Anne Stuart's Out-of-Print Gems

by Anne Stuart

  “You’re there, aren’t you?” she called out, her voice betraying only a trace of her nerves.

  “Right behind you,” he said, wondering why she couldn’t see him when he could see her quite clearly.

  She’d paused, and she was staring in his direction in the darkness, but her own gaze was unfocused. “Your eyes…” she said.

  Instinctively he closed his lids. “What about them?”

  “Nothing,” she mumbled. “Must have been my imagination.” He heard her turn away and continue to mount the stairs, and he waited a moment before he followed her. What had she seen in his eyes?

  The third floor smelled of smoke and chemicals. The hallway was deserted, though at the far end he could see the rubble that had once been his doorway. A yellow tape stretched in front of it, though Daniel doubted that there’d been a police investigation.

  Suzanna’s color was decidedly pale, though she looked happier to be out of the darkness. “How much time do you think we’ve got?”

  “Probably not enough,” he said, moving past her. “I just want to take a quick look around, see if I can find out what kind of device they used, and then we’re out of here.”

  “Device? You sound pretty certain it was sabotage.”

  He glanced at her, one part of his mind taking in the way the T-shirt clung to her breasts and remembering the feel of her body as she’d scrambled up him, the rest being coldly analytical. “I don’t make mistakes,” he said simply.

  “Never?”

  He paused long enough to consider it. “Not that I can remember.”

  The lab was a shambles. It stank of chemicals, of smoke, of fire extinguisher foam and wet, charred wood and melted plastic. Most of the green slime had been washed away by the fire hoses, but a little pool of the stuff remained under one of the workbenches, and he squatted down, staring at it for a long time before he scooped some up in a plastic dish he’d brought along for the purpose.

  “Why are you doing that?” Suzanna was leaning over his shoulder, close enough to touch him. “Do you think that stuff caused the explosion?”

  “No.” He rose, coming up beside her, near enough to touch her if he wanted to. He wanted to. “I think it’s a by-product of what I was working on, combined with whatever was used to start the fire. It’s mutated into something that I intend to identify.” He tucked the plastic dish in his hip pocket. “Did you get any of the stuff on you?”

  “Just a little. You took a bath in it.”

  “So I did,” he murmured. “I wonder—” He stopped. “They’re coming.”

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Don’t you? They’re coming up the north stairwell—about two flights down. I’d say we have about one minute at the most.”

  “You can’t hear them that far away!” she snapped, but he could see the definite alarm in her beautiful brown eyes.

  “Trust me,” he muttered, taking her hand in his and starting out of the ruined lab at a run.

  For once she didn’t argue. She simply followed him, no questions asked, as he dodged debris, racing down the deserted hallway on silent feet.

  He darted into Buchanan’s lab, slamming the door behind them and closing them in shadowy darkness. Buchanan had left several months ago, and the lab had sat empty since then, despite Daniel’s best efforts to co-opt it for his own uses. Not that it was as large as Daniel’s lab, but it came equipped with a back staircase, leading directly to the roof.

  “Where are we going?” Suzanna finally demanded, breathless. “Why are we running? You don’t think we’re in any real danger, do you?”

  He thought there was a good chance that they were in a great deal of danger, but he wasn’t about to explain it to a nosy reporter. “I don’t know. I just want to get out of here. Call me paranoid.”

  “You’re paranoid.”

  He turned to look at her. “You want to wait around for them to come find you?”

  “I have a T-shirt that says Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They Aren’t Out To Get You,” she replied.

  “Good girl,” he muttered, moving toward the door at the back of the lab.

  “Don’t call me a girl,” she snapped, moving past him and reaching for the metal doorknob. Of course it didn’t budge, and she yanked harder, muttering under her breath. “I don’t suppose you have a key for this?”

  “No.”

  “Then we’re stuck.” She turned and glared at him, her wheat-blond hair tumbling into her eyes. “That’s a safety door—reinforced steel. Unless you can pick locks, there’s no way we’re going to get past it. Brute force just won’t cut it this time.”

  “I wonder,” he said, half to himself, moving past her, ignoring the impractical urge to touch her. He took hold of the shiny steel knob, noting the lock. And then he turned it, crushing the tumblers when they tried to resist, pulling open the door with no effort whatsoever.

  She stared at him for a moment, then back at the door latch. The metal workings had been pulverized by some massive force. “How did you do that?” she gasped.

  “Shoddy workmanship,” he replied. “You first. Three flights up, and if the door’s locked up there, we’ll open it.”

  Her parting glance was wary, before she vanished into the shadowy staircase. Daniel watched her for a moment, appreciating the curve of her rear in the faded jeans, before he turned to look at the door. His strength was quite impressive. He really needed to get out of here, away from witnesses, and experiment further. There had to be a limit to it, and he needed to find that limit. He didn’t want to accidently injure someone.

  He stepped into the narrow staircase, pulling the damaged door shut behind him, hoping it would escape detection, at least for the time being. He could hear Suzanna moving upward, her sneakered feet cautious. She was nervous again, the darkness of the passageway getting to her, and he told himself he ought to catch up with her, hold her hand, even put his arm around her. Just to reassure her, he told himself virtuously. Hell, given his unpredictable strength, he could carry her the rest of the way and barely notice the burden. He rather liked that idea.

  There was an odd, sickly sweet smell in the stairwell, not unlike rancid meat and rotted fruit. The higher he climbed, the stronger the stench, and he wondered what Suzanna was doing, why he could no longer hear her tentative footsteps, her nervous breathing, why she wasn’t complaining.

  He found her on the landing just before the final flight of stairs to the roof. She wasn’t alone.

  She was standing utterly motionless. The skylight overhead illuminated the area, but Daniel doubted she was grateful for the light. It shone down on the corpse of Robert Jackson.

  “Is he dead?” Suzanna’s voice came out as no more than a whisper.

  Daniel stepped farther, intellectually gratified at having identified the stench. “Most definitely,” he said. “Don’t you see the bullet hole in his—”

  “Please!” Suzanna begged in a strangled voice.

  “Why don’t you go on up ahead? I’ll be right with you.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Search his body. You want to help?”

  She disappeared up the final flight of stairs with a quiet shriek of protest. When he reached her side a few moments later, she was leaning against the locked fire door, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide behind the wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Are you going to throw up?” He was unalarmed at the notion, simply curious.

  “No.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Can we get out of here? This door is locked, as well, and I’ve checked. It’s very solidly put together.”

  “You’d be surprised.” He tempered his strength this time, turning the knob just enough to break the lock, not enough to pulverize it. He opened the door for her, pushing her through into the fresh air before she could look too closely.

  He started across the deserted rooftop at a fast pace. “Come on,” he said. “If our luck holds, we’ll be out of here before they realiz
e it.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “We might end up like Jackson back there.”

  Wrong words. She swayed for a moment, and her pale face looked even chalkier. He started back, ready to catch her if she fell, but she managed to straighten her back and square her shoulders. “Not if I have anything to say about it,” she muttered.

  “Good girl.”

  “Stop saying that. I’m not a girl.”

  “Argue with me once we’re out of here,” he said. “In the meantime, get your delectable butt in gear.”

  SUZANNA WOULDN’T HAVE thought Daniel Crompton was the sort of man who noticed butts, delectable or otherwise. No one had ever referred to that part of her anatomy in such flattering terms, and she concentrated on that, rather than the vision, the smell, of the dead man in the stairwell, as she followed Crompton over the side of the building and down a metal fire ladder to a deserted parking lot.

  Or almost deserted. There was a Jaguar parked there, sleek, forest green and Suzanna’s dream car, and she stared at it for a moment when she reached the ground, a wave of covetousness sweeping over her.

  “If we’re going to steal a car, I opt for that one,” she said.

  Crompton looked at her. The man was inhuman. He seemed to accept decaying corpses as nothing more than an intellectual exercise, he didn’t recognize such a thing as a locked door, and she was beginning to get the feeling that there was something very different about Dr. Daniel Crompton. That first stretch of hallway had been eerie enough. Trapped in the suffocating darkness, she’d turned back, looking for some kind of companionship, and had found only a pair of eyes glowing in the darkness.

  It had to have been her imagination. In the inky darkness she could barely see his silhouette, and that odd shining had disappeared in a moment.

  Still, she’d tried both of those steel doors. While she’d never pretended to be a superwoman, she had a certain amount of strength, and those doors were locked tight. Yet Crompton had opened them with no visible effort whatsoever.

  “Who says we’re stealing a car?”

  “I don’t know where mine is, and they’ll be watching yours,” she pointed out. “It doesn’t take someone with your exalted IQ to figure out that much.”

  “That Jaguar belongs to Henry Osborn, and he’s formidable enough without us taking his precious car. We’re taking the Ford over there.”

  Suzanna followed his gaze. It was a boring enough vehicle, two door, late model, indiscriminate color. They’d probably blend in well enough, if that was their wish. “I’d still rather have the Jag,” she said, trotting along behind him.

  Of course the car was locked. She stood at the passenger door, throwing him a mocking glance. “Are you going to rip the door off the hinges this time?” she murmured.

  “It might be easier to simply unlock it,” he said, pulling a set of keys from his pocket and doing so. She slid into the front seat beside him, rolling down her window to let some of the suffocatingly stale air out, as Crompton started the car and pulled out of the parking lot at an impressive speed. Even with the wind blowing through the open window it was too hot. It took her a moment to remember she was keeping company with a human furnace.

  “If this isn’t your car, whose is it? How’d you happen to get the keys?” she demanded, fastening the seat belt around her.

  “I don’t think you want to know.”

  Horror swept over her. “It isn’t!”

  Daniel shrugged. “Jackson isn’t going to need it anymore. It was simple enough to find his keys.”

  She looked down at the set hanging from the ignition. The key ring had a shamrock hanging from it. It certainly hadn’t provided much luck for the late Jackson. “You’re sick,” she said, sinking back against the seat.

  “Just practical. Speaking of which, I think we’d better get out of town for a while.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this isn’t just a case of industrial sabotage or attempted murder. Someone actually managed to kill Jackson, and whoever it was used a fair amount of detail and imagination. I don’t think they’re going to stop there. Where do you live?”

  “Why?”

  “I thought you might want to pick up some clothes. Assuming they’re not watching your place.”

  “What makes you think I’m going with you?”

  “Molloy, you’ve got it made. You’re in on a murder. Think of the bidding wars on your movie rights.”

  “Sorry, Crompton, you haven’t got hero potential,” she snapped, ignoring the fact that he was better-looking than almost any actor she could think of.

  “Who says I’m not the villain?”

  That managed to silence her. It was a startling thought. She’d gone along with him, arguing, but trusting, putting her life in his hands. Together they’d found Jackson’s body, and yet Daniel had looked at it as if it were nothing more than a lab experiment gone awry.

  Could he have killed him? Did he find out that Jackson had tried to sabotage his lab, and shoot him in a rage? She glanced over at his profile. His long hair blew in the wind, away from his strong-featured face. He looked cool, remote, incapable of human emotion. If he ever wanted to kill someone, he was smart enough to get away with it.

  “43 West Peacock.”

  He glanced over at her. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You asked where I lived. It’s 43 West Peacock. Just off of High Street.”

  “Does that mean you’re coming with me?”

  “As you pointed out, it’s the scoop of the century. I’m going to be your shadow.”

  His mouth curved in a faint, mocking smile. “You might find that harder than you think.”

  “I can rise to the challenge. Do you know where we’re going?”

  “Somewhere I can think. You don’t talk all the time, do you?”

  “Depends on my mood.”

  “God help me,” he muttered. But for some reason he didn’t look the slightest bit distressed.

  As far as they could tell, no one was watching the old Victorian-style house where she rented her apartment. Crompton stayed in the car while she ran inside and filled an old duffel bag with a dozen T-shirts, all the clean underwear she could find and enough toiletries to keep her human. She yanked her clothes off, throwing them in the trash, and quickly pulled on a new T-shirt and jeans. It was ridiculous, but she felt as if the smell of that long-dead corpse was clinging to her. The sooner she could take a long hot shower, the better.

  Daniel was waiting for her in the sedan, his long fingers drumming on the steering wheel. “You’re fast,” he said approvingly. “You even managed to change your clothes.”

  “I try not to waste time.”

  “Nice T-shirt,” he said, pulling out into the late afternoon traffic.

  She glanced down at the one she’d grabbed. So Many Men, So Few Bullets, it read, in black ink on a red background. She thought back to Jackson and shivered.

  He headed out onto the highway, moving north into the mountains. She sank back against the cushions, closing her eyes in sudden exhaustion. She must have drifted off, for the next thing she knew, they were parked outside of a very seedy-looking motel, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and the digital clock on the dashboard read 5:40.

  “Where are we?” she asked with a yawn.

  “On the back side of beyond,” he said. “I’ve got us a room for the night. I’ve been driving around, doubling back, and I don’t think they’re likely to find us. We’re Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”

  “How original. We’re sharing a room?”

  She might almost have wished he’d responded with a leer. Instead he simply looked surprised. “I thought the intention of this was to keep each other alive. We can’t do that if you’re in another room.”

  “Don’t worry, Dr. Crompton,” she said wearily. “I’m not accusing you of having lustful designs on my fair body.”

  He didn’t even blink. A token protest wouldn’t have done her ego any harm, but Daniel wa
sn’t adept in the art of social lies. He simply stared at her for a moment. “Do you want me to?” he asked bluntly.

  It was getting dark. A fortunate thing, since her damnably fair skin heated up at his artless question. “No,” she said flatly.

  He nodded. “I see,” he said. Something about his tone of voice wasn’t particularly reassuring, but before she could identify what it was that bothered her, he’d climbed out of the car and headed for the door of their room.

  She grabbed her duffel bag and followed him, telling herself she was glad the big oaf was totally lacking in chauvinistic manners. “Room number thirteen,” she noted, stepping inside. “Just our luck.”

  “What’s wrong with number thirteen?”

  She didn’t bother enlightening him—she was too busy surveying the room in dismay.

  At least there were two beds. The place was decorated in early American tacky, from the orange quilted bedspreads to the Naugahyde furniture. She checked beyond, to the tiny square of bathroom with its stall shower, and sighed. “All the comforts of home,” she said. “I wonder where Norman Bates is.”

  “Who’s Norman Bates?”

  “Didn’t you ever see Psycho?”

  “No.”

  She shook her head again. “For a brilliant man, Dr. Crompton, you’re amazingly ignorant.”

  If he heard her, he ignored the remark and busily closed the curtains against the gathering darkness. “It’s hot in here,” he said in a low voice.

  Oddly enough, a chill swept over Suzanna’s body. “I’m going to take a shower,” she said, dumping her duffel bag on the bed nearest the bathroom and rummaging through it.

  He had a strained look to him, almost haunted. “Go right ahead.”

  She paused in the bathroom doorway. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine. Take your shower. Then we can see about finding something to eat.”

  There was something wrong. The room was almost suffocating, and heat emanated from the man at the window. He refused to look at her, and she shrugged. “It’s almost six now,” she said. “I’ll be ready to go out at six-thirty.”