Lisa blushed and looked away. “Do you hate me?”
Matt pulled her close, breathing in the warm scent of her. “I could never hate you. You’re everything to me.”
Lisa looked pained. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not? It’s true. You know it’s true. I think I might hate him, but that’s a different matter. And I certainly don’t think you should be protecting him at your own expense.”
“I have to protect him,” said Lisa.
“Why?”
“Because. It’s my duty. We promised not to reveal each other’s identity.”
“Yeah, but that was before Miles was murdered and you were raped. That kind of changes things, don’t you think? Liu obviously suspects he was involved.”
Lisa shook her head in silent misery. “Nothing changes a promise. Breaking a vow is wrong. It’s wrong.” She rolled away from him to the other side of the bed.
“How well do you know this guy?” asked Matt, his blood running cold. What if Inspector Liu and Danny were right? Not about Lisa being an accomplice to the murder of her husband—that was ridiculous—but about her lover being the killer? He clearly still had some sort of hold over her.
Lisa answered with her face to the wall. “How well does anybody know anyone?” More riddles. “How well do you and I know each other, if it comes to that?”
The echoes of Danny McGuire’s words were uncomfortable. Had that conversation really only been last night? It felt like a lifetime ago.
“Tell me his name, Lisa.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Matt said bitterly, “You don’t trust me.”
Lisa turned back around, propping herself up on her elbow, her magnificent breasts tumbling onto the Frette sheets between them. “I do trust you, Matt,” she said indignantly. “You have no idea what a big deal that is for me. At least I’m being honest, which is more than I can say for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“That phone call last night. You brushed it off when I asked you about it. But it wasn’t just a ‘misunderstanding with a friend,’ was it? It was about me.”
Matt sighed. “Okay. Yes, it was.” After all this time it was a relief to admit it. He told her about Danny McGuire, how he’d worked on the original investigation into Andrew Jakes’s homicide and since moved to Interpol, but how Matt had tracked him down and told him about the other murders, of Didier Anjou and Piers Henley.
“The other widows all disappeared, as you know, but you were still safe, at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. I flew out here to find out what I could and report back to McGuire.”
The blood drained from Lisa’s face.
“And did you? ‘Report back,’ I mean? Oh my God. Is that why you slept with me? To try to get more information out of me, to get me to open up?”
“No!” Matt shook his head vehemently. “That’s why I came out here, but once I met you, everything changed. I haven’t contacted McGuire once, I swear. That was part of the reason he was pissed at me last night on the phone. I disappeared on him.”
Lisa drew her knees up to her chest, the sheet wrapped defensively around her. She thought about what Matt had said. Eventually she asked him, “What was the other part? You said that was ‘part of the reason’ he was pissed. What was the other part?”
Matt swallowed. In for a penny, in for a pound. He might as well tell her now.
“He’d spoken to Liu. He told me you were cheating on Miles and that he thought you might have been an accessory to his murder.”
Lisa gasped.
“I know, I know. I told him he was blowing smoke out of his ass, that you had nothing to do with it. But he wanted me to leave you, to get out of Mirage and come home. Liu had pictures of you and me together. He’d put two and two together and made about a thousand. I think Danny was worried that if I got arrested it would come out that he and I were working together. The folks at Interpol aren’t too thrilled about having amateurs meddling in their cases. Danny might have gotten in trouble, or at the very least been pulled off the case.”
“So you knew I was cheating on Miles,” said Lisa. “You knew and it didn’t bother you?”
“I didn’t know. McGuire told me you were, but I didn’t believe him. It didn’t jibe with the Lisa I know.”