by Incy Black
His hands cupped the curves of her shoulders. “I’m asking, and listening, now.”
“I think you might have left it too bloody late. Patient Peter’s invincible, and he knows it. You and—”
The kiss he brushed across her lips was as unexpected as it was shockingly inappropriate for its timing. But not as shocking as his second pass, his mouth now more certain. Firm and more insistent. Transforming from casual to demanding as if her surrender was not just inevitable but worth the risk and what the hell.
And nowhere near as shocking and inexplicable as her response. Feral and urgent. Like a wild animal caged for too long and suddenly released.
It was she who closed the distance. She who raised her arms to clasp him closer. She who hung on tight. She who opened to allow him a deeper taste. And she who all but climbed his body in need.
He was the one who pulled back. Unwinding her legs from around his waist, he set her firmly aside.
“I kissed you to shut you up about Patient Peter, Lowry, not to start anything,” he said softly. “Think twice before you beckon me down that road, because I won’t apologize later for taking what’s freely offered.” A calm warning. A slap in the face.
She returned the favor.
Her palm made contact with the flat of his cheek with enough force to knock his face from front to profile.
A spurt of bullets riddled an uneven line in the plaster above her head.
Reflexes kicking in, she ducked as more panes of glass shattered.
A heavy weight barreled into her, carrying her to the ground. The spitting retorts continued, plaster splintered, dust clouded the air. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t hear over the cacophonous rush of blood through her head. The nightmare memory of a firefight four years ago clawed at her brain. Someone was screaming; couldn’t be her.
A hand clamped across her mouth. Next thing she was rolling, not of her own accord, and someone was fixed against her, toe to toe, hip to hip, chest to chest. Her back and shoulders screeched in protest with each dizzying turn. The weight, too heavy upon her, shifted. “Move Lowry. The corridor now!”
She scrambled and crawled, lost coordination, and slumped on her stomach. Bullets rained so close, they heated the surface of her skin. She curled her arms tight around her head, accepting escape as futile.
A hand fixed round her wrist, dragged her through the swing doors, and hauled her to her feet before forcing her into a sprint.
With a waist-high kick, Jack smashed down the release bar on the emergency exit and yanked her onto an external flight of metal stairs. Gun in hand, he ushered her at speed, his body adjusting to shield her with each twist of the fire escape that clanked and groaned its censure beneath their clattering weight.
Her feet hit the ground. He pulled her clear, spun her so her spine was flush against brick. He gestured for her to stay close as they edged along the wall of the building. His arm, a steel rod across her midriff, held her back as he ducked his head swiftly around the corner. It must have been clear because he urged her on.
He stopped abruptly, she collided with his back. “Stay down and wait here.”
“But—”
“Do you really want to argue with me at this precise moment, Lowry?”
Not with that soulless look in his eye. Not with his face so granite stern, life appeared to have abandoned him. She shook her head and hunkered down, her eyes fixed between his shoulder blades as he disappeared from view.
Her lungs locked on expel, she gulped furiously, desperate for them to fill. How many men were there? Where were they? To hell with Jack’s orders, she was going after him. He was the one with the bloody gun.
Before she could rise from her crouch, Jack was back. His face grim, those laser blue eyes of his glittering with single-minded intent. Instant calm washed through her. Violence was Jack’s arena; he’d keep her safe.
“Will’s down. Alive, but hurting. I’ve got to get you out of here. Head for that outcrop of brush over there. I’ll cover you.”
“Not without Will. You can’t just abandon him.”
“Damn it, I’m not abandoning him. I’ve called in our position, requested reinforcements. They’ll take care of him. He was just an inconvenient obstacle in the way, not the target. You are. Now, get moving.”
She moved.
She’d sprinted a bare seventy yards when she chanced a glance to the side. She spotted Will, bent double, struggling to get to his feet. He straightened, then stumbled. He was in trouble.
She changed direction. She’d almost reached him when the dirt kicked up in spurts at her heels. The shooter had her in his sights. Air locked in and scorching her lungs, she flung herself at Will, carrying him down. She screwed her eyes tight shut in petrified anticipation of the familiar sting of hot metal ripping into her flesh.
She cracked her eyelids, saw Will’s gun on the ground. Some long-buried instinct from the past kicked in. She reached for it, twisted onto her back, and started firing blindly. Shot after shot after shot, until the trigger pulled freely without resistance and the chamber echoed hollowly. She rolled onto her front and collapsed over Will. She’d done what she could.
A hand clasped the waistband of her jeans and tossed her on her back. Winded, she stared at the pink evening sky hanging high above her, the edge of her consciousness registering the distant thump, thump, thump of helicopter blades and the eerie wail of sirens.
She glimpsed the inert body of a man hung halfway out the second floor window, head limp, his arms reaching downwards as if in a last desperate need to embrace soil.
Oh God, had she done that? Killed a man? Her mind darkened, threatened to close down.
Strong firm hands sped over her limbs, her ribs, her chest. Protest bounced against the walls of her mind, she tried to raise her arms to stop the trespass, but her brain and body refused to function in concert.
Someone flipped her onto her stomach, subjected her back to the same rough treatment. “Will?” Not her voice, it didn’t sound right.
“No, it’s me, Jack.”
The mist smothering her mind began to lift. She tried again. “No, I mean, Will. Is he okay?”
Jack nodded and muttered colorful obscenities as he eased her into a sitting position. On his haunches, he scanned their surroundings before he lowered his weapon, tucking it into place against his lower spine.
Shuffling over to Will he placed two fingers against the man’s throat checking for a pulse. Will’s eyelids lifted, he attempted a weak smile. “How bad is it looking?”
“Flesh wound. Must hurt like a sonofabitch, but you’ll live. Can’t say the same about the bastard who put that piece of lead in you, though.”
Will nodded and closed his eyes. “Think I’ll just catch a bit of shut-eye. I need to rest if I’m going to have to keep pulling your ugly backside out of the fire.”
Jack patted Will’s shoulder and crab-walked back to her.
He expelled a deep breath, then let his ass hit the ground. Dropping his head to his knees while he sucked in oxygen. He looked up, and shook his head at her. “Christ, I thought you’d been shot. What is it with you and orders?”
He looked shaken. Gray veiled his normally disgustingly healthy skin tone, a fine white line tinged the outer edges of his lips. She wanted to reach out and smooth the specter of fear and disbelief from his face. But she knew he’d never forgive her for acknowledging what he felt.
Instead, a part of her crumbling, she confided a horror of her own. “Jack, I think I killed a man.”
Chapter Nine
Jack, his brow knitted, followed the direction of her stare. “Lowry, the way you were firing…” He shuffled closer and dragged her into a fierce embrace, an embrace that he knew from anyone else, would have been too rough, too aggressive, but from him, a man who’d decided years ago he just didn’t care, was entirely natural. He’d never finesse this woman. She’d see through the bullshit immediately.
Holding her. Too tigh
t because his arms wouldn’t relax enough to release her, he shut his eyes and hung on. “You didn’t kill him. I did. You just distracted him.” He adjusted his hold on her, dropped his cheek to rest momentarily on the crown of her head, and expelled another deep breath. His mind bucked at how close he’d come to losing her, how close he’d come to getting her killed.
Reckless. Stupid. Arrogant.
Fuck, you’d have thought he’d learned his lesson by now. First, his brother. Now, damn nearly her. He’d screwed up again.
Feeling ill, he abruptly thrust her away. “Next time I give you a goddamn order, you bloody well follow it. You ever do anything that monumentally stupid again, I’ll shoot you myself.” He surged to his feet, dragged a hand through his hair. Eyes huge, a stunned look on her face, she just stared at him. He loathed what she must see. Him shaken. Vulnerable. His emotions hanging right out there, out of his control and switching fast enough to give whiplash. He shook his head, slapped her with a glare, and strode away.
His chest hurt, a mild understatement given it felt more like a steamroller was using it as a parking bay. What the hell was that all about? When he took a woman in his arms, he did so because getting up close was necessary, in as much as it was damn near impossible to gratify his body’s cravings without doing so. He did not hug; he did not cuddle; he sure as fuck had never clung to a woman as if his life depended on it. Jesus, he dare not trust himself around her. She had a way of making him feel things, things a man like him could not afford to contemplate, let alone indulge.
Like terror. Pure and unadulterated. And guilt. Heavy as a rock. Discounting when he’d damned near killed her, he’d only felt like this once before. When his brother, egged on by him, had made the climb. They’d both been too drunk to anticipate something going wrong. Yet it had. Horrendously.
He cupped the back of his neck and squeezed. He ought to get back to Lowry. Double-check she was all right before he handed her over into someone else’s charge. Someone who knew how to play by the rules and who would keep her safe. She was right—he could be as reckless as he liked with his own life and career, but he had no right to demand that others endanger theirs. It was his fault Will was injured. He should have had his entire team guarding her. Two of them hadn’t been enough. Foolhardy. Arrogant.
Just like that kiss he’d let get out of hand.
A spontaneous act of incredible stupidity that had all but blown his mind. It had also been all the warning he’d needed that his judgment was fucked. For that alone he’d deserved the almighty slap she’d landed. Some people just weren’t meant to co-exist within a hundred miles of one another. Him and Lowry, for a start.
He stood aside as a black saloon screeched to a halt beside him. Marshall catapulted from the car. “Will?” Anxiety pinched the man’s face, and so did censure. Yup, he’d fucked up big time.
“Over there. Lowry’s with him.” He didn’t need to check over his shoulder. He knew she’d have crawled over to take care of his friend. That she’d be soothing and stroking, cooing words of reassurance while she beat back her own fear. That was Lowry.
“Ambulance is right behind me. She okay?”
He extended a flat hand, dipped it side to side to indicate he wasn’t convinced. “She’s unhurt though. You any closer to solving Wainwright’s murder, or do I need to hand the investigation over to the civilians?”
His comment was a low blow, one Nick Marshall didn’t deserve. He stamped down the impulse to apologize. Now wasn’t the time. It was something he’d add to the list of apologies he owed, a list that was fast running out of control.
Lowry’s fault?
Without question! Damn, but she ate at the very last crumb of his sanity. Twisted him in knots, skewered his judgment, frustrated him to the point of savage nastiness. Sonofabitch, he wasn’t supposed to feel. He’d deadened himself against ever feeling again.
“For God’s sake, Jack, give me a break. Someone just tried to kill my only suspect who, in case you’d forgotten, refuses to cooperate.”
Jack scoured a hand through his hair and expelled a resigned sigh. Christ, he was tired. Worn out, sucked dry to the point he could taste his own ashes. “With the wild accusations she’s likely to toss about, don’t expect your job to get any easier.”
“So she’s talked?”
Jack shifted his weight to his other leg and fixed his eyes on the empty distance beyond Marshall’s shoulder. He wasn’t about to throw Peter Forsythe to the wolves just because he had unfortunate eyes. Not on Lowry’s say-so alone. Marshall, and the rest of his team, would piss themselves laughing at his gullibility. “Not coherently. But had it not been for the shooter”—and that damned kiss—“I might have been able to calm her down enough for her to do so.”
“Do I even want to know what you did to wind her up in the first place?”
Jack, his face implacable, stared the investigator’s obvious disgust down.
“Okay, so what did she say?” Marshall demanded.
“Nothing I can hold her to, not yet, I pushed her too hard.”
“I just bet you did. You might want to give her a break, too. If she didn’t kill Wainwright then someone else did, and now they’re after her. The Service abandoned her once. I won’t be part of doing so again. Try and imagine how utterly alone and terrified she must feel without anyone to trust.” With that, Marshall stepped forward, deliberately jarring him with his shoulder, as he pushed past.
Jack held his ground. Tipping back his head, he stared at the darkening sky and acknowledged he was behaving like an ass. What the hell was it about that damned woman that brought out the worst in him? Scared him? And what the bloody hell had Marshall meant “without anyone to trust?” She could trust him. Why the hell did she think he’d contravened orders to protect her? On the other hand, wasn’t that the very mistake his parents had made? Trusting him?
He stepped to the side of the rough track to allow the approaching ambulance through and waved it toward the anxious cluster hovering around Will.
Marshall had his arm around Lowry.
Jack’s impatience busted through the top of his internal thermometer.
And what in the hell was it with that woman and his hardened men? First Will, now Marshall. Did he have to erect a fence around her and pin notices on it not to touch? Damn it, it was his job to keep her safe. Hell, the fear of losing her had seen him empty an entire clip of bullets into the bastard firing at her. More crass stupidity. He’d needed the man alive, if only to make him talk.
His mouth arid with self-disgust, he forced himself to get a grip. The night ahead promised to be long and punishing. The thought of delivering his report of events to a board of indignant suits—whose feathers were already ruffled because he’d breached protocol—held little appeal. Not that he cared a rat’s ass about their ire, but he did care about the fact that Lowry’s protective custody had been compromised. How to explain that? He could hardly point wildly to leaks within the department or to Peter Forsythe. Not without evidence. They’d lock him up and throw away the key.
Much as he’d allowed them to do with her. Much as they would do to her again, given half a chance. How the hell was he supposed to prevent that?
Ten minutes later, he hoped he wasn’t making the biggest mistake of his career, his life even. For her sake, not his.
He’d managed to subtly maneuver her to the fringe of the group anxiously watching as Will received emergency treatment. If there was one bonus to belonging to the Service, it was the guarantee that if you were injured, they’d call in the best.
Not that they had done that for Lowry. He’d hadn’t let them, assuming instead full financial responsibility to ensure she received the best private care available. He made no complaint about the cost; hell, he’d been able to afford it. He’d met the bills of her treatment without a second thought. What nagged at him is why he’d felt compelled to do so.
Under the distraction of Will being loaded into the belly of the ambulance, he pulle
d Lowry aside, using his body to shield her from everyone’s view.
“Take this.” He yanked her dirt-smudged shirt free from the waistband of her jeans, reached behind her, and tucked his gun against her spine. He ignored the absolute stillness with which she held herself while he did so. At least she hadn’t flinched or lost her mind. He also ignored how warm and soft her skin felt as his knuckles brushed, how his breathing had slipped from easy to almost labored.
He stuck a fat roll of high-denomination banknotes into her hand and squeezed it in warning. He needed her to swallow the protest forming on her lips. “Go. Get out of here. Now.” He thrust a mobile into the pocket of her jeans. “Disappear, head for…oh, I don’t know, head for Wales. Bangor. In a university town, you can lose yourself among the students. Contact no one. I’ll call in a couple of days.”
He put his hand on her shoulder, turned her so her spine lay flush with his chest, and bowed his head to whisper in her ear. “I’m the only hope you’ve got. I know it’s a lot to ask, but just this once, trust me.”
He gave her a shove and glared at her when she threw a worried and bewildered look over her shoulder.
God, he hoped she’d be okay. He hated the idea of her being out there on her own. Damn near defenseless, with Christ knows who coming after her with the force of an armored tank in full throttle.
…
Patient Peter rose fluidly from his winged chair beside the open fire and made a show of straightening his bronze- and black-striped tie in the gilt mirror that hung above the fireplace. His fingers lingered and fussed with the silk knot until he was satisfied it lay dead center, plump and perfect.
He didn’t invite Walter to take a seat. He wanted his brother edgy and uncertain. He turned around, retrieved his brandy from the top of the grand piano he couldn’t play, and paced across to his favorite view. His kingdom twinkled in the dark at his feet. Still vulnerable. Especially with the girl back on the run.