Loreth White - The Heart of a Renegade

She fumbled with the buckle and once he saw she was secure, he flipped on the windshield wipers and hit the gas. He swerved out of the parking lot, racing away from the scene as an army of fire engines, ambulances and police vehicles converged on the pandemonium behind them.

Luke slowed his vehicle as they approached the bridge onramp. Snow was turning to slush and it would be light in a few hours. They needed to get out of the city before that happened.

“What now?” she asked in a thin voice.

He inhaled deeply, wishing he’d never met her. “Now,” he said flatly, “we really are in the same boat, Jess.”

“Where are we going?” He could hear despair in her voice and guilt stirred in him.

“Someplace out of the city,” he said. “Somewhere I can hand you over to the CIA before—” he cut it. Fell silent.

“Before I do any more damage. That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?”

“The damage is done, Jess. There’s no going back. Now we deal with the road ahead. Together.” Unfortunately.

And he was going to make sure he got it over with as quickly as possible, he thought as he cranked up the heater to warm her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

His eyes cut sharply to hers and he saw the telltale glisten of tears. He looked away quickly. He really needed to get away from her soon. Before he let her down. Before he let himself down.

“Dry your hair,” he said curtly in an effort to distract her. “Turn up the fan on your side.”

He pulled off the road about twenty minutes later, just before they hit the notorious Sea to Sky Highway, and changed the license plates.

Jessica studied Luke’s profile as he fiddled with the car radio. The meteorologist was warning of three back-to-back storm fronts, the first of which would hit within the hour. It was almost seven in the morning, yet the sky was still an ominous black. Already a mounting wind was buffeting their vehicle as they negotiated the twisting road that hugged cliffs above a sheer drop to the ocean.

Luke hadn’t said a word since they’d hit this dangerous stretch of road, but Jessica could sense the anger rolling off him in waves. She felt absolutely terrible that he’d lost his house. She was especially torn by the destruction of those haunting black-and-white images that had graced his walls.

“Luke, I really am sorry for the loss of your home,” she said, unable to stop herself.

His hands tightened on the wheel. “Don’t be,” he said. “Not your fault.”

“It is my fault. If it wasn’t for me, Stephanie and Giles would be alive, you’d still have your—”

“You’re thinking like a victim, Jess.” His voice was clipped. “You did nothing to deserve this.”

“Well, neither did you. So I am sorry.”

A muscle began to pulse at his jawline. “Quit apologizing. I told you, it’s my job.”

“It was also your home, Luke.”

His eyes cut to hers. “Forget about it, okay? It was just stuff. You don’t get to put down roots in my business. You don’t get attached to stuff.” He blew out a breath. “Look, Jess, it was a mistake to accumulate what I had. Mistakes happen when you get complacent. This was simply a wake-up call. That’s all.”

Jessica had a sense Luke was anything but complacent. And something about his home told her he did care about what was in it. She trusted her instincts. They’d given her many a scoop in the past.

“How long had you been living there, Luke?” she asked quietly.

“Long enough.”

“So why did you come to Vancouver?”

He remained silent.

She shifted in her seat to face him. “Look, if you just spit it out and tell me who I’m dealing with here, then I’ll leave you alone, okay?”

Again, his silence was almost threatening.

“If you were in my shoes, Luke, you’d ask. You’d need to know.”

“Fair enough,” he said, glancing at her. “The FDS sent me here to establish a small satellite office for gathering Pacific Rim intelligence, specifically on Asian criminal networks that collude with terrorists.”

“I thought you said your company was a private military company.”

“It is. PMCs are moving increasingly into the intelligence field. Clients demand this service.”

“Why Vancouver?”

“That should be obvious—it’s a major port city on the Pacific Rim with a significant Asian population and it’s an easy entry point to the United States.”

“You’re gathering this intelligence yourself?”

“My job is—was,” he corrected, “to get a handle on the key players behind the local tongs and triads and to determine what sort of new businesses they’re moving into. Traditionally it’s been heroin, gambling, extortion, black-market weapons, human trafficking and business and banking fraud. However, the syndicates are moving into increasingly sophisticated corporate espionage and, along with military hardware components, they’re now trafficking in biological and chemical components. I was supposed to assess which groups have the potential to become real political problems.”

“Are the Dragon Heads part of this?”

“The Dragon Heads Triad is at the top of my list. They’re one of the primary reasons I’m here. They’ve been aggressively acquiring territory around the world by usurping long-established gangs and networks. They infiltrate the rival tong or triad, then assassinate the leaders and govern by a code of terror. Anyone who steps out of line is killed as a warning.”

“You say this was your job?”

He snorted. “I suspect I’m going to have trouble fulfilling those functions now that I’m on the Dragon Heads hit list.”

Jessica’s stomach twisted. This just kept getting worse. “What makes you a specialist in this area, Luke?”

“Let’s just say I’ve had some…personal experience with triads.”

She thought about the scars on his back. “Is that why they sent you to pick me up?”

“No, Jess. I was the only mutt available. I just happen to also have significant close-protection experience.”

“Luke?”

He glanced at her again. “What?”

“I heard you say on the phone that you’d refused to do bodyguard gigs for this company of yours.”

“Yes.”

“Did…something happen on a job? Back in Australia?”

His energy shifted perceptibly. “Does this kind of interrogation come naturally from being an investigative journalist, Jessica, or were you just born nosy?”

She smiled in spite of herself. “I get the message. You don’t want to talk about yourself.”

“Right.”

She leaned back into her seat and closed her eyes, fatigue starting to consume her again as the adrenaline wore off. “But I will tell you one thing about me, Luke Stone,” she said softly through closed eyes. “In the end I always get the information I want.”

Luke felt a smile tug at his lips. She’d just issued him a challenge, almost playful in spite of the situation. It awakened something in him. Something that felt very, very foreign.

“That dogged curiosity is exactly what got you in trouble in the first place, Jessica Chan,” he said. “A lesser person would have given up after what you’d been through.”

Like he had.

She opened one eye. “Was that a compliment, Stone?”

“Just a statement of fact, Jess.”

“You do realize you’ve been calling me ‘Jess’ from the moment I met you? Is that an Australian thing or were you just born irreverent?”

He chuckled softly, caught off guard. He liked this woman. She had a way of opening him up. But that was exactly the problem with her. It made her dangerous to him, because Luke didn’t want to go back to being the man he once was. He didn’t want to open himself to emotion.