“You planning to beat that bowl to
death?”
“Thinking about it.”
“It’s only been twenty minutes.”
Evie gave the frosting a vicious twist with
her spoon. “Why doesn’t she just call and tell me what she
wants?”
“Because she doesn’t know what she’s looking
for. She’s arguing with whomever she called on the dock. And this
guy—or gal—isn’t being cooperative. My professional opinion.”
“But they’re supposed to be working together
to get David’s files. Ryan Rivera wants them badly enough to kill
for them, so why wouldn’t someone tell Brianna what she’s supposed
to be looking for?”
Matt leaned back on the bar chair. “I don’t
think it’s Rivera. If he knew, he’d send her after it. No, this is
someone else, someone who doesn’t fully trust Brianna. Someone who
wants the files pretty badly but doesn’t want to negotiate for them
in person. Did David have any other friends? Any girlfriends?
Someone he could have told about what he’d done?”
“Not that I’m aware.” Evie gave the frosting
another twist. “I can’t recall anyone he spoke to a lot or any
strange calls. But I was running a restaurant, Matt. I was worried
about menus, supplies, training my employees—things like that. I
suppose he could have been selling Girl Scout cookies from the
trunk of his car and I probably wouldn’t have realized it.”
“Girl Scout cookies?” Matt grinned at
her.
Evie stopped whipping the frosting and yanked
a cake toward her. “I hate to think about anything worse, so allow
me my fantasy, okay?”
Not to mention she was still angry with
herself for not figuring out what David had been up to sooner.
Didn’t matter how good he was or how well he hid his tracks, she
just felt like she should have known he wasn’t the nice guy he
pretended to be.
“Sure.” His sudden smile could’ve melted an
ice cube. “But tell me what other kind of fantasies you think
about.”
A tendril of heat uncoiled in her belly. She
found herself thinking about licking chocolate frosting off his
tight abs, about him moving deep inside her again. She wanted to
forget everything and lose herself with Matt for an hour or so.
But she couldn’t. Not when so much was at
stake. Not when she needed to have her mind in a different place,
needed to be prepared to deal with a killer.
“I can’t, Matt. Later, when this is
over—”
“I know.” He got to his feet, stretched.
“Can’t blame me for trying.”
“No.” She spread a dollop of frosting across
the top of a cake, searched for a way out of the awkwardness she
suddenly felt. “I’m sorry I’m keeping you away from your family.
But if you weren’t here, I don’t know how I’d deal with this.”
“It’s okay. Chris is busy with the wedding
preparations and the senator and I don’t have a lot to say to each
other.”
Evie smoothed the frosting methodically. “He
isn’t interested in what you do in the military?”
“No.”
She stopped. “Does he mind what you do?”
“Yeah, he does. But it’s not his choice.”
“It’s dangerous, isn’t it?” She’d known,
especially as the evening went on and she’d listened to his
conversations with his teammate, but she hadn’t wanted to really
think about it. If she were honest with herself, she’d known it
from the moment he’d disarmed Jimmy Thibodeaux and broke his arm.
“You do dangerous things.”
He pushed both hands over his head and laced
them together behind his neck. His breath let out on a long sigh.
“I go to some pretty bad places. There’s always a chance I won’t
come back.”
Evie nearly dropped the spatula. A twist of
dark emotion grabbed her heart and wouldn’t let go. “Won’t come
back? As in ever?” She couldn’t say
dead
. She couldn’t think
it.
“Precisely.”
Horror gripped her by the throat and
squeezed. How could he? How could he risk himself that way? And yet
he’d been shot. She knew it because she’d seen the red and puckered
scar on his torso. And the smaller scars that marred his perfect
skin in places. “Why would you do that? Why would someone like you
do that?”
The look he gave her was gently mocking. “You
think people born into privilege shouldn’t serve their country
since they have the means to do other things? Should it only be the
poor or disadvantaged who risk their lives?”
“I didn’t mean that.” Her heart ached.
“Yes, you did.”
Okay, probably she did. But it was
unfathomable. If she’d had his background, his money and access,
she wouldn’t be in this predicament right now. She’d have never
listened to a jerk like David, never got entangled in anything
remotely dangerous. She’d be running a chain of Evangeline’s,
flying from city to city to oversee her business, spending time in
a test kitchen making up new recipes. Life would be so good.
Or would it?
Did money really make anyone happy? Clearly,
it didn’t make Matt happy. He’d always been restless. The summer
he’d been fourteen, he’d stolen his daddy’s car and talked her into
going on a joyride with him. They’d gone to Baton Rouge and back,
and no one ever figured out they were missing. Because he’d had a
plan.
She’d never stopped to think about it then,
but she knew looking back that he’d always had that daredevil
streak. And it suddenly made more sense than she would have liked
that he risked his life in the military.
“I would have made different choices if I had
your resources.” She frosted the cake a bit more viciously than
necessary. “I’m sorry if that offends you, but I refuse to believe
there isn’t a better way to contribute to society, if that’s what
you want to do.”
His expression grew hard. Hidden pain flared
in his eyes. She wanted to go over and put her arms around him, but
she knew he wouldn’t welcome it. Not right now. She’d crossed a
line and he was angry with her for it. It wouldn’t be the first
time. She’d pissed him off plenty when they were kids.
Except this wasn’t an issue for kids. It was
serious, frightening, and she hadn’t yet figured out how to
reconcile it in her head.
“I wouldn’t change what I’m doing for
anyone.” He said it coolly, and her head snapped up to meet his
gaze. There was steel in those eyes.
She got the hint. Not that she’d expected
there was a future with him, but it might be nice if it were at
least a possibility if it was something they both wanted. Clearly,
Matt didn’t even want to think about it.
Well, dammit, neither did she. She had things
to do, and Matt didn’t figure into any of them. “It must be a
lonely life.”
“Sometimes.”
She moved the spatula against the cake more
gently, smoothing the thick frosting while her heart skipped. She
hated the idea of him in some foreign country, dying, and her never
knowing about it until it was too late. They’d spent the last ten
years not being in touch, but now that they were, she knew the love
she’d always felt—and by that she meant the love of a friend for
another friend—had never disappeared.
You didn’t stop loving someone you’d been
attached to for so much of your life, even when you’d had a falling
out. You always grieved the friendship lost. And now that she had
him in her life again, she didn’t want to lose that connection.
He reached for her hand and grasped it gently
in his until she looked up at him again. “I’m sorry, Evie.”
She shrugged, though she felt anything but
lighthearted. “For what? You don’t have to explain yourself or
apologize. I was out of line.”
“No, but it came as a shock to you. I
shouldn’t have told you that what I do is dangerous.”
She laughed. It wasn’t a humorous sound. “I
think I already knew that, Matt. It’s kinda obvious to someone who
saw you in action last night, and then again just now at
Charlie’s.”
“Chris doesn’t know. I’d rather she
didn’t.”
Evie swallowed the lump in her throat. “She
won’t hear it from me. But you were captured, Matt. She knows
that.”
“Yeah, but I’m back now. She has no idea that
kind of thing could happen every time I go out with my team.”
“And your father?”
He looked down at the counter for a long
moment. “I don’t think he’d care either way.”
She squeezed his hand. “I think he
would.”
“You’re a sweetheart, Evie. Always have been.
But the senator and I don’t get along very well. I think you know
that.”
They both knew what he was talking about. The
time shortly before his mother had died when the senator had come
out into the garden and railed at him for tracking dirt through the
house. Evie had cringed on the garden seat where she’d been playing
and pretended not to hear. That was the first time she’d realized
that Matt’s life wasn’t perfect.
After that, there were many times when Matt
had been red-faced and sullen. Usually, after an hour or so, he was
himself again. After his mother had died, Evie’s trips to Reynier’s
Retreat became more infrequent. He had come to her then. Until, one
day, he noticed other girls and hadn’t come anymore.
She set the spatula down and licked chocolate
from her thumb. Then she reached up and skimmed her fingers over
his cheek. “I do know. And you’ll just have to forgive me for
caring what happens to you, okay? I won’t tell Chris, but I also
won’t stop worrying about you either.”
He caught her fingers and sucked the tips
into his mouth while she felt the sensual tug all the way down to
her sex. “I don’t deserve your worry, Evie. I betrayed our
friendship.”
She sighed. “Maybe we both did. I shouldn’t
have asked you to be my first. That was the first step over the
line.”
He growled and pulled her toward him until
she was standing between his legs. “I’m glad I was your first. I
just wish I’d taken more care with your heart.”
His mouth fitted over hers and she melted
into him. They kissed for a long minute, but then a phone rang and
she jumped away from him, scrambling for the phone she’d laid on
the island. But it wasn’t her phone ringing.
Matt put his phone to his ear, his voice
clipped as he spoke. “Yeah.”
She watched his face as surprise crossed his
features. “What? You’re kidding… You got a vector on that? … Holy
fuck, yeah.” He cradled the phone against his shoulder, checked the
safety on the gun before stuffing it into his waistband. Then he
grabbed the bullets and motioned for her to follow. “All right, let
me know if there’s any change. … I’m on my way.”
“What is it?”
“Someone just made a call from David West’s
cell phone.”
Evie gaped at him. “How is that possible?
Didn’t the police get his phone last night?”
“Apparently not. Kev’s got a lock on the
location, so we need to get moving.”
“Where are we going?” she asked as they
hurried out to the garage and slipped into the car.
Matt gunned the engine to life. “Your
mother’s house.”
“IS THIS LEGAL?” EVIE ASKED as the trees
whipped by for the second time that night.
“Speeding? Only if we don’t get caught.”
“I meant the military tracking civilians. It
seems, well, questionable.”
“Are you complaining?”
“Of course not! I’m just amazed, is all.”
“That it can be done or that we’re doing it
now?”
“Both I guess. How’d you get your bosses to
let you do something like this? It’s not like we’re on a military
operation.”
He shot her a glance. “Who said I asked
permission?”
Her blood thickened in her veins and her
breath shortened. “I don’t understand how it’s possible in the
first place. Don’t you need to be on the phone with someone to
track them?”
He shook his head. “Not these days. All cell
phones are equipped with GPS trackers—it’s how emergency personnel
find you if you call 911 and don’t know where you are. We’re using
the same principle to track West’s phone. Someone has it and
they’re using it. Good for us, bad for them.”
“It could always be one of the cops, right?
Maybe they just found it—”
“They’ve been done with the crime scene
investigation since this afternoon. Whoever it is, it’s not the
police.”
Evie tried to digest this information.
Someone had David’s phone and was making calls from it. Someone
who’d taken it from him after they killed him. If that wasn’t
creepy, she didn’t know what was. “What if your boss finds out?
What then?”
“Believe me, I sincerely hope he doesn’t. I
imagine my stay at Fort Leavenworth will be of some duration.”
Her heart felt as if it had slipped into her
toes. “Leavenworth?”
“It’s a military prison.”
“My God, Matt, I know what it is. You can’t
be serious!”
“Dead serious,
chère
.”
“You can’t do this.” She was trembling from
fear and adrenaline. She needed him, needed his expertise, and yet
he was risking his entire career to help her. She felt distinctly
unworthy in that moment. And grateful too. “It’s not worth the risk
for you.”
“It is for Sarah.”
Evie pressed a hand to her mouth as she
stared at the neighborhood lights blurring by. How could he risk
such a thing? He could’ve turned this over to the police—surely
they could do these things legally and find Sarah’s kidnappers
without alerting anyone. Without endangering Sarah.
But he hadn’t. He was risking everything—his
life, his future, his career—to help her find Sarah and bring her
home safe. Insanely, she didn’t want him to do it. Didn’t want him
to take such a chance. And yet she needed him to. But she cared too
much—
“Evie, look at me.”
Matt’s handsome face was in profile, his
concentration on the road as he shifted the car into one of those
killer turns of his. She barely registered the sliding, braking,
leveling action as she instinctively braced herself for it.