“I think you’re beautiful.” His hand moved up to brush hair away from her face. He left the hand on her cheek. “I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”
“It’s sweet of you to say that.”
“I mean it.”
“I’m not as beautiful as Isis, though.” She sucked in a breath immediately after the words came from her mouth. She didn’t know why she’d said that, why she’d tried to hurt him. His hand dropped to the table as if he’d suddenly lost all use of his arm. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
He looked down at his mug of coffee. Emma could tell he had to fight back tears at the memory of the wife he thought was dead. “I think I’d better go.” Dan reached into his pocket for some money to pay for the coffees.
Emma sat dazed for a moment. Then she launched herself from the table to hurry after him. If he’d broken into a run he could easily have lost her, but he trudged along the sidewalk with his head down, defeated. She had blown it with him—again. Why had she said such an awful thing?
She came to a stop; she knew why. She deliberately hurt Dan so she wouldn’t get too close to him. She pushed him away to keep him safe. It was the same thing she’d done last time, though in a far more subtle way. He would feel bad for a little while, but eventually he would get over it and find someone else while she would still be alone. That was how it was meant to be.
She turned around to head back for Sylvia’s truck. As she entered the alley, she sensed something wrong. Then the Russians from the night before appeared from around the truck to surround her. They closed in on her; their leader said in his accented English, “It has been twenty-four hours. Your friend has not returned our property. Now she must learn a harsh lesson.”
Emma knew the lesson they had in mind. They would carve her up into little pieces, which they would leave somewhere for the police to find. Tomorrow morning when Becky turned on the news, a reporter would talk about a young woman found dead in an alley; not an uncommon occurrence in Rampart City.
As she looked around her, Emma didn’t see anything to use as a weapon. Her fighting skills were no match for the experienced Russians, not in this body. There was nowhere she could run even if she didn’t weigh three hundred pounds. So she did the only thing she could do: she let out a blood-curdling scream.
The scream echoed through the alley, but as Emma had surmised, the buildings around her were deserted. Still, the scream seemed to halt the Russians for a moment. She hoped they might decide to beat a hasty retreat before someone showed up.
She was partially right; they decided to beat a hasty retreat. “You two put Piggy in the back of the truck. We’ll take her somewhere more private to deal with her.” The leader of the Russians squeezed Emma’s jaw. “Give me the keys.” Emma reached into her pocket and slowly took out the keys. She handed these to the Russian.
To her embarrassment, the other two Russians grunted and strained to heft her into the back of the truck. They dumped her in the bed; one of them stayed with her, his gun aimed at her. “No move, Piggy,” he said.
Emma didn’t doubt the Russian would shoot first and ask questions later. She pressed her head against the frame of the truck so he wouldn’t see her cry. If she hadn’t driven Dan away, this wouldn’t be happening. Then again, if she hadn’t driven Dan away, he might be here too right now to share her fate. It was better this way, she decided. She only hoped Becky would in time get used to Emma’s body.
The lead Russian turned the key in the ignition. Immediately he cried out in pain. The goon next to him in the cab followed that with his own scream. Then the Russian with the gun pointed at her dropped the pistol to put his hands to his ears. He let out a blood-curdling scream of his own. Emma couldn’t hear anything unusual, but she sensed it must be the booby trap Sylvia had planted on the truck so no one unfriendly would tamper with it.
She bolted from the back of the truck and barreled out of the alley. She ran faster than she ever thought possible in Becky’s body. She didn’t care where she went; at this point she only wanted to put as much distance between her and the Russians as possible. The rest she could think about later.
Then she crashed into someone at full speed and knocked both of them to the ground. The last person she expected to see pinned beneath her like a bug was Dan. “Oh my God!” she said. “I’m so sorry.” She climbed off Dan and helped him sit up. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” he said, his voice flat. At least physically he was fine; she doubted mentally he was all right. “Why were you running?”
“I wanted to find you,” she said. This wasn’t exactly a lie; a part of her did badly want to find him. “I wanted to apologize.”
“It’s all right.”
“No it’s not. What I said was unforgivable. I wouldn’t blame you for hating me.” She couldn’t stop herself from tearing up at this.
“I don’t hate you.” He put a hand on her cheek again and his old smile returned. “And I do forgive you.”
She smiled at this and then helped him to his feet. Only when they were upright did she remember why she had run. “Can we go somewhere to talk about this some more?”
“OK. My car is parked over at the museum.” She took his hand as they walked around the corner to the silent Plaine Museum. Emma tensed and waited for more Russians to appear. But none did as they walked past the actual museum to the attached parking garage. Emma breathed a sigh of relief.
She climbed into the passenger’s seat of Dan’s car and squeezed against the door so her fat didn’t spill over onto the shifter. “Where do you want to go?” he asked as he started the car.
“I don’t really care.”
“How about we go back to my place for a drink?”
“Yes,” Emma said much too quickly. The car glided out of the parking garage and then turned in the opposite direction from where she’d left Sylvia’s truck. She let out another sigh of relief. She was safe—for the moment.
***
Emma had been to Dan’s house nine months earlier, though at the time she had disguised herself as an Arab caterer. Again she visited his house in disguise, this time as Becky. One day she hoped to be able to see the place with her own eyes.
He parked at the top of the drive, in front of the steps that led into the mansion. Dan took her hand to lead her up the steps and then into the house. She was surprised by how dark and silent the place was. Didn’t he have a butler or maid around? Or perhaps he’d sent them home for the night.
Like someone used to servants, Dan groped awkwardly to find a light switch. A chandelier finally came on in the foyer. “Let there be light,” he said with a grin.
“Your house is so beautiful,” she said.
“Thank you. It’s been in my family for five generations now.”
“That’s a really long time,” she said, unable to think of anything better. With the various Egyptian artifacts mingled with valuable original paintings, Dan could have easily turned his house into a museum. Like a tour guide, he narrated for her as he led them along the main corridor to his study.
In the study, she saw piles of books and stacks of paper on ancient Egypt. When she glanced at one of the papers, Emma saw it was a map of the Sudan. “Is this for your dig?”
“Yes, I’ve been writing up my proposal for the director. I’m going to deliver it to her on Tuesday.”
“Oh, well, I don’t want to take up too much of your time—”
“It’s no bother at all. I’m almost finished.” He unlocked a cabinet to reveal rows of liquor bottles. “What’s your pleasure?”
“Whatever you’re drinking is fine.”
He poured two glasses of an amber liquid—Emma didn’t see the label—and then sat down on the couch in the room. She sat next to him, her left side pressed against his right. She took a sip of the drink and began to cough as it burned down her throat. Dan patted her gently on the back. “Sorry about that. It’s Napoleon brandy. Fifty years old.”
She took
another more cautious sip. “Are you trying to get me drunk?” she asked.
He reeled back as though she’d slapped him. “No! Why would you think that?”
“I was just kidding.” She looked down at her drink. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s my fault. I’m being too sensitive.”
She set her glass on the table beside the couch. “Maybe I should go.”
“No, it’s all right. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve made such a mess of things tonight.”
“No—”
Though she tried to hold it back, she started to cry again. “The last nine months have been such a nightmare. Everything’s gone wrong.”
“It’s been a nightmare for me too. When you lose someone you love, it’s hard to get your life back together.”
She nodded at this and remembered she was supposed to be Becky, who had lost the love of her life nine months ago. She had lost Steve because Emma had brought the assassin to the church and then done nothing to stop him. It was easy to see the rest of what had happened to her as a sort of penance for that mistake. She put her head on Dan’s shoulder. “It’s all been so awful. Steve dying. My best friend hates me.” She barely held back about losing her job and the debacle in Russia. “How did it all go so wrong so fast?”
“I don’t know. I wonder that myself all the time. At least until I went out with you. For the first time since she died I felt alive.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” He tilted her head up to look into her eyes. “I can’t really explain it, but I feel like I already know you, like we’ve been together before.”
“I know what you mean.”
“You do?”
“Yes.” She squeezed his hand. “When I’m with you, I feel like everything’s right. All of this bad stuff just disappears.”
They leaned towards each other at the same time; their lips met in the middle. Emma closed her eyes and imagined his kiss was meant for her and not Becky. Everything faded away, so that for one minute her entire world consisted only of her and Dan. Then he pulled back to leave her with her lips still puckered.
“I think I should take you home now.”
“Why? Did I do something wrong?”
“No, it’s not that. I just don’t want us to rush things.” He nodded towards his desk, where Emma saw a picture of Dan with Isis on their wedding day in Egypt. “We’re both getting over losing someone. I don’t want this to be some kind of rebound fling.”
“It’s not like that. It’s—”
“It’s what?”
“I love you,” she blurted out, to say what she had yearned to say for six years.
“You love me? We hardly know each other.”
“It’s like you said, I feel like I’ve known you forever. Like we were made for each other. You feel the same way. We were meant to be together.”
“Becky, please—”
She put a hand on his cheek and turned his head to face her. In his eyes, she saw she was right. He loved her. Her, not Becky. “I guess I should go. Would you mind if I used your phone to call a cab?”
She stood up and then waddled over to the phone. As she picked up the receiver, Dan seized her from behind and spun her around. He took the receiver and hung it up. “You don’t have to go,” he said. “I want you here.”
She leaned closer to him. “You do?”
“I love you.” They kissed again. This time as they parted, Dan took her hand to give it a squeeze. He led her up the stairs to the bedroom.
***
Emma had studied sexual reproduction in Gray’s Anatomy and other textbooks. Ever the liberal, Aunt Gladys had allowed Emma to attend a sexual education class in junior high, even though she was only ten years old. Back then the idea of sex had repulsed her.
In college she had heard her roommate having sex numerous times while she studied. It still didn’t sound all that great to her. The grunts and moans seemed like some kind of primitive, animalistic ritual. She would slip out of the room to study in the hallway until her roommate finished.
At twenty-five, Emma was still a virgin. Becky was not. Becky had told Emma about some of her conquests, though she never described them in intimate detail. It still sounded like a primitive, animalistic ritual. Moreover, it seemed to complicate relationships; often it led to their downfall.
But as she lay beneath Dan in his bed, she felt completely different. It was primitive and it was animalistic, but it was also beautiful. Two bodies together in harmony, united in a common purpose. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before.
She had also never experienced an orgasm before, something Becky had often made fun of her for; once she’d gone so far as to leave a vibrator on Emma’s bed as a joke. When it happened, she felt a rush of pure joy unlike anything she had ever felt. She cried out with elation at the release; her voice mixed with Dan’s in perfect harmony. “Are you all right?” he asked. He collapsed next to her on the bed. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” she said. “I’m fine. I’m great.” She pushed sweaty hair away from her face so he could see her smile. “It was wonderful, better than I’d imagined.”
Dan threw an arm around her. “I love you,” he said.
“Say it again.”
“I love you.”
They kissed again; their lips parted only as they drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms. Emma wished they could stay like that together, united in love for the rest of their lives. She had never felt so safe than with Dan’s naked body pressed to hers.
A hand clamped down over her mouth. Another set of hands yanked her back off the bed. Emma landed on her rear to stare up at a half-dozen men dressed in black. Though their faces were covered, she knew who they were: the Russians had found her.
“You thought you could escape, Piggy?” the lead Russian said. “There’s no escape for you. Or your boyfriend.”
Two of the Russians had grabbed Dan; one covered his mouth while the other pinned his arms. Emma bit the hand on her mouth; the man yelped and then pulled the hand back. “You leave him alone! He isn’t part of this!”
“You’ve made him part of it, Piggy.”
“Look, I’ll get the meteor for you. I know where it is. You can take it and go.”
“It’s too late for that.” He patted her roughly on the cheek. “Your friend had her chance. Now she must learn her lesson.”
“No, please, you can take me, but leave him out of this. He’s innocent.”
“We can’t have him calling the police, can we Piggy?”
“He won’t know where we’ve gone. The police will never find us.” The Russian nodded slightly at this; apparently the incompetence of the Rampart City Police Department was known far outside the city. “Take me and I promise you’ll get the meteor back.”
The Russian considered this for a moment. Then he shook his head. “I’d rather kill both of you and get the meteor.” He patted her cheek again. “You will tell me where it is, Piggy. But not before we have our fun.”
He motioned with one hand to the man who held Dan. The man nodded and then pulled a syringe out of his pocket. He jammed this into Dan’s arm. Dan struggled for a moment before he went limp in his captor’s arms.
“Dan! What did you—?” she didn’t get a chance to finish as one of the Russians jabbed her in the arm with a needle. The world spun around her for a moment and then turned dark.
Chapter 27
Emma sits at her desk to study the paper in front of her. She doesn’t know where the paper came from; maybe Dr. Brighton or Ian or the director put it on her desk as a test, to see if the nineteen-year-old PhD is really a genius. Maybe it’s some kind of prank they pull on all of the new geologists, a kind of academic hazing.
Wherever it came from, the sheet of equations before her has her stumped. She’s stared at the strange symbols and squiggly lines for over an hour and gotten nowhere. What could it mean? She taps a pencil against the desk as she examines the paper. It has to mean
something. There has to be a way to solve it.
She looks at one of the equations near the bottom. It looks like the Pythagorean Theorem to her, but she can’t be entirely sure. On a notepad she writes the symbols down and her suspected translation. Maybe this will unlock some of the other equations.
It soon becomes apparent that this won’t solve all of the problems. While some of it makes sense, much of it is still so much mathematical gibberish to her. With a sigh she stares down at the notepad she’s been using for notes. From what she’s deciphered, the equations don’t really mean anything; they’re just a list of basic equations. How bizarre.
The door to her office opens. Dan sticks his head inside and breaks into a smile. “Still hard at work?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says in a strangled whisper.
The rest of him eases into the room with a grace she could never manage. “I thought maybe you’d like to take a coffee break down in the cafeteria—or a tea break I guess for you.”
She smiles at this; her cheeks turn red. He already knows her so well, even though they met only a few days earlier. “I’d love a cup of tea,” she says. “But I really need to finish this first.”
“What is it you’ve got there?” Dan glides over to her desk to study the equations and the notepad with her translations. “Who gave you this?”
“I’m not really sure. It was on my desk this morning.” In a lower voice she says, “I think they’re testing me.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because they think I’m just a dumb kid.”
“You’re not dumb. You’re the smartest person I know.”
“You hardly even know me.” This comes out harsher than she intends.
His grin fades for a moment. “Maybe, but it’s still true.”
He squats down so their eyes are level. “I believe in you.” To her surprise, he kisses her on the lips. Even more of a surprise, she kisses him back. She wants to sweep aside the equations and everything else on her desk so they can do it right there, but he has far more restraint than her. He pulls away and his smile turns shy. “I’m sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me.”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 23
