Extreme Danger

by Shannon McKenna

  “No. You need to get some rest. And lighten up,” Davy said calmly. “Nobody blames you for Novak.”

  “You did,” Nick pointed out. “You hated my guts for years.”

  “So? What if I did? I got the fuck over it.” Davy strode into the room. The chair creaked under his weight as he sat down. “And so should you. No harm done. So chill. It’s getting old, already.”

  The men fell silent. Nick felt like a hysterical idiot for bringing it up at all. Thinking about it made him want to fall into a crack in the ground. Talking about it, particularly with a McCloud, was worse.

  But Con and his lady had gotten through that adventure. They were alive, happy, even reproducing. That event had been superseded by brand new nightmares: Sergei, with his entrails piled on his chest. Sveti, in an unmarked grave. Or huddling some place worse than death.

  Hell, it was a wealth of guilt, betrayals, mistakes, fuckups. An embarrassment of fuel for his nightmares.

  “This isn’t going to work, unless we can find somebody else who speaks Ukrainian,” Seth fretted.

  “How about me?” asked a soft, feminine voice.

  All three men’s heads whipped around. It was Raine, Seth’s wife, who had accompanied him to the SafeGuard headquarters today. She was a slender, ethereal chick with silvery gray eyes and a cloud of blond hair that hung to her ass. The woman was mouthwatering, but any intelligent guy who took one look at Seth Mackey looming possessively over his wife quickly averted his eyes from her. And didn’t look back.

  “You speak Ukrainian?” Nick said, amazed.

  Her slender shoulders lifted. “Pretty much. My father and uncle emigrated from there in the sixties. I spoke it with them until I was twelve. They came from Kiev, and the language I remember will be years out of date. But I speak Russian, too. I’ll understand quite a bit. I could spell you at night, at least, when there’s not likely to be a lot of action.”

  “No way, babe. You’ve got better things to do with your nights than sit around watching that nasty bitch selling her wares. And you need your sleep,” Seth said testily, patting her belly. “Especially now.”

  She laid her hand on his shoulders with a tender smile that was so private, Nick looked away, embarrassed. “Just until you find someone else you can trust who speaks Ukrainian, OK?” she wheedled. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to lose any sleep yourself.”

  “Yeah, right,” Seth grunted. “Like I could sleep, alone, if you were here, manning vid screens. Tiring youself out.” He shot Nick an unfriendly look. “I think it’s a shitty idea.”

  “I think it’s great,” Raine said brightly.

  Nick rubbed his burning eyes, and blinked at her. “Thank you,” he said simply, in Ukrainian. “That would be a great help.”

  “It’s nothing,” she replied in the same language. “My pleasure.”

  Seth gave her a mock-evil squint. “Don’t talk to other guys in a language I don’t know,” he growled.

  Nick looked around on the shelves until he found a pile of telephone books while the others were snickering at the guy, and forced his stinging eyes to focus until he found the Seattle yellow pages. He yanked it down off the shelf, flipped through until he got to R.

  “What are you looking for in there?” Seth demanded.

  “A realtor,” he said.

  Davy scowled. “What for?”

  “Gotta sell my condo.” He stared down, daunted by the sheer number of possibilities. Pages of realtors, for fuck’s sake. How could he tell who to call? “I have to pay for this crazy shit somehow.”

  Davy snatched the phone book from him, and flung it. It thunked heavily back onto the shelf, slid, and fell facedown onto the floor.

  “Stop being an asshole,” he snapped. “Before I lose my patience.”

  Chapter

  15

  Click. Beep. “Becca, this is Marla. I know you’re not up at the island, because Jerome went there today to check on the place when he heard that the house next door burned to the ground. Were you aware that he found the place wide open? Front door swinging, alarm deactivated, lights on? There was a raccoon in the kitchen going through the cupboards! The place was a disaster. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how unhappy Jerome is about this, and how badly this reflects on me. I’m baffled, Becca. It’s not like you at all. And since you’re not at the island, why aren’t you back at work? We have that banquet tomorrow night, and two weddings this weekend! We are swamped, and I mean swamped. Give me a call, if you value your job. And do let me know at least that you’re all right.”

  Click. Beeeeeeeeep.

  Becca stared at the phone from her position sprawled on the couch. It was on the table in front of her, within arm’s reach, but for the fact that her arm was too heavy to lift.

  Value her job? Huh. Did she? It was far too weighty a question for her brain to contemplate.

  She was too miserable to care. Nothing seemed to have any value. Everything she’d ever accomplished, all her fretting and saving and striving, seemed like so much frantic scurrying on a hamster’s wheel. Who cared about it? Who thanked her for it? Who did it really benefit?

  No one. It was busywork. Meaningless, empty busywork. Her life was made up of the trivial details no one else had time to care about.

  No wonder Nick hadn’t been interested in sticking around. Or coming back. Or giving her his phone number. Or even asking for hers. Just a couple of bouts of hot, sweaty sex to work off his adrenaline jag, and he was done with her. She could hardly blame him. She had nothing to offer him.

  And oh, man, the pity party was getting ugly, but she couldn’t seem to snap out of it. She’d already tried her usual tricks. The Oreos lay on the table, packaging ripped and ravaged. Music annoyed her, movies bored her or filled her with a vague sense of dread. She’d tried a scented bath, with bath pearls and bubbles and perfumed goop. She’d even broken out her emergency stash of Godiva. Nothing worked.

  So get busy. Get off your lazy bum, her helpless, hijacked practical self lectured her miserable, depressed, useless self. It’s the only way.

  So very busy, her depressed self scoffed. Like always. Busy, busy Becca. Too busy to notice that what she did had no meaning. None at all. Zip.

  The phone rang again. Becca groaned, flung her head back and her hands over her ears, bracing herself through the interminable shrill six rings, and her own tooth-grindingly cheerful outgoing message. God, had she ever really been that perky? She wanted to smack herself.

  Click. Beep. “Hi, Becca? Are you there? It’s Carrie. I’ve been calling you for three days now and you’re never—”

  “Carrie?” Becca pushed the stop button on the machine. “I’m here.” For her baby sister, she’d break the paralysis.

  “Oh, thank God. What the hell is going on? Are you OK? I talked to Josh, and he said he hadn’t been able to reach you either! And I tried you at work, too! They told me you were out! Have you been sick?”

  “No,” she mumbled. “I just…didn’t feel like going.”

  “Didn’t feel like going?” Carrie echoed her words in a disbelieving voice. “Wait. Don’t you work Thursday nights at your catering job?”

  Becca felt a zing of alarm, swiftly smothered by another wave of weariness. “Oh, shit,” she said heavily. “Yes, I guess I do. I, uh, forgot.”

  Carrie was eloquently silent for a moment. “This is just too weird,” she said. “You’ve never forgotten an appointment in your entire life.”

  “Oh, stop it,” she said crabbily. “I’m not that much of a robot.”

  “What’s the matter with you? Is it about that scum-sucking man slut, Justin? Would you like me and Josh to flatten him for you?”

  Becca hesitated. She’d fretted over how much she should tell her younger brother and sister about what had happened on the island. She’d decided that for the time being, she would go with a highly edited but literally true version.

  “It’s not about Justin,” she said. “I, um, had an encounter this weekend.
”

  “Encounter?” Carrie made an impatient sound. “What do you mean? A close encounter of the third kind? A romantic encounter?”

  “I think romantic would be overstating it,” Becca said cautiously. “Intense would probably be the better word.”

  “Oh! You mean sex? Yowza! You bad girl! I didn’t know you had it in you! Did you get Justin out of your system?”

  She blinked, startled by the question, and realized that, for all her misery, none of it was caused by her ex. Her feelings about Nick were oh, so much more compelling. Not that it made the situation any better.

  Misery was still misery, after all. No matter what caused it.

  “I suppose I did, though I wasn’t thinking about it in those terms at the time,” she said.

  “So? What’s he like?” Curiosity sharpened Carrie’s voice.

  “Not my usual type,” Becca said. “Big. Tough. Lots of muscles. Long hair, beard stubble, tattoos. A foul mouth. Sort of…dangerous.”

  “Woo hoo! He sounds virile. So? Was he, you know, good?”

  “I tell no tales,” Becca said primly.

  Carrie made a disgusted noise. “Hello? Becca, this is me, Carrie. Your sister. We’re alone. I’m legally an adult. Was he good?”

  She took a deep breath, and it rushed out. “He was amazing,” she confessed. “Absolutely unbelievable.”

  Carrie crowed with delight. “Oh, thank God you’ve finally gotten properly laid! I was wondering if it would ever happen! It wouldn’t have ever, if you’d married the dickwad. So when do we meet Mr. Muscles?”

  She winced. “You won’t. It ended. Very badly.”

  “One of those one-night stands where the guy never calls again?”

  Becca let out a long, measured sigh. “I guess so. More or less.”

  “Those suck,” Carrie said sagely. “But it’s probably just as well. He’s just a rebound boy. Slam, bam, thank you, Sam. Those Neanderthal types are great when the lights are out, but you can’t take them to the opera. You can’t let yourself get depressed about that.”

  She was obscurely irritated by her sister’s superior, lecturing tone. “Actually, it would appear that I can,” she snapped.

  It always needled her when Carrie played the role of the more sexually experienced sister. At nineteen, she was just too damn young, but Becca had always been too frantically busy keeping her orphaned family afloat to do the role justice herself. Carrie had picked up the slack with great enthusiasm. It worried Becca sometimes

  Carrie was still nattering on. Becca jerked her attention back to her sister’s voice. “…up to Seattle, just to check on you,” she was saying. “It’s definitely time for a visit.”

  Panic exploded through her. She sat bolt upright. “No! Carrie, no. Don’t come up. Please.”

  “Good God, Becky. Why the hell not?”

  Becca floundered for a credible explanation, but she found herself mired in unspeakable memories instead. Gunshots, pools of blood, slashed throats, the Spider’s wet smile and glittering eyes, it was all far too close to her, too real. The toxic vibe infected the very air she breathed. She didn’t want Carrie and Josh anywhere near it.

  And she couldn’t do anything crazy, like disrupting their lives by taking out a loan and sending them both to Argentina without telling them everything. Telling them struck her as even more dangerous.

  “But I’m worried about you,” Carrie said plaintively. “It’s not like you, Becca. Not answering your phone, forgetting to go to work, picking up dangerous strangers and having wild sex with them…it’s weird. I think you need some serious, heavy-duty, industrial strength cuddling.”

  Her heart squeezed, and tears rushed into her eyes. “You’re a sweetie, honey, and I appreciate the concern, but I don’t want to interrupt your studies. You can’t lose your scholarship. I can’t—”

  “Yes, yes. I know. You can’t help me with rent and tuition both. I know, we’ve been through it.”

  “Please,” Becca pleaded. “I can’t handle a visit now. I’m just not presentable. I need to lick my wounds alone for a while, OK? And oh, before I forget. I lost my cell phone. Here’s my new number. Got a pen?”

  “Go ahead,” Carrie said.

  Becca recited the new number to her. “Could you give it to Josh? And as soon as things calm down, I’ll come down to see you. I promise.”

  “Hmm. We’ll see,” Carrie hedged. “I’ll talk to Josh.”

  “Carrie, I’m serious,” she said, edging on desperation. “Please—”

  “Talk to you soon, Becky. Big, smoochy kisses, OK? Bye.”

  The connection broke. Becca stared at the phone in her hand, silently cursing her stubborn little sister. She flung the phone in the direction of the table and missed. It tumbled to the floor and began to beep forlornly.

  Just as well. She didn’t want to get an angry phone call from Gilda, the manager of DeLillo’s Fine Gourmet Catering, Becca’s off-and-on night job. She didn’t want to grope for lies, excuses, justifications, for feeling so bad. She just wanted to stare at the sky through the window as it turned from cobalt blue to black.

  It got so terribly quiet. She pushed the button of the TV remote, did a desultory surf, and settled on a channel with Friends reruns. That was the only thing that felt safe and bland enough to watch.

  The doorbell rang, and the illusory sense of safety dissolved like smoke. In an instant, she went from feeling limp to feeling every muscle go rigid, with terror.

  Who…? The Spider had found her already?

  She got up, stumbling down onto one wobbly knee and kept herself bent over in the dark so no one looking in the windows would see any moving shadows as she crept towards the door. Kicking herself for not thinking to turn on the porch light before. Turning it on now would announce her presence behind the door like a trumpet fanfare.

  Oh, hell, her security was useless anyway, so Nick said. And the Spider’s guys could shoot her right through the freaking walls, if they felt like it. They probably had thermal imaging devices on their damn guns. She should get over herself. She forced herself to stand up.

  She put her eye to the peephole. There was enough light from the streetlamps to see the tall, broad silhouette. Those night-dark eyes.

  Nick. Oh, God. It was Nick.

  A wobbly rush of fresh feelings went through her. A thrill of excitement, mixed with shame and fury, and a sharp tang of fear.

  And a hot, sweet twist of awareness between her legs.

  No way. Not in a million years would she let that bastard get that close to her again. No matter what pulsed and throbbed inside her.

  She put her hand up to the mass of curly hair that swung a couple inches below her chin. She still couldn’t get used to all that volume the shorter length created around her face, but she was past the worst of the shock, at this point, and the hairdresser had done a nice job in shaping it, so she was coping with the hair trauma. No thanks to him, though. She shoved her glasses up the bridge of her nose, and squinted through the peephole.

  Wow. He’d cut his hair too, just as he’d threatened. He looked very different. The spiky brush of hair stuck out every which way. The bruise under his eye had faded to a purplish line slashing downwards diagonally, from the inside corner of his eye to under his cheekbone.

  He wore black leather. She was not one bit surprised.

  His dark eyes stared into hers, unwavering. It was like the door didn’t exist at all. He knew perfectly well she was there. Staring at him. Cowering behind the door like a goddamn mouse. Whiskers trembling.

  She undid the old lock, the new lock, the deadbolt, the chain, and pried out the kitchen chair she’d wedged under the knob. She yanked the door open, and gave him her coldest frigid bitch look.

  “You,” she said. “What do you want?”

  He didn’t answer. Seconds crept by, stretched into minutes.

  She realized, at length, that being cold and mean would have no effect on this guy. He wouldn’t get the subliminal message. N
or would he get embarrassed or flustered, or feel in any way at a disadvantage. Why should he? Mean and cold was his normal default setting. It probably made him feel right at home. Comfortably familiar. God only knew, tenderness and intimacy had scared him half to death.

  This was silly. They couldn’t stand there having a staring contest all night, and having the door open to the night made her twitch. She stepped back, and gestured him ungraciously into the apartment.

  He closed the door behind himself. The room was so dark. She stood there, rigid with uncertainty. Nick flipped the light on. She flinched, putting her hands up to her eyes. Since that weekend, turning lights on when it was dark outside made her feel scarily exposed, like being in a fishbowl, even with the blinds closed. She’d been creeping around in the dark and she had the bruises on her shins to prove it.

  He stared at her fixedly, his thick, straight dark brows knitted into a scowl. “I told you to go blonde,” he said.

  Her chin went up. “What are you going to do about it? Highlight me by brute force? Tie me down and do foil tips?”

  His eyes flashed. “If I had you tied, it’s not your hair I’d go for.”

  She was struck dumb for a moment. She took a step back, raised a shaking finger, waggled it back and forth. “Uh-uh. Don’t start with me, Nick. Don’t even think about it.”

  He lifted his shoulders in a casual shrug, but the intensity of his gaze was unwavering. “Your hair looks pretty,” he said. “I like it.”

  Her hand flew up to touch the short ends before she could stop herself. “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said. “What you’re looking at is a miracle rescue.”

  That appeared to roll right off his back. “You should change the color, though,” he said blandly.

  “I doubt those guys would recognize me,” she said. “I wasn’t wearing glasses, I had lipstick all over my mouth, and I was bare-assed under that slutty blouse. Probably all they ever saw was my chest and butt.”