Hot As Sin (17 page)

“Whatever.” Emily waved off his correction as if this were a longstanding argument.

Gabe grabbed the rifle and slammed the truck door. Looking pointedly at Derrick, he said, “See? And you wonder why I divorced her?”

“No, sir.” As Derick shut her door, he was smiling again, but this time it was with enjoyment. He liked seeing Gabe in a situation the former SEAL couldn’t handle. “I’m wondering why she married you.”

Emily circled her arm in Derick’s and tossed a victorious smirk in Gabe’s direction. He was waiting, and none too patiently, by the station door. She intended to add one last touch to her performance as the talkative, outspoken Emma Gabriel. But the performance ended as soon as she met his hungry gaze.

The attraction that was always between them, always lurking beneath the surface, flared to life. Her easy smile faltered, then disappeared completely as she realized
her emotions went beyond sexual attraction. Gabe easily had as many flaws as he had virtues. Right now he was the only thing real in her life. The only person she could trust.

“Look at him,” she said softly, covering her confusion with the flip personality of Emma Gabriel. “How could a girl not marry him?”

Derick grinned at Gabe’s discomfort. “Mrs. Gabriel, I certainly like having you around.”

With that pronouncement of approval, the subject of their relationship seemed to have been satisfactorily covered. After the introductions around the squad room, Emily faded into the background. Taking her coffee from Derick with a murmured thank-you, she sat quietly in the extra chair he’d dragged over to his desk.

Questions about the rifle were short and simple. The coffee was surprisingly good. No one at the station paid any attention to her. And she paid very little attention to them until Derick dropped the bomb.

“That’s it on the rifle, Gabe, but I thought you’d want to know I got another report from my buddy. He’s still working with the marshals on that disappearance. Rubbing it in every chance he gets.”

Shock caused Emily’s throat to constrict, and she choked on a mouthful of coffee. Both men swiveled to check on her as she grabbed a napkin and wiped her mouth. Gabe put his hand on her arm and squeezed gently as a warning while he made a production of banging her on the back. “You okay?”

Coughing and her eyes watering, she nodded. “Just went down the wrong way. Sorry,” she rasped. “Go on.
I’m fine.” She was anything but fine, but she tried not to show it.

Derick leaned back in his chair. His gaze stayed on her long enough to make her uncomfortable. Finally he looked back at Gabe. “Well, there’s another little wrinkle. Something that happened before the pro turned up missing. Seems they’ve misplaced a witness. They got two marshals down at a safe house. Both dead. One of ’em went down hard.”

Emily held her coffee cup tightly with both hands, trying to steady it. A wave of nausea hit her as she silently pleaded,
Not this way. Don’t let it be this way
. Gabe would never forgive her if he found out this way.

“Two marshals down?” Gabe asked with a whistle. He let go of her arm, and leaned back in his chair too. “No wonder the Justice Department is pushing on this one. Sort of makes them all look like the boy wonder on a bad day. Who went down? Surely not experienced men?”

Why hadn’t she told him in the cemetery?
Because it wasn’t the place. There was too much death there already, too much fear. Not that her reasons would matter now. It was too late. Emily closed her eyes and waited for her lies to unravel.

“Nobody’s saying who they are,” Derick said, “but how green could the guys have been? You don’t pull witness security detail if you’re fresh off the farm.”

For a few seconds the words made no sense at all, and then they suddenly clicked. Relief rushed through Emily so fast, the room swam. She had to fight a sigh. Derick didn’t know! He couldn’t tell Gabe.

“No, Justice doesn’t like ’em green,” Gabe agreed. “They like a little mileage on their men.”

“Well, they don’t like mileage on their witnesses and this one seems to have put the pedal to the metal. Popular opinion is that she’s still alive. She’s a rabbit going to ground.”

“Say a few prayers and maybe she’ll hop toward Washington and you can snare her.”

“No such luck, man. For the foreseeable future I’m filing reports and writing tickets. If it comes to that, they’ll call in the county mounties. Not me.”

Gabe got up. “Come on by the bar tonight. I’ll buy you a drink to cheer you up.”

“Just might do that. I want to have a chat with Sawyer Johns and Clayton Dover. A friendly chat.” Derick turned and nodded at her. “Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Gabriel.”

“Oh, call me Emma, please.” She struggled to pull herself together. She couldn’t blow it now. “All my friends call me Emma. Come to think of it—only women call me Emma. I don’t have any male friends, because no man has ever survived Gabe’s screening process. Maybe you could be the first?”

“He’s not interested, Emma,” Gabe informed her.

“See! The man is a ne’er-do-well.”

“Neanderthal,” Gabe corrected her. “Ne-an-derthal.”

Emily waved at him. “Whatever.”

Gabe groaned and dragged her by the arm. “We’re leaving now. Say good-bye, Emma.”

“Oh, sure. I find a new friend, and suddenly we’re leaving! See? Bye, Derick!”

She let herself be hauled toward the door, but another argument erupted before they got out the door, continuing unabated until they’d pulled away from the station.

“Not bad, Mrs. Gabriel,” Gabe said as they turned the corner. “Not bad at all. We might survive this yet.”

Emily let her head rest against the seat, a strange exhilaration welling up inside her. “I can’t believe I was in a police station, talking about
me
, and they didn’t even know.”

“Safest place to hide is in plain sight.”

Straightening up, Emily shoved her hair back from her face. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d gone to pump him for information? And what was he talking about? Why am I
another
wrinkle?”

“Yesterday, all he knew was that Joseph Bookman disappeared in transit.”

“W-what?” Emily held herself very still, as if that would change his answer to something she liked better.

“My guess is that when the marshals found out about the farmhouse, they tried to move Bookman. Or that Bookman found out that the attempt on you failed; probably figured he was next. So he struck a deal, and they moved him for security. Whoever got to you probably had the juice to get to Bookman even in jail. The only question seems to be whether or not Bookman’s dead.” He paused. “No bodies have turned up.”

“And that’s bad?” Emily asked, knowing in her heart that it was.

“Yeah. If Bookman’s not dead, he’s looking for you too.”

“He won’t stop until he finds me. Will he?”

“No.”

She tried not to let it bother her. What was one more gun pointed in her direction? Seemed like everyone had a gun. Everyone wanted to kill her.

Emily stared out the window. It bothered her. It terrified her. And so did what she had to do next. She had to tell Gabe.

When the bar loomed in front of them, the liquor distributor’s truck was backing up to leave. Gabe wheeled into the parking lot and jumped out almost before they stopped rolling. In the end he had to bribe the guy into hanging around long enough to unload. He was obsessively attached to his schedule, and Gabe had already kept him waiting fifteen minutes.

Emily left Gabe to deal with the driver and disappeared upstairs. She paced until her gaze found the mess of files on Gabe’s desk. To give herself something to do with her hands, she began straightening pages that stuck out of the folders at every angle imaginable. Each time the steps creaked, she caught her breath, afraid that the time had come to face Gabe and confess. When Wart jumped off the pool table onto the floor behind her, she startled so badly, the file went flying out of her hands, scattering papers everywhere.

“Oh, damn. Now see what you’ve done?” she asked him as she knelt down to gather up the pages. Wart kept butting his head against her hands, oblivious of the havoc he’d caused. “I am not in the mood for this, cat. He’s going to be mad enough. These are his supplier faxes, and they’re all dated, which means I’ve got to put them back in order before—”

The document in her hand was dated the day she’d
arrived, and it was addressed not to a supplier but to Patrick.

Who was already dead before the fax was sent.

She read it twice, telling herself that it was coincidence. That Gabe never really sent it, or the special Christmas present he mentioned was a set of golf clubs or maybe a microwave for Patrick’s mother—
any
present that would be tough to wrap. But there wasn’t a present in sight.

Only her.

She wasn’t certain how long she sat there before she heard Gabe’s familiar footfall on the stairs. She was certain, however, that the only man she could trust couldn’t be trusted at all.

No one could.

Her parents had wanted a child only so they could shape and mold her into an Olympic gold medalist, a dream they hadn’t been able to achieve for themselves. Her coaches had used her talent to launch careers. Her corporate sponsors wanted her face, but at least they had offered to pay for the privilege. The government wanted her as leverage. Everyone had an agenda.

Thank God she hadn’t made the mistake of letting her emotions toward Gabe get out of hand. Falling in love with him would have given him another weapon he could use to control her.

When he reached the threshold, she didn’t get up. She held out the fax.

“What the hell have you done, Gabe?”

Words died on Gabe’s lips as his mind registered the scene in front of him. Emma knelt on the floor by his desk, papers everywhere. Betrayal and fear fought for control of her expression as she waited.

He didn’t bother to ask for the piece of paper in her hand; he knew what she held. It was just as well. Tomorrow morning he would have had to tell her anyway. Pitching his keys on the coffee table, he said, “I sent Patrick a fax. Even on assignment he checks in once or twice a week.”

“It’s true,” she whispered, knowing she should have expected Gabe to do something like this. “Someone in his office knows I’m here.”

“No, they don’t.” He hated the raw emotion he saw on her face. “Look at the fax. My telephone number isn’t on it. I took the sender code off. I didn’t sign the damn thing. I routed it through an oil company in New York. No one’s going to pay attention to an obviously
personal fax.
No one
but Patrick could possibly know you’re here or what that fax means!”

Emily reined in her fear. Right now she needed to think more than she needed to feel. Letting the fax slide out of her fingers, she said, “You never intended to help me. You’ve been scurrying around behind my back the whole time. Checking up on my story. First with this fax and then by going to the police yesterday. You didn’t care about your promise.”

“That’s not true,” he said heavily, and crossed the room to help her up.

Emily jerked away from his touch, forcing herself to get up under her own power. The physical contact destroyed the emotional distance she’d been trying so hard to maintain. His touch fed the fire of betrayal inside her, reminding her that the only one she could count on was herself.

“You lied to me. You promised you wouldn’t contact him. You said you owed him enough to take the dog tag on faith. Oops,” she corrected herself sarcastically, and put the pool table between them. “I forgot. You have a little problem with faith. You were never very good at it.”

“I warned you,” he ground out.

“You did. I just didn’t listen.” She exhaled the words on a breath that was full of self-ridicule. “I didn’t know you that first night, and afterward I thought you were different. Guess not! Guess I’m never going to learn. I’m just going to keep trusting people and getting shafted.”

“Hold on. I had good reason to send him that fax.”
Gabe’s words were soft but laced with anger barely held in check.

“Of course you did.” Her head snapped up, her tone just as righteous as his had been, but not nearly as restrained. “Not the least of which is your need to be in control of every situation. Like today in the cemetery, when you went after that poor hunter and scared him half to death.”

“This has nothing to do with control, Emma. Not the way you think anyway.” He had his hands on his hips. His gaze never wavered. “Two days ago I didn’t know you. The debt I owed was to Patrick. Not to you. I did what I thought he wanted.”

“You didn’t have to think! I told you what he wanted—he wanted you to help me disappear! No questions.”

“Listen to me, Emma. I thought he wanted me to slow you down. I thought he needed me to buy him some time, to baby-sit you until he broke loose from his assignment.” He flared his fingers, digging them into the denim as he spoke. “I figured he was going to come get you. That was the only explanation for the clues he had you drop.”

Frozen in place, Emily couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Come get me? Clues? There weren’t any clues.”

“Sorry, darlin’, but there were. Lots of them.”

“Like what?” she asked, dreading the answer.

“Patrick never gives advice. Ever. That was your first mistake, saying that it would be safer to take his advice. Then there’s the fact that the word ‘safe’ is not in his vocabulary. He wouldn’t use it. Even the nun’s
habit was classic Patrick Talbot. It screamed ‘look but don’t touch,’ especially to someone raised by nuns, as I was.”

“The habit was my idea,” she broke in.

“I know that now, but
then
I thought it was Patrick’s idea of a joke. He has this talent for practical jokes. And the last clue—the real clincher—is that Patrick would never tell me to ‘forget’ you if he actually wanted you to disappear. That’s like telling me how to breathe. It goes without saying.”

“Patrick never intended any of that,” she explained slowly, her heart racing at the mess Gabe’s cleverness had created.

“You’re right. He never intended you to use that dog tag. Never in a million years. He’s full of grand gestures, and giving you the tag was one of them. Believe me, he had no idea that things were going to go to hell in a hand basket and that you’d end up on my doorstep.”