A Darker Place (9 page)

And then below that lay the anger, a wild irrationality that was the only sane response to the idea of walking calmly into the camp of a mortal enemy and pretending to be his friend.

And below the anger and the confusion and the craziness, underlying it all, she could feel the disturbing roil of her old, tired guilt, as worn and dull as a river rock from all the long years of handling. She was asking it now to support and energize yet another hard slog through the most distressing times of her past, a past that she thought she had earned the right not to forget, but perhaps not to dwell on quite so much. The dreams she had were no longer so utterly devastating, the flashbacks she experienced no longer galvanizing; the memories had become, at long last, a part of the vocabulary of her inner life.

She’d been spoiled by complacency and resented being forced to face herself again. Very well: She would be manipulated. But only so far. And not again.

In the cold spring wind and the brush of damp, fragrant branches against her jacket and her face, the cacophony of voices began to fade. The confusion and resentment receded somewhat, the opposing pulls made an effort to sort themselves out, and the fluttering thrill and dread she always felt on these last nights screwed themselves down into a semblance of calm anticipation. At the same time, walking among the trees and hills with only Stan and the wind for company, she came to the decision that this would be the last time. Never again would she submit to Glen McCarthy, become a part of the machinations of federal justice and the personal manipulations of the man himself. Dues paid endlessly became tribute to an extortionist, and with this last
operation, Glen had revealed himself as perilously close to a blackmailer.

Clearheaded and satisfactorily aching, her bad knee only one sharper twinge among the pangs of middle-aged exertion, Anne walked back down the hill to her home. She showered and washed her thick hair with slow attention, put a pot of lentils and sausages on the stove, and went outside to split firewood until she heard the sound of Glen McCarthy’s government car dragging its inadequate transmission up her hill. So much warning did it give her that she had all the wood neatly stacked before he arrived.

As his overheated car pulled up onto the flat before her house, Glen saw her, standing next to the woodpile with an ax in her hand. She watched him park and heard the engine die, and then she half turned to sink the ax, one-handed, deep into the chopping block before stooping to gather the kindling and carry it in through the kitchen door. Glen sat for a long moment looking at the door before he reluctantly set the brake and got out. It must have been a trick of the light, he told himself, the approaching dusk and the overhang of her roofed-over woodpile, but when she had so easily driven the hand ax into the stump, there had seemed to be a very odd expression on her face, a sort of grim pleasure, almost of malice.

Not Anne, he told himself, closing the car door. It was the light. He said hello to Stan, who sat on the porch as aloof as always despite all Glen’s friendly overtures, and then went in to see what Anne had on the stove.

Anne was calm over dinner, Glen was relieved to see. Quiet perhaps, but without the jitters he had been faced with at previous times. She seemed watchful, however, and smiled to herself at odd times. She also drank more
than he’d seen her drink before, glass after glass of the heavy red wine that seemed to have no effect on her, and as time went on her strangeness began to worry him and inflict him with a compensatory anxiety, until he almost felt as if he were the one about to set forth in the morning.

It seemed odd to Glen that he did not know Anne well enough to tell what her behavior meant. On one level, he knew her better than he knew anyone else in the world. He was intimate with her physical history, her psychological profile, her finances, training, and personal history, her family and friends, her strengths and her weaknesses. He knew what size shoe she wore and what kind of blouses she liked, her taste in cosmetics and where she bought her furniture. He knew in general what men she had relationships with, and could, if he wanted to, find out a great deal more about them. He even knew why she liked men of their particular physical type, big and strong and preferably hairy, since he had seen pictures of her husband.

On another level, though, Anne was as much of an enigma to him as she had been the first day he had sought her out fifteen years before. How could he know, really know, what essential shifts would be made when a mother saw her own beloved daughter laid out on the ground beside a row of other children? How could he even begin to guess at the dark areas she hid so efficiently inside her? Nothing truly bad had ever happened to him personally—hell, both his parents were even still alive. He understood how Anne worked well enough to make use of her, but he could not say that he knew her. He did not even think that he wanted to.

When the table was clear and the dishes stacked by the sink, Glen brought out his briefcase and gave Anne her identity. She studied the California driver’s license with its address in a town where she had actually lived, if
briefly and many years before. The photograph on her passport was a different one, more recent than that on the license, with an issue date three years earlier and a smattering of European and Asian stamps on the pages—again, all countries she had at least visited in the past.

She now possessed a checking account, two credit cards, a telephone card, an assortment of memberships to video rental places she had never heard of, an REI sporting goods member number, and three library cards (two of which were expired) from far-flung towns. He also gave her half a dozen letters and communications from mythical relatives and an insurance company, bearing forwarding labels to “general address” at a number of post offices up and down the West Coast. Ana Wakefield had kept an account with a mailbox service in Boise, Idaho, for the last four years, set up automatically when Anne had ceased being the last identity, Annette Watson. Glen had apparently thought it worth maintaining a new name for her even though she had made it clear at the time that she would not work for him again. Well, she had been wrong, and he had been right, and here was Ana Wakefield with a history ready to slip into. She pushed away the bundle of old letters, unable to face the new relatives and the paperwork from a minor accident Ana had had in Seattle. Glen drilled her on the methods of getting in touch, ranging from postcards addressed to her imaginary Uncle Abner to the extreme use of the panic alarm that was wired into Rocinante’s chassis. Although they had been over this already, he decided that they had to review it again and check on the gun safe, so Anne turned on the floodlights and they went out to the barn.

She watched in silence while Glen fussed with the gun’s compartment, which was indeed invisible and which did work perfectly, but when he stretched out on
the floor and began to prod at the panel that hid the transmitter, she studied his legs for a minute and then withdrew to go back out to the woodpile. The crash of an armful of split logs dropping into the wire cage on the back of the bus, a device she had asked Eliot to weld on over the engine panel, brought Glen to investigate.

After a minute, he asked, “Doesn’t the wood get pretty wet out there?”

“Last time out, I woke up one morning to find a nest of baby black widow spiders hatching out from a log I had stored under the front seat. I don’t bring wood inside anymore.” She eased herself down to examine the welds, and then to look under the back fender at the exhaust pipe.

Staring down at the top of her head, the curve of her spine, and the jeans tight over her butt, Glen took a sudden step back and said abruptly, “I’m engaged, Anne. I’m going to get married in the summer.”

“Good for you.” Her voice was so lacking in interest that for a moment he wondered if she had heard him.

“Her name is Lisa. She’s a—”

“I don’t give a damn, Glen.” Anne got to her feet and fastened the wire catch that kept the firewood from bouncing out onto the road.

“Anne, I’m serious. I can’t—”

“Yes you can, Glen.”

“Anne, no.”

She whirled, and he took another step back. “No changes, Glen. No negotiations, no changes, not if you want me to drive away tomorrow. I’d be more than happy to stay here and teach my kids and never see you again. It’s up to you.”

“Jesus, Anne, why?” It was a question he had never asked her before, though he had certainly asked it of himself. “Why do you… do it?”

“Don’t ask, Glen. You wouldn’t like the answer.”

She did not move, did not bring up her hands to undo the buttons of her shirt or cock her hip in coy seduction or even pout her lips, but as he stared at her, angry and disturbed, he began to feel something growing along with the anger, something dark and strong and not very civilized but oh, very, very tasty. She felt the change, and a smile grew behind her eyes. He swallowed, put on a crooked smile of his own, and moved forward.

“God,” he murmured, sinking his fingers into her thick hair and pulling her face up to his. “The things I do for my country.”

Eight—no, nine times, over a period of twelve years, and sex with Anne Waverly had never been remotely the same twice. Breathless one time, funny the next, concentrated and athletic and even—terrible word but quite an experience—nurturing, and never once a repeat.

This time it was brutal.

They started there in the barn, nothing gentle about her mouth on his, her arms half fighting against his own, their two bodies grinding against each other. Their teeth scraped and then Anne’s mouth opened and Glen’s tongue was free to explore the vividly remembered and weirdly erotic plate of the dental appliance that held in place the two front teeth lost in the Utah disaster. Their breathing quickened. Glen’s hands moved up and down over Anne’s clothes until she pulled away slightly, buried her head in Glen’s neck, and bit down hard.

He yelped in surprise and real pain, shoving her away so that her bad knee would have failed to hold her had Rocinante not been there. She said nothing, just turned and walked off in the direction of the house. He followed more slowly, pausing to loosen his collar and crane his neck to see the tooth marks, touching the welt gingerly. He was examining his fingertips in the floodlight
over the barn door for signs of blood and thinking ruefully that he would certainly have to stay away from Lisa for a couple of weeks, when the lights went off, leaving him to pick his way, stumbling and cursing, through the obstacle-strewn woodyard and up the steps to the kitchen.

He half expected the door to be locked, but it was not. He flung it open and was drawing breath to bellow a furious protest at the woman inside when he saw Stan, feet braced, head down, and ready to do battle. Glen strangled on the angry words and forced out a soothing prattle while he inched past the dog. Stan allowed him to pass, and in relief Glen slipped through the door to the living room and slammed it. He then turned, fuming, for the stairs. He didn’t know if this was rejection or foreplay, but he wasn’t about to get in the car and drive meekly away without knowing for sure.

He found her in the bedroom, and took the fact that she was rapidly throwing off her clothes as a sign that she did not intend him to leave. He watched her push her thumbs into the waist of her jeans and peel them down, and when she stood naked before him, strong and middle-aged and bearing the scars he had given her, he took a shaky breath and decided to make a joke out of the past five minutes.

“Look, Anne, if you’re still hungry, I’d be happy to bring you something from the fridge, but try not to bite any more pieces out of—”

Only his training saved him from a split lip, if not a concussion. He caught her arm as it came toward him, and then nearly fell victim to her knee. He was bigger, he was stronger, he was eight years younger, and he was trained, but she was wild and fast and she wanted seriously to hurt him, and all he could do was to wrap himself hard around her like a human straitjacket and ride out whatever storm had hold of her. It took an age
to pass, and his arms were aching and his mind was torn between the wish simply to slap her hard to stop her from trying to bite him through his padded coat and the growing and genuine alarm for her sanity, when between one moment and the next she went limp and stopped struggling against him. He held her, fully clothed against her nakedness, and rocked her gently until he was sure it was not a feint. When her arms moved to free themselves, he allowed her to reach up and pull his mouth down to hers.

Still, the skirmish was not over. The outright violence turned to a slow struggle, with Glen gradually realizing that her arms were content only when they were pinned down, her body free to respond only when it was hedged around and wrapped by his. Putting on the damn condom one-handed while he was lying across her, the other hand clasping both of her wrists together behind her back and his legs wrapped around hers holding her down, was one of the most difficult and grimly ridiculous things he had ever done. When he finally had it on, he was aroused in more ways than the one. He bruised her mouth with his, grabbed her and pinned her down, and finally entered her with no more thought of lubrication than a drunken teenager. He held her down and thrust against her, knowing that he had to be hurting her, wanting to make her ask him to stop. She did not ask, but eventually, finally, she arched herself away from his restraining hands and gave a brief shuddering cry like a sob. He shouted his relief into the hollow of her throat, moved against her slowly two or three more times, and collapsed.

He lay with his chest heaving, wondering what the hell had gotten into him, hurting her like that, and wondering how the hell he was going to begin to apologize, when to his astonishment he felt her arms go around
him and he felt her mouth kiss his hair in an unprecedented gesture of affection.

He turned his head, heavy and damp with sweat, to rest against her breast. “Next time you want to do that,” he gasped, “give me a little warning so I can bring along my cuffs and some rope.”

“Duct tape,” she said indistinctly, and he snorted in astonishment. Then, to his even greater disbelief, he heard her say, very clearly, a thing she had never told him before. “Thank you, Glen.”