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Express Male
Elizabeth Bevarly


Why is everyone calling her "Lila"?Music teacher and part-time lingerie saleswoman Marnie Lundy's biggest thrill is playing piano at the local mall…until the night everyone seems to think she's somebody else!Suddenly she's being addressed in code, menaced by a man who claims to know her intimately and rescued by a handsome spymaster who thinks she's a threat to national security!But OPUS agent Noah Tennant has a feeling she's more Mata Hari than Mother Teresa. Could a woman this sexy truly be innocent, or is Marnie his opponent in a deadly game of spy vs. spy?









“So what’s your code name?”


Marnie met the faux-security-guard-turned-special-agent’s gaze and continued, “I mean, I can hazard a few guesses, but none of them is worth uttering in polite society.”

“I owe you an apology,” he said in an amazingly courteous voice.

“Yeah, I’ll say you do,” she retorted before she could stop herself. “What brings on this sudden change of heart?” For such a supersecret, sophisticated organization, they sure seemed like a bunch of boneheads.

“We ran a check on your name,” he said, “and we realized you are indeed who you say you are.”

“Why didn’t you run a check like that the minute I got here?” she demanded.

“We were convinced you were Lila trying to pull a fast one. We didn’t have any reason to believe you were who you said you were.”

Marnie nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said. Even though she was still suspicious of the sudden turnaround. “So does this mean I can go home?” she asked hopefully.

He nodded. “I’ll drive you myself….”


More delicious “special deliveries” from

ELIZABETH BEVARLY

and HQN books

You’ve Got Male

Overnight Male




Express Male

Elizabeth Bevarly





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


For the Robinson women.

All four generations.

We rock.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN




CHAPTER ONE


AN AWED SILENCE FELL over Carnegie Hall as Marnie Lundy strolled confidently across the stage in her elegant black formal, the flowing crepe whispering about her wrists and ankles with every step. The darkness of the auditorium hid the thousands of eyes she knew were fixed upon her, but she wavered not once. Smiling to herself, she recalled, as she always did when she took the stage, the old Bugs Bunny cartoon where the celebrated symphony conductor Leopold appeared amid hushed and reverent murmurs of “Leopold. Leopold. Leopold.”

Tonight, however, there was no symphony. Tonight, there was no conductor. Because tonight, Marnie Lundy, concert pianist, would solo for thousands of her admirers. Tonight, the hushed and reverent murmurs were of “Marnie. Marnie. Marnie.”

She threw back her head, shaking silvery blond hair over her shoulders, and seated herself gracefully on the bench. Her posture was impeccable, the piano was tuned to perfection and her knowledge of the music was complete. The gods were smiling, the planets were aligned and all was right in the universe. Lifting her hands to the keys, she gently stroked the ivory, filling her ears and her mind and her heart with the lovely, lilting strains of—

“Hey, lady, where’s the bathroom?”

She squeezed her eyes shut tight, sighing with much eloquence as her fingers went still. “It’s behind you,” she said glumly. “Through ladies’ hosiery and designer handbags, in men’s sportswear. Next to the Tommy Bahama display.”

“Thanks, toots.”

When she opened her eyes, it was to see a stout, balding man in an ugly Hawaiian shirt and enormous pants waddling away in the direction into which she’d sent him. Instead of a darkened Carnegie Hall, she was seated in the middle of a brightly lit department store—Lauderdale’s of Cleveland, to be precise—where Marnie Lundy appeared every Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening playing the piano. And where she appeared hawking overpriced underwear in the lingerie department other days. The black crepe formal was actually a straight, gray cotton skirt and light blue sweater set, and the silvery blond hair was really more of the dishwater variety. It was long enough to throw over her shoulders, though, if she wanted to. But that didn’t happen often, since it was generally twisted into a loose knot atop her head, as it was now.

Alas, the thousands of adoring eyes Marnie had imagined worshipping her actually amounted to only eight, mostly indifferent ones: two on the face of a young mother seated on a sofa near the piano (the two on the baby to whom she was feeding a bottle were closed), two on the bored saleswoman in ladies’ hosiery, two on a teenage girl who was clearly trying to decide if anyone would notice her tucking the Kate Spade wallet she was fingering into her jacket pocket and two on the face of the store manager, who really should have been keeping his eyes on the teenager in Kate Spade instead.

Fortunately, those final two eyes were approving of Marnie. Unfortunately, they were a little too approving. In spite of his name, Bob Troutman wasn’t much of a catch. Not just because he was a greasy, revolting little fish-faced man—though, granted, that part was pretty off-putting. But also because he had a wife and four little Troutmans living with him at the bottom of whatever contaminated body of water he called his habitat. All told, it was enough to put Marnie off her lunch whenever she saw the guy. Which was why she always looked away whenever she caught him watching her. Like, for instance, now.

Dropping her gaze back to the piano keys, she repositioned her fingers and played the opening bars of “Stardust.” In her Carnegie Hall fantasy, she would have flawlessly performed Chopin’s Polonaise in A flat, but here at Lauderdale’s, old standards were de rigueur, since so many of Lauderdale’s shoppers were little old ladies who remembered when cotton briefs only cost ten cents a pair. And, boy, don’t think Marnie didn’t hear about that every day of the week, either.

Still, it was a decent job, as jobs went. The pay wasn’t great, but it had flexible hours and gave her the time she needed for other pursuits, like writing her music and giving lessons to her young students. She’d never been one for setting the world on fire, Carnegie Hall fantasies notwithstanding. Having grown up as the only child of a widowed, never-again-married English professor father, hers had always been a quiet life, and that still suited her. Working for Lauderdale’s enabled her to keep living that way.

Well, except when Bob Troutman’s scaly bad self was on the prowl. On the swim. Whatever. But if he was the worst thing that ever happened in her life—and so far, hands down, he was—Marnie would die a happy, tranquil woman.

The music flowed from her fingertips for the three hours she was scheduled to play—interspersed, it went without saying, with periodic directions to the bathroom, the elevator and better dresses. At closing, she straightened up for whoever was scheduled to play in the morning, tidying with what a couple of the other pianists had called her obsessive-compulsive neatness. Well, could she help it if she liked the sheet music alphabetized? And then put in numerical order according to the year it was written? Things like that brought order to a troubled civilization. The world would be a better place if more people took a few minutes out of their day to alphabetize and put stuff in numerical order.

But Marnie had to take more than a few minutes that evening, because whoever had played over the weekend had really fouled things up. That was why, when she finally found her way to the employees’ exit at the back of the store, there was no one left for her to walk out with. Not that Lauderdale’s was in a bad part of town—on the contrary, this part of Cleveland was quite upscale—but no woman relished entering a dark, deserted parking lot alone. The presence of a few cars indicated there must still be a handful of people around somewhere, so she decided to wait.

Fifteen minutes later, she was growing impatient. She could see her car from where she stood, she reassured herself, right in the middle of the lot beneath a streetlight, with nothing parked near it. Pulling her keys from her purse, she jingled them merrily in defiance of the unwelcoming darkness.

There. Take that, Mr. Bogeyman.

But Mr. Bogeyman snapped back when she took her first step through the exit. The night was heavy and damp from rain earlier in the day, and even darker than usual thanks to thick clouds looming overhead. The streetlights dotting the parking lot radiated fat, milky halos of light that never quite reached the pavement, trapping moisture within. Something about the sight made Marnie feel trapped, too. A faint shudder of apprehension stole down her spine, and goose bumps rioted on her arms beneath the sleeve of her sweater.

How strange. She was one for neither whimsy nor portent, never succumbed to omens or premonitions or shudders down the spine and goose bumps under the sleeve. Whatever she was feeling now was unfounded and silly. Today had been like any other day. Tonight would be no different.

With her purse dangling from one bent elbow, she buttoned up her sweater against the cool April evening and squared her shoulders. This was silly, this unfounded aversion to nothing, and honestly, she’d walked through this door and into this parking lot hundreds of times without suffering so much as a stubbed toe, and I mean really, stop being so ridiculous. Marching forward with renewed purpose, she strode into the night. And she got almost all the way to her car before she felt a hand clamp down on her shoulder. Hard.

She cried out as she spun around.

Then halted at once when she saw that the hand was attached to the arm of a tidy, wizened little man who was shorter even than she. And since Marnie stood no more than five-three on a good day—in one-inch heels—that was saying something. The man wore an aged brown suit, and his gray hair was slicked straight back from his face, though whether that was due to the damp air or some kind of hair goo favored by elderly men, she couldn’t have said. His features gave him the appearance of being kind, sweet even, and he smiled benignly at her reaction.

“I’m so sorry,” he said gently. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Marnie smiled back, though the gesture was less a greeting than it was a reaction to profound relief. This guy probably didn’t weigh much more than she did, and couldn’t possibly be dangerous. Probably, he was a shopper who’d lost his way to his car and wanted help finding it. Certainly he wasn’t menacing.

Until he said, “I’m so relieved to have found you, Lila. I was beginning to think they weren’t going to send anyone. I was beginning to think they didn’t even believe me.”

That was when Marnie began to suspect that the guy, however unassuming, might just be a stark raving lunatic, and maybe it was something other than his car that he was looking for, and maybe it would be a good idea for her to throw up her hands and run screaming like a ninny in the other direction.

Not wanting to be an alarmist, however, she replied instead, “I beg your pardon?”

The man smiled his kindly smile again. “I wasn’t expecting them to send you, though, Lila, since this is something one of the junior operatives could have handled. Still, using a department store for the exchange is quite ingenious. I just wish I’d had some warning. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you working last night. One minute, I was looking for a birthday present for my daughter—she loves those big flannel pajamas, you see, especially the ones that have some kind of happy-hour motif. Though I myself kind of worry about her in that regard. She really does drink too much sometimes, and…” He blinked rapidly a few times in succession, as if he were confused—thank God, Marnie wasn’t the only one—then asked, “Where was I?”

“Um, happy-hour pajamas?” she prodded. Though, really, he was someplace that Marnie would just as soon not visit. La-la land.

“No, before that,” he said, tapping his head lightly, as if that might stimulate his brain. Good luck on that, Marnie thought.

“Oh, I remember now,” he finally said. “One minute I was shopping for my daughter, and the next minute, I saw one of the most dangerous women in the world straightening underwear at Lauderdale’s. Obviously, when I saw you, I knew you were waiting for me to make the exchange. Though it would have been nice if someone had told me you’d be here,” he added in a chastising voice. But before Marnie could utter a word in response—not that she had any idea what to say—he hurried on, “Anyway, I stayed up all night last night getting my opus together, and I waited until closing time tonight to give it to you. I didn’t want anything to interrupt us.”

He spoke so quickly—and so strangely—that Marnie was feeling dizzy by the time he paused for breath. What little sense she did make of his speech left her even more confused. Clearly, the man had mistaken her for someone else. Possibly, he was a tad delusional. Conceivably, he was quite mad. Suddenly, the parking lot seemed a lot more menacing than it had before. Suddenly, her aversion to leaving the store by herself didn’t seem silly at all.

A quick glance around indicated she was still well and truly alone—alas—so it might serve well to just play along for a minute and pretend the guy was making sense. At least until she figured out how she could make the short sprint to her car without giving him enough time to whip out a carving knife.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked again.

The man’s eyes went wide, and he covered his mouth with one hand in an uh-oh-what-have-I-done gesture. “Oh, of course,” he said in a chastened voice. “I’m not supposed to call you Lila, am I?” He made a fist and gently tapped his forehead. “Silly me. I’ve been out of the service too long. And that little run-in with the KGB years ago didn’t help.” He smiled at Marnie again. “What name are you going by on your current assignment, dear?”

Current assignment? Marnie repeated to herself. Run-in with the KGB? Oh, yeah. Definitely delusional. “Uh…Marnie,” she said without thinking. But that was probably okay, wasn’t it? As long as she didn’t give him her last name, she should be fine, right?

He nodded as if he understood completely. Well, that made one of them. “Marnie. Of course. Was it chosen by He Whose Name Nobody Dares Say?”

Oh, yeah. Definitely quite mad. “Um, actually, it was my father,” she told him.

“Ah.” The little man nodded in a way that made her think he knew something she didn’t. She hated to think what. “I had no idea the two of you were related,” he continued. “How did that get by me? That must have aided your quick climb up the professional ladder. Not to imply that your ruthlessness and intelligence and complete flouting of personal safety weren’t also responsible,” he hastened to add. “And it’s a lovely name.” He winked at her before adding, “Marnie.”

“Thank you,” she said. She tried to backtrack to the exact moment when her life had slipped into the surreal. In hindsight, it probably hadn’t been a good idea to have that kielbasa from Hank’s Franks at the mall food court for dinner. Just how long had it been on the rotisserie anyway? Maybe she should have risked the long line at Ruthie’s Smoothies.

Not that a digestively generated hallucination was her biggest problem at the moment. Especially since her new bestest friend in the world—or, at least, Lila’s bestest friend in the world, whoever she was—seemed to be getting excited about something. And gosh, Marnie really hated to think what.

“Although I must say, it’s not just your high-ranking status that makes me surprised to see you in Cleveland. Last I heard, you were on a leave of absence in Las Vegas. And then there was that rumor about you having tried to kill—”

He stopped abruptly, his expression indicating he’d almost said something he would regret later. Funny, that, since Marnie was regretting it right now. He’d mistaken her for someone who’d try to kill someone else? That couldn’t possibly be good, could it? Thankfully, he hurried on before she had a chance to think too much about that. Or experience a stark, raving panic attack.

“Well,” he said, “let’s just say I’m glad you’re here. For a number of reasons.”

“Um, look,” she interjected as gently as she could, thinking it would probably be best if she didn’t hear any of those reasons. “You’ve obviously mistaken me for someone else. My name isn’t Lila. It’s Marnie. I’m sorry I’m not who you’re looking for, but…” She shrugged, the internationally recognized sign language for Can’t help you, fella.

“Of course you’re not who I’m looking for,” he said. “I should have realized that right away.”

Marnie would have breathed a sigh of relief, but the little man took a step closer, looked first one way, then the other, then leaned in very close, crowding her personal space way more than she liked.

“I didn’t realize we were being watched,” he whispered so softly she almost didn’t hear. “I should have realized.” He moved a hand to his mouth to mimic the locking of a lock and throwing away of the key. Very quietly, he promised, “From now on, I’ll just call you Marnie, Lila. I won’t call you Lila anymore, Marnie.”

Since he was so close, Marnie took advantage of the opportunity to inhale a deep breath, to see if it might offer some clue as to what he had been drinking. Smoking. Sniffing. Absorbing subcutaneously. All of the above. But there was nary a hint of alcoholic, herbal or chemical enhancement about him. A touch of garlic, perhaps, but as far as she knew, garlic had never driven anyone around the bend like this.

He did that look-one-way-then-the-other thing again, then held up a fat manila envelope that had seen better days. It was stuffed about as full as it could be and still be closed, the flap torn and bent, the paper soiled and wrinkled. Two big rubber bands were wound around it, one vertically and one horizontally, as if he feared the envelope might give way and spill its contents any moment, something that seemed entirely possible. Then he smiled again.

“Here’s my book,” he said. “I finished it, just as I promised them I would.”

Book? Marnie wanted to say. That was no book. It was just a big, dirty envelope full of papers. Why would he bring it to her? To Lila? To anyone? And just who was the “them” he was talking about?

“It’s only a first draft, you understand,” he hastened to add, “but it is my greatest opus.”

Ooh, it was a book he’d written. Now Marnie really didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

“Um, that’s really nice, and I appreciate it,” she said as politely as she could. She glanced around again, hoping somebody might have shown up by now. At this point, she’d even welcome the appearance of Bob Troutman. Well, probably. Maybe. Oh, okay, she could handle this little guy for a few minutes more. “But I’m probably not the best person to give it to,” she added. “I’m not much good when it comes to literary criticism. I’m more of a music person.”

“No, no,” he insisted, his smile falling some. “You’ll like this, no matter what. I assure you, it’s a wonderful opus.”

There was that word opus again. He really seemed to be attached to it. “Oh, I don’t doubt that for a minute,” Marnie assured the man. “But, honestly, I just don’t think I’m qualified to—”

“It’s the story of a powerful sorcerer,” he interrupted in a singsongy, once-upon-a-time voice. “A sorcerer who has betrayed people, and who’s been hiding from those people, hoping they won’t find him.”

“Um, sounds great,” Marnie said flatly, not wanting to encourage him—especially since fantasy novels really weren’t her thing. “But, really, I—”

“This book tells all about this sorcerer,” the man began again, emphasizing that last word meaningfully. Meaningful to him, anyway, since Marnie had no idea what he was talking about. “It tells things about the sorcerer no one knew before. And it tells about where the sorcerer has been hiding and what he’s been up to. It tells about where he’s going next. You’ll like it, I promise.” He winked at her again, a gesture that was beginning to creep her out. “It is my finest opus,” he said again.

Hoo-kay, Marnie thought. Whoever this guy was, he’d caught the express train from la-la land and hopped off at weirdsville. And now he was looking around for the platform for his connection to loonytown.

He shoved the envelope at her again, using both hands now. “Take it,” he insisted. “Read it. Read my opus about the sorcerer.”

He was growing agitated now, and Marnie wasn’t sure what crazy people did when they became agitated. Nor did she have any wish to find out. She wondered if she should just take the envelope from him and hope that would make him leave. Then she could return to Lauderdale’s and alert mall security about the incident and go home.

“Um, okay,” she said as she warily took the manuscript from him. “I’ll read it tonight. How will that be?”

“It’s just a first draft,” he reminded her. “I have many notes, and will write more. When it’s done, I’ll bring it to you.”

Oh, goody. “Well, that’s…that’s just fine,” Marnie said, nodding. Hoping he fell for her fake smile. Hoping he went away soon. Hoping he didn’t hack her to death with a carving knife on his way. “I’ll, um, I’ll really enjoy that.”

He nodded, too, his own warm, benign smile so at odds with his stark, raving lunacy. “Thank you, Lila. Oops, I mean…Marnie.” He winked again, and she tried not to flinch. “I know where to find you now,” he added. As if she really needed for him to put that fine a point on it. “And I’ll contact you again when the time is right.”

Now there was something to look forward to. She held up the hefty manuscript. “I, um, I’ll read this tonight,” she said again, since he didn’t get the hint the first time and leave.

“Good,” he said. “Take good care of my opus. Marnie.”

“I will,” she told him. “I promise your opus is safe with me.”

His smile went kind of sentimental and satisfied and serene at that, and his expression softened to the point where he looked almost lucid. Relief, Marnie realized. He looked profoundly relieved about something. As if by taking the manuscript from him, she had just freed him of a burden that had been almost too much for him to bear.

He leaned in close again and said quietly, “I knew not to believe what they were saying about you, Lila. I knew you could never do what they said you did. I trust you completely. I always have. And I’m so glad you’re back. They need you.”

Strangely, there was something about the way he said it, and the way he looked at her, that made Marnie feel honestly grateful for his trust. Something that made her want to promise him she would do anything for him in return. Suddenly, he didn’t seem mad at all. In fact, he seemed quite sane, and quite sincere. Before she realized what she was doing, she reached out to touch his shoulder, the physical contact feeling surprisingly nice. Surprisingly comfortable. Surprisingly comforting. It was the oddest thing.

“I will take care of this,” she told him as she held up the manuscript, “whatever it is.” And she was astonished to discover that she meant exactly what she said. “You don’t have to worry about it anymore, okay?”

He nodded and smiled again, then lifted a hand in farewell. “I’m glad it’s with you…Marnie,” he said. And without another word, he turned and walked away.

Marnie stood motionless in the middle of the deserted parking lot as she watched him go, mesmerized by his steady, purposeful stride. Not once did he look back, clearly content with how their exchange—whatever it had been about—had gone. She waited for him to approach one of the half-dozen cars still scattered in that direction, but he kept walking until he reached a hedgerow at the edge of the parking lot. She watched, amazed, as he pushed the branches of two bushes aside and stepped through them.

On the other side of that hedgerow was a park, she knew, which eventually spilled into woods. All the houses near the mall were in the other direction—and none was within comfortable walking distance for a man his age. She couldn’t imagine where he was going.

Strange. Very strange.

She looked down at the thickly stuffed envelope in her hands and, for the first time, noticed writing on the outside of it. Nothing intelligible, mostly a bunch of doodles that didn’t make sense. Turning it over, she saw the flap was fastened with one of those winding cotton cords that was whipped into a figure eight over and over again. Marnie told herself to go back into Lauderdale’s and call mall security. Instead, she took the end of the string between thumb and forefinger and began to unwind it.

She was just freeing the final figure eight when she heard the scuff of a shoe over the asphalt behind her.

When she turned, she saw a man standing there who was much larger, much younger and much more menacing than the one who had just left. And where the first man’s smile had been sentimental and satisfied and serene, this man’s smile was feral and forbidding and frightening.

“Hello, Lila,” he said. “You naughty girl, where have you been? Opus has been looking all over for you.”




CHAPTER TWO


ACID HEAT SPLASHED through Marnie’s belly at the man’s words, spoken in a velvety voice she might have found appealing in another situation. His sophisticated good looks, too, she might have rather liked under other circumstances. A situation or circumstances like, oh…she didn’t know…like maybe if she wasn’t standing in the middle of a dark, deserted parking lot with her car still a good ten yards away. Like maybe if she didn’t feel as if she’d slipped into the Twilight Zone. Like maybe if he hadn’t come up out of nowhere like a deranged movie murderer. Like maybe if she wasn’t a complete sissy about things like deserted parking lots and surreal life and deranged murderers.

Stuff like that.

But since Marnie was the proud owner of a sissiness that rivaled some of the greatest sissies in history, she wasn’t much impressed by the man’s good looks and velvety voice. Especially since he was calling her Lila, something that jerked her right back into that distorted—and soon to be sordid—reality, and, well, suffice it to say that her day just wasn’t turning out to be anything like she had anticipated when she’d rolled out of bed that morning.

“And OPUS isn’t the only one who’s been looking for you, sweetheart,” he added, the endearment dripping not with affection, but with what sounded very much like animosity. “I’ve been looking all over for you, too.”

Too frightened now to even move, Marnie tried to at least mentally catalogue the man’s features, so that she could give an accurate description to a police artist later. Providing, of course, she survived. Somehow, though, she didn’t think she could ever forget his face, so arrestingly handsome was he, in spite of his malevolence. His dark auburn hair was groomed to perfection, his amber eyes reflected intelligence and, incongruously, good humor. His clothing was faultless and expensively tailored; dark trousers and a dark T-shirt beneath a jacket that was darker still. All the better to hide in the darkness with, my dear. Nevertheless, had Marnie seen him inside Lauderdale’s instead of out here, she would have thought him a very attractive, wealthy businessman on the way home from happy hour. Out here, there was nothing happy about him. And she didn’t even want to think about what kind of business he might be up to.

“I’m not Lila,” she said before she even realized she’d intended to speak, amazed at how calm and level her voice was. “I seem to have one of those faces that resemble a lot of others. I’m not who you’re looking for.”

In response to her assurance, the man smiled and said, “Of course you’re not. Your name is Marnie, right? This week, anyway. Of course, the last time I saw you, you were going by the delightful moniker of Tiffannee. With two f’s, two n’s and two e’s.”

Oh, please, Marnie wanted to say. What kind of woman actually claimed such a name? “That wasn’t me,” she insisted politely. “I’ve only gone by the one name all my life.”

But the man seemed to have stopped listening to her. Because his gaze was fixed on the battered manuscript she was hugging to her midsection, as if it were a magic shield that might shelter her from harm.

“Well, just give me what Philosopher gave you,” he said, “and I’ll forget all about that pesky episode in Indianapolis. Fair enough?”

Philosopher? Marnie wanted to ask. Indianapolis? What was he talking about? She hadn’t been to Indianapolis for years. And what kind of name was Philosopher? Obviously the guy was talking about the little man who’d given Marnie the manuscript, but how did this guy know him? And if he knew him, then why hadn’t he asked for the manuscript before Marnie ended up with it? And why had both men mistaken her for the same woman?

Just what was going on?

He brought his gaze back up to hers, his smile in place again, then extended his hand, palm out, in a request for the package. “Come on, Lila, hand it over.”

Having no idea why she did it, Marnie clutched it more tightly to herself. Very slowly, she shook her head. “No.”

He didn’t seem surprised by her answer. Which was funny, because Marnie sure was. The smart thing would be to forget about protecting it, since she didn’t know what it was anyway, and she certainly had no obligation to the strange—and she meant that in more than one sense of the word—man who had given it to her. She should just throw it as far as she could away from herself then bolt for the employee exit, and call mall security from the safety of the store. But something made her hesitate.

She remembered how the little man’s face had gone all relieved and gratified when she’d promised him she would take good care of his opus. She recalled the way his entire body had seemed to shift, as if she’d just literally unburdened him of a weight too onerous to bear. She heard again the utter trust in his voice when he told her he was glad she was the one accepting the responsibility. Even though she knew it was nuts to feel obligated to him, she did. She’d made a promise to him. And for some reason, it seemed vitally important that she keep it.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not who you’re looking for,” she said more forcefully this time. She curled her fingers tightly around the envelope. “And this doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to someone else, and I promised him I’d take good care of it.”

Once again, the man seemed in no way surprised by her reply. “Of course,” he said mildly. “It’s much too valuable for you to allow it to fall into the wrong hands, isn’t it? And whose hands could be more wrong than mine?”

“Look, mister, I don’t even know you,” Marnie said, biting back the fear that rose in her throat, and feeling uncharacteristically defiant. There was just something about the man that challenged her. Of course, that same thing that challenged her would probably be responsible for her being cut into little pieces and left at various landmarks around the city, too. For now, she tried not to think about that. “If you don’t leave right this minute,” she added, “I’ll scream.”

He chuckled. “Yes, well, the last time you screamed at me, Lila, it was because I was giving you a spectacular orgasm during the best sex either of us ever had. You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your threat too seriously.” He lifted a hand as if he intended to touch her, and Marnie instinctively, physically, recoiled. Smiling sadly, he dropped his hand again, and said in a voice that held both regret and resolution, “Pity things turned out the way they did, isn’t it? We were extraordinary together.”

Her eyes went wide at that, her stomach pitching at the implication. If he thought she was a woman he’d known intimately—or whatever it was that passed for intimacy with a man like him—then he wouldn’t think twice about trying it again. It being a word for something she absolutely didn’t want to think about.

Run away, she told herself. Now, when he’s not prepared for it. Run back to the store and hope someone’s there.

He seemed to read her mind, though, because before Marnie could even lift a foot from the ground, he lunged at her, grabbing her upper arms and hauling her against himself. His face barely an inch from hers, he said, “Give me the manuscript, Lila. I’d rather not hurt you if I can help it.”

Marnie’s heart was pounding now, her entire body going hot. Her brain lurched into action, but it rushed in so many directions at once, she couldn’t hang on to a single thought. The man’s fingers curled more tightly into her arms, hard enough that he was able to lift her partly off the ground. When she cried out at the pain, however, he eased his grip some, as if he really didn’t want to hurt her.

But he did pull her forward even more and murmured, “Give it up, Lila. You know you want to. You know they haven’t treated you as well as they should. And you know I treated you better than anyone has. Join me. You and I together would be invincible.”

Dizzy now, and too terrified to speak, Marnie felt her eyes begin to flutter closed. She feared she would faint, that she wouldn’t be able to fight back, and although she struggled to hold on, she had no idea what to do. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. She was the product of the most normal upbringing, the most normal life. She had no enemies. She avoided confrontations. She was tolerant, decent, compassionate. She lived a quiet, uneventful life. She taught music to children. She donated money to the local animal shelter. She volunteered at the food bank two weekends a month. She was a good person. Why was this happening to her?

She would have given anything in that moment for a knight in shining armor to gallop up on his faithful steed and fell her attacker with an enchanted sword. But as a thirty-three-year-old single female well versed in the local dating scene, she knew Cleveland wasn’t overrun by paladins these days.

But as if cued by her hopeful thoughts, a soft buzzing erupted out of nowhere, a sound Marnie recognized as one of the little golf carts the mall security guards used for their patrols. Until now, she’d thought the vehicles were kind of silly for law enforcement, even at an upscale mall. But when she glanced to her left and saw one circling the corner of the building just then, it looked very much like a white stallion indeed. And the uniformed guard behind the wheel could have easily passed for a gallant man-at-arms.

Ah. Just the paladin she was looking for.

Evidently making his nightly rounds, the security guard wasted no time coming to Marnie’s rescue. No sooner had he stopped the golf cart than did he launch himself out of it, running at full tilt toward her assailant. Without even stopping to ask what was going on—not that it probably wasn’t kind of obvious, a six-foot-plus man looming over a much smaller woman in a dark, deserted parking lot—the security guard hurtled herself at her accoster, who, likewise surprised, released Marnie and threw himself into the battle.

Everything happened very quickly after that. But even amid all the chaos and confusion, Marnie sensed something out of kilter. Both men, she noted, fought with a forcefulness and expertise that just didn’t jibe with the common man. As she watched them brawl, she realized they weren’t brawling at all. There was too much elegance of movement, too much definition in the blows, too much orchestration of the combat. It was almost as if she were watching a violent ballet, so graceful was the altercation. This was no garden-variety street fighting they were doing. This was something way outside the knowledge of the ordinary man.

They were well matched, though, however they had come by their learning, and for several long minutes continued their fight. Not sure what to do, Marnie stood where she was, still clutching the manuscript, marveling at the sight. If it looked like her assailant was going to win, she would make a run for it. But all signs were pointing toward her rescuer instead, who seemed to have a slight edge over the first man now. A moment later, his edge became dominance, until Marnie’s assailant lay flat on his back on the asphalt.

Though not for long.

Because he scrambled quickly back up again, his nose bleeding, one cheek abraded and studied the security guard through slitted eyes. For a single, weighty moment, both men only eyed each other warily from six feet apart. Then Marnie’s attacker smiled bitterly.

“I knew OPUS wouldn’t be far,” he muttered, “but I didn’t think you’d be this close, not yet.” Then, without further ado—or further adieu, for that matter—he turned and fled.

The security guard completed a half-dozen steps in the same direction, then must have had second thoughts about going after the guy. Smart man, Marnie thought. Who knew what kind of lunatic her assailant was? He might have even been armed. Best just to stay safe until they could make sense of what had happened. Not that Marnie thought for a moment that anything that had happened to her tonight would ever make sense.

After halting, the security guard watched her attacker flee until the other man was out of sight, his hands curled into fists at his side, as if he hated having to let his adversary go. Then he spun around to look at Marnie, pinning her in place with a ferocious gaze.

Wow. He was even better looking than her assailant. And as much as she hated to admit it, he kind of seemed more ominous, too.

Oh, stop it, she told herself. There was nothing ominous about this man. He’d just rescued her from danger. He might have even saved her life! Her nerves were just so raw from everything that had happened tonight that a scoop of butter brickle ice cream would have seemed ominous at that point.

Her rescuer was way too handsome to be anything but a good guy, with straight, dark blond hair falling over his forehead, and eyes so blue even the scant lamplight couldn’t diminish their vividness. As he made his way toward her into better light, Marnie noted that they were a lucent pale blue, the color and clarity of a summer sky. In contrast to his soft eyes, however, the rest of his face was all dark planes and hard angles. High cheekbones were carved out above lean, tanned jaws. An elegant nose was chiseled above a full mouth that looked as if it had been wrought by an angry god. It occurred to Marnie then that his fierce features gave him the look of not a paladin, but a mercenary. Someone who only came to the rescue when he was being paid for performing the service.

It wasn’t exactly a comforting realization.

Nevertheless, he was tall and strong and sturdy, easily topping six feet, his broad shoulders straining at the seams of his white shirt, his black uniform trousers hugging powerful thighs. He continued to stride toward Marnie until he came to a halt with barely a foot of distance separating them, a position that felt…

Well. To be honest, it felt kind of menacing in light of the episode she’d just escaped. She told herself it was only because her nerves were frazzled from all that had happened tonight. Her rescuer had a nasty scrape on his jaw and a split lip, and his shirt was filthy from having rolled around on the asphalt. Anyone would look menacing under such conditions.

Of course, that didn’t explain why he was looking at Marnie as if she were his most hated enemy….

“Thank you,” she told him, shaking off the impression almost literally. “I don’t want to think about what might have happened if you hadn’t shown up when you did.”

His gaze was fixed entirely on her face, but he said not a word to acknowledge her gratitude. He seemed to be cataloguing her features, as if he were trying to figure out if he knew her from somewhere. But he didn’t, she was sure, unless it was just in passing at the mall. She would have remembered a man like him. For a long, long time. And then she would have dreamed about him. A lot. Probably without clothes. On either of them.

“Um, I guess you need to fill out a report or something?” she asked when he remained silent. And when, you know, her thoughts started to get away from her. “I know this sort of thing doesn’t happen often. I’ve worked at the mall for two years, and I’ve never heard about any woman being accosted in the parking lot.”

Although he still didn’t reply, his expression did at least change. A little. If possible, it became even more furious.

“Uh,” Marnie tried again, “I mean, if you need me to answer any questions, I can.” It wasn’t like she had any plans for the evening, other than to go home, curl herself into a fetal position in the closet and weep with gratitude to still be alive.

“Or if you think it would be better to wait until tomorrow, that’s okay, too,” she added. “I could come to mall security on my morning break. Or you could come to Lauderdale’s at your convenience. That’s where I work, in the, uh—” Gee, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be interviewed by this guy surrounded by women’s underthings. “Well, maybe it would just be better for me to come to security. What time will you be in?”

Two things occurred to Marnie as she asked the question. Number one, that although she knew most of the mall security guards by name and all of them by sight, this guy wasn’t one she recognized. And number two, his uniform didn’t hug his physique so snugly because he was muscular and well-formed—though, granted, he was certainly muscular and well-formed. It was because the uniform was two sizes too small.

She dropped her gaze to the gold-tone name tag each of the security guards wore and saw that his said “Randy Fink.” Which was funny, because he didn’t seem like a Randy Fink at all. Who did seem like a Randy Fink was Randy Fink, a mall security guard who made regular rounds in Lauderdale’s. Him, Marnie knew well. And he was indeed both randy and a fink. The man who stood before her now was neither. Well, not a fink anyway—she couldn’t speak for the other. He wasn’t Randy Fink, though, that was for sure.

Before she could say a word to point that out, her rescuer—such as he was—reached down to unsnap the holster of his gun. Marnie had always thought it a bit extreme for the mall to arm its security guards when the greatest enemy for most of them seemed to be the kielbasa at Hank’s Franks. Now it scared her even more that the mall security guards went around armed.

He spoke then, finally, in a voice that was deep and smooth and even more velvety than her attacker’s. The words he spoke, however, were just as puzzling. “Enough with the games, Lila.” He fingered the handle of the gun that rose out of his holster. “I was hoping you’d come along peacefully, but now I’m not so sure. And I really don’t want to have to do this the hard way.”

Funnily enough, it didn’t scare Marnie this time when a strange—and she meant that in more than one sense of the word—man called her by a name that wasn’t her own. No, this time, it kind of ticked her off. Whoever this Lila was, she really got around. And her choice of men left a lot to be desired. Marnie was sick and tired of being confused with her.

She had infinitely better morals than Lila for one thing. Maybe she didn’t attract a lot of men—or any lately—but the ones with whom she had been involved had not carried weapons, or engaged in fisticuffs, or threatened women, or slunk around in dark parking lots. She did have some standards. Which, now that she thought about it, might explain why she hadn’t attracted a lot of men—or any lately.

But that was beside the point.

The point was…Hmm. Well, she seemed to have forgotten the point. Anyway, it was better to live one’s life alone than to be involved with guys like the ones Lila dated. So there.

“I am not Lila,” she said adamantly for the third time, to the third man, that night. “I don’t know who Lila is, and I don’t know why you guys keep thinking I’m her. But lemme tell ya something. If I were her? First thing I’d do is torch my little black book and start over again. Because the men that woman attracts are just plain odd.”

The faux Randy Fink continued to gaze at Marnie in the same way he had before—as if he weren’t buying any of it. And he remained silent in light of her remarks.

She sighed heavily. “What do you want?” she asked calmly. Because so far tonight, she’d experienced, let’s see…fear, panic, confusion, terror, relief, happiness—oh, all right and a little lust for a minute there when she got that first good look at her rescuer—bewilderment, anger and sarcasm. Yep, calmness was about the only emotion she hadn’t felt tonight. And she figured she might as well just get them all over with, so she could go back to the beginning and begin once more with fear, since she figured fear was what she probably ought to be feeling again.

Faux Randy’s eyes narrowed at her question. “You know what I want, Lila.”

“No, I don’t, actually,” Marnie told him. “The first guy I met tonight wanted to give me this stupid manuscript. The second guy wanted to take it away from me. You seem to want to shoot me. At this point, I have no idea what to expect. So I’m asking you again. What do you want?”

Faux Randy settled his whole hand on the butt of his gun. Uh-oh. She’d been joking about that. Still, he did seem to be weighing the prospect of shooting her against the prospect of answering her question, so maybe there was still hope for a good outcome. Or, at the very least, an outcome that didn’t involve gunfire.

“First,” he said, “I want to know where you’ve been for the past five months.”

Well, that was easy enough to answer. In a vague, I’m not-giving-out-my-address-to-strange-in-more-than-one-sense-of-the-word-men kind of way.

“I’ve been here,” she said.

Maybe if she could keep him talking long enough, a real security guard would come along. Not that she trusted a single person on the entire planet at this point. Except maybe Bob Troutman, who, she knew, would be a slimy little git no matter the circumstances. Which currently made Bob Troutman the only human being on the planet Marnie would trust at this point. And of all the things that were going to keep her awake tonight, that one had to be the most troubling.

“Where’s here?” Faux Randy asked.

“Cleveland,” Marnie said. “Ohio. I was born and raised here. Save five years in Columbus to go to college, I’ve always lived here.”

“Right,” he replied in a way that indicated he believed not a word of what she said. “So I guess we are going to have to do this the hard way.” And with that, he did pull his weapon, and he pointed it right at Marnie’s heart.

Okay, cycling back to fear again.

“Look, this is nuts,” she said. She tried to hold up her hands, but thanks to the manuscript, could raise one only to shoulder height. Still, she turned both hands palm out. “I don’t understand any of what’s happened tonight, and all I want is to be left alone. If it’s the manuscript you want, take it. But please, just leave me out of it.”

“Oh, it’s definitely the manuscript I want,” he told her.

“And I definitely will take it. But you know full well there’s something else I want. And I’m going to take it, too.”

“What more could you possibly want?” Marnie asked.

“You, Lila,” the man said without hesitation. “I want you.”




CHAPTER THREE


AT HEARING THE ROUGHLY uttered declaration, every one of those emotions went zinging right through Marnie again. Even lust, briefly, which said a lot about her so-called standards. But instead of going back to square one this time—fear—she put on the brakes at calmness. In spite of the gravity of her situation, she sensed something about this man that prevented her from feeling true fear.

She had no idea why, but her instincts told her he wasn’t going to hurt her unless she badly provoked him, and she’d always been a strong believer in instincts. The way she saw it, human instinct had survived from caveman times, even when the overhanging forehead and unibrow had evolved into much nicer lines. Well, for people other than Bob Troutman, she meant. There had to be a reason for that. Other than that Bob Troutman was a Neanderthal, she meant. So she’d learned long ago to trust her instincts, and her instincts had never let her down.

The man released the safety on his weapon with a deft flick of his thumb and sharpened his aim.

Of course, there was a first time for everything.

“Please,” she said, spreading her fingers in entreaty. “There’s got to be some way to get this all straightened out without anyone getting hurt. Please,” she said again, even more solicitously this time.

“Give me the manuscript,” the man said. “Hold it out with one hand, very slowly. And don’t try anything funny, Lila. Because I will shoot you if I have to.”

Marnie did as he asked, keeping one hand airborne as she gripped the envelope with the other and very carefully extended it toward him. Cautiously, he accepted it from her, his gaze never leaving hers, as if it was more important for him to watch her eyes than it was to watch her hands.

“Which car is the one you’ve been driving?” he asked as he tucked the envelope under one arm, still holding the gun steady. Still not removing his eyes from hers.

She found the phrasing of the question peculiar. He hadn’t asked which car was hers, but which one she’d been driving. As if he assumed she didn’t own the car but was only using it. Still, if he was saying anything at all about her car, it was only because he intended to use it. And that couldn’t be a good thing. Unless he used it by himself. Which was probably asking too much.

Marnie closed her eyes, surrendering to the inevitable. “The one behind me is mine,” she said. “The yellow Volkswagen Beetle.”

“Turn around, and walk slowly toward it,” the man told her, “keeping your hands where I can see them at all times.”

“Oh, please,” Marnie said, unable to help herself. “You can’t possibly think I’m any threat to you.”

He laughed out loud at that. “Oh, sure. You’re harmless, Lila. Everyone knows that. Like that guy in Zagreb. The one you put in a coma a few years ago? The one who’s still in a coma? He’d definitely agree that you’re as gentle as a lamb.”

Yeah, Marnie thought, this Lila for sure needed to hang out with some different people. Not to mention find some new hobbies.

“Turn around,” he said again, his voice steely now.

“And walk to your car. And don’t try anything funny.”

Oh, gosh, no. She wouldn’t try anything funny. That would be so inappropriate in a situation like this.

She did as he asked, making her way carefully to her car with both arms awkwardly extended, constantly aware of his eyes—and his gun—on her back. When she arrived at the driver’s-side door, however, she remembered she’d dropped her keys when the second man grabbed her. She started to say something about that when she heard the merry chirp-chirp of the key fob unlocking the doors. Braving a look over her shoulder, she saw faux Randy standing a few feet away, her keys in his hand. Evidently he’d seen them on the ground and scooped them up, but she sure couldn’t have said when. He had to have moved awfully silently and awfully quickly to do that.

Gee, color her suspicious, but if he kept this up, she was going to start thinking he wasn’t a mall security guard at all.

“Get in,” he said. “Put your hands on the steering wheel and keep them there.”

She did as he instructed, then watched as he rounded the front of her car, his eyes never leaving hers. He honestly seemed to be afraid that she might overpower him. Either this Lila really was a very dangerous woman, or faux Randy was the lamest excuse for a man in the world. As much as Marnie wanted to cling to that second theory, she figured the first one was more accurate. Which meant three men tonight had mistaken her for a very dangerous woman. Her. Marnie Lundy. Who shrieked at the sight of an unexpected dust bunny.

The tiny car shrank to microscopic when faux Randy folded his big frame into the passenger seat, accomplishing the feat with a swiftness and economy of movement that belied his size, his gun never straying from Marnie’s midsection. Once inside, he slammed the door shut and thumbed the locks into place, then dangled her keys from his fingers. When she reached for them, he snatched them back. Her gaze flew to his in silent question.

“I’m going to tell you where to drive,” he said. “And you’re going to follow my directions. You will not exceed the speed limit. You will not swerve off the road. You will not try to attract the attention of another driver. If you do, you’ll be sorry.”

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

Fear was creeping back in again, now that she realized just how little chance there was for escape. She was well and truly alone with him, helpless against him. She might be able to run once they reached their destination, but unless she could outwit him, there was no way she could get away. He was bigger, stronger, faster than she. He had clearly been trained for things she would never be able to master. He could easily overpower her. If he wanted to.

“How much gas do you have?” he asked.

“I filled up on the way to work,” she told him reluctantly. And damn her for not being one of those people who could drive a car until it was down to fumes. She couldn’t let the tank get below half before she started worrying.

“We shouldn’t have any problems then.”

Oh, yeah, speak for yourself, why don’t you? Aloud, she only asked, “Where are you taking me?”

He studied her in silence for a moment, as if he were trying to decide how much to tell her. “It’s one of the few places we have that you don’t know about,” he finally said. “And it’s not far from where we are right now.”

He extended the keys toward her again, and Marnie reached for them gingerly. Although he allowed her to wrap her fingers around them this time, he still didn’t release them.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Buckle your seat belt,” he told her. “We wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, would we?”

She managed to refrain from rolling her eyes but did as he said, reassuring herself that she wasn’t following his instructions this time because she would have buckled up anyway. Nyah, nyah, nyah. Only then did he relinquish her keys. He lowered the gun so it couldn’t be seen by other drivers, but pressed it against her thigh. She guessed that that was because, if she tried anything, he could shoot her in the leg, disabling her without killing her. That would prevent her from crashing the car, and make it possible for him to escape with his own life—if not hers.

As she went to insert the key into the ignition, she realized her purse, a whimsical little Mary Frances number decorated with buttons and ribbons and lace in varying shades of blue—she’d spent way too much on it, even with her store discount, but she hadn’t been able to resist—was still swinging from her elbow. She turned and straightened her arm to let it slide down over her wrist, only to have her wrist seized by her companion, who gripped it with firm fingers.

“Problem, Lila?” he asked as he jerked her hand back up between both their bodies.

“I just wanted to put my purse in the backseat,” she said.

He smiled grimly. “I’ll do it for you.”

“Thank you,” she bit out.

“But not before seeing what you have inside.”

Of course.

Still pressing the gun against her thigh, he released her wrist, and Marnie held her arm still as he guided the purse carefully over her hand. She winced as she watched him manhandle it, turning it over and over in his big brawny fist, having not a care for any of the intricate detailing. Watching him treat the ultrafeminine accessory so carelessly hammered home how little trouble he would have mistreating her, too.

“How the hell do you open this thing?” he demanded.

“That beaded flower on the side facing away from you has a snap beneath it,” she told him.

He found the part she was talking about and unfastened it, but his big hand barely fit inside the little purse, so he turned it upside down and emptied the contents into his lap. One by one, he inspected each item before replacing it, starting with the tube of lipstick, then the tin of mints, then her hanky and so on. He was methodical and dispassionate in his task, even handled her emergency tampon with complete indifference. He saved her leather card case for last, flipping it open to extract one-handed her Visa card, her AAA card, her health insurance card and her driver’s license, studying each in turn.

“These are excellent forgeries,” he told her. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear they were the real thing.” He glanced up to look at her. “But we weren’t the ones who made them. Who did?”

Marnie inhaled a deep breath and released it slowly. “Well, that first came from the bank when I opened my Visa account. The second came from triple-A. That third was from my insurer and the fourth is from the Ohio DMV.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Very funny.”

“Wasn’t meant to be,” she said. “They’re not forgeries.”

Without returning the cards to the case, he dropped all of them into her purse and snapped it shut. “Start the car,” he said as he tossed it into the back without bothering to see where it landed.

Damn men, anyway, Marnie thought as she watched him do it. They had no clue as to the importance of the ideal accessory.

“Which way am I supposed to go?” she asked when the little car purred to life.

“Use the mall’s north exit,” he told her.

His directions after that were clipped, concise and to the point. After ten minutes of driving, they were out of the Cleveland suburbs. Another fifteen, and they were crossing the county line, headed west on Interstate 90 toward any number of small towns that doubled as weekend retreats on Lake Erie. Obviously “not far” was a relative term to him, because it was nearly another hour before they finally reached their destination. During that time, he spoke scarcely a word to her—not that Marnie was all that fired up to get to know him better—and she kept her own thoughts to herself. But when he finally instructed her to pull the car to a halt, throw it into Park and cut the engine, she saw that they had arrived at—

Oh. An isolated cabin in the woods. Why had she not seen this coming from a mile away?

“Get out,” he told her. Then he repeated what seemed to be his mantra. “And keep your hands where I can see them.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marnie waited for the fear to roar up again, but she felt only resolve now. Exiting the car, she inhaled the pungent aroma of fresh evergreen, and through a break in the trees, she could just make out the glitter of moonlight on water. But not Lake Erie. They’d left the interstate for a county road some miles back and headed east, away from the lake. This must be a small tributary that fed into it. Had she been arriving here for a weekend getaway, she would have been charmed by her surroundings. In the moonlit darkness, she saw that the cottage was of the faux-rustic variety—perfect for a guy like faux Randy—built to look like a log cabin but obviously fairly new. It was enchanting, really.

How comforting to realize she’d enjoy such a cozy atmosphere during the last hours of her life.

Marnie still didn’t know what to do. She could try to run, but she didn’t relish the idea of being in the woods alone at night. Who knew how far it was to another cabin, or if there even was another cabin nearby? Besides, her captor would probably tackle her—or shoot her—before she even made it to the tree line. She didn’t want to go inside the house, since that would make escape even more difficult if not downright impossible, but there might be something inside she could use for a weapon….

The matter was taken out of her hands when faux Randy circled the front of the car and wrapped the fingers of his free hand around her upper arm. “Walk,” he said, jabbing the barrel of his gun into her ribs.

Well, okay. If he insisted.

He had the manuscript tucked beneath his arm as he guided her forward. Marnie made it up the three stairs of the front porch without tripping, but her entire body was racked with trembling by the time they reached the front door. Something cold and slimy had settled in the pit of her stomach, and she wanted to throw up. Faux Randy released her arm long enough to fish a new set of keys out of his trouser pocket, but his grip on the gun never wavered as he unlocked the front door and pushed it open. He dragged her over the threshold behind him and shut the door again, turning a single dead bolt with an ominous thump before flipping a wall switch to turn on the lights.

In stark contrast to the ugliness of her situation, the cabin itself was quite pleasant. Amber light radiated from a single lamp in the corner, warming pine-paneled walls that housed pencil sketches of the wilderness. The furniture was big and boxy, looking hand hewn of more pine, and upholstered with blankets of Native American design. The floor was dotted with wool rugs of a similar pattern, the hardwood beneath them gleaming. A large creek stone fireplace took up most of one wall, shelves crammed full of books taking up the rest of it. Opposite her was a row of windows that looked out onto darkness, but which doubtless offered a magnificent view of the woods or water during the day. The whole place was tidy and spotless, as if it had just recently been cleaned. Had she not been here as a prisoner, Marnie would have found it charming.

“That way,” her captor said, tilting his head toward a doorway that led to a darkened room.

She swallowed with some difficulty, but walked carefully in that direction. Her captor, naturally, followed close behind.

“There’s a light switch on the wall to your left,” he told her. “Turn it on.”

Again, she did as she was instructed, her heart sinking when she saw the room was, as she had feared, a bedroom. Again, the decor was cozy and warm, the pine walls and floor continuing into this room from the other, the pencil sketches replaced by watercolor renditions of lake and sky. She felt his hand on her back, his fingers splaying wide between her shoulder blades and she instinctively jerked away. But he caught her easily, circling her upper arm with strong fingers. He tugged her back toward himself and propelled both their bodies forward, kicking the bedroom door closed behind them. He pushed her again, toward the bed, and nausea rolled into her belly.

Her mind raced to recall every self-defense trick she’d ever read in Glamour magazine and could only remember two: Jab him in the eyes with your keys or stomp on his instep with your spike heel. But he’d taken her keys from her and she wasn’t going to do much damage with a pair of knockoff Birkenstocks. Even scratching him would be impossible. She had been a nail-biter since childhood.

When he was undressing, she told herself, that was when she’d make her move. When his pants were down around his ankles, she’d run. Or she’d grab Mr. Happy and make him very unhappy indeed. Something. Anything. The moment his guard was down, she would figure out how best to hurt him. And then she would run like hell.

Little by little, they drew nearer the bed, with him behind her, slowly urging her forward. Closer now…closer…three more steps…two…almost there…one more step…

He walked right past the bed, heading toward another room off the bedroom.

Oh. Well that kind of threw off her plan of attack. Now what?

He instructed her to flip on that light, too, and when she did, Marnie saw a bathroom like any other, except that there was more pine instead of tile, and no bathtub. In place of one was an incongruously modern-looking shower stall in the corner, covered on two sides with frosted glass.

“Get in the shower,” he told her.

Oooh. He was one of those weirdos who had an obsession with cleanliness. That could work for her, she thought. It could. If she could just…If she could just…Well. If she could just get her brain to stop jumping around long enough for her to make sense of it.

“I really don’t think I need a shower right now,” she said. “I took one this morning, and honestly, if I could just wash my face, that would really be all I—”

He interrupted her by uttering a long, exasperated sound. He followed it with a very perturbed, “Just get in the damned shower, Lila.”

She narrowed her eyes at him as understanding began to dawn. Like a good, solid blow to the back of the head. “You mean, get in it with my clothes on?”

He actually had the nerve to roll his eyes and look at her as if she were an idiot. “Get. In. The. Shower. Now.”

She made a face at him. “Oh. Kay.” Just for that, she would leave her clothes on.

A half-dozen steps brought her to the shower door, which she carefully pulled open. Inside, she saw…a shower stall. Clean. Dry. Empty. On one shelf was lined up an assortment of toiletries, no two brands the same. Someone must be a coupon shopper. Marnie knew that because she never had the same brands in her house, either. There wasn’t a shower smell to the stall, though, neither soapy nor mildewy, and she found that odd. It didn’t even smell of disinfectant, as if it had just been cleaned. It didn’t smell like anything.

She was about to turn around, to ask faux Randy what she was supposed to do next, but he was climbing into the shower stall right behind her, something that made the words get stuck in her throat. She opened her mouth to scream—well, it was as good a reaction as any—but he reached beyond her, pointing what she thought was her car-key fob at the soap holder.

Okay, now that was just plain weird.

Weirder still was the fact that one of the plastic shower walls suddenly went sliding to the left, revealing a cubby on the other side. The walls of the cubby were lined with metal, something that looked like brushed aluminum, and when she looked to the left, she saw a flight of stairs heading down. She closed her eyes for a second then opened them. Nope, it was definitely not a hallucination. Sometimes a shower stall wasn’t a shower stall. What this one was, though…

“Go on,” faux Randy said from behind her.

“Go where?” she asked.

“Down the stairs.”

She was going to jokingly ask him if that was where he kept his torture chamber, but was afraid it might not be a joke at all. He must have sensed she was about to refuse—and she was—because she felt the gun press into her back again. She sighed and stepped cautiously into the metal cubby and looked down the stairs. There were about fifty or sixty of them, emptying into a well-lit hallway below. Whatever was down there, faux Randy hadn’t built it by himself. It was too perfect a construction for it to have been completed without some kind of sophisticated technology.

“What’s down there?” Marnie asked, really, really hoping he didn’t reply, My torture chamber.

“Lots of people who have been looking for you,” he said.

“Lots of people?” she echoed, puzzled. That actually might be good. Unless they were all like faux Randy.

He nodded. “Lots of people. And lucky you, Lila. One or two of them might even be happy to see you.”




CHAPTER FOUR


NOAH TENNANT TUCKED Philosopher’s manuscript under one arm and pressed the gun more insistently into Lila’s back. He honestly wasn’t sure which of the two was the bigger prize. Hell, he’d been that close to collaring Sorcerer tonight, too, and had only let the other man escape after making the split-second decision that Lila was worth more. Had Noah run after Sorcerer, she would have disappeared back into the netherworld where she’d been living undetected for the past five months. And they couldn’t have that.

Sorcerer had a habit of popping up again from time to time. Not so Lila. When she dug in, she stayed there. Noah had decided to seize the moment and grab her now, because he might not have another chance. Frankly, he was surprised she hadn’t used that split second to make her own escape. Or, even more characteristic of her, clean his clock and then make her escape. Lila Moreau could do a lot of damage in a split second. Nobody knew that better than Noah.

Still, had he succeeded in bringing in her, the manuscript and Sorcerer, he would have been promoted to the position of All Powerful Emperor of Everything Without Exception So There. And that would have looked great on a résumé.

“I’m not Lila,” Lila said. Again. “There’s been some terrible mixup somewhere. My name is Marnie. Marnie Lundy.” She’d said that several times tonight, too. Though how she could honestly think Noah would ever believe that was beyond him.

“Walk, Lila,” he said emphatically, “and keep your hands where I can see them.”

He jabbed the gun into her waist again to urge her down the stairs, not hard enough to hurt her, but hard enough to let her know he was willing to pull the trigger if she tried anything stupid. And he was, dammit. She’d pissed him off plenty in the past, but never like this. What the hell kind of game was she playing? She knew better than to try and pass herself off as someone else to anyone in OPUS, especially Noah. Hell, OPUS had created her. And Noah had been her senior agent at one point. He’d been more than that for one night, but that was something he did his best not to think about these days. Bad enough it had happened in the first place.

When he’d received the intel last night that she was in the middle of Lauderdale’s department store hanging up underwear, Noah’s first impulse had been to send every agent they had to bring her in right then. He couldn’t imagine what could possibly be going on at that store to have attracted her attention enough to not just bring her out of hiding, but put herself on display. Then he’d reminded himself that Lila was efficient and expeditious when carrying out an assignment—whether it was one OPUS gave her or not—and he made himself wait. And watch. Now that Philosopher had passed her the manuscript, it all made sense. But having Sorcerer, a rogue agent they’d been hunting for years, show up within moments of the transfer…

Well. Suffice it to say it looked like all the rumors about Lila going rogue, too, were true. But Noah was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. For now. There weren’t many in the Office for Political Unity and Security who were willing to do that.

With a heavy sigh that could have meant anything, she lowered one foot cautiously to the first stair. Step by step, she descended with her arms kept at shoulder height, Noah never allowing more than an inch of space to separate her and his gun. At the bottom, she hesitated, even though there was only one direction into which they might travel—forward. Before them was a long hallway dotted on both sides by metal doors all the way down. The two of them appeared to be alone, but dozens of people worked in the facility around the clock. Just because the day came to an end didn’t mean an OPUS workday ended. The Office for Political Unity and Security never slept.

“Walk,” Noah said again.

She moved forward slowly, her arms still held out by her head. It was good that she was being so cooperative, but he had no idea why she was being so cooperative. He’d seen Lila take out ten men twice her size in one evening. That she had accompanied him here without a fight was nothing short of astonishing.

As they made their way down the hall, the only discernible sounds were the soft hum of the air conditioner and Lila’s shallow, uneven breathing. Her hands were trembling, and she stumbled more than once as they walked. If he didn’t know better, Noah would have thought she was genuinely terrified. Which was laughable, because Lila Moreau wasn’t afraid of anything. Least of all OPUS.

“Stop here,” he said when they arrived at the door he wanted. She did so without hesitation. Without a fight. Without so much as a curse. “Turn the knob and go inside,” he told her.

Again, she followed his instructions, leading them into an empty interrogation room. Still training his gun on her, Noah closed the door and thumbed a green button on the wall, to announce their arrival. Within seconds, the door opened again and another agent entered the room.

Noah nodded once at the man in acknowledgment, who nodded silently back in reply. His dark eyes widened, and his shaggy black eyebrows shot high when he noted the extent of Noah’s injuries, until he obviously remembered it was Lila Noah had just brought in. Noah didn’t bother to tell the man it was Sorcerer, not she, who’d inflicted the damage. No reason for the other man to let down his guard.

By now she had retreated to the opposite corner of the room. She stood with her back pressed against the place where the two walls met, hugging herself tight, as if she were trying to hold herself together. Her eyes, an incredible aquamarine that Noah had never seen on any human being but her, were wide with what looked like fear—yeah, right—and her entire body seemed to be shaking now.

For the first time, he noted her attire; the slim gray skirt, the pale blue top and sweater. Her hair, darker blond than it had been the last time he saw her, was wound atop her head in a loose bun, except for a few stray pieces that had fallen free, probably during her scuffle with Sorcerer. She wore no makeup, and her legs were bare, her feet encased in chunky, ugly shoes. It was a remarkably bland getup, worn obviously because she didn’t want to attract attention. Noah had seen her outfitted in everything from black camouflage to designer evening gowns to perform her job. But never had he seen her try to carry off a persona like this. Mild. Unobtrusive. Compliant. It didn’t suit her at all.

“Good to have you back, She-Wolf,” said the second man, an agent whose code name was Zorba, thanks to his Mediterranean heritage. “Though it would have been better if you’d come in on your own, instead of having to be dragged back.”

Lila’s expression changed at the man’s use of her code name, a slip Noah noticed with some satisfaction. Maybe she was finally going to give up the lame pretense, and then they could start talking in earnest about why she’d taken off, where she’d been and what the hell she’d been doing while she was gone and prior to her disappearance.

“She-Wolf?” she echoed, her voice edged with irritation.

“I thought you people were convinced I was this Lila person. What’s with the She-Wolf? What kind of name is that?”

Noah almost smiled. Oh, yeah. Lila was about to reveal herself. Even backed against the wall—literally—she could still snarl.

Zorba looked at Noah. “Gonna be a long night, I see.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Zorba,” Noah said, not taking his eyes off Lila. “If anyone can make her crack, you can.”

Her eyes went wide at that, and he smiled with satisfaction. She’d been out of the game too long if she was revealing herself that easily. Then again, this was probably all part of her game. Since she kept insisting she was someone else, she had to pretend to be scared of what was happening to her. Smart agent. Excellent actress.

“Go ahead and get started without me,” he told Zorba.

“I need to get cleaned up and find something to eat. I’m starving. You hungry?” he asked Lila.

She didn’t seem to know what to make of the offer. After a small hesitation, she said softly, “A little.”

“Too bad,” he told her. “You’ll get nothing until you tell us what we want to hear.”

And without awaiting a reply—or a dagger in his back, which was the most likely response from Lila Moreau—he left the room.



“NOW, LET’S TRY this again, Lila, starting five months ago. We know you went to the Nesbitt estate to make contact with your partner after knocking Romeo unconscious and taking his clothes. But that was the last time anyone saw you. Where did you go after that?”

Noah bit back a growl at hearing Zorba ask the question again. Four hours after bringing Lila to the OPUS interrogation facility, she was still insisting she was someone named Marnie Lundy who’d grown up in Cleveland and held down two jobs, one for the department store where he’d picked her up tonight and one teaching piano to schoolchildren.

He’d actually laughed out loud at that. The only reason Lila would get near a kid would be to have it for breakfast. And the only way she’d get near a piano would be to cut the wire for garroting someone later. Not that OPUS had ever called on her to be an assassin. But she sure as hell had all the right moves and qualities to make a good one.

During a break in the interrogation, when Noah and Zorba had stepped out of the room, the other man had suggested they bring in an OPUS shrink, on the outside chance—the way outside chance—that Lila really had gone off the deep end this time. She’d been out in the cold for five months, all alone, without any of her usual tools or contacts to help her. She’d lost her mother just prior to her disappearance, and although Noah knew there was no love lost between the two women, the death of a parent could still have a powerful impact on a person. Lila’s past was troubled—to put it mildly—her background unstable—ditto. Throw all of that into a pot and it made for a toxic stew that might undo anyone. Even Lila Moreau.

Reluctantly, Noah had called in not just a shrink, but also his superior officer from OPUS headquarters in Washington, D.C. Although Noah headed up the Ohio unit, there were interstate implications with this, and he felt obligated to alert the big guns to what was going on. Especially the biggest gun of all, He Whose Name Nobody Dared Say—mostly because nobody knew what it was. After all, he was the one Lila had reportedly tried to kill.

Now, both No-Name and the shrink had arrived and been briefed on what was going on. The psychiatrist, a middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair cropped short, code name Gestalt, had joined Noah and Zorba in the interrogation room, and He Whose Name Nobody Dared Say was watching from another room on the closed-circuit TV.

“My name isn’t Lila,” Lila said wearily for what felt like the hundredth time.

She was sitting with her arms crossed on the table, her forehead resting on the top one. She was clearly exhausted, and they’d allowed her no food or drink, nor breaks of any kind, since her arrival. Anyone else would have rolled over by now. But not Lila.

“My name is Marnie Lundy,” she said again. “I live at 207 Mockingbird Lane in Cleveland, Ohio. I was born and raised in Cleveland. I’m thirty-three years old. I graduated from Moore High School in 1991, and from Ohio State University with a B.A. in music in 1995. I earned my master’s in music from OSU in 1996. My work record has been varied and eclectic since then, but I now work at Lauderdale’s Department Store, and I teach piano to kids after school and on weekends.” She lifted her head and met each of her inquisitors’ gazes in turn. “I don’t know who you people are or why you’re keeping me here. But I swear, if it’s at all within my power to do so, once this is over, I will hunt down every one of you like dogs and call you Rover.”

Well, at least she’d been honest about her age, Noah thought. And maybe the part about hunting them all down like dogs. Except that she’d do a lot more than call them names once she found them.

“Perhaps you should let me ask a few questions.” The comment came from Gestalt. “I’d like to speak to Ms. Lundy alone for a bit.”

Noah was about to decline, but one look from the psychiatrist stopped him. Fine. If she wanted to call Lila Ms. Lundy, hell, who was Noah to stop her? It wasn’t like he and Zorba had had any luck all night. And they could watch from the closed-circuit TV, too.

“All right,” he said. “Zorba and I will go for coffee. And I think they put out some doughnuts, too,” he added, looking at Lila. “Anybody else want anything? Except you, I mean?”

If looks could kill, Noah would have been atomic fallout about then.

“We’ll be fine,” Gestalt told him. “Ms. Lundy…Marnie,” she said, softening her voice, “and I will have a nice little chat, I hope.”

Whatever, Noah thought.

He and Zorba left the room, locking the door behind them, just in case Lila decided to ditch the compliant, complacent role and return to her old badass self. Then they strode to the next room to join their boss. Also present was Noah’s secretary, Ellie Chandler, a slim brunette on the tall side wearing a dark suit similar to the ones the men favored. Only instead of a necktie, she’d closed the collar with an understated bit of jewelry.

Normally, Noah wouldn’t include his secretary in something like this. But Ellie was ninety percent finished with the instruction and training required to become an agent, and he did his best to include her in things that might be helpful to her education. He was confident she would be an excellent agent. He was, after all, the one who had recommended her to the program.

“All set for your first field assignment?” he asked her now.

It was a rhetorical question. She’d be going undercover in three days, so she’d damned well better be ready. Not to mention she’d made clear her desire to become a field agent on the first day she’d been assigned to his office. The fact that it would only be a training assignment, and therefore not particularly dangerous, didn’t seem to make any difference to her at this point. He just hoped her enthusiasm didn’t ebb when she discovered the particulars of what her assignment would involve.

“I am so ready for it,” she told him. “Bring it on.”

“Funny you should say that,” he replied. “Because I just so happen to have the dossier with me. You can take it home with you after we’re finished here and start going over it. Since you’re working tonight, take tomorrow at home. Get a few hours of sleep before you dive in. You need to be fresh when you review everything.”

She looked slightly disappointed to be taking a day away from the office, and Noah tried to curb yet another grin. Honestly, if even half of his agents were as gung ho as Ellie, OPUS would have ensured world peace ages ago.

The room in which they had all gathered was outfitted more comfortably than the interrogation room, but was by no means luxurious. In addition to a metal table and chairs, there was a long couch and two upholstered chairs. Along one wall was a kitchenette of sorts, with sink and refrigerator and countertops—upon which whattayaknow, were some doughnuts—and a coffeemaker.

That last was coughing out the final drops of a fresh brew, so Noah made his way over and removed the pot, filling a white ceramic mug. Over the speakers, he could hear Gestalt’s voice as she spoke to Lila, a low, indulgent, monotonous tone clearly meant to be soothing. It put Noah’s teeth on edge. He moved to stand next to the others, his attention fixed on the television. His boss, too, a man of indeterminate age and average everything else, had his attention focused entirely on the TV screen.

Gestalt had seated herself at the end of the table kitty-corner to Lila, a less adversarial position than Noah and Zorba had held sitting across from her. She’d removed her jacket and hung it over the back of the chair to further her image as relaxed and less administrative. Lila leaned back in her chair with her hands in her lap, eyeing the other woman warily, just as she had Noah and Zorba. But she didn’t seem to reek quite as much contempt for Gestalt. Yet.

“Do you mind if I call you Marnie?” Gestalt said.

Lila’s response was an irritated sound, followed by a weary, “No. It would be nice to hear my name. I just wish you were calling me that because you believe I am who I say I am and not just to humor me.”

“I do believe you.”

“Then why aren’t you doing something to see that I’m released?”

“Because it’s not up to me to make that decision.”

“Who are you people?” Lila demanded. She sounded genuinely confused, which Noah knew she wasn’t, and genuinely angry, which he was sure she was.

Gestalt smiled in the way a kindergarten teacher might smile at a new pupil. “We work for a branch of the U.S. government called the Office for Political Unity and Security.”

“I’ve never heard of you,” Lila muttered.

“That’s because we’re a small, top-secret organization,” Gestalt told her, clearly unconcerned about revealing information she shouldn’t be revealing to anyone outside the organization, since Lila wasn’t outside the organization, no matter how much she insisted she was. “We don’t want anyone to hear about us, so few people have.”

“Are you law enforcement or what?” Lila asked.

“We fall under the domain of Homeland Security, and we have many functions,” Gestalt said. “Essentially, OPUS tackles anything or anyone that poses a threat to national security, be they domestic or international. We are both collectors of information and enforcers of the law. Right now, much of our focus is on finding two people. One man, one woman.”

“Let me guess,” Lila said. “The woman is this Lila person.”

“Lila Moreau,” Gestalt said. “She works for us. Her code name in the organization is She-Wolf.”

“Code name?” Lila echoed dubiously. A nervous-sounding chuckle escaped her. “You people actually have code names?”

“We do.”

“Gosh, do you have a secret handshake and decoder rings, too?”

Gestalt smiled that benign smile again. “No secret handshakes,” she said.

Lila hesitated a telling beat, narrowing her eyes before saying, “So then you do have decoder rings.”

In response to that, Gestalt removed what looked like a college ring from her right ring finger and laid it on the table between herself and Lila.

Lila looked at it blankly, then back at Gestalt. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“It has a laser in it, too,” Gestalt told her. “And a camera. And a microphone. And a global-positioning device. And a few other little features that are too hush-hush for me to share with a civilian like you.” She reached for the ring and put it on again. “But I could break into the Bank of Switzerland and take out half the United Arab Emirates with it if I wanted to.”

“Unbelievable,” Lila said, even though she owned a ring exactly like it. Just as Noah did. Just as every agent did. “So what makes you people think I’m this Lila Moreau slash She-Wolf person?”

“Well, you do look very much like her.”

Ha, Noah thought. She looked exactly like Lila. Same face, same height, same build, same mannerisms. Because she was Lila. Yeah, her hair was a little darker and she’d dropped a few pounds, but he’d know Lila anywhere.

“What’s she done to make her such a priority with your organization?” Lila asked.

“She’s an agent with top-secret clearance, and she disappeared five months ago without a trace.”

“How do you know she’s not dead?”

“We don’t know that. But it would be unlikely. She’s quite a good agent. Arguably our best.”

No argument here, Noah thought. At least, Lila had been their best agent, up until the time she vanished. Unfortunately, there was so much innuendo and rumor surrounding her disappearance that he wasn’t sure what to think now.

The official word was that Lila had taken a short leave of absence in the middle of an assignment to return to her hometown of Las Vegas because her mother was terminally ill and near death. Within a few weeks of her arrival in Vegas, her mother died, so Lila had asked for a little more time to sort through her mother’s effects and settle the woman’s estate. Well, as much estate as a woman could leave behind when she’d spent her adult life as a showgirl and hooker and had no family besides the illegitimate daughter who’d left home at age sixteen and never returned.

After that, things got a little murky. Last November, Noah, like everyone at his level and higher, had received a report that She-Wolf had returned to Washington and, while being debriefed by He Whose Name Nobody Dared Say, had gone nuts and tried to murder him. Then she’d disappeared.

This, Noah had trouble believing. At one time or another, everyone in OPUS had wanted to murder He Whose Name Nobody Dared Say. But everyone in OPUS, especially someone as smart as Lila, knew that to even attempt such a thing would be suicide. Plus, Lila wasn’t one to lose control and go nuts. She never let her emotions overrule her. She was the coolest, at times the most emotionless person Noah knew.

So, like many in OPUS, he’d had his doubts about the reliability—he hesitated to use the word veracity—of the report. It wouldn’t be the first time the big muckety-mucks in D.C. had inflated—or created—a story to suit their own needs. Still he’d had no choice but to follow protocol and treat Lila as an enemy of the organization.

Watching her now, he couldn’t quite figure out what she was. She certainly wasn’t cooperating with them. But she didn’t seem to be a threat, either. So Noah would reserve judgment and observe.

“If she’s your best agent,” Lila said to Gestalt, “and if you think I’m her, then why are you treating me like a criminal? For that matter, if I’m her, why wouldn’t I come along peacefully and cooperate with you? Why would I keep insisting I’m someone else?”

“Well, there were some…circumstances…surrounding her disappearance,” Gestalt said. “Circumstances that are a bit unclear.”

Lila was silent for a moment, clearly digesting the information. Then she said, “Meaning she either screwed something up really badly, or else she’s turned to the dark side.”

Gestalt smiled again. “Let’s just say there are a few questions we’d like to ask her. A few things we need for her to clear up. But let’s talk about you, Marnie. I want to hear more about you right now.”

For the next half hour, Gestalt quizzed Lila on her phony-baloney Marnie Lundy persona, asking questions that ranged from her childhood illnesses to her high-school social life to her experiences as a teaching assistant at Ohio State. Had he not known better, Noah would have sworn Lila really was some woman named Marnie Lundy. Not once did she stop to think before responding, and not once did she waver from her story. Even when Gestalt tried to trip her up, Lila always made perfect sense.

But that was Lila. She had a gift for changing herself into whatever she needed to be. When she took on the identity of someone else, she didn’t just pass herself off as that individual. She became that individual. Mind, body and soul. The fact that this time the identity was one she’d assigned to herself instead of being assigned it by OPUS didn’t change that.

At the end of Gestalt’s questioning, she left Lila alone and returned to the room where Noah and the others were waiting. Much to his surprise, her expression when she entered was one of philosophical acceptance.

“You think she’s telling the truth?” he asked incredulously.

“I think she’s telling the truth as she sees it, yes,” Gestalt told them. “I think She-Wolf genuinely believes that she’s Marnie Lundy.”

“What?” Noah barked.

“She’s delusional,” Gestalt said. “Something happened to her that’s made her block out her actual identity and assume the identity of a fictional person who lives a life completely different from the one she’s used to. A quiet, uneventful, safe life,” she added meaningfully. “She’s even given that fictional person her initials, albeit reversed. Lila Moreau. Marnie Lundy. But I’m quite convinced that right now, She-Wolf firmly believes she’s who she says she is.”

“So what are we supposed to do?” Noah asked. He still wasn’t sure he believed Gestalt’s analysis, but he couldn’t offer a better explanation himself.

The psychologist sighed heavily. “There are a number of ways we can deal with it, but most of those take time, and I gather you don’t have much of that to spare.”

“You got that right,” Noah told her. “Sorcerer has resurfaced, and She-Wolf’s made contact. Hell, Philosopher’s turned up again after being missing for three years, and She-Wolf has made contact with him, too. I never thought we’d see him again. If we’re going to nail Sorcerer and find out what Philosopher knows, not to mention discover what Lila learned over the last five months, we need her.”

“Then we need a quick fix,” Gestalt translated. “And I have an idea. It’s unconventional, and normally not what I would do in such a situation, but…”

“What?” Noah asked. “I’ll try anything.”

“Then try playing along with her,” Gestalt told him. Though she clearly still had some reservations about what she was saying. “Go in there and tell her you ran her name through the databases and found out Marnie Lundy really exists, and that everything she’s said tonight has been corroborated, and we’re so sorry for detaining her and now she’s free to go.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” Noah muttered. “Like I really believe there’s a Marnie Lundy out there in the world who looks exactly like Lila Moreau and just happened to have her path cross with both Philosopher and Sorcerer in one night.”

“You don’t have to believe it,” Gestalt said. “Just make her think you do. She was specific about her background and home life and jobs. She has a firm grip on her delusion. So expose that delusion for the fantasy it really is. Prove to her that all of what she’s told us is completely false. Once she’s forced to confront the fact that there is no reality to support her convictions, she may—and I do mean may—come out of it.”

“How do I do that?” Noah asked.

“Take her to the address she insists is hers. See if it really exists. And if it does, go inside and see what you find. Ask her questions. Try to trip her up. Do the same thing with her workplace.”

“You didn’t have much luck tripping her up,” Noah pointed out.

“Here, I have no choice but to accept that what she says is true. Out there, you’ll have more opportunities to force her to accept the unreality of the world she’s created for herself. I’m betting she won’t be able to prove much of what she told us tonight. And I’m betting it will happen fairly quickly.”

“And then she’ll go back to being Lila again?” Noah asked dubiously.

“Maybe,” Gestalt told him. “Of course, she might be propelled into an even worse state than she’s in now.” Her gaze shifted from Noah to No-Name, then back to Noah again. “But I don’t think something like that is really a concern for OPUS, is it?”

Noah clamped his jaw shut tight. Gestalt was right. OPUS never put the human condition before national security. They couldn’t afford to. National security was job one. Even more important than the health and well-being of one of their top agents.

“It’s worth a try,” No-Name said without hesitation.

“We need to know where She-Wolf’s been and what she’s discovered. At this point, she may be our only hope for bringing in Sorcerer.”

And they needed to bring Lila up on charges for trying to take out the big guy, too, Noah thought. If indeed she had tried to take out the big guy. The big guy was acting awfully calm for a man whose alleged would-be murderer was on the other side of the wall.

“All right,” Noah said, ignoring the sudden bad taste in his mouth. “I’ll do it. I’ll take her home and see what happens.”

He looked at the TV screen again and saw that Lila had laid her head back on her arms on the table. She was completely motionless. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her in such a state. Even when she slept, she moved constantly. He remembered that much, and more—too much more—about her.

He shifted his attention to Gestalt. “This better work,” he muttered. “And it better work fast. I need She-Wolf back.”




CHAPTER FIVE


IN HER DREAM, Marnie was playing the Polonaise in an empty Carnegie Hall, her passion and love for the music swelling inside her, flowing out through her fingertips and into the cavernous room. As she completed the final stanza, she dropped her head and let her hands fall from the keys into her lap. But when solitary applause erupted, she snapped her head up again.

Not an empty auditorium after all. A lone, tuxedoed gentleman sat center stage in the front row, his crisp white shirt and tie a direct contrast to the black cut of his jacket and trousers. His dark-blond hair was swept straight back from his face, giving more prominence to his blue, blue eyes, his finely sculpted cheekbones, his full, sexy mouth. Marnie’s own lips parted in surprise at seeing him and her heart hammered hard in her chest. But she said nothing.

He stood silently, moved fluidly to the end of the stage where steps appeared, climbed them with clear intention. She remained seated on the bench as he approached from stage right, her mouth going dry at the sight of him, her pulse racing faster with every step he took. Her dream self remembered now that he had attended all her performances, always seated in the same place, watching her with a hazy half smile playing about his lips. He always seemed to enjoy the music—or something—but not once had he applauded with the rest of the audience. Only tonight, when he was alone.

Now he strode toward her with that same half smile curving the corners of his mouth. When he drew close enough, he reached for her and Marnie stood, hooking her fingers over his, thinking he meant to walk her off the stage. But he twined their fingers more tightly together and kept coming toward her, pulling her to himself, sweeping her into his arms and covering her mouth with his, completely and with utter possession.

She gasped as her head jerked off her arm. She felt the cool metal table beneath her hand, blinked at the bright light overhead. She’d dozed off, she realized. She’d been dreaming. But when she turned her head toward the door, she saw the man from the empty auditorium standing there, as if he’d exited her dream with her. Instead of a tuxedo, he wore the dark suit in which she’d last seen him. And instead of the slicked-back, Rudolph Valentino hairstyle, his dark-blond tresses were dry. But they were creased and untidy, as if he’d been running his fingers restlessly through them. The swelling had gone down on his lip some, and the abrasion on his face had faded to a less angry red smudged by a faint bruise. In spite of the injuries, his was still a very compelling face.

How long had she been asleep? she wondered, pushing the thought away. What time was it? When she looked at her watch, she saw that nearly seven and a half hours had passed since her shift had ended at Lauderdale’s. Would that she had dreamed everything that had happened since then, she’d be waking up in her own bed this morning, readying herself for another day’s work.

Straightening in her chair, she met faux Randy’s gaze and asked, “So what’s your code name? I mean, I have a few I could use for you, but none of them is worth uttering in polite society. Then again, the society I’ve experienced tonight has been anything but polite.”

“I owe you an apology, Ms. Lundy,” he said, addressing her by her real name. And in an amazingly courteous voice, too. She wasn’t sure which surprised her more.

“Yeah, I’ll say you do,” she retorted before she could stop herself. Reminding herself that snarkiness wasn’t going to get her home any faster, she gentled her tone some before adding, “What brings on this sudden change of heart?”

He left the door open as he approached the table, something he hadn’t done all night. “We ran a check on your name,” he said, “and we realized you are indeed who you say you are. Marnie Lundy of 207 Mockingbird Lane in Cleveland, Ohio, and that you’ve been an employee of Lauderdale’s for two years, just as you said.”

“Well, why the hell didn’t you run a check like that the minute I got here?” she demanded.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “We were convinced you were Lila Moreau trying to pull a fast one. We didn’t have any reason to believe you were who you said you were. So we didn’t see the point.”

“And what made you change your mind?” she asked, still skeptical. For such a supersecret sophisticated organization, they sure did seem like a bunch of boneheads.

“The woman who spoke to you a little while ago was a psychiatrist we brought in to examine you when we thought you were Lila. After speaking with you at length, she realized—and assured us—that you’re neither crazy, nor pretending and that you are precisely who you claim to be.”

Marnie nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said. Even though she was still suspicious of the sudden turnaround. “So does this mean I can go home?” she asked hopefully.

He nodded. “I’ll drive you myself.”

His offer, too, surprised her. “That won’t be necessary,” she assured him.

“Do you remember how you got here?”

“Um, no,” she admitted.

“And you haven’t had any sleep tonight,” he pointed out.

Well, except for that one little nap with the weird dream about ol’ blue eyes there kissing her, which, now that she thought about it, was really a nightmare, except for the fact that it had actually been kind of nice….

She sighed. She really did need to get out and date more if she was thinking a dream kiss from a virtual stranger who’d abducted and terrified her was kind of nice. Even Lila probably didn’t have anyone like that in her little black book.

“You haven’t had any sleep, either,” she said.

“I can go without it. Something tells me you can’t.”

Yeah, like the fact that he’d walked in on her fast asleep. She hoped she hadn’t been drooling. Or making those soft murmuring sounds of satisfaction out loud that she’d been making in her dream when he kissed her.

“So when can we go?” she asked.

“Any time you’re ready,” he told her, surprising her again.

“But don’t you have to…”

“What?”

“Debrief me or something?”

She remembered after asking the question that she was indeed wearing briefs, a realization that made her hope “debrief” really was the word spy types used in such situations, and not just in movies and on TV. Otherwise, things could get a little embarrassing.

When he smiled at her the way he did, she had a feeling he was thinking about the same kind of debriefing she was. Which was bad, because she wasn’t thinking about the movie and TV kind of debriefing just then. He really was very handsome. Even if he was a big jerk.

“I don’t need to debrief you, Ms. Lundy,” he said.

Ah, well. Story of her life.

She realized then that although he knew her by not one but two names—even if one of them was wrong—she didn’t know even one of his. And, gosh, a girl always wanted to know the name of the man who abducted her and made her life hell for a night. So she asked, “What’s your name?”

His smile fell some at that. “Why? Are you planning to write a letter of complaint about me?”

“And send it where?” she asked. “I don’t know anything about you guys except for your being under Homeland Security.” Which led her to another thought. “The woman who spoke to me said your organization is top secret and no one’s supposed to know about you. Aren’t you afraid that by letting me go home, I’ll spend the day on the phone alerting the media to my experience and your existence?”

“They won’t believe you,” he said with complete conviction. “Except for the media outlets who publish stories about alien Elvises and women who marry Bigfoot, and we’ve already been written up by them dozens of times. Those stories just reinforce how we can’t possibly exist anywhere outside someone’s delusion. Besides, if we find out you’re talking about us, we have ways of making you stop.”

Her blood went cold at the matter-of-fact way he said that. “Are you threatening me?”

“Yeah.”

“With what?”

He chuckled at her expression. “Don’t worry, we won’t kill you or make you disappear. But you’ll find out what all the ruckus is about identity theft. We’ll ruin your credit and tie up your finances and create debt for you where you never had it before. We’ll make you lose your job and your home and everything else we can think of. It’s not a good idea to piss off Uncle Sam.”

Unbelievable, she thought. But, alas, totally believable.

“I won’t say a word to anyone,” she vowed.

“Good.”

“So then you won’t mind telling me your name,” she added, not sure why it was so important for her to know.

He hesitated for a moment, then, “Noah Tennant,” he told her. “Code name Sinatra.”

Of course, she thought. With those eyes, what else would his code name be?

“Now if you’re ready to go,” he said, “we can leave anytime.”

“I’m ready now,” she told him. Actually, she was ready seven and a half hours ago. “But before we leave…?” she added, her voice trailing off before finishing the question.

“Yes?”

“Could you tell me if there’s a ladies’ room nearby?”



THE EASTERN SKY was stained with orange and gold by the time Lila directed Noah to an older section of Cleveland and a neighborhood of tidy homes built between the two world wars. The driveway into which she told him to turn belonged to a red-brick bungalow whose porch spanned the front of the house, and whose broad front windows sported window boxes awaiting spring planting. Terra-cotta pots, likewise empty of flowers this time of year, lined the concrete shelf wrapping the porch and a white wicker swing hung at one end. A quartet of hanging Boston ferns dotted the front, suggesting the owner had been impatient for something to grow, and yellow bug lamps glowed on each side of the front door.

Noah wondered who lived here and why Lila was pretending it was her. She could no more nurture plants—or feel comfortable in such a blatantly cozy house—than he could. He hoped she didn’t try to go inside. It would be difficult to explain the situation to the owners.

“Thanks for driving me home,” she said from the passenger seat as he dropped her car keys into her hand.

“You’re sure you have a ride coming?”

“I’m sure they’re right behind us,” he lied.

“Well…thanks again,” she said, reaching for the door handle. “I appreciate it.”

She sounded exhausted, which he was certain she was after being interrogated all night, and glad to be home, which he was certain she was not, since this couldn’t possibly be her home. Nor could she be happy to be anywhere in his vicinity. He wondered how much longer it would take her to crack.

“I’ll follow you in,” he offered. “Make sure everything’s okay.”

She looked vaguely alarmed by his offer. Which she naturally would be. If he followed her in, she’d have to admit she didn’t live here. And she wouldn’t be able to run away if he stayed too close.

“That’s okay,” she said as she pushed open the door.

“I’ll be fine. It’s a safe neighborhood. And I should know, since I grew up in this house.”

Noah smiled indulgently. Of course she’d grown up in this house. It just screamed ruthless agent Lila Moreau. “Humor me,” he said. “I feel bad about what we put you through tonight, and I want to make sure you get all the way home safely.”

Still looking wary, she said, “All right.”

Her easy acquiescence put him on alert, and he quickly scrambled out of the car before she had a chance to escape. But instead of running, she made her way up the front walk, flipping through her keys until she found the one she wanted. Without hesitation, she strode up the stairs, shoved the key into the lock of the front door and twisted it.

To Noah’s amazement, the door swung open and Lila went in, turning to wait for him before closing it behind them both. Two cats—one black, one with orange stripes—came running to greet her, both skidding to a halt when they saw Noah.

“It’s all right,” she cooed to the cats, dropping down to a crouch. “He won’t hurt you. And I’m sure he was sincere when he told me how bad he feels for being so mean to me tonight.”

That last was spoken half over her shoulder, and Noah almost smiled. Even delusional—if indeed that was what she was—the true Lila kept creeping out.

Her word was evidently good enough for the cats, because both scurried forward again, bumping their heads into her knees, her hands, her hips. They obviously knew her well and were quite enamored of her. And she was clearly attached to them, laughing as she scrubbed them behind their ears and murmuring soothing words to explain her overnight absence.

Noah’s mouth dropped open in amazement at witnessing the scene. Lila purring to cats? Lila showing affection? What the hell was going on? Just what had she been doing for the past five months?

He drove his gaze around the room, taking in the furnishings that were as snug and pleasant, and as pre-World War II, as the house itself. An overstuffed flowered sofa and chair took up much of the right half of the living room, a white fireplace beyond it bisecting two sets of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed full of books. The mantelpiece played host to crystal candlesticks and cut-glass bowls, an antique clock and framed photographs whose subjects were indeterminate from this distance. Some were black-and-white, appearing to be quite old.

To the left of the furnishings, French doors opened into what appeared to be a dining room, though Noah could only see part of it from where he stood—an expanse of wall covered in old-looking wallpaper of dogwood blossoms, the corner of a lace-covered table, the end of a china cabinet filled with enough china to make Martha Stewart look like a slacker.

Scanning to the left side of the living room, he saw a baby grand piano sitting in front of a big bay window whose window seat was upholstered by a different kind of floral fabric from the sofa. Artfully scattered throw pillows covered one end, while sheet music was stacked neatly at the other. A feminine-looking briefcase sat on the floor near the piano, and sheets of lined paper, some filled with handwritten music—were stacked on the bench.

Directly in front of him was a long hallway, the hardwood floor, like the floors of the living room, covered by a worn floral rug. But where the walls in the living room were the dark blue of a twilit sky, the walls of the hallway turned to butter yellow. Taking a few steps to the left, Noah saw that the hall walls were also covered on both sides by scores of framed photographs.

Whoever lived in this house seemed to have a long history here. And whoever lived here was obviously very comfortable living here. He looked at Lila again. She was standing now, laughing at the cats who were still twining around her ankles. And somehow, she looked perfectly at home.

No, Noah told himself. No way.

“So you grew up in this house?” he asked carefully.

She looked up at him with a puzzled expression. “Lived here my whole life,” she told him. “Except for my time at OSU. My father had retired by the time I graduated, and he was getting on in years, so I moved back home with him to live.”

“And you’re a music teacher?” he asked, remembering how adamant she had been about that.

“For my livelihood, I am,” she said. “And I work at Lauderdale’s to bring in a little extra. My real love is song-writing and composing. I haven’t sold anything yet, but I haven’t been pursuing publication for very long.”

Noah nodded slowly, his mind working fast. Maybe what Gestalt said was true. Maybe Lila really did believe she was this Marnie Lundy person. Maybe she’d believed it for the past five months. She appeared to have been living in this house for some time, and the cats obviously knew her well. When he got back to OPUS, he’d run a check on the name Marnie Lundy and see what came up. See if maybe she just appeared out of thin air five months ago.

What could have happened to Lila to drive her over the edge this way? he wondered. It must have been something heinous to have messed with someone as strong—and as dangerous—as she was.

“This house reminds me of the one where I grew up,” he said.

“Really?”

No, not really. He’d grown up in the lap of luxury. His parents had employed servants who lived in bigger houses than this. “Yeah,” he lied. “Except I spent my childhood in Cincinnati.” That much, at least, was true.

“That’s a wonderful city,” she said. “I have a good friend from college who lives down there and we still try to get together once a month, either here or there.”

Of course she did, Noah thought, marveling at just how deeply a person could clinically delude herself.

“Do you mind if I have a look around?” he asked. “It would almost be like revisiting my childhood.”

She smiled at that. “Go ahead. I have to feed Edith and Henry.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You named your cats Edith and Henry?”

“Actually, my father did. After Edith Wharton and Henry James. He was a professor of literature, specializing in the Gilded Age.”

Of course he was, Noah thought. Naturally Lila, who was the offspring of a showgirl hooker and didn’t even know the identity of her father, would create such a fantasy father when she was losing her mind. It made perfect sense.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to keep Edith and Henry from their dinner. Breakfast,” he quickly corrected himself when he remembered what time it was.

Lila took off through the dining room with the cats running alongside her, and Noah headed into the hallway to check out the gallery of photographs. Most of them were old black-and-whites of people he didn’t recognize. But others, not quite as old, made his stomach go tight.

Lila. As a girl. As a teenager. In this very house. In one shot, she was wearing a graduation cap and gown, even though Noah knew for a fact—or, at least, had thought he knew for a fact—that she never formally graduated from high school. But she didn’t look old enough to be in college in the photo. And there was a man standing beside her, bearded, bespectacled, old enough to be her father—maybe even her grandfather—with one arm slung proudly over her shoulder.

In another shot, an adolescent Lila was blowing out the candles on a birthday cake that said Happy 13th Birthday…somebody. Noah couldn’t make out the name from the camera angle. In another photograph, she was elementary-school aged, standing in the backyard with the garden hose arcing water above her, wringing wet and laughing. In yet another, she looked to be in middle school, wearing a full-length gown with a corsage on her wrist, a dark-suited boy the same age standing awkwardly beside her.

And then another, much more recent photo of Lila, at a time when she should have been working for OPUS. Instead, she was sitting on the piano bench not a dozen steps from where Noah stood, a Christmas tree behind her, a glass of what looked like eggnog in her hand and fake reindeer antlers lit with red and green lights on her head. Not at all the sort of whimsy in which Lila would indulge.

Panic rose in Noah’s chest, and he strode back into the living room, to the photographs on the mantelpiece, hoping they offered more insight. But his gaze strayed instead to the bookcase, falling on a row of high-school yearbooks. Hastily, he jerked down the one closest to him, dated 1987. He did some quick mental math. Lila would have been a freshman, so he opened it to look for that class. His attention went instead to the plethora of handwriting on the inside cover, dozens of different signatures, all looking like teenaged writing, all messages inscribed to “Marnie.”

Heat splashed through his belly. Shoving pages to the left, he found the freshman class and looked not for Moreau, but for Lundy. Sure enough, Marnie was there, looking just like Lila would have looked when she was in ninth grade. Except that, knowing what he did of Lila’s life when she was that age, her expression would have been sullen, angry and scared. Marnie Lundy fairly beamed from the page, an obviously happy, well-adjusted kid.

Noah pulled down the next yearbook and found Marnie Lundy as a sophomore, and the inside covers once again obscured by good wishes from what seemed to be the entire class. The next two yearbooks held more of the same.

“Agent Tennant, what are you doing?”

Noah spun around at the question and saw Lila—no, Marnie, he made himself admit—framed by her dining-room doors, staring at him as if she were very, very sorry she had allowed him into her house.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. And then he laughed anxiously. Boy, was that an understatement. “I mean…” He faltered, studying her again. She was Lila. But…not. She looked like her, sounded like her, even moved like her. But she wasn’t her.

“You’re not Lila,” he said, knowing the declaration must sound ridiculous to her. “You really are Marnie Lundy.”

“I know that,” she said, her voice edged with impatience. “That’s what I’ve been telling you all night. I thought you realized it. I thought that was why you let me come home.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t realize it until this minute,” he told her. “I thought I was humoring a delusional agent who would break under the pressure of having to confront her delusion.”

“You thought I was crazy Lila?” she translated.

He expelled a single, humorless chuckle. “Yeah. Instead, I find that you’re…”

She settled her hands on her hips, shifting her weight to one foot, and glared at him. It was a gesture he’d seen Lila perform too many times to count. But it wasn’t Lila doing it this time.

Then another thought struck him. He and Zorba and Gestalt had told this woman all kinds of things tonight about OPUS, convinced that they were telling Lila things she already knew. Marnie Lundy knew some pretty sensitive stuff about the organization and Lila’s disappearance. She knew Noah’s name. She knew his code name. She’d seen their operation, if only from a limited standpoint. If she tried very hard, she might even be able to retrace her steps to the cabin in the woods.

“I’m what?” she demanded.

But Noah honestly had no idea what to say. Except maybe, “You’re not the woman I’m looking for.”



IT WAS MIDMORNING before Marnie’s head finally stopped feeling fuzzy over everything that had happened in the past twelve hours. In the meantime, Noah Tennant had requested and inspected as many of her personal documents as she could pull from her filing cabinet, from the deed to her house to her and her father’s wills to the checking account on which she had written thousands of checks over the past ten years. He hadn’t said much as he’d reviewed the documents, had only asked questions that she’d done her best to answer. But two interrogations in such a short span of time had left her feeling a tad raw emotionally, and coupled with the lack of sleep, she was growing more than a little irritable. Even a steady stream of herbal tea hadn’t been enough to soothe her. On the other hand, the coffee she’d fed to Agent Tennant had only seemed to sharpen his mind, something else that kind of ticked her off.

How could he look so cool and collected—and dammit, so handsome—when she felt like a world-class frump with only one half-functioning brain cell? And why, of all the things that should or could have been circling through her head at the moment, was it his voice of a few hours ago she kept hearing?

You’re not the woman I’ve been looking for.

Story of my life, she thought as she watched him on the other side of her dining-room table, studying her social security card again. She was never the woman men were looking for. Not in the long run. She was always too…something…for them. Too serious. Too dedicated. Too quiet. Too old-fashioned. Too focused. Too straitlaced. Too stuffy.

Not a single charge was true. Yes, she was all of those things from time to time. But never to a point where that was all she was. And she was other things, too, things men just couldn’t seem to see. She could be fun when the situation called for it. She could. And she could be witty and adventurous and outrageous, too. Really. She could. Honest. She’d just never met any men who made her want to be those things, that was all. The men she met were always too…something…for her, too.

“We’ll still have to run a check on you,” Agent Tennant said now, not looking up from her social security card. She’d noticed he’d come back to that little scrap of cardboard several times, as if something about it still bothered him. “There’s a lot I can learn about you from our sources that I can’t from all this.” He gestured toward the piles of paper records fanned out across the table.

Marnie narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you telling me you know more about me than I know myself?”

He was smiling when he looked up at her, but there was nothing happy in the expression. “Well, not at the moment. But by day’s end…”

She shook her head. “Unbelievable,” she said for a second time since meeting him. But again, unfortunately, it was easy to believe.

He studied her in silence for a moment longer, then picked up her birth certificate. It, like her social security card, had seemed to interest him more than anything else she’d presented for his examination.

“This is just a photocopy,” he said. “Do you have the original?”

She couldn’t see what difference it would make, but told him, “No. I don’t remember ever seeing an original, to be honest. I only needed the copy for school registrations and such. I imagine it’s packed away somewhere with my baby effects.”

“According to this,” Agent Tennant said, his attention falling to the document again, “You were born May first, nineteen seventy-two, to Elliott and Lucie Lundy.”

He glanced up again, and again, Marnie was struck by how very blue his eyes were. That, of course, made her notice again how handsome he was, and for some weird reason, she found herself wondering if he was married. Of its own volition, her gaze fell to the hand that was holding her birth certificate—his left. No ring. No tan line or indentation, either. Still, some married people didn’t bother with them. Then she reminded herself it was none of her business if Agent Tennant was married. More to the point, she further reminded herself, she didn’t care.

So why did she need to be reminded of that?

“You mentioned your father passed away,” he said, pulling her back to the matter at hand. Which was not his hand, she assured herself. “Is your mother still alive?”

“No. She died when I was a month old,” she told him.

“In a car accident. I have no memory of her, and my father never remarried.”

For a long moment, Agent Tennant said nothing. Then, “May first, nineteen-seventy-two,” he repeated. But softly, this time, and with some distraction, as if he were thinking about something else when he said it.

She couldn’t imagine why he’d find her date of birth so worthy of consideration, but he said nothing more and stayed quiet so long, Marnie began to feel a little uncomfortable.

Then she realized it wasn’t his silence making her uncomfortable—it was the intent way he was studying her face. He seemed to be most interested in her eyes, however, pinning his gaze there for a long time. Long enough to make heat swamp her entire system. Again.

“I need to borrow this for a little while,” he stated—not asked—as he held up her birth certificate. “I’ll get it back to you this afternoon. This evening at the latest.” He looked down at the papers on the table again and plucked her social security card from the assortment. “I’ll need this, too.”

“Okay,” she agreed reluctantly. Not that she got the feeling that she had much choice. “But why do you need them?”

“I can’t say for sure just yet,” he told her. “But I think, Ms. Lundy, that you and I both are going to be surprised by what I learn.”

Oh, Marnie didn’t like the sound of that at all. “I have to work tonight at Lauderdale’s,” she told him. “And I have students to teach this afternoon.”

“Tomorrow then,” he said. “We should talk then. Are you free in the morning?”

She nodded. “But I have to work at the store in the evening.”

He took a step backward, into her living room. But he continued to look at her face, as if he wasn’t able to look at anything else. “I apologize again for the inconvenience of last night.”

“Inconvenience,” she repeated blandly. “It was a lot more than that. You scared the hell out of me.”

He made a face that indicated he was genuinely sorry, and continued to watch her eyes. “I apologize for that, too.”

A shudder of heat wound through her at the relentlessness of his gaze. The way he was looking at her then…Hungry. That was the only way she could think to describe him. Like a man who’d been starved and neglected for years and had just stumbled upon a banquet.

He kept walking until he was at her front door, his attention divided between her birth certificate, her social security card and her. Marnie seemed to finally win out over the paper documents, however—and my, but wasn’t that a huge compliment, being more important than paper?—because he stuffed the former into his inside jacket pocket and studied her face again. Or, rather, she couldn’t help thinking, her eyes. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was seeing something—or someone—else.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” he said. “Around nine okay?”

“Fine.”

“We can talk more then.”

Marnie wanted to ask about what, since he seemed to already know, but decided maybe she wasn’t all that fired up to hear. There was still a chance, however small, that this was nothing but a bad dream. By tomorrow morning, she might wake up to discover Agent Noah Tennant didn’t exist anywhere outside her feverish imagination, so whatever he had to tell her didn’t, either.

And maybe, she thought further, she’d also wake up tomorrow to discover that an asteroid the size of Lithuania had crashed into Ohio, making this whole episode—not to mention Cleveland—moot.

Without a further word, Agent Tennant opened the front door and passed through it, closing it with a soft click behind him. Marnie moved to the big bay window to watch him make his way toward the plain black sedan he’d called to have someone bring to the house earlier. But he didn’t immediately start the car when he slipped behind the wheel, and instead pressed some buttons on his cell phone and put it to his ear. As he spoke to whoever answered at the other end, he studied both her birth certificate and social security card again, clearly reading off the information on each.

At one point, he glanced up to see Marnie looking at him out the window, and he stopped talking, as if he were afraid she might be able to discern what he was saying. Then, obviously realizing that was impossible, he began to speak again to whomever he had called. But he continued to watch Marnie watching him, and for several long moments, neither of them looked away. Finally, though, after ending the connection, he lifted a hand in farewell. Then he started the car and maneuvered it out of the driveway, and made his way down the street.

Not once did he look back.




CHAPTER SIX


ELLIE CHANDLER SAT cross-legged on her living room floor with an oversize mug of coffee in one hand and a sealed OPUS file in the other. She’d shed her suit and heels in favor of baggy brown cargo pants, a waffle-weave Henley the color of red wine and slouchy socks; her dark auburn hair had been shifted from the sophisticated French twist she wore to work to the loose ponytail she favored for home. Like a good agent—even though she wasn’t one yet—she’d followed Noah’s instructions and gotten a few hours of sleep before looking at the file, so now the noonday sun tumbled raucously through the window. Her belly was full of Krispy Kreme jelly-filleds, the coffeepot was full and she was about to embark on her first field assignment for OPUS.

Oh, yeah. Life was so good.

The sleek white envelope, Staples style #4673, if she knew her office paraphernalia—and it went without saying that she did—had nary a smudge nor crease to be seen, a testament to how seriously her boss took the job. Even more seriously than Ellie did, which was pretty hard to believe, since she took the job more seriously than anything. Noah never left the office before she did, and she generally never left her desk before six. She’d stay later, but she was always finished with her work by then, and if she got started on the next day’s too soon, she’d run out of things to do by lunchtime. Maybe someday, if she was very lucky, she’d be as overworked as her boss. Because she had her sights set on going straight to the top.




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