Free Courting Darkness by Melynda Price Page B

desperately pleaded prayer. He’d even convinced himself the black-clad man stepping out of the shadows was indeed an angel. Albeit a very dangerous, terrifying one, but nonetheless, he’d saved Pat from certain death. Who would do that if not an angel of God?
    When he’d offered to make Pat’s problems disappear, he’d all but jumped at the opportunity for a fresh start. After all, how many people got the chance to start over? Unfortunately, there had been a hefty price tag attached to his new beginning—at least he wasn’t the one paying the ultimate price.
    Pat wasn’t certain what the woman, Olivia, had done to put herself on this guy’s radar, and he didn’t want to know. It wasn’t any of his business, and the less he knew about her, the easier it was to remain in blissful ignorance that perhaps he wasn’t sentencing an innocent woman to her death.
    In those moments of weakness, when his conscience forced him to ponder what he was doing, Pat appeased his guilt by reasoning that the woman was going to die, anyway. He was merely the net this maniac was using to capture his prey. So, why then, if her life was already lost, should he not take the opportunity to save his own?
    “Part of our arrangement ? Neither was your failure to grab that female. Look, it’s real simple, Pat. You get the girl, bring her to me, and then all your debts will be free and clear.”
    Yeah, he’d heard all that before. But it wasn’t so simple. He’d been watching the woman for weeks, plotting how he was going to get to her—short of flat out abducting her, which he didn’t think he had the stomach to do. If he could lure her away, trick her into coming along with him…somehow his part in all this seemed easier to take—less malice a forethought.
    “I don’t understand why you don’t just abduct her yourself,” Pat grumbled, wishing he could undo the lifetime of mistakes that had brought him to this point of unfathomable lows. “You’re perfectly capable—”
    “I never said I wasn’t. Nor am I about to sit here and explain myself to you.”
    He spat “you” with such contempt, the fine hairs on Pat’s arms prickled to attention.
    “My reasons are my own. But if you fail me in this, I promise you, your bad debts will be the least of your worries. Bottom line, you’re in it to win it, my friend. Act as if your life depends on it.”
    Pat had no doubt that it did.
     

Chapter Seven
     
    Over the next few days, Olivia and Tate settled into a certain unspoken truce. She did as he’d asked and hadn’t touched her journal since that first night. Not that she’d need to. Every word had been seared into her blank slate of a memory. But every day that passed, her heart ached more and more for Liam. She was slowly coming to the realization that memories or not, it probably always would.
    Were she given the choice, she’d take her memories back in a heartbeat. And she still hadn’t given up on searching for them—in discovering the truth. But she stopped pressing Tate for answers, knowing he would not be her avenue of recollection. Since that night in the kitchen, he’d refused to speak of Liam. Perhaps he hoped she’d just let it go—out of sight, out of mind, and all that crap.
    “I still can’t feel you,” he’d say daily, as if she needed the reminder to work harder at accepting him—easier said than done. But she honestly didn’t know how to do what he was asking of her. She didn’t know how to let Liam go, maybe it was because she couldn’t remember him and her mind and heart refused to cooperate with each other. Whatever the reason, she was no more able to comply with his request than fly to the moon. It simply was not possible.
    Perhaps with time, and after she learned the truth, she might find a way to let go of the angel who still held her heart—which was just one more reason to get about the business of getting her memory back. Ashley had been helpful in laying the foundation. And perhaps it