Heartbreak Hero

by Frances Housden

  “Are you following me?”

  His features froze for about a second before he answered. “Sorry, but I can see where you’d get that impression. Guess we have to chalk this one up to fate.”

  There it was again. Fate. And Kel felt it, too.

  A small prickle of conscience stabbed her as she arched her eyebrows in feigned disbelief, and a darker slash broached the tanned skin covering his cheekbones. He leaned closer, resting one arm on the back of the seat her day pack still guarded, and swiped his other hand over his chest in a cross. “Honest.”

  His voice was low, husky, intimate. She fell into it, into his eyes, her heart skipping at the dark, liquid intensity begging to be believed in their expression.

  “I didn’t think men believed in fate.”

  His dark eyebrows knitted. “What else could it be?”

  Dear Reader,

  This is definitely a month to celebrate, because Kathleen Korbel is back! This award-winning, bestselling author continues the saga of the Kendall family with Some Men’s Dreams, a journey of the heart that will have you smiling through tears as you join Gen Kendall in meeting Dr. Jack O’Neill and his very special daughter, Elizabeth. Run—don’t walk—to the store to get your copy of this genuine keeper.

  Don’t miss out on the rest of our books this month, either. Kylie Brant continues THE TREMAINE TRADITION with Truth or Lies, a dicey tale of love on both sides of the law. Then pick up RaeAnne Thayne’s Freefall for a haunting, mysterious, page-turner of a romance. Round out the month with new books by favorites Beverly Bird, who’s Risking It All, and Frances Housden, who’ll introduce you to a Heartbreak Hero, and brand-new author Madalyn Reese, who gives you No Place To Hide from her talented debut.

  And, as always, come back again next month, when Silhouette Intimate Moments offers you six more of the best and most exciting romances around.

  Enjoy!

  Leslie J. Wainger

  Executive Editor

  Heartbreak Hero

  FRANCES HOUSDEN

  Books by Frances Housden

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  The Man for Maggie #1056

  Love under Fire #1168

  Heartbreak Hero #1241

  FRANCES HOUSDEN

  has always been a voracious reader, but she never thought of being a writer until a teacher gave her the encouragement she needed to put pen to paper. As a result, Frances was a finalist in the 1998 Clendon Award and won the award in 1999, which led to the sale of her first book for Silhouette, The Man for Maggie.

  Frances’s marriage to a navy man took her from her birthplace in Scotland all the way to the ends of the earth in New Zealand. Now that he’s a landlubber, they try to do most of their traveling together. They live on a ten-acre bush block in the heart of Auckland’s Wine District. She has two large sons, two small grandsons and a tiny granddaughter who can twist her around her finger, as well as a wheaten terrier who thinks she’s boss. Thanks to one teacher’s dedication, Frances now gets to write about the kind of heroes a woman would travel to the ends of the earth for. Frances loves to hear from readers. Write to her at P.O. Box 18-240, Glenn Innes, Auckland 1130, New Zealand.

  This book is dedicated to the next two generations

  of my family. To my son John, his partner, Angela, their

  children Tyler and Georgia, and my youngest son, Owen,

  and his son Max.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  I f only he’d gotten here five minutes sooner. If only. The two most damning words in the English language.

  Kel Jellic wove his way through a dimly lit maze of tables and upturned chairs. Mood as black as pitch, he cursed the snarled traffic, cursed the snares of hookers and touts whose importuning had delayed his progress down Darlinghurst Road. Cursed the alley littered with 2:00 a.m. drunks and druggies, and reviled the stuttering neon sign that caused his night blindness as he’d negotiated the obstacle course of flesh and bone.

  Regret clutched at his gut as he took in the scene.

  If only he’d gotten here five minutes sooner, Gordie Tan, G&T to his buddies, might be performing a ribald routine instead of sprawled faceup on the minuscule stage. The blood leaking from a stab wound to his ribs was no stage prop. Kel dipped his fingers in it as he bent over his best friend. Still warm, it ran across the uneven wood flooring to add another stain to the blue velvet curtains at the wings.

  Of all the gay night joints in Australia’s Kings Cross, this had to be the sleaziest. The crowd had been spilling into the alley as he arrived. His “Out of my way. Let me through!” hadn’t been enough until he’d put his elbows to use.

  He’d squeezed through the crush, ignoring the pathetic squeals and grunts battering his ears. Hell, he might even have passed the jerk who’d knifed Gordie.

  And then again, maybe not. This kind of club always had a back exit for those in the know with the need for a quick getaway.

  Kneeling on a floor stained with spilled liquor and cigarette burns, Kel balled a handkerchief, pushing it tight against Gordie’s wound. Pain gasped from his buddy’s lips and forced open, opaque dark eyes in a face that used to be inscrutable. “Kel?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. Help’s on its way, not to worry, buddy.”

  Gordie’s chin lifted a fraction. “Tell you…” It chewed Kel up to see sweat bead his mate’s face, making his painted eyelids and rouged cheeks garish in contrast.

  Taking particular care not to add to Gordie’s pain, Kel slipped his other arm under the shoulder away from the injury till he could lift him closer. Close enough for the slick, oily smell of greasepaint to hide the coppery tang of blood. Any casual observer, too drunk to make their escape, might have been fooled into thinking them lovers taking a last fond goodbye.

  “What is it? You see who did this?” Kel turned his head to hear him better and felt Gordie’s breath tickle his ear. From this angle he was more than aware of the blood oozing through his handkerchief, then dribbling down the back of his hand. And that the grotesque splash of red matched the lipstick cutting a slash on his buddy’s face. In this place, at this time, it was just one more reason, one more fear, for the crowd to abandon G&T to his fate.

  Drag queen extraordinaire, Gordie could have made a good living at it; instead it had served well as his cover in some of the seamier corners of the world.

  Kel leaned closer to catch his mate’s rough whisper, “Family member…bugger cut my best frock.”

  It took a second to register that Gordie meant Chinese or Eurasian. Kel no longer noticed the difference in their heritages, if he ever had, but he did recognize he was in danger of losing the best partner he’d ever worked with.

  Their association went right back to the days after Kel left the SAS. Two raw Global Drug Enforcement recruits with visions of saving the world. Damn! He’d never thought it would come to this. His mind clouded, blurring scenes from the time they’d thought themselves invincible. Had it only been yesterday?

  Another lesson learned.

  A chair toppled somewhere in the gloomy depths of the club. He jerked his head toward the sound, jarring the cords in his neck. A painful reminder there was no one to watch his back.

  Bile burned the back of his throat. Slight, wiry G
ordie had a mind like a steel trap with muscles to match, plus a black belt in karate. All of which went to show Kel the assailant must have been damn good to get close enough to stick his friend.

  Gordie clutched Kel’s sleeve, the rattle in his throat heightening the urgency as he forced out his information. “Kiss-and-tell, leaving Papeete… Air Tahiti Nui to Auckland…in two days. Name… N. Two Feathers… McKay.” Gordie finished on a weak groan, the weight of his slight frame growing lax in Kel’s arms.

  With more haste than expertise, he checked the carotid pulse in Gordie’s throat. He captured a flutter in the artery beneath his sweat-damp fingertips and let a harsh groan of relief echo through the stillness.

  Two Feathers…McKay? Beyond his more immediate problems, he pondered whether it was one guy or two. Useless pressing G&T for more information even if his job required a certain degree of callousness. The guy was his best buddy. The wonder was, he’d managed to pass on what he had.

  Sirens blared. Their wails of distress prickled the skin at the nape of Kel’s neck. Much as he hated to leave anyone bleeding, the feeling of cutting the cord on friendship made this worse. Like losing an arm. But hanging around, spinning explanations for the cops, could blow their cover big time.

  Still reluctant to leave the smaller guy, he pushed the bloody handkerchief into Gordie’s fist and pressed it to the wound. “G&T, can you hear me? I’ve got to go. Help’s arrived, either medics or the cops, but whichever…”

  Gordie’s eyes flared for a second as if dark holes burned in his face. With a weak push he sent Kel on his way. “Go, I’ll be all right.” The brave words made Kel’s leave-taking more arduous as conscience warred with duty.

  Duty won.

  Disappearing behind the shabby velvet curtain, he let his instincts—honed in similar situations—lead him to the rear exit. The information he carried was worth more than one man. “Harrumph,” he snorted in derision at his excuse. It didn’t help.

  He wanted to believe he was doing the right thing.

  If the powerful drug kiss-and-tell was allowed to hit the streets, the lives of millions would be at stake. It crossed his mind as he slipped out into the darkness that maybe this was too big a job to handle on his own.

  The sound of car doors banging echoed around the corner. Kel headed in the opposite direction. Keeping to the shadows, shoulders hunched, he wound his way through the back alleys, trying to appear invisible. A necessary habit for undercover work. And, like the people in the drug world he targeted, he knew to keep his head down in the vicinity of Sydney cops.

  Kel never imagined this case would drop in his lap. At the first whispers of the drug, his senses had given a slight prickle, going into overdrive, as innuendo became news of known addicts dropping like flies round pyrethrum plants.

  The first postmortems had been done at San Francisco’s exotic diseases center, where the docs feared they had a new plague on their hands. They hadn’t been far off the mark.

  The information Gordie’d just given him was every bit as vital as the news that supplies of the deadliest new experience to hit the streets had run out, ringing a knell for its users.

  He’d been to San Francisco, seen the pale shades of gray human remains and shuddered at the ghostly color broken by pout-shaped marks, as if shortly before dying someone wearing hooker-red lipstick had kissed them all over. And from that had come the name, kiss-and-tell.

  At last, one poor soul, still alive when rushed into the doctors’ care, had wiped all their carefully calculated medical conclusions. But they hadn’t saved the one who’d given them the clue that put them out of their collective misery.

  Too bad. If anyone had deserved to live, it was the victim who’d set the clinicians on the right track. But nothing they did prevented every organ in the guy’s body from shutting down. His death was inevitable from the moment his supplier disappeared.

  That’s where Kel and Gordie’s team came in. As members of the covert organization, Global Drug Enforcement, they worked undercover to cut off drug supplies at any stage from manufacturer to dealer. From Colombia to the Golden Triangle, or a back room in San Francisco, GDE agents went after the scum of society who traded in weakness and misery.

  Another quick glance over his shoulder as he unlocked his car showed nothing had changed. The touts still harassed the passersby and the hookers continued to patrol their patches with their giveaway, one-hip-slung-out walk.

  And he’d no way of knowing if Gordie was alive or dead.

  Instead of the way-to-go delight he’d felt at him and Gordie being paired up again, now he wished his buddy had stayed in San Francisco to play out his contract at the Glamorous Gals club.

  The little guy had been a big hit with the crowds, as well as turning a huge profit in good reliable information.

  Kel had worked with the local DEA while they’d tracked the chemist to his laboratory—too late. He’d been long dead when they got there, his place trashed, every particle wiped clean of any evidence linking it to the drug, particularly his notes.

  Not one of the team had argued that it hadn’t been a fitting end for the psychotic inventor of the formula. But it was obvious the same thought lurked at the back of their minds. For instance, his exit could have been better planned. Say three months after they’d caught up with him.

  Kel put his car in gear and pulled into the stream of traffic, cruising Darlinghurst Road for fresh meat.

  He pulled over just through the lights giving way to a fire engine, its siren screeching as it left the dark gray sandstone station on the opposite side of the Cross. He’d have been better pleased to see an ambulance. The noise tugged at his conscience as he sorted through his memory, trying to remember if more than one type of siren had sounded as the cops pulled up in the alley. Damn, he needed Gordie to be saved, by someone. Anyone.

  Was there ever a good time to die?

  It bugged him that a month down the time chain, even with new information, the researchers were no closer to finding an antidote to the drug. It only took one dose, just one, and users had to keep on buying or be prepared to die. Not only did the drug induce instantaneous addiction, less than five days without supplies and addicts were dead meat.

  Kiss-and-tell was a real little money-spinner in the wrong hands, but whose hands? Now the drug, either product or formula, was on the move, and he’d be doing his damnedest to follow its courier from Papeete, across the South Pacific to New Zealand, the only place he could call home.

  Chapter 1

  K el bit down on the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. But it didn’t diminish the pain in his gut just thinking of Gordie. His buddy’s life had ended up as a crapshoot. Gordie had played craps with opponents who thought themselves above the law, and when his turn came to roll the dice they’d come up snake eyes.

  Goddammit!

  His shoulder ached as though his right arm had been brutally wrenched from its socket. He sucked in a long drag of a cigarette in concert with about a dozen others hovering outside the air-conditioned terminal. It burned all the way down.

  Hell, he didn’t even smoke. But as part of his cover, it gave him a reason for standing outside Papeete’s Faa’a International Airport building where No Smoking signs threatened at every turn. It was all part of the fresh skin he’d donned, like the white-on-black tropical shirt he’d been buying when the news came through about Gordie dying. Its cotton still retained the creases his fist had scrunched in it while Garnet Chaly’s cool voice had come over his cell phone.

  As special agent in charge of Southeast Asian Ops, a huge territory including the South Pacific, he supposed it behooved Chaly to remain calm. The guy hadn’t lost a partner, only an operative.

  Kel knew the drill. Agents weren’t allowed the closure of a funeral. They might be spotted among the mourners. No dragging their asses in sorrow; they picked themselves up and got on with the job. Changing his appearance hadn’t changed that, or relieved the guilt-induced nausea roiling under his ri
bs. Or the knowledge there’d be no time for grief.

  Heat struck at him from the concrete pavement. It caught him a glancing blow from a midday sun filling the Tahitian sky with a wide, mean streak of brass, taking its spite out on the palms till their leaves drooped. Not a solitary cloud challenged its dominance, yet inside him the rain came down in sheets.

  With one last drag of his smoke, he assumed an outward calm. To maintain the pretence he daren’t blink. Sure his eyes felt raw as a day-old recruit, but it was better than the image inside his lids of Gordie, like a broken china doll someone had tossed aside.

  His latest info on the courier put the guy on a ferry from the neighboring island of Moorea, where the mountains rose high and dark and ancient, like castle turrets in a fairy tale. Not one like Rapunzel, but a dark, blood-filled tale to fit his mood.

  The connection keeping him out in the heat was an airport bus that, by his watch, should have arrived five minutes ago even on island time. Part of his problem was the lack of a photo to help recognize his target. Though going by the name, and life’s conditioning, he’d concluded Two Feathers to be of Native American extraction. That’s unless the feathers in his name belonged to a wild goose.

  Kel lit another cigarette.

  “Monsieur.” A stranger’s rough accent infiltrated the roar of a jumbo jet rising through the fine suspension of kerosene vapors hanging in the air, waiting for a breeze to come along.

  “Yeah?” Kel grated at a bulky islander whose four spare chins overlapped a red shirt that reminded Kel of an old sofa cover his grandmother once had.

  Flashing a grateful grin, the man said, “Whoa man! You speak English. Great. Could I bum a light off of you?”

  Kel let his thoughts race through the Filofax in his head, the place he kept everything too important to write down. The accent had none of the French flavors he’d tuned into since his arrival yesterday; instead it reminded him of home.