The Witness

by Nora Roberts

  Now it was a mission.

  If she had time to build more equipment, or the luxury of hiring another skilled tech, or two … But she didn’t, so speculating proved useless. This was only for her.

  In any case, over time she’d developed her own programming language—the better to thwart anyone who attempted to hack into her files—and even if she could hire on, she’d have to teach someone her language and techniques.

  Faster, more efficient, to do it herself.

  She ran the next test, watched her codes fly by, and thought, No, no, no. It remained too unwieldy, too separate, took too long.

  She sat back, her hair twisted up off her neck and secured with a pencil. As she studied the screen, she drank iced green tea for clarity of thinking.

  The tea, the two yoga breaks she’d made herself take, the absolute quiet, didn’t appear to help.

  When her alarm sounded, and Bert went on alert, she checked her monitor. She hadn’t expected Brooks so early, she thought, as she spotted his cruiser, then glanced at the time.

  She’d worked straight through the morning and into the middle of the afternoon.

  Six hours, she thought, with no appreciable progress.

  Maybe it was beyond her after all.

  She started to get up, to unlock the doors for him, then remembered she’d given him keys and the security codes. An uneasy step, she admitted, but the advantage right that moment was she didn’t have to stop to let him in.

  Still, there would be someone in the house, in her space. How was she supposed to concentrate on something this complex, this delicate, unless she was alone?

  Which tore apart her fantasy of a state-of-the-art computer lab and a team of highly skilled techs. But that was only fantasy, because she always worked alone, until—

  “Hey.” Brooks walked in, set a bag on the counter. “How’s it going?”

  “Not as well as I’d like. I need to try another sequence, test again.”

  “How long have you been at it?”

  “It doesn’t matter how long. It’s not done.”

  “Okay. I’ll get out of your hair as soon as I put this stuff away. I brought some of my things over, so I’ll deal with that upstairs. If you’re not done when I am, I’ll find something to do.”

  “Mmm” was her only response. She tried not to tense up at the sound of the refrigerator, the cupboards opening and closing. When silence returned, she let out a cleansing breath and dived in again.

  She forgot he was there. Over the next two hours, she lost herself in the codes and sequences. When the headache and eyestrain finally stopped her, she rose for medication, for fluids.

  And remembered him.

  She went upstairs. The quiet held so absolute she thought he must be napping, but she didn’t find him in the bedroom. Curious, she opened the closet.

  There were his clothes, hanging with hers. Shirts, pants. A suit.

  She’d never seen him in a suit. She trailed her fingers over the sleeve as she studied the shoes and boots on the floor of the closet.

  They shared a closet, she thought. So much more intimate and vital somehow than sharing a bed. Crossing over, she opened drawers in the bureau. She’d meant to reorganize to give him space, but had forgotten in the work.

  He’d seen to it himself. She’d need to alter some of his choices, but that was a small thing.

  Closing drawers, she stepped back, took a turn around the room. Should she buy another dresser, a chest of drawers?

  Would they need one?

  Would he stay?

  A movement out the window caught her eye, and stepping closer, she saw him, hoeing at weeds in her vegetable patch. He’d mounded up her potato plants, something else she’d meant to do that day.

  Sweat dampened his shirt, gleamed wetly on his arms, and a ball cap shaded his face.

  And, oh, the thrill of it. The unexpected and staggering thrill of it. His clothes hung in the closet with hers as she stood at the bedroom window and watched him work the garden under a sky like bleached denim.

  She spun away from the window, hugging herself, then ran downstairs.

  In the kitchen, she found the food he’d brought in the fridge and the dozen lemons she’d bought a few days earlier.

  She made fresh lemonade, filled two tall glasses with cracked ice and poured. She put the pitcher and glasses on a tray and carried it all outside.

  “It’s too hot to hoe,” she called out. “You’ll be dehydrated.”

  “Nearly done.”

  She walked out to him with the glasses as he finished the last row. “It’s fresh.”

  While sweat tricked down his temples, he downed half the glass without pause. “Thanks.”

  “You’ve done so much work.”

  Leaning on the hoe, he studied the garden. “I’m hoping to sample those butter beans, come harvest. I’m fond of butter beans.”

  “Those are lima beans.”

  “You’re standing in the South, honey.” After a roll of his shoulders, he downed the rest of his lemonade. “I haven’t worked a garden since I headed down to Little Rock. Didn’t know I missed it.”

  “Still, it’s hot and close.” She touched his hand to bring his gaze back to her. “I wasn’t very welcoming before.”

  “Work’s allowed to get in the way now and again. Mine does, and will.”

  “Mine, in this case, is frustrating. I thought I’d be closer.”

  “Can’t help you on that. I don’t understand a damn thing you’re doing. But I can work a garden, and I can grill up those steaks I picked up, so you can have more time at it.” He cocked his head as he studied her. “But I’d say it’s time for a break all around, and I sure as hell need a shower.”

  “You’re very sweaty,” she agreed, and took the hoe from him to carry it to her little garden shed. “I can pick some of the lettuce, and a few other things, for a salad when you’re done.”

  “I’m thinking ‘we.’”

  “You’ve already done more than your share in the garden.”

  “Not we in the garden.” He took her hand, pulling her along toward the house. “We in the shower.”

  “I really should—”

  “Get wet with me.” He paused to take off his dirty boots, sweaty socks. “Did I ever tell you about this swimming hole we used to frequent?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not that far from here, a little higher in the hills. Really more a bend in the river than a pool, but it worked fine.”

  Taking her glass, he set them both down on the counter as he moved her through the kitchen.

  “Water’s cool. The color of tobacco, I’d say, but clear. Russ and I and some others used to ride our mountain bikes up there on those long, schoolless days of summer, strip down and cool off. The first time I skinny-dipped with a girl was there, at what we locals call Fiddlehead Pool, because there’s fiddlehead ferns thick as thieves up there. I’ll take you sometime.”

  “That sounds very interesting, but right now—”

  He’d managed to get her into the bedroom, began to back her toward the bath. “You need to get naked and wet. Let me help you with that.”

  “You appear to be very determined,” she commented, when he pulled her shirt over her head.

  “Oh, I am. I am.” And flicked open the catch of her bra.

  “Then I suppose there’s no point in arguing.”

  “No point at all.” Reaching behind her, he turned the shower on, then flipped open the button of her fly.

  “Then I should cooperate.”

  “That’d be the sensible thing.”

  “I prefer doing the sensible thing.” She drew his shirt off, let it drop.

  “Hallelujah.” But he started to hold her back when she would have moved into him. “Let me rinse some of this sweat off first.”

  “I don’t mind it. It’s basic and natural, and …” She pressed her lips to the side of his throat. “Salty.”

  “You about kill me, Abigail. That�
��s God’s truth.”

  She wanted to, wanted to make him want and yearn and quiver as he made her. She embraced the musky scent of him, the good sweat of physical labor as she stripped off his pants, as he stripped off hers.

  And the water ran cool over her head, down her body.

  “It feels good,” she murmured.

  So good when his mouth took her mouth, when his hands took her body. When she tasted his hunger for her, felt his need for her.

  She imagined them sinking into cool, tobacco-colored water in the bend of a river where fiddlehead ferns grew thick and green and moonlight shimmered in rays through a canopy of trees.

  “I want to go to your swimming hole.”

  “We will.”

  “In the moonlight,” she said, as her head fell back, as his lips skimmed over the column of her throat. “I’ve never been romantic, not before you. But you make me want moonlight, and wildflowers and whispers in the dark.”

  “I’ll give you all of it, and more.” He slicked her wet hair back, framed her face to lift it to his. “And more.”

  “Promises and secrets, and all the things I never understood. I want them with you. I love you so much. I love you. That’s already more than I ever had.”

  “More still.” He drew her into the kiss, long and slow and deep, as the water showered over them. He’d have given her the moon itself if he could, and an ocean of wildflowers.

  Promises. He could give her those. A promise to love her, to help her find peace of mind, a safe haven.

  And moments like this, alone, where they could tend to each other, pleasure each other. Shut the world and all its troubles, its pressures and its demands away.

  She washed him, and he her—inch by inch. Arousing, lingering, prolonging. Now the scent of honey and almond rising up, the slick, slippery slide of hands, of bodies, the quick catch of breath, the long, low sigh.

  So when he braced her, when he filled her, there was moonlight and wildflowers, there were whispers and promises. And more.

  There was, she thought as she surrendered, everything.

  THE SENSATION OF CONTENTMENT stayed with her as she stood in the kitchen, contemplating doing something interesting with potatoes—Brooks liked potatoes—to go with the steak and salad. She glanced, a little guiltily, at her computer as she poured wine for both of them.

  “I should try again, now that we’ve had our break.”

  “Give your big brain a little rest. Let’s sit down a minute. I’ve got a couple updates for you.”

  “Updates? Why didn’t you already tell me?”

  “You were involved when I first got home,” he reminded her. “Then I was distracted by shower sex.”

  He sat at the counter, and since she’d already poured it for him, picked up his second glass of lemonade.

  “I guess we’ll take them in order. I had a talk with Roland Babbett. The cameras I borrowed from you did the trick, caught him going into the Ozarks Suite using B-and-E tools to do it.”

  “You arrested him?”

  “In a manner of speaking. I have to say I liked the guy, once we got things aired and ironed out.”

  He ran it through for her, but she didn’t sit. Instead, she kept her hands busy scrubbing then quartering small red-skinned potatoes.

  “You told him he frightened me.”

  “I may have colored your reaction a little differently than the reality of it, but I figure your pride can handle it.”

  “You … prevaricated so he’d feel some sympathy toward me and less curiosity about the cameras, the gun and so on.”

  “I like ‘prevaricated.’ It’s an important word, and classier than ‘lied.’”

  “You believed him, too, believe he’ll just leave and not pursue his investigation.”

  “I do. He’s a family man at the base of it, Abigail, and with his wife expecting their third child, he doesn’t want to risk his livelihood on this or go through the upset and pressures of a trial. His firm isn’t going to want to deal with the publicity we could generate, especially as one of their operatives saw photos of the damage on the hotel. And over that, he doesn’t like Blake or the boy.”

  “But he works for them.”

  “Roundabout, yeah. I work for them, roundabout, as I’m a public official. Doesn’t mean I have to like them, either.”

  “You’re right, of course.”

  “I made him a good deal, one he can live with. He can turn in his reports, fulfill the contract with the client, move on.”

  “If there’s no more danger from that quarter, the logic you used to contact the authorities now, to move forward with testifying, doesn’t hold.”

  He reached out to still her hands for a moment, to bring her eyes to his. “It does if you consider that down the road something like this may happen again. If you consider you’re never going to feel rooted here, the way I think we both want you to, until you finish this.”

  “That’s true, but perhaps we could delay, take more time to …” She trailed off when he said nothing, only looked at her. “Delay is an excuse. It’s fear, not courage.”

  “I’m never going to question your courage, or criticize the way you’ve coped.”

  “That means a great deal to me. I want it over, Brooks. I do. And having taken appreciable steps toward that end is frightening, but it’s also a relief.”

  “Then I hope you’ll be relieved to know Captain Anson’s in Chicago. He intends to contact Agent Garrison tonight.”

  “He called you?”

  “Late this afternoon, on the drop phone.”

  “I’m grateful to him.” She began mincing garlic, her eyes trained on her hands, on the knife, as the pressure built in her chest. “I hope she’ll believe him.”

  “You picked a smart, capable, honest woman.”

  “Yes, I was very careful in my selection.”

  “Anson’s a smart, capable, honest man. We couldn’t do better.”

  “We both made logical choices. It’s good it’s happening quickly. Delay isn’t sensible once decisions are made, so it’s best it’s moving forward quickly.”

  She poured olive oil, spooned some Dijon mustard with it in a bowl. After a distracted moment, she added a splash of balsamic vinegar. “Except for my part.”

  “You’ll get there.”

  “I’m not confident of that at this point.”

  “I am, so take some of mine.” He watched her spoon a little Worcestershire in the bowl, then some Italian dressing he knew she used primarily for marinades. In went the garlic, some pepper, a little chopped fresh basil.

  “What’re you doing there, Abigail?”

  “I’m going to coat the potatoes with this and roast them. I’m making it up,” she added, as she began to whisk the mixture. “It’s science, and science keeps me grounded. Experimenting is satisfying when the results are pleasing. Even when they aren’t, the process of the experiment is interesting.”

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  She whisked, sniffed, narrowed her own eyes, added a little something more.

  Pretty as a picture, he thought, with her hair still a little damp from the shower and pulled back in a short, glossy brown ponytail. She’d put on a sleeveless shirt of quiet gray and jeans that rolled up into casual cuffs just above her knees.

  One of her nines sat at easy reach on the counter by the back