Without a Trace (4 page)

He turned away from her again. He’d accepted Charlie’s death once. A stroke, a little time bomb in the brain set to go off at a certain time. Fate had said: Charlie, you’ve got sixty-three years, five months, on Earth. Make the best of it. That he’d accepted.

Now he was being told it wasn’t fate; it was three men. Fate was something he was Irish enough to live with. But it was possible to hate men, to pay men back. It was something to think about. Trace decided to get a pot of black coffee and do just that.

“I’ll take you back to your hotel.”

“But—”

“We’ll get some coffee, and you can tell me everything Charlie said, everything you know. Then I’ll tell you if I’ll help you.”

If it was all he’d give, she’d take it. “I checked into the same hotel as you. It seemed practical.”

“Fine.” Trace took her arm and began to walk with her. She wasn’t steady, he noted. Whatever fire had pushed her this far was fading fast. She swayed once, and he tightened his grip. “When’s the last time you ate?”

“Yesterday.”

He gave a snort that might have been a laugh. “What kind of a doctor are you?”

“Physicist.”

“Even a physicist should know something about nutrition. It goes like this. You eat, you stay alive. You don’t eat, you fall down.” He released her arm and slipped his around her waist. She would have protested if she’d had the energy.

“You smell like a horse.”

“Thanks. I spent most of the day bumping around the jungle. Great entertainment. What part of Ireland?”

Fatigue was spreading from her legs to her brain. His arm felt so strong, so comforting. Without realizing it, she leaned against him. “What?”

“What part of Ireland are you from?”

“Cork.”

“Small world.” He steered her into the lobby. “So’s my father. What room?”

“Two twenty-one.”

“Right next door to mine.”

“I gave the desk clerk a thousand pesos.”

Because the elevators were small and heated like ovens, he took the stairs. “You’re an enterprising woman, Dr. Fitzpatrick.”

“Most women are. It’s still a man’s world.”

He had his doubts about that, but he didn’t argue the point. “Key?”

She dug into her pocket, fighting off the weakness. She wouldn’t faint. That she promised herself. Trace took the key from her palm and stuck it in the lock. When he opened the door, he shoved her against the wall in the hallway.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. She swallowed the rest when she saw him draw a hunting knife out of his pocket.

It was all he had. He hadn’t considered it necessary to strap on a gun while on vacation. His eyes were
narrow as he stepped into the room and kicked aside some of the debris.

“Oh, God.” Gillian braced herself in the doorway and looked. They’d done a thorough job. Even someone inexperienced in such matters could see that nothing had been overlooked.

Her suitcase had been cut apart, and the clothes she hadn’t unpacked were strewn everywhere. The mattress and the cushions from the single chair had been slit, and hunks of white stuffing littered the floor. The drawers of the bureau had been pulled out and overturned.

Trace checked the bath and the access through the windows. They’d come in the front, he concluded, and a search of a room this size wouldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes.

“You’ve still got your tail, Doc.” He turned but didn’t sheath the knife. “Pick up what you need. We’ll talk next door.”

She didn’t want to touch the clothes, but she forced herself to be practical. She needed them, and it didn’t matter that other hands had touched them. Moving quickly, she gathered up slacks and skirts and blouses. “I have cosmetics and toiletries in the bath.”

“Not anymore you don’t. They dumped the lot.” Trace took her arm again. This time he checked the hall and moved quietly to the room next door. Again he braced Gillian against the wall and opened the door. His fingers relaxed on the handle of the knife, though only slightly. So they hadn’t made him. That was good. He signaled to her to come in behind him, double locked the door, then began a careful search.

It was an old habit to leave a few telltales, one he followed even off duty. The book on his nightstand was still a quarter inch over the edge. The single strand of hair he’d left on the bedspread hadn’t been disturbed. He pulled the drapes, then sat on the bed and picked up the phone.

In perfect Spanish that had Gillian’s brow lifting, he ordered dinner and two pots of coffee. “I got you a steak,” he said when he hung up the phone. “But this is Mexico, so I wouldn’t expect it for about an hour. Sit down.”

With her clothes still rolled in her arms, she obeyed. Trace pushed himself back on the bed and crossed his legs.

“What are they after?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“They’ve got your brother. Why do they want you?”

“I occasionally work with Flynn. About six months ago I spent some time with him in Ireland on Horizon. We had a breakthrough.” She let her head tilt back against the cushion. “We believed we’d found a way to immunize the individual cell. You see, in ionizing radiation injury the main structure affected is the single cell. Energy rays enter the tissue like bullets and cause localized injury in the cells. We were working on a formula that prevented molecular changes within the affected cells. In that way we could—”

“That’s just fascinating, Doc. But what I want to know is why they’re after you.”

She realized she’d nearly been reciting the information in her sleep and tried to straighten in the chair. “I took the notes on this part of the project with me, back to the institute, to work on them more intensely. Without them it could take Flynn another year, maybe more, to reconstruct the experiment.”

“So you’re the missing piece of the puzzle, so to speak?”

“I have the information.” The words began to slur as her eyes closed.

“You’re telling me you carry that stuff with you?” God save him from amateurs. “Did they get it?”

“No, they didn’t get it, and yes, I have it with me. Excuse me,” she murmured, and went to sleep.

Trace sat where he was for a moment and studied her. Under other circumstances he would have been amused to have a woman he’d known for only a few hours fall asleep in the chair of his hotel room in the middle of a conversation. At the moment, his sense of humor wasn’t what it might have been.

She was deathly pale from exhaustion. Her hair was a fiery halo that spoke of strength and passion. Clothes lay balled in her lap. Her bag was crushed between her hip and the side of the chair. Without hesitation, Trace got up and eased it out. Gillian didn’t move a muscle as he dumped the contents on the bed.

He pushed aside a hairbrush and an antique hammered-silver compact. There was a small paperback phrase book—which told him she didn’t speak the language—and the stub of a ticket for a flight from O’Hare. Her checkbook had been neatly balanced in a precise hand. Six hundred and twenty-eight dollars and eighty-three
cents. Her passport picture was better than most, but it didn’t capture the stubbornness he’d already been witness to. She’d worn her hair loose for it, he noted, frowning a bit at the thick riot of curls that fell beyond her shoulders.

He’d always had a weakness for long, luxuriant, feminine hair.

She’d been born in Cork twenty-seven years before, in May, and had kept her Irish citizenship, though her address was listed as New York.

Trace pushed the passport aside and reached for her wallet. She could use a new one, he decided as he opened it. The leather had been worn smooth at the creases. Her driver’s license was nearly up for renewal, and the picture on it carried the same serious expression as the passport. She had three hundred and change in cash, and another two thousand in traveler’s checks. He found a shopping list folded into the corner of the billfold along with a parking ticket. A long-overdue parking ticket.

A flip through the pictures she carried showed him a black-and-white snapshot of a man and a woman. From the clothes he judged that it had been taken in the late fifties. The woman’s hair was as neat as the collar and cuffs on the blouse she wore, but she was smiling as though she meant it. The man, husky and full-faced, had his arm around the woman, but he looked a bit uncomfortable.

Trace flipped to the next and found a picture of Gillian in overalls and a T-shirt, her head thrown back, laughing, her arms around the same man. He was older by perhaps twenty years. She looked happy, delighted with herself, and nothing like a physicist. Trace flipped quickly to the next snapshot.

This was the brother. The resemblance to Gillian was stronger than with the people Trace assumed were her parents. His hair was a tamer red, almost a mahogany, but he had the same wide-set green eyes and full mouth. In his arms he held a pixie of a girl. She would have been around three, he concluded, with that telltale mane of wildly curling red hair. Her face was round and pleased, showing a dimple near the corner of her mouth.

Before he realized it, Trace was grinning and holding the photo closer to the light. If a picture told a story, he’d bet his last nickel the kid was a handful. He had a weakness for cute kids who had the devil’s gleam in their eyes. Swearing under his breath, he closed the billfold.

The contents of her bag might have told him a few things about her, but there hadn’t been any notes. A few phone calls would fill in the blanks as far as Dr. Gillian Fitzpatrick was concerned. He glanced at her again as she sat sleeping, then, sighing, he dumped everything back in her purse. He might have to wait until morning to get anything else out of her.

When the knock came at the door, she didn’t budge. Trace let the room service waiter set up the table. After giving Gillian three hefty shakes and getting no more than a murmur in response, he gave up. Muttering to himself, he slipped off her sandals, then gathered her up in his arms. She sighed, cuddled and caused him an uncomfortable pressure just under the ribs. She smelled like a meadow with the wildflowers just opening. By the time he’d gotten her into bed, he’d given up on the idea of sleeping himself.

Trace poured his first cup of coffee and settled down to eat his dinner—and hers.

Gillian woke after a solid twelve hours of sleep. The room was dim, and she lay still, waiting for her mind to clear. Quickly, and in order, the events of the previous day came back to her. The bumpy, nerve-racking flight from Mexico City to Mérida. The fear and fatigue. The frustrating search from hotel to hotel. The dingy little cantina where she’d found the man she had to believe would save her brother and her young niece.

This was his room. This was his bed. Cautiously she turned her head—and let out a small groan. He was sleeping beside her, and in all probability he was as naked as the day he was born. The sheet slanted across his bare back, from below the shoulder blade to the waist. His face, a little less harsh, a little less forbidding, in sleep, was inches from hers. She felt then, as she had felt when she’d first seen him the evening before, that it was the face of a man a woman would never be safe with.

Yet she’d spent the night with him and had been safe—safe from him and from whatever forces were after her. More significantly, the moment she had stepped into the room and had finished unburdening herself, she had felt a wave of relief and confidence. He would help, reluctantly, resentfully, but he would help.

Sighing, she shifted in bed, preparing to get up. His hand shot out. His eyes opened. Gillian froze. Perhaps she wasn’t as safe as she’d thought.

His eyes were clear and alert. His grip was firm, and just shy of being painful. Under his fingers, he felt her pulse speed up. Her hair was barely mussed, which told him that exhaustion had held her still through the night. The hours of sleep had faded the shadows under her eyes, eyes that watched him warily.

“You sleep like a rock,” he said mildly, then released her and rolled over.

“The traveling caught up with me.” Her heart was bumping as though she’d run up three flights of stairs. He was dangerous to look at, and too close. Perhaps it was the morning disorientation that caused her to feel that
dull sexual pull.

Before she managed to resist it, her gaze had flicked down—the strong column of neck, the broad chest—and froze. A long red scar marred the tanned skin just right of his heart. It looked as though he’d been ripped open, then put back together. And recently.

“That looks … serious.”

“It looks like a scar.” His voice held no inflection at all as she continued to stare at the wound with horrified eyes. “You got a problem with scars, Doc?”

“No.” She made herself look away, back at his face. It was as hard and blank as his voice. Not my business, she reminded herself. He was a violent man who lived by violent means. And that was exactly what she needed. She got out of bed to stand awkwardly, smoothing her clothes. “I appreciate you letting me sleep here. I’m sure we could have arranged for a cot.”

“I’ve never had a problem sharing a bed.” She was still pale. It gave her a delicate bone-china look that made him edgy. “Feel better?”

“Yes, I—” She reached a hand to her hair as she felt the first wave of embarrassment. “Thank you.”

“Good, because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover today.” He tossed the sheet aside and noted her instinctive flinch. His own discomfort turned to amusement. He wore flesh-colored briefs that left little room for modesty or imagination. Rising without any sign of self-consciousness, he gave her a slow, cocky grin. He liked the fact that she didn’t avert her eyes. Whatever her thoughts, she stood where she was and watched him coolly.

Her throat had gone dry as dust, but she made a passable stab at casualness. “You could use a shower.”

“Why don’t you order up some breakfast while I do?” He turned toward the bath.

“Mr. O’Hurley …”

“Why don’t you make it Trace, sweetheart?” He looked over his shoulder and grinned again. “After all, we just slept together.”

The water was running in the shower before she managed to free the breath that was trapped in her lungs.

He’d done it on purpose, of course, she told herself as she sat on the edge of the bed. It was typical of the
male of the species to flaunt himself. The peacock had his plumage, the lion his mane. Males were always strutting and preening so that the female would be impressed. But who would have guessed the man would be built like that?