Colby Conspiracy

Tasha couldn’t help herself. She had to scoot from her seat and rush around the table to give him a hug. She did love him. He would always hold a special place in her heart, as well as her life.

AS THE TAXI traveled east on Division Street, Tasha barely contained the urge to dial Jim right then on her cell phone and give him the news. She shivered at the idea of how deliriously happy she knew he would be. She resisted the impulse. This was too important to do over the phone. It had to be done in person.

Jim had come so far the last few months. He had made great strides in coming to terms with the atrocities that had been done to him after he’d been kidnapped from his family at age seven. He’d progressed to the point of what most people would say was normal. Anyone who met him now would never suspect that just a year ago, he’d been a cold-blooded killer for hire. His primary mission in life had been to assassinate his own mother, whom he thought had abandoned him.

Tasha shuddered at the memories of just how ruthless the alter ego Seth had been. Jim Colby had been buried so deeply under that evil persona that reaching him had been almost impossible. Somehow, she had managed to do just that. Seth had grabbed on to what she’d offered—her heart and soul—and slowly but surely Jim Colby had resurfaced—been reborn.

She would be lying if she didn’t admit that there had been some aspects of Seth that had intrigued her—still did—but he was gone for good, and it was for the best. Her life with Jim was worth every moment of pain and uncertainty she’d endured with Seth.

No. There was no way she would ever go back to the CIA or anywhere else. Jim was her life now. Jim and the baby. She was perfectly content doing research for the Colby Agency on a part-time basis. She no longer felt that burning desire to prove herself or to make her mark among the superspies of the world. This was her life, and she adored every minute of every hour.

Being plain old Tasha North—soon to be Tasha Colby—fulfilled her every desire.

She’d fought the fight of her life and won, had walked away with the kind of love few ever found, and now they were about to move onto the next level…marriage and a family. The latter was a little sooner than expected, but she was definitely up to the challenge. The thought of carrying Jim’s child made her tremble with anticipation. She pressed her hand to her flat belly, closed her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. Jim would be thrilled!

When the taxi reached her street in Old Town, Tasha dug out the fare and a nice tip. She looked up at the Queen Anne row house that she and Jim shared, a present from his mother, Victoria Colby-Camp. She loved the house. It was perfect. But Tasha hadn’t mentioned to Martin how she and Jim had gotten their cozy home. As much as she appreciated his wonderful gift, Victoria had cornered the market on gift giving. She had spent the last year trying to make up to her son for all they’d missed since his abduction nearly nineteen years ago.

Tasha hopped out of the cab and strolled up the walk to her door. She inhaled deeply of the night air, enjoying the clean scent of the recent rain that still lingered. She hesitated before unlocking the door and surveyed the sky and the stars that had peeked from behind the clouds. She wanted to remember everything about this night. Wanted it to hold a special place among the memories she and Jim were making together.

Another rush of pulse-tripping anticipation launched her back into gear. She couldn’t wait another second. She had to tell him the news.

No sooner had the key turned in the lock than the knob was twisted out of her hand and the door jerked open.

Harsh fingers dug into her forearm and hauled her inside.

Before she had a chance to react to the stab of fear a lethal masculine voice demanded, “Where have you been?”

Even in the dark, even with her heart pounding like a drum, Tasha recognized that voice—felt the malice in it penetrate all the way to the very depths of her soul.

Seth.

“Jim.” She reached through the darkness, tried to touch him. What could have brought about this relapse? Something had to have happened to—

He slammed her against the wall. “I said,” he snarled, “where the hell have you been?”

Tasha’s body started to quake. She struggled to steel herself against the fear and worry running rampant inside her. “I’ve been to dinner,” she said calmly. “You knew—”

“So you just take off?”

His face was pressed so close to hers she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek, could smell the liquor. Jim never drank, not anymore. The doctors had warned it might destabilize his condition.

Renewed fear raced through her veins. One doctor in particular had warned that Jim was still vulnerable, that a break from reality could occur unless strict precautions were taken to insulate him from the slightest stress. But he had been okay for months. He was well…happy…he was Jim, the man she loved.

The baby. Oh, God. Hurt knotted inside her. Please, God, not now. Don’t let him regress. Her thoughts whirled frantically, futilely. There had to be something she could do to stop this…to bring him back…

“Jim, please, tell me what’s happened?” She hated the quiver in her voice, the desperation. He’d been through too much already. It just wasn’t fair for him to spiral back into that abyss all over again. Not now, after he’d come so very far.

“Shut up and take off your clothes,” he commanded savagely. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Tasha froze, considered her options. Did she play along and hope he snapped out of whatever the hell this was, or did she fight back? Not now. Not knowing that she was pregnant.

“Jim, let me call your doctor,” she pleaded, praying she would somehow get through to him.

“Stop calling me that,” he warned, his muscular body pinning her to the wall. “Little Jimmy died a long time ago,” he taunted cruelly. “Now stop stalling.”

He wanted sex. Okay, she could play along. Surely he would snap out of this.

Drawing in a steadying breath, she reached toward the top button of her blouse. Her fingers shook before she could stem the reaction.

“You’re too slow,” he growled, then ripped open her blouse.

She bit down on her lower lip to hold back a gasp.

“Hmmm,” he breathed. “You smell so sweet.” He licked a trail down her throat and across her shoulder. She shivered, couldn’t help herself. “You like that?” He breathed the words on her damp skin.

“Please, Jim, let’s just talk,” she begged, suddenly fearing that he would take this too far… Damn, she didn’t know what to expect.

But she had to protect the baby.

His hand closed brutally over her breast and Tasha knew exactly what she had to do.

She went limp in his arms, surrendered completely. His full attention was focused on the breast he’d revealed. His mouth landed there and she made a sound of encouragement. As he kissed his way back up to her throat she rammed her fist into his unsuspecting gut.

He staggered back, doubled over.

Acting on pure instinct now, she landed a kick to the side of his head, forcing him to the floor. Then she made a run for it.

At the same instant that her fingers curled around the doorknob, his manacled around her ankle, closing like a vise.

She screamed, grabbed at the door even as he pulled her away from it.

He was too fast, too strong.

He yanked hard. She fell forward onto the hardwood floor. As he dragged her to him she kicked hard with her free leg and landed a blow to his jaw.

He swore and flung his full weight down on top of her. She grunted at the impact. His right hand clamped around her throat.

“Don’t move,” he growled between clenched teeth.

Tasha stilled. Her breath raged in and out of her lungs, barely hissing past the hold he had on her throat. Part of her screamed inside, urged her to keep fighting, but another part feared for the baby. She couldn’t afford to antagonize him any further. He was too strong.

His fingers all but cut off her airway. He used his right hand to shove her skirt up her thighs. Then he spread her legs and burrowed his way fully between them. His mouth came down on top of hers hard.

She felt him wrench open his jeans. Felt his thick sex spring free and prod against her panties. She closed her eyes and tried to lie still, told herself it would be better this way. Don’t give him any reason to hurt you.

He tore away her panties and shoved into her in one brutal plunge.

She caught her breath, winced against the pleasure of feeling the man she loved inside her and at the same time fearing the demon driving him.

“Now that’s more like it,” he said silkily, tauntingly. He flexed his hips, driving deeper. He kissed her lips, then her jaw. She shivered, afraid to guess what he might do next.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to pretend that this was only a nightmare. It couldn’t be real…couldn’t be happening. Not now. Tears seeped past her tightly clenched lids, but she couldn’t hope to stop them.

His lips encountered those salty tears and he stilled.

He drew back from her then and though she couldn’t see his eyes in the darkness, she felt the change in his body—the sudden, jagged turn his respiration had taken, the slight tremble of his hands as his grip loosened.

“Oh, God.” The words tore out of his throat on a wounded moan of agony.

He scrambled off her, pulled her onto his lap. “What’ve I done?” He ran his hands over her purposefully, hurriedly, as if searching for injury. “Did I hurt you? God, please tell me I didn’t hurt you, Tasha.”

“I’m all right,” she managed to say, pushing past the emotion lodged in her throat. “I’m okay.”

He cradled her in his arms for a long while. Tasha couldn’t say how long. He kept telling her over and over how sorry he was. How he hadn’t meant to hurt her. And then he carried her to the bathroom and bathed her gently in the deep claw-footed tub. He smoothed the washcloth over her skin lovingly in an attempt to soothe the hurt.

Tasha watched him, her heart too damaged to question the sudden reversal. But her eyes saw clearly the price he’d paid for the lapse.

She only knew that he was behaving like Jim now. Inside, she cried, both thankful and scared out of her mind. Because no matter what her eyes saw, no matter what her ears told her as the man she loved attended to her needs, begged for her forgiveness, nothing he did or said would change the cold, hard truth.

Seth was back.

CHAPTER FIVE

BOUND BY THE CHICAGO RIVER and developed by the industrial working class, Chicago’s Lower West Side was as diverse as it was eclectic.

“Stop here.”

Upon Emily Hastings’s order, the taxi driver braked and eased the cab up to the curb on 18th Street. She paid the fare and got out, lugging the carry-on bag with her. The weight of the hastily packed bag dragged at her shoulder, but she ignored it. She made a quick swipe at her skirt in an attempt to smooth the travel wrinkles.

She was home, for the first time in too long to remember.

She inhaled deeply, drawing in the inviting scents of corn tortillas and spiced peppers from the Mexican restaurants and specialty shops that formed the cultural heart of the neighborhood. She let the sounds of salsa emanating from open windows and doors—and it wasn’t even noon yet—seep into her soul.

Her feet guided her; no thought was required. That was good, since her eyes were too busy taking in the changes since she’d last been here…home.

Nineteenth-century buildings served as stoic, sophisticated backdrops to the vibrancy of the street vendors. Emily felt a smile tilt her lips as she surveyed one of her favorites. Walking to the bus stop everyday for school, she’d watched as the dilapidated structure had been overtaken by artists searching for low-rent digs. Over time, the whole district had been brought to life by murals and dotted by funky galleries, all as a result of the influx of those starving artists. Emily had been too young to really understand the change; she’d simply been enthralled with the evolution.

As she took the turn onto her old street, Emily felt the wonder wane a bit. Other memories, ones not so comfortably recalled, filtered through her mind. The sound of weeping at her brother’s wake…the constant arguing between her parents after the death of her only sibling. The sharp pain of knowing that life would never be the same.

Emily pushed those old hurts aside and strode more briskly toward the house where she’d lived as a child before fate had taken its heavy toll on a typical lower middle class family, breaking it into pieces that would never again fit together.

She stood on the sidewalk for several seconds before stepping up onto the stoop. It looked just the same, only smaller. She stared up at the bow-shaped window on the second floor of the modest house. Her old room. She’d sat at that window many nights and prayed that her parents would stop fighting, that everything would be okay again.

But her prayers had gone unanswered.

Her brother had died, at age sixteen, of a sudden heart attack. His rare, congenital heart defect had gone undiagnosed. Her mother had blamed her father. As a cop, he hadn’t been a good enough provider, in Emily’s mother’s opinion. The loss and pain, all of it, were her father’s fault.

So her mother had left, taking Emily with her. They’d moved all the way to Sacramento, California, in an attempt to escape the memories.

Emily’s father had stayed right here. In this house, living with the memories and somehow surviving.

But now he was gone, too.

She blinked out of the trance the past weaved and reached up to the ledge above the door to retrieve the spare key her father had kept there for as long as she could remember. Her bracelet jingled as the numerous charms clinked together. She still wore it every day, had since the day her father had given it to her more than a dozen years ago, back when life had been normal.

On autopilot, she opened the door and stepped inside. A wave of emotion washed over her, as did the scents she’d associated with her father. Old Spice aftershave and gun oil.

For as long as she could remember, her father had been a cop. She’d sat in his lap many a night as he cleaned his service revolver and explained to her the hazards of not showing proper respect for the weapon. Both Emily and her brother had learned early not to play with guns.

An ache pierced her, and Emily fought for control. How could this have happened?

Her father had been murdered only three months from retirement.

She shuddered and closed the door behind her. Her bag dropped to the floor in the narrow entry hall and she moved deeper into the house.

The call she’d received at five this morning had been surreal, like a dream that couldn’t possibly be related to reality. But it was. It was all too gut-wrenchingly real.

Her father was dead.

Murdered.

The detective who’d called had assured Emily that it would not be necessary for her to identify the body and that the body wouldn’t be released before day after tomorrow, but she’d insisted on coming to Chicago immediately.

How could she not?

It was the least she could do.

Though Emily had been raised by her mother and stepfather since she was twelve, she still loved her father. Maybe they hadn’t seen each other often, but he’d gotten out to California when he could. He’d written regularly, had called once in a while.

No matter how much her mother would have preferred that she forget her father and the past altogether, Emily had never done so.

She moved slowly through the house, peeked into the parlor that looked as neat as she’d expected. Her father had always been meticulous about housekeeping. With his busy schedule as a homicide detective, she imagined that he’d hired a cleaning lady for the more tedious routine work, but the small, everyday tasks of keeping things tidy would have been something he naturally did. Emily had inherited that obsession from him. Her friends had always called her a neat freak.

The kitchen and downstairs bedroom her parents had shared looked exactly the same. Every picture, every knickknack sat exactly where it had fourteen years ago. Her mother hadn’t taken a single household or personal item when she and Emily had left. To this day, her mother never spoke of the son who’d died, or of her old life in Chicago. It was as if the past had never happened.

Slowly Emily climbed the stairs to the second floor. Her breath caught when she opened the door to her old bedroom. Her father had left it exactly as Emily remembered. She moved about the room and touched the stuffed animals and pictures that told the tale of her childhood. The small canopy bed with its frilly pink coverlet, the poster of her one-time favorite TV heart-throb taped to the wall. She’d sat in the window seat and daydreamed about growing up and marrying her idol someday.

Dizzy with the remembered voices and moments from her old life, Emily made her way to the other bedroom on the second floor. Her brother’s room. A small bathroom that the two had shared separated their rooms.

Colton’s room took her breath away. The football trophies. The big high school banner. Photos of him armored in sports gear. He had played them all, the epitome of the perfect athlete. Who would have expected him to drop dead on the field running laps?

Emily picked up a framed photograph—the last one taken of her brother—and touched his face. It had been the beginning of the end. Nothing had been the same after that summer.

She took a deep breath and blinked back the emotion burning in her eyes. Memory Lane wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, she decided as she closed up the rooms that served as tributes to forgotten childhoods. She wondered if her father had spent time in those rooms, wishing things had turned out differently. She hoped work had kept him too busy for that. Or maybe he’d moved on, as her mother had, and found someone new with which to share his life. But he’d never remarried and not once had he mentioned another woman to Emily. Just another sad truth to add to the growing stack that represented her old life here.

Back downstairs, she took her bag to her father’s room, opting to sleep there while she was in town. She picked up his pillow and inhaled deeply of his essence.

He’d been lost to her for so long that the impact of his death hadn’t fully sunk in. It was as if he would walk through the door after his shift ended and all would be the same. But that wasn’t going to happen. Maybe she should have identified his body in an effort to force the reality past the barrier of natural denial.

She’d come back to Chicago to plan his funeral, to take care of his final arrangements and his estate. Her mother had refused to come. To her, Carter Hastings had died the same year her son had died.

Emily tossed the pillow aside and decided a hot cup of tea would help get her started. She’d called the law office where she worked this morning to tell them she was taking two weeks off to settle her father’s estate. Her bosses had understood.

She’d gone to college and gotten a degree in journalism in hopes of becoming a Nobel Prize-winning author, but it hadn’t panned out yet. What did a hopeful journalist do when she couldn’t get work in her field? She became a secretary. She could type and file and answer the phone; it was a no-brainer.

After a soothing cup of her father’s longtime favorite, Earl Grey, Emily got to work. Her first chore was to go through her father’s official papers and determine what insurance policies were in effect. Someone from Chicago PD’s human resources department would touch base with her on whatever benefits would be forthcoming.

By the time dusk fell over the neighborhood, she had contacted the funeral home where her brother had been taken all those years ago and made preliminary arrangements. Barring any unforeseen obstacles, a service would be held Thursday afternoon at two. The wife of her father’s partner had called and insisted on having Emily for dinner that evening. She’d almost declined but hadn’t wanted to hurt any feelings. The partner her father had served with the past several years was not the one he’d had when she was a kid. She didn’t really know what had become of his first partner. Emily had vaguely recalled her father mentioning his first partner had died, but she really wasn’t sure

With all she could accomplish today done, Emily shuffled the papers and policies back into neat little stacks and prepared to put them back into the briefcase-size fireproof safe box her father had kept them in. He’d mailed her a key and the location of the safe box years ago. Foolishly she’d kept the key on the charm bracelet he’d given her the Christmas before the divorce. And, even more foolishly, she still wore the damned thing. It was the one part of the past she’d clung to…the single part she hadn’t been able to give up. Unlike her mother, Emily had still loved her father, still cherished the memories of the family they had once been so very long ago.

In the process of lugging the heavy fireproof box back into the closet to tuck it back into its hiding place behind the shoeboxes of photos and other family mementos, something shifted inside.

Not the papers or policies. This was something heavier, something she hadn’t noticed or heard before.

Curious, she hauled the load to the bed and reopened it. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. The papers were no longer in their neat little stacks, but that was to be expected since shifting the box into its hiding place required standing it on end. Then she noticed the difference. One side of the bottom appeared to jut up a little higher than the other.

Emily pressed down on the uneven bottom, but it didn’t budge. She removed the papers and set them aside, then hefted the box to an upside-down position and watched the interior floor fall onto the mattress. A bundle of yellow-tinged envelopes flopped onto the metal plate now lying on the covers.

Emily pushed the box upright once more and considered that she’d heard of, even seen, false bottoms. She just hadn’t expected to find her father harboring something like this in his bedroom closet.

She picked up the stack of bundled envelopes and read the addressee’s name. James Colby. She frowned. Who was James Colby? She looked at the date and was startled again. The envelope was postmarked over eighteen years ago. Strange.

Emily skimmed through the rest of the letters and noted the same names each time—Madelyn Rutland and James Colby. One was even addressed to a Victoria Colby but had never been processed through the post office. Or, at least, she presumed so, since there was no postmark on the envelope. Madelyn Rutland was a name Emily recognized. Madelyn had been her father’s first partner when he’d moved from beat cop to homicide detective. But James Colby was unknown to Emily, as was Victoria Colby.

Why on earth would her father have kept someone else’s letters?

Too tired and emotionally drained to ponder the question any longer, Emily replaced the false bottom and stacked all the papers, including the bundle of letters, inside the safe box. There were probably lots more things she would discover among her father’s belongings that didn’t make sense to her. After all, it had been many years since she’d lived in this house or been a significant part of his life.

Everyone had their secrets, but her father had always been a straightforward kind of guy. She couldn’t imagine him having any deep, dark secrets that would hurt anyone or even disrupt anyone’s life.

A bunch of old letters addressed to people she didn’t even know was the last thing she needed to worry about right now. Her father was dead.

She had to do right by him. Taking care of his affairs was the last thing she could do for him; that task had to be her main focus.

What possible difference could letters nearly two decades old make now?