Dark Memories (The DARK Files Book 1) (12 page)

She stopped, just beyond the congenial circle of adults and children, and faced him. “Have you ever done that? A bonfire, I mean, with tall tales and marshmallows?”

His eyes, midnight dark and brooding, focused on her warily. She had the impression of coiled energy, a wild creature that at any moment could either pounce or flee. “The stories Marines tell around campfires would singe your hair.”

Something flickered behind the intensity in his eyes. Hurt and envy. They curled around her heart. “But as a boy, you never did this, did you?”

His lack of a reply told her he hadn’t. He’d either had to work or deal with his father. If the old man wasn’t already dead, she’d like to choke him for denying his son a childhood.
In spite of Cole’s achievements, he hadn’t banished the feeling of inadequacy engendered by missing small joys like fun around a campfire. The hostile biker facade had been a guise. He still felt unworthy, an outsider.

“Then let’s make up for lost time. I see room for us by the rock beyond the fire circle.” She took his hand and began tugging him toward the spot she’d selected, apart, yet near enough to hear Jake and roast a marshmallow or two. She might’ve tried to uproot a tree. He didn’t pull away from her. He simply didn’t budge.

His hard-hewn jaw was set. “You don’t have to do this.” He spoke in a low voice serrated by bitterness.

“No, but you do.” She laced her fingers with his long, callused ones. “You can’t undo injustices and fill in gaps, but you can move on by not denying yourself simple pleasures everyone should experience.”

She bestowed on him her best come-hither smile and pulled again. The thickening fog formed a gray nimbus around the outdoor lights and left jewels of mist on her hair.

He cleared his throat.
“We ought to get to the cabin. I need—”

She clutched his arm and whispered. “There’s a strange man standing behind us. Look by the tree.”

“LET’S SEE. AVERAGE build, brown hair, closing in on forty?”

“You already checked him out?” Laura asked.

His lips nuzzled her ear as he whispered back, rocketing her pulse. “You can relax. He’s DARK. Stan has hired two new groundskeepers. I thought you’d noticed him earlier in the theater. He’s assisting with lighting.”

She inhaled slowly and deeply, exhaled. “Stan knows?”

“Had to tell him. He wants to help you. Besides, the intrigue appealed to him like a three-act thriller.”

She relaxed against him, secure and trusting he was protecting her. Brushing hungry mosquitoes away, she let him nudge her away from the happy campfire scene and to her cabin.

“You would’ve enjoyed toasting marshmallows and listening to Jake’s stories,” she said as they entered her cabin. “It would’ve been one less thing to complain about never doing.”

He hung his windbreaker, wet with mist, on the back of a kitchen chair. “You can make a list and check off every item if you want — bonfire, sailing, horseback riding, a damned cotillion. It’s not the same.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” She poured water into the kettle for some herbal tea. “Simple joys like roasting marshmallows as a child don’t make a man who he is.”

He turned off the gas heater. “Dammit, I smell gas. This was loose again. The pilot light’s out.”

“I don’t understand. Stan told me at the theater that Burt fixed it today.” At least the thing worked. In a few minutes they could relight it. A little heat would nip the evening chill brought on by the fog. And the sudden chill between them. “So you had a rough beginning. You turned yourself around.”

“Bully for me.” He growled like an unfed wolf.

“Don’t you get all defensive on me, Cole Stratton.” Hands on her hips, she glared at him. The man was all hard lines and uncompromising angles. A hard surface that one day would crack when the hidden fires beneath erupted.

He threw up his hands. “I know you mean well.”

“Whining about what you never did makes you a martyr to no one but yourself. Don’t tell me you didn’t get a kick out of sailing. We can even find horses to ride if you want. Maybe we can invite Janus to come along.” Horrified, she stopped.

The kettle shrieked, and she spun back to the stove.

He trailed after her as far as the refrigerator, where he’d stocked some root beer. “Speaking of Janus…”

“Ah, I was wondering when you’d get around to finishing our conversation of this afternoon. My story may rival some of Jake’s more hair-raising tales. It’s not for children.” Describing the attack would be easier than walking this minefield between them.

She took her tea to a stool beside the heater, restored to giving warmth. “The weather was hot, one of those humid D.C. October nights, when the murder … when everything happened, but telling it gives me chills.”

Cole worried about her emotional state for relating this violent incident. He’d witnessed the havoc wreaked on war-torn villagers as they’d detailed atrocities committed by radicals on both sides of conflict.

Fixing his gaze on her, he sat cross-legged on the floor beside her. In the villages, family members had held and soothed hysterical victims. Laura might not want his support, physical or otherwise, but he was ready. “Tell me about Kovar.”

She clasped her tea mug with both hands. “He’s not very tall, but wide as a house, with dark eyes like iron pellets. I think he enjoyed hurting me. Markos ordered him to kill me, to dispose of me where no one would find me. The beating and … creative knife work were Kovar’s idea.”

She spoke with the toneless and disjointed remoteness of a computer-generated voice. Or as if she were reading a newspaper account of an unimportant event, not even a crime. Maybe the impersonal approach prevented the horror from overwhelming her.

“He took me to some dark place. I don’t know where. An alley or warehouse. First he used his fists. Then he pulled out a switchblade. I knew what was coming. I remember the blade clicking into place.”

She stared into the heater’s small flame, as if it kept her warm and steady during the narration. A veneer of calm covered her, a fragile shield of courage. She continued, but with increasing tension in her voice as unseen blows pummeled her. Cole longed to wrap his arms around her, but feared his touch might snap her control.

“The pain was unbearable. Blow after blow on my head, my neck, my ribs. His fists. The knife. I didn’t know which. I screamed and screamed. No one came. I was dizzy and nauseous. And then I lost consciousness.” Her shoulders stiffened as if prepared for another strike.

“Drink your tea.” He forced the words past his constricted throat. His gut seethed. He lifted the cup to her lips. His hands shook almost as much as hers. “Its warmth will help.”

As she swallowed the mint-scented drink, her shoulders relaxed. “When I opened my eyes again, the darkness … like the inside of a tomb. I couldn’t tell where. I was so weak, but I could feel and smell. Humidity. Stale beer, blood, vomit — maybe mine — and the ammonia sting of animal droppings. I gagged at the stench.” Tears flowed, but she didn’t seem to know she was crying.

Cole’s chest ached with the need to take her pain into himself. Unable to resist, he circled her hips with his arms, holding on as her anchor. Telling the story, getting it out, might stave off the nightmares that haunted her.

“I felt like a hollow shell. So much blood lost. I lay there, bleeding away, drifting. Dying. Then I heard a noise beside me. A chittering sound, like a bird. But not a bird. Something plucked at my sleeve. It plucked again. I felt pricks on my arm. Like needles in a cluster.”

His eyes narrowed. A chill prickled his spine. He knew what was coming. He tightened his grip on her.

“I … reached out and touched — a rat.” Laura’s voice was cold as a January moon. “It was standing on my arm, licking at the blood soaking my blouse sleeve.”

A shudder racked her slim body. Shivering like a hypothermia victim, she swayed, boneless, and nearly fell from the stool. But still the words came in that artificial monotone.

His insides roiling, he listened as she related the shock of touching the sinuous, furry body. Of realizing what the creature was doing. What it wanted.

“Oh God, oh God, I panicked. Fear and revulsion of that rat threw me to action. I flailed out with both arms.”

“What happened?”

“The thing ran away. And then I scooted as far away from where it had been as I could. I came up against a curved wall. Nausea choked me. I lay there awhile to gather strength. I don’t know how long. I panicked again when I realized the foul creature might return. What if I was too weak to fight it off? What if more followed the smell of blood?”

Her knuckles shone white from her death grip on the tea mug. He kept his arms around her.

After a deep breath, she continued. “I knew if I stayed put, no one would find me. Panic would do me no good. I would not let Markos win. I was weak. I’d lost a lot of blood, but I was alive. And I did not want to die in that box.

“I realized was locked in a car trunk. An old car, without a trunk safety latch. If a rat could find an escape, so could I. I remembered reading somewhere about the seat back being a weak spot.”
She described how she rolled to it and found where the rats had gnawed a hole. Moving doubled, trebled the pain, as if her attacker was thrashing and slashing at her again.

If only he could protect her from the agony of remembering. His throat tightened at her bravery and willpower.

“Pain was good. Pain kept me alert. I scooted around so I braced my feet against the seat divider. I had no strength to kick, so my leather pumps couldn’t budge the hard surface. I kept kicking until exhaustion put me to sleep. When I woke up — no telling how much later — I kicked again. And again. And again. Until finally the seat back collapsed and I saw light. And a hole big enough for a gang of rats.”

She gave a bitter laugh, a laugh dragged up from the roots of her tortured soul. “Crawling through that hole meant squeezing and twisting slowly. It might have been hours later that I flopped out onto the ground.”

“The report said you were in a junkyard. In a car slated to be crushed the next morning.” Nearly as wrung out as she, he drew in a ragged breath, took the empty mug from her stiff and cold hands and covered them with his. “You got out just in time.”

“I found the night watchman. He helped me and called the police. I’ll never forget the poor man’s shocked expression when I shuffled toward his trailer. He thought I wore a red shirt. It was my best cream silk blouse, but … the blood. I…” Her voice scraped, as if she’d swallowed nails.

“Hush, Laura, everything’s all right. You’re safe. I’ve got you.” He kneaded at the knots in her hunched shoulders. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever known. Most people would have given up and died. But not you. You turned tragedy into triumph.”

And then her nearness, her haunted eyes, live wires shooting sparks between them, robbed him of thought.
He sieved his fingers through the hair at her nape. Twining his fingers in it, he traced her skin from ear to chin with his thumb before he released the curls. He touched his mouth to the salt trails on her cheeks and kissed away the remaining tears.

Each stroke zapped his nerve endings. He didn’t want to feel this voltage. He should keep their relationship professional. But need sapped his will.

“But I…” Her words died as the spark in her eyes heated to flame.

Caught in each other’s stare, neither moved.

Laura let her gaze roam over his heated face and settle on his lips. His complete focus on her, his strength and support kept her from falling into an abyss while she relived that harrowing experience. She felt cleansed of the horror, its talons withdrawn and the pain soothed after holding it all in for so long. And now she had another need.

Cole.

He tugged on her hair, tilting her head back as he lowered his mouth. “I can’t keep away.”

Offering no gentle, exploratory kiss, his mouth plundered and devoured hers. While one hand cupped the back of her head, the other bracketed her body.

Her knees dissolved, and she could only clutch at his shirtfront as she slid from the stool onto his lap. His heart raced beneath her fingers.
She fitted her lips to his, claiming his mouth as he did hers. He tasted of heat and hunger and something darker.

As the kiss deepened, she forgot everything — her fears about the past, about the present. Everything but the intoxication that reached deep into her soul. With no other man had she ever felt this intense rush of agony and pleasure, this piercing need, this spiraling fall, as if she’d tumbled off a precipice only to soar. No other man. Only Cole.

Too late.
She’d fallen over that precipice into love with him.

If she’d ever stopped loving him.

Her heart stumbled and slammed against her ribs. The knowledge that loving him would bring only more pain to both of them suffocated her until she could barely breathe.

But it was Cole who ended the kiss. “Damn, I didn’t mean to take advantage of you.” Lifting his arms, he let her slide away. Desire dilated his pupils so there was almost no blue. “Wanting you is a fire in my blood. And you want me just as bad. You can’t deny it.”

Fearful her emotions played across her face, she could only shake her head as she pushed to her feet.

At her bedroom door, she turned. “No, Cole, I can’t deny it, but I can refuse. What we had is over. It’s too late now. Nothing can change what happened. We’re not the same people.”

“Of course we’re not the same. No one is. But—”

“We have no future together. Our lives are different.”

When more questions furrowed his brow, she knew the time had come.

She owed him the truth, the simple part.

SHE DREW A deep breath, steeling herself. “You need to know something I’ve kept from you. I didn’t tell you before because I wasn’t prepared. Because it was,
is
painful. We were still half angry with each other, and—”

“It’s okay.” Cole was on his feet, arms at his sides, his hands flexing. The wary wolf. “Tell me.”

Aching at the pain on his face, she held the doorknob for support. Her throat was so dry she could barely speak. “After our weekend together, I was pregnant.”