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For a moment Julia wondered if she’d heard him correctly. “They’re still in this state?” she repeated stupidly.
At his casual nod her hand flew to her mouth, stifling a choked-off sob. She felt the hot prickle of tears in her eyes, but thankfully Dobbs’s attention wasn’t on her.
Dear God—they were still in Massachusetts! For two years she’d imagined Willa as being thousands of miles away from her, had ached with the certainty that between her and her daughter were rivers, mountains, countless cities as barriers—and all the time only a few hours at most had kept them apart.
She could see her today, Julia thought, her mind racing. She wouldn’t do anything rash or foolish—she wouldn’t do anything that might jeopardize her goal—but if she was careful she might be able to catch a glimpse of Willa in a park or a playground. Just one quick look. Surely that would be safe enough.
And then I’ll figure out a way to have you with me forever, sweetheart, she thought tremulously. I still don’t know how I’m going to do it, but we’ll be a family again, you and me.
She fixed her burning gaze on Dobbs’s computer screen as the lines of type scrolled downward and then stopped.
“That’s the one.” He grunted and reached over to a nearby printer. “I’ll run off a copy for you to—”
“She was in prison for killing the girl’s father and the woman’s husband, Dobbs. And unless you shut down that computer right now, you’re looking at hard time yourself.”
Shocked, Julia spun around at the sound of the harsh voice coming from the doorway. Her appalled gaze met the coldly assessing glance of the man standing there.
“Hullo, Tennant,” Max said with a tight smile. “Looking for something?”
“This is harassment, Ross.” She dragged in a constricted breath, and willed her voice to remain steady. “I warned you to leave me alone, and I meant it. You’re interrupting a private business transaction here, so get the hell—”
“I said shut down the computer, Dobbs. Do it,” Max ordered, not taking his eyes from Julia. “Right off the top of my head I can come up with at least two charges that can be laid against you unless you cooperate. Endangering the life of a child is the first one. Being an accessory to kidnapping is the second. Shut it down.”
But Melvin’s fingers were already flying over the keys, and even as Max delivered his ultimatum and Julia turned back to the computer, she saw the lines of type flicker and disappear from the screen. Her eyes opened wide in denial.
“Bring it back up, Dobbs,” she commanded unsteadily. “I paid you for that information. He’s got no authority to—”
“He’s a fed.” Flicking a switch at the side of his computer, the hacker jerked his head at the open ID wallet that Max was negligently displaying. “That’s authority enough for me.” Dismissively he turned away from Julia to the man behind her. “I didn’t know why she wanted it. Just get her out of here and let’s pretend this whole thing never happened, okay?”
“No! No, it’s not okay, dammit!” Her hands balled into fists at her sides, Julia looked wildly first at Dobbs, and then Max. “Damn both of you—that’s my daughter’s address you’re keeping from me. I have the right to know where she is!”
“No, Julia, you don’t.” Max had been standing a few feet away, but now he took two swift strides toward her. Behind the coolness of his gaze heat flared, and was immediately extinguished. “And if I even suspect that you’ve persuaded our venal friend here to change his mind and tell you where she is, I’ll have her relocated so fast you won’t get within a hundred miles of her. For a while after she was moved she was a sad and lonely little girl, but now she’s started to adjust. She’s in kindergarten now. Do you really want to be responsible for uprooting her all over again?”
“She was sad and lonely because her mother was taken away from her, for God’s sake!” Julia hissed at the implacable face only inches from hers. “You were responsible for that, Ross!”
“And I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.” His voice was ice. “She’s got a shot at a normal life. She wouldn’t have that, growing up with the woman who killed her father, her uncle and two innocent bystanders.”
“You keep forgetting something.” He was so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her parted lips, and she realized with a small shock that it had been years since there had been this little distance between her and a man. Julia thrust the thought aside and continued. “They had to let me go, Max. They couldn’t prove their case. I’m an innocent woman.”
“You got off on a technicality, Tennant!” As if she’d goaded him into action, he grasped her arms just above her elbows, and pulled her closer, obliterating the last few inches of space between them. His jaw was set and his grip on her felt like steel. “You got off, but that doesn’t mean you’re not guilty. The only innocent one in this whole damn mess is that little girl, and I intend to keep her safe—from you. Do we understand each other?”
She was vaguely aware of Melvin Dobbs, sitting frozenly a few feet away from them. But on a deeper, more visceral level, she suddenly felt as if nothing and no one had any solid reality except the man in front of her.
His grasp on her arms was tight enough that it should have been uncomfortable. Instead she felt ridiculously as if it was all that was keeping her from falling into a terrible void and plummeting to her own destruction. He was strong, she thought disjointedly, but his strength wasn’t merely a matter of muscle and sinew. It was a strength made up of conviction and a bedrock foundation of personal honor. He meant what he said. He cared enough about a child he hardly knew that he would go the limit to keep her safe.
Under different circumstances, she and Max Ross might have found themselves on the same side, she realized with a small shock. She would have liked that. He was a man a woman could count on.
And if she were honest with herself, in those alternate circumstances there might well have been more than just cooperation between them. Even now, facing each other as enemies, there was a suppressed undercurrent flowing beneath the surface of their anger and antagonism.
She distinctly remembered the first time she’d noticed him, although, as she’d learned during her trial, he’d been involved in the investigation from the first and had actually spoken with her an hour or so after the explosion on the night it had happened. She didn’t recall the encounter, but that was understandable. She’d been in shock those first few days, and then had come the nightmarish realization that the authorities saw her as their prime suspect. From then on her world had unravelled so swiftly she hadn’t taken in much of anything.
Besides, Max was the original invisible man. Obviously that was an asset in his line of work, and she supposed he’d cultivated that ability he had of unobtrusively melting into the background, but she still didn’t know how he did it. Granted, there was nothing about him that was jarringly noticeable, unless the casual observer happened to look directly into his eyes. They were a dark, clear green, and in the tan of his face they looked like chips of arctic ice. But his hair, dark brown and cut fairly short, was ordinary enough, and his features, although harder than the average, were regular.
Still, it seemed impossible that a big man with such a—she searched for the word—such a solid presence could go unnoticed in a crowd whenever he wanted to. Which meant that at her first remembered meeting with him, he’d wanted her to know he was there.
It had been on the first day of her trial, and she’d been walking into the courtroom when she’d become aware of him standing a few feet away. His gaze had been steady and assessing, his expression carefully blank, and she’d suddenly known that the privileged shield of wealth and beauty and social status that had protected her for so long had been ripped away from her. She hadn’t realized who he was at that point, but she knew that the man watching her didn’t see her as Julia Tennant, the attractive young widow of a wealthy and powerful man. Those green eyes had seemed to be looking straight through her, as if they were trying to read her very soul.
And even as he’d continued to stare at her, his attitude impersonally professional, she’d seen a hard edge of color rise up under the tan of his cheekbones. He’d turned away immediately, and during the rest of the trial he’d been careful not to meet her eyes again.
But as she’d told him in the coffee shop, she’d known he’d been watching her. And, if she were honest with herself, the undercurrent she was feeling right now had been there from the start, on her side as well as his.
Except that wouldn’t make any difference to him, she thought with renewed despair. Max Ross might have his alternate realities just as she did, and his might even be more urgent than hers, but even if they included sweat-soaked sheets, total satiation, and every dark desire he’d ever had, he would never let them interfere with real life.
He was the law. She was an ex-convict. They weren’t on the same side and never would be, as far as he was concerned.
She gave it one last try, knowing it was futile.
“She’s my daughter, Max.” Her voice was husky. Her gaze on his, she tried desperately to make him see it her way. “I love her—surely you believe that? Even if everything else you thought about me was true, you must know that I love her too much to ever put her in danger. I’m her mother. She needs me.”
Just for a second she thought she saw him waver, and her heart leapt. Then he shook his head and the irrational hope died.
“If you love her you’ll give her up, Julia.” His voice was as low as hers had been, and it had lost its edge. “What kind of a life could you give her, even if you did find her? Her aunt has legal custody of her now, and that would make you a fugitive. You and Willa would be on the run, never putting down roots, never being able to give her a secure home. Is that what you want for her?”
He stared at her for a long moment. Then he let go of her arms, and his own dropped to his sides. His eyes darkened with something that could have been compassion. “I think you’ll do the right thing, Julia. I think you’ll let her go.”
And looking at him, she knew with sudden despair that he was right.
Chapter Three
She was soaked to the skin, but that didn’t matter. Hunching her shoulders against the downpour, Julia dimly realized that she was shivering, but that too was unimportant. She kept walking. Despite having no real destination in mind, somehow it seemed to her that she was heading in the right direction.
Damn Max Ross. The unspoken epithet was automatic, with no heat behind it. Damn him for showing up, damn him for making sure she hadn’t gotten the information she’d wanted and damn him for what he’d said.
But most of all, damn him for knowing her better than she’d known herself.
“…on the run, never putting down roots, never being able to give her a secure home…is that what you want for her?”
She’d wanted to scream at him that he was wrong, that it wouldn’t be that way. She’d wanted to tell him that no matter what difficulties faced her, she could give her daughter a stable life, a happy childhood. She’d wanted to tell him all the lies she’d been telling herself. She’d looked into his eyes and she hadn’t been able to say any of it, because she knew she didn’t believe it.
She’d been holding on to a dream that had died the day she’d been convicted, and Max was right—no one would ever believe she hadn’t done what she’d been accused of. Although no reporters had tracked her down, in the last few days a newspaper or two had covered her surprising release. The gist of the stories was that she’d made a mockery of the legal system.
No, there had never been any chance of getting Willa back again—not really. Max had known that from the start. Now she did too.
There was no reason to go on anymore.
The thought slipped into her mind as if it had been lurking there and waiting for the right opportunity to reveal itself. She was dead already, Julia thought distantly. Her body might go on for years, but it was only a shell. Everything that had been good, everything that had been real, everything that had been life to her had been held in a tiny pair of hands that had once clutched hers, had shone out of a pair of eyes that had gazed at her with absolute trust, had been encompassed by a love so perfect she could give nothing less in return.
Max was right. If she persisted in trying to get Willa back, ultimately she would tear her daughter apart. Did he understand, even a little, what he was forcing her to face?
He had to. He’d lost a child himself. And although the few details she’d garnered about that loss had been scant, the impact it had had on him was visible. Oh, he’d managed to continue functioning. He’d kept his job, and even performed it with a kind of automatic zealousness—her own case was proof of that. But there was an almost two-dimensional quality to him, as if when his workday was over, and he was finally alone with only himself for company, he simply…shut down. Maybe his ability to fade into the background wasn’t simply a tool of his trade, she thought with sudden insight. Was it possible for a man to turn into a ghost one day at a time?
Dead man walking. How much sheer strength of will did he have, that he could force himself to get up every morning and face an empty world, day after day?
More than she had. More than she cared to have, she thought numbly.
She stepped off the curb onto the street with barely a glance at the traffic lights. Her face was wet with rain, her hair plastered to her skull as if she’d just surfaced from a dive and suddenly she didn’t feel as if she could take another step. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, wanting to blot out the present, wanting to bring back the past…and just for a moment, it worked.
She was holding Willa again, and feeling those tiny fingers delicately touching her ears.
“Why are you crying, Mommy?”
“Because pearls are for tears,” Julia said out loud, forcing a shaky smile to her lips and stopping stock-still in the middle of the road as the rain came down and the scars on her heart finally gave way and tore asunder. Her vision of Willa faded slowly away, and her voice sank to a raw whisper. “Everyone knows that, kitten-paws. Even I know that now.”
Her head bowed, her shoulders shaking with soundless sobs, she didn’t hear the hoarse voice calling out her name until it was too late. Blindly she looked up and saw the bus bearing down on her.
HE’D ALMOST BEEN too late. Max rubbed his jaw wearily and looked down at the still figure tucked under two comforters and a wool blanket in his bed. Her hair was still damp, and just below the hairline and above her closed eyes was a raw-looking graze. He’d given her that when he’d managed a fair imitation of the high-school football player he’d once been and had knocked her out of harm’s way with a flying tackle in the intersection. He realized he was gingerly rotating his shoulder, and he winced just as the doctor he’d called in looked up.
“There’s nothing physically wrong with her except for exhaustion and a bad chill. Now that she’s fallen asleep, I’d prefer not to wake her.” The older man lifted an eyebrow. “Even if I could get her admitted, hospital beds are in short supply. She’d be released tomorrow.”
“She refused to let me take her to one, anyway.” Max met his quizzical gaze and shook his head firmly. “And no, Doctor—there’s nothing here you have to worry about. I’ll let her get a decent night’s rest and then send her on her way in the morning. My interest in her is professional, not personal.”
One-handedly he fumbled his ID wallet out of his jacket pocket—his torn jacket pocket, he realized with little surprise—and displayed it briefly. The doctor grunted.
“I didn’t peg you as the type. But doesn’t she have anywhere else to stay?”
“She’s a transient.” Max’s reply was more curt than he’d meant it to be. “And I’m not sure she didn’t deliberately step out in front of that bus, Doctor. I’d given her some bad news earlier, and…” He paused uncomfortably. “Hell, who knows. Maybe I should have handled it differently.”
“I see. Well, if you’re still worried about her emotional state tomorrow, give me a call and I’ll arrange to have her put under observation for a few days, although I’m sure she won’t thank me for that.” There was shrewd assessment in the physician’s faded gaze as he got to his feet and walked to the door with Max. “She’s recently been a guest of the state, am I right?”
At Max’s quick glance he gave a wintry smile. “Please, Mr. Ross—she’s got a prison pallor, a wound from some kind of homemade weapon on her hand, and she’s obviously been living on sheer nerve for far too long. And you’re FBI, which raises a whole passel of awkward questions I don’t think I’ll ask.”
“Like I said, the relationship between us isn’t personal,” Max said evenly. “I was the one who put her behind bars. If I had my way, she’d still be there.”
They’d reached the front door, and the older man took the lightweight topcoat that Max was holding out to him and shrugged into it. He pursed his lips thoughtfully, patted his pockets for his keys and picked up his medical bag.
“Then it’s all the more interesting that you unhesitatingly risked your own life tonight to save hers, wouldn’t you say?” He tucked an umbrella under the arm that held his bag, and grasped Ross’s hand with the other. “Call me if you need to. But Mr. Ross, don’t forget that old Chinese saying—if you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for them forever.”
“My forebears were hardheaded Scots Presbyterians, Doctor.” Max didn’t smile as he opened the door and stepped aside. “That philosophy would have struck them as annoyingly fanciful.”
He waited until he saw the other man get into his car. Then he closed the door against the still-wet night and snapped off the porch light. A few steps along the short hall, he stopped to unlatch and slide open the pocket doors that led to the living room.
“Sorry, buddy. You can come in now.”
At his words, the big black dog that had been lying on the living room floor got heavily to his feet, his tail beating in acknowledgement. Stiffly the animal walked over to him and stopped, looking up inquiringly.
“Yeah, we’ve got a guest, Boomer.” Max dropped a hand to the dog’s head and idly scratched the folded ear, frowning. “I’m damned if I know what I was thinking, bringing her here, but we’ve got a guest. I’d better go check on her.”
The house was quiet as he passed through the kitchen, the only sounds the ticking of the clock on the wall and the irregular dripping of the faucet. He’d been meaning to fix that, he thought, pausing to tighten the loose tap. Maybe tomorrow he’d stop by the hardware store and get some washers after he sent Julia Tennant on her way.
Julia Tennant. Julia Tennant in his house—no, in his bed. What exactly had he been thinking, for God’s sake?
He’d told the good doctor his interest in her wasn’t personal. That might have been true at some point, but even two years ago he’d been in danger of crossing over the line between professional and personal. Now there was no doubt about it. His involvement with her in the last few days hadn’t been any part of his official duties.
In fact, if anyone found out just how involved he’d let himself become with Julia Tennant, Max told himself with calm certainty, he could end up losing his job.
He’d had a whack of vacation time due him. Other agents might plan a trip to Disneyland with the wife and kids, a wild and crazy jaunt to Vegas, a fishing trip with a few good buddies. He’d taken a week off three years ago, mainly because his director had insisted on it, and for the whole seven days he and Boomer had sat on the couch in front of the television, watching old movies and the afternoon soaps.
But when the word had gotten out that Julia Tennant’s conviction had been overturned and she was due to be released, he’d immediately asked for time off. He just hadn’t told anyone that he intended to spend his vacation making sure that she didn’t get within a hundred miles of her daughter and the woman who had once been her friend and sister-in-law.
So, yeah—this whole thing was emotional, Max admitted, staring out of his kitchen window into the night. But despite what Julia probably thought, the emotion driving him wasn’t hatred of her. She was a murderer, and he’d put plenty of them behind bars without giving them a second thought. On the Tennant case, however, he’d had to watch a little girl’s world be torn apart by the cold-blooded actions of her mother, and Willa Tennant’s innocence had broken through the wall of detachment he tried to keep between him and his work.
She hadn’t deserved to have her father killed, her life turned upside down, and everything familiar taken from her. He’d vowed her mother wasn’t going to do it to her a second time.
But this afternoon when he’d seen Julia standing in that intersection as if she had no desire to go on living, his blood had turned to ice. And a few seconds later, when he’d been cradling her suddenly fragile-seeming body beneath him on the pavement, he hadn’t been thinking of Julia Tennant as the enemy at all. Oblivious to the shaky anger of the bus driver who’d stopped a few feet past them and the surge of bystanders who’d gathered around, his attention had been fixed on her hair, dark with rain under his hand, on the vulnerable line of her throat, on the delicate fanning of her lashes against her cheeks. Then her eyes had opened.
They really were sapphire. For a moment they’d simply gazed at him as if waking up and finding him close to her wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. For that same crazy moment, he’d felt exactly the same way.
He was losing his goddamn mind, Max thought flatly, turning away from the sink and just barely concealing his disconcertion as he met those sapphire eyes once again. This time they were staring expressionlessly at him from a few feet away.
“If you’ll tell me how much I owe you for the doctor, I’ll be on my way.”
Her posture was ramrod straight and the shoulder-length blond hair was pulled tightly back from her face in a low ponytail. The graze on her temple had been cleaned by the doctor, but pinpricks of blood had welled up on it again.
She looked about as vulnerable as an electric fence. She was looking at him the way she always had—as if breathing the same damned air as he did was an ordeal. Max felt a muscle in his jaw twitch.
“Don’t worry about it.” His tone was deliberately dismissive, and with a flicker of satisfaction he saw her stiffen. “It was my decision to call him in. He gave you a fairly clean bill of health, by the way.”
“So barring any more encounters with the Boston transit system, I should live to a ripe old age. That’s good to hear.”
If he hadn’t been watching her closely he would have missed the total despair that flashed over her features. She bent her head, holding out her hand to Boomer as the dog sniffed her leg with canine formality. After a moment the heavy black tail gave a slow wag of acceptance.
“You stepped out in front of that bus deliberately, didn’t you?” He hadn’t intended to ask her the question, but as soon as the words were out he knew he needed to hear her answer. Julia’s head remained bowed.
“I don’t know, Max,” she said finally. “I honestly don’t know. Anyway, what happens with me isn’t your problem now, so don’t worry about it.” She gave Boomer one last pat and straightened, meeting his gaze directly. “I want to thank you for opening my eyes. You were right—Willa’s better off without me. I won’t be looking for her anymore.”
The smile that lifted her lips was brittle, as if she was one small muscle movement away from cracking. The least impulsive of men, with difficulty Max curbed the impulse to reach out to her. There was nothing he could say, he told himself harshly. He’d accomplished what he’d set out to do.
All that was left was to let her walk away. In silence he preceded her down the short hallway. He unlatched the front door and opened it, seeing with obscure relief that at least the rain had stopped.
The woman before him was a stone-cold killer, he reminded himself sharply. Forty days and forty nights of rain wouldn’t wash away the enormity of her crime.
“There’s a bus stop at the corner.” He didn’t meet her eyes. “There should be one coming by in a few minutes.”
“I’ll wait for it on the curb this time.” There was a touch of wryness in her tone. “Goodbye, Max.”
He saw the slight movement as she began to extend her hand to him. Before she could complete the action, he bent down to grasp Boomer’s collar. Her expression went very still.
“I’ll hold him while you leave,” he said shortly. “Sometimes the old boy forgets he’s not a pup anymore, and tries to make a dash for freedom.”
