Riggs's mouth worked. “Remember what you said about betrayal and self-loathing? Look in the mirror, Victor. You spit on me, you're spitting on yourself.”
“Shut up and do as you're told. Get out.”
Victor listened to the man clump away. He was clenching his fists, almost unbearably tempted to go after Riggs and put him out of his misery, once and for all. In the dark, from behind, as he deserved.
Yes, it was past time to devise a fitting retirement gift for Edward Riggs. Something very special, to pay him back for all his years of loyal service. He had been a walking dead man ever since he had soiled his hands with Peter's blood, but it was clear that Riggs's life was worth nothing anyway. Victor had been squeezing every last drop of usefulness out of him before his sentence was carried out. Waste not, want not.
He knew it was hypocritical. The order to kill his younger brother had been his own, after all. But Victor had given Peter every chance. He had reasoned with him, pleaded, and finally threatened him. A lifetime of wheeling and dealing, of holding his nose and doing what had to be done for the sake of the family. Protecting their interests, insuring their future. All the dirty work he had willingly taken on so that Peter and his family could sit in the lap of luxury, serene and pampered.
After all that, betrayal.
There was no point in thinking about it. Every thought that passed through his mind he'd thought a thousand times before. He poured himself a drink and gulped the liquor down, trying not to compare himself to Edward Riggs. He was not yet quite so reduced.
Ordering Peter's murderer to protect Katya was somewhat bizarre, he thought, with a twinge of doubt. But it made a certain crazy sense. Riggs was the perfect man for the job. For all his personal failings, he was a skilled professional. Best of all, he was expendable. He would do what had to be done, and Mackey was sure to notice that his lover was being followed. His reaction would be swift and predictable.
How amusing it would be if Mackey should end up killing Riggs. So much the better. It would be a fitting end, and it would save Victor the trouble and expense of arranging it himself. And since Mackey would never know who had hired the man, he would remain on guard for Novak or anyone else that Novak might send. It was perfect. Airtight.
But sadly, Riggs had ruined the rare good mood that the party had put him in. It had given him such pleasure to see Katya's beauty polished to a high gloss and displayed in a proper setting, out of Alix's long shadow at last. But Riggs had pried open Pandora's box. Ugly memories were fluttering out like bats.
The door behind him opened, and he recognized Mara's perfume, an earthy, alluring blend of essential oils. She made no sound as she padded across the cream-colored Aubusson carpet. “I saw Riggs out,” she said. “Charlie took him back to the mainland.”
'Thank you, Mara.”
He almost dismissed her then and there. He knew from bitter experience that sex could be disastrous when his mood was so precarious, but he had his weaknesses, too. He turned and looked.
She had changed her clothing. Gone was the black evening gown slit up to the hip that had been chosen to set off an exquisite antique, a Japanese pearl and lapis headdress that she had worn over her braided coil of dark hair. She had taken down her hair. The braids had left soft ripples in it, giving her a softer, more vulnerable look. She was wearing a short tunic of white silk, simple and stark, which showed off the length of her bronze thighs. The toe ring was gone.
She met his gaze, her topaz eyes unreadable and paced silently over to stand in front of the bank of monitors. She studied them for a moment, and pointed to the blank one. “Malfunction?”
Victor shook his head. “My niece's lover likes his privacy.”
She nodded, unsurprised, and turned her gaze back to the monitors. “Those two look good together,” she commented.
He stood up, feeling a warm shimmer of anticipatory heat. Amazing. He approached her from behind, bending down to inhale her perfume, to touch her shimmering chestnut hair. “Was it you who picked out the Dolce & Gabbana for her?”
Mara's slender shoulders lifted in a tiny shrug. “It was the obvious choice. It wasn't hard to make her look good. She's stunning.”
“So are you, my dear,” Victor said. “So are you.” He lifted up her hair to admire the curve of her back, the whorl of fine dark hairs at the nape of her slender neck. “Lovely.”
Mara smiled from beneath her thick, sooty eyelashes, then turned back to the monitor. She took the mouse next to the keyboard and clicked on the icons with expert swiftness until one of the images on Monitor #17 enlarged, obscuring the other windows. She enlarged it again, until the image filled the entire screen.
It was Sergio, the curator, tangled in a complicated knot with two beautiful young Asian women and a muscular blond boy, creating a writhing configuration that Victor would have sworn was anatomically impossible for a man of Sergio :s age.
They watched it for a moment. Mara clicked onto Monitor #9. It was the celebrated cardiologist, Dr. Wade, giving his own heart a strenuous workout They watched a lithe, coffee-colored woman in a black bustier apply a pink unguent to a certain part of the renowned doctor's anatomy, and then, very slowly, introduce a formidable sex toy into said part. To the august doctor's evident delight.
She clicked idly across the other centers of activity, lingering on the image of a beautiful young brunette, clad only in scraps of lingerie, rocking back and forth on her hands and knees. She was sweaty and flushed, eyes half closed, as a local software mogul belabored her vigorously from behind.
Victor had little interest in what was on the screen; he had gotten bored with it lifetimes ago. But watching Mara watch made his own sexual energy uncoil, slow and sinuous as a snake waking up from its winter sleep. “You like to watch, Mara?” he asked softly.
She shifted until she was leaning back against him, a light, warm, silken weight “I like a lot of things,” she said.
He put his hand upon the fine-textured skin of her thigh, and slid it up beneath the short skirt. He discovered, with pleasure, that she was naked beneath it. Depilated as well; her mound was smoothly shaven with just a flirtatious little puff of hair shielding her clitoris. She widened her stance, opening for him with a sigh. He delved deeper and found that she was already aroused. She moved her body with feline grace against his hand. Hairless, silky and slick. Delicious.
He bit her neck, savoring the reaction rippling through her slender body- “You're a naughty girl, aren't you?”
“If I wasn't, I certainly wouldn't be here,” she said. Her voice choked off into a gasping moan as he thrust his hand more deeply, unfastening his trousers with the other. She braced herself against the edge of the table and arched herself open.
“True enough,” he agreed.
He drove inside her with a violence that surprised them both. She cried out and stumbled forward, catching herself against the table, and then braced herself more firmly. The room was a haze of glowing images, the bank of monitors with their assorted scenes of pleasure and depravity, Mara's perfect buttocks, the silk tunic pushed up to her delicate ribs, his penis gleaming as it thrust in and out of her.
He barely heard the grunts and gasps, the slapping sound of contact. The cool, detached part of his mind that always watched was well aware that it was his fury at Riggs that fueled this brutal rhythm. He didn't want to hurt Mara, but he paid lavishly enough for her services to indulge in his baser instincts without needing to ask either permission or pardon. He was so aroused. More alive and aware than he had been in years, not since his brother, Peter—
No. He pushed the thought away before it could unfurl, before it could detach him from the intensity of this delightful experience. The tight, slick depths of Mara's perfect body exciting him beyond measure as he caressed her trembling buttocks, giving into the hard, driving rhythm.
Erotic heat roared through him and carried him over the brink. He spent himself in a long blast that blotted out every thought in his mind.
When he moved to withdraw, Mara made an inarticulate cry of protest and shoved herself back against him. “Wait” she gasped. She came, long and shivering and totally unexpected. Delicious to watch, to feel. Her lingering pulsations milked and massaged his still-erect penis.
They were sticky and wet, but the architect had not planned the room with spontaneous sex in mind, so there was no adjoining bathroom. He withdrew himself, closed his pants and waited for his heart to slow down. Mara sank down onto the carpet, her legs sprawled out beneath her, as limp as a rag doll. She was still trembling. With her back hunched over like that, she looked fragile and vulnerable. He put his hand on her bare shoulder. It was hot and damp. She looked up at him. He felt a shock of startled recognition as their eyes met.
The sex had genuinely excited her. A fascinating discovery.
He held out his hand, pulled her up onto her feet 'Thank you, Mara. That was a revelation,” he said. “You can go.”
Her face convulsed. “Don't dismiss me like that!”
Another moment of blank surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
Mara looked suddenly unsure of herself. “I said... don't dismiss me,” she whispered. “Not after we've just had sex. Like that.”
“My dear, I can do anything I want with you,” he said gently. "You agreed to that when you were hired. Remember?”
Her wide mouth trembled. She stared him in the face, eyes wide and glittering with unshed tears. “Don't,” she repeated.
He was taken aback, almost touched by her daring. Under the circumstances, that gesture took both courage and honesty. Both of which were in short supply in his life.
Ordinarily he would never permit a member of his staff to make personal demands of him. But tonight was a night for rule-breaking, for risk taking. Tonight, he would overlook this breach of protocol.
The girl was shivering. Her taut, dark nipples were clearly visible through the delicate fabric. He would not mind seeing those breasts again, he realized, with a fresh wave of lust He saw her in his mind's eye, naked on the bed, her hair fanned out across the white linen. Those topaz eyes, filled with genuine need.
Yes. It would be good. It would work. He was hard again. Already. He gave her a brief nod. “Come along, then. Let’s go to my suite.”
Victor stalked down the corridor, watching as Mara scurried ahead of him, her bare feet silent on the cold flagstones. She cast nervous, wide-eyed glances back over her shoulder at him, as well she should. She was an intelligent girl. She had good reason to be nervous.
He opened the door with a predatory smile and gestured for her to enter. Mara was hungry for something, too. And in appreciation for her charming honesty, he was going to see that she got it.
As much of it as she could take.
Chapter 19
Riggs swerved on the dark road, correcting just in time. It was bad tonight. Ever since Jesse Cahill's death, his ulcers had been flaring up to the point of burning agony. Medication didn't do much good, mixed with bourbon, but he needed booze to take the edge off the knowledge that he was an unredeemable piece of shit Survival lay only in keeping that knowledge from Barbara and the girls for as long as he possibly could.
He thought of this morning; how she'd pressured him to see a therapist with her. “You have to face your feelings, Eddie,” she said, with that goddamn look, that anxious, furrowed-brow look that made him so crazy with rage and shame, he wanted to smack it right off her face. He hadn't sunk that low, not yet, but it was a near thing.
The girl was a lot like Alix, in spite of the clumsy clothes, the glasses and the scraped-back hair. Alix's billowing mane had always been perfectly coiffed; Alix had worn clothes that would have cost him a month's salary for a single outfit. He'd never had a woman like her, a drop-dead, blaze-of-glory woman. Barbara was lovely, but she was a good girl. Too good for him. He'd met her in college, and had been attracted to her ladylike manners. Barbara was an obvious choice for a wife, the perfect mother for his two girls.
But when he met Alix, something had detonated inside him, blowing everything he thought he was to pieces. A man could die happy fucking a woman like Alix. She was feral in bed, a bitch in heat. A couple of lines of coke snorted off her perfect tits, and they'd gone at it for hours, doing things he'd only heard of but never dreamed of trying. Things he could never imagine with his sweet, quiet Barbara.
He'd held himself together during that hallucination of a summer back in '85 by keeping his two worlds separate. Even Haley had never gotten a clue, thank God, since he himself had been the one infiltrating Lazar’s operation, not Bill. Barbara had inhabited one segment of reality, safe and sane and sensible with her cardigan sweaters and her smooth dark bobbed hair, all meatloaf and babies and breakfast cereal. Alix had ruled another segment. Naked, wide open, burning for him.
He'd had a pretty good life once, before that bitch had spread her legs and welcomed him into the gates of hell. Victor’s hooks had sunk into him so insidiously that he’d barely noticed them. Riggs was so far out of it that when the order came down, when he found out how deep in shit he was, he'd wanted to kill that worthless, whining bastard Peter Lazar. He wanted him the hell out of the way so he could have Alix, really have her, all for himself....
Riggs cringed, thinking about how gullible he had been. The world had exploded in his face, and when he sifted through the rubble, he was left with the knowledge that he was not one of the good guys, like Barbara believed. Maybe he never had been. Maybe he had been a piece of shit all along. Victor's creature, belly-down in the mud.
There had been long periods, years sometimes, when Victor hadn't called on him, and he'd begun to fancy himself a normal person again. But the call inevitably came. If Victor Lazar should ever find himself in trouble with the law, those videos would be mailed to his family and to the local media. Details of certain deposits to offshore accounts would be made public. The circumstances of Peter Lazar's death would be recounted to one and all. The same thing would happen if Victor were to die in a suspicious manner. If Riggs was to maintain some semblance of a life, no matter how fictitious, Victor had to stay healthy and happy. Cahill and McCloud had acted on their own. Goddamn mavericks, both of them. They had almost ruined everything.
His eyes fell on the monitor that lay in the passenger’s seat If only he'd drowned the little bitch along with her father. She'd seen him today, and if she hadn't recognized him yet, she soon would Those bright eyes had witnessed his transformation from a man into a crawling thing. He wanted to close those eyes. Forever.
He saw the sign and swerved A roadhouse. He stumbled into the dark interior and ordered a shot of bourbon and a glass of milk. It was as much as he dared allow himself, in his current state. He could drive after a single shot, if the pain in his stomach didn't make him pass out. He popped a handful of antacids and chased them down with milk, a trick that had ceased to work about eight months ago, but he kept it up out of force of habit. He thought about how it would be, to pass out and run into a tree. It didn't seem so terrible. Just the crunch of breaking glass, the shriek of bent metal, and then, darkness. Then nothing.
He left the money on the bar and lurched out. The puddles in the parking lot rippled in the chilly wind. He got into the Taurus and sat with his eyes shut and his hand pressed hard against his corroded gut.
His mind darted around, like a rat in a maze. But there was no way out, and presently his mind slowed. Just an exhausted defeated old rat, that was him.
He fumbled the key into the ignition. Heard the squeak of leather against leather. Felt the icy barrel of a gun, pressed against his neck.
“Don't move,” someone hissed.
The passenger door opened. A man picked up the small monitor that lay on the passenger seat and got in. A wave of frigid air accompanied him, as if the door to a meat locker had suddenly swung open.
The man gave him a pleasant smile. “Good evening, Mr.
Riggs.”
He wondered if it were actually possible for things
to get worse for him than they already were. “Who the fuck are you?”
The man studied the monitor, playing with it. “We've never been introduced, but we're linked by fate. May I call you Edward?”
“If it's money you want, I don't have—”
“I enjoyed myself carrying out Jesse Cahill's execution, Edward” the man said. “I should thank you for the sport, as well.”
His blood froze, and his bowels loosened. “Novak,” he whispered.
The other man's smile widened strangely and carved deep shadows into his young-old face. His eyes glowed, phosphorescent in the gloom.
Riggs fought for control of his basic bodily functions. “What do you want from me?”
“Several things, actually,” Novak said. “You can begin by telling me everything you know about Raine Cameron.”
He was so cold his body was vibrating. “I don't know about—”
“Shut up.” Novak's voice cracked like a pistol shot, and the gun barrel pressed painfully into Riggs's cervical vertebrae. “Sixteen years of licking Victor Lazar's hand, isn't that enough for you?”
Riggs’s mouth sagged open, but no sound came out.
“Here is your chance, my friend,” Novak said “Your chance to put it to him right up the ass. Make him pay for making you crawl.”
He saw Barbara's face in his mind. The anxious line between his wife's brows was etched so deep now that nothing would ever smooth it away.
“I don't work for Victor Lazar,” he forced out, through numb lips.
Novak's eyeteeth glinted like fangs in the roadhouse sign's bloody light. “Of course you don't,” he agreed. “Now you work for me.”
Riggs let out the breath in his lungs and shook his head. “No,” he said. “Go ahead. Pull the trigger. Make my day. Go on, do it.”
Novak regarded him thoughtfully, and then made a gesture to the man behind him, who had been silent in the backseat. The pistol was removed. “Very well,” he said briskly. “Let us put matters in a different light”
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