Countdown

by Iris Johansen

  “I’m not playing. Nothing could be further from my mind.” She started up the stairs. God, she was tired. “But I won’t bother Mario tonight. Tomorrow will be soon enough.”

  She could feel his gaze on her as she climbed the steps. “You don’t have to watch me. I told you I’m not going to see Mario tonight. I’m going straight to my room and to bed.”

  “I like to watch you. I don’t have to have an excuse.”

  She stiffened and then continued up the stairs. No, she wouldn’t let him do this to her. Not now. There was too much at stake to let herself be sidetracked. “Good night, Trevor.”

  “It will be a good night now that you’re back here and not skittering all over Switzerland.”

  “Skittering? I wasn’t—” When she looked back over her shoulder he was walking down the hall toward the library. That’s right, he was going to fax the sketch to Venable. She had done her job and now he was going to follow up. That’s what they should be concentrating on. Stopping Grozak was far more important than the emotions that were drawing them to each other. They had worked well together four years ago and they could do it again.

  They had to do it again.

  She knows who I am,” Wickman said as he came in to the hotel room. “She sketched a goddamm picture of me at the café.”

  “A mistake?” Grozak raised his brows. “I told you that I couldn’t tolerate inefficiency, Wickman. How do you know that she did it?”

  “I’m not inefficient. I went back to remove the witnesses. She was there before me. Sam Brenner was with her or I’d have been able to take care of it.”

  “But you didn’t take care of it.” He smiled. “And now Trevor knows who you are. What a pity. You’ll have to remove him for sheer self-preservation. I shouldn’t even have to pay you.”

  “I wouldn’t try to cheat me, Grozak.” Wickman’s face was without expression. “I carried out your job and did it well. I’ll do the wrap-up well too.”

  “It’s not cheating you to point out that we now have a common goal.” He added persuasively, “You can’t have any love for those smug sons of bitches in the U.S. Help me bring them down.”

  Cheap bastard, Wickman thought with contempt. He’d run across men like Grozak before, who were so caught up in their own hatred that they couldn’t see beyond it. “I’ve no goal other than to collect as much money as I can before I walk away from the business.”

  “I’ll be very well funded by our Muslim extremist friends for any future projects if I can pull this off. You can share.”

  “I don’t want to share. I want my money up front.”

  Grozak was clearly not pleased. “You haven’t finished.”

  “Do you want me to hand you Donato’s head? Sorry. It’s at the bottom of a bog near Milan.”

  “I don’t care about Donato. What about Trevor?”

  “Not until you pay me.”

  Grozak scowled and then reached in the top desk drawer and tossed him an envelope. “Half.”

  Wickman counted the cash. “You want his head too?”

  “Maybe later. I want you to get the woman first. Alive. I need her.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s none of your concern. All you need to know is that I want the woman alive and Trevor has to be able to talk to me before he dies.”

  “About what?”

  “He may be able to lead me to something I need.”

  Money? Wickman thought. Perhaps. But with fanatics like Grozak it could just as well be a hydrogen bomb. Still, it was something to keep in mind. “It’s more risk for me. Quick and clean is better. I’ll want more money.”

  Grozak muttered a curse before nodding. “You’ll get it. Not now. It’s not easy to gather your kind of money together. I’ve thrown everything I have into this project.”

  “Get it from Reilly.”

  “Reilly’s being very stingy with everything but the manpower.”

  Wickman thought about pushing and then decided against it. He had never had a problem squeezing money from his patrons after a job. It always surprised him how quickly they caved when he focused his full attention on them. “I’ll give you a few days.” He dropped down in a chair. “But if you want the woman, you have to give me something to work with. Tell me everything you know about her.”

  12

  It’s good to have you back,” Bartlett said as he met Jane in the hall the next morning. “I was worried.”

  “Brenner was with me. I had to go.”

  He nodded solemnly. “So Trevor told me.”

  “Have you seen Mario? He isn’t in his room.”

  “I understand he’s at the Run with MacDuff. Would you like breakfast?”

  “Later,” she said absently as she headed for the door. “I want to talk to Mario.”

  It took her ten minutes to go through the gates and around the castle to the Run.

  She stopped several yards from the rocks when she saw Mario and MacDuff. They were both stripped to the waist and despite the chill they were gleaming with sweat. As she watched, MacDuff dropped Mario to the ground by sweeping his leg in a round kick.

  Mario muttered a curse and struggled to his feet. “Again.”

  “You’re not going to have time to learn anything,” MacDuff said grimly. “Except how to fall without hurting yourself. That’s not going to save your life.”

  “Again,” Mario said, and lunged toward him.

  MacDuff flipped him over his hip and then straddled him. “Give it up. It will take weeks. Use a damn gun.”

  “I’m learning.” Mario glared up at him. “I’m learning something with every fall. Again.”

  MacDuff muttered another obscenity.

  “He’s angry.” Jane turned to see Jock standing behind her. He was frowning as he came toward her, his gaze on the two men. “He could hurt the laird.”

  “Mario? It’s not likely.” She watched as MacDuff got off Mario and the boy jumped to his feet. “It’s not MacDuff I’m worried about. Mario’s the one who’s the most vulnerable. He could be—”

  She broke off as Mario lowered his head and butted MacDuff in the stomach. MacDuff grunted and fell to his knees, struggling for breath. “Dammit, that’s not anything I showed you. You’re not supposed to— No!”

  Jock was behind Mario, his arm around his neck. He had moved with such dazzling speed that Jane was stunned.

  But MacDuff was there, giving Jock a numbing blow to the arm tightening around Mario. “Stop it, Jock. Let him go.”

  Jock didn’t move.

  “Jock.”

  Jock slowly released Mario. “You should have let me do it. He could hurt you.”

  “He doesn’t want to hurt me. We were just working out. Playing.”

  “It’s not playing. He hit you in the stomach. There are ways to break a rib and send it into the heart.”

  “He doesn’t know those ways.” MacDuff spoke slowly, patiently. “He knows nothing. That’s why I’m trying to teach him.”

  “Why?”

  “What is this?” Mario was staring at Jock in bewilderment.

  MacDuff ignored him, his gaze on Jock. “Someone hurt his father. He needs to be able to protect himself.”

  Jock’s gaze shifted to Mario. “You mean he wants to kill someone.”

  “For God’s sake, not with his bare hands. I told you, he only wants to protect himself.”

  Jock frowned. “He might hurt you. I’ll teach him what he needs to know.”

  “Not bloody likely. You might forget. And as I keep telling you, I’m not as good as you, but I’m fully capable of taking care of myself.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then go on back to the stable.”

  Jock shook his head and moved over to the large rocks at the end of the Run. “I’ll just sit here and watch.”

  MacDuff stared at him in exasperation before turning to Mario. “Meet me here at two this afternoon. This isn’t a good time.”

  Mario hesitated and then grabbed his shi
rt from the ground. “Two.” He grimaced at Jane as he passed her. “Weird. Very weird.”

  She agreed completely, and was so absorbed in the interplay between Jock and MacDuff that Mario had disappeared around the side of the castle before she remembered she had come here to talk to him.

  “I don’t remember sending out invitations.” MacDuff was looking at her as he wiped the sweat from his chest and arms. “Why are you here?”

  “I wanted to try to persuade Mario to drop this craziness.”

  “It wouldn’t be crazy if there wasn’t a time restraint. It would be entirely reasonable. Revenge is completely understandable.” His gaze went to the path where Mario had disappeared. “And he’s not going to be bad if he lives long enough. That last move took me by surprise.”

  “Jock’s the one who took me by surprise.” She looked at the boy, who was sitting absolutely still on the rocks some distance away. He smiled at her as he saw her staring at him, a sweet smile that lit his face with radiance. She couldn’t believe that it was the same face that had tightened to cold ferocity as his arm snaked around Mario’s throat. She returned his smile with an effort and turned back to MacDuff. “He was going to kill him, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.” He pulled a sweatshirt over his head. “In a matter of seconds. Jock is very quick.”

  She shook her head in wonder. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen— He seems so sweet natured.”

  “Oh, he is. When he’s not committing murder.”

  Her eyes widened at the bitterness in his voice. “Murder? But he was just angry because he thought Mario was going to hurt you.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “That was it, wasn’t it?”

  He was silent a moment and then shrugged. “He wasn’t angry. He was on a mission, and this time I was the mission.”

  “What?”

  “He feels duty-bound to keep me safe. I started out letting him do it because I didn’t know if I could keep him alive unless I gave him a motivation. Now he’s stronger and I’m trying to wean him away from it. But it’s not easy.”

  “Keep him alive,” she repeated.

  “He tried to commit suicide three times after I got him away from that son of a bitch Reilly.”

  Reilly. The man Trevor had said he and Grozak were battling over.

  “You’ve heard of Reilly.” MacDuff’s eyes were narrowed on her expression. “Trevor told you about him?”

  She nodded. “But he didn’t tell me anything about a connection between Reilly and you or Jock.”

  “He doesn’t know about the connection with Jock. He only knows I want Reilly.” He glanced at Jock. “Dead.”

  “Then why are you telling me?”

  “Because Jock likes you and you’ve chosen to help him. I thought I could control him, but some time I may not be around and you may need information to guide him. I’m not letting you go in blind.”

  “Is he . . . insane?”

  “No more than any one of us would be if we’d gone through what he has. He blocks things out; at moments he goes back to the simplicity of childhood. But he’s getting better every day.”

  “What things does he try to block out?”

  MacDuff didn’t answer for a moment. “I know he’s killed at least twenty-two people. Probably a good many more. That’s all he’ll allow himself to remember.”

  “My God.”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” MacDuff said harshly. “If you could have known him as a boy, you’d realize that. He was wild as a hare but there was no one with a kinder heart or a sweeter nature. It was that son of a bitch Reilly.”

  “He can’t be more than nineteen,” she whispered.

  “Twenty.”

  “How . . . ?”

  “I told you, he was wild. He ran away from home when he was fifteen to knock about the world. I don’t know when or where he ran across Reilly. All I know is that not long ago his mother came to me and asked me to go get her son. He was in an asylum in Denver, Colorado. The police had picked him up wandering on a highway near Boulder. No papers. And they couldn’t get him to tell them anything. He was in the asylum for two weeks before he spoke one word. Then it was to ask for pen and paper to write to his mother.” He paused. “It was a good-bye letter. She was hysterical when she came to me and asked me to go get him. She thought he was going to commit suicide.”

  “Why didn’t she go to him herself?”

  “I’m the laird. They’re used to coming to me in emergencies.”

  “Then why didn’t she come to you when he ran away?”

  “I wasn’t in the country. I was in Naples trying to find enough money to bail out the Run.” His lips thinned. “I should have been here. I was almost too late. When I got to the hospital, he’d already gotten hold of a razor and cut his wrists. They barely managed to save him.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What did you think I did? He was one of mine. I rented a chalet in the mountains and took him out of that hospital and stayed with him for the next month. I held him while he raved and ranted and wept. I talked to him and made him talk to me.”

  “Did he tell you what happened to him?”

  He shook his head. “Only bits and pieces. Reilly was very clear in Jock’s mind, but he couldn’t decide whether Reilly was Satan or God. Whatever entity he was to Jock, he dominated and punished. And controlled. Oh, yes, he definitely controlled.”

  “Brainwashing? Like Trevor told me he did with those GIs?”

  “Evidently he was doing in-depth experimentation this time. How do you make an assassin of a good-hearted lad like Jock? Drugs? Sleep deprivation? Torture? Give him hallucinations? Prey on his mind and emotions? Or combine them all into one package? He was trained in all forms of murder and then sent out to do Reilly’s bidding. It must have been difficult to keep control of Jock over an extended killing spree like that. Reilly was very clever.”

  “And a monster.”

  “Without doubt. And monsters don’t deserve to walk this earth. And he won’t for much longer. I made a deal with Trevor. I get Reilly. I don’t care about anything else.”

  Jane thought of something. “Why Jock? It’s too great a coincidence that he’d just pick him out of the blue.”

  “No coincidence. I’ve made it no secret that I’ve been looking for Cira’s gold. That story on the Internet drew me the way it drew everyone else. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The answer to my prayers. I’ve made five trips to Herculaneum in the past three years and it must have gotten back to Reilly. Trevor says he’s been keeping an eagle eye on everything and everyone who looked like he might have a chance at finding the gold before he does. He’s obsessed with those gold coins, and he probably wanted to find out if I’d learned anything important. Jock was in and out of the castle all the time before he decided to go off and see the world. Who better to ask?” His lips tightened bitterly. “He probably tracked him down to ask him a few crucial questions and then decided to make use of him in other ways when Jock couldn’t tell him anything.”

  “So you went after Reilly. Could Jock tell you anything about him?”

  “Not much. Every time he’d start to remember he’d go into convulsions and start screaming with pain. A little posthypnotic gift from Reilly. He’s getting better, but I haven’t tried since that first month. I’m waiting for him to heal. If he ever does.”

  “And you’re teaming up with Trevor instead. Why?”

  “I’m one of the people who Dupoi notified when he was trying to double-cross Trevor. Everyone in Herculaneum knew I was interested, and he thought I might have enough money to make the bidding interesting.” He grimaced. “Wrong. But I learned enough about Trevor and his background from Dupoi to know that he could have the same goals I did—and the contacts to find Reilly.” He stared her directly in the eye. “Are you afraid to be around Jock now?”

  She looked back at Jock. “A little.”

  “Then I’ve blown it. I thought you might u
nderstand.”

  “It’s hard to understand twenty-two murders.”

  “If he’d been an assassin for your government, you’d accept it. In some circles he’d be a hero.”

  “You know that argument doesn’t wash. I feel sorry for him, but there’s no way I can understand how Reilly could twist him like that.” She squared her shoulders. “So I won’t try. I’ll accept that it happened and go on from there.”

  “But in what direction? Are you going to abandon him?”

  “Damn you. He’s not my problem.” What was she going to do? Jock had touched and haunted her from the moment she had seen him. The story of horror had shocked her but had also made her heart ache for the boy. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.” But whatever she decided to do, she had to confront it. She strode across the Run toward Jock.

  His gaze was on her face as she went toward him. “He told you about me, didn’t he? You’re going to tell me you don’t want to draw me anymore.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because I’m ugly,” he said simply. “You see it now, don’t you?”

  Oh, hell. She could feel that aching pity begin again. “You’re not ugly. You just did ugly things. But you won’t do them again.”

  “Maybe I will. He said it’s what I am. That I can’t do anything else.”

  “Reilly?”

  “Sometimes I’m sure he’s right. It’s so easy. I don’t have to think.”

  “He’s not right. MacDuff will tell you that.”

  He nodded. “He always does.”

  “And I’m telling you too.” She looked him in the eye. “So stop talking foolish and get on to forgetting that bastard.” She turned away. “And meet me in the courtyard in an hour. I have to finish that sketch.”

  It was only a small commitment and she could still back away. She glanced over her shoulder as she reached the path. MacDuff had come to sit beside Jock on the rock and he was frowning, talking fast and low to the boy. Jock was nodding, but his gaze was still fixed on Jane.

  And then he smiled. A smile full of sadness and acceptance and, dammit, hope.