Force of Knight Magic (3 page)

Holly Force: age unknown.
Address: unknown.
Place of birth: unknown.
He smiled at the one bit of information that they did have.
Place of employment: agent.
They weren’t even sure which agency she work
ed
for.
But they knew for a fact that it wasn’t for them.
They’d have kept her under lock and key if she had been.

Frank McGuire wanted to bring her in alive and see what they could find out about the beautiful woman
,
but his boss said no.
She was better off dead and forgotten rather than to bring her in and try and convert her. Frank didn’t want to convert her
;
he wanted to fuck her.

When Holly followed Clayton to the table
,
he adjusted the microphone in his ear.
He could now hear everything that was being said at the little table in the corner and the men on the other side of their table, on the other side of the wall really
,
w
ere
recording everything he might miss.
Frank had all the bases covered.
He listened to what Clayton said and hoped they’d get the answers they needed.
If not, he would let her kill this man, he was growing more useless all the time
,
and then he’d follow her back to her room, fuck her brains out
,
then kill her as well.
All good in his book.

“Holly, you’ve no idea how sorry I am about last night.
I don’t know what came over me.
You’re so lovely and I’d had too much to drink that I just…well, I just forgot myself.”
Frank wanted to gag at Clayton’s tone of voice, too sweet and syrupy for his taste. “You have the loveliest eyes.”

Looking down at the photo of her that lay on top of her dossier
, he
agreed with Clayton’s assessment of her eyes.
They were the most brilliant shade of gold he’d ever seen.

“Look
,
big boy, we’re here to have dinner together and you had something to tell me.
Tell me so that I can decide if I stay another day or I move on back to where I came from.”
Frank snickered at her tone.
She was one ballsy bitch.

He looked down again at the folder.
He wasn’t sure why the men upstairs thought she was a hired gun.
To him she looked like every wet dream every male from the age of fifteen on up had had about a beautiful woman.
Big eyes, bigger boobs
,
and an ass that you could bounce a quarter off of and have it land in your beer a table away.

“And where is that?
Hum?
You’ve never told me
any
thing about you.
Where you’re from? What you do?”

Frank waited, holding his breath.

“We’ve known each other for all of five hours so when is it exactly that I was supposed to share with you?” She snorted.
“Never mind, it doesn’t matter.
What is it you wanted to tell me?”

“Tell you?
Oh yeah
,
the big news.”
He leaned toward her and Frank had the sudden urge to go over and pound Clayton’s head against the table. Several times. Hard. “I’m going to come into some big money soon.”

They were working on the angle that she might follow Clayton back to his room on the assumption that she was a money hungry bitch.
Personally
,
Frank didn’t think it would fly
,
but he was only here as support and not calling the shots.
He glanced up when a tall man moved to the bar then promptly dismissed him. He had bigger fish to kill.

“Big money?
How big and—
”
Even from across the room
,
he could see her stiffen.
He wondered about it for all of a few seconds until she started talking again.
“Where did you get all your big money?”

“I’ve been working.
On this deal
,
see
,
and it’s about to pay off.”
Clayton reached over and touched her shoulder and Frank heard a low growl like a wild beast was in the room.
He looked around when Clayton did
,
wondering if he’d heard it too.
“Did you hear that?
It sounded like a tiger or something.”

“Or something.
What did you do for a living that would only just now begin to pay off?”
She looked nervous now and kept glancing around the room.
Frank was suddenly very nervous himself and started to call his men in.

It happened fast.
He’d swear that no one moved when the police questioned him later that night
,
but the blood said otherwise.
When he felt the first warm splash hit him in the face
,
he didn’t even wipe it away.
He felt like a man in a dream, a horrific colorful dream where nothing would ever be right again.

Clayton was dead.
That much did register to him immediately afterwards.
He hadn’t seen his actual death
,
but he had seen the aftermath.
Clapping his hand over his mouth
,
he looked away.
Yes
,
he didn’t like the guy
,
but this…
“
Christ
,
” he muttered.

“You gonna be al
l
right?
You’re sort of looking a little green there.”
Frank looked over at the cop sitting
across from him as
what was left of the men he’d come
here
with
w
ere
strewn all over the room.
“You said you didn’t see anything.
I was asking you how that was possible.
There’s a lot of mess here for no one to have seen it.”

Frank had to agree
,
but that’s exactly what had happened.
Four of his men were dead, murdered in
the
most heinous way possible
,
and yet
,
here he sat.
And another thing that bothered him was the woman. Where the hell had she gone?

Looking down to try and think what to tell the officer
that was
demanding answers
,
Frank knew
that he had none to give
him.
That was when
he noticed that the file was missing too.
He knew it had been there when everything went bad because a perfect outline of it was there on the table with blood all around where it had not been.
He tried to think if he’d moved it or
if
the officer had and knew without much of a doubt that whoever had killed the men has also taken the woman and the file.

Frank was suddenly glad he was retiring after this one.
He’d not thought about it before
,
but now seemed a really good time, hell
,
a great time to get out.
He had money saved and his eye on a piece of property
he was going to buy
in the islands just as soon as this ass let him go.

~~~

Phil opened the door to his room and shoved her inside.
He was covered in blood and so was she.
He sniffed the air and could find nothing more than the woman who’d come in to clean while he’d been gone today.
He held
Holly
still, afraid that one of them would fall apart.
And he was terrified that it was going to be him.

“I can’t breathe.”
He loosened his grip on her but didn’t let her go.
“Phil, are you all right?”

“Yes.
No.” He took a deep breath.
“I fucking have no idea.
Just let me hold you a bit longer.
I don’t…I’m still trying to figure out what happened down there.”

She pulled away and looked up at him.
“That wasn’t you?”
He looked down at her and frowned.
“You didn’t kill those people?”

“No.
I don’t know…it was something else.
Someone else.
I don’t… Christ
,
all I could think about was getting you safe.
Did you get any sense of who it was?”

“I don’t know.
I was having a conversation with my target when all of the sudden he—
”
She shivered in his arms.
“All of the sudden
,
he was just gone.”

Gone.
A good word for what had happened.
The man had been torn apart.
His head had landed near his chair and his arm on the table next to him before Phil had moved to get Holly out of harm’s way.
He had only just seen the file that he still had in his hand at the other man’s table out of chance.
He tucked it into the back of his pants, not sure what it said
,
but knew that they had enough to deal with right now.

“The other people, did you know they were there too?”
She shook her head then nodded.
“Which is it, love? Did you know or not?” He smiled and knew that it was as strained
-
looking as it felt.
Humor
,
he thought
,
wasn’t really coming off right now.
He pulled her head back to his chest.
She snuggled into his neck and he tightened his grip on her.
Christ, he wanted her.

“I could smell them.
Not see…they were all over my target, their smell
,
I mean.
Then I could smell someone else.
Not you, I could see you
,
but this person wasn’t there.
I think that the people that I couldn’t see were already dead when we
—
I need a shower.
Do you think it would be all right if I took one?”

She pulled away and he let her.
When she went to the bath and closed the door behind her
,
he moved to the chair and sat down hard.
When the door clicked behind him a few minutes later
,
he turned to look at her, steam billowing out behind her.

“Will you come and shower with me, Phil?”
He didn’t move as she continued.
“Please?
I need you to come and shower with me right now.”

“If I do
,
Holly, I won’t…I think you might be better off taking one alone.
I will be here when you come out.
I promise you
,
baby, I’m not going anywhere.”
His breath caught when she stepped out of the doorway naked.
“Holly, please, honey.
You’re killing me
,
love. I want you too badly to—
”

“Come to me
,
Phil.
I know what I’m asking you.
I want you to make love to me.
I want you to take me.
Please?
I need to…I want you to make me feel alive again.”
She took a few steps toward him and he stood up.
“Please? Please come and make love to me.”

He walked toward her like a man in a trance.
When he took her outstretched hand into his
,
he kissed it.
He began unbuttoning his shirt one handed as he walked her backwards toward the door.

The bathroom was large.
When he’d checked in earlier that morning
,
his first thought after seeing it was how much fun he and Holly could have in the biggest shower he’d ever seen.
He cupped the back of her neck now and brought her mouth to his.

She tasted of sweet wine.
The glass she’d had in front of her had been a ruby red in the bar and he now knew that it had been a chateau, a warm
,
dark red.
But it was the flavor beneath that he was savoring.

Her tongue slid along his and he lifted her up and sat her on the counter.
Her small hands moved down the buttons on his silk shirt until he felt her hands skim along his chest.
When she touched his nipple
,
he pulled his mouth away to watch what she was doing to him.

“You
r
skin is warm.
I didn’t…I’m sorry, I thought you’d be cold.”
He grinned at her when she flushed.
“You must think I’m so stupid.”