CROSSFIRE (22 page)

Someone had touched her. Touched
Elizabeth
. Someone had violated the security ring he'd meticulously put in place and gotten inside. Gotten to
her.

Aaron hadn't given him details. Hawk recalled only a few words, words that had his blood running colder than the river during the dead of winter.
Attack.
Elizabeth
. Naked. Screams.

"Aaron!" he roared, pushing through the front door. The beams of three flashlights swung toward him; a wall of three uniformed cops blocked his way. "I'm sorry, sir, but you can't come in here—"

"The hell I can't." He shoved past two of them, felt the third grab his arm.

"Sir, this is a crime scene."

"I'm well aware of that." Swearing, he twisted free, strained to see through the dance of light gleaming from maglites. Someone had lit candles. An army of them, all flickering eerily like some damn romantic dream, casting off the scent of vanilla. "Aaron!" He wanted to call for her, for
Elizabeth
, but didn't know what shape she was in, if she could even hear. He didn't want to make a bad situation worse by storming around like a mad man.

"Hawk." Aaron vaulted down the stairs two at a time. "He's okay," he directed the cops. "This is the man I told you about,
Monroe
, head of the security for the Carringtons."

The officer released him, stepped back, kept his mouth a grim line. "We'll have some questions, then." He reached for his notebook. "It looks like the perp came in through the bedroom window."

His blood ran even colder. "That window is wired. I checked it myself."

"Magnet's deactivated," the shortest of the three cops told him. "Looks like the perp knew what he was doing."

Hawk swung toward Aaron. "How is she?"

Aaron frowned. "Shaken, but physically all right."

"Where is she?"

"In her room." His friend swung his flashlight up the stairs. "Ethan got here a few minutes ago."

Hawk didn't hesitate. He bolted up the stairs and destroyed the short hall separating him from the open door to her room. He wanted to charge straight in, see her for himself, make damn sure Zhukov had not left so much as one mark on her body.

And yet he forced himself to stop at the doorway, to suck in an uneven breath, to cage the hot emotions leaping through him. She didn't need to see him on a rampage. He was supposed to be in control here, after all. Cool, calm collected. This was his job, security his expertise.

He saw her then, and everything he'd taught himself about control shattered into so many jagged shards, he knew he could never piece them together again.

Chapter 11

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S
he sat on the edge of her foolishly romantic four-poster bed, wearing a ratty old Minnie Mouse sweatshirt that made her look more like a vulnerable little girl than the poised, elegant woman he'd danced with in the white marble bathroom. Ethan sat next to her, his arm around her shoulders. He was turned toward her, speaking in a hushed tone Hawk could barely make out.

"It's okay, Lizzie," he kept saying. "You're okay."

But
Elizabeth
did not look at her brother. She looked down at the carpet, her shoulders curved toward her chest, long, wet hair forming a curtain that prevented Hawk from seeing her face. He saw her hands though, pale, in her lap and curled into tight fists.

The sight slaughtered something deep inside.

"
Elizabeth
." He swallowed against a throat burning with the kind of destructive emotion he knew she hated, the kind he had to keep in check, not just this moment, this night, but from this point forward.

Through the flickering light of three pillar candles, he saw her stiffen, slowly lift her head and turn toward him. Damp hair streaked against the sides of her pale face, drawing his attention to eyes not glowing with mystery and confidence, but huge and hollow and dark. Her chest rose with a deep breath, then fell, but she said nothing, just watched him standing in the doorway to her bedroom as if she expected him to dissolve into vapor.

But desperately, desperately didn't want him to.

His heart didn't just kick, it struck the insides of his chest with a force sure to bruise.

"Hawk." Ethan murmured something to his sister, then stood and strode across the room. "I'm glad you're here."

He couldn't stop staring at her, couldn't stop the truth from racing through him. She'd called Ethan following the attack. Not Nicholas.

"How is she?" he asked quietly.

Ethan frowned. "More messed up than she wants to admit."

Hawk absorbed the information, knew if anyone would know how
Elizabeth
really felt, what she really thought, it would be her twin.
Elizabeth
had often talked of their uncanny connection, the way they felt each other's happiness, pain. And Hawk had always wondered what would have happened if his brother had lived, or if, as one of the hokey books he'd read put it, part of him had died at the moment of his birth.

Ethan glanced back at her, then to Hawk. "Can you stay with her? I need to make a few phone calls."

To the ambassador, no doubt. And to Washington, the FBI. Zhukov had struck boldly this time. Foolishly. It made no sense that he would strike when his chances of success were just about zero. It was almost as if the bastard was toying with them, teasing in a way. Taunting.

"Go," he told her brother, then reminded himself to breathe.

Ethan looked at his sister one last time before striding away, leaving them alone in a room aglow with the light of candles. Hawk couldn't look at her without seeing the sheets thrown back and tangled at the foot of the bed. This was a room for making love, he thought grimly, for long, hard kisses and soft, teasing touches, not the twisted foreplay of a demented killer.

The thought, the reality of what that man could have done to her, might still try to do to her, torched the cage on his emotion, the body armor of control he'd strapped so rigorously into place. He wanted to cross the soft carpet separating them, scoop her into his arms and crush her against him, hold her to his body, his chest, tangle his hands in her damp hair and promise her,
promise her,
Zhukov would never touch her again. That he would pay for what he'd already done. Pay hard.

But that's not what she needed from him. She didn't need ferocity. She didn't need vehemence. She didn't need to think for even one fraction of one second that he wasn't in control.

Control, after all, defined her world.

Slowly he started toward her, crossing her room the way he'd crossed a storefront in
Mogadishu
, knowing every step brought him closer to the unknown. He had to go anyway, couldn't linger in the safety of the shadows like a coward.

She watched him approach, until he stood so close she had to tilt her face to see him. He went down on one knee, tried like hell to keep his hands from shaking. "If you'd wanted me to spend the night, sweetness, all you had to do was ask."

He hadn't thought it possible, but her eyes went even darker. "He was here," she said in a mechanical tone that reminded him sickeningly of the voice on the Lear, the one that had warned him he was going down. He was going down, all right. Hard and fast and for the count.

"Waiting for me," she added. "Until I was in the shower."

It took all his strength, but Hawk kept himself very still, all business, the consummate professional, even as black spots clouded his vision. "What happened?"

She looked beyond his shoulder, toward the bathroom. "The lights went out," she said lifting her arms to hug them around her chest.

Hawk braced himself. The sight of
Elizabeth
like this, shaken and vulnerable, ate at him in ways he hadn't known possible.

"Did he hurt you, Elizabeth?" He forced the question out, ignoring the raw edge as he did so. "Did he touch you?"

She shook her head, sending tendrils of damp hair across her face and shoulders. "He grabbed me through the shower curtain."

The slow boil turned insidiously cold. Z had touched her, grabbed her while she was naked. "Did he—"

Her eyes flared wide. "No."

He lost it then, the control he knew she wanted him to exhibit. He couldn't stop himself, couldn't just kneel there in the dark and watch her struggle to hold herself together. Everything inside him was hard, broken, jagged, but he forced himself to go slow, be gentle. She went willingly into his arms, sliding off the bed and onto her knees facing him, her body flush against his. He closed her in his arms and buried his face against her hair, still damp and smelling of vanilla.

God help him, she held on just as tightly.

"I'm sorry," he murmured against her hair. "So damn sorry I wasn't here." That he'd let emotion blind him to his job.

"It wouldn't have mattered," she said, sliding an arm along his back, so that her hand curled over his shoulder. "He locked my bedroom door. You couldn't have gotten in any more than Aaron could have."

Hawk pulled back and took her face in his hands, spread his fingers wide, his pinkies going into her hair, his thumbs rubbing her mouth. He tried to bring himself under control but knew everything he felt, everything he couldn't control, glittered in his eyes.

"The door hasn't been made," he said very slowly, with every ounce of deliberation he could muster, "that could keep me from you."

The truth, he realized grimly. The truth.

Her mouth tumbled open. "Wesley—"

He felt himself lean toward her, seek out her mouth, open and tilted toward him, forced himself to stand instead. "Come on." He extended his hand, even as his body burned to extend so much more.

She placed her palm in his and stood. "Where are we going?"

Her flesh was cold, like ice. "I'm taking you to your parents' house." The Windsor Farms estate was impenetrable. Security gates, cameras, dogs, the most sophisticated surveillance equipment money could buy. "You'll be safe there."

"No."

He stopped and twisted toward her. "What do you mean no?"

"I mean no," she said, and then, right before his eyes, the vulnerable girl vanished, and the confident woman returned. She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. "I want to be with you."

The quietly spoken words slammed into him. "That's not a good idea." In fact, it was downright atrocious. "You'll be better off at your parents'."

"Zhukov won't look for me at your house," she pointed out.

No, but that didn't mean she'd be safe. "
Elizabeth
—" She tightened her grip on his fingers. "Don't make me beg." The light blazed back into her eyes, the knowing little glint that told him she had an ace to play. "I danced with you tonight, Wesley. In the ladies' room. I took your dare. I proved to us both I'm not the coward you want me to be." She paused, lifted a hand to slide a swath of hair back from his cheekbone. "Are you?"

Sweet mercy, he wasn't a coward.

He was toast.

* * *

Elizabeth
sipped from a mug of hot chocolate, but the warm liquid did little to ease the chill deep inside. She sat
on Hawk's wide ivory sofa, under the soft, crocheted afghan he'd draped around her shoulders, and practiced the breathing exercises her yoga instructor swore by. Two battered yellow cats sprawled all over her, purring like there was no tomorrow. Across the room, an old wooden mantel clock pushed toward three.

Not much had changed in the two years since she'd last been to Hawk's small house just south of town. The furniture remained an eclectic combination of contemporary and early American, the most striking feature a charming antique secretary that looked massively out of place in a bachelor's home, but which she suspected had belonged to his mother. Not much art adorned the walls. And, surprisingly, not much clutter lay strewn around. No shoes or socks or fast-food bags, no year-old magazines, no dirty dishes. Only one book sat on the old sea trunk, a well-worn copy of Steven Ambrose's
Custer
and Crazy Horse.

He didn't want her here. The knowledge chafed as much as it puzzled. For three days he'd been doing his best to stay in her face, but here, now, when she wanted to be with him, he acted as if she'd asked him to walk barefoot over hot coals. He stood at the window on the far side of the room, with his back to her, as he had been doing for close to thirty minutes.

Nothing made sense anymore. Nothing. It didn't make sense that he wouldn't look at her, talk to her, nor did it make sense that from the moment the lights had gone out in her town house, only one name had screamed through her mind. Wesley.

Wesley.

The control she'd been trying so diligently to maintain snapped. She eased Mean Joe and Ditka from her lap and stood, stepped toward the window. "What do you see out there?"

His shoulders stiffened but he said nothing, just stood there in the tuxedo he'd worn to the auction. He'd tossed the jacket over the back of a chair, but the white shirt remained stretched across his shoulders, open deep at the throat to reveal dog tags dangling from his silver chain. The bow tie was long since gone.