Hush: A Thriller Part 7

- CHAPTER -

SEVEN.

"They let him go." Bax was bursting with the enormity of it. They'd moved far enough away from the bedroom door that they were in no danger of being overheard, but he kept his voice down anyway. "Diplomatic immunity."

It was a surprise that Finn absorbed in frowning silence. After a moment he asked, "What country?"

"Ukraine."

"If he's ent.i.tled to diplomatic immunity, then George screwed over a government agency or somebody connected with the government there on a pretty high level." He'd already run the man's face through his own internal database of bad actors, and drawn a blank. Which meant the guy was either new, or deep cover enough to have not shown up on his radar before now. If the latter was the case, then whoever had sent him was sufficiently concerned about the situation to be deploying the big guns. In other words, some foreign fat cat's a.s.s was in a sling. And that foreign fat cat had enough pull-or knew enough people with enough pull-to get his boy instantly released from police custody.

"Good thing you happened to see a man walk past her window." Bax thrust his hands into his pants pockets, rattling the change there.

Happened to see nothing. Finn had been intently watching the aforementioned windows with binoculars from a vantage point on the roof of the building opposite, which was two stories lower than Riley's apartment. He hadn't been able to see a great deal, even with the curtains open and the lights on. But he had seen the shadowy figure of a man moving through her living room, and as a result had immediately hot-footed it over to her building and grabbed an elevator, meaning to go low-tech and listen at her door.

The moment he'd stepped out of the elevator, her scream had brought him running.

"Yeah," Finn replied. "The receiver functional yet?"

While Finn had been up on the rooftop and then racing through apartment buildings, Bax had been on the phone to tech support trying to verify the status of the receiving unit.

"Nothing wrong with it," Bax said. "Cynthia said it's working fine."

"Okay." Finn wasn't surprised that Bax knew the tech support person's first name. Bax had that same geeky cyber-wonk persona that they did, as well as a lot of relations.h.i.+ps with a lot of people he'd never actually met. Finn was equally not surprised to discover that there was nothing wrong with the receiver. It had been patently obvious from almost his first conversational exchange with Riley that she was hiding something. He wasn't quite sure what it was, but one thing he was now sure of: she'd disabled her own and Jeffy-boy's cell phones.

And she wasn't talking about it.

"So what we've got here is a Ukrainian with diplomatic immunity who was trying to kill Mrs. Cowan." Bax looked thoughtful while trying his hand at case a.n.a.lysis, which Finn had already discovered wasn't his strong suit. "The question is, why? You think he was hoping to use her to send another message to George?"

"Don't know," Finn replied. He had no real quarrel with Bax, other than the fact that the powers-that-be had set him up to be his minder, but there was no need to go filling his head with too many possibilities. Finn wasn't sure how much Bax was pa.s.sing on to his superiors, but he was pa.s.sing on something, and Finn wanted to remain in a position to control just what that something could be.

Knowledge is power. It was also leverage. At some point Finn meant to use it to trade for what he wanted, which was his life back. Permanently, this time.

"By the way, what happened to your coat?" Bax rattled the change in his pocket again. Finn narrowed his eyes a little. The sound was annoying, but right then that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, because it provided a distraction. He didn't like being reminded of why he was missing his coat. That took him to the way Riley had looked when he'd heard her scream and taken off running and she'd come flying down the hall toward him.

Naked.

In those few seconds he'd registered everything there was to register about her body: full round b.r.e.a.s.t.s with strawberry nipples, firm but not too firm to bounce; slender waist curving out into unmistakably feminine hips; flat stomach; long, shapely legs. The small patch of hair between them that left no doubt that she was a natural redhead. The smooth sheen of her creamy skin.

He'd unwillingly discovered that her skin was as satiny soft as it looked-and a great many other things about her besides-the instant he'd grabbed her and whirled her around to put his back between her and the gun.

None of those impressions were anything he cared to remember, or be reminded of.

Bottom line? A beautiful woman was a dangerous distraction. A beautiful naked woman who might or might not know where to find what he was looking for? Suffice it to say, he wasn't going there. Not with his mind, or anything else.

He was on board to do a job, and then get the h.e.l.l out.

Finn shrugged. "She was cold."

Thankfully, he was saved from any further explanation as, at that moment, the paramedics exited the bedroom.

"Could you close the door please?" Riley called after them. Her voice was still huskier than Finn was used to hearing it, and he wasn't sure if it was from screaming or from something that had been done to her during the attack. He caught a glimpse of her, all curled up in the middle of her bed with the blanket he'd spread over her tucked closely around her, her hair vivid as a splash of scarlet paint amid a sea of white, as the trailing paramedic complied.

"What's the damage?" Finn asked the paramedics when the door was closed and they started walking away from it. They paused, looking at him as he moved toward them. There was a moment there when he could tell they were debating about whether they should reveal any of her medical information to him, but his a.s.sumption of authority, bolstered no doubt by the shoulder holster and weapon that shouted law enforcement, carried the day.

"The main thing is, she's got a concussion," the lead paramedic said. "Apparently she took a hard blow to the back of the head: she's got a b.u.mp the size of an egg. In addition, she has considerable bruising all over. She'll be sore, but aside from the concussion there's nothing of concern."

"The concussion's the cause of the dizziness?" Finn asked.

The paramedic nodded. "I'd keep her in bed tonight, keep her quiet tomorrow, and she should be fine. If, in the morning, she's still getting dizzy when she stands up, or if any additional symptoms present themselves, you should take her in to see her doctor for a check-up. Or call 911."

Finn didn't reply. Stepping into the breach, Bax said, "We'll do that," and then, as the paramedics left, followed them to the door. After closing it behind them, he turned to look at Finn, who hadn't moved from his spot in the middle of the living room.

"What now?" Bax asked, rattling the coins in his pocket again. Finn's lips tightened fractionally. Bax continued: "Do we stay with her? We have to, don't we? If the guy who just tried to kill her is on the loose, we can't just leave her here on her own."

a.s.set recovery was another field that wasn't exactly Bax's strong suit. He had no real idea how to go about it. Which suited Finn just fine.

"We're not babysitters," he replied, and considered his options. As the attack on her had shown, Riley was a prime target for more interested parties than just himself and Bax. If she hadn't been before, she certainly was now aware that she was on the radar of those who were seeking the missing money. If she had it, or knew where it was, she should absolutely be thinking about ways to protect herself and the funds. She would almost certainly notify her confederates, if she had any, of what had occurred. His presence, and Bax's, in her immediate vicinity could only gum up the works. n.o.body was going to come after her while they were with her-even if no one outside their own small group knew his true ident.i.ty, the presence of two supposed FBI agents was a considerable deterrent to the kind of attack that was meant to extract intelligence from a target-and, more important, Riley herself couldn't make any moves while they were with her.

Therefore, they were going to go. And stay out of sight. And keep watch.

He said as much to Bax.

Bax said unhappily, "But the perp might-"

He never finished.

The bedroom door opened. They both looked around in surprise to find Riley walking through it. She was fully dressed in a black T-s.h.i.+rt with a pair of white jeans and-surprise, because he'd pegged her as a high-heels-on-every-occasion kind of woman-flat sandals. Her hair, which had puffed out in a cloud of vivid waves around her face as it had dried, had been tamed again and was twisted into a loose updo that made her look younger and more vulnerable than Finn would have liked. She had one hand curled around the handle of her small silver suitcase, which she was pulling along behind her. His coat was folded over her arm.

Having swept her, Finn's gaze returned to her face.

"Going somewhere?" he asked. It was a question, nothing more. Whether or not she went haring around with a concussion was of no concern to him. He was there to find the money, and that was it.

"To Margaret's." She held out his coat to him. "Thanks for the loan." Their eyes met as he took it. As he'd noted when he'd first gotten a good look at them, hers were a green-flecked hazel, wide and innocent-looking. If she felt self-conscious about the fact that he'd seen her naked for a considerable period of time, she wasn't showing it.

"Anytime."

He shrugged into his coat-it was a little damp and smelled vaguely of roses, but the object was to keep his shoulder holster out of sight, and any stray thoughts about the body it had so recently covered he immediately pushed out of his mind-and she resumed walking, moving past him toward the table with the kind of carefully calibrated, deliberate gait that told him she was having to work to keep it steady. Her jaw was set with the effort of it. Her mouth was downright grim.

"You're supposed to stay in bed," Bax said. His eyes were glued to her, too. "Because of the concussion."

"I can't." Picking up her purse, she slung it over one shoulder, glanced at them both, and added, "Margaret's expecting me back. I thought about calling her and telling her I'm going to spend the night here but then she'll want to know why, and I can't tell her about what's happened over the phone. And I have to tell her." She wet her lips, and not for the first time, Finn noticed. And deliberately glanced away.

As far as her calling her ex-mother-in-law was concerned, it probably didn't help that she'd disabled her cell phone: Finn welcomed the thought for the distraction it provided.

What he said was, "You're right. If the idea behind the attack on you was to kill you as a way of sending a message to George, then his wife and daughter are also at risk, and they should know it. In fact, I'm surprised the guy didn't go for one of them instead of you." He smiled at her. "To send a stronger message."

The slight widening of her eyes was all he needed to be convinced that she knew exactly what the motive behind the attack on her was, and it wasn't to send a message to George.

"They let him go," Bax told Riley. He looked, and sounded, worried. "The guy who attacked you. Diplomatic immunity. You really should stay here tonight. One of us can-"

"What?" Her sharp exclamation cut Bax off in midsentence. She looked at Finn, and he gave a nod of confirmation. "They couldn't have! He tried to kill me." Something in Finn's expression must have convinced her that it was true, because she added on a note of horror, "What if he tries again?"

Interesting to note how concerned she generally seemed to be about her mother and sister-in-law's well-being, while in this particular instance, when the threat of a murderous attack on one of them should have seemed especially immediate and real, her own safety was her paramount concern. Which Finn translated as an indication that the attack on her had to do with something she, personally, was connected to. Something that the attacker didn't a.s.sociate with the others.

Like, say, Jeffy-boy's phone.

"He's not likely to," Finn said. "If all he wanted to do was send a message, just the fact that he attacked you was enough to do that."

Bax frowned at him. "Don't we deport people with diplomatic immunity who commit a crime?"

"Usually," Finn replied. "But this guy hasn't been convicted. He hasn't even been tried."

The whole time they were talking, Finn had been watching Riley turn a whiter shade of pale. It was clear that the news that her attacker had been freed was scaring her to death, and he couldn't blame her: she was d.a.m.ned lucky to be alive. Under other circ.u.mstances he would have set her mind at rest. The truth was, he had every confidence that the perpetrator would be rushed out of the country within the next few hours, before any other interested party-like, say, himself-could catch up with him and make inquiries into who he worked for and what he was after.

But it didn't suit him for Riley to know that. What he was hoping was the news would scare her into making a move.

"I've got to go." For support, Riley had been leaning a hand on the back of the dining room chair that had been restored to the set around the table, presumably by Bax. Now she let go to head for the door.

"I'll drive you," Finn said. It would give him time to talk to her, to get more of a feel for what might be getting ready to go down. It would be a far easier way to keep track of her this way than relying on Bax's driving skills and the probably still useless receiver. And it would keep her from falling into the hands of someone with his same agenda and an almost certainly more violent way of finding out what he wanted to know, so it was a win-win for both of them.

As she opened the door and stepped back for them to precede her through it, he thought she was going to refuse. Her brows-delicate wings that were the same sooty black as the thick sweep of her lashes-twitched together. The look she shot him was guarded, wary. Walking into the hall with Bax on his heels, he could almost see the wheels turning behind those carefully veiled eyes. The whiff of sweet flowery scent he got as he pa.s.sed her slammed him with a vivid image of the first time he'd noticed it, when she'd been lying naked beneath him in this very hall. Annoyed with himself, he shook it off.

Then he was in operative mode, conducting a quick scan of the hallway, automatically a.s.sessing potential threats. To his left, a police technician in the process of extracting the bullets that had hit the wall dug a thin silver instrument into plaster. To his right, a pair of uniforms talked to a bathrobe-clad woman who stood in her open doorway and cast a curious look their way.

"Thank you," Riley answered, surprising him. As she turned her back to lock her door, her voice was all cool composure. "I'd appreciate that."

"Mrs. Cowan?" one of the uniforms called while Finn was still processing the implications of Riley's easy capitulation. The woman the cops had been talking to had disappeared back into her apartment. The cops had turned and spotted Riley. "Do you have a minute?"

"No, she doesn't," Finn answered for her, taking her arm and urging her toward the elevators. She didn't resist. In fact, he got the feeling she was glad of the support. Her flesh beneath his fingers was firm; her skin felt silky and warm. The outfit she was wearing covered most of her, but it left her slender neck bare. From his vantage point beside her, it was impossible to miss the bruises that were darkening on the porcelain skin below her left ear. It wasn't hard to tell that they were fingerprints from a man's hand that had been brutally wrapped around her throat.

Looking at them, his gut tightened.

She would have been easy to hurt. Finn found that he didn't like the idea of it one bit.

"We'd like to get a statement." The cops were following them down the hall. Finn glanced significantly at Bax, who got the message and pulled out his creds.

"FBI," Bax said, waving his wallet at them, and the uniforms stopped.

A moment later the three of them stepped into the elevator. Finn pressed the b.u.t.ton for the lobby.

- CHAPTER -

EIGHT.

Bradley said, "I was expecting you to give me an argument about driving you home."

It was phrased as a statement, not a question, but Riley answered it anyway.

"No."

If he could be economical with words, why, so could she. She was in the pa.s.senger seat of her Mazda, her seat belt fastened securely around her. Without it, she wasn't sure she wouldn't have slithered down into the foot well. She was exhausted, dizzy, headachey, and sore in so many places that her body felt like one giant tender spot. The pills the paramedics had given her had helped some; she'd felt them taking effect. Without them-well, she didn't want to think about how she might be feeling.

Actually, she didn't want to think about anything. But she had no choice.

She'd been getting that cat-at-a-mousehole feeling from him again ever since she'd gotten into the car with him. It was making her nervous as all get-out. Maybe it was her imagination. Maybe not. With her brain not quite as clear as normal, it was hard to be sure.

Bradley was behind the wheel, driving as competently as he seemed to do everything else, looking far too big for her small car. He'd had to adjust the seat all the way back to fit. They were on the freeway, and the swoosh of the tires and the faint rattle of traffic in the lanes around them formed a constant background noise. Despite how dark the night had become, the roadway lighting made it easy for her to see him. His features were as rugged in profile as they were viewed head-on.

He was handsome, she decided, in the kind of aggressively masculine way that had never really appealed to her: she tended to go more for the fine-featured, leanly elegant type. His hands looked large and powerful wrapped around the wheel. His feet in their black shoes dwarfed the Mazda's pedals.

Turned a little sideways to avoid the b.u.mp at the back of her skull, her head rested against the rolled top of her seat. Her lids felt heavy-so did her arms, and legs, and head-and the fear that chilled her wasn't nearly as sharp-edged as she knew it should be under the circ.u.mstances.

The b.a.s.t.a.r.d who attacked me-what if he comes back?

A tiny echo of residual panic caused her stomach to flutter.

"No?" Bradley flicked a look at her. "Why not?"

"You're not trying to kill me," she answered with beautiful simplicity. That, for her, had become the bottom line. The horror of having been attacked was multiplied by the knowledge that her attacker was free, and heightened still more by her conviction that there were more out there like him. Jeff's fate loomed large in her mind. Tonight she could easily have been murdered, too. The only thing that was keeping her from descending into utter, gibbering terror at the thought was, she suspected, the calming effect of the drugs in her system.

She wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad.

"No," Bradley agreed, and gave her another of those sideways glances that set her teeth on edge.

When they'd exited her building, Bax had left them. He was behind them now, presumably, in whatever car the agents had arrived in. Bradley had escorted her to the parking lot where she'd left the Mazda, then had had her wait while he'd checked her car for bombs. Yes, her life had deteriorated to the point where she had to worry about being blown to smithereens: how had that happened? Perched uncomfortably on the b.u.mper of a nearby pickup because her knees were still unreliable, Riley had been acutely conscious of the darkness beyond the lights of the parking lot. Anyone could be out there: the knowledge was unnerving.

What am I going to do?

Watching Bradley check beneath her car, then under the hood and finally under the dashboard and seat, had sent her pulse into overdrive and had her stomach wrapping itself into knots. She'd only managed to keep calm by reminding herself that her attacker still didn't have what he'd been after: Jeff's phone.

It wasn't likely that he would kill her before he got his hands on it.

On the other hand, how likely was it that he would come back for a second try?

If he doesn't, someone else will. The thought sent goose b.u.mps racing over her skin. To a.s.sume that he was the only one who wanted Jeff's phone-who'd tracked Jeff's phone and linked it to her own-would be stupid. Possibly suicidally stupid.