The Heart of a Renegade

He drew her body firmly up against his. “Listen to me, Jessica,” he said quietly. “I can tell you what happened to Giles Rehnquist, but right now your life depends on following my orders. Now run.”

He hunkered low, pulling her by the hand at a clip over irregular paving as the sirens grew louder. They ducked into Blood Alley, and he forced her hard up against a rough brick wall as Vancouver Police Department cruisers converged on the scene of the shooting, car doors swinging open, officers barking commands. Cops quickly began to fan out, heading their way with flashlights beaming through the fog.

“This way,” he whispered, pulling her after him. They ran for the alley exit, but a squad car slowed in front of it, barring their escape. He turned and shoved her down between two overflowing Dumpsters that flanked the service entrance of an Irish pub, pinning her down firmly against bags of garbage with his weight. “Don’t move,” he murmured against her hair. The smothering stench of stale sweat and booze permeating the tattered tweed of his jacket made her gag, but the soft sweater against his hard body smelled soapy clean. Masculine.

Jessica closed her eyes, trying to calm herself. She could feel the strong, steady beat of his heart against her chest. It was a strangely comforting sensation. In a foreign city where she’d been cut off from everything including her clothes, apartment, cell phone and colleagues—a city where she was beginning to wonder if she could even trust her own mind—this man felt solid. He felt real. Capable. And he hadn’t betrayed her.

Yet.

The sounds in the distance grew less frenetic, but still her rescuer didn’t move and her legs were going numb. She tried to wiggle feeling back into her toes.

“Keep still,” he hissed. “Someone’s coming.”

Then she heard it: the steady clop, clop, clop, of hooves on cobblestones. She peered out from under his jacket as the silhouettes of two police officers on horses darkened the entrance to Blood Alley, fog swirling behind them.

The mounted police entered the alley slowly, hooves echoing as they panned darkened crevices with flashlights.

Jessica’s throat tightened, but the steady beat of her defender’s heart never faltered. Not even when the hooves drew so near they almost touched his feet. One of the horses snorted, hot breath steaming into the air. She could smell them.

“Hey, you,” one of the cops said, directing his flashlight into their corner. “Can you get to your feet, please? I need to see ID.”

The man lying on top of Jessica groaned, made as if he was trying to sit up, then he flopped back as if too drunk.

The officer dismounted. “Can you stand, buddy?” the cop said, reaching down to pull him up. Her mysterious savior waited until the cop’s center of balance was precisely at the most disadvantageous, then he grabbed the policeman’s arm, yanked him down, cracked his head against his own, and rolled out from under him as the unconscious cop slumped heavily onto Jessica. She stifled a yelp of shock.

The officer on his horse immediately drew his weapon, yelling at him to freeze, but her protector surged forward with such swift and fluid motion it caught the officer by surprise. He fired, his bullet going wild and pinging into the Dumpster over Jessica’s head as her defender grabbed the cop with bare hands and dragged him from his horse.

The horse reared, hooves clawing at air before taking off with a clatter over stone. Jessica stared in awe as her guardian rendered the policeman unconscious with quick, firm pressure of his hand to the man’s neck.

She’d seen people trained in martial arts do that. She’d seen them move like him, too—fast and powerful, balletic. This man was skilled in hand-to-hand combat. He was a walking, talking lethal weapon.

Fear squeezed at her heart.

He dragged the unconscious V.P.D. officer off her and checked his pulse, before rolling the man gently onto the garbage bags and positioning his head so he could breathe easily.

He held his hand out to Jessica. “Come.”

“What…what about the policemen?”

“They’ll wake in a few minutes. We’ve got to move. Fast.”

She stared up at him, the beam from the fallen flashlight catching the icy glint in his eerily pale eyes. He wasn’t even breathing hard. Jessica shrank back into the garbage, suddenly terrified, the aftereffects of adrenaline combined with the cold, making her shake violently.

“You want to live, don’t you?” he said.

She nodded. He reached down, grabbed her wrist and jerked her firmly to her feet. “Come, then.”

He guided her through a twisting network of narrow black alleys that stunk of urine and decay, moving in the direction of the water.

They crossed the railway tracks into a deserted dockyard. The fog was thicker down by the sea, inky water slapping softly against old wood pylons, the scent of brine heavy.

“Quietly,” he whispered, taking her hand as they slipped between two massive rows of shipping containers. He held her back against ice-cold steel, waiting until he was certain they hadn’t been followed.

Jessica’s breathing was ragged, her lungs burning from running in the cold, her pulse pounding wildly. But beside her, his body was as calm and still as a practiced and patient predator. She had no doubt this man could kill with his bare hands and without compunction.

“Who are you—?”

He clapped his hand suddenly over her mouth, and pointed. Another cop car cruised quietly across the harbor entrance, flashing lights creating pulsing halos of white, red and blue in the dense fog.

He removed his hand as the cruiser moved on. “Sorry,” he whispered. “Come—”

But Jessica didn’t move. She felt suddenly paralyzed with exhaustion and she couldn’t seem to order her thoughts.

He tilted her chin and looked into her eyes. “You okay?”

“Please…just tell me who you are,” she whispered.

“My name’s Luke Stone. You ready to run again?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He grasped her wrist and dragged her in a crouching sprint across the empty parking lot toward the black water.

They stopped at a dock pylon, Jessica panting hard. Between them and the North Shore lay nothing but the frigid expanse of the Burrard Inlet. Snowflakes began to swirl bigger and softer, disappearing into the black void below her feet.

He edged her toward the dock edge. “You first. Down there.”

“What?”

He swore softly and grabbed her hands, drawing her into a crouch. He placed both her hands on a frozen metal rung. “Hang on to this. Put your leg over the side, feel for the next rung with your foot, climb all the way down to the inflatable. One step at a time.”

Panic whipped through her. “I…I don’t see any inflatable.”

“It’s down there, in the dark. Trust me.”

Her eyes shot to his. She didn’t trust anyone.

“Jess,” his eyes held hers steadily. “They killed your friend because of what you saw in Chinatown. They killed Giles because you told him. Believe me, they will kill you, too. Don’t give them that chance, okay?” He touched her cheek gently. “I’m here to help you.”

Emotion exploded through her chest and she tightened her grip on the rung.

This man simply accepted what the cops hadn’t—that she really had seen those men, that her life was in danger. He believed her. Surely that placed him somewhere on her side?

“You got the film in that bag?”

She said nothing.

“Give it to me, Jess.”

“I…I’d rather hold on to it.”

He swore again. “Look, we don’t have time for this. Give me your bag.” He reached to take it.