Kitabı oku: «Rafe Sinclair's Revenge», sayfa 3

Chapter Three

Rafe awakened, as he had a thousand times, to the sound of the explosion. His body jerked upright in bed, his heart trying to beat its way out from under the sweat-drenched skin of his chest. He opened his mouth, attempting to draw air into lungs compressed by the force of the blast.

It’s just a dream. Plain vanilla, garden-variety nightmare.

He had had enough of those, God knew, that he should be able to tell the difference. As horrific as they were, they were a million times better than the other.

Finally, shaking all over, he managed to take a breath. It seemed he could smell the smoke. He could almost taste it on the cotton dryness of his tongue.

Just another dream, he reassured himself.

He opened his eyes, slitting them against the painful stab of sunshine pouring through the crack he’d inadvertently left between the halves of the motel’s plastic-backed drapes when he’d closed them last night. He ran his tongue around parched lips as his heart rate began to slow.

As soon as the frantic pulse of blood through the veins in his ears eased, another sound replaced it. Distant at first and indistinct, within seconds an identification of what he was hearing roared into his consciousness. Siren.

He listened, again not breathing. Sometimes he couldn’t tell, but he would have staked his life that what he was hearing now was real. A real siren, and therefore… Real smoke?

He tore at the sheet, frantically trying to free his legs from its tangling hold. He staggered a little when his feet touched the floor, but that was only reaction to the flood of adrenaline coursing into his bloodstream.

When he reached the window, he lifted his arm, intending to sweep the curtain aside so that he could see out. He couldn’t force his hand to grasp the material. It was as if the muscles were literally paralyzed.

Cop chasing a speeder, he told himself. Or an ambulance carrying some poor bastard with a heart attack to the hospital. Whatever is outside these windows, it won’t be what was there before.

Sweat beaded his forehead as he willed his fingers to close over the fabric of the drapes, jerking them to the side. Light flooded the room, forcing him to close his eyes. When he opened them, the pillar of oily black smoke was all he could see. All his mind could grasp.

Smoke. Fire. Explosion.

It hadn’t been a dream. The evidence of its stark reality was right before him.

Except he had long ago learned not to trust “reality.” Not his. Not about something like this.

He closed his eyes, deliberately holding them shut as tightly as he could for a few seconds before he opened them again. Nothing had changed. The column of smoke still obscured the sky, and that first lonely siren had now been joined by a chorus of others.

He lowered his gaze, examining the rest of the scene revealed by the opened curtain. Parking lot. Cars, most of them recent models. A motel sign.

One he recognized from having glanced at it last night when he’d checked in. Reassured by that recognition, he lifted his eyes again.

The smoke seemed to be billowing upward from behind the row of buildings across the street. Which meant that the fire was at least a block away, he decided, feeling the adrenaline rush begin to ease. Maybe two. No more than that.

Of course, in Magnolia Grove two blocks was practically across town. Almost—

With the realization, his heart rate, which had almost returned to normal, accelerated like a trip hammer. He ran across the room, scrambling through the sheet he’d thrown aside, trying to locate his jeans.

He dragged them on, hopping awkwardly on one foot and then the other. He pushed his feet into his shoes, not bothering to find his socks. On the way to the door, he grabbed the shirt he’d worn yesterday off the chair where he’d thrown it down on his way to bed.

As soon as he stepped outside, a wall of heat hit him, almost forcing him back. His first response, emotional rather than intellectual, was that it was from the fire. Just like before.

It took a few seconds to realize that what he was feeling was simply a typical Mississippi-in-August heat. The air, however, was thick and acrid with smoke. Just as it had been in his dream.

Or maybe this time there hadn’t been a dream. Maybe what had awakened him had been a real explosion, one that had started this fire. And if so…

He was already running toward the source of the smoke, and he wasn’t the only one. People were rushing out of the surrounding buildings, heading toward the wail of the sirens and the black cloud that seemed to fill the sky.

Despite his lack of familiarity with the town’s landmarks, his usually unerring sense of direction led him straight to his destination. As he neared it, he knew with a wave of terror that he hadn’t been wrong.

The office where Elizabeth worked was on this street. The same street from where that ominous pillar of smoke was rising.

As he rounded the corner, he made a quick visual assessment. Despite the widespread effects of the blast, there was no doubt in his mind that the structure on fire was the law office of Connell and Anderson.

And with a renewed sense of panic he realized he had no idea what time it was. No idea what time Elizabeth normally arrived at work.

Then his searching eyes found her. She was standing, talking to a fireman or paramedic. There was no blood on her clothing, but even from here he could tell her face was completely without color, the scattering of freckles stark against the milk-white skin.

Still, she was standing. Talking. Not bleeding. Apparently unharmed. His knees almost gave way with the force of his relief.

He closed his eyes in an unspoken prayer of thanks. It was a mistake, but by the time he was aware of that, it was too late to do anything about it. Images began to unwind, like the flickering frames of an old newsreel, against the blackness behind his lids.

They weren’t from any newsreel, of course. And they were all in color. The vivid, shocking brightness of freshly spilled blood. The grotesque black of skin that has been charred, peeling off the arm of a woman whose mouth was open, silently imploring him to help her.

At that moment someone running down the street careened into him. The force of collision was enough to turn him, causing him to stumble against the side of a building.

The impact of his fall or the roughness of the brick as his cheek scraped against it was enough to tear him out of the flashback. He opened his eyes, seeing in front of him the scene he had been watching before it began.

Elizabeth was still in the center of his vision. Mouth moving, she was pointing toward the line of cars parked in front of the burning building. They were close enough to the fire that the paint on their hoods was starting to blister. Just like—

He jerked his mind from that comparison, concentrating instead on Elizabeth. Not the woman in the embassy, he told himself doggedly. This was not the same situation. Nothing about it was the same.

He started to run again, feeling as if he were moving through quicksand. The distance between them seemed vast and immeasurable, but he never took his eyes off his goal. Never allowed himself to think about anything other than reaching it. Reaching her.

He knew the exact second when she became aware of him. She had been talking to another of the firemen, but when her eyes locked with his, her mouth stopped moving, remaining open as if frozen in midsentence.

At her sudden silence the two men standing beside her turned to stare at him as well. One of them moved between him and Elizabeth, the gesture obviously protective.

Rafe’s response was nothing short of murderous. Get the hell out of my way, you son of a bitch. He didn’t say that. He had no breath, and his mouth was too dry to form the words.

Elizabeth moved from behind the fireman, quickly taking the last few steps that would close the distance between them. There could have been nothing more natural than to take her in his arms. He had wanted to do that last night, despite everything he understood about how unwise it would be for both of them. That wasn’t what stopped him now.

There was less than two feet between them when their forward motion ground to a halt. She was again looking up at him, her head slightly raised because of the difference in their heights.

A cone of silence descended around him, blocking out the noises of the sirens, the pressure hoses, the shouts from the firemen fighting the blaze. All he could hear was his own breathing, harsh and panting from the exertion of his run.

Terrifyingly, the smell of the fire was all around him. The heat of it.

Elizabeth didn’t say a word, widened eyes searching his face. He couldn’t imagine what he looked like. Deranged, perhaps. Maybe even dangerous. Enough like a lunatic to cause the fireman to edge closer again.

She lifted her hand. For an instant he thought she intended to touch his face, but instead she pressed the tips of her fingers, trembling as they had been last night, against the center of his heaving chest.

“Rafe?”

God, he wanted to touch her. Just to take her hand as he had last night.

He didn’t, of course, because he was afraid that if he gripped her arm, her skin would slip off muscle and bone to lie in his hand as it had before.

That wasn’t here. Not Elizabeth. Not now.

“What the hell happened?” he managed to rasp.

She shook her head, her eyes never leaving his face. “I don’t know. It just…blew up. They think maybe there was a gas leak.”

He laughed, the sound a breath, devoid of amusement. “They’d be wrong.”

Her eyes changed, understanding of what he meant invading them as he watched.

“You think…” The sentence trailed. Once more she shook her head, the gesture small, denying. Her mouth worked and then she tried again. “You can’t possibly believe—”

“Come on,” he ordered.

He didn’t touch her, although by now the few words they’d exchanged had reoriented him. He knew where he was. And there was no doubt in his mind who she was.

Still, he didn’t dare put his hands on her. Not yet. No matter how much he wanted to.

“Come where?”

“Away from here.”

“I have to talk to the chief. There are questions that have to be—”

“Screw the questions. They’ll figure it out. They don’t need you to do that.”

“Rafe,” she protested.

She’d been out of this business too long. Her instincts were to respond to something like this in a rational way. Despite the time that had passed, his were not. His were all of the get-the-hell-out-of-Dodge variety.

The authorities could sort through cause-and-effect to their bureaucratic heart’s content. Meanwhile, he’d have her safe somewhere a thousand miles from here. Somewhere this time where that frigging terrorist bastard could never find her.

“Ms. Anderson?”

Elizabeth turned, removing her fingers from his chest. It was as if his connection to the present had been unplugged. He felt the familiar disconnect start and fought it, concentrating fiercely on maintaining contact with her and what was happening.

Her mouth was moving, but for a few seconds he couldn’t make sense of the words. He concentrated on doing that, forcing his mind to remain focused on the here and now.

It was a struggle, given the stimuli provided by the sights and sounds around them. He couldn’t afford to think about those. Not about the heat of the fire or the smells of it or the sounds of the sirens.

He forced himself to think only about Elizabeth’s mouth until eventually the words she was saying to the man he’d identified as Magnolia Grove’s fire chief began to form a pattern. To make sense.

“…a friend of mine from out of town. He was naturally concerned for me.”

Because I’m the only one who knows what the hell is going on here.

“We just need to ask you a few more questions, ma’am. Then Tommy thinks you ought to ride on in to the hospital and get checked out. You could have a concussion.”

“I’m fine.”

“You can’t be too careful with a head injury.”

Head injury. She had a head injury?

Cautiously, Rafe allowed his gaze to leave Elizabeth’s mouth, focusing on her head. Her hair was full of ash, but there were no bruises visible under the strands that fell forward over her forehead.

“You hit your head?” he demanded, his voice more normal.

She turned her attention to him, drawing the chief’s there, too. “The blast knocked me flat on my back. I think I hit it on the pavement. I remember looking up at the smoke. Then things were just falling out of the sky…”

As explanations went, it was fairly disjointed. Reassuringly normal.

She’d been the one at the center of the firestorm this time. She was bound to be affected, emotionally if not physically. And there was always the possibility that there was some injury. A lot of head stuff didn’t show up until it was too late.

“How far’s the hospital?” he asked.

The chief answered, his eyes still evaluating him. “Thirty miles or so. Mostly interstate.”

“Okay,” he said.

“I don’t need to go to the hospital,” Elizabeth protested.

Maybe it would be better just to put her in his car and take her somewhere. Anywhere. Any emergency room would do. After all, he couldn’t see any sign that she was concussed.

That meant zilch with a head injury. He’d seen men walking around one minute and keel over the next from the pressure of internal bleeding. Or go to sleep, believing they were perfectly fine, and never wake up.

It wasn’t a chance he was willing to take. Not with Elizabeth.

“You need a scan,” he said. “That way—”

“I don’t need to go to the hospital,” she said, raking her hair back with characteristic impatience. “Don’t you think I’d know if I were injured?”

“No,” he said. The word was unequivocal, as was the demand in its tone.

Her mouth tightened, but she didn’t argue. She turned back to the chief instead. “What else do you need to know?”

The fireman’s eyes met Rafe’s, holding on them briefly before he answered.

“Nothing we can’t get later,” he said. “The fire marshal will need to examine the scene after we get the blaze controlled and things cool down. That’ll take a couple of days. We can always get back to you if we have other questions then. You go on now and get that scan. Smartest thing you can do.”

“Come on,” Rafe said again.

It would have been easier to take her elbow and physically insist she get into the waiting ambulance, and it should have been okay by now to do that. He didn’t risk it. Not with the sounds and the smells associated with the fire still going on in the background.

He had successfully locked them out of his consciousness, but there was no guarantee that something wouldn’t happen that he wasn’t prepared for. Something that might trigger another flashback. That also was not a risk he was willing to take.

He debated asking the driver to wait until he could get his car so he could follow the ambulance. That way they could leave from the hospital without coming back here.

There were a couple of problems with that. He wasn’t willing to leave Elizabeth alone even for the time it would take for him to run back to the motel. And he doubted she’d be willing to leave town with only the clothes on her back. Especially if they were telling her that the explosion had been the result of a gas leak. Especially if she believed them.

He didn’t, not for one minute, but there wasn’t much point in arguing the theory with the chief. That was something the fire marshal could sort out when he arrived.

By the time he had, he and Elizabeth would be long gone.

Chapter Four

“I told you,” she said.

She still looked like warmed-over death, but according to the emergency room attending, the CT had revealed nothing troublesome. They’d been given the general precautions, but thank God, precautions were all they were.

“You never could resist saying ‘I told you so,’” he said, taking her elbow.

He didn’t even have to think about the wisdom of doing that now. It was strange, but a hospital, despite the time he’d spent in a couple of them after the bombing, had never been a trigger for the flashbacks.

“I didn’t get the opportunity nearly as often as I’d have liked,” she said.

“So no chance to develop any willpower.”

“This isn’t the way—” she began, pulling against his direction.

He put his hand against the small of her back, applying pressure. “It’s the way we’re going.”

“But the front is that way.”

“Exactly,” he said, steering her in the opposite direction.

He knew the scan had been a necessity, but it had also increased the risk that the terrorist would have time to zero in on their location and to make other plans. Of course, if he were typical, he would have been watching them from the first. Especially staying around to watch the fireworks. They could never resist that. Not even the best of them.

“You really think someone set off that explosion?” she asked, finally giving in and allowing him to guide her.

“Let’s just say the timing seems coincidental.”

“Between Steiner’s warning and this?”

He nodded, not bothering to articulate the obvious.

“But you didn’t know he was here when you came.”

“How could I?”

He opened the door to a corridor marked Authorized Personnel Only, directing her down it as if he knew where he was going. He did have a fairly good idea, having studied the fire exit chart in the emergency room while they’d waited.

“I thought that’s why you were here.”

“I was here to deliver Griff’s message.”

“And it took you a week to decide to do that.”

He was trying to figure out which way to go since the corridor they’d been following had come to an abrupt dead end. What she had just said didn’t register for a moment.

“I told you. I knew Jorgensen was dead.”

Actually, it hadn’t taken him an entire week to finish the dueling pistol. The whole time he’d worked, the chilling words of that security alert haunted him, warring with his certainty that whoever had blown up the barracks in Greenland and the ambassador’s residence in Madrid, it hadn’t been Jorgensen. In the end, despite his surety, he had come to deliver the warning. He had known he’d never be able to forgive himself if there was anything to Griff’s concern. Apparently there had been.

“So you hung around here just watching me?”

“I didn’t get into town until yesterday,” he said, confused by her questions.

He’d driven all night and most of the day yesterday, but he liked to drive. He especially liked it at night, when there was little traffic and long stretches of darkness and silence.

She stopped, pulling against his hold. He turned his head and found that although her gaze was on his face, it seemed unfocused. She was obviously thinking about something other than his features.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Someone’s been following me. I could feel them. All week. When you showed up last night, I naturally assumed it had been you.”

“You saw somebody?”

She shook her head, her gaze still contemplative.

“Nothing. Not a sign of anyone. I put it down to paranoia because I never saw them. When you came to the house—” She broke off the explanation, her eyes lifting to his, seeing him this time. “I thought I hadn’t seen anyone because it was you.”

If someone had been following her all week, then he hadn’t led them to her, which was a consolation. He had taken every precaution he could think of, and as she had intimated, he was very good at what he did. Still, there had been a niggling guilt in the back of his mind that he might have been responsible for giving away her location.

“Is it possible this is Jorgensen?” she asked.

“No,” he said, urging her forward again.

He had told Griff the truth. He had watched the bastard die. He was willing to concede this might be a protégé or a colleague, someone Jorgensen had trained, but it couldn’t be the man himself. He was sure of that.

The fact that whoever it was had been watching Elizabeth all week was significant, however, because nothing had happened until he’d shown up. Whoever this was had been waiting for him to arrive.

The explosion had been for his benefit. Arranged so that when Rafe heard the noise and smelled the smoke, he would believe exactly what he had believed—that this time Elizabeth had been the victim.

“Then who set off that explosion?” she asked.

“Someone who wanted me to think you were inside that building. If this had been Jorgensen, believe me, he would have made sure.”

There was a small hesitation, and then she said, “I should have been.”

“What?” He had been only half listening, wondering if the bomber could possibly know why his ruse had been so successful.

“I should have been in the office this morning. He knew that because he’d been watching me all week. He knew what time I get there every day. And then…this morning I was late.”

A coldness settled in Rafe’s stomach as he began to understand the implications of what she was saying.

“It should have been deliberate,” she went on. “Being late, I mean. I thought yesterday that I’d fallen into a routine. They always told us that was dangerous.”

It was. If you had any reason to believe you might be a target for someone. After all these years Elizabeth shouldn’t have had reason to believe that. He hadn’t.

“He could have set his damn watch by me,” she said bitterly. “I turn the key in that lock every morning at precisely nine o’clock. Except this morning—”

“You were late,” he finished for her, beginning to accept the idea that the explosion might not have been for show. Perhaps the bomber had been waiting for him to arrive, but maybe what he had prepared for Rafe to see wasn’t what had occurred.

Elizabeth’s mouth tightened. “I couldn’t sleep. I forgot to set the alarm. And then a logging truck pulled out onto the highway ahead of me. Normally there would have been plenty of time despite that, but this morning…” Again her voice faded. “I should have been there,” she said softly. “In the office. I would have been if it hadn’t been for that truck.”

And if it hadn’t been for him showing up at her house yesterday. She wouldn’t admit that, but the truth of it had been revealed by her admission that she hadn’t slept and by her failure to set the alarm. He didn’t really need to hear her confess the reason those two things had happened.

It would be a step back to the personal. Back to things he didn’t want to talk about any more than she did. Back to the need for some explanation of why he’d left.

He could make one. He could tell her all the things that he’d never been willing to share before. He had thought about doing that a thousand times.

Even if she knew, even if she understood, it wouldn’t change a thing. Nothing could.

He had always known that one night, as he took her into his arms, feeling the sensual slide of sweat-moistened skin against his, she would suddenly become the woman from the embassy. The woman with the silent scream. The woman who had died in his arms.

And when that happened, she would know everything he had come to know about himself. That was the one thing he had known he couldn’t live with—what would be in her eyes when she looked at him then.

THE CAB he’d called before they left the emergency room had been waiting at the back entrance when they finally made their way through the maze of hospital corridors. The driver, an elderly black man, had been eager to talk about the explosion in Magnolia Grove.

According to him, everyone was buying into the fire chief’s explanation that it had been caused by a gas leak. From their perspective, that was probably a good thing, Rafe decided.

It wouldn’t stand up to an arson investigation, of course. And he’d be willing to bet that the methodology used in this bombing, the so-called signature of the bomber, would be identical to that used in those that had precipitated the CIA security alert Griff had shown him.

By the time that had all been determined, he’d have Elizabeth away. With the care the CIA had taken in destroying any link between the people on Griff’s team and the agency itself, no one would ever connect Magnolia Grove, Mississippi, or Beth Anderson to those acts of terrorism.

Rafe had every confidence that he could keep her safe. The most dangerous aspect would be getting her out of town, simply because that’s where the terrorist was. Or maybe he was wrong about that. Maybe this guy wasn’t one of those who waited around to glory in the results. And maybe pigs can fly.

“Drive around the block,” he instructed the cabbie as they approached the motel.

Despite the ongoing excitement a couple of streets away, the parking lot looked reassuringly empty in the early-afternoon heat. Most of the cars that had been there when he’d pulled aside the drapes this morning had since disappeared, moving on to their next destination.

His own sat fairly isolated among the remaining vehicles. It looked the same as it had when he’d parked it there last night. Of course, looking the same and being the same were vastly different.

All kinds of things might have been done to it in that time frame. Something could have been attached to it, for example. A device set to explode when he turned the key in the ignition. Or when he unlocked the door.

“Want me to drive around again, boss?” the cabbie asked after he’d made the slow circuit of the block.

Not much point, Rafe decided. There was only one way to tell if the room or his car had been tampered with. “That’s okay,” he said. “Pull up near Room 18.”

“You got it.”

The cabbie maneuvered his ancient sedan into one of the parking spaces that had opened up in front of the room since Rafe had left it on foot this morning. Rafe added a generous tip to the fare and handed it to the driver across the bench-type front seat. “Thanks for coming all the way out to the hospital.”

“Glad to do it. Ain’t nothing else happening around here. Not with all that commotion going on. Least the air-conditioning in the car works. Cooler here than at home,” the old man said, carefully folding the bills and putting them in the breast pocket of his cotton sports shirt.

Rafe didn’t argue the point, although the air inside the cab wasn’t appreciably cooler than that he stepped out into. He had thought it was hot this morning, but the afternoon’s heat was a physical assault.

He glanced at Elizabeth’s face as she slid across the cracked vinyl seat and climbed out, using his hand for support. The nearer they had gotten to town, the quieter she had become. Now her expression was closed, her face still colorless, the features pinched with the strain of the last few hours.

She waited until the cab had driven away before she revealed what she’d been thinking during the ride back. “I need to call Darrell. If this is what you think it is, then I’m responsible for what happened to the office.”

“Your partner?”

She nodded. “Semiretired. I handle most of the cases now. It’s what he intended when he took me into partnership. He’s been very good to me, Rafe. At the very least I owe him some explanation—”

“You don’t owe him anything,” he said harshly, taking her elbow and urging her toward the room.

“He owned that building. It was an investment. And if what you believe is true—”

“He’ll have insurance. If he doesn’t, he’s an idiot. And if he’s really ready to retire, the explosion was probably a blessing. He won’t have to fool with selling the place.”

“I’m not sure he’ll think that,” Elizabeth said.

He could tell she wasn’t pleased with his lack of sympathy for her partner’s loss. He was still having trouble dealing with the realization that she was supposed to have been inside that building when it blew. Somehow, in light of that information, he couldn’t be too concerned about the fate of bricks and mortar.

This wasn’t Jorgensen, but whoever it was had already proved that he valued human life no more than his role model. And proved that he was out to make a personal rather than a political statement.

“Stay back,” he ordered when they reached the walkway in front of the motel.

“You think he’s rigged something up in your room?”

“I think we don’t know who or what we’re dealing with,” he said, “and until we do…”

He flattened his hand to fish the key out of the front pocket of his jeans. It was the old-fashioned metal kind, which was rare these days. Of course, there was probably little cause to worry about theft in this setting.

As little as there had been to worry about an act of terrorism. Until today.

“You’re just going to stick that key in the lock and turn it in an effort to find out?”

Her sarcasm was born of anxiety. He understood that. She would be feeling the same sickness in the bottom of her stomach that he’d experienced rounding the corner this morning and verifying that the fire was in her office.

Something about her words nagged at him, however. You’re just going to stick that key in the lock…

“Is that what you did?” he asked, turning to look at her.

“What?”

“Is that what triggered the bomb? When you turned the key in the office door?”

She didn’t answer at once, her eyes again losing their focus as she thought about the sequence. “I never made it that far,” she said finally. “I didn’t get close enough to the building to put the key in the door. Not before it blew.”

That news wouldn’t make him any less cautious. Someone like Jorgensen—someone using his methods—didn’t employ the same trick again. That was the genius of how he managed to do what he did, despite the strictest security precautions. He always came at you from a different direction.