Her chin shot up. "What does it matter what his intentions were? He's a monster. That's not news. But he couldn't buy me, Tierney. Not the real me. The heart of me."
"He did, Eden, and you know it," he reminded her harshly. "For a while, you bought into everything"
"For a while, yes... but not long enough! I'm still here, inside. I'm still fighting. I walked away from the purchase price and I testified even when I knew they couldn't put
him away. " She coughed, and her long, slender fingers gripped the towel clutched to her breast. " Maybe he gave Sheila the keys to kingdom come," she uttered fiercely, " and may he she took them. Maybe she'll never wake up to what a monster he is, but I will never believe she would betray me. "
"Yeah, and I'm sure there was a time when you believed Broussard would never harm you, either."
"That's not fair!"
"Damn straight it's not. You're right," he snarled, done with trying to spare her. He could quote her chapter and verse of the Book of Fair. He'd subscribed himself. He'd bought into God and country and Mom's apple pie. Truth and justice and,. loyalty.
Men like Broussard perverted it all.
"Just think about it, Eden. Think about Broussard turning on that hot-blooded Cajun charm, making Sheila believe he's a changed man, making her think he's found her, but to assuage his freaking immortal soul, he needs to make amends to you. Think about him twisting what she knows and hopes to his own advantage.
"He feeds on people, Eden. Get this. Can you honestly believe for one minute that he wouldn't exploit her, too?"
Her lips tightened. She met his relentless expression. Her eyes roamed his face, looking, he thought, for a trace of compassion, settling a moment, then a pulse beat too long on his lips.
Her gaze flew back to his. Tension arced between them, magnified by the power of spent, reckless kisses. She broke off, lowering her gaze, and he could swear he heard her heart pound. "No."
"No. I didn't think so."
She reached distractedly with her right hand to shove her hair back from her face. Pain bit into her, reaching her eyes in a split second. A cry escaped her lips. Her hand dropped like lead to her lap.
"I..."
He swore beneath his breath. She'd caused fresh bleeding. Applying pressure, he steadied Eden. And caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror behind the sink. It was an unnatural wonder she sat still for him touching her at all. "Just be quiet and let me finish this."
The jet hit a patch of turbulence and shuddered for fifteen or twenty seconds, but she held tier body stiff and motionless--the level of her pain, he thought, ensured that--but she didn't stay silent long.
"It doesn't matter anyway. Sheila couldn't have betrayed me because she didn't know where I was."
"Tafoya believes she did know." Chris frowned, struggling to recall Maroncek's d~ption of his encounter with Tafoya in the presence of the attorney general. Some fragment of that conversation was at odds with Eden's dead certainty that Sheila Jacques knew nothing of her whereabouts.
He tossed aside the bloodied swab and soaked another in peroxide. "Jackson Hole is a world-class resort area. A little rough around the edges, still a fairly well-kept secret. Just the kind of place BroUssard seeks out--for the anonymity, if nothing else. Suppose he sent Sheila on a nice little retreat and she did spot you, walking down the street, or in a movie theater or a bar."
Eden winced, her expression pinched and hurting. "I thought you didn't buy into coincidence."
"I don't--but Tafoya is not a fool, and I can't explain how Broussard got an assassin in place if there's no other way he could have known where you were."
Eden's expression pinched. "There is another way."
"Yeah?" He picked up another towel and dried his hands. "What would that be?"
She adjusted the towel again. For a moment, Chris could see the sturdy wet fabric clinging to her breast and the dark shape of her nipple.
"Broussard's hired gun could have followed anyone." She swallowed. "He could have followed you."
Chris dragged his focus from her breast and looked up at her. "It didn't happen that way, Eden."
"How do you know? How can you be sure that you didn't lead him right to me?"
"Because I didn't even make it to Jackson until the time Paglia met up with the deputy. I saw him park and get into 'the deputy's vehicle at the corner across from the convenience store." He reached for a fresh swab. "I followed them. The shooter was already in place, Eden, and that doesn't happen without some serious planning."
She gulped. "You're saying Broussard's assassin was ahead of all of you?"
"Yeah." Chris inclined his head and doused the swab in peroxide~
"Yes? Just yes? What good are you people?" she cried. "What good are any of you? What kind of promises do you make? " We'll keep you safe from harm, dear witness, right up until someone really wants to get at you.
Chris exhaled heavily. He~ knew the failure to adequately protect her was an ungodly fluke, He knew one failure couldn't impeach the whole of Witness Protection, But if he hadn't been there, hadn't snatched her away for his own purposes, their failure would have cost her her life. "Look. Eden"
"No." She shook her head. He didn't know where she found the grit to talk at all. "I don't want to understand you."
He decided to forget making any attempt to explain and fill ill drew the swab along the edges of the bullet wound. The peroxide foamed madly, trickling onto the exposed nerve endings and raw edges of her flesh.
A whimper seeped out of her. Still she didn't stop. "I don' ttrust you." Her voice broke. "I don' twant you anywhere near me. I don't care if you saved my life.~ I don't even care if it was your fault that Broussard's assassin found me at all. I just want out."
He applied more peroxide, a soaking gauze this time, and she cried.
He forced himself to do what had to be done. He'd managed to shut off her tirade but he hated himself. Hated all of it. She had a right to blow off the steam, the anger. "I'm sorry, I have to do this."
She nodded and backhanded her tears. "Can you see the bullet?"
"Yeah. It's not that deep, Eden. I swear it." He squinted, to dead tired he could barely see anymore, focusing on the bullet.
"Can you get it out--without a scalpel or something, I mean?"
He nodded. "The bullet isn't deep~ but it's lodged beside the bone and the tissue has swelled around it." Knowing if she was going to pass out at all, it would be when he pried the bullet from her flesh, he pushed her bottom along the countertop until she was tight against the side wall.
He picked up the tweezers, then put them down again and scraped at his whiskers, rubbing the back of his neck in a futile little gesture.
"Have you ever done... this... before?" she asked, her voice wavering~ uncertain.
"Yeah." He shrugged. "Out of bricks. Wood. Door-jambs. Things like that."
"That's certainly" -- her breath caught "--encouraging."
He glimpsed for the first time the hint of long dimples in her pale, too-thin cheeks and, for a moment, felt like he'd been slammed. He breathed deeply and blinked a couple of times to ease his itchy eyes, then took the tweezers and doused them in alcohol. Cupping her upper arm, he braced himself as well. "Ready?"
Eden clutched the wet towel. "Just do it."
She lasted through his pulling the bullet loose. She hung in there while he poured in more peroxide. He unwrapped a couple Of small butterfly bandages and gently drew her flesh together with his second and third fingers.
When he was done, she scooted off the countertop, stood and turned to see how he had done in the mirror.
He stood behind her, a head taller, dragged out, beat. He met her wide gray eyes in the mirror, and then she passed out cold.
WHEN WEB BROUSSARD received the news that the hit on Eden Kelley had failed, he was sipping at a glass of Grand-Puy-Ducasse Pauillac, lying on a deck chair at the pooh side of his private estate south of Marblehead on Massachusetts Bay. He had returned only hou
rs before from the villa of a Cuban associate, where the living was easy and the heat reminded him of New Orleans, but the culture was oppressive and annoyingly melodramatic, even to him. Broussard wished to live in joy. Joie de vie.
He clicked off the cellular to end the call, and in the next instant, the exquisite crystal containing his drink shattered in his hand. He took no notice of his own blood mingling with the rare, subtle wine,
Next to him, Sheila cried out, "Web, darling, what is it? Look at your hand! You're bleeding!"
"Take no thought of it, chbre." His tone warned her against hovering or troubling him with further outcries. She sat very still, unnaturally constrained to silence and' against her female instincts to minister to him.
He wanted nothing from her at this black moment, and she had been with him--thOUgh not long--long enough to back off at his command.
Naturally, Sheila Jacques had accompanied him. He found her accommodating in the extreme. She was an ordinary little creature" one that under most circumstances he would have given no more notice than he might a spar row.
Still, her gratitude to him--for a thousand things, not the least of which was that he had rescued her from a lifetime of dealing with sniveling, brain-dead adolescents--knew no bounds. None that he had discovered anyway, and it wasn't as if Winston Broussard 'had ever been less than thorough.
She understood that the small humiliations he had' ocCasion to subject her to were mere tests of her loyalty.
She understood the nature of his tests. She understood his need for complete and unquestioning loyalty. She knew her place in the larger scheme of things. There existed a universe of far. more beautiful w ~omen who would also, for the gifts he bestowed, be as accommodating; Sheila knew he had chosen her~ selected her from among the rest because of her friendship with Eden Kelley.
She'ila's idea of why this was so amused him greatly, but he was not amused now, and he was finding no joy, either. He was enraged. He had paid vast sums of money for his problems to be made to go away, and he had not gotten value for his investment.
True, all the other witnesses against him in that ~pathetic attempt by the Feds to stop his arms trafficking had
been silenced. Two of the three permanently. The remaining traitor had been made to understand the lethal consequences of testifying against him, and that man, for one, had not valued his so-called honor over his life. And it was also true that the G-men had not seen fit to bring him before a grand jury to indict him on conspiracy to murder.
Eden/. Kelley, however, would not give up, but she had not been so accessible as the others, who could be sent very distressing messages while in prison themselves.
The Feds had managed to hide her away in a safe house long enough to get to trial. Her feeble testimony had been enough to send him away. He resented it bitterly. He loathed her. She would pay quite dearly. He hoped he'd made it. clear how little her life was worth by the silent, eloquent gesture of flicking that crushed orchid blossom over his shoulder. He smirked. His hand bled on. He imagined Eden Kelley had no particular fondness for orchids anymore.
The bitch had managed to shrvive the assassination ~t-tempt, had eluded certain death.
He knew Deputy Marshal Christian Tierney, whose stunningly beautiful wife had died' in Eden's stead, would murder him in his bed if he could. Since a Supreme Court decision had empowered the Marshal Service to track down and seize their quarry outside the territorial United States-'without recourse to cumbersome treaties and extradition agreements--leaving the country no longer necessarily ensured a moment's peace.
They could not come after him without formal charges pending, however. Web had given some thought to the possibility that Tierney would goad the FBI into such a course of action--perhaps on murder charges, or conspiracy to murder--so Tierney would be sanctioned to track Web to the ends of the earth. There were no such charges.
Tierneywas a still a loose cannon, but such undisciplined behavior didn't raze Web. It would, in the end, be Tierney's undoing. And in the end, Web would be rid of them both--Tierney and Eden Kelley.
Twice, Web's hired assassins had failed. However much he would have liked to deal with Eden Kelley himself, to choke the life from her with his own hands, he determined to remain disciplined himself, unlike Tierney, and grant his associates one last opportunity. One more chance to send the viperous bitch to her rightful demise.
He would conserve Sheila Jacques's usefulness for another little while.
EDEN WOKE IN A SEAT aboard the government jet wearing a soft champagne-colored silk jersey camisole, her shoulders covered by a coarsely textured army blanket made into a shawl. Christian Tierney sat opposite her, slouched deeply in the seat, his eyes closed, arms outstretched, his long legs extending nearly to the base of her own chair.
Watching him through her lashes, she felt heat rise in her cheeks. He had to have unhooked and unlaced the bus tier to take it off her. He had to have gone through her things to come up with the camisole and put it on her.
In the worst straits of her life, a captive in the hands of a man more immediately dangerous to her than Winston Broussard himself, she berated herself for caring that he had seen her, handled her~ naked from the waist up.
But he had kissed her, and she'd let him, needed him to distract her from the pain. To make her feel human and still alive. Kissing had subtly changed everything, charging what. went on between them with a sexual tension she didn't know how to combat.
With her eyes only barely open, coping now with a dull throbbing between her right breast and shoulder, she watched him for a long time. His eyes were closed. She didn't know if he was sleeping. She decided after a while that he was not--that he might be resting his eyes, but remained aware of his surroundings. Aware of her. Aware, even, that she had regained consciousness.
His raven black hair lay in damp curls, as if he'd stuck his head beneath the lavatory sink. He smelled now of soap. Starkly delineated against fair skin, his black whiskers created a dark, forbidding visage.
Her tummy fluttered. She drew a deep, panicky breath and opened her eyes, willing herself to see him not as a dangerously attractive, compelling man, but for the threat he represented.
If what he told her was true, then he h~idn't known, any more than the sheriff's deputy or Tafoya's-FBI stand-in, that Broussard's assassin already had her virtually in his sights. He had followed Pagiia and the deputy, intending to kidnap her, to take her from them3 nothing more.
He had saved her life, that much was true. She owed her life to him, but she couldn' tallow herself to forget for one moment that beneath his heroics lay a reckless disregard for her welfare. He would use her for whatever purposes he had in mind.
Revenge was at the heart of his actions. She was sure of that much. And she believed deep inside that no matter how valorous he had proved himself to be, he could not exact his revenge against Winston Broussard without getting himself killed: Which almost certainly meant she would die, too--unless she managed to escape him and somehow get back to the protection of David Tafoya.
Observing him slouched low in the seat, resting his head back, she' faced the fact that his pressing weariness touched her. That she sympathized with his deadly intent. Nothing would ease her own heart and mind so much as Winston Broussard's death. "
To know that about herself gave her no comfort. He opened his eyes then and met her stare. Shuddering, she lowered her gaze to her hands, then looked at him again. Maybe~ if she tried, she could reason with him. Maybe she could make him see that there was no way ever to get Catherine back. Tierney had to see that Broussard's life didn't begin to equal Catherine's' and wasn't worth the risk to his own.
She had to try. She had to hope he would give this all up because even if he let her go and went on alone, it would cost him his life, too, one way or another. She couldn't bear to think of that happening.
"I'm son3t for what happened to... Catherine. To your wife."
'~Yeah. " He exhaled harshly. " Me, too. "
"I know I wasn't directly responsibie, but it... feels like I was."
He folded his hands over his flat abdomen. "No one's blaming you."
"I know. I guess that makes it easier to blame myself. If I hadn'f testified, or if"
"Things happen. I~nnocent people die every day."
She nodded, sensing the pain beneath his shrugging it all off. "i know." She watched his Adam's apple slide down at the opening of his green-and-blue plaid flannel shirt. "That can't be any comfort."
He didn't say anything or act as if he wanted to talk about his wife.
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