by Carly Bishop
She nodded and backhanded her tears. “Can you see the bullet?”
“Yeah. It’s not that deep, Eden. I swear it.” He squinted, so dead tired he could barely see anymore, focusing on the bullet.
“Can you get it out—without a scalpel or something, I mean?”
He nodded. “The bullet isn’t deep, but it’s lodged beside the bone and the tissue has swelled around it.” Knowing if she was going to pass out at all, it would be when he pried the bullet from her flesh, he pushed her bottom along the countertop until she was tight against the side wall.
He picked up the tweezers, then put them down again and scraped at his whiskers, rubbing the back of his neck in a futile little gesture.
“Have you ever done...this...before?” she asked, her voice wavering, uncertain.
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Out of bricks. Wood. Doorjambs. Things like that.”
“That’s certainty—” her breath caught “—encouraging.”
He glimpsed for the first time the hint of long dimples in her pale, too-thin cheeks and, for a moment, felt like he’d been slammed. He breathed deeply and blinked a couple of times to ease his itchy eyes, then took the tweezers and doused them in alcohol. Cupping her upper arm, he braced himself as well. “Ready?”
Eden clutched the wet towel. “Just do it.”
She lasted through his pulling the bullet loose. She hung in there while he poured in more peroxide. He unwrapped a couple of small butterfly bandages and gently drew her flesh together with his second and third fingers.
When he was done, she scooted off the countertop, stood and turned to see how he had done in the mirror.
He stood behind her, a head taller, dragged out, beat. He met her wide gray eyes in the mirror, and then she passed out cold.
WHEN WEB BROUSSARD received the news that the hit on Eden Kelley had failed, he was sipping at a glass of Grand-Puy-Ducasse Pauillac, lying on a deck chair at the poolside of his private estate south of Marblehead on Massachusetts Bay. He had returned only hours before from the villa of a Cuban associate, where the living was easy and the heat reminded him of New Orleans, but the culture was oppressive and annoyingly melodramatic, even to him.
Broussard wished to live in joy. Joie de vie.
He clicked off the cellular to end the call, and in the next instant, the exquisite crystal containing his drink shattered in his hand. He took no notice of his own blood mingling with the rare, subtle wine.
Next to him, Sheila cried out, “Web, darling, what is it? Look at your hand! You’re bleeding!”
“Take no thought of it, chère.” His tone warned her against hovering or troubling him with further outcries. She sat very still, unnaturally constrained to silence and against her female instincts to minister to him.
He wanted nothing from her at this black moment, and she had been with him—though not long —long enough to back off at his command.
Naturally, Sheila Jacques had accompanied him. He found her accommodating in the extreme. She was an ordinary little creature, one that under most circumstances he would have given no more notice than he might a sparrow.
Still, her gratitude to him—for a thousand things, not the least of which was that he had rescued her from a lifetime of dealing with sniveling, brain-dead adolescents — knew no bounds. None that he had discovered anyway, and it wasn’t as if Winston Broussard had ever been less than thorough.
She understood that the small humiliations he had occasion to subject her to were mere tests of her loyalty.
She understood the nature of his tests. She understood his need for complete and unquestioning loyalty. She knew her place in the larger scheme of things. There existed a universe of far more beautiful women who would also, for the gifts he bestowed, be as accommodating. Sheila knew he had chosen her, selected her from among the rest because of her friendship with Eden Kelley.
Sheila’s idea of why this was so amused him greatly, but he was not amused now, and he was finding no joy, either. He was enraged. He had paid vast sums of money for his problems to be made to go away, and he had not gotten value for his investment.
True, all the other witnesses against him in that pathetic attempt by the Feds to stop his arms trafficking had been silenced. Two of the three permanently. The remaining traitor had been made to understand the lethal consequences of testifying against him, and that man, for one, had not valued his so-called honor over his life. And it was also true that the G-men had not seen fit to bring him before a grand jury to indict him on conspiracy to murder.
Eden Kelley, however, would not give up, but she had not been so accessible as the others, who could be sent very distressing messages while in prison themselves.
The Feds had managed to hide her away in a safe house long enough to get to trial. Her feeble testimony had been enough to send him away. He resented it bitterly. He loathed her. She would pay quite dearly. He hoped he’d made it clear how little her life was worth by the silent, eloquent gesture of flicking that crushed orchid blossom over his shoulder. He smirked. His hand bled on. He imagined Eden Kelley had no particular fondness for orchids anymore.
The bitch had managed to survive the assassination attempt, had eluded certain death.
He knew Deputy Marshal Christian Tierney, whose stunningly beautiful wife had died in Eden’s stead, would murder him in his bed if he could. Since a Supreme Court decision had empowered the Marshal Service to track down and seize their quarry outside the territorial United States—without recourse to cumbersome treaties and extradition agreements—leaving the country no longer necessarily ensured a moment’s peace.
They could not come after him without formal charges pending, however. Web had given some thought to the possibility that Tierney would goad the FBI into such a course of action —perhaps on murder charges, or conspiracy to murder—so Tierney would be sanctioned to track Web to the ends of the earth.
There were no such charges.
Tierney was a still a loose cannon, but such undisciplined behavior didn’t faze Web. It would, in the end, be Tierney’s undoing. And in the end, Web would be rid of them both-Tierney and Eden Kelley.
Twice, Web’s hired assassins had failed. However much he would have liked to deal with Eden Kelley himself, to choke the life from her with his own hands, he determined to remain disciplined himself, unlike Tierney, and grant his associates one last opportunity. One more chance to send the viperous bitch to her rightful demise.
He would conserve Sheila Jacques’s usefulness for another little while.
EDEN WOKE IN A SEAT aboard the government jet wearing a soft champagne-colored silk jersey camisole, her shoulders covered by a coarsely textured army blanket made into a shawl. Christian Tierney sat opposite her, slouched deeply in the seat, his eyes closed, arms outstretched, his long legs extending nearly to the base of her own chair.
Watching him through her lashes, she felt heat rise in her cheeks. He had to have unhooked and unlaced the bustier to take it off her. He had to have gone through her things to come up with the camisole and put it on her.
In the worst straits of her life, a captive in the hands of a man more immediately dangerous to her than Winston Broussard himself, she berated herself for caring that he had seen her, handled her, naked from the waist up.
But he had kissed her, and she’d let him, needed him to distract her from the pain. To make her feel human and still alive. Kissing had subtly changed everything, charging what went on between them with a sexual tension she didn’t know how to combat.
With her eyes only barely open, coping now with a dull throbbing between her right breast and shoulder, she watched him for a long time. His eyes were closed. She didn’t know if he was sleeping. She decided after a while that he was not—that he might be resting his eyes, but remained aware of his surroundings. Aware of her. Aware, even, that she had regained consciousness.
His raven black hair lay in damp curls, as if he’d stuck his head beneath the lavatory sink. He smelled now
of soap. Starkly delineated against fair skin, his black whiskers created a dark, forbidding visage.
Her tummy fluttered. She drew a deep, panicky breath and opened her eyes, willing herself to see him not as a dangerously attractive, compelling man, but for the threat he represented.
If what he told her was true, then he hadn’t known, any more than the sheriff’s deputy or Tafoya’s FBI stand-in, that Broussard’s assassin already had her virtually in his sights. He had followed Paglia and the deputy, intending to kidnap her, to take her from them, nothing more.
He had saved her life, that much was true. She owed her life to him, but she couldn’t allow herself to forget for one moment that beneath his heroics lay a reckless disregard for her welfare. He would use her for whatever purposes he had in mind.
Revenge was at the heart of his actions. She was sure of that much. And she believed deep inside that no matter how valorous he had proved himself to be, he could not exact his revenge against Winston Broussard without getting himself killed. Which almost certainly meant she would die, too—unless she managed to escape him and somehow get back to the protection of David Tafoya.
Observing him slouched low in the seat, resting his head back, she faced the fact that his pressing weariness touched her. That she sympathized with his deadly intent. Nothing would ease her own heart and mind so much as Winston Broussard’s death.
To know that about herself gave her no comfort.
He opened his eyes then and met her stare.
Shuddering, she lowered her gaze to her hands, then looked at him again. Maybe, if she tried, she could reason with him. Maybe she could make him see that there was no way ever to get Catherine back. Tierney had to see that Broussard’s life didn’t begin to equal Catherine’s and wasn’t worth the risk to his own.
She had to try. She had to hope he would give this all up because even if he let her go and went on alone, it would cost him his life, too, one way or another. She couldn’t bear to think of that happening.
“I’m sorry for what happened to... Catherine. To your wife.”
“Yeah.” He exhaled harshly. “Me, too.”
“I know I wasn’t directly responsible, but it...feels like I was.”
He folded his hands over his flat abdomen. “No one’s blaming you.”
“I know. I guess that makes it easier to blame myself. If I hadn’t testified, or if—”
“Things happen. Innocent people die every day.”
She nodded, sensing the pain beneath his shrugging it all off. “I know.” She watched his Adam’s apple slide down at the opening of his green-and-blue plaid flannel shirt. “That can’t be any comfort.”
He didn’t say anything or act as if he wanted to talk about his wife.
“You must have loved her very much.”
He tilted his head and knuckled his eyes. “Are you going somewhere with this?”
“Yes.” She remembered the shock on his wildly handsome face, the rank confusion, the horror of seeing his lovely, pregnant wife brutally murdered. In the few seconds it had taken to speed away from the scene of the violent assassination attempt, she had known such a brutal loss would deaden a man’s heart forever.
“Where?” he prodded.
She scraped her hair back, to buy time, maybe. A few seconds to find a way to say what she thought Catherine might say to him. “Have you thought whether Catherine would want this?”
He shook his head. “What Catherine wants hasn’t been relevant for a long time. You don’t get to guess what she would have wanted.”
His remark felt personal, like blame, whether that’s what he’d intended or not. “But you can guess,” she said, her voice low, urgent. “Do you think she would have wanted you to throw your life away?”
His looked straight at her and his lips curved, but Eden would not have called it a smile. “Catherine would have expected it.”
Eden swallowed. “You can’t be serious.”
He looked away, sighing heavily. “I was in love with her. She would expect me to die of a broken heart. Or maybe to throw myself off a cliff.”
His mournful response shocked Eden to her marrow. “People say that,” she protested, “but—”
“But what?” he snapped, angry at her now. “But they don’t mean it? They don’t want to believe it will ever happen, but it would sure be one hell of a testimony to undying love?” He surged out of his chair and began to pace, rubbing the back of his neck in his agitation. He turned back to her, one hand cocked on his lean hip, the other pointing straight at her, his eyes shooting daggerlike warnings. “Don’t presume to tell me what Catherine would have wanted.”
Eden felt shaky again, and trapped. Caged by his anger, by emotions she couldn’t fathom. By a kind of love she would never know, a love so powerful that neither person could imagine going on without the other.
She couldn’t let his anger control her, or silence her. “Broussard is deadly, Mr. Tierney–”
“Chris.”
“Mr. Tierney,” she repeated, aware how very dangerous it would be to begin calling him by his first name. How the enforced intimacy of being his captive might begin to seem more rational and less a violation. “Listen to me, please! Winston Broussard has no conscience. He lives for the moment. His motto is loyalty, first, last and always, but he has no allegiance to anything or anyone but himself. He’s an animal!”
“Are you saying I can’t win, Eden?” Tierney mocked, smirking at her. He picked up his coat from where he’d left it near the bulkhead, and pulled a canteen from his coat pocket. “That even if I try, I’ll lose? That I will have thrown my life away and changed nothing?”
“Yes! That’s exactly what I’m saying. Winston Broussard doesn’t care whom he hurts or who gets killed.” Why was this so hard? Because deep within, she knew that if Tierney could contemplate revenge, he was more like Broussard than she wanted to accept? Because his beautiful hazel eyes were already lifeless? “I’m saying you’re not ... not like him. You’re not ruthless enough.”
He opened the flask and brought the opening to his mouth, drained it, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve and tossed aside the empty container.
“You’re wrong,” he said grimly.
Eden felt the color drain from her face. She knew then how hopeless it was to think she could persuade him to abandon his intentions. To forget, if not to forgive.
Christian Tierney loved his wife, Catherine, beyond life itself, but she was gone. He had faced the dilemma of what to do. How to go on.
His answer was not to go on at all, save to exact his revenge, which would cost him his life, but save him a lifetime without the woman he loved.
Eden fell silent.
He sat again across from her. “Look, Eden...” He started to say something she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear at all, trying perhaps to find some way of putting his intentions into a better light, some way of justifying what he had set himself up to do, but he was interrupted by Haggerty calling back to him.
“Tierney. We’ve got trouble.”
He looked once more at Eden, then rose wearily from the seat.
She sat forward, intending to get up, as well. She had to grit her teeth against the rush of pain and the stiffness taking hold of her body. “Do you mind if I hear what kind of trouble we’re in?”
He fixed her with his stare. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”
Chapter Seven
He meant, of course, that she shouldn’t know where she was. That he didn’t trust her not to run, or to try calling for help. He would have to chain her to the seat to keep her from following, and she didn’t think he was prepared to do that—at least not here. Not in confines she couldn’t escape in any case.
The stiffness almost leveled her, almost made her sink back to her seat. Her chin went up. “I have a right to know what’s going on.”
He stared at her a moment longer, for what seemed a small eternity, then shrugged and turned away toward the cockpit. Eden s
hivered. It was a puny victory in a battle of wills she had no chance of winning. He could lock her in the lavatory if he chose, which meant that if he allowed her to listen to his conversation with the FBI pilot, it was because he figured she didn’t stand a chance of escaping him anyway.
“You’re wrong, Christian Tierney,” she uttered fiercely, purposefully echoing his earlier harsh remark.
She pulled the coarse, scratchy blanket tighter about her shoulders and followed him.
She leaned against the hatch. Tierney occupied the copilot’s seat and sat listening to the pilot, Haggerty.
“...is socked in with fog,” Haggerty was saying. “Instrument landings only. I could do that at Logan, but not at a private airstrip. To get out of the weather, I’d have to go south damn near to New Jersey.”
“What’s the alternative?”
Haggerty tilted his head. From Eden’s perspective, she could see a bald spot on top of it. “Looks like there’s a break in the fog bank between the Berkshires and the Catskills. Saugerties, maybe.”
“You know of any place you can put down there?”
“A couple. Fancy-assed private estates.”
Tierney shook his head. “I’d rather not have to deal with any hotdog private security forces.”
“We’re not exactly long on choices here,” Haggerty cracked.
“Pick one, then,” Tierney said. “You can drop us and head for New Jersey.”
Haggerty nodded. “It’ll be better this way. I’ll lie low, head up to Logan in the morning. Tell Tafoya I don’t know where you disappeared to, only I really won’t know.”
Standing behind them, Eden battled a sudden dizzy spell. Glaring white spots appeared before her eyes. She shivered and focused on one of dozens of dials and indicators and switches at Haggerty’s command. “How much longer?”
Haggerty glanced up at her and shot Tierney a look. “Twenty minutes, maybe. You all right?”
“Yes.”
“Go back and sit down,” Haggerty suggested kindly. “You’ll have to buckle up in a minute anyway.”
She nodded. “When you talk to David Tafoya—”