by Linda Howard
His eyes were yellow slits, his mouth a grim line of rage. “So you jumped at the chance for a cushy job. All you had to do was sit beside me every day and anything you wanted was given to you, while Frank paid your bills. This explains why you wouldn’t marry me, doesn’t it? You were happy to accept your ‘salary,’ but marrying a stranger was a little bit too much, wasn’t it? Not to mention the fact that the marriage wouldn’t have been legal. You saved yourself some sticky trouble by dragging up all those excuses.”
“They weren’t excuses. For all I knew you could have had someone who cared for you—”
“I do!” he yelled, his neck cording. “My family! They think I’m dead!”
Jay groped for control, managing to steady her voice. “I couldn’t marry you until you’d gotten your memory back and knew for certain you wanted to marry me. I couldn’t take advantage of you like that.”
“That’s a convenient scruple. It actually makes you look noble, doesn’t it? Too bad. If you wanted the gravy train to keep running, you should have married me while you had the chance and just kept pretending I was Crossfield. Then, when I got my memory back, you could have been the poor victim and maybe I would have stayed with you out of guilt.”
She shrank away from him, her eyes going blank. Somehow, during the long months she had spent with him, she had come to believe he loved her, though he had never said the words. He’d been so possessive, so tender and passionate. But now his memory had returned, and he couldn’t have made it plainer that his absorption with her had ended. He didn’t need her any longer, and he certainly wasn’t going to renew his offer of marriage. It was over, and they weren’t even going to part friends. The worst had happened; she had lied to him, kept his identity from him, and he would never forgive her for it. He thought she had done it just because the government had been willing to support her for as long as the charade had lasted.
He released her suddenly, as if he couldn’t stand to touch her any longer, and she staggered back. Catching her balance, she turned toward the ladder. “Open the door,” she said dully.
He clenched his fists, not ready to break off the argument. He didn’t have all the answers he wanted, not by a long shot. But her movement recalled the need for urgency; he had to get her out of there before Piggot found them. The last thing he wanted was for Jay to be caught in the middle of a firefight.
“I’ll go first,” he said, and shouldered past her. He signaled the door open and climbed the ladder, the pistol ready in his hand. As soon as his head was above ground he looked cautiously in all directions, then climbed out and knelt on one knee by the hole to help Jay out. “All right, come on.”
She didn’t look at him as she crawled out, nor did she accept the hand he extended. He closed the trapdoor, then replaced the bale of hay over it. She started to just walk out of the shed, but he grabbed her and held her back. “Watch it!” he said in a furious whisper. “We go back the same way we came. Stay in the shadows.” He led the way, and Jay followed him without a word.
He still wouldn’t allow a light on in the cabin, so Jay stumbled to the bedroom and gathered a few clothes in the dark. He came into the bedroom as she took off his shirt to put on her own clothes, and after a moment of frozen embarrassment, she awkwardly turned her back while she struggled with her bra. Her hands were clumsy, and in the dark she couldn’t manage to straighten the straps. Despairing of getting it on, she finally dropped it on the bed and simply pulled her sweater over her head.
Lucas watched her. Her pale breasts had gleamed in the faint light coming through the window, and in spite of his anger, his sense of betrayal and the need for haste, he wanted to go to her and pull her against him. Only a few hours before he had held her breasts in his hands and pushed them up to his avid mouth. He had made love to her until the building anticipation had bordered on agony, and they had writhed together on that bed. She had told him she loved him, over and over, and now she turned her back as if she had to hide her body from him.
It hit him hard, shook him. There was more to it than she’d told him, more than the mercenary motives he’d thrown at her. He needed to know what it was, but he didn’t have time. Damn it. If only she didn’t look so beaten and remote, as if she had withdrawn inside herself. He had to fight the urge to take her in his arms and kiss that look away. Hell, what did it matter why she had done it? Maybe money had been the reason at first, but he was damned certain it wasn’t the reason now, or at least not all of it. Even if it had been, he thought ruthlessly, he wouldn’t let her go. He’d get this settled between them as soon as he’d taken care of Piggot, but right now the most important thing was to make certain Jay was safe.
“Hurry,” he urged roughly.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and jerked her boots off, quickly put on a pair of thick socks and put the boots on again. Then she got her purse and shearling jacket and said, “I’m ready.”
He didn’t see the need for her to get anything else, as they would come back to the cabin and pack after he’d taken care of Piggot, and he was pleased that she didn’t insist on wasting time. Jay was a good partner, even though she was out of her depth.
He had to find a safe place to leave her. He doubted that Black Bull, the closest town, had a motel, but he didn’t have the time to go any farther than that. He drove the Jeep at breakneck speed across the meadow, especially considering that he didn’t dare risk turning on the headlights. But he had taken the possibility that he might have to do this into consideration and had walked the meadow over and over, mentally tracing the route he would take, estimating his fastest safe speed, noting all the rocks and ruts in his path. He edged so close to the tree line that branches scraped the side of the Jeep.
“I can’t see,” Jay said, her voice strained.
“I can.” He couldn’t see much, but it was enough. He had good night vision.
She held on to the door as they jolted across a hump, rattling her teeth. He’d have to turn on the headlights when they went down the mountainside, she thought; the track was only wide enough for the Jeep, with a steep drop on one side and vertical mountain on the other. Even in daylight she hardly dared to breathe until they had safely negotiated it. But when they made the turn that took them onto the track, he kept both hands on the wheel. The darkness in front of them was absolute.
Jay closed her eyes. Her own heartbeat was thundering in her ears so loudly that she couldn’t hear anything else. There was nothing she could do. He had decided not to turn on the lights, to risk the drive in the dark, and nothing she could say would change his mind. His arrogant confidence in his own ability was both maddening and awesome; she would rather have walked down the mountain in ten feet of snow than risked this hair-raising drive, but he had simply decided to do it, and now he was.
She couldn’t estimate how long the drive took. It seemed like hours, and finally her nerves couldn’t bear the tension, and numbness settled in. She even opened her eyes. It didn’t matter. If they went over the side, they would go whether her eyes were open or closed.
But then they were down and bumping across the second meadow. Suddenly he slammed on the brakes, swearing viciously. Jay saw what he saw: a set of headlights playing along the edge of the meadow in front of them. They were still safely out of range of the light, but she knew as well as he did what it meant. Piggot’s men were drawing close, closing the net to wait for Piggot’s arrival.
Lucas put the Jeep in reverse and backed the way he had come, keeping the Jeep at the tree line. When he reached the rear edge of the meadow he turned, taking the Jeep up the north edge. They were off the track now, and the snow tires dug in deep, spewing snow back behind them.
“Are we going around this way?”
“No. We won’t be able to make it. The snow’s too deep.” He pulled the Jeep under some trees and got out. “Stay here,” he ordered, and disappeared back toward the track.
Jay swiveled in her seat, straining her eyes to see what he was doing. She could barely make out his
form, black against the snow; an instant later he was out of sight.
He was back in less than two minutes. He vaulted into the Jeep and slammed the door, then rolled the window down. “Listen,” he hissed.
“What did you do?”
“I wiped out our tracks. There was only one vehicle. If it goes past us, we’ll get back on the track and make it to the highway yet.”
They listened. The sound of the other motor came plainly through the night air. The vehicle was moving slowly, the engine toiling in low gear as it cautiously made its way up the slick, snowy, unfamiliar track. The headlights stabbed the darkness, coming almost straight toward them.
“Don’t worry,” Lucas breathed. “They can’t see us from the track. If they just don’t notice where we turned and if they keep on going, we’ll be okay.”
Two ifs. Two big ifs. Jay’s nails were digging into her palms. The headlights were close enough that their reflected light illuminated the interior of the Jeep, and for the first time she noticed that Lucas had on his thick shearling jacket, but no shirt. The odd detail struck her, and she wondered if she might be edging toward hysteria.
“Keep going,” he said under his breath. “Keep going.”
For a moment it seemed as if the other vehicle slowed, and the lights seemed to be coming over the slight rise straight toward them. Then they turned, and the noise of the engine slowly moved away.
She let out her breath. Lucas started the engine, knowing the sound wouldn’t be heard over that of the other motor. He put the Jeep in gear and turned it around, praying they were hidden well enough that the red glow of the brake lights wouldn’t reveal their position. But at least they were behind the other vehicle now. If he had to, he could make a run for the road. As rough as the track was, the chance that they would be hit by gunfire from a pursuing vehicle was small.
The Jeep lurched through the snow, and then they were on the track again. No other headlights disturbed the darkness, and they could just catch glimpses of light playing through the trees as the other vehicle moved slowly up the treacherous mountainside track.
Jay sat silently, even when they reached the road and Lucas finally turned on the headlights. She was numb again.
They reached Black Bull at two in the morning. The local populace of one hundred and thirty-three souls were all in bed. There wasn’t even an all-night convenience store, and the one gas station closed at ten at night, according to the sign in the window. A county sheriff’s car was parked at the side of the gas station.
Lucas stopped the Jeep. “Can you drive this well enough to get out of here?” he asked brusquely.
She looked at the gearshift, but not at him. “Yes.”
“Then drive until you hit the next town big enough to have a motel. Stop there and call Frank. He’ll arrange for you to be picked up. Do you have his number?”
So this was it. It was over. “No.”
“Give me a pen. I’ll write it down for you.”
Jay fumbled in her purse and found a pen, but she didn’t have even a scrap of paper for him to write the number on. Finally he grasped her hand and turned it palm up, then wrote the number on her palm.
“Where are you going?” she asked, her voice strained but even.
“I’m taking that county car right there and radioing Veasey. Then we’re going to catch Piggot and end this once and for all.”
She stared out the windshield, her hand clenched tightly as if to keep the number from fading off her palm. “Be careful,” she managed to say, the admonishment trite but heartfelt. She wondered if Frank would even tell her the outcome, if she would ever know what happened to Lucas.
“He ambushed me once. It won’t happen again.” Lucas got out of the Jeep and strode over to the county car. It was locked, but that wasn’t much of a deterrent. He had the door open in less than ten seconds. He looked at the Jeep, staring at Jay through the windshield. Her face was ghostly white. He wanted nothing more than to jerk her into his arms and kiss her so hard that they both forgot about this mess, but if he kissed her now, he might not be able to stop, and he had to take care of Piggot. It was just that he wanted her so badly, wanted to use the bond of the flesh to make certain she knew she was his. A sense of incompletion gnawed at him because they hadn’t thrashed out the situation between them, but it would have to wait. Maybe it was better this way. In a few hours he wouldn’t have to worry about Piggot any longer, and his temper would have cooled. He would be able to think clearly and not react as if she’d betrayed him. He didn’t understand her reasons yet, but underneath everything, he knew she loved him.
Instead of climbing over into the driver’s seat, Jay opened the door and got out to walk around. She paused in front of the Jeep, her slim body starkly outlined by the glare of the headlights. “It was the only way I could think of to protect you,” she said, then got into the Jeep and put it in gear.
Lucas watched the taillights as she pulled out of the gas station and onto the highway. He felt stunned. Protect him? He was so used to being out in the cold, on his own by choice, that the idea of anyone protecting him was alien. What had she thought she could do?
She could keep the charade intact. She had been right; Frank would have quickly and quietly hustled her away if she’d told him there had been a mistake, that he, Lucas, wasn’t her ex-husband. She didn’t have his skill with weapons or in fighting, but that hadn’t stopped her from literally setting herself up as his bodyguard. The charade had depended on her, so she had kept quiet, and shielded him with her presence.
Because she loved him. He swore aloud, his breath crystallizing in the frigid night air. His damned training had tripped him up, making him look for betrayal where there hadn’t been any, making him question her motives and automatically assuming the worst. He had only to look to himself to understand why she hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t he kept quiet these past two days because he’d been afraid of losing her if she knew the truth? He loved her too much to accept even the possibility of losing her, until Piggot had forced his hand.
Swearing again, he folded his length into the county car and began the process of hot-wiring the starter.
DAWN THREW ROSY fingers of light across the snow, a sight Lucas has seen many times since coming to the mountains, but the scene wasn’t peaceful this particular morning. The meadow was crowded with men and vehicles, the pristine snow trampled and criss-crossed by both feet and tires. Here and there the white was marred by reddish-brown stains. A helicopter sat off to the left, its blades slowly twirling in the breeze.
Ten guns snapped toward him as he stepped out from the trees, then were lifted as the men holding them recognized him. He walked steadily toward them, his own pistol held in his blood-stained hand down at his side. The stench of cordite burned his nostrils in the cold air, and a gray haze lay over the meadow, resisting the efforts of the breeze to disperse it.
There was a tall, black-haired man standing next to the helicopter, surveying the scene with grim, narrowed eyes. Lucas walked straight to him. “You took a chance, setting us up in your own cabin,” he snapped.
Kell Sabin looked around the meadow. “It was a calculated risk. I had to do it to find the mole. Once the location of the cabin was leaked, I knew who it was, because access to that information is very controlled.” He shrugged. “I can find another vacation spot.”
“The mole blew my cover?”
“Yeah. Until then, I had no idea he was there.” Sabin’s voice was icy, his eyes like cold black fire.
“So why the masquerade? Why drag Jay into it?”
“To keep Piggot from finding out you were alive. Your cover was blown. He knew about your family, and he’s been willing in the past to use someone’s family to get to them. I was trying to buy time, to keep everyone safe until Piggot surfaced and we could get to him.” Sabin looked up at the trees behind the cabin. “I assume he won’t be bothering us again.”
“Or anyone else.”
“That was your last job. You�
�re out of it.”
“Damn straight,” Lucas agreed. “I’ve got better things to do, like get married and start a family.”
Suddenly Sabin grinned, and the coldness left his eyes. Few people saw Sabin like that, only the ones who could call themselves his friends. “The bigger they are,” he jibed, and left the rest of the old saw unsaid. “Have you told her yet?”
“She already knew. She figured it out while I was still in the hospital.”
Sabin frowned. “What? She didn’t say anything. How did she know?”
“My eyes. They’re a different shade of brown than Crossfield’s.”
“Hell. A little thing like that. And she still went along with it?”
“I think she figured out that the whole thing was to protect me.”
“Women,” Sabin said softly, thinking of his own wife, who had fought like a tigress to save his life when he’d been a stranger to her. It didn’t surprise him that Jay Granger had put herself on the line to protect Lucas.
Lucas rubbed his jaw. “She doesn’t even mind this ugly mug.”
“The surgeons did what they could. Your face was smashed.” Then Sabin grinned again. “You were too pretty anyway.”
The two men stood and watched the mopping-up process, their faces becoming grim again at the loss of life. Three men were dead, counting Piggot, and four more were in custody. “I’ll notify your family that you’re alive,” Sabin finally said. “I’m sorry they had to go through this, but with Piggot on the loose, it was safer for you, and all of them, as well, if the charade was played out. It’s over now. Collect Jay from wherever you’ve stashed her, and we’ll get the two of you out of here.”
Lucas looked at him, and slowly the blood drained out of his face. “She hasn’t called Frank?” he asked hoarsely.
Sabin went still. “No. Where is she?”
“She was supposed to drive to the next town, check into a motel and call Frank. Damn it to hell!” Lucas turned and ran for the shed, with Sabin right beside him. Suddenly he felt cold all over. There was a possibility Piggot could have gotten to Jay before coming here, as well as the slightly less terrifying possibility that she could have had an accident. God in heaven, where was she?