Lover, Stranger Part 28

"But I've a few things here I have to take care of first."

"I don't think you're in any position to bargain," Grace said coldly.

"In case you hadn't noticed, I'm the one with the gun here."

"Oh, I couldn't help but notice," Hunter said smoothly. Then his voice hardened.

"But in case you hadn't noticed, we aren't exactly alone."

And with that, a man stepped through the door behind Grace and put a gun barrel to her head.

"Drop the gun, por favor," he said with a heavy Spanish accent.

When Grace hesitated, Dr. Hunter said, "Better do as he says. For all his gentle appearance, Javier can be quite vicious. Besides which, you can't possibly take us both out."

He was right about that. When Grace lowered her weapon, the man behind her reached down and took it from her hand. Then he tossed it to Dr. Hunter.

The man called Javier walked slowly around Grace, still keeping the weapon drawn on her. When he was in front of her, she stared at him, recognizing the dark hair, the coal eyes, the thin, black mustache.

He was the man she'd seen in the corridor outside the ballroom of the Huntington Hotel, the man she had pursued into the laundry room, and possibly the man who had murdered Special Agent Huddleston.

"You already know who I am," Dr. Hunter was saying.

"This is a colleague of mine. Dr. Javier Salizar. He runs the clinic in Mexico when I'm not around. It's been a mutually advantageous arrangement over the years, but now that I'm bowing out, he'll be free to use the clinic to continue the small but very powerful drug cartel he's building."

Salizar made an abrupt movement with his gun, one that had Grace's heart pounding in alarm.

Dr. Hunter put up a hand, as if to restrain his colleague. He said something in rapid Spanish, then to Grace he said, "But I still don't know your name."

She saw no reason not to tell him.

"Grace Dono- van."

"FBI, I presume?"

She shrugged.

"Well, at least you're not denying it," he said.

"Not that it matters.

Now that you've seen me, I'm sure you realize I can't let you go. "

"Is that why you killed Huddleston?" When Hunter glanced at her blankly, she said, "The agent at the Huntington Hotel."

"Ah." Hunter steepled his fingers beneath his chin. "He saw me at the hotel while he was shadowing Pilar and Bob. I couldn't let him go after that."

Grace glanced at the gun in Salizar's hand, then at Dr. Hunter, a.s.sessing her situation. Unfortunately, she didn't see a way out. Not yet at least.

"How did you get in here?"

"Past your surveillance, you mean? It was pathetically easy. We were back here before you arrived from the Huntington."

"But Ethan told me he changed the alarm code."

"So he did, but I almost always have a backup plan. Once when I came back from Mexico, my loving wife had changed the code so that I couldn't get into my own house. After that, I had the security company program in an override code that only I knew. Pilar never pulled that stunt again."

The smile vanished from his face, leaving in its place a cruel sneer that made Grace s.h.i.+ver. If she had underestimated Dr. Hunter's capabilities before, she would not do so now.

"Why did you give him your face?" she asked suddenly.

The charming smile was back in place. He shrugged nonchalantly.

"Because I knew Reardon would come after me. And if not him, then some other criminal whose face I've changed. They're all extremely grateful at first, but then they get to thinking. Paranoia sets in.

Their plastic surgeon is the only one who can identify them. Sooner or later, one of them was bound to come after me. "

Grace frowned.

"So you created yourself a double? How did you think you could pull that off? Eventually someone would catch on."

"Not if the double was dead," Dr. Hunter said with another shrug. ' "I had it all planned out very carefully. Or so I thought," he added ironically.

"I brought him back to Houston, dumped him in my clinic, and then one of Dr.

Salizar's American a.s.sociates was to shoot him in the face before he came to and make the whole thing look like robbery. Only, your friend decided to wake up before he was supposed to, and he managed to save himself. Imagine my surprise when I found out what had happened, that my look-alike was still alive and poking around in my life, digging up secrets I didn't want exposed."

"An autopsy would have revealed he wasn't you," Grace said.

"You couldn't change blood types, fingerprints, DNA."

"There was no. reason to," Dr. Hunter said almost impatiently.

"With both Amy and him dead in the clinic, there would have been no reason to suspect he wasn't me.

Especially since I'd made sure my pa.s.sport and ID were on him, along with my wedding ring. There would have been no need for anything other than the most rudimentary autopsy, and I'd taken care of the blood type by changing my medical records at the hospital before I went out of the country. I thought of everything. "

Not everything. Grace thought. She wondered if she should tell him about the fingerprints, about the fact that the FBI were on to him.

But if cornered, he might become even more desperate, and Grace wasn't willing to admit yet that she couldn't somehow find a way out of this.

"Who is he?" she' tried to ask without emotion. "Where did you find him?"

Dr. Hunter smiled.

"That's the beauty of it. He's no one anybody would ever come looking for, except maybe for the police. He was affiliated with one of Dr. Salizar's rival drug cartels, and the Mexican authorities shot him while he was trying to escape capture."

Affiliated with a drug cartel? A sour taste rose to Grace's mouth.

He's no one anybody would come looking for, except maybe the police.

Not Trevor Reardon, she thought weakly, but someone perhaps just as dark.

"Apparently, he fell off a cliff, and some of the locals found him and brought him to me," Dr. Hunter said.

"I'll spare you the details, but suffice to say, his face was badly damaged, and he had a severe head trauma which resulted in acute amnesia. When he woke up, he didn't remember who he was or how he'd gotten to the clinic. He remained heavily sedated at the clinic while I came back here. He couldn't remember his past before he arrived at the clinic, and the drugs ensured he wouldn't remember his time there. We were spared a lot of questions that way.

I even brought his gun back here with me so there would be no way to identify him. Once his wounds had healed sufficiently, I went back to Mexico and began the reconstruction on his face. He didn't remember anything about his former life, so-I gave him a new one. "

She lifted her chin, staring Hunter straight in the eyes.

"I'm a federal agent," she said.

"This house in under surveillance. The minute you fire one of those guns, the place will be crawling with FBI. ".

"You mean the three men watching the house? Javier's American amigo has taken care of them for us."

The sick feeling inside Grace deepened. Three more agents dead? G.o.d Dr Hunter turned to Salizar and spoke rapidly in Spanish, something about the American Salizar had apparently hired for the job. As best Grace could tell, there'd been a last minute change in plans, and in spite of Hunter's cool demeanor, he was worried about the new man.

When Hunter turned back to Grace, she said, "What are you going to do with me?"

He shrugged.

"Oh, I have plans for you. Lofty plans, you might say."

Dr. Salizar had moved behind her, and now Grace saw Dr. Hunter nod to him over her shoulder. She whirled, automatically putting up a hand to defend herself, but she was too late. The b.u.t.t of the gun caught her square in the back of the head.

With a blinding flash of pain. Grace pitched face forward to the floor.

when she awakened, the pain was a dull roar in her head. She lay facedown in what she first thought must be a van or a truck, but the rumble of engines below her and the sway and dip as they hit air pockets told her they were airborne.

She struggled to rise, but her head swam sickeningly, and when she tried to move, she realized her hands were bound behind her. With an effort, she rolled to her side, then managed to sit up, gazing around.

Ethan was directly in front of her, leaning against the wall of the plane, his hands behind him and his eyes closed. One side of his face was covered in blood, and Grace's heart lurched in terror. For one heart- stopping moment, she was positive he was dead. He was so still and his face was deathly pale.

But then very slowly he opened his eyes and focused on her. A look of intense relief flooded over his features, and Grace realized he must have been conscious for some time now, and wondering the same thing about her. ^ "Are you all right?" he whispered, throwing a glance toward the front of the plane.

Grace nodded, unsure of her voice.

"Are you?"

"I will be, as soon as I get these ropes loose."

His brow wrinkled in concentration as he strained at the bindings.

Grace glanced around, a.s.sessing their situation. They were in the rear of the plane. Luggage and crates of supplies were stacked near the back, and directly opposite, a door opened to the front. Grace could see two or three rows of seat backs, and beyond that, a curtain that closed off the c.o.c.kpit.

The cargo door was on the wall nearest her, but without parachutes, the exit wouldn't do them much good.

She glanced back at Ethan.

"What happened?" she whispered.

' "They were waiting for me when I came back downstairs. They were in the house when we got back from the hotel."

"Yes, I know. The agents watching the house are dead."

Ethan's eyes flickered briefly as he struggled with the ropes.

"Where are they taking us?" Grace asked, working at her own bindings.

Her wrists grew raw from the effort.

"I heard them mention Mexico. Hunter still thinks he can pull this off."

Grace glanced up.

"You've seen him then?"

Ethan's gaze met hers, and something dark flashed in his eyes.

"I've seen him."

Grace wondered what he was thinking, what it must have felt like to come face to face with his reflection. She tried to temper the rush of emotion she felt for him by reminding herself of what Hunter had told her--that the man she knew as Ethan had been involved with a drug cartel in Mexico.

But looking at him now. Grace couldn't bring herself to believe it.

Didn't want to believe it. If he never got his memory back, would that side of him disappear forever?

Could he live with that? And could she?

Maybe it was all a moot point anyway if they couldn't find a way out of their current predicament.

As if reading her mind, Ethan said, "He still thinks he can get rid of me and have everyone beJieve he's dead."

"It's been him all along," Grace said.

"Not Rear r don. Hunter hired someone to kill both you and Amy so that everyone would think he was dead."

"Not a bad plan," Ethan said dryly.

"Except for the fact that the FBI knows you and he are not one and the same man."

Ethan's movements ceased. He looked up at her. "What?"

' "We lifted some prints from the water gla.s.s in your hospital room and ran them through the national database. My superior knows that you're not Dr.

Hunter."