The Full Story. Dawn Stewardson

contract killers did have to go wherever their work took them, but Vancouver Island was so different from Manhattan it could be on another planet.

      He was used to bright lights and big city noise. So put him in the wilderness and it was hardly surprising that he wasn’t totally on top of his game.

      Oh, not that the entire island was wall-to-wall forest. He’d landed in a city. Actually, to be specific, he’d landed in its harbor. But same difference.

      Victoria. The capital of British Columbia, a fact he’d carefully tucked away.

      He was a trivia nut, and after millions of hours of Jeopardy and Wheel and Millionaire he could usually come up with at least some inconsequential fact relating to just about any subject.

      Foreign geography, however, was his weak suit. So whenever he traveled he paid special attention to names and places.

      At any rate, from what little he’d seen of Victoria it seemed like a nice place. And only half an hour by float plane north of Seattle.

      Still, once you left the city behind, there was nothing except mile after mile of mountains and trees, and he just didn’t get the appeal of this nature crap. You wanted nature, you went to Central Park. You didn’t head for Canada and total isolation.

      He didn’t, anyway. Not unless someone was paying him big bucks to make the trip, which, of course, explained why he was here.

      But when it came to Billy Brent, the guy made over twenty million a picture. He could afford to be anywhere in the world on his downtime. So why would he want to spend a single day of it in the middle of nowhere?

      Oh, hell, he was back to thinking about Billy Brent and his damned retreat. And what a screwup that scene had been.

      It would have been even worse, though, if he wasn’t in good shape. All those hours at the gym—in the ring, lifting weights, running laps—had really paid off today.

      If he hadn’t landed that one smoker of a punch he might be in real trouble now. Because whoever the guy at Billy’s was, he wasn’t any pushover. That one punch had probably made the difference between getting away and not.

      Of course, the important thing was that he had gotten away.

      But that bitch with the gun had surprised the shit out of him and if he ever laid eyes on her again she’d be dead.

      Hell, she’d be dead already if his Magnum hadn’t gone flying, which was another point against her. Her sneaking up on him had cost him his favorite piece.

      That had him royally pissed, and it wasn’t the only thing that was frosting him off.

      This job should already be over and done with. But because of her, it wasn’t.

      He thought about that for a minute, then backed up his logic a little.

      If not for her, the job would be over and done with, assuming that Billy Brent had actually been in there. Which might not have been the case.

      What if Billy had realized he was being targeted?

      That could be. And it would mean all the media crap about his being at his retreat had been nothing but a setup.

      Turk lit a cigarette and filled his lungs with the hot smoke, feeling pretty much back to normal now, able to contemplate where things stood with a clear brain.

      He’d pegged the guy with the Glock for a bodyguard. Maybe that wasn’t it, though. Maybe he’d been there instead of Billy, waiting to see whether anyone came looking for the superstar.

      But if Billy wasn’t there, where was he?

      After considering the question, he retrieved his laptop from the floor of the back seat, thinking he’d better see—courtesy of the world of wireless Internet connections—if there was anything new going on in Billy’s life.

      Once he was into cyberspace, he clicked on his bookmark for the best of the Billy Brent fan sites he’d found.

      The message scrolling across the top of the screen read, “Watch Billy tomorrow morning! Live on the Sherry Sherman Show!”

      Well. Wasn’t that interesting.

      He read the text saying that Sherry had announced Billy would be her special guest. Then he got off the Internet and shut the laptop, smiling to himself.

      He’d really grown to love modern technology.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      WHILE MICKEY DID HER BEST to convince Dan that taking her to New York with him was a first-rate idea, he tossed enough clothes into a suitcase to keep the killer’s gun and his own, from rattling around.

      Not that he was about to pack his Glock just yet. He wanted it loaded and accessible until he had a flight lined up and was ready to check in.

      Life had handed him enough surprises that he always felt more comfortable when he was carrying.

      “…so I’d get the breaking story firsthand, which would save both of us time,” Mickey was saying. “And you and this Ken fellow would have my help.

      “I can use a gun,” she elaborated. “I mean, for more than shooting into the air to get someone’s attention.”

      Man, oh, man. Just what they’d need. An intrepid girl reporter with a gun.

      “When all’s said and done,” she added, “it comes down to a totally win-win arrangement.”

      She finally stopped speaking and eyed him expectantly.

      He rubbed his jaw as if considering a positive response.

      Needless to say, he really wasn’t. She was definitely not going along.

      Despite the case she’d made, she’d likely get in the way.

      Even if she didn’t, this was strictly a job for professionals and she was a civilian, which meant that if he let her go with him he’d feel responsible for her safety. And that was something he didn’t need.

      Besides, the jury was still out on whether he could trust her.

      Glancing at his watch, he wondered how soon he’d hear back from Lydia. But regardless of what she unearthed about Mickey, it really rankled him that the woman was trying to revise their deal in her favor—especially when this assignment would already be wrapped up if not for her.

      If she hadn’t come back after he’d sent her away, he’d have been watching the monitors when the killer arrived.

      By now, the guy would either be dead or in police custody. So Mickey could claim he owed her all she wanted, but he wasn’t buying into any guilt trip.

      Regardless of that, though, he’d rather not tell her she wasn’t going to New York simply because he didn’t want her along. Not after she’d been gutsy enough to confront their hit man.

      It would be kinder to convince her that it just wasn’t a good idea.

      Kinder.

      He seldom concerned himself about being kind. But these circumstances were more than a little unusual. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d needed help because someone was holding a gun on him.

      So when she finally became tired of waiting for him to speak up, and gave him an impatient “Well?” he did his best to sound eminently reasonable.

      “Look,” he said. “I know how badly you want to be there when this wraps up, but your going with me simply isn’t a good plan.”

      “Why not?”

      He shrugged. “Just for starters, if my wife or girlfriend or whatever announced that she was waltzing off to the far side of the continent with a strange man—”

      “You don’t have a wife or girlfriend or whatever,” she interrupted.

      He had no idea how she knew