by Rachel Caine
Somehow, she expected it to end in a hot, hard pounding against the tile, but it didn’t; he shut off the water and toweled her dry, head to toe, and she wiped him down slowly, pausing along the way to get him wet again, tracing her tongue along the hot velvet length of his erection. That wasn’t enough, not for her, and from the groan she drew from him when her lips parted and slid down, he liked the extra attention.
He let it go on for a long few moments, leaning against the bathroom door and taking in slow, deep, raw breaths; his eyes were half-shut, watching, and his hands caressed her damp hair, moved it back from her face as they moved together, silent and one. Then he gently pushed her back and lifted her up and kissed her again, slowly and deep and drunk on pleasure.
Then they went to bed.
It was a solid hour of lovemaking that kept the world outside the walls—Jane, the past, the future, even the nanites busily crawling inside her veins and the looming threats coming at them, somewhere. Bryn didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything outside of the sensations he woke in her body—tension, friction, release, pain, pleasure, sweat, tears, a thousand more exploding and mixing as he made her feel, for the first time in a long time, free.
Just . . . free.
“Easy,” he said, as she arched against him, begging for him to go faster. “We have time.” It was all he said, other than whispers hot in her ear and against her skin, but even he couldn’t hold time back forever.
When he finally collapsed on her, sweaty and trembling and spent, she rolled him over and rested her head on his chest. He had a thick growth of hair over hard muscle, and she stroked her fingers through it. The silken tug of it felt good. Soothing.
“God,” Patrick finally said, in a voice that was more than a little religious, “that felt good. Thank you.”
She laughed a little, and turned her face toward him. He moved the still-damp hair out of her eyes with a gentle brush of his fingers. “Thank me?”she said. “I like that you’re so polite, but . . .”
“Thank you for letting go,” he said, and he was very serious. “Thank you for not letting my past with Jane stand between us.”
Jane. Some of the warmth went out of the room with the mention of her name, but Bryn tried not to let it show. She put her hand on his cheek—prickly with stubble, he needed a shave, and she’d have friction burns all over her to prove it—and said, “Jane’s not here. Let’s not bring her into the bed with us.”
He took in a breath, closed his eyes, and let it out. Then he nodded. “Sorry. I just—Bryn, I don’t know if we’re still—”
“We are,” she said. “We’re okay. I promise you, we’re okay. It hurt, a lot, but I understand.” She gave him a small, crooked smile. “I almost wish I didn’t.”
“I did warn you I was complicated.”
“You didn’t warn me you were a ball of razor wire, but that’s cool, I have this special healing thing—you might have heard about it. . . .”
He put his arms around her and held her, and she knew from the slowing of his breath that he was sliding toward sleep.
She knew that one of them should stay alert, ready for trouble, but in the end, the safety and warmth overwhelmed her, and she fell with him, into the dark.
Chapter 9
What woke her was Patrick’s hand touching her bare shoulder—not a caress, a deliberate tap, followed by a firm pressure. Wake up, stay still. Bryn came instantly and fully aware, heart racing. They were still in almost the same positions in which they’d fallen asleep, but she could see the digital clock over Patrick’s shoulder, and long, much-needed hours had passed. It was almost midnight.
There was someone at the door. She heard it clearly—shuffling feet on the carpet, followed by a scraping, as if someone was inserting a key card in the door. Patrick let her go, and she rolled quietly one direction, while he went the other; they both landed near-silently on their feet and, still naked, took up posts out of the clear field of fire in case whoever was on the other side came in shooting. Bryn got closest, in the bathroom doorway; she was only an arm’s length from the door, and now she heard that scrape-click again as the card was inserted.
And then, a loud bump against the wall, and a drunken voice saying, “Shit, that’s not the right room. What’s the room? Yo, man, what’s the number?”
There were several of them in the hall, and Bryn didn’t take the whole thing on first impressions; she grabbed a towel, draped it around herself, and eased the door open enough to peer outside.
Frat boys, wearing matching T-shirts, two of them still clutching open bottles of cheap liquor. God, they really did still drink schnapps.
They didn’t see her. Bryn eased the door shut as they wandered off in the other direction, still arguing and bouncing shoulders off the wall as they weaved along. She let out a held breath and turned on the hall light switch. “Clear,” she said, probably unnecessarily, and ran a hand over her face to hold back laughter. Patrick wasn’t bothering. He sat down on the bed, head in his hands to muffle the chuckles. She took a spot beside him, and they leaned together a moment. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m awake,” she said. “And we need to talk, don’t we?”
“Do we?” The laughter faded fast, and when he looked up, he was tense and ready for some kind of blow.
“Not about us.” She sent him a warm smile, and his tension eased. “Work. We need to talk about what we’re going to do next. If everything worked, Joe and Riley should be making their way back to the bunker with a sample of Thorpe’s formula—the stuff that kills the nanites. The advanced models. Best case—we’re a distraction, until they can mass-produce the equalizer.”
“Worst case, they don’t make it,” he said. “And we’re all there is.”
“I didn’t like splitting us up, but we had a better shot that way. If Jane has to divide her attention and second-guess two groups . . .”
“Three. Manny will have a completely separate plan in motion, guaranteed. And she’d better be worried. She might be able to guess what I will do, but she’s a hell of a lot less conversant with you, Joe, or Manny. Joe will make it. He’s made it through—” An odd look crossed Patrick’s face, and then he shook his head. “I was about to say he’s made it through worse, but I’m actually not sure that’s true anymore. We’re into whole new levels of worse.”
“Then I hate to lay this on top, but we’re going to have to risk being spotted,” Bryn said. “Because we need to do some research. I have a name from Thorpe of someone on the Fountain Group board, but I don’t know how to get to him.”
“If you think we’re going to get anywhere using a Google search, I think you’re wrong,” Patrick said. “But you’re right, anyone we reach out to is an exposure, and it locks down a point of data against us. But we can’t just sit here, nice as that would be.” He thought for a few seconds, and then nodded again. “I think I’ve got a guy. Get dressed.”
“Are we leaving?”
“Didn’t you say you wanted a drink?”
Chapter 10
The bar he took her to was not in the hotel. In fact, it was nowhere nearby, and from the gradual scuffing-up of the scenery as they drove, it also wasn’t in what she’d term a better part of town. Just one of those places you’d ignore driving by, in fact, a black-painted concrete building without windows, a flickering neon sign, and sparse parking.
Inside, the place was something out of a bad movie, Bryn thought, as they walked through the swinging doors and into a dim interior. The smell of old booze and sweat hit her first, followed almost immediately by the sound of music. The place had an old west saloon vibe, so the music seemed oddly off; no tinkly piano or western honky-tonk, but a smoky torch song better suited to a wine bar.
The place was a relatively small square, and booths lined the walls, with the equally square four-sided bar in the center. The man behind it was about six feet tall, blond, in black leather with tattoos crawling up and down both arms.
The booths were mostly occup
ied by men. No, not mostly . . . Bryn realized that she was the only woman in the entire place.
And from the bartender’s look, not very welcome, either.
“Sorry,” he said. “You’re probably looking for the place next door, sweetheart.”
“She’s not,” Patrick said, and eased onto a barstool in front of the man. “I’m here to see Brent.”
“Don’t know him.”
“Yes, you do. He’s in that booth right there, with the curtains closed. I want you to walk over and tell him that Patrick is here to see him.”
The bartender’s face settled into a scowl. “He knows you; you know where he is. Why put me in the middle?”
“Because we both know if someone opens that curtain without the right signal, bad things happen to them,” Patrick said. His voice was still calm and pleasant, but there was something different in his body language. “Get your ass over there and introduce me.”
The place had gone almost silent, except for the time-worn whisper of the singer. . . . Everyone was looking at them, and the pressure of the stares made Bryn’s muscles go tense. This place—she couldn’t get a good read on it. Not at all.
“Anything else?” the bartender asked sarcastically. Patrick smiled and dug two tens out of his pocket to lay them on the wood.
“I’ll have a scotch, neat. Bryn?”
“Tequila,” she said. “You can skip the lime and salt. That’s for turistas.”
That got the bartender to reappraise her, and she saw a flash of humor in those cold blue eyes. “True enough,” he agreed, and poured the drinks. “Be right back.”
The money disappeared into the till, and he didn’t offer change. Then he flipped up the pass-through on the bar, walked to the booth with the closed curtain, and rapped with both hands on the wood on either side. Then he slid the curtain over about an inch and murmured something.
The curtain slid back on its rod with a hiss of metal rings, and the bartender beckoned to them.
“Right. We’re up,” Patrick said, and grabbed his drink. “Follow my lead, Bryn.”
She drained her tequila in one burning gulp, put the empty glass down, and trailed him to the booth.
Inside, it was even more dim than at the bar, and as Bryn slid into the wooden seat next to Patrick, she tried to get a sense of the man across from them. Older, fit, tough, with a military haircut and bearing.
“Major,” Patrick said, and nodded. The man didn’t nod back. He didn’t, Bryn thought, look especially happy to see them. “Came to cash in a favor.”
“McCallister.” The voice was gravelly—so much so that it seemed like one that had suffered serious damage at some point. “I don’t think so. You’ve got nothing I want. Who’s the bitch?”
“The bitch,” Bryn said, “is sitting right here, and she’s someone who could break your kneecaps in about five seconds. Sir.”
“Name.”
“If you called me a bitch, you don’t really care too much.”
She surprised a smile out of him, but that wasn’t an improvement, not at all. He was . . . creepy. He didn’t respond, just turned his attention back to Patrick. “Not going to defend the little lady, McCallister?”
“I don’t need to defend what’s secure,” he said. “Buy you a drink, sir?”
The man—Brent?—looked at him with empty eyes for a long few seconds, then said, “Bourbon. A double.”
Patrick gestured at the bartender, but he was already pouring, as if he knew the order, which he probably did. Once he’d delivered the glass, Brent, without a word, swept the curtain closed.
The space felt claustrophobic with the three of them. Bryn tried to keep her breathing slow and steady, and her eyes on the man on the other side. He needed watching; there was no doubt about that. He was armed, and very dangerous.
Patrick seemed as relaxed as she’d ever seen him. He silently toasted their host—captor?—and took a sip of his scotch. Brent picked up his bourbon and drank off half of it in a gulp.
“Favor,” Brent said then, and turned the glass in a slow circle on the table as if he intended to grind it into the wood. “I’m out of that business. It’s strictly cash these days.”
“Then let’s call it what it is: a debt. You owe me. And I want payment. Not in cash. In action.”
“You’re fucking crazy, coming in here to tell me that. The fuck you think you are, you little shit?” The words were aggressive, but oddly, the tone sounded almost . . . tolerant. At least as much as Bryn could hear through the rough, scarred blurring.
“I think I’m the man who saved your son, sir,” Patrick said. “And I think we should just stop posturing before one of us gets carried away.”
“You think you scare me?”
“I think it’s mutually assured destruction, and I brought my girlfriend,” Patrick said, and smiled. “So one of us is more confident.”
“Or more stupid.”
Patrick just waited. He sipped scotch. Brent didn’t sip, but he gulped the rest of his bourbon, and after a solid minute of silence, said, “I don’t deny you did my son right. Favor’s owed to you by him, not by me.”
“He isn’t here. You are. I think it’s more a family debt.”
“Case could be made,” Brent acknowledged, and then sat back and pushed away his empty glass. Bryn tensed, because it was the kind of move a man made before going for a weapon. Not this man, though. He stayed still, waiting to see what they’d do, and when neither she nor Patrick reacted, he nodded. “Tell me what you want.”
“I need to know where to find a man, and I need you to take the news we were here to your goddamn grave, sir. Deep black. You get me?”
“I get you. What’s the name?”
Patrick hadn’t ever asked, and now he looked at Bryn. She resisted the urge to nervously clear her throat, and said, in a gratifyingly calm voice, “Martin Damien Reynolds.”
“Shit,” Brent said. “You people.”
“You know him?” Patrick asked, and now there was a little trace of a frown on his face. If Brent did know the man, that would, Bryn realized, be a terrible complication. This was a world of favors, and if Brent owed a bigger one to Reynolds . . .
“I know of him,” Brent said, which was a relief. “What if I told you that bastard was in Paris?”
“What if I told you I’ve noticed that people who phrase things that way are full of bullshit?” Bryn asked. “He’s not in Paris. He’s not anywhere but in Northern California, so let’s try this again.”
That got her the second smile of the meeting from Brent. She didn’t like that one any better than the first. “Where the hell did McCallister dig you up, cupcake?”
That made her almost laugh, in a sweep of bleak humor. Dig you up, indeed. McCallister cut her off, though, by saying, “She’s ex-army, so knock it off or she’ll knock something off of you, Major. And she’s right. Stop fucking around.”
“Buy me another round.”
Patrick’s frustration showed in the way he yanked the curtain back and signaled the bartender, but not in his expression as he turned back. “Well?”
Brent drew it out as long as he could, waiting until the drink was delivered, then slow-gulping the first half before nodding. “You’re lucky,” he said. “Could have been in Paris. Could have been in fucking Afghanistan, for that matter. But the guy you’re looking for is up north.”
“Address.”
“You think I memorized it? Give me a break. It’s going to take a minute.”
“We’ll wait.”
“You’ll fucking wait out there, McCallister. And this info pays all debts, you understand? I never want to see you again.”
Patrick nodded, and Bryn slid out of the booth.
He didn’t. He asked, in a very different, almost gentle tone of voice, “How is he?”
There was a heavy silence, and then Brent said, “Don’t know. My boy doesn’t talk to me. He’s alive, though. Alive and well. Got married, I hear. Probably got some kids he won’t
tell me about until I’m too feeble to care. If you ever see him, tell him—” Brent went silent for a second, face set in a blank mask, and then continued, “Hell. Just tell him you saw me and I asked after him. That’ll do.”
Patrick nodded assent, and got out of the booth. He pulled the curtain behind him and walked Bryn to the bar, where he ordered them both drinks and paid the tab.
“Who the hell is he?” she asked, as her tequila shot was deposited on the bar in front of her.
“One tough, slippery son of a bitch,” Patrick said. “Could have been a general if he’d kept his mouth shut, but he isn’t built that way. These days, he runs people like Brick, and a lot of other shit that isn’t so nice. You want things done, no matter how messy, you find Brent.”
“And he seems like such a nice guy.”
Patrick snorted in amusement, then took a long sip of his scotch. “I liked his son.”
“And you saved his life?”
“He took some pretty bad hits. I got him to cover and did first aid until they could evac him. Head injury. I never saw him again, but he wrote to me, after. Told me they’d discharged him and he was doing better. Considering they didn’t think he’d make it off the battlefield, I thought that was a pretty good outcome.”
There was a but in there, she sensed. “And?”
He drank the rest of the scotch in a rush. “He lost both his legs.”
She nodded. She knew plenty of guys like that—legs or arms blown off, replaced by impressively crafted replacements. “Lucky,” she said.
“Let’s hope we are, too.”
The curtain on Brent’s booth slid open, and the man beckoned to them. Bryn swallowed her tequila before she went and nodded to the bartender, who nodded back, cautiously polite this time.
“Don’t sit,” Brent said when they came to the booth. “Here. Take it and get out. I don’t know what you’re into, and I don’t want to know.” He slid a folded piece of paper across the table, and Bryn took it. Their fingers touched, and the man drew back fast.
