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Clutching his black dinner jacket with her right hand, she sagged against him, her knees refusing to support her. “The fire,” she gasped. “You did that?”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time. I was impressed that you took immediate advantage of the chance to get away from the jerk. Good job, Tara.”
Other people were suddenly running toward them. Lights flashed, voices shouted. And Tara felt herself giving in to the agony radiating from her left arm.
Her knees buckled completely. Jeremy supported her, murmuring reassurances.
And then Blake was there.
“Tara.” His voice was strangled. “Tara, I’m so sorry.”
Jeremy eased her into Blake’s familiar arms, saying, “I’ll get an ambulance.”
Tara opened her mouth to order him to do nothing of the sort. She didn’t need an ambulance. It was only a bruised arm, for Pete’s sake.
But nothing emerged from her dry, tight throat except a hoarse exclamation of pain.
“She’s going into shock, Blake.” It was Stephanie?
?s voice that time. “We need to lay her down.”
“Blake?” Tara’s voice was a bare whisper. She tried to hold onto his shirt as he lowered her gently to the grass.
“Don’t try to talk, sweetheart.”
He was leaning close to her, but for some reason she was having trouble focusing on his face, even with all the light that had suddenly appeared around them. She struggled to make herself heard over the confusion. “I have to...know. Is Botkin...alive?”
“Yes. He’s alive. Thanks to you, Tara. If you hadn’t gone into that office when you did, Doren would have finished him off.”
The sheer relief of knowing that she hadn’t helplessly watched a man die was almost too much for Tara. “Oh, Blake, I...”
“Shh. Rest now. We’ll talk later.”
That suddenly seemed like a very good idea. Tara closed her eyes and let Blake take care of her one more time.
12
“YOUR APARTMENT is very nice.”
In response to Stephanie’s comment, Tara glanced around the living room that now looked so strange to her, though it had only been eight days since she’d last been in it. “Thank you.”
At least Doren, or whoever had been inside her apartment, hadn’t made too much of a mess after he’d let himself in with her key, she found herself thinking rather distantly. A few drawers had been riffled through as Doren had looked for clues to where Tara might be hiding, but there’d been no real damage done. The only thing that looked out of place was the dead rose stuck in a crystal bud vase on her coffee table.
Gazing at that rose, Tara felt her heart clench. It seemed almost as if months had passed since Blake had pressed the vivid red bloom into her hand.
Sitting in the wingback chair Blake had occupied that afternoon eight days ago, Stephanie sipped the soft drink Tara had offered her when they’d arrived an hour earlier. “It’s a shame Doren wouldn’t tell you what he did with your purse,” she said. “Now you’ll have to replace everything in it.”
“There wasn’t that much,” Tara answered with a shrug that caused a twinge of discomfort in her left arm, which was immobilized in a bulky cast and suspended in a sling. “I’d just stuffed a few things in it for the evening. It won’t be that hard for me to replace everything.”
“Good.” Stephanie looked around the living room again, and cleared her throat. “Is there anything else I can do for you this afternoon? I’d be happy to run to the grocery store. I’m sure you need some supplies.”
“No, I have enough for now. But thank you.”
Tara shifted to a slightly more comfortable position on her sofa, cradling her injured arm in her lap. The medication she’d taken three hours earlier, prior to the trip from Savannah on a small, private jet Jeremy Kane had generously provided for her, was beginning to wear off. Her arm ached dully in a promise of worse to come.
“Stephanie, I’m so grateful to you for accompanying me on this trip, but there’s no need for you to hang around here. I’ll probably just get some rest and then make some calls later this afternoon. Jeremy’s pilot is waiting for you at the airport, and I know you’re ready to get back to Savannah. I’ll be fine.”
Stephanie bit her lip. “I really hate to leave you here alone.”
