Читать книгу The Heart of a Renegade - Лорет Энн Уайт, Loreth White Anne - Страница 8

Luke strode into his living room, booted up his laptop and set his satellite phone next to it. He hooked his finger into the hem of his sweater and pulled it up over his head as he walked to the bathroom, desperate to scrub the lingering scent of booze from his skin and from his memory, knowing at the same time no matter how hard he abraded himself, he was never going to scrape deep enough to eradicate the drunken nightmares that lingered in the dark crevices of his brain.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he called back to her as he went around the corner, leaving her standing alone in the middle of his living room. He’d check in with Jacques as soon as he was done. “Make yourself at home. Take anything you want from the kitchen.”

“I might just leave!” she yelled after him, irritation snipping her voice suddenly.

He stilled, turned and stepped shirtless back around the corner, his eyes narrowing onto her. “Jess, all that stands between you and a bullet right now is me. I think you’re smart enough to see that.” He turned to go, hesitated, spun back. “But if you really want to go, please, be my guest.”

“You said it was your job to protect me,” she called out.

“Never wanted the damn job in the first place,” he muttered to himself as he kept on walking. He stepped into the bathroom, shut the door and turned the shower on scalding hot. Jacques and the FDS crew could wait. She’d be safe here. Neither the Triad nor the cops had a handle on his identity.

And he was damn sure she wasn’t going to leave. Jessica Chan’s memories might be pharmacologically cross-wired, but he doubted the rest of her brain was. The lady knew how to survive. She’d made it two days on her own with Chinese assassins after her blood. And he was impressed with how she handled tonight.

She wanted to survive.

He had to respect that. Luke knew just how easy it was to give up.

Jessica stared openmouthed at the space Luke Stone had just vacated. The man had one of the most ripped bodies she’d ever had the pleasure of personally encountering. But it was the back he’d turned on her that truly shocked.

Every little bit of exposed skin was crisscrossed with long, pale scars, as though he’d been lashed and shredded within mere inches of his life.

She began to tremble. She steadied herself by reaching out for the back of his couch.

Luke Stone understood torture.

Maybe…just maybe…this man would understand her.

She heard the shower go on and she ran her hands over her hair trying to force rational thought. Panic could bring the hallucinations on again, the doctors had told her that. She had to focus on the present. On moving forward. It was her only option. If she lost her grasp on reality now, they’d finally win.

She was never going to let them win.

She realized she still had Luke’s leather jacket on though it was warm in his home. He’d put on the gas fire and the kettle on his way through the kitchen.

She slipped out of his jacket, draped it over the couch and went to the floor-to-ceiling windows of his small living room. The windows looked right onto the water. He had a kayak tethered to a small deck and a bike was chained against the wall. The lights of English Bay twinkled on the opposite side of False Creek, everything muted by softly falling snow. It was a pretty place. She wondered if the yacht she’d seen moored to the side of the double-story boathouse was also his. She suspected it was.

She turned to take in the rest of his living space. It was paneled wood and purely male—the home of an outdoorsman. Touring skis and a snowboard hung from racks near the door. Technical snowshoes were propped against the wall near a hall closet that hung slightly ajar, exposing a tangle of ropes, carabiners and jackets.

Contour maps, a compass and a GPS device cluttered his dining table. Jessica walked over and examined the maps. They were of British Columbia’s backcountry. Luke Stone’s physique was honed by an obvious passion for the wilderness. He had a taste for thrill, adventure. She glanced up at the framed black-and-white photographs that covered one wall. Their evocative beauty drew her closer.

With mild shock, Jessica realized he’d taken them. He’d signed them in the bottom right corners. A shimmer of interest rippled through her as she peered closely at the haunting images. She understood photography—the artistic nuances of black-and-white in particular.

Black-and-white film was what she used. It was her sanity and she clung to it even in a digital era. Two years ago a nurse Jessica had befriended while in the psychiatric institution in England had given her an old Minolta camera. Jessica started using it to record her days, proving to herself that her day-today life was real, not imagined, that her memories of it were true. She’d become good at it. And when she’d started developing her own work, the act of watching those daily memories take literal shape in the darkroom had filled Jessica’s heart with indescribable joy. With progressive skill in the darkroom came increased mental confidence. That old Minolta had given Jessica the strength to fight back, the will to believe in herself.

Taking photographs had saved her.

Now it looked as though it might destroy her.

She leaned forward and closely examined Luke’s images. The way he captured light and contrasting shadow was beautiful. Poignant. He’d shot mountain peaks and ragged cliffs. Eagles, a grizzly. Oceans and ice at sunset. Deserts with nothing but undulating dunes for miles. A wolf pup in snow. A cougar in the crook of two branches. But no humans. Not even a footprint.

She touched a framed image of a small bear cub watching its mother. The look of need and dependence in the young animal’s eyes filled Jessica’s chest with aching emotion. It was poetic. All the images were. They told her that whoever had held this camera and captured these wild scenes had soul. It was an almost elegiac vision of life in its raw, harsh beauty. Luke Stone had a beautiful mind buried somewhere in that rugged brawn and Jessica suspected there was something sad in there, too.

Because there was sadness in these pictures.

She wondered if he was always alone when he shot his film. Did he need these open spaces for his sanity? Was this his freedom? She had a sense the man was a true loner, a transient who didn’t put down roots easily. Perhaps that’s why he lived here on the water—it offered a sense of escape.

She heard the shower go off and a voyeuristic guilt pinged through her. She turned quickly to take in the rest of the room before he returned. There was no sign of family or girlfriends—no female touch in the decor at all. The only sign of human connection was a small color print pinned to his fridge with a magnet. It showed three rugged and weather-browned men on pack horses in a red desert. She couldn’t make out the faces, but she thought one might be Luke.

Jessica’s eyes settled on his computer.

She glanced in the direction of the bathroom. What did she have to lose?

She hastened over to it, quickly tapped a key that brought the monitor to life, saw a file with her name. Her pulse quickened.

She shot another look over her shoulder and clicked on the file. Her breath caught in her throat. Her life, everything, it was all there.

She scrolled rapidly through the information, her body going hot. He had photographs, her résumé, stories on her abduction in China, the name of her mental institution in the U.K., her psychiatrist’s notes, the medication she was on, even a virtual transcript of her conversation with Giles two days ago…she heard the bathroom door open. Her breath lodged in her throat.

She quickly closed the file and moved to the opposite end of the room, heart beating fast. She hugged herself, feeling violated in a way she couldn’t even begin to articulate.

Why shouldn’t he have a dossier on her, if he’d been sent to find her? But why was the CIA suddenly interested in her when everyone else had hung her out to dry in China?

She began to feel small again. Afraid. And that horribly familiar panic began to nip at her brain.

“Hey?”

She jumped, whipped her eyes to him.

He stood drying his hair with a towel, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans faded in places she shouldn’t look. God, he was good-looking. In a rough and untamed way. He seemed too tough to have the sensitivity for those photographs. Yet there was something in the desolate gray of his eyes, the way the lines fanned softly out from them, that echoed the haunting vistas in the photos.

“You okay?” he said, stilling the towel as he studied her face.

“Yeah, I—I’m fine. Did…you take all of those?” she pointed to the wall.

“Yep.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“Thanks. You want to take a shower? Water’s hot.” He smiled and it reached into those wilderness eyes, giving her a thump of sensation in her stomach.

“I…” she became cognizant of the fact she probably stank of garbage and old liquor from that jacket he’d worn. “I guess I should, huh?”

He nodded. “Yep.”

“I don’t have any clean clothes,” she hesitated. “I guess I’m stating the obvious.” She felt awkward. Seeing those photographs made her feel as though she’d somehow seen him naked. It was a language she spoke, and when you came across someone who communicated in the same visceral way you did, the link was there whether you wanted it or not.

“I left some stuff for you in the bathroom,” he said. “It was the best I could do for now. We can pick up some things for you later. Coffee or tea?”

“I…coffee would be great, thanks.”

“Bathroom’s that way, down the hall.”

She began to walk, stopped. “You’re really casual about this,” she said. “You say it’s not your thing, but…you’ve done it a lot, haven’t you?”

“Picked up women and brought them home? Yeah, I do that a lot.” He said it with such a deadpan expression in his flat Australian tone she wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not.

“I mean…never mind.” She began to make her way to the bathroom.

“You mean killing a couple of gangsters, assaulting two cops and then coming home to make coffee?”

She stopped. “Yes, something like that.”

He tossed his towel over a chair at the table, opened a cupboard and took two mugs out. “Your accent is cute, you know that?” he said, plunking the mugs on the counter.

“And you know exactly what part of the U.K. it comes from, too. It’s all in that dossier on your computer, so please don’t play games with me, Stone.”

His eyes flicked between her and his computer and his features turned serious. He stood to his full height, facing her squarely. There was a latent aggression in his posture that made her nervous.

“You looked at my laptop?”

“I’d like to know what is going on and what happened to Giles in Shanghai.”

His eyes narrowed slowly. Then a ghost of a smile played at the corners of his strong mouth. “Fair enough,” he said, and he turned and reached for a box of green tea. “Take your shower and we’ll sit down and talk.”

Luke felt her eyes boring into his back. He ignored her as he poured boiling water over a tea bag.

He’d underestimated Jessica. He’d do well to remember she was once an aggressive and respected investigative journalist. Landing a gig as a foreign correspondent for the BBC needed a fair degree of global savvy.

He heard her leave the room, then heard the bathroom door bang shut.

He extracted the tea bag, squeezed it as he listened for the shower. She’d be busy for a few minutes. He positioned himself in front of his laptop, set his mug of tea down and punched Jacques Sauvage’s number into his satellite phone. Luke checked his watch as it rang. Dawn would be breaking soon.

“Stone, it’s about bloody time. Have you secured the principal?”

“Good morning to you, too, Sauvage. I have her. But we have a complication.” He proceeded to tell Jacques about his altercation with the police and the two gangsters.

Jacques was silent for a moment. “This is going to make any sort of cooperation with local law enforcement close to impossible.”

Luke shrugged, sipped his tea. “I made an executive decision. Those guys were out to kill her. My guess is they’re Dragon Heads, affiliated with Xiang-Li. They don’t want the photos getting out.”

“You manage to drop the tail?”

“Yep.” He sipped from his mug. “What can I tell her?”

“Everything. I’m liaising personally with CIA director Blake Weston on this and he’s given no instructions to hold anything back from her. All he wants is the woman, her film and her testimony. He’s setting up some form of witness protection for her.”

“When are you sending someone to pick her up?”

Jacques hesitated. “You’re going to have to hold on to her for a while, Stone, until—”

He slammed his mug down, sloshing hot tea onto his hand. “Wait a minute, Sauvage, we had a deal. You told me this woman would die if I refused this job. You said I was the only one who could get to her in the time frame. You also said you were going to take her off my hands ASAP!”

“I’m sorry. I’ve had to target all our spare resources elsewhere. You’re all I’ve got out there right now. You can handle one woman, Stone.”

Luke swore viciously. “Listen up, Sauvage, I’m not a goddamn babysitter. You’re in breach of my contract. I can walk from this—”

“Can you, Stone?” Jacques’s voice was cold.

Luke cursed again, dragged his hand over his hair.

“Look, I know what happened to your family in Australia. I know that’s why you wanted out. But you’re the best in the business and you’re all we’ve got. You can do this.”

“Why the hell should I?”

“You want to stay on FDS books, don’t you?”

Luke was quiet for a moment.

“If you turn her out onto the streets now, the woman dies. It’s simple. And it’s your call.”

Luke closed his eyes. He felt sick to his stomach. This was exactly what he didn’t want—sole responsibility for a woman’s life. Images of blood seared his brain. He could smell it. He could feel the warm body of his wife in his arms, dying. The blood from the baby. So much blood.

Luke had managed to take care of everyone, except the woman he loved. She’d died pregnant with his child because he’d been too damn busy protecting someone else. His family had been slaughtered because of him.

He hadn’t wanted to live after that. Almost chose not to. But he hadn’t quite found the guts to kill himself.

“Stone?”

Luke inhaled deeply. “Okay,” he said coolly, very quietly. “But if I fail, it’s on your head.” He wasn’t taking responsibility on this one. He couldn’t. Never again.

“You’re still the best at this, Stone,” Jacques said, just as quietly. “We both know you are.”

“You overestimate me, mate.”

“I believe in you. It’s why I hired you. It’s why I’m asking you to do this now.”

Silence.

“And…Stone, try and stay somewhat inside the law, would you? Cooperation with the Canadians is going to be tough enough down the road as it is, especially now that you’ve engaged the cops.”

“I’ll do what I can.” Luke hit a button and killed the call. He sat back in his chair, eyes closed.

“I’ll leave if you want me to.”

He jerked to his feet and spun to face Jessica. “Jesus! How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to know you want me ‘off your hands’….”

He forced air from his lungs with a puff of his cheeks and rubbed his brow hard. “And just where do you think you would you go?”

She shrugged and he noticed suddenly how feminine and vulnerable she looked in his oversized cargo pants, T-shirt and sweater. Her hair was wet and her skin scrubbed to an innocent glow. But it was her eyes and mouth that did him in. There was nothing vulnerable there. They were provocatively sexy as all get-out. He thought about all this woman had endured, what she’d once had in life and what had been taken from her by the Triad. And his heart squeezed sharp and fast. He—if anyone—should understand.

It was a Triad that had taken his wife and child in Australia.

He turned his back on her, stalked into the kitchen and poured a coffee. She accepted it with both hands and a slight bow of the head—a gesture he found both exotic and genuine, endearing.

“You want something to eat?”

She shook her head.

“Okay, then. Lets talk.” He pulled out a chair at the dining room table. “Sit.”

“I…I don’t want to be in your way if—”

He snorted. “If what? Look, I’m sorry you heard that, but understand this: I took the job. And I don’t quit something once I sign on.”

Only fail. I can still fail.

“Don’t worry, I won’t fail you, Jess.” He had no idea why he said it. But there it was. Some part of him was determined not to let this woman—or himself—down.

“Now sit.”

He scooped up the maps and seated himself opposite her.

“I’m going to bring you up to speed. But first priority is for you to tell me how those guys knew you were going to be at that pay phone. Who else knew you were going to call Giles Rehnquist from that booth, at that time?”

Jessica looked into his eyes. “Absolutely no one.”

“You must have told some—”

She set her mug down firmly. “I told no one.”

His brows lowered. “Could someone have overheard? Think. Maybe you—”

“Listen to me, Stone.” She couldn’t call him Luke, not now, not after what she’d overheard. “Whatever people might say, I am not crazy. I’m sick to death of all those knowing, sympathetic glances. I took those photos because I want my life back.” Her eyes burned with hot emotion. “And since you’re stuck with me now there is one thing you better know about me. Those men may have taken everything they possibly could have from me and they may want to kill me, but I will not run from them. I don’t run from anything. Ever.”

He pursed his lips, nodded slowly, something akin to admiration in his eyes. “Then you’re a better person than I, Jessica Chan,” he said very quietly.

“What?”

“Nothing. So you believe the only person who knew you were going to be there at that time was Giles?”

“Damn right.”

“Why did you call him?”

“Because he is—was—a friend, someone I could trust. Giles was the only person who truly believed in what happened to me in Hubei three years ago. He believed the man I call The Chemist exists and is a high-level assassin for a covert faction within the ruling party.” She paused, staring at her coffee. “Before my abduction, Giles had been helping me investigate collusion between the Dragon Heads crime syndicate and top officials in the Chinese Communist Party. We had a deal that he could use whatever information I had once I broke the story.” She lifted her eyes to his. “Giles knew the players. He understood the government and he knew the workings of the Triad intimately. I needed his advice. That’s why I called him. He said he’d find a way to help me and he told me to call back in two days, from that same phone at that time. He told me to find an ATM somewhere on the other side of town, withdraw whatever cash I could and use it to find a cheap hotel.”

Jessica took a sip of her coffee, welcoming the warmth that diffused through her chest. A distant part of her mind noted that while Luke had made coffee for her, his choice for himself was green tea.

“Is that what you did?”

She nodded. “I found a hotel in Gastown where a single woman renting a room by the night is not unusual. I paid cash upfront and I stayed in that room until it was time to make the call.”

“And no one followed you?”

“I don’t see how they could have. If they knew I was there they would have come for me earlier, right?”

Luke lowered his brows, studied her. “What about food?”

“I didn’t eat.”

He nodded slowly, a strange look sifting into his eyes. “You didn’t think it strange that Giles made you call back from the exact same phone?”

“I…I guess I did. But I knew he had to have his reasons. He had contacts and I was clean out of options.”

“He was CIA, Jess.”

She felt her jaw drop. Her whole world tilted and resettled slightly off axis.

“Are you sure?” she asked quietly.

“Dead sure. He wanted a fix on your location while he contacted Langley for direction. He wanted to be sure they could get to you.”

She dropped her face into her hands, rubbed her skin. Then looked up. “I…I don’t understand.”

He opened his mouth to say something, a strange expression in his features. Then he changed his mind, shut his laptop and surged to his feet. “Grab your camera bag, Jess.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.” He reached for a backpack. “If the conversation you had was exclusively between you and Giles and you’re one-hundred percent certain there is no way this information got out from your end, it leaves only one alternative—it got out on Giles’s end in Shanghai. And that means we need to move. Fast.”

He tossed her a down parka and thick woolen hat then shut his laptop and slid it into his pack along with his satellite phone. He crouched down, unscrewed a bolt under his kitchen table and lifted the top, revealing a large compartment under the surface. He scooped up what looked like different passports and ID’s, some license plates, a roll of duct tape, a radio, a scanner, technical field glasses, a knife and rounds of ammunition.

She stared blankly.

“Put the coat on,” he barked as he snagged his wallet off the counter.

“Why? Where are we going?”

He took her arm, helping her into the parka. “If Xiang’s men were tipped off about the rendezvous at the phone booth, they may also have been tipped off about me. They might know you’re here right now, in my house. Until we know what the hell is going on, and how that information got out from Shanghai, we need to go to ground.”

“Wait, I don’t understand! You’re saying Giles sold me out?”

“I’m saying there must have been a leak somewhere in the chain—an informant with a direct line to the Triad here in Vancouver.”

“But how?”

“I don’t know. It’s probably what got Giles killed and, until we find that leak, we’re sitting ducks, too.”

She stood dumbfounded as he grabbed his leather jacket.

“Now, Jess, move! They could be here any second.”

They shot out the door and fled into the darkness, Luke guiding Jessica over the thick snow that now covered the boardwalk.