The Other Man

  I received a LIAR in my left underarm, high up into my armpit, right on the most sensitive skin. It hurt like a bitch.

  I didn’t get a word every time, but words or not, he always carved something on me.

  It made it easy, at least, to count the days as they passed.

  We were ten days in when he cut a neat little OBEDIENT right on the inside of my wrist.

  He was calculated enough to put me in a long sleeved shirt after that one. He was at least trying to hide all of the cutting from Raf. I appreciated that.

  He was gone from the house right after, leaving us alone for the usual two-hour stretch.

  We were careful when we spoke, I figured he had the room at least bugged, but those two hours were still the highlight of every day.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Raf, first thing when we were by ourselves.

  His raw eyes hit mine, and I could see that this was taking its toll on him. My poor, sensitive boy. If it wouldn’t have done more harm to him, I’d have wept.

  “Did he hurt you?” he asked, voice scratchy with the effort to hold everything in.

  “No, sweetie. I’m fine.”

  Raf’s bloodshot eyes moved down to a spot on my arm, just below the sleeve of my shirt.

  I looked down. Dammit. A bit of blood showed, peeking out through the hem.

  I turned my arm, hiding it, but it was too late.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Just a scratch,” I assured him.

  He shut his eyes, and I could see his lips were quivering.

  My poor, sensitive boy.

  I’d given up on working at my ropes by then. Earl had noticed the condition of my wrists early on, and calmly threatened to hurt Raf if I continued.

  Our situation felt more hopeless than ever. By taking both of us, he had all the leverage he needed to keep us obedient forever.

  Just thinking the word had me glancing down at my bloody wrist. The cuts had leaked just enough to make out the neat OBEDIENT through my white sleeve.

  That was the day something wonderful happened.

  Earl didn’t come back.

  Not that day, or the next, or the one after that.

  The third day was the day when I began to gain the certainty that we were going to die like this, tied up to soiled chairs and starving.

  Each time he’d left, Earl had given us each a large bottle of water, set between our legs. It was tricky, but we’d both picked up swiftly how to drink that way, twisting the cap off with our teeth, and taking small sips.

  We each rationed our water as much as we could; taking the tiniest sips when we began to get an inkling that he wasn’t coming back anytime soon.

  On day three, it was looking dire. Even with the rationing, we were down to the last drops, and soon, sucking at air.

  How long could a person live without water? I thought three days. Raf swore it was five, since we were indoors.

  I badly did not want to find out which one of us was right.

  Another day passed, the water completely gone now.

  I had the popcorn ceilings memorized, and I didn’t even notice the stench anymore.

  We played games, quizzed each other with random trivia to pass the time, but I began to feel my mind getting more sluggish, and we slept longer and longer with each passing day.

  Raf was sleeping when I got a sudden desperate burst of energy and began to struggle against my bonds.

  I rubbed my wrists and ankles bloody, nearly knocked over my chair, and accomplished nothing at all. Earl’d known what he was doing. He left no weaknesses for us to exploit.

  I cried, but no tears came. I was too dehydrated for that.

  I woke with a start, and I didn’t know why. I sat still for a moment, thinking, listening intently, before I heard it, breaking the great, vast silence of the desert.

  A car. A loud one or possibly a few cars.

  My eyes met Raf’s. We stared at each other, both of us afraid to hope that this might be some improvement in our situation.

  Perhaps it was Earl, and he’d just been using a new means to torture us.

  His car had never been loud, though. But then it was possible he’d just brought a different one. The man was a stone cold murderer. I doubted he’d have any qualms about stealing a new car.

  But no, as the sound grew, getting louder and louder until it felt like it was shaking the house, I became more certain that it wasn’t just one car or even a few. It was a lot of cars.

  I jumped in my seat when I heard a loud bang on the door, not like a knock, but like a battering ram, accompanied by shouts of, “FBI! Open up!” and more loud bangs, followed by the unmistakable sound of the front door being smashed open.

  I thought I might pass out cold, I was so relieved.

  Heath was the first one in.

  He looked insane. Deranged. He was covered in blood, from his neck to his feet, and his eyes were more animal than human.

  I didn’t care. I’d take him like that. I’d take him any way at all.

  He brought me water, eyes wary on me, but I refused to drink, telling him to get it to Raf first. He moved slightly, letting me see that Raf was being tended to just as quickly as I.

  He held the bottle to my lips and as I drank, he bent to kiss the top of my head tenderly, letting me know that he wasn’t too far gone. My Heath was still inside there somewhere.

  “Are you bleeding?” I asked him as he cut me loose, my eyes running over his bloody form. All of it was dry or nearly so.

  “No. None of this is mine.”

  “Earl’s?”

  “Yes,” he bit out, tone savage. “He’s dead.”

  “Good,” I said, just as savagely.

  He picked me up and took me out of there.

  I couldn’t help it, when the outside sun hit my face, I started to cry.

  He was holding me to his bloody chest, stroking my hair, over and over, murmuring, “That’s my girl. You’re good now. Everyone is okay.”

  His tone was reassuring, but his arms around me were shaking badly. He was trying to convince himself as much as me.

  I wasn’t the only one that’d been damaged by this ordeal.

  I got a few details out of him when we started to drive.

  He’d surrendered himself to Earl days ago, but he’d managed to turn the tables. For days, he’d been torturing Earl, trying to get him to give up our whereabouts.

  It had taken some time, but he’d broken the doctor. The second Heath laid eyes on me in the house, Mason had been informed, and Earl had been put out of his misery.

  Somehow, we’d survived. We were alive. All of us. And Earl, the fucking psychopath doctor, was dead.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SIX

  There were some dark times then, while I recovered and wondered if I’d ever be the same. Ever feel the same.

  And it was somehow enlightening, because it gave me an insight into what Heath was going through, when you looked around at people living their normal lives and wondered how the hell you’d ever be like them again.

  Raf was going through the same. He was changed now, some of his soft spots hardened, some of his sweet traits broken.

  But we were alive, and life went on.

  Heath had tried his best to let me live a normal life while he protected his sister, but the incident with Earl took that choice out of all of our hands.

  My safety was compromised, my connection to Heath had made me a target, and considering that Earl had been a hired hit, there was no reason to think that it wouldn’t happen again.

  And so, though I wasn’t a witness, I went into the program and into hiding with Iris.

  My sons came with me. They didn’t even complain. We were told upfront that it would likely last years, but none of us could conceive being separated with no contact for so long.

  I didn’t get to say goodbye to my friends, or even my parents, for fear of putting them in danger, so all of that was handled for me.

  I cop
ed with it by telling myself that I’d see them all again in a few years, but it was rough coming to terms with that part of it.

  I got some time with Heath after that, a few weeks, while I recovered, time where he didn’t leave my side.

  I’d been examined by a doctor and put on bedrest for a time to be safe.

  Things were strange between Heath and me. Both settled and unsettled.

  He was happy about the baby, I could tell. It was obvious by the way he couldn’t keep his hands off my belly for more than a few minutes at a time.

  Sometimes I’d wake to find him lips pressed to my stomach, a near peaceful look on his face.

  But we didn’t talk about it much at first. We didn’t talk about a lot of things.

  There was one thing, though, that Heath loved to talk about.

  “We’re getting married,” he told me, bringing it up out of the blue.

  “What?”

  “You’re having my baby. We’re getting married.”

  I couldn’t believe what he’d just said, or how he’d said it.

  A few pounding heartbeats later, I managed to get out, “I’m forty-one years old, Heath. I don’t need to be married to have a baby. This isn’t the fucking fifties. We can co-parent without being husband and wife.”

  “Then don’t do it for the baby. Do it for me. I need this. I need to know that when I go out there, I have this to come home to. You’re mine, and I need to make it legal.”

  My heart was hammering in my chest, but I just stared at him.

  And he kept going. “This isn’t negotiable. I let you go once. I went against every instinct I had and walked away from you, because I thought it was the unselfish thing to do. Now you’re stuck with me for as long as I’m alive. You’re mine, that baby is mine, and we’re going to make it legal.”

  “We don’t even have our own identities. It wouldn’t mean anything.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed with a rough swallow as he stared at me, his expression raw, cold eyes stark. “It would mean something to me.”

  God, he knew how to get to me.

  “Tell me something sweet,” I urged him with a smile.

  “I need you,” he rasped, voice weighty with feeling.

  “And?” I prompted.

  He looked confused, so I made it easy on him.

  “Do you love me, Heath?”

  “Of course I do. What do you think all this is, if not love?”

  That stunned me, stopping my heart, then sending it slamming wildly back into life.

  And still, I felt the need to say, “You never would have taken me with you if you weren’t forced to by circumstance.”

  His brows drew together, making him look stern.

  Mean and magnificent.

  The combination I found most irresistible on him.

  “You’re absolutely fucking right I wouldn’t have. If I hadn’t been so careless, because I was obsessed with you, you wouldn’t be in this situation right now, trapped, confined, in danger. I’d have spared you that. But I’d have done it for you. Not for me. If I were a completely selfish bastard, I’d have chained you to my side from the start.

  He stared me down for a solid minute, then continued, “And another thing, I was always planning to come back for you, when it was safe. If you’d moved on, if you hadn’t, I didn’t give a damn, I was going to come, shake up your life, and take you back when this was all over. That’s a fucking fact.”

  “Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you,” I said suddenly, impulsively, because he’d given me what I needed.

  This man loved me how I deserved to be loved.

  I’d been waiting a long fucking time for that.

  EPILOGUE

  We were married in a church. Heath, who remained constantly and consistently unexpected, insisted on it.

  It was a tiny gathering, just us, Iris, Raf, Gustave, and a few bodyguards standing witness.

  Heath’s face was unsmiling and serious as he recited his vows solemnly.

  I had no doubt in my mind that he meant them.

  None of it was anything I could have even pictured a year ago, but I recited mine back with tears in my eyes and joy in my heart.

  Life on the run was not as expected.

  It was chaotic and a little scary, sure, but there was something unutterably beautiful about it, the living each day like it could be torn from you.

  They were rough times, yes, rough years, but roughness was not the nucleus of it. At the center of it all were memories of joyful reunions and meaningful goodbyes, of holding on to the man I loved for dear life and knowing how precious every single moment we had together was.

  It taught us to love in a new way, one that we’d never forget. Having a love that was endangered made it all the more precious.

  And enlightening, because I learned so much about what love should be, how it should be treated, made me learn to express it as often and elaborately as I could.

  Love is all that matters. Every other thing in life is a detail. Love is both your legacy and your salvation. If you have the right kind of love, you can get through anything. That’s what those years taught me.

  We were a strange little group, with our new names and identities. Heath installed us all in a huge house in the northwest, so it started out as five of us, two pregnant women in different stages of their lives and pregnancies, two college boys, and Heath, who came and went often.

  Well, nine of us, if you counted the fact that we each (with the exception of Heath) got our own personal bodyguards.

  Iris and I hit it off right away. It was one of those friendships that required no effort at all. It just worked. Our age difference was drastic, but it didn’t matter; we got along famously, almost from the beginning.

  Like sisters. And, when we were having fun, partners in crime.

  It was Iris who told me just who she was testifying against that had made their lives so dangerous.

  “The vice president?” I repeated back to her, not quite sure if she was messing with me.

  She loved to mess with me.

  She nodded, biting her lip. “Our grandmother.”

  My eyes narrowed on her, looking for a lie. “Your grandmother is the VP, and you’re testifying against her?”

  She nodded again.

  “What’s the charge?”

  “The better question would be: What isn’t the charge? I’ve got so much dirt on that woman I could start a farm.”

  Now I was pretty sure she was messing with me, but she kept going.

  “But the reason I devoted my life to taking her down is that she murdered my parents and my sister. I’d die to bring them justice. They’re worthy of that. And even if she kills me, they’ll still have a case. My testimony will help, but I gathered so much concrete evidence that it can speak for itself.”

  The way she spoke, how into it she was, had me finally buying it.

  The fucking vice president. Holy shit.

  One thing you could never deny about Iris and Heath— they both had enormous balls.

  The first house we stayed in was basically in the middle of nowhere, but there was a college nearby, and both of my boys quickly found their own lives and were gone more often than not, which was for the best. They were grown men.

  That left me spending more time with Iris than anyone else.

  Neither of us ever complained about that.

  Powerful bonds were made when women were pregnant together. And we did a hell of a lot of bonding.

  Over time, she became like a little sister to me.

  With nothing but time on our hands, we got plenty of talking in, and it wasn’t long before we were telling each other everything.

  I told her all about my strange courtship with her brother.

  And she told me all about her enduring obsession with Alasdair Masters.

  “Why couldn’t you ask Dair to come into hiding with you?” I asked her once.

  “He has too much of a public profile. There is simply no way to hide him
. The best we could do was to keep him out of it. Also, I don’t think he’d want to. I’m pretty sure he hates me now.”

  I doubted that very much. I didn’t know him well, but I did know that Dair was not a man with hate in his heart. Not for anyone, but particularly not for one of the sweetest women I’d ever met, who also happened to be pregnant with his child.

  And also, who wouldn’t fall for a girl like Iris? She was young and sweet, funny and joyful, and of course, there was her extraordinary beauty. Sure, like her brother, she had some fascinating and troublesome quirks, but I was guessing that a man like Dair would find those quirks well worth the payoff. Hell, with what I knew of him, I thought he’d find most of them endearing.

  We had fun together, Iris and I, but always under her bright surface, I could see that something weighed heavy on her, and I knew that it was Dair.

  “I wonder if he’s moved on. It seems likely. We didn’t part on the best of terms, so I doubt he’d even think of waiting for me,” Iris lamented.

  I didn’t know what to say to her. I wanted to reassure her, but I also knew it would be cruel to give her false hope.

  “You know, for a while I thought it’d be you he moved onto,” she added.

  I’d gathered that much, but she wasn’t done.

  “And then I looked into you.”

  “You mean Heath did.”

  She cringed just enough to look guilty as hell. “No, I mean I did, too. Pretty extensively. I just wanted to know what kind of a woman you were, if he was going to end up with you. And everything checked out. Everything. You’re just good people. You make friends everywhere and treat people well as a rule. Hell, you even give a Christmas bonus to your gardener.”

  God, she was scary sometimes. How could she have possibly found that out?

  “Eventually, I was even kind of okay with the option. I saw you out with your boys—”

  “You followed me, too?” For some reason when Iris said she’d checked me out, I’d thought it was all internet dirt. The idea of her following us around just struck me as several shades more crazy.