Hard to Forget

by Incy Black

  Five minutes later, chin not as high as she would have wished, Lowry realized she should have followed her instincts and stayed hidden in his bedroom. The all-too-knowing looks she received from his brothers as she entered the dining room pricked at her skin.

  A wave of heat swept through her, made its way to the surface, and refused to subside. She bit her lip and scuttled to a spare place at the table.

  “Are you quite well, my dear? You looked terribly flushed.”

  Lowry slid into an empty chair and with a tight smile, assuring Jack’s mother that she was fine, maybe just a little tired—which invited a less-than-discreet snort from Richard.

  Lowry flung him her fiercest glare and was alarmed to see Jack doing the same. Great. A row. Just what she needed. Not.

  She took a half-hearted bite of her toast and nearly choked as it caught in her throat, rough like sharp gravel, dry as dust. She saved herself with a swift gulp of coffee, instantly regretting it when heat scorched her taste buds. The start to her day had been an unmitigated disaster, and yet, she suspected, it was about to get a hundred times worse.

  She was familiar enough with the feeling to recognize her own fear. Jack was not going to react well when he heard what she had to say.

  That’s why she’d decided to use this public forum rather than telling him in private. Even he wouldn’t kill her in front of his parents. “Jack, I’m going back to London. I’m turning myself in. I’ve spoken with my father. He agrees it’s probably for the best.”

  The sudden silence was deafening.

  “Care to tell me how you contacted him?”

  With studied care, she set her cup back on its saucer. Oh boy, that tone was all too familiar. How many times in the past had it reminded her of a bullet chambered, waiting for the percussion that would release it to create mayhem? “I still have the cell phone you gave me. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him I was here, and yes, I flushed the SIM card.”

  “Smart move, though unnecessary. Richard’s got this place wired so no calls, in or out, can be traced. What arrangements did you make?”

  She ignored the chill that beckoned for her skin to abandon her, her focus more on the cadence of Jack’s voice. Unnaturally calm. Too precisely measured. She’d expected him to erupt, his words to spew over her like molten tar. Instead, he was spitting ice shards. Never a good sign.

  “I’m meeting him at Victoria railway station at three.”

  “Trains from near here go into Euston.”

  “I know. But I wanted him to think I was coming from the south, not the north.” She’d lied to protect Jack and his family. It was the least she owed them.

  “Quite the little secret agent, aren’t you? I’m almost impressed. But I’m afraid your father’s going to have a long wait. You’re not going back. Not until I’m convinced it’s safe for you to do so.”

  “That’s not your decision to make, Jack,” she warned. “It’s mine. I’m done with hiding. I’m done with running.”

  His eyes lethal, he pulled at his lower lip. “You sure about that? Given your impeccable timing, I’d venture a guess you’re running from what happened last night.”

  She realized her forefinger was beating an ungoverned rhythm on the table, fast and furious, jigging to a tune all of its own. She forced both her hands out of sight beneath the table and threaded her fingers tight. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “I never do. Last night was a one off. You’re not the first woman I’ve had to remind—”

  “Jack!” His father accompanied his sharp verbal intervention by bringing down the flat of his hand on the table with a loud slap, making her jump. “Respect—you’d do well to learn a little. Lowry, what do you intend to do when you reach London?”

  She raised her eyes to meet a piercing blue stare, like Jack’s, less hardened but just as sharply intelligent. “I’m going to give a taped statement under oath. I can’t guarantee anyone will believe what I have to say, but at least I will have tried. Then, when I’m cleared of Adrian’s murder, I plan on getting as far away as possible from this hideousness, and any reminder of it. I’ll disappear. I’ve done it before. Second time round should be even easier.”

  The older man nodded sagely. “Well, the first part seems eminently sensible to me. I have some well-placed contacts within the government. They might prove useful witnesses. I’ll contact them if you like.”

  “The hell you will,” Jack exploded. “You know she was raped, but you have no idea as to the power and reach of the man who did it. What she’s proposing goes beyond a simple whistle-blowing event. It’s an open declaration of war against some extremely dangerous men, only one of whom she can identify. They will retaliate. Violently and brutally. You’ll be giving those contacts of yours each their own personal body bag…”

  Her coffee cup became two and blurred before her eyes. Oh my God, he’d told them, he’d bloody told them. They all knew about her sordid violation. She was sitting surrounded by his family, for Christ’s sake. They had to be looking at her. Imagining. Not believing. Judging.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “You told them, Ballentyne. You bloody told them. What happened to me was private. Intensely personal. How could you? Of all the mindless, heartless…”

  The hoarseness of her voice, barely above a whisper, peeled back Jack’s skin. He pushed his chair clear of the dining table, wood scraping against wood, ready to tackle Lowry with a full body check, should she try and bolt.

  He couldn’t disagree with a single one of the slurs she spat. He was cruel, brutal, pitiless, and all the other dark adjectives she stormed. Confirmation, as if he’d needed it, he was not the man for her.

  Not the way he’d failed Richard—the guilt of which a flood of Noah’s proportion could not wash away. Not the way he’d already failed her. His decisions, his actions, so fucked, they’d endangered her in a way that had gotten her raped and shot.

  Rejecting her the way he had had been the right thing to do. Tact would have been lost on her. Lowry only ever heard what she wanted to hear.

  And he wasn’t sorry for the rejection itself. She’d made him feel…well…things. Dangerous things with the power to weaken him. Like the weird deep inner peace that had lit the darkness inside him last night. Like the feeling of excruciating tenderness that had narrowed his throat, making it all but impossible for him to swallow. And fear. He’d do well not to forget the fear. A gut-wrenching fear that if anything happened to her, if he lost her, he’d lose himself. Christ, he’d never felt so fucking vulnerable.

  Him, a hardened killer, for Christ’s sake. Stained with the blood of evil men who were taking too bloody long to die by any natural means. That was his job, and change was not, and never would be, in the cards. Not for him.

  But he had not breached her confidence about the rape.

  “Jack’s right,” Richard said quietly, cutting the torturous hush that had fallen. “You can’t go back while you’re still wanted for Wainwright’s murder. Forget getting within a hundred yards of the Cube, because you will be shot dead on sight. And, what’s more, you’ll take others with you—your father, Jack, his men—because they want the same thing that you do, Lowry. The truth and the traitors. And they’ll lay down their lives for it.”

  A hand fixed around Jack’s wrist, the long, narrow fingers squeezing. His mother, silently warning him to hold his tongue. To let Richard have the floor.

  Tendons straining to the point he wasn’t sure there would be sufficient elasticity left afterwards to hold his muscles in place, he yanked back on his anger. He’d concede for now, but one hint of further distress from Lowry and, wheelchair or not, he’d pin his twin to the ceiling.

  “…And what will that achieve?” His brother continued in a flat tone, his facial expression hard and unforgiving. “A whole cluster of funerals for too many good men. You were an agent for long enough, Lowry, to learn rule number one: know your enemy, find his weak spot, and, only then, take him down. And, Marshall, not Jack,
told me what had happened to you. I shared that with the family. They had a right to know. Just as we all have a right to know the name of the man who stupidly believed he could violate you and get away with it.”

  “Patient Peter Forsythe,” Jack intervened quietly, sparing her from the lie of telling them she didn’t know.

  A different kind of silence descended, one of shocked disbelief, and broken only by the tick of the carriage clock on the mantelpiece.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Richard eventually heaved with a strained laugh.

  Lowry, her eyes wide with indecision and panic, had paled to the color of smoked ice. Jack shifted his eyes to her chest, needing to see movement, needing the reassurance she still breathed. “Take a look at her face, Richard. Think she’s joking?”

  His mother dug her nails into his wrist in fresh warning. She knew his temper well. If she wanted to avoid blood spill, she’d better hold on tight.

  “Far from it.” Richard protested. “But, damn it Jack, you should have called and told us who you were up against when you first found out. You’re as bad as her. Keeping secrets. A counter attack needs to be put in place and fast. Oh, please, don’t tell me the reason you haven’t shared is because you plan to go up against that bastard on your own. No chance, bro. No. Bloody. Chance. We’ve only just got you back.”

  Jack ignored him. He kept his eyes fixed intently on the woman sitting opposite him, toast discarded, uneaten on the plate beside her, head bowed, her arms wrapped round her midriff. Those should be his arms holding her tight. Reassuring her. Begging her forgiveness because he’d screwed up. Taken what little trust she had in him and stomped on it.

  He watched the one woman who had never taken any of his shit, who’d always stepped forward to meet his surliness, rather than stepping back like most others, slowly cave as she computed what Richard had to say. The blame she took all upon herself, draining away her earlier show of resolve. No. He would not stand by while she just gave up. Not again. “Lowry, you’re right; it is your decision to make. If you want to return to London, I’ll take you myself. My men can lock the area round the Cube down tight. Marshall can sit on Patient Peter, so we’ll know if he makes a move.”

  “And the streets of London will run red with blood. Brilliant idea.”

  “Shut up, Richard, and stop being so bloody melodramatic. She could do without the guilt,” Jack snapped. “She—”

  “She,” Lowry interrupted quietly, “will make her own damned mind up about what to do. What’s your interest in the Service anyway, Richard? I thought you quit a long time ago.”

  “You’re father brought me back in. Four years ago, shortly after you left—”

  “I was dishonorably discharged,” she reminded him dully.

  “Whatever.”

  His hand curling in to fists, Jack promised himself that if his brother dared dismiss Lowry like that one more time, he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions. She was hurting. Couldn’t his brother see that? It was blatantly obvious to him.

  “Your father approached me and asked me to establish a hush-hush electronic surveillance center, tasked specifically with monitoring any suspicious activity at the Cube. No one knew, not even Jack, who was working the case, just from a different angle.”

  He thought he’d kept his growl under his breath. Obviously not. Lowry shot him a perplexed scowl. “I think you might want to shut the fuck up about that, Richard.”

  Richard ignored him. “Jack believed you, Lowry. He trusted your instincts. Pity you didn’t hang around long enough for him to prove it, and an even greater pity that I haven’t been able to trace a single lead…until now.”

  Jack’s heart damn near cracked at her brittle laugh

  “So, why the hell didn’t Jack tell me?” Lowry said. “I would have come forward, if I’d thought for a moment he—”

  “He knew you’d already written him off, and he wanted you safe. Out of harm’s way. He trusted you enough to look after yourself. It wasn’t easy for him, Lowry.”

  Jack watched as indecision and bewilderment swept her face, then she nodded, her shoulders slumping. “And still, after all this time, Patient Peter’s running free. Okay, so how do I help?”

  “For a start, you accept that until your name is officially cleared, you remain in Jack’s protective custody. Do anything stupid, and it reflects on him and your father. You’ll stay here at the Hall, while Jack and I work on a plan.”

  Up came that little chin of hers. He recognized that look. Richard was about to find out why he referred to her as Lowry-bloody-Fisk.

  “While we work on plan,” she clarified. “Or I’m on the first train back to London, regardless. This is my fight. It always has been. I…I should have settled it years ago.”

  Jack had heard enough. She was fading again. Christ, he wished she’d stop flickering like a candle caught in a draught. He doubted his heart could take further strain. “Our fight. If you are in any doubt that I’m in this with you up to my neck, re-visit the newspapers. But arrangements can be made to get us out of here, Lowry, if you don’t feel safe, and yes that ‘us’ does include me. Where you go, I go. No argument. I’m not letting you out of my sight until that bastard’s neutralized—dead preferably. The least I owe you.”

  Head rising, she locked eyes with him, all signs of her earlier distress gone. “You cleared all outstanding debts last night, Jack. Trust me, the slate’s wiped clean.”

  Had he not heard it for himself, he would never have believed she could sound so…disengaged.

  Around him, throats cleared, silverware clumsily clinked against fine porcelain, bodies shuffled. He ignored the sounds of deep discomfort and pushed all thoughts but the duty to protect from his mind.

  Peter Forsythe, for all his patience, must by now be writhing in frustration, making him more deadly, but also more open to making a mistake. The longer Lowry stayed beyond his grasp, the more desperate he would become, and the harder he would trip and fall.

  Which suited Jack just fine. Once a man stumbled, there was no guarantee of a recovery.

  And he should know. Last night had proven it.

  What the hell had he been thinking, taking Lowry to his bed?

  Or, maybe that was the point. He hadn’t been thinking at all. Not with his brain. What red-blooded man could? When faced with naked legs so long and exquisitely turned, his eyes had near gone blind with pleasure tracing their length. And breasts, like blushing apples ripe for the plucking. Not to mention feline eyes that whispered a come-hither, and a mouth so deliciously naughty, it promised a lifetime of hot and dirty.

  But despite all that tempting physical promise, that’s not what had felled him. He’d looked beyond the stunning window dressing to the bravery beneath. To the courage it had taken for her to give him her trust. The sweeter seduction.

  Sonofabitch, but he wasn’t supposed to feel like this. Open to guilt. Consumed by regret. Not to this extent. He never had before. Not even about Richard. Christ, he should have resisted. Damn straight he would in future. Or, at the very least, he’d die trying. Whatever she claimed, he still owed her.

  “You want to tell me what those arrangements are, Jack, because if they don’t suit, I’m going nowhere with you. I’m suddenly rather choosy about the company I keep.”

  Her tone made him want to reach for a fork with which to stab his own ear drums.

  “And, I can’t say I blame you, Lowry. Jack’s not infallible, something he doesn’t find easy to forgive in himself,” said his mother. “And despite the many mistakes he’s made, and even worse decisions, I’ve never before felt the need to apologize to anyone for my son’s actions—until now. The way he disrespected you when you walked in this morning made me ashamed of him for the first time in my life.”

  Words no son wanted to hear from his mother.

  It was akin to suffering instant anaphylactic shock. For the first time in his life, heat climbed his neck to settle on his cheeks. He glanced at the males sitting
around the table in silence. All had their heads bowed as if fascinated by the blue and white design on their plates, even Richard who could normally be counted on to seize the moment and twist the knife.

  Though it damn near snapped his neck doing so, Jack kept his own head upright. He owed eye contact to both the women his behavior had shamed. He wouldn’t duck their condemnation.

  “But if I know my son,” his mother continued softly, raising her hand to still Lowry’s interruption, “I very much doubt he’s going to give you any say in the matter. He is every bit as arrogant, rude, and overbearing as you believe, and just as insensitive.” She fixed Jack with a reprimanding glare before returning her gaze to Lowry.

  “But, I fear once he makes his mind up about something, there is no deflecting him. A trait I’m afraid he gets from me. And I’ve decided that you will both stay here. I’ll hear no further argument about it. Besides, no one will dare make another move on any member of my family. The furor I would cause would unseat the government and destroy the Intelligence Service. For good.”

  “You don’t know Patient Peter. He really wouldn’t care,” Lowry mumbled, shooting Jack a desperate look to intervene.

  “We are all aware of the risks, Lowry,” the older woman continued softly, “but I don’t see anyone heading for the door.”

  …

  Knowing the repetitive action would put his younger brother on edge, Patient Peter repeatedly thumbed the trigger of his gold Mont Blanc pen with a double click, the nib darting in and out of the tip like a little tongue.

  Walter. Walter. Walter. Oh, the things he’d like to do to the self-important, deluded grub. Should have erased the unwelcome smudge at birth—not that he hadn’t tried a time or two. And not that he wouldn’t have succeeded, but for father watching. Always watching. “Patience, Peter,” he’d said with a special smile.