But somehow that possibility didn’t seem to matter. Whoever the hell she was, she was in trouble, and she needed help, and there was no way Liam could stand in the shadows and watch her fall apart.
So he ran.
“Danielle!” His strides were long, powerful, determined. The tight fit of his dark jeans didn’t slow him. Nor did the damp, clinging sand. “Wait!”
She didn’t. She ran with the grace of a wild gazelle with a predator hot on her heels, down the beach, away from him and her car. The rain whipped harder, merging with the wind to slap her in thick horizontal sheets. And still she ran.
“Danielle, please,” he called to her, gaining ground.
She glanced over her shoulder, saw him, staggered forward.
“This isn’t the answer,” he said, surprised by how hard he was breathing. He ran ten miles every day. A short sprint down the beach should have been little more than a warm-up.
He caught her from behind and realized he had two choices. He could tackle her and ensure she didn’t get away from him or he could snag her by the arm.
The image of Danielle sprawled in the sand, beneath his body, with her chest heaving and her eyes flashing, dark hair spilled around her face as she glared up at him, appealed in ways that almost made him lose his step.
“It’s over,” he said, reaching out to close his hand around her arm.
She had no choice but to stop, but she didn’t turn around, just stood with her back to him, gulping in deep breaths of air and rain.
“Hey, now,” he said, trying not to spook her. “I’m not letting you go, not until you tell me what’s going on.”
Nothing prepared him. Nothing could have. Slowly she turned and looked up at him with those big horror-filled green eyes. “Why?” she asked, and God help him there were tears in her eyes. “Why won’t you just leave me alone?”
There was water all around him, the lake to his right, the rain pouring from the sky, but it was in her eyes that he almost drowned.
“Because I can’t,” he ground out. He tried to grab hold of the rough edges cutting through all those walls he’d tacked up after Kelly’s death, but they were too sharp, and he was too tired. “Because I know,” he added, pulling her closer.
He knew he shouldn’t do it. He knew better than to put his arms around her, anchoring her to his body, but he could no more stop himself than he could stop the intensifying storm.
“I know,” he said again, as time turned backward and accelerated. Everything blurred: the days, the weeks, the months, the investigations, the people whose lives he’d walked through, carrying him back to the cold night he’d run down the quiet suburban street, clogged and congested with fire engines and police cars.
“I know what it’s like to be afraid,” he told her, his voice pitched low. “I know what terror tastes like and smells like.” The primal instinct it unleashed. “I know what it’s like to be willing to trade anything.” It sickened him that this proud, brave woman had been willing to strip for him, to give herself to him, in exchange for her son.
It sickened even more the way his body had reacted, the jolt of lust that had fired through him at the sight of the soft, creamy swell of her breasts.
He stared down at her now, at the way she gazed up at him, the wet, tangled hair in her face and clinging to her slightly parted mouth, the noncomprehension in her eyes.
“I know what it’s like to beg and plead.” He forced himself to go on, ignoring the ridiculous desire to ease the hair from her face, not with his hand as he’d done before but with his mouth. “To be willing to do anything, only to realize in the end there’s no option but to run.”
As she had done.
As he had done.
But there’d been no one there to catch him. No one there to stop him. He’d run and run, during the day, the night, toward the house, then away from the charred ruins, but no matter where he went, no matter the time of day, the truth was always there waiting.
He’d killed his wife.
“Let me help,” he said quietly, lifting a hand to wipe the rain from her face. “I can.”
Her eyes, wide and dark and utterly exhausted, locked on to his. “Don’t.”
The urge to pull her closer blindsided him. “Don’t what?” he asked, skimming his fingers along her cheek. “Don’t help you?” He’d forgotten how soft female flesh could be, forgotten the way a simple touch could make him want so much more. Forgotten what it was like to want something that had nothing to do with bringing down Titan. “Or don’t touch you?”
She twisted from him, but this time she didn’t run. She just sucked in another deep breath and angled her chin in an endearingly defiant gesture.
“I don’t know who you really are or what you want, but you shouldn’t be here right now. You shouldn’t have followed me.”
Like he’d had a choice. After hanging up with Mariah, he’d returned to his rental car and retraced his path to her little house north of the city, where he’d sat waiting in the quiet suburban street. He’d watched the single light glowing from a window in her house, wondering, like some deranged pervert, if it was her bedroom and what she was doing inside. A hundred times he’d told himself to go home, to quit playing Peeping Tom. But instinct had hummed too loudly. There was no way he could have slipped beneath the cool, soft cotton sheets of his hotel bed when he knew this woman was in trouble.
“I wouldn’t have needed to,” he said very slowly, very quietly, “if you hadn’t lied.”
Her eyes flashed. She glanced desperately around the beach, toward the parking area, the road beyond, then back at him. “My God, do you have any idea what you’ve just done?”
He was starting to. “Tell me.”
“If anything happens to him…”
Her words trailed off, but he heard what she didn’t say. “I’m not the enemy,” he told her, willing her to believe him, yet knowing she wouldn’t. “I’m here to help.”
She shoved the hair back from her face. “You can’t, don’t you get it?”
“Yes, I can, honey.” Because the endearment flowed from him with alarming ease, he cleared his throat and let the roughness return. “I know things you don’t know.” About Titan. His handiwork. The trail of devastation in his wake. “I have resources you can’t even begin to fathom.”
“I don’t want your resources,” she shot back. “Why is that so hard for you to understand?”
A fresh surge of fury shot through him. What had Titan done to her? Taken her son, to be sure. But it didn’t take years of investigative training to realize that he himself had done more. Worse. That he’d threatened her, as well, pinned her against a wall without so much as laying a finger on her.
God help him, Liam wanted to lay far more than a finger on her.
“Because you’re scared,” he told her, even though he didn’t understand. Bringing down Titan was the only thing he’d thought about, dreamed about, wanted, for the past three years.
“Because I stood in the shadows watching you for over an hour.” Because he’d seen her shaking, shivering. Because he’d stood there with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, fighting the urge to go to her, pull her into his arms and promise her he would find her son.
“Because I’m your best chance,” he added, even though the reality, the hypocrisy, of that statement terrified him.