Читать книгу Guarding Jane Doe - Harper Allen - Страница 12

The bar was smoky, the music was loud and apparently Quinn McGuire wasn’t going to show. He was over an hour late already. Avoiding surreptitiously interested glances from the surrounding tables, Jane took a miniscule sip of the orange juice that she’d been nursing since she arrived. The ice-cubes in it had long since melted, but even the watered-down citrus tang did nothing to relieve the tight parched feeling in her throat. What was she doing here anyway? How had it happened that her life had spun so far out of control that she’d been reduced to waiting desperately in this raucous Irish pub for a man she’d never met?

In marked contrast to this unlikely meeting-place, earlier today the reception area of Sullivan Security and Investigations had given the impression of a professional and successfully run organization. She should have realized right from the start that the firm was well out of her price range, she told herself now with a brief flicker of embarrassment. The Irish trio on the small stage at the far end of the room launched into a new song, and all around her enthusiastic voices took up the refrain. Her temples throbbed dully, and she set her drink down on the sticky tabletop. The female operative she’d finally spoken with had been diplomatic enough not to mention an actual dollar amount, but her keen glance obviously hadn’t missed the fact that Jane’s outfit was working-girl attire, and that her jewelry—a pair of gold-toned studs in her ears and a leather-strapped wristwatch—was department store at best.

The woman had advised her to go back to the authorities to alert them to her most recent problems and had outlined a few basic safety precautions that she should take, a shadow of sympathy on her features. Even as Jane was leaving the reception area on her way out, the woman had come after her, a little breathless. She’d thrust a piece of paper into her hand and told her that the name and phone number written on it belonged to a personal friend of Mr. Terrence Sullivan himself, and that Mr. Sullivan had suggested she call Quinn McGuire to sound him out about the possibility of hiring him for a short while.

At the time Jane had felt as if she’d been thrown a lifeline. Even after that disconcerting phone call with Mr. McGuire, she’d still held onto the possibility that somehow he might be able to extricate her from the nightmare her life had become over the past few weeks. The man had been brusquely antagonistic, and the mention of Terrence Sullivan’s name hadn’t seemed to effect any positive change in his attitude. But when she’d finally apologized for taking up his time and had been about to hang up, he’d grudgingly given her the name of a pub, told her to be there at seven and said he’d meet her.

If she’d had any other options at all she would have thanked him politely and told him she’d changed her mind, she thought bleakly. But that was just it—she’d come to the end of the line and this Quinn McGuire had been her last hope. Now she was forced to face the fact that even the dubious possibility of his assistance had faded.

Gathering up her purse from the chair beside her, she started to rise. She should feel angry at the man, she told herself, but somehow during the last couple of weeks even the capacity for anger had been drained out of her, overridden by the numb and ever-present fear that seemed to be the only emotion she had room for anymore.

“Waiting for me, beautiful?”

Startled, she looked up and met a pair of bright blue eyes. With a slight grin the dark-haired man staring down at her set a glass of beer on the table.

“Mr. McGuire?” she ventured, automatically distancing herself from his familiarity. He had the same lilt to his speech that she’d heard over the phone, she thought, but without the antagonistic edge that he’d displayed earlier. For some reason a flash of confused disappointment overlaid the nervousness that was her usual reaction to men who stepped across the invisible but inviolate boundaries she tried to keep around her. He was tall and well-built, with a hint of muscle filling out the shoulders of the light wool sweater he was wearing, but she’d expected something more. Like what? she asked herself. Did you think he was going to be some kind of superman?

“I’m not McGuire, whoever the hell he is,” he said easily. “But any man crazy enough to stand up a lady like you deserves to lose his chance. What are you drinking, sweetheart?”

“Screw off, boyo. Now.”

It hardly seemed possible that such a big man could come up so unobtrusively, but suddenly he was there. As Jane’s accoster turned and saw who’d just spoken, he swallowed visibly. She didn’t blame him.

Silvery-gray eyes stared out of an implacably expressionless face that looked as if it had been carved from teak. In stark contrast, his close-cropped hair seemed to have been bleached to pewter by the same tropical sun that had tanned him so darkly. He was wearing olive-drab chinos, and an olive-drab T-shirt strained over his massive torso. He looked about as solid and unyielding as an oak tree. Even though he hadn’t raised his voice, the tables around them fell silent.

“You’d be McGuire, I’m thinking.” The dark-haired man smiled weakly in a valiant attempt to retain some of his previous jaunty charm.

“You don’t have to know my name. You don’t have to do anything but walk away.” The softly spoken words were uninflected and matter-of-fact, but at them the other man swallowed again.

“Sure. No problem, entirely.” Not even meeting Jane’s wide-eyed gaze, he edged hastily away, halting nervously as the other man spoke again.

“Your beer, boyo. Don’t rush off without it, now.” The big man handed his glass to him and, without looking to see if he’d left, sat down across from her.

“Quinn McGuire. Sorry I’m late.” He crossed muscular forearms on the table and met her eyes with no hint of apology in his as he made the terse introduction. “I had some business to attend to.”

Besides the slight brogue, there was the faintest hint of a slur to his speech. Jane stared at him, taking in the other signs that had escaped her notice until now. His economy of movement appeared to be an integral part of him, but there was an additional stillness about his attitude that gave the impression of a man who was trying very carefully to stay focused. Those pale silver eyes, veiled by startlingly dark lashes, seemed to be looking through her and past her. For a moment, she had the disconcerting feeling that either he or she was a ghost.

But that was stupid. It was obvious what his problem was.

“Are you drunk, Mr. McGuire?” she asked incredulously.

“Not enough.” As he spoke, a waitress came up to their table and set a squat glass of some dark amber liquid down in front of him. He handed her a bill, waving away the change. “Don’t let me run dry tonight, Molly,” he said, nodding at the glass. “And it looks like the lady’s drinking screwdrivers. Bring her another, would you?”

“It’s plain orange juice, and I’m fine,” Jane said tersely. She waited until the young woman had moved out of earshot. “Is this the business you had to attend to, Mr. McGuire? Did I take you away from an important appointment with a bottle of rye?”

He gave her a pained glance, the mild expression of disgust looking out of place on those otherwise hard features. “Rye? I’d pour it on a wound if I didn’t have anything else handy, but I’d never drink the stuff. No, darlin’, it was good Irish whiskey. But enough of this small talk. You said Terry gave you my name?”

“He must have made a mistake. It’s obvious you’re not interested.” For the second time in a few minutes, she reached for her purse and stood. “I’m sorry I took you away from your more pressing engagements, Mr. McGuire.”

Despite herself, her voice trembled on the last few words. It was the exhaustion, she thought. It was the fact that she hadn’t had a normal night’s sleep for weeks, and that for days now she’d been living on her nerves, waiting for the next incident. She had no more resources left to draw upon, no more strength. Tonight had utterly defeated her.

She’d pinned all her hopes on this encounter, and the man had shown up drunk.

“My name’s Quinn. Sit down.” There was a harsh edge to his tone, but she’d had enough. The look she gave him was steadily assessing and at it, something flickered at the back of those gray eyes.

For a moment she’d thought she’d seen contrition, Jane thought. More likely it had been relief.

“I’ll never know you well enough to be on a first-name basis with you, Mr. McGuire. I doubt that many people are.” With an effort, she fought back the telltale trembling that had started up again. “I also doubt that you care. Goodbye, Mr. Mc—”

“Stop calling me that.” Like a snake striking, one large hand shot out and wrapped itself around her wrist. His grip was firm but even as she reflexively pulled away from him he let her go. His gaze met hers opaquely. “It’s a bad night to be stirring up old memories. Call me Quinn. And please—sit down.”

She didn’t move. She wouldn’t let herself look down at the wrist he’d grasped and released so swiftly, for fear of letting him see how badly he’d rattled her. “Quinn, then. But the rest still stands. I asked you here because I was told that you might be able to help me, and you seem to have slotted me in between bouts of partying.” Even to her own ears her voice sounded thin and high, and she took a deep breath, willing her tone down to a more normal register. “You made it clear earlier that you weren’t really interested in this meeting, so don’t feel you have to go through the motions now just to oblige me. You don’t owe me anything.”

She smiled tightly at him, holding on to the last of her composure, and turned to leave. Behind her she heard him speak.

“Dammit, Sister. You’ve got absolutely no intention of letting me go to hell in my own way, have you?” His words were quietly bitter and Jane looked back at him, startled. She almost expected to see someone else at the table with him, his voice had been pitched so low, but it was her eyes that Quinn McGuire met. “You’re wrong, lady. I owe you, all right. I’m guessing one of my old debts just got transferred.”

“I don’t understand.” She hesitated. For the first time, he seemed to be looking at her as if he was really seeing her, and his scrutiny caught her off-balance. She flushed a little, wishing suddenly that she presented a more pre-possessing sight—and that desire itself was totally unlike her.

She knew she wasn’t the type to turn heads. There just wasn’t anything so special about her, which made what had been happening to her that much harder to understand. Her hair was about as ordinary a brown as it could get. Her eyes were standard-issue blue. She weighed less than she had a few weeks ago, but she had an average figure for her average height. Her skin, a warm ivory tone, was her best feature, and her mouth was a little wider than she thought attractive.

Men didn’t usually look twice at her. She wanted to keep it that way.

“The Star of the County Down,” Quinn murmured, confusing her further. “Irishmen write songs about women like you.” The pewter eyes darkened and then cleared. “I wasn’t at a party tonight. I was holding a private wake for a friend.”

An explanation was the last thing she’d expected from him, and that particular explanation disarmed her completely. Jane caught her breath in swift compassion. “I’m sorry.” She fumbled with the strap of her purse awkwardly, knowing how inadequate her response sounded. “I—I had no idea. You must want to be alone—”

“I want you to sit down, but I’m damned if I know how to get you to do it.” Under the T-shirt the massive shoulders lifted slightly, as if he was attempting to shrug off the burden of his earlier mood. One corner of his mouth lifted wryly. “Why don’t we start all over again?”

Maybe she was projecting her own feelings onto him, Jane thought slowly, but behind the easy manner she could have sworn there was an edge of desolation in that incongruously soft voice. Still holding his gaze and clutching the strap of her purse, she lowered herself cautiously back onto the chair, her posture rigid as she tried to keep as much distance between them as possible.

“I called Sullivan after I spoke with you this afternoon,” Quinn said, frowning slightly. “He said you think someone’s watching you. He told me there’ve been some incidents—and that these incidents have been escalating.”

“Escalating?” A jagged little bubble of laughter escaped her. “That’s one way to put it. Except when I told the police about this, they said the situation hadn’t escalated to the point where they could justify an investigation. When they can spare the manpower they send a patrol car cruising by my apartment, but I’m still walking around alive and unharmed, which means that my case isn’t high priority—yet.”

“So whoever’s targeting you is still at the skirmishing stage,” Quinn continued. “He hasn’t officially declared all-out war. He must have some kind of battle plan that he intends to follow.”

Her head jerked up, her features pinched “Skirmishing? Battle plan? We’re not playing soldiers here.”

He stared at her impassively, seemingly unfazed by her outburst. Smoke-filtered light from the bar beside them gleamed palely on his hair, and his eyes, silvery and reflective, betrayed no hint of his inner thoughts.

“What exactly have you been told about me?” he asked.

“Just that you were a friend of Terrence Sullivan,” she answered, taken aback. “I went to Sullivan Investigations to hire someone to find out why I’m being stalked—and to keep me alive in the meantime. I—I assumed that’s what you did.” Her voice trailed off. “I’m wrong, aren’t I? Just what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a professional soldier,” he said shortly.

She frowned. “You’re in the military? Are you on leave right now?”

“I put in my time for Uncle Sam.” In the first extraneous gesture she’d seen him make, Quinn raked back a short strand of sun-bleached hair. “Now I choose my own wars, Ms. Smith.”

“You’re a—a mercenary?”

Dear God, she thought. She’d expected an ex-cop, or maybe a private eye who could hold his own in a physical confrontation, and instead she’d gotten some kind of hired gun. He was a soldier of fortune, for heaven’s sake!

“I told you—I’m a professional soldier. It’s what I was trained for.” He picked up his glass and drained most of it, setting it back down on the table with a little more force than necessary. “I don’t work for just anyone, and I never take on an assignment that could conflict with my loyalties as a citizen of this country. But there’s always trouble somewhere in the world. Right now it appears that someone’s waging war against you.”

She stared at him, her thoughts chaotic. Quinn had just voiced the feeling she’d had for weeks now. She had felt like some unknown person had declared war on her—a very private, very personal war, but war nonetheless. And from the start she’d had the conviction that her enemy wasn’t interested in taking prisoners.

With Quinn McGuire on her side there was a possibility that she might be able to turn the tide of this one-sided battle, Jane thought slowly. But before they came to any definite arrangement he had to know just what she was up against.

As a soldier, he would want as much information as he could about both his enemy—and his ally. How was she supposed to tell him that her adversary wasn’t the only participant in this war whom she knew nothing about?

“You said earlier that tonight was a bad night for stirring up old memories, McGuire.” Her voice was barely above a murmur, but his eyes narrowed in response. She went on, knowing that she was picking her way through a minefield. “You sound like a man who’s got too many of them.”

“Everybody’s got something they wish they could forget,” Quinn said harshly. His eyes seemed almost silvery. “Everyone’s got a few too many memories.”

“Not me.” Jane stared back at him, her own eyes shadowed. “I don’t know anything about my life up until the time when I came to in a hospital bed eleven weeks ago—not even what my real name is or where I come from or if I have a family.”

Her voice cracked. She fought to keep it under control. “And the only person who can fill in the blanks for me is my stalker.”