More Than a Mission - Caridad Pineiro [41]
Elizabeth pulled over then. Her hands were fisted against the steering wheel, her knuckles white from the pressure. She was breathing roughly, as was he, he realized. “You okay?”
She nodded, obviously unable to speak.
“Would you like me to finish the drive?” he asked and she nodded, popping out of the driver’s seat.
He got out of the car and met her halfway, at the back of the Gaston where she had stopped to look at the damage. Tears filled her eyes and she wrapped her arms around herself tightly.
Embracing her, he winced at the dented chrome bumper, scratched and bent trunk, and the jagged glass shards that remained of her taillights. Her father’s pride and joy, he recalled, and trying to comfort her, said, “We can fix it.”
She nodded brokenly and tears finally slipped down her face as she replied, “But it will never be the same.”
Chapter 13
Aidan hated leaving her, but she insisted she was fine.
When he mentioned calling the local police to report the incident, she had grown agitated and insisted that it made no sense. They had no ID of the driver and no plate number.
All good reasons, except that any normal person would think that the police just might be interested in an attempted murder. But Elizabeth was clearly not a normal person, he thought as he walked back to the hotel and recalled the professional way she had handled herself at the wheel.
Back at the hotel, both Lucia and Walker were waiting for him.
Lucia jumped out of her seat and stalked over to him. She gesticulated wildly with her hands as she demanded, “Is there some reason you’ve been incommunicado all day?”
Aidan cursed and stopped her hands in midair. He reached into his jacket pocket for the earpiece that he had taken off when he’d realized they were beyond its range. Hoping he would get up close and personal with Elizabeth, he had not wanted to risk her seeing it. “Sorry. We were out of range.”
“All day?” Walker asked and examined him carefully, anger darkening his normally blue eyes to a slate gray. “You look…confused.”
Aidan plopped himself down on the couch. Lucia and Walker joined him, sitting on the chairs opposite him. “It was an odd day.” He recounted what they had done, leaving out some key personal parts. Finally, he provided a detailed account of the SUV attack.
“Tinted windows. No plates. Sounds like someone was intentionally after you,” Lucia said, and then added, “Any idea on the make?”
“Big. Relatively fast. Might have been a Hummer. It was dark and too much was happening too fast.”
Lucia added her two cents. “I’ll check through the island’s DMV records and see what I can dig up.”
“But there’s more that’s bothering you, isn’t there?” Walker asked, leaning forward and resting his forearms on his thighs as he clasped his hands together. “Want to tell us what it is?”
Aidan slumped down into the cushions of the sofa and looked up at the ceiling, unable to meet Walker’s discriminating gaze. Afraid the psychiatrist might see too much. “Everywhere we went, people were so happy to see her. She seemed to really take an interest in them.” He then recounted the talk about the prince and after, the one about honor and still believing in it.
“But she refused to call in the police. She had something to hide,” Lucia reminded him before Walker piped in with his opinion.
“The Sparrow is a stone-cold, remorseless killer. A pathological liar who is unable to form commitments of any type, but can fool people exceptionally well. Classic antisocial behavior.”
“Elizabeth seems to have lots of commitments: her friends, all those people we met today.” He didn’t add that for a moment there, she seemed to have been getting committed to him.
“These kinds of killers are by nature glib and superficially charming. If it came down to it, the Sparrow would do as she pleased with little regard for that supposed friendship or affection,” Walker reminded him.
“Like Mitch,” he said out loud and finally met Walker’s gaze.
“Or like you, Aidan. Don’t let this woman trip you up with her charm and beauty,” Walker warned.
“What