Vows of Vengeance
And what had this man said—that it had been a year since she’d seen him? Denial swept through her. If she’d ever met him, she wouldn’t have forgotten him. He was too powerful. Virile. Sexy. Intimidating.
Then again, she couldn’t remember anything except her name.
“Stella?”
She studied his features, searching for familiarity, for any dot of a memory to return. His tight jeans accentuated the massive power of his body. He was tall, over six feet, broad-shouldered and muscular. His eyes were dark, too, like two hot coals on fire, probing, unnerving as if he never smiled. A broad jaw brushed with dark stubble gave him a sexy appearance, but the tight set to that jaw indicated he was angry.
Why would this man be angry with her?
“I…don’t know who you are or why you think you know me.” She met his gaze, determined to prove her point, but somewhere deep inside, in the far recesses of her mind, something intangible registered.
A wild and primitive awareness flickered in his eyes, something predatory, an almost hungry look, as if she’d not only met him, but he’d known her intimately.
As quickly as the moment came, it fled, and she was thrust back into the depths of lost time.
“This isn’t funny, Stella.” The man stalked toward her, stopped and gritted his teeth. “I’ve been searching for you ever since you ran out on our wedding night.”
Stella gasped, perspiration beading her lip. Wedding night? What was he talking about? She’d never been married….
Had she?
LUKE STUDIED his wife’s reaction, his temper battling with other emotions he didn’t want to admit. He was glad to see her. Relieved she was alive. Furious that she’d left him.
And he ached to hold her. To grab her, drag her into his arms and tell her how terrified he’d been that she was hurt, in trouble, needing him. How he’d nearly been out of his mind the last twelve months. That he’d imagined horrid scenarios, seen her face in death a thousand times in his mind, her neck twisted or broken, her body covered in blood with glazed eyes.
That he’d made love to her a thousand times in his mind.
Stella stretched her left hand in front of her. “You must have me confused with someone else, mister. I’ve never been married.”
His dark eyebrow shot up. “Stop lying,” he said in an icy tone. “I’m not in the mood to play games and neither are these other officers.” His cold gaze slid across her, sideways to the bed where the dead man lay in a pool of blood, then back to her hands. “Who was he? Your lover?”
Detective Black cleared his throat. “Devlin, maybe you’d better let me handle this.”
Luke glared at him. “What has she told you so far?”
Stella knotted her hands and glanced at the detective as if he were her friend. As if she thought she needed protection from him.
“I don’t know who this man is,” Stella said to Black. “Or what he’s talking about. Do I have family to call?”
“You told me you had no family.” Luke swallowed, grappling for control. After all Stella had put him through, how could she pretend she didn’t recognize him?
Detective Black gestured for Luke to step aside. Reluctantly he did so, well aware Stella tracked his movements.
“I think she may have amnesia or be suffering from shock,” Detective Black said. “I want the paramedics to evaluate her.”
Luke nodded. “All right, but just to cover our asses. She’s lying through her pretty, white teeth.”
Black shrugged. “Then see what you can get out of her. So far, I’ve hit a dead end. She insists she doesn’t remember anything except her name, that she doesn’t know the victim.”
Luke grunted. Hell, maybe she hadn’t known him, maybe she’d picked up a stranger for a one-night stand. “She was in bed with the damn man.”
Not how he’d expected to find her. He’d be a laughingstock all over the bureau. Disgust rode through him in waves. He’d made a fool of himself the last year. Begging the feds to keep looking for her and trying to clear himself at the same time.
Dammit, he’d chased down lead after lead. Tortured himself over what might have happened to her. Blamed himself for not protecting her. Nearly lost his damn career.
And now here she sat, denying their marriage ever existed, pretending not to know his name…
Fury raged through him as he turned back to her. She was trembling and had shrunken back into the chair as if the cheap flimsy plastic might save her. Hating the sympathy that struck him, he stifled the urge to grab a blanket and wrap it around her arms, to calm her.
Instead he steeled his voice. “All right, Stella. Tell me what’s going on.”
Her eyes smoldered with unease. “Like I told the police, I don’t remember what happened. I woke up around midnight and found this man in my bed. B-blood was everywhere.” Her face paled as she picked at the dark stain between her fingers.
“Go on.”
She bit down on her lower lip. “I…had blood on me, then I scrambled off the bed and saw the gun.”
“You were holding it when the security guard arrived.”
“I…I picked it up off the floor. I…” She gestured toward the bed. “I …don’t know this dead man, though…or what’s going on. I…swear it. I don’t even remember checking into the motel.”
“What is the last thing you remember?”
Stella glanced away, rubbed at her temple as if a headache brewed. “Nothing.”
A muscle tightened in his jaw, his agent instincts battling with the memory of her in his arms. He almost believed her. Almost.
Too much circumstantial evidence pointed to the opposite.
He knelt and touched her hands, ignoring the stab of desire the movement cost him. She was shaking, her eyes glued to the crimson stains on her fingers and nails.
He slowly turned her hands over, and saw the powder burns.
Powder burns didn’t lie. Only people did.
“STELLA’S OUT of control.” He poured himself a glass of brandy from the bar in Sutton’s office, swirled it in circles, then downed it in one swooping gulp. While he waited on Sutton’s response, he savored the taste for a moment, the slow burn of the alcohol sliding down his throat and warming his belly.
“I have the situation in hand,” Sutton barked. “She told the police nothing.”
“You lost her a long time ago, Sutton. You should have disposed of her when she first betrayed you and attempted to escape.”
“My plan will work. Just be patient.”
“Patient? Devlin won’t let go. And we’ve put too much into this project for you to go soft.”
“Soft?” Sutton’s voice rose. “If I’d gone soft, how the hell did I pull off what I just did? My plan is a stroke of genius.”
He tapped his nails on the smooth marble bar. “What if it doesn’t work? You’re taking a chance just letting her near the cops. And that bastard Devlin—he’s no fool.” He paused and poured himself another drink. “He didn’t let the hype about his partner being corrupt deter him.”
“It did for a while. He got sidetracked with Stella.”
“You think we can use her to do the same now?”
“It’s worth a shot.”
He harrumphed. Sutton might think he had things under control, but that was near impossible now. Stella was like a pipe bomb—unpredictable. “Know that I’m monitoring your ever movement, Sutton. If Devlin gets too close, if Stella starts remembering and talking, then I’ll kill them both.”
“I understand.”
Did he really? Sutton might be riding the line, but he wasn’t. He was the same ruthless man he’d been trained to be. He took without mercy. Trained the others to do the same. And he hadn’t gone soft.
Soft meant forgetting what he had learned from the Master. The Master who had led him down the path years ago, just as he continued to lead the others.
Stella had been one of them. One of the hardest to break. One of the ones who’d tried to get away.
But there was no escape. Only a price to pay for trying to do so.
And Stella would learn just how high that price could be.
Death for her lover. For herself.
But first…first, she would know the pain of betrayal.
And if Sutton couldn’t handle it, he’d meet death himself.
Chapter Two
Luke’s gaze rose from Stella’s bloodstained, powder-burned fingers to her heart-shaped face. The bruise stood out, stark now, making his gut clench.
As their gazes locked, the undeniable spark of sexual energy that had zapped him the first time he’d met her rippled through him again, as strong and potent as before. The pull of those green eyes, luminous with fear and confusion, tugged at emotions he refused to acknowledge.
Sweat beaded on his forehead and hands, and his heart pounded. The air was sultry, the room cloying with the stench of death, yet she still had the power to touch some unreachable place that he hadn’t even known existed. A weak place that wanted and needed her in spite of the fact that she had deceived him.
Every protective instinct he’d ever possessed reared itself, taunting him with what-ifs.
What if Stella were telling the truth? What if she were innocent? What if this were some bizarre case that was more complicated than a wife having skipped out on her husband? What if the dead man had tried to hurt her, and she’d been acting in self-defense?
What if she hadn’t wanted to leave you?
Hopeful, stupid thoughts that no jaded cop or federal agent was supposed to think, much less allow himself to believe. Not even for a second.
After all, he’d seen the worst of mankind, witnessed deplorable acts and betrayals that had destroyed his trust in the human soul. And years ago, he’d steeled himself against falling for a wounded woman.
Until Stella had stepped into his life.
Then a part of him had gone soft.
He hated softness of any kind. Had been trained not to tolerate it.
He glanced at her hands again, registered the absence of her wedding ring, and he won the war with his primal instincts. Humiliation and anger raging inside him, he wiped the sweat from his brow and spun away from her, leaving her to face the cops alone while he spoke with the crime scene unit. The medical examiner, Dr. Yates, studied the body, making notes. A sandy-haired man in his twenties and a red-headed female CSI tech were collecting evidence, combing for fingerprints, picking hair fibers from the bed and carpet, lifting prints from the water and wineglasses on the end table. The sheets were soaked, hanging askew, the white pillow-case marred with a crimson stain in the shape of a hand. Stella’s hand.
Luke swept his gaze over the victim. Noticed not for the first time that he was naked. He had brown hair, was average height, no distinguishing marks on his face, except for a scar by his right ear. He was lying on his back, his legs partially dangling over the side as if he’d tried to get up and run. One hand was thrown over his head, the other on his chest where the bullets had pierced his heart. His body was lean, but not muscular. Hairy. And his jewels… They were limp, hanging in plain sight.
Not a man he’d have thought Stella would have been attracted to.
Luke’s hands knotted by his sides. Had Stella slept with the man, then killed him? And if so, why hadn’t she tried to cover up the murder? Why had she screamed as if she was calling for help? She hadn’t even attempted to hide the weapon.
Or maybe her amnesia act was part of her plan…a self-defense ploy to keep her from jail.
He scratched his chin, assessing the rest of the room with a trained eye. There were no suitcases. No bottle of wine to go with the wineglasses. No…clothing.
No woman’s purse.
The pieces of the puzzle didn’t fit. Where were the man’s clothes?
He stalked to the bathroom and found one of the investigators bagging a pair of slacks, so he introduced himself to both the techs. “Any ID in there?”
“No. So far, we haven’t found any for him or her,” Doug, the male investigator, said.
“Condoms?” Luke gritted his teeth while he waited.
The female, Jill, shook her head. “None in here.”
“I didn’t find any in the bedroom, either,” Doug added.
Luke frowned. Stella had always insisted on condoms. So had he, for that matter.
Then again, maybe she and the dead man hadn’t gotten to the nitty-gritty yet.
Luke rushed to the bedroom, checked the nightstand. Empty except for the motel Bible.
He closed the drawer with a scowl, then approached the body again, parking himself by the M.E. “What do we have so far?”
“It appears he died of multiple gunshot wounds. Two to the chest. Close range. My guess from the size of the wound, a .38.”
The same kind of gun Stella had been holding.
“Any other injuries?”
Dr. Yates rolled the man to his side, indicating several bruises that marked his lower back. Others, less noticeable due to the blood on his chest, covered his torso. And another one darkened his thigh.
“Any signs that he had a weapon?” Luke asked.
“No powder burns on his hands. There is some blood under his fingernails. We’ll send it to trace.” The M.E. glanced up and frowned. “There are hair fibers that appear to match the woman’s.”
Luke spotted a long, black strand of hair caught in the man’s finger and his stomach knotted. “Any evidence that indicates someone else might have been in the room?”
The crime scene techies returned. “We’ve found a few short brown hairs in the bathroom,” the sandy-haired CSU guy reported. “They don’t appear to belong to the victim or suspect.”
Jill shot a look of disdain around the room. “Could be a product of a shoddy cleaning staff,” she muttered. “You know they rent these rooms by the hour.”
Luke nodded. “Bag and tag all of it. I want every inch searched, including the bathroom.” He glanced back at Stella, bracing himself for his next move. “I’ll arrange for a doctor to examine her, and make sure he goes over her body with a fine-toothed comb. He’ll look for defensive wounds, signs of sexual activity, blood, semen, DNA from the victim and any other source.”
“She’s already asked to shower,” Jill remarked, a hint of derisiveness in her tone. “At least she isn’t screaming rape.”
Luke aimed a frigid stare toward the tech. “This is a murder investigation, so let’s stick with the evidence. Stella claims she has no memory. We don’t know what happened, and until then, we can’t rule out any possibility.”
The woman’s expression went from cocky to chastised in a flash.
He exhaled, then pivoted to study Stella again, to look for the lies and the truth in the woman he’d married. She was shaking violently now, had her arms wrapped around herself in a blatant attempt to hold herself together. Either that, or she was a consummate actress.
Still, her hair was disheveled, dried blood crusted her fingers and nightgown, and the pale skin of her legs was showing. His eyes narrowed. A long scar glistened along the bottom edge of the nightshirt—a scar that hadn’t been there a year ago. And he would know. He’d loved, kissed and touched every inch of her.
“She can’t clean up until she’s thoroughly examined,” he said, shutting out the memory. “And I’ll inform the doc to examine that scar on her leg. I want to know how long it’s been there and what caused it. Our psychiatrist will also conduct a complete neurological. Let’s see if her amnesia is for real.” He jerked his gaze back to the crime scene agents. “Get me the results from here as soon as all of you are finished.”
He strode toward Stella just as Detective Black snapped the handcuffs on her delicate wrists.
STELLA GLANCED UP at the federal agent, Luke Devlin, the handcuffs rubbing heavily against her skin as the detective gripped her shoulder to lead her from the room. For a brief second, she thought something flickered in the man’s enigmatic eyes—a look that hinted at an apology. Or maybe a promise that he would help her. That she wasn’t alone in the world of darkness that had become her life.
But the feeling disappeared as if it had never existed, and tremors racked her body again, a trapped feeling overwhelming her. She had been trapped before. Had been held against her will. Made to do unspeakable things. And a man had been involved. A black-haired man with cold, black eyes.
Then she had tried to escape.
But there were harsh punishments for that.
Snatches of memories, all in black and white, blurred reality, and the room twirled and spun in a dizzying frenzy. She saw herself—running, running, running. But she could never escape. Never outrun the demons.
The detective cleared his throat. “Mrs. Devlin…are you all right?”
She blinked at the sound of the title, the agent’s face wobbling back into focus along with the voices and murmurings of other officers. The stench of the dead man’s body floated toward her, then the overwhelming scent of another man invaded her space—Luke Devlin.
He carried with him a commanding air, a mixture of a spicy, woodsy scent that simmered with sexuality, a scent that overrode the worst of the stench in the room.
Had she really married this stranger? And if so, why didn’t his face look familiar?
She took one more look at the dead man’s body on the bed and nausea rose to meet with the clogged air in her throat, renewing her panic. The man was dead. She had no idea who he was. Or who had murdered him.
But she was going to jail for the crime.
She would be locked behind bars, a prisoner…
Just as she had been before.
She balked and drew back, stiffening and digging in her heels. The men halted. Another officer reached for his gun as if preparing to fire if she attempted to escape.
“Relax. We’re taking you to the hospital to be examined,” Detective Black said in a low voice. “Agent Devlin is arranging for a CSI team to collect evidence and have you evaluated.”
Luke Devlin approached her, closing his cell phone as he stopped by her side. He stood towering over her, a mass of muscle, black hair and intimidating eyes. “I’ll escort her, Detective.”
A mixture of unease and relief poured through her. If this man had married her, he must care about her. Surely he would help her figure out the truth. Help her regain her memory. Keep her from prison. But the rigid grip of his fingers as he half dragged her to the police car indicated differently.
Outside, she gulped, startling as thunder rent the air, and lightning zigzagged across the gray, mantled sky. It was pitch-black, not a star in sight.
She shifted and looked up at Luke Devlin. His eyes were the same eerie combination of black and gray.
This man might have claimed to be her husband, but would he really help her?
And what if the memory of being trapped meant she had been trapped by him…
THE VULNERABILITY in Stella’s green eyes stole Luke’s breath. When they’d stepped outside, panic had tightened her slender body.
She was scared.
Dammit, she should be. Every piece of circumstantial evidence so far pointed to the fact that she had murdered a man. Probably in cold blood. Maybe even premeditated.
And now she was hiding behind a smoke screen of amnesia.
How common was memory loss anyway?
They descended the steps, his instincts as an agent warring with a compassionate side he hadn’t known he possessed. A side that no one else had ever touched.
But he had pledged vows to this woman. Promised to protect, honor and love her for the rest of their lives. As bitter and cold as he liked to believe he was, he was a man of his word.
They reached the car, and he opened the back door, then squared his shoulders, and helped her inside. Part of him wanted to drive her to some hideaway, a place where they could talk and be alone.
Someplace where he could have his damned unfinished wedding night. Maybe if he made love to her, she’d remember him. He sure as hell hadn’t forgotten her touch. Or what her lips had done to his body. And how it felt to sink himself inside her.
Detective Fox, Adam Black’s partner, jumped into the driver’s seat while Luke claimed the passenger side. “To the hospital?” Fox asked.
Luke gave a clipped nod. “Yes.”
A sound of distress rippled from Stella, but Luke ignored it and gestured for Fox to drive. Thunder barreled and rolled across the moonless sky, and rain began to pound the roof.
The ten-minute ride seemed like an hour. Fox was forced to a crawl from the heavy rainfall. Luke occupied himself by phoning the hospital to confirm that the doctor who worked for the police department was available to examine Stella. Fox parked in the emergency entrance, and angled himself toward Luke.
“You want me to wait?” Fox asked.
Luke shook his head. “No, I’ll assume custody of her now.”
Stella gave him a helpless, frightened look from the back, but he ignored it. Although when he climbed out, he shucked off his jacket and wrapped it around her arms to shield her from probing eyes as he coaxed her into the hospital. She halted in the entrance, her body trembling. He smoothed a damp strand of hair from her cheek in comfort, but she pulled away from him, as if he were the enemy.
“What’s going to happen to me?” she asked in a low, shaky voice.
“They’re going to examine you, take trace evidence. Make sure you’re healthy enough to…”
“To be arrested?”
His gaze met hers. “This exam is as much for your safety and protection as it is for us, Stella. They might discover evidence that someone else was at the crime scene, too.”
Or that she’d been assaulted and had defended herself. He latched onto the thought. As awful as that idea was, the other possibilities were more daunting.
She bit down on her lip, her tangled hair falling over her forehead and across her cheek. He was tempted to reach out and push it back again, but jammed his hand inside his pocket instead. He couldn’t allow himself to touch her. The other officers would see what a complete and utter fool he’d been. Think he’d lost his edge and couldn’t function on the case.
And he had to work this case.
Losing J.T. had made him look incompetent. And then falling under Stella’s seduction…
Besides, touching her was too personal. It meant reviving memories he couldn’t deal with right now. Rubbing salt into wounds that were so fresh he felt as if they’d just been sliced open. Tearing into layers of his heart that had been ripped away one time too many already.
Yes, he had to work this case. Prove he could handle it.
Because he had to know the identity of the dead man in Stella’s bed, and his relationship to her.
And if she had killed him.
AS THE DOCTOR escorted Stella back to the examining area, Luke Devlin stationed himself at the door like an armed guard, proving to Stella that there was no love lost between them.
Weak and drained, she mentally prepared herself for a different type of interrogation. But the minute Luke Devlin had deemed himself her police guardian and ordered these tests, she realized nothing could have prepared her for the humiliating ordeal of being treated as a suspect in a murder investigation.
The doctor, a middle-aged man named Morton, had icy hands that scraped, combed and touched virtually every inch of her. She felt violated in ways she hadn’t known existed.
On the heels of those vile feelings, an uneasy realization swept through her—the familiarity of being treated like a subject instead of a person. That sudden premonition was as unsettling as the remainder of the exam, which she barely endured without screaming.
As soon as the physical torture ended, an Asian psychiatrist, Dr. Wong, put her through a battery of psychological tests and questions that proved to be even more exhausting.
By the time she finished, she wasn’t just worried about her memory loss but her sanity. And she still hadn’t been allowed to bathe. It was almost as if they were playing mind games, leaving the stench of blood and death on her, hoping to drive her to a confession.