The Dangerous Boxed Set

by Lisa Marie Rice

  Every cell in his body was screaming for Option One, the clearest hunch he’d ever had in his life.

  Unless, of course, Nick Ireland’s famous hunch machine was completely broken, crushed and charred just like the bones in the coffin with his name on it, six feet underground.

  Nick hunkered down, watching Charity’s road. As soon as he saw Worontzoff’s limo and driver appear and Worontzoff depart, he’d make his move.

  It was the smart thing to do, the only thing to do.

  And if it also meant that he’d see Charity again, hold her in his arms again, well, hey…a twofer.

  Whatever went down, though, one thing was sure. Charity was not going out tonight to a murderer’s house. To prevent it, he’d die. And he’d certainly kill.

  Twenty-one

  “Excellent,” Vassily said, pale eyes glittering. “I knew I could count on you, dushka. It is meant, my dear. Never tamper with fate; you will only get hurt. It is one of life’s harshest lessons.”

  He put his arm around her and squeezed her shoulders. His voice was louder than usual and his arm around her was so tight it almost hurt. There was something odd about him, something almost feverish, so unlike the normal, coolly rational Vassily Charity knew. She wondered if he were ill, coming down with flu.

  He was holding her so tightly his fingers bit into her shoulder. Charity breathed deeply, thinking perhaps that would discreetly dislodge his hand, but it didn’t work. It only made his grip more painful.

  There was the strangest vibe coming from Vassily—it was as if he were…excited. Or worked up, or overwrought. It felt as if he were losing his grip on himself. His breathing was speeded up. She could feel his rib cage rising and falling against her side, so quickly he was almost panting. He looked agitated, restless, and fitful.

  If she’d felt any better, she would have inquired after his health. He was a friend, more or less the same age her father would have been if he’d lived. Certainly her elder.

  It would be the polite thing to do, after all, for polite Charity Prewitt. You could always count on her to do the right thing.

  Not right now, though. She wasn’t going to do the polite thing, be the nice little girl who’d been well brought up in a nice family. The fact was, she was barely holding it together—utterly depleted, rendered down to bedrock herself, clinging to the shreds of her self-control by her fingernails. She could barely stand upright. The last thing she needed was to deal with Vassily’s agitation.

  What had possessed her to accept his invitation? Where would she find the strength to go out, when all she craved was solitude and the dark?

  And it was entirely possible she was coming down with the flu herself. She’d thrown up three or four times between yesterday morning and this morning.

  Right now, there was nothing left in her to give to Vassily, sick or not. She was down to scorched earth.

  “Vassily—” Charity tried to gently pull away from him, but found to her astonishment that it was almost impossible. He’d put his other hand back on her knee so that she was effectively pinned down. Or at least that was what it felt like.

  He wasn’t doing it on purpose, she was sure. How could he know he was hurting her? But he could certainly know he was crowding her.

  She stood. It was the only thing she could think of to break Vassily’s grip and start getting him out of the house. She craved solitude the way an alcoholic craves a drink, an addict a fix.

  Deeply, desperately. Like she would die if she couldn’t get it right now.

  Vassily stood, too. Charity didn’t see him do anything, he certainly didn’t pull out a cell phone or make a gesture, but the instant he stood, she saw his limousine pull up out front, long and sleek and black. The driver stopped precisely at the point where the passenger door met her walkway.

  Vassily walked slowly to the front door, helped along by his cane, elegant, controlled, limping. Charity accompanied him, hoping her legs would hold out at least until she could close the door behind him. She was close to total collapse.

  Vassily turned to her, pale blue eyes staring intently into hers.

  “Ivan will pick you up at six, my dear. Until then—” He reached out a scarred finger and caressed her cheek. It took all her self-control not to jerk away. He dropped his hand and pulled on gloves, looking around for his hat. Charity picked it up and brought it to him. The felt wool was thick, of excellent quality. He donned his hat, never taking his eyes from her.

  “I will see you tonight, dushka.” His gloved hand picked up hers and he bowed over it. “À bientôt, cherie.”

  Charity withdrew her hand and reached around him to turn the doorknob, something he would find difficult to do. “Good-bye, Vassily.”

  He moved excruciatingly slowly. Out of politeness, Charity stood behind him in the open doorway, freezing. The gelid morning air sent painful frozen fingers of ice deep into her bones. She tucked her hands into her armpits in a vain attempt to keep some warmth in her system.

  Very little light penetrated the slate gray cloud cover. It was almost too cold for snow. A few tiny frozen flakes tried to settle on the ground, but the wind whipped them into a frenzy before they could. Charity felt the ping of sleet needles against her cheek as she waited impatiently for Vassily to leave.

  Finally, he was over the threshold, walking haltingly toward Ivan waiting at the top of the steps, his arm out. As soon as Vassily was safely in the care of his chauffeur, she scrambled to shut the door behind him, trying not to slam it in her haste to have him out of the house. Once she heard the snick of the latch, she sagged against the door, eyes closed. Panting, exhausted.

  Alone again. Thank God.

  After a while, she heard the whump! of an expensive car door closing and the deep purr of a powerful engine. She watched through the living room window as the limo pulled away. The windows of the limo were tinted but she thought she saw Vassily’s pale face pressed against the glass. Looking at her.

  Oh God. What had she done?

  Charity pulled the living room curtains closed—she’d had enough of the outside world—put the tea glasses, tea pot, and jam onto a tray and carried it into the kitchen. She was feeling so weak the tray shook in her hands, the tea glasses rattling. That moment standing in the open doorway had sucked what little warmth she’d had right out of her, together with what little strength she’d been clinging to.

  She stopped and leaned against the sink, arms around her midriff. Such a bone-deep chill, as if her insides held a core of ice. She felt completely ground down, reduced to bone held together by skin. Not too far from the grave herself.

  The trembling grew stronger. Bile rose in her throat again. Tears leaked out of her eyes. She didn’t know whether to try to make it to the bathroom to throw up or simply collapse to the floor and throw up there.

  With difficulty, she swallowed back the bile trickling up her gullet, then waited while her stomach settled. She locked her knees.

  No vomiting, she told herself sternly. No collapsing to the floor. There will be no one to pick you up if you do.

  It felt as if there couldn’t possibly be enough heat in the world to warm her up. The only thing that could make her warm again was Nick, and he was in a coffin in the stony cold ground.

  Oh, how he had warmed her! She hadn’t felt cold once in the week they’d been together. Sleeping naked in the dead of winter hadn’t been a problem with Nick in bed with her. He was a furnace. A constant source of spine-melting heat.

  Had been. Now what was left of him was frozen bones.

  She would never be warm again, for the rest of her life.

  Oh God, how she missed him! A sob wanted to rise from her chest but she repressed it, clapping her hand over her mouth. Her throat shook. A wild keening sound escaped from behind her hand.

  She couldn’t cry again. Crying required an energy she simply didn’t have. The tears would be wrung from some irretrievably shattered place inside her and she would never be whole again.

  She
pressed her hand so hard against her mouth she could feel her lips pressing against her teeth and waited. Waited for the upwelling of grief to subside, like the lash of a scorpion’s tail. All she needed was for it to go down a little, just a little, just enough for her to make her wobbly way back to the bedroom and collapse onto the bed.

  She hugged herself even more tightly, in a vain attempt to give herself the warmth Nick had so easily given her.

  This sharp, lancing pain had to stop at some point. Didn’t it?

  Didn’t all the books say grieving eventually abates?

  It was all she had to cling to, that some day this wracking pain would lessen, even if it would never go away. She was like someone who had been grievously wounded in battle. The surgeons and nurses could give her blood transfusions and stitch her up, but deep inside her, the tissues were rent, and the wound would never completely heal.

  Surely the craziness would stop some day. It would have to, wouldn’t it? Prewitts were long-lived. She could easily live to ninety. Her skin crawled at the thought of another sixty-two years of this madness.

  Over the past three days, she’d felt Nick’s presence a hundred times a day. He was around the corner, behind that door, he’d just left the room. And each time her heart would soar and then crash and burn when he wasn’t there.

  He wasn’t there. He would never be there again.

  So why was her body tormenting her so? Wasn’t it bad enough that her husband was gone, without having these flashes of his presence?

  Like…now.

  Every hair on Charity’s body rose as she walked slowly toward her bedroom. Her feet dragged, her heart thudded. A big boulder of terror pressed down on her, cutting off her breath. Spots formed in front of her eyes, like a big buzzing cloud of gnats.

  For she could feel Nick, feel his presence. She could smell him. He was here, in this house, right now. Thinking that was craziness, she knew it, but she couldn’t stop herself.

  This was an entirely new level of slick horror added to the grief, the terror that she was losing her mind.

  With each step toward the bedroom, she could feel his presence more strongly. It was insane. Her mind was telling her she was crazy but every sense was on alert, sending frantic signals to her brain. He’s here he’s here he’s here! Like the beat of a jungle drum.

  In the week they’d been together, her entire body had become a tuning fork, attuned to Nick’s body. He was here, she could feel it. No amount of reasoning could convince her he wasn’t.

  This was beyond horrible.

  She’d observed firsthand Aunt Vera’s slow, awful slide into dementia and it was the most terrifying, horrific, heartbreaking thing she’d ever seen. Aunt Vera, too, saw long-lost loved ones in the shadows in the corners.

  Terrified, Charity reached out a shaking hand and pressed it flat against her bedroom door. There was nothing behind that door but an unmade bed and tear-sodden handkerchiefs strewn about the floor. She knew that. She knew that. But on an entirely different level, her body knew something else.

  She stood for long moments with her trembling hand on her door, afraid to open it because behind it would be nothing but proof that she was losing her mind.

  Chilled, sick, trembling, she finally gave a little push. The door slowly yawned open, the sound loud in the still of the house. The room behind was shrouded in shadows. She hadn’t bothered to open her bedroom shutters.

  Nick’s presence was very strong.

  Charity was rooted to the spot, utterly unable to enter her own bedroom. Her perfectly ordinary bedroom had suddenly become a place of monsters, waiting to eat her alive. A black pit with her sanity on the bottom, forever lost to her.

  The door opening had created currents of air that brought Nick’s scent, Nick’s presence even more strongly to her.

  There was a slight noise inside her bedroom.

  She couldn’t stand this, simply couldn’t. There was nothing left in her that could withstand this kind of madness. She tried to lift her foot, tried to chide herself into walking into her own bedroom, but she couldn’t. Her feet were anchored to the floor, as if mired in quicksand. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe.

  The shadows in the room swirled, or maybe it was her vision blacking out. Her legs were trembling now, barely able to hold her up.

  The shadows shifted and shifted again.

  The sound of a boot heel striking her hardwood floor. The darkness coalesced, gained an outline.

  A tall, broad-shouldered figure dressed in black stepped forward. A deep voice said, “I won’t let you go to Worontzoff’s house, Charity.”

  Nick. Back from the dead.

  Her eyes rolled to the back of her head.

  Fuck!

  Nick leaped forward to catch Charity before she collapsed onto the floor, cursing himself as he did. He hadn’t war gamed it. He hadn’t run it through his head in any way, which is what he always did, no matter what the move. This time, for the first time in his life, he just barreled ahead without any thought for consequences.

  Otherwise he might have thought about the shock to Charity’s system at seeing her dead husband alive once more.

  Nick eased Charity down, icy dread flooding his system. People died of shock, he knew that. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

  Charity’s face was bone white, almost waxen. Her system was sending as much blood as possible away from the periphery toward the heart, as always happened in moments of great stress. Some shocks are so great blood circulation slows and eventually stops.

  In Bosnia, ten days into his first assignment, Nick had seen a mother keel over dead from shock upon viewing the remains of her daughter’s body after Serb soldiers had finished with her. There hadn’t been much left.

  Shock kills.

  He took Charity’s ice-cold slender hands between his, trying to warm them up. Her hands were completely still. She wasn’t moving at all, not even her chest.

  In a sudden panic, he put a hand under her sweatshirt, feeling for her heartbeat. She wasn’t wearing a bra and Nick was half ashamed of the surge of desire as he felt her soft breast under his hands. He loved her breasts.

  A Delta teammate, Kit Sanderson, once said he worshiped at the Church of Big Tits and without thinking about it too much, Nick had, too.

  The first time he’d touched her there, cupped her in his hand, feeling the velvety pink nipple harden to a point, he’d become an instant convert to the Church of Small Tits, this classy little Greek temple, where they played Bach on an organ, so unlike the other church—loud with raucous country music.

  He laid two fingers over her left breast. Ah, there it was–fast and thready, but a definite beat. He rocked back on his heels, still crouching beside her.

  Jesus, what now? He’d had basic medic training. If she were bleeding from a bullet wound, he’d know precisely what to do. If she had a broken bone he could probably set it, if she needed stitches he could do that, too. But this was beyond him.

  “Charity,” he said softly, then louder. “Charity!”

  Christ, she was barely breathing. Her nostrils were pinched and white, her muscles completely lax.

  This wasn’t good. She was run down anyway. Her cheekbones were sharper, that sharp little chin more pointed, collarbones more prominent. She’d lost weight and she hadn’t had that much weight to lose in the first place.

  Damn, he should have played this differently, but how? How do you tell a grieving widow—Whoops! Husband not dead, after all! Big mistake; sorry about that. Hey, shit happens.

  Nope. There was no way he could have revealed himself without shocking her in a big way. And no way he could keep her from going to Worontzoff’s tonight without revealing himself. What was he supposed to do—send her e-mails from beyond the grave? Leave her messages written in lipstick on her bathroom mirror?

  No, this had to be done in person.

  The story of his life—only one possible hard road to take, dead ahead, with narrow walls and no side streets. The only way
out was straight through. No alternatives, no detours.

  Charity moaned and he watched her face carefully as a little color crept back in. Thank God she wasn’t paper white anymore. She was coming round.

  He’d have poured her a finger of whiskey and forced her to drink it, but that fuck Worontzoff had already made her drink vodka. With nothing in her stomach, that much alcohol would knock her right back out. And besides, he didn’t want to leave her side.

  She moaned again, her hand flexing inside his. He lifted her torso up, keeping his arm around her back for support.

  Unexpectedly, her eyes opened. No coming-around process, no fluttering of eyelids, so he’d have a chance to prepare. Just those beautiful light-gray eyes, closed one second, wide open the next.

  She looked frightened, lost.

  “Nick?” she whispered. She lifted her hand, tentatively. It trembled. She moved it slowly toward his face, as if she were pushing her hand against a waterfall. Slowly, slowly closer.

  Finally, she touched his face, gingerly. As if touching him might burn her. Cheekbone, temple, jaw. Reassuring herself by touch that he was here, alive. As if the evidence of her eyes and ears weren’t enough. A little line appeared between her ash-brown eyebrows. “Is it you? How can it be you?”

  Nick slid his other arm around her knees and rose with her in his arms, frowning at how slight she felt.

  This next part was going to be…tricky. Before he even got to the part where he convinced her not to go out tonight, which was like climbing Everest, he had to hack his way through thorny woods, ford raging rivers, cross blazing deserts.

  Worse. He had to tell her that every word he’d ever spoken to her was a lie.

  So he knew he was in for an uphill battle and the best way to deal with that was to tell her the truth—or as much of truth as he could—while touching her.

  His words had been lies, but his body hadn’t lied. Not once. Every time he touched her, every time he slid into that lovely, warm, welcoming body, his body’s delight was genuine. No lies there.