Mariah laughed. “He’s doing great,” she said. “Busy, as always. He’s out for a run now, trying to clear his head.”
Liam breathed easier, welcoming the benign, normal conversation. “Something up?”
“Just his imagination,” Mariah said wryly. “I think the prospect of becoming a father is starting to spook him. He came home today convinced he’d heard me crying out in pain.”
“You? Cry out?” Not in this lifetime. Not Mariah.
She snorted her agreement. “Exactly.” Then she sobered. “It really rattled him, though. He’s been acting weird all evening. Worried. He even called his brothers and sisters to make sure they were okay, convinced that if it wasn’t me, it must have been one of them.”
“Sounds like that man needs a vacation,” Liam said, then wished he hadn’t. The last time he’d planned a vacation—
He broke the thought off. His last planned vacation no longer mattered. He’d never taken it, never wanted another since, never taken time off from the Bureau.
Until now.
Frowning, he let his thoughts return to the woman with the wild hair and slumberous green eyes, the one who’d angled her chin and insisted everything was fine, even after pulling a gun.
She was so lying.
The wind whipped off the lake and sent sand dancing in a frenzy of motion. High, thin clouds played hide-and-seek with the stars and the nearly full moon. A strawberry moon, she knew. In just a few days the June full moon would ride high in the sky, its rosy hue pulling tides and disturbing sleep, filling emergency rooms and keeping the cops on their toes.
Danielle shivered. She’d been born under a full moon, the cold moon of December. The winter equinox. Full-moon babies are special, she remembered someone telling her once, a voice from a distant past, a life she remembered only in shadowy fragments and horrifying splinters. The life before she and her sister had crouched in a closet, hidden among their mother’s clothes, breathing in her scent of fresh gardenia, while in another room, Deanna Payne screamed and begged, cried, then went horribly silent.
Danielle swallowed hard, forced back the memory. She didn’t want to think of her mother’s murder tonight, didn’t want to think of any death. Not while Alex’s life hung in the balance.
The chill needled deeper, despite the warm, muggy air blowing off Lake Michigan. She wrapped her arms around her middle and glanced at her car, parked in a deserted lot a hundred yards away. Uncertainty stabbed her throat. She’d feel better there, secure in the small front seat, with locked doors on either side of her, much as she’d felt that night in her mother’s closet.
But the caller had been clear.
“Midnight,” the mechanical voice had intoned shortly after sundown. “Come alone, walk to the water’s edge and wait.”
So she stood, and she waited. Beyond, waves swished and crashed against the rocky shore, sending an occasional spray of cool water against the back of her arms and legs. All the while she scanned the beach, watching, waiting, fighting memories that grew stronger with every gust of the wind. A storm was pushing close.
Just like the memory.
“Sailboats!” The moment Danielle released a four-year-old Alex from his child seat, he bolted from the car and ran across the dirty sand. His little legs moved with an uncanny grace, much like his father, carrying him closer to the edge of the lake—and the small drop-off.
“Alex!” Danielle raced after him, her heart pounding so hard it hurt. He was so like his father, in so many ways. Bold, daring, fun-loving. Except Alex was alive, whereas Ty was dead. “Alex, stop!”
Her son kept running, right up until the last minute, when laughing, he skidded to a halt and spun toward her. “Can I have a sailboat, too?”
Breathless, she caught up with him and pulled him to her, hugged his little body to her legs and fought a stinging wave of emotion. “Someday,” she promised thickly, because she knew if it was something Alex wanted, he, like his father, would find a way to make it happen. Even if it proved to be the death of him. “When you’re older.”
He pulled back and gazed up at her through his father’s crystal-blue eyes, uncannily wise for a boy so young. “Mommy, why are you crying?”
The question, pure and innocent and impossible to answer, pierced her heart. “It’s just the sand,” she said, blinking against the moisture, the truth. “I got some in my eyes.”
Alex nodded sagely. “Here,” he said, shoving his little hand into the pockets of his baggy denim shorts and pulling out the pair of Spider-Man sunglasses she’d bought him the week before. “Maybe these will help.”
They had. Much to a laughing Alex’s delight, she’d slipped his small sunglasses onto her face, and the two had settled down for a picnic.
Swallowing hard, Danielle refused to indulge the surge of emotion. Now was not the time for memories. Now was not the time to fall apart. She had to be strong now, for Alex, even if that meant going against every instinct she had and standing alone on the beach in the middle of the night. The clouds had grown thicker, blotting out much of the moon’s gauzy light. If she turned, she knew she would no longer see it playing on the surface of the lake.
But she didn’t turn, wasn’t about to look away, not for one fraction of one second. Her brother thrived on wide-open spaces, couldn’t stand being confined. But Dani—
She heard it then, just a soft sound, a slight disturbance to the cadence of the warm breeze. Footsteps.
Finally.
Her heart slammed hard against her ribs. Once, she’d hidden from her nightmares. Once, she’d run from her fears. But now she didn’t hesitate. She slid a hand to the gun at the small of her back and pivoted to her left.
Nothing. Just shadows shimmying across the sand and rock that locals called a beach.
“Who’s there?” She stripped every ounce of emotion, every ounce of fear, from her voice, but not her body. Jeremy had taught her how to use both.
The wind whipped up, sending sand and whispery raindrops against her face. She blinked against the sting but didn’t look away. “I did what you asked, damn it.” She squinted, seeing nothing but sensing the presence. Shaking, she stepped toward it. “What do you want with me?”
She realized her mistake too late.
“Well, well, well,” came a low voice from behind her.
She spun, but he was too close, too fast. He caught her before she could lift the gun, knocked it from her hands. She lunged after it, but his foot came down on the Derringer before she could make contact. Panic backed up in her throat. She tried to dance out of his way, but before she could move, before her heart could so much as beat, he snagged her wrist and dragged her toward him.
For a cruel moment time stood still. The gently falling rain, the gusty wind, the fury of the waves against the shore all faded into a void of nothingness. She struggled to breathe, to think, to formulate a plan, but intuitively she knew this was not a man she could outrun.
“Where is he?” she bit out with a bravado she didn’t come close to feeling. Refusing to cower, she forced herself to look up and felt the breath leave her lungs on a painful rush.
A grim smile curved FBI Special Agent Liam Brooks’s mouth. “Is this how you greet everyone, Danielle, or is it just me?”
Chapter 3
No. Denial screamed through her. Her throat knotted. Her stomach clenched. Danielle stared up at him, his big body