Delaney's Shadow (46 page)
Authors: Ingrid Weaver
Tags: #mobi, #Romantic Suspense, #Paranormal Romance, #Fiction, #Shadow, #epub
Stanford lunged across the console to hold the door shut. “We’re not finished.”
She pushed at his arm. “You’ve had more than the hour you asked for, but you obviously lied about that, too. I don’t care if I have to walk all the way to Willowbank from here.”
“Don’t say that. Not after what it’s cost me to keep you.”
“You’re so obsessed with your wealth and with winning, you don’t recognize what you could have had. You’re pathetic, Stanford.”
“This isn’t over.”
“Wrong. We’re done.” She twisted to jam the sole of her boot against the door and shoved. He lost his grip on the handle, and the door flew open. She had one foot on the ground when the car jerked forward. Stanford had angled himself onto the edge of her seat to reach the gas pedal. She screamed and grabbed the doorframe to keep from falling out.
Stanford caught her by the hair and yanked her back inside. “I won’t be made a laughingstock by a nobody like you. You’re nothing without me.”
They were accelerating. She fumbled for the ignition switch, but he struck her hand aside. She kicked at his leg but couldn’t dislodge it, so she slammed her foot on the brake. “Stanford, stop! This is insane.”
The car swerved across the highway.
Stanford wrenched the wheel to the right to center the car on the road. “You see, Delaney? I never lose. You should—”
She cried out a warning. He’d steered too far. The car wouldn’t make the curve. She fought to take the wheel. Through the open door came the sound of tires skidding on wet pavement and the noise of a V8 shrieking as it overpowered the brakes.
Then came the sound of crashing. Of metal screeching as it buckled, glass singing as it burst. Fire whooshed and crackled, but it didn’t touch her. It was in the distance, and she was cold. Freezing. She couldn’t feel her hands.
Max brought their joined hands to his mouth. He warmed her skin with his breath.
That’s enough.
That’s enough.
She didn’t want to see the rest. She wanted it to stop, but she knew it wasn’t over. The worst was yet to come. She had to see it all, or she would never be free. She rolled her head back and forth against the floor and looked past him.
She was in a snowbank. That was why she was cold. She had been thrown clear when the car hit the pole, but Stanford was still inside, and he was screaming. Pain sliced through her leg when she tried to stand, so she crawled. By the time she reached the car, flames were billowing through the rear windshield.
Stanford was crushed against the console between the deflated air bags. His knees were pinned beneath the dashboard. She stretched her arms through the open door to grasp his wrist, but she couldn’t move him and his legs were on fire and oh, God, that stench. It was the smell of her husband’s flesh burning.
He was dying. Through the glaze of pain, the knowledge was there in his eyes.
She shook his arm. “Stanford! Don’t give up. Hang on!”
He fastened one hand in her hair and the other on her sleeve. His face contorted as he bared his teeth. Every muscle contracted with his efforts. But he wasn’t trying to pull himself out; he was pulling her in.
The flames gnawed her fingers. Her sleeve caught fire, then her blouse, then her arm. It clawed from her breast to her neck and her hair. Even her lungs were burning. She couldn’t breathe. Tendrils of seaweed combined with the flames. She was drowning in the midst of the fire.
“You’re mine, Delaney!” Stanford’s voice crackled through her head. “I’ll never let you go.”
No, NO! She tried to move, but her legs were caught by the mud. Her mouth filled with silt. She was sinking deeper. In a flash of awareness she remembered the other time. She saw the long-forgotten void where death had claimed her before . . .
And then she remembered the skinny little blue-eyed boy who had fought for her life.
Power washed through her body, giving her the strength to fight for herself. She barely felt the sizzle of flesh as she grabbed the metal doorframe for leverage. She smashed her elbow into her husband’s throat again and again until she heard bone crunch like celery. His hold slackened. She fell to the ground and crawled back to the sheltering snow.
Delaney didn’t realize she had been screaming until she felt the ringing in her ears.
She tore her mind free. The image shattered.
And the past lost its grip.
TWENTY-NINE
THE COPS HAD GONE EASY ON THE STUDIO. THEY HAD probably exhausted themselves by the time they’d reached it. Apart from a stack of canvases that had been spread on the floor like a deck of cards and the shelf of paints that had been emptied, it had been left relatively untouched. It took less than ten minutes for Max to restore order to the room. Restoring order to his thoughts would take longer.
He cranked open the windows as far as they would go. While the breeze cleared out the last traces of the cops’ intrusion, he retrieved the painting of Deedee from the floor and placed it on his easel. It still wasn’t finished. After the connection they’d forged the night before, he should be able to spot what was missing.
Then again, maybe not. There were still layers of colors and textures they hadn’t had the chance to share. It would take more than one night to experience them all. Maybe more than one lifetime.
“So it was real.”
He turned toward Delaney’s voice. She walked from the bedroom to the studio. She had wrapped a sheet around her shoulders like a cape so only her bare feet and one arm were exposed. They’d pulled the mattress back onto the bed before they’d gone to sleep, and she’d been snoring softly when he’d left her. She appeared as if she’d just woken up. Her eyelids were puffy, and a pink sleep wrinkle creased her cheek. He made a mental snapshot of the image. He decided he would paint her like this someday. “What was real?”
“The portrait. I saw it through your eyes in our minds.” She stopped beside him and regarded the painting. “When did you do that?”
“I started it weeks ago.”
She extended her hand through the gap in the sheet to touch the painted scars. “I don’t know how you managed it, but they don’t look ugly.”
“I told you they weren’t.”
She shifted her hand to his back. “Neither are yours, Max.”
It was another one of those small things that he wasn’t accustomed to yet. Each time Delaney touched his scars, he felt the stretching itch of healing beneath his skin.
He leaned down to kiss her.
Afterimages of memories flashed through his head. A jumble of emotions followed. Sympathy, sadness, longing, loneliness.
No, the loneliness belonged with the memories. After last night, there was no going back. Whether he wanted it or not, she was a part of him now. Like the touch of her hand, he felt her presence right down to his bones. The ease with which their minds had fused made him suspect she had never left him. She’d been there all along, in the secret corner of his heart that he’d given to Deedee on the day he’d turned seven.
Was this what she called love? It was more than sex, that was for sure. It was more than their mental link, too. Each on its own had packed a wallop, yet combining the two had united them in a way that would take him a while longer to come to grips with. She’d told him he was afraid to love anyone. It must be true, because what he felt right now scared the hell out of him.
She turned her head aside to smother a yawn against his shoulder.
The sound of his laugh startled him. What did he have to laugh about? Nothing had really changed. The life that he’d built was unraveling. He was only a cop’s whim away from getting tossed back in jail. Their efforts to delve into Delaney’s memories had strengthened their bond and had severed her last tie with her husband but had yielded nothing that shed any light on who was behind the recent violence. He had no right to feel happy.
“What’s so funny?”
“Yawning after a kiss is hard on a man’s ego.”
“Your ego needs no encouragement,” she said. “If you weren’t so insatiable I wouldn’t be yawning.” She nipped his shoulder. “I’m surprised you’re up this early.”
“I needed to make some phone calls.”
She stepped back. “If you’re still planning to arrange security for me so I can leave, forget it. I’m staying with you, Max.”
The pleasure that followed her declaration was scary, too. For her sake, he should be tossing her out on her ass. He couldn’t use their bargain to justify keeping her here, either. It had been fulfilled. “You should think about what you’re getting into. I’ve been charged with attempted murder. I know the drill. The arrest was only the start. Things are going to get a lot worse.”
Her thoughts wound a caress around his. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had honestly believed once I remembered what happened with Stanford, everything would become clear. It didn’t help at all. The only person we know who had wanted to hurt me is already dead.”
He sensed a curl of old panic deep beneath her words. He sent a stroke of calmness to smooth it out.
“The pain must have made him crazy,” she said. “He wasn’t an evil man. He was possessive and stubborn, that’s all. And proud. He couldn’t deal with failure.”
“You’re still making excuses.”
“I need to make excuses for myself, too. Elizabeth was right. I did kill my husband. You saw it.”
He’d done more than that; he’d experienced it with her. He’d felt her arm connect with Stanford’s throat. The crunch they’d heard had likely been the cartilage of his windpipe breaking. He might have choked to death before the fire finished him, just like . . .
Like Max’s mother had been choking on her own blood before Virgil had strangled her. The parallel was eerie. The outcome had been worlds apart. “It was self-defense. You had no choice if you wanted to live.”
“You helped me then, too, Max. You were the key to my memories because you were at the heart of them. It was the memory of how you saved me from drowning that let me save myself from Stanford.”
Above everything else their minds had shared, that particular detail remained the most vivid. The boy he’d once been hadn’t always been a dumb chickenshit. He hadn’t failed completely. Even though he hadn’t known it, he had managed to protect one woman he loved from a monster.
Love. Damn. There was that word again.
“But none of this helps you,” she said. “We still don’t have a clue who attacked Elizabeth.”
“It did help me, Delaney. It showed me that burying the past doesn’t work. Not if it isn’t dead first.”
“It sounds as if you’ve done some thinking.”
“Yeah. Your bad habits are contagious.” The sound of slamming car doors came from the front of the house. He fought down a jab of panic, his own this time instead of hers. She’d had the courage to face her nightmare. He could do no less. “That’s probably the cops.”
She whirled toward the stairs. “Oh, God. Now what?”
“It’s okay. I called them.”
“Why?”
“I changed my mind and reported the vandalism. I want whatever snot-nosed punk who broke those bottles and trashed my Jeep tracked down and nailed to the wall, even if I have to pick up every piece of glass myself and have it dusted for prints. I’m going to file a complaint about the condition Toffelmire’s crew left my house in, too. Someone’s going to pay for that painting they stomped. I’m through taking this kind of shit.”
Her smile was dazzling. So bright, in fact, it made his eyes water.
He cleared his throat. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to get going on one of your do-it-yourself psychology kicks. It’s not that big a deal. I pay my taxes. I recycle. I’m an upstanding citizen now, not some dumb teenager from the trailer park.”
Delaney hiccupped on a sob. “Oh, Max.”
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