Outmatched she may have been, but he felt in no way victorious.
Instead, he found himself remembering what she’d said, about the idea of Cisneros touching her making her feel sick. They’d talked quite a bit since then, exchanged a few tidbits of personal history, even shared a secret or two. But nothing had been said that would change the fact that sometime soon Eve Waskowitz was going to have to find a way to resume convincingly the role of loving fiancé to a man she now abhorred. He suddenly realized that what he was looking at was a terrified woman. And that what she was doing was simply whistling in the dark.
He felt his belly clench, and something flare white-hot inside him and then go cold and still.
Hopeless? Not if he had anything to say about it.
“What’d the nurse want?” he asked gruffly.
Eve shrugged and turned, clutching her gown together where it mattered most, but giving him an unnerving glimpse of the back he remembered from when he’d undressed her in his bedroom-the creamy smooth skin, the delicate indentations of spine.
“Just routine stuff. They keep a pretty close eye on you, I guess, when you’ve been bumped on the head. She also said breakfast will be here soon, and she wanted to know if I wanted to ‘freshen up’ before visitors start arriving. Which I do,” she added pointedly as she sat on the edge of the bed and leveled a look at him. Her eyes were shadowed and dark, impossible to read, and for the first time he thought she looked her age. “I’m sure you’d like some breakfast yourself-a cup of coffee, at least. Better make your escape while you can.”
“Yeah, I will…” But he went on staring at her, his mind spinning furiously, hating to leave it like that. Hating to leave her, it shocked him to realize. Hating to leave her with that look of hopelessness in her eyes, and the thought of her and Cisneros in bed together twisting a knot in his belly.
He lifted a hand, palm out, and said with a voice full of gravel, “Listen-it’s not hopeless. Okay? I’m workin’ on it. Just…do me a favor, huh? Remember to act injured?” Her only reply was a very small snort.
He opened the door a crack, looked up and down the corridor, waited for his moment, then slipped through the door and closed it gently behind him. As he made his way, scowling, through the awakening hospital, bustling with the routines of morning, with the clank of breakfast trays and the ding of elevators and the swish of footsteps and voices on the intercom, he wondered when his first priority had changed from nailing the bad guy to keeping Eve Waskowitz out of the bad guy’s bed.
Eve’s day progressed in predictable hospital fashion. People popped in and out of her room on various errands, most of them involving indignities to her person. Out of sheer boredom, she dozed until the arrival of breakfast, an excitement relative in its anticipation to Christmas morning. Shortly after that, her mother and sisters arrived, bringing with them her small overnighter. She was so glad to see them, it was hard to remember to act feeble and wan.
“I’m not sure what’s in here,” Summer said as she laid the overnight case on the foot of Eve’s bed. “I think it’s mostly makeup and toiletries. I wanted to bring you something to wear-a nightgown, but it all looked like…you know-honeymoon stuff.”
“Sweetheart, are you in pain?” her mother asked anxiously.
“A bit,” Eve lied in a faint voice. “My head, mostly.”
Her mother’s cool hand touched her cheek. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”
“What does the doctor say?” Mirabella demanded, showing her concern in her own pushy way. “Have you seen him yet this morning? Do they know how bad the concussion is? How much longer are they going to keep you here?”
“I don’t know,” Eve said. “A doctor stopped by earlier this morning, just long enough to read my chart and huddle with the nurse for a few minutes. He seemed very busy…” Remembering Jake’s parting words, I’m workin’ on it, she added in a vague tone she hoped would cover all bases, “I think they’re still doing tests…looking at X rays-stuff like that. They have to be sure…”
“Of course,” Summer murmured, stroking her arm. Mirabella subsided, looking not in the least satisfied.
“So-where are the menfolk this morning?” Eve asked brightly, just as her mother was saying, “Have you heard from Sonny this morning?” Before either could answer the other, the phone on the bedside table trilled. Eve stared at it in surprise.
“Well. That’s probably Sonny now,” her mother said.
“Oh-yeah,” said Eve, with what she hoped was a smile. She picked up the phone and ventured a tentative “Hello?”
“Get rid of them,” Jake’s voice growled in her ear. “Sorry to break up the family gathering, but we need to talk. Now. ”
Chapter 7
Eve’s mind was spinning like a bogged-down wheel, going absolutely nowhere. “Uh…” was all she could think to say.
“Did you hear what I said?” Jake growled again. “There’s some things we need to go over before your fiancé gets there. It’s important. Capish?”
Smile, she thought. Let them think it’s Sonny. “Can’t you come now? I mean, why…”
There was an impatient exhalation. “Look-your sister Summer knows me. We met during that business with her ex-husband last summer. If she sees me, she’s gonna know something’s going on. Is that what you want? You want your family in on this?”
“God, no.” Smile, dammit. Remember to smile. “Okay, then, I guess I’ll see you in a little bit. Yeah…bye for now, darling. Mnun-hmm…me. too…” She made sickening kissy sounds into the phone, taking great pleasure in imagining Jake’s face as she did so, and hung up on the ambiguous hiss of his exhalation.
“That was Sonny,” she announced, and smiled widely for the benefit of the three pairs of eyes that had been trying their best to watch her avidly without appearing to do so at all. “He’s coming over in a little while. Hey, guys-I really hate to ask it, but I’d kind of like to, you know…clean up a little bit before he gets here? Would you mind terribly…?”
“Of course not, dear,” said her mother, patting her shoulder. “We’ll go, and let you get yourself spruced up.”
Mirabella exchanged a look with Summer and complained, “We just got here.”
“And we can come back later.” Her mother leaned over to plant a kiss on the undamaged portion of Eve’s forehead. “There’s a nice mall just up the road. We can kill a few hours there. Anything we can get for you, honey? Some pj’s, maybe?”
Eve made an attempt to hitch herself up on her pillows and tried to look pitiful. “Maybe you could pick me up something casual to wear…everyday stuff, you know? Something that buttons in front, so I don’t have to pull it on over my head?”
There was a brief knock on the door, and a nurse stuck her head in. After smiles and a cheery “Well, hi, there!” for the visitors, she turned the smile on Eve. “Miz Waskowitz, your doctor’s here to see you.”
My doctor? Eve had never been sick a day in her life-not counting the occasional tropical bug or spider- or snakebite-and except for her gynecologist out in California, did not have a doctor. However, before she could think of an appropriately noncommittal response, the door opened wider and a man she’d never seen before slipped past the nurse and into the room.
He was tall and thin and looked very fit, with hair that Eve suspected was prematurely silver, although it might have been his jovial manner that made him seem ageless. He seemed to bound into the room, rather like an overly friendly greyhound, with that slightly stooped-over gait very tall people often use in an effort to seem less so. Tucking the large brown envelope he’d brought with him under one arm. he beamed at her and said in a thick Georgia accent, “Hello there, Miss Eve. Well now-you don’t look s’bad.”
“Uh…hi. Mom, everybody-this is…my doctor. Dr.-”
“Dr. Shepherd-good to meet you.” He lunged forward to pump all three hands with immense enthusiasm, and added in the polite Southern way, since it was apparent they were about to, “Don’t rush off.”
Eve kept her smile rigidly in place until the door had closed behind her mother and sisters. Then she filled her lungs with air and whispered, “Okay, you’ve got about two seconds to prove to me you are who you say you are and tell me who sent you, before I start screaming bloody murder. One…two…”
Instead of answering, Dr. Shepherd held up a hand, asking for-demanding-silence. Moving with surprising quickness for one so angular, he went to the door and opened it a crack, looked through, then opened it a little wider. As if he’d been waiting for a signal, Jake stepped into the room.
Eve let out the breath she’d been holding, in one great gust. “Okay, you want to tell me what in the hell’s going on? Who the devil is this? First you spend the night guarding my room ‘just in case,’ so I’m seeing bogeymen under the bed, and then you send some strange guy in here without warning me? For all I know, he’s some kind of hit man, for God’s sake!”
From mild pique, the anger level in her voice had escalated with each sentence until the last three words were delivered in a splutter of full-blown outrage. Most of her annoyance, she acknowledged, was due to the absurd little surge of joy she’d experienced at her first glimpse of the FBI man’s glowering face. A ray of sunshine he definitely wasn’t, and she couldn’t imagine why she should be so happy to see him. The only reason she could imagine was so ludicrous and unlikely, it didn’t even bear acknowledging, must less thinking about.
Obviously unimpressed with her diatribe, Jake barked right back at her. “Waskowitz, do me a favor-shut up a minute and listen. Cisneros is probably on his way here as we speak, so no telling how much time we have. This-” he nodded at the silver-haired man, who thrust his jaw toward her and grinned toothily, rather in the manner of FDR “-is Dr. Matthew Shepherd. He is in fact an M.D., but he also consults for the Bureau. We think we may have come up with a solution to your problem. Matt?”
At his cue, the doctor lunged forward, opening the brown envelope as he did so, and extracted several X-ray films, which he laid across the foot of Eve’s bed.
“Are those mine?” she asked as she raised herself up and hitched forward to get a better look.
“In… a manner of speaking.” Dr. Shepherd took a pair of rimless glasses from his jacket pocket, put them on and peered through them down his long, bony nose at the films. After a moment his gaze vaulted the tops of the glasses to twinkle conspiratorially at her. “Actually, they are about to become your X rays. See this here?” He was once more bent over the films, pointing with a long, elegant finger.
Eve nodded and dutifully said, “Uh-huh,” though she hadn’t seen anything but fuzzy shades of gray. “What does it mean?”
Dr. Shepherd straightened, whipped off his glasses and beamed at her. “What that means, young lady, is that for the foreseeable future, you are gonna have to keep your upper spinal column as immobile as possible. That means wearing an orthopedic device to limit movement, sleeping in a specially designed bed…ahem…alone-” Eve’s sharp intake of breath barely interrupted him. “In addition to which, I would recommend a program of extensive physical therapy…”
Eve was barely listening. Her eyes had slipped past the doctor to find Jake’s, and’ she clung to their steady and bottomless gaze as he added, without inflection, “Which gives us a reason to keep you here in the area, as well as cover in case you need to get in touch with us-or vice versa. If you need us, you’d just call your doctor. Or, say, if we need to contact you, your doctor’s office would call you-maybe change the date or time of an appointment, for instance.”
“My God,” Eve whispered, “it takes care of everything.”
Jake grunted. “It buys you some time. What you do with it’s gonna be up to you.”
“I understand. Jake…I don’t know how to thank you.”
Something black and angry slashed across his face, gone so quickly, she couldn’t be certain she’d seen it at all. Because in the next instant he’d disappeared soundlessly into the bathroom as the outer doorknob turned and the door cracked open to admit the croaking sound of a naturally boisterous voice trying its best to whisper.
“He’s in there with her now? Yeah…that’s good. Sure, you bet I wanna talk to him. Okay…thanks, sweetie-you’re a doll.”
Yeah, Sonny, and it’s a good thing you’re such a flirt, Eve thought. Because even while he was stopping to sweet-talk the nurse, she barely had time to flop back against the pillows and arrange an appropriately pain-wracked expression.
Meanwhile, for the second time that day, Jake found himself reduced to the indignity of skulking in the bathroom like an illicit lover. The space was so small, he couldn’t even pace to release his nervous energy, which he could feel building up inside him like pressure in a steam locomotive. Through the barrier of the door he could hear the muffled murmur of voices, mostly the doctor’s, explaining his patient’s “condition” and outlining the plan for her “treatment.” That was punctuated intermittently by Cisneros’s questions in his Vegas big shot’s bark, loud and brassy, like something out of an old Rat Pack movie. Every time he heard it, Jake had to remind himself to. unclench his teeth.
What was it about the man that got to him so? When had Cisneros stopped being just another case and become his own personal crusade? He thought about it while he waited, having nothing better to do. But the fact was, he knew it hadn’t been one big moment of truth, but rather a lot of little straws-too many things he knew about Cisneros but couldn’t find a way to prove, too many investigations that led nowhere, too many cases evaporating before they could even get to trial. Too many witnesses turning up missing, or suffering memory lapses following a tragic “accident” involving a loved one. Little straws…the last one the hit-and-run death of a key witness’s wife and seven-year-old daughter as they walked to school, just three blocks from their house.
The day that happened, Jake had cut out early and gone home to find his wife on her way out the door with her suitcases. “I deserve to be happy,” was all she’d said when he’d pressed her for reasons. She hadn’t wanted to talk about it; plainly, she’d meant to be gone before he got home.
It didn’t matter-he knew the reason. And he knew the fault was all his. For too long, all his time, energy and passion had been focused on getting Cisneros; he’d had nothing left over for his wife. What he’d told Eve-that it had happened overnight-had been a lie. The simple truth was, Sharon’s love for him had died a long, slow death by starvation. And it was a whole lot easier to blame Sonny Cisneros than his own shortcomings as a husband.
He swore inaudibly and closed his eyes, wrenching himself out of the past and back to the present. Which for the first time in a long while was looking like it might just give him a future to look forward to. After Hal Robey had drowned in that hurricane last summer, he’d been ready to pack it in. He’d actually looked into it-leaving the Bureau-but something had held him back, kept him from taking that final step. And now, by God, it looked as if he was being given another shot. He had a witness, and this one he wasn’t going to lose. He’d be careful, take it slow and easy…one step at a time.
He still had to convince Eve to go along with the program, but he was confident she would. Of course she would; she knew what the stakes were as well as he did-better than he did. It was her life that was on the line, after all, though the risks, if they were careful and she did what she was supposed to do, should be minimal. Minimal, he told himself. At worst, they’d get nothing concrete enough to take to court, she’d bide her time and break off the relationship, and that would be that But if things went the way he hoped…at last, Sonny Cisneros was going down.
The tap on the bathroom door sent a shot of adrenaline through his system.
It was Shepherd. The moment Jake opened the door Matt said tersely, “He’s gone. I told him we needed to run more tests, get her
fitted with the collar before she can be released tomorrow morning.”
“He’ll be here with the limo to pick me up,” Eve put in. Beyond Shepherd, Jake could see her sitting upright against the pillows, one eye purpling and bloodshot, the other glittering like moonlit water. In spite of the bandages she had a pugnacious look-a beat-up prizefighter on an adrenaline high.
Jake flashed her a sharp glance, then said to Shepherd, “Where? He’s not taking her back to Vegas-”
Eve shook her head, then caught herself. “Oops-gotta remember not to do that, don’t I?”
“The collar’ll help you remember,” Dr. Shepherd said cheerfully.
“I hope so. Anyway, no-actually. Sonny’s being really sweet about this-he says he figured I’d want to be close to my doctor and my family, so he’s made arrangements for us to stay at this new resort he’s building on Hilton Head. That’s not far from Summer and Riley’s place-”
“Really,” said Jake thoughtfully.
“And just a hop and a skip from my brand-new office here in Savannah.” Dr. Shepherd aimed his FDR grin at Eve and began gathering up the scattered X rays. “Well-I’ve got things to attend to, looks like. I’m gonna leave you two to work out details between you. Jake, I’ll have that collar ready by this evening, if you want to-”
“Yeah-fine.” Jake silenced him with a surreptitious hand gesture and the smallest twitch of his head toward Eve.
“Right-see y’all later.” With a wave and a wink, Shepherd tucked the X rays under his arm and bounded from the room.
The silence he left behind was thick as cobwebs. Jake felt it settle around him as he turned, so that he seemed to be moving through a sticky, gauzy curtain of his own guilt.
“What was that all about?” Eve demanded, not quite suspicious, just wary, watching him with her head cocked to one side, and that bright-eyed, titmouse look about her again.
“What was what?” he countered, about as convincing as a cookie thief with crumbs on his chin.
Eve’s Wedding Knight Page 10