Secrets and Seduction: 5 Romance Novels (42 page)

Pain seared him like a brand and he yelled.

“I know the real reason you were at Crittenden. I overheard my dad talking about it. He never thinks to close his office door. He said you get depressed. You were in the psych ward. Well, now everyone will think you were depressed enough to kill yourself.”

Christian watched the blood welling over his wrist. He’d seen this before somewhere, in a flash of vision as Gabrielle had touched him. It had been a premonition of his death.

Jeremy grabbed his other wrist. Christian had no strength to pull his hand away. As Jeremy raised the razor to slash, Christian’s mind screamed that this couldn’t be happening. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to live so he could apologize to Gabrielle and tell her he loved her. If she could live with his bipolar, he could learn to live with her clairvoyance.

Gabrielle.

• • •

Gabrielle tracked Paul Ziko down at a job site in Hamtramck. He hadn’t wanted her to know his location, but finally he’d given in. She figured he was luring her in by playing coy with the location. But she was one step ahead of him. She knew he was guilty.

The white trailer marked ‘office’ sat innocently in a sea of mud at the construction site. She gripped her tire iron in her cold hands as rain ran in rivulets down her face. For the first time, she wished she was licensed to carry a gun.

She expected to find Christian in the trailer, in God knew what condition. Throwing open the door, she stepped into the trailer, brandishing the tire iron.

Paul looked up from a pile of blueprints and his blue eyes flew wide. He glanced at the tire iron, stiffened and backed away from the table. “What the hell’s going on?”

The door slammed shut behind her and Gabrielle jumped. “Where’s Christian?”

“He’s gone. He got his handwriting sample and left about five minutes ago.” There was a bitter edge to his words. He was obviously still angry his brother doubted him.

Gabrielle wasn’t certain. “I think you’re lying.”

Paul backed up even further, glancing now at her hands. “Don’t even think about touching me.”

Gabrielle advanced on him. She had a weapon he feared more than the tire iron.

“I said keep away. You’ve got no right to my private thoughts. That’s an invasion of privacy.”

“I do when it concerns the health and whereabouts of your brother.” She stepped closer.

Paul was now cornered in the back of the trailer. His eyes looked wild. “You’re not concerned with Kit’s health, only about crucifying him for your employer. He said you kept it secret that you were psychic. He thought he trusted you, but you betrayed him.”

“No, you betrayed him. His own brother. Where is he?” She reached toward him.

Paul strained away from her hand, his chest heaving as he breathed. “I’m the only one who cares about Kit. I love him. I’d never hurt him.”

If Paul was guilty, he was the world’s greatest actor. She believed what he was saying. She didn’t know what he had to hide from her touch, but it wasn’t Christian’s whereabouts.

She decided to confide in him. “You’re not the only one who cares about Christian. I love him, too.”

His eyes opened even wider. His mouth worked, but no words came out. Finally, he sputtered, “But your employer … ”

“Michigan Casualty fired me for not telling them about Crittenden. I thought you were the one who leaked the story to the press, so I thought Kit would be here. I need to know where he is.”

“He said he was meeting Jeremy Barrett.”

Of course. “Where?”

“I don’t know where. That’s where he was going next.”

“It’s Jeremy. He’s going to hurt Christian. I need to know where they’re at. Paul, I need to touch you.”

He pressed harder into the wall behind him. “I don’t know where they are. You won’t learn anything by touching me.”

“You’re closest to Kit. If something happens to him, it will affect you. If I touch you, I may be able to get a picture of the future and learn what happens today. Then I can stop it from happening.” She hoped. It sounded logical, but in practice … No, today it had to happen exactly as she’d said it would.

“You can predict the future?” Paul said in an awed tone.

“Sometimes. Often, when Kit is involved. You see, he’s the other half of me. If he could accept what I am, there could be a future for us together. But I need to know where he is now.”

Paul studied her, his eyes showing less white with every second that passed. Finally, he reached out his hand to her.

Gabrielle grasped it, like a lifeline. She poured all her hopes and dreams into her hold. Even if she couldn’t have a life with Christian, she wanted him to live and be free of the taint of the Densmore.

The vision came with the sharpness of precognition.
Paul was dressed in black. Mourners congregated around him in small, murmuring groups. Bryce Gannon stood nearby, and there was Sean Bergman.

Roger slid an arm around Paul’s shoulders. “I should have listened to you. I should have insisted he go back to Crittenden. I believed him when he said he wasn’t suicidal.”

“So did I.”

“I’m glad the city is razing the Densmore. I couldn’t look at it again knowing Kit killed himself there,” Roger said.

Gabrielle wrenched herself away from the grief and pain of the vision. Her throat was clogged with trapped sobs. Christian. “The Densmore.” She sprinted for the door.

Paul yelled, “What?”

“Jeremy’s going to kill him and make it look like suicide.”

As she threw open the trailer door, rain slashed at her face. Bring it on. She still gripped the tire iron she’d forgotten she held. Now she was glad she still had it. She’d use it on Jeremy if he thought he could hurt Christian.

Kit. I’m coming.

• • •

Jeremy grunted and his hand jerked sideways, away from Christian’s arm. The razor hit the floor with a clink. Jeremy tumbled backward away from Christian. A loud boom reverberated around the lobby. Christian wondered what was happening. Was the rest of the building collapsing? It was so hard to think.

Slowly Christian dragged his gaze to the door. There stood someone he least expected. Wes Masterson. With a gun.

“You killed my sister.” Wes’s voice quivered with deep emotion.

He held the gun leveled on Jeremy’s chest. Jeremy clutched his shoulder, where a dark patch spread, and whimpered.

“No.” Christian wasn’t sure what he was protesting so feebly or why. Jeremy had just tried to kill him.

Wes glared at Jeremy. “You sick son of a bitch. You’d kill your dad’s partner to cover up a crime. Your own boss.”

“It was an accident!”

Wes shook his head. “I heard your confession. I know what you did. Now my sister’s dead.” His hand tightened on the trigger.

Wes was going to kill Jeremy. Angry, stupid, misguided Jeremy, who’d made a mistake and then compounded it with a criminal act. He needed to pay for what he’d done, but not with his life. Christian didn’t care a whit for the sniveling, lying coward, but he cared about Roger enough not to want to see him grieve over his son’s death. He’d grieve enough when his son went to prison.

And Christian loved Paul enough to know how much Roger’s pain would hurt him. Friends shared one another’s pain. He couldn’t do that to Paul, not if he could stop it.

“No. Trial,” he managed.

“Put the gun down, Wes.” Gabrielle stepped into the lobby as her order echoed around the atrium. She stepped past Wes, who frowned.

Christian had never been so happy to see anyone, but he was afraid Wes would hurt her, either on purpose or with a wild shot. But he was unable to speak. She approached where he lay, then dropped to her knees and applied pressure to his wrist. Blood flowed scarlet over her fingers.

“He deserves to die.” There was anguish and grief on Wes’s face. “He killed my sister.”

Paul stepped into the lobby, holding his cell phone out and open. “I’ve got 911 on the line. They’re listening to this. Jeremy deserves to be punished, but not by you. You’ve suffered enough with your sister dying. You don’t need to have his blood on your conscience. Let the court try him for his crimes.”

“I want vengeance.” It was almost a sob. “My sister needs justice.”

“His father is my best friend, and I know he’d want him spared. So do I, for his father’s sake. So does Christian.”

Wes waved the gun wildly. “He was slitting Ziko’s wrists. Doesn’t that make you want to kill him?”

“Christian needs an ambulance. Will you hold us at gunpoint while he dies, too?”

Wes screamed his pain and frustration and rage. Then he slumped to his knees and began to cry. “Gina’s dead. She’s never coming back. She’s dead.”

Paul took the gun out of Wes’s lax fingers. Christian was losing the fight with unconsciousness, but he knew one thing. Gabrielle had come to him. Even after the horrible accusations he’d made, she’d come to him. He owed her … something. Whatever it was grew foggy.

“Sorry,” he thought he mumbled.

“Hold on, Kit, an ambulance is coming,” she said.

And then he lost the fight.

Christian swam up through the depths of a thick drug fog into the light of day. He thought at first he was at Crittenden, because of the hospital smell and the drugs, but the walls were the wrong color. Paul sat in a chair beside the bed, his head tilted against his shoulder, his eyes closed. Between the disarrayed hair and the dark circles under his eyes, his brother looked like hell.

“Paul.” It came out a croak.

Paul’s eyes snapped open. “Kit.” He scrambled to his feet and reached for Christian’s hand.

Only then did Christian notice the cast stretching from his fingertips to his elbow on his left hand. “What’s this?”

“Do you remember what happened?” Paul’s blue eyes were dark with remembered pain.

“Yeah. Jeremy tried to kill me.”

“And almost succeeded.” Paul took a deep breath. “He cut too deeply and severed a tendon, so you had to have surgery to repair it.” He looked down and away. “I didn’t know about the mickey Jeremy gave you. If I’d known, I would have made the hospital wait on the surgery.”

Christian sensed something had happened, something that had scared Paul. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Paul’s blue eyes were filled with terror and remembered pain. “You nearly died of a sedative overdose, Kit. Between your regular meds, the mickey and the anesthesia, your system stopped. They had to do CPR during the surgery. I almost lost you.”

Jesus. Christian swallowed. That explained the red plastic hospital bracelet on his right wrist that read No Sedatives. “Is there any permanent damage?”

“The doctors don’t think so. The surgeon said your hand should be as good as new after some therapy. The hospital did an EKG on your heart and everything looks normal. But I think they’re afraid of a lawsuit. Bryce shook them up when he was here with me the first night.”

“First night? How long have I been here?”

“You’ve been in a coma for three days. We weren’t sure when,” Paul choked, “you would wake up.”

Cold seized Christian’s belly. His brother had been afraid Christian wouldn’t wake up. As it was, he’d lost three whole days. “The trial was … ” he couldn’t think, “a couple of days ago.”

Paul’s face darkened. “You don’t have to worry about that. Between Wes Masterson’s testimony about what Jeremy said, and Jeremy and Brittany trying to blame each other, you were cleared.”

“It’s over?”

“Yeah. I saved the newspapers for you. Jeremy and Brittany were convicted, separately, of fraud and malfeasance. I think they must have had the fastest trials in Detroit history. Brittany forged the DesignCorp test results and Jeremy forged your signature on the drawing.”

“Jeremy told me that part.” It was too unbelievable and too unreal. He’d worked with both of them for a year and never suspected them. He didn’t know how he could trust his own judgment again.

Yet Paul had come to his aid at the Densmore, despite his anger, and even Wes Masterson had protected him. And Gabrielle … she’d run to him despite how big an ass he’d been to her. She’d known he needed help, maybe through her psychic ability, the power he’d been afraid of.

He had to know about her. “Gabrielle?”

“I haven’t seen her since the first day. I’d thought … well, she’d said she was in love with you.”

Christian’s chest swelled with joy and hope. “She did?”

“Yeah, when she was looking for you, the day this happened.” Paul waved at Christian in the bed.

So Gabrielle loved him. But she didn’t feel secure enough in her welcome to be here at the hospital. He’d done that to her. He’d thought he’d told her he was sorry at the Densmore, but maybe he’d only imagined saying it. He wanted desperately to see her so he could apologize, but there were things he had to say to Paul first.

“You can’t keep trying to protect me anymore, Paul. I’m a grown man. It’s time I stood on my own two feet and acted like a man.”

“But your illness … ”

“I’m not sick, Paul, I’m challenged, like a lot of other people. And those people lead full, productive lives without their loving brother having to smooth their way. I intend to be one of them from now on.”

Paul’s eyes were still concerned, but some of the tight strain faded from his face when he smiled. “My little brother’s growing up.”

Christian smiled too. “About time.”

“So I guess Sean and I did the right thing by explaining to the press the real reason you’d been at Crittenden?”

For a moment, Christian cringed at the world knowing about him. Then his resolve firmed. His secret had kept him a prisoner. That wasn’t what he wanted any more. “Yeah, it was the right thing to do.”

“Then it’s all right if I leave this place? When I thought … when I thought I might lose you, I didn’t care if my business went belly-up. But since you’re going to live and you don’t need me anymore,” his smile widened, “and the sun is shining for the first time this year, I’d like to check on my jobsites.”

Paul had been willing to sacrifice his business for Christian. It was humbling and warming to be loved so much. “Have I told you I love you, bro?”