The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2) (10 page)

The rigid lines of her body softened in his arms. She stared at him with the same mixture of longing, hurt, need, sadness, twisting through him. They collected in the crease between the delicate arches of her eyebrows, pooled around the lines tugging at the corners of her beautiful mouth. But it was the swaying shadows dancing in those clear eyes that caught him in the gut. It was the loneliness and questions.

I promised,
he wanted to tell her.
For you, I had to.

“We should go,” she whispered. “The attendant has probably called the cops by now.”

He glanced to where the toothless man stood watching them through the grimy shop windows and sighed.  It was unlikely. With the number of health code violations, there was no way he’d call attention to himself with the authorities, but it was a risk Dimitri couldn’t take.

He helped Ava into the next seat, waited until she’d snapped her belt into place, then pulled out.

The cabin was a two story structure crafted entirely of stone and glass. It sat nestled beneath the protective canopy of trees hundreds of feet tall and a forest so thick, it would require a chainsaw to get through. But there was no better hiding place.

Dimitri hated camping. He hated the wilderness and the absence of electricity and toilets. There was nothing worse than nature when it was crawling into bed with you. But he could manage it if it was done in the seclusion and privacy of a cabin with functioning taps and radiators.

Ava ducked out of the car the moment he’d killed the ignition. She stepped into the warm, May breeze and squinted up at the place, her expression puzzled.

“You hate nature,” she said at last. “Why do you have a cabin … in the woods?”

“Privacy.”

He stalked to the back of the car and unlatched the trunk. From within, he grabbed her bags and resealed the lid.

“There are locks on both sides of the door,” she observed, standing with him on the porch as he unlocked each one. “Do you kill people up here?”

He shot her a teasing sidelong glance. “Haven’t … yet.”

She rolled her eyes. “Funny.”

Inside was sparsely furnished with two sofas facing a stone fireplace, a coffee table for his beer, and a lamp. Across the room was a set of wooden stairs leading up to the bedrooms. On the other side of the fireplace wall, was the kitchen, laundry area, and a small bathroom. There were no paintings on the walls, no decorative rugs by the hearth, no scented candles, or clutter. It was not a place to live, just a place to lie low. Truth be told, she was the only other person to ever be inside.

“Charming,” Ava mumbled, pert nose wrinkled. “What’s that smell?”

He hadn’t noticed it until she pointed it out, but the sour, decaying scent was everywhere.

“Probably a raccoon died in the chimney.”

“Oh! Ew!”

He smirked to himself as he stalked to the sofa and dumped her bags. “Bedrooms are upstairs. You can pick the one you want. They’re both the same.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked when he made towards the kitchen.

“Find a broom and shake the raccoon’s rotting corpse loose,” he threw over his shoulder, and burst out laughing when she grabbed her bags and practically tore a hole in the floor to the stairs.

He didn’t find a broom. He wasn’t even sure he had one. But he did have a first aid kit, which he pulled down from the cupboard and opened. He stripped out of his t-shirt and examined the damage to his shoulder.

Fucking Ronald,
he thought, picking at the blood soaked gauze.
Two faced little, lying rat.
If Dimitri hadn’t already killed him, he would have done so just for getting him shot. The bastard had insisted the person holding Yolanda was hiding in some dump just on the outskirts of the city. The only thing that asshole was hiding was a meth lab and had mistaken Dimitri for a cop. He was dead now, which was no real loss to the world, but Dimitri had a damn hole in his arm for the effort.

“Oh my God!” Ava stood in the kitchen doorway, both hands mashed against her mouth. “What happened?”

He shot her a wry glower. “Absolutely no idea.”

She ignored his sarcasm and hurried forward. She smacked the hand trying to get the gauze off.

“Don’t touch it!” she snapped at him. “Your hands are filthy.”

He started to tell her he was a man and such things meant nothing to him, but she was already running from the room. A moment later, she’d returned, a toiletry bag in hand. She dumped it on the counter and ripped it open.

“Do you have any rags?” she asked, head half buried amongst the bottles and tubes.

Dimitri glanced around, caught sight of his discarded t-shirt, and held it out to her.

Ava stilled. Her unimpressed expression said it all before she flicked a glance from the wade to him.

“A
clean
rag,” she emphasized.

When he couldn’t respond, she began ripping open the drawers around the cramped bit of space. Most were empty. Occasionally a lone fork, or a loose screw would rattle.

“This is the worst safe house on the planet!” she exclaimed, slamming the last cupboard.

She was gone again, in a blur of red hair and a determined expression. He counted to fifteen before she huffed back into the kitchen, a neatly folded face cloth in hand.

“I always bring one,” she told him, stalking to the sink. “I don’t like the ones at the hotel.”

Waiting for no response from him, she snapped on the faucet and waited until the water had gone from brown to white before scrubbing her hands with the soap from her bag and dampening the cloth. Then she set to work taking off the gauze, cleaning the wound, spraying it down with enough antiseptic spray to kill a baby elephant, and then reapplying fresh wrap. She did the same with the back, though the damage wasn’t nearly as bad there.

“You need to be more careful,” she chided him. “If those rip open, I am not sewing it back up.”

He stared at her, genuinely outraged by her sense. “You did this when you took off,” he told her.

Unfazed by the accusation, she merely sniffed haughtily and tossed the used gauze into the trash. Then she dusted her hands and faced him squarely.

“What’s for breakfast?”

“Where are you?”
Erik’s voice crackled through the crappy reception at the diner, some shit hole nearly two hours from the cabin, in a town not even listed on a bloody map.

“I don’t know,” he muttered, glowering at the smiling face of a plastic leprechaun taped to the wall outside the men’s bathroom. “Hell, maybe.”

“When are you coming back?”
Erik said.

A bell chimed in the main area. Dimitri turned on impulse and sought out Ava sitting in the corner booth with her plate of pancakes. The rest of the dining room occupied a cluster of truckers, a family a few tables from Ava, and two elderly men playing chess at the back. Ava had her head bent over her plate. Occasionally, she’d glance out the window at the parking lot and the post office across the street, but she was oblivious to the glances she was getting from a few of the men at the counter. Dimitri wasn’t.

“Might not be for a few days,” he said to his uncle. “Had some trouble last night.”

“What kind of trouble?”
Erik demanded at once.

His gaze went to Ava.
The worst kind,
he thought miserably.

“I’ll handle it,” he said instead.

“Do it quickly. The first chair meeting is in a couple of days. You need to be here.”

“I’ll be there.” He hung up and dialed Stephen.

The kid picked up on the third ring.
“Talk to me,”
he said in the way of greeting.

There was the distinct
pew, pew, pew
of lasers being shot in the background, the rapid clicking of fingers on a keypad.

“Can you hack into a hotel camera feed?”

There was a quickening of breath, a groan, then an exhalation of defeat.
“Fuck.”
Something cracked. Another sigh.
“Sometimes,”
he muttered.
“Most hotels keep their records in some backroom, but a lot of them have upgraded and download straight to a cloud. Which hotel are we talking about?”

Dimitri gave the name and address, along with the times he needed Stephen to delete.

“I also need you to delete a name off their database.”

“That I can do,”
Stephen said with some enthusiasm.
“But no can do on the videos. Someone needs to go in and handle that in person. It’s all old school.”

Dimitri cursed inwardly. “Okay, do what you can with the name and text me.”

“Cool. What name?”

“Ava Emerson.”

There was a pause on the other end, then,
“That’s the chick you wanted me to find yesterday.”
Another pause.
“Dude, did you whack her?”

Dimitri frowned. “Mind your business … and no one says whack.” He shook his head. “Just delete all record of her off the computer.”

“Uh…”

“What?”

Stephen cleared his throat.
“Might be a bit too late for that, brah. Your chick’s already made the papers.”

“What?”

Dimitri spun in Ava’s direction. She was still eating. But the men at the counter were all looking at her now, murmuring quietly to each other and pointing at a newspaper one of them held.

“What does it say, Stephen?”

“Uh…”
There was a series of rapping sounds on the other end.
“That the police are looking to question her regarding a shooting at the hotel that left two dead. She was last seen leaving the building with an unidentified man. Police are not sure if she’s being held hostage or—”

Dimitri hung up. He started towards Ava just as one of the truckers rose as well, paper in hand.

Fuck!

Ducking back towards the bathroom, Dimitri reached into his pocket. He exchanged his phone for the balaclava, but stopped; if he went out there as the Devil, his secret would be out if the people after them ever found out. It would ruin his chances at the chair, never mind cost him his life, and Ava’s. But if he went as himself, they would have his face.

The trucker was at Ava’s table now. She looked up when he set the paper in front of her with a smack Dimitri could hear from across the room.

Ava jerked back. She stared down at where the man was pointing with a stubby finger. Dimitri reached for his gun. He started forward.

“Is this a joke?” Ava’s voice rose over the low whir of the fan, the sultry croon of Elvis and stilled the chatter in the room. She shot to her feet, paper rolled up in her hand and, to everyone’s astonishment, whacked the trucker on the nose.

The trucker reared back. “What the fuck…?”

“If you are going to behave like a dog,” she was saying when Dimitri got past his shock. She smacked the trucker again, this time on the head. “I will treat you like a dog.”

The truckers at the counter howled. The one getting beaten by a newspaper didn’t.

He wrenched the paper from Ava’s grasp when it came down for a third strike, his face blotchy from the abuse and embarrassment. “You stupid bitch!”

Dimitri got there just as the hand with the paper came down towards Ava. He caught it by the wrist, and in a single, fluid motion, wrenched it behind the trucker’s back and slammed him face first into the table.

The dishes rattled. Someone gasped. The little boy with the family leaped up on his chair and exclaimed, “Cool!”

Dimitri focused on the douche. “It’s a very small man who raises a hand to a woman,” he said quietly enough for the trucker to hear him. “It’s a dead man who raises his hand to my woman.” He added just the right amount of pressure to make the man squeal like a pig. He lowered his voice even further. “Apologize.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” the man cried even before Dimitri finished speaking.

Dimitri released him.

The trucker scrambled off the table, clutching at his arm, his face the reddish purple of a beet. He avoided Ava’s gaze entirely as he hurried back to his friends.