He looked around the shower curtain, wet hair dark and dripping. He’d shaved, the first time she’d seen him without his customary stubble. He looked much younger than she’d assumed him to be.
“Is the pizza here?” he asked. “Damn it.”
The shower spray stopped, so she shut the bathroom door, but it opened again almost immediately. Scott was hastily tucking a bath towel around his hips as he brushed past her, leaving wet footprints in the carpet. She’d seen his body before, on the day he fought The Viscount, but the circumstances had been far from intimate then. Now she felt her quills respond to the sight of his lean frame. She vowed never to tell a soul what it meant when they went flat like that.
He’d neglected to tell her about the pizza, but she didn’t chastise him when he came back into the room and set the box on the end of the bed. By the time he came back out of the bathroom again, dry and dressed in clean clothes, she’d tuned the holovision to a 24/7 cartoon channel and eaten an entire slice of pepperoni. He joined her on the bed, and in half an hour they consumed the whole thing between them.
After setting the box aside, he examined the tiny red quill prick on his finger-pad before giving her an assessing look.
“I have an idea,” he said. He went into the bathroom and she heard the sound of the shower curtain rings being drawn across the rod. After a few minutes, he returned with a section of torn plastic in his hand; the pattern of shells and swirls told her he’d scavenged a piece right off the curtain.
He handed her a tiny pair of manicure scissors, wiggling his fingers and saying, “I can’t use these.”
With his guidance, she cut a circle the diameter of her shoulders out of the plastic, cut a slit to the center and made a smaller circle in the middle. He helped her place the bib around her neck and then made a dissatisfied face.
“It’s fine,” she said, pleased that he’d made an effort.
“Not going to stay on very well. Too bad we don’t have any tape.”
Bryn thought of the duct-taped guy they’d left in the sand. With more finality, she repeated, “It’s fine.”
She sat back on her pillow while he switched channels. They watched a news story about the gun battle between “unknown perpetrators” on Coney Island.
“We’re famous,” he commented.
“Infamous,” she corrected.
After sports and the weather, her father appeared on screen standing next to Dr. Finnegan and a man dressed in a pressed, tailored suit. Instinctively, Bryn knew it was Manny, the ‘marketing guy’ her father had hired. Under the guise of making a public plea for her safe return, her father began his campaign to use her for his own purposes.
“My daughter is distraught after her traumatic kidnapping and mutilation,” he said, voice cracking on the last word. If Bryn didn’t know better she’d swear Harry Vega was devastated by this new turn of events. Maybe he was, but not for the reasons he’d like everyone to think. “She’s suicidal and making very poor decisions. If you see her, please contact the XIA at the special hotline they set up for us.”
An 800-number scrolled across the holo of Bryn her father had taken at the kitchen table. She did, indeed, look traumatized and suicidal. Manny finished the press conference with a statement that sent frissons of alarm down her spine, “There is a ten-thousand dollar reward for any information leading to the safe recovery of Bryn Vega.”
Through gritted teeth, she said, “My father doesn’t have ten-thousand dollars.”
“Well, you’re worth that much to someone.”
His words were uttered casually, but she looked at him out of the sides of her eyes until he said defensively, “I’m not going to turn you in.” Sounding like an afterthought, he added, “They’d arrest me if I tried.”
Bryn felt the comfortable camaraderie fade away. Scott grabbed the holo control and switched channels, finally settling on an old action movie made before holovision was invented. The movie had been holoized, but there was something a little off about it; a fuzziness that normal holos didn’t have. Still, it succeeded in distracting her. After awhile she realized she was on the verge of dozing off, so she turned to ask if he planned on sleeping on the couch or what.
He was lying on his back, eyes closed, mouth partially open, breathing evenly. The top half of his dark hair spilled across his pillow; the bottom portion that had been shaved when she met him had grown to about half an inch. She didn’t want to wake him, but she also didn’t want to sleep on that stiff couch herself, so she climbed under the covers on her side.
Sleep must have come quickly, because when she woke sometime later, she didn’t remember experiencing any of the host of discomforts and troubling thoughts that usually manifested in the intractable insomnia that had been plaguing her for weeks. The room wasn’t dark; she’d shut off the holovision but left the bathroom light on. Something had awoken her, though—a noise maybe. She lay still and tried to listen past the pounding of her heart. After awhile, when nothing happened, her pulse slowed. Scott said this was a safe house. She reached up to adjust her quills so she could roll to the side facing his direction, and began to doze again.
Somewhere between sleep and waking, her drifting thoughts coalesced. Her eyes flew open and she saw him staring at her.
“You’re a cop, aren’t you?” she asked.
Chapter Thirty-four
He’d been thinking how beautiful she was, how much he wanted to get under the covers and touch her. In the lethargy of half-sleep, his body eagerly responded to the notion. It had been a very long time since he’d slept with a woman, with or without sex. His arousal subsided rapidly at her words.
It would be a risk asking how she’d come to that conclusion; if he allowed her to voice her suspicions, they might solidify in her mind. On the other hand, her insight might be valuable. Whatever he’d done to give himself away could get him killed. If he were to confirm the truth, tell her that, yeah, he was essentially a cop, he would put her in even further danger. Knowledge like that was worth more than gold to his competition—they wouldn’t hesitate to hurt her to get it. And if she were forced to tell, or if she let something slip in the presence of another XBestia, he was a dead man. He could only hope this was idle speculation on her part, easily deflected.
He held up his hand and extended his claws. “You ever see a cop with these?”
“No, but-”
He rolled off the bed and pulled the covers aside, saying, “Would a cop do this?” He slid in next to her, very close.
“Um, I don’t know. Maybe-”
He kissed her, ignoring the quills that poked his forehead. Her mouth opened in surprise under his, lips soft and pliable. He reached for her, finding that the sweater had worked its way up, giving him easy access to snake a hand under it. Her waist was firm and narrow, the skin silky even against his touch-dulled finger-pads. Her bra was lying on the bathroom floor with the other dirty clothes. The urge to touch her breast almost overwhelmed him. He barely managed to stop and rest his hand against her ribcage, which expanded against his fingers with her sharply indrawn breath.
He knew she liked him, knew he was taking advantage, but couldn’t help himself. If she told him to stop, he would kill himself doing so, but she didn’t. Instead, she pulled away briefly to take another quick, gasping breath and then found his mouth again, deepening the kiss. Her leg lifted, giving him ample opportunity to pull her closer and slip his knee between her thighs. She moaned in her throat and her hand found its way under his shirt. That moan, combined with the warm touch of her fingers, sparked a surge of intense pleasure; if this kept up, he wouldn’t be able to stop.
There were innumerable reasons not to allow this to go any further, not the least of which was: no condom. He broke away from her mouth but almost gave in again at her little mew of protest.
With a monumental effort, he said, “We can’t.”
She rolled partially away, chest rising and falling. “I know.”
“I want to…but…”
Her glistening green eyes looked huge, like the innocent anime characters his sister used to love. It occurred to him that Bryn was probably a virgin, and he was an enormous jerk for almost taking it from her like that. But she said, “We don’t have to. I mean, we can just…”
She trailed off and his imagination vividly filled in the blanks and fired him up all over again. He let out a regretful groan and disentangled himself from her, trying not to linger with his hand on her thigh.
“Now I know you’re a cop,” she said.
She was trying to be funny, which made it that much harder to disabuse her. “Jesus. Stop saying shit like that unless you want to get us both killed, okay?”
“I would never tell.” She sounded crushed, and painfully young.
“There’s nothing to tell.”
She nodded and said softly, “Okay.”
He’d wanted to withdraw from the situation tactfully, but it seemed more prudent to feign an anger he just didn’t feel. He grabbed his pillow and muttered, “I’m sleeping on the couch.”
He felt her eyes follow him out of the room, hating himself for hurting her, but nursing a justification that couldn’t be denied.
Chapter Thirty-five
Bryn had experienced a myriad of new emotions in her life lately; terror, horror, betrayal, despair—now shame added itself to the list. She wondered how many synonyms there were for the word ‘shame.’ She felt them all.
Tears leaked out of her eyes and trickled into her underfur. She didn’t want to remember the last night she’d gone to sleep without crying, because it was the last night of her old life, before she’d been plunged into xenofreak hell. Maybe her dad was right; maybe she was suicidal. At least, after the humiliating scene that just occurred, she thought she understood why someone might resort to it.
She didn’t know why she’d insisted Scott was a cop when it obviously pissed him off. Her observations of his character, his baffling willingness to help her, this convenient house…the solution to the equation was nothing if solving it pushed him away. And she was certain she had solved it. He’d just proved it to her by not taking what she was so eager to give.
Still, she’d never been so embarrassed. Facing him in the morning would be exquisite torture. For a while, she considered sneaking out and running away again, but she’d just be exchanging one uncertain future for another. If Scott was a cop, it meant he was undercover fighting against Fournier and the XBestias. It meant he was one of the good guys, and the thought put torch to the first flare of hope she’d felt in a long time.
Sleep eluded her. She’d never slept next to someone in her whole life, yet the empty spot where he’d lain left her bereft in ways she couldn’t explain. She knew she was placing too much trust in him, but it was more than that. She couldn’t help but compare the clumsy fumblings of her ex-boyfriend Paul with Scott’s assured touch and…ah, his kiss. Every time her thoughts strayed into that territory, her body responded so forcefully she squirmed with the frustration of it. Her quills would tighten, a sensation she was quickly beginning to equate with lust, and when they finally relaxed it reminded her of what she was trying not to think of and off they’d go tightening up again.
She did fall asleep eventually. In the morning, she woke to the sound of the toilet flushing. She had a brief fantasy of him coming out of the bathroom, sitting on the side of the bed, kissing her with that scarred mouth of his and saying, “I’m sorry.”
Instead, he flipped the overhead exhaust fan on and said, “Don’t go in there for awhile.”
She tried to go back to sleep, but kept recalling bits from the night before and reliving her mortification. Reluctantly, she dragged herself out of bed. Scott was sitting at the kitchen table, looking at something on his holophone.
“Laundry’s almost done,” he said matter-of-factly. “Where on Trill Street do you need to go?”
“It’s West Trill. Provincial Mutual.”
He typed something. “Yeah, okay, here it is. We’ll have to take…three buses.”
She bit her lip, nibbling at a bit of loose skin, halfway hoping he’d acknowledge the elephant in the room and halfway hoping he wouldn’t.
He didn’t.
The dryer buzzed and he disappeared through a door in the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with a basket of clothes.
“Found this in the garage.” He handed her a battered old fishing hat. “Probably won’t get stuck on your quills.”
She was happy to put her own clothes on, but a little disturbed that he’d handled her undergarments in the course of washing them. The elastic in her old panties was stretched out and her bra was dingy and frayed around the edges. There’d been no one at home to ensure she had more than the barest of girly necessities, and since she didn’t have a boyfriend and money was tight, she gave lingerie low priority.
She’d set her boots over the heating vent the night before and draped her jacket nearby so they would dry. The leather on both was stiff and damaged from salt water. Standing in front of the mirror, she put the jacket on, set the faded green fishing hat over her quills and draped the scarf over the top. Crossing the ends under her chin to hang down her back effectively hid the quills poking out of the bottom of the hat, but the end result tromped all over any number of fashion laws.
“You look stupid,” she told her reflection. But it didn’t matter. So what if she looked ready to go ice fishing when the sun was shining outside in what would likely be another warm summer day? If she left her head uncovered, she’d get even more stares than this ridiculous get-up and would certainly be recognized.
She giggled to herself. “Now you’ve got a porcupine and a price on your head.” Predictably, the mirth didn’t last.
Scott had conjured himself a pair of Levi’s that hung from his hips in such a way that she found it hard not to gawk at him in admiration. He also had on a pair of lightweight boots that looked like they fit him better than the last pair. Add to that a grey zip-up hoodie with a white t-shirt and some sunglasses, and he looked too normal to be in her company—when his hands were in his pockets anyway.
He was unusually talkative on the bus, asking probing questions about her father’s motivation for having her mutilated. She didn’t tell him much—talking about it would only depress her further. Scott also showed a sudden interest in Carla and seemed disappointed when Bryn told him, “I hadn’t seen her in years before yesterday. She’s a virtual stranger.”
They picked up fast food for breakfast and ate while walking up West Trill, past a car dealership, a Walmart and a bicycle store. The Prudential Mutual building was a sprawling, one-story brick structure that looked like it had once housed a bank.
Scott leaned against the wall by the front doors and said, “I’ll wait outside.”
The receptionist raised her over-plucked eyebrows at Bryn and asked, “Can I help you?”
Bryn’s heart fluttered, but she tried to appear calm. “M—my mother passed away several years ago. She had a life insurance policy with this company and I was the beneficiary. I just turned eighteen and would like to know how to go about collecting.”
The receptionist’s long red fingernails hovered over her keyboard. “Name?”
Bryn’s nervousness ratcheted up a notch. “Her name was Miranda Vega.”
Tap tap tappity tap. “Her date of birth?”
Bryn told her, and answered several more questions after that. The receptionist remained expressionless throughout. She finally picked up a telephone handset and told Bryn to have a seat in the waiting area. Bryn sat on the edge of one of the chairs, wringing her hands, ready to bolt out the door if she got the slightest hint that she’d been recognized.
After about ten minutes, a man in a rumpled suit appeared from a side door. He had a chubby round face and a pleased smile. “Ms. Vega?” He held out his hand. “Stan Berry.”
Bryn stood, relieved. So far, so good.
Berry’s office was small, neat and smelled like vanilla air-f
reshener. The blinds were open on a large window spanning the west wall, revealing a patch of landscaping shaded with giant ferns. Beyond that was the parking lot. She saw Scott wandering around, but doubted he could see in; the exterior glass on the building had been coated with a reflective surface.
Berry plunked himself down behind his desk and invited her to sit. She declined, choosing instead to stand behind one of two chrome side chairs, gripping the pleather backrest. His smile really did look pleased, almost smugly so, as if he lived to give out large insurance payments to clients. Bryn shrugged off a niggle of doubt.
“I’m so glad you came to see me,” he said with a little chuckle. “I can really use the ten thousand.”
For a brief, deluded moment, she thought he meant he would get a commission on the payment. Then she remembered the amount of the reward for information leading to her ‘safe’ return.
She swallowed and stiffened her spine. “I’ll pay you twenty thousand once the insurance check clears.”
“Ooo, tempting, but too late. Your father thought you might stop by, so he left his personal holo number with me. He’s already on his way.”
Bryn turned to the door and saw through the side glass that a security guard had come to stand outside it. There was no way to get a message to Scott—she’d have to get herself out of this one.
She unwrapped the scarf and removed the hat, setting it on Berry’s desk. His brows rose as she felt her quills puff up like they had when she’d been in the tunnel of spiders. Perhaps that was a trace of fear she saw in his eyes?
“Ya got me, Stan,” she said. Three steps took her to the door, where she reached out and twisted the lock.
Xenofreak Nation Page 14
