Whirlpool

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Whatever happens,” he said, breathing kisses over her face, “it’s not your fault. Believe me, Laurel. You’re the only innocent one in the whole lot.”

  He opened the door and slid out of the car. The cell phone lay on the seat. The phone’s high-tech black plastic gleamed more warmly than his eyes.

  “Wait for me here,” he said in a low tone.

  “But—”

  “No buts,” he cut in coldly. “Give me your word.”

  Shocked, she stared at him, wondering where the gentle lover of a few seconds ago had gone.

  “Listen to me,” he said in the same low, deadly voice. “What I feel goes against everything I’ve ever been taught about clients and professional detachment. But we’re stuck with each other, because you refused to let Gillespie come in my place and I let you get away with it.”

  She waited, her nerves strung so tightly she was rigid.

  “It’s not too late for me to change my mind,” Cruz said. “If I tell you to do something, it’s not a game. Don’t argue or ask why. Just do it. If you can’t promise that, I’m off the case as of right now.”

  The impulse to argue, to ask why, to want more information almost overcame Laurel. A look at his eyes told her that her first question would be the last.

  Cruz would walk out and call in Gillespie and never look back.

  She took a deep, shuddering breath and slowly nodded. “What do you want me to do?”

  “If you see anyone coming,” he said, “punch the send button on the cellular and drive out of here as fast as you can. Gillespie will tell you what to do after that.”

  “What about you?”

  “The sound of you laying rubber on your way down the street will be all the warning I need. Got it?”

  All she could do was nod. If she opened her mouth, she would scream with all that couldn’t be said, couldn’t be done. Couldn’t be.

  Ever.

  47

  Los Angeles

  Wednesday night

  Cruz shut the car door very softly and looked around. No curtains moved in any of the houses that showed lights. No doors opened. No dogs barked.

  With the ease of a man fully at home in the night, he stepped into the pools of darkness that gathered in the driveway between the floodlights. There was only the faintest of clicks as he drew his gun, cocked it, and flipped the safety off. His soft shoes made no noise at all.

  When he came to the spot where Laurel had told him Swann habitually parked, Cruz reached down with his left hand and ran his finger across a black smudge on the concrete. His fingertip came away dark. He rubbed against his thumb, felt a slippery texture, and sniffed his fingertip.

  Engine oil.

  Fresh enough to still be fluid.

  A day old, maybe, but not much more. The searing California sun turned a few drops of oil into sticky tar very quickly.

  With swift efficiency, he went around the exterior of the house, looking for any signs that someone else had done a quick reconnoiter recently. All he found were a few marks that could have been footprints in the margin of one of the flower beds around the patio.

  He’d like to believe that meant Swann had been here, but Cruz knew better. A few footprints didn’t prove anything. The grounds were obviously tended by at least one gardener, and gardeners had feet.

  For several minutes Cruz stood motionless, concealed in the darkness and hibiscus bushes, listening to the natural background sounds. A languid breeze stirred through the sycamores. A mockingbird called. As though in answer, the sweet, desolate cry of a mourning dove curled through the darkness.

  Quietly he stepped over the flower bed and onto the flagstone patio. The house keys Laurel reluctantly had surrendered to him back at Karroo were in his left hand. The second key was for the back door.

  He turned aside from the patio and moved soundlessly over a small walkway leading to the back door of the house. With barely a whisper of steel on steel, the key turned in the lock. Standing to one side, he pushed the door open with his fingertips and waited.

  No sound.

  No movement.

  After another minute he glided inside, put his back to a wall, and listened. At each hallway and room entrance he stopped in the same way, listened, and then moved on, until he finally made a complete circuit of the house. Only then did he uncock the gun, flick the safety on, turn on lights in the house, and go outside to tell Laurel it was safe.

  As soon as she saw him, she turned off the engine and ran to him, holding him for a long, fierce minute. He gave her a strong one-armed hug, but his eyes never stopped checking out his surroundings and his gun hand never was far from the small of his back.

  Gently Cruz put Laurel from him. He reached into the backseat of the car to pull out her leather valise and his aluminum weapon case.

  “Come on,” he said. “I want to get you inside. Here. Carry the stuff. Unchivalrous and all that, but I need my hands free.”

  “I thought it was safe.” Her voice wasn’t nearly as steady as his.

  “Swann isn’t here now, but he’s been here.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Fresh crankcase oil under the sycamore.”

  “Maybe it was somebody else,” she said.

  “In a private driveway on a dead-end street? Not something I’d bet my life on.”

  Silently Laurel walked ahead of Cruz to the house. He followed her inside, shut and locked the door, and took his weapon case from her.

  “Does anyone else have a key besides your father?” he asked. “A cleaning service or security service or something like that?”

  “No.” She followed Cruz through the kitchen into the living room.

  “Then your father was here.”

  “Crankcase oil on the kitchen floor?” she asked flippantly, but her eyes were a tarnished gold.

  “The air is fresh,” he said, “like somebody opened the place up. This morning’s paper is on the kitchen table. You don’t have a security system, do you?”

  “No.” She turned away from him, unable to bear the distance in his eyes, in his voice, in his gestures. “I don’t stay here that much. Cities make me edgy.”

  “Laurel.”

  She turned back to Cruz and saw him waiting, the telephone in his hand.

  With a silent prayer that she was doing the right thing, she took the phone and punched in the number of Jamie Swann’s pager, then left the house phone as her callback number.

  “How long does it take?” Cruz asked after she hung up.

  “He usually calls within an hour.”

  “If he doesn’t, how long does it take?”

  “The record is ten days. Mom was already buried when he finally called that time.”

  Cruz made a low sound. “No wonder you don’t trust men.”

  “I trust you.”

  “You think I’m a better killer than your old man,” Cruz retorted. “Hell of a character reference.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “What’s really on your mind?” Laurel asked tightly.

  “The ways I resemble Jamie Swann.”

  “You don’t.”

  “The hell I don’t. He and I are both beyond the pale. We already know the most dangerous lessons a cop ever learns.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “How easy it is to break the law and skate off free,” he said. “You learn it by living in the gutter world where lies are the only truth, where violence is the quickest way to peace, and where morals are as murky and fluid as the Mississippi.”

  “Are you saying that you’re the same as my father?”

  “I’m saying I could be.”

  “No.”

  “So quick. So confident. Ever think what might happen if you’re wrong?”

  “Why are you pushing me?” she asked.

  “Am I?”

  “Yes,” she shot back. “You know the difference between paradox and immorality as well as
I do. You know the difference between lying in behalf of discovering truth and lying merely for your own gain. It’s the difference between honesty and crime.”

  For a long moment Cruz looked into Laurel’s unflinching amber eyes.

  “You have more faith in me than I do,” he said finally.

  “As you pointed out once, I see you very clearly.”

  He closed his eyes, but still he saw only her. He tried to speak. No words came but the ones he should not say.

  “Cruz?”

  Hearing his name on her lips sent a ripple of emotion through him. “I’m going to check around the house.”

  Though Laurel said nothing, he could see that his abruptness had hurt her.

  “If I stay close to you right now,” he said, “I’ll kiss you until both of us forget where we are, who we are, what we are. And that would be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Cruz,” she whispered, reaching for him.

  “No,” he said, stepping back. “It can’t happen again, honey. I’m the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. To protect you, I’ll likely have to do things that will make you hate me. Don’t make my job any harder on me than it already is.”

  For a long moment, Laurel looked at Cruz. Stranger, lover, bodyguard.

  Hunter.

  The hair at the nape of her neck stirred. She’d made her choice and this was the result. Cruz was sliding away from her, his complex shades of darkness becoming a single overwhelming night. He wouldn’t flinch from what he had to do to protect her. Nothing would deflect him—not danger, not her body, not anything within her control.

  She closed her eyes and shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. “No matter what happens, I’ll never hate you.”

  There was no answer.

  She opened her eyes. She was alone.

  Cruz had stepped into the night, becoming just one more shade of darkness.

  48

  Los Angeles

  Wednesday night

  Wearily Laurel went to the leather valise she’d brought from Cambria. She took out calipers, a delicate mechanical scale, the ruby, and her little portable computer. Curled into an overstuffed chair, she set up the scale on a nearby table and carefully weighed the stone.

  The uncertain light in the room made it difficult to read the tiny scale. She pulled the chain on the table lamp. The shade was made of prisms of clear crystal. The instant the light came on, rainbows cascaded over the table, her hand, the chair.

  Color shimmered over everything.

  For once, she didn’t notice the lamp’s silent display. She had all she could do just to force herself to think about something besides Cruz and her father, trust and violence.

  Unseen, Cruz stood just beyond the doorway, watching with an intensity that ached. He’d never seen anything quite so beautiful as Laurel immersed in her work while rainbows danced all around. It took every bit of his considerable discipline not to go to her, to touch her, to hold on to what he felt was slipping from his grasp forever.

  Her words haunted him.

  I love you.

  He’d never been in love. He wasn’t even sure he knew what love was, how it felt, or how long it lasted. He’d always been too driven by his work to experience other intense emotions. And too deeply addicted to adrenaline, the drug of choice among cops and combat soldiers.

  Yet somehow Laurel had reached down into his shadowed soul, seen him without flinching, touched him, awakened in him a range of feelings whose intensity both baffled and compelled him. Protectiveness, tenderness, passion, even awe. She was more vulnerable and at the same time stronger than any woman he’d ever known.

  How could that son of a bitch put her at risk? Cruz asked silently. I could go a lifetime and never find her equal. And because of Swann, I’m going to lose her.

  If I’m lucky, all I’ll do is send her beloved daddy to jail for the rest of his natural life. If I’m not lucky, I’ll have to kill the father to protect the daughter.

  Then Laurel won’t even want to remember what she once said to me.

  The certainty of losing Laurel haunted Cruz as much as her words of love. Before her, he had been alone but not at all lonely.

  After her…

  He pushed the thought from his mind. Thinking about losing her would only get in the way of doing what had to be done. He’d rather have Laurel alive and free and hating him than dead and buried because he’d flinched when he should have fired.

  As silently as he’d come to the room, he stepped back out and left her alone, sitting in a blaze of rainbows. He roamed the house, analyzing it yet again, using a bodyguard’s eye.

  The house itself was easy enough to defend. It had clean lines and uncluttered design, which meant there were adequate fields of fire from room to room. The driveway was too open to invite an ambush. The front door was too well lighted to encourage stealth.

  That was the good news.

  The bad news was the chaparral-covered hillside in the rear. The brush would conceal approaching intruders right up to the backyard.

  Repeatedly Cruz checked the perimeter of the grounds, standing silently, motionless, listening, thinking of what he would do if it was his job to get to the house unseen.

  Too bloody easy.

  I could get ten men and a dancing elephant onto the patio before anyone had a clue. But I don’t think Swann will come with company. If nothing else, Laurel’s DANGER message should make him wary of his buddies.

  Cruz went back into the house. He was becoming more and more certain that the vague marks he’d seen in the flower bed around the patio had been left by Jamie Swann. He must have made the same circuits Cruz had, thought the same thoughts, reached the same conclusions.

  Come through the hills.

  Come without warning.

  Come alone because you can’t turn your back on anyone.

  Swann, don’t make me kill you, Cruz thought bleakly. Even though you deserve to die for risking Laurel’s life over a cold piece of stone, I don’t want to be your executioner.

  Cruz didn’t mean to end up back inside the house, looking at Laurel from beyond the doorway. He didn’t mean to, but he found himself there just the same.

  This time she sensed his presence. The computer screen was dark. The ruby was resting in the palm of her hand, gathering rainbows like a magnet gathering iron filings.

  Slowly she pulled out a sheet of paper from the valise and folded the ruby neatly inside, just like all the other loose stones she kept. She tucked the paper parcel into the box with her other gems and set the valise aside.

  Cruz watched her with a shadowed face and eyes that burned. He crossed the big room to the French doors that led out onto the patio. They were locked. He flipped the delicate lever and opened the doors.

  Cool air that smelled of foliage and dew spilled into the room. A faint breath of evening breeze stripped a few leaves from a tall eucalyptus in the backyard. When the leaves scattered across the patio, they made a dry rustling sound, like footsteps brushing lightly over the flagstones.

  When Cruz turned back to the room, Laurel was only a step away from him. She watched him with eyes the color of gold. Her lips trembled. So did her hands. Just a little. Just enough for a man with sharp eyes to see.

  Cruz had very sharp eyes.

  “Could you bend your rules long enough to hold me?” she asked hesitantly. “Just that. Just for a moment. I feel…so alone.”

  He didn’t remember reaching for her. All he knew was that the warmth of her body against his chest was a stark contrast to the cold gun resting in its loop holster at the small of his back. His left arm wrapped around her, holding her close.

  His right hand closed around the butt of his gun as more leaves skidded and whispered out beyond the patio, where the chaparral grew close.

  “I should have done so many things differently,” she said, looking up at him. “The choices I made took more away from me than I thought they would. They took you.”

 
; He didn’t answer. He simply released her.

  “Time to check in with Karroo,” he said neutrally. “Stay out of the light, okay?”

  A faint sound came from the backyard. It could have been a cat prowling.

  It could have been a cat-footed man.

  “Cruz?” she said urgently.

  He looked at her and waited.

  “When Dad calls,” she said, “don’t push him too hard. Threats just make him more stubborn.”

  Cruz bent and gave Laurel a swift, fierce kiss. Then he breathed her name over her lips, regret and caress in one. She held him like she would die if he let her go.

  “I know what kind of man your father is,” Cruz said, gently pulling free. “I know better than you do.”

  For the space of a long breath, she searched his face for some sign of the emotions she’d shared with him. No matter how deeply she looked, she found only shades of darkness and new brackets of pain around his mouth.

  He turned and went to the kitchen. She heard his voice as he connected with Karroo.

  “Yes, I’ll wait for her,” he said curtly. “But not forever.”

  Laurel found herself heading for the kitchen, wanting simply to look at Cruz. Abruptly she turned aside, heading for the French doors instead.

  It’s too late for us, she told herself silently. I made my bed, now I’ll have to lie in it the same way I made it. Alone.

  She yanked the chain on the prism lamp, turning it off. The rainbows vanished. The room was dark but for a corner lamp and the concealed lights around the patio.

  A breeze sighed through the open patio doors. Fighting tears, she walked outside, wishing she could simply evaporate into the darkness as the rainbows had.

  A hand clamped over Laurel’s mouth. A hard arm came around her, pinning her against a man’s body.

  49

  Los Angeles

  Wednesday night

  “Don’t scream, Laurie. It’s just me.”

  The relief of hearing her father’s voice was so great that she went limp for a moment.