by Anne Stuart
“It’s dangerous out there. If you want to go for a walk, I’ll go with you, but I think that would defeat the purpose, don’t you? If you just want to get away from me, then go back upstairs.”
“Why should I want to get away from you?”
He smiled at her. She didn’t seem reassured. “You tell me.”
“I should never have come here,” she said bitterly.
“Probably not,” he agreed. “But it’s a little too late to change things.”
“I could leave.”
“Not until I say you can go.”
She stared at him in shock. “You can’t keep me here.”
“I can do anything I goddamn please. And if you really want to put a halt to this, to go back to Martin, you can do so with my enthusiastic cooperation. As soon as I’m convinced it’s safe.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“If someone killed your father, they wouldn’t be very happy about the two of us being together. You started the paranoid delusions, Annie. You’re going to have to humor me for the next few days until I decide just how crazy they are.”
He could see the anger and frustration in her pale face, and he wondered just how far he could push her. Now wasn’t the time to try it.
She moved away from the door, running a hand through her shapeless mop of hair. She was biting her nails, he noticed. That was a far cry from her usually perfect manicure. “Maybe I’ll take a nap,” she said with studied nonchalance. “You can sit here and drink coffee and brood.”
“Fine,” he said absently.
But he didn’t brood. And he didn’t drink his coffee straight. He poured tequila into it, just a bit at first, because he discovered his hands were shaking. He could hear her moving around upstairs, and he poured himself some more, hoping to force his brain to concentrate on what he had to do.
He could send Annie Sutherland back to Martin. Except that Martin had to have had a reason to send her there in the first place.
He could kill her. That might have been what Martin had in mind, but he didn’t think so. Even in their unsentimental branch of the business, people didn’t take killing their ex-wives in stride. And while he usually viewed killing with calm detachment, he wasn’t sure he could be as machine-like with Win Sutherland’s daughter.
Or he could do as she wanted. Find out why Win was killed. Find out who and what had gone wrong.
He knew the official reason Win had died. He’d gone rogue, playing games, setting up his own little army of black hats that kept the Cold War hopping, even in its waning days. He’d been responsible for the deaths of dozens of unsanctioned people, not to mention their own operatives. He’d done it out of malice, and he’d done it for money. He deserved to die, no question about it.
There were strict rules about their tiny, nameless subbranch dedicated to what they liked to call wet work. None of the operatives knew how many were involved, nor did they usually even know one another. For all James knew there could have been a small army of people trained to kill, as he was. Or there could have been a mere handful.
He’d met a few of his associates over the years. Most of them were dead now. But he was left alive. For now. It made a cruel kind of sense. Of all of them, he was the one who most deserved to die. Who most wanted to die.
And fate had dealt him a crushing blow. Instead of expiating his sins, he’d compounded them. After the first few jobs he hadn’t asked questions, and Win hadn’t offered information. There’d been assassins, pedophiles, dictators, and torturers, all of them falling beneath his talented hands. He’d gone on assuming they’d all deserved their fate.
But Win had lied to him. And he hadn’t been alone in his little enterprise. The anonymous, powerful beings who ordered the execution might have thought killing Win had solved the problem, but James knew that it hadn’t. There were others who’d taken up the slack. Others, who’d set Win up to be discovered.
He wanted those others. He couldn’t remember wanting to kill before, but he wanted to kill them. If Win had to die, those others did too. And if he did what Annie wanted, went after the truth, he meant to make sure they did.
“General?” The secretary with the tight ass and the unlikely tits approached him. He’d hired her for that tight ass. Not that he ever expected to partake of it, or even wanted to. But it kept the men around him mesmerized, distracted, and he was a man who took every advantage he could. “Mr. Carew wants a meeting.”
The General gave her his avuncular smile, one that fooled almost everyone. “You know my schedule better than I do, honey. Set something up. Tomorrow, maybe.”
“He said it was urgent, sir.”
“Everything’s urgent to that little weasel,” he said amiably. “I’m not in the mood to listen to his rantings. That’s the problem with this government nowadays, sugar. Too many civilians trying to run the army.”
He never called her by her name. He knew it, just as he knew everything about her, including her teenage shoplifting, her experimentation with cocaine, her sexual leanings, and the way she took her coffee. He knew far more about her than she would ever know about him, and it provided him with an endless source of amusement.
“Yes, sir,” she said, hiding the grimace that always greeted one of his endearments. She thought he didn’t notice. She didn’t realize that if she failed to react, he’d stop calling her things like sweetheart.
“Tell him tomorrow afternoon,” the General said, heading down the corridor. By tomorrow afternoon his own particular ass would be covered, McKinley and Sutherland’s daughter would be dog meat, and Carew could fuss all he wanted. The General paused at the end of the hallway and glanced back at his long-suffering secretary. “Find out what he wants in the meantime, will you, sugar?”
Her eyes narrowed in faint dislike. “He said it had something to do with Winston Sutherland.”
The General indulged himself with a faint chuckle. “I imagine it does. Tomorrow. Late.”
Carew would shit a brick when he found out McKinley had been taken out. He wouldn’t much like it that Sutherland’s daughter had bought it as well, but with any luck the team would see to it that that particular piece of business was covered up. As long as the press didn’t catch wind of it. They didn’t give a fuck how many soldiers died, but let it be a female and they’d all bust a gut.
As far as the General was concerned, women and children were far more expendable than a good fighting man. But the world was full of sentimentalists.
This time tomorrow Carew would be having a temper tantrum, and the General would have everything under control. Everything he’d worked for. Everything Winston Sutherland had played with and jeopardized like a spoiled child.
But the General had taken care of Sutherland. And he’d take care of anyone or anything else that got in his way.
Including anyone who might know anything about the night Sutherland died.
* * *
There was only one bathroom in the tiny cottage, and that was downstairs. It was already getting dark, and Annie had put off descending that narrow flight of stairs for as long as she possibly could. She wasn’t ready to face James again. Not until she got a firmer grip on her temper, on her misgivings.
But her body wasn’t giving her any choice. There wasn’t a sound coming from the ground floor of the cottage, and the murky twilight barely pierced the gloom of the now tidy rooms. When she came out of the bathroom, she looked around her, carefully, for signs of her reluctant host.
He was nowhere to be seen. There was no door to his bedroom, and for some reason she felt an urgent need to look inside. It looked like a monk’s cell. Narrow bed, made with army-like precision. Some drill sergeant could bounce a quarter off it, Annie thought absently.
There was nothing else there. No books, no pictures, no personal possessions. Nothing to fill the days and weeks he’d been there. The place was empty, soulless.
The dishes were washed. She found a can of chili and heated it on the gas burner, aided by
a few soggy crackers. She was sitting at the scrubbed table, eating her way through the unappetizing meal with dogged perseverance, when she heard a sound out on the porch.
Her panic was immediate. He’d told her it wasn’t safe, and all sorts of horrific thoughts came to mind. Someone had followed her, some crazed assassin, and James was out there, lying in a pool of blood, an innocent victim destroyed by her feckless determination. The man who had killed her father was out there, she felt it with an intense paranoia that bordered on certainty. She could stay in the kitchen, hiding, until he came after her.
Or she could go face him herself.
She pushed away from the table silently. She heard the noise again, a faint scrape, a breath, perhaps even the telltale beating of a heart, just beyond the sagging screen door. She moved slowly, carefully, closer, focusing on the silhouetted figure. Tall, powerful-looking in the shadows, he was standing in the corner of the porch, looking out into the surrounding jungle, and she thought she might be able to make it past him, running, into the jungle.
And she knew she wasn’t going to do it.
She needed to look her father’s killer in the eye, even if it cost her her life. She needed to see what her father last saw, and the risk didn’t matter. She moved toward the dark figure, completely silent, reaching out her hand—
A moment later she was slammed against the wall, so hard that her vision blurred, her breath left her body, and all she could feel was agonizing pain washing over her. She clawed at the creature that imprisoned her, at the arm that had shot out, the hand that manacled her neck, and she knew she was losing consciousness. She wouldn’t see him. She would die before she knew who’d killed her father, and that defeat was more than she could stand. She summoned up one last surge of energy, kicking at him, and suddenly she was free.
The shock of it was almost worse than the attack. She collapsed on the rough porch flooring, holding her throat, gasping for breath, and her entire body prickled with sharp nettles of reaction.
When she looked up at the monster towering over her, when her eyes could finally focus, she saw James staring down at her with a total lack of compassion. “Don’t ever sneak up on me,” he said. He held out a hand to help her up. The hand that had clamped around her neck, cutting off oxygen, that had almost killed her.
“I thought you were the man who killed my father.”
She expected to startle him. He showed no reaction whatsoever. “In which case, your search would be over before it even began.”
She ignored his outstretched hand, using the wall of the house to steady herself as she struggled to her feet. “You almost killed me,” she said.
“No. I don’t deal in almosts.”
He was drunk. Not stinking, falling down, blindingly drunk. Just as drunk as he was the night before, with that raw edge of fury released by the liquor, simmering just beneath the otherwise emotionless surface.
He must have read her mind. His mouth curved in a mocking smile. “Want a drink, Annie?”
“I told you—”
“I know what you told me. I know it’s a pile of crap. Why wouldn’t you drink?”
“I stopped when Win died. The thought of him drinking too much, falling down those stairs …” She let it trail off with a shudder.
“Well, then,” he said, “it seems you can repeal your vow with a clean conscience. Win didn’t die from a drunken accident, he was murdered. Have a drink.” He held out an almost empty bottle of tequila.
“You’re drunk,” she said in disgust.
“Just enough,” he agreed.
“I’m getting out of here. You’re of no earthly use to me or anyone else. It’s no wonder they just let you go.” She started away from him, toward the steps.
How could she have forgotten, in a matter of moments, just how strong and fast he could be? He caught her, whipping her back, and she stumbled against him. Given the amount he’d had to drink, she would have thought she’d unbalance him, but he stood firm and solid as a rock. “I told you, it’s not safe,” he said in a harsh voice.
“And I’m safer with you? In your condition?”
“What do you think I’m going to do, Annie? Rape you?” It was a taunt. It should have seemed absurd. But it didn’t.
She ignored the suggestion. “You certainly aren’t in any shape to protect me from these nebulous dangers you keep trying to convince me exist.”
“Annie, no one’s going to take you from me if I’m not willing to let you go.”
Again that strange undercurrent in his husky, faintly Texas voice. For some reason she thought of Martin, not some faceless villain taking her away. But James hadn’t been talking about sex, had he? He’d been talking about life and death.
“I’ve decided to go back home,” she said. “I’ll talk to Martin and maybe he can do a few discreet inquiries. Just to set my mind at ease.”
“Fine,” he said. “But you’re not going tonight.”
She was leaning against his body, she realized suddenly. She could feel the smooth, muscled warmth of him beneath the now rumpled khaki. The heat, the steady beat of his heart. It was the steadiness of his heartbeat that convinced her. If it had been racing, she would have run, and the hell with the consequences. But he was obviously completely calm and in control despite the tequila he’d drunk.
And then he stepped back, away from her, and she felt light-headed. He stood between her and escape, a deliberate move on his part, and tipped the contents of the bottle down his throat. And then he looked at her.
“Go back to bed, Annie,” he said. “We’ll figure out what to do tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow I’m going back to Washington.”
“Fine,” he said again. “In the meantime, why don’t you go disappear?”
“Why?” Now that he was letting her leave, she stubbornly wanted to stay put.
“Because, as you’ve already pointed out, I’m drunk. And I’ve been here for three months, alone. And while you’re not my type, at this point I’m willing to overlook that fact. So either go upstairs and keep away from me, or take off your pants.”
She didn’t hit him. She wasn’t exactly sure why. Maybe because she knew he’d hit her back. Or because touching him, even in anger, might ignite something that was even more terrifying than the specter of death.
Or maybe because she suspected he was deliberately trying to intimidate her.
It didn’t matter. She backed away from him slowly, and he let her go. “Are you ever going to tell me the truth?” she asked him, pausing by the door.
“About what?”
“Anything at all.”
It was odd, the strange sense of yearning that sparked between them. A moment later it was gone, and he lounged against the railing, watching her coolly. “I doubt it, Annie. I doubt it.”
Chapter Four
Annie came downstairs the next morning, wary, obviously expecting him to jump her. He’d managed to pull James McKinley back around him once more, and if he had more of a hangover than he wanted to admit, he figured it was his just punishment. She stared at him for a moment, uncertain.
She wasn’t dressed in her traveling clothes, he noticed with a mix of admiration and despair. She didn’t look the slightest bit terrorized. Just very careful.
“I thought I’d managed to convince you to run away,” he greeted her.
“Why would you want to do that?”
“You’re better off getting on with your life. It can be a dangerous thing, rattling cages.”
“I don’t think I have any choice,” she said. “I can’t let it go.”
He sighed. He was going to have to cut his hair. He’d already shaved twice in the past two days, and the old reflexes were coming back. He was going to have to make up his mind. He’d come up with two possible solutions during the long, sleepless night. He just wasn’t sure which one he was going to implement.
“I figured you wouldn’t,” he said pleasantly. “Which doesn’t leave me with much choice, does it?�
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“Does it?”
There were three of them out there. She hadn’t the faintest idea, but James had counted them with uncanny accuracy. They’d gotten here faster than he would have expected. It was nice to know that the cessation of the Cold War hadn’t blunted their abilities.
It had been a simple enough matter to get rid of the first one who’d come after him. He was young, new to the business, and he’d come alone. He had been no match for a man of James’s skills. There were no witnesses, and the ocean was nearby.
But this time there would be a witness. A civilian, an innocent. Annie Sutherland watched him out of her clear eyes, totally unaware of the danger surrounding them.
They would take her out as well if they could, he knew that. Simply because they had the same training he had, and it was exactly what he would have done if the situation were reversed.
He moved to the cabinet over the gas burner and took out his 9mm, sliding back the bolt to make sure it was ready. It was the least innocuous of the weapons he had stashed around the place, and only the second most lethal. After his hands.
“What are you doing?” she asked, eyeing the gun warily.
She still didn’t have a clue, thank God. “Going for a walk,” he said, rising and tucking the gun in his belt.
“We haven’t finished talking.”
Her father wasn’t the only one good at manipulating. “Listen,” he said with just the right amount of weariness, “I’ve got a hangover and a short temper. Let me get some fresh air, think about things. I have an idea or two. When I come back, we’ll talk.”
“Does that mean you’ll help me?”
“That means I’ll think about it. In the meantime, why don’t you take a long, cool shower? You look a bit battered.”
Actually she looked hot, tired, grumpy, and delicious. Too long without a woman, James reminded himself again. He half expected her to flush, but Win’s daughter seemed devoid of vanity. She simply shoved a hand through her hair and made a face. “I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t exactly call this a luxurious vacation spot.”