getting dressed.” Her comment was tossed over her shoulder as she walked away. “You should, too. Unless you plan to go in that particularly fetching, but unprofessional, state.”
“Go where? What state?”
“To a bombing, darling. I’ve no choice but my gown. But, as sheriff, do you really want to go in tuxedo slacks, looking exactly like you just spent hours making love to your wife?”
“My wife?”
“Until you find someone else.”
Jericho smiled hollowly. Maria Elena had just said the words he’d waited half his life to hear. At the time he least wanted to hear them. She shouldn’t stay. He wouldn’t let her if it was in his power to stop her. But even as he regretted her decision, he knew it was the decision he would have made.
To the world she was Maria Delacroix. To Jericho she was Maria Elena Rivers, a woman of extraordinary courage.
His wife.
“Until forever,” he promised grimly. “If I can keep you safe.”
Three
Maria Elena Delacroix Rivers moved like a cat. A very savvy cat who knew her way around the jungle. Any jungle. Even this one, and what it had become in an instant.
Her rental was a burned-out skeleton squatting in the nether regions of a long deserted parking lot. But, oddly, little around it showed more than the insidious signs of scorching from an intensely generated heat. Even the kid who’d decided to help himself to a joyride in the lone vehicle left unattended in the lot was okay. Just bruises, some burns, maybe a broken bone. A small price for a close call and a lesson, hopefully, well learned.
While rescue and police personnel dealt with the kid, Maria circled the car, studying it from every angle. As Maria studied the car, Jericho studied Maria.
Her work as a newscaster of no little fame also included quite a number of stints as a foreign correspondent. One such assignment had taken her to the Middle East. With her trusty microphone in hand, and her own personal camera never very far away, she’d put together riveting reports. With Pulitzer prize photographs thrown in for compassionate emphasis. Jericho remembered that many of her published photographs of that recent time portrayed scenes more than a little like this one.
“You’ve seen this before,” he surmised as her circling inspection brought her close.
Maria’s eyes narrowed, the piercing scrutiny of her gray, level gaze didn’t alter, or turn from the car. “Almost,” she answered softly. “But not quite.”
A special bomb squad had flown in from Columbia 150 miles from Belle Terre. These experts in every known method of blowing a person, place, or thing to kingdom come, had studied every inch of the car, the parking lot, and the museum—with more to come later. Yet it was Maria who commanded Jericho’s attention. Maria whose answers and opinions he sought. But this terse comment wasn’t enough.
“Explain,” Jericho said, softly. Very softly, but any who knew him would have recognized it as a tense command.
“It’s different from the bombings I’ve seen and photographed.” Maria turned now to look at him. “At first I thought he, whoever he might be, didn’t know his stuff.”
“And now?” Jericho had his own thoughts that had quickly grown into conviction. Now he wanted hers, with no other influence.
“Now I think he knew exactly what he was doing. The only thing he didn’t take into consideration, and couldn’t calculate, was our young car thief. Who just had the bad luck of being at the wrong place at the right time.”
“Then you don’t think the explosion occurred in tandem with ignition of the engine.”
“Only as a coincidence. If it was truly in tandem at all.” With splayed fingers, Maria combed the heavy wealth of her dark hair from her face and, again, didn’t seem to notice that it fell back exactly as it had been. “I’m betting your experts have already found a timer. Probably as part of an incendiary device attached within the necessary proximity of the fuel tank.”
Jericho’s head jerked once in admission, but he said nothing else. As intrigued as before, he watched and waited.
“This was meant to be a warning, Jericho.” Maria didn’t move this time as she raked the destroyed hull again with a narrowed stare. “Only a warning.” She looked to him then, reading his concurring thoughts on his darkly grim face. “But as warnings go, it was worse than stupid.”
Beyond the lift of a questioning brow barely visible beneath the tilt of his broad-brimmed hat, as sheriff, friend, and lover, he offered no opinion.
Maria crossed her arms beneath her breasts, mindful even in this lurid situation of the lingering tenderness left by the scrape of Jericho’s beard and the sweet tug of his suckling. Curbing a sense of mourning for the exuberant innocence of those recent hours, her gaze scoured over the blackened steel one more time before returning to his. Her voice was soft, a little strained as it echoed the bitterness in her eyes. “Whoever he is, he’s not only stupid, but a fool in the bargain.”
“Stupid for this single, senseless act, because he answered the most critical question you asked yourself last night.” Jericho spoke at last, quietly, with every trace of emotion carefully leached from his voice. “He was one of the patrons at the museum.”
“A patron of the past of Belle Terre.” The title seemed ludicrous given a less archaic past. A past that directly spawned this oblique attack. “A patron and a fool if he thinks that because I ran away once, I would again.
“Because things are different now,” she said, almost to herself. “I’m not that frightened young girl from the wrong side of town anymore. And it’s been a long time since I ran from anything.”
Except me, Jericho wanted to say.
Only hours ago he would have given his soul to keep Maria in Belle Terre. But he knew that neither his soul nor his love was enough. Now that the gauntlet had been thrown and taken up, he wondered if it would mean her life if she stayed.
“Sheriff Rivers.” Court Hamilton stood a pace away, a look of apology for intruding on an obviously intense conversation on his face. “Uncle…I’m sorry, sir. I meant, Captain Hamilton would like a word with you.”
Yancey Hamilton, head of the state’s special forces unit, was as much a gentleman as he was a professional. If he sent the deputy to interrupt what he would surely perceive as Jericho’s interview of the intended victim, it was because he’d made an important discovery, or arrived at a pertinent opinion. Maybe one Maria Elena shouldn’t hear. At least not just yet.
“Of course.” Turning from his deputy to Maria, Jericho took her hand in both of his. “Beyond what further study the special investigators might need, there’s nothing else to be done here. If you don’t mind, I’ll ask Deputy Hamilton to take you back to…”
“Back to the Inn at River Walk,” Maria inserted for him. For reasons she didn’t understand, and certainly couldn’t explain, she didn’t want to tarnish her memories of her night with Jericho with the shocking ugliness of the morning. “I have a room there. I was scheduled to check out this morning, but I doubt Eden Cade will object if I stay over for a bit longer.”
Jericho would have felt better if she were tucked away in the safety of his own home. Or better yet, if she were miles removed from any threat of danger. But this was neither the time nor the place to discuss what he wanted for her.
“The Inn at River Walk, then.” A frown channeled between his brows and deepened the lines at his eyes briefly before being chased away by a forced smile. Releasing her and stepping away, Jericho addressed his deputy. “Court, if you would, please escort Ms. Delacroix to her lodgings. Stay close, until Yancey and I have finished here and I’m free.”
Deputy Hamilton snapped to attention