Chapter Nine
She was terrified.
Fear rolled off Shelly in waves. Her heart was beating far too fast, her body was trembling and…
“Breathe, baby,” John whispered.
Her breath left her in a hard rush.
His hand rose, and she took a step back.
Her retreat pierced John right in the heart.
“I was just giving your phone back to you.” His voice was quiet, without emotion.
Mostly because he had put a stranglehold on his emotions.
Rage and fear pounded through him—rage at the man named Devin who’d just wrecked the bond John had tried so hard to form with Shelly.
And fear—gnawing, twisting fear because John was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to convince Shelly to trust him again.
“Go ahead,” he urged when she made no move to take the phone. “Call the sheriff. Get him out here.”
Her gaze dropped to the phone. No spots of color stained her cheeks. In fact, she was far too pale. Her trembling fingers reached for the phone.
He expected her to immediately call the sheriff. Instead, her hand fisted around the phone and her eyes—fearful but also angry, so angry—rose to his. “Have you been playing me all along?” He’d never heard that tone in her voice before. The cut of rage. The rasp of betrayal.
John shook his head. “I wouldn’t—”
“I must have seemed so stupid to you.” She took another step back. “Buying that whole story about you not having a memory. About you waking up in some kind of lab.”
He wanted to take her into his arms. To hold her tight. “It’s not a story. It’s the truth.”
“Is it?” She shook her head. “I’ve known Devin for over five years.
He was my brother’s best friend even before they became business partners.
Hell, that’s why they became partners. Charles wanted someone he could trust to help him run the company after my dad died.
And Devin just told me that you were a threat. ”
“I’m not.”
She retreated another step. His gaze slid over her shoulder and toward the front door of the cabin.
Was she planning to run out? He couldn’t just let her run away.
It wasn’t safe out there. The shooter—the attacker who’d been stalking her—he could be lying in wait. “Call the sheriff,” John urged her.
“Do you remember your past? And tell me the truth!”
His lips pressed together. His past…
Waking up strapped to an exam table. Men and women in white lab coats, whispering. Whispers that he’d heard so clearly.
“He’s back!”
“Another successful experiment.”
“Will he be as strong as the others?”
“John!” Shelly cried out. He blinked. For a moment, he’d slipped away in his mind. “Talk to me! Tell me the truth.”
“I only remember pieces of my past. Flashes.” He kept his hands loose at his sides, kept his body relaxed. He didn’t want her to see him as a threat. “Flashes of you.”
Her chin lifted. “Because you were hired to watch me.”
“Yes, I think so.” His temples began to pound. She was too pale. He wanted to slip into her mind, to see what she was thinking, to see if any part of her still trusted him.
“Did you kill my brother?” The question seemed torn from her.
And, fuck, he couldn’t lie to her. “I don’t know.”
Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them away.
Staring straight at him, she slid her fingers over the screen of the phone.
Then she put the phone to her ear. “Blane,” Shelly whispered a moment later.
“I’m coming to town. I know you still have a deputy watching the house. Let him know that I’m leaving.”
“Is everything all right?” Alarm sharpened the sheriff’s words.
Shelly was still staring straight at John. “I don’t think so.”
John stepped toward her. He had to do it. “Come and get her,” he barked to the sheriff, knowing he was close enough that Blane would be able to hear his words. “Don’t let her drive alone. Come and get her.”
Her lower lip trembled. “I’m coming to town, Blane. I’ll see you soon.” She ended the call and held her phone tightly in one hand. Shelly still didn’t look away from John. “I want to trust you. I look at you, and I swear, I feel this…this connection. Like there is something pulling me toward you.”
“Shelly, you can trust me.”
Her hair slid over her shoulders as she shook her head. “You just told me that you don’t even know if you killed my brother. How do you know I can trust you?”
“Because you are my life.” Truth. Stark.
“When I woke in that lab, when those bastards in the lab coats killed me again and again, you got me through those days. They told me that my past was gone. Dead and buried, the way I should have been. But it wasn’t.
You remained. You slipped into my head. Appeared in my dreams. You gave me hope.
You made me believe that I was more than just some freak who’d been locked away from the world.
You were out there, and I just had to survive long enough to find you. ”
The tears she’d tried to blink away before were back.
One slid down her cheek. He had to touch her.
Had to do it. John closed the distance between them, and Shelly stiffened.
She didn’t back away, though, and when his hand lifted to her cheek, when his index finger caught her tear, she didn’t flinch away from him.
Her eyes slipped closed. He bent and pressed a kiss to her cheek.
“I found you,” John rasped. He’d found her, and he’d give his life—over and over again—to keep her safe.
“John…”
“I don’t know what kind of man I was before I woke up in that lab.
” His voice was too rough. “I just know who I am now. And right now, I fucking live for you. I would do anything for you. You don’t have to worry about me hurting you because, baby, I never would.
” But everything had to be her choice. Everything.
So he stepped back.
She still gripped her phone. Her eyes were wide and dark. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured. “Have I told you that?”
She looked over her shoulder at the door.
“I can walk you out, baby,” he told her.
Don’t run, let me walk with you. “I can make sure there is no threat out there. I’d hear a threat coming, you know that.
I didn’t feed you a bullshit story. Everything about Lazarus, everything about me and the powers I have—all of that is true. Let me protect you.”
“Even though I’m running from you?”
Dammit. “Yes.”
She bit her lower lip. “I don’t know what to do.”
Trust me. He didn’t say those words. Instead…
“Let’s go to town. Both of us. Let’s go see the sheriff.
Let’s wait for this Devin fellow to arrive.
We can figure out everything together. Or…
” He rolled back his shoulders. “You can go alone.” He didn’t like that idea.
Not one bit. What if the shooter tried to get her while Shelly was alone in the car?
“You can go to the sheriff’s station, but at least get the deputy to drive you.
” The guy who was out there, keeping an eye on the cabin. “I’ll stay here. I can—”
Her left hand caught his. Such a soft, silken touch. “I let you make love to me because I trusted you.”
Make love. Is that how she’d seen it?
“You saved those people in town. The mom and her son. You saved me. And when I look at you, I see a good man.”
Only Devin had told her that he was a monster.
“We’ll go to town together.” She nodded briskly, as if she’d just made the decision.
A done deal. “We’ll talk to Devin together.
We’ll figure this out. If my brother hired you, if he asked you to look out for me, then that means Charles trusted you.
He wouldn’t have hired someone that he thought was a monster.
Charles had good instincts about people.
” She let out a slow breath. “So let’s get out of here. Let’s go to town. Together.”
He nodded. Damn, but she was something. Beautiful, sexy, and she was trusting him. Did she realize what a gift that was? How incredibly grateful he was to her?
“I’ll get some shoes and my bag,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” Shelly brushed past him and headed up the stairs.
He stood there a moment, feeling the tension ease from his body. She was giving him a chance to prove himself. And he would do it.
I wish I could fucking remember.
John stalked toward the front door. Before they left, he wanted to make sure the perimeter was secure.
He flipped the locks and a few moments later, he was striding outside.
The mountain seemed so still and quiet. The sun had vanished, and darkness swept across the mountain.
The snow crunched beneath his feet as he walked.
He turned in a slow circle, letting his gaze sweep around the area.
He didn’t see anything suspicious. Didn’t hear anything that set off his alarm bells.
He strode around the cabin, making his way toward the garage.
He wanted to take a look at the SUV before Shelly got into the vehicle, just to be on the safe side.
He didn’t smell anything suspicious in the air, but he wasn’t going to take a chance with her.
He unlocked the side door to the garage, slipped inside…
And a faint click reached his ears.
Just a click. Such a soft sound.
But it was a sound that didn’t belong.
John whirled around, his gaze sweeping over the garage.
And then the place exploded.
***
Shelly was on the stairs when she heard the explosion.
It boomed like thunder, and she could have sworn that she felt the whole cabin shake.
“John? John!” Shelly raced down the stairs and scrambled outside.
She almost fell on the icy ground, but then she was shuddering to a stunned stop as she stared at the blazing remains of her garage.
About twenty feet away from the cabin, the old garage was a mass of flames.
It had once been a workshop for her father, a place for him to tinker for hours. And now…
“John?” Shelly whispered.