“What?”
“If being attacked when you were a girl turned out to be good, then why did you attack me?”
“Instinct,” she said, not liking what he was saying.
“I think that over the years you’ve told yourself some great big lies. As for not wanting revenge, what would you do if some man raped your daughter?”
“Kill him,” Eden said softly, then looked at him. “Are you feeling sorry for me?”
They were in front of her house, and he turned off the car engine. “I think maybe I’d feel sorry for anyone in the world before I gave you any sympathy. And I mean that as a compliment.”
Eden smiled at him. “Thank you.” She looked out the windshield at her old house; she didn’t want to go inside. Her beautiful house now had cut cushions and broken furniture. And, worse, it had memories of being unsafe.
“Come on,” Jared said cheerfully. “I think you’ll like what you see.”
He got out of the car, then waited for her to get out. When she was slow going up the porch stairs, he took her arm in his and pulled her up to the front door. Jared took a big new key from his pocket and unlocked the door.
“Where did that come from?” she asked, wide-eyed. “And how did you get it? You haven’t been out of my sight all day.”
He smiled at her. “I do have a few secrets of my own,” he said as he opened the door and went inside.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, following him. “That I have secrets? I don’t. I’m an open book. I—” She broke off because she’d entered the hall and was looking about her. The secretary was not only now standing upright, but had also been repaired. “Who—? How—? When—?”
“I made a few calls and the agency sent some people.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You gave them permission to search my house, didn’t you?”
“Saves having to get a warrant.”
She knew she should be angry at him, but just then she saw a little camera in the corner of the ceiling. She whirled on him. “What have you done? And don’t lie to me! I want to know all of it.?
?
“I had some security put in, that’s all. Cameras inside and out. An alarm system. We’re hooked up with my office.”
Eden sat down on the little French couch against the wall. “Your office? You mean the FBI? I’m now directly connected to the FBI?”
“Yes,” he said, not seeming to understand her problem.
Eden looked as though she wanted to cry. “You were on the phone most of the day and I saw you get angry more than once. That this house has been fitted out with security equipment, and that lots of money has been spent on my house is important, isn’t it? Why didn’t the FBI send me away somewhere safe?” When she looked at him, he didn’t meet her eyes. “They want to use me as bait, don’t they? Like that goat with the T. rex in that movie.”
“Jurassic Park,” Jared said, looking away and avoiding her eyes. “I liked that movie. It was exciting. In my world too often really bad things happen to people, but in a movie you can make happy endings. It’s nice.” When she said nothing, he turned to look at her, then gave a sigh. “Yeah. You’re to be the bait. This guy Applegate seems to have been involved in more than we thought he was. They just decoded his computer disks, and he was taking in information as well as giving it out. He was a sort of satellite to a lot of people, but we don’t know who they were. There are no addresses, no names. He seems to have memorized most of the vital information.”
“So the only name you have is mine.”
“That’s right.”
“And your ‘office,’ as you call it, thinks that someone might come to me to find out what I know. Come here again, that is, like they came this morning. Of course you thought they were your own people because you’d arranged for them to scare me, but they turned out to be actual criminals, so now your office thinks I really do know something.”
“You really are clever, you know that?” When she didn’t smile, he sat down beside her. “Ms. Palmer…Eden, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think you know anything, and I said so today. I don’t know why Applegate swallowed your name, but it’s the only clue we have. I know I haven’t known you for very long, but in this business if you don’t learn to read people quickly, it could mean your life. I think you’re an innocent in all this, but no one else believes that. I’m sorry for this, but you’re going to have me inside the house and men on shifts outside. I don’t think you’ll ever see them, but they’ll be there. Whether we like it or not, you either know something or have something that someone wants.”
When she didn’t say anything, he stood up. “Come on, we both need sleep. Tomorrow we’ll start looking through this house to see what we can find.”
“I have to meet Brad tomorrow.”
“That’s not until the afternoon.”
“I need to research eighteenth-century gardens so I can start designing them. After I see the land, that is. And I have to get to those manuscripts from my publishing house. They have deadlines on them. And I need to call my daughter to see how she’s doing. And I—”