Sophie Oak
Cam stopped, pulled roughly from his memory. His feet had
known which way to go. He was standing in front of the doors that led
to the lobby. Rafe put a hand on his shoulder and spun him around.
“I’ve been yelling like an idiot for two minutes. Why didn’t you
stop?”
Cam shrugged, unwilling to betray his emotional state. He let his
face go blank. He’d perfected it long ago so his father wouldn’t gain
any satisfaction from knowing how deeply his insults cut. He just
never really thought he would have to go there with Rafe. “I didn’t
have anything to say.”
Rafe scrubbed a hand through his perfectly cut pitch-black hair.
“That’s bullshit, Cam. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have
something to say.” He glanced down at his watch. “I know you’re
pissed at me. I would be pissed at me, too, but I have my reasons.”
“Were you going to tell me?” Cam asked the question as if the
answer didn’t have the ability to rip his insides out. He also asked it as though he would actually believe any answer that came out of Rafe’s
mouth.
“No.”
Well, at least the asshole was honest. “Then we’re done here. I’ll
see you in the next lifetime, my brother.”
“Stop. Come on, Cam. You know we need to talk. Just let me
explain, and then if you don’t want to talk to me, we can be done. I
just need five minutes, but I have to finish that briefing. I can meet
you at McKay’s at four, okay?” Rafe was already backing up, his five
hundred dollar shoes squeaking against the marbled floor.
McKay’s Pub. They had spent a lot of nights unwinding at
McKay’s. For a while it had been their favorite hangout. Cam had
spent every night there after work. They had joked that there was a
booth with their names on it. He and Rafe had taken turns sitting
beside Laura while they discussed the work day. “Sure. Four
o’clock.”
Rafe smiled. “Four o’clock. I’ll be there.”
Lost in Bliss
15
But Cam wouldn’t. He waved at Rafe and then walked out the
door, hopped on his bike, and motored right past the bar where he was
supposed to give his ex-partner five minutes of his time. He wouldn’t
waste another second.
When he pulled into his rathole of an apartment complex, he
carefully unfolded the newspaper clipping he’d printed from the
Internet . Billionaire Artist’s Bride-to-Be. It was an article featuring someone named Jennifer Waters and her spectacular wedding plans.
The picture was of the bride-to-be and her bridesmaids. There were
five other women in the picture, but Cam’s eyes focused on one. She
stood toward the back as though she didn’t really want to be in the
photo, but a smiling red-haired woman held her hand, dragging her in.
Her lips quirked up in a secretive smile. She looked so different with
her hair down and very little makeup on her face. She looked vibrant
and happy and so sweet he could eat her alive.
Laura Rosen.
The only woman he ever loved.
“I’m coming for you, baby.” He hopped off his bike and jogged to
his apartment, eager to get the hell out of Dodge.
* * * *
Rafael Kincaid pulled his Benz into the small parking lot of the
Hampton Manor Homes and felt a bit of his rage morph into guilt.
He’d been furious when he realized Cam had stood him up. Rafe had
rushed through the meeting, anxious to talk to Cam, to clear the air
between them, and that asshole had just gone home. He’d gone home
to a dilapidated fourplex that Rafe wouldn’t have let a dog live in.
Cam lived here?
Damn it, he should have known. Cam had sent him an e-mail with
his new address, but Rafe had been far too busy to do what he should
have done. He should have helped him move. He should have
checked this place out. He slid out of his car, which might be worth
16
Sophie Oak
more than the entire small building. There were four units, and at least three of them had to be housing meth labs. What the hell was Cam
doing here?
Spending every dime he has looking for your woman.
It was obvious to Rafe that Cam had spent all of his money on the
computer equipment he needed to perfect his facial recognition
software. Cam had given up comfort and safety.
Rafe scrubbed a hand across his face and felt years older than
thirty-four. He could swear he’d aged twenty years since the night
Laura Rosen had been captured by the Marquis de Sade. The minute
he’d realized she was gone, his soul had become something older,
heavier, than it had been before. Guilt weighed on him. Now he felt
its press as he walked up the steps that led to Cam’s “home.”
Damn it. Why hadn’t Cam told him he needed money? Rafe
would have happily written him a check.
He rapped his knuckles across the peeling paint on the door.
“Cam? Cam, let me in. I’m not going away, and I can see that your
bike is parked outside. I know you’re in there.”
“And I should care about that, why?” Cam shouted it through the
door.
“Because I’ll tell you what you want to know. I brought the files
and everything.” Rafe felt infinitely weary. He’d wanted to avoid
talking to Cam about this because he didn’t need anything else
tugging at his conscience.
“I don’t want to know anything. I’m good. You could get in some
serious trouble for sharing that file with me. I hope you catch the
bastard.”
Rafe was about to protest, to start to coax Cam out of his shell.
He’d known Cam for years. When Cam felt slighted, he could hold on
to it like a baby clutching a prized toy. But he was also tenacious as a pit bull. Cam should be drooling over new information about the man
they had been hunting for years.
Lost in Bliss
17
Four years before, they had made a deal. It had been almost a year
after Laura had walked out of her hospital room leaving behind
nothing but a note that told them a simple goodbye. They had killed
themselves, splitting their time between trying to catch the Marquis de
Sade and trying to track their wayward lover. Neither one of them had
had a decent night’s sleep. It had been time to make a deal. Rafe
stayed on at the FBI to keep on top of the case, and Cam had devoted
himself to finding Laura. Cam had started a private investigations
business, but it was almost entirely funded by Rafe. Cam had also
started writing a software program that scanned the Internet not only
searching for any mention of her name, but more importantly, looking
for her face.
Cameron Briggs was not a man who gave up. Unless he’d found a
much bigger prize.
“You motherfucker, you found her.” Rafe pounded on the door.
Just like that, his guilt raged into red-hot jealousy. Rafe was not about to let Cam waltz away with information on Laura. Laura was his,
damn it. His.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Rafe heard the unspoken “su
cker” in Cam’s shouted words. He
lifted his leg and gave the piece-of-shit door separating him from his
ex-partner a well-placed kick. The door itself held, but it cracked up
the middle. Cam stared at him through his now ruined door.
“You’re an asshole, and you’re replacing that door.” Cam reached
out, and after two loud clicks, the door swung open.
Rafe wasn’t about to feel bad about the door. “Where is she?”
Cam’s mouth became a flat, stubborn line. A long huff of breath
came out of his chest, and he pointed to a table in the tiny kitchen.
“Colorado.”
There was a printout of a newspaper article on the table. It was a
copy of an article from the Lifestyle section of a Denver newspaper.
He couldn’t miss her even though she was surrounded by other
women. Laura Rosen. He could still remember the day she’d walked
18
Sophie Oak
into the Bureau. He’d known the moment he’d laid eyes on her that
she was the one.
Unfortunately, Cam had felt the same way.
Unfortunately? Was it really so bad? At the time, it had felt that way. At the time, all he could think about was how enjoying a three-way with his partner and his soul mate would affect his career. There
wasn’t a single sitting Bureau chief openly involved in a polyamorous
relationship. At the time, he’d been willing to fight his best friend
over her. At the time, he’d been willing to throw her under a bus to
get ahead. Oh, he’d told himself he was helping her, but he was really
only thinking of himself.
Yep. The guilt was back.
“She’s calling herself Laura Niles. Why does Niles sound
familiar?” Rafe asked, his finger tracing over the picture. He wanted
to touch her, to assure himself that she was real and alive and whole.
“Her grandfather’s name was Niles. Niles Rosen. She loved that
old man.” Cam stood at his side, his arms crossed over his chest.
Rafe looked at the man he’d once been closer to than his own
brother. Cam looked tired. There was a set to his shoulders that Rafe
recognized as defensiveness. Cam stood there in the tiny piece-of-
crap kitchen, a big, unmoving block of wood.
Cam had come to the office to tell Rafe he’d found Laura. He’d
run through the building with this printout in his hand, and when he’d
found Rafe, he’d walked in on what Cam had to assume was a
betrayal of the worst kind. No wonder Cam hadn’t met him at the pub.
He had to play this carefully if he didn’t want to get his ass
kicked.
“Stefan Talbot.” Rafe whistled as he glanced over the article.
“Who the fuck is Stefan Talbot?”
Rafe felt a grin come and go. That was Cam. Despite the fact that
he was built like a linebacker, Cam was a nerd. He was far more into
his computers and watching bad sci-fi movies than art. And Cam
couldn’t care less about society and powerful people. “He’s an artist.
Lost in Bliss
19
My mother has one of his works. He’s very reclusive. Supposedly he
lives in a weird little town in Colorado. And, according to this, Laura
is in his wedding party.”
“What the hell is she doing in some backwater small town?” Cam
asked. His shoulders had relaxed slightly as he stared at the photo.
“Hiding. From the Marquis de Sade. From the Bureau. From us.”
Laura had a lot to run from. “But if he’s back, then he could have seen
this, too.”
“Yeah, nice to fill me in on that.” Cam’s eyes had sunken back
into his face as though retreating. “I must have missed the message
you left. You know how it is when your social life is as active as mine
is. Oh, wait. That’s you. So, you too busy kissing the brass’s ass to
give an old friend a call?”
Cam was firmly pushing a whole bunch of Rafe’s buttons. “Cam,
please hear me out.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you think you can say that would
make me care.”
How did he put this? Rafe had been thinking about this every
minute since last Tuesday when he’d gotten word of the new victim.
“I’m going to be flat honest with you. We found the body a couple of
days ago. We’ve kept it very quiet. I was worried about you. I
remember what happened the last time you were on this case. I
remember the drinking and the fights. I remember you nearly died on
that damn bike. When we found that girl, do you know what I saw
when I looked down at her? I saw you. I saw you falling into bad
habits and getting your ass killed.”
“And that would matter to you?”
What the hell was he supposed to say to that? The asshole
wouldn’t give him an inch. “I give a shit if you die, Cam. You
couldn’t handle it the first time. I wasn’t about to send you down that
path again.”
“I couldn’t handle it?” The words came out clipped, each bitten
off through clenched teeth.
20
Sophie Oak
Rafe had tried to give him an easy way out. Cam was too damn
stupid to take it. “You know you couldn’t. You punched another
special agent in the middle of a briefing. You wrecked your bike
twice. You got arrested for public intoxication. I’m not bailing your
ass out again.”
“I wasn’t asking you to.”
“Oh, is that what this is about?” Rafe gestured around the room
whole place was covered in computer equipment. Wires and cords ran
along the floor like thick vines. There was no rhyme or reason or
organization to the place. Rafe wouldn’t be surprised if Cam just
opened a window to pee. “You don’t want to have to ask me for
money?”
“No, I don’t. I’m sick of living off you.” Cam’s booted feet
widened to a predatory stance.
Rafe was so sick of Cam’s insecurities. He’d put up with them for
years. Rafe had never been able to convince Cam that he didn’t give a
shit that he’d grown up in a trailer park. It was Cam’s problem. Not
Rafe’s. “You weren’t living off me, you stupid, overly proud prick. It
wasn’t charity. You were working to find her. We agreed to this
deal.”
Cam’s lips curled up in a smirking approximation of a smile.
“Yeah, we agreed that you would share information with me, but you
don’t have to uphold your end of the bargain, do you? You don’t have
to share with a guy you consider your goddamn employee. That’s
why I didn’t want your money. I didn’t want to be your butt monkey
anymore. Tell me something, Rafe, you been fucking any admins with
Brad there? Brad working out as your wingman? I’ll be sure to tell
Laura when I see her that you’re fine, because you finally found a
partner you could truly love.”
Without another thought, Rafe pulled back his fist and plowed
into Cam with everything he had. Cam’s head snapped back with a
Lost in Bliss
21
crack, but his body stayed in place. Too late, Rafe remembered why
Cam had gotten
into that fight with another agent.
Cam liked it.
A feral smile crossed Cam’s face just before he reared back and
let his fist fly.
A lance of shock speared through Rafe’s gut. His breath shot out
of his body, and Rafe staggered back, hitting the wall with a thud.
Cam pressed his advantage. He landed another blow, this one an
uppercut to Rafe’s jaw. The pain exploded in Rafe’s skull, and he
fought back.
He shoved against Cam’s bulk. Did the country boy expect the
city boy to play fair? Rafe was done playing fair. It bought him
nothing with Cam. He shoved out with both hands, and Cam fell back,
stumbling over his sadly worn duffel bag.
“What were thinking, Cam? Did you already have your bags
packed when you came to see me? Do you honestly believe you can
waltz back into her life? What do you have to offer her? You going to
bring her back here?”
Cam’s leg came out, sweeping across Rafe’s ankles and knocking
him down. Cam kicked himself up, years and years of martial arts
practice turning the move into a graceful dance. Cam moved well for
a man of any size, much less for a man who weighed in at two
hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle.
“And what are you going to give her? Are you going to bring her
back to your condo and turn her into some trophy for your goddamn
wall? She never meant anything to you. She was just a prize. You
only wanted her to fuck with me.” Cam stopped, his face going dumb
for a minute. “Damn it, Rafe. What the fuck are we doing? I’m…”
Whatever Cam was going to say was utterly lost on Rafe. All he
knew was they had had this fight before. He was so fucking sick of
having his money shoved back at him like it was something to be
ashamed of. Cam wielded his impoverished childhood like a sword,
and Rafe was so done with it. City boy was done taking country boy’s
22
Sophie Oak
shit. With ruthless precision, he brought his foot up and kicked out.
His heel met with Cam’s cock, and Cam went down with a long,
animal-like moan of pure agony.
Rafe rolled over and shoved himself to a standing position. He
wiped the blood off his face. It was time to have a long talk with his
ex-partner. They used to be best friends, and damn, but Rafe missed