CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

A different crowd from the business-suited lunch-lemmings filled the Stag and Hound on Friday nights. Younger. Louder. Boisterous. Music thumped and throbbed from the speakers. In a vague attempt at keeping with the ersatz Olde English pub atmosphere, the songs were all by British artists. The waitresses wove their way among packed tables, carrying trays laden down with pint mugs of a dozen kinds of beer, and more baskets of the fish and chips.

In the same corner booth under the same print of riders in a foggy meadow, Jeanette sat drinking amber ale and munching on pretzels. She, however, was not quite the same.

Even if the place had been filled with the exact same people who'd been here that afternoon a week ago, they wouldn't have recognized her. The platinum pixie-cut bob was gone, replaced by a shorter, sassier strawberry blonde hairdo. Large gold spiral earrings hung from her lobes, and she wore a knee-length black skirt with a sexy slit up the side, a silky black off-the-shoulder blouse, smoke-colored nylons and strappy black high heels. The gold chain with the jade dragon pendant had been replaced by a choker of onyx beads.

"I like the new look," said a voice like rough velvet.

She arched an eyebrow at Rayburn. "Likewise."

He came to the table, scruffy with a week's worth of unshaven beard and a shorter haircut that really showed the silver … more George Clooney than Pierce Brosnan. A plain white shirt open at the throat showed a hint of chest hair, and he was wearing snug, faded jeans and a well-scuffed leather jacket.

"What are you going by these days?" he asked, sitting opposite her and signaling for a waitress. One appeared with such alacrity that she might have been a genie summoned from a lamp. He ordered his usual Guinness.

"Jade will still be fine," she said when they were alone again.

"No tape recorder?" He indicated her purse, a black faux-snakeskin number on a long gold chain-strap, too small to hold more than a wallet, keys and the barest essentials.

"Didn't think I'd need one." Jeanette passed him a thick envelope she'd been carrying folded inside a newspaper. "Here."

"So you're sure? You're turning down the offer?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Only that the job is still open, if you want it."

"I thought my run of bad luck put an end to that particular assignment. Are you telling me the Company is willing to give me a second chance after all?"

"Well …" He shot her a roguish smile that could have – and probably had – melted the resolve of sterner women than she. "Maybe they don't know about that."

"What are you saying, Rayburn?"

"Do you want complete honesty?"

"In our line of work?"

He turned serious. "My employers aren't involved this time."

"What?"

"Well, Jeanette … can I call you Jeanette?"

"Why?" She tried not to show the effect it had, hearing him purr her own given name in that smoky voice. It was almost enough to make her slither under the table in a boneless puddle.

"This is personal."

"Rayburn, you'd better start making sense pretty soon here."

"Michael."

"What?"

"My name. It's Michael."

"This is getting too strange even for me," she said. An uneasy feeling was creeping over her. This was not the way their game was supposed to be played. This was not in the rules. She didn't know how to react.

"My employers didn't arrange that last job. They never even knew about it. I hired you."

"You?"

"Just me," he said. "I'll understand if you're angry with me."

She was too stunned to be angry, at least not yet. "Let me make sure I've got this straight … you approached me just like always, through the usual channels you've used all those times before. But you were acting on your own this time?"

"That's right."

"Why?"

"I told you it was personal."

"Yes …?" She lifted her voice at the end, querying.

"I put it all together just like any of the other assignments we've given you, but the money was mine and the target was of my choosing. I hired you. Fletcher, Christopher, the others … none of them knew. Which means they don't know it went wrong."

Now she did feel a twinge of anger. "You set me up."

"No. No, nothing like that."

"If Fletcher had found out I was working independently for you …"

"But he didn't. They don't know. They never will. This was, and is, between the two of us. Just you and me, Jeanette."

Jeanette rubbed her temples with her thumbs. "God, Rayburn! What were you thinking?"

"Michael."

"Whatever! But what were you thinking?"

"I wanted him out of the way." He folded his hands on the table and sighed, looking down at them. "It was the only thing I could think of to do. I never dreamed it'd turn out like this. I know I shouldn't have involved you, but you are the best. I didn't trust anyone else to get it done."

"Maybe you should have," she said. The anger was rising now. Duped by a skateboard kid, and now to find out she'd been tricked by Rayburn right from the very outset? "Or maybe it's just as well that I failed. This is not the way I work. I never should have accepted it in the first place. I don't take personal cases. How many times have I said that? Now I find out that you were using me?"

"You are angry."

"Damned right I'm angry. I came closer than I ever have to being caught, and I didn't even get paid. Double my usual fee, my foot … you were going to cheat me, too, weren't you?"

He pushed the envelope back toward her. "Keep it. I'll see that you get the rest."

"No. I don't want it, and if you think I'm still going to take this assignment, you're out of your mind."

"Then keep the twenty-five. For your trouble. It's the least I can do."

"The least you can do is tell me exactly why you jeopardized everything like this. You owe me that much at least. Who is he? What's he to you?"

He bowed his head for a moment, then looked up at her with those striking cobalt eyes. They were darker somehow, darkened by pain, to the indigo of midnight sapphires. "I knew his reputation. A stud. A playboy. One girl after another, and when he was done he'd throw them aside like yesterday's news. I didn't want to see her hurt."

"Who?"

"Sophia."

An image of the gorgeous brunette in the red dress came to her … the brunette with the deep blue eyes …

"Oh, my God," she said. "I thought there was something about her, something that looked familiar. She's your daughter."

Rayburn nodded.

"And she's dating Westbrook."

"I've tried to talk her out of it. Tried to talk sense to her. But she wouldn't listen to me. She thinks it'll be different with her. She thinks that he'll treat her right, and won't abandon her like he has all the others. Jeanette, she's my little girl. She's all I have left. What kind of father would I be if I didn't try to do something?"

"So you decided to have him ‘dealt with’?" She made little finger-quotes as she said the last two words. "Jesus, Rayburn … you've been in this field for too long when that becomes your first solution to every problem!"

"What else could I do?"

"Talk to her!"

"I tried –"

"Talk to him!"

"And tell him what? That he'd better not hurt my baby?"

"It could work. And really, didn't you think it would hurt her to have him end up dead? Murdered? Shot by his own gun?"

"Better that than have him ruin her!" he said with a sudden fierce passion that rocked Jeanette back in her seat.

"You idiot," she said. "My God."

"Am I an idiot for wanting to protect my child?"

"What if they suspected her?" she shot back. "Did you even consider that? What if they decided she did it, and put her away? Is that your idea of protecting her? Sending her to jail for murder?"

He blinked several times, mouth unhinged. "I …"

"You didn't consider it, did you? Or what about the possibility she could have been hurt? What if she'd been with him when I made my move? I didn't know who she was. She might have ended up collateral damage."

"No," he said firmly. "No, I know you. You're precise. Like a surgical laser."

"Accidents happen."

Groaning, he propped his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. "I only want what's best for her. My Sophia. I never want her to go through what I did."

"You told me you were a widower," Jeanette said.

"I am."

"Then how in the hell would killing Westbrook keep your daughter from going through what you did? It sounds to me like you'd be putting her through the exact same thing!"

"Angela had an affair," he said. "It was brief. It ended. She came back to me repentant, remorseful, swearing that it had been a one-time fling, a momentary aberration. I should have known better, but I loved her so much … needed her so much. Sophia was still a child then, and needed her mother. So, God help me, I took Angela back."

Jeanette had a chill, knowing what was coming next.

"For a while, it was all right," Rayburn said. He spoke like someone finally unburdening something that had been weighing on him for years, which it probably had been. "Better than ever. But then, a few years later, she met someone else. It wasn't just a fling that time. She wanted a divorce so that she could marry him. She wanted to take Sophia away from me, too. I couldn't let that happen."

"Does Sophia know that you had her mother killed?"

"To this day she thinks it was an accident. She grieved. But she never had to know that her own mother would have abandoned her. I protected her from that, and I'll protect her from Westbrook the same way. I'll do it myself, if I have to."

"You can't protect her from ever being hurt by anything or anyone in her entire life," Jeanette said. "Rayburn, you can't. It's impossible. She's a person, not an exhibit you can keep under glass."

Even as she spoke, she caught herself wondering what it would have been like to have a father – or a lover, or anyone – willing to go to such lengths for her. Willing to kill for her. Not for profit, not for gain, but solely because it was personal.

"I can't sit back and do nothing."

"You can. You will. You have to."

"What you're saying is that you won't take the job. All right. I'll find another way."

"What I'm saying is that you aren't going to do this, Michael."

He raised his head, startled by her use of the name.

"You're going to leave him alone," she said.

"But Sophia –"

"Needs to handle this on her own. You have to let her lead her own life. That's all any of us want." She wasn't about to tell him that she'd just learned that herself, and from a damned skateboard kid, no less.

A terrible wrenching spasm of grief twisted his expression. Somehow, it didn't make him any less handsome. "She's all I have left."

"Does she know you love her, and that you're there for her no matter what?"

"Always."

"Then she'll be fine. Better than the rest of us." She rose smoothly from her seat, shaking her sassy new hairdo around her face.

"I don't blame you," he said. "Not many women would accept a dinner invitation from a man who'd just confessed to murder."

"Well," Jeanette said, sliding into the booth beside him, "luckily for you, I'm not like many women."

**