Destiny Kills Read online

  Yep, it was. But this day had gone to hell anyway, so what did one more act of madness matter? Besides, he did stop, so at least I’d achieved part of my aim.

  “I needed a lift, and no one was stopping.”

  “Considering the less than appealing way you look, I’m not entirely surprised.”

  “That’s no damn reason to try and run me over,” I muttered, tucking thick strands of matted hair behind my ear.

  A smile tugged at his lips, and it transformed his face, lending his aristocratic features a brief moment of warmth and compassion.

  Then the warmth faded and he considered me, his gaze lingering on the bruise marring my forehead before moving down. It was deliberate, that gaze, designed to tease, to arouse. To scare, even. Like he was testing me. Testing my seriousness. Only it stopped abruptly when his gaze reached my hands. “Nice ring.”

  The sexiness had fled his voice, replaced by a flatness that made my toes itch with the need to run. I resisted the urge to tuck my hand behind my back, and said, “It’s a friend’s.”

  His gaze went past me, searching the trees. “And where is the friend?”

  I hesitated. “Elsewhere.”

  The baying of a hound ran across the brief silence, and I glanced over my shoulder. I couldn’t see any movement, but those barks—and obviously my hunters—were getting closer.

  His gaze came back to mine. “Then why don’t we go find him?”

  Wariness swirled through me. Don’t trust, don’t trust. The mantra ran through my brain, words from a past I had yet to remember. “And why would you want to do that?”

  “Because if you’re willing to risk your life standing in front of a speeding car to get help, your friend obviously needs a lot of it.”

  I studied him, not entirely sure what to do. True, I needed help, but did I need it badly enough to trust a stranger who suddenly seemed overly eager to help out two people he didn’t even know?

  Of course, Egan was beyond anyone’s help—and I might just suffer the same fate if I wasn’t careful. They were out there, and they were hunting me.

  And this stranger could be one of them, for all I knew.

  Suddenly my idea of stopping a car to get help didn’t seem so bright after all.

  “I don’t think—”

  He laughed, a sound so soft, and yet so cold. “You have no idea who I am, do you?”

  Meaning I should? “Other than the man who just tried to run me down, you mean?”

  He snorted softly. “Yeah.”

  I frowned and tried to force a memory through the fog. He did remind me a whole lot of Egan—he had the same broad-shouldered, athletic build and shaggy, sun-kissed hair. But this man’s face was more aristocratic and a whole lot handsomer. And there was an odd sort of grace and elegance to his movements. Egan, for all his gentleness, had often resembled a bull in a china shop.

  But then, in all the time I’d known him, he hadn’t really seemed to care about anything at all.

  Except for me.

  And the kids.

  Tears touched my eyes again, but with them came anger. And I had no idea why, because the answers to all my questions were still locked behind the walls of forgetfulness.

  I glanced down at my somewhat bloodied feet and blinked the tears away. Whatever the reasons behind the anger, it was an undeniable fact that I hadn’t deserved Egan’s caring. I’d liked him, I’d enjoyed being with him, and I’d slept with him—but it had never been anything more than that. Not for me.

  And not for him.

  Yet he’d still given his life for me.

  Nothing could ever repay such selflessness.

  Nothing except stopping this. Stopping Marsten.

  I looked back at the stranger. “No. Who are you?”

  “Egan’s brother.”

  I blinked. Of all the answers I’d been expecting, that certainly wasn’t one of them. And it made me even more wary. “Egan hasn’t got a brother.”

  “Egan has three brothers, two sisters, and one half brother. That last one’s me.” His gaze went past me again as the hound barked, closer than before. “That dog seems to have found the scent of whatever it’s chasing. You want to stay, or do you want to go?”

  I hesitated, but really, what choice did I have? It was either stay here and confront the police—try to explain why I wore stolen clothes, and had no ID and no memory—or go with this man who could be spinning me more lies than a used-car salesman desperate to close a deal.

  “They’re almost on us,” he prompted.

  “Let’s go. Please.”

  “Good decision. Come on.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me forward, the heat of his fingers seeming to burn through the sleeve of my sweatshirt and brand my skin. He opened the car door, then ran around to the driver’s side.

  A prickle of awareness ran down my spine, and without turning around, I knew we were no longer alone on the road.

  “Oh, fuck,” the stranger said, about the same time as another voice said, “Hey, you two, stop right there.”

  “Get in,” the stranger said. “Quickly.”

  I wasn’t about to argue. I got in as fast as I could, then slammed the door.

  “Police. Stop,” the other voice called.

  I looked around, saw the big cop accompanied by another man wearing a checkered shirt and holding two dogs in check. Then the stranger gunned the big car’s engine, and we were speeding off.

  “Thank you,” I said, after a few moments.

  “Forget it,” he said, his voice holding an edge. “But why are they chasing you?”

  “I broke into a house to get some clothes.”

  “And that outfit was the best you could come up with? Lady, you make a pretty poor thief.”

  “It wasn’t as if I had a whole lot of choice,” I muttered. “And what would you know about thieving, anyway?”

  “A whole lot more than you, apparently.”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror and swore softly. I twisted around. The cop had the radio to his mouth. He was either calling in the troops or calling in the registration. Either way, too much heat would soon be swarming around my hard-won ride.

  “Look, I don’t want to get you into trouble—”

  “Well, good, because I can manage that quite well by myself.”

  “If you’d just drop me off at the nearest town—”

  “And you’ll what?” He glanced at me briefly. “You appear to have no clothes, no money, not even shoes, for God’s sake. Besides, you’re not the only thief in the car.”

  I raised my eyebrows, not entirely sure whether he was being serious or not. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced at the mirror again and his expression grew grimmer. I took another look behind us. The cop was climbing into a squad car—obviously, that’s what he’d been calling. The stranger’s car seemed to leap forward, the engine a howl that filled the interior with ear-splitting noise. Either he really was a madman, or he was speaking the truth about being a thief.

  “You’re not the man who’s been breaking into various houses around these parts, are you?”

  He snorted softly. “No.” He glanced briefly at the rearview. “Where’s Egan, Destiny?”

  Shock rolled through me and, for a moment, all I could do was stare at him. Destiny. It felt right, that name, felt comfortable.

  Question was, how did he know it? Had I stepped into an even worse situation than being chased by the cops? God, was he one of the hunters?

  I licked my lips, and repeated, “Elsewhere.”

  “Where? Damn it, tell me where my brother is!”

  “Why should I?” The retort came out before I could really think about it, but I was growing more and more convinced that I’d made the biggest mistake yet by getting into this car. “How do I know you’re really even his brother?”

  “I haven’t exactly got time right now to stop and show you my credentials,” he said coldly.

  “Well, until you do, you get
nothing from me.” I crossed my arms and stared out the windshield. The trees were zipping past way too fast, making my stomach feel queasy. Looking at him seemed a better option. “How did you even know he was back in the country?” And how did he know we’d be here? That was just too weird a coincidence, and another reason to be wary.

  “He contacted me last night.”

  He had? How, when he’d died last night? “Why did he contact you?”

  His gaze met mine. The cold depths were assessing. Distrusting. “We were supposed to meet in Florence. So what happened?”

  “Florence? Where the hell is that?”

  “Oregon.”

  So I was in Oregon? God, that was a country away from Maine. And if I needed to get there so urgently, why would I have even agreed to come here?

  And how did he know about me? Even if he had somehow talked to Egan before he’d died, I doubted Egan would have told him much about me. We were both too aware of the need for secrecy.

  “How did he contact you?”

  “If you knew anything at all about Egan, then you’d know how he contacted me.” He gave me another one of those cold glances. “Unless, of course, you really are a thief, and the police are after you because you stole Egan’s ring.”

  Again the shock rolled through me, but this time it was accompanied by a sick churning in my stomach. “What makes you think this is Egan’s ring?”

  He smiled, and this time it was a cold, harsh thing to behold. “Egan had that ring on his hand the last time I saw him.”

  “You know, I find it very strange that Egan never mentioned having siblings, let alone a half brother, in the ten years I was with him.”

  Even as I said the words, sadness washed through me. Ten years was a long time to be with someone you could never love. But it wasn’t as if we’d had any other choice. We’d been locked up, caged like animals. The two of us, my mom, and the little ones—some of them barely more than toddlers who had never really known the freedom of the skies. . . .

  The memories faded yet again. I flexed my fingers and resisted the urge to scream.

  “That’s the second time you’ve used past tense,” he said softly. “Why?”

  I briefly closed my eyes. God, I was an idiot. Yet now that he’d picked up on the mistake, part of me desperately wanted to blurt it all out—all the confusion, all the pain. I needed someone to talk to, someone to confide in. Someone to be what Egan had been to me.

  Someone to end up dead just like him?

  Besides, no matter how good it would feel to confide in someone—anyone—about the stuff I could remember and the stuff I couldn’t, the truth was that I didn’t know if I could even trust this man. His sudden appearance seemed a little too convenient. And hell, trusting a stranger was what had landed me in this whole mess in the first place. I’d lost eleven years of my life thanks to that mistake, and I wasn’t about to repeat it.

  Maybe I was being a little paranoid, but without the benefit of memories, I was working blind, and the urge for caution was humming through my bloodstream.

  I couldn’t end up caged again.

  I wouldn’t end up caged again.

  “Slip of the tongue,” I said, twisting around to look behind us rather than facing the stranger’s knowing gaze. “The cop car is getting closer.”

  “I’ll worry about it when it’s ramming our tail.”

  “Worrying about it before it sends us flying into the trees might be a better idea.”

  “They won’t ram. They’re probably arranging a road-block up ahead as we speak.”

  I studied him for a minute. “What do they really want you for?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What do they want you for? I doubt they’d be so intent on chasing someone over a pair of sweatpants.”

  “Well, apparently you’re wrong.” I hesitated, but had to ask the question that came instantly to mind. “Have you killed anyone?”

  “Have you?” he shot back.

  “No,” I said, but somewhere in the back of my mind, screams mingled with the splatter of blood and white matter across stark white walls. No, I thought. No.

  But the memories would not be denied.

  It wasn’t Egan’s death. The responsibility for that might be mine—if only because he’d died trying to protect me—but he’d been shot through the heart, not the head. The death I remembered was another one entirely.

  I had killed. I just didn’t know how or why. And that was a scary thought.

  Maybe the stranger should be scared of me, and what I might do, not the other way around.

  He didn’t say anything and I looked behind us again. The cop car was catching up. No matter how powerful the engine in this car sounded, we weren’t gaining any ground. I glanced back at the stranger and studied his profile. His lips were like Egan’s—same shape, same lush kissability. I pushed the annoying thought away, and said, “Do you have a name?”

  “Trae Wilson.” He glanced at me. “And I find it hard to believe that Egan never talked about any of us.”

  “The only thing he ever said was that the past no longer mattered.”

  “So he never talked about his clique and what they did?”

  Clique? What the hell did he mean by that? His family?

  “No, he didn’t.” I hesitated, my fingers clenching around the cold metal ring as the decision I’d made to return the ring to its owner reverberated briefly through my thoughts. “What did they do?”

  “What didn’t they do might be a better question.” His gaze went back to the rearview mirror.

  I twisted around again. The cops were closing in fast. The big man who’d tracked me to the dam was talking into the radio, meaning that Trae was probably right in his earlier assessment that they were setting up a roadblock.

  “If I was the betting kind,” I said, “I’d reckon they’re working up a trap.”

  “Looks like it.”

  He didn’t sound in the least concerned, and I studied his face for several seconds before letting my gaze slide downward. Was it his similarity to Egan that had the flick of attraction racing through my veins, or was something else going on?

  “Have you actually got a plan to get us away from them, or are you just playing it by ear?”

  “I always have a plan.” His gaze met mine, the sky-blue depths holding an intensity and an awareness that sent a warm shiver across my skin. “Always.”

  I rubbed my arms and pulled my gaze from his. I didn’t understand what was going on, but for once my lack of memory had absolutely nothing to do with it. This man seemed to be working on a whole different level.

  The car swept around another bend, revealing a long straight stretch of road. Two cars sat across the road at the far end, completely blocking it.

  “Well, there’s our roadblock,” I said, pointing out the obvious. “What are you going to do?”

  He didn’t answer, just wrenched the wheel side-ways. The car slewed around, the tires screaming in protest. The unexpected motion threw me against him, hard. And that odd awareness rose again, thick and strong, until all I could feel, all I wanted, was him.

  And then the car was straightening again, and I was thrown back, this time against the door, hitting my head so hard against the glass it was amazing one or the other didn’t crack.

  “Seat belt,” he snapped, voice little more than a heat-filled growl.

  Or maybe it was my imagination, a leftover of the weird awareness our brief touch had caused.

  I took a deep, shuddery breath and tried to concentrate on the matter at hand—escape.

  We were currently gunning down a dirt track that barely looked wide enough to fit a motorcycle, let alone a car the size of this one. Tree branches and God knows what else slapped across the windshield and scraped the sides, but somehow we were getting through. But a look behind soon revealed the cop still followed.

  “Have you any idea where we’re going?”

  “Not really.”

  I looked at him. “I though
t you said you always had a plan?”

  “Maybe I lied. Maybe I just like winging it.”

  Amusement played about his lush lips, and I frowned. “Is that meant to be comforting?”

  “Sweetheart, it’s not meant to be anything more than the truth.”

  “I’m not your sweetheart.”

  His amusement bubbled, stretching his lips into a devilish grin that had my pulse doing happy little cartwheels.

  Why? That was the question that still echoed through me, even as another part of me bathed in the sexiness of that grin. What the hell was happening to me? Why on earth was I reacting like this to a stranger? A man who might yet prove more dangerous than the cops chasing us?

  “You may not be my sweetheart,” he said, blue eyes twinkling as he glanced my way, “but you could be, if you play your cards right.”

  “In your dreams, my friend.”

  “You don’t want to know about my dreams. Trust me on that.”

  I pulled my gaze away from his, unsure whether the sudden erratic beat of my heart was excitement or fear. A whole lot of me was praying for fear, because that was the sensible reaction in this situation.

  Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of sensible around at the moment.

  The car hit a bump and jumped into the air. I did the same, yelping as my head hit the roof before the car and I crashed back down.

  “You really might want to put on your seat belt,” he said. “This is going to get a lot rougher before it’s over.”

  I looked out the windshield, saw that we were approaching a forest where the trees were all big and sturdy and impassable looking, and quickly pulled on the belt, as advised. “I really need to know that you have a plan right now.”

  Especially seeing that the gap between those trunks didn’t seem to be getting a whole lot wider. I braced myself against the car and resisted the urge to squeeze my eyes shut.

  “I do have a plan,” he said, voice calm and still touched by warm amusement. “Which is not to say you’re going to like it.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  He didn’t answer, and I couldn’t really be unhappy about that. The tiniest loss in concentration on his part could easily send us splattering across the trunks we were approaching way too fast.