Without A Trace

  the way again.

  "Don't look back," Trace ordered as he pulled Gillian along with him.

  "Did he want money?"

  He'd stopped believing anyone could be that naive. She was good for him, he thought. Too damn good. "For starters," he said simply.

  "This is an awful place."

  "There are worse."

  She looked at him then as the beat of her heart began to calm again. "You know how to walk here, how to talk here, but that doesn't make you like that man back in that shack."

  "We both make a living."

  They skirted around the walls and went into the shopping district. "You know, I think you'd like me to believe you were like him. That would be more comfortable for you."

  "Maybe. We'll get some coffee, hang around here long enough for the tails to pick us up again."

  "Trace." Though it shamed her, she felt safe again away from the sights and smells of the slums. "Is it just me, or do you fight off anyone who gets too close?"

  He didn't know how to answer her. Worse, he wasn't sure he could afford to dig too deeply for the real answer. "Seems to me we were pretty close last night."

  She met his look levelly, her eyes clear and serene. "Yes, we were, and you still haven't dealt with it."

  "I've got a lot on my mind, Doc." He pulled out a chair at a small cafe and sat down. After a moment's hesitation, Gillian joined him.

  "So have I. More than I bargained for." She let him order coffee and hoped that before long she would be back in her room, where she could pull down the shades, close her eyes and block out the morning, if only for a little while. "I have another question."

  "Sweetheart, I've never known you not to."

  She put a hand on his before he could light a cigarette. "That man, Bakir, he didn't know you as Cabot."

  "No, I used him in an operation a few years back."

  "He's an agent?"

  Trace laughed but waited until their coffee was served before speaking again. "No, Doc, he's a snake. But reptiles have their uses."

  "He knows who you are. Why would he deliver the shipment instead of simply keeping the money you've given him and telling Husad who and where you are?"

  "Because he knows that if Husad didn't manage to kill me I'd come back and slit his throat." Trace lifted his coffee. Out of the corner of his eye he noted that the first tail had picked them up again. "Bad business risk."

  Gillian stared at her coffee. It was black and thick. She knew that if she drank it it would take the chill from her skin, but she didn't pick up the cup. "I was raised to respect life," she said quietly. "All life. So much of the work I've done has been to try to make life better, easier. I can't deny that science has had too much to do with destruction, but the goal has always been to preserve and advance. I've never in my life hurt anyone intentionally. It's not that I'm such a saint, but more, I think, that I've never had to make that choice."

  She wrapped both hands around her cup but still didn't pick it up as she lifted her gaze to Trace's. "When Captain Addison asked me what I would do if Husad took me, I was telling the truth. I know in my heart that I could take a life. And it frightens me."

  "You're not going to find yourself in the position where you have to put that to the test." He put a hand over hers briefly, because no matter how hard he tried he couldn't keep himself from offering comfort.

  "I hope not, because I know not only what I would do, but that I could live with it afterward. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that we're not so different, you and I."

  He looked away from her, because the need to believe she was right was too sharp. "Don't bet on it."

  "I already have," she murmured, and drank her coffee.

  Chapter Nine

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  Gillian told herself that the move to Sefrou was bringing her another step closer to Flynn. He was close now. She could look out at the unfamiliar streets and mountains and almost feel how close.

  It was a rare thing now for her to allow herself more than a few moments alone. Alone she would think too clearly of what had happened, what could be happening, to her brother and niece. The fear that she was too late, or would ultimately be too late, was a dark secret she kept buried inside her heart.

  She didn't spend her nights weeping. The emotional release of tears wouldn't help Flynn. There were the nightmares, the sometimes hideous, often violent dreams she pulled herself out of on almost a nightly basis. Thus far she had been able to bring herself out of the nightmares without causing a disturbance that woke Trace. At least she could be grateful for that. She didn't want him to know she was weak enough to be frightened into cold chills by dreams. He had to think of her as strong and capable. Otherwise he might change his mind about letting her play any part in freeing Flynn.

  Strange how well she had come to know him. Gillian watched a small compact car wind through the streets below while the silence of her hotel room hung around her. It was at times like this, when she was alone, that she worked hardest to concentrate on the practical aspects of Flynn's release. When that didn't work, she concentrated instead on Trace. Who he was, what made him tick, what secrets he kept locked hi his heart.

  She had come to understand him, though he told her little with words. More than once she had imagined them meeting socially in New York, under normal, even pedestrian, circumstances. A dinner date, a show, a cocktail party. She knew they would have become lovers wherever they'd met, but she also knew that under other circumstances it would have happened slowly and with more caution.

  Destiny. She had never really thought about her own before Trace. Now she believed, as he did, that some things were meant. They were meant. She wondered how long he would continue to fight his feelings, the feelings she sensed in him whenever he held her. Words of affection wouldn't come easily from a man who'd deliberately shut those doors in his life. She was certain the reason for that had to do with his family.

  If there was one thing Gillian was accustomed to, it was reticent males. She could be patient until he opened up to her. And she was optimistic enough not to doubt that he would.

  She was so in love. She leaned on the windowsill with a sigh. All her life she'd waited for this feeling, the one that made the heart pound and the brain giddy, the one that made everything seem more vivid. True, she'd never expected to experience love for the first time hi the midst of the biggest crisis of her life. But, crisis or not, the feeling was there, big and bold and beautiful.

  Gillian knew she would have to wait to share it. There'd come a time when she could speak of it freely, laugh and steep herself in the feelings between them. She hadn't waited all her life to fall in love only to be denied the pleasure of expressing it. But she could wait.

  One day, when Flynn and Caitlin were safe, when the violence, the fear, the intrigue, were nothing more than a vague memory, she would have her time with Trace. A lifetime. She couldn't afford to doubt that. What had happened in the past few weeks had taught her that happiness had to be grabbed with both hands and treasured with a full heart.

  Yes, she would bide her time, and accept her destiny.

  But how she wished he'd come back. How she hated being left alone.

  Gillian understood he had a role to play and a job to do. Neither Cabot's mistress nor Dr. Gillian Fitzpatrick had a place in the morning meeting between Flynn and his ISS contact in eastern Morocco. The ISS agent would see that Andre Cabot received his supply of arms, just as Bakir would see that II Gatto received his.

  She could only wait while the man she loved armed himself and stepped into the hornet's nest.

  Because her nerves were building quickly, Gillian searched for something to do. She had already unpacked and rearranged her belongings three times. Trace's case was open, but his clothes were jumbled inside. He'd taken out only what he needed that morning. For lack of something better to do, Gillian began to shake out, refold and put away his clothes.

  She found she could enjoy the small task, smo
othing out a shirt, wondering where he'd bought it, how he looked wearing it. She could draw in his scent from his rumpled garments. His taste in clothes was certainly eclectic. There was everything from denim to silk, from bargain basement to Saville Row.

  How many men did he carry around in this case? she wondered as she folded a T-shirt that was thin to the point of transparency at the shoulders. She wondered if he ever had to stop and think, to bring back to the front of his mind who he really was.

  Then she found the flute, wrapped carefully in felt beneath a tailored shirt of satin pique. It was polished but had the look of something old and well used. Experimentally Gillian lifted it to her lips and blew. The note came clear and sweet and had her smiling.

  He came from a family that made its living making music. He hadn't left that behind, not completely, no matter how hard he pretended he had. She imagined he played when he was alone and lonely in some foreign place. Perhaps it reminded him of the home he claimed not to have, of the family he'd chosen not to see for years.

  She placed her fingers over the holes, then lifted two at random, enjoying the sound that came when she blew into the mouthpiece. She'd always had an affection for music, though her father had considered the study of chemicals more important than the piano lessons she'd once hoped for. She wondered if someday Trace would teach her to play a real melody, something sentimental, from the country she'd left behind.

  She set the flute on the bed, but didn't rewrap it. There were books in the case, as well, Yeats and Shaw and Wilde. Gillian picked one and leafed through familiar passages. A man who described himself in such harsh terms carried Yeats along with a weapon. She'd sensed that contradictory combination long before she'd seen evidence it existed; indeed, she'd fallen in love with the many sides of the enigma that was Trace O'Hurley.

  Nerves forgotten, fears banked, she set the books on the table beside the bed. She was humming to herself as she put the last of the shirts away. When she started to close the case, she noticed a notebook tucked in one of the side pockets. Without thinking, she drew it out and set it on the edge of the dresser. She put the case in the closet beside bets, fussed to be sure the trousers were hung by the crease, then wandered back toward the window. As she passed the dresser, she knocked the notebook to the floor. The words and musical notes caught her eye as she bent to pick it up.

  The sun rises, the sun sets, but I wait for the dream. The nights are too long to be alone. Days pass without sweetness in sunlight that streams. The nights are too dark to be far from home.

  Enchanted, she sat on the bed to read. Her hand went to the flute and tested there.

  It had been a few years since Trace had worked with Bieintz. They'd put together a tidy little job in Sri Lanka five or six years before, and then, in the way of people in their business, they'd lost touch. Outwardly Breintz had changed. His hair had thinned, his face had widened. There were folds of wrinkles under his eyes that gave him a lazy basset-hound look. He sported a sapphire stud in his ear and wore the robe of the desert people.

  After an hour's discussion, Trace was reassured. However much Bieintz's appearance had changed, inside he was still the same sharp-witted agent he'd worked with in the past.

  "It was decided against using the usual routes for the shipment." Bieintz's clipped English had a controlled musicality Trace had always found agreeable. "It would be too possible for another terrorist group to trace it, or even for an overenthusiastic customs official to cause problems. In this I have used my contacts. The shipment comes by private plane to an airstrip a few miles east of here. Those who need to be paid off have been."

  Trace nodded. In the dim rear booth of the nearly empty restaurant he indulged in one of Breintz's Turkish cigarettes. Over the scent of rich smoke he could smell meat-some sort of sausage—grilling. "And once the shipment arrives, I move accordingly. The whole thing should be over in a week."

  "If the gods permit."

  "Still superstitious?"

  Breintz's lips curved, more in patience than in humor. "We all hold on to what works." Breintz let out smoke in three puffs, watching the rings form and vanish. "I don't believe in advice, but in information. Understand?"

  "Yes."

  "Then I will pass on this information, though you are likely aware already. I am in my fourth year of association with terrorists in this small, beleaguered part of the world. Some are fanatically religious, some politically ambitious, some simply blinded by anger. Such things, when accompanied by a disregard for human life, are dangerous, and, as we have too often found, not easily controllable. There is a reason, old friend, why none of the more established revolutionary organizations recognize Hammer. Religion, politics and anger become unpalatable even to the radical when they are driven by madness. Husad is a madman—a clever and magnetic one, but a madman. If he discovers your deception, he will kill you in any of several unpleasant ways. If he does not discover your deception, he will still kill you."

  Trace drew again on the Turkish cigarette. "You're right, I'm already aware. I'm going to get the scientist and the kid out. Then I'm going to kill Husad."

  "Assassination attempts have failed before, to the disappointment of many."

  "This one won't."

  Bieintz spread his hands. "I am at your service."

  With a last nod, Trace rose. "I'll be in touch."

  Trace knew he would be moving toward a conclusion in a matter of days. He was grateful for it. Since his first assignment with the ISS, he'd accepted the fact that any job he agreed to take could kill him. It hadn't been a matter of his not caring whether he lived or died. Trace had always had a definite preference for living. It had simply been a matter of his acknowledging the risks and making damn sure he was around to collect his pay. Over the past few days, staying alive had become even more important.

  He hadn't changed his mind concerning himself and Gillian, but he'd had to accept the fact that he wanted more time with her. He wanted time to hear her laugh, as she'd done so rarely since they'd met. He wanted time to watch her relax, as she did only when she'd convinced herself she could let go for short snatches of time. He wanted, more than he cared to admit, to have her care for him with the same depth and devotion that she cared for her family.

  It was stupid. It was certainly wrong for her. But that was what he wanted.

  He would give her back her brother, and the child she sometimes murmured for in her sleep. He would do what he bad come to Morocco to do, and then he would have one clear night with her. One night, all night, without the tensions, the fears, the doubts, that hovered around her now. She thought he didn't sense them, but he did. He wanted to give her peace.

  She hadn't wanted his sympathy, so he didn't offer it. The passion he did give should have been easy, yet it was tinted with the sweetest, sharpest ache he'd ever known. The ache was longing, a longing to give more than was asked, to take more than was given. To make promises, and to accept them.

  He couldn't do that, but he could have that one night with her when her family was safe and the threat was past. Then he could give her the gift of backing out of her life.

  To have that one night, to walk away with more than he'd ever had before, all he had to do was stay alive.

  Kendesa's tail dropped him in the lobby. Trace felt secure knowing Kendesa was taking precautions. He felt even better knowing that his meeting with Breintz would be reported. The other agent's cover was as tight as they came. Trace strolled down the corridor to his room, thinking how glad he would be to get out of the suffocating suit and tie.

  When he opened the door he was stunned, then furious.

  Gillian looked up at him, her eyes damp and her smile brilliant. "Trace, I'm so glad you're back. These songs are so lovely. I've read them all twice and still haven't decided if I have a favorite. You have to play them for me so I can—"

  "What the hell are you doing digging around in my things?"

  The tone caught her so off guard that she simply stared at him, the n
otebook open in her lap. When he crossed to her to snatch the notebook, she felt the full brunt of his fury. She didn't cringe away. She just sat very still.

  "I don't suppose it occurred to you that even though I'm working for you, even though I'm sleeping with you, I'm still entitled to my privacy."

  She went very pale, as she did whenever stress took over. "I'm sorry," she managed in a very careful voice. "You were gone so long, and I needed something to do, so I thought I'd put your things away for you. I came across the flute and the notebook as I was finishing up."

  "And didn't stop to think that what was written in the notebook might be private?" He stood, holding the book in his hand, as thoroughly embarrassed as he'd ever been in his life. What he'd written had come straight from the heart and was nothing he'd ever intended to share with anyone.

  "I beg your pardon." Her voice was stiff with formality now. She didn't bother to tell him how the notebook had fallen open, since he was so obviously interested only in the end result. "You're right, of course. I had no business messing about with your things."

  He'd hoped for an argument. A good shouting match would have helped him turn the embarrassment into something more easily dealt with. Instead, her quiet apology only made him feel more embarrassed and a great deal like a moron. Opening a drawer, he tossed the book in, then slammed it shut again.

  "Next time you're bored, read a book."

  She rose as her own temper bristled. She'd gotten such pleasure, such innocent pleasure, out of the words the man was capable of writing. Now she was being punished for discovering this secret part of him. But it was his secret, she reminded herself before she could open her mouth in anger. It was his, and she'd intruded on it.

  "I can only repeat that I'm sorry, I was completely in the wrong, and you have my word that the mistake won't be repeated."

  No, she wasn't going to argue with him, Trace realized as he walked over to wrap the flute in felt. There was too much hurt in her eyes, hurt he'd put there by being so unreasonably hard about an innocent act. "Forget it." He set the flute in the drawer beside the book and shut them both away. "The meet with Breintz went according to plan. The guns are here. I figure Kendesa will make contact tomorrow, the next day at the latest."

  "I see." She looked around for something to do, something to occupy her hands. She settled on clasping them together. "Then it should all be over soon."

  "Soon enough." For reasons that escaped him, he wanted to apologize, to hold her and tell her he was sorry for being an idiotic ass. He stuck his hands in his pockets. "We can go down for lunch. There's not much to see in this place, but you could get out of the room awhile."

  "Actually, I thought I'd lie down, now that you're back and I know everything's all right. I've really been more wound up than hungry." And though she'd thought never to feel that way again, she wanted desperately to be alone.

  "All right. I'll bring you something back."

  "Some fruit, maybe." They kept their distance, because neither had the nerve to take the first step. "I never seem to have much of an appetite when I'm traveling."

  He remembered the first night, when she'd fallen asleep without dinner, how pale and drained she'd been when he'd carried her to bed. She was pale now, too. He wanted, very badly, to stroke the color back into her cheeks. "I won't be long."

  "Take your time."

  She waited until he was gone before she lay down on the bed. Curling into a ball always seemed to help somehow. It concentrated the hurt into one tight place where it was more easily dealt with. She wouldn't weep. She let her eyes close and tried hard to concentrate on nothing. She wouldn't let her emotions swing wild, the way they had when she'd been young and had thought to surprise her father.

  She'd tidied up his office, polishing wood and shining glass. He'd been furious, too. She sighed and struggled to clear the memory from her mind. Furious that she'd infringed on his private space, touched his personal things. She might have broken something, misplaced something. It hadn't mattered that she'd done neither.

  Sean Brady Fitzpatrick had been a hard man, and loving him had been one long exercise in frustration. Gillian sighed again. Apparently she was a very slow learner.

  He hadn't eaten anything. Nor had he finished the whiskey he'd ordered. Trace had never known a woman who could make a man feel more of a fool when she was clearly in the wrong. Those songs had never been intended for anyone but himself. He wasn't ashamed of them, it was just that he'd indulged himself, or parts of himself, in the writing of them. They were his innermost thoughts, innermost feelings, dreams he admitted to having only on the latest of occasions. He wasn't sure he could handle her knowing what was inside him, what he sometimes longed for on the longest of lonely nights. The songs could erase the differences and the distance between them, whether he wanted them to or not.

  He shouldn't have hurt her. Only the stupid or the heartless hurt the defenseless. Discovering he could be both left an unpleasant taste in his mouth. He'd have liked to blame that on her, too, but he thought too clearly once anger had passed.

  He laid the rose on the little basket of fruit and opened the door.

  She was sleeping. He'd hoped she would be awake so that he could make his gesture of apology quick and painless. Growing up with women had taught him that they forgave easily, often smugly, as though men's cloddish behavior was to be expected. It wasn't a sweet pill to swallow, but at least it was a small one.

  Trace set the basket on the dresser before moving toward her. She was curled up tight, as if to ward off another blow. That was one more brick on his back. Muttering a curse, he pulled the spread up over her. She'd left the shade up. He walked over to draw it down and dim the room. It made a quiet sound that had her stirring in sleep.

  "Caitlin."

  Though the little girl's name came in a murmur, Trace heard the fear in it. Not sure what to do, he sat on the edge of the bed and began to stroke her hair. "She'll be all right, Gillian. Just a few more days."