Run Among Thorns (9 page)

“That’s … sad,” she said.

He turned his hand over again, curling the fingers over his palm, willing his pulse back to normal. “For you, maybe,” he said.

Turning her head away slightly, she took a breath, closing her eyes for a moment. One curl swung free of the others, a strand or two catching on her eyelashes, and she raised a hand to tuck it back behind her ear. Her fingers were shaking. Not much, but they were shaking, nevertheless.

“You’re a bully,” she said, flatly. “They pay you to bully people. And you do it because you’re good at it. Mostly I think that’s sad for you, don’t you?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t see it like that.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s something, I suppose.”

“Don’t get sarcastic with me.”

She muttered something; then, “Is that another of your rules, McAllister?”

“No. Just a piece of good advice,” he drawled, and watched her whole face shut down, just like that, although barely a muscle moved.

Jenny didn’t answer any more of his questions that day, although he threatened and swore, cajoled and bribed her with the prospect of freedom. The capacity for answering had been drained out of her somehow, and she didn’t care, did
not
care what he did about that.

Which was nothing much, in the end.

And she was conscious, as he surely must have been, that he’d failed to follow up his advantage once or twice, when it had been a struggle to keep the tears back, and when he’d forced her to live through the deaths of those three men again.

Lunch passed, dinner passed, and the day dulled to sunset under a livid grey sky, so McAllister lit lamps early, painting the stone cottage in pools of warm-honey light and looming shadow.

As soon as she thought she could get away with it, she headed for bed, neither knowing nor caring when he was going to join her.

She was so tired. Tired of fighting, tired of arguing.

Tired of his questions.

He only wanted the truth, after all. Would it really hurt to tell him?

Kier woke, suddenly and completely alert. Snaking a hand out from under the covers, he felt the empty space beside him, still enticingly warm from her body.

His heart lurched, and he didn’t like it, because it was something more than professional concern, and that … that was a weakness that could get him killed, after all.

A quick scan showed him her outline, sitting in a heap at the foot of the bed. She was cross-legged, with something wrapped around her shoulders, leaning up against the footboard.

When she spoke, her voice was dull, expressionless.

“I had no choice, you know.”

He felt a fierce surge of satisfaction. This was the voice of a woman defeated, spilling her guts to the man who had broken her.
Another job well done, McAllister
, he thought, and wondered why he felt like the worst kind of bastard.

“He was scaring Susie. I knew Phillip would need medical attention very soon, or he would die. I thought it was a fair bet they would kill all of us, anyway.”

She paused for a long time, and he raised himself up, slowly and carefully so as not to startle her, and propped himself against the headboard, covers at his waist. He thought he could see what was playing on the screen of her mind’s eye, remembered that stark and shocking video at the facility.

“I knew everyone there,” she said. “Knew all their circumstances. Susie was the only one without a young family, and she had just become engaged to a lovely lad. Alan, my brother … Well, we’re close, but he would have understood if I’d tried and failed.”

There were questions he wanted to ask, but they could wait. He didn’t want to interrupt the flow. There was a seed of grief inside him, for the woman she might have been, if she hadn’t been corrupted to the purpose of killing.

“I never really expected to succeed, you know. All the time I was moving, I was waiting for the bullets to hit me, wondering what it would feel like. I can remember my skin itching all over, it was so sensitive to that anticipation.”

She took a long, even breath, but he heard it waver in the middle. Part of him wondered where she got the control after all the work he’d put into making her lose it.

Kier was puzzled, expecting a confession of guilt. This … this was something very different. Very different, indeed.

“In the end it was very simple. What I had to do all unfolded in front of me, like someone unrolling a carpet. I couldn’t faff about with trying to wound people, trying to restrain them. There were three of them and one of me. If I was to succeed at all, they had to go down and stay down.”

He felt her shift on the bed, and knew she was looking at him.

“If you ask me how I did it, I don’t know. If you ask me how I knew what to do, I don’t know. It just happened. I just did it. I’d never done it before, and I don’t want to do it again.”

He let the silence grow between them, unwilling to break the spell she had been weaving. Her voice, her lovely, quiet voice, had been bleak with hopelessness, grieving for the uncomplicated life she had before. Before there’d been a dirty job, and she’d been the only person willing to do it.

He knew what memories like that could do to someone, had played on that weakness with countless others. Kier was suddenly shaken with the desire to make everything alright for her, to blot it out with a sweep of his hand. For Jenny, he wanted to wash those memories away, make them disappear. For Jenny, he wanted to take her somewhere safe, make her feel safe.

For Jenny, he wanted not to be Kier McAllister.

The thought settled in, making itself comfortable, while his mind reeled at the potential of change. He wanted to tell her everything was going to be okay. But there was a job to do, after all.

“Were you surprised at what you could do?” he asked, instead.

“What?”

“Were you surprised? At the accuracy you produced, at the speed?”

“Oh,” she hesitated. “Yes. Yes and no. It wasn’t so much how I’d done it, but what I’d done.” She shifted on the bed, clearly uncomfortable.

“When the dust was settling, I remember thinking quite clearly about putting the gun to my own head and pulling the trigger, trying to work out how many bullets I’d used, how many it should have left.”

A shiver passed over him, like someone walking over his grave. He couldn’t sit still and listen to her talk about destroying herself; everything in him rebelled at the thought. He didn’t want to distract her, though, or interrupt her. So he stayed put, his hands fisting on the covers beside him, and felt the prickle of a sweat break out on his back.

“Why?” he said, hearing his voice grate on his own ears.

She paused. “You know, you never struck me as stupid. I’d just killed three people in cold blood. Executed them with an efficiency that was stunning even to me. For a second or two I just didn’t want … to live with that. To have to think about it. That’s all.”

The heartfelt emotion that was so much a part of her was bleeding back into her words. Half-mesmerised by the sound in the darkness, he listened to the colourful cadence of them, the thread of her breath around them, those things that formed the weft and weave of the tapestry she wove with her story.

Sometimes her voice broke a little, and he knew she was talking herself back into tears.

“So many people go through life seeing violence and saying, ‘Oh, I could never do that!’ Never kill someone, never hurt them badly, never cross those lines of right or wrong.”

The volume and tone of her words were rising. He closed his eyes and felt the sound wrap him up, felt the essence of her, Jenny, seeping into his bones. He wanted to taste her, touch the words that poured out of her with his lips, take them into his mouth.

“It’s all nonsense! Of course you can! If the motivation is right, the reasoning sound. An ordinary person can do amazing things.”

“Is that what you did, Jenny? Reason it out?” It was hard to keep his voice steady, hard to keep still. Hell, it was just hard.

“What should I have done? Trusted my feelings? My instincts?” The bed moved as she shrugged. “That’s never worked out before. Why should it have then? When the chips were down, I could kill. That’s all. I’m just an ordinary person, Kier, just me.”

“If any of that is true, I’d say you were a pretty remarkable person, Jenny.”

She made an impatient sound, almost a wounded cry.

“I’m not a spy, Kier. I’m not a trained agent. I’m just a killer. Just a dirty little killer.”

Chapter
        FIVE

K
ier lunged across the bed and dragged her back to him, his hands tightening on her shoulders. He settled her flat against his chest, laying his legs over the backs of hers, holding her to him.

She was shaking again.

You are not a killer!
He had to clamp his jaw tight, teeth aching, to stop from shouting the words. It made no sense. He knew,
believed
she was a killer. It had to be his desire for her that was chipping away at that conviction. That part of him that was attracted to her wanted her to be innocent, wanted her to be good. And that was crazy, too. Because he’d never been attracted to good little girls. What was the use of a woman who was above reproach, if you wanted to do something reprehensible?

She was stiff in his hold, her breath coming in little pants. Whether from fear or from something else he couldn’t fathom.

He rubbed the inside of his thigh along hers. She gasped, and the little sound provoked an instant response in his body, a response she must have registered pressing into the soft curve of her belly. She went utterly still.

What was it about the sounds she made? He wanted to hear more, feel more. Make her show him her whole repertoire.

With his hands he urged her up, wanting to kiss her, needing to taste her, but she kept her head hung low, the dark swirls of hair forming a curtain between them.

Just a kiss.

“Jenny,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “Look at me. Look at me, damn it.”

She shivered again, and the feel of her trembling in his arms made him want to thrust against her. Then she moved, achingly slowly, tipping her head up and to the side so that that curtain swung away slowly, exposing marble-white skin; wide, luminous eyes; lips that were damp and trembling.

In a flash he closed that last bit of distance between them, slanting his lips across hers, nudging her head back farther with the pressure of his mouth. He hauled on her shoulders again, dragging her over him, wrapping one arm close about her so she couldn’t escape, pushing the other into that glorious mane of hair, holding her against the shifting pressure of his mouth.

He rushed headlong into the kiss, forcing her mouth open, plunging his tongue inside. He groaned at the taste of her. His hand left her shoulders and skimmed down to where her T-shirt was bunched at the waist, let his fingers trail over smooth, hot skin, across the dip of her waist, lower. She made a little sound, deep in her throat, and he drank it in, quaking, drowning.

And because he was drowning, he never noticed her start to respond, until her tongue tentatively lifted to meet his.

It shocked them both so much they froze.

Slowly, he pulled his mouth from hers, breathing hard. He swallowed. What game was she playing now? And why in hell was he so susceptible to it? That slight touch of her soft tongue had nearly obliterated him, taking this whole thing well out of the realm of scratching an itch. Crazy. He’d wanted to kiss her. But when she kissed him back. .

This is my game, not yours, Jenny Waring.

She squirmed suddenly, trying to wriggle away. And that was sweet torment in itself, God help him. Wanting her off him before she could do damage, he rolled her over onto her back, one hand still fisted in her hair, the other gripping her shoulder. The pull on her hair must have hurt her, because her eyes flashed wide, but she never made a noise.

He bent close to her, until he could feel her shallow breaths washing over his face, feel the tension in her limbs. He struggled for control.

“Don’t think it ends there, sweetheart. This subject is not closed.” He rolled off her, then, reaching to pull on his clothes, trying to ignore the urge to turn back to her, to find out just how far that response would go.

“I’m going outside,” he said, and left her there sprawled on the bed behind him.

Jenny sat on the bed and tried to make some sense of how she felt.

Oh, God, she had wanted to kiss him back, would have given him more, if he hadn’t pulled back. And what did that mean, exactly? What did that make her?

He was so overwhelming. Everything about him was larger than life, a little bigger, a little stronger, a little
more
. When she had finally tried to explain everything to him, she had almost felt as if he really understood, almost as if he sympathised. And that slight
suspicion
of care had just about undone her.

Something went bang in the other room, on the edge of her hearing. She tried to ignore it, concentrating on getting her feelings under control.

Truth was, he was controlling her. Playing her like a puppet on a string, taking advantage of the fact she was dying for a drop of kindness, a little understanding, any kind of concern, since she had first taken her own life in her hands, and the death of three others on her head.

And what did he mean, saying it wasn’t finished? Was he going to come back in here and … and …
Oh, God, no
, she silently pleaded,
not like that, not like that, please!

Jenny groaned when she remembered she’d thrown away her one opportunity to escape. Before this went too far. What had come over her? What was she thinking? She had been desperately clutching at that illusion of friendship, even of something more. Terrified of trying to pick up her life where she had left off, when she wasn’t the same, couldn’t ever be the same again.

Terrified of putting herself out of his influence, of admitting how dependent she was already.

I
am not dependent on him
, she said to herself. She closed her eyes and clenched her fists on her knees.

I do not care what he thinks.

Bang.

I do not care about him at all.

It wasn’t working. She did care about him. She cared that he didn’t believe her, that he thought she was a trained killer. She cared he could take her pain and use it to his own advantage. But most of all she cared that he was taking all her self-control: and she was losing herself in the process.

Bang.

Bang.

Frustrated, she got up and went into the other room.

Bang.

The front door was swinging in the breeze.

For a long second Jenny didn’t register what it meant, but watched it swing again, the latch that hadn’t quite caught knocking against the lock plate.

Bang.

She blinked and took a breath. She could escape! It was there, in front of her, the open door. It didn’t matter that she had thrown away one good chance. This chance, she had to take. This chance to get away from Kier, to never have to see him again.

Suddenly she didn’t want to go.

It was that thought that sent her over the edge, horrified to admit that some wounded part of her already belonged to him.

Jenny grabbed up her jumper, thrust her feet into her trainers, and grabbed an apple from the bowl on the table. She didn’t stop to worry about water—this was Scotland, for God’s sake, she could suck moisture out of the moss, if worse came to worst.

The night was on her side, making pursuit difficult, but it would make her way difficult, too. Frantically she glanced around, looking for the torch, but he must have taken it with him.

Pulling her jumper over her head, and twisting her hair out the way under its collar, she cautiously opened the door.

The moon was up, a gibbous ellipse, staining the ground grey and drawing all the textures of the landscape into long, threatening shadows. There was no sign of McAllister.

In a flash she was out the door and away, running as best she could across the bridge, over the springy heather, towards the dark wall that was the edge of the forest, a few hundred yards away.

Her breath was heaving in her lungs, her heart beating in her throat, her ears straining to catch the shout she half-expected to hear behind her. She tripped and fell in the heather, the hard, sharp, twisted stems scraping painfully along her shins. Scrambling to her feet again, she threw herself towards the dark mass, which was rapidly revealing itself as trunk and branch and straggling underbrush as she drew near.

Still silence behind her.

She was going to make it.

Kier was putting the cell phone back into the stash behind the cottage when he heard something.

His hand stilled in the process of lowering the steel lid of the buried steel box back into place, and he cocked his head, listening intently.

There it was again, the shush and sweep and rustle of heather.
Visitors?
Reaching down into the stash again, he came up with a black bag, taking the strange-looking goggles with binocular lenses out. He pulled them over his eyes, tightening the strap around his head, and adjusting the focus on the skyline.

The night world swam into vision, stained green, but clear as a dull day.

Night-vision goggles. Not as useful as they sounded, he had to keep clear of sudden lights, and it wasn’t exactly Technicolor, but they were useful nonetheless.

He put back the steel lid, and the wooden tray that went over it, with the turf growing on top, ruffling the edges so you couldn’t tell there was anything there.

Sticking to the walls of the cottage, Kier quickly skimmed back round to the front.

The door was swinging.

Silently he cursed.
Sloppy
, he thought.
Careless
.

He turned to scan the horizon, and picked her out with efficient ease, running for the trees to the north. He watched her trip and fall, get to her feet again with an economy of movement he couldn’t help but admire, saw her slide into the tree line and head off northeast before she disappeared from view. He pushed all thoughts of what had just passed between them aside, and stepped smoothly, calmly into his professional mien.

He smiled.

McAllister took a couple of steps and dropped down into the deep bed of the burn. Running along the peaty edge of the stream, bent almost double to stay out of view, he headed for the forest where it curved around to the east.

Jenny clutched at the rough bark of a young Sitka spruce, and tried not to make too much noise as she caught her breath.

The silence of the forest was oppressive. It seemed to catch sounds and swallow them, so that even the ragged sound of her breathing was pressed down and subdued.

Still, she tried to regulate it, because the hammering of her heart in her ears was deafening her, and she couldn’t hear if she was being pursued.

Feeling sticky resin against her palm, she lifted her hand and absently rubbed it down her leg. It was much darker here under the shroud of sweeping boughs, and Jenny waited for her eyes to adjust. With a sinking feeling, she realised she could see very little, only a sense of deeper and shallower shadows.

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. Her heart quieting, she could hear nothing else but the light whisper of a breeze among the tops of the trees. Not a sound of someone charging after her, on the ground littered with dry, sharp twigs.

The sharp pine scent, mellowed by the smell of damp earth, was all around her, and she welcomed it, because it was so different from the last few days. It was true, incontrovertible evidence she was out and away.