Pursuit (12 page)

Matt rolled his eyes. “Don’t you have somewhere you have to be?”

“Nope.” Lenny sounded cheerful as he snagged an apple from a bowl of fruit. “Dude. Weather’s too bad for anyone to want to scuba dive or hire a boat. You know that. Just look out the window.”

Yes, Matt knew that. He also knew that he wanted Lenny gone. “You get everything?”

Lenny didn’t answer. Of course he’d gotten everything. Matt knew it was a dumb question. Lenny met his eyes. “What’s going on?”

Matt’s jaws clenched. “She almost drowned this afternoon.”

Lenny didn’t even ask who “she” was. Lenny’s light blue eyes bore into his. “Hey, bad karma, man. But why are you still here?”

“She risked hypothermia. I’m staying here to make sure she’s all right.”

“Uh-huh.” Lenny was making the rounds of the room, looking at each and every work of art on the walls and on tables. “The fact that you’re dying to get into her pants has nothing to do with it, right?”

“Lenny . . .” Matt growled.

“Hey, man.” Lenny raised his eyebrows. “Don’t shoot the messenger. ”

“The messenger should go home. Now.”

Lenny splayed a large hand over his heart and looked wounded. “Gee, do you mean you don’t want me here?”

“Bingo.”

“Tough shit,” Lenny said cheerfully and continued walking around, fingering watercolors, touching the pastels and color palette, frowning over the oil portrait. Matt gritted his teeth, waiting it out.

“Hey.” Lenny’s big hand hovered over a sketch. “That’s Pepe, Mama Pilar’s grandson. You know—that cute kid that always gets into trouble?”

Matt walked over and looked down at the big sheet of drawing paper. “Yeah, that’s Pepe all right.”

The kid
was
cute, but in the time Matt had been in San Luis, Pepe had managed to break a hornet’s nest with his beach shovel, get his head stuck between the bars of the fence surrounding the Cantina Fortuna, requiring two welders to free him, and get lost a few weeks ago. The entire town had turned out to look for him, the cries of “Pepe! Pepe!”

echoing off the adobe walls. He’d finally been found asleep under a car with a melted icecream cone beside him. The quick sketch was perfect, somehow managing to show Pepe in perpetual motion, as he was in life. Matt couldn’t figure out how Charlotte had done it, how she managed to catch on paper the little scamp, but there he was. There was no way any human being on the face of the Earth with half a heart could look at the sketch and not smile. Next to the sketch was another one, just a few strokes, but he could tell it would be a portrait of Mama Pilar.

“Wow, that’s talent.” Lenny shook his head, bit the last shred off the core of the apple and tossed it one-handed into the wastepaper basket. “Picasso-ette.” He chuckled at his own wit, the smell of beer and tequila coming off him.

Matt loved Lenny like a brother, but Lenny scared him shitless. Lenny was what he would become if he wasn’t careful. When he’d been forced to leave the Teams, it was as if Lenny stopped living. He’d moved down to Baja Sur, opened his shop, and simply drifted through his days skippering and renting scuba equipment. He had no intention of expanding or of adding to the business. From what Matt could see, Lenny had no plans beyond the next beer.

Matt was by nature intensely mission-driven. He had to have clear goals he believed in and a plan to achieve them. He needed that like he needed air and water. All SpecOps warriors were hardwired the same way he was. Or so he thought. You don’t get through the training, you certainly don’t get through Hell Week, without wanting it with every atom of your being, without focusing on that one goal to the exclusion of all else. That kind of drive carried over into life. Matt didn’t know what the hell he was going to do with his life once he’d completely healed, but it wouldn’t be what Lenny was doing. Lenny ran his dive shop and boat rental agency with a light hand, doing the least work possible merely to survive economically. He didn’t even advertise, relying on satisfied customers and word of mouth to get by.

Matt didn’t want to just get by, spending days soaking up the Baja sun, drinking beer, and skippering boats so rich guys could do a little trophy fishing. He didn’t want to drift. He wanted to
do
. But do what?

He shook his head irritably at the thoughts circling his head. Well, right now his mission was to get rid of Lenny, check on Charlotte, finally take a shower and change, check on Charlotte, dig up something to eat, check on Charlotte, and get some shut-eye—after having checked on Charlotte.

Lenny was engrossed in a small oil painting on a wood panel. Matt had noticed it, too. Sunrise painting the
Pintados
—the rocky outcroppings a mile down—a pearly rose. He’d admired the scene himself many times during his early-morning swims. Charlotte had captured the mood of the ocean perfectly. Matt had spent all his life in the ocean and more hours than he could count swimming. She couldn’t possibly know the water like he did and yet—and yet she’d caught it perfectly. That breathless moment as dawn rises over the water, and for a moment you forget that humans exist. You could almost imagine the Earth as one huge blue ocean spinning in black space. She’d caught that, all of it. The mystery and the sense of awe. How did she do it?

“Pretty,” Lenny said.

It wasn’t pretty. That was a dumb word, meaning nothing. The painting was gorgeous, magical . . . Matt bit his lip. Those were dumb words, too.

“Does she sell this stuff? I bet she could make a bundle.” Lenny put down the wooden frame and picked something else up. “Hey, dude, that’s you. Really good likeness.
Man,
she’s sweet on you. You’ve almost got more muscles in here than in real life.”

Matt looked over, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. It
was
him. A line drawing with a few strokes of earth-toned pastels. She must have sketched it from the terrace—a view of him in profile as he stopped for a moment on the beach before diving into the ocean. He was outlined against the dying sun. He had on swim trunks and held his spear. It must have been the day he’d gone fishing and caught three bream. He’d left two of them on her doorstep.

She’d caught the essence of him. He looked elemental, like a warrior at the dawn of time. The emotion in the drawing reached out like a punch to the stomach. Matt bit his lip. He hated this. He hated having Lenny paw through Charlotte’s stuff. There was so much feeling in her artwork—out-and-out love for the elderly gentleman in the portrait, affection for Pepe and Mama Pilar. For him, maybe . . . admiration?

It was like reading someone’s diary, it was that intimate. Matt took the drawing from Lenny’s big paw and placed it facedown on the dining table. “I really need to shower, ace. I got soaked this afternoon fishing the lady out of the water. I’m cold, my clothes are still wet, and I’m hungry. So . . .”

“Scat,” Lenny said amiably. He shrugged broad shoulders. “You got it.” He leveled his hand and made an imaginary pistol with forefinger and thumb, aiming it at Matt. “You need anything, call. I mean it, dude. Anything at all, and I’m on it.”

“Will do.” Matt tried to hide his relief as he picked up Lenny’s slicker and handed it to him. It had stopped dripping, but there was a puddle on the floor. There was no getting round it—Matt was going to have to mop up the mess. Charlotte kept a neat house. Mopping was not Matt’s favorite activity in the world, but he’d done enough of it in the Navy to know he could do an efficient job of it.

By the time he scouted out the pantry, found a mop and pail, and walked back into the living room, Lenny’d gone. The space felt better. As Matt squeezed the mop and attacked the mess on the floor, he realized that Lenny’s presence had unsettled him on a lot of different levels. It had felt . . . wrong, somehow. Invasive. As if the house was meant for Charlotte and him, and Lenny’s presence was an intrusion.

Matt put the mop and pail neatly away, just the way he’d found it, and rummaged in his kit. He pulled out his weapon, clean and smelling of gun oil, just as he’d left it. Matt hefted the weapon, liking the heavy feel of it. His hands held the muscle memory of the tens of thousands of rounds he’d shot with it.

Lenny was gone. He was armed again.

Matt felt a drop in the tension knotting his muscles. He grabbed clean underwear and his sweats and made a detour to the bedroom to check on Charlotte before heading for the shower.

She was in the exact position he’d placed her in. She hadn’t moved an inch, so soundly asleep it was as if she were unconscious. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that she hadn’t been sleeping well. Close up, there had been lavender bruises under her eyes. He wanted them gone. He wanted to get rid of those two small furrows between her eyebrows. He wanted the wariness in those gray eyes gone.

A matted lock of hair curled over her cheek. Matt reached down to brush the curl away, behind her ear. The back of his finger lingered for a moment against her cheek. It was so soft, it seemed like another material, not human skin. She wasn’t in REM sleep, her eyelids were unmoving. He had to look closely to see the blanket move slightly with her breathing. She could easily have been dead.

Another twenty seconds, and she would have been. Matt shuddered at the thought. She’d been looking for him. It was her cries that had made him look up in the water. The weather had become too extreme even for him, and he’d been heading back to shore when he’d heard his name on the wind. It had been Charlotte, standing on the rickety quay, searching the water, calling his name. If he hadn’t plowed through the water at his own personal swim speed record, she’d be a lovely corpse right now instead of a beautiful, live woman.

Matt pulled the blanket farther up over her arms, his hand cupping her shoulder briefly. When he finally straightened, he stood and looked down at her for a long time. He knew what he wanted. But he wasn’t going to get it. Not right now anyway. Sighing, Matt headed for the shower.

Warrenton Early

Morning, April 26

There’s money here,
Barrett thought, as he followed Robert Haine up the wide stone steps of Court Mansion. Big money. Old money. And class, the kind money couldn’t buy. Haine clearly knew his way around the place. He had had keys to the big wrought-iron gates a hundred feet back and he was now pulling out a set of keys for the big oak front door.

Haine’s hand was trembling. He shifted so Barrett couldn’t see that it took him three tries to open the door, but Barrett noticed, of course. Noticing details was what he was about. Haine was under a lot of pressure. He was trying to hide it, but walking up the steps of Court Mansion had dialed the man’s nervousness way up.

Haine smelled, too. Underneath an expensive cologne and the smell of cashmere and freshly laundered virgin wool was the sweat of fear, unmistakable. Barrett had smelled every permutation of it over the years. Haine was deeply, intensely frightened. Haine finally got the locks open and pulled the heavy door wide, flipping on the hallway and porch lights as he entered a few steps into the massive lobby. He held out an arm to him in invitation—
you first
. Barrett walked through. Haine made to follow, but Barrett suddenly stuck out his arm, like a bar of iron. Surprised, Haine tried to push against him, but he didn’t stand a chance.

Haine had gym-honed muscles. Barrett had battle-hardened muscles.

“No,” Barrett said without turning around. “I need to be on my own in here.”

He had to flatten his mind out, make it blank, drive all sensation out of his body to concentrate fiercely on what this house could tell him about Charlotte Court. He needed a handle on the prey. For the next hour or three hours or however long it took, Barrett would turn himself into a human recording machine, filing away even the smallest details, to be taken out and pondered over time as he narrowed the hunt.

It was the first rule of battle—scout out the terrain—and he had to be alone to do it. He couldn’t concentrate with this asshole around.

Foolishly, Haine continued to push against his arm a little, as if to dislodge it and enter the house with him.

Barrett turned then and looked at Haine. Just looked.

“Okay,” Haine said, finally, holding up his hands and backing a step away. “Okay. But you can’t disturb anything,” he said, petulantly, as if giving in to an unreasonable request. Barrett closed the door quietly in his face and entered Court Mansion. It was going to be a long night.

Haine had to walk around the gardens of Court Mansion for a couple of hours to calm himself down. Just seeing the entrance hallway and the glimpse into the huge living room past Barrett’s outstretched arm made his heart pound painfully. Through the open hallway door he’d glimpsed the high back of Charlotte’s favorite armchair upholstered in pale yellow silk, always placed next to the hearth.

Court Mansion—together with Court Industries and Charlotte Court—should have been
his
.

The first time he’d walked into the mansion, he’d felt it in his bones. The place was his, meant for
him
. This was exactly the home he’d dreamed of, worked so hard all his life for. And when he’d seen Philip’s daughter, Charlotte, it had all fallen into place like the cherries in a slot machine, lining up for the jackpot.

His entire life had been an arrow, aimed straight at the heart of this. A company, a mansion, an heiress—they were all what he’d worked a lifetime to achieve. He had a neat little background for himself all prepared, which he’d trotted out to Philip and then to an uncaring Charlotte. CPA father who died tragically young, wonderful stay-athome mother with the law degree. He had the story down so pat in his mind he didn’t even have to think of it. He could even summon up glossy eyes, bravely fighting back the tears, at the thought of his wonderful dad, tragically dead of a heart attack at forty-two. As it happened, his old man had died last year in the drunk tank of some godforsaken hamlet in North Dakota, choking on his own vomit, lying in his own shit. Haine would never have known the fucker had croaked if it hadn’t been for the local cop down there in Bumfuck, ND, calling him up because the old man had had a newspaper clipping of him being appointed CEO of Court Industries in the back pocket of his jeans. Haine had coldly denied knowing Stuart Haine and hung up. He’d kept his voice even, but his hands had trembled. The memory of the son of a bitch could still do that to him. Haine shook his head. That was a long time ago. A lifetime ago. He was another person now. He wasn’t an underweight boy struggling to study on a cracked Formica tabletop covered with his father’s empty beer bottles and crushed roaches. No. He’d gone as far as he could under his own steam, but now he could fulfill his destiny with this old, rich family, with the dying business he knew he could revive, with the old mansion just waiting for his modernizing touch. Gutted and refitted, it would be a showcase. Charlotte, too, was meant to be his. The first time he saw her, he knew. Young, beautiful, classy. Exactly the woman he wanted for his wife.