Read Online Night's Landing by Carla Neggers - Free Book Online Page B

then smiled gently. “Now, come on, don’t you start. The best investigators in the country are on this thing. In fact, Joe Collins called me while you were in with your brother. He wants to talk to you.”
    “Why?”
    “Are you kidding? After the bombshell you dropped?”
    Sarah winced. “President Poe was calling as a friend—”
    “Exactly.”
    “I almost wish I’d told you it was another Wes on the line.”
    “Nah. It’s better this way. Get it out in the open. Your relationship with the president isn’t something you’d want Joe Collins stumbling over on his own. He’s in a private meeting room down the hall from your brother. He’ll have food. Collins
always
has food.” Juliet hit the button for Rob’s floor and sighed. “And you look as if you could use something to eat.”
    Neither of them had been in the mood to eat that morning at Juliet’s apartment—actually, an apartment she was borrowing from a well-heeled friend, because, she’d explained, even as small as it was, she couldn’t afford Manhattan’s upper west side on her government salary.
    “All right,” Sarah said. “I’ll talk to Agent Collins. Then, please, go back to your normal duties. I can book a room at the hotel where we were last night. Tell your boss it’s what I want.”
    “You just don’t like my plants and my fish.”
    Juliet hadn’t exaggerated—her apartment was a jungle of plants and had at least four fish tanks. But Sarah shook her head. “Your apartment’s great. I’m just used to being on my own.”
    “Now that I understand.”
    She sank back against the cool wall of the elevator and closed her eyes. “
I don’t want you here if I’ve got someone shooting at me
.”
    But how could she go home? She imagined herself on her front porch, drinking her sweet tea punch and feeling the soft breeze as if nothing had happened.
    Given her family’s predilection for not leading quiet lives, she’d been prepared for anything when she returned to Night’s Landing—but not this, she thought. Not her brother getting shot in Central Park. Not the possibility that he could become another Dunnemore who died an early, tragic death.
    She stopped her negative thinking in its tracks.
    Stay positive.
    The elevator opened on Rob’s floor. “Come on,” Juliet said. “Let’s go see Special Agent Joe and talk to him about your Tennessee neighbor.”
     
     
    Nate didn’t follow Rob’s sister, but he was tempted—and duty and chivalry had nothing to do with it. The feel of her slim waist when he’d grabbed her, the blond hair, the gray eyes, the tears.
    Damn.
    He stood next to Rob’s bed. “Your sister’s prettier than you are.”
    He was awake, but not by much. “Smarter, too. What time is it?”
    “About nine in the morning the day after the shooting.” Which Sarah Dunnemore had told him before she’d stepped on Nate’s toes and ran off crying.
    “I don’t…” Rob’s red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes tried to focus. “I don’t remember.”
    The doctors had warned Nate that Rob might never remember the shooting. His body had poured all its energy into keeping him alive, not in remembering what had happened. “That’s normal. How’re you feeling?”
    “Like shit.”
    “The nurses are going to get you up today if they can. They like to do that.”
    He wasn’t paying attention. “Sarah should go back home.” He coughed, shuddering in agony, his voice weaker, raspier, when he resumed. “She doesn’t belong here.”
    His concern for his sister was palpable. “She’s with Juliet right now.” Nate assumed Longstreet would be trying to make amends for her ill-advised remark. “Just because you were shot doesn’t mean she’s in any danger.”
    “It wasn’t random. The shooting. I was the target. He was after me.”
    “Rob—”
    “I know it. I have…this certainty.” He shut his eyes, and he seemed to sink deeper into the bed. “I’m sorry.”
    “Get some rest. Don’t worry about