Midnight Man

by Lisa Marie Rice

  She’d never seen the dead man before. How strange that a perfect stranger should want her dead. He’d come to kill her. Instead, he was the one leaving her house in a body bag and she was standing right next to the man who’d killed him.

  Suzanne looked up at John. His arm was tight around her waist, though he wasn’t looking at her. He wasn’t looking at anything, really. His gaze raked the street, up and down, not focusing on anything in particular, but Suzanne could tell he was intensely aware of his surroundings, of everything and everyone on her street. Then he turned to look at her and she felt caught in the beam of a searchlight. A muscle in his jaw jumped and he pulled her even more tightly toward him, turned slightly inwards, his gun hand free.

  She stared up at him, her breath turning white in the cold, mingling with his.

  Bud came up beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Okay, hon,” He said. “Get in the lead car and—“

  “She’s coming with me.” John’s tone was non-negotiable as he spoke to Bud over her head. “I’ll drive her downtown. She’s not getting out of my sight. Not for a second.”

  Bud stared at him and John glared back. Bud’s shoulders lifted. “Okay. It doesn’t make that much difference who drives her. We need to talk to you, too, anyway, as you can imagine. You know the address of headquarters?”

  John nodded.

  “Wait,” Suzanne said. “My house.” The intruder had broken her alarm system. Her building was vulnerable. “We can’t just leave it like this.”

  John understood and squeezed her waist. “The police will post a guard. Nothing will happen to your house.” He speared Bud with a hard look. “Will it?”

  Bud’s mouth lifted in a half smile. “Yeah, okay, sure. I can spare an agent, and of course we’re putting up police tape. No one will touch your house. You’ll find all your knickknacks when you get back, or Claire will have my head. It’ll still be Fong—” he hesitated.

  “Feng Shui.” Suzanne tried to smile past her sadness. It wasn’t true. Her wonderful home, which she’d labored over and dreamed about and worked on, wasn’t Feng Shui any more, wasn’t in tune with wind and water. The harmony of her home had been broken, the energy shattered. Her refuge had been violated. She wondered if she would ever feel safe there again.

  “Right. Whatever.” Bud watched the body being lifted up into a van, which had pulled up to the curb. “Let’s take this down to the stationhouse. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.” He looked up at the still-dark sky then down at his watch. It was three a.m. “Or morning. I’ll lead, John. You follow me.”

  “This way to the car,” John murmured to her once they were outside the gate. He turned left and she pulled her suitcase behind her. She felt foolish with the wheels trundling along behind her. John hadn’t volunteered why he wanted her to pack a suitcase and she didn’t dare ask him. Not with him so intensely focused on their surroundings. Time enough for that later.

  He was scanning the empty night sky, the dark buildings, the deserted streets. But there was nothing to see. It was so late not even the streetwalker twins were out. Or maybe they were in the St. Regis, plying their trade.

  As they passed by the dilapidated hotel, she wondered where John’s Yukon was. He’d parked it out of sight, he said. Why couldn’t they take her car? It was working like a dream now, thanks to him.

  Car. She slowed. They couldn’t take her car. She’d changed purses this evening and left her driver’s license, together with two charge cards, on her vanity table. That wasn’t good. Even if they posted an officer at the door, it wasn’t smart to keep documents and credit cards out in plain sight. Not to mention the fact that she’d probably need some form of ID at the police station. Suzanne turned back.

  It happened all at once.

  There was a coughing sound and she felt her cheek sting. Not even a second later John slammed into her, crushing her against the wall, knocking the breath out of her. She tried to get her breath back, to ask him what he was doing, but his broad back squeezed her, hard, against the wall.

  His arm lifted and she heard two loud noises, so close together it took her a second to realize there were two reports, so loud they deafened her. She was dazed, pinned against the wall, unable to see past him. She realized with a sense of shock that John had fired into a building. She peered around him, following the direction of his arm. He’d fired into the St. Regis. He’d fired a shot—no, two shots—into a hotel! Good God, he might have killed someone!

  “John!” Bud shouted as he came toward them at a dead run. He reached beneath his coat and pulled out a gun as he ran. “What the hell’s the matter with you, man! That’s a hotel! Have you gone crazy?”

  John grabbed her arm and pulled her forward, keeping himself between her and the wall. All three of them looked up at the sound of shattered glass and cracking wood. A body leaned out of the broken window frame of a second story room in the St. Regis. It moved slowly at first, then gathered speed as it tumbled to the ground. For a second, a man had been silhouetted against the porch lights and the long deadly rifle in the man’s hand was clearly visible. As was the shattered head, a mass of blood and brains.

  Suzanne stood, shocked, and uttered a little cry.

  “Come on.” John’s hand pulled at her, hard. He moved quickly and she was forced to keep pace. She slid a little on a patch of ice and he half-lifted her as he steadied her. “That was the second shooter, Bud!” he shouted over his shoulder, running and pulling her along. “Dig the bullet out of the wall if you don’t believe me. You goddamned find out what’s going on, you hear me, man? Until you do, you’re not seeing her again!”

  “Wait!” Bud yelled, his voice echoing in the empty street. “Where are you taking her?”

  But John had rounded the corner at a run. Suzanne had to work at keeping up, dragging her suitcase. Shocked, shaken, she tripped. Without breaking his stride, John bent and lifted her into his arms, suitcase and all, and continued running. A block down Singer Street she could see the Yukon. He had his remote out, unlocking the doors as he ran. In just a few seconds, he’d shoved her into the passenger seat, rounded the vehicle and taken off with the sound of rubber burning.

  Suzanne sobbed once, then with a shudder controlled herself. The last thing John needed at this moment was a hysterical woman. He was driving dangerously fast down the dark streets. His hands were strong on the wheel, but they were going at a speed which would be fatal if they came across another car. His eyes flicked continuously to the rear view and side view mirrors.

  “Fasten your seat belt,” he said, his voice calm, remote. Hands trembling, Suzanne did what he said, tucking her suitcase in the footwell so it wouldn’t bounce around.

  He gunned through an intersection.

  “Hold on tight,” he said coolly, hitting the brakes and twisting the steering wheel. Suzanne was thrown violently to the right, held in place only by the seat belt. She bit her lip to keep from screaming as they went into a long skid. She braced herself for the crash, which never came. The squeal of the tires was loud in the silence of the night and the smell of burning rubber drifted into the cab. It was clear, however, that John was in perfect control of the vehicle as he fought the wheel, pumping the brakes in a smooth rhythmic progression. He brought the SUV around facing the direction they’d come in, executing a 180° turn in a matter of seconds, and accelerated back down the street.

  She’d never seen driving like that before, where the driver was an extension of the vehicle. John’s gaze went from the street ahead, to the rear view mirror to the side mirror, in regular sweeps. She had to brace herself against the door as he raced through the streets, taking corners in tight turns.

  “Is anyone following us?” Suzanne was proud that her voice was steady.

  “No, we’re clear,” John replied, eyes searching the road ahead. His deep voice was remote, dispassionate. He could have been reporting on the weather—it’s stopped raining now, instead of no killers are following us.

  He ha
d slowed down a little, driving steadily toward the outskirts of the city, finally passing the city limits. There were no streetlights this far from town and his face was illuminated only by the lights on the dashboard. They highlighted the rigid line of the jaw, the brutal slash of cheekbones, the strong brow.

  He’d killed two men tonight. He’d done it defending her, but he had two deaths on his hands, nonetheless. He was a warrior, it was part of what he did. Suzanne had no idea how many other men he’d killed, but something about the lethal air he carried with him like an aura told her that there had been others.

  She was alone in a car with a man who could kill. Who had killed. Who—if her reading of his vigilance was correct—was perfectly prepared to kill again. She had only the faintest glimmerings of who and what he was, but he was something so far outside her normal life he might as well have been a Martian who had landed in a space ship.

  Yet as removed from her as he was, he was the person she’d instinctively turned to in trouble. It was as if the sex they’d had—fast and furious and rough—had somehow forged a bond that was bone deep.

  Modern-day sex was supposed to be light-hearted, with no consequences if you took precautions, though she winced at the thought that they hadn’t taken precautions. Still, this was the twenty-first century, and two unattached adults should have been able to have sex casually. Casual, mutually pleasing sex.

  Sex with John had been nothing at all like that. It had been earth shattering, so intense she thought she would faint while climaxing. She’d barely slept since then and had hardly eaten. That wasn’t at all what modern sex was about. Modern sex was about flirting and keeping it cool.

  Not something so primitive it seemed to have come from the dawn of mankind, where men clubbed women and dragged them to their lair, then protected them with bared teeth and claws.

  Some primitive instinct told her that in calling John to come to her aid, she’d crossed a dangerous, invisible line. She’d given herself over to his care. She’d given herself over to him.

  Something important had changed, some turning point in her life had come. She was too shocked, too scared to follow through the ramifications of everything that had happened, but one thing was clear. She was now in John Huntington’s hands. In the hands of a man she knew nothing about, save that he could kill. Easily and without remorse.

  Suzanne looked at his hard profile and shivered.

  A few seconds later, he pulled to the side of the road.

  They had been traveling down it for over half an hour. It was deserted and unfamiliar. The last car they passed had been five minutes ago. John got out, bent briefly over the front fender and then the back fender. In a minute or two, he was back behind the wheel, folding a soft beige blanket around her.

  “There you go,” he said. The deep voice was low, almost gentle. Suzanne stared into his dark fathomless eyes for a long moment. Holding her gaze, he wiped her cheek with a clean handkerchief he took out of his pocket. It came away stained with blood. With a start of surprise, she realized that she’d been cut. By a shard spinning away from the wall, propelled by the force of the bullet. She hadn’t felt it up until now, probably shock had dulled her senses, but now her cheek stung.

  Wonderful. If she could feel the sting of pain, it meant she was alive.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, meaning more than for the blanket and the handkerchief. He nodded and started the engine. The heat was on full blast, but she huddled gratefully in the blanket, chilled to the bone from shock and sleeplessness. They drove on, endlessly.

  Suzanne was quiet, lulled by the dark empty road. They started climbing and she stirred in the darkness.

  “Where are we going?” she asked quietly.

  John looked at her briefly then turned his attention back to the road.

  “Where no one will ever find you,” he said.

  Chapter Eight

  Suzanne awoke with a jolt, dry-mouthed and dazed, as the Yukon took the last of a series of hairpin turns and rocked to a stop. She sat up, banging her elbow against the door, disoriented, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She had no idea how long she’d dozed or even what time it was. Her watch was back in the bedroom, together with her lost serenity and the broken bits of what had once been her life.

  All gone.

  She was too tired to think coherently, but she didn’t need logic to tell her that her entire existence had been ripped to shreds. Her home—her sanctuary, her refuge—was no longer safe. She’d had to abandon it in the middle of the night. Someone had come in the heart of the night to kill her and she had no idea who, and no idea why.

  Until she knew, until she could be sure the nameless, faceless threat was gone, there was no going back.

  Her life was shattered, wiped out in a few moments. There was no past, no future. However hard she tried, she couldn’t see beyond the next five minutes. There was only the here and the now.

  She’d dozed fitfully in the Yukon, the result more of exhaustion and overload than sleepiness. Something inside her balked at the idea of giving herself over to the unconsciousness of deep sleep, so she’d drowsed off and on, half-drugged with fear and shock, completely adrift as John drove the Yukon over unfamiliar roads.

  Where were they? She had no idea, except probably high in the mountains. They’d been climbing steadily for hours. The sky was the pearly gray of cold mornings; light enough to see by but not enough to allow perspective.

  A shack lay a few yards ahead. A simple wooden structure, square and unwelcoming. John killed the engine, plunging them into an eerie silence.

  John turned in his seat, wide shoulders blocking the view of the sky out his window. “We’re here.” His voice was low and calm.

  He seemed so huge in the cab of the vehicle, one strong arm draped over the wheel, big hand dangling. She tried and failed to wipe the image of the intruder with John’s knife through his throat from her mind. The sprays of blood on the floor and the walls, the lingering smell of coppery blood and fetid death. The sound of the crackling glass as the sniper fell to his death with two bullets through his head and the wet thump as he landed. No matter how hard she tried, the sights and sounds stayed front and center of her mind, jarring, shocking.

  John moved and the hairs on the nape of her neck rose, but he was only shifting to open the door. He jumped lightly down and came around to open her door. He reached for her, big hands up. She leaned forward, bracing her hands on his shoulders, feeling the banked strength there as he eased her down. Her feet touched the ground, but she kept her hands on him for a moment longer, anchoring herself to the only solid thing in a world gone suddenly insane.

  They stared at each other, white breaths mingling in the cold morning air. He moved his head toward the shack. “Come on. It’s too cold to stay out here. We need to get you settled in.” He picked up her suitcase with one hand and took her elbow with the other.

  Yes, they were in the mountains, she thought, as they tramped up the makeshift driveway full of loose gravel. The air felt thin and clean and brittle, laced with the unmistakable tang of miles and miles of uninterrupted pine trees. The few inches of snow on the ground looked like ice. They stepped up to a wooden porch. John opened the front door and gestured her inside.

  Small, austere, unadorned. A sofa, two mismatched armchairs, a dining table, a small clean hearth, and a kitchenette. Bare wooden walls. Spare, cold, bleak. A musty smell permeated the shack.

  “This way,” John said and opened a door. It gave onto a bedroom, as spare as the other room. Just a bed and a rocking chair. He dropped her suitcase on the floor and gestured to a door to the left. “Bathroom’s through there. I suggest you wash up and change into your nightgown. You must be tired and I think a few hours’ sleep in a bed would do you good. Come out when you’re ready. I’ll turn the heat on and make you some tea.”

  He disappeared and Suzanne lifted her case onto the bed. Luckily, some instinct had made her pack two high-necked flannel nightgowns. They were warm and c
omfortable and above all, not revealing. She liked frilly sexy silk nightgowns, but now was definitely not the time for frills or silk. Or sex.

  She felt raw enough as it was, on the run and alone with this large, dangerous man. Fleeing from some unknown, unseen danger.

  She knew John wouldn’t force himself into her bed, but she’d proved to herself the other night that she had a fatal weakness for this man. If he asked, she’d say yes. She was cold from the bones out and sex with John was guaranteed to warm her up, take her out of herself, make her forget. She’d climaxed in an explosion of heat the other night. Kissing John, feeling his hard body against hers, in hers, oh yes, that was guaranteed to make her forget her troubles. But sex right now, when she felt so shaky, so unsettled, would be disastrous.

  She’d nearly come apart at the explosive orgasm, leaving her weak and out of control. She’d fly into a million pieces now that the shards of her life lay in a heap at her feet.