Mackenzie's Pleasure

Zane locked and chained the door. Their breakfast still sat on the table, untouched and cold. He all but pushed her into a chair anyway. 'Eat,' he ordered. 'Just the toast, if nothing else. Put jelly on it. And drink all the water.'

He sat down on the arm of the couch, picked up the phone and began dialing.

Just to be safe, she ate half a slice of dry toast first, eschewing the balls of butter, which wouldn't melt on the cold toast anyway. Her stomach was peaceful at the moment, but she didn't want to do anything to upset it. She smeared the second half slice with jelly.

As she methodically ate and drank, she began to feel better. Zane was making no effort to keep her from hearing his conversation, and she gathered he was talking to his brother Chance again.

'If she was spotted, we have maybe half an hour,' he was saying. 'Get everyone on alert.' He listened a moment, then said, 'Yeah, I know. I'm slipping.' He said goodbye with a cryptic, 'Keep it cool.'

'Keep what cool?' Barrie asked, turning in her chair to face him.

A flicker of amusement lightened his remote eyes. 'Chance has a habit of sticking his nose, along with another part of his anatomy, into hot spots. He gets burned occasionally.'

'And you don't, I suppose?'

He shrugged. 'Occasionally,' he admitted.

He was very calm, unusually so, even for him. It was like waiting for a storm to break. Barrie took a deep breath and braced herself. 'All right, I'm feeling better,' she said, more evenly than she felt. 'Let me have it.'

He regarded her for a moment, then shook his head-regretfully, she thought. 'It'll have to wait. Chance said there's a lot of activity going on all of a sudden. It's all about to hit the fan.'

Chapter 13

They didn't have even the half hour Zane had hoped for.

The phone rang, and he picked it up. 'Roger,' he said, and placed the receiver into its cradle. He stood and strode over to Barrie. 'They're moving in,' he said, lifting her from the chair with an implacable hand. 'And you're going to a different floor.'

He was shoving her out of harm's way. She stiffened against the pressure of his hand, digging in her heels. He stopped and turned to face her, then placed his hand over her belly. 'You have to go,' he said, without a flicker of emotion. He was in combat mode, his face impassive, his eyes cold and distant.

He was right. Because of the baby, she had to go. She put her hand over his. 'All right. But do you have an extra pistol I could have—just in case?'

He hesitated briefly, then strode into the bedroom to his garment bag. The weapon he removed was a compact, five-shot revolver. 'Do you know how to use it?'

She folded her hand around the butt, feeling the smoothness of the wood. 'I've shot skeet, but I've never used a handgun. I'll manage.'

'There's no empty chamber, and no safety,' he said as he escorted her out the door. 'You can pull the hammer back before you fire, or you can use a little more effort and just pull the trigger. Nothing to it but aiming and firing. It's a thirty-eight caliber, so it has stopping power.' He was walking swiftly toward the stairs as he talked. He opened the stairwell door and began pushing her up the stairs, their steps echoing in the concrete silo. 'I'm going to put you in an empty room on the twenty-third floor, and I want you to stay there until either Chance or I come for you. If anyone else opens the door, shoot them.'

'I don't know what Chance looks like,' she blurted.

'Black hair, hazel eyes. Tall. So good-looking you start drooling when you see him. That's what he says women do, anyway.'

They reached the twenty-third floor. Barrie was only slightly winded, Zane not at all. As they stepped into the carpeted silence of the hallway, she asked, 'How do you know which rooms are empty?'

He produced one of the electronic cards from his pocket. 'Because one of Chance's people booked the room last night and slipped me the key card while we were eating supper. Just in case.'

He always had an alternate plan—just in case. She should have guessed.

He opened the door to room 2334 and ushered her inside, but he didn't enter himself. 'Lock and chain the door, and stay put,' he said, then turned and walked swiftly toward the stairwell. Barrie stood in the doorway and watched him. He stopped and looked at her over his shoulder. 'I'm waiting to hear the door being locked,' he said softly.

She stepped back, turned the lock and slid the chain into place.

Then she stood in the middle of the neat, silent room and quietly went to pieces.

She couldn't stand it. Zane was deliberately walking into danger—on her account—and she couldn't join him. She couldn't be there with him, couldn't guard his back. Because of the baby growing inside her, she was relegated to this safe niche while the man she loved faced bullets for her.

She sat on the floor and rocked back and forth, her arms folded over her stomach, keening softly as tears rolled down her face. This terror for Zane's safety was worse than anything she'd ever felt before, far worse than what she'd known at the hands of her kidnappers, worse even than when he'd been shot. At least she'd been there then. She'd been able to help, able to touch him.

She couldn't do anything now.

A sharp, deep report that sounded like thunder made her jump. Except it wasn't thunder; the desert sky was bright and cloudless. She buried her face against her knees, weeping harder. More shots. Some lighter, flatter in tone. A peculiar cough. Another deep thundering, then several in quick succession.

Then silence.

She pulled herself together and scrambled to the far corner of the room, behind the bed. She sat with her back against the wall and her arms braced on her knees, the pistol steady as she held it trained on the door. She didn't see how anyone other than Zane or Chance could know where she was, but she wouldn't gamble on it. She didn't know what any of this was about, or who her enemies were, except for Mack Prewett, probably.

Time crawled past. She didn't have her wristwatch on, and the clock radio on the bedside table was turned away from her. She didn't get up to check the time. She simply sat there with the pistol in her hand and waited, and died a little more with each passing minute of Zane's absence.

He didn't come. She felt the coldness of despair grow in her heart, spreading until it filled her chest, the pressure of it almost stopping her lungs. Her heartbeat slowed to a heavy, painful rhythm. Zane. He would have come, if he'd been able. He'd been shot again. Wounded. She wouldn't let herself even think the word dead, but it was there, in her heart, her chest, and she didn't know how she could go on.

There was a brief knock on the door. 'Barrie?' came a soft call, a voice that sounded tired and familiar. 'It's Art Sandefer. It's over. Mack's in custody, and you can come out now.'

Only Zane and Chance were supposed to know where she was. Zane had said that if anyone else opened the door, to shoot them. But she'd known Art Sandefer for years, known and respected both the man and the job he did. If Mack Prewett had been dirty, Art would have been on top of it. His presence here made sense.

'Barrie?' The door handle rattled.

She started to get up and let him in, then sank back to the floor. No. He wasn't Zane and he wasn't Chance. If she had lost Zane, the least she could do was follow his last instructions to the letter. His objective had been her safety, and she trusted him more than she had ever trusted anyone else in her life, including her father. She definitely trusted him more than she did Art Sandefer.

She was unprepared for the peculiar little coughing sound. Then the lock on the door exploded, and Art Sandefer pushed the door open and stepped inside. In his hand was a pistol with a thick silencer fitted onto the end of the barrel. Their eyes met across the room, his weary and cynical and acutely intelligent. And she knew.

Barrie pulled the trigger.

Zane was there only moments, seconds, later. Art had slumped to a sitting position against the open door, his hand pressed to the hole in his chest as his eyes glazed with shock. Zane kicked the weapon from Art's outstretched hand, but that was all the attention he paid to the wounded man. He stepped over him as if he wasn't there, rapidly crossing the room to where Barrie sat huddled in the corner, her face drawn and gray. Her ga2e was oddly distant and unfocused. Panic roared through him, but a swift inspection didn't reveal any blood. She looked unharmed.

He hunkered down beside her, gently brushing her hair from her face. 'Sweetheart?' he asked in a soft tone. 'It's over now. Are you all right?'

She didn't answer. He sat down on the floor beside her and pulled her onto his lap, holding her close and tight against the warmth of his body. He kept up a reassuring murmur, a gentle sound of reassurance. He could feel the thud of her heartbeat against him, the rhythm hard and alarmingly slow. He held her tighter, his face buried against the richness of her hair.

'Is she all right?' Chance asked as he, too, stepped over Art Sandefer and approached his brother and new sister-in- law. Other people were coming into the room, people who tended to the wounded man. Mack Prewett was one of