Читать книгу Rules of Re-engagement - Лорет Энн Уайт - Страница 7

16:57 Romeo. Manhattan.

Tuesday, October 7.

He stood across the street from United Nations headquarters, watching—a scarred man hidden in the shadows of bare-fingered trees. A wanted man. He didn’t like being back on U.S. soil—illegally, no less. But he was here because he had to be. He was the only one who could stop an inordinately powerful man from bringing the entire nation to its knees in just six days.

And he needed a particular woman to help him do it.

She worked inside that building. She was the key to that man’s inner sanctum, his Achilles’ heel.

His daughter.

Jacques Sauvage thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his coat and narrowed his eyes into the brooding gray mist that was cloaking the city with premature darkness and chill. The trouble was, Olivia Killinger was also his own Achilles’ heel. Her father had already destroyed him once because of it.

Six days—that’s all he had to find out whether she was complicit in her father’s scheme. If she was somehow oblivious to what Samuel Killinger was doing, he would have to turn her, force her to betray her own flesh and blood, the father she adored.

But if he found her guilty, he’d have no choice but to use her life as leverage against Killinger. Either way he could not afford to fail. If he did, millions upon millions of innocent people in the country’s three largest cities—New York, Chicago and Los Angeles—would start dying by midnight, October 13. Just six days away.

And that would be only the beginning.

He hadn’t seen Olivia in sixteen years. How in hell did one begin to bridge a gap like that? Especially when the woman you were waiting for had once been your fiancée—and you were supposed to be dead.

He checked his watch. She should have come out by now. The row of flags—almost two hundred of them—that had clapped bravely in the fall wind had long been wrestled to the ground by security staff, their poles now naked as the scraggy boughs above his head.

Only the blue-and-white UN flag with its olive branches of peace was left snapping against the front sweeping down from the Arctic, dragging the premature chill of the Canadian prairies behind it.

The irony of that lone UN flag flying in the face of the coming storm wasn’t lost on him. Global peace wouldn’t stand a chance in hell if Samuel Killinger’s plan succeeded. War would be his tool, the weapon that would feed his massive corporate coffers. Samuel Killinger and his Cabal were about to launch the U.S. into an era of violently aggressive imperialism that would kill democracy and forever change the shape of the globe’s future.

Unless Jacques got to Olivia in time.

He checked his watch again. The temperature was dropping. Leaves skittered across the road, clattered and churned in the wake of a cab. It was fully dark now, the streetlights just fuzzy halos in mist. Still she didn’t come.

He felt the first spits of rain against his face. Perhaps he’d missed her. Perhaps he hadn’t recognized her profile among the huddled shapes that had scurried from the building into the streets, bent against the cold, making for home. Or perhaps she’d used a different gate. He shifted his feet against the growing numbness in his toes.

Then, suddenly, she was there.

Primal recognition slammed through him. His body snapped tight, and his nostrils flared, as if he’d somehow detected her scent on the chill wind. The muscles of his face grew taut, twisting at his scar as his world tunneled into just this moment. Just her.

The headlights of a car panned round and silhouetted her figure as she ran across the road, the wind playing with her coat like a malevolent spirit, opening it so that it fanned out behind her, pressing her skirt firmly against the outline of long, lean legs. She moved in his direction, her boot heels clicking on the pavement as she neared. His heart beat faster.

A sharp gust whipped hair over her face. She tried to hold it back with a leather-gloved hand, and he noticed she’d had it cut shorter. It looked more chic, but it was just as thick, just as lustrous. The sensation of his fingers combing through those soft waves of chestnut brown clawed through his memory. Jacques inhaled sharply.

Olivia Killinger could still do it to him.

One look was all it took to make him hard in places where memory had plagued him for well over a decade. But this time it was different. Now a ferocity swirled through the heat of his lust, and it fed a wild viciousness inside that scared him. Every molecule in his body screamed for him to storm into the road, grab her by the shoulders, yank her round, shake her, demand answers. Why, Olivia? Why did you betray me?

But he couldn’t do that.

If he made one wrong step with her, if Samuel Killinger found out he was in town, the bombs would blow.

While he had to move fast, he also had to go in carefully. This operation was as delicate as it was time sensitive. And this was not supposed to be about the past, not now. This was about saving the future. This was about protecting democracy and innocent lives. To do it, he was going to have to walk a dangerous and delicate line.

Jacques drew in a steadying breath, and he took a step forward, the word Olivia forming in his mouth, a name that had lived indelibly in his brain for all these years but had never left his lips. Until now. Until this mission.

But as he stepped out of the shadows toward her, his hand rising involuntarily as if to reach out and close the distance of the years between them, a black SUV veered sharply out from the curb and screeched to a stop in front of her. She jerked to a stop. Her head whipped back, as if searching for escape.

Jacques instantly pressed back into shadow, the urge to rush forward and defend threatening to totally override his control. But he had to assess the scene. The vehicle was unmarked with an extra-long wheelbase and a battery of communications antennae mounted on top. When the door swung open, a man in a dark suit un-curled himself from the vehicle, stepped onto the curb, his eyes scanning the street as he moved. Secret Service.

Jacques swore softly to himself. This had just gotten a whole lot more complicated. What the hell should he have expected? The woman was dating the vice president. The woman who was once going to be his was now sleeping with the enemy—the very man Samuel Killinger was going to put into the most powerful office in the world in just six days. Acid filled Jacques’s mouth as he watched.

The agent said something to her and gestured to the open door. She shook her head and stepped back from the car. The agent put his hand on her arm, his body language turning insistent. But she stood her ground, her posture defiant.

Intrigue whispered through Jacques. Why was she resisting?

The agent leaned closer, said something else to her. She hesitated and glanced in Jacques’s direction. His heart stilled. Had she seen him? Could she sense him?

Then she turned back to the agent, and his heart dipped inexplicably. Of course she hadn’t sensed him. Who was he to think she ever even thought of him? He no longer existed to her. He lived in the shadows. The damp chill from the nearby East River nosed into his coat. He flipped up his collar, watched her climb into the SUV.

He’d known she was seeing Vice President Grayson Forbes. He’d studied the tabloid photos of their outings. He’d been obsessed by one particular image where the vice president was touching her bare arm, their heads tilted together in intimate conversation. But Jacques hadn’t quite anticipated how actually seeing the living evidence of her association would make him feel.

A cesspool of dark and conflicting emotions swirled up from somewhere deep inside him. He’d totally underestimated the depth of Olivia’s hold over him, even after all these years. He’d misjudged the rawness of his latent passion, his buried anger, his violent resentment. He’d refused to acknowledge his deep and primal need for revenge. Until this very moment.

He knew in this instant, as the door of that SUV slammed shut, that this mission was going to challenge him in ways he hadn’t even dreamed possible.

The SUV swerved out and pulled swiftly into the traffic. Jacques stepped into the street, raised his arm, hailed a cab, the wind snapping his wool coat around his calves.

“I’m with that black SUV up ahead,” he told the driver as he climbed in. “Go where it goes.”

“Follow that car?” The driver snorted. “Haven’t heard that one in a while.”

Jacques said nothing.

The SUV wove deftly, aggressively, through the evening traffic of the pulsing metropolis. His cab driver kept pace. The rain came down harder, flecking the windows, smearing light across the streets. Tires crackled over the wet surface, wipers clacked, and the traffic began to grow thick.

Then suddenly the congested stream came to a complete halt. Jacques wound down his window, tried to see what was going on. He could make out cops up ahead, stopping traffic. They allowed the SUV to pass, and hastily erected barricades behind it, barring all other access. Several police bikes with flashing lights and sirens swerved out of a side street, and joined the Secret Service vehicle in escort down the now-empty street. Jacques cursed.

Olivia had clearly been expected.

The traffic around them was now a stationary snarling mess, engines choking into the misty rain, dense cloud dropping even lower. His driver laid on the horn. So did everyone else, it seemed. Police were now trying to divert the bottleneck through narrow side streets. A chopper hovered somewhere in the cloud above, the sound bouncing heavily between buildings. The cab radio crackled, but the dispatcher’s voice was drowned to Jacques’s ears by the throb of the traffic and helo.

The cabby twisted his head over his shoulder. “Hey, buddy, you’re out of luck. Dispatch says the entire block up ahead has been cordoned off—vice president has made an unscheduled stop in town.” His eyes narrowed. “You sure you with that SUV?”

Jacques paid the driver and got out. He threaded his way through groups of reporters and photographers gathering along the barricades. A television news van honked as it mounted the curb, dispersing curious pedestrians. The rain was coming down even harder now, releasing the sharp smell of the city streets—a mix of gas, concrete and people layered over cool air. He’d forgotten the scent of New York. He didn’t like it. He preferred the air of deserts and jungles, the feeling of open skies. He asked one of the photographers what was going on.

She told him the veep had slipped into town unannounced to the press, apparently for a private and impromptu dinner with an unnamed female guest. “Like we don’t know who that is,” she said, lifting her camera. “The entire street in front of La Bocca della Verita has been blocked off, and he’s commandeered the hotel above the restaurant.” She peered through her massive telephoto lens, focused. “Police are scrambling with the sudden security detail.” She clicked. “Typical Forbes. Has to do everything with a high sense of drama. No wonder the president is running without this guy.”

Jacques said nothing. He’d heard of La Bocca. It was a famous high-end Italian restaurant. He also knew Italian had always been Olivia’s favorite. He stood against the barricade, stared down the empty wet street, his heart growing colder by the moment.

She glanced sideways at him. “Not a fan, are you?”

“No.”

She smiled. “He does have fans. He’s one of the most eligible bachelors in the free world.” She pointed her camera at the phalanx of metropolitan police behind the barricade, readjusted the lens. “So much for privacy,” she said as she clicked rapid-fire.

She repositioned her camera, trying to get a better angle down the empty street. “And so much for secrecy.” She clicked, then glanced sideways at Jacques. “He’s going to propose, I’m sure of it. Want to make a bet?”

“No, I don’t.” He reached into his coat pocket, found the slim, flat box, fingered the hard casing. He’d been uncomfortable with the idea of using what was in the box. He wasn’t so uncomfortable now.

A bus came to a stop beside them in a cloud of diesel fumes, the side plastered with Vote Elliot posters. Jacques stared at the smiling image of the man who’d hired him—John Elliot, one of the most beloved presidents in the nation’s recent history. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he’d secure a second term in the upcoming election. But that was not going to happen if Killinger got his way before October 13.

There wouldn’t be an election. Forbes would be president, and there would be no elections in the foreseeable future—the beginning of the end of democracy.

His job was to stop that from happening. That’s why he was standing here tonight, in the cold streets of Manhattan, a city he thought he’d never set foot in again, preparing to face down a nemesis he’d never wanted to lay eyes on again, about to confront the woman he was once going to marry. A woman he thought he’d only ever touch again in his dreams.

He closed his fist tightly over the box. This was business. He could not allow it to become personal. The stakes were too high.

He turned his back on the photographer and the blocked-off street. If he tried to slip through those barricades now, he’d alert the cops and Secret Service. He couldn’t risk that.

He’d wait at her apartment until she came home…if she came home, if she didn’t sleep with Forbes in that hotel. She wasn’t likely to bring the vice president back to her place. That would require some serious advance security planning, and it would generate the wrong kind of publicity.

Jacques crossed the street, dodging cars, oblivious to the angry honk of horns. Must be hell dating at that level. Not that he had any sympathy. Olivia was once going to be his wife.

Now she was positioned to become the First Lady of the United States. He cursed softly. He’d loved Olivia—mind, body and soul. He remembered how her skin felt beneath his. How soft the insides of her thighs, how…he jerked to a sudden stop, clenched his jaw in pain and lifted his face to the cold rain, his scar twisting tightly down the side of his face.

Her father must be damned pleased with himself. He’d gotten rid of that “poor bastard from the wrong side of the tracks.” He was giving Olivia a president instead—a man of breeding, a man of wealth. A man befitting his little girl.

Rage mushroomed through his pain. He was going to look right into Samuel Killinger’s eyes when he quashed that dream. He was going to show the megalomaniac bastard just what a guy from the “wrong side of the tracks” was made of. He was going to give Samuel Killinger a taste of real power.

Jacques swore bitterly as he reeled under the pressure of the emotions surging inside him.

He could see now there was no way in hell he was going to be able to keep the personal out of this. That genie escaped the bottle the instant he’d caught sight of Olivia again. This was personal. He was a fool for even trying to think otherwise. It was precisely because of his connection to Olivia and Killinger that he had been the unquestionable choice for this phase of the mission.

The best he could hope for now was to keep a tight leash on his feelings and to maintain his balance—and to remember, above all, that the success of the mission must come first. Above Olivia. Above him. Above this sudden ballooning need for revenge.

And in a few days it would all be over. He could get the hell out of New York and go back to the way things were.

He gritted his teeth and stalked with purpose into the city streets. He made for her apartment, his coat flying out behind him, images of her and Forbes searing his brain as the rain beat at his head.

Garish shades of neon—pink and yellow—slid over his features as he moved between the alleys. People in his path averted their eyes, stepped quickly out if his way as he approached, not because he carried a visible weapon. He didn’t need to. His body was one, and he walked like he knew it.

He had a mission, and he was going to get it done.

The heavy wooden doors swung shut behind Olivia as she stepped into her favorite restaurant. The soft sounds of a harp and the gold light of hundreds of candles enveloped her instantly, but there was none of the usual buzz in the room tonight. La Bocca della Verita was empty of patrons.

Save one. And his entourage.

Vice President Grayson Forbes pushed back his chair and stood up from the only table set for dinner. “Olivia! I’m so glad you could make it.” He stepped forward, arms held wide, an unusual animation dancing in his eyes.

An inexplicable sense of foreboding rippled through her. She glanced at the serving staff and bodyguards lined along the wall. “Grayson…what’s this all about?”

“Surprised?”

She had a sudden, sickening feeling that things were about to come to a head, that Grayson was going to force her hand, and that she was going to have to tell him it was over between them. She’d been dreading this moment.

Grayson was not a man to accept rejection easily. He was like her father that way.

She’d planned on talking to him after the election, after he’d left office. She’d wanted to at least do him that courtesy.

“You…you’re supposed to be in Washington,” she said nervously. “What are you doing in New York? Why…why all this secrecy?”

He took her hands, drew her closer. “I wanted to have dinner with my girl tonight. No crime in that, is there?”

“Dinner?” She tried to smile. “You snarled up half of Manhattan and had me kidnapped by agents just for dinner?”

His eyes turned serious. He pulled out a chair. “Sit, Olivia, please.”

She sat slowly, eyeing the bodyguards along the wall. “Do they really have to be in here?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. She and Grayson had been through this a hundred times before. He knew she was uncomfortable under their constant scrutiny. He’d learned just how much when he’d officially requested round-the-clock Secret Service detail for her, and she’d refused it, as was her right. After much argument, he’d relented. But when she was with him, it simply was not her choice.

Still, she didn’t see why his men had to sit in on their private discussions—like now. It really wasn’t necessary. It had begun to feed a growing suspicion in her that the exhibitionist in Grayson Forbes actually enjoyed the audience, the constant attention. It was just one more little reason that their relationship was beginning to wear her down.

He raised his hand, motioned to the sommelier. “I’ve taken the liberty of preordering your favorites, Olivia. Both wine and meal.”

Even the music being played by the solo harpist was her favorite. Anxiety circled tighter. “Grayson, talk to me. What’s going on?”

He paused for a moment. Then he placed his hands firmly over hers, looked into her eyes. “Okay, why wait? I want you to marry me, Olivia.”

Shock slammed through her. She glanced around the room in panic.

A frown creased his brow. “Olivia?”

“Grayson…I—” She cleared her throat. “This…this is so sudden. I—”

He placed a finger over her lips. “Don’t say anything. Not yet.” He lifted her left hand and he slowly slid a ring over her finger.

Olivia stared at the shimmering cluster of diamonds set against cool platinum, and her mouth went bone dry. She could feel the staff watching from all sides. A buzz began in her head. She felt dizzy. Claustrophobic.

Her eyes flashed to his. “This is…so unexpected, Grayson.” Why had she not seen this coming? Why had there not been a small sign, some warning that things had gone this far with him?

She liked him, always had. And she’d known him forever. His family had owned a holiday home near theirs in the Hamptons. Their parents were politically connected and they were friends.

Grayson was also devastatingly good to look at. He was rich, powerful, chivalrous, charming. And he made her laugh. He’d been obsessed with her since they were teens, but her heart had belonged exclusively to Jack.

And then Jack had gone and betrayed her—in love, and in death.

And even though he’d killed her cousin and fled from the law, he’d still managed to take a part of her with him—her soul.

He’d rendered her incapable of feeling again—really feeling. She’d gone through the motions, but not once had she ever come even close to experiencing the raw passion she’d known with him. Jack had made her come alive. When she’d been with him, she felt plugged in to the very rhythms of the universe, in tune with the resonance of life itself. It was absurd.

Maybe what she’d had with Jack was abnormal. Perhaps it was normal to be like this, sort of even and numb. But the fact that she’d tasted something exotic had ruined everything else. Because she knew it was possible. She knew it was out there—true love, raw passion.

But not with Grayson.

A sudden nausea swooped through her stomach. Guilt swamped her chest. Her hands felt clammy. “Grayson I…I’m sorry, I need some time. I need to think about this. We haven’t—” she lowered her voice, conscious of staff “—we haven’t even slept together in months. I thought that maybe—”

“That maybe I was losing interest?” He laughed easily, lightly, but she could see in his eyes that he was anything but taking this easily. He grasped her hands, a little too tightly. “Look, Olivia, no one said dating a vice president was easy. We have no privacy, no real time to ourselves, no policy book to follow. We’re writing our own rules here. But we’re right for each other. We always have been.” He reached up, moved a lock of hair off her face and looped it gently behind her ear. “And that other thing—” he smiled “—I’ve arranged for a room tonight.”

Panic kicked at her heart. She knew in this very instant how wrong this was. She could not sleep with him again. She’d allowed this to go too far. Her association with Grayson had been pleasant. He’d been good company during her deeply lonely times. He’d helped her see some of her major UN projects through the power halls of Washington. He’d given her causes audience before Congress and the Senate. With Grayson’s alliance, she’d been able to help the less privileged people of the world—refugees, political prisoners held without cause, human rights abuse victims. Her work was her life and he’d smoothed roads for her.

She wasn’t going to lie about it—Grayson Forbes had helped her help others. And that was partly why she’d kept on seeing him, partly why she’d slipped so easily into the convenience of the relationship, the friendship.

But she should not have allowed this to happen.

She honestly hadn’t seen it coming. She’d been about to end it.

Olivia looked into his eyes, her heart twisting. She didn’t want to hurt this man. And she didn’t want to turn him down in front of all these people. It would humiliate him. It would make him furious. And fury in Grayson was a terrifying thing. He couldn’t hide it as well as her father could.

“Grayson,” she said firmly, “this is really bad timing for me.”

His eyelids flickered sharply, and his fist curled over a napkin. She covered his hand gently with hers. “Please, give me a bit of time. I…I’ve been under incredible stress at work, with this refugee project, and the trial in the Hague. And—”

“You’re making excuses, Olivia.” There was a new hardness in his voice, an edge born of hurt. “The timing is perfect. All those things you mentioned have just been wrapped up. I know this. That’s why—”

“That’s why I need a holiday, a break. Out of town. Just to get my thoughts together. I haven’t been feeling myself lately.”

His mouth flattened, and the light left his eyes. Her guilt deepened.

“Can we wait until after the election to talk about this?” she said softly. “When things have calmed down, when you leave office, maybe we can go away together, like normal people, away from the cameras, the press, the politics, bodyguards. We can talk about things.” Her eyes pleaded with his. “Why now? Why the rush?”

“There is no rush. I’ve wanted this for a long time, Olivia. Much too long.”

She took the ring off, her hands beginning to shake. She held it out to him. “It’s beautiful. Everything is beautiful, the restaurant, the music. You. But I’m not ready.”

He glared at the ring. Then he closed her hand so tightly around it she could feel the stones cut into her palm. His eyes burned into hers. “Keep it. Call it a thinking ring. Mull it over for a few days, and I’ll give you another when you say yes.” He smiled suddenly, falsely, reached for the bottle of wine, poured a glass for her and then himself. “Because I know you’re not going to turn me down, Olivia.”

She stared at the burgundy liquid still swirling in her glass. “I…I really think I should go, Grayson. I—”

“Come on, sweetheart, we’ve been together far too long for games like that. You’re here now, share a meal with me. Please.” He raised his glass. “And let’s have a drink—” His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked over the crystal rim. “To our future…and to your answer.” He sipped, his eyes locked on hers.

Olivia reached for her glass and took a deep swallow—too deep.

22:58 Romeo. Olivia Killinger’s apartment.

Manhattan. Tuesday, October 7.

Jacques lifted the edge of the drape slightly with the backs of his fingers and watched the black SUV come to a stop down in the street outside her building. The agent opened the door, and Olivia climbed out.

His heart thudded quietly in the dark.

Another vehicle, some distance behind the SUV, pulled into a parking space behind a sedan that had been stationed across from her building since he arrived. Changing of the guards—there was more than one outfit watching Olivia tonight.

Whoever was in that sedan would have seen him enter her building. They would not, however, know that he’d been heading for her apartment.

He watched the way the row of yellow lights under the portico caught auburn glints in Olivia’s hair. Then she disappeared. She’d be up any minute.

He dropped the drape, moved into position near the door, waited.

The elevator bell clanged softly down the hall. He timed it mentally, how long it would take her to walk down the hall. A key slotted into the lock, turned. His body tensed.

After sixteen years, he was going to hear her voice again.

Olivia paused. Something didn’t feel right. It was as if there’d been a subtle shift in the chemistry of the air. She leaned toward her door, listened, but could hear nothing. She frowned, shrugged it off. It was her; it had to be. Her whole world had shifted on its axis tonight and she was just feeling off-kilter, that’s all. She pushed the door open, stepped into her apartment and reached for the hall light switch—

A hand grabbed hers. She opened her mouth to scream, but another clamped down hard over her lips. She was twisted around sharply, dragged into the apartment. The door slammed shut—and all was dark. Panic punched her heart. She struggled maniacally, but the grip on her only tightened. Her attacker was male, huge and incredibly strong. His limbs felt like iron.

“It’s all right, Livie,” he whispered against her ear, “hold still, I’m not going to hurt you.”

She froze. Livie? Only one person in this world had ever called her that, and he was dead.

“Relax.” He spoke low, quietly, his breath warm against her neck. She could detect the scent of expensive aftershave. She could feel his coat was made of wool. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m going to let you go. Promise me you won’t scream, okay?”

The man had an accent. French—not Canadian French, continental French. Yet there was something familiar about the timbre of the voice, the way it curled through her, stirring something dark and forbidden in the depths of her soul. Her chest constricted like a vise over her lungs. She couldn’t breathe. Her vision blurred.

“Did you hear me?” he whispered.

She nodded her head. He released her mouth cautiously, waiting to see if she would scream. She didn’t. He turned her slowly round to face him, and he flicked the light on.

And her heart stopped.