Mine to Take (Mine #1)(30)

“I didn’t know.” Her voice was even colder now. Her eyes were on Trace. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Dammit. He didn’t want to have this conversation with the detective’s watchful stare on them. “Because we were over.”

She flinched.

Hell. He was f*cking this up. We were over. You’d moved on. I just needed to see you.

“He wasn’t just at your dances, though.” And, again, the cop pushed clippings aside. He extracted a final photo from that file. Another photo from the crash scene. Only this time, the wreckage was in the background. Skye was strapped in a gurney and being loaded into an ambulance.

“A reporter on the scene that night caught this shot, but his bosses were…persuaded not to run it.”

She’d stilled.

“That man, right beside the EMTs, that’s you, isn’t it, Weston?”

Skye’s breath rushed out. “You were there the night of my crash?”

Shit. He had to tread very, very carefully now. “I found your car. I called for help.”

Skye shook her head. “Why were you there?”

“I think he was following you,” Alex murmured as his brows lowered. “He’d been watching you for some time. I suspect he left that ballet early, and he waited for you to leave, too. Then he followed you.”

“That’s not what happened!” Trace snapped. He should have told her. Dammit, the minute she’d walked back into his life, he should have told her that he’d been there.

As if he could forget those moments. The pelting rain. The lightning that flew across the night sky.

The blood.

The sick, twisting fear because he could not get her out of the mangled mess that had been her car.

“You were the hero who saved her from death,” Alex said as he gave a nod. “Both in New York, then here, in Chicago. You’ve saved her…what, two times in the last few days?”

Skye wasn’t speaking. Her eyes were so big and wide and lost.

“Someone broke into her studio, slammed her head into the glass…then you appeared, just in time to play her white knight.” Alex’s voice was grim.

“I had a guard on her, I had—”

“Someone set her studio on fire tonight. Before the flames could get to her, you appeared again.”

Skye jumped to her feet.

Trace didn’t move. His hands had fisted. “You think I’m her stalker.”

Did Skye think that, too?

“I think…” Alex began slowly as his face tensed in hard, tight lines, “that you’ve been obsessed with Skye Sullivan for a very long time. Since you were kids, right? That was when you put Parker Jacobs in the hospital. According to him, you did it just because you caught the two of them kissing.”

Don’t! Help me!

Trace forced his hands to unclench. “Parker is a f*cking liar. You’d be wise not to believe a word he says.”

Skye had backed away from the table. From me.

“And I’m supposed to believe you?” Alex’s question mocked him. “I tried to get access to your military service records, but Uncle Sam has those sealed tight.”

“That’s the way they should be.” He needed to talk to Skye. Alone. He’d get her to understand what he’d been doing.

“You’re a dangerous man, Trace Weston. You went black ops within months of your deployment. Vanished during your service for nearly four years, then you burst back on the scene with connections to some of the most powerful players in the world.”

He didn’t talk about his service time. Never had. Never would.

“You came back, then you fixated on the one thing that had always mattered most to you.” Alex’s gaze cut to Skye. “You watched her, you wanted her, and you couldn’t stand for anyone else to have her.”

“Trace?” She barely breathed his name. “Tell me…tell me you weren’t at the crash.”

He didn’t want to lie to her anymore.

“She wasn’t hung up on you. Skye had other lovers, so you had to put a plan in place. You needed to get her vulnerable. She was the celebrity in New York, surrounded by too many people. So you took that celebrity status away—you took her dancing away. You caused that wreck.”

“What the f*ck!” Trace leapt to his feet. His chair slammed down on the floor behind him.

“She was so hurt in the crash that she had to give up dancing, and that was exactly what you wanted.”

Trace stalked around the table, heading right for that bastard.

Alex shoved away from his chair and stood up, fists clenched.

“You took away the dancing because that is what originally took her away from you, right? That’s what Parker said. Skye left to follow her dreams in New York. She left you.”

“No!” Skye’s denial. That sound halted Trace before he could drive his fist into the cop’s face. “It wasn’t like that. Trace was joining the military. He…he’s the one who left me. He told me to go.” Her hair brushed over her shoulders as she shook her head. “He rejected me, not the other way around.”

“Then maybe he changed his mind.” Alex didn’t glance her way. “Maybe he saw so much blood and death during his deployment that it made him want life again. Want you. But he had to come up with a way of getting you back…and he did. He made you afraid. So afraid that the only person you could turn to for help would be—”