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  Collecting her laptop from where she’d left it in the kitchen, she climbed the stairs, wondering if Adam would still want to stop in New Orleans on the way back up. At this point, she wasn’t sure if she was up to showing him the sights she had promised. All she wanted to do was crawl into her wicker bed at home with the remote, a jar of chunky peanut putter, a bowl of celery sticks, set the air-conditioner to full blast and forget this whole weekend ever happened. Maybe then she could concentrate on her life—and the life of her baby—again, without having to worry about her strained relationship with her father. And she’d be able to forget about her lustful thoughts for Adam.

  Eva paused at the top of the steps and leaned briefly against the hall wall. Her reason for coming back hadn’t been solely to prepare her father for her divorce. She had wanted to mend the damaged relationship. Repair it before the truth about her most recent failure caused the rift between them to grow wider. She needed to strengthen a generation of weak family ties for the sake of the baby growing within her.

  Pushing off the wall, she picked up her step, telling herself it didn’t matter now. In a couple of hours she and Adam would be on the road, and everything would be back to the way it was before they’d come.

  Intending to unlock the guest room through the connecting bathroom, she opened her bedroom door and slipped in. She took three steps then came to a complete stop. She stood in the middle of a circle of clothes she recognized as a combination of hers and Adam’s.

  It took a second to sink in that what she was seeing wasn’t normal. That the dresser drawers tilting out at odd angles, the uneven mattresses, and the contents of the closet covering the floor weren’t a result of spring-cleaning—or another of her grandmother’s attempts to get them to stay. The room had been trashed.

  7

  DOWNSTAIRS, the alarm in Eva’s voice as she called for him sent a tidal wave of panic through Adam’s veins. Pushing away from the dinner table, he met the gazes of her brother and father, then rushed from the room. He didn’t stop until he found Eva, safe, in her bedroom.

  “Are you all right?” He gently grasped her arms and pulled her to him.

  “I’m—I’m fine,” she said.

  Her face was a little too pale, her skin too cool beneath his fingers.

  Beyond the relief upon seeing she was okay came the disturbing awareness that somebody had rifled through the room. And had done a fine job of it, too. When Tolly caught up with him, Adam stepped aside to let him enter the room.

  “Are you okay?” Tolly asked gruffly.

  Eva nodded, her hand shaking as she pushed her hair back from her face. “The room was like this when I came in.”

  “There’s been a break-in,” Adam said tightly.

  Stepping past Eva, he checked the bathroom and the closet. Then he moved into the hall, doing a quick search of the other rooms to make sure the intruder wasn’t still lurking somewhere inside the house. He wasn’t surprised that the only room that had been touched was Eva’s.

  Damn. Between his baffling feelings for Eva, and balancing the dual roles he was playing as an undercover agent and as Eva’s husband, he’d let himself get sucked into a false sense of security. Allowed himself to believe that the thirteen hundred miles between Belle Rivage and Edison, New Jersey, was enough to erase any potential danger.

  The Ford. The guy who had broken into Eva’s car. Adam had suspected all along it had been more than a random act. Now he knew. He and Eva had been followed.

  He walked back into Eva’s bedroom. She and her father were talking in hushed tones, and she had her arms squeezed protectively around her stomach. Tolly had moved farther into the room and had a bunched towel clenched in his right hand. He picked something up off the dresser with his other hand, then put it slowly back down.

  Eva’s face paled and she glanced to Adam. He nodded, indicating the rest of the rooms were untouched.

  “What is going on here?” Tolly demanded of Adam.

  “I don’t know beyond what we all see.” Which was accurate if you relied on the surface truth. And right now, Adam decided that’s all that mattered. At least as far as Eva’s family was concerned.

  “You don’t know.” Tolly’s response was tense as he eyed the things around him with disdain. His thick fingers clenched around the towel he held.

  Adam cleared his throat. “Did anybody see anything suspicious? Anyone strange hanging around?”

  He looked at Eva’s mother, grandmother and brother where they now stood in the hall.

  “Mama and I were in the kitchen all morning,” Katina said quietly.

  Adam looked to Pete. “I left early and didn’t return until about an hour ago. I didn’t see anything,” Pete answered.

  Swearing silently, Adam turned back to Eva and Tolly, but neither paid much attention to him.

  “Somebody should call the police,” Adam said.

  Pete quietly left, apparently to do as he’d requested.

  Adam thrust his hand through his hair. He needed to call Weckworth and tell him what was going on. To see if there had been any other developments in the case his boss had neglected to tell him about.

  But right now, he needed to make sure Eva was all right. She turned from where she leaned against one of the wrought-iron bedposts and her face went even paler. Frowning, Adam followed her gaze to her father’s feet. He moved closer and understood Eva’s fear. Tolly stood on her divorce papers.

  Eva’s gaze fastened on Adam’s face, her expression alarmed, her eyes pleading with him to do something, anything, to keep her father from seeing the documents.

  “Tolly, you’re upset,” Adam said, slapping his back as Tolly had done to him that morning. “Why don’t you go wait downstairs for the police? There’s nothing you can do in here now.”

  Tolly looked at the items littering the floor. Eva rushed forward.

  “Adam’s right, Papa,” she said, stepping close enough to force his attention to her rather than the papers he stood on. A light sheen of perspiration glistened on her tanned skin. “Go now and let me and Adam check to see if anything’s missing.”

  Muttering what Adam guessed were Greek curses, Tolly let Adam guide him toward the door. Eva’s mother and grandmother took over from there.

  As soon as the trio was halfway down the hall, Adam quietly closed the door and faced Eva. She was plucking the papers from the carpet, smoothing them out with trembling hands.

  “Planning to get married again, Eva? Or do you always carry your divorce papers with you? You know, in case you need them for identification purposes?” he asked dryly, seeking out his briefcase in the mess surrounding them.

  “After I found I was pregnant…and I agreed to let Bill out of our marriage…” Eva faltered, apparently trying to slow her words. “Everything happened so fast. I mean, I knew it was going to happen, I just didn’t expect his attorneys to be so successful in the expedition of the process….” She closed her eyes and drew a deep, shaky breath. “I’m rambling. What it comes down to is I got the final papers Thursday and, well, I didn’t have a chance to take them out of my attaché case.”

  Adam hadn’t realized her divorce from Bill Burgess had been that recent. But it didn’t take a genius to do the math. While two months was an extraordinarily short amount of time to obtain a divorce decree, with the right connections and without contest it wasn’t impossible. He shoved his fingers through his hair again, cursing the heat, and damning the twist in circumstances. He bent to rummage around the clothes piled outside the closet door. It was there he found his briefcase…open.

  Empty.

  His pulse rate vaulted. He tore through the plastic-protected clothes on the floor. He stopped after he’d combed them a second time. There was no mistake about it. The intruder may or may not have found what he was looking for. But he had walked away with one, important thing: Adam’s 9 mm pistol.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” he muttered, stepping to the window. A police car pulled into the driveway. Yes, the offi
cers would expect a complete report on what was missing. No, Adam wouldn’t mention a word about his gun. Not now. Not when this case had taken such a sharp turn.

  Another thing Adam knew was that he and Eva weren’t going anywhere, whether they liked it or not. Since the danger had started in Belle Rivage, it must end here, as well.

  His biggest problem lay in how he was going to continue to act like a nerd and still manage to get answers to some very important questions.

  Number one being whether or not Eva Mavros Burgess was involved in the illegal scheme with her boss, Norman Sheffert.

  EVA COULDN’T REMEMBER a time when she felt more spent, more violated, more out of sorts than she did at that moment. That included the day two months ago when she returned home from work to an empty house. Bill had taken every piece of furniture, each plate and glass, all the linens, even the CD collection, leaving only those items she had brought into their marriage. She remembered thinking he must have had two trucks and ten movers to have accomplished the feat in so short a time. She had also been struck with the numbing sensation that it was truly over between them. He had destroyed everything they had ever shared with that one, heartless act.

  Now, sitting at her family’s dining-room table in Belle Rivage—a half hour after the local police had taken their statements—Eva rested the fingers of her right hand against her stiff, clammy neck and stared at the Greek coffee in a tiny cup near her left wrist. The late-afternoon sun slanted in through the lacy curtains, making odd, shifting patterns on the surface of the table and increasing the almost unbearable heat of the room.

  “You must stay now,” her father said from the end of the table.

  Stay? As in forever? Eva sought out his gaze, but could read nothing in his expression except a challenge for her to object.

  “He’s right,” Adam said where he sat next to her. “We should stay.”

  Eva fastened her gaze on him.

  “At least until tomorrow morning, when things have had a chance to settle down.” He pushed up his glasses, but Eva found the would-be nervous action somehow incongruous with his firm words.

  “Adam, sweetheart,” she said, her throat thick, her muscles taut. “You know we have to get back to Jersey. We’re both behind in our work—”

  “We can always see to our work from here. At least for a short time.”

  She blinked slowly several times, not quite buying his innocent expression. Not when there was a tension around his provocative mouth that warranted further examination.

  “We can always download the files we need from Alice first thing Tuesday morning,” he said.

  Tuesday? How did they get from leaving a.s.a.p. to getting their files via modem from Sheffert, Logan and Brace Tuesday morning?

  Eva pressed her fingertips against her forehead.

  “Good, then it’s settled,” her father stated, rising from the table.

  He didn’t say anything else, merely left the room. Eva didn’t need to ask where he was going. Greek custom included taking a siesta in the afternoons right after dinner.

  “Your room’s all straightened.” Eva looked up to where her grandmother had rejoined them. Eva had assumed she had gone up for her own siesta. Obviously, she’d assumed wrong.

  Eva sighed. “Yaya, you shouldn’t have done that.” Didn’t anyone think she could take care of herself? She’d lived in New Jersey for years on her own. Who did they think made her bed there? Cleaned up after her? Told her when and what to eat?

  She knew her vexation was due more to frustration, and that her grandmother was just trying to be helpful, but her irrational emotions refused to go away. Emotionally and physically spent, she pushed away from the table and headed upstairs where she hoped everything would look a lot better after some rest.

  “YOUR COVER is blown, Grayson. It’s as simple as that,” FBI Deputy Chief John Weckworth said.

  Adam tightened his fingers against the wallet-size cellular phone that had gone untouched in a narrow false bottom of his briefcase. He bit back a curse, telling himself that nothing was simple. Not anymore. Not since somebody had gone through Eva’s room and his gun had come up missing.

  After making sure Eva was sleeping, Adam had ducked into the guest room next door where he had placed the call to his superior. He’d brought Eva’s laptop computer with him and it sat on a nearby dresser. He glanced at the closed door to the bathroom, envisioning Eva lying in that sinfully sumptuous bed just a few yards and two walls away.

  “My gut tells me you’re wrong, John.” He crossed to the computer. “What happened today has nothing to do with me or my cover.”

  There was a brief silence as he opened the laptop.

  “Then that means Eva Burgess was the target,” Weckworth said, putting into words his own thoughts.

  “Maybe.”

  Weckworth cursed. “Tell me, Grayson, if you and Burgess aren’t the targets, who is? The fisherman? Oh, wait, let me guess. It’s the little old lady.”

  Adam gave a wry smile at the reference to Eva’s grandmother. “Actually, I’m thinking that someone isn’t the target at all, but something is.”

  There was another silence, then Weckworth muttered something and put him on hold.

  Adam hadn’t told his superior about his missing gun, and was relieved he hadn’t. He could imagine what sarcasm he would have suffered through had he given Weckworth that piece of ammunition.

  He had told him about the guy who broke into Eva’s car, and gave a detailed description of the Ford he’d been driving. Adam hadn’t spotted the car or the guy since, but that meant little other than the man had let his guard down. He knew instinctively that the two incidents were connected and that led to his theory that the intruder was after something….

  Adam stared down at the open laptop to find folded sheets of paper lying across the keyboard. He picked them up. They were Eva’s divorce papers. She must have stuck them in there after the close call with her father.

  “I’m back,” Weckworth said.

  “Good thing. I was just about to hang up on you.” Adam glanced at the still-closed door. “To return to what I was saying, I don’t think what the intruder was after is so much the question here as the identity of the culprit himself. Or herself.” He frowned. Until he had proof one way or the other, he couldn’t completely rule out Eva as a suspect.

  “Any theories?” Weckworth asked.

  “A couple. But they’re not at the sharing stage yet. What about you?”

  “The same.”

  Adam dragged in a breath of the hot, humid air, then looked back down at the divorce papers in his right hand. With a flick of a finger, he turned to the second page of the stamped document. Past the official recognition of the filer and respondent—the filer being one pond scum William B. Burgess.

  “Get somebody from the New Orleans office out here,” he muttered to Weckworth. “I don’t care who. I can’t stay in character and insist on staying around the house twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Two guys are already on their way,” Weckworth said, giving him another cell phone number. “You’re not the only one with gut instincts, you know. Call me later to let me know if you find anything on that laptop.”

  Adam broke the connection then called the number of the agents en route and arranged a brief meeting with them in an hour, near the warehouse. Afterward he dropped the cell phone to the dresser and turned to the next page of the divorce papers. A dark expression spread over his face.

  Bill Burgess had signed away all parental rights to his child.

  The baby Eva carried.

  And all indications were that he’d not only done it voluntarily, he’d insisted on it.

  Cursing, Adam tossed the papers to the dresser, then sat in front of the laptop computer, determined to break this case one way or another. And even more resolved to put his growing feelings for the woman in the next room out of his mind. Both for her safety…and his own.

  EVA AWAKENED from her nap to the sound of a
car horn. Pushing upright on the still-made bed, she saw her room was nearly pitch-black but for a purplish haze. Bewildered, she climbed from the bed and peeked through the window where she saw her aunt and uncle getting out of their Honda. The warm greeting from her father downstairs baffled her further as she turned to look at the bedside clock. It read eight-thirty.

  She had slept for five straight hours.

  Adam.

  A glance told her he had not slept on the other side of the bed. She moved toward the bathroom and the door to the guest room. He wasn’t there and hadn’t slept on that bed, either. She returned to her own bedroom and noticed her laptop was gone. Adam must have taken it downstairs.

  Pushing her tangled hair back from her face, she switched on the lights and lethargically got herself together.

  Minutes later, she walked into the dining room to find it empty. She followed the sound of the voices through the living room and halted at the doors to the screened-in side porch that offered a captivating view of the sunset. She had stepped right into another family gathering. But this time, a thorough, lingering glance told her that her father was actually smiling. Well, he was doing the Tolly Mavros equivalent to smiling, anyway, which was a wry, sardonic slight upturn to his full mouth as he filled a wineglass for her uncle. Tolly’s upbeat mood was better displayed by his gregarious bursts of conversation and his frequent prompting of his guests to eat or drink, or both.

  “You’re up,” her mother greeted Eva, spotting her.

  Eva frowned when she saw that Adam held the prominent position next to her father. He sat in a chair usually reserved for her brother, Pete, who was noticeably absent. Adam smiled at her in a modest way that came off as somehow too innocent, too vague, and all too provocative. Her grandmother pulled out the chair between her and Adam. Eva hesitantly went to it. She should have given herself more time to wake up, to gather her thoughts together.