“Yes,” Carter said, but it hadn’t been the call Rica imagined.

“Kevin? We’ve got problems.”

“That’s a fucking understatement. Where the hell are you?”

“Cape Cod. What have you heard?”

“That someone put Brassi on the floor at a family gathering last night and left him with his dick hanging out.”

“Who’d you hear it from?”

“A friend. You’re not the only one inside,” Kevin said. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Motherfu…Jesus. Allen is busting a nut over this. She’s been trying to call you all night. Where’s your phone?”

“I’m talking to you on it.”

Kevin laughed. “Funny. Why didn’t you answer?”

“I was sleeping.”

“Sleeping. With a certain dark-haired princess?”

Carter was silent.

“Fuck me.” Kevin sighed audibly. “Allen went over our heads. Says you’ve compromised the whole operation. Says your judgment’s impaired. You’re off the case, Carter, all the way off. You’ll be lucky if you don’t end up with a suspension.”

“He was going to rape her.”

“So you had to ride to the rescue?”

“You would’ve done the same thing.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Kevin muttered. “Allen thinks it was probably just a lover’s spat and you got in the middle of it. After she warned you away from Grechi.”

“It wasn’t a spat.”

“You gotta come in, partner. Allen’s after your head. She already put Rizzo in witness protection, just in case Brassi makes the connection when he starts gunning for you.”

“Rica is not involved, Kevin. She’s not part of the organization.”

“Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t. And maybe your head’s not in the right place for this job right now.”

“I’m telling you, she’s clean,” Carter said. “I’m not leaving her alone for a few days. Brassi’s probably going to show up.”

“He’s probably going to be looking for your head on a platter, not hers. If he doesn’t get it, Allen will.”

“Brassi’s probably got people here in town already…watching Rica while they’re taking care of his other business. Allen can’t come in here and pull me out without raising suspicions. I’m safe here for a while.”

“You’re putting your job on the line for this woman, Carter.”

“I put her in a tough place, Kev. I’m not walking away from her.”

Kevin groaned. “Jesus, you’re stubborn. Maybe you’ve been doing this too long. Maybe you need a brea…”

Carter had disconnected when she’d realized Rica was awake and watching her from the kitchen. She would have hung up anyway; there was no way she could explain to Kevin why she wasn’t going to follow Allen’s directive. The kind of investigation Allen was running could go on for years without an arrest. Men like Pareto were rarely indicted even with testimony from insiders. Allegiances ran deep and betrayals were dealt with swiftly and mercilessly. In all the months she’d been working the case, she hadn’t uncovered one single bit of evidence to suggest Rica was involved even peripherally in her father’s organization or doing anything illegal. And now, with Rizzo out of the picture in WITSEC, her primary contact was gone. Her part in Allen’s operation was over. And even if it wasn’t, it didn’t matter anymore. She was done betraying Rica’s trust.

“Enzo won’t do anything hasty, Rica.” Carter carefully touched her fingers to Rica’s cheek. “Hurt?”

“Some.” Rica covered Carter’s hand with hers. “Still, you need to be careful.”

“I will be.”

Rica circled Carter’s waist and felt the Glock tucked into her waistband. She’d made a lot of assumptions about Carter, assumptions that might be wrong. Suddenly that mattered. “Are you really an attorney?”

Carter flinched. “Yes.”

“And what else?”

“Rica, we agreed…”

“Things have changed now, haven’t they?” Rica slid back a few steps until they were no longer in contact. She had to know. She’d broken her own rule when she’d let Carter get close, and she needed to know just how badly she had overstepped her own boundaries. “Tell me.”

A dozen replies came to mind. Lies she’d told so often they felt like truths. What was truth? Maybe it was something as simple as a woman sleeping in her arms. Carter didn’t know. She didn’t need to. She only knew there was only one answer now.

“I’m a cop, Rica.”

Rica sucked in a breath, her eyes never leaving Carter’s face. She wavered for just a second and then straightened. “Well, that makes things easy. I can stop worrying about Enzo. He’ll kill you, and that will take care of my mistake.” She slid past Carter, being careful that their bodies did not touch. “Get out.”

“I need you to know something,” Carter said to Rica’s back. She held her breath, waiting.

Rica turned at the doorway, her face a careful mask. “I should call my father now and tell him who you are. I’m sure he could find out who brought you inside. Who has betrayed him.”

“There’s no one to find, Rica.”

“Did you really think you could fuck me and I’d betray my father?”

“I know you wouldn’t.” Carter wanted desperately to go to her. To touch her for just a second. The cold disdain in her eyes was worse than anything she’d ever imagined. Anything except losing her. “I also know…”

“You don’t know anything about me if you think there’s anything in the world that would make me turn against my family. Especially”…Rica shrugged…“not for something I could get anywhere, anytime I wanted it.”

Carter absorbed the words as if they were blows. Her body ached. Her heart bled. “I don’t want you to betray him.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I’m in love with you.”

Rica laughed. “If you come anywhere near me again, I won’t wait for Enzo to do the job.”

Carter closed her eyes, knowing that when she opened them, Rica would be gone. Rica was still inside the house where they’d come for sanctuary and to make love, but she was as unattainable now as if they’d never met. The gulf that stretched between them echoed with recriminations and broken trust. She’d always known how the story would end, but even knowing, she’d been helpless not to play her part. Still, the empty room and the silent house hurt far more than she’d thought possible. After all the lies, it was the truth that would finally break her heart.

I’m in love with you.

Rica walked directly upstairs, through her bedroom, past the bed where she’d lain only hours before in Carter’s arms. She opened the French doors and stepped out onto the deck. The sky was heavy with clouds, thick gray layers of impending rain that obscured the shoreline and draped the lighthouse at Race Point in shrouds of fog. The air was dank and cold. She’d been wrong. Her earlier chill had had nothing to do with Carter abandoning her in the aftermath of their hasty passion, but only with the weather. Nothing had changed except the color of the sky. Women had come into her life and passed through with barely a notice before, leaving nothing in their wake but blurred memories. Pleasure was a fleeting sensation and after a time, empty.

I’m a cop, Rica.

Why hadn’t she known? Why hadn’t she sensed that something was terribly wrong? How had she allowed a handsome face and a little bit of attention to cloud her judgment so badly?

I’m in love with you.

She’d heard the words, but she refused to consider their meaning. Nothing Carter said could be trusted. She was a liar and a threat.

I’m in love with you.

Carter had asked her about her life. Her life. Not her father’s. She’d been interested in her work, her plans for the gallery, her struggle to build a future all her own. They’d never talked about her legacy. Carter had never asked about her father.

I’m a cop, Rica.

Nothing Carter had said mattered now. Her only reason for being in Rica’s life had been to destroy it. This was the reason that opening up to anyone but family was dangerous. At least family could be trusted.

Rica shivered, feeling the weight of Enzo’s body pinning her to the wall, his hard fury pounding between her thighs. Family.

I’m in love with you.

Rica closed her eyes, trying to erase the images of Carter driving her home through the dark, shepherding her to safety, pushing her to orgasm. Carter’s hands, tender and demanding. Her mouth, gentle and fierce. Her eyes, compassionate and devouring.

I’m a cop, Rica.

Why had Carter told her? Why risk the truth? Why had she held her all night?

Rica fought back tears and brutally contained her pain with fury and denial. The effort made her head scream; her face was a throbbing agony. Nearly blind with the pain, she stumbled into her bathroom and pawed through the medicine cabinet for painkillers. Nothing.

She curled up on top of the sheets, her arms clutched around her middle, her knees drawn up, her eyes tightly closed. The pain in her head and the ache in her heart threatened to consume her. She wished for oblivion but sleep wouldn’t come. She moaned as her stomach revolted. She smelled Carter on the pillow. With a cry, she pushed herself up and fumbled for the phone.

When she pulled out of her driveway thirty minutes later, she was too busy fighting back the nausea to notice the vehicle that fell into line a discreet distance behind her.

Chapter Twenty

Tory lifted the chart from the rack on the back of the door. When she didn’t recognize the name, she thumbed through to the intake form. Chief complaint: headache. The rest of the information was sparse. No significant past medical history, no drugs, no allergies, no unusual illnesses. She knocked on the door and walked into the examining room.

“Ms. Grechi? Hello, I’m Dr. King.”

The woman who sat on the examining table was sheet white, the skin around her luminous dark eyes tight with obvious pain, her lips pale. A noticeable hematoma marred her left cheek and a bruise discolored her flawless skin as far down as the edge of her jaw. Tory reached to the wall beside her and turned off the overhead fluorescents, leaving only the small lights under the cabinets for illumination.