by Cynthia Eden
deal in his arms once again.
No one will take you from me.
Chapter Six
“They’re burying the senator today.”
When Noah made that announcement, Claire’s fingers stilled over the computer keyboard. She’d been staying with him at York Towers for the last few days. Sleeping in his bed at night, working by his side during the day.
Drake had vanished.
The reporters had stayed close.
But not as close as Noah.
Noah cleared his throat and said, “And they’re letting Ethan go to the funeral.”
She looked up. They weren’t in the suite now. Instead, they were working in one of the offices downstairs. They’d spent the morning going over blueprints for the Washington restaurant addition. Talking marketing. PR. Noah wanted to open the roof-top restaurant with a bang on New Year’s Eve. Throw a huge party and—
“Claire.”
She swallowed and focused on him. She’d already known that Ethan was being allowed to attend the funeral.
“You’re wearing a mask, Claire. Talk to me.” He caught her hands. Pulled Claire to her feet.
“What do you want me to say?” There wasn’t anything to say. She wasn’t going to pretend some sort of grief for the senator’s death. It was wrong, but she felt relief now that he was being buried.
He can’t hurt me anymore.
“I want you to talk to me.” The words were hard, but his hands were light on her. “Claire, it’s me. I won’t judge anything you say. Just…talk to me.”
“I’m scared.” There. She’d said it.
His hold tightened on her.
“I saw on the news that the Alabama governor was granting some sort of special release for Ethan.” A temporary hardship release or some other kind of bull. “I don’t like knowing that he’s out there, free, not even for a second.” She wanted him locked away behind as many bars as possible.
“He won’t touch you.”
His gruff words sounded like a vow, but Noah didn’t understand. “That’s what my parents told me, too.” She pulled away from him. Headed to the nearby window. Stared out at the city. “They told me I’d be safe. That Ethan wouldn’t hurt me again. That I could just walk away from him.”
Behind her, Noah swore.
“I wasn’t safe. Even with a restraining order on him, he came after me. He killed them, and he found me.”
He’d told her that when he first found her on the dock. Been so proud.
“He watched me in that courtroom. Watched me like he owned me.” She’d been sixteen. So terrified. “And when I left the courthouse each day, there’d be people outside, yelling at me. Calling me so many names. There’d be spray paint on my house. People were believing his story. I thought…” This was the part that twisted her insides, but saying it out loud…I have to do it. “I thought Ethan was going to get away with what he’d done.”
Noah’s hands wrapped around her shoulders. He turned her around and forced Claire to face him. “He didn’t.”
“I thought he was, though, and I knew if he got free, he’d come after me.” She looked down at her wrists. Covered by her long sleeves. Always covered so carefully. “So I took the razor.” A hard smile lifted her lips. “I made sure I cut myself just the right way, and I waited to die in the same house that my parents had died in.”
His hold on her was bruising.
“I know it was weak,” she said, voice husky, “but I was sixteen, and so scared, and death was better than having to see him again.”
He yanked her against his chest. She could feel the mad drumming of his heart.
His scent wrapped around her. His arms held her close. She felt safe there, in his embrace. Once, she’d thought that she’d never be safe.
“You won’t see him again,” Noah promised her. “He’s going back to jail.”
But one day, Ethan would get out, for good. In five years, eight months, and seven days. Yes, she knew exactly how much time he had left to serve.
“Sara found you, didn’t she?” Noah asked her.
Claire pulled away from him, just a little bit. “She came home early.” Her big sister. Older by four years. “She saved me. She got there in time.” Her lips trembled as she thought of Sara’s recent death…and how she’d just been minutes too late to save the one person in this world that she loved. “I couldn’t do the same for her.”
Claire had lost everyone that she loved.
So much pain. Sometimes, she felt as if it were choking her.
His lips brushed against her forehead. “We’re getting the fuck out of here,” he said.
Claire blinked. “What?”
“I’ve got a place in the Hamptons. We’re going to the beach. You’re going to drink wine with me, and you’re going to relax on that beach—even if it is getting a bit cold now—and you’re not going to think about death, Senator Harrison, or that asshole Ethan.” He tipped up her chin. “You’re only going to think about me. Got it? Me…and you…and the way we can make each other feel.”
“But…the Washington hotel, the restaurant—”
“Will still be there when we come back. We’re leaving, Claire. Because you’re alive, I’m alive, and the rest of the world can just screw off.”
***
He hated funerals. Particularly this funeral.
The overdone mourning. All the fake tears. The talk about the “good” man that had been taken too soon.
Such bullshit.
Drake Archer shifted beneath the hanging branches of the old oak tree. Spanish moss clung to the sprawling branches, and the moss blew lightly in the faint breeze.
It was a packed funeral, but Drake had expected nothing less. Old senators, law enforcement personnel, reporters…and, of course, just the curious had turned out for this event.
It’s like a freaking circus show.
Noah hadn’t asked Drake to attend the funeral. After he’d left New York, Drake had actually planned to just head back to Biloxi, but the funeral in Fairview had been too close for him to pass up. Maybe he was just curious, too.
Or maybe I’m a suspicious bastard, and I wanted to see Ethan Harrison with my own eyes.
Because the guy was there. Not wearing prison orange, but instead dressed in a black suit. Drake sure never would’ve guessed that man had spent the last nine years in a cell.
It turned out there were actually two Harrison boys. Ethan Harrison, and his older brother, Austin. Ethan was the black sheep, but the brother who currently sat beside him on the front row, right next to the casket, well, it seemed Austin Harrison was supposed to be the savior of the family.
He was an attorney, some big corporate deal. Drake had done a little digging, and he’d discovered that Austin was the one who’d kept the family afloat for so many years. After the senator had crashed and burned, it had been Austin who made sure the family never lost their position in Alabama society.
They’d kept their mansion. Kept their power.
Drake shifted again, moving to get a better view of the brothers. His eyes narrowed. Ethan was staring at the grave. He was…smiling?
“Are you a friend of Senator Harrison’s?” A soft voice asked him. “Or are you family?”
He turned his head and saw a petite beauty with light brown skin standing close by. “I’m neither,” he told her.
She tilted her head. The woman’s shoulders were straight. Her hair fell just to her chin. She was dressed simply but stylishly in black pants and a matching blouse. Her gaze held his, then slid to the mourners, as if assessing them.
His instincts kicked into gear. The way she was watching the crowd…
Cop. Or a private investigator. He could usually spot them easily.
Even when said cop came in the form of such a pretty package.
“Don’t bother,” she said, not glancing back at him. “I’m taken.”
Drake felt a grin curl his lips. “I was just admiring.”
“Um.” Her
gaze was on Ethan Harrison. “Well, Mr. Neither, if you aren’t a friend or family member, then want to tell me why you’re at the funeral?”
“I was just passing through. It’s not every day that a senator gets buried.” He kept his eyes on her. “And what’s a cop with a northern accent doing down here in Alabama?”
“I’m the cop who found the senator’s body in D.C.”
“So why aren’t you in D.C. right now?”
Her gaze came back to his. “Because I’m trying to find a killer, Mr. Archer.”
Ah, he wasn’t Mr. Neither any longer. The lady had known exactly who he was all along. Interesting. “It would seem then you’re a pretty good cop.”
“You’re a friend of Noah York’s,” she said. Once more, her gaze turned to sweep the crowd. “Did he send you down here to watch the funeral…or to watch Ethan Harrison?”
“Neither.”
He thought her lips curled a bit at that answer. “Like I said, I’m just passing through,” Drake told her.
This time, she turned to face him. “Your friend could be a killer.”
There was no could be about it.
“You wouldn’t protect a killer, would you?”
I’d protect Noah York any day. “Once upon a time,” he said as he remembered days better left in the past, “Noah pulled me out of hell. A man doesn’t forget things like that.”
Because he could’ve died in a frigid prison, if Trace and Noah hadn’t fought so hard for him. They’d been willing to die in order to save him. No, he’d never forget what they’d done.
His gaze slid back to the funeral.
Drake knew that, if he had to, he’d kill in order to protect Noah. Because he would not just stand back and watch his friend crash and burn.
***
The funeral was over.
Ethan Harrison tried not to smile as he stared at the grave. His father was gone.
Good fucking riddance.
The mourners kept looking at him. They were driving him insane. There were so many whispers and curious stares. He hunched his shoulders. Looked at the ground. And tried to act like this wasn’t one of the best moments of his life.
I’ll be getting away soon.
His brother tried to brush by him. Ethan grabbed Austin’s shoulder. “We need to talk.” He steered his brother to the relative privacy of a nearby mausoleum. The guards stayed close, about ten feet away, so Ethan dropped his voice when he said, “You haven’t come to see me, brother.”
He and Austin had the same eyes. Same green color. Same shape. And right then, Austin’s eyes were bright with fury. “Why the hell would I come and see you?”
“Because we’re family!” That should be plenty of reason. “You don’t lock family away and forget about them.”
“You do if the family is anything like you.” Austin glared at him, the disgust plain to see on his face. That was Austin all right. Always looking down his nose at him. Always acting like he was so much better than Ethan.
You’re not.
“Everything that happened is on you,” Austin snarled at him. “If you’d just left that girl alone—”
“Claire.”
Austin’s eyelids jerked. “You should have left her alone.”
Austin had always been the perfect one. The quarterback. The valedictorian. The every-fucking-thing. “You saw her first,” Ethan recalled.
“What?”
“In the diner, you saw her first.” He could remember this so well. “I wouldn’t have noticed Claire at all, if you hadn’t been staring at her so hard. Hell, you even said…‘I’m gonna ask her out.’ I just beat you to the punch.”
Austin’s jaw dropped in surprise, and he surged toward Ethan. “That’s why you hooked up with Claire Kramer? Because you thought I wanted her?”
Ethan just smiled at him. You did want her, brother. I saw it in your eyes.
Austin sucked in a deep breath. Then he smiled, too. And laughed. “You’re such an idiot, Ethan. I hope you enjoyed your afternoon of freedom, because it’s over. They’re waiting to take you back to jail.” His voice dropped to a low whisper. “And guess what happens when you get back? Your preferential treatment ends. No more being separated from the others. Welcome to general pop.”
Was that supposed to scare him?
“Dad’s gone. And I’m not as blind as he was. Everything will change for you now. You did the crime, and you’ll suffer for it.”
Ethan glanced away from Austin’s glittering eyes. “One thing I always wondered…” His stare lingered a moment on the casket. Rot, old man. Rot. “Did he hit you, too? Or did he just save that shit for me?”
Silence. Maybe that was his answer.
“Your big brother is supposed to protect you. How come you never helped me?” Ethan asked him. Then, because maybe he didn’t want to hear the miserable lie that Austin would spout, Ethan walked away from him.
The whispers were louder as he headed back to the patrol car. The black and white car was parked near the edge of the lot, close to a thick patch of trees. Those trees backed up to a little bayou. He’d taken Claire to that bayou once.
He’d taken her virginity there. They’d been in the back of his car then.
“Time to go,” one of the guards said as he stepped to Ethan’s side. Bo. Bo Dunnelly.
The other guy was Marcel Reed.
They’d been good enough, for cops.
Marcel opened one of the car’s back doors. Ethan knew the reporters close by had been waiting for this shot. The picture of him being loaded back up for jail.
The cops didn’t cuff him.
He’d counted on that.
So he waved to the crowd. He sucked in a deep breath of that free air. And he remembered Claire.
He slid into the car.
Marcel and Bo headed toward the front of the vehicle. They climbed inside.
“Damn, son,” Marcel said as he settled into the front seat of the car. “That was sure a lot of folks to see your dad off.”
Yes, it had been. “He always liked a good show.” The old bastard had cared so much about what everyone thought.
Too bad no one had realized what an abusive prick he was.
***
The show was over. Drake strode past the grave. He glanced toward the patrol car. Ethan Harrison had just been loaded up in there and—
The force of the explosion threw Drake back about five feet. He nearly landed right in that damn grave.
Drake jumped up as fast as he could, then stared with narrowed eyes at the sight before him.
The patrol car was a ball of flames. People were screaming, running, and Ethan Harrison…
He was burning.
The little cop ran toward the car. Damn foolish mistake. Amateur hour. He grabbed her, jerked her back and—
Another explosion sent the flames surging even higher.
“There are men in there!” The cop screamed. “Two officers, I saw them load Ethan in—”
And all he could see was fire now. “They’re dead.” Someone had wanted to take out Ethan Harrison and the cops had just become collateral damage.
The heat from the flames lanced over his skin.
***
When his phone rang, Noah thought about ignoring the call. He would have, if the ring hadn’t been the distinct tone that told him Drake Archer was on the other end of the line.
“Shouldn’t you be gambling some place?” Noah asked when he took the call. Drake owned a series of casinos along the Mississippi Coast, and Noah had thought that his friend would be getting right back to business.
Noah and Claire had just arrived at his house in the Hamptons. Claire was walking along the beach. He intended to join her there in the next sixty seconds.
“Can’t talk long,” Drake said, the words low. “I’ll tell you more later, but…Ethan Harrison is dead.”
Noah wasn’t sure he’d just heard correctly. “What?”
“I was at the senator’s funeral…”
Why the hell had Drake been there?
“Everything was fine until Ethan Harrison got loaded back into a patrol car. Someone put a bomb in the car. Everything and everyone in that car are gone.”
Noah stared down at the beach. “You’re sure he’s dead?”
“Unless the man can walk through fire, hell yes, he’s gone.”
Good.
“Be careful,” Drake warned him, “there’s a cop here. A woman from D.C. She’s asking a lot of questions about you.”
“I’m always careful.” Claire was free.
“I’ll see what I can find out from the authorities down here. But, shit, Weston’s the one who is good at investigating things, not me.” There was the murmur of voices in the background. “Got to go.” The line went dead.
Noah kept staring down at the beach. Claire had turned and was walking toward him. She wasn’t smiling, but she didn’t look as frightened as she’d appeared back in the city.
He moved to the edge of his deck. The wind tousled Claire’s hair as she climbed up the steps. Her gaze darted to his phone. “Is everything okay?”
Just tell her. “Ethan Harrison is dead.”
She stopped.
“Drake was at the senator’s funeral.” Why? “A bomb was put in the car, and he’s…Ethan is gone, Claire.”
Her breath heaved out, and Claire hunched over, clutching her stomach.
“Claire!” He ran to her. Put his hands on her arms.
She looked up at him. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “He’s dead?”
“Yes.” If Drake had said the man was gone…he was gone.
Noah didn’t mention that when it came to demolitions, Drake was an expert. He’d always been the one to set the detonations for their team.
And Drake just happened to be at the funeral? Shit, but this could get bad, fast.
“Ethan won’t ever come after me,” Claire whispered. She was crying and smiling, and breaking the heart that Noah didn’t think he still had. “He’s gone!”
Then she threw her arms around Noah and held him tight. He held her just as tightly.