Her mouth curled again; she gave a cynical laugh, daring him. “How long have you lived in Australia? How many names have you used in the past few years?”
Shutdown, and showdown. “Beth—”
She glanced at him, eyebrows raised. “Oh, so you do remember my name now. That’s nice. With the amount of times you called me by your girlfriend’s name, I was beginning to wonder if one of us would end up with an identity crisis.”
“Maybe both of us has one now,” he said quietly.
She laughed again, but this time it was softer, sweeter. “Maybe. And maybe we’re fooling ourselves, not each other. Wanting things we can’t have will only drive us both crazy.”
He got out the medical kit, no longer up to a war of words. “You could have left me in the water. I couldn’t have stopped you from getting away.”
She shrugged. “You wouldn’t have left me in the water, if only because your boss wants me alive and whole, either to own me or get me to hand over whatever it is he thinks I have. If you’d been out to kill me, I’d have left you there to die.”
The probable truth of that felt like a sharp knife slitting his skin. He put antibiotic cream over his wound before binding it. He wouldn’t take anything for the pain until the Nighthawks were in sight—anything might put him to sleep in this condition, and if he awoke too groggy to fight her, she might dump him somewhere. When he finished with the wound, he finally answered her. “I’m starting to believe you would.”
A flash of pain crossed her face for a moment, the shadows chasing each other across her skin. Tiredness, angst, fear, uncertainty. And he wished he could take his words back. “I’m sorry,” he said, loud enough to be heard over the noise of the engine. “I won’t hurt you, Beth.”
“You bet you won’t. Like I told you, McCall, you won’t get the chance to be close enough.” Without conscious effort, she turned the plane toward the southwest.
Exhausted, wound throbbing and frustrated by her constant deflection of anything he said—perhaps because it reminded him too forcefully of himself since he’d become a Nighthawk, or maybe years before—he snapped, “You’re too cynical.”
Another shrug. “Cynicism is a safe bolt-hole when you’re too scared to take risks. Naiveté—or trust—can get you killed when you have a man like Danny’s father on your trail.”
He had to shatter the cynical defenses she used somehow, or he’d keep bashing his head against the fortress of her secrets. “Say his name, Beth. We both know what it is.”
“Have you got a tape recorder or sound device in a safety-seal bag somewhere to catch it for posterity, or your boss?” she retorted without skipping a beat.
He pulled off his coat, jacket and shirt, awkward and one-handed. “Can I ask where we’re going, at least?”
She flashed a look at him. Her gaze caressed his half-naked body before she turned her head, and shook it in negation. “I don’t know what kind of surveillance equipment you have on you.”
“I could have a tracking device on me. I could already have notified my people of our whereabouts,” he pointed out, almost kicking himself for not wanting to do just that. “My boss is already hot on our trail.”
Her mouth twisted. “I realize that. But I still haven’t figured out which side you’re all on.” She flung up a hand as he opened his mouth. “I know—you’re a knight on a white Jet Ski, and your team is out to save me and my son from ourselves, right? Sorry if I don’t quite put faith in that yet, McCall.” His name was tossed at him like a casual insult.
Brendan, he wanted to yell. My name’s Brendan. You know my name…you called me Brendan when you smiled at me, held my hand, kissed me and touched my body all those years ago. You called me Brendan last night when you touched and kissed me. I’m on the side of the good guys, a Nighthawk sent to save your beautiful neck, and your son’s, from that slime bag Falcone!
What was the point? She wouldn’t believe him. And Anson’s instructions were set in stone. A silent sentinel he was, and had to remain so, even in his own mind, until the tape proving Falcone’s guilt was in Nighthawk hands and she was in safe custody. Anything else put them both, and Danny, in danger.
He didn’t have the strength right now to keep pushing. He had to conserve himself. If he fell asleep she could—
“You’re bleeding through the bandage.”
With an effort he turned his head, but it felt too heavy to go the whole way. “Can’t—awkward, one-handed…”
Through the fog in his mind, he heard her make a savage sound. “Right.” She put the seaplane in autopilot and turned to him. With deft motions, she unwound the lopsided crossover bandage. “You’re dizzy, aren’t you? You’ve gone pale.”
His head fell back against the seat. He hated falling asleep at any time—it indicated a lack of control he refused to show, a deep, dark loneliness he couldn’t stand—but he knew that this time his body was going to force the issue. “Hit—my head on a rock.” Let her do what the heck she wanted with that information.
She inspected the head wound, then the wound on his arm, and made that harsh sound again. “No wonder you’re losing blood—you need at least seven stitches in that. I’ve got ten minutes before I need to change course, so I’ll do what I can.”
He frowned and blinked, trying to make sense of her words. “You can—do that?” He could—it was part of his medic’s and combat/rescue training—but a model?
An odd laugh, almost derisive—or self-mocking—burst from her lips. “Yes, I can, McCall. I did an advanced first-aid course more than once. A woman and child without legal ID—or on the run from someone who has resources to check computer databases—learn how to fend for themselves.”
Yeah, he supposed they did. He gave up the battle with his eyes and closed them. “And you—”
“I wouldn’t dump you in an isolated spot and escape while you’re injured and have a possible concussion, McCall.” She sounded wounded by the implication he’d been about to make. “I do have more morals than that…and I know how much I owe you.”
Her gentle touch on his wound, cleaning the salt from it, preceded the quick jab of a needle. “Local anesthetic. I’ll give you antibiotics when I’m done.”
He was sliding into sleep, his mind as numb as his arm was fast becoming. “Where…?”
“Your curiosity will be the last thing to leave you, McCall.” Her voice now sounded gentle with laughter. “I didn’t steal them. There are places you can get these things, no questions asked.”
Yes…he knew most of them. He’d—he’d have to…Anson…yeah…the pull and tug of the curved suture needle going in and out of his skin was strangely rhythmic, soothing. He felt himself sliding into the first deep sleep he’d had in over a week, trusting that she’d take care of him. Trusting that she’d still be there when he opened his eyes. “Beth…?” he mumbled.
She couldn’t have heard him over the engine, yet she answered. Maybe she’d been watching his mouth? “What?”
He sighed. “Thank you.”
Though he’d never know how later, he felt more than heard her answer. “You’re welcome—damn you, McCall, for making me want to care.” A light hand touched his bandage. “You probably have a light concussion. I’ll wake you every half-hour.”
He nodded. “Thanks,” he mumbled again.
“You’re welcome.”
The last thing he felt was a flutter, as of butterfly wings, across his mouth, so light and fleeting, it felt like part of a dream already forming in his spinning mind.
But he knew, knew. She really had kissed him, kissed him of her own free will. Not a kiss of passion, nor of exasperation, or even of response—it had been a comfort kiss. As though she knew of all his years alone and aching for what he thought he’d never have—and she wanted, by some crazy miracle, to take all that away from him. A kiss better.
Well, what do you know…
And the darkness he fell into this time wasn’t so lonely, as out of control, as it had always
been before.
Chapter 14
H e only slept for an hour before he jerked awake. Instinct, training, he didn’t know; but he never ignored the imperative warning call. He awoke to full awareness of his surroundings, what he was doing, and why. The throbbing head pain had receded to a dull ache, even though she’d shaken him awake twice to ask what day it was. He didn’t have a concussion then; at least not one strong enough to keep him down.
Well, she hadn’t ditched him. A moment’s check of the sun’s position told him how long he’d slept before he checked his watch, and their current direction. They were heading for Auckland, or somewhere nearby.
A soft pulling feeling at his ear made him start. Beth had put a headset on him while he slept, cutting off noise—how had she done that without arousing his fight instinct?—and now she turned on the sound to speak to him. “So Prince Charming awakes too soon. You don’t get enough sleep, McCall.”
“Habit.” He rolled his shoulders, stretched his neck to clear his head. “I can’t ever remember sleeping a full night through.”
“Ever?” She sounded incredulous.
He shrugged. “Not that I can remember.” He’d always slept like a cat, with one eye open. When he was little, looking out that his dad didn’t fall on him in a stupor, or belt him unawares; and later, hoping Mom would come back for him. Hopes and fears so tightly interwoven he no longer knew how to separate the two, and trusted neither. “Just weird, I guess.”
“I suppose so. By the way, McCall, would you consider switching sides for a million dollars? Would you help me get away from your people then?”
The question startled him—shook him to his core. Was it confirmation of who she was…confirmation he was no longer sure he wanted to have? And why did she choose now to say it? Because she wanted that damn distance put back between them? Did she regret a single kiss so much that she had to remind him that he was the operative, she his subject? “How does a single mother get that kind of money? How could someone who lives as modestly as you appear to be able to offer me that kind of bribe?”
With the last word, she flinched. “For my son.” Her voice was flat. “For Danny.” She turned to him, her eyes filled with unshed tears, blazing, pleading in the soft, unfocused light of sunrise. “Don’t make Danny go back to his father. He’d eat my baby alive.”
Hate slammed into his soul. Dear God, gentle, stammering Danny being left to Falcone’s tender mercies. That beautiful, shy little kid would morph into a damn hit man before he turned ten. No wonder she was going out on a cracked and shaking limb here. Any mother would. Well, maybe not his mom, but Beth loved her son. “You don’t care for yourself?” he asked, low. “You know what he’ll do to you if he gets you.”
An equally low sound, like a ripping shudder, tore from her throat. As she turned back to the cockpit, her shaking hands held on to the controls like a lifeline as she dragged in breath after shaking breath. Her face, so pure and lovely, had the faint, creamy-grass hue of a woman about to throw up.
She didn’t have to answer him after that. Those few seconds had been more than eloquent enough.
He hated to push her now, but he had little choice. He had to know where she was coming from—and where she was going. “Is it his money you’re offering, or yours?” Silence greeted the question, and he heard his voice, rough and demanding. “Come on, Beth, you have to trust someone!”
But she’d reestablished control, and confidences, or even pleading, were at an end. Her words were measured. “The only two people I ever trusted with my life—or Danny’s—are dead.”
More words that echoed inside his own soul. A page in his own life history. Hell, they had so much more in common than he’d dreamed…such a sickening, gut-churning shame it was all negative. “How?” She shook her head, and felt a sudden rage, totally out of proportion to the level of need to know in the question. “Tell me, Beth!” he all but yelled, feeling foolish even as he yelled.
She turned back, her eyes blazing. “A chopper’s following us—sent by you—and you’re upset because I don’t give you irrelevant information about a dead man who was in my life? Oh, poor McCall. Shall I just lay myself and Danny down on the ground to play dead for you and your boss while I’m at it?”
He tried to thud a fist against his thigh, but the arm fell back, useless. Damn it, how could he tell her the whole truth? It put his whole career, everything he’d worked for the past ten years, on the line. It compromised the mission, put him and the whole Nighthawk team at risk.
And her telling you could kill her—and Danny. And she loves that kid more than she’ll ever love any man.
“By the way, I haven’t seen your friends yet,” she remarked casually. “Does that mean they’re damn good at their job, or that you, the perfect watchman, fell asleep before you could notify them of our direction?”
Yeah, she’s putting distance between us all right—and it’s deliberate. The only thing he didn’t know was why—why now?
He didn’t ask any more questions. What was the point? The stakes were too high for them both, and their cross-examinations were fruitless, like a pair of roller coasters on a one-railed collision course, slamming against each other in painful carnage but still going nowhere. But he took careful note of the direction, the local landmarks.
Moments later, pretending to look out the window, he took his pager out of its waterproof cover. Pressing the silent option and keeping it well beneath her line of sight, he used his left hand to press the buttons. Injured, request backup, stat. With subject in seaplane, WSW. Alpha 849Y8 Delta. Expect airstrip outside Auckland to collect son. She will leave me behind. Repeat, subject plans escape.
His gut clenched before he pressed send.
Moments later, he got a silent reply. Roger. Five miles back and following. Start tracking device.
He felt sick with betrayal—she hadn’t broken her word to him, and though he’d made no promises, they both knew, understood, the unspoken accord that she hoped for. But still, he pressed the GPS-tracking button on his pager. Even though he knew all he was doing was his dead level best to protect Beth and Danny, he still felt like a traitor of the worst kind.
And with a sinking feeling in the pit of his gut, he knew Beth would never forgive him for what he’d just done.
The Nighthawks’ chopper reached the small airstrip northwest of Auckland before they did; and though Beth half expected it to be there, the betrayal burned right to her gut. “Congratulations, McCall. Your people won the race.” She put no inflection in her tone. “World peace wins over individual rights, and my son and I become collateral damage in your righteous war. I hope you can live with what you’ve done—and what it will do to Danny.”
He unlocked his seat belt. “Where is Danny? I thought Donna would be here by now. Isn’t that what you worked out with your um-and-ah, hand-signing Morse-code communications last night?”
“Damn you, McCall,” she whispered, shaking. “You don’t know what you’ve done. It’s all about you. You and your save-the-world friends don’t care if my son and I live or die.”
He turned on her, the wind-blasted darkness of his soul hitting her from those incredible eyes of his. “Clever, self-reliant Beth, always so sure you’re right. Maybe it’s you who don’t know what you’re doing. You think you’ve outwitted Falcone all these years? You think his only obsession was with you, the perfect Delia? Well, think again, baby—seems like he’s a one-obsession-at-a-time kind of guy. The reason you’ve been left alone all this time was that he had another woman on his mind. He spent five years chasing Verity West, the singer. It seems he was willing to let you keep Danny if he could have her; he talked of having an heir with her. But when Falcone got too close, Miss West recognized that she needed help. She might have been cold, but she wasn’t stupid. She didn’t try to get away from him on her own. She trusted us to help her—and we got her out of danger. Falcone’s only turned back to tracing you and Danny because she married another guy and disappeare
d from public life altogether.”
She felt herself start to shake, in rage, in regret for the contempt she’d engendered in McCall by her deliberate cruelty earlier, but she had to keep him alienated to keep him alive. “And you think his wanting another woman would bother me? The only part of his chasing the poor woman that upsets me is the empathy I feel for her. I’m glad she got away. I just wish he’d turn his obsession onto a woman that wants it. You idiot. You fool. What makes you think you know anything about me?”
He blanked out. Literally. She watched the barriers come up in his eyes so fast she all but felt herself slam into them. “Nothing. Nothing at all.” He opened the passenger door and vaulted out in a smooth movement. Ready for action, despite his injury and little to no sleep the past four days. “You’d better get that evidence on Falcone ready, because you just told me who you are—and this time I did tape it. And my boss will have a search warrant on him, and a female operative ready to search you. Get your bags out, baby. You just blew it. Big-time.”
Beth watched him greet his boss with a nod, and hand over the recording machine, wanting to scream, cry, tear out her hair. Oh, she’d blown it all right. By her callous rejection she’d made McCall, the most fiercely loyal of men, an implacable enemy. She’d sent him back to his first allegiance by throwing his every offer of implicit protection and utter caring back in his face.
But I did it for you, Brendan. I did it for you!
It was too late now. Maybe it had always been. A love as fatal as it was fated, and as impossible to start as it was to end. A love as unforgettable as the eruption of a volcano, and as unforgiving—unrelenting and destructive as seasons out of time. Had she killed it, or was it always going to happen this way?
Dangerous Illusion Page 14