It was just an apartment. They were just things. She was okay, her parents were okay, and Chase was okay. Things could be replaced. But they were her things. Five years of memories and what little comfort she had been able to draw from them during the two years she had forced herself to withdraw from her earlier life.
"Carl, I need to get her out of here," Chase said to the detective standing at his side. "She's had it."
Carl nodded. "We're almost done here. I'll let you know when you can get a cleaning crew in, but I want to wait and see what the lab comes up with, make sure they don't need anything else before I release it."
"If you need her, you know where she'll be." Chase nodded.
She would be in his home, in his bed. She would be safe. He was going to make damned certain of it.
As he turned back to her, Khalid rose from in front of her, shoving his hands in his slacks as he watched her straighten shakily from the bench.
She hated this. Hated feeling helpless and endangered. She had never felt endangered in her entire life. Not like this. And the feeling was threatening the last shreds of her control.
"Let's get you home," he said, his voice tight. "Cameron, Jaci, and Khalid will be with you for a while. I have a few things I have to take care of."
Kia paused, knowing instinctively what those few things were, and she wasn't having it.
"Chase." She finally shook her head again as she fought to make sense of everything. "Drew wasn't involved with this. If you go after him yourself, I'll walk out of that apartment of yours so fast it will make your head spin. Do you understand me?"
His eyes narrowed on her. "I'll take care of this, Kia."
"Do you understand me?" She stared back at him. "If you want me to trust you, then you have to trust me as well. You'll get proof. You won't handle this like some Western gunslinger intent on revenge. Are we clear?"
She watched the rage move, lightning-fast, through his gaze before resignation darkened the icy-green color of his eyes.
"I'm getting damned tired of you defending him," he burst out.
"And I'm getting damned tired of worrying about having his broken neck on your conscience," she snapped right back. "And don't you dare try to pretend it wouldn't affect you, Chase. Especially if you found out he was innocent."
"Do I look stupid?" The edge of silky danger in his voice had her shaking her head slowly.
"No, but you do look very very angry, Chase. And if you confront Drew now, you won't be confronting him over this." She waved her hand to the apartment across from her. "You would be confronting him over the past. And that I simply won't have."
He watched them leave the building. The way Falladay enclosed Kia among him, Khalid, and Khalid's chauffeur bodyguard.
Ian Sinclair and Cameron were behind them. All moved into the limo except Sinclair. He got into Chase's car and the two vehicles moved out together.
She was alive. He had known she was alive for the past week, and he still wasn't certain how he felt about it. Was he glad or sad? Happy or angry that she had survived?
There were so many emotions he couldn't make sense of and so much pain filling his soul.
He was out of control, and he knew it. He could feel it rising and ebbing, keeping him off balance as the rage obliterated all the gentleness he had once thought he possessed.
There was so much pain inside him. It was bleak and ugly, a black stain across his soul that he couldn't wipe clean.
He had lost everything. Lost everything that ever meant anything to him, and now he was losing his wife as well. His cherished wife. How he loved her. Cherished her. And along with everything else that Falladay had taken away from him, he was losing that as well.
He had tried to hold on. Hold on to his beliefs and the control he had once possessed. Now he felt uncertain, out of control, and enraged. Chase had destroyed everything, and now he was benefiting from that destruction.
He couldn't allow that.
It was his fault Kia was still with that bastard. If he hadn't pulled back at the last second when he slammed the butt of his gun to her head, she would have been dead. If he had just fired the gun as he had originally intended, she would have certainly been dead.
But at the last moment, grief had overwhelmed him. Such sorrowful, pain-filled grief, that he had pulled back.
The next time, he would make certain he didn't pull back. Chase had to realize what it was like to lose everything, to be destroyed as only a man can be destroyed. It was just so sad Kia had to pay the price for the lesson Falladay had coming
. Sweet Kia. She should have remained faithful. If only she had just remained faithful, been the wife she should have been, and stayed away from Falladay. Everything would have been okay then. She wouldn't have to be hurt or frightened.
How sad.
He breathed out a small, weary sigh and maneuvered his car onto the street, heading away from the direction the others had taken.
He had been watching for her, waiting for her to return home. He had wanted her to see. Wanted her to save herself by distancing herself from Falladay. But she hadn't. She was with him, and she would remain with him.
He had failed the first time, but he knew he wouldn't fail the next time. It was planned. Everything would go smoothly and he would stare her in the eye and pull the trigger. He would watch the life leave her eyes, and in that death Falladay would know how it felt to lose everything.
To hurt, every day. To ache. To dream of days when all had been lush and filled with life and happiness. He would know the agony of reality, the loss and the certainty that he had marked her for death.
Vengeance, It was going to be his. And, he promised himself, it would be sweet.
Chapter 21
"You can't put a bubble around me." Kia stared at her fingers, interlaced in her lap. They twisted together, a nervous reaction, Chase realized.
Kia rarely showed her nerves. Even two years ago, facing him, knowing what he wanted from her, she hadn't shown any fear.
Steel spine. Tears fell silently when they did fall. She didn't sob, she didn't latch on to him and beg for strength, even silently. She wiped her eyes with that damned handkerchief Khalid had given her and tried to still the tears and the pain.
"I can do more than put a bubble around you," he told her. "I know what we're looking at now, and I do know how to protect you, Kia."
She lifted her head, her tongue swiping over her pale, dry lips.
"What are we looking at?"
"Someone out of control," he told her. "Someone you can anticipate." He drew her into his arms, feeling the fine tremor that raced through her body.
"Someone who will try again and again until he succeeds," she said.
"And when they do try, there will be protection," Khalid stated, his voice harsh, hard. "And he will be caught."
Kia shook her head, tense as Chase held her to him.
"Trust me, Kia," he whispered against her hair, his hand stroking her arm, trying to warm her. "Do you trust me to protect you?"
Kia kept her head lowered. She was aware of too many eyes on her, too many watching her. Khalid and Cameron. And Chase.
"Who will protect you?"
She fought to keep her hands in her lap, to keep from touching him, just to make certain he wasn't hurt, even though she knew he wasn't hurt. She felt his lips against the top of her head, his hand warming her arm under the sweater she wore. And she was terrified. For Chase.
"Protect me?" Chase lifted her face. Something in her voice, in the set of her body, filled him with a heat that threatened to burn him alive.
When his eyes met hers he felt that heat consume him. She wasn't worried about herself; the fear wasn't for herself. It was for him.
He felt his expression tighten. He couldn't help it. Emotion tore through him like an explosion, tightening his arms around her and clenching his teeth with brutal force.
Fuck. Damn her. She was ripping into his soul and there wasn't a damned thing he could do to stop her. No one had ever cared about his protection.
With the exception of Cameron, there had never been anyone who gave his life a thought above their own. Until Kia. It was her life in danger. She had been attacked, hurt, everything she owned brutalized, but she was worried about his protection?
"You watch my back, and I'll watch yours." He lowered his head and whispered the words to her as Khalid and Cameron found something fascinating to watch outside the car windows.
He felt her start, her eyes dilating in surprise. The slightest lessening of tension, the hint of her heart rate easing.
"You would let me?" Her whisper low enough that he knew only he heard.
He touched her cheek, experiencing the same rush he always felt when he touched her skin.
"Any day of the week, any hour of the day. Keep your eyes on me, Kia. Mine will always be on you."
Kia let her head rest against his chest then, inhaling with a slow, measured breath. Nothing could happen to him, not because of her, especially because of her. She couldn't live with herself if it did.
The drive back to Chase's apartment was made quickly and Kia had nearly managed to regain her balance when they pulled into the underground parking lot and she realized her parents were there.
"Who called Dad?" She wanted to scream in frustration then.
She loved her father and her mother. They were the bedrock of her life, but she knew exactly what was coming.
"Kia, I couldn't not let your father know," Chase chastised her gently. "He'd kill me."
"He'd only hurt you a little," she snorted as the chauffeur opened the door. "I would have made it worth your while."
She was aware of the surprised looks as the men moved from the car and Chase helped her out gently.
"He would have killed me," he reiterated. "And then you'd really have to make do with just the electric blanket."
"There was more than that." The brief byplay was easing her nerves, giving her more to concentrate on than her mother's tearful face.
"Remind me to spank you again for that one," he murmured in her ear as they neared her father's limo.
And of course he made certain he got in the last word.
"Kia, sweetheart." Her father pulled her into a bear hug, his big arms wrapping around her like they used to when she was a child. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
"Oh God, Kia, I can't believe this is happening." Her mother was next. Her small body trembled as she pulled her daughter into her embrace. "Thank God, Chase was there."
"I'm fine, Mom." She pulled back, shaking her head. She didn't want to talk about it. She couldn't bear to.
"We brought the clothes you had at the house." Her mother gripped her hand. "Your closet was full there, remember? I brought your favorites for now."
Her father and the chauffeur were pulling several suitcases and dress bags from the trunk of the limo.
God, all her clothes. She shook her head and lifted her hand. "I need a drink."
"Let's get her upstairs." Chase's arm came around her again as he led them to the elevator that she knew was rarely used.
Not that the drink helped. Kia drank the wine Chase poured for her, then as the men gathered in the living room to discuss her, she escaped to the bedroom, Chase's bedroom, where Chase had directed the chauffeur with her luggage.
"Kia, come home."
Her mother didn't waste time. The moment Kia stepped into the bedroom to unpack her bags, her mother was there, worried, her face still damp with tears.
Kia shook her head before setting her wineglass on the dresser and moving to the bags.
"I can't do that, Mom." She wasn't going to do it. Whoever had destroyed her home had done her a favor in one way. It had forced her to stay exactly where she had wanted to be in the first place. With Chase.
