Guilty as Sin (55 page)

“I’ll leave you alone, let you catch up.”

Kate looked up at Tommy’s voice, saw him standing in the corner. His arms were folded across his chest, taking in the scene, his expression carefully guarded.

But she could see it there, the tightness in his mouth and shoulders as he watched her, surrounded by her family.
She’s got them, she won’t need me anymore.
He didn’t have to say it out loud.

“No!” she said, a jolt of panic hitting her at the thought of him leaving. She gently tugged her hand from her father’s and reached out to Tommy. “Please don’t go. I need you.” Because in a strange way, as amazing as her family’s desire to reach out to her was, it was in its own way as traumatic as anything else that had happened in the past few days. There was no way she was going to get through it without him.

A fact that was driven home as his big hand swallowed hers up and she immediately felt a rush of warmth, of peace. That feeling that with Tommy at her side, everything really
would
be okay. “I need
you
, Tommy.”

He brought her hand to his lips, his eyes crinkling at the corners in a smile she couldn’t help but return.

Her father cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Tommy, there are of course, things I need to say to you as well. I’m not entirely sure where to start—”

“How about thank you for saving Kate’s life,” Lauren broke in. She reached over and grabbed Tommy in a quick hug. He stiffened at first, but gave her a gentle pat on the back.

“Of course,” the senator said gruffly. “We’re of course incredibly grateful. But I also owe you an apology, for what I did after Michael’s death,” he glanced guiltily at Kate before turning his attention back to Tommy.

Kate could feel Tommy’s fingers stiffen against hers. “What’s done is done. All I care about now is seeing Kate through all of this so we can get on with our life.”

She didn’t miss a single detail, not the way he said
our life
, their future already intertwined. And not the way his entire body seemed to loom larger in challenge, making it clear to her father, to her family, they could apologize all they wanted, but Kate was his now.

As he was hers.

Her father nodded and turned his attention back to Kate. “I don’t expect you to forgive me right away,” he said gruffly, “or ever. I just want the chance to be in your life again. We all would.”

Tears stung Kate’s eyes as she stared at their faces, apprehensive, afraid she would turn them away as they’d once turned from her.

While she would always bear the scars of Michael’s death and the aftermath, she knew if she turned them away now, it would be out of pure spite. It wouldn’t be what she wanted.

More importantly, it wouldn’t be what Michael wanted. “I’d like that,” she said, her throat tight with tears.

They left a few minutes later, with promises to visit again the next day.

“I really wanted to punch him in the face,” Tommy said when the door closed behind them.

Kate smiled. “After what he did to you, no one would blame you.”

Tommy stretched out onto the bed next to her, careful not to jostle her. He pressed a kiss to her cheek and murmured, “It would have been for you. I don’t care what he did to me.”

Warmth pooled in her chest and she snuggled closer. Sensing she wasn’t quite ready to talk, Tommy started the movie up again while she tried to make sense of her jumbled emotions. She was happy her family wanted to reach out, pull her back into the fold, but wary too.

She felt like a puzzle whose pieces had warped and worn over the years; complete, but not quite fitting together seamlessly like everything should.

She didn’t even realize she was crying until Tommy brushed his thumb across her cheek. She wrapped her good arm around his waist, drinking in the feel of him, the scent of him, the sound of his heartbeat thudding steadily against her cheek.

“It’s so strange,” she said, as much to herself as him. “How everything works. I lost everyone I loved the night Michael died. And finding out the truth has brought them all back to me.”

“You’re never going to lose me again,” Tommy whispered. “You know that, right?”

Kate nodded against his chest. “I love you.”

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I love you too, Kate,” he replied, his voice suspiciously thick. “More than you even know.”

As she lay there, folded in his arms, something welled
up in her, pushing through the cracks of her puzzle pieces, washing past the tangle of conflicted emotions raging inside her.

Happiness.

After everything that had happened, it had seemed impossible, and she still wasn’t sure she deserved it.

But it was here. It was hers. She was going to hold it tight and never let it go.

Y
ou can go ahead and file a report,” the officer, who was not nearly as nice as Officer Roberts, said in a voice that managed to convey the emptiness of that gesture. “But your landlord admitted the lock is old and the house had been previously burglarized. There’s no proof those scratches are from the other night—”

“They look fresh,” Jack interrupted. “Had they been from the previous burglary, they would have been smoothed out—”

“So being a high-priced rent-a-cop makes you an expert in forensics?” the cop said, adjusting his belt under his hefty gut as he puffed his chest out.

Ben rolled his eyes and went back into the house. Talia was pretty sure that crunching sound was Jack biting on his tongue. “What else do you suggest I do, Officer?”

“Keep your doors locked and your alarm on,” he said with a smirk, and left.

Jack muttered something under his breath.

“Tal, do you want me to stay with you for a little while?” Rosario asked, her hand on Talia’s arm the only warm spot on her body.

Talia shook her head. “I’ll be fine.” Rosario loved living on campus, and Talia would never take that away from her. And maybe she was being paranoid, but if someone
was specifically targeting her, she wanted Rosie well away, safe in her dorm, protected by the university’s own rigorous security protocols. “Just do me a favor—no missing any curfew calls this week. Deal?” When Talia had agreed to let Rosario live on campus, they’d agreed Rosario would call her every single night, no matter what, at eleven p.m. to let her know where she was. In the eight months since school started, Rosario had gotten a little lax. And try as she did not to overreact, nothing sent Talia into a tailspin faster than not being able to get ahold of Rosie. There had even been one humiliating—according to Rosario—incident involving her dorm RAs and the campus police.

“Deal,” Rosario replied with a smile. “Eleven o’clock, on the dot, unless I go to bed early, and if I can’t call, I promise to text.” She gave Jack a quick hug good-bye and ran inside to get her stuff together.

“Talia—” Jack got cut off as his phone beeped. He let out a low curse. “I’m sorry, but we have to go.” He nodded at Ben, who emerged from her house with his bag of gear. “We need to move it if we’re going to make it on time,” he called over Talia’s head, then focused back on her. “I’m on a personal security detail over in Atherton—our client has been receiving death threats, so they’re temporarily relocating from London. It’s going to be twenty-four-seven, so the next few weeks—”

Talia held up her hand. “Jack, you don’t have to explain to me that you have a job to do. I know you didn’t come down from Seattle to see me. You don’t have to babysit me. I’ll be fine.”

He cocked an eyebrow and looked meaningfully in the direction of her garage door.

Talia shrugged and said, “Like Officer Friendly said, that probably happened ages ago.”

“You don’t buy that bullshit any more than I do.”

“Let’s move,” Ben said. “And I’m driving. You drive like a grandma.”

Jack didn’t budge. “The system is wired now to call Gemini headquarters and my cell phone if the alarm trips. I’ll get here as fast as I can, but if I can’t someone else will. And if anything else happens, you call me immediately. I’ll have my phone on and with me at all times.”

Talia rolled her eyes. “It was probably just some dumb kid looking to steal beer—”

“Immediately,” Jack bit out. “And if I don’t answer, you call Danny, Derek, or Ethan directly.”

“Or me!” Ben interjected.

“Not Ben,” Jack said with a smile so slight she wondered if she was imagining it. “He’s an asshole.”

Did the iceman just make a joke? “I promise,” she conceded. “But don’t expect to hear from me. And I won’t expect to hear from you,” she said. But she couldn’t ignore the hollow feeling that washed over her as she watched Jack and Ben climb into the car and drive away.

It was stupid, she told herself as she walked back into the house, the way seeing him left her with that strange, hollow ache. A faint yearning for him to stick around, for her to unglue her tongue and figure out what to say instead of her halfhearted efforts to push him away. A wish that maybe they could have… something.

Right, like that was possible, she thought, and gave herself a mental kick. What she and Jack had, so oddly intimate yet so excruciatingly uncomfortable, could never be untangled enough to go anywhere good.

She drove Rosario back to campus and contemplated what to do for the rest of the afternoon. Maybe she should see if Susie was up for a movie, she thought, then quickly
dismissed the idea. Talia was in a weird, melancholy mood and had no business inflicting herself on anyone.

Besides, she had only a few hours to kill before she had to work. Maybe she’d do some laundry. The house phone rang, cutting off her mental meanderings. She started to ignore it—anyone she knew would have called her cell. She picked up the handset to turn the ringer off, hesitating when she saw the number on the caller ID display.

Wireless caller.
Her brow furrowed as she recognized the Washington State area code and Seattle exchange.

Without thought, her thumb pressed the
TALK
button. “Hello?”

“Talia Vega?” an unfamiliar male voice asked.

“Who’s calling?”

“Is this Talia Vega?” he repeated.

Her grip on the phone tightened. “Who wants to know?”

The phone went dead.

Cold sweat filmed her forehead.
They’d found her.
Just like that, she was back down in that black hole of panic and fear, leaving the safe house only when necessary. Breath held, constantly looking over her shoulder, dreading the moment when he or one of his lackeys would snatch her from her bed or, worse, take Rosario and use her as bait to flush Talia out.

No, stop.
She took a deep breath, reminded herself that David was dead, his organization blown to smithereens. There was no more “they.” No one had bothered to come after her in nearly two years. Why would they now?

But whoever called knew her name, knew her phone number.

It wasn’t like she was in hiding, the rational, calming part of her brain argued. She’d kept her information unlisted, but she knew there were ways to find out that sort of thing if someone was motivated enough.

That last thought wasn’t at all comforting. She picked up the phone and brought the number up on the caller ID. She knew it was overkill, but she could call someone back at Gemini’s office and have them trace it. She didn’t want to bother Jack—

The phone rang in her hand. It was him again.

“What do you want?” she asked sharply.

“Talia Vega?”

She didn’t answer.

“Sorry about before. I went through a canyon and my cell dropped the call. I’m trying to get in touch with Talia Vega. Can you at least tell me if I have the right number?”

“And I’ll ask you again,” she said, irritation doing its part to chase away some of the fear, “who wants to know?”

“My name is Greg Fitzhugh,” he said. “I’m working on a book for
Seattle Magazine
about the fallout from the Grayson-Maxwell scandal—”

“I have nothing to say on the matter.”

“Please,” he said, “if it hadn’t been for you, no one would have ever connected him to Karev’s operation,” he said.

Talia wasn’t sure if he was genuinely impressed or just kissing her ass.

“If it weren’t for you helping Deputy PA Slater, the corruption would have gone unchecked, and none of those people would have been arrested.”

Her fingers started to go numb at the tips. The last thing she wanted to do was remind all of those people of her existence and, worse, make it seem like she was bragging about her part in bringing them down. Hell, at one time she’d been as knee-deep in the shit as the rest of them. She had nothing to brag about.