"Yeah, sure. If you start pitching your cookies, I can run an IV."
"Is that a medical term? 'Pitching your cookies'?"
"Universally understood."
"I'm fine."
But she sank onto a chair and started shivering, and he tossed her a wool blanket, then threw another one over the bed. He added a down comforter, thinking, for no reason he could fathom, of her and her ab muscles. Flutter kicks. Hell.
"Tomorrow will be better," he told her.
She gazed out the window at the moonlit sky. "I didn't win any battles today."
"No one was fighting with you, Carine."
"It felt that way. Or maybe I'm just fighting myself-or I just wish I had someone to fight with, as a distraction. I don't know. It's weird to be this unfocused. Last fall, at least we had the police out combing the woods for clues. I heard the bullets. Manny saw the guys, even if he couldn't get a description. This thing- it's like chasing a ghost." She paused, tightening the blanket around her. "What about you? Are you okay? Manny's your friend."
"Manny can take care of himself."
"You PJs. Hard-asses. Trained to handle yourselves in any situation, any environment."
"Carine-"
She didn't let him argue with her. "I know, just average guys doing their job. Thanks for coming after me." She got to her feet and looked for a moment as if she might keel over, but she steadied herself, grabbing the bedpost. "I think I'll just brush my teeth and fall into bed."
He wanted to stay with her, but he'd done enough damage for one day. "You know where to find me if you need anything."
He went back downstairs, hearing her shut the door softly behind her. They'd planned to fix up the place after they were married, turn her cabin into a studio. She was so excited about the possibilities of the house, he'd teased her about falling for him because of it.
Never. It could burn down tonight and I'd still love you.
Ty poured himself a glass of Scotch and sat in front of the fireplace, the wind stirring up the acidic smell of the cold ashes. He felt the isolation of the place. Three hours to the south, a man was dead. Murdered. Shot. The police thought Manny had pulled the trigger.
And he was on Carine duty. Manny was the one in Boston under police surveillance. Whatever he was dealing with, he was doing it on his own. His choice.
When he finally headed upstairs, Ty walked down the hall and stood in front of Carine's door, listening in case she was throwing up or crying or cursing him to the rafters, although he didn't know what he'd do if it was crying. The other two he could handle. He'd never been able to take her tears, as rare as they were, as much as he told himself she was stronger because she could cry. He remembered coming upon her in the meadow, sobbing for his mother soon after her death, and even then, when he never thought he'd let himself really fall in love with auburn-haired, sweet-souled Carine Winter, it had undone him.
But he didn't hear anything coming from her room, not even the wind, and he went back down the hall to his own bed.
Eleven
Val collapsed into bed early, but she didn't sleep for more than an hour at a time. She finally got so frustrated at her racing thoughts, she threw off her blankets and turned on a light, her gaze landing on her wedding picture. Manny was in uniform, so handsome and full of himself. Clean-cut in his maroon beret. Lately, he didn't even shave every day.
She grabbed the picture and hurled it across the room.
He hadn't called. Bastard, bastard, bastard.
But she was so worried about him, it was making her sick. At least Eric was okay. She'd talked to him, and he sounded saner than she did. And her breakfast with Hank and Antonia had gone well-they'd formally offered her the job. An assistant in the Washington, D.C., offices of a United States senator. It sounded exciting.
"Okay, so you won't stick your head in the oven tonight," she said. "You'll get through this."
Manny. Damn him. Why wouldn't he talk to her?
Because he wanted to protect her. Because she couldn't be trusted not to go off the deep end when faced with the truth, even an artful lie.
Except neither was true. He hadn't called her because he was in trouble, and he was a proud man, independent to a fault. Even if she hadn't turned into a nutcase, he wouldn't have called. He was Manny Carrera being Manny Carrera.
Her shrink had suggested she stop referring to herself as a nutcase and playing fast and loose with phrases like "sticking her head in the oven."
She'd promised she would.
She stepped on a book she'd tossed on the floor after three pages. Tolkien. Bookworm that she was, she'd never gotten hobbits. But Eric had read the Lord of the Rings trilogy twice, and she'd promised she'd try again.
So many promises.
Her laundry was still stacked on the bureau. She'd meant to put it away after she got back from her meeting with the Callahans, but she hadn't gotten around to it. No energy. No focus. She'd heated up leftover Thai food and checked the Internet for Boston newspapers and television stations, trying to get an update on Manny's situation. Not much new. No arrests yet-that was something. At least it meant he wasn't in jail.
She wandered into the living room and opened the blinds. Damn. Still. Dark. She glanced at the clock-
4:18. Too early to make coffee.
With a husband in the military, she was accustomed to being on her own-she didn't get spooked. She lay down on the couch and pulled a throw over her, but knew she was too fidgety to sleep. She turned on the television and watched CNN. Nothing much going on in the world. That was probably good. She flipped over to the Weather Channel and got the weather for Europe. She wanted to go to Spain one day. Paris and London didn't interest her as much. Rome might be fun.
At six o'clock, with a mug of hot coffee in her and a sketchy plan of action in mind, she flipped through Manny's address book on the computer and found Nate Winter's number in New York.
He answered on the first ring. She almost hung up, but he was a U.S. marshal and probably the naturally suspicious type. "Nate? It's Valerie Carrera, Manny Carrera's wife. We met at your sister's wedding. Actually, we've met a couple of times-"
"Of course, Val, I remember you." He was polite, almost formal, no doubt because he knew he was talking to the wife of a possible murder suspect. Or maybe because she'd never called him before. "What can I do for you?"
God, she was an idiot. A card-carrying idiot. "Nothing," she whispered. "Nothing. I'm sorry to bother you."
She hung up.
She couldn't ask a U.S. marshal to do a background check on Louis Sanborn on the sly. That just wasn't the way to go. Manny would have her head. Her ass'd be out the door for sure.
She'd have to do it herself.
Twelve
Carine woke up in the wrong bed. Wrong bed, wrong house.
But she knew where she was. She wasn't disoriented for even half a second as she sat up in the snug, four-poster bed and tried to guess what time it was. Seven? Sunlight angled in through the windowpanes. At least seven.
She imagined her life pre-Tyler North, pre-Boston, pre-Louis Sanborn's murder, when she'd get up in her cabin across the meadow on just such a sun-filled, pleasant morning and make herself a pot of tea and build a fire in her woodstove to take any lingering chill out of the air before she got to work. She loved every aspect of what she did. Assignments from various magazines and journals were her mainstay, but she was selling more and more prints, earning a name for herself at shows, and she had her own Web site and taught nature photography workshops. Before moving to Boston, she'd been putting together plans for a set of New England guidebooks, new specialty cards and her annual nature calendar for a local mountain club.
She viewed her life in the city as a kind of sabbatical, not a permanent move. But she'd felt that way about her log cabin, too, when she moved in five years ago. She hadn't meant to spend the rest of her life there.