Run Among Thorns (32 page)

Hospitals were the same the world over, John decided. Too many strange noises, too many artificial smells, and far too many uncomfortable beds.

He shifted, trying to find a way to lie that didn’t make his head pound. Not possible. Dozing on and off all day, under the influence of drugs and boredom, left him wide awake most of the night. Light seeped under the door of his private room, but the glow of the monitors was gone—they’d disconnected him from everything yesterday. Now they were just waiting for the pain to subside, until they were satisfied he could fly.

His skull wasn’t fractured; the bullet had only skimmed. But the trauma had concussed him, and he’d lost a lot of blood from the ragged scalp wound. The doctors had called him lucky. He didn’t think they’d be using that word if they had a headache like his.

But it was only his head, now, that hurt. Kendrick was gone, the Agency under investigation. Davids, he was told, was in custody, and Groven had been spotted in Mexico. There was a kind of peace in him. But there was a piece missing, too. He closed his eyes again, but that didn’t help.

Outside in the corridor, one of the night nurses went by, soft-footed and slow, shadowing the light under the door.

Inside the room someone stirred.

Blood beat in his ears. There was someone curled in the chair in the corner. Holding his breath, he could hear theirs, slight and even. His eyes flicked towards the panic button, but it was a long stretch, and he could hardly do it without being noticed.

“John?”

He gasped a breath, sweat breaking on his forehead.
“Alice?
How did you get here?”

“I can go if you want,” she said, dryly.

He retained enough wit to answer that one fast enough. “No! No, please stay. I didn’t expect you, I didn’t think …”

“The police got in touch. I got the next flight.”

She made it sound simple, when he thought they’d passed out the other side of simple a long time ago.

“Thank you,” he said, meaning it.

They sat together in silence for a while, long enough for the nurse to come back the other way.

He wished he wasn’t in hospital, in a bed. Wished he had any confidence that he could get up and go to her without passing out or throwing up.

“They’re expecting to discharge you in a day or two,” she said.

“Right. When do you have to go back?”

A little rustle of clothing—a shrug? “No rush. I’m not expected anywhere. Work can wait. You?”

It took him a moment to work out what she was asking. “I don’t have a job.”

There was a pause. “Good,” she said. “Maybe next time you can get a job you can talk to me about.”

He was scared to open his mouth, scared anything he said might break the thin, insubstantial strand of hope in him. He swallowed, hating the dryness of the hospital room that made his throat tight and painful. “I’d … like that.”

She didn’t answer.

“So where do we go from here?” he asked, knowing the answer he was looking for wasn’t
the airport
or
a hotel
.

He thought she shifted on the chair, but he couldn’t be sure. “Where do you
want to
go from here?” she asked, her voice a thin sound he had to strain to hear. Grimacing at the pain, he turned his head on the pillow, but she was just a loose shape in the darkness, indistinct.

Memory filled the gaps, though. He knew her face, knew her body. Knew the way she moved. Knew that when her voice faded, it was because her heart was beating the louder.

“Home,” he said. And now his eyes were stinging, and that had to be the air-conditioning, too.

“And do you want us to go home together, John?”

“I thought—”

“I got a police officer on my doorstep telling me my husband had been shot in the head, John. It tends to clarify things.”

He almost smiled, but his face was stiff, uncooperative.

“Do you want us to go home together, John?” she asked again, and he could barely hear her at all.

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

It wasn’t happily ever after. But it was a start.

Two days later, a bird watcher from Hawick found Kendrick’s body in Budle Bay, rolled up against the high-water mark, near the dunes on the south side. The water had been cold, he wasn’t much disfigured, and the police were able to make an identification from records supplied.

Chapter
        FIFTEEN

A
lan entered the sitting room with a tray holding two bowls of soup with rolls and butter. The scent that rose off them was redolent of parsnip and warm winter vegetables, but even though Jenny had loved soups like those in the past, she couldn’t quite ignore the way her stomach heaved at the smell.

Her brother set her bowl down on the coffee table in front of her, and she curled her feet more closely under her on the settee. She tried to stifle the sigh that was drawn out of her, but Alan’s sharp glance told her he’d still heard it.

A week ago he’d told her that she was heaving vast sighs all the time, and until that time, she hadn’t noticed. Now she was aware almost of every breath. Had even caught herself dully counting them when she was down here in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, not wanting to think.

“Do you want to watch a DVD or something, Jen?” he asked, waving a spoon at the TV.

“If you like.” Try as she might, she couldn’t inject any enthusiasm into her voice.

He ate in silence for a while. Although he didn’t remark on it, she knew he was recording the fact that she wasn’t eating her soup, and chalking it up as another thing to worry about.

“Did you call work today?”

She shrugged. “What’s the point? I’m not going to change my mind. It doesn’t matter that the bosses are keen to have me back. I can’t work there.”

“Maybe things have calmed down, Jen. They’ll forget it in time, won’t they?”

“Forget that their colleague killed three men stone dead? I don’t think so.” It had been painful leaving, but two weeks of sidelong glances, sudden silences, and growing distance had made it impossible for her to stay. Even her friends couldn’t quite deal with what had happened, couldn’t behave as if nothing had changed.

Well, it had changed. She had changed. She was edgier, moodier, short of temper. Once, she’d shouted unnecessarily at an adminstrative assistant for botching some typing and had actually seen a flash of real fear in the other woman’s eyes. She had marched into her manager’s office that afternoon and handed in her resignation. He’d been relieved. Oh, on the surface he’d been reluctant, and supportive, but underneath it all, she’d seen the relief.

And home … wasn’t home anymore. She didn’t fit in any of the old spaces in her life.

So she’d got out of there in a big way. Left the county, went to stay with Alan, who’d come home from his mysterious business trip about a week after she’d left Kier. She’d stayed in the house, mostly.

Trying not to think about Kier.

And failing. Failing miserably. Failing in misery, especially at night, when she’d creep downstairs and cry into a kitchen towel, shaking and hating herself for being weak. For loving a man because he had been stronger than her, because she was suffering from some sort of misguided sense of gratitude to a man who had hurt her.

It was almost as bad in the mornings after Alan had gone to work, when she’d awake from a fitful parody of sleep and be so exhausted and run-down that she actually felt nauseated. Sometimes she’d even vomit, holding back her hair as best she could, wishing she wasn’t alone. Every day facing the stupid vulnerability of her own heart, and hating it.

Alan set down his bowl with a snap, making her jump. She jumped a lot these days, at the slightest thing.

“Jenny,” he said. “I can’t just sit around and let you do this to yourself. Let you let
him
do this to you.”

She tried to wave a hand at him to stop him. “Alan, please …”

“For God’s sake, Jenny, he kidnapped you, terrified you, forced you to go with him, and then abandoned you when he’d sorted out a problem that was all about him anyway, and you’re eating yourself up about this … this clown!”

It was clear on his face that he wanted to call Kier something very different. He wouldn’t be so diffident if he’d heard some of the names she’d sobbed in the night, or spat down the toilet.

She stared at the fire, and thought about that time she’d spent with Kier, so short and so eventful.

“He also risked his life for me. Cared for my needs, tried to protect me, and gave me his trust.”

Touched me, loved me, gave me pleasure I’m scared to be without.

“Oh, come on, Jenny, it was just a power trip for him. He didn’t really care about you.” Alan got up irritably, and cleared the bowls through into the kitchen.

That’s not the issue. It’s whether I really care about him, or if I’m just being weak.

He came back and stood there, hands on his hips, frowning.

“He doesn’t really love you, Jen, and you don’t really love him. You have to get past this,” he said. He came round and perched on the coffee table in front of her, tugging one of her hands free and holding it in his.

She looked at him, and saw the honest concern mixed up with the exasperation in his face.

“Jenny, I’m scared for you. You’re always tired, barely sleeping, and don’t think I don’t know you’re being sick once in a while. You torture yourself about this bully, and he couldn’t get rid of you fast enough when it was all over.”

No. You’re wrong
. She remembered what Kier had said to her in those last moments. So caught up in her own uncertainty and pain, she’d barely heard him at the time. But she did now, loud and clear.
Stay with me
.

So it wasn’t a declaration of undying love, but it was a start, wasn’t it? She wavered yet again. Caught between what her mind was telling her and the words her heart was speaking, she was tearing herself apart. And she knew it, too.

“I left him, you know. He wanted me to stay.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t let him explain.”

“No, I mean, why did you leave him?”

Jenny shrugged, staring past him at the fire. “None of it was real. It was all so extraordinary. What sort of relationship can be founded on that? On stress and fear and running.”

“Fair enough, but that doesn’t say exactly why you left him.”

“Because I thought I loved him, but that couldn’t be true. I had to be deceiving myself.”

“Why, Jenny?” His voice was soft, and although he had been raging that Kier had never cared about her earlier, she sensed he was willing to believe what she said now. He’d always supported her, been the good big brother, even if he hadn’t been there a lot of the time. But she heartily wished he wasn’t forcing her to pick at her wounds just now.

“Oh, you know what I’m like!” she said, with a kind of pained vehemence. “I’ll throw my heart over every time, and then be surprised when it gets trampled on. I never listen to my head! I knew what it was going to be like,
knew
I was going to love him right from the start. Even when he didn’t believe me, when he was still against me, it was like falling out of control.” She couldn’t say any more, her throat was choked, aching with tears. It had been hopeless right from the start.

“Right from the start?” Alan asked. Preoccupied with her own misery, Jenny had to think to work out what he meant. He moved to sit on the sofa beside her, and dropped an arm round her shoulders.

“Oh, yes,” she murmured, remembering that first cognisant morning with Kier. “I knew I was lost from the start, really.”

“It wasn’t just when he started being nice to you?”

“No. Pathetic, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“No?” she questioned, puzzled, turning a little to look up at his face. There was a trace of something that looked like resignation there— his mouth was tipped in a lopsided smile, and if his eyes were sad, they were warm, too.

“Answer me this, Jen. Do you love him?”

She wailed, shaking her head. “My heart says yes, but my head—”

“No!” He held up a hand to silence her little outburst. “Forget splitting yourself up into pieces. Forget setting your heart against your mind. It’s just you, yourself, Jenny.”

You. Yourself. Herself. To my own self be true.

“Are you in love with Kier, Jenny?”

The whole world stilled, crystallised, bright light splitting to a radiant rainbow and running back together, pure and clear. So clear.

“I am,” she said, and smiled the first real smile she had smiled since she’d been alone.

She was. It wasn’t weakness that made her love Kier, it was a strength she was only just beginning to suspect she had. When everything was against it, still she’d been drawn to him, still she’d been prepared to be his, no questions, no demands. If she’d have met him in the street, out of the blue, she’d have been drawn to him. If she’d met him any other way, she’d have loved him.

She’d always feared losing herself in his strength. But the only time she had truly felt lost was when he had been taken from her. Jenny had never lost herself in Kier. She’d found herself.

Alan got up and went over to the computer desk at the other end of the room, turning the PC on.

“What are you doing?” she asked in confusion.

“Booking you a flight.”

She felt her mouth drop open. He knew there was no way she could afford a flight to the US with no job and an empty bank account. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes.

“And while I’m booking you a flight, I suggest you book yourself a doctor’s appointment.”

“A doctor’s appointment? Why?”

“Because I think you’re pregnant.”

Jenny felt sick. Really, physically sick.

The flight wasn’t bad, although it was far too slow for her. But now she’d arrived at her destination after all those hours of travelling, and
here
was very definitely bad.

Alan had been clear about it. “It’s all very well, Jen, but how on earth are you actually going to find him? You haven’t even got a state to peg him to, have you? And he never struck me as the sort of person you could look up in a directory.”

No, he wasn’t that type of person. He was secretive and self-sufficient and private. And strong and powerful and gorgeous.

That was a bar to thinking straight, too. Back in England, she’d worked so hard to
not
think about Kier. Now that the self-imposed prohibition was lifted, her mind was running wild. Reminding her what it had been like to be with him. The sound of his dark voice, the touch of large, rough-skinned hands, so gentle for hands so strong. That hard, mobile mouth fastened around her nipple. The abrasion of hairy thighs between her own, his hips, pushing, straining.

She closed her eyes and took a deep steadying breath trying to tamp down feelings that threatened to become the one focus of her whole life. They were, really. She wanted, needed to find Kier, and do it quickly. Only there was just the one connection she had with anything in the US. Only one way to find him.

Jenny didn’t want to think about that, yet. Not yet. So she kept her eyes closed and thought about something else.

About the little visit to the doctor before she left. Her face ached with smiling.

She was carrying Kier’s child.

Oh, God, the image of the two of them, together, with a dark-haired child in his image, was so strong, so real she felt like she could reach out and touch him. There was warmth to be had in that sensation. Warmth tied with a bittersweet kind of longing that was so strong it was like the anticipation of physical pleasure.

She guessed when it had happened. That second time in Alan’s house, in the chair. It had honestly never occurred to her at the time, but they hadn’t used any protection at all that time. She remembered that feeling she had had, that nothing would ever be the same again. How right she was.

Jenny was going to have his child. Which gave her all the more reason to find him. Although, if she was honest with herself, which she was being increasingly these days, she didn’t need any other reason to go after Kier. She had to find him. Failure was not an option. She’d follow him to hell’s gates and beyond if that’s what it took.

Which was appropriate, considering her destination.

She snapped her eyes open. She was parked in her rental car a few hundred yards from the entrance to the Agency’s headquarters, staring at the razor wire and massive gates. Her stomach churned, and she pulled sweaty hands from the wheel to wipe them on her suit trousers. Her fingers were trembling, and she watched them dispassionately for a moment, wondering what the hell she was trying to prove.

She couldn’t help remembering how she’d felt the last time she’d been here, and those memories magnified her present anxiety, till she felt as beaten and bruised as she had when they’d taken her in, and handed her over to McAllister.

Which was why she was here. It was the only way she knew how to get hold of him.

She could do this. It wasn’t as if they were still after her. Kier had carefully drawn a line under all that.
But…
and there was a but, she thought.
What if…

Jenny gave herself a mental shake and forced her trembling fingers to turn the ignition key again. Fumbling with the strange automatic gear shift for a moment, she put it into drive, and carefully pulled away from the kerb and towards the entrance. One of the guards was already stepping out of the booth. He was armed.