Lethal

He seemed even more menacing when he lay down on his back inches from her. She hadn’t been in bed with anyone since Eddie. Emily, of course. But Emily’s forty pounds hardly made an impression in the mattress. She didn’t rock the bed when she climbed onto it or create a decline, which caused Honor to focus on keeping to her side rather than rolling against him.

The motions and sounds of his settling down beside her harkened back to the familiar, yet it felt strange. This man lying close to her wasn’t Eddie. His breathing was different. His sheer presence felt different from Eddie’s.

And somehow not touching seemed more intimate than if they were.

Once he was settled comfortably, he didn’t stir. From the corner of her eye, she looked over to see that he’d closed his eyes. His fingers were loosely clasped and resting on his abdomen.

She lay as straight, still, and stiff as a plank, trying to talk herself out of having a full-blown panic attack. She was bound and unable to get free, true. But, she told herself sternly, she wasn’t in mortal danger. She counted her heartbeats in order to keep the rate of them under control. She made each breath long and deep.

But these exercises worked no better than reason.

Her anxiety continued to mount until she began pulling against the bindings, straining against them with as much effort as she could muster.

“You’re only making them tighter,” he said.

“Undo them.”

“Go to sleep.”

A sob burbled out of her and she started jerking at the bindings until the headboard banged rhythmically against the wall.

“Stop that!”

“I can’t. I told you I couldn’t stand it, and I can’t.”

She began to pull so viciously against the stockings that the recoil caused the backs of her hands to rap painfully against the iron rails of the headboard. The pain caused her panic to rise until she was bucking like someone demented. Her legs bicycled as though trying to outrun the feeling of suffocation. Her heels pushed hard against the mattress. Her head thrashed from side to side on the pillow.

“Shh, shh. Calm down. You’re okay. Shh.”

Realization came to her gradually. Coburn was leaning over her. He was holding one of her hands in each of his, his thumbs planted solidly in her palms. His voice was a soothing whisper.

“Shh.” His thumbs began massaging small circles into her palms. “Take deep breaths. You’ll be fine.”

But she didn’t breathe deeply. Following one stuttering exhale, she didn’t breathe at all. And when he angled his head back to look down into her face, he stopped breathing too.

His face was close to hers, close enough that she could see his eyes as they looked down at her mouth, then at her chest, making her achingly aware of her breasts. Not even the semi-darkness could dim the blue intensity of his eyes when they reconnected with hers.

In order to stop her convulsing, he’d placed his leg across her thighs. His lap was pressed against her hip. His arousal was unmistakable. And Honor knew that her perfect stillness was a giveaway that she felt it.

It seemed like an eternity that they lay there, frozen in that position, but it was probably only a few seconds. Then he swore viciously as he released her hands and rolled off her. He lay as before on his back, close but not touching. Only now he placed one forearm across his eyes.

“Don’t pull another stunt like that.”

It hadn’t been a stunt, but she didn’t refute him. He hadn’t specified what her punishment would be if she freaked out again. But the gruffness in his voice warned her against testing him.

Chapter 13

One hour shy of daylight the boat belonging to Arleeta Thibadoux was discovered. It appeared to have been dragged into a grove of cypress trees for concealment.

Two deputy sheriffs had been poling their way through the swamp when one of them spotted it with his high-powered light. He and his partner used their cell phones to spread the word, and within half an hour of the discovery, two dozen exhausted but exhilarated law enforcement officers had converged on the site.

Fred Hawkins, who’d been at the police station in downtown Tambour when he got word, was able to get fairly close to the site in the helicopter on loan from N.O.P.D. As soon as the chopper set down, he was picked up in a small motorboat by fellow officers, who conveyed him the rest of the way. Doral was already at the scene when he arrived.

“It took on water,” Doral told him, getting straight to the point. He aimed his flashlight into the partially submerged hull. “At least we have a new starting point.”

“We don’t know for certain it’s Coburn.”

“It’s either him or a bizarre coincidence.” Doral used the beam of the flashlight to spot the blood smears on the oar. “Still bleeding from somewhere. The hell of it is…”