by Неизвестный
"Hell, I'm rich now that I've got my credit cards back. It's on me, all except your room, Dillon."
"Tomorrow we'll buy you some clothes that fit."
She was standing there, staring at the large motel room. There was a sitting area and a TV and a king-size bed. She turned to look at him. "It's payback time?" He cocked his head to one side. "What do you mean?" She nodded toward the bed. "I gather I'm to sleep with you in that bed."
"I was going to ask that you take the sofa. It's too short for me."
She gave him a baffled look, then walked to the bathroom, saying over her shoulder, "I don't understand you. Why aren't you furious with me? Why aren't you yelling? I'm not used to reasonable people, particularly reasonable men. Just look at you, the very image of long-suffering Job."
A bruise was coming up along her jaw. He wondered just how badly her shoulder was hurt. "I would be pissed at you if I hadn't seen you go flying off that motorcycle. You gave me a gray hair with that stunt."
"It was a slick spot. There was nothing I could do."
"Take a nice long shower. It should help your aches and bruises."
Five minutes later there was a knock on the adjoining door.
Quinlan opened it up. "She's in the shower. Come on in."
Dillon was carrying a big bag from Burger King and a container holding three big soft drinks. He set them down on the table and threw himself on the sofa.
"What a mess. At least it seems like she's not going to try to run again. I didn't know you had such charm."
"Hang around and maybe you'll get a few pointers."
"What the hell are we going to do, Quinlan? We've got to call Brammer. We don't even know what's going on with the rest of the investigation."
"It just occurred to me that it's the weekend. This is Friday night-well, actually Saturday morning. We're sort of off duty. We've got until Monday before we have to be the good guys again, right?"
Dillon was leaning back against the sofa, his eyes closed. "Brammer will have our balls for breakfast."
"Nah. He would have had our balls if we'd lost Sally. But we didn't. Everything will be fine now."
"I can't believe your wild-eyed optimism," Dillon said, opening his eyes and sitting up when he heard the shower turn off. “They have all sorts of those little shampoos and conditioners and stuff in the bathrooms."
"Your point?"
The blow-dryer went on.
"No point, really. Let's eat." Dillon said. He took a big bite of his burger, saying with his mouth full, "I'm stressed. I need to work out. Thank God tomorrow's Saturday. But damn, the gym will be crowded."
It was nearly three o'clock in the morning. It was quiet and dark in the room. He knew she was still awake. It was driving him nuts.
"Sally?" he said finally. "What's wrong?"
"What's wrong?" She started to laugh. "You have the feelings of a rhino. You ask me what's wrong?"
“Okay, you have a point, but you need to sleep and so do I. I can't go to sleep until you do."
"That's nonsense. I haven't made a sound."
"I know, that's what's so crazy about it. I know you're scared to death, but if you'll remember, I promised you that I'd protect you. I promised that we'd get this mess all cleared up. You know I can't do it without you."
"I told you, James, I don't remember that night. Not a single thing. There are just images and sounds, but nothing solid. I don't know who killed my father. He may not even have been killed when I was there. On the other hand, I could have shot him. I hated him more than you can begin to imagine. Noelle swore to me that she didn't kill him. There was more, but she didn't have time to tell me-if, that is, she would have told me in any case."
"You know you were there when he was shot. You know very well you didn't shoot him. But we'll get back to that later."
"I think my mother didn't tell me the truth because she knows I did shoot him. She's trying to protect me, not the other way around."
"No, you didn't shoot him. Maybe it was because she didn't have time since we showed up. Or maybe it was because she's protecting somebody else. We'll find out everything. Trust me. She told the cops and us that she'd been out all evening, alone, at a movie."
"Well, she told me she'd been with Scott. Which means she had a witness to prove she didn't kill my father."
"Scott? Your husband?"
"Don't be cute. You know he's my husband, but for only a very short time longer."
"All right. We'll take care of things. Now, it's late. We've got to get some sleep.
"I just wanted to tell you that you ran a good race, Sally, real good. When I just happened to spot you leaving the motel on that motorcycle, 1 nearly dropped my teeth. That was real smart of you to ditch the car and buy a bike. It took us totally by surprise."
"Yes, but it didn't matter when it came right down to it, did it?"
"No, thank God. Dillon and I are good. That and lucky as dogs on the loose in an Alpo factory. Where were you going?"
"To Bar Harbor. My grandfather gave me three hundred dollars. It was all he had in his wallet. When I counted it, I became aware of a certain irony."
"You're kidding. Three hundred exactly?"
"Right on the button."
"I didn't particularly care for your grandparents. The maid showed us into this back study. They were watching some Home Shopping show. I've got to say that was a surprise. Mr. Franklin Oglivee Harrison and wife watching that plebeian show."
"That would have surprised me too."
"Sally, would you like to come here to the big bed? No, don't freeze up on me. I can see you freezing from here. I'll bet your shoulder aches too, doesn't it?"
"Just a little bit. More sore than aches. I was very lucky."
"You're right about that. Come on now, I promise not to attack you. Remember how well we both slept in The Cove in my tower bedroom? It can't have bothered you all that much, since you were willing to tell the bikers about it quick enough."
The silence lasted for a full minute. She said, "Yes, I remember. I don't know why I opened my mouth and blabbed it to total strangers. I had that horrible nightmare."
"No, you remembered what had happened to you. It was a nightmare, but it was real. It was your father. At least you finally told me that.
"Come here, Sally. I'm exhausted and even you-super female-have got to be teetering on the edge just a bit."
To his relief and pleased surprise, she was standing beside the bed in the next moment, looking down at him. She was wearing one of his white undershirts. He pulled the covers back.
She slipped in and lay on her back.
He lay on his back four inches away from her.
"Give me your hand."
She did. He squeezed her fingers. "Let's get some sleep."
Surprisingly, they did.
When Quinlan awoke early the following morning, she was sprawled on top of him, her arms wrapped around his neck, her legs parted, lying directly on top of his. The undershirt had ridden up to her waist.
Oh, damn, he thought, trying not to move, trying to tell himself that this was just something else a professionally trained FBI agent had to learn how to deal with. So it hadn't been covered in the sixteen-week training course at Qutsitico. No big deal. He had experience. He wasn't sixteen. He breathed through his teeth.
Yes, he would handle this situation with poise and composure. He felt the heat of her through his boxer shorts. He was just a smidgeon of material away from her, that was all, and he knew that composure was a big thing at this point.
"Sally?"
"Hmmmm?"
He was harder than his uncle Alex's divining rod. No way he was going to scare her. As gently as he could, he pushed her off him onto her back. The only thing was that she didn't let go of him. He had no choice but to come down over her. Now Uncle Alex's divining rod was between her legs, just where it belonged.
What the hell was poise anyway? It didn't seem too important right this moment.
"S
ally, I'm in a bad way. Let me go, okay?"
Her arms eased around his neck but she kept her fingers laced.
He could have easily pulled away from her, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. She was slight and warm and he thought where he was and where she was a very nice thing. He loved the feel of her arms tight about his neck. He liked her warm breath against his neck.
He thought having her here beneath him until he croaked would be a very nice thing.
He was staring down at her. He opened his mouth and said, "Sally, would you marry me?"
Her eyes came open in a flash. "What did you say?"
"I asked you to marry me."
"I don't know, James. I'm already married."
"I'd forgotten that. Sally, please don't move. Do you want to take your arms off my neck?''
"No, not really. You're warm, James, and I like your weight on me. I feel safe and like everything just might be all right. Somebody would have to go through you to get to me. They'd never make it, you're too solid, too strong. Please don't roll off me."
Solid and strong was he? He turned even harder. "You're sure you're not afraid? After what happened to you at the sanitarium, I won't want to scare you."
She frowned even as she tightened her arms around his neck. "It's odd, but you never scared me except when you came roaring through Amabel's door like a bull that day, that day when my father called me for the first time. But after that, not at all, not even when you walked in on me and I'd just come out of the shower."
"You were so beautiful, I thought I'd lose it for sure."
"Me? Beautiful?" She snorted, and he was charmed. "I'm a stick, but you're nice to say it."
"But it's true. I looked at you and thought, She's perfect. I really like that little black mole on the side of your belly, just beside your left pelvic bone."
"Oh, dear, you saw that much of me?"
"Oh, yes. A man's eyes can move real fast when the motivation is there. Why don't you dump Scott Brainerd and then you can marry me?''
"I don't think he'll mind at all," she said after a moment. "Actually he's already dumped me, despite those pleas he made on TV." She was rubbing her hands over his shoulders and upper back. His skin was warm and smooth. "Shortly after we were married, I knew it had been a mistake. I was as busy as he was, always on the go, always going out to meetings and parties and functions in the evenings, always talking to people on the phone, always having people over. I loved it, and he seemed to at first.
"Then he told me he'd thought I would give all that up when we got married. Evidently he expected me to sit around until he got home and then feed him and probably rub his back and listen to him talk about his day, and then strip if he wanted sex. At least that's what he'd expected. Where he got that idea I'll never know.
"I tried to talk to him about it, but he would just shake his head and tell me over and over that I was a crummy wife, that I was unreasonable. He said I'd lied to him. That wasn't true. It came as a total shock to me after we were married when he started pitching fits over my schedule. While we were dating it had been just the same and he'd never said a word. Once he even told me how proud he was of me.
"When I finally told him that I knew he was having an affair and that I wanted out, he said I was imagining things. He said I was being silly, at least at first he said that. Then just days later he said I was losing it, that I was paranoid but that he wouldn't divorce me because I was going crazy. It wouldn't be right. No, he wouldn't do that to me. I didn't understand what he was talking about until about four days later.
"He was sleeping with another woman, James, I would bet my life on it. After I was locked away in Beadermeyer's sanitarium, I don't know what he did. I was kind of hoping that I'd never have to see him again. And I didn't. Just my father came. But Scott had to be in on it with my father. He was and is my husband, after all. And he had told me I was nuts."
Interesting, he thought. "Yes," he said. "He was in on it, up to his little shyster's ears. Who was he having an affair with?''
"I don't know. Probably someone at work, at TransCon. Scott's big into power."
"I'm sorry," he said, dipped down and kissed her ear, "but you're going to have to see him again, at least one more time. Good thing is, I'm your hero and I'm even official, so you don't have to worry.
"Sally, maybe Scott killed your father. Maybe your mother is protecting him."
"No, Scott's a worm. He's a stingy, cowardly little worm. He wouldn't have the guts to kill my father."
"All right." So much pain, he thought, too much. It would all work out, it just had to.
He leaned down and kissed her mouth this time. Her lips parted, and he wanted more than anything to go deep into her mouth, just as he wanted to go deeply inside her body, but he realized her world was spinning out of control right now. He didn't want to add any more confusion to her life. Good Lord, he'd asked her to marry him.
"Perhaps that would be good," she said and pulled him down so she could kiss him.
"What would be good?" he said in her mouth.
"To get married. To you. You're so normal, so big and normal. You didn't have a screwed-up childhood, did you?"
"No. I've got two older sisters and an older brother. I was the baby of the family. Everyone spoiled me rotten.
My family wasn't particularly dysfunctional. No one hit anyone. We kids beat the crap out of each other, but that's normal enough. I was big into sports, any and every sport, but my passion was and still is football. Sundays were created for football. I always go into withdrawal after the Super Bowl. Do you like football?"
"Yes. I had a woman gym teacher at my school who was from San Francisco. She was nuts about football and taught us the game. We got very good. The only problem was that there wasn't another girl's team around for us to play. I don't like basketball or baseball."
"I can live with that. I'll even play touch football with you."
She kissed his neck. He shuddered as he felt her opening even more beneath him. He said quickly, "My big screw-up was marrying Teresa Raglan when I was twenty-six. She was from Ohio, seemed just perfect for me.
"She's a lawyer, just like your husband and dear old dad. It turned out she fell in love with a guy in the Navy who was selling secrets to whoever was interested. I was the one who caught him. She defended him. She got him off, then left me and married him."
"That's pretty amazing, James. What happened to her?"
"They live in Annandale, Virginia. She's got two kids, the guy's some sort of lobbyist, paid really well, and they seem to be doing just great. I see them every once in a while. No, don't romanticize it and pretend that I was a brokenhearted wreck. I wasn't. I was shocked and furious for a while, before Dillon pointed out the absurdity of it all.
"The good guy catches the bad guy. The good guy's wife defends the bad guy and gets him off and then marries him. Pretty deep stuff to walk in. He was right. The whole thing was like a bad melodrama or a TV soap."
"James, you're wonderful. Even in all this mess, you can laugh and make me laugh, and you weren't angry that I poked a gun in your stomach and stole your car. I had to just ditch the car, James. Then I bought the motorcycle. I had to get away. I think if you could forget who you are and come to Bar Harbor with me, everything would be better than what it's going to be soon. I used to love life, James, before-well, that's not important right now."
"It is important. You want to know something else? Something else that will prove how great I am?"
"What's that?"
"I didn't even get pissed when you pulled my gun on me the second time."
"Well, that settles it then, doesn't it?" She moved beneath him, and he thought he'd lose it for sure. He was hard against her, and his heart was pounding deep and fast against her chest.
He hadn't intended to let things get this out of hand, at least he hadn't before she shifted beneath him, her legs wide now, his legs between hers.
He kissed her, then said into her mouth. "You
're beautiful, and you can feel how much I want you. But we can't let this happen. I don't have any condoms. The last thing you need is to get pregnant."
He heard Dillon moving about in the adjoining room. "Besides, Dillon is awake and up. It's nearly seven o'clock. We need to get back home."
She turned her face away from him. Her eyes were closed. He thought she must be in pain, from either her head or her shoulder. Without thinking, he reared back and pulled his undershirt over her head. She blinked up at him and made a move to cover herself.
No, he thought, she wasn't ready for this. "It's all right. I want to see how badly your shoulder is hurt. Hold still."