Force of Nature (35 page)

And sure enough, over Yashi’s shoulder, two other overall-clad agents were carrying a roll of cheap carpeting up the driveway. The body of his allegedly murderous ex-girlfriend had to be inside, in a body bag. Ric stepped back to let them in.

“Don’t worry.” Yashi patted his arm, no doubt because the look on his face warranted it. “Jason and Apolonia are forensics experts. They’ll set up the crime scene. Just tell us where you want the victim, and they’ll make it look real.”

“In my office.” Ric pointed the way as he closed the door behind the agents with the carpeting.

“Hey, Annie,” Yashi greeted her. She’d sat down at her desk, and was looking a little pale. “You squeamish, too?”

“Maybe a little,” she said. “I’m kind of freaked about…I mean, who was she?”

“We weren’t given her name,” Yashi said. “She’s former CIA counterterrorism, though, we do know that. She had an inoperable brain tumor that metastasized—making her useless as an organ donor. She died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, day after her doctor gave her four months to live.”

“Oh, God.” Annie went another shade more pale.

“Her family was adamant that she would’ve wanted to continue to help fight terror,” Yashi continued. “They signed off on all releases—they don’t expect to get her body back.”

Annie looked up as Ric touched her shoulder. “Let’s get out of their way,” he suggested, “and let them work.”

Amazingly, she didn’t argue. She let him take her hand and pull her out of her seat—and all the way up the stairs, back into his apartment.

She still looked as if she needed air, so he led her through the living room and out the doors to the screened-in porch.

“Maybe I should just go,” she said as she leaned on the railing overlooking his garden. “I can drive myself to Robin’s hotel.”

Ric looked at his watch. “Martell will be here soon.”

She nodded. “Once I’m in California, you’re not going to be able to micromanage my every move.”

“Are you sure you want to go to California?” Ric asked, and she looked up at him. “I mean, instead of Boston, or I don’t know. Savannah. You could visit your mother. Or Bruce.”

He’d watched that digital video of Robin on his computer, with Annie looking over his shoulder. Neither of them had said much at the time, but Annie had touched him, her hand warm on his back. “This kind of blows, huh?” was her sole comment.

It did—not just for Jules, who clearly had feelings for the movie star, but also for Ric. So much for his stupid plan. He wanted to provide security, not be a babysitter. It was obvious that Chadwick needed both—and that one would be the other.

“I thought I’d take advantage of the flight to California,” Annie said now, “and check out that company that Jules’s friend Sam works for—Troubleshooters Incorporated. I went to their website and found out that they’re not private investigators, although they do provide that service. Their big thing is personal security—which is exactly what you want to do. It seems like a really good organization, Ric. And if they’ll provide training…”

She loved him. She was standing there, planning for their future. But instead of calling her on it, Ric nodded. “Just…keep me in the loop, okay?”

“Okay.” She forced a smile. She looked tired and was still pale, her usual sparkle subdued.

He tucked a stray piece of her hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry Yashi was so insensitive.”

“He didn’t know. How could he?”

“Yeah, but…” Ric sighed. “This was the last thing you needed, huh?”

“I’m okay. I’m pretty tough, you know.”

Now she was gazing up at him, her gray eyes wide, looking anything but tough. Her mouth was tight with determination, but Ric knew how soft she really was.

Which was probably why he leaned over and kissed her.

He didn’t mean to. He’d tried not to, but damn. He could taste her surprise, and he made himself pull back. “Sorry,” he said.

She was as rattled as he was—but she managed a shrug. “It’s your stupid rule,” she told him. “If it were up to me, I’d be squeezing in one last quickie, right there on that lounge chair.”

Ric turned to look at the lounge chair in question. He couldn’t help himself, and she laughed.

“You want to.” It wasn’t quite a question, but it also wasn’t not. Annie moved closer, her hands on his belt. “It might be a long time before we see each other again…”

He caught her wrists. “You just don’t want to talk about Pam.”

“What’s to say?” But she couldn’t hold his gaze.

“I called Bruce, and he told me that she asked you to help her die.” Ric pulled Annie close, and she seemed to surrender, her head against his shoulder. “What did she ask you to do?” he asked her quietly. “Leave her painkillers where she could reach them?”

Annie sighed. “If you already know, why ask me?”

“Because you need to talk about it. If the mere mention of someone else with terminal cancer—”

“Whoever that is downstairs,” Annie said hotly, “she was a fool. She had four
months
to spend with her family—probably even more—and she threw it away. Pam was only given three, and she lived more than twice that.”

“And yet, in the end, she chose to stop fighting,” Ric said quietly. “That must’ve been so hard for you. To know she’d given up all hope…?”

Annie was silent, and he knew he’d gotten it right. He’d struck a chord.

“I couldn’t do it,” Annie finally admitted. “Ric, she was in so much pain, and she begged me, but I couldn’t do it. God—and I’m still so angry with her.”

Ric nodded. “Anger
and
guilt. That’s got to suck.”

“Yeah,” she agreed.

“Give yourself a break,” Ric told her. “You did the best you could.”

“Did I?” She looked up at him with such sadness. “I don’t know. Because I wouldn’t help her, she somehow got out of bed. She must’ve just rolled herself out. She crawled into the kitchen, where we kept her prescriptions.” Her eyes filled with tears. “She was just having a bad day. We had this mantra—tomorrow’ll be better. And sometimes it was.”

“But sometimes it probably wasn’t,” Ric said.

“She told me she hated seeing us—her parents and me—in so much pain. She did it for us—and all we wanted was to have her around for another day.”

“Annie, she was ready to go,” Ric said quietly. “And think of it this way. You’ll never have any doubt that she loved you.”

“Yeah,” Annie said. “And I loved her so much that she died, all alone, on her kitchen floor. I was the one who found her later that night, curled up around Pierre.”

Ric smoothed her hair back from her face. “If she was with Pierre,” he told her, “then she didn’t die alone.”

She was going to kiss him. Ric saw it in her eyes, saw it coming, and he didn’t stop her. It was, after all, just a kiss.

And he was a freaking idiot, because there was no such thing as just a kiss when it came to him kissing Annie, and Annie kissing him.

She was going for that lounge chair, and damn it, he was, too, because, man, she was right—neither of them knew how long it was going to be before they could do this again.

Except this wasn’t what he wanted.

“Stop,” he said. “Stop!” as he finally disconnected his mouth from hers, which was flat-out ludicrous, since he was the one who had her up against the side of the house. He was the one pressed hard between her legs.

She laughed at the absurdity of the situation, which was his downfall, because he could never force himself to back away from her when she was laughing, even when her eyes were filled with tears. Which meant he was standing there, stupidly staring at her—an easy target—when she kissed him again.

Jesus God. “I’m not doing this,” Ric insisted.

“Okay,” Annie said, reaching down into his pants and—Gahd—wrapping her fingers around him.

“I’m serious,” he told her, closing his eyes as she touched him.

“I can see that.” She kissed him again. “Let’s go inside.”

“No,” he said, but he followed her. It was definitely the moment of truth. Once they got into his bedroom, she’d take off her clothes, and that would be that.

But Martell saved him. “Yo, Annie, you ready to go?” From the sound of it, he was taking the stairs up from the office, two at a time.

Annie managed to get her hand back before Martell came in, but just barely. Ric sat down fast. Of course, now that he’d been saved, he wished desperately that he hadn’t been.

“Everything okay?” Martell said, looking from Annie to Ric.

Annie had turned toward the window, pretending she wasn’t wiping tears from her eyes.

“You, uh, need a few more minutes?” Martell asked. “It’s pretty hot out, I should go get Pierre out of the car, if you’re gonna—”

“No,” Annie said, taking a deep breath and turning back around. “I’m ready to go, and Ric should get back downstairs. Did you see what’s going on in his office?”

“No,” Martell said. “What’s his name, Yashi, told me you were up here.”

“Don’t look,” Annie said. “It’s going to be awful.”

“Okay, now you made me curious.” Martell started down the stairs.

“I’m not kidding,” Annie called after him. She turned to Ric. “Be careful.”

He nodded. “You, too.”
I love you.
He didn’t say it, because it would have made her more upset, which was crazy.

“Thanks for…trying to make me feel better about Pam,” she said, and followed Martell down the stairs.

“Damn!” Ric heard Martell shout. “Why did you let me look?”

“
Let
you look? I warned you,” Annie’s voice drifted up the stairs, and then was gone, as she and Martell left the building.

Ric sat there, with the silence bearing down on him. It was heavy on his chest, making it hard to breathe.

He launched himself off the sofa and thundered down the stairs. “Annie!”

The craziness was hers. She was just going to have to get used to hearing him say it.

He threw open the door, but she was already in Martell’s car as he backed down the drive, transmission whining. She didn’t even see Ric—she didn’t look back—she was preoccupied with greeting Pierre, laughing as the little dog licked her face.

Ric watched as Martell’s car disappeared down the street.

“Jules just called,” Yashi reported as he went back inside. “He’s running a little late, but he should be here any minute.”

Robin sat at the desk in Jules’s hotel room, in front of Jules’s computer, sick to his stomach.

Jules was in the bathroom, getting ready for his meeting with Ric Alvarado and Gordie Burns Junior. It was a jeans–and–T-shirt meeting, but Jules had also pulled a loose-fitting, lightweight jacket out of his closet and tossed it onto the bed. The jacket was to cover the gun he’d taken from a locked case—the gun that he’d tucked into the shoulder holster he’d matter-of-factly strapped on. His donning of that holster and his quick, professional check of that gun screamed of routine and everyday, ordinary habit in a way that was both sexy as hell and terrifying.

Robin could hear him now, brushing his teeth, the bathroom door ajar.

On the computer screen, the digital video footage that had been uploaded to YouTube ended with Robin’s evil twin chugging a bottle of whiskey and tripping over the ottoman in his hotel suite—landing hard on his back, all while laughing hysterically.

He hadn’t dropped the bottle, though. As he brought it to his mouth, the footage froze into a still shot—a close-up that was undeniably of Robin’s own face. His eyes were open, and he was laughing.

It could have been worse. The amateur filmmaker—a budding directorial genius with the YouTube handle of CelebrityHunter—could have chosen to end with a still of that extremely nonflattering but thankfully almost completely nonrecognizable, two-second-long close-up of Robin’s nonresponsive private area. Of course, that didn’t mean that any of the two and a quarter million viewers hadn’t thought to hit pause at that particular moment in the download.

A little work with Photoshop to sharpen the image and, voilà. There he’d be, the perfect desktop background for millions of personal computers. Robin put his head in his hands.

“Watch it again.”

He looked up to see that Jules had come out of the bathroom.

“No,” Robin said. “I’ve…seen enough. It’s…like the ultimate out-of-body experience. He looks like me and he sounds like me—”

“He? It’s
you
, Robin.” Jules put on his jacket, zipping it closed at the very bottom. “You did all those things last night.”

“Yeah,” Robin said quietly. “I know.” Which was why he didn’t want to watch it again. When he watched it, he couldn’t imagine Jules ever forgiving him.

“I’ve got to go,” Jules told him just as quietly. “You do, too. You’re supposed to be meeting Annie.”

“I left her a key card at the front desk of my hotel,” Robin said. “I called and told her I was going to do that, so…If it’s okay with you, I thought I’d shower here before I, uh, go meet her.”

Jules nodded. “Just don’t be here when I get back.”

Ouch. Robin forced a laugh. “I guess you know me pretty well. I thought if I just never left, you’d come back and, well…You seem to like me better when we’re in bed, so I thought…Maybe you’d either forgive me or forget why you were angry, if we just made love for, like, two weeks, nonstop—”

“Sex,” Jules corrected him sharply. “This was sex, what we just did. Don’t get it confused with something that it’s not.”

Wow. That one really stung.

“Shut down my computer when you’re done watching that again, and make sure the door locks behind you.” Jules turned to leave.

Robin stood up. “So this is what, then? Goodbye? Thanks for the
sex
—see you around in a year or two?”

Jules stopped but he didn’t turn back. “I don’t know what this is,” he said, his voice low. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

“I do.” Robin’s voice shook with conviction. “I know that if you want me to watch this fucking awful video again, I’ll watch it again. I know I’ll do whatever I can to make this up to you. I’ll stop drinking. I’ve already stopped—”

Jules laughed as he turned to face him. “Are you kidding? You better watch that video another fifty times if you think you’re just going to be able to announce that you quit and—”