Outlaw Derek (7 page)

The phone rang, and Derek half turned to scoop it up quickly from the end table. “Yeah?”

Shannon, watching him, still bewildered, heard the scratching of a shrill voice from the telephone, unintelligible to her. But she listened to Derek’s end of the conversation, looking at his face and feeling the tendrils of those unfamiliar emotions fluttering inside her. What was wrong
with her? Why did she feel so … so restless? So unlike herself.

“Johnny? All right, if the information’s worth fifty, I’ll leave it in the usual place. What is it?” He listened for a few moments in silence, his face going still. And his voice was flat when he said, “Are you sure? All right. Yeah. I’ll leave the money for you. Thanks, Johnny.” He cradled the receiver slowly, looked at Shannon for a long moment in silence, then sighed softly.

“Well. It’s started.”

She felt cold suddenly, something in the flat timbre of his voice alerting her. “What?”

“That was a friend. On the streets. He has good ears, and he just heard there were some unfriendly out-of-towners fresh off a plane trying to find out if I’m in Richmond, or still out of the country. They’re also asking about a lovely brunette and flashing a picture of you around.”

“A picture? Of me? But, how—”

“You had to get security identification at Civatech, right? An identification with photo?”

Shannon nodded, then frowned. “Unfriendly out-of-towners? What does that mean?” She was afraid she knew.

Derek answered gently, as if he would have softened the blow if he could have. As if anyone could have. “Hit men, Shannon. Assassins.”

“But I didn’t
do
anything!” she cried.

“That doesn’t matter with people like these,” Derek told her steadily. “You
could
do something. It’s all they know—and it’s enough. More than enough. It’s a threat to them, and one they have to take care of.”

She drew a shuddering breath. “This isn’t happening.”

“I wish it weren’t. But it is. Get your things together, Shannon; we have to leave now. Pack your clothes in that bag I showed you in the bedroom.”

His steady voice calmed the panic she felt, and she rose slowly to her feet. He was on his feet as well, facing her, and she looked at him in unconscious pleading, forgetting everything except the
terrible need for a sense of stability in a world that had gone mad without warning.

He reached out to touch her shoulders lightly. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Shannon.”

She tried a smile that didn’t quite come off. “Promise?”

“I promise.” He smiled. “Now, go pack.”

Derek stood where he was until she disappeared into the bedroom, then raked his fingers through his hair as he headed for the hall closet and the bag he kept packed for emergency exits such as this one. Promises. Like a damned bloody fool, he kept making promises, driven to ease the fear in her eyes. And no one knew better than he that promises made in a situation like this were just words written on the wind.

Derek carried her bag and his own down the service stairs of the building and through a maintenance door he unlocked with a key. He guided her to a dimly lit parking lot just down the street,
stopping only once, briefly, to jam a fifty-dollar bill underneath a pot containing a drooping coleus that was trying rather pathetically and vainly to decorate a low brick wall lining the sidewalk.

He moved quickly, but not so quickly that the pace was too difficult for her to maintain. An unassuming, rather battered Ford was parked nearby, and he unlocked the passenger door and helped Shannon inside. Within minutes of leaving the apartment, they were driving down brightly lit streets.

It was nearly midnight when a small, dark woman joined a tall companion in the sheltering darkness of an alley between two quiet buildings in a renovated business district. “You have good instincts,” she said grudgingly. “How did you know he’d move tonight?”

The tall, athletic man with the colorless eyes continued to stare across the street at an old
warehouse recently given a much-needed face-lift and converted to spacious lofts. “Know? I didn’t know. How could I? But the pawns in this game seem to be moving with unusual speed. He should have been able to count on another day at least before being forced to abandon the apartment. Interesting.”

“You’re sure he left because they were too close?”

“He wouldn’t have moved otherwise. The girl is—too fragile, I think, to move needlessly.”

“And he’d care about that, of course.”

The tall man looked down at his companion, his flicker of amusement lost easily in the darkness. “Jealous, Gina?” he asked gently.

She stiffened. “Don’t be ridiculous! I’m merely concerned that his emotions not … not cloud his judgment. There’s too much at stake for such things.”

Her companion nodded gravely, the darkness still hiding his expression. “I see. An admirable caution.”

She fumed in silence.

He chuckled softly, and changed the subject. “If we are very, very lucky, he saw no sign that he was followed here.”

“It’s almost impossible to spot a tail if two different cars share the duty,” she pointed out in a sharp voice, still obviously annoyed. “And traffic was certainly heavy tonight. He didn’t see us, Alexi.”

“Perhaps.” Softly, as if to himself, Alexi added, “But I have learned never to underestimate his skill—or his instincts. He’s been hunter and hunted far too often not to have learned well the tricks of the chase.”

Gina looked up at him, frowning slightly. “Sometimes I think you actually like him. Certainly you admire him.”

“Is that what you think?” Alexi murmured, and then added, “I’ll take the first watch. Relieve me at dawn.”

She hesitated, but turned away. And she was making herself as comfortable as possible in her
car, parked around the corner, when it occurred to her that Alexi hadn’t really answered her implied question about Derek Ross.

Not really.

The loft was huge, open, and airy. It was bi-level, with a raised platform supporting a large, old brass bed, a polished antique mahogany wardrobe, and an equally old rolltop desk; a bathroom and walk-in closet had been built into the upper space in one corner, and a lively schefflera spread its umbrellalike leaves to provide greenery in another corner.

The lower level held a compact kitchen partitioned from the living area by a waist-high counter, and the remainder of the room was casually furnished with a long, overstuffed couch, two comfortable chairs, a wooden rocking chair with a hassock in front of it, end tables, and a coffee table. There were bright rugs on the polished wood floor, the kitchen was stocked with
food, and the bed was made up. The place had a lived-in air, but a curious waiting air as well, as if it wasn’t occupied on a daily basis.

Shannon, sitting in the rocking chair and keeping it moving slowly, watched as Derek made hot cocoa in the kitchen. “Who does this place belong to?”

He looked across the counter at her, taking in her methodical rocking, which obviously hadn’t relaxed her. She had been silent all the way here, withdrawn. He couldn’t really blame her for that, but he knew how dangerous it was for her to retreat into herself rather than face what was happening. He had to reach her, had to strengthen that tenuous bond between them.

“It belongs to me,” he said finally. “But it isn’t in my name, and it would take weeks to trace the deed back to me. We’re safe here for a while.”

She was looking at him, but her eyes were focused on something else, something locked away somewhere inside her. “We moved a lot while I was growing up,” she said softly. “Packing and
unpacking, a different house or apartment to get used to. Different school. People I didn’t know around me. I could never have a pet. And I always felt I—I wasn’t a
part
of anything. That I didn’t belong anywhere.”

Derek hardly realized he was moving toward her; he knew only that the desolate, lost sound of her voice pulled at him like a magnet. He found himself sitting on the hassock and holding both her hands even when she would have instinctively pulled away. Even when she stiffened. His forearms rested just above her knees, and he could feel her tremble.

“Shannon, honey, I know this is hard for you. It would be difficult for someone a hell of a lot tougher and harder than you could ever be. I know you feel lost, confused, scared; you’d have to be made of stone not to. But you
aren’t alone
. Do you understand that? I’m with you. I won’t leave you, no matter what. And I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

She looked down at her hands, lost in his, and
the sensation of things whirling out of her control gradually slowed, steadied. She felt less dizzy, less cold. Less alone. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Derek. You’re being so kind and I’m falling apart like an idiot—”

“Not like an idiot,” he interrupted to correct her. “Like a normal human being, Shannon. You’ve had one hell of a rug yanked out from under you, and it’s only natural to be disoriented and scared. Especially when we had to leave the apartment so suddenly, and you know we may have to move quickly again.” His voice altered suddenly, became light and rather pained. “And would you please stop telling me how kind I am? You’re going to give me a complex.” He squeezed her hands gently, then rose and returned to the kitchen to get the cocoa.

Shannon discovered she was smiling. Had he really called her honey? No. No, of course not. Her imagination. “A complex? It was a compliment.”

“Was it?” he asked, carrying two cups from
the kitchen and handing her one before sitting at one end of the long couch. “And if I called you a ‘dependable sort,’ I suppose that would be a compliment?”

She thought about it, and her smile became stronger. “No. No, it wouldn’t be.”

“Exactly.”

After a moment, still smiling, she started rocking again. This time the motion wasn’t tensely methodical, but lazy and relaxed. “What happens tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” he said, “we take it easy. I’ll make a couple more phone calls, see if I can find out more about this Cyrano gadget. And we’ll go on from there.”

Shannon nodded, and he watched her, very conscious of her vulnerability. More relaxed now, she was nonetheless too withdrawn for his peace of mind. Last night, she had been too exhausted and frightened to hide within a shell, too desperate to keep herself from reaching out to someone else for comfort. And now, when she
badly needed comfort, needed to be certain she was no longer alone, her wounded self wouldn’t allow her to accept reassurance.

He wanted to hold her. But even if she were willing to accept that—and he knew she wasn’t—he didn’t trust himself. The desire that had coiled in his weary body last night had grown stronger, closer to the surface with every passing hour, and he was fighting to control it. Even assuming she could feel the same for him, such powerful emotions now would very likely send her even deeper into her shell.

Derek had walked many fine lines in his life, performed many a balancing act between safety and danger, but he had never felt such caution within himself as he did now. With Shannon. To say that this situation was the worst possible one in which to begin building a relationship was a vast understatement.

To say that he wanted that relationship more than he had ever wanted anything in his life was a vast understatement.

“I think I’ll take a shower,” Shannon said, rising to carry her cup into the kitchen.

Derek was too aware of her movements behind him in the kitchen. He watched her climb the stairs and knew she must be taking the silky pajamas Raven had bought her out of the suitcase. He heard her close the bathroom door.

He set his almost-untasted cup of cocoa on the coffee table and frowned at it. He wanted something stronger, but didn’t get up to get it. There was, he reflected broodingly, little he could do about the situation at Civatech until he knew more. He’d have to go out there eventually, slip into the place somehow, but he wasn’t ready to try that just yet.

Was it less than twenty-four hours ago that Shannon had come into his life? Odd that events had a way of stretching time in improbable ways. Still, it was something he had seen happen more than once. He wasn’t sure if he had lived a week’s normal time at any point during the past ten years or so. One of these days he’d have to
drop back into normal life, with its hectic but predictable schedule, and he’d probably suffer jet lag from the shock to his system.

One of these days.

His mind, never very far from Shannon, focused on her more intently as he heard the shower running. Cautious as he was toward her, he knew only too well that he couldn’t allow her to remain withdrawn. He had to reach her somehow. There was, inside that guarded, wounded woman, a vividly alive and laughing woman hidden away. He knew it. He
felt
it.

She was stronger than she knew—she would have had to be to weather the shocks and pain of her life. She was innately a very strong woman; yes, he knew that as surely as he knew his own strengths and weaknesses. But she was so accustomed to being alone inside herself that withdrawal had become a part of her personality rather than a simple defense mechanism. And how could he teach this hurt, guarded woman to
allow him close enough to share the careful space she had marked out for her own?

It was what he had tried to do in explaining that she had to trust him. And though that first step had forged a tenuous bond, Shannon refused to let him close the distance between them. She needed time alone, safe time, he knew that. She needed to find a balance, to catch her breath. The problem was, he couldn’t give her that.

The only safe time he could give her would be fleeting and uncertain, with the probability of fast action and danger hovering over them like a sword.

Derek knew rationally that he was in no shape for this. It was beyond his experience. He was adept at functioning on little rest under stressful conditions, but he had never before had to do so with a fragile victim depending on him for her very life. And if he had been asked theoretically if he could have done so while also being emotionally involved with that fragile woman, he
would have answered with an unequivocal
no
. But the question was hardly a theoretical one.