Command Performance Read online

  “I’m told Deboque pays very well.”

  “I don’t believe it, Ben.” She turned back to stare at the stage. Her actors, her troupe. Her family. “If I did, I’d scrub this production right now and send everyone home. These people are actors, technicians, seamstresses, for heaven’s sake. They’re not assassins.”

  “I’m not saying it has to be—I’m just saying it could be. I only want you to think about it, Eve.” His hand pressed down on hers. “And watch yourself. I love you.”

  All the anger drained. “Ben, if I thought I’d been responsible for bringing someone here who would—”

  “Wait, don’t even finish. Whatever the answer is, you aren’t responsible. Deboque is.”

  Deboque. It was always Deboque. “I’ve never even seen him. I don’t know what he looks like, and he’s pushing into every part of my life. He has to be stopped.”

  “He will be.” Bennett’s voice was mild, but she did know him well. The thread of violence ran through it. “Reeve’s already started something. It’s going to take time, more time than any of us would like, but he’s going to be stopped. I just hope I can have a hand in it.”

  “Keep your hands in your pockets. I don’t want anything to happen to you, either.”

  The touch of violence was gone as he grinned at her. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m more interested in women and horses than I am in glory.”

  “Just keep it that way.” She rose, dragging her hair back with her hand as she did so. “I should go up and check on the other rehearsal.”

  “You’re working too hard, Eve. It’s starting to show.”

  “Gallant. Always gallant.”

  “You’ve got to stop worrying about Alex.”

  “How?”

  “All right, so you don’t have to stop worrying about him. Try to trust the fates a bit.” He rose with her, then reached out to toy with her hair. “He’s destined to rule Cordina. I’m not, thank God. Nothing’s going to happen to him.”

  “I always believe that when I see him. I have a harder time when I can’t.” She kissed him, then decided it wasn’t enough and hugged him, too. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Play some gin rummy?”

  “You already owe me fifty-three dollars from the last time.”

  “Who’s counting?”

  “I am.” She managed to smile.

  He watched her walk down the aisle and back behind the stage. The two guards trailed after her.

  * * *

  Gabriella and Chris came by and tried to convince her to take the afternoon with them at a seaside café. Her assistant brought her coffee and sugar cookies and clucked her tongue. One of the actors offered his dressing room for a nap and one of the staff from makeup suggested a cream to help with the shadows under her eyes.

  Eve was steaming by the time rehearsals were wrapped for the day.

  “If one more person, just one more, tells me I should get some rest, I’m punching him right in the mouth,” Eve muttered to herself as she strode down the backstage corridor.

  “You won’t hear it from me.”

  Her heels skidded a bit as she stopped. Pete was crouched over one of his cases, locking up props. “I thought just about everyone had cleared out.”

  “Just about have.” Keys jingled at his waist as he stood. “I’ve got a couple of more things to store. Couldn’t find a box big enough for that vase or whatever it is.”

  “Leave it on the set. It’s too ugly for anyone to steal.”

  “You said you didn’t want class.”

  “And you delivered.” She rubbed at the tension gnawing at the back of her neck. “It’s perfect—really, Pete. So are the doilies. I know you’re conscientious, but the theater’s going to be locked up tight. With security the way it is around here, I don’t think you have to worry about anyone making off with the props. Why don’t you go get some dinner?”

  “Thinking about it.” Still he hesitated, toying with his keys.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Nope. Got something to say.”

  Amused, Eve nodded. “Go ahead, then.”

  “You got my dander up the other day when you ordered me out of here. Yanked on me, too, and threatened to fire me.”

  “I didn’t think you were pleased.”

  “Guess I’d have moved a lot faster if I’d known what was going on.” He scratched his chin and looked at his shoes. “Talbot told us how you were running around the place, making sure everybody got out, when you knew there was a bomb. Seems pretty heroic to me. Stupid,” he added, looking back at her. “But heroic.”

  “It wasn’t stupid or heroic. It was necessary. But thanks for the thought.”

  “Like to buy you a drink.”

  For a moment she was speechless. It was the closest Pete had come to a sociable concession in all the time she’d known him. “I’d like that, too. I have someone meeting me here tonight. How about tomorrow, right after rehearsals?”

  “Sounds all right.” Pete scratched his chin, shifted his belt, then started down the hall. “You’re okay, Ms. Hamilton.”

  “You, too,” she murmured, and felt better than she’d felt all day.

  She started down the opposite way, bypassing her old office for her temporary one. Six-fifteen, she thought with a look at her watch. Alexander was late. She’d waited throughout the day, edgy and short of temper, for six o’clock. She’d just have to wait a little longer.

  Why did he want to talk to her? To break things off as cleanly as possible. He had to know how deeply in love with him she was. He didn’t want to hurt her. Hadn’t he said so? He’d want to break things off now, before things became even more difficult for her.

  He still wanted her. She had no doubt about that. But there was his sense of honor. He could only offer her a few hours in the night in secret. His sense of right, of fairness, wouldn’t allow him to continue for long. Wasn’t that one of the reasons she loved him?

  No regrets, Eve reminded herself. She’d known things couldn’t last and had accepted that from the outset. Princes and palaces—they had no place in her life.

  With a sigh she opened the small book she’d put in her briefcase that morning. Inside was the flower she’d pressed, the one Alexander had tucked behind her ear. Two weeks ago? A lifetime ago. She closed the book, telling herself not all women had even that much to comfort them.

  You’re okay, Ms. Hamilton. Well, that was exactly right. She was okay, and she was going to go on being okay. Life was meant to be faced for what it was.

  She would wait, but she wouldn’t brood. Going behind her desk, Eve took out one of the new files she’d started to compile.

  The theater was quiet. Then she heard the bang.

  Chapter 12

  Eve was halfway out of her seat by the time she heard the footsteps race past her door. Her only thought was to lecture whoever among her troupe was still in the theater, making a commotion, when they were supposed to be at dinner. The moment she reached the doorway she saw the body.

  Everything froze. Then she was running down the hall, crouching over the unidentifiable man. There was blood already seeping through his shirt. A tray holding a water pitcher and some glasses had been knocked over. Shards of glass were everywhere. Thinking fast, she tore off the long cardigan she wore and draped it over him.

  The phone. She had to get to the phone. Fighting for calm, she ran down the hall again and into her office. Her fingers were damp and trembling when she picked up the receiver and dialed.

  “This is Eve Hamilton at the Fine Arts Center, the Grand Theater. A man’s been shot. I need an ambulance. The police.” Her breath caught as she heard footsteps coming softly toward her door. “Hurry,” she whispered. “Please hurry.”

  She set the receiver on the desk and looked frantically around. There was no way out, no way but the door. The footsteps had stopped, but where? How close? Trembling, she edged around the desk. Whoever it was would kill her, kill her and …

>   Six-twenty. The face of her watch seemed blurred, but she remembered. Alexander. They were waiting for Alexander.

  Moisture pearled on her forehead, but she inched closer to the door. She had to warn him somehow. She had to find a way. Even as she reached to pull the door the rest of the way open, it swung slowly toward her.

  She saw the gun first. Black, deadly. Then the hand that held it. Biting back a scream, she looked at the face.

  The man who had fenced with Alexander. The man who had smiled at her, whose face had seemed vaguely familiar. Now she remembered. He’d been at the theater before.

  He wasn’t smiling now. His face was grim, set. She looked in his eyes, and knew he was a man who could kill.

  “Mademoiselle,” he began, and she acted.

  She swung, using the back of her fist to connect forcefully with the side of his throat. As the gun clattered out of his hand, she brought her stiffened open hand down on the back of his neck. Panting, she looked down at him, crumpled half in and half out of her office. She wanted to run, just run, but forced herself to think clearly.

  Hooking her hands under his arms, she dragged him inside. After a quick fumble through her top desk drawer, she found the key. The room was hardly as long as he was, sprawled on the floor. She stepped over him, shut the door and locked him in.

  She shook her head to clear the buzzing that filled it and gave herself a moment, leaning back against the wall and catching her breath. The wounded man a few steps away groaned, and she was beside him instantly.

  “Help’s coming,” she murmured. “You’re going to be all right.”

  “Jermaine …”

  “Yes, yes, I know. It’s taken care of. You mustn’t try to talk.” Pressure, she thought. She had to stop the bleeding. She dragged a hand through her hair and tried to think. Towels. “Try not to move,” she told him. “I’m going to get something to stop the bleeding.”

  “Was waiting—was hiding.”

  “He’s locked up,” she assured him. “Don’t talk anymore. I won’t be gone long.”

  She rose, intending to run to the nearest bathroom for towels, when she heard a noise behind her. She spun around, but the hall was empty. Moistening her dry lips, she stared at her office door. Was he conscious again already? It hit her then, coldly, that she hadn’t taken the gun. It was locked in with him. If he woke up and found it …

  Then she heard voices out front and ran toward them.

  The stage was dark. She hit the main switch, flooding the stage with light. Her chest heaved with a sob at the sound of Alexander’s voice. As he climbed the steps to the stage she was racing across it. His apology for being later than he’d promised never materialized. He had her by the arms, holding firmly.

  “What is it?”

  “The man, Deboque’s agent—he’s locked in my office. He shot a man, one of your guards, I think. I’ve already called an ambulance and the police.”

  “Did he hurt you?” Even as he took the first quick look, his hands moved to her shoulder. “There’s blood.”

  “Not mine, the guard’s. Alex, he needs attention. And in my office—”

  “It’s all right.” His arm circled her as he turned to his own bodyguards. “See to it. I’ll stay here with her.”

  “He has a gun,” she began.

  “So do they. Sit.” He lowered her to the sofa she had insisted be faded. “Tell me.” He took his gaze from hers only long enough to watch his guards go backstage.

  “Everyone went home—I thought everyone went home. Of course I know there’s been a guard on me. I heard a bang, then footsteps. There was the body in the hall. I went back to the phone, then I heard someone again. Alex, it was the man you fenced with, that Jermaine.”

  “Jermaine was shot?”

  “No, no!” Dragging her hands through her hair, she tried to be clear. “He was the one. He had a gun. I knocked him out, then—”

  “You knocked out Jermaine?”

  “I’m trying to tell you,” she snapped. “He must have shot the other man, and he was coming back.”

  “Eve.” He shook her gently. “Jermaine is the head of my personal security. I assigned him to you to protect you.”

  “But he …” She trailed off, struggling to clear her mind. “Then who … ?”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt.” Russ stepped out of the shadows at stage left. In his hand was a revolver, lengthened by a slim silencer.

  “Oh, my God.” Before the words were out, Alexander was up, placing Eve behind him.

  “I have to thank you for sending your guards away, even so briefly, Your Highness. I promise to be quick. I am, after all, a professional.”

  “No.” Eve stepped from behind Alexander to grip his arm. “You can’t.”

  “You, I regret.” There was a touch of sincerity in his tone as he smiled at Eve. “You know the business, Eve. I want you to know you’re the best producer I’ve ever worked for.”

  “You won’t get away with it.” Alex spoke quietly, knowing his guards would be back in a matter of seconds.

  “I’ve been given the opportunity to learn this theater very well. I can disappear in ten seconds. It should be all I need. If I don’t make it …” He shrugged. All of them heard the high, distant sound of sirens. “Well, that’s business.” He leveled the gun at Alexander’s heart. “Nothing personal.”

  They were standing on the set. The red urn with its bunch of bright paper flowers stood out like a joke. The heat of the spotlights warmed them as though the play had already begun. But the gun was real.

  She screamed. It was torn out of her. Without a second thought, with no regrets, she stepped in front of Alexander and took the bullet.

  * * *

  She couldn’t die. Alexander sat with his head in his hands as the phrase repeated over and over in his head like a litany. He knew how to pray, but those were the only words that would come to him.

  He knew there were others in the waiting room, but they might have been ghosts. Phantoms of his own imagination. His father stood by the window. Bennett sat on the small lounge with Chris’s hand in his. Gabriella sat beside Alexander, letting her support come through without words. Reeve was there, then gone, then back again, as he dealt with the police.

  If he’d had only a second more, one second, he could have pushed her aside, thrown her aside. Anything to keep the bullet from going into her. She’d jerked against him. As long as he lived, he’d never forget the way her body had jerked in shock and pain before it had gone limp.

  And her blood had been on his hands. Literally and figuratively.

  “Take some tea, Alex.” Gabriella urged the cup on him, but he shook his head. She watched as he lit yet another cigarette. “Don’t do this to yourself,” she murmured. “Eve is going to need you to be strong, not riddled with guilt.”

  “I should have protected her. I should have kept her safe.” He closed his eyes but could still see that horrifying moment she had swung herself in front of him. Throwing her arms around his body as a shield. “It was me he wanted.”

  “You or any of us.” She put a hand on his knee. “If there’s guilt we share it equally. Alex, through the worst days of my life, you were there for me and I wouldn’t let you help. Let me help now.”

  His hand covered hers. It was all he could give.

  Reeve came back into the waiting room. He looked at his wife, touched her briefly on the shoulder, then went to Armand, by the window. Armand only nodded, then went back to his silent vigil. He, too, knew how to pray.

  Unable to sit any longer, Chris rose and walked to the corridor, then back again. There were tears she hadn’t been able to stem drying on her cheeks. She felt Gabriella’s arm go around her, and leaned against it.

  “We can’t lose her.”

  “No.” Gabriella kept her hold tight. “We won’t lose her.” Gently she drew Chris back toward a chair. “Do you remember when we were in school together, the stories you would tell me about Eve? I had wondered what it was
like to have a sister.”

  “Yes, I remember.” Chris took a deep breath and tried to make the effort. “You thought having one would be delightful.”

  “It seemed I was always surrounded by men and boys.” Gabriella smiled and, with Chris’s hand in hers, looked around at her family. “You showed me a picture of Eve. She was twelve, thirteen, I think, and beautiful, even as a child. I loved the idea of having someone like that to share things with.”

  “And I told you how I’d found her in my room with all my makeup lined up on the vanity, experimenting with my best eye shadow. Her eyes looked like garage doors.” Chris ran her fingertips under her eyes to dry them. “She thought she looked gorgeous.”

  Chris sniffed and took the tissue Gabriella handed her. “She hated being sent away to school.” Her breath was shaky as she let it out and drew more in. “Dad thought it best, and he was right, really, but she hated it so. We all thought Eve was a lovely girl, a sweet girl, but not too bright. Lord, did she prove us wrong. She just refused to waste her time doing things that held no interest, so she wasted it with magazines or the latest CDs, instead.”

  “She used to write you those funny letters. You’d read them to me sometimes.”

  “The ones where she described the girls in the dorm or her history teacher. We should have seen then that she had a knack for the theater. Oh, God, Brie, how much longer?”

  “Just a little while,” she murmured. “We used to think that she and Bennett … They seemed to suit so well.” She looked over at Alexander as he stared down at his own hands. “Isn’t it odd that the people we care for should have come together?”

  “She loves him so much.” Chris, too, looked at Alexander, and her heart rose into her throat. “I wanted her to come back to Houston with me. She couldn’t leave him. It was almost as if she knew the time would come when she would protect him.” Her voice broke, and she shook her head before going on. “She said it didn’t matter how he felt, she only wanted whatever time with him she could have.”

  Brie sighed. “Alexander closes himself in, so often even from himself. But I don’t think there can be any doubt now about his feelings. He blames himself. Not circumstances, not Deboque or fate, but himself totally.”

  “Eve wouldn’t.”

  “No, she wouldn’t.”

  Understanding, Chris rubbed her hands over her eyes and rose. It wasn’t easy to cross the room to him. There was resentment. She couldn’t avoid it. There was blame and an anger wedged in her heart that had found no room for escape. The step she took was for Eve. When she sat beside him, he didn’t reach out to her, but looked over with eyes that were shadowed and red from the scrubbing of his own hands.

  “You must hate me.” He said it in a voice that was both quiet and dull. “It is small comfort to know that you can’t hate me as much as I hate myself.”

  She wanted to take his hand for Eve’s sake, but couldn’t. “That doesn’t do Eve any good. She needs us to pull together now.”

  “I could have found a way to make her leave, to make her go.”

  “Do you think so?” It made her smile just a little. “I can’t imagine that. Since she got out of school Eve hasn’t allowed anyone to make her do anything.”

  “I didn’t protect her.” He covered his face with his hands again, fighting the pressing need to break down. “She matters more than anything in my life and I didn’t protect her.”

  Chris found her hand groping for his, for Eve, yes, but also for herself and for Alexander. “She stepped in front of you.” The pain shot into his eyes again. As her own rose to meet it, their fingers linked. “If you have to blame yourself, Alex, blame yourself for being the man she loves. We have to believe she’s going to be all right. I need you to believe that with me, or I don’t think I can handle any more.”

  They sat and waited. Coffee was brought and grew cold. Ashtrays overflowed. The scent of hospital—antiseptic, detergent and nerves—grew familiar. They no longer noticed the guards posted in the corridors.

  When Dr. Franco entered the room, they all got to their feet. His surgical cap was soaked with sweat, as was the front of his pale green scrubs. He came