Midnight Obsession (Soulmated #5)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

With an angry curse, Harold Goddard slammed his fist against his desk, making the bottles on the nearby liquor cart rattle. He winced as the shock of the powerful blow reverberated up his arm.

The clacking bottles drew his attention. Standing, he crossed to the cart, snatched up a highball glass, and poured himself two fingers of Jack Daniels. After downing the first swallow in a gulp, he warned himself to slow down. He had to keep a clear head if he was going to get out of this mess.

He ran a shaky hand through his thinning, salt-and-pepper hair.

Okay, he silently admitted, he had killed the wrong man.

But his plan should have been foolproof.

No more trying to capture a pair of the devil’s spawn from that nutball Louisiana fertility clinic.

Down in Mardi Gras country when they were under threat, some sixth sense had them teaming up with other couples of their kind.

Since that group dynamic made them even more dangerous, he’d decided to do his hunting in a safer environment where any individual would naturally be more isolated.

And no more thoughts of experimenting to find out what a mated pair could do together.

That was simply too risky, because when they hooked up, they were more than the sum of their parts.

Capturing only one was safer. He’d settle for an intense interrogation before getting rid of the evidence. That should be enough.

He’d found the perfect candidate. A loner, like a lot of the people born from those fertility clinic experiments.

A guy whose body would be easy to dispose of because his job took him away from home base on a regular basis.

Someone who would jump at the chance to earn a tempting fee for a few days’ easy work. The plan was genius.

Except that it turned out it wasn’t. A detective from some hotshot private agency called Decorah Security was poking into the guy’s death.

And it looked like Harold was going to have to eliminate him, too.

Then what? Would he have to go up against another agent from the company?

Then another? Or would he have to blow up the whole place?

He brought the glass of whiskey to his mouth again.

First things first. Deal with the detective and adjust as needed.

* * *

Olivia Langston wanted to scream, but somehow her vocal cords wouldn’t work. She knew she was having a nightmare—and one like no other she had ever experienced.

She couldn’t utter a sound because the terrible dream was happening to someone else. She wasn’t in her own body, in her own mind. She was another person. A man she didn’t know. A man she had never met. Yet somehow she had been pulled into his reality.

His nightmare? Or was it actually real life? His life.

Rough hands seized him, pulled him to his feet, and dragged him across a cold floor. He tried to struggle, but his muscles wouldn’t work. Maybe he’d been drugged.

A gruff voice was speaking, giving orders to his captors, and she strained to catch the words.

“Make sure he’s alive when he goes into the water. If the body ever turns up, I want it clear that he drowned.”

Desperately, Olivia tried to wrench herself away even as she knew they weren’t talking about her.

While she fought for understanding, she struggled to regain her sense of self.

But breaking free was impossible. Getting back into the mind of Olivia Langston was as far beyond her as it would be to fly to the moon.

She was stuck in the consciousness of some unknown man—just as he was plunged into what must be the most horrible episode of his life.

They picked him up, tossed him onto a hard surface, his head colliding with cold metal.

Was he in the back of a pickup truck? He caught a glimpse of the night sky filled with stars before someone tossed a blanket over him.

Then he felt motion as the vehicle started up and lurched forward.

After the endless ride, he was carried somewhere else—across wooden boards to a surface that rocked under him as the sound of waves reached his ears. They were on the water, in a boat, the rocking of the craft a familiar sensation.

His boat? Yes, he thought so. Memories came back to him.

The joy of plowing through a sea smooth as glass as the red ball of the setting sun sank from view.

The pleasure of landing an enormous fish that had given him a valiant fight.

And then the terror of holding a course while fifteen-foot-high waves crashed over the deck.

The calm after the storm, and the satisfaction of knowing he had brought his vessel through the tempest. All that and more flashed through his mind as the familiar rocking lulled him.

But safety was only an illusion. All too soon, the engine slowed. Then the captors’ hands were on him again, pulling him from the cocoon of the blankets they had wrapped around him before they’d carried him from the truck across a dock and onto the boat.

Confusion threatened to swamp him. This couldn’t be happening. But the scene was all too real.

They hoisted him by the arms and legs, swinging him in a great arc before they let go.

He flew through the air, then plummeted into the water with a tremendous splash.

As he sank into the cold darkness, he desperately tried to fight to the surface, but his muscles still didn’t work.

He tried to hold his breath, but it finally became impossible.

When he gasped for air, water flooded his lungs.

His last sensations were terror, followed by resignation that there was no way out of this trap.

Olivia sat bolt upright in bed. Shuddering, she dragged blessed air into her lungs. Her heart was pounding so hard that she thought it would be visible through the wall of her chest.

Lord, where had that terrible dream come from? Nothing like that had ever happened to her before.

She focused on her breathing, willing herself back to calm. She was herself again. She was safe. It wasn’t her.

It was that poor man. Thugs had murdered him, and she didn’t even know why. It had been so real that she could believe it was true. For a fleeting moment, she thought she should call the police.

She shoved that thought out of her mind as quickly as it had arrived. If she made the call, she’d sound crazy. That last word hung in her mind.

Looking around, she confirmed that she was safe in her own room. She hadn’t been in a boat. She hadn’t been thrown overboard to die.

Again she told herself—it wasn’t you. It was a man. And the whole thing had been as strange as it was terrifying. When had she ever experienced a dream from the point of view of another person—much less a man?

She shuddered. She had come in at the end of the guy’s life. It seemed like he’d been held captive and maybe tortured before they’d dragged him to a boat and tossed him overboard like a sack of garbage.

Trying to banish the disturbing images, she pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, but it did no good. The experience was burned into her brain. Where had it come from? Certainly not her own memory. She’d had some horrendous experiences in her life, but nothing like this.

She glanced at the clock. It was only four-thirty in the morning, but she knew she wasn’t going back to sleep.

Swinging her legs out of bed, she stood unsteadily for several moments before scuffing on her slippers. She was wearing a T-shirt and yoga pants, her favorite sleeping outfit. If someone happened to ring the doorbell before she was ready to start the day, it looked like she was dressed.

She padded downstairs to the first floor of the big house she’d inherited from her parents. In the kitchen, she contemplated her collection of teas and selected a cranberry-orange blend. Dunking the bag into a mug of hot water, she set it in the microwave.

While she waited with her hips propped against a caramel-colored granite counter, she looked around the large room.

Her mother would have said the kitchen needed updating, but she liked it this way, and Mom and Dad were no longer around to make her life a living hell—in their well-meaning way, of course.

On a trip down to their vacation home near Asheville, a sudden fog had come up, and Dad had crashed his Cessna into a mountain.

It might be hard to understand that someone could feel relieved that her parents had left her an orphan at the tender age of twenty. But that was the main emotion she felt when she thought of them.

Long ago, she’d pushed all the old, whispered conversations between her parents out of her mind. Somehow the dream, or perhaps the aftermath, brought them zinging back.

“What’s wrong with that child?...not normal...going to end up in a mental institution.”

They’d dragged her to a series of psychiatrists and psychologists.

She’d heard words like “on the spectrum, personality disorder, and latent schizophrenia.” Later, out of what she considered morbid curiosity, she’d done some reading on her own and knew that full-blown mental illness might not burst forth until young adulthood.

That worry had lingered in the back of her mind, but she’d always been able to tell herself that she was doing just fine on her own.

Olivia grabbed her mug out of the microwave and threw the tea bag in the trash. Mom would have saved it in a saucer on the counter to make another cup. Olivia had always hated the weak second brewing.

With the hot drink in hand, she wandered out to the sunroom.

In her parents’ day, it had been a screened porch, but she had enclosed it with big windows and added a heat pump to make it an all-year-round room.

The furnishings were classic white wicker chairs with comfortable cushions, a wrought iron table, and a few of the painted furniture pieces she made her living selling.

Pots of orchids and other flowering plants sat on the table and long benches under the windows.

And she’d even brought in a couple of tall Ficus trees to give the room a tropical look.

This was her favorite spot in the house, and she settled into a comfortable chair, putting her mug on the nearby table.

The familiar setting soothed her, and she eased back in her chair, turning her attention to a more welcome topic—ideas for her next projects. She was almost finished painting whimsical cats on a chest of drawers. Next, it might be interesting to put colorful birds on a wooden tea cart.

As the new design took shape in her mind, she could almost convince herself that the dream had been nothing to worry about.

Almost.