Ready (18 page)

“For the time being.”

She looked at Nitro and read a surprising understanding in his eyes.

“Couldn’t you guys sneak
me
out?” She couldn’t help asking, tilting her head to get more solid eye contact with Joshua. “You go running every day and aren’t worried about Nemesis seeing you.”

“I go disguised and I leave the apartment building by a route he’s unlikely to watch.”

“Then take me out the same way.” She’d only been back in her apartment for a couple of days, but she was already feeling stir-crazy. “I’ll wear a disguise, too. Nemesis isn’t as all-seeing as he’d like me to believe he is.”

Joshua’s lips curved just slightly. “No, he’s not. And he’s not as smart as he thinks he is, either, but we don’t know what he is watching outside your apartment. For all we know, he’s tapped into the security cameras in the apartment building.”

“If he has, then he’s seen you, Nitro, and Hotwire enter and leave my apartment.” There was a camera at the end of her hall.

“No one has seen us. We feed prerecorded footage of an empty hall to the camera when we come and go,” Nitro said, surprising Lise again, this time with the sheer thoroughness of the mercenary’s covert behavior.

They’d gone to a lot of trouble to protect her and be there for her. It wasn’t fair for her to repay them with a bunch of whining. “Please forget I said anything. I’ll be fine.”

She forced a smile to prove she wasn’t the stressed-out basketcase she seemed to be.

She was writing when the phone rang again.

She finished the sentence she was typing before leaning over to grab the cordless headset off the table next to the sofa. “Hello?”

“Are you having fun retyping your book?”

Unexpected and all-consuming rage filled her at the inhuman sound of Nemesis’s digitized voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Are you saying you didn’t notice the disappearance of your book? I don’t believe you, Lise Barton.”

“And you think I care?” The sarcastic words slipped out, born of her fury that he would threaten her family, besides all the other grievances she could lay at his door.

“You should. You should care very much what I think. I hold your fate in my hands.”

“You hold a phone in your hands, not my fate.”

An ugly laugh was her only answer.

“How did you know about my book being deleted?” she asked, playing dumb, trying to control the anger roiling through her.

“How do you think? I did it.”

Hearing him say it in such a triumphant voice made her even madder than she’d been when she discovered what he’d done.

Nemesis added, “Don’t leave town again, Lise Barton. It made me angry.”

“Right, so you hacked into my system and deleted my book,” she mocked, infusing her voice with the very real derision she felt for the kind of coward that terrorized a woman and hid behind anonymity to do it. “More likely a sector went bad on my hard drive.”

“If I hadn’t been the one to do it, how would I have known about it?” His outrage was palpable.

He didn’t like being questioned.

Good. She didn’t like being stalked.

“I don’t know, but if I had to take a guess, I’d figure you must have gotten a friend to hack into my system. If
you
were smart enough to do it, you would also be sufficiently computer savvy to realize I back up my files.”

“You bitch! I know more about computers than you ever will.”

“You sound like a three-year-old fighting over playground turf. If you did do the hacking, I bet it was luck.” She wanted to push him, needed to push him.

She could not forget the sound of her brother’s voice on the phone earlier, pleading with her to come into hiding with him, demanding that she allow him to come and help her find her stalker. This bastard had upset her family’s lives as well as her own.

“A four-year degree and twenty-five years in the industry is not luck.” Even the digitizer could not mask the near hysterical volume of his voice.

“Oh, I’m so convinced,” she jeered.

“Don’t mock me.”

“What are you going to do to stop me? Call me again?” She laughed and hung up the phone, dropping it in its cradle with an obvious look of contempt on her face which she purposefully turned toward the video camera in her speaker.

Then she picked up her Dana and started typing again. It was all gibberish, but he didn’t know that, the bastard. If he was watching her, and she was sure he was, he would be livid at how little importance she was attaching to his phone call.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Joshua demanded from several feet away, his voice vibrating with wrath that had far more impact on her than Nemesis’s anger. “You didn’t even try to keep him on the line long enough for a trace.”

She didn’t look up, not wanting the dweeb stalker to realize she had company.

She grabbed the stylus and tapped her lip before speaking as she often did before reading a paragraph aloud. “What difference does it make? He called last time from a pay phone across town and that piece of information netted us nothing.”

“So, that made you decide to taunt him?”

“He threatened my family, Joshua. I think the guy’s a jerk and I’m going to tell him so.”

“Forget it.”

“I can’t.” The next time she got a call, she was going to tell Nemesis what a lowlife she thought he was in very explicit terms even an idiot could understand.

“We don’t know how he’ll respond to that, damn it. Things could escalate rapidly.”

She moved so only her legs and busily typing fingers were in range of the camera. Hotwire had very meticulously outlined the area of the living room that could be seen by the camera transmitter.

She didn’t want Nemesis seeing her doing so much talking. He might think she was more upset and talking to herself, and she refused to give him the satisfaction. “So, they escalate. Our only chance of catching him is to force him into acting anyway.”

“Not by making him murderously angry.” Joshua was the one that sounded furious enough to spit nails.

She looked up, meeting a dark brown gaze filled with a lot more worry than anger. “I’m sorry, Joshua.” She’d done it again. Put her emotions first, rather than acting with logic and self-control. “Truly. I don’t want to mess with the plan, no matter what I’ve said today, but I really couldn’t make nice to him. I just couldn’t.”

She hoped he understood, but he probably didn’t. The only time she’d seen him lose his control was when they were making love. She was usually a lot more self-controlled, too, but her emotions were too close to the surface right now. If she attempted to explain it was because of making love to him, he’d probably go back to his
no sex on the job
rule.

And then if Nemesis didn’t drive her round the bend, unrequited lust would.

“I never said you had to,” Joshua said, “but antagonizing a stalker is dangerous. You’re giving him more ammunition for his vengeance delusion, possibly sending him over the edge.”

“You’re right. I’ll be better next time.” She couldn’t help the emotional catch to her voice. “Are you mad at me?”

She hated what her life had become, but she loved this man. That love was so new that the thought of sending him away from her because of her inability to control her growing rage was enough to tear a strip right out of her heart.

Joshua looked like he wanted to come to her. “I’m not angry with you, sweetheart. Just don’t be so antagonistic next time.”

She wished more than anything that he
could
come into the living room and hold her, but if he did, he’d have to cross a section of space in range of the camera.

“Do I have to answer the phone again?” As difficult as it was to admit to herself and to him, she wasn’t sure of her emotional control.

She needed a chance to get a grip on herself before she had to face Nemesis’s inhuman voice over the phone again.

“No. I think he’d see you ignoring him as in character.”

“Thank you,” she said softly.

Joshua’s face twisted, but he didn’t say anything else and he turned to leave.

The phone rang a few minutes later and she ignored it. The answering machine picked up and the caller hung up. Afterward, she reached for the phone and turned the ringer off before going back to her book.

“She dedicated one of her books to victims of domestic violence?” Hotwire asked as Joshua laid the letters that had led him to the book in question on the table.

“Yes.”

“We didn’t read that one, did we?”

“No, it was actually her first book. I tried to buy it before, but it had a low print run and was hard to find. I’ve got a book dealer looking for me right now. Hell, he may have found it, but I haven’t been home for over a month.”

Nitro picked up one of the letters and read it. “She put nationwide hotline numbers and Web sites for abuse victims in the dedication?”

“More than that, she encouraged women to get help if they were in fear for their safety.”

Hotwire whistled. “And you think her stalker is a disgruntled husband?”

“It fits.”

“It does,” Nitro agreed. “This creep has been deprived of his victim and it makes sense he would turn his attention to the person he blames. Wolf’s woman.” Hotwire said.

“Yes.” Joshua didn’t deny possession of Lise.

She might not be his permanently, but she belonged to him right now and it made him angry enough to maim to see her as distraught as she’d been earlier. She’d fricken apologized for losing her cool, and he’d felt guilty because she wasn’t the perpetrator, damn it.

She also wasn’t a soldier, and no matter how self-contained she appeared on the surface, she was a woman with a woman’s emotions. It wasn’t just Nemesis pushing her to her limit; it was him, too. He was treating her like she was a seasoned warrior who could go into battle-ready mode and shut off her feelings as easily as he could. She wasn’t.

“So, are there any live ones in these letters?” Hotwire asked.

“There are actually six letters from women who claim to have gotten help because they read the book.”

“I’ll start looking into it.” Hotwire scooped up all the letters.

“There’s no reason to assume his wife wrote a letter of thanks to Lise,” Nitro said.

Joshua knew that all too well. “It’s a place to start.”

“Y
ou think my stalker is a pissed-off husband?” Lise demanded, her expression disbelieving.

“Yes.”

She plopped down on the side of the bed to watch him do floor stretches. He’d been working out in her bedroom again while she wrote. Her stare wasn’t exactly disinterested, and he played to her obvious fascination.

“I guess it makes sense, but that book came out years ago, in the very beginning of my career. Why am I being stalked
now?
”

“It’s only been five years.” He stood up and did a couple of side-stretches, smiling to himself when her mouth parted and a small sound escaped. “Besides, she could have read it and acted on the dedication message within the last year or so.”

“It had such a small print run.” Her gaze snagged on his pecs as he flexed them shamelessly for her benefit.

She took a deep breath and seemed to gather herself, though her gaze remained glued to his body. “It’s hard to believe anyone found a copy to read recently, but I suppose she could have picked it up used somewhere.”

“That’s what I’m guessing.”

“What?” Her eyes had gone unfocused and he was having a hard time himself sticking to the topic at hand. Her scent teased him, the sweet and feminine fragrance a reminder of how incredibly womanly the little she-wolf really was.

“Oh, um…and you figured this out from the letters in my file?” She perked up. “Does that mean you’ve got a lead on the stalker?”

He grabbed a small towel and started wiping the sweat from his skin. “The timing’s not right for the letters you’d gotten from grateful wives. They were all written the first year after the book came out. So, I’m not sure we’re any closer to identifying the perp.”

It was damn frustrating. They went one step forward and then slid back again. Usually, he had infinite patience with this sort of thing, but Lise’s safety was compromised and he didn’t have his usual professional detachment.

She cocked her head to one side. “Sure we are.”

“How?”

“We know he’s a computer genius who has a four-year degree and twenty-five years of experience in the industry, which gives us an approximate age, and if your theory is correct, we also know he beat his wife. From what he’s said, I think she left him and I have to wonder if he didn’t lose his job, too. How else could he follow me across country?”

“That still doesn’t give us a lot to go on.”

“He’s bound to do something big soon.” Her eyes flashed with intent and temper. “I made him mad today and now that I understand his mind a little better, I’m positive that will spur him to action.”

“You understand his mind better?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s an abuser who doesn’t take responsibility for his own actions, or he wouldn’t be blaming me. That’s a well-documented personality type.”

“You seem to know a lot about it.”

“I had my reasons for finding out.”

“Did your father beat you?” Joshua thought she’d had a rough enough childhood as it was, but he had to ask.

“No, but he ignored the fact that one of our foremen slapped his wife around. I was a little girl—six or seven, maybe—when I saw it happen the first time and I went running to my dad. He told me to mind my own business.
That a man could not come between a husband and his wife
.”

He could sense from the vibrations coming off of her that there was more to the story. “What happened?”

“It went on for a couple years until she died in a car accident trying to run away from him after one of their fights. I remember going to her funeral. He cried by her grave and I wanted to scream at him that it was his fault.”

“Why didn’t you?” She was pretty feisty. He couldn’t see her backing away from a fight, even as a child.

She sure didn’t fit the first impression he’d had of her as a shy introvert.