Without A Trace

by Nora Roberts

  He seemed so confident, so sure of the plan of attack. There was nothing she wanted, needed, more than to believe in him. "You'd met al-Aziz before, hadn't you? He seemed to know you."

  Trace felt an itch between his shoulder blades. He'd have preferred sitting with his back to the wall. "We've dealt before."

  "You've used him to sell guns before."

  "The ISS used him," Trace said. He broke another bread stick in half. "A few years back there were plans for a coup the ISS wanted to endorse. Anonymously. Cabot made a nice profit, al-Aziz made his commission, and democracy took a giant step forward."

  She knew such things happened. She'd grown up in a country divided by war. She lived in a country whose faith had been strained by secret deals and political machinations. But that didn't make it right.

  "It's wrong."

  "This is the real world," he countered. "And most of it's wrong."

  "Is that why you do it?" She'd drawn away from him, but she couldn't ignore the impulse to move closer. "To make things right?"

  There'd been a time—it seemed a lifetime ago—when he had been idealistic enough to believe that things could be made right. When he'd lost that, where he'd lost that, he couldn't have said. And he'd stopped looking.

  "I just do my job, Gillian. Don't try to make a hero out of me."

  "It didn't occur to me." She said it dryly enough to make his lips curve. "I just think it would make it easier if I understood you."

  "Just understand that I'm going to get your brother and his kid out."

  "And then?" She made a conscious effort to relax. There was nothing she could do now but wait. Wait, and try to probe beneath the surface of the man who held her life in his hands. "Will you retire?"

  "That's the idea, sweetheart." The smoke around him was expensive—French, Turkish. The music was loud, the liquor just tolerable. He wondered when it had hit him that he'd spent too much time in places like this. He nearly laughed out loud. For all intents and purposes, he'd been born in a place like this. Sometime over the past year he'd realized he wanted out as badly as he'd wanted out a dozen years before. Only he was long past the point where he could just stick out his thumb.

  "Trace?"

  "What?"

  She wasn't sure where he'd gone, but she knew it wasn't the time to ask. "What will you do…when you retire?"

  "There's a place in the Canary Islands where a man can pick fruit right off the tree and sleep in a hammock with a warm woman. The water's clear as glass, and the fish jump right in your lap." He took another long sip. "A hundred thousand dollars in a place like that, I could be king."

  "If you didn't die of boredom first."

  "I've had enough excitement to last me the next thirty or forty years. Honey-skinned women and a salt-free diet." He clicked his glass against hers. "I'm going to enjoy myself."

  "Andre!"

  Trace twisted in his chair and found his mouth captured in a long, steamy kiss. About halfway through, recognition dawned. He could remember only one woman who smelled like a hothouse flower and kissed like a vampire.

  "Desiree." Trace ran a hand down her bare arm as she snuggled into his lap. "Still in Casablanca."

  "Of course." She gave a throaty laugh and tossed back a mane of spiky midnight hair. "I'm partners now in the club."

  "Come up in the world."

  "But yes." She had skin like a magnolia and a heart that pumped happily with poison. Despite it, Trace had maintained a distant affection for her. "I married Amir. He's in the back, or he'd slit your throat for putting your hands on me."

  "Nothing's changed, I see."

  "You haven't." Blithely ignoring Gillian, Desiree ran her fingertips over Trace's face. "Oh, Andre, I waited weeks for you to come back."

  "Hours, anyway."

  "Are you staying long?"

  "Few days. I'm showing my friend the charms of North Africa."

  Desiree glanced around, took a sweeping up-and-down look, then cast Gillian into oblivion. "There was a time when my charms were enough for you."

  "Your charms were enough for any army." Trace lifted his drink and kept his eye on the door of the back room. He knew Desiree wasn't exaggerating about Amir. "I've got a little business, ma belle. Do you still listen well at keyholes?"

  "For you—and a price."

  "Flynn Fitzpatrick. Scientist. Irish, with a small daughter. How much will it cost me to find out if they're in Casablanca?"

  "For such an old, dear friend…five thousand francs."

  Trace shifted her off his lap before taking out his money clip. "Here's half now. As an incentive."

  She bent down and slipped the money into her shoe. "It's always a pleasure to see you, Andre."

  "And you, cherie." He rose and brushed his lips over her knuckles. "Don't give Amir my best."

  With another laugh, Desiree weaved her way through the crowd.

  "You have fascinating friends," Gillian commented.

  "Yeah. I'm thinking of having a reunion. Let's go."

  Gillian made her way out of the smoke and into the clear night. "What were you saying?"

  "Just reminiscing about old times."

  She lifted a brow. "I'm sure they were fascinating."

  Despite himself, he had to smile. Desiree had a heart of coal, but what an imagination! "They bad their moments."

  She fell silent for a moment, struggling. At last she gave up. "That woman was your type? Slinky?"

  Trace knew enough about women to know when laughter was dangerous. He coughed instead. "Let's just say she's a type."

  "I'm aware of that, and I doubt she's terribly attractive once you've scraped off the three layers of makeup."

  "No need to be jealous, sweetheart. We're old news."

  "Jealous?" She made the word sound like a joke and despised herself because it wasn't. "I would hardly be jealous of any woman you'd… you'd…"

  "Come on, you can spit it out."

  She shrugged off the arm he'd draped companionably around her shoulders. "Never mind. What did you pay her for?"

  "To dig up some information."

  "How would a woman like that be able to get any information?"

  Trace looked down at her, saw that she was serious, and could only shake his head. "Diplomacy," he said.

  She couldn't sleep. The energy that had been so sorely depleted only days before was back in full force. She was in Africa, a continent she had only read about in books. The Sahara was to the south. She was only steps away from the Atlantic, but from this side of the world it seemed a different ocean. Even the stars seemed different.

  She didn't mind the strangeness. During her childhood she'd often dreamed of going to faraway places, but she'd contented herself with books. Her decision to emigrate to America had been the result of a craving to see something new, to be her own woman in a way she could never have been if she'd remained in Ireland with her father. So she'd gone to America to pursue her own goals, to live her own life. Now her father was ill and her brother was missing.

  Gillian pulled on her robe, then threw open the terrace doors. How many times had she asked herself if things would somehow have been different if she'd stayed. It seemed foolish, even egotistical, to believe it. And yet the nagging doubt remained.

  Now she was in Africa with a man who changed his identity in the blink of an eye. It would be through him and her own determination that things were put right again.

  Put right. With a sigh, Gillian leaned on the railing and looked out at the lights and shadows of Casablanca. He said he didn't believe in putting things right, only in doing his job. Why didn't she believe that? It seemed to fit the style of the man. What it didn't fit were her feelings about him.

  Almost from the first moment, she'd felt both drawn and repelled. There was something in his eyes, though only rarely, that told her he could be both kind and compassionate. There was the way he'd looked at her, looked to her, at the top of the Pyramid of the Magician. Part of him was a dreamer, part of him an icy
realist. It seemed impossible to combine the two.

  What he was, what he did, made her uneasy. All her life she'd believed in right and wrong, good and evil. Until she'd met him, she hadn't considered there could be so many shades in between. Nor had she realized until she'd met him that she could be attracted to a man who lived his life in those shades.

  But it was a fact—not a theory, not a hypothesis, but a fact—that she was attracted, that she did trust, that she did believe. She couldn't take her emotions into a laboratory and dissect them, analyze them. For perhaps the first time in her life, she was stuck with a problem that no amount of logic or experimentation could solve. And the name of the problem was Trace O'Hurley.

  She'd been jealous, quite fiercely jealous, when that woman had draped herself all over Trace in the club. When she'd murmured to him in intimate French and put her hands all over him, Gillian had wanted, badly, to grab her by the hair and yank out a few lacquered hunks. That simply wasn't in her nature. Or rather she'd never known it was.

  She'd been jealous of Flynn from time to time, but only in the way a sister might be of a favored brother. And her love for him had always been much deeper than her envy. At university she'd had a few jealous pangs over girls with straight blond hair and blue eyes. But that had been very much a surface thing, without passion or depth.

  The jealousy she'd felt tonight had been hot and violent and very difficult to control. It had also been unfamiliar. She hadn't been jealous of the woman's exotic looks or of her sinuous body, but of the fact that she'd twined that body around Trace's and kissed him as though she could have eaten him alive.

  And he'd seemed to enjoy it.

  Gillian crossed her arms over her chest and looked out at the smattering of lights that were still glowing in the city. She didn't care for jealousy any more than she cared for confusion. Trace O'Hurley apparently equaled both.

  She jolted at a quick scraping sound, then whirled to see the flare of a match on the terrace beside hers.

  He was in the shadows. They seemed to suit him best. She wondered how long he'd been there, silently watching.

  "I didn't know you were there." And she wouldn't have, she realized, unless he'd allowed her to. "I couldn't sleep." When he didn't respond, she fiddled with the tie of her robe and cleared her throat. "I thought you'd gone to bed."

  "Time change throws your system off."

  "Yes, I suppose that's it." She curled her fingers around the railing again, wishing it was that simple. "We've been in so many time zones in the past few days. I'd have thought you'd be used to it."

  "I like the night." That was true enough, but he'd come onto the terrace because he'd been restless, and because he'd been thinking of her.

  "Sometimes I'll go up on the roof of my building. It's the only way you can see the stars in New York." She looked up at them now. "Back in Ireland, all you had to do was walk outside." With a shake of her head, she looked out at the city again. "Do you ever miss it?"

  "Miss what?"

  "Your home."

  He drew on the cigarette, and his face was washed in red light for an instant. "I told you, I don't have one."

  She moved to the side of the terrace that ran along the side of his. "Just the Canary Islands? How long can a man live on fruit and fish?"

  "Long enough."

  Though the night had cooled, he wore only baggy drawstring pants. Gillian remembered, quite clearly, the wild thrill of being held against that body. And the confusing emptiness of being pushed away from it. No, emotions couldn't be analyzed, but she could try to analyze their source.

  "I wonder what it is you're running from."

  "Running to." Trace pitched his cigarette over the balcony and onto the street below. "A life of luxury, sweetheart. Coconut milk and half-naked women."

  "I don't think you can do it. You've already given a chunk of your life to your country."

  "That's right." Unconsciously he rubbed at the scar on his chest. "What's left is mine." Her scent was soft again. The breeze carried it from her skin to his.

  "You know, one of the things Mr. Forrester told me about you was that if you played by the rules more regularly you'd be running the ISS."

  "Charlie had delusions of grandeur."

  "He was tremendously proud of you."

  "He recruited me. He trained me." Trace moved restlessly to the railing. "He'd want to think he'd done a good job of it."

  "I think it was more than that. Affection and pride don't always go together." She thought of her father. "You should have the satisfaction of knowing he liked who you were, as well as what he'd made you. I know you cared for him, and that you're doing this as much for him as for the money. The reasons shouldn't matter to me, but they do. Trace?"

  He didn't want to look at her now, with the moonlight slanting down and her scent hanging in the air. He kept his eyes on the street below. "Yeah?"

  "I know that Flynn and Caitlin will be all right. That they'll be safe soon because you're here." She wished he was close that she could reach out and touch him. She was grateful he wasn't. "And when I have them back I'll never be able to repay you. So I want you to know now that whatever happens in the meantime, whatever has to be done, I'm grateful."

  "It's a job," he said, his teeth clenched, because the low, warm voice tended to make him forget that. "Don't make me out to be some knight on a white charger, Gillian."

  "No, you're not that, but I think I'm beginning to understand what you are, Trace." She walked to the terrace doors. "Good night." Because she hadn't expected him to answer, she closed the door on his silence.

  "But how can you expect me to browse through shops and snap pictures as if I were nothing more than a tourist?"

  Trace steered Gillian toward another display window. "Because today you are nothing but a tourist. Show a little enthusiasm, will you?"

  "My brother and my niece are prisoners. I'm afraid it's a little difficult for me to work up any enthusiasm over a bunch of crockery."

  "Authentic North African Art," Trace said.

  "We're wasting time poking around when we should be doing something."

  "Any suggestions?" His voice was low as he continued to stroll, her arm caught firmly in his. Brightly striped awnings shaded the wares spread on outside tables. There was leather, and there was the flash of metal and the smell of horse. "You want me to break into where you brother's being held, guns blazing, maybe a knife between my teeth?"

  He did a good job of making her feel like a fool. Gillian shrugged it off. "It makes better sense than buying trinkets and taking snapshots."

  "In the first place I don't know where they're holding him. Hard to break into something until you've got the address. In the second place, if I tried that kind of TV tactics I'd be dead and your brother would be no better off. Let's sit." Satisfied with the position, he chose a shaded table on the terrace of a small cafe. "Why don't you tell me what's eating you?"

  Gillian pushed her sunglasses more firmly on her nose. "Oh, I don't know. It might have something to do with the fact that Flynn and Caitlin have been kidnapped. Or perhaps I just got up on the wrong side of the bed."

  "Sarcasm doesn't suit you." He ordered two coffees, then stretched out his legs. "You played the game well enough yesterday."

  Gillian looked down at her hands. The sun glinted off the gold band of her watch. She studied the play of light until their coffee was served. "I couldn't sleep. Most of the night I just lay there waiting for morning. There was this feeling I couldn't shake. Something was wrong, dreadfully wrong, and I was going to be too late to put it right again." She looked up at him then, certain she would despise him if he laughed at her.

  "You've been through a lot in the past few days." He said it easily, without the sympathy she would have bristled at or the edge she would have resented. "It wouldn't be normal for you to sleep like a baby."

  "I suppose not, but if I just felt we were doing something…"

  "We are." He put his hand on hers, the
n immediately drew it away again. "Drink your coffee."

  The touch had been quick, and he was already resenting it. The fact that she thought she understood made her smile. "Being kind makes you uncomfortable."

  "I'm not kind." He lit a cigarette, knowing he'd do better if he kept his hands occupied.

  "Yes, you are." A little more relaxed, Gillian picked up her cup. "You'd prefer not to be, but it's difficult to change your nature. You can become other people." The coffee was hot and strong, and exactly what she'd needed. "But you can't change your nature. Whatever name you use, underneath it you're a kind man."

  "You don't know me." He let smoke fill his lungs. "Or anything about me."

  "As a scientist, I'm trained to observe, to analyze, categorize, hypothesize. Would you like to hear my hypothesis about you?"

  "No."

  The tension that had been locked in her muscles throughout the night eased. "You're a man who looked for adventure and excitement and undoubtedly found more than he'd bargained for. I'd say you believed in freedom and human rights strongly enough to spend a great deal of your life fighting for them. And you've been disillusioned and you nearly lost your life. I'm not certain which disturbs you more. I don't think you lied when you told me you were tired, Trace. But you lie every time you pretend not to care."

  She was close, much too close, to the heart of things, much closer than anyone else had ever stepped. He'd found that life was more comfortable with distance. When he spoke, it was with the single goal of reestablishing it. "What I am is a trained liar, thief, cheat and killer. There's nothing pretty or glamorous or idealistic about what I do. I follow orders."

  "I think the question isn't so much what you do as why you do it." For now, she stopped asking herself why it was so important for her to believe that, and just believed. "The whys became less clear, so you have a fantasy about retiring to some little island where you won't have to think about it."

  Trace crushed out his cigarette. "You said physicist, not psychiatrist, right?"

  "It's simply a matter of logic. I'm a very logical person." She set her cup back neatly in its saucer. "Then there's the matter of your behavior toward me. Apparently you're attracted."

  "Is that so?"

  She smiled then, always more secure when things were spelled out clearly. "I think it would be foolish to deny that a physical attraction exists. That can be listed as fact rather than theory. Yet, even on that basis, your behavior is contradictory. On each occasion when you've acted on that attraction, you've chosen to back off in favor of annoyance and frustration."

  He didn't care to have his attractions, physical or otherwise, dissected like some embalmed frog. Trace waited until the waiter had freshened both cups before he leaned toward Gillian. "You can be grateful I backed off."

  Their faces were very close over the little round table. Her heart began to drum, but she found the sensation more unique than unpleasant. "Because you're a dangerous man?"

  "I'm the most dangerous man you'll ever meet."

  She wasn't about to argue with that. "I explained to you before, I can take care of myself."

  She reached for her coffee, and Trace closed his hand over her wrist. The grip was firm enough to make her eyes narrow. "You wouldn't know where to begin with me, Doc. And you sure as hell wouldn't know where to end. Count your blessings."

  "My family's been kidnapped, I've seen a man die and had a knife to my back. There's little you could do to frighten me." She jerked her hand away and, with every outward appearance of calm, lifted her cup. Her heart beat fast and hard in her throat.

  "You're wrong." This time he smiled. "If I decide to have you, you'll find out how wrong."

  Her cup hit the saucer with a snap. "I'm ready to go."

  "Sit." It was the sudden change in his voice that made her obey. "Drink your coffee," he said mildly as he picked up his camera.

  "What is it?"

  "Al-Aziz has a visitor." The camera was one of the few pieces of ISS equipment Trace was fond of. He pushed a button, and a man stepping out of a black car twenty yards away filled the viewfinder. He recognized the face from