Kincaid's Dangerous Game (The Taken Book 4)

by Kathleen Creighton

  What was she going to do? What could she do?

  It was at that point in her panic that she’d headed for the shower. She did some of her best thinking in the shower.

  So. What were her options?

  Running would always be her first choice, but in this case, probably a bad one. Not only would it be futile, at best only postponing the inevitable, but there was the thing about brothers. Holt Kincaid had said brothers.

  Admit it, Billie, you’re dying to know what that’s about.

  And, the man with the answers is dying to tell you.

  So why don’t you do it? Go see the man, buy him that drink—or let him buy you one—and see what he has to say. What are you afraid of?

  Afraid?

  That did it. She turned off the water and yanked back the shower curtain. Grabbed a towel and scrubbed her skin rosy and her hair into layers of spikes, every movement jerky with anger. If there was anything in the world Billie hated, it was being afraid. She was done with being afraid. Done long ago with feeling scared and helpless. Knowledge was power, right? These days, Billie Farrell was all about having the power. Which meant she had to have the knowledge.

  And the man with the knowledge was Holt Kincaid.

  The ringing telephone dragged Holt into consciousness from the depths of a sound and dreamless sleep. He groped first for his cell phone, then realized it was the room phone that was making the racket.

  What the hell? he thought. A glance at the alarm clock on the nightstand told him it was three o’clock in the afternoon, since it was obviously daylight. Too early for Billie to be off work. He picked up the receiver and growled, “Kincaid.”

  “Hey, you up for that drink?”

  “Billie?” He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, scrubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Where are you?”

  “In the lobby. What’s the matter, did I wake you up?”

  “Yeah, well…I didn’t get much sleep last night.” He was wide awake now, and his heart was going a mile a minute.

  “So you coming down, or what?”

  “Yeah, sure. Give me five minutes.”

  “Okay, I guess I’ll be in the bar. Want me to order for you?”

  “Make it the coffee shop,” Holt said, swallowing a yawn. “You can order me a cup of coffee—black.”

  As he lurched into the bathroom to splash water on his face and run a comb through his hair, he was wondering one thing: Would Billie be wearing her sunglasses?

  In the parlance of Vegas, he was willing to lay odds on it.

  Billie would have given a lot to be able to keep her heart from pounding when she saw Holt Kincaid standing in the entrance to the coffee shop. But although she’d learned to control a good many of her body’s natural reflexes, pulse rate wasn’t one of them.

  Schooling her visible movements to be slow, careful, deliberate, she picked up her Coke and took a sip, then watched over the rim of the moisture-beaded glass as he spoke to the hostess, who pointed him toward the table where she was sitting. She smiled as she saw the hostess’s body language change in the subtle and indefinable ways of a woman in the presence of a very attractive man.

  He was attractive, no denying that. Wearing the same slacks, jacket and open-at-the-neck dress shirt he’d had on this morning, he didn’t look quite so out of place in the hotel restaurant as he had wandering among the potted plants at the garden center. But no matter what kind of setting he found himself in, she thought, Holt Kincaid wasn’t a man to fade into the woodwork.

  The hostess’s eyes followed him as he zigzagged his way across the almost-empty dining room, and so did Billie’s. When he pulled out the chair opposite her, she saw that he had a bedspread wrinkle across one cheek, and something in her chest did a peculiar little flip.

  Another thing she hadn’t learned to control—yet. She definitely needed to work on that.

  Holt settled into the chair and reached for the cup of coffee steaming on the table in front of him, gave her a little nod of greeting and drawled, “Miss Billie.”

  “Wow,” she said, lifting her eyebrows, “that didn’t sound like California.”

  He drank coffee, grimaced and set it down. “I said I live in L.A. I was born and raised in Georgia.”

  “Really. You don’t have an accent. Usually.”

  “I left the South behind fairly early on. It still crops up now and again, I guess.”

  Most people would have missed the slight flinching of the soft skin around his eyes when he said that, but Billie didn’t. And she thought, Aha. He’s got ghosts in his past, too.

  She filed the knowledge away for future reference.

  “Sorry about your nap,” she said, and her eyes kept coming back to the wrinkle mark on his cheek. She had the strongest desire to reach out and touch it. Why did it seem so poignant to her? Something about that mark on the supercool, iron-hard Clint Eastwood clone brought to mind images of unexpected innocence…or vulnerability.

  He regarded her while he drank coffee, then said, “I wasn’t expecting you this early.”

  “Well, here I am.” She lifted a shoulder, not about to concede how badly she wanted what he had to give her. Billie didn’t give her opponents that kind of advantage over her, not if she could help it.

  Holt didn’t say anything, just watched her over the rim of his coffee cup. She fought down impatient anger and said lightly, “You were going to tell me a story.”

  His eyebrows rose. He set down the cup. “Just like that? No social niceties?”

  She gave a little tiff of sarcastic laughter. “Social niceties? What do you want to do, put money in the jukebox and dance?”

  Unbidden, the thought popped into Holt’s head that dancing with Billie Farrell might be a very nice thing. Unsettled by the notion, he gave her a thoughtful smile. For a moment the air between them did the sizzle and crackle thing, and then he thought, What the hell am I doing? He cleared his throat, shifted around in his chair and frowned. “I’m just trying to think where to start.”

  “How about, who hired you to find…this woman?”

  He nodded. “Fair enough. His name is Cory Pearson.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “No,” said Holt, “of course you haven’t. But the story begins with him. When Cory was a little kid his dad went off to fight in Vietnam. He came back changed—nothing like the loving daddy who used to tell his little boy bedtime stories he made up himself. He was moody and withdrawn…started drinking heavily, couldn’t hold a job. It was a familiar story at that time.

  “Anyway, as time went on, the family grew to include four more children—two boys, and then twin girls. When their father was having one of his spells of PTSD, it was Cory’s job to keep the little ones out of his way while his mother tried to talk her husband back from whatever hell he’d gotten lost in. Finally, one night when the little girls—the twins—were about two, their father had a violent episode during which he shot his wife and then himself.”

  “Good God,” Billie exclaimed.

  Holt nodded, picked up his cup and found it empty. A waitress appeared to refill it. He thanked her, waited until she had left, then went on. All the while Billie sat without moving, without seeming to breathe, even, her face gone still and pale as death.

  “Since there was no other family, the kids were taken by social services. Evidently, no foster family could be found to take all five, so they were farmed out all over the system. Eventually, the four younger children were adopted—the two boys by one family, the twins by another.”

  Billie spoke almost without moving her lips, and devoid of all inflection. “What about Cory?”

  “He was older, about twelve by that time. Too old for most adoptive parents to consider. He stayed in foster care for a while, but ran away so many times trying to find his brothers and baby sisters, that he eventually wound up in juvenile detention. By the time he graduated out of the system when he was eighteen, his brothers and sisters had vanished—adopted and gone
.”

  Billie muttered under her breath.

  Holt nodded. “He was just a kid, and a known troublemaker at that. What could he do?” He paused, cleared his throat and wondered whether, behind those dark lenses, there might, just possibly, be tears in her eyes. Was it his wishful thinking, or did her mouth have a softness about it he hadn’t seen before?

  As if determined to deny that, she cleared her throat and said harshly, “Okay, so he’s hired you to find the four siblings—I get it. So why did he wait so long? Vietnam—that had to be…what, thirty years ago?”

  Holt nodded. “That’s a question Cory has asked himself. Mostly, I think he’d just given up. He managed to turn his own life around—went to college, became a journalist, a war correspondent. Fairly famous one, too—won a Pulitzer for his reporting on the Middle East wars. Was captured and held prisoner for a while himself.” He paused. “It was while he was in an Iraqi prison that he met a man, an aviator who had been shot down during the first Gulf War and had been in that same prison for eight years. They were rescued together. Eventually, Cory married the man’s daughter, Samantha. It was Sam who convinced Cory he needed to find his brothers and sisters. That’s when he contacted me.”

  “Because you specialize in finding people.” Billie’s lips twitched slightly, too quickly to be called a smile.

  “That’s right.” He spoke very softly now, too, watching her face. It occurred to him that she seemed to have gone a shade whiter, if that was possible. “As I said, I’ve found the two boys. Wade is a homicide detective in Portland, Oregon, and Matt is in Southern California—splits his year between teaching inner-city kids and being a whitewater rafting guide, which is quite a feat, considering a rock-climbing accident put him in a wheelchair a few years back. I also found one of the twins—Brooke. That was a couple of months ago. She told me—”

  Billie stood up so abruptly Holt flinched back as if from an expected blow. “Like I said—can’t help you,” she mumbled, and there was no question about it now…her face was the color of cold ashes. She paused, then made a valiant attempt at a smile, obviously trying to backtrack, mend what for her had to be a catastrophic breakdown of her defenses. “Look…thanks for the Coke…Gotta go. Wasn’t watching the time…I’m supposed to be—sorry.”

  She walked away, moving as rapidly through the dining room as the closely set tables would allow.

  He didn’t try to stop her, or follow her, either. He knew desperation when he saw it.

  Billie managed to wait until she’d turned the corner and was out of Holt Kincaid’s line of sight before she bolted. Fortunately, she’d played a tournament in the hotel and knew where the restrooms were. Even so, she barely made it into a stall before becoming wretchedly, violently ill.

  Thankfully, the restroom was empty. She threw up until she had nothing left in her stomach, then collapsed onto the cold tile floor, pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them in a vain effort to stop the shaking. The pressure of sobs was like an iron fist squeezing her chest, and she hauled in air in great gulps and clenched her teeth so hard in her determination to hold them back, her jaws screamed in agony. She tore off her sunglasses and dug the heels of her hands into dry, burning eye sockets. But no matter how hard she pressed, no matter how viciously she tried to scrub them away, the images came. Images she thought she’d blocked out of her mind forever. Memories of pain and fear and humiliation and shame.

  Brooke…oh, Brookie, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry…

  Chapter 4

  H

  olt was trying to decide whether he’d just had a major break in his case, or blown it completely. One thing he did know: He was never going to be able to figure out Billie Farrell or anticipate her reactions, so he might as well quit trying. Cory Pearson’s story had shaken her, no doubt about that. And if it had finally sunk in that she had three brothers she didn’t know about, he could have expected some degree of shock. Given the color of her complexion, he wasn’t all that surprised she’d felt the need to make a hasty exit.

  But he hadn’t expected her not to come back.

  He’d waited for her for nearly an hour, nursing his cup of coffee and smiling at the waitress whenever she appeared anxiously at his elbow. He’d figured once Billie regained her composure she’d have a jillion questions—or at the very least, be ready to stand fast on her denial of any relationship to his client. Finally, accepting the fact that his quarry had slipped away, he’d signed his tab and gone back to his room to plan his next move.

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed gazing at the wooden skewer in its napkin nest and trying to calculate the odds a lab might be able to get a reading on Billie’s DNA from it, when a knock came on the hotel room door. His heart jolted and skittered around a bit, but he was pretty sure his voice was calm as he called out, “Yeah, who is it?”

  When he heard a gruff, “It’s me—Billie,” his heartbeat settled down to a hard, heavy rhythm he could feel in the bottom of his belly.

  He opened the door and she pushed past him without a word, her momentum carrying her into the middle of the room, where she paused and looked around her as if she wasn’t quite sure where she was or how she’d come to be there. Naturally, she was still wearing the shades.

  He closed the door and walked around her, touching her elbow as he turned to face her. She flinched away from him like a contrary child.

  “Brenna Fallon?” he asked softly.

  The dark lenses regarded him steadily, revealing nothing but twin images of himself. Below them her face showed no signs of emotional turmoil, only a kind of poignant defiance. “Used to be,” she said in a voice full of gravel. “A long time ago. I’m Billie now. Billie Farrell.”

  “Okay,” he murmured, nodding cautiously.

  She spoke rapidly, vehemently, arms folded across her chest. “You got that? I’m not that person you’re looking for. I wasn’t lying.” She sucked in air, and he wondered if her heart was beating as fast as his was. “I’m not that person anymore.”

  Again he nodded. Seconds ticked by, counted in those thunderous heartbeats, while he gazed at her and she stared back at him. Then he lifted his hands and gently took the sunglasses off of her face.

  Her eyes blazed at him, molten gold like the just-risen sun.

  His breath caught, and he felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He’d known it—known she was Brenna—from almost the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. Of course he had. But maybe he hadn’t known it in his gut. Until now.

  “You have your mother’s eyes,” he heard himself say in a thickened mumble he didn’t recognize.

  More seconds passed—he didn’t know how many. Then without warning she reached up, caught his shirt collar in her fisted hands and pulled his head down and kissed him. Kissed him hard, with hunger and desperation and who-knows-what other emotions. And, at least for a while, gained his shocked and instinctive cooperation.

  Might as well face it. He was never going to be able to predict Billie Farrell’s next move—or Brenna Fallon’s, either.

  She hadn’t known she was going to kiss him—hadn’t even known she wanted to. Kissing anyone was the farthest thing from her mind. For the first couple of seconds it seemed like the wildest, stupidest, most dangerous thing she’d ever done—and given her history, that was saying a lot. Adrenaline surged through her, prickling her skin and sending her heart rate rocketing off the charts.

  Then…she felt him. Felt his mouth, silky soft on the surface, firm underneath…the warm, shocked puff of his breath, the solid bulk of his shoulders beneath her balled-up fists. And his response—she hadn’t expected that.

  She felt a moment of panic…thought, I should stop this! And discovered she didn’t want to—for a number of different reasons. To keep from having to think about the bombshell that had just been dropped on her. But mostly…because it just felt so damn good.

  Such a hard-looking man, and yet…Who would’ve thought he would feel so g
ood?

  She would have liked to go on kissing him a considerable while longer, but obviously he didn’t share her desire. She became aware of his hands on her waist, felt them linger there a moment…then move with purpose to her shoulders. The pressure on her shoulders was gentle persuasion, at first, and his mouth still clung to hers in a way more wistful than hungry. Knowing what was coming, she made a soft, whimpering sound of protest, but his hands had already moved on to her arms, slipped along them until he could grasp her wrists. Before he could humiliate her completely by pulling her hands free of his collar, she gave up her grip and jerked away from him, furious and shaken. She would have fled, then, but he’d probably anticipated that, because he didn’t let go of her wrists. And for a few seconds they looked at each other across their locked hands, both breathing hard.

  Holt’s eyes narrowed, and he said thickly, “You want to tell me what that was about?”

  She lifted her chin and lowered her lashes, and injected her voice with a seductive bravado she was far from feeling. “Don’t tell me you hadn’t thought about it.”

  He gave her a sideways, wary look. “Uh…actually, no, I hadn’t.”

  “Liar.” But he went on looking at her, saying nothing. She felt cold and queasy. She knew her smile was congealing fast, and it was only pride that enabled her to produce a nice little pout and accompanying puff of laughter to go with it. “Okay, I think my feelings are hurt.”

  “They shouldn’t be,” he said dryly, “believe me. It’s just against my principles to hit on my clients’ relatives—or a woman who’s emotionally vulnerable, for that matter.” He gave a sharp little laugh and gallantly added, “But you sure don’t make it easy.”

  She bit her lower lip as she smiled up at him and turned her wrists experimentally in his grasp. “You didn’t hit on me, I hit on you. And who says I’m ‘emotionally vulnerable’?”