But he thought, this time, maybe something had found him.
Chapter 2
Gwen should have gone right into that hotel and grabbed a room. Instead she found herself too shaken to handle the transaction. She stood at the double-door entry for a moment, and then turned on her heel, heading for the sidewalk.
Not the best part of town for a midnight stroll. But she’d spotted the all-night diner on the way in—a block away, well-lit—and her stomach had growled at the sight. At the moment it was still a little too clenched to countenance the thought of food, but that’s what the walk was for. A block of dark privacy to collect her thoughts.
Besides, she was safer than most in this darkness. She’d know if anyone around was considering mayhem, thanks to her strange unwelcome legacy.
Her father’s pendant shifted with her long strides; she rotated the chain, wondering that she noticed it at all. It had been so much a part of her for so many years...never aging, never wearing, shedding soap, shampoo and sweat as readily as it did the tarnishing air.
I am nine years old, and my father gave me a pendant...and then tried to kill me for it.
But tonight her skin tingled slightly beneath it, and she briefly cupped her hand over it. “Behave,” she murmured.
She couldn’t remember when she’d started talking to it. When she’d been a girl and her father had nearly killed her before he disappeared, leaving only this behind? Or somewhere along the way? She only knew that it gave her strange comfort.
She smiled, no matter how briefly. For here she was, a dark city block from where she’d started—breathing deeply of the night air and feeling calm again. With food waiting before her. Just as planned.
Her stomach growled again. Right on cue.
The place looked used but clean, and the food smelled wonderful. A young couple in the far booth played a constant game of touch-and-flirt, mutually afflicted with bad tattoos and poor personal hygiene. A ragged man pushed a coffee cup around his little table, giving her no more than a desultory glance. The midnight clientele.
Including her hungry, travel-worn self.
Gwen grabbed a seat at the counter, snagged a plastic-encased menu, and flipped it open to a picture of the best breakfast burrito she’d ever seen—here in the state that claimed to have invented them. As the waitress approached, she pushed the menu away with her finger on the picture. “And decaf.”
Nice to be decisive. In this, at least.
The man with the coffee made a juicy throat-clearing noise, threw change on the table and left. As the door closed, several young men slipped in; the flirting couple drew back from one another to greet them.
Gwen sighed, fingers straying to the pendant.
She knew. She always knew. It had taken time to learn the hard lesson of when to react, when to stay silent, when to run away.
It had taken too long, actually. An emergency room visit or two.
But once upon a time her father had tried to kill her. Once upon a time, he’d nearly succeeded. And when she’d healed, tender young muscle and bone knitting back together, she’d discovered that now, she always knew.
They had weapons. They had intent.
She must have tensed. The waitress, a Hispanic woman with wiry grey at her temples and a tired smile at her eyes, flipped over her coffee cup, filled it and said, so casually, “Whatever they’re up to, they won’t do it in here.” And then a half shrug. “Mostly that crew is just figuring out how to grow up.”
They looked plenty grown up to Gwen.
“Thanks,” she said, picking up the coffee cup...meaning the reassurance. Extra tip for you.
But when the door opened again, she fumbled the cup, nearly dropping it. High cheekbones, strong jaw, scruffy dark hair, body by lean and mean. Her eyes widened, deer in the headlights—already off balance from her awareness of the weapons and the intent right here in the small diner behind her. Not subtle, Gwen.
Not subtle at all.
And that mouth, made to carry a wry smile, proved once again its proficiency at just that. “Not,” he told her from just inside the door, “following you.” His gaze flicked briefly to the young men in the background, noticing them—the low but intense conversation between them, the young woman impatient and defiant.
In this light, she could see the blue in his grey eyes, the exact cast of his mouth, the confidence in his movement. Up went his eyebrows—a bit of a natural brood in them—and he asked, “Okay?”
Belatedly, she realized the courtesy he offered: If you’re not comfortable with my presence, I’ll leave.
“Um, fine,” she said. “Eat, drink...whatever.”
The waitress appeared with her breakfast burrito, plunking down both ketchup and salsa, and slid the plate neatly into place before Gwen. No mean feat, considering that whereas she had ignored the young men from the get-go, now her gaze never left the man who had just entered.
She, too, had her own sense of things.
Dangerous things.
The man nodded at her plate as he sat beside her at the counter. “That looks good. And juice, if you have it.”
The waitress nodded, scribbled on her order pad and stuck the sheet on the counter behind her, a wall-cutout through which Gwen had gotten occasional glimpses of a cook. At the far table, voices rose in crude discord, then abruptly cut off. The young men trooped out, clomping for effect—leaving the couple at their table. No more touch-and-flirt...now it was an argument, swift and low.
“Don’t do it,” Gwen murmured.
But she could feel it. Before the young woman’s face closed in frustration and fear, before the young man pushed away from the table with a scrape of chair. She could feel it, and she winced and turned her back more completely.
Only to find Mac watching. Not only watching, but aware.
She’d reacted before the young man had moved.
Get over it, she thought at him. That was something else she’d outgrown—the need to explain herself. Herself or her travel-wrinkled clothes or her footloose, late-night arrival here.
Or even what it was about this man that made it hard to breathe.
She dug into the burrito. Deliberately.
Besides, if anyone should be answering questions...
He was more than scruffy, here in the café lighting. He was downright messed up—beyond the worse-for-wear jacket and the obvious stiffness of utterly sore ribs. A confusing road map of injuries marked his face, his hands—abrasions across his knuckles, one hand swollen throughout. Fresh blood but older cuts. Bruising fading to yellow in some spots but starkly purpled in others. The careful way he took a first bite of his newly delivered food.
Of course he caught her looking.
Without thinking, she gestured, reaching toward the freshest of the blood, a trickle from just inside his hairline, an unspoken you’ve got a little—
His polite disengagement vanished. His hand flashed out to snatch hers, a block and parry and grab, trapping her just tightly enough to verge on pain—stopping short of the follow-through that would have twisted tendon and bone.
She gasped, fought the impulse to yank away. Realized in surprise that she hadn’t seen it coming. And voiced, nonsensically, the final piece of the gesture, a single strangled word. “...Blood.”
His mouth twitched; the muscles of his jaw worked. Gently, deliberately, he released her hand. “It’s been an interesting evening,” he said, and it seemed to be meant to cover all of the moment’s circumstances. The bruises, the blood and the grab.