Moonrise (22 page)

She knew she slept. And this time her dreams grew more solid, and she felt his hand on her breast, and she wanted to cry out, but she couldn’t move.

She hated it. Hated being trapped and vulnerable. Helpless. She wanted to take his hand and hold it to her breast. She wanted to pull him into bed with her, to tell him what she wanted and to take it.

But Win stood behind him. Not as she’d found him in death, still and silent. But covered in blood, screaming a voiceless scream, and she wanted to scream as well. To tell him to go away, leave her alone, leave James alone. They’d paid too much already.

And then the dreams shifted, stopped, turned into peaceful fields of daisies, with a bright sun overhead and green grass all around, and everything was calm and gentle. Until she looked down beneath her, at the
man lying there, and saw it was James. With his neck broken, as Win’s had been.

She sat up with a cry that barely made it past her lips. She was in total darkness, cold, disoriented, and alone, and the panic was so deep she shook with it.

She was surprisingly alert, after what seemed like days of drifting. It was a small room, with a high, narrow window, and she seemed to be on a bed, fully clothed, with her shoes missing. And her shirt undone to her waist.

She refastened the buttons with shaking hands. She was cold, she was dirty, and she was hungry. She could do something about that. The fear and the solitude would have to wait.

Where was she? And even more important, where was James? Where had he brought her, and why had he abandoned her? The floor was rough wood beneath her bare feet, and her seeking hands could find no light switch on the plaster walls. She eventually encountered a string overhead, and the faint, bare lightbulb clicked on with a tug, illuminating a room better left in the dark.

The mattress was bare ticking, covered with a thin blanket. The walls were gray, the rusty radiator beneath the window had stained the
floor, and the place smelled of cabbage and musty, closed-up places. And poverty.

Odd, that she’d know the smell of poverty, she thought, when she’d lived her entire life in privilege. But she recognized the hopeless stench of it, and it added to her sense of desolation.

She’d thought the trailer park was bad. This place was far worse, and she wondered if James lived out his life in places like this one. If he felt safe only in misery.

She found a shower with lukewarm water and a backpack with clean clothes. She found an empty kitchen, some cold fish and chips wrapped in paper, three empty bottles of beer and one unopened one. Obviously James had been there.

The fish and chips tasted of pure grease, but it felt as if she hadn’t eaten in days. The warm beer was better, and she drained it quickly. The night was growing colder and darker around her, and she felt weak, vulnerable. Where the hell was James?

He would come back to her sooner or later, she told herself. She had no doubt of that. He wouldn’t have kept her with him for so long only to abandon her.

But what if he had no choice in the matter? What if the forces of darkness that had been shadowing them finally closed in? What if
James was lying dead in some alleyway, and she was alone, helpless, lost?

She shook herself. She’d never been lost in her life. She was strong and resourceful. If James didn’t return, she would go out looking for him.

She heard the rattling of the doorknob with almost pathetic relief and she rose, starting toward the front hallway, trying to curb her smile of relief, when something stopped her. Alone in the narrow, darkened corridor she realized belatedly that someone wasn’t unlocking the shabby front door. They were trying to break in.

She backed away in sudden, silent terror. Whoever was out there hadn’t made a random choice of houses to break into. He, or they, knew what they were looking for. James. And Annie.

She couldn’t think of anywhere to hide. The house was stark, barely furnished, and there were no closets. The rusty shower had no door or curtain; the bed was almost flush with the floor.

In the end she had no choice. The door finally gave way, and she had no place to run but the tiny living room, ducking behind the open door and holding her breath.

Whoever it was came alone. She held still, listening, praying it was James, that he’d forgotten
his keys, that he’d never had keys to this strange, empty house in the first place. But the man moved with too much noise, too little grace, for all that he was trying to stifle any sound he might make. It wasn’t James. Therefore, it was the enemy.

And if he was making an effort to be silent, he must know he wasn’t alone in the house. Had he come looking for James? Or had he already taken care of him?

She was cold, barefoot, damp-headed. He would see signs of a shower in the bathroom, he would see the food she’d just abandoned in the kitchen. She couldn’t wait and have him find her. She’d have to make a run for it, barefoot and all, the moment he stepped into one of the back bedrooms. She’d simply have to pray that she was faster than he was, and that she could disappear into whatever lay beyond the front door.

Count to five, she told herself. Count to ten. Don’t make a break too fast, don’t wait too long. Take a deep breath, and go …

He caught her in the hallway. He was no more than a burly figure, fierce and strong and solid, and he caught her and slammed her against the wall, so hard that the wind was knocked out of her, so hard that the world shifted and turned, and she knew she’d never have time to regain her breath. He was going
to kill her before she could fight back, and she heard the foul cursing under his breath, saw the arm raised to strike her as she tried desperately to scramble out of his way. He had a knife, and he was going to use it.

She didn’t want to die in this dark, smelly hallway, die at the hands of a squat, shadowy figure. Her breath came back in a great sucking rush, and she screamed, a loud, shrill cry, and his name echoed harshly through the almost empty house.

“James!” she screamed, holding up her arms to try to ward him off as he slashed at her. “Help me!”

There was no cut, no sting, just hot wet, blood pouring down her arm, and she knew if he slashed again she couldn’t fight him off. James would come back to find her in a welter of blood. Would he grieve? Or was he already dead as well?

“Bitch,” her attacker muttered in a voice thick with Ireland in it. “Bleedin’ Yank bitch.” And the knife slashed down again, toward her face.

It never connected. She hadn’t heard him come in, and neither had her attacker. In the darkness and horror he was only another shadow, taller, leaner, picking the short man up and throwing him against the wall with the ease of powerful rage. It was a murderous
stranger, it was James, and she wasn’t going to die.

The man seemed to crumple within himself, and the knife skittered across the floor as he collapsed, seemingly unconscious, no longer a threat. Annie tried to move, to take a deep, shaky breath, only to watch with numb horror as James picked up the knife and advanced on the comatose man.

“No,” she gasped, but the word was no more than a choking whisper, and if he heard it, he ignored it, kneeling down over her attacker, shielding him from her sight. When he rose, the man lay facedown on the floor. And blood pooled beneath him.

James rose, turning to face her for the first time. He wasn’t even out of breath—he simply stared at her for a long, measuring moment.

“You killed him,” she whispered in horror.

“And his friend outside as well,” he said. “What did you expect me to do, invite them in for tea?”

She looked up at him, the horror compounded. There was no Texas drawl in his voice, no anonymous American accent. He was Irish. As Irish as the man who’d just tried to kill her.

He held out a hand to her, but in the murky light she told herself she could see the blood staining it, and she shrank away from him.
“All right, then,” he said coolly. “You make your way into the kitchen on your own steam, and I’ll clean up this mess.”

He turned from her and she pushed herself to her feet, using the wall for support as she held her arms tightly around her middle. She made it into the kitchen, and then she threw up in the sink, the beer, the fish and chips, everything.

She could hear water running in the bathroom. She knew she should rouse herself, offer to help him. He’d saved her life. He’d killed the man who’d been trying to kill her, and she ought to be grateful, not horrified.

Dr. Death, Martin had called him. Quick and clean and he made house calls, James had told her. She shivered, looking down at the blood seeping into her clothes.

The gash on her forearm looked gory enough, but the blood seemed to have slowed to a steady ooze. She didn’t dare use any of the filthy dishtowels in the place, and it didn’t come equipped with anything as useful as napkins, so she simply pulled off her T-shirt and ran it under the faucet, hoping the water was reasonably pure.

The slash across her arm was long and shallow. It would leave a scar if she didn’t get stitches, but somehow she couldn’t see James taking her in to the nearest emergency room.
Win would be upset, she thought with a latent bubble of hysteria. He didn’t like anything to mar the perfection of his possessions.

She sank down in the chair, suddenly dizzy, as she wrapped the white T-shirt around her arm. It had begun to sting, just enough to weaken her already shaky self-control.

She didn’t want to hear the thumps and bumps from the hallway. She didn’t want to think about what James was doing, and how he managed it with such cold-blooded expertise. She wanted to shut down her mind, her thoughts, her emotions. But still the thumps and thuds echoed throughout the empty house.

James worked quickly and efficiently, silently cursing himself for cutting the man’s throat and creating such a mess. He should have simply broken his neck. But he’d been reaching for the gun in his pocket, and within seconds he would have managed to shoot Annie, and James had only had time to react, not to think.

He knew what Annie was thinking. He’d seen the horror in her eyes before she’d staggered off into the kitchen. She thought he’d executed the man for no reason, simply cut his throat on a whim instead of necessity.

He wasn’t about to explain to her, to try to
make her understand. He’d killed often enough for just as little reason. If this time was justified, there were others that weren’t, and he was willing to take her judgment.

It had all been theory to her. She knew about the deaths, she’d even seen Clancy’s body, seen her own father. But she’d never seen death delivered, in all its filth and sweat and blood. It had still been one step removed from her existence.

Now she’d seen him for what he was. A killer. It was a relief, he told himself, dragging the body out the back door to the tiny garden shed where he’d already left the other man. She would forget her daydreams, her memories. She would know him for what he was. She would know the truth.

She was sitting in the corner of the darkened kitchen, but he refused to allow himself to glance her way, instead picking up the kettle and heading toward the sink. “Tea,” he said in a deliberately cool voice. “The British cure-all.”

“What’s the Irish cure-all?” Her voice was no more than a faint rasp, but the accusation in it was unmistakable. Down but not out, he thought, not sure whether he was relieved or regretful.

“Whiskey, of course. Unfortunately, we’re flat out of the stuff, so we’ll have to make
do …” He allowed himself to face her, now that he’d gotten his mask firmly in place, but the sight of her sent the words tumbling off into space.

She was sitting there wearing only a pair of jeans and a bra. For a brief, crazed moment he wondered whether she was trying to seduce him, and then he saw the blood-stained cloth wrapped tightly around her arm.

For a moment he couldn’t move. A remote part of him marveled at that. In all his thirty-nine years he’d never been paralyzed as he was now, by the sight of a wounded girl.

She was a girl too. Twenty-seven years old, far from a virgin, bold and fierce and angry. But a girl despite it all.

“The bastard hurt you,” he said in a quiet voice, refusing to let himself move. Afraid he’d move too fast, that he’d scare her, that he’d say something, do something he’d regret for the rest of his cursed life.

“It’s not as bad as it seems. The bleeding’s almost stopped.”

He knelt down beside her, his hands gentle as he unwrapped her makeshift bandage. He half expected her to pull away from him, but she didn’t. She let him touch her, holding very still, her eyes downcast, her breathing shallow.

“It looks worse than it is,” he agreed in a
deceptively cool voice. “Though it’ll leave a scar.”

“Something to remind me of my Irish vacation,” she said in a harsh attempt at flippancy. “That’s where we are, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“That’s where you come from, isn’t it?”

He hesitated, but there was no reason to deny it. No reason for lies. If she’d asked him just then who killed her father, he would have told her the truth. “Yes.”

The bleeding had just about stopped. He rewrapped the arm, fastening the T-shirt with strips of the dirty dishrag that lay in the sink, and then went to make them tea. He didn’t waste his time ordering her to drink it. Either she would, or he’d force her.

She drank the tea. The room was chilly, and he pulled off his own shirt and draped it around her bare shoulders. She didn’t say thank you. Instead she concentrated on the tea, sipping it, seemingly lost.

“Who were those men?” The question startled him, coming out of the blue.

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t lie to me, James,” she said, the first note of emotion filtering through her shock-deadened voice.

“I’m not lying. They could be anyone. Carew might have sent them, though I don’t think
so. It wasn’t his style. They might have been old mates of mine, eager to settle up a score, but I don’t know how they would have known I was coming. Besides, most people I used to hang around with are long dead. I suppose even Martin might have sent them.”

“Martin!”