Читать книгу And Able - Lucy Monroe - Страница 8

Claire flipped off the call light for Lester’s room before making her way down the silent hallway to see what he needed. It was late, almost three in the morning, and few Belmont Manor residents were awake. Perhaps Lester was even the only one.

She found him clad in a robe and pajamas, sitting up in a chair and thumbing through a composition book like the ones she used to take notes in her classes.

“Did you need something, Lester?”

He looked up, his dark eyes intimidating even in a weathered face attached to a body stooped by age. “Just a little company. You didn’t work yesterday.”

According to the nurses and other aides, he never called for late-night company on the nights she had off. Maybe they didn’t listen with the same amount of tolerance to his sometimes confused ramblings. She’d had a lot of practice with her mom; Lester’s dementia was less taxing to her patience than her mom’s drunken discourse had been.

She smothered a yawn. “My best friend got married today…or yesterday, rather.” She smiled at the memory. Josette and Nitro were the perfect couple, and her friend deserved to be supremely happy; she was such a sweetheart. And Claire thought Nitro might actually turn out to be a man who could be counted on in the long run. “I took the night off to help her with last-minute preparations.”

Lester frowned. “I never got married.”

“I know.”

“A hired killer doesn’t make a good husband.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” she said, humoring him.

He looked down at the book in his lap and then shut it. “I killed too many people. Couldn’t bring myself to marry even after I retired. What if I talked in my sleep? I’d have had to kill my own wife.”

She didn’t know how much of what he said was truth, or how much was fantasy, but sometimes it sounded so real it was chilling. This was one of those times.

“I don’t think you would have killed your own wife, Lester.”

His gaze turned so cold it made her shiver. “You can’t let your emotions get in the way of a kill when you are a professional. I was a professional. The best.” Unmistakable pride laced his voice. “I would have done whatever I had to, but I didn’t want to face that kind of circumstance…so I never got married.”

“Were you lonely?” she asked, thinking of her own future stretching out years ahead of her.

Maybe putting up with sex was worth it to have a family, but then she’d have to deal with the vagaries of life and the risk that it could batter her kids the same way it had battered her. It didn’t seem fair to have kids in a world like the one that existed today.

“Never got lonely. Life is too full of interesting things to see and do. You appreciate that when you see a lot of death.”

“I imagine you do.”

“I like having you and Queenie around now, though. She’s a firecracker.” He smiled, his expression warming about twenty degrees. “If I had known I’d meet her in a place like this, I would have moved in sooner.”

“The feeling is obviously mutual. Queenie thinks you are a king among men.” Sweet and as bubbly as a bottle of soda pop, the other Belmont Manor resident had shown her preference for Lester from day one. Talk about opposites attracting.

“She’s nuts. I told her about what I did, but she just thought it made me more mysterious. She even read my kill book. The working of a woman’s brain is a mystifying thing.”

Not in the least offended, Claire laughed. “I suppose it must seem that way to you.”

“JFK’s not as safe as he thinks he is,” Lester said, slipping back into the past.

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“I tried to tell Marv at the agency, but he said presidential safety wasn’t his detail. No one else in the government outside the agency knows I exist. They won’t listen to me.”

“Who is Marv?” she asked, curious in spite of herself.

“You know who he is. My contact with the agency. We were together in the war. He wasn’t much of a sniper, but he sure understood logistics.”

“World War I?”

“Yeah. You okay, Melba? You sure are asking some strange questions.”

Every once in a while he called her Melba, and all she’d learned about the other woman was that she’d worked in some secretarial capacity for Lester a long time ago. His senility was growing steadily worse, but Claire still liked being around him. She didn’t care if he made sense. He was an interesting man and knew more about odd trivia than she did.

She couldn’t stay and visit too long tonight, though, no matter how much she might want to. A group of politicians was coming on Monday to tour the facility. Apparently it was some part of a report they were doing on the living conditions of the elderly in Oregon.

It was up to her and the rest of the junior staff to make sure the place shone with cleanliness and gave the appearance of a healthful environment. Not that it wasn’t usually clean, but this was like spring cleaning at the end of summer.

Hotwire walked into his office and did a quick visual check of his equipment. A light flashed, indicating Claire’s alarm had gone off. He swore, adrenaline pumping into his blood, an immediate sense of impotency sweeping over him. What could he do for Claire from his home in Montana?

Nothing. He didn’t like knowing that. Not one bit.

Fortunately, the light was yellow, which meant she’d turned it off…or someone had.

He grabbed the phone and dialed Claire’s number.

She picked up on the third ring, sounding breathless. “Hello?”

That breathy little hello instantly started him thinking of her writhing in the middle of an acre of silk sheets. The predictable effect of his imagination on his cock wasn’t exactly comfortable. He grimaced. “It’s Hotwire.”

“Uh…hi.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Sure. Um…is there some reason it shouldn’t be?” She sounded guiltier than a kid caught sneaking out of her bedroom window after curfew.

“Your alarm went off.”

“Did you give the police instructions to call you if it did?” Her voice vibrated with outrage. “Don’t you think that’s a bit excessive? I do not need a baby-sitter. Seriously. What were you thinking? Don’t tell me this was Josette’s idea. Sheesh, I don’t know what you thought you could do about it, in any case.”

He’d noticed before that she talked fast and furiously when she was concerned about somebody else, angry, or feeling self-conscious. He wondered which one she was at the moment. She sounded mad, but there was something in her voice that hinted at embarrassment, too.

“Tell me about the alarm, Claire.”

A big, heavy sigh came across the phone line. “Classes are over in another week and a half.”

“So?”

“Well, my final project in my Unix programming class is due. There’s a glitch in the program and I’ve been trying to figure it out.”

“What does that have to do with the alarm going off?”

“I forgot to use the remote code on my laptop to disarm it when I got home.”

“There’s a keypad inside as well.”

“I wasn’t thinking about the alarm. I told you, I was trying to figure out my program…I didn’t think about the alarm at all.” That was definite chagrin in her voice. “Not until it went off, anyway.”

“Did the police come?”

“You know they did.”

In fact, he hadn’t. “Good.”

“It wasn’t good. It was awful. I was a nervous wreck trying to explain the alarm to the police. What if they’d thought I was the one breaking in? After all, the house doesn’t belong to me.”

“That’s highly unlikely.”

She grunted, the sound one of pure disgust. “I was mortified. The neighbors came out and gawked. One of them even came over to make sure I was all right.”

“How long did the alarm go off before you noticed it?” he asked, trying to control the amusement in his voice.

“I don’t know.” She sounded petulant and he’d never heard her sounding that way.

It made him horny. Heck, just about everything she did made him want her.

“I’m surprised your neighbor came to check on you.”

“He’s ex-military. A retired SEAL or something. You guys are all alike…interfering.”

He laughed.

She made a sound like steam escaping a teakettle, and he bit off his laughter.

“That alarm is a big pain.” Something in her tone alerted him and he started running a diagnostic on the system from his computer.

“No strange phone calls, or anything?” he asked, just to keep her talking while the system ran its check.

“Other than this one? No.”

“There’s nothing odd about one friend calling to check on another.”

“I thought you were Josette’s friend.”

“Is there anything that says I can’t be yours as well?”

“Um…no.”

“Good.” Then his computer beeped and he glared at the screen, wanting to bite something. “Why did you disable the alarm, Claire?”

There were probably only a handful of people in the country that could have done it without the code, which he had not given her on purpose. And according to the stats he was now looking at, she’d done it a lot faster than even she should have been able to.

“How do you know I did?”

“I ran a diagnostic.”

“Oh. You mean you have my security system hooked up to your computer?”

“Yes.”

“That’s how you knew it had gone off?”

“Uh-huh. I didn’t leave instructions for the cops to call, but maybe I should fix that.”

“Don’t you dare. This was humiliating enough as it is.”

“The alarm can’t do you any good turned off.”

“I’m not having the police out here every other day because I accidentally set it off. That’s just not okay, Hotwire.”

“So don’t set it off.”

She was silent on the other end of the line.

“Come on, sugar. I know you struggle with focusing on the world around you sometimes, but you can train yourself to remember the alarm.”

“Why do you call me sugar? I’m not a piece of candy.”

“You taste as sweet as one.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Trust me. I’d rather suck on your tongue than a peppermint stick any day of the week.”

“You’re flirting with me,” she said accusingly.

“And I bet you’re blushing.” She acted tough, but she reacted to the attraction between them with more vulnerability than he was sure she wanted to admit to.

She sighed, the soft sound shivering through him. “Maybe.”

“You’re awfully innocent for a woman of twenty-eight.”

“Innocent is one thing I’m not.” The cynicism in her tone was absolute. “And how did you know how old I am? Did you hack into my identity records?”

“No. I found out the old-fashioned way. I asked Josie.”

“Oh.”

“You’re not going to sidetrack me from the issue at hand.”

“I wasn’t trying to sidetrack you.”

No, it probably hadn’t been on purpose. She just had a tendency to jump from one subject to another. “I’m turning the alarm back on and this time I want you to leave it that way.”

“If it goes off again, I’m cutting the wires.”

“You’ll do no such thing.”

“Watch me.”

“You do not have authorization to dismantle the alarm.”

“This is not the military. I don’t need authorization. I’m the one living here. If I don’t want an alarm disrupting my life, I don’t have to have one.”

“Then move out, but as her renter, you have no right to circumvent measures Josie has put in place to protect her property. The alarm and the house it safeguards belong to her, not you.” The words were harsh, but he had no choice.

He couldn’t force her to keep the alarm enabled from several hundred miles away, and he’d already used the argument about Claire’s own safety to no avail. She refused to give credence to his concerns, but that didn’t make them any less real. And he refused to dismiss them because she didn’t want the inconvenience of remembering the alarm.

“You’re right,” Claire said, her voice subdued. “I’m just the renter. This isn’t my home. I won’t disconnect the alarm again. If that was all you needed…”

Josie was going to kill him. He’d hurt Claire’s feelings and he wasn’t all that happy about it himself. “Claire—”

“Thank you for calling to check on m…the house. As I said, everything is fine.”

“Sugar—”

“I’ll try not to inconvenience you again. Good-bye.”

The phone went dead in his ear and he swore pungently, glad his mama wasn’t there to hear him. His army drill sergeant had never intimidated him like her five-feet-nothing of southern belle charm.

He hadn’t meant to hurt Claire, and he had not called to check on the damn house. His jaw ached from clenching it as he reset the alarm. He checked his messages and e-mail, but couldn’t get the hurt tone of Claire’s voice out of his head. Finally, he gave in and called her again.

She didn’t pick up, and he checked her schedule only to realize she had a class and would be working later that night. He left a message telling her he had rearmed the system, but didn’t know what to say to undo the damage he’d done to her feelings, or even if it was a good idea to try.

Choking back tears, Claire unlocked her front door.

Lester was dead. She couldn’t believe it. He’d been at Belmont Manor practically since she started working there three years ago. There had been other deaths over that time. How could there not be, with the average age of the residents seventy-five years? But Lester was different. Lester was special. She’d loved him like family.

For a woman who had known as little family as she had, that meant something.

Just the night before, they had sat talking for over two hours and he had been mostly lucid. He’d told her more about his life as a paid assassin and she was convinced now that most of what he told her was real. He’d only started telling her about it this last year, since his senility had worsened, so it had taken a while to sort truth from hallucination. Unless he hallucinated the same things consistently, the stuff about his dark alter ego was real.

She’d told him she was surprised he’d lived so long, considering what he did, but he said he’d kept his real identity a strict secret. The government and clients for his private jobs had only known him by the name Arwan…Celtic god of the dead. It was fitting for what he had done.

Only she didn’t care what he’d been in his past; he had been an important part of her life now and it hurt so much that he was gone. He was the closest thing she’d ever known to a father figure she could respect, which was pretty darn pathetic, but there it was.

She shut the door as the tears started to fall. She swiped at them and belatedly remembered the alarm. Saying a word she rarely used, she rushed across the room to its hidden keypad and coded in her entry before it went off again. She made it just in time and disarmed the system through the veil of moisture blurring her vision.

It was a good thing she really did plan to move, because she hated having to remember the alarm. She would miss this house, but just like everywhere she had ever lived…it wasn’t her home. It wasn’t permanent. She was just a renter.

She’d lived a lot of places in her life, some of them scarier than others, but they’d all had one thing in common…they had been temporary stops, and this house was, too.

She wasn’t hungry and she couldn’t face studying. She was exhausted from grief over Lester and working after almost no sleep for the second weekend in a row. She stumbled down the hall to her bedroom, stopping along the way to reset the alarm.

That should make Hotwire happy.

Claire was dreaming. She was sleeping in the front seat of the old Buick she and her mom had called home for a few months when she was twelve. Part of her knew it was a dream, that she was a grown-up woman now, living in a house, not a car, but everything felt so real. She could even smell the must of the perpetually wet floor carpets.

She could hear her mom’s slow breathing from where she slept in the backseat and she could hear a siren’s wail. It was really close. The cops were coming…they would arrest her mom and put her in jail, too. Or maybe juvenile hall. Wasn’t it illegal to live in someone else’s abandoned car? She didn’t want to go to jail.

She started to whimper, fear clawing through her insides like an angry cat. Something came flying over the seat and landed against her face. Her mom’s pillow? Why had she thrown it? Claire tried to push it away, but it wouldn’t budge.

She struggled, desperation choking her.

She came awake with a jolt. She couldn’t breathe. There was something against her face and she could still hear the siren’s wail from her dream.

It was the alarm.

Someone had broken in. Someone who was holding a pillow over her face.

She opened her mouth to scream, but the pillow blocked it.

She thrashed, but couldn’t get any leverage.

The person was saying something. Counting. Her hands flailed and her right one hit a hard object. Then she remembered.

Hotwire had made her put a can of mace at the head of her bed. Weak from lack of oxygen, she grappled for it. There…got it. She fumbled with the safety, terrified she wouldn’t get it undone in time. Then, she directed it above the pillow over her face and pressed the button. And kept pressing while she waved it back and forth.

Vicious swearing. No more weight against the pillow. She pushed it up and sucked in air while terror-induced adrenaline caused her body to buck under her assailant. She managed to knock him sideways. She rolled off the other side of the bed and hit the hardwood floor with a thump.

The phone was ringing, but she couldn’t move to answer it. She was too busy trying to breathe. She pushed up onto her knees and sucked in one shuddering, noisy breath and then another. Her lungs were still starving, but she had to get out of there.

Her assailant lurched to his feet and lunged for her with a clumsy movement. She brought the mace up and sprayed again, this time aiming directly for the eye holes in his dark ski mask. He reared back, screaming. She ran for the door, but her oxygen-deprived body was clumsy.

She made it to the hallway, the house alarm screaming around her. Disoriented, it took her a fraction of a second to decide which way to go. She rushed for the front door, but she was only halfway across the living room when something grabbed her hair and yanked. She went backward and landed with a painful jarring flat on her back.

She saw the foot coming toward her head, but couldn’t do more than try to roll out of the way. She didn’t make it. Pain exploded in the back of her head and then everything went black.

Her head hurt like someone had used it for hitting practice with a brick bat. She groaned.

“Miss Sharp, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” came out a husky slur.

“Can you open your eyes?”

“Can try…” She willed her eyelids to peel back and winced when they did. “Too bright.” She shut them again.

“Please, Miss Sharp, I need you to open your eyes and keep them open.”

“Hurts…”

“I’m sorry.” The voice was kind.

She would try to do what it wanted.

She opened her eyes again, this time blinking at the brightness and trying to let her vision adjust. A light flicked in her left eye and then her right. She flinched from it. “No.”

“I won’t do it again.”

“Okay. Thank…you…” Her voice trailed off when she found it impossible to finish the thought.

He touched her head all over and her neck, asking questions. She tried to answer, but she cried out in pain when he probed the back of her skull.

“You’ve got a nasty bump here.”

Memories were flooding back. “Kicked me.”

The man made a disgusted sound and then asked, “You remember what happened?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good news.”

“Really?” She didn’t particularly enjoy remembering those terrifying moments.

“A concussion is usually accompanied by retrograde amnesia, the inability to remember what happened just prior to passing out.”

“Don’t have a concussion?” she asked, confused.

“I’m not sure, but your ability to remember is a good sign that if you do have one, it is not severe.”

“Who did this to you?” Another voice. Male.

She turned her head toward the voice and tears sprang into her eyes when excruciating pain shot through her head.

The voice belonged to a uniformed policeman.

Old conditioning died hard, and she cringed at the sight of the blue-clad officer standing so close. “Don’t know,” she croaked. “Wore a mask.”

“I’d like to finish my examination before you interview her.” The first voice belonged to a white-coated doctor, she now realized.

The policeman nodded.

She looked around her without moving her head. She was in an emergency room cubicle. How long had she been out? She didn’t remember leaving her home.

“How did I…”

“How did you get here?”

“Yes,” she sighed.

“A neighbor came to check on your alarm. He saw you lying on the floor of your living room through the open drapes. He called 911.”

“I know the neighbor…used to be a SEAL.”

“Yes, I believe the older gentleman is former military,” the policeman said.

“Not so bad…guess.”

The officer laughed, but she didn’t know why.

A nurse joined the doctor and they gently examined her, checking her reflexes and responses, asking lots of questions.

Finally, the doctor sent the nurse out of the cubicle for a pain reliever and he straightened to stand beside her bed. “I’d like you to have an MRI, but from my initial examination, you appear to be a very lucky young woman. You appear to have no more than a mild concussion. It could have been a lot worse.”

She blinked. “Yeah. I think he wanted to kill me.”

“Why do you say that?” the policeman asked.

That began the interrogation.