Shattered Mirror (Eve Duncan #23)(11)

“Aye,” he said coldly, his slight Scottish accent making the word even more clipped. “The way I was feeling, I had to block you out entirely. I couldn’t take any more, Cara.”

“You can take anything. I know how strong you are.” Even to herself her voice sounded uneven. She paused, then forced herself to say the words she’d been preparing. “If you don’t want to see me anymore, then that’s different. But you shouldn’t have just walked away from me. You’re important to me. You’re my best friend. You should have known I’d come after you. That’s all I wanted to say to you if you’d answered my calls.” His face was so hard, but she forced herself to go on. “But you didn’t, and that’s an answer in itself, isn’t it?” She couldn’t take this any longer. She was hurting too much. She walked past him toward the front door. “All you had to do was make me understand. Evidently, that’s what you came to do. Thanks for making it clear. Good-bye, Jock.”

His hand was on her arm. “You’re not going anywhere. I came here to talk to you. I’m going to do it.”

She shook her head. “I have to get to Connecticut. I have a concert. It’s an obligation.”

His lips twisted. “And I know how you feel about obligations.” He took her violin case. “I hired a limo for the day. I knew this wasn’t going to be a quick fix, and your place here in this residency is like a nunnery. I’ll drive you to your ‘obligation.’” He nudged her toward the gray limo at the curb. “Just give the driver the address, then lean back and stop looking at me like that. I’ve had enough for right now.”

She hesitated and got into the limo. She gave the uniformed driver behind the plastic divider the address of the auditorium in Fairfield, Connecticut. “Quick fix?” She didn’t look at him. “Is it going to be a fix at all? I thought maybe you’d decided I was getting in your way. I know how busy you’ve been lately.”

“And that’s why you’ve been bombarding me with calls and emails? Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to ignore them? You never give up.”

“No, I don’t. I had to be sure. Did you expect me to let pride get in my way after all we’ve been through together? I had to make you tell me.” She still wasn’t looking at him, her eyes fastened on the plastic shield separating them from the driver. “So tell me, Jock. You decided that I wasn’t worth the trouble? That I’m just a kid who wandered into your life and brought you nothing but headaches and now you want out? Because that’s what I’ve been thinking for the last three months.”

“Look at me.”

“You told me not to look at you.”

“Look at me.”

She looked at him.

The hardness and cold was gone. There was only weariness. “You’re the one who should want out. How many times have I told you that I interfere with your life? You have your music, you have Eve and Joe and Michael. You’re only eighteen. You have your whole life in front of you. I just get in your way.”

“How could you get in my way when I hardly ever see you?”

“I seem to manage,” he said dryly. “There’s no one in the world as loyal and steadfast as you, Cara. I saved your life, so you think it belongs to me? It belongs to you. Only to you, Cara.”

“You bet it does. So I should do what I want to do with it.” She made an impatient gesture. “And you know that’s only the tip of the iceberg. You became my friend, and there’s no one who knows me like you do. Everyone I loved had been killed, and I felt so alone inside. And then you were there, and I wasn’t alone anymore. I can’t even talk to Eve the way I talk to you.” She paused. “Even though you don’t feel you can talk to me.”

He went still. “I talk to you all the time, Cara.”

“About me, always about me, never about you.”

His lips twisted. “I’m quite sure Jane and Eve have filled you in on my background. It would be their duty to warn you against me.”

“Of course they told me. But not because they thought there was any chance of your hurting me. They know you, Jock. It wasn’t your fault. You were younger than me when that terrorist, Reilly, brainwashed you and tried to make you into an assassin.”

“He didn’t try, he succeeded,” Jock corrected without expression. “I was the ultimate assassin.”

“And you ended up in a mental hospital where MacDuff found you after you tried to commit suicide.” She repeated, “It wasn’t your fault.”

“There could be endless philosophic discussions about that statement. MacDuff prefers that I don’t explore them. Let’s just say that I am what I am.”

“And that’s good and shining inside,” she said fiercely. “I’ve always known that.”

“You can’t know. And you’ve never asked me anything about that time.”

“I was waiting for you to tell me.”

“You would have waited a long time. I’ll never take you down to that particular hell, Cara.”

“Then that’s okay. As long as you know I’d go with you if you asked me.”

He nodded slowly as he reached out and took her hand. “Oh, I know that, Cara. That’s what this is all about. I thought I’d take another shot at stepping away, so you wouldn’t be tempted to follow me.”