by Gayle Wilson
The terrorist should assume that Elizabeth would return home at some point. And since she had obviously been his target from the beginning, Jorgensen would eventually show up there. Only Elizabeth wouldn’t be the one he’d find when he came.
THE UNPAVED ROAD leading to the summerhouse seemed more threatening in the middle of the night than it had at dawn. The car’s headlights, reflecting off the overhanging branches, cast wavering shadows. As if something were moving through the woods bordering the drive. The sensation unnerved Rafe, making him wonder if this had been a good idea.
He thought about doing what Edmonds had done when he’d arrived this morning—stopping a mile or so from the house and walking in. Except, since the whole point of this exercise was to attract Jorgensen’s attention, there seemed nothing wrong with announcing he was here.
His gut feeling was that he would be safe in doing that. Despite the method of his brother’s death, he believed Adler Jorgensen would want a personal confrontation. Adler would arrange for it to be up close and personal, maybe even eye-to-eye, so there could be no doubt in Rafe’s mind who was responsible for his death.
He pulled Griff’s car to a stop in front of the door of the garage and turned off the engine, killing the lights at the same time. Then he sat in the darkness, listening to the small noises as the engine cooled.
After a moment or two he could also hear the familiar night sounds from the nearby forest. Gradually, away in the distance, he became aware of the rhythmic beat of waves breaking over the rocks on the other side of the house. There was nothing else.
After his eyes had grown accustomed to the near lack of light, he turned, still in the driver’s seat, and made a visual survey of the area around the car. Nothing moved in the broken patterns of light the moon threw across the lawn and drive. More tellingly, he had no sense that there was anyone else on this isolated spit of coastline.
He reached over to the passenger’s seat and picked up the Glock he had laid there. The cool surface of its grip against the heat of his sweating palm was pleasant.
Almost as an afterthought, he stretched his left hand toward the glove box, opening it and then feeling around inside. His fingers finally found what they’d been searching for, closing over the narrow, cylindrical shape of a small flashlight.
Straightening, he opened the car door with the same hand that held the light. And he listened again before he stepped out. After all, if he hadn’t read Jorgensen right, this would be the most critical moment.
Maybe the terrorist was out there in the darkness, sighting through the nightscope on his rifle. Aligning its cross-hairs on the exact spot at the base of Rafe’s skull that would mean instant death.
If he were, Rafe told himself with the fatalism his former profession had instilled, then it would be over before he knew what had happened. Long before he had time to feel fear. Or regret.
Elizabeth. He allowed the image of her face as she’d slept to form in his mind as he slowly stood up beside the car. The sound of the ocean was clearer now, but there were no other noises in the stillness. Only the distant crash of the waves and the low murmur of the night creatures in the woods.
The hair on the back of his neck lifted. He waited for what seemed an eternity, but nothing happened. Because Jorgensen was no longer here.
He was sure of that now, a deep down, gut-level surety. And it grew with each step he took away from the car and toward the garage door.
He bent to lift it, and then hesitated before his hand closed over the handle. For an instant the roar of some fire—either the one at Elizabeth’s office or at the embassy—was in his head. He closed his eyes, willing his mind away from it.
After all, an explosion would be even more impersonal than a sniper shot. That wasn’t what Jorgensen had planned for him. Gunther’s brother had something far more diabolical in mind than blowing him to kingdom come.
Despite the assurances that both his instincts and intellect were providing, Rafe knew he couldn’t afford to take any chances. Griff had trusted him to handle Jorgensen. He didn’t intend to fail by being careless.
He clicked on the flashlight, directing its narrow beam slowly along the bottom of the garage door. Not satisfied with a visual inspection, he knelt, laying the flashlight on the ground and feeling along the entire length of the door. There were no hidden wires. No residue of any kind.
He slipped his fingers under the rubber strip and lifted. The heavy door slid upward, moving silently on well-oiled hinges. As it did, he straightened into a crouch. He shoved the flashlight into his pocket to put both hands around the butt of the Glock before he stepped into the garage.
Once inside he lifted his head, scenting the stale interior air like a hunting dog. There was no distinctive hint of plastique. Nothing but the expected smells of gasoline and oil.
And his car was still sitting exactly where he’d parked it. He squatted again, running his hand under the back bumper and then duck-walking along both sides and the front to do the same. When he finished, he straightened and opened the hood. A thorough inspection of the engine, using the flashlight he’d brought from Griff’s car, revealed that nothing appeared to have been tampered with.
Still he hesitated, looking over the top of the car and out into the drive. He put the flashlight under his arm and fished in the pocket of his jeans for his car keys. His eyes remained focused outside, watching the play of light and shade caused by the slight breeze that disturbed the nearby trees.
When he’d retrieved the keys, he didn’t use the remote, remembering what Elizabeth had said about the explosion at her office. Instead, he walked around to the driver’s door and inserted his key into the lock.
Holding his breath, he turned it. There was a small click. And nothing else.
He opened the door, and the interior light came on. He had already started to slip into the driver’s seat when he noticed something white lying on the dark dash. Something he hadn’t left there. He halted, half in and half out of the car, trying to figure out if the object could possibly be what it looked like.
The bastard had left him a note. He could see the bold block marks on the inside of the folded sheet of paper. His eyes lifted again, looking out into the darkness once more.
Finally he took the flashlight out of his pocket and shone the beam along the open edges of the message. No filament.
He tossed the flashlight into the seat and reached out with two fingers, pulling the paper toward him. When he had it in his grasp, he hesitated a moment before he unfolded it, holding it up to the dome light.
Only then did he realize that what he was looking at wasn’t a note, but a crudely drawn map. Not so rough that he didn’t recognize the location. The landmarks, rural and virtually unknown to anyone not from the area, were infinitely familiar. For almost five years they had comprised the world in which he now functioned—the isolated mountain in North Carolina that bore his family’s name.
Whatever Jorgensen intended, it seemed he had chosen his battlefield. One that Rafe Sinclair knew better than anyone else on the face of the earth.
Chapter Sixteen
Despite her eagerness to get to Rafe, her apprehension had been steadily increasing since she’d abandoned John’s car among the trees along a side road. It was one of several that snaked off from the paved two-lane that came part of the way up the mountain. She had walked the rest of the way up.
Her hike to the ridge above the cabin reminded her of how long it had been since she’d done any really strenuous physical activity. Apparently her thrice-weekly aerobics class wasn’t the ideal training for mountain climbing. And that wasn’t the only inadequacy she felt as she studied the deserted clearing below, centered by the Sinclair home place.
She had been here half a dozen times during the years she and Rafe had been involved. They’d used the cabin for rest and relaxation after difficult missions. It was the one place they could be together and alone without being constantly on guard.
She had ev
en come once after he’d disappeared. Hoping that if he could see her again in this familiar setting, the memories might be powerful enough that he would be willing to talk to her.
He hadn’t been here. The signs of neglect had made her believe it had been a long time since anyone had.
Judging by the scene below, she had again come to the wrong place to find him. And as much as she’d like to, she realized she couldn’t blame John for that.
When she considered his exact words, it was obvious that what he’d told her had been his best guess of where Rafe would prefer to face his enemy. Edmonds hadn’t claimed any knowledge of the plan the others had devised. If she hadn’t been so damned impatient to get to Rafe, she would have realized that.
In the long hours she had spent lying on her stomach, peering over the edge of the outcropping she’d chosen as her vantage point, she had seen nothing to indicate Rafe was down there. Nor had there been any indication of human presence on this mountain. Not here. Not during her trek up.
Which meant John had guessed wrong. It also meant, she was finally forced to admit, that she had wasted enough time on this wild-goose chase.
She could only hope that Rafe’s confrontation with Jorgensen wasn’t already being played out in Mississippi or Virginia. Locations that lay in opposite directions from where she was. And she had no way of knowing which of them would take her to the scene of the action.
She began to scramble back down to the base of the outcropping. Despite her conviction that she was alone on the mountainside, she tried to keep the noise of her descent to a minimum. Other than a few dislodged pebbles that tumbled down ahead of her, she thought she’d succeeded.
As soon as her toes touched the ground, she turned, eyes surveying her surroundings as she took a few seconds to catch her breath. Almost subliminally, she was aware of a slight noise behind her. Before she had a chance to react, a hand was clamped over her mouth.
At the same time she was jerked off her feet by a forearm around her chest, pulling her up into the muscled wall of a man’s body. Her first instinct was to scream, but as cruelly tight as the hand was across her lips, all she managed was a muffled bleat.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Rafe whispered, his mouth against her ear.
She closed her eyes in relief. Rafe. Not Jorgensen. Rafe.
That he had caught her off guard was certainly embarrassing, especially since she had come here in what was obviously a misguided attempt to rescue him. Still, this was not the disaster she’d been imagining from the instant she felt that hand close over her mouth.
She tried to answer him, but his palm was still pressed so hard over her lips that nothing coherent emerged. Feeling those aborted movements, he loosened his hold.
The viselike grip of his arm around her torso also eased, although it was still in place. She closed her eyes again, willing her heart rate to slow. She wanted to explain what she was doing here without revealing the extent of that instant of terror she’d experienced when he grabbed her.
“I was looking for you,” she said.
She could detect no quaver in her whisper, but her heart was still beating too rapidly. As closely as he was holding her, she suspected he could feel it.
She eased a calming breath, her breasts moving against his restraining arm. Despite the situation, her nipples hardened with the involuntary contact.
“Lying bastards,” Rafe said, his mouth still against her ear.
Griff and Hawk. Although his accusation was unfair, her residual anger at the two prevented her from explaining that her being here was through no thanks to them. Not yet, anyway.
“Is he here?” she whispered.
Rafe removed his arm from her body and took a step back, freeing her. Despite the heat, she shivered at the loss of his warmth. There had been something very reassuring, in spite his fury, about the feel of Rafe’s body once more fitted that closely against hers.
“Jorgensen?” he asked.
She resisted the urge to mock. Of course, Jorgensen. Who the hell else are you hunting? Who else is hunting you?
The effects of her shock at being captured were too near the surface to attempt that kind of flippancy. In truth, Rafe had scared the bejesus out of her. Not betraying the extent of her fear was presenting enough of a challenge without trying to pull off sarcasm at the same time.
Turning to face him, she nodded instead. As she did, she examined his face.
His eyes were rimmed with red. Shadows lay like old bruises beneath the dense bottom lashes. She wondered how long it had been since he’d slept.
Although he had shaved at some point during their long, harrowing ordeal yesterday, his whiskers were again dark enough to make the lean cheeks appear gaunt, almost hollowed. The beautifully mobile mouth was set and stern. He was obviously furious, and at the same time he looked totally exhausted.
With an unwanted insight, she realized that her being here would only add to the stress he must already be feeling. Hawk had been right. He and Griff had been right, and she had been wrong. Terribly, unforgivably, dead wrong.
“I don’t know where he is,” he said. Despite the softness of the words, his frustration that he didn’t was clearly communicated. “When I heard you stumbling around up here, I thought you were Jorgensen.”
“I wasn’t ‘stumbling around.’” An empty denial since obviously Rafe had heard her.
On the other hand, he had moved quietly enough that she hadn’t been aware that anyone was in the vicinity. Again the feeling that in coming here she had made a dangerous mistake, perhaps a fatal one, churned in her gut. Despite her genuine concern for Rafe, she knew that her presence had only complicated things.
Hawk had warned her not to take away what Rafe had left. What she had done was far worse. She had given him something else to deal with.
“Why would they let you go?” he demanded, ignoring that pointless denial. “We had a deal.”
“They didn’t. John did.”
“Edmonds?” He controlled his surprise, quickly lowering his voice to ask the obvious question. “Why?”
She found she had no good answer. Replaying the conversation she and John had had over Griff’s kitchen table last night, she couldn’t remember a single compelling argument she’d made. She had said something about their always having operated as a team. Something cutting about Carl Steiner’s motives. A lot about sacrifice and expediency.
“I know about the PTSD,” she said.
The leap had seemed logical, at least until the words came out of her mouth. Maybe she couldn’t make Rafe understand why Edmonds had let her leave, but she could explain why she’d felt it necessary to try to convince him to.
Rafe’s eyes narrowed as if he were attempting to figure out the connection between his question about Edmonds’ motives and her response. He shook his head, a small, almost considering motion.
“Are you saying Edmonds told you that?”
“Hawk told me,” she admitted.
What was reflected in the tired eyes this time was clearly pain. They had seemed to physically flinch from the information. Rafe obviously considered Hawk’s telling her about the post-traumatic stress a betrayal.
Why wouldn’t he? she admitted. After all, it was something Rafe himself had gone to great lengths to keep from her all these years.
“That’s why—” she began, and then knew, because she was still watching his eyes, that she couldn’t tell him the reason she had been so determined to find him.
Don’t take away what he has left, Hawk had warned.
Telling Rafe she’d been afraid he couldn’t handle Jorgensen alone would do exactly that. He had volunteered for this mission. And Griff, far wiser than she had been, had agreed. Not because Rafe was expendable, but because he had recognized that Rafe needed this opportunity.
“That’s why you came riding to the rescue,” he finished for her when she stopped.
“We were a team,” she said softly. In every way imaginabl
e.
“We aren’t anymore.”
“You can’t do this alone, Rafe. Not with—”
“I can do it a hell of a lot better alone than I can with you hung around my neck.”
It hurt, even though she understood that he’d meant for it to. Maybe just to try to drive her away, but still…
“You didn’t used to feel that way,” she said, trying to keep emotion out of her voice.
“I didn’t used to feel a lot of the things I feel now. And no, there isn’t anything about what I feel that we’re going to discuss. You need to find someone else to be the recipient of your good deed for the day.”
She steeled her heart at the taunt and chose a weapon of her own. A woman’s weapon.
“I heard what you said.”
She hadn’t intended to tell him that. It revealed too many things, including her cowardice in not responding.
She had found, however, that this rejection hurt as much as all the others had. There was no reason to let him get away with it when she knew the truth. A truth he himself had acknowledged.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, but he did. That, too, was in his eyes.
“I wasn’t asleep when you came into my room last night. I knew you were there. I heard what you said.”
“You really have changed, haven’t you?”
The same accusation he had made that night at the summerhouse. Something to the effect that she was not the woman she had been six years ago.
She wasn’t. And they both knew why.
“Only because you have.”
He laughed, the sound without humor. “Mea culpa. How many times do you need to hear me say it?”
“What I need you to say is what you said in my bedroom last night.”
She really did, she discovered. She wanted him to say it to her face. Here and now. Not whisper it in the darkness when he believed she was asleep. She wanted an open confession that he had loved her more than he had ever loved anyone else.