Moonrise

by Anne Stuart

  “I’d really like to kill you,” she said.

  “I seem to bring out your violent streak, don’t I?” he murmured. “Maybe we’d better bring our unholy alliance to an end before you turn out just like me.”

  “And what would that be like? Or don’t you even know?” she goaded him.

  “I know,” he said, and his voice was bleak. “When Martin comes back, I’ll send you with him. He may not be as good as I am, but he has connections. He could keep Carew off your back. If anyone can keep you safe, Martin can.”

  “Can anyone keep me safe?”

  She expected a lie, an evasion. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Then I’m not going with him.”

  He was showing emotion now. Anger. He pushed off the couch, stalked by her, and it took all her courage not to pull her legs away from him as he brushed by. “You’ll goddamned well do as I say.”

  “Make me.”

  He stopped, mid-stride, turning to look at her, and she regretted her words instantly. “Haven’t I just given you a clear lesson on how I can make you do anything I want you to do? I can overpower you, physically, sexually, emotionally. You’ll do what I tell you.”

  “I’ll fight back.”

  His exasperated sigh was a little warning, and then he leaned over her, trapping her in the chair, his hands on the vinyl arms, his face close to hers. “You won’t win, Annie,” he said softly. “No one ever wins.”

  Anne stared up at him. His face was so close she could see the specks of silver in his dark eyes, the bleakness he tried to disguise. She didn’t want to think about what he’d just done to her, or why.

  “I don’t want a battle, James,” she said. “And neither do you. Just help me find out what happened to my father.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “I’ll make it simple,” she cried. “Find out what happened to that picture of the saint. Find out what he did with it, and we’ll stop there. If you want to.”

  “If I want to,” he echoed. The trailer was absolutely silent, only the faint, muffled sound of the muted TV disturbing the thick tension that lay between them. “All right,” he said. “We’ll find what he did with the picture. And then you’ll go back to Martin.”

  She didn’t want to go back to Martin, she realized with sudden shock. She never did again.

  But she refused to consider what she really did want. “Find the picture,” she said, “and I’ll do what you tell me to.”

  He stared at her for a minute longer, then nodded, moving into the kitchen, busying himself with the kettle.

  She glanced at the television. The mute was on, but the pictures were bright and vivid. It looked like a bombed nightclub, somewhere in Europe. Covered bodies were stretched out over a wide floor, and there were dark-clothed women weeping in silent fury.

  She shuddered, looking away. Death was everywhere. In the past six months, since she’d first discovered her father’s body at the bottom of the stairs, she’d been living with mortality. She’d always been afraid of death—avoiding funerals and tragic movies and even the obligatory sympathy notes. Now she’d been flung into the heart of it, and there was no longer any room for fear.

  “Don’t send me away, James,” she said quietly.

  He didn’t turn, and for a moment she thought he hadn’t heard her. But he had. “It would be better if you left it up to me,” he said finally. “I’ll take care of things. I’m good at cleaning up the mess people make.”

  “I don’t want you to. I don’t want someone’s death on your soul, no matter how well deserved. I just want to find out what really happened to Win. And then we can leave it at that.”

  He turned, and she stared at him, mesmerized. Even though it was mid-morning, the trailer was dark, the dim lightbulbs barely penetrating the gloom. “Annie, I lost my soul years ago.”

  He believed it. And it was then that she realized she was still half in love with him, just as she’d been when she was younger and he’d been strong and mysterious and there.

  He believed he’d lost his soul, and he was trying to convince her as well. But in this case she knew him better than he knew himself. He wouldn’t be hurting if he were soulless. And he was hurting so badly.

  She wanted to get up and put her arms around him. She wanted to draw his head down to her breast and nurture him. Murmur soft, soothing words to comfort him, heal him. She wanted to take him into that rumpled bed, into her arms, into her body, and show him …

  “Stop looking at me like that!”

  It snapped her out of her erotic reverie like a glass of ice water thrown in her face. “Like what?”

  “Like I’m a wounded sparrow and you’re Saint Francis.”

  He managed to startle a laugh out of her. “Actually, my thoughts were a bit more secular.”

  Fortunately, he didn’t follow up on that. “You can’t save me, Annie. You can’t save anyone but yourself.”

  “Who says I want to save you?”

  “The look in your eye. That all-he-needs-is-a-good-woman-to-love-him look. You’re old enough and smart enough to know better.”

  “I hadn’t noticed I was volunteering,” she shot back.

  He shook his head. “You’re a bleeding heart, Annie. Win couldn’t wipe that out of you. You think you can make things better. But you can’t. Some things are beyond mending, and all you can do is wipe up the blood and get on with it.”

  “Life isn’t that grim,” she protested.

  “The hell it’s not!” She’d wanted emotion, and now she got it, in an explosion of fury. “Life’s a dirty, bloody, hopeless business for most people, and there’s nothing you can do to change it. You can just go back to your safe world and pretend it didn’t happen. Mourn your father and let go. Get married again, to Martin or whoever, and have babies if you want. You can make love in the dark, and no one will try to scare you. But keep out of this mess.”

  “What mess?”

  “My life.”

  She considered it for a moment, and then a thought struck her, an icy, chilling one. “What did you mean about making love in the dark?” she asked calmly.

  “I know everything about you. You have no secrets, didn’t you realize that? Win could find out everything, and he passed it along. I know you got your period when you were fourteen, and you were worried because it was so late. I know you’ve slept with five men in your life, including Martin. I know you don’t like oral sex or doing it with the lights on or anything other than missionary position with your eyes closed. You worried you were frigid, your shoe size is eight and a half A, and you had a crush on me from the time you were nineteen years old until you were twenty-one. Do you want to hear more?”

  “My therapist’s records,” she said numbly.

  “No one could keep anything from Win.”

  “But why did he tell you?” She couldn’t keep the weary defeat from her voice. She felt betrayed, by her father, by the man in front of her who seemed so angry.

  “He wanted to torment me.”

  Her head jerked up. She stared at him in disbelieving shock, but before she could say anything there was a sudden pounding on the door.

  It startled the hell out of her. It didn’t ruffle him in the slightest, and she realized he must have known someone was out there all along. And he’d deliberately made such a provocative statement, knowing she couldn’t demand any kind of explanation.

  “It’s me,” Martin called from the other side of the door.

  James was already unfastening the locks. “I know,” he said, his back to Annie. Martin slipped inside, bearing bags of groceries and a ready smile on his face.

  “Food,” he announced cheerfully, dumping the bags on the kitchen counter and pulling out chips and beer, frozen dinners and Diet Coke. His eyes narrowed as he took in Annie’s expression. “So what have you two been doing while I was gone?”

  “Go to hell,” James snapped. “She’s yours. Take her with you when you leave.” And a moment later he was
out of the trailer, slamming the heavy metal door behind him.

  The silence was absolute. And then Martin opened a can of soda and handed it to Annie. “I take it you two aren’t getting along?”

  “You could say so,” she replied.

  Martin shrugged. “I suppose I should say I’m sorry, but I’m not. I was a fool to have sent you after him, Annie. It was a major mistake on my part, but I didn’t realize …”

  “Didn’t realize what?” she prodded when he didn’t finish his sentence.

  Martin shook his head, then peered at her from under the shaggy brown strands. “What do you know about what he and Win did? What has he told you?”

  Annie shrugged. “It sounded like they were playing junior G-men, or James Bond or something. A lot of macho spy games from out of the Cold War paranoia. James said you were part of it as well.”

  Martin leaned across the counter, and his eyes were dark and troubled. “I suppose that’s true enough. Win was the head of a covert organization dealing with security matters.”

  “Spying,” Annie said flatly.

  “If you want to call it that,” Martin agreed. “Just the covert gathering of information. It didn’t do anyone any harm, except our so-called enemies, and it provided a useful balance of power. That’s where I worked. Not actually gathering the information, but sorting it, disseminating it, covering things up.”

  “It sounds childish enough,” Annie said.

  “It was anything but. There was a branch to Win’s little organization. I hate to admit that he knew about it, but I think it’s time you realized that your father wasn’t the sweet, absentminded old gentleman you thought he was.”

  “I know that, Martin,” she said calmly.

  “He was a brilliant, ruthless manipulator. He’d use anybody or anything to accomplish what he thought was right.”

  She didn’t want to hear this, she thought distantly. She wanted to follow James out into the desert sunshine, her hands over her ears, running.

  But there was no way she could stop him from telling her, no way she could escape. She’d hidden from reality for far too long in her life. Martin was right—it was time to face the truth.

  “Tell me,” she said in a husky voice.

  “Win set up a covert branch of his department. None of us knew about it—certainly not Carew, or me, or any of the others. We weren’t supposed to. It was just Win and his favorite son and one or two others. James was his creature—he did what he was told.”

  “And what did Win tell him to do?”

  “Kill.”

  She wanted to throw up. She’d known death had followed them wherever they’d gone, the deadly stink of the blood lily haunting her dreams. But the flat reality, from a man she trusted, was stomach-churning.

  “Who?”

  “It all started out nobly enough. Anyone who seemed a danger to Win’s idea of a proper world order. Dictators. Terrorist leaders. Politicians. People who would interfere in the United States’ best interests abroad. Win would make the decision, give the orders, and James or one of the others would carry them out.”

  “The others?”

  “Mary Margaret Hanover. Clancy. I’m not sure how many more,” Martin said.

  “And you didn’t know anything about it? You worked with both of them for the last ten years?” she cried in disbelief.

  “I’m not a fool, Annie. I suspected something wasn’t right. Too many coincidences. Too many convenient disappearances. Let me make one thing clear—I agreed with Win that most of these people were a very real danger to world peace. I even, for my sins, helped single them out. But I didn’t agree with how he handled it. How he had James handle it.”

  “But why would he do it? Why would he agree?” Annie demanded, bewildered.

  “Patriotism. James is very old-fashioned—he won’t admit it, but his country comes first to him. And he’d do anything Win would tell him. Most of us would, you included.”

  Annie shivered. “What do you think happened?”

  “Things started getting a little out of hand. Some of the hits turned out to be of dubious political value. Money started changing hands. Things got corrupted,” he said carefully.

  “Things?”

  “Jesus, Annie, I don’t want to tell you this,” he said desperately. She stared at him, implacable, waiting. “All right, your father got corrupted. He started hiring out his talented little squad of handpicked assassins to the highest bidder. Carew or someone above him discovered exactly what he was doing. Someone was dispatched to take your father out of the equation, quietly, without a lot of fuss. And they’ve been after James ever since. He didn’t go off to the Caribbean to drown his sorrows. He was running for his life.”

  “And you sent me down to him.”

  “I told you, I didn’t realize the truth. I still don’t know half of it. If you still want to find out what happened, James is the man who knows the answers. If he doesn’t, he knows how to get them, and he’s not squeamish about how he does it. But he’s right, we need to get you safely away from here. Leave it up to him, Annie.”

  “No.”

  Martin stared at her in patent disbelief. “What do you mean, no? Haven’t you listened to a word I said? James is a man who kills for a living. Do you realize how many people he’s killed in the time you’ve been with him?”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “Three in Mexico. Including Mary Margaret Hanover. You remember her, don’t you? One of your father’s protégés?”

  “I remember her,” she said numbly.

  “Four more in California. Including his old friend Clancy.”

  “He didn’t kill Clancy!” Annie cried.

  “Who else could have? You have to face the truth. James is like an animal. A killing machine. He’ll get the job done and not count the cost. You can’t make a house pet out of him, Annie.”

  “He trusts you, Martin.”

  Martin shook his head, “James doesn’t trust anyone, me included. For what it’s worth, I think he’s a brilliant, dedicated man. He’ll find out what happened to your father, and he’ll take care of things. Before someone finally manages to get to him. But in the meantime you need to get safely away from him, and you know it.”

  “No,” she said again.

  “You think you’re safe from him? He’ll kill you if he has to. They call him Dr. Death. He’s an artist at execution, Annie. And he wouldn’t hesitate to kill you as well if he needs to.”

  “He wouldn’t kill me,” she said with calm certainty.

  “Because you’re sleeping with him? Don’t be naive. He slept with Mary Margaret, and that didn’t stop him from blowing her brains out.”

  “I’m not sleeping with him.”

  “Then for God’s sake come with me. He told me to take you—he has enough sense to know you’re in danger as long as you’re around him.”

  “And I’m not in danger away from him?”

  Martin frowned. “I can’t promise that.”

  “And can you keep me safe?”

  “I can do my damnedest. I always thought we deserved a second chance, and you know it, Annie. Now’s the time.”

  “But James could protect me better. Couldn’t he?”

  “He can kill better,” Martin said with some bitterness.

  “I’m not going with you.”

  “Annie …”

  She raised a hand to stop him, noticing that the faint tremor that had been afflicting her was gone. It didn’t even look like her hand. The nails were short, unpolished; the pretty rings that her father had presented her with were gone as well. They were the hands of a stranger, strong and useful. “I have to see this through, Martin,” she said slowly. “I believe what you told me about James—it all makes a kind of horrible sense. But I still trust him. I don’t care how irrational that seems. I know he wouldn’t hurt me, any more than my father would. I loved my father. I have to find out the truth, for his sake. Not the pieces the government would end up doling o
ut to me.”

  “You’re in danger—”

  “Wherever I am, I’m in danger,” she said flatly. “At least with James I stand a fighting chance.”

  “There’s more than one way to destroy a person, Annie. He could break your heart.”

  “I told you, I’m not sleeping with him,” she said. “It isn’t like that between us. I have to stay with him whether he likes it or not. When it’s over, if I’m still alive, then maybe we can see whether there’s some future for you and me.”

  She expected more of a fight. Instead Martin simply shook his head with a wry smile. “I know you pretty well after all these years, Annie,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t come with me. I think you can trust him, Annie. To some extent. He’ll see you safe if he can. He’ll end it painlessly and swiftly if he has no choice.”

  It took all her courage not to touch her throat. She was being a raving idiot. She could go with Martin, be safe with him. Or she could leave herself in death’s hands. James’s hands.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said firmly.

  Martin leaned over and kissed her full on the mouth. He kissed her with love and despair and farewell, and she wanted to kiss him back. But she couldn’t.

  “If you need me, I’ll come to you,” he said in a hoarse voice. And a moment later he was out the door, slamming the heavy metal behind him.

  The sun was blazing hot, baking down on his head. Inside the fortified trailer it was cool and dark, but out here it was an inferno.

  James walked. He walked fast, afraid he might turn around and go back. He had to get rid of her. Martin was absolutely right—she made him vulnerable, and now, at the most dangerous time of his life, he couldn’t afford to be vulnerable.

  He didn’t particularly give a shit about his own safety. He had already outlived his time, and sooner or later his guard was going to drop long enough for someone to finish him. In a way it would be a relief.

  But he didn’t want Annie caught in the middle. And he didn’t want the bastards to get away with it. The fat bureaucrats who sent men out to kill and then washed their hands of it when it became politically embarrassing.