Married To A Stranger
Page 24
JENN PAUSED to catch her breath, crouching at the edge of the woods directly behind the keeper’s cottage. She wasn’t close enough now to see in any of the windows, and she knew from experience that all the access points were locked—with the possible exception of the one the Raven had used to enter the cottage.
The only open door she could count on was the one to the lighthouse itself. If she entered there, she’d have cover as she picked the lock of the door on the firstfloor landing. Taking a deep breath, she sprinted across the narrow opening between the woods and the cottage, keeping low as she circled the tower.
As before, the door was ajar, and Jenn cautiously peered through. The tower well was deeply shadowed, but appeared empty. She moved through the door, her arms extended, with the Smith & Wesson in a steady two-handed grip.
Nothing but silence greeted her entrance.
She started for the stairs, stepping lightly so that her soft-soled shoes wouldn’t create any noise that might echo in the well. She reached the steps and started up.
She was a quarter of the way up the first flight when she realized that the door that led into the second floor of the cottage was a few inches ajar.
She was halfway up the flight when the door opened completely and the Raven appeared on the landing wearing a pale blue wet suit and carrying tanks and flippers.
Jenn froze with her gun trained on him, and the shock on his face was so comical she wanted to laugh. She also wanted to shout out her joy at the victory she’d just won—after all, this was why she’d joined the Agency. Moments like these were the ones she’d always counted on to fill the emptiness inside her.
But not knowing whether Jake was alive or dead only made that void yawn wider than it ever had before. For all the satisfaction that shocked look on the Raven’s face brought her, she knew that capturing him—even killing him—wouldn’t touch the emptiness inside her if Jake was dead.
“Well, well. Mrs. Hopewell. Or whatever your name is.” The Raven’s accent sounded slightly more European than he’d sounded that day in the health club. “I thought that you were a loose end I’d have to wait a while to tie up.”
“Couldn’t figure out a way to give me a stroke like poor Mr. Blaknee, huh?”
He gave her a disparaging look. “I never use any method of incapacitation twice on one job, and your bodyguards made it too difficult to arrange an accident.”
“I guess it’s lucky I ran into you today, then,” Jenn said amiably, smiling up at him. “We’ll get this over now, and I won’t have to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.”
He nodded just as amiably. “And I can get on to other things,” he said, taking a step toward her.
Jenn cocked the gun and the Raven froze. “If you would, please, very slowly and gently lower those tanks of compressed air to the floor, I’d be eternally grateful.”
He didn’t move. “Let me ask you something. Who, precisely, do you work for?”
Jenn shook her head. “Sorry. We’re not going to play Twenty Questions here. Put down the tanks!” she commanded.
The Raven sighed heavily and slumped as though he was lowering the tanks to the floor, but the move was only a feint. He launched the air tanks at her and was flinging himself out of the way as Jenn clipped off one shot that was pure reflex. Before she could duck, the tanks hurtled into her, knocking her off her feet.
With no way to catch herself, she went tumbling down the stairs, her ribs taking a jolt against each step she hit. By the time she came to rest, there wasn’t an ounce of air left in her lungs.
Gasping for breath, she tried to come to her feet and became aware of two things simultaneously. One was the roar of helicopter engines. The other was that the Raven had leapt to the bottom of the well and snatched up her gun before she’d even had a chance to start looking for it.
“Well, I see you’ve brought friends with you,” he said mildly.
Jenn finally succeeded in catching enough breath to speak. “I don’t know how friendly they are,” she said between gasps of air as she straightened her purse, which had gone askew and slipped around to her back during her fall. “I had to hijack a helicopter and breach a no-fly zone to get here. They’re probably out for my hide, so if you’re thinking of using me as a hostage, I wouldn’t count on getting any mileage out of their concern for my safety.”
“It seems I have no choice but to take my chances,” the Raven said, pointing Jenn’s gun at her head. Since his hand was only about six inches away, she didn’t think there was much chance he would miss.
“You said you hijacked a helicopter? Where is it?”
“Around the point.”
“Let’s go.” He grabbed her arm and twisted her into position in front of him, the gun pressed into her temple.
Jenn figured that anything else she said about the unlikelihood of his chances for escape would sound like a cliché from a bad movie, so she kept her mouth shut and let the Raven use her as a shield. In tandem, they moved out the door and came face-to-face with the two gigantic, camouflage green-and-gray Huey helicopters that had landed only twenty yards down the beach. Soldiers with rifles trained on the door were lying on their bellies in the sand or were standing a perimeter; some were still running, fanning out to encircle the lighthouse. And behind them to the east, another Huey was landing.
Jenn took the risk of turning her head back toward him as far as the gun at her temple would allow. “You still think we’re going to make it across the sand, through that perimeter with all those sharpshooters, to that little teeny tiny unarmed helicopter around the bend?”
“We’re going to try,” he replied. “Since I don’t think I have anything to lose.”
“Well, think again,” Jenn muttered, giving her body a sharp twist downward, just as she stabbed her captor in the thigh with the stiletto-pointed nail file she’d managed to slip out of her purse when she’d straightened it across her shoulder.
The Raven howled in surprise and pain, and the gun discharged automatically, but Jenn’s head was several inches below the muzzle by then. The blast hurt her eardrums, but nothing else, and she spun around, locking one leg around his to take him down. With his leg already injured, he didn’t have a prayer of resisting her. He fell like a stone, and before he could do anything to compensate, Jenn had flipped him facedown with her knee pressing into his spine near the base of his neck.
The gun had fallen just out of her grasp, but she didn’t need it. If he moved an inch in any direction, she could paralyze him for life just by pressing her knee a bit harder.
The Raven was captured!
THE LOBBY of the historic Bride’s Bay hotel had turned into a zoo. With the media people, resort staff, hotel security, Secret Service, the air force officials who’d become involved, the Agency operatives who’d been working undercover and the Coast Guard commander who just didn’t want to feel left out, there were enough clamoring people in the lobby to give a fire marshal apoplexy.
The President was alive and unharmed, but the media people had known immediately that something was wrong on the golf course when a half-dozen Secret Service men had tackled him, knocked his lucky towel out of his hands and spirited him to the bulletproof van that hadn’t been far away from him at any time during his vacation. The golf course had been cleared and virologists from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta were already on the way to handle the analysis of the presumed murder weapon.
The President had been whisked off the island even before the Raven had been captured, but the assassin was gone now, too, though there’d been a lot of squabbling over who had jurisdiction. Dan Luther and Anthony Vernandas had been aboard the third helicopter that had landed, and while Luther quickly assumed control of the prisoner, he did so over the objections of the Air Force.. Vernandas hadn’t tried to take custody of the Raven, but within five minutes Luther had grown sick of being reminded that it was Jenn Lambert, an Agency operative, who had made the actual capture.
Now Lut
her was holding a press conference in the far corner of the lobby by the front desk. Jenn was sitting on the curving staircase about halfway up, so she had a good view of the show below, and Jake was in conference with Vernandas and Tom Graves near the door to the garden exit.
“Well, thank you very much, Ms. Hopewell, or Lambert, or whatever the hell your name is!”
Startled, Jenn looked down through the handlathed balusters and found the resort’s helicopter pilot glaring up at her. “Mr. Masterson! Where have you been?”
“In custody, thanks to you!” he said, storming to the foot of the stairs and marching up. Jenn decided she’d better stand in case she needed to defend herself. The charming, devil-may-care pilot looked anything but charmed. “A very nasty air force colonel confiscated my chopper, put me under armed guard and forgot about me! Next time you want to stop an assassin, hijack somebody else, okay?”
Jenn gave up trying to keep a straight face. “I’m sorry I pulled a gun on you and got you in trouble with the Air Force, but we never would have captured the Raven without your help. In another five minutes, he’d have been swimming out to sea.”
Duke looked moderately mollified. “Glad I could be of assistance.”
“I’ll have my boss make sure there are no charges against you. But I’d be more worried about your boss than the Air Force or the Secret Service if I were you,” she said, looking down over his shoulder to the manager of the hotel, who was hurrying across the lobby. Jenn gestured toward her. “Ms. Jermain has been raising hell trying to find out what happened to you.”
Duke turned and saw the woman he loved pushing her way through the crowd. Not knowing what to expect, he moved back down the stairs and was utterly stunned when Liz broke through the crowd and threw herself into his arms.
“Thank God you’re all right!” she cried, running her hands across his shoulders, touching his face, making sure he was solid.
“I’m fine, Liz,” he told her, then lowered his voice, a devilish twinkle in his eyes. “But you’re not exactly being subtle, darling.”
“I don’t care.”
“People will gossip,” he warned her.
“I don’t care about that, either. I’m just so relieved you’re not hurt. I love you, Duke.”
Jenn watched from above as the diamond-in-the-rough helicopter pilot gathered the aloof and elegant hotel manager into his arms and kissed her in front of an audience of resort-staff members. There was a moment of stunned silence followed by an outburst of applause.
Jenn was so intent on enjoying the show that she didn’t realize Jake had joined her on the staircase until she heard, “Hmm. I didn’t know those two were an item.”
“Apparently nobody did,” Jenn said, slanting a sidelong glance at the man beside her. “But he certainly knows how to treat a lady.”
Jake looked at her, then did a double take as he tried to assess the sparkle in her eyes. “Miss Lambert, are you flirting with me?”
She put her hands on her hips in exasperation. “You mean you can’t tell?”
Jake shook his head. “No. I can’t. Two days ago I was a callous, manipulative bastard. Yesterday you were barely speaking to me. This morning, we graduated to communication with extreme suspicion. I’m not sure what to expect now.”
“But all that was before I got my memory back,” she replied. “You told me once that if I had Jenn Lambert’s memories, I’d understand why you said the things you said, did the things you did. Well, you were right. I’m Jenn. I remember. And I do understand.”
Jake was having a little trouble catching his breath. He’d seen that look in Jenn’s eyes before. It was the look he’d seen once at a border crossing checkpoint in Israel eight years ago, and the same look she’d had in her eyes last week when he’d known she was about to tell him she loved him.
The first time he’d been so sure of the meaning of that look he’d asked her to marry him, and he’d ended up losing her because she said he was expecting too much from her. The second time he hadn’t let her say the words. And this time…
This time he didn’t know what to do. “Are you saying you forgive me, Jenn?” he asked.
She nodded slowly. “Yeah. I forgive you. In fact, one of these days I may even thank you for what you did to me.”
“Why?”
“Because after all this time, you finally made me trust you. I had to lose my memory and become Maddy Hopewell to learn what I should have known eight years ago—that all the revenge in the world isn’t going to fill the void in my life.” Jenn slipped her hand into his and-stepped closer to him. “You’re the only thing that’s ever done that, Jake. I want that feeling back.”
Jake squeezed her hand gently and reached out to brush a smudge of dirt off her cheek. “If I take you to the lighthouse and ask you to marry me, will you say yes this time?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I will. I might even say yes if you asked me right here. In fact, I might even ask you myself. Will you marry me, Jacob Adam Hopewell Carmichael whatever-the-heck-your-name—”
Jake let out a joyful whoop, gathered her into his arms and silenced her with a long, gratifying, soulstirring kiss that earned them the second standing ovation of the day at Bride’s Bay Resort.
eISBN 978-14592-7790-8
MARRIED TO A STRANGER
Copyright© 1996 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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Table of Contents
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Dedication
About the Author
Other Books By
Dear Reader
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Copyright