"Oh, God, Kev. I'm sorry," Edie said apologetically. "It's just this." She lifted the champagne bottle. "The cork hit the ceiling, and you weren't looking at it, and I...I didn't think."
He let out a shuddering sigh, easing down his thudding heart. "Christ, Edie," he muttered, through set teeth.
"Really." She bit her lip. "I'm so sorry." She lifted one of the plastic glasses. "Do you want some? It's warm, but it's also Dom Perignon."
He lay the gun down, and thudded heavily on the bed. His hands were still trembling. "No fucking way. I'm not touching alcohol until this situation is completely resolved."
She looked worried. "But aren't we safe here?"
"We're not safe enough anywhere that I would voluntarily drink something that could slow down my reflexes."
"Ah. I see." She put bottle and glass both on the bedstand. "That's, ah, very rigorous, Mr. Super Hardass."
"Fuck, yeah," he muttered. "Do the hard thing."
She gave him a considering look, her head tilted to the side. "The hard thing? What's the hard thing?"
He shrugged, uncomfortable. "Just a figure of speech."
"But what does it mean to you, exactly?" she persisted.
Shit. He wasn't feeling all that articulate today. "I don't know," he said, his voice surly. "It's just a thing I say. Don't know where it comes from. I guess the hard thing is usually the right thing. Or vice versa."
She pondered that. "And the corollary is that the easy thing must be wrong. Or lazy. Self indulgent. Dangerous. Right?"
Irrational anger surged. It felt like she were criticizing him, though her tone was very gentle. "Yes! It is! Like fucking you in my apartment while those kidnappers were closing in, for instance! It'll take years of being a hard-ass for me to get over that!"
"That wasn't your fault!"
"Doesn't matter," he said. "Results matter. Outcomes matter. I'm still responsible. And I might have known that something like this would happen. I might have known that it was too good to be true."
He forced himself to choke off. He was overwrought. Babbling stupid, senseless shit that would only get him in trouble.
"Too good to be true?" she repeated slowly. "And how is that?"
He was in for it now. "Yes! Too fucking good to be true! There's no way that I could just meet the perfect woman who's haunted my dreams all my life, and just have it be normal. Just have it go smoothly."
She blinked. "Clue me in as to what's smooth and normal, Kev."
"Like other people!" he yelled. "I meet you, I charm you, I date you. We go see movies, concerts. We go to bed. We leave toothbrushes and underwear in each others' places, we start unofficially living together, I meet your parents, I buy a ring, we set the date, get married, etc., etc. That's normal. That scenario, for me? No fucking way! The day I meet you, the killers close in on you! The very same day, Edie!"
"Kev," she breathed out softly. "Sweetie--"
"What am I supposed to think?" he roared. "That I'm cursed, right? That I just can't have this! I can't have you! It's just not in the cards for me, not in this lifetime. That's the truth. That's the hard thing that I have to face, but I can't face it, Edie! I just can't face it!"
His voice cracked. He turned away from her, suddenly afraid he was going to cry. Oh, God forbid. Please. Not that.
"You don't have to," she said. "I won't let you face it. I can't face it either." She leaned closer to him, pressing her face to his shoulder. Kissing it, as if she were kissing a baby. Her hand drifted up to stroke his cheek. The scar tissue was weirdly oversensitive there, but his screwed up nerve endings accepted her light touch, and amazingly, translated it as pleasure. Not the nervous tickle that he usually felt.
"Edie," he started, feeling exhausted. "I just can't--"
"Shhh," she soothed. "You think you'll be punished for anything too good, don't you? And who could blame you. You've been punished so much." She kissed his shoulder, moving her warm, soft lips tenderly over the scars. "There's something that we need to do."
He watched her rummage through the wreckage of their feast until she found a spoon, and the white cardboard container that proved to have a goopy, unidentifiable dessert, once she popped it open.
It still smelled good, despite being battered into goop. Coffee, cream, custard, soaked cookie crumbs, God knew what else.
She scooped some up onto the spoon, and shuffled closer to him on her knees, holding up the spoonful. She had that fey, magical glint in her bright eyes. The one that stopped his breath right in his lungs.
"Uh, wasn't that stuff for the brainwashing session?" he asked.
"This is the brainwashing session, you big silly. Get over here."
She waited patiently while he scooted toward her on his knees, and grabbed his hand tightly, like she thought he might bolt.
"Now. Repeat after me," she said. "None of this is my fault."
He sighed. "Edie. It's not that simple, and I can't just--"
"Repeat it!" Her voice had a ring of command that zapped his spine up to military drill straightness. And made the scar on his cheek sting, from the smile spreading there.
"Fine," he grumbled, rolling his eyes. "None of this is my fault."
She smiled her approval, and put the spoon of sweet goop into his mouth. The sugar orgasm jolted him hard. But Edie wasn't done with him yet. "Repeat after me," she commanded. "I deserve to be happy."
A strange, irrational tension gripped him. "Edie--"
"I know it sounds silly. I know it feels false. That's exactly why you need to say it. Don't fight me on this. Indulge me, OK? Remember what a hard night I've had. How fragile I am."
He grunted. He was being blatantly jerked around, but whatever.
"I deserve to be happy," he said, grimly acquiescent.
She put the spoonful of goop to his lips. He accepted it. They stared at each other, sobered. Something was happening. Something subtle and mysterious, vibrating in the air. It almost scared him.
"Another one," she said. Her voice had a little quiver in it. "Repeat after me. I deserve pleasure."
He swallowed. He was uncomfortable with this weird game, but there was no way out but through. "I deserve pleasure," he muttered.
Edie nodded, and gave him his spoonful of goop, with the ritual air of a priestess offering holy communion. "One last thing," she said softly. "Look me straight in the eye, and repeat after me. I deserve love."
Kev stared at her. His throat was petrified. There was big cold rock where his voice box had been. Edie just waited, merciless.
"Come on, Kev," she prompted gently. "You can do this."
He cleared his throat. "I deserve love," he said hoarsely.
She gave him the spoonful. It was all he could do to swallow it.
His throat burned. His chest, too. Her eyes were wet, shining.
He grabbed the dessert and the spoon out of her hands. "OK," he said. "Your turn now. Say it, Edie. All of it."
Edie quietly repeated the exact phrases that he had said, accepting spoonfuls of the dessert after each assertion.
At the end of the solemn ceremony, they gazed at each other. Raw emotion vibrated between them in the deafening silence.
"I love you," she said.
He swallowed. "I love you, too."
He put the container and the spoon down, and took her hands. Lifted them to kiss them, slowly and reverently. Edie pulled her hands free, put them around his neck, pulled his face down to hers.
He meant for it to be a holy, sacred kiss. Gentle, respectful, in keeping with the gravity of the moment, but no. The kiss flared instantly into something frenzied. Like he had to crawl inside her soul to survive. Like they'd both die if they didn't get closer, kiss deeper.
He pulled back, gasping for air. "You keep doing this to me, and you know I'm going to fuck you again," he blurted. "I was trying to be reasonable and civilized. Trying to give you some time, let you rest. But you keep messing with my head."
She undulated against him. "The food
gave me a second wind."
He swept the containers off the bed with his arm, and seized her.
"I cannot believe it! Aren't you hardened professionals? Decades of experience? I read your brochures, gentlemen! It's all bullshit!"
Ava's shrill voice was making Des's head ache. He rubbed his temples. Tom and his men were slumped in their chairs in the big luxury trailer outside Ava's lab that Des had procured for them, in varying stages of bloody disrepair. Richard's face was turning color, both eyes swollen shut, his mouth was distorted and torn, nostrils still caked with dried blood. Ken was hunched in his chair, curled around the ugly black hematoma in his scrotum, whining about a ruptured testicle. Tom's pant leg was cut off, his thick, hairy leg bandaged with blood-soaked gauze. In short, they were a whimpering, pathetic mess.
"Ava, please," Des soothed wearily. "Calm down."
"We handed them to you! On a silver platter! And you let them get away!" Ava's voice rose to a shriek. "Imbeciles! Incompetent dickheads!"
"You sent us out there with incomplete intel," Tom threw back. His face was beaded with sweat, pupils dilated from the pain meds. "We weren't aware that he had a high level of combat training--"
"He is a McCloud!" she hissed. "Did you not read the files? His background, his father, his brothers? Did we not tell you what Sean McCloud did to Dr. O? Did you not do the cognitive enhancement program? Can you think for yourself? Is the concept foreign to you?"
"You told me he was a brain-damaged amnesiac!" Tom snarled.
Ava snorted her disgust. "In the future, remind me. Thinking is a process that you and your people need to have outsourced."
Tom's eyes went very cold. "Shut up, you mouthy cunt."
Ava's eyes lit with battle fury. "To think I facilitated orgasms for these losers." Her voice was a thread of sugary poison. "If I had it to do again, I'd compel Keira to bite their shrinking little pink penises off."
"I'm done." Tom looked at Des. "Deal's off. I cannot cope with your venomous bitch of a girlfriend and a knife in my leg at the same time. And I want McCloud for myself. I want to take this"--he held up the dagger that had been embedded in his leg--"and fuck him with it."
"Not McCloud," Ava snarled. "He's mine."
"Wait, wait, wait. Just hold on," Des broke in. "Everybody just take a deep breath." He leaned over Ava, gripped her shoulders. "Shut up," he whispered. "Or we lose everything." Ava's breath hissed through bared teeth like a cornered animal, but he held her gaze. "Everything we always wanted," he coaxed. "You with me? You'll be good?"
Her eyes dropped. She gave him a sharp nod.
Des turned back to Tom. "Ava's sorry she was rude to you."
Tom snorted his disgust. "She can suck my dick."
Ava's smile dazzled. "Wouldn't risk that, if I were you, Tom."
"Stop it! Everyone!" Des snapped. "Throwing insults is inefficient. We need a new strategy for taking McCloud without injuring him."
"Drugs," Ava said. "Trank gun. I'll load it with something special."
"Or Tasers," Ken offered.
"That's what you should have used last night!" Ava snapped. "You risked damaging his brain even more! Blackjacks? Stupid idiots."
"Ava! Shut up!" Des massaged his temples. "So, Parrish is no longer in the ICU," he said briskly. "I called Marta. His status has been upgraded to good, and he's leaving the hospital to look for Edie. We start making arrangements as soon as he's home."
"I thought McCloud in the bag was key to that plan," Tom said.
"We'll get him in the bag," Des assured him.
"Yeah? And how do you propose that? He's off boning the girl in a hotel somewhere. Why should he come back at all?"
"He'll come." Des held up his cell. "I've got his number, and I've got something that he wants. He'll come. So will Edie, when Daddy croaks all over the evening news. We've got them both cold, Tommy."
Tom's nostrils flared. "Could have suggested this possibility before you had me stick my neck out last night."
"I'm sorry, man. I didn't know about his combat skills, either, but I did know about yours, and they're flat-out amazing," Des soothed. "It seemed simpler to have you take him. At the time. Forgive me, OK?"
Tom grunted. "Leave the cock licking to the girls, Des. They do it better." His eyes flicked to Ava. She smiled, showing off her white teeth.
Des rushed into the breach before things could degenerate further. "We need to put surveillance cameras in McCloud's apartment, and Edie's. If either one of them should drop by, we'll grab them. Are you gentlemen, ah...fit for that?"
"Fuck you, man," Ken Wanatabe growled.
Richard just opened one eye halfway, closed it, and groaned.
"It'll get done," Tom muttered.
"One more thing." Des braced himself. It was a piss poor time for this particular conversation, but it had to be gotten through. "I meant to ask you about this yesterday, but things got crazy. The disposal issue."
"We took care of it yesterday," Tom cut in brusquely. "Before the banquet. It's done. Don't micromanage."
"I'm not talking about Keira," Des said. "I'm talking about what's backed up in the cooler already. I know it's a bad time, but Parrish was supposed to croak last night, and he didn't. And he's breathing down our necks. We have got to take out the trash."
Tom's mouth hardened. "How many?"
Des shrugged. "I think there's about eight, last time I checked."
"Twelve," Ava corrected. "He hasn't checked in a while."
Tom stared at Des, then at Ava. "Twelve," he repeated. "You send us out with bad intel to get fucked by that hopped-up McCloud maniac, and then you tell me you want us to get rid of twelve cadavers for you?"
Des gazed apologetically back at his friend. "I know, it's a lot to ask," he said. "But consider this. For an exclusive contract with--"
"No!" Ava shrieked. "An exclusive is wasted on these idiots!"
"For one year," Des went grimly on. "Shut up, Av."
Tom chewed the inside of his cheek. "Two years," he said.
"No!" Ava wailed.
"One," Des repeated patiently. "Only one."
"Eighteen months, and the bitch sticks a sock in her mouth."
"Done," Des said, giving Ava a quelling look. "We've set things in motion, Av," he said softly. "We can't go back. It's too late. Eat it."
Ava looked away. Her face was a white mask of fury.
Des pulled up the number, and hit CALL.
CHAPTER 20
Kev tried to ignore it, but the buzzing was relentless.
He dragged his brain up to the level of consciousness, with the uncomfortable sense that he'd been way too far under. That phone could have been ringing for hours. He could have opened his eyes and found himself looking into a gun barrel. With Edie's lithe body draped all over his dominant gun arm. He had to sharpen the fuck up. Fast.
But he didn't want to sharpen up. Or even to get up. Fuck the phone. He was fine where he was, with Edie wrapped around him, her hair swirling over his chest, her tits pressed against him.
Who the fuck was calling him, anyhow? Someone persistent.
He stumbled out of bed into the cold, kicking through scattered clothes until he found the coat. It was on the floor, where Edie had dumped it last night. He crouched, rummaged in the pockets until he found the thing, squinted at the display. Not a number he knew.
Edie was sitting up now, looking worried. "Who is it?"
"We'll see." He sat down on the bed, and hit TALK. "What?"
A pause, and a male voice asked. "Is this Kev Larsen?"
The voice was familiar, and annoying. He fished through his data-banks, trying to match it. "Who the hell is this?"
"This is Desmond Marr. Good morning!"
"Ah." Kev summoned what courtesy he could for that slobbering hound. Calling at this ungodly hour. He peered at the clock. Ten-fifty.
Shit. Not so ungodly. So what. He'd fish for something else to be rightously pissed about. "How'd you get this number?"
"Excuse me for taking the liberty." Marr's charm oozed through the electronic freqency, as unpleasantly viscous as it was in person. "Edie borrowed my phone last night at the banquet to text you, so I had the number in my records. Hope you don't mind. Did I wake you?"
Like that was his fucking business. "What do you want, Marr?"
Marr's fruity chuckle set Kev's teeth on edge. "Actually, this was about what you wanted. Weren't you interested in researching the--"
"I told you I'd get in touch," Kev said. "No need to call me."
Marr cleared his throat. "Ah, yes. Well, I've been in touch with the Parrishes, and they're terribly upset about Edie being, ah, kidnapped. By you. Sorry, but that's how they see it."
That gave Kev a jolt. So far, nobody knew about last night's kidnapping attempt except for himself and Edie. "She hasn't been kidnapped," he said. "We'll call them, and tell them. No big deal."
"Oh, that's great news," Des said heartily. "That'll be a big relief to everybody. So I suppose you wouldn't mind putting her on the phone?"
Kev handed Edie the phone, mouthing "Marr."
Edie took it. "Hey, Des. What's up? Any news of my Dad's condition?" She listened, nodding. "Good. I wish he'd stay longer, but if he's feeling strong enough to launch a crusade...yeah, he's tough...that's problematic, Des. They don't approve of me being with Kev, so it would be best if I...yes, I know, but..." She rolled her eyes eloquently at the tinny burst of verbal diarrhea coming from the cell. "I'm not coming home right now. I'm safe with Kev, and...no. We'll be leaving soon anyway. Don't worry about it."
Nosy shithead. Trying to pry their coordinates out of Edie. Kev reached for the phone, cut off Des's pompous tirade in midsquawk.
"Marr. It's Larsen. We'll talk later. Give Parrish our regards."
"Don't hang up! You know those archives? Charles asked me about them this morning. If you wait, Parrish is going to know a lot more about you than you know about yourself, and he is not going to leave any crumbs. If you want that info, you have to move fast. Today."
Kev's jaw clenched. He had to find someplace to stash Edie, and a human pit bull to guard her while he got his hands on a car and a computer. So he could track down those fucking kidnappers and get started on the task of grinding them into a fine pink paste. Fuck the Osterman archives. He was busy. "Tomorrow," he said. "Can't, today."
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