The Dangerous Boxed Set

by Lisa Marie Rice

  That she couldn’t eat didn’t surprise her. She could barely breathe. Sleep was almost a forgotten concept, which was for the best. When she did manage to nod off, she would wake up immediately in a cold sweat. Her dreams were filled with images of flaming cars flying off a mountain, explosions, and charred bones. Her nightmares were incredibly vivid, down to the smell, which would remain a part of her forever.

  Charity had insisted on going to the coroner’s office to identify Nick. The sheriff and the coroner both had told her that visual identification was impossible and so she was exonerated from viewing the body. What remained of the body.

  Something, some Prewitt concept of honor, made her insist on seeing the remains, overriding the sheriff’s and coroner’s wishes. At one level, she wished with all her heart that she’d listened to them. Nick’s charred remains had been enough to make even the coroner wince.

  What had been laid out on the autopsy table bore no relationship to a human being—it was simply a collection of blackened bones, some cracked open to the marrow, laid out in a terrible facsimile of a human shape.

  Blackened skull on top, the flesh burned away, baring Nick’s mouth of perfect teeth in a macabre grin. The coroner had arranged all the bones in the anatomically correct positions, except for the right tibia, which had never been recovered. It left a blank spot in the sooty sketch of what had once been a human being.

  The sheriff clutched her elbow, hard, in case she fainted.

  Prewitts were made of sterner stuff than that, though. She didn’t faint and she didn’t break down. Whatever she felt was to be saved for the privacy of her own home. As she gazed at Nick’s remains, she could feel her own face, stiff and expressionless.

  She’d stepped forward, away from the sheriff’s hand, and approached the table.

  The sheriff had said that it wasn’t necessary to view the body, but it was necessary.

  She had to stand witness for Nick, let him leave this life under a loving gaze. She was his family. He had no parents and no siblings, just like her. They were each other’s family and this was the last thing she could do for him.

  Fate had stopped her from bearing witness for her parents. She never saw them again after the night of the fire, not their bodies, not their coffins. She didn’t attend their funeral. By the time she woke up from her coma, her parents had been in the ground for two weeks.

  So she was determined that she would stand by Nick in the only way she could. If his spirit lingered anywhere near his broken, burned body, he would know that she stood steadfast by his side, no matter the cost to her.

  She didn’t regret it, not once, though what she’d seen would, she knew, forever color her nightmares.

  And until the end of time, on her deathbed, she would smell that terrible stench of charred bones and burnt flesh.

  Her stomach quivered again and she swallowed heavily.

  The car rolled slowly to a stop outside her house. She had visitors. Her heart beat slow and heavy in her chest.

  Whoever was coming, they were not welcome.

  In a token attempt at trying to stem her bottomless, dark grief, she’d switched on the living room lights. Unfortunately, they were visible from the street. She couldn’t even pretend nobody was home, as she had done for the past three days.

  Her living room window framed the big black limo parked at the curb. She could see everything perfectly.

  The driver, dressed in elegant black livery, came around the car and opened a backseat door, extending a hand to the man who emerged. The man’s deeply lined face was sharply handsome. An expensive Borsalino covered his longish, graying blond hair. He was dressed for the cold—a heavy midnight blue overcoat and thick leather gloves covering what she knew were scarred hands. One hand was clutching an ebony walking stick with a polished ivory knob.

  He was making his limping way slowly up her walkway, leaning heavily on the arm of his driver, who held Vassily’s arm with one hand and a big black box with another.

  Vassily.

  He’d come out in the freezing cold, just for her.

  Charity winced. Vassily coming out on a cold day was a big deal. A very big deal. He made no secret of the fact that he hated the cold, venturing out only when necessary in winter. Watching him make his slow, laborious way to her, it was painfully clear that this cost him sacrifice.

  It was a magnificent gesture. Charity knew she should be grateful, even flattered. This was something Vassily would do for very few people in the world. Maybe she was the only person he’d do this for. But though she was touched, she was in no condition to receive him.

  She wanted to be left alone and not have to gather her scattered, grieving self together enough to make conversation. There was no conversation in her, not enough energy left in her to deal with anyone.

  But this had to be done. Vassily was an old man. Well, if not old, much older than she. He was a great man who had suffered great tragedy, and he was making an effort to come to offer her comfort in the hour of her own tragedy.

  On any possible scale of suffering, Vassily’s suffering far, far exceeded hers. He’d been to hell and back, and for five long years. He’d not only lost loved ones, he’d been injured, tortured, forced to work in mines in subzero temperatures, whipped and beaten.

  No, her suffering was a paltry thing in comparison. Shame made her stiffen her spine. Somehow, she had to claw her way up out of the slippery, gory, deep, dark well of mourning she’d fallen into. For the next half hour or hour, or however long Vassily chose to stay, she had to somehow take her suffering and compress it, tuck it away somewhere, just long enough so she could function while he was here.

  Afterward, when he’d gone, when she was alone, she could let the grief unravel and swell to monstrous proportions again, until it occupied every cell of her body and mind, as it had for the past three days.

  But for now, whatever it took, she had to cling to control.

  Vassily’s slow walk up to her front porch allowed her to rush into the bathroom and dash some cold water on her face, pull a comb through her tangled hair. She looked up into the mirror above the sink and shuddered, hardly recognizing herself.

  Her eyes were red rimmed and swollen, testimony to her sleepless nights and the endless tears. Dark bruises shadowed her eyes. She’d lost weight, in just these three days. Her cheekbones were sharper, the line of her jaw more pronounced. Her skin was paper white, bloodless. She looked caved in, beaten. She looked ready for the grave herself.

  The grave…in a flash she was at the cemetery again. The dark gouge in the earth yawned at her feet, the heavy mahogany coffin’s gleaming brass handles starkly contrasting with the frozen black earth. The smell of unearthed sod rose in her nostrils, churning her stomach. The smell of death and…

  She froze on the threshold of her bedroom.

  Oh my God.

  There was another smell in the room, lingering in the air. Musky, faintly citrusy. Familiar, unmistakable.

  Impossible.

  Nick’s smell.

  How could—

  The front doorbell rang and her head whipped around, making her faintly nauseous again.

  Every hair on her body rose because together with his scent, she somehow felt…Nick. Felt his presence, felt his aura. Nick’s aura was strong. He was a force of nature. Whenever she’d been near him, it was as if the molecules in the air speeded up. He cast an energy field around him. He punched a six-foot-two Nick-shaped hole in the universe.

  The bell rang again, longer this time.

  Charity should be rushing to the door, opening it, and welcoming Vassily into her home. It was beyond discourteous letting an elderly man wait outside in the freezing cold. But Charity was frozen herself, with horror.

  She was drenched in Nick’s scent, drowning in his aura and it terrified her.

  Oh God, this was infinitely worse than smelling charred bones, horrible as that was. The moments by Nick’s poor, ravaged body had been traumatic, the memory seared into her v
ery being. No wonder, in her grief, that she could revisit them. She knew she’d revisit the images until the end of time, in her nightmares.

  Still, smelling Nick’s death, however awful, was normal.

  But smelling and sensing Nick—the live, vital, sexy Nick, not the sad charred sticks that were all that was left of his mortal body—in her bathroom and bedroom took horror to a new level. This wasn’t a memory, something real, something she could hold on to, however horrible. No, this was her mind playing tricks on her. This was insanity.

  That slippery hold she had on reality was starting to fray.

  She looked down at herself. Her forearms were covered in goose bumps.

  The bell rang again, two long rings.

  The idea of feeling Nick in empty rooms for the rest of her life was terrifying. Her stomach rejected the very notion.

  She bolted for the toilet where she miserably retched the few remaining molecules of milk left. Her stomach spasmed and spasmed again, bringing up only green bile, until she didn’t have the strength to stand and sank down to her knees.

  She rested like that, feverish cheek against the cold porcelain bowl, for a full minute. Vassily was waiting outside, but she simply didn’t have the strength to get up.

  Another ring, this time with impatience behind it. Vassily would be feeling the cold. His leg ached when the weather was damp and cold, like today. She simply couldn’t make him wait any longer.

  Using the toilet for leverage, she stood slowly, straightening and waiting a second to see if her stomach had settled. It had.

  She rinsed her mouth out with water to rid herself of the terrible taste.

  Gritting her teeth, Charity forced her feet to move, using sheer willpower to make it to the door. One foot after another. Left, right, left, right. Spooked, trembling.

  Fuck, that was close!

  Nick’s heart was still pounding as he crouched in the space between the garage and the house. His thermal imager had shown that she was in the living room, so he’d taken the chance to seed the back of her house with bugs. In her purse, in the vase on the sideboard, in the pockets of her jackets. He was fast and he was quiet, but she’d almost caught him.

  Checking in with the head office this morning had driven his anxiety levels off the charts. After giving him a scolding Nick barely listened to, the boss provided an update.

  Chatter in Sandland was off the charts, spiking yesterday, about an upcoming meeting with “the Russian.” They’d intercepted a call between Hassad al-Banna and Abu Rhabi, who were a little less circumspect with their cell phones than Worontzoff was.

  There was going to be a meeting, soon. And something else was going to happen, soon. And it was going to be big. The details weren’t there but it was enough to make the office crap its collective pants.

  That was the only reason Nick hadn’t been sent to Alaska or North Dakota to check on terrorist ties there. And since he’d flat-out refused to come back to D.C., he was allowed to continue with the mission. Under strictest orders to stay in the surveillance van and not even crack the door open for a piss.

  But Charity’s house was a magnet, he simply couldn’t stay away. He’d get on the road to drive to the surveillance van, then find himself driving back in. It was as if Hit Man’s SUV was sensitive to some kind of force field around Parker’s Ridge.

  The operator who could never get lost now found himself lost beyond saving, unable to leave.

  Being here, now, outside Charity’s house, was breaking every single rule in the book, and about a dozen beyond that.

  He wasn’t going to be recognized. Dressed in black from head to foot, with thin black shooting gloves and a black Nomex balaclava, nobody could possibly recognize him even if they saw him, which they wouldn’t.

  He had his head against the downstairs bathroom wall. Through the siding, he could hear her vomiting, then quietly crying. He heard it twice—through the wall and over the mikes he’d scattered through the bedroom.

  Her misery came through, loud and clear.

  Nick reached out a hand and lay it against the cedar siding. Not a foot from his hand, he knew, was Charity. He’d give his left nut to be able to hold her, ease the tears, though they were for him.

  His hand curled into a fist and he beat it, gently, against the wall, body tense with frustration, while Charity whimpered.

  A big black limo with smoked windows had come to a rolling stop in front of the house and Nick crouched even farther, watching through the alleyway between the house and the garage. A big rhododendron bush hid him from sight.

  He came to high alert when an ivory-tipped black cane came into view, followed by an elegantly shod foot. The man’s uniformed driver held a back door open for him. The driver was carrying a big black box with one arm and supporting the man with the other.

  Several minutes later, Nick heard the doorbell chime through his headset. In the bathroom, silence, then the sound of running water.

  Vassily Worontzoff, world-famous writer, international crime syndicate boss, had come calling, to console Nick’s widow.

  Twenty

  Charity opened the door just as Vassily was lifting his gloved hand to ring again.

  “My dear,” he said warmly, looking her up and down. He walked in, taking off his hat and pulling off his gloves. “I’ve been worried about you. On the table by the window, Ivan,” he said without looking around.

  The driver deposited the big black box on the table and quietly left. A minute later, the powerful engine of the limo fired up and the big car drove away.

  Vassily waited until they heard the car depart, then stepped forward and enveloped her in his arms. Her own arms came up automatically.

  He was the first person she’d touched since…since Nick. She hadn’t wanted to be hugged by anyone at the funeral and had avoided even those pointless air kisses. Even Uncle Franklin had seemed to understand that she couldn’t be touched, otherwise she’d fly into a million pieces. And Aunt Vera—the poor darling had been barely aware of what was going on.

  So no one had hugged her and no one had held her and she realized now, right now, how much she desperately needed both. These past days had been spent on another planet, far from humankind. A big, dark, airless planet with heavy gravity and no life. Vassily’s tight embrace bumped her back to Earth, among her own kind.

  He was a man who’d known great sorrow. He held her as if he wanted to absorb some of her own.

  “My dushecka,” he murmured, head bent over hers.

  His heavy overcoat was warm from the car, as was the pocket created by his shoulder and neck. He gently pushed her head down more tightly onto his shoulder, her cheek nestling against the soft cashmere of his overcoat, her nose against the warm skin of his neck.

  “Cry, dushka,” he commanded softly. “It’s best. Get it out.”

  Her heart was drumming, so quickly she thought it might just beat its way outside her chest. A high keening sound rose in the room and it took her a second to realize it came from her. Her lips tightened against the sound, but it wouldn’t be contained. She took one big gulping sob of a breath, another and then it was meltdown. Utter and total meltdown.

  How could she have any tears left? Surely she’d cried them all, buckets, lakes, oceans of tears.

  Charity cried as if she’d never cried before—a deep upwelling of despair. She was racked with sobbing, shaking, and shivering, tears spurting from her eyes. She was trembling so hard she’d have fallen to the ground if he hadn’t been holding her up.

  Vassily held her tightly, letting the crying jag take its course, letting the hot, poisonous ball of grief work its way through her system, the sounds she was making raw and ugly in the quiet house.

  She cried until her throat ached, until her lungs hurt, until she felt her bones would shatter from the trembling, holding on to the lapels of Vassily’s coat, drenching his shoulder.

  The hot ball of fiery grief had moved on, at least for the moment, leaving Charity clinging to Vas
sily, weak-kneed and dazed.

  “Come, my dear. Let’s sit down.” It was the first time he’d spoken since the crying jag had begun. She was infinitely grateful that he hadn’t spoken platitudes while she’d been crying her heart out.

  But then that wasn’t Vassily’s style. He wouldn’t reassure her that things would get better. This was a man who understood tragedy down to the depths of his soul.

  Vassily walked her to the sofa, sat her down, unbuttoned with difficulty his overcoat, and sat down next to her. Again, he put his arm around her and kissed her gently on her forehead, and again on her cheek. His lips were warm and dry.

  Some time later, when the wildest stages of grief were passed—however impossible it was to think of that time—Charity knew that she would cherish the memory of his gestures of affection.

  He rarely touched anyone. He always seemed to her to be so self-contained, not ever needing human warmth. Content with his music and reading and whatever it is he did all day in that enormous, beautiful mansion. Certainly, she’d never seen him with a female companion and, at many of his musical soirées, she had somehow ended up doing the honors of the house.

  Suddenly, Charity wondered whether Vassily had a love life.

  It had never even occurred to her that he might. Perhaps because she’d been blinded by his fame or had been unable to look beyond the scars to the man underneath. He wasn’t even that old. Though the years in the prison camp had aged him terribly, Vassily was only fifty-four. Young for a man. Especially for a rich and famous one.

  Did he have a secret lover he didn’t want to share with the world? Perhaps a Russian émigrée, a woman of letters that he saw discreetly from time to time? Someone he could speak to in his native tongue? That would be best. She hoped he didn’t have a series of paid liaisons—dry, heartless, mercenary affairs, swift and cold. How awful.

  A large linen handkerchief had appeared in his hand and he wiped her eyes carefully, then he held the handkerchief politely against her nose while she honked into it. She must look awful—red-eyed, red-nosed, gaunt, dazed.