Now You See Him(3)

He hadn't been exaggerating—the past few weeks had been holy hell. He'd been pretty well shot to pieces, and a body takes time to heal, particularly one that had gone through this sort of thing too many times. He didn't like drugs, and his mind instinctively resisted painkillers, even when his body craved them. The pain had been the only thing that had kept him going when he'd first emerged from three weeks in intensive care. The pain, and the hatred.

Normally the idea of weeks in the sun, lying there doing nothing but swelter, would be his idea of hell, especially after such a long stretch of forced inactivity. But he wouldn't be inactive. While he lay in the sun and tried to marshal his strength, his energy, he would be finding out exactly what Frances Neeley knew. And just how deeply she'd been involved.

Of course, he hadn't confided those suspicions to Daniel. If the old man thought Michael suspected his young cousin of conspiracy, he wouldn't let him within a thousand miles of her. And Daniel could do just that, spirit her away on that ocean liner of a yacht he owned and head out into international waters where there'd be no reaching her.

So Michael had pretended to believe in the woman's innocence, keeping his own opinion in reserve. Word on the street had been divided. Some said she was sleeping with Dugan, some that she was just another victim. He intended to find out the truth as soon as possible and then head back to England to clean up the mess Dugan had left behind. See if he could find out who'd been pulling the strings, giving the orders. Who headed up the dread sect of the IRA known only as the Cadre. With Frances Neeley's information in hand, there was no way they could keep him on the sidelines, much as Ross Cardiff wanted to.

He was going to the Caribbean with a very simple goal in mind. To get stronger. And smarter. And meaner. Even though he knew that most people simply wouldn't consider that possible.

He wondered if he was going to have to sleep with Daniel Travers's plain, pale cousin to get what he wanted from her. And he wondered if he was going to have to kill her.



Francey had never liked the way the pink Jeep handled. It tended to pull to the left, particularly when she was enthusiastic with the brakes, and she had grown a little too accustomed to power brakes, power steering, power windows and the like. The old Jeep was not much of an improvement over a push-pull railway cart, and she'd been half tempted to rent a more reasonable car to get around the mountainous little island.

Two things stopped her. One, she didn't go out often enough to make the hassle worthwhile. Daniel had regular deliveries of food and staples arranged, and just about every need was taken care of by a silent army of workers who came and went with smiling faces and almost invisible presences.

The second reason was less practical but far more devastating. She simply didn't want to drive on the left-hand side of the road. She had too many memories of Patrick teasing her about her future, trying to drive on the left-hand side of the road when they went back to Ireland. She had too many memories of Patrick.

One of those almost invisible workers had just checked over the Jeep that morning, so at least she could reassure herself that the silly vehicle was marginally safe. The gas tank had been topped off, the bright pink paint was newly waxed, the awning clean, the vehicle swept clean of sand. She could only assume that whoever had checked the car was equally well versed in its underpinnings. The only sign that marred the spotless paint was a greasy thumbprint on the hood, proof that someone had known enough to at least check the engine.

One of the great blessings of Belle Reste was its remoteness from the rest of the small, busy island. One of its greatest disadvantages was its distance from the tiny airport, most of it over hilly, twisty roads. People also tended to fly in during the evening hours, making the trip even more hair-raising, but Francey navigated the narrow roads with her usual aplomb. She liked driving. And she hadn't yet gotten to the point where it mattered terribly if she lived or died.

Daniel's private jet had already landed by the time she drove the stubborn little Jeep into the airport confines. She slammed the vehicle into Park and jumped out, absently noticing that the brakes were a little spongier than usual. The moment she caught sight of the man making his way carefully down the flight ramp she held her breath, oddly startled.

Even in the electric light she could see that his color wasn't good. He was deathly pale as he moved down the stairs, leaning heavily on the handrail and a cane, and his eyes seemed too big for his face. He was tall and as thin as a scarecrow, his rumpled white suit flapping around his long legs, and his face was narrow and lined with pain beneath a shock of incongruous auburn hair.

A thousand confusing emotions swept over her as she leaned against the mesh of the fence, watching him as he reached the tarmac and moved slowly forward. She didn't quite know what she was feeling, whether it was déjà vu, the odd sense that this had all happened before, or something else. Some strange, psychic knowledge that the sick-looking man walking slowly across the empty runway was going to matter to her very much. Was going to make the difference between life and death. And that he might mean death.