At the Edge of the Sun (Maggie Bennett 3)

“I know you very well.” His hands were moving up her arms to the collar of her jacket, and he was pulling it off her, gently, with such expert ease that she was almost unaware of it. “I know you have the heart of a lion and the soul of a Valkyrie. When we catch Flynn next time I’ll let you kill him.” And as he slid the silk jacket off her his arms circled her, and his mouth touched hers.

They both tasted of rain and Irish whiskey. Holly sighed, moving her arms up around his neck. “Oh, Ian,” she said, when he kissed her neck. “What took you so long?” And she sank down on the bed beneath him.

Timothy Seamus Flynn ducked under the low-hanging portico of the train station. He was soaked to the skin, but the chill December wind didn’t bother him. A hot, burning rage was keeping him warm, keeping him fiery hot beneath the cold dampness of his clothes.

He’d only seen him for a moment, a brief flash in time before he’d dived out the window, but he’d have known him anywhere. Ian Kellehy Andrews, in the flesh, still after him after all these years. He couldn’t know about Maeve, it was too soon. Maybe, just maybe, he could turn around and find him, be the one to tell him just what had happened to precious Maeve O’Connor less than twenty-four hours ago.

As soon as the thought entered his mind he dismissed it. Ian wasn’t alone, he’d somehow gotten tied up with those damned Bennett women and Randall Carter. And while Flynn had few doubts about his own infallibility, to finish all four of them would take careful planning.

For now he’d just move on to his next stop a little ahead of schedule. He could make a few calls, pull in a few favors, and maybe leave those interfering Americans up to someone else. He would have liked to have been the one to finish Ian, but there was no need to be greedy. Right now what he needed most was a vacation.

The row of telephones stood off to one side in the noisy, crowded building. Shaking off the rain that had soaked him to the skin, he headed toward them, brushing against a stern-looking Italian policeman. The carabiniere glared at him, and Timothy Seamus Flynn smiled his devastating smile, murmuring “Scusi.”

And the policeman

smiled back, before turning away from the most wanted criminal in Europe.

twelve

The moment Holly awoke the next morning she knew something wasn’t quite right. Despite the fact that her body felt deliciously sore, well loved from the top of her raven hair to the tips of her red-painted toes, her sleep-dazed mind warned her she wasn’t going to like what she saw when she woke up completely. She considered rolling over and going back to sleep, but consciousness had taken its nasty toll. She opened her eyes, past the empty space next to her, over to the second bed they hadn’t needed to use the night before. Ian’s battered leather suitcase was gone.

Keep calm, she ordered herself. He probably just took it into the bathroom with him to change. Or he shoved it under the bed and she didn’t notice. But that was a vain hope. She’d noticed quite clearly everything he’d done when they got back to the hotel room, noticed and enjoyed it thoroughly.

She sat up, pushing her thick black mane away from her face. Sun was filtering through the closed curtains, the bright sunlight of midday. The bathroom door was open, and Ian wasn’t inside. Ian was gone.

“Hell and damnation,” Holly said succinctly, pulling herself out of bed and walking over to the dresser. There was a note waiting for her, and she opened it with barely suppressed fury.

“I’ll be back for you. Ian.”

“Sure you will,” she snarled, dropping it back on the dresser. “But I’m damned if I’ll be waiting.”

She cursed her way through a long hot shower, reviewing her options. She could sit and wait like a good, passive little girl. She could fly home and keep Kate and Jilly company at their bedside vigil. She could take off with Randall and Maggie, assuming they had anywhere to take off to. Or she could see if she could find out where the hell Ian went.

The latter option was the most attractive. Ian was on special assignment for British Army Intelligence, wasn’t he? The logical place to start would be the British Embassy. And if by any chance her questions proved embarrassing, well, that was too damned bad. He should have trusted her enough to tell her where he was going.

She’d met the current ambassador at a party her friends, the Fendis, had given last year, hadn’t she? A sweet, red-faced gentleman of the old school, all British bluster and faded blue eyes and apoplectic charm. If she couldn’t get what she needed to know out of him then she was losing her touch, her looks, and quite probably her mind. But she had no doubts at all she’d succeed.

The silk suit was a rumpled mess on the floor beside the bed. The Ultima’s valet service would be able to rescue it in no time, and for now Holly had no other options. She would have preferred not to dress in the outfit that had almost become her shroud, but her choice was limited. It was that or fatigues, and blustery old gentlemen preferred women to look like ladies. She’d pick up something better on the way back and dump the damned suit in the incinerator. It would serve Ian Andrews right if he returned to find her reequipped with twelve suitcases.

First things first. She’d have to hassle with a call to California again. At least Sybil had made it through the night—if she hadn’t, Holly would have heard. There might even be good news. At least she was still alive.

For Maggie the flight from Damascus to Rome was deceptively brief. It was a small enough compensation for the incredible frustration of the last twenty-four hours. The supposedly easy trek down from El Khabrim to the Syrian border was wrought with nothing but hassles. First the Bronco overheated, and they had to hike five miles to find water. Two hours later it developed a flat tire, due to a bullet graze from the night before. They hit a goat in the early afternoon, and ran into a particularly surly border guard when they tried to cross over into Syria. They were detained for five hours, sitting apart from each other in a squalid little oven of a building. Maggie wasn’t even allowed to use the bathroom until she went through the expected indignity of a body search, and her mood grew fouler by the minute.

Illogical as it was, she blamed Randall. She blamed him for her discomfort, for her empty stomach and full bladder, for the sneering threat of the customs officer and the sadistic behavior of the guard who examined her. At least they’d waited until a woman customs official showed up, though the uniformed creature with the badge reading S. Khuerdi must have come close to failing the gender test. With her dark, malicious, piggy eyes, rough hands, and incipient mustache, she somehow failed to encourage in her prisoner any feeling of sisterhood. Maggie withstood the indignities and the deliberate cruelties with a calm she had to admire in herself. She could only hope Randall was meeting with a similarly degrading fate.

It was after midnight when they were released, with empty apologies. The Bronco was waiting, and this time it served them well. They made it in record time, and the clean hotel Randall checked them into had small, separate rooms. Maggie had fallen into the narrow bed, thanking God she at least had that small respite. If she fell asleep clutching the lumpy pillow and thinking of Randall, she was too tired to fight it.

At least there was an early flight to Rome. Maggie sat in her window seat, staring out at the clouds, trying to ignore her seat mate. Randall had been in an unusually sunny mood, with none of his characteristic mockery showing through. He’d accepted her taciturn silence, accepted her bad temper, and immersed himself in an Arabic newspaper. Maggie remembered another occasion, when he’d been equally engrossed in an Eastern European newspaper, apparently as at home with the Cyrillic alphabet as he was with the Arabic one.

She’d allowed herself a brief look at him, a dangerous glance that she regretted the moment she succumbed. He was a bundle of contradictions and questions. In repose his austere, handsome face was almost grim. The lines that furrowed his brow and ran down parallel to his mouth were deeply etched, and the thin, sensuous mouth was, she knew from experience, unused to smiling. It was still dangerously effective, at least on her.

His sixth sense must have told him she was watching. He lifted his head, his stormy blue-gray eyes meeting hers for a lingering moment. And then he did smile, that rare, bewitching curve of his lips, and Maggie felt the ice around her heart begin to melt.

“Are you certain you want to change partners, Maggie?”

God, she was a stupid fool. An idiot of a female, betrayed by her hormones. She looked at his hands holding the paper, the long, tanned fingers that were so fiendishly clever, the narrow palms, the deceptive strength. She could still feel those hands on her, feel their power and their pleasure.

“I’m certain.” And she turned her face toward the window, staring into the puffy white clouds.