Deathwatch (15 page)

She visualized the aching knots under his skin, then she visualized them dissolving.
“Try to think of something relaxing and happy.”

She always thought healing thoughts as she worked.
She believed in bringing positive, healing energy to what she did.
She’d had plenty of practice so it came fairly easily, a calm enveloping her as she kneaded his muscles.
She’d missed that calm.
She’d been on the run for too long, fear becoming her norm.

But for this moment she wasn’t alone.
And focusing on Murph helped her forget her own troubles a little.
Then as minutes ticked by, her fingers gliding along his skin, over hills and valleys of muscles, something strange happened.

Her fingertips tingled.
His heat somehow spread up her arm and spread through her.
So completely unprofessional.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
She was better than this.
He might not have been her patient officially, but she was doing this to help him.
 

She lightened the pressure to wind down the massage, and cleared her throat.
“That should help a little.
Does your back feel better?”

He stayed face down for another second or two, then turned his head to look at her.
The heat in his gaze stole her breath away.
She felt singed.

“
Thank you.”
His voice, raspy with desire skittered along her skin.
“It’s much better.”
 

She sat back on her heels and folded her fingers in her lap so she wouldn’t reach out to touch him again.
She was fairly sure he would respond.
Then they would….
Even as need zapped through her, she knew what a terrible idea that would be.
The smartest thing was to walk away.

But before she could rise, he sat up, legs apart, and she suddenly found herself kneeling between his powerful thighs, their eyes on the same level, his gaze—boiling with heat—holding hers.

He shifted forward while reaching for her at the same time, his large hands warm on her arms, tilting her closer to him.
She had zero will to resist.
Every cell in her body screamed for him.

He held her a hairsbreadth from his lips.
Then his eyes darkened and he closed that minuscule distance, their lips meeting at last in the lightest of touches.
Even so, an electric charge shot through her, short-circuiting her brain.

She wanted more, with a deep, aching need.
She could have cried when he pulled back an inch.

“
I want you.”
His voice had turned hoarse.
 

She couldn't speak.
The air disappeared from her lungs.

After a tension-filled moment that lasted an eternity, he let his hands drop from her arms, pulling back all the way.
“I'm not going to take advantage of you.
You should go back to your room, Kate.”

She already missed the warmth of his touch, of his lips, as she pushed to her feet, almost as relieved as she was disappointed.
“Good night, Murph,” she said when she found her voice.

He was right.
They needed to keep cool heads.
They were strangers, and she didn't like feeling this out of control.
She was in no position to lose her head, lose her focus.
Too much was at stake—her life.
She couldn't afford to be distracted.

He lay back down, on his good side, facing her.
“
Good night, Kate.”
 

The look of open need on his face said he was thinking about coming after her.
He didn't.
Which was good, because she would have been lost if he did.

Chapter Seven

Murph woke reluctantly, from a dream where he was with Kate, playing naked wrestling.

She was in the kitchen, quietly making coffee, getting ready for work.
White top, short tan skirt, plain white sneakers on her feet.

Those endless legs were going to do him in.
His fingertips itched to stroke the length of them, to caress the soft spot behind her knee.
His fingers would pave the way for his lips….
He looked away from her, up at the ceiling.

“
Hey,” she said softly from behind the counter.
“How do you feel this morning?”
 

“
Fine,” he barked the single word, mad at himself for touching her in the middle of the night, for having dreamt of her then continuing that fantasy when he’d come awake.
She deserved better than him gawking at her and being dragged into his dirty fantasies.
 

“
Any more bad dreams?”
 

Jesus.
He didn’t need to be checked up on.
He didn’t need a nursemaid in the night either.
There was nothing wrong with him some hard workout wouldn’t cure.
He was going to hit the gym at the police station until he was fit enough to pass his physical.
He was going to get his old life back if it was the last thing he did.
 

He rolled off the couch and strode down the hall to the bathroom.
By the time he came out, his breakfast was waiting for him on the table.

When she smiled at him—a sincere, open smile—he suddenly felt embarrassed for his surly attitude.
His problems weren’t her fault.
“Thank you for breakfast.”

“
You’re welcome.”
 

“
I’m sorry I woke you up last night.”
 

She paused by him on her way to the fridge.
“I’m not.
If the massage helped, I’d be happy to do it again.”
She placed a gentle hand on his arm.

He steeled himself, but the need for more of her washed over him in an overwhelming wave, anyway.
He looked into her sparkling sky gaze, got lost a little.
A long moment passed before she pulled away.

“
I’ll run into the station after I drop you off at work, then see what needs to be done around the house,” he said, so he wouldn’t say,
I want you,
again.
What the hell was wrong with him?
He went to sit at the table.
 

“
You’re injured.
Give yourself time to heal.
It's supposed to be a beautiful winter day.”
 

All right, so maybe it was nice to wake up to a shot of positive energy in the morning.
He nodded toward her coffee cup.
“Is the cup half empty or half full?”
He jokingly tested her.

“
It’s all the way full.
Half of it is coffee, the other half is air.
Technically.”
 

He shook his head.
“It's worse than I thought.”

She smiled.
“My mom taught me that.
When I came to her, I was just as likely to hurl the cup across the kitchen in a fit.
She’s a big believer in positive thinking.”

“
Ellie Bridges?”
Her adoptive mother.
 

She nodded with a wistful expression on her face.
She must miss her family like crazy.
But she was soldiering on, doing what she had to do to keep them and herself away from danger.

Of course, he was attracted to her.
Who wouldn’t be?
She was smart, beautiful and compassionate.
He wanted her, fine.
But he was in no position to enter that kind of complication at the moment.

He rolled his shoulders.
The pain didn’t seem to be as bad this morning.
“So how did you get into massage therapy?”

“
I wanted to be a vet when I was younger.
I think just about every preteen girl does.
It comes right after the princess phase.”
 

She flashed a quick smile.
“My mom set up a volunteering gig at a nearby farm for me where they were rehabilitating abused animals.
One of the women there did these therapeutic rubdowns on traumatized horses.
She was amazing.
She’d start with a horse that wouldn’t even allow a human in the corral with him, and by the time she was done, she had a healthy animal that would let people on his back again.”

Her blue eyes sparkled like the summer sky.
This is how she should always be, he thought as he ate, not scared, with the sad angel eyes.

She tucked an escaped lock of hair behind her ear.
“By the time I went to college, I knew I wanted to work with abused children.
And at one point it occurred to me that there might be something like therapeutic massage for people with psychological damage.
Turned out there was.
I never looked back.”

“
You miss it.”
He wasn’t asking.
He could see the truth on her face.
 

She pressed her very kissable lips together.
“I’m going to get back to it someday.”

“
I hope you will.”
 

He finished off his bacon and eggs, put his empty plate into the dishwasher, showered quickly, drove her to work then headed to the police station.
Everybody was out on calls, Leila busy with the switchboard.
He left the weights alone since he didn’t want to mess with the shrapnel, but he spent an hour on the treadmill at the station’s small gym.
He had to build back his stamina if he ever hoped to pass that physical.

After his workout, he went up front and logged into his computer.
He didn’t have full access to the FBI’s database, but a lot of that data was fed into the general law enforcement systems.
He used those to learn a little more about Rauch Asael.

The hit man was a serious psycho.
The bloody crime scene photos Murph paged through on his computer turned his stomach and squeezed his lungs, brought back memories of gunfire and explosions and his friends dying around him.

Rauch
meant smoke in German, he found out.
Probably because the man was as elusive as smoke.
 

Asael
was one of the names used for the devil.
 

And that was just one of his dozen creepy aliases.

* * *

The small apartment grew cold in the mornings.
The windows let wind whistle through, the hideous country curtains not nearly enough to stop the draft.
Mordocai could afford better.
He could have demanded that the super fix things, but he didn’t.
The character he played wouldn’t.
He wore the apartment like a costume on stage, like he wore the character’s clothes, the makeup, the voice he created for this particular time and place.

He gripped his disposable cell phone and listened to the man on the other end, one of a handful of people who knew how to reach him.
A listing put on a certain popular online auction site with the right keywords, and Mordocai would call.

“
It needs to be done very quietly and very fast,” the man said.
 

“
How fast?”
 

“
By the end of the week.
The idiot cannot be allowed to talk at the press conference that’s scheduled for Monday.
It’s imperative for the client.
He’s willing to pay the rush fee.”
 

“
Do you have all the information I need?”
 

“
I’m posting it right now.
It’ll self-delete in ten minutes.
He’s in Canada.”
 

They used an obscure internet chat room, with name, address, license plate, anything and everything they had on the target, posted in code.
Anyone who chanced on the posting would take the few lines of text for computer error.
But most likely, nobody would stumble on it during the short time before it disappeared.

Mordocai hesitated but for only a second.
He’d had his fun stalking and catching up to the witness bitch.
He’d talked to Kate.
He'd reached out and touched her.
He’d been inside her house.
Now that he had her in the cross-hairs, the thrill was waning.
He needed to finish and move on.
“Tell the client to consider the job done.
Any specific instructions?”

“
It has to look like an accident.”
 

Mordocai hung up, went to the chat room and picked up the contract information, then reserved a one-way ticket to Montreal for Friday night.
That would leave him three days to deal with Kate.

He’d been waiting for either her or the man to move out.
He didn't have exact plans for how to end her, but he knew he wanted to play with her a little first, which would be best done in private.
He frowned at the thought that he might not get that.

He would just have to be creative.
Knowing the time limit helped him focus.
Suddenly he knew exactly how he was going to do it.
Decapitation.
No one asked for that anymore, but he liked the medieval mood of it.
Made him feel like a warrior.

Yes.
That was the right way.
In three days’ time, he would have Kate Bridges’ head on a platter.
Then he'd go and take a suite at the best hotel Montreal had.
He glanced around the cramped room.
He was done with this dump.

* * *

Since Fred had her car, Kate had to walk to the mechanic shop after her shift.
She didn’t mind, even if the weather was a little nippy.
She felt perfectly safe in broad daylight, all of Main Street’s shops open, the sidewalks busy.

“Hey, Kate.”
One of her regular customers passed her, a retired schoolteacher.

“Hi, Verna.
Nice coat.”

“A gift from my sister.”

Verna stepped into the Irish bakery, and Kate kept walking.

She tried not to think of Murph, or the almost kiss.
They'd both been half asleep.
Nothing happened.
And
nothing
would continue to happen.
First step was to stop her lips from tingling every time she thought of him.
Maybe if she didn't keep reliving the moment....
She forced her attention to her surroundings.
 

She liked the town, more so than any other place where she’d hidden so far.
Main Street was all red, white and green, the Christmas decorations still up everywhere, even on the gazebo/bandstand in the middle of Broslin Square.
The bandstand was usually decorated in red, white and blue, but some elf had added evergreen garlands to the railing for the holidays.

“Hello, Kate.”

“Hi, Mrs.
Miller.”

An Amish buggy passed by, horseshoes clopping on the pavement, the sound making Kate smile.
The horse parking spots at the grocery store still tickled her funny bone every time she saw them.

Out at the edge of town toward Lancaster, Amish farms dotted the landscape, but Broslin had plenty of modernized farms, too, and a lot of places that raised horses.
Pennsylvania horse country, the locals called it and told her to wait till she saw how cute the spring foals were.

Except, she’d be gone by then, disappearing in the night with nothing but a note to Eileen about a family emergency.
A day or so later, she’d call to make sure Eileen wasn’t worried enough to call the police, Kate pulled her coat closed against the wind.

She’d tell the boss she wasn’t coming back.
She’d make up a story, lie through her teeth to people who had never done her any harm, had given her nothing but kindness.
No forwarding address would be given.