by Rebecca York
“You’d better sit down and hold still.”
After they’d both made themselves comfortable, he washed the dirt off her hands and his. Then he swabbed her skin with antiseptic and did the same with a needle.
Cradling her right hand in his left, he began to probe for one of the splinters. When she sucked in a sharp breath, he stopped abruptly.
“Sorry.”
“There isn’t any other way,” she replied, nodding.
He bent to the task again, keeping his eyes focused downward because that was the only way he could keep working. He saw her grit her teeth, saw her struggle not to show him the pain he was inflicting and tried to keep his own face blank. After digging out the end of the first splinter, he used his fingernails to pull it free.
“You did fine,” he murmured, then went to work on the other, which wasn’t as deep. When he pulled the remaining sliver of wood from her hand, she breathed a small sigh.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Sorry I had to hurt you,” he said, the sound of his voice thick and low. Gently he stroked his thumb across her palm.
There was a moment of silence when he sensed she was waiting for him to say something more. But he felt as if he’d already given too much away. He didn’t want her to think he needed her, or that he was vulnerable to her. Not now. Not here.
So he turned away and mechanically repacked the first-aid kit, then went back to the SUV and slid behind the wheel. A few tries at the starter had him cursing. It looked as if the vehicle wasn’t going anywhere under its own power.
He saw Hannah pull her cell phone from her purse and try to make a call. But either she wasn’t hooked into the right network in southwest Texas, or there were no cells in this patch of wilderness.
Shoving the phone back into her bag, she craned her head in the direction of the highway. There was nothing to see but desert landscape. “I guess we could walk to the road,” she suggested gamely.
He shook his head. “It would be dark before we got there, and rattlers are most active at night. I think we’re better off staying put until morning.”
He watched her considering the advice, weighing one danger against another. “What if the guy in the truck comes back?”
“You notice he turned tail and ran when I took a shot at him. He won’t come back because he knows if he gets close enough to me, I’ll drill him.”
Before she could ask him another question, he looked around at the lengthening shadows and said, “We’ve got a lot to do before it gets dark.”
First they retrieved their supplies and luggage from the truck. After setting everything down by the back door, he tried the knob. As he suspected, the door was locked.
He’d wanted to avoid going into the house, since he assumed it was only going to be another painful exercise in frustration. But he had no choice. So he lifted his foot and gave the door a swift kick. The lock snapped, and the door flew inward.
“I guess there’s nothing wrong with breaking into your own property,” he observed dryly as they stepped into a large kitchen with outdated appliances and linoleum counters edged with metal strips.
The air inside was dry and musty as they made their way into a dining room, then directly into a sitting room where the bulky furniture was covered with white sheets.
“Do you remember the place?” she asked, her voice no louder than a whisper.
“Not a damn thing,” he answered, keeping any emotion out of his voice.
After surveying several areas, he returned to a small room at the back of the house. It appeared to be a den, with a leather couch, a desk, a fireplace and a Native American rug still on the wood floor. On the desk was a metal lamp decorated with two animal horns.
Focusing on the tasks that needed doing, he returned to the kitchen and retrieved a broom, sweeping it along the walls and edges of the ceiling.
“Getting rid of the dust?” Hannah asked.
“No. Texas is full of nasty critters you wouldn’t want to cozy up with. I’m making sure there are no black widow spiders or scorpions before we camp here for the night.”
She shuddered, then whipped the sheet off the couch. They both coughed when dust rose.
As she gingerly inspected the cushions, he pulled up the rug, swept the floor and threw the covering back down. Then he turned over the dusty sheet and laid it on top of the rug.
“At least we can build a fire,” she said, gesturing toward the hearth.
“Not a good idea. That would be an advertisement that we’re in the house.”
“Right. I guess I wasn’t thinking about that,” Hannah acknowledged. Luke might have a memory impairment, but he was functioning on a much more efficient level than she. At least with regard to making this place as safe and comfortable as possible.
She was pretty sure that on a personal level, he wasn’t doing too well. And that he wouldn’t welcome any comments about his emotional state.
“I should thank you for coming prepared,” she said as he brought the supplies into the room.
“There’s stuff I wish I’d bought,” he answered.
“We could do worse.” She cleared her throat. “Although I would like directions to the bathroom.”
“You mean the grove of trees out front?”
“Right,” she said with a groan.
He dug a small packet of tissues out of one of the supply boxes and matter-of-factly handed it to her.
Hoping the dim light hid the color that had sprung into her cheeks, she accepted the tissues from him and shoved them into her purse.
When he escorted her back outside, it was getting dark and the temperature was dropping rapidly. Wishing she’d brought a jacket, she watched Luke inspect the underbrush with the flashlight.
“No nasty critters I can see,” he said cheerfully.
“Glad to hear it,” she answered, striving to match his tone.
He left her alone in the thicket, and she felt vulnerable and exposed in the growing darkness as she lowered the zipper on her jeans.
When she’d finished with the awkward procedure, she made her way toward the house, then handed off the light to Luke and waited just outside the back door.
The sun had dipped below the horizon. In the chill air, she wrapped her arms around her shoulders as she looked up at the almost full moon and the stars that were starting to fill the sky. In a half hour she suspected the heavenly show would be spectacular. But she didn’t plan on being out here to look at it.
When Luke returned, he shined the flashlight beam into the cabinets and drawers, taking out several spoons and an empty soda bottle. Wondering what he had in mind, she watched him pull a length of string out of his pocket and tie the spoons around the mouth of the bottle. Then he fastened the whole thing to the inside doorknob. When he closed the door, the spoons rattled against the bottle—a very effective burglar alarm.
“Good idea,” she said.
Luke tied the door closed with a piece of rope hooked to a nail sticking out of the wall. Then he lighted their way back through the house to the far end of the living room, where he turned to one of the windows and wrenched up the sash. With the glass out of the way, he partially loosened the boards that had been nailed into place over the opening.
Apparently satisfied that they could get out quickly if necessary, he ushered her into the den.
Hannah lowered herself to the sheet, propping her back against the bottom of the sofa.
Luke joined her, setting his gun down on the floor, then began rummaging in the boxes. Pushing aside a tire iron, he brought out a couple of bottles of water, then a few packages of food.
“Nothing very luxurious,” he apologized as he laid out paper-towel squares on which he set peanut butter crackers, apples and canned meat.
Picking up a cracker, she tried a small conversational gambit. “I used to love these when I was a kid.”
“Um-hum.”
In the dark, she could only imagine the neutral expression on his face.
Figuring that she couldn’t get less of a response, she switched topics as she tried a bite of the canned meat.
“Who do you think came after me in that truck?”
“Someone with a grudge against me. Or a grudge against my family. Or someone who lost a million dollars and figures I have it.”
“But if he kills you, he’ll never get his money.”
“He wasn’t trying to kill me. He was trying to kill you.”
At his blunt statement, the meat she had just swallowed turned to lead in her stomach. “Why?” she finally managed to say. “He doesn’t even know me.”
“A warning, maybe. That I’d better cough up the money.”
She came back instantly with a second opinion. “Or a random act of terror. He saw us drive up here, knew this place was isolated, and figured he could get his jollies, get away with anything he wanted.”
“So it was just a coincidence? Like the guys who arrived at the town house?”
“That wasn’t a coincidence. Somebody traced you there.”
She waited in the darkness, hoping he would tell her he’d realized she didn’t have anything to do with the attack. When he didn’t answer, she forced herself to chew another cracker, washing it down with several swallows of water.
It was almost a relief when he finally said, “We should switch off the flashlight. And you should try to get some sleep.”
“What about you?”
“Somebody’s got to stand guard.”
“I thought you said the guy who tried to run me down wouldn’t come back here.”
“I don’t think he will. I’m not going to bet my life on it, though. And there are other possibilities. Pritchard is a small town. By now a lot of people know I’ve talked to Juanita and figured out that I might have come out here.”
“That’s probably right, but you can’t stay up all night. Wake me so I can take a shift.”
“Okay,” he agreed, but she wasn’t sure if he intended to do it.
He switched off the light, and she stretched out on the sheet-covered rug, using her carry bag as a pillow.
A blanket would have been nice, too, but she could only dream of such niceties.
She slid her eyes toward Luke. After he’d rescued her from the porch, he’d held her in his arms and she’d felt as if all the mistrust and the bad feelings of the past twenty-four hours had been wiped away. But gradually the feeling of closeness had eroded. Now there were so many things she wanted to say. But he’d made it difficult for her to communicate on any kind of meaningful level, so she simply rolled to her side and lay there in the darkness.
ADDISON JENNINGS STOOD on the darkened patio of the manor house that headquartered the Peregrine Connection, staring out at the night sky. In Washington, D.C., sixty miles to the north, the ambient light dimmed the radiance of the night sky, but out here in the country, the heavens were filled with stars. Not as many as when he’d been on assignment in Peru or San Marcos. But enough to make him feel like a tiny speck of dust against the vastness of the universe.
It was still early spring, and the Virginia night was chilly, but he’d come out here hoping the cold air would clear his troubled mind.
Hearing footsteps behind him, he turned and was surprised to find Connie standing in the doorway. Apparently she’d been as restless as he.
The light from the doorway made it impossible to see her face. But as soon as she spoke, his senses went on alert.
“There’s been a development in Baltimore. Sedgwick’s men raided a town house in the Canton area.”
“Was anyone killed?”
“Not as far as our intelligence reports. A car was stolen several blocks away.”
They had both stepped back into the lighted office, both taken their accustomed seats—Addison behind his wide desk and Connie on the other side.
“Were they after Reese?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe—” She stopped, a look of indecision coming into her eyes.
“What?” he commanded sharply.
“I don’t want to get your hopes up. But maybe our operative isn’t dead after all.”
LUKE LAY in the darkness, listening to the gentle breathing of the woman next to him. Her scent and the heat from her body were driving him crazy. But he wasn’t planning to reach for her—for a whole host of reasons.
In an effort to cool himself down, he deliberately turned to his speculations about her motives. Maybe she’d been careless about revealing the location of his town house. Maybe the money was too much of a temptation and she’d been willing to split the cash with her friends. Or maybe she was totally innocent, and whoever was looking for him had somehow traced him to Baltimore. If that were true, he’d like to know what clues he’d inadvertently dropped, what factor he’d overlooked. Or did he have some connection to the city that he didn’t remember?
He didn’t know. And the frustration made him clench his fists. Sternly he ordered himself to relax. He had a long day ahead tomorrow. And tonight he had to at least rest.
Yet relaxation was impossible. His awareness of Hannah would have been enough to keep him awake. But she wasn’t the only factor. Everything that had happened today pressed down on his chest with a weight he could hardly bear.
He’d driven to Pritchard, Texas, with a hard knot of apprehension making his stomach ache. And when he’d finally gotten to town, the letdown had been almost more than he could bear. He’d expected to feel something. Find out something. Discover the key to his past life. Instead, there had been a blazing flash of nothing.
Nothing at all.
No memories. No impressions. No hopes.
Just the eternal blankness that had enveloped him for weeks.
Not even meeting the woman who said she’d raised him had made any damn difference. Or seeing his father’s gravestone.
Andrew Somerville. It meant nothing to him. Like his own name. Lucas Somerville.
He whispered it aloud, trying to get some meaning from the syllables. But he might as well have been reciting a name he’d copied from one of the gravestones up on the hill. It sounded less familiar than Luke Pritchard.
He squeezed his eyes closed, then opened them again, staring into the darkness of the house where he was supposed to have grown up, for Lord’s sake. But being here did nothing for him. Like the town, it was unfamiliar.
Well, not completely unfamiliar. He didn’t remember the people or the events of his own life. But he knew the names of the plants. The tang of the desert air teased his senses. He knew how to combat the natural dangers of the area—the snakes, the scorpions, the black widow spiders.
Selective amnesia, he thought with a snort. Was his mind protecting him from the past?
He knew from Juanita that his childhood had been bad. And his life over the past few years? It looked as if he was hiding from that as well.
It was chillier in the room than it had been several hours earlier. Beside him, Hannah stirred. He lay rigid on the makeshift bed as she rolled toward him in the darkness, draping her arm intimately over his chest.
“Hannah?”
The rhythm of her breathing didn’t change. She was still asleep. He shifted ever so slightly so that he could slip his own arm around her shoulder, the movement pressing her breast against his ribs. Another considerable distraction.
The temptation to focus on his pleasurable response to the woman lying next to him rather than on the painful hole in his memory was overwhelming. There was not a scrap of light in the room, and he couldn’t see her. But he had a perfect image of her sable hair, her silk skin, her pretty lips.
In the darkness, he moved his hand upward to gently stroke his fingertips against the blunt ends of her hair.
Her arm moved, shifting across the fly of his jeans, and he cursed silently at the sexual jolt that shot through him.
He wanted to pull her body on top of his, feel the pressure of her breasts against his chest, cradle his erection against the cleft at the top of her legs. He contented
himself with turning his face and stroking his lips against her hair.
He knew the moment she woke, the moment she became aware of her arm resting against the shaft of rigid flesh he couldn’t hide.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When Hannah started to pull away, it was impossible to simply let her go. Luke’s arm seemed to have a will of its own as it tightened around her shoulder.
A while ago he had been wondering whether he could trust her. Now his suspicions seemed as insubstantial as the cobwebs he’d swept out of the room. Against his better judgment, he whispered, “Stay here.”
The stiffness went out of her as she did what he asked. Her only concession to propriety was that she raised her arm a little higher so that it was now across his abdomen. He longed to snatch it back, to retain the pressure of her flesh against the part of him that ached for her, but he restrained himself.
When she started to speak, it took several seconds before he realized what she was saying.
“I’m sorry.”
“About what?”
“Plastering myself to you.”
He felt a hitch in his throat. “It’s cold. You were trying to get warm, and I like holding you.”
“Do you?” she asked, her voice turning breathy.
“Darlin’, you know I do.”
He closed his eyes as he felt her hand creep upward, flatten against his chest, over his heart and he knew the accelerated beat gave another indication of just how much he was enjoying having her in his arms, in his bed, even if it was only a makeshift pallet on the floor.
He told himself that carrying this interlude any further was a mistake. Still, he found his own hand mirroring her action; only when he touched her chest, his fingers gently curved around her breast.
Her little indrawn breath rippled through his whole body. And once he’d touched her, it was so natural to move his fingers, find the tight bead of her nipple, stroke back and forth across that tantalizing nub of flesh.
She didn’t move. But her breath turned fast and shaky.
