Nowhere to Run

by Suzanne Brockmann

  This was normal, polite conversation. There was no reason Marty would suspect that Emily wanted to know her last name in order to inform the police of Alex Delmore’s whereabouts….

  Marty put her lipstick back in her purse and closed it with a snap. “Bevin,” she said. “Martina Bevin. Your last name’s Marshfield, right?”

  “Marshall,” Emily told the older woman, drying her hands on a paper towel.

  Marty shrugged. “Oh, well,” she said. “I’m lousy with names. But I won’t need to remember Marshall much longer, right?” She smile slyly. “I’ve heard rumors you’ll be changing your name to Delmore soon.”

  The woman was obviously fishing for gossip. If she only knew what Emily knew…Of course, maybe she did. Maybe Marty and Ken were as involved with running drugs as Alex was. The thought was chilling. They seemed so nice. Of course, before overhearing his conversation with Vincent Marino, Emily had considered Alex nice, too.

  Emily murmured something polite, yet vague enough to neither confirm nor deny Marty’s hint about wedding plans, and fled back into the restaurant. The day she married Alex would be the day the world stopped turning, that was for sure.

  Once outside the ladies’ room, she took a deep breath. Now what?

  Ken and Marty Bevin. At least she had something to tell Jim. But short of writing him a message on the ladies’ room mirror in lipstick, she really had only one alternative.

  She had to leave a message on her own answering machine. With any luck, Jim would think to call and check for messages. No, he’d get the message, and it wouldn’t be because of luck. Jim was good at what he did. He was thorough. Checking her answering machine would be one of the first things he did after he realized he and Felipe had lost her.

  The bartender already had the telephone out and waiting for her on the bar. “Just dial nine to get an outside line,” he told her with a friendly smile. He was a big man with long hair pulled back into a ponytail. Something about the way he moved reminded her of Jim. Inwardly she made a face. It didn’t take much these days for her to be reminded of Jim.

  She quickly dialed her number. The telephone rang four times before the machine picked up.

  “Hi, Dan,” she said, in case anyone was listening in, “it’s Emily. I wanted to let you know that I’m going to be back later than I thought. Alex and I are going over to Ken and Marty Bevin’s house—I’m not sure of the address, but it’s somewhere down here on the water.” She lowered her voice. “Don’t worry about me. Everything’s fine. I’m okay. I’ll see you later.”

  She pushed down the hook with one finger, cutting the connection. Taking one more deep breath, she plastered a smile on her face and went to the table where Alex was waiting for her.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She nodded. She was as ready as she’d ever be.

  DAMN IT, THIS WAS HELL.

  Jim slammed down the telephone for the tenth time in the past half hour. Where was she? Where the hell was she?

  All his efforts at tracking down Ken and Marty Bevin had failed miserably. No such people existed. They didn’t own property, they had no criminal records, no priors—not even a single parking ticket. They didn’t have a telephone—listed or unlisted—they didn’t file state income tax, they weren’t even registered to vote, for crying out loud!

  Each time a potential lead came up blank, Jim got more worried. Who were these people? Their name was obviously an alias. Damn it, it scared him that Emily was with them. It scared him that he didn’t know where she was. She could be anywhere. She could be on a plane to God knows where. She could be handcuffed and unconscious, lying belowdecks on some boat, heading for South America. She could be dead—

  With a growl, he pushed himself up and off the couch and started pacing again.

  How could he have lost her? Why hadn’t he been prepared for something like this to happen? He should have arranged for her to wear a listening device. He should have considered the fact that Aquavia’s was on the waterfront. He should have realized that there would be nautical traffic to and from the wharf. He should have been prepared to follow Emily by boat.

  Jim looked at his watch and cursed. It was nearly quarter to two in the morning. Where the hell was she?

  Shortly after midnight, he and Salazar had split up. They had come back to Emily’s apartment to see if maybe she’d returned. That was when Jim had found her other purse, the one that held her wallet, his cellular phone number—and her keys. That was perfect, just perfect. Now he had to wonder if maybe she’d tried to come home but had been locked out.

  Felipe had gone back to Delmore’s house to watch for any sign of either him or Emily. Jim had stayed behind, hoping that she would call again, hoping that she would come home, praying that she was safe.

  Praying. Jesus, when was the last time he’d actually prayed? He couldn’t remember. But, God, he was making up for it now.

  At one-fifty, the telephone rang.

  Jim picked it up before it completed its first ring. But it wasn’t Emily. It was Frank Gale, from the police station downtown. He had been searching computer files, trying to find any mention at all of Ken and Marty Bevin.

  “I figured it out,” he said. “Bevin’s a stage name. Martina Bevin, remember? She used to have bit parts in those really cheap horror flicks back in the early seventies? She was always the girl with the big chest who took off her shirt and got killed early on in the movie. She keeps a low profile these days. Apparently some nutball fan stalked her, and she dropped out of the business. Back in ’82, she married a local man—Ken Trudeau. Rich guy. He owns that resort out on the point.”

  Jim scribbled the name in his notebook. “You got an address on him?”

  “Yeah—211 Flamingo Lane,” Frank said. “It’s off Ocean Avenue.”

  “Thanks, Frank.”

  “My pleasure, pal.”

  Jim hung up, then turned as the apartment door opened and Emily slipped inside.

  Emily.

  She closed the door, locked the dead bolt and leaned back as if she were exhausted.

  Relief hit Jim like a punch in the stomach. She was alive. She was all right. She was…The relief soured instantly, turning to a rapidly growing disbelief.

  Her hair was a mess, as if it had been wet, or windblown, or as if someone—Delmore—had touched it, run his fingers through it over and over. She was holding her high-heeled pumps in one hand, and he could see that she’d taken her panty hose off and stuck them into the toe of one shoe. Her legs were bare, and her dress looked rumpled, as if she’d taken it off and thrown it casually over a chair—

  Jealousy knifed through him, hot and sharp and painful as hell.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t call you,” she said. “I didn’t bring your phone number….”

  “I know.” He made an effort to keep his voice from shaking. “Are you all right?” What he really wanted to know was what she’d been doing all this time. Had she slept with Delmore? Had she made love to him? But he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

  Emily nodded. “I’m fine.” She smiled, but it was tight, unnatural. “Better than fine. I got Alex to invite you to a party on his yacht. Next Saturday—a week from tomorrow. He’s having a cocktail cruise on the Home Free from five-thirty until nine. We’re both invited. He wanted to take the two of us out alone, another time, but I thought it would be better if there was a crowd. That way, you can sneak down to his office and not be missed.”

  “Yeah,” Jim said. “That’s good.” Outwardly, he was calm. Inwardly, he was dying. She’d gotten Delmore to give him an invitation. He couldn’t shake the picture of Emily doing her persuading in Delmore’s bed.

  “You’ll need a tux,” she said, meeting his eyes only briefly before she looked away.

  What Jim was thinking was too terrible. Emily was afraid of Delmore. If she didn’t want to go to dinner with him, she certainly wouldn’t be eager to have sex with the man. But would she do it anyway? In an effort to hurry along the investigation,
in an effort to find the information they needed to put Delmore in jail—and get Jim out of her life—would she force herself to make love to Alexander Delmore one more time?

  Jim hated the fact that he didn’t know. He hated the fact that he suspected not only that she would, but that she had. He wanted desperately to believe that she wouldn’t prostitute herself that way, but he couldn’t get past the obvious evidence. At some point during the evening, she’d taken off her clothes. He couldn’t ignore that, and it was killing him. Despite all the danger and jeopardy he’d imagined her to be in over the past few hours, he hadn’t let himself think about the possibility of Delmore making love to her. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it now, and it made him feel sick.

  “I need to take a shower,” she said, and he realized he was blocking the hallway that led to the bathroom.

  But he didn’t want her to go. He knew that unless he stood and waited outside the bathroom door, she would slip quietly into her bedroom after her shower and he wouldn’t see her again until morning. Then he’d be alone with his suspicions and his jealousy all night long.

  He took a step toward her and motioned toward the couch. “Sit down and…tell me what happened,” he said.

  She glanced at the couch and shook her head. “Nothing suspicious happened.” She looked down at the shoes she was holding in her hand. “We sailed out to Ken and Marty Bevin’s—”

  “Trudeau,” Jim said, interrupting her, and she looked up at him, frowning slightly. “It’s Ken and Marty Trudeau. It took my investigator until just a few minutes ago to figure out that Bevin is Marty’s stage name. She used to be an actress.”

  Emily understood instantly. “Oh, shoot,” she exclaimed. She dropped one of her shoes, but didn’t bother to pick it up. She stared up at Jim, concern darkening her eyes. “So, all that time, you had no idea where I was or who I was with. Jim, I’m sorry—”

  “No,” he said, taking another step toward her and grasping her by the shoulders. “No, Emily, don’t. I should be the one apologizing here. I told you I’d stay with you. I promised I’d follow you. Damn it, I should have made sure you were wired for sound—”

  “Good thing you didn’t,” Emily said, then blushed. Jim froze.

  She gently pulled free and stepped around him, heading toward the bathroom. He turned and caught her arm, stopping her.

  “Why?” he asked. His voice was low, and Emily caught her breath when she saw the tension around his mouth and the dangerous light in his eyes. “What happened that you didn’t want me to hear?”

  She didn’t answer, and his fingers tightened around her arm. “What did you do, Emily?” he asked. His voice got steadily louder. “Where did you go after you left the Trudeaus’? I know you didn’t go back to Delmore’s house. Salazar was staked out there all night. So where did you go? To Delmore’s boat, right?”

  Emily stared up at him. What was he implying? Oh, God, was he implying—? He thought she’d slept with Alex. He actually thought she’d stoop that low. Angry tears burned her eyelids as she tried to wrench herself free. But his fingers tightened on her arm.

  To her horror, she burst into tears.

  He pulled her into his arms, instantly contrite. “God, I’m sorry,” he said as he held her tightly. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I…I lost it, and I shouldn’t have, but I was so worried about you, and then…But what’s important now is that you’re here and you’re safe. That’s what I’ve got to focus on. You don’t know how glad I was to see you walk in that door. God, I was so scared, and so damned helpless. But you’re okay now. You’re okay. That’s what matters. That’s all that matters.”

  Emily felt more than heard the catch in Jim’s voice, and the sudden unevenness of his breathing. Jim was crying. He was actually crying, too.

  She could feel his cheek pressed against the side of her head. She could feel his ragged breathing, warm against her ear. He was so solid as she leaned against him, enveloped by his powerful arms. For the first time all evening, she felt protected and safe.

  And needed, she realized suddenly. He was clinging to her as tightly as she was holding him. This embrace was not one-sided. She was comforting him, too.

  And that scared her to death.

  She did the only thing she could. She let go of Jim and fled into the bathroom.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  JIM SAT IN EMILY’S LIVING ROOM, trying not to think about Emily and Delmore, alone on Delmore’s yacht last night.

  But, God, it was hard.

  He tried to distract himself by watching the sun rise. The dawn sky was hazy and red. What was that old saying? Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. It was going to be another scorcher of a day—hot as hell, and muggy to boot, building up to violent late-afternoon thunderstorms. The storm would rid the air of this sticky humidity for only a few short moments. Before it even stopped raining, the puddles on the ground would begin to evaporate, creating more haze.

  But hey—he shouldn’t complain. This was Florida. It was summer. Heat and humidity came with the package. And he’d chosen to be here, right? He’d made a decision to leave the New York Police Department. He could have stayed up north. His boss had wanted him to stay. Even as a rookie detective, Jim had been good at what he did.

  But he had had to leave. New York had already taken a solid chunk of his soul. His only hope of getting any of it back had been to get the hell out of there.

  So then what had happened? He had moved to Tampa, not quite whole emotionally, but able to function, able to get the work done. But only a few months into the new job, he’d woken up to find he was missing a piece of his heart.

  A piece? No. The whole damned thing. Emily had stolen the whole damned thing. He’d thought he’d gotten it back, but he’d realized last night that he was mistaken. Emily had possessed his heart all these long years. Nothing had changed. He loved her. He probably always would.

  She was older now—they both were. God knows he’d grown up a hell of a lot in the past seven years. He’d come to terms with who he was and what he’d done. Yeah, he’d gotten at least some of his ravaged soul back. It was patched and uneven—not a pretty sight—but he’d come to realize that he wasn’t as bad a person as he’d thought he was.

  No, he wasn’t that bad. But was he good enough for Emily?

  He was a cop. He knew the risks he took every day when he went to work. His world and the people in it were brutal and ugly. And sometimes, in order to catch the bad guys, he had to be just as brutal and just as ugly. More than once, he’d pointed his gun at another human being and pulled the trigger. More than once he’d taken another’s life. And in doing so he’d been dragged down to their despicable level.

  No, he wasn’t the kind of monster he’d imagined himself to be, but he was no golden prize, either.

  As the sun gathered its strength and climbed higher in the sky, Jim pushed himself off the couch and went into the kitchen to brew another pot of coffee.

  Whether or not Emily deserved a man better than him was a moot point. She didn’t like him. There wasn’t much he could do to make her like him—much less to make her love him again. He wasn’t even sure he wanted her to love him again.

  But he knew one thing that he had to do. He had to tell her the truth. He had to tell her why he’d hurt her, why he’d left her all those years ago. Maybe she wouldn’t believe him. But maybe she would. Maybe at least she’d understand and forgive him.

  And maybe that would be enough.

  EMILY WOKE UP at ten-thirty, still exhausted.

  She lay in bed, listening for the sounds from the living room that would let her know Jim was awake. She heard nothing. But she doubted he was sleeping. He never slept past eight.

  She shivered, remembering the way he’d held her last night, remembering how he’d cried.

  Having her disappear from the restaurant must have been a major shock for him. It certainly had had more of an impact on him than she would have imagined. But as she tho
ught about it, his emotional reaction, his anger and upset, made sense. He had been assigned to protect her. He was responsible for her safety. Through no fault of his own, he’d found himself in a situation in which he was unable to do that. Added to that had been the stress of having failed. He was not a man who failed often—or took failure lightly.

  She wouldn’t allow herself to consider that his emotional upset had anything to do with her on a personal level. Thinking that way was dangerous.

  Emily sighed. It had been one hell of an awful night.

  Alex had asked her to marry him.

  She’d been dreading that, and when he finally asked it had been both better and worse than she’d anticipated. Better because he hadn’t seemed at all surprised when she told him she’d need some time to think it over before she gave him an answer. And worse because, throughout the course of their entire discussion, not even once had Alex mentioned love. He wanted to marry her not because he loved her, but because he thought she would make the perfect little wife.

  In a way, it was good. She would feel no guilt about betraying a man who didn’t love her. But, despite that, she felt oddly depressed. She wanted to be loved. Jim hadn’t loved her, either, and she was starting to wonder if anyone ever would.

  She’d been really glad that she wasn’t wearing some kind of bug that would have let Jim listen in on her conversation with Alex. That would have been too hard to take. It was going to be difficult enough to tell him about Alex’s loveless marriage proposal.

  Emily climbed out of bed and took her beach bag from the closet. She and Alex had purposely made no plans to see each other before next Saturday. That was a relief. She needed some time away. She needed it desperately.

  All she really needed to pack was her bathing suit, a couple pairs of underwear, an extra pair of shorts and a T-shirt. She threw the clothes into the bag and hurriedly got dressed.

  Carrying her bag with her, she went into the bathroom, washed her face, brushed her hair and teeth and packed up everything else she’d need for a few days away.