An Affair of Vengeance (4 page)

She removed her hand. That didn’t mean anything. Not every crook liked working out. But there wasn’t much middle ground. The ones who weren’t meatheads were usually doughy or skeletal,
and maybe a little drug-addled. No way did the Scotsman’s palebrown eyes have the bloodshot whites and dilated pupils of an addict.

Not that it mattered. It was all just a tad unusual, and she was trained to spot the unusual.

More atypical, though, was the fact that he still held on to her. He hadn’t groped her, and yet he hadn’t pushed her away. Any other man in this particular underworld would have his hands around her ass by now, or failing that, would have pushed her to the floor in disgust for having had the gall to trip in front of him. She would have been sexualized or discarded. No happy medium. Not here. Not with these sorts of men.

But
this
man had treated her like a human being, with some degree of respect, and had afforded her protection. He’d been tender, and his instincts—judging by the innocent placement of his hands beneath her arms—were pure.

Why? Why wasn’t he treating her like an object?

She didn’t understand, and she didn’t have time to figure it out.

She stepped back and ran her hands over her hair, patting her curls into place. “You nearly killed me!”

He looked over her shoulder, down the hall, like he couldn’t be bothered to look straight at her. “What were you doing here?”

“I was coming to see if you wanted to order dinner or another drink. You seemed hungry. And thirsty. Bread and ice water isn’t much of a meal.”

His attention slid to her, and her skin prickled under his unsmiling gaze. Maybe she liked it better when he didn’t look at her.

She straightened her spine. “I’m your waitress, remember? One water, ice. Basket of hot bread. It’s been a few minutes. I’m just trying to do my job, monsieur.”

He didn’t move, didn’t blink. Wasn’t buying it.

“For Christ’s sake, you’re my only customer.” She dropped her hands to her hips and let irritation enter her voice. “Whatever. Look, I gotta go see if I can score another table or two. Can I get you anything else, or what?”

He didn’t say a word, just stared her down like she was a mouse and he was a hawk about to extend its talons.

She wouldn’t wait to be ensnared. With a quick eye roll to show him she wasn’t frightened by his silent treatment, she spun around and sauntered down the hallway. Her heart raced, but she kept her pace even. Surely he didn’t believe that she’d just happened to be standing outside that room. Surely he’d rush up behind her and grab her wrist, demanding that she explain herself.

Nothing but silence followed her down that hallway. She sailed past the guards and melted into the crowd. Finally out of sight, she stuck a hand into her apron and found her Blackberry. She dialed her station chief.

“What?” Peter Mason’s voice was sharp and clean, like a paring knife.

She spoke low. “I need a trace on the pick.”

“Speak up.”

“I can’t. Trace the pick. The toothpick.”

“What? Why? Did you lose it?”

“No. I planted it.” She glanced around, but no one was paying her any attention. “See where it goes.”

As soon as McCrea was alone in his suite at the Metro Hotel, he writhed out of his jacket and tossed it on the bed. He’d grown used to custom-made clothing, at first a necessary evil and now an everyday nonevent, but even the best suits constricted motion. He whipped off his belt and was about to fling it on the bed when
he froze, staring at the jacket that he’d thrown onto the blindingly white duvet. Something wasn’t right. He didn’t know what it was, but his instincts screamed at him to think hard and fast.

What kind of neurotic mess was he becoming? Annoyed with himself, he picked up the jacket and began to inspect it, not expecting to find anything but knowing it was impossible—maybe even unwise—to ignore his intuition.

Really, what could possibly be wrong? Things were great. He’d gotten the contact information of a man higher up in the food chain than Penard. It was a huge score, one he resolved to take advantage of. He should feel jubilant.

So why did he feel so unnerved?

He stared at his discarded clothing, looking for a cause for the prickling of his skin.

Did he feel this way because he’d made Penard bleed? As necessary as it was, he didn’t like how easily such violence came to him. It should be harder. It wasn’t. And it got easier each time. What slippery slope was he walking? How much like his brother was he, really?

He ran a hand over his face, wishing he could just let go for a little while. But the unsettled feeling wouldn’t fade away.

Damn it. It was the waitress. He couldn’t forget her roundeyed stare, or the soft scent of her hair. She’d looked straight at him, had made him feel exposed, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like the feeling that someone had looked at him so thoroughly. It wasn’t that he was hiding his appearance or worried that he’d be made. Mostly, he just didn’t like people ogling him.

Maybe he didn’t like what they saw. He’d been living as a criminal for so long, he didn’t know how he looked to people anymore. He was afraid to know. He could only assume that the stink of the underworld had never left him, had permeated his DNA.

He gave a little laugh at the thought. His DNA had been screwed from conception. No point in worrying about it now.

And why had she been standing outside the private room, anyway? Maybe she’d been telling the truth. She was a waitress, after all. It stood to reason that she’d come back to see if they wanted another round, even if it’d been a little too early for her to think of doing so. With only one table to work, maybe her timing was off. He could accept that.
Had
accepted that. With her innocence ratified, he’d let her go, but not before he’d gathered her straight into his arms.

Into an embrace. The remembrance of it made him push his fingers into his eye sockets. She’d gotten too close. He
never
let people get that close. Even though he knew that a man like the one he played—a coldhearted dealer from the slums of Glasgow—would never be so gallant as to catch a lady when she fell, he’d done just that. With any luck, Penard had been too concerned with cleaning the blood off his neck to notice.

In all likelihood, she was a good person, just a simple waitress trying to make ends meet. The contact made him feel like he’d infected her, and now he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Why had he been so careless?

When he’d run into her and sensed that she was about to fall, he had reacted without thinking. He’d broken her fall and kept her on her feet until she recovered. Something had forced his hands to reach for her, his arms to shelter her, and the rest of his body to remain sturdy and strong enough to steady both of them. He had been her anchor, just for a moment.

And he’d liked it. She was a lady, and he was a gentleman still, even after all these years of trying to behave otherwise.

It was as simple and as stupid as that. That one act—catching a girl when she fell—had made him feel better than he had in years. Decades, maybe. Better, even, than when he joined SOCA. He’d liked being the good guy instead of the bad guy. He’d liked helping instead of hurting. And damn it if he didn’t like the way she’d felt, so soft and small but strong as iron, and smelling of
pretty, domestic things he’d rather not think about. Clean linens hanging from a line. Heather blooming in an August meadow. Things that weren’t meant for him. Things he swore he didn’t want but that sometimes called to him, weakening his resolve, making him dream of a different kind of life.

He couldn’t afford the yearning that she’d awakened. Anything less than full commitment to his role would get him singled out and killed. It’d take years before SOCA could get another agent placed as well as he was. His death would destroy the investigation.

No, a normal life wasn’t for him. And he had no idea where he’d picked up that gentlemanly reflex to catch a lady as she fell. His worthless father hadn’t taught him a bloody thing about how to treat a woman. Nor had his brother. His mother may have shown him a thing or two about proper manners. She’d been a sweet woman during his earliest years, but had been embittered by a hard life. McCrea’s father hadn’t had the decency to leave her once things went sour between them. He’d kept on drinking and whoring around town, right under his mother’s nose. She couldn’t do a thing about it, or at least she stopped trying after she learned that her voice didn’t stand a chance against her husband’s angry hands. No one’s voice did. She started drinking more and more, and then one day Aaron came home with a sack of pills to help her sleep and keep her calm.

McCrea, not yet a teenager when the pills made their appearance, had been grateful at first, because she seemed happier on the pills than she’d been as a drunk. She could sleep; she didn’t cry all the time. The fights between her and his father were less frequent, and less violent. She seemed less afraid, and so was McCrea.

But it wasn’t long before she started drifting away. He remembered coming home from school one day and finding her staring at the television, the sound muted, the picture fuzzy. She didn’t look up as he’d fixed the rabbit ears for her, bringing her
soap opera into focus. He’d become afraid again then but didn’t know to help her. He didn’t want to take away the one thing that kept her from weeping, but he didn’t want to lose his mother to a drug-induced fog, either. So he’d just taken care of her. It was all he could think to do. He’d fed her and kept her alive, even when she seemed past caring whether she lived or died. All she cared about was maintaining the oblivion that kept her from facing just how awful her life had become.

He’d been a stupid kid. He knew now that he should have sought help for her. But he hadn’t known where to look for it, and he’d hoped he could make her better on his own. So he’d tried to moderate her use. He’d hide the pills that Aaron brought home for her or play tricks with her by substituting them with harmless vitamins. Sometimes it worked. But whenever she would start to sober up, she’d rail against him, screaming obscenities and hitting him with her small, fierce fists. Then she’d hallucinate and shake, and McCrea would give in. She was an addict whose husband abused her, and as a prepubescent boy, McCrea was ill equipped to help her recover. After a while, he just let her have the pills and accepted that the mother who’d once loved and protected him was now as useless as a sack of drowned kittens.

Against all odds, McCrea never joined her in that dreamland. Even when he was forced to begin bathing her, even when he started helping her use the toilet, he stayed sober. He was tempted to sink into a stupor with her, but he had to stay vigilant for both of them, because his father would return every few days for a shag and a fight—the shag with his mother, thank God for small favors, and the fight with whoever was handiest. McCrea tried to put himself in his father’s path and usually succeeded. Every bruise on his mother’s skin was a sign of his failure to protect her.

He was too busy keeping her alive and out of his father’s view to realize that he couldn’t do it all on his own. The battle he fought was all-consuming; he couldn’t see around it. He dropped
out of school and focused on earning enough money to bring home the food they needed to survive. His mother needed near-constant care, and for a long time, he gave it to her. It gave his life purpose, and it kept him close to the only person he’d ever loved and who’d ever loved him back.

But as he grew older and he saw no end to the drudgery of their lives, he began to dwell on the role his brother and father had played in his mother’s decline, and how easily they’d shaken off any responsibility for it. He’d simmered, growing angrier and angrier. A dark part of him had risen up, demanding justice. Right around that time, he’d started to become aware of other options for addicts besides their sons devoting their entire existences to the maintenance of their conditions. He’d reached out to a social worker, who’d helped his mother obtain National Health Service funding to enter residential rehab.

Looking back on it, he knew he should have done it sooner. Right away, really. If he’d done it at the beginning of her addiction, maybe she could have come out of it still able to function. Maybe she’d have more than two bloody brain cells to rub together today. He blamed himself for—what’s that word he learned from the social worker?—
enabling
her all those years, but what did he know of it? Just some dumb kid from a broken family living in a shit neighborhood. No one he knew had ever entered rehab. He sure as hell didn’t know that the NHS might fund it. It wasn’t exactly easy getting her help, but once she was safely ensconced at Castle Craig’s treatment facility, far from his father and his brother, McCrea had nothing left in his heart but vengeance.

He could have gone straight into Aaron’s gang. The offers were tempting—money, status, women. But the younger McCrea didn’t want any of those things. He only wanted to make them pay. So he did the last thing anyone would have expected a poor, uneducated street rat with a junkie mother, abusive father, and drug-dealing brother to do: he went into law enforcement. He
didn’t tell anyone—he didn’t have anyone to tell—and that may have been the only reason SOCA took his application. Because of his secrecy and family connections, he could slide into the Glasgow street scene seamlessly, and upon graduation from the academy, he did precisely that. His brother was dead by then, a victim of his own supply. Such things were too common to question. With one McCrea brother down, no one asked where the younger was. No one cared. They only wanted another man to take Aaron’s place. Before long, McCrea was climbing the ranks, always looking for the man at the top of the pyramid, the one making the most money off the backs of the addicted.