the side door opened. “Sorry,” a deep voice said above her as the blanket was abruptly removed. “Why didn’t you say something?”
Strong yet gentle hands helped Cate rise and come out of the SUV to stand next to it, and for a moment the world swung dizzyingly around her as she regained her equilibrium. Then she steadied and was able to focus on the man in front of her.
He looked so much like Alec Jones that he could be his twin brother. But there were differences, and though Cate couldn’t have said exactly what those differences were, she knew in an instant this man wasn’t her cousin’s husband. He was tall and broad-shouldered, just as Alec was, with a muscular compactness that spoke of a man who kept himself in fighting trim. Close-cropped auburn hair, also just like Alec. And soft brown eyes. Is it his eyes that are different? she wondered distractedly. Not the color, no. But the expression in them. An expression that told her plain as words he found her attractive. Man-woman attractive. Alec had never looked at her that way. Alec had known she never wanted any man to look at her that way...ever again.
But there was something else in this man’s expression that bothered her even more. Gentleness notwithstanding, Cate knew he’d made a snap judgment about her...and found her wanting. It wasn’t obvious from his manner, but she had a sixth sense about these things.
“Who are you?” she asked abruptly. “You’re not Alec.”
“Liam. Liam Jones. Alec’s my brother.”
She glanced around now, taking in their surroundings. They were in a rest stop on the highway. Not deserted, but not overly crowded, either. There were no other cars in the parking area, but there were a couple of tractor-trailer trucks on the other side of the divider. “Why have we stopped here?”
He smiled ruefully, and Cate caught her breath. That smile changed his whole face from pleasantly masculine to something extraordinary. “You were so quiet I forgot you were under the blanket in the back,” he said in a deep voice that sounded like Alec’s in a way, but was also different somehow. “When I remembered, I was kicking myself for not letting you out sooner. I stopped the first chance I had.”
His hand went to brush back her tousled hair—a perfectly natural response under the circumstances—but Cate shied away. Then despised herself as a coward when the smile faded from Liam’s face.
“Sorry,” he said again, but there was a watchfulness in his eyes now. A guarded expression she couldn’t read. Not exactly. But she knew he hadn’t missed her reaction to his innocent gesture. His gaze dropped from her face to her dress and then to her arm, and when she looked down she realized the blood had already dried. Not her blood, of course. The blood of the men who’d risked their lives protecting her. Men like this man.
She didn’t know how she knew Liam was a bodyguard, too. There was just something about him. She had only vague, disjointed memories of their flight from the courthouse—she’d already entered that escapist fugue state almost the moment the first shots were fired, the moment the two US Marshals had thrown themselves on top of her to shield her with their bodies. But Liam had carried a gun, she remembered that now. And he would have used it, she remembered that, too. Had he already used it? Was that how the machine guns targeting her had been silenced?
“Did you kill them?” The question popped out before she could stop it.
He obviously knew to whom she was referring. “I killed one of them,” he said quietly. “Alec got the other one. But there could have been others around—backup killers—there was no way to know. So Alec told me to get you out of there.”
She culled her memory, trying to recall the frenzied voices around her during and after the attack. Then she said slowly, “‘She dies, this case dies, too.’ That was Alec, yes?”
“Yeah. I didn’t like leaving him in that situation, but he was right. I had to get you to safety. That was more important.”
“Who are you?” she asked in a voice barely above a whisper.
“I told you. I’m Alec’s brother Liam.”
She shook her head impatiently. “No, I mean, what are you? Are you a US marshal like the men who were guarding me?”
“Diplomatic Security Service. DSS. Like Alec. The DSS is responsible for a lot of things, including protecting foreign dignitaries when they visit the US, and I’ve done my share of that. In fact, I was on the detail guarding your Princess Mara when she first came to this country. Alec and I both were. So yeah, I knew what to do when bullets started flying. That’s my job.”
“So what is next? Where do I go?”
“We,” he told her. “Where do we go. I’m not sure. I’ve got to call a man.” He pointed to the dried blood on Cate’s arm, then indicated the restroom a short distance away. “You might want to wash up a little and use the facilities while I do that. My call will take a while.”
When Cate agreed, she was surprised he led the way to the ladies’ room but prevented her from entering until he’d checked it out. “It’s clear,” he told her when he returned. Then he moved away from the doorway a couple of paces, pulled out his cell phone and hit speed dial.
He was still on the phone when Cate came out of the ladies’ room. She’d washed the blood from her arm and done her best with the dress—which was still damp in places, although she’d blotted as much of the water from it as she could—but anyone who looked closely could still see the faint discolorations that would probably never go away completely. She didn’t care. This dress didn’t really belong to her, it was a dress designed to present a certain appearance for the jury. Well-to-do, but not too expensive. Not the Mayflower Madam, but not a street hooker, either. The dress had been picked out by the prosecutors, who wanted her to look young and wholesome. The girl next door.
Cate was young. In years, if nothing else. But she wasn’t wholesome—she was damaged goods. She would never be wholesome again. But the jury didn’t have to know that, and she had no intention of telling them how she felt about the two-year nightmare when she’d been Vishenko’s prisoner. Stick to the facts, the prosecutors had hammered home, don’t volunteer opinions.
Angelina had said the same thing. But she’d also advised Cate to let her emotions show just enough so the jury empathized with her, believed her implicitly. If she was too cold the jury wouldn’t like her. And the jury needed to like her, Angelina had said. Angelina, who had at one time been a prosecutor herself long ago, but who had also been a bodyguard for Zakhar’s Queen Juliana. Angelina, who now headed the queen’s security detail, but who had come over to the States to be there for Cate during the trial.
“Okay,” Liam was saying to the man on the other end of the phone. “Call me back as soon as you can. I’ll be waiting.” He listened for a minute, then laughed and said, “Yeah, you’re right. It’s a hell of a way to start a vacation.” Then he disconnected.
“Who were you talking to?” she asked.
“Let’s sit in the SUV,” he told her. “I don’t want you out in the open if I can help it.”
He held the passenger door for Cate but didn’t touch her at all, as if he knew she couldn’t bear to be touched in a personal way. Then he got into the driver’s seat, saying, “That was Cody Walker. My brother-in-law. At this point he’s about the only person who can help us that I know I can trust. He was already working on it—can you believe it?—he’ll call me back
