The Bride's Protector

by Gayle Wilson

  “Yes,” Claire agreed.

  At least she hadn’t been wrong about that, Tyler thought. At least he was one of the good guys.

  “A very specialized agent,” Claire said.

  “He kills people,” Tyler said simply. “Officially kills people, I mean.”

  Claire’s eyes reflected a touch of shock at her bluntness, but that gave way almost immediately to amusement. “You don’t find that...repugnant?” she asked, accurately reading her tone.

  “I’ve known a couple of people the world would probably be better off without, and my circle of acquaintance isn’t all that large,” Tyler said.

  She was finally beginning to put some of this into perspective. Hawk was a government assassin. That’s why he had been an immediate suspect in the sheikh’s death. That’s why just his appearance on the hotel security tapes had made them think he had something to with it. And that’s why he had come to find her. Because she was the one person who could prove he didn’t.

  He hadn’t told her the complete truth about who he was. And there was really no reason why he should have. She didn’t imagine he just went around announcing something like that. As Claire Heywood suggested, there were plenty of people who would find that to be repugnant.

  “If you consider all that goes on in the world,” Tyler said, “all the crazy people like Hitler who get into power and then decide they can do anything they want to... I guess it isn’t too hard to understand why the government would feel that some of them have to be stopped.”

  “And that makes sense to you?” Claire asked softly. “It makes sense for Hawk to be the one to do that?”

  “It makes sense to me that someone has to do it.”

  Claire held her eyes, searching them.

  “You think...what Hawk does is wrong?” Tyler asked.

  “I don’t know,” Claire said. “I thought I did. There are certainly laws against it. Strongly stated national policies. But...I had a friend who believed as you do. That occasionally someone has to do it.”

  “Hawk’s friend? The friend of a friend?”

  Claire nodded again. “Hawk’s friend.”

  “I don’t think he has many,” Tyler said.

  He had always seemed so alone to her. Maybe that had even been part of his appeal. His aloneness. His emptiness. Always before she had seemed to gravitate to someone who would take care of her. He had accused her of that. And yet in Hawk...

  She realized suddenly what she had been thinking. And the incredible flaws in her reasoning. Hawk didn’t need her to take care of him. Hawk didn’t need anyone. He never would. He had made that abundantly clear.

  He believed in standing on his own two feet. Just as he had told her she had to do. It hadn’t been a fair criticism of her life, but he didn’t really know her life. What it had been. Why she had done the things she had. Trusting Paul. Agreeing to marry Amir. Loving Hawk.

  Loving Hawk. Suddenly her vision blurred, Claire Heywood’s classic features disappearing behind a mist of tears. Tyler had never told him that, and she wondered now if it would have made a difference. Wondered if he really hadn’t known.

  Considering the things in the file Claire Heywood was holding, it was possible he hadn’t understood. Possible that he hadn’t known he could be loved. She understood that feeling all too well—wondering how someone could find you worthy to love. She had wondered that about Amir. Had wondered why in the world, out of all the women out there, he would love someone like her.

  “Do you think that, while we’re waiting, I could read that?” Tyler asked. She reached across the space and touched the manila file with the tips of her fingers. “If it’s not...classified or something?”

  Claire hesitated a moment, and then she pushed the folder along the table. “It probably is,” she said, smiling, “but I don’t think that matters much now.”

  Tyler thought about what she already knew. About the things this file contained. The things that had been read aloud today. Bare bones of a story she could certainly put flesh to. A history of pain and deprivation that made her own life seem privileged and protected. At least someone had loved her. At least there had always been a home to run to. A sanctuary.

  And for Hawk... With trembling fingers, Tyler Stewart opened the file they had been given. They were still shaking as they fanned the stack of papers the folder contained.

  And her eyes, when she raised them to Claire Heywood’s, were again touched with moisture. “There’s nothing here,” she said softly. There hadn’t been. Not one written word. Every page of the final file on Lucas Hawkins was totally blank.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Three weeks later

  “So you can see that there really is no reason for you to remain here any longer,” Carl Steiner said. “And I’m sure you’d rather be somewhere else,” he added, smiling at her.

  “Are you saying that Truett actually confessed to planning the sheikh’s assassination?” Tyler asked, trying to make sense of something that seemed unbelievable. After all, she knew Malcolm Truett. Maybe the CIA could believe it, but she found the scenario Steiner had just outlined to be incredible.

  “He’d been working for the extremists long before he became Amir al-Ahmad’s personal secretary.”

  “But why would he become so involved in the internal affairs of a place halfway around the world? In a religious struggle that didn’t even involve his own religion?”

  “He believed the Ahmads were raping resources that belonged to the people of their country, and that those people were getting far too little in return. There are those, Ms. Stewart, who are altruistic enough to go to a great deal of trouble to attempt to right the perceived wrongs of the world. The English have a reputation for idealism.”

  “But he must have known that Amir would step into his father’s place. That nothing would change.”

  “He was hoping for something more. An uprising, encouraged by the fundamentalists, as soon as news of the sheikh’s death reached his homeland. With Amir out of the country for the wedding, it was the perfect opportunity for them to act.”

  “But they didn’t?”

  “Apparently not. Not that we’re aware of. Maybe Truett’s plans weren’t that extreme. Maybe he simply believed he could influence the son as he couldn’t the father. Perhaps the new sheikh will be more progressive regarding his people’s needs.”

  “I didn’t think the extremists were interested in progress,” she suggested quietly.

  “I’m not sure exactly what they’re most interested in. Maybe Truett saw his involvement with the extremists as a means to an end. We may never know what his real motives were.”

  “What will happen to him?” Tyler asked. Despite the Westernization of Amir’s country, the penalties for treason there were harsh. And primitive. That was one of the things that had stuck in her mind from her reading—how traitors were punished.

  “Mr. Truett has already chosen his own punishment.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He committed suicide shortly after he signed his confession. The sheikh wasn’t prepared for such an act of desperation and hadn’t taken any measures to prevent it.”

  Maybe Truett’s suicide wasn’t surprising, considering what he could expect at the hands of Amir’s courts. The unbelievable thing to Tyler was the whole idea of Truett’s guilt. The concept that he had been responsible for the sheikh’s death. Amir had warned her, however, that politics in the region were often deadly. So she supposed anything could be possible.

  “Then who were the men I saw? The ones on the terrace of Amir’s room?”

  “You were right about that. Two of them were members of Amir al-Ahmad’s personal guard. Fortunately, through Truett’s confession, they’ve been identified and sent home to stand trial. All but the shooter himself. He hasn’t been found. Some professional they hired. Totally apolitical.”

  “Someone who kills for money?” Tyler asked.

  “Not as unusual as you’d imagine,” Stein
er said. “In any case,” he concluded, standing up, “I think you are safe to assume your life can go back to normal. Back to what it was before you opened that door and saw the men on the balcony that day.”

  Back to normal, Tyler thought. Back to what it was before you opened that door... She took a deep breath, thinking about her life. So many things had changed there was almost no life to go back to. At least nothing she wanted to go back to.

  “Is there anything else?” Steiner asked kindly.

  He hadn’t had to come out to the safe house where she was being kept, and explain the situation to her. They had all been kind, the men who had guarded her these last weeks, but they hadn’t talked to her about the assassination. No one had questioned what she had seen or asked her to identify anyone.

  However, neither had Steiner again suggested she tell Amir what she saw. He had abided by the agreement made in Claire Heywood’s office. And now that agreement was ended. The assassins had been caught, and so Tyler had nothing to fear.

  “How can you be certain that Amir had nothing to do with his father’s death?” she asked.

  “We did our own investigation, of course. According to the terms of our agreement.”

  The agreement with Hawk, she thought. The deal he had made with them for her safety. Apparently Steiner had stuck to the terms they’d hammered out.

  “We found nothing to tie al-Ahmad to the plot against his father,” he continued. “Instead, everything we discovered pointed to an attempted fundamentalist coup.”

  “But you can’t be absolutely sure?” she asked.

  “If I weren’t sure, Ms. Stewart, I wouldn’t be suggesting this,” he said, smiling at her.

  “It doesn’t feel right,” she said softly. “Not Malcolm.”

  “It’s hard to judge the depths of someone’s political beliefs and commitments from a social acquaintance. Would it make you feel better to see the material we have tying him to the extremists? Those connections are fairly well documented. And besides...” Steiner hesitated a moment before he went on. “It’s over. As far as the world community is concerned, the assassins have been caught. Amir al-Ahmad is going back to his country to make sure things stay calm there.”

  “So...it doesn’t really matter any longer what I might say,” she suggested. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “It no longer matters to anyone what you saw that day,” he agreed, “or what you say about it. You have no reason to be afraid.”

  Which was essentially what Hawk had told her. Even if Amir were guilty, once he realized she couldn’t hurt him there would be no reason for him to have any further interest in her.

  “However,” Steiner added, perhaps reading the doubt in her eyes, “if you’re uncomfortable with the situation, we can provide a more... permanent arrangement. A change of identity or relocation, at least. Most people in your situation would resist something that drastic, which is why I didn’t propose it to begin with. And I really don’t think it’s necessary, Ms. Stewart. If I thought you were in any danger, I’d never have suggested this.”

  She nodded. What he said made sense. It made sense even if Amir had been involved, and with Steiner’s repeated assurances, she was beginning to question her feelings about that. After all, it was entirely possible that when she had realized marrying Amir was a mistake, she’d transferred her sense of wrongness about that to the other situation. To the assassination.

  Maybe Malcolm had even been trying to foster that belief by what he had said to her that day. Maybe he had been so desperate to get her away from the area that he had given her the passkey to get rid of her, afraid that she might see or hear something that would make her suspicious.

  And as for Amir’s claim that she was grief stricken and in seclusion, which had seemed to be even more proof of his guilt, maybe that was nothing more than his overweening pride. He would never admit that his bride had simply run away on the day of their wedding. It was entirely possible it had all happened exactly as Steiner indicated.

  “Is there anything else?” Steiner asked again.

  “I don’t suppose there is,” she said reluctantly, trying to think what came next.

  “Someone will drive you to the airport when you’re ready,” he said. “We’ll provide a ticket for wherever you want to go. It’s the least we can do in exchange for your cooperation.”

  Although she couldn’t quite figure out what cooperation they wanted to compensate her for, she couldn’t afford to turn his offer down. Her options were pretty limited. She could go back to New York, she supposed, but she didn’t have enough money to pay last month’s rent, much less this one’s.

  She needed to sell her furniture and sublet the apartment. The furniture should bring in enough to pay off some of the bills. And there was the house in Mississippi, of course. Selling it wouldn’t realize much, but enough to pay off the rest of what she owed on her credit cards. And enough to keep her afloat until she could figure out what to do with the rest of her life.

  Suddenly an image of that sagging front porch intruded into her thoughts, along with the remembrance of the spreading oak that shaded it and the old-fashioned swing. The scent of honeysuckle drifting in with the evening breeze. Her mother’s voice, calling her home from the darkness.

  “Covington,” she said softly.

  “I beg your pardon?” Carl Steiner said.

  She looked up, surprised to find he was still there. Surprised she had spoken the word out loud. “Covington, Mississippi,” she said. “I think that’s where I start.”

  “Start?” Steiner repeated.

  “The rest of my life,” she said, smiling at him.

  “YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED to be here,” Hawk said.

  He hadn’t moved, other than to lift his head from the pillow to see who had come into the room. Fingers interlocked behind his head, he was stretched out on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He had done a lot of that during the weeks they had held him here. A lot of thinking. Remembering. And none of it had been easy.

  The muscles in his stomach had tightened, however, as soon as he recognized his visitor. He didn’t want to hear whatever Jordan Cross had come to say. He could tell that by what was in the gray eyes.

  “Jake pulled this location out of the computers. I told the guys outside that Steiner sent me to question you, but they’re probably busy verifying that right now, so we don’t have long.”

  “And when they find out he didn’t send you?” Hawk asked.

  No one had questioned him about anything. They weren’t interested in why Hawk had gone to Baghdad. He had known that all along. They were holding him as an act of discipline. And he supposed he was lucky they were doing it in a safe house rather than a prison. When Steiner had said a “secured facility,” that’s what Hawk had been expecting.

  “By then we’ll be gone,” Jordan said.

  “I made a deal. I can’t be gone.”

  “He let her go,” Jordan said.

  Hawk’s body came off the bed in one fluid motion. “What the hell do you mean, he let her go?”

  “Amir al-Ahmad’s secretary confessed to planning the assassination. Right before he conveniently committed suicide.”

  “His secretary,” Hawk said disbelievingly.

  “Male type. English. Supposedly the mastermind of an extremist coup.”

  “Supposedly?”

  “Jake says the background on that is manufactured, created after the fact. Probably by al-Ahmad.”

  “And Steiner didn’t bother to check it out?”

  “All I know is he considers the case closed. And the assassins duly caught So...”

  “That stupid son of a bitch,” Hawk said softly.

  Jordan’s eyes hadn’t changed, and Hawk still didn’t like what he was seeing in them. “Where is she?” he asked.

  “Jake says she took a flight to Mississippi. This morning. The agency paid for the ticket.”

  “I hope you brought some money,” Hawk said, starting toward the d
oor, “because I doubt they’re going to pay for mine.”

  “There are four of them out there,” Jordan warned. “You want some help?”

  Hawk turned, his blue eyes resting briefly on Jordan Cross’s face. “Only if you want to give it,” he said softly.

  “I didn’t come out here for the scenery,” Jordan said, and realized this was the first time he’d ever seen Hawk laugh.

  SOMEONE HAD CLEANED UP the mess. They hadn’t repaired the damaged wall or replaced the bullet-scarred door frame, but the debris on the floor had been cleaned up. And the blood.

  Standing now in the afternoon sunshine that was painting patterns of light on the old wooden floors, Tyler realized that it all seemed like some long-ago nightmare. Like a bad dream. As unreal, in a very different way, of course, as the few days that had followed it. The days she had spent with Hawk.

  She put her suitcase down on the sagging mattress. It was the same battered case she had bought in the New York pawnshop that day. She’d been carrying it around since, with the same items of clothing she’d bought at the airport stuffed inside.

  She walked over to the windows and pushed them up. It seemed hotter inside than out, and the bank clock she’d passed on the way had read 97 degrees. With the house closed up, that probably meant the temperature in this room was pushing 100, despite the shade the oak provided.

  Which meant she’d spend another night tossing and turning in the heat. When Cammie sent her the money from the sale of her furniture—if there was anything left after she paid Tyler’s rent and the utilities—the first thing she was going to buy was a window unit for this room. Then at least she’d be able to sleep.

  She walked back to the kitchen. She had set the groceries she’d picked up on her way home on the wooden table. There was only one sack because her cash was running low, and she didn’t want to put anything else on her credit cards unless she absolutely had to. As it was, she had two rental cars sitting out in the gravel driveway. She’d have to figure out a way to get those turned in. And think about getting some kind of secondhand car of her own for transportation to and from work.