Dark Tribute--An Eve Duncan Novel

by Iris Johansen

  Unsatisfactory? She could still feel her body throbbing with heat just looking at him. The tan skin, that tousled fair hair and teasing smile … He knew very well what those hours of erotic experimentation had done to her. She wanted nothing more than to run to him and jump back into his bed. “I thought I’d go to my room to shower and get dressed.”

  “Later,” he said softly. “I’ve just thought of another way to prove myself to you. You have to let me try to redeem myself. It’s only fair.”

  “I think I should go now. It’s almost noon. I meant to leave much earlier and you know it. I was lying there beside you and I thought how hard it was going to be the longer that I—” She stopped short as she caught a flicker of expression cross Jock’s face. She suddenly stiffened. “And that’s what you meant to do, isn’t it? I believe you’re the one who’s not being fair. Isn’t that true? You’re taking advantage of the fact that you nearly drove me crazy last night, to use it to delay what I told you I had to do.”

  He was silent. Then he shrugged and sat up in bed. “Guilty. You weren’t the only one who went a little crazy last night. And I went a little more insane when I saw you heading for that door. I’d been waiting for you to come back to me, then I saw you leaving, and I remembered you’d told me you were going after Joe this morning. The rest was pure instinct.” He met her gaze across the room. “I won’t lie to you, it might happen again. I’ll use any weapon I have to keep you safe. And I would have made certain that particular weapon would have pleased us both.”

  That would have gone without saying. How could she be angry with him? Wouldn’t she do the same to keep him safe? She thought helplessly. “It still wasn’t fair. I told you what I had to do, Jock.”

  “And I tried to distract you from doing it. Aye, it wasn’t honorable, it was only expedient.” He asked warily, “What are you going to do now? Am I going to have trouble with you?”

  “I believe there’s no question you are. You have to realize that I’m very vulnerable where you’re concerned, and you have to be honest with me. I’ve trusted you all my life, and I can’t lose that just because of all this sex stuff.”

  His lips twitched. “All this sex stuff? You weren’t treating it so casually an hour ago.”

  “I’m serious, Jock.”

  His smile faded. “I know you are. Come over here.”

  She hesitated, then slowly went to stand beside the bed.

  He took her hand and lifted her palm to his lips. “You can trust me forever, and I won’t use sex again. But you’ll have to keep an eye on me with anything else that’s involved in keeping you alive. Consider it a challenge.”

  His lips felt warm and soft on her palm, and she felt the beginning of a sensuous tingle in her wrist. It was starting again. “You’re always a challenge.” She forced herself to pull her hand away. “But I guess that will have to be good enough for the time being.” She turned and headed back toward the door. “And you asked what I’m going to do now? I’m going to my room to shower and pack. I want to get on the road in the next hour or so.” She turned to look at him as she opened the door. “I invited you to go with me. You never answered me.”

  “You knew I’d never let you go alone.”

  She smiled faintly. “But you hoped you’d never be forced to do it, that you’d be able to send me home so that you and Joe could team up again.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Sorry. You’re stuck with me. I’ll see you in forty-five minutes.”

  “Make it an hour. I want to give Nikolai another call and check on how many of Svardak’s men they’d managed to capture and interrogate.” He got out of bed and strode naked toward the bathroom. “Then I need to see if I can reach Joe so that I can see where the hell we should be heading.” He stopped and glanced over his shoulder. After those last curt, brusque words, his mischievous grin came as a surprise. “Would you consider that I was using sex as a weapon if I asked you if you wanted to share the shower with me? We haven’t done that yet.”

  The words were solemn, the sexuality tamped down, and the humor like a gentle nudge. This was a cross between Jock, the best friend, with all the knowing intimacy of Jock, the lover. She knew he meant it to make her fully at ease with that relationship. She grinned back at him. “It would come very close.”

  He sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.” He closed the door behind him.

  LAKE KEDROW 12:10 P.M.

  Joe lifted his head and breathed in the scents of the forest, mentally separating out the scents. Nothing suspicious, it could be hunters or campers. Or it could be someone very suspicious. He hoped to hell it was.

  He went a few yards farther, then stopped beside a brook and knelt as he’d been trained to do when tracking prey in an open area. It was best not to announce his presence until necessary.

  He sniffed the air again. A campfire burned nearby, perhaps two miles away. He couldn’t see a smoke trail in the sky, but judging from the wind, the campsite was probably due west. Not a bad place to start. He bypassed the trail and headed into the dense forest, keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of human life. Aside from a couple long-overgrown campsites, there was none.

  The fire’s odor came and went with each turn of the wind. The air was increasingly damp, and the clouds darkened as he pushed farther into the woods. A misty rain began to fall. After about two and a half miles, he stopped. The trees had abruptly thinned, revealing a large cedar structure with a flap pole on one side of the large porch.

  “Can I help you?” The deep, craggy voice came from within the structure. In the next instant, a tall man stepped out onto that sizable front porch. He was wearing the uniform of a U.S. National Forest Service ranger.

  Joe nodded. Of course. He’d run smack into a ranger substation. That must have been the rather peculiar structure he’d noticed from across the lake. “Just out for a hike,” he said.

  The man looked at him doubtfully. “Going off the beaten path, aren’t you? We recommend hikers stick close to the trail.”

  Joe shrugged as he glanced around. “I know what I’m doing.”

  The man smiled and adjusted his ranger hat. “The last time someone said that to me, I ended up loading him onto a medevac with a pair of broken legs.”

  “That won’t be me.”

  “Confidence isn’t always a good thing, especially out here.” He waved his hand back toward the door. “Come inside and have a cup of coffee. I’ll give you some good maps that’ll save you a lot of problems.”

  “Sounds great.” Joe cocked his head back toward the forest. “I left my backpack on a rock back there. I’ll go get it and be back in ten or fifteen—”

  “I’ll go with you,” the man interrupted. He walked down the four short steps and joined Joe in the clearing.

  “That’s really not necessary.”

  “It’s easy to get lost around here, especially if you’re going off path. I need to stretch my legs anyway.”

  “Sure.” Joe walked alongside the man, slipping the strap of his canteen off his shoulder. “It’s just through here.”

  “Lead the way. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “I appreciate your taking the time.” Joe surreptitiously unclipped the strap. An instant later, he let the canteen fall to the ground. “Oops.”

  The man bent over to pick it up for him. “I got it. Trust me, you don’t want to lose this if…”

  Joe spun around and snapped his canteen strap around the man’s neck!

  As the man writhed and tried to reach the gun tucked into his belt, Joe kneed him in his lower back and pulled the handgun away. Joe punched him in the back, and the man’s legs simply ceased to work. He slumped over as the strap closed off the last of his air.

  “You have about thirty seconds before you lose consciousness,” Joe whispered. “Death will come about ninety seconds later. If I choose to revive you, I can probably do it within a couple minutes after that.”

  The man desperately clawed for air.


  Joe smiled.

  “You might have a few extra minutes if I can find a defibrillator in that ranger station, but that seems like a lot of work to me.”

  Joe let him fall to his knees, easing the pressure on his throat. The man leaned back and looked at him with eyes that were suddenly bloodshot. He still couldn’t talk.

  “Where’s the ranger you took the uniform from?” Joe said. “For your sake, he’d better still be alive.”

  The man’s lips quivered as he struggled to form a single word. “How…?”

  “The uniform gave you away. The hat brim is supposed to be two fingers above the eyebrows. This one was slightly too small for you. Plus, your socks are gray. Brown socks are regulation.” He deliberately twisted the strap tighter. The man gagged. “And every ranger knows undershirts aren’t supposed to be visible. You were careless.” Joe shrugged. “I went through SEAL basic training with a guy who was studying to go into the forestry service until all the rules and regulations drove him nuts. He thought he might as well join the SEALs if he had to go through all that.”

  The man tried to stand, but Joe pushed him down by the shoulders. “Stay where you are. What’s your name?”

  “You think I’ll just tell you that?”

  Joe tugged at the canteen strap, once again constricting his captive’s airway. “I think you will.”

  The man hesitated before speaking. “Lacher.”

  “You work for Svardak?”

  Lacher nodded.

  “Where is he?”

  Lacher hesitated, and Joe once again tugged at the strap. “In a camper … a few miles from here,” Lacher rasped. “He’s waiting for my call.”

  “After you kill me?”

  “That was never part of the plan. He just wanted you immobilized.”

  Joe thought for a moment. “Okay. Slowly, and I mean slowly, pull the phone from your pocket. You’re going to call your boss.”

  “And tell him what?”

  “Tell him I’m unconscious and tied up in that ranger station. If you say anything else, I’ll have no choice but to terminate the conversation immediately. And that means terminating you. Understand?”

  Lacher reached into his pocket with thumb and forefinger and slowly pulled out his phone.

  “Be convincing,” Joe said. “Your life depends on it.”

  A bullet plowed into the pine tree next to him!

  Joe instinctively whirled and raised Lacher toward the sound, using him as a human shield. Using the canteen strap as a leash, Joe jerked him behind a thick clump of brush. “Who’s your friend?” Joe whispered. “Abrams?”

  Before Lacher could reply, another shot was fired. “You want to kill your buddy?” Joe shouted. “No problem. One more shot, and he’s a dead man.”

  Joe finally made out a figure in the trees. The man was taller than Lacher and appeared to be holding a rifle.

  “Drop the gun, and you may survive the day,” Joe called out.

  The man didn’t drop the gun. Instead, he walked toward Joe, still holding his rifle in front of him. Was the son of a bitch crazy?

  And then Joe recognized him.

  Svardak!

  Then he felt the white-hot agony as a bullet tore into him from behind!

  * * *

  “You fool, Abrams! Stop hitting him.” Svardak tore Abrams away from Quinn. “You shot him, you didn’t have to start pistol-whipping him. If you’ve killed the bastard, I’ll cut your heart out.” Svardak bent over Joe Quinn’s body, shoved him over on his back, and tore open his shirt. He was unconscious and bleeding from a wound in his upper right shoulder, but he was breathing. “He’s alive, and he’d better stay alive. Get him inside and stop that bleeding, Lacher.” He straightened and moved up the steps to the porch. “Why the hell couldn’t the two of you obey orders?”

  “He was too damn fast. I was lucky to get a shot at all,” Abrams said sourly as he watched Lacher start to drag Quinn up the steps. “Lacher was supposed to either take him out or set him up for me. Blame him.”

  “I do.” He was scowling at Lacher, who was trying to take himself out of view with Quinn as quickly as possible. “I couldn’t believe how easily Quinn took him down. He forced me to go after him myself,” Svardak said. “Amateur.”

  “He took me by surprise.” Lacher was now dragging Quinn through the office toward the first-aid room. “It won’t happen again.”

  “No, it won’t. I’m tempted to let Abrams make certain of it. But I need you, so you’re going to get another chance. I never know when someone will decide to come here and check on those rangers. I think the blood’s almost stopped. He didn’t lose much.” He watched Lacher lift Quinn onto the exam table. He took a step closer and examined the wound. “The bullet’s still in there. Leave it. Just clean him up.” His lips twisted. “It looks like you lucked out, Abrams. Because if you’d robbed me of the pleasure of putting that bitch through hell as she watches what I do to Quinn, I’d have to do it to you instead.”

  “I did what you said.” He moistened his lips. “It’s Lacher who screwed up. He almost lost him.”

  “You both almost lost him,” Svardak said with disgust. “He’s only one man and you couldn’t even spring the trap. I can’t trust either—”

  “Svar … dak…”

  Svardak’s gaze flew down to Joe Quinn’s face. His eyes were open and focused on Svardak’s face. “Oh, you’re back with us? Good. How nice that you recognize me. May I say I’m delighted that you’ll be around to help me teach Cara that I always keep my word?”

  “Cara…” His eyes were suddenly sharp and fully aware. “You don’t have Cara, you son of a bitch.”

  “No, not yet. Only her dear friend and guardian. But that makes me at least halfway to the final goal.” He bent closer, and his voice was silky-soft. “She is so fond of you. It would hurt her very much to see you suffer.” He reached out and pressed the bullet wound with his thumb. Quinn jerked and bit his lower lip. “You didn’t scream.” He pressed down again, grinding harder. “Amazing. I’m tempted to keep on until you do scream, but I want the pain fresh when she sees it.” He turned and headed for the door. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t allow myself to enjoy myself a bit while I’m waiting for her.”

  “By all means.” Quinn’s voice was hoarse but still strong. “It’s all the enjoyment you’re going to get. You won’t have another chance at Cara. Gavin has her now, and there’s no way he’ll let you get close to her.”

  “Gavin … I’ve heard that name before. I’ve been trying to check on him. He appears to be a threat.” Svardak looked back at him. “But then, he may not be a danger to my plans at all. I got to know Cara so well when we were together. She’s a poisonous mixture of bitch and soft sentimentality. Do you really believe she’d let anyone stop her if she thought you were being tortured?” He chuckled in delight as he saw Joe Quinn’s expression. “Now that scared you, didn’t it? You’re not as certain of Gavin’s ability to keep control of her as you tried to make me believe. We’ll see who’s right.” He turned to the door. “Get him cleaned up, Lacher. And make certain that you cuff him afterward. If he escapes, you’re a dead man.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  “I still couldn’t get hold of Joe,” Jock said as he pulled out of the hotel driveway. “Not surprising, but it means we’ll just have to travel to the last place from where he contacted us and try to get in touch with him on the way. That was Wheeling for me night before last. You?”

  “The same. Eve and he try to stay in touch every day. I’ll call her and see if she’s heard anything from him more recently. He also tries to check in with the captain of his precinct daily, but I’d bet on Eve.”

  “You always bet on Eve.” He glanced at her with a smile. “And so do we all. By all means, phone her. Even if she hasn’t talked to Joe, she’ll be glad to hear from you. I’d call her, but I’ve proved myself a complete failure where she’s concerned. She was counting on me to persuade you to join her at the l
ake house.”

  “If anyone had been able to do it, you’d have been the one. She knew that I’d do whatever you wanted…” She darted him a glance as she added, “If I could.”

  “If you chose,” he murmured. “That’s a major difference. As I said, I’ve been a failure where that’s—”

  Cara’s cell was ringing.

  No ID.

  She stiffened. Her hand clenched on the phone as she stared down at it.

  “Easy,” Jock said quietly. “It doesn’t have to be that son of a bitch.”

  But it could be him. He’d called her only last night. “I know.” She couldn’t take her eyes off that ID. “And if it is, it may not mean anything. He likes to toy with me.” She reached out and pressed the access. “Hello.”

  “It took you long enough to answer,” Svardak said. “I’ll have to teach you to jump when I snap my fingers the way Marian did. As it happens, I’ve found just the way to do it.”

  “You’re lying, Svardak.” She saw Jock stiffen and pressed the speaker button. “Everything you told me about Marian I chalk up as one of your delusions. You’re insane, and you’ve been lying to me since the moment I woke up in that cabin.”

  “Have I? You like to believe that because it hurts you to admit how she suffered. I suppose I’ll just have to prove that I don’t lie to you, Cara.” His voice lowered to deep malice. “Or perhaps I’ll ask someone you trust to convince you. That would please me much more.”

  She inhaled sharply. “What are you talking about?”

  “I told you last night that I was almost ready to put a noose on your Joe Quinn as I once promised you I’d do. You didn’t believe me then.”

  “And I don’t believe you now. He’s too smart for you. Joe was able to find you before and put you on the run. He’ll do the same thing this time.”

  “Really? I’d be angry if I wasn’t so amused.” He raised his voice. “What do you say, Quinn? Are you too smart for me?” He laughed. “He’s not answering. I’ve found he’s quite the stoic. I wasn’t even able to get a response from him when I experimented with that bullet wound in his shoulder. I don’t know many men who could take that degree of pain.”