by Jean Thomas
The heat of his body pressed against hers had her feeling woozy. And very much in need of putting some space between them.
“All right, you’ve demonstrated just how helpless you think I am. How about letting me go now?”
He didn’t release her. He continued to hold her, both with his arms and his mocking gaze. “I don’t think so,” he said in a smoky, husky voice. “You promised me something last night, only you didn’t get around to delivering it. Seems to me this is a good time to collect on it.”
Clare realized she had gotten herself in a bad situation. She didn’t know this man, didn’t know what he was capable of, and she was alone with him here in the middle of nowhere.
Damn it, dangerous or not, she wasn’t going to let herself be intimidated by him. “You can stop testing me,” she defied him. “I’m not playing your game.”
“That all it is? A test?”
As if to prove it wasn’t, his face came down so close to hers that she could feel his warm breath. Could see his parted mouth ready to descend on hers in a savage kiss that, before he was through, would leave her lips bruised and swollen.
Clare experienced all of it before it happened. Except it didn’t happen. With a muttered oath, he thrust her away so suddenly she almost lost her balance.
“You can stop worrying, Nola. I’m no more in the habit of forcing myself on unwilling women than I am in smacking them. Or is Nola your name? Why don’t we find out?”
His leg didn’t stop him from swiftly reaching her purse where it had landed, scooping it up with one hand and zipping it open with the other. He found her wallet on top and her driver’s license inside.
“Clare, huh?” he said, consulting the license. “Even a last name this time. Fuller. Cute.” His head came up, his dark eyes searching her. “Suits you. Different outfit now, different hair. Not all seductive like last night. No wonder I didn’t spot you on the ferry.”
“Then how did you—”
“Learn you were aboard? I didn’t until we were pulling in and some guy on the upper deck asked one of the hands what went wrong with the other ferry that it wasn’t able to make its final run last night. That’s when I figured you must be somewhere on the lower deck. Got down there just in time to catch a glimpse of you headed off the ramp.” He shrugged, replaced her wallet in the purse and concentrated on its other contents. “So, Clare Fuller, what else have we got in here? Ah, here we go.”
Clare knew he would find the amulet. And he did, fishing it out of the purse with a triumphant grin, taunting her with his recovery by swinging it from its cord, as if it were a pendulum. She could feel the bitterness of her loss settling in her stomach like a sour acid.
She watched him with distress as he looped the cord over his head. Once settled again around his neck, he tucked the amulet out of sight inside his shirt, patting the area of its disappearance with satisfaction.
“There, that’s better. Back where it belongs.”
Clare refused to be defeated. “Look, I know what I did last night was all wrong, but—”
“Wrong?” His laugh was brittle, harsh. “Lady, it was rock-bottom dirty.”
She swallowed her pride, prepared to do whatever it took to get the amulet. “All right,” she admitted, “it was a rotten trick I pulled on you.”
“Why?”
“Because I need the amulet.”
“So you said last night. For what reason?”
“I...well, I can’t explain it. I just do. I don’t know what its value is,” she pleaded, “but whatever it’s worth—”
“You trying to buy it from me?”
“Yes.”
“Forget it. It’s not for sale at any price.”
Hadn’t she already learned that would be the case from the man who had sent her to steal the amulet? Still, it had been worth the effort.
Zipping her purse shut with the same finality as he’d dismissed her offer, he flipped it toward her with a careless “Here.”
His aim, however, was not a careless one. It was as true as his earlier one, enabling Clare to catch her purse with ease.
She watched him as he wordlessly fetched a pair of old towels from the rear of his SUV, took them down to the edge of the swamp, soaked one of the towels and carried both of them back to the SUV, retrieving his shoes and socks along the way. Leaning against the side of the car to support himself, he washed the mud off his feet with the wet towel and dried them with the other one.
Socks and shoes back on his feet and the towels restored to the SUV, he opened the passenger door with a crisply instructed “Get in.”
Clare didn’t move.
“No? Fine. Then I guess I leave you out here in the wilderness on your own.”
There was a long silence.
He glowered at her.
She glared at him.
In the end, unwilling though she was to go anywhere with him, the thought of being left alone with a useless car landed in a swamp was not exactly the wisest of her two options. No, not even if she was equipped with a cell phone.
Trouble was, she’d left that phone back in the Honda, which meant risking those snakes and alligators. Not to mention the mosquitoes, she thought, swatting at one.
“And just where do you plan on taking me?”
“There’s a service garage about a half mile up the highway. I stopped there for gas and coffee in the diner next door on my way to the island. With any luck, they’ll have a tow truck to haul your car out of the swamp and back to the garage. And while we’re waiting to see if it needs any repair...”
“What?”
“We have ourselves a nice cozy breakfast in the diner. And you get to answer some questions, Clare Fuller. A lot of questions. And if I like your answers, maybe I won’t turn you over to the cops.”
* * *
They sat at a corner table across from each other. Mark waited until the waitress had taken their orders and departed before he leaned toward her with an I-mean-business tone in his voice.
“Let’s start with some basics.”
“Such as?”
She didn’t trust him. She’d been silent and nervous all the way to the diner, squeezed as far away from him as she could get in the car. He could see she was nervous now from the way she toyed with the spoon resting on the saucer of the coffee cup the waitress had filled before leaving their table. Well, that was all right. He didn’t trust her, either.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe things like what you do when you’re not coming on to guys in bars so you can rob them. Or is that a full-time occupation for you?”
“I don’t expect you to believe it, but I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“Yeah? Then what is your job?”
She didn’t answer him. It was clear to Mark that she didn’t want him to know anything personal about her.
“You ashamed of it, Clare?”
“Of course not. It’s a perfectly respectable job.” She hesitated, and then seemed to decide that it didn’t matter if he knew. “I’m a fifth-grade teacher in a private school in New Orleans.”
Mark couldn’t help the laughter that erupted from him. Laughter loud enough to draw attention from the other tables near them.
Clare frowned at him. “What’s so funny?”
“Just wondering what your fifth-graders would have made of you in that high-class hooker outfit last night.” He tipped his head to one side, considering her. “Come to think of it, the change in you this morning looks convincing enough to say ‘teacher.’”
“Meaning what?” she challenged him coolly. “The prim image of one?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he drawled.
Or anywhere near such an image. Not remembering as he did the terrific body that would be there under whatever outfit
she wore. He had certainly found her alluring last night. And although he hated to admit it to himself, he was beginning to find her just as alluring this morning. With her silky blond hair, blue eyes and lush mouth, not even the plainest of clothing could make a difference.
There was something else Mark found interesting, something that hadn’t been evident last night under all the makeup. High on her left cheek was a white, crescent-shaped scar. Now why in hell should something as insignificant as that strike him as captivating?
You don’t watch it, Griggs, you’re going to be feeling things that are only going to end up burning you again.
It was much safer to get back to all those questions he had, he decided, lifting his coffee cup to his mouth, welcoming the taste of the caffeine-rich brew on his tongue. She had yet to touch her own cup. She was watching him with that same uneasiness that had been there since he’d chased her down in the swamp.
“A teacher, huh?” he said over the rim of his cup. “So why aren’t you in your classroom?”
“I took a few business days I had accumulated.”
“Which you’re spending hunting for strange men in bars. Only I wasn’t so strange, was I? You recognized me when you wandered in there, even though we’d never met. How was that possible?”
“I—” She paused before admitting it. “I’d been shown a photograph of you.”
“This gets more intriguing by the second. Who showed you the photo, and where did they get it?”
“I don’t know where he got it or how he knew you were registered in the Pelican Hotel.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“It wasn’t important.”
He lowered the coffee cup to his saucer with a decisive click. “I think it’s time we got to the particulars, Clare. Like you telling me just why it wasn’t important.”
She didn’t answer him. There was a mulish expression on her face now. Mark dug his cell phone out of his back pocket and slapped it down meaningfully on the table in front of him.
“I suppose,” he said, sitting back in his chair, “I could still let the cops handle it for me. I think they’d listen to a soldier who served his nation in battle, don’t you?”
“That’s blackmail.”
“Yeah, it is. Wonder where that falls in the category of crimes. Somewhere below robbery, I imagine.”
Mark could see that his threat worked. Although she plainly resented him for it, she was ready to talk to him again.
“It just didn’t matter. Helping Terry was all that mattered.”
Whoever this Terry guy was, there was a strong emotion in her voice when she named him. And why, Mark wondered, should that bother him?
“Boyfriend?”
She shook her head. “Sister.”
The relief he experienced, slight though it was, also bothered him. He had no business experiencing it. What did it matter whether she did or didn’t have a boyfriend?
“Terry is in trouble. Serious trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
Before she could explain, the waitress arrived with their orders. There were scrambled eggs, bacon and buttered toast for him. Clare was having a health-conscious bowl of oatmeal and a bran muffin. Maybe her method for maintaining that sexy figure, Mark thought.
He eyed her as they ate, envying the food that was going into her mouth, remembering how he had kissed that mouth last night and wanting to plunder it again.
She was eventually conscious that he was watching her. Did she guess what he was thinking? Is that why she flushed and looked away?
You’re an ass. You’ve got no business getting mixed up with this woman. Not on that level.
That’s what his head told him. Another area of his body told him otherwise. However insistent that area was, though, he refused to listen to it.
Concentrating on his eggs and bacon, he prompted her between bites. “You were saying?”
“About Terry. She...well, she’s in jail.”
“For what?”
“She’s been charged with murdering her husband.”
Mark issued a long, low whistle of surprise. He hadn’t expected something like this. “She do it?”
“Of course not. Even though God knows she did have a reason, Terry was too much in love with Joe to ever hurt him, much less kill him. Besides, she was in New Orleans at the time the medical examiner fixed for his death, which is a good hour’s drive downriver from their parish and another hour back.”
“Then she has an alibi.”
Clare shook her head. “That’s the problem. The only one who saw or spoke to her was the owner of the antiques shop she visited. When the police interviewed him, he didn’t remember Terry ever being in his shop.”
“There must have been a surveillance camera in there.”
“There was. Terry saw herself on the overhead monitor with the date stamp counting down the exact time and day of her visit. The police asked him about this. He said there was no tape for that day, that the equipment was out for repair. He even had the receipt for that repair.”
“So?”
“He was lying. I knew he had to be lying. I went to see him myself, and he admitted as much.”
Mark had finished his eggs and bacon and was working on his toast. As for Clare, she had pushed aside her half-eaten bowl of oatmeal and was ignoring the muffin. No appetite, he figured. Understandable.
“So why should this guy lie? He must have had a reason.”
“He did. Me.”
Mark dropped the last slice of toast on his plate, no longer interested in food. “I’m beginning to make the connection. He wanted you to go after my amulet.”
“He said he would trade the surveillance tape for the amulet.”
“Who is this guy, anyway?”
“His name is Malcolm Boerner.”
“Never heard of him. How did he know about me?”
“I don’t know.”
“But he had a photograph of me you said. How did he come to get it?”
“I told you before I don’t know.”
“And how did he learn I had the amulet?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
“Seems there’s an awful lot you don’t know.”
“I told you—”
“Yeah, yeah, all you cared about was saving your sister.” Mark cocked his head to one side, appraising her face and what he could see of her figure above the table. What was below the table he had no trouble remembering. Not after last night. “I guess this Boerner character must have decided you had all the right equipment for the job. Guess you also don’t know why he didn’t come after the amulet himself.”
Clare shrugged. “He wasn’t specific about it, but I think he felt he wouldn’t be able to get close enough to you to get it. You’re an army ranger, after all. That must make you naturally cautious of any stranger, and probably too well trained to be overpowered by force.”
“But you could get close to me. And did.” She had no answer for that. “What I can’t figure is why he wants my amulet.”
“I—”
“Don’t say it. You don’t know. Well, it doesn’t make sense. These amulets are available all over Afghanistan, most of them cheap junk. It’s rare for any of them to be old. Doesn’t matter, though, if they’re fakes. The Afghans are a superstitious people. They think the amulets, antique or fake, have the power to protect them from evil.”
“But if yours is very old and Malcolm Boerner somehow knows that...”
“Forget it. It’s not old.”
“Then why do you value it so much?”
“Remember what I told you in the hotel lobby about this gimpy leg of mine being the result of a Taliban attack?”
“Yes, I remember,” she said solemnly. “Y
ou were protecting a child.”
“That’s what they told me. All I know is that this kid was out in the street in the direct line of fire. The next thing I knew I was out there myself with both of us hugging the dust, my body wrapped around his and bullets flying everywhere.”
Clare had a look on her face that suggested a sudden, deep regret. As if she might be feeling guilty over her theft of the amulet. Well, maybe she actually did.
“Anyway,” Mark continued, “this is where the amulet comes in. The kid’s father turned up while the field medic was strapping me on a stretcher to be airlifted by chopper to a combat hospital. He had the amulet with him. Told me in fractured English he’d inherited the thing from a cousin who’d died of—I think he said cancer—in Kabul. And that this cousin, who was a very important man, regarded the amulet as something to be revered and that Ahmad, the kid’s father, was to keep it always safe.”
Mark paused for a swallow of coffee. It was cold by now. It didn’t matter. Clare was waiting for him to go on.
“The amulet was precious to Ahmad, but his son was far more precious to him. You understand?”
“He wanted you to have the amulet in gratitude for saving his son.”
“Something like that. He insisted on hanging it around my neck under my dog tags. Told me I should keep it close, and it would guard me from any further harm. Hell, what could I do? He would have been deeply hurt if I’d tried to refuse it.”
“And you promised him to always wear it.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“A man who never fails to honor his promises.”
“Don’t make me out as something I’m not.”
“Mark, I—”
“Hey, I get it. You’re feeling lousy now for having taken the amulet, but you still want it. Right?”
Whatever response she might have had, he didn’t get to hear it. The mechanic from the service garage next door appeared at their table. He was a large man with a mouthful of teeth so white they almost blinded you. Maybe because his skin, in sharp contrast, was so dark.
Those teeth were on full display now as they smiled down on Clare. “Got your car back from the swamp and up on the hoist. That’s the good news. Afraid the rest isn’t so good. The underside is damaged. Struck this halfway submerged stump on the way in.”