The SUV peeled away, tires squealing. It tore out of the parking lot, ran a light at the corner, and was gone.
Liam slid off the case onto his ass, shaking. His face was wet. His nose streamed with blood. He turned the case gently right side up and unlatched it with trembling hands, his heart in his throat.
Nancy was curled inside the padded interior, hair over her face. He felt her throat, rejoicing at the pulse. Scooped her out into his arms and cradled her. He brushed the hair off her forehead, murmuring her name over and over. Alive. Not shot. Not broken. Not taken. Oh, God.
He was crying. He couldn’t stop. He just sat on the ground, while the commotion buzzed. Rocking her. Holding her.
Until they pried her out of his arms and took her away from him.
Chapter
12
Nancy stared out the window of her apartment from her seat on the couch. It was full dark, but she couldn’t be bothered to turn on the light. And she was too tired to wrestle the couch down into a bed.
She should be at the cathedral uptown, where Novum Canticum, her Gregorian chant choir, was having their big New York debut concert. It was an important gig for them, their first well-established classical concert series, and she should be there to support them.
But she couldn’t get off the couch. Her ass was weighted down.
They would understand, of course. Everybody was extremely understanding these days. They were treating her like blown glass.
She’d tried to stay too busy to be miserable. How could a woman wallow in self-pity when her cell phone never stopped ringing, and her e-mail in-box never had anything less than twenty new messages? She was surrounded by people who needed her. The hub of frantic activity.
The Jericho gig had been a smash. Peter and Enid were besieged with offers. Record companies that had previously disdained them were making unctuous overtures. Nancy boosted concert fees by a judicious 50 percent and passed out promo packets right and left, wondering why she wasn’t happier. It was finally coming together, and that was something, wasn’t it? All that heroic effort had paid off. Hadn’t it?
No. It hadn’t. The horrible events in Boston had laid her pathetic emotional stratagems bare. She’d been scrambling for love all these years. And she only knew that because she’d finally gotten some of it. Just enough to know what it felt like, anyway. And now it was gone.
She’d been better off before. Not knowing.
No, she hadn’t earned any love from all her heroic efforts. Love couldn’t be earned, or God knew she would have more of it. She finally understood Lucia’s impulse to matchmake. Her mother had wanted so badly to find Nancy someone solid. A man she could lean on. The joke was on them, though. Liam was so solid, he was like an outcropping of volcanic rock. Immovable. A cosmic joke, but she wasn’t laughing.
She flopped down onto her side, curling around the empty space inside her. Liam had saved her from the guy with the reptile eyes. He’d come to her rescue as heroically as ever, but after snatching her from the jaws of death, he’d decided that his duty as a righteous dude was fulfilled. He’d shaken the dust off his boots and walked into the sunset.
Not a word from the man. Not a call. Not a peep.
She was having nightmares, crying fits every night. She’d stayed with her sisters for the most part, but she’d slipped away from everyone tonight. She needed to be alone. Scary though that was.
The doctors said that it would take a while for the anxiety to ease. The pills they’d prescribed rattled in her purse. She hadn’t taken them. All she had were her feelings. She didn’t want to cut herself loose from those, too. And she wanted to be sharp, if Reptile Eyes came calling.
She thought constantly about calling Liam, but something always held her back. She’d told him that she loved him, so technically, the ball was in his court. But this was no game. She was too raw, too sad for games. She just wanted to go to him, hold out her heart and say, “Take this. It’s yours anyway, you great big idiot. So take it already.”
The intercom buzzed. She leaped up, her heart in her throat.
Her sisters both had keys. And Reptile Eyes would not buzz. He would transform into fetid slime, ooze under the crack in the door, and reconstitute himself on the other side like the über-evil Terminator III.
She didn’t want to talk to anyone. Just as well she’d left the light off. She curled into a tight ball, and gave the intercom the finger.
Buzzzzzz, it rang, loud and long and demanding. Persistent bastard. She waited. Two minutes. Three. Buzzzzzz, again. Curiosity laced with fear dragged her to the window. She leaned out to peek.
Liam stood on the top of her stoop. Her heart leaped, thudded heavily against her ribs. Her legs started to wobble. Buzzzzz, he hit the intercom again. He looked up into her eyes, and held out his hands, palm up, in silent entreaty. She shuffled to the intercom like a zombie and buzzed him in.
She unlocked all the locks, of which there were many. She’d added three more to her collection since the Reptile Eyes episode.
She opened the door. He was thinner. Pale, drawn, and deadly serious. In the flickering light from the stairwell, she saw the fading bruises beneath both eyes. A broken nose, Eoin had said, and cracked ribs. Hanging out with her was hard on a guy’s health.
She suppressed the concern, the guilt. The desire to fuss.
Her heart was careening at such a fast clip, she felt woozy and faint. She couldn’t speak, so she just stepped back and gestured him in.
He shoved the door shut after him, blocking out the light, and she was grateful she’d left it off—until she started remembering the last time they’d been alone, in this room, in the dark. Making love.
He cleared his throat, awkwardly. “Are you all right?” he asked.
She blocked all the automatic babble-mode replies at their source. The “Oh, I’m fine and how are you” bullshit. She had nothing to lose, no reason to lie. “No,” she said flatly. “I feel like shit.”
He took a step closer. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She choked on her laughter. “Oh, are you? I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t concentrate. I’m scared of my own shadow. I am wrecked, Liam. I am roadkill. So don’t ask stupid questions. And don’t tell me that you’re sorry. Because I don’t want to hear it.”
“You’re going to have to hear it. Because I’m not done saying it.”
“Oh, yeah?” She backed up, and her thighs bumped against the couch. She was so wobbly, she sat down with an undignified thump. “Don’t tell me what I have to do, because I am so very done with all your arrogant pronouncements and your bullshit ultimatums!”
“I love you,” he said.
That cut her tirade off and left her gasping for air. She just hung there, head dangling, hands clamped over her mouth.
Liam sank down onto his knees. He pried one of her hands off her mouth, pulled it to himself, and kissed it, with reverent slowness, like a sacred ceremony. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
She didn’t know where to start. This thing between them was a maze, a confusion of entrances and exits, full of dead ends, land mines. Her heart shook at the idea that there might be a way through it.
If she could find that narrow, winding way. If they could find it, together.
“Why didn’t you call?” she blurted. The question she’d sworn she would not ask had popped up and asked itself, without her permission.
He hesitated, his face turned away. “I couldn’t. First, I was numb. Then, I was scared. Then, I was embarrassed. I was just…stuck. In a big machine. I had to shake loose of it. It took some time. But I’ll regret how long it took for the rest of my life.”