The Reckoning

Though he was lousy at light banter, he tried to ease the tension of the moment. “Oh, good. Then maybe I have a chance with you.”

She didn’t crack a smile. “As if I would know what to do if I had you. I was no good as Linda Faraday, secret agent accountant. Ricky doesn’t think anything of me as a mother. I doubt I’m much of a woman, either.”

Despite those words, her flowery, female scent was in the air, tickling his nose, shaking awake the lust that he’d felt when he’d held her in his arms that morning. He couldn’t stop himself from pushing back a damp tendril of her bright hair. “Give yourself time.”

“I can’t, don’t you see? I’ve lost so much time already. In another ten years, Ricky won’t need a mother.”

What could he say to that? What could he do to help? Unfortunately for Linda, he wasn’t the pep-talk type. His true expertise lay in looking at the dark side of life. “What’s the alternative?” he asked.

She spun away. “Giving up.”

The two words froze him. Not because he didn’t understand the impulse, but because he’d done it himself. After the Jessica Chandler case, so closely following his brother Chris’s murder, he’d given up and run away to the cabin in the Sandias. If he had his way, he’d probably still be there. Still be half-drunk. Still be full of pain.

Now he was sober. And still full of pain.

Linda spun back. “But I can’t. I won’t. I have a responsibility to Ricky, an obligation to Nancy and Dean who never gave up on me. Do you see?”

“I do.” It was the truth. “Sometimes what keeps us going is not what we want, but what we owe to other people.”

She studied his face. “The promise you made to Ryan.”

“And to myself. To my parents. To the memory of my brother Christopher.”

Linda winced. “I’m sorry.” She touched a hand to her forehead, then laid her fingers on his arm. “The injury…I’m still working on not thinking everything revolves around me, me, me. I’m complaining, but you’re in a bad place, too, and yet you’re here, playing Mary Poppins to me.”

He raised his eyebrows. “As long as you don’t ask me to fly you around with my umbrella.”

Her fingers tightened on him and her touch was once again warming his blood, that lust distracting him. “Seriously, Emmett. I know I’m not quite a whole person, let alone a sounding board, but I’m here if you want to talk.”

“I’m not much of a talker. I was always the lone wolf in the family.”

“You’re in luck,” she said with a half smile. “I practiced my silence for many years.”

Then she showed him how good she was at it. She sat down on the edge of the treadmill’s ramp, then patted the spot beside her. He surprised himself by obeying, seating himself next to her while the quiet grew around them.

She crossed her arms on top of her bent knees and rested her cheek there. He gazed at the back of her head while listening to the sounds of spring outside. Birds were trilling, peeping, cheeping. A branch, jostled by the warm wind, scratched against the glass of the window. Dogs barked in the distance.

A sense of the season settled over him. Springtime. Renewal. Hope.

Linda’s eyes were closed and he wondered if she was asleep. Her lashes were dark brown and curled against the soft pink of her cheeks.

“You’re still a woman, you know,” he murmured.

She wasn’t asleep, at least not all the way. Her lashes rose and she sat up, slanting him a half-drowsy glance. “You think?”

“I know.” Their gazes held. Darker pink color tinged her fair skin. His hand reached out and he palmed her warm cheek. “Shall I prove it to you?”

She swallowed. “Not because you’re obligated.”

He shook his head. “Not because I’m obligated.” But because he didn’t like to see her sad. Because he thought he could take one worry off her mind. Oh, yeah, and then there was that lust. He’d known it would complicate things, but right now he didn’t care.

Leaning close, he touched his lips to hers.

She jerked against his hand, as if he’d stung her, but he’d been gentle. He was gentle. So, so gentle.

For a moment, she kissed like a child might, her mouth pursed and stiff, but then she softened. Her lips parted, but he didn’t pretend it was an intimate invitation. Instead, he let her warm up to the kiss, let her warm up to him, without doing any more than keeping his mouth pressed close to hers.

“You should breathe,” he whispered against her mouth. “You still need air.”

“Is that why I see stars?”

It made him smile, and he drew back to look at her.

She traced his lips with two fingers. “You don’t do that often enough. Smile, I mean.”

“Keep kissing me and maybe I will.”

But she was shaking her head. “I have your number, you know. I’m getting smarter by the minute when it comes to you.”

“How’s that?”

She straightened away from him. “You’re sweet.”

He stared at her. “Sweet? You’re kidding, right?”

“You’re sweet.”

“I’m cynical. Cold. Distant. Determined. Ask anyone.”

Shaking her head, she rose to her feet. “I don’t need to. I was feeling low and not very confident and you kissed me. That’s sweet.”

“I didn’t do it to be sweet!”

She had the wide blue eyes of a baby. “Then why did you?”

“Because…” It had nothing to do with sweetness. It was because he thought she was beautiful and sexy, which, if she wasn’t so sweet herself, she’d see proof of in the tight fit of his now uncomfortable jeans.

“Told you.” With a little grin, she spun on one foot and sauntered out, her hips swishing with a sassy little twitch.

That womanly touch was almost worth being called sweet. Almost.

“Don’t fool yourself,” he called after her. “I’m cynical. Cold. Distant. Determined. Just wait and I’ll prove it to you.”

The bathroom door closing was her answer.

He was still smiling—smiling again!—when his cell phone rang. It sat on a low table he’d pushed to the side of the room, so he made a long reach for it.

“Jamison, here.”

“And here, too,” a voice said.

Emmett forgot about spring and sunshine. Darkness closed in on him again. He felt it, smelled it, sensed the sulfur whiff of evil in the air. Striding to the doorway of the exercise room, he glanced down the hall to keep watch on the bathroom door. To make sure Linda was safe.

“Where the hell are you, Jason?”

“Do you think I called to tell you, little brother? Then you’re stupider than I thought.”

Emmett gritted his teeth at his brother’s taunting. In a perverse sense, Jason was entitled to his arrogance. The police had had him in custody once and then he’d escaped to kidnap Lily Fortune. Later, even with experienced men like Emmett in the mix, the FBI had lost him during the ransom exchange. And an agent had lost his life.

“We figured you’d be on your way to the South Pacific or South America with the ransom money by now,” Emmett said, calming his voice.

“You’d like me out of the country, wouldn’t you?”

What Emmett would like was to find his brother and stop him once and for all. It was what he’d vowed to do. Cynical, cold, distant, determined. If Linda could look inside him right now, she’d have no doubt about the kind of man he was.

“I’d like to know why you called, Jason.”

“I read this morning’s Red Rock newspaper.”

There was a clue. His brother was near enough to Red Rock to have easy access to the local paper. What it might have said, though, Emmett had no idea. Since he was in San Antonio now, he read the San Antonio paper. But Jason couldn’t know what city he was in and Emmett certainly wasn’t about to tell him. His brother was smart enough without providing him any aid. “I didn’t get a chance to read it yet myself.”

“Didn’t get a chance to read it,” Jason mocked, his voice rising. “You don’t need to read it to know that Ryan Fortune left you a bundle of cash and stock options.”

Apparently some of the details of Ryan’s will had been leaked to the press. It might have irritated Emmett if it hadn’t also brought Jason out of the woodwork. “Hey, it wasn’t my choice, Jase. That was Ryan’s doing.”

“Why should you get any of the Fortune money when it was me who worked so hard for it?”

Jason had thought himself entitled to the Fortune wealth since they were kids, and their grandfather, Farley Jamison, had been obsessed with the money as a means to fund his grandiose political aspirations. “But you have some of the Fortune money—Lily’s ransom,” Emmett pointed out.

“I don’t care about that,” Jason snapped.

Emmett frowned. “You don’t care about the money?”

“Not as much as I care about taking you down, little brother. Keep looking over your shoulder, Emmett, because I’m coming after you. Then I’ll have my reward. And my revenge.”

The call clicked off. Emmett remained standing, staring at the phone in his hand. Well, well, well. This put a new spin on things.

The man Emmett had promised himself to stop had just promised to stop him.

Fine, he thought.

May the best man win.

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