It was a major relief when, after making him sweat for what seemed hours, she did precisely that. Lifting her chin and sweeping him with a look of silent indignation, she strode past him and up the stairs, going out of her way to kick the knapsack as she passed.
Connor smiled ruefully and bent to catch it as it tumbled down the steps. Hopefully that would be the extent of her retaliation. Gaby had never struck him as a vengeful woman, and Lord knew she had cause to be. As he recalled, she was stubborn as hell, however. If he couldn't get her to listen to reason and persuade her that what he was doing was in her and her son's best interest, it was going to be a very long week.
He watched as she walked to the back door of the cabin, taking note of the fact that she didn't so much as glance toward the corner of the deck where there were a couple of lounge chairs and a barbecue grill, the old-fashioned kind that used charcoal instead of propane gas. Maybe she didn't remember the last time they were here, he thought. Then again maybe she just didn't want to remember. Connor didn't glance in that direction, either, but he still remembered every second, every heartbeat of that long-ago afternoon.
He followed Gaby inside, turning on the light in the kitchen. Off the kitchen was a bay-windowed alcove for dining and a large living room, all decorated in sturdy neutral-tone fabrics and furniture just battle scarred enough that you felt comfortable putting your feet up. The wall of the living room that faced the lake was almost entirely glass. Still, the towering fir and cedar trees surrounding the cabin shielded it from most of the sun and kept the interior always cool and restful.
A spiral staircase led upstairs, where there were two loft bedrooms and the sort of opulently decadent bathroom one didn't normally find in a log cabin. Besides being generous with its use, the cabin's owner, his friend Charlie, was a man of exquisite taste and great imagination. An ice-cold beer, barbecued T-bone steak and sunken tub big enough for two were Charlie's idea of heaven. Connor had to hand it to the man; if it wasn't heaven, it was damn close.
He picked up one of the knapsacks and tossed it to Gaby, who was standing stiffly beside the kitchen table. He tried hard not to notice how much of her legs were exposed as a result of his handiwork with her dress.
She caught the knapsack and held it away from her, eyeing it suspiciously.
“What's this?” she asked.
“Take a look.”
She slowly unzipped it and looked inside. Glancing up at him with a frown, she asked, “Clothes?”
He nodded. “I thought that sooner or later you might get tired of wearing your wedding dress and want something a little more practical. It's just a couple of T-shirts and pairs of shorts, a sweatshirt, jeans. Oh, and underwear, of course.”
She stared at him in what looked like disbelief. “Howâ?”
“How did I know your size?” he broke in. “I used my imagination.”
“No. How long have you been planning this?”
“About twenty-four hours,” Connor replied, shrugging. “Ever since I got back home and found out you were planning to marry Adam.”
She looked pale suddenly, and Connor thought he saw her hand shake as she lifted it to push her hair back from her face.
“What is it?” he asked. “What's the matter?”
She laughed weakly. “What isn't? I just can't believe that you actually planned all this... right down to packing for me.” She made an impatient gesture with one hand. “Oh, I knew you had to have arranged for the van to be waiting there for us, but thisâ” she grimaced at the knapsack of clothes “âseems so... calculated. So...” She paused and swallowed hard. “So definite.” Looking back at Connor with a wistfulness that tore at something deep inside him, she asked, “This really isn't a joke, is it?”
He shook his head. “No. It isn't.” .
As he watched, she seemed to sag with... What? he wondered. Defeat? Acceptance? Too soon to tell.
“Listen,” he said, gentling his tone, “why don't you go upstairs and change and I'll fix us something.”
“No.” She shook her head emphatically. “I don't want to change or eat or do anything else until you tell me what this is all about.”
“I think maybeâ”
“Now, Connor.”
“I'd forgotten how impatient and demanding you could be,” he muttered. “And do you have to keep calling me that?”
“What?”
“Connor.”
“It's still your name, isn't it?” she asked sarcastically.
It was his name, all right, but for as long as he could remember he hadn't liked being called it, especially not by a woman.
“I prefer Wolf,” he reminded her.
Her lips curved in a satisfied smile. “Then yes, I do have to keep calling you Connor. Now, are you going to keep your promise or not?”
“What promise are you talking about?” he asked, regarding her cautiously.
“You promised when we got where we were going you'd explain everything. Well, we're here, and I want to know what's going on. Why the hell did you want to stop me from marrying Adam?” she asked, her voice rising sharply. “Why are you so damn determined to ruin my life?”
“I'm not,” he said, feeling cornered. He'd wanted to wait for an opportune moment to explain things to her. He could see now that even if such a moment was feasible, she wasn't going to wait for it to come around.
“Really?” she drawled. “Well, for a man who's not trying to ruin my life, so far you've made two very impressive attempts at it.”
“Maybe this time I'm trying to save your lifeâdid you ever consider that possibility?”
“No. Not for a minute.”
“It's true.” He raised his hand to ward off her exclamation of disbelief. “At least it might be true.”
“And someday the sky might fall. That doesn't mean I have to run out and invest in a cave.”
“If my suspicions are right, the threat to your life could be a little more imminent than that. You could be in real danger, Gaby.” He hesitated before deciding he had to be totally honest with her to get her to understand. “And so could Toby.”
“Toby?” Her chin came up, and her eyes first widened in surprise, then narrowed with an almost feral glint. Just like a mother lioness whose cub has been threatened, Connor thought, thinking that in spite of everything Toby Flanders was a mighty lucky kid. “What are you talking about?”
“Sit down and I'll tell you everything.”
She obediently sank onto one of the mismatched chairs gathered around the massive oak pedestal table in the dining alcove. He moved to join her, detouring by the refrigerator for a beer. He'd borrowed Charlie's truck and driven up with some supplies last night. He held a can aloft to offer her one, but Gaby shook her head.
“Soda?” he asked. “Juice?”
She shook her head again. “No. Thank you. I would like a glass of water, though.”
He dropped a few ice cubes into a glass and filled it with water for her. This time he was certain her hand shook as she lifted it to take a sip.
“Calm down,” he said quietly, sitting in the chair beside hers. “I promise you Toby isn't in any danger right now.”
“But you said...”
“I said he could be...and I only said that much because I want you to understand how serious this is.”
She nodded. “All right, just tell me.”
“It has to do with the explosion,” he began by way of warning.
“My God, not again.”
She started to get up, but he stopped her by placing his hand firmly over hers on the table.
“Sit down.” More gently he added, “Please. Let me finish.”
“Go on.”
Connor took a gulp of beer, searching for words. Except for the endless questioning immediately following the explosion, he hadn't discussed what happened that day with anyone in nearly two years and he wasn't ready to now.
“Like everyone else, I bought the results of the official investigation into the explosion at the restaurant. I accepted the conclusion that the bomb wasâ”
“Was intended for you,” she broke in, an edge to her voice. “It was done in retaliation by some gang members you'd arrested, and Joel just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I read the report, too.”
“Yeah, that's right.” He kept his gaze on the table before him, where he was absently batting the metal tab from the beer can back and forth between his fingers. “You don't know how that made me feel.”
“I know how it should have made you feel,” she said in that same cool voice. “Responsible. Guilty. Reprehensible.”
His smile was reflexive and self-mocking. “I take it back. You do know.”
“You should have felt responsible,” she reiterated, visibly struggling for control. She wasn't the only one. Connor felt as if a balloon full of heat were filling up in his chest. “It wasn't as if you didn't have advance knowledge,” she continued. “They warned you... they sent threatening letters...hell, they'd even tried once already and screwed up....Damn it, Connor, you knew it was going to happen.”
“I didn't.” He made an impatient gesture. “Oh, sure, I knew about the threats and the stuff they found wired under my car the week before, but I didn't know what they might try next or where or when they might try it. I didn't even know if they were serious. Cops get threats all the time, Gaby. It's all part of the game. Did you expect me to lock myself in a cage and stop living?”
“I don't know. I only know I didn't expect you to put my husbandâyour best friendâin danger, too. I didn't expectâ”
Her voice broke off, the tears running down her face so profusely it was impossible for her to speak clearly. The urge to reach out and wipe them away rose up so strongly inside him that Connor shot to his feet to get away, knocking his chair over in the process. He left it where it fell, too agitated to sit.
“Maybe I didn't,” he said to her.
Gaby wiped her face with her hands. He tore some paper towels from the roll on the counter and thrust them at her.
She dried her eyes before shooting him a bewildered look. “What did you just say?” she asked.
“I said maybe I didn't put Joel in danger that day. Maybe it was the other way around.”
She frowned, her tone incredulous. “What are saying? That Joel caused that explosion? That he put you in danger?”
“Of course not,” he said, shaking his head. “Joel couldn't have known it was going to happen any more than I did. All I'm saying is that maybe the explosion wasn't aimed at me the way you and I and everyone else assumed. Maybe we were all intended to assume that to hide the fact that the real target was Joel.”
She smiled. Connor hadn't been sure exactly what her response would be when he finally told her his suspicion, but the last thing he expected was a smile.
“I see,” she said. “Let me see if I've got this straight. You're saying that the explosion that killed Joel, a happily married man, a father, an accountant, for God's sake, the same explosion which youâa cop with plenty of enemies and a history of troubleâmanaged to survive, was intended for my husband all along? Is that it?”
“I said he might have been the target.”
“That certainly would be nice for you, wouldn't it, Connor? It would get you right off the hook, ease your conscience, give you a chance to come back home from wherever it was you ran away to, an excuse to stop licking your wounds.”
“Mexico.”
“What?”
“Mexico. Just for the record that's where I ran away to lick my wounds.”
“I don't care, do you hear me?” she shouted, standing. “I don't care where you went. I don't care why you came back. And most of all I don't care what lies you want to tell yourself to try to soothe your conscience as long as you don't try telling them to me or go trying to drag me and my son into it, do you hear me?”
“It's not a lie,” he said flatly. “It may not prove to be true. That's what I came back here to find out. But it's not a lie.”
“So after nearly two years, out of the clear blue, you've come up with this notion that the bomb might have been meant to kill Joel rather than you, and based on that you come charging back to Providence, ruin my wedding and tell me I have to hide out from the man I'm going to marry. What precisely is poor Adam's role in all this supposed to be? Let me guess, he planted the bomb, right?” she asked, her tone blatantly mocking.
“Maybe,” he said, shocking her into silence. “That's what I intend to find out. And it's not just some idea I pulled out of thin air...I got a call a couple of weeks ago from a friend back here on the force. He told me they picked up a guy for a bombing that had a lot of the same markings as the one at the Black Wolf.”