The Lady and the Lion

by Kay Hooper

  “A little over a year ago,” he went on, “I was in Paris, and had been for a few months. The call woke me in the middle of the night. It was a friend of mine, a cop with the NYPD, and he said there’d been an accident. Dad’s car had gone off a slippery road in the Catskills. Mom had been with him, and Cathy. They were all dead.”

  “Keith…Oh, Keith, I’m so sorry.” She wanted to go to him, comfort him somehow, but she could feel the distance between them was greater than it had ever been, as if he’d withdrawn completely inside himself. And he seemed not even to hear her voice, going on in that dispassionate tone as if he felt nothing.

  “All I knew until I got home was that they were dead. And there was so much to do, so many things to take care of. At first I didn’t realize there’d been more to it than I’d been told. But I found out. I found out the police were certain it hadn’t been an accident, even though they couldn’t prove who was responsible. They knew the car had been run off the road deliberately. They even knew who had ordered it done.

  “Dad had been involving himself in conservation efforts, something I hadn’t known. There was a wealthy businessman with political influence named Guy Wellman, who wanted to acquire a piece of property the conservationists were trying to save. Wellman would have netted millions from the deal; he already had an agreement under the table to sell the property to a foreign conglomerate. Dad was spearheading the fight against him, and it looked like he was winning.”

  Erin fought to keep her voice steady. “Then it was Wellman who—”

  “That lily-white coward?” The total lack of emotion in Keith’s voice was almost eerie. “He wouldn’t dirty his elegant hands with such a distasteful thing as murder. But he didn’t mind crawling in bed with the devil to get it done. He asked a favor of Vincent Arturo, an up-and-coming crime boss with a lot of ambition. Arturo had been scratching for political ties, needing the influence to smooth his climb to the top, and Wellman looked like the perfect tool.

  “So Wellman went to Arturo. Arturo’s old-line mafia, and they know how to protect themselves. He set up the hit in such a way that no one would ever be able to prove he gave the order, even if the police found the men who’d actually run the car off the road.

  “When Dad was killed, the conservationist group he’d been working with yelled murder. That was the first I’d heard of it. But over the next few months, I found out the rest. Pieced it together, just like the police had. All the circumstantial evidence that would never reach the inside of a courtroom. Until I was sure.”

  Keith turned suddenly to face her, his face like granite and eyes completely shuttered. His voice was still remote and dispassionate when he said, “Then I came here to destroy them.”

  Chapter 8

  “How?” Erin whispered. He was so far away from her now that he looked at her as if from the cold, dark reaches of some alien place with no way to get back and no will even to try.

  “By playing on their greed and mistrust,” Keith explained in that distant voice. “Wellman came down here because he’d found out too late what it meant to have Arturo’s claws in him and he wanted to get away. Arturo followed, because he’d had his eye on the drug traffic in Florida and thought he could control this territory—if he could find a way to remove Martine, the man who was already in charge here. The setup was perfect. Wellman was squirming, Arturo was demanding more and more of him—more introductions, more influence, more of his flesh than just a pound. Arturo didn’t have the manpower to declare war on Martine, but he was working to get it. They hated and mistrusted each other.”

  Erin swallowed hard. “What did you do?”

  Keith took a step away from the doors and sat down in a chair near the table. His gaze was fixed on her unwaveringly. “I created a Colombian drug cartel, and made myself their representative. It was absurdly easy. All I needed was enough money, and I had that. A faked identity, a boat and jet with Colombian registry, a few paper holding companies with impressive cash balances, a bribe or a favor here and there so that anyone checking would find what I wanted them to. It took a few months to set up, and then all I had to do was come here, splash money around, and meet the right people.”

  “Wellman. And Arturo.”

  He nodded slowly. “For nearly three weeks, I’ve been setting them up. Wellman thinks my cartel will get Arturo off his back because we intend to kill him and deal with Martine; all I ask of Wellman is a little political clout in return. The same deal he made with Arturo, in fact. Poetic justice. Arturo believes he’s found the backing to launch a war against Martine, that my cartel prefers to see him in charge, so he’s gathering his forces. But of course, there is no cartel.”

  “Keith…”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. “Arturo can’t possibly win a war with Martine, not alone. And Martine is not a forgiving man. Neither is Arturo. You see, I’ve taped several conversations with Wellman. Damning conversations, all about how my cartel is going to kill Arturo and deal with Martine. Arturo won’t like hearing those tapes, and he will. At the proper time, after I’ve vanished, he’ll go after Wellman. And then Martine will go after him.”

  Erin understood now. She understood it all. When grief and rage filled the emptiness in a man’s heart…obsession was born. Betrayed by a hamstrung legal system, grief and bitterness became a terrible, vengeful rage that had to be satisfied. No, what he was doing was not illegal. There were people who would question if it was even wrong. Erin wasn’t sure herself. But she knew one thing: Somewhere in the deepest part of his conscience, Keith knew it wasn’t right.

  But she didn’t know how or even if she could touch that part of him. And she had to try, because if he went through with his plan, he would be left in the end with only an empty shell. She would love a man who no longer existed, a man whose hollow triumph had destroyed him.

  “When will it be—the proper time?”

  “Tomorrow, I think,” he said remotely.

  “They’ll be killed,” she said, feeling desperately unequal to this and so terrifyingly conscious of the vast distance he had put between them.

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes were burning, and she wished she could cry. “Keith, it’s wrong. You know it’s wrong, or it wouldn’t be tearing you up this way.”

  “They destroyed my family. Without an ounce of compunction, they violently killed three wonderful people. Good people. They have to pay for that.”

  “It isn’t your place to make them pay—”

  “Then whose place is it? Nobody else gives a damn, Erin, I found that out. And I won’t be able to live with myself until Wellman and Arturo are burning in hell.”

  “You’ll be there, too,” she said very quietly. “In a living hell. Suffering with them, and because of them. Another victim to add to their lists. Another person destroyed by them.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. And why, Keith? What good will it do? It won’t bring back the people you love or help them to rest easier. It won’t fill the empty places inside you. It won’t even give you what you think you want, because it won’t be justice! It will be revenge.”

  “I’ll have no blood on my hands.”

  “No, only on your soul. Like Wellman.”

  He jerked at that, as if a blow had struck home, but his face remained stony. “I have to do this,” he said flatly.

  Erin felt as if every breath she drew hurt unbearably. She couldn’t reach him. She had tried, had offered every argument she knew, and it hadn’t been enough.

  …he must decide what it is he wants most of all.

  Keith had made his decision. There was nothing she could offer that meant more to him than revenge. And she couldn’t stay, knowing that. It was breaking her heart.

  “I don’t have to watch,” she said dully, rising slowly to her feet.

  He got up as well, but quickly, then went still again, almost frozen, staring at her. “Where are you going?”

  “To pack. My flight leaves in the morning. I—don’t think I c
ould face Dad just now, so I’ll spend a week or so in New England with Mother’s family.”

  “Don’t go,” he said.

  For an instant, Erin thought she heard some emotion in his deep voice now, but her own feelings were so chaotic she decided it was wishful thinking. He looked the same, shut in himself far away from her. She turned and walked steadily to the connecting doors.

  “Good-bye, Keith.”

  He watched her slender figure vanish through the doorway, saw his side close firmly and, a moment later, heard the muted click of her door shutting. He was alone.

  It hadn’t occurred to him that she would leave, not during the past few days after he knew she loved him. And when she had said it so quietly, said she was leaving him, it had hit him like a punch to the gut, almost paralyzing him. He had felt numb, dazed. He’d even said it, said she couldn’t go because she loved him, as if it were a talisman to ward off the unthinkable.

  He had told her all of it, answering the questions she hadn’t asked, thinking when she understood, maybe she wouldn’t go. She had understood, and she hadn’t been horrified as he had once feared she might be, but the most dreadful pain had shadowed her haunting eyes.

  And she had left him.

  Her gentle voice kept echoing in his head, saying things he had brushed aside, things that wouldn’t leave him alone now, beating against his certainty. That he was destroying himself, that it was revenge he wanted, that he’d have blood on his soul like Wellman. That she was leaving. That she couldn’t be a part of it anymore, she was leaving. That she couldn’t watch what was happening to him, she was leaving.

  Maybe you can’t see what it’s doing to you. Maybe you don’t want to see. But I do.

  Gone.

  You go out at night, and whatever you’re doing is eating you up inside, and then you come back to me but only halfway.

  Her sweet voice, gone.

  But I’m afraid for you. Whatever you’re doing is wrong, and it’s killing you.

  Her fiery passion, gone.

  Do you know what that made me? One side of a tug of war. You want me, but your obsession, your blind anger, keeps pulling you away.

  Her love, gone.

  I can’t stay here and watch you be torn apart…I’m sorry your obsession matters more to you than love.

  It was final, he knew. Terribly final. She wouldn’t walk back through the door. She had left, not because she didn’t love him, but because she did.

  Stiffly, he began pacing the room, the pressure inside him building like something alive, clawing desperately to get out. He was trying to think, to sort out what he was feeling, but he could only think about her being gone. Bleak and terrifying coldness seemed to consume everything else inside him. Like a wild animal trapped too long in its cage, he paced, knowing there was a door, escape, but wary of trying for freedom—and failing.

  His anger had been with him so long, driving him, tormenting him until he’d had to take action, until anything had seemed better than living with it. Until the thought of destroying the two men who had stolen the people he loved had taken root in the anger, feeding on it savagely.

  No…not blood on my hands or my soul. She was right, I can’t live with that.

  Was she right about the rest, too? Instead of healing the raw wound of his grief and fury, had all the months of obsessive planning, all the tensions and strain, done nothing except more damage? Grief to bitterness, bitterness to rage, rage to hate and revenge, until—what? Until he was an emotional cripple, unable to feel anything?

  But he did feel now, he could still feel something other than hate, he told himself.

  He felt about Erin. So crucially important to him, connected to some deep part of him in a way he hadn’t tried to understand. Offering her love, and he’d wanted it, he’d accepted it, yet held it out away from him because he couldn’t pull her over the edge with him.

  The realization was like a blow. He had never really believed Erin might be threatened by his plot, not seriously; he’d been too careful to protect his real identity. She had never been in danger from it. She had been in danger from him. He had known all along he wasn’t coming back. Whether his revenge ended in success or in failure, he could never go back to being the man he had been. And he hadn’t wanted to destroy Erin as well as himself.

  Because he loved her.

  Keith blinked, looking around him with the dazed eyes of a man who had been in the dark for a long time. Hours had passed, he thought; the balcony was shadowed and the room was dim. He was standing in the middle of the room as if he were lost. But he wasn’t, not now. Not any longer. The connection to Erin, something he understood now and didn’t struggle against, was pulling him surely in the single direction that mattered, away from the grinding pressure, the blind rage. Not toward emptiness, but toward the love in her eyes, the sweetness of her smile, the pure white flame of her passion.

  Love did matter more to him than revenge.

  He went quickly to the connecting doors, opening his side quietly. Hers was firmly shut, but when he pushed, it opened without protest. He stepped into her suite and closed the door silently behind him. He could see into her bedroom from here, see a closed suitcase on the floor by the bed and another open on a luggage rack.

  She was in the sitting room, in a chair near the couch, lamplight touching her bright hair with muted fire. Her head was bowed, her face hidden by her hands, and the mute anguish in every line of her body went through Keith like a knife.

  “Erin,” he said huskily.

  She shuddered. “Don’t. Please, don’t. I can’t take anymore.” Her voice was thready.

  He crossed the space between them swiftly, dropping to his knees beside her chair and grasping her delicate wrists gently. “Erin, honey, look at me.” He tried to pull her hands away from her face without force. “Please, baby, look at me.”

  She did, finally, her huge green eyes wet and deeply shadowed, and the look of blind suffering nearly killed him. He groaned and surrounded her face with his hands, leaning over to kiss her tenderly, muttering words that were quick and urgent with the overwhelming need to ease her pain.

  “Oh, dear God. Oh, Erin, I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. I love you, sweetheart, I love you so much. Don’t say it’s too late, I couldn’t bear it if I lost you, too.”

  Erin had been caught in the storm of his emotions more than once, but this time it was almost too much for her. The leap from defeat and misery to hope was so sudden, she was terrified none of this was real, terrified she was dreaming the husky tenderness of his voice, the words of love, and the heart-stopping expression in his vivid eyes.

  “You love me?” she whispered.

  He groaned again and yanked her against him, his arms going around her hard. He was still on his knees beside her chair, still wearing nothing but jeans, and the heat of his bare skin seemed to burn through her blouse and ease the chill of her own flesh.

  “God, yes, I love you,” he said thickly, his fingers stroking her hair, her back, almost compulsively. “Don’t go, baby, stay with me.”

  The possibility of his love was something she had wanted so desperately that everything in her cried out now to give in to him, to hold on fiercely to their love and believe that it could pull him free of the anger she could still feel. But she had seen the root of his obsession, and she didn’t think she was strong enough to fight it.

  “I can’t stay,” she said almost wildly, clinging to him despite her words. “It would kill me to see you destroyed, don’t you understand that? Don’t make me watch, Keith, please!”

  He uttered a rough sound and scooped her up into his arms with that astonishing strength of his, rising from his knees to sit in her chair and cradle her on his lap. “No, sweetheart, it’s all right. It won’t happen, I promise. I don’t care about that anymore, it doesn’t matter. As long as you stay with me, nothing else matters.”

  She lifted her face from his neck, afraid to believe, but the unshuttered truth in his eyes
convinced her. The anger was still pulling at him, she could feel that; it was still inside him because he hadn’t dealt with the grief and bitterness that had caused it. But he would, when he was ready. For now, he had turned his back on revenge and reached out to love.

  “I love you,” he said deeply, stroking her cheek with his fingers in a tender touch. “I’ve loved you all along, Erin. I was too blind to see it, too obsessed to let myself understand what I was feeling.”

  Her arms went around his neck, and Erin cuddled closer, the coldness inside her finally vanishing and happiness growing. “I was so afraid. I didn’t want to leave you, but I just couldn’t stand it anymore. You wouldn’t let me get close, and I love you so much I couldn’t bear to watch you going further and further away from me.”

  His arms tightened around her. “That’s what made me realize. When you walked through the door and I knew you weren’t coming back. I’d convinced myself I could have you and still do what I’d planned, but all the time…How could I plot to destroy life, anyone’s life, and then look into your eyes? You were so sweet and loving, so gentle. Every time I came back to you, it was like I was bringing the dirt with me, touching you with it, and I hated that. So I kept trying to push you away, even though I couldn’t let go of you.”

  Erin drew back just enough to look into his face, her own delicate features grave. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’ll stop it,” he said instantly. “The man I pretended to be—Duncan—will vanish from the face of the earth. I made the arrangements to do it in the beginning. It’ll only take a phone call to put everything in motion. I won’t have to go near them or any of it again. The boat and jet will disappear, the bank accounts will empty, the holding companies turn out to be nothing but paper.”

  “What will happen?”

  He smiled crookedly. “Arturo will scream at Wellman for introducing him to a phantom, and probably bolt for the Northeast out of Martine’s territory. Wellman will probably stay here and wonder what the hell happened.”