by Brenda Joyce
His mood clearly remained ugly, because his eyes were hard and burning with barely controlled anger.
“Your sweats are falling down, Maclean. Lose your drawstring?”
He walked over to her and stared at the e-mail she was reading, then reached past her to exit his mailbox. “There are laws against what yer doing.” His broad muscular chest heaved.
He caught her staring and she thought she almost flushed. “Gee, no nipple ring?” Sam slowly pushed away from the desk, one hand on her towel. He slammed his hand down on the desk, blocking her from rising.
He looked at her as if finally aware that she was just barely covered up. But he didn’t leer or smile that mocking, sexy smile; he was really angry.
She sank back down into the chair. “Well, you might consider devising a password.”
He seized the edge of the towel. “Are ye happy now?”
She half wished she had put the dress back on. “You found John online by pretending to be a teenage boy. You lured him here so you could kill him.”
“I’m tired of this game. I want sex. Now. Either put out or leave.” He jerked on the towel, but didn’t pull it away from her. “Which will it be, Sam?”
She understood that he was not going to answer her questions, but she barreled on. “This is about what they did to you, right? What happened to you? When you were a child in captivity?”
His eyes widened.
“I know. I was helping Brie find Aidan, remember?”
He breathed hard and harshly again. “Give me what I want or leave,” he snarled.
“So we’re back to the tiger in the cage?” Why was he even more upset?
For one moment, he did not speak. Then he leaned close. “Such a brave, fearless woman! Ye should fear me, Sam. Or have ye forgotten that my grandfather was a demon?”
She knew this was a good time to back off, because she was pretty certain he was going to rip the towel away—not that she couldn’t handle it. Still, he was really furious. “I know your grandfather was Moray—and I also know your power is white, Maclean. I think his bad genes missed. So what are you hiding?”
His eyes widened and then he struck the papers and files from his desk, knocking over the monitor as he did so. Sam leapt to her feet, but he seized her and pulled her close. “The doorbell woke me up. Yer friend is downstairs. I will steal the page, but not tonight. Now get out.” And he pushed her away, hard.
She stumbled, keeping a firm grip on the towel.
He strode past her, like a whirlwind, in fury.
Sam managed not to cry out.
His back was so scarred, it was a mosaic.
SAM WOKE UP, her neck aching. It took her a moment to realize that she was asleep on the sofa in Maclean’s library, clad in the jeans and tank top Kit had brought last night. She sat up, grunting. The room’s only windows faced north, showing the landscaped terraces of a neighboring building. It was bright enough out that she was certain she’d slept more than a couple of hours.
She cursed and got up, stepping into her worn biker boots. Then she hurried from the library, running a hand through her disheveled hair to comb it.
A man was leaving the master suite, but it wasn’t Maclean. She recognized the gray-haired butler she’d met at Loch Awe. “Where’s Maclean?”
“Good morning, madam.” He was cool. “Will you be having breakfast this morning?”
Sam hurried past him into an opulent drawing room. A doorway to her left led to an exercise room with some major weight lifting equipment and cardio machines. Well, that explained the hard, packed body. His bedroom was directly ahead, the walls pale blue, the ceiling ivory, a huge four-poster bed that looked as if it belonged in a historic castle in its midst.
“Lord Maclean’s rooms are private, Miss Rose,” Gerard said. “He made it very clear to me that you are not welcome in his apartments, and that after breakfast, if you cared to dine, I should ask you to leave.”
Sam strode into his bedroom.
So much testosterone filled it she felt confused, off balance. For one moment, she stared at the bed with its darker blue bedspread and pillows, and then she turned. “When did he leave?”
“A few moments ago.” Gerard stared coldly at her.
She might need him as an ally. “I’m sorry about us having gotten off on the wrong foot last spring,” she said.
He did not soften. “It is terribly impolitic to barge into other people’s homes. But it seems to be a habit of yours.”
“Yeah, I need a lesson in good manners.” She laughed. “Has it ever occurred to you that Maclean might need the very same lesson?”
He stiffened, clearly affronted. “His lordship does the best that he can.”
“Gee, so do I.” She’d forgotten Maclean was titled—the baron of Awe.
“There have been exceptional circumstances.” He was not going to budge.
Sam went on alert. “Really? I’d love to hear about them. How long have you been with his lordship?” She hoped she hadn’t been too mocking upon uttering the last word.
“Two decades, and I do not gossip.”
Sam sighed. That was for the best. Maclean had a jump start on her, and she knew where he was going. She patted Gerard’s arm, who flinched as if she’d struck him. “I really don’t bite. Not unless you ask me to. And even then, you have to ask really, really nicely.”
He scowled at her.
SAM DOUBLE-PARKED her black Lexus sedan in front of One Hemmer House, putting a siren on top of the roof. Still in her jeans and biker boots, wearing dark glasses, she got out and went up to the doorman. He was suitably admiring of the tight denim and tiny white tank top. Sam flashed her fake ID at him. “Did Ian Maclean go up?”
“No, ma’am, but I already told your partner that.”
Sam was surprised. Then she glanced into the lobby. MacGregor was seated on a plush beige sofa, reading a newspaper and drinking coffee. He gave her a very speculative look.
What did that mean? Almost taken aback, Sam strode inside without bothering to ask the doorman permission. “What’s your gig?”
“Wow, you’re in another great mood. I guess spending the night with Maclean wasn’t all that great?”
“I’m going to kill Kit.”
MacGregor stood. “Actually, we have the apartment wired, so Kit didn’t give you up.” He had a very male look in his eyes. “You’re so tough on the job, Rose,” he said softly.
She actually flushed. Was he kidding? Maclean’s apartment was wired? They’d been on camera? “Are you on Maclean, now?”
“I think Nick is leaving Maclean to you.” He started smiling.
“You’re almost as much of a jerk as he is.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“Of what? The parade of perfect ass?”
He leaned close. “No one’s ass is as perfect as yours.”
“Don’t I know it.” She walked back out to the street.
“I’m on Hemmer,” he called after her.
Sam ignored him, but she was livid. Nick could have told her he was wiring Maclean’s house. Damn it. They’d probably been eating popcorn and drinking beer at HCU last night—at her expense.
They were all in over their heads. Maclean might not have leapt into the vault yet, but he most definitely could and would leap out with the page and go anywhere he chose, in any time. He’d be almost impossible to find.
She tensed as she acknowledged it. That was why she’d been so determined not to let him out of her sight last night. His absence now was not good news.
She saw Hemmer first, before he saw her. She ducked into her sedan.
He looked like a happy man as he left the building, a paper in one hand, a briefcase in the other. A chauffeur opened the door of a dark sedan and he got inside.
Sam watched as MacGregor leapt into his partner’s gray Toyota, parked just up the block, and cruised after him. “Have fun,” she muttered. “I hope you lose him in the midtown traffic!” It was petty but she was sti
ll seething over being on videotape.
She was thinking about that when she saw Maclean get out of a taxi a few moments later. She tensed. He wore a dark gray blazer, a dark T-shirt and jeans, looking no worse for wear. And he walked right past the doorman, greeting him as if he did so every day. Obviously the affair with Becca Hemmer was ongoing. Sam looked at her watch.
It was half past eleven in the morning.
She turned the ignition on and put on the radio, oddly annoyed, and began flipping through the channels. She finally settled on a country music station, which quickly became really annoying. She switched to jazz and looked at her watch again. Only seven minutes had passed. Fox News was always a good bet. She slumped in her seat, listening to Sean Hannity defend America, agreeing with most of what he said. The minutes ticked by, really slowly, and it was excruciating. Of course, she knew what they were doing. He was tiring Becca out, the bastard, and if she didn’t fall asleep afterward, he’d probably drug her or slug her. Not that she cared what he did. He was a sociopath with a really messed-up past, the kind of guy every woman should steer clear of. Someone should warn Becca.
It was a quarter past noon, now.
She changed the station.
He came out twenty minutes later, a parcel under his arm. And he was smiling—dog that he was. And he veered right toward her Lexus.
Sam went still.
Still smiling, he knocked on the window, his gaze on hers. He was wearing aviator sunglasses.
She rolled it down. “Guess I’m made.”
He removed the glasses and his gaze moved over her tiny white tank top. “Ye could never pass by a man unnoticed.”
“Gee, a compliment. I’m in a relatively generic car with tinted windows.”
“But the doorman thinks ye look like Sharon Stone when she was in Fatal Attraction.”
“Remind me not to chat with the help.” Sam pushed open the door, making him step back, and she got out, turning the ignition off but leaving the key.
His gaze moved over her tight, distressed jeans. “I hope I didn’t keep ye waitin’ too long.”
“I love country music.”
“I did try to rush.”
“Don’t bother with the details.”
“Why? Are ye jealous?” He started to laugh.
“Of a mindless bimbo having mindless sex with an unrepentant sociopath? Are you kidding?”
“Mindless is how ye like it, isn’t that right? Even with a sociopath? Even with me?”
Sam felt a fist hollow her. Slowly, she said, “Mindless sex is definitely better than the other kind.”
Sam looked away from his hard gray stare, which was somehow speculative, at the package under his arm. She knew what the parcel contained. “It’s probably disintegrating even as we speak. That page needs climate control, 24/7. Want to share?”
He almost smiled. “Sharing is against my nature.”
“Of course it is. So what’s the plan?” And she reached for his cheek and dragged her nails lightly there. The gesture intensified the vibrations in her body. “What are you going to do with it? Or have you lined up a buyer, the way you did the van Gogh?”
He caught her hand and reeled her in. “I’m selling it to the highest bidder.”
She moved closer, against his big, stiff body. “Somehow I’m not surprised. I didn’t peg you for a patriot. Any way I can get you to play for the good guys?”
“Convince me,” he said.
He was hard already—clearly, it didn’t take much. Not that she should criticize, he had a similar effect on her. “Love to,” Sam said softly.
She moved. He held her hand and she ducked under his arm and twisted it behind his back, at lightning speed. It was a move she’d performed hundreds of times, always with the same results—it incapacitated a man, because if she didn’t stop, she’d break his arm. But he moved with her.
As if he knew what she meant to do, he went with her, preventing her from twisting his arm, and they wound up in their starting positions, face-to-face, holding hands, breathing hard.
He grinned. “I was hopin’ fer a different kind of persuasion, Sam.”
She went for his solar plexus. He dodged the attack and lightly blasted her with power, sending her backward, into her car. “Sorry,” he taunted.
She cursed.
He hurried into the street, raising his hand to flag down a taxi. Brakes screeched. Sam launched herself upright as he waved the parcel containing the page at her. Then he opened the driver’s door, pushed the driver out and got in, taking over the wheel.
Sam leapt into her car, turned the ignition on, jammed it into Drive and peeled out after him. Horns blared at her. She ignored the outrage. A Honda crashed into a parked car to avoid hitting her as she barreled through the traffic.
She hit the gas. She was not going to lose him, but there were half a dozen yellow cabs ahead, each identical at this distance. She was careful to keep him in her sights.
His yellow cab suddenly veered away from the group, turning abruptly onto a side street.
Sam cursed, weaving past two taxis to follow him. But a woman and a child were already stepping into the street and she had to slam on the brakes. Maclean was almost at the end of the block and she saw that he was going to run the changing light. “Shit!”
She leaned out of her window. “Move!” she screamed at the woman. She turned her siren on.
The woman leapt across the street, the boy in tow. Sam slammed down the accelerator. Maclean was entering the next intersection, and the light between them had turned red. She cursed and hit the gas harder, using the horn. Miraculously, the New Yorkers about to cross the street actually stopped and she drove furiously forward, into the uptown traffic.
Horns blared, tires screeched. An SUV hit her passenger side door. Sam kept going. The Lexus leapt into the next street, only a half a block between them now.
He was laughing—she just knew it.
Ahead, she saw the cab veer left, heading back downtown.
Sam drove faster, the light ahead still green. Not that it mattered—she was on Broadway now and dozens of pedestrians were jaywalking. She held down the horn, the blare incessant, her sirens still screaming, but the pedestrians ignored her. She braked hard to avoid vehicular manslaughter.
The crowd streamed across the street, blocking her way.
She leaned out of her window, firing her gun into the air. “Get out of my way!”
The men and women walking past her car ran for the safety of the sidewalk.
Sam shot through the intersection.
About twenty yellow cabs were ahead of her.
She slowed, her heart racing, scanning the mass of taxicabs. From behind, most of them looked alike. “Shit.”
The light changed. The traffic moved on. She followed the pack of yellow cabs, now trying to feel him. “Where are you, you sonuvabitch? Which one are you?”
She didn’t expect an answer. But she focused as never before.
And she felt his hot male power. Oh yeah, she did.
Her gaze slammed onto a cab on the right side of the mass. “Gotcha,” she snarled. She turned the wheel hard, cutting off a delivery van, ignoring the driver, who hit the brakes, cursing her through his window. She slammed down the gas and drove her vehicle right into his rear fender.
The cab bounced hard at the contact, the fender crumpling. Then Maclean turned and looked over his shoulder at her.
He was laughing.
“I’m having the last laugh, Maclean,” she said. “And I am staying right here, glued to your shiny yellow ass.” She smiled, wondering what he would do next.
She found out two blocks later. Suddenly he swerved toward the sidewalk and she followed him, determined to stay with him. Maclean looked like he was going to hit the patrons of a sidewalk café, and the masses screamed, people diving away from their tables and chairs. He swerved again. Sam followed as he drove into the exit ramp of a parking garage—at full speed.
He was testi
ng her, she thought grimly, her hands clamped on the steering wheel. But she did not have a death wish. The exit ramp spiraled tightly upward—making it impossible to see who was coming down.
Sam slowed fractionally.
And as she turned the corner, she saw a car swerving away from the down ramp to avoid a head-on collision with Maclean.
Maclean swerved between two pillars to avoid the next descending car and Sam came hood to hood with it. She swerved, hard, bouncing into the ramp’s concrete wall, metal screaming. The oncoming Volkswagen hit the ramp wall dead on.
Breathing hard, Maclean no longer in sight, she took the next corner. She swerved to avoid another descending car and sideswiped some parked vehicles, while the passing vehicle hit the garage posts. The next car coming down the ramp swerved to avoid a head-on collision, as did Sam. She drove her Lexus hard up the ramp, against the concrete wall, sparks shooting off her car. She heard the car she had just passed collide with either the ramp wall or a pillar.
And when she turned the next corner, she was on the garage’s top level. Maclean was racing the taxicab through the rows of parked cars.
Sam hit the brakes. The top level was mostly unoccupied, and she could see that the roof of the garage was a rectangle. The buildings on three sides were taller; she did not know what was on the fourth side.
Where was he going?
The only place for him to go was down, but he’d sped by the entrance ramp, and he was far from where she sat at the top of the exit ramp.
Sam realized he was heading for the open side of the garage. She shifted into gear and drove toward it.
Maclean didn’t stop.
Sam was close enough now to realize that the roof of the adjacent building was about two stories below the garage’s top floor. And she realized what he was going to do.
She braked hard. “Are you crazy?” she cried.
And as she spoke, the cab hit the low barrier wall, went through it and was briefly suspended in the air.
Then it fell.
And it landed hard on the lower roof.