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“Did you find the evidence you needed?”Madeline asked him with a bob of her head.“Did you get proof that Hudson’s wife is a cold-blooded killer?”
Ice pouredthrough her entire body.Naomi stared through the glass.She waited for Eb to throw back his head and laugh at the woman who sat so casually in front of him.If not laughter, a good denial that he’d never intended to prove Naomi was a murderer would have been outstanding.
Instead…
“Still working on it,” Eb admitted with a roll of his shoulders.
A roll of his shoulders.
Henry sat on Naomi’s right foot.His warm body pressed against her leg.
“But you’re gaining her trust?”The woman—Eb’s boss—pressed.“That’s the first step of your master plan?”
The drumming of Naomi’s heartbeat seemed terribly loud as it echoed in her ears.
“You don’t spill all your secrets to someone if you don’t trust them.”Eb seemed almost bored with the whole scene.“Isn’t that the first thing that the Agency teaches recruits?You have to become anyone necessary in order to get the job done.In this case, I decided to become Naomi’s hero.Iplayedthe hero for her.”
She wanted to back away.Or to raise her hands and pound against the thin glass and tell Eb what a bastard he was.Her insides twisted and her heart ached, and she could not believe that she’d actually been letting herself fall for a liar…a second time.
First Hudson.
Now Eb.
What was wrong with her?
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice…shame on me.
She hated that old saying.Almost as much as she hated Eb in that moment.
“Thought you might like to hear what they had to say,” Clark told her.He’d been the one to pull her from holding in the back of the station—that particular holding cell had certainly been familiar to her, almost like a second home—and to haul her to the small observation room.As if she didn’t know that plenty of cops and the DA had watched her from this very perch during her marathon sessions with Clark.
Only this time, she wasn’t the one sitting at that interrogation room table.The table with one short leg that made the whole thing wobble.She was the one watching.
And getting my heart broken.
No, no, her heart could not be breaking.There was no way that she was in love with Eb.Not so soon.Absurd.She’d just—she’d fallen into his web.Not fallenforhim.A huge difference.She hurt this way because she didn’t like being played for a fool.
I had sex with him.She’d trusted him enough for sex.The best sex of her life.And he’d been playing her the entire time.
“You real sure you were with that man every moment, Naomi?You absolutely sure you had eyes on him at all times?”
“I told you already.”She had said this before, but she’d say it again.“I had a seizure last night after the fire.Eb insisted that I go to the hospital.When I returned to the guesthouse, Eb stayed with me.He was still with me when I woke up.”When we had insane sex.“He was with me when we found Ivan’s body.We went in the bar together.”Eb was her alibi.She was his.
“But you had to sleep, didn’t you?”
Her eyes were on Eb.She wanted to hear what he had to say.Hard to do with Clark chattering away in her ear.“Yes, I had to sleep.”
“How do you know that he didn’t sneak away while your eyes were closed?”
“Sneak away and beat Ivan to death with a bat?”She didn’t buy it.“Eb hardly seems the type to do that.”
“You just never know about someone, do you?”His shoulder brushed against her arm.“Will he alibi you the way you just alibied him?Or will he turn on you?”
He’s already turned on me.The truth was that he’d been against her from the very first moment, and she just hadn’t realized it.No, no, unfair.She’d suspected the truth.From the very first moment.After all, he’d been Hudson’s partner.But Eb had said he didn’t hate her…
Liar, liar.“Of course, he won’t turn on me.”Now she slanted a glance at a watchful Clark.“How many times do I have to tell you?I’m not a murderer.”