by Stacy Gail
Chrome...
The events of the night before came back to him in a rush, and with a sigh he rolled over. And touched a length of empty bed.
“Nikita?” Yawning, he sat up and looked through to the front of the camper, all the while knowing instinctively he was alone. The murmur of the TV that awakened him snagged his attention, and belatedly he realized it hadn’t been on when he and Nikita had finally made their way to her bed. It also occurred to him the sticky note slapped right in the middle of the flat screen probably wasn’t supposed to be there either. With another yawn he pushed to his feet, padded to the wall facing the bed and plucked the note free.
Cabrón, you sleep like the dead. Had a chance for sleepy early morning sex, but I couldn’t wake you. Had a chance to shower with me, but you slept through it. Now you can shower alone and wait for me to return with breakfast from my tía’s. Be naked.
Nikita
Kyle’s laughter rang around the small camper, and if he was perfectly honest he’d admit there was a strong thread of relief running through it. The one thing he’d been sweating bullets over was an awkward morning-after. Or, since it was Nikita, an impossible, bristling-with-defenses morning-after. It would have been just like her. And his only plan to deal with that possibility had been to kiss her until she forgot she still wasn’t onboard with them being officially in a relationship.
As plans went, he could have done worse.
A steel drum ringtone sounded somewhere close to the front of the camper, wiping the stupid grin off his face as he contemplated Nikita’s note. Closing his hand over it, he was across the small space in a handful of strides to the bundle of their wrinkled clothing wrapped up in the towel. “Kyle Beaudecker.”
“Wow, why the professional tone? Are you not alone?”
Macbeth. Belatedly Kyle glanced at the screen and decided now would be a good time to wake the hell up. “No, I was thinking about something else.” Like Nikita wanting me naked. Important things like that beat a possible apocalypse any day. “What’s going on?”
“That’s what we’d like to know. By the way, you’re on a conference call with Sara and me. Have you had a chance to find anything out about that old man we discussed earlier?”
Kyle grimaced. “Not yet. I’m in a somewhat delicate position here, Macbeth.”
“Delicate how?”
“I have a priority of my own. Nikita doesn’t know about me or...or anything else. I want to find a believable excuse to get her off this case should this be something more than a witness who couldn’t adequately describe what was going on. Which is probably all this is.”
“And,” came Macbeth’s shrewd voice, “you don’t want her to be in the line of fire, right?”
So he was that obvious, was he? Nice. “If this is Dantalion, telepathic demon extraordinaire, it’s possible she’s already there. He doesn’t need the internet to find anyone the way you found Nikita. I’m just lucky he can’t read my Nephilim mind—otherwise he’d see she’s my main priority.”
“Don’t assume your immunity to his telepathy is any kind of shield for her, Kyle.” Sara’s voice came through loud and clear. “If Dantalion is in your area, he’s had time to sift through the thoughts of regular humans to discover who’s thinking about you the most. And since you’ve been working together for a while now, that would be Nikita, wouldn’t it? Unless you two aren’t as close as I thought.”
All too clearly Kyle remembered her cries as ecstasy shattered through her. If Nikita was half as overwhelmed as he was by their night together, she’d be able to think of nothing else. And thoughts like that—intimate thoughts that involved him—were just the thing a demon like Dantalion would be on the lookout for.
Shit.
“No one is unknown or unseen to this monster, but that doesn’t mean we should make it easy for Dantalion to find our weak spots,” she continued while Kyle’s mouth went bone dry. “Is Nikita a weak spot for you?”
“If Dantalion was still in the human realm—and that’s a mighty big if—he wouldn’t find any weakness in me.” At last Kyle was able to get his tongue unglued from the roof of his mouth. Adrenaline buzzed through him, and he realized he was sweating in the air-conditioned coolness of the trailer. “Sara, you were able to feel when just the demon’s proxy was nearby, right? And Nate said he was almost blinded with a headache whenever Dantalion...was...”
Headaches.
He never suffered from headaches.
Not until yesterday.
Sara cleared her throat. “Kyle? Are you still there?”
“You’re right.” He spoke carefully, so they wouldn’t hear the nerves screaming at him to move. “The witness who crossed paths with our jump, Bambi Dominguez, also mentioned Paul Hardy and his grandfather, and it was the grandfather’s behavior that caught my attention. Both Nikita and I have tried to get a name and photo of this grandfather for the witness to verify, but so far we’ve come up empty. The only thing I did discover was that Paul’s maternal grandfather has been deceased since before Paul was born.”
“That sounds like it could be something,” Macbeth offered, a frown in his tone. “After all, Dantalion’s always adopted the appearance of someone who’s kicked the bucket.”
“At first glance, sure.” Kyle began to pace and wished to hell the trailer was about thirty feet longer. “But Dantalion’s reputation as being the demon of a thousand faces stems from the most dangerous aspect of his abilities—telepathy. He searches his victim’s mind for the person who will cause the most agony, and adopts that image.”
Macbeth loosed a sound of disgust. “What a dick.”
“Demons are always dicks. It’s part of the job description,” Sara said, her tone absent. “I see where you’re going with this, Kyle. If Dantalion was reading Hardy’s mind to conjure up the image of someone who brought him pain, our MIA hell spawn wouldn’t be gallivanting all over creation wearing the face of a man Paul Hardy didn’t even know, and certainly has no emotional ties to.”
“Someday I would like to gallivant,” Kyle couldn’t help but offer before glancing at the stove’s clock. How long had Nikita been gone? “After we put this mess to bed, gallivanting is all I’m going to do.”
Predictably Sara sighed. “Shut up, Kyle.”
“What about the paternal grandfather?” Macbeth asked.
“Unfortunately, I have nothing to report. Yesterday Nikita texted me about hitting a brick wall on that score, and I ran into oodles of trouble when I tried to find any information on him myself. By the way, I also have mad love for the word oodles.”
“Kyle...”
Ha. This time Sara couldn’t tell him to shut up. “Understand that the Hardys aren’t your garden-variety family. Even before Floyd Hardy won the senate seat, he had his own televangelist ministry on a broadcasting schedule that preached to his flock three days a week, and had a viewing audience in the tens of thousands down here in Florida. Over the years he’s endured a couple scandalous leaks. There was something about one of his people making church funds vanish, and then there was an unsubstantiated rumor that one of his secretaries performed a personal service for him that required her to be under his desk. Naturally, Floyd grew paranoid about personal security. So much so that uncovering anything about the Hardy family, even something as simple as his father’s name, has been a challenge. Right now, all I know is that in Floyd Hardy’s short biography on the official senatorial web site, there’s mention of his father finding great financial success as a commercial pig farmer in Central Florida. I had planned on talking it over with Nikita last night, but I got sidetracked.” Anyone would have, considering she’d been skinny-dipping when he’d rolled up.
“It’s like you forget about me the moment you hang up,” Macbeth whined. “Do you remember what my specialty is? Remember I’m known as the king of the internet?”
“I’ve tracked down elusive people once or twice in my time, Your Majesty. Believe it or not, I’m capable of researching information all by my little lonesome.”
“Yeah, but why do it when you so obviously suck at it?”
“Sara, if you’re in the same room as Macbeth, please be a dear and clobber the dog snot out of him for me. Thanks.”
“As soon as he digs up the information you failed miserably to get, I’ll get right on that,” she promised, her smile evident. “And I’m sure Macbeth didn’t mean to trample all over your delicate professional pride. Right, Macbeth?”
“Let’s just say I’m not surprised Nikita’s caught more bounties than our favorite beach bum,” came the distracted answer, and Kyle could imagine the other man working his magic as his fingers flew over a keyboard. “Wow. There is a lot of security around the ever-righteous Floyd Hardy, isn’t there? Whoa. Did he really try to get bikinis and stilettos outlawed?”
“Yeah. That didn’t go over so well here in Miami-Dade.”
“Dude, that wouldn’t go over well anywhere.” There was a hint of clacking as Macbeth did his stuff. “I’m glad you didn’t try to dig any deeper on this one. The government gets cranky when amateurs snoop into the lives of its elected officials.”
“Amateurs.” Despite the worry churning away in his gut, Kyle couldn’t help but huff a little. Nothing like being cut down to size before his first cup of coffee. “Don’t they get cranky when professionals do that as well?”
“Of course they don’t. They never even know we professionals have been there, so there’s nothing for them to get cranky about. Uh-oh.”
“What?” Both Sara and Kyle pounced.
A long exhalation that held a tremor reached Kyle’s ears. “This looks bad, guys. According to the background check, Senator Hardy’s father and Paul Hardy’s grandfather, a man by the name of Edward Paul Hardy, died six years ago after taking a tumble down the stairs at the family’s estate. Whoever your witness saw with Paul Hardy, it definitely wasn’t his grandfather.”
* * *
“So.” With her narrow face flushed from the steam rising from the pot of black beans prepped for the day’s lunch special, Yolanda skimmed a critical eye over the two bags of carry-out food hanging from Nikita’s hand. “You sure you got enough salsa? You know how much Kyle likes my fire-roasted pepper salsa. He’s the only person I’ve ever seen who prefers to eat it with a spoon.”
Cocooned in the tiny kitchen of her aunt’s business, Nikita settled back against the spotless stainless steel counters she’d had installed for Yolanda a few summers ago. It had been an especially profitable year after she’d closed the net on an international drug dealer whose bounties had come to a whopping seven figures. The first thing she’d done was find out exactly what Yolanda needed to make her life easier. Her aunt had accused her of trying to “buy” her love in the hope of not being sent away, and maybe in the beginning that had been true. But now it was a matter of gratitude and love she wasn’t sure how to express in any other way. There was no way she could adequately thank her aunt for taking her in when she’d had nowhere else to go. The least she could do now to make up for the years she’d been a burden was to give the older woman everything she could possibly need. “That’s because Kyle’s wiring is screwy.”
“Are you saying my salsa’s not good enough to eat all by itself?”
“No, Tía.” Then Nikita stopped short. “Wait. How do you know I’m picking up food for Kyle? I didn’t mention him.”
“You come in beaming like the sun, you have a big hickey on your neck, and you pick up two orders of his favorite breakfast—croquetas de jamón and poached eggs with salsa, when I know you don’t like salsa on your eggs. I guess you think I’m too old to figure out he spent the night and stayed for breakfast, eh?” Muttering to herself and shaking her head, she sent her niece a withering glance. “You didn’t bring him with you. You should have brought him with you to show me you’re together now.”
Nikita slapped her free hand to where Kyle seemed to enjoy resting his mouth when he was inside her. “He wouldn’t wake up.” Though, to be fair, she hadn’t tried all that hard to rouse him. For at least a quarter of an hour she’d done nothing more than simply stare at him while he slept. Stare, and reel over the magnitude of the change in their relationship. In the end she hadn’t been sure she wanted to face it in the harsh light of day. “Who says we’re together? We’ve known each other for years. This doesn’t change anything.”
“This is the first time he’s spent the night, yeah?”
Nikita sighed and wondered if there was a more uncomfortable subject they could discuss. Her parents, maybe. Or Yolanda’s sex life. Not much else. “Yeah.”
“It’ll change everything.”
Nikita’s heart dropped like an Acme anvil onto an unsuspecting Coyote. “This isn’t the first rodeo for either of us, Tía. It’s the twenty-first century, where people have sex without the threat of commitment hanging around the neck like a noose. I don’t expect anything to change between us, and I’d bet my surfboard Kyle doesn’t either.”
“I’d take you up on that bet if I surfed. You’d lose it in a heartbeat.”
“Kyle doesn’t want things to change. Neither do I.”
Yolanda propped a hand on her hip. “You’re the one who’s got her wiring all screwy, you know that? You hear things are going to change and you jump to the immediate conclusion that the change is going to be for the worse.”
“That’s usually how it goes.”
“No. Sometimes change makes everything better.”
“As I recall, those were the exact same words my mother used to get me on that boat to leave Cuba.” The echoes of screams sounded, and the memory of suffering and yearning to be home instead of bobbing in an endless ocean surged up before she could dodge it. With a grimace she shook her head to dispel the long-ago nightmare, and pushed away from the counter. “I don’t trust change.”
“I know. But what a boring world it would be if everything stayed the same. What would be the point of getting out of bed in the morning if you knew nothing would ever change? No matter how comfortable you might think you are in life, when it’s always the same there’s never any reason to get excited about the future.”
Nikita hesitated as her aunt’s words took their time seeping in. “When it comes to Kyle, there’s enough excitement without bringing the future into the mix.”
“Let me put it another way. Are you sorry you spent the night with Kyle? Would you have been content with keeping a casual relationship with him forever? Would you be okay with him falling in love with another woman and settling down to raise a family with her? Speak the truth now.”
Nikita opened her mouth to assure her aunt she didn’t give a damn about what Kyle did, but her voice refused to cooperate. The rebellion continued all the way up to her brain, which came to a discombobulated halt. While she was sure she was indifferent to Kyle choosing to lead a Leave It to Beaver life with a happy homemaker of a woman—or any woman who wasn’t her—she couldn’t get the words past her lips. Worse, she couldn’t think clearly when there was an angry storm of emotion welling up at the thought of never again knowing what it was to be touched by his masterful hands. There was no way she could regret the heights of pleasure Kyle brought to her, because he’d been right; it wasn’t just sex. With Kyle, it was worlds apart from anything she’d ever experienced. There was a closeness there, and a profound sense of being cherished. The damned man made her feel like she mattered.
Small wonder she feared she might become addicted to him.
“The truth is, I can’t handle a conversation as heavy as this when it’s only eight in the morning.” Shifting the food to her other hand, Nikita gave her aunt’s shoulders a brief hug before heading for the door. “Don’t be surprised if this change you’re looking for doesn’
t come about the way you’re hoping it does. I’m happy to just let things coast and see how they turn out.”
Yolanda’s expression flashed with surprise before she chuckled. “As long as you keep saying things like you’re happy, I’m happy.”
That was the strange thing, Nikita thought as she drove back to the trailer and parked next to where Kyle’s car still sat on the unpaved track. She couldn’t remember feeling this ridiculously happy before. Oh, there had been moments, of course; she wasn’t some gloomy raincloud by any stretch of the imagination. The day she’d been plucked from the middle of the Atlantic would go down as the single greatest rush of relief and joy, though its bittersweetness haunted her still. And whenever she bagged a jump, her mood was pretty much set for the day. When she caught a wave at just the right moment, all the while defying what had taken her mother’s life to come and get her, the natural high was exhilarating.
And gone, all too soon.
This feeling glowing in her chest, as if she’d swallowed golden sunshine, was different. It sank its roots into every shadowed corner of her soul, with no hint of fading. It was strange, really, she thought as she absently repacked one of the bags that had tipped over during the journey home. Since she was a kid, she’d never looked to anyone outside herself to be a source of happiness. People tended to be leaky vessels even at the best of times; they couldn’t be trusted with something as vital as her happiness. But...this was different, though she couldn’t put her finger on why. All she knew was that she wanted to hold on to this unexpected warmth. To do that, all she had to do was stay close to what created it in the first place.
Kyle.
It wouldn’t last. She knew that. Better than anyone, she knew nothing lasted forever. That was why she’d devoted herself to living so hard. Better to grab for what she could get out of life before the next catastrophe hit and the world as she knew it came to an end. There were so few things in life that could bring genuine joy, and she’d be a fool to shun it now.
