Jagged Hearts (2 page)

The figure stalked her, and she heard his labored breath as he moved closer. She’d never have time to close the bedroom door, but if she shoved it and turned to run for the closet, she might be able to lock herself in there.

She shoved as soon as she stepped inside, pivoted on one foot and took off only to have her hair snagged from behind. Her scalp felt as if it were on fire as her assailant hauled her back and flung her to the floor. Air whooshed from her lungs as she hit, and she felt her wrist snap as she threw one hand back to brace from the fall.

She cried out, automatically pulling her arm to her chest as pain exploded. That was the least of her worries though as the figure landed on her, knees bracing beside her hips as he used his weight to hold her legs down. She’d never forget those eyes, black and empty, as if there was no one behind the mask.

“Please,” she pleaded, bucking uselessly under him and using one hand to shove at his immovable bulk.

The knife lifted, but it wasn’t her life flashing before her eyes. It was the life she could have had. It was Lance and marriage and children and the years of happiness she was being robbed of. Fire burned in her belly as the first plunge struck deep.

“No!” The denial screamed from her throat as the blade stabbed her flesh again and again, every stroke centered on her stomach, her womb, her child. Fiery pain bled into numbness as she lay there, unable to budge.

He shifted and stood, looming over her, a shrouded figure who’d stolen everything that mattered to her. She blinked, her eyes growing heavy. She should fight. She should try to hold on, to stay awake, but there was nothing left inside her. Instead, she closed her eyes and prayed to die.

* * * *

She woke briefly to hear voices. Her mother and someone saying something about minimal scarring. Vivian wouldn’t like that. Scarring? From what?

The next time Paisley blinked open her heavy lids, there were other voices, masculine voices, and one of them brought tears to her eyes. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed him.

“Daddy,” she whispered through dry lips.

He was beside the bed before she’d finished calling his name.

“I’m here, princess. I’m here,” he promised, leaning close so she felt his breath on her cheek.

“Don’t leave.” She forced out the words.

“Not without you,” he said.

“Lance?” she asked.

“Rest, honey,” he whispered. “You need to rest. Everything’s going to be okay.”

She blinked, struggling to grasp something she knew was important, but it faded as sleep tugged her into oblivion again.

The next time she awoke, memory returned like the wicked blade of another knife, this one aimed at her heart. She felt the tears before she forced her eyes open. There was a stranger in the chair beside the bed. As she turned to look at him, he leaned forward and placed his hands softly beside her on the bed. Blue eyes. He had blue eyes filled with life, and it calmed her racing heart.

“Where’s my dad?” she asked.

“Making arrangements to take you home.”

She closed her eyes and let more tears fall. Home. It was exactly where she wanted to go, where she needed to go. She wanted to be as far away from LA and this waking nightmare as she could get.

“My mother?”

She swore she saw his lips tighten before he relaxed his jaw enough to answer.

“She’s around somewhere.”

Paisley swallowed, trying to hold back her sobs.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Barrett, Bare to my friends. I work for your dad. He asked me to stay with you. He didn’t want you to wake up and be afraid.”

She took in Bare. He was big, muscled and tough looking with his shaggy hair, scruffy beard and numerous tattoos peeking out from under his collar and sleeves. He would definitely stop anyone from getting to her in here, and she had little doubt that was why her dad had asked him to stay.

She moved her hands, one weighed down by an IV and the other by a cast, and cradled them both over her stomach.

“The baby?” She knew the answer before he shook his head softly. There was sadness in his eyes and maybe a sheen of tears. Or maybe those were in her eyes.

“Lance?”

Another brief movement of his head destroyed her world. She braced, fighting the surge of emotion, desperate to hold the jagged pieces of her soul together. Then he moved, standing and sitting beside her on the bed.

“There’s no weakness in tears,” he whispered to her. “Let it out. Let it all out.”

“They’re gone,” she said, somehow finding it easier to bare herself to this stranger than she ever would have to the mother she loathed and the father she rarely saw. “I’ve lost everything.”

He said nothing, just leaned closer, letting her bury her face in his T-shirt as she cried. Her body was blessedly numb from whatever they were giving her, but her heart was anything but. Why? The question surged through the pain. Why would someone want to kill her and Lance?

“I don’t know,” Bare said, making her aware she’d whispered the question aloud. “But no one will ever hurt you like this again. I promise.”

She let her eyes slide closed again without replying. It didn’t matter if anyone hurt her again. There was nothing left for them to take.

Chapter One

Five years later…

Today, we’ll look back at the brutal attack that rocked the entertainment industry and left the world mourning the loss of heartthrob, Lance McIntire. He and his fiancée, fellow actress Paisley Ames were attacked in their home by an assailant who was never identified by investigators. It’s believed McIntire was attacked in the entryway when he answered the door. Though there were signs of a struggle, McIntire was hit with a fatal knife wound to the chest. Ames was not so lucky. The assailant forced his way into the couple’s bedroom and stabbed Ms. Ames multiple times in the abdomen. Though never officially confirmed, speculation lingers that Ms. Ames was pregnant at the time. In the immediate aftermath, she left Los Angeles and acting and has refused all requests for interviews.

A picture flashed on the screen of Paisley on horseback, riding on her grandmother’s ranch. She wondered bitterly how they’d managed to obtain it, but instinctively, she knew.

Joining us today is the mother of Paisley Ames, Vivian Ames, who has remained stoic in her quest to find the person responsible for destroying her daughter’s life.
Vivian, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

The television showed Vivian fixing her gaze on the picture of Paisley and tearing up right on cue, as if her world had been the one that ended that day.

“Turn that shit off,” Barrett “Bare” Locke ordered as he walked into the room. “Now,” he added when the newest recruit to Knight’s Watch didn’t move fast enough for him.

“What the hell!” The new guy, Seth, grumbled, standing and walking over to shut it off. He had a book in his hand. His place marked by a finger stuck in between the pages. Paisley blinked as she realized he was even taller than Bare.

“I wasn’t even watching the fucking thing,” the guy said and threw a glance over his shoulder.

Sterling and Jagger, the other two men in the room, did as well, and that was when they realized she’d walked in the room. The television had been turned pretty loud, so it wasn’t her fault they hadn’t heard her. Jagger muttered a swear word, and Sterling shook his head.

“Holy shit,” Seth muttered, staring at her as if he was seeing a ghost. And wasn’t that appropriate? Didn’t she feel like a mere ghost of her former self?

“Seth Gunnerson meet Paisley Ames,” Bare said.

“Knight,” she corrected Bare with a glare before turning to the new guy. Paisley Ames had died five years ago. “Paisley Knight. Nice to meet you, Seth.”

“Knight?” he asked.

“As in Jamison’s daughter,” Bare said.

“Sorry about that, Paisley,” Jagger said, standing and walking toward her.

“It’s been all over the media for the last few days. Always is around this time,” Paisley replied. “Vivian makes sure of that.”

“You okay?” he asked as he looked down at her. He reached out a finger to lift her chin, and she knew he saw the dark circles under her eyes, testament to her sleepless nights.

“I’m fine,” she answered automatically. It took all she had to keep her hand from falling to her flat stomach that was barely marred by the attack, thanks to the skilled hands of the plastic surgeon her mother had brought into the operating room after the doctors had saved Paisley’s life.

She felt anger filling the room. Her mother had no fans here. These guys were her father’s men, and they took anything done to Jamison personally. The fact Vivian had kept father and daughter separated through lies and deceit didn’t surprise Paisley, but it infuriated these guys.

“Jagger, why don’t you take Seth with you today?” Bare suggested.

Jagger grinned at her before turning to Seth. “I’ve got a team with a fresh install today,” he said. “Top of the line system. Guy’s a judge. He’s been getting some threats over a case he’s presiding over. I’ll walk you through all the checks we do before the crew puts everything in.”

“Sounds good,” Seth said then turned back to her. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Knight. I apologize for the television.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You don’t control what they air. And it’s nice to meet you. Welcome to Knight’s Watch.”

He nodded, and there was something on his face that made her think he knew what it was like to lose someone close. Then he turned and walked out with Jagger. Sterling followed them, leaving her alone with Bare, something she would have liked to avoid. Especially today. He saw far too much she preferred to keep hidden. She could practically feel him trying to penetrate inside her head and find out what she was thinking.

“What?” she finally asked a bit shrilly, which pissed her off. He was the only one who got to her. She liked the other guys. Enjoyed chatting with them. But Bare was different. He made her feel different. He made her feel things she’d thought had died five years ago when she’d lost Lance, when she’d lost her baby.

“What are you doing here?” He barked out the question in his normal gruff tone, but concern was etched in the lines around his eyes.

She sighed in resignation as she looked at him. She wasn’t sure what had made her think she could ever walk in this building without Bare knowing. He crossed massive arms over an even larger chest as he stared at her, one brow cocked over his deep-blue eyes.

“I came to see my dad.”

“He’s not in,” Bare said.

“Oh.” She had no idea what else to say. Her dad was always here.

“He flew out for a special assignment last night,” Bare finally said. “You usually hole up for this week, so we didn’t think about letting you know. Sorry.”

He was right. That was exactly how she dealt with this every year. She locked herself inside the farmhouse she’d remodeled and pretended the rest of the world wasn’t reliving her worst nightmare in vivid detail. It had been her intention this year as well, but she was restless, had been for a while now, and couldn’t shake the feeling no matter what she tried. So she’d decided to come visit her dad.

“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Bare asked. He reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, and she jolted at the brush of his fingers against her skin. She always did. And it still made her feel guilty.

She moved away, shrugging her shoulders. “Just needed a distraction, I guess,” she finally confessed. “What kind of special assignment is he on? Tell me he’s not doing anything dangerous.”

She knew some of the special missions her dad took on. Bare went on quite a few of them himself. Usually, they involved high-risk kidnapping cases, mostly of the international variety where the government couldn’t get involved. Sometimes, they were rescue missions, but at times, they became body recovery ones instead.

“No, this is different. He hasn’t taken an active role in those missions since you got here,” Bare reminded her. “He wouldn’t do anything to risk losing you.”

Which reminded her there had been a time when her father had risked it all on a daily basis, both during his military career and when he’d first established Knight’s Watch. Now, he hired no less than thirty people at a time, all ex-military. He gave them a job and a home when they ventured into the civilian world. Most of them were fresh from war zones and had seen more than their fair share of serious shit. Knight’s Watch made them part of a group who knew them and understood what’d they’d been through. And her dad was always available to talk to any of them, though usually, his right-hand man, Tucker, took the role of therapist. This was a place where they could stay and decompress, reacclimate and adjust. They could stay as long as they needed to.

“Tuck go with him?” she asked.

Bare ignored her question. “Tell me what you need, Paisley?”

“You” hovered on the end of her tongue, and for the hundredth time, she asked herself if it would really be so bad to lose herself in the desire she knew he felt for her. Unfair? Yes. She got the feeling he wanted more than a one-time deal. He deserved more than a woman who’d never love again, one without the jagged scars of a past that would never set her free.

“I don’t know,” she said with a shake of her head. “Felt like the walls were closing in. I needed to get out, get away for a bit.”

“Let’s get out then,” he said. “My bike’s outside. We can go anywhere or nowhere. Your choice.”

The thought of straddling his big black bike and wrapping herself around him sent a shiver through her. She wanted to say yes.

“Come on. I know you want to,” he said with a grin.

And she saw Lance. His brown eyes twinkling as he challenged her to run off to Vegas and marry him. God, what a fucked up place her head was. Fucked up and guilt riddled.

“I can’t,” she said. “Let my dad know I stopped by.” She turned, heading toward the door, but his next words stopped her midstride.

“He’s dead,” Bare said gruffly. “I doubt he would have expected your life to end with his.”

“You don’t know anything about him,” she forced out between gritted teeth, clenching her hands into fists at her sides and keeping her back to him.