“I dinnae have to stop them making it,” he replied. “They can make it all they like. While ye and I stand here discussing the matter, me men are on their way to San Francisco.” He waved toward the window. “Take a look. They’re no’ out there anymore.”
Against her will, she glanced out the window. The garden stood empty outside, but that meant nothing. Boyd could be trying to trick her into panicking.
He didn’t have to trick her. She’d already panicked. She was staring into the oncoming headlights of her own death. She should have listened to Malcolm and stayed with him. They could have found out who these men were some other way. She’d been too quick to jump and too slow to reason. Now she was dead. She would never see Malcolm again.
Poor Malcolm! Her heart ached thinking about the time she’d spent in bed with him. She loved him more than she could stand, and now she would never see him again. Would he ever love another woman, or would he live the rest of his miserable life undercover at Allied Chemical?
Boyd came to a stop in front of her. For the first time since she’d first met him, he looked down on her with sympathetic kindness. He took her hand and raised it to her lips. “Let’s have no more unpleasantness between us, lass. Sit ye down here, and let’s talk about this as civilized people. We neednae fight and damage each other like wild animals.”
She craved the soothing temptation he offered, would give anything to wipe all this hostility out of existence. She wanted more than anything to be friends with Boyd, to believe against all evidence to the contrary that he would shelter her and protect her. She started to give in, letting her hand relax into his touch.
Malcolm. She’d touched him. She’d kissed him and lay next to him. She’d given him her body, not just once, but over and over, and would do it again if she could.
Her gut revolted against Boyd’s touch. Her love for Malcolm repelled Boyd.
He sensed the change almost before she registered it herself, and the slightest hint of cruelty tinged his expression.
Lightning quick, she jerked back from Boyd and grabbed for the first thing available. She scooped the ink pot off the desk and flung it at him with all her strength. The ink splattered over him on impact, staining his light hair. He cringed for a fraction of a second before he recovered and lunged at her, roaring in fury.
Vic dove for cover, but with lightning precision, he hooked his arm around her waist and yanked her back. In a heartbeat, he’d hurled her down on the floor. She smashed onto the carpet with a shriek but didn’t have a chance to experience any pain before he was on her.
Chapter 29
Boyd dropped onto one knee and delivered a smashing blow of his fist to the side of Vic’s head. Her skull collided with the hard floor, and her senses reeled from the shock. Her eyes stung with tears at the shattering pain rocketing through her brain. She plunged into darkness and bobbed up into agony before he pounded down on top of her one more time.
Though she was limp on the floor, he wasn’t finished with her. He yanked her up, her arms, legs, and head sagging, and hauled her halfway up, then slammed her down twice as hard.
Her temple struck the floor again, and she succumbed under the nauseous wave of semi-consciousness. His twisted face blurred before her eyes. His voice echoed from somewhere far beyond the crashing surf of blood in her ears.
“Ye had to go and stick yer nose in our business, did ye no’? Ye had to go and make a nuisance of yerself, and now I have no choice but to kill ye. I dinnae like it any better than ye do, but what choice do ye leave me?”
She became aware of blows raining all over her body but couldn’t distinguish where they were or what he was doing.
“I dinnae like killing,” he grumbled. “Dinnae get me wrong. I’m no’ a deliberately cruel man. Ye dinnae understand me, but then again, ye havenae ever really tried, lass. I’m sore disappointed in ye. I thought we could have something special, but ye had to go and turn against me like that. It breaks me heart to waste a woman of yer character, but nothing comes before the Guild. Ye must ken that yerself.”
She couldn’t formulate an answer even if she wanted to. Her neck lolled every time he hit her. The dull ache nagging her limbs came to a sudden end, and she lay shattered and broken on the floor.
Where was he? Was he coming back to blow her brains out? Had he left the room? Was he on his way to kill Malcolm now?
Malcolm. She rallied out of her daze. He’d said he never saw Boyd again after she time traveled to San Francisco. She still had time. She had to keep Boyd occupied until…something happened. How could she do that when she couldn’t even move or think?
Something sharp and cold hit her in the face.
“Wake up!” Boyd snapped. “No snoozing on the job, lass.”
She jolted out of her stupor and jumped up gasping, all the pain of the beating hitting her in the head. She reeled but didn’t pass out again. If only she could pass out, she could forget all about this.
He heaved her off the ground and shoved her inert body into a chair in front of his desk. He went around it and rummaged in the drawers.
She watched him from a great distance, but the sight of him searching the compartments caught her attention.
He opened the drawer where she’d found the pens and the seal, pushed it shut, and opened another drawer on the other side. “Where is it? I put it in here somewhere.” He tore back and forth in a frenzy, spun the other way, opened the first drawer again, and picked out the pile of paper. “Och, here it is! How could I miss that?”
He took out the penknife and flicked it open, flashing the blade in front of her eyes. “Ye see this? It was a gift from me father. They killed him. Do ye ken that? The Angui killed me father down in Aberdeen. They might have told ye all about us killing their women, but they’re no’ the only ones who’ve taken casualties in this war. I’ve been waiting for a chance to pay them back for that, and now I can.”
He sauntered around his desk to plant his feet in front of her chair. The light gleamed off the knife blade.
Vic’s eyelids took too long blinking at it. Where did it come from? Didn’t Boyd realize what he was doing? Just a moment before, she’d wondered how she could get around his desk and get that knife before he caught her and beat her to a pulp. Now he’d done the job for her. He’d taken it out, opened it, carried it around the desk, and held it out, right where she could pluck it out of his fingers.
She studied it in the minutest detail. He wouldn’t threaten her with it if it wasn’t sharp. Did she really think she could do this? How could she use a weapon against another human being? She’d killed that man at the wharf, but she already had the weapon in her hand. She was perfectly lucid then, not like now, and he was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Noah at the time. He never saw her coming.
Boyd presented a different challenge altogether. Her arms wouldn’t obey her even to shift on the chair, let alone fight Boyd Gunn for a knife he held in his hand. It was hopeless.
It was hopeless, but it was also necessary.
While she sat there pondering, he bent down and wedged the blade into her bodice laces, slicing the strings one after another. His lips quivered each time the fibers parted.
Her waist relaxed in relief.
Faint pearly beads of sweat popped out on his upper lip, and his eyelashes fluttered.
She couldn’t let this happen. What would he do when he finished with her laces? She pushed the possibility out of her mind. She had to act fast. Her gaze slid away from his psychotic features to the feather pen that had landed on the desk when she threw the ink at him. Its blackened tip pointed at Boyd like a highway sign.
She didn’t give herself a chance to hesitate. Hesitation meant death. She didn’t bother to gather her muscles to spring. Blind rage sent her hand flying sideways. She smacked the knife away from her chest, and her fingers flattened the quill’s barbs when she took hold of it. She whipped around the other way and drove the point into his face. She aimed for his eye socket bu
t missed. The tip shattered against his temple. His hands flew up as he bellowed in surprise.
How she accomplished what happened next, she couldn’t remember afterward. It smeared into a seamless rush of movement that didn’t fit her idea of what she was capable of. She tore the knife out of his hand and leaped out of the chair. By the time he got his eyes open and his hands down, she’d rounded on him with the blade pointed at his head. She backed away toward the door, clenching the knife handle so tightly her hands shook. Her eyes wouldn’t focus. She couldn’t think what she would do when she got out of this room. The adrenaline fog blocked out all else but keeping that blade between herself and him.
She bumped into the bookcase next to the door, then couldn’t unpeel her fingers from the knife handle to let herself out.
Boyd straightened up, and a hideous grin cracked across his mouth. “Nicely done, lassie, but ye cannae get out of this house. One call from me, and the Gunns’ll hunt ye down all over the island. Ye’ll never make it out of here alive. Hand over the knife and we’ll sit down and talk this over. Ye cannae think ye can win against several hundred Highlanders with that pencil sharpener.”
Insane laughter bubbled out of her, but that laughter teetered on the brink of desperate tears. She would lose all hope if she listened to him. She couldn’t let go of the knife to open the door, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him to find the handle. She plastered herself against the bookcase, unable to decide what to do.
Boyd inched closer.
She menaced him with her weapon—as near as she could come to menacing anybody in her condition. Where was Malcolm? Her heart cried for him to walk in right now. He said he came to find Boyd. Why didn’t he come and get her out of this?
Boyd took his time crossing the room. “Do you see that wee bell over there? I have only to ring it, and all the men’ll come running. Do ye really want that? Give it up. Ye dinnae want this, and neither do I. Ye’re no’ a killer, lass. I ken that. I saw it on ye the first time I met ye.”
“I’m not a killer?” she shrieked. “I’m not a killer? Is that the best compliment you can give me? I’m not a killer. You made me into one. You made me this way. Just remember that.”
“I’ll remember it,” he purred. “Now hand over the knife, lass.” He extended his hand, palm up and open.
All she had to do was drop it into his hand, but she couldn’t release it.
He waited, but when she didn’t budge, he let his hand fall with a sigh. “Very well.” He turned away to pick up the bell he’d pointed out to her.
At that moment, her brain shifted gears. She wasn’t a killer—at least, she hadn’t been before she came to this wretched house. His torture of Noah, that man who tried to stop Noah from escaping—they all turned her into a raving maniac.
His tender fingers, so smooth and unmarked, migrated through the air toward the bell. That sight, more than all the blows and kicks he could deliver, turned her into a killer.
He picked up the bell, and she blasted off the bookshelf. She struck out and knocked the bell to the floor. It gave a dull plink when it landed on the carpet. She slashed the blade at him, but he saw her coming a mile away. He sidestepped, and she stumbled past him. He spun around, and his mighty arm closed around her waist. He jerked her off her feet and swept her back to carry her across the room. She flew into a wild frenzy. She kicked her heels against his shins and scratched at his fingers but couldn’t pry him off no matter how hard she tried.
She saw the door receding away from her and thrashed every which way, but she could never match him in strength. Her panic before couldn’t compare to the terror gripping her heart now. She lost all awareness of her arms and legs windmilling around him in every direction. She slapped her hands at his face and whipped her body back and forth in a maniac effort to break away.
He lugged her back toward the chair.
If she sat back down in that chair, she was finished. She saw that coming. She screamed and exploded in one last mindless fit of animal ferocity.
He let her go, but he didn’t drop her in the chair. His arm released, and she slammed down on the floor at his feet. She scrambled around to backpedal away from him when she saw something that made no sense at all.
Boyd stood erect and tall next to the chair, staring straight ahead. The knife handle stuck out of his forehead, protruding between his eyebrows. His two eyes crossed at the top to look at it.
She crab walked backward as fast as she could, unable to believe he wouldn’t come after her again. He trembled all over, took a step, and crumpled to the ground.
Vic didn’t wait another moment. Her addled brain still couldn’t comprehend what happened, but that didn’t matter. He was still as much of a threat to her as ever, if not more so. She got as far as the door before her mind started functioning again. Her fingers closed around the door latch, her instincts telling her to run like the wind, to get as far away from him as possible. Something bugged her, though.
A different voice whispered in her ear, and she glanced back. Boyd lay in a heap next to the chair. She couldn’t see his face from here. His tumbled hair concealed everything but his back and shoulders. One foot stuck out at an angle. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe.
She blinked down at him. Noah witnessed the first death, but no one witnessed this one. It dwelt here, in the hollow of her heart. If she didn’t tell anybody, no one would ever know.
Malcolm would take over the Guild. He would never find out Boyd was dead. Boyd just…vanished. A distant, wicked possibility crept into her mind. She could make Boyd disappear so no one ever found him. Malcolm never had to know she killed him, the same way he would never know she killed that man at the wharf. Noah might have told him later, but no one would ever tell him about Boyd.
She looked around in the dawning realization of what she might do, what she could do. The afternoon sun sloped behind the trees out in the garden. She knew the names and recognized the faces of the interception teams. She didn’t need anything else. She only had to get out of here without getting caught.
She surveyed the apartment with new eyes. In a flash of brilliant insight, she came up with a plan. She crossed the room and took hold of Boyd’s wrist, dragged him to his bedroom, and crammed his body under the bed, exactly where she’d hid herself a few minutes before. Then she crawled underneath and hid next to him.
Once she got into position, she folded her arm under her head and closed her eyes in the crook of her elbow. She drifted back to the delicious silken beauty of the hours spent in bed with Malcolm. She swaddled her broken spirits in ecstasy while she waited for the sun to go down. She blanked Boyd out of her awareness, and the pounding ache of her many bruises hastened her on her way.
Chapter 30
When Vic picked up her head, solid darkness enveloped the room outside her hiding place. She climbed out and looked around but couldn’t see anything in the night. She groped her way to the window. Stars glittered over the garden. Other than that, the whole landscape slumbered as far as the eye could see. The Guild House stood silent and peaceful, all except for her thundering heart.
She had to get Boyd out of the house. She had to hide him somewhere, but where? The Guild would search for him. Where could she hide him so they would never find him?
The only place she could think of was the bottom of the ocean, but that was….
Was it really as impossible as she thought? How could she transport a dead body many times her own weight across town, to the jetty?
If only she could confide in somebody, she might ask them for help. That was preposterous. Half the inhabitants of this island belonged to Clan Gunn, and the other half were loyal to it—all but Malcolm. She’d made up her mind not to let him know what she’d done, so she ruled him out.
She couldn’t carry Boyd across town. Not in a million years. She couldn’t even lift him. She needed a wheelbarrow. Her head snapped around to the window again. A wheelbarrow! She’d seen one in the garden. She just had to go
outside and…
A click echoed through the house.
Vic stiffened to listen. Was someone coming, or was it just the house settling with the chill of the night? Her heart couldn’t survive all this tension and anxiety. She inched toward the door and eased it back, listening one more time. When she didn’t hear anything, she dashed out into the dark corridor and tiptoed to the kitchen. She considered taking another carving knife, but she wouldn’t be able to use it with both hands holding the wheelbarrow.
If she did this right, she wouldn’t need a knife anyways. She could disappear Boyd and be back in the Guild House before anybody detected anything was wrong. Her thoughts whizzed through each step of her plan. Wheel Boyd to the harbor. Dump him in the drink and return the wheelbarrow to the same spot in the garden. Then head back inside, find Malcolm, and get him to send her home. Piece of cake, right?
If she could only still her fluttering heart, she’d be okay. Instead, she gasped for every breath. She seized the back door and burst out into the starlit garden. There was the wheelbarrow, right where she’d spotted it from Boyd’s window.
Thank you, Boyd. That was really helpful.
Christ, she had to pull herself together before she lost it altogether. Tension, anxiety, excitement, and terror combined into a kind of madness that erased all sense of proportion. She wanted to scream and laugh and burst into tears all at once.
She raced between the herb beds to the wheelbarrow. It might be a little bit small to carry a man as big as Boyd, but it was the best she could come up with at short notice. She took hold of the handles, lifted it up, and wheeled it around in a circle. She leaned forward to push it back to the house, then froze in horror as her worst nightmare materialized before her eyes. Two men on horseback cantered into the garden through a gap in the hedge. They scanned the garden but didn’t notice her as they trotted up to the open kitchen door.
One of them said to his comrade, “I’ll go in and find the Guild Master. Ye guard the door, Tavish. Give the signal if anyone follows us.” He flung his leg over his mount, alighted on the kitchen step, and disappeared into the gloom.
Spies of the Angui - Cipher's Kiss Book 3 Page 20
