Run Among Thorns (13 page)

“You want me to hide from anyone who might come along.” She sounded breathless, scared. He didn’t blame her.

“I will pick you up at the end of the track, at the road.
Do not
come out until you can see for certain it’s me. Not even if it’s the SUV, not even if the number plate is right. Not until you see me in person do you come out. And only if I’m alone.”

“I’ve got it.”

He expected more, but the silence grew. Then he heard her clear her throat.

“Kier?”

“Make it quick, Jenny. You’re wasting time.”

“What do I do if you never turn up?”

He didn’t want to think about that. Without him, she didn’t have much of a chance. But he was covering every other eventuality; he had to face that one, too.

“Don’t go home. Don’t contact your brother. Keep moving, keep out of the public eye as much as possible. There’s money and food and other gear in the canvas bag.”

There had to be someone else he could trust who would help her. But it seemed like he had spent his whole life cutting himself off from people so they didn’t drag him down. He was beginning to regret that isolation.

“There is one man you can call. He’s the head of security at North Atlantic Air. Call their London office and ask to be put through. Mention my name, ask him to call you back, and explain everything to him. His name is Bradley Walsh. He’ll help you.”

“Kier?” her voice was wavering. He hated to hear it when he was still two hours away. “What’s happening? What are you afraid of?”

“You’re wasting time, Jenny,” he said again. “Do what I told you and everything will be fine. You got it?”

“Got it.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He severed the call.

The car flashed past, brake lights winking at the corner a quarter of a mile down the road. Jenny sighed in relief, and relaxed where she lay behind the trunk of a pine tree.

It was all very well for McAllister to say to take cover, and a forest seemed the ideal place to hide. Only the planted ranks were brashed neatly, trimmed up to head height. Which meant you only had to duck down a bit to see a good way into the forest. And there wasn’t much in the way of scrub, either.

Luckily, she hadn’t seen a soul on her trip down the track. But as she neared the road and started to hear the intermittent traffic, she had slipped into the trees and decided the best way to stay unseen was to crawl down one of the shallow ditches between the lines of trees.

So now she had pine needles where she didn’t want to entertain the thought of pine needles, and most of the fear she had felt had dissolved into farce.

That wasn’t to say she hadn’t been afraid when Kier had rung. Far from it. She’d had to work hard to push the fear aside and bring her mind to bear on what he was telling her. Trying to ignore what he wasn’t telling her was even harder.

She hated, really hated, not knowing what was going on. At a guess, it seemed like they were running. Jenny had no idea from whom. She had no information to draw on, only those few days at the facility, and beyond the first few hours of that experience she’d simply stopped taking things in.

Now she was waiting for her rescuer. Who had been her captor until a few short hours ago.

What would he be like in his new role? She didn’t know, couldn’t guess.

She could hear another vehicle approaching. She pressed herself to the damp, fragrant mulch of pine needles, and kept her head down.

It was Kier’s vehicle. It pulled over onto the verge on the opposite side of the road, a few yards down from where she lay. Kier got out and leaned back against the bonnet, arms folded, staring intently down the track. A couple of times he glanced warily around, but he didn’t see her. He was alone.

Well, this was it. Decision time. Walk out there. Or walk away.

The unnatural forest was silent, no inspiration there. She closed her eyes, pressing her forehead briefly to the damp earth, hearing her heartbeat in her ears.

With a deep breath, Jenny got up off the forest floor, brushed the pine needles off, and walked over towards Kier, who waited for her by the car.

Kier hadn’t thought about how he would feel if Jenny didn’t come to meet him until she walked out of the forest with bits of tree in her hair.

Her head was up in that way she had when she needed the extra confidence, when everything inside her was all tightened up to face what was in front of her. Whatever that illusion of confidence gave her, she was going to need it.

He was conscious of a sense of relief that she hadn’t just bolted, but guilt gnawed at him, too, because he wouldn’t have blamed her if she had. He’d run the risk, but he didn’t know what he’d been relying on, hoping she would stay with him. Trust? He had to be kidding himself. Fear? He sincerely hoped not, although he was probably kidding himself there, too. Dependency? Now that was just downright laughable. Jenny was one of the strongest women he’d ever met. There was a supple strength deep inside her, a fact he guessed few people realised, least of all Jenny herself.

But then she was right there in front of him, with pine needles stuck to her pants, and a smudge of dirt on her forehead.

Her eyes asked a question, but she never said a word. He reached out and gently pulled a scaly twig out of her hair. The dark tendril held on to it for a moment, then sprang back, gleaming. She didn’t flinch, as he half-expected her to. He fought the urge to put his hand back to her hair, to thread his fingers through the dark mass and tip her face up to his. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry.

“We have to get going,” he said.

“McAllister, what’s going on?” She sounded exasperated, and he couldn’t blame her for that, either.

“Get in. We’ll talk on the way.”

She hesitated, but mercifully, she did as he asked and climbed into the passenger seat without another word. Kier saw her glance at him, sidelong, and remembered driving her under very different circumstances. Now she was willing, had chosen, to come with him.

He wished he knew why.

Chapter
        SEVEN

T
hose words,
“We’ll talk on the way,”
had not been a strictly accurate statement, Jenny soon realised.

Oh, she’d talked. Well, more like questioned, really. Insistently. Repeatedly. But answers were not forthcoming, and now she sat in what she hoped was a dignified silence, trying to suppress the queasiness in her stomach that was reminding her, all too insistently, that she had just gone with her former kidnapper out of choice.

McAllister had deigned to share with her that his meeting had not gone according to plan, that he was now expecting people to come and “talk” with them, but further than that he would not say. Against her better nature, she had to admit he seemed colossally preoccupied, his dark brows forced together, the lines in his face accentuated almost to the point of parody. It made him look like some gothic villain, dark and dour and ominous. Even the contour of his shoulders was threatening, the way he held the wheel in one hand, the uncompromising movement of his arm as he changed gears with the other white-knuckled grip.

Even when he looked menacing like that, she was lost. Desperately attracted. Drawn to him by something more than sexual magnetism. Although he had that quality in spades. Something that had pulled her out of her situation into needing him dreadfully, as if he’d never held her captive, never put bruises on her flesh.

The Rover picked up speed, eating up the slick road with a high whine. They were headed in the opposite direction from the one they’d travelled when he brought her here. The tight ranks of Sitka spruce now gave way to stately larches, just beginning to turn amber as autumn came on. The first fall of needles was dusting the verges of the road, and gathering at the edges of the tarmac. It looked like gold dust, strewn along their way, but where the car tyres ground it, it just turned into a muddy mulch. Mucky.

She felt mucky. Days without a proper bath or shower. Oh, she’d snatched a couple of hurried strip washes, but she’d kill for a decent bath. And some good shampoo.
Kill for it? Ugh
.

She felt entirely unequal to standing up for herself while she felt like she’d been pulled through a hedge backwards. Absently, she picked at a couple of pine needles still pricking through her trousers. Well, she didn’t have the luxury of a bath or even a shower, and she didn’t have the luxury of postponing life until she had one, either.

Jenny snatched another glance at Kier. He was still glowering, and she faced front again with a short, sharp sigh.

“At least tell me where we are going,” she said.

Silence.

“Where are we going, Kier?”

He’d spent hours, shortly after buying the cottage, looking for this sort of vantage point. The map was misleading, never suggesting that this hillside was high enough to see over the disguising trees and get a clear view of the cottage. And a hundred yards to either side, it wasn’t. The shoulder of the framing hills obscured the view from every spot around except for the one where they were parked right now. It was the only clear view for miles around.

Even so, it was a good distance away, about three miles. Someone would need a clear day and a seriously good pair of binoculars to get a look at the cottage. Today he had both.

Jenny was still sulking beside him, arms wrapped around her middle, studiously taking in the view. He guessed she probably hadn’t even worked out what he was looking at, she was so set on not looking.

He had no idea how long the others might be, if they were coming at all. Alarm bells were clamouring all over his mind, but he had to have confirmation. So they sat here, watching the cottage, waiting. And he would continue to wait until he was sure, one way or another.

In the meantime, though, he was going to need Jenny’s cooperation before long. And he hated to see her angry.

He tipped his head to the side, stretching the tense muscles down his neck. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jenny shift in her seat, crossing her arms higher up over her chest.

He turned to her, trying to wipe the preoccupied concern off his face. “Look, Jenny, I …”

She scowled across at him. He stared at her for a moment, recognising defiance and frustration. Before now, a look like that had been all about Jenny defending herself from him. Now he thought it was more about her demanding an equal share—in decision making, in information, in everything that mattered. Frankly, the thought was scary. He worked alone. He always worked alone, to his own code.

Hell, he lived alone, to his own code.

He sighed. “The dynamic’s changed, hasn’t it?” he said.

“You mean you not being deliberately cruel and abusive anymore?”

“I was just doing my job, Jenny.” Even to him, it now sounded like a feeble excuse.

“Yes, I know. You are
good
at your job.” The scowl faded from her face some. She tipped her head to one side, examining him. “The question is,” she said, “why? Why do you bust a gut to do this, Kier?”

He shrugged.

She raised her brows at him, and he was reminded of the two of them sitting around the kitchen table, swapping questions for answers.

He was right; the dynamic
had
changed. She was demanding answers from him, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit. He took a breath, and then another, and relaxed his death grip on the wheel.

It dawned on him slowly that this was hardly the topic for polite conversation, that she could only be asking this because she was interested. Because she wanted to know. Which brought him back to
why
again.

“I don’t usually have to bust a gut. It’s instinctive, most of the time, a simple matter of pitting your mind against another, and winning.”

She was staring at him like he had something on his nose.

“What?” he said, irritably.

“Um. That’s the most forthcoming you’ve been. It’s just… odd.”

“Thanks.”

“No, sorry. Go on.”

“There’s not much more to say. It’s like night vision. People with good night sight can see in the dark, when other people can’t. I can … see the place where a little pressure will spring someone’s mind open, that’s all.” It sounded cold, even to him.

“Don’t you … Haven’t you ever, well, felt bad about hurting someone, mentally, maybe physically?”

He remembered the bruise on the pale, smooth skin of her back, and tried not to think about other bruises he’d put on her. He turned to her and saw the uncertainty in her eyes. Her small white teeth were pulling at her blush-pink lower lip, and that was downright distracting.

He dragged his gaze back to her eyes. “Until now, no,” he said, and she shivered and looked away.

“Oh,” she said.

“Jenny …” He still needed her with him.

“I still have the gun, you know,” she said, quickly, nudging the bag in the foot well with one muddy boot. “Don’t you want it back?”

From trying to establish cordial relations to discussing the disposition of arms was a leap, but he made it, only wincing at her timing. He waited till she turned round and met his eyes before he answered her. “For now, until I’m sure what’s going on, you’d better hang on to it, okay?”

She hadn’t expected that, he could tell. She frowned, swallowed, glancing away and back again.

“And until you are sure what’s going on, I don’t get to know anything about it, yes?”

“That’s about it, yes.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll shoot you?” she asked.

Frankly, my dear …
Trying to ignore the lapse of his mind into inanities, he glanced back out the windshield towards the distant cottage, just a fleck in a patch of moorland from this far away. “No,” he said.

He should have known better than to give a short answer to that one, he thought, as her mouth tightened and her eyes narrowed.

“You could at least acknowledge the fact that I could shoot you.”

This stupid conversation was bugging him while he was trying to focus on their situation. He drummed his fingers on the wheel.

“Jenny, sweetheart, I am a dead man walking, if that gives you any satisfaction. You have only to act on your impulses, and I’m perfectly convinced of your competence to kill me. That what you wanted?”

She didn’t answer, only tightened her arms around herself and pursed her lips. She was mad, and he hadn’t wanted that, but it couldn’t be helped now. He was fretting about Kendrick and that damn cottage, and the forced inactivity while he waited for action was winding him tight as a spring.

“Look,” he said, “I need to get over that knoll over there and take a look”—he indicated a small scrubby rise over the way—”just stay put for a few minutes, will you?”

He watched her visibly swallow the questions she was dying to ask.

“Not planning to abandon me now, are you, McAllister? After all we’ve shared?”

If he had the time, he’d work that sarcasm out of her, so help him God, but he didn’t, so he couldn’t.

“With a marksman like you behind me? I wouldn’t dare,” he said, dryly. Given the current circumstances, it was a pretty low thing to say, so he was startled when she turned to him and grinned right up at him. A big, wide, cheeky grin.

“Ah, well,” she said, “it does run in the family.”

For a moment he thought he’d misheard her.

“What?”
He hadn’t meant to be sharp with her— that grin fell off her face immediately, and the wary, bruised look was back. He tried to speak lightly, but his mind was racing, mentally scanning the background files they’d given him.

“What, what?” she said, turning towards him a little in her seat, but backing up against the door. She wrapped one slim hand around the seat belt where it passed over her breastbone. The wind gusted, rocking the car on its springs, but she just stared right back at him, looking a little haughty, which was probably what she wanted him to see, and a lot scared, which almost certainly wasn’t.

“Are you saying marksmanship runs in your family?” He worked to keep his voice calm, and probably should have reassured her by not glaring at her, but this changed everything. Only he wasn’t sure what it changed it into.

She gave a confused little sound. “Of course. My dad won prizes for it, pistols, not rifles. Alan does reenactment stuff as a longbowman, and I used to clay pigeon shoot.”

McAllister flexed his right hand on the wheel. “Skeets?” Could they have missed something this obvious? It wasn’t as if competing in shoots was something you could hide.

“Yes. I haven’t done it in ages, but I still have two shotguns.” She glanced out the windscreen and her voice warmed into enthusiasm. “One of them is a beauty. A Beretta, over and under. Lovely.”

“So you held a firearms’ licence?”

She looked back at him, wearing a puzzled frown.

“Of course, I did. Still do. This isn’t the Wild West, you know. Not many people keep guns here, but if they do they have to be licenced and the rules about locking them away and what have you are very stringent.”

That, they couldn’t have missed. What the hell was going on? “Why didn’t you mention it before?”

She blinked at him in that way she had. “Well, I … I assumed you knew. You knew everything else, Kier, remember?” The tartness in her voice warned him. He wondered when he’d stopped being able to manage people without threatening them.

“Are you saying you didn’t know?” He heard the catch in her voice as she got it. He’d been so damn suspicious because there was nothing to suggest that she might even know one end of a gun from another, let alone produce two perfect kill shots in a handful of seconds. Why hadn’t this information been in the files?

Why hadn’t Jenny said anything about it?

“I—” His voice was hoarse and he had to stop to clear his throat. He remembered her sitting on the end of his bed, her voice flowing over him in the half light. Soft and broken. He remembered her lying over him, the scent of her hair, the press of her body over his. He remembered how she tasted.

“I asked you once if you were surprised that you were so fast and accurate. You said yes.”

Jenny lifted her hands and let them drop into her lap. “Well, of course I was surprised. I’d never shot at someone who was trying to shoot at me! I’d never shot at a person at all! For goodness’ sake, McAllister, it wasn’t exactly like shooting spinning disks, was it?”

She shifted in her seat again, folding her arms and facing front. There was a definite suspicion of a snit there.

He sighed and pressed the heel of his hands into his eyes until he saw stars. When he pulled them away, he saw her sneak a look at him. He looked carefully ahead, drumming his fingers lightly along the top of the wheel, but he watched her out the corner of his eye.

She opened her mouth on a breath, and then shut it again, wrapping her arms tighter around her.

So. What? What did this all mean? Obvious information had not appeared in the files they had given him. Not the sort of information that could have been overlooked. But definitely the sort of information that would have changed the way he looked at the case.

So the next question was, how? Or rather, as he was beginning to suspect, not how, but why? Because this looked like a deliberate act to him. They had deliberately kept extremely relevant information from him. What were they trying to—