by Anne Stuart
He pulled to a stop on the side of the road, killed the lights and the engine, and looked at her.
“What’s this all about?” she demanded. “Surely you didn’t go to all that trouble to get me out of there just for the pleasure of killing me yourself?”
“Tempting as the idea is, no. Unfasten your seat belt.”
“You’re abandoning me in the woods?”
“No,” he said, reaching over and unfastening her seat belt.
She hit at his hands to stop him, but he simply captured her wrists in one hand while he undid the belt. The he leaned over farther so that he was brushing against her, so close she could remember the familiar scent of his skin and soap. She felt dizzy, and she held her breath.
He pushed open the door, then leaned back, releasing her hands. “Goddammit, why are we here?” she demanded. The dizziness should have faded once he moved away, but in fact it was growing stronger, and her stomach, momentarily appeased, suddenly decided to move into overdrive.
“You’ll know in just a minute.”
It didn’t take that long. She had just enough time to get herself out of the car, on her knees by the side of the road, throwing up everything she’d just wolfed down.
And him! Damn him, he’d gotten out of the car, come around beside her and was holding her, holding her braided hair away from her face, supporting her as she puked her guts out. She couldn’t push him away, she couldn’t do anything but let him hold her until everything was gone, and she was racked by dry heaves. She wanted to die, both from misery and humiliation, and all she could do was let him hold her.
“Finished?” he asked in a kind, businesslike voice. He had a handkerchief with him—of course he did— and he wiped her face with it. His cold blue eyes were dispassionate as he looked down at her. “You’ll do. Get back in the car and we’ll find someplace to spend the rest of the night. I could have told you that death and fast food don’t mix but I didn’t think you’d listen.”
She wanted to protest, but she was too weak to do anything but let him bundle her back into the car and fasten the seat belt around her trembling body. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, stifling her instinctive moan of pure misery, and it wasn’t until he was driving again, back toward a more populated area, when his words sank in.
“Where did you say we were going?”
“We’re going to the cheapest, sleaziest motel I can. We both need to sleep.”
“I’m not sleeping with you!”
“I know this will come as a shock to you, but I don’t find someone spewing their guts out to be a particular turn-on. I certainly didn’t rescue you for the sex, which, while pleasant enough, was nothing special. I assure you I can do better without half trying.”
The words stung. Why did they hurt, and why had he said them? “Then why did you?”
“I told you, a favor for a friend.”
“That’s what Takashi said. You couldn’t both think you’re just helping each other.”
“He told you his real name? That surprises me. He’s usually a better judge of who to trust.”
“Whom to trust,” she said automatically. “Why did you come halfway across the world to get me?”
“Unfinished business.”
“Who? Me or Harry? Or both of us?”
He closed down on her, his face that cool, enigmatic mask once more, and he didn’t answer. They were moving away from the city, into the massive suburban sprawl, and she didn’t want to think anymore. About her stomach, about her future, about him. She just wanted everything to go dark and stop moving for a while.
She opened her eyes with a start. He’d finally found a motel that suited him—the M in the sign had burned out, one of the streetlights was broken, the building looked as if it wouldn’t withstand the next minor earthquake. The paint was cracked and peeling, but they’d have beds, and that was all she cared about.
“This’ll do,” he said, getting out of the car.
“Get two rooms. I’m not spending the night in the same room as you.”
“Yeah, right,” he drawled. “Stay put, or next time I’ll use handcuffs.”
How did he know she’d considered running the moment he went into the motel office? Without a purse, decent clothes, money or identification, her one instinct had been to get away.
But then, he had a wretched tendency to know what she was thinking. “I don’t have the energy to move,” she said. It was a lie.
She waited until he’d gone into the motel office, and she opened the car door slowly, carefully, rolling out and onto the cracked pavement as she closed the door again. The light in the car would have only been on for a second, and his back was to the parking lot. He wouldn’t know she was gone until he came out.
She didn’t make it very far. He caught up with her two streets over, in the darkness, coming up over her like a dark, silent bat, knocking her to the ground. He hauled her up, and even in the darkness she could feel the fury vibrating from him. “If you make one sound I’ll strangle you,” he said in a cold, deadly voice. “It won’t kill you—it will shut you up and knock you out long enough for me to get my ‘drunken wife’ back to the motel room. The problem is, it’s a technique that’s hard to master, and sometimes you cut off the oxygen to the brain for too long and there’s some permanent damage. Though you’d be a lot easier to take in a semivegetative state.”
He’d do just that, and not give a damn if he killed her, she believed it with all her heart. He pulled arm around hers in a show of husbandly concern that concealed the iron-hard grip of his hand on hers, and marched her back to the Sleepy Time ’otel.
It was a corner room on the second floor—she had a pretty good idea it hadn’t been a random assignment, but she was too tired to ask why. The room was small and dingy, with two double beds taking up most of the space. He closed and locked the door behind them, then jerked his head toward the back of the small room. “Bathroom’s over there—you might want it.”
She went in, slammed and locked the door. At least this was one place where he hadn’t been able to tamper with the locks—she’d have at least a modicum of privacy.
The second thing she did was look for a way of escape. There was a window, but it was small and high, and even if she was able to get through it there was no telling where it led except straight down. She washed her face and did her best to wash her mouth out, then looked up at her reflection.
She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to laugh or cry. She looked like a ghost—pale, frightened, lost. Like someone just released from a mental hospital, she thought, in her black silk pajamas.
And suddenly she needed to be clean, washed free of anything left from Harry Van Dorn. “I’m taking a shower,” she called through the door.
The only response was a grunt.
The tub was small and stained, the flimsy shower curtain had mildew along the bottom, the bar of soap was not much bigger than a book of matches and the shampoo was mostly water. She didn’t care. She stood under the hot water, letting it scald her, and she soaped herself, over and over again until the bar was not much more than a sliver. She used up the tiny bottle of shampoo—too damn bad if Peter Jensen had the sudden desire to get clean.
No, his name wasn’t Jensen, was it? She couldn’t remember what it was, and she didn’t care. In a short time it would never matter again.
The hot water finally ran out. She didn’t think that was possible, even in the cheapest of motels, but she must have overburdened the system. She turned the water off and stepped out of the tub. Her skin was red from the scalding water and her scrubbing, her hair was a mass of tangles, and the entire room was filled with fog. The Sleepy Time ’otel didn’t come equipped with an exhaust fan, so she opened the tiny window a crack and wiped the mirror with the edge of her towel. She’d left the black silk pajamas on the floor of the bathroom and they were now crumpled and wet, and she picked them up with all the enthusiasm of someone picking up a dead rat, then dropped them again.
A sheet had worked before, it would work again, and too damn bad if it made Peter think of the night they’d spent together. He’d already informed her it was nothing special; he would hardly be swept away by uncontrollable lust at the sight of a tangle-haired ghost in a bedsheet.
She opened the bathroom door a crack. “Could you hand me a sheet?”
No answer, the son of a bitch. He probably wanted to force her to come out in a towel, not for any prurient reason but just to humiliate her. Well, she wasn’t going to let that happen. Humiliation was a state of mind, and she’d already reached the pinnacle, or was it the nadir, an hour ago when she lost the entire contents of her stomach while he held her. Traipsing around in a towel was nothing compared to that.
Except that in such a cheap motel the towels were incredibly skimpy, and she was a tall woman. She’d been knocked out for God knows how long—weeks if what Harry said was true—long enough to lose the extra weight? She looked down at her body and it still looked the same—smooth and curvy. Clearly running for her life and almost dying hadn’t gotten rid of those fifteen pounds. The universe must want her that way.
Besides, it was the least of her worries. She wrapped the towel around her as best she could, opened the door again and announced, “I’m coming out.”
There was no snotty rejoinder. Because he wasn’t there. The room was empty.
She yanked the top sheet off one of the beds and wrapped it around her, refusing to think about Harry’s island, and went straight to the door. Locked, of course. He’d somehow managed to secure it from the outside, and no matter how she fiddled with the door it wouldn’t budge.
The room had one small window next to the door, and she pulled back the curtains, ready to pick up a chair and crash it through the glass. Unfortunately the Sleepy Time ’otel didn’t believe in chairs—apparently people came there to use the bed and not much else. The bedside table was fastened to the wall, and the TV was bolted in place. There was nothing to break the window with.
Except her fist. She’d seen it done in movies and on television, and it was simple enough. Just wrap your hand in a towel and punch it through the glass. She picked up one of her discarded towels, wrapped it around her fist and slammed it against the glass.
Unfortunately even the thin terry cloth absorbed the blow, and the windowpane didn’t even shake. She cursed beneath her breath, dropped the towel on the floor and stripped one of the pillowcases off, wrapping that around her hand. She made a fist, and tried to channel Jet Li or Sonny Chiba, punching straight into the center of the glass.
There was no way she could silence her screech of pain as the force of the blow jarred her entire body. Her hand and fingers were numb, her wrist aching, and the window remained solid.
The glass had to be reinforced, which only made sense, given the neighborhood and the obvious clientele. Her entire hand was throbbing, and shaking it only made it worse, so she cradled it against her stomach with a quiet little moan. But she wasn’t giving up.
She loved martial arts movies, even though she knew just how far-fetched most of them were from her training with Master Tenchi. She’d never been terribly good at kicks, and she was out of practice, but if Jet could take out a car window with his foot then she could certainly manage a reinforced household window.
She stuck her foot in the pillowcase, using her one good hand, but she couldn’t figure out how to keep it on. She certainly didn’t need her ankle going through shards of glass.
She finally gave up, dropping down on the bed in defeat. What if Peter wasn’t coming back? What if he’d dumped her there, locking her in so she’d starve to death? She looked around for a telephone to call for help, something she should have thought of sooner, but of course there wasn’t one. She had no idea whether the rooms were soundproofed or not, but she suspected that was one area where the owners might have put some money. This was clearly a motel designed for an hourly rate—hence the lack of phones and chairs. People would also want to be able to make as much noise as they wanted without being heard.
Maybe he’d just left her for a little while, long enough to make sure they’d gotten away, and he’d be back. Or maybe he was simply calling in reinforcements, handing her off to someone who didn’t want to strangle her every other minute.
That would be the best possible scenario, she told herself. That Peter Whoever-He-Was had gone, and some sober bureaucrat was about to show up to take her to a nice cozy safe house until someone figured out how to stop Harry. A place with high thread-count sheets and lovely food and…
She was out of her mind. Harry’s sheets had been the best money could buy—she was better off with the scratchy white crap she’d wrapped herself in.
She wanted to go home. Back to her beautiful, sterile apartment, back to her designer clothes and her Chanel makeup and shoes that cost too much and hurt her feet. She may not have been happy there, but she’d been safe.
She lay back on the bed, wrapping her sheeted body in the quilted bedspread as well, curling up into a pathetic little ball of misery. She was tired, she was frightened, and yes, damn it, she was hungry again.
And she was alone.
She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t cry. Crying only made it worse, and it served no earthly purpose. There was nothing to cry for—she was away from Harry Van Dorn, who’d casually ordered her torture and death, and she was abandoned by Peter…Madsen, that was the name! Abandoned when he probably would have rather killed her as well.
Sooner or later someone would come and get her, someone safe and solid. All she had to do was wait. And not feel so bereft.
It would have been better if she hadn’t fallen asleep. It lowered her defenses, made her emotional and vulnerable. The sound of a key turning jarred her into wakefulness, and the moment Peter walked in the door she flung herself at him in relief.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know relief when it hit him upside the head, and he slammed her face down on the carpet, her arm twisted behind her back, his hand like a manacle on her twisted wrist.
Hong Kong was quarantined. Harry’s ship, filled with infected pigeons, had been detained twenty miles out at sea, with a Hazmat team covering every inch of it. His captain had just time enough to warn him before they burst into the engine room. But not time enough to free the pigeons.
Harry threw the phone across the room so that it crashed into a glass-fronted cabinet, and there was broken glass all around. He began to pick up and throw anything he could reach—a lamp, a pile of books, a heavy bronze award attesting to his humanitarian efforts in the third world, a cat.
The cat managed to land on four feet and scamper away to safety. Harry liked cats. He liked their “fuck you” attitude, their haughty style. The only drawback was they ran too fast when he wanted to get his frustration out on something. He hadn’t yet been able to kill a cat, and he’d been trying for years.
Everything else crashed with what should have been a satisfying violence. But Harry was beyond satisfaction.
The phone rang. Unfortunately the handset lay smashed against the marble floor, but he knew the number by heart. He pushed the speakerphone, barking his name.
It was his second in command in London. Some- how hearing the words spoken out loud instead of in the privacy of his ear made it even worse. He pulled the base of the telephone from the wall and threw it, and it shattered in a pile of plastic and wiring, with a disembodied voice still apologizing for fucking him over.
Harry walked across the room and kicked the phone into silence. It was all falling apart, everything he’d planned and dreamed and worked so hard for. The Rule of Seven lay shattered—there was still a faint hope he could carry off the nuclear accident in Russia but he suspected that had been aborted as well—the place was just too remote for him to have heard as yet. Or maybe Vlad had been terminated as well.
And there was no name, no face he could put on his deadly rage. All his resources could track down only the vaguest of information about the Committee, a
nd it wasn’t enough. Peter Jensen aka Madsen was dead—there’d be no satisfaction from gutting him. And Takashi had already taken care of the girl, her body long gone, in so many pieces no one would ever be able to put Humpty back together again. He giggled softly, and then his rage returned.
There had to be some way to get to the Committee, to exact his revenge. The Rule of Seven was smashed, but there was always another day. As long as he found a way to show his enemies just how dangerous he could be. As long as the so-called Committee existed, they would try to stop him. Therefore the Committee must be dealt with.
He needed to do something, anything, to show he wasn’t the patsy they took him for. Something bloody and brutal and undetectable enough that they wouldn’t be able to stop it. Something that would make them think twice before they tried to get in his way again.
He needed a sign. He firmly believed in divine guidance. After all, wasn’t he one of the chosen ones, to whom all things are given? He could do any number of things to find a clue—but that would require having someone come and read the signs. And he couldn’t afford to waste the time.
He closed his eyes and focused his entire body, tight and angry, like a child desperate for a toy train at Christmastime. “Give me a sign,” he said out loud. “Show me what to do.”
This time it was his cell phone, and he pulled it from his pocket and snapped it open eagerly. Ask and ye shall receive.
It was Donahue. He’d done his usual sweep of the garage, and found two of his men in the back of his Porsche, dead. There’d been blood on the ground as well, not belonging to the two men. And a couple of strands of long, blond hair clinging to the damp wall.
Takashi had told him he’d disposed of her body through the underwater entrance, piece by piece, and Harry had been so taken with the notion that he’d wished he’d asked for pictures.
