by Kay Hooper
Devon gave her an odd look. “You were ready to think I was the man; hasn’t it occurred to you that several other people entered your life at the same time you met me? People who are also involved in the play, who know where you are every night, where your car’s parked.”
After a long moment she said, “You think it’s Luke.”
“I think it could be.”
Lara tried a laugh that didn’t quite come off. “But he’s funny, charming. He’s not a killer.”
“Honey, the most charming man I ever met was an international assassin.”
“I just can’t believe it.”
He drew a short breath, then said softly, “He told you I was watching this building yesterday at dawn.”
“Yes.”
“How did he know it was your building?”
Chapter 6
Lara didn’t want to believe it. She liked Luke, and facing the possibility that he could be trying to kill her was both difficult and chilling. “Nick has my address. Luke could have asked him about it.”
“Yes. He could have. He’s been interested in you from the first night.” Devon sighed. “Maybe it’s that innocent. And maybe he’s just a talented carpenter moonlighting at a community theater.”
“But?” she prompted, knowing there was more.
Devon was trying to keep his mind on business, and it wasn’t easy. Despite the deadly situation surrounding Lara, memories of holding her in his arms kept distracting him as if it had been days instead of only hours since he had held her. It was an unexpected reaction, and his realization that their lovemaking had only added fuel to an already raging fire was more than a little unnerving.
That had never happened to him before. He wrenched his mind back to the most vital subject, refusing himself the luxury of exploring his own confusion.
“But. He’s new in town and staying at a hotel. His regular job is a recent one, and the builder who hired him knows nothing about him except that he’s skilled in the work. He doesn’t seem to have a past, at least none that we could find; the car he drives is registered in his name, but the address is a post office box in California.”
“California? He said that he was something of a gypsy at the moment.” Lara shook her head. “But he is a skilled carpenter; would an assassin be able to fake that?”
“Who says he’d have to? Maybe it’s his hobby. It isn’t that unlikely. Lara, many paid killers lead perfectly normal lives most of the time. They command a high wage and often accept no more than three or four assignments in any given year. Some collect art or run legitimate businesses. As a general rule, the only traits assassins must have are the ability to consider murder just a job to be done and the detachment to do the job.”
Devon watched her intently, wishing that he could insulate her from some realities that most people were never aware of. But he couldn’t. She had to know for her own protection. He watched the acceptance of hard realities show on her delicate face, and it hurt him that she had to consider the motives and abilities of paid killers.
Lara shivered.
“Sorry, but you need to know.” He forced a smile and held his voice steady. “Killers aren’t all steely-eyed machines, or monsters with hate burning inside. You’ve probably passed a few on the streets with no more than a glance.”
She was silent for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. Accepting the possibility that it could be Luke—has he guessed who you are, or was his warning just meant to keep any man from becoming inconveniently involved with me?”
“Good question.” Devon frowned slightly. “If he is the one, we have to assume he’s on to me—just to play it safe. But at the same time, I can’t understand why he’d warn you if he thinks I’m an agent; there was every chance you’d tell me about the warning, and that would focus my attention on him—and it did, even though I was suspicious before. Suspicious but more than a little surprised. I didn’t expect the cartel’s man to be directly on the scene with you, not at first.”
“Why not?”
“Because it breaks the usual pattern.” He hesitated, then said carefully, “Assassins don’t generally get close to their potential victims, and we have to assume he’s just that. Men who’d be involved in something like the cartel would see a threat—and eliminate it immediately. They’d send someone to get rid of the threat and not waste time with scare tactics.”
“But they did this time.” Lara tried to think it through. “So they must be very sure that evidence against them did exist, and at least reasonably sure that I know something. They sent someone to try for the information, at least as a first step. But why didn’t they just—” She swallowed, unable to complete the chilling thought.
She didn’t have to. Devon reached for her hand and held it gently. He didn’t complete her question, but he did answer it in a quiet voice.
“They could have had you kidnapped, but that kind of action always leaves a trail, especially when the victim is in the witness protection program and under at least periodic observation. And they couldn’t count on making you talk, no matter what methods they used; there’s no such thing as a foolproof way to get information. It’s been months, and they know you haven’t talked to us or we would have moved against them. They must figure that either you have a very good reason for keeping quiet—and they may be afraid of blackmail—or you quite honestly don’t know that you know something.”
“Then why try to make me panic?”
“Self-preservation,” Devon answered promptly. “On your part, I mean, as well as theirs. They’re using a method least risky to them in the event that you know nothing, and a method that could very well work. Lara, the human mind is an amazing thing. Mental blocks exist because of pain or shock or an unwillingness to face something, but let the mind realize that a block is endangering you, and the chances are good that the walls will come down in a hurry.”
She stared at him. “It hasn’t worked.”
“That’s why I don’t think it’s a block.”
“You believe it’s something I didn’t notice at the time.”
“Right. If you’d either deliberately or unconsciously blocked something out, I think you would have known it by now.”
“Do you think they realize that?”
“Whether or not they do, I believe they’re too uneasy about your father’s evidence to take the chance of removing you without making certain. Think about it, Lara. Suppose the cartel believes you’re staying quiet for your own safety. If you did indeed have that evidence, it’d be a damned good insurance policy.”
“You mean, I’d think they wouldn’t bother me so long as I had something to hold over them? Something to bargain with?”
“Exactly.”
Lara was silent for a moment, allowing that idea to reach a logical conclusion. “Then we have to use that.”
Devon knew what she meant, she could see it in his eyes, but he asked anyway. “Use it how?”
It was her love and understanding of Devon rather than thoughts of herself that made Lara consider her next words carefully before speaking. She knew, without a single doubt, that despite his training and responsibilities, Devon wouldn’t hesitate to whisk her away the instant he believed she was in real danger. She also knew that this situation was tearing at him, that the conflict between man and agent was as strong as ever and as unresolved.
The agent was working on an assignment and had the duty as well as the desire to gather evidence against a very dangerous group of criminals; the man was involved with a woman who was, in all innocence, a linchpin in that situation and terribly vulnerable because of it.
Devon knew there had to be an ending to the deadlock between the bureau, the cartel, and her, and yet the only means of breaking that deadlock endangered her. Whether he loved her or not, the bond between them was very real, and he was hurting because the agent had been taught to use every tool available—and the man couldn’t use her.
He hadn’t wanted to use her as bait even in the beginning, when
she was a stranger to him, and he was determined not to now. He very obviously intended to help her to “relive” the night her father had died, primarily in order to avoid using her as bait. The problem was that Lara was convinced she knew nothing that would help him.
And where did that leave them? If Devon was forced to make the decision to use her as a lure to get evidence against the cartel, it could destroy him. She felt that with a certainty that wouldn’t be denied. Yet if he decided against using her, and chose to get her safely away into another life, that also could destroy him. Because Devon knew all about the pain of being imprisoned with no roots and a strange identity, and the burden of being the one to lock her into another prison might well be the one burden he wouldn’t be able to bear.
Lara drew a deep breath and spoke carefully. “What we need is more time. Time to find out if I really do know more than I think I do about that evidence. Time to figure out a way to end this. Right?”
Devon’s face was still, but his eyes were haunted. He had at least a good idea what she was going to suggest. “Yes.”
She wanted suddenly to throw her arms around him and hold him, wanted to drive away the shadows in his eyes. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t. What she was about to suggest would undoubtedly add more shadows. And she had no choice.
“Then we have to stall,” she said. “We have to make the cartel believe that killing me wouldn’t help them.” She forced all the calm she could command into her voice. “So they have to think that I do have the evidence, and that I’m using it as an insurance policy.”
“I’m sorry I brought it up. Even if we could make them believe that, it’s too dangerous,” Devon said immediately. Tightly.
“It will give us time. They’ll have to rethink their options, decide how much they’re willing to risk.” She drew another breath. “Devon, I’m not running this time. I won’t let anyone hide me away again. I can’t be hidden if I don’t want to be. So unless you’re prepared to put me in a real prison with real bars, you’d better accept that.”
“Dammit,” he said almost inaudibly.
Lara hurt inside, but she wasn’t willing to back down. This had to be her decision, for both their sakes. She could only hope she was able to make him see and understand why it was so important. “Besides that, what if I don’t remember anything helpful? In that case, the only way to get at the cartel is to make them deal with me.”
“They won’t,” Devon said roughly. “Their man knows I’m on to him, we have to assume that. And we have to assume they believe you’ve kept any knowledge about the evidence to yourself; otherwise the bureau would have moved against them by now. They’ll decide very quickly to get you out of the way.”
“Not if we make sure they believe that my death wouldn’t stop the evidence from coming to light,” she said.
Devon moved slightly, almost unconsciously, as if his whole body rejected the word “death.” “How do we do that? Take out an ad in the classifieds warning the cartel that you’ve left the evidence with some nameless third party with instructions to reveal it if anything happens to you? Dammit, Lara, that’s right out of a grade B movie!”
She smiled a little. “Yes, it is, isn’t it? But I’m not a pro, Devon. I’m an amateur. A very scared amateur. All I know about the so-called underworld is what I see on television and read in novels. And from those examples, I know that any smart person with damaging evidence always protects himself that way.”
He stared at her. “Are you seriously suggesting that you run an ad in the newspapers?”
“Why not?”
Drawing a deep breath, Devon spoke with careful restraint. “Which newspapers? And just what do you plan to say?”
Lara refused to let his obviously forced skepticism rattle her; she knew where it was coming from. “Since I’d have to be an idiot not to have realized somebody’s after me right here in Pinewood, I’ll run it in the town daily. And then—”
“Assuming a hired killer would take the time to read the newspaper?”
“He will if he knows I went to the newspaper office. And I would assume it was only logical that he was following me, wouldn’t I?”
More or less cornered on that point, Devon visibly gritted his teeth. “And then?”
“The New York and D.C. papers; Dad and I lived just outside Washington.”
That was too rational for Devon to protest; the New York papers tended to monitor the pulse of the entire country, and D.C. was close enough to home ground to be reasonable. Before he could find an objection somewhere, Lara went on in the same calm, reflective voice.
“As to what I should say in the ads, I’m not quite sure. Something to catch their attention, certainly. They’ll have to believe that I know I’m being stalked, and that I’ve protected myself by leaving the evidence with someone they couldn’t possibly know about.”
“Lara—”
Frowning thoughtfully, she interrupted. “And we’ll have to get you innocently out of the way when I place the ads, or the cartel’s man will think you know what I’m doing. Even if he’s not sure you’re an agent, he’ll smell a trap. It has to look like you’re still trying to get information from me and I’m not giving any. Or that you’re definitely not an agent. Damn. This is getting hideously complicated. I’ll bet he knows you spent the night here.”
Devon swore under his breath, being quite creative, and then said somewhat fiercely, “Even if they get the message and don’t smell a trap, what d’you think they’ll do, Lara? Turn tail and run?”
Gently, she said, “No. I think that eventually they’ll try to grab me.”
After a long and tense moment, he said, “I won’t let you do it. There has to be another way.”
“There isn’t, and you know it.” She lifted her free hand to touch his taut cheek. “Devon, you said yourself that there couldn’t be any talk of futures until this is over. I don’t even have a future, not with this hanging over me. It has to be resolved, one way or another. I want the men who stole secrets and killed my father punished, and I want to be free to live my life as I choose to live it. Not in a prison of any kind, not under a threat—and not in limbo. I won’t be satisfied with anything less, no matter what the risk.”
Devon almost yanked her into his arms, pulling her across his lap and holding her tightly. In a voice with all the feeling squeezed out of it, he said, “Don’t you understand that I can’t keep you safe here if they really go after you? No matter how many people are with you and watching you, if they try hard enough to get at you, they can. Somehow.”
“I know that.” Lara smiled up at him, using every ounce of her willpower to ignore the strong thighs beneath her. But even now, with the tautness of other emotions between them, she was conscious of a desire so powerful, the sound of it ached to escape her throat. She held her voice steady. “But if we play this just right, we can trap the man they sent after me before they’ve made up their minds to grab me.”
Still holding her, he winced slightly. And there was even a flash of reluctant humor and unwilling admiration in his burdened eyes. “Dammit, what’ve you got in mind?”
Lara forced herself to concentrate. She was still putting the plan together mentally, but she didn’t intend to tell Devon that. “Well, it’s going to be very complicated—”
“So I guessed. In case it didn’t occur to you, I’ve read your file. I know what your IQ is. Any plan you come up with is bound to be complicated.”
“My father was generous with his genes,” was her only comment on that.
“Something the cartel is certainly aware of. So don’t think you can play dumb with them,” he warned.
“That’s not what I had in mind.” She was relieved that he had decided to hear her out. Not that she expected him to like what she was planning, but he was too intelligent himself not to realize eventually that it was the only way. At least she hoped so.
“What do you have in mind?”
“First, we agree that the cartel believes there
’s a chance I’ll panic?”
“It certainly looks that way.”
“All right. Then suppose I make it fairly obvious to the cartel’s watching man that the ads in the newspapers are partly a bluff. That I do know where the evidence is, but haven’t safeguarded it by giving it to anyone else, mainly because I never got the chance. I’ve been more or less in protective custody since that night, remember. But I’ve kept quiet about the evidence because I’ve thought I might need to use it. Now the cartel has found me, and I’m scared. In that case, I might well use the evidence as a bluff, but I’d very quickly try to safeguard myself.”
He frowned a little. “By getting word to someone?”
“No. By going back to the house outside D.C. and getting the evidence myself.” The house had been closed up, but it was still hers. The FBI had been fairly confident they would find evidence against the cartel quickly, so they had allowed that; she had promised not to go near the place until she was told it was safe to resume her real identity. And despite the tragedy that had happened there, Lara had wanted a place to return to, a place that was a part of her past.
“They searched the house,” Devon objected. “So did we—and very thoroughly.”
“But they can’t be absolutely positive the evidence isn’t there, hidden in a place no one would find.”
Devon saw the point and obviously wasn’t happy about it. “And what would I be doing while you drive off to D.C.? If the cartel’s man knows who I am—”
“How good is your cover?” she interrupted.
“The seams won’t show unless he can dig a hell of a lot deeper than I think he can. But if he already suspects me, he won’t risk believing I’m just an innocent bystander.”
“Then we’ll have to distract him. The cartel can’t know the bureau was tipped that I was in danger, and even if their man suspects you, he has to be wondering why I haven’t been spirited away by now.”
“He could guess I’m undercover.”
“Yes, and after what he told me last night—assuming it’s Luke—he’d expect me to guess as well. He’d expect me to think either that you’re FBI or that you’re the one who’s after me.”