The Bride's Protector

by Gayle Wilson

Cops. As soon as she thought the word, the explanation for all those things occurred to her. And it made sense. Suddenly something made sense out of his presence here tonight. Of the fact that he had come all the way to Mississippi to find her. It even made sense of what he had done. It explained everything that had been so puzzling about this man from the beginning.

  “That’s why you’re here,” she said. He was some kind of cop, of course. It was obvious, now that she put the clues together. “I told you in the restaurant that I saw them, and when you found out what had happened, what they had done, you came here to find out exactly what I saw.”

  Her voice had risen with her growing excitement. That would explain everything. Why he carried a gun. His certainty about what would happen when the alarms went off. About how the cop on the street would react.

  “You’re...” She hesitated, thinking about who they would send. FBI? CIA? She wasn’t sure, but it didn’t really matter who he worked for. “You’re some kind of federal agent,” she said. “You’re trying to find out who killed Amir’s father.”

  She should have gone straight to the police when she left the hotel. She would have, if she hadn’t been so terrified. But all she had been able to think about was getting away. Away from Amir, even if he had had nothing to do with his father’s death. But now, of course...

  “I’ll tell them what I saw,” she said. “I’ll tell it to whoever you want me to.” She expected some reaction, but his eyes were considering. And still cold.

  His response, when it finally came, wasn’t what she had expected. Again it was prosaic, in strong contrast to her sudden sense of euphoria. “You should pack a few things,” he suggested.

  “All right,” she agreed, a little let down by his tone. But obviously he was going to take her with him. Back to New York?

  “Not much. One small bag.”

  Those directions were as precise as the ones he had given her about getting away from the hotel yesterday. And she was more than willing to do what he told her. After all, he was one of the good guys. She’d be safe with him. Far safer than she would be here alone. Tonight had proved the fallacy of that.

  “And get dressed,” he said, holding his hand out. “You won’t want to travel in what you’re wearing.”

  The blue eyes, however, didn’t examine the sheer nightgown. They focused instead on her face, and in the growing light of dawn, she could find nothing in them like the flare of desire she had seen yesterday.

  She put her fingers into his. Hers were cold against the warmth of his hand. Soft against its callused strength. He pulled her up, but as soon as she was upright, the room began to swim. She closed her eyes, swaying toward him. He took a step nearer, pushing his body against hers. Supporting.

  “You’re okay. Just shock,” he said. The breath from his words, as warm as his fingers, stirred against her temple. The soft words seemed to give permission, and without having the strength to resist their invitation, she accepted, leaning into his body. Resting her forehead against his cheek.

  His arms didn’t enclose her. He didn’t touch her in any other way, and after a moment even his fingers let go of her hand. He stepped back, but he waited a moment before he turned away, maybe to make sure that she wasn’t going to faint.

  That would be nice, she thought, watching him walk across the room. If she fainted, maybe her head would stop hurting and her arm wouldn’t feel like it was on fire.

  He disappeared into the hallway, and she closed her eyes, leaning back against the wall. Unconsciously, she rubbed at the back of her arm, wincing as she touched the area that hurt the worst. An area that was wet, she realized. She glanced down and was surprised to find that the fingers of her hand had come away covered with blood. Which was also dripping off her left elbow, a small pool of it forming on the wooden floor.

  Seeing that made her light-headed again, so she closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall, wondering why her arm was bleeding, wondering what she could have hit it on to do that much damage. She didn’t open her eyes until she heard him come back into the room, shoes crunching on the debris.

  She watched him walk over to the man hanging over the windowsill. He reached under the headdress to check for a pulse. Apparently he didn’t find one, because he gripped the back of the man’s robe and pulled, jerking him up off the sill and into the room. The body crumpled bonelessly to the floor, hitting headfirst. She closed her eyes at the sickening noise, but then, curious about what he was doing, she forced them open. He was bent down beside the corpse, methodically searching it.

  “Is he dead?” she asked.

  “Very,” he said succinctly. “They all are.”

  Three dead men in her mother’s house. Bleeding all over Aunt Martha’s spotless floors.

  “What are you going to do with them?” she asked.

  “Leave them.” He didn’t look at her.

  “Maybe we should call the sheriff,” she suggested hesitantly. They had to do something. You didn’t just leave bodies lying around. Not in Covington, Mississippi, you didn’t.

  “You never know in a situation like this who you can trust.”

  “But why would you think that the sheriff—”

  “I don’t,” he said. “I just don’t trust many people. That’s how I’ve managed to stay alive this long. Since that’s worked well in the past, I think we’ll keep playing by my rules.”

  The blue eyes finally lifted to her face. They were cold again, commanding obedience. And they were still full of certainty. Still absolutely sure of what he was doing.

  Maybe because they were so sure, she nodded. She didn’t have any choice but to play by his rules, she thought. After all, he was the one who knew what he was doing.

  At her agreement, he went back to the task he’d undertaken. She wondered what he was looking for. Identification, she supposed. And she wondered suddenly if she would recognize the dead man. Could he be one of Amir’s numerous bodyguards? One of the men who had been in that room yesterday?

  Thinking for the first time about that possibility, Tyler pushed away from the wall, moving carefully because she didn’t want to make a fool of herself by fainting. Holding her left arm against her body, the palm of her right hand cupped around the elbow, she walked over to the fallen man. There was enough light in the room now that there was no doubt.

  “He’s not one of them,” she said. “Not one of the ones at the hotel.” She had been afraid, since she had seen them so briefly, that she wouldn’t be able to identify them. But there was no doubt in her mind that this man hadn’t been there.

  He didn’t look much like a conspirator. Or a killer. He looked as if he were sleeping. Too much at peace to have died so violently. But it might just as easily have been her lying in that pool of blood, she thought. Or the man with the blue eyes.

  “I don’t even know your name,” she said.

  His eyes came up suddenly, locking with hers. They held a moment, assessing. She understood his hesitation. His caution was habitual, not personal. He was just doing his job.

  “Call me Hawk,” he said finally.

  Not his real name. She understood that also.

  “Hawk,” she repeated.

  “For now,” he agreed, eyes holding hers.

  She nodded, although she wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. She had bent forward a little, arms crossed over her stomach and her shoulders hunched, giving in to the searing pain that continued to burn across the back of her arm.

  “What’s wrong?” Hawk asked.

  Without waiting for an answer, he stood up, rising in one fluid motion, and closed the distance that separated them. Unaccountably, at his nearness she found herself thinking about yesterday, about when he’d leaned down to kiss her. About the warmth of his lips moving against hers.

  “I hurt my arm,” she said, looking up into his face. Remembering.

  Hawk, however, apparently wasn’t bothered by those same thoughts. He stuck the pistol into the waistband of his jeans, took h
er left arm in both hands and turned it.

  Finally she looked down, pulling her gaze away from those compelling features. He was holding her upper arm toward the thin light coming in through the windows. In that position she could see the bloody slash across the back of it.

  “What in the world?” she whispered.

  “Looks like somebody shot you,” Hawk said.

  “Shot me?” The blow she had felt stumbling through the kitchen door? Could that have been—

  “Or you got hit by a ricochet, maybe even one of mine. I don’t suppose it makes all that much difference how it happened.”

  She looked up again at his face. His eyes were very blue, focused on hers. There was something different about them. They were not like they had ever been before. Not cold. And not heated by the sexual desire she had seen so briefly. They were full, instead, of something else.

  Even as she looked at him, trying to decipher whatever was hidden in the blue depths, the control that seemed so much a part of him reasserted itself. His gaze fell, returning to the gash a bullet had plowed across the outside of her bare arm. The light, thick lashes screened his eyes. But his lips tightened, a small muscle jumping beside his mouth.

  “It doesn’t hurt that much. I know...” She hesitated, unsure how to phrase what she thought she should say. “I know if you did it, you didn’t mean to.”

  Hawk’s mouth relaxed slightly, his lips moving, maybe even into the beginnings of a smile, but he kept his eyes on the wound, stretching the skin around it to judge the depth. She gasped at the sudden pain and then caught her bottom lip with her teeth, determined to prevent any other reaction. He released her arm immediately.

  He turned and walked back into the hall. She thought about telling him he wouldn’t find anything to bandage it with, if that’s what he was looking for. She wasn’t sure, however, whether the people who had been hired to clean the house would have thrown away any first-aid supplies. Before she could decide, Hawk reappeared, carrying a folded dish towel. He handed it to her, but he didn’t offer to look at the injury again.

  “Press it against the cut until the bleeding stops. You should wash it out with some kind of antiseptic,” he advised.

  She nodded, obediently pressing the soft cloth against the wound. He didn’t seem too concerned. If he’d had any experience at all with bullet wounds, it was more than she had had, so she hoped he knew what he was talking about. And maybe there were still some aspirin in the medicine chest.

  “Can you manage to pack a suitcase?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Then you better get dressed and do it. I parked the rental about half a mile away. I’ll go get it. You be ready when I get back.” The blue eyes were cold again, once more commanding her obedience. But they were still full of certainty. Still absolutely sure of what he was doing.

  Still playing by his rules, she thought. But it didn’t seem she really had any other choice.

  BUYING INTO THE IDEA that what had happened yesterday had been a coincidence still bothered him, Hawk thought, as he jogged to where he had parked the car. For one thing, it went against all his previous experience. And against his natural cynicism.

  But Hawk had also learned a long time ago to trust his instincts about people, and they were telling him now that Tyler Stewart had told him the truth. She had dragged him into the middle of that assassination by chance. A coincidence, but one that, given his past, no one else was likely to believe in.

  The one time in my life I decide to play the white knight, Hawk thought, almost amused at the realization, and where does it get me? Into a whole hell of a lot of trouble.

  The agency believed he’d made yesterday’s hit. Not a totally unreasonable assumption, considering that he’d made the one in Baghdad without their approval. Maybe they thought Griff’s death had driven him over the edge. Or maybe they believed he’d taken out al-Ahmad because the sheikh had ties to the terrorist Hawk had targeted.

  He couldn’t know what they thought or what assumptions they were acting under. But he had been warned by a man working on the inside, with access to solid information. A man he knew he could trust.

  The other thing he now knew was something he should have realized all along. Instead, he had only belatedly recognized the possibilities it presented as he had listened to the halting story she told him.

  What he had finally figured out was that Tyler Stewart was the one person who could prove he had had nothing to do with that assassination. If she hadn’t been involved in setting him up, then she was exactly what she had claimed—an innocent bystander. And she was all that stood between him and a death sentence. Which wouldn’t, of course, be the kind they handed out in any court of law.

  Hawk had already had his day in court. A long time ago. “Last chance,” that old Texas judge had warned him. Luckily, Hawk had believed him. He had taken the chance he’d been offered, and it had changed his life.

  This time, he knew, there would be no warning. Not any beyond the one he’d already received from Jordan Cross. Dead serious.

  Chapter Six

  “Where are we going?”

  It was the first question she’d asked since they’d left the house, and Hawk had been surprised by her restraint. He had been expecting her to ask a whole lot more of them.

  But she trusted him, he remembered. She thought he was some fearless federal agent who had been sent to rescue her from the assassins. Sent out to bring her in so she could give the authorities a description. It was a pleasant scenario, he supposed, and if it kept her compliant and cooperative, then far be it from him to disillusion her.

  “Somewhere safe,” he said.

  He had been trying to think where the hell that might be. There weren’t many places that were “safe” when you had the full force of the United States government on your tail. And when you were traveling with a woman who apparently had half the extremists in the Middle East trying to kill her.

  “By the way,” Tyler Stewart said, “I want to thank you.”

  “Thank me for what?” he asked. He concentrated on the road a moment, and then, when she didn’t answer, he glanced at her. The violet-blue eyes, wide and sincere, surrounded by that sweep of long dark lashes, were focused on his face.

  “I know I should have said it all before,” she said. “Yesterday when you helped me get out of the hotel. For coming to find me. Certainly for what happened back at the house. For saving my life.” She paused, the litany of his good deeds apparently finished.

  At least I hope it is, Hawk thought. I hope to hell that’s all she’s got to say.

  “I should have already told you how grateful I am, but...I guess this has thrown me. I’ve never been involved with anything like this before,” she added unnecessarily.

  He closed his lips, clamping them shut over the denial he wanted to make. I came to find you because I thought you had set me up. And because I intended to force the truth about what happened yesterday out of you, any way I could.

  “If you hadn’t come for me,” she continued, her voice low, unconsciously intimate in the close confines of the car, “I know what would have happened back there. Even with you there...”

  They had almost succeeded. She didn’t say it, but that was certainly the truth. Hawk had almost let them get to her because he had been acting on the assumption that she had been in on the deal yesterday. They had almost succeeded, he thought again, remembering the gash the bullet had cut across the back of her arm. He didn’t want her thanks. He sure as hell didn’t deserve them. Because he hadn’t come to save her. And because he was using her. He sure didn’t want to listen to her gratitude over what he was supposedly doing for her.

  “I thought I was safe back there,” she said. “I thought they wouldn’t be able to track me down.”

  He said nothing, keeping his eyes resolutely on the road ahead. She had been wrong about that, of course. It hadn’t taken them any longer to find her than it had taken him. Even without access t
o the government databases he had used. At least now she seemed to understand that part of her situation.

  “So I just wanted to say thank you for taking the trouble to come for me. And for what you did back there.”

  He hadn’t lied to her, he reminded himself. She had come up with the idea that he was investigating the assassination. He just hadn’t corrected it. After all, he was a federal agent. Not the kind she was imagining him to be, of course. Not anything at all like the kind of agent she was imagining.

  “It’s my job,” he said. Despite his cynicism, the falseness of that lie was bitter on his tongue.

  She’s my ace in the hole, Hawk told himself, fighting the unfamiliar surge of guilt. My sleeve card. The only person in the world who can prove I had nothing to do with that hit. I need you, Tyler Stewart. Not the other way around.

  “Maybe so,” she said, “but...forgive me if knowing that doesn’t prevent me from being grateful. They would have killed me if you hadn’t been there.”

  A real white knight, Hawk thought, mocking himself. Just riding in for the rescue. He wondered why he was feeling so damn guilty about this. After all, whoever had killed the sheikh really couldn’t afford to have her running around telling everyone what she’d seen. Telling anyone, he amended.

  And it hadn’t taken them long to track her down. The bad guys, he thought, mocking her simplistic view of the world—everything in black and white. But she was right. They would have killed her. He had a brief mental picture of her body lying on the hardwood floor of that little house, blood pooling and then slowly congealing under it.

  It was as simple as that, just as black and white. The lips that had been so warm yesterday when he had put his mouth—

  He cleared the memory from his head, knowing he couldn’t afford to think about that. Couldn’t afford to think about her in that way. It had been a mistake to allow himself to touch her, as big a mistake as playing Good Samaritan, but Hawk had believed he’d never see her again. The stolen kiss had seemed a harmless, pleasant diversion for a man who hadn’t had any lately.