Seeing Red (15 page)

He brought her fingers to his lips and brushed a kiss across them. Certainly an act of fealty, not romance. “You gave me my life. The least I can do is protect yours.”

She sat transfixed, relishing the feel of his warm breath on her fingers.

Then she blinked and rationality edged back into her thoughts. His sentiments were noble, tempting even. But she couldn’t afford to get used to someone else looking out for her—especially not someone who was going to be gone in a few days.

She reclaimed her hand. “Are you going to hang around protecting me forever?”

She meant it to sound facetious, a call back to reality. But the look in his eye remained dead serious.

“Until I know he’s no longer a threat to you, yes.”

“And you think he’s a threat to me?”

He raised a dark brow. “Why are you running around in the dark with a gun if
you
don’t?”

“I’m always careful. It doesn’t have anything to do with Alexander being on parole.”

“Good to hear. But, if I may point out, tonight you could have been in real trouble.”

“I wouldn’t have been out there at all if you’d let me know what you were doing instead of sneaking around in the dark.”

He tilted his head and drilled her with a pointed stare. “But you
thought
it was Alexander.”

Hard to argue that one. She redirected, “What is it you do, Nate Vance, that you can pick up and come here to protect me indefinitely?”

“I have lots of flexibility in my work.” He didn’t offer further explanation.

“I see.” Then she realized she hadn’t asked the most pertinent question yet. “How did you get inside the complex?”

He grinned. “Boat down the river and through the marsh. That little fence is only good for keeping gators out.”

“Where are you staying, with Mr. J?”

“Part of the flexibility in my work depends on discretion, on no one knowing much about me or where I happen to be. So the less anyone knows the better—for everyone.” He slid forward in his seat, reaching out to run a finger down her cheek. “So, please, no more questions. Just let me make sure you’re safe.”

She closed her eyes, soaking in the feel of his finger against her skin, wanting to draw so much more from his simple touch of friendship.

When she realized what she was doing, her eyes snapped open and she leaned away from his touch.

With a dismissive chuckle, she said, “Well you don’t have to stand around out there all night long smoking in the dark to do it.”

He sat up straighter and glanced toward the sliding door. “Smoking?”

“Yeah, I saw your cigarette last night.”

“I wasn’t in Belle Island until very early this morning.”

“You weren’t?” Her skin felt clammy all of a sudden.

He looked grim when he turned off the lamp and got up. “You’re sure you saw someone out there?”

“Yes.” The taste the tea left in her mouth turned cloyingly sweet. “I called security, but they didn’t find anyone.”

Keeping himself to the side, out of sight, he looked out the sliding glass door. He pointed. “There, under the big tree?”

“Yes,” she said. “Right where I saw you tonight.”

His voice was tight when he said, “I wasn’t under the tree.”

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

N
ate kept to the deepest shadows as he searched the grounds around Ellis’s condo. He supposed he should feel some satisfaction in predicting Alexander’s move correctly. In normal circumstances—in his job—he would. Eliminating the threat would be that much easier. But the fact that Ellis was the target tweaked something inside him.

The way he felt when close to her had taken him by surprise. Of course, he’d known she’d grown up. He’d seen it for himself. But, sweet Jesus, he’d had no idea he’d find himself this drawn to her. He’d given in to the urge to kiss her cool, trembling fingers. And he hadn’t wanted to stop there.

They’d been friends before. In fact, she hadn’t known it, but she’d been the closest friend he had in Belle Island. And the way he’d left . . . Well, he’d expected his departure to kill any fondness she held for him—and certainly to obliterate her unshakable trust in him.

But when he’d looked in her eyes, he’d seen it, there behind the maturity, beyond the distance time had put between them. The trust, the fondness was all still there.

Unfortunately, he didn’t deserve one iota of her trust, and certainly not a scrap of affection—not after what his life had turned into.

He lived in a shadow world populated with liars and thieves, misfits and outcasts. It was a world that was dangerous and cruel.

He’d lived with liars for so long, he hardly knew how to deal with the truth. And he’d learned to lie with the best of them. Truth, he’d discovered, was an overrated commodity, one that had no value in his world.

He’d never given himself over to long, soul-searching thought about the lies and their purposes. Life was what it was, certainly not what he’d intended it to be. The essence of the peculiar dance his existence had become boiled down to two things: power and money. Since money bought power, it trumped all else. Truth never got so much as a fingernail hold in the equation.

But Ellis, sweet Ellis. Her spirit was pure and true. She taught children. She gentled horses. She worked to keep young girls safe. Her life was honesty and goodness. He could not let his life follow him here. He could not sully her goodness with his tainted touch or the dark stain of his affection.

He looked up at her living room door. He’d left her there holding her gun, with orders to shoot anything that came through a door or window while he was gone. She handled the weapon like someone trained, but her revulsion to it was clear. Another testament to her innate goodness; even when threatened, her humanity won out.

The lights in her condo remained off, the sliding glass door nothing but a reflective panel of black. But he could sense her there, feel her looking out into the night, searching for him. Her champion.

He couldn’t fail her the way he’d failed Laura.

He moved on.
Focus,
he thought. Focus on what he’d come here to do.

Underneath the oak where Ellis had seen the movement that had drawn her out earlier, he searched the ground with his penlight. There were no discarded cigarette butts. But there was evidence someone had indeed spent a good amount of time there. The few sprouts of weeds were flattened and broken. Feet had shuffled in the pine straw until there was a bare spot. This sandy, loamy soil didn’t hold an impression, so he couldn’t tell anything about the size of the person.

It didn’t really matter. Only one person would have any reason to be sneaking around here two nights in a row.

The question was, had Alexander fled? Or was he still hanging around?

Nate kept himself concealed as much as possible as he systematically searched the area. He hoped that if Alexander was here, he could still surprise him.

An hour later, he completed his circuit. He hadn’t turned up any other signs of the man. Nate’s opinion that the “security” in this place was a joke had intensified when he’d poked around the gatehouse for at least five minutes and never aroused so much as a glance up from the guard reading the newspaper.

Alexander had most likely entered the complex the same way Nate had, over the fence somewhere on the perimeter bordering the wetlands. But truthfully, it wouldn’t have taken much to get through the front gate unseen.

Had Alexander been scared off? Or had he still been out here watching when Nate was in Ellis’s living room?

That question bred another. Would Alexander recognize him? Not likely. It’d be best if the man didn’t put two and two together.

Nate needed to remain a ghost in this town.

After Greg left Ellis’s, he’d driven to the beach and waited for darkness. She hadn’t let him leave until he’d had himself under control. He was grateful for her patience. But now, as he sat in the lonely dark many hours later, the avalanche of pain once again overtook him.

How was it that the years did nothing to dull his grief? He vacillated between resentment and envy over Jodi’s ability to close off that part of her life, to lose herself in the bliss of denial. How would it feel to close his eyes at night and
not
see Laura’s broken and unconscious body caught in that breakwater? To not see her wet hair tangled and matted over her bruised and swollen face?

To not have rage continually simmering just beneath the surface of his skin?

People thought he chased risk for pleasure. No one knew the dark truth; he did the dangerous in secret hope that it would end the pain.

Finally, he started the Corvette and drove slowly past the old house, the place that held the last happy moments of his life—and the most horrific. It had been Jodi’s idea to move. She’d made the decision the day they’d moved Laura to Garden Grove, a place where human beings who’d lost everything that made them human were stored—where they waited for death to complete its course.

For a long while, he sat on the street in front of the house. He tried to bathe himself in the good memories, the birthdays and Christmases. But his mind always circled back around to the morning his world was slung out of its orbit, shooting into vapid darkness, away from all light and warmth.

He started the car and drove out of town. It was late enough that the roads were deserted. He wound the engine too tight, never shifting until well into the red line. He pushed the Corvette too fast around curves, driving without purpose through the night.

After some time, a plan started to form in his mind.

He drove home, and for the first time in days, he slept.

Ellis kept watch out the windows as Nate searched outside. He was good. Even with the knowledge he was out there, she couldn’t see him moving around.

Just another nugget to make her wonder what he’d been up to these past years. He’d been in South America. South America always brought drug cartels to mind. That fact shifted the odds from fifty-fifty to eighty-twenty in favor of Nate being on the wrong side of the law.

Try as she might, she just couldn’t see him in a ruthless, lawless role. Was she being totally naïve, still seeing him through the trusting eyes of a besotted teen?

She’d like to think she was more clearheaded than that. Besides, she was a firm believer that a person didn’t change his basic makeup. A good person didn’t turn evil. Circumstances could harden him, life choices could shift his outlook, but what was deep inside remained the same.

Going into the kitchen, she looked out the window at the grounds on the back side of the building. She studied the shadows and contours until her vision blurred. No sign of Nate.

The weight of the gun in her hand didn’t give her much security.

Nate had been right. Never pull a gun if you don’t intend to fire. It was one of the first things she’d learned in her self-defense class at the shooting range—and the reason she’d never kept a gun in her possession. The sensation of a bullet exploding from the chamber was so violent, she’d barely been able to pull the trigger when aiming at a paper target. She certainly couldn’t count on herself to do better against a living, breathing being, aggressor or not. That being the case, the risk of handing over the weapon to the attacker outweighed the benefit—and it was exactly what she’d done with Nate a short while ago.

Of course, she’d justified her hesitation; what if it had been Mr. Breese? She couldn’t shoot first and identify the person later. And, of course, Nate’s superior skill at disarming her had made that hesitation seem much greater than it was. In the end, that’s all it had been, justification.

She went back to the living room, shifting the gun from one hand to the other, wiping her palms on her shorts. As she looked back at the tree across the street, a thought occurred to her. Rory had vowed to protect her. Security would let him enter without question. Had it been him beneath that tree?

She thought of the rose and his ambiguous denial. If it had been, had his purpose been to protect? Or to frighten her into thinking she needed him?

No. She was being ridiculous. For one thing, Rory had quit smoking after his dad had been diagnosed with lung cancer over two years ago—

A knock sounded at her door, and she nearly dropped the revolver.

“It’s Nate.”

She checked the peephole before opening up and letting him in.

He stopped her as she reached for the light switch. “Leave it off.”

“Find anything?” she asked.

He shook his head. “But you were right. Somebody has been under that tree recently. We have to assume it was Alexander.”

She nearly mentioned her wild thought that it could have been Rory, but she didn’t want to open the subject of her relationship with him. Nate was right; they had to assume it was Alexander. If it had been Rory, there wouldn’t be any danger anyway.

“Now what?” she asked.

He looked down at her. Her eyes were well adjusted to the dim moonlight in the room. It was easy to see the transformation as the hard, determined look on his face softened.