Jake sighed and switched off the stereo.
In the week that followed, Eve experienced what she was certain must be the emotional equivalent of being buried alive. She felt completely isolated, but at the same time as if every move she made, every breath she took, every beat of her heart were being monitored… measured… judged.
She lived every waking moment with a vague and unformed sense of menace, but it was at night that the fear came to settle over her like a shroud. She kept waking every few hours in a clammy, heart-pounding panic, only to lie awake in a twilight that seemed alive with watching eyes and listening ears, haunted by vague memories of dreams in which she was being slowly suffocated.
None of which made sense, considering she couldn’t have asked for more pleasant surroundings. The resort, which Sonny had told her would eventually include a five-star hotel, luxury condos, a golf course and tennis courts, bike paths, three swimming pools and miles of gently sloping white sand beaches, wasn’t scheduled to open until spring, but most of the external layout and landscaping had already been completed. Sonny’s private quarters, nestled in a remote corner of the hotel grounds, were like the keep within the castle, surrounded by walls of brick and wrought iron and lush tropical landscaping, so new they still smelled of fresh paint, with rooms that were airy and light and open to endless vistas of sea and sky.
Eve didn’t kid herself; she knew it was only an illusion of freedom. In a way it made her think of Alcatraz, which she’d had occasion to visit while filming a piece on the federal penitentiary for a cable channel a few years back. She’d found the island an eerie, unnerving place, and one of the things that had haunted her was the fact that inmates serving life sentences could look out through barred and slitted windows and watch sailboats skimming over white-capped waves, and in the distance, the shimmering towers of San Francisco-Baghdad by the Bay-taunting, beckoning, a constant and cruel reminder of everything they’d lost and would never have again.
Not that Eve couldn’t come and go as she pleased-oh, quite the contrary. She had the run of the island. She could and did go for walks, within the limitations of her supposed “injury,” along the beaches or down the few remaining unspoiled avenues shaded by canopies of moss-festooned live oaks and Palmettos and Southern coastal pines. If she wanted to go shopping, a car was instantly at her beck and call.
But she was never left alone. If she ventured beyond the walls of the house, someone was always with her-Sonny, if he was home, or if he was gone, which was most of the time, then either Ricky or Sergei, which was Infinitely worse. One of the two was always there, within arm’s reach, silent and watchful, like vaguely menacing shadows. She no longer dismissed them as witless thugs-Sonny’s “Two Stooges.” Now she realized that they were, in fact, extremely good at what they did, which was, like the highly trained attack dogs they were, to follow orders without question. And like attack dogs, if the order was to kill, she imagined that they would do so unhesitatingly and efficiently, without either enjoyment or regret.
Worse even than the constant company, though-which was at least a menace she could see-was the formless and skin-crawling sense she had that she was being watched.
Okay, maybe it was only a bad case of paranoia fostered by the weight of her guilty conscience, not to mention a collar full of listening devices. After all, she’d never actually seen the cameras. But she knew Sonny, and what a stickler he was for security, and she was taking no chances. Wherever she went, indoors or out, she acted on the assumption that unseen eyes followed her every move. Not even trusting the privacy of her own bathroom, she dressed, showered and used the toilet in the dark whenever possible, and only removed her collar in order to access the cache of bugs late at night, in bed, with the covers pulled over her head.
Needless to say, her suspicion that she was being watched made planting the bugs more complicated than she’d expected. In the rooms to which she had free access, it was mostly a matter of slipping them into place during the course of some seemingly innocent activity-selecting a magazine to read, for example, or admiring a potted plant, searching for a pencil with which to work a crossword puzzle, mixing a drink.
The first one she’d installed had been in her own room. That had been Jake’s request. At the time she’d found the suggestion unnerving, an unwelcome reminder of the danger she was about to plunge herself into. But during that first week in the suffocating isolation of the resort compound, that bug had come to seem almost like a friend, her one source of comfort, her only lifeline, a tiny and tenuous umbilical cord connecting her with Jake and her family. With safety. With a world that included work and laughter, children and family dinners and dogs and touch football on the lawn. Brothers arguing and newlyweds snuggling on the sofa, and mothers and daughters bickering, and the smells of dinner cooking in the kitchen. She thought of the bug almost as a living thing, and talked to it under the guise of reading aloud or talking to herself. She tried to imagine Jake’s face as he listened, out there beyond the compound walls.
Would he smile, she wondered, if he thought no one was watching? Someday, she thought, I’m going to make him smile, and I’m going to catch him at it, too.
The thought made the loneliness seem less oppressive.
The biggest problem with the bugs was that after a week she still hadn’t found an excuse to go into Sonny’s private office, not without raising suspicions. He’d been gone most of the week, during which time the office was locked up tight. And when he was home he treated Eve like a convalescent princess, smothering her with attention, gourmet dinners complete with wine and candlelight, breakfast in bed. Business, he said grandly, was off-limits-taboo. He was there to spend time with his Evie, and nothing was allowed to interfere with that.
How strange it was, Eve thought, to realize that the focused attention she’d once considered a major facet of Sonny’s charm she now considered the biggest pain in the neck.
Another problem was, as Jake had explained to her, that the bugs would periodically have to be replaced. They were voice activated to save battery power, but even so…
She was pondering those problems as she returned from her walk late Monday afternoon, one week to the day after she’d arrived at the Hilton Head resort, to find Sonny pacing the white marble entryway.
Her heart gave a little skip of fear. “Sonny…hi! When did you get back?” She went to him for a welcoming kiss, but drew back as he rounded on her with a scowl.
“Where the hell’ve you been? I’ve been waitin’ for hours.”
“I went for a walk on the beach. If I’d known-”
“Yeah? Hell, I was worried about you. You shouldn’t be out there so long. Who was with you? The guys go with you?”
“Ricky was with me.” Eve gestured toward the huge, bull-necked man who’d followed her like a bad smell into the house. “Sonny, what’s wrong? Did I do something-”
“Come ’ere.” Unsmiling, Sonny jerked his head for her to follow him.
Oh God, he knows. Eve’s heart dropped into her stomach and began to pump with a jackhammer rhythm. Her chest felt constricted; she couldn’t get a breath.
As she followed Sonny on wet-spaghetti legs up the long, curving staircase, her mind, paralyzed at first, came to life and began to hurl itself frantically in all directions.
He’s found the bugs! How many? One? All? Jake-are you listening? Help me!
Wait, dummy…if he’d found the bugs, how would Jake know what was happening? And even if he did, how far away was he? Could he possibly get here in time?
Wait a minute-time for what? Why would Sonny necessarily think she’d planted them? He had no reason to suspect her…unless he’d known all along! Unless he had seen her running away that day in the church garden, and knew from the beginning that the “mugging” was a charade. Jake…help me.