough for him.” Then the last button pulled free and she turned, exposing her bared back. “This is what he did to me,” she told him, her voice breaking. “When I refused to cry, when I refused to submit, this is what he did to me—to make me beg him for mercy. To make me beg him to let me go.”

“Oh God.” Liam closed his eyes and averted his face for a moment, fighting the sickness that rose in him. Not the sight of the scars themselves, but the realization of the agony Cate must have endured when each and every scar was inflicted.

Then he turned his gaze back to her. Gently, so gently he didn’t know he had that much gentleness in him, he pulled the pajama top up and turned her around. He drew the edges of the top from her unresisting grip and pulled them together. Then he buttoned the buttons with fingers that trembled slightly.

Her breathing was ragged as she tried to drag in enough air. “You wanted to know what Alec knows. I didn’t want that. Didn’t want you to know.” Her face was stony, her eyes bitter. “I wanted to keep my shame a secret from you as long as I could, but you wanted me to tell you.” Her next four words dropped like hard little pebbles thrown into a pool of water as smooth as glass. “So now you know.”

Liam couldn’t bear it. Those words were uttered as if she believed he’d turn and walk away from her now, as fast as his legs could carry him. As if she believed that would be any decent man’s normal reaction to her revelations. As if she was responsible for what happened to her.

He drew Cate into his embrace—taking her by surprise so she had no chance to pull away—and held her close, rocking her like a little girl. Comforting her the only way he knew how, the way his mother had comforted him when he three...four...five. Then he heard it, a sound he’d never expected to hear from Cate. Weeping. Soft, heartbroken sobs that ravaged his heart to hear.

He bent and caught her knees, sweeping her into his arms, cradling her against his chest as he carried her into his bedroom.
Oh God, oh God,
he begged.
What do I do? What do I say? How can I make this right for her?

He laid her gently on the bed, then followed her down, still holding her—just holding her—as she wept. And every sound she made was a lash against his heart. It seemed like forever, but when her tears finally subsided, he reached over a grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on the nightstand. He wiped her face, then held the tissues for her as she blew her nose.

“I’m sorry,” she said between little huffing sounds as she tried to catch her breath.

“Don’t be sorry, Cate. That was coming for a long time, I think.”

“I didn’t cry—after the first time,” she told him brokenly. “Tears didn’t soften his heart.” She didn’t have to name him for Liam to know who she meant. “He
enjoyed
hurting me—tears would only have added to his pleasure.” She was silent for a long, long time, then added so softly he had to strain to hear, “I have not cried for nine years.”

His heart slowly tore in two, knowing what she’d endured in silence for two years. And knowing, too, there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to take her remembered pain away, no matter how much he wished it.

She made as if to pull away from him, but he refused to let her go. “Don’t,” he told her after he cleared the obstruction in his throat. “Just let me hold you the way someone should have held you nine years ago.” What had happened to Cate should never have happened—not to her, not to any woman. The knight-errant in Liam wanted so badly to
do
something—avenge her. Make Vishenko pay in blood. But that wasn’t what Cate needed now. She needed to be held. Comforted. Not a sexual embrace, but a loving one.

She didn’t resist, and Liam marveled at that. But he wasn’t going to question it. Not now. Not when she was willing to accept comfort from him, the comfort he’d longed to give her since the moment he’d seen those scars on her wrists. No, to be honest, he’d wanted to comfort her since the moment she shied away from him yesterday morning.

Was it only yesterday? It didn’t seem possible. Too much had been crammed into too few hours, and he was still reeling emotionally. But the only thing that mattered right now was Cate. Letting her know how much he hurt for her. How much he cared.

As he held her close, many things started to make sense to him, things he hadn’t really understood before. Cate’s desire to be invisible, to not draw attention to herself, for one. Her feelings for Alec, another. Alec had rescued her from a life on the run. Gratitude was a natural response. And as he’d told her, Alec was a hell of a guy. Admiration—the same kind of admiration he felt for his brother—was another perfectly natural response.

But she wasn’t in love with his brother, and inside he heaved a sigh of relief. What had she said earlier?
“...I never wanted him to touch me...that way... I never wanted any man to touch me that way...until I met you.”

And Cate thought she wasn’t brave. How many women would have admitted that to a man they barely knew? How many women would trust a man they’d just met to hold them in an intimate embrace on a bed and not push for more after the woman admitted her attraction to him?

She trusts you,
he realized, the shock reverberating through his system.
She doesn’t know it, but she really does trust you.
He’d wanted her trust, and now he had it—at least up to a point. But suddenly he knew it wasn’t enough. He didn’t just want Cate’s trust in this way. He wanted more. He wanted it all.

Chapter 9

C
ate woke first. Liam must have pulled the covers over them at some point during the night, and she was lying with her head pillowed on his shoulder. His other arm was snug across her body, as if to hold her safe.

She couldn’t believe it. She’d slept through the night in Liam’s arms, and no nightmares had invaded her dreams. She hadn’t woken in a panic, either, with that choking feeling and a runaway pulse. Liam holding her wasn’t like Vishenko holding her. When Vishenko had held her he’d wanted to hurt her, and she’d fought him until her strength had given out. It was different with Liam. He was holding her to comfort, to heal. To shelter her from anything that might hurt her. To place his body between hers and danger.

She raised her head to see what time it was, but when she moved Liam woke immediately, his hand already reaching for the SIG SAUER on the nightstand. Then his eyes focused on her, and he subsided back onto the bed, leaving the gun where it was. “Morning,” he told her. And the guarded tone in his voice told her he wasn’t sure what her reaction would be to having spent the night in his arms.

“Good morning.” And it
was
, she realized. It
was
a good morning. She smiled at him. A tentative smile, but a real one. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

For not forcing me,
she wanted to say, but she knew he wouldn’t understand. He’d be insulted—no, he’d be hurt to think she believed he could do to any woman what Vishenko had done to her. She hadn’t. Not really. But how to explain? “For holding me,” she settled on.

His chest rumbled with soft laughter. “My pleasure, Cate,” he told her. There was a light in his eyes that warmed her, and he repeated, “My pleasure.”

* * *

While Cate dressed and packed her few things, Liam called Callahan on the cell phone. “It’s Liam Jones,” he identified himself when Callahan answered. “I assume you were expecting my call?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t say anything more, and Liam realized Callahan was a man of few words.

“We’re still at the hotel, and we’re going to have breakfast before we leave. But we should be there in about seven hours. D’Arcy said I shouldn’t go to the sheriff’s office—”

“Yeah, Nick asked me to meet you someplace safe, where no one will see you. My office is out—too many people. And I’d rather you not come to the house—my wife wouldn’t say anything, but I can’t guarantee my children won’t accidentally reveal we have a guest staying with us—they’re too young to know better.”

Liam frowned. “Then where—”

“You know how to get to your brother-in-law’s cabin near Granite Peak?”

“I think so.”

“I’ll meet you there. I’ll be the one with the Smith & Wesson.”

* * *

Aleksandrov Vishenko’s private airplane landed on the single runway of a local airstrip in Arlington, Virginia, then taxied toward the hangar. Once there, the pilot turned off the engines, then he and the copilot exited the plane and entered the office to arrange for refueling and to file a new flight plan. As always, Vishenko wanted to be ready for anything, including a quick getaway if necessary.

He was early for his meeting, but he’d planned it that way. The government official he was there to see—his most dangerous gamble—would not arrive for another hour. But the stage would be set and Vishenko’s men—who’d arrived earlier and were waiting inside the hangar—would search the bureaucrat for weapons and listening devices when he arrived, before allowing him to board Vishenko’s plane. Then, and only then, would Vishenko offer his bribe in absolute secrecy...to the man he feared most. To the man who’d been after him for years and who was one witness away from putting him behind bars for life. To the man who had a reputation as an incorruptible man...but Vishenko had learned differently.

“Every man has his price,” Vishenko reassured himself now as he reviewed the details in his mind. Overtures had already been made—through an intermediary, of course—and the government official had proved...amenable. Corruptible after all. But greedy. He had not named his price—but all indications hinted the price would be steep. If that was the price of his freedom, though, Vishenko would pay it. Gladly.

* * *

Cate and Liam had a leisurely breakfast, during which they talked about nothing in particular, then loaded their things in the SUV. As she buckled her seat belt Liam asked her, “Is there anything else you need before we get on the road to Black Rock? I know the agency provided you with a few changes of clothes and toiletries, but they might have overlooked something. There
are
stores where we’re going, but your choices might be limited.”

She shook her head. “I’m used to making do.”

Liam sighed softly. “That’s not the point, Cate. If you need something, now’s the time to speak up.”

She hesitated. “How long am I staying with Sheriff Callahan?”

“Hard to say. The trial has been postponed for a month, that’s all I know for sure. The way D’Arcy was talking yesterday, though, I got the feeling he doesn’t plan to produce you until the last minute. So at least a few weeks.”

“I’ll go crazy with nothing to read,” she said finally. Reluctantly. “If there’s a library...”

“I’m sure there are libraries in Buffalo and Sheridan, if not in Black Rock itself. But unless Callahan or his wife checks the books out for you, you’re out of luck—no local address to apply for a library card, remember?” He turned the key in the ignition, then put the SUV in gear. “We have time. We’ll stop and get you some books to read.”

Liam pulled into the parking lot of the first Walmart he came to, then led Cate inside, grabbed a shopping cart and headed over to the book aisle. Once there she glanced around, picked a book off the shelf and read the back cover, then put it down again. She did that numerous times, he noticed, before finally settling on one book.

“This one,” she said. But her eyes stared longingly at the last book she’d set down.

Liam shook his head. “Come on, Cate. One book won’t last several weeks.” He already knew from the conversations he’d had with her that she was well-read. One book might have been good enough for some people, but not her. He went back down the aisle, selected the books she’d picked up but rejected and tossed them into the cart.

“Liam, no!” Her protest wasn’t loud, but it was insistent.

He ignored her. When he had a dozen books in the cart he turned around and faced her. “If there’s something you really don’t want—fine. Put it back. But if you want to read it, then I’m buying it. This is my money, Cate, not the agency’s, so you don’t have to worry.”

“But, so many,” she said faintly. She glanced at the price of the paperback in her hand. “I can’t let you—”

“I want you to have the books you want to read,” Liam said, cutting her off. He knew his face was set in stubborn lines, but he wasn’t going to back down on this, no matter how much Cate protested.

“But I—”

“No arguments, Cate,” he said. His left hand came up of its own volition and cupped her cheek. She didn’t flinch away, so his thumb brushed gently over her lips the way his lips longed to do. “Let me do this for you,” he said softly. “My way of apologizing for what I said last night.”

“You already apologized.” And her eyes told him she’d already forgiven him.

“Yeah, but this will make me feel better.” He grinned his most engaging smile at her. “And besides, there are a couple of books here I wouldn’t mind reading myself. I’ll borrow them if you don’t mind.”

She didn’t say anything more, just added the book in her hand to the pile in the cart and followed Liam to the checkout. As the cashier rang up their purchases, Liam noted absently Cate’s taste in reading was eclectic, but the majority of books were fiction. Women’s fiction. Or at least that’s what his mother called the genre. Liam still thought of it as romance—books most guys avoided like the plague. All of a sudden, though, something occurred to him, bringing her choices into sharp focus. If Cate read romances, then that meant—in her heart of hearts—she still believed in love.

A rush of excitement swept through him, which he was hard-pressed to keep off his face. Cate still believed in love. Still believed men could have tender feelings for a woman as well as baser urges. Still dreamed dreams, despite what she’d been through. Which meant there was a chance for him. Unbelievably good news, since he was halfway to being in love with her already.

* * *

Vishenko’s men swarmed around the government official the minute he entered the airplane hangar. The pat down one of them gave him was much more thorough and intimate than any airport screener, but he didn’t protest. Another man ran a metal detector over him that pinged on his artificial left knee—he was forced to roll up his pants leg and show them the vertical surgical scar, then take out his wallet to display the ID card he used when he went through the metal detector at the airport, the one with a graphic X-ray picture of what his knee looked like now. A third goon ran an electronic scanner—a scanner that would detect any listening device he might be wearing—over his entire body with the exception of the artificial left knee that had already set off the metal detector. His heartbeat was a little faster than normal, but that was only to be expected...given what he was about to do.

In a long-ago era he’d been a US marshal. He’d protected witnesses with his life, and had the scars to prove it. But it had been years since he’d handled field assignments, since he’d put his life on the line. Not since he’d assigned himself to the team backing up Reilly O’Neill—aka Ryan Callahan—and Cody Walker when they confronted David Pennington.
How long ago was that?
he wondered, mentally trying to add up the years.

It had never been about the money. Even at his level within the government, his salary and benefits paled in comparison to what he could have earned elsewhere, so money had never been a motivating factor for him.
But every man has his price,
he reminded himself with grim smile.
Every man has something he will risk everything for.
He was no different.

Incorruptible. Everyone who knew him believed as much in his incorruptibility as in his omniscience. So no one would suspect what he was about to do. No one. And that dovetailed nicely with his overall plan.

* * *

“If you need a rest stop,” Liam told Cate when they were back on the road, “don’t hesitate to tell me. I know guys tend to forget women usually need to stop more often.”

“Okay.” There was a hint of reserve in her voice, a little shyness, and Liam guessed this probably wasn’t a conversation she was used to having. She glanced down at the bag in her hands—the one she’d refused to let Liam put in the back with their limited amount of luggage—then over at him. “Thank you. You have no idea how much I appreciate this, and I...well...thank you.”

“My pleasure.” And it was, he realized—just as much a pleasure as holding her had been last night. He’d never given a woman a gift that brought him as much joy as seeing the warm glow in her eyes at the thought of
owning
so many books. If he’d given her expensive jewelry it wouldn’t have meant as much to her.

They whiled away the next hours talking about books they’d read. Liam was surprised and yet not surprised to learn they’d read some of the same books, and had similar takes on them.

“Wasn’t it unbelievable how Isaac Cline played such a critical role in two of the worst natural disasters in US history?” Cate asked, referring to both Erik Larson’s
Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
and John M. Barry’s
Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America
. “And because of him, because of his actions so many years apart, both disasters were immeasurably worse than they could have been.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Both times he did the wrong thing,” Cate said softly. “But with the best intentions. It had to be heartbreaking for him.” She was silent for a moment. “That’s why I feel responsible for what happened the other day—the prosecutor who was killed, the men who were shot.”

“You’re not responsible,” Liam insisted, taking his eyes off the road for a few seconds to make sure Cate understood. “Vishenko—assuming he’s behind the attempt to kill you, which is a pretty fair assumption—is responsible. For all of it. Not you.”

Cate shook her head. “But I am. Because I was a coward for so many years...until Alec convinced me otherwise. If I had—” She broke off, and Liam wondered what she’d been about to say. She finally continued. “If I had gone to the police years ago with what I knew...with the evidence I had...who knows? Things could have been so different.”

Liam was sure this wasn’t what she’d originally been thinking, but all he said was “You can’t second-guess yourself like this. That’s the first thing you learn when you become a bodyguard. All you can do is the best you can do
at the time.
”

“That’s what Alec and Angelina said.”

“They’re right.” Cate still didn’t look convinced, so Liam added, “Remember what D’Arcy said? That Vishenko was working hand in glove with Pennington back in the day? They could have stopped him then, same as Pennington, if they’d known. But they didn’t. Everything that happened to you at Vishenko’s hands could have been prevented...if they’d stopped him years ago. Same goes for what happened in the courthouse. But they didn’t know. D’Arcy, Callahan and my brother-in-law, Cody, did the best they could with what they knew
at the time.
That’s all any of us can do. If we clutter up our minds with what-ifs and might-have-beens, we’ll be frozen with fear of making a mistake. Then at the critical moment we won’t do
anything.
And that’s worse than doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.”

The GPS beeped at that moment, announcing a rest area five miles ahead. “Do you need to stop?” he asked her.

“No, I’m fine for now.”

Liam thought for a moment. “The past is the past, Cate,” he said finally, returning to their original conversation. “It is what it is, and we can’t change a single thing. Would I change things I’ve done over the years if I could? Sure. I don’t think anyone can say they’ve never made a mistake they’d give anything to fix. But we can’t fix it. We can only learn from it, and try not to make the same mistakes in the future.”