"I'm sorry."
"I used to think you were doing it deliberately, to punish me."
"Punish you for what?"
"For loving you. For getting too close. For doing whatever it was that drove you away."
"I never meant—I'm sorry."
He shook her briefly. "Stop saying that, dammit. You didn't know it would happen, did you? You didn't know that making love with me would cost you that little piece of yourself, would open a door you could never quite close again, at least not for good."
"No. I didn't know it would happen."
"And if you had known?"
"What do you want me to say? That I wouldn't have done it if I'd known? Even if somebody had told me, had warned me, I wouldn't have understood what it would mean. And I… probably wouldn't have cared even if I had understood. Not then. I loved you, Max. I
wanted to belong to you. And I don't think it would have stopped me if I'd known it would be forever."
One of his hands lifted and touched her cheek. "Then why are you shutting me out now?"
"It's been twelve years."
"That isn't it. I want the truth, Nell. What is it you don't want me to know?"
"Max—"
"What is it you don't want me to see?"
"You're very quiet," Shelby noted as they approached downtown Silence. She was driving, since they were in her car, and Justin hadn't had a lot to say.
"Just thinking about the investigation. All the questions."
She glanced toward his shadowed face. "Sure it's not that you're still mad at me?"
He sighed. "I was never mad, Shelby. But this is a dangerous situation, and Nell had no business pulling you into it."
"She didn't pull. She asked if I was interested. And made sure I'd be with a cop, in case you forgot that."
"You can't be with me twenty-four hours a day until this thing is over."
"I can't?"
He glanced at her but said nothing.
"You're just tired," Shelby said. "Look, if it'll make you feel better about me being involved with this, why don't you stay at my place tonight? I have a very comfortable guest room."
After a long moment, Justin said, "I'm not that tired."
Shelby took the turn that would take them to her house and said calmly, "Well, the master bedroom is very nice too, if you'd prefer that. Though I will warn you that I sleep with the windows open even in winter."
Justin waited until the car turned into her driveway before saying, "If this is in the nature of an apology, you really don't have to go that far."
Unoffended, Shelby laughed. "No, I wouldn't do that. But if you don't like the woman doing the asking, just say so."
"I'm flattered."
"Are you?"
"And puzzled."
Shelby shut off the engine, turned to her passenger, and then leaned across the console to kiss him. A moment or two later, she drew back far enough to murmur, "Still puzzled?"
His arms tightened around her. "No."
"Good. Let's go inside."
CHAPTER TWENTY
What is it, Nell? What is it you don't want me to see?"
"I've told you before." There was tension in every line of her body as she stared up at him. "You didn't believe me, but it's true. There's evil in my family a darkness more than bone deep. And it's in me too."
"You've never done an evil thing in your life."
"You can't be sure of that."
"Yes, I can." His hands tightened on her shoulders. "I can."
"I wake up from nightmares, Max, horrible dreams filled with blood and violence. Every night since I got home, but even before, even years ago. You know that. You've caught glimpses, haven't you?"
"They're just dreams, Nell. We all have them, even the dark and violent ones."
"No, not like these dreams. I know abnormal, believe me. I've seen it in the flesh more times than I like to remember. And one thing I'm sure of is that my dreams are coming straight from hell."
"So what? Nell, your life has been hell. Surviving this family, what happened in this house, then running away when you were no more than a kid, having to build a life for yourself all alone. Living with abilities you barely understood. And then becoming a cop investigating the worst sort of crimes, the most evil, vicious killers alive. Of course you have nightmares. Without that outlet, you'd probably have suffered a breakdown a long time ago. Or turned out like Hailey, so damaged by your father that a normal relationship isn't even possible."
"What makes you think it is?"
"Let's find out." Pulling her closer, he kissed her.
A part of Nell had expected it to be different this time, but it wasn't. Just like on that warm spring day twelve years before, the instant his mouth touched hers and his arms closed around her, all she was conscious of was an overwhelming sense of being exactly where she was supposed to be.
She belonged with Max. She always had.
It was like recognizing an elemental truth, knowing that. Even with all the years and distance between them, some part of her had always known she could never be whole without Max, and realizing it now gave her a feeling of certainty and freedom unlike anything she'd ever known before.
"I think it's very possible," Max said.
Nell couldn't say much of anything because he was kissing her again and she was kissing him and feeling things she hadn't felt, hadn't allowed herself to feel, since the last time he had held her like this. It all washed over her in a tide of emotions and sensations, and she nearly cried out because it was such simple, uncomplicated pleasure.
"Let me in, Nell."
"No… you'll see…"
"I want to see." He kissed her again and again, deep, drugging kisses so insistent that everything inside her demanded she give him whatever he needed from her. "I have to see."
Nell was never sure afterward if she would have protested again given a moment or two to think about it. Max didn't give her that moment or two. She felt him lift her up into his arms and carry her from the cool living room and up the stairs, conscious of a tiny shock that he could do that so easily and that she could enjoy it so much.
Then sensations rushed in and pushed everything else aside. Clothing falling away, sliding against her skin. His hands on her, warm and hard and urgent. The feeling of his powerful body under her own searching fingers. Her heart hammering against her ribs and her breath coming quick and shallow. Then the bed beneath her, disconcertingly soft and not at all like a thin woolen blanket that had barely protected them from the cold spring ground.
It was a dizzying reminder that a dozen years had passed, and her own body insisted she understand that. She was no virginal girl now, shy and half terrified of what she wanted, and Max was no longer that gentle, careful young man so intent on not hurting her that it hadn't occurred to him there might be another price demanded of them for those few minutes of incredible closeness.
"Nell…"
He was a little rougher now, more direct, more insistent, his hunger for her so fierce that it was a caress all its own, touching her deepest instincts, igniting a response as involuntary as the beating of her heart.
She reached out for him blindly, needing him to be as close as he could possibly be. Her arms held him, and it wasn't close enough. Her body held him, and it wasn't close enough. She needed him closer.
Closer.
It had shocked Max, the first time it happened. Shaken him. Nothing in his life had prepared him for the incredibly intimate closeness Nell had offered. No—demanded. Passion and need had seared away everything but instinct, and in joining physically with the man she loved, Nell's instinct had driven her to mate in the deepest possible way.
This time, he was ready for it.
Max caught his breath just as she did, staring into her eyes as her senses blended with his, her thoughts, her emotions. It was something deeper than sharing, something more elemental and absolute. Their hearts beat with precisely the same rhythm, their breathing was perfectly in sync, their bodies moved with a single will.
They were one.
Ethan set aside the birth record that puzzled him and continued through the stack of copies. But as the clock on his credenza ticked away the minutes and he read record after record, he began to feel restless, uneasy. He got up once and wandered through the building, not so much checking on his people as needing the exercise in order to think.
When he finally returned to his desk, the question in his mind was no less answerable for being clear.
It couldn't be that, could it? So simple a thing?
My real mother's dead. She died when I was born.
A boy's inexplicable lie? Or something else?
It was nearly midnight when Ethan sat back, over half the birth records still unread, and picked up the one that bothered him. This late on a Saturday night, there was no way he could check this out—unless he simply asked.
A good idea, or a bad one?
Take someone with him, or go alone?
He opened his desk drawer and pulled out the schedule to see who was supposed to be working this weekend, but even as he studied it he knew from his stroll through the building that most of the deputies were either still on the clock or else were gathered here in the lounge, playing poker or just quietly talking. Some of the married ones would have gone home to their families, but most would hang around just as they had been doing for weeks.
Waiting.
Ethan put the schedule away, still undecided. He picked up the birth record again, staring at the circled name of the birth mother. Supposed birth mother.
He was cop enough to know that people found the oddest, most inexplicable reasons and rationalizations for murder, but he couldn't think of any reason why this name on a birth record could have gotten George Caldwell killed.
My real mother's dead.
Did it mean something?
Ethan briefly considered calling out to the Gallagher house, but dismissed the idea almost as soon as it occurred to him. No. Despite his reassuring words to the mayor, he was not at all happy that the FBI had been called in behind his back, and he'd be damned if he'd run along behind Nell now, touching his hat and saying yes, ma'am, and no, ma'am, while she and her invisible partners solved the case.
Besides, she seemed way too convinced the killer could be Hailey, and the more Ethan considered that possibility the less likely he thought it was. Not that Nell had yet explained what she'd meant about Adam Gallagher's death, but Ethan couldn't see any reason why that death, even if it hadn't been natural, could point to Hailey. She'd been gone by then, disinherited by an openly furious father, so why come back just long enough to put him in the ground?
No, Hailey being the killer just didn't track.
As for this birth record…
Making up his mind abruptly, Ethan folded the report and tucked it into a pocket, then got his gun out of the desk drawer and clipped it to his belt. He shrugged into his jacket and went out into the bullpen.
With several patrols out, there were only a couple of deputies in the big room, and one of them was on the phone. Ethan stopped beside the other one, who was sitting on the corner of a desk and contemplating a dartboard hanging on the wall nearby.
"Hey, Kyle. Where's Lauren?"
"Went home to take a shower. We aren't officially on the clock, but—"
"Yeah, I know." Ethan looked over to see that Steve Critcher was still on the phone, then said to Kyle, "Interested in taking a little ride with me?"
"Sure. Where we going?"
"Out to Matt Thorton's place. There's something I need to ask him about."
"You were afraid," Max said. "That was part of it, wasn't it? Part of why you kept the door closed as much as you possibly could all these years. Part of why you shut me out so fiercely when you came back here. I could hardly get through at all."
"I was afraid," Nell admitted, the lamplit peace of the bedroom allowing her to say what she might have resisted saying anywhere else.
"Because of how I reacted the first time."
She hesitated, then sighed. "I didn't blame you for that. What happened shocked me, so I knew it would be hard for you to deal with it. You were… a little freaked."
"A lot freaked. But fascinated too, Nell, you had to know that."
"I knew. I also knew it made you wary. Made you wonder if you would lose all your privacy. People need a quiet place inside them where they can be alone, and you were afraid you wouldn't have that anymore."
"That's why you shut the door so quickly, almost as soon as… as soon as we could both think again."
"It wasn't just your reaction I was afraid of, Max. The… power of it scared me. I'd never been close to anyone, really, and then to so suddenly find myself that close to you…"
Max shifted his weight so he could look down at her. "And now? The door is almost closed again. Not slammed this time, just eased to during the last few minutes."
Nell didn't have to share his thoughts to know he was disturbed by that. "Max…" She shook her head. "I'm not a telepath, and neither are you. This connection we have, this doorway—I don't think it's supposed to be wide open all the time."
"Is that a rule?"
"Don't get angry. I'm not trying to shut you out because I don't want you. You know better than that, we both do. But I… there are things I don't want to share with you, things I don't want you to see."
"The nightmares. The visions."
She managed a smile. "No reason why both of us should risk a short-circuited brain."
"So I can share the pleasure, the joy, but never the pain or fear?"
Nell reached up to touch his face, her fingertips tracing the straight line of his grim mouth, trying vainly to soften it. "Would that be so bad?"