Lethal Lover Part 6

He nodded and continued to rummage for agoniz, ii! ling minutes through his duffel bag, withdrawing clothes. Watching him, Tess couldn't help noting his dark, expressive eyes glittered in the soft, lamp ? iil light that east his features in shadowsl-the high, forehead and the aquiline nose.

A slow, satisfied smile spread across his face when he caught her studying him.

"You haven't changed either," he said quietly.

"T.

"Go on," she snapped. ake your d.a.m.n show en ? i I'll listen for the phone in " case Selena calls.

He nodded and started for the bathroom with shaving kit i hand and a fresh s.h.i.+rt thrown carelessly i( over his shoulder. Then he seemed suddenly to change his mind and headed instead for the door where, with (! iil a quick turn of his wrist, he locked the dead bolt wi the key extending from it and withdrew the key andili tucked it into the side pocket of his snug-fittinl ' Tess's heart stopped. She'd planned to slip out of the room the moment he stepped inw the shower. When he turned and gave her a crooked grin, she fought to hide the panic she. felt draining the blood from her face.

"Not that I don't trust you."

"I told you I'd let you know if Selena called." She forced her voice steady.

He arched one thick, sardonic brow.

"And I'd like to believe you.

It's just that I always like to cover my. bets."

She turned on her heel, marched out onto the balcony, plopped down on the chair and waited for the sound of water running.

"The offer's still open. if you want to watch," he taunted before he closed the bathroom door.

"No thanks," she shouted.

"I hate reruns."

She could imagine the wickedly triumphant grin that creased his handsome face, and the string of curses she muttered under her breath would have made a sailor blush.

Chapter Five.

The minute she heard the water running in Tess reached up and unscrewed the light bulb illuminating the balcony, slid her purse strap over her arm, and peered over the railing, a.s.sessing her chances.

Her plan to escape the hotel by drawing on her free-climbing skills had been hastily conceived the ment Reed had chosen, in his patently caveman to make her a prisoner in her own room. It wasn't a plan without risk, but with a bit of luck it might Most people were careful to lock the'rr hotel rooms when they left them, but Tess was betting that mos guests wouldn't concern themselves with the doors that opened out onto a balcony several stories above ground level. It was a bet she was counting heavily upon as she prepared to drop down onto the small green roof of the balcony below her own.

If she couldn't gain access to the third an open balcony door, she'd have to make the again, increasing the risk, not only of being seriously injured, but Of being caught.

If the worst happened and she was forced to make the drop twice, she might well find herself trapped behind a locked sliding door on a first-floor balcony that was still a good twenty feet above the ground.

The graceful concrete archways and walkways' that comprised the resort's mezzanine level would afford anything but a soft. landing but Tess steeled herself for the possibility that she might have to chance that final drop.

But of all of the dreadful scenarios that swarmed through her mind, the worst was the image of the inside of a Grand Cayman jarl. If she was caught breaking into an empty hotel room via the balcony, how would she ever explain? Even worse, if she was caught, what would happen to Selena when she failed to make the rendezvous at the time dictated by the kidnapper?

Tess shrugged' off the possib't/ity of' failure, telling herself that, dressed as she was in dark clothing, she'd be lost in the lengthening shadows of evening should an unsuspecting pa.s.serby happen to glance up.

Not only was the darkness in her favor, but the fact that she was a good climber in excellent physical condition helped to buoy her spirits.

Although her plan of escape was frighteningly risky, she knew she had no other choice. Reed McKenna had seen to-that, she reminded herself bitterly.

Swallowing her fear, Tess took a deep breath and prayed that the first balcony she dropped onto would provide entry to an unoccupied room, which would ultimately give her access to the hallway and escape.

With one last adjustment of her shoulder bag, which contained Selena's ledger, Tess prepared to swing her long legs over the rafting. But just as her foot came up even with the railing she heard voices ing from below. She stood frozen, her heart wildly.

Judging by the sounds of the happy chatter drifting up from the room below hers, a large group of revelers, giddy with West Palm's famous rum punch, had just emerged out onto the balcony through which Tess had hoped to make her escape.

With her mind scampering for another solution, Tess's eyes settled on a small strip of wood trim that ringed the side of the building and b.u.t.ted up against the railing of each balcony on the fourth floor.

Be' fore she lost her nerve or had time to consider the consequences of her hastily revised plan, she eased over the edge of the railing and gingerly transferred. her weight to the small wooden strip.

The thin ledge upon which she balanced was flat, and seemed stable, but it was narrow, no more than eight or ten inches wide.

Leaning into the nubby stucco wall, pressing her weight against the building, Tess prayed for balance and for the narrow ledge to be strong enough to support her one hundred and twenty-something pounds of weight.

Forcing herself to breathe while banis.h.i.+ng one gruesome thought after another, Tess edged along the side of the building like the infamous cat burglars she admired so much in fiction. Cautiously sidestepping, moving first one foot and then the other, her hands searched the stucco for the slightest irregularity or c.h.i.n.k into which her grasping fingers might dig and hold.

"Her purse sc.r.a.ped against the wall, further threatening her precarious balance.

The muscles in her arms and legs screamed with the impossible strain.

Negotiating the treacherous course, Tess was haunted by the horrible memory of her last free-climb up the side of a stark, red sandstone monolith in western Colorado.

Her'mouth went dry remembering the misstep that had spelled disaster that day--a thirty-foot free-fall that had resulted in a shattered ankle. The physical injury had taken months to heal, but the emotional scars of that expedition still lingered.

Despite her injuries, Tess had been the lucky one that day. Another member of the party had died when an unstable ma ncos ledge, some three hundred feet above a stark, boulder-strewn valley floor, had collapsed.

Tess had witnessed the accident that had cla'. lmed the life of her friend Mark.

Sitting am ere ten feet away, with her injured ankle splinted, waiting for the rest of the party to regroup and take her to the hospital, Tess had watched in utl horror as the oust upon which Mark had been standing, crumbled and collapsed.

The tragedy had happened three years ago. In the year before the accident, Tess had dated Mark. Their relations.h.i.+p was exclusive and becoming serious; they had even talked of marriage. Then, before her eyes, he'd been taken.

Just as it seemed all the other people who'd ever mattered to Tess had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from her life forever.

She hadn't been climbing since. In fact, she'd sold her gear and retired the Jeep she'd driven school. Since the accident, ideas of marriage serious dating had been far from her mind.

Without warning, her purse strap s.h.i.+fted and a of adrenaline shot through her syslm, back to her present reality.

Snap out of it, Tess, warned herself as she stopped to regain mental and physical balance. This was no time to panic; no could paralyze.

Paralysis was something she afford while hovering a hundred feet above.

clinging to a skimpy ledge Another few feet and she. would be-rewarded success, Tess told herself. Steady. Steady. Just a more feet.

Cautiously, s'fiently, forcing herself breathe evenly, she edged closer to even from her precarious position on the ledge, pea red to be empty.

Another moment of torture and then it was over. Her hands had closed around the railing and her feet had landed on the balcony floor with no more than a gentle thud.

Trying to regain the edge that a rush of relief had dulled, Tess crept to the side of the sliding gla.s.s door. Her legs felt weak and her to mach churned as she leered tentatively into the dark, empty room beyond il With trembling fingers, she tested the door.

It opened and she allowed herself a little inner yelp of triumph before moving on tiptoe across the dark hotel room. At the door, she paused and listened before turning the k.n.o.b and easing the door open a scant inch. The hinges were well oiled and she accomplished the movement noiselessly, but the sound of voices outside in the hallway caused her to shrink back into the shadows, where she watched through a slit in the door as the older man and woman she'd seen from her balcony walked past the room.

The woman walking beside him held the toddler in her arms and the man carried a plastic bucket and shovel. The child was fussing, on the verge of tears.

"Get her inside, Gertie," Tess heard the man say. "Before she draws attention to us."

Tess didn't have time to consider the eaiark she idly noted as strange before she seized the opportunity of the deserted hallway to emerge from the vacant room unseen A few minutes later she was in the resort's parking lot, trying to find the rental car Selena had turned over to the attendant when they'd arrived at West Palm. After a moment of frustrating disorientation, she spotted the red Mustang and hurried over to it, only to stop dead in her tracks when she realized she didn't have the keys. She'd never had them!

Naturally, since Selena had visited Grand Cayman before and was familiar with the route from the airport to the hotel, she'd been the one to drive. But re-memhering why she had no keys offered no consolation, and for one terrible moment, Tess felt that all was lost until she remembered the mopeds she'd . i people zipping around on as she and Selena had driven in from the airport.

"They rent them everywhere," Selena had plained.

"We'll get a couple for at least a day. perfect for exploring the outer limits of the island."

Silently, Tess thanked her cousin for that vital of information as she raced the haft mile to the main. thoroughfare behind the hotel. Selena had been righ about the availability of the popular scooters, and Te had only jogged three blocks when she spotted a blinking sign advertising scooter rentals.

In less than fifteen minutes, Tess had filled out the, necessary paperwork and paid for rental of a noisy red moped. Afler a tentative trial around the lot, Tess emerged onto the sped south toward the city limits, where her directions from Selena's abductors began.

As she road, the warm tropical night air swirled pleasantly around her, but her thoughts weren't on the atmosphere or the ocean air.

Instead, her mind spun with the possibility of failure and her heart ached for relief.

But there would be no relief just yet. Not until she saw her cousin with her own eyes. Alive and well and out of danger.

IT HAD TAKEN ecry ounce of control Reed possessed not to shout when he'd stepped out onto the balcony and seen Tess inching along the side of the budding like some kind of deranged circus performer.

No one had ever called' Reed McKenna a religious man, but he'd nearly been driven to his knees at the sight of Tess balanced on the thin piece of wood trim a hundred feet above the ground.

He'd held his breath while she'd inched along, terrified to make a sound, lest he startle her and send her tumbling to, if not certain death, at least serious injury. When at last she swung one long, s.e.xy leg and then the other over the edge of the railing that enclosed the neighboring balcony, he'd felt his. whole body go limp with relief. An overwhelming desire to rush next door and either shake or kiss her senseless seized him.

But by the time he'd made it to the door, the cool professional inside him, the one that had taught him to survive in a business that would have broken weaker man, had already reined in the impulse.

And now, with the stealth of a cat, he eased out into the hallway, slipped down to the second floor and waited beneath the open stairway for her to emerge-He almost choked when he saw Gertie and Jake and the baby climbing the stairs mere inches above hi, hiding place. If one of them spotted him, he'd lose best chance of finding Selena Elliot. For he w to wager all that he owned that if he kept low and 1owed, Tess would lead him to exactly to be.

Gertie and Jake walked past him unaware and up to the third floor and into their own room. A merit later, Tess slipped down the stairs and out into the hotel parking lot.

From a safe distance he watched her almost when she realized the rental car would do her no I without the keys he'd seen her frantically searaing purse to find. Selena must have them, he told as he followed Tess to the moped tended to the rental and practiced on the scooter ran back to the parking lot and hot-wired the tang.

Ten minutes later, he was following Tess Georgetown. She was driving too d.a.m.n fast, he i with growing concern and anger. If rolling piece of tin on its side and break her pretty neck, he'd be pleasantly surprised.

She'd always been too brave for her own good, he remembered, thinking back to 'that first night when he'd'come upon her walking down the middle of a deserted mountain road, wearing high heels and a prom dress.

Despite himself, he winced, remembering how he'd been the one moving too fast that night, as was his habit. He'd been leaning into the curve, pus.h.i.+ng the Harley well past a safe speed when suddenly in the. glow of his headlight he saw an apparition in the middle of the road. Had that fancy satin party dress of hers not reflected light like a mirror, he'd have run right over her and probably killed them both that night.

As it was, he'd barely kept from laying the bike on its side trying to avoid the beautiful prom queen standing like a startled deer in his path. After giving her h.e.l.l for almost killing them, he'd listened as she'd explained between tears how her date with Jimmy Somebody had gone sour. Instead of driving her home after the prom, Jimmy had taken her up to the most well-known make-out spot on the mountain.

The b.a.s.t.a.r.d, as she'd kept calling him, had been drinking, they both had.

But when he'd put his hand up her dress, Tess had shoved him and insisted that he take her home.

When he'd refused and grabbed her again and shoved her down onto' the seat, she'd slugged him squarely in the face, breaking his nose, Reed had guessed, if the amount of blood on her mined pink' dress was any indication.

He could still see that dress and her satisfied smile at the thought of the damage she'd inflicted on the overstimulated Jimmy.

After she'd decked him, Tess had haughtily climbed out of Jimmy's car and insisted on finding her own way home. Only when he'd left her had reality down, reminding her that it was four good miles back'i to town.

It had been at that point in the story that Tess started to cry again as she'd pulled up her dress show Reed the pair of satin heels she'd ruined n rough, gravel road. And it had been at that Reed McKenna's heart had turned over, his mind to mush and making him believe that could play hero to that endearing damsel in distress. Even now, thinking back on that time of cence, he felt moved by their young love. Within a weeks, he'd become her first lover, and she had been his first and only real love.

With Tess he'd thought his life could be And for a while it had been; the things the old and said had hardly seemed to matter anymore.

The coc.o.o.n that Tess's love had spun around held almost a year, before it began to unravel h.e.l.l broke loose and the old man went too broke Sean's arm.

The courts had stepped in and with the help of Reed's testimon3/had taken Sean away. Just a short month later, Sean was gone forever.

Stabbed by some strung-out punk in the backyard of the home where the couiits had placed him for safekeeping.

The irony still stung and the lesson Sean's death had taught Reed was still indehly primed on his mind: the old man had been right. Reed McKenna didn't really give a d.a.m.n about anyone. He was incapable of caring enough to protect anyone. If he'd really cared for Sean, would he have let the courts take him away?

How could a man without a heart consider taking a wife, building a life with her when he hadn't even loved his brother enough to save him?

Hadn't he promised Sean he'd always be there? But where had he been when his brother needed-him most?

He'd given Sean up to strangers, even helped them take him away. In Reed's mind, it didn't matter that the old man had willingly signed the papers--Sean had never expected the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d to fight for him.

But Reed had always been Sean's champion, and if he lived to be a hundred, he'd never forget the look of bitter disappointment on Sean's young face when the woman from the county had come to take him away.

The flash of a signal light up ahead brought Reed back to his present situation with a jolt. He eased off the accelerator as Tess made a left turn and then another sharp right onto a narrow street lined with well-lit shops and open-air bars bursting with tourists.

Threading the rental car through the narrow street, Reed strained to keep the small red scooter in view. When a hotel limousine cut him off, Reed gave him the universal reply to rudeness and slammed on the brakes: to avoid running down a gray-haired couple on a tan-dean bicycle.

Although no one was the worse for the near-collision, Reed realized that in the confusion he'd lost sight of Tess.

At the next street, he turned right onto a wide paved, boulevard lined with two- and three-story townhouses and condominiums. There was only one streetlight and very little traffic, so when Reed spot-tea a single taillight at the end of the next block, he figured he'd found Tess.

Following at a distance that wouldn't arouse her suspicions, he tailed the scooter through the block residential area. As they wove their way into poorer section of the pavement gave way to dirt.

Beyond a scattering of tin-roofed shanties, Reed saw the scootefts brake light come on and he eased offtbe accelerator and doused the Mustang's headlights. the light of a pale crescent moon, he steered into. rutted driveway betw an abandoned lean-to what appeared to be a junkyard for boat wreckage.

Once out of the car, he jogged back to where he'd seen the moped slowing.

trim s'dhouette standing beside the scooter. She'd the headlight on and where the weak yellow beam split the darkness it reflected off a small, corrugated-steel building. The warehouse sat alone in the middle of a 'large lot.