Obsession Falls (45 page)

How did she forgive that kind of betrayal? Because of Kennedy’s undeserved contempt, she had spent one more fearful night and one more desperate day, a pawn in a destructive game she had barely known existed.

And it was so much worse than that.

Jimmy hadn’t raped her. No. But because Kennedy turned away from her, Jimmy Brachler had seized the chance to replace Kennedy as a lover. In her mind only; she’d told Kennedy the truth when she said they hadn’t had sex.

Yet high in that helicopter, Jimmy had stripped her out of her costume. He had taken advantage of her drugged quiescence to touch her breasts and between her legs, and to her eternal humiliation, while she clung to him, he had brought her to orgasm. Violently. Twice.

Each time he had laughed.

Now Summer rolled away from Kennedy, curled into a ball, hid her head against her knees. But she couldn’t hide from the memories that bit into her soul and mind and tore away confidence and self-respect.

She could give excuses for her own behavior. The drugs, of course. They removed every inhibition. But more than that, she had believed she was going to die. She had believed that this man who manipulated her body intended to throw her from the helicopter. Visions of falling from the helicopter into the forest blended with the old, black fears of falling from the ledge in the bottomless cave.

Supplies for survival. A flowery note. Whispered words of support.

Humiliation. Nightmares. Death.

Those were the two sides of Jimmy Brachler.

He terrified her. She
knew
he was a murderer, a thug, a thief, the worst human being she had ever imagined. Yet … he drugged her, hypnotized her, seduced her, made her want him. More important, she remembered those moments when he had let her touch him. He had whispered that he wanted her to win the game. He wanted her to live. She was the only woman who was his equal. He wanted
her
.

Kennedy had done as he had promised. For a few hours, he had made her forget. But nothing could keep the fear away for long.

In
Empire of Fire,
Jimmy’s name was Venom, and she knew why. He had marked her, poisoned her world with dark fantasies and cruel fears.

No matter what, Kennedy couldn’t help her vanquish those. She would have to do that herself.

She was the Prize. She had two choices.

She would win. Or she would die.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

In a rush of appalled adrenaline, Kennedy came awake. He sat up in the bed he had shared with Summer.

He was alone.

He threw off the covers and dashed out into the living room. He skidded to a stop in the entry … Summer sat at the computer desk, dressed in his sweats, sipping coffee and jotting down notes.

She looked up. She surveyed his naked body with appreciation. “Happy birthday to
me
.”

Off balance and confused, he asked, “Is it your birthday?”

“No. But we can pretend it is.” She smiled. Then she looked back at her notes. “I’ve been researching
Empire of Fire,
wondering if I can see something you’ve overlooked. Why don’t you get dressed? I’ll make us a late lunch and we can talk.”

Sensible. Logical. But affectionate? Or even casually lustful? No.

He went into the bedroom.

As he dressed, he recalled the times when, during one of his affairs, the woman had told him that she loved him. He had always thanked her. Finally, she had said,
Can’t you just tell me you love me, too? Can’t you lie?

He couldn’t, and he didn’t understand why she would want him to.

Now, despite a gallant effort to resist, he had to admit to himself that what he felt for Summer was more than obsession. It was love. All-consuming, blazing-fire, shattering-stars, euphoric love. So he hadn’t been able to help himself—he had told her.

She hadn’t even thanked him.

Worse, she was remote. He had spent the morning making love to her, hours poring over her body, assuring himself she was all right, unharmed, and if not his, then at least not Jimmy’s. Kennedy had made her happy. They had gone to sleep together, and now … this.

He came back in jeans and a black T-shirt, carrying his running shoes, to find canned tomato soup and toasted cheese sandwiches waiting on the coffee table, and Summer in the easy chair polishing off the plate of food she held in her lap.

His stomach growled; making love for hours had a way of working up an appetite. “You have a bright future as a chef.” He dropped a kiss on the top of her head, sat on the couch across from her, and tore into the sandwiches. When he looked up, she was watching him and grinning.

He relaxed a little. There was the affection he’d been looking for. “Did you find anything out?”

“A few things. As I understand it, to win the game, we have to find Jimmy’s den and defeat him. So I’ve been making a list of possible lairs garnered from my concierge responsibilities.”

“That’s good. The soup.” She’d added a touch of basil. “And your plan. Any luck?”

“More than you’d think. More than we’d like. There were some pretty eccentric houses built along the coast in the early part of the twentieth century. Most of them are gone. Some are still there and in ruins. And there’s a castle or two. We need to narrow it down somehow.”

“Before we can guess at possible lairs, we need to know what role he’s chosen.”

“Venom.”

“He
told
you that?”

A hesitation. “Yes.”

Was she lying? “Venom is the snake under a rock, the viper who waits to strike the unwary warrior. He kills with guile and poison.”
Had Jimmy somehow poisoned her mind against Kennedy?

“I read the online description.” She held her mug clasped between both hands. Sourly she contemplated her soup, then placed her mug and plate on the table. “But who are you?”

“I’m the Celt.”

“Always?”

“Yes.”

She frowned. “Isn’t that a weakness, to always play the same role?”

“In the hands of someone who doesn’t understand the role, it is. The Celt is a barbarian leader who plays the lute and sweetly sings the ballads of war and lost love.” He waited to see if she would grasp the significance.

“I know. I read the online description,” she said again. “But…” She thought. “Ah. The Celt is a dichotomy. He has a warrior’s brutality hidden under a veneer of civilization and melody.”

“Not brutality. Ruthlessness.”

“Call it what you want. I’m the pawn and the Prize. To survive, I need knowledge.”

“I can tell you everything you need about the
EoF
world.”

“I’m depending on that. From what I can see by observing the game—did you know people still play it?—the world is too vast for me to comprehend without months of study and participation. No. What I need to understand is you. The real you. And
him
. The real him.” She leaned forward. “Who was Jimmy Brachler before you knew him? How did he get to MIT?”

Kennedy couldn’t keep his disdain hidden. “You mean … was he a poor, underprivileged boy from the wrong side of the tracks?”

“I don’t mean anything,” she said sharply. “I’m not leading the witness. I mean—who was he? Where is he from?”

Oddly, her impatience reassured him. “He was raised by his grandparents on a small Illinois farm south of Chicago. I met Harry and Ruth Brachler once, after the trial. Good, churchgoing Christians. They were grieved and bewildered about the way Jimmy turned out.”

“They’re dead?”

“I don’t know.” As he imagined what could have happened to them, his skin crawled. “He wiped them out of existence.”

“Like he wiped Jimmy Brachler out of existence?” Summer put her hand over her heart. “There’s no record that they ever lived?”

“They’re gone.” He stood, gathered the dishes, and took them to the kitchen.

She followed and leaned against the door frame.

As he loaded the dishwasher, he said, “His mother was an advertising executive, very successful, who wanted a baby. She had no husband and no desire for one. She conceived James … somehow. She died when he was three. His grandparents told me they taught him to work on the farm, but James hated it. They said his mother was the same way. Restless. Ambitious. Always looking to the horizon.”

Summer gathered the pans off the stove and handed them over. “So he was brilliant, driven. He had a tragedy in his background—his mother died of breast cancer and when that happened, the only person who understood him was gone. He was alone.”

Surprised, Kennedy faced her. “How do you know that?”

“I heard him talk about her. He was … sentimental.” Actually, remembering the speech Jimmy gave at that fund-raiser still broke her heart. Whatever he was—killer, drug smuggler, pimp, madman—he had loved his mother, and his loneliness had touched Summer in ways she couldn’t define. Maybe … maybe because her own mother had failed to provide love and support. Maybe because the loss of her father had scarred her more deeply than she had ever realized before.

And she didn’t want to talk about it with Kennedy. She didn’t want him to put that razor-sharp mind to work, to analyze Jimmy’s weakness and how it could be used against him. Jimmy deserved to have the memories of his mother untainted by Kennedy’s manipulations. “Jimmy might not have liked living with his grandparents on a farm, but it means he came from a stable environment.”

“Probably. The Brachlers seemed like nice people, but it’s hard to see the truth about what goes on behind the scenes in any household. My parents didn’t lose custody of my sister and I until I was old enough to make it happen.”

She mulled that over. “You say Jimmy was from a farm. But he was reminiscing with Dash about when they were kids, stealing cars in Chicago.”

“I know that by the time he was a teenager, he had worn his grandparents down. He spent winters in Chicago going to high school and summers on the farm.” Kennedy shut the dishwasher and hung up the dish towel. “I didn’t know about the stolen cars. I’ll bet his grandparents didn’t, either.”

“So he never got caught.”

“Or he got caught and erased the evidence before he could go to trial—he was always a gifted hacker.”

“He would only be caught once. He would never make the same mistake twice.” With skill and insight, she was building a portrait of Jimmy Brachler.

“You are good at this,” Kennedy admitted. “I had never considered the possibility of defeating him by using his own personality as a weapon.”

She inclined her head. “It’s the technical versus the intuitive. You’re the technician. I’m doing what profilers do in the FBI. The more I know about him, the better chance I have of surviving—and winning.” She walked to the refrigerator, got a couple of bottles of water and handed one to him.

He took it, and her hand.

She let him keep her hand, but she didn’t intertwine their fingers, or give his a squeeze, and after a moment she pulled away to open her bottle and take a long drink.

His first intuition was correct. Something was very, very wrong.

Should he ask? Should he not? Never in his life had he been confronted with this kind of emotional dilemma. All he knew was … he needed
not
to chase her away.

He headed back into the living room.

She followed. Probably not because she was drawn by the need to be near him, but because she wanted the information he had. But still … she followed.

“How did he get to MIT?” she asked.

“The same way I did. He
aimed
for MIT. He tested well. His grandparents didn’t have that kind of money, so he got scholarships. Not enough, though. He was paying his own way, too. He had jobs; he worked as the host at a local restaurant and at the university at the library.” Bitterly, Kennedy said, “I thought he needed those jobs to pay his tuition. Actually, he was using them to find his buyers, to keep in touch with his suppliers.”

“You said that you admired him.”

“I thought he was upright and honorable. I didn’t suspect a thing was out of place.” Kennedy seated himself, put on his shoes and tied them firmly, as if Brachler’s neck was in the knot.

She stood beside him and watched without seeing. Her voice was distant and reflective. “He has a different face now. But he has always lived in disguise—on the farm, in Chicago, at MIT. I wonder if even
he
knows who he is.”

“Venom is evil, using stealth and terror to kill. When you think of the drugs he pushes and the lives he has poisoned … I don’t even know why I’m surprised.”

“But Jimmy views himself in a glamorous light, a man who lived through the worst life could give him, a man who survived and thrived through intelligence, deception, and determination.” She almost sounded as if she admired him. “If he is a snake, he’s a coral snake, decorated with brilliant colors, and each movement is designed to distract from the real, deadly purpose.”

Kennedy was tired of her apparent fascination with that little shit James Brachler. “I can’t argue with your insights. But what I can say is—I don’t care how he views himself. He tried to kill my nephew. He tried to kidnap my sister. He penetrated and attempted to sabotage my corporation. I don’t want him captured. I don’t want him discredited. I don’t want him imprisoned. I want him
dead
.”

Fiercely, she replied, “Don’t kid yourself. I do, too. I understand the stakes. If he went to prison, it would be nothing more than a short, profitable recruiting expedition. He would be out in no time, and never again would you and I and your family be safe.” She put her hand on Kennedy’s shoulder as if to comfort him. “He’s not going to leave us alone.”

“No.” He glanced out the window. They had three hours until sunset. “We need to start the search now.”

“All right.” She hitched up his sweatpants. “I need to go to my apartment to get ready. So what’s he going to do next?”