Читать книгу The Heart of a Renegade - Лорет Энн Уайт, Loreth White Anne - Страница 9

Halyards chinked against frozen masts as they raced down the dock. But just as they reached the stairs that would take them from sea level up to the parking lot, headlights cut round a building, illuminating falling snow. Luke jerked Jessica down into shadow behind a set of pilings.

A black SUV cruised slowly into the parking lot and cut the engine. Luke could hear a second vehicle approaching.

“Quick,” he whispered, “back that way.”

They ran back along the boardwalk, ducking below a wall just as the beams of a second vehicle swung over their position. They held dead still as the tires of the second vehicle scrunched through snow and came to a stop.

Silence grew deafening as tension pressed down on them and snow began to accumulate on their clothes.

What in hell were they waiting for?

Luke peered cautiously up over the wall, his snow-covered woolen hat providing camouflage. His vehicle was at the far end of the parking lot, behind the two black SUVs. He and Jessica would have to get past them somehow.

The passenger window in the first SUV was suddenly lowered. A match flashed, glowing orange. The scent of cigarette smoke reached him, pungent in the crisp air.

Then the driver’s door opened and boots squeaked onto snow. Luke heard snatches of what sounded like Chinese.

“It’s a dialect from the south,” Jessica whispered against his ear as she tried to peer over the edge and see what he was looking at.

He pushed her back down. “Stay low,” he hissed.

He reached into his pack, found his night scopes and trained them on the vehicles. He could make out six Asian men getting out of the cars, all packing serious automatic firepower.

Definitely triad. Somehow they’d gotten an ID on him. This bothered Luke. He rented the boathouse under a false name, paid for everything with credit cards backed by funds from FDS front companies and offshore numbered accounts.

Someone with inside information had to have fingered him directly.

And if the Dragon Heads knew exactly who he was, they had to know he’d taken Jessica and killed two of their men. A contract would be put out on him. Luke knew how these men worked.

Anger welled inside him. This pretty much ended his intellience-gathering gig in this city. Jesus, this was beginning to feel personal.

Jessica edged closer to him, and he could smell his shampoo on her wet hair. “What are they doing?” she whispered.

“Don’t know. Stay down,” he growled, suddenly—irrationally—angry with her.

He watched through his scopes as a third vehicle pulled into the parking lot and drew to a stop alongside the others. Four more men climbed out, assault rifles in hand, black coats fluttering in the cold wind.

Luke felt for his weapon. He had eight rounds in the magazine, one in the firing chamber, spare magazines in his pocket. Still, a 9-mm was no match against the kind of firepower those guys were packing. His best move was evasion, not engagement.

His muscles burned with tension as he watched the posse cross the parking lot and descend the stairs toward the boardwalk. One man remained guard at the base of the stairs and the other nine moved like black ghosts along the snowy boardwalk, making directly for Luke’s boathouse.

They would find his house empty within seconds and track their prints through the snow.

“Jess,” he whispered urgently. “We need to make a run for it. Now.”

She nodded.

He hauled her over the wall and they raced across the parking lot in a crouch, the sound of their footsteps swallowed by snow.

Gunshots suddenly peppered the air.

Luke lunged sideways, forcing Jessica down hard behind his SUV. He dragged her behind the wheel hub, covering her body with his own until he could identify the source of the shots. Another barrage of automatic fire rent the winter air. Luke winced. They were shooting up his place. They had to get out of here.

He reached up, quietly opened the passenger door to his SUV, motioned for her to get in. “The snow cover will shield you once you’re in,” he whispered.

He crept round to the driver’s side, dusted a small hole in the snow that had accumulated on the window, climbed into snow-covered cocoon, and eased the door closed. He watched through the small gap, aggression simmering inside him.

Luke didn’t like feeling this way. Taking a job personally was always a bad thing, it threatened the state of numbness he’d perfected over the last four years.

The booze had taken care of the first year after his wife’s death.

Then he’d quit drinking, clawing his way back out of moribund self-loathing, and beaten himself back into peak mental and physical shape with such sustained and brutal workouts that sleep had finally returned—the kind of sleep that came without booze. The kind of sleep that didn’t allow for thoughts or guilt. Or recurring nightmares.

Maybe in reaching this level of cold command over himself Luke had simply traded one coping mechanism for another, but what the hell—he was doing fine with it. It had saved his life. It had gotten him work with the FDS.

It had gotten him here, to Vancouver.

It had been a way to dull the pain that did not involve the bottom of a whiskey bottle and self-disgust. So why was he feeling things now?

He glanced at Jessica. It was her fault. She’d opened some damn Pandora’s box inside him.

She was shivering again, her frightened eyes fixed on him. She saw him as her last hope. He clenched his teeth and turned away. But before he could dwell on it, all nine men suddenly swarmed out of his boathouse and raced along the boardwalk toward the parking lot.

He tensed. “What the—”

An explosion whumped through air, then another, orange flames bursting out from his boathouse, spreading fast, fueled by some kind of accelerant. It took Luke a nanosecond to process what had just happened. His belongings, his photographs, his yacht, his home—every goddamn thing he owned—had just gone up in a giant ball of fire.

Rage erupted in his belly.

This was more than personal. These men had just declared war on him.

“Luke! What’s happening?” Jessica leaned over him, trying to see through his peephole. He shoved her away, opening his window wide. “Give me your camera.”

“What?”

“Just give it to me!”

He aimed the old Minolta out the window, focused on the fleeing men, clicked, zoomed in closer, clicked again and again, capturing their faces. He switched position and snapped the vehicles, zoomed closer, captured the plates.

He kept clicking as the three SUV’s fishtailed wildly out of the snowy parking lot and sped away. Fire alarms began to clang as flames crackled and popped. Another gut-hollowing whoosh sent shock waves through the air as the diesel fuel containers of his boat caught fire and blew.

Sirens began to scream. People raced out of the other boathouses, black silhouettes against white snow and hot raw flames, some diving into the frigid water to escape the blaze.

Staff and guests flocked from the nearby Granville Island Hotel. More alarms sounded as the fire spread quickly to the adjacent art school and another row of boats. More yachts exploded in balls of fire. Bedlam engulfed the island as Luke silently handed Jessica her camera and started the engine.

“Are you strapped in?” His voice was tight.

She fumbled with the buckle and once he saw she was secure, he flipped on the windshield wipers and hit the gas. He swerved out of the parking lot, racing away from the scene as an army of fire engines, ambulances and police vehicles converged on the pandemonium behind them.

Luke slowed his vehicle as they approached the bridge onramp. Snow was turning to slush and it would be light in a few hours. They needed to get out of the city before that happened.

“What now?” she asked in a thin voice.

He inhaled deeply, wishing he’d never met her. “Now,” he said flatly, “we really are in the same boat, Jess.”

“Where are we going?” He could hear despair in her voice and guilt stirred in him.

“Someplace out of the city,” he said. “Somewhere I can hand you over to the CIA before—” he cut it. Fell silent.

“Before I do any more damage. That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?”

“The damage is done, Jess. There’s no going back. Now we deal with the road ahead. Together.” Unfortunately.

And he was going to make sure he got it over with as quickly as possible, he thought as he cranked up the heater to warm her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

His eyes cut sharply to hers and he saw the telltale glisten of tears. He looked away quickly. He really needed to get away from her soon. Before he let her down. Before he let himself down.

“Dry your hair,” he said curtly in an effort to distract her. “Turn up the fan on your side.”

He pulled off the road about twenty minutes later, just before they hit the notorious Sea to Sky Highway, and changed the license plates.

Jessica studied Luke’s profile as he fiddled with the car radio. The meteorologist was warning of three back-to-back storm fronts, the first of which would hit within the hour. It was almost seven in the morning, yet the sky was still an ominous black. Already a mounting wind was buffeting their vehicle as they negotiated the twisting road that hugged cliffs above a sheer drop to the ocean.

Luke hadn’t said a word since they’d hit this dangerous stretch of road, but Jessica could sense the anger rolling off him in waves. She felt absolutely terrible that he’d lost his house. She was especially torn by the destruction of those haunting black-and-white images that had graced his walls.

“Luke, I really am sorry for the loss of your home,” she said, unable to stop herself.

His hands tightened on the wheel. “Don’t be,” he said. “Not your fault.”

“It is my fault. If it wasn’t for me, Stephanie and Giles would be alive, you’d still have your—”

“You’re thinking like a victim, Jess.” His voice was clipped. “You did nothing to deserve this.”

“Well, neither did you. So I am sorry.”

A muscle began to pulse at his jawline. “Quit apologizing. I told you, it’s my job.”

“It was also your home, Luke.”

His eyes cut to hers. “Forget about it, okay? It was just stuff. You don’t get to put down roots in my business. You don’t get attached to stuff.” He blew out a breath. “Look, Jess, it was a mistake to accumulate what I had. Mistakes happen when you get complacent. This was simply a wake-up call. That’s all.”

Jessica had a sense Luke was anything but complacent. And something about his home told her he did care about what was in it. She trusted her instincts. They’d given her many a scoop in the past.

“How long had you been living there, Luke?” she asked quietly.

“Long enough.”

“So why did you come to Vancouver?”

He remained silent.

She shifted in her seat to face him. “Look, if you just spit it out and tell me who I’m dealing with here, then I’ll leave you alone, okay?”

Again, his silence was almost threatening.

“If you were in my shoes, Luke, you’d ask. You’d need to know.”

“Fair enough,” he said, glancing at her. “The FDS sent me here to establish a small satellite office for gathering Pacific Rim intelligence, specifically on Asian criminal networks that collude with terrorists.”

“I thought you said your company was a private military company.”

“It is. PMCs are moving increasingly into the intelligence field. Clients demand this service.”

“Why Vancouver?”

“That should be obvious—it’s a major port city on the Pacific Rim with a significant Asian population and it’s an easy entry point to the United States.”

“You’re gathering this intelligence yourself?”

“My job is—was,” he corrected, “to get a handle on the key players behind the local tongs and triads and to determine what sort of new businesses they’re moving into. Traditionally it’s been heroin, gambling, extortion, black-market weapons, human trafficking and business and banking fraud. However, the syndicates are moving into increasingly sophisticated corporate espionage and, along with military hardware components, they’re now trafficking in biological and chemical components. I was supposed to assess which groups have the potential to become real political problems.”

“Are the Dragon Heads part of this?”

“The Dragon Heads Triad is at the top of my list. They’re one of the primary reasons I’m here. They’ve been aggressively acquiring territory around the world by usurping long-established gangs and networks. They infiltrate the rival tong or triad, then assassinate the leaders and govern by a code of terror. Anyone who steps out of line is killed as a warning.”

“You say this was your job?”

He snorted. “I suspect I’m going to have trouble fulfilling those functions now that I’m on the Dragon Heads hit list.”

Jessica’s stomach twisted. This just kept getting worse. “What makes you a specialist in this area, Luke?”

“Let’s just say I’ve had some…personal experience with triads.”

She thought about the scars on his back. “Is that why they sent you to pick me up?”

“No, Jess. I was the only mutt available. I just happen to also have significant close-protection experience.”

“Luke?”

He glanced at her again. “What?”

“I heard you say on the phone that you’d refused to do bodyguard gigs for this company of yours.”

“Yes.”

“Did…something happen on a job? Back in Australia?”

His energy shifted perceptibly. “Does this kind of interrogation come naturally from being an investigative journalist, Jessica, or were you just born nosy?”

She smiled in spite of herself. “I get the message. You don’t want to talk about yourself.”

“Right.”

She leaned back into her seat and closed her eyes, fatigue starting to consume her again as the adrenaline wore off. “But I will tell you one thing about me, Luke Stone,” she said softly through closed eyes. “In the end I always get the information I want.”

Luke felt a smile tug at his lips. She’d just issued him a challenge, almost playful in spite of the situation. It awakened something in him. Something that felt very, very foreign.

“That dogged curiosity is exactly what got you in trouble in the first place, Jessica Chan,” he said. “A lesser person would have given up after what you’d been through.”

Like he had.

She opened one eye. “Was that a compliment, Stone?”

“Just a statement of fact, Jess.”

“You do realize you’ve been calling me ‘Jess’ from the moment I met you? Is that an Australian thing or were you just born irreverent?”

He chuckled softly, caught off guard. He liked this woman. She had a way of opening him up. But that was exactly the problem with her. It made her dangerous to him, because Luke didn’t want to go back to being the man he once was. He didn’t want to open himself to emotion.

She closed her eyes again. “Your laugh almost makes you sound friendly,” she murmured.

“Me?”

“Comes as a shock, does it, Stone?”

It did, actually. He didn’t think of himself that way—as nice. Mostly he tried to avoid people. A bluntness bordering on rude usually did the job. His aggressive physical appearance took care of the rest.

He stole a quick look at her.

She’d fallen asleep, lashes dark on pale cheeks, her exhalations soft. An odd feeling quirked through his chest as he looked at her.

Luke returned his focus to the road. The wind was increasing, small flakes of snow were once again hitting the windshield as they drove into the brunt of the new storm.

But while the weather was foul outside, listening to her sleeping next to him felt warm, intimate, and Luke couldn’t help thinking about what she’d just said.

Friendly? Him?

He felt his lips twitching into a smile. The idea was amusing, strange, like the taste of something new.

Didn’t taste too hellish, either.

As they neared Furry Creek, driving snow was settling alarmingly fast on the road. A sedan in front of them skidded sideways, slumping nose first into a ditch at the base of a rock face held back with wire, red taillights upended. Luke glanced at Jessica. She was still fast asleep.

He looked up into the rearview mirror. A vehicle behind him was stopping to aid the driver. Luke kept driving. It was safer to avoid stopping. Stopping might mean engaging police.

But less than one minute later, he saw it was futile. Up ahead lay a police roadblock, luminous pink flares lining the road where Mounties in reflective gear waved certain vehicles off the road with flashlights.

He cursed, wondering what they were looking for. They shouldn’t have an ID on him personally, and he’d changed plates. The RCMP out here also would not likely know about Jessica’s link to the murder of Stephanie Ward—that was Vancouver P.D. jurisdiction.

As they hit a bump, Jessica woke, rubbed her face, then sat bolt upright. “A roadblock? They’re looking for us. Turn around, Luke.”

“We can’t. Not without being obvious.” His brain ticked over fast as they approached. “Jess,” he said urgently. “You never told me how the Triad knew you had taken those photos in the first place.”

“I don’t know! I told only the RCMP. That very same night, my apartment was ransacked.” She ran a hand through her hair, then looked at him. “Luke, they must have had an informant in the police.”

He had to think fast. “Don’t say anything,” he said, eyes fixed on the roadblock ahead. “Pretend you’re still asleep, put that hat on, turn your face away.” Luke slowed the vehicle as he lowered the window. A gust of flakes swirled into the warm interior.

A cop walked over, bent down, a layer of snow thick on the peak of his hat. “Good morning, sir,” he said as he directed his flashlight at Luke, then panned over to Jessica.