Shatter (27 page)

“I’m sick of this shit. I want my life back. I’m not getting any younger and I’m only living once. The longer this goes on, the less life I have to reclaim. Get me something solid on Schaeffer so I can take down both him and Abernathy before they do any more damage. Then we can
all
move on.”

The phone went dead in Mitch’s ear. He stayed there, ass on the tile foyer floor, elbows on knees, and let the cell fall away from his head. He didn’t want to believe Halina had held all this knowledge back. Didn’t want to acknowledge she could have been allowing both him and his family to suffer unnecessarily by harboring evidence of Schaeffer’s compulsive manipulation. Didn’t want to believe she’d walked out on him when she’d had the evidence to free herself and stay.

But . . .

Now he understood just why she believed that.

The depth of hurt that lunged up from the shadows of his soul overtook him as he imagined a demon would. Pulling him into the dark. Drawing out all his bad—anger, viciousness, malice. Every painful thing she’d ever done filled his mind. And with the hurt of her betrayal and abandonment threading through seven years of his life, he had plenty to think about on his way to the bathroom where her shower ran.

 

H
alina rested her head against her arm on the shower’s tile wall and let the hot water pour over the cuts on her shoulders. They were sparse and shallow thanks to the way Mitch twisted at the last minute, shielding her, Dex, Kat and Mateo from most of the glass. She should be out there with him now. Taking care of him. Wished she could be—the way Alyssa and Teague, Keira and Luke, Jessica and Quaid took care of each other. The way she and Mitch used to take care of each other. She hadn’t recognized that element of their relationship as something she’d missed until she’d come here, met these people.

But in light of what had just happened, that was so minor. What she lacked in her life was worth giving up to keep them safe.

Her fingers tightened around Dex’s collar. She opened her eyes and glanced sideways at it. She fingered the deep brown studs. Tears of pride burned her eyes when she remembered how he’d reacted in the chaos and protected Kat and Mateo. That one incident was worth every hour of training over the last four years.

The bathroom door opened. Halina didn’t hear it. Only knew from the shift in the steam. Her delayed alarm sensors kicked on just as she heard, “Halina.”

Mitch. His deep voice husky with frustration.

The tension drained from her shoulders. The burn of alarm melted from her belly. Resignation welled into some emotion she couldn’t describe or explain. Inside, a combination of failure and fear coiled deep in her gut. She wasn’t ready to do this. To give up everything that had kept him safe for so long.

But it wasn’t keeping him safe anymore.

He pulled the curtain aside. The rake of metal rings against the rod made her flinch. One look at the darkness of his eyes, the pull to his face, the tightness of his mouth, and she closed her eyes and rolled her head back toward the wall.

“Just . . . let me finish my—”

Mitch stepped over the edge of the tub—still in his khakis—and grabbed her biceps. “You have all the evidence we need to put Schaeffer away, don’t you? You’ve had it all this time and you’ve hidden it.”

The trained, strong part of her wanted to knock his hands away and hit back. But another part of her felt guilty and ashamed and mortified over what had happened to these good people. And that part of her wanted him to shake her and shake her until her brain rattled in her skull.

“No. I mean, yes, I have had some, but—”

“You’ve put my family at risk—”

“I know, Mitch. I . . .”

“—all these years just to save yourself,” he spoke over her.

“No.” She couldn’t gather any anger, only desperation. “No, I didn’t know . . . I didn’t understand the risks until—”

“Until I found you. You’ve had a hundred opportunities to help over the last twenty-four hours.”

She closed her eyes as shame ravaged her. “I . . . I didn’t realize . . . I was trying to—”

“Kat and Mateo were almost
killed
, Halina.”

The torture in his voice stabbed at her. Guilt overwhelmed her until she wanted to cave under its weight. “I know. I
know
.” She choked on a sob. “I didn’t want to come here. I tried to tell you . . .”

She pulled out of his grasp to shut off the water. Trembling with the grief and pain of her guilt, she pulled the towel off the shower curtain rod and buried her face.

She had to accept that she’d hit a wall. There was nothing she could do to help him anymore. She’d successfully kept Schaeffer away when she’d had control over her research and her cover. But Mitch wouldn’t stop. She couldn’t protect any of them with him interfering like this.

When she lifted her eyes to his, there was so much hurt, so much anger there, she wanted to crumple. She stepped from the tub and wrapped the towel around her body.

A swamping sense of failure made her reach for the sink to help her stand.

She pushed Dex’s collar into his hand. “Here’s everything. Everything I have. All my research, all Rostov’s and Gorin’s. And more. Lots more. It’s in there. Alone it’s not enough to destroy Schaeffer. But maybe with what you have now . . . maybe . . .”

She turned away, reached for the doorknob, and paused. With her back toward him she took a deep breath. “The moment Schaeffer discovers I’ve given you these files,” she swallowed past the terror and tears in her throat, “you’re as good as dead. He knew I had the incentive to keep them hidden. And he knows you don’t. Like you told me, Mitch, when he sends men after you, there’s no escaping. Your only chance now is to do something with them before he—or one of his men—finds you.”

Halina exited the bathroom and entered the guest bedroom across the hall. Closing the door at her back, she leaned against it, dropped her head back, and closed her eyes. Failure swamped her body. Ultimate failure. But also a twisted relief. Carrying the responsibility for Mitch’s safety had weighed on her every day of the last seven years. Making sure he was alive and well without him discovering she was watching, continuing to remind Schaeffer she held the evidence and was prepared to use it without leaving any hint of her location, living in constant fear that she’d make a mistake along the way and it would cost Mitch his life—it was exhausting.

Now, she only had to concentrate on getting away from him and hiding. With his band of followers and their paranormal abilities, that would be difficult. But now that Mitch knew everything—or would after he absorbed the information from the discs she’d just given him—now that he believed she’d completely betrayed him and his family, he might stay away.

Unless she was pregnant.

But she couldn’t do anything about that now.

What she could do—the very last thing she could do—was attempt to buy Mitch time.

Halina opened her eyes and glanced around the room. Her gaze halted on a phone beside the nightstand. She went directly to it and dialed information. With the credit card numbers for her unused alias, which she’d memorized—just in case—she placed the call.

“Yes, I need to get flowers urgently to one of your patients,” she told the gift shop clerk who answered, speaking quickly and keeping her voice low. Her gaze held on the door, ready to cut the call if Mitch walked in. “Can you do that?”

“Of course, ma’am.”

“They’re for my uncle,” she said, rubbing her aching forehead. “He’s a senator and always uses an alias when he’s in the hospital. I know you can’t give me his alias,” she said before the clerk objected. It wasn’t her first time using this tactic. “I’m only asking that you get these flowers and a message to him. He’s critically ill and I’m in Arizona. I may not make it to see him before he passes and I really want him to know I’m thinking of him.”

“Oh, dear,” the older woman said. “I can send the flowers to his room, I just can’t guarantee—”

“I understand,” Halina said, in the back of her mind chanting
please, please, please
. “Even knowing I was able to attempt will ease my guilt. The earliest flight I could get is tomorrow morning and I just don’t know if he . . .” She purposely trailed off, but didn’t have to try to sound desperate.

“I’d be happy to do what I can to get the flowers and your message to him.”

“Oh, thank you.” Halina’s relief sounded in her voice. “If he is too sick to receive them, if someone can just whisper the message in his ear and give it to the others who are there with him, I’d be forever grateful.”

 

Mitch stood dripping on the tile floor for a long moment after Halina had exited, staring at the rich brown rhinestones on Dex’s collar. He drew in thick breaths of steam-filled air. His heart assaulted his ribs as his mind spun and spun, trying to put everything into a place.

She
had
told him she’d feared putting others in danger here. She
hadn’t
understood the extreme effects of Schaeffer’s rampage until she’d arrived. And she’d hardly had time to assimilate everything and make such a monumental decision as to whether or not to give up the information saving her own life in order to save others.

Mitch turned the collar over and slid his fingers along the black canvas. A stiff area in the center made his heart trip again. Three stiff squares lived at the center of the collar—squares the size and shape of micro discs.

Air whooshed from his lungs. God, she was clever. He couldn’t think of a safer place for them than on her attack-trained shepherd’s neck.

When it counted, she’d come through. He hadn’t told her how he knew she had the information. Didn’t tell her what information he thought she’d had. Yet, she’d turned over—what at least looked like—everything, as she’d claimed.

It was a huge sacrifice. One that moved Mitch and gave him the strength to make that leap of faith that terrified his heart, but one he knew he had to make.

He exited the bathroom and paused in front of the guest bedroom door. The house was quiet and cold. Everyone had descended into the basement and only plywood covered the gaping windows. But the heat was on full blast, beginning to warm the house again.

He turned the knob and pushed the bedroom door open. Halina, still in her towel, crouched in front of the suitcase one of the guards had brought in, collecting clothes.

“Please don’t yell at me anymore.” Her voice was quiet and flat. “Just let me get dressed and I’ll leave.”

Mitch closed the door at his back and stood there a long moment. With its intact windows and the heat pouring from a vent nearby, this room was warm. “Is that what you want?”

“It’s what you need. What everyone needs.”

The fact that she hadn’t jumped to a
hell yes
was a good sign. But they had a long way to go to rebuild the bridges they’d burned. And Mitch didn’t even know where to start.

“I shouldn’t have . . . judged you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She didn’t respond, just threw a pair of jeans on the bed. Then a long-sleeved shirt.

He crossed his arms and approached her, stopping a few feet away. “Halina, what did you say to Dex? I recognized
protect,
but not the other word.”

“Children,” she said, her voice weak, distracted as she tossed underwear, socks, and a bra onto the pile. “We did search and rescue for a while. Had to stop because when Dex located a body instead of a live person, he went into weeks of depression. Something about the smell . . . affected levels of neurotransmitting . . .” She paused. Sighed. Shook her head. “Never mind. I taught him search—
poisk,
find—
nakhodit’,
hunt—
okhota
—”

“Hunt?”

“It means the same as attack, but signals the dog he has to find the target first.”

That comment made Mitch think back to when he’d first found her, less than two full days ago, and all the security measures she’d had in place. An attack-trained shepherd, Krav Maga training, weapons training. He thought about how long she’d lived in fear. How much she’d given up to stay safe.

How much time . . . investment . . . security . . . power . . . she’d just handed over to him in Dex’s collar. She hadn’t needed to. She could have stood her ground. Continued to deny. Mitch would never have found it.

“Halina, tell me about the visions.”

She crossed her arms. “You know about the visions. There’s nothing else to tell.”

“You didn’t tell me there were two sides. A good side and a bad side.”

“It doesn’t—”

“It
does
matter. Were your visions of me with other women the good vision or the bad?”

Her brow pulled in a frown. “What kind of question is—”

“Tell me, Halina,” he said, growing frustrated. “I want to know both sides of the futures you saw for me.”

She pressed her lips together and tightened her arms. “The women were the good side of your future, Mitch. As I said, you have a happy life ahead of you.”

“And the bad side?”

She hesitated. A mixture of anger and resignation shone in her eyes. “The truth is that in the bad side of your future, you’re dead. Murdered. Can you leave now, so I can get dressed? I’d like to get out of here before Abernathy decides to come back.”

“Murdered?” he said, stunned. “I mean, everyone dies. It’s the ultimate bad future, right? But
murdered
?”

“Actually, dying isn’t the worst future, Mitch. Difficult as it may be to believe, there are worse fates than death.”

He didn’t like that little reminder. “Come on, Halina. Give me a little more than that.”

“I don’t know the details,” she said. “All I know is that in all of my visions, your life splits and goes one of two ways. The details of each vision are slightly different—a different woman, a different location, a different manner of death—but they’re all similar enough to know your fate. You’ll either live a life of bliss with your harem or die by murder.”

Frustrated, Mitch ran a hand over his face. “Why don’t you ever see yourself in my future?”

She closed her eyes. “I’m always in your future, Mitch. I’m the reason you die,
every time
.”

“For Christ’s sake, Halina—”

“Did you not almost die in a car accident yesterday?” she asked, her anger and incredulity growing. “Did you not just almost die in the living room? How many times have you come that close to death in the last seven years? When I’ve been out of your life?”

He thought back. “Actually . . . quite a few.”

“
Un
related to Schaeffer.”

Okay, none. She had him there.

“Are you really going to tell me I don’t know what I’m seeing? That I don’t know what I’m talking about?”