Shock Waves (11 page)

Leering with self-satisfaction, the guard led them from the bedroom down the cool, dimly lit hall, retracing their path from earlier in the day. A shiver ran through her as they approached the massive doors leading to the white room, and then they were there, inside the sanctuary.

Ethan never let go of her hand.

She saw the man immediately, reclining in a deeply cushioned, white leather chair. He wore all white, a linen summer suit against his dark, Mediterranean skin. He held the tumbler in his hands up to a ray of sunshine cutting in from the wall of windows. The light reflected off the amber liquid inside.

And she knew. She knew this man. Knew this moment.

Ethan knew, too. Beside her, she felt him go very still. Absolutely, completely, deathly still. His fingers, curled around the back of her palm, tightened. It was a sharp contrast to the frustrated pacing of earlier in the afternoon, but as she glanced at him, instinct told her this was the real Ethan Carrington. He was not a man of wild, jerky movements. He wasn’t a man to release his tight grip on control. He was a man of unyielding iron, unbendable determination. He played every scenario in his mind prior to execution. There were no accidents. No mistakes. Nothing was left to chance.

That’s why he’d agreed to meet her, had arrived without the security detail she’d expected to be flanking him. That’s why he’d stood in the open along the banks of the James, making himself the perfect target. That’s why he hadn’t tried to run when he’d seen the limo.

He wanted to be here. She saw it in the slow burn in his eyes, every hard, etched line of his face. The subtle flare of his nostrils. The tightness of his jaw, made more menacing by a shadow of whiskers completely at odds with the image the cool, refined federal prosecutor usually showed his adversaries.

This was the real man, the man he concealed from the world, the quietly dangerous, cunning predator. The man who knew no fear, who would walk into the line of fire to protect his family.

And the woman he loved.

The thought, the memory of what was to come, wrapped around her heart and squeezed. What happened next? she couldn’t help but wonder. What happened when those tightly bound chains of constraint broke?

Excitement hummed beneath the hard surface of his body, radiating from him like the hot summer sun baking through an exposed plate-glass window. Brenna absorbed it, looked slowly from Ethan to the man in the chair, the man who just watched them, lazily swirling the amber liquid in his glass.

“Ethan,” he said in a richly cultured voice, one that sounded as if it belonged in some exotic European destination, like Cannes. He smiled slowly, revealing a row of white teeth. “How kind of you to join me.”

Brenna hadn’t thought it possible, but Ethan’s body went even more tense. “Jorak,” he said, his voice betraying none of the simmering animosity that practically choked her. “Or should I say Dimetri?”

There was an edge of menace to the second name he spoke, an edge she remembered from the night before, when he’d tossed out snippets of Jorak Zhukov’s life in the States. Snippets she was no doubt supposed to recognize.

Jorak unfolded his large body from the chair and stood. “It’s been a long time, my friend.”

“Seven years.”

A shadow crossed the other man’s face, briefly, fleetingly. “And three months, two days.”

The breath jammed in Brenna’s throat. Something had gone down between these two men, something horrible, something unimaginable. The aftermath, the residue, still throbbed between them.

“Here I am,” Ethan said, finally releasing her hand. He stepped forward, extending his arms downward in a false gesture of surrender.

“Ah, yes,” the other man said, smiling. He strolled to a glass-and-pewter bar and poured another tumbler of Scotch, extended it toward Ethan. “I take it you found your room accommodating?”

Ethan stunned Brenna by crossing to Jorak Zhukov and taking the heavily cut crystal glass from his hands, throwing back the amber liquid. “Glenmorangie,” he muttered. “Single malt.”

Satisfaction gleamed in Jorak’s dark, dark eyes. “Your favorite.”

Ethan smiled lazily. “You remember.”

“I have forgotten nothing, my friend.” The words sounded innocent, almost kind, but beneath them slithered a current of animosity. “Not one single detail.”

Ethan poured more Scotch, but didn’t drink. “Neither have I.”

“That’s what I’m counting on.” He held Ethan’s gaze a long moment, then glanced toward Brenna. She bit back a wince at the sudden contact, the sensation of being caught in the sights of a sniper’s rifle.

“You know what I want,” he murmured, and his eyes, cold moments before, heated.

Ethan’s jaw went tight. “She can’t help you,” he gritted out, and for a second, there, Brenna’s heart foolishly swelled.

“Oh,” Jorak crooned, strolling toward her, “but she already has.”

Disgust crammed into her throat, a dread unlike anything she’d ever known. He was going to touch her. She saw it in his eyes. But even worse was what she saw in Ethan’s eyes the splinters of accusation. And worse, confirmation.

“Has she now?” he asked in that deceptively quiet voice of his. “Has she really?”

Jorak lifted a hand toward her face. “Immensely,” he murmured, but rather than putting finger to flesh, he streaked an imaginary line down her cheek. “I am sorry about the bruise,” he said. “One so valuable should never be hurt.”

* * *

Somehow Ethan kept himself from moving. Yet it was hard, damn hard, when his blood pounded a battle cry through his body. He’d learned, though. Learned to hide emotion, hide reaction. Because both damned. He forced himself to just stand there in the whitewashed room, with the glass of fine Scotch in his hand, and not move a muscle. Just watch.

The sight of Jorak and Brenna together sickened.

Seven years had passed since he’d last seen the man he’d once called friend. The man he’d invited into his home and his family, the man who’d married the woman Ethan had once dreamed of making his wife, the man who’d betrayed them all. Time had spiraled relentlessly forward, but little had changed. Life on the run, hands drenched in blood, had done nothing to mute the chiseled dark looks of Jorak’s Mediterranean ancestry. Standing there in the kind of trademark white suit his father had always worn, the man looked as though he should be attending an opera in Barcelona, rather than holed up in a compound on some hot, sweaty island.

It was no wonder women fell so easily under his spell.

“You know what they say about intentions,” Ethan muttered with a casualness completely at odds with the fury of his heart rate. Brenna had yet to move. She just stood there with her chin angled and her eyes unusually dark, pale blond hair falling loosely around her face.

The surge of protectiveness made no sense. The evidence spoke for itself. And yet … the thought of Jorak touching her, of all the ways in which he could use her, hurt her, twisted through Ethan like barbed wire.

“You seem to have a habit of catching women in the cross-fire, don’t you?” he reminded Jorak, forcibly loosening his grip on the glass. If it shattered, he would have a weapon. And a simple shard of glass was all it would take, all he would need, to turn his quest for justice into revenge.

Jorak’s expression darkened. Lips tight, he turned his attention from Brenna, to Ethan. “And you seem to have a habit of letting the good ones slip away,” he taunted. Then smiled. “My men tell me you did not make love to your woman this afternoon, despite the beautiful bed I provided. Was there a problem?”

Ethan saw Brenna’s eyes flare. It was almost as though she hadn’t known about the three strategically placed cameras in the big bedroom. He’d found and destroyed five listening devices during her shower. If others existed, they hadn’t been close enough to pick up the highlights of their conversation.

“I don’t perform on command,” he shot back.

Jorak laughed. “Really? Since when?”

The burn started low, spread fast. He’d prepared himself for this moment, played it out in his mind hundreds of times, but the contempt slicing through him dwarfed anything he’d imagined. Because Jorak was right. He had performed on command. Brilliantly. Stupidly.

And because of him, because of his mistake, men had died.

So had a child.

“It’s not a problem,” Jorak said, turning back toward her. Appreciation warmed his voice. And this time he touched. A hand to her face, the gentle caress of lover to lover.

Brenna reacted so swiftly, so violently, Ethan never saw it coming. She slapped Jorak’s hand away and shoved back from him, spun away and positioned herself behind one of the big white chairs. “Don’t touch me,” she ground out in a voice Ethan had never heard her use before, low and throaty, but laced with deadly intent.

Out of nowhere three guards materialized and closed in on her.

Ethan was across the room before his heart could beat. He pulled Brenna toward him, inserting his body between her and the men with the guns. “Leave her out of this.”

Amusement sparked in Jorak’s dark eyes. He barked out a command in his native tongue and lifted his hand. “I will deal with her personally,” he added in English, and the guards stopped dead in their tracks.

Ethan expected Brenna to be trembling, but in his arms she held herself completely still. So still she barely felt human. He wanted to turn her toward him, to look into her fairy eyes and feather a finger down her face, check the temperature of her skin. But didn’t dare. Wasn’t about to show Jorak an ounce of vulnerability.

“Feisty, isn’t she?” the other man commented, strolling closer. His eyes met Ethan’s. “Maybe I should just dispose of the pretenses and get rid of her now.”

It made no sense, but Ethan pulled her tighter. “This is between you and me,” he reminded, detesting how readily he performed on command. But he couldn’t help it, damn it. He couldn’t just stand there while Jorak Zhukov used and discarded another woman. “Why do you insist of dragging innocents into the line of fire?”

“You know the answer to that,” Jorak chided. “It’s the same reason my father went after your sister.”

Ethan’s jaw tightened, and he knew. He just didn’t understand. “Leverage.”

Jorak smiled. “It’s all very simple, my friend, not all that different from the chess we used to play. The choice is yours. Give me what I want, and the lady walks out of here alive.”

The farce almost made Ethan laugh. Almost. No one was walking out of here alive, not if Jorak had his way. And even if Ethan believed the lie, why would he compromise himself, his family, the information he’d been protecting for years, for a woman he didn’t even know? Didn’t even care ab—

He broke off the thought. “And if I don’t?”

Another shrug. “Then you missed your last chance to get naked with the lovely lady.”

He would kill her. She would serve no more purpose to Jorak, and he would find some creative way to execute her, staining Ethan’s hands with more blood.

He looked from the cold triumph in Jorak’s black eyes to the blank stare in Brenna’s, and without warning all the pieces, all those misshapen, jagged edges, came crashing into place. And he knew. God help him, he knew. Standing there in the fading light of the late evening, with lengthening shadows creeping across the white carpet and darkening the white walls, the truth doused like a bucket of acid, and blinded.

Adrenaline let loose with a violent surge. “I’m not going to let you hurt her.”

“That’s what I was hoping you would say.” Jorak smiled. “Let’s dispense with the games, then, and get down to business. The name, Ethan. I want the name.”

Somehow Ethan kept everything he felt, all the hot, violent loathing, off his face. For years he’d been looking forward to this moment, savoring just the thought of once again standing face-to-face with this man, and bringing him down. But now, God, now he wanted to shout “Time out,” and wipe away the past twenty-four hours, find some way to erase Brenna from the picture. She didn’t belong here. She was in way over her head.

I’m here with you because I couldn’t let you walk into danger without trying to warn you.

God.

It took effort, but he said nothing, just let a hard smile curve his lips and invited the hated memory to return. Already he saw its embers burning in Jorak’s eyes. The other man knew only of the outcome, the night the FBI had busted into the apartment he’d shared with his wife, and a volley of gunfire had shattered the lie, the life, he’d been building.

Ethan knew the beginning, the night a few weeks before, when a hooded figure had met him by the banks of the James River. The scene played before him in vivid detail, the half-moon hanging in the sky, the brutal cut of the sharp March wind through the sycamores and elms. The frozen moment he learned that the man he’d called friend had betrayed them all.

The moment when he’d realized what had to be done.

The moment he’d set into motion a chain of events that extended well beyond those crucial weeks, traveling years into the future and touching so many innocent lives. He’d put a fist through the window of his town home when his father had called with news of his baby sister, Miranda’s, kidnapping, and the sick piece of information that Jorak’s father was responsible.