What Are You Afraid Of? (The Agency #2)(106)

Again she seemed to hit a raw nerve as Baylor sucked in a sharp breath.

“Don’t compare me to that pathetic psycho,” he warned.

Her gaze skimmed blindly from the smoldering fire toward the shadows across the clearing as the memory of what she’d overheard seared through her mind.

“Are you saying you didn’t kill those women?”

She felt him shrugging his shoulders. “It was necessary to play the game with Ronnie,” he drawled. “And I’ll admit there’s something satisfying in releasing my deepest lusts. It cleanses the soul and allows a man to return to civilized society with a sense of peace.”

Nausea rolled through her stomach. She still had nightmares from the pictures that had been sent to her. The thought that her own cousin had been responsible for torturing and murdering those poor women was inconceivable.

Had there been warning signs when he was young? Had he always harbored such wicked lusts? Or had his greed slowly corrupted his soul?

“Ronnie was sick,” she breathed. “You’re pure evil.”

He muttered a curse, the gun pressing hard enough against her temple to leave a bruise.

“Last chance, Griffin,” he called out, an edge in his voice warning that he was reaching a breaking point. “One. Two.”

Carmen squeezed her eyes shut. In the next few seconds, Griff was going to step into the clearing and be shot. Or she was going to have a bullet rip through her brain.

Neither option was something she wanted to watch.

It never occurred to her that there might be a third option. Not until she felt the raindrops that were spraying over her face.

At first she thought she must be dead. Why would it be raining in the middle of the warehouse?

Then she felt Baylor loosen his grip on her as he stumbled backward.

“What the hell?” he muttered.

Carmen opened her eyes and impulsively did a belly flop onto the hard floor. She landed with enough force to knock the air out of her lungs, but she barely noticed as the blast of a gunshot deafened her.

Blinking through the rain that continued to fall, she turned her head to watch as Baylor’s eyes widened. As if he’d seen something surprising. Then a trickle of blood flowed down his nose from the new hole he had in the middle of his forehead.

Carmen grimaced, jerking her gaze away as her cousin started to tumble backward. She didn’t need to check to see if he was dead. Instead, she frantically searched for some sign of Griff.

He was standing just a few feet away, his dark hair plastered to his head and his arm slowly lowering, with the gun held loosely in his hand.

He was pale and soaking wet, and he’d never looked more gorgeous. Jumping to her feet, Carmen wobbled across the suddenly slick floor and tossed herself into his waiting arms.

“Griff,” she breathed, pressing her face into his damp sweater.

He was alive. They’d survived both Ronnie and her crazy-ass cousin.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured, laying his cheek on top of her head.

She was trembling so hard she was sure her knees were about to collapse.

“Why is it raining?”

He chuckled softly. “It’s the sprinkler system.”

“Oh.” She wrapped her arms around his waist. She dismissed the relentless water drops that fell from the ceiling. And the knowledge there were two dead men in the building. Right now nothing mattered but the fact she was in Griff ’s arms. “Hold me. Just hold me.”

“Don’t worry, Carmen, I’m never going to let you go,” he promised in low tones.

For long minutes they clung to each other, and then the sound of footsteps had them awkwardly pulling away to watch a slender man stumble out of the shadows.

Matthew.

He looked as bedraggled as Carmen and Griff, but there was a goofy smile on his face.

“I did it,” he announced with obvious pride. “I pressed the button.”





Epilogue


January 22, Louisville, KY





Griff did finally manage to join Rylan and Jaci to enjoy the holidays. It was a little belated, but with Carmen at his side, he’d never been so happy.

They’d also traveled to visit his grandmother, who’d smothered them with her special brand of affection. Carmen had slowly lost her pallor and the dark circles beneath her eyes had faded to mere smudges.

Griff wasn’t na?ve enough to believe that she’d fully recovered from the trauma she’d endured. It might take months, if not years. But he could sense that she was starting to heal.

Best of all, she’d agreed to his demands that she allow him to travel with her during her upcoming book tour, and that when she was done, he insisted that she move into his home in California.

He’d leashed his urge to ask her to make their relationship official. Until she was strong enough to stand on her own two feet, he didn’t want to pressure her into something she might later regret. When she walked down the aisle toward him, he wanted to be sure it was because she shared the same overwhelming love he felt for her.

It was three weeks later when she abruptly announced that she’d been in touch with a real estate agent and was preparing to put her grandparents’ farm on the market. He’d merely nodded and made a few of his own phone calls. Then, loading their belongings in his rental SUV, he’d driven them from Iowa to Indiana, where a professional moving company was waiting for them at the farm, along with a couple of trusted security guards whom he ordered to remain hidden outside.