The Heart of a Renegade
Loreth Anne White

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my editor—Susan Litman,

for continuing to believe in me.

And to Johnny Onefeather, for the brainstorming.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Prologue

Jessica Chan scrambled under the drooping boughs of a giant hemlock, her camera bag dragging through needles and loam, heavy wet branches drenching the thin fabric of her blouse.

Shaking from cold and nerves, she huddled tight against the base of the tree and peered through the curtain of branches as two Asian men emerged from the apartment building across the street.

They stopped, looked down the road for her.

Her heart stalled as she saw the glint of steel in one of the men’s hands.

The knife that had just killed her friend Stephanie.

The blade that had been meant for her, not her friend.

For a terrifying moment Jessica thought they’d seen her. She shut her eyes, telling herself it was not possible. The winter night was black as pitch, cloud low, freezing rain falling. There were no lights in the park.

One of the men cursed violently in Chinese and her pulse raced.

There was no doubt in Jessica’s mind—they were members of the Dragon Heads Triad.

And she was certain they would kill her because of what she’d seen—and photographed—in Chinatown that morning, because of the images still undeveloped on the roll of film in her Minolta camera.

She clutched her camera bag against her chest and watched as the men moved down the street, disappearing into the alley where Stephanie’s body lay.

Shivering violently, Jessica remained hidden under the hemlock branches in the park for hours, the image of the men knifing Stephanie rolling in a sickening loop through her brain.

Stephanie Ward had been Jessica’s closest friend, her only friend in this new city. She had invited Jessica to come to Vancouver from the U.K. to start afresh, offering Jessica a job at the small Canadian television station where she worked.

Jessica had been so grateful. Three years after her brutal kidnapping ordeal in China, she had finally abandoned psychotherapy and drug treatments, and her hallucinations hadn’t occurred for a while. She’d thought she was finally getting her life back on track.

Until she’d gone shopping in Chinatown that morning.

Until she’d seen—and photographed—Dragon Heads kingpin Xiang-Li, a wanted man in several countries, along with the unnamed man responsible for the pharmacological torture that had nearly destroyed her in China three years ago. A man Jessica called The Chemist.

Those two men had stolen her life. One of them was a man no one would even admit existed.

Jessica had gone straight to cops. She’d told no one else about her photographs apart from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but somehow the Triad had still been tipped off.

They’d ransacked her apartment, taken the negatives and prints from the one roll she’d already developed, then come for her. Too afraid to return to the police, Jessica had run to Steph’s apartment with the second roll still undeveloped in her camera.

The men must have followed her, been waiting in the dark alley for her to come out. Because of Stephanie’s height and coloring they must have mistaken her for Jessica when she’d borrowed Jessica’s raincoat and nipped out for cheesecake. They’d realized their mistake when they’d pulled the hood back from Steph’s face and looked up to see Jessica standing on the balcony. Watching in horror.

Tears finally filled Jessica’s eyes. Steph was dead.

And it was her fault.

It was well after midnight before Jessica finally dared leave the cover of the hemlock. The temperature was plunging and icy needles of rain stung her face. She was shaking uncontrollably, the first stages of hypothermia setting in, confusing her mind.

She had nowhere to go. No one to trust.

Not even the police.

Her cell phone was in the pocket of her coat—on Stephanie’s body. So was her driver’s license and her keys. The RCMP were going to be looking for her in connection with murder now. And she was being hunted by one of the biggest—and deadliest—Chinese organized crime syndicates.

There was only one person in the world who might be able to help her. Giles Rehnquist, her old colleague in Shanghai, would believe what she’d seen. He’d know what to do. She just had to reach a pay phone and call him in Shanghai.

Before the Triad got to her first.

Chapter 1

Luke Stone hunched over his shopping cart, black wool hat pulled low over his brow, eyes trained on the woman.

A blast of steam roiled from a vent in the sidewalk, disappearing with a white hiss into the frigid February night, but not for one instant did his focus stray from the woman standing alone outside the phone booth.

She was underdressed for these temperatures, shivering as she rubbed bare hands and checked her watch. He noted the heavy camera bag slung over her shoulder.

It was definitely Jessica Chan, ex-BBC foreign correspondent, Shanghai bureau. Here in Gastown at the appointed booth, at the allotted hour. His principal.

Luke no longer accepted close protection gigs. Not since he’d failed to protect the most important people in his life—his wife and unborn child. It was written right into his contract with the Force du Sablé, and he’d refused this job point-blank. But they’d told him he was the only person who could reach Jessica in time. Without Luke’s help, she would die.

Tonight.

Luke hoped to be rid of her in a matter of hours. Then he could get back to life the way he liked it. Alone.

The nearby steam clock released a sharp whistle and she jerked round, her straight, waist-length hair shimmering under the neon of the store sign behind her as she spun to face his direction. Her skin was pure porcelain in the eerie light, her exotic eyes glittering. Even from his position he could see they were the color of fine single-malt whiskey. With a small punch to the gut Luke realized the lady was startlingly beautiful. And very, very frightened.

She had reason to be.

Not only were the cops after her, she was being hunted by one of deadliest Asian gangs in existence. Now the CIA wanted her, too—ever since she’d placed a call to undercover CIA operative Giles Rehnquist based at the CNN bureau in Shanghai two days ago.

That phone call had cost Rehnquist his life.

And that’s why Luke was here now, to bring her in and to hand her—and the film in her camera—over to the CIA before she died, too.

She didn’t know yet that her “journalist” friend would not be there to take the call she was about to place. To the best of Luke’s knowledge, Jessica Chan had no idea Rehnquist was CIA.

It was almost 11:00 p.m. now, the time Rehnquist had told her to phone him from this booth, and a dank fog was crawling up from the docks, fingering through the historic brick alleys that led off in all directions.

Luke tossed a can into his cart as he inched closer. The sound caught her attention and she shot a look directly at him, missing what had just snared his interest—an Asian man in a leather jacket lingering just beyond a pool of light that spilled from a restaurant window.

The Asian quietly signaled another man in a dark doorway down the street. Both were watching Jessica, closing in on her from either end of the alley.

Luke pushed his cart faster toward his principal, head bent low as he mumbled to himself.

The Gastown steam clock shot out a powerful blast and began the hourly Windsor chimes. It was eleven o’clock. Jessica Chan stepped into the booth, picked up the receiver and rapidly began to punch in numbers.

A car drove by, tires crackling on slick cobblestones as tiny flakes of snow began to crystallize in the frigid air. By the time the vehicle had passed, Luke had lost visuals on both men.

His pulse quickened and he unholstered his weapon.

Giles was dead?

Jessica clenched the phone, her mouth turning dry as she tried to absorb what the woman at the CNN bureau in Shanghai was telling her. The one man who could help her was…gone. Confusion clouded her brain.

She’d spoken to him only two days ago, after Stephanie’s murder. She’d told him everything.

Giles had instructed her to lay low in a cheap hotel, use only cash and call him back from this exact same pay phone in forty-eight hours. In the meantime he’d find a way to help her. He had been Jessica’s last resort.

Her only hope.

And now he was dead.

Panic strafed her chest as the implications hit her and she slammed down the receiver. But just as she turned to run, a gunshot shattered a pane of glass near her ear.

She screamed and dropped down, covering her head with both hands and scrunching her eyes tight as a hail of bullets blew out another pane and shards rained down over her.

There was a moment of deathly silence before another exchange of gunfire shattered a store window across the street. Jessica heard glass tinkle to the frozen sidewalk. A security alarm began to wail. A woman screamed. More shouts came from the opposite direction as footsteps rang out on the cobblestones and a man yelled for someone to call 911.

She had to leave before the cops arrived.

Clutching her camera bag, Jessica surged to her feet, but as she tried to bolt from the booth, a man grabbed her, yanking her forcibly backward. Jessica screamed, fighting back with every ounce of strength. But she was no match against his iron grip. He whirled her round to face him and her heart clean stopped.

It was the Dumpster diver, morphed from a bent and fragile shape into something huge, ominous and incredibly powerful. He reeked of old booze, yet his pale gray eyes were sharp as flint against his grease-blackened face.

She opened her mouth in terror, but he pressed a gloved palm over it. “Don’t make a sound,” he whispered against her ear. “I’m here to help you.”

He released her mouth slowly, testing her resolve. But Jessica couldn’t have uttered a word if she’d tried.

She couldn’t even breathe.

He took her jaw in powerful fingers, twisting her face quickly toward the light. “Looks okay,” he said, wiping blood from her cheek with a callused thumb. “Just a shallow cut.” His voice was rough gravel, his accent Australian.

Out of the corner of her eye Jessica could see a man’s body splayed inhumanly across the sidewalk, a gun at his side. Another body sprawled to the right of him. Both were Asian. People were gathering around them.

Her eyes shot back to the man holding her. He was holstering a pistol. He’d shot those men. He’d just saved her from the triad. She struggled to absorb the contradicting images he telegraphed. His tattered gloves had no fingertips, his hat was old black wool, his jacket threadbare tweed. He stunk of booze, yet there was no alcohol on his breath. She couldn’t make any sense of him.

The yelling and footsteps grew louder, and police sirens began to wail.

Jessica shot a last desperate look down the road, toward the sound of approaching sirens. Right now she didn’t know which was the worse evil—the police who’d betrayed her, or him.

“You don’t want the cops, Jessica,” he warned, his fingers encircling her arm.

He knew her name! Her eyes whipped back to him.

He drew her body firmly up against his. “Listen to me, Jessica,” he said quietly. “I can tell you what happened to Giles Rehnquist, but right now your life depends on following my orders. Now run.”

He hunkered low, pulling her by the hand at a clip over irregular paving as the sirens grew louder. They ducked into Blood Alley, and he forced her hard up against a rough brick wall as Vancouver Police Department cruisers converged on the scene of the shooting, car doors swinging open, officers barking commands. Cops quickly began to fan out, heading their way with flashlights beaming through the fog.

“This way,” he whispered, pulling her after him. They ran for the alley exit, but a squad car slowed in front of it, barring their escape. He turned and shoved her down between two overflowing Dumpsters that flanked the service entrance of an Irish pub, pinning her down firmly against bags of garbage with his weight. “Don’t move,” he murmured against her hair. The smothering stench of stale sweat and booze permeating the tattered tweed of his jacket made her gag, but the soft sweater against his hard body smelled soapy clean. Masculine.

Jessica closed her eyes, trying to calm herself. She could feel the strong, steady beat of his heart against her chest. It was a strangely comforting sensation. In a foreign city where she’d been cut off from everything including her clothes, apartment, cell phone and colleagues—a city where she was beginning to wonder if she could even trust her own mind—this man felt solid. He felt real. Capable. And he hadn’t betrayed her.

Yet.

The sounds in the distance grew less frenetic, but still her rescuer didn’t move and her legs were going numb. She tried to wiggle feeling back into her toes.

“Keep still,” he hissed. “Someone’s coming.”

Then she heard it: the steady clop, clop, clop, of hooves on cobblestones. She peered out from under his jacket as the silhouettes of two police officers on horses darkened the entrance to Blood Alley, fog swirling behind them.

The mounted police entered the alley slowly, hooves echoing as they panned darkened crevices with flashlights.

Jessica’s throat tightened, but the steady beat of her defender’s heart never faltered. Not even when the hooves drew so near they almost touched his feet. One of the horses snorted, hot breath steaming into the air. She could smell them.

“Hey, you,” one of the cops said, directing his flashlight into their corner. “Can you get to your feet, please? I need to see ID.”

The man lying on top of Jessica groaned, made as if he was trying to sit up, then he flopped back as if too drunk.

The officer dismounted. “Can you stand, buddy?” the cop said, reaching down to pull him up. Her mysterious savior waited until the cop’s center of balance was precisely at the most disadvantageous, then he grabbed the policeman’s arm, yanked him down, cracked his head against his own, and rolled out from under him as the unconscious cop slumped heavily onto Jessica. She stifled a yelp of shock.

The officer on his horse immediately drew his weapon, yelling at him to freeze, but her protector surged forward with such swift and fluid motion it caught the officer by surprise. He fired, his bullet going wild and pinging into the Dumpster over Jessica’s head as her defender grabbed the cop with bare hands and dragged him from his horse.

The horse reared, hooves clawing at air before taking off with a clatter over stone. Jessica stared in awe as her guardian rendered the policeman unconscious with quick, firm pressure of his hand to the man’s neck.

She’d seen people trained in martial arts do that. She’d seen them move like him, too—fast and powerful, balletic. This man was skilled in hand-to-hand combat. He was a walking, talking lethal weapon.

Fear squeezed at her heart.

He dragged the unconscious V.P.D. officer off her and checked his pulse, before rolling the man gently onto the garbage bags and positioning his head so he could breathe easily.

He held his hand out to Jessica. “Come.”

“What…what about the policemen?”

“They’ll wake in a few minutes. We’ve got to move. Fast.”

She stared up at him, the beam from the fallen flashlight catching the icy glint in his eerily pale eyes. He wasn’t even breathing hard. Jessica shrank back into the garbage, suddenly terrified, the aftereffects of adrenaline combined with the cold, making her shake violently.

“You want to live, don’t you?” he said.

She nodded. He reached down, grabbed her wrist and jerked her firmly to her feet. “Come, then.”

He guided her through a twisting network of narrow black alleys that stunk of urine and decay, moving in the direction of the water.

They crossed the railway tracks into a deserted dockyard. The fog was thicker down by the sea, inky water slapping softly against old wood pylons, the scent of brine heavy.

“Quietly,” he whispered, taking her hand as they slipped between two massive rows of shipping containers. He held her back against ice-cold steel, waiting until he was certain they hadn’t been followed.

Jessica’s breathing was ragged, her lungs burning from running in the cold, her pulse pounding wildly. But beside her, his body was as calm and still as a practiced and patient predator. She had no doubt this man could kill with his bare hands and without compunction.

“Who are you—?”

He clapped his hand suddenly over her mouth, and pointed. Another cop car cruised quietly across the harbor entrance, flashing lights creating pulsing halos of white, red and blue in the dense fog.

He removed his hand as the cruiser moved on. “Sorry,” he whispered. “Come—”

But Jessica didn’t move. She felt suddenly paralyzed with exhaustion and she couldn’t seem to order her thoughts.

He tilted her chin and looked into her eyes. “You okay?”

“Please…just tell me who you are,” she whispered.

“My name’s Luke Stone. You ready to run again?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He grasped her wrist and dragged her in a crouching sprint across the empty parking lot toward the black water.

They stopped at a dock pylon, Jessica panting hard. Between them and the North Shore lay nothing but the frigid expanse of the Burrard Inlet. Snowflakes began to swirl bigger and softer, disappearing into the black void below her feet.

He edged her toward the dock edge. “You first. Down there.”

“What?”

He swore softly and grabbed her hands, drawing her into a crouch. He placed both her hands on a frozen metal rung. “Hang on to this. Put your leg over the side, feel for the next rung with your foot, climb all the way down to the inflatable. One step at a time.”

Panic whipped through her. “I…I don’t see any inflatable.”

“It’s down there, in the dark. Trust me.”

Her eyes shot to his. She didn’t trust anyone.

“Jess,” his eyes held hers steadily. “They killed your friend because of what you saw in Chinatown. They killed Giles because you told him. Believe me, they will kill you, too. Don’t give them that chance, okay?” He touched her cheek gently. “I’m here to help you.”

Emotion exploded through her chest and she tightened her grip on the rung.

This man simply accepted what the cops hadn’t—that she really had seen those men, that her life was in danger. He believed her. Surely that placed him somewhere on her side?

“You got the film in that bag?”

She said nothing.

“Give it to me, Jess.”

“I…I’d rather hold on to it.”

He swore again. “Look, we don’t have time for this. Give me your bag.” He reached to take it.

But she pulled back, overbalancing as she did, her foot shooting out from under her, lurching her down toward the ocean. He grabbed her, halting a certain plunge into the icy water. His fingers dug into her arm as she swayed out over the water. “If want my help, Jessica, you give me that bag and you get down into that boat. Fast. Understand?”

There was something in his voice that warned her not to cross him.

Her throat turned dry and her eyes watered as she let him take the one thing from her that could prove her sanity and buy back her credibility—proof that the man who’d tortured her in China three years ago was real.

“Thank you. Now go.”

Heart slamming against her ribs, she swung her leg out, searching for purchase on the old ladder, and she descended blindly into the darkness.

Luke cursed to himself, willing her to speed it up as he scanned the shadowed dockyard, weapon in hand, her camera bag slung across his chest.

This was supposed to have been a simple in-and-out job—pick up the principal at the pay phone, take her back to his place, call it in, arrange to ship her out. It sure as hell hadn’t panned out that way.

Somehow the Dragon Heads—if that’s who those two men were—had gotten wind she’d be at that pay phone. And they’d ambushed her.

He’d just killed two of their members. Those guys tended to hold grudges. He’d also assaulted a couple of V.P.D. cops. There was going to be a fair grudge there, too.

Damn it to hell. Jessica Chan had just sucked him right into her shadowy mess, all the way up to the bloody hilt. The triad, the RCMP and the city police were all going to be out for his blood now, too.

“Way to go, Stone,” he muttered to himself. So much for keeping a low profile. At least you got the girl.

Trouble was, he didn’t want the girl.

He didn’t want to be responsible for protecting another woman. Ever. If he failed again, it would kill him.

Inky ripples fanned out in the ocean as she stepped into the Zodiac. “I’m in,” Jessica whispered from below. And for one insane and fleeting second, Luke almost thought about leaving her. Right there. On her own. In the boat.

Because she scared him.

It wasn’t her beauty or the fact she smelled and felt too damn good when pressed against him. She was frightened. Vulnerable. And she needed him.

Luke didn’t want to be needed.

He didn’t want to care about anyone.

But being close to Jessica Chan had awakened something dangerous inside him. Something better off left dormant, preferably dead.

But the beast inside him had stirred. And Luke Stone knew instinctively that he was in trouble.

Chapter 2

Luke steered the inflatable into the choppy shipping lanes of Burrard Inlet. They had no lights and their small craft was dangerously invisible to bigger ships.

Jessica drew the black plastic sheet Luke had placed over her shoulders tightly around her neck in an attempt to shut out the insidious cold. “Wh-what happened to Giles?” She was shivering so badly she was stuttering.

“Shh, not now,” he whispered. “Sound carries over the water.”

A tanker loomed suddenly out of the mist and a foghorn blared. A monster hull sliced through the darkness in front of them, causing a surge of waves that broadsided their little boat, sending them bobbing like a cork.

But Luke held the Zodiac steady as he calmly negotiated the churning white water of the big ship’s wake. Nothing seemed to knock this man’s steely control.

As they neared the North Shore the sea turned glassy and the air grew quiet. All Jessica could hear as they neared the lights of Lonsdale Quay was the low drone of their small engine and the soft slap of water under their hull. It was around midnight, no movement on the pier, the Lonsdale market long closed.

Luke guided their craft past a row of tugboats as he maneuvered into a small working harbor and bumped up against a dock. He tossed out a rope, secured the craft and reached for her hand. “Leave the plastic in the boat,” he whispered.

“It’s freezing,” she protested.

“You can have my jacket.”

“It stinks.”

He laughed softly. “I don’t mean this one,” he said as he shrugged out of the booze-drenched tweed. He reached under the dock, fiddled with some knots and rope, pulled a garbage bag free and opened it. “This one,” he said, withdrawing a black leather jacket and draping it over her shoulders.

He removed his tattered gloves, palmed the wool hat off his head and ruffled his hair before dropping to his haunches and floating the old jacket out into the dockyard water along with the hat and gloves. Bemused, Jessica watched as he dipped a handkerchief into the sea and wiped the black camouflage grease from his face. He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pant pocket, stood to his full height, and slung her camera bag across his massive chest.

There was enough light coming from the SeaBus terminal for Jessica to see his hair was sandy blond, short and rumpled. His features craggy, strong, and tanned against his startlingly pale gray eyes. He was now clad in black jeans, black boots and a black turtleneck sweater which emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and the muscle in his arms. Not the slightest hint of the broken homeless character she’d seen shuffling behind the shopping cart lingered in his physique.

A chameleon, she thought. One who shifted shape at will. And he’d clearly planned every step of their escape. A cool whisper of warning ruffled through her and with it came the renewed bite of fear.

He checked his watch, and hooked his arm casually through hers. “You’re my date, okay? Let’s go.”

“I’m…what?”

“The last SeaBus is coming over from the city now. We’re going to blend with the commuters as they disembark and drift toward the car park and bus loop. Then we’re going to walk up to a nightclub on Esplanade, grab a hot dog at the late-night stand outside the club and I’m going to hail a cab to take us to a false address. No talking in the cab, not one word, understand?”

“Luke, please—” she tried to draw him to a halt. “I need to know what happened to—”

“Later. All the cab driver must recall is an ordinary couple coming out of the club. Nothing else, got it?”

She pulled her arm free. “No,” she whispered angrily. “I don’t get it. There is nothing ordinary about us. I have no idea who you are or where you’re taking me. Do you think I’m nuts? You think I’m just going to along with—” she wagged her hand at him “—whatever some lethal cross between James Bond and Crocodile Dundee orders me to do? You just assaulted two cops back there. You killed two men. I—”

He seized her arm, pulled her close, his eyes narrowing to sharp steel slivers. “Dammit, Jessica, keep it down. I saved your life back there.”

“And I’m grateful. But I don’t trust anyone, especially foreign men with guns who want what’s in my camera.”

He studied her in silence for a long beat. “I know why you don’t trust anyone,” he said quietly. “It’s because no one trusts you.” He tilted her chin up. “Not since your abduction and torture in China. Am I right?”

She swallowed a ballooning hurt in her throat.

Luke was right. The incident had cost her everything, most importantly her career, her pride and her hard-won respect. As the unacknowledged, illegitimate daughter of a British diplomat and his Chinese mistress Jessica had felt driven all her life to prove her worth in this world, to dig herself out of her impoverished London background. To make something of herself.

She’d done it for her mother.

She’d done it to show she didn’t need the acknowledgment or support of her wealthy father. She’d done it for her own sense of self-worth, and she’d succeeded. She’d become a rising star with the BBC, one of their top foreign correspondents. There was even talk of hosting her own news show.

But it had all vanished three years ago, the day she’d been kidnapped from Shanghai’s business district and taken to a remote factory warehouse in Hubei province where members of the Dragon Heads and an official from the Chinese government had accused her of being a spy for the United States.

She’d been tortured for information and injected with mind-altering hallucinogenic “truth drugs,” designed and administered by the man she called The Chemist. A man she believed was a top level biochemical assassin for a covert arm of the ruling Chinese Communist Party which was using the Dragon Heads to further its political agenda worldwide.

Jessica had managed a harrowing escape, but the drugs had permanently damaged her brain, leaving her with horrific flashbacks and hallucinations. The hallucinations were so real that she could no longer be certain of her ability to discern reality from fiction. The Chinese government denied any involvement and she had no proof of a government cover-up. In the end, she’d been swept under the bureaucratic carpet. She’d lost her job, and she’d been left to languish in a British mental institution with severe depression, paranoia, hallucinations, labeled a schizophrenic.

But Jessica had fought back.

She knew what she’d endured in China was true, even if her own memories of the ordeal were sketchy. And now she finally had some proof. The film in her camera was going to show The Chemist really did exist and that he was here, right now, in North America, with Dragon Heads boss Xiang-Li.

“Not even the RCMP took your word that what you just saw in Chinatown wasn’t another of your well-documented hallucinations. That’s why they told you to come back with the prints, once you’d developed them. Am I right, Jess?”

She looked away.

But Luke drew her firmly against his torso as a bus passed on the road above them. His body was so incredibly solid, so warm. Big. He felt so confoundingly safe and dangerous at the same time.

A terrified and very lonely part of Jessica ached to lean into him, to have him hold her, have anyone hold her. To have someone care.

“Let me tell you something, Jess,” he said quietly. “I believe you. Those guys shooting at you in Gastown were real. That tells me that what you saw in Chinatown was real, too. And someone is prepared to kill to keep it quiet. They want the evidence in your camera and they want you dead. And now they want me, too.” He paused, watching her face intently. “That puts you and me pretty much on the same side, wouldn’t you say?”

She closed her eyes. The idea of an ally, someone who actually believed she wasn’t a total nut job, was so heady and alluring it hurt. After being alone and confused for so many years she’d come to a point where she’d actually believed she was crazy, where she honestly didn’t know whether she could trust her own mind. The doubt still whispered, even now.

Tears burned under her lids as she struggled to hold back the painful surge of emotion. “Why are you doing this for me, Luke?”

The question punched at him in a way Luke couldn’t explain. This woman got to him. He’d seen her file. He knew her background. He knew what she’d endured and he understood her kind of solitude. And while she was afraid and vulnerable, she was also brave. Never mind utterly physically compelling.

He exhaled heavily.

He didn’t want anything to get to him. He didn’t want to understand her. Hell, he didn’t even want to like her.

He didn’t want to like anybody.

“I’m not doing it for you, Jess.” His voice was suddenly blunt and he knew it but couldn’t help it. “It’s my job. I work for the Force du Sablé, a private military company that offers close protection to politically sensitive targets, among other things.” He paused, angry again that this mission had been thrust on him by FDS boss Jacques Sauvage.

“Politically sensitive targets?” she whispered.

“The FDS was contracted by the CIA to find you and to bring you in. I’m your bodyguard until I hand you and the film over.” Which he hoped to hell would happen within the next few hours.

Panic sparked in her eyes. “How does the CIA know about my film? How do you know about it? How do you even know about Giles?”

“Later, Jess. Right now I need to get you someplace you can sleep for the night.” He took her arm and guided her up the narrow gangplank. He’d wasted enough time. It wasn’t his job to explain anything. This mission had come on such short notice Luke wasn’t the hell sure what he could tell her.

The only reason he was on this dock right now was because Jacques Sauvage had informed him that Jessica Chan would die tonight without his immediate intervention.

The FDS had stationed Luke in Vancouver to gather intelligence on Asian organized crime syndicates that operated out of the Pacific Northwest, particularly gangs rumored to be colluding with known terrorist organizations—like the Dragon Heads.

The FDS was finding increased client demand for this sort of intelligence and Luke’s brief had been to establish a small intelligence office in the city.

This had positioned him as the only operative the FDS could dispatch to Jessica in time. In spite of his contract.

Now he was saddled with a job he could neither refuse nor fully embrace. He cursed silently. Jacques was going to pay for this.

“Where?” she asked.

“Where what?”

“You said you were going to take me someplace I could sleep for the night.”

“Right. I guess that would be…my place.” Luke swore to himself again.

Yeah, Jacques was going to pay big-time, especially if he didn’t get this woman off his hands within the next few hours.

The cab was warm and it relaxed his principal—which was how Luke was determined to think of Jessica Chan from this point on. He put his arm around her in an effort to appear a casual couple, while he clamped down on his emotions. She was exhausted and within minutes she’d fallen asleep nestled right into the crook of his arm. Reluctantly he realized she fit perfectly.

Too perfectly.

She felt too damn good.

Old protective instincts began to rustle uncomfortably. Being a bodyguard had come as naturally to him as beating up the bully who’d picked on the smaller kids in the schoolyard. And it had brought him just as much trouble.

Luke had simply been born to protect, especially when he perceived injustice. But for the last four years, he’d managed to hold those instincts at bay, for his own survival. Now, holding Jessica in his arms, he could feel the echo whispering through him again, pulsing louder and stronger with every beat of his heart. Luke swallowed against the sudden dryness in his throat.

The taxi bumped over a speed hump and the soft weight of Jessica’s—his principal’s—breast pressed into his chest, awakening something in quite another part of Luke’s body.

He closed his eyes, grudgingly unable to stop savoring the sweet sexual sensation stirring low in his gut. Luke realized with mild shock that he didn’t actually want to block it out. It felt good to have a woman in his arms again, to feel his blood and body roused again. His pulse quickened and his throat turned even drier.

The cab pulled up in front of the West Vancouver address Luke had given the driver, and not a moment too soon. “Wake up,” he said, gently nudging her.

Her almond-shaped eyes fluttered open, sultry with sleep, then widened in shock at the sudden realization of where she was.

“It’s okay, we’re here.”

Luke settled the fare, helped her from the car and, without a word, pulled her against his body and covered her mouth with his own as he watched the red brake lights of the cab retreat down the hill from the corner of his eye.

Jessica stiffened, trying to pull away, but Luke tightened his hold. “Easy, Jess,” he murmured over her lips as he watched the taxi round a corner. “A loving couple is the only thing that driver must remember.”

She stilled in his arms, but he could feel her heartbeat increasing rapidly against his chest. To his shock, she opened her mouth tentatively under his.

Heat rocketed through Luke, exciting something savage and hard in him. Before he could stop, knowing full well the taxi had long gone, he deepened his kiss and his tongue met hers. He felt her welcoming him, her body softening against his as she angled her mouth, allowing him to taste her own hot, sweet need.

Luke couldn’t breathe. He closed his eyes, allowing his iron grip on control to ease for the first time in years, simply giving himself over to sensation, tasting her deep, hungrily, not bothering to fight the mounting pressure of his arousal against her belly, which he knew she had to feel.

At the same time his brain was screaming that this was so wrong, for more reasons than he cared to count. She was his principal. And vulnerable. And she was opening to him for all the wrong reasons.

Luke managed to pull back, breathing hard. They locked gazes for a moment, words defying them. And he could see just as much dark turbulence and confusion in those exquisite amber eyes of hers as he felt in his heart.

He wanted to explain why he’d done this. But he didn’t know the answer himself.

Instead he cleared his throat and said, “We should go.”

She simply nodded.

Luke escorted her to his innocuous dark blue SUV parked along the curb, taking exaggerated care not to touch her again as he beeped the alarm, opened the passenger door and let her in.

But letting Jessica Chan in was the last thing in this world Luke was ready to do.

He had a sinking feeling the more he opened the door to this woman, the harder it would become to get her back out of his life.

Tasting her had been intoxicating, like the first heady sip of elixir for an alcoholic. Just as addictive and potentially just as lethal to him.

Hot damn, he was in trouble. Serious trouble.

Luke slammed the door shut and wiped his mouth roughly with the back of his hand. Jacques better have that pickup ready because he wanted to be rid of this woman before sunrise.

Luke drove over the Lions Gate Bridge, back toward the heart of downtown Vancouver, car heater cranked high, soft classical music playing, snowflakes swirling at them like asteroids in the headlights. For the first time in days Jessica felt safe—on one level.

But on another, she wasn’t so sure.

She studied him surreptitiously as orange-hued streetlights pulsed over his rugged profile, throwing a small scar that fanned from the corner of his right eye into relief.

He had another fine scar across his chin and another that ran down his neck.

He looked ruggedly handsome, scarred, dangerous.

“Are you going to tell me about Giles now?” she asked.

He hesitated. “I need to check in with my people before I can explain. This was…sort of a rush job,” he said, turning off the bridge and heading toward Granville Island, where he pulled into a parking lot near the marina and killed the engine.

“You sound pissed to be saddled with me. Are you?”

He wouldn’t look at her.

“Why don’t you just say it like it is, Luke? It’s not like I haven’t endured worse.”

His eyes flashed to hers, a hint of guilt in them. “It’s nothing personal,” he said flatly. “I’d moved out of the close-protection business.”

“Why?”

“Not my thing.”

“Great,” she muttered to herself. A reluctant bodyguard. She’d almost made the mistake of thinking he cared. Just a little. A part of her actually wanted him to care. The loneliness in Jess wanted to attach meaning to his incredible soul-searing kiss.

A dark sense of depression descended on her. She was a fool to be so needy. It made her angry.

He got out, came round to the passenger side, her camera bag in his hand, and he opened the door. “Coming?”

She closed her eyes for a moment and sucked in a deep breath of cold ocean air mixed with brine. “Yeah. I guess I’m flat out of choices.”

He jutted his chin toward a row of houseboats interspersed with yachts. “My place is down there, on the water.”

The snow was dumping heavily now, big fat flakes waltzing on the wind and shimmying in the halos of lights that lined the wooden boardwalk to the boathouses. It was settling fast on the yachts and the stacked rows of kayaks, but the flakes melted into blackness as they hit the glistening dark water of False Creek.

He took her arm. “Careful. The boardwalk gets slippery.”

A quiver of heat shot through Jessica as her body connected with his again. She cursed to herself, wondering if his attentiveness was chivalry or chauvinism.

Or just another aspect of a job he didn’t want.

Chapter 3

Luke strode into his living room, booted up his laptop and set his satellite phone next to it. He hooked his finger into the hem of his sweater and pulled it up over his head as he walked to the bathroom, desperate to scrub the lingering scent of booze from his skin and from his memory, knowing at the same time no matter how hard he abraded himself, he was never going to scrape deep enough to eradicate the drunken nightmares that lingered in the dark crevices of his brain.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he called back to her as he went around the corner, leaving her standing alone in the middle of his living room. He’d check in with Jacques as soon as he was done. “Make yourself at home. Take anything you want from the kitchen.”

“I might just leave!” she yelled after him, irritation snipping her voice suddenly.

He stilled, turned and stepped shirtless back around the corner, his eyes narrowing onto her. “Jess, all that stands between you and a bullet right now is me. I think you’re smart enough to see that.” He turned to go, hesitated, spun back. “But if you really want to go, please, be my guest.”

“You said it was your job to protect me,” she called out.

“Never wanted the damn job in the first place,” he muttered to himself as he kept on walking. He stepped into the bathroom, shut the door and turned the shower on scalding hot. Jacques and the FDS crew could wait. She’d be safe here. Neither the Triad nor the cops had a handle on his identity.

And he was damn sure she wasn’t going to leave. Jessica Chan’s memories might be pharmacologically cross-wired, but he doubted the rest of her brain was. The lady knew how to survive. She’d made it two days on her own with Chinese assassins after her blood. And he was impressed with how she handled tonight.

She wanted to survive.

He had to respect that. Luke knew just how easy it was to give up.

Jessica stared openmouthed at the space Luke Stone had just vacated. The man had one of the most ripped bodies she’d ever had the pleasure of personally encountering. But it was the back he’d turned on her that truly shocked.

Every little bit of exposed skin was crisscrossed with long, pale scars, as though he’d been lashed and shredded within mere inches of his life.

She began to tremble. She steadied herself by reaching out for the back of his couch.

Luke Stone understood torture.

Maybe…just maybe…this man would understand her.

She heard the shower go on and she ran her hands over her hair trying to force rational thought. Panic could bring the hallucinations on again, the doctors had told her that. She had to focus on the present. On moving forward. It was her only option. If she lost her grasp on reality now, they’d finally win.

She was never going to let them win.

She realized she still had Luke’s leather jacket on though it was warm in his home. He’d put on the gas fire and the kettle on his way through the kitchen.

She slipped out of his jacket, draped it over the couch and went to the floor-to-ceiling windows of his small living room. The windows looked right onto the water. He had a kayak tethered to a small deck and a bike was chained against the wall. The lights of English Bay twinkled on the opposite side of False Creek, everything muted by softly falling snow. It was a pretty place. She wondered if the yacht she’d seen moored to the side of the double-story boathouse was also his. She suspected it was.

She turned to take in the rest of his living space. It was paneled wood and purely male—the home of an outdoorsman. Touring skis and a snowboard hung from racks near the door. Technical snowshoes were propped against the wall near a hall closet that hung slightly ajar, exposing a tangle of ropes, carabiners and jackets.

Contour maps, a compass and a GPS device cluttered his dining table. Jessica walked over and examined the maps. They were of British Columbia’s backcountry. Luke Stone’s physique was honed by an obvious passion for the wilderness. He had a taste for thrill, adventure. She glanced up at the framed black-and-white photographs that covered one wall. Their evocative beauty drew her closer.

With mild shock, Jessica realized he’d taken them. He’d signed them in the bottom right corners. A shimmer of interest rippled through her as she peered closely at the haunting images. She understood photography—the artistic nuances of black-and-white in particular.

Black-and-white film was what she used. It was her sanity and she clung to it even in a digital era. Two years ago a nurse Jessica had befriended while in the psychiatric institution in England had given her an old Minolta camera. Jessica started using it to record her days, proving to herself that her day-today life was real, not imagined, that her memories of it were true. She’d become good at it. And when she’d started developing her own work, the act of watching those daily memories take literal shape in the darkroom had filled Jessica’s heart with indescribable joy. With progressive skill in the darkroom came increased mental confidence. That old Minolta had given Jessica the strength to fight back, the will to believe in herself.

Taking photographs had saved her.

Now it looked as though it might destroy her.

She leaned forward and closely examined Luke’s images. The way he captured light and contrasting shadow was beautiful. Poignant. He’d shot mountain peaks and ragged cliffs. Eagles, a grizzly. Oceans and ice at sunset. Deserts with nothing but undulating dunes for miles. A wolf pup in snow. A cougar in the crook of two branches. But no humans. Not even a footprint.

She touched a framed image of a small bear cub watching its mother. The look of need and dependence in the young animal’s eyes filled Jessica’s chest with aching emotion. It was poetic. All the images were. They told her that whoever had held this camera and captured these wild scenes had soul. It was an almost elegiac vision of life in its raw, harsh beauty. Luke Stone had a beautiful mind buried somewhere in that rugged brawn and Jessica suspected there was something sad in there, too.

Because there was sadness in these pictures.

She wondered if he was always alone when he shot his film. Did he need these open spaces for his sanity? Was this his freedom? She had a sense the man was a true loner, a transient who didn’t put down roots easily. Perhaps that’s why he lived here on the water—it offered a sense of escape.

She heard the shower go off and a voyeuristic guilt pinged through her. She turned quickly to take in the rest of the room before he returned. There was no sign of family or girlfriends—no female touch in the decor at all. The only sign of human connection was a small color print pinned to his fridge with a magnet. It showed three rugged and weather-browned men on pack horses in a red desert. She couldn’t make out the faces, but she thought one might be Luke.

Jessica’s eyes settled on his computer.

She glanced in the direction of the bathroom. What did she have to lose?

She hastened over to it, quickly tapped a key that brought the monitor to life, saw a file with her name. Her pulse quickened.

She shot another look over her shoulder and clicked on the file. Her breath caught in her throat. Her life, everything, it was all there.

She scrolled rapidly through the information, her body going hot. He had photographs, her résumé, stories on her abduction in China, the name of her mental institution in the U.K., her psychiatrist’s notes, the medication she was on, even a virtual transcript of her conversation with Giles two days ago…she heard the bathroom door open. Her breath lodged in her throat.

She quickly closed the file and moved to the opposite end of the room, heart beating fast. She hugged herself, feeling violated in a way she couldn’t even begin to articulate.

Why shouldn’t he have a dossier on her, if he’d been sent to find her? But why was the CIA suddenly interested in her when everyone else had hung her out to dry in China?

She began to feel small again. Afraid. And that horribly familiar panic began to nip at her brain.

“Hey?”

She jumped, whipped her eyes to him.

He stood drying his hair with a towel, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans faded in places she shouldn’t look. God, he was good-looking. In a rough and untamed way. He seemed too tough to have the sensitivity for those photographs. Yet there was something in the desolate gray of his eyes, the way the lines fanned softly out from them, that echoed the haunting vistas in the photos.

“You okay?” he said, stilling the towel as he studied her face.

“Yeah, I—I’m fine. Did…you take all of those?” she pointed to the wall.

“Yep.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“Thanks. You want to take a shower? Water’s hot.” He smiled and it reached into those wilderness eyes, giving her a thump of sensation in her stomach.

“I…” she became cognizant of the fact she probably stank of garbage and old liquor from that jacket he’d worn. “I guess I should, huh?”

He nodded. “Yep.”

“I don’t have any clean clothes,” she hesitated. “I guess I’m stating the obvious.” She felt awkward. Seeing those photographs made her feel as though she’d somehow seen him naked. It was a language she spoke, and when you came across someone who communicated in the same visceral way you did, the link was there whether you wanted it or not.

“I left some stuff for you in the bathroom,” he said. “It was the best I could do for now. We can pick up some things for you later. Coffee or tea?”

“I…coffee would be great, thanks.”

“Bathroom’s that way, down the hall.”

She began to walk, stopped. “You’re really casual about this,” she said. “You say it’s not your thing, but…you’ve done it a lot, haven’t you?”

“Picked up women and brought them home? Yeah, I do that a lot.” He said it with such a deadpan expression in his flat Australian tone she wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not.

“I mean…never mind.” She began to make her way to the bathroom.

“You mean killing a couple of gangsters, assaulting two cops and then coming home to make coffee?”

She stopped. “Yes, something like that.”

He tossed his towel over a chair at the table, opened a cupboard and took two mugs out. “Your accent is cute, you know that?” he said, plunking the mugs on the counter.

“And you know exactly what part of the U.K. it comes from, too. It’s all in that dossier on your computer, so please don’t play games with me, Stone.”

His eyes flicked between her and his computer and his features turned serious. He stood to his full height, facing her squarely. There was a latent aggression in his posture that made her nervous.

“You looked at my laptop?”

“I’d like to know what is going on and what happened to Giles in Shanghai.”

His eyes narrowed slowly. Then a ghost of a smile played at the corners of his strong mouth. “Fair enough,” he said, and he turned and reached for a box of green tea. “Take your shower and we’ll sit down and talk.”

Luke felt her eyes boring into his back. He ignored her as he poured boiling water over a tea bag.

He’d underestimated Jessica. He’d do well to remember she was once an aggressive and respected investigative journalist. Landing a gig as a foreign correspondent for the BBC needed a fair degree of global savvy.

He heard her leave the room, then heard the bathroom door bang shut.

He extracted the tea bag, squeezed it as he listened for the shower. She’d be busy for a few minutes. He positioned himself in front of his laptop, set his mug of tea down and punched Jacques Sauvage’s number into his satellite phone. Luke checked his watch as it rang. Dawn would be breaking soon.

“Stone, it’s about bloody time. Have you secured the principal?”

“Good morning to you, too, Sauvage. I have her. But we have a complication.” He proceeded to tell Jacques about his altercation with the police and the two gangsters.

Jacques was silent for a moment. “This is going to make any sort of cooperation with local law enforcement close to impossible.”

Luke shrugged, sipped his tea. “I made an executive decision. Those guys were out to kill her. My guess is they’re Dragon Heads, affiliated with Xiang-Li. They don’t want the photos getting out.”

“You manage to drop the tail?”

“Yep.” He sipped from his mug. “What can I tell her?”

“Everything. I’m liaising personally with CIA director Blake Weston on this and he’s given no instructions to hold anything back from her. All he wants is the woman, her film and her testimony. He’s setting up some form of witness protection for her.”

“When are you sending someone to pick her up?”

Jacques hesitated. “You’re going to have to hold on to her for a while, Stone, until—”

He slammed his mug down, sloshing hot tea onto his hand. “Wait a minute, Sauvage, we had a deal. You told me this woman would die if I refused this job. You said I was the only one who could get to her in the time frame. You also said you were going to take her off my hands ASAP!”

“I’m sorry. I’ve had to target all our spare resources elsewhere. You’re all I’ve got out there right now. You can handle one woman, Stone.”

Luke swore viciously. “Listen up, Sauvage, I’m not a goddamn babysitter. You’re in breach of my contract. I can walk from this—”

“Can you, Stone?” Jacques’s voice was cold.

Luke cursed again, dragged his hand over his hair.

“Look, I know what happened to your family in Australia. I know that’s why you wanted out. But you’re the best in the business and you’re all we’ve got. You can do this.”

“Why the hell should I?”

“You want to stay on FDS books, don’t you?”

Luke was quiet for a moment.

“If you turn her out onto the streets now, the woman dies. It’s simple. And it’s your call.”

Luke closed his eyes. He felt sick to his stomach. This was exactly what he didn’t want—sole responsibility for a woman’s life. Images of blood seared his brain. He could smell it. He could feel the warm body of his wife in his arms, dying. The blood from the baby. So much blood.

Luke had managed to take care of everyone, except the woman he loved. She’d died pregnant with his child because he’d been too damn busy protecting someone else. His family had been slaughtered because of him.

He hadn’t wanted to live after that. Almost chose not to. But he hadn’t quite found the guts to kill himself.

“Stone?”

Luke inhaled deeply. “Okay,” he said coolly, very quietly. “But if I fail, it’s on your head.” He wasn’t taking responsibility on this one. He couldn’t. Never again.

“You’re still the best at this, Stone,” Jacques said, just as quietly. “We both know you are.”

“You overestimate me, mate.”

“I believe in you. It’s why I hired you. It’s why I’m asking you to do this now.”

Silence.

“And…Stone, try and stay somewhat inside the law, would you? Cooperation with the Canadians is going to be tough enough down the road as it is, especially now that you’ve engaged the cops.”

“I’ll do what I can.” Luke hit a button and killed the call. He sat back in his chair, eyes closed.

“I’ll leave if you want me to.”

He jerked to his feet and spun to face Jessica. “Jesus! How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to know you want me ‘off your hands’….”

He forced air from his lungs with a puff of his cheeks and rubbed his brow hard. “And just where do you think you would you go?”

She shrugged and he noticed suddenly how feminine and vulnerable she looked in his oversized cargo pants, T-shirt and sweater. Her hair was wet and her skin scrubbed to an innocent glow. But it was her eyes and mouth that did him in. There was nothing vulnerable there. They were provocatively sexy as all get-out. He thought about all this woman had endured, what she’d once had in life and what had been taken from her by the Triad. And his heart squeezed sharp and fast. He—if anyone—should understand.

It was a Triad that had taken his wife and child in Australia.

He turned his back on her, stalked into the kitchen and poured a coffee. She accepted it with both hands and a slight bow of the head—a gesture he found both exotic and genuine, endearing.

“You want something to eat?”

She shook her head.

“Okay, then. Lets talk.” He pulled out a chair at the dining room table. “Sit.”

“I…I don’t want to be in your way if—”

He snorted. “If what? Look, I’m sorry you heard that, but understand this: I took the job. And I don’t quit something once I sign on.”

Only fail. I can still fail.

“Don’t worry, I won’t fail you, Jess.” He had no idea why he said it. But there it was. Some part of him was determined not to let this woman—or himself—down.

“Now sit.”

He scooped up the maps and seated himself opposite her.

“I’m going to bring you up to speed. But first priority is for you to tell me how those guys knew you were going to be at that pay phone. Who else knew you were going to call Giles Rehnquist from that booth, at that time?”

Jessica looked into his eyes. “Absolutely no one.”

“You must have told some—”

She set her mug down firmly. “I told no one.”

His brows lowered. “Could someone have overheard? Think. Maybe you—”

“Listen to me, Stone.” She couldn’t call him Luke, not now, not after what she’d overheard. “Whatever people might say, I am not crazy. I’m sick to death of all those knowing, sympathetic glances. I took those photos because I want my life back.” Her eyes burned with hot emotion. “And since you’re stuck with me now there is one thing you better know about me. Those men may have taken everything they possibly could have from me and they may want to kill me, but I will not run from them. I don’t run from anything. Ever.”

He pursed his lips, nodded slowly, something akin to admiration in his eyes. “Then you’re a better person than I, Jessica Chan,” he said very quietly.

“What?”

“Nothing. So you believe the only person who knew you were going to be there at that time was Giles?”

“Damn right.”

“Why did you call him?”

“Because he is—was—a friend, someone I could trust. Giles was the only person who truly believed in what happened to me in Hubei three years ago. He believed the man I call The Chemist exists and is a high-level assassin for a covert faction within the ruling party.” She paused, staring at her coffee. “Before my abduction, Giles had been helping me investigate collusion between the Dragon Heads crime syndicate and top officials in the Chinese Communist Party. We had a deal that he could use whatever information I had once I broke the story.” She lifted her eyes to his. “Giles knew the players. He understood the government and he knew the workings of the Triad intimately. I needed his advice. That’s why I called him. He said he’d find a way to help me and he told me to call back in two days, from that same phone at that time. He told me to find an ATM somewhere on the other side of town, withdraw whatever cash I could and use it to find a cheap hotel.”

Jessica took a sip of her coffee, welcoming the warmth that diffused through her chest. A distant part of her mind noted that while Luke had made coffee for her, his choice for himself was green tea.

“Is that what you did?”

She nodded. “I found a hotel in Gastown where a single woman renting a room by the night is not unusual. I paid cash upfront and I stayed in that room until it was time to make the call.”

“And no one followed you?”

“I don’t see how they could have. If they knew I was there they would have come for me earlier, right?”

Luke lowered his brows, studied her. “What about food?”

“I didn’t eat.”

He nodded slowly, a strange look sifting into his eyes. “You didn’t think it strange that Giles made you call back from the exact same phone?”

“I…I guess I did. But I knew he had to have his reasons. He had contacts and I was clean out of options.”

“He was CIA, Jess.”

She felt her jaw drop. Her whole world tilted and resettled slightly off axis.

“Are you sure?” she asked quietly.

“Dead sure. He wanted a fix on your location while he contacted Langley for direction. He wanted to be sure they could get to you.”

She dropped her face into her hands, rubbed her skin. Then looked up. “I…I don’t understand.”

He opened his mouth to say something, a strange expression in his features. Then he changed his mind, shut his laptop and surged to his feet. “Grab your camera bag, Jess.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.” He reached for a backpack. “If the conversation you had was exclusively between you and Giles and you’re one-hundred percent certain there is no way this information got out from your end, it leaves only one alternative—it got out on Giles’s end in Shanghai. And that means we need to move. Fast.”

He tossed her a down parka and thick woolen hat then shut his laptop and slid it into his pack along with his satellite phone. He crouched down, unscrewed a bolt under his kitchen table and lifted the top, revealing a large compartment under the surface. He scooped up what looked like different passports and ID’s, some license plates, a roll of duct tape, a radio, a scanner, technical field glasses, a knife and rounds of ammunition.

She stared blankly.

“Put the coat on,” he barked as he snagged his wallet off the counter.

“Why? Where are we going?”

He took her arm, helping her into the parka. “If Xiang’s men were tipped off about the rendezvous at the phone booth, they may also have been tipped off about me. They might know you’re here right now, in my house. Until we know what the hell is going on, and how that information got out from Shanghai, we need to go to ground.”

“Wait, I don’t understand! You’re saying Giles sold me out?”

“I’m saying there must have been a leak somewhere in the chain—an informant with a direct line to the Triad here in Vancouver.”

“But how?”

“I don’t know. It’s probably what got Giles killed and, until we find that leak, we’re sitting ducks, too.”

She stood dumbfounded as he grabbed his leather jacket.

“Now, Jess, move! They could be here any second.”

They shot out the door and fled into the darkness, Luke guiding Jessica over the thick snow that now covered the boardwalk.

Chapter 4

Halyards chinked against frozen masts as they raced down the dock. But just as they reached the stairs that would take them from sea level up to the parking lot, headlights cut round a building, illuminating falling snow. Luke jerked Jessica down into shadow behind a set of pilings.

A black SUV cruised slowly into the parking lot and cut the engine. Luke could hear a second vehicle approaching.

“Quick,” he whispered, “back that way.”

They ran back along the boardwalk, ducking below a wall just as the beams of a second vehicle swung over their position. They held dead still as the tires of the second vehicle scrunched through snow and came to a stop.

Silence grew deafening as tension pressed down on them and snow began to accumulate on their clothes.

What in hell were they waiting for?

Luke peered cautiously up over the wall, his snow-covered woolen hat providing camouflage. His vehicle was at the far end of the parking lot, behind the two black SUVs. He and Jessica would have to get past them somehow.

The passenger window in the first SUV was suddenly lowered. A match flashed, glowing orange. The scent of cigarette smoke reached him, pungent in the crisp air.

Then the driver’s door opened and boots squeaked onto snow. Luke heard snatches of what sounded like Chinese.

“It’s a dialect from the south,” Jessica whispered against his ear as she tried to peer over the edge and see what he was looking at.

He pushed her back down. “Stay low,” he hissed.

He reached into his pack, found his night scopes and trained them on the vehicles. He could make out six Asian men getting out of the cars, all packing serious automatic firepower.

Definitely triad. Somehow they’d gotten an ID on him. This bothered Luke. He rented the boathouse under a false name, paid for everything with credit cards backed by funds from FDS front companies and offshore numbered accounts.

Someone with inside information had to have fingered him directly.

And if the Dragon Heads knew exactly who he was, they had to know he’d taken Jessica and killed two of their men. A contract would be put out on him. Luke knew how these men worked.

Anger welled inside him. This pretty much ended his intellience-gathering gig in this city. Jesus, this was beginning to feel personal.

Jessica edged closer to him, and he could smell his shampoo on her wet hair. “What are they doing?” she whispered.

“Don’t know. Stay down,” he growled, suddenly—irrationally—angry with her.

He watched through his scopes as a third vehicle pulled into the parking lot and drew to a stop alongside the others. Four more men climbed out, assault rifles in hand, black coats fluttering in the cold wind.

Luke felt for his weapon. He had eight rounds in the magazine, one in the firing chamber, spare magazines in his pocket. Still, a 9-mm was no match against the kind of firepower those guys were packing. His best move was evasion, not engagement.

His muscles burned with tension as he watched the posse cross the parking lot and descend the stairs toward the boardwalk. One man remained guard at the base of the stairs and the other nine moved like black ghosts along the snowy boardwalk, making directly for Luke’s boathouse.

They would find his house empty within seconds and track their prints through the snow.

“Jess,” he whispered urgently. “We need to make a run for it. Now.”

She nodded.

He hauled her over the wall and they raced across the parking lot in a crouch, the sound of their footsteps swallowed by snow.

Gunshots suddenly peppered the air.

Luke lunged sideways, forcing Jessica down hard behind his SUV. He dragged her behind the wheel hub, covering her body with his own until he could identify the source of the shots. Another barrage of automatic fire rent the winter air. Luke winced. They were shooting up his place. They had to get out of here.

He reached up, quietly opened the passenger door to his SUV, motioned for her to get in. “The snow cover will shield you once you’re in,” he whispered.

He crept round to the driver’s side, dusted a small hole in the snow that had accumulated on the window, climbed into snow-covered cocoon, and eased the door closed. He watched through the small gap, aggression simmering inside him.

Luke didn’t like feeling this way. Taking a job personally was always a bad thing, it threatened the state of numbness he’d perfected over the last four years.

The booze had taken care of the first year after his wife’s death.

Then he’d quit drinking, clawing his way back out of moribund self-loathing, and beaten himself back into peak mental and physical shape with such sustained and brutal workouts that sleep had finally returned—the kind of sleep that came without booze. The kind of sleep that didn’t allow for thoughts or guilt. Or recurring nightmares.

Maybe in reaching this level of cold command over himself Luke had simply traded one coping mechanism for another, but what the hell—he was doing fine with it. It had saved his life. It had gotten him work with the FDS.

It had gotten him here, to Vancouver.

It had been a way to dull the pain that did not involve the bottom of a whiskey bottle and self-disgust. So why was he feeling things now?

He glanced at Jessica. It was her fault. She’d opened some damn Pandora’s box inside him.

She was shivering again, her frightened eyes fixed on him. She saw him as her last hope. He clenched his teeth and turned away. But before he could dwell on it, all nine men suddenly swarmed out of his boathouse and raced along the boardwalk toward the parking lot.

He tensed. “What the—”

An explosion whumped through air, then another, orange flames bursting out from his boathouse, spreading fast, fueled by some kind of accelerant. It took Luke a nanosecond to process what had just happened. His belongings, his photographs, his yacht, his home—every goddamn thing he owned—had just gone up in a giant ball of fire.

Rage erupted in his belly.

This was more than personal. These men had just declared war on him.

“Luke! What’s happening?” Jessica leaned over him, trying to see through his peephole. He shoved her away, opening his window wide. “Give me your camera.”

“What?”

“Just give it to me!”

He aimed the old Minolta out the window, focused on the fleeing men, clicked, zoomed in closer, clicked again and again, capturing their faces. He switched position and snapped the vehicles, zoomed closer, captured the plates.

He kept clicking as the three SUV’s fishtailed wildly out of the snowy parking lot and sped away. Fire alarms began to clang as flames crackled and popped. Another gut-hollowing whoosh sent shock waves through the air as the diesel fuel containers of his boat caught fire and blew.

Sirens began to scream. People raced out of the other boathouses, black silhouettes against white snow and hot raw flames, some diving into the frigid water to escape the blaze.

Staff and guests flocked from the nearby Granville Island Hotel. More alarms sounded as the fire spread quickly to the adjacent art school and another row of boats. More yachts exploded in balls of fire. Bedlam engulfed the island as Luke silently handed Jessica her camera and started the engine.

“Are you strapped in?” His voice was tight.

She fumbled with the buckle and once he saw she was secure, he flipped on the windshield wipers and hit the gas. He swerved out of the parking lot, racing away from the scene as an army of fire engines, ambulances and police vehicles converged on the pandemonium behind them.

Luke slowed his vehicle as they approached the bridge onramp. Snow was turning to slush and it would be light in a few hours. They needed to get out of the city before that happened.

“What now?” she asked in a thin voice.

He inhaled deeply, wishing he’d never met her. “Now,” he said flatly, “we really are in the same boat, Jess.”

“Where are we going?” He could hear despair in her voice and guilt stirred in him.

“Someplace out of the city,” he said. “Somewhere I can hand you over to the CIA before—” he cut it. Fell silent.

“Before I do any more damage. That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?”

“The damage is done, Jess. There’s no going back. Now we deal with the road ahead. Together.” Unfortunately.

And he was going to make sure he got it over with as quickly as possible, he thought as he cranked up the heater to warm her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

His eyes cut sharply to hers and he saw the telltale glisten of tears. He looked away quickly. He really needed to get away from her soon. Before he let her down. Before he let himself down.

“Dry your hair,” he said curtly in an effort to distract her. “Turn up the fan on your side.”

He pulled off the road about twenty minutes later, just before they hit the notorious Sea to Sky Highway, and changed the license plates.

Jessica studied Luke’s profile as he fiddled with the car radio. The meteorologist was warning of three back-to-back storm fronts, the first of which would hit within the hour. It was almost seven in the morning, yet the sky was still an ominous black. Already a mounting wind was buffeting their vehicle as they negotiated the twisting road that hugged cliffs above a sheer drop to the ocean.

Luke hadn’t said a word since they’d hit this dangerous stretch of road, but Jessica could sense the anger rolling off him in waves. She felt absolutely terrible that he’d lost his house. She was especially torn by the destruction of those haunting black-and-white images that had graced his walls.

“Luke, I really am sorry for the loss of your home,” she said, unable to stop herself.

His hands tightened on the wheel. “Don’t be,” he said. “Not your fault.”

“It is my fault. If it wasn’t for me, Stephanie and Giles would be alive, you’d still have your—”

“You’re thinking like a victim, Jess.” His voice was clipped. “You did nothing to deserve this.”

“Well, neither did you. So I am sorry.”

A muscle began to pulse at his jawline. “Quit apologizing. I told you, it’s my job.”

“It was also your home, Luke.”

His eyes cut to hers. “Forget about it, okay? It was just stuff. You don’t get to put down roots in my business. You don’t get attached to stuff.” He blew out a breath. “Look, Jess, it was a mistake to accumulate what I had. Mistakes happen when you get complacent. This was simply a wake-up call. That’s all.”

Jessica had a sense Luke was anything but complacent. And something about his home told her he did care about what was in it. She trusted her instincts. They’d given her many a scoop in the past.

“How long had you been living there, Luke?” she asked quietly.

“Long enough.”

“So why did you come to Vancouver?”

He remained silent.

She shifted in her seat to face him. “Look, if you just spit it out and tell me who I’m dealing with here, then I’ll leave you alone, okay?”

Again, his silence was almost threatening.

“If you were in my shoes, Luke, you’d ask. You’d need to know.”

“Fair enough,” he said, glancing at her. “The FDS sent me here to establish a small satellite office for gathering Pacific Rim intelligence, specifically on Asian criminal networks that collude with terrorists.”

“I thought you said your company was a private military company.”

“It is. PMCs are moving increasingly into the intelligence field. Clients demand this service.”

“Why Vancouver?”

“That should be obvious—it’s a major port city on the Pacific Rim with a significant Asian population and it’s an easy entry point to the United States.”

“You’re gathering this intelligence yourself?”

“My job is—was,” he corrected, “to get a handle on the key players behind the local tongs and triads and to determine what sort of new businesses they’re moving into. Traditionally it’s been heroin, gambling, extortion, black-market weapons, human trafficking and business and banking fraud. However, the syndicates are moving into increasingly sophisticated corporate espionage and, along with military hardware components, they’re now trafficking in biological and chemical components. I was supposed to assess which groups have the potential to become real political problems.”

“Are the Dragon Heads part of this?”

“The Dragon Heads Triad is at the top of my list. They’re one of the primary reasons I’m here. They’ve been aggressively acquiring territory around the world by usurping long-established gangs and networks. They infiltrate the rival tong or triad, then assassinate the leaders and govern by a code of terror. Anyone who steps out of line is killed as a warning.”

“You say this was your job?”

He snorted. “I suspect I’m going to have trouble fulfilling those functions now that I’m on the Dragon Heads hit list.”

Jessica’s stomach twisted. This just kept getting worse. “What makes you a specialist in this area, Luke?”

“Let’s just say I’ve had some…personal experience with triads.”

She thought about the scars on his back. “Is that why they sent you to pick me up?”

“No, Jess. I was the only mutt available. I just happen to also have significant close-protection experience.”

“Luke?”

He glanced at her again. “What?”

“I heard you say on the phone that you’d refused to do bodyguard gigs for this company of yours.”

“Yes.”

“Did…something happen on a job? Back in Australia?”

His energy shifted perceptibly. “Does this kind of interrogation come naturally from being an investigative journalist, Jessica, or were you just born nosy?”

She smiled in spite of herself. “I get the message. You don’t want to talk about yourself.”

“Right.”

She leaned back into her seat and closed her eyes, fatigue starting to consume her again as the adrenaline wore off. “But I will tell you one thing about me, Luke Stone,” she said softly through closed eyes. “In the end I always get the information I want.”

Luke felt a smile tug at his lips. She’d just issued him a challenge, almost playful in spite of the situation. It awakened something in him. Something that felt very, very foreign.

“That dogged curiosity is exactly what got you in trouble in the first place, Jessica Chan,” he said. “A lesser person would have given up after what you’d been through.”

Like he had.

She opened one eye. “Was that a compliment, Stone?”

“Just a statement of fact, Jess.”

“You do realize you’ve been calling me ‘Jess’ from the moment I met you? Is that an Australian thing or were you just born irreverent?”

He chuckled softly, caught off guard. He liked this woman. She had a way of opening him up. But that was exactly the problem with her. It made her dangerous to him, because Luke didn’t want to go back to being the man he once was. He didn’t want to open himself to emotion.

She closed her eyes again. “Your laugh almost makes you sound friendly,” she murmured.

“Me?”

“Comes as a shock, does it, Stone?”

It did, actually. He didn’t think of himself that way—as nice. Mostly he tried to avoid people. A bluntness bordering on rude usually did the job. His aggressive physical appearance took care of the rest.

He stole a quick look at her.

She’d fallen asleep, lashes dark on pale cheeks, her exhalations soft. An odd feeling quirked through his chest as he looked at her.

Luke returned his focus to the road. The wind was increasing, small flakes of snow were once again hitting the windshield as they drove into the brunt of the new storm.

But while the weather was foul outside, listening to her sleeping next to him felt warm, intimate, and Luke couldn’t help thinking about what she’d just said.

Friendly? Him?

He felt his lips twitching into a smile. The idea was amusing, strange, like the taste of something new.

Didn’t taste too hellish, either.

As they neared Furry Creek, driving snow was settling alarmingly fast on the road. A sedan in front of them skidded sideways, slumping nose first into a ditch at the base of a rock face held back with wire, red taillights upended. Luke glanced at Jessica. She was still fast asleep.

He looked up into the rearview mirror. A vehicle behind him was stopping to aid the driver. Luke kept driving. It was safer to avoid stopping. Stopping might mean engaging police.

But less than one minute later, he saw it was futile. Up ahead lay a police roadblock, luminous pink flares lining the road where Mounties in reflective gear waved certain vehicles off the road with flashlights.

He cursed, wondering what they were looking for. They shouldn’t have an ID on him personally, and he’d changed plates. The RCMP out here also would not likely know about Jessica’s link to the murder of Stephanie Ward—that was Vancouver P.D. jurisdiction.

As they hit a bump, Jessica woke, rubbed her face, then sat bolt upright. “A roadblock? They’re looking for us. Turn around, Luke.”

“We can’t. Not without being obvious.” His brain ticked over fast as they approached. “Jess,” he said urgently. “You never told me how the Triad knew you had taken those photos in the first place.”

“I don’t know! I told only the RCMP. That very same night, my apartment was ransacked.” She ran a hand through her hair, then looked at him. “Luke, they must have had an informant in the police.”

He had to think fast. “Don’t say anything,” he said, eyes fixed on the roadblock ahead. “Pretend you’re still asleep, put that hat on, turn your face away.” Luke slowed the vehicle as he lowered the window. A gust of flakes swirled into the warm interior.

A cop walked over, bent down, a layer of snow thick on the peak of his hat. “Good morning, sir,” he said as he directed his flashlight at Luke, then panned over to Jessica.

Chapter 5

“Is there a problem, Officer?” Luke asked.

“We’re doing a vehicle check, sir, not permitting anyone through without proper snow tires and chains. There’s heavy weather ahead. Road north of Pemberton is closed due to an avalanche and we’re expecting worse over the next seventy-two hours.”

“We’re equipped.”

“Where are you headed, sir?”

Luke frowned inwardly. This wasn’t standard. “Only as far as Squamish,” he lied.

“Can I see your license, please?”

Luke offered one with an alias. The officer went back to his vehicle to check it.

Luke sat calmly. The false ID would hold, but he didn’t like the fact it was being checked at all. The cop returned, did a walk around the vehicle, noting tires.

“You carrying chains, sir?”

“Yes, like I said, we’re equipped.”

The cop handed the license back. “There’s no guarantee the road will stay open north of Squamish if the weather worsens.”

“As I said, officer, we’re not going that far.”

The cop nodded. “Have a good day, then, sir.” He stepped back and waved another car over behind them.

Luke edged his vehicle forward, tires slipping slightly.

“Thank God,” Jessica whispered as she sat up. “I thought they were hunting for us.”

“They are. They just haven’t connected the dots yet.”

Moisture filled her eyes and she looked away quickly. Luke’s heart punched. He placed his hand on her knee. “It’s okay, Jess. We’ll get you through this.”

He had no business making promises he might not be able to keep. But he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to try and make her feel better.

“Thank you,” she whispered, barely audibly, covering his hand lightly with hers. Electricity sparked through Luke’s arm at the contact. Shocked, he withdrew his hand instantly. His tires were slipping, he needed both hands on the wheel, full attention on the road ahead.

Dawn arrived in pale monochromatic grays, a diaphanous curtain of snowflakes separating from the dark underbellies of clouds that socked low over the mountains. All around them granite cliffs were fringed with ridges of conifers that speared aggressively into the sky.

Luke pulled off the highway and turned into the village of Squamish. “Breakfast?” he asked.

She blew out a lungful of air and smiled shakily. “You have absolutely no idea how good that sounds right now.”

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