Becca took a deep breath, and lifted off the top. OK. Not a human head, or an embalmed space alien. Just a rack, with seven neatly labeled vials of dark liquid suspended in it. She lifted one out, and realized that the liquid inside was blood.
Beneath the rack were several small containers containing clear yellow liquid. Urine, for sure. Then there was a handful of sealed plastic bags with big cotton swabs inside them. The blood, urine and bags were neatly hand-labeled. F-121396-88991. The numbers followed a pattern. Two Fs, the rest Ms, which she assumed referred to male or female. Then a six digit number that she assumed was a birthdate. Then a five digit number. No names. If they were birthdates, 96 was the earliest year. Then a 98. The others were all in the oughts: 01, 02, two 04’s. One 06.
Children. Small children.
Another shudder went up her spine. Shadows, monsters, slithering in the dark, out of plain sight. She was afraid to know the answer to this riddle, afraid it would be something very bad.
She wished, piercingly, that Nick were there. Then she dragged a pen and scrap of paper out of her purse and hastily copied down all the numbers on the vials. Why, she had no idea. But it couldn’t hurt.
Rattle, fumble, click. Someone was trying to open the door.
Becca’s heart practically leaped out of her mouth, she was so startled. She looked around wildly for a hiding place. Closet? Bathtub?
She heard low, tearful cursing, a few futile thuds, as if someone were swatting the door in a fit of frustrated pique. The muttering receded.
Guarded relief flooded through her. Of course. Diana’s key card no longer worked since they had reprogrammed the lock for Becca. Thank God. Becca waited what she hoped was long enough for the woman to get down the hall, measuring time in galloping heartbeats.
She peered out the door and bolted like the hounds of hell were after her. The desk clerks had seen her and so had the security cameras. Chances were good that Diana would know in seconds that her privacy had been violated and would start making a big, fat fuss about it.
Becca really did not want to get into a catfight and exchange bitchslaps with Mathes’s whining, weeping, urping mistress. Besides, if Diana wanted to call the cops on her, she would have the moral high ground. Becca would be printed and booked, have a record. Before Zhoglo subsequently slaughtered her, of course.
Once she got on the highway, she fought to keep under eighty miles per hour, she was so eager to put distance between herself and that woman. She was so rattled, she shrieked when her phone beeped to inform her that she had finally entered her cell phone’s calling area.
It rang, seconds later. She checked the display. Mr. Big.
Hah. Why was she not surprised?
Ringing, thank God. Three rings, and she finally picked up.
“Hello? Nick?” She sounded wary.
“Becca. Where are you?” He tried to keep his voice expressionless.
All activity in the workroom abruptly froze. Davy swiveled his head from the computer screen. Seth, who was overhand chinning on the exercise bar, stopped in midpull and just hung there, muscles locked, eyes slitted. Alex Aaro, the ex-Ranger from Brighton Beach whom they had just briefed, crossed his thickly muscled arms over his broad chest and listened, his broad Slavic face impassive.
“Uh. Well, it’s a long, complicated story,” she began. “I—”
“Where the fuck are you?” This time, anger and fear punched through, undisguised.
Becca was unnerved by its force. “Calm down. I’m fine. And I—”
“You told me you were working at the club until midnight!”
“And what makes you think I wasn’t?” Her voice was tart.
He was ready for that one. “Because your phone was out of area. I know Bothell’s covered. We were messaging the entire goddamn day. So don’t even try to jerk me around.”
Desperate subtext. Please do not lie to me. Do not lie. Do not.
“Oh,” she said, more subdued. “That’s true. I’m sorry if I worried you. I haven’t had a chance to stop and call from a land line—”
“Where are you?” he bellowed.
Becca made an irritated chuffing sound. “Don’t yell, and stop interrupting me. My nerves are shot to hell already. I’m on the highway. I was in Kimble. I saw Mathes at the banquet, and got fired from my job—”
“Fired from your job? What the hell—You saw who? Who the fuck is this Mathes?” He felt like he was about to hyperventilate.
“Richard Mathes. The guy who came to see Zhoglo on the island. He’s a famous surgeon, apparently, and he was there, at the banquet. That I organized. And I—”
“Holy Jesus. And you didn’t call me?” His voice crackled with outrage. “Did he see you?”
“I don’t think so. And I would have, except that I overheard this weird conversation he had with his mistress, and then I ended up following her car. It all happened really fast, and by the time I thought to call you, my cell was out of area, but I couldn’t stop—”
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. You saw Zhoglo’s dinner guest at your banquet. You chose not to call me. Then, you spied on his conversation with his mistress. You chose not to call me once again. Then you followed her goddamn car?”
The other men in the room exchanged glances. Seth thudded to the ground and whistled.
“That’s about the size of it,” she said, sounding sheepish. “I lost her for a while when this black Mercedes SUV came to pick her up, and I couldn’t get out of the parking lot fast enough to see where they—”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” He was on his feet now, yelling into the phone. Seth grimaced, made a cut-it-out slicing gesture with his finger. Davy waved his arms, mouthing cool it, cool it.
She paused for a moment. “Not at all,” she said, in her haughtiest voice. “I’m making an effort to help. That’s quite a different thing.”
“Like hell it is!” he shouted.
“I was heading for that hotel where I was supposed to meet you, but if you’re just going to scream and carry on, I’ll pass, and go home.”
“No!” He sucked in a deep breath, exhaled it slowly, and struggled to get a grip on himself. It was like grappling with a gigantic, muscular, greased octopus. “It’s not safe. Go to the hotel. I’ll meet you there.”
“What for? To scream at me some more?”
He spoke slowly and carefully through clenched teeth. “Please, go to the hotel,” he said. “You scared the living shit out of me.”
“Sorry,” she murmured, finally sounding a little contrite. “OK, then. I’ll tell you the whole story at the hotel. Till then. Bye.”
The connection broke, and the force that had been holding the phone up to his ear deserted him. His arm flopped to his side and his knees gave way, dumping him into his chair.
So. She hadn’t been abducted, tortured, murdered. And she was not running away from him. She was not lying to him, either. No, she was just off her rocker. Which was a whole different problem.
He breathed down the bizarre urge to burst into tears. Not in front of these guys, who were giving him assorted funny looks.
“Chick’s got nerve,” Davy observed, his voice dry.
“Bug-fuck crazy,” was Aaro’s comment.
“Those are the fun ones,” Seth said with relish. “So she tailed this bad guy’s mistress, huh? Hot damn. I can’t wait to meet this girl. She sounds like a real firecracker. I’ll tell Margot to put her at our table.”
Nick barely heard them. “I’ve got to go,” he said, distractedly.
“Yeah, you do,” Seth said. “We’ve got things under control. We’ll analyze the vid at Pavel’s house and get something cobbled up tonight. Aaro’s on the Ludmilla monitors. So go on, have some fun. Go get ’em, tiger. Show that chick who’s boss.”
Nick didn’t have any extra mental energy to bother with Seth’s bullshit. He turned to Davy. “Can you check out that guy she saw at the banquet? Richard Mathes is the name. Famous surgeon.”
“Will do,” Davy said. “Yo. Nick?”
He jerked around on his dash to the door. “What?” he snapped.
“Chill,” Davy said quietly. “Step back. Watch yourself with her.”
Like it was that easy. That was like telling a fire not to be hot. You could try all you wanted, but there wasn’t a whole lot of point in it.
Chapter
21
N ick’s giant black pickup loomed over the tame sedans lined up in the hotel lot like some big, sleek, crouching predator.
Becca pulled her suitcase out of the trunk of her own pussycat of a rented sedan. Tomorrow, she had to take it right back where she’d gotten it. Back to riding the bus. Rented cars were not in the budget of a recently fired person. Not that a recently fired person could really be said to have a budget at all. Such a person had, at best, an emergency fund. In her case, an almost nonexistent one.
Even with Carrie and Josh almost on their own, she barely scraped by from month to month. No margin for error now.
Stop it. She had bigger problems right now than her pathetic bank account.
Like her complicated, volatile new lover.
A part of her coolly observed the chattering voices in her mind, how they generated a cheerful fake buzz of white noise to hide from herself how incredibly nervous she was about seeing Nick.
But it wasn’t working. She was on to the trick. What was the point of all this energy expended in self-deception if it didn’t even work?
Habit, she supposed. She smiled at the desk clerk. A shivery sense of déjà vu went through her. “Hi. Has my husband, Rob Steiger, arrived yet?” The H word gave her a shivery rush of emotion.
The chubby brunette behind the desk smiled and passed her a key card. “He sure has, Mrs. Steiger, just about ten minutes ago. He told us to be on the lookout for you. Have a good night!”
She took the elevator up and walked slowly down the hall. Knees wobbling, heart thudding, head dizzy, breath shallow, hands damp and cold—symptom for symptom, she was in more of a nervous tizzy now than she had been while breaking into Diana Evans’s hotel room.
How ridiculous was that. She needed to grow a backbone. Right now. She took a deep breath, and stuck the key card in. The light flashed green, and she pushed the heavy door open.
Nick sat on the bed in the dim room, framed by the room’s dark entryway. Facing the door, simply waiting.
He smoldered at her. There was simply no other word for it. The harsh lines of his handsome face were grimly expressionless, but his eyes burned. The power of his anger pulsed at her. The hairs on her neck tingled.
Something sinuous and powerful moved inside her. Behind the fear and the white noise. A hungry pull of hot desire, as she sensed that simmering power in him. Hers to use, if she could rise to the occasion. If she could handle him.
“Hello, Mr. Steiger,” she said.
He waited a long time to answer, and finally inclined his head. “Mrs. Steiger,” he said guardedly.
“How was your day?” she asked.
“It was shitty.” His voice sliced through the silence. “Don’t fuck with me, Becca. I’m not in the mood.”
Tactical retreat. New strategy. Nix the playfulness.
She shrugged off her coat, hung it up, lifted her suitcase onto the rack. Caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She didn’t recognize herself, with the teased, tangled cloud of hair, the shockingly red mouth. She shrugged off the blazer, and contemplated ways to stage this confrontation. His body language did not invite her to sit with him on the bed, but neither did she want to stand before him like an accused criminal before the judge.
She grabbed a chair, perched in it. Took a deep breath and tilted her rib cage so that the high-necked white knit tank pulled sexily over her boobs. Crossed her legs, to hike the straight skirt up. Let her crossed foot dangle, in the stiletto-heeled strappy sandal. She’d bought those shoes for her engagement party. This seemed like a much, much better use for them.
He stared at her, hot eyes moving up and down her body.
Ah. That was better. So she was not entirely without resources.
“What’s with the slut red lipstick?” he asked.
“Oh. That.” She hesitated. “I, ah, stole it. From Diana.”
“And Diana is…?” His voice went soft, almost menacing.
“Mathes’s mistress,” she admitted. “The woman I’ve been tailing.”
The quality of his silence deepened. It was like the moment of inevitability after the fuse is lit, but before the explosion.
Becca rushed on, trying to keep her shaking voice light. “I think the color is a little extreme, but it’s growing on me. Do you like it?”
“Don’t know,” he said slowly. “It makes me want to fuck you hard, up against the wall. Was that your intention when you put it on?”
She blinked, nonplussed. “Ah…maybe we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves in the agenda for the evening,” she murmured. “Don’t you want to be debriefed? Is that the right word?”
“Yeah. Debrief me.” He jerked his chin. “Get the fuck on with it. I want to move right along to the other part of the evening’s agenda. I’ve got big plans for you, babe. Big, big plans.”
She shivered at the implied threat in his low voice. “Stop trying to intimidate me, Nick. I do not appreciate it.”