“Good luck,” Noah said, and meant it.
Jack’s smile was flat. “You, too.”
Wednesday, February 24, 6:40 p.m.
“Eve?” Her chin jerked up when hands squeezed her
knees and she met Noah’s eyes over her laptop. He was crouching, looking
panicked.
As well he should.
“I tried to call you a couple of times, but you didn’t
answer.”
She fished her cell from her bag. “I had it on vibrate
and forgot to change it. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you again.”
The panic had left his eyes, leaving concern and an
anticipation that made her own skin tingle despite her own jumble of emotion.
“How is David?”
“Better. Tom’s in with him now. Noah, I think I found
him.”
“Who?”
“The man who hates you. Sit and look.” He did, sliding
one arm across her back and leaning closer. Which put his face right next to
hers, throwing her pulse into overdrive. Which, she suspected, was his intent.
Keeping her eyes straight ahead she pointed to the picture she’d downloaded.
The man had a dark beard threaded with silver, a hard mouth, and harder eyes.
“Do you recognize him?” she asked, her voice a little huskier.
“No.” Then he turned his head, bringing his mouth
inches from hers. “Should I?”
“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “Pay attention, Noah.”
“I am.” But instead of backing away, he came closer
and there was nothing hard about his mouth when he brushed it over hers. There
was instead sweetness and heat. Her eyes slid closed and she leaned into him,
lifting one hand to tentatively touch his face, deepening the kiss until it was
slow and unhurried, making it all the more devastating. It was sumptuous, rich
and full. And right.
That rightness would make it that much harder to lose
later.
She pulled away, as slowly as they’d come together,
her palm still cupping his cheek. His eyes searched hers while she fought the
tears that rose in her throat. It had been a hell of a day. Anyone’s emotions
would be on the edge.
“Sometimes,” he murmured, “when you’re behind the bar,
you watch everyone and your eyes grow so sad. I always wondered what you saw.
I’m wondering that right now.”
The tears rose a little higher and she swallowed them
back. “Why didn’t you ask?”
Regret flickered in his eyes. “If you only knew how
many times I wanted to. But I watched you and knew you were… fragile.
Vulnerable.”
“I’m not,” she protested.
“You are. So am I.” He hesitated. “Eve, my mother was
an alcoholic when I was a kid, out of control. I never wanted to be like her. I
craved discipline and prided myself on not being weak. I joined the army, did a
tour, came back determined to be a cop like my dad. He died when I was five,
line of duty. That started my mother drinking.”
“You got married,” she said and he nodded. “But she
died,” she added. “How?”
“Car accident,” he said briefly. “Which… started me
drinking.”
He hadn’t moved, his face still hovered inches from
her own. “Who saved you?”
“My cousin, Brock, at first. I spent more time at his
house than mine growing up because my mom was always drunk. When I hit rock
bottom, I called him, begged him to help. He took me to my first AA meeting,
stood by my side while I dried out. My mom had joined AA a million times, but
always fell off the wagon. I was determined not to, but it was, it is hard. Mom
saw me fighting the booze, she saw me following in her footsteps and that
pushed her to change. We did AA together.”
“And she’s still sober?”
“Ten years later we both are. She’s down south now.
Comes back for the summer.”
“You love her,” Eve said quietly, a little enviously.
“I’m glad.” And she was.
“Me, too. Eve, I grew up with chaos. Discipline, or
the illusion of it, is important to me. I sat in the bar, watched you, and was
pretty damn proud of myself for not talking to you, not saddling you with my
demons. But I think I was just afraid. That if I let you in, I’d lose what
control I’ve managed to keep. So I kept my distance.”
“For a whole year?”
“You didn’t help,” he countered dryly. “You wouldn’t
even look at me. Why?”
He’d been honest. She could be no less. “Because I
wanted to,” she said. “I wanted you. And it scared me. It still does.”
“I know it does,” he said softly. “But we have time to
deal with that.” He returned his attention to the man on her screen. “Why
should I recognize him?”
She forced her eyes away from Noah’s face and her mind
back to the work at hand. “This is the father of a man you and Jack
almost
arrested about a year ago. His name is Harvey Farmer. His son was Harvey
Farmer, Jr., but folks called him V.”
Noah nodded slowly. “Yeah, okay. I remember V Farmer.
He robbed a convenience store and killed the owner, shot him in the face. We
found V hiding in a friend’s house. He ran, we pursued. Jack chased him and V
ran across a highway to escape.”
“At night, in the snow,” Eve said, recalling the
Buckland article she’d finally found after pages of search results. “The truck
that hit him tried to stop, but couldn’t.”
“Right. V was dead at the scene and we closed the
case. How do you know this?”
“Kurt Buckland covered V’s funeral. In the Metro
section.” She toggled to the article. “ ‘Harvey Farmer, Jr., known as V to his
friends, was buried today. He is survived by his father, Harvey Farmer, Sr.,
and his brother, Dell Farmer.’ Who you’ve met.”
“The reporter? How do you know?”
“I’ll show you. The father was at V’s funeral and
Buckland snapped this picture of him for the piece.” She clicked on a picture
showing the bearded man standing at a graveside. “I think that’s Dell standing
next to him, but you can’t see his face.”
Eve brought up her favorite design software into which
she’d already imported Farmer Sr.’s face, enlarged and grainy, but usable.
“Take away the beard, the gray in his hair, a few wrinkles, and make his eyes a
little closer together…” She worked steadily as she talked. “And voila. One
faux reporter. Dell Farmer.”
Noah blinked and stared. “Wow. That’s amazing. I never
would have seen the resemblance based on that little picture. It’s not obvious
at all. How did you see it?”
His praise warmed her. “I study faces. You know, what
makes people trust one face and not another. Which features make us comfortable
and which make us afraid.”
“And you used that when you started up your avatar
design shop in Shadowland.”
She shrugged. “Might as well get some semipractical
use out of it.”
He was studying her again. “You trusted him,” he said
quietly. “Rob Winters.”
She flinched. “Yes. I was young and stupid.”
“And you’ll never let that happen again.”
“I’ll never be that young again and I pray I’ll never
be that stupid again.”
His eyes never left her face. “And you’ll never trust
a man again?”
“That’s not it. I trust you. I never would have gotten
into a car with you otherwise.”
“You don’t trust yourself, then. You don’t trust your
judgment that you trust me.”
She nodded, both relieved and sad that he finally
understood. “Convoluted, I know.”
He rose. “I’ll get Olivia this information.”
“You’re not going after him yourself?”
“It’s Olivia’s case. If she needs my help, she’ll ask
for it.”
“Of course.” Eve busied herself putting her laptop
away. “If you could take me back to the station, I’ll get David’s truck.
Callie’s working tonight, so I’ll just hang out at Sal’s. I’m sure one of the
off-duty officers will see us home, so it’ll be perfectly safe.”
“Eve.” His eyes glittered with determination, but his
voice was gentle. “Let’s go to dinner. Then you can decide where you’ll stay.
Give me your bag. I’ll carry it for you.”
He understood, but he wasn’t walking away. “My friend,
Tom… wants to meet you.”
Noah’s eyes lit up. “The ballplayer? Sweet.” He put
his arm around her shoulders, possessively. “Is this like being brought home to
meet the family?”
“Yes. I guess it is.”
Chapter Nineteen
Wednesday, February 24, 7:20 p.m.
“
I do like
your house.”
Noah closed the oven door and turned to lean against
it. Eve sat at his kitchen table, her annoyance mostly gone. “And I liked your
friend Tom.”
Her mouth lifted. “And the tickets to Sunday’s game?”
He grinned. “Those didn’t hurt.” He sobered. “So…
you’re not angry anymore?”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t angry. Just surprised you
brought me here.”
“I have to meet Jack soon, so I didn’t want to spend
what little time we have waiting on waiters. Next time we’ll go somewhere with
tablecloths and fancier food.”
“Frozen pizza is fine and better than a lot of meals
I’ve eaten.”
She was nervous.
So am I
. He took the chair
next to hers, took her hand. “I’m going to get to the point. You said you
trusted me. Why? Is it something about me? My face?”
“I don’t know why. I just do. At the risk of sounding
trite, this isn’t about you. It’s me.”
“So that you trust me for absolutely no good reason is
what frightens you?”
Arousal warred with the apprehension in her dark eyes.
“I behaved impetuously six years ago,” she said. “I have paid dearly for that
mistake, every day since. I don’t do impetuous things very often anymore.”
“You play it safe. With men, anyway.”
“Essentially, yes.” She lifted her chin. “And I won’t
apologize for that.”
He recognized the lifted chin as a warning and
detoured, approaching from another direction. “You said you hid in the dark for
two years after Rob Winters attacked you.”
She didn’t flinch as he’d expected. “I lived in a
shelter for battered women. I rarely left the house, took most of the night
shifts.”
“Because you were afraid to sleep.” Afraid she’d
dream, that she’d hurt someone.
“Yes. I took care of the babies, ones too young to
scare. My scars were bad then.”
“What happened after two years?” He knew, but wanted
to hear it from her.
“We unknowingly brought a murderer into our shelter, a
woman who’d kidnapped a child for her own revenge. But you know this. You’ve
read all the news archives.”
He had, and had been chilled to the bone. “You saved
the boy but were nearly killed.”
“Alec was a brave kid. He helped save us both.”
“Where is he now?”
She smiled. “Chicago. He’s a senior in high school.
Well-adjusted and happy.”
“So what happened after you’d saved the day and the
boy?”
“Dana and Ethan took the woman down, delivered her to
the cops. Dana’s kind of like my mom and big sister and probation officer, all
rolled into one. She is best friends with David’s sister-in-law, Caroline, and
Olivia’s sister, Mia. That’s how we all connect.”
“You love them, the people you left behind in Chicago.
They’ve earned your trust.”
Her eyes sharpened. “You should be the psych major.”
“Just trying to understand,” he said mildly. “You’ve
been here in Minneapolis for two years, so where were you in the two middle
years?”
“Hiding,” she said, one brow lifted. “I’m good at
that.”
“I know you are. Where were you hiding?”
“Well, having a killer in our secret shelter kind of
compromised our secrecy. Dana closed down, she and Ethan bought this big house,
and now she’s foster mom central. I could have moved in with her, but I needed
my space. So I got a job at what I thought then was the perfect place—a rehab
center for people who were newly blind.”
Noah frowned. He hadn’t known this. “Because they
couldn’t see you?”
“Pretty much. I liked it there. I could work on my
degree at night and never needed to leave the grounds.”
This made him angry. “For two years? Why did you leave
there?”
“I got a kick in the ass from one of our clients. He’d
lost his sight in an accident—hard enough, but he was a surgeon. His career, in
his mind, was over.”
“Was it?”
“Of course not. He couldn’t do surgery, but he could
other things. Over time, and with a lot of nagging, he began to accept that. He
restarted his life, reinvented himself.”
“You saved him.”
She shook her head, embarrassed. “No. I was just his
friend.”
“I can see that.” For all she’d endured, Eve was a
nurturing soul with a full heart. That was the quality that had first attracted
him. “You take care of people. That’s a gift.”
He’d surprised her, he could see. “Thank you.”
“So your friend left this rehab center?” he asked and
she nodded.