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"Oh, my God." Alex sat back on her folded legs, a cold numbness crawling over her skin. "The injuries, Zach ... what happened?"
"Something attacked them out there, according to the other men. Dave is delirious and he's lost a lot of blood. He's in and out of consciousness, talking a lot of nonsense about a creature lurking in one of the caves west of Harmony. Whatever it was that got ahold of him and Lanny, well, it's bad, Alex. Real bad. Tore both of them up something awful. The news is all over town already and everyone's in a panic." She closed her eyes. "Oh, my God ... oh, my God ..."
Kade's hand came to rest lightly on her bare shoulder. "What is it, Alex?" She shook her head, incapable of forming the words.
"Who's that with you?" Zach demanded. "For fuck's sake, Alex. Are you with that guy from Pete's the other night?"
Alex didn't think she needed to answer to Zach Tucker about whom she was spending time with, not when one man was dead and another man's life was hanging in the balance. Not when the horror of her past-the horror she had feared had visited the Toms family just a few days ago--was now raking her heart open all over again.
"I'm out at the Tulak cabin, Zach. I'll leave right away, but I'm probably forty-five minutes out."
"Forget it. We can't afford to wait on you. I'll track down Roger Bemis instead." He disconnected, leaving Alex sitting there, frozen in shock.
"What happened?" Kade asked. "Who's been hurt?" For a moment, it was all she could do to concentrate on breathing in and out. Her heart banged miserably, guilt gnawing at her. "I should have warned them. I should have told them what I knew instead of thinking I could deny it.">Grinning as though he were used to women admiring him, he stood up and slowly walked back over to where she lay in their nest on the floor, totally uninhibited in his nudity. Alex laughed softly and shook her head. "Does it ever get boring for you?" He cocked a dark brow as he dropped into a negligent recline beside her. "Boring?"
"Women falling all over you," she said, realizing with a bit of stunned surprise that she didn't exactly like that idea. Hated it, in fact, and she wondered where the pang of jealousy was coming from, considering she had no personal claim on him simply because they'd shared a few sweaty--and, yes, okay, flat-out spectacular--hours enjoying each other's bodies.
He stroked a stray lock of hair out of her face and drew her gaze to his. "I only see one woman here with me right now. And I can assure you, I am anything but bored."
He cupped her face in his palms and kissed her, easing her back onto the blankets. His gaze smoldered as he looked down on her, and she could feel the rigid pressure of his erection nudging at the side of her hip where he'd stretched out beside her. "You're a special woman, Alexandra. More special than you know."
"You don't even know me," she protested quietly, needing to remind herself of that fact more than him. They'd known each other for what--a couple of days? It wasn't like her to allow someone into her life so quickly, or so deeply, especially after such a short time. So, why him? Why now, when everything in her world felt as though it were perched on the edge of a very steep cliff? One strong push from the wrong direction, and she was gone. "You don't know anything about me ... not really."
"Then tell me."
She looked up into his eyes, startled by the sincerity, the raw plea, in his voice. "Tell you ..."
"Tell me what happened to you in Florida, Alex."
All the breath seemed to squeeze out of her lungs in that instant. "I did tell you--"
"Yes, but you and I both know that it wasn't a drunk driver that took your mom and brother from you. Something else happened to them, didn't it? Something that you've kept secret all these years." He spoke with gentle patience, coaxing her trust. And God help her, she felt ready to give it to him. She needed to share it with someone, and in her heart, she knew that someone was Kade. "It's okay, Alex. You can tell me the truth."
She closed her eyes, feeling the awful words--the horrible memories--rise up like acid in her throat.
"I can't," she murmured. "If I speak it, then everything I've tried to put behind me ... everything I've worked so hard to forget ... it will all become real again."
"You can't spend your life running from the truth," he said, and something haunted crept into his voice. A sadness, a resignation that told her he understood some of the burden she'd carried for so long.
"Denying the truth never makes it go away, Alex."
"No, it doesn't," she replied quietly. In her heart, she knew that. She was tired of running and sick of fighting to keep the horror of her past buried and forgotten. She wanted to be free of it all, and that meant facing the truth, no matter how awful--no matter how unfathomable--it may be. But fear was a powerful enemy. Maybe too powerful. "I'm scared, Kade. I don't know if I'm strong enough to face it alone."
"You are." He dropped a tender kiss on her shoulder, then brought her gaze back to his. "But you're not alone. I'm with you, Alex. Tell me what happened. I'll see you through it, if you'll let me." She held his imploring stare and found the courage she needed in the steely strength of his eyes.
"We'd had such a good day together, all of us. We picnicked down by the water, and I had just taught Richie how to do a backflip off the dock. He was only six years old, but he was fearless, and willing to try anything I did. It had been a perfect day, filled with so much love and laughter." Until darkness had settled over the swamp, bringing unholy terror with it.
"I don't know why they chose our family. I've searched for a reason, but I've never been able to find one for why they came out of the night to attack us."
Kade caressed her carefully as she struggled for the words that came next. "Sometimes there are no reasons. Sometimes things happen and there's nothing we can do to make sense of them. Life, and death, isn't always neat or logical."
Sometimes death sprang out of the shadows like a wraith, like a monster too horrific to be real.
"There were two of them," Alex murmured. "We didn't even know they were there until it was too late. It was dark, and we were all sitting on the veranda, relaxing after supper. My mom was on the porch swing with Richie, reading us Winnie-the-Pooh before bed, when the first one came out of nowhere without warning and pounced on her."
Kade's hand stilled. "You're not talking about a man." She swallowed. "No. It wasn't a man. It wasn't even ... human. It was something else. Something evil. It bit her, Kade. And then the other one grabbed Richie with its teeth, too."
"Teeth," he said evenly, no shock or disbelief in his voice, only a steady, grim understanding. "You mean fangs, don't you, Alex? The attackers had fangs."
