Leigh Riker - Double Take

It was the least he could do.

Because of me you’re lying here in a pool of your own blood.

McKenzie clutched at his coat sleeve, his voice weaker now.

“Cameron…” Then in a final gasp, another name. “Ven.”

Her name went through J.C. not like a sweet reprieve but like the bullets James had taken for J.C.’s brutal error, and he wondered for a moment if his own blood had spilled on the ground. The place smelled of rotting garbage, but of stale whiskey, too, and now of death.

He didn’t trust McKenzie, not one bit more than he’d trusted his own father. Even McKenzie’s name, his real name before the many aliases he’d used, was only a point of reference now for J.C.

But that didn’t mean he wanted him dead either.

A chill raced along J.C.’s veins, like guilt. His fingers clenched around McKenzie’s shoulders, then moved up to his throat.

And he realized he felt nothing. Nothing.

That last faint beat of blood was gone, like the assassin who had struck Cameron’s father. All that remained was the ever-closer scream of the sirens that shattered silence. The sirens, and now his own fear.

The body slumped against him. J.C. looked down into blank, staring eyes. James McKenzie was dead. All he’d left behind was a daughter and those last few words.

The cops and the ambulance shrieked to a halt at the entrance to the alley. But J.C. didn’t move.

This isn’t over yet, he kept thinking, and the words kept echoing inside.

New York City

Her father had been dead for nearly a year. Venuto Destina had been out of prison for a week. And Cameron McKenzie was still looking over her shoulder.

Now she felt the back of her neck prickle, and the too-familiar thought shot through her brain. I’m being followed. Unable to fight the lifelong urge, she glanced behind her again along the dark Manhattan street but the footsteps she imagined hearing had died.

She saw no one.

Relief swept through her, canceling the swift rush of adrenaline, and for a moment she felt her heartbeat begin to slow. She often worked late—how else could The Unlimited Chef, Cameron’s cooking business for celebrities, show more than a small profit?—but she never liked walking home by herself.

It was necessary, of course, for her own peace of mind. Yet on this cold December night—the week after Thanks-giving—with light snow falling, she liked it even less. As if to acknowledge a threat, fewer people seemed to be out. Only a handful dotted the normally crowded sidewalks and several restaurants had closed early tonight. On this side street in the Seventies off Third Avenue, where Christmas lights already twinkled in almost every window, she felt utterly alone.

She strode briskly toward her apartment, arms wrapped around her too-thin coat trying to keep warm, but the chill seemed to penetrate her very bones. Just a few more blocks, she told herself. Then she’d feel safe.

Suddenly, her pulse hitched again. Her heart took up a noisy pounding.

Was that another footstep behind her? The sound of a man’s shoes muffled by the lightly falling snow? She would not look.

Then the blare of a passing taxi’s horn sent a shock blast through her body, and she struggled against panic. Now she heard nothing. The danger she had lived with for most of her life was gone, like those imagined footsteps. Safe, she tried to think.

Only the past lurked behind her now, not some assailant or unseen threat that seemed to hover in the cold air like a hand about to snuff out her breath.

Cameron silently scolded herself. This unfounded paranoia was why she forced herself to walk home each night rather than hail a cab or hop a city bus and bathe herself in its harsh interior light. She wouldn’t take the easy way out.

“I am going to lead a normal life,” she said aloud.

Even without Dad.

At the thought of James McKenzie, she pressed her lips tight.

She missed him. Oh God, how she missed him.

But he, of all people, wouldn’t want her cowering behind closed doors. Wouldn’t want her shivering in terror because Destina was free.

With one ear still tuned to any sound behind her, she picked up her pace.

She would go home, fix a cup of hot chocolate, open her mail…

Normal things. Everyday things.

She had yearned for them too long. Now, most of the time, she had them.

Yet the vague feeling of impending doom stalked her every step and Cameron finally surrendered again to the heart-thumping need to look over her shoulder. One more time. Just to be sure…

Seeing nothing, she felt in a pocket for her key then clutched it tight, ready to strike out at some attacker’s eyes. Frowning, she swept into the lighted lobby of her high-rise apartment building. There, too, the lobby was already decked out with wreaths and a huge tree. Normally, the sight would cheer her.

“’Evening, Fred,” she greeted the elderly doorman. And checked the sidewalk outside, reflected in the mirrored glass of the elevator bank, while she waited for the car.

“A cold one,” he said, clearly relishing the overheated lobby.

She shivered. “I’m glad to be home.”

“This is New York, not Arizona. You need a warmer coat.”

“Or thicker blood.” Leaving his laugh behind, she stepped into the elevator.

Blood. There must have been so much blood when her father…

Cameron blinked and stared up at the floor indicator. Two, three, four…at number eight the doors glided open. Cameron knew she was being silly, but she held them back anyway—and peered out into the long hall. Looking left then right, she confirmed that it, like the street downstairs, remained empty.

With her key gripped tight in a fist, she hurried to her own door. Her sensible shoes sank into the dense plush of the hallway carpet. She couldn’t afford this address, but she needed it. Image was everything.

After all, she had been forced to reinvent herself. More than once.

Turning her back on the hall, she slipped the key into her lock.

Startled by a slight sound from behind, she froze. Alarm flashed through her body like a scream. Dread pooled in her veins and her pulse beat thundered again. I was right, I was right, dammit. Before she could spin around, she felt someone at her back. She sensed the hard male body inches from her spine, watched the large, callused hand cover hers on the key. Her nose picked up his scent, but the lone word didn’t calm her.

“Relax.”

That harsh male voice, deep and low, sent her crashing back into the nightmare. That scent he carried, so uniquely his…she’d hoped never to smell it again. A hint of outdoors, of musk, of heat. Even a frigid December in New York couldn’t protect her.

Maybe, Cameron thought, there was no escape.

HE SHOULD LET HER GO. Now.

Yet he couldn’t seem to move and J.C. silently cursed himself again.

He knew better than to come up behind a solitary woman in a dimly lit hall—especially an edgy woman like this—just as he’d known not to follow her home, or to accost her downstairs in the building lobby.

Frankly, there didn’t seem to be an optimum place to confront her.

Just as there would be no easy way to tell her what he’d come to say.

In the past week everything had changed.

J.C. kept his mouth shut. His professional training hadn’t covered these bases, no way, but he’d done enough damage, especially with James McKenzie. From the race of the pulse at Cameron’s slender wrist, he guessed she wouldn’t relax until next week. If then.

Fresh guilt swamped him. Nothing new, but for the past year he’d devoted his every waking moment to official routine, official protocol, to one careful bureaucratic step at a time. It hadn’t helped. He didn’t sleep much and when he did, he dreamed of death and destruction and his own deadly error in that Denver alley.