by Kay Hooper
She stared at him, somehow aware that this was important, and not because she needed to believe she was beautiful. It was important, she realized, because her trust in Derek did indeed have to be absolute. If she doubted him in any way, hesitated to believe anything he said, her own indecision could conceivably put them both in greater danger.
Her head understood that, but her heart … how could anyone trust that completely? And she had known him barely twelve hours, knew so little about him.
“Trust me, Shannon.” His voice was softer now, deeper, and curiously compelling. “Trust me to tell you the truth always, no matter what. You’re beautiful.”
“I limp.” It was an automatic response, her greatest doubt given voice.
“No, you don’t.”
What was the matter with him, was he blind? Of course she limped, she wouldn’t deny reality! No one could trust that much, no one at all!
“You don’t limp. Last night you did, because you were exhausted and you’d strained your hip. Today you’re walking with no sign of a limp. It isn’t something that’s always with you, Shannon, and no one sees it but you. A part of that distorted reflection.”
Was it possible? No, no, her mother would have told her. Her mother would have—and then she remembered her friend Janie, she of the red dress and gentle bullying.
“You only limp when you’re thinking about it, Shannon, or when you’re tired. Half that limp’s in your mind—and in your mother’s.”
“Mother says I limp,” she whispered, remembering. Remembering her last visit, when her mother had scolded her gently for not walking slowly enough.
“Then her mirror is cracked too,” Derek told her softly. “You were hurt once, and she can’t forget it. That doesn’t mean she’s right, Shannon. I’m right. Trust me.”
Shannon stared into those quiet dark eyes, those infinitely wise eyes, and the room was small again, so small she could barely breathe. And despite that closeness, or because of it, she suddenly felt as if something heavy had been lifted away from her.
“All right.” It was said on a sigh.
“You’re beautiful, Shannon.” He was smiling.
She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, and this time she said it not because it was the thing to say, but because she meant it.
“Thank you.”
THREE
THEY REMAINED IN his apartment the rest of the afternoon and evening, and if some hurdle had been cleared by his insistence on absolute trust and her conscious surrender to that, something else had happened as well. Shannon couldn’t really put her finger on it except to realize that she was more aware of him now, more alert to his every movement, his glances, his smile. As if, by declaring her trust, she had thrust aside the wary veil that people inevitably hid behind in the presence of a stranger.
The odd thing was that she felt Derek had not thrust his veil aside simply because he never hung one between himself and other people. She was seeing him clearly, but she knew instinctively that he had seen her that way from the first. Maybe it was his eyes, she thought, those tolerant, ancient eyes. Maybe his old soul had outgrown the need for disguises and veils.
“You look bemused.” He sat down beside her on the couch, his expression quizzical.
Dinner, efficiently prepared by him, was over and the apartment was quiet except for the soft semiclassical music coming from his stereo. Shannon felt … peculiar. Her throat was tight and her heart thudded unevenly, and she had a mad impulse to reach out and touch his gleaming blond hair. She looked fixedly down at her hands, folded together in her lap, wondering what was wrong with her.
“Shannon?”
If it were possible to bottle his voice, she thought distractedly, somebody could make a million bucks selling the stuff to airlines and hospitals; it would instantly reassure passengers and patients that nothing bad could ever happen. Ever. “I was just thinking that you—have an old soul.” Oh, great, Shannon, now the man’s going to think you’re a flake!
“Sometimes it feels that way.”
She looked at him hesitantly, discovering that he was watching her with no sign of amusement on his hard, handsome face. “I meant—”
“I know what you meant.” He smiled. “Maybe it’s true. I’ve always liked to believe we’re given the chance to correct the mistakes we make.”
“And be rewarded for the things we do right?”
He shrugged. “I suppose. The mistakes are more important, though.”
Which, she thought, said a lot about this man. He was less interested in being rewarded than in correcting his mistakes. She didn’t think he’d make many mistakes.
“You have an old soul too,” he said abruptly.
Shannon was startled by the comment, and her laugh held no humor. “Then I must have made somebody important in my last life very angry,” she managed lightly.
“That cracked mirror,” he murmured.
She looked away, disturbed. She trusted that he had told her the truth when he said she was beautiful, but that was only his opinion, after all. Everyone was entitled to his own opinion, no matter how bizarre. And there was her flaw, something she never forgot. No matter what he said about that, she knew the limp existed.
“Shannon—”
The phone rang, cutting off whatever he’d been about to say, and she could only be relieved by that. She felt unsettled, confused. She half listened to his end of the conversation, concentrating on stifling the unusual tangle of emotions she was feeling. And it was unusual for her, because she had long ago found a relatively stable position, an even keel for her emotions. If she never allowed her emotions to overwhelm her, she had reasoned, then nothing could hurt too much.
But the past twenty-four hours had held too many emotions for her defenses to stand against. Though she felt physically safe with Derek, there was, on the periphery of awareness, the frightening, numbing sensation of being hunted, like an animal. There was the sense of loss after the destruction of what had been her home. There was the terrifying realization that this virtual stranger beside her was her only lifeline in a treacherous storm. And there was the confusion she felt because he said her mirror was cracked, the reflection she had looked at for so long a distorted one.
Shannon wanted, needed, a moment in which to sit back and catch her breath. A quiet moment in a safe corner somewhere. A moment free of handsome men with ancient eyes, and faceless men who wanted her dead, and a corporation that seemed to be doing something illegal. She needed the safe haven of her drab apartment, as comfortable as a worn shoe and as unthreatening. She needed the secure routine of her ordered life, uninteresting though it was. She needed to get another African violet, because the one in her apartment was dead now.…
“Shannon?”
Stupid, she thought, to feel like crying for an African violet. “Was that one of your technician friends?” She looked steadily at her laced fingers.
“Yes. Shannon, what’s wrong?”
She could feel him lean closer, and stiffened without even thinking about it. Too close. He was too close. The room was getting small again, closing itself up, filling itself with him, and she could barely breathe. Her throat hurt. “Nothing. What did your friend say?”
Derek moved again, but he was leaning back away from her this time. And his voice was calm and impersonal when he answered her unsteady question. “He said there was some talk a while back about Civatech’s ‘billion-dollar bust.’ They’d apparently gotten military funding for the project, and then reportedly couldn’t make the design work.”
“What kind of design?” She continued to gaze steadily at her fingers.
“Some kind of sophisticated robotics gadget. Word has it the design was supposed to be practically indestructible, and completely lethal. There was even a rumor circulating at one point that a technician had been killed because the thing ran amok. It seems they couldn’t control it, so the design was scrapped. Supposedly.”
“And the military just wrote off the loss
?” The question was an automatic one, just words to fill a silence.
“Probably. It wouldn’t be the first time. But we have to assume that thing is still in one piece, and that somebody’s planning either to use it or sell it.” He reflected for a moment, frowning. “Probably sell it; it makes more sense. And any fanatical group or army in the world would just love a weapon like that. For a great deterrent, if nothing else. It’s a little unsettling to go into battle if you know the other fellow’s got a bigger gun.”
Derek studied her averted face for a moment, aware that she was tense, guarded. “Like watching a flower close up.” He had reached her, briefly, and that tenuous thread of trust, he was convinced, remained intact. But it was such a fragile thing, that bond, as fragile as she was herself. Even his leaning toward her in an undemanding physical closeness had tautened it, made her warily conscious of a threatened intrusion.
He kept his voice dispassionate, calm. “We’ll have to find out exactly what this design is, and who’s planning to use it or sell it. Jeff said they called it Cyrano—” He broke off abruptly, because Shannon looked at him then.
“No,” she said in a surprised voice, her eyes widening. “Not Cyrano. C.y.R.A.n.O.W. Camouflage Robotics Armory Offensive Weapon.”
After a moment, Derek asked her quietly, “How do you know that, Shannon?”
“I saw it.” She shook her head slightly. “I never thought—but that was what was written on it. When I came back from my supervisor’s office yesterday, I saw it moving down a hallway. I stopped and watched it. There are all kinds of electronic devices in the building, and I never thought it might be somebody’s restricted project. It was in the unrestricted part of the building. But this one was almost funny. Like the gadgets in those science-fiction movies. It was about as high as my shoulder, and had armlike extensions, and it rolled on concealed wheels or something.”
“What happened then? Did it just go past you?”
“No. No, a man came hurrying down the hall before it quite reached me. He had a little box in his hand, a remote control, I guess, and he looked angry and—and almost frightened. Shaken. He gave me a hard look, and I turned away and went back to my office.”
“And never gave it another thought.” Derek sighed heavily. “That was it, I’ll bet. If you had just noticed a few oddities and discrepancies, in correspondence, they could have explained it away somehow. But you saw their ‘scrapped’ design alive and well. And they couldn’t explain that.”
“You mean, just because I saw—”
“It has to be that, Shannon. It was bothering me that they moved so fast and ruthlessly to get you out of the way with apparently so little reason. But if you accidentally saw their gadget on top of everything else, they couldn’t take any chances. They couldn’t afford to wait, to see if you managed to connect everything.”
The phone rang, and Derek half turned to scoop it up quickly from the end table. “Yeah?”
Shannon, watching him, still bewildered, heard the scratching of a shrill voice from the telephone, unintelligible to her. But she listened to Derek’s end of the conversation, looking at his face and feeling the tendrils of those unfamiliar emotions fluttering inside her. What was wrong with her? Why did she feel so … so restless? So unlike herself.
“Johnny? All right, if the information’s worth fifty, I’ll leave it in the usual place. What is it?” He listened for a few moments in silence, his face going still. And his voice was flat when he said, “Are you sure? All right. Yeah. I’ll leave the money for you. Thanks, Johnny.” He cradled the receiver slowly, looked at Shannon for a long moment in silence, then sighed softly.
“Well. It’s started.”
She felt cold suddenly, something in the flat timbre of his voice alerting her. “What?”
“That was a friend. On the streets. He has good ears, and he just heard there were some unfriendly out-of-towners fresh off a plane trying to find out if I’m in Richmond, or still out of the country. They’re also asking about a lovely brunette and flashing a picture of you around.”
“A picture? Of me? But, how—”
“You had to get security identification at Civatech, right? An identification with photo?”
Shannon nodded, then frowned. “Unfriendly out-of-towners? What does that mean?” She was afraid she knew.
Derek answered gently, as if he would have softened the blow if he could have. As if anyone could have. “Hit men, Shannon. Assassins.”
“But I didn’t do anything!” she cried.
“That doesn’t matter with people like these,” Derek told her steadily. “You could do something. It’s all they know—and it’s enough. More than enough. It’s a threat to them, and one they have to take care of.”
She drew a shuddering breath. “This isn’t happening.”
“I wish it weren’t. But it is. Get your things together, Shannon; we have to leave now. Pack your clothes in that bag I showed you in the bedroom.”
His steady voice calmed the panic she felt, and she rose slowly to her feet. He was on his feet as well, facing her, and she looked at him in unconscious pleading, forgetting everything except the terrible need for a sense of stability in a world that had gone mad without warning.
He reached out to touch her shoulders lightly. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Shannon.”
She tried a smile that didn’t quite come off. “Promise?”
“I promise.” He smiled. “Now, go pack.”
Derek stood where he was until she disappeared into the bedroom, then raked his fingers through his hair as he headed for the hall closet and the bag he kept packed for emergency exits such as this one. Promises. Like a damned bloody fool, he kept making promises, driven to ease the fear in her eyes. And no one knew better than he that promises made in a situation like this were just words written on the wind.
Derek carried her bag and his own down the service stairs of the building and through a maintenance door he unlocked with a key. He guided her to a dimly lit parking lot just down the street, stopping only once, briefly, to jam a fifty-dollar bill underneath a pot containing a drooping coleus that was trying rather pathetically and vainly to decorate a low brick wall lining the sidewalk.
He moved quickly, but not so quickly that the pace was too difficult for her to maintain. An unassuming, rather battered Ford was parked nearby, and he unlocked the passenger door and helped Shannon inside. Within minutes of leaving the apartment, they were driving down brightly lit streets.
It was nearly midnight when a small, dark woman joined a tall companion in the sheltering darkness of an alley between two quiet buildings in a renovated business district. “You have good instincts,” she said grudgingly. “How did you know he’d move tonight?”
The tall, athletic man with the colorless eyes continued to stare across the street at an old warehouse recently given a much-needed face-lift and converted to spacious lofts. “Know? I didn’t know. How could I? But the pawns in this game seem to be moving with unusual speed. He should have been able to count on another day at least before being forced to abandon the apartment. Interesting.”
“You’re sure he left because they were too close?”
“He wouldn’t have moved otherwise. The girl is—too fragile, I think, to move needlessly.”
“And he’d care about that, of course.”
The tall man looked down at his companion, his flicker of amusement lost easily in the darkness. “Jealous, Gina?” he asked gently.
She stiffened. “Don’t be ridiculous! I’m merely concerned that his emotions not … not cloud his judgment. There’s too much at stake for such things.”
Her companion nodded gravely, the darkness still hiding his expression. “I see. An admirable caution.”
She fumed in silence.
He chuckled softly, and changed the subject. “If we are very, very lucky, he saw no sign that he was followed here.”
“It’s almost impossible to spot a tail if two different cars s
hare the duty,” she pointed out in a sharp voice, still obviously annoyed. “And traffic was certainly heavy tonight. He didn’t see us, Alexi.”
“Perhaps.” Softly, as if to himself, Alexi added, “But I have learned never to underestimate his skill—or his instincts. He’s been hunter and hunted far too often not to have learned well the tricks of the chase.”
Gina looked up at him, frowning slightly. “Sometimes I think you actually like him. Certainly you admire him.”
“Is that what you think?” Alexi murmured, and then added, “I’ll take the first watch. Relieve me at dawn.”
She hesitated, but turned away. And she was making herself as comfortable as possible in her car, parked around the corner, when it occurred to her that Alexi hadn’t really answered her implied question about Derek Ross.
Not really.
The loft was huge, open, and airy. It was bi-level, with a raised platform supporting a large, old brass bed, a polished antique mahogany wardrobe, and an equally old rolltop desk; a bathroom and walk-in closet had been built into the upper space in one corner, and a lively schefflera spread its umbrellalike leaves to provide greenery in another corner.
The lower level held a compact kitchen partitioned from the living area by a waist-high counter, and the remainder of the room was casually furnished with a long, overstuffed couch, two comfortable chairs, a wooden rocking chair with a hassock in front of it, end tables, and a coffee table. There were bright rugs on the polished wood floor, the kitchen was stocked with food, and the bed was made up. The place had a lived-in air, but a curious waiting air as well, as if it wasn’t occupied on a daily basis.
Shannon, sitting in the rocking chair and keeping it moving slowly, watched as Derek made hot cocoa in the kitchen. “Who does this place belong to?”
He looked across the counter at her, taking in her methodical rocking, which obviously hadn’t relaxed her. She had been silent all the way here, withdrawn. He couldn’t really blame her for that, but he knew how dangerous it was for her to retreat into herself rather than face what was happening. He had to reach her, had to strengthen that tenuous bond between them.
