It was a low voice, husky with a kind of half-buried sensuality. It acted on him like a magnet, dragging him slowly, but insistently, out of the shadowy place where he’d been floating for what felt like a very long time.
And it sounded impatient.
“I know you want me down there, Arnie. I’ve told you, I can’t leave.” There was a brief pause. “All right, then, I won’t leave. The point is, the hospital’s fax machine is tied up. And unless you can get somebody up here to pick up my copy in the next half hour, this is the only way you’re going to get it.”
He tried to open his eyes. It didn’t work. But he could see a hazy brightness around the edges of his eyelids that made him think there was daylight out there somewhere.
Inside, he seemed to be lost in a dark cloud, unable to grab hold of any thought for more than a second or two. Even the mellifluous voice that had pulled him up toward the light faded into a gentle murmur now. He felt himself sinking into the shadows again, away from the gentle, husky voice and the pain that was starting to nag at him from somewhere in his midsection.
Then a word caught his attention.
“Brady...”
He struggled back toward consciousness, somehow certain the name was important. It took an effort, but he managed to focus his concentration—what there was of it—on the flow of words coming from somewhere to his right.
“Along with Justice Brady, who is expected to be arraigned today, several Miami police officers, including two detectives and a member of the Internal Affairs Department, have been implicated in the scandal.”
Her speech sounded very slightly formal, as though she was reading rather than conversing. What she was saying seemed strangely familiar, though he couldn’t figure out why.
He wasn’t even certain who or where he was at the moment. He felt a spurt of frustration at the thought, but didn’t have enough energy to maintain it. He lapsed into listening again as the woman’s voice went on.
“But by far, the biggest shock in the case was the suicide of Miami Deputy City Attorney Greg Iverson. Iverson, a highly regarded young lawyer who was widely considered to have a bright political future, was pronounced dead on arrival at the same Broward County hospital where injured police detective Nick Ryder was taken following the canalside shooting.”
There was a tremor in her voice this time. He could feel his own body answering it. Something deep in his gut—something that came from far below the nagging pain in his left sido—quivered with an instinctive empathy he couldn’t quite understand or control.
He blinked, and tried again to open his eyes. It still didn’t work, but he could feel himself moving closer to consciousness with every attempt.
The velvety voice had become firmer, as though to counteract the slight quaver he’d heard in it. “Iverson, like Brady, was apparently a target of a systematic attempt to gain control over key members of the law enforcement and judicial systems,” she was continuing.
“Where John Brady’s weak spot was his ill-advised investment in a land development scheme, Iverson’s downfall was his taste for low company. FBI investigators searching Iverson’s Miami apartment have found copies of several compromising photographs of the deputy city attorney with employees of a Miami call-girl establishment. Agents have speculated the photographs may have been sent to blackmail Iverson, who apparently then used his influence to obtain lighter sentences or acquittals for indicted mob members.”
There was another pause. When she spoke again, there was a new tightness to her voice. “That’s easy to say now, Arnie,” she said. “But those people were fully capable of hurting him if he so much as pretended he was going to defy them. You know that as well as I do. And Greg was—” She seemed to stumble a little over the word. “He had very high hopes for his career. You know that, too. It was just—”
There was definitely distress in her tone, although she was doing her best to disguise it. The quiet anguish of it made him want to reach out and comfort her, to soothe away the sadness troubling that throaty, musical voice.
“I know he was a bastard, Arnie. He was prepared to let those people kill Ryder just to cover his own trail. When I think about how close they came—”
She was shaking her head. He was sure of it, although his eyes were still closed. He had a very clear image of a head of short, tousled dark hair, of a gesture halfway between impatience and supplication.
“But he was also one of my oldest friends,” she said. “And I can’t forget that, either. Look, can we just get on with this? I thought you wanted to go to press twenty minutes ago.”
He had to wake up.
It didn’t matter that something seemed to be stabbing him in the ribs every time he pulled in a breath. His need to make a connection with the husky-voiced woman was nearly overpowering.
It was even stronger than the need to piece things together, to know why every phrase she spoke seemed to strike the same disturbing, half-remembered chord in his memory. Even the thought of being stabbed in the ribs had that urgent, almost-familiar feeling to it.
Getting his eyes open was excruciating. The light was too bright, the pain in his midriff too demanding. And the cobwebs still clung to his brain, making it almost impossible to listen to what the woman was saying.
But some of it sunk in, anyway.
“The FBI has now confirmed that it was Detective Nick Ryder’s undercover work in prison which has enabled them to link corrupt justice department officials definitively with organized crime. Upon his release from prison, Detective Ryder was pursued by mob assassins, who attempted four times to kill him before nearly succeeding early Wednesday morning.
“The first three attempts are believed to have been abetted by corrupt officers within the Miami police department, colleagues of the injured man. Using police department information, these officers were able to keep mob gunmen informed of Detective Ryder’s whereabouts from the moment he left prison.
“When he survived an arranged ‘accident’ that left an FBI agent dead, he was followed by a mob gunman, first at the hospital where he was taken following the accident, then at a mall north of Miami where he had paused in his escape. When neither attempt succeeded, both mob and police insiders focused their attention on Greg Iverson, who was known to be close to the detective, in the hope that Iverson would lead the killers to their quarry.
“Detective Ryder’s testimony is expected to be the cornerstone of the federal government’s case against the indicted conspirators.”
As she paused, Ryder finally got his eyelids to move. He couldn’t make out details yet, just light.
“No,” the woman was saying firmly. “I don’t want to appear in this at all. I’m only filing this piece because I happen to be the one with the information. It’s really Nick’s story, not mine.”
Nick...
The name sounded so sweet as she said it. Even the determination in her tone wasn’t enough to keep him from responding to it.
“I don’t care,” she was continuing. “I just—it’s too raw, Arnie. All of it. I don’t know where it’s going.”
She paused, then gave a short, unamused laugh. “I know that. Probably exactly the same place it was before he was arrested. But I can’t say for sure until he wakes up.”
He could hear her trying to wrap up the conversation as she added, “Look, you’ve got what you wanted, right? You’ve got my story, and even if I didn’t get any pictures you’ve got as juicy a corruption scandal as any crusading editor could possibly want. So could you go and put the paper out and let me get a little rest? I‘m—well, tired isn’t the right word for it anymore. I got past tired about a day and a half ago.”
The instant he saw her, it all came flooding back.
His vision finally came into focus as she hung up the phone next to his bed. As she’d told her editor, she looked tired and tense. There was weariness in her gesture as she pushed her hair back from her forehead with the heel of one hand. And her eyes had dark smudges under them.
But they were still the most astonishing eyes—glittering, soulful, the color of amethysts.
“Jaynie...”
His first attempt at speaking was a failure. He couldn’t seem to get air to move out of his lungs. And the effort of lifting his head to get her attention was beyond him. Cursing inwardly, he eased back onto the pillow and tried to get his breath.
He remembered it all now—the grim scene at the picnic area next to the canal, the days of hiding at his grandfather’s old property, even the feeling of waking up in the hospital days ago, without his memory or any idea how he’d gotten there.
He knew how he’d gotten here this time.
And the realization of how close he’d come to dying—how close they’d both come—shook him from head to toe.
“Jayne.”
This time his voice was stronger. It was as though some of the adrenaline that had coursed frantically through him at the picnic area was still kicking around in his system.
He knew he sounded hoarse as hell, but he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was to get Jayne to turn toward him, to look at him with those dazzling eyes, to prove to him that she really was all right.
She turned instantly at the sound of his voice, and seated herself on the bed next to him. He noticed a chair beside the bed, but from the way the sheets were rumpled at his side, he thought she’d been sitting there, too, perhaps staring down at him as he slept.
Her fingers twined quickly, warmly, around his. The feeling of her skin against his palm was more than enough to offset the nagging pain in his left side.
But her eyes didn’t look the way he’d been hoping.
They were as brilliant and intelligent as ever, fringed by those impossibly long lashes. He could just see the sprinkling of freckles across her nose, darkened slightly by their hours on the water over the past few days. She was looking at him with an intensity that made him feel instantly stronger and more alive.
But her expression was uneasy.
She kept her voice level enough as she informed him,
“You’re ahead of schedule. They said you probably wouldn’t wake up until tonight.”
He started to ask what day it was, then realized he didn’t care. There were more important things he needed to know first.
“Are you all right?” He knew his words were hard to understand, but she seemed to know what he meant. He held on harder to her hand, loving the feel of her slender fingers between his.
She was shaking her head again, in exasperation, it seemed, not in answer to his question. “That’s my line, Nick,” she said. “You’re the one lying there with two holes in your body and a bunch of wires and tubes in you.”
He couldn’t see the wires and tubes, which suited him just fine. He frowned. “Two holes?” he said. He only remembered one shot.
She reached her free hand across his chest and pointed carefully to his left side. “One coming in,” she said, “and one going out.”
For the first time he realized that he was propped half on his side, so that his weight was tilted toward his right. “Hit anything important?” he asked.
“No. You were lucky.”
Before he could stop her, she tugged her hand free and stood up. He felt bereft, alone again.
It was obvious from her face that her matter-of-fact tone was covering a lot of feelings she wanted to conceal if she could. But some of them got through in her voice as she said, “I can’t believe you’re so cool about this, Nick. If that bullet had been just a few inches to one side—”
She turned away from him, moving toward the window. Ryder couldn’t see anything beyond the glass, which probably meant he was on an upper floor of whatever hospital this was.
Just like last time, he thought. For a moment he was confused, picturing himself standing at the window instead of Jayne, turning to see a beautiful stranger in the doorway telling him in the most disapproving tones that she was his wife.
It seemed like an aeon had passed since then. And inside, aside from whatever damage the mobster’s bullet had done, there were parts of Ryder that were very different than they’d been that first time Jayne had come to a hospital room to claim him.
Before that first accident, he’d actually convinced himself it might be possible to let this woman out of his life.
Now he knew better.
But was it too late to change Jayne’s mind?
“The FBI wants to talk to you as soon as they can,” she was saying. “I was able to give them some of the details, but there’s a lot I still don’t know.”
“Jayne—”
Either his voice had failed him again or she’d simply decided not to hear him this time. Leaning against the windowsill, propping herself on her wrists, she went on speaking.
She wore a pair of jeans not nearly so clingingly revealing as the pair she’d bought in Narvaez, and a white blouse that was badly wrinkled, as though she’d been sleeping in it. Her hair was disheveled, her face devoid of makeup, her stance cautious and tense, as though perhaps the man she’d tackled had hurt her more than Ryder wanted to think about.
And yet the mere sight of her still turned his blood to fire. It was hard to keep his thoughts on her words when all he wanted to do was look at her—hold her close to him—whisper promises he’d been too foolish, too afraid, to whisper before now.
But she was continuing, sounding very practical again.
“And I’ve learned some things from Agent Disenza that you and I didn’t know,” she said. “For one thing, I found out why nobody had been looking at John Brady’s records before we stumbled onto them. All the FBI’s evidence pointed to someone in the prosecutor’s office, not on the bench. The mob. apparently saved Brady’s services for special cases—like yours—when they couldn’t afford to take a chance on a verdict. Otherwise they left things to the city attorney’s staff—to Greg—”
She was still having a hard time realizing how deeply enmeshed her old friend had become in the deadly business that had nearly claimed Ryder’s life, and her own. Swallowing, she went on quickly, “Anyway, that’s where the FBI was focusing. Until you and I started checking into Brady because you’d recalled his name, nobody in the judiciary was under any kind of suspicion.
“And another thing—remember that witness who came forward to say that you and the FBI driver had been struggling with each other just before the car went over the bridge last week?”
“Vaguely.”
“Well, it seems the witness was a plant. When the police went looking for her at the address she’d given them, they found it didn’t exist.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. Listen, Jaynie—”
“So the whole accident was rigged to kill you if possible, and to pin the blame on you if by some chance you survived. And it almost worked.”
Jayne was having a hard time keeping her mind on the hard facts of the mystery that had enveloped them for the past few days. Ryder looked so haggard, so defenseless—and so gorgeous that it made her want to weep. Those turbulent blue eyes—those defiantly high cheekbones—the sensuous slant of his mouth—everything about him had become painfully precious to her since those awful moments when she’d been afraid she was going to lose him forever.
He might never be hers in the way she had once hoped for. But at least he was alive.
She tried to remind herself that that should be enough. Asking for more was only courting heartache. She swallowed to get past the tightness in her throat when she let her eyes wander over Ryder’s broad shoulders. This hospital gown was, if anything, even skimpier than the one he’d worn last week. And if she was going to stick to her plan of getting back to her own life, she couldn’t afford to let herself be seduced by the beauty of his battered body and his stormy eyes.
“The FBI checked your grandfather’s old house on Monday and decided we weren’t there,” she told him. “But then, when there hadn’t been any reports of us anywhere else after twenty-four hours, they came back on Wednesda
y with a helicopter, and spotted the cabin. If we’d just stayed put, we’d have been safer.”
“We didn’t know that at the time.”
“I know.”
“So we ran right out of the frying pan into the fire.”
’ She loved the rough music of his voice, she thought, and the way his eyes could catch and hold hers with an intensity that made her limbs weak.
“That’s about the size of it,” she replied.
“And now? What happens now?”
The suddenness of the question caught her by surprise. She’d been about to tell him everything she’d uncovered while investigating this business on the phone over the past day and a half. But the look in his eyes made her think he had other things on his mind.
She still wasn’t completely certain what they were. “Now you lie here and don’t move until your side heals up,” she said. “And then—”
She shrugged, and wished she hadn’t. The second gunman had landed some painfully accurate blows at that parking lot.
“I don’t know what happens then,” she admitted. “You go back to work, I guess. And so do I. Right now, we’re both local celebrities because of this thing. It’ll probably do our careers good. At least, I guess it’s good.”
She hadn’t meant to expose her own uncertainties quite so plainly. But between the ache in her body and the turmoil in Ryder’s blue eyes, it was difficult to maintain the composure she’d been aiming for.
“Is that what you want, Jaynie?”
With an effort, she pulled her gaze away from his. “I want a good night’s sleep,” she said, with an effort at sounding lighthearted that didn’t quite come off. “I won’t know what else I want until after that.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Since they first brought you in. Thirty-six hours.”
“Why?”
Again, the question was so simple she wasn’t sure how to answer it. Caught off guard, she settled for the truth.
“I couldn’t leave you until I was sure you were all right.” She lifted her chin as she said the words, waiting for his inevitable answer. I’m all right. This is my business, not yours. There’s no point talking about this.
A Marriage To Remember Page 21
