Hello, Gorgeous!

by MaryJanice Davidson

  His very roughness, his absorption, the fact that she was pinned to the wall like a butterfly to the board, pinned by a cock that was digging into her, making her his, all that was enough to jolt her into orgasm.

  He shuddered again, and for a moment his grip tightened to the point of pain, and then he was setting her on the floor, sliding out of her. She tried to stand but her knees buckled, and he caught her and swung her onto the bed.

  “What was that?” she gasped.

  He didn’t say anything, just got dressed and readjusted his clothing. After a long, difficult moment he said, “I apologize.”

  “Don’t be a jackass.”

  “I—have no excuse. Don’t… don’t be afraid.” His gaze was haggard, haunted. “Everyone is afraid of me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m not afraid, idiot. But I am hungry. You think the flight attendant can rustle up some scrambled eggs?”

  He looked at her, visibly surprised, then turned and left the room.

  The eggs were waiting for her by the time she got dressed.

  Chapter 27

  “Dmitri Novakov! What an unexpected pleasure.” The Boss looked them both over, then chuckled. “An embarrassment of riches, to be sure.”

  “You suck,” Caitlyn informed him, bringing a ghost of a smile to Dmitri’s face, a smile that disappeared as suddenly as it had shown up. “In every possible way. Now you’ve got lab weenies being axed in your own offices? How lame is that? How lame arc you? This place is lousy with security.”

  “Not lousy enough, apparently. Thank you both for coming, and so quickly too. Have a seat,” he added, gesturing to the two chairs in front of his desk.

  “Pass. Getting all comfy and chatty in here is nowhere on my to-do list. So, what? Everyone on the Wagner team is dead now?”

  “Almost. There’s one left, Dr. Roe. She’s in protective custody this minute.”

  “Well, finally. It took only… what? Four murders?”

  The Boss didn’t say anything, but looked stricken for a moment, such a brief moment quickly followed by his usual blank-faced imperturbability that she wondered if she’d imagined the expression.

  “Well, great,” Caitlyn fretted, resisting the impulse to pace. “This is all just… great.”

  “You’re so quiet, Dmitri,” the Boss said, glancing over at him. It was impossible to tell how the odious, evil man felt about the Wolf being there. “How uncharacteristic.”

  “His skin’s crawling just being on the same city block as you, creep, and I know exactly how he feels.”

  “Right,” Dmitri said, that small smile back. She was so glad to see it. He’d been odd after their mutual introduction into the Mile-High Club. Even quieter and more withdrawn than earlier, if that was possible.

  “He thinks you’re the evilest man in the universe,” she continued, “just like I do, and for two cents he’d let you solve your own problems and fuck Dr. Roe.”

  “Right,” Dmitri said, his smile broadening.

  “Fuck poor defenseless Dr. Roe?” the Boss mock-gasped.

  “Fuck you too,” Caitlyn replied rudely.

  “Caitlyn, Caitlyn. Really, it pains me that we’re at odds all the time. Actually, I’ve come to realize of late that you and I have much more in common than I ever imagined.”

  She made throwing-up noises and Dmitri tightened his lips, looking like someone struggling with laughter. Well, maybe he had a bellyache. “We don’t have anything in common, you ogre.”

  The Boss sniffed. “Ah, the soul of maturity, even in a crisis.”

  “Blow me,” she said. “So, what? What now? You want us to do our bloodhound routine, talk to the cops, what?”

  “We have not involved the police. And I haven’t allowed anyone in the lab. The crime scene is exactly the way it was when the killer left.”

  “Oh, gross,” she said, knowing where this was going.

  “Why don’t you two go check it out? Then report back here.”

  “We’ll check it out,” Dmitri said quietly, “but we won’t be reporting to you.”

  “Fine, fine, have it your way. Oh, and, Caitlyn?”

  “What?”

  “Stacy says hi.”

  Caitlyn blinked and stopped halfway to the door, so suddenly that Dmitri bumped into her, but she was so surprised by what the jerk had said, she barely felt the shock of his body against hers. She slowly turned, gently shoved Dmitri out of her sight line, and said, “What? What did you say?”

  The jerk raised his pale eyebrows and feigned surprise at her surprise. “Stacy. Your best friend? Lovely girl, medium height, skin the color of cappuccino, limbs like silk? Is any of this ringing a bell, dear?”

  “What?”

  “When I left her last night—this morning, actually, after security called—she asked me to say hello when I saw you. Also, ‘Tell that girl she’s almost out of margarita mix.’ “

  Caitlyn digested this for a moment, then said, almost pleaded, “You’re not fucking my friend.”

  “Actually, I really am. She—gak!” Caitlyn had crossed the room and was holding him off the floor, shaking him like a rag. “Let go! Stacy loves this suit!”

  “Die,” she said through gritted teeth, tightening her grip. The pervert turned a dark shade of plum and gargled something she couldn’t understand. “Die! Right now.”

  “Now, Caitlyn,” Dmitri said, the first time he’d said anything directly to her besides “Buckle your seat belt” when they were about to land. “I agree, if anyone deserves death by strangulation, it’s him. In fact, under most circumstances, I would gladly lend you a hand. Two, if you needed them. But do you think it’s wise? At this particular moment in time? There will be plenty of opportunities to take care of this. Later.”

  The swine gargled something in agreement.

  “Won’t take a minute,” she snarled. “Then we can go check out the lab. Then I can puke. Then I can cry myself to sleep again. Then I can tell Stacy it’s time to find a new fuck buddy.”

  Dmitri shrugged. “Oh, have it your way.” He smiled at the Boss. “Sorry.”

  “Girlfriend, you put him down right now.”

  They both turned. Stacy was standing in the doorway, bizarrely arrayed in a typical outfit: forest green leggings, a sky blue T-shirt, a black leather jacket that was two sizes too big for her, red tennis shoes. Her hair was pulled back so far, her black eyebrows looked like they were arched in surprise, and she was holding a Brueger’s Bagels bag.

  Caitlyn put him down. Sort of.

  “That must have been six feet,” Dmitri said, watching the creep soar through the air and crash against the far wall. “Oh, well done.”

  “I came to bring you some breakfast, seemed like you’d be having a long day,” Stacy explained, staring at the crumpled lump. “Good thing I stopped by. And it was super sweet of you to tell your secretary to let me in whenever I came to visit, BTW.”

  “Anytime, my darling,” the Boss groaned from the floor.

  Caitlyn shuddered. “Stacy, say it ain’t so! He was just torturing me for fun, right? It’s not true, right? Right? Right?”

  “Jimmy, I love you, but if you ever do that again, I’ll snatch you bald-headed.”

  Caitlyn clutched a hank of her hair protectively. “You wouldn’t!”

  “Oh yes I would.” Giving her a good glare, Stacy pushed past them and bent over the lump on the floor that was the Boss. “Greg, you okay?”

  “I am now… darling.”

  Caitlyn snarled and took a step forward, but Dmitri’s hand closed over her arm and he pulled her back. “Death is too good for you! I’ll pull your skin off in strips! I’ll tie you to the back bumper of my car and drag you down Lake Street. I’ll—“

  “Jimmy, enough” Stacy helped the cretin to his feet and shook her head. “Cripes. I knew you wouldn’t exactly be thrilled by the news, but I didn’t think it’d be this bad.”

  “Thrilled? Thrilled? Have you lostyourfucking mind? This guy… this guy! You know wh
at he’s like. I told you all the things—“

  “He saved you,” she said quietly. “I’d have liked him for that, if for no other reason, you know?”

  “Yeah, saved me for what?” Caitlyn asked bitterly.

  “And we’re not doing it just for fun, though it started out that way. I really like him. He’s—he’s not like anybody in the world.”

  “Thank you, darling.”

  “You shut up. Started out that way? How long has this been going on? Cripes, how long was I in Europe?” Caitlyn looked around wildly for a clock. “What year is it?”

  “It’s been a whirlwind courtship,” the Boss croaked modestly, rubbing his throat, where an interesting bruise was already forming.

  “Stop talking. Stacy, wh-why him? Of all the guys in the world, why that guy?”

  “I don’t know, Jimmy. I really don’t. And if you ever told me I’d—there’s just something about him. I can’t explain it, and now’s not the time even if I could,” Stacy said, glancing over at Dmitri.

  “Oh, don’t mind me,” he said, struggling against laughter.

  Stacy looked back at Caitlyn. “And I don’t know where this is going or even if it will last, but I do know this: you try to hurt him again and I’ll make you sorry. I don’t care if you can lift a Porsche over your head. I’ll figure out a way to make you sorry.”

  Caitlyn clutched her head. “This can’t be happening. It’s all some totally fucked-up dream.”

  “At the very least,” Dmitri commented, “it’s been worth the trip.”

  “Uck. Let’s go. I’ll talk to you later,” she said to Stacy, who, to her credit, shrugged and didn’t look remotely alarmed. “You I’m never, ever speaking to again,” she told the Boss.

  “Don’t tease, dear,” he said as she stomped out the door.

  Chapter 28

  “I’m gonna barf! I mean right now! Ride the vomit comet, toss my cookies, shout at the floor—pick your saying.”

  “It certainly seemed like a surprise,” Dmitri commented, his hands in his pockets as they followed the security guard to the lab. “Lord knows you were surprised.”

  “A surprise? No, Dmitri. A surprise is when someone hands you a present and it’s not your birthday. A surprise is when a pal picks up the drink tab when you were supposed to go dutch. This is a total fucking shock, representing the beginning of the end of human society.”

  Dmitri snorted.

  “Yuk it up, pal. Meanwhile, my world is crumbling around me. Frankly, I was gonna bug you about what happened on the jet, but all I can think about right now is… is… how could she? Him I get, he’ll do anything to torture me, but what was she thinking?”

  “As much as it pains me to say anything remotely positive about Gregory Hamlin, I’m not sure his… assignations… with your friend are about you at all.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “She knows his real name,” he explained quietly. “It took me eight years to find out his real name. The only way your friend could know is if he told her. And he never tells anyone.”

  “So, what? What are you saying?”

  “I’m merely suggesting there might be more to this than you think.”

  “Gawd. I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.” She paused for a moment. “Worse. A million times worse. Bad enough if they’re doing it just for the hell of it. But if they’re in a relationship…” Caitlyn shook her head. “Well, she’s ruined Christmas, that’s for sure.”

  “Your friend seems very… sure of herself.”

  “She’s the stubbornest person in the world,” Caitlyn snapped.

  “And it was interesting, the way she defended him.”

  “Interesting like horrifying? Interesting like really, really weird and fucked-up? Interesting like being trapped in a waking nightmare? Help me out here.”

  “Just… interesting.”

  “This is it,” the security guy (M. Daniels, his name tag read, and what kind of a name was M?) announced. “Room six twenty-four. Dr. Miller’s still in there. If you could tell me when you’re done, I’ll get the room processed.”

  “Very good,” Dmitri said.

  The guard stood there while Dmitri opened the door (holding a handkerchief in his hand as he did so, Caitlyn noticed) and walked in. After a moment, she followed.

  Chapter 29

  She couldn’t see the body at first. All the shades were drawn and the lab was on the south side of the building, so there was little natural light. But when she spotted it, she wondered how she had missed it. Dr. Miller was sprawled behind one of the lab counters, but his arm was sticking out and his fingernails were blue.

  “Watch where you step,” Dmitri said calmly, and walked around the body, studying it. “Hmm. Body temperature has dropped only ten degrees. He hasn’t been dead long.”

  “Swell,” she muttered. It occurred to her that she had never seen a dead body before except on television, and that it wasn’t much fun. Not that she’d thought it would be a laugh a minute, but it was even less fun than she imagined.

  It wasn’t much like television. Dr. Miller didn’t look like he was sleeping. He looked freaked out and deader than shit. His skin was waxy, almost yellowish, and she thought if she had to touch his dead hand or his dead face, she’d scream and scream and finally go crazy. The perfect end to a perfect day.

  She noticed his lab coat had bloody holes in it and, after scanning, realized that there were two bullets in his left lung and one in his heart. But there wasn’t much blood, certainly not as much as TV would have a viewer believe.

  “Multiple gunshots to the chest,” Dmitri said absently. “But who could get a gun into this place?”

  “Only any agent.”

  “Right. But those guns will be on record, will be in a databank somewhere. We might ask Gregory Hamlin if any agents have reported missing weapons.”

  “Or,” she said, “I could ask him to die slowly and in great pain.”

  “It’s refreshing to find a kindred soul.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “I admit, I found your treatment of him vastly amusing.”

  “So glad I could help. Let’s stay focused so we can get the hell out of here, okay? Like this place doesn’t bug me enough without dead bodies glaring up at me. Fuck a duck. So, what? The bad guy came in and shot Dr. Miller, then left? Got through security, brought a gun, then got back out through security? Come on.”

  “Well,” Dmitri said, “think about what that means for a moment.”

  She thought. Then, “Oh.”

  “Right.”

  “Oh!”

  “Right. And if you and I have thought of it, doubtless Gregory Hamlin has also thought of it.”

  “I hate having to clean his fucking house.”

  Dmitri shrugged. “It’s the way of the world. I have to admit, the dreading of coming back to this place was far worse than actually being here.”

  “Oh.” She thought that over. “Yeah, sorry about that. I guess I sort of forgot how hard this might be for you.”

  He grinned in the gloom of the lab. She was pissed as hell at the dork and Stacy, but not so pissed that the flash of that dimple didn’t still weaken her knees. “You had other things to think about.”

  “Boy, that’s the truth,” she muttered.

  Then, after a long moment, he said, “Cry yourself to sleep again?”

  “What?”

  “In the office. You said, ‘Then we can go check out the lab, then I can puke, then I can cry myself to sleep again.’ “

  “Well, duh,” she said irritably. She would never be able to follow the track of his mind. Shouldn’t they be trying to solve a murder right now? Men! Or maybe it was cyborgs! “Think I wanted to send you away last night? It was the hardest thing I ever had to do. Even harder than passing Introduction to Physics. But I couldn’t sleep with you, wondering if you were the killer. Duh.”

  He stared at her expressionlessly for a moment, then slowly sm
iled. It was like watching the sun come up, and she forgot her annoyance. “That’s… that’s why you sent me away?”

  “Stop me if you’ve heard this before: duh! Why else would I send you away? Because I hate broad shoulders and six-pack abs? Because great kissing makes me ralph? Jesus Christ!”

  “I thought… never mind what I thought.” But he looked quite cheerful, weirdly cheerful given where they were. “Ah… it’s shaping up to be quite a nice day, don’t you think?”

  She stared at him. “Dude, you are weird.”

  Chapter 30

  “I’d invite you to stay at my place—it’s the least I can do, since you put me up at your castle and had your mom try to shrink my brain—but Stacy’s staying with me right now and it’ll be tight.”

  Dmitri almost shuddered. “That’s quite all right. It’s probably best you and Stacy have privacy while you… discuss things.”

  “I’d like to discuss things,” Caitlyn muttered, stomping through the lobby of the Minneapolis Marriott. “Right upside her head, I’d like to discuss things.”

  “I prefer a well-run hotel to most homes anyway,” he said.

  “How annoyingly bacheloresque. So, what?” she asked, stepping into the plush elevator behind him. “They’re processing poor deader-than-shit Dr. Miller, and now what?”

  “Let me get my laptop set up, and I’ll show you. For starters, we’ll pull files on all O.S.F. employees, find out who, if anyone, is missing a gun, find out who has access to the Wagner team.”

  “You can do that? Just from your laptop?”

  He smiled at her and said nothing.

  “Can I do that, maybe? Someday?”

  “Probably.” He added, “I could teach you if you wish.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Was it cool, or unbearably geeky? Well, she’d think about it later. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that. Listen, I’ll have the driver take me home and get my car. And change my clothes! Then I can come back and take you wherever you want. That way the O.S.F. doesn’t necessarily know every move we make.”

  “I’m sure your car is bugged. But if it makes you feel better to drive your own car…” He shrugged.