A Game of Chance by Linda Howard
When she did, he caught her feet and guided them to the next gouges. “Thanks,” she panted, and worked her way down another foot.
That was enough. He caught her around the knees and scooped her off the rock. She shrieked, fighting for her balance, but now that he had her in his grip he wasn’t about to let her go. Before she could catch her breath, he turned her and tossed her face down over his shoulder.
“Hey!” The indignant protest was muffled against his back.
“Just shut up,” he said between his teeth as he dipped down to pick up her knife, then set off for the camp. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“Good. You had too much hell in you, anyway.” She clutched him around the waist to steady herself. He just hoped she didn’t grab the pistol out of his waistband and shoot him, since it was so close to hand.
“Damn it, don’t you dare joke about it!” Her upturned bottom was very close to his hand. Temptation gnawed at him. Now that he had her down, he was shaking, and he wanted some retribution for having been put through that kind of anxiety. He put his hand on her butt and indulged in a few moments of fantasy, which involved her jeans around her knees and her bent over his lap.
He realized he was stroking his palm over the round curves of her buttocks and regretfully gave up on his fantasy. Some things weren’t going to happen. After he tended her hands and got through raising hell with her for taking such a risk, he fully intended to burn off his fright and anger with an hour or two on the blanket with her.
How could he still want her so much? This wasn’t part of the job; he could live with it, if it had been. This was obsession, deep and burning and gut-twisting. He had tried to put a light face on it, for her benefit, but if she had been more experienced, she would have known a man didn’t make love to a woman five times during the night just because she was available. At this rate, those three dozen condoms wouldn’t last even a week. He had already used six, and it might take two or three more to get him settled down after the scare she had given him.
The hard fact of it was, a man didn’t make love to a woman that often unless he was putting his brand on her.
This wouldn’t work. Couldn’t work. He had to get himself under control, stay focused on the job.
He heard her sniffing as they neared the camp. “Are you crying?” he demanded incredulously.
She sniffed again. “Don’t be silly. What’s that smell?” She inhaled deeply. “It smells like…food.”
Despite himself, a smile quirked the corners of his mouth. “I shot a rabbit.”
There was a small disruption on his shoulder as she twisted around so she could see the fire. Her squeal of delight almost punctured his eardrums, and his smile grew. He couldn’t stop himself from enjoying her; he had never before met anyone who took such joy in life, who was so vibrantly alive herself. How she could be a part of a network devoted to taking lives was beyond his understanding.
He dumped her on the ground under the overhang and squatted beside her, taking both her hands in his and turning them up for his inspection. He barely controlled a wince. Her fingers were not only scorched from the hot rock, they were scraped raw and bleeding.
Fury erupted in him again, a flash fire of temper at seeing the damage she had done to herself. He surged to his feet. “Of all the stupid, lame-brained…! What in hell were you thinking? You weren’t thinking at all, from the looks of it! Damn it, Sunny, you risked your life pulling this stupid stunt—”
“It wasn’t stupid,” she shouted, shooting to her feet to face him, her brilliant eyes narrowed. She clenched her bleeding hands into fists. “I know the risks. I also know it’s my only hope of getting out of this damn canyon before it’s too late!”
“Too late for what?” he yelled back. “Do you have a date this weekend or something?” The words were heavy with sarcasm.
“Yeah! It just so happens I do!” Breathing hard, she glared at him. “My sister is supposed to call.”
Chapter 10
A sister? Chance stared at her. His investigation hadn’t turned up any information about a sister. The Millers hadn’t had any children of their own, and he had found adoption papers only on Sunny. His mind raced. “You said you didn’t have any family.”
She gave him a stony look. “Well, I have a sister.”
Yeah, right. “You’d risk your life for a phone call?” Some terrorist act was being planned after all, he thought with a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. That was why she’d been lugging the tent around. He didn’t know how the tent fit into the scheme, but evidently she had been planning to drop out of sight.
“I would for this one.” She wheeled away, every line of her body tense. “I have to try. Margreta calls my cell phone every week at the same time. It’s how we know the other is still alive.” She turned back to him and shouted, “If I don’t answer that call, she’ll think I’m dead!”
Whoa. Once again, the pieces of the puzzle that was Sunny had been scattered. Margreta? Was that a code name? He searched his memory, which was extensive, but couldn’t find anything or anyone named Margreta. Sunny was so damned convincing….
“Why would she think you’re dead?” he demanded. “You might just be in a place that doesn’t have a signal—like here. What is she, some kind of nutcase?”
“I make certain I’m always somewhere that has a signal. And, no, she isn’t a nutcase!” She threw the words back at him like bullets, her mouth twisted with fury at him, at the situation, at her own helplessness. “Her problem is the same as mine—we’re our father’s daughters!”
His pulse leaped. There it was, out in the open, just like that. He hadn’t needed seduction; anger had done the job. “Your father?” he asked carefully.
Tears glittered in her eyes, dripped down her cheeks. She dashed them away with a furious gesture. “Our father,” she said bitterly. “We’ve been running from him all our lives.”
The pieces of the puzzle jumped about a little more, as if a fist had slammed down and jarred them. Easy, he cautioned himself. Don’t seem too interested. Find out exactly what she means; she could be referring to his influence. “What do you mean, running?”
“I mean running. Hiding.” She wiped away more tears. “Father dear is a terrorist. He’ll kill us if he ever finds us.”
Chance gently cleaned her hands with the alcohol wipes from the first aid kit, soothed the red places with burn ointment and the raw spots with antibiotic cream. The gauze she’d wrapped around her hands had protected her palms, but her fingers were a mess. Sunny felt a little bewildered. One minute they had been yelling at each other, the next she had been locked against him, his arms like a vise around her. His heart had been pounding like a runaway horse.
Since then he had been as tender as a mother with a child, rocking her in comfort, cuddling her, drying her tears. The emotional firestorm that had burned through her had left her feeling numb and disoriented; she let him do whatever he wanted without offering a protest, not that she had any reason to protest. It felt good to lean on him.
Satisfied with the care he had given her hands, he left her sitting on the rock while he added some fuel to the fire and turned the rabbit on the spit. Coming back under the overhang, he spread the blanket against the wall, scooped her into his arms, and settled on the blanket with her cradled against him. He propped his back against the wall, arranged her so she was draped half across his lap and lifted her face for a light kiss.
She managed a shaky smile. “What was that? A kiss to make it better?”
He rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip, his expression strangely intent as if studying her. “Something like that.”
“I’m sorry for crying all over you. I usually handle things better than this.”
“Tell me what’s going on,” he said quietly. “What’s this about your father?”
She leaned her head on his shoulder, grateful for his strength. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? But he’s the leader of a terrorist group that has done some
“I’ve never heard of him,” Chance lied.
“He operates mostly in Europe, but his network extends to the States. He even has someone planted in the FBI.” She was unable to keep the raw bitterness out of her voice. “Why do you think I don’t have a license for that pistol? I don’t know who the plant is, how high he ranks, but I do know he’s in a position to learn if the FBI gets any information Hauer wants. I didn’t want to be in any database, in case he found out who adopted me and what name I’m using.”
“So he doesn’t know who you are?”
She shook her head. She had spent a lifetime keeping all her fear and worry bottled up inside her, and now she couldn’t seem to stop it from spewing out. “My mother took Margreta and left him before I was born. I’ve never met him. She was five months pregnant with me when she ran.”
“What did she do?”
“She managed to lose herself. America’s a big place. She stayed on the move, changing her name, paying with cash she had taken from his safe. When I was born, she intended to have me by herself, in the motel room she’d taken for the night. But I wouldn’t come, the labor just kept on and on, and she knew something was wrong. Margreta was hungry and scared, crying. So she called 911.”
He wound a strand of golden hair around his finger. “And was there something wrong?”
“I was breech. She had a C-section. While she was groggy from the drugs, they asked her the father’s name and she didn’t think to make up a name, just blurted out his. So that’s how I got into the system, and how he knows about me.”
“How do you know he knows?”
“I was almost caught, once.” She shivered against him, and he held her closer. “He sent three men. We were in…Indianapolis, I think. I was five. Mom had bought an old car and we were going somewhere. We were always on the move. We got boxed in, in traffic. She saw them get out of their cars. She had taught us what to do if she ever told us to run. She dragged us out of the car and screamed ‘Run!’ I did, but Margreta started crying and grabbed Mom. So Mom took off running with Margreta. Two men went after them, and one came after me.” She began shuddering. “I hid in an alley, under some garbage. I could hear him calling me, his voice soft like he was singing. ‘Sonia, Sonia.’ Over and over. They knew my name. I waited forever, and finally he went away.”
“How did your mother find you again? Or was she caught?”
“No, she and Margreta got away, too. Mom taught herself street smarts, and she never went anywhere that she wasn’t always checking out ways to escape.”
He knew what that was like, Chance thought.
“I stayed in my hiding place. Mom had told us that sometimes, after we thought they were gone, the bad men would still be there watching, waiting to see if we came out. So I thought the bad men might be watching, and I stayed as still as I could. I don’t think it was winter, because I wasn’t wearing a coat, but when night fell I got cold. I was scared and hungry and didn’t know if I’d ever see Mom again. I didn’t leave, though, and finally I heard her calling me. She must have noticed where I ran and worked her way back when she thought it was safe. All I knew was that she’d found me. After that was when she decided it wasn’t safe to keep us with her anymore, so she began looking for someone to adopt us.”
Chance frowned. He hadn’t found a record of any adoption but hers. “The same family took both of you?”
“Yes, but I was the only one adopted. Margreta wouldn’t.” Her voice was soft. “Margreta…remembers things. She had lost everything except Mom, so I guess she clung more than I did. She had a hard time adapting.” She shrugged. “Having grown up the way I did, I can adjust to pretty much anything.”
Meaning she had taught herself not to cling. Instead, with her sunny personality, she had found joy and beauty wherever she could. He held her closer, letting her cling to him. “But…you said he was trying to kill you. It sounds as if he was trying very hard to get you back.”
She shook her head. “He was trying to get Margreta back. He didn’t know me. I was just a means he could have used to force Mom to give Margreta back to him. That’s all he would want with me now, to find Margreta. If I was caught, when he found out I don’t know where she is, I’d be worthless to him.”
“You don’t know?” he asked, startled.
“It’s safer that way. I haven’t seen her in years.” Unconscious longing for her sister was in her voice. “She has my cell phone number, and she calls me once a week. So long as I answer the call, she knows everything is all right.”
“But you don’t know how to get in touch with her?”
“No. I can’t tell them what I don’t know. I move around a lot, so a cell phone was the best way for us. I keep an apartment in Chicago, the tiniest, cheapest place I could find, but I don’t live there. It’s more of a decoy than anything else. I suppose if I live anywhere it’s in Atlanta, but I take all the assignments I can get. I seldom spend more than one night at a time in one place.”
“How would he find you now, since your name has been changed? Unless he knows who adopted you, but how could he find that out?” Chance himself had found her only because of the incident in Chicago, when her courier package was stolen and he checked her out. As soon as he said it, though, he knew that the mole in the FBI—and he would damn sure find out who that was—had probably done the same checking. Had he gone as deep in the layers of bureaucracy as Chance had, to the point of hacking into those sealed adoption records? Sunny’s cover might have been blown. He wondered if she realized it yet.
“I don’t know. I just know I can’t afford to assume I’m safe until I hear he’s dead.”
“What about your mom? And Margreta?”
“Mom’s dead.” Sunny paused, and he felt her inhale as if bracing herself. “They caught her. She committed suicide rather than give up any information on us. She had told us she would—and she did.”
She stopped, and Chance gave her time to deal with the bleakness he heard in her voice. Finally she said, “Margreta is using another name, I just don’t know what it is. She has a heart condition, so it’s better if she stays in one location.”
Margreta was living a fairly normal life, he thought, while Sunny was on the move, always looking over her shoulder. That was what she had known since birth, the way she had been taught to handle the situation. But what about the years they had spent with the Millers? Had her life been normal then?
She answered those questions herself. “I miss having a home,” she said wistfully. “But if you stay in one place you get to know people, form relationships. I couldn’t risk someone else’s life that way. God forbid I should get married, have children. If Hauer ever found me—” She broke off, shuddering at the thought of what Hauer was capable of doing to someone she loved in order to get the answers he wanted.
One thing didn’t make sense, Chance thought. Hauer was vicious and crazy and cunning, and would go to any lengths to recover his daughter. But why Margreta, and not Sunny, too? “Why is he so fixated on your sister?”
“Can’t you guess?” she asked rawly, and began shuddering again. “That’s why Mom took Margreta and ran. She found him with her, doing…things. Margreta was only four. He had evidently been abusing her for quite a while, maybe even most of her life. By then Mom had already found out some of what he was, but she hadn’t worked up the nerve to leave. After she found him with Margreta, she didn’t have a choice.” Her voice dropped to an agonized whisper. “Margreta remembers.”
Chance felt sick to his stomach. So in addition to being a vicious, murdering bastard, Hauer was also a pervert, a child molester. Killing was too good for him; he deserved to be dismembered—slowly.
Worn out by both physical labor and her emotional storm, Sunny drifted to sleep. Chance held her, content to let her rest. The fire needed more fuel, but so what? Holding her was more important. Thinking his way through this was more important.
First and foremost, he
She had no way of contacting Hauer. The only way to get to him, then, was to use her as bait. And considering how she felt about her father, she would never, under any circumstances, agree to any plan that brought her to his attention.
He would have to do it without her agreement, Chance thought grimly. He didn’t like using her, but the stakes were too high to abandon. Hauer couldn’t be left free to continue wreaking his destruction on the world. How many innocent people would die this year alone if he wasn’t caught?
There was no point in staying here any longer; he’d found out what he needed to know. Zane wouldn’t check in again, though, until tomorrow morning, so they were stuck until then. He adjusted Sunny in his arms and rested his face against the top of her head. He would use the time to formulate his game plan—and to use as many of those condoms as possible.
“Get away from me,” Sunny grumbled the next morning, turning her head away from his kiss. She pried his hand off her breast. “Don’t touch me, you—you mink.”
Chance snorted with laughter.
She pulled his chest hair.
“Ouch!” He drew back as far as he could in the small confines of the tent. “That hurt.”
“Good! I don’t think I can walk.” Quick as a snake, her hand darted out and pulled his chest hair again. “This way, you can have as much fun as I’m having.”