Decoded

Maggie was strong and brave. He’d admired that about her for the past two years. She would need all the strength and bravery she possessed for what was to come.

As if that courage had abruptly kicked in to full throttle, she turned on him, green eyes blazing as hotly as that mane of red hair. “What kind of trouble are you in—” her lips tightened “—whoever you are?”

“Sit.” He gestured to the bed.

Her arms crossed over her chest. “I’m not taking any more orders until you answer my questions.”

Weariness hit him hard. Or maybe it was the drain of having her look at him that way. Funny, his entire life he’d never cared what anyone thought of him. He’d stopped caring about that kind of thing by the time he was seven. By twelve he would have killed anyone who got in his way like this. That he tolerated it now startled him still. His indulgence of this unfamiliar aspect of human bonding the past two years was the biggest surprise of all. He’d spent endless hours making this lonely, hardworking woman want him as she had never wanted anyone before. After that, he’d told himself that stringing her along was necessary for his cover.

As it turned out, he had been the fool.

He contemplated drawing his weapon to gain her cooperation, but he lacked sufficient motivation. Instead, he dropped into the chair by the window. The room was a little cold, so he turned on the heat. The box beneath the window rumbled then shook with the effort of noisily blowing out stale air.

“I mean it,” she warned when he turned his attention to her once more. “If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’m walking out that door.”

He dropped his head back on the chair and deliberated as to which lie to offer. There were so many. So many, in fact, that he had to think hard to sift out the most recent ones. Counting the water stains on the ceiling distracted him for a moment. The stains were dark and without uniformity or pattern. Like his life.

As good as her word, Maggie started for the door. He grabbed her arm as she passed his chair. Her gaze collided with his. She was just mad enough to call his bluff. Another funny thing. He never bluffed.

His lapse into the mundane was going to get him killed. And anyone else who had the misfortune of being with or connected to him.

“Maggie, sit down.”

She stared at him for an endless moment before relenting. With a frustrated about-face she stamped to the bed and sat, arms still crossed, one foot patting against the ragged, once-beige carpet.

With a heavy breath he settled his eyes on hers. “The people who hit the brownstone—”

“You mean the ones who blew it up?” she snapped. “That’s what they did, Slade. They blew it up.” She gestured in frustration. “Innocent people may have been injured or killed.”

He reached for patience. “No one was injured or killed.”

“How do you know?” She shot to her feet. “You can’t know!”

“I have a contact who’s keeping me informed.” He’d received two messages since they left Chicago. Unless an unauthorized person had been inside the buildings on either side of the brownstone that housed the Equalizer offices, no one had been hurt.

Maggie dropped back down to the mattress. “That’s one good thing.”

He had her attention, so he might as well get to the point. “I need you to stay here for a few days.” Her eyes grew rounder with each word he said. “Until the dust settles. When it’s safe for you to go home, I’ll give you the all clear.”

MAGGIE TOOK A MOMENT TO calm the outrage and indignation mounting inside her. She had decided that he had no intention of killing her or he surely would have by now. Still, pushing the issue wouldn’t be smart. God knew, she’d been wrong about him all this time, so what made her think she knew anything now?

“Where are you going?” Someone obviously wanted him dead. Was he going to go up against whoever this was alone? She tried her best to ignore the weight on her chest. Why did she care? If she were smart she would let him go and then get out of here as fast as possible. “Who did this? What do they want?”

He braced his forearms on his spread thighs. His unusually dark gray eyes studied hers. “The person responsible for what you witnessed tonight has been looking for me for a very long time. I can’t evade her any longer. When this—”

“Her?” Maggie felt her brow furrow in confusion. The person responsible for this insanity was a woman? An old lover? Jealousy flooded her, washing away the harsher emotions she’d hoped to hang on to.

“The less you know,” he advised in that deep voice that curled around her like a warm, familiar blanket, “the better. You’re already a target simply by virtue of the fact that you’ve been seen with me.”

Maggie’s head started to spin. She felt sick to her stomach. How had she gotten herself into this? “I don’t understand.”

“You have to believe me when I say that she will stop at nothing to get to me. Anyone in her path will go down, too. Anyone she believes she can use to get to me will suffer an even worse fate.”

Maggie hugged herself more tightly. Her fingernails bit into her skin despite the sweater she wore. “What kind of person has enemies like that?” She wasn’t totally naive. She watched the news. There were bad people out there. All kinds. But was this about drugs? Guns? Stolen goods? Murder? An angry client of his private-investigations business? Or some past business dealings? What?

She held his gaze, her insides raging with an agonizing twist of emotions. This man was the father of her child. Yet she had no idea why someone would want to kill him. She didn’t know him at all.

As if sensing her thoughts, he looked away. “The kind of person you don’t want to know.”

As cold as he’d been from the moment their gazes locked in her rearview mirror, just now she heard something almost like vulnerability in his voice. But that was impossible. Just her imagination. She wanted to hear real emotion and that wasn’t going to happen.

“I’d say it’s a little late for that.” He’d been dragging her heart around for almost two years now. This wasn’t the time to suggest she didn’t want to know him. He’d stolen that option from her a long time ago.

Slade pushed to his feet. “There’s nothing I can do to change that now.” He nudged the curtain aside and stared into the night.

“So that’s it.” She shook her head. “You steal two years of my life and then you tell me there’s nothing you can do to make this right.” Hysteria had edged into her voice. She forced it back. “What does that make you, Slade?” A user, she didn’t say. But it was true. He’d used her to get close to Victoria and Lucas. She understood that part now. If her friends at the Colby Agency were in danger it would be her fault. That confounded quaking started deep inside her once more.

He had weaseled his way into her life for a reason. Something that involved the Colby Agency. Maggie had a right to some answers.

“Why the Colby Agency? They’re good people. What could they possibly have done to you?”

He turned around, his face a hard mask she couldn’t hope to read. “You think you know people, but you don’t. Can you really be certain they’re good people? Can you? Really?”

“Of course I can,” she retorted without hesitation. “It’s you I don’t know.”

“At least we agree on something.”

Maggie dared to take two steps toward him. His gaze narrowed. “You made me love you.” Her throat tried to close. She fought the aching emotions. “Just so you could do whatever it was you came to Chicago to do.”

More of the dingy carpet between them disappeared as he took a step toward her, matching her stance. The air vanished from her lungs. “I didn’t do anything you didn’t want me to do.”

The tremors grew stronger. She struggled to restrain the visible shaking. “You never felt anything for me, did you?” How could she love the wrong man twice in her life? Hadn’t she learned anything the first time around? That part hurt the most. Knowing that she loved him so much and he felt nothing at all.

“Listen to me carefully, Maggie.”

He touched her. She couldn’t bear it. She drew away.

His hand dropped to his side. “You have one chance at surviving this. If you do exactly as I say, you’ll be safe.”

As though she would trust anything he said. She laughed. “You said yourself that she’d seen me with you. What’s to keep her from coming after me once you’re gone?” And what would happen to him? Would he be able to win against this woman who had sought him for so long? Misery writhed inside Maggie. The idea that her child would never know his or her father abruptly tore at her with staggering viciousness.

“I won’t let that happen.”

How could he make such a promise? “You can’t guarantee my safety.” If that were the case, they wouldn’t be holed up in this hovel. Was he kidding her or himself?

“It’s me she wants,” he said, his voice weary. “As long as you stay out of the way you’ll be safe.”

He wasn’t going to give her any answers. This man she had come to love was going to leave her and she would never know if he was dead or alive.