He smiled, revealing perfect teeth.
Slick.
That's how her sister Lisa insisted on referring to him behind his back. Don't call him that, Gaby would admonish her, demanding to know why a man couldn't be well mannered and charming without being branded slick.
Slick.
Only now, too late, did she see how perfectly the name suited him.
“What am I doing here?” he repeated, his soft tone as incredulous as if she'd asked him his name. “Gabrielle, darling, I'm here for you.”
“I see.” Somehow she managed to flex her lips into a stiff smile. “It's just that I...I thought my mother would have told you why Iâ”
“Why you ran away from me on what was supposed to be our wedding day? The start of our new life together?” His smile was relaxed, but the look that came at her from deep within his eyes was cold and frightening.
“I'm so sorry about that,” she told him. “It was unforgivable of me. I was all set to go through with it....”
She saw his mouth twitch at her choice of words and hesitated. “I mean I was looking forward to the ceremony, and then all of a sudden I ... I don't know what happened, I just knew I had to get away, that I needed...”
“Time to think,” he finished for her.
He smiled again. With his lean, aristocratic features and a physique honed at the most exclusive fitness center in the state, he was undeniably a handsome man, but Gaby had never found anyone as repulsive as she found him at that instant.
“I understood all that,” he said in a tone she'd once found so soothing. “Of course, I assumed at the time that you would be doing your thinking alone. I wasn't aware that my future bride would be sharing her hideaway with the man responsible for her late husband's death.”
Gaby had to bite the insides of her cheeks to keep from blurting the truth, that he was the one responsible for Joel's death... for Joel's murder. Not Connor.
Connor.
Her breath shuddered from her as her stomach churned with sudden fear. Where was Connor? And Toby? Connor would never have let Adam be alone with her. How had Adam gotten in here without being seen?
The sound of water splashing, followed by a whoop from Toby eased the worst of her fears.
“So?” Adam prodded as she continued to stare at him in silence.
Gaby blinked.
He prompted her. “Wolf. You were about to explain how you ended up here together. I had no idea you two were so...close.”
“We're not. At least we weren't. I needed a place to stay for a few days and...” She shrugged. “Did you get a chance to say hello to him on your way in?” She took a step to go around him. “I'm sure Connorâ”
“Connor?” he repeated, moving to block her path. “Is it Connor now?”
Again she shrugged.
“He's crazy, you know.” He watched her reaction closely. “Mad. I probably should have warned you. He's been badgering me for months to advance him his quarterly payments, ranting about selling his share of the business. He even threatened to go to you with some off-the-wall story about me doctoring the books.” His lips thinned and turned up at the corners. “Crazy, right?”
Gaby nodded. “Right.”
Liar, she thought, aghast at the realization that her reaction to these latest lies would have been dangerously different if he had told them to her a week ago.
“But to answer your question,” he went on, “no, I didn't stop to say hello on my way in. You see, I wanted to surprise you first.”
“Well, you did.” A new thought narrowed her eyes. “I didn't even hear your car pull up. With that gravel drive you can usually hear people approaching a mile away.”
“I know. That's why I parked down the road and hiked up the back way. To surprise you, remember?”
“Of course.”
“Lucky for me I'd been here before and knew the way. It is a little off the beaten path.”
“Yes. It is. Tell me, Adam, how did you know I was staying here?”
He smiled. “A friend told me they saw you leaving your mother's with Toby, heading this way.”
“There's a lot of places I could have been staying between my mother's and here,” she stated in as light a tone as she could muster.
“I got lucky.”
Liar, she thought again, hiding her outrage behind a smile. Connor was right; Adam had had someone watching for her. Only he was even more clever than they realized. He'd been watching her mother's house, knowing she would show up there to see Toby sooner or later. And she had played right into his hands.
“I have to admit,” he went on, “I was a little surprised myself when I got here. I mean, there's Wolf...excuse me, there's Connor,” he corrected, giving the name an exaggeratedly formal accent, “frolicking in the water with Toby and I find my fiancée, who I fully expect to be deep in contemplation of whatever it was you needed time to think about, chatting away on the phone.”
Gaby remained silent, fear coiling inside her.
“Who were you talking with, Gabrielle?”
“Who? Oh, you mean on the phone,” she said, stupidly pointing to it.
“Yes, darling, on the phone.”
“My mother.”
“I see. I thought I heard you mention my name.”
“Did I?” Her puzzled frown gave way to a brittle smile. “I was just telling her that I had given everything a great deal of thought this week and that I would be talking things over with you very soon...and that I was anxious to apologize to you for everything I put you through.”
His teeth flashed inside a deadly smile. “And now you have your chance.”
His arm snaked out and snagged her around her waist, pulling her against him.
Gaby stiffened, the self-preservation instinct kicking in hard and fast. The urge to shove him away, to scream and bite and do whatever she had to do to get free of him was held in check only by the slim hope that by playing along she could better protect Connor and Toby. She didn't care what Adam did to her. There was nothing she wasn't willing to face, no risk she wouldn't take to keep them safe.
“Skip the apology,” he told her, his arm tightening even more, drawing her up until their faces were only inches apart. He smelled as he always did, of breath mints and expensive salon hair gel.
“I've been a most patient bridegroom, Gabrielle. I've waited and made excuses for your behavior to all our friends and guests, and given you time to...think. Now I want to hear you say that it's over, that you've come to your senses and you're ready to become my wife.”
Â
Gaby still hadn't come back out.
Connor had been checking every couple of minutes, telling himself there were plenty of things that could have detained her inside and that she had obviously seen Toby and him together and knew Toby was safe enough. Maybe she'd even gone inside to put on her suit and join them. Maybe. The thought alone was enticing. He would relish the opportunity to brush his legs against hers underwater. Maybe he would even get a chance to ask her the important question that had been on his mind ever since his little talk with Toby.
He glanced again at the deck and the empty chair where she'd been sitting. He could go on making up reasons why she could be taking so long, but he couldn't ignore that feeling at the back of his neck that told him something was wrong.
“Okay, partner,” he said to Toby as he swung him in the air, “last toss of the day.”
“Aw, Wolf.”
“I think maybe your mother could use some help with lunch.”
“Okay. But throw me real high this time.”
“Real high? You've got it. See that tree?”
He pointed to the highest pine tree in sight.
“I see it,” Toby said.
“Good. Don't bump your head on it on the way down.”
Toby giggled wildly as Connor began the now-familiar count. “One, two, ready, set, three.”
As soon as he emerged, Connor was rushing him out of the water, hurriedly drying him off with his shirt.
“There,” he said, “that ought to hold you until we can grab a towel on the deck. And don't let your teeth chatter like that when we get to the house, or else your mother will think I let you stay in too long. I can't afford to lose any brownie points.”
“What areâ?”
“I'll explain later,” Connor said, cutting him off. “Now, let's move it.”
He yanked his jeans on over his wet suit and shoved his feet into his sneakers. Edgy without knowing exactly why, he ended up carrying Toby most of the way rather than having to wait for him to keep up. The instant he stepped over the threshold, the flesh at the back of his neck tightened like a hand was grabbing him there.
He stopped so abruptly Toby bumped into the back of his legs. A quick look around without moving from his position by the door told him that if Gaby was in there, she wasn't on the first floor. He considered calling to her and decided against it. No particular reason. Just instinct.
Turning, he took Toby by the shoulders and hustled him back onto the deck.
“Wait here,” he told him, “and don't ask any questions.” He looked around and grabbed a towel that had been drying in the sun. “Here. Wrap this around you to stay warm.”
“But...”
“Later. And don't move off this deck until I come back for you. Okay?”
“Okay, Wolf.”
Inside he went straight to the locked cabinet where he'd put his gun, loaded it and stuck it inside the waist of his jeans in back.
He'd brought the gun along as a precaution, not because he thought he would need it. There had been no reason to believe that Gaby or Toby was in any imminent danger from either Adam or whomever he was involved with. If not for the fact that she'd been about to marry Ressler and he had wanted to stop her from making what could prove to be a huge mistake, she wouldn't even be there now. The police investigation would simply have proceeded without Gaby even being aware of it until they showed up to arrest her new husband.
He told himself the odds were that he still wouldn't need the gun, that his uneasy feeling was just the result of the week's accumulated tensions. In fact, he thought, Gaby was probably going to be mad as hell at him for taking the gun from the cabinet and loading it with Toby around. He might even end up losing ground with her when he desperately needed to regain it.
He still liked the feel of having it tucked back there. He buttoned his shirt over it as he headed for the stairs and started up. Slowly. Keeping his weight on the balls of his feet and listening intently as he moved. Not that it did him much good. The interior walls of the cabin were also made of solid wood logs, and he didn't hear anything until he turned at the top of the stairs.
“...a real lying bitch, you know it?”
He froze in his tracks at the angry sound of a man's voice coming from his room.
Adam?
It had been a while and he hadn't heard enough to absolutely identify the voice as that of his supposed friend, but in his gut he knew it had to be. Damn it, how had Adam gotten in here without his seeing him? Had he been that engrossed in teaching Toby to swim?
Seething at his own ineptitude, he recalled the walk back to the house from the lake and the fact that he'd only passed one car in the driveway. Gaby's car. Which meant that whoever was in there with her had arrived on foot so his approach wouldn't be detected. Understanding how it happened didn't make him feel any better about it.
Something in the man's tone made him reach for his gun, moving as quickly as he dared along the hallway, staying close to the wall and taking pains not to make a sound. If he had his way, the next surprise was going to be his to deliver.
When he drew next to the open door of the bedroom, he brought the gun up so he was holding it in front of him with two hands, the safety off. He braced himself, then lunged forward and sideways onto his right foot, a stance he'd taken hundreds of time in his years on the force. This was the first time when what he saw as he rounded the corner made everything inside him go cold.
It was Adam, all right. He had Gaby cradled against him, twisted at an awkward angle so that her back was to him, her head wrenched back by his grip on her hair. In his other hand he held a small-caliber pistol with its barrel positioned just under her jawline.
Connor's sudden appearance caught Adam by surprise. For a few seconds, no more, all three of them remained absolutely motionless. And silent. It felt like forever. More than long enough for hundreds of disjointed images and impressions to streak through Connor's head.
He had a flash of a long-ago memory of Adam viciously kicking a dog that had done nothing but come begging for some of the sandwich he was eating. Then came the much more recent and crushing memory of how soft the skin on Gaby's throat was at that spot where he held the gun. Then he was hit by the alarming realization that the sense of disconnection that had always given him his reckless edge, allowing him to think with absolute clarity in situations like this one, wasn't with him now.