The Woman Who Wasn't There

MILLS & BOON

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To Tiffany Khauo and Eddie S. Wu.

I wish you love, now and forever.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Coming Next Month

Chapter 1

The feeling of danger threaded itself through the atmosphere, permeating every inch around her.

Pulsating.

Feeding the kernel of fear within her until it threatened to take over. The fear stole the very air away from her. She began to choke. The panic was tangible.

This isn’t real. It’s not real.

The words throbbed within her head, a mantra she clung to even as she felt herself cascading down the rapids of mounting terror.

And then she heard his voice. She heard it inside her head before it even reached her ears.

“Don’t even think about it. Don’t even think about running away. Don’t you know you can’t?” The voice mocked her without an iota of mirth. “There isn’t a corner of this earth where you can run to hide from me. Not for long. Because I’ll find you. And when I do, you’ll learn what it means to cross me.”

“I could shred the very skin off your bones and no one’ll lift a finger to help you. No one’ll lift a finger against me.”

“Do you understand?”

The words, disembodied, branded her soul.

She couldn’t see him. Only feel his hot breath, tinged with alcohol and malice, along her skin. Along her face, her neck, down to her very toes. It burned.

He was right. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. She was vulnerable. Naked before him as she always was now. In spirit if not in fact.

But it was her spirit that kept her going. The spirit, the courage she’d found deep within her. The spirit he’d tried to rip from her. Grasping it like a solid entity in her hands, she fled. Fled as she was bound to. Because she knew if she stayed, somehow, some way, she’d be dead. He’d see to that. She knew it as well as she knew her own name.

So she ran.

Ran until her lungs ached and her legs threatened to give out beneath her. And then she ran some more. And always, always, she felt his presence right there behind her. Felt it even though she couldn’t see it.

Then suddenly he was there, grabbing her. His two hands wound around her throat and he was choking her. Making the air disappear again.

Even though she still couldn’t see him, his eyes were gleaming above her as his thumbs applied pressure on her windpipe.

“You’re mine. You’ll always be mine. Mine.”

Delene D’Angelo bolted upright in her bed. It took her a moment to realize that the shrieking that had woken her up came from her. She pressed her trembling fingers over her mouth to still the noise.

She couldn’t still the trembling.

It was March. March in the Northern California city of Aurora was still fairly cold, but she was sweating. Her short platinum-blond hair was plastered against her forehead, and the jersey she slept in, the single habit that tied her to her past, adhered to her body as if she’d just been shoved into the center of a pool.

Her body was slick with the perspiration of fear. She threaded her arms around herself and rocked, the motion comforting her only a little.

The sound of her labored breathing filled the small, sparsely furnished loft apartment. Delene did her best to regulate it. To still it as she strained to listen.

Were there any other sounds in the room, hidden by the noise she made? She caught her breath, even though it hurt her lungs. She still felt as if she’d run a long distance. And she had. She’d run for five years.

There was no other sound in the room. The tiny rented apartment was silent.

Like a house of cards, Delene collapsed, her head falling forward for a moment to lean against her clenched knees. After a moment, she began to pull herself together. Taking a deep, cleansing breath, she dragged her hand through her hair.

It was a dream. A nightmare.

Again.

She made a small, disparaging noise in the darkness, shaking her head. Was she ever going to be free of them? Or were they—was it—going to haunt her forever?

It had been five years, five long years, since she’d walked into this brand-new life she’d laid out for herself. Five years since she’d fled from the other world she’d inhabited. When would the nightmares finally leave her alone? When would she stop looking over her shoulder, wondering if that noise she heard was harmless, or if it was a warning to run?

The nightmares assaulted her three, sometimes four times a week. Granted, that was less frequent than before. But just marginally. When she had first escaped, she’d have the nightmares every night. Whenever she closed her eyes, there was her old life, waiting for her. Mocking her.

And there he stood. Russell. Looming larger than life. Grabbing at her. Capturing her again.

“A dream, Dee. Just a dream,” she told herself out loud, her voice harsh and stern as if she were trying to snap someone out of succumbing to hysteria.

She could feel the tears that wanted to come and she banished them. Tears were worse than useless. They were a sign of weakness, and she couldn’t afford to be weak. Not even for a moment.

Delene sat there in the dark, willing herself into a state of rational calm.

“Maybe I should go to a shrink. Have someone help me get these thoughts out of my head.”

Her words skimmed along the shadows. It was just talk. She wasn’t about to expose her fears to anyone. Didn’t really trust anyone enough to talk to them. She couldn’t risk it. Because Russell and the people he worked for had eyes and ears everywhere and somehow it would get back to him.

And then he’d have her. And kill her. Just as he’d threatened he would. He wasn’t given to making idle threats. That wasn’t his style. And style was everything to Russell. That and his reputation.

Delene shifted, swinging her legs out of the double bed. She sat for a moment, staring into the semidarkness, the chill in the air slowly creeping over her. After a beat, she blew out a breath.

Her breathing was almost steady. And her pulse was slowing down to something considerably less than the speed of sound.

She was going to be all right.

Until the next time.

Glancing at the clock on her nightstand, Delene rotated her shoulders, throwing off the last remnants of sleep that might have still been clinging to her body if not her mind. The bright blue numbers on the clock registered in her brain. Four o’clock. An ungodly hour for everyone but bakers and a handful of medical professionals. And her. It was time for her to be getting up today.

There was a raid she was scheduled to conduct.

Less than half an hour later, Delene finished buttoning the khaki-colored blouse and slipped the ends inside similar-colored slacks. Her mouth quirked at her reflection. She certainly didn’t look like someone who was plagued by nightmares. Or someone who diligently checked the locks on her windows and door first thing every morning as soon as her feet hit the floor. And the last thing every night before she went to bed.

She’d learned to install the locks herself rather than trusting someone else to do it for her. Locks to keep the source of her nightmare out.

Given her past, she hadn’t exactly picked a profession that was designed to give her peace of mind. But it was the last kind of career Russell would think she’d become involved in, so she’d taken to it like a duck to water.

She was glad to finally make use of her degree for something. Eye candy had no use for a degree in criminology. And the idea of her working at anything had displeased Russell.

Her present career served as an outlet for her on more than one level. She was a probation officer for the county, had been for five years, thanks to a little altering of her school records by a friend. The education hadn’t been a lie, only the name in the records.

Being a probation officer allowed her to do something positive. It gave her the opportunity to help the people who genuinely wanted to atone for their transgressions and get on with their lives. To make something of themselves by putting their lives on a different track. The way she ultimately had.

And it also allowed her to keep tabs on the people who had thought that somehow they’d beaten the system and received a “get out of jail” card for nothing. The ones who felt they were invincible. Those she took special pleasure in foiling.

And each time she did, she thought of Russell. Of how it would feel to send him to prison. This empowered her.

That was what this morning’s raid was all about—checking up on one of her charges. Clyde Petrie was a mean-mouthed, small-time drug dealer who’d gotten a walk the first time because of a technicality and a slap on the wrist plus probation for dealing the second time. Both times he’d gotten lucky and drawn judges who believed he could be rehabilitated. Both Judge Walker and Judge Le felt that space in the overcrowded jails should be saved for the truly hardened criminals, the ones who raped and maimed their victims before killing them. To them, Clyde was just an annoying gnat to be swatted away.

Thinking himself in possession of a charmed life, or maybe just too stupid to learn from his mistakes, Clyde had gone back to doing what he did best. Dealing. And this time, it might result in his undoing. But Clyde, when faced with the threat of serious jail time, had blurted out that he had something to trade. Something big. He’d singled Delene out, begged her to be his advocate and she in turn had brought the matter to the court-appointed lawyer. The latter had concurred.

Against the better judgment of the assistant district attorney who oversaw the case, Clyde had somehow managed to get out on bail. But he was still on the books as one of her cases, and until he was either under lock and key, or in protective custody, she intended to keep tabs on him. To keep him as straight as possible.

One of the best ways was to conduct a raid. Probation officers had the right to turn up in the dead of night on the person’s doorstep, demanding entry. They could legally toss his or her possessions to make sure that there were no illegal substances or weapons on the premises. Fear of jail was supposed to keep them honest.

However, this raid was just a cover. To establish an alibi for Clyde and throw suspicion off—until he testified against the man who ultimately gave him his supply, one Miguel Mendoza.

Delene put the cereal bowl she’d only half filled into the sink, running water into it. Then she checked her weapon, the way she did every morning. In the five years she’d owned the gun, she’d never fired it in the line of duty and didn’t intend to.

Unless Russell found her.

Satisfied as to its condition, she holstered her weapon. She was ready.

Once Clyde said what he had to say at Mendoza’s trial, the government would give him a new identity and send him off to some obscure location. Where he would undoubtedly run afoul of law, Delene thought grimly. Someone like Clyde seemed predisposed to stumble. But that wasn’t her concern. She had to make sure the case closed satisfactorily. In this instance, getting Clyde into court to testify and then into the hands of another branch of the government, who would take it from there.

Her hair still slightly damp from the quick shower she’d taken, Delene got in behind the wheel of her small, nondescript vehicle. She liked it better than the Jaguar she’d driven in her other life, because the Jaguar had been a symbol of her servitude. This secondhand car, bought with her own money, was a symbol of her independence.

After buckling up, she turned on the rebuilt engine the department mechanic had installed for her at cost, and switched on the lights. The mechanic, a twenty-year veteran with the department, had taken pity on her when the car had all but died at his feet. He told her she reminded him of his youngest daughter. She’d still kept her guard up. It grew tiring at times.

Pulling out of the carport, Delene drove toward the Traveler’s Motel, a seedy little place comprised of eighteen units, all in need of some kind of repair. Clyde called it home when he wasn’t cooling his heels in a holding tank. She was meeting Adrian Jones and Jorge O’Reilly there, the two men joining her in the raid.

Dawn was still more than an hour away.

“Oh, damn.”

Standing to her right, Adrian nodded. Tall, athletic and given to grinning, he sported a grim smile now as he said, “Yup, I’d say that about sums it up.”

They, along with Jorge, found themselves looking down at the body that lay facedown in the middle of a flattened rug. The floor covering had long since lost any hint of an actual color. Its present hue was a combination of over a decade’s worth of stains and dirt. At the moment, its most prominent color was provided by the pool of blood slowly darkening as it was drying. The blood, until recently, had been part of Clyde Petrie’s limited supply.

The county’s only witness against Miguel Mendoza was dead.

Moments earlier, on Delene’s order, Jorge had applied his considerable bulk to the front door, taking it down after several quick raps went unreplied. It had made Delene somewhat uneasy that there hadn’t been the sound of scurrying on the other side of the door to indicate the quick disposal of drugs or some other illegal contraband. That was when she’d given Jorge the signal for a quick entry.

They’d stumbled over Clyde’s body the second they’d gained admittance.

The heat was on, causing the ripening smell of death to take possession of the single-room unit. Taking a breath to steel herself off, Delene leaned over and checked Clyde’s neck for a pulse just in case he’d managed to continue his lucky streak. His luck had apparently run out when he needed it most. There was no pulse.

“Looks like Mendoza got to him first,” Jorge surmised. He loosened his collar. Despite the open door, it felt stuffy in the room.

She got to her feet, ignoring the hand the large man offered her. Not because of any disdain she felt, because she didn’t. She got along as well as could be expected with the two men. They were pleasant and decent. But she was stubbornly determined to do everything for herself and accept no help unless she absolutely had to. The less dependent she was on anyone, the safer she was. That meant building no bridges, forging no relationships beyond the office.

As far as coworkers went, both Adrian and Jorge were good men. They were both likable, both married and Jorge had two kids with one on the way. And more importantly, they didn’t look down on her for being a female in what could be easily thought of as a man’s world. They treated her like a person and she was grateful for that. But not grateful enough to think of either man as a friend.

She sighed, shaking her head. Thinking of the waste. Clyde had been safer in jail than in the place he called home.

“Looks like,” she agreed. The logical conclusion was that Miguel Mendoza, the former gang member who’d risen up to become a drug lord of some consequence, had eliminated their star witness.

But Delene knew nothing was ever so crystal clear.

If it was, she would still be in Colorado.

Taking her cell phone out of her hip pocket, she dialed the number that would connect her to their liaison in the police department. As it rang, she looked at the body on the floor. Clyde Petrie was no longer her concern. Technically.

“You’ve just got to get a bigger car.”

The words were grunted out as Troy Cavanaugh, the last of Brian Cavanaugh’s sons to make detective, folded his six-foot-three frame into the vehicle he swore was a subcompact. It wasn’t the first time he’d made the complaint to Kara Ward, the homicide detective the department had paired him with almost immediately after awarding him his gold shield.

As before, Kara sniffed at his words. The vehicle was a perfect fit for her, but then, she was only five-one in her bare feet. As far as he was concerned, that wasn’t even people-sized. She could have just as easily ridden around in a toy car. But he needed something with space, and Kara’s car was cutting off the circulation to the lower half of his body.

Kara gave him a look that said beggars had no right to be choosers—or complainers.

“Either that or a partner who can’t pass as a float in the Thanksgiving Day parade,” the woman quipped. She watched as he struggled to buckle up. “Not my fault you didn’t have the good sense to know when you should stop growing.”

Troy shook his head. Or attempted to. The car wasn’t much on head room, either. The one he normally rode in—the one he drove—was currently in the shop after a rather damaging encounter with a fire hydrant. Said encounter was the result of the tail end of a high-speed chase with a man suspected of killing his pregnant girlfriend to keep her from talking to his wife. The chase had ended in the man’s apprehension as well as the wrecked car and a substantial repair bill—both for the car and the fire hydrant.

All this had happened yesterday and Troy hadn’t gotten a chance to get a replacement. When the call had come in this morning, taking him away from a rather pleasant dream, he’d had no choice but to agree to have Kara come pick him up. Something he’d regretted the moment he’d hung up the phone.

Finally he managed to get the metal end of the seat belt into the slot. There was a stitch in his side.

“I’m going to the car rental agency after work,” he announced, trying to sit straight. It was a futile attempt. “Get a real vehicle instead of a clown car.”

Kara glanced toward him. “Keep this up and I won’t let you have the can opener you’ll need to get out of this one when we get to the motel.”

Taking a corner sharply, she laughed at the stifled curse coming from the passenger side. A minute later, they were pulling up into the parking lot of the motel. Kara smoothly parked her pride and joy next to a large white van with blue and green lettering across the side. The sign proclaimed it to be a crime scene investigation vehicle for the city of Aurora.

Bracing one hand on the dashboard and one on the roof of the compact, Troy managed to extract himself from the torturous vehicle, although it wasn’t easy. His partner hadn’t left all that much space for him on his side. Straightening, he fixed his jacket.

“Looks like the CSI people got here ahead of us,” he noted.

Kara laughed shortly as she closed her door. “Easy to see how you earned your shield.”

One of four siblings with seven cousins, most of whom were older, Troy had learned early on to roll with the punches and take things lightly. It was the key to survival. He grinned at Kara as they made their way to the motel room.

“What’s up, Kara? Your hot-and-heavy date decide to hog the covers?”

She frowned as she gave him a dirty look. “None of your business what my hot-and-heavy date did with the covers.” The next moment she offered a somewhat lukewarm apology. “Sorry, Cavanaugh. Didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“Yeah, you did.” As he spoke, he looked around at the area. Light was uncharitable to the motel, exposing all its dingy, dirty little secrets. “But that’s okay. I’ve got a sister who’s pretty much as even-tempered as you are. Rolls right off my back.”

Kara snorted. “Remind me to send condolences to your sister.”

“Funny—” Troy opened the door to the motel room and moved back to let Kara enter first “—I was thinking the same thing about your hot-and-heavy date.”

The room was like every other run-down motel room that littered not only this state, but every other one, as well. In its own way, the space bore the mark of the countless people who had passed through over the years, leaving not only the stench of hopelessness in their wake, but a coat of grime that went down too many layers to clean.

Ordinarily, the first thing Troy took in when he entered a crime scene was the reason for his presence: the victim. But this time, his attention was momentarily drawn to the three people who were standing off to the side, conferring with one of the crime scene investigators. There were two men and a woman, identically dressed in the uniform provided by the county’s probation department. They couldn’t have been more different. One man was tall and thin, the other shorter and far more heavyset.

But it was the woman who captured his attention. Not because she was the only female in the trio, but because her delicate features seemed so out of place, so alien to the drab uniform she wore. The clothing belonged to someone who was hardened, someone accustomed to dealing with the dregs of society.

She, on the other hand, looked like someone who might have inspired a Renaissance artist to go run for his paints and his brush in an effort to somehow capture this vision of an angel walking the earth.

“Hey, Cavanaugh,” Kara whispered, “you’re staring. Get your tongue back in your head before you wind up embarrassing me.”

“Too late for that, Kara,” Troy heard himself whispering back, only half-aware that he was even answering her. “They’ve already seen you.”

Kara muttered something cryptic and sarcastic in response, but her words just formed a slight buzz in the background.

He and the woman in the probation officer’s uniform had just made eye contact and he had to remind himself to breathe.

The only problem was he’d forgotten how.

Chapter 2

He was staring at her.

Did the man who’d just walked into room know her? Recognize her from somewhere? Delene thought he looked familiar, but she couldn’t be sure.

Long, thin, spidery fingers of panic skittered through her as she struggled to place the tall, dark man in the black slacks and equally black turtleneck sweater he wore beneath a blue windbreaker.

This was stupid.

Annoyed with herself, Delene banked down the growing fear. She was overreacting again. It was obvious by his manner, by the way he took over a room, that he was a police detective. And since she was an agent with the County Probation Department, more than likely their paths had crossed once, if not several times. So he was probably just trying to place her. There, a logical explanation. No big deal.

Delene did her best to stifle an impatient sigh. The impatience was directed at herself. How long was it going to take before she felt safe? Before a look was just a look and not the outward sign of pending exposure? Of a reason to run? She wished she could say soon, but she knew better.

Squaring her shoulders, she ran her fingers through her short hair, pushing it away from her face as she donned her “go-to-hell” attitude, the one that had kept her secure up to now. She looked straight at the tall, dark-haired man with the penetrating blue eyes, wicked smile and cleft chin.