Double Cross

by Carolyn Crane

  I lay back, head hitting the backrest; he stays with me, between me, kissing my neck, my ear, but not in me. My whole pelvis sings to attention as he presses a hand onto my belly, and lower, reaching his thumb onto my clit. We kiss like that, and I want to fuck his thumb and every other possible part of him. He draws nearer, presses me back.

  “Oh, Justine,” he says when I reach down to guide him into me. The slow, sure way he pushes into me feels like a kind of heaven. An all-encompassing, fully complete, and perfect heaven. I let out a whoosh.

  He stills. “Too hard?”

  “Too good.” I touch his hips in the darkness, moving with him, gazing into the velvety blackness of his face. We move slowly together, luxuriating in each other’s bodies. Eventually his breath becomes ragged. He props himself up over me and moves into me from a higher angle that’s a whole new language of goodness. I moan, possibly loudly; it’s like he’s plunging into my very core. I rise; I want every part of him in me, and touching me. We luxuriate in each other until the fucking takes on its own rhythm.

  “I need you,” he says. “I need you.”

  “I need you, too,” I whisper as he lowers onto me, pushing into me. Our movement catches fire.

  “Oh, God, I need you.” He spreads a hand over my shoulder, grips me there, and pushes faster, harder. I’m on the brink of coming—I feel it taking over, that glorious autopilot where sensation drives everything and it’s too late to think. I still can’t see his face, but I feel him, feel the state he’s in: lost, senseless, transported like me.

  “You’re the only one who makes me feel better,” he mumbles, panting, covering me with kisses. “The only one who stops the darkness.”

  I try to conceal my shock—try to keep moving and not appear to waken from the sexual dream, but I have. The darkness? What does that mean? Does he mean his fear of darkness? Is he talking about the stress of the prisoners, battering against his mind? Or something else? I think what Shelby said, about him seeming grimmer. If anybody knows grimness, it’s her.

  I kiss him, but really, it’s killing me that he’d be suffering and alone in it. And what does he mean, stop it? Not light the darkness but stop it, as if it’s a force.

  “Oh, Otto,” I breathe. He’s lost in the fucking. I feel sure he doesn’t know what he just said, which is probably for the best. Though now I’m too worried and freaked out to enjoy myself. And I wanted our first time back together to be so perfect! I try to get back in the mood, but it’s no good, so I make a decision. Clutch his hair.

  “Oh-oh,” I say, squeezing my pelvis violently around his cock. “Oh!” I do it again, and thank goodness he starts getting off, and doesn’t know. He pushes deep, then jolts inside me, ecstatic, as I fake on. He comes exuberantly.

  “Oh,” I say, hating myself for what I just did. But he’ll never know.

  After, I scoot over to make room for him and he sinks in beside me.

  “That was amazing,” he says.

  I touch his cheek. “It was.” But all I can think about is what he said about me stopping the darkness. I alone help him. I marvel at that a little. I’ve always been so hopeless, barely even able to take care of myself, but now here’s Otto, looking at me full of faith. He needs me, and hell if I’ll let him down.

  He pulls up the quilt and tucks us in together and we sit there naked and cozy.

  After a long, lazy span of watching the logs burn and shift, he says, “I heard about what you did today.”

  My first feeling is guilt. “What did you hear?” God, why am I always so guilty around him?

  “The lead. The glasses. Brilliant work. Absolutely brilliant.”

  “It was more blunder than brilliance.”

  “You followed your instincts, and you took the suspect to the place he needed to go.”

  “It was luck he revealed anything. Seriously, he revealed the secret of the glasses in spite of me.”

  “No, not in spite of you—because of you. Sometimes the best interrogators let the wind take them. You went in there, and when you came out, you had the information.”

  I want to say, I wasn’t interrogating him, but I know Otto meant it as praise. “I can’t help but feel like I screwed him over,” I confess.

  “One of the many things I admire about you,” he says, “is your empathy.”

  “Empathy for the guy I just screwed over? I doubt he’ll be thanking me.”

  “Maybe not. But others will.” His eyes shine. “Keep your attention on the big picture, Justine. Sometimes, extreme circumstances call us to do things we’d prefer not to have to do. But the Dorks are killing people. They’re killing more often now.”

  “I know. We have to move fast.”

  “No, you have to move smart. Let it take as long as it takes. I read the report on the manufacturing operation you’re infiltrating tomorrow. If you head in there with any sense of urgency, you’ll spook them and squander the lead. Move in there and lie in wait. Let the opportunity or the moment come to you.”

  I nod grimly.

  “Like a spider,” he says. “Your job is not to create the moment. It’s about having everything in place when the moment arrives, and being ready to strike.”

  “So I’m a spider?”

  He laughs his rumbly, sexy vibrato and takes my hand, kissing my knuckles.

  About an hour later, the doorman rings up that a package has arrived for me. The laptop. It’s late, but I fire it up and spend the time it takes to get familiar with the software while Otto reads.

  It’s midnight by the time we’re washing up for bed. Otto reminds me that Covian is going to be released from the hospital tomorrow. Covian’s family had to go back to Oklahoma, so Otto’s going to pick him up. Apparently Covian’s healing beautifully, and driving the nurses crazy.

  “Driving them crazy how?” I ask, trying to be mindful about not brushing my gums too hard. Eroded gums can lead to heart disease.

  “With his mania to get up and out of there. He ruined several wound dressings trying to walk around. Thank God he’s all right.”

  “It’s not your fault he was shot,” I say for the umpteenth time.

  In bed, I prop my head up on my hand and trace the curve of his biceps as he stares at the polished bronze chandelier, which casts a warm glow all around us. This is the ultimate man’s bedroom, I sometimes think. All the furnishings are as solid and darkly burnished as Otto is.

  “I have something for you,” he says mysteriously.

  “What?” I’m thinking something dirty, but he grabs a book from his nightstand. “Bedtime story?”

  “Of a sort.” He shows it to me. Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. “Renaissance sculptor.” Otto opens the book to a ribbon bookmark. “I think you’ll find a particular passage in here every bit as interesting as I did.”

  I settle back to listen as he reads aloud. It seems the sculptor made enemies of the Pope and the Pope’s son back in the mid-1500s. Then the Pope’s son threw Benvenuto in jail.

  I lay my head on Otto’s shoulder and close my eyes, luxuriating in the warmth of his voice. He’s like a warm, living mountain that resonates goodness. I also find it pleasantly coincidental that Otto, whom I see as a type of Renaissance man, would read to me from a book about a Renaissance man. Soon we get to this passage where Benvenuto is in his dungeon cell eating a meal. Suddenly, Benvenuto notices something sparkly in his food. He is alarmed; he assumes he has just ingested pounded diamonds.

  I lift my head. “Oh my God!”

  Otto reads on. Benvenuto has heard that diamond dust can kill a man. Otto pauses to tell me that, according to his online research, the tiny particles supposedly lodge in the intestines, creating tiny perforations that become increasingly inflamed, leading to horrible pain and infection. He returns to the text. Benvenuto is freaked; he’s already eaten half the food.

  I grab Otto’s sleeve. “Where did you find out about this book?”

  Mysterious smile. “Am I not a detective?” He reads on.


  “Do you think we should be reading this before bed?”

  “It ends well,” he says.

  “It better.” I shift so his arms circle around me, and the book is in front of me. I read along with him and we excitedly discuss the details. Benvenuto tries to crush and grind a larger shard, and soon determines that he has consumed glass, not diamond dust. He thanks the Lord for the poverty of the Pope’s underlings.

  I sigh my relief. “What a story!”

  Gently Otto closes the book. “I know,” he says. “The Pope’s son, killing with diamonds.”

  “What a horrible way to die.”

  “You can borrow it for Ez if you like,” he says. “Seems right up her alley.”

  “It would be almost too much.”

  “Isn’t that the point?”

  “Right,” I say, taking the book, running my finger over the cover. That would be the point.

  Chapter

  Eleven

  I’VE GOT HIM in a bear hug at the top of the steps. He twists and struggles and I nearly lose my footing, then I jerk him backward and we fall together on the broken concrete—me on my ass, him on me, on my balls. Pain shoots through me, but I keep hold. He’s already torn away a lot of the wall. More of the bodies show now. I can’t let him back down there, but he’s not so easy to keep hold of these days. He’s nearly my size now.

  Henji pulls up and off, but I grab his arm and jerk him down on top of me. He fights me, all knees and elbows, hair in my face. We roll. Glass shards gouge my back. Blood in my mouth.

  He tries to get away again and I grab his sleeve, but it rips. I heave up, swing an arm around the back of his neck, and wrap my legs around one of his legs, trying to keep him down with me, but he pushes up, hand on my throat, knee in my balls. Pain. I can’t breathe. Coughing.

  I feel fuzzy. The tiles on the ceiling look funny, the words go double. Riverside Elem, spelled out twice, diagonal, then floating back together again. He needs to be protected. I can’t let him see in the wall.

  “Who are they?” Henji yells, voice cracking. I keep hold of him. “Who are they?”

  He thinks it’s Goyces. He’s right.

  But he’s not sure. Maybe it’s not too late. The glass grinds deeper into my back as we wrestle. He finally gets the hard side of his forearm past my chin and smashes it down into my throat. Choking, I twist his finger until I feel a pop, and he cries out and heaves off. I grab his pants pocket, but he pulls away, ripping it, and clambers back down to the broken wall and starts pulling it away.

  I jump up and try to stop him, but he’s too strong, too crazed. The concrete parts like rubble when he digs in his hand. He gets hold of something and pulls it out. One of the bodies.

  Shit!

  He jerks it out of the wall, lets it collapse onto the stairs—a dirty body held together with clothes and something else, like dirty tissues and rags glued to its skull face. Skin. All stone-dusty from the wall.

  “Who?”

  “Leave it, Henji!”

  “No!”

  He’s brushing pieces of rubble off the body. I grab his arm, but he flings out of my grip; he has more strength than ever.

  He brushes dust from what’s left of the Goyce’s shirt—one of the bowling league shirts they always wear, the circle patch over the pocket that says the name in cursive. He’s ripping the shirt. I try to stop him, but he’s crazy now, ripping off the name patch. When he has it off, he comes at me, holding it. “Does that say Goyce? It does, doesn’t it? It says Goyce!”

  “No, Henji!”

  He smashes the little patch against my cheek. “Say it!” He pushes me against the wall, pushing and smashing the patch into my cheek. Blood in my mouth. “One of the Goyces! I’m not dumb. It’s from a Goyce!”

  He’s right. One of the Goyces from rabbit night. The first Goyces.

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  Hands on my shoulders. Jerking.

  “It was one of the Goyces from rabbit night.” He jerks my shoulders and I shake him off.

  “Hey!” I try to get away. A stronger jerk. “A Goyce from rabbit night!”

  “Justine!”

  I open my eyes. He’s over me, looking at me wildly. “Henji?”

  Otto’s gaze darkens.

  “I mean—” I’m disoriented. It’s Otto. I’m in Otto’s bed. I was dreaming.

  “He told you?”

  “What?”

  “He told you!”

  I look at him blankly.

  “What were you just saying?”

  “It was a dream.”

  Otto grabs my shoulders and pulls me up. “I heard you. You were dreaming about the Goyces.”

  I shake my head, trying to shake out the confusion.

  “He told you. What did he tell you?”

  “I don’t—”

  “I didn’t hear wrong! Don’t lie to me.” He sounds a little out of breath, dark curls wild under his crooked beret. “You know about the Goyces.”

  “No, it was a dream.” I draw back until my shoulder blades hit his paneled headboard.

  “A Goyce from rabbit night. That’s what you said. I heard you.”

  “Yes, but I don’t know about them.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Nothing,” I say, heart racing.

  “How could you possibly dream that dream?”

  “I didn’t. It’s Packard’s dream. I was dreaming Packard’s dream. Just these bodies and you guys called them Goyces.”

  He leans nearer to my face, as if proximity will make things clearer.

  “Otto, it’s Ez, the dream invader. She got us.”

  “Ez?” He stills. “Both of you?”

  “She linked to us,” I say, wishing very badly that I’d told him when I had the chance. “She conferenced us.”

  I watch the emotions flow across his face. “That was you … sharing Packard’s dream?”

  “Yes.”

  “You saw Goyces?”

  “I saw a decomposed body, and you guys kept calling it a Goyce. Otto, what’s a Goyce? What happened with you two?”

  “So you don’t know.” His failure to hide his extreme relief says everything about the enormity of what I just dreamed. He switches on his bedside lamp.

  “What the hell happened in that old school?” I ask.

  He takes a deep breath and sits up. “Ez has you two conferenced?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long? How deep? Can you feel her yet?”

  “No, it’s nothing, and she’s nearly rolling. It’s nothing.”

  He frowns. “She has you two and you didn’t see fit to tell me? You call it nothing?”

  “I didn’t think … Oh, Otto. I’m so sorry.”

  “Why wouldn’t you tell me? Did Packard threaten you?”

  “No.”

  “Then why?”

  I see all my rationalizations now for what they were—excuses not to tell. “I didn’t want you to know. I wanted to solve it and have you never know.”

  There’s a new tightness in his expression; even his eyes seem smaller. I reach up to right his crooked beret, but he pushes away my hand. Like he doesn’t trust me to touch his head now.

  A hoarse voice: “Why?”

  Panic rises in my chest. Here it is, I think. I kept it from him when I shouldn’t have, and now he’s angry.

  “Why?”

  I go on incoherently about feeling guilty for causing it, and the Dorks, and the stress of the imprisoned highcaps, but I know that if I’m not honest now, he’ll never trust me again, so I dig deeper. “Because the dream invader, you know, she plunges you back in old memories and scenarios. And because Packard and I were conferenced, I felt scared that my old memories of when we were close, when we were almost, you know …”

  “Yes, I know,” he says impatiently. “Together.”

  “I thought they’d be the ones Ez would grab and stir up and explore, and I would be reliving that whole time with Packard—with him following along in my
mind. It felt so …” I pause. “Like cheating. That reality isn’t my reality anymore. I didn’t want to go back there with him riding along. I just wanted to unlink us before you ever had to feel upset about it. Because you have so much to deal with.”

  “To prevent me from being upset. To protect me from you reliving your past.”

  “I know it sounds so …” I can’t find a damning enough word.

  His eyes look cold, stony. “You felt it was best to keep me in the dark to protect me.”

  I have nothing to say. Of course he’s right.

  “What do I care that you have a past with Packard?” he demands. “What do I care of memories? I care what you do now. I care who you are.”

  I feel small and despicable under his anger. Who I am is not looking so good. “I’m sorry.”

  “One thing! One thing I asked of you!” His eyes are so cold, I can’t see into him anymore. “What was the one thing I asked of you? The one thing?”

  “Never keep you in the dark.”

  “That’s right. Because managing me, and lying to protect me, is the best way to destroy me.” He flips the quilt off himself and gets out of bed. “My not knowing suited you, and everything else be damned.” He grabs his trousers. “Your only allegiance is to yourself. Just like Packard.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going somewhere?”

  “Apparently so.”

  “Where?”

  “Out.”

  “It’s four in the morning.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “What about the Dorks?”

  He shrugs on his long coat over his bare chest. “I will not be kept ignorant. I will not be managed.”

  “Otto, at least take one of your bodyguards.”

  “If I can’t walk in my own city alone, then I really do have nothing.” And with that he strides out of the room. Part of me wants to run after him, but it would be futile. I listen to his steps down the hall, then the soft thunk of the elevator doors.

  I rest my hand on his side of the bed, move it under the sheet, searching out the last of his warmth. What have I done? Don’t keep him in the dark—it was all he’d asked. A dangerous dream invader had Packard and me linked up; Otto deserved to know that. Even Packard warned me to tell him.