Lover, Stranger

by Amanda Stevens

  To Grace’s right, a closed door was skillfully hidden between two of the mirrors. Until she was almost upon it, the door looked like one of the intricately carved wall panels. Cautiously, Grace opened the panel and glanced down a long corridor. It appeared to be some sort of service hall with swinging doors that led to the kitchen and work areas.

  Near one end of the corridor, a man in a white waiter’s uniform cowered in a corner, his hands still clutching a circular tray of dirty dishes.

  Grace started toward him. “I’m a federal agent,” she said. “Don’t move.”

  The man’s expression was one of shock. He muttered something she couldn’t understand. As Grace neared him, she saw that he was a middle-aged Hispanic with a swarthy complexion and dark, piercing eyes. A thin, black mustache traced the line of his upper lip, and a tiny gold hoop glinted from his left earlobe.

  His eyes were wide with fright, and his hands trembled so badly, the crystal and cutlery made a jingling sound on the tray.

  “Don’t shoot, por favor.” His tone was pleading, his voice heavily accented as he stared at the gun in Grace’s hand.

  She took another step toward him. “Just stay calm,” she advised. “¿Habla usted inglés?”

  “Sí. Un poquito.”

  “Are you alone here? Have you seen anyone else in this hallway?”

  His dark eyes lifted to hers. He nodded.

  “Where? ¿Dónde?”

  He pointed down the hallway behind her. Grace glanced over her shoulder.

  She sensed more than saw the man move toward her. She whirled back around, but as she did so, he slammed the tray into her stomach as hard as he could. The breath flew from her lungs, and Grace stumbled backward, falling against the wall and sliding to the floor. The man took off running toward the end of the hallway. He looked back only once before disappearing around a corner, but in that split second, Grace could have sworn she saw recognition flash across his features.

  “Stop!” she commanded, but her gun had slipped out of her hand when she fell. She scrambled toward it, but the man was gone.

  Fighting for breath, Grace pulled herself up from the floor and started after him. The adrenaline rushing through her veins was almost like a drug high. Her head spun dizzily, but she didn’t hesitate.

  Why had he run from her?

  The most logical explanation was that he was an illegal alien who didn’t want to be deported, but as Grace rounded the corner where she had last seen him, another thought came to her.

  If he was nothing more than an illegal alien, why had she glimpsed a look of recognition on his face?

  BY THIS TIME, hotel security had descended on the uproar in the ballroom. HPD would be close behind, and Ethan decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to be seen with a loaded gun. He slipped the weapon beneath his jacket, into the waistband of his pants, as he hunted through the crowd. Where the hell was Grace?

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of midnight-blue, but when he turned, all he saw was his own reflection in one of the mirrors lining the side wall of the ballroom. Then one of the panels in the wall moved, and he realized it was a door that someone had just gone through. Ethan started across the room.

  It seemed to take forever to tear his way through the hysterical crowd, but Ethan finally reached the side of the ballroom and located the door. He opened it and peered cautiously inside. Broken crystal and china lay strewn on the floor where a tray had been dropped.

  Ethan started to back out of the hall, but then he noticed something else on the floor. An earring sparkling among the shards of broken glass. Grace’s earring.

  Drawing his gun, Ethan listened for a moment, then started down the corridor toward the sound of a closing door.

  GRACE SHOVED OPEN a swinging door, and stepped into a damp, humid room with dim lighting.

  The area was cavernous and eerie in its silence. Laundry bags hung from an overhead conveyor, and she stood motionless, searching for movement, the telltale swing of one of the bags as someone brushed by it.

  Nothing moved. There wasn’t so much as a whisper of sound.

  As silently as she could, Grace reached down and removed her high heels. Then in stocking feet, she moved along the rows of laundry bags, searching for Reardon.

  As she neared the end of one of the long aisles, the hair on the back of her neck rose. A breath of air touched her skin, as if someone had moved behind her.

  Heart racing, Grace spun.

  FOR A LONG moment, they stood staring at each other. Neither of them lowered their weapons as they faced off. Grace’s gaze went to the gun in his hand, and one brow lifted ever so slightly. Then she raised a finger to her lips, warning Ethan to be silent. She motioned for him to take the right side of the room while she turned to search the left.

  He hesitated. Something told him he wasn’t used to following orders, that he was the one who was usually in control of a situation like this. But under the circumstances, he couldn’t find fault with Grace’s logic. Split up. Circle the room. Force Reardon, or whomever she had cornered, out into the open.

  Ethan made his way through the mountain of laundry bags stacked in bins along the side of the room. There were any number of hiding places, and flushing out their quarry might not be so easy. But just as the thought occurred to him, Ethan caught sight of something in one of the bins. A flash of black among all the white linen.

  He eased forward, until he was directly in front of the bin. The black he’d seen was the arm of someone’s tuxedo jacket, but he didn’t think it belonged to Reardon. Someone was still wearing the jacket, and a crimson stain was spreading slowly over the soiled laundry hiding the body.

  Silently, Ethan unearthed the victim. He didn’t recognize the man, but he knew the ear piece the man still wore indicated a cop of some kind. Obviously, he and Grace weren’t the only ones on Reardon’s trail.

  He wondered who the victim was, but he didn’t take time to search for his ID. The bullet hole through the man’s neck was enough for Ethan.

  He had to find Grace.

  THE ECHO OF her heartbeat sounded deafening to Grace. She wondered if Reardon could hear it. Wondered if he was taking pleasure from it.

  The damp humidity in the laundry room was almost stifling. Grace found she had a hard time breathing. Sweat trickled down the side of her face, but she didn’t waste a motion on swiping it away. She couldn’t let down her guard for even a second.

  At the far end of the room, away from the entrance where she’d come in, a sound finally came to Grace. At first, she wondered if it might be Ethan, but then as she stood listening, she identified the creak and rumble of an elevator car sliding down the cable.

  Grace whirled and took off toward the sound. She didn’t bother now to try and conceal her movements. If Reardon made it inside the elevator before she could get to him—

  She fought her way out of the suspended laundry bags just in time to see the heavy metal doors sliding closed. Grace lunged toward the elevator, jamming the button with the heel of her hand so hard, pain ripped all the way up to her elbow. Ignoring the pain, she tried to pry open the doors, but it was no use. The car began to ascend.

  ETHAN EMERGED from the forest of laundry in time to see Grace pound the elevator door in frustration. When she heard him approach, she looked around, wild-eyed and desperate.

  “The stairs,” she said hoarsely. “Come on. We have to find him.”

  She didn’t wait to see if Ethan followed her, but turned and raced through the door, retracing their steps down the corridor to a door marked Stairs.

  He wondered why he didn’t try to reason with her, why he didn’t try to stop her from pursuing a cold-blooded killer. She was in danger, but it never occurred to Ethan to grab Grace and hold her back. She was too competent. Too coldly determined, and besides. She had a gun. If he tried to stop her now, she might just use it on him.

  Ethan caught her on the stairs and overtook her. She wouldn’t care for that, he thought flee
tingly, but he was still a man, still had enough of the protective instinct to want to go first and blaze the trail. If he couldn’t take out Trevor Reardon, Ethan could at least do enough damage so that Grace would have a chance.

  They burst through the stairwell door on the second level. Two uniformed maids stood in the hallway chatting beside their carts. They looked up in surprise and then in terror when they saw the weapons.

  “The service elevator,” Ethan said. “Where is it?”

  Neither of them said anything, but one of them pointed to the far end of the corridor. Grace darted past Ethan, and he swore, wishing she’d stay behind him.

  They were only halfway down the hall when they heard the elevator doors swish open. Grace gasped in dismay and lunged forward, throwing herself at the elevator and managing just barely to get her fingers between the doors.

  Ethan put his hands above hers, and as the doors yielded to their pressure, both Grace and Ethan jumped back and raised their weapons.

  The doors slid open, but the car was empty except for a white, blood-stained waiter’s coat lying on the floor.

  GRACE SPUN, HER gaze frantically searching the hall. But she knew Reardon hadn’t gotten off on this floor because he’d never been in the elevator to begin with. She’d let herself fall for the oldest trick in the book.

  She whirled back to the elevator and started to step inside, but Ethan caught her arm. She flung off his hand. “What are you doing? He’s still in the laundry. We have to get back down there.”

  Ethan put away his gun. “He’s gone, Grace.”

  “You don’t know that,” she said angrily. “He may still be down there. You don’t have to come with me, but I’m going back. I’ll search every inch of that place, look in every laundry bag down there if I have to, but I’ll find him. He won’t get away. I won’t let him—” She stopped herself as she realized how she must sound to Ethan. How she must look. Like a woman completely out of control.

  And that’s exactly how she felt. Reardon had thwarted her again. Made her act without thinking.

  Grace forced herself to step out of the elevator, to take a long, deep breath. Ethan was still staring down at her, and the look on his face was not one Grace thought she could easily forget. His eyes were dark and narrowed, his mouth set in a grim, forbidding line. She found herself shivering and wondering about the outcome when and if Ethan Hunter and Trevor Reardon ever came face to face.

  Ethan wasn’t like any doctor she’d ever known before, that was for damn sure.

  She said almost calmly, “Where did you get the gun?”

  He shrugged, but his gaze darkened. “I found it in the safe at the house. I thought it might be useful tonight.”

  Grace was tempted to give him the old lecture about weapons in the hands of amateurs, but she was suddenly too weary. And besides, she had a feeling Ethan Hunter could handle a gun as effectively as he could wield a scalpel. She was the last person to underestimate him.

  She slipped her own gun back inside her purse. “I guess you’re right. Reardon’s probably long gone by now.”

  “He left a calling card in the laundry,” Ethan said. “Or at least someone did. There’s a man with a bullet through his neck down there. I think he’s a cop.”

  “My God,” Grace whispered. Was he one of Myra’s agents? Someone Grace knew?

  She turned back to the elevator. “We’d better get back down there. Maybe you can help him.”

  Ethan caught her arm. “Nobody can help him, Grace. He’s dead.”

  She hesitated. “We still have to call someone. We can’t just leave him down there.”

  “I know exactly what we have to do.”

  Grace glanced up at him. Something in his voice alarmed her. “What do you mean?”

  Ethan’s expression turned grim. “We were fools to think we could do this alone. Reardon is a killer. A master criminal who has escaped from prison twice. And now at least three people are dead because he’s after me. First Amy, then Melburne, and now the man downstairs. How many more people have to die because of me?”

  The guilt in his eyes was not an easy thing to witness. Grace said urgently, “This isn’t your fault. You didn’t kill those people.”

  “That’s not what you said the first night I met you.” His voice hardened with disgust. “You said I had a part in Amy’s death. And if everything you suspect is true, you were right.”

  Grace stared helplessly at Ethan. She didn’t know what to say to him.

  He put his hands on her shoulders, gazing down into her eyes. For the longest moment, they stayed that way as a myriad of emotions flashed across his face. Then he said, “I can’t risk your life to save my own skin, Grace. I won’t. I’m calling Pope and telling him everything. I’m going to end this tonight. I don’t care what happens to me, but we have to get the police involved. Now.”

  His words blew Grace away. She couldn’t believe he was willing to subject himself to a police investigation, to face a prison sentence in order to keep her safe from Reardon.

  How long had it been since someone had cared about her that much? Since she had allowed anyone to care about her?

  Until that moment, Grace hadn’t realized just how lonely she’d been all these years. How empty her life had become.

  Now that knowledge was almost like a physical ache inside her.

  She closed her eyes briefly, making a decision that she knew might cost her everything. When she spoke, she heard her voice quiver with emotion. “You don’t have to call anyone,” she told Ethan. “I am the police.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Back at Ethan’s house, Grace stood at the second-story window, staring out. From her vantage, she could see over the brick wall surrounding the grounds to the street beyond where an unmarked car was parked at the curb. The neighborhood sparkled with lights, but the dark sedan blended into the shadows cast by the water oaks lining the sidewalk.

  In the opposite direction, where two streets intersected and formed a tiny parklike area in the median, a man stood smoking in the dark. Grace could see the glowing tip of his cigarette lift and fall.

  Though from this distance, she couldn’t see his radio or his weapon, she knew he would have both, and that he would remain in constant communication with Myra and with the man in the car. After tonight, the operation had suddenly become personal to every agent and support personnel working the case. Joe Huddleston, a well-liked and respected agent assigned to the field office here in Houston, had been killed. Murdered in cold blood, his body stuffed down a laundry chute at the hotel like so much dirty linen.

  Grace had known Joe for years. They’d gone through training together at Quantico. He was one of the few agents in the FBI who knew her entire story. And now he was dead. Because of Reardon.

  For a moment, Grace’s hatred threatened to consume her, but she forced herself to stand back, take a breath, look at everything logically. There would be time enough later to mourn Joe’s death. For now, she had to remain focused.

  Could she be absolutely sure that Reardon was responsible for Joe’s death? Was Reardon the man she’d seen in the corridor of the hotel? If so, his disguise—whether temporary or permanent—had been nothing short of miraculous.

  Grace’s mind went back over the events of the evening. The last time she’d seen Huddleston was when he’d followed Pilar and Kendall out of the ballroom. Was it possible that Pilar’s little scene had been a diversion? Was she or Kendall—or perhaps both of them—responsible for the shot that had been meant for Ethan tonight? Had they killed Joe Huddleston?

  Grace knew that Myra had someone working on that angle even now, but the older agent was still concentrating most of her efforts on Reardon.

  When Grace had contacted her earlier, before leaving the hotel, and told her what she planned to do, Myra had been against it. “You can’t tell him the truth, Grace. What if he runs?”

  “I don’t think he will,” Grace had argued. “And besides, I don’t have a choice. If I don
’t tell him the truth, he’s going to the police. The last thing we need is to get HPD involved any more than they already are.”

  She’d finally managed to placate Myra, but Grace knew Ethan wouldn’t be quite as easy to appease. She wouldn’t soon forget the look on his face when she’d told him she was the police. A federal agent, she’d barely managed to get out before the hotel security and several HPD officers had descended upon them in the corridor.

  Grace wasn’t sure why, but Ethan hadn’t said anything to the authorities about what she’d told him. Instead, he’d let her take the lead, and when it had come time for him to give a statement, he hadn’t said or done anything to give her away. That action, as much as anything else, made Grace realize how much he had come to trust her. How much she owed him.

  And now it was time to pay the piper, she thought, turning away from the window. Ethan, who had gone straight to the kitchen to mix himself a drink when they’d gotten home, would want an explanation, and she had better be convincing. For more reasons than one.

  Across the room, Simon moved restlessly on his perch. Grace drifted over to him and stood staring at him for a moment.

  “What did you mean yesterday when you said, ‘I say we just the kill the bastard and be done with it’?” she asked him.

  The bird tilted his head and squawked, “They’re not real.”

  “Forget about that,” Grace said impatiently. “We’re way beyond that now.”

  The bird strutted along his perch. “Book him, Dano!”

  For God’s sake, Grace thought. The bird was a walking, talking advertisement for daytime TV.

  “Who do you think I am, Jack Lord?” she muttered.

  “That’s a good question,” Ethan said. She turned to find him standing behind her, a drink in each hand. “Who are you, Grace?”