by Jodi Henley
“Guess we’ll find out.”
He followed her pink ruffles down the stairs and out to the driveway before pointing to the borrowed sedan wedged in next to a plain blue rental car.
Corlis leaned out. “Hurry up. I need to stop at a gas station.”
Jen folded her dress in around her and tried to get in. “It’s tighter than I thought,” she muttered, tugging at the material around her hips.
“You’re not that fat,” he told her.
It wasn’t until he got in on the other side that he saw Fallon roll his eyes.
“Man, no wonder we keep you at home.”
Corlis started the engine and threw an arm over the back of the chair. “Drop it.”
Keegan frowned, glancing at Jen out of the corner of his eyes. “I didn’t mean to call you fat.”
She rolled the window down and refused to look at him. “I’m not fat.”
“I really didn’t mean—”
“I don’t want to hear what you meant. You’re my bodyguard. We shouldn’t even be having this conversation.” Jen folded her arms tightly over her chest and spent the rest of the trip down into Hilo staring out the window.
The highway was clean and sterile. It could have been any highway, anywhere in the highway system.
“I’m hungry,” said Corlis.
At least she’d waited until they got to civilization before hitting him up for food. Keegan took out a wad of currency and tossed it into the front seat.
Fallon scooped it into his pocket, and pulled a couple of tired-looking twenties out of his wallet. “Filipino pesos don’t cut it, man. Not here.”
Corlis turned into a drive-thru and pulled up to the order screen. When they had their meal, she ripped out of the parking lot, cutting up and down sleepy side streets until she was sure no one was following them.
In thirty-two miles, highway 11 dropped over four thousand feet. For some reason, from that perspective, the capital of East Hawaii looked a lot like Cambodia. Hilo dozed in the sticky morning heat, buildings poking up through the choking greenery like Angkor Wat without the Khmer Rouge or maybe with them. The majority of his clients came from Pacific Rim countries. He knew what islands looked like. He’d internalized some image of Hawaii with white sand beaches and gorgeous women in bikinis, but the only woman he saw at the tiny bay where Corlis finally stopped to let them eat was a big woman in a loose purple house dress with arms like a stevedore.
Jen got out and waddled off to sit on a small wooden bench overlooking the water. Keegan sent Fallon after her. He didn’t think she’d want to talk to him yet, and from the way tension eased out of her hard-held shoulders, Keegan knew he was right.
Corlis joined him leaning against the car.
“Quiet,” he said.
She didn’t take her hand off her gun until she’d checked out the tiny pull-off. There was one bench and two trash cans. It wasn’t much of a destination.
“Yeah,” she said.
Sunlight filtering through the banyans made the rock-strewn bay sparkle with motes of light. A container ship chugged by out beyond the breakwater, pushing waves against the shore in slow, oily swells.
Keegan took one of the takeout bags from his sister. “I’m not letting her go to that party because I want to fuck her.”
“Yeah, right.” Corlis opened her bag and eyeballed the contents. “Four specials, I said. This thing has gravy on it.”
“Connor doesn’t have much time.”
His sister pulled out the Styrofoam tray and investigated the contents. “Tell me something I don’t know. There’s an egg under here and I think it’s sunny-side up. Nasty,” she said. She took a suspicious sniff.
Keegan watched Jen talk to Fallon. He barely knew her, and what little he did know told him she was far outside his range of experience. “How could anyone walk away from all that money?”
He wasn’t aware of speaking until Corlis gave him a level look. “I think you’re more than capable of asking her.”
“She’s already too damned real. Connor is the mission objective. Jen is the means. We need to put her out there and get some reaction.”
“You want to use her as bait,” said Corlis.
“Yeah.”
Corlis scraped her egg to the side and flipped it out on the ground. “Going to tell her?”
Keegan pulled out his bowl and broke the yolk. “No.”
****
Shopping wasn’t something Keegan did well. He followed Jen into the store and hovered like a stork, foot up, foot down, shifting from side to side like someone was going to jump out from between the tables and gut them both.
He said it was the store but after a quick glance at Fallon and Corlis, Jen knew it was just him. The two DalCon operatives were as jumpy as rocks. Jen noticed how Keegan chafed over being in the store, and bought him a pair of loose cargo pants and a soft short-sleeved button down. Besides, she wasn’t exactly dressed for shopping, herself, in her lurid pink ruffles. He should be grateful she hadn’t bought him a matching pink aloha shirt. She’d wanted to get him slacks and a dress shirt, but he’d insisted on jeans, and while cargo pants weren’t the perfect compromise, anything was better than jeans.
“My aunt is a stickler,” she told him.
“Not a jeans person?”
“No.”
He followed her into the car and waited until his sister clattered over the Wailuku River Bridge before leaning out the window. The Hamakua Coast rose before them in a series of tall green headlands. “This isn’t what I expected.”
Jen shifted away from him. “And what did you expect?”
“Beaches? Blue skies. Leis and stuff.”
“We just passed a beach,” said Jen.
“Honey, that was a whole lot of nothing. I’ve been to Oregon, and that expanse of pebbles you call a beach is damned close. It’s cold and wet. Down here, it’s hot and wet. So far the only thing this place has going for it is the color of the ocean.”
“I live on a mountain,” said Jen. “There are mountains in other parts of the Pacific.”
Keegan shook his head. “Not like this.”
The road carved through the Hamakua Coast like a tightly strung wire, with the lush green vegetation and the distant rise of Mauna Loa on one side, sea cliffs and deep water on the other.
“Then it’s a good thing you don’t have long to suffer.” Jen readjusted the ruffles around her ankles. “It’s only a twelve mile drive.”
Jen slid down in her seat as the car rolled through a headland and out on a high trestle bridge. The sound of falling water echoed through the deep gorge, hidden by a drift of red cloud-like flowers. Her stomach clenched up tight. Did the delicate spider-web of concrete and girders seem to sway in the stiff breeze?
Keegan noticed her slumping. “You okay?”
She glared at him. “I have vertigo.”
“Vertigo isn’t one of your documented weaknesses.”
“And you have my complete dossier. Don’t you, Keegan?”
“Damn straight. Keep your eyes closed and stick your head out the window.”
It was a known fact her family bred for genetic supermen. With unlimited money and opportunities, it was a wonder any of them were less than physically and mentally perfect.
She took a deep breath. “Don’t worry, I won’t throw up on you—I can control it, to an extent.”
Corlis pulled into the small turnaround at the entrance to Kate’s valley. “I can give you a few minutes.”
Jen gave her an icy look. “Don’t feel sorry for me.”
“Suit yourself.” Corlis turned back to the wheel and started down, whomping over the speed bumps. The fading light made the narrow road look like it was held on with duct tape. A big green gravel truck roared toward them, grille glittering. They were too close to the edge, and the road was barely adequate.
Jen abruptly found herself in Keegan’s lap, nails gouging into his arm.
“Trust me,” he whispered. “I won’t let you fall.”
“So we’re the only people who know about the vertigo?”
She stilled. “Are you going to tell on me?”
He shook his head and went silent. Silence didn’t do much good. He could hear the quick pant of her breath as she tried to ignore her fear. He smoothed her hair uncertainly and stared out the window, over her shoulder. Dusk darkened the groves of wild banana clinging to the valley walls. From this angle, it looked like a miniature train-set, too damned perfect. A small parking lot at the base of the cliff opened out into a manicured lawn contained by a wall of tangled vegetation and a tiny white sand beach, like an English estate done up Hawaiian-style.
“We’re down,” he said finally, wanting to hold on to her.
“Thanks,” she muttered, moving to her corner. She rearranged her hair and dress while Corlis parked the car.
Kerosene lanterns strung along the edges of the lot peopled the already parked cars with fitful yellow ghosts. His shoulder felt sticky. Keegan glanced down to find blood on his fancy new shirt.
Jen choked, “You’re bleeding again.”
“Jesus.” Keegan shrugged out of the button-down and pulled his black t-shirt back on. “If you’re going to freak every time my shoulder breaks open, I need to know why.”
Jen flounced out of the car and slammed the door behind her. “You’ve read my files. You tell me.”
Keegan followed her, careful to leave the width of the car between them. She was obviously in no mood to be messed with. “Your files aren’t complete. I’m part of your protection detail. Don’t make me do this job blind, Jen. Tell me what you see.”
She kept walking, a Popsicle in pink. But a pretty one. “I don’t have to tell you anything. I could walk away from you right now and you’d simply follow. You’re my bodyguard, not my shrink.”
“Fuck the blood.” He caught up with her and grabbed her arm, spinning her to face him. “You’ve had some kind of past trauma. I need to know what it is.”
“Because you care?” she snarled.
He made a frustrated sound. “Get it straight, I give a damn. We leave in six days and—”
“Six days?” She stopped trying to pull her arm away from him and lifted her chin instead. “Oops, sorry, Ms. Stalling. Your time is up? Why the hell did you take this assignment?”
“I need the money.”
She frowned. “You’d just leave?”
“If you don’t feel safe after the threat is contained, we’ll drop you off at StallingCo.”
“I’m not crawling back there. Ever.”
“Your safety is more important than your pride.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Make me. Try real hard.”
“No one understands!” Jen snapped, sharp and intense. Her anger built to a screaming haze. “Not my brother, not Mac. You aren’t even a Stalling. We have no common ground. How can you understand what it’s like to be an object, to be of use simply because every genetic cross in my background has been documented to the nth degree?”
She shoved him away. “They tried to breed me, Keegan—like a dog.”
“Jesus.”
Jen spun on her heel in an angry pink flourish. “Good fucking answer.”
Chapter Six
Fallon got out of the car. “Man, this bites. If I’d wanted to watch a soap opera, I’d have stayed back at the house.”
Corlis swung up on the hood of the big sedan, raking a hand back through her hair. He loved that color, pale, silver blonde. She shot him a look as if she knew what he was thinking.
She probably did.
Fallon shifted his weight, wishing he had the balls to simply reach down in his pants and adjust himself. If she hadn’t noticed, and yeah, that was about as freaking likely as a rogue tornado drop-kicking his ass to Oz, he didn’t want to draw attention to himself.
Down boy, nothing today.
Or ever.
Fuck it. He didn’t care.
He reached down in his drawers and adjusted himself anyway. It was all up in his head and if he thought otherwise, yeah—he was the idiot.
Corlis didn’t mess around. She never said anything she didn’t mean and so far there’d been a conspicuous lack of words. That one night they’d spent together, okay that mind-blowingly intense twenty minutes they’d spent together, had been marked by silence.
The screaming had come later.
“Liss, I—” love you. “God, Liss, please?”
“Fuck you, Padraic Fallon! No, wait. I already did that. Fuck me, I’m so stupid.”
Par for the course. Him groveling and her pissed off. He didn’t need a shrink to tell him their relationship was sick. He’d seen her once, talking to Nick, animated like she never was when she talked to Fallon. Nick Radnov, a.k.a, Nick the Dick.
The big Russian hadn’t wasted time moving in on Corlis while Fallon was away. Okay, while Fallon was fucking locked up, a guest of the Shining Path. And who was he to judge her?
He’d barely seen her during his stint in Q course and pretty much dropped out of sight once he’d signed on with Special Forces. She’d stayed behind at Fort Bragg to finish up college and become an officer coordinating the Spec Op field units.
She’d dumped Nick to take Fallon back as her partner, but Fallon had come to the conclusion that she’d done it to beat the crap out of him emotionally. Corlis shifted silently. Yeah babe, the hood was hot. They’d driven straight through, from Hilo to shit-nowhere, and like all loaners, this one overheated.
Her hand flickered, shorthand from their shared childhood in the projects. Security coming.
He gestured back. Move.
****
Jen squeezed through the surging crowd, painfully aware of Keegan right behind her. He caught her arm again before she could disappear into the shadows behind a catering tent.
“Walk around front,” he told her. “Stay where there are people.”
“Just follow. It’s your job, isn’t it?”
He stepped in closer, eyes enigmatic. “It’s dangerous. Too many random factors.”
He didn’t let go, the warmth of his hand imprinting itself on her flesh. She’d climbed into his lap. God, legs slung over his and claws sunk deep. He’d bled for her. And on top of that he knew about her vertigo. He didn’t look like the kind of man who’d try to leverage his knowledge, but she’d been wrong before. She’d overreacted, and now Keegan had a handle on her. She should have offered to drive. It was always better when she drove.
“Slow down,” he continued, like he was trying to tell her something important. “Don’t let emotions get in your way. Living is the best revenge.”
She looked into his eyes. “Who do you want vengeance on?”
His expression turned hard. “No one.”
“I’ll walk slower.”
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
She twitched her dress close, grateful for the stiff salt breeze blowing in off the ocean. The heavy cotton clung like a wet towel. “It’ll be over soon. Aunt Kate is a stickler for appearances, but she could care less if any of us stay.” The idea of her father watching her through Keegan made her sick, but it would be a workable compromise if she could just get her mind out of the gutter and off his incredibly hot body.
No one was dumb enough to start something at one of Aunt Kate's parties. Katherine Kualani had been born a Stalling, and she still had her full contingent of bodyguards, as well as use of whatever security happened by.
Her immaculately preserved Victorian loomed over the gathering, wedged up at the far end of the valley like a fever dream of lights and music. Enormous white tents billowed in the breeze and sunset painted the underside of the high trestle bridge they’d just crossed over with splashes of gold. Kate owned the entire valley, all the entrance r
outes, and a good slice of the mountain behind her. The ancient Hawaiian land grant had been in the Kualani family for more than a century.
“Cara!” Raphael Caravaggio started toward them. The only thing the black-haired operative needed was a stiletto to complete his impression of a renaissance soldier-of-fortune.
He loomed up beside her with his hands tucked out of sight. A sure bet he was hoping Keegan would be stupid enough to challenge him.
Keegan looked him up and down. “What the hell are you doing here, Caravaggio?”
“My job,” said Rafe.
“What’s with the get-up? I saw you in Jakarta two months ago and you were a mercenary.”
Rafe lifted a brow. “Still am. Want to buy me?”
“Fuck, no.”
“You suspicious bastard, I didn’t mean it that way.” Rafe pulled a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket and shook one out. His black leather trench fell back to reveal cross-holstered guns and the holographic black ID of StallingCo Security hanging from a lanyard around his neck.
“Don’t try to intimidate my bodyguard, Raphael.” Jen considered him a friend even if he did work for her cousin, Tris.
Rafe fished in his pocket for a lighter. A sullen red glow flared over the elegant line of his jaw. He took a long drag and eyed her, smoke curling from his lips. “Trouble in paradise, poverina?”
Jen tilted her head back, eyes narrowed on the tall Italian. “Doesn’t Tris know?”
“Tris knows everything. I merely work for him.”
Jen told Rafe everything up to and including Keegan’s involvement.
“Per Dio,” he said. “That’s messed up.”
Jen looked past him to the line forming outside a tall pavilion picked out in gilt and sapphire lacquer. “I’ll be messed up if I don’t pay my respects to Aunt Kate.”
“Then go,” said Rafe. “You were announced.”
Keegan followed Jen through the growing crowds until she found a place where she could cut through and come out near her aunt. Katherine Stalling-Kualani was Art’s sister, and she held court like a queen, sitting on a throne-like chair lit by the glow of antique Japanese lanterns. A whisper of chamber music brought the doomed court of Marie Antoinette to mind, but this was no girl playing dress up. The former Stalling had married her cousin Teddy, reinforcing bonds that had been in place since the time of the missionaries. Born to money, Katherine carried herself with all the arrogance of Old Bess.
