“If we’re going to act, we need to do it quickly. We can’t give Luis time to go underground. If we do, we’ll lose our opportunity to capture him and rescue the girls,” Stahlsaid.
Cole spun, ready to lay into the agent for forcing the issue, but Tomi beat him to the punch. “What do you have inmind?”
“No,” Colesaid.
Tomi looked at him dead in the eye. “You can help me or get the hell out of my way, but either way I’m going with him. If you try to keep me here, you’ll have to spend the rest of your life trying to keep me locked up because, so help me God, I’ll spend the rest of mine trying to get away fromyou.”
Ice crawled up his heart with each word, freezing into a solid block in his chest. The ache he’d learned to live with all those years ago returned with a vengeance. Something in his brain short-circuited. He couldn’t live through that again. All those lonely nights and hollow days…he refused to go back to any existence withouther.
Cole made a choice. The only choice that he could live with. Without warning, he bent at the waist, threw her over his shoulder and stormed down thehall.
“What are you doing?” Tomi beat on hisback.
He stopped at the door to the makeshift playroom and kicked it open, carried Tomi inside and slammed itshut.
“You caveman!” Anything else she’d planned to say was cut off when he tossed her to the bed. With demented need, Cole followed her down. Her bright blue eyes glittered with anger. In that one moment, he felt a measure of logicreturn.
What the hell am Idoing?
“You have no right!” Tomi threw her head to the side and bucked with all hermight.
The small flare of rationality dissipated. She can live with a broken heart, but she can’t live if Luis puts a bullet in herhead.
Cole grabbed her right arm and forced it over her head, calmly snapping the metal cuff attached to the headboard around her delicatewrist.
“Don’t do this!” Tomi kicked and screamed, but he ignoredher.
She fought his grip, but he quickly overpowered her. Forcing her left arm up, he snapped the cuff into place. “I can and Iam.”
His nerves felt fried and out of whack. Tomi’s sweet body kept pressing against him. Unable to stop himself, he took her face in his hands and kissed her. “I loveyou.”
He wasn’t crazed or maddened anymore. He wasdetermined.
Cole shoved off the bed and gave her hisback.
“Cole!”
He’d figure it out…he’d figure out a way to convince her to listen. He just needed sometime.
“I’ll never forgive you,” Tomi cried out brokenly from thebed.
Cole paused at the door, the hollow ache solidifying over him like an empty shell. He stared into the hallway, listening to the sound of her soft sobs with a hard heart. Grabbing the handle, he said, “If anything happened to you, I would never forgivemyself.”
And then he shut the door and turned thelock.
“Cole!”
28
Cole wentoutside and stared at the thick trees behind the house without really seeing them. He stood there so long the moon shifted from his right to his left side. The stars marred the dark sky, breaking up the blackness that hecraved.
Cole didn’t know how long he stood out there. He didn’t care. He neededher.
But he couldn’t have her. Notanymore.
When he finally became aware of the cold seeping into his bones, he went back inside thehouse.
Cole reentered the living room on legs as numb as hisheart.
