He walked until his instincts told him he was beyond the natural patrol point and put Axel down. Deaver looked at him, stretched out on his back. He looked peaceful, as if he were taking a nap.

You should thank me, buddy, Deaver thought. I just gave you a great death. The best.

It was the one thing soldiers feared above all else—a bad death. Long, lingering, painful. The RA rebels specialized in hacking deaths, where it takes a man maybe an hour to die after having his hands, then his arms, then his feet and finally his head chopped off. Sometimes it took the child-soldiers, wielding axes half their size, ten tries to separate the head from the body.

Deaver had seen men taking hours of agony to die after having been gut-shot or having their insides ripped open by a land mine. Two employees of ENP had been hacked to death by a ragtag squadron of RA thugs. It was after looking down at their bodies that Deacon vowed to get himself some real money and finally get out of the business.

That was when he heard about the diamonds.

Axel had had his own fears. Four UN peacekeepers—a Norwegian, a Pakistani, a Brazilian and a Brit—had been found tortured to death last month, their bodies having been dumped into the UN encampment during the night as a warning not to cross RA troops.

The medical examiner said they’d been raped repeatedly “with something big and wooden,” then skinned alive. Axel had told him this with a shudder, and Deaver realized it was his worst fear.

It would never happen to Axel, now. He’d gone out like a light being switched off. One moment he was happy in the knowledge that he was going to give diamonds to Maja, then bam! Lights out.

Lucky guy.

Deaver was going to have to mutilate the body, but Axel was already dead. It wouldn’t make any difference to him.

When a patrol finally found him, they had to think it was Deaver’s body, fallen into the hands of the RA. Deaver looked down, studying the body. Hacking off limbs is harder than it looks, unless you have a tree stump and a big axe, which most of the assholes in the RA did.

All Deaver had was his Kobun Tanto, but he kept it as sharp as a scalpel. He’d dressed enough deer growing up in Arkansas to know how to go about doing what he had to do. He bent, inserting the knife point between the tendons on the inside wrist, and quickly severed Axel’s right hand. He picked it up and flung it far into the jungle. He could hear the small thud as it fell. In five minutes, the second hand was severed and flung in the opposite direction, the unclotted blood forming a red arc as it flew through the air. The hands would be eaten before nightfall.

Now came the distasteful part. Deaver bent down, knife point on the throat and in one quick, hard movement, slashed Axel open from sternum to pubic bone. There was very little bleeding, but Axel’s bowels bulged out through the opening. With several more slashes, the skin on Axel’s face hung in tatters.

The Revolutionary Army was known for its stoned thugs who loved torturing and mutilating their victims. There would be no doubt in anyone’s mind what had happened. The story of the diamonds was well-known. RA soldiers broke into the encampment, kidnapped Deaver, tortured him for the diamonds, and left his body to rot in the jungle.

While Axel left for Finland and Maja.

Deaver straightened and stepped back to admire his handiwork. The predators of the jungle would come across the body as soon as he left. No matter when a UN patrol found the body, what would be left would be Deaver’s clothes, wallet, passport, ENP Security ID and very little else. With no hands and no face, the only thing that could identify Deaver was DNA, which would have to be analyzed back in Paris, if anyone cared enough to want a positive ID.

By the time the DNA analysis results were back, Deaver would be long gone, back in the States, tracking down Prescott to get his diamonds back.

He knew just where that fucker Prescott would go. Deaver knew from the moment he set eyes on Prescott, that he was trouble. He made it his business to find out his weak spots. The fucker didn’t have any. He didn’t drink, he didn’t do dope and he couldn’t be bought. The only weakness Deaver could find was a woman. A girl. Prescott kept a photograph and a press clipping about her, hidden in a secret compartment in his rucksack. Deaver had managed to make photocopies once, while Prescott was away. He’d watched Prescott take the photo out and stare at it, endlessly.

So he knew where that fuck was going. Back to that bitch he’d mooned over forever, the one he jacked off to.

Deaver’d find him, oh yeah. He’d find them both and the diamonds, too. It would be a real pleasure killing them before he disappeared again, forever.

Summerville

Oh, my, Caroline thought, watching through the wide arch as Jack quickly descended the stairs and strode through the atrium into the dining room. There was a rare, very definitely feminine flutter in her chest.

Boy, does he clean up nicely.

Gone was the scruffy, unshaved look of a man who’d been traveling hard and rough. He’d washed his hair and tied it back. It gleamed an intense, shiny black.

He had on tight black pressed jeans and a black turtleneck sweater. Though the clothes were informal, they had the odd effect of looking like elegant evening wear. The clothes also showcased his body, strong chest muscles and biceps showing under the sweater.

In the bookshop, it had been clear that Jack Prescott was a tall, strong man, but Caroline had been too busy worrying about whether to accept him as a boarder and then about whether they’d actually make it home alive to dwell on his body.

But now they were safely home, they hadn’t died, the boiler hadn’t died, and he didn’t seem like a serial killer. Now she could look her fill. In between setting the last of the tableware and lighting the candles, she watched him.

She’d rarely seen such a perfect specimen of a man. It was something other than being buff. Buff was normal nowadays. Even Sanders was gym-fit. This was something beyond that—it was sheer male power, unadulterated, unadorned.

His eyes met hers and held as he made his way quickly down the staircase and into the dining room. Some expression, one she couldn’t pin down, passed over his face when he saw the dining table.

Had she overdone it?

She looked over the table, set with her best Villeroy & Boch tableware, which her parents had bought on their honeymoon in Paris thirty-two years ago. She still had four unbroken Waterford crystal glasses and there were still bits and pieces of the family silver. Enough, certainly, to set an elegant table for two.

She’d been lighting the last of the candles when he stopped on the threshold. They looked at each other, utter silence in the room. What incredibly magnetic eyes he had. They held her own. His gaze was so compelling, she could scarcely look away…with an exclamation of pain, Caroline blew out the match that had singed her fingers. It stung. She glanced down at the angry red spot on her index finger.

In a second, he was by her side, a deep frown between his eyebrows. He picked up her hand and examined it carefully.

“It’s nothing,” she said, tugging at her hand to free it. It didn’t work. He was holding her in a perfectly painless yet unbreakable grip. How stupid, to burn her finger on a match staring at a man. You’d think she’d never seen a man before, the way she’d been staring at him.

A flush of embarrassment rose from deep inside her. She was cursed with the skin of a redhead, and she knew that her cheeks would be flushed and that the flush would extend down to her breasts.

He was standing very close, close enough for her to smell him. He’d used the soap she left for all the guests, but his smell—the one that had been imprinted on her brain, on her very nerve endings in the car—overrode the attar of roses. Maybe it was the combination of such female and masculine scents blended together that made her slightly dizzy.