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Cara had cared House, maybe even loved him. Todd ached for the pain she felt, even as an insidious curl of jealousy rose within him.
But House was gone now, poor bastard. A death he hadn’t deserved.
He’d find the guy’s killer—because it was his job and because he liked to give victims their peace.
His fingers eased over Cara’s flesh. “I can be a hard man, Cara. My job’s important to me. Doing what’s right. Protecting those who can’t protect themselves. I take it all seriously. ” For years, the badge had been all he had. He wanted her to understand him.
The darkness inside, a darkness he knew she’d felt.
Her cheek rested on his arm as she gazed at him. “Why did you become a cop?”
The memory of his mother’s scream burned in his mind. “My dad was a cop. He worked for the Atlanta PD for eighteen years. ”
Most folks took the statement at face value and left it at that. A boy, wanting to grow up and be like his father.
Some truth. Some lie.
“But why did you join the force?” The dark eyes that stared back at him saw too much.
Too deeply.
Todd found himself telling her a story he’d never told another. Not even the grandfather who’d wound up raising him. “My dad worked undercover. Deep undercover. Months would go by and we wouldn’t see him, then when he would finally come home, he’d be a stranger. ” A hard, brooding stranger who smelled of alcohol and smoke. One whose eyes had been flint sharp and whose mouth had never smiled.
“He was a good cop, though. Everyone said so. ” And there had been so many plaques and medals in his dad’s room. His mom had polished them every single week, smiling that same, sad smile as she cleaned them. “I don’t know how many guys my dad put away over the years. Drug dealers. Robbers. Killers. He made a lot of enemies in his time, the kind of enemies who don’t forget or forgive when they’ve been betrayed. ”
Cara didn’t speak. Just watched him.
“A guy got out one day. Tony Costa. My dad had been undercover in the guy’s crew. Busted him for selling coke and for the murders of two prostitutes. ”
“And he got out?” Cara asked, surprise in her voice.
The woman didn’t understand the human justice system. “He rolled on some higher-ups. Pleaded to manslaughter for the prostitutes and wound up serving a seven-year sentence. ” He sucked in a deep breath. This was the part that he hated to remember. “I was fourteen when Tony was paroled. I remember because it was my birthday. Mom had ordered me a cake and we were just leaving the house to go get it. ” He’d been going to have a swimming party. The plan had been to get the cake and go back home to set up before his friends came over.
“Costa was waiting for us in the driveway. He had a gun. ”
“Todd…”
“He made us go back inside. Told mom to call dad. Said to ‘get the bastard over there so he could watch. ’ But dad was undercover, and mom couldn’t get him. She told Costa she could call his captain, but—” A lump was in his throat now, choking back the words. “But Costa knew a call to the captain would have cops swarming over him. So he smiled at my mom, and he killed her. The bastard shot her point-blank in the head. ”
She wrapped her arms around him, turning to burrow her head against his neck. “I’m so sorry. ”
He felt cold. Even with the warmth of her body pressing down against him, he felt so damn cold. “Then he turned the gun on me. ”
She froze against him. A burst of wind blew into the room, sweeping over his body, ruffling the sheets and covers.
Her head lifted. “He shot you. ”
Todd caught her hand. Brought it to rest against the old, jagged scar on his left side. “I tried to run, but the bullet caught me. ” He’d thought he was dying when he felt the burning lash of the pain in his side. The fiery agony had stolen his breath, then he’d seen the blood. So much blood. His. His mother’s. Everywhere. “He left me there. Bleeding out on the floor, with my mother’s body only a few feet away. ” He still had nightmares about that day. Still woke up in a cold sweat, wishing he’d done something to save his mother. Wishing he couldn’t still smell her blood on his skin.
“But you survived. ” Her fingers curled over the white scar. “You got out of there. You lived. ”
“A neighbor heard the gunshots. Called nine-one-one. I woke up in a hospital, my side stitched up, and found my grandfather sitting beside me. ”
“And where was your father?” He caught the snap of anger in her voice—and the soft echo of pain, for him.
“Tracking Costa. He came to see me, once, in the hospital. He hugged me and told me that he regretted a lot of the things he’d done in his life. ” His dad had been the same hard, stranger, but he’d also seemed…desperate. He’d put back on his wedding band, a ring Todd had never seen the man wear. “He told me then that ‘if you go too deep into the devil’s world, only darkness will fill you. ’ It was the last thing he ever said to me. ”
“Did he catch the man who’d shot you?” Quiet words in a beautiful face that was suddenly deadly.
The windows were still closed to the night. The magic wind had disappeared now. The air was strangely tense around him.
“Yeah, he caught him. Didn’t even try to bring him in. My dad shot Costa in the head and in the heart. Then he turned the gun on himself. ”
Eighteen years on the force, and his dad had eaten his gun. And left him alone.
“I hated him for leaving me. For years, I didn’t understand why he’d done it—”
“He thought it was his fault,” she said, her voice soft. “Humans…do crazy things when guilt presses on them. ”
This was the part he didn’t like to think about. “I blamed him, Cara. For my mother’s death. For me getting shot. If he’d just been at home, taking care of his family like he should have been doing, none of this would have ever happened. ” The words came from the boy he’d been, though he liked to think the man knew better.
Yeah, he liked to think that. “When I first woke up and realized that my mom was gone, I wished it had been him instead of her. ”
And he’d kept wishing that, even when his father had finally come to see him in the hospital. He’d wished it until…“His captain came to see me a few days after I was released. I was staying at my grandfather’s. ” His mom’s father had been an affluent, somewhat reserved man who lived in one of the older, richer parts of Atlanta. He’d never approved of his only child marrying a cop, and he’d been fighting hard to get a custody hearing for Todd when the captain had come calling with his dark news.
“How did you feel, when you learned what had happened?” Her naked body pressed against his, and the flesh-on-flesh contact was strangely comforting. Her hand stroked his scar, softly, tenderly, and the mysterious eyes that stared into his held no censure.
Just patience. Warmth.
Warmth in darkness.
His skin didn’t seem quite so cold anymore, but inside, he still felt like his heart was encased in ice. “I was so fucking glad that Tony Costa was dead. So fucking glad. ”
She pressed a kiss against his chest. Right over his heart. “But what about your father?”
He’d been furious with him. “He didn’t have to die, Cara. There were so many other options for him, he didn’t have to die. ”
“Maybe he thought he did. ”
“Well, he was damn well wrong. ” He’d taken the coward’s way out. The easy way.
“He might have thought that he’d failed you, your mother. A man who’d spent his life protecting others would have a hard time facing the fact that he’d failed to protect the ones who’d mattered the most. ”
Yeah, the shrinks had all said something like that. They’d told him that his father had been disturbed, pushed past his reason by the murder of his wife.
But the simple truth was that his dad had chose
n to put that gun into his mouth.
And chosen to leave the world and his son behind.
He hadn’t forgiven him for that, not yet.
Not deep inside.
“You hate him, don’t you?” Again, no censure. No judgment of any kind. Just a quiet question and those eyes, watching him.
“For a long time, I did. I’m still mad as hell at him for what he did, but—” The truth? “It takes too much energy to hate. I wish he’d been different. I wish I’d been different, but hating a dead man isn’t going to make my life any better. ”
“Will blaming him?”
The direct question made him flinch. Suddenly, part of him wanted to jump from the bed, to put distance between them. And another part wanted to hold her as tight as he could. “It helps me to sleep at night, baby. ”
“No, I don’t think it does. ” Now she kissed him on the mouth. Not a passionate kiss. Her lips were closed, the touch brief, but soothing. “Nothing makes death easier to bear. Nothing. ” There was a knowledge in her voice. A pain that hinted at her own loss.
He brushed back her hair, and wondered what had caused the sadness he felt in her. A sadness that more than matched his own.
He wanted to ask her. Had begun telling her about his father because he’d wanted her to learn to trust him—as he was learning to trust her.
But now wasn’t the time to push her, he knew that. And perhaps he’d already revealed too much about himself, too soon.
“If you blamed him, then why did you become a cop?”
He would tell her this. “Because I needed to prove him wrong. ” He’d also wanted to save others, as he hadn’t been able to save his mother. But he didn’t tell her that.
“How?”
“You don’t have to give up your humanity to be a good cop. You can fight killers, mon—” He broke off, uncomfortable with that particular word choice. “Evil without becoming evil yourself. ”
“And trying to make up for your mother’s death? That has nothing to do with it, hmmm?”
Insightful demon.
Smart woman. “Yeah, it does. ” He tightened his arms around her. The past weighed too heavily on him. He’d opened the door, but too much had spilled through. “Enough of this talk, Cara. It’s late, you’re here, I’m here, and the dead, they’re buried now. ”
“Sometimes they don’t stay buried. ” Whispered words.
“What?”
She shook her head and brushed her lips against his once more. “Nothing. ” Her arms wrapped around him, held him tight.
For the first time in years, Todd almost felt at peace.
Closing his eyes, he inhaled her sweet scent.
Susan Dobbs paced in front of the phone booth. She was nervous as hell, but the call had to be made.
She’d driven hard and fast to get out of the city. He had too many friends, spies, in Atlanta, and she’d been afraid one of them would see her making the call. Hell, she’d even thought about buying one of those cheap, disposable cell phones, but she’d stopped at two stores and hadn’t been able to find any in stock.
Just her fucking bad luck.
But it didn’t matter—this way was better, anyway. Dozens of people used this phone every day, so the call would never be traced back to her. Besides, once she made the call, she’d keep driving straight down that long, dark road, and no one in Atlanta would ever see her ass again.
Her palms were sweating and her heart pounded so hard that her chest hurt.
He didn’t know what she’d done. The last attack hadn’t been part of their original plan. When he found out, Susan knew the guy was going to be fucking furious.
But damn it, when was she supposed to ever have any fun?
Taking a breath, Susan reached for the phone. A lock of blond hair fell over her eye, and she shoved it out of the way with her left hand.
Then she dialed the cop’s number, a number she’d memorized days before.
Chapter 12
The shrill cry of the phone ripped Todd from his sleep. He muttered, cursed, and tried to reach for the nightstand. Cara was on top of him, her body completely limp, so the phone rang four times before he finally managed to snag it.
“What?” Jesus, the light on the bedside clock said 4:15 A. M . If McNeal was calling him again—
“They lied to you. ” A woman’s voice. High. Thready with what could have been fear.
A burst of adrenaline brought him to instant wakefulness. “Who is this?”
Cara, who was now partially on her side, tensed.
“They lied to you,” the woman repeated. “He made them lie. ”
“Look, lady, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about and it’s too damn late for prank calls—”
“Your demon wasn’t at Paradise Found like she told you. The waitresses, they lied. So did the bartender. She slipped away, and they know she did. ” The words came out in a tumbling rush.
Anger began to fuel his heart. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Because he made them lie. Just like he tried to make me. ”
“Who are you talking about?” But he already knew.
“Niol. ” A fearful whisper of sound.
“You got proof of that?” Cara was completely silent next to him, and he knew that she could hear the whole damn conversation.
“He’s a demon, just like she is. Demons lie. They deceive. ”
“Who are you?” He asked again, but he knew the caller wasn’t about to reveal her identity.
“I’m a woman who is tired of living with evil. The killings have to stop. ” A pause. “She has to be stopped. Don’t let her trick you.