by Sharon Sala
“Hello.”
“Boss, it’s me.”
“Where are you?” Richard asked.
“Austria. I rented a room here, but I can relocate to wherever you need me to be.”
Richard smiled again, as he sat down on the side of the bed. “Isis came through for you, I see.”
Dieter hesitated. He didn’t know whether to relay the message she’d given him or not. But Richard could tell by Dieter’s silence that he hadn’t been completely forthcoming.
“Talk to me,” Richard said.
“She said to tell you that if you ever set foot in Houston again, you’re a dead man.”
“That seems fair,” he said shortly. “However, she wouldn’t know it if I did.”
“What do you mean?” Dieter asked.
“You will see for yourself when we next meet.”
“And when will that be?” Dieter asked.
“I’ve been a bit under the weather,” Richard said. “When I feel better, I’ll give you a call. How are you fixed for money?”
“I have plenty for now. She was generous with that, as well as my new papers.”
“That reminds me. To whom am I now speaking?”
Dieter grinned. “Lars Vintner, a citizen of the U.S, born and raised in Wisconsin, but with familial ties to Austria.”
“Nice to meet you, Vintner,” Richard said. “And you may call me Herr Anton Schloss, or continue with ‘boss,’ if you so choose.”
Dieter felt like shouting. “This is great, boss. You did it. You’ve escaped them all. I’m looking forward to living this new life.”
“Yes. Well. I still have a few kinks to iron out of the old one before I’m ready to celebrate,” Richard said, then added, “I’ll call when it’s time to begin.”
Two miserable days had passed since what Alicia privately referred to as “the night of John’s angel.” John wasn’t exactly ignoring her. He continued to see to her comfort and safety, and patiently answered when spoken to, but he didn’t initiate anything. She might as well have been a shadow on the wall. The emotional connection between them was gone. He rarely looked at her, and when he did, his expression was distant, as if he were looking at a stranger. She was devastated by what had happened, but at a loss as how to get back to where they had been.
She’d gone over and over everything he’d told her so many times that she’d made herself crazy. She no longer knew what was real and what wasn’t. All she knew was that she’d lost the most important thing she’d ever had: John’s love.
She cried herself to sleep every night, and woke up with a pounding headache and swollen eyes. It was obvious what was happening to her. But it was also obvious that John Nightwalker no longer gave a damn.
Her mother’s brooch was lying on the table beside her bed. She looked at it a dozen times a day, touching it, feeling the weight of it in her hand, trying to figure out if it was a copy or the real thing. But the only thing she had for evidence was the message she’d received. Either she believed or she didn’t. Just like John’s story: she either believed him or not.
She wanted to. God knew how badly she wanted to. But what did that make her if she gave in and gave up? As crazy as John—or a woman in the middle of an eternal cycle of revenge?
Either way, she was screwed.
Every day that John kept Alicia at a distance was another day that seemed like dying. He hadn’t felt this sad and empty since the day White Fawn and his people had been butchered. He wanted to hate her. He wanted to replace this pain with rage. But she was too deeply embedded in his soul for him to be able to distinguish where he ended and she began. It was the purest sort of irony that the only person to whom he’d revealed the real truth about his life had not only rejected what he’d told her but him, as well.
He knew she was suffering, too. He saw her swollen face and red-rimmed eyes each morning at the breakfast table. He felt her gaze on him a hundred times a day, but he was done with trying to make her understand. It was like the old man had told her. Either she believed or she did not.
And so their silent war continued through yet another day.
John’s cell phone rang as he was getting ready for bed. He answered before he thought to look at caller ID.
“Is this John Nightwalker?”
“Yes.”
“This is Officer Belmont. I worked that wreck you witnessed the other day.”
“Oh. Yes, Officer. How can I help you?”
“I just thought you might like to know that the woman finally regained consciousness this afternoon. They diagnosed her problem as epilepsy. She’d suffered a seizure and passed out. By the time you got to her, the seizure had passed, but she had a serious concussion, as well as some broken ribs and a broken jaw. You saved her life.”
“Glad I could help,” John said. “But it was just a case of being in the right place at the right time.”
“She would have burned to death if you hadn’t pulled her out. The family wanted your name and phone number. I think they want to thank you personally, but I told them I’d run it by you first.”
John sighed. “Please tell them I’m very happy she survived and that I was able to help, but there’s stuff going on in my life right now that makes it better for all concerned if I maintain a low profile.”
“I thought that might be the case. I knew your name was familiar when I was working the wreck, but it wasn’t until I got back to headquarters that I made the connection. I suppose the young woman who was with you is Alicia Ponte, right?”
“Officer Belmont, I would be very grateful if you’d keep all this to yourself. Right now, her life and welfare depend on staying out of the spotlight.”
“Absolutely,” Belmont said. “And would you tell Miss Ponte for me that as an officer of the law, as well as the brother of a marine who is now fighting in Iraq, I’m grateful for what she did. I know it wasn’t easy.”
“I’ll pass along your message,” John said.
“And I’ll pass yours along to the woman’s family.”
“So…we’re even, right?” John asked.
“Okay.”
“Thanks for calling,” John said.
“Take care.”
John laid the phone back down and started to get undressed, then thought of the message he’d promised to pass on to Alicia. Facing her again was the last thing he wanted, but he had to do it sometime. Better now than later.
He walked across the hall and knocked on her door.
Alicia was sitting in the middle of her bed, staring at the television, but deaf to what was on the screen. She’d been crying for so long her eyes were swollen and her nose was running steadily. She shuddered on a sob, then reached across her pillow for another tissue as the knock sounded on her door. At first she thought it was the program, but when it sounded again, she realized it was John.
She hit the mute button on the remote and then blew her nose one more time.
“What do you want?” she yelled.
John was a little taken aback. He’d expected her to answer the door, not yell at him.
“May I come in?” he asked.
Alicia knew what she looked like. The last thing she wanted was for him to see her in this condition.
“No.”
John put a hand in the middle of her door, then leaned his head against his arm and closed his eyes.
Damn. All he seemed to do was make her cry. Her voice was so hoarse she sounded sick. He wanted to walk away. She’d brought this all on herself. But even though she’d hurt him to the core, he couldn’t bear to think of her in the same kind of misery.
“I have something to tell you. It’s something you’ll want to hear.”
Alicia rolled her eyes, wadded the tissue into a ball and tossed it toward the wastebasket where she’d thrown the others. She missed, as she had several times before. But she didn’t care. She rolled off the bed, stomped to the door and yanked it open.
“What?” she demanded, well aware of how rude she was
being.
“You’ve been crying,” he said accusingly, then thought how stupid that sounded. She was obviously aware of her own condition, as well as who had caused it. Him.
“No shit, Sherlock,” she snapped. “So, is that the something you came to tell me? Because if it is, I have news for you. I already knew it.”
She slammed the door in his face.
He bit his lip to keep from shouting back and knocked again.
“What?” she yelled again.
“I wasn’t through.”
“Well, I am,” she returned. “I’m through with my father. I’m through with you. In fact, I’m through with men in general. All they ever do is lie to me and hurt me.”
That was the wrong thing to say.
John opened the door with a shove, slamming it against the inside wall as he strode in.
Alicia’s eyes widened, and her heart skipped a beat. Oops. Maybe she’d overdone the indignation a bit. John Nightwalker looked beyond pissed.
He walked up to her until there were mere inches between their bodies, then poked a finger at her chest, using it to drive home every word he spoke.
“I did not lie to you. You just didn’t believe me. You’re wallowing in your own misery. I didn’t cause it. You can wallow all you like, but do not blame me for it.”
“Ow,” she complained, rubbing at the spot above her right breast where he’d poked as he spoke. “That hurt.”
“Good,” he shot back.
She sighed. “What did you come to tell me?”
“The highway patrolman from the wreck called. He said the woman regained consciousness and is going to live. She has epilepsy. That’s what caused her to crash. The officer also recognized my name and put two and two together. He knows who you are. He said not to worry, he won’t give us up, but he wanted me to tell you something. He said he knew it must have been really tough for you to give your father up, but he wanted to thank you for it. He has a brother who’s in Iraq with the marines.”
Then he turned around and left, slamming the door shut as loudly as he’d swung it open.
Alicia sniffed, then grabbed another tissue and blew again. “That went well,” she mumbled, then picked up the scattered tissues and tossed them into the wastebasket, before leaving the room.
She expected John to be in his bedroom, ignoring her existence, as she stomped toward the kitchen. She wanted something cold to drink, and considering the fact that she’d sulked her way through dinner, she was still hungry.
She fixed herself a cold Pepsi and was in the act of making a sandwich when John appeared in the doorway.
His first thought was that she’d come a long way from the woman who’d never made herself a meal, becoming someone at home with a fully loaded refrigerator. “I didn’t know you were in here,” he said. “Sorry.”
She shrugged. “It’s your house,” she said, and continued to smear mayonnaise on the bread.
He started to say something, then knew it would just turn into another brawl, and turned and walked away.
Alicia felt a little bit guilty, but she kept on making her food. Instead of taking it to her room, she sat down at the kitchen table and proceeded to eat.
A few minutes later, John reappeared in the doorway.
“Sorry,” he repeated. “I thought you were back in your room.”
She licked a swipe of mayonnaise off her finger, then sighed.
“John. Shut up, would you? Stop apologizing for walking around your own house. I’m the interloper here, and obviously an unwanted one. Granted, I’m hurt, and I feel bent all to hell and back, but I’ve learned that I don’t break. Go about your business and leave me to stew in the mess of my own creation, okay?”
The last thing she expected was to hear him laugh. When she looked up, he was already gone, but she could hear him laughing all the way down the hall.
“Happy to have supplied the humor for the day,” she muttered, then got up and carried her dishes to the dishwasher, too preoccupied to realize that she’d been the one to put the first big crack in the wall between them.
John was still grinning when he got to his office. Granted, there were huge hurdles to get back to where they’d been before his big reveal, but this was the first exchange between them that had made him believe there might be hope for them yet. He had to give her credit where credit was due. She was one hell of a woman, and she’d been right on all counts. She could be hurt, but it would obviously take more than what he and her father had dished out to put her under.
When she’d told him to shut up in such a tired, disgusted voice, he’d wanted to kiss her. She was the most aggravating, hardheaded, single-minded, defiant woman he’d ever known. Not even White Fawn had been able to stand up to his authority as a second chief. But it was quite obvious to him now that Alicia Ponte was not impressed with his status or with him—or, as she’d so succinctly stated, with men in general.
He chuckled again and turned on his computer. It would be impossible for him to sleep now. And it was just breaking day across the world. It was always time somewhere to do a little business through the World Wide Web. As he waited for his computer to boot up, it was not lost upon him what vast strides mankind had taken since the day he’d first drawn breath. His father would have called him crazy if he’d tried to explain televisions and telephones, not to mention the fact that men had walked on the moon.
Then his hands went limp as the truth of that hit him square in the face. His father would have reacted no differently than Alicia had. He would have thought his son was crazy. He would have had the shaman perform a cleansing ceremony, then send him off to renew his spirit with a vision quest. He sighed, then scrubbed his hands across his face.
Damn it if he didn’t owe her an apology. Maybe not for everything, but an apology nonetheless.
He got back up and headed for the kitchen. She was probably going to hit the ceiling if she saw his face again, but this had to be said. When he got there, though, she was nowhere in sight.
“Great. She’s probably back in her bedroom, and I already know how the first try at talking to her there went.”
“John.”
He turned abruptly, startled by her voice.
“What?”
“You’re talking to yourself.”
“I know that,” he said, and found himself knocked off center by her attitude.
Alicia shrugged. “All right, but I just thought I’d point that out, because people who talk to themselves are often considered—”
“Crazy?” he offered.
“Um, maybe ‘eccentric’ is a better word.”
He tilted his head questioningly, then held out his hand. “Truce?”
Alicia almost choked. Truce? There was a God. “Yes, thank you.”
John pulled her into his arms and kissed the top of her head, then the side of her face, then her cheek, then her lips. Over and over. And over. Until they were both breathless.
“I had a small revelation a few minutes ago,” he said softly. “Made me realize I owed you an apology.”
Alicia was so grateful he was talking to her that she was having problems concentrating on what he was saying. “How so?” she asked.
“I was booting up my computer, and as I sat there, watching this small thing called a laptop connecting me to any place I wanted to talk to in the world, I thought what a difficult time I would have had trying to explain all the technology that we now take for granted to my father.”
Alicia wanted to ask whether he was talking about his “real” father, who he seemed not to remember or discuss, or about his five-hundred-plus-year-old father whom he surely didn’t have. She decided to wait and let him surprise her.
“And?” she urged.
“And it occurred to me that he would tell me I was crazy. He would have had the shaman perform a healing ceremony on me. He would have been embarrassed before The People that his son was making such crazy statements.” He stopped to cup her face in his hands. “In oth
er words…he would have reacted to what I said the same way you did. But I wouldn’t have cast him out of my life. So I should not have cast you out, either. Does that make sense?”
She sighed. So he was still persisting in the belief that he was ancient. But so what? He was alive and vital and loved her. And he was smart and generous and brave. If she put that “quirk” into perspective, it was almost unimportant. Almost.
She put her hands over his, feeling the warmth of his blood pushing through his veins and seeing the reflection of herself in his eyes.
“John, right now I’m so happy you’re not angry with me anymore that I’d agree to almost anything you said. The operative word being almost. Does that make sense to you?”
He heard the slight hesitance in her tone and understood it. Like him, she was reserving the right to disagree. Beyond that, they were pretty much back on the same wavelength.
“Enough to live with,” he said.
“Me, too,” she agreed, and hugged him fiercely. She didn’t care if he was crazy. She was at the point of wanting to go crazy with him rather than live another minute with him angry at her.
“So where do we go from here?” John asked.
“To bed?”
He growled beneath his breath and picked her up in his arms.
“I thought you’d never ask,” he said as he carried her down the hall.
They undressed without speaking, tearing at their clothes in hasty, jerking motions. John finished first and then reached for her, helping her out of the last bits. As she stepped out of her panties, he swooped her up in his arms. And for a moment, time seemed to stop.
He paused, taking in the satiny feel of her skin against his body, feeling the heat of her against the palms of his hands, seeing the love and the desire in her eyes and knowing he was feeling all the same things.
“Alicia…”
“Make love to me, Nightwalker. I’ve been missing you…missing this….”
Blood pounded through his body as he put her on his bed. Take her. Take her. Take her. His pulse rocked with the rhythm looping in his brain. Love her. Love her. Love her.
