(Blood and Bone, #1) Blood and Bone (11 page)

He rolls his eyes, pressing the button for down. When we get back downstairs, the hallway is filled with men in suits and police. We walk through them all, not briefing any of them on the situation. I assume they all know the details.

At the end of the dimly lit hallway we find Antoine talking to a tall man with an angry face. He scowls when he sees me. “I didn’t believe it. You have to be on your last life.”

This has quickly become my least favorite thing ever, the whole
they remember me and I remember nothing.

“Randall, she’s back. No questions about before. It doesn’t matter—she doesn’t remember anyway.”

His steely eyes narrow. “I have some testing scheduled for her first. Take her to a safe house until we can test her.”

Rory nods. “The ambassador is dying, you should know.”

He sighs, glaring at me viciously. “You should have brought him in, Sam. I’m not happy about this shit.”

Antoine shakes his dark head. “We had nothing. We still have nothing.”

Randall sighs a second time. “Well, we’ve been told he’s no longer of interest to us anyway.”

“He just killed a dignitary from another country.”

Randall laughs bitterly. “Oh, you don’t have to tell me. We’ve run this op for seven years. He’s killed a hundred people. He’s vanished like a ghost with one of ours and erased her mind. He’s playing with us, and the higher-ups feel that he’s one of two things. He’s either a spook assassin we aren’t being told about because his pay grade is so high that even the president doesn’t need to know, or he’s more dangerous with us to torment. They think he kills more frequently when we actively pursue him.”

“You’re fucking with me, right?”

Randall shoots Rory a look. “I want you on the next flight back to DC, where we will all regroup.”

I can feel panic starting to build in me. “What if I don’t want back in? I don’t remember anything anyway.”

“Sam, we haven’t wanted you back. Rory said you were eager to catch Dash in action. He said you wanted revenge.” Randall snorts.

I cock an eyebrow. “He told me I would be charged with treason if I didn’t play along.”

Randall shakes his head. “You’re free if you want out, but this is it for you. The end of the line.”

“Done.”

Rory grabs my arm. “Wait. You wouldn’t want this. The real you—she wouldn’t want you to stay trapped in there with him. You wanted him behind bars.”

I jerk free, shoving him back. “I want you all out of my life. That’s what I want. Sam Barnes is dead. Let’s leave her there.”

Randall nods at the door. “I have a car; I’ll give you a ride. You two go to the airport. The jet is there. I’ll meet you.”

Rory looks like he might argue again, but he doesn’t. I don’t look back to see the angry stare he’s trying to kill me with. I push out into the night air and climb into the black car with Randall. A man drives but doesn’t look back at us.

Randall speaks softly, “You can’t blame him, Sa— Jane. He’s been devastated and searching for you for six years. Everyone figured you would be in Europe, so he’s been there working but looking for you the entire time. Every time a politician or figurehead even coughs or farts, he blames Benjamin Dash. He’s been searching for you high and low.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to be found.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have let Rory fall in love with you.”

I turn and nod. “You’re right. I never should have let him love me, but I don’t remember being that girl. I don’t care who Benjamin
Dash is. I care that I am Jane Spears. I am a shopgirl. I am happy and stress free. Since all of this started washing back up in my life, I’ve been stressed. I feel funny in my skin for the first time in years. I don’t think Sam was a good person, and I don’t want to be her. I don’t want her baggage or her bullshit.”

The car stops at a red light, and I see my store. “I’ll get out here.” I open the door and walk out into the night. I take my usual route home. My cell phone rings in my pocket, making me nervous Derek is home, but when I answer, it isn’t his voice screaming in my ear. It’s Rory.

“He’s not with that car in Bellevue. It wasn’t his car we were tracking. He must have known you put the tracker on and dumped it on another silver Mercedes. The guy just got back—he’s a rower. That means—”

“He’s home and waiting for me.” I finish his sentence. Dread and guilt battle for the top spot in my emotions.

“Where are you? I’ll come get you.”

“No. Go to the airport. He won’t hurt me.” I hang up the phone and walk behind the building to the street where our house is. Seeing his car makes me gag a little, but I keep walking. I force my steps. Every inch of me wants to run except my heart. My heart drags my feet across the street and up the driveway.

I open the unlocked door, peeking into the darkness. The silent house is still. Even Binx stays hidden. My stomach is in my throat as I close the door, pressing my back against it. Images of him rampaging with a knife in his hand flicker through my mind. I turn the lock on the door, slipping my shoes off. I walk into the kitchen first. It’s dark, with the pale-blue glow of the appliances the only light. I walk into the dining room, but he isn’t in there.

So I turn to the living room, but again it’s empty.

This isn’t me. I have been drawn into their madness, locked away in their fears, and let them rule me. I believe I am safe in my home with my boyfriend. But strangers have me scared by all the what-ifs.

I swallow hard, tiptoeing past the French doors that face the backyard to the hallway where the bedrooms are.

When I open the door to our room, I notice the sweat on my palms as I turn the handle. In the glow of the moonlight and streetlights, I see him sitting in the chair like Norman Bates. His silhouette and the shadow he casts are more frightening than a single thing I have done in the past couple of days.

I close the door, leaning against it and trapping us both in the dark.

“Did you come to kill me?” His voice is soft and yet strong, not defeated as his shadow on the floor might suggest.

“No.” Shit. My heart is breaking as the silence and simple words become all the proof I ever needed.

He lifts his face, showing me his eyes as they reflect the light from the window. “You must know their version of everything.”

“No.” The words are a lie, but I want nothing like I do our peace and to return to our life.

He stands, making every hair on my body stand on edge, and crosses the floor slowly. His steps are soft and deliberate. When he reaches me I swear I see him hesitate. “Do you know my name?”

My stomach sinks as I nod, feeling a single tear slip down my cheek. There is a terrible feeling inside me that facing him is like facing a wild animal.

“Say it.”

Glancing up into his beautiful face I say the name I want to say. “Dr. Derek Russo.”

A smile crosses his lips, but it’s not the one I love. It’s bitter and filled with what I fear is the end of us. “Say it.” He doesn’t specify. He doesn’t have to.

I swallow hard, letting the words fall out of my lips. “Benjamin Dash.”

“And who are you?”

A sound leaves my lips. It’s defeat in its simplest form. “Jane Spears.”

“Liar.” He lifts his hand, running it through my hair and then cupping my cheek. He leans forward, I assume to kiss me, but he whispers in my ear instead: “Who are we?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.” My response is a whisper to match his.

“We are the hunter and the prey.” He kisses my cheek softly. “Which one are you, Samantha Barnes?”

I close my eyes, no longer fearing him, regardless of the fact I am certain he is every bit the man Rory said he was. “My name is Jane.”

“What are you doing here? Why didn’t you leave?”

“I told you earlier, I love you. I have always loved you. I don’t want us to be this way. I don’t believe you are anything but my sweet Derek.” I know it’s wrong, but I don’t care that he’s an assassin. He might have killed a man tonight—he’s all but admitting to it all, and I don’t care.

His lips find mine in the dark. There is something desperate in the kiss. There is no control and no method to his madness; it is just pure and crazed.

His fingers tear at my clothes, where his lips press to heal the reddened flesh. He kisses away every bit of roughness but never softens in his touch. My clothes are ripped away completely as my lips are kissed as though they may never be again. I don’t move with him but allow myself to be ravaged. I am unsure of his mood or movements. Everything is foreign and frightening in a sensual way.

He lifts me into the air, lowering me onto his erection. His jeans rub the bottoms of my legs as he enters me roughly. His hands lift me by the hips and ass, working me on his cock but at the same time moving with abandon on the reins normally holding him back. Warm grunts fill my ears as my head and back drag up and down the door. His fingers bite into my flesh, holding me too tightly and treating me too roughly. But I love every second of the assault.

Our lips crash as our faces melt into one another. My tongue slips into his mouth, only to be met with caresses and soft sucks, contradicting the thrusting and slamming of my body.

My naked breasts squish into his shirt in rhythm to the jerking of our bodies as my climax starts to build. I grip him, clutching and clawing as his cock brings me to a blissful release. He cries out, groaning into my hair as my orgasm milks his cock until he too releases inside me. Our movements slow but the disparity of it all doesn’t.

He doesn’t hesitate. He moves our still-trembling bodies, carrying me to the shower. He strips off his clothes, pulling me into the shower. He turns it on, as always, protecting me from the cold water.

He cups my face as if it were the most delicate thing in the world. His eyes are almost completely gray, no green at all, but his smile is the one I love the most. “I don’t want to lose you.”

I nod. “Can we just be who we are, right now? These people in this shower?”

His eyes glisten, and I know it’s not the shower. “I don’t know.” He kisses me softly, just lightly feathering his lips against mine. “I have never been more scared in all my life than I was today.”

I nod again. “Me too.”

He wraps around me, holding me tightly to his chest.

When we go to bed there are a thousand questions roaming my head, but choosing which one to start with feels impossible. Each one leads down a path I’m not certain I want to detour down. Not when he’s here and he’s mine.

I hate myself in some ways. I hate that I needed to know. I hate that I followed the bread crumbs to Samantha Barnes and the bullshit that was her life. I wish I’d left it alone. I wish for so many other options instead of the one that led me to the moment I am in. It is too filled with regret, so filled that I’m certain if I break the top off this can of worms I will drown in the sea of things I could have lived without knowing.

“Do you want me to sedate you?” His question is so random I don’t answer at first. I lie perfectly still, perplexed as to why he would ask it.

“No.” I almost answer as if I’m asking a question.

He turns, facing me. I can hardly make out his face in the dark. “You might sleepwalk.”

“I thought you made that up.”

He shakes his head, rustling it against the pillow. “No. You really killed a cat in front of me. You really sleepwalk. You really wake covered in blood—not often, but you do.”

“You didn’t do that to me?”

It’s his turn to sit in silent contemplation. I regret asking it, even more so when he answers.

“I have done everything I can to make you safe. I have told you a thousand times that I love you. You have always been my priority, even when you didn’t know me. The first chance you are given something that could make you doubt me, and you believe that, over the years of love and sacrifice? How did it take such a small thing to make you doubt me when it was so hard to make you love me?”

My insides clench. “I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know what to think about the sleepwalking. I don’t think I did it when I was a kid.”

He gets up abruptly, bringing instant panic out in me. He walks from the room, flooding the hallway with light and heavy footsteps. He bangs and clangs and rifles through things downstairs in the concrete basement.

It’s then that I realize how little I know about him, and it makes me trust him even less, if at all. I have a fear that he’s downstairs making something that will be my demise.

A realization hits me like a shovel to the face: Our love will never work. He will always be a suspect in my brain that is naturally on the side of the law, even though I never knew it was. I am naturally
skeptical, even if I am lost in the mud and fog in my head. I wish I could take it all back. I wish for a second I could just be the girl with no memories again.

His heavy footsteps leave the basement as he rushes back into the room. He looks me over, giving me the strangest face. I can hardly make it out with the light of the hallway behind him. He starts to speak softy, but I’m lost in the look on his face. I think it’s defeat, but I can’t be certain.

I don’t hear what he’s saying, not completely. I just watch him, hating how beaten and rough he looks. It’s more than tired and stressed. It’s loss in its simplest form. He is losing me and I am losing him, and we both know it.

I fear it puts me in a sticky situation, though, what with him being the serial killer and me being the ex-agent of sorts. I don’t think either of those roles defines us, but our love doesn’t either. Not anymore.

My doubt in him is a betrayal of the worst kind. It matches his lies, even here in the dark where we can’t see everything and we say nothing that will patch these injuries.

He drops to his knees, and I realize he’s holding a box. He’s telling me things I don’t listen to. The box has become my focus. Its contents drive my curiosity.

He struggles with words for a moment, taking a deep breath. “Your name is Samantha Barnes. You were an agent assigned to bring me in.” I watch him slip away, fading as a person and becoming a shell, a husk. He is empty when he says his next words. “I was also an agent, assigned to something different. Killing people is an art, one only a certain type of person can stomach.” He blinks and breathes and looks pained in some way, but he is a robot. I see that now. “I was a doctor in the military—easiest way to become one without paying for it. I didn’t have money growing up.” There is something else to his story of growing up that I can see is there
in his hollow eyes. There is pain there that he has buried with the deaths of others.