01 Untouchable - Untouchable (17 page)

I only knew a little about
guns, but I could plainly see that the clip was in the handle and I
was certain it was loaded. I lifted it out, careful to keep my
fingers away from the trigger, and turned around. I expected that
he would be standing right there waiting to snatch it from my
hands, but he wasn’t. He was standing in the doorway, arms braced
against each side of the door frame, his face pained and pale, and
he was perfectly still. He was giving me the best shot
possible.

I walked toward him, the
gun butt clenched in both my hands but pointed to the floor. When I
was no more than five feet from him, he told me to stop.

“
You can’t
miss from there—and if you get any closer, I
will
take it away from
you.”

I hadn’t realized until
that moment that the tears were spilling down my cheeks. I walked
right up to him and turned the gun sideways and put it against his
chest. “Take it,” I choked. “You’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt,
right?”

His eyes were wide with
disbelief, but his hand was trained to go for the gun.

The next thing I knew, I
was against the bedroom wall. He had me by the throat and the gun
was at my temple. I kept my eyes shut. I didn’t want my last memory
of him to be the look on his face when he pulled the
trigger.

“
What the hell is wrong
with you?!” He snarled, his grip getting tighter on my throat.
“Don’t you realize that this is what I do? I don’t get involved—I
don’t fall in love—I don’t care if someone lives or dies—I do what
I’m paid to do! Why didn’t you just shoot me and end
this?”

I swallowed, but it was
difficult with his hand so tight on my throat. My eyes opened, they
felt like they were about to bulge out of my head. I couldn’t take
much more of this. I would simply pass out and never know what
happened. Then his grip relaxed and I could get some
air.

“
Tell me why you didn’t
shoot me?” But this time it sounded like a plea.

“
If you
let me go, someone else will step in. Maybe that person won’t care
if Kimmy, or Bev or Matt or Matt Junior is in the way—maybe it’s
better this way,” I said, trying to keep my quivering lips from
pulling down at the corners. “And, I don’t want someone to
kill
you
because of
me
.” I’d never seen a more confused look on someone’s face in
my life, and then he seemed to snap out of it.

“
I have to kill you,” he
stated, using the full press of his body to hold me to the wall,
“But—I have to have you first, Leese.”

His mouth was moving toward
mine, but my face turned away. “You’re going to have to shoot me,”
I replied, a certain amount of bravado still clinging to my moral
fiber. “The only man that is going to have me will be the one who
loves me.” My fingers were formed into claws, and I pressed them to
his bandaged side to let him know the fight was getting ready to
happen.

“
What does it matter?
You’re ready to die and you said you wanted to say yes last night,
say yes now. Tell me you want me,” he breathed the words against my
neck.

“
Last night, I was hoping
it was love. Not this way—if you’re looking for a rape victim,
you’ve found the wrong girl.”

The word rape must have
taken the fire completely out of him. He didn’t want to force me
into anything, and he was apparently having trouble coming to grips
with the fact that I’d give him permission to kill me, but not to
violate my body. He knew he couldn’t make me do it by threatening
to kill me—I’d already agreed to that—but it seemed he desperately
wanted me to need him enough to willingly give him the living part
of myself, not just to offer my death.

“
Will you tell me
something?” I asked as the gun returned to my temple and the void
returned to his eyes. “Who paid you? Who wants me dead? And why
this way? Why didn’t you just find me that first day and walk up to
me and shoot me?”

He released me slowly and
lowered the gun. “This business isn’t always about knowing who’s
flipping the bill. Matter of fact, it’s rare to know who is really
behind the money when it’s a complicated hit.”

“
Why was I
complicated?”

“
You really want to do
this, don’t you? You want to discuss how you’re supposed to
die?”

I could only
nod.

He took a deep breath and
turned his back to me. He went to the dresser and put the gun away,
“I was given six weeks to get this job done. I guess it won’t hurt
to talk to you about it.”

“
Six weeks?” I said in
disbelief. What kind of mental case would need someone to get so
close to me? Did they want me to fall in love and then have that
person murder me? I knew if I had spent another five weeks with
Evan, I would be so deeply in love—and no matter what he said about
his job or the fact that his heart was supposed to be untouchable,
I knew he would have fallen.

“
Let’s go out by the pool
and have a drink,” he said, sounding like a good host—at the Bate’s
motel.

We sat on the patio, the
waves lapping at the shoreline and the sun sparkling off the pool.
It would have been perfect under other circumstances. He brought
out a tray with coke, glasses of ice and a bottle of rum. The rum
was something I didn’t expect. He set it down, getting ready to
uncap it; I was suddenly so scared.

“
Please—please no
alcohol.”

He shrugged his shoulders, uncapped the
bottle and moved to his glass.

“
For either one of us,” I
pleaded.

He looked up at me, his
hand frozen in place. “I’m not eighteen, Leese.”

“
I don’t care, please,
please don’t.”

“
You aren’t afraid when I
hold a gun to your head, but you’re terrified if we
drink?”

“
Drinking makes people do
things they never intended to do. If you’re going to put a bullet
in me, you’ll have to do it sober.”

“
Well, then, maybe you
should drink,” his hand shifting the bottle to my glass.

“
No, I might try to kill
you—and you’d let me.” I looked back into that handsome face. “I’d
never forgive myself.”

He put the cap back on and
set the bottle down on the pool deck. “You are the strangest woman
I’ve ever met.” Then he opened a coke and poured it into our
glasses.

“
So tell me why so long?
Why didn’t they just pay you to get it over with?”

He laughed and leaned back against his
chair.

“
What’s so
funny?”

“
I’ve never had to explain
my job to my victim—it’s ludicrous.”

“
So I’m weird, but you’ve
figured that out.”

He took a sip of his coke
and began, “My job was to get you to go out with me, for people to
see us together. I was supposed to get you to like me enough, that
when you vanished, everyone would believe that you ran away with
me.”

“
Why?”

“
I don’t know. It was
supposed to cause a reaction somewhere. It would have been in the
papers. I’m sure the story about what you were doing in Pensacola
in the first place would have been all over the news. But,” he
said, setting down the glass and looking at me. “After a week or
two, whenever they told me, your body was supposed to turn up. Evan
Lewis would have been the guy with the blame, but he no longer
exists.”

“
You didn’t…” I swallowed,
“You didn’t kill the real Evan Lewis, did you?”

“
No. He was a high school
drop-out from Dawson High School in Georgia. His family moved to
Lincoln, Nebraska and he was killed in a car accident a few weeks
later.”

“
How did you take his
identity? I mean, it can’t be something simple to
assume.”

“
You really are determined
to learn all about me, aren’t you?” he mused.

“
Weird,
remember?”

“
My whole family is
involved in the criminal ‘underworld’,” he said, making quotation
marks in the air. “My mother is a master at forgery, records, and
documents. Whatever is out there, she can find it, copy it, alter
it; she’s extremely good at what she does, an artist actually. She
put the records together for me to register as Evan Lewis, and she
made sure that the school still thought they were
viable.”

I didn’t understand; evidently he saw
that.

“
She made sure Dawson
wouldn’t refuse a records transfer because they had knowledge that
he was dead. Then she made some changes so that no trail would
connect me to the real owner of this identity. I’m him; at least
until I do something stupid like kill a girl from Pensacola high
school.”

“
So you’re Evan Lewis while
I’m still alive?”

“
Yeah, except for my car
which I’m assuming you read the registration. I have two, the fake
one is in my wallet, but I’d forgotten about the other one until
this morning. That was a stupid mistake and I don’t usually make
mistakes.”

“
Really?” Now it was my turn
to laugh a little.

“
What?”

“
You’ve evidently been shot
twice and cut more than once. Don’t they count as
mistakes?”

“
No, just occupational
hazards. The guy who shot my shoulder for example was the body
guard for my target. He never left the guy’s side and it was
supposed to be a close range shot, so I had to deal with him after
I made my target.”

“
You talk like a target
isn’t something human.” I couldn’t keep the sadness out of my
voice—I was his target.

“
It’s not, not for me
anyway. My dad taught me my trade when I was fourteen. He was
waiting to see if I could be completely detached, just like he and
my brother. That’s why we get the big money—we don’t get involved,
we just get the job done.”

“
But I was different,” I
whispered.

“
Yeah. You’re my first
civilian.”

“
Civilian? You mean you do
this in other countries?”

“
No,” he gave a bitter
laugh and tried to explain, “In my business we call a civilian
someone that isn’t part of, or involved in, a crime or a crime
family. You’re an innocent,” he sighed catching my sight. “Like
someone being bumped for insurance money. My family doesn’t usually
do that. Even we consider that dirty money, but they needed someone
that was professional and could pass for your age.”

“
How much am I worth to
you?”

“
You
were
worth two-hundred and fifty thousand until this
morning.”

“
Were? What
changed?”

He reached into the pocket of his jeans
and produced my wallet; he’d had it on him the whole
time.

“
I only had your fake last
name. I think that was one reason I couldn’t take my chances and
simply kill you, I didn’t know who you really were—Miss. Winslett.
You weren’t kidding about being rich.” He placed my wallet on the
table and I picked it up as he continued. “I called my contact this
morning and told them the price was going up to a
million.”

I held my wallet and stared
at it. “Does more money make it easier for you?”

He got up, still holding
his coke and walked to the edge of the pool. “Not this time,” he
faintly replied.

An idea was taking shape
inside me. I had no clue if he’d even consider it, but I had to
try. I had to know who was behind the plan to get me
killed.

“
We still have five weeks,”
I said, following him to where his back was turned to me. “I want
to hire you.”

He turned around, eyes wide
open. “You want me to kill someone?”

“
No, and if I had my way,
you’d never kill another soul, but I want you to help me figure out
who is behind the money. I’ve got to know who is doing this and
why.”

“
I’m no detective, Leese,”
he started to rebut.

“
Yeah and you’re no idiot
either. You have connections. You know how this all works. I know
you can do this for me.”

“
What are you offering in
trade?”

I didn’t like the way he
was looking at me and if he wasn’t a killer with a gun in the other
room, I’d have slapped his face. I opened my wallet and pulled out
my Visa. “Did you check my balance?”

“
Ninety-eight-thousand-four-hundred-something.”

“
That sounds about right.”
I was trying not to act surprised that he had actually checked what
was on the card. “If I throw in the title to my Porsche, that’s
almost a quarter million—the original going price for my life—but I
want my five weeks.”

“
And at the end of the five
weeks?” he questioned.

“
Do what you have to,” I
stated firmly. “I just want whoever is doing this to my family
stopped.”

That tiny grin that liked
to play with the edges of his mouth was starting to form, “We’ll
have to make it look like everything is going as planned. They
could be watching me and I don’t want this botched.”