DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS (19 page)

She blinked. “Okay, if—if that’s what you want.”

“I don’t,” he said. “Laney?”

She swallowed. “Yes?”

“I don’t want you—” His mouth went dry.

Her brows furrowed.

“I don’t want you to—” He swallowed and tried again. “I don’t want you to leave.”

“You don’t?”

“You’re the most annoying, most stubborn and most fascinating person I’ve ever met in my life.”

“Thank you...” she said cautiously.

He smiled. “I’m sure you probably feel the same about me.”

“You are stubborn,” she said. “And pigheaded and officious and arrogant and—”

He bent his head and kissed her, hard and long. When he finally lifted his head they were both out of breath.

“And—” she took a breath “―confusing and irritating and—”

“I’ll do it again,” he warned.

“Oh, no,” she said, smiling. “How long will I have to endure this?”

“Well,” he said, touching the corner of her lip with his thumb. When he did, she closed her eyes and sighed. “We do have to put up with each other until this trial is over. It could be years and years—and years.”

“Promise?” she asked, lifting her head and kissing him on the lips.

“I promise,” he answered, pulling her close. “And here’s another promise. Once this trial is over, I’ll make you a big pot of spinach pasta and we can see what comes up in the conversation.”

Laney laughed and put her arms around Ethan’s neck. “I’ll hold you to that promise.”

* * * * *

Mallory Kane’s popular miniseries,
THE DELANCEY DYNASTY,
continues next month with GONE.
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Chapter One

She came to slowly, her head throbbing, crippling pain
skewering her temple like an ice pick digging deep. Without opening her eyes,
she tried to lift her hand to touch the side of her head, but her arm wouldn’t
move, almost as if it were pinned against her body. Confusion swept over her,
and she forced her eyes open to sheer, cloying darkness. The air around her was
fetid and stale, stinking of dirt, wet wool and...

And blood.

Oh, God. Where was she?
Desperation
clutched at her throat.

She struggled to move, but her arms were numb. Something held
her as if she were encased in a straitjacket. Frantic, she lifted her head, and
her face bumped up against what felt like cheap shag carpet. She clawed her
fingers beneath her and identified the distinctive weave. This couldn’t be
happening.

Instinctively she gasped for air, the darkness pressing down
like a vise clamped on her chest.

Was she buried alive?

Her stomach rolled, and bile rose in her throat. She couldn’t
get sick. She had to escape.

She twisted and turned, struggling against the suffocating
prison, scratching at the rough fabric. It was above her, below her, around her.
She fought to free herself, panic mounting from deep within.

She rocked back and forth. Dirt and dust shook free. She sucked
in a breath, and her lungs seized on the foul air. She had to get out.

“Help,” she tried to scream, then fell to coughing as if she’d
used up the meager air supply.

Worse, the rug had muffled the sound of her voice. Wherever she
was buried, would anyone hear her cries? “Oh, God. Someone help me. Please,” she
croaked in a voice she didn’t recognize.

Her breathing turned shallow. The air had thinned.

She sucked in one more desperate breath and froze, aware of a
new scent, far more subtle than the rest. It penetrated her mind. Sweet,
familiar, and so very, very wrong. Baby lotion.

Nausea suddenly churned, and her dread escalated. Strange
visions stirred through her. A pink blanket. A tiny crib. But along with the
images came stabbing pain in her head that nearly shattered her.

Her thoughts grew fuzzy, and she fought to hold on to reality.
Somehow she knew, if she closed her eyes, she would never wake up. She couldn’t
pass out. She had to find...

A name flitted at the dark edges of her memory, then slipped
away, leaving despair and terror. She turned toward the sweet scent again and
breathed deeper. More flashes. Pain. Fear.

A stranger’s voice screaming, “No!”

Lights exploded behind her eyelids and darkness engulfed her,
closing around one wisp of memory.

The last sound she heard was a baby’s terrified cry.

* * *

T
HE
AFTERNOON
SUN
beat down on Daniel
Adams from a bright West Texas sky. He adjusted his dusty brown Stetson to block
the back of his neck and stood at a fork in the road, not a cloud in sight, not
a car to be seen, nothing to tempt him to travel one way more than the other. He
could choose a twisting blacktop leading into the Guadalupe Mountains or the
county road veering east.

The dirt road headed in the general direction of Carder, Texas.
He had friends there who’d made it clear he had a place waiting at Covert
Technology Confidential. Staffed with former Special Forces, CIA and FBI
operatives, CTC helped people in big trouble with nowhere to turn. The only rule
they followed: justice.

Daniel wanted to be there, but he couldn’t put himself back
into the battle.

Not yet.

He was still too screwed up from his imprisonment and torture
in the small European country of Bellevaux. Right now all he wanted was to find
his way back to normal from the PTSD and not eat a bullet like his old man had
done to deal with the same thing.

Daniel looked around again, frustrated he couldn’t even decide
which way to go next.

He
normally
made split-second,
life-or-death decisions, but that was before. Before he’d been thrown in a
dungeon, before the bastards had taken a whip to every inch of his body, an iron
bar to his legs, and so flayed his mind with lies and threats that he’d almost
broken.

For what seemed like an eternity, he’d fought every damn day
with every ounce of strength to stay alive, to not give the interrogator the
information he’d wanted.

In the end, Daniel had prayed for death.

Like his old man.

But Daniel was still alive. He’d been found, then stuck full of
tubes and even now had more metal holding him together than Wolverine. Against
the odds the doctors had given him, he’d healed, then stood and, after six
months of recovery in the States, had walked again.

Daniel was broken. He knew it; the CTC operatives knew it. Only
his family and his therapist held out hope.
Talk about
delusional.
Daniel knew better.

What other reason would a man sleep outside and walk the
highways and dirt roads from Langley, Virginia, ending up in Texas months later?
A bit Forrest Gump, but Daniel couldn’t face his team till he knew his PTSD
didn’t endanger anyone, until the memories and flashbacks no longer turned him
into a terrified beast, striking out at everyone. So here he was, facing miles
of desert plateaus, prickly pears and the occasional rattler.

Alone. Mostly.

Trouble followed him. Literally.

Trouble was the name he’d given the foolish dog he’d rescued,
who’d warily taken up residence about ten feet from Daniel’s side. He glanced at
the mixed breed—some odd combination of Newfoundland and Irish setter that made
him look like Chewbacca.
Dog must be dying in this heat
with all that fur.

Daniel knelt down and slid the duffel from his shoulder. He
tugged a metal bowl from one pocket and set it on the ground. He didn’t dwell on
why he’d taken to carrying it with him; he just filled the dish half full from
his canteen. He rose and stared at the water, then the dog. “What are you
waiting for?”

Trouble tilted his head and sat on his haunches, his expression
all but saying,
Move back, stupid. You know how this
works.

Daniel sighed and retreated. “Fine. But one of these days,
you’re going to have to come closer than ten feet.”

As soon as Daniel reached the required distance, the mutt
bounded to the water, burying his face in the cool liquid.

Daniel had found the fuzz face lying on the side of the road
with his leg and hip scraped up after losing a one-sided battle with a car.
Since Trouble wouldn’t let Daniel touch him, Daniel had been forced to rig a
makeshift travois and drag the miserable canine five miles to a vet’s office.
The doc tranquilized the dog and patched up his injuries, but the moment the vet
had given him the opportunity, Trouble had hightailed it out the front door and
down a back alley.

A couple miles later, the animal had taken up residence
parallel to Daniel, walking along the highway, never again getting close enough
for even a scratch behind the ears. They’d passed a road sign, listing Trouble,
Texas, three hundred miles away, and the dog instantly had a name.

That was a couple of weeks ago. The dog limped less now, Daniel
a bit more.

Yesterday they’d made it to the small Texas town bearing the
dog’s name. Daniel had stood in the cramped, dark foyer of a B and B, testing
his body’s reaction to it, but knew he still couldn’t sleep inside. Nothing to
do but move on.

The waitress at the diner had told him there was nothing but
lost dreams for miles around. She hadn’t been lying. The beat-up sign he now
leaned against—Cottonwood Creek Copper Mine—could’ve come from the 1950s.

He really had traveled west of hell to end up a few miles east
of nowhere.

Trouble finished his water, nosed the empty bowl toward Daniel,
then moved away.

“We’re a pair, aren’t we, boy?” Daniel said softly. “Too
damaged to do anyone any good.”

As Daniel repacked the dish, the dog’s ears perked up, and he
growled low in his throat.

“What’s the matter with you?” Daniel turned to see what had
upset Trouble and noticed a black vulture circling nearby. “Relax. It’s probably
eyeing the carcass of a cow that wandered away from the herd.”

The dog’s hackles rose as he focused his attention on a hill
jutting up from the desert. Without a backward glance, Trouble bolted toward the
mound. And that vulture.

What the hell? The dog hadn’t left Daniel’s sight since they’d
become traveling companions. “Trouble!” The hairs on the back of Daniel’s neck
rose, and a warning chill ran through him. He started after the dog that had
disappeared from view.

Within a minute the mutt bounded toward Daniel, skidding to a
halt a few feet away. Trouble barked urgently several times, ran back a short
distance, then turned and barked again.

“What’s going on, boy? Show me.”

Trouble whined and yipped, then ran. Daniel, his gait uneven,
took off after the dog.

The vulture still circled but lower now.

He followed Trouble over the small rise, past a dead rabbit,
then came to an abrupt halt.

Trouble circled in front of the dilapidated opening to an old
mine, the mouth leading into the dark interior of the mountain. When he saw
Daniel, the dog barked again and raced into the tunnel.

A mine shaft. Complete with a condemned sign and evidence of a
partial cave-in. Rock walls, claustrophobic darkness. He couldn’t go in there.
Daniel sucked in a panicked breath, trying to quell his racing heart and the
terror that bubbled up from his gut.

The dog didn’t come out of the mine.

While Daniel watched, more loose stones fell from the mine’s
ceiling. “Trouble!”

The dog appeared several feet inside the opening and barked
furiously.

Perspiration slid down Daniel’s temple. He couldn’t do it. Not
now. Not ever. The dog growled, racing back and forth, entreating Daniel to
follow.

Bracing himself, Daniel stepped barely into the opening,
kicking something metal that clanged off the rocks, like the slamming of iron
prison bars. A medieval dungeon. Memories assaulted him. The darkness echoing
with screams. No, he was in a mine shaft. Still, he heard the footsteps of his
captor. The crack of the bastard’s whip.

Daniel fell to his knees, fighting to stay present, to escape
the horrific memories, until Trouble dropped something in front of Daniel and
bit his sleeve. Daniel broke free, panting, and his hand landed on a woman’s
shoe. Daniel’s gut clenched. High heels weren’t exactly appropriate for trudging
around the Texas desert.

Hell. Was there a woman in here?

Trouble grabbed his shirt again and tugged hard. Daniel snagged
a small but powerful flashlight clipped to his belt and shone the beam into the
tunnel. The crumbling shaft veered left, debris and broken supports everywhere.
Trouble bolted ahead and waited at the bend.

Grasping at his primary PTSD tool, Daniel focused on the
grounding techniques he’d learned in therapy and forced himself forward into the
shadows. An all-too-familiar panic squeezed his lungs. The walls pressed in
until the cave morphed into a stone cell.

Pain level, eight.

Fighting to stay in the present, Daniel clutched the flashlight
in a white-knuckled grip. He stared at the illuminated circle, narrowing his
gaze. Sounds still reverberated. Trouble’s barks morphed into sadistic laughter.
The dirt seemed to hold the scent of torture and blood.

He fought against every survival instinct that raged within,
that urged him to run. Struggling for control, Daniel moved forward. He wasn’t
in Bellevaux, he was in Texas. Broken, but free.

“Anyone here?” he shouted.

His words echoed in the darkness, but only silence answered
him.

A sprinkling of dirt fell on his head, and the timbers creaked.
He froze. The flashlight’s beam hit a large heap of rocks, filling half the
tunnel.

“Trouble?” Where the hell had the dog gone?

Suddenly he heard an odd moan coming from around the tunnel
bend. Was that Trouble...or a human?

“Hello? Is someone there?”

Trouble barked, then reappeared to tug on Daniel’s pant leg,
frantic now.

Daniel followed the dog into the blackness, concentrating on
the small beam of light that helped him keep the nightmares at bay.

The dog rounded the debris and led Daniel to a six-foot-long
pile of rocks and dirt, hidden behind the mound from a cave-in. The dog
scrabbled among the rocks, desperately trying to dig through them.

Daniel knelt down just as several stones fell away, revealing a
bloodstained patch of multicolored carpet and silvery-gray tape.

Duct tape.

Another high-heeled shoe lay a few feet from the mound, and a
quiet wail sounded again from beneath the rocks.

Trouble whined and pawed at the carpet.

A steely calm came over Daniel, not complete, but closer than
he’d felt in almost a year. Someone was alive and needed him.

His damn freak-out would have to wait until later. He needed to
keep it together now.

After propping the flashlight so he could see, he shoved
several rocks to the side. The smell of blood hit him, nearly slamming him into
a flashback, but he fought for control.

Daniel swept aside the small rocks that covered the carpet,
then threw the larger ones to the side.

“Help me...” The voice faded to silence.

He grabbed the Bowie from his leg sheath and slashed through
the two taped areas with the knife, then rolled the carpet open. A woman, beaten
and bloody, lay half-comatose on the filthy carpet.

Daniel pressed his fingers against her throat and felt the
thread of a pulse.

She was chilled and in rough shape, but alive.

Relief loosened some of Daniel’s tenuous hold on his emotions,
so he quickly ran his hands over her arms and legs, knowing he needed to get
them both out of this death trap fast. His examination didn’t reveal any broken
bones or severe lacerations on her body, but blood caked one side of her face
and hair. The rest of her long hair spread across the carpet like a raven’s
wings.