Torn

  But a pissing contest mattered for less than shit when lives were on the line.

  “So what do we do?” Victoria bit her lower lip. “Stay and see what Jim has to say? Do we help the cops to—­”

  “We go home.”

  She shook her head. “The killer is still out there. We can’t just walk away!”

  They could. They would. They fucking should.

  He rolled his shoulders back as he walked forward. Yeah, he was closing in on her. They were alone, and it was finally time to clear the air.

  “Wade?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  Her lashes fell, shielding her gaze from him.

  “No, that won’t work,” he said curtly. His fingers curled under her chin and he tilted her head back, making her look at him. “Tell me everything. I want to hear it.”

  But she pulled away from him and stumbled back. “This isn’t right. I—­I . . . you can’t just stand there and act all calm when you know that I killed my own father!”

  Her grief was tearing straight into him.

  “This isn’t you.” Victoria gave a hard shake of her head. “You should be sending me to jail. Locking me away. I killed a man. And I covered it up. For years. I’m . . . still covering it up.”

  He locked his muscles so he wouldn’t follow her. She was running scared, and the wrong move from him—­hell, he did not want to make any more mistakes with her. “I don’t think you know me as well as you believe.”

  “What?” Her laughter held a sharp edge. “You’re going to cover for me? Is that it?”

  “Tell me what happened. Everything. Then we’ll go forward from there, okay?”

  Her hands fisted at her sides. “It’s not pretty. It’s not—­not right. I knew what he’d done to my mother. For years, I knew. I had to live in the same house with him, and no one would believe me. Even when the cops finally started searching for her . . . even when she was declared missing, no one would listen to me.”

  He wanted to touch her so badly. “You finally made them listen. You got him arrested. You—­”

  “Only because they found her body. But it was a paper thin case, and I knew it. I went in that court, I told my story, and he sat at the defense table, just smiling at me. A sad, patronizing kind of smile.” She swiped at her cheek.

  Hell. She was crying again. Her tears gutted him, did she realize that?

  “I knew the jury would find him not guilty even before the verdict was read, but I still went back into that courtroom. I guess . . . I guess I still hoped.”

  He took a step closer to her, helpless now to stay away.

  “Do you know what he said to me, right after he finished his press conference? A conference he held right on those courthouse steps?”

  Wade shook his head. He had no clue.

  “I stood there and watched him, and then he turned to take me back home.” Her smile was absolutely broken. “Because I did have to go home with him. He was my father, and I was a minor. What else was there for me to do? No one was going to help me.”

  “What did he say?” Wade whispered.

  “I forgive you.” Her voice was totally flat. “And he kissed my cheek.” Wade’s hand rose once more and she touched her cheek, only this time she wasn’t wiping away a tear. “Later that night, when we were alone, he broke that cheekbone.”

  Rage burst through him, so sharp and hard that he lunged forward.

  “Stop!” She held up her hands, as if warding him off. “If you touch me again, I won’t be able to finish this and I have to finish it!” She sucked in a ragged breath. “It was one blow. Just one. One that sent me right to the floor. He said that I’d turned on him. After everything he’d done. After all he’d given to me. I was on the floor, looking up at him, and he was yelling about how I couldn’t make it without him. How I needed him to survive . . .” Her lashes flickered and she stared at Wade. “I knew then that I couldn’t need anyone.”

  No, baby, that isn’t how life works.

  “I had to rely on myself. Only myself. Because he was yelling the same crap at me that I’d heard him yell at my mother, right before he killed her.”

  “You were afraid.” His voice came out as an angry growl because he was pissed. Pissed at her psychopath of a father. Pissed that someone hadn’t helped her. Pissed that no one had listened to her when she’d tried so desperately to get the cops to hear her.

  “After that night, he started trying to control me more. Wanting to know where I was going. Watching me, all the time. If I did anything that upset him . . .” She shook her head. “I heard the whispers from everyone. People thought I was the crazy one. That I’d gone over the edge when my mom vanished and I’d just latched onto the idea of him killing her. I knew the truth, though.” She paused. “The truth is that he killed her, and he was going to kill me.”

  “Victoria . . .”

  “He was a brilliant man. He knew so much about science. Medicine. About the human body.” Her hand rose and she pressed it to her heart. “He knew just where to cut, so that death could be fast or so it could be slow.”

  You think I’m going to blame you for stopping that bastard?

  “I know . . . because he told me. He told me that he made my mother’s death slow because she needed to suffer. But for me . . . He told me one night while I was in bed . . . he sat there, right beside me, stroking the hair away from my forehead, and he said that he’d make it fast for me. Because I was his daughter, you see. I was part of him. So he was going to be kind and he’d make it fast.”

  He took another step toward her.

  She lurched back. “He said . . . no one would find me. They’d think I ran away. He’d learned from my mom’s death. He was going to be better this time. No one would ever find me. I was just going to vanish, and he—­he doubted anyone would ever even look for me. I’d be a troubled teen . . . the world already knew just how troubled I was. I’d vanish, and that . . . that would be the end of me.”

  Her father was a fucking bastard. “But you didn’t die.” You didn’t vanish.

  Her lashes lowered, shielding her gaze again.

  “Victoria . . .” He needed her to look at him. “You didn’t die.”

  Her lashes rose once more. She stared at him. “No, I didn’t. But he did.”

  “I know. I read the files, a heart attack—­”

  She shook her head. “The perp who has been ­texting me. He was right, Wade. I am a killer. I killed my father. I couldn’t just wait for him to come after me, and I knew he was . . . he was going to wait for the perfect moment. He was going to take his knife and kill me, and no one would ever find my body. I—­I couldn’t let him do that.”

  Jesus. “No, you couldn’t.”

  “I went to the cops again. That next morning. I got up and I ran there. I told them what he had planned for me, but . . . they didn’t believe me.” Her laugh was bitter. “Or if they did, they didn’t do anything. I mean, what could they do? It was my word against his, and the jury had believed him before, not me, so . . .” Her words trailed away. “I had an option. I could run or I could stay and die.”

  “You ran.” This hadn’t been in the files he’d read. He just knew—­she’d run.

  “I didn’t go back home that night. I was too afraid. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t have any other place to go. I—­I just stayed on the streets. Slept near the bus stop. When I woke up, a cop was shaking my shoulder. He . . .” She gave him a sad smile. “He took me back home.”

  Hell, no. “You didn’t have anyone you could turn to?”

  “There was no other family, and my friends—­they’d pulled away during the trial. Not that I had a whole lot of them to begin with. I was always the quiet girl. The shy one.” Her gaze hardened. “But I wasn’t going to be the dead one. Right after that cop left, my father smiled.”
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  “Smiled? Why—­”

  “He really was a brilliant man, you see. And I’d just played right into his hands by running away. By letting a cop find me. Now there was proof that I was a runaway. So if I vanished again . . .”

  Sonofabitch.

  “Everyone would be more likely to buy his story. He . . . thanked me, for being so helpful.”

  Talk about a twisted bastard.

  “So that evening, I wanted to thank him, too. I made him dinner. Used my mother’s favorite flower.”

  Okay, now he was lost.

  “She loved oleanders, you see,” Victoria said, a brief smile curving her lips. “She always thought they were so beautiful, and even though she’d been gone for years, the oleanders still grew in our backyard. Gorgeous, white flowers, but quite poisonous.”

  He could only shake his head.

  “He didn’t even know that he was being poisoned. He thought he was having a heart attack. I heard him, later that day, yelling for me. I found him on the floor, trying to crawl toward the phone. He was holding his chest, saying I had to get help.” Her gaze held his. “He didn’t get any help for my mother, did he? He killed her, just as he was going to kill me. So I closed his office door and went up to my room. I covered my ears, and I cried and I cried, and I didn’t go down the stairs again until the next morning.”

  Wade couldn’t move.

  “I am a killer. I poisoned him, and even when I had the chance to change my mind, to save him, I didn’t.” Victoria shook her head. “I went down the next morning, and when I found his body, I called the police then. Then. No one even tested his blood. It looked like a heart attack, so that’s how it went down. I . . . I asked them to cremate his body. That way—­”

  “No one would ever be able to prove what you’d done.”

  “Not without a confession.” Her smile was heart-­breaking. “But I just confessed to you. You know my darkest secret now. You know that I’m one of the monsters out there. He was always right when he talked about it . . . I am just like my father.”

  He didn’t know what in the hell he was supposed to say to her. “You were defending yourself.”

  “You know that doesn’t fly. He wasn’t coming at me with a knife when I gave him that poison—­”

  “But he said . . . he was going to kill you. If you hadn’t stopped him . . .”

  “Then I would have vanished.” She nodded. “I absolutely believe that. But that doesn’t make what I did right. I took a life. My own father’s life, and when he was gone, I just felt free. I could live my life then, and I did—­I went off to college. I got my M.D. I thought I could help people, could make a difference. But . . .” Her gaze fell. “The guilt would come back to me. Sliding in late at night. I couldn’t escape what I’d done. What I was.”

  “That’s when you turned to the dead.”

  She nodded. “I was spending all my time studying anyway, so I just piled on more courses. I started wondering if I could have just proved his guilt. If I’d studied my mother’s body, if the M.E. had just found more clues . . . and suddenly I found myself being called in as an expert on different cases. I’d find small details that others had overlooked.” She laughed, a hollow sound. “I was even working with the FBI. I was absolutely terrified the first time I worked with an agent. I thought . . . what if he finds out? He’s working with a killer, and he doesn’t even know it. But he didn’t find out. And I helped him. I identified the remains. I gave him a cause of death, and for a little while the guilt I felt . . . it eased.”

  “That’s why you joined LOST.”

  “I didn’t vanish,” she said quietly. “So I thought maybe I could help those who had.”

  So much about her was clear now. So damn much. What he’d thought was her careful reserve was actually a shield she had in place—­one designed to protect her from pain. Guilt still ate at her, he could see that now. No wonder she threw herself into the work so much. Victoria was trying to atone. Trying to balance scales that he knew—­in her mind—­would never equal up.

  No strings. And he understood that part, too. She was too afraid of proving her father right. Of being just like him—­of needing someone so much, so badly, that she couldn’t let go.

  So instead of reaching out, of connecting with others, Victoria kept holding herself back.

  “That shit isn’t going to work any longer,” Wade said.

  Alarm flashed on her face. “What do you mean?”

  “You aren’t holding back with me anymore.”

  “I—­I’m not holding back. I just told you everything!”

  No secrets. No lies.

  “Now what are you going to do? Because I can’t—­I’m sorry,” she said, and the tears came then, trickling unchecked down her face. The wall she’d built crumpled as he stared at her. “I’m so sorry . . . I did it, I killed him. I didn’t . . . I didn’t want to die!” And she was about to fall right before his eyes.

  Wade surged forward and caught her in his arms. He held her tightly and could feel the tremors that shook her. She’d carried this weight around, for this damn long? And she thought he was going to judge her? That he was going to turn her in?

  If I could, I’d kill the bastard myself.

  She obviously didn’t understand who he was—­or rather, she didn’t realize just how much she mattered to him. Her life—­her. He’d do anything to keep her safe.

  So while she cried, Wade just held her tight. After a while he lifted her into his arms and carried her back to his bedroom. She didn’t say a word when he put her in the bed or when he crawled in beside her.

  But she did reach out to him again. She wrapped her arms around him and fit against him.

  So very perfectly.

  “SO . . . I’M CLEAR?” Matthew Walker demanded as he turned to face his lawyer, Bob Moore. He’d just exited the lawyer’s car. Moore had brought him back home after Matthew finally left the hell of that police station.

  Bob gave him a broad smile. “Dr. Walker . . . there are no charges against you.”

  “But—­But I heard what was going down at the station. The killer attacked someone else, right? While I was in custody. So now the cops know, absolutely know, that I’m innocent.”

  Bob nodded. “You’re clear. They’d be fools to bring you in, and the PD doesn’t want the kind of media firestorm I’d bring their way if they so much as hinted they were still trying to link you to this mess.”

  Good. Matthew exhaled and inclined his head toward the lawyer. “Thanks, Bob. I owe you.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, you’ll be getting my bill.” Moore gave him a little wave. “Now try to get some sleep. After today, you deserve some time to crash.” Then he drove away, zipping down the road in his red Ferrari. If any car yelled mid-­life crisis . . .

  Matthew shook his head and headed toward his gate. He punched in the security code and the wrought-­iron gate swung open. His steps were slow as he headed across the sidewalk that led up to his house, and for a moment he tipped back his head, glancing up at the historic home.

  Tall, with red brick and big white columns. Surrounded by blooming flowers. A gorgeous house. And his Jag sat waiting in the drive.

  He’d always wanted to live in a big house. He’d grown up with nothing and had vowed to have everything.

  Now I do. But today, in that cop station, he’d nearly lost it all. If he hadn’t been able to prove his innocence, his life would have come crashing down.

  Matthew unlocked the door and flipped on the lights. He made his way into his study and poured some of his twenty-­year-­old bourbon in a glass. He downed the dark amber liquid fast and—­

  “Are you going to say thanks?” a mocking voice asked.

  He’d known the guy was there, of course. That was why he’d made sure not to invite his lawyer in for a thank-­you drink. Figured the guy woul
d come by. Arrogant asshole. Just have to let me know how much I owe you, right?

  “Told you the cottage would come back and bite you in the ass,” he continued.

  Matthew didn’t turn to look at him. “It only bit me in the ass because you screwed things up. You led the cops right out there and you killed Melissa.” Fucking hell. He’d had so many fine plans with her. “Want to tell me why you did this? I thought we’d planned this all out. I take her, we keep her, and—­” His voice was rising. He took a long, low breath as he tried to get his control back. “You changed everything. Why? For shits and giggles?”

  “No . . . I did it for a very real reason.”

  Those words just pissed him off. Matthew slammed down the glass and whirled to face him. “Your real reason caused me to be hauled off to jail! And what the fuck did you mean, digging up Kennedy’s body? That wasn’t part of any damn plan! I didn’t even realize what the hell I’d found at first when I was on that freaking trail. She was mine! She should have—­”

  “I needed her. She served her purpose.”

  The bastard just sat there, in his favorite chair, looking all smug and cocky. He’d screwed everything to hell and back. Nearly destroyed his life. I hate this asshole.

  “The cops won’t be looking at you anymore. An attack was committed—­one that they know Melissa’s killer committed—­while you were in custody.”

  “I wasn’t done with her! You shouldn’t have killed her!”

  “You were sloppy during her abduction. The bouncer saw your car. He told the LOST agents that, and then I got him to tell me the same thing. She wasn’t going to disappear like Kennedy. Not with them here. I was just cleaning up your mess.”

  Bullshit. He didn’t believe that, not at all. “What did I miss?” Matthew asked. “Shit, were you sleeping with her, too?” Had to be. It was the only thing that made sense.

  “We enjoyed each other. She made the mistake of thinking she controlled me and you. In the end, I think she learned a very valuable lesson.”

  His temples were throbbing. He needed more bourbon. So he poured another glass. Even got one for the cocky bastard in his chair.