A Dom is Forever (Masters and Mercenaries #3)(24)

“You have to follow it, Li. It’s okay. This happened years ago. It can’t hurt you now.”

She was wrong. This would always have the ability to devastate him. This was his failure in life. Still, he let that ring fill his head. He stood there for a moment as time sped up. He concentrated on remaining in the moment. He felt the phone in his hand, the way his fingers seemed to struggle to hold it. His knees felt weak and nausea churned in his gut.

And that smell. Blood and the wharf. Someone had left a window open. In the distance, he could see the docks. He could hear the sound of water churning. Were they right on the water?

Liam forced himself to turn. Voice mail came on again. Rory didn’t have a personal message. It was just a computerized voice requesting that he leave a message and then a long beep.

But he’d heard the ring long enough. He hung up his phone and saw it. What he didn’t want to see.

Rory’s boots were on the floor. They stuck out just past the edge of the couch. Something was wrong with those boots. It was something about how they were sitting on the floor. His brain couldn’t quite handle the input. Why were the boots wrong? He shook his head. The boots could only mean one thing.

His brother was laid out on the blood-soaked floor.

“Rory?” His voice sounded smaller, younger. A boy calling out for his younger brother. Please get up. Please.

Nothing. No movement. The boots were still, as though someone had painted them there and they weren’t actually real. As though they were nothing he could reach out and touch.

And the ringing began again.

His phone. Someone was calling him.

Don’t answer. Don’t answer. Don’t answer.

Panic welled up. Fire seemed to flare from the corners of his eyes. Control. He was losing control. Don’t answer. He stared down at the phone. Bad things would happen if he answered that phone.

“Wake up, Li. Come out of it.”

Liam focused. He was in Eve’s room. Fuck. He wiped the sweat away. It was dripping down his brow and into his eyes. He was standing up. He’d been lying down. Confusion. He hated the feeling. One minute he’d been back there hearing that phone ringing and the next he was here doing god only knew what.

“You were trying to get out the window, Li. You seemed very intent on throwing yourself out the window.” Eve was out of breath, her normally perfect clothes askew. There was a fine tremble in her hands.

“Did I try to hurt you?” Fuck all. It was the last thing he wanted to do. Eve was his friend. She was trying to help him, and if he hurt her he would never forgive himself. Hadn’t he hurt enough people he cared about in his time? Why wouldn’t he ever learn?

She shook her head. “No. You did not. Liam, you didn’t hurt me. You were just trying to get out the window for some reason. I had to stop you, and it was a near thing.” She took a long breath. “I think you’re close to something.”

Yes. He was close to losing his bloody mind. He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I got further this time.”

Eve reached out, taking his hand in hers. “You were much more in control for longer. It will get better. But next time I think we should invite someone with a little more upper-body strength to sit in.”

He gave her hand a squeeze and then backed away. “I don’t think so.”

“Why? Li, Ian wouldn’t judge you for something that happened years ago. If I know Ian, he probably knows more than he’s saying. He wouldn’t have brought you on board if he didn’t trust you.”

“If Ian knows something, why wouldn’t he bloody well tell me?” Ian didn’t know a thing. He couldn’t possibly. If he knew, Ian would have told him. Ian was the one damn person in the world he trusted completely. Ian had saved him when all evidence was against him.

Eve found her way back to her chair on shaky legs. “If Ian didn’t think you were ready he might have kept it from you. I’m not saying he knows a damn thing, Li. I’m just saying that he likely looked into the incident even if you asked him not to.”

He hadn’t. Liam had looked into it himself, calling on a few people he trusted, but all he’d been able to discover was that he and Rory were missing and considered dead.

And all he remembered about the whole bloody affair before Eve had started her therapy was waking up in the water with blood on his hands and the memory of those boots. He’d been able to remember the dead girl and Rory’s body and that the bonds were gone.

He’d woken up face down and nearly drowning with no recollection of how he’d gotten there. One minute he’d been staring at his brother’s boots and the next he’d been in the water.

After he’d gotten out of the water and realized just how f*cked he was, he’d called Ian Taggart.

Eight hours later, he’d been on a plane to the States.

Liam sat down, making a few decisions. “If Ian knows something, then he had a reason to keep it from me. He probably didn’t think I was ready to know. He was the one who helped me find the building I’d been in, and he was the one who found out it had exploded that very morning.”

Eve leaned forward, intelligence radiating from her eyes. “I think you knew the building was going to explode. That’s why you were trying to get out tonight.”

“Well none of us bought the newspaper’s explanation of a gas leak,” Liam said. “I tried to run down ten leads and they all ended in nothing. No one had any idea where the bonds had gone. If they were used, it was with complete discretion. The arms dealer we were trying to take down mysteriously vanished off the face of the earth.”