Passion by Marilyn Pappano Page B

hidden behind the blank weariness that etched his face. “You’ve met a man claiming
     to be Tremont. What proof did he offer? What proof did you ask for?”
    “He knew Rebecca. He knew me. He was the man I’d talked to on the phone. He knew everything there was to know about Simon’s
     business. He knew Simon’s real name, knew his address—”
    Interrupting her, John recited the address—box, city, and zip code—from memory. “Sound familiar?”
    Stunningly so. But she responded almost immediately with a stunner of her own. “He wrote
Resurrection
.”
    The silence that followed her triumphant pronouncement was repressive, and the rising temperature, too warm now and sticky
     as the heat from outside seeped in, made it more so. She wished for cool air, for a blast from the air conditioner, for noise
     or music, for anything to alleviate her discomfortand chase away the suffocating closeness in the cab as John stared at her.
    “He wrote
Resurrection
,” she repeated, her voice softer now, gentler. “You can’t explain that away, can you? If he’s not Simon Tremont, how did
     he come up with the story? How did he write the book that perfectly matches the outline that’s been sitting in our files for
     more than a year? How did he write the best book that Simon Tremont has ever written?”
    She waited a moment, but when he said nothing, she gave a little shake of her head. “You can’t explain it,” she said finally.
    “No,” he said at last, quietly. Defeatedly. “I can’t.”
    Maybe she had won, she thought, hope rising, expanding. Maybe now he would acknowledge that he couldn’t pull this off. Maybe
     he would turn around and take her back to New Orleans. Maybe he would let her go.
    But her hopes were shattered as quickly as they had formed. “I need your help, Teryl.” Desperation shadowed his voice, made
     it unsteady and made her skin crawl. “I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m not asking you to believe me. I just need your help
     to prove that I am who I say I am. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m not going to kill you. But I have to have your help.”
    Her gaze locked fully with his. “And if I don’t give it?”
    His fingers knotted around the steering wheel, and a corresponding knot formed deep in her stomach. “Then I’m prepared to
     take it.”
    “You’re threatening me.” Her tone was accusatory, her expression belligerent. “You just said you wouldn’t hurt me, and now—”
    “It’s not a threat, Teryl,” he said quietly, silencing her. “It’s a promise.”
    She had never been so utterly miserable in her life.
    Teryl rested her head so that the shoulder strap from the seat belt offered some support, but with every bump on the narrow
     road they were following, her forehead bangedagainst the window, and the muscles in her neck were tight enough to spasm any minute now. Her back hurt from long hours in
     the same cramped position—as far from John as she could get—and she was hungry, sleepy, and needed a bathroom desperately.
    She was almost too miserable to be afraid.
    But not quite.
    Reaching up, John turned on the map lights, then pulled a road atlas from between his seat and the console and tossed it onto
     her lap. Sometime this afternoon, somewhere south of Montgomery, he had done the same thing, had instructed her to find a
     route to Virginia that would keep them off the interstates. She hadn’t asked why; she had assumed that it had something to
     do with all those state troopers they kept seeing, first on I-10, then on 65. Maybe he had thought she would do something
     crazy, like this morning—something to get their attention, something to force a confrontation.
    She had thought about it, had thought about it long and hard, especially when one young female trooper had come up alongside
     them. She had thought about grabbing the wheel again, about creating enough of a disturbance to get the woman’s attention,
     even about forcing both the trooper’s