Lise was too nervous to chat with the security guard like she normally did when picking up a package.
But that was going to get her nowhere, which was where running away to Seattle had gotten her, so she didn’t do it.
Taking the box, which felt light for its size, she thanked the female security agent and then headed straight for the elevator. Nitro came along beside her, but did not betray by a flicker of an eyelash that he knew her.
Once they were on the elevator, he kept his eyes straight ahead and she examined the package. Wrapped in brown paper, it was about the right size for a book delivery, but too light, unless there were only a couple of books and a lot of weightless packing. The return address was smudged beyond recognition and the postmark was from Seattle’s city center post office.
While Amazon.com was Seattle-based, deliveries from the bookstore had the company name emblazoned on the boxes themselves and she couldn’t remember making a recent order. Though that didn’t mean a great deal. She’d often surprised herself with book orders when they got delivered.
Talking wasn’t the only thing she did with her mind fully engaged in her book.
The elevator stopped on Nitro’s floor and he stepped out, stopping just on the other side of the open doors, but not turning around to look at her. “Don’t open it until I’m up there.”
He didn’t wait for her agreement before leaving and the doors slid shut almost immediately after.
Both Joshua and Nitro’s attitudes weren’t doing much for her nerves. She’d thought she had mentally prepared herself to live under the siege mentality that being stalked induced, but she realized she’d been trying to hide from reality again. Yesterday, she’d used her work to do it, typing away while Joshua and his friends discussed her plight.
She should have been in on that, taken an active interest in their plans, but she’d lost herself in the fictional world she’d created. A world where the heroine always triumphed and the bad guys got theirs. It wasn’t a new defense mechanism. She’d used the stories in her head to hide from her father’s rejection and her focus on her writing had effectively masked the cracks in her marriage until Mike’s request for a divorce had plunged her into painful reality.
Here she was, trying to hide again. She didn’t want to believe the package was from her stalker, so she kept trying to come up with an alternative. She hated knowing that everything coming into her life was suspect now. However, not wanting to face reality was a far cry from being able to get rid of the prickly feeling she got every time she looked down at the nondescript box in her hands.
Joshua waited impatiently for Lise to return.
He didn’t like that walk down the hall by herself, even if he knew Nitro would not have left the elevator if there had been anyone else on it with Lise when it stopped at his floor. Knowing his friend’s competence didn’t stop Joshua from picking up his mobile to call and see if Nitro had returned to his own apartment, but as he went to dial, the door opened and Lise walked in.
She put a plain brown box down on the hall table and hung up her keys, her expression troubled.
He flipped his phone shut again and attached it to the clip on his belt. “What’s the problem?”
Biting her lower lip, her eyes skittered to the package and then to him. “I can’t read the return address and the postmark is from the post office here in Seattle.” She glared at nothing in particular. “I hate feeling like this.”
“Like what?”
“Besieged.”
Joshua knew what she meant. Thus far, all of her actions in regard to her stalker had been defensive. You couldn’t live large behind a defensive shield. It was a simple reality of combat. Taking the offensive could be a huge risk, but it also freed a person to act instead of react.
“Has he sent you anything before?” She hadn’t mentioned it, but he had not interrogated her on all the events leading up to her current situation.
It shamed him to acknowledge it, but he’d been too busy fighting the ungovernable desire that plagued him whenever he was with her. Sixteen years as a professional soldier and a tiny woman laid waste his defenses. It was damn embarrassing and not something he would ever willingly admit to.
“No.” She looked at him with troubled eyes as turbulent as a war-torn country. “But prior to pushing me into the street, he’d never done anything to put me in danger, either.” Her small fingers curled and uncurled at her sides, the knuckles turning white. “Maybe the sergeant was right. Maybe that wasn’t my stalker at all.”
He squeezed her shoulders, pulling her infinitesimally closer to him. “Don’t start doubting yourself now.”
She looked at his hands on her shoulders and then back at his face. “You do that a lot.”
“What?” Her mind definitely went places he had trouble following.
“Touch me.”
“And that surprises you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You said no sex on the job.”
He brushed the delicate column of her neck with both his thumbs, entranced by the rapidity of the pulse he found there. “I’m not touching you sexually.” Much.
“It’s just a friendly touch,” she mocked.
“Yeah.” A real friendly connection.
“And you caress all your friends this way, right?”
His lips quirked. He liked the way she made him smile even when she was stressed. “Not Hotwire and Nitro.”
Her hazel eyes filled with humor. “I can’t imagine.”
Neither could he, but what she didn’t know and he had no intention of telling her was that he couldn’t imagine touching another woman in this casual way, either. Even when he was having sex, he tended to keep the fondling to what was necessary to achieve his partner’s climax. With Lise, he wanted his hands on her all the time, even when he wasn’t aching with desires he couldn’t do anything about right now.
Her small hand settled against his heart and her pixie face took on a very serious cast. “I’m glad you’re here, Joshua. Thank you for helping me.”
For several seconds, he couldn’t say anything and he had to force himself to let her go and step back. “No problem.” He picked up the box. “Let me get Nitro in here before we open this.”
“He said he’d be up, but why does he have to be here to open it?”
“He’s an explosives expert.”
“You think it might be a bomb?”
“Your stalker’s behavior so far hasn’t indicated that level of violent intent, but caution never hurts.”
She glared at him, her eyes promising mayhem and retribution. “My heart missed several beats there. Maybe you need to be a little more circumspect about your precautions.”
He liked her sass, but he didn’t agree. “It’s no use hiding from the possibilities.”
She straightened as if driving herself up and mentally soldiering on. “I know you’re right. I have a bad habit of hoping if I ignore something, it will go away.”
“Like a stalker?”
“Yeah, among other things.”
Lise watched the dark, silent man use a swab chemical detector like the ones security employed in airports.
They’d brought the box into the kitchen and he was working at the table.
Joshua had suggested she go down to his friends’ apartment while Nitro did the scan, but she’d wanted to watch. Her professional curiosity had been aroused. Besides, she’d argued, if Joshua had really believed it was dangerous, he wouldn’t have allowed her to bring the package up from the security desk in the first place.
He’d admitted she was right with a real lack of grace and allowed her to stay, grumbling about independent, stubborn females. However, he’d made her promise to leave if Nitro found anything doubtful.
So far, Nemesis had been very careful to avoid giving any sort of concrete evidence for her to take to the police. She didn’t think they’d find anything dangerous or traceable in the package. Unless he wanted to kill her, and nothing so far indicated he wanted to do anything more than terrorize her, there was little chance the package was any danger to anything but her mental well-being.
Nitro’s efforts were no doubt overkill, but they were fascinating to watch.
“What does that do?” she asked Nitro as he scanned the package with a handheld wand.
“It detects electromagnetic emissions.”
She looked at Joshua for a clarification.
“If there is an electric timer or trigger for a bomb, the wand will pick it up.”
“It’s clean.” Nitro flipped open a knife that seemed to appear out of nowhere.
He sliced the packing tape holding the brown paper to the box and then pulled back the flaps. It was filled with packing peanuts and Nitro carefully removed them after doing an additional scan with his wand thing.
He pulled a tissue-wrapped bundle from the box and looked at her. “Do you mind if I unwrap it?”
She shook her head. “Go ahead.”
He peeled away the generic white tissue to reveal two pieces of a broken crystal heart on a pedestal. A groom was still attached to the base, but the bride had been crushed, the tiny shards of colored crystal that had comprised her still in the tissue.
Both Nitro and Joshua looked at her as if asking what it was.
“That’s a wedding cake topper. It’s a lot like the one I had when I married Mike.” Uncannily like it, actually.
Joshua took the tissue bundle from Nitro and examined it. “How much like it?”
She leaned back against the counter, not wanting the men to know that her limbs seemed to have stopped working. She hated being weak. “Almost identical. It’s like he’s seen my wedding photos, or something.”
“Maybe he did.”
Bile rose in her throat, but she swallowed it back down. She was not going to be a wimp about this.
“He could have seen it one of the times he broke into my apartment in Canyon Rock.” She’d kept her wedding album with her other pictures in a cabinet.
Joshua set the tissue bundle down on the counter and started rifling through the box. “You kept your wedding photos?”
He sounded surprised. She supposed a professional mercenary didn’t make it a habit of saving mementos.
“Yes.” It was part of her past, just like her awful picture missing her two front teeth in first grade and the photos that saved for posterity her pimple-faced adolescence.
Joshua looked at Nitro. “No note.”
She couldn’t say she was sorry. The implied message was upsetting enough—she didn’t need a vitriolic note to add to the effect.
That night, it wasn’t an erotic dream that woke Lise. It was the sound of a ringing telephone.
She rolled across the huge bed and scrabbled for the cordless phone on the table beside it. She encountered a hard, hairy wrist instead.
“Joshua?” she asked groggily.
“Yes. Here’s the phone.” He put it in her hand. “If it’s Nemesis, try to keep him talking for a trace.”
“You put a tracer on my phone?” she asked, shock waking her more effectively than the sound of the phone.
“Don’t worry about that now. Just answer it.”
She pressed the Call button as Joshua came down to sit beside her on the bed.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Lise.” The digitized voice made her hand clench tightly around the phone. “Your boyfriend appears to have abandoned you.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
Digitized but obviously scornful laughter met her denial.
Joshua’s warm hand settled over her thigh as if he was making a statement.
She wasn’t alone.
Not at all sure which was messing more with her nerves—the call, or Joshua’s nearness—she asked, “Who is this?”
How many times had she asked that same question? At least once in each of his phone calls. It irritated her that she hadn’t stopped asking it because he sure as certain wasn’t answering it.
“Nemesis. Are you pretending you don’t know?”
“Nemesis isn’t your real name.”
“It is now. That is what I’ve become, what you’ve made me.” Even through the voice distortion, she could hear the passionate anger in his voice, the accusation.
“How did I make you that? I don’t even know you.”
“Are you sure about that, Lise Barton?” Again the awful, almost mechanical laughter.
No, she wasn’t, and that bothered her. A lot. Nevertheless, she said, “I’m positive. None of the people I know would do what you’re doing.”
“They don’t have the guts.”
“It doesn’t take guts to stalk a woman, it takes insanity.”
Joshua squeezed her thigh in warning and she remembered she was trying to keep the lunatic talking, not make him mad enough to hang up.
“You deserve what you get. You lead other women astray.”
What in the world was he talking about? She didn’t even belong to a local writer’s organization, much less a women’s group of some kind. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t pretend ignorance. You know!” Fury vibrated in each word.
“But I don’t.”
“Don’t lie to me! You know! You destroy families.” His voice lowered to almost a whisper through the digitizer. “Maybe your family needs to be destroyed—then you would understand how heinous your crime really is.”
Sick fear curled through her insides.
“My family hasn’t done anything.”
“That’s true. They’re innocent and the innocent should not pay with the guilty, but they love you. To love you they must share your distorted view of the world. I have to think about this…” His voice trailed off like he was talking to himself.
“No. Leave my family alone. Please.”
“I don’t know.” He sounded unsure, almost confused, and terror ripped through her at the thought of him hurting anyone she loved.
“They’re innocent,” she stressed.
“But you’re not!” His voice boomed across the phone lines, condemnation vibrating in every syllable.
“Please tell me what I’ve done.”
“Your husband divorced you. He found out you weren’t worth loving, didn’t he? He married a woman who gave him children, a woman worthy of marriage. You aren’t, Lise Barton.”
She knew the man speaking had to be crazy to do what he did, but his words hurt anyway because they tapped into an old fear. One she’d tried so hard to leave behind in her less-than-pleasant childhood, the fear that she wasn’t worthy of love.
“You’re wrong.”
“You’re defective. You couldn’t even give him children. God punished you with infertility and now I will punish you, too.”
His words shocked her into silence.
“You want to destroy other women’s marriages. All because you couldn’t keep your own.”
She had to keep her head about her, not give in to the palpable insanity blasting her through the phone. “I don’t want to destroy anyone’s marriage. What are you talking about? I have a right to know what I’m accused of!”
“You have no rights. You’ve already been tried and convicted.”
“By you?”
“Your own actions have convicted you and you will be punished.”
The words were still echoing in her ear when the click that signaled he’d hung up crossed the line. She pressed the Disconnect button with a trembling hand and then fumbled the phone back to the nightstand.
“What did he say?”
“He said I destroyed other people’s marriages. That’s why he’s become my Nemesis.” She tried vainly to make eye contact in the darkness. “I don’t understand, Joshua. I’ve never even told a girlfriend she should leave her husband. Not that I wouldn’t…if I thought she was at risk, or something, but the issue has never come up.”
Joshua’s cell phone buzzed. He picked it up. “Yeah?”
She could hear the echo of a voice from the mobile phone’s headpiece.
“Hell.”
“Who is it?” she asked, not caring that it was rude to interrupt a phone conversation.
“Nitro—he says the call was made from a pay phone across town.” His attention went back to the phone. “He said what?” Joshua demanded.
More talking at the other end indicated that Nitro was recounting the horrific conversation verbatim. They must have put a wiretap on the phone as well as a tracer. She was grateful.
She didn’t want to forget anything that had been said, especially the threat to her family.
They had to do something.
“My guess is he’s hacked into her medical records,” Joshua said and then paused.
She could hear Nitro’s voice, but not what he was saying over the mobile phone.
“Hold on a sec,” Joshua said.
He turned the bedside lamp on and then faced her, his expression serious. “We need to know where he got the information about your infertility. My guess is your medical file, but is it something you told other people?”
She snorted, anger replacing the feeling of fear and helplessness the awful phone call had instilled in her again. “I’m not infertile. I have an odd monthly cycle, that’s all. The doctor said it might take a while to get pregnant, but Mike and I never even tried. Not only is Nemesis insane, he’s also an idiot.”
And she wished, just at that moment, that her tormenter could hear her opinion of him.
“Is this women’s cycle thing common knowledge?”
“No.” She hadn’t even told Mike because it had never become an issue in their marriage. “It’s not a big deal.”
Joshua nodded and returned to the phone. His expression turned feral and he said a really ugly word. “Like hell he is going to hurt them.”
Good—Nitro had shared that part as well.
“Will you fly down and move them?” Joshua asked, then said, “Tomorrow would be good.” A pause. “Your house. Right. It’s as much of a fortress as mine.” He smiled. “We’ll have to ask Bella what she thinks after she’s seen both of them.”
Lise listened to him making plans to move her brother’s family to safety with a growing sense of guilt and self-condemnation. Something she had done had put her family at risk. Jake was going to be furious about having to leave the ranch. Thank God it was winter and not roundup, or he’d insist on staying while sending his wife and daughter to safety.
But she’d done this, messed up everyone’s lives.
A tiny voice of reason tried to tell her it wasn’t her fault, but it was no match for the emotions roiling inside her.
Joshua shifted to put his free arm across her thighs, boxing her in, surrounding her with his presence. So obviously lending her his strength that she about choked on another wave of emotion.
She couldn’t handle it. She’d spent the last two years proving to herself she could make it on her own and that concept of herself was being blasted to heck and gone by her anonymous enemy.
Somehow she’d made all this happen and there was nothing she could do to make it right. She had to rely on Joshua and his skills. A new kind of helplessness filled her, a sense that she could never make up to her family for what the problems in her life were costing them.
She needed space. Joshua was too close. Everything was too close. Her skin felt too tight for her body, like she was going to explode out of it. Nemesis’s words rang in her head and Joshua’s conversation with Nitro jumbled over them.
She had to get away.
She tried to move Joshua’s arm, but he wouldn’t cooperate.
“Joshua…” She pushed at his wrist, but she might as well have been trying to move a tree.
His gaze fixed on her as he spoke to Nitro.
She glared at him. “Let me go.”
His eyes narrowed and he looked down to where she was trying to drag his arm away from her.
He shook his head, just once; then, instead of moving away, he scooted her closer to him so her thighs were touching his beneath the blankets.
He said, “Relax,” before he went back to discussing possible ways for Nemesis to have gotten into her medical files.
Tangible pressure pushed against her, the stress of her circumstances like a vise, slowly squeezing the life out of her.
She hated this.
He put his finger over the mouthpiece. “Just to be clear—no one but you and your doctor know about this female problem?”
It wasn’t a problem, except in Nemesis’s warped mind, but she wasn’t going to argue the point. If she opened her mouth, stuff would come out that she had to keep inside. Fear. Frustration. Anger—and this carrion guilt that was sucking her soul dry.
So she nodded her head.
“You didn’t tell your brother?”
She actually laughed at the thought, the sound as mechanical as Nemesis’s voice, and found she could speak after all. “No.”
If Bella talked about her menses with her brother, they had a much different relationship than she had with Jake and somehow she just couldn’t see it.
Joshua’s eyes narrowed with concern and he studied her face as if reading sign. Jake had taught her to track when she was eight, but somehow she thought Joshua was probably better at it than she was.
Suddenly, he dipped his head and before she could protest, he kissed her full on the mouth. It lasted only a second, but the contact went all the way to her anxious soul.
“It’s okay, honey.” He spoke against her lips and then brushed his mouth against her temple before speaking into the phone again. “It has to be the medical records. Find out if they’re online, or if he broke into the clinic to get them.”
Nitro said something and Joshua agreed.
Lise tried to get up again. She couldn’t give in to the need to lean on Joshua.
In one of his powerful, swift moves that were forever taking her by surprise, he pulled her right into his lap. Wrapping his free arm tightly around her, he continued the conversation with Nitro. Joshua’s body language was clearer than a billboard. Stay put.
She didn’t want to.
She struggled, but if his gentle cage had been difficult to get out of, this intimate hold was impossible to break.
Joshua finished his conversation and then flipped the phone shut before tossing it on the nightstand beside her cordless phone. He wrapped his other arm around her and rubbed her back with his big hand for a long time, saying nothing.
“I don’t know what he means by me leading other women astray,” she finally said when the silence had stretched beyond what she could stand.
“Shh…we’ll talk about it in the morning.”
“But—”
“We can’t do anything about it tonight.”
“What if—”
“Let it be.” His tone was firm.
“I don’t like you telling me to shut up.”
Incredibly, a chuckle rumbled in his chest against her ear. “Heaven forbid, but do you really want to dissect it tonight, Lise?”
“Yes. I’m too wound up to sleep.”
“Okay, what do you think he meant?”
She thought about it, but her train of thought derailed as Joshua’s caresses strayed lower on each downward sweep until he was smoothing his hand over the upper curve of her bottom.
The more intimate stroking made her acutely aware of her physical surroundings.
Joshua wasn’t wearing a shirt and her cheek was nestled against the silky curls on his chest. He smelled good, warm and musky, and she couldn’t help nuzzling him just the tiniest bit to inhale more of his scent. His heartbeat was steady, but increasing, and the corded muscles of his thighs weren’t the only hard things under her bottom.
Her muscles contracted in an involuntary Kegel and she grew warm and wet where the apex of her thighs fit over his growing erection.
Good night! How could she be so upset one minute and so turned on the next? Was she depraved? Her family was in danger and here she sat, wanting to devour the man under her. She could see herself doing it, kissing and nipping at his body in a way she’d never even fantasized doing with another man.
Remnants of the emotional storm buffeting her fought with the sensual images and she grasped at them to stop herself from doing something stupid. Like attacking him in a passionate frenzy.
“I did it,” she whispered against his chest, not wanting to meet his eyes. “I put my family at risk. What am I going to do, Joshua?”