Together always (23 page)

He slid his left hand into the pocket of his jacket and opened the front door with his right. He wouldn't be back here now if John hadn't called to tell him that the lawyer had papers they all needed to sign—something to do with Mike's estate. It was too soon. He needed more time away from Lily, time to regain his equilibrium, time for her to think

about what he'd said. Maybe she'd see the sense in his arguments. He ignored the pain that thought brought with it.

The house seemed to welcome him. This place was home in a way no other place had ever been. The feeling had changed with Mike's death but the welcome was still there. He shut the door quietly but apparently not quietly enough.

"Trace?" Lily's voice preceded her by only a moment. As always, Trace felt a funny little catch in his throat when he saw her. She was wearing jeans and a loose gray sweatshirt, her hair held back from her face with combs. Nothing fancy. If she was wearing makeup, it was too subtle for him to notice. On some women, the casual attire might have looked sloppy. On Lily, it looked like... Lily. Exquisite.

'*Hi."

"Hi." She watched him, her eyes a little uncertain. "How are you?"

"Fine. Just fine." He started to shrug off his jacket, then remembered his hand and left it on. "Is the lawyer here yet?"

"No. I guess he's running a bit late."

"Must be." He looked at her and then looked away. What was he supposed to say to her? It wasn't possible to ignore the things they'd said to each other the last time they'd talked, but that was what he had to do. "How's John?"

"Fine. Just fine. He's in the living room."

There was a long silence while Trace tried not to look at her—and found it impossible. How could he look at anything else? It took all his willpower to drag his eyes away from her.

"I guess I'll go say hello to John."

"Trace, I-"

"Not now, Lily. Not now." He was unable to resist the urge to touch her, even if just for a moment, and his fingers trailed across the softness of her cheek. She closed her eyes

as if savoring the light touch. Before she could open them again, he was gone.

John was seated in an overstuffed chair—the one Mike had always favored—a newspaper spread across his lap. He glanced up as Trace came into the room and Trace had the uneasy feeling that John saw a lot of things that he'd just as soon have left unseen. He was immediately aware of the dark circles under his eyes and the hollows in his cheeks.

"How's the leg?" He nodded to where John had his injured leg stretched out on a hassock.

**Not bad. A little stiff but that's about it. How's the apartment?"

*'What's wrong with your apartment?"

Trace winced at Lily's question. John shrugged. "Sorry."

"Sorry about what? What's wrong with your apartment?" Lily came to stand between the two men, one dark brow arched in question.

"Nothing much. A small fire. No big deal. The damage is already pretty well cleaned up."

"A small fire? Does this have something to do with someone trying to kill you?"

Trace shook his head. "Not unless they're doing an incredibly clumsy job of it. I wasn't even home the night it happened." He didn't mention the fact that there'd been quite a few incidents that had stopped short of being actually life threatening. That they were connected to Mike's murder, he didn't doubt, but there was no reason to tell Lily that.

"Then why didn't you want me to know?"

"Because I knew you'd worry," he answered honestly.

"You were right." To his relief, she was willing to let the subject drop. The relief dissipated with her next words. "You want me to take your coat?"

He thought of the bandages on his left hand, considered how odd it was going to look if he kept his coat on in the comfortably warm living room, and surrendered to the inevitable.

*'Sure/' He shrugged the coat off.

*'Trace! What happened to your hand?" The coat was tossed in the direction of the sofa as she took his injured hand in hers, looking at the bandage that circled his palm.

"It's no big deal. I cut myself."

''You don't put a bandage like this on a little cut. This looks like a professional job. What happened?"

She looked up at him, her green eyes wide with concern, cradling his injured hand in her palms. Trace wanted to sink into her eyes and leave all his troubles behind him. Instead he pulled his hand away from her, flexing it to show how minor the injury was, trying not to wince at the protesting twinge of pain as the stitches pulled at his flesh.

"It took a couple of stitches, that's all. I grabbed the wrong end of a knife."

"It must have hurt a lot."

Her words brought the pain to mind, the. instant when he'd reached into his mailbox and felt the blade bite into his palm. Instead of a handful of junk mail, he'd drawn back a bloodied pahn. It could have been worse. That's what he told himself, what he told the detectives when they came out to examine the booby trap, what he told Captain Jacobs when Jacobs wanted to put him in a safe house. It could have been worse. And if he went into a safe house, how were they going to draw this nut out?

His eyes met John's over the top of Lily's head and he read more comprehension there than he liked.

"Any clues as to who is trying to kill you?" John asked.

Trace frowned. He didn't want to talk about it in front of Lily. He didn't want to worry her any more than she al-

ready was. But the question had been asked and she was looking at him with as much interest as John.

**No real progress. We're still going through the files. We haven't turned up much yet."

"Well, they've got to do something. You shouldn't be walking around on the street like this. I mean, you should have a guard or something. Just what are they doing to protect you?" She looked so upset on his behalf that Trace couldn't help but take some pleasure in her concern.

"Captain Jacobs suggested that I go to stay in a safe house, but if I do that, then this guy might just go underground until I show up again. There's the same problem with armed guards. Not to mention the fact that we don't have the manpower to do that twenty-four hours a day."

"Well, you can't just walk around waiting to get shot." She wrapped her arms around her midriff and Trace knew she was trying to conceal her trembling. He wanted to hold her and tell her that everything was going to be all right but he couldn't do that.

"I'm being careful and I'm wearing a bulletproof vest. It's not like I'm walking back and forth on the street like a duck in a shooting gallery. I'll be fine. Sooner or later this guy will show himself and we'll nab him and then we'll have Mike's killer."

"Just make sure you get him before he gets you." Lily's stem words didn't match the pleading in her eyes. Trace's heart melted and he had to draw on every ounce of willpower he possessed to prevent himself from taking her in his arms and holding her close.

"Isn't this lawyer pretty late? Has he called or anything?" Trace quickly diverted the conversation.

John shook his head. "Nope. Not a word. He should have been here twenty minutes ago. Maybe he got caught in traffic."

**Could be. He'll probably be here any minute now."

But twenty minutes crept by and there was still no sign of the lawyer. The three of them sat in the living room making increasingly labored conversation. At least it seemed labored to Trace. He was painfully aware of Lily every moment. It was heaven and hell being so close to her and yet still so far apart. Lily seemed distracted, inclined to lose the thread of the conversation, her sentences trailing off into nothing.

Only John seemed at ease, carrying the conversation practically by himself when necessary. And when a silence occurred, he seemed just as comfortable with that. Another twenty minutes crept by and it was becoming pretty clear that the lawyer wasn't going to show up.

"Maybe his car broke down," Lily suggested.

*'Could be. I'm going to call his office and see if they know anything." Trace crossed to the phone, checking the number in the address book written in Mike's scrawled hand. ''Did he say what he wanted?"

John shrugged. "Just that he had some papers for us to sign, some final stuff about the estate, I guess."

"Probably." But the lawyer's office had no idea what he was talking about. They weren't aware of Mr. Lavery's having an appointment to see them; besides, they said, he rarely called at a client's home.

Trace set down the phone, quizzical. He told Lily and John what the secretary had told him and the three of them looked at one another, none of them willing to voice their suspicions.

"Maybe he just forgot to tell his secretary," Lily said.

"Maybe." Trace glanced at his watch. "One way or another, I'm not going to hang around here much longer."

He made it sound as if he had other, far more important things to do, though the truth of the matter was that his only

plans were to go back to the station house and sift through files for the thousandth time.

Lily stood up abruptly. "You know, I told the other teachers I'd only be gone an hour or so and it's already been almost twice that. I think I'll go ahead and get back to work. If the lawyer shows up, tell him he can bring any papers he has down to the school and I'll sign them there." She spoke rapidly, her tone a little too clipped, a little too hurried.

"I thought you took the afternoon off?" It was John who asked the question. Trace was busy studying the toes of his boots.

"No." She looked at Trace, her heart in her eyes. He glanced up and then away, steeling himself. "No, I really should be getting back." Trace looked up as she left the room, her back ramrod straight, her steps brisk. But he knew it wasn't his imagination that her eyes were a httle too bright. The front door shut behind her and the room was silent.

"You're a hell of a lot stupider than I think you are if you let her go like that." John's tone held a bite.

"It's for the best," Trace told him.

"Like hell it is. I don't know the details of what your problems are but I know she's hurting, and if you let her walk away Hke that, you may never be able to repair the damage."

"Mind your own damned business," Trace snarled, but he was already on his way out the door.

Lily was just 0f)ening her car door when he stepped outside. He didn't need to see the hunched set of her shoulders to know that she was either crying or very close to it. No matter what, he couldn't let her go away in tears.

"Lily." She looked up as he called her name. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, as if debating about ignoring him.

and he came down off the steps, calling her name again. 'Xily."

She turned, wiping her face on her sleeve, and Trace felt like a beast. All his talk about never wanting to hurt her and yet it seemed that was all he did. She took a few steps toward him as he strode across the lawn.

And then the world seemed to explode around them.

Afterward Trace could remember every second of what followed as if he'd seen it played in slow motion. There was a hollow roar and the car seemed to swell and bulge like some bizarre kind of insect shedding its skin. The roar became an ear-shattering boom and he saw Lily thrown forward, heard her scream at the same instant the ground seemed to disappear from beneath his feet.

He hit the lawn with enough force to knock the wind out of him, but he was struggling to his feet even before he could register what had happened. His one thought was to get to Lily. His only need was to have her in his arms, to protect her, to shelter her.

"Lily!" He wasn't aware that he screamed her name as he threw himself across the short distance that ^parated him from her still figure. The car was burning, throwing off a fierce amount of heat. Lily was sprawled facedown on the grass, her hair spread around her like a black mourning cloak. Trace caught her under the arms, aware of the heat beating against his face. He dragged her several yards away, praying that he wasn't adding to any injuries she might already have.

"Come on, baby. You're going to be all right. You have to be all right." If anything happened to her, his life wouldn't be worth living. There'd be nothing left in the world for him. Nothing. Lily was everything. Everything bright and beautiful and precious. "You've got to be all right. You just have to be."

He knelt on the grass, turning Lily over and cradling her across his lap. She was so still and pale, her lashes forming thick black crescents on cheeks devoid of color. His hands were shaking too badly to find a pulse but when he bent to lay his head against her chest, he could hear a heartbeat, a little too fast but there.

**Is she all right?" Trace looked up as John hobbled to a halt beside them.

*'She's alive."

'Thank God. How badly is she hurt?"

"I don't know." Trace ran his shaking fingers over her arms and legs. He could find no obvious injuries but that didn't mean there wasn't something internal.

"I'll call an ambulance." He barely acknowledged John's words. All his concentration was on Lily. She had to be all right. She just had to be.

He was still kneeling beside her when John returned with a blanket. He was vaguely aware of the crowd that was gathering on the lawn, some of them watching the car bum, some of them watching him and Lily. One of the neighbors came over and asked if there was anything he could do. Trace hardly heard him. It was John who asked him to make sure that the paramedics could get through when they arrived.

Trace couldn't—wouldn't—pull his gaze from Lily. He had the strange thought that she might slip away from him if he wasn't looking at her every moment. As if the fact that he was concentrating on her could keep her tied to him.

Sirens wailed in the distance, coming nearer. John and a few others herded the crowd back, clearing plenty of room around Trace and Lily and the still smoldering wreck of Lily's car.

Lily's lashes fluttered and she took a deeper breath, which seemed to catch in the middle. Trace leaned closer, stroking the hair back from her forehead.

'*Lily? Sweetheart? Can you hear me?"

Her eyelids flickered and then opened slowly. She stared up at Trace, her eyes dazed, her face still pale as mist.