Eve’s Wedding Knight

In any case, the notion that they could all be either wrong or lying was ludicrous. Which left only one alternative: they were right, and so was she, and Sonny Cisneros, no matter how wonderfully charming, how seemingly gentle and sweet, really was a powerful crime boss and possibly a cold-blooded killer.

Oh, God, how did I get myself into this mess?

The cervical collar that held her head and neck motionless seemed weighted with lead. She could feel every one of the tiny battery-operated transmitters nested in the specially designed cavity inside the collar, almost as if they were living things, each with its own pulsating heartbeat. She could almost hear the GPS tracking device sending out its silent signal to the satellite that would relay its location, and hers, back to Jake.

At least I know he’s out there somewhere. Right now. He knows where I am.

“You want a drink?” Sonny waved a hand at the bar. “Whatever you want. We got Black Jack…Scotch… soda… champagne…”

“Maybe some water.” Eve wiped her eyes, then asked with a pitiful sniffle, “Do we have any straws?”

“Straws?” Sonny threw her a questioning look. Then comprehension flitted across his face in a little grimace of sympathy. “Ah-got it, babe. I think so…yeah, here we are.” He poured mineral water into a glass, plunked in a plastic straw and held it for her while she maneuvered it awkwardly to her lips.

“We’ve got to get some of those bendy kind,” she said with a giggle as the straw slipped away from her and spangled water onto her chin.

“Whatever you need, baby…” And Sonny wiped away the drops with his thumb as tenderly as if she were a baby. “Anything in the world-you just say the word and Sonny’ll get it for you. You know I love you, don’t you?”

Unable to nod, she blinked and whispered, “Sonny…” Her pulse hammered against the collar.

“Hey, nothin’s too good for my Evie-girl. And lemme tell you, nobody’s ever gonna harm my girl again-nosir. From now on, Sonny’s lookin’ out for you. You don’t ever have to be scared of anyone, ever again, understand?”

Capish…

In her mind she heard her own and Jake’s voices saying that word in chorus, and from a tiny well of warmth somewhere deep inside a bubble of laughter rose and spilled across her lips.

“That’s my girl,” Sonny crooned approvingly. He leaned closer, and now it was her lips he stroked with the fleshy pad of his thumb. “Come on, baby, lemme hear you say it…”

She closed her eyes and her mind. “I love you, Sonny.”

“Yeah…that’s my Evie…”

As Sonny’s lips brushed hers, the limousine swooped onto the bridge connecting Hilton Head to the mainland, and she felt the stomach-dropping sensation of being on a roller coaster.

Jake and his partner, Birdie Poole, watched the limo glide past the portals of the gated resort community and disappear from sight like a great white whale sinking into the sea.

Birdie breathed a toneless whistle. “Holy…shinola. Talk about your velvet cage. This place is huge. We gonna be able to get within range?”

Jake picked up a pair of binoculars from the seat beside him and surveyed the surrounding terrain. “It’s doable.” He glanced at, then tapped the GPS monitor mounted on the dash. “Depends how far they are from the perimeter fence. Might have to put up a booster antenna…” He laid the binoculars aside but went on frowning at the gatehouse, at the spot where the limo had disappeared, his fingers playing a restless tattoo on the steering wheel. “Won’t know until she gets those bugs planted. If she does…” He could feel Birdie’s eyes on him.

After a silence that lasted for…oh, maybe a long five count, his partner let out a breath and faced the front of the vehicle. “And…you’re sure this was a good idea.”

Jake lifted one shoulder. “She had to go back to him. What were we gonna do, cut her loose and send her in on her own? This way, anything goes wrong, at least we’ve got a shot.”

Even without looking, he could feel Birdie’s eyes come back to him like homing beacons. “Why do I get the feeling it isn’t Cisneros you’re wanting to keep tabs on?”

Jake grunted, a sound few besides Birdie would recognize as laughter. “In five years of surveillance on Cisneros, have we ever gotten anything we could take to the U.S. Attorney? You and I both know the man’s too careful for that.”

“Then you mind telling me what the hell’s all this about?”

“A feeling.” He let out a breath and muffled it in the hand he scrubbed restlessly across his mouth. “She’s the key, dammit. She’s important-I know she is.”

“I can see that,” Birdie said softly. “Question is, important to whom? And why?”

Jake threw his partner a pained look. “Come on, Bird. She’s the key to nailing Cisneros. Period.” He punched a tape into the deck and reached for the ignition key. “Tell me, partner, have you ever known me to give a rat’s ass about anything else?”

“Nope,” said Birdie, “never have.”

“Uh-huh. Let’s get some lunch while we’ve got a chance.”

“Yeah…okay. Aw, man-” Birdie winced as a scratchy rendition of “St. Louis Blues” filled the van. “You’re not going to make me listen to that junk now?”

“Whadaya mean, junk? Don’t you know who that is? That’s Bessie Smith. That’s a classic, man.”

“No, no, don’t give me that-classic is Bach, maybe Beethoven, definitely not Bessie. Hey, if you gotta listen to blues, at least get rid of the scratch-is that too much to ask? Hey, compromise. Got any Ray Charles? Now-I can take ol’ Ray. ’Georgia…’”

Jake sighed and switched off the stereo.

In the week that followed, Eve experienced what she was certain must be the emotional equivalent of being buried alive. She felt completely isolated, but at the same time as if every move she made, every breath she took, every beat of her heart were being monitored… measured… judged.

She lived every waking moment with a vague and unformed sense of menace, but it was at night that the fear came to settle over her like a shroud. She kept waking every few hours in a clammy, heart-pounding panic, only to lie awake in a twilight that seemed alive with watching eyes and listening ears, haunted by vague memories of dreams in which she was being slowly suffocated.

None of which made sense, considering she couldn’t have asked for more pleasant surroundings. The resort, which Sonny had told her would eventually include a five-star hotel, luxury condos, a golf course and tennis courts, bike paths, three swimming pools and miles of gently sloping white sand beaches, wasn’t scheduled to open until spring, but most of the external layout and landscaping had already been completed. Sonny’s private quarters, nestled in a remote corner of the hotel grounds, were like the keep within the castle, surrounded by walls of brick and wrought iron and lush tropical landscaping, so new they still smelled of fresh paint, with rooms that were airy and light and open to endless vistas of sea and sky.

Eve didn’t kid herself; she knew it was only an illusion of freedom. In a way it made her think of Alcatraz, which she’d had occasion to visit while filming a piece on the federal penitentiary for a cable channel a few years back. She’d found the island an eerie, unnerving place, and one of the things that had haunted her was the fact that inmates serving life sentences could look out through barred and slitted windows and watch sailboats skimming over white-capped waves, and in the distance, the shimmering towers of San Francisco-Baghdad by the Bay- taunting, beckoning, a constant and cruel reminder of everything they’d lost and would never have again.

Not that Eve couldn’t come and go as she pleased-oh, quite the contrary. She had the run of the island. She could and did go for walks, within the limitations of her supposed “injury,” along the beaches or down the few remaining unspoiled avenues shaded by canopies of moss-festooned live oaks and Palmettos and Southern coastal pines. If she wanted to go shopping, a car was instantly at her beck and call.

But she was never left alone. If she ventured beyond the walls of the house, someone was always with her-Sonny, if he was home, or if he was gone, which was most of the time, then either Ricky or Sergei, which was Infinitely worse. One of the two was always there, within arm’s reach, silent and watchful, like vaguely menacing shadows. She no longer dismissed them as witless thugs-Sonny’s “Two Stooges.” Now she realized that they were, in fact, extremely good at what they did, which was, like the highly trained attack dogs they were, to follow orders without question. And like attack dogs, if the order was to kill, she imagined that