Silhouette

by Robin Hale

  She'd been dangerous since the first time I saw her. Her bright eyes, her clever mind, her devastatingly gorgeous figure, they'd drawn me in immediately. Her laughter had only exacerbated the problem. And the way she looked at me when she let herself look… I was in one serious pile of trouble.

  Indulging in the desire to let Molly sleep in my arms hadn't helped the problem any. Reheating the takeout she’d brought over, sharing the bottle of wine under her careful supervision, and watching what turned out to be one of Molly's favorite feel-good films had resulted in the pair of us tangled together on the sofa, wrapped in soft, warm blankets as thoroughly as we were wrapped in each other. I'd missed half of Arsenic and Old Lace in favor of the taste of the curve of her neck.

  I couldn't bring myself to regret it.

  I trailed careful fingers through the dark silk of Molly's hair, watching her lashes flutter still deep in sleep. And that ache in my chest clenched, burned as my heart seemed to seize at the sight. Damn, she was beautiful. Beautiful and sweet and loyal and kind. And god only knew what she was doing in my bed.

  The bullet wound on my hip had stopped bleeding. The edges Molly had so carefully stitched were finally closing together. It was no longer a dangerous time for me to be alone, no longer at risk of infection or rejecting the stitches she’d placed. She would leave soon, I knew. It had been a pretty fantasy, but Captain Colossal's girl Friday didn't really have any place in the Silhouette’s bed. Not really. We'd stolen a small handful of days, and soon Molly would remember who she was and why she didn't belong there with me.

  As if responding to my dour mood, Molly's eyelids fluttered open. There was a scant moment of confusion before the fog in those warm brown eyes cleared and a shy smile pulled at that perfect mouth. I quirked a sly grin in response. It was practically a reflex by that point.

  "Good morning, starshine," I drawled.

  A light, breathy giggle sounded in the late morning stillness. "The Earth says hello," Molly returned, the shyness fleeing from her smile in favor of simple delight.

  I raised a brow in amused question. "Hair?"

  Molly shrugged. "My mother had a bit of a hippie phase," she said. "Believe me, I was surprised, too." Molly pulled herself into a seated position and stretched her arms above her head in a way that made her camisole pull at her chest and stomach in interesting and far too tempting ways. "How are your stitches feeling?"

  The easy, professional question brought me back to myself. I shifted on the soft mattress, trying to pay attention to any unnatural pulling or increased pain. "Just itchy," I said with a wry nod.

  That earned me another laugh and it felt like victory. Pathetic.

  "Good," Molly said with a bright smile. "That sounds like it's healing properly then. I'll check it over once more, but then I think you'll be able to take care of it on your own until it's time for the stitches to come out."

  That was it then. No more excuses for Molly to be there, even given how flimsy the original justification had been. Her soft, competent hand reached for me, sliding over the bare skin of my thigh up toward the adhesive bandage covering my stitches. I caught her wrist and wrapped my fingers indulgently around it even as I kept her hand from meeting its mark. Suddenly, the idea of her hands on me again, taking care of my wound just as I had been permitted to take care of her pleasure, was too much. I was healing, she would be leaving, and I couldn't bring myself to sit through her careful bedside manner while I waited for her to go.

  "That's all right, darling," I said lightly. "I think I can take it from here." I slipped from the bed to my feet, barely even wincing as the stitches in my side pulled.

  There was surprise on Molly's face, hesitation in her smile that I hated myself for putting there, but the back of my brain had begun to itch and I needed to feel in control again. I was caged, trapped. Cornered by the realization that I could only have the first third of anything I wanted, to be paid for by watching Molly leave.

  Molly hopped up from the bed, pink rising in her cheeks in that delicate, fetching way she had, and she began to pull her clothes back on. "Of course," she said like she should've expected that a touch I'd welcomed last night would make me anxious that morning. I wanted to correct her, to tell her not to be so certain that she was the one at fault, but it was a conversation that would lead Molly back into my arms instead of out my front door the way I needed.

  She gathered her things, the medical bag, the film she’d brought over, the remnants of the clothing she’d snagged in her haste, and tucked them back into her basket. It’d been an optimistic maneuver — something solidly outside my wheelhouse — and the sight of Molly Fawn on my doorstep with her back straight and eyes determined as she marched into my apartment, convinced that she would be the one to help me in my self-inflicted folly…it’d been a jolt of something incredible. The sight of Captain Colossal’s right hand riding to my rescue had been as glorious a moment as watching her leave was grim.

  Fawn hesitated by the door, looked back at me with a weak smile, and I lost my nerve.

  I had her face in my hands, my lips on hers in a heartbeat, ignoring the way I’d jostled my hip to get to her. “Thank you,” I breathed against her mouth. I sucked her lower lip, drinking down the little gasp that she let out at the sensation. I chased the movement of my lips with the edge of my thumb and traced Fawn’s mouth to keep myself from tasting it again. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Fawn’s face was bright red, a jerky nod all she managed as she pulled the door open to escape into the hallway.

  Izzy Verdera stood in the open doorway with her hand raised as though she’d been about to knock, eyes going wide in surprise. Fawn mumbled something vaguely apologetic as she hurried down the hallway toward the bank of elevators, and with an ironic wave, I gestured for Izzy to come inside.

  “What on earth,” Izzy asked with a grin already spreading across her face. “Was that?”

  “That,” I said, pretending that the careful purr I affected as the Silhouette had ever provided the distance with Izzy that it did with everyone else. “Was Doctor Molly Fawn. Captain Colossal’s much better half.”

  Izzy whirled on her heels in my living room to turn back to me where I stood by the door. “Oh my god, are you sleeping with Colossal’s girlfriend?”

  I jerked upright out of the lazy lean I’d affected, brow furrowing. “What? No!” At least, I didn’t think so. I frowned as I considered the possibility. I’d never seen them in an intimate position, but that didn’t mean there was nothing going on there. “I meant that she’s his handler. The…the woman in the earpiece. You know, the reason the big oaf has any tactical sense at all. He wears an earpiece. She’s the voice on the other end.” I huffed, scowling at my best friend and making a beeline for the liquor cabinet. Eleven in the morning and Izzy was already driving me to drink. Ye gods and little fishes.

  “All right, all right,” Izzy raised her hands as if in surrender. A sly smile stole over her face and I saw, too late, where I had misstepped. “So you are sleeping with her, though.”

  “Maybe,” I groused and poured a measure of whiskey into a heavy-bottomed glass. “What’s it to you?”

  Izzy’s laughter filled the apartment, chasing away some of my dark mood. “Nothing, nothing,” she said. “Just happy to see you indulging, you know? This was the girl from the university job, right? And the daring rescue at her apartment? The one you took on an impromptu motorcycle ride?”

  As Izzy went on, the tension in my shoulders increased. Shit, there was no one on earth who could make me feel as exposed as Isobel Verdera did. “Yeah, that’s her.” I took a resentful swig of my drink. Exposed and suddenly thirteen years old. That was me five minutes into any conversation with Izzy.

  “Good for you, Lana.” Her grin was accompanied by a fond swat of my arm as she breezed past me toward the kitchen. “I’ve got the usual care package here for you.” She lifted a teasing brow as she looked back at me. “Although maybe you don’t need it.”

&nbs
p; “Yeah, yeah, you’re hilarious and I’m floating along on a cloud of rainbows and love.” The whiskey burned on the way down and I was suddenly relieved I hadn’t taken any more of the painkillers Fawn had brought me. I was pretty sure my current rate of consumption wouldn’t have been doctor approved.

  “Hey,” Izzy frowned at me. “What gives? I’m an asshole, but I’m always an asshole and you just laugh at me.” Izzy crossed her arms in front of her chest, brow furrowing. “Did she do something?”

  Yeah, she found my place, which I’d thought was so well hidden that no one could do that. And what did she do with that information? Did she hand it over to the police? To the hero she worked with? No. She used it to come and make sure I would be okay when she knew I was injured. She came to me because she didn’t want me to be hurt and alone.

  And then she let me touch her, let me watch her as she fell to pieces in pleasure. She stayed with me, looked after me, and made me feel safe enough that I fell asleep next to someone for the first time in ages. I should have sent her away immediately, but I didn’t. Hell, my safe haven was compromised and I didn’t feel the need to run, to bail out. It felt…right to have her there.

  I gritted my teeth and tried to force my shoulders to relax. “No,” I said. “She didn’t do anything.”

  “Just you then, huh?” Izzy’s smile was soft, kinder than I really had coming. “What’s it going to take for you to let yourself have something good, Lana?”

  I snorted. “I’m a thief, Izz, I don’t think abnegation is one of our characteristic virtues. I let myself have whatever I want.”

  Izzy nodded slowly. “Sure, yeah. You let yourself take things if you want them, but I’ve never seen you let yourself have an actual relationship with someone who could be good for you.” She sat the bag of supplies down on the counter. “Why do you do that?”

  I scrubbed my free hand through my hair and down my face. “Izz, just…leave it. She’s slumming. She’s probably already remembering that what she really wants is a hero, even if thieves can be fun.”

  “You said she’s some kind of genius, right?”

  “She is,” I confirmed.

  “Then she’s too smart for that shit you just put in her mouth.” Izzy’s voice was firm, brooked no argument, and I loved her fiercely for it. She’d always believed the best of me, even when she shouldn’t have. “Now, do you want to know what happened with Popova, or should I keep beating you over the head about Colossal’s girl until you believe me?”

  I raised my hands in surrender. “Please tell me about the Russian contact.”

  Izzy eyed me like she hadn’t quite decided which way she was going to go on that, offer be damned. After a long pause, filled by the sounds of Izzy unloading meals from her bag into my freezer, she relented. “The sale went off without a hitch, she didn’t even seem mad about the delay.” Izzy turned and leaned back against the counter to face me once again. “And she’s in the market for something else, too.”

  The sip of whiskey bought me some time as I eyed Izzy warily. “What’s she looking for?”

  “Brachnine.”

  Izzy looked entirely nonplussed by the cloud of whiskey that flew out of my mouth.

  “What the fuck?” I growled and wiped my mouth on the back of my arm. “Izzy, tell me you’re not selling chemical agents.”

  My best friend’s lazy indifference morphed into genuine offense. “Are you kidding me? Of course not! That’s not why I told you. I told you so that you can add it into your paranoid little web of ‘what the hell is happening in Opal City’ and make sure we don’t all end up poisoned.” Izzy huffed, hefting her bag back onto her shoulder. “Selling chemical agents. It’s like you don’t even know me.”

  “All right, all right, I’m sorry.” I held out a hand, clapped Izzy on her shoulder. “Walk me through the meeting and we’ll sort it out.”

  Izzy followed me back into the living room, and I settled into the familiar web of crime in my city, letting warm brown eyes and golden skin slip from my mind.

  19

  MOLLY

  My lab was almost exactly as I’d left it the night I’d rushed off to find Lana Blake in her apartment. I was lucky, in fact, that one of my colleagues had stopped in to unplug the hot plate I’d been using for processing Colossal’s healing serum. Without that intervention, I might have returned to a far more significant mess than interoffice memos and a series of messages piling up on my desk.

  The day had been spent following up on questions, responding to crisis alerts — crisis alerts that weren’t high enough priority to get past a simple ‘out of office’ email, which is to say not critical at all — from other projects, and clearing the backlog of work that always seemed to spontaneously form when one was out of the office for two days in a row. I had everything cleared back to normal when a familiar voice broke through my focus.

  “Molly!” Kevin called, filling the doorway with his broad chest, thick arms, and bright smile. “Feeling better?”

  The guilt I felt over taking sick time to cover my absence was only moderate, but still present. There was something distinctly Midwestern about the unease that roiled in my stomach, but I covered it with a friendly smile. “Much! Did I miss anything exciting while I was out?”

  Kevin cast a casual glance over his shoulder before easing into my office and closing the door behind him. Uh oh. Evidently, the answer was yes, and it was exciting in a Captain Colossal way, rather than a Kevin-from-accounting way.

  “I didn’t realize how spoiled I’d gotten having you in my ear, Molly.” Kevin’s smile was tinged with a sheepishness that was appealing on someone so confident. “We had two thefts, back to back, and I was running in circles. Had to be the Silhouette. Had to be.”

  It definitely hadn’t been, but there wasn’t any way I could tell Kevin that without revealing how I knew. Still, it was flattering to hear that he’d been lost without me, even if he wasn’t running up against the most accomplished thief in Opal City’s history.

  Kevin smiled down at me with a fondness that only weeks ago would’ve made my tongue too thick in my mouth, my throat dry, and would’ve sent my heart beating like a hummingbird’s. I was suddenly struck by how comfortable my crush on him had been. It had let me focus on something fun and warm and soft when the rest of my heart had been shredded by my breakup with Jenna. It was hopeful, but safe.

  Kevin’s eyes crinkled at the corners and there was a fondness in his face that I’d always cherish, but there wasn’t the sense of…simmering that I got from Lana. There was no barely restrained passion building beneath the surface. There was no heat stoking just beyond where I could see it. And I wanted that.

  And for the first time in ages, I felt like it was okay to want that.

  “I’m sure you did just fine,” I said with a soft, genuine smile. “Are the reports filed so I can catch up, or…?”

  Kevin groaned and sagged back against the wall. “Now you sound like Detective Foster. And that’s another thing I hadn’t realized: just how much paperwork you do so that I don’t get stuck with it.” His eyes twinkled as he huffed a laugh beneath his breath. “I don’t know how you put up with me.”

  “Years of practice, sir.”

  He huffed a sharp laugh and turned the doorknob. “I’ll let you know when I’ve got those reports in, and you can figure out what I missed. Good to have you back, Molly.”

  “Good to be back, sir,” I said, and it wasn’t entirely a lie. It had been dreamlike, spending the past two days in the Silhouette’s home. Letting her touch me, getting to taste her. Laughing at old movies I’d watched a thousand times and feeling strangely relieved when she laughed as well. Learning the way her mouth quirked when she was about to say something scandalous, how her skin heated when she drank wine.

  But it had all felt kind of separate from my normal life. Hazy and gauzy like the best dream. And I was already waking up from that feeling. The rest of my life, my real life was coming into focus as the memory of Lana
’s sheets faded.

  Would it feel the same for her? Was she standing in her apartment, wondering if she’d dreamt my presence there? Was she missing me in her bed or thinking that her life had settled back into place? There was a tension in the wondering, something that felt less like dread and more like hope.

  It was ridiculous to wonder about it. I was still who I was, she was still the Silhouette. Nothing had changed, really. Nothing had changed except I knew what it felt like to fall asleep in her arms. And that changed everything.

  “Either you’re still sick or you’ve come to some seriously unpleasant conclusions about something,” a familiar voice mused from my office door. “Is it wrong if I hope you’re sick? I’d just rather not find out that something in this lab is fatally toxic, you see.”

  I looked up from my desk, startled, into the grinning face of Jade Jones.

  “Jade!” I said. “Sorry, I was lost in thought, there. Have you been here long?”

  “Nope.” Jade popped the plosive on the word like snapping chewing gum. “Just got here. Kevin said you were back in the office, and I wanted to stop by and check on you.” Her eyes narrowed, and I felt the edges of the trap closing around me far, far too late.

  “That’s sweet,” I said brightly, trying to cover whatever was coming with an oversized smile and only moderately nervous eyes.

  “Uh huh.” Jade sidled into the room and pulled the door closed behind her. It was the second time someone had done it, that day, but I didn’t get the impression that Jade was going to let me off as easily as Kevin had.

  The soft mint of her crepe de chine blouse billowed around her as she settled herself on the chair across from me, and I spared a moment to appreciate how carefully put together she was even as her mind was clearly on other, more important matters. It was like…like armor. Seeing Jade in full, stylish force was like knowing that she was prepared for anything the world might throw her way. It made me feel better for her.