In His Shadow (Tangled Ivy Book 1)

by Tiffany Snow

  A sudden clatter made me nearly jump out of my skin. I spun around, my gun at the ready, only to see a skinny cat behind me. He blinked at me, then primly stepped over the mess he’d just made tipping over a box of trash. Daintily sniffing an overturned jar, he batted it with his paw.

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. I was shaking like a leaf, either from fear or adrenaline, probably both.

  “Damn cat,” I muttered, wiping a hand across the cold sweat that had formed on my brow. “Scared me half to—”

  A hand landed hard on my shoulder, spinning me around just as another knocked the gun from my grip. It landed on the cobblestones with a clatter. A scream clawed its way up my throat, but then I was pressed with my back to the wall and a man’s palm covering my mouth, silencing me.

  “Following me, Ivy?”

  Oh, God. It was Devon. Relief flooded through me, so overwhelming in the immediate aftermath of being terrified that I thought I might pass out.

  He was pressed close to me, his body blocking the meager light in the alley. I expected him to remove his hand, but he didn’t, not right away. I breathed in the scent of his skin, his hand warm despite the weather. My eyes were locked on his, their depths unfathomable in the darkness. Finally, he slid his hand from my mouth and I took a deep breath.

  “How did you know it was me?” I asked.

  Devon leaned down until his lips were near my ear. His proximity, the hard length of his body against mine, sent my thoughts careening off into a much more carnal direction.

  “I was downwind,” he said, his warm breath fanning lightly across my ear. “I caught the scent of your perfume.” He nuzzled the spot underneath my jaw. The touch of his tongue against my skin made me gasp and my eyes slid shut. His hands moved to the inside of my coat to rest possessively on my hips. “And why are you following me this evening?”

  It was hard to think with him doing that, and it took a moment for me to stammer a reply. “B-because I w-was afraid something might happen to you.” My voice was too breathless and my arms reached up to clutch at his shoulders.

  Devon lifted his head and I released a tiny sigh of disappointment. I’d become addicted to him so quickly, craving the feel of his skin against mine the way a pet craved its master’s touch.

  “I didn’t ask you to care,” he said, the words so cold I couldn’t suppress a shiver. When I didn’t speak, he continued. “It would be better if you didn’t. Our involvement is a fleeting one.”

  I swallowed hard at that. Devon certainly wasn’t one to give a girl the warm fuzzies, that was for sure.

  “Fine,” I said stiffly, my anger just under the surface. “Forget I gave a damn.” Pushing out of his grip, I got two steps before he had me back against the wall, his body pressed against mine to hold me in place.

  “What did you think you were going to do?” he asked, his face so close to mine I could see into the depths of his eyes.

  “I-I don’t know,” I said. “I brought my gun.” I shrugged. “You know. Just in case.” Yeah, because I’d just pull it out and shoot someone. Right. What had I been thinking?

  Devon’s lips twitched. “So you were going to have a go at rescuing me,” he said.

  Okay, now it did seem ridiculous. I remembered seeing him fight with those men in the stairwell, remembered the bank robbers he’d killed.

  “I helped last night,” I said defensively.

  “Do you want to help again?”

  I gave a hesitant nod, my lips pressed tightly together. I had no idea how I could help him, but the need to be around him outweighed the need for self-preservation, in spite of and perhaps especially because he’d outright said he wouldn’t be with me for long.

  Reaching down, Devon scooped up my gun and handed it back to me.

  “Then you may need this,” he said.

  Taking the weapon, I slipped it back inside my purse.

  “Come with me,” Devon said, reaching to take my hand. He led me out of the alley and down another street to where his car was parked. I thought about mentioning my car, but decided I didn’t really care. I’d come back for it later.

  The confines of the car felt safe to me, especially with Devon only inches away. I watched his hands move on the gearshift and steering wheel, flashes of memory of those hands on me going through my mind. Devon had discarded his suit for a change, tonight wearing slacks and a dark sweater that was either black or navy. The sleeves were pushed up, exposing the heavy bones of his wrists and muscles in his forearms.

  I marveled at how just a few weeks ago, Devon frightened me. A man of his size and demeanor always had and probably always would, but now I felt sheltered by him rather than threatened. Deep inside, a part of me knew Logan was right, that I was treading a dangerous path, yet I couldn’t stay away from him.

  I didn’t speak until we were out of the city. “Where are we going?” I asked, dragging my eyes from his hands to his profile, shadowed in the darkness.

  “To the scene of the crime,” he said cryptically. Glancing at me, he clarified. “Galler’s residence.”

  “Why? What did Clive tell you?” My curiosity was rampant now that the immediate danger had passed.

  “Clive gave me information,” Devon said cryptically. “We’ll see if it works out. He’s still not to be trusted.”

  “He told you why he did what he did,” I reminded him. “He said they were going to kill Anna.”

  Devon’s gaze slanted my way for a moment, then returned to the road. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  I frowned, confused. “Doesn’t matter that she would’ve died? He obviously loves her. Of course he did what he had to do to protect her.”

  Devon’s lips tipped up in a humorless smile. “Love. A worthless, debilitating sentiment expressed by a fool.”

  I was sure I hadn’t heard him right. “You think love is worthless?” True, he’d been less than enthusiastic about the emotion when speaking to Clive. At the time, I’d thought that had been due to his anger at Clive’s betrayal more than a deep-seated antipathy.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Of course not!” Yes, I sounded like a cliché, but his dismissal of an emotion that was too close to what I was feeling for him stung.

  “Emotions are subject to change, they make one irrational instead of logical, and are impossible to predict. Fear, anger, frustration. Lust, jealousy, hate. And yes, even love, are to be avoided.”

  He recited the words as though he’d memorized them and taken them wholly to heart. While depressing, I didn’t want him to stop talking. This was the first he’d really told me about himself and I wanted to know more.

  “You’re referring to your job,” I said. “Emotions are dangerous to you because of what you do for a living.”

  “Obviously.” Very British, the way he said that, with condescension in his tone.

  “So you’re impervious to emotion then?” I asked.

  Devon’s eyes were fixed on the road. “I never said that.”

  “But you just said—”

  “I said they’re to be avoided, not that I was immune. No one is immune. But they can be controlled, so they don’t control you.”

  “Like the Force, right?” I joked, deadpan. He glanced questioningly at me. “You know, ‘Anger, fear, aggression. The Dark Side are they,’ ” I quoted Yoda.

  Devon gave a sudden bark of laughter. “I suppose that would be one way of looking at it,” he acknowledged. His smile was still intact and I took a minute to enjoy it.

  “But then why do you do what you do?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’d think it would take a great deal of commitment—of emotion—to do a job like yours,” I said. “Be it from patriotic fervor, or anger, or love of country. So why?”

  That seemed to take Devon utterly aback and it took him a while
to answer me.

  “I didn’t have a lot of alternatives,” he said at last.

  “Why not?” I couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t have been smart enough to have a different career.

  “I was orphaned at a young age and sent to live within the system. When I was of age, I joined the Royal Marines, then moved into the SBS”—he glanced at me—“Special Boat Service. I was . . . recruited from there.”

  That was a lot of history he’d just glossed over. I had the feeling getting personal information out of Devon was going to be like playing a game of Twenty Questions. I decided to start at the beginning.

  “How did your parents die?”

  “Why do you want to know?” His voice was hard.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, why do you want to know?” he asked again. “I’ve repeatedly told you our arrangement is a temporary one. You’ve been put in danger because of your association with me. Why do you want to know my personal history?”

  “Because . . . I’m curious,” I said with a shrug. “I like you. I want to learn more about you. Is that wrong?”

  “Not wrong,” he admitted. “Just perhaps . . . misguided.”

  I just loved being told I was stupid, even if it was cloaked in a polite euphemism. I held my tongue, though, and waited him out.

  “They were killed by an IRA attack in London,” he said with a sigh. “I was ten.”

  A pang of sympathy struck me. Despite my grandparents, being an orphan was something I could relate to.

  “My father died when I was three,” I said. “He was in the Army and died in combat. My mother was never the same. She thought I needed a father, and she needed someone to help pay the bills, so she remarried when I was six.” I swallowed and looked out my window, not wanting to say the next part, but if I expected Devon to share his past, then I had to do the same. “She killed my stepfather and herself when I was thirteen.”

  Silence reigned in the car.

  “Considering what you’ve told me of your stepbrother, I would guess she did that to save you,” Devon said.

  Surprised at his insight, I glanced at him. “It was a gas leak,” I said. “Officially an accident. But I know the truth. Yes, that’s exactly what she did. My stepdad drank, and when he was drunk, he was mean. He hit her. Me, too, sometimes. Then he stopped hitting me, and he started—” But my throat closed off and I couldn’t speak anymore.

  Devon turned to look at me, and our eyes met. I saw that he already knew what I couldn’t say. There was no pity in his gaze, which I couldn’t have withstood, just an understanding that sometimes life could be real shitty.

  I cleared my throat. “So how long have you done this job? Been a . . . spy?” It still felt weird saying that.

  “Sometimes it seems like a very long time indeed,” he said. His vague answer didn’t surprise me.

  “Ever thought of doing something else?” I didn’t dare hope what his answer would be.

  Looking over at me, he said firmly, “Not for a moment.”

  Well. It wasn’t like he was leading me on, I supposed. Brutal honesty, though I could do without the “brutal” part.

  “I heard Logan say I was ‘damaged,’ ” I said. “You don’t see me that way?” I’d really liked hearing him say that and wanted to hear it again, this time to my face.

  “We’re all products of our past,” Devon said. “What we choose to do with it is our decision, no one else’s. You can choose to be damaged, fragile. Or you can choose to be more than the broken elements of your psyche. Fire tempers steel. Pain tempers character.

  “I think you are stronger than your friend Logan gives you credit.”

  We pulled to a stop then, and I noticed we were parked adjacent to Mr. Galler’s property, which was probably wise. Everyone knew he’d been murdered. Parking in front of the house would be a dead giveaway that we weren’t supposed to be there.

  The snow crunched underneath our feet as we walked, much of it had melted but some patches still remained. I slipped at one point and Devon caught my arm before I fell. From there on, he held my hand, which I didn’t mind at all.

  “Did Galler tell you anything else that day?” he asked as we approached the dark and silent house.

  “No,” I said. “He was writing his memoirs and mentioned his father was a doctor, that he died in the war. That was all. I wasn’t there for very long. He gave me the pendant and I left.”

  We walked over the large patio in the back and past the swimming pool covered with a large, black tarp. I hadn’t brought my coat and was freezing. I stood with my arms wrapped around myself while Devon fiddled with the lock on the back door. Quicker than I would have thought possible, he had the door open and we were inside.

  The house was still and as silent as a mausoleum. No one lived there anymore, and I could feel it. Strange how it’s like that. I wasn’t a believer in the sixth-sense kind of thing, but couldn’t deny the shiver that went down my spine as I gazed around. Scattered moonlight filtered through half-closed window blinds and I could feel the underlying hum of electricity through the house.

  Devon took the lead and I let him, the darkened house giving me the creeps. When we reached the study, he flipped on the light.

  “Did you see where he kept the pendant he gave you?” he asked.

  I nodded. “In his drawer,” I said, walking to the ornate desk in front of the windows. I showed Devon the drawer and the secret compartment. To my surprise, he yanked the entire thing out of the desk.

  “What’s this?” he murmured, inspecting something in the back, next to the notch I’d pressed to open the drawer. I leaned in for a closer look.

  The point of a needle lay hidden far up inside the recesses of the drawer.

  “That must have been what pricked me,” I said, thinking out loud.

  Devon glanced sharply at me. “When?”

  “The night I was here,” I explained. “Mr. Galler didn’t get the pendant out, I did. He just told me where it was and how to open the drawer. When I reached in, something poked me. I thought it was a splinter.”

  Devon didn’t say anything, turning his attention back to the drawer. Brute force was enough to crack open the hidden compartment farther, enough for both of us to see that the needle was attached to a spring. Taking a pen, Devon pressed lightly on the button and I watched in amazement as the spring instantly jabbed the needle forward.

  “Wow,” I breathed. “That was really fast.” A disturbing thought occurred to me. “Devon? Why would he have that in there?”

  Devon’s gaze met mine again. “I don’t know.”

  Well.

  I swallowed, wondering what I was supposed to do now, how I could find out. Devon replaced the drawer while I drifted aimlessly around the room, searching for I didn’t know what.

  I ventured out of the room and down the hallway. There was enough ambient light to see. I turned into an open doorway, wondering if I could find Mr. Galler’s unfinished manuscript. It might have something written there that would help Devon. I fumbled for a light switch, the room too dark to see anything.

  “Ivy, wait—”

  But Devon’s words were cut off by my scream as someone reached out of the blackness and grabbed me. I blindly fought him, trying to get away and retreat the way I’d come. He grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked me around. I cried out in pain, but when I felt the cold press of steel against my neck, I froze.

  The lights clicked on and I blinked in the sudden glare. My heart was pounding with fear and panic, which only notched higher when I saw Devon standing in the doorway. His gun was in his hand, but his eyes were on the knife at my throat.

  I swallowed, feeling the knife slide against my skin at the slight movement.

  Two other men were in the room, along with the man holding me. All of them looked menacingly lethal, as did the guns they h
eld, all pointed at Devon.

  “Drop the weapon, mate,” the man holding me said, “or I’ll slice her from ear to ear.” He yanked my hair again and my eyes watered at the pain. I pressed my lips tightly together so I wouldn’t make a sound.

  Devon’s eyes flicked to the two men, then back to me, and I knew with a sinking sensation in my stomach that, if not for the threat to me, Devon could have gotten out of this. I could see it in his eyes.

  And right as Devon tossed his gun to the floor was when I understood why he was so averse to feeling anything for anyone.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I watched in horror as one of the men approached Devon, who stood his ground. If he was afraid, he didn’t show it. His face didn’t even register mild concern. I was terrified they were going to kill him.

  I squirmed when one of the men stepped behind Devon, unable to stop myself from wanting to help him. The guy holding my hair pressed the tip of his knife to my carotid artery and I sucked in a breath as he yanked me back.

  “Don’t move,” he hissed.

  Devon’s head jerked toward us, his body tightening and his hands fisting, but before he could act, the man behind him coldcocked him with the butt of his gun. I watched as Devon’s eyes rolled back in his head and his body collapsed to the floor.

  I was unfortunately very much conscious as they dragged me across the hall. They left Devon on the floor, but I saw someone else coming down the hallway with rope dangling from his hands. The last I saw of him, he was entering the room before the door was slammed shut.

  The man with me had sheathed the knife, but still held my hair. My scalp was burning, my body bent sideways as I tried to keep up with him and ease the pressure as much as possible. He finally let go, only to backhand me. I went flying, careening right into a table at knee height. I fell on it, knocking it over and dumping everything onto the hardwood floor. The tinkling sound of breaking glass filled my ears as I lay facedown on the floor, struggling to catch my breath.

  My head ached, both from the punishment my scalp had taken and the blistering hit to the side of my face. I groped for my purse, but realized too late that I’d left it in the study.