Dangerous (13 page)

He pulled up in front of Barbara’s Café where she’d left her car and sat with the engine idling.

She wanted to say something. She couldn’t think of anything that would express her confused emotions.

He wanted to say something, too, but he was angry. Anything he said would be too much.

Her hand went to the car door. “Thanks for the ride,” she said tautly. “Sure.”

She waited for a minute, but he didn’t say another word. He didn’t even look at her. She opened the door, got out and closed it behind her. She walked to her own car without looking back. She could barely see it through her tears when she heard him drive away.

“Y
OU LOOK LIKE DEATH
warmed over,” Keely said gently later, when they were fixing supper.

Winnie managed a smile as she made a pasta salad. “That’s how I feel.”

“Want to talk about it?”

Winnie put the finishing touches on the salad and covered the bowl before she put it in the refrigerator to chill. “It wouldn’t help,” she said finally.

“Well, if you do want to talk, you know where I am,” Keely said.

“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had,” Winnie told her. “It was the best day of my life when Boone married you.” She hugged her warmly.

“I could return the compliment. You saved my life when the rattler bit me. I thought I was a goner.”

Winnie laughed. “Poor old snake,” she said, fighting back the tears that the hug had provoked.

“He never should have bitten me in the first place.”

“He wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t sat on him,” Winnie said.

“I guess so.”

“You won’t tell Boone, if I tell you?” she asked.

Keely’s green eyes twinkled. She crossed her heart.

“Kilraven wants me to marry him.”

“Winnie! That’s great news…!” Keely began.

She held up a hand. “It’s not. He wants me to marry him and spend a few days at our summer house in Nassau so that he can have me pump Senator Sanders’s wife for information about her crooked brother-in-law. Then he wants an annulment when we get back. Unless I’m willing to, how did he put it, enjoy our time together, in which case we can get a divorce when we come home.”

Keely just stared at her. “That silver-eyed devil,” she exclaimed. “I hope you told him where to go!”

“Not in so many words, no,” Winnie replied quietly. “But I did tell him no.”

“Good for you. I can’t believe he asked you to do such a thing!”

“Neither can I.”

“You poor thing,” Keely said. “I know how you feel about him.”

“So does he.” She sighed. “That’s part of the problem. I shouldn’t have been so obvious.”

“It’s not as if you could help it.”

“Well, that’s true.”

“Men are a lot of trouble. Even the best of them.”

Winnie leaned back against the counter with her arms folded over her chest. “I really thought he was beginning to like me. He seemed to. Then he came up with this cockeyed plan.” She glanced at her friend. “I do understand how he feels. He loved his little girl…”

“Little girl?” Keely exclaimed. “He’s already married?”

Winnie’s eyes were sad. “He was. Someone killed his daughter and his wife. The little girl was just three years old. She drew him a picture. It looked just like the painting I did for him, as a Christmas gift.”

Keely went quiet. “You really do have something extra in your brain, Winnie.”

“I must.” She laughed softly. “It made him furious. That’s why he took me to his house that time, to find out why I painted a raven. I didn’t even know myself. When he showed me the finger painting, I almost passed out.”

“It wasn’t the first time you’ve had odd connections. You knew Kilraven was in danger and sent backup long before he asked for it.”

“Eerie, isn’t it?”

“Not eerie,” Keely said gently. “It’s a gift. You probably saved Kilraven’s life when you sent another squad car to assist him.”

“He gave me strange looks after that.”

“I think he’s conflicted about how he feels,” Keely said. “A man who’s gone through a trauma like that has to work through it.”

“He’s had seven years.”

“Yes, but he hasn’t really faced it, has he?” Keely asked. “He wants revenge. It’s all he lives for. But revenge is a hollow thing.”

“He’ll find that out.”

“Yes, he will.” Keely hugged her. “But it doesn’t help you, does it?”

Winnie hugged her back. “Not a lot.”

“Give him time,” Keely advised. “Just be there when he needs someone to talk to. He seems to have told you things that he hasn’t shared with anyone else. He really is a loner.”

“Yes.”

“Why did he want to marry you to go to the Bahamas?” Keely wondered.

“We’d have to stay in the house together. He was worried about his reputation,” she added facetiously.

“His?”

Winnie flushed, when she recalled what he’d told her. “Well, his and mine,” she amended without elaborating. “He said it wouldn’t look right for us to be staying together, alone, when we’re not married.”

“Talk about a throwback to an earlier generation,” Keely exclaimed.

“So says the woman who offered to send my brother packing because she thought he was looking for a good time,” Winnie said and grinned.

Keely grimaced. “Touché. I guess Kilraven’s like us. He doesn’t move with the times. That’s not a bad thing. I don’t like promiscuous men any more than I like promiscuous women, and I don’t care if it’s supposed to be acceptable behavior to the whole world.”

“Want me to get you a soapbox and a placard?” Winnie mused.

Keely laughed. “I sound like a crusader, don’t I? I don’t preach to people about my personal beliefs, I don’t tell people what I think they should do. But I never was one to go with the crowd. Neither are you.”

“We live in a whole community of dinosaurs,” Winnie pointed out. “Including Kilraven.”

Keely smiled. “He’ll come around.”

“Do you think so?” she asked miserably. “He didn’t even look at me when he let me out at Barbara’s. He just drove away.”

“He’ll think about it and then he’ll call you.”

“Not a chance in the world.”

Keely pursed her lips. “I’ll bet you some homemade rolls.”

“You can’t make homemade bread,” Winnie pointed out.

“That’s how sure I am that Kilraven will be back,” she returned. “Wait and see.”

Winnie only smiled. But she didn’t believe it.

K
ILRAVEN WENT TO SEE
J
ON
. He was fuming about Winnie’s refusal and at a loss as to how to change her mind. Maybe Jon had some ideas.

But Jon didn’t. Worse, he kept grinning, as if the whole thing was a joke.

“It’s not funny!” Kilraven growled.

Jon glanced at him from his lounging position on his sofa. “Yes, it is.”

Kilraven sat down in the easy chair. There was a soccer game on, two European teams slugging it out with feet, heads and shoulders on the huge green field.

“You have to see it from her point of view,” Jon said gently. “She’s lived a sheltered life. She doesn’t really know much about men. If you know her brother, Boone, you’ve already figured that out. I imagine that protective attitude of his kept a lot of men away from Winnie when she first started dating. Most grown men are afraid to stand up to him. From what you’ve told me about her, I can guarantee you that Winnie won’t even try.”

Kilraven sat back in the chair and crossed his long legs. He let out a frustrated sigh. “This is the best chance I’m going to get to see if the senator’s wife knows something,” he said. “All I want Winnie to do is go down to Nassau with me for a few days.”

“No, you want her to move in with you and do what comes naturally for a few days. She isn’t buying it. She’s the sort of woman who won’t settle for anything less than marriage, but a permanent marriage, not a pretend one. She sees right through you. That’s what you can’t take.”

He shrugged. “It’s damned inconvenient.”

“What is?”

Kilraven looked at the television screen. “She’s attractive.”

“But you don’t want anything permanent.”

“That’s part of it.”

“Is there another part?”

He nodded. “She’s twenty-two, Jon.”

“Oh. Now I begin to see the light.”

“Twenty-two to my thirty-two,” he continued. “She’s already learned about the generation gap from her parents. Her mother was twelve years younger than her father. She ran off with his younger brother. Winnie saw the dangers.”

“Then why is she still interested in you?”

“God knows. I’m an old, worn-out, used-up lobo wolf,” he said heavily, staring at his shoes. “She’s innocent and unsophisticated.” He laughed. “Funny. When I first met her, I had this idea that she was a bored debutante playing a game, pretending to be naive. But it was a far cry from the truth. She’s very naive, but she doesn’t play games and she’s greener than grass. I don’t know how she’s managed to stay so innocent for so long in the circles she and her family travel in.”

“Which brings us back to big brother Boone, who would knock your teeth in for playing around with his baby sister.”

Kilraven smiled. “I guess I wouldn’t blame him. It was a stupid thing I suggested to her. Still, I’m not taking her to Nassau and staying in the house with her without some legal ceremony. She’s a fine young woman. I don’t want to mess up her reputation.”

“Or your own,” Jon mused.

Kilraven shot him a glance. “At least I don’t have the police lead women out of my office handcuffed.”

He shrugged. “What can I say? She tried to bend me back over my own desk.” He shook his head. “My mother needs therapy.”

“I would never have said that,” Kilraven replied. He grinned. “But I’m glad you did.”

“We should have taught Cammy how to recognize a call girl.”

“Too late now.” He pursed his lips. “Ms. Perry still giving you hell at the office?”

“Come to think of it, no.” Jon frowned. “I can’t figure out why. I did praise her for doing such a good job of digging up info on our murder victim. She’s been different since then.”

“Different, how?”

“You know, I haven’t really thought about it,” Jon said. “She’s stopped sniping at me. She smiles once in a while. Things like that.”

“Look out.”

He chuckled. “No need. She’s not interested in me. She doesn’t like men.”

“She has a child.”

“Strange thing about that. She seems afraid of men, if they come too close physically.”

“Where’s her husband?”

“He wasn’t her husband,” Jon replied somberly. “He went overseas and got killed. Maybe there was some violence in the relationship. But before she got involved with him she didn’t date much, either.”

“She might have other preferences.”

“She might, but she doesn’t. She keeps to herself.”

“What’s the little boy like?”

“Don’t know,” Jon said. “I’ve never seen him.”

“Don’t you have those Bring Your Child to Work days?”

Jon glared at him. “We have an FBI office—we don’t encourage employees to use it as a day-care center.”

Kilraven held up both hands.

“I don’t like children.”

Kilraven was giving him an odd look. “Why?”

“I just don’t.”

“Oh. I remember. The soap thing.”

“It was not a soap thing,” Jon corrected him. “The kid wrote obscene words all over the passenger side of my car, and I didn’t notice until one of my coworkers was rolling in the aisles laughing about it.”

“I thought you had to be observant to work for the FBI,” Kilraven said innocently.

“Observant? Who looks at the passenger side of his car every morning?” Jon asked belligerently.

“CIA personnel, checking for bombs,” Kilraven replied.

“In your case, I’d even be checking the paint for C-4,” his brother pointed out. “But nobody ever tried to blow me up.”

Kilraven chuckled. “It wasn’t much of a bomb.” He recalled the incident his brother was alluding to. “The brown envelope he’d shoved it into was torn and you could see the wires sticking out.”

“Lucky for you.”

“Lucky for him, too. He’s only doing five to ten for attempted murder. He could be facing the needle for a capital crime.”

“I believe the defense attorney was insinuating that we need a better educated class of criminal and looking straight at you when he said it?”

“So I cost him a couple of gold stars on his defense record as a public defender,” Kilraven scoffed. “One of the lowlifes he got off raped a girl one day after he was acquitted. The pissant knew he was guilty—he defended him anyway and got him off. I just made sure the prosecutors knew that the public defender had ‘encouraged’ a witness not to testify at the first trial. He got a reprimand from the bar association.” He glanced at Jon. “Pity we don’t still have the rack and public stocks.”

“You need to lay off that sixteenth-century Scottish history,” Jon advised. “Why don’t you read something modern?”

“I do. Combat manuals and books on antiterrorism.”

Jon threw up his hands.

B
UT
J
ON HAD, AT LEAST
, convinced Kilraven that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Winnie if he continued with his present plan. He went back home to his apartment downtown to think about his next move.

It was a nice apartment, roomy and open. He had three bedrooms, one of which he used as an office. It contained all his high-tech equipment, weight-lifting bars and traveling accessories, including a bag that remained packed year-round in case he was sent overseas on a mission with a few minutes’ notice. That had happened in the past. It wouldn’t anytime soon because he was officially on a leave of absence.

There was a bed in the room, also a desk where his laptop stayed connected to the Internet—hard-wired and monitored, to make sure he had no hackers on board.

There was a guest bedroom next to his own, with the minimum of amenities. It was just a place to stay, in case some out-of-town agent needed a secure place to bunk down.

His own bedroom was Spartan, just a double bed, because he liked room to turn over, and a chest of drawers and bookcase. The bookcase was almost the size of the bed, and chock-full of historical tomes. In a corner was a big Schmidt-Casssegrain telescope, which he rarely had time to use.