And fuck, was he humbled.
He pried his fingers away from hers and dragged himself up. Back turned, jeans half-fastened. Into the bathroom, to splash come off his belly. He couldn’t risk another shower. Getting naked and wet only led one place with Becca.
He was careful not to look at her as he rummaged on the floor in search of the rest of his clothes.
“So this is routine for you, after sex?” she said, her low voice drifting in from the bedroom, “Acting like an ice cube, not looking at me, not speaking to me?”
He opened his mouth to reply. Stopped himself, closed it tight. Anything he said could be used against him in a female court of law.
“What did I do to deserve this?” she asked quietly.
He found his shirt, yanked it on, and grabbed his boots as he went back into her bedroom to put them on. He owed her that much. “Sweetheart, whatever you think you want from me, you’re better off without it.”
“Would you just look at me, goddamnit?”
Her whip-crack tone startled him into doing just that. He focused on the swirly fall of her dark hair rather than her big, hurt eyes. “The hair has got to go,” he said, distractedly. “Cut it off today, Becca. Get some colored contacts, too. Dark brown. Definitely.”
“Don’t change the subject!” she snapped. “Why do I always get the feeling that you’re punishing me for something that I didn’t do?”
He shook his head. “That’s way too deep for me.”
“Bullshit.” Her voice held an edge. “There’s no video cameras in here, Nick. No bad guys watching to see if you’re evil enough to suit them. You could ease off. Just, you know, a suggestion.”
He plunked his ass down on the carpet amidst all the pillows to yank on his clammy, disgusting socks. “It’s all real,” he said. “What you see is what you get.”
She pondered that as she knelt there on the bed. In her fury, she’d forgotten all about cringing and hiding. Her chin was up, her color high, eyes shining. She was crazy gorgeous. Power shining out of her.
“Well, then,” she said. “I guess I see something you don’t.”
“You see what you want to see,” he said. “Most girls do.”
He could feel her hurt in the thick silence that followed. She persisted a minute later, tough as nails. “I don’t believe it,” she said.
“Believe what?” He yanked a boot on, tried lacing it. The damn thing was waterlogged, the leather laces swollen and stubborn.
“Your mean and horrible act,” she said. “I just don’t buy it. You did an amazing thing for me last night, and I just can’t believe—”
“No.” He struggled with the fucking bootlace until it snapped in his hand. “What I did last night was fail. Get it through your head.”
She dragged in a hurt breath. “It was not your fault that I came over to that house. And rescuing me from death does not equal failure!”
“That’s not what I meant,” he growled. “It was my job to come up with a solution to that problem that didn’t involve fucking my cover. I failed to do that. Years of my life, down the drain.” He shrugged, and rose to his feet, letting the unlaced boots flap. “This is salvage, babe. I’m trying to look on the bright side. Insofar as I can. At least I got some spectacular sex out of it. You burned me alive. I will never forget it.”
She swung her legs around and perched on the other side of the bed, her back to him. “OK,” she said. “I give in. You are mean and horrible and awful, Nick. You can stop trying to convince me. It must take a whole lot of your energy, and I know you must be tired. Just go.”
Her words made his stomach sink to unplumbed depths he’d never imagined. “It’s better you know that right off,” he said heavily. “That’s better than being disillusioned later. Trust me.”
She made a sharp gesture with her hand. “I tried to trust you,” she snapped. “You keep throwing it back in my face. Just leave, OK? I’ve had enough.”
Those were the words he needed to break the spell, get him moving. He reached out to touch the glossy hair waving down her back, and gathered it all into his palm. It felt warm. Slick and vibrant and alive. It made him sorry to do what he was about to do, but hey.
“You’re a sweet girl, Becca,” he said.
She shook with bitter laughter. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing? With you, I don’t dare guess.” She jerked her head, trying to shake off his hand.
He tightened his grip, slid it further down the length of hair. “It’s an observation, not a compliment,” he said.
“Let go of my hair. And thanks so much for the distinction. God forbid I should think you capable of doing or saying anything nice.”
“God forbid,” he agreed. “A girl like you should stay away from assholes like me.”
“Thanks for the tip.” Her head jerked round as she heard the snick of his knife, but he was too quick. Two back-and-forth slashes with the razor-sharp blade, and a thick hank dangled from his hand.
She shrieked with outrage, launching herself at him. “My hair! What the hell? How dare you? Why did you do that?”
He tossed the shorn hair onto the bed, where it swirled around itself. It looked much reduced, separated from her.
Becca’s remaining hair dangled between her ears and her shoulders, a raggedy, irregular inch shorter on one side than the other.
“You weren’t taking me seriously,” he said. “I didn’t want to have to wonder whether or not you’d do as I say. This way, I know.”
“You overbearing, controlling son of a bitch!” She punctuated every word with a violent shove.
“I see you’re finally getting a clue.”
“Get out!” she yelled at him. “Just get out of my place, you…you asshole! Get out!”
He stumbled backward before her onslaught, hastily scooping up his SIG from where he’d left it on her dresser. Leaving a fully loaded piece lying around within reach while lopping off a chick’s hair with his pocketknife was not one of the brighter moves of his spotty career.
He allowed himself to be herded out the door. It slammed in his face. The sound reverberated in his ears.
Well, hell. He’d burned his bridges. Spectacularly. But then again. Burning bridges came naturally to him.
He moved down the stairs, like he’d been preprogrammed by someone else. Someone who did not wish him well. Out with the keys, into the truck. Put it in gear. Conflicting thoughts jostled in his head. He should have left her a number. If the worst happened, and Zhoglo—
No.
A) Chances of something happening diminished exponentially if she had no contact with him. B) If Zhoglo found her, she wouldn’t have a chance to call for help. She would never see it coming.
And he’d be better off not knowing.
He drove, mechanically, to his condo. Parked in his slot. Sat there, for a long, timeless interval, mind blank. He finally dug into his pocket and pulled out the coiled-up hank of satiny brown hair that he’d swiped.
Fondling it. It was the only word that fit. It was so amazingly soft. What the hell was this, something sick, like a trophy? He didn’t know.
He’d better jump-start his brain, start thinking again, if he wanted to survive. He tried, but it was like flogging a dead horse.
The only sure thing was that he should stay on the move. And the hell away from Becca. A brief stop here to get his shit together, and he was gone. If Zhoglo took him down, the first thing the guy would go for when he started to hurt him would be Becca’s whereabouts. Nick had no illusions about how long he’d be able to hold out under a highly skilled torturer. It didn’t matter how tough you were. Eventually, they got to you.
He wished he’d scared her bad enough to make her run someplace far and unknown even to him, but the stubborn broad was impossible to intimidate. Though it was also true that he could not un-know her name or former address. The biggest threat to Becca’s safety right now was the information inside his own brain. He wasn’t going to sleep at night knowing Zhoglo was out there, nosing around for her.
Not that he slept much anyhow. Not since Sveti and Sergei.
He wandered around his condo, at a loss. The apartment seemed unfamiliar. Empty, cold. A parking place for his stuff and, occasionally, his body. Never a home. He hadn’t spent any real time there for years.
It didn’t take long. There wasn’t much. A couple of guns, some favorite knives. His hard drive, his laptop. Some photos of his mother. He had none of his father and wanted none. Besides, if he wanted to remember what Dad looked like, all he had to do was go to the mirror and give himself a snake-eyed, sealed-mouth, pinched nostril glare. He was a dead ringer for the man. All that was missing was the smell of alcohol that had exuded from Dad’s every pore.
He took down the photo of Sergei and Sveti that hung on the blank wall. It was grainy, poor quality, snapped on a cell phone. He wasn’t sure why he’d framed it. He was never in this house to look at it.
He snapped open the cheap frame, and tucked the photo into the padded envelope. Looking at Sveti’s sweet smile made his stomach cramp. He stared at it. Tried to swallow it down. The truth, like a nasty pill.
The best he could do for Sveti at this point would be to simply eliminate Zhoglo. That was starting to look impossible, aside from suicidal. But hey. What the fuck else did he have to do with himself?
One more thing. He pulled his fly fishing tackle box out of the closet, and rummaged till he found a plastic ziplock baggie, the kind drug dealers used to portion out their wares. He pulled the feathery fishing fly out of it, tossed it into the guts of the box and rooted around till he found a length of thread. Then he sat down under the light at his dining room table, and took Becca’s hair out of his pocket.
It took him a while, to soothe and stroke and restore the handful of hair back to its original glossy perfection, but once it was done, he coiled it into a circle and threaded the red filament carefully around to hold it in place. His fingers were deft from years of tying fishing flies. The one thing Dad taught him that had been of any use.
Then he tucked the ring of hair into the plastic envelope with the photos. A moment later, he plucked it out, put it back into his pocket.
Christ, he was so tired. Down to his bones. Sometimes he caught himself wishing that Zhoglo would just get a move on and kill him already, so he could get some fucking rest. But the joke would be on him. He’d probably go straight to the hot place. Pitchforks and flames.
Life sucked. Why should death be any different?
He was pondering that heartening thought when the phone rang. He read the display. Aw, fuck. It was Tamara.
He might as well get the red-hot-poker reaming session over with sooner rather than later. He picked up the phone. “Yeah,” he muttered.
“You idiot.” Her voice burned through the telephone line like acid. “You can’t even get yourself killed like a real man.”
He rolled his eyes as he stalked into the bathroom, and tucked the phone between shoulder and chin as he rooted through the cabinet for the clippers. The blades on the thing were dull for sure. He hadn’t cut his hair in over three years. “Thanks for your touching concern.” His lame attempt at irony reminded him of Becca’s prickly sarcasm.
Bravado, covering up that cream-puff interior.
“Concern. Pah. Stupid goat’s dick excuse for a man,” Tam hissed in Ukrainian. “I just got a hysterical phone call from Ludmilla. She thinks she’s going to get her tits cut off, and she has good reason to think so. Smooth move, Nikolai. Whatever the fuck you did, it is going to cost me. I should never have tried to help you. You were supposed to kill him, you asshole! I thought you were on a suicide mission!”
Man, that bitch could be cold when she was inconvenienced. “I was,” he said. “Then it morphed into murder suicide. And I choked.”
“Morphed…what the hell are you talking about? Use short sentences, yes? Small words. What happened?”
He yanked the scissors out of the bathroom drawer, pushed the speakerphone button and laid the phone down onto the sink. He stared at his reflection as he held a thick, snarled clump of hair away from his head, and brutally scissored it off. It fell into the sink with a soft thud. “A girl,” he said.
“A girl? What girl?” Her voice was getting shrill.
“A girl happened,” he said, through clenched teeth.
“Wait a minute.” Tam hesitated for a moment. He could almost hear the gears crunching in her head. “You don’t mean to say you brought a girl to the—”
“Fuck, no,” Nick snapped, hacking off another clump. “She just appeared. She was staying on the island in another house. That house was supposed to be empty. I checked. Repeatedly. She showed up, out of nowhere in the middle of the night to use the fucking pool. The night before the big Z showed up.”
“Oh, God,” Tam moaned. “Men and their fucking hero complexes.”
“I tried scaring her,” he snapped, defensive. Best to skip the details. Tamara really would cut his balls off for a necklace. “She was tougher than I thought. She’d left her glasses at the poolhouse before I chased her off. She came back to get them the next day.”
“Don’t tell me. Let me guess. At the worst possible moment?”
“Ran smack into the Vor and his boys as they were coming up from the boat,” Nick said wearily. “Unfortunately, she was pretty. Zhoglo licked his chops and decided to have her for lunch.”