Accompanying Alice Read Free Page A

lifted her chin defiantly and matched him stare for stare. “I won’t go quietly,” she spat. “I won’t lie down and let you kill me.”
    He recoiled as though slapped. “Kill?”
    Stunned, he stared at her, and all at once the balance between them shifted perceptibly. Her eyes took him by surprise. Where he’d expected ordinary brown he found mocha, cinnamon, flecks of chocolate.
    And directness.
    His mouth went dry. In a flash he saw himself the way she must see him, not as Gabriel Lucas Book, who’d fifteen years ago sworn to serve and protect, but as Luke Book, the corrupt cop, the bastard he portrayed, the man at home among killers, drug runners and thieves. He licked the rain off his lips, trying to moisten his tongue.
    Unsettling. He wasn’t prepared. He’d pegged her as a nice, naive, everyday sort of woman with a social worker’s conscience, easily mired in extraordinary circumstances, not the type of woman to make a man uncomfortable with his stray thoughts. Not the kind who could tell a man to go straight to hell and leave him standing there like a dummy asking for directions. Not the kind of woman who’d be worth that particular emotional trip.
    Distracted, he looked at her again. Dark hair short enough to require little care, but long enough to tangle his fingers in, brushed her neck as she cocked her head to view him from another angle, waiting. Her eyes told him she’d had a lot of experience with waiting, with fear.
    He blinked and looked elsewhere, trying to escape her eyes.
    Step back, Book, he told himself. It’ll eat you alive.
    Concentrate. This is life ‘n death you’re messin’ with here—her life, your death. You owe her something, but don’t go gooey and screw it up.
    “Listen, lady,” he said softly, and felt his gut cramp.
    Telling her who and what he was violated all the rules, but he didn’t see where he had much choice. He had to trust someone. If anything happened to him, someone had to know why. Someone had to speak for him. Someone had to forgive him. “We have to get out of here now. I know this is tough for you, I know you’re frightened, but I’m not the killer here and I don’t have time for long explanations.”
    He pulled her around to the open driver’s door of her car and slid in across the seat, drawing her in behind him. “My name’s Book, Gabriel Lucas Book. I’m a federal agent—FBI—working internal affairs undercover at the request of the Oakland County prosecutor’s office.” He grabbed up a pile of paper napkins that sat in a tray on the floor hump, then angled the rearview mirror and wiped the mud and blood from his face and hands. “You’ll have to take that on faith. I don’t have any I.D. Last night somebody killed my partner and shot me. I think it was a cop—in fact I’m sure it was a cop. Had to be. Only three people know who I am and why I’m here. One of ‘em’s dead and the other two...”
    He stopped, turned a blind eye to the rain rolling down the windows, looking for courage, for relief from the pain. “The other two are friends.”
    Abruptly, he tapped the keys she’d left in the ignition.
    “Drive,” he ordered. “I have to pick up some stuff, then I need a phone. Whether I want to or not, I’ve got to find out whose gun this is. After that...” He stared bleakly at the weapon in his lap. “After that,” he said grimly, “I’ll need a new identity and a place to hide for a while. A safe place.” He turned to her and the depth of his ocean-bay-colored eyes was intense and endless. “Your place should do.”
    *
    “Huh?” Alice’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. She shut it with a snap, and the soft line of her jaw firmed. “What am I supposed to do, let you waltz in and take over my life and my home at will?”
    Gabriel ran a hand regretfully through his hair, wincing slightly, and fingered the gun. “You don’t have much choice right now, Alice,” he said. “And neither do I.”
    Something inside