On Thin Ice (14 page)

Even Killian deserved that much.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

She was going to be the death of him, Finn thought as he made his way toward the village. He could lie with the best of them; in fact, it was his stock in trade as an undercover operative for the Committee. He never told the truth if he could help it – a lie was always easier to slip out from under, and he never forgot details.

But he never lied to himself. He’d been hoping he’d dazzle her with his newly-shaven glory. Even without a mirror he knew what he looked like – his face was just one of the many weapons in his arsenal, and he knew how to use it.

It had worked, sort of. Beth Pennington had taken one look at him and freaked. He would have preferred a gentle swoon, accompanied by a “take me now” but he’d always known it wouldn’t be that easy.
She
wouldn’t be that easy. Beth had a wall around her taller and stronger than any of the ones he’d erected around himself. He ought to respect a fellow refugee, leave her in peace.

Dylan was right, of course. He was going to look for a piece of tail to work off his three-year drought, and Sister Beth wasn’t the woman to take care of him. He needed a professional.

It was a ten-minute walk back to the tiny cantina, and all the way he thought about exactly what he would do. Maybe start with a blowjob to take the edge off him, then follow with a more leisurely straightforward fuck, and then they could start getting creative. Problem was, each act he envisioned wasn’t with some raven-haired beauty. It was with a pale blond almost-nun.

By the time he reached the cantina he was disgusted with himself. The place was crowded, and showing himself among so many people wasn’t necessarily the best idea, particularly since he recognized one of Redbeard’s men busy flirting with one of the barmaids. He skirted the building, then moved through the village, silent as a shadow, until he found the right vehicle for their needs.

He wasn’t going to take some farmer’s beat-up truck, or the desperately-needed transportation belonging to some poor family, not if he could help it. But parked a ways back from cantina was an SUV that, while showing wear and tear, was too expensive a vehicle for anyone in this village to afford. The bullet holes in the rear fender clinched the deal. Just to make certain it would be there when he needed it he removed the distributor cap, closing the hood silently again, and then made his way back to the mission.

It was a beautiful night. The moon was half-f, giving his excellent night vision a clear view of the surrounding area, and he sank to the ground at the wall beside the entrance to the mission, his gun across his lap, ready for use, forcing his body to relax. It didn’t matter that he’d rather be pumping away between the thighs of the barmaid that Redbeard’s man would probably end up with. It didn’t matter that even more, he wanted to spend all his pent-up energy and frustration on Beth Pennington’s pale body. He did what he had to do.

Long ago he’d perfected his almost trance-like state, where he could keep watch and still manage to rest his body enough to keep going. He felt his heart rate slow, his breathing drop, and he waited, through the long, silent night, protecting his little chickens.

It felt . . . odd not to have someone watching him. To know he could simply walk away, go wherever he wanted to go, with nothing holding him back but the two helpless children now sound asleep in the old mission.

Except that Beth was neither a child, nor helpless. She didn’t have the skills to survive this place, but she would go down fighting if it came to that. But now, he didn’t want to be thinking about Beth Pennington going down. He was already horny enough.

The night birds kept him company. They’d always avoided the rebel encampments, scared away by the noisy men and their raucous laughter. He’d ended up killing Izzy, and he shouldn’t feel regret. Izzy had raped and murdered a nun, caused her to die in shame and agony. But he’d also been as close a friend to MacGowan as any of them. Hell, he’d learned long ago that things weren’t black and white but shades of gray, and no one was all bad or all good. He did what he had to do at the time, and hoped karma sorted it all out in the end.

What kind of karma had brought him Beth? She wasn’t his type – he liked them busty and enthusiastic, not thin and aristocratic. He kept telling himself it was simply because she was the first woman he’d seen in God knew how long, but he knew that was just an excuse. He could have had fucking Angelina Jolie there and he wouldn’t look at her.

Which meant, of course, that he needed to keep his bloody paws off her.

Easier said than done, mate
, he told himself. And he leaned back, lowering his eyelids to mere slits, and kept watch.

He didn’t wait for the sun to rise. The first light was just coming over the trees beyond the mission, and he could picture the blue Atlantic Ocean waiting for them. He’d gone back for the SUV, returning the distributor cap, and driven it back to the mission, filling the back of the vehicle with anything he thought might come in handy. He woke Dylan up first, sent him to make coffee and get ready to go, and then he moved toward Beth’s room.

Loud knocking would do the job. She’d probably locked the door, maybe even dragged stuff across it if she had any sense. He turned the handle, and it opened far too easily.

The room was warm, and she lay stretched across the twin bed. She was wearing men’s boxers and a tank top, standard sleepwear for women who weren’t interested in seduction, and her silver blonde hair was spread out over the pillow.

He stared for a long moment. He could see her breasts quite clearly through the thin fabric. A B-cup, when he preferred a generous handful. Pale nipples, when he liked them dark. And he would have given ten years off his life to yank up that damned shirt and put his mouth on them.

She stirred, curling up protectively, her hand tucked under her chin, as if she knew he was watching. She had long, gorgeous legs – he had no complaints there. Fuck, who was he kidding? He had no complaints about any part of her. Except the fact that she was so patently out of his league.

She opened her eyes then, startled, looking up at him, and again there was the frisson of shock. He wasn’t sure what caused it, he only knew it couldn’t be good. And the sooner he got to civilization and got righteously laid, the better.

“Time to go, Sister Beth,” he said. “The car’s waiting.”

“Car?” Her voice was soft and raspy with sleep, another fucking turn-on. “You were able to borrow a car?”

“Stole it might be a little closer to the truth. You want to travel like that?”

She flipped the cover over her body, a little too late since he’d already had plenty of time to peruse her. “Just give me a minute.”

“Okay.” He didn’t move.

“Alone.”

He gave her a mock salute. “At your command, Sister Beth.” And he wandered off, leaving the door wide open.

Dylan’s abilities with making coffee equaled his social graces, so MacGowan kicked him out of the kitchen, making it himself, so strong it would strip paint. No milk in the place, but there was a jar of creamer on the shelf, and he shoved enough in the thermos to turn the color a dark brown instead of the deep black. By the time Beth appeared she looked like a different woman. Her blonde hair was braided in a thick braid, and she had a kerchief tying it back, disguising its color. She wore some kind of long, drapey skirt and a loose shirt, and he suspected this was what she normally wore down here. He decided to wait to tell her what she was going to end up in.

Of course Dylan had already deposited himself on the front seat of the SUV. MacGowan kicked him into the back, barely waited long enough for Beth to get her seat belt buckled, and then they were off, driving as fast on the almost non-existent roads as he dared, so that by the time the sun had fully risen they were miles away.

She’d taken one sip of his coffee, shuddered in horror and set it back. He could feel her eyes on him, and without turning he said, “What?”

“Your hair. Exactly what color is your hair?”

“Why the fuck do you care?” he countered. He hadn’t bothered trying to cut it, and it reached to his shoulders. He caught a piece and pulled it in front of his eyes, frowning. “It used to be brown, but I dyed it black when I came down here. What color is it now?”

“Why did you dye it?”

“None of your damned business.”

He wondered whether he’d shut her up, but after a moment she spoke again. “Well, it’s brown, I can see that. And there’s some red there too.”

“Yeah, that happens.”

“And bleached blond from the sun, and some black left from the dye, and an awful lot of white.”

“White?” he demanded, horrified. “Shit, I’m only thirty-six.”

“Three years,” she said.

“Christ.” He rubbed a hand through the long mass of hair. “I’m too fucking young.”

“How old was your father when his hair started turning gray?”

He felt the familiar coldness fill him, but he answered her question. “He died when he was younger than I am.”

A shocked intake of breath. “I’m so sorry. How did he die?”

“Starved himself to death in Maze prison as part of the hunger strikes.”

He’d managed to shock her into silence. “He was IRA?”

“Obviously,” he said flippantly. “Though not to begin with. He was put in prison for beating my mother to death, and decided to become a martyr when he realized he’d never get out. So he’s on a list of fucking heroes and I changed my name rather than live with that legacy.”

She was only silent a moment. “I think you do anyway.”

He almost drove off the road. He wanted to grab her by both arms and shake her, but he simply gripped the steering wheel so tightly he could have bent the steel, and kept driving. “Well, that’s my cross to bear, now isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Damn the woman and her utter calm. He’d wanted to shock her, and instead she’d listened with her quiet attention and refused to feel sorry for him. Which he would have hated, but her lack of pity pissed him off as well.

“So since you’re telling me this much, why don’t you tell me what you do for a living?” she said after a moment.

“I kill people.”

Again no shock. “I already noticed. What else do you do?”

His anger disappeared just as suddenly as it had come on, and he laughed. “I’m a spy, me darling. A super-secret operative who goes undercover to see what the real bad guys are doing, kills when ordered to, rescues hostages when the money’s good enough. You see, you couldn’t have come across a better man to get you away from the Guiding Light.”

“I agree. The question is, why didn’t you get away sooner? Or was that part of your undercover assignment?”

He frowned briefly. “They knew exactly who I was, and they weren’t taking any chances. I’d been sent down to take out their leader. I almost got away twice, but each time they brought me back. I have no idea why they kept me alive – as far as I know they never asked for ransom, and the Committee wouldn’t have paid any. That’s part of the deal. If things go south we’re on our own. Except that they’re supposed to make an effort to get you out, not just fucking forget about you.”

He sensed rather than saw her nod. “Well, then I just have to be glad you were still there when they brought me. Though maybe I would have been all right. After all, they could have gotten a very large ransom for me, and they would have wanted to keep me in good condition.”

He shook his head. “You would have been dead in twenty-four hours. Redbeard would have been furious, but Carlos and Izzy had plans, and I don’t think you would have survived. And if you had, you would have wished you hadn’t.”

“And you were going to leave me to them?”

Now she was getting the point. “Darlin’, it was about me getting out, not saving the fucking world,” he said. “It still is.”

For a long moment she said nothing. “Good to know.” Her voice was cool, emotionless, and he was almost sorry he’d set her straight as to what a total son of a bitch he was. “But you’re committed to see Dylan and me safe now, right? Because we’re worth so much money to you?”

“Exactly.”

“And what are you going to do with all that money?”(“Go back to England and kill the people who left me here,” he said in a cold, uncompromising voice.

He expected her to argue, but she said nothing. “Dude,” came Dylan’s plaintive voice from the backseat.

“Shut up,” MacGowan and Beth said in unison.

Who would have thought the jungle would feel cold, Beth thought as she rubbed her arms. She stared out at the lush greenery as MacGowan drove too damned fast and wondered whether she’d ever feel warm again.

She shouldn’t be surprised by anything Finn had said. So she’d had delusions about him being something noble when he was, in fact, nothing but a mercenary. He’d said as much, from the very beginning, but at some point along the way she’d wanted to imbue him with nobler principles. She’d been a fool.

She could tell herself she was with MacGowan’s clean-shaven, too-attractive doppelganger. The man who’d saved her life, bandaged her feet, killed for her, kept her warm, teased her, and watched over her had been left behind on the mountain. This cold-eyed man beside her would have left her at the first chance he got if it weren’t for the money. The real MacGowan wouldn’t have, even though he threatened.

Hell, she didn’t know what was what anymore. She only knew she’d had enough of death, and yet it followed MacGowan like a cloud. Once they reached a port city they could part ways, once he was assured of proper compensation for getting her away from La Luz, though what was proper was beyond her. One hundred thousand dollars? Five hundred thousand? A million?

Exactly what was her life worth? Surely not any more than kindly Father Pascal’s.

He made two stops, one in a medium-sized town, coming out of a store with a bag of food and what looked like a cell phone. “Are you going to let me use that?” she asked as she and Dylan drained the canned fruit juices he’d bought.

“Dream on.” He kept it beside him. “We’re not safe until we’re out of this country, and it’s too easy to track cell phones. They’ll be watching your family, and the kid’s.”