The Triangle Conspiracy

was very near. An arm’s length from him was a wooden stand, just like the one downstairs by the door. On it sat a small portable CD player. Its tiny digital readout, the only light in the room, told him it was playing track number ten.

The intruder on the stairs took two more steps.

Sean moved. He swiveled and grabbed the little stereo, the cord ripping out of the wall socket. He angled back around as the man hit the eleventh step. Holding the stereo in one hand, like a baseball pitcher going into his windup, Sean drew back with all his strength and flung it around the corner.

“What the-” muttered the man on the stairs.

Sean really didn’t think the little stereo would hurt the man, but if he was lucky, it would make him lose his balance. Sean leaped to his feet and rounded the corner. The man, who was shorter and older than Sean, though with a muscular build, had taken the blow right in his knee. A perfect shot. He was teetering on the top step. Sean reached out with his long arms. He could smell the man’s breath, stale with cigarettes. He shoved him in the chest and the man tumbled backward down the stairs.

He watched as the man’s head thumped against the wood floor. “Let’s go!” he yelled at Daryn.

She obeyed him with no hesitation. He grabbed the Glock and they ran down the stairs. Their attacker was still dazed and Sean stepped over him easily, but Daryn, with her shorter legs, had to actually go around him, and his hand reached out and closed over her bare ankle.

“Michael!” she screamed.

Even though the man’s eyes were still closed, he had a firm hold on Daryn’s leg, shaking her, trying to make her lose her own balance, just as Sean had done to him. Her arms flailed.

Sean had the Glock out in an instant, turning it around, butt first, bringing it down with all his force on the man’s wrist. Sean heard a sick cracking sound and the man’s hand went limp, releasing Daryn’s leg.

Sean reached out a hand to Daryn. She stepped past the groaning man and came toward him.

“Hey!” shouted the second man, from the entryway to the living room.

Sean half-turned. He saw the pistol in the man’s hand, saw it being raised, saw the barrel glint.

He whipped up the Glock and was thankful there was no safety on this gun. He hated guns with safeties-he would never have been able to learn to fire the damn things under stress if they had. He squeezed the trigger.

Marksmanship had never been Sean’s strong point, but the shot went right where he wanted it to go, into the shoulder of the second man’s gun arm. The gun flew out of the man’s hand and he stumbled backward, bouncing off the wood cabinet of the television set in the living room.

“Let’s go,” Sean said again.

He took Daryn’s hand and they ducked through what was left of the front door. For a moment Sean was confused when he stepped outside, looking for his Cherokee. Then he had it-Faith’s little Miata. He pointed to it. He and Daryn ran.

In less than five minutes Sean had the Miata on Interstate 44, driving south as it looped around the west side of Oklahoma City.

“Do you know who they were?” he asked.

Daryn sat in the passenger seat, trembling, hugging herself, each hand on the opposite shoulder. She shook her head.

“Do you have someplace you want me to take you?” He decided to do a little gentle probing, to see what, if anything, she might reveal. “Any family here in town?”

“No,” she whispered. “No family.”

“What about friends?” He thought of Britt, standing in the rain outside the Oasis Motel.

Another head shake. “I’m new here. I just got set up in town a little while ago. I haven’t…no, there’s no one. Help me. Please, Michael. Can you help me? You said you’re new here too.”

Christ Almighty, Sean thought. He had to be very careful, to try to remember what was real and what wasn’t. Kat Hall wasn’t real. Daryn McDermott was. Michael Sullivan wasn’t real. Sean Kelly was. And until he could break through Kat and get to Daryn, he would have to remember that everything was a lie. And by the same token, Michael would have to tell lies that Sean would have to deal with later. He shook his head, catching his reflection in the windshield.

What have I gotten into? Sean wondered.

“Let’s get you somewhere safe,” he said. “Then we’ll try to sort all this out.”

Daryn was still hugging herself. “You’ll stay with me?”

“I’ll stay with you.”

“Good,” she said, and Sean saw her face in the windshield as well.

11

SEAN WOUND UP DRIVING WEST ON INTERSTATE 40 until they reached El Reno, a midsize town half an hour’s drive outside the Oklahoma City metro. He got them a motel room, though for a moment he’d hesitated when the clerk asked if he wanted one bed or two.

We were about to have sex, he thought. But that was business, wasn’t it? And if so, what is it now?

He finally opted for one bed, thinking it would arouse more suspicion if a man and a woman checked into a single room with two beds. He paid cash and steered Daryn to an upstairs room. He sat her down on the bed, then went to the sink and ran cold water onto a white motel washcloth.

“Run this over your face,” he said, handing her the cloth. He noticed that his own hands were shaking ever so slightly.

She looked at his hands, then at the cloth, then into his eyes. She slowly took the cloth and wiped her face and neck.

Sean pulled the hard plastic motel chair near the bed and sat down. “Did you recognize them at all?” he asked.

Daryn shook her head.

Sean waited a moment, choosing his words. “Do you think they might have been former…clients?”

Daryn managed a smile. “I’m a professional escort, not a street hooker, Michael.”

Sean’s eyebrows knitted.

“The girls on the street try hard to forget the men they’re with. For most of the girls, the guys don’t even have faces. Why do you think I recommend my clients book two full hours? It’s not just sex.” She handed the damp cloth back to him. “I remember the men I spend time with. Neither of those guys looked the least bit familiar.”

“Is there any other…” Sean let the sentence hang.

Daryn stared at him. She was calm now, and Sean realized how striking her dark eyes were under the dyed blond hair.

“There is a possibility,” she said.

Sean leaned forward until his knees were almost touching hers.

“I have some…unusual…views,” she said.

“Go on.”

“Political, social views. I’ve had some clients that were powerful men, and it’s in their best interest to keep the status quo. Maybe I mouthed off about my views to the wrong person.”

“And they sent someone around to scare you?” Sean said. “That sounds-”

“Farfetched?” Daryn said. “Have you ever heard the term ‘gun thugs’?”

Sean nodded. “It’s kind of an old term.”

“Read your American history. In the early twentieth century, in the early years of the labor movement in this country, it was pretty common. Especially in the coal fields in Appalachia, where the miners were trying to organize. The coal companies would hire these guys as freelancers to come and shoot up the miners’ camps, to send them warnings. There were several pretty notorious massacres when things got out of hand.”

Sean nodded again. “It’s a pretty bloody history.”

“Maybe these guys were modern-day gun thugs, sending me a warning to be careful about my pillow talk.”

Sean smiled. “Unusual political and social views, huh?”

Daryn met his gaze head-on. “Yes.”

“Can you tell me? I’m just a woodworker, no one with powerful interests in keeping the status quo.” Sean breathed deeply. He was starting to dance along the tightrope.

Gain her trust.

How better to gain her trust? Even as Kat the professional escort, Daryn’s politics would shine through. He was certain of it. When a human being was as passionate about something as Daryn McDermott was about her issues, they wouldn’t ever leave those issues totally behind, even when descending into a different person’s life.

Gain her trust. Make her want to tell you. Make her want to strip Kat away and become Daryn again with you, for you.

“Please,” he said. “Please, I want to know.”

She looked at him squarely. “You saved my life,” she said, almost in a whisper.

Sean shrugged.

“No, don’t shrug it away. You saved my life.” She stood up and began unbuttoning the white blouse.

Sean started to hold out his hands, but he realized they were shaking again.

“This first,” Daryn said. She peeled off the blouse and stood there, braless, before him. “Then talk.”

She came to him, leaned over him, straddled him, her legs on either side of him. Her lips found his.

God help me, Sean thought.

When they were finished, Sean felt as sated as he ever had. She had moved with him as if they’d known each other forever, as if they’d already made intimate explorations of each other’s bodies. She took him places he had scarcely imagined. Her responses to him were raw and passionate and utterly breathtaking.

He lay bathed in perspiration on the motel bed. He stole a glance at the bedside clock, surprised to see that it was after eleven.

Sean had never been with a woman who so reveled in her own nakedness. All of the women he’d been with before had wanted to get dressed immediately, or at least slip under the sheets. But Daryn/Kat was absolutely unself-conscious about her body. She wore her nudity proudly, sitting cross-legged beside him.

“You’re quite a man,” she said softly.

Sean smiled at her.

She stroked his leg. “Let’s talk now,” she said.