Merciless Read online

  “No! They’ll just find his owner. That’s all.” She smiled and hoped that it was the truth.

  “I wish we could have a dog,” he said.

  She fastened him into the backseat and got in behind the steering wheel. Of all the things about modern life that she disliked, this was her pet peeve. A child should sit beside its parent, not isolated in the backseat. Yes, air bags saved lives and they were dangerous and could kill a small child. But when she had been small, Joceline had ridden in the front seat of her father’s pickup truck, strapped in like a miniature adult, happy and laughing. Someone should figure out a child seat that could withstand the air bags going off, and allow kids to be closer to their parents.

  She sighed as she pulled out into traffic. Her boss was going to be all right. He was going to be all right. She had to believe that, to save her own sanity. Markie would be all right, too. Rourke would watch out for him. She didn’t have to like Rourke to know that he was good at his job—whatever it was, when he wasn’t doing favors for Kilraven. She started looking around to see if she could recognize the one-eyed lunatic in any passing cars.

  “Mommy, are you looking for somebody?” Markie asked curiously.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m just checking traffic, that’s all.”

  “Isn’t your boss named Mr. Blackhawk? Somebody said he was shot. Is he dead?”

  “No! He’s just wounded and in the hospital. He’s not dead,” she said at once.

  “I’m glad. We played video games with him that night. I like him.”

  She smiled sadly. “I like him, too.”

  “Could we go and see him?” he asked.

  Joceline, surprised, just stammered. “There’s an age limit, Markie,” she foundered. Well, there used to be. She wasn’t sure of modern hospital policy. It had been several years since she herself had been in one, when she’d had Markie.

  “You mean I can’t see him?”

  “Yes. That’s what I mean. His mother is with him.”

  “Oh, that’s okay, then.”

  Joceline had other thoughts about that, but she didn’t share them. “How about an ice-cream cone?” she asked.

  “Wow! Could we?”

  “Yes.” It was the little things, she considered, that made life bearable. Even the hard times were smoothed over by something simple and comforting.

  She stopped at an ice-cream parlor and ordered two cones, strawberry for herself and butter pecan for Markie. She handed his to him with a smile.

  He licked it and laughed up at her with sparkling eyes. He was going to be handsome when he was older, she thought. She thanked God every day that he looked more like her than his father.

  When they got home, just after dark, the front door was standing open.

  “Stay here,” Joceline told Markie firmly.

  “What is it, Mommy?”

  She didn’t answer. She went to a point where she could see the front door. Nothing was visible inside it. She knew better than to walk into the apartment. Someone had broken in. Someone who might still be in there, might be armed, might want to kill Joceline and Markie just for their closeness to Jon Blackhawk…!

  “Well!” came a deeply accented voice from inside the apartment. “It’s a good thing you didn’t come home sooner.”

  And Rourke appeared in the doorway, big and handsome and smiling.

  7

  “Rourke!” Joceline exclaimed. “You idiot! You scared me to death!”

  He strode down the steps, his hands in his pockets, whistling. He was tall and lean and muscular, with long blond hair in a ponytail down his back. He had one light brown eye. The other was hidden under a rakish black eye patch. “Now, darlin’, if I hadn’t come along when I did, you’d have had a very bad shock when you opened that front door. Hi, little feller. How are you?” he asked the small boy in the backseat in a very pronounced South African accent.

  “I’m good,” Markie said. “Who are you?”

  “Rourke,” was the amused reply.

  “You only got one eye.”

  “I noticed,” Rourke told him, not taking offense.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The man looked at the boy with a visible softening. “Nice of you to say that.”

  “Did some mean man hurt you?”

  “You might say that,” Rourke replied.

  “I like your eye patch. You could be a pirate on Halloween.”

  Rourke burst out laughing. “You know, I’ve been called a pirate a time or two.” He looked pointedly at Joceline.

  “Why are you here, and what’s wrong with the apartment?” she asked worriedly.

  “Nothing major. Step over here a bit.” He smiled reassuringly at Markie. But when he turned back to Joceline, his hard face was solemn. “Someone had a go at your desk. At a guess, they were looking for something. Any idea what?”

  Her heart stopped. She had no important papers, nothing that would interest an outsider. There was only the usual things, bank deposit records, tax information, Markie’s birth certificate and her own, nothing…nothing… There was her diary!

  She brushed past Rourke and ran into the apartment in a panic. She kept the diary in her bedside table, but it was under a mass of other objects, like paperbacks and a pad and pen, over-the-counter analgesics, booklets and instructions for electronic things like her clock. She fumbled in the drawer, horrified at some of the things she’d written down. It had never occurred to her than anyone would rob her!

  She pulled out books, scattering them, scared to death. But then, there it was, at the bottom of the drawer, its small lock intact. It hadn’t been opened. She clutched it to her breast and shivered with reaction.

  “Something damaging in there, I presume?” Rourke asked gently.

  She looked at him with sick fear. “People write things that they never should.”

  He nodded solemnly. “Yes.”

  She drew in a harsh breath. “I’d better burn it, I think.”

  “Put it in the bank, in a safe-deposit box,” he suggested.

  She stared at him. “Along with my diamond collection and my gold bars.” He laughed.

  “Listen, I can barely pay the rent. There’s no money for extras. It’s better to destroy it. No good could come of keeping it, anyway.”

  “Keeping what, Mommy?” Markie asked as he joined them. Rourke had brought him inside the minute Joceline vanished into the apartment.

  She grimaced at her lack of instinct, leaving Markie alone in the car.

  “It’s all right, I’ve got your back,” Rourke assured her with a smile.

  “It’s just a diary, Markie,” Joceline told him. “I wanted to make sure I knew where it was, that’s all.”

  “Can I read it?”

  She swallowed. “When you’re older.”

  “Okay.”

  Rourke was watching her through a narrowed pale brown eye. Something in that diary was enough to make her panic. He wondered what it was.

  The rest of the apartment was seemingly untouched, at first glance. Joceline was nervous. Someone had touched her things, invaded her privacy. She felt violated. Now she wondered if she needed new locks.

  “Yes, you do,” Rourke said when she mentioned it. “I’ll install dead bolts tomorrow. Do you need permission from the landlord?”

  She shook her head. “I asked once before and the manager approved it, in writing. I just didn’t get around to it.”

  Rourke nodded.

  Her expression was briefly unguarded as she looked up at him. “I wasn’t scared before,” she said unsteadily.

  His one eye narrowed, and his lean face hardened. “Any normal human being would be afraid for a child,” he said quietly, so that Markie didn’t hear.

  She turned on the small television. “Time for someone’s favorite show, I believe?” she teased, putting Markie in his little beanbag chair in front of the TV.

  He giggled. “I love this one,” he told her, and immediately became entranced by the cartoon chara
cters on the screen.

  “He can already pick out certain characters in Japanese just by watching that cartoon,” Joceline told Rourke. “I think he may have a flair for languages.”

  “Do you speak any?” he asked without appearing to care.

  She laughed. “I can barely speak my own language.”

  “Then he must get it from his father or someone else in his family,” he said easily.

  Joceline went pale. “You think so? I’d better check and make sure nothing was taken.” Which brought back the enormity of having her apartment ransacked. She was terrified and trying not to show it, because she didn’t want to upset Markie

  She went quickly from room to room and found that though she’d thought nothing else had been touched, she was wrong. There were papers scattered, drawers askew, even chair cushions upended.

  “What in the world could they have been looking for?” she wondered uneasily.

  “What sort of important papers do you keep here, besides that diary?” Rourke asked, nodding toward the diary that she was holding so tightly in one hand.

  She pushed back her hair and looked around worriedly. “Nothing much. The usual bills and important papers. Birth certificates.”

  “Are they all here?”

  She went to the folder where she kept her personal documents, in a cheap cardboard filing cabinet, and pulled out the file folder. There was nothing that would prove anything. She’d been very careful about that.

  She opened the folder and looked inside, and sighed with helpless relief. “Everything’s right here,” she said, and laughed unsteadily.

  Rourke’s eyes were narrow and thoughtful. He wasn’t going to tell her that there were ways to collect documents without physically removing them. Any good agent carried a tiny camera, often disguised as a cigarette lighter or pen. A lock on a diary was so simple to open that a beginner could do it with ease, and without leaving any telltale mark of tampering. She was unusually worried about that diary and some of her important papers. Why?

  She saw his mind working and her face tautened. “Don’t pry.”

  “Was I prying?” he exclaimed, and grinned.

  “You were thinking about it,” she accused.

  “Pretty and smart and reads minds, too,” he teased.

  She flushed. “Let’s leave it at ‘smart.’”

  “And doesn’t like flattery. I’m taking notes,” he added. He smiled at her. “How would you feel about living in Africa?”

  “I am not leaving the country with you,” she said firmly.

  “I have a nice little place there in Kenya, with a pet lion.”

  “A lion? You got a lion?” Markie was out of his chair in a flash, looking up at the tall blond man. “Could I pet it?”

  “You could even ride him,” Rourke assured him with a big smile. “He’s very tame. I raised him from a cub. Poachers got his mum.”

  “Oh, that’s very sad,” Markie said. “I would feed him hamburgers, if I had a lion.”

  “I don’t think they’d like it if you tried to keep him in your apartment,” Rourke assured him.

  “These two guys in England did just that.” Joceline chuckled. “It was viral on the web about two years ago. Two boys bought a lion cub and kept it in their apartment, then they had to let it go to a preserve in Africa because it got so big. They went to see it, despite people warning that it was wild and would attack them. But it ran right up to them and put its paws on their shoulders and started rubbing its head against them. It even took them to see its mate.” She sighed. “I cried like a baby, watching it. They had the story on the news. Afterward, I sent a little check to the foundation that took in the boys’ pet.”

  “Wild animals aren’t so very wild after all,” Rourke agreed. “Pity so many people see them as a way to quick profits.”

  “Oh, I do agree,” Joceline said.

  “See how much we have in common?” he asked.

  “I want to go to Africa and see his lion,” Markie announced. “Can we go now?”

  “Logistics aside,” Joceline told him gently, “I do have a job and you have to go to school tomorrow.”

  “Oh.” He thought about that for a minute. “Can we go Saturday, then?”

  Both adults laughed.

  “Children make impossible things seem so uncomplicated,” Rourke remarked when Markie had gone back to his program and Joceline was serving up cups of strong black coffee. He wondered if her budget would stretch to giving free coffee to visitors, and decided that he’d bring her a pound of his special South African coffee next time he came over.

  “Yes. Markie’s had a hard time of it,” she remarked with a sigh. “He has asthma and his lungs aren’t strong. We spend a lot of time in doctors’ offices.”

  “There are allergy shots,” he said helpfully.

  “He takes them,” she said. “And they help. But if he’s stressed or exposed to viruses, he gets sick easier than most kids do.”

  “He’s a fine little boy,” he remarked, glancing at him. “You’ve done well.”

  “Thanks.”

  The diary was lying beside her right hand. She hadn’t let it out of her sight since they’d been in the apartment. It wasn’t really his business, but he was quite curious about what dark secrets she was keeping.

  “What are you going to do with that?” he asked, indicating it.

  “Tear it up and burn it,” she said at once. “It must never be read by anyone except me. Ever.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “Stop speculating.”

  His eyebrows arched.

  “My, you can say a lot without opening your mouth,” she muttered.

  “Facial expressions 101,” he replied.

  “Will they come back, you think?” she asked worriedly.

  He shook his head. “Either they found what they were looking for, or it wasn’t here.”

  “Found…?” She was staring at him with stark horror. She looked again at the diary. It was locked. Then she remembered something she’d heard from a visitor from a covert agency, about how easy it was to pick a lock and photograph a document. Her face went pale.

  “Joceline,” he said gently, reading her horror, “what do you have in there that’s so frightening?”

  “A great source of blackmail if I were rich,” she said heavily. She smoothed her hand over the diary. “But I’m not rich. And I can’t imagine what use anyone else would have for it.” That wasn’t quite true. The right person could do a lot of damage with the information in that little book. She shuddered to think what a criminal like Monroe could do with it.

  “You mustn’t worry,” Rourke said gently. “I’ll check around and see what I can dig out. I have all sorts of sources.”

  She searched his expression worriedly. “I’m not afraid for myself. I don’t want anyone else hurt.”

  “You think someone else could be?”

  She swallowed. “Yes.”

  “What tangled webs we weave,” he murmured, alluding to a poem about deception.

  “Indeed.” She sipped rapidly cooling coffee. “We make choices. Then we live with them.”

  “Do you think you made the right one?” he asked.

  She smiled. “I made the only one I could.” She looked toward her son, who was oblivious to everything except the Japanese manga on the television. “I’ve never regretted it.”

  “He’s quite a boy.”

  “Thanks.”

  “His dad died in the service, I understand?” He didn’t look at her as he said it.

  “Overseas. In the military.”

  “Sad.”

  “Very.” She got up. “More coffee?”

  He chuckled. “No, thanks. I tend to be wired even at good times. Too much caffeine can be a real killer, in my case.”

  “I drink too much of it,” she confessed.

  He got to his feet. “I’ll get working on those locks. Do you go back to the office tomorrow?”

  She hesitated. “Well, I don�
��t know,” she said suddenly. “My boss won’t be there, and the only cases I’m working are his…”

  Just as she said it, the phone rang.

  She got up to answer it, hesitated, with her hand outstretched as if she were about to put it into fire.

  She jerked it up. “Hello?”

  There was a long silence.

  Her blood felt as if it froze. “Hello?” she repeated.

  The line went dead.

  She turned and looked at Rourke with absolute horror.

  He took the receiver from her, punched in some numbers, listened and then spoke. “Yeah,” he said to someone. “Do it quick. I want to know what brand of liquor he drinks in ten minutes or less. Just do it.” He hung up. Joceline was amazed at how authoritative, and how businesslike, he could be when he wasn’t clowning around.

  “You have it tapped,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he replied curtly. “The minute I pulled into the driveway.”

  She bit her lower lip. “I’m glad you came over.”

  His eyebrows arched. His one eye twinkled. “You are? I can have a marriage license drawn up in less than an hour…!”

  “Stop that,” she muttered. “I’m not going to get married.”

  “But I have my own teeth,” he protested. “And I don’t even have a gray hair yet.”

  “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “A man with good teeth and no gray hair is a fine matrimonial prospect. I can also speak six impossibly difficult languages, including Afrikaans,” he added.

  She went to clean the coffeepot, shaking her head the whole way.

  Rourke installed dead bolts and window locks. He also brought thermal curtains, heavy ones, for the windows. He didn’t tell her that a sniper would have a field day with the block of apartments overlooking hers. She wouldn’t have thought that anyone would be crazy enough to shoot at her or the boy.

  That diary really puzzled him. He went out to get something to eat, and while he was out, he made two more telephone calls. Joceline would have had a heart attack if she’d heard the topic of discussion.