Free Eleventh Hour by Catherine Coulter Page A

before she ducked into the women’s room. “Okay, enough.”
    He pressed his back against the wall and jerked her back against him. “Let’s try this again. That was a good move, that twist. Where’d you learn that?”
    She was heaving, panting. She didn’t say anything, just stood there, her head down, breathing hard. She didn’t say anything for a very long time, but Dane was patient; he’d learned to be. Finally, he said, “Are you afraid the media are going to catch up with you and there’ll be a photo or a video?”
    “Another word about me, and, believe this—I’m gone. You have no right to question me, no right at all.
    No more, Agent Carver. No more.”
    He didn’t want to drop it, but he knew he had to. They needed her. Dane sighed. “There just isn’t anything easy in this life, you know? Why couldn’t you have sold lingerie at Macy’s? Something nice and normal?”
    “I was nice and normal,” she said, realized she’d let something out, and seamed her lips together.
    “Oh? Maybe you were in real estate? Advertising? Maybe you were married and your old man knocked you around? All right, you got it, there won’t be another word out of me.”
    “You’ve got words just waiting to spill out of you. Forget it.” She leaned down and bit his hand, hard.
    Dane yelled, just couldn’t help himself. There were a good dozen folks on them then, half of them cops.
    She was homeless. There was no question who the good guy was. One uniformed officer grabbed her hair and yanked her head back.

    The officer said, “She didn’t draw blood, but it was close. You want some help here?”
    “Yeah, could I have a pair of cuffs?”
    The officer handed them over without even asking for an ID and Dane knew it wasn’t because they were careless. He looked like a cop. He pulled her arms behind her and cuffed her wrists. “There,” he said. “
    Now my body parts are safe. Thank you, ah, Officer, ah, Gordon. I’ll leave the cuffs with Inspector Delion, up on four.”
    “No problem. You gotta watch yourself with these people. You might want your hand checked out, you never know what diseases she might be carrying around.”
    “Yeah, thanks, I will.”
    He barely understood Nick say “bastard” she had her jaw locked so tight.
    “I’m not a bastard. I’ve got a pedigree. Now, what are we going to do with you?”
    “Let me leave. I’ll come back, I swear it.”
    “Nope. Let it go, Ms. Jones. You’re with me now. Think of me as your own personal bodyguard. Just let it go. Can you do that?”
    As he spoke he turned her around to face him. There was a line of freckles across her nose he hadn’t noticed before, quite visible since she was so pale. But what he really saw, and hated, was defeat. She looked crushed, flattened.
    He clasped her upper arms and shook her slightly. “Listen to me. I won’t let anyone hurt you, I promise.”
    “You look so much like him.”
    “Yes, I know, but my brother and I were very different people. Very different. Well, not in all things, but in many.”
    “Maybe not,” she said. “Maybe not. He promised he wouldn’t let anyone hurt me either.” She bit her lip.
    “But he’s dead. Please, I wasn’t responsible for his death, was I?”
    She stood there, her arms pulled behind her, her wrists handcuffed, tears streaking down her cheeks.
    “No,” Dane said. “You weren’t responsible. I do know one thing for certain—Michael’s murder had nothing at all to do with you. Believe it.”
    “Oh shit,” Delion said, coming to a dead stop about three feet from them. “I don’t need this.”
    NINE
    “What size do you wear?”
    “I don’t want any new clothes. Listen to me, Agent Carver, I just want to stay the way I am now. I have to, don’t you understand?”
    “You’re going to be safer if you look like a reasonably dressed woman rather than a bag lady. This is a very ordinary, inexpensive store, Inspector Bates told me. She said we could get you a couple of