One Wrong Move

by Shannon McKenna

Nina felt the point of no return bearing down on them like an eighteen-wheeler, and pushed at him. “Aaro. Stop. You have to stop.”

  “I know.” He staggered to his feet, wiping his mouth.

  Nina’s face was stern, but her crimson lips twitched when she looked at him. “Um, your face is covered with glitter now.”

  “Kiss it off,” he invited her rashly.

  Her eyes went big. “Well . . . then there’s this lipstick, and I—”

  “I do not fucking care.” He grabbed her.

  The kiss jerked him around to where it wanted him, a force of nature that had to have its own desperate, twining way. They ended up horizontal on the messed-up bed, he had no idea how, fingers wound into each other’s hair. He pressed the bulge of his cock against her groin, pulsing it, tenderly. The ache was killing him.

  His cell phone buzzed.

  They froze. The phone rang again. Aaro lifted off. Flopped heavily onto his back, staring at the ceiling. Ah, fuck. Too heavy to move.

  Nina slid off the bed. She knelt on the floor, digging into the pockets of his leather jacket. The cell buzzed, buzzed, buzzed.

  She retrieved it, and handed it to him. It rang twice more before he could even lift his arm to answer. “Yeah?” he asked dully.

  “It’s Wilder, the bodyguard,” the guy said. “Bruno Ranieri sent me. I’m in front of the lobby. Six two, brown crew cut, blue jacket, gray Chevy Tahoe. You want to take her out the front or the side?”

  Aaro shook the fog of sex from his head, and rapidly decided he liked the clearer visual of the lobby’s traffic circle better than the parked cars on the deserted side lot. He didn’t like the shrubs, but the cars were worse. “Front,” he said. “Be right down.”

  He hung up, and got grimly to it. He took down the squealers, strapped on the various guns, stuck an extra in the back of his jeans. He’d come back up, and get the rest of his gear after Nina was gone.

  “Aaro?”

  He rounded on her. “What?”

  “Wash your face.”

  He stomped into the bathroom to clean off glitter and crimson-lipstick clown smears. She followed him in, grabbed her own washcloth.

  They scrubbed, side by side. He didn’t even dare to look at her. That jittery feeling kept growing. His fuck-up alert. Like a car with sensors that beeped when you were about to back into something. He was trying so hard to do the right thing, but the sensor kept shrilling.

  Nina hoisted the plain black bag over her shoulder. She’d stuffed the clothes he’d gotten for her into a shopping bag. “Shall we?”

  “Put on more lipstick,” he told her.

  Nina sighed, and leaned in to the mirror, reapplying the bright crimson. He peered into the corridor, and they were off.

  He matched his steps to hers, his mind buzzing. He’d go see Aunt Tonya, then fly back to Portland tonight, to aid in the community effort to keep Nina alive. Bruno could use his help putting the pieces together. Another brain and gun wouldn’t hurt. He’d be able to check on her.

  Tonya would approve. Applaud, even. Protecting his lady friend.

  Don’t even start with that shit. Shut up, asshole. Snip snip with the bolt cutters. Follow through. Move the fuck on.

  He’d never realized how unpleasant that voice in his head was.

  Down the elevator, through the lobby. The fuck-up sensor blared louder, shriller. His balls itched. But not a thing was out of place.

  Outside the sliding door, next to the gray Chevy Tahoe, was a tall guy with a big jaw and a salt-and-pepper crew cut. He saw them, and nodded. He was just as Bruno had described him, and just as he had described himself. Everything was exactly as it was supposed to be.

  Apparently. He slowed, pulling Nina closer.

  She sensed his tension, peeking nervously up at him. “Aaro?”

  she murmured. “Isn’t that the guy?”

  “He looks like it. Shhh.”

  “Aaro,” she whispered. “Something is weird in here. You feel it?”

  “No shit.” The automatic door slid open. He jerked to a halt.

  “When did you meet Davy McCloud?” he called out.

  Wilder’s face was expressionless. “Ninety-three,” he said.

  “Iraq.”

  It was the right answer. Still, he hesitated. Don’t want to let her go, lover boy? That fucking cold voice, again.

  They stepped through the door. At that moment, another SUV

  pulled up, right behind Wilder. Aaro flicked his gaze over it. Gray Ford Expedition, woman driver, bobbed dark hair, sunglasses.

  The woman got out, as Nina took a timid step out the door.

  She was thick-waisted and awkward, wearing a baggy, nonde-script blouse. She jerked open the back door, grabbed her suitcase, and pulled it toward the hotel entrance, passing on Aaro’s other side.

  Nina sucked in a sharp breath as the feeling of danger opened up beneath her, like a dark mouth gaping hungrily. “Aaro! Watch out!”

  He spun, instinctively, to block the baton whipping at the back of his head, caught it on his forearm, a white-hot crack of pain.

  His body took over.

  Nina flew through the air toward Wilder’s car. Wilder yanked the back door open and was reaching for her when another body hurtled against her. The bald guy with the scar, a snarl on his savagely reddened face. He jerked Nina back against himself, his meaty arm across her neck. She wiggled, squirmed, and chomped on his arm. He bellowed, and Wilder’s boot flashed out. A pistol flew into the air, clattered to the ground, and Wilder charged him.

  It was really confusing after that, with two big guys grappling around her body, but when the bald guy was too busy fighting Wilder to hold her, she wormed away and scrambled back against Wilder’s Chevy. Wilder jerked the bald guy’s arm back, and smashed his bald pate into the car window, crunching it inward 218

  and leaving a bloody stamp around the rounded hole. She craned to see Aaro. He had flung the attacking woman to the ground, was running to the car. She was rolling to her feet, wig and glasses askew. It was the blond doctor, wearing a foam-padded vest beneath her oversized blouse. Aaro whipped out his gun.

  Pockmarks stepped out of the hotel. “Hello, Sasha.”

  Aaro froze, for a split second. Pockmarks’s gun whipped up.

  Bam.

  Wilder crushed her against the car, knocking out her wind. His weight bore her to the ground. A bullet had taken him in the head. The exit wound had taken out his temple, his eye. It was a red crater. The car was spattered with the contents of his skull.

  The one eye he had left stared at her, blank and empty.

  She barely felt it when Aaro jerked her up, tossing her into the car. She barely heard the gunshots. Felt the percussion with her body, like faraway thunderclaps. A door slammed shut, the engine surged.

  Aaro was driving, shouting as he took the curve, flung her back against the seat. He braked, flinging her forward. She slid onto the floor.

  The car roared as he turned onto the street. Aaro was too shocked to keep up his shield. She felt how terrified he was, how guilty. It blazed out, raw and jagged, blood tinged with battle fury . . . got Wilder killed . . . almost got Nina killed . . . brain-dead asshole . . . Dmitri? What the fuck?

  She curled up into a ball and willed herself into nonexistence.

  Chapter 18

  Miles parked the Wrangler outside the overgrown lawn of the old Victorian house that belonged to Joseph Kirk. He’d been trying to call the guy since seven A.M. It was early, it was rude, but fuck it, this was Aaro’s girlfriend. Aaro needed a girlfriend. If the guy cared enough to stick his neck out this far for her, then this chick was definitely the one.

  He stared up at the house. He’d checked out the photo portrait of the guy in the Wentworth College Web site. Self-important professor emeritus. Handsome older guy, pointy Freud beard.

  He had that annoying pose; holding chin with the thumb and crooked forefinger, the “Bow down, o clueless ones, before my wisdom” pose. Miles had spent
years in academia. He could smell their affectations from miles away.

  In any case, he was glad for something that took him out of the temple of trees Aaro called home. Working for Aaro was OK, once he got used to the guy’s rudeness. The guy was ambitious, and ferociously smart. Miles liked working with smart people.

  The McCloud Crowd and Seth still had their panties all in a wad since Miles had bailed on them, but he couldn’t be within a two-hundred-mile radius of Cindy Riggs. Cindy, who had gone off a few months ago on an up-and-coming alternative rocker’s big concert tour, and come back the rocker’s concubine, mouth -

  ing unbearable platitudes. I’m, like, so sorry, Miles! I love you, too, but my love for Aengus blew me away.

  His own fault, to have tried for so long to believe that she had hidden depths. Cindy was fluff. It was sad, even. Not worth being angry over. And yet, he was. Oh, man, he was.

  She didn’t deserve this much airtime. He had his doubts as to how long Cindy’s fling would last, but he’d be damned if he’d wait around to pick up the pieces. Move on, man. Fuck that.

  So he’d come down to work for Aaro, like joining the French Foreign Legion to forget his tragic past. Sweet deal moneywise, since Aaro paid him well to do something he’d probably be doing at all hours for free. The problem with living up in Aaro’s extension, north of Sandy, Oregon, was that the situation had a lot in common with all the worst aspects of living in his parents’ garage.

  Just tattoo a big L for loser on his forehead. No one to talk to but trees and chipmunks. And himself.

  He had to get his ass out there, get a fucking social life. He and Aaro were sexless robot hermits in their cyber-lair. He only crawled out of his computer to sleep, usually during the day. Or work out in Aaro’s gym. Or sprint through the forest until he collapsed.

  The McCloud-style adventures were over. He’d just revert to being a bug-eyed, number-crunching, code-cracking geek freak in a basement. Making a pile of money that he had no heart to spend. Who the fuck cared.

  Yet here he was. He even had a gun. He had no license to carry concealed in Oregon, but Aaro’s tales of psycho killers and mafiya drive-by shootings had made him nervous enough to bring the Glock Sean had given him last year for his birthday.

  The insane lengths those McCloud guys had gone to, to man him up, Jesus. He was proficient with it, but he felt like a fraud when he carried a gun.

  He walked up to the porch, which was covered with a drift of pine needles. He peered through the window, saw a dim foyer.

  Curtains over the front windows were drawn. No reason for his neck to prickle. Nothing weird about an empty house. He took a flagstoned path that curved around the house. Time to go back to Sandy and crawl into the computer, where his talents were put to their best use.

  He rounded the corner and looked up onto the back porch.

  The back door had a missing pane. Someone had broken in.

  Shards of glass littered the porch floor. He reached into the hole, turning the knob. He wore thin leather gloves, since the crime lab in Clackamas already had his DNA and fingerprints in their databank, after that mess that came down with Kev. He was highly motivated to never have trouble with the law again, ever.

  Just wearing the gloves made him feel in the wrong. He wished Sean were there, or Davy, or Aaro. To help him make the right decision.

  Grow up, man. They can’t hold your hand forever.

  He padded through the mudroom. Stopped to listen. Creaks and pops, wind whistling. Trees swaying. He stepped into the kitchen.

  It was trashed. Only the table was intact. It held a plate with the remains of fried eggs, crusts of toast, a half cup of coffee. He touched the cup. Cool. The coffeemaker by the sink had a half a pot still steaming. Every cupboard and drawer was open, contents flung out on the floor. Same with the fridge.

  He picked his way through broken glass, pickles, relish, smashed eggs, cherry tomatoes. In the dining room, the papers and academic journals had been flung to the floor. Living room, same deal. Couches and easy chairs slashed and gutted. Pictures torn down, the backs ripped off. Books swept off the shelves.

  A photograph caught his eye. He leaned to pick it up. A black and white taken at the coast, of a girl sitting on a rock looking out over the churning surf, dark hair flying like a banner. Big, mysterious eyes that looked like they could see for a million miles. She was . . . wow.

  He turned the photo over. Lincoln City, OR, and a date, ten years ago, scrawled on the back. This must be Lara. In her twenties now. Slender, gauzy peasant blouse that blew flat against her high, beautiful tits, which were evidently feeling the chilly coastal breeze. If he was a dad, he wouldn’t hang his daughter’s nipple hard-on up on the wall for every passing random schmuck to slaver over. But maybe these cultured, academic, artistic types were different about stuff like that.

  His cyber-digging had revealed that she was an artist. She looked the part. Those big dreamy eyes.

  Miles shook off the spell, and squelched the impulse to slip the picture into his jacket. That would be stealing. Not to mention vaguely kinky and stalker-ish. He put it down where he’d found it. Mooning over dream babes on the job. Lack of vigilance will get you killed. A McCloud creed that he seemed to have inter-nalized.

  It occurred to him, as he picked his way over the smashed coffee table, that Lara Kirk was the first woman he’d scoped that he hadn’t automatically compared to Cindy. Of course, he’d just in-validated that miraculous event by noticing it, and congratulating himself for it.

  There were more pictures of Lara. In one, she was about eight, in a dark-haired woman’s lap. She had a somber, thoughtful look.

  He climbed the stairs. As he made his way down the corridor, a noise began to register. The shower. The bathroom door hung open. The walls of the corridor sweated from the steam that floated out.

  All the horror flicks he’d ever seen ran through his head. He braced himself, and peered in. Empty, thank God. He turned off the water. Condensation slid down the mirror. He stared grimly at himself. His jagged hair stuck straight up. He’d chopped it off himself with kitchen shears while freshly in mourning for the Cindy of his dreams who had never existed. His hooked schnoz, his clamped mouth, his sweaty forehead. The medicine cabinet hung open, the sink full of stuff they’d scooped out. Shaving stuff, nail scissors, dental floss.

  The bedroom had been torn apart. Bed coverings ripped away, mattresses slashed. There was a suitcase, though someone had emptied its contents onto the floor. A briefcase, gutted. Kirk had meant to go somewhere, but he hadn’t taken his suitcase or briefcase with him.

  Miles picked through the papers scattered across the floor.

  One proved to be an e-boarding pass. A flight for Denver, leaving at eleven fifty-five A.M. this morning. He memorized the trip code and put the paper down where he had found it.

  That was it for the upstairs. He crept back down. The professor had gotten up, put coffee on, made breakfast. He’d gone upstairs, prepared his suitcase, gotten into the shower . . .

  And something very bad had happened. Miles went steadily toward the one door he had not yet tried.

  Oh, man. Don’t. Not the basement. That never turns out well. Going down into the basement was for blond actresses with bobbing tits, doomed to die screaming. He turned the knob, flipped on the hanging chain light. Dust and mold, bare wood steps, basement floor of oil and damp, stained, rough poured concrete.

  He smelled it halfway down the stairs. He didn’t want to believe it, but his nose did not lie. His heart was stuck in his neck, choking the air out of him. The smell got stronger as he descended. He’d smelled it before. Wished that he hadn’t. Voided bowels. The fresh, meaty smell of blood. Like an anvil, careen-ing through space toward his head. He tried to prepare himself, but he still wasn’t ready when the sight hit his eyes.

  The professor was naked, seated against a support column, his arms jerked back at an agonizing angle, hands cuffed behind it with plastic ratchet cuffs. Blood was ever
ywhere. He was still, eyes staring. His fingers and his toes were gone. Something red and fleshy was stuffed in his open mouth, and his crotch . . . oh, sweet holy Jesus.

  A whimper jerked out of his throat. He struggled not to retch.

  Oh, God. How fucking horrible. The guy was surely dead, but Miles felt a ceremonial necessity to check his pulse. He owed a fellow human being that much, no matter what. He crept closer, trying not to look at those red stumps. Blood still oozed. The people who did this must have left moments before he arrived.

  He pulled off a glove. Couldn’t feel for a pulse with leather on his hands.

  He touched the guy’s carotid. Nothing. His fingers came back red.

  He got up the stairs, tears streaming down his face. Rinsed 224

  blood off into the kitchen sink, hand shaking. Put the glove back on. He dialed nine one one. “I’m calling to report a murder,” he told the dispatcher, in a voice that was unrecognizable as his own.

  He gave them the address, let the phone dangle as the woman exhorted him to stay at the scene.

  Not. He stumbled out the door and broke into a run. To get as far away from the house as possible before he lost his breakfast.

  “Ah . . . Mr. Arbatov, would you sign the guest book before—”

  “Shut up.” Oleg kept on down the hospice corridor, fingering the flash drive that contained the footage of Sasha and his woman friend.

  He stared at his pitted, jowly face in the reflective metal surface of the elevator panel as he went up to the second floor. He looked old. Felt old, upon seeing Sasha in that video. So many lost years. It had an odd effect on him, to see his grown-up son.

  Like seeing himself thirty years ago, though Sasha was unques-tionably better looking, having gotten his mother’s dramatic bone structure to mitigate the bull-like Arbatov genes. Oksana, his first wife, had been very beautiful. His throat still caught when he saw her in photos. A rare occurrence. His wife Rita made sure that pictures with Oksana were kept well out of sight.

  But his son’s green eyes and severe mouth, that was pure Arbatov. Sasha looked good. He had not gone to fat, nor did he have the broken veins or pitted skin of an alcoholic and a junkie, as his cousin did. The two were profoundly different, in every way. Although when the boys had been children, many had taken them for twins.