“Well, thank you.” She stepped aside in clear indication that he was now free to leave the room.
He didn’t move. “I actually had a reason for coming in here other than pj’s and water.”
“What?” If her tone was a little abrupt, it was because she was feeling distinctly uncomfortable. Just as she had finished taking in the full glory of the pink pajamas, it had hit her with all the force of a two-by-four between the eyes that she was wearing an orange towel. Period. A skimpy orange towel that covered all the pertinent parts but left her shoulders and most of her legs bare.
The thing was, he ’d noticed. That ’s what had alerted her, the way his expression had changed. He had blatantly checked her out, his eyes sliding over her, while he had thought she was busy examining the pajamas. She’d caught the whole long look out of the corner of her eye. It was an entirely masculine look, an unmistakably sexy look, and her heart was beating faster as a result. Now, as their gazes met, she curled a hand around the top of the towel right where it overlapped between her breasts, just to make sure that the flimsy thing stayed where it was supposed to.
Jeez, am I blushing?
It was then, as she frowned in pure flustered self-defense at the hard, handsome face that was in such perfect focus that she could see every tiny line around his eyes and bristle in the stubble darkening his cheeks and chin, that she remembered she was wearing her glasses. That was worse by far than being caught in a towel. It was all she could do not to whip them off.
Don’t be a complete idiot. This is not about you and him. It’s about . . .
“Close the door,” he directed in a low voice.
She couldn’t help it. Her eyes widened a little on his face. Her mouth went dry, and her pulse picked up the pace. If naughty thoughts sprang instantly into her mind, it wasn’t because she thought they were going to leap into bed the moment she complied. It was, rather, because the room was small and he was close and she was next to naked.
And she’d had dreams like this. Actually, too many to count.
How embarrassing is that?
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want anyone else overhearing this conversation.”
Okay, then.
She was so near to the door that all she had to do was reach out and close it, which she did.
Suddenly, the room seemed even smaller.
“So, what?” she asked defensively, pressing the top of the towel more firmly against her chest.
“First off, Marian Young’s dead. I’m sorry.”
Her heart gave a sad little thump, even though the news wasn’t a surprise. Jess realized she ’d known it all along.
“Poor Marian. She didn’t deserve that.”
“Nobody deserves that.” His expression changed subtly, his eyes narrowing, his mouth tightening, and Jess realized that the face she was now looking at belonged to the Fed. “I’ve got a question for you: Where were you going? In the car that night, you and the First Lady and the others?”
“What?” Given the change of subject, the question took her a moment to process.
“You told me that Davenport was going to call and tell you where the First Lady was going once you got in the car. Did he call? Where were you going?”
It took her a moment to remember.
“Mr. Davenport didn’t call. He was drinking that night, just like he was drinking earlier, and he didn’t want to deal with Mrs. Cooper. It was Marian who called. She called the driver directly, and then she called Mrs. Cooper, which made Mrs. Cooper furious, because she didn’t like dealing with a secretary. She wanted to talk to Mr. Davenport. Presumably, Marian told the driver where we were going. I’m pretty sure she told Mrs. Cooper, too, because Mrs. Cooper was trying to call somebody to make sure all the arrangements had been made when she couldn’t get a signal and got mad and threw her phone. But I don’t know who that somebody was, and I don’t know where we were going.”
Ryan frowned at her for a moment, his expression thoughtful. He was so near she could have closed the distance between them in a single step.
Not that she wanted to, of course, or was even thinking about doing anything like that.
Anyway, he now appeared about as aware that she was nearly naked as he did that she was wearing glasses. Which was to say not at all.
Wallpaper, that ’s what she was once again.
Which was probably a good thing, even though it might not feel like it at the moment.
“The First Lady never said a name?”
“Nope.”
“Didn’t say anything about what she planned to do when she got there?”
“Nope.”
“You sure? She must have said something that would provide some kind of clue.”
“Not that I can remember.”
“You’re not being much help here.”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
“You know, to end this thing and get you back to your normal life, we ’ve first got to figure out what exactly is happening.”
“Actually,” Jess said, “I may have thought of another way to get myself out of this.”
“Such as?”
“What if I went to the media? I know a reporter who works at the
Post
. What if I contacted him and told him everything I know and he published it? Or what if I went on TV and told the whole thing to the entire country? There wouldn’t be any point in anyone killing me after that. Everything I know or suspect would be out in full public view.”
Ryan shook his head. “Go to the press? Without any kind of proof? That would be the worst thing you could do.”
“I don’t see why.” She put up her chin. “In fact, the more I think about it, that ’s just what I may do. I’m ready to end this.”
He took the step needed to close the distance between them and caught her by the arm. Just like the rest of him, his hand was big. His fingers felt warm and strong curling into the soft skin just above her elbow. His grip was firm, almost hard.
She was very aware of it—and him. Whether she wanted to be or not.
“Don’t even think about doing that.” There was an intensity to his gaze that told her he meant every word. “If you go public with the stuff you told me, without any kind of proof to back you up, then it will be just you accusing some very dangerous people of murdering the First Lady of the United States and a bunch of other people, too. That would cause them a problem. What’s the best way to take care of that problem? Take care of you. No more witness? No more problem. Poof! The whole thing just goes away when you do.”
“People would still investigate. . . .”
“They might, but you wouldn’t know anything about it because you’d be dead.” He must have realized that his grip on her was getting too hard, because he let go. “You do want to get out of this alive, don’t you?”
The look she gave him was answer enough.
“Then just hang tight. I’ve got people looking into it. If we get some proof, then you can think about going public. But not until then.”
“Fine.”
He studied her. His expression softened fractionally. “Look, I’m handling this, okay? Everything’s going to be all right.”
“Are you going to pat me on the top of my head now?”
For a moment he looked surprised. Then he grinned. “I would, but you look like you might break my arm if I tried.”
“Just so we ’re clear.”
“Clear as glass. Go to bed, Jess.” He walked past her, opened the door, and paused, looking back at her. “By the way, you look damned good in a towel.”
Before she could react, he closed the door and was gone, leaving her heart to flutter like the poor foolish thing it was.
By the time she put on the fuzzy pink pajamas and crawled into bed, she was so tired her head was spinning, so tired she couldn’t think straight.
Which was good. Because she didn’t want to think at all.
Because if Ryan wasn’t filling her head, worse things were: images of Davenport pointing the gun at her and firing, of the big window wall suddenly shattering so that the office was open to the night, of Davenport lying lifeless in the street below, of Marian flying up into the air.
Followed by memories of the crash itself.
Ryan wouldn’t tell anyone that she had remembered. He ’d promised, and anyway, he was on her side, and . . .
Annette Cooper was buried today.
Okay, enough
. Jess started counting sheep, picturing the woolly little things leaping a fence in a spring-green meadow.
One little sheepie, two little sheepies . . .
The next thing she knew, she was waking up. Which meant, of course, that she had been asleep. So deeply asleep that it took her a minute to get reoriented, to recall whose bed she was sleeping in and where she was.
The room was so dark that she knew where the door was only because of the thin line of light seeping beneath it. There was a clock beside the bed, the kind that glowed if you touched it, so she did. The glow happened, but the numbers were blurry. Putting on her glasses, she saw that it was four-forty-nine a.m. She’d been asleep for about five and a half hours.
She had to go to the bathroom.
Jess remembered the bottle of water she ’d chugged before going to sleep and grimaced. She should have known better.
Getting up reluctantly, she headed for the bathroom without bothering to turn on the light.
The house was quiet. The upstairs was dark, while a glance down the stairs told her that below some lights were still on. The good Secret Service agents below were acting as her bodyguards, and thus had stayed awake all night to protect her. Or maybe they were sleeping in shifts.
Coming back out of the bathroom, she found herself looking toward the master bedroom at the far, dark end of the hall and wondering if Ryan was in there, asleep.
The picture that conjured up awoke a little pulse of heat deep inside her body.
You look damned good in a towel.
Just remembering him saying that made the flicker of heat get a whole lot hotter.
He . . .
Voices from below distracted her.
“. . . feel like breakfast?” The voice was muffled so that she couldn’t really identify the speaker, except that it wasn’t Ryan. It was obvious that whoever it was had just walked into the living room, which was why she had heard only the last part of what was said.
“Kind of early for that, isn’t it?” Jess thought that might be Wendell talking. It kind of sounded like a woman, but without seeing the speaker it was hard to be sure.
“It ’s never too early for breakfast, sugar.”
Jess stopped walking, like she’d been poleaxed. She stood in the middle of the hall, with the pool of light from below ending just in front of her bare feet. Unable to help herself, she looked down the stairway toward the living room. She could see nothing but the newel post and a rectangle of wood floor at the bottom. The sudden tightness in her chest was accompanied by an awful sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.
The roaring in her ears was so loud that if they were still talking, she couldn’t hear it.
But she’d heard enough: that one word,
sugar.
With a certainty so intense it was sickening, she knew where she had heard it before.
19
T
his will help you go back to sleep, sugar.
That’s what the person in the too-small scrubs with the suit pants and shiny black shoes showing below them had said just moments before he tried to kill her.
She’d just heard the same endearment again, in the same voice with the same intonation.
As Jess faced the truth of that, her heart pounded so hard it felt like it was trying to beat its way out of her chest.
The person who wanted to kill her was here. He was, as she had suspected from the beginning, a Secret Service agent, one of Ryan’s supposedly “good” Secret Service agents who were downstairs right now with a mandate to protect her.
The ringing in her ears subsided enough so that her hearing came back.
“. . . two scrambled eggs, then. With sausage.”
“If you’re cooking, I’m eating. I’ll have the same thing.”
“ ’ Fraid I’m all out of sausage.” That voice was Ryan’s. She would recognize it anywhere. He was down there, too. With them.
One of them. He ’d lied about the results of the testing on her IV bag. At least, until she had called him on it.
“You got bacon, then?”
“Should have.” Ryan again. “Check the fridge and see.”
There was a reply, but it was muffled so that she couldn’t quite make out the words. Probably the speaker was heading for the kitchen.
Jess didn’t wait to hear anything more. Moving very, very quietly, she headed back to the bedroom and shut the door. Curse the luck, it didn’t have a lock.
For a long moment, she simply stood in the pitch dark with her back pressed to the door, trying to slow her breathing, trying to calm her pounding heart, processing what she’d heard while panic surged icy cold through her veins.
What do I do?
Going running to Ryan was obviously out. First, the scale had again dipped drastically in favor of not trusting him. And second, he was down there with the others.
Every instinct she possessed shrieked that she needed to get out of that house as soon as possible. Before Shiny Shoes, as she was going to call him, got a chance to try to kill her again.
Maybe they were all in on it. Even Ryan.
At the thought, she broke out in a cold sweat and her breathing grew ragged.
She didn’t know. She had no way of knowing. All she knew was that she recognized that “sugar”—and that was enough.
I have to get out of here.
The thought brought another surge of panic with it.
The good news was, they all thought she was asleep. It would be an hour, maybe an hour and a half, until dawn, so she’d have darkness to cover her escape. Probably no one would even consider checking in on her before eight at the earliest. At the minimum, she had about three hours to put as much distance between herself and them as possible.