“So? You can’t have kids. I don’t care, Eve.”
“You say that.”
“I mean that.”
She smiled at him, trying to lessen the sting. “You
think you mean that. And if that were ‘it’ then I’d give you the opportunity to
find out for yourself. But that’s only part of it. Noah, I…” She shrugged, her
smile gone. “I wake up at night, screaming like it’s happening all over again.
And I’m… violent. Really violent.”
“You’re worried you’d hurt me?” he asked
incredulously.
“I know I would. Sometimes I walk in my sleep. I’ve
woken up in the kitchen, a butcher knife in my hand. I used to lock myself in
my bedroom at the shelter so that I didn’t hurt anyone by accident. Most of the
time I just didn’t sleep. I became a creature of the night.” She forced a smile.
“Slept odd times during the day. Still do.”
He nodded slowly. “So… that’s it?”
She rolled her eyes. “Goddammit, what will it take to
make you go away?”
“More than that. Is that it?”
“No.” She stood up, poured herself a cup of coffee
that had long grown cold, then set it aside. “I just don’t want to be with
anyone. Can’t you accept that?”
“Eve, look at me.” His voice was low and so warm. She
turned stiffly, as if a giant hand forced her. Met his gaze because somehow he
commanded it. His eyes glittered. “Tell me you don’t want me and I promise I’ll
go away.”
She wanted to. Needed to. But could not. So she closed
her eyes and said nothing.
“I thought as much,” he said quietly. “You need time,
that’s fine. I have time. You need space, I’ll give you space. And if you ever
tell me to go away and mean it, I will. But for now, I’m here. I came back
because I needed to. Eve, I needed you.”
And then he was there, his arms tight around her
again. He rested his cheek against her hair and she had to try, once more. For
his own good. “I’m not a good bet, Noah.”
“Neither am I. Let’s just see where it goes, okay?”
She remained unconvinced. “I’ll hurt you,” she said
tonelessly.
“I’ll hide the knives,” he said, wry amusement in his
voice, but she couldn’t smile.
There was more, so much more, and she didn’t have
words to tell him.
He’ll figure it out himself and then he’ll leave on his
own. And you can tell him “I told you so.”
She knew it would be a hollow victory. She pulled
away. “Have you eaten?”
He frowned slightly. “Not since the last time you fed
me.”
“Sit.” She had opened the fridge when her cell phone
chirped. “Text,” she said and read the screen. Then froze, her mouth open.
Noah took the phone from her hand. “ ‘Didn’t your
parents teach you not to get into cars with strange men?’ What the hell does
that mean?”
Eve’s knees went weak and she didn’t fight when Noah
pushed her into a chair. “That’s the last thing Rob Winters said before he
killed me.”
Wednesday, February 24, 6:30 a.m.
He closed the cell and powered it down, his text
complete. That ought to shake her up, he thought with a smile. Then he got back
in his car and started for home. He still had about forty-five minutes before
his wife’s alarm woke her up. If he wasn’t at home reading his morning paper,
she’d ask questions he had no intention of answering.
He was quite fortunate to have a wife who slept so
soundly. Of course the occasional sedative he put in her cup of evening herbal
tea went a long way toward assuring her sleep was deep when he needed it to be.
He was also fortunate she was so completely absorbed in her work that she
didn’t notice what he did even when she was awake. She rarely read a paper,
preferring science journals to television.
She moved in her own little world, after twenty years
never suspecting a thing.
Nobody did.
Because I am very, very careful and
very, very good.
Wednesday, February 24, 7:05 a.m.
“Well?” David Hunter demanded. When Eve received the text, Noah had pounded on
the door to wake him up. She’d been so pale, Noah had thought she’d pass out.
Luckily Eve had come around on her own. Now Hunter was cooking breakfast with
the intensity of a man possessed. Or a man terrified. “What are you doing to
catch him?”
Noah rubbed his hands over his face. “We’re running a
trace on the text. So far, it’s showing up as an unregistered number.”
“Throwaway cell?” Hunter asked.
Noah lifted his brows. “Maybe. Anybody can buy one.”
Hunter rolled his eyes. “I guess I deserve that one.”
“No, you don’t,” Noah said. “I’m sorry. I’m just
tired.”
Hunter put a fluffy golden omelet in front of him.
“When did you last sleep, Noah?”
“God. I don’t remember. Saturday night maybe?”
“You’re gonna crash if you don’t rest. When do you
have to report in?”
“Nine.” He dug into the omelet and nearly sighed.
“This is really good.”
“Thanks. When you’re done, go sleep in Eve’s bed. I’ll
make sure she’s all right.”
She’d retreated to the shower, still pale, her eyes as
haunted as if she’d seen a ghost. Noah guessed she had. “She needs to sleep,
too.”
“She won’t,” Hunter said. “Not until she feels safe.
She’ll catnap in that chair of hers.”
“You might want to hide the knives,” he said, and
Hunter shot him a surprised look.
“She keeps them in a lockbox. I’ll lock them up when
I’m finished cooking.”
“Okay, I’ll take the bed.” Noah blinked hard. “Who
knew about the getting in a car with strangers thing? Who knew Winters said
that to her?”
“We did, the family, because she told us. We never let
that leak to the press.”
“Somebody knew,” Noah said darkly. He eyed Eve’s
laptop. “Can I use it?”
Hunter hesitated. “Use mine. She’s a little… you know,
about her computer.”
When Hunter returned with his laptop, Noah was
practically scraping the plate clean.
“You want another?” Hunter asked, and Noah nodded.
“If you don’t mind.” He opened the laptop. “You’re a
good cook.”
“I get a lot of practice. I do most of the cooking for
my firehouse.”
“They’re lucky. I eat out of a microwave except on
Sundays when I go to my cousin and his wife’s for dinner. If you’re still here
on Sunday, you’re welcome.”
Hunter’s lips twitched. “Thanks, but you’ll be happy
to know I’ll be gone by Friday.”
Noah didn’t smile. “Eve will miss you.”
“I’m hoping she’ll be too busy to miss any of us back
home,” Hunter said dryly.
“Point taken.” Noah frowned at the search results on
the screen. “Rob Winters gets me too many hits, most about serial killers. How
many people did this guy kill?”
“At least six that we knew of. Evie would have been
seven.”
Noah swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. “He
was
killed in prison, right?”
“Yes. I believe it was Tom’s hope that once the other
cons knew Winters was a dirty cop there wouldn’t be enough of him left to
scrape into a baggie. There wasn’t.”
Hunter’s voice had gone hard, making Noah remember
that Winters had not only traumatized Eve, he’d traumatized an entire family.
“Which prison? Was it in Chicago?”
“No, North Carolina. I can’t remember which prison,
but my brother, Max, will know.”
“Let’s not make him remember if we don’t have to.”
Hunter poured his omelet concoction into a skillet, a
muscle twitching in his taut cheek. “When my brother found Winters, the bastard
had beaten Caroline almost unrecognizable and had his hands around her throat.
Max deals with the memories, with the dreams, but there’s nothing about Winters
he’s forgotten.”
Noah thought of Susan and the baby, gone twelve years
now. Hardly a day went by that he didn’t think or dream of them in nightmares
of his own. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“No need. It was just a very bad time.”
“Well, I think we can approach this from a different
direction. Buckland’s researched Eve’s past. Let’s assume he ran across
Winters’s threat while he was reading up in the online archives of some paper.
Did Winters give any interviews before he died?”
“Probably,” David gritted. “Asshole liked to hear
himself talk.”
Noah searched for prison interviews. Luckily there
weren’t that many, as Winters had not survived long behind bars.
Justice
,
he thought fiercely.
I hope it hurt. A lot.
“Here’s one,” Noah said. It was a transcript of a live
interview in which Winters described his assaults in detail, including the
“cars with strange men” comment. He read to himself, sparing Hunter the memory.
Noah’s head pounded as he read Winters’s boasts about Eve. His jaw clenched
hard, his fists harder.
I hope to God it hurt a hell of a lot
.
“It wouldn’t have taken Buckland long to find it,” he
finally said. He remembered the look in Eve’s eyes, the utter shock. The fear.
And the shame. “That he’d use it to rattle Eve says quite a lot.”
Hunter slid another omelet on his plate. “So what are you
going to do about him?”
Noah forced his clenched fists to relax so he could
pick up a fork. “I sent out a BOLO last night when I found he’d tampered with
her gun. Today, Eve will file her complaint, and when I catch him, he’ll wish
he’d never seen a newspaper.”
Hunter nodded once. “Sweet.”
“What’s sweet?” They turned to find Eve standing in
the doorway. Her short hair stood in wet spikes. She’d been crying, hard.
Hunter took a step toward her, but she held up one hand to fend him off. “Not
now. Please. What’s sweet?”
Noah closed the interview and lowered the lid of
Hunter’s laptop. “Just that you’ll file your complaint and we’ll put Buckland
in a cage where he belongs.”
“I’ll drive you to the police station,” Hunter said.
“Sit. You need to eat. Webster needs to sleep. If you both don’t start taking
care of yourselves, you’re going to get sick.”
Unbelievably, the side of her mouth lifted in a smile.
“David takes care of people when he’s stressed out,” she said to Noah and
Hunter bristled. She sat, careful not to touch either of them as she did so.
“I’m sitting and I’ll eat. But I’ll drive myself to the police station.” Again
she raised her hand as both he and Hunter opened their mouths to protest. “You
can follow me if you want, but once I’ve filed that report, I’m going to
school, where I’ll be surrounded by people. I have my Abnormal seminar at ten.
If I’m not expelled by the time all of this is over, I don’t want to be
behind.”
Hunter turned his glare from Eve to Noah. “You’re
going to let her?”
Her face was cool and calm. But her dark eyes churned
with emotion and he knew she needed at least this vestige of control. “I can’t
stop her,” he said to Hunter, “but we’ll all watch her. And I’m taking your gun
as evidence,” he said to Eve.
“It’s okay. I have another. I have several others.”
“Of course you do,” Noah murmured. “It’s a survivor
thing. I get it. Promise you’ll park out in the open and you’ll stay around
people.”
She nodded. “I promise.”
“Oh for God’s sake,” Hunter snarled and turned back to
the counter, slicing green peppers with frustrated vengeance. “If you’re going
to be stupid, at least take my truck.”
“Why?” Eve asked, still too calm.
“Buckland will be looking for you in your Mazda.
Besides, your car needs a tune-up and it’ll give me something else to do while
I worry about somebody else killing you.”
She rose, placed her hand on Hunter’s arm and his
frantic chopping stilled. “I know you worry because you love me. And I know
better than anyone that I am not invincible. But if I cower here, then he wins
and I lose. I promise I will be careful. I will call you every hour and if I
see Buckland, I’ll call 911 so fast. But I can’t hide. Not even for you.”
Hunter’s shoulders sagged and Noah cleared his throat.
“I’ll follow her in and she can park in the police garage. If he follows her,
we’ll grab him.”
“And when she leaves?”
“I’ll find a way to get coverage.”
Hunter nodded once. “If he doesn’t get coverage, you
call me, do you understand?”
She leaned up, kissed Hunter’s cheek. “Completely.”
Noah stood, his heart unsteady. With Hunter, Eve was
unfettered and made Noah realize how much of her guard she maintained with him.
But he’d promised to give her time and space. “I’m going to catch an hour
sleep. Don’t leave without me.”
Wednesday, February 24, 9:00 a.m.
Noah gave Jack a short nod when they sat down with the rest of the team in
Abbott’s office. An hour of sleep had made a little difference. At least he
could think again.
They were waiting for Abbott, who was still in a
meeting with the brass. Noah didn’t envy his boss a penny of his medium-sized
salary at the moment.