Run Among Thorns (29 page)

“Exactly,” he said, stupidly proud of her, as if she’d been a protégé. “To anyone. American or foreign, friend or foe. They didn’t care. Just whoever would pay highest.”

“That’s … treason.” She glanced back at the door, clearly afraid.

“Yes. And that’s what makes Kendrick so dangerous.”

She looked a question.

“He doesn’t care.” He held her eyes, trying to communicate the depth of that simple statement. “He doesn’t
care.”

Kier prayed Jenny and Dawson made no sound getting out the window.
Come on, Kendrick, keep talking. Give them time
.

“This didn’t go quite according to plan for you, did it?” he asked, keeping his tone light.

“Oh, I admit you gave us a few surprises, McAllister. You certainly exceeded our expectations of mayhem. You really
don’t
like to be crossed, do you?”

Enough dancing around the subject, damn it. “Okay, Kendrick. Let’s make this farce one whole lot easier, yes?”

Kendrick tensed, ever so slightly, and ran his eyes swiftly over Kier’s hands. Kier kept very still. “Why don’t you tell me what you want from me, and I’ll see if I can supply it.”

That angelic grin split Kendrick’s face again. “You know, McAllister, not so long ago it really would have been that simple.” He ducked his head, chuckling at his own private joke. “We want you to go away.”

He tipped his head to one side. “To go away?” he said, raising his brows.

“Just go away, McAllister. Leave the profession. Don’t attempt to contact any old clients, don’t do any last jobs, just walk away.”

“I like my work.” At least, he used to. “You’ll have to make it worth my while.”

“Oh, hell McAllister, she’s really fried your brain cells, hasn’t she? We don’t have to make it worth your while. Not now.”

The little room next door was silent. Dear God, let them be gone already, far and away, well out of reach.

Out of range. “Now?”

“You had to push, McAllister, didn’t you? You just had to push a little harder, a little further.”

“It’s what I do best.”

“Not anymore. You pushed too hard, McAllister. It got messy, it got … inconvenient. It would have been enough for you to just”—Kendrick waggled his fingers in a parody of a wave— “go away. But you took it a little too far. You made them nervous.” He tipped his head back a little, still smiling. “It’s all over, McAllister. Once they wanted you gone. Now they want you dead.”

The spike of adrenaline made Kier’s skin itch.

“It’s all over, McAllister,” Kendrick repeated, grinning.

“Hmmm. Do you think so, Kendrick?” Kier stepped just a little closer, so he could see his eyes clearly. “Do you really think so?”

And for the first time Kendrick showed unease. His gaze flicked past Kier, out behind him for a moment, then back again.

Kier didn’t give him a chance to comment. “Tell me,” he said conversationally, “why Jenny? What was her role in this?”

“Jenny?” Kendrick smirked at him under raised brows, seemingly relieved at the apparently innocuous question. “She was just there at the right time. When the report of the incident came in, it was perfect timing. Just what we needed to use against you.” He snorted, enjoying his little joke. “Jenny was just the grit in the oyster, McAllister mate.”

Kier wondered absently if Kendrick would still be smiling when he pushed his teeth through the back of his throat. On balance, he thought not.

Just the grit in the oyster. A worrying, irritating, wholly captivating bit of grit that was inexplicably necessary to him. The knowledge gleamed in the heart of him, deep down inside his hard shell. That little pearl he was going to keep to himself, whatever it took.

He shook his head at his enemy, smiling. “You know, Kendrick, you made so many mistakes it’s hard to know where to begin.”

Kendrick’s smile was hard now, brittle and angry. “I’m not here for an evaluation, McAllister. Your part in this ends here. Didn’t you hear me? You’re a dead man, McAllister.”

Not yet, damn you
.

Jenny reached for the door, wild-eyed and shaking, but John was there before her, thrusting her back, shaking his head at her, miming for her to go back,
get back
.

She implored him with her eyes and her hands, gesturing at the thin door that separated them from Kier and from Kendrick.
Do something
, her eyes said, swimming in tears.

He had not even the first idea what he could achieve.

Her shaking hands were on his arm. He looked down into a pale face that pleaded with him, worry and fear etched into the tension around eyes and mouth.

“Please,”
she begged.

Chapter
        FOURTEEN

J
ohn was light-headed. He was as light as air. And he was totally calm.

Setting gentle hands on Jenny’s shoulders, he eased her around against the wall, out of sight. Then he opened the door, and passed through, closing it behind him.

“You.”
Kendrick spun, gun appearing, levelled at him in both hands. But John saw that Kier stayed still, hands empty, watching.

John took another careful step forward. “You won’t kill him,” he said. “Not when you hear what I have to say.”

Kendrick’s hand moved on the grip, but his eyes had slid across to Kier. “So talk. I’m getting bored with this crap.” There was sweat on his face, though.

He’s falling apart
, John thought. “I have all the information I need to bring you, Groven, and Davids down. We know about your little triumvirate, we know what you’d planned, why you had me doctor Jenny’s file and bring in McAllister. That’s all. It’s over.”

The colour drained from Kendrick’s face in a rush. While he, John, was still maintaining some illusion of calm. Maybe he
would
make a field agent.

“I can see you know what I mean, Kendrick,” he said.

“You’ve no proof,” hissed Kendrick.

It was Kier’s turn to interject. “No? You’re forgetting something, Kendrick. And that might be really, fatally stupid on your part.”

“And what is that?” The other man was breathing hard now, stood rigid, feet braced, his eyes locked on McAllister.

Kier smiled, slow and sure. Moved a little closer. “Remember why you had to get rid of me in the first place, Kendrick?”

He leaned forward. “Because I’m the best, damn it.”

John almost laughed. He knew, then, why operatives like McAllister worked every job they could get, why they were driven to do what they did. He felt the buzz, and it was good.

“We’ve got all the proof we need, right here,” he said, patting his jacket where the file was concealed. The paper rustled. He thought Kier made a noise, but he was busy watching Kendrick come apart,
enjoying
achieving that, if he was honest.

“When I tell them …” he faltered to a stop as Kendrick’s head swivelled round, meeting his eyes along the gleaming barrel.
When
.

… all the proof we need, right here
.

Oh, damn.

In half a breath he understood his mistake, and had time to curse it.

He thought Kier moved; he tried to turn away himself. Something struck him in the head. There was the loud crack of a shot, the two almost indivisible. The wall was under his cheek, no … it was the floor; he’d fallen.

Why didn’t it hurt?

He wanted it to hurt, wanted it with a rising panic as he realised he’d been shot in the head. Pain was for the living, only the dead were numb.

Alice?

He turned his head, distantly amazed it still obeyed his brain’s commands. It wasn’t fair hair bending over him though, it was dark. Long, dark, curly hair. He tried to frown, but the movement sparked a chain reaction of agony that had him gasping for air.

Elation. He hurt, he wasn’t dead. But there was blood in his eyes, now, and lassitude seizing his limbs, and following hard on the heels of that flare of pain was the numbness, and he didn’t want that. He didn’t want it.

He was not a field agent
. Well, not anymore he wasn’t.

Jenny was bending close, her face obscured by her arms as she pressed down on the source of the pain, high on his forehead. What if his skull was cracked, and she pressed …?

“Jenny.” Damn it, his voice wasn’t working.

There were angry shouts in the background, and Jenny was talking too, high and distressed. He couldn’t understand them.

There was another man there, too, a man who wasn’t shouting, and who somehow was vitally important. His head throbbed, his whole skull vibrated with pain, right down to his teeth. He couldn’t
think
.

There was something he had to tell the woman bending over him, something he had to explain to her. About control and manipulation, and the mess he’d landed her in.

“I’m sorry,” he tried, but his voice just croaked a nonsense, and that wasn’t important, anyway.
Information
, he thought.
Give her the most relevant information, Dawson
.

And that, in the end, was the easy part.

Concentrating hard, he swallowed, and worked to shape the sounds he needed. “Jenny.”

It worked. He felt her bend closer, felt her hair brush his cheek, the gentle touch, ridiculously sharp and clear in the midst of the blunt instrument sensations his body was racked with.

“Jenny,” he said again, working to speak clearly, each syllable its own word. “Stockholm syndrome.”

Stockholm syndrome?

What the hell was Stockholm syndrome? The phrase rang a bell, but she couldn’t place it. Jenny sat back, confused, her hands still pressed to the long, ugly gash on John’s forehead. But blood welled under her fingers, and she felt a sob rising just as inexorably.

She had no idea if his skull was cracked, if the bullet had actually penetrated. She hadn’t looked that closely, acting under the twin commands of instinct and horror. The shot had sent her out of the bedroom without thought, to stumble immediately over John’s body.

No, no, no.

She glanced around, searching for something to use as a pressure pad, and as she did so she saw Kier coming over, moving slowly and carefully under the eye of their enemy.

He had a tea towel, and fashioned a pad and bandage in short, economical moves. He fastened it, moving her hands aside, and when he’d done, and she reached to check his handiwork, he caught her wrist, his grip slipping in blood.

His eyes met hers over John’s body, the warning plain.

“He’s dead,” he said, loudly, loud enough for Kendrick over in the corner, loud enough for John himself to comprehend, and let his eyelids slide shut, his shoulders slump.

She pressed her lips tight together, and breathed hard.

Kier got to his feet, holding her eyes with his own. Under cover of the movement, of the rustle of their clothes, he hissed instructions. “First chance you get, you run.”

Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth. They’d argued that already, argued themselves in circles. But there was a man bleeding at her feet who, if not in fact dead already, might be dead very soon because he hadn’t listened to Kier. The man whose hard grip on her wrists somehow spoke more deadly urgency than the other man with the gun in the corner.

He released her, and she edged away, widening the gap between them so Kendrick had to keep turning his head to see them both. And, God, what was to say he wouldn’t just kill Kier the moment she bolted?

But Kier was looking approval at her, edging away himself, perhaps slightly more subtly.

Jenny realised with a start that she wasn’t shaking. That she felt steady, capable. Kier was still holding her eyes, and she revelled in that connection, and the sense of power it gave her.

But they didn’t have any power, after all. Kendrick made his decision, swung his gun in her direction. “Don’t move again, sweetheart,” he said, and Kier stilled faster than she did.

“You’re in trouble, Kendrick,” said Kier.

She broke his gaze, glanced at Kendrick over that gun, but Kendrick didn’t take his eyes off her. The corner of his mouth lifted a little, but he was breathing hard. “Don’t you ever learn? The guy with the gun is never in trouble.”

“The UK authorities don’t take kindly to foreign citizens murdering other foreign citizens on their soil.”

Kendrick nodded slowly, a mock considering expression on his face. “Now that’s very true, McAllister. But who said I’ve murdered anyone? Or, rather, who’s to say I did it, when we’re finished here? They already want you for attempted murder.”

“Of you.”

“Sure. But since I’m going to be nowhere near here when they finally turn up, and all they’ll find is three dead bodies … well, everyone likes a nice, neat, open-and-shut case, don’t they?”

She was barely three feet from the open door. It wasn’t far. She just had to move fast, be lucky.

She’d been lucky in the US, and three men were dead. John hadn’t been lucky at all.

Damn it.

She was poised on the balls of her feet, ready to move.

“So what are you waiting for?”

“What?”

Kier shook his head. “Why aren’t we already dead?”

Was he
crazy?
But in the next breath, Kendrick’s eyes flicked to Kier, and she knew he wasn’t.

“A bit keen, aren’t we?” Kendrick sneered.

Kier shrugged. Carefully. “If it was me, you’d be dead by now. I don’t need to feed my ego with a performance. It’s all drama to you, isn’t it? Putting on a show at the cottage, grinning at us in York, coming alone, playing it your way. Doing everything that made you worse than useless to your employers.”

There. A real look at Kier, a split second of wavering attention. Outside the wind gusted, rattling the windows in the kitchen. Jenny breathed deeper, biding her time.

“Oh, yes,” Kier continued. “They chose you because you’d be willing to do anything. But you can’t trust a man with no morals, Kendrick. And just how useful to them will you be, when your name is bound inextricably with my downfall. Don’t you think that will make future clients a bit suspicious?”

“It won’t matter when you’re gone,” he hissed.

Kier snorted. “Oh, you made it personal, didn’t you? It’s never personal, Matthew Christopher Kendrick,
it’s never personal!”

Kendrick swore at him, viciously, and the gun wavered as he looked Kier’s way.

Kier’s brows climbed. “Is that your considered argument?”

“D-Davids … Groven—”

“Will be falling over themselves to put distance between you and them. You’ll be lucky if they admit to remembering your name by the time this is over.”

Jenny slipped a little closer to the door. It was closed of, course, but not locked. And it would open inward, giving her some cover. If she didn’t fumble the catch, if she didn’t… She tried to remember to breathe.

“You bloody idiot,” Kier said dispassionately. “You could have had it all for the asking. Barely days ago, if you’d have asked me to walk away, take Jenny and walk away, I’d have thanked you, laughing at my own good fortune.”

Kendrick’s eyes were on Kier, now, but the gun was still trained on her.

“You should have handed this whole project to someone else, you know. But you were greedy, you wanted to play this game to your own rules. You were greedy, Kendrick. And you’ve
failed.”

The word was like a curse, and that was it. Kendrick snarled, the gun dipped, moved—and so did Jenny.

Snatch at the door, the lock giving miraculously under her hand. Swing it wide and out, moving, running as her feet hit the ground, heading left, for the lane, and for the shore, because it was downhill, and faster. The wind hit her in the face like a cold slap, sending her hair tangling round her face.

A shot sounded behind her, inside the house. She sobbed, for a moment it was like running in treacle, like a nightmare, but she fought through it, every second expecting a bullet in the back, every breath believing Kier had already taken one.

Don’t split my attention. I have a plan.

She cried. But there was no breath for sobbing, no time for blurred sight. So the crying was only in the way her face twisted, in the way she ached, because she wouldn’t let it be any other way.

The haggard blackthorn that edged the lane danced and creaked in the rising wind, looming over her, and blocking out the fading sun. She stumbled, her foot twisting on a smooth, loose stone, and a hand grabbed her arm.

She spun, a harsh cry tearing up her throat. But it was Kier, it was Kier apparently whole, and urging her on, forcing her to run.

God
. “Where—” she gasped.

“Incapacitated. Temporarily,” he said, and didn’t slow.

What? Why? She had time to think,
why not dead?
and time to be wholeheartedly, passionately glad Kier hadn’t killed him.

The lane spilled onto the shore, a jumble of stone and mud, mixing with the sand, stirred by the wind. Which hit them, full force, coming straight off the sea, and carrying half a mile’s worth of grit and sand. It stung her skin, burned it, blinding her. For a moment it filled her mouth and she skidded to a halt, choking.

Kier caught her, his hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him. Swiftly he unzipped his jacket and pulled his shirt out of his trousers. Two sharp moves ripped the shirttail off, and then he was wrapping it around her mouth and nose, tying it behind her head, catching curls painfully in his haste.

“I’m sorry,” he raised his voice over the hissing of the sand-laden wind. “I can’t give you my jacket, it’s too much of a target.”

Confusion cleared, then—fast—washed out in a rush of terror, dread, and anger.

“He’s still
armed?”

“In his place, I’d have more than one,” Kier said.

Rage won out. She shook with it; it pumped in her blood till her ears roared with it. How dare they … how dare they hunt her like this? How dare they threaten Kier? But there was rage at Kier, too, mired in that heart-thumping mix.
It’s too much of a target
.