CHAPTER NINE
Juliana didn’t know why she went into her father’s room. Despite what Susan had said, Juliana didn’t expect any big revelations. She and her father—they hadn’t been close.
Not in years.
She stood in the doorway, feeling like an intruder as her gaze swept over the heavy furniture. The room was cold but opulent. Her father had always insisted on the best for himself.
He just hadn’t cared about giving that best to others.
Such a waste. Because when she tried hard enough, Juliana could almost remember a different man. One who’d smiled and held her hand as they walked past blooming azalea bushes.
She turned away, but from the corner of her eye, she saw…
My paintings.
Goose bumps rose on her arms, and she found herself fully entering his room. Crossing to the right wall, she stared at those images.
Storm Surge. The painting she’d done after the horror of the last storm had finally ended. On the canvas, the fury of the storm swept over the beach, bearing down like an angry god.
Eye of the Storm. The clouds were parted, showing a flicker of light, hope. The fake hope that came, because the storm wasn’t really over. Often, the worst part was just coming.
Her hand lifted and she traced the outline of her initials on the bottom left of the canvas. Her father…he’d told her that her art was a waste of time. He’d wanted her in law school, business school.
But he’d bought her art, framed it and hung it on his wall.
So he’d see it each day when he woke?
And right before he went to sleep each night?
“Who were you?” she whispered to the ghost that she could all but feel around her in that room. “And why the hell did you have to leave me?” There had been other ways. He shouldn’t have—
A woman was crying. Juliana’s head whipped to the left when she heard the sobs, echoing up from downstairs.
She rushed from the room, leaving the pictures and memories behind. Her feet thudded down the stairs. She ran faster, faster…
Susan stood in the foyer, her face splotched with color, and streaks of blood were on her arms and chest.
Gunner waited behind her. His face was locked in tense lines of anger.
“What the hell is going on?” Logan demanded as he rushed in from the study.
“Some of the guards near the gate found her….” Gunner picked Susan up and carried her to the couch. “She was walking on the road outside of the house.”
Susan was still crying. Her eyes—they didn’t seem to be focusing on anyone or anything.
“We need an ambulance!” Juliana said, grabbing for the nearest phone. There was so much blood… She could see the slashes on Susan’s arms.
Juliana glanced up and met Logan’s hard stare.
“The bastard just dumped her in the middle of the road, like garbage,” Gunner growled, but though fury thickened his voice, the hands that ran over Susan’s body were gentle.
Juliana started to rattle off her address to the emergency dispatcher.
“No!” Susan jerked away from Gunner and her gaze locked on Juliana. “Don’t let them take me! I don’t want to go! I want—I want to be home!” Tears streaked down her cheeks. “Let me st-stay, please.”
Gunner grabbed her hands and began to inspect the slices on her body.
Juliana hesitated with the phone near her ear. The operator was asking about her emergency.
“Does she need stitches?” Logan leaned in close.
Gunner’s tanned fingers slid over Susan’s pale flesh. He caught her chin in his hand, forcing her to look at him. “Are there any other wounds?”
She just stared at him, eyes wide.
“Susan, tell me…are there any other wounds?” When she still didn’t answer, his hands moved to the buttons on her shirt.
She jerked, trembled. “No! No, there aren’t any more…” Her gaze darted back to Juliana. “I want to be home.” She sounded like a lost child. “Please, I told them that I just wanted to go home.”
Logan gave a small nod. Juliana’s fingers tightened on the phone. “Never mind. It’s my mistake. We don’t need any assistance.” She put the phone away and hovered near the couch. She could see bruises already forming near Susan’s wrists. And those cuts… Someone had definitely used a knife on her.
Susan’s breath choked out. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank us.” Gunner’s voice still shook with fury. “We’re gonna have to take you in.”
Her face crumpled. “Why?” Desperate.
“Because there’s evidence on you,” Logan told her, his own face grim. “The techs can check you. Whoever attacked you—there’ll be evidence left behind.”
Susan’s laugh was brittle and stained with tears. “We both know who attacked me. Guerrero—or rather, his men.” Her lip quivered but she pulled in a deep breath. “He took me from my apartment, threw me in a trunk.”
“He? You saw Guerrero?” Juliana asked, stunned. If Susan had seen Guerrero and gotten away…
Susan gave a slow shake of her head. “I never saw anyone. The man—at my apartment—came at me from behind. Took me someplace, but when he opened the trunk, he had on a ski mask.” Her gaze found Gunner’s again. She kept turning back to him. “I can’t tell you anything about him. I don’t have any evidence or DNA on me. I didn’t touch him, didn’t claw him, didn’t fight.” She swiped her hand over her cheek. “I was too scared.”
“How did you get away?” Juliana asked. She hated seeing Susan like this. She’d wanted to protect her, but…
It seemed she couldn’t save anyone.
“I didn’t know anything.” Another swipe of Susan’s hand across her face. “I didn’t! I kept telling him that, over and over…”
Juliana fired a fast glance over at the grandfather clock. It had been five hours since the press conference.
Five hours of torture for Susan.
“It felt like I was there forever,” Susan whispered. “Then…then he said I could go if I delivered a message.”
Logan’s gaze locked on Susan. “What message?”
“Guerrero…said to tell you…there is no evidence. There’s no escape.” She looked at Juliana. “And you’re going to die.” A sob burst from her. “I’m so sorry!”
Susan was apologizing to her?
“He’s coming…he’ll kill you, and he said he’d kill your lover.” A fast glance toward Logan. “He knows what Logan did. I told him, I had to tell him! He was cutting me and I wanted him to stop. I didn’t have any information on Aaron, and it was the only thing I could say—”
Juliana shook her head, lost. “What did Logan do?”
Silence. Then the grandfather clock began to chime.
Susan’s jaw dropped. “I don’t…” She fired a wild glance at Logan. Then Gunner. Then Juliana.
Juliana gripped the back of the leather sofa. “What did Logan do?” Something was off. Wrong. She could see the fear in Susan’s eyes, and Logan…
Why had the lines near his mouth deepened? Even as his gaze had hardened.
“We should talk,” Logan told her softly.
Susan was still crying. “He knows…” she whispered. “I told him what Aaron…how he kept you away from her…”
Her father had kept Logan away? Since when? Logan had walked away. Hadn’t he?
“The man who took me, he said—” Susan was talking so quickly that all her words rolled together “—he would kill Juliana…make you watch…”
Logan’s gaze seemed to burn Juliana. “No, he’s not.” He jerked his head toward Gunner. “Take Susan upstairs, then call Syd. I want techs out here to check her out.”
But Susan tried to push against Gunner. “No, I don’t want anyone else to see what he did! No!”
Gunner lifted her into his arms once more. “Shh. I’ve got you.”
She’d never expected him to be so gentle. So…easy.
Susan’s cries quieted as she stared up at him with hope in her eyes. “He won’t come back?”
“No.”
Juliana didn’t speak while they climbed the stairs. Her palms were slick on the leather sofa. Logan’s face had never looked so hard, so dark before.
He knows what Logan did.
She pushed away from the couch and marched to him. “What’s going on?”
“The sins of the past…Guerrero thinks he can use them against me.” His smile was twisted. “And he can.” His hands came up to rest on her shoulders. “When I tell you…you can’t leave. You’re going to want to leave. To get as far from me as you can. That’s what Guerrero will want.”
He was scaring her. What could he possibly have to say that would be so bad?
“I can’t let you leave me. Guerrero will be out there, just waiting for the chance to get you. He’s trying to drive us apart, and I won’t let him.”
“Tell me.”
He braced himself as if—what? He were about to absorb a blow? Did he actually think she’d take a swing at him? If she hadn’t done it before, it wasn’t as if she was going to start now.
“It wasn’t just chance that led me to that diner all those years ago.” His voice was flat, so emotionless. “I was there because I’d been looking for you. I wanted to talk to you. I needed to.”
She remembered the first time she’d met Logan. She’d been at Dave’s Diner, a dive that high-school kids would flock to right after the bell. She’d been home from college on summer break, hanging out with some girlfriends. Juliana had been leaving the diner and she’d run into him, literally. His hands had wrapped around her arms to steady her, and she’d looked up into his eyes.
She’d always been a sucker for his sexy eyes.
Juliana held her body still. Inside, a voice was yelling, telling her that she didn’t want to hear this. Susan had been too upset. This wasn’t good. But she ignored that voice. Hiding from the truth never did any good. “Why?”
“I came to find you…because I wanted to apologize.”
That just made her feel even more lost. “You didn’t know me. There was nothing you’d need to apologize for.”
His gaze darted over her shoulder. To the picture that still hung over the mantle. The picture of her mother. “I didn’t know you, but I knew her.”
Her breath stalled in her lungs.
“I told you about my father.”
He had. Ex-military, dishonorably discharged. A man with a taste for violence who’d fallen into a bottle and never crawled out. Logan had told her so many times, I won’t ever be like him. As if saying the words enough would make them true.
“The military was his life, and when they kicked him out, he lost everything.”
She waited, biting back all the questions that wanted to burst free. Her mother? She wouldn’t look at that picture, couldn’t.
“I tried to help him. Tried to stop him, but he didn’t want to be stopped. He was on a crash course with hell, and he didn’t care who he took with him to burn.”
She wouldn’t look at her mother’s picture.
“I tried to stop him,” Logan said again, voice echoing with the memory, “I tried…”
* * *
THE BEDROOM DOOR shut softly behind them. Susan could feel Gunner at her back; his gaze was like a touch as it swept over her.
He saw too much. She didn’t like the way he looked at her. As if he could see right through her.
She swiped her hands over her cheeks once more. No matter how hard she wiped, Susan could still feel the tears. “I need to shower. I have to wash away the blood.”
But he shook his head. “You’ll just wash evidence away. We told you—”
“I’m not a crime scene!” The words burst from her. “I’m a person! I don’t want to be poked and prodded by your team. I just want to forget it all.”
His dark gaze drifted over her bloody shirt. “Is that really going to happen?”
No.
She glanced around the room, her gaze sweeping wildly over every piece of furniture. Every picture on the wall.
Every. Picture. Her heart kicked into her chest.
“I know what it feels like,” he told her, and the gravelly words pulled her gaze back to him.
“I was taken hostage by a group in South America.” He lifted his shirt and she gasped when she saw the scars that crossed his chest. Not light slices like the ones she’d carry on her flesh. Deep, twisting wounds. Ugly. Terrifying. “They took their time with me,” he said. “Five days…five long days of just wishing that pain would stop.”
She’d had five hours. Susan never, ever wanted to imagine having to go through days of that torment. It wouldn’t happen. She wouldn’t let it happen.
Her gaze swung back to the wall. Juliana’s canvases. Those storms. Surging.
A storm was at the door. A hurricane that was going to sweep them all away.
Not her. She wouldn’t let it hurt her.
“What did you do?” she asked, taking a small step toward him, unable to help herself. “What did you do to get away?”
That stare was like black ice. “I killed them. Every single one of them.”
Susan shivered. She hadn’t been strong enough to kill the man who came after her. He’d been too big. That knife…
“I just cried,” she said, voice miserable. “I cried, and I told him everything he wanted to know.” Because she’d just wanted the pain to end.
She’d always thought she was so tough, but in the end, she’d broken too easily.
“You’ll get past this,” Gunner promised her as he lowered his shirt, hiding all of those terrible, twisting scars. “I did.”
But she wouldn’t.
* * *
“I WAS ALWAYS dragging my father out of bars. Or finding him in alleys passed out. But even when he was sober—days that were far too few—my father…had a darkness in him.”
It seemed as if every word came slowly. The grandfather clock’s pendulum ticked off the time behind him, with swinging clicks that seemed too loud.
“My father was a good killer. An assassin who could always take out his targets.” Logan’s breath expelled in a rush. “He told me, again and again, that I was like him. Born to kill.”
And Logan had told her—again and again—I won’t be like him.
“Why—why was he discharged?” Juliana asked.
“Because on his last mission, he had what some doctors called a psychotic break. He had to be taken down by his own team. He wasn’t following orders. He was just hunting.”
And that broken man had come home to Logan? “Where was your mother?”
“She left him.”
And you? She forced the words out. “And what about my mother?”
He lifted his hand as if he’d reach for her, but his fingers clenched into a fist before he touched her. “That night, I found him at another bar. He jumped in his truck and wouldn’t give me the keys.” He lifted that clenched hand to his jaw and rubbed his skin as if remembering. “He punched me. Hit me over and over then got in that beat-up truck. I couldn’t…I couldn’t just let him leave like that. I climbed in. I thought I could get him to stop.”
She didn’t hear the grandfather clock any longer. She just heard the drumming sound of her heartbeat filling her ears.
“He was going too fast, weaving all over the road. I was trying to get him to stop….” A muscle flexed along the hard length of his jaw. “I saw the other car coming. I yelled for him to stop, but it was too late.”
Too late.
“I guess I got knocked out for a few minutes, and when I opened my eyes again, he was dead.”
She blinked away the tears that she wouldn’t let fall. “And my mother?”
His gaze held hers. “She was…still alive then.”
Her knees wanted to buckle. Juliana forced herself to stand straighter.
“I rushed to her. I tried to help.” He drew in a rough breath. “She said your name.”
Her heart was splintering.
“It was…the last thing she said.”
She stumbled back. But he was there, rushing toward her, grabbing her arms, holding tight and pulling her close.
She didn’t want to be close then. She didn’t want to be anything.
“She loved you,” he said, voice and eyes intense. “You were the last thought she had. I came to find you… I was in that diner because you should have known how much she loved you. I wanted to tell you, I needed to. But then you looked up at me.” He broke off, shaking his head. “You looked at me like I was something—somebody—great, and no one had ever looked at me like that before.”
She couldn’t breathe. Her chest hurt too much.
“You loved me,” he said. His eyes blazed. “With you, then, everything was so easy. I knew if I told you that I was there that night, that my father was the one driving when your mother died…you’d hate me.”
Her whole body just felt numb. “I read…the reports. Talked to the cops. The man driving the car, his name was Michael Smith.” She’d dug through the evidence when the memories and pain got to be too much for her.
Her father had never talked about the crash. She’d been seventeen when she went searching for the truth herself.
“After he died, I took my stepfather’s name.” His fingers were still tight around her. “My mom had remarried another man. Greg Quinn. Greg…was good. He tried to help us.”
Her heartbeat wouldn’t slow down. “The reports… The police said a minor was in the car.” They’d told her…the teenager had been the one to call for help. When they’d arrived on scene, he’d been fighting to free her mother.
Logan?
He would have been what then, fourteen?
“I went by Paul back then,” he said. “Logan’s my middle name.”
All these years…he’d kept this secret?
“I was arguing with him,” Logan told her, his voice slipping back into that emotionless tone that she hated. “He wasn’t paying attention. I was arguing, he was drunk…”
“And my mother died.”
A slow nod. He released her and stepped back. “If I’d been stronger, I never would have let him in that truck. If I hadn’t been yelling at him, maybe he would have seen her car coming…. I could have saved her, but I didn’t.”
Her face felt too hot. Her hands too cold. “My father knew.”
“Yes.”
Another secret. More lies.
Juliana held his gaze. “You asked me to run away with you. You said you wanted us to start a life together.” Kids. A house. “And all that time…”
“I wanted to be with you more than I ever wanted anything else in my life.” Now emotion cracked through his words. “Your father investigated me, found out who I was. The son of a killer.”
He was more than that.
“He was going to tell you. He told me to leave, or he’d—”
“And that made you just walk away? His threat?” She wasn’t buying that line. Time to try another one.
But he gave a hard shake of his head. “No, I left because he was right. You deserved more than me. My father was right, too, you know… In a lot of ways, I am just like him.” He lifted his hands, stared at his fingers. “I was made to kill.”
“Maybe you were made to protect.” She was tired of this bull. “You don’t have to be like him. Be your own person! You didn’t have to leave me alone—”
“You looked at me like I was a hero. I never wanted you to look at me…the way you are right now.”
She stepped back. “You should have told me from the beginning.” Everything could have been different between them. No secrets. No lies. “You just left me!”
Juliana took another fast step away from him.
“I came back.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Six months,” he said, jerking a rough hand through his hair. “I’d joined the navy. Tried to forget you. I couldn’t.”
“You didn’t come back for me.” The lies were too much. Why couldn’t he ever tell her the truth?
“You weren’t alone.”
Juliana blinked.
“You called him Thomas. He was blond, rich, driving a Porsche and holding you too close.”
“How do you know about him?” Thomas had been her friend; then after Logan left, he’d been more. She’d just wanted to forget for a while. To feel wanted, loved by someone else.
“You were sleeping with him.”
There was anger, jealousy—rage—vibrating in his voice now. She almost wished for that emotionless mask.
“I couldn’t breathe without thinking of you, but you’d moved on. Gotten someone better.”
She and Thomas had broken up after a few months. He’d been a good guy, solid, dependable, but he hadn’t been…
Logan.
“You had what you needed. I had no right to come back in and screw up your life.”
He’d come back.
“So I stayed away.” His hand rose to his chest. Pressed over the scar that was a reminder of the battles he’d faced. “I did my job.”
* * *
SUSAN STARED UP into Gunner’s face. Not a handsome face. Too hard. Too rough. This wasn’t an easy man before her.
She let her head fall forward, so weary she could hardly stand it. “I never wanted things to be like this.”
His hands came up to her shoulders. “You’re safe.”
She wasn’t. “I grew up with nothing.” Nothing but the looks of pity others gave her. “I swore that one day I’d have everything.” But Aaron was dead. His daughter was still alive. The will gave Susan nothing.
Just what I’ve always had.
Unless Juliana died, Susan would just get scraps.
Now she had Guerrero out there, waiting in the shadows.
Her shoulders hunched as she leaned toward him. “This isn’t the way I wanted my story to end.”
“It’s not over,” he told her as his hands tightened around her shoulders. “You think I didn’t want to give in when they had me in that pit? Giving up is easy. Fighting to live is the hard part.”
Yes, it was, but… “I’m a fighter.” Always had been.
“Good, you should—” His words broke off, ending in a choked gurgle.
Susan didn’t look up at his face. Her eyes were on her hands—on the knife she’d just shoved into his stomach.
You should have searched me. Guerrero had been right. An injured woman could get past nearly any guard. Some men just had blind spots. I slipped right past yours, Gunner.
She twisted the knife. “I’m not going back to nothing.”
Another choked growl.
Susan looked up into his eyes. His hands had fallen from her. “Sorry, but this time, you need to give up. There’s no point in fighting.”
Because he wasn’t going to keep living.
He slumped over and hit the floor with a thud.
* * *
A FAINT THUD REACHED Juliana’s ears. She frowned and glanced back up the stairs.
“We can’t change the past. If I could, hell, yes, I would,” Logan said, “but we—”
Glass shattered. Logan jerked—and red bloomed on his shoulder.
Then he was leaping toward her. He threw his body against Juliana’s, and they fell to the floor, slamming down behind the couch.
She heard shouts. Screams. More gunshots.
It sounded as if an army was attacking.
With Guerrero, that might be exactly what was happening. They had guards outside, local cops who’d been assigned to protect the house and her. Surveillance was watching, and backup would come, but…
More gunfire.
She grabbed Logan’s arm. Felt the wet warmth of his blood. “Logan?”
He raised his head. Stared at her with an unreadable gaze.
“Guess he took the bait,” he said.
The words were cold.
“Stay here, and keep your head down.”
What? He was leaving?
She held him tighter. Logan winced, and her hand dropped. “You can’t go out there!”
“I’m a SEAL. That’s exactly where I need to go.”
Into the fight.
“You won’t be afraid anymore. We’ll get his men. I’ll make sure one stays alive, and we will track Guerrero.” Then he kissed her. A hard, fast press of his lips. “Stay down.”
And he was gone. Rushing away and his blood was on her hands.
Juliana crouched behind the thick couch, breath heaving in her chest. Then she heard the scream. Wild, desperate and coming from upstairs.
Susan.
The guards outside were already under attack. Susan couldn’t get caught in the crossfire. The woman had suffered enough.
Because of my father. Because she was close to us.
Juliana knew she had to help her. Keeping low, she rushed across the room and used the furniture for cover as best she could.
Her hand was on the banister when another round of gunfire erupted in the room.