LITMIR.BIZ

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now. There was only one clear emotion inside it. Relief.

      He didn’t bother knocking on the door or looking for a bell, both of which might be loud enough to draw attention to him out here on the street. He didn’t want to risk that. Instead, he reached for the knob and turned it, and since the door was actually a gate and not really a door at all, it was unlocked. Just as he had figured, it opened on a piazza that overlooked a storm-littered garden at the side of the house.

      Then he was inside and the door closed behind him. Inside and mercifully safe.

      There were a door and windows off the front of the piazza. Probably the agency’s office. The windows were dark. But at the rear of the piazza, where the house turned in a right angle, were lighted windows. He staggered toward their welcoming glow.

      He didn’t make it. Halfway along the piazza, his body finally betrayed his determination. Although it felt as though he was collapsing in a silent slow motion, he must have toppled with a crash. Because as he lay there, helpless on the wet bricks, a door banged open and light spilled onto the piazza.

      There was the sound of hurrying footsteps, a little cry of alarm, and then he sensed someone kneeling beside him, caught the whiff of a fragrance. A feminine scent that was warm and comforting. Something that made a man want to sink into its sweetness.

      He lifted his head and just before he slid into unconsciousness, he managed to plead in a strained, husky voice, “Am I home?”

      HE WAS CONSCIOUS again but still so disoriented he was only dimly aware of his surroundings. What was this place? A bedroom apparently, since he felt a firm mattress under him and a warm quilt drawn over his prone figure.

      But it was hard to be certain of that since the room was in almost total darkness. The only source of illumination was a thin strip of vertical light, which was the result of a door left slightly ajar somewhere on the other side of the room.

      All right, he was in a bedroom. But whose bedroom, and where? He wanted to believe it was his own room, that he belonged here. But he couldn’t be sure of that either.

      He hated his confusion. Hated this state of helplessness that prevented him from…what? He didn’t know, but it nagged at him. There was something he was supposed to do, someone he was supposed to see, but he couldn’t recall what or who.

      And then he heard it. The sound of voices drifting through the crack where the door was ajar. Two people engaged in a conversation out there in another room. Voices so low that he couldn’t make out their words, only their tones. One of them intense, earnest. The other calm but equally insistent. Her voice.

      He recognized it now, remembered its reassurances to him. As soothing as her hands on him, as silken as her scent. It was all right then. If she was here, close by, then he was safe. He could forget all the rest, worry about it later.

      He was so damn sore and exhausted that he needed to do just that. The voices droned on and then faded altogether as he drifted back into unconsciousness.

      “YOU CAN’T DO THIS, EDEN. It’s wrong. The man should be on his way to the E.R., not stretched out back there in your guest room.”

      Eden watched as her friend and neighbor from the apartment upstairs placed her medical supplies back in her bag. There was an expression of pronounced disapproval on Tia’s delicate Asian face.

      “He’s not at risk. Didn’t you say it yourself when you patched him up? That someone with a body that fit wouldn’t need a hospital to recover?”

      “Well, I shouldn’t have said it. I’m a nurse-practitioner, not a doctor, and if there should be any complications—”

      “Then I’ll see to it he has whatever attention is necessary.”

      “When?” Tia demanded, revealing a form as dainty as her features when she came to her feet. It was a figure that belied her strength. Tia had demonstrated that robustness, a result of her work with patients twice her size, when she had helped Eden bear her midnight visitor into the guest room where he had been stripped and examined, his wounds treated. All of which Tia had handled skillfully, if unwillingly.

      “As soon as he tells me what I have to know,” Eden promised her.

      “Let the police question him then. You should have called them right away.”

      “And see him taken away?” Eden shook her head obstinately. “No, I won’t risk losing this opportunity. I won’t trust hearing what he has to say from anyone but him personally.”

      “Eden, this is reckless. The guy could be dangerous. Probably is dangerous. Stumbling in here out of nowhere like that, no identification on him, absolutely nothing to suggest who he is or where he came from.”

      “He won’t hurt me.”

      “Why? Just because at the moment he’s too weak to be a threat?”

      “No, because my instincts tell me this is a decent man. Couldn’t you hear it in his voice?”

      “What I heard were a few mutters that didn’t make sense. But what I saw worries me. Those injuries aren’t the result of some accident. I think he was beaten, brutally beaten. And I’ll tell you something else. He has several old scars on his body, a bad one on his right leg.”

      “I noticed.”

      “Then those scars should have told you this is someone with a history that might not be so good and that you shouldn’t have him here. Come on, Eden, you’re thinking with your emotions, not your head.”

      “Wouldn’t you if you were me and this brought him here?” Her hand went out to the table beside her and snatched up the business card she had found in the jacket of his pocket. Her business card. “And this.” Her other hand closed around the photograph that had accompanied the business card. She could feel the painful longing deep inside her as she gazed down at it. “Nathanial, Tia. He was carrying a picture of Nathanial.”

      Tia’s face softened at the mention of Nathanial. “Honey,” she pleaded gently, “be reasonable. Having red-gold hair and a pair of lavender-blue eyes, distinctive as they are, doesn’t make him Nathanial. He was what when he was taken? Less than two years old, right? It’s been almost three years now, and kids change a lot. The boy in that photo could be anyone.”

      “It’s Nathanial,” Eden insisted fiercely. “I know it is!”

      Because you want it to be. That was what the expression on Tia’s face told her. She knew what her friend was thinking, what all the sympathizers had thought and refrained from saying since Nathanial’s disappearance. That too much time had passed, that she would never recover him, that Nathanial was probably dead.

      Let them think it. She knew better. Nathanial was still alive. She had never stopped believing it in all the agonizing weeks after his disappearance, in the months and years that had followed. She had never dared permit herself to believe otherwise, haunted as she was by his loss, frustrated as she was that none of the efforts of the professionals, including her own, had produced any results. But now… Oh, yes, now.

      “He’s a link to Nathanial, Tia. Whoever he is and whatever brought him to my door, he’s a link to Nathanial. And however rash you think I’m being, I’m not letting him leave until he tells me what I want to know.”

      “You’re vulnerable as long as he’s here. You realize that, don’t you?”

      “I’m a mother, Tia,” Eden reminded her. “I’ll do anything to find my son. Anything.”

      Tia sighed softly. “Yeah, I guess I can understand that kind of desperation. I just hope you know what you’re doing.” Medical bag in hand, she moved toward the door to the piazza and the outside stairway to her apartment. “The painkiller should have taken full effect by now. My guess is he’ll sleep the night through, but if he should wake up and you need me—”

      “I won’t hesitate to call you,” Eden promised, following her friend to the door to see

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