Summer Games (23 page)

Well, I need to know. I’ll keep asking until I do know, damn it. It isn’t smart and I shouldn’t care, but I do.

“The Pentagon,” Cord continued, watching Raine with eyes that were almost colorless, like his voice, “has set aside fifty million dollars for backup in case of another terrorist attack like Munich. Our hole card is Delta/Blue Light, a group of hand-picked commandos waiting around outside Las Vegas, Nevada. If they have to, they’ll come down on L.A. like a hard rain, using all the nasty tricks we’ve learned from some of the world’s nastiest people. Terrorists.”

She was utterly still for a second, caught as much by the violence implicit in his words as by the words themselves. Not a bodyguard, not a simple soldier, not like any man she had ever met before. Not even like her father.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

She saw the subtle, devastating change that swept over Cord at her words. Suddenly he was poised, deadly, waiting for a signal only he would recognize. Fear roughened the skin on her arms.

He was looking at her the way he had the first time, when he hadn’t known who she was. He was looking at her as though his pale, uncanny eyes could peel away her soft skin and see whatever might be hidden beneath.

And if he didn’t like what he found . . .

The hard-edged smile Cord gave Raine was no more comforting than his eyes. “I’m Cord Elliot, remember?”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said quickly, words tumbling out of her as she tried to explain, to banish the deadly stranger who was looking at her through Cord Elliot’s eyes. “Are you local police or federal or military or . . . something else?”

His eyes closed for an instant. When they opened, the stranger was gone. “I’m on your side, Raine. Isn’t that enough?”

He turned away before she could answer.

There was a finality to his movement that told her more clearly than words that the subject of Cord Elliot was closed. With hands that wanted to tremble, she picked up the mystery and began the second chapter for the fifth time.

This time she was more successful, if success could be measured by the number of pages turning beneath her determined fingers as the darkness outside deepened toward midnight. But the words she read were meaningless, the silence and the static cries of the scanner oddly hypnotic.

Cord was right. This equipment, this room, she herself didn’t exist. Nothing did but darkness and ghostly voices and the man with pale eyes who sat at the center of everything, listening, waiting.

“—Ontario. Two-eleven in progress. All cars in vicinity respond code three. Repeat. Two-eleven in progress on corner of—”

Static and silence and the hollow clicking of a computer keyboard. She held her breath unconsciously while the scanner searched unknown frequencies.

“—Subject turning right on Sunset. Are you on him, Jake? Can you—”

Silence and clicking, scanner searching.

“—And they’re at it again. Flip you for it, Martinez. Last time I got between her and her pimp she damn near cut off my—”

Static and silence, the faint hiss of voices coming over frequencies layered like cards in a deck, waiting for a dealer to pick them out and give them meaning.

“—repeat. Anyone monitoring this frequency speak Chinese? At least, I think it’s Chinese, but I—”

Cord snapped on the hold and waited, listening.

“—can’t be sure because I’m no linguist. She looks about six years old, and scared to death in the bargain. This is Kate on Nine. Over.”

He waited, but no one answered. He picked up the radio, adjusted the frequency, and spoke.

“Kate on Nine,” he said, leaving out his own identification. “Is the girl able to hear me? Over.”

“Yes. Over.”

Raine listened in fascination as sliding, singsong syllables poured out of Cord. When he ended with, “Does she understand? Over,” the English words were almost jarring.

“Thank God. Yes, she understands you. Over.” The woman’s relief was evident even through the static.

He talked for a while longer, his voice soothing even in the odd tones and minor-key phrasing of the language he used. A girl’s voice came back to him, high and thin and strangely musical. The exchange continued for a few minutes before Cord addressed the woman called Kate.

“The girl’s name is Mei. She’s Vietnamese, ten years old, and has been here only a few weeks. Do you live near Anaheim Stadium? Over.”

“A few blocks north. Over.”

“Call stadium security. She was at an Angels game and she got separated from her parents in the closing crush. Her folks are probably frantic by now, though they won’t show it until they have her back. Over.”

“What about the police? Shouldn’t I call them? Over.”

“Only as a last resort. The sight of a uniform might panic Mei. Where she came from, uniforms were worn by enemies. Over.”

“Okay. Thanks. What’s your name and call number? Over.”

“I’ll monitor this band for a while. If you need me, just ask for Mei’s friend. Over and out.”

He set the radio aside, released the scanner, and went back to sifting through electronic reports.

Raine picked up her mystery again. For a long time she lay there, staring at pages she didn’t see, wondering about the man called Cord Elliot. A man who could badly frighten her with a single look and the next instant speak gently to a lost child in her own language, an alien language thousands of miles removed from the reality of the Summer Games. Fear and gentleness flowed from him so easily, so naturally. As did hunger and passion and an elemental male sensuality that was like nothing she had ever known.

After a long time, the mystery novel slipped from her fingers. She drifted in and out of sleep, listening to fragments caught by the restless scanner, voices crying in the cosmopolitan wilderness telling of drunk drivers and armed robbers, lost children and freeway accidents, drug deals and domestic disputes, murder and rape, loneliness and violence, and a chill seeping into her soul.

Woven through it all like a glittering black thread came the clipped, almost brutal humor of the men who spent their lives patrolling civilization’s long nights. Men just beyond the castle, walking cold perimeters while fire danced behind the locked gates they guarded, warmth always alluring, always beyond reach.

Half-asleep, half-awake, suspended between dream and reality, she turned restlessly, seeking peace. But the voices were still there, scratchy static whispers describing life beyond the castle walls, life besieged by violence and unhappiness, life that knew the pain of lonely men and of children crying for lost mothers.

And one man calling to Raine in a dark shaman’s voice, telling her to unlock the gate, to come to him and make a new world where fire would drive away the chill . . .

Holding to his voice, she let herself slide slowly into sleep.

*   *   *

From the corner of his eyes, Cord had watched Raine’s restless twisting and turning, her fussing with pages, reading and rereading them, then simply staring at the print without seeing it. When the book finally slid from her fingers and her breathing changed, signaling sleep, he punched a code into his computer.

BLUE
MOON
CALLING
BLUE
HERRING

Within minutes, the special radio phone buzzed. He activated it quickly so that it wouldn’t wake her and spoke quietly into the microphone. “Blue Moon.”

“Blue Herring, buddy.” The words floated up from a desktop speaker like smoke, softly filling the room. “You took your time getting back to me. Hot date?”

Cord’s lips turned in a sardonic curve as he thought of Chandler-Smith’s daughter sleeping on his bed only an arm’s length away. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. What’s doing, compadre?”

Silently Raine awakened. Motionless, she tried to orient herself. Memories came—the fall, the motor home, the shower, the bed. Cord’s bed. As understanding came, so did the soft, smoky-rough words that had pulled her from sleep.

“The usual,” Bonner said. “Blue is using field boots on everyone in sight. He’s worried about Baby.”

“Tell Blue that Baby is literally within my reach when her one-ton guard dog isn’t on the job,” Cord said.

“Her what?”

Cord laughed softly. “Just tell him. He’ll know.”

“He’s worried about whether she’ll cooperate with you. Says she’s damn near as stubborn as he is.”

“She is,” Cord said succinctly. “But she’ll cooperate, one way or another.”

“Well, at least you won’t have to chase Baby through a lot of bedrooms. The book on her is that she likes horses a helluva lot better than men.”

Raine winced and then went utterly still, listening with increasing anger. She knew who Blue was. She suspected that “Baby” referred to her.

“Can’t say as I blame her,” Cord said.

“Cynic.”

“Realist. Did your worm say anything else about Barracuda and friends?”

“No. He couldn’t even positively ID the picture Mitchell managed to take at
LAX
.”

“You don’t suppose your worm’s turning again?” Cord asked.

“Doubt it. He barely got out alive. His ex-friends don’t have any sense of humor. Barracuda personally executed the last three who tried to leave without permission.”

Chill crept through Raine. Cord’s back was to her. It was just as well. She didn’t want to see what his eyes were like now—ice around the kind of darkness that sane men and women avoided.

“Sometimes they kill their own just for window dressing,” Cord pointed out.

“Yeah, but this time they dressed the wrong window. The worm’s girlfriend was five months pregnant when Barracuda scragged her.”

Cord heard Raine’s gasp. He spun quickly, watching her but saying nothing.

“Believe me, our worm can’t wriggle enough for us.” The smoky words continued softly, relentlessly, crowding the room. “He wants revenge so bad he sweats thinking about it.”

“Anything else?” Cord asked.

“Nothing new, except . . .” Static, soft and scratchy.

“What is it?”

“Bad vibes, buddy. If I were running this show, I’d put a lock on Blue and Baby that an A-bomb couldn’t blow. Moving targets are one thing. Sitting ducks are another. Watch your ass, okay? You’re the only one I can beat at chess.”

“I don’t play chess.”

“No kidding.”

“Neither do you,” added Cord, ending the prearranged code that established that each man wasn’t acting under coercion of any kind.

“That’s a state secret. Hasta la bye-bye, buddy.”

“Hasta luego, compadre,” Cord said, giving back correct, liquid Spanish for the mangled border Spanglish version of good-bye that Bonner had used.

Biting her lip, trying to control the emotions seething inside her, Raine watched Cord disconnect. She wished she could believe that she wasn’t the “Baby” that the scratchy voice had referred to. She didn’t want to be another target, another pawn, like the poor woman who was five months pregnant when she was murdered trying to get away from someone or something called Barracuda. Then there was the woman’s husband or lover, another pawn, the worm who was turning and twisting under pressures too great for anyone to bear.

And there was Cord, wearing his gun again . . . Cord in the center of all that violence, watching it with eyes the color of ice, colder with every moment, and a darkness in the center that admitted no light.

Even at second hand, Raine couldn’t survive the kind of life he lived. Yet the hunger and need in him called to her in a language older than castles or civilization. He was a winter night and she was a fire burning. He needed her in ways she couldn’t explain. She needed him in the same ways.

Slowly, never looking away from her, he stood up. With quick, casual motions he unclipped the holster from his belt and put the gun on the chair he had just abandoned. The pager and ammunition clip followed, making an almost musical sound as metal met metal over the leather cushion.

She closed her eyes, unable to bear the intensity of his look any longer.

Hard, gentle hands closed around her face. Her eyes opened dark and almost wild. He was very close, his eyes intent as he tilted her head toward the bedside light.

“What—what are you doing?” she demanded.

“I’m looking at your eyes,” he answered matter-of-factly, but his lips curved up in a smile that made his eyes look more like blue diamonds than ice.

Like the man, the smile took her breath away. “W-why?”

“I’m checking that both your pupils are evenly dilated.” His voice was patient and very deep.

“Oh. Of course.”

She bit her lip, caught between the aching pleasure of his touch and the knowledge that he was the wrong man for her, he led the wrong life, he would destroy her and never mean to. Yet his hands were very sure, very gentle, and his fingers curved to fit her face perfectly. His eyes were clear, intent, and so beautiful that her heart turned over.

“Are they?” she managed.

“Are they what?” he asked absently. His thumbs traced the sleek brown curve of her eyebrows. It was like stroking a silky kind of fire. It burned him in the sweetest, deepest way. He wondered how something so normal as eyebrows could be so sexy.

“Evenly dilated,” she said. “Are they?”

“Flecks of gold and depths of green, dark amber shadows . . . do you know what time it is?”

She could only shake her head mutely, caught between his hands and his unexpected question, off-balance again, falling toward him so quickly that she didn’t even feel the pressure of her teeth scoring her lower lip.

“It’s tomorrow,” he said simply.

Then he bent over her until he filled her world. Gently, coaxingly, he kissed the corners of her mouth. When the tip of his tongue traced the teeth pressed into her lower lip, she couldn’t control the tiny ice-tipped shiver that went through her.

She was afraid, but not of him. It was his world that frightened her, a world where violence came as surely as midnight. She couldn’t be a part of that world.

“Cord,” she whispered achingly, “it won’t work. We’re too differ—”

His tongue slid between her lips, her teeth. The tender invasion of her mouth made speech impossible. He savored her slowly, stealing her words. Stealing her. The velvet texture of his tongue stroked her, exploring her with a deliberate thoroughness that asked everything of her and concealed nothing of himself.