"Then someone else will! They will. His underlings... and if they don't"
"Do you think I care? Do you think I give a good goddamn what happens to me afterward?"
"That's what you want?" Water streamed off her face, but whether tears or rain She couldn't tell: Her skin felt afire with her anger at him. "That's it?" she shrilled again. "Eden, stop it!"
"No!" She was completely, desperately, madly, profoundly in love with him when all he really wanted was a way out of his own pain ? "That's what you want, isn't it? To take out Broussard and get yourself murdered so I'm the one left alone again? You miserable excuse for a~ man!" she cried, tears streaming from her eyes, She tried to get to her feet, to lash out at him and escape, but he jerked her back down and cupped the back of her head with his hand, tightening his fingers in her hair.
"What are you saying, Eden? Spit it out."
"I'm saying I won't have it, Tierney! I'm saying I won't be left alone by you. I'm saying" -- She broke off. His were fixed on her, staring at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. His brow was creased, almost in pain.
His beautiful dark eyelashes were wet with rain and she thought they were tears. Her throat constricted and she began to shake.
"Say it, Eden," he urged, his voice low and strained. Her knees slid in the mud and she clung to him, but she was not so suddenly helpless as to refuse to meet his eyes when she laid herself bare.
She took off the backpack and hurled it under a bush. Her heart thundered, louder now in her ears than the real thing. "I'm saying... Christian Xavier Tierney, that I want to make love with you and I don't ever want to stop."
"Oh, my God, Eden. Eden. " He shut his eyes, and the groan that came from deep in his chest stirred her blood beyond any sound she had ever heard. He fe~11 back against the drenched undergrowth and pulled her down with him. " I want you, and want it never to stop. "
Mouth open, he kissed her, drew her in, stroked her lips with his tongue, and Eden thought she would die with the keen, smothering pleasure of that kiss alone.
He held her face in his hands and moved his lips over every part of it, kissing her eyes her forehead, sucking the rain from her cheeks and chin and neck, and when he brought his lips back to h~rs, her heart lurched painfully with sensations too new and intense and sharp and inciting to bear.
"We've only begun, Eden," he uttered harshly. She knew that what he said was true when he only had to stroke the side of her breast before her nipple puckered tight in a rocketing swell of pleasure so shattering and exquisite that it bordered on pain. "We have only begun."
In the torrential downpour with the roar of the swollen brook in her ears, she returned his kisses. Heat flared between them and the bitingly cold rain on her back and bottom and thighs made her crazy with need. She seemed driven, toward seeking to get closer, toward willing herself to be consumed in Christian Tierney's fire.
Kissing her, absorbing her, he slid his hands down her sides, lingering at the flattened swell of her breasts, but he wanted more and reached to pull off her sweater, to have no barriers between them.
"Let me." Her idyllic, sterile-dreams of candlelight and violins and satin paled, fading to nothing. She pulled back and sat up, alive, electric with need and instinct and the power of her choice, to make love with this rugged, reckless lawman in this fearsomely elemental and primitive forest, beneath storm-blackened skies opening up in thunder and lightning and in torrents of rain.
She stripped the clinging, sodden sweater from her body. The drenching rain poured over her bare back and her small naked breasts and the ugly black stitches. Her nipples tightened into hardened buds, in the cold of the night air. She didn, t know just how sensitized they were before he raised himself up on one elbo~v, touched her face with his fingers and then sipped the rain from one and then the other of her beaded nipples.
When his lips closed over one of them, desire exploded in her, Deep inside, her muscles clenched and throbbed, making her cry out. Her pelvis began to rock unwittingly and Chris drew her rhythmically deeper and deeper into his mouth, stroking her with his tongue, knowing now for himself that what she'd said was true.
Eden Kelley was untouched. and already, so soon, so sweetly, on the brink of her first climax.
His sex burgeoned painfully against his fly. His body hummed. with incredible tension. She held his head to her breast and cried out again when the powerful sensations took her over the edge.
He grabbed the sweater she'd shed and laid it out before turning her on her back. Frantically, she lowered her jeans till she could spread her knees. Just as needful, he lowered his. When he entered her for the first time, when the pain receded and the pleasure washed over her in torrents, when he brought her again and 'again to spiraling, soaring heights, Eden was still mindful of the exquisite moment when she knew what it was to be taken cam of and treasured and to know that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
To know that once, she had belonged to Christian Tierney and he. had belonged to her.
T~m BANCgOFr was messing with the VCR, playing his little brother Jake's Power Rangers tape. At eleven, he thought they were as lame as all get-out, but Jake would whine his head off when the tape wasn't in the right place and that was just fine with Tiller. Jake wasn't all that, bad, but a little guerrilla action their morn would never believe Tiller had done anyway wouldn't kill the little rug rat.
But when Tiller heard his dad come in the back door off the garage, he grabbed the remote control, shut off the VCR fast and changed the channel to the morning news. His dad walked through the family room to the kitchen where his mom was making breakfast. Tiller acted as if he was listening hard to the news, the only acceptable reason for the TV to be on in the Bancroft prison, and the only reason for not standing to-attention when his dad walked into the room.
He didn't know what made his dad such a creep, but it didn't matter. Tiller just steered clear. He was always teed off about something, especially when he came back from having been called out to the hospital in the middle of the night--like now.
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His mom had been real jumpy since the day before yesterday. Usually, he didn't catch her puffing on a cigarette and he could never come up to her and make her jump out of her skin. He knew she didn't have eyes in the back of her head, but lots of the time, he could swear she did. But not in the past two days.
His old man was yelling about the alarm system being turned off at the eighth zone when the TV newsman started talking about that hospital in western N~w York. The news graphic snagged Tiller's attention. It was the FBI seal superimposed over the federal building in Boston ~where his Uncle Chris worked: Tiller paid attention because it was just like his dad to demand a full account of the news stories he'd seen over their meal. Something stupid about how what was good enough for the Kennedys was good enough for the Bancrofts.
Tiller tuned in. "The story just keeps growing more and more interesting. The hospital has. been under a great deal of scrutiny in the past several weeks--first for the transfusion of a unit of donated blood to the wrong patient, then again ten days later when an elderly patient was found dead in a whirlpool bath. Now, as we reported on the ten o'clock news last night, a woman was admitted with a gunshot wound under a Jane Doe alias, which admission was then itself purged from the records of the hospital emergency room. For more details, let's go live now to our reporter on' the spot. Thea?"
Yeah, Thea! Tiller thought. Enough of the old fart. "Last night, the FBI apparently took an interest in the bizarre claims made by an anonymous caller. This morning, the ER chief physician met with agents of the FBI. It's clear now that our first reports of last evening concerning t. arty z~tsnop a Jane Doe gunshot victim were accurate and provoked this joint statement by the FBI and local police:
"" We believe that the identity of a witness relocated in the Federal Witness Protection Program has been compromised. That witness is, in all likelihood, the Jane Doe treated and released by this hospital for a gunshot w
ound almost forty-eight hours ago. In the hopes of protecting the witness from further incident, the physician in charge made the decision to purge all records of her admission here. We appreciate that gesture.
"However, the witness is now believed to be in the custody of United States Deputy Marshal Christian 7'ter A photo of his uncle flashed on the screen. Tiller sat up, excited. " Mom, listen to this! "
His dad raised his voice, something lame about Tiller coming to the kitchen if he wanted to talk to his mother. Secretly, in his lap, he flipped his dad the bird. It was apparently all right for him to yell. But Tiller went from thinking it cool that his uncle was on TV to being freaked out when he heard what Thea-the-babe newswoman said next.
"Tierney is believed to have taken this witness hostage after a shoot. out in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he appropriated a U.S. government jet to make his escape with the witness. He is acting outside his authority and is urged to return the witness to protective custody and face the unofficial charges.
' 54n all points bulletin has been put out for a 1985 maroon Ford Mustang. 7~terney must be considered armed and dangerous. Information leading to his whereabouts and/or the whereabouts of the Jane Doe gunshot victim, is being sought and a reward offered. "
"Liars!" Tiller snarled, totally disgusted they ~ould say those things. His uncle would never do anything like they said. Tiller turned off the set and threw down the remote control. His mom called him to breakfast. He didn't know what to do. He didn't believe those creeps on TV, but he didn't know what to believe.
He went to the table and jerked out his chair. His more shot him a warning look while she put a plate of toast and another filled with scrambled eggs on the table.
He glared at the food. He didn't even want to eat. He hated eggs. He wanted to go kick his soccer ball through the stupid garage door. Howcould they say that crap about' Chris? He ought to sue their pants off.
His dad didn't even notice how pissed Tiller was. He was still going off about the alarm system being useless if people couldn't remember to keep it turned on. which was when he knew why his morn was so jumpy.
She had turned it off on purpose.
He choked down a few bites of egg and asked to be cused. He had to get to his uncle Chris before his dad figured it out, too.
Chapter Twelve
Chris awoke from the best sleep he'd had in two years to the most gut-sick, hollow feeling he'd ever known. Curled against his body, Eden was shaking him, her beautiful sleepy-eyed face frozen in anxiety. He stiffened. "What is it?"
"Listen."
Stock-still, he heard a pinging sound, a pebble striking the window.
He swore, trying not to overreact, trying to convince himself that. in these few hours of letting down his guard, he hadn't sealed his own and Eden Kelley's death warrants.
He touched her face. If he never saw that kind of resignation in her wide, stormy gray eyes again it would be too soon. He murmured softly, encouraging her to roll off the other side of the bed and stay there. Another pebble hit and bounced off the window.
He went for his gun, rolled off his side and slipped on his boxers. Crouching low to the floor, he moved into the kitchen, then rose slowly in the corner beside the door. Twisting the doorknob, he shoved the door open so that it banged against the wall.
He sank down against the other wall. Crouching on the cold tile floor, he worked the action on the' Mac 10 and aimed with both hands. He stretched out his arms and waited.
He heard footsteps approaching warily. The first thing he saw was a sneaker, then a stick-thin leg, finally a knobby knee.
"Uncle Chris?" came a scared voice. "Is that you?" Relief poured through him and his eyes fell closed for the briefest interlude. An assassin was hardly likely to announce his presence or intentions with pebbles bouncing henignly off the windows, but Chris couldn't afford to take anything lightly.
He disarmed the automatic and came upright in one swift, effortless motion. Tiller Bancroft stood on the stoop, trying to see in. Relief swam through Chris and he let out his breath.
"It's all right, Eden," he called softly. Then, "Tiff. You scared the crap out of me, kid."
"Chris!" The boy's face lit UP when he heard Chris, and he grinned widely when he saw him, but then the pleasure disintegrated. He bounded over and gave Chris a fierce hug. "Chris, you gotta get out of here. There's stuff on TV. Is there some lady here? There's this hospital and the cops and they know you ran away a couple days ago and they're saying-~"
"Whoa, wait a minute." Chris took his nephew by his narrow shoulders. Tension knotted the boy's small, immature features, and the tendons of his thin little neck were stretched tight. For a moment, Chris felt violently angry at himself for exposing his nephew, this child, to this sordid mess. "Tiller, listen to me. Does your more know you're down here?"
His dark eyes wide, Tiller swallowed and shook his head. "No, but"
"Your dad?"
"No," Tiller said, "but Chris, he's pissed about the alarm system being off, and then I heard on the news" -- "What's on the news?"
"About you and that lady, and I figured out that Morn turned it off on purpose and if my dad hears that"
"Tiller," Chris interrupted, giving his nephew's shoulders a small shake. "What are' they saying on TV? Exactly. Can you remember?"
"I don't..." Tiller gulped and he stared at Chris, too scared just then to remember.
Wrapped in the white terry-cloth robe, Eden scooted around the door into the kitchen. "You're scaring him, Chris."
His head jerked around. His eyes swept over her. Memories of their lovemaking made his chest tighten. She looked pale but no longer scared'. and incredibly lovely.
He knew she was right. He knew his voice sounded far harsher than he meant it ~to be, but Tiller was eleven and he could go off half-cocked for twenty minutes without getting to the point. Right now, he was afraid of what his dad might do.
Chris couldn't afford to ignore Ed Bancroft's ire, either. He would assume the worst-~ase scenario and turn his knowledge of Chris's whereabouts over to the authorities in a New York minute. But Chris and Eden were in an even more deadly position if, because of the news reports, Winston Broussard had any idea where to find them.
But Eden was right. He was upsetting Tiff, and that was the last thing he wanted to happen.
"Tiff, this is..." His eyes met and locked with Eden's. "This is my friend. This is Tiller Bancroft. My nephew.
Catherine's sister, Margo, is his mom. " He watched Eden's eyes widen, watched her glance uncertainly down at her hands. He wished he could tell her how it was between him and Margo, but that would have to wait.
"The gunshot lady?" Tiller asked, his eyes darting to her.
"Yes. But I'm better now," she answered softly. Tiller blew out a breath, calmed a little, Chris thought, by Eden's gentle reassurance. His child's lips were still pressed thin.
"Tiff, man, I need to know what they said on television. Start at the beginning and just say what you remember. Better sit down now."
The boy' nodded and went over to a chair. He had on one of-Chris's old hockey-club shirts, and it covered his shorts.
He recited what he could recall of the news clip. "They said the hospital had a gunshot lady and that they let her go. They said it was good the hospital didn't blab about it 'cuz she's a protected witness--like in the movies. Is that right?"
Chris nodded. "Yeah, like that. Did they say which hospital, Tiff?"
The boy nodded. "I can't remember exactly, though." His brow puckered. A lock of his dark brown hair fell in his face. He shook it back. "Western something? In New York?"
Chris bit back a curse. Dragging in a deep breath, he exchanged glances with Eden. "That's right, Tiff. They got it right."
"But not all right," Tiller objected. His freckles stood out and his fists clenched. "That bitch said"
"Lady, you mean," Chris warned.
Tiff's little jaw tightened. "She isn't a lady, Chris. She said "
early l~tsnop
"You know what I mean. Men don't call women things like that, or hit them or"
"Chris, leave it be," Eden interrupted softly. "I'm sure Tiller knows that."
Tiller looked from Chris to Eden, then back. He was old enough to pick up the vibes between them, probably old enough to figure out what they meant, as well. He wasn't allowed to comment on things like that in his father's presence, even Margo's, but he'd always had the straight poop from his uncle Chris--one of the myriad reasons Ed Bancroft detested him.
So Chris could see the question lurking in his nephew's eyes. "Tiff, look." He glanced at Eden. "Neither of us knows how things are going to work out right now. I'm in some serious trouble, and there are people trying to kill this lady, so a lot of problems have to be ironed out before I start thinking about... other things. You following me?"
Carly Bishop Page 16