Killer Instinct (20 page)

I abandoned all attempts at secrecy and made a run for it. I burst onto the pavement just as the car was drawing level. With my attacker only a few feet behind me, I had no choice but to keep going.

I threw myself into a forward roll, hit the front wing in a dive and clattered over the bonnet. I even had time to realise that the vehicle was a big BMW as I spilled across the bodywork.

The Scouser didn't have quite the same incentive to practice his aerobatics. He skidded to a stop on the pavement, and judged in a second that the odds had tipped against him. He turned and pelted off along the quay on foot.

The BM driver's reactions were remarkably fast. He had already slammed on the brakes by the time I made contact with his paintwork. As I bounced off the other side and tumbled into the far gutter, he had already opened the driver's door and was halfway out.

“Charlie!” he yelled. “Christ, are you all right?”

It was Marc Quinn.

I tried to climb to my feet, but my legs wouldn't obey the usual commands. I made two attempts, like a punch-drunk boxer with the count on him. I ended up on my knees both times. The referee would have had no choice but to stop the fight.

Marc saw the state I was in at first glance and his face closed in with fury. He looked longingly after the rapidly disappearing Scouser for a moment, then moved quickly to pick me out of the gutter.

His instinct was to grab me round my ribs to lift me. The pain it caused made me cry out, pushing back away from him and ending up back where I started.

He started to swear then, amazingly inventive oaths about what he was going to do to the people who'd worked me over, as and when he ever caught up with them. It was educational to listen to even if, afterwards, I couldn't remember a single piece of invective.

Eventually, using him as a crutch, I managed to haul myself upright more or less under my own steam.

“Can you make it to the car?” he asked, his voice terse. It was only ten feet or so away, but it seemed like half a mile to go round the bonnet to the passenger side.

I took a deep breath, regretting it as my ribs protested, and nodded.

“OK, come on, take your time.” He put a gentle arm round my shoulders, keeping it light. “I'll be right here.”

I stopped suddenly and peered up at his face. “Marc, what are you doing here?” I asked. My voice seemed awfully reedy and thin. I was still shivering from the cold, which was making my ribs hurt all the more.

He gazed down at me, reaching to move my hair away from my eyes. Most of it on the right-hand side was now glued to my scalp. I daren't even begin to imagine what I looked like.

“I came to see you,” he said, smiling that slow long-burning smile of his.

My heart flip-flopped over in my chest. I couldn't help it.

Maybe it was a ploy to take my mind off things, because the next thing I knew he was pulling open the passenger door of the BM. I stopped short when I saw it had a cream leather interior.

“I can't, Marc, I'll ruin it,” I protested. Not only was half my hair plastered with blood, but I'd picked up a good layer of masonry dust sliding down the front of the building, and a liberal coating of road dirt from the gutter.

“I'll have it valeted,” he dismissed impatiently. “Now for Christ's sake lady, get in!”

I subsided into the soft upholstery without further demur. He slammed the door and moved round the bonnet to the driver's side, looking suddenly hard and dangerous. An unexpected fear needled me. Was I doing the right thing allowing myself to be put into his car so easily?

I quashed it as he climbed into the driving seat and glanced at me, the concern clear in those pale eyes.

“I think perhaps I should take you straight to Casualty,” he said.

“No!” It was a reflex. I hated the damned places. Besides, I had a good enough knowledge of my own body to recognise when an injury was serious. Those I'd sustained this evening were painful, but they were in no way life-threatening.

“Well, I need to do something with you,” he said, touching a hand to my cheek. His fingers felt so hot they almost burnt me. “You're freezing and you're in shock.”

He took my hands between his and tried to rub some warmth into them, but I yelped again. Turning them over, I realised I'd torn and scraped my palms and fingers, but I couldn't for the life of me remember doing it.

He gave me a dark look, but said nothing. Instead, he settled for just turning the car's air con control round to maximum heat and putting the fan on full blast.

We set off sedately along the quay, turning left away from the river to weave through the back streets up towards the railway station, and the castle.

By holding my hands directly over an air vent in the dash for a few minutes, I managed to persuade some sensation to return. Unfortunately, with it came a pulsating pain in my fingers. I clamped them together in my lap and tried not to think about it too much.

As the heat permeated the interior of the car, I was aware of a grinding weariness soaking down over me. “Aren't you going to ask me what that was all about?” I said tiredly.

Marc glanced sideways at me, his face lit by the eerie orange glow from the car's instruments. “I assumed you'd tell me when you were ready,” he said, concentrating on the road ahead.

“Someone at your club doesn't want me there, Marc,” I said, feeling abruptly groggy, “and I don't know why that is.”

I felt the BM react as his hands twitched on the wheel. He favoured me with a brief look. “Do you have any idea who?” he asked sharply.

“Not a clue,” I said hazily. I let my head flop back against the padded rest.

“So why do you think someone doesn't want you there?” he demanded. “Come on, Charlie, talk to me!”

I opened my leaden eyelids with an effort. “Hmm? Oh, I don't know,” I mumbled. “And I don't know what I
do
know, either, which Jacob thinks is half the problem.”

“Charlie,” he said dryly, “you're rambling.”

“Mm, sorry,” I muttered indistinctly. For some reason a picture of the man outside the French windows at the Lodge slid into my woolly mind. He'd worn a mask, too. “Somebody's been watching me, and I've got a bad feeling about it,” I informed Marc with a sigh. “A very bad feeling.”

The line between consciousness and oblivion was blurring. I felt it closing in on me.

I slept.

***

It only seemed a few seconds before I felt a hand on my shoulder, shaking gently.

“Charlie, come on, wake up.”

I came fully awake with a jerk, automatically tensing to strike before I recognised Marc. He backed off quickly. “It's OK, don't panic.” His voice was calm, soothing.

I realised he'd stopped the BM, and slithered further upright in my seat. I recognised the front entrance to one of the most up-market hotels in the area. His hotel.

“Why are we here?” I felt dazed, disconnected. My mind seemed to be working at half speed.

His face was unreadable in the gloom inside the car. “You were most insistent I shouldn't take you to a doctor, and I didn't think it was wise to take you home again,” he said. “It was either here or drive you round in circles all night.” He put his hand under my chin and tipped my face up, studying. “You're a mess,” he added. “We need to get you cleaned up.”

“Thanks,” I said, “you really know how to make a girl feel good about herself.”

He flashed me a quick smile as he opened the car door and climbed out, moving round swiftly to help me out of my side. I got out experimentally, and found my ribs seemed to grate protestingly when I moved. I stifled a gasp as I stood up.

Marc caught me. “Are you OK?”

I shook my head. “It's nothing. I'm fine. Nothing a hot bath and a stiff whisky wouldn't cure – and not necessarily in that order.”

Despite my denials, it seemed a long walk to the front door. Marc walked slowly alongside me, watching like a hawk for the first sign I was about to keel over. At one point I stumbled and his arm snaked round my shoulders instantly. His musky aftershave mingled interestingly with the smell of man.

“I can manage,” I said. Having him so close when I wasn't in full control of my senses to begin with was altogether too distracting.

The expression on the receptionist's face when we staggered in to the grand lobby area of the hotel spoke volumes about the state I was in. I suppose with my bloody face, dirty soaked shirt and scuffed leathers, I wasn't exactly representative of the target clientele. Marc silenced her protest with a single hard stare.

“Miss Fox has had an accident,” he said, his voice like stone, brooking no argument. “She will be in my suite.” The woman probably thought he'd run me down in his car.

Somehow, I don't remember the ride in the lift, or how I got from there to Marc's room. The next memory I have is the crackling noise of an open grate. I opened my eyes to find I was on a deeply cushioned sofa, with a soft blanket thrown over me. Marc's face appeared.

“You had me worried for a moment there,” he said. “Here's that whisky you wanted, and the bath's running.” I fumbled to a sitting position and he handed me a lead crystal glass of liquid the colour of old gold.

I stuck my nose into the glass, recognised single malt quality, then gulped two-thirds of it down like a rough blend anyway. The resultant fire lit my stomach and roared through my veins with a welcome blast.

Marc moved round in front of me. He'd taken off his jacket, and folded back the sleeves of his shirt, revealing muscled forearms, covered with a fine layer of dark hair. I was surprised to see he had tattoos on both arms, blurred with age. He was carrying a wet flannel and a towel with the hotel crest on it.

“Now,” he said, “let's get the worst of that off and have a look at the damage.” He smoothed my hair back and dabbed efficiently at the blood on my forehead.

I sat with my eyes closed and let him get on with it, too weary to put up much of a fight. His hands were cool and careful, their touch firm but reassuring. The movement lulled me.

“It's only a small cut, and it's stopped bleeding,” he murmured at last. “Scalp wounds always look worse than they are to begin with.”

He took my hands and turned them over, wiping the worst of the grit away gently.

“They're not too bad,” he decided. “Where else do you hurt?”

I opened my eyes reluctantly and admitted that my ribs were still aching. Hardly stunning when I thought about it. I was lucky to be still walking.

Marc had pulled my shirt out of my leather jeans and started to unbutton it before I had the wit to object. “Hey!” I tried to bat his hands away, but my depth perception was off, and he was determined. When he slid his hands over the skin of my ribcage my protests died in my throat as my heart leapt up and bounced there.

“You're going to have some cracking bruises, Charlie,” he said, and his voice suddenly seemed very deep. “I don't think there's anything broken.” He seemed to be too close to me. I could see the individual pores in the skin of his face. The faint line of an old scar running through his eyebrow. Much too close. My breath hitched.

He looked straight into my eyes and smiled, then got to his feet. “I think I'd better go and check on that bath,” he said, and strolled away.

The brief pause gave me chance to look round the suite for the first time. The sofa had a low mahogany table in front of it, and beyond that was the open fire I'd sensed, full of burning logs. It was so healthily ablaze that it could only have been one of those fake gas affairs, but it was pretty convincing.

There was a desk on the far side of the room, and doors leading off for the bathroom and bedroom. The decor was subdued, expensive. I didn't even begin to want to know how much a night it was costing him. I chucked back the remainder of my whisky and set the glass down on the polished wood without regard for watermarks.

Marc returned, drying his hands on a towel. “You're all set,” he said. “Do you need any help?”

I wavered for a moment, enticed, then shook my head. “I can manage,” I said. It was becoming a mantra.

I got to my feet stiffly, trying to ignore the complaints from my body, and tottered across to the bathroom. Inside it was all white marble and mirrors clouded with steam from the bath. I almost groaned at the sight of it. Marc had dropped in a generous quantity of the foam bath furnished by the hotel, and hadn't stinted on the hot water. It was filled to the brim.

I shut the door and took a moment to study my reflection in the mirror. What I saw made me grimace. Marc had managed to mop away most of the blood from my face, but my hair still looked matted like a stray cat's. The flesh over my left cheekbone seemed swollen, closing my eye a little, but some ice would probably sort it.

I stripped off my shirt and prodded experimentally at my ribs. There was moderate blueing along them that was slightly alarming, but it was nothing I couldn't handle. More bruises came to light as I peeled off my leather jeans. Even with the kevlar and the padding, the hip I'd landed on was turning a regal shade of purple.