Shock Waves (14 page)

“Music won’t bring her back.”

Chapter 8

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T
he words were soft, quiet, but they cut through Brenna with an eerie precision. She saw Jorak’s eyes clear, sharpen, saw the change consume him. He wasn’t a man lost anymore. Not a man driven by music. The monster was back, the man she’d seen in the still of the night.

“I can still hear her voice,” he murmured, rising. Eyes trained on Ethan, he walked toward them. “I can see the look in her eyes when she went down. I can hear the way she cried out.” He paused a few feet away, pierced Ethan with a look of pure hatred. “Can you?”

Brenna’s heart was pounding so hard she could barely breathe. She looked at Ethan, saw the shadows had deepened. “She deserved better.”

Jorak laughed, a dark sound ripped from somewhere deep. “I would have given her the world.”

“But you didn’t, did you?” Ethan shot back. “You gave her something entirely different.”

Jorak’s eyes went wild for just a heartbeat, then he banked the emotion, brought himself under control. With a slow, degrading smile, he turned his attention to Brenna.

“You look lovely this morning,” he murmured in his rich Mediterranean voice. His gaze skimmed the length of the skimpy sundress she’d slipped into after showering. She preferred jeans and T-shirts, but Jorak had only provided scant slips of fabric that clung provocatively to her curves. This was the simplest she could find—a soft white cotton with a scoop neck, a line of tiny buttons extending down the fitted torso and flared at the hip.

The urge to wrap her arms around her body was strong, but she refused to show even a sliver of fear or intimidation.

Jorak’s smile widened, revealing his gleaming white teeth. “My men tell me the two of you didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Ethan reached for her hand, the first contact since she’d rolled from his arms, and curled his fingers around hers. “What went on in that bed last night is none of your business.”

“Tsk-tsk,” Jorak chided, pursing his lips. “Don’t tell me my adventurous friend has grown prudish in his old age.”

My adventurous friend.
Friend.
The word fell softly into place, another piece to the puzzle Brenna didn’t understand.

“We’re both men,” Jorak continued. “We both know what a man wants from a woman like this.”

Ethan urged Brenna closer to his side. “I highly doubt we have the same appetite.”

“We’ll see,” Jorak murmured, lifting a hand to Brenna’s face.

She never had a chance to brace herself. Never had a chance to prepare. The images came at her like a fractured prism, cutting, blinding, distorting. Darkness. Rage. An unquenchable thirst for revenge.

“Take your hands off her.”

Ethan. His voice. Quiet. Deadly. Far away. So far away. His hand, curled around hers, gone. She blinked dizzily, brought the room back into a hazy focus, saw Ethan struggling against two dark-skinned guards in fatigues. They each had one of his arms, but still he fought like an untamed animal.

“So lovely,” Jorak murmured, feathering a hand down her throat. “Such a waste. Maybe I should enjoy her first.”

Panic sliced in fast and raw. She twisted against him, swung her elbows. “I’d rather die,” she gritted out.

“Touch her, and it will be the last mistake you make.”

Those words. The lethal vehemence of his voice. She stopped struggling, stopped breathing, looked at Ethan standing there through a distorted window of time and space, blurred but horribly clear. She’d seen him like this before. So many times. She’d heard his voice, heard those words. And God, she’d fought. Fought so hard to prevent this moment from arriving.

Never before had she lived through one of her visions. She’d always been a witness, an observer suspended on the sidelines, unable to participate, to prevent, only to discover the aftermath. She didn’t belong here in this glaring room of white. She should never have made contact with Ethan Carrington. Never have tangled their lives.

But that was a lie, and she knew it.

The late-morning sun cut through the expansive wall of windows, falling like a spotlight on Jorak Zhukov. He no longer touched her, instead had his hands curled around a sleek, black semiautomatic. And just as she knew he would, he laughed.

“Look at you.” He swept an arm toward the far side of the spacious room, where armed guards stood ready and waiting. “You’re hardly in a position to be making threats.”

Instinctively Brenna glanced toward the ornate mirror, where she knew what she would see—a tall raven-haired man surrounded by a semicircle of guards with guns she recognized from her dreams as MP-5Ns. One of the men had secured rope around Ethan’s wrists to keep his arms behind his back. Still, he looked defiant, his eyes hard, his jaw a firm line, and she knew he welcomed the bite of the rope digging into flesh. It meant he was alive. And so long as he was alive, the man with the suit of white but smile of darkness would not be allowed to win.

The man who called Ethan friend.

“I have what you want,” Ethan said in a dangerously quiet voice. “Killing me leaves you with nothing.”

Contempt flashed in Jorak’s coal black eyes. “Death doesn’t always involve the body, my friend. Only if you’re lucky.”

The threat echoed silkily through the sun-drenched room. White walls, white furniture, white carpet. But not white lies. The lies were black, and they had destroyed.

But not again.

With punishing clarity, Brenna knew that as long as Ethan Carrington had a breath in his body, he would not allow Jorak Zhukov to hurt another, not ever, ever again.

Frowning, she glanced at the silver frame embracing the photo of the woman, and finally she knew. Finally she understand. The hatred that simmered between these two men was personal, and before too many more suns sank beneath the horizon of the ocean, the vendetta was going to end in a spray of gunfire.

“The choice is yours,” Jorak announced, reaching out to slide the barrel of the gun along her throat. “The power has always been in your hands.”

* * *

Somehow Ethan kept himself from lunging. Somehow Ethan kept himself from slamming his body against Jorak’s and severing the contact between the vile man and Brenna. She stood there so unnaturally still, looking breathtakingly beautiful in a simple white cotton sundress. He didn’t want Jorak putting his manicured hands on her, touching her, making the color drain from her face. He didn’t even want him looking at her.

But acting prematurely would ruin everything.

So he forced himself to stand there, with his body rigid and his jaw tight, and tried to communicate to her with his eyes. To assure her everything would be okay. That Jorak would not hurt her. That he would not let him.

God help him, she was amazing. Jorak Zhukov held a gun to her throat. In less than a second, he could end her life. But she wasn’t screaming or crying, wasn’t fighting. She just stood there, staring at him through hard, challenging eyes, with her chin tilted and her blond hair, still damp from her shower, falling against stiff shoulders.

Jorak was right. The power was in Ethan’s hands. That’s what this whole charade was about. That’s why he’d dropped his security detail, why he’d gone to the river that night, convinced Brenna was luring him into a trap.
Hoping
that she was.

Now… Christ, now the gravity of his mistake burned, and he knew he had to play his cards even more carefully. She wasn’t part of his plan. She was a complication, a danger he could neither afford nor risk.

Refusing to take the bait, knowing Jorak would never hurt her until he was sure he had the information he needed from Ethan, he wiped the emotion from his expression and stared beyond the weapons trained on him and through the window to the beach beyond, where a turquoise surf swished lazily against a carpet of sand so white, so sugary, it defied logic and possibility.

“So what’s it going to be?” Jorak slid the barrel of the gun along Brenna’s throat. Ethan saw her wince, felt it deep. “The name?” He dragged the gun between her breasts. “Or the woman.”

This was it. The moment he’d been waiting for, planning for, since
Jorak
escaped custody. He looked at Brenna, found her eyes locked on him, felt the punch in his gut. “Jordan Cutter.”

Jorak swung toward Ethan. His eyes were narrow, mistrusting. “Cutter? The name means nothing to me.”

“Actually, it means everything to you,” he said with a casualness he knew would infuriate the other man. “Cutter is the one you want. The one who betrayed you. Bring Cutter here and all your questions will be answered.”

And then some. In devastating ways Jorak couldn’t even begin to foresee.

Holding his face expressionless, Ethan watched the other man process the information, saw the doubt, the fledgling hope. “Why should I believe you?”

“You mean, besides the fact you’re holding a gun on the woman I share my bed with?”

Jorak returned his attention to a motionless Brenna, sliding the barrel of the gun along the swell of her breasts.

Ethan had never wanted to kill so badly in his life.

“It could be a trap.” Jorak mused.

“It could be,” Ethan agreed, and still Brenna showed no reaction. It was as though she’d seen this movie before, knew the ending.

“She’ll die if it is,” Jorak pointed out.

“She’ll die anyway.”

“Miguel!” Jorak snapped, and another man pushed through the circle of guards, this one small and Latino. “Find this Jordan Cutter and bring him here.”

The other man nodded, turned to leave.

“Last-known address was Baltimore,” Ethan tossed out, trying damn hard not to smile. It was like fishing, just as Grandfather Carrington had taught. Bait the hook, dangle it, then wait. Patience truly was a man’s best friend. “In case that helps.”

Jorak’s eyes hardened. “I was going to be gentle with her, make it fast. But if you’ve lied to me, if you’re trying to trick me, stall for time, there will be nothing gentle or fast about what I have in store for her.” With a self-satisfied smile, he shoved her toward Ethan. “Until then she’s yours.”

* * *

Only a few nights before, along the bank of the James River, the first hint of fall had whispered through the stately old sycamores and oaks. Not here. Summer held the island firmly in a death grip, with the sun, closer this far south, beating down relentlessly. Ethan stripped off his shirt and stood, reminded himself to breathe.

She stood on the sugary-fine sand at the water’s edge, with the warm breeze blowing her blond hair and tropical water surging around her ankles. With a hand lifted to shield her eyes from the sun, she looked down the beach, where a long-haired black-and-white dog raced after the ball she’d just thrown.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a more damning sight.

She didn’t belong here. She didn’t belong on this island, in Jorak’s foolishly elegant compound, in this charade. She didn’t belong in his life. She was a rare combination of strength and vulnerability, alluring yet aloof. Sometimes he caught a look in those whitewashed sapphire eyes of hers, a faraway, haunted look that jammed in his gut and made him wonder why she held herself apart from those around her, why she recoiled from a simple touch.

The further she held herself apart from the world, from Ethan, the closer he wanted to pull her.

They’d returned to their room to find beach clothes laid out on the bed, accompanied by a note informing them of the afternoon they were to spend enjoying a picnic—and their last moments together. For months he’d been looking forward to again standing face-to-face with Jorak. Once he would have been amused by this farce, the way Jorak was treating them as houseguests, fattening them for the kill. But now the game sickened him.

Because now Brenna was involved.

The dog ran toward her at a full gallop, splashing through the surf. Laughing, she bent and rubbed his head, took the red ball and threw it again, this time into the water, toward a rickety pier at the end of which bobbed two speed boats. The dog took off, running at first, soon breaking into a paddle.

Laughing. Dear God, it hit him with the jolt of the walls of water he craved while rafting through level-four rapids. She was laughing. The soft sound carried on the breeze, above the din of the seagulls, to stab into his gut. From the moment he’d met her she’d been tense and rigid, guarded, all except for those broken hours the night before, when she’d clung to him in the darkness. But now she was laughing, more relaxed with the dog than he’d ever seen her around people.

Desire sliced hard and fast. He wanted to be the one to make her laugh. He wanted to be the one to soften the tight lines of her body. He wanted to touch her and bring a smile to her mouth, not the hard lines she usually gave him. He wanted her to wrap her body around his out of desire, not horror.

But more than anything he wanted to stop wanting. Wanting only led one place. He knew that. Had learned not to trust the cravings that blotted out logic and caution.

Focus, he told himself. Put aside the want, and focus on the need, not for her body, but for the answers she continued to deny him. The truth. He’d tried to be patient. He’d tried to respect the walls she’d erected between them with the first light of the morning, when she’d awoken to find his hand tangled in her hair, their legs intertwined. She’d bolted from the bed and locked herself in the bathroom, torturing him with thoughts of her standing naked beneath the warm spray of water.