Promises in the Dark Page 13

  “No, he was seeing a lot of other women and I just wasn’t into that. I didn’t know what I was into. But right after my father died, that guy took me to a lecture at the college—as friends. That’s where I met Dale. He’s an archeologist—and a professor. He traveled a lot.”

  “Last name and address.”

  “Dale Robbins—247 Lakeshore Drive, Apartment 4C. That’s about half an hour from my house,” she added.

  He committed that to memory because he didn’t want to stop working on her hands to write it down. She shifted as his touch began to make her feel … warm. Watching his big hands stroke hers, the difference in the skin color, his tan to her paler skin, highlighted by the closeness.

  “How long were you guys together?”

  “We dated for six months. In the beginning, I thought it was going to be perfect, but it didn’t really work.”

  “Why not?” His voice caressed her—it was deeper now, even as his hands continued to massage hers, working the pressure points on her wrists, and she fought the urge to squirm in her seat.

  No one had ever done this for her, had worried about her hands cramping or her wrists hurting. Caleb made this seem like far more than a job to him.

  “It was more me than him. I mean, Dale came into my life at the right time. I was more alone than ever, distrustful of everyone. He said the things I needed to hear. He made me feel like someone finally had my back, and it was really nice.” Nice, but no fireworks, at least not the kind she’d read about, or seen in movies and on TV.

  Not at all the way she felt around Caleb after less than forty-eight hours together. “He needed me. He wanted me around. But he worked a lot and so did I.” She paused. “I was waiting for it to grow into something it never did, so I ended things. He wasn’t happy about it, showed up at my house late one night asking for another chance. I let him in and we talked until I was too tired to argue more. I went back to sleep, he stayed on the couch, and when I woke up in the morning, he was gone. Work, he’d written on a note he left in the kitchen, and I knew that things between us wouldn’t change. Apparently, he realized it too, since that’s the last I heard from him. I’m afraid I didn’t handle any of it very well, not the relationship, or the breakup. He was intense at times … and it was all so new to me.”

  “At least you realized early that Dale wasn’t right for you. There are people who live their whole lives in bad relationships and refuse to let themselves see it.”

  “So I’m not doing badly for a reforming recluse?”

  “Not bad at all.”

  She liked the way he talked with her. Talked to her. She believed what he said and even though that might make her naive, her instincts were telling her otherwise. “I never thought I’d be able to fall for someone. My father always said that love is the ultimate weakness, that when you let your guard down, you lose all perspective.” She paused. “Sometimes I think he was right.”

  “So why date at all? Why even bother to try?” He wasn’t goading her with the question. Rather, he really seemed to want to know—and she wasn’t even sure she knew.

  “I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life living under my father’s influence of distrust. I wanted to be part of a regular couple. I didn’t want to be the poor girl who lived with her recluse of a father.” God, she sounded defensive. Probably because she knew she’d been acting stupidly. Naively. But since then, she’d toughened up. She’d learned.

  From this experience alone, she’d learned.

  “Give yourself some time, Vivi. You can’t blame yourself if you weren’t feeling the relationship.”

  But she did. Because the sex part hadn’t been good at all, and from everything she’d read, you could have great, even amazing sex with someone you didn’t love. Granted, Dale had been her first and she was nervous, but he’d done nothing to reassure her, which made the entire experience fall into the not-good category.

  “We, uh, slept together, but it wasn’t very good. I wasn’t very good,” she blurted out, wondering why she couldn’t have just stopped while she was ahead with this true confession.

  He stopped his massage cold. “Is that what he told you?”

  She hesitated and then said, “He told me I was young … that it would get better as I got older.”

  “He’s a fool,” Cael growled. “It’s his job to give you pleasure, especially if you were a virgin.”

  How did he know that? And furthermore, why was she talking about this with him? “I suppose things would’ve been different with you.”

  He nodded, slowly, raked her with his eyes in a way that made her shiver, as if she were naked in the middle of an open field. “Don’t suppose. Know.”

  “You stopped me before.”

  “I didn’t want to take advantage of you.”

  “And now?”

  He simply smiled, and God, he looked good when he smiled. But Dale had smiled too.

  Dale never made you feel like this. And still … “What if my father was right? What if I shouldn’t trust anyone at all?”

  “You’re going to have to trust someone along the way,” he said quietly, and anger surged through her, fast and furious, her emotions bubbling with a fury she’d never expected.

  “Sometimes, I felt so used by him. And that’s horrible, because he was my father.”

  “No offense, but it sounds to me like he was the child in the relationship.”

  She nodded. “Yes, that’s true. And with Dale—the boyfriend—I followed the same pattern.”

  “Maybe it’s time you broke the pattern, tried something new,” he suggested. “Pick someone … random.”

  “You don’t know anything about numbers,” she said. “Or randomness.”

  He stopped any more words with a kiss. It wasn’t gentle, but hard, almost punishing, and enough to make her forget about numbers and patterns and Dale.

  When he tore his mouth from hers, she felt flushed, her lips bruised, and as she touched them he said, “That’s what it should be like.”

  “I’d better … ah … I mean …”

  His ringing phone saved her and he smiled like he knew it before he turned away and answered with a sharp, “What’s going on?”

  What was going on? She’d never thought she could feel so strongly for someone, and so quickly. She rubbed her bare arms and then grabbed the blanket from the bed to wrap herself in.

  What made her think she could trust him?

  He saved your life … twice.

  His job, she argued.

  But the kiss … she was pretty sure that wasn’t a part of the job at all. Then again, it was obvious she knew nothing at all about love and trust. Or kissing. Or life.

  And she was trapped—cut off from her former life and completely unable to help the military, stop DMH from using her program.

  As much control as she’d fooled herself into thinking she had over numbers—or anything—she now realized she barely had a grip on anything.

  And this man … he could swallow her whole in one bite … and something trilled inside of her, as if to let her know if that was to happen, she would enjoy every second of it.

  He looked completely in control, and her life had been so utterly the opposite when her father had been alive, she longed for stability.

  Dale had seemed to understand her need to mourn her father.

  It hurt to admit that during the last years of her father’s life she’d been very close to hating him.

  He’d left her with a mountain of debt, shitty credit and a general distrust for most people. Of course, on that she had to agree that he’d been right.

  She’d let her guard down with Dale—she should’ve known better. The relationship didn’t devastate her, but it left her far more wary than she’d already been. She’d waited a heck of a long time to give her virginity away to someone far more interested in his own pleasure. But, just the way she’d taken care of her father for years and gotten so little in return, she’d continued that pattern—although no
t consciously—and much to her dismay when she finally had realized it.

  Now there were firewalls around her heart.

  Why did she feel like Cael could breach them with a single touch?

  Why did she want him to try?

  CHAPTER

  9

  Olivia saw that the dark had finally come and so she washed up quickly using the rest of the water and a bandanna Zane lent her, dressed in her now dry borrowed T-shirt and pants. Wished she had different shoes. “God, I hope no one took the truck,” she muttered to herself.

  She was packed and ready by the time Zane came back inside. “Dylan got in touch with some of his contacts—it seems that the missionaries in the areas around Freetown know Doc J well. Apparently, they use a lot of former Army to protect their clinics and camps.”

  “Do you think DMH can track me there, the way you just tracked Doc J?”

  Zane’s jaw clenched and then relaxed. “I’m sure they could—but the missionaries wouldn’t reveal that intel to just anyone. Dylan served with the guys who provide the protection, that’s the only reason they revealed anything.”

  She nodded, having no choice but to trust that. She knew Doc J had a former soldier who indeed worked inside the clinic, providing protection and shuttling visiting doctors and such back and forth to the harbor and into the main parts of town.

  “My brother’s making arrangements with Doc J,” he said, had flipped his phone open again and was punching in a few numbers. He spoke quickly and she caught a couple of words, like transport, and then there was only silence, deep and dark. The pit of her stomach ached again from fear and she hoped this would work out.

  When he hung up, he said, “Someone from Doc J’s camp will meet us. There’s a place an hour from here. More like three, the way we’re traveling, but we don’t need to be there until first light. We should have plenty of time,” he muttered, more to himself than her, and then, “Why the hell are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “I’m not, Zane. I just want to make sure you’re safe. That if I stay, you’ll get out of this country unharmed.”

  “Too late, Liv,” he told her. “DMH has my picture. I’m in this as deeply as you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I found my picture on the guy’s phone—the one outside your house. He’d transmitted it already.”

  Ama’s face flashed in front of her eyes. Ama, who’d gone to the States for medical school and then come back to Africa in order to use what she’d learned to help her own people. The woman had taken Olivia in, cared for her, didn’t worry about her own safety.

  There’s no safety in Africa, she’d said. There’s no safety anywhere, Olivia. Fear isn’t going to help you.

  Now Ama was dead. Tortured. And even though Olivia hadn’t been there, hearing what had happened from Ama’s friend had been horrifying.

  “When?” she demanded now of Zane.

  “The night I came to you. That guy arrived right after I did—or before, I’m not sure.” He ran a hand through his hair.

  “DMH knows who you are?”

  “By now they’ve got a pretty good idea,” he said. “I’m not telling you to make you feel guilty. You just need to know that I’m a target too.”

  “And what are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m not going to hide, that’s for sure.”

  She bristled. “I can do a lot of good here.”

  “If you weren’t scared for your life, sure.”

  She hated him then, because he’d basically told her she was a coward. She’d fought for so long to be anything but, and in the end it didn’t make a damned bit of difference. “I can’t get taken again.”

  He didn’t say anything right away, continued to watch her with those eyes that told her he knew everything she was going to say, every argument and justification, and he’d still wait patiently and listen anyway.

  Having people who helped her getting in major trouble had become a pattern she did not want to repeat. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier about the picture?”

  “Everyone needs their secrets.” He shouldered her bag along with his own. “Ready?”

  Caleb hadn’t wanted to be interrupted, had wanted to keep kissing Vivi as she melted against him, wanted to kiss her silly and erase memories of that asshole ex-boyfriend.

  But it was Dylan on the other end of the line, who didn’t even give him a chance for more than a fleeting hello before he said quietly, “Cael, we’ve got a problem.”

  “Tell me.”

  “DMH has Zane’s picture.”

  Hearing that was truly like getting socked in the gut, and both he and Dylan remained quiet for a few moments, the severity of the situation weighing heavily enough for Caleb to feel the need to sink into the nearest chair.

  Dylan spoke first. “He’s okay. He took the guy’s phone, but the picture had already been sent—I didn’t know if you guys could do anything with the e-mail addresses.”

  He rattled off the address and IP and Caleb wrote them on the legal pad he’d been drawing on. “I’ll pass it along to Gray.”

  “Good. Zane’s headed to a clinic with Olivia. She’s not ready to come home yet. He said he’s giving her some rope and letting her run herself out.”

  “Give her some rope,” Cael repeated. “What the fuck, Dylan?”

  “He’s playing it right. The doc’s worried about coming home. Thinks that she’ll bring retribution to anyone close to her.”

  “Yeah, that’s my big goddamned concern as well. So we’re on the same page.”

  “He’ll get through it, Cael. He always does.”

  “How many chances does one guy get?”

  “As many as he deserves,” Dylan said before he clicked off.

  Cael sat holding the phone. Sat and stared at the four walls that felt like they were closing in on him.

  Someone had to talk some sense into Zane.

  Someone needs to let the boy run free. That’s the way he’s happiest. The way you’re all happy, his mother used to say, without anger or judgment. In fact, out of all of them, she might’ve been the one who needed to run the most, and she’d found the perfect match in their father.

  As he heard Vivi tapping on the keys, he texted the information he’d gotten from her about the three men she’d dated—putting extra emphasis on Dale—to Mace. Mace texted back that they were still waiting for the fingerprint IDs they’d taken from Vivi’s house, both before and after the break-in.

  Satisfied with that, Caleb then texted Gray the intel he’d gotten about Zane, and received a terse I’m on it message back. Now he just had to try not to jump out of his goddamned skin while he waited to see exactly how far DMH would go to trace Zane.

  It took them less than an hour to get to the shed where he’d parked the truck. The only reason he was going back to it at all was because of Liv, and mainly because she moved too slow for his comfort.

  Not her fault, of course, but Zane’s goal was to get them to the mission fast.

  She was moving as quickly as she could, her head down, but every step seemed to echo in the early evening quiet. He ground his teeth together and said nothing.

  Short of carrying her, that couldn’t be helped.

  He was also pretty damned annoyed with her. Felt like she’d fucking used him.

  You slept with her pretty damned willingly.

  Because he’d been thinking of nothing else for six months. Maybe Caleb was right, maybe it had simply grown into an obsession born of guilt and pride.

  And maybe Zane knew that he’d fallen damned hard for Olivia Strohm—and he didn’t want to come down from that just yet.

  “Stay here, out of sight,” he told her, handed her a rifle. “I’m going to stake out the truck.”

  She nodded, the strain evident on her face.

  He resisted the urge to kiss her. Which seemed really hard to do, and so he turned away fast and made his way toward the shed.

  Once in position, he got down o
n a knee to scan the area. Noted that even though the shed was closed, the grass that surrounded it was tamped down far more than it had been earlier—and not because of the rain. No, there was a path from the other side of the clearing, clearly man-made.

  They were here, waiting for them to come get the truck. Which they, he wasn’t sure, of course, so why tell Liv any of it and scare the shit out of her.

  Instead, he went back and lied.

  ———

  They weren’t alone.

  Olivia hadn’t realized it until what was likely the last possible minute, but judging by the way Zane had maneuvered them for the past twenty, he’d been in better safe than sorry mode for quite some time.

  She’d been sorry ever since he’d come back and told her their truck had been stolen, had been deep in thought for the hours they’d been walking, trying to figure out what she was doing. Her mind tracing circles around everything that had happened to her over the past months … and still, her body was prepared to do anything to get back underneath Zane again.

  Her mind, her heart, wouldn’t let it be that easy though.

  Zane was so hard, dangerous—and he moved as if he belonged out here, blending into the backdrop of this wild place with his own primitive nature.

  Moving like this with him, she could appreciate that, for the first time since her escape, she wasn’t flying blind. Wasn’t completely alone.

  As uncomfortable as his agenda made her, she was still grateful. Never more so than now as she waited behind his tensed body, so stock-still that she was barely breathing.

  They were close to the meeting place—or at least they should be. She didn’t know if Zane had circled them back in an attempt to throw people off their track.

  People. Soldiers? DMH?

  “Run,” Zane whispered against her ear and the command—and the fear—broke her stillness.

  She did, aware that she was jerked in every direction by the thick brush, the hidden ropes of vines along the floor of the forest, the wet ground spongy under her feet.

  She was happy for the darkness even as she was bruised and scratched and poked, even as her legs began to protest and her breath came in short wheezes. But she wouldn’t stop. Her life depended on it, and the renewed strength from that thought pushed her on for the next while, legs moving seemingly of their own accord, hands fisted, shoulders tensed.