Shaking, Amara clamped her free hand to her mouth and tried to control her raspy breathing.
Stealthy and deadly, lit only by the moonlight filtering in from the shades, nothing but black upon black upon black, with no discernible eyes or even face, the intruder crept forward with the flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other.
It was a big gun—longer than Jack’s.
No, wait.
That gun had a silencer on it. That was an assassin’s gun.
Which meant that … that was an assassin.
Not a garden-variety robber or would-be rapist, the kind of criminal who could possibly be talked out of committing a violent act.
An assassin.
Please, God, don’t let us die.
The assassin lingered in the doorway and looked back and forth, surveying the room, and that light circled the walls, ceiling and floor in a relentless sweep.
And then Amara saw it inches from her crouched knee: the hard stainless steel glint of the chef’s knife she’d tried to use on Jack. Oh, thank God. Not that a knife would be much good against a silenced gun, but it was sure better than nothing.
Reaching out, she clutched the knife’s hilt and picked it up.
The blade’s ring, like a tiny sword being drawn, echoed in the kitchen’s utter silence.
Amara cringed; the assassin cocked his head; Jack struck.
With moves Amara had only ever seen in a James Bond movie, Jack sprung forward and elbowed the assassin in the face. Crying out, the assassin dropped to the floor and his gun clattered away.
Amara scrambled for it.
The assassin drew his knees into his belly and kicked out, catching Jack squarely in the thighs. Jack yelped with pain, hit the floor on his butt and kept rolling until he got back to his feet as though the whole move had been choreographed by a stuntman.
The assassin, meanwhile, was up and running and had apparently decided that, given the loss of his gun, it was time to call it a night. Darting down the hallway in a full retreat, he ripped open the front door—Amara heard the telltale squeak of the hinges she never remembered to oil—and ran off.
Cursing, Jack took a few steps after him and paused long enough to aim his gun in a two-handed hold and fire. The sound exploded through the kitchen and ricocheted off the walls until it felt as though Amara’s ears were bleeding.
Apparently it was a miss because Jack cursed again and yelled at Amara over his shoulder, a wild light in his eyes. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
Amara nodded and watched him go. The second he was out of sight, she crept out from under the table, reached for her cordless phone on the counter and punched three buttons that she really hoped were 9-1-1. Nothing happened. Bewildered, she tried again, but then it hit her: no power meant no cordless phone.
Shit.
Glancing wildly around for her cell phone, she remembered she’d left it in her briefcase and hurried into the living room to find it. The second she fished it out, running footsteps approached outside her front door and she froze, debating whether to run back to the kitchen for the gun and wondering why she’d been stupid enough to leave it there in the first place.
Jack reappeared, shutting the door behind him, and glared at her. Even though he was panting—they both were—he managed enough breath to chastise her.
“Believe me now?”
“Absolutely.”
His sharp gaze latched onto the phone in her hand. “What the hell are you doing? I told you we’re not calling the police.”
Something inside Amara snapped. She hadn’t slept in days, she was running on fumes, she’d endured two break-ins tonight and feared for her life three times in the last eighteen hours.
You didn’t mess with a woman on the edge.
“Listen, jackass.” She used the phone to gesture in his face, beyond caring that she was yelling like a banshee. “I don’t know what planet you’re from, but here in the United States, when someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night and tries to kill you, you call the police.”
Jack reached out and neatly snatched the phone from her.
After one disbelieving second, Amara growled with outrage.
Jack cut her off by planting his hand over her mouth, jerking her to him and speaking quietly in her ear.
“As I have been trying to tell you since I got here,” he said, “some bad people are after me and I’m afraid they’re coming back right this second, as soon as they get another weapon.”
Amara whimpered at the thought.
“If you’ll be so kind as to throw on some clothes, pack a couple of things in a bag and come with me,” Jack continued, “I’ll be happy to take you somewhere safer until we can contact the authorities and figure out what to do with you. Does that work for you, or should I leave you here to deal with the killer yourself the next time he comes back?”
Shoving her away, he turned her loose and she rounded on him, opening her mouth, itching to finish the verbal castration she’d started and make sure he didn’t manhandle her again in this lifetime.
But then she tamped down her hot temper and realized that while he may be a jackass, he’d saved her life once tonight and she sure hoped he’d do it again if the time came.
“Let’s go.” She hurried down the hall toward her bedroom and clothes. “What’re you waiting for?”
“You’ve got two minutes,” Jack told her grimly.
Chapter 7
“I need to make a phone call,” Jack said.
Amara, who was sitting in the motel room’s single chair, looked up from the spot she’d been staring at on the floor and blinked. Her face was so expressionless that he doubted she’d heard him and wondered if she was in shock.
They’d driven twenty miles down the interstate and found a no-tell motel with a vacancy. No one had followed them; Jack made sure of that, and it was easy to track the people behind you on a deserted highway in the middle of the night.
The motel, one of those sprawling ranch types with an actual neon sign, didn’t look promising. A bored clerk who could barely be bothered to look around from the online poker he was playing checked them in. Cash didn’t seem to be a problem, though, and the room smelled clean, so Jack was grateful for those small blessings.
Amara, on the other hand, was a first-class, grade-A problem of the highest magnitude, one he needed to wash his hands of as soon as possible. Her silent routine in the car didn’t fool him for a minute, nor did those big, unfocused eyes and the bewildered way she’d noted the ugly blue and green flowered bedspread, matching drapes, black-velvet wall art and threadbare carpet, as though she didn’t know where she was and couldn’t understand how she’d gotten there.
Any moment now, she’d get a second wind and come out swinging, as much of an unmitigated pain in the ass as she’d ever been.
“How come you get to make calls and I don’t?” she demanded.
Sure enough.
Jack stared at the intransigent line of her mouth—nothing bewildered or unfocused there, not now—and wondered why God had sent this woman to torment him. Was it because his life wasn’t screwed up enough already? He needed a few more trials and tribulations to test his mettle as a man—was that it? Or was it a slow day out there in the universe and God just needed a good laugh?
“Well, Amara.” He took care to strike the exact sarcastic tone he needed to make her stubborn chin jut at him—there it was. Funny how he took time out from a life-threatening situation to press her buttons and let her press his. “If you have a prepaid cell phone that’s registered in a false name like this one”—he found the phone in his jacket pocket and flashed it at her—“that won’t lead any killers to our door, feel free to use it.”
The words struck a chord with her and her eyes widened with unmistakable fear. “That was a killer, wasn’t it?”
“That was a killer.”
“How did he find me? Did he follow you?”
“I know how to blend in. No one followe
d me.”
“Then how did he find me?”
Jack shrugged. “Probably the same way I did. You’re in the phone book.”
She managed an ironic smile. “I wanted potential clients to be able to find me. I guess that worked a little too well, huh?”
“Looks like.”
“I think he got in through the garage. The circuit box’s in the garage.”
Jack wanted to tell her not to dissect the intricacies of a contract killer’s standard operating procedure—if a professional had been hired to find and kill you, he’d find and kill you because it wasn’t that hard—but he let it go for now. She’d get the picture soon enough.
“Yeah. The garage. Makes sense.”
Nodding with grim satisfaction, she stared down at the floor again, but something was still nagging at her. He could see it.
“I personally installed locks on all my doors when I moved in. Good dead bolts. I’m not one of those people who leave their doors unlocked for the kids when they get home after school—”
“Some people can’t be kept out with locks, Amara,” he said simply.
This seemed to make sense to her, which was strange because all these months later it still didn’t make sense to him.
She stared off across the room, lost in her troubled thoughts.
And then, without warning, she jerked her head around and nailed him with a narrowed gaze that was as clever as it was unrelenting. Uh-oh. He tried to hide his growing unease by taking off his jacket and tossing it on top of their bags, which he’d placed next to the wall, but it was hard because any minute he’d break into an outright nervous sweat.
Damn woman.
Of all the people in the world to be saddled with, he had to choose a brilliant criminal defense attorney who was probably known nationwide for her blistering cross-examinations.
“Who are you?”
He arranged his features, aiming for an expression of uncomprehending innocence. “I told you. Jack Patterson.”
“Jack Patterson. Fry cook.” The icy derision in her voice was enough to cover everything in the room with a layer of frost. “Who just happened to—what? Piss off a neighbor in a fence-line dispute and make him angry enough to hire a killer to get you? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“You don’t need all the details.”
“What about some of the details?”
“You don’t need those, either.”
“My life is on the line here, too, and I’m entitled to—”
“You’re not entitled to jack shit,” he told her.
He didn’t expect any of his evasions to fly, and they didn’t. Spitting mad now, she surged to her feet and got in his face, her eyes bright and wild and her wavy black hair skimming her cheeks.
“I’m asking the wrong question, aren’t I? Instead of wondering who you are, I should be wondering what you are.”
Shit. Was it getting hot in here? Jack scrolled through a series of lies and excuses in his mind, hoping he’d come up with one that would satisfy her without putting her in any more danger.
“You’re in organized crime, aren’t you?”
Irritated and agitated, Jack stripped off his sweater and tossed it on the bed. “Yeah.” He tugged at the bottom of his white T-shirt and wondered why he didn’t feel any cooler. “Me and the Gottis and the Gambinos and the Genoveses. We’re like this.” He held up a hand with his first two fingers crossed. “I’m godfather to all their kids.”
She snorted with a repressed laugh. “Yeah, you’re right. That’s stupid. The way you moved tonight, the way you carry yourself—”
“Drop it, Amara.”
“—the way you handle your weapon—”
Jesus. Staring into her eyes, he’d swear he could see the neurons firing in her clever brain, feel the connections being made. Why didn’t someone put her in charge of the world hunger problem? With a mind like this, she’d have it solved by the end of the week.
“—you’re a cop, aren’t you? No—wait. You’re a fed.”
He turned away, his careful explanations scattering like grains of sand in a hurricane. For the life of him, he couldn’t think straight when this woman was in the room. Hell, he could barely breathe half the time and he wasn’t doing so great managing the in-out lung thing right now.
“You ever try novel writing with that imagination?” he wondered.
Edging around until she was in his face again, she gave him a sharp jab in the chest with her index finger. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re FBI, aren’t you?”
“I’m not FBI and you need to back off. I’m trying to protect you.”
The sudden sharpness in his voice didn’t make a damn bit of difference because she’d scented blood and zeroed in for the kill. He’d’ve had better luck extracting his thigh from the jaws of a rabid pit bull.
“Homeland Security? Immigration? ATF?”
“I said, back off,” he roared.
Amara didn’t back off in the face of his fury, didn’t flinch, didn’t so much as blink one long eyelash. Instead she stared at him with her unwavering vision and the kind of courage that even a couple of his toughest colleagues had lacked. Despite his frustration, he felt a grudging respect for her, an admiration he’d sooner die than admit.
“No, wait,” she whispered, the light of comprehension illuminating her face. “I remember what you said. You wondered why I was wasting my time defending an accused drug dealer, didn’t you?”
Jack looked to the ceiling and let the defeat wash over him.
It was almost a relief.
To be who he was, just this once. To tell the truth, just this once.
Nodding and triumphant, Amara connected the last dot. “You’re DEA, aren’t you?”
Exhausted now, Jack looked her in the face, held her gaze, and said nothing.
That was all the answer she needed. The thrill of her momentary victory leached away as the enormity of his situation sank in. Her expression sobered by slow degrees until finally she was looking at him the way he imagined she’d look at a man with inoperable lung cancer.
Empathy was there in her warm brown eyes. Much as anyone else’s empathy would have set him off with proud indignation, there was something about her empathy that felt like absolution.
With this one woman, he didn’t have to explain. She understood the path he’d chosen and that he’d been doing his job. She knew that tracking down drug dealers wasn’t the thrilling escapade they showed on TV, where the daring agent nailed the bad guys in an hour and headed home for a shower and a nice dinner. She knew, without his explanation, that the work he’d done was hard, that he’d made enormous personal sacrifices, that he’d had to get his hands dirty and, worst of all, that he’d had to make tough moral choices that he questioned to this day.
She got it.
The weight of his unexpected gratitude threatened to knock him flat on his butt.
Tears shimmered in her eyes and they were so beautiful and so terrible that he felt them in the pulse thundering in his ears and the blood beating in his heart—she affected him that much.
“Oh, Jack,” she said, and then a crease furrowed her smooth brow. “That is your name, isn’t it? Jack?”
This one didn’t miss a beat, did she? He almost had to smile. “Jackson is my first name.”
“But Patterson?”
He said nothing. He supposed this was the new code between them: when she stumbled onto something that was a little too dangerous and a little too close to home, he kept quiet rather than lie to her.
Funny thing about this irritating woman. He had a real hard time lying to her.
“How long have you been in hiding, Special Agent?” she asked.
None of your business. That was the correct answer, the one he should hurl at her with enough force that she finally backed off and let the whole dangerous topic of his unfortunate career choices drop. None of your damn business, he should say. Now sit down and shut up while I make that phone call I’v
e been trying to make for the last ten minutes while you’ve been interrogating me.
Instead, he opened his mouth and said, “Several months. I’m on a leave of absence.”
“Sooo … you’re in WITSEC?”
“Huh-uh. I’m a big boy. Special agents like me with weapons training and a gun are supposed to be able to take care of ourselves. We don’t get put in the Program. We get transferred to another office.”
“Oh.”
She reached out to touch his arm and suddenly all that touching empathy was more than he could stomach without lapsing into dry heaves. Wheeling away, he snapped at her over his shoulder.
“Now if you’re done with the third degree, I need to make that phone call so I can get you out of my hair as soon as possible. You’re a royal pain in the ass.”
Some devil made him glance back in time to see the hurt streak across her face and it stabbed him with the kind of pain he deserved for being such a bastard after she’d shown him such kindness.
But Amara Clarke was only a temporary visitor to his fucked-up world, and it was best that they both remembered that and kept a nice distance from each other. Best for her and definitely best for him. Emotional attachments weren’t his thing and never would be as long as Kareem Gregory was alive and had the money to put out a contract on him.
Aware of Amara hanging her head and collapsing back into her chair, Jack pulled his cell phone out again and punched the numbers he had memorized and only used in case of emergency. He figured his current boiling cauldron of trouble qualified.
“I’m calling Dexter,” he said.
“Who’s Dexter?”
Cincinnati
“Dexter. Oh, God, Dexter.”
Belinda, thought Dexter Brady, really overdid it when she came, especially when they did it doggy style, like now. The whimpers, the operatic screams, the endless loud calling of his name, so bad that he’d had complaints from his irritated upstairs neighbors on more than one memorable occasion. He appreciated enthusiasm as much as the next guy and, let’s face it, he could fuck a woman like nobody’s business, but Belinda really needed to tone it down.
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