She answered with a small nod, wondering exactly where this conversation was going. She was still struggling to come to grips with her new reality—back in the clutches of John Reynard. If it was her new reality. The explosion was real, but what if, by some miracle, Craig was all right?
She had to cling to that. It was her only option because, if she admitted that he was dead, what was the use of her going on? Or, to put it another way, what did it matter what John Reynard did to her?
He was speaking, and she struggled to focus on his words. “So whatever you’ve been doing with him, it’s over. And now we can take up where we left off.”
“Yes,” she managed to say.
“You refused to sleep with me until we were married,” he said suddenly, his words and his tone lancing through the wall she had tried to build around her emotions. “A very old-fashioned attitude, I must say. Did you sleep with him?”
She should have been expecting the question. Well, perhaps not so bluntly. Now she froze, knowing that she was skating on very thin ice.
Raising her head, she looked John square in the eye, calling on all the salesmanship she’d learned at the dress shop. “No,” she said aloud, and as she spoke, she did something else as well—gathering her mental power and putting it into her silent order to him.You believe me. You believe I didn’t sleep with Craig Branson. You believe it because you want to believe it. That’s the answer you want to hear, and you believe me.
Would it work? She certainly hadn’t been able to do anything like that before she’d met Craig. The power had developed because of her connection to him.
A stray thought danced in her mind, a thought that gave her hope. Or was it false hope?
She brushed aside that last part. If she’d developed this power with Craig, could she still use it if he was dead?
She clung to that as she kept shooting her silent message to John, and maybe her faith that Craig was still alive made the suggestion stronger.
Harold Goddard held up the duct tape he’d retrieved from the shopping center. It looked unremarkable except that it was stretched slightly out of shape. How had that happened? Had Branson or Swift done something to it? And if so, what and how? The speculation was cut off when his cell phone rang. He put down the tape and clicked the on button.
“You have them?”
“No,” Wayne answered.
“You followed him, but you weren’t able to get your hands on him?” Harold clarified.
“We had him cornered, but he dived into the bayou.”
“And then what?”
The man on the other end of the line hesitated, and Harold could picture the scene.
“Did you shoot him?” he asked.
“We tried to wound him, but he got away.”
“And he didn’t go back to the bed and breakfast?”
Again the man seemed reluctant to answer. Finally he said, “When we didn’t find him, we went back to the place where they were staying.”
“And?”
“There was an explosion,” Wayne said.
Harold shouted a curse into the phone. He walked across the room and snapped on a news channel. A breathless reporter was giving the details of a mysterious explosion in Houma.
“I’ll get back to you later?” Harold advised.
“You want us to stay in Houma?”
“Yes.” He clicked off and focused on the report. It seemed that the man and woman who had rented the cottage were CraigBranson and his wife. But he knew they’d just met each other. Could they really have gotten hitched so fast? Probably they had only been pretending to be married when they’d rented the room.
But were they dead?
He’d keep checking to see if they surfaced somewhere. Meanwhile, he’d look around for another couple he could send into each other’s arms.
