“Yeah.” He moved his fingers, and she took his hand, his skin moist and pale. His eyes fluttered open-they were bloodshot, glassy looking-but the effort was too much and he shut them again. “Sarah, listen to me…”
“Sure, Rob. What can I do for you?”
“You’re on vacation.” He coughed, and she noticed spots of some kind of brownish ointment on his gown, the fresh bandage on his abdomen. He was weak, heavily medicated, exhausted. His attempt to talk-to make sense-had to be a struggle. “I don’t want you here if I’ve got someone shooting at me.”
It wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. “Just relax, okay? It’ll be all right.”
“If this guy sees you…”
“Nobody’s going to see me.” She tried to sound cheerful, but his fear was palpable, unnerving. “Rob, please don’t worry-just concentrate on getting better.”
His eyes still closed, he mustered his energy and squeezed her hand. His hair was matted, dirty. “You’re too trusting.”
She wanted to reassure him, but she had no intention of going back to Tennessee, not until he was more himself. “I’ll go home. Of course I will. I can’t wait to go home. After I know you’re better.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s a little after nine in the morning. You were injured yesterday around lunchtime.”
“Tonight. You can catch a flight back to Nashville tonight. Promise me.”
She didn’t know if he was entirely lucid or if the trauma of his injury, the lifesaving surgery and the medications he was on were making him a little crazy. Paranoid. She had a friend whose father, suffering complications after heart surgery, kept insisting he saw waiters in tuxedos delivering him pheasant under glass in the I.C.U.
Or was her brother simply projecting his own fears onto her? If she were drinking tea on the front porch at home in Night’s Landing, he’d feel safer.
“I don’t…” His voice was barely a rasping whisper now. “I don’t remember anything.”
He looked so vulnerable, so out of his element. Sarah could picture him yesterday in Central Park-strong, vital, a professional but also a man with a sense of fun. Why would someone shoot him? Who would do something like that? She’d lain awake much of the night on the futon in Juliet Longstreet’s, surrounded by plants and fish tanks as the questions repeated themselves. And over and over, until she finally gave up on sleeping at all, she kept hearing Rob on the phone, telling her he’d been shot.
She found herself having to choke back tears. “I’ll let you sleep. I’ll see you soon.”
But her twin brother had already drifted off.
Brushing her tears off her cheeks with her fingertips, Sarah stepped backward toward the exit and stumbled on someone’s feet. Before she could fall flat on her face, a firm hand caught her by the elbow, steadying her.
“Whoa, there. Easy.”
She spun around, straight into Nate Winter, the deputy who’d been shot with her brother. She recognized him from the photo they’d shown on TV. He was tall, lean, his dark hair softened with just a hint of auburn, and he had, Sarah thought, the most incisive, the most no-nonsense blue eyes she’d ever seen. He wore black jeans, a black T-shirt under a dark plaid flannel shirt and scuffed running shoes.
The blue eyes settled on her. “Sarah Dunnemore, right?”
She nodded. “Deputy Winter-I hope I didn’t hurt your arm.”
She realized she was about to cry. She’d held her tears in check since the marshals had arrived in Night’s Landing yesterday, but now, with her brother lying a few feet away from her, hurting, begging her to go home, with the lingering sting of Juliet’s words, she couldn’t hold back. “I should go.”
Nate Winter didn’t say a word, didn’t try to stop her as she pushed past him and ran out of the I.C.U. into the hall, sobbing, tears streaming down her face. She couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t bring herself under control. She hated crying in front of anyone.
Juliet shot out of the waiting room. “Sarah-wait.”
Sarah broke into a run, charging past startled law enforcement officers. She squeezed by doctors and nurses getting off and onto an elevator and pushed her way to the back wall, sinking against it, bracing her knees as she focused on her breathing in an attempt to calm herself.
Nate Winter had been shot yesterday, and he was a rock. Steady, unemotional.
She had no business falling apart.
“You’re too trusting.”
Maybe. Maybe she shouldn’t have told the truth about who’d called last night. Maybe she shouldn’t have let Juliet Longstreet insist on moving her out of the hotel.
Maybe she shouldn’t trust her brother’s colleagues to have her best interests at heart.
They were all in shock themselves. They wanted to find a sniper, not be burdened with a wounded deputy’s archaeologist sister.
She had to get a grip.
Had Winter overheard her brother urging her to go home? Would he take it as his duty to put her on a plane back to Nashville?
She didn’t like the idea of being a nuisance, having these people think they were responsible for her. Before her flight to New York, her deputy escorts had offered to arrange for a counselor to be with her, but she’d turned them down. Maybe if her brother had been killed.
But he was alive. He’d be all right. She’d been so determined not to tempt fate by agreeing prematurely to counseling. She just had an ordeal to get through.
She hadn’t expected, though, that Rob wouldn’t want her in New York.
The elevator doors shut. An elderly doctor frowned at her in concern. “Are you all right?” he asked softly.
She nodded and brushed at her tears, relieved to be getting off Rob’s floor, away from the able-bodied deputies. She needed something to eat, a break. She didn’t want to feel sorry for herself. She wasn’t the one lying in the I.C.U. And what kind of compassion did she expect from a bunch of armed federal law enforcement officers? They were doing the best they could.
The elevator doors opened again, suddenly, and Juliet Longstreet stepped in. She put up a hand to Sarah, stopping her before she could get started. “I’m a jerk. I’m sorry. What I said in the waiting room-it was stupid.”
The older doctor moved to the front of the elevator car, letting Juliet take his spot. Sarah felt an immediate urge to ease some of Juliet’s obvious guilt. “It’s a difficult time for everyone.”
But Juliet refused to cut herself any slack. “For you. You’re Rob’s twin sister. I’m only a colleague.” She didn’t mention their past relationship. “I was just trying to look tough in front of Nate. I’m sorry I mouthed off at your expense.”
“No harm done.”
“Sure there was. You must have felt like the kid sister at the big kids’ party.” She smiled crookedly. “I’d say belt me one, but you’d probably have a half-dozen marshals jump on the elevator and pin you against the wall in two seconds flat. We’re all in rotten moods. But, hey, you see some of those guys? Very buff.”
Sarah fought a smile of her own, her first, she thought, in many hours. “Nate Winter-I just met him.”
“Yeah. I can tell. Most people run when they meet him. You’re not the first. He’s a total hard-ass.”
“You’re very irreverent, aren’t you?”
Juliet smiled, relaxing some. “Helps in dealing with things like two marshals getting shot in Central Park. At least the news on Rob is positive. Barring complications, he should be back on the streets before too long.”
Sarah tried to let Juliet’s optimism sink into her psyche, tried to visualize Rob back on his feet, with that lazy grin of his, that way he had of making people think he was a hundred percent on their side. “What about Deputy Winter?” she asked. “How’s he doing?”
“He’d like to get his hands around the neck of whoever shot him.”
“But physically?”