The memory of that evening could warm her still. She could even remember the sharp smells of that evening melding together—Mom’s Diorissimo, hot candle wax, woodsmoke, the cook’s cakes and scones, Earl Grey tea and Dad’s bourbon. A heady scent of joy and celebration.
She’d played the piano and they’d sung Christmas carols. She’d played—
“…play?”
With a wrench, Caroline brought her mind back to the present. Her boarder was sitting next to her. Not so close it made her uncomfortable, but close enough so that she could feel his body heat and feel the air move and the sofa dip as he leaned forward to put his cup on the coffee table. Seeing him this close, she felt slightly overwhelmed by the sheer size of him. It seemed his shoulders took up half the sofa.
Her perfectly normal-sized coffee cup looked tiny in his hands. His hands were compelling, unlike any other male hands she’d ever seen. Though they were huge, the skin visibly rough, as if he worked with them a lot outdoors, they were also naturally well shaped, long-fingered, elegant and strong, with a light dusting of black hairs on the backs. The nails were clean but clearly unmanicured, so very unlike Sanders’s hands, which were pale and soft, with perfect, buffed nails.
Oh my God. She was doing it again—drifting with her thoughts. He’d said something. “I beg your pardon?”
Jack inclined his head toward the piano. His voice was patient. He was a strong guy—a soldier. Presumably that gave him extra patience not to roll his eyes and shout at the crazy lady who drifted away in her head at the drop of a hat. “I see you have a piano. I imagine you play. I’d love to hear you play something.”
No, absolutely not was her first instinct, and she had to clench her jaws tightly closed to keep from saying the words.
No way could she play. She hadn’t played since before Toby died. Not enough time had passed. Her feelings were too close to the surface, the memories too bright, the pain still razor-sharp…
“Please,” he said and waited, watching her patiently.
Her chest was so tight it was hard to breathe. The thought of playing the piano made her slightly ill, but how could she say no? He couldn’t possibly understand what he’d asked of her. Saying no would sound as if she were insane. Or maybe even worse for a landlady—rude.
She glanced up at Jack. He was watching her quietly, his gaze dark and penetrating. She met his eyes for a moment, then looked down at her hands, hands that itched to touch the keys for comfort, hands that at the same time never wanted to play the piano again.
This was so scary.
Caroline felt she was poised on the edge of some deep, deep precipice from which there would be no return. She could either step forward and fall into the abyss of perpetual grief, a ghost of a woman with only ghosts to keep her company, forever mourning the past. Or she could step back and somehow reclaim her life and have something resembling a future.
She had to stop living in the past. She had to stop grieving. She had to stop thinking incessantly of Toby and her parents. She had to stop now.
This was so hard. But it had to be done. She could do it. Over the past six years, she’d learned how to do the hard things. Over and over again.
She drummed up a smile, upturned lips and a flash of teeth, hoping he wouldn’t notice how false it was. “All right,” she said, her throat tight. “Of course I’ll play for you.”
Resolutely, she got up and went to the piano. There was an off chance that over the past two months the piano had gone out of tune. God knows there’d been enough changes in temperature with her temperamental boiler to warp the wood. If the piano wasn’t in tune, well then, that would be a perfect excuse not to play, and it wouldn’t be her fault at all.
She stopped by the big black upright and played a quick scale. The notes rang out true and clear in the big room. The piano was perfectly in tune.
This was something she was simply going to have to face.
Clenching her teeth, she sat down. She turned, surprised, when Jack lit the candles in the brass holders on either side of the upright with one of the long matches kept by the hearth.
“Looks so pretty like this,” he said, and blew the match out.
Caroline sighed. Yes, it was very pretty.
She looked up at him. “What would you like for me to play? Do you have a favorite Christmas carol? I have a pretty good repertoire of carols.”
“No, no carols, please. I’ve been listening to way too much Muzak in airports lately.” He tapped the score in front of her. “How about this? It must have been the last thing you played.”
Caroline froze. “This” was the score to Phantom of the Opera. She’d played it incessantly for Toby the last two weeks of his life. Please God, not this.
A Christmas carol would have been easy. She could choose one with no particular memories attached. “Silent Night,” maybe. Or “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” The only thing they reminded her of was school.
But the Phantom of the Opera…
Oh dear sweet God. Anything but that.
This was going to be so hard. Caroline touched the keys, stroking them, familiarizing herself with the touch of the ivory and wood all over again. Music had always been her refuge, her place of peace. It was a sign of how deep her grief had been that she’d stayed away from music for so long.
She looked up uncertainly and met his gaze. Dark and steady and penetrating, as if he could reach inside her mind and read all the painful emotions swirling around inside, including her panic and fear. This was a man who’d faced gunfire. How could someone like that possibly understand a fear of a keyboard?
He couldn’t.
Do it now.
Taking a deep breath, Caroline slowly started playing a few, halting notes with her right hand. The notes were discordant, too slow, but the song was recognizable.
The opening bars of “Think of Me”—the haunting melody Christine sang to the Phantom—came out. The song was forever branded in her heart as a hymn to pain and loss.
Her hand faltered, and she kept her index finger down on F for a long moment, wondering if she could go on.
She had to. She had to not only out of courtesy to her boarder but for herself. And for her own sanity.
You must do this, Caroline ordered herself, her spine stiffening.
Her right hand picked out the notes of the opening again, faster, smoother, more melodic. The left hand came up, reluctantly, to provide the counterpoint to the lush melody. Muscle memory took over. The notes started flowing as her hands moved lightly over the keys, the song as familiar to her as her own name.
Think of me…
Mom and Dad and Toby had flown from Seattle to meet with her in New York for Thanksgiving. She’d taken the Amtrak down from Boston, where she was studying music and men, having a great time with both. Dad had booked a two-room suite at the Waldorf. The Lake family had four magical days together, taking in the sights by day and going to plays and musicals by night. Their last night in New York they’d all gone to see Phantom at the Majestic Theater. She’d been just old enough to sigh at the romanticism of the love triangle. The doomed, scarred lover banished forever to the shadows, the handsome young viscount and the beautiful young woman loved by both men.
Remember me…
Toby’d been just young enough to get jazzed at swirling capes, chandeliers crashing to the stage, candles rising from the water, a mysterious boat on a lake under the Opera. Toby’d been still hopping with excitement the next morning when they accompanied her to the station. She remembered boarding the train back to Boston, looking through the window at Mom and Dad blowing kisses and Toby excitedly waving good-bye. A happy family with their whole lives in front of them.
It was the last time she saw her parents.
It was the last time she saw Toby walk.
For years, he refused to listen to the CD of the musical. Caroline understood completely. It reminded him too much of what he’d lost, of the carefree boy he’d been, a boy with a whole lifeti
me ahead that had been cruelly snatched from him.
Then, suddenly, a couple of months ago, he started insisting that she play the music for him, over and over as he grew weaker and weaker.
Toby knew he was dying, Caroline thought suddenly, the hairs rising on the nape of her neck. That was why he asked her to play the music so often. Toby felt his death approaching and he wanted to hear the music that reminded him of the last time the family had been together, the last time he’d been a healthy boy.
She bent her head, her hands moving on their own, without her having to think of the notes.
The delicate, romantic music filled the room, filled her head, filled her heart. Her hands floated over the keyboard, the music coming from the deepest reaches of her being.
…please promise me…
She forgot where she was, she forgot about the large, dark-eyed man by her side watching her, as she was swept up in the haunting melody. A song of yearning and the promise of love when the hope is gone.
…that sometimes you will think of me…
Softly, softly the song ended on one last lingering note that echoed, then died away. Her hands slipped from the keys to lie in her lap.
Caroline bowed her head, a loose tendril of hair falling forward to lie on her shoulder.
A sudden current of ice-cold air swept through the room, ruffling the pages of the score, chilling her to the bone. Goose bumps rose on her skin. She looked up, startled, as the candles in their brass holders guttered, then died. The heavy curtains fluttered briefly, then stilled.
It was over almost before it began. The air was suddenly still once more. Wisps of smoke from the smoldering wicks rose straight up. Nothing moved.
Something had come—and gone—from the room.
To her dying day, Caroline believed that it was at that precise instant that her brother’s soul departed from this life, finally, finally breaking free from the broken cage of flesh he hated so.
He’d heard her play one last time and had left the world.
Caroline had just played Toby’s requiem.
Now he was finally, truly gone. And she was alone.
One large tear slipped down her cheek and fell on the keyboard, plopping so heavily that the key made a ghost of a sound.
Jack hadn’t moved, but something in the very stillness of the air to her side made her turn. He was standing next to her, one big hand on the top of the piano, watching her steadily. She had no idea what he could be thinking.
Probably what a crazy, crazy woman she was.
Suddenly, Caroline was so very weary of her grief and loneliness. Something had to happen to break her out of this icy shell of sorrow that encased her. She needed human warmth and connection. She needed to touch someone. She needed for someone to touch her. Other than an occasional handshake, she hadn’t touched another human being since Toby’s death.
She looked up into the dark eyes of a perfect stranger and spoke the truest words she knew out of a painfully tight throat.
“I don’t want to be alone tonight,” she whispered.
Five
Sierra Leone
The human eye sees what it expects to see. Deaver knew that. Like all soldiers he used that fact often. Half of military tactics is deception and evasion.
So when a five-ten, 180-pound blond man wearing dark sunglasses strode confidently through the UN camp, dressed in well-pressed fatigues with the UN badge on his shirtfront and wearing the distinctive bright blue helmet of the UN peacekeeping force, nobody gave him a second glance. He was just another of the five hundred UN soldiers in the encampment.
It was evening. Half the troops were on routine patrols—unarmed, the idiots.
Deaver still found it hard to believe that soldiers would allow themselves to go unarmed. Orders from on high. Military observers and peacekeepers had to show their neutrality at all costs. Axel had thought it stupid, too. Deaver had a sudden pang of sympathy for the guy.
He felt like an incredible asshole walking around unarmed in West Africa, a place where it was as if some giant hole had opened up and sucked in everyone who was human, leaving only deranged monsters. He’d only been unarmed for a couple of days, but it felt like forever.
Deaver could only imagine what a whole tour of duty here unarmed would feel like, where if you fell into the wrong hands, you could have your hands and feet chopped off by teenagers, be staked out in the broiling equatorial sun with your bowels slashed open for the insects to eat or be skinned alive, without any weapons whatsoever to defend yourself with.
Well, the hell with that, he was getting the fuck out. Right now. Just as Axel would have.
The evening air was suddenly filled with the familiar whump whump whump of a helicopter. Deaver walked fast in the direction of the sound. He wanted to break into a run, but he didn’t dare.
In the twilight, he could make out the familiar outline of a Huey, landing in an improvised helipad carved out of the surrounding forest. The pilot landed gently, smack in the center of the circle, and stayed in the cockpit, his hands on the controls. He clearly wanted to be out of there as soon as possible. He was landing at last light to increase his chances of survival. The route from Freetown took them over rebel-held territory. RPGs needed daylight to take planes and helicopters down.
Men dressed in jeans and sweatshirts with the sleeves cut off jumped down nimbly and started unloading boxes. They worked silently and efficiently. Within ten minutes, there was a neat stack of boxes lined up on the ground.
Deaver walked straight up to one of the men. He shouted over the noise of the rotors and the engine. “May I ask where you’re going next?” He was a good mimic, and he’d talked enough with Axel to be able to imitate his slight Finnish accent perfectly.
One of the men stopped for a second to look at him curiously. “Back to Lungi,” he shouted back, then took another box from the man behind him, passing it on to the man in front of him.
Perfect. Lungi International Airport, his way out. If they left immediately, he could make the 9:00 P.M. flight to Paris, then on to the States. He’d be back in the U.S. before anyone even thought to question whether Axel had made it back home.
“I’m on leave,” he shouted over the thumping whine of the main rotors. “My flight departs early tomorrow morning from Lungi. I was supposed to hitch a ride with the convoy, but I missed it. My commanding officer made me go over some paperwork, the bastard.” Deacon rolled his eyes. The man looked like an NCO. NCOs throughout the world are familiar with dipshit officers. “Can you give me a lift to the airport? Otherwise, I will lose my flight.”
The man stopped and looked back. “We’re off-loading four hundred pounds of supplies, so we’ve got plenty of room. I don’t see why not. Wait here.” He leaped into the cockpit, and Deaver saw him confer with the pilot. The pilot turned his head sharply and stared at Deaver, looking vaguely insectoid with his deep black pilot’s sunglasses. It was impossible to tell his expression. Finally, after a long scrutiny he said something, and the man he’d been talking to jumped back down. He jerked a thumb toward the pilot and put his mouth close to Deaver’s ear.
“Pilot said sure,” he shouted. “We’ll be back at Lungi in an hour. Hop on in.”
Fucking A!
Deaver quickly climbed into the cabin and settled himself in for the first leg of his journey back to his diamonds and his new life.
Summerville
I don’t want to be alone tonight.
The words lingered in the quiet of the room. A log broke apart, the pieces falling to the hearth with a hiss and a flurry of sparks.
Jack reached out, hesitated a moment, then used his thumb to gently wipe the tear away from Caroline’s cheek. She didn’t move, she didn’t even blink, watching him to see how he’d react to her words. Her skin felt like satin, so tempting he lifted his hand away.
It trembled. His hand fucking trembled.
Jack had been team sniper for three years. Snipers are made—forged in the fire of ceaseless
, pitiless training. But snipers are also born—with a rare combination of natural-born eye-and-hand coordination and the kind of nature that can wait, endlessly, for the right moment to explode into action.
Jack never lost his cool, ever. He’d hunkered behind a rock in the prone position, finger on the trigger, eye on and off the scope in half-hour intervals, for three days and three nights for the chance of catching Mohammed Khan, drinking only a liter of water and never crapping. His hand had never once wavered, and when he’d finally made the shot, it was a perfect kill. Khan had dropped like a stone with a .50 caliber bullet through the bridge of the nose, one of the few shots guaranteed to kill instantly. One shot one kill. The sniper’s mantra.
He was in control of himself, always. His life had depended more times than he could count on that control.
The fact that his hands trembled scared the shit out of him. He couldn’t lose control, not tonight. He daren’t. If he lost control, who knew what he would do to Caroline? Fuck her too hard? Ending up hurting her? Jesus, maybe biting her?
He shuddered at the thought.
Right now, right now, he was shaking with lust, clenching his hands into fists because he was afraid he’d grab her and throw her to the floor. Every cell in his body was slick with lust, aching to have her. It wasn’t just a six-month dry spell. It was as if he’d never had sex before. It felt like a lifetime of dammed-up desire was raging through his system, burning up his veins.
Touch was too difficult just right now. Use words, he told himself.
I don’t want to be alone tonight.
“I won’t let you be alone tonight, Caroline. Come with me.” Cupping a hand under her elbow, safely covered by black silk, Jack lifted her from the piano stool. She rose, huge gray-silver eyes fixed on his.
Do not fuck this up, he repeated to himself. His new mantra.
He had to get a grip. When he’d come down the stairs a few hours ago, it was as if someone had reached deep inside his head and pulled out the most compelling image he could imagine, one he didn’t even know he’d had in his head, something guaranteed to touch all his buttons and get his blood up.
The Dangerous Boxed Set Page 64