Lover, Stranger Page 10

  Grace let the weapon drop to her side, but she didn’t put it away as she stepped out on the balcony to join Myra Temple. The woman sat in darkness, the only substance to her shadowy form the arcing glow of her cigarette as she lifted it to her mouth. In the silence that followed, Grace could hear the tiny crackle as the flames ate away at the paper holding the tobacco.

  “How did it go today?” Myra asked. Her voice, husky from years of smoking, was one men dreamed of.

  Grace replaced the gun in her purse before answering. “I think he’ll cooperate.”

  “How much did you tell him?”

  “Almost everything. The truth is almost always more convincing than lies. I’ve heard you say that dozens of times.”

  The cigarette lifted again. “He still thinks you’re Amy’s sister, though. You didn’t tell him the truth about that.”

  “No.” Because a man who had managed to stay one step ahead of the law wasn’t likely to throw in his lot with an FBI agent. Not a man as resourceful and wealthy as Ethan Hunter.

  She thought about their last conversation, the threat he’d given her, and in spite of the heat, Grace shivered. “You have someone watching the house tonight?” she asked.

  “Huddleston and Smith have the first watch, but they’ll be relieved after midnight, just like last night.”

  Grace nodded, satisfied. She wondered suddenly what Ethan was doing all alone in that house. Or was he alone? Had Pilar decided to pay him another visit?

  Against her will, Grace conjured up an image of Ethan’s wife—the lithe body, the glossy hair, the incredible face. What a handsome couple they would make. In her mind’s eye, Grace could see the two of them together, in each other’s arms. Naked. Kissing. Making love.

  She thought about the way Ethan had looked at her today in Amy’s apartment, the brief kiss they had shared, and the image changed. She could see herself in his arms. Naked. Kissing. Making love.

  I’m a married man, Grace.

  “So what are you doing sitting out here in the dark?” she asked Myra, trying to dispel the forbidden image in her mind.

  She sensed rather than saw Myra’s shrug. “Strangely enough, I’ve been thinking about the past.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re getting maudlin.” Grace sank into the green plastic lawn chair next to Myra’s. “You always told me the past is a dangerous pitfall, one that should be avoided at all costs.”

  Grace heard the tinkle of ice against glass as Myra lifted a drink to her lips. “I know, but lately it’s become harder and harder for me to avoid that particular pitfall. I find myself reflecting at the oddest times. I guess it comes with age.”

  “No way,” Grace said. “You’re still a young woman.” Still vibrant and beautiful, though there’d been times when Grace could have sworn her mentor ate nails for breakfast. Grace wasn’t the only one in the Bureau who had thought so. Myra Temple was almost legendary.

  Myra sighed, an uncharacteristic sound for her. “I may not be old in the real world, but forty-three can be ancient in our world, Grace.”

  She had a point. Grace fell silent for a moment, contemplating her own life. In twelve years, she would be Myra’s age. Would she then want to look back, to reflect as Myra had put it? Somehow Grace couldn’t imagine it.

  Myra picked up a tiny whiskey bottle—the kind stocked in the room bar—from beside her chair and set it on the plastic table between them. The seal on the bottle was broken, but Grace knew Myra’s own drink contained no alcohol. She was very disciplined in that regard. The empty bottle was to make a point.

  “All right, so I had one drink last night,” Grace admitted, wishing she didn’t sound so defensive. Wishing she didn’t have a reason to be. “But that’s all. It won’t happen again. You can take the bar key with you if it makes you feel any better.”

  Myra tossed her cigarette butt over the balcony to the asphalt parking lot below them. Tiny sparks rained down in the darkness. “That won’t be necessary. I know you remember how bad it was for you back then. But you’re strong now, Grace. Stronger than me in a lot of ways.”

  Grace didn’t think that was possible. Myra was unparalleled. She would never consider drinking alone in the middle of the night, much less making love to a man whose secrets just might be even darker than her own.

  “Do you remember the first time we met?” Myra asked suddenly. “You were only seventeen, but I sensed that resilience in you even then. I hated the fact that your father always seemed hell-bent on breaking you.”

  Don’t, Grace thought. Don’t take me back there.

  She closed her eyes, letting the hot breeze blow across her face, willing away the melancholy that seemed to have gripped both her and Myra.

  Beside her, Myra shifted restlessly in her chair. “You came by the office to see your father that day. He’d just learned I was to be his new partner. He wasn’t too pleased to discover I was a woman.”

  “Some things never change,” Grace said. “The Bureau is still a man’s world.”

  “True enough,” Myra said. “But you’re becoming a damned fine agent, Grace. You’ve earned a lot of respect.”

  “So have you. You paved the way for women like me. I’ll always be grateful.” For that and so much more, but Grace left the words unspoken. Over the years, she and Myra had developed an internal method of communicating. They’d been through a lot together, but Grace couldn’t help wondering if this was to be their final assignment. When Trevor Reardon was no longer their nemesis, who or what would then become their raison d’être?

  Myra stood and stretched. “By the way, we lifted some fresh prints from Hunter’s clinic last night after the police left. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear back from the lab.”

  Grace got up and walked her to the door. In the light from the corridor, Myra suddenly looked much older than her years. It made Grace uneasy, watching her.

  Grace remained at the door until the agent disappeared around a corner. After a moment, Grace heard the ping of the elevator and the sound of the doors sliding open and then shut again. Only then did she close and lock her door. But she didn’t turn on the light. She stood in the darkness as the memories came flooding back.

  Putting her hands to her ears, she tried to shut them out, but Myra’s pensiveness tonight had inadvertently opened a Pandora’s box. In her mind, Grace saw the house where she’d grown up bursting into flames. She heard her mother’s terrified cries, her father’s anguished shouts, and her sister’s tormented screams.

  Grace closed her eyes, trembling. It had taken her years to get those images out of her head. Years of therapy and cold indifference before she no longer saw her sister, her hair in flames, at every window. Years of single-minded devotion to her career to block out the argument she and Jessica had had just hours before her sister’s death.

  Like a roller-coaster out of control, Grace’s mind whipped around the perilous comers of her past, plunged downward into the murky depths of her memory. Faces flew past her. Scenes blurred by her. She wished she could stop them—she would do anything to stop them—but it was too late for that. Too late to do anything but huddle in the darkness and remember.

  There had been a man. Grace had sensed from the first that he was different, someone special, but she hadn’t learned until later just how extraordinary he was. When she’d first met him at the library during the Christmas break of her senior year in high school, all she’d known was that he was a dashing older man, probably at least thirty, and more sophisticated and worldly than she could ever have imagined.

  She’d also thought that he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. When he looked up from the book he was reading and smiled at her, Grace knew instantly he was the one. The two of them had a connection, some special bond that had drawn her to him. His eyes were blue, his hair golden brown, and even in the dead of winter, he was suntanned, as if he’d just come from the slopes of some exotic ski resort.

  Grace grew so nervous, just watching him, that she dro
pped the book she was holding. His smile broadened, as if he knew he was the source of her anxiety and was pleased by the knowledge. Grace turned and all but ran from the room.

  The next day, she saw him again at the library. This time, her nerves in check, she took a seat two tables away from his, facing him. Every time she looked up from her book, she found his gaze on her, and Grace’s insides quivered in delicious anticipation.

  On the third day, he approached her. He stood over her table, hands planted on the surface as he bent down to whisper in her ear. Grace could smell the intoxicating scent of his cologne, could see the faint shadow of his beard, and her heart went wild. This was no boy, but a man.

  “Do you want to get out of here?” he whispered, his voice deep and knowing.

  Grace could only nod. He removed the book from her hands, then pulled her to her feet. Clasping her hand in his, he led her outside to the parking area, to an expensive sports car that made Grace catch her breath.

  “This is your car?”

  He dangled the keys before her. “Would you like to drive it?”

  Grace had her license but her father rarely let her behind the wheel of the family sedan. His career in the FBI had made him overly protective of his family, and Grace’s nature had made her openly rebellious. The two of them often clashed. She wondered fleetingly what her father would think if he could see her now.

  In spite of her defiant nature, the image subdued Grace a little. This man was a total stranger after all. She shook her head. “I’d better not.”

  “Oh, come on,” he said in that dark and silky voice. “You know you want to. For once in your life, live dangerously.”

  The challenge was irresistible. Grace took the keys from his fingers, and he opened the door for her. So gallant and so unlike the boys she’d dated. She slid behind the wheel and waited until he climbed into the passenger side before starting the car.

  The engine roared to life, the sound thrumming through Grace’s veins like a shot of pure adrenaline. So this was power, she thought.

  The man put his hand over hers on the stick shift, helping her find the right gear. His touch made her shiver. Grace glanced at him warily. “Where are we going?”

  “Anywhere you want to go, Grace.”

  That stopped her for a minute. Her excitement cooled. “How do you know my name?”

  He smiled, pulling a card from his pocket and holding it up to her. It was her library card. “You dropped it that first day,” he said, “When you were running away from me.”

  “I wasn’t running away from you,” Grace protested, not wanting him to think of her as a child.

  “Maybe you should have.” His smile turned mysterious. “I’m a dangerous man, Grace.”

  “I know.”

  Their gazes met and held for the longest moment, then he reached over and grasped the back of her neck, pulling her toward him. His mouth found hers and almost instantly, Grace felt his tongue plunge inside.

  She knew she should pull away. This man was way too old and way too experienced for her, and he was a stranger. A stranger who kissed her like no boy had ever kissed her. Who made her feel the way no one had ever made her feel. Who whispered to her things no one had ever told her.

  “You’re very beautiful,” he murmured. “You have no idea how special you are to me, Grace.”

  Something warm unfurled inside her, some womanly need that made her cling to him, that made her groan against his mouth, that made her want him in ways she’d hardly dared dream about.

  She drove them to his apartment a few blocks from where she lived, and they talked a little, trying to get to know one another, trying to ease the almost unbearable tension between them. But all the while they both knew the inevitable would happen—had to happen—before she left him that night.

  They met again the next night, and the next. Grace was barely allowed to date boys her own age, so she knew bringing him home to meet her parents, especially her father, was out of the question. She started sneaking out of her room at night, begging her younger sister, Jessie, to cover for her.

  Unlike Grace, Jessie had never been rebellious. She had always worked very hard to please their father, and lying to him went against her nature. Grace understood that, but her sister’s conscience didn’t matter enough to Grace to make her want to stop seeing him.

  On the night of the fire, Jessie had been especially troubled by Grace’s deception. She even threatened to tell their parents and take her own punishment for the duplicity if Grace left the house again without their permission.

  Grace lashed out at her, calling her a Goody Two-shoes. “Why don’t you mind your own business for once,” she snapped before climbing out the window and slipping away into the darkness to meet her lover.

  That night, he seemed different. Before, he’d always been dark and intense, even moody at times, but Grace had found those qualities deeply compelling. Tonight, however, he was almost ebullient, laughing and smiling, whispering to her that he had a secret.

  It was only...afterward that Grace learned what his secret was.

  “Would you like to know my real name?” he asked, drawing her fingers to his lips and kissing each one of them.

  Grace gazed up at him in confusion. “Your name is Jonathan Price.”

  He laughed out loud. “Jonathan Price is a fictional character, you little idiot I got it from a novel.”

  Grace didn’t much care for the insult. She pulled away from him.

  He didn’t even seem to notice. “I go by many names, but the one you may have heard of is Trevor Reardon.”

  He laughed again when he saw the horror dawn on her face.

  “That isn’t funny,” she said, shaken. Nothing about him was the least bit amusing. In fact, he was beginning to scare her. Grace jumped up, pulling on her clothes while he lay on the bed, smiling that taunting little smile. “Trevor Reardon is in prison,” she said.

  “So you have heard of me.” He propped himself on his elbow. “I didn’t think your old man could resist bragging about the coup he pulled off when he captured me. But didn’t he also tell you that I’d escaped from prison a few weeks ago? Didn’t he warn you I might come back for revenge?”

  Her father had been acting strangely lately, even more protective than usual, making the whole family promise to be home by dark every day. Maybe that’s why Jessie had been so frightened when Grace had started sneaking out of the house at night. Maybe she’d known something Grace hadn’t.

  Dressed by this time, Grace started backing toward the door. She didn’t believe him, couldn’t believe him, and yet...

  What if he was telling her the truth?

  What if he was Trevor Reardon?

  She put a hand to her mouth, trying to swallow back a rising tide of nausea. “Who are you?” she whispered. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “It’s all been a game,” he said. “And you’ve been so much fun.” He got out of bed and stood naked before her. “But playtime’s over, Grace. It’s time to get to work.”

  Her hand on the door knob, she said weakly, “If I scream someone will hear me. The police will come.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t wait for the police if I were you. Your family may need you, even as we speak.”

  She saw the truth in his eyes. Knew that he had done something unspeakable to her family while she lay in his arms.

  Grace turned and fled the apartment. He didn’t try to follow her, but she could hear his laughter echoing in the darkness all around her.

  Five blocks away from her house, she heard the sirens. Two blocks away, she saw the flames. When she reached the driveway, she heard the screams.

  Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, was all she could think as she rushed toward the burning house. Someone grabbed her and held her back. She struggled to free herself, and it was then that she looked up and saw Jessie at their bedroom window. Sweet little Jessie pounding at the double panes, screaming in terror and agony as her clothing and hair caught fire.

&
nbsp; And somewhere in the darkness, Grace could hear Trevor Reardon, still laughing....

  As the memories all but consumed her, Grace slumped against the wall of her hotel room, weak and dizzy. Even after all these years, the thought of his mouth on her, his hands touching her sent her flying to the bathroom. She lay spent and trembling on the floor moments later, the memories still closing in on her like a crushing weight. She willed them away, but they resisted. They weren’t through with her yet. There was still more to be endured, other horrors to relive.

  Groaning, Grace rolled to her side, feeling the cool tile against her cheek.

  After that night, the guilt and grief over her family’s deaths had almost killed her, but Trevor Reardon hadn’t been finished with her. Dressed as one of the cops standing guard at the church, he attended the funeral service for her family three days later. Grace knew this because he called her afterward and described in detail the clothing she’d had on, right down to the tiny pearls she’d worn in her ears.

  The knowledge that he had been that close to her again very nearly drove Grace over the edge. If it hadn’t been for Myra Temple, Grace wasn’t sure she would have survived.

  But Myra helped her through the worst of those days. She forced Grace from the pit of despair she’d crawled into. Made her stop drinking. Made her realize that Reardon would win again if Grace let him.

  So with Myra’s help, Grace went on to college and eventually graduated from law school. After a while, she could even pretend she led a normal life. At times, she even managed to forget that a killer was out there somewhere, still waiting for her.

  But Myra never forgot.

  On the night Grace graduated from law school, Reardon was waiting for her in her apartment. He grabbed her, threw her on her bed, and, knife to her throat, told her exactly what he was going to do to her.

  But then Myra came bursting into Grace’s bedroom, and the agents with her had quickly subdued Reardon. Myra calmly walked over to him, and with a hand that was completely steady, put a gun to his head. For a moment, Grace thought she would pull the trigger. Wanted her to pull the trigger.