A Marked Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

phone with Spike…No, dammit, I told him what I found out from the Hibbses, nothing else. Get Michele’s information. Home address, contract, whatever you’ve got. Take it to Spike at his office.” He stopped talking and his attention seemed to wander. “Spike can find out if she was on her plane back to New York today. I forgot to ask if he’d already done that.”
    He looked at her. She got another mouth-only smile and pushed a fist into her stomach. This was panicking her and she’d already been through enough in the past twenty-four hours.
    “Did you sleep last night?” he asked, pressing the mouthpiece against his shoulder. He figured he already knew the answer. Annie looked sick. She blinked rapidly as if her eyes stung.
    “Of course I slept,” she said, sounding defensive and not like the Annie he was trying to know.
    “Is that why your eyes look like black holes and you’re so stressed you’d probably break if someone touched you. What did you do to yourself?” He had noticed before, but never mentioned several small, silvered areas on both sides of her hands. Old, insignificant burn scars. Severe burns, taking away the disfigurement they caused, were part of his life, but Annie’s weren’t even near his league. However, today she did have a new gauze dressing on the left side.
    “I’m fine,” she protested. “Never been better. Mornings aren’t my favorites, that’s all.” She didn’t explain the bandage.
    Max didn’t believe her. Absently, he heard Kelly’s muffled, angry voice.
    Annie didn’t intend to talk about what had happened at the church. She returned Max’s blue stare. “Do you think I’m lyin’?”
    The road curved but he took the bends with absent ease.
    Annie felt every turn of the wheel, the frequent corrections the car made, and looked doggedly at her lap.
    “Have you finished?” Max said into the phone, repeatedly glancing back at Annie. “Oh, yes you have. No, I’m not telling you the details—let Spike tell you. I can’t face it. Not yet. Hell, I don’t know but it’s all too familiar. I’m going for a drive…Because I need to.”
    He turned off the phone—all the way off—and headed north. Annie wanted to know where they were going but didn’t ask.
    Yellow and brown leaves fell from deciduous trees. Some caught in the windshield wipers and slapped back and forth. The rising fog layer steamed as if the rain falling from misty skies were boiling. Billowing vapor rolled from the road and coiled away between trees on either side. Patchy visibility cleared for brief moments before disappearing into ghostly clouds that took the car in a suffocating embrace.
    If she asked him to slow down, or even to wait for the conditions to improve, would he turn his strange hostile voice on her, and allow his face to look as it had outside Pappy’s?
    Max leaned forward slightly. His damp knuckles were white, the tendons on the backs of his hands and wrists, distended.
    “I’m sorry,” he said suddenly and glanced at her. He heard himself swallow. “Really sorry, Annie. I don’t know what got into me, bringing you with me like this. I’m not good company.” This was probably the only appealing woman he had known who didn’t feel her own power over a man. Reticence hovered behind her eyes. Yet she was lovely, her shoulder-length hair smooth and fair, her eyes remarkable for their catlike, almost amber color and her mouth soft, full and inviting. And Annie was slim with gentle curves and long legs.
    But Annie Duhon, a thoughtful, gentle woman, had a tough side. She ran Pappy’s with an ease he admired and he had witnessed how she used humor to cut through difficult encounters. Max didn’t think he would enjoy being on the wrong end of Annie’s displeasure. He smiled slightly at the thought.
    “Me, I kind of like wild days like this,” Annie said, feeling silly but desperate to break the tension. Each time he glanced at her she felt as if he touched her. Her