“I keep telling you my name is Mariana.”
“Yeah,” he says hoarsely. “But you’re my angel, so that’s what you’re gonna get called.”
Now I’m the one getting choked up. “I’m no angel, Ryan. I’m trouble with a capital T. You have to know that. However this all turns out with the diamond…I’m no good.”
“You’re not trouble, you’re in trouble. Two different things.”
“I’m a fugitive from the law.”
Unimpressed with my evidence, he lifts a shoulder. “The law’s overrated.”
My brows arch. For a smart man, he’s utterly failing to grasp the general concept of our predicament. “Is prison overrated? Because if I’m caught—”
“I’m gonna take care of that.”
Examining his face gives me no clue as to what he could possibly mean, so I prod an explanation. “‘That’ being…”
“Your record. The rap sheet of one nameless, international thief known as the Dragonfly. That’s all gonna go away.”
Because my brain is incapable of directing any of my bodily functions in the aftermath of that outrageous statement, my mouth falls open and expels a small, astonished breath on its own. It takes every ounce of focus and determination I have to form a coherent sentence, and even then, it’s only three sputtered words.
“Th-that’s not p-possible!”
In his supremely casual, confident, infuriatingly-vague-yet-dripping-with-overt-sexual-innuendo-Ryan-like way, he drawls, “You just worry about how you’re gonna show your gratitude when your man’s done fixin’ all your shit that’s broke, okay?”
He kisses the tip of my nose and makes a move to turn away, but I grip his biceps and give him a hard shake, which fails to move him even a single inch. This time it’s his brows that arch.
“Stop it! Just stop with the random, over-the-top, incomprehensible pronouncements! How are you going to fix it?”
He produces a dazzling smile that, if it showed up on anyone else’s face but his, would inspire me to commit homicide.
“That’s what heroes do, baby. We save the motherfuckin’ day.”
When it becomes apparent that that’s his idea of a reasonable explanation, I say between gritted teeth, “I will kill you where you stand.”
“Damn, you’re gorgeous when you’re angry.”
I close my eyes and inhale a deep breath while mentally adding another few choice words to his list of faults.
“Ryan. Please. This is my future we’re talking about. My life. No more jokes. Tell me.”
He strokes the pad of his thumb over my cheekbone, following its path with his gaze. “I made a deal with the FBI to get the charges against you dropped. I’m gonna give ’em somethin’ they want a lot more than a jewel thief.”
My heart slams against my breastbone, sending my pulse flying, my blood roaring through my veins. The FBI? A deal? He can’t be serious. He can’t possibly be speaking the truth.
Past the roaring in my ears, I manage to ask, “What are you going to give them?”
The wolf slips back into Ryan’s eyes and is there in the growl in his voice when he answers.
“A monster.”
20
Ryan
Mariana stares at me, breathless, speechless, her eyes wide and her face bone pale. For a while, I’m not sure if she’s happy or angry, but then she releases my arms, stumbles backward, and drops heavily into a chair.
Gazing up at me like I just arrived from outer space, she breathes, “Capo?”
“Yeah. Vincent Moreno, aka Capo, head of the European crime syndicate, head of a transnational human and drug trafficking organization, head of a big fuckin’ violent snake that specializes in suffering and exploitation. Your boss.”
“My jailor,” she corrects vehemently. “My master. The man who holds my leash!”
I force myself not to react to the image those words invoke of Mariana on her knees, the man from the limousine with the dead eyes gripping the chain to the choke collar around her neck. But rage has a way of making itself known in spite of all efforts to contain it. In this case, it’s the flush of heat climbing my neck that gives me away.
She glances at my throat and sniffs in disapproval. “If all it takes are those few words to get you mad, you’ll never be able to take him down. He’s a siphon for negative emotions. He’ll feed off anything—anger, fear, shame, doubt—grow stronger from it, and turn it around and use it against you.”
The heat on my neck flames hotter. “There you go underestimating me again.”
Mariana looks into my eyes. Her shock has vanished. Now she’s simply practical, all business, her tone as flat as her expression.
“Put your ego aside, cowboy. That wasn’t an attack on your manhood. It was the truth, gained from years of experience earned the hard way. If you’re even a little bit serious about getting close to him, you’re going to have to do it surgically, methodically, without an ounce of feeling to mar your perspective. And even then, you probably won’t be able to pull it off.”
Does this woman have no idea that she can crush me with her words? I snap, “Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.”
She shakes her head, annoyed with me. “This isn’t a street thug we’re talking about. Vincent Moreno is a psychopath with hyperactive paranoia and a genius-level IQ. He’s filthy rich, vastly powerful, and extremely connected. Everyone who’s anyone in the crime world owes him favors. He’s a god among bastard kings.”
Her voice grows softer. “And he owns me.”
I growl, “Not for long!”
She shakes her head again. “You don’t understand what I’m saying.”
“Then make it fuckin’ clearer!”
After a frigid beat, she says, “Number one: use that tone with me again and you’ll be missing a cherished body part. I won’t make it painless. Number two: I’m Capo’s favored pet. I can go places you can’t. Whatever your plan to get to him is, it has to include me.”
This entire conversation has veered off into unexpected and extremely unwelcome territory. I stare at Mariana, my blood boiling like a cauldron of poisonous witches’ brew in my veins. Quietly, with deliberate enunciation, I say, “That is out of the fuckin’ question.”
She gathers herself, inhaling and sitting up straighter in the chair, then leans back and folds her arms over her chest. “Fine. Let’s hear your plan.”
It sounds like a challenge, like she’s already decided whatever I’m gonna say will fail big time, so of course I get more pissed off, even though she just told me to can it.
“My plan,” I shout, “is to let him know I’ve got the Hope Diamond, and if he wants it, he’s gonna have to meet with me, and when he does, the FBI’s gonna swoop in and bust his ass, and then he’s off for a nice long soak in a sensory deprivation chamber before bein’ interrogated by a bunch of agency spooks who get off on roughin’ guys up as much as he gets off on sellin’ little girls into sexual slavery!”
My fevered rant is met with a cavernous, icy silence, timed by the hollow ticking of the clock on the wall. Then, in a voice an executioner might use to call up his next victim to the gallows, Mariana says, “Repeat the part about the Hope Diamond again? The part where you said you have it?”
We stare at each other with open hostility, like pistoleros in a Mexican standoff. I wonder if the vein pulsing in my temple is in imminent danger of bursting, it’s throbbing so hard.
“Yeah,” I say gruffly. “I’ve got it. The real one.” Acidly sarcastic because I’m bent by her reaction—I was expecting gratitude and got attitude—I add, “Surprise.”
Her jaw works like she’s chewing on something that’s really, really tough to swallow. Saddle leather, maybe. And I’ve never seen a pair of brown eyes glow so fucking bright, like they’re lit from within by hellfire.
With perfect control, her voice Arctic cold, she says, “And how, may I ask, did that come about?”
If I were a smarter man, I’d probably be getting real
nervous right about now, but I’m obviously not that bright a bulb, because all I’m getting is more and more pissed. “It came about,” I repeat mockingly, “when I asked the guy I know who owns it if I could borrow it to snare a snake.”
She does this thing that brings to mind a cartoon tea kettle right before it explodes. All the shaking and rattling, bolts popping off like popcorn, steam escaping, sounds like train whistles and splitting metal screeching in the air…yeah, that’s what my girl starts to do, only it’s a helluva lot more intense.
“I planned that job for a week,” she says, rising from her chair, her voice shaking, her eyes flaming incinerator hot. “I lived in a shitty, cockroach-infested motel room for seven days, working twenty hours a day on research and logistics, listening to junkies tripping and hookers howling through fake orgasms and homeless guys fighting over cigarette butts they found in the street. I sweated every detail, had nightmares about what would happen if I failed, risked my neck breaking into that museum not once, but twice.”
Her voice rises to a shout that could disrupt flight paths with its thundering vibrations. “And the whole time you had the diamond?”
She takes a step toward me.
I’ve stared the grim reaper down a hundred times in as many different ways, yet the look in her eyes still makes me take a step back.
“In my defense,” I say placatingly, hands held up, “we weren’t on speaking terms at the time. You’d ditched me again, remember? Sheets out the window? Vanishing act? Any of this ringing a bell?”
“Oh, I hear ringing bells all right, cowboy, and they’re tolling for you.”
I get that’s some kind of reference to death from a Hemingway novel, but can’t remember specifically which one. Not that it matters, because she’s advancing like an M1 assault tank, and I’m about to get ripped a new asshole. Among other things.
“Honey, now stay calm—”
“Too late. That ship has sailed. Now we’re taking a nice, long cruise on the SS Cut A Bitch. Guess who’s the bitch? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not me.”
My laugh sounds nervous. “Jesus. And I thought I was temperamental.”
“Oh, smart. Insults and sarcasm are a great choice right now. Just keep digging that hole, cowboy.” Mariana nods slowly, her eyes pinwheeling in full serial killer mode. “Because I’m about to shove you over the edge and bury you in it.”
She’s still advancing, I’m still retreating, and I’m starting to sweat.
I had no idea that five and a half feet of female could be so terrifying.
Maybe she’s about to get her period?
In fear for their life, my testicles scream at me in no uncertain terms that I shouldn’t make that observation aloud. Instead, I start to toss out rationalizations like a nervous zookeeper might toss raw meat into the alligator moat, hoping to pacify all the snapping, ravenous teeth.
“It’s not like I could waltz into the fleabag motel and interrupt your planning! Knock, knock, who’s there, it’s your kinda-sorta boyfriend who you keep runnin’ out on! Hey, look, shiny object, you don’t have to hit the museum after all!”
“That’s exactly what you could’ve done!” she retorts hotly, steam billowing from her ears.
“You ran out on me!”
“You crossed an ocean to find me!”
“You needed time to miss me!”
She rears back with an expression of shock and horror, like I just shoved a big, rotting rat corpse under her nose. “What?”
At least she’s stopped advancing.
In my best macho-dude-who-is-NOT-intimidated-by-his-woman impersonation, I fold my arms over my chest, brace my legs apart, and peer at her down my nose.
“You heard me,” I say, then exhale in annoyance, wishing I didn’t sound like somebody’s elderly, prissy aunt.
Birdlike, Mariana cocks her head. “You wanted me to miss you?”
I narrow my eyes at her suspiciously rational tone. “Well…yeah.”
“Why?”
Now the heat crawling up my neck is embarrassment. Trying to maintain a shred of masculine dignity, I say stiffly, “I wasn’t sure if you would.”
When she just stands there staring at me in confounded silence, I figure the cat’s already out of the bag, might as well go for broke. “So, did you?”
“I don’t know,” she says, sounding thoughtful. “Is that what you call it when you think about someone every second of every day, dream about him every night, know without a doubt you’ll never experience anything quite as wonderful as the way he made you feel? When you ache that it’s over, yet still feel privileged to have experienced it anyway?”
I have to swallow before I answer, because someone has shoved a rock down my throat. “Yes.”
Her smile is so beautiful it could end wars. “Then I definitely didn’t miss you.”
That rumbling sound echoing through the kitchen is the growl emanating from my chest. It only serves to piss me off even more that hearing it makes her smile grow wider.
Full of sass and tartness, she says, “And if you want me to decide I like you again and start telling you the truth, you better count me in on any plan you have regarding Capo and tell me everything from here on out. Including,” she adds when I open my mouth to talk, “any other things I’ve been instructed to steal that you already have in your possession.”
My eyes narrow to slits. “You better sweeten that demand with a kiss, woman.”
She lifts her chin and looks at me the way one might look at a piece of debris in the gutter that fell off a passing garbage truck. “You’ll get your kiss when I get my promise.”
My brows shoot up my forehead. “You think you can blackmail me?”
“Yes, Ryan,” she replies with supreme confidence, a queen addressing her lowly subject. “That’s exactly what I think. Now, do you want your kiss or not?”
“I’ve negotiated with terrorists before, you know.”
“You’re calling me a terrorist?”
“I’m calling your bluff.”
“I’m not bluffing.”
“Oh, yeah?” I rub my chin and give her a long and lingering once-over, calculating the odds of being stabbed depending on what I say next. There’s a butcher’s block of knives on the counter to her left that I’m pretty sure she’s been eyeballing during this conversation.
“So you don’t care if you ever kiss me again? You can totally live without my mouth on yours?” A hint of a smile lifts the corners of my lips. “Or any other parts of your body?”
Her cheeks faintly darken with color. Her chin lifts another inch in the air. “That’s right.”
I chuckle. “You used to be a better liar, darlin’. But okay. You’re on.”
She blinks, a little frown forming between her eyebrows. “I’m on?”
I shrug, turn back to the stove, and start to scrape out the burned bacon from the frying pan into the sink. Whistling cheerfully, I reach under the counter for the dish soap, then proceed to wash the frying pan, taking my time to scrub off all the little black bits, one ear trained behind me for a different kind of whistle, the sound the edge of a knife makes as it slices through the air toward the tender space between my shoulder blades.
That sound doesn’t come. By the time I’m finished with the pan, Mariana has settled into a chair at the table, legs crossed, fingers tapping, searing my face off with her eyes.
I smile at her.
She smiles back with the sharpness of a viper’s fangs. “Enjoying yourself?”
“Just cleanin’ up the mess, baby. It’s kinda my thing, cleanin’ up messes.”
If a man could be struck dead from a look, I’d already be six feet under.
“Funny,” she says lightly. “And here I thought your thing was causing blindness with your teeth. How much work have you had on those chompers? That shade of white must’ve cost a fortune. They’re as pearly as a unicorn’s backside.”
I make spokesmodel hands at my smile. “These old things? Oh no. Th
ese are bona fide, baby. I never even had braces.”
She makes a face like she’s sucking on a lemon wedge. “What about that nose? And that jaw you’re always parading around like it should be chopping a cord of wood? I’ve seen axes with softer edges. There’s a history of cosmetic surgery there, right?”
I mouth You wish and stroll over to the fridge, where I open the door and stand peering in. “You feel like breakfast or lunch?” I ask over my shoulder. “It’s kinda brunch time, which is why I went with bacon—though really, bacon’s apropos for any meal on account of it bein’ so delicious—but I’ve got fixin’s for sandwiches, omelets, pasta, crepes—”
“Crepes?” she repeats loudly.
I turn and look at her, glaring at me like a warlord from the kitchen table. Blinking innocently, I say, “I knew I was gonna have a guest from Paris, so I stocked up.” My lips twitch, but I try very hard not to smile. I’m only marginally successful. “Got escargot, too. You want some of those? Not really my thing, but I figure with you bein’ French and all”—I add emphasis on the word French—“you’d enjoy ’em.”
She flattens her hands over the tabletop and exhales. I imagine plumes of white frost emanating from her nostrils, like the smoke from dry ice, and suck in my cheeks to keep from bursting into laughter.
“No, thank you,” she replies, in a voice like brandished swords.
“Okay. I’ll surprise you then, how ’bout that?”
“For a change,” she mutters under her breath.
Now who’s the sarcastic one?
I set about making brunch and ignoring the waves of hostility pulsing at me from all angles. I’m whipping eggs and milk with a fork when I hear, “So where are you keeping the diamond, anyway?”
“Ha! Wouldn’t you like to know?” I keep on whipping, then am struck by an idea. I turn to her with a smile, which she curls her lip at. “I’ll make you a bargain.”
Tap, tap, tap goes her index finger on my kitchen table. “This should be interesting.”
Wicked Games: The Complete Wicked Games Series Box Set Page 80
