following had come to an abrupt dead end. What she had just said didn’t register for a moment.
“I told you. I knew Jorgensen was dead.”
Actually, it hadn’t taken him an entire week to finish the dueling pistol. The whole time he’d worked, the chilling words of that security alert haunted him, warring with his certainty that whoever had blown up the barracks in Greenland and the ambassador’s residence in Madrid, it hadn’t been Jorgensen. In the end, despite his surety, he had come to deliver the warning. He had known he’d never be able to forgive himself if there was anything to Griff’s concern. Apparently there had been.
“So you hung around here just watching me?”
“I didn’t get into town until yesterday,” he said, confused by her questions.
He’d driven all night and most of the day yesterday, but he liked to drive. He especially liked it at night, when there was little traffic and long stretches of darkness and silence.
She stopped, pulling against his hold. He turned his head and found that although her gaze was on his face, it seemed unfocused. She was obviously thinking about something other than his features.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Someone’s been following me. I could feel them. All week. When you showed up last night, I naturally assumed it had been you.”
“You saw somebody?”
She shook her head, her gaze still contemplative.
“Nothing. Not a sign of anyone. I put it down to paranoia because I never saw them. When you came to the house—” She broke off the explanation, her eyes lifting to his, seeing him this time. “I thought I hadn’t seen anyone because it was you.”
If someone had been following her all week, then he hadn’t led them to her, which was a consolation. He had taken every precaution he could think of, and as she had intimated, he was very good at what he did. Still, there had been a niggling guilt in the back of his mind that he might have been responsible for giving away her location.
“Is it possible this is Jorgensen?” she asked.
“No,” he said, urging her forward again.
He had told Griff the truth. He had watched the bastard die. He was willing to concede this might be a protégé or a colleague, someone Jorgensen had trained, but it couldn’t be the man himself. He was sure of that.
The fact that whoever it was had been watching Elizabeth all week was significant, however, because nothing had happened until he’d shown up. Whoever this was had been waiting for him to arrive.
The explosion had been for his benefit. Arranged so that when Rafe heard the noise and smelled the smoke, he would believe exactly what he had believed—that this time Elizabeth had been the victim.
“Then who set off that explosion?” she asked.
“Someone who wanted me to think you were inside that building. If this had been Jorgensen, believe me, he would have made sure.”
There was a small hesitation, and then she said, “I should have been.”
“What?” He had been only half listening, wondering if the bomber could possibly know why his ruse had been so successful.
“I should have been in the office this morning. He knew that because he’d been watching me all week. He knew what time I get there every day. And then…this morning I was late.”
A coldness settled in Rafe’s stomach as he began to understand the implications of what she was saying.
“It should have been deliberate,” she went on. “Being late, I mean. I thought yesterday that I’d fallen into a routine. They always told us that was dangerous.”
It was. If you had any reason to believe you might be a target for someone. After all these years Elizabeth shouldn’t have had reason to believe that. He hadn’t.
“He could have set his damn watch by me,” she said bitterly. “I turn the key in that lock every morning at precisely nine o’clock. Except this morning—”
“You were late,” he finished for her, beginning to accept the idea that the explosion might not have been for show. Perhaps the bomber had been waiting for him to arrive, but maybe what he had prepared for Rafe to see wasn’t what had occurred.
Elizabeth’s mouth tightened. “I couldn’t sleep. I forgot to set the alarm. And then a logging truck pulled out onto the highway ahead of me. Normally there would have been plenty of time despite that, but this morning…” Again her voice faded. “I should have been there,” she said softly. “In the office. I would have been if it hadn’t been for that truck.”
And if it hadn’t been for him showing up at her house yesterday. She wouldn’t admit that, but the truth of it had been revealed by her admission that she hadn’t slept and by her failure to set the alarm. He didn’t really need to hear her confess the reason those two things had happened.
It would be a step back to the personal. Back to things he didn’t want to talk about any more than she did. Back to the need for some explanation of why he’d left.
He could make one. He could tell her all the things that he’d never been willing to share before. He had thought about doing that a thousand times.
Even if she knew, even if she understood, it wouldn’t change a thing. Nothing could.
He had always known that one night, as he took her into his arms, feeling the sensual slide of sweat-moistened skin against his, she would suddenly become the woman from the embassy. The woman with the silent scream. The woman who had died in his arms.
And when that happened, she would know everything he had come to know about himself. That was the one thing he had known he couldn’t live with—what would be in her eyes when she looked at him then.
THE CAB he’d called before they left the emergency room had been waiting at the back entrance when they finally made their way through the maze of hospital corridors. The driver, an elderly black man, had been eager to talk about the explosion in Magnolia Grove.
According to him, everyone was buying into the fire chief’s explanation that it had been caused by a gas leak. From their perspective, that was probably a good thing, Rafe decided.
It wouldn’t stand up to an arson investigation, of course. And he’d be willing to bet that the methodology used in this bombing, the so-called signature of the bomber, would be identical to that used in those that had precipitated the CIA security alert Griff had shown him.
By the time that had all been determined, he’d have Elizabeth away. With the care the CIA had taken in destroying any link between the people on Griff’s team and the agency itself, no one would ever connect Magnolia Grove, Mississippi, or Beth Anderson to those acts of terrorism.
Rafe had every confidence that he could keep her safe. The most dangerous aspect would be getting her out of town, simply because that’s where the terrorist was. Or maybe he was wrong about that. Maybe this guy wasn’t one of those who waited around to glory in the results. And maybe pigs can fly.
“Drive
