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The sudden, overwhelming feeling of Alyssa’s death the night they’d left had been followed by another hours later. That connection to her that they’d never understood had gone all but silent about four months after she returned home. No matter how they reached for her, they only found her in their dreams.
They’d stayed away from her, following the demands in the blackmail letter implicitly. Their families had ensured it. Otherwise, they would have never been able to resist that first, agonizing loss they’d felt. The hell they’d endured for the past six years had nearly driven them past the brink of sanity. The aching loneliness and broken dreams had driven sharpened spikes of loss through their souls.
The need to see her now, to touch her, took all the self-control he could muster to resist. She was so close, waiting for him, needing him.
She was cold. All the way to the soul cold that had fear building inside him. He could only imagine what such a deep, dark chill could be. The kind where there was no warmth at all, nothing to comfort the body or the spirit.
It wasn’t death, but so close to it, he feared, that she might never find her way back.
11
Security had definitely been beefed up at the house, Shane noticed as he and Sebastian slipped onto the grounds and made their way patiently to the small patio at the back of the senator’s D.C. mansion.
The senator had doubled the security guards and added canine reinforcement, and though the guards were good, they weren’t military or Special Forces trained. They were civilian and not nearly as diligent as their better-trained, highly intuitive military counterparts.
Slipping through the break in the guards’ perimeter checks, they made it across the grounds, using shadows to cover their approach until they made it to the tree-shaded patio at the back of the two-story mansion.
The first set of French doors led to a hall lined with offices used by the senator’s staff. Farther along the precisely placed flagstone walk was another set of doors, all but hidden behind another¸ much smaller, tree-lined patio. There a small suite had been left intact, though the shades at the doors and windows blocked any attempt to see inside.
Using an ultra-thin camera connected to telescopic cable he worked between the panels of the window, Shane was able to glimpse the part of the suite they’d be slipping into. It was clear, though it was impossible to glimpse what waited behind the ornate room divider that hid the other half of the room.
Waiting to be certain there was no movement, he gave Sebastian the go-ahead to disable the alarm and move into the room as he kept watch.
Nothing moved. Even as the door opened and Shane slipped in, no more than a shadow along the side of the wall, and indicated Sebastian could proceed in.
Sebastian’s first sight of Alyssa as she lay unconscious in the narrow bed, tucked against the wall away from the doors and window, nearly brought him to his knees. Fear congealed in his belly, had his heart racing, and tightened his throat with so much emotion he felt swamped by it.
He moved across the room, uncaring if anyone waited in the darkened bathroom or entered by the door leading to the hall. Nothing mattered but Alyssa and getting to her as quickly as possible.
Reaching out, almost terrified to touch her, he let his fingers stroke down her arm, his breath catching as a sound similar to an animal’s whimper left his throat.
“She’s so cold, Shane,” he said softly, his gaze moving over her still, silent face. “She hates being cold.”
She would often chill at night for some reason, unless one of them cuddled her against his body. Now she wasn’t just chilled; she was cold. So cold and so still that he feared she’d never waken.
Kneeling next to the bed, he could only stare at her, count each breath, and fight back the rage threatening to engulf him.
Behind him, Shane sat heavily in the chair that had been pulled close to the bed. The cousins had both suffered the past six years, one just as deeply as the other. The first six months they had spent so drunk they barely remembered anything but the day they’d felt her pain striking inside them like stabbing blows.
For weeks Lucien and Murphy had kept the hands at the hacienda on alert. Many of them hadn’t escaped unscathed during the bitter, violent fights that ensued when Shane and Sebastian had fought to leave, to get to Alyssa. To ease that black, agonizing pain that had reached out to them.
“Look at you, siren,” he whispered raggedly, lifting her hand to lay his cheek in her palm, holding her lax fingers to his flesh. “I bet you were climbing again.” He knew better. “You were, weren’t you? Didn’t I warn you? We’re going to talk about that spanking, baby.”
God, what he wouldn’t do to hear her call him Goofy, to see her smile, perhaps hear her laughter?
Behind him, Shane rose, collected the doctor’s metal file at the bottom of the bed, and returned to the chair.
“You’re going to have to wake up, siren,” Sebastian whispered. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen those pretty eyes. Since you’ve given me that little scowl you used so often on me.”
She had called him incorrigible so many times, but the love in her voice had assured him she’d found joy in the antics he’d pulled just to hear her laughter.
He’d loved her laughter.
“Come on now, you know how Shane gets when you won’t speak to us.” His voice thickened painfully. “He gets impossible to deal with, starts threatening me.”
It was actually the other way around.
There was no response, though. Not even the slightest movement of her fingers against his cheek. She was completely still, far too cool, as though death had already stolen her from them.
