Anne Stuart's Out-of-Print Gems

by Anne Stuart

  She heard the door open, the footsteps in the big room below, and she rose from the bed, leaning over the balcony with the duvet clutched around her, ready to offer him a provocative invitation. The words died in her throat as she recognized the man beneath her, wandering through Daniel’s precious house, his elegant, cruel hands rifling through the papers and books that littered the place.

  He didn’t look up, didn’t realize she stood there, watching him in bemused horror. “Where the hell are you, Crompton?” he muttered under his breath, slamming open the door to the lab.

  No answer, of course, and no sign of him. Suzanna wondered if he was in the house, or if he was outside, looking for their intruder.

  And would he realize the man inside was a far cry from the civilized businessman he appeared to be?

  Looking down at Henry Osborn’s pale, pink head, she could only hope so.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Suzanna backed away from the balcony as silently as she could. Her clothes lay scattered on the living room floor beneath her, but she was able to rifle through her duffel bag and come up with another pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She’d just pulled it over her head when she felt the eyes on her, and she knew they weren’t Daniel’s unseen eyes.

  She turned, slowly, taking a deep breath to control her sudden panic. He was standing there, blocking the narrow stairway, and he looked impeccable, unruffled, despite the smell of gasoline that clung to him.

  “We’ve been looking for you, Ms. Molloy,” he said in a charming, genial voice. “You know, I didn’t believe Daniel when he told me you two had something going, but I guess I was wrong. You certainly have a well-screwed look.”

  She barely blinked at his deliberate crudeness. “What are you doing here, Mr. Osborn?”

  “You were awake two nights ago, weren’t you?” He took a step closer, a small, sadistic smile on his face. “I thought you might be, even though you managed to hide it. Maybe you have a taste for pain.”

  “Not particularly.” She sounded very cool, something she could congratulate herself on. Of course, she felt more than cool. She felt chilled to the bone.

  “Don’t make this difficult, Ms. Molloy. Where is he?”

  “Where is who?”

  He closed his eyes, sighing in genteel exasperation. “I don’t mind doing my own dirty work, you know,” he confided. “It’s been years since I’ve been in the trenches, but an old soldier never loses his touch. If for no other reason, this latest debacle has been instructive. But I don’t care to prolong it any further. I have people who want answers, and I intend to provide them. Where is Dr. Crompton?”

  “Didn’t you see him when you came in?”

  “No.”

  “We heard you,” she said in a dulcet voice. “He went in search of you. I wouldn’t be surprised if you walked right past him and didn’t see him.”

  “Not likely,” he said with a snort. “I’m going to want you to come downstairs, Ms. Molloy. Very slowly and carefully—no sudden moves or shouts for help.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I have a gun. I know how to use it. I’m actually quite good with it,” he said in a calm, measured voice. “I think I would start by shooting you in the throat. That way you wouldn’t be able to call for assistance.”

  She hadn’t even noticed the gun in his hand. It was small, black and undoubtedly capable of doing all he said and more. She put an involuntary hand up to her throat, and his smile widened.

  “Come along, Ms. Molloy. Let’s go downstairs and wait for Dr. Crompton to return.”

  “What if he’s left?” she asked, moving slowly, carefully ahead of him, down the narrow flight of stairs. “What if he’s gone for help?”

  “Where could he go? There’s no one around for miles. If it weren’t for my contacts, we would never have found this place.”

  “We?” She took a brief, surreptitious glance around the living room. It was cold down there, icy, and she knew that Daniel must still be outside. The smell of the gasoline was even stronger downstairs, and there was no way she could dismiss her sense of impending doom.

  “Surely you must realize by now that Beebe has limitless resources. The finest minds, the greatest talents of this country, have lent themselves to Beebe, and I can say quite truthfully that there’s no stopping us.”

  “No stopping you from what?”

  Osborn smiled like a rat. “Have a seat while we wait for the good doctor.”

  He gestured with the gun, and Suzanna didn’t make the mistake of thinking she had any choice in the matter. She took the seat he pointed at, putting her hands in her lap and trying to still her panic. “No stopping you from what?” she asked again.

  “Our noble cause. Our patriotic duty. We’re not fools, Ms. Molloy, even if Washington seems to be overrun these days with bleeding-heart liberals. Those who ignore their history are doomed to repeat it. If we’re fools enough to seek isolation, to let those third-world countries fend for themselves, then we’re asking for the collapse of the United States as a world power.”

  “I didn’t know we were letting them fend for themselves,” she began, watching warily as Osborn drew a thin nylon cord out of his perfectly tailored pocket.

  “The hell with economic help or economic sanctions. Blackmail won’t get us what we want,” he said, tucking the gun in his pocket and advancing on her, the nylon cord extended. “Arms. Weapons. That’s the only power these people will understand.”

  “How does Dr. Crompton fit into that?” She tensed herself. She could fight back. He wasn’t any taller than she was, and he was a great deal older. She had a chance against him, as long as he put that gun away.

  “He’s brilliant. Quite our most valuable asset. We assumed he was working on cold fusion, and if he’d managed to perfect it we would have been in the catbird seat.”

  “Then why were you trying to kill him?”

  Osborn looked disgruntled. “We were fed the wrong information. That fool Jackson said he’d perfected it, that he was only a liability. If Crompton suffered from a fatal lab accident, there’d be no one to interfere with our plans for cold fusion.”

  “Wouldn’t that be killing the goose that laid the golden egg?” she asked, and in the far recesses of her mind she heard Crompton’s disgruntled reaction to being called a goose.

  “We wouldn’t have needed him any longer. He’s not the only brilliant scientist in the world. With his research, we could have hired other, more practical men, and gone on to develop a power base such as the world has never seen.”

  “But things went wrong.”

  Osborn grimaced. “Thank God. Once Jackson had time to put all the research together, we knew we were in trouble. Whatever Crompton was working on, it had nothing to do with cold fusion. It didn’t resemble anything anyone could recognize.”

  “So why don’t you kill him?”

  “I’m not a fool, Ms. Molloy. I didn’t get where I am today by ignoring potential. He’s America’s secret weapon. Whatever that amazing brain has come up with will be worth billions. Trillions. The entire national debt. I’m taking him back with me, if I can.”

  “And if you can’t?”

  He smiled. “Then sooner or later someone will be able to take his research and make sense of it.”

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “Why, nothing at all, my dear. Just tie you up so you won’t interfere. I promise I won’t tie you so tightly that you won’t be able to loosen your bonds within a couple of hours.”

  She shook her head. “What makes you the executioner, Mr. Osborn? I would have thought that duty would be left for underlings. Or do you have a taste for killing?”

  “My dear girl,” he said in his unctuous voice, “I don’t usually waste my time with enforcement duties. But this has partly been my responsibility, letting things get out of hand like this, and I want to make sure things are handled right from now on. Besides, I have a certain talent.” He was standing close enough that
she could smell his cologne, mixed with the scent of gasoline. It was very elegant, expensive cologne. Her father had used it, as well. “Put your hands at your sides, my dear, and I promise I won’t tie them too tightly.”

  She looked up at him. Where was Crompton? “That answers one question,” she said, keeping her hands folded in her lap, her muscles coiled to spring.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re not planning on putting that rope around my wrists. You’re planning on strangling me with it.”

  She’d managed to shock him out of his slimy equanimity. “My dear girl,” he protested, moving closer, the nylon rope stretched tight between his two soft white hands.

  “I can read your mind,” she said savagely. “And don’t call me girl!”

  He lunged for her then, but she was too fast for him, ducking and rolling out of the chair, onto the hard wood floor. “Daniel!” she screamed as Osborn fell on top of her, the rope snaking around her throat.

  She grabbed at it with her hands, but the man was murderously strong, brutally efficient. His knee pressed into her back as he wrapped the rope twice around her neck.

  Time stood still. Years ago she’d read an article about a woman who’d almost been strangled to death by a maniac. She’d been saved, but the loss of oxygen to her brain had left her in a wheelchair, her nerves and muscles useless. Suzanna clawed at the rope, trying to scream again, but it was too tight. No sound came out, and she knew she was going to die. Better that than to be left a living corpse. But she hadn’t been able to tell Daniel she loved him, she loved him…

  The weight disappeared from her back with shocking speed, the tension slackened from the rope around her throat, and she yanked it away, coughing and choking, barely aware of her surroundings. And then she heard Osborn babbling.

  She sat up, dazed. The man who’d tried to strangle her lay spread-eagled on the floor, a look of glazed horror on his face. “What’s going on here?” he gasped.

  “I’m going to kill you, Osborn.” Daniel’s voice came from thin air, cool, unyielding, deadly.

  Osborn stared around him, trying to see the source of that voice. “Where are you, Crompton?” he demanded, getting back some of his bluster. “You know I wasn’t really going to hurt the girl. I was just trying to scare her.”

  “Don’t call her girl,” Daniel said in a tight, lethal voice. “Thirty seconds more and she would have passed out. Another minute and she would have suffered permanent brain damage. But you weren’t going to hurt her, were you, Hank?” His voice was savage as he called the dignified old man by his totally inappropriate nickname. “Any more than you were going to hurt her when you mauled her in the hospital. Where did you get your training, Osborn? You’re too young to be a Nazi, even if you have the personality for it.”

  Osborn sat up, his equilibrium momentarily back in place. “It’s some kind of remote speaker, isn’t it?” he said with renewed self-confidence. “And just so you don’t underestimate me, I should tell you I got my training with the best. The CIA taught me everything I know. Now where are you, Crompton, and how did you manage to throw me? Was it some sort of electric shock?” He brushed a speck of dust off his rumpled jacket.

  An invisible hand punched him in his shoulder, knocking him backward. “It’s a shock, all right,” Daniel said. “Suzanna, I want you to get out of here.”

  She’d managed to pull herself together, just barely. Her throat was on fire, and the smell of gasoline was growing even stronger. “I won’t let you kill him, Daniel,” she said.

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “Daniel, if you kill him, you’ll become just like him.”

  “Do you think I give a damn? I don’t spend my life worrying about petty notions of morality. He hurt you, he was going to kill you—”

  “Daniel…”

  “Get out of here.”

  Osborn lay back on the rug. “Don’t leave me,” he croaked. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but don’t leave me alone.”

  “The problem is, Osborn, that you’re not alone,” Daniel said in a silken voice, close enough to him that Osborn must have felt his breath on his face.

  Osborn jumped a mile, scuttling backward till he came up against the wall. “Is this what you’ve been working on? Some kind of invisible ray?”

  “It’s the side effect of that little lab explosion you and Jackson manufactured for me,” he said. “Just one of the benefits of hazardous work. By the way, did you kill Jackson, or was it Armstead’s little army?”

  Osborn’s color was ghastly. He stared straight ahead, like a blind man. “It’s hot here,” he choked, loosening his tie.

  “It was you, wasn’t it? You’ve got a taste for such things. I’m sure Armstead didn’t tell you to come and kill Suzanna. You just decided to show a little initiative.”

  “I don’t take orders from Armstead.”

  “Oh, but you do. You’re an errand boy, Osborn. A figurehead for Big Brother, doing what they tell you, taking your punishment like a man. Are you ready to die?”

  “Daniel!” Suzanna shrieked in protest.

  Osborn lurched to his feet, throwing himself toward the sound of Daniel’s voice, arms outstretched to topple him. He connected with nothing and went down hard.

  He lay there, panting, and when he tried to rise, something in the middle of his back shoved him downward again. Suzanna could only suppose it was Daniel’s foot.

  “I’m not the only one who’s going to die,” he wheezed, his face twisted and malevolent. “You’re going with me, and your girlfriend, as well.”

  “Who have you got waiting for us, Osborn?” Daniel’s voice was silky with menace. “One of Armstead’s mercenaries?”

  “I don’t need anyone. This place is set to blow, and I’m the only one who can stop it. Get off me, and this whole conversation will be academic.” Osborn tried to get up, but the invisible foot stayed planted in the center of his back.

  “How long?”

  Osborn’s pale face had a grimace of triumph. “Let me up,” he said again. “Or the girlfriend goes up with us.”

  “Bastard,” Daniel muttered, but Suzanna could sense him move away from the prone man. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise when unseen hands wrapped around her arms and hauled her to her feet. “Get out of here, Suzanna. Get down the hill as fast as you can, and keep your eyes open for any of his little buddies.”

  “Not without you,” she said in a raw, rasping voice.

  “I’ll be right behind you.”

  “How will I know that?” she said stubbornly. Henry Osborn had managed to climb to his feet, and he stood there, swaying, his perfect white hair mussed, his elegantly groomed face a mask of violent rage.

  “You’ll have to trust me.” Daniel’s hands were strong, unyielding, as they pushed her toward the door.

  She was still fighting him, even knowing that she was a dangerous distraction. “Are you going to kill him?” she demanded in a hoarse whisper.

  She heard his long-suffering sigh, and she could just imagine the expression on his face. She put out her hand and touched him, connecting with his cheek, brushing against his mouth in a last caress.

  “He deserves it,” he muttered. “If I weren’t such a sentimental fool, I’d throw him over the balcony.”

  For me, she wanted to ask, but was afraid to.

  For you, he thought, and she heard it, even though he wouldn’t say the words aloud. And she smiled up at him. “I’ll wait for you at the bottom of the path.” Then she was gone.

  “She’s not going to get very far, Crompton,” Osborn said in a casual voice. He’d straightened his silk tie, and his pale pink hands weren’t even shaking.

  Daniel turned from his spot by the door. He knew what Osborn had in mind. As long as he could engage him in conversation, he could pinpoint his location. Daniel had no intention of giving him that edge.

  “Haven’t you realized by now just how far-reaching Beebe is? You scientists, with your dreams and
your heads in the clouds…you don’t have any idea what real power is all about. Beebe is about power. There’s no place she’ll be safe. Even if you lied to her, and I don’t make it down this hillside, Armstead and his men will be waiting. If she doesn’t go back to Santa Cristina, they’ll still find her. It may take a while, but those men are dedicated. Sooner or later they’ll run her to ground, and they’ll wipe her existence off the face of the earth.”

  Daniel moved slowly, silently toward the sliding doors leading onto the narrow balcony. He’d have to pass Osborn to get out there, and while he knew he could manage to accomplish that without making any noise, he was afraid his body heat would give him away.

  But he had to get out of there. Osborn assumed he hadn’t noticed the innocuous little box tucked into a corner of the deck, or the almost transparent wires leading away from it. He’d underestimated his opponent, a fatal mistake. Daniel wasn’t a man who missed anything, and he’d noticed that box instantly. He had to get rid of it, or the whole house that he’d built with his bare hands would be a pile of cinders. And he’d probably be in the ashes, as well.

  Osborn took a step, blocking the center of the door. “I’m afraid not, Crompton. You’ve become too great a liability, despite your undeniable gifts. I’m afraid your usefulness is at an end. It’s a pity, too. For a man with your intellect, you could have had anything you wanted. You always struck me as such a ruthless, practical man. You’ve changed.”

  Daniel was standing directly in front of him. “Yes,” he said finally.

  Osborn jumped, but recovered himself with impressive speed. “You’ve become practically human,” he observed. “What in God’s name happened to you? Don’t tell me you’ve been fool enough to fall in love with that girl?”

  “Don’t call her a girl,” Daniel said absently.

  “Is that it? Has true love made an idiot out of you?”

  “Not exactly,” Daniel drawled. “It was more likely a case of green slime.”

  He heard the change. The quiet, merciless little hum of the box on the porch suddenly went into a high-pitched squeal, so painful that Daniel held his ears for a moment. Osborn didn’t move, obviously deaf to the sound.