"I need to be here tonight."
"I leave in cinco minutos." Five minutes. Even Hawk knew that much.
"Please change the sheets on the bed."
"La cama. Claro quй sн." The bed. Of course. He didn't know whether she imagined he was on his own or not, or if she thought about it at all. That's why he'd chosen her. She was discreet.
Expensive too. He counted out two hundred dollars in twenties and handed them to her. It cost a lot of money to survive on the run, and Hawk had been damn lucky to escape the beach in a truck with cash in it—payment to Constantine from the middlemen. He had no scruples about spending drug money in this case. If nothing else, he was a practical man. Without the money, he wouldn't have had a chance in hell of evading his hunters. With it—as well as the other thing he'd hidden—he had a fighting chance of turning the tables.
Thanks to Mrs. Avery, his timetable for revenge had begun to tick. He only hoped he was ready for it.
Hawk locked the front door behind Consuela and watched until she turned the corner before going back to the garage. He got his sports bag from the front and said, "Not long now," then returned to the house. Putting the bag on the kitchen table, he got out what he needed and sorted through the cupboards for the rest. It took about two minutes to fill the horse-sized gelatin capsule with the white powder and another two for the glue sealing the capsule to dry. He tested it to make sure it wouldn't break open, then put it into his jacket pocket and went out for the woman.
He opened the back door and flipped the blanket onto the seat. "Time to go in."
A shaft of light from the kitchen caught her full in the face, and she blinked owlishly at him. "You're making a huge mistake, you know."
"I doubt it. Let's go." He leaned into the truck and hooked an arm around her hips to get her started.
"Don't!" Somehow she'd gotten her knees under her and used them to arch away from his arm. Before he knew it, she was sitting on the seat and glaring at him from under a fall of heavy hair, her face creased and red from where it had pressed against the carpet. She was beginning to show a little wear and tear around the edges, but still managed to retain an air of elegance, a sense of refined composure that would have served a man facing a firing squad in good stead.
Hawk wondered how her composure would withstand the coming hours.
He rested an arm on the open door and met her angry gaze. "Don't tell me what I can do. In case you hadn't noticed, I can do whatever I want with you. That includes touching you in whatever way I need to."
"The consequences of having my bladder squished by your ignorant manhandling are more imminent than you might think."
It was a battle, but he kept a bland expression on his face. He couldn't afford to let her know how much he admired her ability to ignore the threats facing her. That would only give her confidence and waste precious time. He didn't figure he had much to spare. She didn't either, though to listen to her, it was hard to imagine she knew it.
He said, "Get out of the truck."
"I thought you said the people inside—"
"Shut up and get out of the truck."
She held his gaze for a long, defiant moment, then looked away and slid out on stocking-covered feet. Hawk noticed but left her shoes where they were. She wasn't going anywhere she'd need them. Closing one hand firmly around her arm, he took her inside, wondering as they walked into the kitchen how a woman whose head came up only as far as his chin expected to take on a man like him and win. Obviously, she didn't rely on physical strength. While the muscles in her arm were firm, they weren't developed to the point of being useful in any aggressive manner. He would have remembered any telltale calluses on her hands and fingers when he'd tied her up, and there hadn't been any—which eliminated martial arts from her repertoire.
She could be a shooter, but the man had carried the only gun between them. It was possible her own had malfunctioned and she'd been reduced to scrambling for the other, but Hawk doubted it. She would have had a backup if she was a shooter, and she hadn't.
He hadn't found a knife either. That didn't leave many options.
He was a bit rough with her as he hauled her through the kitchen and living room, picking up his sports bag en route. It worried him, not knowing how she killed.
After dropping the bag on the bed, he pulled her into the tiny bathroom and glanced around to make sure there was nothing she could use against him. Not that he intended giving her the chance, but it never hurt to err on the side of caution. Satisfied she couldn't get her hands on anything useful, he spun her to face him and began to unfasten the leather belt at her waist.
THREE
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" The words burst out of her mouth with all the frustration and fear and confusion Angela had been trying to keep a handle on since the nightmare had begun.
For hours, it seemed, her imagination had skittered from one ugly scenario to another. Physical abuse, interrogation, humiliation—they'd all figured in what she assumed would be her end if she couldn't convince him she wasn't part of whatever mess she'd stumbled into. But not once, never, had she imagined sexual assault was part of the man's plans. Call it naivete or plain stupidity, he just hadn't seemed the type.
Not, that is, until his fingers started working on her belt and she realized she'd given him more credit than was due.
Angela backed away from those hands so fast, she would have fallen over the toilet if he hadn't reached out to steady her. His reward for hauling her upright was a kick to the shin that she wouldn't have given if she'd remembered she was barefoot. Her scream was a combination of pain and frustration. Like a wounded animal, she lashed out again, ignoring the throbbing pain in her toes as she tried to bring her knee high enough to do some good.
He cut off her knee jab with a slick step sideways, keeping his fingers curled around her arms so that she didn't fall over. It occurred to her that he could just as easily let her fall and avoid having to duck her pathetic blows, and that fueled her growing anger. Throwing the last vestige of caution to the wind, she bent her head and sank her teeth into his forearm.
For her trouble, she got a mouthful of his leather jacket and the satisfaction of knowing she'd annoyed him. He swore at her, short, explicit words that gave her courage, because even anger was preferable to the almost total indifference he'd subjected her to thus far.
Hard fingers bit into her one arm as his other hand fisted in her hair and jerked her head up and away from his arm. She relinquished the bit of leather and clenched her jaw firmly shut as she met his furious gaze.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded.
"My question exactly." Ignoring the tearing pain in her scalp, she tried to shake her hair free, yet only succeeded in making him tighten his grip. She tried the thing with her knee again, but had to admit defeat when he backed her against the shower door and pinned her legs with a single thigh.
"Will you stop that!" he growled. "No one's getting hurt here except you."
"You expect me to just stand there while you rape me?"
"That's not—"
"Oh, shut up!" Surprise flickered in his eyes, then it was gone and she realized his anger had also disappeared. Indifference resurfaced, and she knew she'd lost the battle. It had felt good, though, to throw his own admonition back in his face. Telling him to shut up had done wonders for her self-esteem. Unfortunately, it was also a conversation stopper.
Tiled walls echoed the whoosh of frantic breathing, and she wondered, too late, if kicking and biting had been a good idea after all. His body lay hard against her, and it took hardly a moment to realize she was the only one whose breathing was fast and uneven. His was steady and sure, his chest a solid wall that crushed her breasts and quelled her resistance.
Something wet tracked down her cheek and settled in the corner of her mouth. She touched the tip of her tongue to the bead of moisture and tasted salt. Yes, it was a tear all right. Dammit anyway, she hadn't cried since Frank
, and only then because he'd taken their cat with him when she'd thrown him out. That had been four years ago, and now a man she'd never met before was making her do it again. She willed the tears to stop, then had to bite her tongue to avoid swearing aloud when another slipped away.
She watched his eyes as he followed the narrow ribbon of water, bracing herself to meet his gaze when it lifted again.
"I didn't bring you here to rape you. I think you know that." His voice was heavy and dark, words without expression that terrorized her because he didn't seem to care one way or the other how she reacted.
Angela gulped back the fear and tried to remember a time when calm was an asset she'd taken for granted. "Sorry, but when a man reaches for my belt, there are only so many conclusions I can jump to."
"I thought you had to go to the bathroom."
She blinked and tried to make her own expression as neutral as his. "I've been able to do that without any help since I was three."
"If you can undo your belt and pants with your hands tied behind your back, then you're more dangerous than I imagined." He retreated a couple of inches, taking care, she noticed, to minimize her selection of targets. The hand buried in her hair eased its grip, and her scalp tingled with its return from numbness.
"You're the one with all the moves around here," she said. "Where on earth did you get the idea I'm dangerous?" The image of that split second when she'd picked up and pointed the gun at him rose unbidden. She flicked it away with a mental whip.
He backed up farther and crossed his arms on his chest. "We're wasting time."
"Then untie me and I'll be as quick as I can."
When he just stood there without speaking, it dawned on her that it had never occurred to him to untie her. She was, in a word, aghast. "You can't possibly—"
"I can."
"But I can't—"
"Come here." He pointed to a spot in front of the toilet.
She shook her head, feeling a resurgence of the hated tears. "No."
"This is your last chance." His expression was unreadable, his tone even and unemotional. She believed him, just as she believed everything else he'd said that night. Including the part about rape. That had stopped being a threat the moment he'd said the words.
Her choices were limited and growing more urgent by the minute, with the humiliation factor weighing heavily in favor of stuffing her modesty and getting the thing done.
Angela took the necessary steps to where he'd pointed and fixed her gaze on a fleur-de-lis imprinted on a tile as he helped her through the drill. To be fair, he was efficient and brisk and managed to get through it without making her feel worse than she already did. Almost before she knew it, he was fastening the catch on her slacks and fixing the belt.
She continued staring at the tile, refusing to meet his gaze until he'd led her into the bedroom and pushed her onto the bed. When she scooched back to cower—yes, that's how she felt—against the headboard, he let her go without comment, seeming more intent on digging through his sports bag than on what she was doing. She watched as he pulled out the sweatshirt and the thing that was still inside it, then tried not to look too conspicuously relieved when he unscrewed the silencer from the gun and put it away. The gun went back under his coat, into a holster of some sort, she imagined, then he put his hand into a jacket pocket. When it slid out there was something in his palm. It was white and shaped like a capsule—elephant-sized, if she had to make a guess.
She didn't have a clue what it was.
His gaze flicked up to make sure she was watching as he showed it to her. "You probably know what this is, but to save time, I'll tell you. That way there won't be any misunderstanding."
"I don't know—"
His chastising look cut off her denial, and he held it between his fingers so she could clearly see it. "This is a gelatin capsule. When it's in your stomach, you'll have approximately twenty minutes before the gelatin dissolves. Don't worry about it breaking, because I've glued it shut. Inside the capsule, of course, is enough cocaine to fry your brain and probably kill you—although by then, you won't care."
Her wrists burned where the silk rubbed against her skin and her ribs were sore from bouncing against the driveshaft, but Angela forgot all about them in the wave of sheer terror that washed over her. She stared at the deadly capsule and knew she was dead.
"If you tell me everything I want to know, I'll give you this to make you vomit the capsule back up." He showed her a small plastic bottle of Ipecac syrup that he'd pulled out of his sports bag. "The capsule doesn't have to be in your stomach ten minutes if you cooperate. Of course, you could always tell me what I want to know without going through all this."
"I don't know what you want to know. I'm not who you think—"
"Lies will get you dead, Angela. I know you were part of a team sent to kill me. The tables are turned now, except that I'm giving you a fighting chance."
"I'm not part of a team," she began, desperate to make him listen. "I wasn't part of anything."
"And I don't believe you."
She looked into his eyes, and her protests faded into a soundless whisper as she understood that he wouldn't be convinced she'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Several years earlier she'd faced death and come away with a broken fingernail and a healthy respect for seat belts. In the split second of time when she'd seen the semi bearing down on her and known she had to drive off the road or meet it head-on, she'd imagined her life was over. Bits of said life had flashed before her eyes as her car left the road and flipped over before sliding down the embankment. The images had been vivid and real, happy moments of her past that she would carry with her into whatever lay beyond. When she'd regained consciousness, those images had stayed with her for months, a reminder, perhaps, of how close she'd come.
This was different. Perhaps because she had twenty minutes, not merely a second or two wrenched from the inevitable. Twenty minutes before her brain melded her past and future into a mushy gray lump of nothing.
She tore her gaze from the hideous white death and met his eyes. "I won't swallow that."
He sighed and dug into the bag again, pulling out a small plastic bottle of water. Opening it, he moved toward her, blocking her escape by sitting on her feet, crushing them into the soft mattress without really hurting. "Angela, you know I can make you swallow this just by holding your nose and pushing it inside your mouth until you choke or swallow it."
She shook her head helplessly. If he was going to kill her, he'd have to do it without her help. Tears streaked down her cheeks, and all she could think was what an ass she'd been to cry in the bathroom over something that was no more than an affront to her modesty. If she'd known then how high the stakes would rise, she wouldn't have wasted the emotional effort.
If she'd known and not just suspected that the night would end up like this, she would have yelled her head off every time he told her to shut up. At least then she'd be dead without having twenty minutes to think about it.
If she had it all to do over again, she would never have picked up the gun. She would have stayed in her car and covered her eyes and ears and pretended that if she couldn't see it or hear it, nothing would happen. Just like the tree falling in the forest, its passage ignored for lack of observation.
He put the bottle on the bedside table and caught her chin in hard fingers until she looked at him. "You know there are two other places I can put this where it will do the same job. I had hoped we could do this with a little dignity."
For a moment she didn't understand, then comprehension flooded her thoughts and she was furious that her first reaction was the familiar combination of modesty and humiliation that had plagued her so recently.
"It won't fit." Which was absurd, but it was the first thing that came to her mind. She was shocked when it got a laugh out of him. His reaction stopped the tears, though, and for that she was relieved.
He held the capsule in his fingers and measured it with hi
s eyes before meeting her gaze again. "I think it will." His hand fell from her face and swiped across his own in a quick motion that removed any hint of expression. Before she could think of another objection, he reached for the sports bag and dug around until he found a small tube of Vaseline.
"Is there anything you don't carry in that bag?" she asked, eyeing the Vaseline and knowing she would swallow the damned capsule before she let him put it anywhere else.
His gaze was steady and impenetrable. "I don't have any more time to waste. How are we going to do this, Angela?"
With dignity, she said silently, wishing the only real option wasn't one he also preferred. It would have given her pleasure to be contrary, to defy him to the end. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, trying to dislodge the surreal feeling that was beginning to obscure her thought processes. It didn't work, though, because when she opened her eyes he was still there, offering her a choice of death or death.
She wet her lips and opened her mouth, then tried not to gag as he put the thing on her tongue and told her to swallow. She couldn't, not until he held the water to her lips and kept pouring until she had a choice of drowning or swallowing. It went down her throat, finally, inevitably, helped along by the ciliated pharyngeal muscles she'd learned about in fifth-grade science during an experiment in which Jimmy Caruthers stood on his head and swallowed without the benefit of gravity. She could almost hear the laughter of the kids in class as they'd watched Jimmy unbalance and crash to the linoleum, gravity flexing its brawn on those things it could and did affect.
She felt the brush of cloth across her chin as the man dried the spilled water with a corner of the bedspread, and she wondered if the Jimmy Caruthers flashback was the first of those images she'd see as her life replayed itself. If so, she hoped the content of the snippets improved. Jimmy Caruthers had been an obnoxious boy who'd grown into an equally obnoxious man.
He got off her feet and checked his watch as he sat at the end of the bed. "Just to get things rolling, Angela, why don't you tell me what name you use with Constantine."
Night of the Hawk (LS 767) Page 4
