She held up the kill book, its harmless appearance so incongruous with what it held that she shook her head.
“He listed the people who hired him for the jobs and why they hired him. He was very meticulous. You can’t tell though, what he felt about any of it. It’s all so cold and emotionless. He was my friend, and he killed every person in here.”
Anguish ripped through her. How had Queenie stood reading through this book?
“You look a little shaky,” Brett said, his voice laced with concern. “Do you want me to stop the car?”
Her stomach twisted. “Maybe you’d better.”
He pulled into a rest area and stopped the car away from the bathrooms, near some trees. She shoved her door open and stumbled out of the car, doing her best to control the urge to be sick.
She made it to a picnic table and sat down on the bench. It was summer and there were other people in the rest area, but none of them paid her any attention. For that, she was grateful. It was bad enough that Brett was witnessing her mental distress.
She rubbed her arms, feeling chilled despite the warm sun beating down on her. Her mind raced with images of the old man she had cared so deeply about killing each person he’d listed, and she couldn’t stand it. She hugged herself, trying to hold the feelings inside, trying not to fall apart from the truth.
He’d once told her that he saw his job as the same as being a soldier, but he’d been paid better. He’d seen his kills as another way of waging war for his country. It wasn’t the same, though. Not everyone in that book was a threat to national security or the greater good of mankind. They couldn’t be…
And who had Lester been to think he could make that distinction, or that the men who had hired him could?
She couldn’t come to terms with the reality the composition book represented, because she still loved that old man and grieved his passing.
She didn’t realize she was crying until Brett sat down beside her and pulled her against his chest. “It’s okay, sugar. You can cry it out. Mama always says that tears are God’s way of washing away pain a little bit at a time.”
His tender understanding released the floodgates, and she sobbed in the circle of his strong arms. He held her, petting her and saying soothing things until she eventually got herself under control.
He wiped her face with fresh tissues. “All right now?”
She sniffed and nodded, though she wasn’t sure she was all right. “I can’t believe he killed all those people. I really cared about him, Brett. He was my family.”
“Oh, baby…” He rocked her back and forth like she really was a small child, and she found comfort in it even though she knew she should be handling this on her own.
This was her grief, not Brett’s, but somehow he’d made it past her every barrier, and her emotions were frighteningly open to him.
“How could he do that?”
“The war changed him. Queenie said it best…battle left him scarred and changed his conscience. You can’t judge another person’s life by your own.”
“I don’t want to judge him.” She really didn’t. She just wanted to understand, but she didn’t know if she ever could. “It hurts to know what he did. It had to have hurt him, too. You know it did.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Then why did he keep doing it? He was an assassin for decades!”
“I don’t know, sweetheart, but he was living the life he thought he should live.” He sighed and rubbed her back, no doubt understanding way better than she could. “He gave up the hope of a wife, of children, and gave up his family so he could do what he did. He had to believe in it.”
“Yes.”
“His choices weren’t yours, sugar, but they didn’t make him a monster. He wasn’t a cold-blooded killer or without honor or conscience, he just had a different set of standards he lived by.”
“He was a good man—he was,” she said fiercely, her feelings of loyalty toward the old man not diminishing because she’d been forced to come face-to-face with the reality of her friend’s life choices.
“Yes, he was, and he loved you. Queenie said so.”
“Yes.”
Brett eventually got her back in the car, but when she went to pick up the kill book, he took it away with a shake of his head. “Concentrate on making a list of people that you know Lester saw in the last month.”
She was only too happy to do so and take her mind off the names written so neatly in the composition book.
Hotwire drove while his mind churned with the ramifications of Claire’s reaction to seeing the kill book.
The reality of Lester’s past as Arwan had devastated her. She didn’t understand why he had become an assassin or how he could have lived his life doing one job after another.
Would she be any more capable of dealing with Hotwire’s past? It was far from pristine. He’d gone solo like Lester had done, and although Hotwire had never once killed for money, he had been forced to kill in self-defense and the defense of others in his years as a mercenary.
Would Claire be able to understand and accept that?
He’d never been ashamed of his life as a soldier, both for his government and as a private operator. He’d believed in his job in the Rangers and he’d taken that core set of beliefs with him into his life as a mercenary. He had used his skills to protect, to save, and to defeat the enemy.
Some would look at his past and see shades of brutality when in reality, he’d only done what had to be done at the time.
It wasn’t a carbon copy of Lester’s path, but it was close enough. He remembered the discussions he and Claire had had about violence as a solution to a crisis. She said she wasn’t a pacifist, but if she wasn’t, she was damn close.
For the first time, he wondered if her refusal to marry him had something to do with her inability to accept his past. It made sense, but it also worried the hell out of him.
He’d been pretty confident of overcoming her emotional misgivings, but how could he convince her that his past did not make him a monster?
The prospect that he would have to bothered him. A lot. He’d spent his whole adult life excusing and explaining his career choices to his family and he’d always felt a barrier between himself and the rest of them because of it.
He didn’t want to feel the same separation from Claire.
Brett was strangely subdued as they made their way to his hotel suite. He hadn’t said much since her emotional outburst at the rest area.
She’d never made friends easily…at least, not since her dad’s death. She had a hard time trusting people, and letting them get close required a level of risk that she’d always shied away from. She knew better than most people how easy it was to lose the people in your life who were supposed to be constant.
She’d let Queenie and Lester into her heart, and then Josette, whom she’d shared more with than anyone else…besides Brett. She hadn’t realized how lonely she’d been until she’d become friends with Josette, though. Her time with Queenie and Lester had always been limited to her work hours, but Josette’s friendship had permeated every aspect of Claire’s solitary existence. She didn’t want to be alone anymore.
She wanted more than Brett’s body; she wanted his friendship on a level that scared her spitless because it made her vulnerable to losing him. If he walked away, it would hurt. So much. No matter what label she wanted to put on the feelings she had for him. She wished she could turn her emotions off as she’d done during the final years of taking care of her mom, but she didn’t know how.
Brett let them into the suite with his key card, and a few seconds later, while she was still busy stretching the kinks from the nearly two-hour car ride, he swore.
She spun to face him. “What’s the matter?”
“The suite was searched while we were gone.” He was glaring down at something beside his computer.
“Did they take anything?”
“It doesn’t look like it, and unless they were better at computer security than I am, they weren’t able to log onto either of our systems.”
“Good.” She hated this feeling of violation, and for whatever reason, the thought of a faceless person poking around in her computer files was even worse.
Brett powered up his system. “Unless the civ took a crash course in subtle searching methods, I think we’re looking at the men in black as culprits.”
“When you find out who they are, I want to tell them a thing or two.”
“Me, too, sugar. Me, too.” The dark menace in his voice made her shiver.
“Are you still convinced they weren’t responsible for my attack?”
“I have a hard time seeing one of our government agents trying to smother you with a pillow.”
“You can say that after seeing Arwan’s kill book?”
Brett’s face closed up. “Yes.”
She turned away, not wanting to deal with what felt like a rejection. “My list is on the last page of the purple composition book if you want to compare it with Collins’s report.”
“Where are you going?”
“I thought I’d watch television in the bedroom.” She waited to see if he’d ask her to stay and help him.
“Fine.”
She nodded and went into the other room.
She was lying on her stomach, her head at the end of the bed, and watching a home decorator show when he came in to find her, his expression grim.
She rolled and scooted into a sitting position. “Did you need something?”
“You hungry for lunch?”
“I didn’t realize it was that late.” She looked down at her watch and realized she’d been in the bedroom for more than an hour. “I guess I could eat something.”
“Do you want to order or do you trust me to order for you?”
She shrugged. “I trust you.”
“Do you?”
Her brow wrinkled in confusion. “Yes.”
“I’ve been going over Arwan’s notes.”
She noticed that he used the assassin name to refer to Lester in that role as well. It seemed right, because from what she could tell, Lester had been two different people…at least, he’d lived two very separate lives. “Find anything?”
“I’m not sure about the case yet. I’m going over it as I type it into a database that I will cross-reference with Collins’s report. But I did find something I thought might interest you.”
“What?”
“Arwan didn’t take every job. In fact, he was very particular about the jobs he did take. He refused to kill unless the danger to national security or the security of others could be proven to his satisfaction.”
“What about the private jobs?” she couldn’t help asking.
“There weren’t that many, but the reasons for the contracts being taken out were ones that Arwan believed justified his involvement.”
“Like what?” She desperately wanted to understand.
“Like a man who beat his wife to death and was doing a damn fine job on his children until their grandfather hired Arwan to take him out. There weren’t as many laws in place to protect domestic abuse victims back in the fifties as there are now. That grandfather saw no other way to protect his family, and Arwan agreed.”
She shouldn’t feel relief, but she did. The idea of vigilante justice wasn’t acceptable, and yet, how could she condemn a grandfather for wanting to protect his grandchildren from their violent father? A man who had already killed his wife…the man’s daughter.
Her eyes filled with tears and she averted her face so Brett wouldn’t see them. “You’re right. Knowing that helps a lot. Thank you.”
“If it helps so much, why won’t you look at me?”
She shrugged and surreptitiously wiped at her eyes. “No reason. I’m just watching the show.”
“And that’s more important than what I told you about Lester?” he asked.
“Arwan, you mean.”
“They were the same man.”
So much for her theory. “Well, yes, but…”
Brett sat down beside her and tugged on her chin until she was looking at him. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m relieved—I shouldn’t be, but I am.”
He shook his head. “I’m never going to understand you, am I?”
She shrugged. “Probably not. I don’t think our brains are wired the same way.”
“Does that bother you?” he asked with a probing intensity she didn’t understand.
“Not really. Josette informs me that it’s a man-woman thing.”
“And you think that’s all it is?”
“Yes.” She didn’t get the underlying significance of his question, but she could sense that he wanted something from her. Some kind of assurance, but she didn’t know about what. And since she didn’t know what it was, she didn’t know how to give it, either. “What is it, Brett? What do you need?”
His eyes went smoky, just that fast. “I always need you.”
As his mouth took possession of hers, she was sure that needy passion wasn’t what his odd looks had been about, but she didn’t hesitate to respond to him. He made her burn and she was only too happy to go up in flames.
Afterward, they ordered lunch and took a shower while they were waiting for it. He kept dropping the soap and then going searching for it, his mouth and his hands managing to caress every square inch of her in the process. She was leaning against the wall, panting after a shattering orgasm, when room service knocked on the suite’s door.
Brett did a quick dry-off and then wrapped the towel around his waist to saunter into the main living area. The man had no shame, but he sure was fun.
She finished her shower, threw on a tank top she usually wore under other things and a pair of shorts she never wore in public.
His wolf whistle of appreciation when she went into the living room made her grin and get all shivery at the same time. He was still wearing the towel while he set the food out and she did a little whistling of her own. That elicited retaliation in the nicest possible way, and she thought later it was a good thing her food had been cold already, because they sure didn’t get to it immediately.
After lunch, she called the professor who wore the same cologne as the guy who had attacked her. Once she knew its name, Brett insisted on running downtown and getting a bottle so he could smell it, too. He wanted to be on the alert.
After sniffing it and pronouncing it way too girlie for a real man, he recapped the fragrance bottle and tossed it in the bag.
When they got back to the hotel, she did the comparison of her list with Collins’s report while Brett finished entering the names from Arwan’s kill book in the database.
The phone rang a little later and Brett answered it while she saved Collins’s report with her additions in it. There had only been two, and she figured they were both useless, one being a doctor who had worked with Lester since he first became a resident of Belmont Manor and the other a small group of politicians who had visited the Manor a few weeks before. They hadn’t been there during her shift, but Queenie had told her about the visit. It had upset her. While they had not been Lester’s visitors per se, they had seen him.
She smiled as Brett hung up the phone. “Who was that?”
“Ethan. He identified the men in black at the funeral. They work for a director with a lot of clout in Washington.”
“Who is he?”
“Raymond Arthur. Ethan ran a background check on him. He’s a former military hard-ass with some questionable mission directives in his past.”
“What do you mean?”
“He isn’t known for showing scruples when it comes to getting the job done. I wouldn’t be surprised if a good portion of Arwan’s later hits were ordered by him.”
“Do you think he would have had Lester killed to keep the government’s secrets?”
Brett’s expression was grim. “It’s possible. This guy sounds like the type that would have thrived during the secrecy surrounding our efforts in the Cold War.”
“What are we going to do about it?”
“We’re going to call on him while we are on the east coast, and we are going to force a meeting with his two agents. One of them has gray eyes and a medium build.”
“Like the man who tried to smother me with a pillow?”
“Yes. If they are responsible, there will be hell to pay from here to the next election.” The soldier who went into battle and knew how to do whatever it took to win gazed out from Brett’s glacier-cold blue gaze.
She could almost feel sorry for the government agents in question.
Claire’s tension grew with every mile the SUV traveled away from the small municipal airport where Brett had landed his plane.
His parents lived about an hour and a half southwest of Savannah, on the outskirts of a small town named for one of Brett’s ancestors. She couldn’t even imagine. What must it have been like growing up as a member of the town’s founding family? Brett wasn’t a conformer, and she wondered if it had been hard for him.
He didn’t talk a lot about his family…all she really knew was that they were definitely a bunch of overachievers and he loved them.
But the prospect of meeting the rest of his family had her stomach in knots. It shouldn’t and she knew it shouldn’t. She and Brett weren’t a couple. Not really. He hadn’t even said anything about his marriage proposal since leaving Lincoln City.
This was probably the one and only time she would ever meet these people. So, his family’s opinion of her should not matter, but it did. She smoothed down her white t-shirt and the khaki cargo pants she’d worn to travel, wishing her wardrobe stretched to a pair of real slacks.
Brett was silent, too, his usually charming exterior going grim the closer they got to his family home. Was he embarrassed to be bringing her?
“I can stay at a hotel, you know. I don’t have to horn in on your mother’s birthday weekend.”
His head jerked as if he’d been deep in thought. “What?”
“The bad guys aren’t going to know where I am. I can stay in a hotel.”
“You’re staying at the house.” That’s all he said and then he went back to brooding.
She watched the green scenery go by for another mile. “How close are we?”
Right then, he turned the car into a long drive lined with trees. “Very close.”
As he pulled the car to a stop behind a huge white mansion, she felt her heart speed up until it was going faster than the Road Runner fleeing Wile E. Coyote.
“Your parents live here?” she demanded in a voice that sounded as awed as she felt.
“Yes.”
“You grew up here?”
“Yes.” He got out of the car and came around to open her door, but frowned when she made no move to step out. “It’s just a house, Claire.”
“It looks like a scene from Gone With the Wind.” She and her parents had lived in a pretty nice house in West Portland prior to her dad losing his job, but it had been nothing like this.
“No chance. My mother and sisters think Scarlett O’Hara gave southern women a bad name.”
“Because she was so selfish?”
His brows rose, as if he hadn’t expected her response. “Yes.”
“Okay…so it’s not a movie set, but it is beautiful—and huge.” She sighed and stared at the house and its incredible surroundings, unable to imagine growing up in such a place…and then leaving it.
He smiled, his eyes narrowing with a speculative gleam. “If I promised to bring you here every holiday and two weeks in the summer for our kids to run riot, would you marry me?”
She gasped. “I thought…”
“What did you think?”
“That you’d forgotten about that ridiculous idea,” she blurted out. But the image he painted of their children—not just child, singular—playing in the green, green grass, or climbing one of the huge trees around the mansion, was totally tempting.
“I’m reserving my resources.”
“What do you mean?”
But he didn’t get a chance to answer, because two boys with dark hair and identical grins had come hurtling from the direction of the house and threw themselves against him with gleeful cries of, “Uncle Brett, Uncle Brett.”
A small, blond girl followed the boys, her shorter legs not letting her reach Brett as quickly as the other two. When she did, she stood back, sucking her thumb and watching the boys and Brett engage in an impromptu wrestling match.
Claire climbed from the car and closed the door, snagging the little girl’s attention. She smiled shyly around her thumb.
Claire dropped to her haunches so she and the child were at eye level. “Hi, my name is Claire. What’s yours?”
She popped her thumb out of her mouth. “Jenny.”
“That’s a pretty name. Is it short for Jennifer?”
Jenny nodded. “Those are my brothers, Derek and Kyle. They’re bigger than me,” she said confidingly.
“I see. They like to wrestle with their uncle, don’t they?”
“Uh-huh.” She looked at Claire for several seconds before asking, “Are you Uncle Brett’s girlfriend?”
“No…um…” Claire hoped her consternation did not show on her face. “I’m, uh…his friend. That’s all.”
Jenny didn’t say anything to that, but popped her thumb back into her mouth, her expression solemn.
“Hey, sugarplum.” Brett had come to stand with one boy hung under each arm like a bag of oats. “Where’s your mama?”
“She’s inside,” Jenny said around her thumb.
“I’m right here, actually.”
Claire surged to her feet and Brett released his hold on his nephews as they all turned at the sound of the melodic voice. His sister was a beautiful woman, dressed elegantly in a pale pink suit and heels, with a superficial resemblance to Brett that was unmistakable.
The woman put her hand out to Claire. “I’m Eleanor Adams-Stanton, this disreputable person’s older sister and these three adorable cherubs’ mother.”
Claire shook hands with her. “Claire Sharp. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“She said she’s not Uncle Brett’s girlfriend,” Jenny piped up. “Nana was wrong.”