by Anne Stuart
And he wanted to find out what had happened to Win. He needed those answers, needed them desperately. What had made the man he’d trusted and loved turn into a manipulative monster, playing chess with people’s lives?
And who had played that game with him?
He hadn’t done it alone. It had taken more than Winston Sutherland to do the harm he’d done. He would have had others working with him. Others carrying on the tradition.
And he wasn’t going to die until he found out who it was and stopped him.
Carew was the logical choice. Carew was the one he wanted, not because he was a whining little coward, not because he’d been a back-stabbing, ass-kissing politician both in and out of covert activities. He wanted Carew to be the bad guy simply because it was Carew who’d given the order to terminate Win.
But just because he wanted it to be Carew didn’t mean he was blind to other possibilities. He’d given Martin enough time to clear Annie out of the trailer, and then he’d start his inquiries. He’d go where he needed to go, do what he needed to do. And give Annie the answers she needed.
He shouldn’t have touched her. Shouldn’t have listened to Martin’s stupid suggestions, except that it had been what he wanted to hear. He could still feel the tightness of her body in his arms, the heat and fierceness as she fought him and her own response. He could hear the sound of her sobs. He’d probably hear them for the short time he had left. They’d haunt his dreams.
Damn Martin. And damn him.
God damn them all.
Chapter Thirteen
There was no sign of Martin’s car by the time James returned to the ramshackle trailer. He’d left hours ago, long enough that even the scent of Annie Sutherland would be gone. And he could concentrate on what he had to do.
The sun was setting, the late autumn chill of the nighttime desert sinking around him as he quickly, efficiently opened the complicated series of locks on the trailer. And then he pushed the door open.
It was dark and still inside. Someone had left one of the overhead lights on, but it barely penetrated the gloom. He closed the door behind him and silently reached for his gun.
He wasn’t alone in the trailer. His instincts had kept him alive for countless years, and they were still working. There was someone waiting for him, and none of the possibilities were promising.
Maybe Annie had taken Martin’s car, leaving him behind. Maybe they both had taken off, but someone had followed Martin. Someone who planned to silence James’s uncomfortable questions forever.
That would have been his preference. Not that he wanted to die—he didn’t really give a damn. But he would have enjoyed a fight right now. He might even enjoy killing.
There was a third possibility, the most devastating of all. Martin might have left Annie behind.
There wasn’t much that could scare James McKinley. Annie Sutherland had that ability. Martin was absolutely right—she made him vulnerable. He’d rather face a dozen of Carew’s best people, he’d rather go back to Ireland, where he desperately didn’t want to go, than walk into the bedroom and see Annie Sutherland.
He had his gun drawn when he edged into the bedroom alcove. She lay on the bed, utterly still, and all he could see was a tangle of tawny hair.
He’d already scoped out the room. Apart from Annie, it was empty. She was the only other living soul in the trailer. Except that he couldn’t be certain she was a living soul.
He moved closer to the bed, silently, looking for the matting of blood in her hair, waiting for the stink of death to hit him. She was absolutely motionless, and he reached out with his gun, pushing the sheet away from her face.
She opened her eyes and stared up at him, blinking, fearless, with the cold metal barrel of the gun almost caressing her cheek. “Are you going to shoot me, James?” she asked in a husky, defiant voice, echoing his own words to her.
He moved the gun, setting it down. “I ought to,” he snapped. “Where’s Martin?”
“Gone back to Washington, I expect.”
“Without you?”
“Isn’t that obvious? I wouldn’t go with him.”
“I don’t buy that. Martin didn’t have to take no for an answer. He can be ruthlessly efficient when he needs to be.”
“So can you.”
There was something in her voice that alerted him. He sat down on the edge of the bed, noting with grim amusement that she scuttled out of his reach. He wondered what she was afraid of. Sex? Or death?
“What did Martin tell you? What pack of lies did he feed you? You’re too damned gullible, do you know that? You always have been. You believed everything Win wanted you to; you thought people were who they said they were. What did Martin say to convince you to stay?”
“He didn’t convince me to stay. He just realized I wouldn’t leave. He doesn’t make the mistake of underestimating me.”
“And I do?”
“You don’t realized how determined I can be. You can try to scare me all you want, James. I’m seeing this through. I came to you for answers, and you said you’d find them for me.”
“You came to me for vengeance.”
“Maybe. At first. But right now I just need to know. Please, James.” Her voice softened, and she was pleading. He wanted her pleading.
“Even if the knowledge might kill you?”
She didn’t flinch. “Even so.”
He made one final protest. “You don’t know what you’re getting into, Annie. You’re going to find all your illusions shattered.”
“I don’t have any illusions about you.”
“Illusions about your father,” he said impatiently. “About your safe little life. You haven’t the faintest idea what this is all about. You don’t know who and what I am.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Hell, no.”
“It doesn’t matter. Martin already did.”
He just stared at her. “Told you what?”
“What you do for a living. What my father had you do. He said they call you Dr. Death. Why?”
“Because I’m fast, scientific, and relatively painless. And I make house calls.” His voice was icy. “What else did Martin tell you?”
“That you and my father had a covert operation going, where he’d choose the people and you’d go out and … kill them. The other members of the organization had no idea that sort of thing was going on, and when they found out, my father was killed.”
“That’s as good an explanation as any,” he said softly. “Then I don’t understand why you’re here with me. You have your answer. You know why your father was executed. Why didn’t you go back with Martin?”
“You must have known that too. Martin said they’ve been after you as well. So why did you agree to come with me? Why didn’t you just send me away and stay where you were? At least there you were safe.”
“Don’t count on it. They kept sending people after me. More and more each time.”
“Did you kill Mary Margaret Hanover?”
“Did Martin tell you that?” He leaned back against the foot of the bed, watching her lazily. “I wonder how he knew.”
“And it didn’t bother you?”
“It’s what I do,” he said. “What I was trained for. I don’t even think about it anymore. I told you I’d lost my soul, and you didn’t believe me. It’s the truth, plain and simple.”
“And what about my father?”
She was close to tears—he could see her eyes glistening in the darkness despite the cool steadiness of her voice. He wondered if he could spare her. But the time for sparing her was past. “He had no soul to begin with,” he said harshly.
She didn’t flinch. “Who killed him?”
“Why didn’t you ask Martin? He seems to have all the answers this time.”
“He said you would know. You would tell me.”
“You’d be better off forgetting about it.”
“I can’t.”
He rose, moving away from her. “I
hope you’re going to survive this.”
“I hope I am too,” she muttered.
He didn’t come near her again. Annie told herself she was glad, relieved that he seemed to have made his point. She lay in the bedroom alcove, sleepless, restless through the endless hours of night.
He sat in the living room, watching CNN, drinking. He didn’t seem to need sleep, a fact that failed to reassure her. He seemed even less human than ever—a dark creature with a lost soul.
She drifted in and out of a troubled sleep herself, and her dreams were lush and disruptive. She kept waking, thinking he was watching her, but when she opened her eyes he wasn’t anywhere in sight, and she told herself it was a nightmare. Or wishful thinking.
When she awoke again it was daylight, and his hands were on her, and she thought, this time he will kill me. But he simply flipped back the covers. “Time to get the hell out of here,” he said gruffly. “You’ve got five minutes.”
“Where are we going?”
“Looking for answers. Away from here. The trick to not getting caught, sweet Annie, is not to stay in the same place for too long. Particularly when at least one person already knows you’re there.”
“You said Martin was your friend. You trusted him!” she protested, still dazed from her fitful sleep.
“I have no friends. I trust no one. Get out of bed and get going, or I’ll leave you behind.”
“You’d like that excuse,” she muttered under her breath as he started out of the bedroom.
He shouldn’t have been able to hear, but he stopped, turning to look at her out of cold, dark eyes. “Yes,” he said. “So don’t tempt me.”
She was no temptation whatsoever for James McKinley, and they both knew it, she thought wearily. It took her less than five minutes to take a quick, cold shower and pull on a baggy pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He was already standing by the door when she came out, her hair wet and tangled down her back.
He showed no emotion, simply turned for the door. She could see the outline of his gun beneath the jean jacket he wore, and his hair was tied back. “You look like a Hell’s Angel,” she said lightly.
“I’m a lot more dangerous.”
She didn’t argue the point.
It was already hot outside in the early morning air. There was a skinny dog slinking past the trailer, and across the way the mini-blinds shifted in one of the small windows. “You want the front or back?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re small enough to fit in front of me and still give me room to steer. We can ride that way if you want.”
“What’s the advantage? Wouldn’t I be in your way?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But if you ride behind me, your back’s a perfect target.”
He was trying to scare her. He was doing a good job. “If they shoot you instead, the motorcycle will crash and we’ll both die anyway. I’ll sit in back.”
“Suit yourself. Are you wearing a bra today?”
“Yes,” she snapped at him.
“Good.”
She climbed on behind him, putting her hands at his waist, determined not to move any closer unless she had to.
She had to. He caught her arm and hauled her up tightly against him as he started the Vincent. And all she could think of was his hands on her, and she leaned her head against his back with a silent groan of misery.
It wasn’t until he pulled into a small rundown airport that she realized they were back in Mexico. She had no idea when they’d left the States, and she knew perfectly well they hadn’t crossed the border legally. Legality was clearly the least of James’s concerns, and sometime in the past few days Annie had lost her interest in it as well. Staying alive seemed far more important.
Her grasp of Spanish was nil—she’d learned only Latin and French in the expensive schools Win had sent her to. James’s rapid conversation with the men at the airfield was incomprehensible, and she simply did as she was told, climbing aboard a tiny plane and trying to forget the stories she’d heard about crashes. They took off into the darkening skies, James sitting across from her, saying not a word. Looking down at the sleek black Vincent motorcycle as it disappeared beneath them.
She closed her eyes. The interior of the plane was dark, the small port lights inadequate, and there was nothing to look at. She was hungry, she was tired, and her body ached from the tension of holding onto the motorcycle, holding onto James. She wanted to drift into a safe, distant world where no one could harm her, and she let herself slip. But there was no safety in her dreamlike state. Only memories of another time she didn’t want to remember.
Win hadn’t said a word about James when he arrived home late Thanksgiving night. He’d sat with them, sipping his brandy and bemoaning the horrible travel conditions, and James and Annie had sat primly on opposite ends of the couch, drinking as well, making polite sounds. Pretending they hadn’t been caught doing something wrong.
Not that James seemed to suffer from an excess of guilt. He’d sat beside her, perfectly relaxed, and Annie wondered if she’d imagined his momentary weakness toward her.
She knew her father too well. Loved him too dearly, but she recognized the speculative expression in his eyes as they shifted between the two of them. But he didn’t say anything, not when James left, despite pressure to spend the night and avoid the still icy roads, not when Annie patiently waited for him to broach the subject that lay, coiled like a snake, between them.
He said nothing over breakfast, nothing for the remainder of the holiday weekend. Nothing to her, that was.
But when James showed up at the house to drive her to the airport, she knew her father had been busy indeed.
The traffic was ghastly heading out toward National Airport, and for a while all James could do was concentrate on the kamikaze drivers. Lulling Annie into a false sense of security, that maybe he’d offered to chauffeur her as a favor. That he wanted to be with her, that he wasn’t obeying Win’s orders.
The ice had melted, the day was unseasonably warm and sunny, when he pulled into short-term parking, switched off the ignition, and turned to her.
She was already reaching into the back for her bags when he caught her hand, pulling her around to face him. “We have to talk,” he said.
“Says who?” she asked. Knowing the answer with a sinking feeling of dread.
“Says Win.”
“I really can’t right now, James,” she said, trying to pull away from him. “I’ll miss my plane.”
“Your plane doesn’t leave for an hour and a half, and you know it.”
“I like to check in early.”
He ignored her protests. “Stop struggling, Annie. Let me say what I have to say, and then I’ll let you go. I’ll even carry your bags.”
She wanted to lash out at him, to stop him, but she didn’t. She’d been brought up to be polite, well behaved, discreet. She couldn’t have a raging emotional fit in front of the most emotionally controlled man she’d ever known.
She leaned back against the leather seat of James’s car. “All right,” she said. “What did Win tell you to tell me?”
If he didn’t like the way she’d phrased it, he didn’t say so. As usual he was in control, cool, reasoned. “It was a mistake, Annie.”
“What was a mistake? I don’t recall we did anything particularly shocking or torrid. You kissed me. So what? That’s all it was. You regained control of your animal passions quite quickly, and my reputation remains unsullied. What’s the big deal?”
“That’s my point. I want to make sure we’re agreed on it,” he said.
“That it was just a kiss? I don’t remember anything else, but maybe you drugged me and had your wicked way with me and the shock and horror of it sent me into a Victorian swoon—”
“Shut up, Annie,” he said pleasantly.
She was still half shocked at her flippant tone. She never talked that way to anybody. But then, she seldom got mad at anybody. And she was mad now. Furious.
&n
bsp; “What’s your problem, James?”
“You, Annie. I know perfectly well you have a crush on me—”
“I do not!” she protested hotly.
“It’s been going on since the summer you turned nineteen and I came to visit you and Win in Maine.”
“Bullshit,” said Annie, who never swore. It had been going on at least a year before that. She’d just been better at covering it up.
“I don’t want to argue with you, Annie. I just want to make it clear that it’s not going to happen. Not now, not ever.”
“What’s not going to happen?”
“I’m not going to bed with you.”
“Why?” she asked.
She’d managed to startle him. “Why?” he echoed. “Because it’s a bad idea. Because you’re a generation younger than I am. Because I work with your father. Mainly because I don’t want you.” He spoke with devastating frankness, and it would have taken a blind fool to think he was lying.
But she was being a blind fool. “You mean my father told you to keep your hands off me.”
“If you think that, then you don’t know Win very well. And you don’t know me.”
“You mean you wouldn’t listen to my father?”
He sighed, a weary, bored sigh. “Annie, I’m not going to argue with you. This isn’t up for discussion. I’m flattered, but I’m really not interested. I’m involved with someone else at the moment, and even if I wasn’t, my tastes don’t tend to run to college girls.”
Win had taught her to be ladylike and serene, never to show anger or passion. He’d taught her to be strong as well, and it took all her strength to force a cool smile to her face. Think Grace Kelly, she told herself.
“You make yourself very clear,” she said sweetly. “So why don’t you let go of me, and this college girl will head back to college?”
He couldn’t have forgotten that he still held her wrist. But he might not have noticed that he was absently caressing her with his thumb. It hadn’t escaped her attention.
He released her, climbing out of the car, ignoring her protests that she could carry her small bag by herself. He walked beside her through the crowds of people heading for the terminal, and all the time her temper was simmering.