Rapture

by J. R. Ward

  "Well, for one thing, it looks like it belongs on a forty-year-old. The jeans and parka are more your age."

  "How old do you think I am?"

  "Twenty-five-ish." And maybe that was why he didn't like her touching him. She was so young, too young for someone like him.

  "Twenty-four, as a matter of fact. It's why my mom's in town, actually." She touched her sternum again. "Birthday girl."

  "Happy birthday."

  "Thanks."

  "Your father coming in, too?"

  "Oh...yeah. No." Now, she closed up completely. "No, he's not coming."

  Damn it, the last thing he needed was to get all into her personal shit. "Why not."

  She fiddled with her coffee cup in its saucer, turning it back and forth. "You are so odd."

  "Why."

  "I don't like to talk about myself, but here I am babbling away."

  "You haven't told me much, if that makes you feel better."

  "But...I want to." For a split second her eyes dipped to his lips, like she was wondering things about him she really, really didn't need to. "I want to."

  Nope. Not going there, he thought.

  Especially not after Mels.

  Dee leaned in, those breasts threatening to break out of that dress. "I haven't been able to stop thinking about you."

  Great. Wonderful. Fucking perfect.

  In the tense quiet, Matthias briefly eyed the big window next to them. He'd already been out the thing once.

  If things got awkward, he could do it again.

  Mels hung up her office phone and leaned back in her chair. As the squeak sounded, she made a new tune out of it, rocking back and forth.

  For some reason, her eyes locked on that coffee mug that had been left behind by the other reporter.

  When her cell phone went off, she jumped and fumbled with the thing. Quick check of the screen and she wanted to curse--not because of who it was, but because of who it wasn't.

  Maybe Matthias was in the shower.

  People took showers in the mornings.

  Yeah, for, like, a half hour, though? She'd been calling every five minutes.

  "Hello?" she demanded.

  "Hey, Carmichael." It was Monty the Mouth; she could tell by the cracking of his gum. "It's me."

  Well, at least she did want to hear from the guy. "Good morning."

  "I got something." His voice dropped, all secret-agent style. "It's explosive."

  Mels sat up, but didn't get too excited. With her luck, "explosive" was more hyperbole than H-bomb. "Oh, really?"

  "Someone tampered with the body."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Like I told you, I was first on scene, and I snapped some photographs--you know, in an official capacity." There was a rustling over the connection, and then a muffled conversation, like he was talking to someone and had covered up the receiver. "Sorry. I'm at the station house. Let me get out of here and call you back."

  He hung up before she could say anything, and she had images of him dodging fellow officers on his way to the parking lot like he was one of Eli Manning's receivers.

  Sure enough, when he called back, he was out of breath. "Can you hear me?"

  "Yeah, I got you."

  "So my photographs of the body have something on them the official ones don't."

  That was her cue to OMG, and in this case, she didn't have to fake it. "What's the difference?"

  "Meet me and I'll show you."

  "Where and when."

  After she hung up, she checked her watch and dialed Matthias's room phone again. No answer.

  "Hey, Tony," she said, leaning into the aisle between their cubicles. "Can I borrow your--"

  The guy tossed the keys without missing a beat with whoever he was talking to on the phone. As she blew him a kiss, he covered his heart and gave her a little swoon.

  Striding out of the newsroom, she got in Tony's Toy and headed across town, using a route that just happened to...well, what do you know, it was the Marriott hotel.

  And she was a good half an hour early for her meeting with the Mouth.

  By crazy luck, she found an open, metered parking spot just across from the lobby entrance--except it took her two tries to get the car in place, her parallel-parking skills rusty from her using too many garages since she'd moved back to Caldwell.

  Plus, feeling like a stalker didn't help her at the wheel.

  As she walked into the lobby, she felt like someone from security should stop her and turn her away, but no one paid her any attention--which left her wondering exactly how many other people were to'ing or fro'ing over things they felt icky about.

  At the elevators, she hopped a ride to the sixth floor along with a businessman whose wilted attire and red eyes suggested he'd flown in the night before from somewhere far away.

  Maybe even flapping his own arms.

  Stepping free, she hung a right and went down the carpeted hall. Room service trays were set out next to doors, treacherous welcome mats with their smudged plates, half-empty coffee cups, and stained napkins. At the far end, a maid's cart was parked in front of an open room, the light from inside spilling into the corridor and highlighting fresh toilet paper rolls, folded towels, and a lineup of spray bottles.

  Matthias's door still had the Do Not Disturb sign on it, and she took that to mean he hadn't checked out. Putting her ear to the panels, she sent up a quick prayer that he wouldn't pick this moment to open up.

  No running water. No muttering from the TV. No deep voice on the phone.

  She knocked. Knocked a little louder.

  "Matthias," she said to the door. "It's me. Open up."

  As she waited for a response that didn't come, she glanced over at the maid who had come out with a plastic bag full of trash. For a split second, she considered playing the whole I-forgot-my-key-card thing, but in post-9/11 Caldwell, she had a feeling that wasn't going to work--and might end up with her getting tossed out on her hey-nanny-nanny.

  Well, wasn't this a credit to her character: The invasion of his privacy wasn't even on her no-go radar; it was the fear of getting caught that stopped her.

  Disgusted with herself, and pissed off at him, Mels hit the elevator again, and when she got to the first floor, she intended to march out to Tony's car, get in the damn thing, and be wicked early for her meeting with Monty and his flapping gums.

  Instead, she casualed her way around the lobby, peeking into the gift shop, wandering down to the spa...

  Yeah, 'cuz of course he'd be buying bathrobes and getting a cucumber wrap on his face. Right.

  When she came up to the main restaurant that was open, she nearly abandoned the wild-goose chase, but it only took a moment to peer in--

  On the other side of the tables of diners, sitting at a window, Matthias was eating with a brunette woman in a limoncello-colored dress.

  Who was she--

  Was that the nurse? From the hospital?

  "Would you like a table for one?" the maitre d' asked.

  Ah, yeah, that would be a negative--unless the thing came equipped with an airsick bag. "No, thanks."

  Across the way, the brunette started to laugh, throwing her head back so that her hair flowed all around. She was so perfectly beautiful, it was as if she were a moving photograph that had been touched up in all the right places.

  As Matthias sat accross from her, he was hard to read, and in an absurd moment of possessiveness, Mels was glad he was wearing her sunglasses. Like that was the equivalent of her pissing on his fence post.

  "Are you meeting someone, then?" the maitre d' asked.

  "No," she replied. "I do believe he's busy."

  Dee's laughter was...well, kind of divine, as a matter of fact. To the point where it fritzed out part of Matthias's brain, and he couldn't think of what he'd said that was so funny.

  "So how's your memory?" she asked.

  "Spotty."

  "It'll come back. It's only been, what, a day and a half?" She leaned to the side as her pl
ate of eggs, sausage, toast, and hash browns arrived. "Give it time."

  His bagel looked anemic in comparison.

  "Are you sure that's all you want?" She gesticulated with her fork. "You need to put on weight. Myself, I'm a strong believer that a big breakfast is the only way to start the day."

  "It's nice to be around a woman who doesn't pick at her food."

  "Yup, that's not me." She motioned for the waitress to come back over. "He wants what I have. Thanks."

  It seemed rude to point out that if he ate that much he was going to explode, so he just pushed the bagel aside. She was probably right. He felt out of it, sluggish and empty, the club sandwich he'd had for dinner with Mels having been long burned off thanks to that ninja motherfucker with the happy trigger finger.

  "Don't wait for me," he said.

  "I wasn't going to."

  Matthias smiled coldly and passed some time glancing around the room. Most people were exactly what he'd expect in a hotel like this...except for one guy over in the corner who looked seriously out of place: He was wearing a suit that was cut better than everybody else's, and seemed dated even to the fashionless eye.

  Hell, the getup might have been worn to a flapper party--or maybe back in the Roaring Twenties themselves--

  As if sensing he was being looked at, the man lifted his eyes with an aristocratic air.

  Matthias refocused on his dining companion. Dee was going at her food with precise cuts of her fork, the thin edge pushing easily through the scrambled and the hash.

  "Sometimes not remembering is a good thing," she said.

  Yeah, he thought, he had a feeling that was especially true in his case. God, if that story Jim had fed him was--

  "And I didn't mean to be evasive about my father," she said. "It's just...he's nothing I like to think about." Her fork drifted down to settle on the plate as she stared out the window. "I'd do anything to forget him. He was...a violent man--an evil, violent man."

  With a quick shift, her stare came back to his and locked on. "Do you know what I'm talking about. Matthias--"

  Abruptly, another one of those headaches came from out of nowhere, barging through his thought processes and zeroing in on his temples, twin shots of pain heating up on either side of his skull.

  Dimly, he saw that Dee's perfect red mouth was moving, but the words weren't reaching him; it was as if he had pulled out of his body, even as his flesh stayed where it was...and then the very interior of the restaurant began to recede, sure as if the walls had hinged loose and fallen outward, morphing all Inception-like until suddenly he wasn't sitting in a Marriott's pseudo-fancy eatery anymore, but somewhere else--

  He was on the second floor of a farmhouse, rough wood planking marking the floors, walls, and ceiling. The stairwell in front of him was steep, the banister made from pine that had darkened to the color of tar from the oils of countless hands having gripped it.

  The air was stale, and stuffy, although it wasn't hot.

  Matthias looked behind himself, into a room that he recognized as his own. The twin bed had mismatched blankets and no pillows...the bureau had scratches on it and pulls that were halfway attached...there was no rug. But on the little table next to where he slept, a brand-new radio with fake wood trim and a silver dial sat pristine and out of place.

  Glancing down, he saw he was wearing a ragged pair of pants, and that his feet stuck way out from the rolled-up hems; his hands were the same, oversized compared to his thin forearms, his extremities too big for the rest of his body.

  He remembered this stage of his life, knew that he was young. Fourteen or fifteen--

  A sound brought his head around.

  A man was coming up the stairs. Overalls were dirty; hair was slicked with sweat, as if a hat or a baseball cap had been locked on it for hours; boots were loud.

  Big man. Tall man.

  Mean man.

  His father.

  All at once, everything shifted, his consciousness de-coupling from his flesh such that he was no longer able to control the body he was in, the steering wheel having been taken over by someone else.

  All he could do was stare out of his eye sockets as his father turned the corner at the head of the stairs and stopped.

  The skin on that lean face had been weathered to the point of cowhide, and there was a tooth missing on one side as he smiled like a serial killer.

  His father was going to die, Matthias thought. Right here, right now.

  However improbable that was, given the difference in their sizes, the man was going to hit the ground and be dead in a matter of moments--

  Abruptly, Matthias could feel himself start talking, his lips forming sounds that didn't register on him. They had an impact on his father, however.

  That expression shifted, the smile dissipating, that dental gap disappearing as the thin mouth flattened. Rage narrowed those electric blue eyes, but it didn't last. Shock was next. As if something that he had been confident about now seemed less than certain.

  And all the while, Matthias kept talking, slow and consistently.

  This was where it had all started, he thought to himself: this man, this evil man who he'd lived alone with for too long, this sick bastard who had "raised" him. Now was the time for reckoning, however, and his younger self felt nothing as he spoke the words he did, knowing full well that he was finally caging the monster.

  His father's hand grabbed onto the front of the overalls, right over his heart, crushing the material, the dirty, chipped nails digging in.

  And still Matthias kept talking.

  Down to the floor. His father went down on his knees, his free palm thrown out to the banister, his mouth cranking open so wide that the other missing teeth, the ones in the back, showed.

  He had never expected to get caught. That was his killer.

  Well...technically, the myocardial infarction was what did him in. But the proximal cause was the fact that their ugly secret was out.

  Death took its own sweet time.

  As his father flopped over on his back, his hand now shifting to his left armpit as if it hurt like a bitch, Matthias stood where he was and watched the dying process roll in and take over. Apparently, breathing was difficult, that chest chugging up and down without much effect: Beneath the tan, his father's color was receding.

  When the view switched back to the bedroom, Matthias realized that he had turned away and was walking, going over to the radio, sitting down, turning it on. He could still see his father struggling like a fly on a windowsill, limbs contracting this way and that, head arching back as if he thought maybe a different angle would help increase the oxygen flow.

  But it wasn't going to help. Even a fifteen-year-old farm boy knew that if your heart wasn't pumping, your brain and vital organs were going to starve no matter how many deep breaths you took.

  Out on the prairie, they got only five stations and three were religious. The other two played country and pop, and he twisted the dial, going back and forth between the pair. From time to time, just because he knew his father was going to meet his Maker sometime soon, he let a sermon ring out.

  Matthias felt nothing other than frustration that he couldn't get hard rock to play. Seemed like Van Halen was a better match to his father's kicking it than Conway fucking Twitty or Phil fucking Collins.

  Other than that, he was calm as a pond, level as concrete, set as a table leg.

  Hell, he didn't even care that the abuse was over. He'd just wanted to see if he could get rid of the old man, like the effort was a science project: he'd made the plan, gotten the pieces into place, and then woken up that morning and decided to set the first domino falling at school.

  Thanks to his particularly malleable, softhearted, very religious homeroom teacher.

  Standing out in the hall, he'd cried in front of her as he'd told her the hell he'd been living in, but that show of tears had just been to give her some extra motivation. In truth, the grand reveal was no more internalized than a change of cloth
es: As he'd manipulated her with the truth, he'd been cold as ice on the inside, taking neither satisfaction that the first part was done, nor excitement that it was finally happening.

  Everything had gone down fast after that, and that had been the only thing that he hadn't banked on: He'd been immediately sent to the school nurse, and then the police had come, and paperwork had been filled out, and off he went into the system.

  They'd sent only women to work with him, as if that would make it easier on him. Especially during the "physical exam" part--which they'd expected him to get really upset by.

  And who was he not to give them what they wanted?

  He had not expected to go into foster care within two hours, however.

  The thing was, the only goal he'd really wanted was this part here, this endgame with his father on the floor--and he'd had to run away and hot-wire a car to make sure he got home before the police took his father to jail when the man came in from the cornfields. Everything was a waste if he blew the final act.

  But it had worked out just fine.

  In the last few moments of his father's miserable life, Matthias twisted the radio knob over to one of the religious stations--and paused for a moment. The sermon was about Hell.

  Seemed appropriate.

  He watched as the final breath was taken and then the stillness came. So strange, a human being suddenly stepping over to the other side, that which had been animated becoming indistinguishable from a toaster oven or a throw rug or, shit, even a clock radio.

  Matthias waited a little longer as the pallor in that face went completely gray. Then he got up, unplugged his radio, and tucked the thing under his arm.

  His father's eyes were open and staring up at the ceiling, much as Matthias's had done at night over the years.

  He didn't flip the guy off, or spit on him, or give him a kick. He just walked past the body and went down the stairs. His final thought, as he left the house, was that it had been an interesting mental exercise...

  And he wanted to see if he could do it again--

  "Matthias?"

  Letting out a shout, he jumped in his chair, the restaurant rushing back at him, those walls popping into place again, the ambient sounds of people eating and talking filtering into his brain once more.

  As other diners looked over at him, Dee leaned in. "Are you okay?"

  Her beautiful face was cast in perfect lines of compassion, her lips parted as if his distress was making it hard for her to breathe.