I know. I caught the edge of the dream as you started to wake up.
I thought I’d lost you.
You’ll never lose me.
She sighed deeply as she held on to him, overwhelmed with gratitude that he was here—with her. Yet she knew he couldn’t make the promise to be with her always. He could be yanked away from her, the way his brother had been yanked away from him.
No. I promise.
Despite his reassurance, her thoughts were racing.Something awful is going to happen. We have to get away before it does. Can’t we leave Louisiana? Go somewhere nobody knows us?
She caught his reluctance to consider the desperate suggestion.I understand why you want to run, but we won’t really be safe until we find out who’s after us.
How do we do it?
The answer must be in Houma.
She shuddered.I don’t want to go there.
I know.He gathered her closer, running his hands up and down her back, combing his fingers through her hair, stroking his lips against her cheek.
She relaxed in his embrace, so grateful to have him.
The feeling’s mutual,he murmured in her mind.
He rocked her in his arms, and when he began to make love to her, she brought her face up for a long heated kiss.
John Reynard rang the elder Swift’s doorbell and waited, impatiently tapping his foot on the floorboards of the wide front porch.
It was early in the morning, earlier than he liked to be making a business call, but he had spent a restless nightworrying about Stephanie. She’d disappeared, and he had to find her.
He’d gotten a call back on the Craig Branson credit card. It hadn’t been used, which meant that the guy was being careful about revealing where he was.
The last John knew, Stephanie was with him. He meant to find her and get her away from the guy.
Was she a prisoner? Or had she gone with the bastard on her own? What had Branson told her to get her to agree to whatever he had in mind? Had he told her about Arthur Polaski’s body?
But why would he? Unless he was trying to turn her against her fiancé.
One thing John knew was that she’d left her car at home. Of course, there was no absolute proof that she was with Branson, but it was John’s best guess.
In the middle of the night, he’d sent a message to a PI who worked in the DC area and started the guy looking into Branson’s background, looking for something that would explain why the man had shown up to investigate a twenty-two-year-old murder. And why he was dragging Stephanie around.
When no one answered the door, he rang again.
“I’m coming,” a voice called from inside.
The crackly old voice sounded like Henri Swift.
Half a minute later, a shadow appeared behind the lace curtain that covered the glass panel in the middle of the door. Finally, the barrier was pulled open, and John and one of his men stepped inside.
Swift blinked at him. He was wearing an old burgundy satin dressing gown. His hair was mussed, and his cheeks were covered with gray stubble. Obviously, his visitor had gotten him out of bed. “What are you doing here at this time in the morning?”
“Looking for my fiancée.”
“She isn’t here.”
“Maybe not now. But was she?”
