by Tami Hoag
“No,” Shane admitted. “I didn’t.”
“You and I have a little unfinished business to take care of, mon ami.”
“Where are you?”
The laughter that floated over the phone lines rang with rich amusement. “Nice try, Agent Callan, but I’d rather not have an army of your compadres descending on our little soiree. What we have to settle is between you and me.”
“Why the theatrics with the Kincaid woman, then?” he asked, fighting to keep emotion out of his voice. He holstered his pistol and wiped a sweating palm on the leg of his pants. “She’s got nothing to do with this.”
“Doesn’t she? Ah, well, you know me, Shane. I always have had a flare for the dramatic. Remember our foray into the theater district that time—”
“Can the bull, Strauss,” Shane cut him off. He wanted no reminders of his time inside the Silvanus operation. He’d come too close to the edge, too close to losing what it was that made him human rather than a cunning, vicious animal like Adam Strauss. Now he forced a sigh and a bored tone. “I’ve had a long day. Where do you want to meet?”
“Testy tonight, aren’t we?” Strauss taunted lazily, then turned businesslike. “I’ll give you ten minutes to drive to Anastasia, to the phone booth outside Dylan’s Bar and Bait Shop. I’ll call you there and give you further instructions.”
Shane swore at his nemesis in disgust. “You’ve seen too many Dirty Harry movies.”
“Don’t be insulting, Irish,” Strauss said on a laugh. “Oh, and need I remind you?” he added as an afterthought. “Come alone.”
Shane stared blindly at the stretch of road that was illuminated by nothing more than the headlights of the car. The night was as black as the heart of the killer he was on his way to meet.
The road dipped and curved, turned and cut back along the cliff edge. Frequent signs advised caution and a prudent speed limit. He ignored them. The sedan hugged the pavement, though its driver was operating on nothing more than reflexes and subconscious memory.
Strauss had Faith. It was Shane’s worst nightmare come true. Instead of protecting the woman he had grown to love, the woman who had offered him a future, the woman who had offered him her heart, he had put her life in grave danger. There was no question in his mind—Strauss was there because of him, to even the score. This had nothing to do with William Gerrard. It had nothing to do with defense contracts. It was vengeance.
He had expected it to happen sooner or later. It was just a matter of his past catching up with him. But now Faith was caught up in it as well. She could die, and it would be his fault.
Dammit, he thought, this was why he had avoided involvement. Long ago he had set the rules that governed his life. Those boundaries had made his life a lonely one but that had been the price for doing a very important job, a job he believed in. By breaking those rules he had endangered the one person who had touched his life and left him feeling better for it.
The twinkling lights of Anastasia came into view as the road eased around a bend and down a slope. The tourist town that was home to two thousand permanent residents was nestled in a quiet cove. With its restored Victorian buildings and busy harbor, Anastasia was picture-postcard lovely, but its beauty was lost on Shane. His entire being was focused on one goal—rescuing Faith from the clutches of the most evil man he’d ever known.
Dylan’s Bar and Bait Shop was located on the waterfront, in the heart of Anastasia’s tidy, thriving marina area. It was a popular establishment, busy most nights, and this night was no exception. Warm amber lights glowed through the building’s windows, a welcoming beacon to passersby. Music and laughter floated through the front door as patrons came and went.
Parking his car in the small lot, Shane got out, his narrowed eyes scanning the area as he strode toward the phone booth that stood to the left of the bar’s entrance. The scents of fish and fuel and the sea filled his nostrils, but danger was what he sensed stronger than anything. Strauss was nearby; he could feel it.
The phone inside the booth was out of order. Strauss’s idea of a joke, Shane supposed, though he found no humor in it. Taped to the glass of the booth was a note with the name Brutus and a pier number written in Strauss’s neat, almost feminine hand. Using the pen that hung on a frayed string beside the phone book, Shane scrawled BANKS across the top of the note and left the missive taped in place.
He had come alone, as Strauss had instructed, but Banks wouldn’t be far behind him. There hadn’t been time to argue about strategy. Shane had wanted time to try to deal with Strauss on his own—certain that bringing in more cops would further endanger Faith—so he had given himself a head start.
As he pulled his gun from his shoulder holster, he wondered just how much trouble he would get into for knocking out his boss. It didn’t matter. The odds were against him coming out of this at all, he thought as he started toward a boat called Brutus and a confrontation with the man who had sworn to kill him.
The Brutus was a powerboat, a midsize luxuriously appointed cabin cruiser fitted out for deep-sea sport fishing. But fishing wasn’t on the mind of the man who owned the boat, Faith thought as she sat on the cabin’s small built-in sofa, trying her best to keep from shaking visibly.
William had owned a boat very like this one. He hadn’t been much interested in fishing either. The Getaway had been for impressing people, an ostentatious toy, a place to hold clandestine meetings. But if William Gerrard’s uses for his boat had been less than honorable, Adam Strauss’s were evil.
“In a way, I’m going to regret killing Shane Callan,” Strauss said from his leather-upholstered chair in the corner. In his left hand he held a snifter of cognac. His right hand absently stroked the semiautomatic weapon lying in his lap as if it were a beloved pet cat. A Mozart symphony played in the background.
“A very shrewd, intelligent man, Shane. Well brought up, you know. A Princeton man.” He smiled at Faith. “I myself graduated from Brown. A doctorate in behavioral psychology.”
Faith guessed she was supposed to be impressed, but she was too damn scared to pull it off. Tugging her cardigan closer around her, she merely stared at her captor with wide, unblinking eyes.
He was a handsome man in a cold, sharp-featured way. Thinning brown hair was combed straight back from his high forehead. The arch of his eyebrows above his narrow dark eyes could only be described as sinister looking. They went well with the cruel, thin line of his wide mouth. He was well dressed and meticulously groomed—right down to his neatly manicured nails. Somehow the fact that he was an educated, fastidious man made him seem even more diabolical in his madness.
In a little corner of her mind Faith noted that this entire scenario was insane. She was just a former business major from Notre Dame, a mother, a woman trying to pursue a quiet dream. How on earth had she ended up on a boat listening to Mozart while an assassin reminisced about his college days?
“What do you need me for?” She blurted the question out, amazed that she had dredged up the nerve.
Strauss’s face lit with amusement. “Why, bait, of course. You should be very familiar with the role by now, I should think.”
Faith’s skin crawled.
“This has all been a very amusing little game.” He took a sip of his cognac, savoring the amber liquid for a moment before continuing. “I managed to acquire a copy of Shane’s current case file, thanks to an obliging little secretary at the Justice Department. Pity I had to kill her. At any rate, I thought it rather a clever game to play the part of your tormentor. Rouse all of gallant Shane’s protective instincts and so on.”
A chill went through her at his calm dismissal of murder, and another shot through her at the thought that she had been used as bait to get to Shane. “You never had anything to do with DataTech or William?”
His lips curled upward as he shook his head.
Faith’s eyes strayed to the window. She would have given anything to feel Shane’s arms around her now. At the same time she had to hope she woul
dn’t see him, because the man in the corner was planning to kill him, and she didn’t think she could survive watching that happen.
“Rest assured, Ms. Kincaid. He’ll arrive presently.”
Setting his brandy aside, Strauss rose from his chair only to settle beside Faith on the cushioned bench. She couldn’t suppress a shudder of revulsion as he coiled one arm around her shoulders.
“You see,” he said in his lazy voice, “I know Shane very well. His strengths, his weaknesses. His likes and dislikes. For a time we were nearly as close as brothers.” He brought his pistol up to caress the silencer against her temple almost lovingly, and his voice turned as cold as the steel of the gun. “Then he betrayed me.”
Bile rose in Faith’s throat as tears stung her eyes.
“Ah, but alas,” Strauss said, his voice heavy with mock regret as he glanced at his gold Rolex, “we have no time to discuss such things.” With his arm still around her, he stood and drew Faith along with him. “Our hero should be arriving any minute now. Let’s go out on the deck to greet him, shall we?”
Raw fury surged through Shane as he approached the Brutus, his gaze focused on Faith and the man who held a gun to her head. Close on fury’s heels was fear. He tried to will both emotions away. A clear head was essential in a situation as deadly as this one. Emotions got in the way; they clouded judgment and slowed the thinking process. But it was impossible for Shane to look at Adam Strauss—one arm around Faith’s shoulders and a pistol pressed to her temple—and not have a riot of feeling tear loose inside him.
His hand tightened on the grip of his gun as the dark desire to kill snaked through him. He may have been raised in an upper-class home. He may have been educated in one of the finest schools in the country. But primitive instinct easily cut through generations of civilized behavior. Beneath the cop, the scholar, the musician, he was a man, and Faith Kincaid was his woman. If Strauss had hurt her …
Hell, Shane thought, he wanted to kill the man for touching her. Despite all she’d been through, Faith was an innocent. Adam Strauss represented everything evil. The two didn’t belong on the same planet, let alone on the same boat.
“Hello, Shane, my old friend,” Strauss said in a silky tone that raised Shane’s hackles. “How do like my little boat? Brutus. I named it after you.”
“I’m flattered all to hell,” Shane remarked dryly as he crossed the gangplank and stepped aboard.
“I knew you would be. Drop the gun overboard, Irish.”
Reluctantly Shane tossed the Smith and Wesson over the side. Strauss smiled at the soft splash that sounded as the gun hit the water.
“Now the little surprise you have tucked into the back of your trousers.”
Scowling in the pale glow of the security light, Shane reached behind him and gently eased a small pistol out of his waistband. It joined its companion on the bottom of the Anastasia marina.
“And that little darling you’re wearing for a sock garter.” Strauss’s laughter floated eerily on the damp night air as Shane muttered a stream of curses. “Ah, yes, my friend. I know all your secrets.”
“Yeah, you’re a regular genius,” Shane commented. His expression a blank, stony mask, he turned to Faith. “Are you all right, Ms. Kincaid?”
Faith winced a bit at his cool, businesslike tone. This was not the same man who had held her and loved her fears away. This was Shane the cop, the man who leashed his emotions and instinctively lived in the shadows.
She prayed she would get the chance to see that other Shane again. The one who was so patient with her daughter, who was a tender lover full of sad, sweet music, the one who sometimes looked at her as if he couldn’t quite believe she was real. She told herself she would see that man again. All they had to do was get through this nightmare.
Finding her voice with some difficulty, she managed to stutter, “I—I’m f-fine, Agent Callan.”
She was terrified, Shane knew, but as she had so many times over the last few weeks, Faith managed to dredge up a little more strength from that well that ran so deep inside her. He watched her swallow down her fear and stick out her little chin. How one woman who seemed so ordinary could have so much heart and courage was a mystery to him, but he loved her for it.
He loved her, and now she could die because of him. The knowledge twisted in his gut like a knife.
“Shane, you cut me to the quick,” Strauss said, pouting like a petulant lover. “I’ve been a perfect gentleman.”
“Gentlemen don’t kidnap innocent women and hold guns to their heads,” Shane pointed out, his voice low and smoky.
Strauss grinned. “Point taken. Let’s call it a temporary breach of conduct—rather like your seduction of a federal witness.”
The bastard. He knew. He’d been watching them. A muscle jumped in Shane’s jaw. His hands clenched at the thought of wrapping them around Strauss’s throat. The idea that this piece of scum had any knowledge of the tender, loving relationship that had blossomed between himself and Faith made him sick. But the wisest course would be to ignore the remark as if it meant nothing to him.
“Let her go, Strauss. Your argument is with me.”
Strauss’s eyes narrowed as if in consideration, but his hold only tightened on Faith’s shoulders. “I think not. I know you, Irish. I know your weaknesses, few though they may be. I know your flaws—melancholy, gallantry, and good Irish whiskey. I mean to take advantage of your gallantry. You won’t try anything as long as I hold the lovely lassie. Never make an enemy of a friend, my dear Lancelot,” he advised. “That enemy will slay you with your own sword.”
Shane heaved a sigh and hitched his hands to his lean hips. “You’re boring me, Strauss. If you want to kill me, then kill me and be done with it.”
“Oh, no.” A thread of rage tangled with the madness in his cultured voice. “I won’t make it that easy for you, I mean to see you suffer.” Jerking his head in the direction of the dock, he ordered, “Cast off. We’re going to take a little midnight cruise. Revenge should be a very private thing, I think.”
Shane weighed the odds. He couldn’t rush Strauss now, Faith would never have a chance. For the moment the deck was stacked in the killer’s favor. Obviously Strauss didn’t realize it, but sea would take some of his advantage away. So Shane went about the task of setting the Brutus free, skills he had learned as a boy surfacing without effort. The Atlantic had been a second home to him when he’d been growing up. He could only hope the Pacific would prove to be as good a friend.
Keeping a firm grip on Faith, Strauss motioned Shane toward the ladder that led to the navigation bridge. “You’re driving, Captain Callan.” He flashed a wicked grin in the dim yellow light that spilled out of the cabin. “As you can see, I have my hands full.”
The muscles in Shane’s jaw tightened against the snarl that threatened to curl his lip as he turned and hauled himself up the ladder. He didn’t care if he died trying—his life hadn’t seemed worth much for a long time—but Adam Strauss was going to pay for putting his hands on Faith.
Faith wasn’t sure if the wave of nausea that sloshed through her stomach was seasickness or fear or both. The Brutus had been under way for ten or fifteen minutes, bucking through choppy water, when Strauss ordered Shane to cut the engine. Now it bobbed like a cork on the black water, dipping and swaying beneath their feet as the three of them stood in the cockpit behind the cabin.
It was all Faith could do to keep her balance, and she half fell against her captor as the powerboat rocked. Annoyed, Strauss took her hand and pressed it to the gin pole. “Hold on to that, Ms. Kincaid. If you let go, I’ll shoot you.”
She couldn’t keep from looking to Shane for some kind of sign. He was nearly invisible with his dark hair and clothing, like a panther in the night, but she caught his almost imperceptible nod. Her hand closed around the cold metal pole, and her fingertips brushed across a loosely knotted rope. As Strauss’s attention swung away from her, she stole a glance.
A heavy block-and-ta
ckle rig hung down from the top of the gin pole and was secured to it with nothing more than a flimsy piece of nylon. Praying wildly Strauss would keep his focus on Shane, Faith began trying to work the knot loose with her fingers. She didn’t want to think about what the madman had planned for her, but she knew he meant to kill Shane, and she had to do everything she could to stop him.
“You betrayed me, Shane,” Strauss said, raising his voice so his dramatic accusations could be heard above the wind and the sea and the creaking of the boat. He stood with his feet braced slightly apart, his Italian loafers offering footing that was less than sure on a deck slick with mist. The gun he had pressed to Faith’s temple was now leveled at Shane. “We were like brothers. You were my friend.”
Shane answered him with a curse. “I was doing my job, Strauss. I’d sooner make friends with a cobra.”
“I know differently. We’re two sides of the same coin, you and I, my darling Shane.”
The statement was so close to being accurate, it nearly made Shane sick. He had come so close to that edge, but he had pulled back. He had struggled with the darker side of himself. For a time he had felt he would never escape the shadow of it. Then Faith had let sunlight into his life, and he had felt his soul begin to heal.
Abruptly he pulled back from his thoughts. He had to concentrate, had to find some way to get Strauss’s gun away from him. Strauss had said he wanted to play on Shane’s weaknesses. Two could play at that game. Adam Strauss had an enormously overinflated ego. It was time to start punching holes.
“I’m sick of your theatrics, Strauss,” he said, caustically. He let one foot inch ahead as the deck swayed beneath his sneakers. “Besides being a lousy actor, you’re nothing but a two-bit killer with a fake diploma.”
Even in the faint light that glowed out of the cabin Shane could see the man’s eyes flash with insane outrage. “How dare you! I am a scholar—”
“What’s the plan? Kill me, dump me overboard, and make a run for South America with the woman? You’ll never make it.”
