Lethal Lover

by Laura Gordon

  With her back in his life, Reed was beginning to see how easy it would be to start forgetting a great many things: like loneliness and self-loathing, and maybe even that part of his past that had kept him from her for all these years.

  Seeing her standing there grieving something she perceived he’d lost touched him deeply and he pulled her into his arms. His heart swelled when she didn’t pull away. “We’ll get through this,” he promised in a murmur against her hair. “Somehow we’ll figure it all out. For now, let’s forget about the notebook and just concentrate on what you’re going to tell that messenger, how to stall him until we can find Selena.”

  But even as he assured her, he wondered if somehow he really could manage to forget everything but Tess, to allow himself to feel love again. And what about her? Her bitterness ran deep; he saw it in her eyes nearly every time she looked at him. Was there really a way to recapture the love and trust they’d once shared? Today on the beach, he’d almost allowed himself to start believing a fresh start might be possible. But was it? Or had the past now become Reed McKenna’s greatest obstacle?

  Without warning, she pulled out of his arms. “Reed, look. There’s a limo in the parking lot and I think that man standing in the doorway of the bar drove it in.”

  His eyes followed hers to the front door of Davey’s establishment.

  The glow of a cigarette in the doorway partially illuminated someone’s face. Reed shook his head. “I think that’s Davey catching some fresh air.”

  He’d barely finished his sentence when the night was illuminated and the air reverberated with a deafening explosion.

  Before their shocked eyes, the bar and the man standing in the doorway literally disappeared in a flash of angry flames.

  Chapter Ten

  The deafening belch of smoke and fire arced skyward, tossing flaming debris in all directions. Reed grabbed Tess’s hand and led her quickly along the edge of the dock, purposefully moving away from the raining embers and the crowd of people who were rushing out of the restaurant and bars to see what had happened.

  “This way,” Reed shouted.

  A siren wailed in the distance over the crackling of burning timber and the sizzle and pop of liquor exploding in the flames. Reed paused in the bustling chaos when he caught sight of a familiar face.

  “What happened?” Reed asked one of the old men he’d seen earlier playing dominoes inside The Dive.

  The man shook his head and ran gnarled fingers through his thinning gray hair before he said, “I just left the bar. Davey had followed me to the door. Halfway to my car—kaboom! And then this...” he bent down over the man who lay deathly still at his feet. “Old Davey, he never hurt no one.”

  Davey’s eyes rolled open and looked up at the people hovering around him. His black eyes rolled unseeing before finally they seemed to focus on Reed.

  The acrid smell choked Tess and she covered her mouth with her hand. Her eyes stung and tears welled, making Reed a glistening presence before her as he knelt down beside the huge, bearded man. Tess bent down with him, her arm looped through his, holding on as though he were the only anchor in a hurricane.

  “Hang on, Davey,” Reed urged. “Help is on the way.”

  The bartender tried to smile, but his expression turned to a hideous grimace when the pain seized him.

  “Who did this, Davey?” Reed asked. “What happened?”

  At first the dying man seemed not to have understood Reed’s question, but suddenly his eyes grew wide and he gasped, “It was...him, mon!” Davey winced, the pain obviously unbearable. “The one I told you about...the one...with the silver eyes.” Davey closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “He...left old Davey...a helluva message on the old jukebox, eh mon?” he muttered with his eyes still closed.

  The look on Reed’s face was murderous when he stood and shoved through the crowd, his grip on Tess’s hand almost painful. She didn’t look back, but she knew instinctively that the ambulance, whose screaming sirens announced its arrival in the parking lot behind the bar, had arrived too late to save Davey.

  A sudden rush of guilt washed over her. “That explosion was meant to kill me, wasn’t it, Reed?” Her heart pounded so loudly in her ears her own voice sounded muffled and distant.

  “I don’t know,” he said, but she knew he did.

  He knew as well as she that the intended victim had escaped the horrible explosion at Davey’s Dive and as they walked across the parking lot toward the Jeep, Tess wondered if Reed felt as battered and shaken as she did.

  His face was set in a stern mask, his emotions held in check by his self-control and reserve, steely and impenetrable. He’d always reacted that way to pain—blocking it out, holding back. She remembered the times he’d shown up at her door, his lip split and his face bruised from a beating he’d endured at the hands of his father. His expressions of cold rage on those nights so long ago had etched the lines she saw slashed across his face tonight.

  If he noticed her staring at him, he didn’t show it, but merely opened her door and walked around to his side of the Jeep and got in behind the wheel.

  A police car roared into the parking lot behind a fire truck, the screeching siren chilling, and the revolving red and white lights stark against the velvet night.

  “Close your door,” Reed ordered. “We’re getting out of here.”

  Tess couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Shouldn’t you at least talk to the police, Reed? Tell them what Davey told you?”

  “There will be plenty of witnesses for the police to question. Now, close the door,” he ordered again, his tone rough and angry.

  She did as she was told, but continued to stare at him as he shoved the key in the ignition and gunned the engine to life. “I don’t understand,” she said as he guided the Jeep quickly out of the parking lot and onto the highway.

  “I know you don’t,” he said. “But right now, I’d appreciate it if you could just ride this out and try to trust me, for once.”

  “Trust you,” she murmured, shaking her head. If he only knew how badly she wished she could, how badly she needed to be able to lean on him, to count on him to help her through this nightmare. “I want to trust you, Reed. And I am trying. But with everything that’s happened and now, with that man back there...dying... Why, Reed? Why didn’t you stay and tell the police what you knew? You believe this is all related to Selena’s kidnapping, right? Then why didn’t you stay and try to work with the police? I can’t imagine a fellow cop not wanting to help the authorities, even in a different country. I just don’t get it, Reed.” She felt helpless, unable to arrive at a logical explanation. “I want to understand. But to watch you running away like this—well, I just don’t know what to believe anymore.” When words failed her, she pleaded with her eyes for his understanding.

  When he whipped the wheel to the right and pulled off the road, Tess was jolted against the dash. When he cut the engine and turned off the lights, she realized she was holding her breath.

  By the intermittent light of passing traffic, she saw him studying his hands where they overlapped on the steering wheel. Finally he sighed and turned to her and reached over and touched a strand of hair that had fallen across her face. At his touch, Tess trembled.

  “Better put your jacket on,” he said with a husky tenderness so filled with caring it caused a burning lump to swell in Tess’s throat. He stared at her, his eyes never leaving hers as she slipped into her jacket.

  Against all common sense, but at the desperate bidding of her heart, she touched his face, letting her fingers trace the firm contour of his jaw before coming to rest against his lips. “Sometimes I think it’s you who doesn’t know how to trust, McKenna.”

  His hand came up to cover hers where it rested on his cheek. Taking both her hands in his, he said, “Listen, Tess, I know you have questions, and I can’t answer them all. Not now, anyway. I can’t explain everything that’s happened or what may happen in the next few hours. There are things...circumstances
...that don’t involve you, things I can’t explain right now. Hopefully we’ll be able to nab the bastards that tried to kill you tonight. And then we can both get on with the rest of our lives. But for now, you’ll just have to take my word that I’m doing everything in my power to bring Selena back safely.”

  She sensed that making such a declaration cost him dearly and although she still felt a long way from satisfied with his answers, Tess knew that for the moment it would have to be enough.

  Without her mind’s permission, her heart answered, “All right, Reed. I want to believe you. I’ll try to be patient. But it won’t be easy. I’m so afraid they’ll hurt her.”

  He leaned across the darkness and pulled her into his arms, bringing the tears she was holding back close to spilling.

  This is insanity, an inner voice warned, even as she leaned into his embrace. Didn’t she have enough problems right now without tempting fate by falling in love again with Reed McKenna?

  Trust him, he’d said. Believe him. But how could she believe a man who could drop out of her life without so much as a phone call? Who could betray her with her own sister and then leave town? Even as all the old tapes played over in her mind, Tess gave in to the temptation that drew her to him, that compelling chemistry that refused to be denied by old memories and old heartaches.

  He lowered his face and she tipped hers up to meet his. He kissed her—a long, slow tantalizing kiss that kindled a startling blaze of desire inside her. With his lips he begged her to forget the past and ignore the future. Only the present mattered, her heart cried.

  When a flash of headlights from an oncoming car illuminated the inside of the Jeep, Reed dragged his lips reluctantly from hers. “You could make a man forget himself, Tessa.”

  * * *

  WHEN THEY PULLED UP in front of the hotel, the lobby was nearly deserted. “Go up to the room,” he said. “And be sure you lock the door behind you.”

  Reaching into the front pocket of his jeans, he handed her the dead bolt key. “I’ve got something to check out and then I’ll be right up and we’ll decide where to go from here.”

  A niggling fear that he would run out on her again nagged at the back of her mind, but she ignored it. “I’m too tired to argue,” she said wearily. “I don’t know why, but I can’t help but think things might look better after a shower.” The smell of smoke clung to her skin, a constant reminder of her brush with death.

  “Good idea,” he said. “But don’t get too comfortable,” he warned, his voice low. “We’re checking out tonight, so pack up and be ready to roll when I get back.”

  “Checking out?” Her voice was incredulous, and she grabbed his arm and pulled him to the corner of the lobby out of earshot of anyone who might be passing. “Do you think that’s smart? When Morrell’s men discover that I survived that explosion, they’ll try to contact me again.”

  “And you want to be waiting for them to take another shot?”

  She glared at him. Was this his idea of working together? “Of course not. But if they try to reach me, to offer a deal, an exchange of some kind for Selena...”

  He shook his head. “It’s gone way beyond that now, Tess. As you just reminded us both, they tried to kill you tonight,” he said quietly. “And I don’t have any intention of letting them have another chance. The ball’s in our court now.”

  His comments did more to scare than reassure her, but she nodded and headed toward the stairs.

  “Get packed,” he said before leaving her. “I want to be on the road before midnight.”

  Numbly, Tess climbed the stairs. On the landing she stopped and looked back to see Reed talking to the clerk behind the front desk. Every instinct told her to watch him, to follow him, to be sure he wasn’t running out on her. The old battle between common sense and her need to trust him raged inside her as she made her way to their room.

  Reed dialed Gertie and Jake’s room first, knowing he’d be waking them and regretting again the position he’d put them in by asking for their help and bringing them to Grand Cayman.

  Jake answered and Reed knew he’d been sleeping. “Hello, sonny,” Jake’s greeting was characteristically upbeat, despite the hour.

  “How’s it going up there, Jake?”

  “So far, so good. Gertie and I are having the time of our lives and that little girl couldn’t be happier. No problems here, son.”

  Jake had started calling him “son” from that first night when Reed had showed up at their café on the interstate to apply for the dishwashing job advertised in the window. He’d been thirteen then, filled with a defiant spirit that his old man had not yet beaten out of him.

  “I’m checking out, Jake,” he murmured into the phone. “Things are heating up. I’ll be in touch to let you know where I am and if you and Gertie need to move.”

  “All right, Reed. You go on and don’t you worry about us. We’re hanging in just fine.”

  Jake’s easy manner was reassuring. Reed’s father would have been about Jake’s age, had he not managed to kill himself with the bottle before he’d hit fifty-five. But age was the only similarity between Jake Patterson and Reed McKenna, Sr., Reed reminded himself.

  “I can’t thank you and Gertie enough—” Reed began, a sudden rush of emotion crowding his heart.

  “Aw, go on, now, son. You know we’re glad to help out. And this little girl, why, she’s no trouble at all. Hang on a second—” Reed heard Gertie saying something in the background, but he couldn’t make out the words.

  In a moment Jake was back on the line. “Gertie says to tell you we’re having the time of our lives. First vacation we ever had away from the café, you know. You making that last bank payment sure took the pressure off.”

  “Yeah, well,” Reed stammered. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re doing all right. You guys just take care, keep your eyes open. Remember if you smell anything suspicious, you take those tickets I gave you and put Gertie and the kid on the plane and don’t look back until your feet are on Colorado soil.” Before he’d left D.C., Reed had made financial arrangements that would take care of Crissy if the worst happened.

  “I’ll be in touch, Jake. Tomorrow or the next day. This thing is coming to a head real fast. In no time we’ll all be breathing easy again.”

  “Don’t worry about a thing,” Jake said as they both prepared to hang up. “Oh—wait a minute. Gertie has something else to say.”

  Reed smiled to himself; Gertie always had something else to say. The rustling on the line signaled the phone changing hands.

  “Hello, son,” Gertie breathed into the receiver. “Say, the old man and me, we got us a bet. I say that pretty little gal we saw you with in the hallway is the one you almost married. He says she ain’t. Now go ahead, tell me I’m right.”

  Reed shook his head, picturing Gertie’s satisfied grin. “As always, Gertie, you’re right as rain.”

  “See there,” she said to the men on each end of the line. “Now, listen, son, you best grab hold of that little gal again. She’s a good one, old Gertie can always tell. The only thing worse than a mistake is making it twice, you hear?”

  “Yeah, I hear you, Gertie. Now, you two go back to bed. I’m sorry I woke you.”

  Reed hung up the phone mulling the simple wisdom of Gertie’s remarks. How easy life would be if everything were only that straightforward. With a sigh, he picked up the phone again and punched in Charlie Franklin’s number.

  “You got something against letting me sleep, McKenna?” Charlie grumbled after he’d picked up the phone on the third ring.

  Reed glanced at his watch to see that it was almost eleven-thirty. He was tired, stressed out and completely shaken that someone had tried to murder Tess. In short, he wasn’t in the mood for apologies.

  “Just tell me what you found out about Talbot, Charlie. Why’s he here? Who sent him?”

  “Whoa, hang on, Mac. First things first. Are you sure it was Talbot you saw?”

  Charlie’s question set an alarm screami
ng inside Reed’s mind. “Of course I’m sure,” he snapped. “What’s the problem, Charlie?”

  “The problem is, no one sent Talbot to Grand Cayman. So either you didn’t see who you thought you saw or the guy’s there on his own. If that’s the case, nobody here can figure out why.”

  Reed closed his eyes and saw the explosion at Davey’s. “Are you sure, Charlie? Who did you talk to?”

  “Everyone but Talbot himself. Seems he’s on leave. When I got nothing but blank stares from Talbot’s own department, I went to the top.”

  Reed knew Charlie could be like a bloodhound when it came to tracking down a loose end. “So what do you think, Charlie? Is there something going on that I should know about?”

  “As far as I can tell, nobody’s jerking you around on this end, Mac. They don’t have the inclination or the time. Morrell’s lawyers have asked for the trial date to be moved up a week and it looks like the judge is going to grant them the motion. It’s not looking good for the good guys,” Charlie warned. “We need that bookkeeper’s testimony or Morrell’s going to walk, and if he does, heads will roll at the department.”

  Reed ignored that dire prediction and posed the question that had been burning in his mind since the explosion on the beach outside of Georgetown. “Charlie, do you think it’s possible that Talbot could have been bought by Morrell?”

  He heard the veteran cop release a long tired breath before answering. “I suppose anything’s possible, Mac, but it doesn’t seem likely. Talbot came from money, didn’t he? Fancy college, first in his class?”

  “Yeah, Harvard, I think.” But who could say what motivated a cop to go bad, Reed finished to himself.

  “Yeah, well, if you find him, you tell him there are some folks in D.C. who have some serious questions to ask him, you know what I mean, Mac?”

  But the phone had already gone dead and Reed McKenna was busy preparing his own list of questions for the elusive federal agent.