Stolen: A Novel of Romantic Suspense (31 page)

Shay smiled against his skin as he stroked a hand up her back.

“Did you mean that?” he whispered, his mouth moving against her shoulder.

“Yeah.” Rising, she braced her elbows on his chest and stared at him. The dark, tumbled red-brown of his hair was damp with sweat, framing his lean face, and his eyes glinted as he watched her. She touched his lower lip with her finger. “I figured it out while you were giving me a back rub and trying not to freak me out. And for the record … I was freaked out over what I’d figured out. Not the back rub.”

Elliot grimaced. “And here I thought I was good at covering things.”

“You are.” She smiled. “I’m just good at reading you.”

“Are you?” In a flash, he moved, rolling over so that she was under him. “What am I thinking?”

Grinning, she shrugged. “I dunno. I said I could
read
you. That doesn’t mean I can see inside your thick skull.”

“Good. That means I get to do the same thing to you that you did to me.” He lowered his lips to her ear. “Shay … I love you.”

Lorna was in there.

Darcy curled her lip as she studied the woman bent over the counter. What an ugly-ass name.

It sounded like it belonged to some backwoods, backward country hick. The woman with the russet-red hair might not be completely backwoods or backward, but Darcy figured she wasn’t as smart as she thought.

Customers had been coming and going all day. Darcy had been in and out several times.

Lorna hadn’t once noticed her, even though she’d rung her up twice. Hell, she’d sat in the back of the
store, using up the free Wi-Fi while she sent Shay some very interesting pictures.

Shay thought Darcy didn’t know about the little things that kept her awake at nights. But Darcy noticed
everything
 … she watched everything. All it took was the mention of an article she read about a child being locked in a closet
—oh, the poor thing
—and Shay wouldn’t sleep for days. Then there had been one post where a couple of guys had kidnapped a girl from their school and kept her tied up for several days, playing with her, raping her … 
that
had really set Shay off.

And she’d written one of her most twisted books afterward, too.

“Really, you should thank me,” Darcy murmured, thinking about how many of Shay’s fucked-up nightmares had led to fucked-up books. And how many times Darcy had fed those nightmares. It was a partnership—one Shay didn’t even know existed.

Absently, she wondered if Shay was keeping up with her email … because that
last
one had been a trip. She hadn’t sent it under her name. That would be stupid at this point. Shay was starting to remember more and more—she had said as much in her diary. Couldn’t let her piece together too much, not until Darcy was back in control.

Shay lay sprawled next to him, half dozing. Every now and then, because he just couldn’t stop himself, he reached over and stroked a hand down her arm, brushed her hair back from her face.

Once, she’d opened her eyes a little and smiled at him. But then she wiggled closer and buried her face against his neck and sighed her way back into sleep. It made his heart ache, watching her sleep. If anybody had ever told him it would be such an amazing thing to watch a woman sleep, he would have laughed.

But it was.

Amazing, and erotic, and beautiful.

He couldn’t sleep. Part of it was because he couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said. She loved him. It was a gift he’d hoped for. Longed for. Now he had to hope he didn’t fuck it up.

But those softly spoken words weren’t the only thing keeping him awake tonight. The rest of it was something he could only attribute to feeling
twitchy
. He was damn twitchy, adrenaline cranking on high, and although Shay had yet to fully see it, he knew there was something really, really fucked up going on with her friend.

With her laptop open on his lap, he logged into his email, hoping there would be something from Mike. Something that would
hopefully
explain some of that fucked-up shit.

When he saw the new email, he practically pounced on it.
About damn time
, he thought sourly. It shouldn’t take a cop a whole fucking
day
to run a background check, should it—what the
fuck
?

His eyes narrowed as he read the report.

Then he read it again.

When he came to Mike’s question down at the bottom, his gut was as heavy as lead, twisted into hot, slippery knots.

What the hell was this?

Sliding Shay a look, he blew out a breath.

Okay. Well, it appeared he’d found an answer for the fucked-up weirdness they were dealing with.

Now he just had to tell her.

Shay read the email.

Hands shaking, she scrolled back to the top and then read it again.

Finally, she minimized the window and then got to her feet and walked away from the bed to stare outside.

It was dark out, although the streets were far from quiet. Apparently midnight in Detroit didn’t mean much. The streets were still busy with cars and she stared at them, focusing on the blur of light and motion for a moment while she turned things over in her head.

“Why did you have Mike run a background check?” she asked quietly.

“Because I wanted answers.”

Turning, she stared at him. The dim light cast by her laptop played with the planes and hollows of his face, neck, and shoulders and his expression was grim at best.

“Answers about …?”

“Everything.” He rose from the bed, the sheet falling away from him. He came to her, wearing nothing but a close-fitting pair of boxer briefs. The muscles in his arms bunched and relaxed as he opened and closed his hands. “Shay, none of this makes sense and
all
of it is seriously fucked.”

“You think I don’t
realize
that?”

“I think you do. But have you considered just how fucked up this woman is? She’s obsessed with you, Shay. That’s dangerous.”

“She’s not—” Then she groaned and turned away. Her belly hurt just thinking about this, but she had to admit it.

If it had been anybody
but
Darcy, she would have been a hell of a lot more cautious about this, and she probably would have been a hell of a lot more scared. And she was already plenty scared.

“Missing,” she murmured. “For two years. But it doesn’t make sense. I talk to her, Elliot. All the time.”

Shaking her head, she moved to the bed and reached for the laptop.

Maybe it was another Darcy Montgomery. She’d just do that deeper search now. She’d meant to do it, anyway. Why not now? It wasn’t as if she was going to sleep anyway.

Half desperate to prove Elliot wrong, to prove Mike wrong, she did a Google search and found the typical
Find Darcy Montgomery …
blah, blah, blah. There were numerous hits on Facebook and she went there.

After several minutes of searching, she found the right one.

Or at least she thought she had. But the only person she was going to prove wrong, it seemed, was herself. Reading it sent a shiver down her spine.

The picture was right.

Completely right.

And Darcy Montgomery was indeed missing.

Darcy …

Two years. Squeezing her eyes closed, she tried to think back. Thought about the emails she’d been going through. The weirdest changes had been in the past year or so, yeah, but the smaller things, those had started about two years ago, give or take.

As fear gripped her heart in a tight, desperate fist, she focused back on the monitor and clicked on the link for a Facebook page. Here, she realized, she’d found Darcy. The Darcy she knew … the Darcy she remembered. A Darcy others had known … and missed.

I’m thinking about you today, sis. Part of me still thinks you’re out there and you’ll come back to us
. Darcy’s brother … Shay remembered him. Darcy had talked about him endlessly.

Don’t forget, there’s a reward posted
. A cousin, according to the profile.

Effing spammers—don’t see why they have to hit the page of a dead woman
. A friend.

“A dead woman,” Shay whispered. “Oh, my God.”

Her belly clenched.

That wasn’t right, damn it. That wasn’t fucking
right
.

But there was something in the pit of her gut that said it
was
right. So many things hadn’t made sense. Until now.
This
made sense. It wasn’t right, and it hurt. It was like acid and glass and nails in her gut … but it made sense.

“I didn’t want you to be right,” she whispered, looking up to find Elliot standing with his back to her, staring out the window.

Slowly, he turned around and met her gaze.

She closed her eyes and pushed the laptop away, drawing her knees up and resting her forehead on them. “I really didn’t want you to be right.”

Hearing a sound, she turned her head and watched as he came over and crouched by the bed, studying the laptop. “I guess that’s Darcy,” he murmured.

“Yes. And some of her friends, family.” She closed her eyes. “I saw one of her brother’s posts. I know him—never met him, but she sent me pictures. It’s really her. There are articles from newspapers and everything. She really is missing.”

He wrapped one hand around her ankle, his thumb stroking lightly. “I’m sorry, Shay.”

She didn’t say anything. What was there to say?

After a few moments, he closed the laptop and moved it over to the bedside table. Then he settled on the bed and pulled her against him. She snuggled against his chest and wished she could just stay there. Forever sounded like a good time frame, really.

“What now?” she whispered.

“I don’t know.” He stroked his hand down her thigh and pressed his lips to her temple. “But we need to start looking at things deeper. You realize that, right?”

Shay squeezed her eyes closed. “I don’t even know where to start. I don’t know what to look at, what to think … I just …” She trailed off and wished, yet again, she could just stay where she was. Forever. Not thinking about anything but her and Elliot.

“I’ve got an idea where to start, Shay, but you might not like it.”

Opening her eyes, she tipped her head back and met his gaze. “With the exception of
you
, I haven’t liked anything that’s happened in my life over the past few weeks. Hell, the past few
months
. But I’ll deal. What’s the idea?”

“You need to think about who all knows who you are.” He reached up, cupping her cheek in his hand.

“Who I am now?” She stared at him, her heart racing, fear turning her hands cold, her heart to ice. “Or who I
was
?”

“What do you mean you’re not coming home yet?” Lorna asked.

“There’s just some other things we need to check out,” Elliot said, sighing. He turned away from the computer, staring at Shay. She stood at the window, her gaze locked on something he couldn’t see.

She had come out here to speak with a woman who had been missing for two years.

Fuck, everything was
insane
.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. He smiled at her, but the smile she gave him in return was so broken, so sad and strained. She turned away and went back to staring out into the night.

“Can you do me a favor, Lorna?” he asked quietly, turning back to the computer.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Remember … you already agreed,” he said. “Go stay with Mike for a few days.”

“What?”

Covering his eyes with one hand, he braced himself for the argument he knew was coming. “Please just do it. I’ve got my hands full worrying about the mess going on now. I’ll feel better if I’m not worrying about other shit,” he said flatly.

“Why should I go stay with him?”

“Because you’re sleeping with him anyway and he’s been trying to talk you into moving in with him and you’re acting like nobody knows and everybody does, and for God’s sake, because I asked you to … 
please
,” he snapped. He glared at the computer, not seeing anything, too aware of the burning in his gut, too aware of the fear that had been in Shay’s eyes ever since she’d seen that fucking
eerie
Facebook page about her friend.

Missing … for two years
.

Yet she was still getting calls from her.

“What’s going on, Elliot?”

“I can’t explain now. But if you go stay with Mike, I’ll explain as soon as I can. I swear.”

Lorna was quiet for a second. Then she sighed.

“Fine.”

He hung up the phone and then turned back to Shay, wishing he knew what to do, what to say.

It was edging up on two o’clock now, but he doubted she had any more interest in trying to sleep than he did.

Shay stood at the window and he was pretty sure she wished she were anywhere but here. Maybe even with anybody but him—

“I’m glad you’re here,” Shay said softly, her voice cutting through the turmoil of his thoughts.