by Carly Bishop
“Nothing, Eden.” She didn’t believe him. Her expression must have conveyed her skepticism. He crammed his hands into his pockets, then gave a crooked smile. He shrugged. “I was just thinking it’s been a long time since I was in a girl’s room. A girlfriend’s bedroom.”
She blinked and stared down at her hands, then tossed her hair back and met his gaze. “Is that what I am, Tierney?”
He blinked slowly back at her. “Yeah, Kelley. That’s what you are.”
Her throat tightened. A frayed cabbage rose paper decked the walls. A primitive kind of long-legged stuffed cotton bunny rabbit lay on the spread. Frilly curtains matched the dust ruffle. “I was a girl here. For a while. But no boys ever came in here.”
“Good.”
“You knew that, Chris.”
Fending off a grin, he shrugged. “I knew no one stole home, Eden. That doesn’t mean some little creep with sweaty hands and high hopes never went to bat here, or got to first base.”
She gave him a quelling look, then let her gaze follow the line of the molding at the ceiling. “This was the first place I remember feeling safe.”
“Even counting St. Anne’s?”
Sitting back on the bed, she nodded. “There were a lot of girls there who had more experience than a grown-up hooker. I would listen to them talk and think about going off to join a nunnery.”
Chris cleared his throat. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
The heat in his eyes and the gravelly desire in his voice made her flush and shiver at once. “Me, too.”
Desire flared in her to match his. She got up off the bed and crossed the small room to a high, narrow dresser. She pulled out a mauve satin bustier, turned toward Chris and held it up against Gelham’s sweater at her midriff. She felt brazen and daring and scared.
“I could have spent my life mending hospital bed sheets. Instead...I made this. Do you like it?”
“I’m not sure.” His voice was gritty. He shifted his stance.
Eden gulped, startled, aware for the first time in her life what it meant when a man shifted like that. She flushed hotter and caught her lower lip between her teeth.
He closed his eyes momentarily and shifted again. “Maybe you should put it on for me so I can...decide.”
She nodded, blushing, and turned away, but she did not retreat behind the screen. She put the bustier on top of the dresser and pulled off Gelham’s sweater, baring her back to Chris, then slid her arms through the satin shoulder straps.
Her heart raced. Her breasts tingled, felt full, and her nipples had already drawn tight. She turned back, halfway through closing the garment up with its old-fashioned hooks and eyes and ties.
She watched his eyes following the upward path of her fingers. She smoothed the fabric when she was done, drawing her hands down the slick mauve satin to her waist. “There.”
He knew she expected an answer now, but he felt as if he’d swallowed his tongue. The candlelight flickered and glowed on the satin molded so perfectly to her breasts. He had never felt more vulnerable.
Never.
He wanted her too much. He ached low and outside his torso. He knew in his head that the top floor of Monique Lamareaux’s brownstone was not the place for this, but this was where he was, how he was. He could no more walk away from Eden Kelley or wanting her or needing to show her how he felt about her than he could let her sacrifice her life so Broussard would stop killing people.
He unbuckled his belt and unzipped his jeans and began to unbutton his plaid flannel shirt.
Eden didn’t need any other answer. When he stroked the sides of her bustier and groaned and slipped the satin straps from her shoulder so he could kiss her there, she forfeited forever the notion of taking herself off to a nunnery. But a part of her grieved every kiss, every touch, every thrust of his supremely masculine body.
Deep inside her soul where it had always been apparent to her that she could never belong, she believed Broussard would win.
And that this would be the last hour she would ever spend in Christian Tierney’s embrace.
AT TWO-FORTY in the morning of his sixth day with Eden Kelley, Chris got up from the bed where she had spent the last of her girlhood. He put on his socks and then his jeans and flannel shirt and moved silently down the four flights of stairs, carrying his boots and her mauve satin garment. He went to Monique Lamareaux’s study and sat in the high-backed executive chair, staring in the dark at the phone on her desk.
His body was well sated, his heart little more than a mechanical object witlessly pumping away. He knew what he must do, knew how to do it and knew this was the moment, while Eden lay sleeping, trusting him.
There was the rub. He’d led her to believe she could trust him. He had lied at worst, misled her at best. The best he could do now was to ensure her safety and put her in the hands of the only other man she trusted—David Tafoya.
Chris held her satin bustier to his face and inhaled deeply. The scent of her lingered on the fabric. The slick texture sent tactile sensations through his fingers. His whiskers caught against the fine grain. His throat swelled. His chest tightened and heaved and he came as close to tears as he had come since he was younger than Tiffer.
He picked up the receiver and dialed the Boston FBI. Following recorded instructions, he punched zero for the operator. When a woman answered, he identified himself as an informant seeking Special Agent David Tafoya and asked to be put through to Tafoya’s home.
The Feeb picked up on the third ring. Chris choked. Tafoya barked a second hello. Chris shook his head at his indecisive waffling and made himself do what had to be done. “This is Tierney.”
“Tierney who?” Tafoya demanded.
Chris could imagine the Feeb wetting himself. “Tierney, Christian Xavier, deputy marshal, United States Marshal Service, Boston.” He rattled off every kind of identifying government number from his birth date to his date of hire to his clearance IDs and sandwiched Monique Lamareaux’s address somewhere in the middle.
“Is this some kind of test?” Tafoya asked.
“Two conditions,” Chris snapped, “or I’m out of here with the witness for good.”
Tafoya placated him. “You’re doing the right thing, Tierney. I’ll put in a good word for you with the A.G. What conditions?”
Chris didn’t think even St. Peter putting in a good word would salvage his badge. After he finished with Broussard, his job would be irrelevant. “One,” he answered, “you come for her now—”
“I can do that—”
“And two, you keep her away from Broussard, no matter what.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean, Tierney?” Tafoya demanded. “I’m the one who was looking out for Eden Kelley a long time before you ever heard of her. Why would I let her anywhere near Broussard?”
“Because she’ll ask. She wants to go in wearing a wire. I want your word that won’t happen.”
“Done,” Tafoya agreed. “Tierney, let me say this one more time. You’ve done a hell of job and put yourself on the line—”
Chris interrupted with a lone succinct curse. He didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want the Feeb extolling his actions. It didn’t matter that Chris had saved her life. What was uppermost in his mind and heart was that he was about to betray Eden’s trust. He knew, as far as she would be concerned, he might as well put a bullet through her heart himself.
“Just keep her alive, Tafoya.”
“You know I will.”
“Yeah.” Chris’s hand closed tight on the satin. “See to it.” He hung up the receiver and sat a moment longer, then got up and slipped like a shadow out the front entry. Broussard’s life was now measured in hours.
THE SUN HADN’T YET come up when Eden awoke in her old room, alone in the antique four-poster. Foreboding swamped her. Switching on the bedside lamp, she climbed off the bed and dressed quickly in Gelham’s jeans and a sweater of her own. She checked the bathroom and then the other two rooms on the fifth floor of Monique’s
brownstone, then descended the stairs to the kitchen where there was a small light on and the scent of freshly brewed coffee.
“Chris?” She came around the landing and saw not Tierney, but the familiar short, solid shape of David Tafoya.
“David.” Eden stopped short, still on the bottom stair. It took no great ration of reasoning ability to understand, but the implications took her agonizing long seconds to assimilate.
Christian Tierney had left her to go end Broussard’s life.
Between one beat and the next, her heart caved in on itself. She should have known Chris would do this. He had changed his mind too easily to be true.
“Sorry to disappoint you, Eden,” David said, pouring a cup of coffee from the automatic drip decanter. He gave a half smile. “But I thank God you’re alive.” Dark-haired, solidly muscled, wearing khakis and a gun in a shoulder holster over his light, short-sleeved shirt, he handed her the cup. “And looking well,” he added.
“Thank you.” She accepted the cup of steaming coffee, trying to disguise the bitter disappointment. “Where’s Chris Tierney?”
“‘You’re looking well, too’ comes next, Eden,” he chided gently. Or, ‘Boy, it’s good to see you again.’ Something like that.”
She shivered. Her teeth clenched. She trusted David Tafoya and she knew very well that it had been her own plan to seek his help, but she found herself utterly unable to offer up inane clichés.
As he watched her reaction, Tafoya’s blunt-featured face softened. “He’s gone, Eden. I don’t know where.”
“He called you?”
“Several hours ago.”
Shaking, feeling betrayed, Eden held her cup with both hands. “I was going to do that.”
“Call me?”
She nodded. “I just thought—” she swallowed hard “—I just thought Chris would stick around.”
Tafoya put down his cup and leaned against the kitchen counter. “It’s best this way.” He folded his thick arms over his chest. “Tierney was looking out for your best interests. We all are, you know.”
His patronizing, we’ll-take-care-of-you tone upset her deeply. “I intend to look out for my own best interests, David. Broussard has got to be stopped. I can’t go on like this.”
“Of course not.” He drained his cup. “We’ll get you back into protective custody, see to it that you’re safely relocated once and for all so you can put all of this behind –”
“No.” Pain roared through her like a distant train, heard, felt, not seen. There wasn’t even any room for anger, only for keeping her focus. “I want to do this again, David. I want to go after Broussard.”
“For what, Eden?”
“Murder.” She shook her hair back. “Conspiracy to murder, whatever you call it. Catherine Tierney’s murder and Judith Cornwallis’s and Dan Haggerty’s. I need your help.”
Tafoya shook his head. “Tierney said you would ask. I’m afraid I promised him it wouldn’t happen.”
“You had no right to make a promise like that, David!”
“Eden—”
“Don’t you see I have to get to Broussard before he and Chris kill each other?”
“My God!” Tafoya stared at her, incredulous, as if he were seeing her clearly for the first time. His features took on an ugly twist. “You’ve gone and convinced yourself you’re in love with Tierney, haven’t you?”
Chapter Seventeen
“That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
Eden’s insides quaked. Hot coffee slopped on her hands. “David...”
His face darkened. “How sickeningly trite! What went on here, exactly?”
His inflection sent prickles down her spine. Stunned, she fought against shrinking from him. “That’s none of your business, David.”
“Oh, I beg to differ! Carnal relations with a witness isn’t in the handbook, Eden. It’s abusive and despicable.” He snatched the cup of coffee from her hands, not caring that the hot liquid splashed on his own hands, and thrust it crashing onto the counter. He grabbed her by the wrist. “Show me, Eden,” he commanded, hauling her back to the stairs. “Let’s just see what’s been going on.”
He dragged her with him. Fighting him, she tripped on a riser and fell, banging her knees, but he only kept dragging her along up one flight and the next and the next.
“David, stop it!” she cried. If he thought she’d been sexually abused at Chris’s hands, why was he treating her like this? “What are you doing? Let me go!”
But he didn’t stop, didn’t let her go until he had hurled her into the room at the top of the stairs and stood staring at the tangle of bed sheets, blocking her way out.
“Tell me Tierney forced you,” he commanded coldly. “Make it good, Eden. I will try very hard to believe you.”
“David, it didn’t happen that way.” His frenzy chilled her to the marrow. Dear God, what had she done? Goose bumps broke out on her flesh. She no longer recognized David Tafoya at all. He wasn’t the same FBI agent who had been so intent, so vehemently determined to get Broussard, so dedicated to protecting her. “Why are you doing this? Why are you so angry? Why does it matter?”
He ignored her questions. “You let Tierney take advantage of you,” he sneered. “You just don’t ever get a clue, do you?”
“David, what are you talking about?”
“Or am I giving you too much credit?” he went on as if she hadn’t asked anything at all. “Did you beg him, Eden? Did you begin to see him as your savior? Did you think you owed him? Did you, Eden?”
“No—”
“It’s a common enough phenomenon among female kidnap victims and hostages,” he lectured, pacing the floor of her small room. “A woman will submit every time to her captor’s despicable sexual advances in her gratitude for his having kept her alive.”
Fear spread through her chest and congealed into a lump in her throat. She could feel Tafoya’s eyes on her, as if he’d suddenly gone schizo, half of him violently condemning Chris, the other half insanely jealous, wanting her for himself. Her skin crawled. Her heart pounded as fear gnawed at her. “It wasn’t like that, David. Please. Can’t we go back to being allies, to working together to put Broussard behind bars forever?”
“I’m afraid I don’t see that happening.” He smiled. “You see, Winston Broussard paid me—exceptionally well, I must say—to see that the witnesses against him never testified.”
Eden shivered violently. “No...you—”
“Oh, yes. You’ve been living on borrowed time, Eden. For way too long.”
“David, no,” she cried, anguish spilling through her. The blood rushed from her head. Her denials were meager hope, too meager. “You spent years going after him, years—”
“Exactly. Too many. I lost my wife and kid over it. Do you suppose my quality of life hasn’t improved a thousand times by the simple choice of letting it be? Broussard was never going to be convicted. At a certain point,” he explained, as if it were all really very simple, “all that zeal bums itself out and you’re left holding the bag of ashes, wondering what the hell happened to your dreams.”
Eden sank to her bed. “Why didn’t you just kill me when I insisted on going through with my testimony?”
He gave a faint smile. “You were removed from the safe house in Maine after that. Even I didn’t know where you were—but in any case, the decision was Broussard’s. Suspicion might have fallen on me. He thought it much more valuable to have a...friend on the inside. He never believed he would be convicted even of jaywalking on your testimony alone. He paid dearly, didn’t he, for the mistaken belief that he could bring you to heel?”
All hope withered away, Eden shook her head. “Not dearly enough.”
He smiled nastily, then pinned her with his dark, righteous gaze. “Now, you insipid, foolish little slut, you have gone and squandered the only coin that has ever bought you any more time. And I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t hold me accountable because you are no longer his unspoiled little virg
in.” Tafoya scowled. “What was it he called you? Eden, his little garden of secret delights? Well...” He pulled the gun from his shoulder holster and aimed it straight at her heart. “All our dirty little secrets are out now, aren’t they?”
Sickened and terrified, Eden bolted. Before she even made it as far as the door of her room, Special Agent David Tafoya lifted his arm and cracked her on the head with the butt of his gun.
CHRIS STUCK AROUND in the deep shadows of an outdoor stairwell across the street long enough to make sure that Tafoya arrived to take Eden back into protective custody.
He watched the Feeb drive up in a late-model BMW, watched him adjust his shoulder holster, pocket the keys and check out the street for any signs of trouble. The Feeb mounted the steps two at a time, approached the building without a trace of hesitation and then performed an illegal entry into Monique Lamareaux’s brownstone.
Tafoya was good. Maybe too good. It took him well under sixty seconds to get in. Doubts clung to Chris like old sweat. His mouth tasted bad, his instincts railed against leaving her in anyone else’s hands—but if Tafoya could keep her safe for a few hours more, just a few measly hours, she would be safe from Broussard for all time.
Keeping to the shadows, Chris walked the two blocks down the street to the Karmann Ghia, got in and drove off before he could think of better reasons to go back than that the Feeb was too good.
He drove to a seedy little motel off the highway on the northeast side of Lynn, Massachusetts, parked the Karmann Ghia in back, paid cash and went to his assigned room. He stripped out of his clothes and stood under the inadequate, too-low shower head for as long as the hot water lasted. He hoped it would be long enough, or the soap sufficiently strong, to purge Eden’s scent from his flesh.