Her Forgotten Betrayal

by

Anna DeStefano

Coming in June from Entangled Publishing

Chapter One

Run!

The thought screamed through Shaw Cassidy’s mind, her entire body, every

instinct demanding that she escape.

“You’re not going anywhere,” she silently scolded herself. “Not until this is over.”

The cramped darkness around her shrank closer, choking off her oxygen like a

fist clenching around her throat. She fought to swallow. She crouched behind the closed

closet door. On the other side, an angry argument escalated. Unholy plans seethed like

brutal, living things.

“That’s not the price we agreed upon!” someone shouted, every syllable laced

with the threat of violence. The words held a foreign accent, even though the man’s

English was impeccable.

“The parameters of our deal have changed,” answered a raspy voice that was

familiar, yet she couldn’t place it. “I’ve absorbed enormous risk to get you what you

need. Pay up, or our deal is off. And I assure you, sir, no one backs out of an agreement

with me.”

The coldness of the second man’s response made Shaw’s stomach roll as they

continued to argue. She shivered. What had she stumbled into?

If she made the slightest noise, she’d be discovered crouching amidst surplus

office equipment and supplies. Frozen to the spot, she strained to hear each word, her

heartbeat pounding in her ears. This was insane. But she had to know everything these

men were up to, even if it took all night for them to finish so she could get away and

finally alert the authorities.

The world she'd created from her empty life was imploding around her. These

bastards’ clandestine activities would ruin her. They were putting countless lives—

countries, even—at risk. Her multi-national corporation, Cassidy Global Research, and

the valuable work they did were the center of her world—if she didn’t count Esmeralda,

who condescended to being petted twice a day when Shaw filled her geriatric Siamese’

food bowl. Every other waking moment was consumed by her research, client

conferences, her smartphone, and an endless stream of reports and deadlines.

Her research made a difference. Her companies provided the government and

other select clients with top secret technology and scientific innovation in various fields,

while she was rarely required to venture farther than her office or her labs. At thirty-

two, she was successful. She was content. She was as close to happy as she’d been in

fifteen years. As close as she’d ever be again. No way was she letting these men rip that

away from her.

She hunkered deeper within the cloying dimness.

The only light was a sharp seam of illumination cutting across her bent knees

from where the door didn’t completely meet the carpet. She’d been lying in wait for

these guys, certain of the timing of the meeting, even though there was no mention of it

in the Cassidy scheduling system. She had to stop them. She needed more information,

incontrovertible proof of the security breaches she’d uncovered. Otherwise if an official

investigation was launched, the trail of evidence would lead authorities straight to her,

not these dangerous men.

She shifted her balance. Fresh blood circulated through her legs. Pain seared up

her thighs. Pinpricks of sensation swarmed like bees.

“You won’t get away with this madness!” the foreign-sounding man raged.

“I will,” shouted the raspy-voiced man. Then he calmly added, “I always have.”

The verbal sparring escalated to even greater decibels. She winced. At any

moment, they’d come to physical blows. Who was arguing like they wanted to kill each

other in her father's abandoned conference room?

A winter storm battered rain against the outer windows, drowning out more and

more of what was being said. One of the men moved closer to her, a body blocking the

light filtering under the closet door. She cringed, her hand grabbing the doorjamb, until

the person stepped away.

How had she convinced herself that the solution to stopping their criminal

activity was to spy on them herself? In a closet. In the middle of the night. With an

ominous wail, wind buffeted the high-rise that housed her corporate headquarters. An

agonizing cramp grabbed at her right calf. Her leg slipped, her shoe banging into the

closet's wall.

The room beyond her stilled, the sudden silence terrifying her. She held her

breath, her hands plastered against the door, hoping. Praying. Maybe they’d think the

noise had been caused by the storm.

Someone approached again. This time, she could hear his footsteps. Steady.

Measured. The tread of men's dress shoes, muffled by carpet. He slowed, stopped,

stalling mere inches from her. Another pointless wave of fear sucked away the air

around her. Her lungs burned. Her hands balled into fists. She wanted to pound them

against the door.

God, how could she have been so reckless, so stupid?

The doorknob turned. She grabbed it, as if she could prevent whomever was

there from getting inside. The knob was wrenched away. Light from the conference

room pierced her hiding place. She blinked against the brightness, and squinted. The

barrel of an ancient-looking revolver emerged through the glare. Her gaze tracked from

its muzzle up an arm and then a man’s torso, both covered in an expensive, dark suit

coat. Until she was staring into the face of a monster.

Her mind seized.

Reality seemed to contract, then expand. One second, she thought the carpet was

rising up to smack her. The next, she realized she’d crumpled to the floor, in a boneless

heap at the man’s feet. Her thoughts blanked to nothingness, except for the conviction

that it wasn’t possible. He wasn’t possible.

“You...” said the raspy, eerily familiar voice. A menacing hand grabbed her hair.

Its grip kept her from crawling away. He jerked her head up. The muzzle of the gun bit

into her temple.

“No!” She stared at her captor and saw nothing but death. Her mind refused to

process the rest.

The ruthless, emotionless logic she’d mastered since she was a teenager deserted

her. She fought the all-consuming confusion that replaced it. She strained to focus. To

really see him. But his features wouldn’t register. There was only the gun and the terror,

the ominous sound of a vicious storm, and the absolute certainty that he was going to

kill her.

“I don’t understand,” she said. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.

“Kill the bitch,” said the man with the foreign inflection. “She’s heard everything

we’ve said.”

“No, please…” Shaw struggled against his hold, hating that she was begging,

that she once more felt like a desperate teenager—petrified, fighting for her life, and

crumbling under her fear. “I won't tell anyone you were here. I swear.”

Pain burned across her scalp, her hair pulling out from its roots. She tried to

crawl away. Her legs tangled in something from the closet.

“Sorry, Shaw,” said the man restraining her. His tone was annoyed, hassled,

maybe even a little amused, as if killing her was a special treat just for him. “It’s time for

you to learn your true place in my world.”

She heard a click. The sound of a revolver’s hammer being cocked. She stared up

at him in defiance, wanting to spit in his face so he’d know he hadn’t won.

Instead, she screamed when the gun fired and her world dissolved into darkness.

***

Cole Marinos jogged through biting-cold rain toward Atlanta Memorial

Hospital’s ER entrance. The entire eastern seaboard had been socked in by slushy

winter storms. It had been a bitch of a night to catch a flight in from New York, and

then a cab to midtown from the airport.

Stepping inside, he shucked his leather jacket, which was soaked even though

there’d only been a few feet between the cab and the sliding doors that now whooshed

shut behind him. Rubbing a hand over his face and through his longer-than-regulation

hair, he dripped water onto the admissions counter.

“Sorry.” He flashed his badge, then asked for the directions he required.

An older woman in a starched white shirt and pink jumper consulted her

computer, then jerked a tissue from the box at her elbow.

“Sixth floor,” she grumbled. “Ask at the desk.” The button pinned to her

shoulder said she was a hospitality volunteer. Evidently, three o’clock in the damn

morning was no place for hospitality to make an appearance.

Just as Atlanta was no place for Cole himself tonight.

He draped his jacket over his shoulder, dampness soaking through his T-shirt.

The foreboding that had hounded him since boarding the plane grew stronger as he

strode to the central elevators, rode to the sixth floor, then followed a second set of

directions given by an equally irritable nurse, down the hallway to their right. After

flashing his badge twice more at plain clothed officers who were either Atlanta Police

detectives or Federal Marshals or, like Cole, FBI, he stopped at the room’s observation

window and stared inside.

The patient was a fragile-looking blonde, even though he’d read she hit the

private gym at her corporate headquarters seven days a week, and was a devotee of

several eastern meditative disciplines. The single light over the bed shrouded her in

shadow. If it weren’t for the bandage covering the right side of her head where a bullet

had grazed her skull, the breath-taking beauty would have appeared to be resting

peacefully. Like a princess, awaiting the hero who would kiss her back to awareness.

Cole rubbed a hand across his still-damp neck, echoes from their childhood whispering

through his mind. He brushed them away.

He didn’t have to look to know that the man stepping to his side was his latest

supervisor. Cole tensed, instinctively anticipating the worst. He’d been summonsed to

Atlanta ostensibly to offer an in-person consultation on the their task-force’s prime

suspect. But he wasn’t buying it. The escalating stakes of the Cassidy Global situation

had put their team on high alert. With Shaw Cassidy’s shooting on top of everything

else, there were too many unanswered questions now for their investigation to continue

without a significant shift in tactics.

“You said she was hysterical, ” Cole began.

“The doctors had to sedate her again,” Chief Inspector Rick Dawson replied,

unwrapping a stick of chewing gum and slipping it into his mouth. The faint, cloying

scent of tobacco clinging to the man hinted that Dawson still hadn’t fully kicked his

addiction. “Each time she wakes up, it’s as if she realizes that she can’t remember

anything all over again. It’s happened twice already. At this point, the doctors think it

will take considerably longer for her condition to resolve itself.”

“For her memory to return?”

Dawson nodded stiffly and chewed faster.

“Like what?” Cole asked. “A few more hours?”

“Days. Weeks. It could be months, for all they know. Or possibly never, if we

push her too hard for answers, and her fucking mind closes down for good. That’s what

the experts say, anyway.”

Cole winced. He reminded himself for the dozenth time that the spiraling-from-

bad-to-worse circumstances of this case meant nothing more to him personally than any

of his others assignments had. “Because of her injuries?”

“Because of the trauma of whatever happened. Her brain’s intact, but it’s

shutting down for some reason. We’ll try interviewing her, but—“

“Don’t you mean interrogating?” Cole snapped.

“Whatever.” Dawson shot the gum wrapper at a nearby waste basked and

missed.

The calculating look in his gaze said he’d relish the opportunity to close this case

once and for all. Any way he could. Shaw had been on their radar since the beginning of

the Cassidy Global investigation. Yet legally they’d been unable to touch her. Most of

the team would be happy to use any means necessary to finally get some real answers.

Including ruining a woman’s mind.

Dawson’s jaw clenched in frustration. He patted his pants pockets, as if searching

for a pack of cigarettes that didn’t materialize.

“The neurologist says to give her time,” Dawson said, chewing even louder.

“Quiet. Isolation. Familiar surroundings. Additional agitation or trauma will worsen

her condition. Maybe make it permanent. Which means, at least for now, we still keep

our hands off.”

Cole gave the taller, fairer man a measured stare. Feeling as if a guillotine had

been positioned precariously above his head, he shrugged back into his soggy jacket,

already calculating how long it would take him to backtrack to the airport. “Then me

interviewing her personally is a non-starter. Of all the people who might agitate her, I

assure you I’m tops on the list. ”

Dawson’s focus tracked back to their patient. “I didn’t call you in to interview

her.”

Cole froze. The moment that he’d somehow known was inevitable had arrived.

He let his head fall forward, picturing a razor-sharp blade swiftly dropping toward

him. He glanced into Shaw’s hospital room again. “Then why am I here?”

“Don’t you still own that piece of junk fishing cabin up on her family’s

mountain?”

Ah, hell.

Chapter Two

THREE WEEKS LATER…

Shaw woke in the dead of night, kicking at the attacker who’d discovered her in

the conference room closet.

Awareness returned, her nightmare’s lingering hold as sickening, as real as every

other time she’d dreamed it since her shooting. But, thankfully, there was a pile of

suffocating pillows beneath her, not office carpeting. There was no faceless man or

brutal grip restraining her. Instead, her arms and legs were tangled in linen sheets, the

fabric so fine and so old it was gossamer-soft to the touch.

She forced her eyes to open completely.

She wasn't being dragged to her death by a murderer. She was sitting alone on

an overstuffed mattress, fighting her bedding and losing her mind, and grasping for the

details of that night’s memory before they once more slipped beyond her reach. Just as

every other recollection of her life before the shooting had stubbornly refused to return.

Which left her smack-dab in the middle of a living nightmare, in a world beyond her

control that her detail-obsessed brain refused to make peace with.

“This is ridiculous, Esme,” she said to the cat winking sleepily at her from the

foot of the bed. “And it’s not working. How did we end up here?”

Here being Shaw’s grandmother’s bedroom, on a secluded, mountain estate she

couldn’t remember any better than she did her family or the life in Atlanta, Georgia,

she’d been whisked away from.

Her body and flannel nightdress were drenched in sweat. Her mind, her

thoughts, every part of her was shivering. Not from fear. But from the possibility that

she might never remember what she had to in order to reclaim the successful life she’d

been assured she’d lived before that awful night.

She wrapped her arms around herself and gave her mind a mental shake

Jeez.

Maudlin much?

A bedside lamp illuminated the room. Its cheery glow was no match for the dark

spell the dream had cast. Something thudded softly beyond her closed bedroom door,

jerking Shaw’s gaze toward the hallway, then back to her cat.

“Did you hear that?” she whispered…