Moonrise by Anne Stuart Page A

her father had approved of for her.
    The flash of guilt was immediate. Her father had loved her, wanted the best for her. He was a connoisseur, an expert in matters of taste and art. He knew far better than she did what clothes and colors would suit her, what wine she would prefer to drink, what car she would prefer to drive. It didn’t matter that deep in her heart she’d always longed for a gaudy, classic Corvette. She drove a late-model Mercedes. A perfect, elegant car that suited the person she knew herself to be.
    She dressed in wrinkled white pants and a fuchsia silk T-shirt. She’d never worn fuchsia—it was too bright, too conspicuous, but she’d bought it anyway, then stuffed it in the back of her closet and forgotten about it. She brought it with her at the last minute, throwing it into her suitcase, and right now she wasfeeling defiant. No one could look battered in fuchsia.
    She didn’t see him at first when she emerged from the bathroom. He was sitting at the table, a cup of coffee in his hand. He looked cool, relaxed, a man at peace with himself. She almost envied that peace. Except for some reason she wasn’t certain she believed it.
    “I didn’t realize you were back,” she said, shoving a hand through her wet, tangled hair.
    “It didn’t take as long as I expected,” he said.
    “What didn’t?”
    “Deciding what to do.” He took a sip of coffee. “Why don’t you go upstairs and pack?”
    “Am I going someplace?”
    “We both are. I’ve decided to help you. If you still want me to.”
    “I still want you to,” she said. “Where are we going?”
    “All in good time, Annie. You’re going to have to trust me on this. You’re going to have to keep trusting me.”
    She hesitated, considering it. “All right,” she said finally.
    “It’s that easy?”
    “Don’t you trust anyone?”
    “Not a living soul.”
    She shook her head. “You must have a very empty life, James.”
    His grin was cool and savage. “You don’t know the half of it, Annie.”
    He sat back, listening to her slam around upstairs, expressing her irritation with him in none-too-subtle ways. He smiled wryly. She never would have shown irritation while Win was still alive. He’d taught her that good manners were of paramount importance, and image was everything. One always had to appear in control of oneself, and one’s situation, even if it was all a sham.
    In Win’s case it hadn’t been. He’d controlled everything and everybody who came within his sphere, up until the last day of his life. James had accepted that unpalatable truth in the last few months, a truth he’d managed to avoid while Win was alive.
    He’d left his mark on everyone, and it was only now, after his death, that they were beginning to emerge from his shadow. Martin Paulsen, Win’s dutiful protégé, handpicked to marry his daughter, a clever, loyal, honest soul. Carew, the slimy excuse for a superior who’d finally gotten the last word, and no longer had to worry about Win looking down his patrician nose at him. Annie, wearing gaudy colors, glaring at him, slamming around.
    And even James McKinley himself. He wasemerging from the shadows whether he wanted to or not. Coming out into the open, where he was a living, breathing target for the people someone, maybe Carew, sent after him.
    They would keep coming, of course. Next time it might be a full-scale attack force of navy Seals, if they could come up with a believable excuse.
    But there wasn’t going to be a next time. He’d waited long enough for them to come and get him. They didn’t let people retire in his line of work, not with his history. But he was tired of their inept attempts at taking him out. Of not knowing who or what was after him. He was going to bring the war right back to them.
    But first he had a decision to make. If he had any sense at all, he was going to have to finish what he’d started. He was going to go upstairs and kill Winston Sutherland’s