Part 34 (1/2)
”An F. Koury.”
”Ah.” He nodded, concealing a sense of relief. ”My secretary.” Probably it had nothing to do with Mercer, then, but why was Evie looking so frozen?
”It's there in the trash, if you want to read it, but I can tell you what it said.”
He leaned against the cabinet and crossed his arms, eyeing her carefully. ”All right. Tell me.”
”Mr. Borowitz notified your secretary that he'd received a cas.h.i.+er's check from E. Shaw for payment in full of the loan, and that his hands were tied. She asked for further instructions.”
Robert's expression didn't change, but inwardly he was swearing viciously. Of all the things for Evie to stumble onto! It was less damaging, from a security standpoint, than anything connected with Mercer would have been, but a h.e.l.l of a thing to try to explain to a lover. He'd never intended her to know about it. The pressure had been real, but he would never have let it go to foreclosure. He didn't rush into explanations but waited for her reaction so he could better gauge what to say to her. And how in h.e.l.l had she managed to get the money to pay the loan?
”You're the reason I couldn't get a mortgage on my house,” she said, her voice so strained it was almost soundless.
She'd put it together quickly, he thought. But then, from the beginning, she'd proven herself to be uncomfortably astute. ”Yes,” he said, disdaining to lie.
”You're behind the loan being sold to another bank in the first place.”
He inclined his head and waited.
She was gripping the keys so tightly that her fingers were white. He noted that small giveaway of emotion held in check. She took several shallow breaths, then managed to speak again. ”I want your boat gone from my marina by the end of the day. I'll refund the balance of the rent.”
”No,” he said gently, implacably. ”I'm holding you to the agreement.”
She didn't waste her breath on an argument she couldn't win. She had hoped he would have the decency to do as she asked, but given his ruthless streak, she hadn't really expected it.
”Then leave it there,” she said, her voice as empty as her eyes. ”But don't call me again, because I don't want to talk to you. Don't come by, because I don't want to see you.”
Sharply he searched her expression, looking for a way to penetrate the wall she had thrown up between them. ”You won't get rid of me that easily. I know you're angry, but-”
She laughed, but it was raw and hollow, not a sound of amus.e.m.e.nt. Robert winced. ”Is that how you've decided to 'handle' me? I can see you watching me, trying to decide which angle to take to calm me down,” she said. ”You never just react, do you? You watch and weigh other people's reactions so you can manipulate them.” She heard the strain in her voice and paused to regain control of it. ”No, I'm not angry. Maybe in fifty years or so, it'll just be anger.” She turned on her heel and started for the door.
”Evie!” His voice cracked like a whiplash, and despite herself, she stopped, s.h.i.+vering at the force of will he commanded. This wasn't the cool strategist speaking but the ruthless conqueror.
”How did you pay off the loan?” The words were still sharp.
Slowly she looked at him over her shoulder, her eyes dark and unguarded for a moment, stark with pain. ”I sold my house,” she said, and walked out.
Chapter Seventeen.
ROBERT STARTED TO go after her, then stopped. Instead he swore and hit the countertop with his fist. He couldn't explain anything to her, not yet. Every instinct in his body screamed for him to stop her, but he forced himself to let her go. He stood rigidly, listening as the truck door slammed and the motor started. She didn't spin the wheels or anything like that; she simply backed out of the driveway and drove away without histrionics.
G.o.d! She had sold her house. The desperation of the action staggered him, and with sudden, blinding clarity he knew, beyond the faintest doubt, that she wasn't involved with Mercer in any way. A woman who could make money by espionage would never have sold her home to pay a debt. She had appeared to be leaving the marina and meeting with Mercer on the lake, but it must have been nothing more than d.a.m.nable coincidence. Evie was totally innocent, and his machinations had cost her her home.
She wouldn't listen to anything he said right now, but after he had the espionage ring broken up and Mercer safely behind bars, he would force her to understand why he had threatened foreclosure on her loan. That he had suspected her of espionage was another rocky shoal he would have to navigate with care. He didn't imagine it would be easy to get back into her good graces, but in the end he would have her, because he didn't take no for an answer when he really wanted something. And he wanted Evie as he had never wanted anything or anyone else in his life.
He would have to make amends, of course, far beyond apologies and explanations. Evie was the least mercenary person he'd ever met, but she had a strong sense of justice, and an offer of reparation would strike a chord with her. He could buy her house from the new owners-they probably wouldn't be willing to sell at first, but he cynically suspected that doubling the price would change their minds-and present her with the deed, but he far preferred that she have a newer, bigger house. The simplest thing would be to deed over his own house to her. It meant nothing to him, he could buy a house anywhere he wanted, but Evie needed a base that was hers and hers alone. It would be a vacation home, a getaway when they needed a break from the hubbub of New York, a place for her to stay when she wanted to visit Becky.
He fished the d.a.m.ning fax out of the trash and read it. Three concise sentences, Felice at her most efficient. There was nothing more he could do about the loan; realizing that, she had de-prioritized it and sent the information by fax so he could have it immediately but respond at his leisure, rather than calling and wasting both his time and hers. Felice was a genius at whittling precious seconds here and there so she would have more time to devote to the truly important matters. In this instance, however, her knack for superefficiency had worked against him and perhaps cost him Evie.
No. No matter what, he wouldn't let Evie go.
EVIE DROVE AUTOMATICALLY, holding herself together with desperate control. She tried to empty her mind, but it wasn't possible. How could she be so numb but hurt so much at the same time? She literally ached, as if she had been beaten, yet felt somehow divorced from her body. She had never felt as remote as she did now, or as cold and hollow. The heat of the sun washed over her, but it didn't touch her. Even her bones felt cold and empty.
Why? She hadn't asked him that and couldn't think of a reason that would matter. The why of it wasn't important. The hard fact was that he had sought her out for a reason that had nothing to do with love or even attraction, used the intimacy he had deliberately sought as a means to gather information that he wanted, and then turned that knowledge against her. How had he known about the loan in the first place? She supposed it was possible a credit report would have given him the information, but a far more likely explanation was that he had simply taken a look through the papers in her desk at home. There had been ample opportunity for him to do so; the very first time he had been in her house, she remembered, was when he had brought her home to change clothes after Jason had fallen in the water, and she had left him alone while she showered and changed.
She didn't know why he had targeted her marina, and she didn't care. She marked it down to simple avarice, the greedy impulse to take what belonged to others.
She hadn't known him at all.
She was still calm and dry-eyed when she reached her house. No-not her house any longer, but the Campbells'. Dazed, she unlocked the door and walked inside, looked at the familiar form and content of her home, and bolted for the bathroom. She hung over the toilet and vomited up the little coffee she had swallowed, but the dry, painful heaves continued long after her stomach was emptied.
When the spasms finally stopped, she slumped breathless to the floor. She had no idea how long she lay there, in a stupor of exhaustion and pain, but after a while she began to cry. She curled into a ball, tucking her legs up in an effort to make herself as small as possible, and shuddered with the violent, rasping sobs that tore through her. She cried until she made herself sick and vomited again.
It was a long time before she climbed shakily to her feet. Her eyelids were swollen and sore, but she was calm, so calm and remote that she wondered if she would ever be able to feel anything again. G.o.d, she hoped not!
She stripped, dropping her clothes to the floor. She would throw them out later; she never wanted to see that skirt again, or any other garment she had worn that night. She was s.h.i.+vering as she climbed into the shower, where she stood for a long time, letting the hot water beat down on her, but the heat sluiced off her skin just like the water, none of it soaking in to thaw the bone-deep cold that shook her.
She would have stood there all day, paralyzed by the mind-numbing pain, but at last the hot water began to go and the chill forced her out. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed, close her eyes and forget, but that wasn't an option. She wouldn't forget. She would never forget. She could stay in the shower forever, but it wouldn't wash his touch off her flesh or his image out of her mind.
He had never wanted her at all. He had wanted the marina.
The marina. Her mind fastened on it with desperate grat.i.tude. She still had the marina, had salvaged something from the ruin Robert Cannon had made of her life. No matter how much damage he had done, he hadn't won.
The habits of years took over as she moved slowly about, getting ready to go to work. After towel-drying her hair, she stood in front of the bathroom mirror to brush out the tangles and braid it. Her own face looked back at her, white and blank, her eyes dark, empty pools. Losing Matt had been devastating, but she had carried the knowledge of his love deep inside. This time she had nothing. The care Robert had shown her had been an illusion, carefully fostered to deceive her. The pa.s.sion between them, at least on his part, had been nothing more than a combination of mere s.e.x and his own labyrinthine plotting. The man could give lessons to Machiavelli.
He had destroyed the protective s.h.i.+eld that had encased her for so many years. She had thought she couldn't bear any more pain, but now she was learning that her capacity for pain went far beyond imagination. She wouldn't die from it, after all; she would simply rebuild the s.h.i.+eld, stronger than before, so that it could never be penetrated again. It would take time, but she had time; she had the rest of her life to remember Robert Cannon and how he had used her.
She hid her sore, swollen eyes behind a pair of sungla.s.ses and carefully drove to the marina, not wanting to have an accident because she wasn't paying attention. She refused to die in a car accident and give Cannon the satisfaction of winning.
When she drove up to the marina, everything looked strangely normal. She sat in the truck, staring at it for a few seconds, bewildered by the sameness of it. So much had happened in such a short time that it seemed as if she had been gone for weeks, rather than overnight.
No matter what, she still had this.
ROBERT PROWLED THE HOUSE like a caged panther, enraged by the need to wait. Waiting was alien to him; his instinct was to make a cold, incisive decision and act on it. The knowledge of the pain Evie must be feeling, and what she must be thinking, ate at him like acid. He could make it up to her for the house, but could he heal the hurt? Every hour he was away from her, every hour that pa.s.sed with her thinking he had betrayed her, would deepen the wound. Only the certainty that she would refuse to listen to him now kept him from going after her. When Mercer was in jail, when he had the proof of what he'd been doing and could tell her the why, then she would listen to him. She might slap his face, but she would listen.
It was almost three o'clock when the phone rang. ”Mercer's moving early,” his operative barked. ”He panicked and called them from the office. No dead drop this time. He told them that he needed the money immediately. It's a live handoff, sir. We can catch the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds red-handed!”
”Where is he now?”
”About halfway to Guntersville, the way he was driving. We have a tail on him. I'm on the way, but it'll take me another twenty-five minutes to get there.”
”All right. Use the tracking device and get there as fast as you can. I'll go to the marina now and get ahead of him. He's never seen my boat, so he won't spot me.”