“You were a target the moment he asked you to front for him.” Eve’s eyes widened, but now wasn’t the time to tell her exactly how dangerous Lyle was. “Get in the car.” He locked his fingers with hers and led her around the back of the Jeep. When they were both inside, doors locked, he pulled out of the parking lot and drove past Lyle.
The moment they rounded the corner, stomach-churning fear swept through him, because for a second she’d made him forget everything that mattered, who he was, why they were on Thirteenth Street in the first place, his duty to protect her. “In fact, you were a target before he walked into Eye Candy and asked you to front for him,” he said. “He’s been thinking about this a long time, Eve. Thinking about you. This isn’t just two old friends playing wrong-side-of-the-tracks games. Something’s happened to him since he left town.”
“Like what?” she asked, searching through her purse.
“I don’t know, but you don’t get expansion opportunities with the Strykers by playing nice with the other kids,” he said, giving her the fit-for-civilian-ears version of the reports he’d read of beatings, torture, murders. They’d totally underestimated Lyle Murphy’s ruthlessness, missed the madness seething behind his eyes. “It’s in his eyes,” Matt finished.
“I’ll have to take a closer look,” she said, her voice shaky as she fumbled with her wallet, sliding the deposit receipt into one of the expansion slots. “Next time I’ll try a different approach. You weren’t all that into it anyway.”
He laughed, that unfamiliar noise she drew from him. “I couldn’t really give it my full attention,” he said, and looked at her. She was uncharacteristically pale, her eyes wide and unseeing. “You okay?”
“No.”
“Put your head between your knees,” he said.
She let her head drop forward and lifted her hair away from her neck. “What do you think?” she asked through the tumbled mass hiding her face. “Coincidence that he shows up in front of the bank while I’m there?”
“He’s following you,” Matt said, glancing in the rearview mirror as he drove. The Escalade was gone. “He wants to know what you’re doing, who you’re with, and why.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve seen his kind before. Psychopaths pop up pretty regularly in war zones.”
Eve blinked, but they were pulling into Eye Candy’s parking lot. There was no time to do anything but scramble through prep. Eve shook out her hands before picking up a knife; he watched for a few seconds to make sure muscle memory took over so she didn’t slice off a finger.
She looked at the clock. “You’re sure I can’t tell Natalie?”
Matt kept up his rhythmic slicing and chopping. “The fewer people we involve, the better. It’s too dangerous.”
“So,” she said, entirely too casually to be casual, “tell me about Ramadi.”
She had a right to know. “Caleb had the basics,” he said. “Two of our guys were injured and pinned down at the back of an alley. I got them out.”
“Under fire.”
Two words, three syllables to describe two mad dashes through a kill zone, just as likely to get hit by a ricocheting bullet from one of his fire team as from one of the snipers. All he could hear was his father’s mantra: Emotions make you weak. No fear. No failure. “Under fire,” he said, and swept the limes into a tub.
She considered this, then said, “How do you do it? How do you go back and forth between lives?”
Eve had one life—friends, family, people she connected with on a regular basis, people she’d regret lying to. He had compartments. He shrugged. “They’re two distinct worlds. My life. My job.”
“Oh,” she said quietly.
Natalie hauled the door open and sashayed into the bar, wearing black leggings, knee-high boots, and a white sweater that clung to her breasts, hips, and thighs. The Eye Candy logo peeked out of the deep V of her sweater. “Well, well,” she said, tugging iPod headphones from her ears. “Where were you all weekend?”
The first big test. “At Chad’s house,” Eve said. “Someone shot out my windows after close Saturday night. Chad was with me, so I went to his house.”
Natalie exclaimed, made all the right noises, asked all the right questions. He stood to the side, observing Eve and Natalie, as he sliced lemons and stocked glasses. Eve didn’t quite seem like herself, her voice a little shaky, her gaze sliding to him every so often, for reassurance, but it was nothing that wouldn’t reasonably be chalked up to nerves after gunfire.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Until I know who did it and why, I didn’t want to get you involved,” Eve said. She looked at Matt. “Chad can take care of himself, and me. He’s going to stay with me for a while.”
“Do your parents know? Caleb?”
“Yes, and I’m worried about Dad,” she said, hoping the effort to change the subject wasn’t too obvious. “He’s not feeling all that great these days. Mom’s pretty spooked. Hey, can you make change in the registers for me? I’m really behind after being gone all weekend.”