“Y-yes, sir. But I—”
“I’m not interested in the rest of your feeble excuses. What I am interested in, Mr. Corza, is results. All I need to know is if you are capable of obtaining those results within my time frame. If not, I will simply send someone else to complete the job and of course to take care of y—”
“No, sir! I can do it. All of it.”
“Good. Now, get off the phone and get what I want. And then clean up your filthy mess. If you don’t…”
Click.
Zeno flinched as the boss hung up.
He wished to God that damned click had been some fancy form of mind game. But it wasn’t. It was a promise, and he knew it. A promise he’d do anything in his power to make sure the boss decided not to follow through on.
Anything.
Chapter 4
“I, uh, never thanked you.”
Dare glanced up from the year-old issue of Newsweek and shifted it to the right of the wooden table. Abby sat catty-corner to him, tracing her fingers about the tattered edges of an equally ancient issue of The New Yorker. She’d been so silent since they’d been relegated to this sparse room, his own emotional equilibrium so taxed from the evening’s events that he couldn’t even be sure how long she’d been looking at him. By the time they’d reached the police station, his sense had shorted out. It had yet to return. And he’d been too exhausted to get his other senses to pick up the slack.
Namely sight. Despite the shadows flitting through those exhausted hazel depths, he had no idea what or whom Abby was referring to. So he guessed.
“Brian?”
Was she referring to his help in getting her brother settled, or to the fact that he’d waited with her until the doctor had finished his house call? Fortunately, Dr. Chase had confirmed that her brother’s sleepiness was due to shock. What Abby didn’t know was that if left undisturbed, by morning Brian would forget he’d even met Dare.
But when Abby knotted her fingers atop the magazine and shook her head, Dare realized she hadn’t been referring to her brother at all.
“The trash.”
He blinked. “I beg your—”
“The empty boxes? The bags of packing material? You got rid of it as promised—or you had someone do it.” She flushed. “Anyway, I meant to head up and thank you.”
But she hadn’t been welcome.
She hadn’t voiced it. But they both knew it was true.
He felt his own neck heat. “I am sorry.”
There was something else they’d yet to discuss. Their original misunderstanding. Her brother’s Down’s. Dare shifted his stare to the far side of the interrogation room. To that taunting one-way mirror. Damn, but he did not want to be having this conversation here. Not with his most important sense still numb. And certainly not with Pike lounging on the other side of the mirror, watching every motion, sucking in every word. And Pike was watching.
According to the cop who’d escorted them into this room, Pike had already returned from the hospital. Despite being knocked seriously off kilter—not to mention the limits imposed by that oversized slab of glass—Dare would lay odds the detective had hurried up his perfunctory visit to Van Heusen’s bedside simply so he could position himself on the other side of that one-way mirror the moment he and Abby arrived. Pike had to know Dare wouldn’t leave Abby to his grilling. Not after having experienced the bastard’s technique himself.
Dare shifted his face away from the mirror to keep Pike from experiencing maximum voyeuristic satisfaction. “Abby, your brother is a remarkable young man. You’re damned fortunate to have him in your life.”
He meant it.
Her father’s recent death, her mother’s years before—he’d learned of both during the link with her twin. Despite the losses, Abby had known love. The deep, unconditional kind. She still did. He’d seen it tonight in her and in her brother; he’d felt it. As devastating as events had been, the two still had each other. He’d spent his entire childhood yearning for that. Hell, even after his mother died and he’d walked away from her grave knowing the last person on the planet who’d felt anything for him was gone, he couldn’t shake the fantasy that this constant, gnawing void wasn’t supposed to be.
He’d wanted to believe it so badly he’d given in to the urge to carve that damned symbol over his heart.
Dare rubbed the tiny tattoo discreetly. He’d gotten it at seventeen. Flush with the triumph of reaching the summit of Everest for the first time, he’d felt the need to mark the occasion. Himself. He must have passed on two hundred suggestions at least—and then he’d seen the triquetra. At first he’d assumed he was drawn to the simplicity of the design, three interlocking circles within a triangle. But when the tattoo artist explained that the Celtic symbol represented trinity, he’d known there was more to it. At least in his mind. He’d had the strange idea that branding the triquetra over his heart would let someone, somewhere, know he was ready to be found.
He must have been drunk on the adrenaline of being among others for so long and not feeling the crush of their emotions, because he’d had it branded into his flesh that same night.
Naturally, no one had ever come for him.
He’d refused to have the tattoo removed. It served as a reminder of his foolishness. Unfortunately, it also served as a reminder of the void that was still there. A void so deep that years later even the combined latent emotions of the world wouldn’t be able to fill it.
Nor did they displace the silence in the room now.
His unease grew as Abby tucked a limp curl into the braid that hung halfway down her back, becoming downright unbearable as she continued to avoid his stare. Instead, she focused on the magazine he’d been reading. Try as he might, he simply could not penetrate her aura. Like that night she’d let him in through her window, he had no idea what she was feeling. But the numbing that had resulted from that evening’s climb and subsequent adrenaline rush had been deliberate.
Tonight’s had not.
He would never forget the sheer terror that had ripped through him when he’d realized Abby was in danger. It was that damned dream he’d had in the flesh—that nightmare he’d woken from in the dead of night after she’d come into his life. Only now he was forced to wonder if that scream he’d heard in his soul, that gut-wrenching terror that accompanied it, had been his. Was that why he was still numb?
Or had his well simply run dry due to the unexpected strength of the bond with her brother? Perhaps he was still experiencing the effects of the concert he’d had no business even attempting to attend. But he’d been unable to refuse her invitation. He’d deliberately arrived late. Unfortunately, the raw emotion surging through Avery Fisher Hall had been too intense. The ensuing nausea had driven him back before he’d had a chance to claim his seat. He’d retreated to the men’s room, hoping to acclimate himself in time to catch Abby’s solo. He hadn’t. He’d barely recovered in time to save her from that car and her brother from himself.
And now he couldn’t even gauge her mood well enough to know what to say to get her to look at him.
Her gaze remained fused to the magazine.
Damn. Despite the voyeur behind that mirror, he dragged his breath in deep and just spelled it out. “Abby, I swear to you, I don’t give a damn about your brother’s Down’s. Nor does Brian have anything to do with my initial objections regarding your presence at the Tristan.”
Though her gaze remained fused to the magazine, she spoke. Softly and with certainty. “I know. I figured that out tonight.” He noticed she didn’t ask for the real reason behind his initial objections. Nor did he offer it. Neither did he need his sense to feel her disappointment.
Another eternity seemed to pass, and then she sighed. “He did.”
Stuart? Had her brother had something to do with her breakup with Stuart Van Heusen? Had the golden boy of the district attorney’s office been unable to deal with her brother’s condition? If so, he wasn’t surprised. Even if he hadn’t met Van Heusen’s able as
sistant at a fund-raiser three months before and accidentally probed the woman’s aura, he’d had his bubble burst long ago regarding the carefully masked, hypocritical natures of too many men—compliments of Detective Pike himself…and his own father. But then, he couldn’t afford to share that with this woman either.
Especially here.
Dare clamped down on his anger and regret, and offered up the only thing he could. “I’m sorry.”
A bitter smile twisted her lips as she finally glanced up. “Yeah, well, it’s more than Stuart was.”
He didn’t understand.
He wanted to. But he knew better than to try to draw her out.
Unfortunately, Abby was too rattled from the night’s events to guard her thoughts. Before he could warn her, she drew in her breath and faced him squarely. “We dated for almost a year. I thought he was serious, you know? Granted, I didn’t have a lot of experience. In the beginning Stuart used to tease me that I too naive and too wrapped up in my music. He was right. Maybe that’s why I fell for him so hard and so fast.” She smoothed another stray curl into her braid and sighed. “You have to understand, Stuart Van Heusen was everything I wasn’t. Older, sophisticated, financially secure. He was born into a world I only get to play in. Once I tuck my fiddle away, most men expect me to leave with it. If they do want me to stick around, it’s usually without my clothes. I thought Stuart was different.”
Damn. It was too late. If that last hadn’t caught Pike’s attention, nothing would. It sure as hell had captured his.
Dare caved in to the need. “He wasn’t?”
She shook her head. “He was worse.”
Worse?
His heart lurched. With the motion came the stirrings of emotions—none of which were his. Pain, anger and a perceived disgrace. The need to share the source with someone who just might understand. Someone she desperately hoped would refrain from judging her. He felt it all.
No doubt about it, the emotional brownout was easing.
The curse was returning. For the first time in a long time, he embraced it willingly. But the overall impression was still too vague. He reached out, instinctively closing his hand over hers. Just like that it strengthened, tearing through his pride as sharply as it had torn through hers. He stared directly into that exhausted, reddened gaze. “Stuart Van Heusen abused you. Deeply. Along with someone else.”
But she hadn’t been abused in the way he’d feared.
Thank God.
It wasn’t until she’d snatched her hand from his grasp, that he even realized he’d voiced the discovery out loud. The first half, anyway. “What? I don’t—” She broke off, swallowed firmly and immediately smoothed the shock in her facial features. It was too late. Like that night outside his apartment, their brief physical contact had tuned him to her so perfectly, he could feel the astonishment radiating from within her. By the time she licked her lips, the beginnings of suspicion had set in. “H-how could you know that?”
At least she hadn’t denied it.
He shrugged. “I simply guessed.” Though the age-old lie grated, it succeeded in placating her.
“Oh.” She dampened her lips again. “It’s not what you think. Stuart didn’t betray me with another woman.”
That wasn’t what he thought. Much less was it what he now knew.
He wisely kept both to himself as she tugged her braid over her shoulder and worried her fingers over the elastic at the end. “There was another woman, though. His mother.”
“She didn’t approve of you?”
“No.” The pain in her eyes as well as her heart belied the finality in that single word.
There was more.
But it was beyond his reach. Their touch had lasted seconds. Not nearly long enough for him to channel her feelings and use them to paint a more complete picture of the memory in his mind, much as her brother had used oils, brushes and a canvas to reproduce the Tristan. He needed more. Enough to know if he should head off the conversation in light of their greedy audience. An accidental brush would do. It often did. He pushed his magazine to the edge of the table and allowed it to fall, deliberately waiting until Abby reached down between them before he, too, reached out.
Unfortunately, their fingers did more than simply brush, they collided. Tangled. Held. He drew his breath in deep and received her essence along with it. Within seconds she’d enveloped him, filling every corner of his being, mingling with his very heart and soul—and she didn’t even know it.
But when she inhaled sharply, he knew she felt it, too.
The pull.
It was inescapable. She was inescapable. Utterly captivating. And, God help him, he was powerless to resist.
He leaned closer—
Until a shallow cough rent the air.
They sprang apart.
It took several moments for the realization of what they’d almost done—along with who had interrupted it—to burn through the fog still swirling through his head.
“Pike.”
The detective’s hand was still on the knob of the door.
Why? How? There wasn’t a shard of glass embedded within that slab of steel. So how had Pike been able to enter the room without Dare’s internal radar registering the intrusion? But as the fog within his brain—his sense—finally dispersed, Dare knew. It was his mother all over again. Though rare, there were moments growing up when he’d felt his mother’s pain so deeply it had obscured the emotions of others around him. Only this time, the effect was a hundred times more pronounced, a thousand times more dangerous. For Abby and him.
Especially around this man.
By the time he’d recovered, Pike had closed the door and stalked across the room, bypassing the closest chair in favor of the one at the far end of the table. It figured. Pike might not have believed his frantic explanation any more than his father had all those years ago, but like Victor Sabura, the detective had also been careful to keep outside Dare’s reach whenever they’d had the misfortune to meet since.
Just in case.
The man nodded to Abby. “Ms. Pembroke. I apologize if I…interrupted something.”
She flushed.
Dare burned. He shoved his anger down. Now wasn’t the time to settle old scores. Too much was at stake. He might not be able to get a clear read on the man’s intent, but they had enough history for him to know that something was amiss—and it wasn’t good. It came in the form of the manila folder Pike had carried into the room and tossed atop the table in front of Abby. Dare clamped down on yet another curse.
Pike smiled. His twisted lips dripped with satisfaction as the detective tipped his graying temple toward the folder. “I thought you could use a more recent read.”
Dare couldn’t blame Abby for staring. Nor could he begrudge her the shock spreading through her. The sight of his name on the summary sheet chilled him to the bone as well—but for an entirely different reason.
The bastard had pulled his police record.
The damned thing had been sealed years before. Releasing it would have required a judge’s signature—unless Pike had retained an illegal copy. Either way, he had obviously hoped to use his arrest history to knock Abby off balance, to scare her into giving up whatever it was that he thought she was withholding.
But there was more.
His curse finally ripped free as he realized what it was.
He turned to her, for the first time in his life not caring if the entire world knew him for the freak he was. He had to say it first. There was no way he could let Pike deliver the news. She’d sustained too many blows tonight as it was. He took her hand and did his best to prepare her mind and her heart before he delivered the blow. “Abby, Van Heusen’s condition is worse than we thought. They don’t think he’s—”
The moment he felt her pull away, he released her. He no longer needed to touch her to know what she was feeling. Hell, he didn’t even need the curse. The denial was etched within every inch of her face as she shot to her feet. She shook her
head as she backed away from him, all the way to the wall.
“No. You’re wrong. Stuart’s fine. They got him to the hospital. He—” She swung her stare to Pike’s. “Tell him he’s wrong. Stuart is going to be fine.”
The detective remained silent.
“Please.”
For the first time since Dare had known the man, he felt the pulse of genuine empathy beat within Pike’s conscience. “I’m sorry, Ms. Pembroke. He’s right. By the time we got Van Heusen to the hospital, he’d already coded twice. The paramedics revived him both times, but he’s in a coma now. The doctors don’t expect him to survive the night.”
Dare stood as he felt the air surrounding Abby grow hot. Stifling. She was going to faint. Unfortunately, Pike headed for her side along with him.
Pike reached her first. “I’ve got her.” The detective grabbed her upper arms and wrenched her away from him firmly. Deliberately. “You okay, Ms. Pembroke? Maybe you should lie down. We’ve got a cot in the back—”
“No.”
The connection they’d forged prior to that near-kiss was stronger than he’d expected. Stronger even than on that night outside his door. One moment he was watching those soft thick lashes of hers as they flew wide and the next, it was as if he was inside her skin, as she struggled to focus her tunneled vision upon his face. Slowly but surely her circle of vision spread. Soon she could make out the white sleeves of his shirt, the dark blue of his tie, the hair spilling onto his shoulders, the shadow already rasping his cheeks and jaw. The moment she caught the quiet warning in his gaze, he relaxed. She knew what he was trying to tell her.
He needn’t have worried.
She might be rattled, but she’d realized what Pike was attempting to do. The detective might have felt sorry for her, but he still intended to use her to his own end. Why else had he brought that damned folder with him? Despite its presence, she trusted Dare. He eased out his breath as she calmly extricated herself from Pike’s grasp.
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