Run Among Thorns (28 page)

Several hours later, someone knocked on the door.

Jenny started to her feet, and Kier moved to let them in. But it wasn’t Kendrick, it was another man, slim and dark-haired, neat and tidy. And familiar.

Kier swore and dragged him inside, slamming the door behind him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

The other man’s eyes flicked between them, obviously uneasy. “Miss Waring? Do you—”

“Hey.” Kier thumped him in the arm. Not hard, but shocking to her, to see him aggressive and violent again. “Talk to
me,”
he snarled.

The familiar face paled, but he ignored Kier, steadfastly facing her with an expression of anxious sincerity. “Miss Waring. My name’s John Dawson—”

And she got it. The technician or whatever from the facility in the US. The guy who’d drugged her, and handed her to Kier. And Kier was watching her now, not Dawson.

She backed up, got herself on the other side of the armchair, blinking hard. What was this? She shot a look at Kier and he answered it, fast enough to give her an idea of how her face looked just now.

“No. I didn’t call him. I didn’t want them, Jenny, only Kendrick.” He turned on Dawson. “Why are you here?”

Dawson stood stiffly. “I came to speak to Miss Waring. To … to offer her my protection, to explain—”

Kier gave a shout of laughter. “Your protection?”

Dawson’s mouth set a thin line, but he turned to face her again. “You don’t have to stay here. I don’t have time to explain, but this is between Kendrick and McAllister. It needn’t concern you at all.”

“I was right, then? This is a setup?”

Dawson flicked Kier a look, but he didn’t seem concerned at all. “That’s right.”

“Why the hell,” she said, “should I go with you? You work for them!”

“Not anymore. I quit. I have absolutely nothing to do with what they’re trying to achieve here, and I want nothing to do with any of them. When I … when I realised exactly what they planned, how far they would go, I quit. I came here.” He turned back to Kier. “McAllister, I suggest you leave, too. I have information that will lead to the arrest and extradition of Kendrick, and will cancel the warrants out for your arrest, too. You have no further reason to hold this woman.”

There was silence. Dawson looked between them uneasily. Kier levelled a hard stare back at him. And she … she closed her mouth with a snap, hardly knowing where to begin.

She cleared her throat. “He’s not holding me, John,” she said. “He’s been protecting me. We’re …” In spite of herself, she felt her cheeks heat. “We’re together.”

And the look Dawson sent her was pure horror, silencing her, setting a cold feeling in her stomach. “Look,” he said, eventually, “are you sure you—”

“Dawson,” Kier warned. He really didn’t seem to want Dawson to finish his sentences. Any other time, Jenny might have been amused. “If you say you can call Kendrick off, then call him off.”

Dawson shook his head. “It’s not that simple. He’s … off the leash, out of control.”

Kier swore again, probably fondly believing that if he muttered it that low, she wouldn’t hear. “Then we should leave now,” she said. “We don’t have to face him now, do we?” she appealed to Kier. “John can tell us what we need to know, can’t he?”

“Yes,” said Dawson quickly, “anything you need.”

Kier looked between them, hesitating. She understood. It wasn’t as if she had any reason to trust this John Dawson, either. Except… except she remembered begging him, back at the facility. She couldn’t recall what she asked for, or why, she just remembered the plea itself. And the feeling that maybe, just maybe, he was going to help.

Well. He’d taken his time, that was for sure.

“Look,” said Dawson, a shade of desperation in his measured, oddly clear-cut voice. “Groven’s gone, disappeared. I think he’s skipped the country. Davids has lost his nerve, is expecting the FBI at the door any day.” The names meant nothing to her, but she could tell they were significant to Kier.

“They’re not a problem anymore,” Dawson continued. “Only Kendrick. And we can outrun him just long enough for the law to catch up with him. Look, I have proof—” he reached into his jacket.

She cried out at about the same time Kier went for his gun. But this Dawson wasn’t a fool, after all. He froze, white-faced but calm, with one hand stuck inside his jacket and the other extended in a placatory gesture. “It’s a file,” he said, and she was impressed his voice didn’t shake. “Just papers.”

Kier didn’t relax, and she didn’t want to look at him, so hard-faced and rigid, the man she didn’t know. Or maybe she did know him. And feared him.

She remembered John’s look of horror, and bit her lip.

“Take them out slowly,” Kier said, and John complied, but it was only a file, after all, buff-coloured card covering a sheaf of white printouts.

“It’s everything I’ve gleaned from the network, everything I’ve patched together. I’ve even transcribed a conversation I had with Davids, although there are no witnesses to that. And here, look”—he extracted a sheet of paper from the rest, waved it in front of Kier—”they made him sign. You said you never signed anything, but Kendrick’s not that clever. They made him sign a contract.”

Kier lowered the gun, and took the paper in his left hand. He scanned it, dark brows pulled together, and then glanced sharply back up at John. “This is for real?”

“It is.”

Kier snorted, a sharply satisfied sound. “This is it. Our Get Out Of Jail Free Card.”

For the first time, she saw John smile. It softened his face and she found herself starting to think of him as a person, rather than a pawn of a higher power. “I don’t understand,” she said. “How does that help us?”

Kier turned to her, smiling a thin smile. “They wanted to replace me. Set up their own man in my place, as the first person all the big agencies call when they want an agent debriefed, a hostile subject…” he hesitated, and his mouth tightened. “When they want someone interrogated. But that only works so long as everyone thinks
their
man is not anyone’s man at all, as long as everyone believes Kendrick is completely free and independent. But he’s not. And this”—he waved the paper—”proves it. They didn’t trust him, so they made him sign.”

“Okay,” she said, getting the significance, if not the stakes. “So what now?”

“We go,” said Kier, decisively, handing the paper back to John and secreting the weapon away. “And quick.”

But even as she spoke she heard the sudden silence of the birds, the crunch of the gravel outside, the soft sound of an expensive engine.

“Too late,” Jenny said, with no apology for the melodrama.

Kier shot her an angry look, but it didn’t scare her. She understood. He’d wanted her gone, and she was still here. He’d wanted her safe away before Kendrick got here, and she’d thwarted him in that. She could even feel a type of sympathy for his anguish. She felt it, too.

She’d expected him to swear, half-expected him to explode, but instead his eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, and he rolled one shoulder, a smooth, muscular movement that caught her whole attention. He closed his eyes for a breath, opened them, and suddenly she remembered the implacable speed of the man who had hunted her in that dark forest.

He took her breath away.

“You.” He pointed at John. “Take her into the bedroom, keep the door closed. First chance you get, you’re both out the window and away, no stopping. And”—that pointing finger swung round to compel her, too—”no arguments, either. Don’t split my attention. I have a plan.”

She understood. She hated it, but she understood. She shook her head sharply, but she said “okay,” and followed John out of the living room. She balked at the door, wanting to go back, say something profound, kiss him,
something …
but he was already at the front door, and in his mind, she was already gone.

John reached past her, and quietly pulled the door closed.

Kendrick was outside.

He was standing there waiting on the rough area of grass and gravel in front of the cottage, unwrapping a stick of chewing gum. He was wearing a big puffy leather bomber jacket and black jeans, silhouette nicely indistinct so as to not reveal things under the jacket.

Kier felt like a hound that had caught the scent. His heartbeat pumped in his throat, and the thin, acidic feel of adrenaline raised his awareness and his spirits. He smiled and moved to open the door.

“Mr. Kendrick,” Kier said. “So nice to meet you again. Conscious.”

Kendrick was smiling, too, shaking the shaggy blond hair out of his eyes, uncovering the fading bruise that discoloured almost half his face. “McAllister. It was good of you to call.” He seemed to think better of the gum, and tossed it onto the wind-rippled grass.

They stood there, facing each other, sizing each other up.

“Come on, we have to go,” Dawson said, trying to take Jenny by the arm.

She snatched it back, scowling, still trying to listen through the bedroom door. “I’m not leaving.”

“You heard him, we’re to get out the back while we can.”

“I’m not leaving, Dawson, live with it.” It occurred to her that McAllister would have removed her bodily. But Dawson wasn’t McAllister, after all.

Kier spoke first. “All alone?”

“There’s a time when witnesses are an inconvenience.”

“True.” He indicated the interior with a slow movement of his left hand. “Won’t you come in? Reduce the chance of any more stray witnesses?”

Kendrick looked about him, the place was lonely enough, but that wasn’t the point. “Sure.”

Kier backed up, and into the living room, letting Kendrick come on, and close the front door softly behind him.

“It seems I owe you a vote of thanks,” Kendrick said. “You pulled me out of a puddle, I hear.”

“Don’t mention it. Left up to me, I wouldn’t have got my feet wet.”

Kendrick snorted with false good humour, nodding. “I don’t doubt it.” He lifted his head and looked around him, as if innocently inspecting the small, unassuming room.
Arrogant puppy
. “So, Kier. Where exactly are we, then?”

Kier let the silence build between them, keeping a confident half smile on his face. For all that he was dying for the opportunity to beat the hell out of this man, this sort of mental fencing put him right in his element. “I take it we are now abandoning the idea that any of this had anything to do with Jenny?”

Kendrick stilled, and then slipped him a sidelong smirk. “I think we’ve got about as much play out of that one as we’re going to get. And you more than some.”

He concentrated on not letting his hands curl into fists. Let Kendrick have his playground insults, Kier knew who the real victor was. The one left holding Jenny.

“Where is Jenny, by the way?”

“Safe.”

Kendrick shrugged. “Maybe.”

We should have gone
, John fretted. They should have gone by now. He stood by the open window, the wind beating the curtains against the walls, watching Jenny listening at the door.

He was crazy to have come. He’d achieved nothing.

She’d never had a chance.

We’re together.

God
. He’d put them together, a shocked, vulnerable young woman, and a man who made a living manipulating people’s minds. It was almost inevitable really.

And dangerous, and damaging, and wrong.

She left the door, and moved across to him, interrupting the panicked run of his thoughts. “I get what they were trying to do—supplant Kier with Kendrick,” she whispered, close to his ear. “But I don’t get why? What was in it for them? What were the stakes?”

As high as you can get
, he thought, but he ran it all through in his head, trying to find the simplest way to put it. “They wanted to remove McAllister and put Kendrick in his place. Then they were going to sell the information he gained, while undertaking the kind of jobs McAllister used to do.”

She frowned, thinking that one through. “Who to?” she asked, and he almost smiled. Everything, but everything in the file on her that he’d assembled, and then dissected, would have told him to expect her to ask just that—a single succinct question, putting her finger right on the crux of the matter.