She didn't know him at all. He was more of a stranger to her than the man across the table.
Maybe the man Remy had become was capable of murder. Maybe he was capable of having her killed. Maybe he no longer had a conscience to bother him with right and wrong.
She didn't know. And she didn't know what she was going to do about him. She just knew she needed time. She had a hard decision to make, and she needed the courage of her convictions, still lacking, to make it.
Most of all, she needed not to have her choices taken away from her. She needed not to be taken into protective custody by the FBI.
Abruptly rising from her chair, she moved toward the door. Her tennis shoes sat on the braided rug where she had removed them last night, and her socks were draped over a branch of a small potted tree near the door. They were stiff and dry when she picked them up, but they wouldn't stay that way long, not once she put on her shoes, soaked clear through, squishy and cold.
"What are you doing?" Michael asked, leaving the table and coming to stand between her and the door.
She sat down on the nearest chair, a solid wooden piece that reminded her of the library back home, and she tugged on one sock. "I'm leaving."
"You can't—"
"I can't go to the FBI."
"Why not?"
She simply shook her head.
There was irritation in his voice, darkening his eyes. "You can't go back out on the streets, Valery. People are looking for you—people who most likely want you dead."
"You think I've forgotten?" The second sock slid on, rough and uncomfortable, and she shoved her foot into her shoe, barely suppressing a flinch at the wet chill that instantly soaked through her sock and, it seemed, into her very skin. "I'll take my chances out there."
"You'll die out there."
She put the second shoe on, then stood up. "Where's my jacket?" She would leave without it except that her money, just under twenty-eight hundred dollars, was tucked in an inside pocket. With the money, she could make it. She could slip out of the city, could hide wherever the cash would take her. Without it, she was sunk. She might as well just throw herself off the bridge into the river, because she very well might end up floating there anyway.
"You're not leaving."
For the first time since he'd mentioned the FBI, her control snapped. Her voice was shaky, and so, she realized, was her body. She hugged herself tightly to still the tremors. "I won't be turned over to the FBI!" she insisted. "If I wanted to be in police custody, I never would have left the police station Monday! I wouldn't have stayed in those shabby hotels or been afraid every moment of the last four days! I won't go! Do you understand? I'll leave town before I'll let anyone make me go to them!"
He regarded her with such calm that, slowly, bit by bit, she began feeling foolish for the outburst. She wondered if he was trying to read her, trying to judge just how serious she was, wondered if he could even do that. Well, she was serious. She was leaving—leaving the apartment, the Quarter, the city, maybe even the state. She was going to find someplace safe on her own, someplace that met her requirements, someplace where she could—
"All right."
She blinked and weakly echoed his words. "All right?"
"I won't call the FBI."
"Or the cops?"
"Or the cops."
"Promise," she demanded.
Closing his eyes briefly, he pressed his fingers hard against his temples, as if trying to ease an ache there—an ache, she suspected, that she was responsible for. Then, with a heavy sigh, he opened his eyes and fixed his dark gaze on her again. "I promise. You'll stay here, and I—" It was almost as if it hurt him to say it. "I'll find some other way to help. But you have to trust me, Valery. You have to do what I say."
Trust him. He wasn't at all shy about asking for impossible things, she thought. The last person she had trusted fully was her father, who had waited exactly two days after her mother took off to dump her on his sister's family. And as much as she'd loved Aunt Marie and Uncle George, she had never totally trusted them, either. She had lived with the fear that one day they, like her mother, like her father, would decide they didn't want to be burdened with her any longer, that, like Remy, their love would turn to something else, something less.
And here was this man, this stranger, Michael Bennett, asking for her trust.
Because he was waiting for a response, because she had to give an answer, because he made her feel safe, she nodded solemnly. She would trust him.
As much as she was able.
Looking suddenly haggard and bleak, he shook his head in dismay. "Damn it," he said softly, without feeling. "I knew it couldn't be so easy."
She felt a swift regret for involving him in her problems, even though it hadn't been deliberate on her part, even though, through the visions that haunted him, he had been involved almost since the beginning.
And he was haunted. A person didn't have to be sensitive to otherworldly gifts to see it in his eyes, to recognize his sorrow. He had lost something—someone?—important, and it had almost cost him more, she thought, than he could afford to pay. Almost.
He shook off the bleakness, the dismay, hiding them from her sight, and offered her a taut smile. "Make yourself comfortable while I clean the kitchen."
"I can help."
Turning down her offer with a shake of his head, he gestured instead toward the hall closet. "The laundry room's through there if you want to wash your clothes. Later I'll go out and pick up whatever you need."
She nodded and kicked her shoes off again, peeled off her wet socks. She waited until he was about halfway to the kitchen before she spoke. "Are you a cop? Or a crook?"
His fingers brushed lightly, familiarly, across the pistol in its holster before he turned to face her. "Which one would be the lesser evil right now?"
She thought once more of what she'd seen Monday afternoon, of what she'd heard. "I'm not sure."
Like her, he took a moment to consider his response. When it came, it was flat, bare, laid out without excuses. "I'm a cop."
A knot formed in her stomach, a queasy Oh-God-what-have-I-done? sort of knot. A cop. God help her, after hiding from the police for four days, she had followed her silly little premonitions right into a cop's home.
A cop. That could explain how he'd known about the murder. How he had known her name. Why he had let her spend the night. It could explain everything he had supposedly learned about her from his so-called visions.
Then she remembered the dark, anguished look that had come into his eyes when he'd spoken of his visions, and she knew beyond a doubt that he did indeed have some sort of psychic power, as surely as she knew he didn't want it. It was nothing to joke about, nothing to lie about.
You have to trust me, Valery.
Hadn't she already shown some measure of trust in even coming here? Hadn't she trusted him enough to spend the night here?
So he was a cop … a cop who hadn't yet turned her in. Who could have picked up the phone at any time in the last ten or twelve hours and been rid of her. A cop who had said he would find some way to help her, some way that didn't involve bringing in the police or the FBI. He had promised her.
"Are you willing to help me because it's your job?"
"I'm willing to help you because it's the only way I know to stop the visions and because…" The bleakness reappeared for an instant, then was gone again. "Because I owe it to a friend."
She stood motionless for a long time, and Michael watched her, waiting for her response. He'd taken a chance with the last part of his reassurance. If she knew that the friend he owed was Remy—her cousin, yes, but also a fed with the very agency she was determined to avoid—she would be out the door in a flash. She wouldn't bother with shoes and socks, wouldn't wait to find her jacket with its twenty-seven hunched seventy-odd dollars and change in the pockets.
But if she demanded an explanation, he had another to give. He owed Evan, too—owed it to his old friend and partne
r to see that his visions didn't get anyone else killed. He owed it to Evan to get Valery Navarre—and himself—through this alive.
"You won't turn me in." She said it as a statement of fact, but there was a faint questioning tone in her voice.
"I told you I wouldn't."
She stood there for a moment longer, then, with a shake of her head, she laughed. It was a queer, bitter and, at the same time, amused sound. "A cop. Damn. First a soon-to-be-dead guy, and now a cop. Can I pick 'em or what?"
He watched her turn toward the bathroom to retrieve her discarded clothing, and slowly, when she was out of sight, he went into the kitchen. A soon-to-be-dead guy and a cop. He could think of a thousand other pairings she could have made that wouldn't have given him a moment's pause. But he had more than a passing familiarity with death. He had a great guilt for causing it, a great sorrow for not being able to prevent it.
Death was just a passing, he'd been taught, from one realm to another, from one imperfect place to—for God-serving Christians, at least—a better, happier one. He'd had no doubts when he was a kid that heaven and hell really existed, that those who believed would be rewarded in heaven and sinners would be punished in hell.
Now all he had, it seemed, were doubts. Good people suffered and died, and sinners lived long, healthy, wealthy lives.
He had just started filling the sink with hot, soapy water when the phone rang. Drying his hands, he found the cordless phone in the living room where he'd left it and, under Valery's watchful gaze from the utility closet, he took it back into the kitchen to answer, pitching his voice so she couldn't hear.
Remy wasted no time with greetings. "I talked to Smith this morning."
"Did you?" Michael wasn't surprised. The three of them talked on a regular, almost daily, basis. They talked about unimportant things like the weather and the Saints and where they should meet for dinner, and about the important stuff, too. Investigations. Arrests. Trials. Problems. Families.
Families. In the nineteen years they had been friends—best friends, damn it—Remy had rarely talked about his family, and he'd never mentioned his cousin at all. Not once.
"He said he told you about Valery."
Why didn't you tell me? he wondered. Not two days ago, not Thursday afternoon, when Remy had come over to talk about the Chartres Street
murder. He understood perfectly well why Remy hadn't wanted to pressure him then. But at some time in the past, any of the times when he and Remy. Smith and Evan had talked about their families, why hadn't Remy mentioned Valery then? It wasn't as if she were just a cousin, a not-too-distant relative whom he saw on holidays and at family get-togethers. She had lived in his house, had grown up with him, must have been more a sister than a cousin to him, and yet he had never told them—his best friends—about her.
"I'm sorry, Michael," Remy went on. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to feel obligated."
Which, of course, he did. "You didn't tell me because you knew I couldn't turn you down. But you should have told me anyway."
"I remember how bad it was last time."
Michael smiled bitterly. Yes, Evan dead certainly qualified as bad. "How do you think I would have felt if I had ignored her and she…?" And she died, too? If he'd been somehow responsible for someone else's death—for Remy's cousin's death—it would have been enough to send him crawling back into the nearest bottle.
And this time he wasn't sure he would have crawled back out.
"I know. I'm sorry." Remy sounded regretful. "I want to help you—"
"No."
"Michael, she's my cousin, and Falcone is my case. I have to help."
"No," he repeated, stronger this time. "I don't want you or anyone else calling or coming around. When I find out something, I'll let you know."
"Damn it, I don't want you in this alone."
"Alone is the only way I can do it." Michael sighed wearily, then ended the call with an abruptness that was rude and with the certainty that Remy wouldn't take offense. "I'll be in touch."
When he returned the phone to its base on a small Queen Anne table in the dining room, he saw that Valery was sitting on the sofa, hugging a pillow to her middle. "Who was that?"
He didn't mind the question, didn't mind the suspicion that prompted it. "Someone I work with." Gathering dishes from the table, he returned to the kitchen.
She hugged the pillow tighter. "Another cop?"
"Yes."
"Did you tell him about me?"
Pressing his palms flat, he rubbed his eyes, his temples, then combed his fingers through his hair. Damn, he was tired. He wished he could go to his room and shut the door—shut out the world and shut her out, too—and sleep the rest of the day away. But to do that, he would also have to shut himself out, and he hadn't yet learned how to do that.
With a sigh, he focused his gaze on her. "No."
"You didn't tell him I'm here?"
"I said no, Valery."
Now it was her turn to sigh. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to be so suspicious. It's just … hard."
He didn't respond to her apology. He simply returned to the kitchen and the dishes waiting there. A moment later she appeared in his peripheral vision, this time sitting cross-legged on a seat at the dining table. "When do you have to go to work?"
"I generally work evenings, but I took some time off."
"Why?"
He gave her a sidelong glance. "To find you."
"And how were you planning to do that?"
"I've never failed before." Turning away, he murmured, "Not at the finding, at least."
Though the words weren't intended for her, she heard them. "What have you failed at? The helping? The keeping safe?"
He didn't answer. Laying out his role in Evan's death for her examination—for her condemnation—wasn't part of the bargain. For all he knew about her, she was still a stranger, and he didn't share his private hell with strangers.
"Considering that you expect me to trust you with my life, you aren't forthcoming with many answers," she commented dryly.
"I wasn't planning on being entrusted with your life," he replied, his tone equally dry. "I was planning to turn you over to the FBI and let them protect you." It took only a few minutes to wash the dishes, to rinse them and leave them to drain on the counter. He dried his hands, then joined Valery at the table, choosing a chair at right angles to her, facing her. "Do you want to talk about that?"
"About what?"
"Who's not forthcoming now?" He didn't wait for an answer. "About why a law-abiding, upstanding citizen is scared senseless by the idea of being taken into protective custody by the FBI. You have something personal against them?"
"They're a bunch of strangers. How could I have something personal against them?"
Michael was neither surprised nor disappointed by her lie. He was a cop; he'd been one nearly half his life. He was used to people lying to him. He was interested, though, in the reasons behind the lie. Why was Valery denying that she knew an FBI agent? And why hadn't that agent been the first person she'd gone to after fleeing the police station Monday? Granted, Smith had said that she and Remy weren't close, that they hadn't been for fifteen years. But he was still her cousin. He was still family. He was still the logical choice to ask for help.
But he knew all too well that logic wasn't always reliable. Logically he knew he wasn't really responsible for Evan's death. Evan was a cop. Cops risked their lives to help and protect others. Even if he hadn't worn a badge, Evan would have done everything exactly the same that night. He would have protected Michael. He would have put himself in danger to save that little girl. He would have died so that she could live. It was the kind of cop he was.
It was the kind of man he was.
But none of that lessened Michael's guilt for being the one to draw him into the case in the first place.
"They could protect you," he said, putting Evan out of his thoughts. "You could be someplace safe and comfortable."
"I'm
someplace safe now."
What she didn't say said a lot. Safe, but not particularly comfortable. At first glance—and maybe even second—no one would know by looking at her that she wasn't comfortable. Her hair was drying, a few wisps stubbornly standing straight up. Her clothes—his clothes—were slouchy and well-worn. Her posture was outwardly relaxed—feet on the chair, legs crossed, hands loosely clasped.
But there were lines on her face—at the corners of her eyes, around her mouth. There was a certain wariness, a certain tension, in her body, as if she were prepared to take flight at any moment. And her eyes… A man could read a lot in those blue eyes of hers. Exhaustion. Stubbornness. Determination. Caution.
Distrust.
She had said she would trust him, and he believed she did—as much as she was capable of trusting any stranger. But she was holding some part of her trust—and her self—back. She was waiting for him to prove himself worthy of total faith. What she didn't know, and he knew all too well, was that he wasn't worthy. Only a short while ago he'd made her a promise—that he wouldn't tell anyone she was here—that he knew he wouldn't keep. And sooner or later she was certain to find out about his friendship with Remy. She was sure to discover that one of his best friends was the cousin she wouldn't—or couldn't—go to for help.
It was best that she didn't trust him fully.
Even if some part of him wished she did.
"So…" She blew her breath out with a force that shivered through her entire body. "What do we do now?"
"What exactly is it you want?"
Valery answered immediately, without hesitation. "For the past week to never have happened."
"Sorry. Time travel is a little out of my field." He almost smiled. She would have sworn it. "You can't go back and change the past, and you won't go to the authorities. So … what do you want to do?"
It was a good question, living here secretly for the rest of her life was obviously out of the question. So was running away—avoiding the issue and thereby avoiding a decision about Remy that she didn't want to have to make. What she wanted was time … but how could she explain that to him without telling him what she needed it for?
MICHAEL'S GIFT Page 5
