Moonrise

by Anne Stuart

  She was used to luxurious vacation spots, he thought sourly. With Win’s handpicked escorts. “Take your time in the shower,” he said with an affability he was far from feeling. “I won’t be back for about an hour.” He didn’t want to lay it on too thick. The shower was in the middle of the house. She’d be safer there than any place else, and the sound of the water might drown out the noise of gunshots. His Beretta was equipped with a silencer, but even the top of the line was pathetically noisy. He’d have to work fast and hope she wouldn’t notice.

  He stepped off the porch, surveying the tropical morning as he listened to her moving around. He lit a cigarette, taking a deep breath of the ocean air, the subtle scent of foreign sweat on the breeze, as he waited for the sound of the shower. He figured he had ten minutes at worst, up to twenty if he was real lucky. In the old days he could take three operatives out in less than half that time. But this wasn’t the old days, and he was feeling tired and angry. Emotions always slowed him down.

  Another day in paradise, he thought sourly, taking a deep drag off his cigarette. He could hear the birds in the distance, edgy and disturbed by the presence of strangers. The hush of the ocean surf penetrated through the thick, jungle-like underbrush. There were a hundred places a man could hide in an overgrown place like this. And he felt a brief flash of that hateful, seductive anticipation.

  He found the first one behind the house, his gun drawn, sneaking up toward the back porch. James came up behind him and broke his neck, quickly, efficiently, letting the body drop with a silent thud onto the soft, spongy ground.

  Two left, he thought with clinical detachment, moving around the side of the house. The first one had been too easy. The next intruder was more of a challenge, staying just out of reach.

  He was moving toward the house, James realized with only a brief moment of concern. No matter how good the operative was, he wouldn’t be able to get to Annie. He’d have to come out in the open if he wanted to enter the cabin, and James could pick him off with a single shot.

  The attack team might have brought a short-fused explosive device. Then they’d have to run like hell, and James had little doubt he could take them out and defuse whatever little present the company had come up with for one of their own.

  At least his compatriots, perfectionists and professionals though they were, had never gone in for suicide missions. Staying alive had always been more important than getting the job done. Too bad this latest batch would accomplish neither objective.

  There was only one slight difficulty. He still hadn’t figured out where the third operative was.

  His quarry made the mistake of stopping his determined advance toward the cabin. James found him squatting in the bushes about ten yards from the front porch, loading extra 9mm clips with hollow-point bullets. If it hadn’t been for the bullets James might have considered letting him go, but those bullets were meant to maim and hurt. The man must have sensed his presence. He looked up, and there was a flash of recognition between the two. James had never seen him before in his life. But he knew him, as well as he knew himself. He shot him at point-blank range.

  One left. He’d tossed his cigarette, and he could smell the coppery scent of blood, the iron smell of death on the air. And something else, something he recognized.

  “Fuck me,” he muttered.

  “Not this time, James.”

  He turned, slowly, to face the third and final operative they’d sent after him. Mary Margaret Hanover. A woman with the face of an angel and the soul of … hell, she didn’t have a soul.

  “You’ve been your usual efficient self, James,” she said coolly, moving around him with extreme care, her gun pointed directly at his crotch. “I would have expected no less. I tried to warn the others, but they seemed to think you were merely human. I know better.”

  “You going to kill me, Mary Margaret?” he inquired casually.

  “Certainly. I’ll regret it, of course, but I won’t even hesitate. I’m following orders. Nothing personal, James. We’ve had some good times together, but I take my work seriously. Trust me, I won’t enjoy killing you.”

  “That’s a shame,” he murmured. “You usually get off on it.”

  Her pleasant smile faltered for a moment. “Don’t worry about me, James. After I take care of you, I get the little girl in the shower. I’ll enjoy doing her, trust me on that one.”

  “You know who she is?”

  “You think I’m sentimental about Win? I’m no more sentimental than you are, James. I do what needs to be done. With more pleasure than you’ve ever shown in your craft. Though in your case I might even call it sheer artistry.”

  “Do you have any regrets, Mary Margaret?” he asked gently.

  Her smile was wide, innocent, bone-chilling. “None, darling. You’re fiendishly inventive in bed, you’re a brilliant tactician, but you’ve always been a little too moral for your own good. If you’d known the scope of the operation, you would have been tiresomely difficult. It was just as well most of us didn’t even know each other and what we were assigned to do. But I can’t regret knowing you, James.” She smiled sweetly. “And your death will clean up a number of loose ends.”

  “Always glad to be of service, Mary Margaret. Just tell me one thing. Did you do Billy Arnett?”

  “That sweet little yokel? He didn’t belong in the company, James. He particularly had no business being groomed for our branch. Certainly he could shoot well enough to make even you look bad, but he was a child. A golly-gee-whiz patriot, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “Oh, that’s right. He was your little protégé, wasn’t he? You even set up some money for his wife. She was better off without him, you know. He slept with me, and he was lousy in bed. No staying power. Unlike you.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “Of course I did,” she said irritably. “What has that to do with anything?”

  Her cold blue eyes widened in sudden surprise. A second later the bullet hole appeared, in the middle of her forehead, and she crumpled onto the ground like a broken puppet. He stared down at her for a moment before lowering the gun. “Everything,” he said in a soft voice. And then he stepped over her body and headed back to the house.

  Battered, Annie thought as she stood under the shower, lathering her hair. It shouldn’t bother her, but it did. It had nothing to do with James McKinley, she told herself, letting the lukewarm water sluice over her face. She didn’t particularly want anyone thinking she looked the worse for wear. Win had instilled in her all sorts of priorities, and always facing the world well groomed and in control was part of it.

  Funny, but right now good grooming seemed the least of her worries. In the months since Win’s death she’d gradually stopped wearing the well-cut, pastel suits that took up most of her closet space. She’d given up her weekly manicure appointment, her hair was months past its usual careful shaping, and yesterday was the first time she’d worn heels in what seemed like centuries.

  She had certainly picked the worst possible time to wear them. She was half tempted to throw them in the trash before she ever tortured her feet again.

  She heard the sound when she stepped from the shower. A muffled explosion, and for some odd reason she thought she’d heard the same sound earlier, drowned out by the heavy water beating down on her head. She paused, listening, but there was nothing at all. Just silence.

  She dressed swiftly, scarcely bothering to towel herself dry. Battered, he’d said. She deliberately refused to look in the mirror. She had no reason to pretty herself up for James McKinley. No need to drape herself in the bland, pretty clothes her father had approved of for her.

  The flash of guilt was immediate. Her father had loved her, wanted the best for her. He was a connoisseur, an expert in matters of taste and art. He knew far better than she did what clothes and colors would suit her, what wine she would prefer to drink, what car she would prefer to drive. It didn’t matter that deep in her heart she’d a
lways longed for a gaudy, classic Corvette. She drove a late-model Mercedes. A perfect, elegant car that suited the person she knew herself to be.

  She dressed in wrinkled white pants and a fuchsia silk T-shirt. She’d never worn fuchsia—it was too bright, too conspicuous, but she’d bought it anyway, then stuffed it in the back of her closet and forgotten about it. She brought it with her at the last minute, throwing it into her suitcase, and right now she was feeling defiant. No one could look battered in fuchsia.

  She didn’t see him at first when she emerged from the bathroom. He was sitting at the table, a cup of coffee in his hand. He looked cool, relaxed, a man at peace with himself. She almost envied that peace. Except for some reason she wasn’t certain she believed it.

  “I didn’t realize you were back,” she said, shoving a hand through her wet, tangled hair.

  “It didn’t take as long as I expected,” he said.

  “What didn’t?”

  “Deciding what to do.” He took a sip of coffee. “Why don’t you go upstairs and pack?”

  “Am I going someplace?”

  “We both are. I’ve decided to help you. If you still want me to.”

  “I still want you to,” she said. “Where are we going?”

  “All in good time, Annie. You’re going to have to trust me on this. You’re going to have to keep trusting me.”

  She hesitated, considering it. “All right,” she said finally.

  “It’s that easy?”

  “Don’t you trust anyone?”

  “Not a living soul.”

  She shook her head. “You must have a very empty life, James.”

  His grin was cool and savage. “You don’t know the half of it, Annie.”

  He sat back, listening to her slam around upstairs, expressing her irritation with him in none-too-subtle ways. He smiled wryly. She never would have shown irritation while Win was still alive. He’d taught her that good manners were of paramount importance, and image was everything. One always had to appear in control of oneself, and one’s situation, even if it was all a sham.

  In Win’s case it hadn’t been. He’d controlled everything and everybody who came within his sphere, up until the last day of his life. James had accepted that unpalatable truth in the last few months, a truth he’d managed to avoid while Win was alive.

  He’d left his mark on everyone, and it was only now, after his death, that they were beginning to emerge from his shadow. Martin Paulsen, Win’s dutiful protégé, handpicked to marry his daughter, a clever, loyal, honest soul. Carew, the slimy excuse for a superior who’d finally gotten the last word, and no longer had to worry about Win looking down his patrician nose at him. Annie, wearing gaudy colors, glaring at him, slamming around.

  And even James McKinley himself. He was emerging from the shadows whether he wanted to or not. Coming out into the open, where he was a living, breathing target for the people someone, maybe Carew, sent after him.

  They would keep coming, of course. Next time it might be a full-scale attack force of navy Seals, if they could come up with a believable excuse.

  But there wasn’t going to be a next time. He’d waited long enough for them to come and get him. They didn’t let people retire in his line of work, not with his history. But he was tired of their inept attempts at taking him out. Of not knowing who or what was after him. He was going to bring the war right back to them.

  But first he had a decision to make. If he had any sense at all, he was going to have to finish what he’d started. He was going to go upstairs and kill Winston Sutherland’s daughter.

  He’d known, as he’d dragged Mary Margaret’s body into the bushes, that he really had no choice in the matter. He could get her away from this place without noticing the carnage that surrounded them, but sooner or later it would catch up with them. And to keep her alive would only complicate matters.

  She served no useful purpose, and he had been taught a ruthless efficiency. She was a complication, in his way, and the only obvious choice was to dispense with her.

  The alternative was unthinkable. He had no reason to let her live, except for sentiment. Emotion. Old memories, a passing fondness he’d once had for a young girl, a moment in an empty house one Thanksgiving years ago when she was young and alone and he’d let his guard down for a brief while. She seemed to have forgotten, but it might come back to her sooner or later. And he couldn’t afford to let that happen.

  She was already doomed. Her parentage, and her curiosity, had made that certain. He could be gentle with her. Make it fast, painless. If someone was going to kill Annie Sutherland, then it ought to be him.

  It wasn’t as if he had a conscience that could bother him. He’d killed. He was good at it, neat and painless, delivering death to the deserving without pause or regret.

  Or if the regrets had come, it had simply been part of his penance. The price he had to pay, to live out his life expiating his sin by compounding them.

  Catholic guilt. He’d always taunted himself with that, with the knowledge that his mother’s faith had eaten its way into his heart and soul, into his very bones like a cancer.

  That too was his penance.

  He moved up the stairs silently. Adrenaline was still pumping through him, a natural side effect of the past half hour. His pulse was steady, and his hands were without a tremor. This was what he did best. Mary Margaret had called it artistry. He doubted if Annie would consider her corpse a masterpiece.

  She had her back to him when he reached the top of the stairs. She was stuffing clothes into her suitcase, and her movements were fast, jerky, angry. She picked up those absurd high heels, held them for a moment, and then slammed them into the wastebasket in the corner. It tipped over beneath the weight of her throw, and she muttered a curse.

  He moved closer, so close he could reach out and touch that slender neck beneath the damp fall of hair. She wouldn’t know what happened. A moment of pressure, and she’d be dead before she hit the floor. He could catch her, carefully, and lay her out on the bed. He would close her eyes, and then maybe he’d even burn the place down around her, a funeral pyre. He found he didn’t want people touching her, messing with her, after she was dead.

  He just needed to lift his hand. She didn’t know he was there, behind her, ready to strike, but if he hesitated much longer she’d turn and see him, and recognize her death in his face. It would frighten her, and he didn’t want to do that. If he was going to do it, he needed to make it as easy, as painless, as possible.

  His muscles clenched painfully. He lifted his hand, and his fingers brushed her wet hair.

  She whirled around and glared at him. “You scared the hell out of me,” she snapped. “You’re as bad as Win, tiptoeing around and sneaking up on people. Is that part of your stock in trade? Junior Spooks on Parade?”

  He laughed then, a rough, harsh sound, and he wondered how long it had been since he’d laughed. Maybe a decade or more. He dropped his hand to his side, flexing his coiled fingers. “You’ve got more sass than brains,” he drawled, using his best Texas accent.

  “That’s saying a lot. I was Phi Beta Kappa at Georgetown University.”

  He found he was grinning. It almost felt as if the stiff lines in his face would crack from the unexpected amusement. “Annie,” he said, “you’re getting in over your head.”

  “I already am. What do you suggest I do about it? Run away and hide?”

  There was no place she could run to, no place she’d be safe. He knew that, even if she didn’t. The safest place for her was with him. The man who had almost killed her.

  He wasn’t going to do it. Not now, at least, not while he had a choice. He knew enough about life to know that the damnedest things could happen. The odds were against the two of them, and if he were a gambling man he’d bet they’d both be dead by Halloween.

  But odds didn’t mean diddly squat when you threw human beings into the equation. She just might make it out alive. And if there was a chance, then he was goin
g to see to it that she did.

  He wasn’t any too happy with his decision. It was impractical, emotional, a weakness. But when it came right down to it, he didn’t want to kill Annie Sutherland unless he had to.

  He reached past her for her suitcase, being very careful not to brush against her body. Her hair was already beginning to dry in the late morning heat, and he could smell the scent of her body, the heat of her skin. And, on the sultry breeze, the tang of blood and death.

  “We’re getting out of here,” he said. “Before anyone else comes after me.”

  “Someone’s come after you?”

  “An annoying woman named Annie Sutherland,” he drawled. “I don’t want to risk having your ex-husband show up as well.”

  “I thought Martin was your friend.”

  “He is. Or as close to a friend as I have.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  She looked up at the man who was going to kill her, tilting her head to one side as she considered it. Her eyes were a clear, limpid blue. The same color as her father’s had been, though without Win’s malice or guile. She wore no makeup today, but oddly enough she looked prettier without the protective coloration she usually wore. Her skin was soft, fresh, touched with natural color. Her eyelashes were thick and tawny, like her hair. Her wide mouth was full, pale, and there was a scattering of freckles across her unremarkable nose.

  Jesus Christ, what was he doing, standing there thinking about her freckles?

  “Can I?” she said.

  He wanted to tell her the truth. He wanted to tell her to run like hell, to get away from him as fast as she could. But it would be a waste of time. If she tried to run away, he’d catch her. If he caught her, he’d hurt her. Lying was the only choice.

  “Of course, darlin’,” he drawled, letting the Texas slip into his voice, knowing its usual disarming effect. “Your father trusted me, didn’t he?”

  “With his life,” Annie said.

  Poor choice of words. He didn’t let his faint, sexy grin falter. “Then you can trust me as well. I’ve got a car parked down the road a ways. We’ll have to go through the brush, but you look a little better dressed for it today.” He glanced down at her sneakers. She could run in those if she had to. He could carry her, if need be.