Betrayed by a Kiss (19 page)

“You’re not making any sense.” Dane didn’t even recognize this man. “This is about my wife and child.”

“Yeah.” Joe was breathing heavily now. “Don’t mourn Alice. She wasn’t worth it. Believe me. She was going to take Elizabeth from you and disappear, letting you think they’d both died.”

“What? No. I don’t believe you.” But he did, and it killed him.

“I was doing my best,” Joe said.

His best. Hadn’t Dane been telling himself much the same thing these last two years? His breath left his body in a ragged exhale as he tried to forgive his friend. WE had destroyed Joe’s life, too, and because Dane couldn’t believe his ex-partner would kill him, the moment suddenly became about saving Joe. Putting him on the right path again. He tried once more.

“Put the gun down, Joe. I’m not hunting you. I want the man that killed Alice. Help me get
that
son of a bitch.”

Instead of lowering the gun, Joe stepped closer and snapped a silencer onto its muzzle. “I didn’t want anything to do with Whitman, but he gave me no choice.” He spoke conversationally, glancing over his shoulder, assuring himself they were alone. His face was clear of agitation. “When Alice died, everyone fell into line. No one was willing to risk what happened to you. Whitman rules by fear and extortion. Every time we obey, he has one more thing on us. He made a tape…” He shook his head, stopping himself. “He gets you, holds things over you. There’s no end. I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

He didn’t look sorry. He looked resigned. “Prove it. Help me.”

“He’s going to kill you, Dane. I’d prefer it wasn’t me who pulled the trigger. Tell me where Marnie Somerville is. Where are the files?”

“It’s not too late for you, Joe.”

“It is. He has an army of powerful people on his payroll, and even more muscle ready to step into my shoes should I fail.”

“For every bad cop or judge, there’s plenty more that are good.”

“That hasn’t helped you.” Joe shrugged. “Dane, I’m his right-hand man at the precinct. It’s been my safety net, and yours. Without me, you’d have been dead two years now. But you’ve gone too far and even I can’t help you.”

Dane didn’t think he had any more time. Joe looked ready to pull the trigger. “I have his files. Decrypted this time.”

“The woman was here, then. Still here?” He took a quick breath, looking beyond Dane. “I guess this is it, then.”

Thoughts of Elizabeth, Harper, and Marnie and how they’d feel if he died gave Dane the strength to push aside pride. “Don’t.” It was the only word he could force past his lips.

“Whitman would torture the information from you. I’m doing you a favor.” The gun trembled in Joe’s hand, but this was the moment. Dane had no doubt.

Movement behind Joe grabbed Dane’s attention. Joe noticed and turned as Marnie swung a fire extinguisher at his head. Joe collapsed. Dane lunged forward, ripping the extinguisher from her hands before she could hit Joe a third time. Marnie’s eyes were wild. Her chest heaved, and her hands shook.

“We need him alive, dammit.” He’d have information. He pressed his fingers to his ex-partner’s neck and felt a pulse. Assured he was alive, Dane threw Joe over his shoulder. They’d have visitors soon. “We’re bringing him.”

Marnie’s shock equaled her fury, but after a brief hesitation, she ran back to Whitman’s office without a word. Dane followed at a fast clip and arrived at the balcony as she balanced the long rope on the railing.

“Prop him against the railing. We’ll tie the rope around his waist,” she said. Dane kept him steady as Marnie tied a slipknot. Joe hung on the railing, his head over the side. When Marnie grabbed Joe’s pant legs near his ankles, Dane was curious. When she tugged them chest height and threw Joe over the side, he lunged to save him and missed.

“Shit.” He leaned over the railing, trying to see in the shadows below. Were the guards awake yet? Did they notice?

“Stop worrying,” Marnie whispered. “People like him have nine lives.”

She donned leather gloves, took hold of the taut rope, and jumped over the edge, swiftly repelling down the three floors. Dane followed suit, descending an instant later, stopped from reaching the ground by Joe, who was swinging a foot above the ground. Dane landed on his feet next to him. He wasn’t looking forward to the interrogation ahead.

Marnie tugged and snapped the rope, which released this particular type of knot’s hold on the balcony’s railing. Joe dropped to the ground with a thump. Their twenty minutes were up, and the guards in the booths would be waking soon, so Dane made quick work of helping Marnie gather up the rope and tuck it into the duffel.

Dane threw Joe over his shoulder again and ran across the parking lot to their hidden van. Marnie unlocked it and opened the sliding door, stepping aside to allow Dane to lay Joe inside. After patting Joe down, dismantling his phone, she made quick work with a roll of silver duct tape and secured Joe’s wrists and ankles. She then hopped into the van.

“You drive.” She used her burner phone to call someone, impatiently waiting for the line to connect as Dane sat behind the wheel. “I have a guy I need to put on ice.” He saw her distance the phone from her ear, cringing as the person reamed her out. Dane could fully sympathize with whoever was on the other end of the line. He wanted to wring Marnie’s neck for putting herself in danger in Whitman’s office.

Dane put the van into gear and then drove away, clamping down on his emotions as the call continued. He turned the headlights on only when he was sure they couldn’t be seen from the security booths. Someone—he assumed Smith was on the other end of the line—wasn’t happy, but Dane was so dazed by his new reality, he found it hard to care. When the curses wound down, Marnie pressed the cell back to her ear. “I’ll explain—” She was interrupted, but what she heard took much of the stress off her face. “The regular place.” She hung up, typed something into the computer linked to the security server, and then shut the laptop down. “Pull over there.”

He found a safe spot and did as she asked. “We have to talk.” He had to have it out with her about her behavior back at the office or his head would explode.

“Later. Please.” They switched places, leaving her in the driver’s seat and Dane in the back of the van. “I know where we’re going, and I think it’s best if you keep an eye on this asshole. I need to think, and I can’t even look at him.” She pulled back into traffic with barely a delay.

Dane balanced on his haunches, studying his ex-partner and friend. Joe looked like shit. The damage she’d done to his head was extensive. He was bleeding everywhere, and the mess on the floor in the offices wouldn’t go unnoticed. Dropping him off the balcony—sure, he didn’t hit the ground, but that rope probably broke a rib or two when it caught him. “What the hell were you thinking?” Dane forced himself not to yell, but he wanted to. He wanted to vent all over Marnie’s ass.

Marnie glanced in the rearview to meet his gaze before turning her attention back to the road. She was angry, too. “Are you talking to me, or him?”

“You.”

“Which part?”

“Three floors. You could have killed him.” And it would have been a straightforward, bald-faced homicide. If anyone was going to kill Joe, it would be Dane. Once and for all, they had to have it out. Marnie was not allowed to risk her life or liberty for him. It was unacceptable. He could not allow it.

“He’s alive, isn’t he?” She was looking defensive, but her rage fairly crackled about her. “He would have killed you.”

He remembered the look on Joe’s face just before Marnie hit him. Yeah. Joe was going to kill him. “Maybe. But he could have killed you, too. I told you to leave, to get out of the building. You had what we came for. You had no right to jeopardize your safety or the operation. Hell, Marnie, if he’d turned a moment sooner, you could have been the one bleeding on the floor. Dead. What were you thinking?”

“At least I was thinking. You stayed to confront Folsom.”

“He has intel.”

“We have all the intel we need. You wanted him to convince you he wasn’t the evil fuck he turned out to be. He came right out and told you who he is. You risked both our lives because you didn’t want to believe him.” Was that hurt he saw in her eyes?

Dane forced himself to consider her words. “He said he and Alice were lovers.” He caught her eye. “He said the kidnapping was Alice’s idea.” Yeah, maybe she was partially right. But he was right, too. “We have a witness now, a confession. If I’d left with you, we’d have neither.”

“He’s a liar. The files will tell us the truth.” She was mad at him. “You had no right to risk your life like that. You have a daughter.”

“I thought I should try to save him.” He studied Joe’s face, swollen and smeared with blood, and searched for evidence of evil. Dane only saw his friend in trouble. “I still want to save him, but now it’s from me. I want to kill him.”

“Stop thinking about it.” Marnie bit her lip, glancing at him over her shoulder.

He couldn’t. Every time he thought of Marnie inches away from Joe, armed only with a fire extinguisher, his heart clutched and it was hard to swallow. It made him want to punch something. “You can’t do that to me again. Promise, Marnie. The next time I say run, you run. Can you do that?” He wanted to put her in a plastic bubble, like he did to Elizabeth and Harper, but Marnie wasn’t like them. He had to rely on her well-honed sense of self-preservation to keep her alive, and it wasn’t enough for him.

“Like you ran when I begged you at the cabin?”

“That’s different.”

She sighed impatiently. “Of course it was. Because all this is your fault, right? You’re the only one that deserves to take risks.”

“I don’t think that.”

“You act that way, but it’s Folsom’s fault. Whitman gave the orders, Folsom carried them out. That we know.”

“He needs a hospital.” Joe was still out cold, but the bleeding from the cut on his forehead had stopped.

“We need him to disappear.”

Dane forced himself to be dispassionate about his ex-partner, to see him as an asset rather than the open wound he was, because now was not the time to grieve. They were still in the trenches. “I need him talking or he’s useless to me.”

“If they discover we have him, it’s tantamount to telling Whitman we know everything. Who knows how he’ll react? We can’t chance it. Our first priority has to be decrypting these files and giving them to the authorities.”

“So no hospital and no turning him in to the police.”

“It would require lengthy explanations and confessions on our part. Too many variables.”

He thought about what she said. “Disappear him. I’m not bringing him to the farmhouse.” Joe wasn’t getting anywhere near his family.

“Of course not!” Marnie glanced at him over her shoulder and then turned back to watch the road. “Never let anyone know about the farmhouse. Not now, not ever. Where would you go if you had to bug out?”

He marveled at her assumption that people needed a bug-out place. She was a survival machine. He loved that about her. “What do you have in mind?”

“I know someone who will keep Folsom safe until he can’t screw up our plans.”

“Who is this someone? Caleb Smith?”

“It’s better if you don’t know.” So, yeah. Caleb Smith.

“For who?” When she didn’t respond, his impatience bubbled over. “You’re one big secret. When will you begin to trust me?”

She glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “You trust people. How’s that working for you?”

Dane sat next to Joe, pushing computer cables aside to get more comfortable. He’d trusted this man completely, like a brother. “Just say it,” he said. “I’m a fool.” Marnie took a curve tightly, forcing him to steady himself against the van’s wall.

“You’re a good man. You want to believe others are good.”

“You think that’s a weakness.”

“It’s a luxury.” She was gripping the wheel so tightly her knuckles were white. “I do trust you, Dane. With my life. It’s just—if it was my secret to tell, I’d tell you.”

“You’re protecting your friends.” Everything was upside-down. The man he’d thought he could trust with his life, whom he thought of like a brother, turned out to be the man who’d destroyed it. The woman who worked for the company that destroyed his world was helping him to piece it together again. And he loved her.

“I’m trying to protect
you
.” Her words were said under her breath, as if she feared they were unwelcome. They were. She was trying to
save
him. Once again. Was this the extent of Marnie’s ability to connect with him? Was she even capable of loving him?

Dane buried his face in his hands, wondering how he was supposed to explain Joe’s betrayal to Harper and Elizabeth. They weren’t like Marnie. They wouldn’t shrug this off and blame it on human nature. He feared its lasting effect on his family. How could they trust anyone ever again?

As the van swerved and bumped along the road, Dane kept his eyes on Joe and realized…
they just would
. He and his family would get past the kidnapping, past Alice’s murder, Joe’s betrayal—they’d find closure and move on. It wouldn’t be easy, but they’d do it, because no other path led to happiness.

He turned away from Joe and admired how Marnie expertly drove the van through the narrow streets of Manchester. Her accomplishments never failed to impress him.
She
impressed him. And she trusted him with her life. That had to mean she loved him. Right?

He’d make her see it. He’d make her love him. Dane refused to lose her, too.

But first…he had a company to destroy.

Chapter Seventeen

Marnie drove north for a half an hour in relative silence. There were a million things she wanted to say to Dane, but none of them could be said in front of Folsom, and the ass was awake. And furious. He was on the van’s floor, complaining. Gagged, kicking, and carrying on best he could while duct-taped, the man was a nuisance. But he was alive. Something he wouldn’t be if she dropped the bomb she’d been carrying since she saw him with Whitman at the office. Folsom had killed Alice, and Dane was the only one in the van who didn’t know.

The turn was just ahead; an obscured dirt road leading to the drop-off. She drove exactly a quarter mile in, nervous and covered in flop sweat. When she parked in the clearing just off the road, she purposefully didn’t look into the thick expanse of trees surrounding them. Best not to have faces to ID, lest those faces saw you as a threat to their well-being.

Marnie had been purposefully vague about her plans for Folsom. Dane was the loyal type. This betrayal hit him hard, but Folsom had been his best friend forever. It would go against Dane’s nature to abandon him. Well, Marnie wasn’t going to allow his better angels to be wasted on this piece of shit. No good would come from it.

When Dane eventually discovered Folsom had murdered Alice, a clarity of purpose would take him over and there’d be no saving either man. Dane would kill Folsom, and the universe being the bitch that she was, he’d get caught and spend the rest of his life in jail. Elizabeth would lose her father. Totally unacceptable. If Folsom was going to die, someone else had to do it. Not Dane.

Caleb’s men would put him in the right locker, the one where live people took a vacation until they were no longer a glitch in a grift. When next Folsom saw the light of day, everything would be over. Dane would know what Folsom had done but have no access to him. She didn’t suppose Dane was going to thank her for taking this decision out of his hands, but Marnie would be long gone by the time he realized what she’d done.

She turned off the headlights, hating the pitch black outside the windshield. She found it ominous, and threatening. “Folsom will be safe with these people, held for a price. When everything’s over, when you want him back, we hand over a fee and Folsom will be delivered exactly where you want him—your front door or the steps of the Manchester Police Department. It’s your call.” She’d emptied Folsom’s pockets earlier and found thousands of dollars in his wallet, his phone, keys, nothing much more. She hopped into the back of the van, hunkered down next to Folsom, and put the cash into his coat pocket.

“We might need that,” Dane said.

“He’ll need it more.” Marnie opened the sliding side door, pressed both of her feet against Folsom’s body, and shoved him out. He landed with a grunt. She slammed the door closed and then hurried back behind the wheel. Lights on, Marnie revved the engine, peeled out, did a three-point turn, imagining dirt and stones kicking up from the tires, dusting the evil son of a bitch.

Dane watched through the rear window as Folsom’s inert body was swallowed by the dark. Shoulders bowed, Dane didn’t look like a guy who’d won the day. He seemed defeated and she hated that.

“This is the right thing to do,” she said. “We don’t have time to babysit the guy, and if he somehow got news to his boss we have the files, who knows what kind of heat would come raining on us? We’re under the radar now. I want to stay that way until we’re done.”

“Joe said Whitman Enterprises was one of many. That Whitman has a boss.”

“Not my monkeys, not my circus.”

He hopped into shotgun, holding onto the dashboard to keep himself steady as she sped over ruts and roots along the way. “Why did you leave the money?”

“So they won’t kill him.”

His eyes widened. “Good to know.”

“You want to question him. So he needs to live.” She glanced at him. “You need him to live.”

“I want to see those files before we do anything with them. How long will it take to decrypt them? Can I pull them up on one of these computers?”

“No.” She wasn’t ready to face Dane knowing the full truth.

“Why?”

“Not here. We’re in the open.”

“When? How long will it take?”

“Soon. And not long.” It was almost over. She refused to think of what that meant for her. Personally. So much good and so much bad mixed together, it would take years to process her decisions and figure out if she’d made the right ones. She had no more excuses to be with him. It was time to fix everyone else’s lives that she’d touched while working at WE, and Dane needed to start building a new life with his family.

She hit a particularly deep rut. Dane winced as he braced himself. “At WE. I told you to go. Why did you come back for me?” he said.

That was a million-dollar question.
When their time clock expired, the twenty minutes were up, instincts and training screamed run. So she ran. Marnie of a few years ago would have kept going. Now, she couldn’t imagine leaving him. She loved him.

Dane was staring, reminding her he’d asked her a question and
shut up
wasn’t the answer he was looking for. She felt defensive and vulnerable. It was one thing to know her feelings and fears and another to reveal them. “What do you want me to say?”

“Something.” He had an agenda. She could see it in the set of his jaw and the intent way he was focusing on her.

She had to protect herself, so she deflected. “Here’s something. You’re sitting there, alive, with all the evidence you could possibly need to bring down Whitman’s world. You’re welcome.” His confusion was marked. She didn’t blame him. Marnie was sure if she were normal, she’d know exactly what was expected of her in this conversation, but she wasn’t, and what she
wanted
to say had no business being said. She didn’t belong with someone like Dane, and he’d figure that out sooner or later. From experience, Marnie knew sooner hurt less. “Listen. It’s over. I’ll drop you off at the farmhouse, and you’ll never see me again.”

He dismissed her words with a shake of his head. “It’s not over. I’m going to need to speak with Joe. After I hand in the files.”

“I’ll contact you.”

“Pull over,” he said.

“We have to—”

“Just pull over!”

Marnie flinched as Dane’s booming voice filled the cabin. She checked the rearview and saw they were alone on the road. It was near midnight, and she was too tired to fight. She drove into a parking lot of a closed bike shop, stopping as far from the building as possible in case they had active security cameras.

“What?” She threw her head back and closed her eyes. If he tried to break through her protective shell, she’d dissolve before his eyes. She needed to hold everything in—the fear, the sorrow, wishful thinking, hell, her unrequited love. She and Dane were never going to play house in a white-picket-fence community and pop out two-point-five kids and adopt a poodle. Things like that didn’t happen for Marnie.

“Look at me.” He lifted her across the seat onto his lap and kissed her. She welcomed his heat, his arms around her. Before she could stop herself, tears overflowed. His tenderness had her chin quivering. He wiped her cheek, but more tears replaced them. “Talk to me. I’m here, Marnie. Why can’t you let me in?”

She took a breath, but it sounded like a sob. She wanted to tell him she was fine, let’s go, but instead she rested her head on his chest and allowed him to hold her and to caress her back. “I don’t know how,” she said, “without being afraid. So I don’t.”

He dropped a kiss on her forehead, and it made her feel cherished. She hated how much she’d come to need him, despite knowing they had no future. She wasn’t enough, and there was no changing that. How could she remake herself when the raw material of who she was had become so implacable? No move to some different locale, no purchased identity would change who she was. She was damaged, and that didn’t wash off.

“Do you trust me?” he said.

Marnie could count on one hand the people she trusted. That she trusted Dane said a lot about the man. “Who wouldn’t? You’re a damned hero.”

He squeezed her. “A fool.”

Wiping her tears, she scowled. “Stop. You were betrayed. That’s not on you.”

“He wouldn’t have fooled you.” His smile was sad as he pushed a lock of hair off her cheek. “How do you do that? How do you keep yourself safe like that? It’s as if you’re untouchable. Shit storms come and go, but you stay steady, bulletproof.”

That wasn’t her. He didn’t know her. “No one is bulletproof.”

“No. I guess not.” He pulled her back into his embrace. “But your defenses are so strong it sometimes seems that way. What happened to you, Marnie? Who made you this way?”

She wanted him to know her. On some level, she’d needed it since the first moment she saw him over Skype. In the middle of nowhere, nearing midnight, it felt as if they were separate from the world and not obliged to cater to its sensibilities. There would never be a better time or place to share her sordid story with him, and maybe this time her weakness wouldn’t hurt her.

“My mom’s an addict. She started on heroin, ended on crack. She’s in recovery, day by day, but that’s relatively recent. She spent her life hooking to chase her next fix. Having a kid didn’t change that. Then one day when I was eight, she disappeared, abandoning me at a flophouse. I know now that I was lucky she forgot about me. She could have made a mint pimping me out.” MacLain’s hand stopped rubbing her back. His breath stilled. Whatever he’d expected her to say, she guessed that wasn’t it. “I lived there, ignored mostly, until it was all I knew. My life became about hiding in plain sight, stealing food. Then I fell into a gang of kids, and they sort of took care of me. Not many of them are still alive—ODs, gangs whittled us down to a few. Caleb is one of them. He didn’t hide as well as me. He was always getting hurt protecting someone or other. By the time we met, he was recovering from a particularly brutal attack. A group of us left the house soon after.”

“How old were you?”

“Ten, maybe? I don’t know. We met a guy that showed us how to pick pockets, and the rest, well, that came easy. We decided it was easier to hide if we didn’t have to duck from social services, so we cleaned up and blended.”

“You went to school. I saw your high school yearbook.”

Marnie pulled out of his arms, studying his expression. “You did a background check on me?”

He rubbed his thumb across her lower lip. “I googled you.”

“Planted information.” She licked where he touched.

“It was a good picture,” Dane said. “Your favorite teacher was Mrs. Mountford?”

He wanted to kiss her, she could tell, and she found an answering want inside. Marnie wiped her cheeks dry. “If I was to have a favorite teacher, I’m positive her name would be Mrs. Mountford.”

“So none of it is real.” He lowered his forehead to hers, and his breath warmed her face. “I’ve never met anyone like you.”

There were plenty like her in the world. Just not in his world. “Trust no one. Make a living.” His lips were so close. All it would take would be a lift of her chin and she could kiss him. “Is there more to life?”

Dane angled his head, positioning himself to kiss her. His gaze never left her lips. “Yes. There is.” Marnie went still, waiting for the exquisite pressure of his lips on hers. “Has anyone ever loved you? Do you know what it feels like?” The heat of him, poised to kiss her, created a painful anticipation. Was he declaring himself? He loved her? Marnie tried on the fantasy like a robe, but it didn’t fit. It felt like a trap.

She leaned back. “I play people, they don’t play me. Don’t pretend you love me to get me to decrypt the files.” She struggled to move off his lap, but he wouldn’t let her.

He was smiling. “Okay.”

Confused, she tried to read him. “Huh?”

“I won’t pretend.” His words made her heart sink. “I’ll only tell you the truth.” He kissed her, gently rubbing his lips against hers. It was the least demanding kiss she’d ever experienced, and it had her melting against him. “I love you, Marnie Somerville. Don’t leave me. Stay and see what happens. Maybe you could love me, too.”

His words hit her like a cold splash of water. This was happening, and nowhere in her repertoire of defense mechanisms was there any plan B to fall back on. He said he loved her. She was moments away from never seeing him again. This was not something she was willing to let pass without wringing it dry.

Marnie kissed him, clutched him to her chest, pulling at his jacket, his shirt, needing to feel the warmth of his skin. He accommodated her with precision and speed; his shirt, her shirt were thrown to the floor in the time it took her to climb on his lap. She fumbled with his belt.

Dane had other ideas. He lifted and laid her across the van’s bench seat, tugging her boots off, shucking her pants. Marnie slipped her panties off and was wriggling up again, impatient for him to unbuckle his belt. Unclipping her bra as he adjusted his pants, she climbed on his erection the moment she could and gasped into his mouth. His tongue tasted hers. He wrapped his arms around her, burying himself deep, arching himself forward as he kissed her, smothering the sound of her tiny moans.

Dane ran his lips down her jaw, to her neck, nuzzling her behind her ear, down to her collarbone, then he bent her back over his arm and dipped his head, capturing the tip of her breast with his lips, circling it with his tongue. She held his head to her, drugged with desire, her sense of self splintering as he rocketed her into ever-increasing arousal.

“Marnie.” He spoke her name like a prayer, and then together they soared, reaching climax and hovering there as Marnie cried out.

Heaven help her, it was going to be hard to leave him. It wasn’t what she wanted, but he wasn’t thinking clearly. She had to, for both of them. A man like Dane—a cop—could never fully trust a woman like Marnie, but he was a hero—he couldn’t experience what they’d shared without assuming this was love. Another man, she’d suspect subterfuge, but not Dane. It was self-delusion. Yet Marnie deserved better. She wanted a man like Dane, but a Dane who didn’t know her. Pain was all she had to look forward to when he realized that, too. She had only herself to blame. She’d seen this coming when she met him at the cabin, then later at the farmhouse, but she was weak, and now she was paying for it.