Kitabı oku: «Guarding Jane Doe»
“From now on, I don’t let you out of my sight, lady.”
Quinn stared at her. “And if I think you’ve finally told me the truth I’ll go to the wall for you.”
There was no mistaking the unwavering conviction in Quinn McGuire’s words.
“Why?” Jane whispered. “Why would you do that for me?”
“Because that’s what having a bodyguard means, up to and including dying for you, if that’s what it takes. But you have to be straight with me. What is it you’re hiding?”
Jane gazed at the impassively silent man in front of her.
He’d just said he’d die for her. Even though she couldn’t remember her past life, she knew no one had ever made such a vow to her before. And all he asked in return was her trust. She shook her head, her expression tortured. Would Quinn still go to the wall for her, when he learned her most closely guarded secret?
Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,
Welcome again to another action-packed month of exceptional romantic suspense. We are especially pleased to bring you the first of a trilogy of new books from Rebecca York’s 43 LIGHT STREET series. You’ve loved this author and her stories for years…and—you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! The MINE TO KEEP stories kick off this month with The Man from Texas. Danger lurks around every corner for these heroes and heroines, but there’s no threat too great when you have the one you love by your side.
The EDEN’S CHILDREN miniseries by Amanda Stevens continues with The Tempted. A frantic mother will fight the devil himself to find her little girl, but she’ll have to face a more formidable foe first—the child’s secret father.
Adrianne Lee contributes a terrific twin tale to the DOUBLE EXPOSURE promotion. Look for His Only Desire and see what happens when a stalker sees double!
Finally, Harper Allen takes you on a journey of the heart in her powerful two-book miniseries, THE AVENGERS. Guarding Jane Doe is a profound story about a soldier for hire and a woman in desperate need of his services. What they find together is everlasting love the likes of which is rarely—if ever—seen.
So join us once again for a fantastic reading experience.
Enjoy!
Sincerely,
Denise O’Sullivan
Associate Senior Editor
Harlequin Intrigue
Guarding Jane Doe
Harper Allen
MILLS & BOON
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harper Allen lives in the country in the middle of a hundred acres of maple trees with her husband, Wayne, six cats, four dogs—and a very nervous cockatiel at the bottom of the food chain. For excitement she and Wayne drive to the nearest village and buy jumbo bags of pet food. She believes in love at first sight because it happened to her.
Books by Harper Allen
HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE
468—THE MAN THAT GOT AWAY
547—TWICE TEMPTED
599—WOMAN MOST WANTED
628—GUARDING JANE DOE
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Jane Smith—Even if a bodyguard can protect her from a murderer, she fears that no one can save her from her shadowy past.
Quinn McGuire—Soldier for hire and sometime bodyguard, he’s haunted by the ghosts of his past.
Carla Kozlikov and Gary Crowe—Jane’s neighbors—has their friendship with her put them in danger?
Terry Sullivan—He knows Quinn better than anyone—and he’s powerless to help him.
Donny Fitzgerald—The police detective was once Quinn’s friend, but he can’t allow that to interfere with his investigation.
Jennifer Tarranova—Fitzgerald’s partner, she’s almost sure she’s met Jane before…under very different circumstances.
Sister Bertille—The nun saved Quinn’s life once—and it’s time she called in his debt to her.
To Brian Henry.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
Prologue
If he hadn’t received the letter from the dead woman that day, Quinn McGuire would never have heard of Jane Smith. He’d been about to leave his apartment to make a secure phone call from the pizza joint down the street, and if the man he’d been planning to call had mentioned the right figure, Quinn would have been catching a night flight out of Boston and the country within hours. But just as he’d shrugged into his ancient leather jacket a hesitant knock sounded at his door and a quavery old voice called out his name.
“Mr. McGuire? It’s Agnes Lavery from downstairs. I’ve got some mail for you.”
Quinn knew he hadn’t left anything incriminating lying about—he never did. But even as he unlocked the apartment door and slid back the heavy-duty dead bolts he’d installed himself when he’d moved in here several years ago, he scanned the room behind him with the caution that was second nature to him.
There were a few reasons why he’d stayed alive for thirty-one years, he thought wryly as he noted the innocuous china mug on the kitchen counter and the half-folded morning paper littering the surface of the table against the wall. They were simple reasons, and easy to remember.
Don’t trust anything. Don’t trust anyone. Watch your back.
But a seventy-two-year-old woman probably wasn’t going to pull a fast one on him, he thought. He unfastened the forged-steel security chain and turned off the alarm sensor. Of course, Paddy Doyle must have been thinking something similar in the split second before that crazy rebel assassin opened the large black bag that had been part of his disguise and had pulled out a weapon big enough to blow even a tough and lucky Irishman like Paddy away for good.
Quinn blinked. For the life of him he couldn’t recall what country or what war that had been. All he could remember was Paddy, his chest torn apart and the life leaking out of him on that dusty street, his blue eyes fading as Quinn held him, and that sweet smile that had driven women wild on five continents lifting the corners of his mouth one last time.
“Another wild goose, boyo,” he’d whispered. Blood so dark it seemed black had welled up and mottled his lips as he gasped his last breath. “Look for me flying home with the rest of them, will you?”
And the moral of that story was that luck was a bitch, Quinn thought abruptly. Entirely. As soon as some poor bastard started depending on her, she’d be sure to shaft him. He opened the door and smiled down at the frail old lady standing there.
“You’re a complete saint, Mrs. Lavery, you are.” He allowed a little more brogue than usual to creep into his voice as he held out his hand for the flimsy airmail weight envelope. He shook his head. “With all the gadding about I do for the head office, it’s a real favor for you to let me use your address. That’s the first thing thieves look for—uncollected letters in a mailbox. And how’s Mr. L. today?”
She was inclined to talk, and for fifteen minutes expounded on everything from her grandchildren to the selection of cookies she planned to bake over the next few weeks in preparation for Thanksgiving. Quinn retained the recipe for strawberry powder jelly balls for as long as it took him to gently disengage himself from the garrulous old lady and to close and bolt the door behind her. Then he wiped his mind clean of all extraneous details. He looked down at the envelope in his hand, the mask of affability that he’d worn for his neighbor gone, his jaw rigid.
It was postmarked Belgium, and it had been mailed a week ago. He already knew what it contained, since the handwriting wasn’t the one he’d grown familiar with over the last seven years. His face expressionless, he ripped it open and let it fall to the floor unheeded as he held up the single sheet of lined paper it had enclosed.
“My dear Mr. McGuire…” it began.
Despite himself a ghost of a smile passed across his features. She’d seen him naked a score of times and still she’d never been able to bring herself to use his first name. He read on, the smile fading.
You know what this is, of course. The doctors tell me that what time I have left should be measured in hours, not days. I have said my goodbyes to everyone here so that I can prepare myself in peace for what is to come, and now this last goodbye is to you. But the real reason I am writing you is this: you owe me, Mr. McGuire—and it is high time you paid up.
Startled, Quinn stopped and reread the last line. The writing was scrawled and uneven but it was still recognizable, and he hadn’t made a mistake. What he was holding in his hand was, more or less, an unpaid bill. He continued reading.
When I nursed you back to health all those years ago I expected no repayment, but you insisted that you were in my debt. Since then you have reminded me many times that I only have to name my price and you will gladly pay it. Mr. McGuire, my price is this—I want you to take on an assignment for me. I want you to use those talents and skills that you have employed in wars all over the world, but this time I want you to use them in the role of a protector. You will know when the right case presents itself, and—
Whatever she had intended to add had never been written. Except for a small splatter of ink on the page, the letter ended there. Quinn squeezed his eyes shut for a second, as if he was riding out a wave of pain. When he opened them he turned the paper over in his hand and saw that someone had added a postscript.
Mr. McGuire, Sister Bertille was unable to complete this letter to you, but before she slipped into unconsciousness for the last time she asked me to make sure that I sent it to ‘her Quinn,’ as she always called you. I know you held a special place in her heart, and we will all continue with our prayers for your safety and your soul, as we have done since Sister Bertille came to live with us.
It was signed by the Mother Superior of the convent in Belgium where she’d retreated when the cancer had started to spread, he noted numbly. Apparently somewhere in that tiny country was a group of nuns who knew him by his first name—she’d been pretty damn tricky with that formal “Mr. McGuire” business in her letters, Quinn thought—and who now had taken up the burden of saving his soul that Sister Bertille had obviously carried all these years. A muscle in his jaw jumped.
“So who the hell asked you, Sister?” he muttered. His fist tightened around the flimsy piece of paper, crumpling it. “And what kind of an underhanded scam is this for a nun to be running—calling in your markers and then getting up from the game before a man can negotiate the price, dammit?”
She’d been small, wiry and middle-aged when he’d first met her, with thick-lensed glasses held together by a piece of wire that he’d recognized as the discarded firing pin of some light semi-automatic pistol. She’d worn the traditional nun’s black habit of scratchy coarse material, but in that hellhole of a jungle clinic, she had always seemed cool and unruffled. She’d saved his life.
And now she was dead. Quinn rubbed his arm wearily across his eyes and then walked slowly over to the kitchen table. Unclenching his fist, he tried to smooth out the creases that he’d created in the letter. He’d only known her for a few weeks, but she hadn’t let a month go by since then without writing to him. Sometimes he would come back from an assignment and find four or five envelopes waiting for him, and once in a while he’d scrawled a postcard back, just to let her know he was still in the land of the living.
Jack Tanner. Paddy Doyle. The Haskins kid—the one they’d nicknamed Hemingway, because he’d always been writing in his journal. And now Sister Bertille, who in her own way had been as much a soldier as any of them: going wherever she was sent and fighting for the cause she believed in as implacably as they had. He glanced down at the letter once more, his gaze bleak.
“When mercenaries die, Sister, their souls become wild geese. That’s how the legend goes, anyway,” he whispered softly. “And those of us who are left behind go out and get drunk, and sometimes we persuade ourselves that we hear our friends high up in the night sky, flying through the darkness toward home. I owe you that much, Sister. I owe you a drink or two to your memory, and I’ll wish you safe journey to wherever it is that you believe we go when we die. But what you’re asking of me is impossible. This is the only way of life I know.”
Drunk sounded good, Quinn thought. To hell with the phone call he’d been planning on making earlier; there would always be another job. He’d go out to the nearest bar, stay just sober enough to walk out under his own power at last call, and then he’d come back here and finish off the bottle of Bushmills he kept at the back of the cupboard. Sometime during the evening he’d try to call Terry Sullivan and let him know about Sister Bertille, and if Terry hadn’t grown too respectable to be seen with an ex-comrade, he might even join him in the wake of a woman they’d both known and respected.
A protector, for God’s sake. She’d always told him he was a better man than he knew, he thought in irritation, staring at the still-crumpled letter. It seemed that right up to the end she’d been too damned stubborn to discard her naive belief in him.
He turned away and was halfway to the door when his phone rang. Grabbing it up impatiently, the caller’s first words froze him in his tracks.
“Mr. McGuire? Quinn McGuire? I was given your number by someone who knows you.” The soft voice quavered. Then it steadied. “I—I need a bodyguard. I want to hire you to protect me.”
Chapter One
The bar was smoky, the music was loud and apparently Quinn McGuire wasn’t going to show. He was over an hour late already. Avoiding surreptitiously interested glances from the surrounding tables, Jane took a miniscule sip of the orange juice that she’d been nursing since she arrived. The ice-cubes in it had long since melted, but even the watered-down citrus tang did nothing to relieve the tight parched feeling in her throat. What was she doing here anyway? How had it happened that her life had spun so far out of control that she’d been reduced to waiting desperately in this raucous Irish pub for a man she’d never met?
In marked contrast to this unlikely meeting-place, earlier today the reception area of Sullivan Security and Investigations had given the impression of a professional and successfully run organization. She should have realized right from the start that the firm was well out of her price range, she told herself now with a brief flicker of embarrassment. The Irish trio on the small stage at the far end of the room launched into a new song, and all around her enthusiastic voices took up the refrain. Her temples throbbed dully, and she set her drink down on the sticky tabletop. The female operative she’d finally spoken with had been diplomatic enough not to mention an actual dollar amount, but her keen glance obviously hadn’t missed the fact that Jane’s outfit was working-girl attire, and that her jewelry—a pair of gold-toned studs in her ears and a leather-strapped wristwatch—was department store at best.
The woman had advised her to go back to the authorities to alert them to her most recent problems and had outlined a few basic safety precautions that she should take, a shadow of sympathy on her features. Even as Jane was leaving the reception area on her way out, the woman had come after her, a little breathless. She’d thrust a piece of paper into her hand and told her that the name and phone number written on it belonged to a personal friend of Mr. Terrence Sullivan himself, and that Mr. Sullivan had suggested she call Quinn McGuire to sound him out about the possibility of hiring him for a short while.
At the time Jane had felt as if she’d been thrown a lifeline. Even after that disconcerting phone call with Mr. McGuire, she’d still held onto the possibility that somehow he might be able to extricate her from the nightmare her life had become over the past few weeks. The man had been brusquely antagonistic, and the mention of Terrence Sullivan’s name hadn’t seemed to effect any positive change in his attitude. But when she’d finally apologized for taking up his time and had been about to hang up, he’d grudgingly given her the name of a pub, told her to be there at seven and said he’d meet her.
If she’d had any other options at all she would have thanked him politely and told him she’d changed her mind, she thought bleakly. But that was just it—she’d come to the end of the line and this Quinn McGuire had been her last hope. Now she was forced to face the fact that even the dubious possibility of his assistance had faded.
Gathering up her purse from the chair beside her, she started to rise. She should feel angry at the man, she told herself, but somehow during the last couple of weeks even the capacity for anger had been drained out of her, overridden by the numb and ever-present fear that seemed to be the only emotion she had room for anymore.
“Waiting for me, beautiful?”
Startled, she looked up and met a pair of bright blue eyes. With a slight grin the dark-haired man staring down at her set a glass of beer on the table.
“Mr. McGuire?” she ventured, automatically distancing herself from his familiarity. He had the same lilt to his speech that she’d heard over the phone, she thought, but without the antagonistic edge that he’d displayed earlier. For some reason a flash of confused disappointment overlaid the nervousness that was her usual reaction to men who stepped across the invisible but inviolate boundaries she tried to keep around her. He was tall and well-built, with a hint of muscle filling out the shoulders of the light wool sweater he was wearing, but she’d expected something more. Like what? she asked herself. Did you think he was going to be some kind of superman?
“I’m not McGuire, whoever the hell he is,” he said easily. “But any man crazy enough to stand up a lady like you deserves to lose his chance. What are you drinking, sweetheart?”
“Screw off, boyo. Now.”
It hardly seemed possible that such a big man could come up so unobtrusively, but suddenly he was there. As Jane’s accoster turned and saw who’d just spoken, he swallowed visibly. She didn’t blame him.
Silvery-gray eyes stared out of an implacably expressionless face that looked as if it had been carved from teak. In stark contrast, his close-cropped hair seemed to have been bleached to pewter by the same tropical sun that had tanned him so darkly. He was wearing olive-drab chinos, and an olive-drab T-shirt strained over his massive torso. He looked about as solid and unyielding as an oak tree. Even though he hadn’t raised his voice, the tables around them fell silent.
“You’d be McGuire, I’m thinking.” The dark-haired man smiled weakly in a valiant attempt to retain some of his previous jaunty charm.
“You don’t have to know my name. You don’t have to do anything but walk away.” The softly spoken words were uninflected and matter-of-fact, but at them the other man swallowed again.
“Sure. No problem, entirely.” Not even meeting Jane’s wide-eyed gaze, he edged hastily away, halting nervously as the other man spoke again.
“Your beer, boyo. Don’t rush off without it, now.” The big man handed his glass to him and, without looking to see if he’d left, sat down across from her.
“Quinn McGuire. Sorry I’m late.” He crossed muscular forearms on the table and met her eyes with no hint of apology in his as he made the terse introduction. “I had some business to attend to.”
Besides the slight brogue, there was the faintest hint of a slur to his speech. Jane stared at him, taking in the other signs that had escaped her notice until now. His economy of movement appeared to be an integral part of him, but there was an additional stillness about his attitude that gave the impression of a man who was trying very carefully to stay focused. Those pale silver eyes, veiled by startlingly dark lashes, seemed to be looking through her and past her. For a moment, she had the disconcerting feeling that either he or she was a ghost.
But that was stupid. It was obvious what his problem was.
“Are you drunk, Mr. McGuire?” she asked incredulously.
“Not enough.” As he spoke, a waitress came up to their table and set a squat glass of some dark amber liquid down in front of him. He handed her a bill, waving away the change. “Don’t let me run dry tonight, Molly,” he said, nodding at the glass. “And it looks like the lady’s drinking screwdrivers. Bring her another, would you?”
“It’s plain orange juice, and I’m fine,” Jane said tersely. She waited until the young woman had moved out of earshot. “Is this the business you had to attend to, Mr. McGuire? Did I take you away from an important appointment with a bottle of rye?”
He gave her a pained glance, the mild expression of disgust looking out of place on those otherwise hard features. “Rye? I’d pour it on a wound if I didn’t have anything else handy, but I’d never drink the stuff. No, darlin’, it was good Irish whiskey. But enough of this small talk. You said Terry gave you my name?”
“He must have made a mistake. It’s obvious you’re not interested.” For the second time in a few minutes, she reached for her purse and stood. “I’m sorry I took you away from your more pressing engagements, Mr. McGuire.”
Despite herself, her voice trembled on the last few words. It was the exhaustion, she thought. It was the fact that she hadn’t had a normal night’s sleep for weeks, and that for days now she’d been living on her nerves, waiting for the next incident. She had no more resources left to draw upon, no more strength. Tonight had utterly defeated her.
She’d pinned all her hopes on this encounter, and the man had shown up drunk.
“My name’s Quinn. Sit down.” There was a harsh edge to his tone, but she’d had enough. The look she gave him was steadily assessing and at it, something flickered at the back of those gray eyes.
For a moment she’d thought she’d seen contrition, Jane thought. More likely it had been relief.
“I’ll never know you well enough to be on a first-name basis with you, Mr. McGuire. I doubt that many people are.” With an effort, she fought back the telltale trembling that had started up again. “I also doubt that you care. Goodbye, Mr. Mc—”
“Stop calling me that.” Like a snake striking, one large hand shot out and wrapped itself around her wrist. His grip was firm but even as she reflexively pulled away from him he let her go. His gaze met hers opaquely. “It’s a bad night to be stirring up old memories. Call me Quinn. And please—sit down.”
She didn’t move. She wouldn’t let herself look down at the wrist he’d grasped and released so swiftly, for fear of letting him see how badly he’d rattled her. “Quinn, then. But the rest still stands. I asked you here because I was told that you might be able to help me, and you seem to have slotted me in between bouts of partying.” Even to her own ears her voice sounded thin and high, and she took a deep breath, willing her tone down to a more normal register. “You made it clear earlier that you weren’t really interested in this meeting, so don’t feel you have to go through the motions now just to oblige me. You don’t owe me anything.”
She smiled tightly at him, holding on to the last of her composure, and turned to leave. Behind her she heard him speak.
“Dammit, Sister. You’ve got absolutely no intention of letting me go to hell in my own way, have you?” His words were quietly bitter and Jane looked back at him, startled. She almost expected to see someone else at the table with him, his voice had been pitched so low, but it was her eyes that Quinn McGuire met. “You’re wrong, lady. I owe you, all right. I’m guessing one of my old debts just got transferred.”
“I don’t understand.” She hesitated. For the first time, he seemed to be looking at her as if he was really seeing her, and his scrutiny caught her off-balance. She flushed a little, wishing suddenly that she presented a more pre-possessing sight—and that desire itself was totally unlike her.
She knew she wasn’t the type to turn heads. There just wasn’t anything so special about her, which made what had been happening to her that much harder to understand. Her hair was about as ordinary a brown as it could get. Her eyes were standard-issue blue. She weighed less than she had a few weeks ago, but she had an average figure for her average height. Her skin, a warm ivory tone, was her best feature, and her mouth was a little wider than she thought attractive.
Men didn’t usually look twice at her. She wanted to keep it that way.
“The Star of the County Down,” Quinn murmured, confusing her further. “Irishmen write songs about women like you.” The pewter eyes darkened and then cleared. “I wasn’t at a party tonight. I was holding a private wake for a friend.”
An explanation was the last thing she’d expected from him, and that particular explanation disarmed her completely. Jane caught her breath in swift compassion. “I’m sorry.” She fumbled with the strap of her purse awkwardly, knowing how inadequate her response sounded. “I—I had no idea. You must want to be alone—”
“I want you to sit down, but I’m damned if I know how to get you to do it.” Under the T-shirt the massive shoulders lifted slightly, as if he was attempting to shrug off the burden of his earlier mood. One corner of his mouth lifted wryly. “Why don’t we start all over again?”
Maybe she was projecting her own feelings onto him, Jane thought slowly, but behind the easy manner she could have sworn there was an edge of desolation in that incongruously soft voice. Still holding his gaze and clutching the strap of her purse, she lowered herself cautiously back onto the chair, her posture rigid as she tried to keep as much distance between them as possible.
“I called Sullivan after I spoke with you this afternoon,” Quinn said, frowning slightly. “He said you think someone’s watching you. He told me there’ve been some incidents—and that these incidents have been escalating.”
“Escalating?” A jagged little bubble of laughter escaped her. “That’s one way to put it. Except when I told the police about this, they said the situation hadn’t escalated to the point where they could justify an investigation. When they can spare the manpower they send a patrol car cruising by my apartment, but I’m still walking around alive and unharmed, which means that my case isn’t high priority—yet.”
“So whoever’s targeting you is still at the skirmishing stage,” Quinn continued. “He hasn’t officially declared all-out war. He must have some kind of battle plan that he intends to follow.”
Her head jerked up, her features pinched “Skirmishing? Battle plan? We’re not playing soldiers here.”
He stared at her impassively, seemingly unfazed by her outburst. Smoke-filtered light from the bar beside them gleamed palely on his hair, and his eyes, silvery and reflective, betrayed no hint of his inner thoughts.
“What exactly have you been told about me?” he asked.
“Just that you were a friend of Terrence Sullivan,” she answered, taken aback. “I went to Sullivan Investigations to hire someone to find out why I’m being stalked—and to keep me alive in the meantime. I—I assumed that’s what you did.” Her voice trailed off. “I’m wrong, aren’t I? Just what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a professional soldier,” he said shortly.
She frowned. “You’re in the military? Are you on leave right now?”
“I put in my time for Uncle Sam.” In the first extraneous gesture she’d seen him make, Quinn raked back a short strand of sun-bleached hair. “Now I choose my own wars, Ms. Smith.”
“You’re a—a mercenary?”
Dear God, she thought. She’d expected an ex-cop, or maybe a private eye who could hold his own in a physical confrontation, and instead she’d gotten some kind of hired gun. He was a soldier of fortune, for heaven’s sake!
“I told you—I’m a professional soldier. It’s what I was trained for.” He picked up his glass and drained most of it, setting it back down on the table with a little more force than necessary. “I don’t work for just anyone, and I never take on an assignment that could conflict with my loyalties as a citizen of this country. But there’s always trouble somewhere in the world. Right now it appears that someone’s waging war against you.”
She stared at him, her thoughts chaotic. Quinn had just voiced the feeling she’d had for weeks now. She had felt like some unknown person had declared war on her—a very private, very personal war, but war nonetheless. And from the start she’d had the conviction that her enemy wasn’t interested in taking prisoners.
With Quinn McGuire on her side there was a possibility that she might be able to turn the tide of this one-sided battle, Jane thought slowly. But before they came to any definite arrangement he had to know just what she was up against.
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