THE PERFECT TARGET (29 page)

She would know if he'd died, she told herself. She would
feel
it.

But didn't.

You're free,
her father had told her. But she wasn't. Didn't know how she could be free when memories flanked her more tightly, than her father's security personnel. She'd tried every avenue imaginable to discover the fate of the man left shot and bleeding at the base of those crumbling old columns, but could find nothing.

It was as though he'd never even existed.

Or rather … died five years before.

Not for the first time she wished for her camera, the film inside, but the sleek little 35mm
had not made it out with her.

But something had, something more tangible and precious than any picture in the world.

Swallowing against an uncomfortably tight throat, Miranda leaned toward her coffee table and picked up the object she'd found stuffed in her purse several days after her return.
Virgil.
The carved statue of Sandro's boyhood dog felt smooth and sure in her hand, and it promised her that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Sandro was not the criminal he pretended to be.

She was still holding Virgil when a loud knock echoed through her quiet apartment. Startled, she blinked, then stood and hurried to the door. The rapid-firing of her heart was ridiculous. The rush of adrenaline misplaced. She knew that, but could not stop the physical reactions.

"Mir," her sister said as soon as she opened the door. "Are you okay?"

Miranda smiled tightly. "I'm fine." Elizabeth looked gorgeous, as always, her long sable hair twisted off her face to highlight killer cheekbones and flashing green eyes. She was dressed to the nines, wearing a chic little black dress that hugged all the right places. "I'm flattered, E, but you didn't need to get dressed up just to come see me."

She expected her sister to smile or laugh, not to frown. "Oh, Mir, you've forgotten, haven't you?"

"Forgotten what?"

"The party."

"Party?"

"You know, the party Mom and Dad are throwing to celebrate your safe return?"

She remembered then, didn't know how she'd forgotten. "Oh."

Her sister pushed inside and closed the door, pulled her into a hug. "It's him, isn't it? You're thinking about the man who kidnapped you."

"He didn't kidnap me," Miranda immediately protested, but the claim sounded weak even to her own ears. Of course he had. "He saved my life."

Elizabeth pulled back and gently wiped the tears from beneath her sister's eyes. "Time heals all wounds, sweetie. You'll see."

"Does it?" Miranda instinctively challenged, and knew she'd hit pay dirt when she saw her oh-so-poised sister wince. Elizabeth hadn't healed yet, despite what she wanted the world to think. Her sister hadn't forgotten. Miranda herself had heard Elizabeth cry out Hawk's name in her sleep, seen the tears.

Miranda doubted she'd ever forget the shock, the profound relief of discovering he'd not been killed that day in Cascais. He'd been shot in the shoulder, a bullet that went clean through. And when he fell, he'd hit his head on the concrete and blacked out.

"Are you really over Hawk?" she now challenged.

"Don't be ridiculous," Elizabeth said in that smooth, cultured voice of hers, the one that announced a subject was closed and she wasn't about to reopen it. "How many times do I have to tell you that man was my bodyguard, nothing more?"

Until the lie caught up with her.
But Miranda let the subject drop. Now wasn't the time.

"Come on," her sister was saying, tugging her toward the bedroom. "Let's get you dressed and out of here before Father sends a search party."

* * *

"…the Pentagon is confirming that General Viktor Zhukov was killed overnight after an exchange of gunfire with elite U.S. Special Forces involved in a covert operation…"

Five weeks after the nightmare in Evora, Miranda sat upright in bed and cranked up the volume on the morning news program. Adrenaline shot through her, clearing the cobwebs of sleep and making her heart pound so hard it hurt.

"…an ongoing mission to apprehend the man responsible for war crimes and the deaths of eight undercover operatives…" the anchor was saying. But Miranda barely heard.

General Viktor Zhukov was dead.

Killed by Special Forces.

A covert operation.

Ongoing mission.

Blindly, she reached for Virgil sitting on the chest by her bed and clutched the carved dog to her heart. Because she knew. In that moment she knew, deep, deep in her heart, she finally, at last, had her answer.

Sandro may have lied about his identity, but that lie had concealed a dangerous truth. He hadn't planned to turn her over to Zhukov, but he had been straddling a thin dark line. And he had planned to die that day, if that's what had been necessary to give her the one thing she'd claimed to want above all else.

Freedom.

The tears started then, hot, salty, wrenching. Her throat tightened. She couldn't believe how naive she'd been. How foolish. All her life she'd dreamed of being free, of living her life outside the fishbowl of the Carrington prestige, but now she knew true freedom had nothing to do with the body, but everything to do with the spirit. And the heart.

Loving Sandro, losing him, had taught her that.

Miranda shoved back the thick ivory comforter and scrambled out of bed.

She knew what she had to do.

* * *

He didn't want to be found. That much was clear. His family refused to back off the claim that Allesandro Vellenti died one sunny morning five years before. The Department of Defense refused to acknowledge that he worked deep undercover for the U.S. government, that he'd been part of a covert operation to bring down General Viktor Zhukov.

For once in her life, Miranda had been grateful for her family's political clout, certain it could break through the web of lies and intrigue. But not even her father could find the truth.

As far as the world was concerned, Alessandro Vellenti was dead. Which only meant one thing.

He was a man of the shadows. He couldn't allow sunshine into his world.

"Your father will have my hide for helping you do this."

Walking down a narrow street in Cascais, Portugal, Miranda waved off Hawk Monroe's concern. "Let me handle my father."

The familiar sights and sounds and scents greeted her, the local vendors with their wares proudly displayed in stall after stall, two men having an animated conversation in bursts of Portuguese, the smell of French fries from an American hamburger joint. It was all so achingly, painfully familiar.

Past the perfume shop and around the corner, the Atlantic ocean glimmered in the early afternoon sun, the fleet of rainbow-colored fishing boats bobbing in the harbor, just like before. The fountain still sprayed upward. Pigeons still hobbled around the cobblestone piazza.

Lovers strolled hand in hand.

Everything was the same as that morning six weeks before, when her life had changed so irrevocably. Everything was
exactly
the same. Except her. She wasn't the same. Would never be again. Still, she could almost hear the gunfire, see the blood.

"Are you okay being here?" she asked Hawk.

He didn't break stride, just kept walking toward the ocean. As usual he wore aviator sunglasses, but Miranda knew he scanned the busy open-air market with that unerring intensity she'd once found so offensive. Now, the semiautomatic tucked into his shoulder holster brought her comfort.

"I'm not a flashback kind of guy," he answered in clipped tones, "if that's what you're asking. Lightning never strikes twice."

She didn't know whether to hope he was right or pray he was wrong.

He stopped then, turned to face her. She couldn't see his eyes, but she would have sworn his expression gentled. "You're looking for him, aren't you? You're looking for Sandro."

It was the concern that got her, maybe even a trace of sympathy. The question was far more brotherly than that of the bodyguard she'd clashed with not that long ago. Before her ordeal with Sandro, she'd thought Hawk evil incarnate. He'd hurt Elizabeth. He'd made her cry.

Nothing seemed quite so black-and-white anymore.

"No, I just … needed to come back." To retrace their footsteps, visit the places she'd been with Sandro.

To say goodbye.

Now, at last, she understood why Elizabeth had been so lost after Hawk left. She looked at him standing there against the vivid blue sky, all tall and rough around the edges, dark blond hair queued behind his neck, looking more like a Viking than a former Army Ranger. Normally she didn't find blond men attractive, but there was an energy to Hawk Monroe, a wildness. A presence. It was as though a fire burned deep inside him, smoldering from his eyes, his very flesh. She almost thought that if she touched him, he would sear her fingertips.

Just like he'd seared her sister's heart.

"Did you see her?" she blurted out.

He was looking toward a vendor hawking seashell wind chimes, which tinkled in the breeze. "Did I see who?"

"Elizabeth," Miranda clarified. "Did you see Elizabeth?"

Hawk went very still, his voice very hard. "No."

Once, Miranda would have let it go at that. Once, she would have celebrated. Until Sandro, she'd never understood what had drawn Elizabeth to bold, blunt, brutal Hawk Monroe, never understood why her sister gave the time of day to a man who rattled her by merely walking into a room. Now, though, now that she knew what it was like to be carried away by emotion, by desire, she understood a little more.

"Will you when we get back?" she asked.

"No."

"Do you want to?"

Hawk's jaw tightened. "No."

"But—"

"Don't, Miranda, okay? Don't look for something that's not there." He hesitated, staring down at her through those damnable mirrored sunglasses. "Your sister would rather walk barefoot over hot coals than see me again. She made that abundantly clear when she had me thrown out of her engagement party to Nicholas like I was some no-good piece of trash."

Miranda just stared. Right there, in one hot angry breath, Hawk Monroe had spoken more to her than he ever had. And no matter what he said with words, she knew he lied. The hard line of his mouth and rigid stance of his body made that abundantly clear.

"She's not with Nicholas anymore," Miranda said softly.

Hawk looked off toward the ocean. "It wouldn't matter if she was."

"She's not the ice princess you think she is," Miranda pushed on. "She's never been the same since you left." Her sister would kill her for interfering like this, but Miranda couldn't let that stop her. There'd been enough suffering already. "Maybe the two of you should talk."

Hawk whipped back toward her. "And maybe you should just leave it alone," he said angrily. "Your sister and I have never talked, Miranda. We only f—" He bit back the words with near-violent force. "Fought. We only fought." The muscle in the hollow of his jaw jumped furiously. "Now come on. I don't like you standing in the open like this."

"I thought you said lightning never strikes twice," she reminded.

He didn't answer, just cut her a look that warned he'd said all he had to say.

And Miranda let it drop. She recognized a dead end when she saw one. For now.

They wandered over to the boardwalk, where she curled her hands around the railing and gazed out over the ocean. The salty breeze was cool, just like before, carrying with it the scent of fish and dreams.

"Here."

She turned to see Hawk with his arm extended toward her, a camera in his hand.
Her
camera.

Her heart pitched, hard. She took the 35mm
and checked the little window, saw that film remained inside, tangible proof those dangerous days with Sandro really happened.

"Where did you get this?" she asked, surprised by how breathless her voice sounded.

Hawk shrugged. "It showed up a few days ago … must have gotten left behind in Evora."

Miranda lifted the camera, looked through the lens, saw memories. There was Sandro standing in this very spot. Sandro carving a block of wood in the musty old wine cellar. Sandro eating mint-chip ice cream at the basilica in Fatima. Sandro making love to her beneath a mammoth standing stone.

Sandro lying still as death at the base of the temple in Evora.

Moisture stung her eyes, forcing her to blink rapidly, but the tears spilled over anyway. She turned toward the ocean, not wanting Hawk to realize she was crying. She didn't want his comfort. She didn't want his advice. She didn't want to hear him talk about lightning never striking twice.

Because, dear God, she needed to believe it could.

The sky was obscenely blue with no clouds in sight, weathered old fishing boats bobbing on the water in the cooling breeze. Like that day that now seemed more dream than memory, they were practically begging to be photographed.

"No, no, no. That's not right at all."

The voice was low, drugging, almost made her drop the camera. It was the voice of memory, the voice of countless nights alone in her bed, dreaming. Instinctively she closed her eyes, wanting to hold the moment as long as possible.
This
was why she'd insisted on coming to Portugal. Not closure, but to prove to herself that what she'd felt those magical days had been as real and powerful as she remembered.

"Aren't you even going to turn around?"

Miranda went very still, all but her heart. It kicked, hard. Her chest tightened painfully. Her throat constricted. Imagination had always been her friend, bright, vivid, full of promise, but now it turned enemy.

Swallowing against the emotion lodged in her throat, she kept the camera to her face and slowly turned toward the voice that made her heart strum low and deep and hard.

Only a few minutes before, when Hawk had given her the camera, she'd looked through the lens and seen memories.

But in her memories, Sandro had never stood on crutches.

She blinked, but the image didn't go away. He stood much closer than American manners dictated, tall, dark, battered, the weight of the world in his midnight eyes. Dark whiskers covered his jaw. On the left side of his face, there was a scar that hadn't been there before.