Leah Braemel - Deliberate Deceptions

“In.” Preferably something they could eat while sprawled naked on the bed.

He grabbed a towel from the rack and wrapped it around her, and tucked the end into her cleavage. Before he could wrap his towel around his hip, Lauren took it from him. She lingered over her task, patting every single part of him dry. The sun had long since set when they finally walked back into the bedroom. Chad flicked on the light. Before she could step around him, he’d shoved her behind him but she hit the doorframe with an oomph.

“Stay where you are, Mr. Miller.” Shit, there was a man in their bedroom.

Chad held out his hands and adopted the reasonable tone they’d been taught during their hostage negotiation training at Quantico. “Tom? Put the gun down and let’s talk about what you’re doing here.”

Gun. Her empty holster lay on the bed. Aw fuck. It was her own gun that Tom Whoever was using.

“I don’t think so. I know you’re hiding a whore behind you. You tell her to come out where I can see her.” Lauren didn’t recognize the voice, but being called a whore had her balling her fists.

“Tom, the woman behind me isn’t a whore. It’s my wife. You remember Lauren, don’t you?”

It was someone they knew? Lauren peered over his shoulder. It startled her to recognize their intruder. The man she’d last seen as a fourteen-year-old boy now stood at least two inches taller than Chad. “Tommy Jenkins?”

“What are you doing here, Mrs. Miller?” From the way her Sig Sauer shook he was likely to shoot one of them accidentally. “You shouldn’t be here.”

His gaze dropped to the bed, his forehead wrinkling. “You guys had sex? Didn’t you?” The gun steadied and returned to point at Chad. “Did you rape her? The way you did last time?”

“He’s never raped me!” Lauren couldn’t stop her response.

“Yes, he has. I saw it.” Tom used both hands to steady his grip. The shaking stopped only marginally. “It was on all the websites, on all the news reports. He’d tied you up and blindfolded you. He made you,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “do things. Bad things.”

“Chad never raped me,” she repeated, keeping her voice steady. How the hell could she get him to understand that she’d asked Chad to do that to her? That she enjoyed being bound and blindfolded. “He’s never hurt me, Tommy. I promise.”

“You’re just saying that to protect him. You shouldn’t do that. He’s a bad man. You need to stay away from him. You hate him, remember? He killed your baby. He killed Emily.”

“No. No, he didn’t.” She sidled away from Chad, attempting to draw Tom’s attention away so Chad could get to the drawer where he’d stashed his gun. If they were lucky, Tom hadn’t already found it.

She took another step toward him but also to the left, drawing his attention further away from Chad. “Chad didn’t kill Emily. Neither of us did.” She took a deep breath but didn’t dare close her eyes the way she wanted. “She just stopped breathing. There was nothing either of us could have done.”

“No! He killed her.” With a roar of anger, Tom swung the gun back toward Chad, who dived to the floor at the same time the gun went off.

Pain seared Chad’s shoulder like someone had stabbed him with a red-hot poker. Even as he fell, he saw Lauren kicked Tom in the back of the knees and grapple for the gun.

His right arm not working properly, Chad dragged himself across the floor, the six feet between him and his weapon a chasm wider than the Grand Canyon. Using his left hand, he opened the drawer and felt around inside until his fingers closed around the barrel of his Glock. He rolled over just in time to see Lauren’s head snap back. Blood spurted across the room, splattering over the sheets. Lauren’s body toppled sideways.

FUCK! Chad aimed his gun but Tom dragged Lauren to her feet and used her as a shield. “Stay back! I didn’t want to hurt her but I had to. You saw-she was fighting me.”

Lauren’s head lolled onto her chest and he couldn’t see her face properly, but from the blood trailing down her shirt, the bastard had probably broken her nose. Hopefully that’s all he’d done. “Set her down, Tom. Please. Let me look after her. Let me make sure she’s all right.”

“Uh uh.” Tom shifted Lauren’s dead weight to one arm and lifted the gun, aiming it at Chad. He tilted his head until his mouth was less than an inch away from Lauren’s ear, but his gaze never left Chad. “You shouldn’t have come back, Mrs. Miller. You should have stayed away. He was miserable when you left. I was sad too but at least I knew you were safe.”

Chad held his own gun steady but couldn’t fire without risking Lauren’s life. At least the gun was aimed at him, not at Lauren’s head. Though the rest of Lauren didn’t move, the fingers on Lauren’s right hand made the “OK” sign. It was all he could do not to heave a sigh of relief. She was all right. If they kept their heads, if he could get control of this situation, they could still get out of this. Maybe. Tom still had that fucking gun.

Tom’s eyes went unfocused, dreamy, his voice soft and distant. The arm holding the gun dropped a few inches but not enough. If Chad moved now, he’d still be gut-shot. “I loved you so much, Mrs. Miller. You were such a good mother to Emily.”

“She was; you’re right.” Come on, Lauren, move. Drop to the floor. Something that’ll get you out of the line of sight and give me a clean shot at him.

Tom’s gaze cleared and the black barrel of the gun stared at Chad again. From this distance, a two-fingered monkey couldn’t miss hitting him. “Don’t you talk to her. You’re not good enough for her. That’s why I had to keep her away from you. Keep her safe.”

Chad held up the hand he could move, spreading his fingers wide. “All right. Let’s just calm down.”

“I kept her safe from you. I checked your mail box every day so you couldn’t get any of the letters she sent you. I deleted all her messages from your answering machine. You didn’t even know I was there. You thought you were so good with your security system. But you couldn’t stop me.”

Shit, he’d given Tom the security code and asked him to check his mail and water the plants when he was away. The whole time the little shit was the reason Lauren hadn’t come home?

With a move so fast it startled even Chad who had been looking for a sign, Lauren dropped to the ground, taking Tom with her. As Tom swung around with a curse, aiming Lauren’s own gun at her, Chad aimed and squeezed the trigger.

“They’ve charged Jenkins with attempted murder and aggravated assault.” Sam glanced at Lauren as she settled onto the arm of the couch beside Chad. “He’s lawyered up, and isn’t talking, but from what Andy’s been able to find out through his sources his lawyers are seeking a psychiatric review while he’s still in the hospital.”

“They’re looking for an insanity plea,” Lauren surmised. “Or at least diminished capacity.”

“They’ll get it.” Chad covered her knee with his left hand. His right was bound to his side, the bandage where they’d operated on the bullet not as thick as it had been the day before.

“What I don’t get is why he waited this long to go after Chad.”

“I talked to his mom.” The petite woman who Chad had introduced as Rosalinda Ramos, Sam’s fiancйe answered Lauren’s question. “She said he’d had a breakdown at school, enough that the counselors there suggested he come home for the semester.”

Sam scowled. “Except he came home and found his mom with a black eye.” He held up a hand when Chad cursed under his breath. “Don’t worry, her rat-bastard ex didn’t give it to her this time. I checked. Patsy had been in a car accident and she got it from that. She’s fine, by the way.”