True Lies (26 page)

“A raid?” she said, her voice hoarse. “You mean dozens of cops driving in with guns blazing?”

“We hope it won’t come to that, but we don’t want to wait any longer. It’s not only drug smuggling anymore, it’s attempted murder. Yours.”

“But we weren’t hurt when the Cessna blew up. Couldn’t you do it some other way? Some safer way? There’s too much risk of someone getting shot.”

“As long as Simon doesn’t resist, he won’t get hurt.”

With a shock she realized that her first thoughts hadn’t been of her brother’s safety but of Bruce’s. “He doesn’t even know how to use a gun. He doesn’t want to be with those people. Couldn’t we warn him to stay out of the way?”

“No, Emma.”

“But—”

“No!” He rolled forward and got to his feet. “There’s no room for discussion on this. The plans are already set. We move at 10:00 tonight.”

It was going too fast. From the time she had first laid eyes on this man, she had been swept along on a flood surge of events beyond her control. Her fingers curled around the hard steel of the bars behind her as if the cold solidity would anchor her. “I feel so helpless. How can I stand by and do nothing?”

“That’s exactly what you have to do. You'll stay here, out of sight, until the operation is finished.” He moved to stand in front of her and grasped her shoulders. “I've endangered you once. I was so caught up in the job I was doing, I almost got you killed. I won’t let that happen again.”

“You didn’t know about the bomb, or the double cross. You thought I was guilty, anyway.”

“It shouldn’t have made any difference whether you were guilty or not.” His grip tightened. In the stark light from the caged bulb overhead, his face was all harsh planes and angles. “Emma, I understand your loyalty to your brother.”

Loyalty? How could she resolve her loyalty to Simon with the love she felt for Bruce? “We don’t have any choice about the people we love,” she said, her voice breaking. “It can’t be turned on or off.”

“And I realize that you'll do everything in your power to help him.”

“He’s all I have left.” Her eyes filled. “It hurts too much to lose someone you love, but you know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know. The pain is a dull ache behind your heart. You learn to live with it, but it never goes away.” He brought her against his chest, enfolding her in a sudden embrace that crushed the breath from her lungs. “All along, you've asked me not to apologize, but I have to say it, Emma. I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry.”

There was nothing dull about the pain she was feeling now. It was a wrenching, tearing misery. “I'm sorry, too.”

“What we shared was precious. I'll never forget it. I'll never forget you.” He lifted his hand and tangled his fingers in her hair, pressing his cheek to her head.

Sliding her arms around his waist, she clutched him as if she had the power to make him stay. “You're saying goodbye.”

“Yes. I'm sorry.”

The door at the top of the stairs opened and closed with a heavy clang. Footsteps gritted closer.

Bruce released her slowly, pulling back to look into her face. “Please, try to forgive me, Emma.”

Her fingers cramped when she tried to let go of him. “There’s nothing to forgive,” she whispered.

He reached behind him and caught her wrists, then joined their hands together and brought her fingers to his lips. “Oh, yes. There’s plenty to forgive. But I have to do my job.”

“I know you do. I know
why
you do.”

O'Hara shuffled to a stop outside the cell and cleared his throat. “Xavier’s already left, Bruce. Are you ready to go?”

He nodded once, his gaze never wavering from hers. “Like I said, Emma, I realize that you'll do everything you can to help Simon. I don’t blame you for it, I understand it.”

The sympathy was too much to bear. She pulled her hands from his and crossed her arms tightly, as if she could hold in her emotions by physical force. She glanced briefly at O'Hara, who was plainly waiting for them to finish. “Thank you for telling me what’s going to happen.”

“You deserved that much.” Bruce backed away from her, pausing in the open cell door. “Forgive me, Emma.” Clenching his hands at his sides, he turned to the other man. “Okay, go ahead.”

O'Hara took a ring of keys from his pocket, stepped around Bruce and slammed the door of the cell shut. Before the echoes had faded, he inserted a key into the hole on the flat metal plate and clicked the lock.

Emma’s breath whooshed out as if someone had punched her in the stomach. “What...”

“Sorry, Miss Duprey, uh, Cassidy,” O'Hara said. He backed away and put the keys on the table on the other side of the basement. “I had my orders.”

She leapt at the door, but of course it was too late. She grabbed the bars and jerked with all her strength. Nothing moved. “Let me out!”

O'Hara shrugged and looked at Bruce. “We’d better go.”

“You can’t do this to me!” She twisted sideways and rammed her shoulder against the steel. “Open the door!”

Bruce raked his hand through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck. “This is for your own good. I said I was sorry.”

“I didn’t know what you meant. I thought you were apologizing about...” She swallowed hard. “How can you do this? You tricked me.”

“That wasn’t my intention. I want to keep you safe. You were willing to take crazy risks to fly those drugs for your brother’s sake. I couldn’t take the chance that you’d do something reckless now.”

She kicked the bars. Her leather boot provided scant cushioning against the force she applied. “I cooperated with you. And you said I wasn’t under arrest.” She kicked again, sending sharp pain spearing up her leg. “I should have known better than to trust a cop.”

“You're in protective custody. It’s only temporary. Haskin will release you the minute our operation is over.”

“You don’t trust me, do you? That’s what this is all about. Even after everything we've gone through, and what we did last night, you still don’t—”

“Too many lives are at stake, Emma. If even a hint of this raid gets out, things could turn ugly real fast. My feelings don’t count. I have to go by the book on this.”

“Do you think I'm going to betray you? Is that it? Do you think I'm so shallow that I’d share my body with someone and then go behind their back to—”

“This is my job, dammit. You said you understood.”

O'Hara started off for the stairs. “I'll wait in the alley for you, Bruce. Sounds as if you've got some personal business to settle.”

Bruce glared at him. “Forget you heard that.”

“I didn’t need to hear it to figure it out. There’s been a high-voltage field crackling in the air since I picked you two up this morning. Take a minute to get your head straight. I don’t want your mind wandering when you're supposed to be watching my back.”

Swearing under his breath, Bruce waited until the door at the top of the stairs clanged shut behind O'Hara. “It’s for your own good,” he repeated, frustration edging his words.

“Right. Fine. Hide behind your badge, Bruce.” She slapped the bars and stepped back from the locked door. “You're so damn worried about caring for someone again, you had to find some way to push me away, didn’t you? No trust, no emotional attachment, no pain.”

“I do care for you, Emma. What we had together—”

“Is over. Over.” She sniffed hard and waved her arm at the bars between them. “Take a good look. Opposite sides, Bruce. How much clearer could you make it? You're not doing this for my safety, you're doing it for yours. Well, you didn’t need to. I knew the score. You locked your heart away five years ago when your wife died.”

He flinched as if she had struck him. “I have to go.”

“So go.”

Without a word, he walked to the stairs.

“Get another one of them, that’s what you're doing, right? Put every bad guy in the world away, one by one.”

He placed his foot on the bottom step.

“It won’t bring her back, Bruce.”

He whirled around and strode to the front of the cell. “Devoting your life to coddling your brother won’t bring back your parents. And it’s easy to blame the law for everything that went wrong, but your life wasn’t so great to begin with, was it?”

“If my father hadn’t been arrested—”

“I've had it up to here with that story.” He sliced his hand roughly against his forehead. “Things happen. Plans change. Circumstances aren’t always in our control. If you're strong enough, you survive. That’s what you did. That’s what I did. But now you hide behind your hate so you won’t have to take another chance with life.”

“I have good reasons to hate the law.”

“Do you? Or are you using it?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You're afraid. You act tough, but underneath you're so scared of opening yourself up to more pain you channel all your feelings into this misguided devotion to your brother and your useless grudge.”

“You don’t know—”

“But I
do
know. We've both built our lives around lies of one kind or another. For our own reasons, we've lied to each other and to everyone else. But when you can’t face the truth about yourself, that’s the true lie, the really dangerous one.”

How much more of this could they hurl at each other, how much more could she take? She moved back from the bars as each one of his words struck home.

“Before you judge me, Emma, take a good look at yourself.”

She retreated until her shoulders nudged the cement wall. Fingers shaking, she raised her hands and covered her face.

His stride was swift and angry as he moved away. He sprinted up the stairs and slammed the door behind him.

In the long silence that followed, she could hear nothing but the pounding of her pulse in her ears. When she finally gained the strength to look in front of her, she was alone.

“Bruce.” The sound of his name bounced off the bare walls in a hopeless refrain. He was gone. She had told him to go. She hadn’t even told him goodbye. “Bruce, don’t leave like this.” She went to the door and pressed her face to the bars, her anger dissolving in her tears. “I don’t hate you,” she whispered. “I love you.”

The declaration sounded hollow, because no one was there to hear it. He didn’t know. The way things were turning out, he probably never would.

* * *

The afternoon dragged into evening. A young deputy brought Emma a plate of food from the Stardust Café, but she couldn’t bring herself to take a single bite. She sat on the edge of the bunk, the plate on her lap, the fork forgotten in her fingers.

“Is something wrong, ma'am?”

She pushed her hair behind her ears and glanced up. The deputy was sitting on the edge of the desk across the room. He was vaguely familiar, like everyone who lived in Bethel Corners. Red-haired, with skin freckled like whole wheat bread dough, his earnest face was creased with concern. She had heard Haskin tell him that she was being held until her brother could pay her speeding tickets. Although the deputy looked sympathetic, so far he had ignored her demands for release. Emma looked down at her plate and jabbed at a lump of mashed potatoes. “I don’t feel like eating. What time is it?”

“Around 8:00. Is there anything you need?”

Her freedom, she thought immediately, but she didn’t bother saying it. “No.”

“Okay. I'll be back to get your plate in half an hour or so. I've got some paperwork to do upstairs, but I'll leave the door at the top of the stairs open, so just yell if you need anything.”

She nodded, poking at a piece of chicken. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” he said easily as he moved away.

Emma set her plate aside and leaned back against the wall. She wasn’t good at waiting, she never had been. Bruce had mentioned they would raid McQuaig’s place after 10:00 tonight, so it would happen soon. It was hard to accept that there was nothing more she could do for her brother, but maybe it was high time to let him pull himself out of the hole he had dug. And maybe it also was time to stop blaming all her problems on the law.

Wearily, she rubbed her eyes. Bruce had been right. She was afraid of taking another chance with life, terrified by all these tangled emotions that had been let loose. She’d been hiding behind her hate the same way Bruce had been hiding behind his badge. She had been lying to herself because she hadn’t wanted to risk loving someone, and she was as much to blame as he was for the emptiness of the future she faced.

Last night she should have told him how she felt. She should have admitted it to herself long before that. And she should have gone to the police in the first place and forced Simon to turn himself in, but instead she had let her old grudge, the old reflexive antagonism, rule her actions.

And now her brother was still in danger. Worse than that, so was Bruce. She should have ignored the threats McQuaig’s man Harvey had made on the phone, but how was she to know it was a bluff? Just thinking about that deep, tomblike voice made her shiver. The memory of it was so vivid, for a moment she imagined that she actually was hearing it.

The hair on her arms lifted and she held her breath. It wasn’t her imagination. She
was
hearing it.

Quietly she eased off the bunk and tiptoed to the front of her cell. A cool draft blew from the direction of the staircase, carrying with it fragments of a hushed conversation. Emma remembered passing the rear entrance to the police station when Bruce had brought her down here. That must be where the draft was coming from. Someone must be standing at that door, talking to whoever was in the alley outside. But that voice...

She turned her head to press her ear to a space between the bars. The words were difficult to make out because the exchange was harsh and rapid. She tried to tell herself that it couldn’t possibly be Harvey. It must be her nerves. What business would someone like that have at a police station? She was about to move away when a single phrase came through with sudden clarity.

“They're planning a raid tonight.”

She pressed back against the bars so fast she scraped the side of her forehead. Squinting against the sharp pain, she held her breath and listened.

“We'll have to move up the timetable. You should have gotten word to us sooner.”