Really, I felt heartsick every time I thought of Barrett on the business end of the insurgent’s bomb that had given him those scars. As for the black eye, though, I told myself Barrett deserved it. I just couldn’t quite make myself believe it.
Because Philip had crossed a line.
Of course, Barrett hadn’t been exactly civil, either. I huffed out a sigh, offered him the compress again. He still didn’t take it.
None too gently, I pressed the ice pack to the side of his face.
He winced at the contact. And then he grabbed my wrist with one hand, slid an arm around my middle with the other. Barrett pulled me into his lap.
Without meaning to, I recalled the last time I’d sat in his lap. It was three nights ago and half a world away in my townhouse in Virginia. Now, here we were again. In the same situation. Only everything had changed.
“You went too far,” I told him. “You should’ve had the sense to never call a member of Her Majesty’s Government a liar.”
“Do you think your friend would’ve taken it better if I’d sent him a singing telegram?”
Barrett’s hand covered mine. He said, “You think you can trust Philip Bloody Spencer-Dean, but you can’t.”
“If I can’t trust him, I can’t trust you. I’ve known him for years. I only met you last spring.”
Barrett tossed the ice pack aside. It landed with a bounce on the floor. Wet cubes erupted onto the carpet.
“Jamie, you know your priorities are mine. But what about his?”
I jumped as Barrett touched icy fingers to my bare ankle. I glanced down, realized my traitorous bathrobe had given way again, opening up from waist to hem. It left my legs available for Barrett’s gaze—and to his touch.
I tried to jerk the fabric together one-handedly, but the move was useless.
“Your hands are cold.”
“I apologize,” Barrett said, and I didn’t believe him for a second.
His fingertips blazed a trail along the topline of my calf. He didn’t stop until he was south of my sore knee. With a slow slide, his hand found the hollow behind it, caressed the soft flesh there.
He leaned close to brush a kiss against my cheek.
I shivered—and it had nothing to do with the ice in his fingertips.
Barrett’s hand traveled along the bare skin of my thigh, rounded the curve of my satin-clad hip.
“Think about it, Jamie. Who handed you that glass of champagne?”
“The bartender.”
But that wasn’t true. The bartender had handed it to Philip. He’d carried it for me toward the balcony. And going onto the balcony had been his idea. He’d handed me my drink before we stepped out there.
Barrett said, “Did Philip propose a toast? Did he urge you to drink?”
Philip had urged me. He’d urged me to pause. To savor my champagne before we snuck to his car.
“Did Spencer-Dean try to scare you? Did he make a pass at you? Anything to make your heart race?”
Barrett didn’t wait for my reply. He nuzzled a tender spot behind my ear. My pulse began to pound.
But Philip had kissed me on the balcony and my heart had hammered. He’d asked me to go home with him, too. He’d asked me to spend the night in his bed.
Of course, none of that meant he’d had an ulterior motive in mind.
“A racing heart would carry the drug through your system quickly,” Barrett said. “Your old friend Philip wanted answers. He didn’t want to wait.”
“You don’t know him. You don’t know what he did.”
I tried to clear my head, tried to slide from Barrett’s lap. I was angry with him for suggesting these things and none too happy with myself for thinking he could perhaps be right. But Barrett wrapped his arms around me.
He wouldn’t let me go.
“What,” I snapped, “did Philip supposedly want me to tell him?”
“The location of Armand Oujdad.”
“But I don’t know it.”
“That’s what you keep saying. That doesn’t mean others believe you.”
“Why would Philip care about Oujdad, anyway?”
“You know the answer to that one.”
And I did.
I knew whoever found the old man would also find a way to manipulate the daughter.
“When a sovereign nation gathers intelligence,” Barrett said, “getting it from your allies is good—”
“—but getting it for yourself is better.”
And if the British government made Ikaat an offer she couldn’t refuse, they’d get that intelligence without playing Monkey in the Middle with us.
I shook my head, feeling as prickly as a cactus pear. I cupped my good hand to Barrett’s face, smoothed a thumb over the arch of his cheekbone. It was as burnt as if he’d spent a week under a tropical sun. But the plane of his face beneath was a paler shade of tan. As if he’d worn a beard. And wearing a beard was standard operating procedure for certain troops entering certain areas of the Middle East where local custom meant that’s what men did. It was a good reminder that Barrett hadn’t been entirely honest with me.
And that I couldn’t be sure he was being entirely honest now.
I said, “I’m not buying your theory about Philip.”
In answer, Barrett smiled. And his grin could’ve convinced a saint to turn sinner. His hand skimmed my waist. His nose brushed aside the collar of my robe. He left the tiniest of kisses there.
My eyes closed of their own accord.
Barrett’s mouth found my throat, began to work some secret magic only he knew. My breath quickened. My skin flashed hot. I placed my palm against his bare shoulder, thinking I should push him away. But that was a mistake. Because once I touched him, I wanted to keep touching him. And I wanted him to keep touching me.
I opened my eyes, glanced toward the bed. All ironed sheets and eiderdown, it stood ready and waiting. The door, I knew, was closed. The rest of the world had been banished to the far side of it. In the here and now, only Barrett and I remained.
We could take the night—just one night—to be together if my doubts and fears would let me. But they wouldn’t. Because what if Barrett were wrong? What if I could prove Philip was one of the good guys? I had a terrible sense of loyalty—and it wouldn’t leave me be—just as Barrett had a terrible sense of timing.
Or did he?
Barrett’s breath was hot in my ear. As long as I listened to it, I couldn’t ask him how he already knew Philip. I couldn’t ask him how he’d ended up in that attic in Marylebone. And I couldn’t ask him who’d sent him here to London in the first place. I couldn’t ask him, because he didn’t want me to.
And it was time for me to call him on it.
I said, “I know what you’re doing.”
“Good,” Barrett murmured. “I didn’t want to have to stop to explain it to you.”
“The only reason you’re kissing me is to distract me.”
“Believe me, honey, it’s not the only reason.”
“You think,” I said, his flippant answers making me more angry, “I’ll forget my questions if I sleep with you. Well, I’m not going to do it.”
“What?” Barrett asked, and his hand found its way under my cami. “You’re not going to forget your questions? Or you’re not going to sleep with me?”
Those were two very interesting questions. At the thought of the second, desire flashed through me like heat lightning. But fury wasn’t far behind.
I was achy and itchy with unmet needs. And at that moment I hated him for it. I opened my mouth to tell him so. But even that was a risk. Because the word balancing on the tip of my tongue tasted much more like yes than no.
Before I could say anything, though, a knock sounded at the bedroom door.
“If that’s your friend Spencer-Dean,” Barrett groaned, “he’s going to get what he’s got coming to him.”
In a wink, he shifted me from his lap, crossed to the door, and opened it in a flash. But Philip wasn’t sta
nding on the far side of it. Katie was.
And she fell into Barrett’s arms.
Chapter 19
“I couldn’t stop her,” Katie cried.
She was hyperventilating. I’d made her sit on that ridiculous lavender fainting couch where I’d almost gotten stupid with Barrett. Her lungs still heaved like a ship’s bellows, though.
“Keep your head between your knees,” I ordered her. I thrust my arms into the lamb’s-wool sweater I’d had the sense to buy that afternoon and hauled it over my head. “Try to breathe normally.”
“Ikaat got that call and she was out the door. They’ve got her dad, Jamie! When she goes to him, they’ll kill her.”
“Tell me about the caller.”
“I didn’t speak to him. I’d fallen asleep. I got up to go to the bathroom and the phone rang. Ikaat answered it.”
I hadn’t heard it ring.
But then again, Barrett had been nibbling on my ear, so I hadn’t heard a lot of things.
“She’s gone,” he announced, appearing in the doorway.
As soon as we’d understood Ikaat had left the suite, Barrett had snatched up his discarded T-shirt and bolted down to the lobby after her. Now, he yanked open a drawer, snatched up a pair of the socks I’d sent to the hotel. He sat on the edge of the bed to slip them on.
“The doorman didn’t see her go out the front. She left no trace in the alley.”
“She could’ve caught a cab at the corner,” I said.
“Or maybe a car met her.”
“I don’t think so,” Katie offered. “She asked how to get to someplace called Seven Sisters.”
“That’s a Tube stop,” I said, “and a station on the National Rail line.”
“It’s also a neighborhood,” Barrett added, “and all three are near the A-10.”
The A-10 was a major highway running north from London. If Ikaat caught a bus from the Seven Sisters, hitched a ride with an accommodating truck driver, or was met by her caller with a fast car, she’d soon be halfway across the UK. She could take a train from the Seven Sisters station and get even farther, heading into Scotland or Wales. On the other hand, she could stick to the Sisters’ post–World War II streets and get into all kinds of mischief without leaving town.
Any way I looked at it, I needed to narrow down the possibilities.
To do that, I needed more information.
“Katie, when she was on the phone, what language did Ikaat speak?”
“English, I guess. Does it matter?”
Oh, it mattered. In fact, it mattered a lot. But neither Barrett nor I pointed this out to her.
“Here’s what you’re going to do,” I told her. “You’re going to get dressed and go to The Elizabethan Rose.”
“The hotel where the motorcycle rider attacked you?”
“Yes.” I plucked the fat envelope Roger had given me from behind a watercolor of the heath in bloom hanging on the wall. I shoved most of the cash the envelope contained into Katie’s hand. “Get the night clerk to give you the passports we stashed in the safe. Bribe him if you have to.”
“What do I do once I’ve got the passports?”
I grabbed my own passport from the nightstand drawer, shoved it into her hand as well. “Meet me at Heathrow. I’ll have Ikaat and her father with me.”
It was a tall order. But I intended to fill it. Katie seemed to believe I could. Her blue eyes went as wide as the heath itself, and she nodded like she’d never stop. She ran from the room to do as I said.
As soon as she was gone, Barrett asked, “What’s our plan?”
“We don’t have a plan.” I snagged a jacket from the armoire and headed for the hall.
On the way, I bypassed the coffee table, scooped up my cell phone in the fancy case Philip had bought for me, and rushed from the suite.
Downstairs, I found a lowly security guard on duty in the House Detective’s office. He was young and he was bored. I introduced myself as a private eye from America. When I asked, he told me he had a clunker of a car parked in the hotel’s underground garage. In exchange for an indecent sum of money and a story he’d be able to tell his friends at the pub, he agreed to let me borrow it.
The car turned out to be a Peugeot sedan that had rolled off the factory line the year I’d started high school. Its paint was the color of excrement and the remaining upholstery smelled faintly of cat pee. But the car ran, and that was all I cared about.
As I nosed its dented grille into the street, the passenger door whipped open.
Barrett slid into the seat beside me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.
“Just drive,” he told me.
“No.”
The trousers I’d found him in in that wrecked building had apparently made their way back from the cleaners. He’d teamed them with a black pullover—what the Brits would call a jersey—and he’d topped his blond head with a brimmed cap pulled low to shade the black eye Philip had given him. In the dark, he’d be all but invisible.
“You’re not going after Ikaat alone,” he told me. “You don’t know what you might be walking into.”
Well, I didn’t know what I’d be walking into if I allowed him to join me. Despite what he’d said when he’d held me on his lap, Barrett’s motives were not my own. He’d proven that again and again since he’d killed Dalmatovis on the cobblestone streets of Covent Garden. He hadn’t been honest with me about why he’d done it or who had sent him. Because despite his Uncle Sam remark, I still had no doubt someone specific had sent him—even if he wouldn’t admit it.
I slammed the car’s gearshift into park. “Barrett, did you even enter this country on a passport?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’ve been walking around town without cash and without ID. I bet you walked through the desert like that, too. You’re stripped, Barrett. Just like you’re on a mission. And don’t give me that Uncle Sam line. Uncle Sam is a figure of speech. A real person arranged for you to come to London and a real person must’ve cleared the way for you to enter the country. So who was it? Who pulled you off regular duty at your army post? Who sent you here tonight?”
Barrett sat completely still while the cold light of the English moon slanted across his face.
When he spoke, he said four words.
“Your father sent me.”
His admission hit me like a slap in the chops. “You colluded with my father?”
“Collusion is an ugly word, Jamie.”
Well, I didn’t know what else to call it.
And calling it anything wouldn’t bring Ikaat back.
The car’s gears screeched as I shoved the stick into first. I pointed the car toward the northwest, toward the Seven Sisters. And hopefully, toward the Oujdads.
I’d been so proud when my father asked me to do him a favor. So thrilled that he trusted me to accompany Katie. I’d gone from being my father’s kid to his confidante in one easy step. Except it hadn’t been so easy. And as it turned out, I wasn’t his confidante at all. Barrett was. And there was someone else.
“Who arranged to let you into Britain without a passport?”
“Your friend,” Barrett said. “Spencer-Dean.”
No wonder Philip hadn’t arrested Barrett when he saw him tonight. Philip had arranged for him to be in the country on special permission. He knew all about Barrett’s purpose in coming here. But no wonder Philip had wanted to hunt him down, too. He couldn’t have an undocumented American army officer running loose through his nation.
So Philip and Barrett were secretly in cahoots, and wasn’t that just fine and dandy? Apparently none of the men in my life could be honest with me. Worse than that, none of them believed I could get the job done.
“All right,” I said. “I get it. You’re here to check up on Daddy’s Little Girl. What’s in it for you? A promotion to bird colonel? Or did my father promise you half his lands, a fat cow, and my hand in marriage?”
“And I suppose the fact my father did the asking had nothing to do with it?”
“What if it did?”
That shut me up. Because Barrett was saying he’d agreed to help the Oujdads because of me. He’d marched across that desert through enemy territory because of me. He’d risked capture and torture because of me. He’d killed Dalmatovis because of me and he’d had the shit beaten out of him all because of little ol’ me.
The realization had me squirming in my seat. Because the idea that he’d do so much probably meant he cared deeply about me. And it possibly meant he had certain emotional expectations, too. Like reciprocal love, for instance. But I wasn’t sure I was capable of love.
I sure as hell didn’t offer to discuss the subject at that point in time, though. Likewise, Barrett kept his thoughts to himself. In mutual silence, we zipped through London’s late-night streets.
And then we were on Seven Sisters Road, and better yet, approaching the low-slung station of blackish brick that had connected North Londoners with the rest of their countrymen since Victoria’s reign.
“I’ll check the platforms,” Barrett said, releasing his seat belt.
“Inbound and out,” I told him. “She could be heading anywhere.”
“Don’t worry. It’s a small station.”
I watched Barrett jog across the sleeping street. The blue haze of the station’s lights blessed him with a halo as he headed indoors. I felt rather forlorn when I couldn’t see him anymore.
And I didn’t like what that said about me.
Instead of dwelling on it, I got busy and got on my cell phone. I skipped the listing for my father’s office phone and dialed his BlackBerry directly. Roger answered on the first ring.
The Kill Shot Page 15