To the Edge (35 page)

With that many guests, you also had to figure there were any number of employees. Ethan and Dallas were in the process of running the names the hotel personnel office had grudgingly handed over less than an hour ago. If anything of interest popped, they'd call him.

Beside him, Jillian conversed with forced animation with some Civic Center mucky-muck who'd been given the honor of presenting her award tonight.

"It's a night for celebration," Jillian had informed Nolan when he picked her up at Golden Palms an hour ago. "Smile, darling." Her sarcasm had been honed to a razor-sharp edge. "There may be little children there. You'll scare them."

He couldn't have smiled if he'd been told he'd won the lottery. Hell, he could barely breathe when he caught sight of her.

He hadn't seen her in more than twenty-four hours. When he left her at Golden Palms yesterday, he made tracks. And he hadn't been running, dammit, no matter that she was convinced he was. He was just being smart.

He'd needed to regroup. The bomb she'd dropped about attending the Civic Awards had hit him as hard as it had the Kincaids. She wasn't backing down. There wasn't going to be any stopping her from attending. She'd already made her concession. She'd agreed to spend the night at Golden Palms ... providing Nolan was rehired as her bodyguard. End of negotiations.

He'd been caught between the proverbial boulder and rock wall. If he refused to come back onboard, she'd go to the banquet without him. Yeah, Kincaid could have hired an army of guards to protect her. But would she have let them? And could they have done the job?

He wasn't willing to take the chance.

And wasn't that a 180-degree turnaround?

He'd come into this scared spitless that he didn't have it in him to protect anyone, let alone Jillian. Now he wasn't willing to trust anyone else with the task. He knew what lengths he'd go to. He'd die before he let anything happen to her. He couldn't guarantee the same from anyone else.

So, he'd ended up holing up at E.D.E.N., Inc., the rest of the day and half the night, poring over every piece of information his brothers and sister had gathered on Jillian and the dozens of potential suspects who might be gearing up to make their final move.

He'd been determined not to think about the night he and Jillian had spent in his bed. Determined not to think about the things she'd said.

I'm the woman who loves you.

She just thought she did.

Do I frighten you that much?
Hell yes, he was afraid.
Who do you think you let down?
Will. Sara. And everyone who cared about them. He didn't care what Jillian said or what she believed. He was responsible. He'd let them down. He wasn't going to take a chance of letting Jillian down, too.

But he was going to keep her alive. And when this was over and whoever was trying to hurt her was dead or behind bars, he was walking away. End of story.

She laughed, a clear, ringing sound, and he had to—he just had to—look her way.

She'd been a knockout in shimmering white and seed pearls a week ago. She was unbelievable in emerald silk and rhinestones tonight.

While the dress she'd worn to Mar-A-Lago had exposed lots of creamy skin and incredible cleavage, this one covered her from head to toe—yet it left nothing to the imagination.

The high neckline ended just below her chin; the sleeves were long and narrow, just like the dress. The rich green silk hugged her body like a thin film of lotion overlaid with shimmering trails of tiny white rhinestones that crisscrossed in horizontal lines to the floor. Beneath the slightly flaring hem, her bare toes peeked out of silver sandals that were all straps and four-inch heels.

"You're doing it again."

Slowly, he lifted his gaze from her breasts to her eyes. "Doing what?"

"Scaring the children." She smiled, but there was a brittleness in her eyes that he'd put there.

She'd told him she loved him and he'd laughed it off. She'd shown him how much she cared and he'd thrown it back in her face.

She'd given him the most amazing night of his life... and he'd discounted it as just sex.

Fat chance.

"The children are on their own. In case you hadn't noticed, I have a few other things on my mind."

She drew in a serrated breath, glanced around the room. "You really think something's going to happen tonight?"

"I'm paid to think something's going to happen."

"Oh, right. I forgot. It's all about the job for you."

He held her gaze. Told himself it didn't faze him when a mist of tears gathered. "Yeah," he said, understanding that she'd given him one last chance to convince her otherwise. For her sake, he held the line. "It's all about the job."

Soft to hard. Hope to grim acceptance. He saw it all in those hopeful eyes that had wanted so much to believe in him.

She'd given up. He knew right then and there that he'd finally managed to kill whatever feelings she thought she had for him.

And he felt a loss as consuming as cancer.

Jillian felt like a stranger among strangers as she sat in the banquet room, a fabricated smile firmly in place. She even felt like a stranger to herself tonight. It was possible that someone in this crowd loathed her, rejoiced in terrifying her, relished the thought of killing her. Nolan was certain the vendetta was personal. The proof had been in the destruction of her penthouse. Every room had been trashed. Every room but one. The kitchen. Whoever had done this knew she was no cook, didn't care about cooking, could care less about learning how. So they'd left her the one thing they'd known would be no loss. Just so she'd know how very personal it was.

She looked around the room, wishing Rachael could have been here. A friend would have been good tonight. No matter what Nolan thought, Rachael could never be responsible.

Rachael. She hadn't been far from Jillian's mind since Friday, when Nolan had suggested she might have been sexually abused. By her own father. The thought made Jillian nauseous.

Laughter broke out around her. She laughed, too... because everyone at the table was laughing. Because she had to get it together. She had a part to play tonight. Somehow, she had to maintain the status quo ... while the one person she wanted to count on and believe in and turn to and confess how truly frightened and desolate she felt had shut off his feelings like they were a light.

She might consider despising him for that if she didn't love him so much. For all the good either emotion would do her. She couldn't reach him. Obviously, she didn't know how.

"Jillian?"

She jumped when Nolan said her name.

She glanced his way. His eyes were dark with concern. "They just announced your name. Are you OK?"

She heard the anticipatory applause from around the packed ballroom, and shifted into autopilot mode.

Manufacturing a huge smile, she stood, then, very aware of the unsteadiness of her legs and of Nolan's hand at her back supporting her, wound her way carefully through the maze of tables toward the front of the room.

Calling on all her reserves, she climbed the three steps to the dais. Then, doing her best to ignore Nolan's lurking presence a few feet behind her, she stepped up to the podium and began her speech.

Nolan stood on the platform behind Jillian, scanning the darkened room for anything out of order. The problem was, he couldn't see anything. They had dimmed the lights; the entire ballroom was dark but for the single tapered candle on every table and a set of spotlights mounted high above the dais that swept the crowd in crisscrossing arcs like this was some freaking Hollywood movie premiere.

He didn’t like the way they’d set up the dais, either. An elevated platform held a podium equipped with a mike. The platform was positioned at the south wall of the ballroom. Behind it, three sets of huge double doors led out to a wide corridor. He'd been assured the doors were locked, had checked them himself before he and Jillian settled in.

This was the part of the evening when Jillian was at her most vulnerable. Nolan hadn't been more than a foot from her side all night. Now he was forced to stand a little over a yard away, out of the spotlight, in the fricking dark.

When the cell phone clipped to his belt vibrated, his pulse jumped several beats. The display lit with Ethan's number.

"What?" he said quietly so as not to disrupt her speech.

"John Smith, Jillian's Forgotten Man? Seems he recently started working at the Breakers as a dishwasher. He's on the schedule for tonight."

Warning bells clanged like fire alarms as Nolan disconnected. And when a door approximately fifteen yards to the left of the dais cracked open—a door that was supposed to be locked—his adrenaline spiked off the charts.

A thin shaft of light spilled into the room, backlighting the figure standing in the open doorway. Even at this distance, there was no mistaking it was John Smith—just like there was no mistaking the flash of light glinting off something metal Smith clutched in his hand.

Nolan shoved Jillian behind him. "Get down!"

A collective gasp ripped through the room like a wind gust.

"Down!" he repeated, shoving her lower as he reached inside his jacket for his gun.

"What... what's happening?" she whispered, breathless.

"Smith's out there."

"John? John's here? Why would he... oh. Oh God."

When Smith spotted Nolan, he ducked back into the hall and slammed the door behind him.

"Stay down. And
do not
leave this room." Another gasp and a scattering of screams echoed through the ballroom as Nolan jumped off the dais and sprinted toward the door.

Leading with his gun, he wrenched the door open and inched carefully into the hall. All he saw of Smith was the back of his head as he rounded a corner at a dead run.

Nolan debated for all of a nanosecond before he took off after Smith. He didn't want to leave Jillian, but he couldn't let Smith get away.

"You!" Nolan collared a hotel security person who had come running when he'd heard the commotion. "Get to the Venetian Ballroom. See to it that Ms. Kincaid is all right. Then stay with her and call the Palm Beach PD. Detective Laurens. Tell him I think we've got the stalker. Move!" he yelled as he skidded around another corner and into a full-out run.

"Are you all right?'

Still on her knees, her heart in her throat, Jillian dusted herself off and looked up and into the eyes of one of the few people who could have made her smile in the face of terror, "Oh, thank God. Where did you come from? Never mind," she said, pushing shakily to her feet. "I'm so glad to see a friendly face."

And someone she could count on. She hadn't realized until then just how shaken she was, how desperately vulnerable she felt without Nolan at her side.

She felt her heartbeat quicken even more. Felt her hands begin to shake and tingle, her head begin to spin, as her breath became more and more erratic.

She was about to hyperventilate.

"Get... me out of here. Please. Before the whole mob descends."

"Come on. I'll sneak you out the back door."

On rubbery legs, she rushed down the dais steps, tried to force away the panic. "I don't suppose you've got a paper bag on you? I'm going to either barf or pass out on you."

"Fresh air's a few steps away. Hang in there ... and then tell me what's going on."

He'd lost him.

Sonofabitch!

Hands braced on his knees, sucking air, Nolan cursed his physical conditioning. Three months ago, Smith never would have outrun him. Three months ago. he'd still been in shape.

Straightening, he dragged his hand through his damp hair, jerked the tie from around his neck, and shoved it in his jacket pocket. Heading back toward the ballroom at a jog, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed Laurens's number.

The detective, already en route, answered on the first ring.

Nolan told him what had happened, where he'd lost Smith, and that he was headed back to Jillian. His heart was slamming from much more than physical exertion when he burst into the ballroom—and didn't see her.

"Where is she?" he roared at a frazzled-looking security guard.

"I got waylaid," the guard said, trying not to look cowed. "I just got here. I'm sorry. She's gone."

"Gone? Where?"

"How the hell should I know?" the kid bristled. And he wasn't much more than a kid, inexperienced and out of his element, something Nolan hadn't seen with his adrenaline soaring and his mind set on nailing Smith.

"Quiet. Quiet!" Nolan yelled at the crowd milling around the ballroom in agitated excitement. "Did anyone see Ms. Kincaid leave?"

An elderly gentleman with a red face and rapidly blinking eyes pointed toward the double doors behind the dais.

Nolan set out at a run. He burst through the doors into the middle of a wide hallway. Twenty yards to his right and he'd end up back in the interior maze of the hotel. Twenty yards to the left, exterior doors led to the seawall. His gut instinct had him running for those doors.