“The marshals are going to want to talk to me. The FBI. It won’t just be Juliet.”
“You know what you can and can’t say.” Her green eyes were as hard as emeralds now. “If I didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t be talking to the marshals at all.”
“You’re not scaring me, Mia.”
“I’m not trying to. I’ve already given you my advice. You don’t need to find another fire to put out. Go home, Major Brooker. Visit your family. Mourn your wife. It’s time.”
After she left, Ethan stood in the middle of his fancy suite and tried to conjure up Char. The feel of her, the taste of her. The bubble of her laughter.
He could see her dark eyes, filled with regret and a sense of inevitability.
“I’m losing you, Ethan.”
Had she actually spoken those words, or did he just imagine them?
Her death wasn’t his fault. Everyone had said so.
He hadn’t found Bobby Tatro in Colombia, and now Tatro had killed a doorman and traumatized a teenager.
Not your fault.
“Bullshit.”
Ethan tossed his things into his suitcase, then headed down to the lobby and checked out, assuring the desk clerk that he had, indeed, enjoyed his stay. It’d just been premature to think he was due for any kind of a break.
Nobody congratulated Juliet for taking Bobby Tatro into custody. She’d have punched anyone who did. He’d barged into her building and killed a man. He’d pushed his way into her apartment and scared the hell out of a teenage girl. Her niece.
It was too much. Too damn much.
But she tried to keep herself from pacing and looking as horrified and livid as she was. What Wendy needed right now was a calm, controlled aunt, not a wild woman who wanted to put her fist through the wall.
Wendy had crawled onto the double bed in the small bedroom and had tucked her knees under her chin and wrapped her hands tightly around her shins. At least, Juliet thought, the bedroom was free of dead fish, sopping plants, FBI agents, NYPD detectives, marshals and crime-scene types.
She’d have taken her niece out of the building altogether, but she didn’t want to risk Wendy seeing Juan’s body. The crime-scene workers would be upsetting enough. Passing through the lobby after everyone was gone and everything was cleaned up—Juan’s body safely at the medical examiner’s office—would be traumatic enough.
Let Joshua be the one with her when she had to face that reality.
“Do you want some tea?” Juliet asked, her jaw tight with unreleased tension.
Wendy shook her head, her eyes downcast, as if she were counting the squares in Juliet’s quilt.
“Water?”
Another shake of the head.
Because a federal agent was involved, the FBI was on the scene—Special Agent Joe Collins. He’d investigated the shooting of the two marshals in Central Park in May, and Juliet had ended up on the wrong side of his suspicions, which had brought him to her apartment to question her. He obviously didn’t like being back under similar circumstances. Collins was an experienced agent, a red-faced man in his midforties. People sometimes assumed he was laid-back, coasting toward retirement, but that was a mistake.
He’d grimaced when Juliet had told him about Ethan and Tatro and the picture of her. “Brooker again? What is it with you two?”
She’d had no good answer.
She sat on the edge of the bed. Right now, she needed to concentrate on her niece. Brooker, Collins, Rivera—they all could wait until Joshua arrived and took over care of his only child. “Your dad should be here any minute.”
Wendy shrugged her small shoulders.
“It’ll be okay—”
“I saw him yesterday.”
Juliet felt a sudden chill but took a mental step back from her own emotions. “Saw who, Wendy?”
She raised dark, tearless eyes and managed to settle her gaze on her aunt. “He sat next to me at the diner where I had lunch right after I got here.”
“Wendy, who…?”
“The man who—who was in here.” Sniffling, she pressed her chin into her knees, her eyes glazing over again. “He knew my name. At the diner. I didn’t tell him. He must have overheard me talking to Juan when he had me show him my ID.”
“Did you see him here?” Juliet asked. “In the building? Out on the street?”
She shook her head, her chin still mashed into her knees. “I didn’t notice him until he sat next to me in the diner. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t here. I just—New York’s full of people. I just didn’t notice.”
“It’s okay.” But Juliet had stiffened, realizing that Bobby Tatro had been in the neighborhood yesterday, twenty-four hours before he’d killed Juan, broke into her apartment and terrorized her niece. “Wendy, did you tell Special Agent Collins or one of the NYPD detectives about the diner?”
“No. I didn’t think of it until now.” She averted her eyes, her lips chapped and swollen from biting down on them. “I should have told you about him sooner. I knew it wasn’t right that he knew my name.”