Headstrong (2 page)

Reece’s phone rang. Or rather, it vibrated—he’d been a smooth enough amateur spy to set it on silent but the buzzing in his shirt pocket jangled his nerves. He kept his eyes trained on his target, wishing it would stop. How bloody long until it went to voicemail?

Libby Prentiss wielded the neck of her wine bottle like a microphone, sang the song off with a flourish, and snapped the tape deck off with her toe. She turned to where Reece stood in the dark.

“Hey! Pervert!”

Panic trickled through his veins, and he froze, as if it could somehow fix whatever it was he’d already managed to bugger up. As if Libby Prentiss were a tyrannosaurus and he’d become invisible to her if he just stood still long enough.

She took a defiant slug of wine. “I can see your phone, jackass!”

Reece glanced down in time to catch the bright white screen that was illuminating his pocket go dark again.

Bugger.

She curled her finger, come-hither. “Come on down here,
loverboy
. Let me see you.”

What in the hell did a spy do in this situation? Why wasn’t there a handbook? Or if there was, why hadn’t Reece been smart enough to read it?

Libby reached into her bag and rummaged for a few seconds, and Reece found himself staring into the barrel of a drawn gun.

“Come over here.” Libby jerked the thing a couple of times to indicate that he should join her by the fireside.

Reece couldn’t find a decent reason to argue. Abandoning all pretense of suavity, he raised his hands by his ears and approached. “Jesus, don’t shoot me.”

Number one—don’t let her see you unless it’s absolutely necessary.
Ten minutes into the assignment and already Reece had broken the first rule of the contract.

Libby trained the gun on him, but something in her cocked eyebrow and smirk said she hadn’t yet decided what to make of him. One thing was clear—she wasn’t impressed. “What do you want?”

“Sorry. I was just passing by.”
Number two—if you have to talk to her, don’t bother lying. Libby’s a savvy girl. She’ll know.

“Oh, yeah? Doing what, bird-watching?” She twitched the barrel at his binoculars.

Reece drew within a few paces. Libby was silhouetted by the bonfire, but she could surely see him as plain as daylight. The smell of the ocean peeled off her in waves, making Reece seasick, and he prayed he looked even half as dignified as he felt.

Libby pointed the gun at her lawn chair. “Have a seat.” There was a smile in her voice—a sultry voice that promised torturous waiting culminating in unforgettable sex. Sex she would be fully in charge of. “You’re going to sit down and I’m going to call the cops.”

Shit shit shit.

Reece stepped backward toward the chair, facing her, hands raised. His heart was pounding and only partly on account of the gun. The cops could
not
come. That would ruin everything. Not just this ridiculous job—which he was fairly sure he didn’t want anymore—but far more important plans.

Libby was half-cast in the light, her eyes dark and wild. It looked disturbingly as though she was enjoying herself. Reece needed a distraction.

As if his luck decided to arrive, one of the branches in the bonfire split and sparked with a loud crack. Libby turned her eyes for the briefest moment, which was all Reece needed.

Considering he executed it in sneakers, two inches deep in sand, it was a gorgeous kick. Pivoting on one foot, he spun his shoulders toward the ground and swung his back foot up in a lightning-fast arch, knocking the gun out of Libby’s hand. Snapping back into position, he was poised to tackle her if she ran. However, Libby didn’t move. Her mouth fell open, and she clasped her right hand in her left.

“Holy shit—you broke my finger!”

Her tone threw him, and Reece fell reflexively back into gender roles, horrified. “I’m sorry. I thought you were going to shoot me.”

“Jesus, you psychopath, it was only a flare gun.” She studied her crooked digit before glaring at him. “What do you want?”

A
flare
gun? He just got held up with a
flare gun
? Reece wanted out of this deal. Now.

“Shit.” Libby glanced around, irritated. “Now we have to go to a hospital.”

“We?”

“Uh, yeah. It’s your fault my finger’s broken.”

“Oh, come
on
—”

“Here, help me with this,” Libby directed, tossing him a cardigan from beside the cooler.

Against his better judgment, Reece held it up and she threaded her injured hand into the sleeve. She slipped her other arm in and turned to him.

“Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to pay the hospital bill. Just give me a lift in your perv-mobile, Romeo.”

“It wasn’t like that—”

“You can explain on the way.” She began sweeping sand over the bonfire with her foot. “You know how to kick, right? Help me.”

Unsure of what else to do, Reece complied, and they extinguished the fire. He wondered if he could run off under the cover of darkness and be done with all this.

He heard Libby rooting through her bag. A flashlight switched on and illuminated her face as though she were about to tell a ghost story. “Where’s your car?”

She aimed the beam at Reece, and he didn’t give her the satisfaction of shading his eyes. He yanked a thumb toward the road, and Libby grabbed a pair of sneakers and her stereo, seeming content to leave everything else.

“Why are you bringing that?” Reece asked, pointing at the boom box.

She tossed her hair. “It’s valuable.”

“It’s a tape deck.”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to find one of these that still works?” She brushed past, handing him the flashlight. “Hold this.”

Reece held the beam on her hands as she sat on a rock, lacing her shoes with some effort. He tried to ignore her crooked finger, guilt and panic twisting his stomach and dampening his impulse to run.

They walked half a kilometer in silence to where Reece had parked. Libby Prentiss seemed exceedingly confident for a woman venturing into the darkness of a quiet road with a man she’d just caught spying on her. She stood at his side as he unlocked the passenger door, and he was shocked by how close they were in height.

“This is quite the shaggin’ wagon, loverboy,” Libby said as she slid inside. “What is it? Like an ’86 Escort?”

Reece felt a fresh flash of irritation and slammed her door. He climbed in to the driver’s side and started the car. “It’s an ’89 Laser.”

Libby closed one eye, trained her good index finger at him and made a zapping noise. The odd thing was that Reece could tell that she wasn’t drunk, though she was unmistakably
strange
. Fearless to a fault and more than a bit flirtatious. He could see now why she needed looking after.

Libby pushed the seat back for more legroom. “Must be hard to keep a white stallion like this clean,” she said conversationally, tapping a knuckle on the window.

Reece clicked on the lights and eased them onto the road. “It’s got one red door,” he said, at a loss for what else to offer.

“Classy.”

“You’ll have to take your criticisms up with my father, if it bothers you so much.”

“Maybe I will.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” he mumbled. The speed with which she’d managed to draw him into chitchat was unnerving.

Libby craned her head toward the backseat. Not much to see—Reece’s gym bag plus the binoculars and a camera, and now her stereo and flashlight. Thankfully Reece had left his notes on Libby herself back at his flat. He glanced at his passenger after a couple of silent blocks. She was examining her crooked finger with interest and no apparent discomfort.

“Buckle up.”

She made the sort of noise that accompanies an eye-roll, but Reece heard her fumble, followed by a click.

“Ten minutes ago you called me a psycho, and now you’re forcing your way into my car in the middle of nowhere,” he said.

She sighed, sounding bored. “You don’t scare me, loverboy. Can we have some music?”

“Car’s only got a dodgy cassette deck. And the radio’s busted.” The second part was a lie, but Reece didn’t feel like music just now.

“Perfect.” Libby unbuckled herself and twisted her long body back between the seats. Reece heard her eject a tape. She squinted in the dashboard light to check the side before sliding it into the console. Queen came back on—“I Want to Break Free”.

They drove without speaking though the track, Libby nodding her head, and when it finished the tape flipped to the next side. “We Will Rock You.” After half a bar, Freddie Mercury’s voice transformed into a long, stretched-out-sounding warble, cut off by an alarming shuffling noise as the deck began eating the tape.

“Crikey.” Reece jabbed the eject button.

Libby pulled out the cassette, streamers of tape still caught in the dash. “Oh, gorgeous.”

“I told you it was dodgy.”

“You really owe me, now. A broken finger and you’ve wrecked my album.” She tugged gently on the strands.

Reece frowned. “It’s a cassette. You can take the fifty cents you’ll need to replace it out of the ashtray.”

“These are becoming rare, smart-ass. It’s all CD now.”

“Actually, it’s digital—”

She cut him off with a theatrical sigh. “This is so not cool.”

“I’ll fix it.” How had she managed to make him feel guilty about this?

“You better,” she said. “How far to the hospital?”

“Maybe ten minutes.”

“Let’s play Twenty Questions then.”

Reece felt his brows bunch in puzzlement. “No, let’s just be quiet.”

“Animal, mineral or vegetable?”

He didn’t reply. He trained his gaze on the road and blocked her out.

Shit… He needed this money. Was it ruined? Or could he still pull it off? Libby had infused the car with the scent of the ocean. Distracting. Maybe if Reece could just keep from being spotted again…

Libby toyed with the handle to the glove box, and Reece considered slapping her hand away. The last thing he needed was her finding out his name or address and reporting him. Luckily the latch was permanently jammed, and she gave up after a brief investigation, redirecting her prying attempts at Reece.

“Well, I sincerely hope you enjoyed your free show, loverboy.”

Reece didn’t rise to the bait.

His passenger turned to stare at him. “Are you Australian?”

This time he flinched. He was duty-bound to, nationalistically. “Not even remotely.”

“Ooh, I hit a nerve. You have a weird accent for a Kiwi.”

“I’ve been away for a while,” Reece muttered, hoping to put an end to the topic.

Libby rolled down her window and propped an elbow up, resting her chin on her hand. The late-fall evening had grown cold, and the wind pushed her wet hair back. Reece glanced at her profile in the light of the passing streetlamps. What in the hell kind of scientist was this?

That’s what her file had said. It had been sketchy at best, not the detailed spy’s dossier Reece had been naively expecting. It included her photo, the inaccurate one, and her age and general background, a rough idea of her temporary address in Wellington. He’d memorized it easily. His instructions were clear—watch her most days, take photos, report any untoward activities, follow her whenever possible. Watch what sorts of crowds she ran with. Thirty hours a week of surveillance. That was going to give Reece plenty of chances to get spotted again. She’d already caught him mere minutes into his first shift. How had he ever convinced himself he was qualified to do this? Well, two thousand US dollars a week was pretty convincing. He just needed to make it through, what? Twelve weeks, maybe? That might be enough to get things under control.

But three months… Sitting next to Libby Prentiss now, it might as well be a lifetime.

Reece turned them into the emergency department car park, grabbed Libby’s busted cassette from the dash and his jacket from the backseat. They strode through the automatic doors together, probably looking to the rest of the world like a rowing couple.

Libby gave her companion a long, sideways glance as they entered the brightly lit waiting area.

Damn, you are one sexy pervert.

She hadn’t gotten a proper look at him on the beach. Firelight made everyone look better than normal, and the dashboard glow had been equally useless for analysis. But even now, bathed in nasty florescent light and with a frown plastered on his face, he was a stunner.

Libby was tall, five-eleven in socks, which put him right around six feet. He wore a look of cool placidity that didn’t evidence the agitation she’d hoped to cause him. A couple of snappy comments on the drive were not the level of discomfort she’d been aiming for. Either he was a robot, or her charms were finally failing her. Or he was gay. Shame. But what would a gay guy be doing spying on her in her two-piece?

Plus he wasn’t quite styled enough to fit that particular stereotype. He had short brown hair, stylishly messy, but she didn’t suspect he’d spent any time constructing that look. He also had the beginnings of what might soon blossom into a receding hairline.

He met her stare, and his eyes were something else—pale gray like a rain cloud, ringed in darker gray. Steady. Icy. Wide open, even half-lidded. Libby wasn’t accustomed to studying a man this close up who wasn’t visibly frazzled.

Her mystery man preceded her to the check-in desk and addressed the receptionist. “My…friend has a broken finger. And do you have a pencil I could borrow?”

“How about a biro?”

“No, I need a pencil,” he said.

The receptionist handed Libby a clipboard. “Was it an accident?”

His posture at her side tightened, and she gave him a cold glance.

“Never fear, Lancelot,” she muttered, then turned to the receptionist. “It was an accident, yes.”

She took the forms and a pen, and found a seat in the corner. She heard him say, “No, that won’t work. Do you have one of the old kind? With edges?”

He joined her a minute later, leaving an empty seat between them.
You’ll want a bigger buffer than that
, Libby thought. She sighed. “It’s so hard to write without my index finger.”

Her companion gave her no sign of acknowledgment—he had cold indifference down to a science. He drew Libby’s damaged cassette from his jeans’ pocket and smoothed the crumpled tape against his thigh. Sticking a faceted yellow pencil through the hole, he wound the black tangle onto its spool and handed it to her.