Moonrise

by Anne Stuart

  “As long as we need to. Until Carew comes and we figure out where to go from here.” He turned to look at her, and with a mere blink he took in her fascinated gaze.

  He dropped his hand from the gun, not self-consciously, and tucked it in his pocket. “If you’re not hungry, I am, Annie,” he said gently. “It probably wasn’t wise for me to drink on an empty stomach and no sleep.”

  It galvanized her as nothing else would. “I’ll make us something,” she said grudgingly. “But I know you’re trying to manipulate me. Don’t think you can get away with it.”

  “Why not? Win always did.”

  She slammed the door on him. The loud crash was mildly satisfying, though she couldn’t stomp down the narrow stairs effectively in bare feet. The bottle of tequila stood out on the counter, and at least a third of it was gone.

  Sudden apprehension washed over her. She took the bottle over to the old iron sink and poured the rest of the contents down the drain. The acrid stench of alcohol filled the room, and she knew a moment’s misgiving.

  She shoved it down. She was damned if she was going to put her life in the hands of a desk-bound CIA agent with cowboy fantasies and let him fuel those fantasies with too much alcohol. She had yet to decide just how real the danger was. But until she did, she wasn’t taking any chances. James McKinley was going on the wagon, whether he wanted to or not.

  Annie made scrambled eggs from the limited contents of the refrigerator. She called up to James, but he didn’t answer, so she sat and ate hers, dutifully, watching as his grew cold and jellied on the plate.

  She found him asleep on the bed, his long, black-clad figure stretched out across the coverlet. He’d closed the windows, and the room was stuffy. She stared down at him for a long moment, seeing him for the first time without the distraction of his looking back at her.

  He was taller than she’d ever realized. Lying angled across the huge bed, he filled it. He had the body of a high jumper—long, rangy muscles, long bones, sinewy and strong. His damp hair had dried, curling slightly at the back of his neck, and it was dark brown mixed with gray. Slightly thin at the very back of his head.

  For a moment she smiled, the one imperfection making him somehow more human. He shifted in his sleep, rolling onto his back, and she looked at his face. The lines were scored deep, around his eyes, bracketing his mouth, visible even in sleep. Those lines hadn’t come from smiling. It was no wonder she’d always thought he was much older. For all that his face and body were in their late thirties, his heart and soul were ancient.

  And the thought came to her, out of nowhere. What in God’s name had Win done to him?

  She wanted to touch him. Some small, mad part of her wanted to climb up on that bed and soothe away the lines that marred his face, even in sleep. He should look innocent, boyish as he slept. Instead he looked like a soldier in Death’s army.

  She backed away, quickly, before she could give in to the temptation. What the hell was wrong with her? James McKinley wasn’t a man to be touched, to be stroked, like a stray kitten. He was a dangerous man—she was coming to realize that more and more, as unlikely as the notion had first seemed.

  Too dangerous for her. She’d been a fool to come after him, a fool to ask him for help. Even beyond the grave Win was manipulating her, and by now she should have had enough of it.

  She grabbed her shoes, closing the door silently behind her as she tiptoed down the stairs. He would sleep for hours. She’d leave him a note, apologize for stirring things up, and get the hell out of there. By the time he awoke she could be halfway back to Washington. Back to Win’s house, surrounded by the artifacts of Win’s life. Everything but the silver-framed print of the Irish saint. Back where she belonged.

  The note was brief, scribbled on a pad of paper. She left it next to the empty tequila bottle, grabbed her purse, and stepped out into the hot California sunshine. There was no car—Clancy had said he’d return some time that evening, but Annie figured it would take her about fifteen minutes to hike out to the highway. Then she’d take her chances on hitchhiking back to the city, to public transportation of some sort that could get her to LAX. For some reason hitchhiking seemed safer than waiting in that little house with the man asleep upstairs.

  She was halfway up the winding drive when she smelled that awful smell. What had James called it—the blood lily? It smelled like septic tanks and blood. It smelled like death.

  She stopped in the middle of the driveway, riveted, as that hideous, unwelcome thought squirreled its way into her brain like a hungry maggot digging into dead flesh. Death and carnage. She looked up, toward a hawk wheeling and turning overhead. It wasn’t a hawk. It was a vulture.

  She wanted to turn and run. But she had no idea where she could run. James was back at the house with his knowledge of weapons and the secrets in his cool, merciless eyes. There was no safety back there. Ahead of her lay death.

  She forced herself to look around her. She couldn’t rid herself of the eerie notion that she was being watched, even though she knew she was being ridiculous. Who would be watching her? James was dead to the world in that big bed upstairs, and there was no one in sight, no one who could be watching her, no one knew they were there, or would even care. She was alone in the brilliant California sunshine, with only the vulture for company.

  She took a deep, calming breath. She was overwrought, overtired, jumping at shadows. She simply needed to keep walking, putting one foot ahead of the other, until she made it out to the main road. There was no danger, no death around her. It was a bright day in California, the sunshine state.

  She managed to move, forcing herself, down the dusty, rutted driveway. From a distance she could see a flash of light, the sun bouncing its reflection against a shiny surface, and once more she halted, squinting into the undergrowth.

  And then she saw a car.

  She should have kept going. Past the telltale section of undergrowth. But she couldn’t help it. She took one step closer, then another, as she recognized the battered silver-blue of the Toyota Clancy had picked them up in.

  The car had to be empty. He must have driven off the road and then gone for help. Except that there were no signs of an accident. The car had been driven there, hidden there, with great care.

  She pushed the bushes aside, assailed by the stench. There was nothing resembling a lily anywhere around, and yet the too familiar smell assaulted her.

  The car wasn’t empty after all. She could see his shoulders slumped over the steering wheel. See the smear of blood on the cracked windshield.

  There was no reason to move closer. She knew immediately that he was dead—the back of his head had been blown away. She stumbled backward, a scream bubbling up in the back of her throat. But no sound came out, nothing but a faint, gasping noise, as she struggled for breath.

  An arm snaked around her throat, hauling her back with a rough jerk, cutting off her already desperate attempts to breathe. Horror erupted, and she fought, insanely, kicking, struggling against the unseen body behind her.

  The pain was so sudden, so intense that everything went black. Her entire body convulsed in agony, and she was falling, falling, through the darkness of pain and emptiness, and she knew she was dying, and no one would help her, no one would save her. She flung out a hand as she landed, and as the void closed around her she managed to choke out a name.

  McKinley stared down at her. She lay sprawled gracelessly on the dusty surface, half hidden by the underbrush. He stepped over her body and went to the car, careful not to touch anything. He could tell at a glance that Clancy had been dead at least a couple of hours, and there was no way Annie could have done it.

  Not that he’d seriously considered her capable of it. But he took nothing for granted in this life. He’d once almost had his balls sliced off by a placid middle-aged nun. Annie Sutherland was, after all, Win’s daughter. There was no telling what she was capable of. Whom she was working with.

  He stepped away from the car, delibera
tely calm. He’d always liked Clancy. They’d shared a decent bottle of scotch on occasion, and more than one adventure. There weren’t that many of his old friends left. None, with the exception of Martin. And even he might not be around for long.

  He squatted down beside Annie’s body. Her color was lousy, her breath was shallow and raspy, and he wondered why he’d stopped. A little more pressure, and he could have dumped her body in the car with Clancy’s and taken off.

  Hell, he didn’t wonder why. He knew. She’d called his name, and he’d dropped her. She’d called his name, and he’d shown his first sign of weakness.

  She was going to be the death of him. He knew it now with a bone-chilling certainty. He pushed her hair back from her face with a deliberately careless hand. A bruise was already forming at the base of her throat. She had the pale, soft skin that bruised easily. She would look in the mirror and know what he’d done to her.

  He should have just let her go. But he didn’t trust her. When he heard her sneaking out of the house, he’d gone after her. When he’d seen her head into the bushes, he’d been certain she’d be meeting a confederate.

  Instead she was finding a dead body. Her second in less than six months. First there was Win, now Clancy.

  There were going to be more.

  Chapter Seven

  She woke in darkness, in pain. Her neck felt stiff, paralyzed, and when she tried to turn it, streaks of agony shot through her body. She felt drunk, hungover in the murky night, and she closed her eyes again, trying to summon back the graceful twilight.

  She could hear voices. Low, murmuring, from somewhere in the house. It took her a moment to remember where she was—the small, Englishy-cottage overlooking the L.A. canyons. She’d found … what was his name, Clancy? And someone had come up behind her and tried to kill her.

  No, scratch that. If someone had tried to kill her, she’d be dead. And it wasn’t just someone—in retrospect she knew exactly who’d come up behind her. James.

  She could barely control a quiet whimper of pain as she sat up. She reached a trembling hand to her neck, pushing her hair away. It was raw, throbbing. What had the man done to her?

  She moved to the door, then stopped. The voices were clearer now—James with the Texas in his voice, deceptively smooth and easy. And someone else, all quiet concern and stern disapproval. She knew that voice as well. Remembered it. Carew.

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think,” James said affably. “If you didn’t hit Clancy, then I want to know who did.”

  “I wouldn’t be here now, I wouldn’t have simply walked in, if I was in any way responsible for Clancy’s death. He was in the business for years, McKinley, and he made a lot of enemies. You know that as well as I do.”

  “Pretty damned convenient for those enemies to choose today to snuff him.”

  “All right, so I don’t believe in coincidences either. But I’m here, aren’t I? I came as soon as I got your message. What do you want from me, Mack?”

  Annie moved closer to the doorway, peering out into the hallway. They were at the bottom of the stairs, she guessed, their voices floating up toward her, and they were making no effort at discretion. Either Carew didn’t know she was a witness. Or didn’t care.

  “I’ll cut you a little deal, Carew. We both know I’ve tried to kill you twice. I was drunk then. I’m not drinking now, and you know that sober, there’s no more dangerous man alive. If I put my mind to it, you’re a dead man.”

  “You always did have delusions of grandeur,” he said with a sniff.

  “Give me a week. Let me find out who’s left of Win’s little sideline. Who helped him out. He didn’t do it alone, even “if you want to pretend he did. He was a smart man, but it was too complicated an operation for him to handle alone. I want to find out who was left. Who was with him when he turned. Who’s going to try to keep it going.”

  “What if it’s me?”

  “Then you’re a dead man anyway.”

  “It’s not me.” There was no missing the alarm in Carew’s whiny voice.

  “No,” James said after a moment. “I don’t believe it is. I want you to back off, Carew. Call off your little soldiers. You can’t be sure who you can trust anyway. Which of them might be working for Win’s replacement—”

  “I trust them all!” he said sharply.

  “Then you’re a fool. You’ve still got a real problem, whether you want to admit it or not. Give me a week, and I’ll take care of things. I don’t make mistakes, and I don’t leave loose ends.”

  “What do you call the woman upstairs?”

  Silence, and Annie held her breath as she waited for his answer. “A complication,” he said finally. “One I can handle.”

  Annie moved down the first step, silent, even as the pain in her head threatened to explode. “I’m willing to deal,” Carew said in a bitter voice. “You always knew that.”

  “Sure you are. When your back is against a wall and you know there’s no way out. Well, this time, my friend, there’s no way out.”

  She was halfway down the stairs by now, certain she was completely silent in the murky darkness. She could see their legs—they were standing in the living room of the cottage, and Carew was wearing beige linen trousers. James was wearing black.

  “I must say I don’t believe all this sudden nobility on your part, Mack. Is it money? You never were that interested in the kind of money you could have made in your line of work, or you wouldn’t have been working for us.”

  “I don’t need money.”

  “Then what the hell do you want from me?” Carew’s voice rose to a frustrated shriek.

  “Annie wants to know who killed her father. She’s not going to rest until she finds out. And then she’s going to want revenge.”

  Dead silence. “Jesus,” Carew said softly. “So where’s the problem? Handle it.”

  “No.”

  “I haven’t seen any signs of you getting squeamish in your retirement, but I can always assign someone else. Assuming there’s anyone left after you’ve gotten through with them,” he added bitterly.

  “You won’t touch her. That’s why I’m here. You’re to keep your fucking goons away from her.”

  “Jesus, what happened to you, James? What the hell do you care what happens to Win’s daughter?”

  “I don’t,” he said flatly. “I just don’t intend to let you clean up the mess you left behind. I’m not going to let you get off that easily.”

  “So?” Carew taunted him. “Then I can count on you taking care of her?”

  “You can count on the fact that you better watch your back. I’m going to take her where she wants to go.”

  “It’s your funeral, Mack. Are you really going to help her find out who did her father?”

  “I’m going to help her find the answers she needs. Whether she likes it or not.”

  “Jesus,” he said again. “What the hell are you getting yourself into, McKinley? What do you think you’ve got to gain by messing with all this?”

  “Peace of mind maybe.”

  “It’s a little too late for that, wouldn’t you say?” The humor in Carew’s voice was unpleasant. “You lost your chance for peace years ago.”

  “Maybe I’m curious. Maybe I just want to find the missing pieces of the puzzle.”

  “What missing pieces? It’s straightforward enough, and you know it.”

  “I hate your guts, Carew, but I never thought you were stupid,” James said in a level voice.

  There was a pause. “Why don’t you just ask me?”

  “Because you don’t have the answers any more than I do. You just want everything swept under the rug. That way you get to keep your job, and your power. But supposing I don’t want things swept under a rug?”

  “You made that more than clear.”

  “Tell you what, Carew. Let’s have a little truce. I’ll stop trying to kill you, and you can stop trying to kill me.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Carew said p
romptly.

  “Not so fast. I don’t believe you. I think you’ll need a little incentive to back off.”

  “You’re a dangerous man, McKinley. Don’t you think self-preservation is a strong enough incentive?”

  “You’re smart, Carew, but you’re arrogant. Look at it this way—if anything happens to me, or to Annie, then everything’s going to blow up in your face. It’ll make a stink so bad you won’t ever get rid of it.”

  “It looks like that might happen anyway,” he said in a sulky voice.

  Annie moved down another step, crouching behind the railing, her hands tight with anger.

  “It doesn’t have to. I know they’re regrouping. I can put a stop to it.”

  “How? And don’t give me any crap about instincts—I don’t believe in ’em.”

  “And that’s why you made a lousy field operative.”

  “If he had a protégé, then the logical choice would be you.”

  “It would. But it wasn’t.” She could hear the icy drawl in his voice. “We’re going to find out who he is, Carew. And I’ll take care of him for you. I’ll clean up the mess you’re trying to ignore.”

  “You’re crazy. Send Sutherland’s daughter back to D.C. and we’ll work something out. We can protect her, see that she’s safe—”

  “She stays with me. It’s the only way I can keep her safe. Besides, I don’t think she’s going to give me any choice in the matter. Are you, Annie?” He pitched his voice toward the stairs, and Annie paused, clutching the banister.

  “Jesus,” Carew swore, whirling around. “You mean the bitch has been listening?”

  Annie descended the stairs slowly, coming into the light. Carew was just as she remembered him, surprisingly attractive for such a narrow little soul. She’d always assumed he was a decade younger than James, but now she wasn’t so sure. Beneath the carefully tanned skin and the contact-lensed eyes lurked an old, old man.

  “You remember Carew, don’t you, Annie?” James drawled with perfect civility.