And Able (21 page)

“Well, he did. In my backpack.”

“That’s not possible. You would have noticed by now.”

“No, I wouldn’t. My black composition book was for my programming class. I finished my final project before the first attack in Josette’s house. Remember, you turned it in for me?”

“But you’ve been in and out of your backpack tons of times since then.”

She explained about the color-coding for her classes. “My eyes just skipped over it because I didn’t need it.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“I can’t, either.”

“You’ve had it all the time.”

She nodded and swallowed against a sour taste in her mouth. “The guy in the bathroom at the college was right, but how could he know?”

“You said you thought that was your notes for your programming class. Does that mean they’re missing?”

She rifled through the bag. There was no second black composition book. “Yes, the notes are gone.”

“Maybe Lester switched the composition books.”

“Mine could be back at the hotel.”

Brett shrugged. “It could be, or whoever went looking for Arwan’s kill book found your composition book instead and that’s why he came after you.”

“Lester wouldn’t have deliberately put me at risk like that.”

“Sugar, his mind was going…for all we know, he started making the switch and forgot what he was doing halfway through.”

“We’ll never know, will we?”

“No.”

Her heart hurt because no matter what way she looked at it, the man she’d loved like family had deliberately used her as a blind to hide his secrets.

Brett grabbed his cell phone and made a call. She listened with half of her attention as she realized he was talking to Collins and finding out how close the operative was on a completed list of people Lester had seen in the last month.

She started reading through the kill book. Lester had notes beside some of the jobs, and it didn’t take her long to decipher his notation code and determine which jobs had been for the government and which had been for private citizens. He hadn’t only worked domestically, but had traveled the world with his profession.

Her stomach churned with acid as she flipped from one page to the next, no longer reading but merely taking in the reality of what each page represented.

Brett turned off his phone and set it down. “Collins says he should have the report for me when we get to Portland.”

“He’s a fast worker.”

“He’s been busy while we’ve been studying for your finals.”

“I kept you from the investigation, didn’t I?”

“I trust him to do a thorough job and…” His voice trailed off suggestively and he winked. “It was fun helping you study.”

She tried for a smile and failed. “I’m glad,” she said anyway.

“What’s the matter, Claire?”

“Nothing.”

“Wrong answer.”

“It’s just…” She paused, trying to gather her thoughts while keeping her roiling stomach under control. “It didn’t seem real before this, that Lester was an assassin. But the names of the people he killed are in here.”

S
 
he 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 that 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.