40
Kage
I stand in the middle of the wreckage of Natalie’s demolished living room, thinking.
She’s not answering her phone.
Her purse and car are gone.
The dog is gone, too.
My first thought is that she went to Sloane’s, but Nat would know I’d go there. She’d head somewhere else if she wanted to avoid me.
I doubt she’d run to her parents, but it’s a possibility. I’m sure there are work friends, too, or maybe she’d just go to a hotel to hunker down.
Only one way to find out.
I take out my cell phone and open the GPS.
“The airport,” I mutter, looking at the little red dot on the screen.
Fuck.
I hope I can make it there before she gets on a flight, but even if I’m too late, the positioning signal from the cell phone I gave her will let me know her final destination.
In the meantime, I’ve got to figure out a way to kill an inmate inside a maximum security prison.
No matter what it costs me, even if the price is my own blood, Max is going down.
Nobody threatens my baby.
41
Nat
When I come to, I’m lying on my back on a leather sofa with a cold washcloth on my forehead. Some time has passed, because the sun has set and crickets are chirping outside.
The room is large and airy, decorated in a tropical Balinese style. The polished dark wood floor gleams. Ferns, orchids, and palms nestle beside carved teak tables and smiling stone buddhas. Sheer white linen curtains sway in the breeze from a pair of open French doors. I smell salt air and hear seagulls crying somewhere far off, and try to remember how I got here.
David sits on the sofa opposite mine, watching me.
His tanned legs are crossed. His feet are bare. His gaze is fixed on me with unblinking intensity.
When I sit up too abruptly, the washcloth drops to my lap and the room starts to spin.
“You have heat exhaustion,” he says quietly.
His voice. That low, rich voice I’ve heard so often over the past five years in my dreams and cherished memories…here it is.
Doing nothing for me.
A square wooden coffee table separates us. On it are artifacts from his life: travel books, a glass bowl of pretty seashells, a small bronze sculpture of a reclining nude.
I’m seized by the urge to bludgeon him with that sculpture.
I meet his gaze and spend several silent moments just looking at him, trying not to smash in his skull. He looks good. Healthy and well rested. Like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
The lying, cheating, scheming, son of a one-legged dog.
“Or maybe it’s the five years I spent mourning your death while you were living like a king on an island paradise that’s getting to me.”
He blinks, slowly, like he’s taking that in. A small smile curves his lips.
“I’ve missed that lethal sense of humor, tulip.”
“Call me that old nickname again and I’ll shove that bowl of shells straight up your ass.”
We stare at each other. He finally moves, uncrossing his legs and sitting forward to rest his forearms on his thighs. He fixes me in his piercing gaze.
“What took you so long to get here?”
He says it gently, not like an accusation, but that’s what it feels like.
Like he thinks I failed.
“Gee, I don’t know. Could be the fact that I thought you were dead.”
“I sent you the key—”
“That stupid key got stuck in your outgoing mailbox. I only received it recently, after the owner of the Thornwood found it during renovations.”
His lips part. Then he closes his eyes and exhales.
“Yeah. Great plan, David. You know what would’ve been better? A phone call.”
He shakes his head, frowning. “I couldn’t take the risk of contacting you directly. The police were crawling all over you for months.”
“Okay, that covers the first few months. How about the four and a half years after that?”
When he looks at me now, his gaze is assessing, like I’m someone he hasn’t met before.
He says softly, “You’ve changed.”
“Yep. I’m not worried about being easy to swallow anymore. You can choke.”
After another beat of silence, he says, “Why are you so angry with me?”
I don’t recall him being this stupid.
“Gosh, where to start? Oh, here’s a good place: you disappeared. The day. Before. Our fucking. Wedding.”
He stands abruptly and walks across the room, his hands shoved into the pockets of his shorts, his shoulders tense. Looking out the open French doors toward the sea, he says, “I’m not the man you think I am, tulip. There’s much I didn’t tell you.”
“I’m already caught up to date there, David. And don’t push me on the tulip thing. I meant what I said about the bowl of shells.”
He glances at me over his shoulder. Then he glances down at my left hand.
“There’s something you’re not telling me, too, isn’t there?”
I twist Kage’s promise ring around with my thumb. Suddenly, it feels hot, like it might burn through my skin and sear my bones.
When I remain silent, he prompts, “I know a Russian love knot when I see one, Natalie.”
“I bet you do. Did you give one to Claudia?”
Surprise flashes in his eyes. It’s followed quickly by alarm.
He turns from the French doors and walks back to me, his expression worried and his tone rising. “How do you know about Claudia? Who’s been talking to you?”
“What, no denials? It’s not like you to not have a good cover story all ready to go.”
He ignores my blistering sarcasm. “Whoever it is, you can’t trust him. He’s only trying to get close to you to find out information about me—”
I interrupt loudly, “I know. I’m caught up there, too. It’s been a laugh a minute the last few days, let me tell you.”
He crouches down in front of me, grasping my clammy hands and staring into my eyes.
“Tell me who contacted you. Tell me what’s happened. Tell me how you got here—everything.”
He must be able to see that I’m about to gouge out his eyes with a nice, sharp jab of my thumbs, because he adds softly, “Please.”
I can smell him now that he’s so close. That old, intoxicating mix of spice and sandalwood. Sweet and creamy, smooth and warm, it wafts into my nose like a siren’s call.
How I used to love that scent. How comforting it used to be.
Emphasis on “used to.”
Instead of feeling surprise or pain that his voice, scent, and lingering gaze no longer have the power to move me, I’m incredibly relieved.
It’s going to be so much easier to tell him to go to hell now that I’m not in love with him anymore.
The image of Kage’s handsome face flashes in front of my eyes. When I forcefully blink, it vanishes.
“You first, loverboy. Tell me why you left me the day before our wedding without so much as a goodbye. Massive case of cold feet? Or did you hit your head and remember you were already married?”
He draws a deep breath, then releases it, bowing his head to rest on our clasped hands. Unlike mine, his forehead is cool and dry.
He murmurs, “I never wanted to hurt you. I’m so sorry, Natalie.”