It hardly mattered. The outcome for her was the same.
“Richie, I’m so sorry about all this,” she said brokenly.
He found the pack of tissues in the center console, pulled one out with slow, deliberate care and forced himself to wipe away the blood drying on her chin. He tried to pat down that wayward crest of hair.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “You’re more tenderhearted than you knew. But you’re misplacing your compassion. Save it for those who deserve it. Those who can benefit from it. Otherwise, what’s it worth? Who benefits?” He stroked her sticky cheek.
“Come up with me,” she pleaded, her long red nails digging into his forearm. “I need you. Please, Richie.”
Her bleating whine grated on his raw nerves. He clamped down on the urge to shake her off. Apart from the fact that she could never arouse him in this condition, he also thought it unwise to let himself be seen by her neighbors entering her house. Much less filling any of her orifices with his genetic material. Considering.
He touched her face with manufactured gentleness. “I can’t. I’m overbooked already. Helen and the girls are furious with me. And besides, you never get any rest when I’m with you. You need your rest.”
She blinked, and then her eyes narrowed as if she were squinting into bright sunshine. “Why are you being so nice?”
He was alarmed by the question. “Good God, Diana.”
“It just seemed strange, that’s all,” she said softly. “You don’t have a nice bone in your body.”
He tried to smile. “I’m not comfortable with it, either. So hurry and get back in top form, so I can be my nasty familiar self again.”
She tried to smile with her swollen mouth. The results were painful. She got out of the car, teetering her unsteady way up the street.
Hurry, hurry, he urged her mentally. He didn’t want anyone to notice how she looked or ask her if she’d been mugged. If she needed help. Or God forbid, the police.
She went up her porch steps, and entered the house without encountering anyone. He pulled out into the street and dialed a number on the dedicated cell phone he had been given at the island.
Zhoglo answered. “Dr. Mathes? Is there a problem?”
He suppressed the unfamiliar nervousness the man’s baritone voice provoked in him. It was unacceptable that this man should actually intimidate him. He was beyond all that.
“Ah, unfortunately yes,” he admitted. “Diana Evans, the anesthesiologist who I had chosen for my team. She, ah…she—”
“Has proven to be less than worthy?” Zhoglo finished smoothly.
“She’s become erratic and unpredictable,” Mathes said, reluctantly. “I think that she’s close to a total breakdown.”
“Ah. I see. Sad. She is pretty. I saw pictures. I could have told you not to go into partnership with a woman that you are fucking, Doctor.”
Mathes swallowed down his angry response before he realized that he had done it, and was left with nothing left to say. Jaw flapping.
Maybe it was the scene at the island that intimidated him. A man could hardly be blamed for being a tad unnerved by throat-slashed, bullet-ridden corpses strewn left and right. Even Dr. Richard Mathes.
“You will be able to manage without her, I presume?” Zhoglo asked. “The team I assembled for you is adequate, no?”
“Yes,” he admitted. He had not yet met the members of the secret surgical teams, all of whom were from Eastern Europe, but he had studied their CV’s. All of them were superbly qualified. It made one wonder how Zhoglo had managed to hire so many fine doctors.
He had a sudden flash of the two Parisian girls, tied to the bed, throats gaping red. Nigel Dobbs, smiling cordially in the foreground.
Perhaps it was not such a mystery. All those doctors had families.
“I’ve given her sedatives,” he said. “She should sleep for several hours today.”
“Meaning that you want me to hurry up and clean up your mess for you, Doctor? By rights, you should put her down yourself.”
Mathes was utterly taken aback. “I—”
“Yes, I know.” Zhoglo sounded bored. “You are not competent. Such things require a specialist. I will send someone to take care of it. Is there anything more?”
Diana’s mysterious double flashed through Mathes’s mind, and just as quickly he dismissed it. His situation was bad enough as it was. “No.”
Zhoglo waited another moment and grunted. “Very well. I am not impressed, Doctor. Your Diana is not the security risk. You are.”
Mathes hurried to excuse himself, flustered. “I am sorry—”
“Do better, from now on,” Zhoglo said. “I do not tolerate failure. The effect of further failure upon your family would be…unfortunate.”
The connection broke. Mathes let the phone drop from a hand that was numb with an emotion he barely remembered. Fear.
He’d awakened a beast by poking a stick through the bars of its cage, just for fun—only to discover that the cage door hung wide open.
Becca woke up with an odd feeling of well-being. Her body felt boneless and warm, limp. She wiggled, felt the deep ache in her groin that was beginning to feel almost normal. The feeling she always had after a mad marathon of hot, crazy sex with Nick. Wow.
Not that the sensation was unpleasant. In fact, she squeezed, flexed, stretched, savored it. Her muff hurt quite a bit less than it had the previous mornings. It would seem that she was getting in shape, sex-wise. For the first time in her life.
She reached out across the bed, found it empty. Her eyes popped open, searching for him.
There he was. And how. He sat cross-legged on the rumpled sheets of the other bed, from which he’d stripped the covers. Not a stitch of clothing. He contemplated a large screen laptop. The screen illuminated his somber face with an eerie glow. The room was dim, lit only by the sunlight that glowed around the borders of the blackout curtains.
In the gloom, Nick looked like a naked space-age monk deep in meditation, with that supernatural focus in his eyes. His concentration was laser sharp, slicing through whatever he saw. Including herself.
His pose was outwardly relaxed, but the profound stillness of his body gave her the sense that he could explode into movement in a fraction of an instant. Explosive, volcanic emotions, hidden behind his steely façade, under constant, relentless pressure.
He was so beautiful. It was outrageous. Every detail, those smoldering dark eyes beneath the thick, straight black brows that winged straight back, the hard, sealed mouth, the sharp cliff of his cheekbones. The bumpy terrain of his nose. And his body, all that hard, slabbed, ripped complexity of his heavy musculature. He was so lean, every muscle, every tendon visible, ready and willing to do its job. Not a speck of pinchable fat on him. Which was hardly surprising, since he forgot to eat for days at a time.
Speaking of which. She was startled to realize that she’d done the same thing. Her last chance to eat had been lunchtime the day before, and she’d sacrificed that opportunity to go to the mall and buy slut lingerie. Not that she regretted it, but still. She was ravenous.
And not just for food, either. She’d developed a host of other appetites. She wanted to grab and stroke and caress every inch of that man’s succulent, sinewy body. But she’d probably have to tie him down with rope to get the chance, he was so sexually aggressive.
Tying him. Hmm. The idea had merit. She started to grin. Ten to one, he wouldn’t go for it, control freak that he was, but the resulting argument would be, well, stimulating. And the final outcome would be a lot of fun. She squirmed, just imagining it.
Nick sensed the intensity of her gaze and glanced over, giving her a slow smile that made a string of inner firecrackers detonate inside her. Heat, sparks, colors. Excitement, confusion, fear.
And joy. Of all things to find, in the midst of this mess. Blooming out of the wreckage of her life, like a perfect tulip in a trash heap.
“Hi,” she whispered, blushing. Remembering just how many times he’d wakened her in the night, to start again. And again.
He just nodded, studying her intently. She became suddenly aware of how she must look, with wild bed head, puffy morning face, smeared makeup. A Picasso woman, with nose and mouth and eyes all scrambled up. And even so, he had that look in his eyes about which there could be no mistake. She looked away, flustered, and her eyes fell on the digital clock on the bedstand. 12:24 P.M.
Panic jangled through her, and hard on its heels, disorientation. She sought to anchor herself in this new world.
Cool it. No reason to sweat. She’d been canned. No job to be late for, no responsibilities she was neglecting, no place to go, no one who was waiting for her angrily, tapping a foot, looking at a watch.
It made her feel so lost. Adrift in nowhere. She had Carrie and Josh, of course, but she was desperately hoping to keep them at arm’s length until she managed to resolve this situation. God alone knew how.
Every other point of reference in her life was gone. Except for Nick. He was a big one. Right now, he was her only one.
A dangerous state of affairs, for both of them. She must not glom onto this guy, make him her reason to exist. The danger was there. As sexy and charismatic as he was, as scared and vulnerable as she felt.
As madly in love with him as she was.
She thought of that bad moment last night, when she’d practically blurted it out. And stopped herself, with the grace and subtlety of a stampeding elephant. It was just that she was so terrified of destroying this thing before it even unfolded, before she was even sure what it was. The way she’d somehow managed to destroy all her other relationships.
Nick was so much more important than any of the others. All the more reason not to trash it by opening her big mouth too soon. Scaring him off with inappropriate demands, inconvenient emotions.
She stared at his sexy dimples. “It’s late,” she offered.
“You were tired,” he said. “Me too. I slept more than I have in the last two months combined. Hours on end.” He sounded faintly amazed as he tapped a few keys, snapped the laptop shut and slid off the bed.
Stood there before her, showing off. Inviting her to gape at his gorgeous bod. “I’m glad you’re awake,” he said. “I missed you.”
She smothered a giggle. “Don’t even look at me that way until I’ve had a shower.”
“I don’t care,” he said. His penis lengthened before her eyes.
“I do,” she said, scrambling out of the far side of the bed. She backed up towards the bathroom, shimmying out of the garter belt. “Plus, I’m ravenous. Don’t even think about it. You sex freak.”
He stared at her body, looking wistful. “Get your shower,” he said. “We’ve got to get moving if we want time to grab something to eat.”
She teetered on one leg to peel a stocking off. “What? What’s our hurry? Where are we going?”
He looked embarrassed, and uncomfortable. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said. “I don’t believe it myself.”
“Just tell me,” she snapped.
He lifted his hands helplessly. “We’re going to a wedding.”
She was so startled, she thudded against the wall and almost slid down onto her butt. “You have got to be kidding.”
“I wish I was,” he said. “It’s one of the guys I told you about, the guys who’re helping me track down the big Z. They keep inviting me to their weddings and barbecues and christenings, and Christ knows what all, and it seems ruder than shit to blow them off, since I’m mooching favors right and left. Big, expensive favors. So fuck it. We’re going.”
“Uh-uh. Not me,” she said. “I’m not going to any weddings.”
“We can stop at a mall if you need a dress,” he offered. “I can blow some bucks on a couple of my cards. Or not. That suit with the tank top that you wore yesterday looked really hot. You could wear that again.”
“It’s not the dress. I have a nice dress,” she snapped. “The one I meant to seduce you in.”
His eyes lit up. “Let’s see it,” he said.
“Don’t get sidetracked,” she said, scowling at him. “I’m not going to some strange couple’s wedding, and that is final.”
He shook his head. “It’s a done deal. Davy’s wife booked us a room. She ordered me a suit from Macy’s when I told her I couldn’t go back to my condo. They got a guy to man the surveillance set-up who speaks Ukrainian. I’m outmaneuvered. My ass is grass if I don’t go.”
“That’s your problem, not mine.” She marched into the bathroom. “Just go without me, if you must.”
He followed her in, staring at her naked body in the mirror. “Not happening.” His quiet voice had a tone of finality.
Becca started feeling trapped, almost panicked. “Nick. Be reasonable. I’m not prepared to go to a wedding.” Her voice rose in pitch. “I don’t know these people. I just got fired from my job, I’m on the run from a sadistic mafiya killer, and I don’t even have a gift!”
“That’s OK. They won’t care. On the plus side, it’ll be a great place for us to catch our breath,” Nick coaxed. “The party will be swarming with cops, ex-cops, security professionals. It’ll be the safest place to go dancing in the Pacific Northwest.”
She waved all that away. “It’s a really bad time, Nick. I’m not presentable right now.”
“Bullshit,” he said. “You’re gorgeous. You make my eyes hurt.”