Right now, though, there was a lot more going on inside him than just the usual teeth-clenching edginess. There was that brassy tang at the back of his throat, for one thing-he wanted this to work so badly, he could taste it. And something else-that knot in his belly, which was something he didn’t remember feeling before. Cold-no, not cold…white-hot, as if it would burn right through him. He’d felt it back in his apartment, when his witness had put it into words-the fact that she’d slept with Cisneros.
What the hell was the matter with him? Of course she’d slept with the man-she was marrying him, wasn’t she? But whenever the thought came into his mind, he felt the knot… the cold fire in his belly. Right now, watching the two of them together, seeing that blond, bandaged head next to Cisneros’s and those slender arms twined around his thick neck, those big, dark-blue eyes closed…he felt the fire eating its way through his guts… into his chest… all but eating him alive. He knew he should probably stop watching for the sake of his own mental health, if nothing else, but he didn’t. For some reason he couldn’t take his eyes from the screen.
“You really think she could pull this off?” Coffee asked, swiveling to look at him. “It’s a hell of a risk-you know that, don’t you? Are you sure she’ll even agree to go along with it? What we’d be asking her to do would be dangerous even for a trained agent. She’s a civilian and she’s vulnerable-”
“She’ll go along with it.” Jake’s eyes burned in their sockets as he watched Cisneros pull back from the bed, watched his hand, winking with gold and diamonds, slide lingeringly across the woman’s breasts. He felt her shrinking in the depths of his soul. “She’s tougher than she looks,” he growled.
Cisneros was leaving, finally. Jake watched as he moved to the curtains… watched Eve give him a wan and teary smile…blow him a kiss. And then she was alone, and he saw her body shudder with revulsion, and her eyes, wide-open and staring, now, darken with rage until they looked like two holes burned into marble.
“She’ll go along with it,” Jake said softly, his heart quickening within him.
“Seems to me she’s between a rock and a hard place,” Birdie said. “She’s got to go back to the guy-how’ll it look if she doesn’t? But can you imagine what it’s gonna be like for her, knowing what she knows?” He shook his head.
“That’s why she’ll do it,” Jake said. “Because she’s got no choice.”
“I think you’re jumping to conclusions, Bell,” Summer said in an undertone as she and Mirabella hurried across the hospital parking lot, once again bringing up the rear. The night was moving along toward the wee hours and the low-country fog was already coming in, swirling around the light posts and settling like crystal dust onto the hoods and windshields of parked cars. “Of course she’d be upset-”
“Not upset-afraid. You saw her face.” Mirabella’s voice was low-pitched, as well, but staccato with impotent fury. “I’m telling you, she’s scared of him. Scared to death. We have to do something. We can’t just let her-”
Her sister’s hand clutched her arm, stopping her in her tracks. “You can’t mean you think he did that to her. Bella, that’s just ridiculous. On their wedding day? And even if he did, Evie would never put up with such a thing-never. She’d have him in jail so fast, it’d make your head swim!”
Mirabella grudgingly conceded, “Maybe not But some-thing’s not right, I can feel it. You saw her face, Sumz. She didn’t want us to leave her alone with him. I just wish I knew what the hell’s going on. If she’s in some kind of trouble-”
“If Evie was in trouble, she’d tell us,” Summer said in a shaky voice. She was hugging herself against the dampness and chill, but shivering anyway. Her face looked pinched and unhappy. “I’m sure she would. We’re her family, after all.”
“Would she?” said Mirabella, her tone softly accusing. “You didn’t.”
Chapter 6
Eve opened her eyes in the hospital’s perpetual twilight and knew at once that she wasn’t alone. From her curled-on-her-side position she let her eyes roam as far as they would, but saw only the stark walls, the bedside cabinet and visitor’s chair, the graying rectangle of a window.
And yet she’d definitely heard something…someone…the stealthy brush of cloth on cloth… the whisper of an exhalation. The nurse, perhaps, coming to check on her yet again? But no, there’d been no footsteps, no sounds of an opening or closing door, no subtle swirls and eddys of air currents stirred by a passing body. Her mother, then, or one of her sisters, unable to stay away, come to sit quietly and wait for her to awaken? The thought made her feel deliciously warm and loved, and at the same time near to weeping.
She turned carefully onto her back and stretched her legs beneath the thin hospital covers, and the dark shape slumped in a chair near the door stirred to instant alertness.
Her heart gave an odd bump. “Jake?” she said on a rising note of surprised laughter. “Is that you?”
The FBI man leaned forward from the waist, arms extended above his head, stretching out stiffness. “Yeah, it’s me.” His voice sounded as if he’d stifled a yawn.
“What on earth are you doing here? When did you come back?” She felt the strangest all-over prickling, the tiniest shower of shivers, almost like goose bumps. It was the most pleasant feeling she’d had in quite a while actually, and it was hard to keep the smile out of her voice, even as she supplied the answer with its grim reminder, “Are you my bodyguard?”
His eyes regarded her from deep in their shadowed sockets. “You could call it that. Keeping an eye on my star witness.”
“I take it you don’t trust Sonny’s ‘All is forgiven’ act?”
She heard a noise that she might have taken for a laugh, except she remembered that Agent Jake Something wasn’t capable of laughter. “Just taking no chances.”
“How long have you been here?” Now that she thought about it, the idea that he’d watched her sleep was disconcerting; she wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or appalled.
His shoulders casually rose and fell. “Couple hours. I got tired of lurking in the hallway. When the nurse wasn’t looking, I ducked in here. Hope you don’t mind.”
To cover the ambiguity of her emotions, she gave a dry snort.
She sat up and twisted half around and began lifting up bedclothes and pillows as she added sardonically, “By the way-Sonny plans to assign me a bodyguard. Isn’t that nice? Dammit, where in the-”
“What’re you looking for?” He rose, a silent, fluid motion that diminished the space between him and her bed by half.
Her heart gave another of those strange little bumps. To distract herself from that she pretended an irritability she didn’t feel. “Isn’t there supposed to be some sort of button to push when you want to crank this thing up?”
He pointed. “That it?”
“Where?-oh yeah, there it is.” And he was close enough to her to evoke memories of how warm his body had felt as he’d carried her into the E.R., and the comforting smell of his bathrobe. Somehow those memories made the space between them seem emptier and the air chillier by comparison. A shiver wafted through her as she added a breathless “Thanks.”
“Where are you going?” He’d perked up like a watchdog catching a whiff of an unauthorized scent when she threw back the covers and swung her bare legs over the side of the bed.
She raised her eyebrows at him, feeling with her feet for the floor. “To the bathroom. You want to check it out first?”
He frowned, ignoring the sarcasm. “Shouldn’t you, uh…you sure you should be out of bed?”
Amusement rippled through her, but she kept her tone lightly sardonic. “You’re really getting caught up in this, aren’t you? Might I remind you that I was not really attacked, and do not actually have a concussion? Except for a minor bump I got when I dropped a Dumpster lid on my own head, and some scrapes and bruises that were the result of my falling out of said Dumpster flat on my, uh, face, I am perfectly fine.” Poised to hop down off the bed, she paused and made a twirling motion with one finger. “Turn around, please.”