Transference (3 page)

Nothing had ever terrified her more.

They spent perhaps another hour in the car in silence before he pulled into the lot of a rundown and nearly deserted motel. He went inside and returned a moment later with a key in hand. Watching him, Allison was struck by the predatory and cock-sure way in which he moved. Of all the people they could have sent to rescue her, Brad was undoubtedly the most well suited to the task. There was no question in her mind that he'd gladly shoot through any obstacle they encountered.

After retrieving some bags from the trunk, Brad led her to the room where she was instantly struck by the immediate problem. "There's only one bed."

He rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated sigh. "They don't have double beds here." Forcing one of the bags into her hands, he added, "I can sleep anywhere. I'll take the floor."

Allison watched him carefully as he checked the locks on the door and windows. "What's this?"

"Clothes that should fit." He glanced at her over his shoulder. "This window isn't secure. You go ahead and hit the shower while I deal with it."

He picked out her new clothes? That felt strange, wrong somehow. That also meant his hands had been all over her underwear. Had he picked out delicate lacy things while imaging how they'd look against her skin? Or had he just grabbed handfuls of white cotton bras and panties and thrown them on the counter for a clerk to ring up without bothering to check the sizes?

Neither option was terribly appealing. She'd put off finding out until after the shower.

Wordlessly, Allison started the water and then stared at the closed bathroom door for a long moment. She thought about locking it, but then changed her mind. What did it really matter? If he wanted in badly enough, he'd either pick the lock or just shoot it out. It wasn't like she'd be able to stop him if he tried.

Who the hell did she think she was kidding? A part of her wanted him to walk in on her.

She stood under the weak spray of warmth for a long time, wincing when the water made contact for the first time with the raw places on her wrists. It didn't make any sense. How could he hurt her one moment and kiss her senseless the next? More importantly, what did it say about her that she'd enjoyed it?

What would Adam say about that?

Allison shut off the water and shook that thought from her head. He wouldn't say anything about that because Adam Barrows would never know. No power on this earth could make her tell him. It would only hurt him and that was the last thing she ever wanted to do.

Even though he'd hurt her more times than she could count.

Even though he'd left her to suffer alone for her part in the escape when the wrong cop recognized her as the woman wanted for stealing drugs from a prison and aiding an escaped convict and slapped cuffs on her wrists in the middle of a convenience store when she was paying for their gas.

Even though he'd sent the one man she passionately hated to bring her back to him.

Was it really any wonder that she wanted a shot of morphine more than breath itself? If she wouldn't let herself slip down that path again and Brad wouldn't let her have a drink to curb the edge...what was left?

Brad, the man she hated; the man she craved.

But what would withdrawals from him be like?

It wouldn't matter. She'd be safely with Adam by then. She'd simply transfer her addiction from one man to another, just the way she was planning to transfer her morphine addiction into a Markenson addiction.

CHAPTER 4

BY THE TIME this was over, Brad knew he'd have earned each and every penny of his million bucks. Something was definitely going on with Allison. If something didn't give soon...it was going to be a very long drive.

If he hadn't needed the money to get out of the country as much as he did, he would've never considered the offer of a man who'd eluded him repeatedly in the months after Allison's arrest gave him a warm trail to follow. Getting fired from the US Secret Service usually wasn't such a deadly affair, but he knew more about illegal off-the-books ops than any civilian got to know. He'd called in all the favors he'd accumulated over the years, but he didn't do any better than the brothers had at getting the proof he'd need to ensure his safety.

Knowing where the bodies were buried did little good when you couldn't prove who was involved.

His eyes were instinctively drawn to the bathroom door when it creaked open. Heaven help him. She'd actually just walked out into the room wearing only a towel, tangled hair dripping with water. The towel might've been enough for a shorter woman, but Allison was tall enough that it would be downright indecent if she reached up to brush her hair.
 

He averted his gaze quickly. "The room's secure. I'm getting in the shower if you're done in there."

"All yours." Something about the tone swimming underneath her words again drew his eyes in time to watch her sit on the bed and cross her legs, showcasing her smooth thighs. "Feel free to take your time."

She wasn't talking about the shower. Brad cleared his throat roughly. "Don't get any ideas about skipping out on me while I'm in the shower. I've hidden the keys somewhere you'll never find them." He grabbed his bag and headed to the bathroom, avoiding the summons of the skin beckoning to him. "You won't find the bullets either."

"Hmm. No bullets in the gun, huh?" Her eyes raked over him from head to toe. "Somehow I doubt that, Brad."

Wordlessly, he closed himself into the small bathroom and started the water, finding the pressure to be inadequate. While the soft drops fell upon his back, he rested his forehead against the cool tile surface. Whatever game Allison was playing, he couldn't let it continue. This had to stop before it got started.

But that would be easier said than done if she kept parading around in only a threadbare towel.

This was ludicrous. She wasn't even his type. Sure, there was something inherently sexy about any half-naked woman with wet hair, but...this was Allison Waverly.
 

She was a job. Nothing more. Just a job.

Brad clung to that thought as he washed the day from him. Allison was just another assignment and he prided himself in his ability to get the job done. Romantic feelings had never once gotten in the way. Nor would they. Of course, he would have taken her to bed in a heartbeat if that had proven the best way to get information from her instead of playing the role of her new sponsor with a boyfriend of his own just to make her more comfortable around him. Without batting an eye, he would have bedded her and then killed her to get what he wanted if necessary.

Orders were different now though. All he had to do was get her to Costa Rica. That was it. No sex. No killing. No complications.

Costa Rica.

He let the water wash over his face as he remembered the last time he'd been in a motel room with Allison. All he'd wanted was the information she had when he snatched her out of her apartment before she could make a run for it to meet the brothers. Using her cell phone to contact Adam hadn't been a wise choice.
 

With every dunk of that pretty head into the full bathtub, he grew to hate himself a little more. And he'd hated her for making him do it, even as he'd smiled inside at her bravery. So carefully, so gently, he had wiped the water from her face and pushed the drenched auburn strands from her eyes. There had been nothing sexual about it, he realized suddenly. He'd actually been thinking about his sister, wondering if she'd be able to fight back so valiantly at the hands of a monster.

Because that's exactly what he'd become.

Only a monster would repeatedly dunk a woman's head into the bathtub nearly to the point of drowning her. Only a soulless beast would dig her curling iron out of her overnight bag and use it to electrify the water when the simple threat of drowning alone wasn't enough to keep her talking. Only a man as far gone as he'd been would keep up that routine for an hour after he started to believe she'd never found the evidence her father claimed to have. He'd had to.
 

Brad Markenson wasn't a man who got played.

But when Allison walked out of this bathroom...feelings of brotherly love had been but a faraway memory. There was something sensual about the way she moved across the dingy room. What stirred within him at the sight of her was animalistic, primeval.

The sound of the bathroom door opening ripped his thoughts back to the immediate present. He poked his head around the shower curtain to see Allison, still clad in only the towel, at the sink. "Can I help you with something?"

"Probably." She smiled at him and then turned on the faucet.

"What are you doing?"

She put a glob of toothpaste on the cheap red toothbrush he'd procured for her. "Getting high on Polar Mint Blast?"

Pull it together, man. It's all just a big game. That's all any of this is to her. "And you can't wait five minutes to brush your teeth?"

"No." Her eyes danced with something unfamiliar. "I take my oral hygiene very seriously."

God. Why did even the way she spoke about brushing her teeth sound dirty? "Whatever. Knock yourself out." He retreated back behind the shower curtain and willed the blood back to the correct parts of his body.

This was one job he should've turned down and he knew it. Death at the hands of the government's finest scumbags would've been preferable to this torture.

* * *

Allison brushed her teeth quickly while she tried to figure out what she thought she was doing. She loved Adam. She hated Markenson.
 

At least, she thought she loved Adam. They'd just been two people talking in a coffee shop at first, two people who seemed to have a knack for always running into each other. Then he'd slowly opened up about having a brother in prison for a crime he didn't commit. The more he told her about the circumstances of Eli's arrest for passing counterfeit money, the more she wanted to help him in any way she could until she finally asked her father to look into it.

Never once did it occur to her that his brother was in the same prison that was on her sales route, that their meetings had been anything other than coincidental in nature. Not even after the escape had she figured out that she'd been his target, his dupe, until the police suggested it when questioning her.

It had all seemed so simple, so innocent at the time. After her father's death, she'd even run into Adam in the prison infirmary, claiming he was there to find out about the state of his brother's health, but that the prison doctor wouldn't give up any details. Could she find a reason to get him to walk out in the hallway with her once he got off the phone so that Adam would have a minute alone to look at the file himself?
 

Getting the man she'd been occasionally dating into the hall didn't seem like such a big deal and certainly wasn't difficult. She hadn't dreamed it would give Adam the opportunity to somehow steal one of his keys and replace it with a fake.

How stupid she must've seemed to Brad that night she'd confessed over a home-cooked dinner how much she missed Adam even though he'd so thoroughly used her.

If the police hadn't started taking a closer look at her over the stolen morphine, she might've been content to wash her hands of Adam Barrows for good. But they had and she didn't know anyone else who knew how to go on the run. Once she was with him and his brother, Adam spoke with so much passion about the frame job that was done to make it look as though Eli had killed the man who gave him the counterfeit bills that she could almost justify the way he'd used her. And then when he kissed her...it wasn't fair how easily she forgave him.

But she definitely hated Brad Markenson. Probably.

The desire she felt pulsing through her veins was insane.

When was the first time she'd felt the shift in her feelings toward him? Was it when she'd nearly succeeded in strangling him during her escape from the motel room he'd held and tortured her in for two days? Was it the moment he'd freed her from that van?

No. It was when he'd almost killed her.

Sure, there had been terror over the realization that the man she believed to be her friend had a gun aimed at her nose, that everything had been a lie. Of course she'd felt dread at the questions he'd screamed at her while bound to the chair in that hideous motel room with what looked like tiny Christmas elves smiling at them from the wallpaper. But no question about it, that was the day.

As though it were yesterday, Allison could see him calmly stand after her insistence that she knew nothing, had nothing. Even with the gun in his hand, Brad was so casual in the way he'd undone that button at his neck to loosen his tie that she'd almost thought he might actually be on the way into the bathroom to take a shower. She'd even momentarily forgotten her predicament while checking out his ass.

Black slacks really hadn't done it justice.

She shuddered at the memory of what came next. Every time he dunked her into that bathtub, she hated him. And every time he pulled her out and looked at her with such loving concern...Allison didn't know what that made her feel. She didn't understand why she almost began to crave the feeling of his fingers against her cheek while still fighting for breath. Shrinking away from his touch had been the only thing that made sense to her then. After all, weren't you supposed to jerk away from the man who was trying to kill you?

But even in those terrifying moments when she thought that each dunk in the water would be her last, there had been something so familiar about him that she was almost comforted. Her taste in men had always been shit. In a way, what he did to her that day hadn't been so much worse than the things previous lovers had done.

Especially at the height of her drug use.

Having completed her task of obtaining minty-fresh breath, Allison shut off the water. No more trips down memory lane. It was time to deal with the present. It was time to deal with the man who was separated from her by only a towel and a stained shower curtain.

She hated herself for wanting him – even as she tousled her damp hair. She hated herself for the way she'd let her eyes wander over those snug jeans when she followed him to the car – even as she silently let her towel drop to the floor. She hated herself for the way her body had melted when he kissed her – even as she pulled back the curtain and slipped behind him into the shower.