"Then who?"
"Think about it. They were both very close to you. Losing the little boy sent you into a tailspin from which you barely recovered. Might that not happen again if something similar occurred to the young woman in question?"
His heart pounding with sudden horror, Bill straightened up on the couch.'
"Are you-saying—?"
"Yes," Veilleur said, nodding. "I think you are Rasalom's target."
Bill stood up. He had to move, had to walk around the room. More craziness! It couldn't be! But it explained so many things. And there was a hellish consistency to it.
"But why, God dammit! Why me?"
"I don't know," Veilleur said. "But I may know someone who does. We can't talk to her right now. But in the morning, I'll call her. For now I suggest we all get a little rest."
Bill continued to prowl the room.
Rest? How could he rest if all Danny had suffered and what Lisl was going through were because of him?
TWENTY-EIGHT
North Carolina
Lisl locked the car with Ev sleeping peacefully inside and walked into the truck stop. A couple of times during the last half hour he'd stirred and she'd thought he was going to come around, but he never actually opened his eyes. She hoped he woke up soon so she could get him back to his apartment and get some sleep herself.
She was beat. Almost dawn now and she was verging on twenty-four hours with no sleep. As an undergrad she'd had no trouble pulling all-nighters at exam time, but that had been over a decade ago. She'd become accustomed to her sleep these days.
If nothing else, the endless drive had given her plenty of time to think. Her thoughts had turned inward and she hadn't liked what she'd found. How had she become so warped? How had she allowed Rafe to twist her up into someone who could pour alcohol into an alcoholic's orange juice? She hated Rafe for doing that to her. And simultaneously she felt her insides heat with desire at the thought of him.
God, she was a mess. She was going to need help to straighten herself out after this.
But first she had to get Ev straight.
She shivered in the dawn breeze and her hand shook as she reached for the door to the coffee shop. This must have been her eighth stop since leaving the Pantry in Pendleton, and she'd bought coffee at every one. Too little sleep and too much caffeine.
Tired and wired. She smiled at the phrase. Not bad. She'd have to remember that.
She wondered how many miles she'd put on her car tonight. She'd swung by Will's house first. The lights were on, the door was unlocked, but he wasn't there. So she'd taken 40 north to the interstate and had cruised 95 ever since. Traffic had been light. She'd set the cruise control on fifty-five and settled into the right lane. But the truck traffic was picking up now. Maybe it was time to head back toward Pendleton.
Inside the coffee shop the counter was crowded with truckers having breakfast. She guessed most of them had spent the night in the cabs of those big eighteen-wheelers lined up in the parking lot, but some looked like they'd just come off the road. She'd gained new respect tonight for long-haul drivers.
She was aware of appraising stares from many and even heard a few whistles. She glanced at herself in one of the mirrored walls and saw a pale, haggard-looking woman with circles under her eyes and wind-tangled hair.
They've got to be kidding!
Maybe driving all night not only made truckers tired, but desperate and nearsighted as well.
She poured herself a coffee from the take-out pot, added two sugars, and grabbed a wrapped donut. Another whistle followed her out the door after she'd paid.
Halfway to her car, she froze in the middle of the parking lot. The passenger door was open. But she'd locked the car. She ran toward it. There was a puddle of vomit under the door. The car was empty. Ev was gone.
She set the coffee and donut on the trunk and stepped up on the bumper for a better look. Frantically, she scanned the parking lot but saw no one who looked like Ev. And then, all the way around behind her, she spotted a lone figure, thin, lost-looking, stumbling toward the highway.
She ran after him, shouting his name, and caught up to Ev near the edge of the roadway.
"Lisl?" he said, squinting at her in the dim light. He looked dazed, but he didn't seem drunk anymore. "What are you doing here?"
"I drove you here."
"You? But how? I don't remember. And where are we?"
She could barely hear him over the roar of a passing truck, but the confusion in his eyes said it all.
"I found you in a bar. You were…"
She saw his shoulders slump, his head drop until his chin touched his chest.
"I know. Drunk." With a moan that echoed from the deepest part of him, Ev dropped to his knees and buried his face in his hands. "Oh, Lisl, I'm so ashamed." He began to sob.
The utter misery in the sound made Lisl feel as if someone were tearing her heart out of her chest. She sank down beside him and threw her arms around him.
"Don't, Ev. Please don't. It's not your fault."
He didn't seem to hear her. He lifted his head and stared out at the thickening traffic.
"I thought I had it licked. I had my life completely under control. I had a career, I was making progress, I was working on a paper, everything was going perfectly."
"Nothing's changed, Ev. You still have all that to go back to. You can forget about tonight and pick up things where you left off."
"No," he said, still not looking at her. "You don't understand. I'm an alcoholic. I'll always be an alcoholic. I thought I had it under control, smothered, locked away, but I can see now that I'll never really control it. It's like a ticking bomb that can go off at any time. If I can fall off the wagon like this after all these years, when everything's going so well for me, what's going to happen the first time something goes wrong? Don't you see, Lisl? I'm a slave to this thing! I thought I'd won but I didn't. I'm a loser! And I'll go on being a loser! I think I'd rather be dead!"
"No, Ev!" she said. His doomed, hopeless tone frightened her. "Don't talk like that! You didn't fall off the wagon, you were pushed. You didn't lose in a fair fight. You were ambushed."
Finally, he looked at her.
"What are you talking about?"
"Your orange juice. There was alcohol in it."
"No," he said, shaking his head. "That's impossible. I bought it at the A & P. There couldn't be…"
His voice trailed off as he stared at her. Lisl wanted to turn away but couldn't. She had to face this, and face it now.
"How do you know?" he said.
"I know…" The words clogged in her throat, but she squeezed her eyes shut and forced them out. "I know because I put it there."
There. She'd said it. The awful truth was out. Now she had to face the music. She opened her eyes and saw Ev staring at her, face slack, mouth agape.
"No, Lisl," he said in a hushed voice. "You wouldn't—couldn't—do that."
"I did, Ev. And I'm deeply ashamed. That's why I'm here with you now."
"No, Lisl. You have too much integrity to do something like that. Besides, you couldn't have known I was an alcoholic."
"I did, Ev." God, she wanted to run down the highway rather than speak these words. "I followed you to a meeting in the basement of St. James. I knew exactly what you were."
"But how? Why?"
"When I borrowed your keys last week, I… had copies made."
The shock in Ev's eyes was quickly fading to hurt.
"You made copies? After I trusted you with my keys? Lisl, I thought you were a friend!"
"Friend?" she said, suddenly overcome by a need to justify herself. "Friend? Do you call someone who has lunch with the department chairman and whines not to let a woman be tenured before him a friend?"