Ultimate Weapon

by Shannon McKenna

  But she closed her eyes and breathed. Covered his hands with her own, holding them motionless at her waist, and waited for a miracle.

  Val himself was the miracle, a living, breathing miracle. His gentleness, his tender patience, melted her, healed her instantly.

  The feeling bloomed from deep inside her, soft and sweet and intensely alive. Surprised, moved. Every moment a deeper revelation, a new level of tenderness, of longing. Her body was soft, hot, intensely sensitive. His every tiny touch burst like fireworks, tingling through her nerves. When he put his arms around her and pulled her against himself, an earthquake of accumulated tension shuddered through her.

  He felt thinner, harder, his arms as tight and taut as piano wire. He vibrated with emotion, desire. He was rigid with the tension of holding back. Waiting for as long as she needed him to wait.

  Amazingly, she felt safe in the circle of his arms. She pressed her face against him, breathed in his delicious scent. Listening to his heart, pounding strong and fast.

  Safe. The feeling was so unfamiliar, it frightened her. To think that she could feel safe with him after all that had happened between them. All the ugliness, all the violence and betrayal.

  “Why did you do that to me?” she blurted out and hid her face against his chest again. Afraid to hear the answer.

  He stroked her hair, gripping her thick braid to tug her head back so she would look into his eyes again. “The video, you mean?”

  She waited, eyes locked with his.

  A long, careful sigh escaped him. “It was the deal I made with Novak,” he said. “Or rather, the deal he made with me. I was to deliver those videos to him every three days, and in return, he would refrain from carving a piece off of Imre while I watched on the videophone.”

  She winced. “Oh, God.”

  “I was desperate,” he said. “I hated myself for it, every time. I would never have chosen to do such a thing to anyone, let alone you. I am sorry. It’s over. Can we leave it behind? Can you forgive me?”

  She nodded.

  Val closed his eyes, sagging with evident relief. “He wanted me motivated,” he said. “He did not expect me to fall in love with you. Nor did I, though it happened before we even met.”

  She glanced up, startled. “How could you—”

  “I watched you and Rachel for ten days. That was enough for me,” he said forcefully. “You were so gentle with her, so patient. You were so strong. And bella maladetta. My wildest fantasy in flesh and blood. I did not even know that I had a fantasy woman. But you were—are her.”

  He cupped her bottom and lifted her up onto the table. “My turn, now, Tamar. How could you do what you did to me?”

  Her fingers tightened on his shoulders, then she remembered his wound and let go as if she’d been burned. “What are you referring to?”

  “Ah, but where do I begin. The handcuffs, the drugs?” Anger hardened in his voice. “Running away while I was practically comatose? As if you did not care, as if there was nothing between us?”

  The impulse to shove his accusation away from herself in anger was almost automatic, but she short-circuited it. She breathed, deep and slow, and swallowed the sharp words back.

  They were no longer true, in any case, and she did not truly want to say them. It was just a reflex. A tic.

  What she really wanted was for him to understand. She concentrated on the buttons of his black shirt, unbuttoning them one by one as she spoke to give her hands something to do, her eyes some place to rest.

  “You know why,” she said fiercely. “I had to settle accounts with Stengl. He murdered my family, destroyed my village, my home. He killed my childhood, raped me, turned me into something that I was never meant to be. I’d been waiting my whole life for payback.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Then why did you not kill him? I know that you did not. Santarini would have sent the Camorra for me by now if you had, and I was in no condition to defend myself from them. Did you fail to get close enough to him? Or did Ana—”

  “No. I . . . changed my mind,” she said, her voice halting. She undid the last button, spread the shirt out over his chest.

  He frowned. “Changed your mind?” he repeated. “When?”

  “When I got into his room,” she said. “When I looked into his eyes. That was when I realized—”

  “What?” he prompted impatiently.

  “That you were right,” she admitted. “He wasn’t worth it. He was nothing compared to what I had to lose. Even though I thought that I had already lost it after what I’d done to you. I thought you’d never want to see me again.”

  Val lifted her right arm, bent low, and pressed a gentle kiss against the scar. Then another and another.

  She took courage from that. “I was running out of the clinic to find you when András got me.” She closed her eyes tightly, feeling every warm, soft butterfly kiss so intensely against her flesh. “You must think I am so stupid.”

  “Not at all,” he said. “But explain this to me. Why did you change your mind about us and leave me all alone? Did living in bliss with me in a tropical paradise no longer appeal to you?”

  She shook her head. She couldn’t bear to talk about it. The core of the problem. Her secret shame, the weakness in herself that she despised so violently. She was not made of gemstones or metal. She could not wash away the stains. Not anymore.

  He took her face in both his hands. “Answer me, Tamar.”

  She swallowed, tasting the bitterness of the poison. A bitterness she still tasted faintly every moment of every day. “I couldn’t,” she whispered.

  “Why not?” he demanded, unrelenting.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, and searched herself for the courage she needed to say it. “I felt . . . soiled,” she whispered. “Poisoned, damaged. I felt like a black hole. Like I didn’t deserve—oh, God. I thought it was better to get away, stay away. I didn’t want to inflict myself on anyone. Certainly not you.”

  His face was blank with astonishment. “Oh, God, Tamar,” he said helplessly.

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice was fogging up with tears, to her distress. “I couldn’t get past it. I’m not as strong as you think I am.”

  He gave her a short, hard shake. “What bullshit,” he said roughly. “You should have known better.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” she flung back. “And maybe I never will.”

  “Oh, you will. You should have come to me, Tamar. I would have convinced you. You are a queen. A goddess. Shining and perfect.”

  She snorted. “Oh, please. Don’t overdo it, Janos,” she said tartly.

  “I cannot help it,” he said. “It is my nature. And you inspire me to flowery excess.”

  “Oh, God,” she muttered. “I am so in for it. I can’t stand flowery excess.”

  “You will learn,” he promised solemnly.

  “Will I?” She yanked the shirt down over his shoulders, his arms, and stopped to stare at the angry scars.

  She stopped to kiss each one. Then she moved on to the older scars. There were many of them, and by the time she had kissed her way through everything she could see, he was fully aroused. She wrenched his belt open, shoved down his jeans. Took him in hand, squeezing with a shuddering sigh of delighted satisfaction. Ah, yes.

  “So, did this interview with me work out to your satisfaction?” she asked breathlessly.

  He kissed her throat as he pushed her thighs wide, then teased her clit tenderly, circling it with his fingertip. “Oh, yes. But there was never any question of you refusing me,” he said.

  She blinked at him. “Really?”

  He nuzzled her ear. “I had decided. You agreed to love me, or you would have had to kill me to get rid of me. Either way, I won.”

  “Oh?” She suppressed a crack of laughter. “How do you figure, loverboy?”

  “Killing me would be a long, difficult process,” he informed her solemnly. “I am very hard to kill. It could take your whole lifetime. And in the meantime, while you plotted a
nd schemed and made attempt after attempt, I would at least be with you, no? So I win.”

  She snorted with laughter and pressed a hot kiss against his chest. “Melodramatic idiot.”

  “Admit it,” he said. “You love that about me.”

  “I love everything about you,” she said rashly. “But it’s been so long. Remind me why, Val. Go ahead, blow my mind. Bowl me over. Show me exactly why I love you so much.”

  He gave her that radiant grin that made her heart jump with unbelieving joy, and got right down to it.

  If you enjoyed ULTIMATE WEAPON,

  you won’t want to miss Shannon McKenna’s next

  thrilling romantic suspense novel, and her return to the

  super sexy, intense and rugged McCloud brothers!

  Turn the page for a special excerpt of

  FADE TO MIDNIGHT

  A Brava mass-market paperback on sale September 2011.

  Prologue

  1994, Portland, Oregon

  Tony Ranieri sucked in smoke and fingered the tarnished dog tags in his hand. He had no patience for mysteries. Not in books, not on TV. Mind-squeezing, time-wasting bullshit. But there he was. In Tony’s face.

  He watched the kid squirt disinfectant into the bucket and start in on the floor, staring at the ponytail of streaky, dirt-blond hair, the thick muscles of the kid’s shoulders, emerging from the sprung-out tank top of Tony’s, two sizes too big for him. The flesh-creeping pattern of scars snaked and spiraled over the kid’s skin. Those wounds had still been oozing the night he found the unlucky son of a bitch, almost two years ago, now. He hadn’t dared to take the kid to a hospital. The guys who’d done for him would be watching.

  Tony had braced himself to see those wounds go bad. There was internal bleeding, broken bones, too. And the kid’s face. Mother of God.

  He’d steeled himself to have to hide the body, pretend he’d never found the kid. Like he didn’t have enough shit on his conscience.

  But he hadn’t died. Tony sucked his cigarette, in defiance of the no smoking rule in the diner kitchen. His sister Rosa, colossal ballbreaker, was home, asleep. His young nephew Bruno had crashed hours ago upstairs. And the kid wasn’t going to rat him out. The kid couldn’t talk for shit. He could wash dishes, chop onions, scrape plates, and fight like a fucking demon from hell. But he couldn’t say a damn word.

  He wasn’t a kid, really, either. He’d been twentyish when Tony found him, but Tony hadn’t gotten a good handle on him yet, so he’d just stuck with “the kid.” He offered no other satisfying defining characteristic, besides his silence, and his scars. The kid would be movie-star good looking, if not for the scars. He was lucky they hadn’t taken his eyes. But Tony’d bet his left nut that the torturer had been working up to the eyes, the balls. Tony knew what got that kind of guy off. He knew it all too well.

  But something had interrupted the torture fest. The bastard had decided to finish the kid off. Just beat him to death and dump the body.

  Who knew why. Mysteries. Fuck ’em.

  The kid paused in his mopping, looked over his shoulder. He wanted to say something, wanted it bad. His green eyes burned with urgency. But nothing came out. The wires were cut. He was all fucked up. It hurt to look at him.

  The kid’s shoulders slumped. He got back to work. Slop, dip, swab.

  Tony’s fingers closed around the dog tags. He stubbed out the cigarette. He was a straight shooting guy. Kill or be killed, that was the kind of motto he could get behind. Ambiguity fucked with his digestion.

  Tony wound the chain round his hand til it burned his fingers. He’d found the tags in the kid’s blood-soaked jeans pocket, the night he’d chased off the killer. Not the kid’s own, though that was Tony’s first assumption.

  These tags were of an older soldier. Tony’s generation. Tony’s war.

  Tony had nosed around, asked his Marine buddies, and heard stories to curdle a guy’s blood. The name on that tag struck fear into the hearts of battle-hardened men. Sniper, killer, monster. Accused of unspeakable atrocities. Disappeared after Nam, before they could court-martial him. Probably slitting throats for the criminal underworld.

  He’d be Tony’s age, by now, with a team under him. Guys as badass as him, or worse. There was always worse.

  Tony stared at that lost, fucked-up kid bent over his bucket, and renewed the decision he made every night. The kid was in no shape to deal with the people who had reduced him to this. They would squish him like a cockroach. He was better off scraping plates, swabbing floors. Tony stared, breathing smoke. Hating the sick feeling of doubt in his guts.

  Eamon McCloud. What was he, to this kid? He cursed under his breath, in thick Calabrese dialect. He shoved the tags into his pocket.

  The name on those dog tags could put the kid’s broken life together.

  Or it could get him killed once and for all.

  Chapter 1

  I am fucked.

  The thought flicked through Kev’s head, calm and detached. The roar of icy water filled his ears. The current would pull him loose in counted seconds. Seconds measured by the pounding pulse of blood through his brain. Each throb hurt like a raving motherlover, but there was nothing like imminent death to take a guy’s mind off a headache.

  His little angel’s face flashed through his mind. His dream companion, his spirit guide. Her big eyes looked sad, and scared.

  He’d known since he got out of bed that today was going to be the day. He’d had that prickle, as if someone were looking at the back of his neck. Not surprising, since he’d set the day aside for high-adrenaline sports activities, his chief joy in what passed for his life. One would think, having gotten a clue from the Great Beyond that death lurked nearby, that a reasonable, sane person would spend the day on the couch, watching reruns. Cruising the mall bookstore, reading about mindfulness or voluntary simplicity. Lying low in a multiplex, watching a nature documentary. Sipping a green tea latte. Well out of sight.

  Not him. The reasonable, sane parts of himself were out in space. Along with his memories and his normal and natural fear of death. Danger? Bring it the fuck on. He should be dead already anyway. Look at his face. Kids ran screaming to mommy when they saw his bad side.

  Cold had numbed the pain. He no longer felt his hand, clamped around the boughs of the dead tree. He did not feel the compound fracture in his other arm. His injured limb flopped in the water, sucked by the current, a few yards from the head of the falls. His broken bone tented out the nylon of his jacket, pinkish with blood. But he doubted he’d be using that arm again, once the water flung him over the brink.

  Whatever. He’d been smash totaled years ago. Living on borrowed time. Half a brain, half a life. No clue at all.

  Don’t start with that. Just shut the fuck up. He did crazy shit like this for the express purpose of keeping himself too zapped with adrenaline to indulge in self pity. That was why he hung off the edge of cliffs, hang-glided treacherous air currents, rafted badass rapids. When he was that close to death, he felt buzzing, connected. Almost alive.

  Since Tony found him he’d had some mechanism functioning that damped his emotional volume way down. High enough for function, but no more. Probably caused by the trauma to his brain that had caused the amnesia, and rendered him speechless, back in the bad old days.

  Whatever it was, he was bored with it. If he could, he’d join the military, fly fighter jets. Playing with toys like that, yeah. Talk about a coping mechanism. But the military wouldn’t want a guy with crossed wires, a questionable identity and a black hole in his mind to fly their hundred million dollar toys. They’d put him to work cleaning engines. If they took him at all. No, he had to make do with high-risk sports. They kicked his ass into high gear, and he liked that gear. The color, the noise. The buzz of being awake to it, aware of it. Giving a shit.

  He’d gotten what he wanted. But he was going to pay big. He stared at the top of the falls. Clouds of vapor rose from the thundering tons of water crashing down, hundreds of feet
below. How many hundreds? He tried to remember. Several. Well over three. Whoo hah.

  Not that he was afraid of dying. At most, he was curious. Sorry he’d never unravel the great questions of his existence, at least not as a living man, and who knew what happened after? He’d never speculated. His present mortal existence was problem enough, for as long as he could remember. Roughly half of his life. He didn’t know how old he was. Tony put him around twenty when he’d saved Kev from the warehouse thug eighteen years ago. So he was fortyish. Give or take.

  At least the boy was going to make it. Kev was immobilized by tons of rushing icewater, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw activity in the trees choking the cliffside shore. Rescue proceedings were underway. Other people besides Kev had been at the point when he’d put ashore, where he’d seen the kids spin past, oarless and out of control. Only a guy with a black hole in his brain would be suicidal enough to jump in after them at that point in the rapids, but he’d taken no time to ponder that implacable truth. He just went for it.

  And then, a long, hopeless wrestle with nature while the water got wilder, the roar of the falls louder.

  While death approached, smiling. Happy to see him. His old pal.

  Maybe he’d subconsciously wanted it. Bruno threw that death wish crap in his face a lot, whenever he got cracked up doing daredevil sports. Could be. Not worth worrying about, though. Particularly now.

  The kids had capsized by the time he caught up. Kev saw a bobbing head and scooped one out of the water by sheer, blind luck. Then they plunged into a trough, the raft flipped, and they were tossed like twigs, the boy flailing, choking. He’d clamped the kid against him, struggled, kicked. He’d wanted to save that kid. Wanted it ferociously. He was played out, now, though. In fact, he felt strangely serene.

  The other boy was gone, over the falls. That was fucked, and he was sorry. Rescue was on the way for the other one, but the greedy way the water sucked at the tree told him the hard truth.

  He was going down. Anytime.

  He forced his head to turn, checked on the kid. Sixteen or so. A drowned rat, clinging to the lucky side of the rock that split the top of the falls into two long, thin tails, hence the name, Twin Tails Falls. The weight of rushing water pinned him against the bulwark of the rock. He couldn’t move if he wanted to. But he’d live. That was good.