Shadow Woman: A Novel

by Linda Howard

  He smiled in the darkness. He liked a challenge.

  Sometimes the gods smiled, because a light rain began falling. Perfect. For someone sitting inside a parked car, that had just cut visibility through the side windows down to nothing more than a blur. It wasn’t just the rain, but the inevitable fogging that would occur. In the same situation, Xavier would have lowered the window and let the interior of the car get wet, because surveillance, not staying dry, was the objective, but the human instinct was to shut out the rain.

  Xavier reached the rear of her house and took a quick peek around the corner, keeping his body flat against the wall and rolling his head just enough to get a line of sight on the car across the street.

  If the gods sometimes smiled, other times they downright laughed. Abruptly a light was turned on inside the house just up from where the guy was parked. A couple of seconds later, the porch light was turned on, the door opened, and the robe-clad homeowner stepped out with a small dog bouncing around his feet. The little dog immediately dashed into the yard to take care of his business.

  Human nature being what it was, the guy in the car had probably lain over in the seat so he wouldn’t be seen; if he hadn’t done that, he had at least slid way down in the seat, and all of his attention would currently be on the pet owner, hoping the guy either didn’t notice his car or didn’t recognize it as not belonging.

  Xavier figured he couldn’t have been handed a better opportunity. Silently he slipped around the corner of her house and approached the back door.

  He could hear the neighbor saying something to the dog, his tone more querying than angry. Xavier imagined it was something along the lines of Are you finished yet? He didn’t care what was said, because as long as the neighbor stayed on the porch, the guy in the car wasn’t going to be watching anything else.

  Xavier spared a quick glance to see that the dog was now happily prancing toward the owner, wagging its tail. He had just a few seconds left before that perfect distraction ended.

  The keys, one for the doorknob and one for the deadbolt, were in his hand. He kept them separate, so they wouldn’t clink against each other. Swiftly he unlocked both locks, each one clicking smoothly and almost silently; he put one key in his left pocket, one in his right, then gently turned the knob. He eased inside, closed the door, then stood very still and listened.

  He was in the kitchen, with light coming in through the window; there were lights from the oven, the coffeemaker, and the microwave as well, small but effective. He heard the hum of the refrigerator but nothing else, no creaking of the floors or fabric brushing against walls, nothing to indicate that she’d been awakened by his almost completely silent entry. Faintly, from outside, he heard the air-conditioning compressor kick on, and a moment later cool air began blowing from the vents.

  That was good. Air conditioning covered a multitude of small sounds.

  Beyond the kitchen, the house was dark. That was the way she liked it when she slept—dark, like being in a cave. There were no night-lights for her, no bathroom light left on to illuminate the hallway. The dark worked in his favor.

  He made his way through the kitchen, noting that the clocks all displayed the same time: three thirty-two. Lizzy kept her clocks synchronized. He wondered if she realized why, if somewhere in the back of her mind she knew how crucial a minute could be. He himself had an instinctive sense of time, one that he’d learned to adjust according to what time zone he was in, and he could usually nail it to the minute without seeing a clock. For operations he always synchronized with team members, but that was more for their benefit than his. He’d always appreciated Lizzy’s punctuality. She’d been dependable down to the second.

  He didn’t have to fumble around, figure out where he was or where she kept things. He was familiar with the layout of the exterior and the interior because he’d seen pictures. Lots of them. Even though he’d never been here, this wasn’t entirely unfamiliar territory.

  She was asleep just down the hall. He could almost feel her there, her presence pulling at him, and he had to make a conscious effort to focus on the task at hand.

  Lizette knew she was dreaming, because she recognized the dream. It was the all-white house again, except for that one three-dimensional room that held all the colors, as if the colors from the rest of the house had been bled away and put in that one room. But she wasn’t in the colored room, she was in the biggest white one, everything muted and quiet.

  He was here, her Mr. X. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him, but she knew he was close by. She could sense him as strongly as if he were in the same room, watching her. She spun around, checking every corner, every white wall, every window, but the room was empty except for herself.

  Wait a minute, she thought. What was going on? Was this a dream, or reality? It felt real. She’d been here before. But—oh, yeah, that had been a dream too. Her heart began beating faster, because X had been in that other dream, and he was waiting for her in this one.

  He’d be in that bedroom where all the color was, the one room in this massive house that seemed more real, more tangible, than all the others. Her body responded, knowing he was near, instantly craving what she’d gotten in the last dream: not just sex, even though it had been powerful and earth-shattering and almost—almost—nothing-else-matters sex. Because something else did matter, something stronger that pulled her to him.

  But where the hell was he?

  She walked from one room to the next, searching for the one room with color, but it wasn’t where it had been the last time. Damn it, why wouldn’t the rooms stay in one place? She grew more and more frustrated as she got more and more turned around. She was completely lost now. Hallways twisted and turned, grew longer as she tried to reach the end. She was so frustrated she felt like kicking a wall. He was here—somewhere. She felt him on a cellular level, down deep where instincts ruled alone and logic went out the window. But if she didn’t find him soon, it would be too late; he’d go away, find something else to do. He was always going away.

  And then she smelled him. He had a faint, masculine odor that was his and his alone. His skin, his clothes, the soap he used … it all added up to X. Perhaps no one else would note the scent, it was so light, but she did. She’d inhaled his scent on more than one occasion, had closed her eyes and breathed deep and been soothed and excited and inflamed by the way he smelled.

  She followed her nose and her instincts. She quit thinking and just walked forward, drawn onward. And finally there it was, the room she’d been searching for. She knew it was the right room before she even opened the door, but she watched her hand turn the knob and push the door open, watched all that vivid color bloom at the threshold. And there he was, waiting for her, always waiting. All this time, if only she’d known where to look.

  “Lizzy.” That was all he said, one word, her name, but it was enough.

  Xavier knew the details of this house he’d never been in before tonight almost as well as he knew his own. Even though it was an older home, it had been renovated at some time, opening up the interior to a more modern floor plan. The living room and dining area were open to each other, one to the left of the front door and the other to the right; the kitchen was separated from the dining area by a half-wall.

  Moving into the living room, he looked around; again, the room wasn’t completely dark. Light seeped in past the edges of the heavy curtains over the windows, plus there were the electronic lights: a small blue one on the cordless phone charger, a bright amber light from the cable box, a red dot on the DVD player. The soft, multicolored glow allowed him to see all the furniture in the living room, and a sweeping glance told him what he was looking for wasn’t there. Damn it, he hoped she hadn’t carried everything into her bedroom, because that could get dicey. He stood in one spot and did a slow three-sixty, carefully examining every chair, the floor, every flat surface—

  Aha. There they were, on the round table in the dining area—the shopping bags from this afternoon’
s jaunt into Virginia.

  This very-early-morning visit—he wouldn’t call it breaking and entering since he did, after all, have a key—wasn’t the safest course of action, but he had to know. Where had she gone, and why? What would take her into Virginia when everything she might possibly need could be found within ten miles of her house? She had been put in this location for that very reason, to make her world small. Routine was their friend. Routine kept Lizzy alive. Her days were usually predictable down to the minute, allowing for traffic variables.

  But not today—rather, yesterday afternoon, when she’d left work. She’d gone in the opposite direction. She’d driven too fast. She’d gone way the hell into Virginia, then turned around and come back, and on the return trip she’d gotten off at an exit that she’d burned past on the first half of her trip. She hadn’t gone just one exit down, as if she’d missed that one; she’d gone several exits down. It was as if she’d been trying to shake a tail.

  Except Lizette wouldn’t have known how to even spot a tail, much less how to shake it. Lizzy, however, would.

  Lizette was a neat freak. Lizette would have unpacked the bags and put everything away. These out-of-character things were little, but they told him a lot.

  There wasn’t enough light for him to see the bags as well as he needed to, and he didn’t dare move them. The rustle of plastic might be enough to wake her, especially if she was recovering some memory and was more wary. Not only that, she might have memorized the exact position of these bags and their contents. He did things like that, automatically, so he’d know if anyone had been in his space.

  He pulled a small penlight from his pocket. He’d placed black electrician’s tape over the end so only a thin sliver of light shone through. He glanced at the window behind him, the window that faced the street. She had blinds in here, bracketed on each side by curtains. The blinds were closed, but even the faintest light would seep through the slats, noticeable even in the rain. Shit.

  He had to take the chance. He moved so his body was between the window and the shopping bags, bent close, and turned the little light on directly over the bags. Just for a split second, long enough only to identify the store name on the bags; then he switched off the light and stood there with his heartbeat galloping in his chest. He, who was legendary for his cool under fire, was about to break a sweat as the meaning hit him square between the eyes.

  Shit, shit, and double shit. A sporting goods store might seem innocent enough, but they were great places to stock up on certain equipment, whether you were into sports or not.

  Two bags and a shoe box lay empty on the table. What the hell else had she bought?

  One of the unopened bags had the receipt stapled to it.

  He wouldn’t have to open the bags if he could get a good look at that receipt. The bags held some bulky stuff, and he wanted to know exactly what it was. But to read the receipt, he’d have to turn on the light for at least ten, fifteen seconds. That was just begging to get caught.

  His options were to pick up the bags and take them into the kitchen, away from the window, which would make some noise no matter how careful he was; or to tear the receipt off the bag and take it into the kitchen where he could read it, alerting Lizzy for certain that someone had been there. His last option was to take the chance of turning on the penlight and reading the receipt right there.

  Option C. If he had to make the guy outside disappear, so be it.

  He didn’t want to kill the guy, though; the poor sap was just doing a job, and taking a decent stab at it by staying awake. Couldn’t fault that.

  The kitchen towel.

  He remembered it, a red-and-white check, hanging on a ring beside the sink. It wasn’t folded any particular way, it was simply hanging there. Going into the kitchen, Xavier studied the towel for a moment and concluded that the only thing she had done out of the ordinary was make certain the towel hung exactly the same length on both sides. And that wasn’t even Lizette; he’d seen Lizzy do the same thing, way back when.

  He pulled the towel from the ring and went back to the dining area. Draping the towel over the penlight so virtually none of the thin beam of light would be visible from outside, he thumbed the button and in the dim light read the list of her purchases:

  A backpack. A knife. A rope. Three canisters of pepper spray. And she’d paid cash for them, so the purchases wouldn’t show up on her credit card.

  He turned off the penlight and closed his eyes, standing there for a moment as adrenaline flooded through him. No doubt about it now, not that he’d doubted his instincts anyway. But this was proof. She was back, or on the way back.

  Lizzy was either getting ready to run or she was getting ready to fight. Would she recall everything, or just bits and pieces? How much did she remember now? Not much. If she’d remembered specifics, she wouldn’t be asleep in her own bed right now; she’d be gone, her backpack filled with these purchases and who knows what else. Would she have filled out the paperwork to begin the process of buying a weapon? No, not in a place like that. If she was looking for a weapon, she’d go deeper into Virginia for an off-the-books weapon, either find a county flea market or make a black-market buy on a street corner. If she started making unusual trips on a regular basis, they were in trouble.

  No, she was in trouble.

  Piggybacking on the surveillance in place on her car, phone, and electronics wasn’t enough, not now. He had to know where she was at all times; he couldn’t take the chance that she’d shake her tail, ditch the car, leave behind this house and everything she’d known for the past three years. Even if she only partially recovered her memory, she was capable of doing just that; she’d be frightened, and not understand exactly what was going on.

  If she ran, she’d take the backpack; why else would she buy it? It wasn’t as if she were going to school or taking up hiking. Shit, he was going to have to make some noise if he took the backpack out of the plastic bag. He could tell which bag it was in, just as he could tell, now that he knew what she’d bought, that the receipt was stapled to the bag that held the pepper spray.

  He needed to get to that backpack. He had other options, but he wanted to cover as many possibilities as he could.

  Maybe he could work his hand inside the bag without making more than a rustle. Having full access to the backpack would be the best option, but circumstances weren’t in his favor.

  Reaching into a pocket, he removed a small pouch that contained three small, almost undetectable trackers. There were smaller ones; some were microdots, but they were more difficult to place, and he wanted to keep his time in here to a minimum. He removed one of the trackers. He’d put each of them into an individual resealable plastic bag, and marked each bag with a different number so he’d know which tracker he was putting on what. Removing one, he turned the plastic bag toward the dim light coming through the closed blinds, and could just make out the number 2. Okay, 2 was going on the backpack.

  Working carefully in the darkness, because he didn’t want to drop the little fucker, he eased his hand into the bag. The plastic rustled, but he moved in slow increments and the sound was faint, nothing more than a scratch. He felt straps. Not good enough. Easing his hand deeper, he brushed against a flap, which would probably cover a zippered pocket. Good enough, even though he couldn’t see what he was doing. Carefully turning his hand, he attached the tracker to the underside of the flap.

  Then he just as slowly pulled his hand out of the bag.

  One down, two to go.

  He took the towel back to the kitchen and looped it back over the ring, carefully adjusting it so both ends hung evenly.

  Now things got tricky.

  *

  She didn’t hesitate, simply walked forward, undressing as she approached him. There were no second thoughts, no thoughts at all, just instinct and need. Skin to skin; she needed it. Him inside her; she needed it. She wanted to feel her climax building and building until she screamed when she came, and she would. In this room sh
e could scream if she wanted to. She could take what she wanted, live with abandon. Here she could live.

  X folded his arms across his chest and stood there waiting, not undressing himself, just waiting for her. Always waiting. She pushed her underwear down her legs, stepped out of them without hesitation, without embarrassment or fear. She reached him, smiled up into his dark eyes, and began to undress him. When she removed his shirt, she took a moment to bury her face against the warmth of his bare chest and deeply inhale. He smelled so good, so real, and she could feel the heat of his skin against her cheek, the way the hair on his chest tickled her nose.

  Even though she knew this was a dream, it was the best dream ever.

  But as great as this was, she wanted more than just the smell of him—much more.

  Tugging at his belt, she unbuckled it, then unzipped his jeans and slipped her hand inside, wrapping her fingers around him and feeling him harden, push against her fingers. He made a deep sound in his throat, more than a hum, not quite a growl.

  She pushed his jeans down and off. In real life they’d have had to deal with his boots, but this was her dream, and she didn’t want boots slowing her down. She was already wet, ready, empty without him. She wanted to push him down and straddle him, taking him hard and deep, but then she’d come and it would be over. She’d wake up, trembling and gasping for air. Not yet! She didn’t want to wake up just yet. It was too soon. She wanted to feel him, smell him, savor every inch.

  His hands wound in her hair, holding her close, making sure she didn’t slip away. She loved his hands. They were big hands, powerful hands that could kill or pleasure, hurt or heal. Some people were afraid of those hands, but not her.

  X lifted her off her feet and walked toward the bed. This was how she liked him best: naked, hard, impatient. When X was impatient, when she was rocking his world the way he rocked hers, he could make her feel … ravaged, and treasured, and loved.

  Lizette’s feet dangled inches from the floor. She soared. She wanted him so much, and he was right there, he was with her, she could wrap her arms around his neck and hold on even as she flew, really flew. And because this was a dream, maybe she could fly. She laughed a little, dangling there in his arms as he moved to the bed … and then she looked to the side and saw her face in the mirror. Her laughter died away as she stared at herself. That was her old face, the one that had been taken from her. She closed her eyes, tight, and when she opened them again her face was the new one, the one that she knew wasn’t her.