Page 78 of Dangerous Lover

“The capital of Sierra Leone?” Caroline asked. “What on earth was he doing there? He didn’t say anything about Africa.”

“No? That’s probably understandable, seeing as how he and three other mercenaries massacred a village of women and children.”

“That’s a lie!” The words came from deep inside her. She stood up suddenly. “I refuse to listen?—”

The Special Agent didn’t raise his voice, but then he didn’t have to. “Sit down, Ms. Lake, or I will haulyouin for obstruction of justice. Sit!”

She sat and folded her hands on the table to keep them from trembling. “There is no way Jack Prescott could do something like that.”

He didn’t even answer, simply stared at her out of his cold eyes.

“Have you been watching the news over the weekend?”

What she’d been doing over the weekend was no business of his. “I fail to see?—”

“Answer the question, Ms. Lake,” he interrupted in a hard voice, “or I will take you into the Seattle office and have you questioned there, which would be much less pleasant for you. Would you like that? Your choice.”

“I—no, um, to answer your question, I haven’t been watching the news over the Christmas holiday.” She’d been too busywith Jack and besides—now that she thought of it—both her radio and her TV sets had been on the blink. It was only then that it occurred to her how unusual it was for both the radio and the TV to die on the same weekend. “I don’t really see what that has to do with anything.”

“It’s been all over TV,” Sanders said, leaning forward. “I don’t know how you could have missed it.”

The FBI agent shot Sanders a look that had Sanders lifting his hands—sorry—and sitting back. The agent turned back to her. Caroline kept herself from shivering by force of will. The man had the coldest eyes she’d ever seen.

“Ms. Lake, it appears you are unaware of the fact that five days ago, four US military contractors who worked for a US private security company called ENP Security massacred a village of women and children in Sierra Leone and made off with a fortune in uncut diamonds. Sierra Leonean soldiers appeared at the end and killed three of the military contractors. One escaped with the diamonds.”

What a horrible story. Maybe her TV and the radio had died out of compassion, deciding to spare her this news. “I’m sorry. What does that have to do with me?”

“The man who escaped was Vincent Deaver. You know him as Jack Prescott. He’s a very dangerous man and we need your help in bringing him in.”

A sudden gust of gelid air burst into the shop as a customer walked in. Caroline heard the ping of the bell as if from a great distance. Laurel Holly, the mayor’s wife. She had to dosomething, get up, go to Laurel, get away from this terrible man. She placed her hands flat on the table, but somehow, she couldn’t. Something was wrong with her legs.

Sanders got up immediately and went to Laurel. Caroline heard them murmuring, then Laurel left and Sanders turned the OPEN sign around to CLOSED and walked back, never taking his eyes from her face. “No one will bother us now.”

He had the most awful look—triumphant and self-satisfied. Happy. Happy at the thought that she might have been sleeping with a mass murderer.

If there had been a tiny little something inside her, a little softness for Sanders, for old time’s sake, it died right then and there. He wanted Jack to be a monster, a war criminal. It made him happy.

Well, too bad, because she didn’t believe it, not for a moment.

Jack—a mass murderer?Jack?A man who’d kill for diamonds? It wasn’t possible. She refused to believe it. Her body didn’t.

The man who’d held her so gently, so self-controlled he constantly reined himself in so he wouldn’t hurt her, not even inadvertently, in the throes of passion. That man wasn’t a murderer.

Of course, he was a soldier. Undoubtedly, he’d killed, time and again, in the line of duty.

Caroline shivered violently, as if her heart had suddenly frozen. The taste of the breakfast she’d choked down this morning was in her mouth. She clamped her jaw shut as bile tickled her throat.

Never mind that she’d had her doubts about Jack. They’d been more along the lines of how he knew her home so well, not whether he might be a monster.

She looked the Special Agent straight in the face. “That’s insane. Jack’s not a mass murderer! And he wasn’t in Africa, he was in Pakistan this winter. You’ve got the wrong man.”

Agent Butler slid another photograph across the table. Caroline crossed her arms, body language rejecting what she was seeing in the photograph and stared straight ahead. The agent was a good starer, better than she was. His gaze was steady and unrelenting and with a shudder and a sigh, Caroline gave in and dropped her eyes to the photograph. Just a flicker of a gaze, but it was enough.

The photograph was very clear.

Jack, with several days’ growth of beard, in camouflage, holding a big black gun. Dense, blindingly green foliage in the background, a line of wooden huts with tin roofs, African children playing in the dust, African soldiers standing guard.

There was a time stamp in white at the bottom. 11:21 am, December 21st.

---