Black at Heart Page 3

  Inside, he pulled off his sunglasses while she closed the door, securing every lock, testing them with a pull of the knob. He didn't smile at the overly cautious ritual. There was nothing funny about how seriously Lily took her privacy and self-protection.

  Considering she had been shot, kidnapped, and tortured for a week by a madman, the surprise would be if she were not extremely careful. And this house didn't have a history of gentle security.

  Perhaps that was one reason he'd brought her here. Because, really, lightning couldn't strike twice, could it?

  "Can't be too careful," she said lightly as she triple-checked the dead bolt, wary and serious.

  He just didn't know if wariness had slowly transitioned into blind rage. And he needed to know. Badly.

  Did he really think the gentle, soft-spoken Lily Fletcher he knew could have killed the three men who'd been cut to pieces in those hotel rooms? That she'd lured them using their own sick desires against them, employing the names of her lost loved ones to do it? That she'd left a tiger lily to autograph her latest crime scene?

  No. Deep down, he truly didn't believe she had it in her.

  But the human mind could snap if pushed too far. He knew that, more than most.

  "So what are you doing here?"

  He had anticipated the question. "Monday is Labor Day. I thought I'd take a couple of days off and come up for the long weekend."

  "You could have called."

  "It's my house," he reminded her, his tone smooth and perhaps even a little bit mocking. This cold aloofness she'd shrouded herself in was almost too much of a challenge. He wanted her to be strong, knew she needed to in order to survive, but he sometimes found himself missing the Lily he'd once known.

  He had to be honest, though. This woman fascinated him in ways he hadn't yet begun to evaluate. She was the living example of how a person could drastically change after one horrific ordeal.

  Then again, she'd gone through more than one. He suspected the Lily he'd known had been different from the one who had waved her young nephew off to school or shared confidences with her twin sister.

  He'd never know who she had once been.

  "Suit yourself." She didn't even glance up at him as she spun on her bare feet and walked away from him, annoyance obvious in her tight shoulders. Her hips swayed, her long legs eating up the floor as she moved with determination toward the kitchen.

  No, she couldn't be more unlike the young woman he had met a short fourteen months ago. That woman had been gentle and vulnerable, spiritually wounded after the terrible, tragic death of her nephew and her sister's resulting suicide. Lily had been soft-spoken and soft-tempered, with a quick smile, delicate, fluttering movements, and an eagerness to please that sometimes made her appear clumsy. But there had never been anything clumsy about the way her mind had worked. She'd been a brilliant programmer, a genius IT specialist, and he'd been damn lucky to get her.

  That genius served her well in her new life. Not a thing could happen within a quarter mile of this house without her computer surveillance system warning her.

  "I was just about to make dinner."

  He followed, feeling a slow smile tug at his mouth. "Getting any better at it?"

  Casting a quick glance over her shoulder, she smirked. "You won't choke."

  Considering he'd tasted her dubious kitchen creations before, he'd reserve judgment. On the weekends when he came up, he usually brought fish or steaks to grill. This trip had just been too impromptu for him to do it.

  After all, forty-eight hours ago, he would not have imagined he'd be traveling to Maine to try to find out if the young woman whose life he had saved really had slaughtered three men.

  It's crazy. But he needed to be sure.

  "Salad and grilled chicken okay? I went to the market yesterday."

  "Fine. And you were careful in town?"

  She gave him a Duh look. "In case you haven't been there lately, Keating is a tourist town. Tons of people in and out. I make sure not to draw any attention."

  Huh. She drew attention no matter where she went, though she didn't see it. "Well, now that it's Labor Day weekend, be prepared for all that to change. The town is small enough that it will start to pay attention to anybody who sticks around."

  "They've paid attention," she admitted, sounding grudging. Rolling her eyes, she gestured around the bright, airy kitchen with the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ocean. Her tone dripping sarcasm, she added, "Enough to drop hints about this creepy house of yours."

  The muscles in his body stiffened reflexively, but he forced himself to remain where he was, leaning against the doorjamb, his arms crossed. Nonchalant. Normal. Nothing to reveal just how much he hated being here and how right the townies were to think of this place as tainted.

  "Just be warned, they're likely to be more nosy when they don't have other tourists to focus on."

  "Duly noted."

  Lily finally dropped it, thank God, and began to prepare dinner, pulling fresh produce from the refrigerator. As she worked, she would occasionally move a certain way, or her bottom lip would push out in frustration as she tried to decide which spice to use, and he'd catch a glimpse of the old Lily. She even unconsciously lifted a hand to sweep her short hair away from her face, as if forgetting she no longer had the long, silky strands.

  "Your hair's really grown out," he murmured, acknowledging that for the first time.

  She lifted a brow. "You just saw me three weeks ago."

  "I know. But I can't see the scars at all anymore." At least, not the external ones.

  This time when she lifted her hand, it was to self-consciously pat and smooth the hair over the top of her mangled ear. She would eventually need to get plastic surgery to repair it, but seemed to have had enough of doctors and hospitals for this year.

  Lovesprettyboys, the bastard she and members of another Cyber Action Team had been trying to catch last January in a sting in Virginia, had shot her point-blank, aiming for her face. The bullet had instead skimmed the side of her head, taking off a chunk of her ear.

  She'd been lucky. Damned lucky. Especially because the killer's second shot, straight to the chest, had been stopped by her bulletproof vest. He regularly thanked God that she'd been wearing it. She'd ended up with some broken ribs and bruises, but nothing major.

  No, the major wound had been the third shot. It hit her in her upper thigh, so close to her femoral artery that another millimeter to the right would have been the end of her.

  It almost had been, anyway. He still sometimes found it hard to believe she'd lived, especially given the amount of her blood they'd found inside the surveillance van where she'd been attacked. So much blood, it had been impossible to believe she could have survived, and despite the lack of a body, the world had decided she hadn't. Him included.

  The grief of those standing beside a grave that held no coffin, who watched as a small marker with her name and the dates of her brief thirty years on this earth had been erected, had been genuine and heartbreaking. Something none of them had expected to get over. So when he picked up his phone that very night after her memorial service, hers was the last voice he had expected to hear. Weak and agonized, but Lily's voice.

  It had been one of the most shocking moments of his life.

  They had all believed her corpse had been swept away after the van had crashed from a high bridge. Now, of course, he knew that was what her attacker had wanted them to think. But then, answering that call, he had wondered whether someone was playing a sick joke.

  "So how are things in the Hoover Building?" she asked as she reached for an onion and began peeling away the skin, taking a few usable layers of white with it. Talented in the kitchen, she was not.

  "Fine."

  "Everybody at the office okay? Jackie?"

  "The same. She and Lambert still go at each other, especially when they start arguing about who's going to drive."

  Her smile was faint, but it did appear. "She's dangerous behi
nd the wheel."

  "He's managed to survive."

  The smile widened the tiniest bit as her guard began to come down at the talk of normal things. Familiar things. "Lambert turned out okay, though?"

  "Yes, he's worked out very well." Jackie's partner, Alec Lambert, had been a new member of the team, on board for only a week when Lily's attack had occurred. "His profiling background has been a remarkable asset. Meanwhile, Kyle still manages to get off one-liners that leave Dean ready to laugh or growl-I can't quite tell which."

  That put a sparkle in her eyes. "Mulrooney's a big, crass teddy bear, but Dean wouldn't trade him for another partner for anything."

  Wyatt lifted a surprised brow. Because, though Lily was right, he wondered how she could know that. It had been only a year since the team had come together, and Lily had been absent for seven months of that year. When she left, everyone was still just a bit unsure, cautious, not quite melding into the solid unit they had become.

  Funny, in a completely unfunny way. Lily's death had been the unifying moment.

  "What about Jackie's family? Her husband? Her kids?"

  "Everybody seems fine. The kids are growing up too fast, she says." He couldn't help adding, "She talks about you often."

  Jackie Stokes had been the only other woman on the team at the time of Lily's attack and had taken the loss very hard. They had formed a solid friendship, and Jackie, though only twelve or so years older than Lily, had a mother instinct that ran deep. Despite her caustic exterior, the striking, brilliant African-American woman had grown protective of all the younger members of the team.

  Many times, Wyatt had wondered just how big a mistake he had made in bringing only Brandon in on the rescue, and in letting Lily swear them both to secrecy about her survival. Jackie could have been a big help. All of them could.

  But he'd had his reasons. Valid ones. And he didn't know that he'd make a different decision now, even knowing Lily's recovery was going to take so many months.

  Still, he couldn't help wondering whether any of them would understand that, how they would react when Lily decided to rejoin the land of the living. They would be furious, would feel betrayed. And he couldn't blame them. He only hoped they eventually understood the choices he, Lily, and Brandon had all made that bitter January night.

  "What about the new ones?"

  "Anna Delaney's good, very thorough, although she doesn't have quite the instincts that you do. And Christian Mendez, who came in from the Miami field office, is very direct and single-minded, but I think he'll work out all right."

  "Another Taggert, huh?"

  "Not exactly. Dean was street-cop gruff. Christian's more quietly intense."

  "And Brandon?" Her voice remained deceptively low, her attention on her task, as if she didn't want him to know she really cared about the answer to her question.

  "Fine, though he still doesn't understand why you don't want him to come and visit anymore."

  Her tremulous sigh reminded him that they had this discussion nearly every time he came up. "Maybe in the fall."

  "That's what you said about summer."

  She shook her head. "Look, it's bad enough you feeling like you have to come here and check up on me. There's no need for Brandon to go out of his way, too."

  Shaking his head, Wyatt wondered if she really felt that way, if she didn't know that Brandon, probably a couple of years her junior, had feelings for her. I

  Perhaps she did. And perhaps that was why she'd asked the other man to stop visiting altogether at around the same time she'd asked Wyatt to come up no more than once a month. Lily, it seemed, didn't want anyone to have feelings for her.

  Not that she had ever been ungrateful. In the first few weeks after Wyatt and Brandon had rescued her from the bastard who'd held her captive, she'd been able to do almost nothing but thank them. Since then, though, as her body had healed, her heart had developed thick scar tissue, too. She no longer thanked him. He only hoped it was not because she was no longer glad they had found her and saved her life.

  "So are you guys still called the Black CATs because nobody has the nerve to call you black sheep to your face?"

  It was his turn to smile slightly. "Some things never change. Besides, we've decided we like the name."

  "I assume you're still stuck in those crappy offices on the fourth floor that should be used as supply closets?"

  He nodded in acknowledgment but lifted an ironic brow. "Which you, especially, should concede is not an entirely bad thing. It's much easier to fly under the radar when we're so far out of view of everyone else."

  Her jaw tightened and her cheeks flushed. "I'm sorry."

  He waved a hand in disregard.

  "I mean it." She dropped the onion onto a cutting board, reached for a large, wicked-looking knife, and started to chop. Quick, hard, efficient. She had been practicing.

  He shifted uncomfortably, not liking the flash of images shooting through his mind. Ugly ones. Bloody ones.

  Could you? Could you really?

  No. Impossible.

  "On top of everything you did for me, saving my life, getting me medical care, letting me live here, faking my death…"

  Shaking his head, he replied, "That, I did not do. Nobody faked your death, Lily. Not you, not I."

  "You know what I mean."

  "Yes, but remember, you committed no crime in not coming forward to correct the mistaken impression that you died. Filed no false life insurance claims, made no illegal moves at all. It was not your fault you were declared dead while you were…" He cleared his throat, unable to go there, even in his thoughts, not wanting to think about what she'd been going through while he and the rest of the team had been fruitlessly waiting for her body to wash up somewhere. "I repeat: You've done nothing illegal."

  "I know. But I'm still sorry." Defiance and anger dimmed the warmth of the apology. "You caught the blame for it, didn't you? For what they all think happened to me?"

  Wyatt merely stared, wondering how she could know that.

  "Damn, it's unfair. It was nobody's fault but my own. You warned me to let the Lovesprettyboys case go."

  Yes, he had, not liking what her obsession with an Internet phantom was doing to her. They had discovered the pedophile while researching a sick online site called Satan's Playground, where sadists and monsters gathered and enacted their ugliest fantasies. From the moment Lily had seen Lovesprettyboys' avatar, and the kind of revolting online games he liked to play, she had been determined to find the man before he could play those games in real life. Even after Satan's Playground had been shut down, after the rest of the team had moved on to other cases, having caught the serial killer who had been using the site to air videos of his brutal murders, Lily hadn't been able to let go of the need to do something.

  "I should never have ridden along."

  "You were supposed to be protected," he said, the words hard to push from his tight jaw. The whole thing still infuriated him. "Anspaugh should have kept you safe."

  She rolled her eyes. "Anspaugh. The jerk. What did he get, a promotion?"

  Special Agent Tom Anspaugh, who'd allowed Lily to help in his investigation without Wyatt's knowledge, had definitely not gotten a promotion. In fact, he'd been busted down so low, it was surprising he had remained with the bureau. "Quite the opposite. And you're lucky he doesn't know you're alive, because he holds you responsible for his disgrace."

  "Oh, nice, blame the dead chick."

  His lips quirked a little.

  "Something tells me, though, that he's not the only one who got blamed."

  No, he wasn't. Though Wyatt hadn't gotten slapped quite as hard as Anspaugh, he'd definitely taken a hit. But again, he had to wonder how Lily could know that. It wasn't as if Wyatt had raised his voice in Crandall's office when he'd gotten called on the carpet. Their heated conversation couldn't have been heard from beyond the walls of the DD's office, to be then whispered about, for, perhaps, Brandon to repeat to Lily.

  "It do
esn't matter."

  Lily's fingers tightened around the handle, whitening under the nails. Then she tossed the knife down, turned to the cabinet, and retrieved two wineglasses. "After everything you've done, all the cases you've cleared, I can't believe they still treat you the way they do."

  Watching her uncork a bottle of Merlot, Wyatt remained silent, not really wanting to talk about it. He'd long since come to accept that his career with the FBI would halt right where he was. His title would never be higher than supervisory special agent and some would never trust him. All because he'd seen some ugly, illegal activities going on and he'd done something about it.

  Whistle-blowers, it seemed, were never promoted. Only shoved into the Cyber Division, where he'd never worked, and handed a new CAT that had been so narrowly defined, everyone had expected it to fail.

  "Is Deputy Director Crandall still trying to drive you out by any means, fair or foul?"

  Wyatt reached for the full wineglass she extended, and glanced at the ruby red liquid. Swirling it around, he didn't answer at first, not wanting her to see his reaction. "What do you mean?"

  He was stalling. There had been nothing subtle about that query; she'd come at the matter head-on. The question remained: How did she know Deputy Director Crandall was trying to drive him out? Oh, certainly everyone in the bureau knew the DD hadn't been happy about the embarrassing scandal that had ensued after Wyatt had reported the evidence manipulation going on at the FBI crime lab. Especially because one of the agents implicated had recently been promoted to a position directly under Crandall. What made it worse was that high-level agent-Jack Eddington, now cooling his heels in federal prison-had once been Wyatt's good friend and mentor.

  The way Lily had worded the question, it was almost as if she knew the deputy director truly hated his guts. That the vengeful man's actions had been personal, more than professional. Having his own office implicated in the crime-lab investigation had made Crandall his enemy for life, and he would have loved to fire Wyatt if he could.