Now You See Him (8 page)

Not likely, Michael thought absently, remembering his intermittent discomfort when Francey brushed by him in that huge, empty house that was too small for both of them. "I never believe anything until I'm ready to, Ross," he said. "I need more time."

"Two more days. If you can't get her in bed and find out her secrets by then, then you shouldn't be back in action. I told you that you should take some time off, spend a few months at your cottage in the Lake District…"

He was tired of this, Michael thought. Mortally tired of taking orders from shortsighted bureaucrats and weaselly, narrow-minded idiots like Cardiff. He'd done everything he could to get transferred from Ross's jurisdiction once he realized what a venal bungler the man was, but the bureaucracy had been adamant. Besides, he had a reputation for being a lone wolf. The powers-that-be figured at least Cardiff would irritate him enough to check in.

"I'll take as long as I bloody well need," he said flatly. "I'll check in tomorrow."

"Cougar…" That nasally whine was cut off as Michael slammed down the phone, keeping his back to Francey. He hated that name. There'd been a time in his life when he'd taken a romantic pleasure in it. That time was long past.

The damnable thing about it was that Ross was right this time. He was just wasting time. Francey Neeley was vulnerable, ready to fall, and all he had to do was reach out a hand. She would go—into his arms, into his bed—and she would tell him absolutely anything he wanted to know once he'd spent a few hours reminding her what bodies were made for. He was mad to hesitate.

He turned to look at her. The wind was tossing her sun-streaked hair back from her profile, and she looked both strong and vulnerable. Her mental health once he was finished with her wasn't his problem, his consideration. All he needed to think about was the Cadre, who and what and where they were. And how to stop them. In comparison to their vicious destructiveness, the well-being of one rich American female wasn't of great consequence.

He'd been sidelined too long. But he was no longer completely sure of that fact, even as he told himself he was. Maybe, much as he hated to admit it, for once in his life Ross Cardiff was right. He'd grown soft, emotionally and mentally, as his body had hardened.

No, he couldn't ever admit that a bug like Cardiff was right. Francey wanted him, whether she was completely sure of that fact or not. Tonight he was going to take her. He was going to spend a long, energetic night with her, working off the longest stretch of celibacy he'd known since he'd reached puberty. And by midday tomorrow, in a postcoital haze, she would tell him absolutely everything he needed to know.

"You look grim," she said when he reached the table, her eyes as sharp as usual. "Is your mother all right?"

"Mum's in fine shape. Just crabbing about the change of life." It was his only small measure of revenge against Cardiff's nit-picking. Referring to the man as his menopausal mother had the capacity to amuse him as few things did.

"Isn't she a little old for that?" Francey asked.

Michael's smile didn't waver, even as he mentally cursed. Maybe Cardiff was right after all. "She had me when she was a teenager," he said easily. "Are we going swimming?"

She made a face. "We're going swimming."

He was smiling at her again. Francey wondered absently whether he knew what it did to her when he smiled like that. She doubted it. If he knew his smile could be that powerful, he wouldn't be the gentle, unassuming man that he was.

But that smile made her nervous. It started her thinking that maybe he was just as attracted to her as she was to him. He seemed to have gotten a lot stronger in the time he'd been on St. Anne, and every now and then she thought she'd surprised a heated expression in his usually bland blue eyes. But it would be gone as quickly as she noticed it, and she'd told herself it was her imagination.

But ever since his troubling conversation with his mother, during the long drive back to Belle Reste, he'd been sending forth waves of charm that disturbed her as much as they drew her. She had the uneasy sense of being manipulated. Absurd. Patrick had managed to twist her mind around past common sense. Things had gotten out of hand when she couldn't even trust a straightforward schoolteacher.

"Funny," she said, fiddling with the front door key while Michael blocked the light behind her.

"What's funny?"

"The lock's not working properly. I'm certain I locked it when I left. Not that it's necessary, but you're so paranoid…"

"You locked it," he said easily, reaching out and taking the key from her. A second later the door swung open, and she started into the shadowy coolness.

His hand on her bare arm stopped her. "Wait a minute."

"But…"

"Hold still," he said, no longer gentle and polite. There was a wariness about him, and all gentleness, all sweetness, seemed to have vanished. "Someone's been here."

"Don't be absurd. Why should someone…?"

"Move back." It was a ridiculous statement. His hand was clamped around her upper arm so tightly it would likely leave bruises, and he was already moving her back, slowly, steadily.

"What's wrong, Michael?"

"Can't you smell the gas?"

She could. She hadn't noticed—indeed, she'd been so caught up in her confused feelings about Daniel's guest that she hadn't been paying much attention to anything. "The gas heater must have malfunctioned…"

They were back at the car. He practically shoved her into the passenger seat, and there was no hesitation in his movements, barely a trace of his troubling limp. "It was tampered with," he said flatly.

"Don't be ridiculous. Who… ?"

"The same person who cut your brake lines. Face it, Francey, someone wants to kill you." He started the car, spun it around and took off.

"Where are we going? We can't just leave it like that," she protested, dazed by his sudden forcefulness.

"We're getting the hell out of here. I only know one person I can trust on this island. Your friend Cecil."

"He's not my friend," she said. "I never saw him before last week."

He stopped the car in the middle of the narrow, deserted roadway. "Take your choice. Is there anyone else you want to turn to?"

She couldn't think of a soul. She didn't trust anyone. Except maybe this suddenly enigmatic stranger beside her. "Cecil," she said.

He didn't smile or look triumphant. He simply nodded, putting the car into gear once more. She glanced back at the house that had been her haven, her safety, her place of healing, just before the road twisted, putting it out of sight. And she wondered if she would ever see it again.

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"Stay in the car," Michael ordered, vaulting out with a lithe strength that was entirely at odds with his previously fragile air. They'd pulled up at a tumbledown shack near the harbor, one she hadn't realized was even inhabited. The windows were darkened, the door tightly shut, strange occurrences for a climate like theirs. But for the moment she was numb, too bewildered by the swift turn of events to even consider moving.

He was back in a moment, his face as shuttered as the ramshackle little cottage. "You know where Shaman's Cove is?"

She nodded. "It's a small, rocky inlet on the northern side of the island."

"Directions." The word was a command, brief, to the point, one she obeyed without question.

A car passed them as they drove up the long, winding road away from the deserted cottage, a new Land Rover with smoked windows, going so fast it nearly ran them off the road. "Was that Cecil?" she asked.

"Land Rovers cost more than that entire village makes in a year," he said flatly.

He hadn't answered her question, she noticed. "Was that Cecil?" she asked again.

He glanced at her. The sunglasses were covering half his face, and his mouth was thin, grim. "Your guess is as good as mine."

He wasn't going to tell her anything more specific,. To ask again would be a waste of breath. "What's in Shaman's Cove?"

"Cecil will have a boat waiting. We're getting the hell out of here."

"But…"

"I've told him how to get in touch with your cousin. We'll have to leave it up to Travers to rescue us."

"The house. It'll blow…"

"Maybe. Cecil's going to see what he can do about it."

"Are you certain we're not overreacting? I mean, brakes do fail. Gas heaters do malfunction."

"You want to wait for the third attempt to be convinced? Chances are, that time they'll be successful."

Francey was suddenly very, very cold. She rubbed her bare arms, wishing she could ask him to put the top up on the convertible, wishing she'd brought a sweater, a bulletproof vest, a quart of Scotch. Anything for protection from the ice that was slicing down into her heart.

She'd been ready to put it all behind her. Even the near miss last week had been easy to explain away. Her involvement with Patrick Dugan had been a brief sojourn of misery, but it didn't need to wreck her life.

But now it seemed as if it was coming close to ending her life. She couldn't imagine how they'd managed to find her, or why they even wanted to kill her. For revenge, perhaps, for Patrick's and maybe Caitlin's deaths. She hadn't been responsible for Patrick, and she hadn't meant to push Caitlin in front of the car. She'd been fighting for her life.

But obviously someone didn't see it that way. Someone had come to her peaceful haven of St. Anne to make her pay. And the innocent, harried man beside her was going to pay the price, too, for something he'd had no involvement in.

"Stop the car," she said suddenly.

He glanced over at her, not slowing their hurtling pace in the slightest. "Why?"

"I want to get out."

"Don't be a fool." The words were calm, without rancor. He drove well, she noticed. Better even than she did. "I suppose there's a chance in hell that this was simply a coincidence, but I don't plan on taking that chance."

"It's not your chance to take. It's not you who's in danger. It's me. Stop the car and let me out."

"Virgin sacrifice?" he said pleasantly. "You want me to find a live volcano so you can throw yourself in?"

"Don't be a fool."

"Don't you be a fool!" he said. "You seem to forget, I'm a perfect British gentleman. I was brought up to bring aid and comfort to damsels in distress."

"Not at the cost of your own life."

"Nobility makes me want to puke."

"Michael…"

"Which way?" They'd come to a crossroads. The narrow little-used dirt roadway led down to Shaman's Cove.

"I'm not telling you," she said.

He slammed on the brakes, hurling them both toward the padded dashboard. He took her wrist in his large hand, and the pain was sudden, numbing, unbelievable. "Which way?" he repeated in a calm, emotionless voice.

"The dirt road."

He released her, putting the car in gear again, and she glanced down at her wrist as she hugged herself. There was no mark. The sudden, shocking pain must have been in her imagination, part of this entire, unbelievable nightmare. Michael Dowd wouldn't hurt her. Wouldn't know how.

She didn't know whether Michael was fearless or simply terrified as he plowed the sports car down the narrow, overgrown roadway. At one point she closed her eyes, too frightened to watch as they hurtled toward certain doom. He was going fast, too fast, and he didn't know the area. They were going to die, no thanks to whoever had rigged the gas heater. She told herself she should regret dying, and, indeed, she did. She thought of the man beside her, driving with consummate skill and recklessness, and thought she might really want to live after all.

The car slammed to a stop, and her eyes flew open. By some miracle they'd made it to the bottom of the narrow roadway, out onto the tiny spit of pink sand. He killed the engine, glancing around them, and she told herself it was only her imagination that he seemed wary, dangerous, like the hunter instead of the hunted.

"Are you all right?" He had to ask twice before she pulled her scattered thoughts together enough to respond.

"I guess so."

He reached out, and it said a lot for her disordered frame of mind that she didn't flinch from hands that had hurt her. He touched her face with consummate gentleness, and she knew then that she'd imagined the moment in the car, the icy pain in her wrist. She smiled at him shakily, and for a moment his face darkened, shadowed by some distant emotion she could only guess at.

And then he was tugging her out of the car. "We've got to get out of sight. Cecil said he'd come by with a boat, but in the meantime, we don't want anyone seeing us."

"No one comes here," she said, following him as he headed for the underbrush. "They think it's haunted."

He glanced around him. Funny, she hadn't realized how tall he was. He was usually hunched over the cane that had somehow gotten left behind, and she wondered for one absurd moment whether he really needed it. Whether he was the innocent schoolmaster he pretended to be.

"Haunted, is it? I think we'll need more than ghosts on our side to keep us safe." He sank behind a hummock that gave them a decent view of the dazzling blue sea, pulling her with him. "So tell me who haunts it while we wait."

His body was warm beside her, warm while she was cold, so very cold. Ghost stories were a good enough way to pass the time, and part and parcel with the unreality of the situation. "There are rocks out there," she said, rubbing her bare arms absently as she hunched closer to him. "I presume Cecil knows that, since he must have grown up here. Back in the seventeen hundreds there used to be wreckers here, pirates who never bothered to set out to sea. They'd wait for people to go off course, blown by the storms, and they'd use lanterns to lead them to a safe harbor. Except that the harbor was protected by a coral reef, the boats would founder, and the people of the island drowned anyone who happened to make it to shore."

"Nasty business," he said absently. "I thought they only had wreckers in England."

"These were English convicts, sent out as slave labor for the sugar plantations," she said, clenching her muscles to keep from shivering. "Nice bunch of people you're descended from."