Reflex (31 page)

Davy shook his head. "You have nothing to fear from
me.
I wish you
would
tell. Tell the whole world!" He sighed. "You can leave when your other passengers come back. Miss Pope and I will not be riding back with you."

"You're the guy, aren't you, who stopped those hijackings ten years ago? Those airplanes and that ship in Egypt."

Davy shrugged. The conclusion was obvious. He'd been captured on video appearing on the wing of a 727 during the Cyprus rescue. Over two hundred passengers and crew saw him jump during the
Argos
ship rescue.

"What do I tell them?" He gestured toward Roule and Reverend Ilori.

"Shock. Angels. Hallucinations. Whatever you want. I better go get Miss Pope before she pops a blood vessel."

"Or the army does that for her."

"I
wish."
Davy jumped.

He reappeared under the center of the church, well behind Hyacinth. One of the shooters on the Jet Ski had figured out where she was hiding and had rounded the island, flanking her. Dried mud was flying as bullets tore past the stairs and Hyacinth was pressed tight against the back of the cinderblocks, barely in cover. Apparently she'd run out of ammo for she wasn't returning fire and she no longer looked as if she were enjoying herself. Between the shots Davy heard the distant noise of helicopters.

He would be in danger of being hit if he jumped directly behind her. She pretty much filled the only sheltered space in her vicinity and the way she flinched as the bullets set showers of dried mud flying she probably wasn't considering it much like shelter.

He looked at the Jet Ski. It was drifting, idling, and the pilot was twisted on the saddle, shooting three-round bursts.

Davy jumped and appeared with both feet on the rear starboard edge of the Jet Ski. The Jet Ski promptly rolled over, dumping the shooter, but Davy jumped away before he'd sunk more than knee deep in the estuary. He appeared directly behind Hyacinth, a large amount of water puddled around him, turning the dried, cracked dirt to mud.

One of the crewmen from the large boat had climbed into the mangroves and was now shooting at the steps, but his position didn't allow him to shoot directly at their position. Davy ignored him.

He wanted to just grab Hyacinth and jump, but the way she flinched every time a bullet slammed into the mud steps or plowed into the mud gave him an idea.

"Back to the Vineyard?" he asked.

She twisted around and said "Yes, dammit!" Almost immediately, her face changed, anger replacing fear. "How did you—oh just get us out of here!" A chip of flying debris had cut her forehead and blood ran down into her eyebrow, but she seemed unaware of it.

He allowed himself a small smile as he jumped her back to the mansion.
A mansion,
he mused,
which is on the south shore of Martha's Vineyard.

They appeared in his room, in the box. Mud splattered on the Turkish rug. They were entwined, still lying prone, and Davy tried to roll away but Hyacinth pulled him back, twisted on top and straddled him. She dropped the radio and her Glock on the floor.

I'll jump away,
he thought, but he didn't. Instead he felt her pelvis grinding against him and then her mouth on his and his body responding. He let his hands come to rest on the small of her back, just where the swell of her buttocks met her waist.

Oh, god. It's been so long...

Her tongue ran across his lips and she pulled his shirt apart, literally, buttons flying and cloth ripping as she tugged. She lifted up again astride him as she tore off her photojournalist's vest. He found himself lifting the tail of her polo and running his fingers over the skin of her back as she pressed her chest down on him again. He encountered her bra strap but there was no clasp at the back so he moved his hands around, under the shirt, encountering her breasts beneath stretch lace, hard nipples, and then the front closure. Hyacinth lifted to give him access and the bra separated, dropping her full breasts into his hands. She groaned and sucked on his lower lip.

Davy ached for her, even though a tiny voice in the back of his head was screaming that this woman shot, killed, murdered Brian Cox in front of him, was one of those who made him a prisoner, tortured him, kept him away from Millie. His body didn't care.
Shut up! It's not about
love.

He pushed her up and tugged at her shirt, pulling and pushing it up. Hyacinth sat up and pulled it over her head in one quick motion, shrugged off the unfastened bra, then shifted back along his legs. She straddled his knees and put one hand on his crotch as she fumbled with her other hand at the buckle of his belt.

He watched her, frozen in agonized anticipation, drinking in the motion of her breasts, the play of hollow and swell around her collarbones and the base of the neck—then he jerked his head up and raised himself to his elbows, staring.

A semicircular scar, old and faded to the merest white line, graced Hyacinth's chest an inch below her collarbone. He searched with his eyes and saw another, the thin straight line on the side of her neck.

His hand reached out, probed her skin, and felt the lump, the flat hardness below that matched his own implant. He jerked his hand away as if burned. He felt nauseated but it wasn't accompanied by the tingling in his throat. It was pure, visceral revulsion.

She reacted to his jerking away as she hadn't to his probing touch, looking up from where she was unsnapping his jeans, her brows raised. He recoiled, a jump that left him standing on the other side of the room from her.

She jabbed a finger in her mouth and swore around it. "Dammit, you might warn a girl! You nearly tore my finger off."

She stood up, her breasts swaying. Objects of desire only seconds before, Davy hardly saw them. His eyes were drawn to the scars, barely visible from across the room yet burning, to Davy's eyes, like lines of fire.

"What's wrong?"

Davy tapped his own chest, where they'd put the device. He ran his finger over the scar tissue there and on his neck.

She raised her hand to touch her own skin above the breast. "Yes? What about it?" She cupped her own breasts and lifted them. "What does that have to do with
this?
With what we were doing?"

He looked away, ashamed of himself. "It brought me back to my senses. I don't know what I was thinking." He looked back. "When did they do it to you? And why?"

She crossed her arms over her breasts. "What does it matter?"

Davy felt like he'd been drenched in ice water. His stomach was roiling and though his arousal had vanished he could still feel her on his skin. "Because you went through this yourself, you
felt
what it was like, and
you let them do it to me!"

"Ask yourself
this
my boy: What choice did I have?" She let her hands drop again. Her mouth, so soft and yielding before, was a tight line. "I spent my share of time lying in my own shit and vomit. Not that mine works like yours. They didn't use it to keep me from running—a locked door does that just fine in my case. But they did use it to compel my... loyalty."

Davy shuddered.
We're all victims here.
"What did you do to piss them off?"

She turned away. "You don't understand. You probably can't understand."

"I understand more than I
did.
They turned you into a killer, didn't they?"

She stared at him, frowning, like he'd just said the stupidest thing she'd ever heard. She picked up her clothes and her gun and walked to the door.

He was upset and he found he didn't want her to leave. "What did I say?"

She laughed at him, but there was very little humor in it. Her eyes glittered as she jerked her shirt on. "You don't get it. They didn't make me into a killer—that was why they hired me in the first place." She opened the door and touched her upper breast. "This wasn't inflicted on me—it was a requirement for promotion, a necessary condition to work at this level. It was something I
chose!"
She looked at Davy with narrowed eyes, then shook her head. "I should've known better." She slammed the door hard enough that the Winslow Homer print bounced off of its picture hook and fell to the dresser top.

Davy stared at the door, his mouth open. His hands shook and his mouth was dry. He thought about her skin, her breasts, and the way his body had responded to her touch.

Then he went into the bathroom and threw up.

After an afternoon spent watching Lawrence Simons's New York address from a rooftop in the next block, Millie had a bad evening and a worse night.

In New York there'd been one delivery of groceries and the mailman had stuffed several envelopes in the slot but that was all. She was using the cheap plastic chair she'd used in D.C. and it still hurt her butt.

Later she'd bought takeout for herself and Padgett, dropped his off without being seen, and eaten her meal crouched before the wood stove in the Aerie.

Her dreams had been awful. They varied from being caught by Padgett's employers to finding Davy's lifeless body, his face frozen and frost crystallizing his eyes.

In the morning, she finally gave up the struggle and crawled out of bed, bleary-eyed, at five. She made tea and dressed warmly.

Time to talk to Padgett,
she decided.

She brought him a mug of tea and placed it near the head of the sleeping bag. He was snoring, apparently having slept both soundly and well. Millie returned to the Aerie for an old, weather-beaten director's chair and set it down some fifteen feet from the sleeping man. She was wearing her Millie wig and her regular glasses without the contacts. She didn't know if she was going to give Padgett to the FBI or not, but if she did, she didn't want him telling anybody about her changed appearance.

She took a deep breath and settled herself into what she called her counselor self, the persona she used to do therapy.

"Good morning, Mr. Padgett."

The snoring cut off with a glottal catch and his lips smacked together. He was still asleep apparently, but she could tell he was surfacing.

"Time to wake up, Mr. Padgett."

He pulled the rim of the sleeping bag down and peered at the gray sky, then at her. "Sod off," he said and pulled the sleeping bag back over his face.

She blinked. It was bad enough that she hadn't slept. Why should he? She got a bucket from the Aerie and, after thinking for a moment, jumped to the waterfront in Edgartown. The wind had died but the air hovered at freezing. The salt water she dipped from the harbor was fresh from Nantucket Sound and very cold—around forty-five degrees Fahrenheit.

She stood five feet back from the head of the sleeping bag and swung the bucket with a will. The icy water splashed into the opening, spreading the bag open and soaking Padgett's head, arms, and upper torso. He struggled with the wet bag, trying to fight his way clear of the cold, sodden cloth.

Millie returned to Edgartown and took another bucket from Nantucket Sound. She jumped back to Texas, to the rim of the pit well above Padgett. The man had stripped off his shirt and was huddled over the coals of the fire trying to stir them to life. He had more firewood than she remembered, then she saw that the chair she'd carried down to the island had been broken up.

I liked that chair.

She put the bucket down on the ground and jumped to the island below, again, about fifteen feet away. "Are we awake, now?"

Padgett snarled. The canvas seat and back of the director's chair had caught afire and he was arranging the chair legs carefully atop the flames. He was shivering and he reached out to take one of the crutches into his hands but he didn't use it to stand. He held it like a club. "Keep away from me, bitch!"

Millie flinched from the intensity of his voice, then steadied.
What can he do to me?

"Do you want me to leave you alone? All you have to do is answer two simple questions." She jumped to his rear, still twenty feet away from him. "One: Where is my husband, Mr. Padgett? Two: Where is Ms. Johnson."

Padgett nearly fell into the fire as he jerked his head around, tracking her voice.

She jumped back to her original place across the firepit. "Well?"

Padgett jerked back. He lowered his eyes to the fire and he ignored her.

She jumped back to the rim and retrieved the bucket of water. She appeared across the fire from him and he jerked away, rolling sideways as she swung the bucket, but Millie ignored him, and all the water splashed into the fire pit. The fire went out in a billowing cloud of steam and ashes. She jumped to the fireplace lighter and picked it up. Belatedly Padgett grabbed for it but she'd jumped back again, twenty feet away. Swinging the bucket back and forth, she said, "Back soon. Need more water."

She didn't go back to Edgartown. Instead, she bought a large cup of coffee in Manhattan. She retrieved the cheap plastic lawn chair from the roof on 82nd Street and returned to the island.

Padgett had unzipped the sleeping bag and had wrapped the third of it that was still dry around his upper body. He was visibly shaking.

Millie placed the chair on a stretch of sand and gravel and crossed her legs, making a show of removing the coffee cup's lid, sniffing deeply at the hot steam, and cupping the sides to warm her hands. She sipped and said, "Ouch. Still too hot." She put the cup down on the ground in front of her feet.

"I don't suppose you're willing to talk to me, yet?"

He was glaring at her. His teeth were chattering. There was a distinctly blue look around his lips, but he didn't speak.

"I see. Perhaps later, then."

She jumped up to the rim, behind the boulders, where she could look down upon him from concealment. Padgett sat there for a few minutes looking around, then he used the crutches and pulled himself to his feet. He was still shivering and physically awkward. His leg was clearly still a problem. He started across the sand toward the coffee she'd left on the floor.

She had to steel herself for the next step.
Remember what he has done. The FBI agent. Davy. His attempt to capture me.