The Heart of a Renegade

He removed his tattered gloves, palmed the wool hat off his head and ruffled his hair before dropping to his haunches and floating the old jacket out into the dockyard water along with the hat and gloves. Bemused, Jessica watched as he dipped a handkerchief into the sea and wiped the black camouflage grease from his face. He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pant pocket, stood to his full height, and slung her camera bag across his massive chest.

There was enough light coming from the SeaBus terminal for Jessica to see his hair was sandy blond, short and rumpled. His features craggy, strong, and tanned against his startlingly pale gray eyes. He was now clad in black jeans, black boots and a black turtleneck sweater which emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and the muscle in his arms. Not the slightest hint of the broken homeless character she’d seen shuffling behind the shopping cart lingered in his physique.

A chameleon, she thought. One who shifted shape at will. And he’d clearly planned every step of their escape. A cool whisper of warning ruffled through her and with it came the renewed bite of fear.

He checked his watch, and hooked his arm casually through hers. “You’re my date, okay? Let’s go.”

“I’m…what?”

“The last SeaBus is coming over from the city now. We’re going to blend with the commuters as they disembark and drift toward the car park and bus loop. Then we’re going to walk up to a nightclub on Esplanade, grab a hot dog at the late-night stand outside the club and I’m going to hail a cab to take us to a false address. No talking in the cab, not one word, understand?”

“Luke, please—” she tried to draw him to a halt. “I need to know what happened to—”

“Later. All the cab driver must recall is an ordinary couple coming out of the club. Nothing else, got it?”

She pulled her arm free. “No,” she whispered angrily. “I don’t get it. There is nothing ordinary about us. I have no idea who you are or where you’re taking me. Do you think I’m nuts? You think I’m just going to along with—” she wagged her hand at him “—whatever some lethal cross between James Bond and Crocodile Dundee orders me to do? You just assaulted two cops back there. You killed two men. I—”

He seized her arm, pulled her close, his eyes narrowing to sharp steel slivers. “Dammit, Jessica, keep it down. I saved your life back there.”

“And I’m grateful. But I don’t trust anyone, especially foreign men with guns who want what’s in my camera.”

He studied her in silence for a long beat. “I know why you don’t trust anyone,” he said quietly. “It’s because no one trusts you.” He tilted her chin up. “Not since your abduction and torture in China. Am I right?”

She swallowed a ballooning hurt in her throat.

Luke was right. The incident had cost her everything, most importantly her career, her pride and her hard-won respect. As the unacknowledged, illegitimate daughter of a British diplomat and his Chinese mistress Jessica had felt driven all her life to prove her worth in this world, to dig herself out of her impoverished London background. To make something of herself.

She’d done it for her mother.

She’d done it to show she didn’t need the acknowledgment or support of her wealthy father. She’d done it for her own sense of self-worth, and she’d succeeded. She’d become a rising star with the BBC, one of their top foreign correspondents. There was even talk of hosting her own news show.

But it had all vanished three years ago, the day she’d been kidnapped from Shanghai’s business district and taken to a remote factory warehouse in Hubei province where members of the Dragon Heads and an official from the Chinese government had accused her of being a spy for the United States.

She’d been tortured for information and injected with mind-altering hallucinogenic “truth drugs,” designed and administered by the man she called The Chemist. A man she believed was a top level biochemical assassin for a covert arm of the ruling Chinese Communist Party which was using the Dragon Heads to further its political agenda worldwide.

Jessica had managed a harrowing escape, but the drugs had permanently damaged her brain, leaving her with horrific flashbacks and hallucinations. The hallucinations were so real that she could no longer be certain of her ability to discern reality from fiction. The Chinese government denied any involvement and she had no proof of a government cover-up. In the end, she’d been swept under the bureaucratic carpet. She’d lost her job, and she’d been left to languish in a British mental institution with severe depression, paranoia, hallucinations, labeled a schizophrenic.

But Jessica had fought back.

She knew what she’d endured in China was true, even if her own memories of the ordeal were sketchy. And now she finally had some proof. The film in her camera was going to show The Chemist really did exist and that he was here, right now, in North America, with Dragon Heads boss Xiang-Li.

“Not even the RCMP took your word that what you just saw in Chinatown wasn’t another of your well-documented hallucinations. That’s why they told you to come back with the prints, once you’d developed them. Am I right, Jess?”

She looked away.

But Luke drew her firmly against his torso as a bus passed on the road above them. His body was so incredibly solid, so warm. Big. He felt so confoundingly safe and dangerous at the same time.

A terrified and very lonely part of Jessica ached to lean into him, to have him hold her, have anyone hold her. To have someone care.

“Let me tell you something, Jess,” he said quietly. “I believe you. Those guys shooting at you in Gastown were real. That tells me that what you saw in Chinatown was real, too. And someone is prepared to kill to keep it quiet. They want the evidence in your camera and they want you dead. And now they want me, too.” He paused, watching her face intently. “That puts you and me pretty much on the same side, wouldn’t you say?”

She closed her eyes. The idea of an ally, someone who actually believed she wasn’t a total nut job, was so heady and alluring it hurt. After being alone and confused for so many years she’d come to a point where she’d actually believed she was crazy, where she honestly didn’t know whether she could trust her own mind. The doubt still whispered, even now.

Tears burned under her lids as she struggled to hold back the painful surge of emotion. “Why are you doing this for me, Luke?”

The question punched at him in a way Luke couldn’t explain. This woman got to him. He’d seen her file. He knew her background. He knew what she’d endured and he understood her kind of solitude. And while she was afraid and vulnerable, she was also brave. Never mind utterly physically compelling.

He exhaled heavily.

He didn’t want anything to get to him. He didn’t want to understand her. Hell, he didn’t even want to like her.

He didn’t want to like anybody.

“I’m not doing it for you, Jess.” His voice was suddenly blunt and he knew it but couldn’t help it. “It’s my job. I work for the Force du Sablé, a private military company that offers close protection to politically sensitive targets, among other things.” He paused, angry again that this mission had been thrust on him by FDS boss Jacques Sauvage.

“Politically sensitive targets?” she whispered.

“The FDS was contracted by the CIA to find you and to bring you in. I’m your bodyguard until I hand you and the film over.” Which he hoped to hell would happen within the next few hours.

Panic sparked in her eyes. “How does the CIA know about my film? How do you know about it? How do you even know about Giles?”

“Later, Jess. Right now I need to get you someplace you can sleep for the night.” He took her arm and guided her up the narrow gangplank. He’d wasted enough time. It wasn’t his job to explain anything. This mission had come on such short notice Luke wasn’t the hell sure what he could tell her.

The only reason he was on this dock right now was because Jacques Sauvage had informed him that Jessica Chan would die tonight without his immediate intervention.

The FDS had stationed Luke in Vancouver to gather intelligence on Asian organized crime syndicates that operated out of the Pacific Northwest, particularly gangs rumored to be colluding with known terrorist organizations—like the Dragon Heads.

The FDS was finding increased client demand for this sort of intelligence and Luke’s brief had been to establish a small intelligence office in the city.

This had positioned him as the only operative the FDS could dispatch to Jessica in time. In spite of his contract.

Now he was saddled with a job he could neither refuse nor fully embrace. He cursed silently. Jacques was going to pay for this.

“Where?” she asked.

“Where what?”

“You said you were going to take me someplace I could sleep for the night.”

“Right. I guess that would be…my place.” Luke swore to himself again.

Yeah, Jacques was going to pay big-time, especially if he didn’t get this woman off his hands within the next few hours.

The cab was warm and it relaxed his principal—which was how Luke was determined to think of Jessica Chan from this point on. He put his arm around her in an effort to appear a casual couple, while he clamped down on his emotions. She was exhausted and within minutes she’d fallen asleep nestled right into the crook of his arm. Reluctantly he realized she fit perfectly.

Too perfectly.

She felt too damn good.

Old protective instincts began to rustle uncomfortably. Being a bodyguard had come as naturally to him as beating up the bully who’d picked on the smaller kids in the schoolyard. And it had brought him just as much trouble.

Luke had simply been born to protect, especially when he perceived injustice. But for the last four years, he’d managed to hold those instincts at bay, for his own survival. Now, holding Jessica in his arms, he could feel the echo whispering through him again, pulsing louder and stronger with every beat of his heart. Luke swallowed against the sudden dryness in his throat.

The taxi bumped over a speed hump and the soft weight of Jessica’s—his principal’s—breast pressed into his chest, awakening something in quite another part of Luke’s body.

He closed his eyes, grudgingly unable to stop savoring the sweet sexual sensation stirring low in his gut. Luke realized with mild shock that he didn’t actually want to block it out. It felt good to have a woman in his arms again, to feel his blood and body roused again. His pulse quickened and his throat turned even drier.

The cab pulled up in front of the West Vancouver address Luke had given the driver, and not a moment too soon. “Wake up,” he said, gently nudging her.

Her almond-shaped eyes fluttered open, sultry with sleep, then widened in shock at the sudden realization of where she was.

“It’s okay, we’re here.”

Luke settled the fare, helped her from the car and, without a word, pulled her against his body and covered her mouth with his own as he watched the red brake lights of the cab retreat down the hill from the corner of his eye.

Jessica stiffened, trying to pull away, but Luke tightened his hold. “Easy, Jess,” he murmured over her lips as he watched the taxi round a corner. “A loving couple is the only thing that driver must remember.”

She stilled in his arms, but he could feel her heartbeat increasing rapidly against his chest. To his shock, she opened her mouth tentatively under his.

Heat rocketed through Luke, exciting something savage and hard in him. Before he could stop, knowing full well the taxi had long gone, he deepened his kiss and his tongue met hers. He felt her welcoming him, her body softening against his as she angled her mouth, allowing him to taste her own hot, sweet need.

Luke couldn’t breathe. He closed his eyes, allowing his iron grip on control to ease for the first time in years, simply giving himself over to sensation, tasting her deep, hungrily, not bothering to fight the mounting pressure of his arousal against her belly, which he knew she had to feel.

At the same time his brain was screaming that this was so wrong, for more reasons than he cared to count. She was his principal. And vulnerable. And she was opening to him for all the wrong reasons.

Luke managed to pull back, breathing hard. They locked gazes for a moment, words defying them. And he could see just as much dark turbulence and confusion in those exquisite amber eyes of hers as he felt in his heart.

He wanted to explain why he’d done this. But he didn’t know the answer himself.

Instead he cleared his throat and said, “We should go.”

She simply nodded.

Luke escorted her to his innocuous dark blue SUV parked along the curb, taking exaggerated care not to touch her again as he beeped the alarm, opened the passenger door and let her in.

But letting Jessica Chan in was the last thing in this world Luke was ready to do.

He had a sinking feeling the more he opened the door to this woman, the harder it would become to get her back out of his life.

Tasting her had been intoxicating, like the first heady sip of elixir for an alcoholic. Just as addictive and potentially just as lethal to him.

Hot damn, he was in trouble. Serious trouble.

Luke slammed the door shut and wiped his mouth roughly with the back of his hand. Jacques better have that pickup ready because he wanted to be rid of this woman before sunrise.

Luke drove over the Lions Gate Bridge, back toward the heart of downtown Vancouver, car heater cranked high, soft classical music playing, snowflakes swirling at them like asteroids in the headlights. For the first time in days Jessica felt safe—on one level.

But on another, she wasn’t so sure.

She studied him surreptitiously as orange-hued streetlights pulsed over his rugged profile, throwing a small scar that fanned from the corner of his right eye into relief.

He had another fine scar across his chin and another that ran down his neck.

He looked ruggedly handsome, scarred, dangerous.

“Are you going to tell me about Giles now?” she asked.

He hesitated. “I need to check in with my people before I can explain. This was…sort of a rush job,” he said, turning off the bridge and heading toward Granville Island, where he pulled into a parking lot near the marina and killed the engine.

“You sound pissed to be saddled with me. Are you?”

He wouldn’t look at her.

“Why don’t you just say it like it is, Luke? It’s not like I haven’t endured worse.”

His eyes flashed to hers, a hint of guilt in them. “It’s nothing personal,” he said flatly. “I’d moved out of the close-protection business.”

“Why?”

“Not my thing.”

“Great,” she muttered to herself. A reluctant bodyguard. She’d almost made the mistake of thinking he cared. Just a little. A part of her actually wanted him to care. The loneliness in Jess wanted to attach meaning to his incredible soul-searing kiss.

A dark sense of depression descended on her. She was a fool to be so needy. It made her angry.

He got out, came round to the passenger side, her camera bag in his hand, and he opened the door. “Coming?”

She closed her eyes for a moment and sucked in a deep breath of cold ocean air mixed with brine. “Yeah. I guess I’m flat out of choices.”

He jutted his chin toward a row of houseboats interspersed with yachts. “My place is down there, on the water.”

The snow was dumping heavily now, big fat flakes waltzing on the wind and shimmying in the halos of lights that lined the wooden boardwalk to the boathouses. It was settling fast on the yachts and the stacked rows of kayaks, but the flakes melted into blackness as they hit the glistening dark water of False Creek.

He took her arm. “Careful. The boardwalk gets slippery.”

A quiver of heat shot through Jessica as her body connected with his again. She cursed to herself, wondering if his attentiveness was chivalry or chauvinism.

Or just another aspect of a job he didn’t want.

Chapter 3

Luke strode into his living room, booted up his laptop and set his satellite phone next to it. He hooked his finger into the hem of his sweater and pulled it up over his head as he walked to the bathroom, desperate to scrub the lingering scent of booze from his skin and from his memory, knowing at the same time no matter how hard he abraded himself, he was never going to scrape deep enough to eradicate the drunken nightmares that lingered in the dark crevices of his brain.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he called back to her as he went around the corner, leaving her standing alone in the middle of his living room. He’d check in with Jacques as soon as he was done. “Make yourself at home. Take anything you want from the kitchen.”

“I might just leave!” she yelled after him, irritation snipping her voice suddenly.

He stilled, turned and stepped shirtless back around the corner, his eyes narrowing onto her. “Jess, all that stands between you and a bullet right now is me. I think you’re smart enough to see that.” He turned to go, hesitated, spun back. “But if you really want to go, please, be my guest.”

“You said it was your job to protect me,” she called out.

“Never wanted the damn job in the first place,” he muttered to himself as he kept on walking. He stepped into the bathroom, shut the door and turned the shower on scalding hot. Jacques and the FDS crew could wait. She’d be safe here. Neither the Triad nor the cops had a handle on his identity.

And he was damn sure she wasn’t going to leave. Jessica Chan’s memories might be pharmacologically cross-wired, but he doubted the rest of her brain was. The lady knew how to survive. She’d made it two days on her own with Chinese assassins after her blood. And he was impressed with how she handled tonight.

She wanted to survive.

He had to respect that. Luke knew just how easy it was to give up.

Jessica stared openmouthed at the space Luke Stone had just vacated. The man had one of the most ripped bodies she’d ever had the pleasure of personally encountering. But it was the back he’d turned on her that truly shocked.

Every little bit of exposed skin was crisscrossed with long, pale scars, as though he’d been lashed and shredded within mere inches of his life.

She began to tremble. She steadied herself by reaching out for the back of his couch.

Luke Stone understood torture.

Maybe…just maybe…this man would understand her.

She heard the shower go on and she ran her hands over her hair trying to force rational thought. Panic could bring the hallucinations on again, the doctors had told her that. She had to focus on the present. On moving forward. It was her only option. If she lost her grasp on reality now, they’d finally win.

She was never going to let them win.

She realized she still had Luke’s leather jacket on though it was warm in his home. He’d put on the gas fire and the kettle on his way through the kitchen.

She slipped out of his jacket, draped it over the couch and went to the floor-to-ceiling windows of his small living room. The windows looked right onto the water. He had a kayak tethered to a small deck and a bike was chained against the wall. The lights of English Bay twinkled on the opposite side of False Creek, everything muted by softly falling snow. It was a pretty place. She wondered if the yacht she’d seen moored to the side of the double-story boathouse was also his. She suspected it was.

She turned to take in the rest of his living space. It was paneled wood and purely male—the home of an outdoorsman. Touring skis and a snowboard hung from racks near the door. Technical snowshoes were propped against the wall near a hall closet that hung slightly ajar, exposing a tangle of ropes, carabiners and jackets.

Contour maps, a compass and a GPS device cluttered his dining table. Jessica walked over and examined the maps. They were of British Columbia’s backcountry. Luke Stone’s physique was honed by an obvious passion for the wilderness. He had a taste for thrill, adventure. She glanced up at the framed black-and-white photographs that covered one wall. Their evocative beauty drew her closer.

With mild shock, Jessica realized he’d taken them. He’d signed them in the bottom right corners. A shimmer of interest rippled through her as she peered closely at the haunting images. She understood photography—the artistic nuances of black-and-white in particular.

Black-and-white film was what she used. It was her sanity and she clung to it even in a digital era. Two years ago a nurse Jessica had befriended while in the psychiatric institution in England had given her an old Minolta camera. Jessica started using it to record her days, proving to herself that her day-today life was real, not imagined, that her memories of it were true. She’d become good at it. And when she’d started developing her own work, the act of watching those daily memories take literal shape in the darkroom had filled Jessica’s heart with indescribable joy. With progressive skill in the darkroom came increased mental confidence. That old Minolta had given Jessica the strength to fight back, the will to believe in herself.

Taking photographs had saved her.

Now it looked as though it might destroy her.

She leaned forward and closely examined Luke’s images. The way he captured light and contrasting shadow was beautiful. Poignant. He’d shot mountain peaks and ragged cliffs. Eagles, a grizzly. Oceans and ice at sunset. Deserts with nothing but undulating dunes for miles. A wolf pup in snow. A cougar in the crook of two branches. But no humans. Not even a footprint.

She touched a framed image of a small bear cub watching its mother. The look of need and dependence in the young animal’s eyes filled Jessica’s chest with aching emotion. It was poetic. All the images were. They told her that whoever had held this camera and captured these wild scenes had soul. It was an almost elegiac vision of life in its raw, harsh beauty. Luke Stone had a beautiful mind buried somewhere in that rugged brawn and Jessica suspected there was something sad in there, too.

Because there was sadness in these pictures.

She wondered if he was always alone when he shot his film. Did he need these open spaces for his sanity? Was this his freedom? She had a sense the man was a true loner, a transient who didn’t put down roots easily. Perhaps that’s why he lived here on the water—it offered a sense of escape.

She heard the shower go off and a voyeuristic guilt pinged through her. She turned quickly to take in the rest of the room before he returned. There was no sign of family or girlfriends—no female touch in the decor at all. The only sign of human connection was a small color print pinned to his fridge with a magnet. It showed three rugged and weather-browned men on pack horses in a red desert. She couldn’t make out the faces, but she thought one might be Luke.

Jessica’s eyes settled on his computer.

She glanced in the direction of the bathroom. What did she have to lose?

She hastened over to it, quickly tapped a key that brought the monitor to life, saw a file with her name. Her pulse quickened.

She shot another look over her shoulder and clicked on the file. Her breath caught in her throat. Her life, everything, it was all there.

She scrolled rapidly through the information, her body going hot. He had photographs, her résumé, stories on her abduction in China, the name of her mental institution in the U.K., her psychiatrist’s notes, the medication she was on, even a virtual transcript of her conversation with Giles two days ago…she heard the bathroom door open. Her breath lodged in her throat.

She quickly closed the file and moved to the opposite end of the room, heart beating fast. She hugged herself, feeling violated in a way she couldn’t even begin to articulate.