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Taking photographs had saved her.
Now it looked as though it might destroy her.
She leaned forward and closely examined Luke’s images. The way he captured light and contrasting shadow was beautiful. Poignant. He’d shot mountain peaks and ragged cliffs. Eagles, a grizzly. Oceans and ice at sunset. Deserts with nothing but undulating dunes for miles. A wolf pup in snow. A cougar in the crook of two branches. But no humans. Not even a footprint.
She touched a framed image of a small bear cub watching its mother. The look of need and dependence in the young animal’s eyes filled Jessica’s chest with aching emotion. It was poetic. All the images were. They told her that whoever had held this camera and captured these wild scenes had soul. It was an almost elegiac vision of life in its raw, harsh beauty. Luke Stone had a beautiful mind buried somewhere in that rugged brawn and Jessica suspected there was something sad in there, too.
Because there was sadness in these pictures.
She wondered if he was always alone when he shot his film. Did he need these open spaces for his sanity? Was this his freedom? She had a sense the man was a true loner, a transient who didn’t put down roots easily. Perhaps that’s why he lived here on the water—it offered a sense of escape.
She heard the shower go off and a voyeuristic guilt pinged through her. She turned quickly to take in the rest of the room before he returned. There was no sign of family or girlfriends—no female touch in the decor at all. The only sign of human connection was a small color print pinned to his fridge with a magnet. It showed three rugged and weather-browned men on pack horses in a red desert. She couldn’t make out the faces, but she thought one might be Luke.
Jessica’s eyes settled on his computer.
She glanced in the direction of the bathroom. What did she have to lose?
She hastened over to it, quickly tapped a key that brought the monitor to life, saw a file with her name. Her pulse quickened.
She shot another look over her shoulder and clicked on the file. Her breath caught in her throat. Her life, everything, it was all there.
She scrolled rapidly through the information, her body going hot. He had photographs, her résumé, stories on her abduction in China, the name of her mental institution in the U.K., her psychiatrist’s notes, the medication she was on, even a virtual transcript of her conversation with Giles two days ago…she heard the bathroom door open. Her breath lodged in her throat.
She quickly closed the file and moved to the opposite end of the room, heart beating fast. She hugged herself, feeling violated in a way she couldn’t even begin to articulate.
Why shouldn’t he have a dossier on her, if he’d been sent to find her? But why was the CIA suddenly interested in her when everyone else had hung her out to dry in China?
She began to feel small again. Afraid. And that horribly familiar panic began to nip at her brain.
“Hey?”
She jumped, whipped her eyes to him.
He stood drying his hair with a towel, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans faded in places she shouldn’t look. God, he was good-looking. In a rough and untamed way. He seemed too tough to have the sensitivity for those photographs. Yet there was something in the desolate gray of his eyes, the way the lines fanned softly out from them, that echoed the haunting vistas in the photos.
“You okay?” he said, stilling the towel as he studied her face.
“Yeah, I—I’m fine. Did…you take all of those?” she pointed to the wall.
“Yep.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“Thanks. You want to take a shower? Water’s hot.” He smiled and it reached into those wilderness eyes, giving her a thump of sensation in her stomach.
“I…” she became cognizant of the fact she probably stank of garbage and old liquor from that jacket he’d worn. “I guess I should, huh?”
He nodded. “Yep.”
“I don’t have any clean clothes,” she hesitated. “I guess I’m stating the obvious.” She felt awkward. Seeing those photographs made her feel as though she’d somehow seen him naked. It was a language she spoke, and when you came across someone who communicated in the same visceral way you did, the link was there whether you wanted it or not.
“I left some stuff for you in the bathroom,” he said. “It was the best I could do for now. We can pick up some things for you later. Coffee or tea?”
“I…coffee would be great, thanks.”
“Bathroom’s that way, down the hall.”
She began to walk, stopped. “You’re really casual about this,” she said. “You say it’s not your thing, but…you’ve done it a lot, haven’t you?”
“Picked up women and brought them home? Yeah, I do that a lot.” He said it with such a deadpan expression in his flat Australian tone she wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not.
“I mean…never mind.” She began to make her way to the bathroom.
“You mean killing a couple of gangsters, assaulting two cops and then coming home to make coffee?”
She stopped. “Yes, something like that.”
He tossed his towel over a chair at the table, opened a cupboard and took two mugs out. “Your accent is cute, you know that?” he said, plunking the mugs on the counter.
“And you know exactly what part of the U.K. it comes from, too. It’s all in that dossier on your computer, so please don’t play games with me, Stone.”
His eyes flicked between her and his computer and his features turned serious. He stood to his full height, facing her squarely. There was a latent aggression in his posture that made her nervous.
“You looked at my laptop?”
“I’d like to know what is going on and what happened to Giles in Shanghai.”
His eyes narrowed slowly. Then a ghost of a smile played at the corners of his strong mouth. “Fair enough,” he said, and he turned and reached for a box of green tea. “Take your shower and we’ll sit down and talk.”
Luke felt her eyes boring into his back. He ignored her as he poured boiling water over a tea bag.
He’d underestimated Jessica. He’d do well to remember she was once an aggressive and respected investigative journalist. Landing a gig as a foreign correspondent for the BBC needed a fair degree of global savvy.
He heard her leave the room, then heard the bathroom door bang shut.
He extracted the tea bag, squeezed it as he listened for the shower. She’d be busy for a few minutes. He positioned himself in front of his laptop, set his mug of tea down and punched Jacques Sauvage’s number into his satellite phone. Luke checked his watch as it rang. Dawn would be breaking soon.
“Stone, it’s about bloody time. Have you secured the principal?”
“Good morning to you, too, Sauvage. I have her. But we have a complication.” He proceeded to tell Jacques about his altercation with the police and the two gangsters.
Jacques was silent for a moment. “This is going to make any sort of cooperation with local law enforcement close to impossible.”
Luke shrugged, sipped his tea. “I made an executive decision. Those guys were out to kill her. My guess is they’re Dragon Heads, affiliated with Xiang-Li. They don’t want the photos getting out.”
“You manage to drop the tail?”
“Yep.” He sipped from his mug. “What can I tell her?”
“Everything. I’m liaising personally with CIA director Blake Weston on this and he’s given no instructions to hold anything back from her. All he wants is the woman, her film and her testimony. He’s setting up some form of witness protection for her.”
“When are you sending someone to pick her up?”
Jacques hesitated. “You’re going to have to hold on to her for a while, Stone, until—”
He slammed his mug down, sloshing hot tea onto his hand. “Wait a minute, Sauvage, we had a deal. You told me this woman would die if I refused this job. You said I was the only one who could get to her in the time frame. You also said you were going to take her off my hands ASAP!”
“I’m sorry. I’ve had to target all our spare resources elsewhere. You’re all I’ve got out there right now. You can handle one woman, Stone.”
Luke swore viciously. “Listen up, Sauvage, I’m not a goddamn babysitter. You’re in breach of my contract. I can walk from this—”
“Can you, Stone?” Jacques’s voice was cold.
Luke cursed again, dragged his hand over his hair.
“Look, I know what happened to your family in Australia. I know that’s why you wanted out. But you’re the best in the business and you’re all we’ve got. You can do this.”
“Why the hell should I?”
“You want to stay on FDS books, don’t you?”
Luke was quiet for a moment.
“If you turn her out onto the streets now, the woman dies. It’s simple. And it’s your call.”
Luke closed his eyes. He felt sick to his stomach. This was exactly what he didn’t want—sole responsibility for a woman’s life. Images of blood seared his brain. He could smell it. He could feel the warm body of his wife in his arms, dying. The blood from the baby. So much blood.
Luke had managed to take care of everyone, except the woman he loved. She’d died pregnant with his child because he’d been too damn busy protecting someone else. His family had been slaughtered because of him.
He hadn’t wanted to live after that. Almost chose not to. But he hadn’t quite found the guts to kill himself.
“Stone?”
Luke inhaled deeply. “Okay,” he said coolly, very quietly. “But if I fail, it’s on your head.” He wasn’t taking responsibility on this one. He couldn’t. Never again.
“You’re still the best at this, Stone,” Jacques said, just as quietly. “We both know you are.”
“You overestimate me, mate.”
“I believe in you. It’s why I hired you. It’s why I’m asking you to do this now.”
Silence.
“And…Stone, try and stay somewhat inside the law, would you? Cooperation with the Canadians is going to be tough enough down the road as it is, especially now that you’ve engaged the cops.”
“I’ll do what I can.” Luke hit a button and killed the call. He sat back in his chair, eyes closed.
“I’ll leave if you want me to.”
He jerked to his feet and spun to face Jessica. “Jesus! How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough to know you want me ‘off your hands’….”
He forced air from his lungs with a puff of his cheeks and rubbed his brow hard. “And just where do you think you would you go?”
She shrugged and he noticed suddenly how feminine and vulnerable she looked in his oversized cargo pants, T-shirt and sweater. Her hair was wet and her skin scrubbed to an innocent glow. But it was her eyes and mouth that did him in. There was nothing vulnerable there. They were provocatively sexy as all get-out. He thought about all this woman had endured, what she’d once had in life and what had been taken from her by the Triad. And his heart squeezed sharp and fast. He—if anyone—should understand.
It was a Triad that had taken his wife and child in Australia.
He turned his back on her, stalked into the kitchen and poured a coffee. She accepted it with both hands and a slight bow of the head—a gesture he found both exotic and genuine, endearing.
“You want something to eat?”
She shook her head.
“Okay, then. Lets talk.” He pulled out a chair at the dining room table. “Sit.”
“I…I don’t want to be in your way if—”
He snorted. “If what? Look, I’m sorry you heard that, but understand this: I took the job. And I don’t quit something once I sign on.”
Only fail. I can still fail.
“Don’t worry, I won’t fail you, Jess.” He had no idea why he said it. But there it was. Some part of him was determined not to let this woman—or himself—down.
“Now sit.”
He scooped up the maps and seated himself opposite her.
“I’m going to bring you up to speed. But first priority is for you to tell me how those guys knew you were going to be at that pay phone. Who else knew you were going to call Giles Rehnquist from that booth, at that time?”
Jessica looked into his eyes. “Absolutely no one.”
“You must have told some—”
She set her mug down firmly. “I told no one.”
His brows lowered. “Could someone have overheard? Think. Maybe you—”
“Listen to me, Stone.” She couldn’t call him Luke, not now, not after what she’d overheard. “Whatever people might say, I am not crazy. I’m sick to death of all those knowing, sympathetic glances. I took those photos because I want my life back.” Her eyes burned with hot emotion. “And since you’re stuck with me now there is one thing you better know about me. Those men may have taken everything they possibly could have from me and they may want to kill me, but I will not run from them. I don’t run from anything. Ever.”
He pursed his lips, nodded slowly, something akin to admiration in his eyes. “Then you’re a better person than I, Jessica Chan,” he said very quietly.
“What?”
“Nothing. So you believe the only person who knew you were going to be there at that time was Giles?”
“Damn right.”
