Bare Facts (8 page)

“Maybe I was thinking that you needed a strong hand,” he said, capturing her wrist and rubbing his thumb over the inside of it.

“Strong hand?”

“I didn’t stutter.”

“You’d better be prepared for a heck of a fight if you try to discipline me.”

“Under the right circumstances, I bet you’d be amiable.”

She shook her head. “Why does everything with you come back to sex?”

“Why do
you
always think it does?” he countered.

But he’d moved closer on the seat. He wanted her. And he wanted her safe. Already he was planning a way to make sure she was out of harm’s way when he challenged Sekijima. He’d probably have to do something that she’d find unforgivable to cause her to drop her guard.

He studied her fine features, memorizing them for a time in the future when memories of Charity would be all that he had left. He didn’t understand why he felt so strongly about her. Didn’t think he ever would, but then women were meant to be mysterious.

“It frightens me when you stare at me.”

“Why?”

“Because I can tell you’re not at all the sophisticated, civilized man you pretend to be.”

He almost laughed at that. She was too observant, but then he hadn’t expected that to change. From the first moment she’d walked into his hotel room, she’d been knocking him off balance.

“Good, forewarned is forearmed.”

“Do I need to be armed around you?” she asked, in that silky tone of hers that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

“Aren’t you always armed around men? Ready to charm or disarm them?”

“Maybe.”

“I thought we were going to have honesty between us.”

She put her free hand over his wrist, right below his watch, and stroked his arm. “Yes, I am exactly like that. But with you it’s different.”

“How?”

“I got the feeling you saw past all that.”

He drew her hand up toward his lips, brushed his mouth over the back of her hand. The skin was soft; her nails were painted a delicate color, yet that hand had held a Sig Sauer semiautomatic with surety and skill. God, she intrigued him.

T
upac’s rap had a way of cutting straight to the heart of what she was thinking. Charity didn’t find any peace in knowing what was in her own heart. She wanted to pretend that she didn’t understand Daniel or that she wanted just his body or to protect him.

But the truth was that she felt sometimes that there was nothing left inside of her except the two parts that warred with each other. Nothing left of that girl who’d been her family’s pampered princess. That all of the real Charity had been burned away in her quest for vengeance against the man who’d ruined her world.

The man who’d dared to take her perfect fairy tale and ruin it. And she hadn’t been subtle about ruining that man’s life. She’d been very Old Testament about her quest against Kenkichi. She’d gone after his parents, and then after him. She’d taken his world apart as efficiently as he had hers.

The only problem was that she’d emerged not knowing who she was anymore. And she still didn’t know.

She doubted that knowledge was going to come to her now as she stared into Daniel’s green eyes.

“What are you hiding?” he asked her as he dropped her wrist. He brought his hand up to her face, something he did with too much frequency. She was starting to really like the way he held her jaw in his hand. That ruined forefinger moving over her skin softly, tracing the line of her jaw.

“Nothing,” she said, the honesty of that statement rattling around inside of her.

“Charity,” he said, her name released on a breath.

“I’m not lying.”

“I know. You’re not empty.”

His words scared her. How could he know the very fear that had always driven her?

“How?”

“It’s in your eyes. You think that you are—”

She jerked her head away from him. “Don’t tell me what I think, Daniel. You don’t know me.”

“Sweetheart, you don’t even know yourself,” he said.

His words were at once sweet and cutting. She shook her head, angry that she’d let him distract her from her focus. It didn’t matter that she’d wanted to distract him. She had just realized that with Daniel she was playing a game she didn’t know how to win.

But she was beginning to understand the rules. “You needle me when you want a distraction.”

“I’m not needling you.”

“That’s right, you aren’t.”

He gave her one of those half-smiles of his. “When we get on the plane I want you to help me think like my enemy.”

She sat up straighter. Finally, something she was good at. Once she understood more about Sekijima she could figure out what made him tick. Her own knowledge of the Yakuza was rough, barely formed. Kenkichi hadn’t been in the Yakuza and he’d been the only thing she’d focused on in Japan.

Her training had taken her into sex clubs, and she’d met a few of the local gang members but she hadn’t allowed her focus to slip. She needed to bring that focus to bear now. She needed to find a way to tap into that same single-minded determination that had brought her to her quest against Kenkichi ten years ago.

But she didn’t like that part of herself. Hadn’t wanted to admit that behind her pretty face and body there could lurk a need for such revenge. Yet there had been.

“I’ll help in any way I can. What I don’t know, Justine will.”

“What are the strengths of your team?” he asked.

“That we’re all so different. We all think and fight in unique ways. Justine is a street fighter—”

“Like me,” he said.

“Yes, and she has no give in her. She’ll fight using whatever means are necessary. She’s a dirty fighter when she has to be.”

“And the other girl?”

“Anna lives by the rules, but she’s smart enough to outwit anyone. I’ve never seen anything like it. She hates to fight and she almost never has to.”

“And you?”

“I’m lethal with weapons. I don’t like getting personal in a fight the way Justine does.”

“You keep yourself above it,” he said.

Was that true? She thought about the way she relied on her weapons, the fact that she could make a kill or take someone down without getting in too close. And when she had to, she used martial arts training to quickly subdue her opponent.

“I guess I do.”

“Why is that?”

She shrugged. “I’ve never analyzed it.”

“Would you like to hear what I think?”

“No.”

“I never would have figured you for a coward,” he said.

“I’m not going to let you goad me into this. I’m not scared of anything you have to say.”

He turned to the front of the vehicle and the silence built between the two of them. And just as she was sure he’d planned, she couldn’t stop wondering why he thought she fought the way she did.

He wouldn’t be right because there were things about her that no one knew. Not even Sam, with his extensive connections, had ever been able to find out what made her tick.

The glimpses of vulnerability he caught so fleetingly crossing her face made him want to stand up for her. Tell her not to worry about whatever faults she imagined she had, because he knew she was so much better than he was.

“You are so used to wielding your looks and lethal talents that most people don’t know how to deal with you—and you like that.”

“Are you sure? It could be that people really just don’t know how to deal with
me
. Most women are afraid to trust their husbands and boyfriends around me.”

“Is their fear of you or the men?” he asked, leaning closer.

She shrugged. “What does it matter?”

“I want to know.”

“I think it’s a mixture of both. Usually they are right and their men make a pass when we’re left alone. So it’s not that I’m hiding, exactly—it’s just that…”

He loved the cadence of her words and the softness of her voice. In all his life, softness had been absent. Even now, with all his wealth and supposed security, he still hadn’t found any way to bring that into his life.

“Every time you let someone in, they disappoint you,” he offered. He wished they’d met two months earlier. Hell, two
days
earlier would have been great. Any time before Sekijima had resurfaced, and he could have courted her the way she deserved. Instead he was going to have to use her as cover to set up a trap that could endanger her.

Well, didn’t
that
make him the catch of the year!

“I’m not complaining. Most of the time I come on full-out bad-ass to scare people. It’s easier that way.”

He wanted to laugh. She was so blasé about her life, which was borderline extraordinary. Her cell phone beeped and she pulled it out, read an e-mail, and then quickly typed a response on the keypad.

“Justine is ready for us at the plane. I alerted her that we might have a tail. She’s getting into position to protect our back until you are safely on the plane.”

“That’s fine. Henry’s not going to be able to drive out in this car.”

“I’ll have Anna take care of him.”

Henry stopped the car and got out to open the door. Daniel signaled him to wait. “Your people will have to keep him safe for a few days.”

“We will,” she said.

“I’ve rethought keeping you with me, Charity.”

“Not again.”

“It’ll be safer for you if you stay here with Henry.”

“You’re not paying me to stay safe. You’re paying me to protect you.”

“Since I’m the one paying, I get to choose,” he said, capturing her wrist when she would have started to get out of the car.

“If I answered to you,” she said. “But Sam is my boss and he assigned me as your bodyguard.”

Henry opened the door and she swiveled on the seat, turning her legs to exit. “You’re a very caring man—to watch out for your staff the way you do.”

She climbed out before he could answer. Caring wasn’t something that was in his makeup, but if she wanted to believe that about him, he wasn’t going to argue. He knew enough about women to know that they were more comfortable with emotion.

He wanted Henry safe for two reasons: one, the man had been a good driver over the last few years; and two, he wasn’t sure that Henry wouldn’t talk if he were captured. He’d probably give them Charity’s address, and he wanted that information kept out of Sekijima’s hands.

“Henry, someone from the Liberty Investigations team will take you to a safe location until the men who were after me are caught,” Daniel said.

“I’m fine, sir. I know how to watch my back.”

“All the same, I’m going to insist you take a few days off—think of it as a vacation.”

“Yes, sir.”

He followed Charity across the tarmac, thinking about what she said. He’d revealed more to her than he’d intended, and though she thought that would help in her investigation, he knew that it had increased the danger to her.

As soon as the plane was in the air, Daniel took out his laptop and started working. He’d taken a call as soon as they’d arrived at the airport. Charity wasn’t sure if she was glad that he was unavailable or not.

She did know she had a list of questions that just kept growing, questions that only he knew the answer to, questions that her gut warned her were going to stay unanswered.

“Why didn’t you take him to your dojo and work out some of your frustrations on him?” Justine said as she settled into the leather executive chair next to Charity.

Charity exhaled, trying to find the right words. “He wasn’t agreeable to that.”

Justine chuckled. “That man is getting under your skin.”

“I don’t know why,” she admitted. “Did you have a chance to run the Yakuza and the name he supplied us with?”

“There’s nothing on Sekijima in our databases, but Anna only had time for a prelim search before we took off. She’s back on the computer working her magic again. We’ll have an answer soon enough.”

“Good. I e-mailed you the plans for his house on that island in the San Juans as well as the high-rise apartment. Can you make a list of everything we’ll need to secure those two locations?”

“Will do. I think security is going to be tough at both locations. You’re good but that island is vast. Will he wear a vest?”

“I doubt it. It would be better if we could get a decoy in to take his place. I’m going to add that to my security-plan scenarios.”

Both women worked on their laptops independently until Justine needed more information from Anna and left to go chat with her.

Daniel didn’t move from his desk, which took up one wall of the plane. Charity stretched and scanned the interior. She knew that Anna and Justine had been over every inch of the plane but she wasn’t going to be satisfied until she had a chance to check out the small bedroom in the back and reassure herself that there was no danger lurking there.

She’d been up front to check out both of the pilots and felt she could handle anything those two threw at her. The one flight attendant in the back with them had worked with Liberty Investigations before.

Charity saved the document she’d been working on and stowed her laptop. She went over to Justine and Anna.

“What’s up?” Anna asked.

“I want to check out that room. Can you cover Daniel until I’m back?”

“Sure. But we already went over it.”

Charity shrugged. “I’ve got to see for myself.”

“Go ahead—we’ve got him covered.”

“Thanks.”

She entered the room and realized there was a lot of space for an assailant to hide. The bed was king-sized and took up all of the room from wall to wall. There was a small closet, which was empty of everything save Daniel’s suit jacket. The small washroom was also empty, but as she went over the space she found a small pin.

Bending down, she picked it up. It was similar in size to a Rotary pin, but the design wasn’t familiar.

“What are you doing in here?”

She glanced up from where she was kneeling on the floor. “Double-checking.”

“For?”

“Anything that can help me keep you safe.” He leaned there in the doorway against the frame, his arms crossed at his chest, staring down at her.

She stood up and turned in the close confines to face him. The pin felt cool in her hand and she turned it over in her palm, glancing back down at it for a minute before lifting her palm toward him.

“Do you recognize this?” she asked.

His face went totally blank as he stared down at the item. Then he picked it up and brought it closer for examination. “Where did you find that pin?”

“On the floor,” she said, indicating a spot behind her. His eyes had gone totally quiet when he stared at the pin. There was a history there and she had no idea what it was.

He closed his fist around the small symbol and pocketed the piece. He kept his hand in his pocket and she wondered what he was thinking. Wished like hell there was some way to know what was going through his head. Did it have much significance?

“Wait. That’s evidence. I want to dust it for prints,” she said. Would he say something more?

“It’s not evidence.”

“It isn’t?”

“No, it’s a warning.”

“Then you know who dropped it here?”

“I know who left it.”

“Sekijima?” she asked. She wanted to know more about the man who was threatening Daniel. Anna was going to run a check on him but if he was deep in the Yakuza, they’d only get so far.

“More likely one of his people.”

Charity leaned her hip against the countertop surrounding the sink. “Why would they be that clumsy?”

He shook his head, drew his hand out of his pocket, and looked down at the tiny pin one more time. His mind was somewhere else. Probably on the enemy he knew far better than he wanted to reveal to her. “They weren’t. This was left in here deliberately as a signal to me.”

She didn’t like the way his fist was clenched. The anger was back, that cold and fierce tension in his shoulders and eyes. He looked dangerous and she knew it wasn’t directed at her but all the same she was concerned.

She thought about what he’d said…a signal. This felt more and more like a game of cat and mouse to her. A deadly game to be sure, but a game nonetheless. What was Sekijima up to?

“You say it’s a warning of some kind?”

“Yes, it is.”

She waited, hoping he’d elaborate, but Daniel wasn’t much of a talker and revealed only what he wanted to.