One Wrong Move

by Shannon McKenna

  She kept getting distracted by random things. The shape of Aaro’s earlobe. The way his hair grew off his forehead. The roar in her ears. The room was tipping, swaying.

  Aaro typed like he did everything else—hard. His fingers pounded on the keyboard like a hailstorm. Her eyes burned. She wished, suddenly, that she could just lean against his back. It seemed so warm, so broad. She could just . . . rest there. Maybe even breathe a little.

  She stopped herself, kept her spine stiff. No. Flipping. Way.

  The pounding stopped, followed by random sporadic tapping.

  She squinted at the screen. He was in some e-mail program, attaching a file to a long list of addresses with a three-word message: “Talk to Bruno.”

  “Who are you sending it to?” she asked him.

  “Bruno, and Miles, this guy who works for me. Awesome hacker. I’m asking him to do some digging. The McClouds, too, and Nick Ward, Seth Mackey, Val Janos, Tam Steele. You know them?”

  “I’ve heard of them,” she said. “Lily told me stories about them that curled my hair. She loves them. She said I’d meet everyone at the wedding.”

  He grunted. “Maybe you’ll meet them sooner.” He pulled out his cell phone, punched some keys. “Yo, Miles? Yeah, fine, as you can see. . . . I figured they’d all be having kittens by now. I’m sending you the transcript of that file . . . yeah. Couple things.

  Dig up anything you can find on Helga Kasyanov, her daughter Lara, and anybody who might be associated with them named Joseph. Also a place called the Wycleff Library. And do some filtering on that audio file. There are places when the woman’s voice is covered by a man’s. Scrub out the man. Yeah . . . yeah, right. Good. Later, then.”

  He hung up, rolling his shoulders. “Miles is on it.”

  The room phone shrilled. It jangled four times before Nina reached out. Aaro batted her hand down, grabbed it. “Who is it?”

  He listened for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, put him through.” He hung up, looking glum. “Bruno followed the trace on my phone,” he said, in response to her questioning glance.

  “Forgot all about the damn thing. He called the hotel, told them to connect him to the big dark-haired guy who checked in at ten forty-eight P.M. Son of a bitch.”

  Nina was startled. “He put a trace in your phone?”

  “Never again,” Aaro said darkly. The phone rang. He picked it up.

  “Yeah?” He jerked the phone from his ear as shouting burst from it. “We’ve been busy,” he muttered. “Sorry. Things got away from us.”

  Another explosion made him flinch again. “Nina is fine.”

  Aaro’s eyes flicked to her face. “She’s. . . . I need to . . . whatever.” He held out the phone. “He’s popping an artery. Calm them down. Lily wants you.”

  Nina clutched the phone to her ear. “Yes?”

  “My God.” Lily’s voice was froggy. “I was so worried. You’re OK?”

  OK? Was she? With this drug wreaking havoc in her head? Assassins chasing her? Cryptic instructions from a comatose woman her only guide out of doom, and Aaro, driving her nuts? Was that OK?

  She made an arbitrary decision. Yes. OK meant “not cut into little chunks.” She was fine. Great, even. Living in the goddamn moment.

  “More or less,” she said. “Lily. Sweetie. If you cry, I’ll cry, and I can’t break down now, OK? I’ve got to be tough. Help me with that.”

  “OK,” Lily squeaked. “Sorry. I’ll . . . I’ll try.”

  “Lil, Aaro translated that file, and he—”

  “Oh, really? Did he finally condescend to do that? I can’t believe he said no this morning! I’ll rip that jackass limb from limb when I—”

  “No,” she broke in. “Don’t. He had his reasons.” And besides. I need him in one piece.

  Lily floundered. “Uh . . . what? What reasons are those?”

  She ignored the question. “Just don’t tear him limb from limb.” She was careful not to look in Aaro’s direction. “He was amazing, actually. He saved my life. Twice. I’d be dead, if not for him.”

  “Ah. I see.” Lily sounded mollified. “Well, good, then. He’s racked up some points. But tell me, what in God’s name were the two of you doing at the Mercer Street Hospice for forty-two minutes, of all places?”

  “Visiting Aaro’s aunt,” she said.

  “Let me get this straight. You take time out from running for your very life from deadly assassins to make a hospital call? Nina?

  Hello? ”

  “She’s dying,” Nina said. “It was now or never.”

  Nina got the uncomfortable sensation that her friend was smiling. “I see,” Lily murmured. “Defending him now, are we?”

  “I am not, by any means,” she snapped. “It’s not like that. He doesn’t need defending.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Aaro grabbed the phone back. “Give me Bruno, Lily,” he snapped. “We don’t have time for this.”

  He listened for a moment. “OK. Her flight is Delta two forty-eight, one thirty PM tomorrow to Seattle, got it. Yeah, I’ll take a picture right now, with my cell. Send me his e-mail. Don’t send him over tonight, though. She needs . . . OK, I’ll ask her.” He held the phone up. “Bruno’s asking if you want him to send the bodyguard to pick you up now, or do you just want to crash here and catch up with the guy tomorrow morning? He wants to hear it from you, since I suck, and cannot be trusted.” He waited.

  “Nina,” he prodded, after several seconds. “Decide.”

  It was no decision at all. She didn’t want to watch Aaro walk away. He made her feel . . . safe was not the word, but whatever it was, she wanted more. A lot more. As much as she could get.

  She pitched her voice so Bruno could hear it. “I’ll stay,” she said, and blushed, as if Lily and her guy could see how crushed out she was.

  Aaro put the phone to his ear again. “Don’t send the guy too early. The airport is forty minutes from here. Traffic’s not bad in the morning from this direction, so don’t send him before ten.

  Have the guy bring her some cash, too. She’s broke. Oh, and one more thing. That tracer chip stays in the trash. Don’t you ever tag my phone again.”

  Aaro slammed the phone down. His fingers tapped and fisted in the covers. He was tense, too. Big surprise.

  The silence made her sweat. She wondered if he would see her decision as a declaration of intent. She wondered if it was a declaration of intent. It wasn’t like she had much experience with those.

  What the fuck, let’s seize the day. One excuse is as good as another for me. His words echoed in her head. She should definitely be seizing her days. Particularly if she only had three of them.

  She pushed that thought away, and opened her mouth to tell him . . . what? Damn. She was such a wuss. She just couldn’t.

  She wanted to burst into tears. “I, um, have to take a shower,”

  she mumbled, fleeing into the bathroom.

  The challenge was on, as the shower hissed. Trying not to think about her on the other side of the wall, naked, wet. Those suckable tits gleaming with soapsuds. Rivulets rushing over luscious curves into cleavages, crevices. Dripping off the thick, dark ringlets of her muff.

  Sharks and crocodiles, man. He’d surpassed himself this time.

  Sex hormones pumped out unchecked, after all that they’d just been through. He should be turned off by problems this huge.

  His balls should have crawled right back up into his body. He should have told the bodyguard to get his ass over here pronto.

  Good-bye and good luck.

  What the fuck was wrong with him?

  He should at least be working on Nina’s problem, if he wasn’t going to jettison her tonight. He dropped his face into his hands.

  Forget it. He wasn’t rational tonight, and couldn’t pretend to be. Bruno and his gang were flogging their brains against Nina’s problems now, and his own part in this adventure would be over when the bodyguard showed up. He’d hear how the story played out via Miles,
who talked to some McCloud or other every day.

  His part was done.

  That should make him relieved. But it made him feel heavy.

  Like his limbs were made out of lead.

  A knock sounded on the door. He grabbed the .45, jangling unpleasantly with a fresh jolt of adrenaline. “Who is it?”

  “Pizza delivery.” A bored young voice.

  Oh, yeah, that. He cracked the door a slit, gun at the ready.

  Pimply seventeen-year-old, padded rubber pizza bag, it all looked legit. He peered down the corridor in both directions and concluded the transaction with lightning speed, shoving money at the kid, slamming the door before he could make change.

  He’d given the pizza boy a two-hundred-percent-plus tip, but what the hell. Kid didn’t know what he was risking, hauling a pizza up to the likes of them.

  He set it aside, and mounted the portable squealer door alarms he’d gotten from the McClouds’ catalog of goodies. He’d made fun of himself when he’d packed them. Check him out, scared shitless to get near the Arbatovs. Pussy. To think he’d given Nina a hard time about her trick closet.

  How was he supposed to distract himself when she came out?

  Hot and soft. Fragrant. Damp. Pantiless. He’d turn the TV on, maybe, though he hated squawking screens. Something loud and obnoxious.

  She didn’t come out. The water just kept running, and running. He mounted the squealers. Checked and re-checked guns, inventoried the ammo. Minutes ticked on. He thought how she’d sat on his lap on the bus stop bench. Her weight innocently perched on what instantly had become an aching hard-on.

  Though she hadn’t seemed aware of it.

  Had she been aware . . . ? Could she be expecting . . . ?

  No. No way. Don’t even go there. Don’t even start.

  Too late. His brain was out of the starting gate, hurtling full speed into erotic fantasyland. Stripping off his clothes, strutting into the bathroom. Whipping aside the curtain. Letting her take a good, long look at what she was dealing with before he stepped in. Seized her.

  His heart thudded. Sweat popped out at his hairline.

  Had she even locked the bathroom door? A discreet turn of the handle would answer that.

  Oh, fuck, no. He sat on the far side of the bed, just bearing the weight of his massive overload of adrenaline-fueled lust. It wasn’t worth the risk. If he got something that big that wrong, he’d have to shoot himself in the head just to save face.

  After a nerve-shredding eternity, the bathroom door clicked open. Perfumed steam stole into the room. He heard Nina’s padding bare feet.

  He did not turn. Her bed creaked as she sat down.

  He dug for his lighter and smokes with a hand that shook.

  Careful not to look at her as he lit up. Waited for the stern com-mentary. He could practically do a countdown. Five. Four.

  Three. Two.

  “Um.” She cleared her throat. “I don’t think this is a smoking room.”

  Right on cue. He found himself smiling as he took a deep drag and slowly blew it out. “It is now,” he said.

  “But there’s a sign on the desk that says—”

  “Too bad.”

  She did her impatient sniffing sound. “You do this kind of thing on purpose, don’t you? You deliberately rent a nonsmoking hotel room so that you can smoke in it? For the pure pleasure of breaking the rules? You just have to be bad, at all costs?”

  His smile became a grin. He was careful to keep his face averted.

  “I actually don’t remember the smoking or nonsmoking interchange with the desk clerk,” he said. “I was too busy worrying about someone garroting you in the parking lot while I was gone.”

  He smoked in sweet silence for a minute, the time it took for her to wind up the scold mechanism again.

  “That’s bullshit,” she informed him. “You’ve just got to be in everyone’s face. It’s how you define yourself. You wouldn’t know who you were if you weren’t being a pain in the ass to someone.

  Right?”

  He considered that possibility from all sides as he basked in the nicotine chill. “We all have our schtick,” he offered.

  She snorted. “Don’t you get sick of it? Doesn’t it make you tired?”

  “Still not breaking a sweat.” At least not for the reasons she meant. He thought of her rosy buttocks, her sweet, lickable dimples. He fought the impulse. Like he’d fought before.

  He lost, again. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m bad. I know it. I don’t know how to be any other way, and it’s too late for me to change.”

  “God, Aaro. That’s so self-defeating.”

  “Nah, just honest.” He twisted around, fixed her with a narrow gaze while he blew out a long stream of smoke. “You hate smoke?”

  She waved the question away. “Of course. I’m a nonsmoker.

  Cigarette smoke is toxic. And nasty.”

  He blew out another long stream of it in her direction. “Make it worth my while to stop,” he said.

  Her eyes went wide. Those long lashes, all around, like coal smudges. He kept his eyes on her, letting his meaning sink in.

  “I’m bad,” he went on. “But there is that small skill set I told you about earlier. The short list of things at which I am expert.

  Who knows, they might make up for my more glaring faults.”

  He shrugged. “At least a few of them. You won’t know unless you try me.”

  “There you go again,” she said. “Being bad. Trying to shock me.”

  “No, just proving you right,” he said. “Don’t you like to be right?”

  “I don’t like to be played with.” Her voice trembled.

  He smiled slowly. “You’ve never felt me do it.”

  “Aaro.” She swallowed, a few times. “This isn’t fair.”

  He shrugged. “Life never is.”

  “With all that’s happening, this is hardly the time . . .”

  “This is the time we have,” he said simply.

  The truth of that statement reverberated like a big gong.

  Silence spread afterward, heavy and liquid. The energy between them shimmered like a desert mirage. He felt her response. Awareness. Desire. She wanted it. No matter how scared she was.

  Time to lighten up. Stave off her impending panic attack.

  Pissing her off again should do it. He finished his smoke, stubbed it out.

  “You know what your problem is?” he said, lighting up another smoke. “You’re not used to a strong come-on. You’ve never developed a standard set-down strategy for dickheads like me. You never needed to, with that bag over your head.”

  “Quit it with the bag bullshit,” she snapped. “I’m sick of it.”

  He gestured with the cigarette. “But that trick won’t work with me. I’ve seen you without the braid, the tent, the buttons up to the neck. That thing you do with your lip.”

  “I do not do anything to my lip!”

  “You hide it. Like you hide all the good stuff. Your lower lip is pink, like a satin pillow.” He stared, fascinated. “But you suck it in, squish it flat. I understand, if you don’t like a guy looking at how hot and soft your lips are. Imagining them closing around his dick.”

  He saw from the look on her face as she sprang off the bed that he’d pushed too hard. Shit. Dick-for-brains. Literally.

  He moved without thinking to head her off before she got to the door, which was wired shut with squealers. He grabbed her before she could yank the knob. She batted at his arms.

  He held her fast. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That just slipped out.”

  “I can’t stay here with you,” she burst out. “I can’t deal with you.”

  “You can’t leave now,” he said. “You have no place to go. And you don’t have cash with you, either, right?”

  Her eyes slid away. “I can go to a bank—”

  “No. You can’t use your bank card, or your credit. You can’t go to the cops. The mobsters got tipped off about Lily’s
nine one one call. You can’t go to your friends. You’d put them in danger.

  Like Shira’s in danger now.”

  “I put you in danger, too!”

  “That’s OK. I was born to be put in danger. It’s all I’m good for.”

  She stared at him, breathing hard.

  “I’m a pain in the ass, and I’m crude and lewd, and I stink of toxic smoke, but I’m all you’ve got, for now. So use me.”

  “Yeah?” Her eyes blazed at him. “And just who do you think would really be getting used, Aaro?”

  “It wouldn’t be like that,” he told her. “I wouldn’t use you.”

  “Right,” she muttered. “And until you hand me off tomorrow, it’s my job to make this bullshit worth your while?”

  He was about to snap back at her when the look in her eyes finally came into focus for him. Comprehension slipped in, like a knife between his ribs.

  She was scared of him. Of course. Like he should be surprised, knowing what he knew about her. Being what he was.

  He stepped back, hands lifted in the air. “I won’t lay a hand on you unless you tell me to,” he said. “And I would never, ever hurt you.”

  She still huddled, big-eyed, tight-lipped. Unconvinced.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, with some effort. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It was just the hard-on talking. It talks loud, but it’s not the boss.”

  “I wasn’t scared.” Her chin went up. “That’s, um. Good to know.” Her eyes darted around, finding no good place to rest.

  “So what is this huge favor that you owe Bruno, anyway? I’ve been wondering.”

  His first impulse was to slap the question to the ground, hard enough so that it never dared to rise again. That, however, did not jibe with his current attempt to not be a dickhead. The words ground out.

  “Not technically a favor. A fuckup. I have to make up for it.”

  “What fuckup?” she prompted. “What happened?”

  He let out a savage sigh. “You know what happened to Lily?

  When she got abducted by King’s goons? The hospital at Ros-aline Creek?”

  “She told me the story,” Nina said.

  “Right. Well, that was me. That happened on my watch.”

  She looked blank, so he tried again. “I was the asshole who was guarding Lily when that happened. Do you understand me now?”