Hush (9 page)

“It's over. He's gone. You're safe,” Mr. FBI told her quietly, having paused in the act of lifting himself off her, checked by her death grip on him.

It was only as she saw her hands that she realized that she
had
a death grip on him: her fists were wrapped in his shirt front. There was a soothing note to his deep voice that both served to reassure her and, paradoxically, made her start to shake. Her teeth chattered when she tried to open her mouth. She deliberately clenched them to stop the sound. She was light-headed with reaction, and breathing way too fast. Her heart raced. Her stomach churned.

“You're safe,” he said again, then added, “He's not coming back.”

Riley could almost feel the adrenaline that had been rushing through her bloodstream begin to ebb. She took a deep breath, and just about managed to regulate her breathing. There was nothing she could do about the tremors that racked her. She had to work to let go of the crisp cotton of his shirt, forcing her fingers to open almost one by one.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, as, freed, he crouched beside her. He was a big guy, broad-shouldered, long-legged, muscular: it was like having a mountain crouch beside her. Riley refocused her attention from the wrinkles she'd put in his shirt to his face, and found that she was looking at the tall fed she'd seen earlier at the cemetery.

His eyes were a calm grayish blue, set beneath thick dark brows.

She gave a small, negative shake of her head, then took a breath.

“I saw you earlier. At the cemetery.” Her voice was hoarse, creaky. It hurt her throat to talk.

Before he could reply, the couple from down the hall walked up behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, Riley could see them looming just a few feet away. With her peripheral vision she caught a glimpse of more of her neighbors stepping cautiously into the hall. They moved closer, looking at her and the fed and the damaged wall in fascination, talking among themselves.

“Who is that?”

“The Cowan woman from fourteen G.”

“Wowzers.”

“What happened?”

“Did she get shot?”

“The wall sure did.”

“Was it a robbery?”

“Oh my God, were you raped?”

That last horrified question, louder than the rest and addressed to her by her young female neighbor, was what slammed Riley with the up-to-that-point-forgotten fact that she was naked. It hit her then what she must look like, all pale skin and sprawled limbs, lying on her side on the prickly gray carpet facing the fed, who despite the fact that he could absolutely see it all was, to his credit, keeping his eyes on her face. Her back was turned to her neighbors, but still they were getting quite a view.

Of my bare butt.

The sting of embarrassment gave her the strength to move. Defensively she pulled her knees up to her chest. She wasn't even sure it was enough to make her minimally decent, but under the circumstances it was the best she could do.

“All right, everybody back off,” Mr. FBI said, as something warm and dry settled over her—his suit coat, she discovered as she clutched at it, pulling it around herself gratefully. “Give her some space.”

Riley got the impression of movement behind her as, not surprisingly, her neighbors obeyed and began to retreat into their apartments. She took a deep breath.

Time to get it together
.

“You sure you're not hurt?” he asked, low-voiced, as, with a major effort of will, she sat up, careful to keep his coat wrapped around her. Fortunately, it was large enough to cover about three people her size, and longer on her than some skirts she possessed.
Pulling her legs up beneath it, she left nothing of herself on view except her bare feet, and felt marginally better.

“Yes.” Light-headed from the effort, which had taken more out of her than she would have imagined, Riley dropped her forehead onto her knees and concentrated on taking deep breaths. She was still shaking, and she suddenly realized that at least part of the reason was that she was freezing. Rivulets of now-cold water dripped down her back from her wet hair. Pulling her hair out of the coat, she slid her arms into the sleeves and hugged the garment closer still, willing the shivers to stop.

The man stood up and put his hand down to Riley. “Help you up?”

She had to tilt her head way back to see his face. On the way up, she couldn't help but notice his powerful athlete's build—and the black shoulder holster that bisected the left side of his white shirt. The gun protruding from it made her breath catch.

Welcome to your new life, Riley Cowan.

“Thanks.” She put her hand in his and let him pull her to her feet, careful to keep his jacket closed with her other hand as she moved. As she had thought, it reached almost halfway down her thighs.

“How about we go back inside your apartment and talk?”

“I—”

As soon as he let go of her Riley realized that she'd made a mistake: her knees wouldn't support her.

“Oh,” she finished on a note of surprise as they wobbled. Grabbing his arm for support, taking a staggering sideways step, she started to sink to the floor.

“All right, I got you.” He caught her before she hit, scooping her up in his arms like she weighed nothing. Riley curled an arm around his shoulders as he carried her back into her apartment. He was solid muscle, and at such close quarters he was almost overwhelmingly masculine down to the hint of stubble darkening his square jaw. Having him carry her like that felt surprisingly intimate, but unless she wanted to stay out in the hall—which she didn't—she didn't seem to have a whole lot of choice.

He closed the door behind them, carried her to her couch, and set her down on it.

“Thank you,” she said with assumed composure, as, straightening, he frowned down at her. Conscious suddenly of what she must look like wearing nothing but his sport coat with her bare legs on display, not helped by the knowledge that she was naked beneath it and he knew it and had already seen every inch of her without a stitch on besides, she felt suddenly uncomfortable under that penetrating gaze.

She lifted her chin.

“You're an FBI agent?” It still hurt to talk, and her voice was still hoarse, but she didn't want to just give him the upper hand in whatever interaction was coming. Her tone made it not quite a question. “Could I see some ID, please?”

His eyes narrowed slightly. Then he reached into his back pants pocket, extracted a wallet, flipped it open, and held it out to her.

“Finn Bradley,” he said as she looked at the photo ID displayed behind the clear plastic film.

She nodded her acceptance of his ID, and he flipped the wallet
closed and restored it to his pocket. “I'm Riley Cowan. But I'm guessing you know that.”

He inclined his head. She took that as a big fat
yes
.

“I'm also guessing that you weren't just passing by and happened to hear me scream.”

“You're right, I wasn't. I was on my way to talk to you.” His eyes swept her.

“What do you want to talk about?” If her tone wasn't quite hostile, it was close. She
knew
what he wanted to talk to her about: the money. That was what they all wanted to talk about.

He held up a hand. “Hang on a minute.”

He turned, walked into her bedroom, and disappeared from sight. A moment later he reappeared carrying her bedspread and a towel.

“You're shivering,” he said in response to the look she gave him, and Riley realized it was true. He dropped the towel on her lap, then draped the bedspread around her shoulders. Even as she picked up the towel he continued: “There's blood all over your bathroom. Suppose we start by you telling me what just happened.”

“L
ike I said, I was taking a bath.” Riley's thoughts raced a mile a minute as she pulled the bedspread more closely around her, appreciating its weight and warmth. She
was
shivering, long tremors that racked her body. Her throat hurt and her head hurt and she had various other aches and pains, as well, but none of those were her biggest concern at the moment. Far more urgent was this: How much should she tell him? How much
could
she tell him, without causing herself all kinds of trouble? “I looked up, and there was a man in my bathroom. He tried to kill me.”

“Why?” The blunt question, coupled with the look that accompanied it, was disconcerting.

“You know, I didn't ask him. I was too busy trying to stay alive.” She started blotting her hair with the towel as she spoke, relieved to discover that her heart was slowly regaining its normal rhythm. He watched her with unwavering focus. She found
his gaze mildly—all right, who was she kidding, forget the mildly; acutely was more like it—unnerving, and used the excuse of toweling off the rest of her hair to duck her head and escape it. There was a bump on the back of her skull, she discovered with a grimace as she touched it, and recalled having her head slammed into the hard rim of the tub. It was tender, so she avoided it.

He said nothing more until, with her hair as towel-dry as it was going to get, she gave up and tossed her hair back. Their gazes met. His calm blue eyes told her exactly nothing.

Crap
.

“He tried to kill you,” Bradley prompted. He stood so close she could have reached out and touched him. Now that she was getting a good look at it, she saw that his tie was dark gray, a nice complement to his black suit. His pants leg just brushed the trunk/coffee table in front of the couch. His arms were folded over his chest. By the soft, pale light of her ginger jar lamps, he looked big and dark and dangerous—and way too focused on her for her peace of mind. Riley hated to admit that she found him intimidating, but the truth was she kinda-sorta did. There were damp places on his shirt, and she realized that they must have come from her, when she'd thrown herself naked and streaming wet into his arms.
Not
the most steadying memory ever. “What did he do, exactly?” Bradley pressed, pulling her out of her momentary diversion.

Remembering made her stomach tighten. The fear of dying was still with her, she discovered, even though she had survived. Probably because somewhere deep inside she was convinced that now that they had targeted her, they would never stop until—

She couldn't finish the thought. Instead she looked him in the
eye and said, “He forced my head underwater and held it there until I managed to get away.”

“And how did you do that?”

That answer was easy. It even made her feel better. “I stabbed him in the neck with a comb. It's a rattail comb, with a long, sharp end.”

His eyes flickered, she thought with surprise.

“Ah,” he said, as if that cleared up something—probably the blood in the bathroom—for him. “You know him? Dated him, talked to him, seen him around, anything like that?”

“No.” She wasn't just cold on the outside. She was cold on the inside, too. Freezing, actually, as though the blood that was circulating through her veins had been refrigerated. She had almost died, she was terribly afraid of the “they” that she knew was still out there, and now she was being interrogated by a man who looked like he got his jollies from strong-arming people. No wonder she had the shivers. “I never saw him before in my life.” She took a deep breath and hurried into speech before he could ask her anything else. “He was wearing a ski mask, at first. Then he took it off. That's when I knew he was going to kill me.”

At the memory, her heart lurched.

He inclined his head, which she took as meaning that he agreed with her assessment of what the removal of the ski mask meant.

“Was your door locked?”

“Yes, of course. And the chain was on.”

“No sign of forced entry. I looked as I came in. Door's intact, lock's intact. Chain's in one piece, although that's easily managed. Who has your spare key?” He looked at her speculatively.

“My mother-in-law.” Her voice took on an acerbic edge. “It wasn't her.”

An uptick at the corner of his mouth acknowledged the tone of that last.

“Building maintenance has one, too,” she added. “I don't know who else.”

“All right. We'll just take it as a given that it wouldn't be that hard to get hold of one.” His mouth tightened. His eyes swept her. Something about the look in them reminded Riley that he'd seen her naked. “Did he molest you?”

“No.” Her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and there was a faint ringing in her ears that she put down to reaction. “Nothing like that.”

“You were in the bathtub and he immediately jumped on you and tried to drown you.”

A jerky nod. “I think it was because of my ex-father-in-law. You were at the funeral today. You know about him. About Jeff.” After what had just happened to her, Riley knew she needed help. Jeff had been murdered, she had nearly been murdered, and the bottom line was this guy had just saved her life. Federal agents weren't her favorite people, but she was going to try telling one more law enforcement type the truth about Jeff's death. Her voice hardened. Her eyes challenged him. “He didn't kill himself.”

“You got a reason for thinking that?”

“Jeff wasn't suicidal. Not
ever
,” she said. “He wouldn't have done that to his mother or sister. There was no note. He—there are all kinds of reasons.” She felt her insides twist as the reality of how close she had come to meeting Jeff's fate hit her all over again.
“Jeff was convinced that someone was killing people who were close to his father. After what happened to Jeff, after what just happened to me, I think so, too.”

“With what purpose?”

“I don't know,” she replied with a touch of impatience. “To send a message, I guess.”

His eyes stayed fixed on her face. “You think this guy was trying to kill you to send a message to George Cowan? What message?”