by Anne Stuart
He belched again, and he could taste the beef blood on his tongue. He smiled lazily, drained the cognac, and headed for the gaming tables.
Randall shifted his long legs and grimaced at the darkness outside the plane. He hadn’t had much choice when it came to night flights to London, and this particular airline came with seats so jammed together that his six-foot-plus frame could barely squeeze into the classless flight. The food had been worse than usual, and there was a baby crying unceasingly three rows behind him. He swore beneath his breath, using words he hadn’t even thought of in years, and the savage, fluent cursing soothed some of his temper. He had five more hours to go, five more hours crammed into this tourist-laden airplane, and then he could concentrate on what was foremost in his mind: finding Timothy Flynn.
There was no guarantee that Maggie would appreciate the gesture, no guarantee at all. But since their last, hostile meeting when she’d flatly told him he was second best and she wouldn’t settle for him, he’d been waiting for the right moment. Presenting her with her mother’s attacker might be just the right touch. Better than candy and flowers any time.
He shifted uncomfortably, staring out into the rainy night, and wondered where Maggie was at that moment. If he knew her, she was already on her way to London herself. She wouldn’t be counting on anyone else to find Flynn. And she certainly wouldn’t be counting on Randall.
But he’d find Flynn. And he’d find Maggie. And then, just maybe, he’d find some peace of mind.
Customs was easy enough, with all the holiday traffic. Maggie managed her innocent calm as the officials made a cursory inspection of her luggage, of her makeup case with the hidden gun, before gesturing her onward while they dealt with Holly’s mountain of suitcases. There were times when her sister’s proclivity for fancy clothing had its uses.
Maggie stood there patiently, her own modest suitcase at her feet, when her senses suddenly became very alert. She didn’t whip around, didn’t move, didn’t even risk a furtive glance over her shoulder. She just stood there, absorbing the feel of hostile eyes boring into her narrow back, burning her vulnerable, exposed nape. And then she moved across to Holly, who was busy dazzling the Customs inspector, and touched her lavender silk arm.
“We’re being watched,” she murmured. “Have any idea who it could be?”
Holly turned, her face wonderfully bland as her magnificent eyes swept limpidly over the bustling tourists before resting on Maggie. “Yup,” she said succinctly. “Green Eyes.”
“What was he doing?”
“Just standing there with the London Times, leaning against a pillar and trying to look innocent. Except he was glaring at me again.”
“Maybe you remind him of his ex-wife,” Maggie suggested, inwardly pleased at Holly’s deft handling of the situation.
“Maybe,” she said with a grin. “Or maybe he just hates beautiful women.”
“I love your modesty.”
“You love my honesty,” Holly shot back. “Are you going to call the hospital? This may take me awhile.” She flashed another brilliant smile at the customs official wading through the fourth suitcase. The bemused official smiled back.
Maggie nodded. “See if he follows me.”
The row of telephones were well within sight of the customs tables. Green Eyes was lucky, he could watch them both from his vantage point with the London Times shielding him. At that moment he seemed far more interested in Holly than her sister, a fact Maggie noticed without a trace of rancor. Holly was absolutely right, she thought as she dealt with the vagaries of transatlantic telephones. He was staring at her with intense dislike, if not outright hatred.
Such animosity was unnerving and completely unexpected. As far as Maggie knew, Holly had no enemies. If she lived a butterfly existence, the very rootlessness that kept involvement away also kept hatred away. There were no deep emotions, either negative or positive, to interfere with her admittedly shallow existence.
Could the man be Flynn? He hardly seemed Sybil’s type. He was too sturdy, too pugnacious, too lacking in charm or beauty to appeal to someone of Sybil’s exacting tastes. Of course, his eyes were quite beautiful, but Sybil was more into handsome faces and broad backs. No, it couldn’t be Flynn, and Flynn worked alone, without accomplices. Besides, Holly would have recognized him.
Maybe he was just a nutcase, a random psycho who preyed on beautiful women. Holly’s face was famous enough if one was a reader of Vogue or Elle. Somehow Maggie doubted Green Eyes was into high fashion.
Slowly she replaced the receiver. No change in Sybil’s condition, damn it all. Well, no news was good news—at least she hadn’t worsened. Maggie crossed the room, ignoring their watcher. All they needed was a weirdo complicating matters. The sooner they got through customs and into London the happier she’d be.
There was no sign of Green Eyes when they climbed into their taxi. Maggie leaned back against the seat, next to Holly’s slender shoulders, and looked out the back window of the cab. The sturdy silhouette of the driver behind them was ominously familiar. She almost fancied she could see his green eyes, still watching them.
“Damn.” She ducked back down again. “He is following us.”
Holly didn’t turn. “Did we ever have any doubt?”
“Not really,” Maggie said with a sigh. “Do you recognize him?”
“Never seen him before in my life,” Holly said. “Should we ask the driver to try to lose him?”
“Not on your life. I want to find out who he is and why he’s tailing us.”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“Ask him politely,” Maggie said.
“And if he won’t tell us?”
Maggie’s smile was grim. “He’ll tell us,” she said.
Holly eyed her warily. “I expect he will,” she said in a faint voice.
three
Maggie had chosen a discreet, upper-class hotel in the heart of London, one that catered to the famous and not so famous who had the wherewithal to avoid crowds. The lobby resembled the sort of private men’s clubs she’d always imagined when she read Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries, and she half expected to find an elderly corpse propped neatly beside a potted palm.
Checking in was accomplished with quiet efficiency, and as Maggie turned with Holly to follow their masses of luggage she kept her gaze averted from Green Eyes.
He should look out of place in these surroundings, Maggie thought as she stepped aboard the wire cage lift. With his rough clothing, his tough, pugnacious air, he should have been like a bull in a china shop. But he wasn’t. For some strange reason he fit into the elegant surroundings as if born to them, and Maggie’s curiosity grew.
“What are you going to do?” Holly asked as they rose above the lobby, leaving Green Eyes staring after them.
“I told you, find out why he’s following us. I can’t jump him when you’ve commandeered half the bellboys in the place—this is the sort of thing that needs to be accomplished without an army of witnesses. I’ll wait till they’ve gone and then take a little walk down the hallway. I have no doubt at all I’ll find him waiting for me.”
“Uh, Maggie, he looks awfully strong …”
Maggie only smiled. “Trust me, Holly.”
It took all her self-control to wait patiently as three extremely handsome young men placed Holly’s twelve suitcases in one of the bedrooms of the large suite. It took every ounce of calm to stand there, looking out the window, as Holly flirted and tipped and sent them on their way. And it took every bit of her inner balance to calmly wash her hands and face, retrieve the Colt 380 from its hiding place, and head for the door.
“I’m coming.” Holly hadn’t even bothered to change, a rare situation indeed, but Maggie was having none of it.
“You’ll stay right here. I don’t need anyone else in the line of fire.”
“Are you actually going to use that thing?” Holly eyed the gun warily.
“Not if I can help it.” She dropped it in the pocket of
her Irish knit cardigan. “But it doesn’t hurt to carry insurance.”
“No,” Holly said faintly. “It doesn’t hurt.”
The hallway was still and deserted. Maggie moved down the narrow carpet without a sound till she came to a spot she’d noticed on their way in, a shallow hallway leading to what was probably a linen closet. Ducking in, she waited there, listening, her back pressed against the wall as a measured pair of footsteps moved down the hallway.
She could feel the tension running through her exhausted body, and she held herself taut and still, listening, desperate not to make the kind of mistakes that weariness inspired. She stood there, unmoving, as an elegant, elderly gentleman passed the hallway, breathing a sigh of relief that she’d had the sense to wait till she was certain. The sound of his door closing almost muffled the next set of footsteps.
This time she knew. By the itching in her palms, by the adrenaline buzzing through her, by instincts older than civilization.
It happened very quickly. One moment Maggie was standing there, seemingly calm and relaxed, and in the next she had Green Eyes dragged back into the tiny hallway, pressed up against the wall, her gun at his neck.
“Would you like to tell me why you’re following me?” she inquired pleasantly.
“You expect me to believe you’d shoot me?” The voice that came from that rough, belligerent face was startlingly elegant, the perfect tone of the British upper classes. The green eyes were clouded with both fury and embarrassment, and Maggie guessed quite rightly that he was outraged that he’d been bested so easily. “You have no silencer on that little toy,” he continued. “It would make a hell of a noise and a hell of a mess, and then you’d never find out anything. Why don’t you put the silly thing away?”
“It may look like a toy to you, Green Eyes,” Maggie said sweetly, “but it could still make an awful big hole in you.”
“I’m aware of that, Miss Bennett,” he said, his eyes sweeping her with insolent disdain. “But I think you have more sense than to shoot me.”
“Oh, I won’t shoot you,” Maggie agreed as her nimble hands reached inside his jacket and removed his own, much larger gun, tossing it on the carpet. “Not yet, anyway. But you are going to tell me how you know my name and why you’re following me.”
“I have no objections to that.” He glowered at her as she continued a desultory search of his body, one that allowed for no maidenly restraints. She found the knife in its ankle holster and tucked it in the pocket of the cardigan. She pulled his wallet from his pants pocket, flipped it open, and grimaced.
“Ian Andrews,” she read his identification. “British Army Intelligence, eh? Maybe I can trust you. But that still doesn’t answer my question. Why?”
“You’ve got it a bit wrong. I’m not following you.”
“All right, I’ll bite. Who are you following?” She pressed the snub-nosed barrel of her Colt closer. “And why?”
“I’m following that empty-headed sister of yours. Because she’ll lead me to Tim Flynn.”
Maggie didn’t even blink. “Why do you want him?”
“That’s my business.”
“What makes you think we’ll have any success?” She mustered the last traces of her patience. “Why can’t you find him yourself?”
“Because I’m not his lover.”
This time Maggie did blink. “And you think she is? Don’t be an idiot, man,” she snapped. “If you know that much you must know that Tim Flynn robbed our mother and left her for dead. We still don’t know whether she’s going to survive or not. Do you think my sister’s about to crawl into the sack with a monster like that?”
“I know nothing about your mother,” he said stubbornly. “I have my sources. And I know Tim Flynn has been living with your sister for the last four months.”
“He’s been living with our mother. I think you’d better check your sources—your information’s got a thousand holes in it.”
“Maybe,” he said, unchastened. “I never trust informers. But if he has tried to kill your mother … all I know is that Flynn never leaves anyone behind who can identify him.”
“Reassuring,” Maggie said, considering for a moment and then moving the gun away. “Holly isn’t Flynn’s lover, and neither am I.”
Green Eyes looked disbelieving, and Maggie’s temper snapped.
“Listen, Mr. Andrews, I don’t know what you think you’re doing …”
“Lieutenant Andrews,” he corrected. “And I’m on special assignment to track down Tim Flynn.”
“Well, Lieutenant”—she mocked his British pronunciation while she bent down to pick up his gun and dropped it into the cardigan’s other pocket—“perhaps you’ll feel like coming with me and talking with Holly yourself. If she can’t convince you nobody can.”
“Nobody can,” he said gruffly, moving obediently enough. With her snub-nosed pistol still pressed against his neck he didn’t have much choice in the matter, and the two of them moved down the hallway, back to their suite and her waiting sister.
It took Holly a moment to answer the door, and behind the thick oak Maggie thought she could hear voices. Holly would soon rediscover how deadly British television was, she thought. And Ian Andrews would provide ample entertainment. The door opened, and Holly stood there, face flushed, aquamarine eyes bright, staring at Ian Andrews with suspicion and dislike. “Who is he?”
“He says he’s Ian Andrews of British Army Intelligence, on special assignment to catch Tim Flynn. He also thinks you’ve been having an affair with Flynn and that you’ll lead him straight to him, so I don’t know how bright the dear man is.”
“What?” Holly shrieked. “Did you hear that?” she called over her shoulder. “I didn’t tell you, Maggie, but someone’s arrived.”
Maggie stood there just outside the door, and the gun in her hand felt heavy, deadly. She listened to the sound of footsteps on the parquet floor, approaching the door that Holly’s tall body blocked, listened with a horrifying sense of disbelief. The last, intense five minutes might never have existed. She was no longer aware of her quasi-prisoner, of her sister, of the hotel, of London. Jet lag must be playing tricks on her, she had to be imagining things. She looked over her shoulder down the hallway to the linen closet, tempted to run back, break it open and hide there, alone in the darkness she hated, rather than face what was waiting for her in her hotel room.
“Don’t just stand there, Maggie,” Randall Carter said in his rich, calm voice. “It’s not going to do us any good to stand around squabbling in hallways. Bring your prisoner in and we’ll figure out how we’re going to find Tim Flynn.”
She didn’t move, didn’t say a word as her insides crystallized into ice and her hand tightened around her gun. A part of her mind was remote, removed, unfeeling as her eyes slid over him with a curious mixture of longing and despair. It had been four months since she’d left him in Chicago, four months that had changed the course of her life. He still looked the same—tall, lean, impeccably dressed; his thin, sensuous mouth a cynical line in his narrow, aristocratic face; his blue-gray eyes masked and unreadable. Those eyes met hers for a long moment, and then she looked away, anywhere rather than face his gaze that had always seen and known too much.
“Are you going to shoot me, Maggie?” His voice was mocking.
She considered it for a moment. Considered, then rejected the idea. Later, she promised herself grimly. Later. She lifted her head again, meeting his gaze with all her hard-won calm, and walked into the living room of their suite, with Ian Andrews following docilely enough. “Not right now, Randall,” she said. “What are you doing here? And what do you mean by saying we’re going to find Tim Flynn?”
His eyes followed the downward path of her gun, and his shoulders relaxed an infinitesimal amount. So he wasn’t as unmoved as he pretended, she, thought coolly. Good.
“What do you think I meant? I followed you to London to offer my humble services.”
“Forget it,” she snapped, moving
toward the window and looking out at the busy winter street below. She still held her gun, albeit loosely enough.
“Not to mention an interesting lead,” he continued, unmoved by her rejection.
“You can take your interesting lead and shove it,” she said. “We don’t need your help. The three of us will handle it just fine.”
“The three of us?” Holly shrieked, having followed all this with interest. “Who’s number three?”
“I believe I am,” Ian Andrews replied, and there was a thread of reluctant amusement in his voice.
“Not on your life,” Holly snapped, glaring at him. “I want to hear Randall’s lead. He’ll probably be more help than any number of broken-down British soldiers.”
“Broken down?” Andrews echoed, his momentary humor vanishing. “Listen to me, you painted puppet—”
“I don’t want Randall’s help!” Maggie said between her teeth.
“And I don’t want Andrews’s!” Holly shot back, the two sisters squaring off.
“Why don’t we sit down and discuss this reasonably?” Randall suggested in a calm voice.
“I don’t want you in my hotel suite.”
He raised an elegant eyebrow. “Whyever not, Maggie? We’ve certainly shared more than that in our time, and while we didn’t part on the best of terms in Chicago, I hadn’t realized our relationship had degenerated to the level of childish squabbling.”
“I don’t want you in my hotel suite,” she repeated stubbornly, knowing she sounded as childish as he suggested and unable to help herself. “I want you to leave.”
“What are you afraid of, Maggie?” he said. “You have plenty of protection.”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” she said in an icy voice. “Especially not you.”