Finally he drew a deep breath, lifted his head and ran one hand up her back, pulling her down for a hot kiss that left her reeling. ‘You’re mine, Detective. You have been since that first day I saw you.’

When he’d been shot protecting a woman he’d never even met. She smiled at him. ‘I know. But it’s nice to hear, isn’t it?’

His lips curved, just a little. ‘Hell, yeah.’ Effortlessly he scooped her into his arms, setting her on his lap, gently pressing her cheek into his chest when she tried to look at him. ‘I have something to tell you. It’ll be easier if you’re not looking at me while I do it.’

She braced herself. Not gonna be good, she thought. ‘Okay. I’m ready when you are.’

Twenty-eight

Cincinnati, Ohio

Wednesday 5 August, 6.25 A.M.

‘I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to tell anyone, but I need you to know.’ He grew still, his only movement the rising and falling of his chest as he breathed. ‘You didn’t ask me how I knew my father had hired the kidnappers.’

‘I wanted to, but I figured you’d tell me when you were ready.’

His arms tightened around her. ‘Why am I so lucky?’ he murmured, then sighed. ‘Mom sent a car to drop us off and pick us up from school every day. Stone and I were taken when our driver was overpowered. He was found a few hours later, wandering the streets in Lexington, drugged and confused. By then, Matty had been taken too.’

‘From his bed.’

‘Yes. They took us to a warehouse by the river, but we didn’t know that. They locked us in an old beef freezer that was no longer used. It smelled bad, but it wasn’t cold. Stone and Matty were so scared. I tried to be brave, but I was terrified too. I knew we were rich. I knew my mother worried that something like this might happen one day.’ He was quiet for a moment, rubbing a lock of her tangled hair between his thumb and forefinger. ‘We weren’t tied up at first. I guess they figured three little boys couldn’t cause them any trouble.’

‘I guess they didn’t know the O’Bannion boys,’ she said, and he huffed a small laugh.

‘The day Jeremy O’Bannion adopted us and gave us his name was the best day of my life, up until that point. I couldn’t stand introducing myself as Marcus Gargano. Gargano was his name and I hated him.’ He’d grown stiff, but he drew a few breaths, his hold on her relaxing. ‘The freezer had a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, but the light switch was on the outside wall so we couldn’t turn it on.’

‘You were trapped, alone in the dark,’ she murmured. His littlest brother had died in the dark. Like Tala. ‘Oh, Marcus.’

Another audible swallow. ‘Yeah.’ His voice broke and he cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t talked about this in twenty-seven years.’

‘Your mother didn’t get you counseling?’ she asked, appalled.

‘Sure, but . . . I didn’t tell the counselors anything. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I didn’t want my mother to know what I’d done and I didn’t trust the counselors not to tell her.’

Didn’t want his mother to know? Hell. ‘What did you do?’ she asked gently.

‘I climbed on a box and unscrewed the light bulb so that they wouldn’t have any light when they came in to check on us, then I used a paperclip in my pocket to loosen some of the screws on the metal shelving unit against the wall. I used one of the rods as a club and hit one of the kidnappers with it.’

She jerked in surprise, even as the knowledge registered that he was not answering her question. But this was his story and she’d let him tell it. ‘Wow. You were very resourceful.’

‘I watched way too much television. It was foolish, actually. I was only eight years old, and even though I hit him with all my might, it didn’t hurt him. It just made him mad. He wanted to kill me, but the other kidnapper calmed him down. The two of them brought in a chair and tied me to it, then turned me so that I couldn’t see my brothers. They tied Stone and Matty too. Didn’t blindfold or gag us.’ He shook his head. ‘It was winter and we all had colds. The calm one was afraid we’d suffocate if they covered our mouths with duct tape. I couldn’t get to my brothers, but I could hear them crying.’ He shuddered out a breath. ‘Stone kept asking me to make the men go away, saying he just wanted to go home. I kept promising him it would be all right.’

She remembered Stone’s near meltdown in Marcus’s office the day before. ‘He said that yesterday. Said to make me go away. You promised him it would be all right.’

Another shuddering exhale. ‘Certain things set him off. One of the kidnappers was the security guard for the warehouse. Told Stone he was a cop and would shoot him if he cried. For a long time he couldn’t look at anyone in uniform without unraveling, but he got past that eventually. Jeremy helped a lot. He’s a calm man and helped us calm down too.’

‘But Stone was in the Army. He wore a uniform.’

‘That was a personal challenge to himself. The ultimate “fuck you, world, I’m over that shit”. He wore a uniform, served with uniforms, took commands. He served his time and got out. His issue with cops, though . . . It’s still there. If he feels threatened by a cop . . .’

‘I don’t wear a uniform.’

‘Doesn’t matter. I’ve always thought that for him to get over his fear of uniforms, he had to transfer it somewhere, so it’s generalized to all cops.’

‘But . . . He didn’t trust me when I met him nine months ago, but he didn’t melt down.’

‘Not while you were there. He melted down later.’

‘That’s why you were so fierce that day in the hospital, when I criticized him for lying to us. You told me that when I’d walked a mile in his shoes, then I could judge him. I didn’t understand.’

He kissed her temple. ‘Of course you didn’t. How could you have? I wasn’t going to tell you, because it’s Stone’s secret. But it’s mine too.’

She petted his chest, soothing him. ‘I won’t let him know that I know. I think we’ve achieved a truce and I don’t want to ruin it. Or hurt him any more.’

A shrug of his muscled shoulders. ‘Thank you. At this point he doesn’t think you’re Satan.’ His huffed chuckle was sad. ‘You made some kind of impression. A good one, I think. It’s hard to tell with Stone sometimes.’ He straightened his spine against the wall, jostling her a little in his lap, but his arms kept her close.

‘There are other things I can’t tell you. Things . . . they did to him.’ His voice was stark, filled with pain. ‘They knew I was listening. Saw how hard I fought to get loose so I could make them stop. I . . .’ His chest heaved once. ‘That was . . . Oh God. I still hear his voice, crying for me to help him. They didn’t touch me. I wish they had. I begged them to, to leave Stone and Matty alone. They just laughed and said I’d get my turn.’

Scarlett was trembling with anger, her fists clenching helplessly. She bit her tongue to keep from saying anything, knowing her fury would spill out into her words.

Marcus stroked her hair. ‘More things you can’t unsee,’ he murmured.

‘I hope they’re dead.’ Because if they weren’t, she’d find them and kill them.

‘They are very dead.’

The darkly satisfied way he said it made her pull away to try to see his face, but he held her tighter. ‘Not yet,’ he said harshly. ‘Don’t look at me yet.’

She ceased her struggling, giving him his privacy. ‘Were they caught by the police?’

‘No.’ He sounded a little amused at that. ‘I’m sure they would have preferred the cops.’ He resettled her in his lap and continued, his voice surprisingly calm. ‘They gave instructions for the ransom, said no police or FBI should be contacted. Gayle told me later that my father wouldn’t let my mother contact the authorities, but she snuck away and did it anyway. The Feds followed the pickup man to the warehouse complex. That’s how they found us, but they had to do a building-to-building search. When the kidnappers realized the Feds were closing in, they freaked. They grabbed the money and ran, but not before trying to take care of us. We’d seen their faces. I was just a kid. I didn’t realize that from the beginning we were dead in their eyes. One of them opened the freezer door and . . . fired.’