Chapter 8

January 15th

2:26 A.M.

Déjà vu.

It was happening all over again.

What had she been thinking staying here alone?

Scarlett didn"t hesitate this time like she had the night she'd been kidnapped. Even as she wished she'd listened to her team when they suggested she come and stay with one of them, or listened to her gut when she faced her bedroom and realized she couldn't stay in there and should go to a hotel, she was already sliding out from under the covers.

It was too late for wishes. She hadn"t gone to stay with one of her team when they'd asked—begged really—and she had stubbornly refused to go to a hotel, so now she was stuck here, and if she didn"t want to wind up kidnapped and tortured again then she had to be smart this time.

No panicking.

No pretending she was imagining things.

Because she hadn"t imagined the sound of footsteps passing her room.

Someone was inside her house.

Her need for some time alone, to try to process her ordeal, was once again putting her in danger. That need to shut herself off from others—because although she understood her team had been ordered to stay away, they had still stayed away when she needed them—had left her alone and vulnerable.

Not that she could do anything about it.

Was it Raul Castillo sending more of his men after her? Scarlett had known that might be a possibility, but she hadn"t really thought he would try to make a move this soon. Surely, she was being watched by some government agency, the suits or some of their colleagues. And if Prey thought she was in danger, they'd have someone watching her, too … wouldn't they?

Problem was, her faith in the people she worked for had been shaken.

Weapon in one hand, cell phone in the other, she crept to the door, inching it open just in time to see a black, shadowy figure step inside the master bedroom.

Thankfully, the thought of sleeping in that room again had her nauseous enough she'd almost thrown up and decided not to push herself. The carpet had been thoroughly cleaned and you could never tell that someone had been shot dead in there less than a week ago, but it didn"t matter. Scarlett kept seeing the events of that night play out in her head, burned forever into her mind's eye.

Not wanting to engage, because for all she knew it wasn't Raul's men who had broken in here, but instead someone from the government come to put her in handcuffs, Scarlett slipped out into the hall and crept toward the stairs.

It would only take moments for the intruder to realize she wasn't in the bed, so there was not time to waste a single second.

Regardless of whether or not the intruder was from some agency or part of a criminal organization, it wasn't likely that they had come alone.

There had been six men the night she had been abducted, and law enforcement always worked in groups.

Either way, she was almost certainly outnumbered.

Her palms were so sweaty that she almost lost her grip on both her cell phone and weapon as she reached the stairs.

At least the spare bedroom was closer to the staircase than the master, which was down the end of the hall. And whoever the intruder was, he was probably going to think she was hiding somewhere in the bedroom because Raul's men knew that's what she'd done that night, and law enforcement knew too because it was in her statement.

Maybe if someone had actually listened to her and believed in her, she wouldn't be in danger all over again.

Well, her team believed, and they said no one at Prey thought she had done what she was accused of, but Scarlett was still struggling to believe them. They seemed sincere, but every time she tried to believe she remembered how she felt when she was sitting alone in that interrogation room, hurting, tired, and scared, and not a single person she cared about had been there.

Somehow, she made it down the stairs without tripping over her feet or dropping something and alerting everyone to where she was.

The bottom of the stairs was only steps away from the front door, but she wasn't sure if she should go out that way or around the back. Her backyard had a huge fence and lots of trees and vines, she liked her privacy and she loved to hang out there in the summer and pretend that she was way out in the woods nowhere near another living soul. It would provide better cover for sneaking away, but then again, it would have provided better cover for anyone sneaking in.

Her best bet was to get out of the house, get to someplace she felt safe, and then call someone to see if it was law enforcement who broke in. She wasn't going to make herself look guilty by running, but she also wasn't hanging around and letting those men get her in case they were Raul's.

A shudder ripped through her as she remembered the look on his face as the drug he gave her began to take effect and she started panting and writhing as unbearable pressure built up inside her.

The memory cost her precious seconds and she heard footsteps above. Hurrying toward the front door, deciding to risk it and make a run for it, if someone was waiting out there for her then she would scream her head off and hopefully wake the neighbors.

Just as her hand closed around the handle something moved behind her.

Lifting her weapon as she spun around, she was too slow to dodge the fist that came towards her.

Connecting squarely with the side of her head, pain flared out from her temple, and her head snapped to the side, slamming into the door hard enough she saw stars. A clunk told her that was her weapon hitting the floor and she knew her chances of escaping just plummeted to pretty much zero.

"Got her down here," the man in front of her called out as a large, meaty hands wrapped around her throat, squeezing just enough to make it difficult to breathe.

Footsteps thumped down the stairs and she saw another man appear beside the one holding her.

Tattoos.

At the hollow of their necks.

Raul's men.

Not law enforcement.

Why they would risk coming after her again so quickly she didn"t know, and she didn"t care. All that mattered was getting away. If they got her out of her house, she would never be seen or heard from again, and everyone would just assume that the accusations were true and Raul's men had come to whisk her away to safety.

How anyone could look at the marks on her body and think she had been working with Raul was beyond her. And even if he hated her, Tate surely must have told them in his reports that she had been tied to a rock when he found her, about to be shoved into a pool to drown as motivation to talk and tell Raul what he wanted to know.

"Raul always gets what he wants," the man gripping her throat told her with a smarmy smile that made her skin crawl.

If she got taken back to Raul, she would be tortured again and again until she broke. While the thought of the physical pain she would endure was terrifying, it was that drug she'd been given that scared her the most.

How long could she hold out if it was administered again?

What if they kept giving it to her in a never-ending loop, not giving her time to recover in between?

Scarlett knew the answer to that question.

She would break, give over the formula, anything to get relief from the clawing need that had possessed her body.

When the hand around her neck tightened, cutting off her air supply, every cell in her body screamed at her to fight. It was what the man thought she would do, what he wanted her to do if the amusement in his eyes was anything to go by.

But fighting wouldn't help.

He was bigger and stronger, she wouldn't get away by fighting the hand at her neck.

Fighting against her instincts, Scarlett didn"t claw at the man's hand. Instead, she focused every bit of her fading energy and rammed her knee up and into the man's groin.

Doing the unexpected worked to her advantage, and suddenly the pressure on her neck was gone as the man doubled over. She'd gotten in a direct hit, and when her would-be strangler staggered sideways, he bumped into the other man, buying her enough time to fumble with the lock and throw the front door open.

Terrified there might be more of Raul's men out there somewhere, she fought against her natural instinct, which was to run, and instead crept out into her front yard, scanning the street as she went.

Unfortunately, she didn"t even make it to the sidewalk before a huge body connected with hers and she was slammed onto the hard, cold ground, and pinned in place.

January 15th

2:47 A.M.

As soon ashe saw Scarlett come creeping out of her house Tate knew something was wrong.

The benefit of the doubt he'd been willing to give her was gone.

She was trying to run.

Only guilty people ran.

Shoving open the car door, he ran toward her before she got away. Reaching her before she even got off her front lawn, Tate tackled her, taking them both to the ground.

Predictably she fought him, thrashing about with more strength than her small frame should have had. Still, she was a tiny thing compared to his six-foot-two, two-hundred-pound frame, and he easily pinned her in place.

"I don't think so, little traitor," he murmured as he straddled her thighs, keeping her legs pinned, while with one hand he held both her wrists and pinned them to the ground above her head.

Stretched out as she was beneath him, he absolutely should not be thinking about how good she'd look just like this only in his bed.

Sex with a traitor was not on his radar.

Yet almost without realizing it, his thumb brushed across the inside of Scarlett's wrist as though they were lovers.

Beneath him, she'd gone still, and the sound of her ragged breathing drew his gaze to her heaving chest. She was wearing black leggings that clung to her toned legs and an oversized sweater instead of pajamas, further fueling his belief that she was going to run.

In the thin moonlight her dark eyes looked like two bottomless pits of pain, but he fought against their pull. He wasn't getting sucked in again. Already he had been willing to consider the possibility that she had been framed, that she was innocent. He'd wanted proof one way or the other and now he had it.

The only reason to run was if you were guilty.

Only …

She didn"t have a bag and her feet were bare.

If she was planning on disappearing, she'd be more prepared.

Indecision warred inside him. Was he only painting her with a guilty brush because of the mess he had inadvertently caused with his father? Was he the one with the problem here? Doubting Scarlett because it was actually himself that he didn"t trust?

"T-Tate?" she stammered, blinking up at him with her huge doe eyes.

"Not your lucky day, sweetheart," he muttered. Regardless of her reasons for sneaking out of her home, he wasn't going to just let her go. Someone with a clearer head needed to deal with this because he had no choice but to admit to himself that clear was the last thing he could be around this woman.

"It definitely is," she said, surprising him. "They're inside. Two men. They thought I was in my bedroom, but I couldn't sleep in there after what happened. I was almost out the front door when they got me."

While his traitorous heart wanted to believe her, his logical mind screamed at him that she was leaving. He'd seen no one breaking in and he'd been there the entire time. Plus, nobody had come running out after her, and as far as he knew, nobody but Eagle even knew he was there, although his team might suspect.

"Sure, sweetheart," he mocked.

Instead of the anger he'd been expecting, Scarlett just deflated beneath him, until she looked completely and utterly defeated. "Believe me or don't, but two men were in my house. The second one got me as I was about to sneak out of the door. If I'd been in my bed where they thought I was I"d be dead or kidnapped again."

As though saying the words out loud had made them that much more powerful her entire body began to shake. Not fine little tremors, but full body-shuddering enough that he could both feel and see it.

There was no way she could be faking that kind of reaction.

Yet the little voice in his head screamed at him that he'd also believed the woman he encouraged his father to move on with would be good for him, and he'd been spectacularly wrong on that account.

It was like there was a war raging inside him. One side insisted that Scarlett was innocent, that she didn"t act in the least like someone with anything to hide. The other taunted him that you couldn't trust anybody, especially yourself.

"No one is killing you today, sweetheart," he said, voice cold as ice as he reached for some zip ties he'd had on him just in case he needed them.

Although he had hoped he wouldn't.

Because regardless of everything he knew about Scarlett Madden and what she had done, his body still reacted to hers with an intensity unlike anything else he had ever experienced. Not just his body, but his heart reacted to her, too. The craziest thing since he had never wanted, even from a young age, to fall in love. He'd seen the flip side of love with his parents, how it could morph into co-dependent obsession, and he'd wanted no part of it.

Even less so now after what had happened with his father and his second wife.

But whether he wanted it or not, he couldn't deny that he had been unable to forget about this woman. Her laugh, her smile, her sweet and somewhat shy persona, her openness and joy, the way she seemed to brighten a room just by stepping into it.

A small smile curled her lips up. "Thanks to you. I don't know why you"re here, Tate, but I"m so glad that you are. If you weren"t …"

"Then you would have gotten away," he finished for her, confused by her smile and the gratefulness emanating from her.

At least it had been emanating from her until she saw the zip ties.

Then her brow furrowed into the most adorable frown.

"Tate?"

"No one was in your house, Scarlett," he said firmly, but when he went to bind her wrists he found he couldn't do it.

Because you don't need to.

You can trust her.

"There was," she insisted as his hand fell away and he shoved the ties back in his pocket. "He grabbed me and put his hand around my neck. He was going to squeeze until I passed out and take me, but I kneed him in the groin. He wasn't expecting that." Despite the fear lingering in her eyes, there was a note of triumph in her voice, and in spite of himself he felt a flush of pleasure that she'd defended herself.

Keeping hold of her, Tate pulled her up to her feet with him as he stood. He'd put her in his car, then he'd check out her house, confirm that nobody else had been in it, before driving her back to Prey. They could hold her there until someone figured out what to do with her, because if he stuck around he was going to lose his mind.

"Whether you believe me or not, Tate, someone broke into my home. Raul isn't going to just let me go. He wants the formula to the Reactivator and he's not going to stop until he gets it. Just because no one wants to believe me doesn't make it any less the truth," Scarlett said quietly as he led her to the car.

There was sincerity in her voice, but acceptance as well.

Tate found he didn"t like that.

Didn"t like knowing that Scarlett had somehow accepted that she was on her own in this. The visit from her friends didn"t seem to have convinced her that Prey was on her side, and he had to assume it was because she was used to nobody being on her side.

No matter how many times he ran over the evidence against her in his mind, his gut continued to insist that this woman who offered no resistance as he opened the passenger door of his car and helped her inside was in fact innocent.

Again, the idea that she was being coerced flashed in his mind. It was obvious she cared about her team. If they were threatened, would she agree to give Raul the formula for the drug?

"Look, Scarlett," he started, prepared to have a conversation with her if it got her to open up. Maybe if she confessed now and agreed to help them trap Raul Castillo, she could negotiate her sentence down. "If you just?—"

The sound of gunfire abruptly cut him off and he slammed Scarlett's door closed, then dove across the hood of his truck and into the driver's seat.

Someone was shooting at them.

Not any of the many agencies who could have been watching Scarlett's house because they would talk first and shoot second.

Had to be Raul's men.

As he tore off down the street, tires screeching, he had no choice but to believe Scarlett's story that there had been intruders in her house. There had been no time for her to alert anyone that she was being taken in, and they were shooting at her as well.

He was beginning to hate himself for the lingering doubt. Just because he'd messed up with his dad didn"t mean that he was messing up now. He knew how to read people even if he'd been wrong a grand total of one time. It was just the consequences of that one time were so severe that it was hard to let it go.

But he had to.

Because if he didn"t then it was going to be the woman huddled in the passenger seat of his car who paid the price.

Taking off down the street, Tate didn"t even make it to the next corner before he saw the black vehicle on his tail.

"Do you have your phone?" he asked as he took a corner so fast he almost lost control.

"It's in my?—"

Scarlett's words were cut off when a bullet hit his tires, and the car went careening sideways, throwing both of them about.

As they hurtled across the road, Tate tried desperately to regain some control.

But he couldn't.

Briefly, he wished he'd put their seatbelts on.

Then they slammed into a pole, and the world was swallowed up into a pain-filled black hole.