The Bride And The Mercenary. Harper Allen

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      If she hurried, she could be back at St. Margaret’s before Sully told the assembled guests the bride had gone AWOL.

      She tugged at her hand again. “No,” she said gently. “Whoever they are, they’re not after me. I should get back to my own world now.”

      She didn’t know why she’d phrased it like that, only that it seemed right. She looked up into the tanned, heavily bearded face, seeing him for the first time as the man he was, not as the man she’d so desperately and illogically wanted him to be. A pang of sadness stirred in her. She’d been right about one thing. The expression she’d thought she’d seen in those eyes was anguish. He was looking at her as if the very sight of her caused him immeasurable pain, and maybe it did. Maybe she reminded him of someone, too—a woman he’d known, a girl he’d loved, the life he’d lived before everything had spiralled out of control for him.

      “I’ll decoy them away from you.” She kept her voice soft. “A bride on a motorcycle would be enough to distract anyone, and that’ll give you a chance to get to safety.”

      Her attempt at reassurance didn’t have the effect she’d intended.

      “No!”

      The explosiveness of his answer was shockingly loud in the quiet alleyway, his voice amplified by the narrow brick walls of the buildings. Ainslie felt a twinge of nervousness, but almost immediately she realized that her unease wasn’t a result of his unexpected reaction.

      The alleyway was quiet. They were in the middle of a busy city—surely it wasn’t natural not to hear any signs of life. Now that she thought about it, she realized she hadn’t seen so much as a stray cat since she’d driven in here.

      She gave herself a mental shake. The man’s fear was contagious. This time when she tried to pull away from him, she put more force into it.

      Still he wouldn’t let go.

      “It’s too late. They have to know you’re with me, and they won’t allow you to leave now. Come on. Maybe if we hide, they’ll keep on going.”

      He was more than just troubled. He was paranoid. Whoever they were, he’d credited them with almost supernatural powers. Now her uneasiness was because of him.

      Don’t upset him any more than he is already, for God’s sake, she told herself sharply. Keep everything calm and low key, and just walk out of here.

      “Even if they do come after me, they can’t catch me on that.” She nodded at Bobby’s motorcycle, garishly yellow against the crumbling wall. “It’ll be better if we split up and—”

      “Dammit, they’ll kill you!” For a moment reality faded again. He even sounded like Malone, Ainslie thought faintly—except Malone had never spoken to her with such fearful urgency. “Don’t you get it? These people are ruthless, Lee! We can’t let them find us!”

      Jerking her roughly toward the door, he shoved her inside and then pulled it shut. Ainslie heard him fumbling in the dark for something, and then the blackness was suddenly illuminated by the beam of a flashlight.

      “Up those stairs,” he whispered hoarsely. “Hurry!”

      She didn’t move. “What did you just call me?” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. He looked impatiently at her, his beard and the tangle of hair falling across his eyes shadowing his face.

      “I said take the stairs. Come on, we have to get to the third floor!”

      “You called me Lee. How did you know my name?”

      “Dammit, we’re wasting time! They’re coming for us!”

      Grabbing her roughly by the arm again, he started up the stairs. The faint beam of the flashlight bobbing eerily ahead of them, Ainslie found herself stumbling up the first few steps. She felt her shoe catch on the trailing hem of her gown and heard it rip slightly before she could release it.

      “Watch the fifth step. It’s loose.” Frowning, he looked over his shoulder at her, not slowing his pace or loosening his grip. “What the hell are you wearing, anyway?”

      “It’s a wedding dress.” At the Alice in Wonderland turn to the conversation, she felt as if her final connection with the sane world on the outside had just been severed. “I was supposed to be getting married today, remember? You saw me going into the church.”

      “Oh.” There was a note of uncertainty in his voice, and she wondered if he did remember. They reached the second floor, turned a corner, and continued upward. “Well, I guess the wedding’s off now,” he grunted dismissively, hauling her up the last few steps.

      They were on the third floor, the flashlight wavering over a dusty, patterned carpet that ran down the hallway in front of them. As her abductor—of course, he thinks he’s my rescuer, she told herself grimly—dragged her swiftly along the seemingly endless hallway, on either side she saw numbered doors, forbiddingly dark rectangles set into the peeling walls.

      He’d called her Lee. She was sure he’d called her by name, although at this point she realized she couldn’t be sure of anything. But she’d heard him, she knew she had, and the only way he could have known it was if—

      If he’d read about the wedding in the papers, she told herself sharply. If he’d heard someone outside St. Margaret’s mention it. For God’s sake, the events board on the church lawn lists the names of the bride and groom when there’s a wedding being held. He could have seen that.

      Except somehow those explanations didn’t seem very convincing. Whoever he was, he lived in his own world—the world of him and them. The danger he perceived all around him was imaginary, of course, but to him it was real and immediate. He focused on it exclusively. Nothing else existed for him.

      Which was fine, if that was the way he wanted to live his life. Except now she’d been drawn into his paranoia.

      Whatever excuse Sully was making for her right now, it couldn’t be more outlandish than the situation she was in, Ainslie thought. She couldn’t allow this to go any further. As he came to an abrupt halt in front of one of the doors, she found her voice.

      “I’m not going in there with you.” She was shaking, she noted dispassionately. “I don’t know who you think is after you, but I know that if you don’t let me leave, people are going to start looking for me. As soon as they see that motorcycle outside, they’ll know I’m here. You don’t want to spend tonight in a jail cell, do you?”

      With the hand that wasn’t holding hers, he fished for something inside the open collar of the ragged shirt he was wearing under the greatcoat. Ainslie saw it was a length of string with a number of keys attached to it.

      “They’re here.”

      She was close enough to him to feel the sudden rigidity in his muscles. In the act of unlocking the door, he froze in a listening position, his whole demeanor one of tense alertness. Despite herself, she froze, too.

      “I don’t hear any—” she began in a whisper, but then stopped.

      Had she heard something? Unconsciously holding her breath, and realizing that her unlikely companion was doing the same, she listened intently, straining her ears СКАЧАТЬ