Return to Poughkeepsie (9 page)

“Now I’m hurt. After the striptease I thought for sure we were best friends.” He licked his lips.

Eve ignored him and stepped outside. There were no cabs to be seen, and it was dark—later than she thought. She’d have to walk. Glad she wasn’t burdened by high heels, she started off at a quick pace. He stayed right next to her.

“We’d make a stunning couple, you know. My dark and your pale? Half the time we could be killing each other, the other half screwing our brains out.”

He’d never know, but he’d just described her relationship with Beckett to a T.

After three blocks, he seemed to realize she was never going to start a conversation with him. And he felt compelled to fill the void.

“Okay, I’m just letting you know there’s some movement on Poughkeepsie. And I know it’s Taylor’s but…”

She stopped and turned to look at him. “Who?”

“I’m proposing we work together and get Poughkeepsie organized before it gets absorbed by someone else. There’s some lucrative deals to be had there.” He winked at her, smirking the whole time.

“Why not go alone?” She didn’t like how this was going—or anything about this guy. He knew way too much.

“Well, you have the connections already. The respect.” He shrugged his well-built shoulders.

They both looked around, assessing the situation.

“I think you’re fishing for information, and I’m not helping.” She spotted a cab and hailed it.

He got in behind her. The cab ride to her apartment building was silent, save for the crackle of the radio, which wasn’t quite tuned in. The cabbie didn’t seem to notice.

Shark paid for the trip, and they stood in front of her building, staring at each other as the cab drove away.

“Unless you have something useful to offer, I’m going to kill you,” she breathed.

He tilted his head. “I know. I’m not your friend or your lover, but I’m smart enough to find you, to find where you work out. Aren’t you at least a little interested in who my angel is?”

She looked toward the sky, hazy with the lights from the building. “What do you want?”

“Just a little information on the two-way street. Taylor still alive?”

When Eve looked back at him, shrewdness had crowded out any playfulness in his eyes. It was a hard choice, right there on the sidewalk, to decide which answer would be the best for Beckett, for his brothers, for Poughkeepsie.

“He’s been dead for four years, thirty-eight days, and four hours.” She looked Shark in the face and gave no tells.

“So specific. How can you be sure?” He shifted his weight.

Eve noticed his shoes were Italian and expensive. “That’s two questions, and yet you’ve told me nothing.” She stood as still as a predator, filing away everything she could about him. She’d stalk him later.

He leaned in close—close enough to stab her or kiss her. “The Vitullos are coming that way. Looking for information. Stirring things up. Evidently there’s money to be made there.”

Eve didn’t tell him she’d light every bill in the world on fire if it meant saving her loved ones.

“So how do you know for sure he’s dead?”

“That’s a stupid question,” she said.

“You did him?”

She forced herself to shrug and look at him knowingly.

“He was a tough bitch to crack.”

She didn’t answer, letting his imagination fill in the blanks. “Give me a number, and I’ll think about it,” she finally said.

He pulled out his wallet, and she handed him a pen from her bag. He scrawled a number on a hundred-dollar bill.

She left him and walked into her lobby without another word. This wasn’t good. How did this random asshole have more information on her town than she did?

She didn’t get more than a few feet into her apartment before her cell phone rang. Blake was on the other end.

“Hey, are you sitting down? Your dad’s in the hospital. He’s alive, but he’s really injured. I think you need to come home.”

“I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.” Eve ended the call and put the phone against her forehead.

In spite of all the time she’d spent building her new, placeholder life, she’d always known she’d eventually get a phone call like this: one that would drag her right back.

Blake waited for Eve in the hospital parking lot. A sleek sports car caught his attention, and he wasn’t surprised when she stepped out of it. He hadn’t actually seen her in years. She looked hollow. He silently cursed Beckett for leaving her for so long.

“How bad?” She was composed, but barely.

“He took a real beating. The kind I used to see back in the day.” Blake didn’t need to say more. They were speaking of Beckett’s sins and Eve’s talents. Her steps faltered a bit.

He reached out quickly in case she tripped. She shook off his questioning hand.

“Okay, I understand. Come with me?”

When they made eye contact, he knew she was coming undone. Blake took her hand in his as they entered the hospital. They were cousins. She’d helped him with his rehabilitation. And now he would be here for her.

Blake explained who Eve was to the duty nurse and led her to her father’s hospital room. Blake stopped her before she stepped through the open door. “It’s rough,” he warned.

She nodded and exhaled. As they walked around the curtain giving Dr. Ted Hartt a bit of privacy, Blake put one hand on Eve’s lower back. She swooned a bit before shoring herself up and proceeding. Blake had been with Ted since shortly after the phone call from the hospital, and he still wasn’t accustomed to the sight. Ted was covered in bruises, abrasions, and worst of all, burns. The doctor on his case had been surprised to find he had no broken bones.

Eve gently touched her father’s unmarked hand, then his cheek. Blake watched as her jaw tensed. Her father opened his eyes, heavy with pain meds.

“Who did this, Dad? What happened?” Eve’s jittery hands belied her cool, confident voice.

“I was walking and…fell. I fell.” Ted closed his eyes again, a wave of medication taking him under.

“Hello, Eve.” The doctor on call swept into the room. “Your father’s on a powerful sedative. His condition is stable.”

Blake’s eyes widened for a moment before he realized the doctor knew Eve personally. Considering Dr. Hartt’s prominent place on the staff, this shouldn’t have surprised him.

“Is this all superficial? The wounds?” Eve crossed her arms in front of her.

“Yes, for the most part. He lost a lot of blood, and the burns will take a while to heal—he’ll have to be fastidious with his bandages. He was brought in unconscious.” The doctor scrolled through the chart on his iPad and nodded, as if approving his own facts.

“Who brought him in?” She glanced at Blake, who shook his head.

“Ah, your father arrived as a John Doe by ambulance. He was found on the side of Ritcher Street by the bar. When we were finally able to bring him around, he insisted he fell and that no police be called. And he didn’t want you called either, but one of our nurses had already called Blake so…”

“Okay, thank you.” Eve nodded to the doctor, giving him his cue to leave.

The minute the door closed behind him, Eve put her hands on her head and squatted, quiet sobbing noises escaping her. Blake came around the bed and put his arm around her.

“I’m sorry.” He tried to pat a comforting pattern on her back.

Eve wiped her tears and stood, her moment of humanness over. “Listen, go home. Tell Cole to keep his head up. If either of you see anything out of the ordinary, call me immediately. You watch the girls and the baby like hawks. Until I know what’s happening, I need you both to check in three times a day. Make sure someone knows where you’re going at all times.”

Blake nodded. “This about Beck?”

Eve leveled her cold blue eyes on him. “Right now? It’s about me.”

She leaned over and kissed her father’s head. “Dad, don’t worry. I’m gonna take this burden from you,” she whispered. She stood and smoothed her blond hair. “There’ll be security here soon, so Dad will be fine. You don’t come back. Stay with your family. That’s your only job. Got it?”

Blake nodded as she brushed past him and out the door.

Eve started her car and pulled away from the hospital. Whatever happened to her father, it hadn’t been an accident. What had they wanted? Money? Information, like Shark said? Had they connected him to Blake and Beckett, or just to the hospital? Maybe his skill as a surgeon had caught someone’s eye, and the next time he saw them he’d be expected to help. Or maybe knowing her had been his downfall.

She’d gotten people’s attention the same sort of way for Beckett, once upon a time—back when she was a monster. But now five years had passed since he’d left her in a hotel room, naked and hoping for a better life. After weeks in limbo, she’d realized she had to do something, be something while she waited for his return. Vegas was over for her, and Poughkeepsie was just too much. There her role was labeled and marked. Too many people wanted her to replace Beckett, and she had no desire to be him. So she kept her distance and did her best to disappear—just sneaking in and out to visit her father for holidays.

Clearly, Beckett was either trying so hard to be different that he’d found another life entirely or he was dead. So many years later, she wasn’t sure what the hell was going on. But not being near him, memories of the time she’d spent enforcing for him—all of it hurt. Damned if she’d show it. If he was still alive, she could find him. Yet she hadn’t even tried. It mattered that he came to her. And maybe he’d found someone else. He wasn’t a damned priest, after all. Her heart hurt thinking about him.

Her new life had come together nicely, but the longer she worked in New York, the more she felt herself drifting with no real purpose, no idea of her future. Nothing seemed real, and none of it was what she really wanted. Her mind was always on him.

And now she would have to go back to her previous life, face down an incoming enemy—one that had targeted her father—without him. And without Mouse. She had nothing. Or worse than nothing.

She pulled out her phone and hit Shark’s number. Instead of hello, he just laughed his knowing, sexy laugh. She bit her lip until he was done and then delivered her instructions: “Meet me tomorrow at five. I’ll be at the river dock in Poughkeepsie.”

Shark was waiting at the river the next evening when Eve pulled up in her Audi 8. It was a place she hadn’t visited in a long damn time, and she wished she were here under better circumstances now.