Eve’s glance shifted to the skull in front of her. Talking to Cara had brought home to her that life was difficult and filled with problems, but with effort they had a chance of being solved. The ugliness that had been done to this young woman and the silent threat of her being deposited on Eve’s doorstep might not be as easy to resolve. She was once more feeling that sudden sense of urgency again. “No, next week is just fine, Cara. No hurry.”
After she had hung up the phone, she sat there an instant, looking at the ruin of that scorched and blackened face. What had driven this monster to try to destroy whatever beauty of form and soul this woman had possessed? “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “He couldn’t do what he intended to do. We won’t let him win.” Then she picked up her measuring device again. “I’ll try to get through this boring stuff quickly, but it has to be done. Then we can get down to bringing you back to the way you should be, Sylvie…”
CARNEGIE RESIDENCE HALL NEW YORK CITY
“You’re going to be late,” Darcy Nichols said over her shoulder as she ran past Cara on the way to the stairs. “The bus for that Wounded Warrior Concert in Connecticut leaves in ten minutes. You know Madam Gallono will kill us if we don’t show up there on time.”
“I won’t be late.” Cara was hurrying after her. “And if I am, all I’ll have to do is slip in behind you and no one will even notice me.” She chuckled. “You know how to grab and hold the spotlight.”
“True.” Darcy glanced over her shoulder with a brilliant smile that had a hint of mischief. “Only a few months together, and you’ve learned how to make use of me. Everyone thinks that I’m the lightweight, and you’re so serious and dedicated, but you’ve got them all fooled.”
“Yeah, I’m clearly a master manipulator,” Cara said as she followed Darcy down the stairs. “I wouldn’t have been late, but that call just took longer than I thought it—”
She stopped short.
She’d reached the turn of the stairs and come in view of the reception area below and saw the man who stood there by the desk.
“Jock?” she whispered.
Darcy had stopped, too, her eyes widening. “Who on earth is that?” she murmured. “My God, he’s fantastic.”
That’s what everyone thought when they first saw Jock, Cara thought. Fair hair, tan, perfect, almost Grecian features, shimmering gray eyes. Strength and grace and that quiet stillness that hid so much. When she had first seen him when she was much younger, she had thought he looked like the prince from a fairy tale. These days she hardly noticed what he looked like on the outside because there was so much inside. But this was Darcy’s first sight of him, and she was getting the full impact.
“That’s my friend, Jock Gavin,” Cara said.
“And you never told me about him? Introduce me. I believe I may be in lust.”
“You don’t have time.” Cara was meeting Jock’s eyes as she finished walking slowly down the stairs. Her heart was plunging. Fear. She was so afraid of what was to come. No smile. And those gray eyes were cold. “You have a bus to catch, Darcy.”
“So do you.”
“I’ll get there some other way.”
“And you want me out of here,” Darcy said shrewdly. “I would, too, if I were you. I should have known. You’re such a workaholic, it would take someone like that to get you to sit up and take notice.” She smiled and gave Cara’s arm a quick squeeze. “Don’t worry. I’ll cover for you. You were joking, but I really can make black look white or gold or whatever. Just make sure you get there. See you in Connecticut.” Then she was dashing across the reception area and out the front door.
Cara braced herself, then was walking to the reception desk toward Jock. “You didn’t have to come to see me. A phone call would have done the trick. Or even an email. All I wanted to know was that you were alive and well. Would that have been too much?”
“Aye,” he said coldly, his slight Scottish accent making the word even more clipped. “The way I was feeling, I had to block you out entirely. I couldn’t take any more, Cara.”
“You can take anything. I know how strong you are.” Even to herself her voice sounded uneven. She paused, then forced herself to say the words she’d been preparing. “If you don’t want to see me anymore, then that’s different. But you shouldn’t have just walked away from me. You’re important to me. You’re my best friend. You should have known I’d come after you. That’s all I wanted to say to you if you’d answered my calls.” His face was so hard, but she forced herself to go on. “But you didn’t, and that’s an answer in itself, isn’t it?” She couldn’t take this any longer. She was hurting too much. She walked past him toward the front door. “All you had to do was make me understand. Evidently, that’s what you came to do. Thanks for making it clear. Good-bye, Jock.”
His hand was on her arm. “You’re not going anywhere. I came here to talk to you. I’m going to do it.”
She shook her head. “I have to get to Connecticut. I have a concert. It’s an obligation.”
His lips twisted. “And I know how you feel about obligations.” He took her violin case. “I hired a limo for the day. I knew this wasn’t going to be a quick fix, and your place here in this residency is like a nunnery. I’ll drive you to your ‘obligation.’” He nudged her toward the gray limo at the curb. “Just give the driver the address, then lean back and stop looking at me like that. I’ve had enough for right now.”
She hesitated and got into the limo. She gave the uniformed driver behind the plastic divider the address of the auditorium in Fairfield, Connecticut. “Quick fix?” She didn’t look at him. “Is it going to be a fix at all? I thought maybe you’d decided I was getting in your way. I know how busy you’ve been lately.”
“And that’s why you’ve been bombarding me with calls and emails? Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to ignore them? You never give up.”
“No, I don’t. I had to be sure. Did you expect me to let pride get in my way after all we’ve been through together? I had to make you tell me.” She still wasn’t looking at him, her eyes fastened on the plastic shield separating them from the driver. “So tell me, Jock. You decided that I wasn’t worth the trouble? That I’m just a kid who wandered into your life and brought you nothing but headaches and now you want out? Because that’s what I’ve been thinking for the last three months.”
“Look at me.”
“You told me not to look at you.”
“Look at me.”
She looked at him.
The hardness and cold was gone. There was only weariness. “You’re the one who should want out. How many times have I told you that I interfere with your life? You have your music, you have Eve and Joe and Michael. You’re only eighteen. You have your whole life in front of you. I just get in your way.”
“How could you get in my way when I hardly ever see you?”
“I seem to manage,” he said dryly. “There’s no one in the world as loyal and steadfast as you, Cara. I saved your life, so you think it belongs to me? It belongs to you. Only to you, Cara.”
“You bet it does. So I should do what I want to do with it.” She made an impatient gesture. “And you know that’s only the tip of the iceberg. You became my friend, and there’s no one who knows me like you do. Everyone I loved had been killed, and I felt so alone inside. And then you were there, and I wasn’t alone anymore. I can’t even talk to Eve the way I talk to you.” She paused. “Even though you don’t feel you can talk to me.”
He went still. “I talk to you all the time, Cara.”
“About me, always about me, never about you.”
His lips twisted. “I’m quite sure Jane and Eve have filled you in on my background. It would be their duty to warn you against me.”
“Of course they told me. But not because they thought there was any chance of your hurting me. They know you, Jock. It wasn’t your fault. You were younger than me when that terrorist, Reilly, brainwashed you and tried to make you into an assassin.”
“He didn’t try, he succeeded,” Jock corrected without expression. “I was the ultimate assassin.”
“And you ended up in a mental hospital where MacDuff found you after you tried to commit suicide.” She repeated, “It wasn’t your fault.”