the killer he was on his way to meet.
The road dipped and curved, turned and cut back along the cliff edge. Frequent signs advised caution and a prudent speed limit. He ignored them. The sedan hugged the pavement, though its driver was operating on nothing more than reflexes and subconscious memory.
Strauss had Faith. It was Shane’s worst nightmare come true. Instead of protecting the woman he had grown to love, the woman who had offered him a future, the woman who had offered him her heart, he had put her life in grave danger. There was no question in his mind—Strauss was there because of him, to even the score. This had nothing to do with William Gerrard. It had nothing to do with defense contracts. It was vengeance.
He had expected it to happen sooner or later. It was just a matter of his past catching up with him. But now Faith was caught up in it as well. She could die, and it would be his fault.
Dammit, he thought, this was why he had avoided involvement. Long ago he had set the rules that governed his life. Those boundaries had made his life a lonely one but that had been the price for doing a very important job, a job he believed in. By breaking those rules he had endangered the one person who had touched his life and left him feeling better for it.
The twinkling lights of Anastasia came into view as the road eased around a bend and down a slope. The tourist town that was home to two thousand permanent residents was nestled in a quiet cove. With its restored Victorian buildings and busy harbor, Anastasia was picture-postcard lovely, but its beauty was lost on Shane. His entire being was focused on one goal—rescuing Faith from the clutches of the most evil man he’d ever known.
Dylan’s Bar and Bait Shop was located on the waterfront, in the heart of Anastasia’s tidy, thriving marina area. It was a popular establishment, busy most nights, and this night was no exception. Warm amber lights glowed through the building’s windows, a welcoming beacon to passersby. Music and laughter floated through the front door as patrons came and went.
Parking his car in the small lot, Shane got out, his narrowed eyes scanning the area as he strode toward the phone booth that stood to the left of the bar’s entrance. The scents of fish and fuel and the sea filled his nostrils, but danger was what he sensed stronger than anything. Strauss was nearby; he could feel it.
The phone inside the booth was out of order. Strauss’s idea of a joke, Shane supposed, though he found no humor in it. Taped to the glass of the booth was a note with the name Brutus and a pier number written in Strauss’s neat, almost feminine hand. Using the pen that hung on a frayed string beside the phone book, Shane scrawled BANKS across the top of the note and left the missive taped in place.
He had come alone, as Strauss had instructed, but Banks wouldn’t be far behind him. There hadn’t been time to argue about strategy. Shane had wanted time to try to deal with Strauss on his own—certain that bringing in more cops would further endanger Faith—so he had given himself a head start.
As he pulled his gun from his shoulder holster, he wondered just how much trouble he would get into for knocking out his boss. It didn’t matter. The odds were against him coming out of this at all, he thought as he started toward a boat called Brutus and a confrontation with the man who had sworn to kill him.
The Brutus was a powerboat, a midsize luxuriously appointed cabin cruiser fitted out for deep-sea sport fishing. But fishing wasn’t on the mind of the man who owned the boat, Faith thought as she sat on the cabin’s small built-in sofa, trying her best to keep from shaking visibly.
William had owned a boat very like this one. He hadn’t been much interested in fishing either. The Getaway had been for impressing people, an ostentatious toy, a place to hold clandestine meetings. But if William Gerrard’s uses for his boat had been less than honorable, Adam Strauss’s were evil.
“In a way, I’m going to regret killing Shane Callan,” Strauss said from his leather-upholstered chair in the corner. In his left hand he held a snifter of cognac. His right hand absently stroked the semiautomatic weapon lying in his lap