CHAPTER NINETEEN
Throughout the night, Nicole sat next to Holly’s bed, curled up in the comfortable chair Caleb had brought in for her to use while she watched over the young girl she felt responsible for. Nicole was exhausted and drained, yet a deep, restful sleep eluded her. There was too much going on in her mind—her worry for Holly, thoughts of Sloane’s impending arrest, and the disappointment in Nathan’s eyes as she’d walked away from him earlier.
The latter still haunted her, in ways she’d never anticipated.
As the hours slowly passed, Holly tossed and turned in her bed, moaning and whimpering as her own dreams, and possibly nightmares, plagued her. The few times she did wake up Nicole made her drink gulps of cool water to help flush the alcohol and drugs out of her system, though Nicole had a strong feeling the young girl was going to feel like crap come morning. By then, the narcotics would have worn off and Holly would be forced to deal in the real world with nothing to dull her anxiety, emotional pain, and the reality of her situation.
She heard Caleb’s and Nathan’s voices drifting in from the other room, along with an occasional comment from Valerie, and knew they were discussing details of the case, gathering information on Holly, and getting in touch with all the pertinent agencies to take Sloane down.
By dawn, Nicole’s heavy eyelids drooped and she snuggled into the blanket wrapped around her and nodded off. When she woke up half an hour later, she found Holly awake, curled up on her side, her vacant gaze staring at the wall behind Nicole. The girl’s makeup was smeared, showing her pale complexion, and her hair was a disheveled mess around her face. She looked so empty and alone, and much older than her fifteen years. Her innocence and childhood were gone, stolen by a man who had no regard for the lives he destroyed in his quest for his own sick pleasures.
Nicole sat up in her chair so she was closer to the side of the bed. Holly didn’t even acknowledge that she was there, though she knew the girl was well aware of her presence. Most likely, she was still pissed off at Nicole for taking her away from Sloane.
“How are you feeling?” Nicole asked softly.
Holly didn’t respond, clearly ignoring her.
Sighing, but by no means defeated, Nicole tried again. “Would you like some breakfast? I can make you some eggs or toast.” Eventually the girl would need to put something in her stomach—other than drugs and alcohol.
“I don’t want anything from you,” Holly finally said, her voice flat and spiritless. “Just go away.”
Okay, she was talking. At least that was a start. “Do you remember where you are?” Nicole asked, unsure what the girl recalled from last night. “That I took you away from Preston’s estate and brought you somewhere safe?”
Her gaze finally met Nicole’s, a spark of renewed animosity flashing in her eyes as last night’s events came back to her. “You had no right to take me!”
“We did have the right to take you,” Nicole said gently, trying to keep the girl calm. “You’re only fifteen, Holly. You’re an underage runaway who was kidnapped and taken to Preston’s place in Summerlin.”
Holly’s brows snapped into a frown. “Who told you that?”
So, she didn’t remember her conversation with Valerie. “Last night, you talked to one of the other women who is here. You told her you ran away from home a year ago, when you were fourteen, and that Gwen brought you to Vegas from California.”
“I wouldn’t tell anyone that!” she said, her tone panicked. “I’m eighteen and I want to be with Preston.”
Both Sloane and Gwen had done an excellent job in brainwashing the young girl. “What Preston did, what Gwen did, was against the law.” Wanting to offer Holly comfort, Nicole reached out to grab the girl’s hand.
Holly yanked her arm away, sat up in bed, and glared at Nicole. “I don’t care. I’ll do anything to be with Preston, to make him happy. He’ll find me and he’ll come for me. I know he will!”
“He’s not coming for you,” Nicole said, not wanting Holly to be under any illusions. “As soon as your parents are located, you’ll be reunited with them, and they’ll take you back home.”
Holly shook her head wildly, and tears brimmed in her eyes. “I don’t want to go back. My mother doesn’t want me. She’s never wanted me.”
It didn’t escape Nicole’s notice that Holly only mentioned the one parent, and it seemed like the relationship hadn’t been a good one. It was hard to imagine that a mother would discard a child so easily, and she wondered if Holly’s perception of what it had been like at home was somehow skewed after her time with Sloane.
“Why do you think your mother doesn’t want you?” Nicole asked. Her own parents would have come for her in a heartbeat, just as Angela’s had.
Tears ran down the girl’s cheek as memories of her past seemed to overwhelm her. “My mother was always too busy with her boyfriend of the week, and most of them were creeps. She left me alone all the time while she and whatever guy she was dating went out and partied. Sometimes, she didn’t even come home until the morning. I wanted to live with my dad, but my mom wouldn’t let me.”
“Where’s your dad?” Nicole asked, curious to know why her father hadn’t been a direct part of her life.
“He’s in the army,” she said, and swiped away the wet tears from her face. “He’s stationed in Germany. I miss him so much.”
Oh, hell. It sounded as though Holly’s home life had been a heart-wrenchingly dysfunctional one. Most likely she’d rebelled in various ways in the hope of getting just a fraction of the attention her mother gave to her boyfriends. When her attempts hadn’t worked, she’d decided to run away. And then Sloane had come along and had given her what she craved the most—attention, affection, and gifts to make her feel loved.
“I want Preston.” Holly lay back down on the bed, facing away from Nicole this time. “He loves me, I know he does,” she said, and Nicole knew Holly believed her own words.
“If Preston loved you, why was he asking you to be with other men?” Nicole asked, hoping the question would break through the girl’s stubborn mind-set. It was the same question she’d asked herself over and over, while fighting an internal struggle over Mark’s request to sleep with another man.
Holly stiffened. “Go away,” she said, choosing not to answer, probably because there was no justification for what Sloane had done to her. “I want to be alone.”
There was so much more Nicole could say to Holly to point out all of Sloane’s immoral flaws, but in the girl’s current mental state, Preston was her hero, the man who’d taken her in and had given her nice things and a false sense of security and love. Never mind that he’d also exploited her and had already started passing her around to other men. Nicole had no doubt that he would have eventually sold her off to his Russian connections for an even worse life, with no chance of ever going home again.
There was no reasoning with Holly in her current frame of mind, and it would be a waste of Nicole’s breath to continue trying. The girl required the kind of professional help that Nicole wasn’t equipped to provide, and she’d talk to Caleb to make sure she received some kind of counseling to heal her damaged emotions.
But in the meantime, she wanted to be sure the girl had someone to talk to if she needed support. She looked through the nightstand and found a pen and a notepad, then jotted down her name and her cell phone number. She ripped off the piece of paper, came around the bed and tucked it beneath Holly’s hand, then gently touched her hair, wishing there was some easy way to make all this go away for Holly. Unfortunately, there was nothing simple or easy about what the girl had been through.
Holly didn’t move or acknowledge her touch or the note she’d given her. “If you ever need someone to talk to, that’s my cell number. You can call me anytime.”
Again, Holly didn’t respond, but neither did she crumple up her phone number and toss it aside, which Nicole took as a positive sign.
The longer she stared at Holly, the more Nicole saw a part of herself in the young girl. From the very beginning, she’d been drawn to Holly, the need to protect her strong because she knew what the girl was going through.
All too well, Nicole understood the pain of Holly’s situation—of once being Sloane’s “it” girl, of being asked to do unmentionable things with other men, then being cast off for someone younger and prettier. Mark Reeves had been older and charming—a man who knew all the right words to make a girl’s heart beat faster. Yet beneath all that charisma had been a selfish, egotistical player who had no qualms about using his female students for his own sexual gratification.
She’d fallen in love with Mark quickly and completely, and had been willing to do anything to make him happy, to make sure he loved her, and only her. To the point that she’d done degrading, humiliating things because she’d been just as obsessed with Mark as Holly was with Preston. Her entire world had revolved around her professor, to the exclusion of everything else.
A shiver rippled down her spine, and the chill of a deep-seated fear touched her heart. After Mark, she’d deliberately spent years in casual relationships, keeping her emotions out of the equation while embracing her independence and working toward building her career as a journalist. She’d learned the difficult lesson that giving any man control over her emotions was the most painful, self-destructive thing she’d ever done.
She’d only known Nathan a few weeks, yet already she couldn’t get enough of him. Her strong feelings for him were crossing all those emotional boundaries she’d set for herself, the ones she’d erected to protect her heart and everything else that was important to her.
An onslaught of doubts swept through her, forcing her to question whether her emotions toward Nathan were even real, or if he was nothing more than an obsession, a result of their close proximity over the past few weeks. Was she about to repeat the pattern of her past and risk losing her identity as a journalist and as a woman? And what price would she pay to love Nathan, knowing he could walk away at any given moment?
She feared the answer.
Oh, God. She pressed her fingers to her lips as she looked down at Holly, a clear-cut reminder of what giving her heart and soul to someone could reduce her to. And that’s when Nicole knew she just didn’t have it in her to take that risk with Nathan, because she’d never be able to survive the heartbreak of losing him.
Nicole had to make a choice, and she knew which one it had to be. She couldn’t lose focus as a woman or as a reporter, not when she was on the cusp of something huge with her career. She was about to get the big breakout story on Sloane after all, and she was confident that the exclusive would open up myriad opportunities for her. The kind that would require dedication and commitment to her job. She needed to remain true to herself this time, making the choice to leave before it was made for her. Or before she did something stupid in the name of love.
It was time to end things between them. She knew saying good-bye was going to hurt, that she would miss so many things about Nathan. But she knew it was much easier to shut the door on someone else than have it shut on her. Their story was done. It was time for her to move on and heal.
A soft knock on the door startled Nicole out of her troubling thoughts, and she glanced from Holly to Valerie, who stood just inside the bedroom.
“I heard you two talking in here a while ago and thought I’d give you a break,” the other woman said, her gaze compassionate. Then, in a lower voice, she said, “Nathan is waiting to talk to you in the other room.”
“Thanks,” Nicole said, even though she had no intention of having a long, drawn-out conversation with Nathan about them.
Nathan wanted to talk, but for her, there was nothing left to discuss.
*
Nathan glanced up from the information he and Caleb were reviewing on his laptop as Nicole entered the living room. He was quick to notice she avoided eye contact with him—not that he was surprised. Everything about her body language told him that sometime in the past six hours she’d spent by Holly’s bedside, she’d erected emotional barriers and was already closing herself off to him … and anything between them beyond this case.
Last night, she’d changed from her jester costume to a large T-shirt and a pair of drawstring shorts Caleb had given her to wear. She’d scrubbed her face clean, and except for the dark circles beneath her eyes, she appeared like a young girl herself. She also looked worn out, and he knew her exhaustion was both emotional and physical.
For now, he’d let business take precedence.
She stood across the room from where Nathan and Caleb were sitting on the sofa. “I found out from Holly that her mother and father aren’t together, and she lived with her mother before running away.”
“We know,” Nathan said. “We have a full background report on her. She’s listed as a runaway, and she’s only fifteen years old, which helps us finally nail Sloane. We contacted her mother about an hour ago to let her know we have Holly.”
A troubled look passed across Nicole’s features. “How did her mother react?”
“She was shocked and happy her daughter was alive and okay.” A normal response in Nathan’s opinion. “Why?”
She ran her fingers through her hair and sighed. “Because the two of them didn’t have a great relationship. According to Holly, her mother spent more time with her various boyfriends than with her.”
Nathan sensed where Nicole was heading with her comments, and knew he had to get her to start cutting those emotional ties to Holly, despite whatever the girl’s family relationships had been. “Her mother is on her way from California to pick her up. She should be here in a few hours.” He said softly, “You need to let it go, Nicole.”
The concern in her eyes shone bright. “I just don’t want to take her out of one bad situation and place her in another. She might be better off with her father, even though he’s stationed in Germany.”
“It’s not our choice to make,” Caleb cut in, not bothering to temper the bluntness of his words. For him, this was a cut-and-dried situation, and while Nathan knew that deep inside Caleb was sympathetic, his boss handled all his cases objectively.
“I’ll be taking Holly to The Onyx with me. Valerie will stay with her until her mother arrives,” Caleb continued, making it clear this was the end of Nicole’s involvement with the girl. “We’ll probably hold Holly at the hotel for a few days so the FBI can talk to her and everything gets straightened out. Then she’ll be released to her mother’s custody.”
“Okay,” Nicole said, though the stunned look on her face told Nathan she wasn’t dealing well with the brusque way Caleb was handling the situation. She was having difficulty separating herself from Holly and accepting that her part in the case was done.
Caleb stood and crossed the room to Nicole, extending his hand to shake hers. “I want to thank you for your help,” he said, the sentiment genuine. “We appreciate everything you’ve done to help get Angela back to her parents, and we’ll handle everything else from here.”
Nathan winced inwardly. Caleb’s words sounded like a cool dismissal. But Nathan knew how his boss operated and he was treating Nicole, and the success of the mission, in a professional manner. In Caleb’s mind, he’d already moved on to the investigative part of the case and the feds’ involvement to take down Sloane.
Caleb headed into the kitchen, leaving Nathan alone with Nicole. He stood up, more than a little tired himself. He’d stayed up all night with Caleb working on the case. They desperately needed a break before the shit really hit the fan with Sloane, and he also needed to get Nicole somewhere safe. After discussing the options with Caleb, they’d both agreed she’d be secure in her apartment until everything was resolved, since Sloane didn’t know who she was.
“You’ve had a long weekend,” he said, his voice low and soothing. “I’m going to take you home.”
She glanced back at the guest bedroom, her reluctance to leave Holly behind palpable.
“She’s in the best hands possible,” he said in an attempt to reassure her. Then he held out his hand for Nicole to take, which she did. “Come on, sweetheart. You need a hot shower and lots of sleep, and you’ll be more comfortable doing both back at your apartment.”
Instead of taking the Hummer, which attracted too much attention, Nathan used Caleb’s car to drive Nicole to her place. She sat quietly in the passenger seat, and with each passing mile he could feel her withdrawing and emotionally closing herself off to him. He hated that she could so easily shut him out after everything they’d shared, but he also knew that the stress of what she’d endured was a huge part of the reason she was retreating into herself.
Right now, making sure Nicole was safe and protected was his main priority. Until they arrested Sloane, the man was still a threat. Nathan had already started closing off all the trails for Alex Keller, and Lucas was making sure the identity was completely erased, as if that persona had never existed. As a material witness for the case, he’d be required to give a deposition for the feds, as would Nicole. But until her presence was required, she needed to lie low.
He arrived at her apartment and walked Nicole up to her place. Once the door was unlocked, she stepped inside and turned around, but didn’t invite him inside—a telling sign he heeded. For now.
“What happens from here?” she asked, her voice as tired as she looked.
“Until Sloane is in custody, you need to keep out of sight,” he said, making sure she was clear on that. “Stay in your apartment and don’t go to work. I’ll keep in touch so you know what’s going on, or you can reach me on my cell at any time.”
She nodded. “How long is it going to take?”
“At least three days.” He shifted on his feet, trying hard to give her the space she seemed to need, even though the distance between them was killing him. “Less if the feds move quickly.”
She rubbed her fingers across her furrowed forehead as she processed his answer. “Then what?”
“We can go back to our regular lives.” For him, that meant a future that included her in it. A committed relationship that eventually led to marriage, when she was ready to make that step. “And you can write your exclusive story on Sloane, like you wanted.”
He expected an ecstatic response from her, since exposing Sloane had been her goal from the beginning. But she didn’t even acknowledge the coup that would be hers, and hers alone.
Instead, she stood there, like an empty shell of herself. Seeing her so devoid of emotion scared the crap out of him. “All my stuff is still at the Turnberry apartment.”
The mundane conversation grated on his nerves, and also set off an uneasy sensation deep inside him. “Caleb has a crew coming in and cleaning everything up. He’ll get your things packed, and I’ll bring them to you.”
She shook her head, her expression suddenly adamant, as was the way she lifted her chin. “No, just have them send everything to me.”
The finality of her words hit him in the stomach like a sucker punch. Right here, right now, she was ending things with him, without giving him any choice in the matter. And it royally pissed him off.
His first instinct was to confront her, to lay everything on the line and force her to acknowledge that there was something special between them. To argue that they weren’t over just because the case was, or because she decided they were done.
Goddamn it, he loved her. And he knew she cared for him, too. Their relationship might have started out as strictly sexual, but there was no denying the deep emotional connection that had formed between the two of them.
But she was denying her true feelings in the only way she knew how, by reverting to past behavior and walking away before things became even more complicated—just as she’d done the first evening they’d met when she’d slipped out on him in the middle of the night. She was trying to protect her heart the only way she knew how, even if that meant sacrificing her own happiness in the process.
Frustrated by her behavior, he exhaled a deep breath, which calmed his anger and helped him to think straight before he said or did something he’d regret later. He knew the events of the past few days were skewing her judgment. She wasn’t trained to deal with the emotional impact of what she’d witnessed at Sloane’s. She didn’t possess the skills he did to compartmentalize her feelings. His training kept his focus on the mission, and logic ruled his behavior. Everything about this case had affected her emotionally.
She needed time to process everything. She needed space to put everything in perspective, including what was between the two of them. Right now, she was overwhelmed. If he pushed her to examine her feelings for him, she was going to snap. Hell, one of the most valuable lessons he’d learned from his own sisters was that if he made demands of a woman when she was stressed, she was going to make a decision that he’d regret.
And he didn’t want any regrets between him and Nicole.
He took a step back, so he was no longer standing in the doorframe. “You and I aren’t done yet.” His words were short and to the point.
A flicker of sadness passed through her soft blue eyes. Then, without a response, she shut the door on him, closing the door on them.