Aware of the sweat that had broken out along her spine, Kate tried to swallow the sour taste of fear. She gripped the edge of her desk as hard as she could, supplying physical input to her muscles in an attempt to wrap her head around the news.
She’d taken refuge in her office. A few minutes to herself, that was all she needed, to get back the small bit of control she’d held on to these last couple weeks. She shook her head with a burst of disbelief. Control. Just a figment of her imagination.
Brian Michaels, her former patient who’d grown obsessed with having her for himself, had been released from prison. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. He’d taken everything from her, and he was supposed to suffer for it.
“Michaels is never going to hurt you again, Kate.” Declan slipped into her peripheral vision without warning. Soundless. He the predator, her the prey. The single lesson that’d been hammered into her brain over and over throughout her profiling years: behavior reflected personality. Declan’s new behavior—the aggressive, sarcastic, seemingly unfazed kind—reflected a far different personality than the one she’d known.
His tone dipped into dangerous territory, raising the hairs on the back of her neck. “Or he’ll die trying.”
Overlaying her fear was a deep, deep anger. Anger at Michaels. For his release. For the shooter who’d put a bullet in Declan’s side tonight. For the fact that no matter how hard she’d tried to blind herself from the truth the last few hours, the nagging feeling in her gut wouldn’t disappear.
Kate raised her gaze to his, the bones in her fingers screaming for release. The man standing in front of her wasn’t her husband. Same features, same body, same color hair. But the hardness in those brilliant blue eyes when he looked at her revealed Declan—her Declan—had died that night a year ago.
She forced her fingers to release the desk. “What’s your name?”
“The federal ID in my file says Declan Monroe.” That damn smile attempted to cool the burn blazing through her as he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. “But I have the feeling you already knew that.”
A humorless laugh escaped her throat as she closed Michaels’s file and pushed it to the side of her desk. She wouldn’t show weakness. Not now. Not ever. As far as anyone knew, she was emotionless, and she’d keep it that way. It’d been the most effective buffer for pain thus far. “I meant the name you’ve been using. What do you want me to call you?”
“I adopted a name after I left the hospital.” His expression softened. “But Declan is fine. That’s who I am, right? Gotta get used to it.”
“Right.” She nodded. Reaching across the desk, she gathered her client files to hand over to Elliot. Investigating her clients wouldn’t do Blackhawk’s private investigator any good. With Michaels’s release, Kate had a pretty good idea where to look to find the shooter. After all, it was like Sullivan had said in the conference room: Michaels, who’d turned her life upside down once, had already shown a preference for guns.
She would help her team and Anchorage PD find the shooter. Then she’d get Declan the help he needed to move on with his life. Without her.
“I’ve already done the background check on Michaels,” she said. “His sister is the only family he has left. He’s probably hiding out at her property.”
“Kate.” Declan set his hand on top of hers holding the file, and an unfamiliar electric surge bolted up her arm.
Kate pushed away from the desk, knocking into her chair as oxygen left her lungs. The chair’s wheels protested against the hard plastic beneath it, and she shot one hand behind her to catch herself from hitting the floor. Her throat swelled in an instant as she struggled to keep her balance. “Don’t.” She forced herself to take a deep, calming breath. “Please, don’t.”
“I’m sorry.” Palms raised in surrender, he backed away from the desk. “I didn’t mean to hurt you—”
“You didn’t.” She struggled to keep her expression neutral. She’d overreacted, but just as she’d discovered in the conference room when he’d reached for her hand, when he touched her, she hurt.
More than the bullet wounds. More than the grief burrowing a hole through her entire being. She’d prayed for nothing over the last year but to have her husband back, but the reality of it was he hadn’t come back. He might be standing in front of her, but he didn’t know her, didn’t remember their marriage, didn’t know the green cargo jacket she wore every day actually belonged to him. Or that she’d finally had the guts to take off her wedding ring when she came back to work two weeks ago. Giving in to those innocent touches, of letting hope that he’d remember everything between them drown out the pain, was a risk she wasn’t willing to take.
Swiping a stray hair out of her face, she collected Michaels’s file once again. She cleared her throat. “The shelter probably isn’t safe anymore. Is there anywhere else you can go tonight?”
“I’m not leaving you.” Declan came around the desk. His hand rose, but he didn’t touch her. He was too close, but she fought the urge to pull away again. To prove he didn’t affect her—nothing did. “Tell me what the hell just happened.”
She was suddenly far too aware of his proximity, and her breath came a bit faster. His clean, masculine scent worked deep in her lungs, and her stomach twisted.
She gave in to her instinctual urge and tugged away, needing space between them. A lot of it. She lifted her chin. No point in keeping the truth from him. Didn’t matter if he was the man she’d married or not. They’d be working this investigation together. “You’re not him.”
Saying the words made them real, made the ache behind her rib cage hurt a bit more.
“Your husband.” Declan backed off, taking his body heat with him. A coldness ran through her as he seemed to sink in on himself. He scrubbed a hand over his five o’clock shadow, the bristling loud in her ears. “And here I thought getting shot in the gut was the worst that could happen to me today. If I’m not him, then who am I?”
“No.” She blinked to clear her head, palms pressed together in front of her as she closed the distance between them. “I mean, you are him. You have his eyes. You have the same scar on your hand he got falling off his bike when he was ten and the dimple on the right side of your mouth. But you’re—”
“Different?” Declan studied her office, but she got the sense it was more out of distraction than pure curiosity over how she’d decorated the space. “I read that could happen. Personality changes. Guess I didn’t think much of it since I can’t remember who I was from before.”
The realization sat in her stomach like a rock. The small bit of air she’d been holding on to burned as it escaped up her throat. How could she have been so careless? He’d been through hell, too, if not worse. At least she’d been able to hold on to the memories of him. He...he had nothing. She had to remember that. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean... None of this is your fault. I—”
Commotion—yelling—reached her ears from outside her office.
“Kate!” a male voice yelled.
Recognition flared.
“Ryan?” Kate walked out from behind her desk, fully aware of her arm brushing against Declan’s as she passed and wrenched open the door. The weight of Declan’s gaze settled between her shoulder blades as a wall of black and white filled her vision.
Due to his six-foot-four height, she craned her head back to look up at Special Agent Ryan Dominic. Studying the hallway past his mountainous shoulder, she spotted both Anthony and Vincent as well as Dominic’s partner, Kenneth Winter, waiting for her to raise the alarm. “What are you doing here? I got pulled onto your case this morning. I haven’t started—”
“You weren’t answering your phone.” Ryan stared down at her with the darkest eyes she’d ever seen. Brown, almost black, but it was the control he kept over his expression that struck fear into the hearts of the violent offenders he hunted for the Bureau’s Behavior Analysis Unit. Absolutely deadly. Made him one of the best agents on the government’s payroll with higher arrest rates than any other agent. That technique had given him a nickname nobody dared say to his face. He was a good agent. A good friend, one she’d relied on since that dreadful night. She’d lost her husband in the shooting. He’d lost his partner.
“I had to hear about the shooting at your house from Anchorage PD.” Dominic set both hands on her shoulders. “I came as soon as I could to make sure you were still alive. Why didn’t you call me?”
“Good to see you again, Kate.” Special Agent Kenneth Winter, in all his uptight glory, nodded around his partner’s shoulder. He had medium length brown hair, thick eyebrows and steely brown eyes close to Dominic’s in color. She didn’t know Kenneth as well as his partner, but if the rumors she’d heard were true, Ryan had himself a go-getter on his team. Desperate to prove himself and to climb the internal ladder, Kenneth lobbied for the most violent and taxing cases. Usually with success. “This seems personal. I’m going to find a vending machine until you get your stuff sorted out.”
“Thanks, Kenneth. It’s fine, guys. I can take it from here.” She waved toward Anthony and Vincent to take the physical tension filling the room down a notch. Pulling Dominic into her office, she closed the door behind him. “I’m alive and the team is running down leads with Anchorage PD as we speak. You didn’t have to—”
“You’re going to want to back away, friend.” Declan moved beside her. If he’d had fur, his hackles would be raised.
It seemed every muscle Dominic owned stiffened. His hands curled into fists at his side. The special agent took a single step forward as he studied his former partner. “I don’t believe it.”
Declan watched every move Dominic made, blue eyes creasing at the edges like the investigator she remembered hunched over the dining room table, working his way through his most recent case.
“Right. Declan, this is Special Agent Ryan Dominic of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.” She set her hand on his shoulder, throttling the warmth settling deep into her bones from the contact. “Your former partner.”
* * *
PARTNER? THE AGENT standing in front of him sure didn’t feel like a partner.
Declan eyed the Glock Dominic kept in the shoulder holster beneath that perfectly pressed suit. He didn’t have any idea how he knew the agent’s choice of service weapon, but the information was there, in the back of his head. Dominic worked for the FBI. Given the file on Declan’s life, it stood to reason they’d met, but Dominic’s body language said it wasn’t a friendly relationship. Let alone a partnership. “You know me?”
Confusion cracked that carefully controlled expression, and the stiffness between the agent’s shoulders and neck disappeared. Dominic widened his stance, hands on his hips. Close enough if he had to reach for his weapon. He brushed his jacket out enough for Declan to get a peek at his service weapon. A Glock. “I sure as hell hope so. We were partners for six years. Is this a joke?”
“No,” Kate said. Her light vanilla scent clung to him, to his clothes, his skin, threatened to drag him deeper into the past his brain had barred him from remembering. The burn of her hand on his arm grounded him, kept him in the moment, but then it was gone. Again. He didn’t blame her. She’d made it clear before the FBI had walked through her door. He wasn’t her husband. At least, not the one she’d been expecting to come walking back into her life from the grave. “Ryan, Declan doesn’t remember anything before the shooting. The trauma erased his memories.”
“What?” A disbelieving laugh broke through the special agent’s control but was gone faster than it appeared. Dominic ran a hand down his face and the stubble along his squared jawline. A hint of Latino heritage gave him the dark hair and eyes, but Declan pegged the agent as local from his accent. “They said you were dead. The FBI buried you, and all this time you’ve, what, been walking around Anchorage without any idea of who you are? Whose body is in your grave?”
“We don’t know. The surgeon obviously has some explaining to do, but that about sums it up, yeah.” They were wasting time here. The shooter could’ve already started planning another attempt on Kate’s life. Could already be on the way to Blackhawk Security. Although getting through the front doors might take a small army considering how many armed operatives and security measures Declan had noted coming in, but he wasn’t willing to take the chance. Not with the only lead he had to restoring his memory.
“This is unbelievable,” Dominic said. “What do you remember then?”
“Ryan, it’s a long story, and I promise I will explain it all later.” Kate swiped the file from the edge of her desk and handed it to Dominic. “Right now, we need to find Brian Michaels and interrogate him about the shooting tonight. If he’s off his meds again, I don’t want him hurting anyone else. Can you pull some strings? Help us out?”
Ryan. Not Special Agent Dominic. Kate and his former partner were familiar with each other. Explained why the agent had touched her as soon as she opened the door. Declan locked his jaw against the unfamiliar rush of jealousy ripping through his chest. Exactly how close had his wife and Dominic gotten when he died?
“Michaels is out? This day keeps getting better and better.” Dominic flipped through the file. “All right, I’ll help you track down your shooter, but in the meantime, I’m getting you into a safe house. From this moment on, you’re officially in protective custody.” That dark gaze flickered to Declan as Dominic handed the folder back to Kate. “If Michaels is responsible for the shooting tonight, there’s a chance he’ll keep trying until he gets what he wants. As far as we know, that’s you, and I’m not going to let him shoot at you a third time.”
“The FBI can’t protect her.” Declan closed the distance between him and Kate, a possessiveness bubbling beneath the surface. Kate had escaped a killer twice. The odds of her surviving another attempt, even while in FBI custody, went down with every second the bastard was out there. Serial offenders only got better at what they did. They learned from experience, and the shooter wouldn’t stop unless he was caught or killed. “I can.”
Dominic folded his arms, stance wide. “You can’t be serious. You just said you can’t remember anything—”
“I’m not going into hiding,” Kate said, “and I’m not going into protective custody. I can protect myself, or have you both forgotten who I work for?” She tilted her chin higher, Michaels’s file in her hand.
In that instant, Declan had no doubt the woman standing in front of him could give the shooter a run for his money. Not just physically but mentally, and for an instant, he sensed exactly why he’d married her in the first place. Profilers were known to put themselves inside the heads of the criminals they hunted, and that meant knowing how the suspect would think, act and what their next step would be before they made a conscious decision.
Dominic lowered his hands to his sides, took a step toward her. “Kate—”
“I’ll have my profile on your serial case ready as soon as I can, Special Agent Dominic.” She motioned him to the door. “Until then, thank you for helping find Michaels. I appreciate it.”
Dominic’s nut-brown eyes darted to Declan again. Dropping his voice, the special agent leaned closer to Kate, making Declan’s blood boil. “You’re making a mistake. Call me when you realize that.”
Kate didn’t respond as Dominic wrenched open the office door and disappeared down the hall. Tension visibly drained from her as she faced Declan, but the exhaustion etched into her features didn’t lessen. “He’s not going to look for Michaels,” she said. “My case doesn’t come with an honorary award like the Hunter’s does if he solves it.”
The Hunter. Was that the serial case the FBI had brought her in to profile? According to news reports, three women had disappeared over the last year, their bodies found in the middle of the woods around Anchorage with a single arrow shot to the heart. All blonde. All athletic and in great shape. Similar to the woman standing less than two feet from him. “You seem sure of that.”
“There isn’t enough room in Ryan’s life for friends and his ego. He’ll work the Hunter case and leave Blackhawk to find our shooter.” She studied him. “You want to know how close we are. Your former partner and your wife.”
Had she read his thoughts or was his face just that easy to read? “It crossed my mind.”
“We’re friends. Nothing more. He brought dinners after I was released from the hospital, helped me arrange your funeral so I didn’t have to. Like I said, Ryan doesn’t have room for real relationships. He uses people to get what he wants, which usually involves a case he’s working,” she said.
Declan didn’t have any right to ask, but the words clawed up his throat anyway. “Has there been anyone else?”
Her bottom lip parted from the top. “Are you asking because you’re worried it will affect our investigation into the shooter or because you were my husband in a former life?”
“I shouldn’t have asked.” Taking Michaels’s file from her hand, he headed for the door.
“After you died, I used to talk to you. Like you were still around,” she said.
Her voice slowed his escape, prickling goose bumps along his arms. The pain in his side evaporated as he slowly turned back to face her.
A humorless laugh bubbled past her lips. “It sounds insane. I buried you. I knew you weren’t coming back, but a part of me still held on to hope. Still prayed day after day to some greater power that the shooting, losing you, had all been some sick nightmare I’d wake up from any moment. But the months went by—a year—and I never woke up.”
Declan couldn’t move, couldn’t think. He worked to swallow the tightness in his throat, but the anguish in her expression held him frozen. If she’d sought comfort in another man’s arms, he had no logical reason to give in to the unexplained jealousy simmering in his veins. He couldn’t remember their marriage, had only glimpses of her in his memories. That wasn’t why he’d come back into her life.
He took a step toward her. “Kate—”
“I took my wedding ring off two weeks ago, Declan. There hasn’t been anyone else, but I moved on.” She massaged the line of lightened skin around her ring finger as she stared down at her hand. Lifting her chin, she lowered her hands to her sides and locked out the emotion that’d been there a few moments ago. “We’ll find Michaels or whoever took those shots at us tonight. I’ll help you get your life back, but after that, I think it’s best we go our separate ways.”
An invisible fist clenched inside his gut. Get his life back. What the hell did that even mean? He’d spent the last year in a shelter, digging into as many records as he could find to uncover his past without any luck.
According to the few legal documents he’d read in Blackhawk Security’s file on him—combined with the handful of memories his brain had decided to vomit at random intervals—his life was standing on the other side of that desk. Kate Monroe was the key to his past, the only person who knew him before he’d woken up in a hospital bed. His likes, dislikes, if his parents were still alive, if he had siblings, the sources of his scars, how he’d chosen a career hunting criminals, if he’d been a good man, a good husband. A father?
“I understand.” A lie. He didn’t. The few glimpses of memory he’d had of her had seemed happy enough. Her smiling as he came home, the echo of her laughter as they made a batch of vanilla cupcakes together and the flour had gotten on her nose and cheeks.
All of those memories combined had given him a mere fraction of the emotion burning through him now. This woman had been ingrained so deep in his neural pathways, not even amnesia had been able to force him to forget her. There had to be a reason.
Declan took in the lack of photos on her desk and forced himself to nod. He’d sure as hell find out why. “Lead the way.”