by Anne Stuart
Carew was a consummate actor. But then, she was learning they all were. All the men who’d surrounded her, lied to her, kept her safe in her cocooned little world of order and normalcy. “This has been a difficult time for you, Miss Sutherland,” he said, moving swiftly forward and taking her limp hand in his. His grip was firm, warm, against her own icy skin. “I don’t know what you think may have happened, but be assured that we’ll do anything we can to help.”
She pulled her hand away from him. It took all her effort not to plaster a polite smile on her face, not to murmur the appropriate, reassuring answer. She’d been trained as well, she thought. By a master.
“Can you think of any reason why I should believe you, Mr. Carew?” she said coolly. “Lies are more your style, aren’t they?”
He didn’t flinch, just kept that same concerned expression on his face. As if he hadn’t, a few short moments ago, suggested that James “handle” her. “I don’t know what you think you know, Miss Sutherland. I don’t know what James has told you, or what you’ve figured out on your own, but chances are whatever you’re thinking, it’s only part of the truth. If lies have been told, they’ve been told to protect you. Your father was involved in a highly classified government project. The fewer people who share information about such projects, the safer it is all around.”
“Not very safe for my father. Who killed him?”
Carew didn’t even flinch. “I’m sorry, Miss Sutherland.”
“And why? Why was he killed? Who placed the order? Was it you?”
Carew shared a glance with McKinley. James was leaning against the mantel, watching them in the gathering dusk, and Annie hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on behind his impassive gaze.
“You’ll have to ask McKinley about that,” Carew said with a faint sneer. “He’s the man with the answers.”
The phrase rang in her head, like an unpleasant carillon, one that would sooner or later make her crazy.
But Carew had already dismissed her. “You’ve got your bargain, Mack,” he said. “Hands off. I can’t promise you forever. Let’s say one week. And then it’s out of my control. I answer to other people, you know.”
“Yeah,” he said. “And you lie to them as well.”
Carew ignored the gibe, turning back to Annie. “I wish you’d come to me for help,” he said in his soft, faintly plaintive voice. “Perhaps we could have found the answers you wanted without McKinley’s theatrics.”
“Sorry,” she said, even as one hand absently kneaded her aching neck. “I trust James.”
Carew’s eyes were oddly colorless, almost reptilian in his handsome face. His gaze followed her hand to her neck, and there was only the slightest shift in his expression.
“I hope you don’t live to regret it. But then again, that’s exactly the problem. We can protect you from the men who killed your father. I’m not convinced that Mack can. Or will.”
James said nothing. The shadows grew darker still in the room, but he made no move to turn on the lights. “I’m willing to take my chances,” Annie said stubbornly.
Carew’s smile was gentle and contemptuous. “I won’t argue with you. It’s your life. But if you happen to change your mind, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. That is, if Mack lets you. I can offer you the best protection your government has to offer.”
“It didn’t do my father much good, did it?”
He blinked, then glanced back at James. “You know, I underestimated you, McKinley. You’ve managed to turn a reasonably intelligent human being into an idiot, just by crawling between her legs. I wouldn’t have thought you were that good in bed.”
Annie hadn’t realized how fast James could move. Neither had Carew. In a matter of seconds James had him slammed up against the wall, one hand cradling Carew’s throat, his long fingers wrapped halfway around it. It looked almost like a caress, and yet Annie had no doubt how very lethal that grip was. The sweat beading Carew’s brow as he tried for a nonchalant smile told it all.
James’s smile didn’t help matters. It was cool and terrifying, and Annie could only be glad it wasn’t directed at her. “You aren’t really ready to die, are you, Carew?” he murmured softly.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Carew said in a tight voice. “You don’t think I just walked in here without any backup. You know me well enough to know that I’d cover my ass. If I don’t come out of here safe and sound, this place goes up like a tinderbox.”
“And risk taking you along with it? I don’t think so,” His fingers flexed, and Carew let out a small, strangled moan.
“Let me go, McKinley,” he gasped. “Let me go or I’ll—”
James released him so suddenly that Carew sagged against the wall, almost sliding to the floor. “Bastard,” he muttered, rubbing his throat. He threw a sly glance over toward Annie, toward her own throat. “Watch your back, Miss Sutherland, And if you need help, I’ll provide it. If hell let you.”
“You can leave now,” James said with perfect courtesy. “We’ll be in touch.”
Annie found, to her absolute horror, that she wanted to giggle, James sounded like a prospective employer dismissing an unqualified applicant. She put her hand to her throat once more, leaving it there as some sort of unconscious protection, while Carew made a hasty retreat.
For a moment James stood in the darkness, his back to her. She started toward the light switch, suddenly unable to bear it anymore, but he caught her hand, her arm, whirling her around and stopping her before she could turn it on.
“Chances are he’s got snipers trained at the windows,” he said in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice. “If not Carew, then someone else. They’ve probably got infrared scopes as well, but we don’t need to give them an illuminated target.”
“Why would he want to have us killed? I thought he agreed to a truce.”
“He’s not the only one we have to worry about. As a matter of fact, I think he’s the least of our problems. There are a lot of people who aren’t too happy with the questions we’ve been asking. Don’t believe him when he says he can protect you. Without me you’re a dead woman, Annie. No ifs, ands, or buts.”
“And with you?”
“You have a fighting chance.”
It wasn’t much of a consolation. She looked up at him. The darkness was so thick she could barely see his face, and for some reason she felt safer that way. “What’s going to happen to us, James?” she whispered.
“We’re probably going to die.”
“You’re very comforting,” she said wryly. “Couldn’t you lie a little bit? Just to make me feel better?”
She could feel the stillness in him. His hand was still on her arm, holding her, and she could feel a thousand unnamed emotions banked under his cool surface.
“I can lie,” he said.
He released her, but she didn’t move away. “Your friend …” she began. “Clancy.”
“What about him?”
“He’s dead.”
“I know. I saw him.”
“Is that what’s going to happen to us?”
“If we’re not lucky.”
“What’s luck got to do with it?”
“Everything.”
“Did you … did you bring me back to the house?” She wasn’t sure if she wanted to hear the answer. Except that she already knew it.
In the darkness he reached up and cradled her throat with one hand. He had big hands, strong, with long fingers that reached more than halfway around her neck. Long fingers that stroked her very gently, pinpointing the exact spot where the pain was the worst. “Yes,” he said, his voice low and expressionless. “I knocked you out and brought you back here while you were unconscious.”
“Why?”
He laughed. The sound was cool and faintly eerie in the enveloping darkness. “Why?” he echoed. “Because I didn’t want to kill you.”
She jerked herself away from him, and he let her go, making no effort to stop her. “Bastard,” she snapped, thoroughly unn
erved. “I suppose you think you’re funny.”
“A barrel of laughs, Annie,” he murmured as she stalked from the room. “A barrel of laughs.”
* * *
They were drawing back. His night vision was excellent, but even so, it was those instincts that Carew had derided that told him. The snipers were pulling back, and for the time being he and Annie were safe.
He had no particular illusions about how long it might last. He would take whatever advantage he could get, for as long as it lasted.
It was the only thing he could count on.
One thing was certain—he couldn’t bring any more old friends into it. Clancy hadn’t deserved to die that way—another soul on his conscience. Except that he had no conscience. And no more friends to risk, including Annie’s ex-husband, Martin.
No, he’d be on his own from now on. Correction—they’d be on their own. He had Annie Sutherland, like a barnacle, like a clinging leech, like an albatross around his neck. One he didn’t want to cut free.
He couldn’t quite figure her out. She had no reason to trust him over Carew. She’d already known he’d half strangled her earlier that afternoon, and seeing him nearly do the same thing to Carew should have scared the hell out of her.
Instead it had only seemed to strengthen her resolve. She’d put herself in his hands completely.
He could hear Annie in the kitchen, making a remarkable amount of noise. He looked down at his hands. The moon was rising over the canyon, sending a faint silvery light into the room, and he could see them quite clearly. An artist’s hands.
An artist at dealing death.
They were going to have to deal more than death if he was going to keep Annie safe. He’d already made the decision, and much as he regretted it, he wasn’t going back on it. He was keeping her with him.
His first problem was to figure out a way to keep her reasonably docile. Not that the word docile and Annie seemed to have much in common now that Win was dead. She was entirely rebellious, where once she had done everything her father had told her.
He needed to have her just where Win had. Blind, unquestioning obedience. He needed her to think what he wanted her to think, wear what he wanted her to wear, do what he wanted her to do. He needed her to have no mind or will of her own for the next week or so, while they went in search of the man who’d betrayed her father.
And in doing so, betrayed James himself.
There were any number of ways to bring Annie to heel. He could do it with threats, brute force, and intimidation. Easy and effective, but the victim was more likely to develop an unexpected streak of rebellion.
He could rely on friendship, shared memories and affection for her father. The weakest of all possible links, and one he didn’t want to bet his, or her, life on.
He could use drugs, various forms of mind control, once he got access to them. He’d never had any particular liking for those recent innovations, but he was adept at using them.
Or he could use sex.
It was the least appealing of the possibilities. Sex was a two-edged sword—he was a man of phenomenal control, but that control had seemed more tenuous lately. Reckless. He wasn’t certain of his ability to keep himself detached, even as he drew her in.
Unwanted, the memory of Mary Margaret Hanover came back to him. Mary Margaret in bed, on top of him, her long hair rippling down her back, her head thrown back in laughter, her full, perfect breasts bouncing up and down as she rode him.
And Mary Margaret, cool, slightly surprised, as his bullet entered her brain and she knew it was over.
He could fuck and kill if he had to, he knew that.
The danger was, he didn’t know if he could fuck and kill Annie Sutherland.
“Do you want anything to eat?” He hadn’t heard her return. She stood silhouetted in the living room door, the light from the kitchen illuminating her, and he turned slowly, knowing his face was in the shadows. There was no way she could guess what he was thinking. What he was considering.
What he might do to her.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m hungry.” And he started toward her.
Chapter Eight
She couldn’t sleep. Annie lay in the old-fashioned bed underneath the eaves and watched the moonlight throw shadows across the polished wood floor, and she wondered if she’d ever sleep again.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Clancy’s dead body slumped over the steering wheel.
She was living in a nightmare. One that had started the morning she’d found her father’s body. Everything she’d believed in, everything she’d held sacred, had been turned upside down in the past six months. Her father was a stranger to her—the warm, slightly acerbic gentleman was becoming nothing more than a fairy tale, as unlikely as cowardly dragons or noble princes.
James was a lie as well. The quiet friend of her father’s had vanished. She’d gone to him for help, expecting uncompromising strength and calm. Instead she’d found …
She didn’t know what she’d found. She didn’t know anything about the man she thought she’d known all her life. Except that he was dangerous.
But oddest, most disconcerting of all, was the fact that she didn’t know herself anymore. Simple decisions were no longer simple. More and more often she’d found herself torn between what was obvious and right, and what her father would have wanted. And oddly enough, it was her father’s wishes that seemed wrong.
If she’d had any sense at all, she would have gone into therapy, gone back to her muted colors and her muted life, and gotten on with things. Listened to Martin when he told her to leave things be. Leave James alone.
Instead she’d chucked it all and run off with the man who knew the answers. And she wasn’t entirely sure she was ready to learn them.
She wondered where he was. There was no other bed in the tiny cottage, and the chintz sofa looked too small and too dainty for a man like McKinley. Maybe he could sleep standing up. Maybe he didn’t need sleep at all.
Carew said she could change her mind, come to him for help. James said he was the only one who could keep her alive. And she had no idea who to believe, who to trust.
She glanced down at the thin Rolex her father had given her. Two forty-five in the morning, and just beyond the shadows lay a dead man. In the morning she might be dead as well.
When she awoke, the room was inky darkness. The moon had set, the wind had picked up, and there wasn’t a sound beyond the rush of the leaves. She opened her eyes, and she knew she wasn’t alone in the room.
“James?” she said, her voice almost unnaturally calm.
“Who else?” He sounded almost unbearably weary. “Time for us to get out of here.” He loomed up over the bed, barely visible in the smothering darkness.
She had the odd notion he was going to touch her. And she didn’t want him to. She scrambled off the bed, backing away from him. He made no move to follow her.
“How are we going to do that?” she asked. She was dressed in a light T-shirt and jeans, and the predawn air was chilly. She wasn’t about to tell him so.
“Clancy.”
Annie shuddered. “I’m not going in that car …”
“It’s already been moved. Disappeared. Carew and his men can be very efficient when they need to be.”
“What happened to him?”
She could see him shrug in the dim light, seemingly unconcerned. “His body won’t be found. It won’t matter—he had no family or friends outside the business. You learn to live a solitary life. No one will even notice his passing, much less mourn him.”
There was an odd note in his voice, made even more noticeable by the darkness that surrounded them. “Is that what will happen with you?” she asked.
“Not if I’m lucky.”
“What will happen if you’re lucky?”
He moved closer, and there was no place for her to run. She’d already backed up against the wall, and she could only stand there, shoulders back, as he approached.
He stopped inches away, close enough that she could feel the tension that ran through his body. Close enough so that she could close her eyes and breathe in the strength of him, the sense of him, his power and his danger.
“If I’m lucky,” he said, “I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”
For a moment she didn’t move. He didn’t touch her, but then, he didn’t need to. She felt touched, possessed, invaded, merely by his closeness. Somewhere she found her voice, and her defenses. “Are you sure you’re thirty-nine?” she asked dryly. “You sound like an adolescent male.”
The room was frozen in silence for a breathless moment. He moved then, putting his strong hands on her shoulders, and she flinched, unable to help herself, looking up at his shadowed face.
His long fingers splayed over her shoulders, his thumbs caressing her collar bone. “Be careful, Annie,” he whispered, ducking his head closer to hers.
“I’m not afraid to offend you,” she shot back, her voice wobbling just slightly.
“You don’t offend me.” The thumbs dipped lower, trailing across the tops of her breasts. “You …” He stopped, as if he was uncertain what to say. But James McKinley wasn’t a man plagued by uncertainty, and she waited for him to finish.
“I … what?” she prompted.
He released her abruptly, and she fell back against the wall with a pronounced thud. “We’ll talk about it when we’re out of here,” he said.
“And how are we getting out of here?”
“I told you, Clancy would have seen to it that we have a vehicle. I just have to hope we find it before the others do.”
“The others? I thought Carew was going to leave us alone for the next week.”
“Carew isn’t our only worry, Annie. Besides, I don’t trust anybody. He might do as he promised. Then again, he might not. I’m not about to risk your life on his word.”
“What about your life?”
“That’s expendable.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “We’ve got one advantage. We’re up against some impressive enemies, but they don’t know the way Clancy’s mind worked.”
