Run From Fear (15 page)

“Holy mother of God,” he whispered, blood roaring in his ears as he saw Nate Brewster’s naked form, rippling with muscle and covered with tattoos, enter the frame.

And Talia, so small, her dark eyes wide with terror as
she lay in a naked heap on the floor, so heavily drugged she could barely move even as Nate pressed the glowing end of a cigarette against the tender skin of her breast.

But she could scream, loud, anguished, the sound of it ripping down Jack’s spine. Another scream joined Talia’s off camera—that would be Megan Flynn, trapped in the basement by that psycho Brewster.

Jack’s stomach cramped and he barely swallowed back a surge of vomit as he watched Nate’s arm come down on the screen, the blade of the hunting knife flashing as it made a diagonal slice across the skin of Talia’s back.

He turned from the screen and took two lurching steps toward Talia and grabbed the remote. He pressed at the buttons with shaking fingers.

The TV went silent as he pulled her into his arms and collapsed with her onto the couch. He was shaking and so was she.

He buried his head in the crook of her neck and squeezed his eyes shut, but the images were seared into his brain. Jesus. He’d been there for the aftermath, had been the one to wrap his coat around her naked body, had felt her blood soak his hands as he’d held his shirt over the stab wound in her abdomen until the paramedics arrived.

It had been bad, but he’d seen worse. Christ, he’d been a soldier for over a decade. He’d seen and suffered plenty of bullet wounds and shrapnel and had built up a tough skin when it came to witnessing violence.

But seeing Talia, witnessing her attack as it happened… it sent him reeling, spinning out into a black hole of memories he had no desire to go exploring.

Goddamn you, stop hurting her! You stop hurting her or I’ll fucking kill you!

The sound of his father’s palm hitting his mother’s face echoed across the room. He threw himself at the old man, landed a haymaker to the side of his head that sent his father staggering back. “Get out of here,” he yelled at his mother and his sister, Lizzy, who was crying in the corner. Lizzy sprinted for the front door and didn’t look back, but his mother heaved to her feet and screamed at him.

“Jack, stop!”

Jack turned to protest. “Mom—”

“Don’t you dare raise your hand to me, boy!” His father’s fist caught him full in the face, knocking him flat.

“You better apologize to your father.” He looked up into his mother’s bruised face, her eyes filled with fear as she watched his father.

The memory curdled his stomach and Jack forced it away, focusing on the woman in his arms.

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered, as much to himself as to her. “I’m here. I’m not leaving. I won’t let anything happen to you.” He pulled Talia closer, his arms so tight she squeaked, but still he couldn’t let her go.

Unlike the others, he could still save her.

I
have no idea how someone got ahold of the recording,” Talia explained to Officer Martinez, who had responded shortly after Jack had shown up. She sat at her small kitchen table nursing another cup of coffee Jack had forced on her, while he stood directly behind her.

Though he’d released her long enough to let the officer in, he hadn’t moved more than six inches from her side. And while the first frame of that recording had eliminated any desire she might have had about seeing where that kiss from Jack might lead, his warm, solid presence was the only thing keeping her from splintering into about a million pieces.

“I assume it was entered as evidence after”—Talia swallowed heavily—“after I was attacked, but David Maxwell had enough contacts in the police force for him or anyone in his organization to get ahold of it.”

“Even if it originated with someone in Maxwell’s organization,” Jack said wearily, “all it takes is a click of a button to send it across the world. Any whacko could have pulled it off the Internet. Who knows how many copies there are of that thing.”

The recording hadn’t surfaced in the two years since
the attack, and Talia had assumed it was in the bowels of the Seattle PD evidence locker. She should have known better. “But what about the note? Doesn’t that prove it’s someone who knows me?”

“No offense, Miss Vega,” Officer Martinez said, “but even though you’ve kept a relatively low profile, the press coverage that case garnered gave you a fair bit of notoriety. I’m sure there are lots of people who feel like they know you even if you don’t know them. And you said it just appeared in your purse?”

Talia shivered as she felt icy fingers trail up her spine. It could be anyone. She’d thought it was bad before, when she was in hiding from David Maxwell and his cohorts, knowing that to show her face meant certain death. At least with David she knew the identity of her personal monster.

This was worse, the idea that someone was lurking, wanting to terrify her, maybe planning to harm her, like an evil shadow that darkened every corner of her life. “Yes. Someone slipped it in there sometime today, either when I was at the gym or at the restaurant. Those are the only times my purse was out of my sight.”

Jack’s hands came up to curve around her shoulders, and the tension in his fingers told her he was wondering the same thing. While they were sparring, while he was kissing her, at that very moment was some sick fuck slipping the DVD into her bag? Or was it later, while she was at the restaurant, alternately annoyed at Jack for not calling and mooning over him in fantasies about having something resembling a normal relationship with him?

Whenever, however it was done, it had served its purpose, terrifying her, bringing up all the pain and fear of
the past. A vivid reminder of who she was, what she’d been, and why she would never, ever be able to let her guard down.

Why she was too broken to be with any man, even one as strong as Jack.

“I’ll need to take the DVD with me,” the officer said. “We’ll check it for fingerprints and have our techs analyze it to see if they can pull any information from it.”

“What kind of information?” Talia asked as the officer covered his hand in a latex glove and retrieved the disk from the player.

“Honestly, I’m not up on all the particulars, but I think they can figure out if it’s a duplicate copy, if it was downloaded from a website, that kind of stuff.”

“If it’s different from the original, they’ll be able to tell that too.”

“Sounds like you know all about it,” the cop said.

“I work in security,” Jack said, and handed the cop his card. He said it casually, but the subtext was unmistakable.
I know what I’m doing just in case you don’t, and I’ll be all over your ass if you fuck this up.

The cop studied the card and gave Jack a once-over. “Probably not a bad guy to keep around until this blows over,” he said to Talia.

Talia forced herself up and managed to walk the cop to the door.

“I’m sure we’ll have more questions,” he said.

“I’ll help any way that I can.”
Anything to make this stop.

She shut the door behind the officer and slid the dead bolt home, its metallic thud echoing through the room.

She turned to find Jack a few feet behind her, propping
himself on the back of the couch. His face was grim as he studied her.

How odd that only a few hours ago, she’d been stewing over the fact that he hadn’t called her after that shocker of a kiss. Now he was here in her living room, apparently with no plans to go anywhere anytime soon.

What would have made her night hours before now had her as jumpy as a drop of water on a hot skillet. “You don’t have to stay, you know. I’ll be fine, with the lock on and the new alarm system.” She walked back to the kitchen and busied herself loading the empty coffee mugs into the dishwasher. “I feel like such an asshole now, giving you and Ben such a hard time about upgrading.” She’d never been much of a nervous babbler, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself as Jack continued to study her without a word, his gaze so intense it was like a hand rushing over her body. “When you talk to him, you’ll have to thank him for me because this definitely makes me feel better about staying alone—”

“In what universe do you think I’d ever leave you alone after that?”

Talia turned to face him as something that felt a lot like relief washed through her. No getting around it, she’d sleep a lot better knowing a big, strong, ex–Special Forces badass was in the house with her.

Okay, maybe not any Special Forces badass. Just Jack.

Yet the thought of him being under the roof of her small house after what had happened earlier today…“Really, I don’t want you to put yourself out any more than you have,” she said, wincing at the way she sounded like a broken record.

“Just stop,” Jack said, holding up a silencing hand as
he crossed the small living room into the kitchen. “To be crystal clear, I’m not getting more than ten feet away from you until we catch the asshole who’s doing this.”

Part of her wanted to throw herself at his feet and thank him for, once again, taking care of her. Yet she still rankled at the idea that she needed to be saved, that once again she needed to depend on him, that she would have another obligation to add to the pile of unpaid debts she already owed. “What about work? You’re here on assignment. How are you supposed to protect your clients if you’re stuck trailing after me?”

“I’ll figure out something.”

“I don’t know Danny that well, but there’s no way this will go over well with him.”

Jack shrugged and took off his suit jacket to drape it over a kitchen chair. “Let me worry about Danny. He might get pissed, but he’ll understand. I can’t let anything happen to you again. Jesus, seeing you like that…”

Talia saw it then, the crack in his no-nonsense armor, the trauma in his eyes that mirrored her own as he remembered the horrific images. He raked his hand through his hair, and as he did, she saw it was shaking.

He squeezed his eyes shut and when they opened again, they were once again cool, steady. Determined. “Nothing is more important to me than keeping you safe, got it? And if that means pissing off my friends or even losing work over it, tough shit.”

She swallowed hard and blinked back the sting of tears. It was just stress, she told herself. Someone wanted to terrify her—and was succeeding—so why wouldn’t she deserve a good cry?

But it was more than that, and she knew it. This was
all new for her, having someone want to look out for her, having someone tell her she was important to them. Having someone like Jack put everything in his life on hold just to help her didn’t and would never make sense to her.

Are you forgetting what happened this morning? I think someone finally showed his true colors.

As though reading her mind, Jack said, “I don’t want you to worry about what happened earlier today. It was completely inappropriate and unfair of me to do that to you.”

“Unfair how?”

His dark brows knit as though he was surprised by the question. “After everything you’ve been through, for me to put you in that kind of position where you might feel obligated to—” He broke off, and Talia wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light, but he might actually be blushing.

“To fuck you out of some sense of gratitude or obligation?” she asked, her own face hot.

“Exactly,” Jack ground out. “Especially since I know there’s no way in hell you could ever return the sentiment.”

After this morning, she wasn’t so sure that was true. And it rankled that he thought she was so damaged, so broken that she could never recover enough to ever give a man another chance.

Yet, as the images from the DVD drifted back through her head, she had to admit that even if she hadn’t regressed all the way back to the terror-filled weeks and months after the attack when she’d been forced into hiding, seeing herself like that was a serious step back in whatever healing she’d managed.

“There’s been some stuff building and for a second, it slipped out of my control. But I don’t want you to worry
about it. I’ve got a handle on it, and nothing like that will happen again.”

Some perverse part of her wanted to ask, exactly, how he planned to handle it. Take matters into his own hands, as it were?

Or find someone else to help take the edge off? He wouldn’t have to look far.

A twist of jealousy she had no right to feel settled in her stomach at the thought.

But the fear-induced adrenaline rush was quickly wearing off, sapping her of energy and leaving her too tired to do any verbal sparring tonight. “I’m not worried,” she said finally, and then covered her mouth to hide a jaw-cracking yawn. “You can sleep in the spare room. It’s just a twin bed, so sorry if it’s a little small.”

“I’ll be fine. You get some sleep.”

Her eyes drooped and her lips pulled into a smile. “You know, with you here I think I actually might.”

Jack wished he could say the same. He watched Talia’s retreating back until she disappeared up the stairs. When he heard the door of her bedroom click closed, he breathed a sigh of relief. His face relaxed now that he didn’t have to conceal everything he was feeling.