Aces High (13 page)

It wasn't even a matter of giving herself, but simply a matter of a possession that was mutual.

Her own blind fervor drove his desire higher; she knew that because he made no secret of it. If he couldn't make pretty speeches about his need, he charmed in a different, rougher way, his hoarse voice uttering raw words of stark necessity that seared her to her bones. And his hands on her, his beautiful hands that were hard without hurting, brought her body to life in a way she had never thought possible.

Katrina lost herself so utterly in the heat and frantic urgency of his passion that she thought she'd never find herself again. And some dim instinct told her he had marked her forever, inside where it wasn't visible to the naked eye. Deep inside her, where it burned like a brand on her soul.

The bedroom had been peaceful for some time when Katrina became aware of a guilty memory. The accounts. It was already the middle of the afternoon; she didn't stand a chance of finishing up by the end of the day even if she went back to work immediately. She was debating with herself as to whether Skye would protest her leaving him, when the sudden summons of the phone on her nightstand made the matter academic.

“Oh damn,” Skye muttered in disgust, removing one arm from around her to reach for the pesky intruder. “What?” he growled into the receiver.

And Katrina, held closely beside him, didn't need the abrupt stiffening of his body to alert her, because she heard the hard voice of the caller almost as clearly as he did.

“Skye? He's loose.”

“How the hell did that happen?” Skye bit out, releasing Katrina and sitting bolt upright. His expression was grim.

She sat up slowly beside him, still hearing the caller's voice clearly because it was so powerful, so distinct.

“I don't know yet, but I mean to find out,” the caller promised darkly. “I just got a call from one of the agents; the other's in bad shape and needs to be taken to a hospital. It happened half an hour ago. Adrian didn't try to take the car, he simply vanished into the hills. I told Thompson to get his partner to a doctor and keep his mouth shut. In ten minutes I can be airborne with a squad of marshals.”

“We can't have a manhunt out there, or we'll tip our hand for sure,” Skye said flatly.

“It isn't a game anymore, Skye,” Daniel Stuart, director of the FBI, said in a sharpened tone.

“You owe these people.” Skye's voice was hard. “And you gave your word, Daniel.”

“I can't have Adrian running loose down there!”

“He won't be for long.” Skye threw back the sheet covering his naked body and swung his legs off the bed. “I'll get him.”

“Alone? Skye, are you out of your mind?”

“I'm not alone. There's a small army here, one you'd love to get your hands on anytime, and they have a vested interest in capturing Adrian.”

There was a pause, and then Daniel swore violently. “I don't like it—”

“You didn't like it when they made it possible for me to catch him the first time. Forget your marshals, Daniel. Bring only enough men to hold on to him. See you there.” And he hung up the phone decisively.

Katrina knew that Adrian had been held in a remote house no more than ten miles from the park, and the thought of that killer loose on an unsuspecting countryside frightened her. But something else frightened her more, sending ice through her veins and tightening her throat until she could hardly speak.

Almost inaudibly she said, “You won't get the others, will you?”

Skye rose from the bed and began dressing. “There's no need. Adrian can't get far, not on foot. I'll be able to move faster if I go alone.” He retrieved his gun from the top shelf of her closet, where he had put it the day before, and shrugged into the shoulder harness.

“I'm going with you,” Katrina said, throwing off the covers and sliding from the bed. She went to the dresser and began hauling out clothing.

“No, you aren't,” he said flatly, sliding his bare feet into moccasins and reaching into the closet for a thin Windbreaker.

“Skye!”

“Katrina, you aren't an experienced field agent trained to handle this kind of thing.” He came to stand before her suddenly, one hand lifting to frame her face. His eyes were shuttered, his voice still harsh. “You'd only get in my way. Believe me, I know what I'm doing.”

She stared up at him, holding the still-folded clothes to her naked breasts. In a wondering tone she said, “Dane was right. You do think you're made of iron, don't you?”

He gazed at her lovely, still face, aware that her catlike amber eyes held shock, that her slender body was rigid. In spite of the urgent need for him to get moving, he was fighting the urge to discover why she was looking at him with that expression of strange surprise. He didn't understand it. His own actions made perfect sense to him; Adrian had escaped, and he was going after him.

“I have to go,” he said, ignoring her question and hearing the reluctance in his own voice.

She dropped the clothes she was holding and grabbed handfuls of his jacket. “Answer me!” she demanded.

Skye was trying to keep his attention off her naked body, and having little luck. The late afternoon sunlight filtered through the sheer curtains of the window, painting her body gold and lighting her wild hair with fire. He hated leaving her! “Of course I don't think I'm made of iron,” he said finally, irritable because the question was unimportant.

“Then why are you going alone?” Her voice was fierce, her eyes burning. “Get Dane! Get
someone
!”

He forced patience into his voice. “I told you—I'll move faster alone. I've tracked Adrian before, and I know how his mind works.” He bent his head and kissed her firmly, then pulled her hands loose from his jacket and stepped back.

“Don't,” she said.

Skye turned away from her, surprised at the effort it took. And it wasn't, he realized, just because he could hardly stand to be out of her presence these days. It was something else, something on a deeper level—a wrenching tug inside him, as if some vital part of himself were irrevocably connected to her and resisted his leaving her. He had never felt anything like that before, and it disturbed him. “I'll be back,” he muttered, and knew his promise was unvarnished truth.

He'd always return to her, no matter what stood in his way.

Katrina dressed in desperate haste, softly cursing her trembling fingers, trying to make her mind work. Dane, of course. He knew his brother best, he knew what she had only just seen clearly for herself. He had tried to warn her, but she hadn't listened, hadn't believed that a man with Skye's strength could ever need anyone else for any reason.

He needs someone to care about him, so he'll stop to think before risking his neck.

She had seen it for the first time, that unconscious, heedless inability in him to recognize the fact that he was made of flesh and blood. It had shocked her, because until then she hadn't known what Dane's warning had meant. But she knew now. She knew that Skye's very strength, the burning life force inside him, made him completely, unconsciously reckless when it came to his own survival.

Katrina had fought for her survival, grimly and with all the will she could command. She had stoically endured interrogation techniques expressly designed to break the human mind and spirit, and had refused to be broken. She had faced her childhood terror of small rooms and close places, rejecting the mind-shattering horror of a nightmare come to life as she had stared at four bare gray walls in a three-by-five-foot cell. And she had emerged with a sure grip on her sanity to rebuild her life.

She knew how precious life was, and how vulnerable that life was to the vagaries of fate.

But Skye…He didn't know. Nature had given him a natural impatience and recklessness, and then had added both an unusual physical strength and an inner fire that burned with all the invincible heat of a crucible.

What had he said about Dane finding him months after he had left Germany?
I probably would have managed to get myself killed. God knows I was trying hard enough.

His own life didn't matter very much to him. And it wasn't a defeatist thing, but simply a careless one; he never thought about it. He would always be largely indifferent to his own fate, she knew now. But his great strength and incredible life force had provided a kind of aura, a rare cloak of sheer luck, and he had survived despite his own hell-bent recklessness.

But luck was a capricious thing.

What Skye needed was, as Dane had warned, someone who cared about him. He needed someone to love him so utterly that he became a part of that other life and, so, linked to it. Careless with his own existence, he would never be careless with another's, particularly if he loved her as well.

Dane had been his balance, Katrina realized, remembering the truth in what he had so lightly said. He had been Skye's center, his anchor. The more patient and cautious brother had held firmly to the bond between them, refusing to allow Skye to fling his life away without a thought. But Dane was married, his own heart claimed by the woman he loved, and though there wasn't less between the brothers, there was a difference. Skye was more alone, less connected.

And, as she raced from the hotel and through the park, Katrina promised herself fiercely that she would forge the bond he needed. She had been afraid to offer her love, but there was no room in her now for such insecurity. Skye's life meant more to her than her own, and she was prepared to fight with all the relentless will she could command to make certain he knew it.

He might not be able to love her, but he would never again be able to doubt that he was loved.

She drew up, breathless, a few yards from the docked riverboat. Dane was there, along with a lovely blonde who had to be his wife, as well as two other men, Derek and Kelsey, whom Katrina had met earlier while this operation was in the planning stages. All four were in casual clothes, having obviously changed from their costumes at the end of their shift.

And before she could even find the breath to speak, Dane was alert and aware. For the first time, she felt the force that he shared with his brother, saw it leaping at her out of his eyes as he instinctively probed.

She found her voice. “Adrian's escaped. Skye's gone after him.”

“When?” Dane rapped out.

“Just a few minutes ago. Daniel Stuart called. One of the agents was badly hurt and the other one took him to the hospital. Adrian doesn't have a car; he's on foot somewhere in the hills. Skye wouldn't let Daniel bring in marshals; he said that all of you could recapture Adrian. But he meant to go alone, and he did.”

Softly Derek said, “We have a chopper on the roof of the hotel. Would Skye—?”

Dane shook his head. “A skill neither of us has. He must have taken his car.”

“Derek's a pilot,” Kelsey offered, his pleasant face grim. “With a little luck Skye won't be more than a few minutes ahead of us.”

“He's probably there already,” Dane muttered, because one trait the brothers shared was a love of fast cars. He looked down at his wife, seeing her pallor and worried eyes. “Jenny—”

“I know,” she said quickly, managing a reassuring smile. “Just be careful.” She looked at Derek and said, “I'll tell Shannon and the others.”

He nodded his thanks. All of them were conscious of the passing moments, and there was no time to stop and plan. No more than a couple of minutes after Katrina had found them, she was hurrying back across the park with the three men.

“I'm coming with you,” she told them fiercely.

Kelsey opened his mouth, but Dane shook his head slightly at the other man and said, “Good” to her.

“There are a few guns stowed inside the chopper,” Kelsey said instead. “Enough for us.”

Katrina was still coldly afraid for Skye, but the three men she was with solidly inspired confidence. They were all big men, and though each would be formidable alone, in a group they were impressive as hell, she thought. She trusted Dane simply because he loved Skye too, and because he shared with his brother that rare, enormous strength. Derek, blond and with serenely expressionless dark eyes in a hard, handsome face, was so calm and casually graceful that Katrina didn't doubt he knew his own strength to the last ounce. And then there was Kelsey, whose pleasant face and gray eyes concealed, she thought, the kind of danger that came from a very rough life.

She trusted them all, and they inspired confidence. But Skye was out there alone, trailing a soulless killer, and he didn't know that another heart was inextricably connected to his own.

Buckling her seatbelt in the helicopter, she leaned forward to speak to Dane while Derek was checking over the craft's instruments. “You tried to warn me,” she said jerkily, “but I didn't understand. If I had, maybe I could have stopped him. I'm sorry.”

Dane half turned in the front seat to look back at her, and though his face was drawn, he was smiling faintly. “Don't blame yourself, Katrina. I certainly don't. And you probably couldn't have stopped him anyway. It may take a little practice before you're able to do that.”

“Can you?” she asked him.

“No. I can't stop him. But you will be able to.”

The roar of the helicopter as Derek started it put an end to the conversation, and Katrina sat back, conscious of hope surging inside her. Had Dane meant what she thought? She half closed her eyes as the helicopter lifted from the roof of the hotel, praying she'd get a chance to find out.

Skye left his car in the woods near the sprawling farmhouse and approached on foot, swift but with the instinctive caution of a wild animal. He doubted that Adrian had returned to the house once he'd escaped, but he had hunted the killer before and knew he was capable of just about anything.

No more than a minute served to convince him the house was deserted, and he slipped inside to take a quick look around. The place was peaceful and silent, but overturned and smashed furniture and a patch of blood drying on the living-room carpet told of recent violence. Skye was about to leave, when he caught sight of a crumpled map on the floor beside the couch, and he bent to pick it up. A map of the area, he realized; he had seen a similar map when he and Daniel had decided on this place as the best available spot in which to hold Adrian captive.

Had the killer seen the map? Skye had to assume he had. And that Adrian had cannily spent his two weeks of incarceration trying to find out all he could about the area. Daniel's agents weren't stupid men, of course, but Skye knew only too well the boredom that inevitably led to guards relaxing after an uneventful passage of time.

Spreading the map out on the kitchen table, Skye studied it carefully, still holding his gun. Ten miles of wilderness all around the house, but…There was a long-abandoned coal mine nearby, clearly marked on the map. It had been a prosperous shaft in the past, but when explosives had broken into a natural artesian well, waters under pressure had flooded half the shaft. And, Skye remembered suddenly, that property had recently been surveyed again. Daniel had mentioned it while they had gone over the maps.

Skye marked the location of the mine in his memory and left the house, moving swiftly. He returned to his car briefly to get a flashlight from the glove compartment. Then he set out in the direction of the mine, and within fifty yards found signs that another man had also chosen this way. And Skye knew why.