by Sylvie Kurtz
Fantasy hadn’t come close to the real thing. Warm. Solid. Giving. She pressed herself nearer. The boom of his heart thumped against her breasts.
“I think—”
“I don’t want to think.” Thinking filled her imagination with blood and death. If she didn’t think, she could ride through the terror. She nipped at his earlobe and ran her tongue along his jaw.
Cold—that’s what James, her last boyfriend, had called her. She wasn’t feeling cold now. She was burning from her scalp to her toes. Her blood was sizzling, her pulse sparking. Every atom in her was alive, wild with power. And the guttural sounds in Gray’s throat made her giddy. She scraped her nails down the soft hair along his nape and over his shoulders. He quivered and something in her thrilled.
“Abbie—” He sounded breathless.
“Shut up.” Her lips curved over his. “It’s television or you.” She skimmed the tip of her tongue along his upper lip. “I choose you.”
Just as she swallowed his protest, the phone rang, and the cold returned.
Chapter Nine
At first Gray thought the shrill jangle was the smoke alarm going off. Then his conscience reminded him that this path would take him straight to hell. Except that this particular brand of torture sure touched him like heaven.
The woman of all of his fantasies, his golden girl, kissing him, touching him, wanting him. How was he supposed to resist that? Her honeyed tongue plunging into his mouth. Her clever hands setting his skin on fire. Her full breasts pliant against his chest. His willpower frittered away faster than dry wood. She had him breathless and on the edge of insanity. He was made of flesh, after all, not steel. And she was so hot, so soft, so delicious.
But he was a coward. Because when he finally realized the cell phone was ringing, reason pierced through the haze of hot lust, leaving behind the slick film of sweaty fear. He’d almost broken his personal code of conduct. He’d almost given in to temptation. He was supposed to protect her and instead was becoming one more person whose trust she had to question. He’d almost let his weakness for her get the best of him.
Still tasting the lingering sweetness of Abbie’s almond-and-honey skin on his tongue, he slid off the bed and strode to the counter where he’d left the phone and ripped it off the top of Bryn’s report. “Reed.”
“It’s Noah.”
The hesitation in Kingsley’s voice had every nerve in Gray’s body on alert. “How’s my sister?”
“Bad enough to require emergency care. Not bad enough she didn’t fight me over calling an ambulance.”
Relief sagged his shoulders. That sounded like Bryn—never knowing what was good for her. Thank God she was alive. “What’s the prognosis?”
“Concussion. Some bruising. No broken bones. She needed a couple stitches on her scalp. She was passed out when I got to the house, so they’re going to keep her overnight for observation.”
“She’ll need protection.” Vanderveer and his minions weren’t going to get close to her again. “Not the Aerie.”
“I’ve got it covered. When she’s released, I’ll take her and her yappie little dog to my parents’ place—kicking and screaming, if I have to. My parents aren’t home, but their housekeeper is, and she’ll take care of your sister. Marta’s looking forward to having someone to fuss over.”
Marta was better than a pit bull at guarding what she considered her territory. Gray hadn’t realized how much tension bunched in his muscles until Kingsley lifted the burden of guilt off his conscience. Bryn was going to be all right. She was going to be safe. “How did the intruder get in?”
“The back door was forced open.”
Over the steady beeping of machinery, Bryn mumbled something.
“Hang on.” Kingsley put a hand over the receiver and came back on a few moments later. “She says to tell you she was beaten by a ghost and to beware of shadows. She says to tell Abbie to stay away from the hospital and go have a latte.”
“Latte? What the hell is all that about?”
“They have her drugged. She needs rest.” Kingsley hesitated. “I’ll have to tell Falconer about the incident at your sister’s.”
Yeah, Gray had figured as much, but giving up a step was worth it to make sure Brynna was okay. “Thanks for the heads up.”
“I won’t mention where she’s staying. Just in case. I took Brynna’s hard drives home to see if I can recover anything.”
That, too, was inevitable. He and Abbie would have to leave this motel to avoid Mercer, who’d track them down much too soon. “Let me know what you find.”
“About Harper…”
“Yeah?”
“He’s Falconer’s cousin. He was DEA.”
“Was?”
“His wife and kids took a bomb meant for him. They all died.”
Gray swore.
“Grief doesn’t mean betrayal,” Kingsley said. “Let me dig a little deeper.”
Grief might not mean betrayal, but it sure made powerful motivation. If Harper wanted revenge badly enough, would his grief make him give up Abbie for information? Gray didn’t know him well enough to say. Another reason to cut and run without leaving a trace. The time on this phone and this hiatus had all but expired. “I’ll call you.”
After he’d put down the phone, Abbie, wringing her hands, asked, “Bryn’s okay?”
“She’ll be fine.” He hated seeing worry spin in Ab bie’s eyes. He much preferred the hot fire that had set them ablaze earlier. What he wouldn’t give to remove the obligations between them and have her melt into his arms again. He scrubbed a hand over his face. Stay out of the gutter, hotshot. “They’ll keep her overnight for observation. Then Kingsley’s going to take care of her.” She would be under the protection of a brother Seeker. Her world and his would collide. Would she understand then why he’d had to leave?
“What was that about a latte?”
“Bryn told Kingsley she wants you to go out and have a latte.”
Color raced up Abbie’s face. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and her hands crimped the thin comforter. “Are you sure?”
He started to reach for her, then shoved his hands in his pockets. “It’s the drugs. She’s talking about ghosts and shadows.”
Steeltex. Vanderveer’s flunky had gone back to the house all decked out in her Steeltex suit.
“No, not the drugs. It’s help.” Abbie thrust her feet into her shoes, grabbed her bag and raced toward the door. “Let’s go.”
“Wait a minute!” He lunged after her, barely catching her vest as she flung open the door. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Out for a latte.”
“We can’t—”
Abbie cut him an impatient look. “Bryn managed to send a copy of the information she’d found before she was attacked. We have to go retrieve it.”
“You can’t access your e-mail account.”
She shook her head as if he were a dull child she needed to indulge. “Bryn showed me how to set up a third-party anonymous remailer account. That’s how we talked to each other when I was in WITSEC. Lattes. Cybercafes.” Her smile beamed as if for the first time since he’d found her she had real hope. “No one can trace it.”
IN CAMBRIDGE, AT THE MUFFIN Top Bakery and Cyber-Cafe with its red-and-white awnings and white metal ice cream tables, Gray plunked down five dollars for an hour’s worth of computer time. He insisted on adding a couple of carrot muffin tops and coffees to their order so they would fit in with the patronage. As soon as he’d picked a table, Abbie latched on to the computer bolted to the table and navigated the Web to her anonymous accounts.
“There it is,” she said triumphantly. She’d had to check three separate locations. Bryn had suggested that multiple addresses would give her more freedom to connect. This anonymous way to talk to her friend had proved her salvation. Abbie didn’t know how she would have survived the year of isolation without this fleeting contact with Bryn. “There’s a file attached.”
&nbs
p; She clicked open the file and scrolled down, trying to make sense of all the information Bryn had collected. Gray flopped an arm around the back of her chair as if they had all the time in the world, which served only to make Abbie nervous. The more relaxed he looked, the more tension strung his body.
“What’s wrong?”
He shrugged. “A bad feeling.”
“Let me download the file so we can look at it later.” She pulled on a chain hanging around her neck. A flash drive dangled from the chain. She tugged on the flat, finger-size disk and connected it to a port.
“Where did you get that?”
“Bryn. She showed me how to transfer my digital photos onto it.” Bryn was also the one who’d encouraged her to try digital photography. If she hadn’t, then Abbie wouldn’t have caught Rafe’s murderous deed in action. And the police would never have believed that her father hadn’t killed himself. Rafe had planned his clean up too well.
“The pictures you took of your father are on there?” Gray pointed at the stick she’d furiously guarded through the past year of mayhem.
This was what Rafe wanted to murder her for.
She gulped and nodded.
“Is there a copy?”
“The police have one and so does Bryn.”
Gray’s face took on a pensive look. Behind his mirrored lenses, his eyes were once more unreadable. “Her office was tossed. It’s probably gone. And if Rafe has the locals in his pocket, it wouldn’t surprise me if that particular bit of evidence vanished.” He tapped a finger against the table. “Make sure the files don’t mix.”
She dragged the file to the flash-drive icon and checked that the green light was on, signifying active transfer. Bryn had explained to her that in court the original photo file could prove crucial. “I’m not completely helpless.”
“Never said you were.” Gray squeezed a warning on her thigh, and a moment later a woman wearing light gray yoga pants and a purple T-shirt that said Breathe stopped at their table.
“Excuse me.” The woman’s mass of red curls was caught in a stubby ponytail high on her skull. A black tote bag dangled from her shoulder. “Abrielle? Abrielle Holbrook? Sue. Sue Collins. You took my daughter’s picture two years ago. Hillary? I get so many compliments on it.”
Of course she remembered Hillary, with her big, blueberry eyes and strawberry curls. A soap bubble had so captured the two-year-old’s attention that Abbie had frozen a moment of pure joy on film. “You must be mistaken.”
Gray grinned and the woman saw nothing else. That easy charm worked every time. “My wife and I are on vacation. We’re e-mailing a cyber postcard home to California. Aren’t these cybercafes great?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. Really, your wife looks just like this photographer who took the most awesome picture of my little girl. They could be twins.”
“No problem.”
The woman backed away, blinking as if to focus blurry vision. She continued to the counter, where she purchased a dozen muffin tops. Twice she looked over her shoulders at them. Gray draped an arm around Abbie as if this kind of intimacy was his right. Not that she minded. In the air-conditioning his heat was welcome, grounding.
“What now?” Abbie asked as she returned the flash drive to its chain around her neck and slipped it beneath the silk of her blouse.
He polished off the last of the muffin top and drained his coffee. “We need to go shopping and find ourselves a new home.”
“Shopping?” She hated shopping on a good day. This was definitely not a good day. She stood and hooked the strap of her bag over her shoulder.
He plucked at the collar of her robin’s-egg short-sleeved blouse. “You stand out too much. We need to dress you down.”
“Me?” She eyed him up and down, taking in his dress shoes, khakis and silver polo shirt. He was right. It wouldn’t do for another Sue Collins to recognize her. Not when they needed to lie low for five and a half more days. “What about you?”
“Two blue-light specials coming up.” He smiled down at her, igniting warmth that spread from her center out like a lazy summer day. Sliding an arm around her waist, he guided her toward the street where they’d left the rental parked. And for a second it seemed as if all was right with the world.
Until his hand tightened against her waist and he kept walking right by the car.
“WHAT’S WRONG?” ABBIE WHISPERED into his ear.
Smiling as if she’d just told him a joke, Gray leaned close. “Two tails.”
Her head started to jerk back over her shoulder. He stopped it with what would look like a caress of his cheek against hers. “Don’t look back.”
“Two? Are you sure?”
Mercer was easy to lose in the shadows, but he wasn’t wearing Steeltex, and Gray had worked with him often enough to recognize his style. Gray figured the reason Mercer hadn’t pounced on them yet was the tall, thin woman who was working hard at looking like a simple shopper but couldn’t quite hide the predatory tension of her body. Nice to put a face on the ghost licking at their heels. How had she found them? How had Mercer? Had he caught up with Vanderveer’s pawn and followed her? Gray had tossed Bryn’s phone and hadn’t followed a predictable path. What was he missing? How could anyone have latched on to them so quickly? Hell, he didn’t even know where he was going. How could someone else? “One tail at nine o’clock across the street. He’s one of ours. The other one’s behind us. She has to be Vanderveer’s.”
“She?”
“Looks like it.”
“That’s why you were asking if he’d hired a woman. You knew the person following us was a woman.”
“Not for sure.” Until now. “Brown hair in a braid. Tight safari suit. Backpack.”
Like a champ, Abbie followed his lead with the carefree-lovers playacting, pasting on a smile that warbled on the edges but still shot right to his gut. He’d rehearsed for this role a million times in his mind, but never had he imagined it would come true under these circumstances. “So, what do we do?”
“We pretend we don’t know they’re there. I want to give Mercer a chance to study Vanderveer’s gofer and take her down. It’ll give us one less thing to worry about.” Gray didn’t need to worry Abbie by mentioning that once the tail was stopped Mercer would resume his hunt for them. By then Gray hoped to have holed up somewhere safe. No action meant no triggers for Mercer to follow.
“Then what?”
He stopped and whirled her into his arms and looked deep into her worried honey eyes. God, he wanted her. He wanted her safe. He wanted her his. It’s all pretend. It’s all a game of survival. The kiss he was about to plant on her was business. Part of the show they had to put on. No, the softness of her lips wasn’t frying his brain. That was lack of sleep. Her hands around his neck weren’t blistering his skin. That was the two-o’clock sun beating down on him. The sweet molding of her body to his wasn’t turning him rock hard. That was his usual state around her anyway.
Liar.
He broke the kiss and held her for a long moment—as if danger wasn’t licking their heels, as if she hadn’t run from him all those years ago and belonged in his arms. An ache pinched his heart. He kept her close and started strolling down the street as if he had no particular care in the world. “Then we disappear. Again.”
“That part doesn’t seem to be working out too well.”
He pressed a kiss on the top of her head. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ll keep you safe until the trial.”
He led her into a shop that sold retro merchandise. They stopped by lava lamps with amber bubbles that matched the color of Abbie’s eyes. Sun struck her hair, highlighting the gold, and her sweet smile made him long for all the missed years. If he’d done things differently, he could have woken up to that glorious sunshine of a woman every morning.
But this was a job, and if he let Abbie distract him too much, he’d fail. Gray clocked the movements of both their stalkers. The woman picked up an ashtray and put it down without really look
ing at it. Mercer hovered outside in the shadows.
Gray led Abbie in and out of shops as if they were tourists with an afternoon to wile away. Her hand fit into his as if it were made for him. She seemed to intuit his every move, following as smoothly as if they were dancing down the sidewalk. Vanderveer’s tail and Mercer trooped right behind.
Roses and candlelight. That’s what he’d give her if he could, instead of this footrace with danger.
Gray pictured a map of the subway in his mind and planned a route. He ambled in one door of a magazine kiosk and sauntered right out the door on the opposite side. “Time to find out how well your fancy shoes hold up.”
“Where to?” She swallowed hard.
“Won’t know till we get there.” He tucked her in closer to his side. Vanderveer was going to pay for every second of hell he’d put Abbie through.
ABBIE GRIPPED GRAY’S HAND like a vise, afraid to let go of the one thing that was keeping her from complete terror. They raced into the T station and down the steps. Tails. Two of them hot on their heels. How could anyone have found them?
Gray shoved tokens into the turnstile and hurried them into the rush-hour crowd gathered on the platform. A slap of heat and exhaust engulfed them. Even the blowing fans couldn’t fight with the underground humidity or quite dispel the polluting fumes.
How clever of Rafe to send a woman after her. Abbie would have never guessed. Probably would have trusted her. This woman wouldn’t dare shoot in the thickness of this crowd. Would she? She’d already killed four people. What was a few dozen more? But here in this crowded subway station she’d have no chance for a clean getaway. To kill and steal the flash drive, Rafe’s assassin would have to get up close and personal. As long as they kept distance between Rafe’s tail and them, they’d stay safe.
A rumbling along the dark tunnel announced the arrival of a train. After it braked to a stop, Gray waited until the last possible moment and feigned a leap inside. Rafe’s tail took the bait but managed to jump out before the doors closed. Gray propelled Abbie to the stairs that would take them to the other side of the platform and they caught an inbound train.