Dangerous Lover (18 page)

Axel continued with his generosity and Deaver lifted a cut-crystal glass in his honor.

When the waiters had finished setting the meal out on the huge, antique oak desk, and bowed themselves quietly out of the room, Deaver breathed in deeply and savored the moment.

It was all so perfect—the linen tablecloth and napkins, the fine bone china, the heavy silverware, the crystal glasses. The delicious smells of excellent food and clean table linen.

Deaver had grown up in a trailer park outside Midland, Texas. All his childhood, most of his food had been eaten cold, out of a can, and he had had to fight the cockroaches for it. He’d been eighteen, and in the Army, before he knew that forks came in different sizes.

But that was a long time ago, and he’d discovered that he had a taste for living large.
This
was how he was meant to live.

An hour later, Deaver wiped his mouth with the peach-colored oversized linen napkin and gave a little belch. Perfect. Perfect meal. The first of many.

The rest of his life was going to be like this. Exactly like
this—luxurious surroundings, staff, superb food and wine—except he was going to have women around. Lots of them.

No women now. Now it was hunting time.

Wrapped up in the hotel’s thick terry-cloth robe, he opened the laptop he’d bought from Drake. Again, whatever Drake delivered was excellent. It was clearly a laptop that had seen heavy use, but its hard disk had been wiped clean, and it powered up just fine. Deaver connected to the high-speed Internet access port, went to Google, then sat back to reflect, staring at the bright screen.

The Colonel had found Prescott in January of 1996, emaciated, half-dead and half-frozen behind a Dumpster. Deaver had been OUTCONUS most of that winter, freezing his butt off in Bosnia. By the time he got back to base, Prescott was a done deal. The Colonel had adopted him, he’d put on forty pounds of muscle and was studying for his GCE, intent on joining the Army.

Deaver had hated him on sight. The Colonel thought the sun shone out of his ass. Well, he would, considering his own son, the other Jack, had been a whiny wimp who’d started drinking at fifteen and managed to wreck a car he’d stolen for a joyride and got himself killed at the age of twenty, together with a family of four, before his new cocaine habit could do it for him later.

One thing you had to say for Jack—he was as straight as they come, and the Colonel had taken him like a second lease on life.

When the Colonel retired to found ENP Security, everyone had assumed that Deaver would be his second-in-command.
After all, he’d served under the Colonel for almost twenty years. It was his due, damn it.

Twenty years in the Army and he had fuck-all to show for it. Everyone else was making a bundle off Homeland Security, and it should have been Deaver’s turn.

But the only thing the Colonel had offered
him
was a job—and a miserably paid one at that, even though it was double what he’d been making in the Army. Deaver was expecting a managerial position with stock, and he ended up being a glorified hired gun, sent immediately to Waziristan to guard a pipeline, then to Sierra Leone to guard fat mining executives.

And Jack Prescott quit the Rangers and was made executive vice president of ENP Security the next day.

It still burned.

But he couldn’t dwell on that now. No emotion when planning a mission. Love, hatred, revenge—they could get you killed quicker than gunfire. No, Deaver had to think it through, logically and clearly, step by step.

Well, step number one was to be sure that Elvis had actually left the building.

Half an hour later, it looked like he had. Prescott had sold the company to a competitor and had sold his house to Rodney Strong, a CPA, and his wife Cathy Strong, lifestyle coach.

Prescott’s phone had been disconnected, as had all the utilities. There was no record of sale of property, or utility contracts, in the name of Jack Prescott, either in town or in a fifty-mile radius.

Much as Deaver found it hard to believe, since Jack had inherited a big, expensive house and a thriving company—he’d sold everything and disappeared off the face of the earth. He’d even sold his car.

Just to torment himself, Deaver hacked into Prescott’s bank account and stared at the screen, jaw muscles jumping.

On the nineteenth of December, just before leaving for Sierra Leone and fucking up Deaver’s life, Jack Prescott had converted all his assets into a cashier’s check for $8 million and change.

The fucker!

Deaver slammed his hand on the walnut desk, cracking it slightly. He stood up and walked the perimeter of the room, trying to calm himself down.

That son of a bitch had over 8 million plus
his
diamonds. Deaver was going to take the diamonds back, have Prescott wire all his money to Deaver’s account in the Caymans, then break every single bone in the son of a bitch’s body, before slitting his throat.

Then he’d kill the woman.

It took fifteen minutes before he could settle back down, but when he did, it was with a soldier’s concentration. The beautiful surroundings, the staff on call, quivering to be of service, the lavish meal—they all disappeared as he focused like a laser beam on the mission.

There would be no more indulgences, no more forays into the good life, until Jack Prescott was found.

Turning to the computer, Deaver checked the car rental agencies in town and in the surrounding towns. Prescott
hadn’t rented a car. He wouldn’t take a bus—what man with almost $30 million would? So he’d flown out of town, to…where?

Half an hour later, Deaver had the answer. A credit card corresponding to Jack Prescott had been used to buy a one-way ticket from Freetown to Seattle, via Paris, Atlanta and Chicago. He couldn’t find any car rental agencies that had rented him a car.

So Deaver knew two things. One, Jack Prescott was in the Pacific Northwest, and two, he hadn’t bothered hiding his tracks. He’d left a clear trail behind him, which meant he didn’t know Deaver was on his trail.

If Jack hadn’t wanted to be tracked, Deaver would have ended up playing with his dick forever. So Jack wasn’t expecting anyone to follow him. Perfect. Surprise attacks worked best.

So, Deaver thought, leaning closer to the screen showing a detailed map of Washington state, where in Washington are you? Did you go up into Canada? His eyes tracked to the top of the screen, which cut off about a hundred miles north of Vancouver. He let the thought run through his mind, examining it from different directions.

Nah. He had a valid passport, and he wasn’t on the run. If he wanted to go up into Canada, he would have gone straight there.

No, everything pointed to Prescott being a man on a mission and taking a beeline to get there. Just as soon as he humanly could, he liquidated his assets and made straight for…

Straight for the girl—now a woman. Find her, find Prescott. Deaver was sure of it.

Once more, Deaver placed the two photocopied photographs flat on the table and studied them, more intently this time. This time, they had to tell him where Prescott was, and fast.

It was entirely possible that Prescott would find a married woman with six kids, who over the past twelve years had gained fifty pounds and lost teeth and hair and didn’t remember him.

If that was the case, Prescott would disappear and Deaver would never find him, or his diamonds, again.

So he studied the photographs the way soldiers going into battle studied a terrain map—carefully and thoroughly, because it all depended on knowing what you were going to face.

The photograph had to date back to 1995 at the latest. Prescott hadn’t been linked to any particular woman since the Colonel found him. So this obsession he had was with someone he’d met in 1995 or earlier. The date on the newspaper clipping was October 15, 1995, so maybe the photograph was from that period.

He studied the high-school photo. Staged, like they all were. Deaver hadn’t had one. The old man wouldn’t spring for it, but he remembered everyone else’s at the high school. For most of them, it was their first formal portrait, and they had fixed grins, or at least the ones whose teeth were good enough to show did. The girls had slapped on the makeup with a trowel, and the boys had worn dress shirts instead of tee shirts, some for the first time in their lives.

This girl’s smile was natural, not stagy. Maybe she was
used to being photographed. She looked like a million other pretty teenagers, though prettier than most. Long, strawberry blonde hair with a little curl to it. Straight, even, white teeth. Some kind of pink sweater with a pearl necklace. No indication of what her body looked like, only a general impression of slenderness.

Deaver switched his attention to the photograph of her playing the piano, dressed in a sweater and a long skirt, showing off a great body, though the face was in profile.

He looked again at the newspaper heading.
ville Gazette
.

Well, he had a state to start with, Washington. Why would Prescott head straight for Seattle if what he wanted wasn’t in Washington?

Deaver called up all the townships in Washington state. Seventeen cities, ninety-two townships. Four ending in–ville. None of them had a newspaper called the
Gazette.

Deaver sat back, thinking furiously.

This whole exercise might be futile. Maybe he was barking up the wrong tree. Caroline Lake had been a pretty girl. If she’d grown into a beautiful woman, she’d be married by now. Hell, she might be on her second or third marriage, having changed names a couple of times. She could be Caroline Warner in Las Vegas, or Caroline Yoo in San Francisco or Caroline Steinberg in New York.

Fuck.

Maybe he should start looking for Jack, who wasn’t bothering to hide his tracks. Maybe he should just hole up here for as long as Axel’s credit card lasted until the next time Jack used
his
credit card.

Idly, Deaver Googled “newspaper + Gazette + Washington + 1995” and bingo! There it was. He leaned forward, surprised at the hit. Goddammit, bless the Internet because there it was in black and white, cursor blinking gently, just waiting for him to connect the dots. The
Summerville Gazette
, local rag for a small city called Summerville, defunct since 2002, but alive and well in 1995.

Eyes narrowed, Deaver leaned over the keyboard, Googling Caroline Lake + Summerville, Washington, and came up with ten hits, all concerning a Caroline Lake who ran a bookshop, gave prizes and played the piano in church. To be on the safe side, he clicked on
images
and gazed at about fifteen photographs of Caroline Lake. Prescott’s Caroline Lake. Still beautiful, still unmarried.

Jack Prescott was there, right now. He’d bet his left nut on it.

Deaver started furiously looking for online sites to book a flight immediately to Seattle, cursing because there was no way he could get there before 9:00
P.M
. tomorrow night. Most flights were booked solid till after the New Year. The flights he finally found would take him twelve hours from Newark to Atlanta to Chicago to Seattle. It was the best he could do.

Well, at least he’d be there on Monday morning.

He looked once again at the photos of Caroline Lake, a truly stunning woman.

Prescott would still be in Summerville on Monday. Oh yeah. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Summerville

They never did have that big Christmas meal Caroline had planned.

After the crying storm, Caroline had fallen into the deepest sleep of her life, almost a coma. When she woke up alone in her bed, it was pitch-black outside, and she had no idea how long she’d slept.

It was dark, the only light coming from the hallway outside. Caroline lay in bed, staring at the black ceiling, sorting through her feelings, so mixed it was impossible to know which was the strongest—shame, embarrassment or relief.

There was some shame, but not much. It was true, she should be feeling ashamed for crying like a baby on Jack’s shoulder—a man she barely knew, even if they had had sex. And she did feel ashamed. Then there was embarrassment.
That wild crying jag after—not even
while
coming—wow, that was beyond embarrassing.

But there was also such a great sense of…peace. It was as if the tears had washed away something black and foul inside her, leaving her depleted, exhausted, empty—but not sad. The sadness was gone. Sadness had been her constant companion for years now, and she almost didn’t recognize herself in its absence.

She felt rested, refreshed and…hungry. A quick trip to the bathroom to put a cold compress on her eyes, a quick shower, pulling on cherry red sweats, and she was out the door.

Caroline was halfway down the staircase when Jack appeared suddenly at the bottom of the stairs, though she hadn’t seen him move.

When their eyes met, her heart gave a massive thump in her chest.

His dark eyes checked her over quickly, impersonally, like a soldier checking a comrade for wounds. Then his gaze turned warm.

“Hi.” His deep voice was calm, quiet.

“Hi.” Caroline’s voice sounded breathless to her own ears.

He started up the stairs, taking them two at a time until he came to a stop on the step below hers. It put her face almost on a level with his.

His face was fascinating—so deeply unequivocally male. “How are you feeling?” His eyes searched hers.

“Better, believe it or not.” She shook her head slightly. “Though a little embarrassed at bawling all over your shoulder.”

“Anytime.” That hard mouth lifted in a half smile. He took her right hand, lifted it to his mouth, placed it on his left shoulder. “Consider my shoulder yours.”

It was an interesting notion. It was an interesting shoulder. Caroline kneaded the hard muscle under the soft cotton of his sweat suit. She’d held him in her arms a couple of times now, and it never failed to astonish her—the absolute iron feel of him, as if he were made of something harder than mere human skin and muscle.

Her hand danced lightly from his collarbone to the huge ball of his shoulder, and she remembered very vividly the feel of him naked under her hands. Without the softening effect of clothes, he was almost frightening in his power, the strongest-looking human she’d ever seen.

She watched his face as she smoothed her hand over the broad, deep muscles. It was a mystery how a man who wasn’t handsome could be so attractive. He was wearing his long, black hair loose instead of tied back, and it framed that strong, narrow face, softening its harsh features. It was almost impossible to guess how old he was, though she suspected he was about her own age, but without the benefit of moisturizer, which she used religiously. The skin was weather-beaten, with faint white lines fanning out from the corners of his dark eyes.

He’d shaved this morning—she’d heard the electric razor buzzing—but he already had a five o’clock shadow. Had he grown a beard in Afghanistan? Many of the photographs of the men guarding the president showed them with beards.

What was his background? Jack Prescott—it was a perfectly
ordinary name for an unordinary man. His skin and eyes were so dark, there must have been Hispanic or—considering his high cheekbones—Native American blood somewhere in his ancestry.

She could stand here for hours, one step above him, looking at him. His face was so fascinating. She’d never met anyone even faintly like him, and yet she couldn’t seem to shake the feeling of recognition each time she studied his face.

She could only imagine that it was the sex. They’d short-circuited the normal getting-to-know-you phase, and the hot sex had imprinted her with him, so that she felt as if she’d known him forever. Déjà vu sex.

“Let’s go down,” Jack said, placing a strong arm against her back. Caroline wondered what he thought about her standing and staring at him. She’d make dinner memorable, to compensate.

“What would you like for din—” Caroline cut herself off. Something was missing. They were walking down the stairs, and something was missing. Something should have—“The steps! You fixed the steps! Oh my gosh!” She turned and threw her arms around Jack’s neck in a rush of gratitude. “Thank you thank you thank you!”

It was on her urgent to-do list. Item number 476 on her superurgent to-do list.
Call carpenter to fix stairs before someone breaks their neck.
But she knew she could get around to it only when she had some spare cash. Which meant never.

His arms had gone around her immediately, holding her tightly against him. “If I’d known I’d get this reaction, I’d have fixed all your stairs. They creak a little. I did, however, fix
your shelves in the bathroom, repair the banister and fix the loose doorknob to the study. What do I get for that?”

He was teasing her. She had no idea that was in him. He actually had…well, not a smile exactly, but his eyes crinkled, and his hard mouth curled slightly upward.

“My hero,” Caroline said, smiling, and reaching up on tiptoe, gave him a big wet smack on the mouth.

He tensed. She could feel his muscles becoming even harder under her hands, his big hand between her shoulder blades pressing her forward.

His mouth settled over hers.

This kiss was different from the other ones. Maybe he had a whole repertory of them? This was warm, possessive, right from the beginning. He didn’t coax her mouth open with his to test her with little forays of his tongue. Her mouth was already open to him, to the slick feel of him licking inside her mouth. She was still on the step above his and it was wonderful being almost at the same level, so she didn’t have to stretch up to kiss him. She slumped against him, heart beating wildly as he kissed her nearly senseless.

Every stroke of his tongue sent shooting darts of fire all through her, but particularly between her legs. He cupped the back of her head tightly and changed the angle of his mouth so he could delve more deeply inside her, and this time when his tongue touched hers, her vagina
fluttered
. Oh my God, he was making her vagina contract with his mouth alone!

She pulled back and gazed at him wordlessly, almost frightened at the power he seemed to exert over her body. Caroline
had always been so slow to arouse, and here she was having the prelude to an orgasm with a mere kiss.

She had the same effect on him. Under the deep tan and his naturally dark skin, deep red slashes of red rode his high cheekbones and lower, she could definitely feel what she’d done. His penis lay like a column of marble against her belly.

Nervously, Caroline licked her lips. He followed the movements of her tongue closely, breathing hard. When she wet her lips again, his penis surged against her stomach.

Which growled.

Caroline lifted startled eyes to his, blushing furiously. “Sorry,” she gasped, mortified. Her body was making parallel demands—for sex and food—and her head couldn’t keep up. “I guess that’s a sign for me to go cook our dinner.”

“I have another idea.” He bent to kiss the corner of her mouth. “Don’t cook. Why don’t you put some stuff on a tray and bring it into the living room? I’ll light a fire, and we can have a Christmas picnic.” He bent again to her, lightly brushing lips and teeth along the skin of her neck. “I don’t want you spending hours in the kitchen cooking. I want you spending hours with me.”

Oh God, when he did that, she melted. Caroline’s neck arched, and she found herself smiling. How could anything so simple feel so good? He was barely touching her with his mouth, yet it sent pleasure zinging through her body. “Sounds wonderful, but I used up all the wood yesterday. If we want a fire, I’ll have to—”

Jack frowned down at her. “
I’ll
go to the garage and stack some wood. Then we stuff our faces.” He took her hand and
started back down the stairs. Caroline grasped the banister, which had been dangerously loose, and made a point of shaking it. She couldn’t move it at all, it was solid. Jack watched her, smiling faintly.

“You did a good job.”

He nodded his head. “Got an advanced degree in stair and banister repair. Aced the classes.”

Maybe he did have a degree in stair and banister repair. Boiler repair, too.

She was almost certain he had a degree in something, he was surprisingly well-spoken and seemed somehow very knowledgeable about the world. Part of that was the travel, even if to places where sandbags and machine guns trumped museums. They did say that travel was broadening.

He had been an officer, she was almost sure he’d said that. And didn’t officers have to have a college degree? And what was his degree in?

She was suddenly desperately curious about this man, who’d appeared out of nowhere to give her amazing sex and repair her house. “Where did you—” she began, but he was striding away.

“Hurry up with the food, I’m starving too.” His deep voice floated in from the mudroom, and a second later she heard the door to the garage open.

Caroline started ferrying the food out on big trays—cheeses, whole wheat bread, corn bread, focaccia, leftover roast beef, slices of baked ham, butter, lavender honey, homemade chutney, a sliced tomato salad with a drizzle of olive oil, lettuce
and arugula salad, carrot and celery sticks with a sour cream dip, a bowl of Greek olives and two slices of chocolate cake—one big and one small.

In the time it took her to bring out several trays of food, Jack had neatly stacked enough wood in the bin to keep the fireplace going for days. It was a job she hated, and she rarely lit the fire because of it, except, of course, when the boiler died. It was dirty, backbreaking work, and he’d done it in the blink of an eye.

It was hard to keep her eyes on what she was doing. Jack was kneeling in front of the fireplace, building a fire, massive thigh muscles straining his jeans, broad back outlined in red from the burgeoning flames, exactly like last night. With any luck, it was a sight she’d be seeing all winter—Jack stoking the flames, the firelight dancing across his strong features.

He moved easily, with grace. He knew what he was doing, too. In no time, a perfect fire was blazing.

Caroline stepped back and looked, pleased, at the spread on the big coffee table. She lit four red candles and placed them on the four corners, and thought it looked like a very festive Christmas meal.

The fire had already begun blazing merrily, the warmth seeping into her bones. Jack stood, brushing his hands, looked at the spread and turned to her. “Looks nice.”

“It does, doesn’t it? So I guess we’re all set—oh! Wine. We finished the bottle last night, I’ll go down to the cellar and get another one.”

“I’ll go. You relax on the couch. Any special bottle?”

Her father had always opened a Burgundy at Christmas. “Get a red, a Burgundy. You’ll find a selection on the far wall. The cellar is—”

He had already disappeared, before she had a chance to tell him that the door to the cellar was next to the kitchen door.

It was completely dark outside. Christmas Day had passed, and it was already Christmas night. A day she’d dreaded since Toby’s death was almost over.

There were no sounds at all outside. Usually, she could hear the sound of the odd car driving by, or a dog barking. Now, they could have been the last human beings on the face of the planet, it was so quiet.

Who knew what was happening out there?

She was feeling so good, maybe world peace had broken out. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Only one way to find out. Caroline clicked the remote control on to the local news channel and found snow. CBS, NBC, CNN…snow.

She began clicking through all the channels when suddenly the remote disappeared from her hand and the TV screen went black.

“I’m not ready for the outside world yet,” Jack said, putting the remote down with one hand and wagging a bottle from side to side with the other. “I think we should be doing our celebrating without any interference from all the yahoos and creeps out there.”

“Okay.” He was perfectly right. “TV wasn’t working anyway. We’ll need a cork—”

Somehow, by some magic, he had the corkscrew already in his hand, and Caroline laughed. The cork came out with the
cool little pop of a well-aged bottle, and Jack poured them half a glass each while Caroline filled their plates.

Both of them ate with enormous gusto. Sooner than she’d have thought possible, they’d polished everything off, including the cake crumbs. The bottle was almost finished. Caroline had forgotten to put water out, but who needed water when there was excellent wine? The Burgundy was liquid joy. It was exactly the bottle she would have chosen. He had a sophisticated wine sense, her soldier.

Caroline settled back with a happy sigh into Jack’s arm, bare feet curled over the edge of the coffee table. The fire crackled and hissed merrily.

She had no idea what time it was and didn’t care. All she knew was that soon Christmas would be over, and a day she had been dreading with all her heart had been wonderful in many different ways.

She tipped her head back over Jack’s arm and looked up at him, at the man responsible for her wonderful day. “Where were you last Christmas? What were you doing? How did you celebrate?”

Jack finished his wine and put the glass down carefully on a side table. He ran the back of his forefinger along her neck, gently, up and down. “Last Christmas I was on duty all day in Afghanistan, where Christmas doesn’t exist. And if it did, it sure wouldn’t herald a day of peace. The warlords would have been delighted to nail Habib on a Christian holiday. So that was my Christmas and it was more or less par for the course, the same as the other 220 days before it. A tour of duty lasting twelve hours, a meal of stewed goat meat, which
is what we ate every day, at the end of it, no wine because it’s a dry country, and reruns of
Lost
.” He leaned over and kissed her on the ear. “And you? Where were you last Christmas?”