by Incy Black
Shit. Shit. Shit. When the order had come through to warn Lowry off, he should have delegated. Sent in someone with whom open combat wasn’t a given. She’d only have to suspect he was close, and she’d bristle and spit, her tight little body quivering with fury. Not good, when his own body was already revving in hungry anticipation.
He looked down, saw his hand was less than steady, and clenched his jaw tight enough for the crack to be heard above the hubbub of the chattering masses.
Jesus, one glimpse of her, Lowry Fisk—the first in four years—and he was as twitchy as a raw recruit, first time under fire.
Sonofabitch and to hell with this. He’d confront her. Caution her, then get the fuck out of her orbit. Is wasn’t like he hadn’t done it before.
In a single belt, he downed his drink, making no effort to hide his grimace. Reaching forward, he placed the now-empty glass, with its impossibly delicate stem, on the waiting tray. The flirty server, as wickedly promised, had returned.
With a forced grin as close to civilized as he could muster, he shrugged a flattered-but-not-tonight-darling apology, which earned him a disappointed pout. Hell, the foul mood he was in, Miss L.W.A—luscious, willing, and able—should count herself lucky for the narrowest of escapes.
Lowry-bloody-Fisk, on the other hand, had just run out of time.
…
Lowry had taken refuge near the rear of the gallery. Butterflies with blades for wings swooped in her stomach. She wrapped her arms across her midriff, her hands rubbing her upper arms against a sudden chill. Someone was watching her, tracking her; she could feel it. Or it might just be another hated flashback, brought on by the pressure of her opening night.
Adrian, her agent, would kill her if he discovered she’d deliberately released the lock to the back exit. A wise precaution to her way of thinking, but he wouldn’t agree. His priority was to protect property. Her only concern, escape—should the need arise.
She tried measuring each inhale and exhale of breath against a slow countdown from a hundred. Maybe if she just focused hard enough, she could pretend her skin didn’t itch and her spine wasn’t threatening to rip free and leave her to her own damned fate.
Suddenly conscious of the pathetic impression she must be giving, she straightened her shoulders and forced her arms to her sides. Not quite sure what to do with her hands, she fisted them tight. Better that than allow her fingers to clutch and twist the slate-gray silk of the dress skimming her thighs.
Her throat, already as dry as week-old toast, tightened. She snuck out the tip of her tongue to moisten her lips. God, she didn’t want this. Not the tittering. Not the strangers. Not the fear.
Especially not the fear.
What the hell had she been thinking? Tonight—the solo show, the blaze of publicity—huge mistake. If her little foray into the public eye backfired, it could finish her. For good this time. Four years was a long time. Long enough for her attacker to forget her? The lighting in the warehouse had been poor, but what if he recognized her? What if he didn’t trust her to keep her mouth shut? What if he came after her to make sure that she did?
Gritting her teeth, she damped down the gnawing anxiety fast. Losing control wasn’t an option. Not when she’d only just seized it back.
Bloody past.
Her history didn’t exactly qualify for a cheer or even a hesitant ripple of applause. But she hadn’t let it beat her. Change her, yes. But not beat her. And that was what tonight was all about—vindication.
Only mildly emboldened by that reminder, she darted quick little glances at her milling guests, trusting not a one of them.
The tiny hairs at the nape of her neck pricked. The little pants escaping her mouth puffed at loose strands of her hair. To hell with the promise she’d made herself not to run. To stop hiding. She could smell the threat in the air.
She twisted her body, her hips going one way, her shoulders the other, and it was all she could do not to claw at those obstructing her path as she attempted to thread a fast exit through the crowd.
A heavy arm draped around her lower back and pulled her in tight for a quick squeeze.
“Seventeen red stickers, only six left to sell. Unbelievable!”
She stared blankly at her agent. Couldn’t Adrian see she had more important things to worry about than the sale of a few pictures?
Survival for a start.
His brow puckering, Adrian dipped his knees to better capture her line of sight. Then, his eyes rolling heavenwards, he reached forward and positioned his forefingers at the corners of her mouth. The gentle pressure he applied was upward in direction. “I know this isn’t easy for you, but could you at least pretend to smile?”
“Someone’s watching me—I need to go,” she blurted, thrusting him aside. He was blocking her view.
“Lowry, sweetheart, everybody’s watching you. What did you expect? They’re insanely curious about the hermit-girl responsible for the paintings. You’ve worked hard for this; we both have. Don’t blow it, not after you’ve come so far. Please, cupcake, your adoring public awaits.”
Sweetheart? Cupcake? She bit back a sharp reprimand. Adrian didn’t know about the man who, while holding her down, had used those same sweet nothings and a whole lot more besides. No one did. Not even the staff at the PTSD hospital after her last mission with the Service, who—clueless about anything beyond her bullet wound and fracturing mind—had thought it comforting to shower her in obscenely affectionate endearments.
Adrian, clearly determined to draw her back into the melee, seized her hand and tugged. She dug her heels deep, resisting. She also freed her fingers and scrubbed her palm against her thigh as if contaminated.
His look, ever patient but pitying, flooded her cheeks with color. She hadn’t meant to be rude, but touching was a no-no. “Fifteen minutes more, then I leave,” she warned him quietly, hoping to make amends.
“Make it an hour, and I’ll not only call you a taxi, I’ll even cover the fare,” he pleaded.
Her nerve endings flashed worse than any lightning storm. Another sixty minutes? Could she last that long? One quick look at her best—her only—friend’s excited face, and she knew she didn’t have a choice. “Okay, lead on,” she agreed weakly.
Smiling hurt. Her cheeks ached with the strain, as did her muscles from the effort of trying not to jerk and recoil at every stranger’s touch. With no wall to protect her back, people hovered dangerously close, outside of her line of vision; the brush of their unknown bodies jolting bolts of anxiety the length of her spine. Where the hell was Adrian?
Not for the first time, or even the fourth or fifth, she smoothed a moist palm against the silk of her dress and ran through her particular fashion “must” list for reassurance. All pieces dark in color to blend with shadows, check. Skirts and dresses short and cut loose to allow uninhibited flight, check. Stiletto heels—normally avoided—a half-size too big, so she could kick them free and run, check—
From behind, a hand clasped her shoulder.
She squirmed free, staggered forward, quickly stifling the squeal on her lips in case the touch had been an innocent mistake. Deafened by the sound of blood gushing through her head, she spun around, her arms instinctively raised somewhere between attack and defense.
Her assailant swore and raised his palms to calm. “Easy…I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Battling the palpitations threatening to crack her chest, she pushed the humiliating weight of paranoia aside and forced herself to make eye contact, an apology for her skittishness ready on the tip of her tongue.
Her vision cleared, and she stopped herself just in time. “You!”
That past she’d buried? She should have staked it first. Dead center through the heart. It might have prevented its resurrection.
“Yes, me.” Jack, visibly bracing his shoulders, closed in. Probably to halt a line of braying men from cutting between them. “I take it you have yet to forgive me?”
With the crowd tight behind her
, she couldn’t run. She couldn’t even step back. “Damn right. So piss off.” Language she hadn’t used since being tossed out by the Service, but in this man’s company, the coarseness flooded back. Some words, however ugly, said it all.
She stared fixedly at his long fingers, now curled around her wrist. “Let go, Ballentyne, or so help me, I’ll scream, and a man like you doesn’t need the attention.”
His grin was lazy. Deliberately provocative.
Her heart dithered with indecision. Speed up, or stop beating altogether?
“A man like me? And what kind of man is that, Lowry?”
A rash of invisible pinpricks danced the surface of her skin. She leaned back into the crowd behind her. Distance from Jack Ballentyne, more imperative than any danger strangers might pose. “A stained man. A violent man. A heartless, brutal, scary bastard who—”
“Okay, okay. I get it,” he interrupted, one palm back up. “You don’t like me much.”
“Wrong. I don’t like you at all. You embody everything I abhor, what any decent, person would abhor.” That should cut his misplaced amusement off at the knees.
She jerked her wrist.
His fingers squeezed, his grin slipping into a hard, straight line. “Point taken, Fisk. We’ll keep this short. I’d appreciate a word. Somewhere less public.”
Her lungs flattened. The gallery spun, colors swirling, the disconnected snippets of chatter from her guests, too loud for her ears. “Appreciate away. This is as private as I ever want to be with you. Now get the hell away from me.”
“Not until you hear me out.”
She opened her mouth to make good on her threat to scream. Closed it again when his fingers tightened further and he jerked her flush against him.
“Don’t.” Though the word was quietly spoken against the shell of her ear, the warmth of his breath whispering against her skin, it was not a request. It was a warning. A promise of swift retribution.
Her body began a slow shutdown, the numbness starting in her toes and slugging upward. Dear God, never above the dirtiest of tactics, Jack would kiss her into silence if he had to.
Ice frosted her skin. Jesus, the bastard had an erection, and his hot male scent—predatory, lawless, just as she remembered—had strengthened. The frost began to melt away. Stupid, traitorous body.
One hand flat to his chest, she ignored the fierce pounding of his heart beneath her palm. She pushed and wrenched her wrist free, not caring about the bruises she’d carry in the morning. As injuries went, he’d given her far worse. The memory of his bullet plowing into her was all the reminder she needed.
Locking her spine, one vertebra at a time, she looked up, way up, ready for some hostile eyeballing. The mighty Jack Ballentyne, as drop-dead-or-drop-your-panties gorgeous as he was, looked stunned.
She immediately pounced for the first strike. With this man, it paid to seize the advantage. “You look a touch strained, Major. Don’t tell me you’ve come to apologize.”
His tight scoff put her right. “Hardly.”
Ordinarily, she avoided prolonged eye contact at all costs—four years ago she’d had her sanity stared right out of her—but not this time. She scoured the depths of violent blue, and found the shocking. “My God, you want absolution,” she gasped in disbelief.
“I don’t need absolution.”
“You shot me, Ballentyne.”
“To save your life! I shouted for you to stay back, but noooo, you had to run straight into the crossfire. If I hadn’t taken you down fast, you’d be dead.”
She crossed her arms. “You were letting him get away.”
“There was no him.”
“Yeah? Try telling that to the three agents who died.”
“It was damned near four,” he fired back. “The angle was tight. I nicked your femoral artery. And your recklessness that night not only put your own life at risk, it compromised months of undercover work. You shouldn’t have been there, Lowry. I’d banned you from anything more active than shuffling paperclips.”
“That’s right, you shut me down. Why? Because I refused to let you intimidate me? Because I dared to disagree with your ethics? Because I dared asked questions no one could hear, because they had their heads too far up their own behinds?”
“My ethics stand up to scrutiny. Your suitability for front-line duty never did. Face it, Lowry, just as I’d predicted, you panicked when the shit hit the fan. And it got you shot.”
She ignored the personal slight. It wasn’t like he hadn’t leveled it before. Incessantly. “I didn’t panic. I was trying to stop him from getting away.”
His snort had her wishing she had a gun in her hand.
“Here we go again. The evil mastermind scenario. A figment of your imagination, in which we, apparently, let “Mr. Big” get away. Tell me something, ex-special agent Fisk, was it worth it? Preserving your pride at the expense of your reputation?”
Lowry lifted her chin a smidgen, only dimly aware of the crowd funneling around the pair of them. “By then, thanks to you, I didn’t have much pride left. And as for the cost? What do you think? I lost my job. Hell, I lost my mind. You let him go, so you tell me.”
“There. Was. No. Him.”
By now, Jack was giving a damn good impression of a furious bull pawing at the ground, ready to charge. But she’d stood up to him before and survived.
Tilting her head, she leaned in close. As close as she dared and stared him straight in the eye. “Go to hell, Ballentyne. Trust me, I can show you the way.”
“Lowry…”
“Don’t Lowry me. Not in that tone. I don’t need your pity, I’ve moved on. Sadly, it appears you haven’t, and it’s eating you alive. So, I absolve you, Ballentyne. Let it go. That’s what my very expensive therapist would have advised.”
In a gesture screaming frustration, Jack plowed an untidy furrow through his too-long-for-regulations, mucky blond hair. “And maybe you should have listened.”
“I did, right up until I found out you were personally footing the expense. Now, I’m self-healing.”
“Really? And how’s that going?”
She threw her arms as wide as the pressing crowd would allow. “Take a look around you, Ballentyne. Read the press reviews. I’m making quite a name for myself.”
He nodded, his hard stare cutting through to the bone. “I know. That’s why I’m here. Concern has been expressed at all the media attention you’re attracting. People are worried it might lead you to forget you remain bound by the Official Secrets Act.”
The butterflies that had sliced earlier swooped high into her chest, along with the nausea that had been swilling low in her stomach. By people, he meant the Service and her father. The very bastards who probably wished she had died the night of the raid. Her insistence that they had a traitor in their ranks hadn’t been much appreciated, thank you very much. “Well, that’s the thing about guilty secrets, isn’t it? They just refuse to lie down and die,” she challenged, rashly.
“Lowry, this is a warning. Leave. It. Alone.”
“Or what? You or someone like you, will silence me for good? Don’t worry, Jack, I learned my lesson. Some battles can’t be won. Those traitorous bastards you work for are safe. On condition my past stays where it belongs. Way, way behind me, so I can get on with my life.”
Oh, he did not like that.
His eyes spat ice chips like an icicle shattered by the flat side of an axe. “Is that a threat?”
She tightened her lips, needing her words to be Kevlar-vest hard. “I wouldn’t know. Thanks to you, I’m longer in the business. But put it this way: I’ll be ecstatically happy—and hold my silence—but only if I never see you again, nor any of your associates.”
She didn’t wait for his response. Turning on her heel, she plunged into the heaving mass behind her, for the first time in years grateful for the warm embrace a tight crowd provided.
Chapter Two
The number of guests had thinned, their muted conversations now bar
ely audible in the small office at the rear of the gallery where Lowry had sequestered herself.
Damn Jack Ballentyne. Damn him for dragging her back into his world. And double damn him for reminding her that she’d never be free. Not of the past. Not of him. Not of what had undeniably sparked between the two of them all those years ago. It wasn’t just bad temper that flared when they were around each other.
Oh, they’d denied and fought and refused it. Blamed and punished and hated each other for its cause. They’d both wanted. They’d both resisted. She remembered the physical hell well. In the end, he’d hated enough to shoot her, and she’d hated him right back for his betrayal.
Not only did Jack Ballentyne have the empathy of a rock, the heartless bastard was completely without conscience. It’s how he’d risen to the top. It’s why those who dared cross him feared him. His motto, as always: the ends justify the means, and fuck the collateral damage.
With a puff of pained resignation, she reached down for her small backpack, the one she took everywhere she went. It was fat with a change of clothing, £5000 in cash, and a small leather folder full of fake documents, including three passports supporting her different identities—her survival kit, should she need it.
Slinging the strap of her backpack across one shoulder, she made her way back to the main exhibition space of the gallery.
Heart stampeding, she pulled to an abrupt halt. Oh, God, who’d dimmed the lights?
Her eyes urgently mapped an escape. Then, just as quickly, she recognized what was going on. Laughing softly, without conviction, she shook her head, her braid pendulum-ing against her back. Paranoia was a bitch.
