by M. Malone
His omission might be coming back to bite him in the ass now.
He had taken her to a closet and told her to stay quiet. And she’d been so terrified she did exactly as he asked. He wasn’t sure why he’d left her off the report. The Feds and Interpol would’ve hardly expected him to harm a civilian.
The CIA was a different game. They were almost as brutal as ORUS. So he’d stayed silent about her presence there.
“Interpol has issued a red notice for the Vandergraffs. They’re implicated in a massive human trafficking operation that covers most of Western Europe. Of course, they’ve been on several countries’ radar for decades now, as I’m sure you’re aware, but they were always very careful to keep their tracks clear.”
Rafe ignored the look she sent his way when she said as I’m sure you’re aware since she’d obviously seen the files relating to their previous operation in Austria. Having been deep undercover with ORUS at the time, his files at the FBI wouldn’t have revealed that he was the one responsible for the hit on Dieter Vandergraff, but he figured she could guess. She seemed like the type to read between the lines. Exactly what he didn’t need.
“So they’re here. In New York?”
“Yes, so we all need to be on alert. Likely they’re not here for vacation. They want something.” Alan finally pushed away from the wall and walked closer. Although he’d included them both when he spoke, Rafe was pretty certain the message was for him.
“You think they know we’re working on a case against them?”
Alan nodded. “No doubt they’re building up their contacts here in North America because they’re on the radar of law enforcement agencies in so many countries in Europe. With their contacts, they could easily take up new identities in the States and start an entirely new criminal enterprise here. They just need funds and to partner with the right organization. They appear to be having financial problems.”
That took Rafe by surprise. The Vandergraffs had always been a different level of wealthy. He whistled. He couldn’t imagine blowing through that kind of money in ten lifetimes. “What do you think prompted the sudden move? Surely they could have found ways to make money in Europe.”
Emilie smiled at him. “Perceptive. They’re after the Jewel of the Sea.”
Rafe frowned. “Am I supposed to know what that is?”
She slipped a photo over to him of a brilliant diamond. “This is the Jewel of the Sea. It’s worth over $25 million now. It’s a Vandergraff family heirloom from their mother. She was some kind of countess or something. She came from an old family name without much liquid wealth but with a title and lands and all that jazz. That diamond is passed on from mother to daughter. It vanished right around the time of Dieter Vandergraff’s death.”
And there it was—the tickle along the nape of his neck that told him all was not right with his fucked-up world. Rafe kept his voice even. “So, what do you want from me?”
“Everything you have on them. Comb your old files. If these two are here, it’s problematic for all of us.”
He gave her a sharp nod. “I’ll look through what I have and give ORUS a call. Most of the files you’re after would have been under the old leadership and not available to us. But I’ll ask.” For now he’d leave out that he had access to those files.
She gave him a smile that was all teeth. She didn’t trust him. Well, that goes both ways, sister.
“You do that. Before you go though, are you sure you were entirely forthcoming about that night you were there?”
So it was like that? Good thing he’d been trained to do nothing but lie. After all, survival depended on it. “Absolutely. You know what I know.”
She nodded. “Okay then, I’d love to take a look at whatever files you can dig up. You know, fresh eyes and all that.”
The hell he’d give her ORUS files without redacting them first. Interpol had been less than successful trying to get in with ORUS. Since the new leader was currently an ally of sorts, he sure as shit wasn’t giving Emilie Durand her in. “Of course. If we’re done, I’m out.”
She slid her glance over him again. “I understand that you’re pseudo retired. Care to share what you’re up to these days?”
He grinned. “Nope.” Turning his attention back to Alan, he nodded. “I’ll get you what you need.”
Rafe took the same underground pass he usually took, then went through a series of checkpoints that led to the exit. From there, he deliberately took over an hour to get home. Just to make sure he wasn’t tailed. Before he’d ‘come back from the dead,’ he’d been stationed in Philly. But after his miraculous resurrection, he’d moved back to New York to be closer to Lulu.
And somehow he’d ended up with more family than he’d had in six long years. Granted, they might not all think of him as family. You try to kill some guys one time… and they held it against you.
He knew the drill. To most of the world, Rafe DeMarco was dead. If he didn’t want to resurrect that ghost just yet, he still had to be careful. If the Vandergraffs were kicking up a fuss again, his old life might be coming back to haunt him.
On McMillan, the winding two-lane road he often used as an alternate route home, he saw taillights glowing in a ravine and frowned. What the hell?
He liked this route. It was an old access road that let him bypass the freeway. Technically it was only meant for government and Parks and Recreation access, but Noah had ways of bypassing pesky access rules.
The weather hadn’t given way to spring yet, and as there weren’t very many streetlights, the road was often dark and desolate. And with the added benefit of the rain that had started an hour ago, it was eerie.
He reached the embankment where the light shone brightest and stopped his car. Fuck balls, someone had gone over. “Hello? Is anyone down there?”
There was a faint rustling, and Rafe strained to hear better. Then he heard what he was looking for.
“Help.”
Shit. “Are you hurt?” He couldn’t see a fucking thing thanks to the rain. He could see the steam rising up from somewhere down off the embankment, but very little else. All he heard was that voice.
“I’m hurt, but I can walk. I climbed out of the car.”
“Visibility is shit right now, so I need you to move closer to the lights. I’m coming down for you.”
There was a pause of silence. “Don’t be ridiculous. Just call for help or something. You come down here and we’ll both be stuck trying to climb up a mudslide.”
Rafe’s lips twitched. “Have a little faith, would you?”
“I have plenty of faith in AAA. The fire department even. Not some random wannabe hero.”
Even with the rain dripping into his face and the cold air puffing out of his lungs, he had to stifle a laugh. “Listen, lady, you want to stay down there longer than you have to? It’s cool. I’ll call the fire department, and we’ll wait the extra twenty minutes it will take them to get out here. Or I can come and get you now, and by the time they get here, you’ll already be safe. Then it will just be a rescue mission for your car. I mean, it’s cold and rainy, but it’s really up to you.”
There was another beat of silence. And then her voice came again, this time sounding as if she spoke through clenched teeth. “Okay, fine.”
“See, I knew you could be reasonable. Give me one minute.”
Rafe couldn’t be sure, but he was pretty certain he heard her say, “You better know what you’re doing.”
He ran back to the driver’s side and pulled his car up several feet, then threw it into park and engaged the hand brake. Next he ran to his trunk and pulled out his rappelling gear. He had his harness on in seconds. He just hoped she didn’t ask too many questions about why the hell he had rappelling gear. What would he say to that? Oh, you know, I just like to do a little building scaling on the weekends. And this was why he could never have a normal life.
Once he had the harness on, he dropped the rope as close to the lights as possible. When he was secured in, h
e steadied himself on the ledge and stepped backward. Then, foot by foot, he dropped gently, calling out to the woman down below. She was right; the mud was slippery as hell. When he reached her, she was only a few feet up from where the car was. She wore only a thin dress, and her feet were bare.
Shit. She was lucky she didn’t have hypothermia. “Hi. I’m Rafe. I’m going to help you out of here.”
Even wet, shivering, and resembling a tiny drowned animal, she was beautiful. Those dark eyes of hers bore into him as she stared at him. “You were serious about coming down for me?”
Rafe rolled his eyes. “You know, as rescue-ees go, you are a tad ungrateful.” Rafe had the harness around her in seconds and wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her close. He inhaled for a moment and caught a whiff of vanilla.
So not the right time to realize she was cute and smelled amazing. Focus, man.
Her lips twitched as she met his gaze. “Oh, I’m grateful. I just think you’re crazy. You better have a whole army up there ready to pull us up. Because this mud—”
“Do you always talk this much?”
She opened her mouth, very likely to give him some kind of scathing retort, but then he pressed the electronic switch on his rope ascender and they were zooming up. Definitely not as fast as the system was capable of, given his weight and his rough approximation of hers, but it would do. He had to physically pull them up the last couple of feet, but she helped, mostly by not getting in the way and just clinging to him tightly.
Once they were on solid ground, she still clung to him and Rafe let her. For several beats they stood like that, with her wrapped around him and him encasing her in his arms, giving her some of his warmth.
But then she pulled back. And that mouth of hers started again. “So, are we going to talk about why you have burglary equipment handy?”
Despite himself, he laughed. “So, this is you being grateful? And for your information, I’m a rappeller. It’s a sport.” It was the best he could do in a pinch.
“This is me making sure I haven’t been rescued by a serial killer.”
Rafe rolled his eyes. “I promise you, I’m not Dexter. Why don’t you sit in the car and warm up while we wait for an ambulance to come and check you out.”
Her eyes went wide. “I’m fine. I don’t need an ambulance. Just point me in the direction of downtown, and I have it from here.”
“Are you crazy? It’s miles to Manhattan.”
She squared her shoulders. “So? I’m strong. Thank you very much for your rescue or whatever. But I can take it from here.”
Rafe stared down at her. She was tiny. At least compared to him. “You’re insane if you think I’m going to let you walk. And have you not noticed that you’re barefoot?”
She looked at her feet and wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m fine. I don’t need your help. I’ll just call an Uber or something.”
Rafe stared at her. “Oh yeah? With what phone?”
She narrowed her gaze at him but stayed silent. When she turned her back on him and started walking in the wrong direction, he fought an inner battle with himself. The fact that she didn’t want medical attention and was insistent on walking away from this told him she was in trouble. And the last thing he needed was trouble in his life.
The problem was, as soon as she was ten feet away from him, he was calling after her. “Hey. Let me give you a ride.”
She turned to face him. “Thank you, Rafe. But I have this.”
He chuckled low. “So, is now a good time to tell you you’re walking in the wrong direction?”
And then he saw it, the telltale quiver of her bottom lip. Shit. She was about to cry. He strode up to her and wrapped her in his arms. There was a reason he kept his life simple. There was a reason he stayed alone. The problem was this girl slid under all his defenses. He knew he shouldn’t take her home. But she clearly needed help. Besides, it wasn’t like he didn’t have the best security in the world. She was one tiny girl. How much damage could she really do?
“Look, something tells me you’re in trouble.”
“I am not in trouble. I just need somewhere to lay low for a while.”
He sighed. “Fair enough. Come with me. Although, if you’re going to crash in my spare room, I should probably know your name.”
She blinked wide, dark eyes up at him. “It’s Diana. Diana Renquist.”
Had it really been that easy?
Granted, considering Diana had dragged herself through mud and had nearly gotten hypothermia from the chilly rain, it hadn’t exactly been easy.
But Rafe had done exactly as predicted. Months of watching him had paid off. And now she was in the den of a killer.
How evil can he be? He stopped to help a total stranger. She shut that shit right down. That was her traitor of a vagina talking.
Of course she knew how good-looking he was. But it was nothing compared to having him wrapped around her as he held her in the harness and lifted them out of the ravine. His scent still lingered on her, sending tingles to parts of her body she refused to think with.
What she hadn’t expected was for him to bring her home… to his house. The plan had been to get him to take her to a hotel, give him the cover story, compel him to come back and check on her, and snare him with her feminine wiles. Whatever the fuck those were. But he’d taken her home.
Who does that? She could be a serial killer for all he knew.
Her rib still hurt like hell. The pain radiated down her side. Every now and again, she’d turn too quickly and send searing pain all the way down to her hip.
She sensed Rafe before he spoke and turned to face him as he entered the bedroom he’d given her.
“You feel better after the shower?”
Diana nodded. “Yes. Thank you. I didn’t realize how cold I was. If I’d thought it through properly, I probably should have grabbed my coat from the car when I scrambled out.” More like she’d tossed it when she heard him coming for her. This is a mistake. No. Desperate times called for desperate measures. He’d killed her father.
“Do you have any idea how fortunate you are? I mean, you could’ve died on impact. Not to mention that I came along when I did on such a desolate stretch of road. You must have one hell of a lucky charm.”
“I’m not really a lucky kind of girl.” She dropped her gaze to her hands. She deliberately didn’t look up at him until he spoke again. She had to work hard to pull off the wary, downtrodden thing. She’d learned a long time ago it was better to meet men’s gazes directly. They were less likely to fuck with you if you did. But this is not you. This was Diana Renquist. She needed to put on that persona like a suit.
He held out a T-shirt and a pair of shorts for her. “These should do for now. I just put your clothes in the wash so you’ll have them for tomorrow at least. In the morning, we’ll figure out what your next steps will be.”
She took the clothes from him. “Thank you for this. I know I was kind of a pain in the ass. I’m just not used to people helping me.”
Rafe nodded, then turned his back. There was an awkward pause before Diana figured out he was giving her some privacy to change, although he didn’t leave the room. Quickly she scrambled into the clothes, hissing slightly as she pulled the shirt down.
He whipped around at the sound, just in time to catch her as she pulled the edge of the T-shirt past her ribs.
His brows dropped into an immediate scowl. “That bruise from the crash?”
She lowered her gaze. That would certainly explain it, but what if he knew about injuries and shit? Would the lie pass muster? And well, if he thought someone did it to her, it would certainly tie in to her cover story.
When she didn’t respond, his voice dropped an octave, but somehow instead of going warm and flowing over her like liquid, it went icy and deadly. “Did someone do that to you?”
Oh, protective are you? Where was this protective instinct with my father? She licked her lips. “It’s not a big deal.”
&
nbsp; “The hell it isn’t. Who did that to you? Is that the reason you were trying to walk to the city?”
She tilted her chin up. “Look, I am grateful. I really am. You’re right. I could have died down in that ravine. But you came along. You did the whole Good Samaritan thing. But not everyone is like you.”
Wasn’t that the truth? Along the way, she’d met better than him. And worse. He was just the asshole at the top of her list.
“There are guys out there who don’t think twice about hitting a woman. Unfortunately, I happened to meet one of those. And he did this.” That much was the truth. What she left out was that she’d gotten in a good groin kick as retaliation. “It won’t be happening again.” Yeah, she’d bet the fucker had learned some control now.
The look in his golden eyes was murderous, and a chill ran over her skin. There he was. The killer she knew he was didn’t linger too far below the surface.
She shivered as she remembered the first night she’d seen him. He’d had the darkest eyes she’d ever seen, almost black. Those vampire eyes had haunted her nightmares for years. Well, now she was about to be the stuff of his nightmares.
But he didn’t hurt you.
Again, she shoved down that voice. Never mind that he looked good enough to lick. Stupid vagina, there’s a reason you’re not consulted on these types of things.
One thing though… she’d always wondered why he’d left her alive. It would have been cleaner to kill her. After all, she’d seen him. Though she hadn’t seen his face. Why had he just left her in a closet when she was so obviously a loose end? She wasn’t supposed to be home that night, but the friend she was meant to stay with had gotten sick. Her brothers had been gone. It had been just her and her father in the study.
That’s what she needed to remember. Despite the fact that he hadn’t hurt her then, despite the fact that he’d rescued her today, Rafe DeMarco was a monster. It was hard to reconcile. At the same time, he looked capable of murder right now.
“Tell me his name,” he said quietly.