Helen looked at him over her wine glass. Though he had boyish good looks, he wasn’t quite as young as she’d imagined this morning, and now, dressed casually in jeans and t-shirt, he appeared both more mature and more approachable. And despite the humor that speckled his speech, she had the feeling he actually had a strong, serious side.
“The photograph,” she said. “The one you brought back this morning that you’d been using to trace Joseph Lopez’s family?”
“Yes?”
Helen took a drink and laid down her glass with precision. “I know her.”
Darren closed his mouth and paused with his hand still on his pint glass. “You know her? Then why the f…why didn’t you say?”
“I just have,” she said tartly. “But I had to think about it. She’s a very good friend of mine, and she’s had a lot to cope with in her life. I didn’t want her upset by—whatever this is. So I phoned her up and asked. She doesn’t know Lopez and has no romantic entanglements in America. Or anywhere else. I already knew that, but I had to check. So I thought, she has an American double called Maria. It’s not unheard of.
“I put it out of my mind, went to sleep. Only when I woke up, I knew it was Anna.”
“Anna?” he pounced.
“You didn’t hear that. I knew it was her. No one else in the world smiles just like that. And I remembered something else, too.”
She let him sweat for it while she took another sip of wine. “I’ve seen that particular photograph before.”
“Where?” he demanded.
“In a magazine. Oh, not a popular one, an academic journal. She published a paper a couple of years ago that got quite a bit of attention. A couple of scientific and professional journals printed it, or covered it, and that was the publicity photo they used.”
Darren frowned. “So why is our boy wandering around with a photo from an obscure academic journal?”
“Because he reads said obscure academic journal?” Helen suggested. “Which would narrow him down to a fairly small group of people with the same academic or professional interest.”
“There’s more,” she pursued relentlessly when he would have spoken. “I’ve seen his clothes and, worse, his shoes. Mangled as they are. This guy is stinking rich. He’s no struggling researcher.”
“Which means?” Darren enquired, sitting back and regarding her with mingled interest and patient resignation.
“Which means he’s probably some hot shot industrialist concerned in the same industry as A—as my friend.”
“That should narrow it down even further. Good!”
“Good? Not necessarily. We still don’t know what he was doing with her picture, and that’s the bit I don’t like. Why pretend she’s called Maria? Why have it with him at all unless he’s got some creepy thing for her—stalking her, even. I think the guy’s weird, and if he wasn’t comatose in my hospital I might be forced to kick his arse.”
***
Anna tangled her fingers through the fine, dark hairs on Joe’s chest, following the line of a long-healed scar. “I can’t even imagine what your life was like.”
As they lay close in each other’s naked arms, talking of different things, he had finally told her something of his childhood on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Not much, just a couple of sentences that told more by what he left unsaid. Now he didn’t answer her remark, just stroked her hair.
She said curiously, “Why didn’t you stay with the nuns when they rescued you?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Rebellion, boredom, an urge to self-destruction. Plain greed.”
“Do you regret it?” She glanced up from tracing a long, white scar with her finger nail. “Leaving them?”
He shifted restlessly. “I don’t know,” he said again. “I never think about it. It’s like my way was already set, before the nuns ever took me off the street, before they even beat an understanding of right and wrong into me…”
“They beat you?” she demanded in quick horror, and he gave a twisted smile.
“Some of them did. Beating wasn’t the problem. Restriction was. I ran away without a backward glance. By then I’d been granted a glimpse of how rich people lived—not just a roof over their heads, which was luxury enough to us—but big houses, fast cars, soft clothes, expensive jewels, anything they wanted. I wanted, and I knew how to get, too. I could steal with the best of the street kids, and I could fight. From there it was easy enough to get into killing.”
Abruptly, he rolled her onto her back, looming over her. “Stop asking me. I’ve been around. I know how decent people regard men like me. So why don’t I disgust you? Is it pity?”
There was a hint of ferocity in his eyes, reminding her, if she needed reminding, of who and what he was. She shook her head vehemently. “No. Though I don’t deny your—situation would move me to help all I could, whoever you were. You…” She tightened her arms around his neck. “No one ever made me feel like this before.”
His lips twisted. “I think you need to get out more. How come you’re not married with two point four kids?”
“It just never happened. My relationships, such as they were, always took second place to my work. And my friends. And washing my hair to be honest. I’m a crap girlfriend.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” he murmured, sliding his hand in between her legs, where her own body’s juices mingled with his drying semen, making her gasp and wriggle. “I can tell you’ve been missing the sex. Don’t you ever miss the other stuff? Husband and kids?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted honestly. “But it’s always been negative, if you see what I mean. I never met anyone I wanted enough to marry and have children with.” She slid both hands down the smooth skin of his back till she found his taut, hard buttocks. “What about you, Joe? No urges to settle down?”
“Don’t be silly. I used to be a hit man. Now I’m dead. Neither is a good basis for setting up home.”
Anna stared at him while the layers of happy fantasy fluttered away. She brought her hands back up to hold his face. “I don’t want you to be dead. And I don’t want you to suffer any more…”
“Who’s suffering? For a dead guy, I’m getting plenty of action.” Before the hurt could hit her, he swore and kissed her mouth, hard. “For any guy, I’m a lucky bastard…”
“Lucky? You’ve been in three fatal crashes in two days!”
“I don’t care about that.”
She wanted to weep. Instead, she brushed her lips achingly across his. “You will, Joe. I don’t know how to solve this, let you move on, rest in peace, whatever it is that needs to happen—but we can stop the cycle in the short term quite easily.”
He slid his body off hers and propped his head up on his hand. “How?” he asked reluctantly. As if distracting himself, he began to trace his damp finger around her darkened aureole, watching it glisten. She could smell their mingled juices, thought inevitably of even more sex.
She swallowed. “Come away from here. Like this, as you are now—then I won’t have to carry you. Frankly, I couldn’t carry the dummy on my own. The dummy will disappear, be a ten-day wonder and push up our insurance premiums—but you’ll be safe from the crash tests.”
His eyes were steady on hers. His finger stilled but didn’t leave her breast. “Where would I go?”
“To my flat, of course, unless you have a better idea.”
A frown twitched between his eyebrows. “You’d do that for me?”
With difficulty, she smiled. “I’d do anything for you.” Even that simple truth made her heart soar. Something was clearly wrong with her…
His hand slid downward, closed between her legs again, cupping, gripping, making her gasp. “Come for me, then,” he whispered.
“Wait!” she panted as his clever fingers probed and stroked among her folds, parting them, gliding butterfly light across her clitoris. “We have to do it before morning, otherwise people will watch me walking away with the crash test dummy. Nobody can see you, Joe…Joe!”
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While his thumb circled her clitoris, he pushed two fingers into her pussy, and through the mounting climax, she heard him saying, “I don’t care about anybody else.” And then she fell apart.
She was still coming when he slid out of her convulsively grasping hands and set his mouth to her lower lips. The sharpness of the pleasure made her cry out, sparking a new orgasm from the old, but even then he wasn’t finished. He made her come twice more for his mouth, and only when she began to think she couldn’t take anymore did he release her, though only to turn her over onto her stomach and yank her hips upward so that he could push himself hard into her and seek his own release.
It turned out she could take more. As he slammed against the soft flesh of her buttocks, pounding her, the throbbing of his cock, the jetting of his seed inside her, sent her over the edge once more, and they collapsed ecstatically together into the nest of protective clothing.
“I’ll have to wash these,” she gasped when she could speak, and for the first time she felt his body shake with laughter. Enchanted, she curled into him, smiling, and for a time, they lay in silence. Then she said, “So you’ll come with me.”
His heart beat against her breast. “I’ll come with you.”
She smiled again, kissing his neck, his lips. Then, as her smile slowly died, she said, “I thought I was mad. When no one else could see you. I thought I was hallucinating.”
Grasping a handful of her hair, he gently tugged her head back so that he could see her face again. “And what do you think now?”
Laughter caught in her throat. “Now I don’t care.”
“Yes, you do, Anna, yes, you do…”
With a last kiss on his shoulder, she sat up. “Come on. The cleaners have gone and there shouldn’t be anyone else around. We should go.”
With unusual difficulty, he sat, laying his hands flat on the floor on either side of his thighs. She dropped the overalls he’d been wearing into his lap, but he didn’t touch them. A curious lethargy seemed to have come over him.
“Joe?” In panic, she stared at him. He tried to smile.
“I think—it might—have to be—later. I’m—sleepy…can’t make myself—move…”
His eyelids fluttered, as if trying to close against his will. With a supreme effort, he dragged himself backward, toward the place the dummy was usually left, but it was as if his limbs were weighted down with lead. The natural grace and quickness had gone, leaving him heavy, clumsy with drowsiness.
“Joe…” She threw herself down beside him, helplessly grasping both his hands in hers. His fingers clasped hers tightly in the first sign of fear or need he had ever revealed, and it broke her heart. “Joe, I’m with you…I’ll wait for you, I won’t leave you,” she said urgently.
His head lolled back, his fingers lost their grip, but she thought he tried to smile. Speech was beyond him. As she held his hands, pressing them to her lips, her cheeks, he slowly changed before her eyes. His face glazed over, his hands stiffened, the texture and color of his naked skin transformed from vibrant brown to sickly grey plastic. The harsh planes and angles of his face flattened, erasing every expression. His eye sockets closed over, like a film covering his lashes, removing the last vestiges of life.
Her tears fell on the grey plastic hands. A moment of terror and pity before she returned to the fight.
***
She woke with a jolt—aware only that something had disturbed her sleep, but not what it was. Glancing at once toward Joe, she saw only the dummy’s flat, impassive face.
She blinked to clear her eyes and peered at her watch. Just after seven. Since she’d had no idea how long Joe would sleep, she’d been afraid to go home and leave him. She’d imagined there might still be a chance of getting him away in the night, so she’d brought the Zeitek files down here and sat beside the lifeless dummy to prepare for tomorrow’s meeting. Inevitably, she’d fallen into a fitful doze. And now, cold and stiff, she realized they’d run out of time. Unless Joe wakened in the next few minutes…
Close by, a steel door crashed, making her jump to her feet. Her heart thundered as for the first time in her life she faced the possibility of actual physical danger from another human being.
Joe’s replacement, summoned by Mason Grenville to kill her?
But no, Joe had said it was too soon. Although he had reacted seriously enough to the sound of intruders last night, before she had told him it was the cleaners…
This noise was the steel door to the crash room. She’d heard it opening and closing a thousand times.
Carefully, trying to steady the wild pumping of her heart, she walked to the storeroom door and flicked out the light. Now, in the fine line under the door, she could see that the corridor light was on.
Slowly, silently, she turned the key. When the door was opened a bare crack, she heard the faint sound of voices. Men’s voices, echoing from the top of the corridor…from the crash room. Opening a shade further, she peered through, angling herself till she could see all the way down.
Just outside the open crash room door stood Professor Lewis, talking to someone inside.
“…automatic locking mechanism, operated from the control cubicle. When a crash is in progress, no one can get in or out. Let me show you the controls, run through things with you. You’ll see it all again in action later, of course…”
Lewis moved into the room, passing the shadowy figure of his companion.
“So this is where it all happens…” observed a slightly bland but unmistakably American voice. “Doesn’t look like much. Considering it could wreck a corporation.”
“Mr. Grenville, I assure you no one wants to wreck Zeitek.”
A snort came from the American, and then the steel door crashed shut.
Anna let her breath out in a rush.
No assassins. Just a disgruntled Zeitek boss who’d somehow talked Lewis into an early reconnaissance without her. Interesting, but not dangerous.
Stepping back, Anna found her shoes and slipped them on, along with her jacket, and gathered all her files together. Upstairs was a clean silk shirt that she’d collected from the dry cleaner’s over a week ago and never remembered to take home. An all-over wash in the ladies, the spare pair of knickers she carried in her handbag (a hangover from student days), and no one would know she’d been up most of the night having sex… hours of hot, incredible sex with Joe….
Just thinking of him made her warm and tingly all over. Alternately fierce and tender, gentle and rough, he was the most exciting lover she’d ever known. Or wanted to know. She’d never dreamed of finding such intense and varied pleasure in the simple act—acts!—of sex. But they weren’t simple, she realized. Not to her. Her time with him, making love with him, had been like a—a bonding.
But now it was time to go to work. To put all thought of Joe to one side, if she could, until she had done battle with Zeitek.
Chapter Six
Mason Grenville was an arsehole of the first order. Unconcerned with right or wrong, even with seeming to be right, he had one agenda, and one agenda only. To beat her down. To get agreement that the Zinnia was as safe as any other car. He began with the patronizing “my dear young lady” approach that made Lesley’s hand twitch visibly as if to slap him one. Then he moved on to brow-beating them.
And he was impressive. Tall and fit, still in his forties, he was good-looking, distinguished with perfect teeth and even more perfect self-belief, a big personality in an important job. If he’d been a school teacher or a friend’s parent, he would have scared her witless. When she was ten years old. At thirty-two, he didn’t stand a chance in hell. She simply stared him down and repeated the test results.
“At thirty miles an hour?” Grenville looked thoroughly amused. “Darlin’, you’ve got your figures all wrong.”
It took Anna a full second to take that one in. Even the Scottish Executive blokes were shuffling their feet and looking uncomfortable, and they had seemed inclined to give him his head. Since L
ewis said nothing, merely looked apprehensive, Anna curled her lip.
“Mr. Grenville, did you really come to discuss our findings, or simply to insult us? This is a scientific institute, run on strict guidelines with largely public money, in order to prevent as many serious road accidents as possible both in the present and in the future. Do you really imagine it’s staffed by a few bored or ignorant housewives taking time out from painting their nails?”
Lewis said smoothly, “Of course Mr. Grenville is well aware of the qualifications of our staff. I’m sure what he meant was to enquire if our tests have been confirmed elsewhere.”
“By an independent body,” Grenville added.
Bill said flatly, “We are an independent body.”
“Not from where I’m standing. I see a bitter, grieving woman out for revenge against my company. My dear, I pity you, and I am so sorry for your loss, but you must move on now. Stand aside and let these good people work without your interference.”
Anna whitened under the attack. Lesley grasped her arm and stood. “The project leader does not lay down results in advance,” she said pleasantly. “I don’t think you’ve many ways left to insult the entire staff.”
“Oh lighten up there! I’m not impugning your worthiness—but I believe Dr. Baird is unconsciously skewing the results.”
“Not possible,” Bill said flatly, and Anna, who foresaw an entire day of bickering with nothing resolved on Zeitek production, took a deep breath and aimed for conciliation. Or at least a change of subject.
“To set your mind at rest, Mr. Grenville, why don’t we show you how we work? You should then be able to see how we reached the conclusions we did and we can move on to discuss what measures to take regarding the manufacture of the Zinnia.”
He sat back, regarding her with the same lazy, superior half-smile. Smug, murdering git!
“Very well. What have you got for me?”
“In a few minutes, we’ll show you how we conduct the actual impact tests, but first we thought you’d like to see the latest technology in crash test dummies. It’s the best resemblance we have to the human body, and by scanning it after impact, we can tell the degree of damage to head, brain and internal organs. Most importantly, it fits together like Lego bricks and it can be reused repeatedly. We can also adjust its size.”
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