by Lisa Gardner
Freddie didn’t move. “It’s Vincent, sir. He’s called four times already. He claims it’s important.”
J.T. plopped down on the deck and dangled his fingertips into the pool. He’d dreamed of owning a pool like this most of his life. He half-hated it.
“Sir?”
“Vincent always thinks it’s important.”
“He refuses to hang up, sir.” Freddie placed the phone on the patio. His indignant sniff indicated what he thought of Vincent. J.T. rolled over on his back. Neither Freddie nor the phone appeared to be willing to go away.
Grudgingly he lifted the receiver. “I’m retired, Vincent.”
“No kidding, old man.” Vincent’s booming voice made J.T. clutch his forehead. “I got a live one for you, Dillon. Right up your alley.”
“It’s the thirteenth.”
“All over half the globe.”
“I don’t take calls until the fourteenth, and I don’t take your calls any day. I’m retired.”
“Dillon, wait till you hear about the money—”
“I don’t need money.”
“Everyone needs money.”
“I don’t need money. I don’t need business. I’m out. Good-bye.”
“Hey, hey, hey! Hold on! Come on, J.T. Hear me out, for old time’s sake. Listen, I met this woman. She’s really terrific—”
“Good fuck?”
“That’s not what I meant—”
“Blond probably. You always were a sucker for blondes.”
“J.T., buddy, don’t be such an ass. I wouldn’t have called you about just anyone—I know you’re retired. But this woman needs help. I mean, she needs help.”
“Yeah? Grab a phone book, look up St. Jude, dial the number. If anyone answers, let me know. I might try dialing it myself someday. Bye.”
“J.T.—”
“I don’t care.” J.T. hung up the phone. Freddie was still standing there. A bead of sweat traced his upper lip. J.T. shook his head.
“What were you so worried about?” he chided his manservant. “That I’d say yes? That I’d give up all this for a thirty-second adrenaline rush? Freddie, I thought we knew each other better than that.”
“I’ll bring you another margarita, sir.”
“Yeah, Freddie. We understand each other just fine.”
J.T. let his head fall back against the heat-proofed patio. The sun pierced his eyelids until he could see the red veins zigzagging his flesh.
Freddie reappeared with a salt-rimmed glass and set it by J.T.’s head.
“Freddie?” J.T. said.
“Yes, sir?”
“Let another call come through, and I will fire you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Even if it’s the colonel, Freddie. Do you understand?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Good.”
Freddie pivoted sharply and left; J.T. didn’t bother to watch.
He tipped into the pool fully clothed. He sank all the way down. He didn’t fight it, he’d never had to fight water. From the beginning, Marion had been able to do anything on a horse and J.T. had been able to anything underwater.
His feet touched bottom. He opened his eyes and surveyed his kingdom, the sides of the pool formed by jutting red stone, the bottom that looked like strewn sapphires.
The tickling started in the base of his throat, the instinctive need to breathe. He didn’t fight that either. He accepted it. The need, the panic, the fear. Underwater, he could accept anything. Underwater, the world finally made sense to him.
He ticked off the seconds in his mind, and the tickling in his throat grew to full-fledged choking. Don’t fight it, don’t fight. Ease into the burn. He passed the two-minute mark. Once he’d been capable of four, but that wouldn’t happen today.
Two minutes forty-five seconds. That was it. He rocketed to the top. He broke water with a furious gasp, swallowing four gulps of air at once. His jeans and T-shirt were plastered to his skin, the tom-toms pounded against his head.
The memories were still in his mind. Rachel and Teddy. Laughing. Smiling. Screaming. Dying.
Every year he had his bender. Five days of remembering what he couldn’t stand to forget.
Five days of blackness rolling over him like a fog and choking out the light.
After a minute he began to swim. Then he swam some more. Above him the air was dry, and the crickets began to sing as the sky turned bloodred.
“Are you alive?”
“Whuh?” J.T. groggily lifted his head. He’d passed out facedown on the patio. Something clammy was sticking to his skin. Wet clothes.
“Mr. Dillon? Mr. J. T. Dillon?”
He squinted his eyes, his pupils refusing to cooperate. Somehow everything seemed red, red and shadowed and ugly. He tried focusing harder. A human being appeared before him. She had black hair, which reminded him of an Elvis wig. He let his forehead sink back down.
“Are you all right?”
“That’s always been subject to some debate.” He didn’t bother to look up again. “Lady, I don’t buy Avon products or Girl Scout cookies. On the other hand, if you have any Cuervo Gold, I’ll take two cases.”
“I am not the Avon lady.”
“Tough break.” He had to be dying. Not since his first day at West Point had he felt this ill.
“Mr. Dillon—”
“Go away.”
“I can’t.”
“Stand up, pivot one hundred and eighty degrees, and don’t let the gate hit your ass on the way out.”
“Mr. Dillon … please, just hear me out.”
He finally pinned her with a bleary gaze. She sat on the edge of a deck chair, perched like a scrawny dove and framed by the mesquite tree. Young. Really bad haircut. Even worse dye job. She tried to appear non-chalant, but her white knees were shaking. He groaned.
“Lady, you’re out of your league.”
“I … The … I …” She stood up stiffly and squared her shoulders. Her face was resolute, but the rest of her ruined the impression. Her too-white suit was wrinkled and ill fitting. She’d lost a lot of weight recently, and the shadows beneath her eyes were too dark to speak of sweet dreams.
“Mr. Dillon—”
“Freddie!” he called out at the top his lungs. “Freddie!”
The woman’s lips snapped shut.
“He went out,” she said after a moment. She began to methodically shred her right thumbnail.
“Went out?” He moaned again, then shook his wet hair. Water sprayed out, a few drops hitting her silk suit, but she didn’t flinch. He sluiced a hand through his hair, wiping long strands back out of his face, and looked at his unwanted guest one more time.
She kept a careful distance. Close enough not to show fear, but far enough to be prudent. Her stance was solidly balanced and prepared for action, legs wide apart with one foot back, chest out, arms free. It gave him a sense of déjà vu, as if he should know something about her. But the intuition came and went too fast, and he didn’t feel like pursuing it.
“Your friend left,” she said. “I watched him climb into a sedan and drive away.”
“Huh.” He sat up reluctantly. The world spun, then righted. Considering that his blood had to be ninety percent tequila by now, his vision was much too clear. How long had he been out? How much alcohol had he sweated from his pores? He was sobering up too fast.
He ripped off his T-shirt and dropped it on the deck. Then his fingers went to work on his jeans.
“I want to hire you.” The woman’s voice had gained a slight tremor.
He stripped the clinging denim from his legs and tossed the jeans onto the deck. “Better.”
“I … I’m not sure this is appropriate,” she said.
J.T. turned on her with a scowl, hands on his hips. Buck naked, he looked her straight in the eye and wondered why the hell she hadn’t smartened up enough to disappear by now. “Lady, does this villa look like a convent to you? This is a private residence and I’m the beast in cha
rge. Now, get the hell out of my sight or do something useful with your mouth.”
He gave her a sardonic smile, then walked away. Freddie had left him a margarita on the poolside table. It was melted, but he didn’t mind. He downed half in a single gulp.
“Vincent sent me,” the woman whispered behind him.
“That son of a bitch,” J.T. drawled without any real emotion. “I’ll just have to take him off my Christmas card list.” He downed the second half of the margarita. “I’m counting to five. Be gone before I’m done, or heaven help you.”
“Won’t you please just hear me out?”
“One.”
“I’ll pay you.”
“Two.”
“Vincent did not tell me you were a pigheaded drunk!”
“Three.”
“I need a professional!”
He turned, his arms crossed over his bare chest, his expression bland. “Four.”
Her face grew red. Frustration animated her body, bringing up her chin, sparking her eyes. For a moment she was actually pretty. “I’m not leaving!” she yelled. “Goddammit, I have no place else to go. If you’d just stop feeling sorry for yourself long enough to listen—”
“Five.”
“I won’t leave. I can’t.”
“Suit yourself.” J.T. shrugged. He placed the empty margarita glass on the table. Then, and naked as the day he was born, all one hundred and eighty pounds of muscle and sinew, he advanced.
TWO
Sweat beaded her upper lip. Her eyes took on a dangerous sheen. Her gaze shifted from side to side. She jammed a hand inside her purse. J.T. pounced, hurtling his full weight upon her. They went down with a thunder, the contents of her purse spilling, a silvery gun skittering across the patio. She bucked like a bronco and attempted to scratch out his eyes with her ragged nails.
He slapped her wrist down hard. He lay on top of her, trying to keep her still while protecting the more sensitive parts of his anatomy from her lashing feet. She grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked.
“Shit!” He jerked his head free, snapped his fingers around her wrist, and slammed it down.
She winced, but when she looked at him, her eyes still contained fire. He was bigger than her, stronger than her, and a helluva lot tougher than her. She wasn’t going anywhere, and they both knew it.
She made one last futile attempt to jerk free.
“Come on,” he goaded unkindly. “Try it again. Do you think I’ll suddenly change my mind and let you go? Look at me, sweetheart. Vincent didn’t do you any favors by giving you my name. I look like the devil and I am the devil. Genetics decided to play truth in advertising.”
“I have money,” she gasped.
“Who cares.”
“One hundred thousand dollars.”
“Ah, honey. That’s much too cheap for me.”
“Funny, you don’t look like the expensive type.”
He arched a brow at her unexpected barb. She wasn’t struggling anymore, so she wasn’t totally naive. He took the time to give his uninvited guest a more thorough inspection. This close, he could see that she was truly ragged around the edges. The back of her neck was whiter than the front, as if it had been recently protected by long hair, then ruthlessly exposed by desperate scissors. The roots of her dull black hair appeared blond. Her fingernails seemed to have spent quality time with a cheese grater. She had the peaked look of the anemic. For chrissake, she probably had a large target tattooed on her back.
“Little girl, don’t you have enough to worry about without picking fights with me?”
“Probably,” she said gamely, “but I have to start somewhere.”
She lashed out with her foot. He shifted and stopped the blow in time. Just as he began to grin smugly, she sank her teeth into his forearm.
He paled. His neck corded and pain shot through him, sharp and deep, as her tiny white teeth found a nerve.
Rage, primal and ugly, rose up inside him. The need to lash back. The need to return the pain inflicted upon him. He felt the jungle drums in his veins and suddenly he was hearing his father’s boots rapping against the hardwood floors. His grip on her left wrist tightened. She whimpered.
“Fuck!” He yanked his arm from her mouth. Blood dewed the dark hairs and made him even angrier. With a heave he was on his feet, fists clenched, eyes black, anger barely in check. Control, control. He hated men who took it out on women. Control, control.
The silver Walther .22 semiautomatic that had been in her purse now lay just six inches from his feet. He kicked it into the pool. It wasn’t enough. Once he got good and pissed off, nothing was ever enough.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he roared. She was still lying on the patio, her skirt hiked up around her thighs and revealing slender legs badly in need of muscle tone. She held her wrist against her chest. It obviously hurt, but she didn’t make a sound.
He swore again and contemplated leaping into the pool. He needed a drink.
“You don’t draw down on a marine,” he muttered fiercely. “What kind of idiot draws down on a trained professional?”
“You were going to attack me,” she whispered at last. She clutched her wrist closer, the harsh red imprint of his hand staining her pale skin. It shamed him.
“I was going to carry you out of here!”
She didn’t say anything.
He thrust a finger at her. “This is my home! You shouldn’t go barging into homes uninvited, unwanted and … and …”
“Untrained?” she supplied.
“Exactly!”
She didn’t argue. She merely worked on getting to her feet. She swayed slightly when she stood. She didn’t seem to be aware of it, smoothing down her skirt and clutching her jacket shut as if that would somehow protect her.
“I know you don’t want me here. Vincent’s been trying to call you, and you were never home. And I … I couldn’t afford to wait, so I got your address and I just … well, I just came here.
“Train me,” she said abruptly. “Just train me, that’s all I want. One month of your time. I’ll give you one hundred thousand dollars and you teach me everything you know.”
“What the hell?”
“One month, that’s all I’m asking. You never have to leave the villa, you don’t have to do anything other than lounge around and tell me what to do. I’m stronger than I look. I learn fast. I don’t whine.”
“Who are you?”
She hesitated. “Te—Umm … Angela.”
“Te-um-Angela? Uh-huh. Well, just for the sake of argument, why does a happy homemaker like you need training, Te-um-Angela?”
“I … I’m being stalked.”
“Of course. Who?”
“Who’s what?”
“Who is stalking you?”
She fell silent. He shook his head. “You don’t need a mercenary, you need a shrink.”
“A man,” she whispered.
“No kidding.”
“My …” She seemed to debate how much to admit. “My husband. Ex-husband. You know how it goes.”
She spoke too quickly. She glanced at him to see if he believed her or not.
He shook his head again, this time in disgust. “You came all the way here just because of a domestic disturbance? Lady, you track a man like me down and the least you could do was have half the Medellin cartel after your hide. Jesus Christ. Go get a restraining order and leave me alone.”
She smiled wanly. “Do you really think a piece of paper scares away a monster?”
“It beats hiring a professional. What did you do, run into Vince at a Tupperware party? You’re looking at stay-fresh seals, he’s hawking his connections with retired reprobates—”
“We were introduced. By a mutual friend who understands that I need real help.”
“Real help?” he snorted. “You’ve seen too many Sunday night TV movies. Go to the Nogales police. I’ll draw you a map.”
“The police are the ones who lost him,” she said quietly.
“Now, I’m turning to you.”
He shook his head. He tried his best scowl. She remained standing there, somehow dignified in her ugly white suit, somehow regal with her bruised wrist held against her stomach. And for once in his life, J.T. couldn’t think of what to say.
The night grew hushed, just the sound of the water lapping against the edge of his pool and the lonely cry of the crickets. The mesquite tree fluttered with a teasing breeze behind her, while white rocks at her feet glittered in the porch light. The night was warm and purple-black, deceptive in its softness.
“J.T.,” she whispered, “did you save the orphans in Guatemala?”
“What?” His heart began to beat too fast.
“Vincent told me about the orphans. Did you do that? Did you really do that?”
“No, no. You can’t blame that one on me.” But his denial was too sharply spoken, and they both knew it.
“One month,” she repeated. “One month of intensive training. Self-defense, shooting, evasion, stalking—”
“Population control, intelligence gathering. Ambushing and counterambushing. Sniping and counter-sniping. Evac and evade, infiltration and penetration. All SpecWar goodies—”
“Yes.”
“No! You don’t get it. Do you think killing machines are made overnight? Do you think Rambo rose up out of the ground? It takes years to learn that kind of focus. It takes decades more to learn not to care, to site a human being in a scope and pull the trigger as if the target really is nothing but the watermelon you used in practice.”
Her face paled. She looked ill.
“Yeah, you’re just a lean, mean killing machine. Get outta here and don’t come back.”
“I … I … I’ll give you me.”
“What?”
“I’ll give you my body, for the month.”
“Chiquita, you were better off sticking with the money.”
She smiled, her expression apologetic, resigned, knowing. Before he could stop her, she dropped to her knees. “I’ll beg,” she said, and raised imploring hands.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” He crossed the patio and grabbed her shoulders, shaking her as if that would rattle some sense into her head.
“Please,” she said simply. “Please.”