Run Among Thorns (16 page)

Once on relatively dry land, Kier heaved Kendrick onto his shoulders, and Jenny followed him up the slope, the rope in hand.

He deposited him on the verge, and she dropped to her knees to hunt for the man’s pulse.

She looked up at Kier, fumbling with the knot of the rope. “He’s breathing, but he’s got a major knock on the head, look, here.”

“We can’t take him farther than this, Jenny. We need the breathing room.” Kier was still labouring for air, and his voice came out in gasps, but she could still hear the note of finality in his pronouncement.

With businesslike precision she rolled Kendrick into the recovery position, checked again that he was breathing, and ran to get the blanket she had seen in the boot of the car. She had to clamber over the backseat to get it, as the rear door was twisted out of shape, the window shattered and opaque.

As she came back, Kier was rising from beside Kendrick, with a gun in one hand and a radio in the other. He tried the radio, shook it once, and then tossed both it and the gun back down the slope and into the river. Wordlessly she handed him his mobile that she’d also grabbed from the front dash.

“No arguments?” he said, one brow rose quizzically.

You listened to me, and you almost drowned for it
. “Not this time,” she said, lightly.

While he called the emergency services, she rummaged in the bag she’d taken from the cottage stash, producing a spare jumper of his. She tossed it to him, and he grinned, although she could see his teeth chattering from where she was.

They piled back into the car, wet trousers and all, and she pulled the sleeves of her jumper down over her sore wrists and hands.

“With him out, we’ve got a night, at least,” Kier said. “His team won’t blink without his say-so, I know his style.” He glanced across at her. “The ambulance will be here in ten minutes. He’ll be fine.”

She smiled. Logically he was right. Kendrick was chilled and in shock, but he hadn’t drowned, and he was going to live. “I know.”

“Ready?”

She glanced through the window at Kendrick, lumpish and indistinct under the blanket, his face showing blotchy red where the bruises were starting to form. Far, far in the distance, she heard the rising wail of an ambulance siren. “Ready.”

They’d put ten miles or so between them and the gorge, on back roads and country lanes, before Jenny started nodding off. Since it was pretty close to dark anyway, Kier pulled into a passing place, half-screened by the trailing lower branches of an ash tree. Smashed taillights were illegal. And they were much more obvious at night. It made sense to wait for light again, instead of running the risk of being seen by a police vehicle.

Beside him, Jenny snuffled and slipped sideways as he pulled on the parking brake. Twisting slightly, he got his arm round her, holding her against his shoulder. Her sweater was still damp under his hand, so he left the engine on, and cranked up the heater.

He couldn’t blame her. He could feel tiredness throbbing in his own muscles, and the faint stiffness of bruises, here and there. He should follow her example, and get some sleep.

Which was easier said than done
, Kier thought irritably. Tiredness or no, Kier couldn’t quite grasp the gentle oblivion that had Jenny boneless against his side. He strained his ears past the soft rumble of the engine and the whisper of the blower, but there was nothing happening outside.

He leaned his head back against the rest and breathed deep. He could smell mud and the damp, musty smell of a recent soaking on them both. If they’d had time, and if they’d had a complete change of clothes, they should have stripped out of those wet things and warmed up properly. Carefully, he lifted the dark mass of hair from her neck and lightly touched her throat. Warm, not too warm.

With his other hand he turned off the engine.

His fingers lingered, without his permission, feeling the thump of her pulse and the slight shift when she breathed. In spite of himself, for a moment he imagined her stripped, naked, nipples pursed tight with cold, her skin pale and flawless. But thoughts of her skin inevitably led to the sight of those vicious bruises on her back, marring the softness and looking so painful. And of more recent marks he knew were there.

His fingers withdrew from her throat, her hair slipped down again to hide her face and neck. A bitter, sick feeling curled in his stomach. Everything he did, no matter how well-intentioned, seemed to hurt her. Bruises he’d put there. Mental scars. Fears and shadows of mistrust. Physically, mentally, it didn’t matter, whatever he did, she got hurt. He couldn’t protect her.

Jenny made a slight “huh” sound and slipped a bit, burrowing her shoulder into his side. He twisted some more, trying to support her, and somehow she ended up halfway on her back, on his lap. He looked down at her, trying to see clearly in the darkness while the engine
plinked
cool.

A week ago he would have said he was the best in the business with pride and absolute conviction.

Now that seemed like an empty achievement, with Jenny sleeping off pain and fear and exhaustion right there in his lap. Nothing to be proud of anymore.

He’d always sought to do the best he possibly could, to stretch his abilities to the limit. So what if that meant other people got hurt? He needed to use the skills he had.

It sounded cold to him now. He’d done his job with Jenny, and he was close to hating himself for it. Which was a type of introspection he hadn’t indulged in for many, many years.

He rubbed his eyes, squeezing them tight shut. Trying to drag his mind away from those thoughts that threatened all his goals of the last ten years or so, and latch onto the problems and solutions of the present. He reached for the dial to tilt the seat back, awkwardly scooping Jenny along with him as it reclined. She stirred a little in her sleep, and murmured, burrowing her nose into his abdomen. He absently slid her hair out from under her neck, smoothing it the best he could up over his thigh as he knew she liked to smooth it over the pillow. His fingertips lingered again on the smooth skin of the back of her neck, her hot breath seeped through his sweater, and his mouth went dry.

He wondered how long it would be before they actually got to sleep in a bed again.

He sneered in the darkness in disgust at his own train of thought. He was hardly the knight in shining armour of fantasy.
I’ll take care of you, babe, but you gotta take care of me, too …
He might be more the stuff of nightmare than dreams, but Jenny didn’t need a fairy-tale prince. She needed ruthlessness and resolve. Someone who wouldn’t drop, who wouldn’t stop. Not till they were done. He might not be able to provide the fantasy, but the rest he could do.

She needed a proper bastard.

And he was the man for the job.

In spite of himself, he let his fingers lightly trace the line of her jaw, gleaming milky white in the dark. He saw her soft lips part around a gentle sigh and found himself holding his breath to listen to hers. And he thought about what he could offer her.

And how unlikely she was to want to accept it. From him, at least.

The truth was … ah, truth. Dropping his head back, he sighed. This dawning conscience, the desire to protect her. That sure as hell wasn’t truth. That was the stuff of fantasy. Delusion.

Truth was facts and figures. Actions and motivations and
people
. He saw Kendrick grinning in the Merc; saw Groven’s eyes, hard even through the blur of digital projection. Kendrick, Groven, Davids. They wanted Jenny. And McAllister had her.

That was truth. That was tangible.

For that reason only
, he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight.

Jenny woke because something hard was digging into her ribs, and because someone was snoring. The snoring rose out of the background noise of half-sleep and became a vibration, too, against the warm and scratchy something her face was pressed to.

Reluctantly opening one eye, she got an ascending view of Kier’s jumper-clad chest and stubbled jaw. He wasn’t exactly snoring. It was more the raspy breathing of someone lying on his back with his mouth slightly open.

It was incongruous enough to make her flick her hair out of her eyes to stare.

Then she realised the thing digging into her side was the hand brake.

“Hunh.” She wriggled back and up, trying to get upright without actually shoving at him, and without getting even more closely acquainted with the brake lever. “Ow,” she muttered, under her breath, and managed to get onto her hands and knees, mostly on her seat, but partly on his.

“Morning.”

And why, exactly, did that make her freeze? It wasn’t the first time his voice had sounded that rough.

Although it may have been the first time it sounded that gentle, too. Looking up, she realised the windows were completely fogged over.

Oh, for God’s sake.

She swivelled her head in his direction and saw heavy-lidded eyes and the quirk of those mobile lips through the curtain of her hair. “Good”—she cleared her throat—”good morning.”

He shook his head, the lines beside his eyes cutting deeper.

She frowned at him, not understanding.

He sat up, a smooth, effortless curl of his body up away from the seat, closing the distance between them. One hand tucked her hair behind her ear, one cupped her cheek.

He kissed her.

A touch. A smooth, hot pressure—nothing more.

In the darkness behind her closed eyelids, the stroke of one fingertip along the curve of her ear was a totally absorbing sensation. She drifted, holding the thought, holding the moment, and thought, almost inconsequentially,
I’m in love with this man
.

“Good
morning,” he said.

Opening her eyes, she took a breath and backed off, awkwardly shuffling onto her own seat, and fumbling the door open. The dawn air was cold, a slap in the face after the close confines of the car.

“Where are you going?”

She slipped out and tugged her top straight. “To find a big, secluded bush—do you mind?”

“Be my guest,” he said, laughter in his voice.

“Tell me about Kendrick.”

Kier frowned, squinting at outlandish names on a crossroads signpost. They were working their way round the north of Carlisle, now, in open, windswept country. Scraggy fields and bent trees.

He made his choice. “What about him?”

“Why was he alone?”

Kier took a corner with care before answering. There was mud on the road, thrown by some farm vehicle that had left deep trenches in the green-grass verges. “He likes to work alone.”

“Why?”

“Because he likes to hoard the glory.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jenny tug at the seat belt, drawing it away from her neck. He reached down and tweaked the heater up some.

“So why do you work alone?”

A stray sheep was grazing on the verge ahead, a straggly fleeced ewe that stood stiff-legged as they came near. He drove by with exaggerated care. “There’s another way?”

“If there wasn’t, I wouldn’t be asking.” She sounded sharp, and he couldn’t blame her. But she might as well have asked why he dug in people’s minds and made sand castles of what he found there.