Читать книгу Official Escort - Jean Barrett - Страница 12

Mitch paused only long enough to struggle into his jacket before tearing out of the house. Leaping off the porch, he swept a frantic gaze over the empty yard, then the outbuildings. No sign of her.

He was on his way to the barn, prepared to search both it and the crumbling granary, when he saw something. The sun reflecting off something hard and shiny, high on the wooded hill behind the farm. The quick flash through the trees told Mitch there was someone up there. Someone on the move, bearing an object bright enough to catch the glare of the sun. A metal object. Like a gun.

On the heels of that thought came a fear that was almost a certainty. They had somehow learned Madeline was here at the farm, had managed to invade the house and snatch her. He had heard no sound of a car in the driveway, but he remembered there was another lane down on the other side of the hill. Was she being taken to a car waiting there?

Mitch didn’t hesitate. His long legs carried him swiftly across the frosted meadow behind the sheds and up the steep slope of the hill. The morning air was clear and crisp, and on any other occasion he might have found it invigorating. But now it was nothing but a hindrance, its sharp coldness burning his lungs as he struggled through the dry, brittle undergrowth.

He kept scanning the ridge above him, but he detected no further reflections or movements. And all the while he cursed himself for his lack of vigilance. He had to get her back. Whatever it took.

He must have covered half the distance to the top, his labored breath steaming now in little clouds, when he heard it. The sound of something approaching through the thicket above him. He dodged behind an oak tree, the enormous girth of its trunk hiding him as he waited, his gun ready.

Whatever, or whoever, it was came on through the dense growth, unaware of him concealed behind the oak. Seconds later, Mitch risked peering cautiously around the trunk. The sight that met his gaze was one of the oddest he’d ever seen.

There, emerging from the woods, marching blithely down the hill in his direction, was an upright evergreen tree. Nothing else. Just an evergreen that must have been a full six or seven feet in height.

Evergreens didn’t walk by themselves. Someone had to be behind it, maybe using it as camouflage or a shield. He was certain of this when once again, this time through the thickness of the tree’s boughs, he glimpsed metal winking in the sunlight. There was a figure supporting that evergreen.

Mitch announced his presence with a growled, “You’ve got a gun covering you, so drop it!”

The evergreen came to a startled halt and was perfectly still. There was a long, uncertain pause.

“Now!” Mitch barked. “And make sure that whatever else you’re carrying back there gets lowered to the ground with it.”

With a suddenness that took him by surprise, the object that had first captured his attention came sailing through the air from behind the evergreen. At the apex of its arc, it flashed again in the sun before descending to land with a thump in the weeds. Not a gun. Not even a weapon, unless you defined its polished steel blade as a weapon. In this case Mitch didn’t, since he realized immediately that the ax had been used to chop down the evergreen.

A second later that same tree, which he identified now as a fir, was flung to one side, revealing the figure behind it. There was no further hesitation from her, no willingness to be challenged again by the assailant lurking behind the oak. In a headlong panic, not daring to look back, she charged down the hill.

What in the—

But Mitch had no time to question her reckless flight. Fearing she’d break her silly neck on the steep, rough slope, he took off after her. “Hey, hang on!” he shouted. “It’s just me, you little—”

Too late. A root caught her by the ankle, throwing her to the ground, where she rolled over like a log before coming to rest in a little hollow. Slipping and sliding down the incline, Mitch reached her side. Pistol tucked now into his belt, he knelt in the dry grass and leaned over her, intending to help her to her feet.

By this time Madeline was so blind with terror that she failed to recognize him. Or, if she did, to comprehend that he hadn’t become the enemy. When his hands started to close around her arms, she read his action as an attack and struck out at him. Mitch didn’t know quite how her instant and ferocious struggle managed to rob him of his balance, but the next thing he knew he was lying full length on top of her.

It was a treacherous position, in more ways than one. Fighting for her release, she squirmed and heaved under his weight. Mitch took several blows, but they didn’t matter. Not when he was aware of her tantalizing body under his, igniting a fire in him. He supposed he was a bastard for his arousal, for experiencing the excitement of her lush warmth.

To his credit, he did try to make her understand. “Madeline, it’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you.”

At some point she must have listened to his repeated pleas, must have realized who he was. Her body went still under his, and for a timeless moment their close gazes locked, their breaths mingling on the cold air as she searched his face. He could almost taste her. Wanted to taste her.

The moment altered when her anger surfaced. She pushed against him with an urgent, “Off! Get off of me!”

Dragging his head back, he levered himself into a sitting position. She sat up beside him and smacked him on the arm with her gloved fist. There were tears of rage in her eyes.

“What were you doing hiding behind that oak? You’re supposed to protect me, not ambush me.”

Mitch was angry himself, not just with her but with himself for being susceptible to that sweet body. “How was I supposed to know it was you under all that shrubbery? Why did you run like that?”

“Why wouldn’t I run, when every time I turn around somebody points a gun at me?”

“I might have shot you, you little fool, and all for the sake of a— What were you doing with that fir, anyway?”

“Taking it back to the house, of course. And don’t yell at me.”

Mitch suddenly understood. “A Christmas tree! You were bringing in a damn Christmas tree! Probably planning this since yesterday. That’s why you disobeyed Neil and left the car. You wanted to get a better look at the evergreens up here. Where did you find the ax? In one of the sheds, I suppose.”

She wanted a Christmas tree. It was a sentiment that didn’t jibe with the kind of woman he knew she was.

“What’s wrong with that?” she said, getting defiantly to her feet and brushing bits of leaves and grass off her coat and jeans. “And it wasn’t planned. It was an impulse.”

Mitch surged to his feet. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it. You made me a promise last night not to leave the house without me.”

“No,” she corrected him. “I made a promise not to leave the house without telling you.”

“Which you didn’t.”

“Which I did. I left a note for you on the table.”

“Which I didn’t see, since I happened to be a little too busy going out of my mind with worry to notice it. Why didn’t you just tell me in person what you wanted?”

“I meant to, but you were so sound asleep I…well, I didn’t like to disturb you.”

She couldn’t have known that, Mitch thought, unless she had opened his bedroom door to check on him. And since he happened to be in the habit of sleeping in the nude, and sometimes in the night kicked off his covers, there was the possibility that she had—

He looked at her sharply. She lowered her gaze, flushing.

So she had gotten an eyeful of him. Interesting. Of course, he ought to be annoyed that she had caught him in the buff. Instead, the image of Madeline Raeburn standing there in his doorway gazing at him filled him with a sudden heat that made him think of a steamy night in July, not a frigid morning in December.

“Anyway,” she mumbled, “I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss. We’re in the boonies, and no one knows I’m out here but you and Neil, so how could I be in any danger?”

“That’s what you thought about that safe house and— Where are you going?” She had started up the hill.

“To get the tree.”

“You don’t need the tree. Forget it.”

“I do need the tree,” she insisted stubbornly.

All this trouble, and she still wanted that blasted fir. “Fine,” he grumbled, “we’ll get the tree, but I don’t know what you think you’re going to decorate it with. I don’t have any lights or ornaments.”

“You’ll see.”

If I manage to survive her, Neil, I’m not going to let you forget this. You’re gonna owe me forever.

They trudged up the hill, rescued the evergreen and the ax, then dragged both of them back down the hill. Once they reached the farm, Mitch was prepared to turn his back on the whole project—which made him wonder how he ended up in the barn a few minutes later, searching through an accumulation of junk for a tree stand. Miraculously, he actually found one. Rusted and battered though it was, it managed—after a frustrating effort on his part, all of which involved mutters, groans and considerable exertion—to support the fir.

To his relief, Madeline assumed responsibility for the tree once it had been placed to her satisfaction in front of the parlor’s bay window. She had turned up a supply of construction paper in one of the cupboards, which wasn’t surprising since the wife of the couple from whom Mitch was renting the farm was a kindergarten teacher.

Madeline settled herself at the kitchen table with the paper and a pair of sharp scissors she had extracted from the depths of the canvas satchel she’d fetched from her bedroom. Mitch continued to wonder about that mysterious satchel. Once the scissors had been removed, she snapped the bag shut and kept it close to her side. Why was she so careful about it? What was so precious about the contents?

Mitch, fixing a late breakfast for them, tried to ask her about it with a casual, “I’m all out of cornflakes. You got any to spare in there?”

She responded with an unrelated query of her own. “Is there any glue in the house?”

“Try the drawer over there.”

She was either so absorbed in her project that his curiosity hadn’t registered, or else she didn’t want him to know what the satchel contained. Probably the latter. He let it go. For now.

Madeline was interested in nothing but coffee. As he ate his own breakfast, he watched her work and was impressed by the ornaments she fashioned out of the simple stack of paper. A series of intricately designed snowflakes, whimsical angels, loops of paper chain. The pile grew. She was creative. He’d give her that.

Mitch would have been all right if he’d been able to keep his fascination focused strictly on her efforts and not on the woman who produced them. He couldn’t. Gazing at her across the table as she frowned with concentration behind a pair of reading glasses, he watched her lips making quirky little movements that he assumed were silent directions to herself. He kept remembering their encounter on the hillside and how that same sultry mouth had been so close under his that it seemed to beg him to take it.

When he abruptly shoved himself back from the table, she looked up from her work. “Where are you going?”

“To split some wood for the fireplace.”

He hadn’t used the parlor’s fireplace since coming to the farm, didn’t even know if it worked. But he needed an excuse to leave the house, to get away from her and what she was doing to him.

He spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon in one of the sheds, attacking logs they didn’t need, in an effort to rid himself of his mounting tension. When he returned to the house, she had the Christmas tree all decked out with her paper ornaments. Even without lights, the result was impressive.

He admired the tree, and she thanked him. Neither of them referred to the sparks they had been rubbing off of each other since her arrival yesterday. They got through the rest of the day politely pretending that the unbearable strain between them didn’t exist.

Their truce lasted until the next morning, when Mitch, emerging from his room, passed her door and noticed that it was ajar. He figured she was in the shower. He heard the water running behind the closed door of her bathroom. An empty glass on the bedside table told him she must have been down to the kitchen to get herself some orange juice and hadn’t bothered latching her bedroom door when she returned.

There was something else he could see through the gap. The canvas satchel was there beside the bed. It was an invitation he was unable to resist.

Spreading the door wide, Mitch entered the room and crossed to the bed. He hesitated before reaching for the satchel, knowing that what he was about to do amounted to snooping. But, hell, he was a PI, wasn’t he? He was supposed to investigate, especially when it was a woman with a history like Madeline Raeburn’s.

Burying his guilt, telling himself he was entitled to know just what he was dealing with under his own roof, Mitch opened the satchel and dumped its secrets on the bed.

MADELINE HOPED THE SHOWER would revive her. She had spent a sleepless night trying to quell the disturbing image of Mitchell Hawke. But even behind her closed bedroom door, those stormy blue eyes had haunted her.

All day long yesterday, whenever she had turned around or looked up from her work, she had caught him watching her. She could still feel his dark gaze on her, following her with a brooding hostility she didn’t understand.

He had been right, of course. She’d had no business going out on that hill without him. But she’d badly needed to get out of the house for a while, away from its charged atmosphere, away from him.

There was another memory that Madeline couldn’t seem to shake, one that was far more unsettling. She kept seeing him there on his rumpled bed when she’d so unwisely opened his door yesterday morning to check on him before slipping away.

It refused to leave her—the potent image of sleep-tousled hair, long legs and muscular chest, the covers barely draped over another area that didn’t bear thinking about. There had been a kind of flush on all that hard, naked flesh, as if its owner had spent a long night of heated lovemaking. And then on the hill when he had—

You have to stop this. You’re in no position to be intrigued by any man, much less some steel-eyed stranger who seems to resent you, maybe just because you’ve dared to intrude on his privacy.

Madeline’s mind continued to question that privacy, wondering if it had a connection with the harsh lines of suffering around his bold mouth.

Enough. Forget about him.

Impatient with herself, she slammed a hand against the plunger that cut off the shower portion of the tub. She left the water running in the tub itself, however, to wash away the soap and scum.

Her cosmetics bag wasn’t on the sink counter when she stepped out from behind the shower curtain. She then remembered having placed it on the chair just outside the bathroom door. Wrapping herself in her terry-cloth robe, she opened the door to retrieve the bag—

And caught Mitchell Hawke in the act of examining the contents of her satchel.

For a moment their gazes met, hers shocked, his wearing a challenge without apology. Then, outraged by his invasion, Madeline swiftly crossed the room and snatched the velvet pouch he was holding out of his hand.

She lashed out at him furiously. “If you have an explanation, I don’t want to hear it, because nothing you say can—”

“Oh, I’m not going to try to make excuses for myself. Why should I, when I’m supposed to be responsible for you?”

He made it sound as if he was her jailer. She could have smacked him for his smugness. “And that entitles you to look through my belongings?”

“Maybe it does, when it turns up something illicit.”

Madeline frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Those.” He nodded at the articles strewn across the bed. “A hacksaw, blades, hammers, files. And then there’s the matter of that little bag you’re hugging. I saw the stones inside it. They must be worth a fortune. What would you say all of that adds up to, Madeline? Would you say it adds up to…oh, I don’t know, maybe a case of safecracking?”

She stared at him, wondering if she ought to laugh or smack him, after all. “I see. You think I’m involved in some form of jewel robbing.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what branch of law enforcement you practiced back in San Francisco, but you couldn’t have been very good at it.” Opening the pouch, she emptied its shining contents on the bed. “This,” she said, picking up one of the stones, “is carnelian. And that’s a tigereye. The blue ones are lapis lazuli, the milky ones moonstones and opals. All of the others, including the garnets and amethysts, fall into the same category. There isn’t a precious gem in the whole collection. Now, would you like to know about the tools?” She scooped up the three hammers and held them out. “This is a chasing hammer, this one here a raising hammer, and this is called a planishing hammer. I seriously doubt that any of them, or all the rest in the satchel, could get you inside a safe.”

Mitch said nothing for a moment. She watched his gaze travel from the bed to the table beside it. Next to the empty orange juice glass was the enameled pendant she had worn that first night. His eyes came back to her. She saw understanding in them, and something more. For the first time he actually looked contrite.

“You made the necklace thing yourself, huh?”

“And designed it, yes.”

“Okay, so I made a mistake, and I apologize for it. But if all this is just about a hobby—”

“It isn’t a hobby. I’m very serious about my jewelry making. I’m good, and one day I expect to make a living from it.”

He had a look of surprise on his face, as if he thought such a pursuit uncharacteristic of the woman he believed she was. Obviously he didn’t know her, any more than she really knew him.

“All right, not a hobby. Then, why were you so secretive about the satchel?”

“I wasn’t being secretive, I was being protective. My tools are valuable, and I can’t afford to risk them. It’s bad enough I’ll have to replace all the larger equipment I had to leave behind in San Francisco. Do you know what a good rolling mill costs?”

“No idea. Here, give me the pouch. I made the mess, I’ll pick it all up and put it back.”

His hand came out with the intention of closing around the pouch and taking it from her. Madeline, who was holding the pouch by the drawstring, wasn’t ready to forgive him. She started to jerk the pouch back out of his reach. She wasn’t certain whether what happened next was deliberate or merely an accident. She knew only that his hand was suddenly grasping not the velvet bag but her own hand.

Jolted by his touch, she tugged against his grip. She expected him to release her. He didn’t. He went on clinging to her, his strong hand searing her flesh. Their eyes met, and she was instantly lost in his mesmerizing gaze, raw with desire. She stopped resisting, almost stopped breathing.

They stood like that for what felt like a long time. Then slowly, insistently, he drew her toward him until she was resting against the hard wall of his chest. Madeline wanted to believe that when she lifted her head and parted her mouth, it was to voice her objection. But she would never be sure of that, either. Never know whether, instead, she issued a silent invitation he was immediately prepared to answer.

His mouth came crashing down on hers in a deep, blistering kiss—an explosion that involved his tongue plundering hers, the clean taste of him in her mouth, the virile aroma of him in her nostrils. For one uncontrollable, urgent moment, as he strained his hardness against her, his hand dipping inside her robe to stroke the softness of her bare skin, Madeline surrendered to his sensual assault.

Sanity was restored to her at the same time as his own awareness must have surfaced. When he suddenly released her, she felt she was being thrown away. If she experienced any sensation of loss, she denied it to herself. It would have been canceled, anyway, by the look in his eyes as she backed away from him to an area of safety. It was a wounded look, one of naked accusation. Then, without a word, he swung around and strode out of the room.

Shaken, Madeline went to stand by the window. She stared out at the leafless trees against the overcast sky and remembered his kiss. There had been a wild passion in it. There had also been a seething anger. It was the anger that decided her.

Recovering herself, she went back into the bathroom and turned off the water. She was still damp from her shower. She dried herself, fixed her hair and gathered together all of her belongings. When her satchel and suitcase were packed, the bed neatly made, she left the room and went to look for him.

She found him in the kitchen by the back door, hands thrust into his pockets as he gazed out at the barren landscape. Their situation had become impossible, one Madeline could no longer bear. He would have to understand and accept that.

“I can’t stay here any longer. I won’t stay here,” she informed him, managing to keep her voice low and even, though she was trembling with emotion.

He turned away from the windowed door and looked at her. Then, without asking for an explanation or offering any argument, he nodded slowly. That’s when she realized that he, too, could no longer endure this bewildering mixture of stress and sizzle that had been between them from the start.

“Neil will have to make other arrangements for me,” she said. “I don’t care what they are, just as long as he makes them immediately.”

Again he made no objection. He must have known as well as she that they were a mistake together and that giving her back to Neil was the best thing for both of them.

“All right,” he said.

He went to the phone on the wall and dialed. She listened to him speak briefly to someone at the Milwaukee precinct where Neil worked.

“He’s off today,” Mitch reported after he ended the call. “I’ll try him at home.”

Again she waited while he dialed and talked to someone who, by the tenor of the quick conversation, clearly was not Neil. He hung up and turned to her.

“It was the girl who cleans house for him,” Mitch explained. “She’d finished her work and was just leaving. Neil isn’t there. She said he went out to get a paper and coffee and would probably be back in a few minutes. We’ll just have to wait.”

Madeline shook her head, her frustration at an intolerable level. “I don’t want to wait. I want you to drive me to his house.”

Her tone was so insistent that one of his thick eyebrows quirked. “What are you saying? That if we wait I might change my mind, or that if I give Neil the chance, he’ll change it for me?”

“There is that possibility,” she admitted. “But if you deliver me to his door, he’ll have to take me in. Please.”

“Have it your way,” he conceded. But she knew he was relieved by her decision.

Minutes later, with her suitcase and satchel tucked behind the front seat of his pickup, they headed in the direction of Milwaukee. They didn’t talk on the drive. Glancing at him at the wheel, she wondered if he was experiencing either regret or uncertainty. If he was, he didn’t express it by word or look.

Madeline thought about asking him again why he seemed to resent her, and just what had gone wrong between them. But at this stage, what was the point? Turning her attention from the man beside her, she diverted herself with the countryside through which they dipped and wound. Neil had told her on the drive out to the farm that the area was known as the Kettle Moraine. Even under a cold, dismal sky, it was a lovely region with wooded hills and gentle valleys.

When the first snowflakes of the season began to drift down from the darkening sky, Madeline remembered thinking two days ago how a blanket of white would soften the scene, enrich it. It seemed that her longing was being answered.

But as the snowfall thickened, the route began to seem less like a welcome Christmas card and more like a potential problem. She finally voiced her concern to Mitch. “This is getting heavy, isn’t it?”

He shrugged. “It’s Wisconsin. It snows.”

There was no reason to be worried if he wasn’t bothered himself. That’s what she told herself, but by the time they reached the fringes of Milwaukee it was snowing in earnest. The wind had risen, driving a curtain of white against the truck as it crawled through the traffic. Snow was piling in the streets faster than the plows could remove it, making the going hazardous.

Madeline was relieved when Mitch pulled into the driveway of the small, suburban ranch house that Neil occupied. There was no sign of life along the quiet street. People were wisely staying indoors.

Mitch left the engine running and turned to her. “I want you to stay here in the cab while I go in and talk to him. Neil isn’t going to be happy about this. I have some explaining to do, and I’m better off handling that without you on the scene.”

Madeline was puzzled. What could he have to say to Neil that he didn’t want her to hear? She started to object but decided that she wanted no more quarrels with him. All she needed was a fast resolution to the problem and a final parting from him.

“You’ll be all right,” he assured her, turning off the blower that had kept the windows clear. They immediately began to cloud over with moisture. “With the fogged windows and all that snowfall out there, no one will know you’re even in here. Just stay in the cab and keep the doors locked. I’ll try to be as quick as I can.”

His coat strained against him as he opened the door and started to slide out of the truck, revealing an unmistakable bulge beneath the leather. He must have brought his gun with him. He couldn’t have anticipated trouble, not here. He must simply be exercising caution, feeling a responsibility for her until he handed her back to Neil.

But before she could ask him about it, he was gone. Scrubbing the mist off a spot on the window, she could just make out through the swirling snow the dim shape of his tall figure disappearing around the back corner of the house.

Making sure the doors on both sides were secure, Madeline turned on the radio to hear a weather forecast. It was something they should have done on the drive in, but both of them had been too preoccupied to think of it.

She found a news station and learned what she already feared—that the snow was rapidly developing into a major winter storm. When the station started to announce early school closings and cancellations of public meetings, she switched off the radio.

She went on waiting, wondering what was taking him so long. It seemed forever before a sudden rap on the window of the driver’s door startled her. Leaning over, she rubbed away the condensation and discovered Mitch’s face pressed against the glass. She unlocked the door.

There was an urgency about the way he flung open the door and climbed behind the wheel, bringing a rush of snow and cold air into the cab with him.

“Is something wrong?”

He didn’t answer her. Without bothering to buckle up, he turned the blower on full blast, threw the gear into Reverse, gunned the engine and backed out of the driveway. The wheels spun in the snow on the turn. Then, digging in, the pickup leaped forward and tore up the street.

Madeline stared at him. His face was granite hard and grim. “What is it?” she demanded. “What’s happened?”

“Not now,” he muttered, biting the words, each syllable uttered on a note of harshness.

They roared recklessly around a corner, the pickup skidding dangerously on the slick snow. Rocked against her seat belt, Madeline caught her breath and waited for an impact. But the pickup righted itself and went on speeding through the blinding whiteness.

“Slow down before you kill us,” she pleaded.

He didn’t seem to hear her. His hands tightened on the wheel. Her own hands clenched the seat. She felt sick. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. Why were they fleeing?

“Tell me,” she insisted.

And he told her, bluntly and without looking at her.

“Neil is dead.”