by Robin Hale
15
MOLLY
Isagged further into my couch, well into my second glass of wine, shoes flung somewhere on the other side of the living room. It had been the longest day and a half of my professional life. The lab had been in shambles. There was brick piled haphazardly, some of the walls still smoking where the explosives had set them to smolder. A number of sprinklers had been activated, which had triggered the automatic alarms to the police and the fire department, and the sheer number of sirens blaring as I’d finally come up on the building had been…chaos.
It had taken ages to sort things out, to get a list of who might have been in the building just to make sure everyone was accounted for. Next came tallying the research projects in flight, making sure there was an accurate inventory of what was there, what we expected, and what, if anything, was missing.
The Silhouette had been right. They’d taken the atomizer.
In the end, the damage was much less than I’d feared. No one had been killed, and only the front guard had been injured in the breach. He was resting in the hospital and was expected to make a full recovery in a matter of weeks.
I frowned as an uncomfortable feeling teased at the edge of my mind. There had been danger there, and my brain very faithfully reproduced the look of hurt on the Silhouette’s face when I’d wrenched away from her and accused her of orchestrating the attack.
Of course she hadn’t. Once I’d had a moment to myself, more than a second to think without the blur of adrenaline and fear pumping through my veins, it had been painfully obvious that the Silhouette hadn’t been at all involved. It made sense that she would know what other criminals were planning in Opal City.
My frown deepened. To that end, it probably explained why she had been at the university when those armed intruders broke in all those weeks ago. Damn. I’d have to update the Dangerous Brains board in my office. If it had survived the sprinkler system, that was.
I pressed the heel of my hand into my eye and groaned. I had actually hurt her feelings. And over the dumbest thing. Of course she hadn’t taken to involving unskilled clods in her jobs. Of course she hadn’t resorted to the senseless violence that came with an explosion, no matter how small the payload. I knew her better than that. And wasn’t that insane? That I could say that I knew the Silhouette at all, when I didn’t even know her name?
“Why does your hand soap smell like a smoothie, Moll? I swear, every time I use the bathroom here I want to drink your soap.” Jade’s amused voice rolled into the room just a few seconds ahead of her. In the high part of her cheeks, she had the appealing flush of someone halfway into her cups, and the languid roll of her shoulders said she was finally letting go of some of her own tension.
Things had been crazy at the Enquirer, too. It wasn’t every day, after all, that someone blew up the local research lab. Even in a city like ours.
I’d barely had to say anything at all to Jade to get her to show up on my doorstep, takeout and wine in hand, already dressed in the faded sweatpants she wore only two places: the privacy of her own apartment and mine. That had always meant a lot to me, that Jade felt comfortable enough in my space to dress the way she would in her own home. It underscored what we meant to each other. God, I would’ve been lost without her.
“That the pomegranate?” I asked, trying to think back to what I’d stocked in the half-bath last time.
“Probably. It’s red and fruity and I want it,” Jade grumbled.
I laughed and picked up the open bottle of wine sitting on the coffee table between the two of us. We’d nearly killed that one, but there was plenty more in the kitchen. “Well, red and fruity I can do, but we’re just about out of this one.” I tipped the bottle, sending the last splash of fragrant red wine into Jade’s waiting glass. “How far into this are we going tonight?”
“Oh, you’re not getting rid of me for at least another bottle, Molly Fawn.” Jade’s eyes sparkled at me, and I knew that half of her insistence on spending the evening at my place was to make sure that I was okay. She’d always been protective, even when she shouldn’t have bothered.
“How many people at the Enquirer are working on the break-in?” I asked.
“Seems like everyone. But let’s not talk about that, shall we? It’s been all I’ve thought of since that damn alarm went off.” Jade’s dark head tipped back against the couch.
“All right,” I mused. With a sly smile, I cast my eyes toward Jade in a sidelong glance. “Made any time to date lately?”
The deeply heartfelt groan from the opposite end of the couch was all the answer I needed.
“I’ve changed my mind. Let’s talk about work.”
As I laughed, Jade swept up her wine glass and downed the ounce or so that I had upended from the now-empty bottle.
“I’m going to go open the next one of these, grab some of the Thai food we haven’t finished, and by the time I’ve come back you’re going to have come up with something to talk about that isn’t either of our jobs or my love life. Deal? It’s either that, or we start another rewatch of the Golden Girls.” Jade rolled in an easy, controlled wave to her feet and headed back through the living room off toward the kitchen.
“Deal!” I called after her. The Golden Girls sounded like a perfectly nice plan to me.
“Did you ever watch the spin-off series ‘Golden Palace’? Nowhere near as good.”
I jolted upright as that familiar, velvety alto interrupted my silent musing, and I spun to face the Silhouette where she leaned against my window frame. Her painted lips were quirked in a wry smile and the line of her body looked to be bathed in exhaustion. What had she been doing for the past day and a half?
“You!” I blurted, inanely.
“Me,” the Silhouette purred. At that point, I didn’t think she could help it. Everything she said came out in some painfully sexy drawl or purr. Every word she spoke glided across my skin like I knew her fingertips would if I ever let my guard down far enough.
That kiss in her safe house had been full of promise, dark and sweet. It was an offering, and oh, how I’d lain awake at night wishing that I had taken her up on it.
A muscular roll of her hips drove her forward from the window and she prowled across the open space until every breath I took was drenched in the scent of her. She leaned forward, forward — oh god, was she going to kiss me? My mouth was suddenly dry, practically tingling at the memory of her lips on mine and the sudden desperation I felt to taste her once again.
And then she reached out, liberating my wine glass from my lax-fingered grip and raising it to her own slyly smiling mouth instead. “Mm,” she murmured. “That’s nice.”
The press of her lips left the faintest smudge of red lipstick on the rim of the glass, and for the first time in my life I envied a piece of stemware.
“Why are you here?” The words came out in a whisper, and I cleared my throat self-consciously. What had become of my life?
The Silhouette — there was no use wondering what her real name might be when she was standing in my living room, practically perched on the arm of my couch, in full leathers and goggles — lifted a gloved hand to push back a few strands of hair that had escaped from my bun.
“A few reasons,” she said gently. “Are you okay?” There was something hesitant on her face, even partially obscured as it was by the goggles that were practically her trademark. “The way you ran off…” The Silhouette’s mouth quirked in a grim hint of a smile. “I was half-worried you were going to run into the lab and find yourself under a pile of rubble, and all of my careful maneuvering would have been for naught.” A chuckle ghosted through the air between us, painting my lips with the taste of her laughter. “And I don’t think my ego could take you foiling my plans again quite so soon, darling.”
“I’m okay.” The words were soft, but my voice didn’t crack and I didn’t sound like an overly shrinking violet, so I would consider that a measure of victory. “You were right, by the way.”
The Silho
uette lifted a curious brow.
“They were after the atomizer.”
The master thief perched on the arm of my couch didn’t look surprised at that, nor overly satisfied. It didn’t seem like she took any pleasure in being right. “I know,” she said, eyes sliding away from mine after a moment.
“I can only imagine what they intend to do with it,” I sighed, accepting my wine glass back as the Silhouette offered it to me with a sympathetic quirk of her lips. “You know it’s meant for more efficient fertilization in regions where crop-dusting is either too expensive or too disruptive?” I took a large swallow of wine. “They stole farming equipment.”
The Silhouette’s gloved fingers grazed my own as they lifted the wine glass from my grasp for another sip. Afterward, she kindly returned the glass to me, and I was struck by the intimacy of the moment. I’d been tucked tightly into the corner of the couch, feeling the press of the arm and the upholstered back as a comforting, solid presence. When the Silhouette draped herself over the arm, she ended up looking down at me, bare inches from sitting in my lap instead. And there we sat, passing a glass of wine between ourselves, sharing the drink like lovers or old friends. The subtle scent of her perfume swept over me, mixing with the slight tang of recently dried sweat that hung in the air around her. When she left, would I still be able to taste her on the air?
“Well, you don’t need to wonder about that too much longer, darling,” the Silhouette mused.
For a horrified moment I was sure that I had asked the question aloud, but the thief continued.
“They won’t be doing anything with the atomizer.” Her left hand slid along the back of the couch, settling her elbow into place and wrapping the overwhelming wash of her presence around me even further.
“Why is that?” I tried to behave as casually as she was, like it was perfectly normal for Opal City’s greatest thief to murmur in my ear late at night, sharing wine with me, touching me in glancing brushes like I’d invited her in. Perhaps I had.
“Because the atomizer is back in your lab, as of —” There was a slight shift as the Silhouette looked down at her watch. “Seventeen minutes ago.” Her eyes flashed to mine once more. “I ran into some trouble getting here. Traffic on fifth, you see.”
I could only imagine what might constitute traffic for someone who traveled recklessly via motorcycle, or leaped along rooftops, and then the meaning of what she’d said slammed into me. My heart beat a fierce double-thump. “It’s back in the — how?”
“Too easily.” The smile on Silhouette’s face was satisfied, now. She looked proud, preening. Happy to bask in my confused elation. “They’d been celebrating their victory instead of finishing the job.” The look of professional disdain on her face — familiar to me after years of academic conferences and industry dinners — nearly surprised a laugh out of me. “They still had it, unsecured, in plain sight while all of them were drunk on nothing quite as delicious as your wine, darling.” There was a careless wink and it released a flood of heat in my cheeks. It was the wine, of course. I’d just overindulged and was feeling flushed. That was all. “It was entirely too easy to climb down from the skylight and retrieve the atomizer.”
It was back in the lab. I sat for a moment in stunned silence, feeling the weight of that fear lifting from my shoulders. She hadn’t been manipulating me. She hadn’t been keeping me from the lab so I wouldn’t be able to stop the theft. And she’d…she’d gone well out of her way to undo the damage that had been done. Suddenly I felt the familiar prick of tears at the backs of my eyes, and I knew, with growing horror, that I might cry. God, I was exhausted. Exhausted, slightly tipsy, and entirely unprepared for the sheer volume of emotion the thief had managed to inspire in me.
There was a wince, then, a minor one as her weight shifted and something like pain — was that pain? — crossed her gorgeous face. My gut twisted at the sight and I found myself sliding my hand over the Silhouette’s knee as I searched her face, concerned.
“Are you all right?” I asked, my voice a hush, as though if I spoke too loudly the Silhouette would notice that I was touching her and would push me away.
Had she drifted closer to me? Was her knee pressing more firmly against my palm? Was that pink in her cheeks an expert application of makeup, or a genuine flush? Then, it wasn’t just the smell of her perfume that I could feel wrapping itself around me. It was the taste of the wine on her breath, mixed with whatever she’d been eating or drinking before her arrival. Something spicy. There was that tang of sweat and growing heat, and if I leaned up just a fraction, I could press my mouth against hers and discover for certain whether the thief tasted as intoxicating as I recalled, or if I had dreamed it in the privacy of my bedroom in the time since our one kiss.
“Better now, darling,” the Silhouette purred with a sly grin, one that sent roiling heat through my limbs to collect behind my navel and curl my toes. She was a hair’s breadth from me and watched me, poised on the very edge of giving me the kiss I was certain that I would die without.
“Oh holy shit!”
I leaped back from the Silhouette like a teenager caught in a compromising position by her parents, and noted with satisfaction that even the elegant thief leaning over me flinched in surprise.
I whirled to face Jade, returned from the kitchen with an open bottle of wine and a plate of leftover Thai.
“Ah, Ms. Jones, I presume?” The velvet in that voice was more theatrical than it had been a moment prior but was just as lazy and relaxed as it had ever been. It seemed the Silhouette had already recovered from the surprise interruption.
“Moll.” Jade’s voice was tight, her eyes wide like she wanted to make sure she didn’t miss anything that happened in the next few minutes. “Why is Opal City’s most notorious thief in your living room?”
“Oh, I like her.” The Silhouette slid from the arm of the couch in a sinuous glide, taking just a single step toward where Jade stood. Jade took an involuntary half-step back. “Notorious. No one uses that word enough. Thank you, pet.”
“You said it’s back in the lab, then?” My voice was too loud, too tense. I knew that everything I said and did was dripping with my own feelings of guilt. I was useless at lying, or subterfuge, or anything that could be construed as deception of any kind. Jade usually found it charming.
The Silhouette turned back toward me, peeking over her shoulder and sending the line of her back and the curve of her ass into agonizing relief against the eggshell cream of my apartment’s walls. Hell, did her leather really need to be quite that tight? Surely it would inhibit movement?
“That’s right, darling.” The Silhouette pivoted on her boot heel, all controlled movement and careful grace. “And if I may, you really ought to replace the lock on your office door. I took the liberty of leaving a recommendation on your desk.”
I huffed a short, surprised laugh, although how I’d expected anything else I couldn’t explain. “Thanks for that. Would it keep you out?”
The smile that spread across the thief’s face was delighted, genuine, and the way she winked as she did it sent a jolt of lust through my core that I was utterly unprepared for. Damn. I needed to get laid. This was pathetic.
“Nothing keeps me out.” She prowled back to the window, with long-legged strides and careless exposure of her back to Jade and myself. Presumably she didn’t consider us to be threats. “Dr. Fawn, Ms. Jones. I hope you ladies have a lovely evening.”
Her leg was through the window and she was heartbeats from disappearing into the Opal City night when I blurted, “Thank you! For everything. For…for keeping me safe and getting it back.”
The playful expression the Silhouette had worn like a mask was entirely absent, and in its place was a fierce, heated look that I could feel ghosting along my jaw. “Of course, darling. Until next time.”
And then she was gone.
I was still staring at the open window when I heard the siren of Jade’s long exhalation. “Holy shit, Moll.”
“I, uh…” I coughed in a futile effort to cover my sudden awkwardness. “I think we might be dating?”
It was the first time I’d said it out loud, but it was the only explanation that made any sense to me. I’d thought at first that the Silhouette had a plan, a long con that required getting close to me, earning my trust. But it didn’t fit. She hadn’t asked for anything except my company. Hadn’t seemed the least interested in the lab or the Captain’s secret identity. Hadn’t even stolen more than a single kiss, and I was practically begging her to take me.
“Okay.” Jade said like the word could manifest itself into being true. “Okay. You’re going to sit right there, we’re going to consume this entire bottle of wine, and you are going to explain to me exactly how it came to happen that you’re dating the Silhouette. And why you haven’t mentioned this to me until now.” Jade refilled my glass and looked pointedly between my face and the wine.
I sighed. Jade, with her nose on the trail of an interesting story, would never let go. I knew that better than anyone. It had been impossible to keep secrets from her, even if I’d wanted to. It was a miracle I’d kept the extent of my interactions with the Silhouette quiet for so long.
I settled back against the couch cushions and tried to sort out where to begin.
“WOW,” Jade said once I’d relayed the entire, if not completely sordid, tale. “Well, I’ll say one thing for her, she is excruciatingly hot.”
I groaned, burying my face in my hands. “I know,” I said miserably.
“And did she look like she was limping, to you?” There was the edge of that journalist’s interest in Jade’s voice. That sense that she was putting pieces together that were meant, at least in part, to remain hidden.