Rogue's Passion Read online

  “I don’t like this,” he said from the open doorway. “We shouldn’t have come.”

  He cast a wary glance at the dark stairway they’d just climbed, uneasy that he couldn’t see the road from here. This was the only way out of her apartment, unless you counted jumping off the balcony as a viable exit. If the army blokes drove up, they wouldn’t see them until it was too late and they’d be trapped inside.

  Olivia frowned at him as if she’d bitten into a lemon. “What did you expect? That I was going to simply stuff some clothes into a bag and grab a few things, while you waited by the door?”

  “Yeah.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I did.”

  “I came here to pack up my stuff. All of it. I can’t just abandon my apartment and leave everything. I don’t have a ton, but what I do have, I love.”

  He considered invoking Rule Number One so that she’d have to do what he told her, but when he saw the determined glint in her eye, he changed his mind. That was a game. This was the real thing, and he’d like to keep his balls intact.

  He looked around the neat but lived-in apartment. In the center of the living room was a comfortable-looking sofa and a square coffee table with a distressed, whiskey-colored leather top. Various pictures hung on the walls—black and white vintage photographs and charcoal drawings in matching black frames. She didn’t appear to have a television. She didn’t have a dining room table, either, just three barstools tucked under the kitchen counter. That must be where she ate.

  A few dishes were stacked neatly in the sink, probably the remnants of her last meal before she’d driven her car in to work on the day of the explosion. He noticed there were two identical cups and plates. Had she had company? Maybe she’d had a girlfriend over for dinner. Or the guy across the hall. Or maybe it was two meals’ worth of dishes for only one person.

  Was Olivia a loner? When you were always on the run and looking over your shoulder, your lifestyle wasn’t exactly conducive to building friendships.

  Her place had a comfortable vibe that he could easily get used to. If things were different and they weren’t caught in the middle of a deadly war, he could imagine curling up on the sofa, his head in her lap as she read a book to him. A science-fiction story about alien battles on faraway planets. Or maybe an epic fantasy with dragons.

  “Possessions can be replaced, Liv. You can’t. No wasting time packing things perfectly. Throw what you need into these boxes and we’ll get the hell out of here.”

  Her expression softened considerably, but the hard set of her jaw still remained. She set her messenger bag on the kitchen counter and strode toward him. “If they are looking for me, wouldn’t it be better if they found an empty apartment? They’d assume I moved out as a result of having no job after the explosion destroyed where I worked. If my things are still here, it’ll look as though I left in a panic, which would confirm their suspicions that I’ve got something to hide.”

  Asher pressed his lips into a firm line. She had a point. “Just hurry up, okay?”

  She finished taping up the bottom of one cardboard box, handed it to him, and started assembling another.

  “It won’t take me long to pack up the bedroom and bathroom, if you want to do the kitchen. Don’t worry about the dishes and glasses—I’ll do those—but everything else is fair game.”

  Reluctantly, he let the outside door shut behind him and he got to work. Conry was stationed at the bottom of the stairs outside to alert them if something was wrong. He hoped that was enough.

  Olivia was right. It didn’t take her long to pack. After carrying the boxes out to the van, they starting packing up the living room.

  Asher wrapped her collection of candles. They smelled like the herbal oil she used in the bath. He wondered if her mother had made them.

  “It drives my mother crazy that I don’t put down any roots,” she said, as if she knew what he’d been thinking. “But at least she understands.”

  “How often do you see her?”

  “Every few months, I guess. But I call her a lot. When I visit, I go at night, so that none of her neighbors know. A few years ago, when I went off the radar and stopped reporting to the army once a year for testing, they questioned all the people on her street and asked if they’d seen me recently. God knows they got nothing out of my mother.”

  “Is this your dad and brother?” he asked, picking up a framed photograph from the coffee table.

  “Yeah, it was taken on the last camping trip we took. We used to go every summer.”

  “You look a lot like your brother,” he said. Vince had a mop of reddish brown hair the same color as Olivia’s and they had the same smile.

  “I wonder if I still do. That is, if he’s still alive somewhere.”

  Asher placed the photograph in the box and continued packing. “I’ve heard that twins have a special bond.”

  “It’s true,” she said. “I used to know what he was going to say before he even started talking. Drove our teachers crazy. So much so that after the third grade, we were always assigned different classrooms.” Her voice got quiet. “Which is why I still think he could be alive somewhere. I’m pretty sure I would know if he wasn’t.”

  Asher lifted a picture from the wall, a pencil drawing of a young woman. Her head was turned away and behind her in the distance was a craggy mountain covered with trees.

  “Is this one of Vince’s?” he asked, remembering that her brother was a talented artist.

  Olivia pointed throughout the room. “He did all of them.”

  He felt guilty for thinking she could just walk away from her belongings. These were memories she could never get back. Aside from Conry, there was nothing he owned that had any sentimental value. He was used to traveling light. Going back and forth through the portals forced you to depend on nothing but yourself. “They’re amazing,” he said. “Is this the woman you said he drew a lot?”

  “He must’ve done forty or fifty of them. When I left home, I took a few of my favorites and had them framed.”

  “How old was he when he drew this?” He held it up for her to see.

  “Hmmm. Since that one’s not dated, he was probably fifteen or so. He only started dating his pictures when he got a little older.”

  As she worked on the hall closet, he cleared off the table, carefully wrapping her collection of whimsical colored porcelain pigs and placing them in the box. It occurred to him that she’d enjoy shopping in Greenway, an open-air market on his side of the portal. Greenway was home to many local artists and—

  He needed to stop thinking that he had a future with Olivia and remember what had happened Jenny. They’d be parting ways tomorrow, which was the right thing to do. He’d get her situated at Rand’s, then go to meet the other Iron Guild warriors at the rendezvous point.

  The next framed drawing was hanging by the window. He peered through the blinds and saw Conry sitting patiently at the base of the stairs. The parking lot was still quiet.

  He grabbed the picture off the wall and started to reach for more packing material, when something about the drawing caught his attention. He took a closer look. He blinked a few times and took a step backward, but his boot caught the leg of the coffee table. Trying to keep from dropping the picture, he cradled it to his chest as he crashed to the ground, landing on his ass with hard thump. The corner of the black frame hit the coffee table and the glass shattered.

  Fuck.

  “Asher?” Olivia called from the other room. “Are you okay?”

  He could barely breathe.

  “I’m the one born with the klutzy gene, not you,” she said, coming down the hall. “Or as my mother likes to say, I was cursed by gypsies.” Suddenly, she was at his side, her hand on his shoulder. “Asher, you’re bleeding. Oh my God, what’s wrong?”

  He didn’t answer. He couldn’t speak.

  The young woman in the drawing looked exactly like his sister.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I haven’t seen Zara in many
years,” Asher said as Olivia held his hand.

  The cut wasn’t deep. It took hardly more than a thought to heal him. “That’s a pretty name,” she said.

  “My father used to say he loved us from A to Z.”

  “And you really think it could be her? How is that even possible?”

  “If it’s not, then she’s got a twin sister I don’t know about.” Flexing his hand, he thanked her, then carefully examined the rest of the drawings, five in total. “Are these the only ones you have?”

  She nodded. “And the one you’re holding is the only one I have of her face. There’s something sad and melancholy about the ones where she has her back to you. That’s why I took them, I think. It seemed as though she was looking for my brother, missing him like I was.”

  “Where were you living when he drew these?”

  “I think we were in Granite Falls by then. It’s a small town in the Cascade foothills. Vince and I were fifteen when my father retired and we moved there.”

  “Fifteen?” he repeated, almost to himself. “And he was taken from home when he was seventeen?”

  “Yes.”

  Asher said nothing for a long moment as he stared at the drawings, then he pointed to one of them. “Do you recognize these mountains as being the ones near Granite Falls?”

  Olivia tried to remember, but when you see something every day for several years of your life, you forget to pay attention to the details. “That would be my guess, but I don’t know for sure. My brother liked to go camping and fishing with his buddies. He was really outdoorsy. Sometimes he’d go out by himself with a sketchpad and our dog. I honestly didn’t pay too much attention to what the mountains looked like. They all seemed the same to me.”

  Asher looked like he was about to ask another question when headlights flashed against the living room wall, interrupting him. It made a moving geometric pattern through the blinds. He jumped from the sofa to peer outside.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Do you see anything?”

  He held out a finger. “Hold on. I’m not sure.”

  Olivia’s heart thumped in her chest.

  “Is the light on in the bedroom?” he growled.

  “Um, I think I turned it off. Crap. Maybe I didn’t. Why?”

  “If this is the only light, it could easily be the one you’d leave on if you weren’t home, right?”

  “I…I guess so.” She didn’t understand what he was getting at. “Want me to go turn it off if it’s on?”

  “No, it’s too late now. If you do, then they’ll know for sure that someone’s here.”

  She tried to think clearly and not panic. “Where’s Conry?”

  “Still there, but he’s standing now. And watching.”

  Okay, that’s it.

  She slung the messenger bag over her shoulder and grabbed the keys off the kitchen counter, stuffing them into her pocket. They’d already packed up most of the rooms and taken everything down to the truck. She glanced around, doing a quick survey. The furniture in the living room would have to stay. She’d always hated that ratty sofa anyway.

  Maybe Asher was just being overly cautious and it would turn out to be one of her neighbors. If so, then they could finish up and make sure she’d left nothing behind.

  Conry gave a quick bark.

  “Shit,” Asher said, ducking away from the window. “Night Patrol vehicle. Do you see many of them around here?”

  Her heart dropped into her stomach. “No, not really. It’s a fairly quiet neighborhood.”

  “Let’s go,” he ordered. “We’ve got to assume they’re coming here.”

  She grabbed the box with Vince’s artwork and ran toward the door.

  “No.” Asher lunged, grabbing her arm. “It’s too late. They’ll see us coming down the stairs. We’ll go out the balcony and hope they don’t have another unit back there. We’ll run along behind the two buildings and get to the truck from the other side.”

  Thank God the parking spots right in front of her unit had been taken, which had forced them to park in the overflow parking at the end of the row near the tennis courts. Mr. and Mrs. Carmichael who lived downstairs were continually forgetting that they only had one parking spot and were always taking hers. She’d meant to talk to them but never got around to it, feeling it would be too bitchy to make senior citizens move their car. It had been a pain in the ass to carry the mattress that far, but now she was grateful.

  They heard another bark.

  “They’re parking,” Asher hissed. “Let’s go.”

  “You don’t think we can bluff our way out of it?” she asked, not expecting a positive answer.

  He paused to lock the front door. “We can’t take the chance. We got lucky at the Grape and Bean. It’s not going to happen again.”

  True. She was the first one not to push her luck too far. She opened the slider and stepped out onto the narrow balcony.

  “I’ll go first,” Asher whispered. “I’ll give a little whistle and then it’s your turn. I’ll catch you.”

  “What about my box?” she asked, thinking about all of the drawings and the collectible pigs that Vince had given her. He’d started giving them to her for Christmas a few years before he’d been taken, mistakenly thinking she liked pigs. She never knew what had given him that idea, so it became a funny joke between them.

  “Leave it.”

  It felt like someone punched her in the gut. “But this is all I have left of Vince.”

  “Sorry, Liv. Can’t chance it. It’s going to be tricky enough getting down without it. The glass could break or the box could crash to the ground, alerting them that someone’s out here.”

  He took the box from her and set it on the floor of the balcony away from the slider, then climbed over the railing. “Ready?”

  “Um, I guess so.”

  He jumped to the ground. Almost instantly, there was a low whistle that sounded like a night bird.

  Okay, good, he’d made it and was fine. She put a hand on the rail then hesitated. No, she had to at least try.

  She turned back to the box and reached inside, searching for the one with the broken frame. There, she found it. It was wrapped in newsprint and— Damn. The glass cut her finger too. It stung like hell, but she couldn’t stop now. She was too close.

  Asher whistled again.

  Just one more second and I’ll have it.

  There. She located what she hoped was the drawing, pinched the paper between her ring finger and her thumbnail, and slid it out as fast as she could. Just as she tucked it into her messenger bag, a loud knock sounded on her front door. She had to clamp her hand over her mouth to keep quiet.

  “Liv!” Asher hissed from below.

  She swung a leg over the railing and slipped down. Holding on with just her fingertips, she tried to ignore the pain as she dangled between the balcony and the ground. She’d heal herself as soon as they got away. It felt as if Asher were a mile below her. Considering that she was five foot six, it couldn’t be more than a seven or eight foot drop from her feet to the ground, right? She said a little prayer and let go.

  She landed in Asher’s arms.

  “What the fuck,” he whispered, as he set her on her feet. He grabbed her hand and pulled her along with him, not saying another word. They hugged the back wall of her unit, then sprinted across the opening to the next building. As they rounded the far corner, she could see the truck straight ahead and pulled the keys from her pocket.

  Glancing back, she saw the lights go on in her apartment. They were in her bedroom. Assholes. She handed the keys to Asher, but he wouldn’t take them.

  “You’re driving.”

  “I am?” He wasn’t planning to lean out the window and shoot at them like they did in the movies, was he? “Why? What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to fuck with their car to keep them from following us right away.”

  They kept their heads low and hid behind a hedge near the truck. Conry was watching them from the
front of Olivia’s building. Asher gave him a signal and pointed. The deerhound trotted to the left, across the parking lot and into the big field near the pond.

  “When I say go, you are to run to the van, get in quietly and count to ten, then start it up and get the hell out of here.”

  “What about you? Where will you be?”

  “Conry and I will meet you when you turn out onto the main road.”

  The main road? But that was around the tennis courts, past the kids’ play area, and down another street. “That’s too far, Asher.”

  “If we’re not there in five minutes, don’t wait. Go back to Rand’s. We’ll figure out how to get there on our own.”

  “But—”

  “You’d better fucking do as you’re told this time.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Asher had barely said two words to Olivia after he and Conry jumped into the truck. The open highway in front of them stretched as long as the silence between them. It was obvious he was angry. Her hesitation on the deck had almost gotten them caught.

  “Asher, I—”

  “Pull over here,” he said gruffly, pointing to an exit that led to a rest area.

  Okay, he definitely was pissed.

  She took the off-ramp, drove past a few semi-trucks in the dark lot, and parked the moving van near the back. He stared straight ahead, a muscle in his jaw twitching.

  “I’m sorry, Ash, but I just couldn’t leave without taking one of Vince’s drawings. Next time, I’ll—”

  “Olivia, this…thing…between us has been fun. I’ve had a…a great time.”

  Oh my God. Was he breaking it off with her? She gripped the steering wheel to keep her hands from shaking.

  “But I’m afraid it has to end.”

  It felt as if someone had punched her in the chest as all the air evaporated from her lungs. She knew their week had been drawing to a close, but she’d been hoping that things would continue.