Her heart galloped like a horse’s hooves on a racetrack, her mouth falling open.
The office location was only a mile from where she was, maybe two. She scrolled down, a picture of the SEALs coming into view, her stare locking onto the miniature portrait of the man whose features were burned into her memory. She zoomed in on it, those piercing eyes seeming to connect with hers through the screen, remembering how he’d seared her soul as he pinned her down with his body, sensations she’d never felt before overwhelming her consciousness and binding her to him forever.
No, not forever.
She’d been a virgin, a stupid twenty-year-old virgin who should have known better but didn’t. The good girl who’d always done the right thing had jumped out of the frying pan into the fire, one impulsive dip into the waters of her own sexuality that had knocked her on her ass, but barely scratched the surface of the mighty man she’d bedded.
He was considerably older than her. More experienced. Worldly. But time had left its mark on Gavin DeGrey. She could still see his face when she told him she loved him and wanted to see him again. He’d barely registered a reaction before launching into what she swore was a well-rehearsed speech about his solitary nature and inability to handle a relationship.
And there he was, staring back at her in all his male glory, her traitorous stomach flip-flopping and her restless body twisting against the mattress.
Stupid, stupid girl.
A knock on the bedroom door made her jump. It was locked, but she didn’t like the idea of having strangers right outside, no matter that they were police officers. “Yes?”
“The district attorney is on her way to talk with you. Should be here in about ten minutes. Do you want some breakfast? Coffee?”
“No thanks.”
The reality of her situation came crashing back to the forefront of her mind. The murder of a police detective she’d witnessed and the suspect she’d inadvertently caught on film. Her ransacked apartment and the terror that sluiced through her as she thought of what might have happened if she and the baby had been home. Police custody and this dirty little room where the officers brought them to keep them safe.
What would happen next was an empty page. Her life as she knew it was over. Eva curled into a ball, daunted by the idea and comforted by the warm bed.
The sooner you hand those photos over to police and testify, the sooner your life can get back to normal.
Normal?
Gavin was in New York. Her life would never be normal again. In a city of eight million people, she still wasn’t willing to take the chance of running into him. She squeezed her eyes shut. She’d have to move somewhere else—a monumental and expensive task—and she was just starting to make a name for herself here, to get clients by referral from others. Enough work to put food on the tableand pay rent and even have a little left over to buy a special toy for Abby.
Now all of it would be gone.
You could tell him about the baby.
She squeezed her eyes shut, unable to believe the thought had even popped into her mind. She hadn’t let Gavin off the hook with a simple claim that he wasn’t interested. She’d pressed him until they fought, insistent he shared her feelings, desperate to keep him in her life until he yelled at her, standing up from the bed they’d shared for days and pulling his jeans on.
“You want to know why I can’t be with you? I came to this town to visit the grave of another one of my SEAL brothers who shot himself in the head because he couldn’t handle what we went through over there. That’s four, Eva. Four fucking people who quit living after that shit.”
“What are you saying? Are you suicidal?”
“No. I’m saying I’m fucking here, and that’s the best I can do right now.” He pointed to the bed. “I told you this was just for the weekend before we slept together. You knew exactly what you signed up for. Sex. That’s it. Not a relationship and damn sure not love.”
Her eyes stung and she opened them, refusing to give into those feelings again. She’d cried all she would cry over Gavin DeGrey, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to show up on his doorstep with Abby in her arms, the baby just as unwanted by him as she herself had been.
No. She would leave New York as soon as she was able, that’s all there was to it. She couldn’t take the chance of running into him. She sat up, the weight of the world heavy upon her shoulders once again.
A loud boom came from the living room. Yelling. Strange sounds like…fighting. She hopped out of bed just as agunshot rang out. She knew what it sounded like now, firsthand. She was frozen, completely still and unable to move. The doorknob to her bedroom jiggled.
Now shewasmoving, grabbing her baby and opening the window, icy December air blowing in, making the dirty curtain billow. There was violent pounding at the door, someone throwing their weight against it, as she climbed out the window and onto the fire escape, the icy cold metal painfully cold on her bare feet.
The diaper bag hung from her arm, but she moved quickly, racing down the narrow steps six stories high. She stopped when she reached the ladder, the fire escape vibrating with someone’s pounding footsteps behind her.
She unlatched the ladder and scampered down, taking off at a run for Sixth Avenue some two hundred feet away. The baby was screaming, no doubt objecting to the cold as Eva ran as fast as she could, suddenly grateful for all the miles she’d logged jogging in a desperate if futile effort to get rid of the baby fat.
She darted down the steps into the subway station. A train sat with its doors open, and she hopped on just as they began to close, finally turning around to see her pursuer run to the train behind her, unable to get in. A man, six inches from the glass, staring at her and the baby.
Dark eyes that screamed he would attack her if he could. Black coat. Olive skin.
She shivered.
