by Anne Stuart
And he wasn't snoring now. He was struggling for breath.
She vaulted out of the lagoon, scrambling to his still body in the bedroll. He didn't flinch as she dripped water over him, and his skin was cool, clammy beneath her damp hands.
"Wake up, Michael," she said urgently, tugging at his shoulders.
His eyes fluttered open for a moment, and they were dazed, blank. They focused on her, and for a moment she thought she was looking down at a stranger. Some demon who'd stolen into Michael's body and was staring at her out of dark, dangerous eyes.
"Francey," he said, his voice a thread of sound. "Got to tell you…hurt…Travers…watch…" His eyes shut again, as if the effort were too much for him.
"You're hurt," she said, trying to make sense of his ramblings. "You want me to watch for Travers. I will, Michael. I'll go out to the beach and keep watch for him." She started to rise, but his hand shot out and caught her wrist with unexpected strength.
"Don't go," he said, his eyes shut. "Don't…leave…" And then he released her, his hand dropping limply beside his body.
"I have no choice, Michael," she said, but he could no longer hear her. He'd lapsed back into unconsciousness, not sleep. "I have to get help."
He didn't move; he simply lay there, cold and still, and she knew he would die. For a moment she gathered him into her arms, holding him against her. "Hang on, Michael," she whispered. "I won't let you die, damn it. I couldn't bear it."
It never occurred to her in her panic that the path to the beach would be obscured. She'd been tired, dazed, when she'd first followed Michael to the lagoon, and she hadn't left since. She'd assumed the path to the beach was wide and well-marked, but she couldn't find it.
"Don't panic, Francey," she muttered beneath her breath as she took one wrong turn after another. "If you don't find them, they'll find you. And they'll find Michael, and get help for him. Just be calm, and you'll make it." But her voice sounded frantic, even to her own ears, and her heart was racing beneath the light cotton dress. Maybe she'd been crazy to leave him alone in the clearing. What if the people who'd been after her found where they'd run to? They'd been lucky so far—except for Michael's tumble down a cliff, no one had managed to hurt them. But their luck hadn't held out. Michael was deathly ill, and the Cadre was bound to track them down sooner or later. What if they found Michael when he was unconscious, unable to defend himself?
She lost track of time as she struggled through the junglelike growth. The sun was blazingly hot overhead, and she knew it must have been hours since she left him. Was it already too late?
She could see a faint shimmer through the tangle of trees, a shimmer that had to be the sea. There was no pathway, just fallen trees and overgrown bushes, but she didn't dare turn around or look for another way around. She would get lost again, and who knows when she would get near the sea again.
She started climbing over the thick fallen trunks, her bare feet bruised and bleeding from her endless trek through the island forest. The closer she got to the light, the more hope filled her heart. It was the sea, and salvation had to be close at hand. It almost looked as if there might be a boat out there, something large and white, bringing safety and salvation, bringing help for Michael…
She broke through onto the sand, sinking to her knees in relief. The brightness of the sun was so intense that she could make out no more than the outline of a large white boat. And then the sun was blocked out, and her eyes narrowed in panic as she saw the men.
Two of them. Soldiers, they looked like, though she didn't recognize the uniform, and armed to the teeth. They were advancing on her kneeling body, and she knew death was staring her in the face.
One man had already drawn his gun, and it was more than sufficient for the job. She bowed her head, waiting. She wasn't quite ready to stare death in the face.
After that, events happened so quickly that it took her days to piece things together. One moment she was expecting death. In the next, something, someone, had dropped down in front of her, shoving her out of the way. There were gunshots, the stink of cordite, and he fell in front of her. Michael.
Francey no longer cared about the death-dealing soldiers. "Michael!" she shrieked, flinging herself on him.
He grimaced, writhing in pain, but his hand was still on the gun, still trained at the advancing soldiers. "Keep the hell back," he said weakly, and she didn't know whether he was talking to her or the soldiers. Or both.
"Good God, man," one of the men said. "What the hell happened to you? I thought you were invincible." His accent was pure Cockney, no trace of deadly Irish lilt whatsoever.
And then Francey saw the others on the beach. A short, impeccably dressed man with dark glasses, picking his way carefully toward them. Followed by the rough-hewn, untidy figure of her cousin Daniel.
Never had safety seemed so dear. She wanted to run to him, fling her arms around his elderly body and weep for joy. But the man in her arms mattered more than her own safety. She looked down at him; his eyes were closing, and she had the sudden, horrible fear that he was dying.
"Get a doctor!" she screamed, clinging tightly.
One of the soldiers had already reached them. "I'm a medic, miss," he said, and the other man pulled her away, gently but inexorably, passing her to Daniel's waiting arms.
She tried to tug herself away. "He's hurt, Daniel. He's dying. He's…"
"There's nothing you can do for him right now, Francey," he said patiently. "Let the medic work on him. We'll get him evacuated to the nearest hospital, and I promise, he'll be right as rain."
"But…"
"Miss Neeley?" The short, dapper figure had a high-pitched, nasally voice, with an accent from somewhere in the north of England. "You've had a rough time of it. Let's get you on the boat while the men deal with Mr. Dowd."
"Daniel!" Francey cried, ignoring the newcomer, turning to her cousin for help.
"He'll be all right," Daniel said firmly, pulling her away. "You're just making things worse. Come on, Francey."
There was nothing she could do. Two men were working on him, shielding him from her view, and she had the sudden, aching certainty that she would never see Michael Dowd again.
"Come along," the shorter man said, his voice filled with concern. A concern Francey didn't believe for a moment.
But the hands on her arms were inexorable, pulling her away from Michael. She could hear the sound of a helicopter overhead, and she looked up.
"They'll get him to the hospital, Francey." Daniel followed her gaze.
"Will it make you feel any better if I go check?" the little man demanded.
"Yes," she said flatly, digging in her heels.
"Wait here, then."
Daniel kept his grip on her arm as they watched the man step carefully over the sand. He knelt down beside the men working on Michael, leaning over and saying something in Michael's ear.
Michael wasn't unconscious after all. The stranger was yanked down by his impeccable silk tie, and it took him a moment to break free. When he came back to Francey his face was flushed beneath his mirrored sunglasses. "Your friend still has some fight in him," he said stiffly.
"What did you say to him?" Daniel asked the question Francey longed to.
The little man straightened his mangled silk tie, and Francey saw there was blood on it. Michael's blood.
"I just told him he didn't have to worry about Miss Neeley any longer."
He was lying; Francey knew that. She also knew there was nothing more she could do. Sooner or later she would find out the truth. From Daniel, or from Michael himself. He was tougher than she dared hope. Even if her heart was terrified that he was disappearing from her life forever, she knew better—for the simple reason that she wasn't about to let that happen. She was taking responsibility for her own life, and happiness. She'd lost too much in the past several months. She wasn't going to lose Michael without a fight.
Half a world away, a battle of wills was raging. A battle to the death
.
"You can't do anything about it," the young man said wearily, tired of dealing with a lunatic. "The three of them are dead, the girl's gone off with Travers, and God knows when we'll get a shot at her again. Give over."
"Don't tell me to give over! My brother's been murdered! That bitch has gotten off scot-free. And even Cougar stands a good chance of surviving! I won't have it, do you hear? I'm not going to let go—"
"We have a shipment waiting for us. We can't afford to chase after your quest for vengeance right now—there are larger matters at stake. Put it to one side, at least for now. Your time will come."
He felt the hatred blazing in her, the fanatical, murderous fury that had served the cause so well in the past. The Cadre's leader had always been an obvious choice, because of that single-minded dedication. He was no longer so certain.
"Another month. You can wait that long till we get to Malta," he said. "We get the shipment, we get things settled, and then I promise you, I'll bring you the girl's head on a damned platter if that's what you want."
"Her head. And his."
The man nodded, seriously doubting anyone would get close enough to the infamous Cougar to separate his head from his body. "And his," he promised.
Chapter 9
« ^ »
New York was hot and sticky, the smell of tar and garbage rising from the streets. Francey stepped out of the unair-conditioned taxi and stared around her with a sense of wonder, as if she were seeing the place for the first time.
She'd always loved Greenwich Village. The tiny, little walk-up on Twelfth Street was the first real home she'd ever had. It came equipped with a key to a private park just two blocks away, and even if keeping the cockroaches at bay was a full-time occupation, she always had a sense of peace and belonging.
That had vanished the night Caitlin Dugan came and dragged her on that hair-raising ride to the UN. She'd spent the month afterward in New York, waking up in the morning, going to work, coming home at night, but she'd been numb, in shock. It wasn't until her cousin Daniel had stepped in, rooted her out of her apathy and sent her off to his villa on St. Anne that she'd started to come back to life.
To be honest, it wasn't until Michael Dowd had stepped off that plane into the warm evening air that she'd decided life might be worth living after all. It wasn't until she'd nearly died that night, and later, that she'd considered there might be life after betrayal. It wasn't until he'd kissed her, put his hands on her, that she'd realized…
What? What had she realized? That she was in love? That was absurd. You didn't fall in love with someone you'd only known for. a week. Someone out of his own milieu. It was like a shipboard romance, spiced with the erotic charge of danger. If she saw him in England, ensconced in his job as soccer coach and math teacher, surrounded by adolescent boys, she would probably regard him in a much less romantic light. That warm, loving matriarch of his was probably a tartar, his sisters spoiled bitches, his brothers lechers. He'd never mentioned what happened to his father. Probably dead on the hunting field, or of apoplexy or too much port.
In retrospect, his life sounded like an English novel. James Herriot crossed with P. G. Wodehouse and a little bit of Jane Austen thrown in. She hadn't known people really lived like that.
She certainly wouldn't fit in. If she were even asked to. As it was, she hadn't been given the choice. Michael had been whisked off to some hospital with that officious little man, and Daniel had taken her on a long, leisurely cruise northward, on a vacation that had felt more like prison.
She couldn't rid herself of the notion that there'd been some message passed, some word given, that she was now allowed to return home. Daniel had stoutly denied all of her direct accusations and skirted more oblique questions, and finally she'd given up asking. Daniel was a man who knew how to keep secrets. She could only take his word for it that Michael was in a hospital in London, on the mend. That the attempts on her life had been the work of a deranged segment of Patrick and Caitlin Dugan's splinter group of the IRA, and that every single member of that group, the Cadre, had been arrested and imprisoned. And that everyone was going to live happily ever after.
She didn't believe him. Oh, she believed she was safe enough. Daniel wouldn't let her return to New York if her life was still in danger. But his facile explanations were just a bit too unlikely coming from someone who'd learned about life the hard way.
The taxi behind her squealed off into the blazing hot day, but still Francey didn't move. She was home, but it didn't feel like home anymore. She remembered an old gospel song, one she'd heard when her mother had been married to the man who consorted with bootleggers in the hills of Tennessee. "I ain't got no home in this world anymore." She would have to scour the old record bins and see if she could find a recording of it. It felt as though it had been written with her in mind.
Her apartment smelled of stale air and dead plants. She opened the windows to let what little breeze there was blow through, opened her refrigerator, then slammed it shut in disgust. Daniel hadn't given her time to close up her apartment; he'd simply swooped down and carted her off, and she'd been too apathetic to do anything more than go along. He'd even paid her bills while she was gone, keeping things as they were. The result was two rooms full of dead plants and a refrigerator with a whole new definition of the word penicillin.
She dumped the moldy food and dead plants, ignoring the noisy scuttling of displaced bugs as their peaceful haven was disturbed. She made herself some iced tea, deciding to risk her ancient ice, and sank onto her overstuffed sofa, the best piece of furniture in the apartment.
She flicked on the television, discovering it was still set on CNN. She'd been obsessive before she'd left, living and breathing the news. The healthiest thing she could do would be to turn to a game show.
She was reaching for the remote control when her hand stopped. Despite the newscaster's words, it didn't look like Northern Ireland on the television, it looked like Beirut. Bombed-out buildings, smoke rising, sirens wailing. None of the rolling green beauty she'd always associated with Ireland. But then, she used to believe in leprechauns, too.
Daniel hadn't been lying after all, even if he'd been a bit premature. The British secret service had managed to ferret out the headquarters of one of Ireland's most fanatical groups. The Cadre was destroyed, its leaders jailed, with only a few members escaping. The authorities expected to catch up with them in a matter of days.
The picture switched to a sunny, tropical island, and the voice-over continued with a rundown of the recent upsurge of terrorism around the world, including three men found dead on a deserted island near the resort island of St. Anne, and the deaths of a couple on an island off Malta.
Francey didn't move, but her mind switched away from the still-stuffy room and the endless drone of the television as the announcer moved on to gloomy financial news. Three men dead on Baby Jerome. Michael? Cecil?
Or whoever had been trying to kill her?
None of it made sense. No one had told her the truth, not since she'd first been unlucky enough to meet Patrick Dugan and his phony sister Caitlin. They had lied, the government had lied, Daniel had lied. Only Michael had told her the truth. Hadn't he?
She leaned back against the overstuffed sofa and shut her eyes. She could hear the noise from the street, the cars, the people, the endless sounds of the city. So different from the peace and quiet of St. Anne. She wanted to be back there. Away from the noise and bustle of New York, away from the news and the lies. She wanted to lie on the beach and listen to the sound of the surf. She wanted to be able to reach out and touch Michael. She wanted to finish what they'd started by the lagoon on Baby Jerome.
She wanted peace. But even more than that, she wanted Michael.
He slid down on his haunches, his back against the rough surface of the building, and lit a cigarette. He didn't smoke much nowadays—just often enough to remind himself he could control it. The smoke tasted harsh, acrid in his lungs. But it cleared away the
stench of burning buildings, burning flesh.
Geoffrey hunkered down beside him, his dark, narrow face streaked with soot. "You okay, Cougar?"
The man who'd been known as Michael Dowd nodded, taking another drag on the cigarette. "Right as rain."
"Cardiff said it was too early for you to be out in the field."
Michael's reply was short and obscene. "You know Ross," he added. "Always playing mother."
"He told me about the men on the island."
"Did he, now? You two must have had quite a little chat. Has he started fancying you?"
Geoffrey grinned, scratching his grimy face. "He's saving himself for you, love."
"Sod off, Geoffrey."
"Did he tell you who you got?" he continued, imperturbable.
"Two middle-level operatives and a boy," Michael said flatly. He'd had dreams about the boy. Nightmares, during his most recent stay in hospital, filled with hopeless what-ifs.
"It was Connor Dugan. Brother to the boy-o you took out at the UN."
Michael was adept at hiding his reactions. This time there was no need; he'd worked with and trusted Geoffrey Parkhurst for more years than he cared to admit. "It wasn't."
"Word of honor. You just happened to take out one of the most vicious little killers this side of Beirut. You remember the bomb he set that killed thirty-seven school kids? And then he put out the statement that they should be happy to die for the cause of a free Ireland?"
"And the massacre at Heathrow last summer," Michael added as he felt a black cloud begin to lift. "He was there, I've seen the video tapes. I just didn't connect him with the boy on the island."
"So you've done the world a favor, pally."
Michael grinned sourly. "So who are you, my guardian angel? Come to cheer me when I'm feeling burned-out?"
"We all get burned-out at some point or another. Sometimes we come back, sometimes we don't. Looks to me like you're back, but I'm not sure if your heart's in it. And if it's not, that can be dangerous to all of us."