“Did someone really kill Brent Weber?” she asked after a while.
“Yes,” Günter answered after a long pause, almost as if she’d pulled him from a place deep inside himself.
She didn’t have much knowledge of Weber, outside of his betrayal of her brother. While she didn’t like to see anyone hurt—or dead—she found it difficult to feel sympathy for the man.
“Did you see him tonight?” she asked.
Another pause, then a wary, “Yes.”
“Did you do it?” Asking the question made her feel a little ill.
“No.”
“Then the White Tiger did it?”
“No.”
“I’m putting money on Gray,” Simon interjected. “If he’s tied to the White Tiger, and he’s shopping for an out, he’s got guilt written all over him.”
Günter stared out the passenger window, his breath fogging the glass. “If it is the Tiger, he should be shopping for coffins, not resort locations.”
Jenny belatedly put two and two together. “Is that why we’re fleeing the city? Because you’re being framed?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to quid pro quo?” she asked, needing answers and reassurances, not reticence.
They’d been doing so well talking about the White Tiger and he clammed up now? Did he feel guilty about Weber? Or had he really done it?
“I’m answering your questions,” Günter said.
“Why the reluctance? If you’re innocent?” She knew it was childish, but she couldn’t help throwing the implication he’d lied back in his face.
“I hate to tell you this, sunshine, but I haven’t lied to you. That character flaw is all yours,” he answered, catching her implication.
The truth in his words stung and she looked away, refusing to meet his gaze. She wasn’t a liar. Not really. She’d done what she had to do to survive. Which was worlds away from her father. Or mother. When push came to shove she had plenty of integrity and morals.
Several minutes later, after cobbling her sense of self back together, she cleared her throat and asked, “We’re not really going to London are we?”
“Yes,” Simon answered, sliding a sideways glance at Günter when he continued to stare out the window as if she hadn’t spoken at all.
London. Home.
Hell. She hadn’t been there since the Crown had taken her away from her parents almost twenty years ago.
“Why not to Paris? To be with David?” She tried to sound nonchalant as she made the suggestion.
“We don’t want to present your assailant with a double target.” Darkness cloaked Simon’s features, lending an ominous quality to his carefully worded reply.
Her assailant. Was this really all about her? And David?
“But I thought this was about…about Günter and the White Tiger.” From the moment Detective Gray had put Günter’s freedom and safety center stage, Jenny breathed a tiny selfish sigh of relief that she and her brother hadn’t been the targets after all. “Isn’t he just trying to draw you out?”
Günter surprised both her and Simon when he interjected with, “No. It started with you and Tallis. Those letters and—if you’re telling the truth—your near abduction. You’ll remember your brother did a pretty good job of dismantling the White Tiger’s money laundering arm. Thanks to my powwow with Weber tonight, I’m a bonus.”
She ignored the antagonism in his voice and asked, “Don’t you think it’s quite a coincidence?”
Simon glanced sidelong at Günter, and the wipers thub-dubbed several times as he studied his boss.
“You know, she has a point,” he said, finally.
“She has zero knowledge of what’s going on here,” Günter said, brushing off Jenny’s contribution.
“You have to admit—” his second tried again to no avail.
“Absolutely nothing, except that you’re about to miss the turnoff, and we have a plane to catch…” Günter looked hard at Jenny in the visor mirror, his face a sinister shadow as he emphasized the words, “To London, whether you like it or not, sunshine.
“And don’t get lippy,” he continued when she opened her mouth to tell him to fuck off, “because I’ve had about all I can take tonight. Seven hours on a plane with you is a long time and I’d just as soon zip you in a body bag to keep you quiet.”
The beast of Jenny’s panic roared to the surface at his menacing threat. Only now the monster had six heads where before there’d been only one. As the car came to a flashing red light at the end of the one-lane road, she gripped the door handle and said, “You two can go kiss the Queen for all I care. I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Günter and Simon looked at her as if she’d gone mad. And perhaps she had, but she didn’t pretend to care as she bolted from the vehicle and ran in the opposite direction of the demons pursuing her.
Tires spun, their sound a slumbering growl against the snow, as the beast attempted to turn and pursue. She made it as far as a frozen marsh and ducked into the sparse skeletal remains of long-dead summer reeds before she glanced over her shoulder and saw the headlights coming toward her in a swooping arc.
In a blur of motion accompanied by a string of guttural Anglo-Saxon words, her newest demon was on her, pinning her to the ground, and she fought him like the woman she’d become…for the girl she’d once been.
Chapter Five
“I can’t believe you knocked her out with that stuff,” Simon admonished.
Günter gave him a hard look then returned his gaze to their unconscious companion. Jenny’s limp form rocked gently in the plush leather airplane seat on Tallis’ private jet.
“She was bordering on hysterical.” That justification sounded lame, even to his own ears.
“You told her you’d take her to London zipped in a body bag if you had to, Gun.” Apparently Simon wasn’t buying his explanation either.
“I didn’t mean dead,” Günter shot back. “How was I supposed to know it’d send her completely ’round the bend?”
The thing was, he of all people should have known. He tried to stand, but the storm-driven turbulence forced him to sit again. He winced and removed his weapon from the small of his back where he’d jammed it before helping Jenny onto the plane. Well, maybe helping was pushing it, but the word dragging didn’t sit right with him either.
Simon looked down at Jenny and huffed.
“Give it a rest,” Günter said, his temper more than frayed. “I sedated her. I didn’t poison her.”
“I’m terrified to find out what else you have in that bag of yours,” Simon said before he jerked his chin toward Jenny. “Was all that really about going to London?”
“Yes.” With everything Günter knew about her past, he didn’t have to be a genius to figure out the answer to that question.
“Mind telling me why?” Simon asked.
Günter rested his elbows on his thighs and contemplated his fingernails. He wasn’t sure Jenny would appreciate his giving away information about her past, but Simon, as his second, needed to be briefed. He didn’t count this as disclosing confidences. It was business. Pure and simple.
“No. I don’t mind.” He reached out to brush a burnished lock from Jenny’s pale brow. The strand slipped though his fingertips, capturing light and releasing her sweet scent.
Jenny’s first seven years hadn’t easy by any means. Günter, once having been part of MI-5, knew more of the particulars than perhaps anyone but David Tallis—aka Jeremy Ainsley. Even Jenny didn’t know the whole story, and she had lived it. Everyone from Tallis to her foster parents had tried to shelter her from the full truth. Until tonight, with her reaction to his insensitively worded insistence that they return to her birth city, none of them had been sure she remembered anything from those years.
He cringed at the memory of his words and sat back heavily to look out the airplane window at the gray dawn. His reflection was a blur he didn’t care to contemplate as he spoke. “Her father was an organized cri
me enforcer of sorts. Worked for a London money laundering operation headed by the original White Tiger out of Dublin. Real charmers. The lot of them.”
Günter cleared his throat, hating what he knew about humanity, loath to impart what came next.
“Go on,” Simon prompted when he’d been silent too long.
“Apparently the mother killed the father when he made arrangements to bring David—then named Jeremy—into the family business. There was an argument. David witnessed the murder. Nobody is sure how much Jenny really saw or understood.”
“I got the bit about David from the article his journalist girlfriend published. That and the stuff about him going into protective custody and testifying against his father’s associates. God, for those kids to go through all that before thirteen,” Simon said. “Did the mother go into witness protection too?”
“No.” Günter swallowed down the truth. “She’s dead. The organization whacked her in prison.”
Simon’s eyes narrowed, but to Günter’s relief, he let the fib pass with a jerk of his head. They both knew Günter couldn’t talk about it even if he wanted to.
“I should have guessed Jenny was there.” Simon’s voice turned soft as he whispered, “She had to have been so young…”
“Hey.” Günter snapped his fingers in Simon’s face. “She’s just a job. Don’t forget it.”
“Just a job?” Simon cast him a dubious look. “Since when has anyone you’ve shielded been just a job?”
Günter closed his eyes. Damn, but he was tired. There was very little anyone could say to convince him to have this conversation right now.
Taking the hint, Simon yawned. “What do you say we get some sleep?”
“You want the bed?” Günter offered.
“Nah. Let’s give it to her.” Simon indicated Jenny with a jerk of his chin, and Günter looked over his shoulder. Coat pillowed under her head, lips parted and cheeks flushed, she was the picture of innocent repose.
Pole dancing.
He almost swore when his cock immediately hardened at the thought of Jenny in that flirty pink leotard, wrapping her legs around a shiny, metal pole. The vision of the pole morphed to become his torso and he felt her heat wrapped around him as she shimmied up and down.
“Hey.” Simon waved his hand in front of Günter’s face. “You want me to carry her?”
“I have her,” Günter snapped, resenting the idea of Jenny in anyone’s arms but his own.
He gathered her up and tucked her head protectively under his chin. Carrying her into the bedroom he let her heat and softness register fully on his senses, imprinting the scents and sensations on his mind in case another half-decade passed before he held her again. When he returned to the main cabin he found Simon studying the Heathrow blueprints on his laptop.
Günter glanced over his shoulder. “Wrong airport.”
Simon looked up, the glasses on the end of his nose making him look every bit the professor Jenny had dubbed him. “Are we going to Paris?”
“No.”
“Not London and not Paris?”
“No. Not London. Not Paris.” Günter played his fingers along a seam in the cabin wall.
“Are you planning on telling me where—”
“Oxford.”
“Where?” Simon adjusted his glasses and peered at Günter.
“Don’t look at me as if I’ve lost my bloody mind. I have MI-5 contacts meeting us there.”
“Assuming they aren’t taking us directly to prison,” Simon groused.
“I have every faith in Ian…” A smile played about Günter’s lips as he thought of his former fellow spook. “Unless he’s still pissed off about Liverpool.”
“What did you do to him in Liverpool?”
“Not in, with,” Günter explained, moving to the plush sofa on the opposite side of the cabin. But Simon only gave him that look again. “Forget it. I was only joking anyway. Dim the lights will you?”
The main light bank flickered off, leaving the cabin bathed in the warm glow of the safety lights.
“I don’t know why you wouldn’t let her pay the money. It’s not like she couldn’t afford it, and we could use the window to go underground.” The light from the laptop’s LCD reflected off Simon’s glasses. Presumably he was calling up schematics for the smaller airport and making changes to their flight plan.
“Beyond having an objection to wiping Gray’s arse, you and I know the money would end up in this new White Tiger’s hands sooner or later—probably sooner.” Günter shut his eyes. “And I, for one, have an aversion to helping fund the next batch of Bengal coming out of London.”
“You really think he’s back?” Simon asked, referring to the drug kingpin everyone had long believed dead.
Günter contemplated what to say. Until he spoke with Ian, he didn’t really have many answers. At least not any good ones. After years of trying not to remember, he wasn’t inclined to start now. The explosion and senseless loss of life. His teammates. His wife.
His eyes flew open. “The White Tiger is dead. I saw to that myself.” The words were out before he could think to take them back.
“What?” Simon bolted upright from his slouch and whipped his glasses from where they’d perched on the end of his nose. “I knew you’d worked the case, but are you telling me Dublin was you and your boys?”
Günter stared at him steadily by way of an answer. He shouldn’t have even revealed as much as he had.
“Shit.” Simon raked his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end like red shag. “Shit. You fucked up Dublin?”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot,” Günter answered, despite the top-secret security clearance requirement.
“You can’t tell me what happened?”
Günter rolled and pulled the blanket up and over his back. “Good night, Simon.”
“You’re sure the White Tiger is dead?”
“Yes,” he said into his pillow.
“So what’re we dealing with?” Simon mumbled to himself, fingers flying over his keyboard with a telltale clickety-click. It’d probably take him twenty minutes tops to crack the files he needed to get the answers he sought.
He looked over his shoulder and Simon paused to meet his eyes.
“Revenge,” Günter replied, the single word tasting like acid on his tongue. “We’re dealing with revenge.”
* * * * *
Even in his dreams he couldn’t get away from Jenny or that night he’d held her close…
Günter wrinkled his nose at the stink of cigarette smoke and stale alcohol. Wearing a baseball cap and a golf shirt half tucked into his jeans under his windbreaker, he almost blended in with the other jocks and jerks vying for position in the college dive bar.
He pried his foot free from a sticky spot on the worn parquet floor and pressed his way through the crowd in an attempt to get closer to his charge. She’d escaped his sight line when she moved to the other side of a support pole five minutes ago. When she didn’t emerge onto the dance floor he assumed she leaned against the pole, perhaps stopped to chat up some admirer.
The idea of her flirting over the rim of her red plastic beer cup at any of these blokes had him shouldering the assembled throng out of the way. When he reached her side, she looked up at him, doe eyes just this side of tipsy, and smiled.
His heart stopped. Whether because she looked at him directly for the first time in the three years he’d been tailing her for Tallis, or because he realized his mistake too late—never let the principal remember your face—he couldn’t say.
“Hi,” she said when he stared down at her like an idiot.
He cleared his throat. “Hi.”
“Want a drink?” She raised her voice over the din and waggled her mostly empty cup at him.
Frantic to make a quick getaway before his features imprinted on her inebriated brain, he shot back a brusque, “No, thanks.”
Her face fell and she looked away. “’Kay.”
“Sorry. I just…” Ju
st what? He wasn’t prepared to talk to her for God’s sake. What was he supposed to say?
“Hey, you’re in my accounting class.” A sandy-haired kid in a letterman’s jacket sidled up to her. Forearm braced possessively above her head he leaned in and whispered something in her ear.
Günter stepped back farther. He’d kick some scrawny kid off a barstool and watch her from the crowd. Make sure she didn’t get into any trouble. Gather some innocuous tidbits about her life for Tallis. That’s all the job required. Nothing more. Nothing less. Unless of course she got into trouble.
It didn’t happen too often, but every once in a while Jenny behaved in ways that confounded him. Perhaps it was just being a college student, but the girl wasn’t entirely predictable. For instance, in the three years she’d been in college he’d never seen her drink as much as she had tonight.
He saw the coed eye her empty cup and Günter read his lips as he asked her if she wanted another.
She tossed back her hair and smiled up at him. “What’s your name?” she mouthed.
“Chad,” he answered.
“Jenny.” Her eyes sparkled with sexual energy and there was no mistaking her expression. The girl wanted to get laid.
Chad took the opportunity to drop his arm neatly behind Jenny’s back and used it to palm her backside and press her close. Jenny giggled up at him and Günter saw red. Before he could rearrange the guy’s face, Chad stepped back and said, “I’ll get you that drink.”
As luck would have it, he approached the bar near Günter. The bartender, busy with the crowd, would take a while to serve him.
“I see you’ve met Jenny,” Günter said.
“Huh?” The kid looked at him, a half-annoyed half-bemused expression adorning his vapid but conventionally handsome features.
“Are you two dating?” Günter asked.
“What are you, some kind of pervert?”
“No, but I know her brother.” It was the truth, but even if Chad told Jenny in class on Monday, she’d think the kid was lying.
“So?” Chad held up two fingers to the bartender, who didn’t notice.
“He has me follow her sometimes. I make sure she doesn’t besmirch the family name. Cover up any problems she creates.” Now he lied. Sort of.
Undercover Lover Page 6