by Barry Eisler
She looked at him. “Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know. I just can’t figure you out.”
“I’ll be here. Just give me a minute first.”
She went to the bathroom and came out a little while later, looking different. She’d been wearing makeup, he realized, and had washed it off. He liked her better this way. He almost said so, but then decided it wouldn’t sound right.
The shower was heaven—roomy, clean, and with great water pressure—and he would have loved to linger and unwind in the steam and the heat. But they did have a lot to cover. And though he believed her when she said she’d still be around when he got out, he didn’t think it would be a good idea to give her too much time to reconsider, either.
He dried off, then brushed with the hotel-provided toothbrush and toothpaste. There was a whole complement of toiletries, in fact—comb, brush, cotton swabs, even earplugs, though who would ever need earplugs in a sleepy place like this? Well, maybe reprobates who didn’t like the sound of waves on the beach. Or who suffered the misfortune of a snoring partner. Earplug fetishists, maybe. About the only thing the hotel didn’t provide, it seemed, was a condom. Which was unusual, as, in his experience with such establishments—and, in fact, back in the day with this very establishment in particular—the hotel-provided condom was considered both chic and de rigueur.
He looked at his duds, which he’d left in a pile on the floor. The thought of getting back into clothes so sweat soaked and road grimed after a good shower wasn’t appealing, so he pulled on one of the hotel robes instead and hung the clothes on the shower rod to air them. He’d buy some new ones tomorrow.
She was sitting on the couch when he came out, her gun on the coffee table within easy reach. The Glock 21, he saw. Kind of a big gun for someone her size. On the other hand, she’d driven the Kawasaki like a pro.
She still looked tense, and he wished she’d taken a shower. It might have relaxed her some. It sure had him.
“There’s another robe,” he said, taking the other end of the couch and turning so he was facing her. He placed the Supergrade on the coffee table alongside the Glock. “Might be more comfortable than that little cocktail dress. Though you do look fabulous, I won’t deny, especially after surviving a gunfight and fleeing by motorbike through the dead of the sultry Thailand night.”
She smiled again. She had such a nice smile. It made him sad that it took so much to coax it out of hiding.
“Hey,” she said. “Before, in the hotel stairwell. You said your guy had contractors waiting for Sorm at the fire exit, and that if Sorm went that way the contractors would ‘have him.’”
Damn, she had zeroed right in on the very contradiction he knew he was going to have to grapple with.
“That’s right,” he said.
“What did you mean by that? Why contractors? Why ‘have him’? You dropped those guards. Why wouldn’t you just kill Sorm yourself? After the flashbang, he would have been helpless.”
“Well, this is the part where I have to say it’s complicated. And I hope maybe you can help me figure it out.” He cleared his throat. “All right, here it is. Some people hired me, ostensibly to have a frank conversation with Sorm, but it turned out to be a setup and they were trying to get me to converse with Sorm’s enemy. So now, I find myself embroiled in all that skullduggery, and my best way out of it is to finish the conversation, if you know what I mean. But at the same time, I’m hemmed in by circumstances.”
Omitting some names and being general about the details, he told her about Gant, and Vann, and the indictment in New York, and Kanezaki, and Sorm being a CIA and DIA asset, and Zatōichi, and how he’d promised to bring Sorm in, not kill him. Rain would have had a fit that he told her so much. But come on, she was obviously no friend of Sorm. Though in fairness, he knew his inclination to trust her wasn’t only that.
“I had a feeling he was on the run,” she said when he told her about the indictment. “One of my leads told me he’d switched to a burner and needed fast cash.”
That tracked with what he’d learned from Vann. “Yeah, because of the UN guy. Vann. Vann told me Sorm must have gotten wind of what was coming and hightailed it.”
He told her more, about how the guy he worked with had tracked Sorm to Pattaya, about the plan to capture him.
“So even if Sorm was there,” she said, “and even if he went out the back door of his safe room, you didn’t know for sure that he’d take the stairs all the way to the ground level and go out the fire exit, where the contractors were supposedly waiting.”
Man, she really had a nose for potential inconsistencies in a story. “That’s true,” he said. “Like I said, the plan was for me to be hot on his heels to that level, or more likely to drag him by the scruff of the neck. But without that, then yeah, even if he was there, which I seriously doubt he was, and even if he went out the back door of his little VIP room, if he had a hotel room key, he could have gotten out of the stairs at any level he liked.”
That seemed to satisfy her. Or at least she didn’t ask about any other inconsistencies.
When he was finished, he thought she was going to argue about how capturing Sorm was bullshit, and how they had to kill him. Which, now that he’d talked it through, he figured was an easy compromise—he wouldn’t kill Sorm, he’d just help her do it. It wasn’t like he’d promised to protect Sorm, after all. Only not to kill him. So this lady could do the actual coup de grace. That way, Dox’s promise would be intact and the world would be a better place, too.
But instead she said, “Why are you telling me so much?”
“Am I oversharing?”
She gave him that small laugh again, which he liked.
“It’s more than I would have told you.”
“It’s more than you have told me.”
“What do you want to know?”
“You’re a cop, aren’t you? Or at least you were one.”
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t show anything at all. But . . . something snuck through. In her face, or her eyes. It was too subtle to describe. But it was enough.
“Why do you say that?” she said.
“You’re a hell of an interrogator, for one thing. You stay on inconsistencies like a bloodhound on a scent. Meaning okay, could be a cop, but could be a ’gator—an interrogator, maybe air force, I guess I could see that. But you said you had a ‘lead’ on Sorm. And that one of your ‘leads’ told you Sorm had switched to a burner. That sounds cop to me, not military.”
She didn’t answer.
“And besides,” he went on, “no ’gator I’ve ever known could shoot for beans. Maybe at target practice, but not when the bullets are flying the other way. Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”
“My uncle.”
“Who’s your uncle, Wyatt Earp?”
“Where did you learn?”
“The US Marine Corps. Though I’m a sniper by temperament and training, and prefer to avoid gunfights up close. Okay, your turn.”
She didn’t answer.
“The thing is,” he said, “even if I’m barking up the wrong tree, and I don’t think I am, I’m in the right neck of the woods. You’re a pro, I can see that, but at the same time I can tell this isn’t professional for you, the way it is for me.”
“It’s just professional for you?”
He thought for a moment. “Well, it’s funny you would ask. When I came out here it was. But then I met this nice lady in Phnom Penh, Chantrea, and got to know her, and saw a few things, and . . . I don’t know. I guess it has gotten personal, and not just because I tend to find myself irritated when people hire me under false pretenses and then try to kill me on top of it.”
“How is it personal for you?”
He was starting to see that it wasn’t just that she didn’t talk much. She was good at keeping the other person talking, too. Well, he didn’t mind. He liked to talk. And maybe he was being played, but he thought if he kept talking it might coax her into recipro
cating.
“Where I come from we have a saying. Actually, we have a lot of sayings, including ‘A turtle doesn’t get up on a bookshelf by itself,’ which is one of my favorites, but the one I’m referring to is ‘Some people just need killing.’ And I think this guy Sorm is one of the people the expression was invented for. How about you?”
There was a pause. She said, “I’ve known a lot of people like that.”
He looked at her and felt the oddest mix of emotions. Understanding.
Admiration. Compassion.
And gratitude, because he realized all at once she wasn’t playing him. He knew what it must have cost her, to say even that much. And to a stranger, no less.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve known a few myself. But . . . not the way I think maybe you have. And I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, I’m glad to know you. And not just because you saved my ass back at Les Nuits.”
She looked at him. She seemed more wound up than ever, like she was fighting something inside herself. At the same time, he thought he saw something new in her eyes. He wasn’t sure what—fear or vulnerability or something. It was like he’d hurt her just by saying he was glad to know her.
“Then why?” she said.
He thought for a moment. “Because among other reasons, we’ve killed people together. A lot of folks might find that an unusual means of establishing a bond between people, but in my experience, it’s actually surprisingly effective.”
She gave him that reluctant smile, but the look in her eyes didn’t change. He realized how much pain that periodic smile masked. He wondered why he hadn’t seen it before.
“What’s your name, anyway?” he asked.
“What’s yours?”
“Oh, right, I forgot. I always have to go first, and you don’t go at all. But okay. People call me Dox. Short for unorthodox. But my name, which pretty much nobody but my folks calls me, is Carl.”
There was a long pause. She said, “I’m . . . Labee.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
She looked away.
Damn it, he’d meant it, too. “What, do you think I say that to all the girls?”
But it was as though she didn’t hear him. “Nobody calls me that, either,” she said quietly.
“Well, I could, if you like.” He held out his hand. “Labee, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Carl.”
She looked at his hand but didn’t take it. She shook her head and balled her fists. She glanced at him, and for a second, it looked almost like she wanted to hurt him. All at once he didn’t like how close that Glock was. Didn’t like it at all.
But she didn’t go for the gun. She took his hand, but rather than shaking it, she used it to tug him toward her. Not suddenly or hard, but firmly, with a lot more grounding and power than he would have expected from her size alone.
He was confused, and wondered distantly whether she had some kind of martial-arts background—Rain could move people like that, making it seem effortless. But before he’d had a second to consider further, she’d somehow twisted and spun him so his back was on the couch, and she was straddling him, reared up with one hand tight around his throat and the other retracted in a fist like she was fixing to punch him. He was so startled he actually froze, though maybe that was a luxury he allowed himself because her hands were empty, and while the grip on his throat was no joke, it wasn’t quite like she was trying to kill him with it, either.
She kept still and just stared into his eyes like that for a moment, like she was enraged or desperate or he didn’t know what. And then she moved a little, rubbing against him. His eyes widened and he thought, What the hell?
Well, his brain might have been asking What the hell, but Nessie had no questions at all, responding instantly and dramatically to the friction and pressure. The woman felt it—how could she not, it was Nessie, after all, and besides, her little dress had ridden up when she flipped him so that there must have been nothing between them but his robe and her panties. The thought aroused him more, and she started moving against him harder, riding right up and down and making the terrycloth of the robe feel good enough to drive him crazy.
He put his hands on her hips, but she shook him off angrily and squeezed his throat tighter. Again he thought, What the hell? But he realized that with whatever this woman had been through, this must be how she liked it. Or maybe it was even the only way she could do it. So though he couldn’t help feeling tense from the grip on his larynx and the nearness of the Glock, he let his arms settle to his sides and just went with it. She seemed to like that, maybe feeling she was achieving compliance or whatever, and relaxed her grip enough so he could breathe a little better.
And then, without his even noticing where she’d pulled it from, he saw she was holding a condom. The one from the bathroom, he realized, she must have taken it while she was in there in case this happened, or because she planned on it happening. He was so bewildered by now that he didn’t even move as she tore the wrapping open and eased forward onto his belly, then reached back with both hands and opened the robe. Panting now, she got the condom on over him, and then she brought her knees in and slid off the panties, and moved back into position and eased herself right down onto him. The feeling was so good and so intimate that again without meaning to he reached for her, and again she squeezed his throat until he remembered himself and dropped his arms back to his sides. He stayed stiff and motionless after that, just watching her as she rode him harder and harder, her panting getting louder, more intense, and then her face twisted and she cried out, but she never closed her eyes, she just kept staring down at him, even as she came. And then he saw she was crying.
He was weirdly turned on by the whole thing, but also too freaked out to come himself. Which was all right—not that he would have minded, but the main thing for him was always that the lady got to come. But then it was like she wanted him to, and she let go of his neck and put her hands on the couch past his head and looked at him and began to ride him even more violently, her expression pained, her cheeks streaked with tears, and it was strange not to kiss her or be able to touch her with his hands, and to connect with her only by looking in her eyes, and she rode him harder, hard enough for it to hurt, and oh thank you lord that was it, that was what he needed, and he groaned as the pleasure intensified and then he was coming as she had, his arms at his sides and her eyes boring into his.
When it was over, and the two of them were breathing a little more normally, she reached back, gripped the condom, and slid herself off him. She moved over to the other end of the couch, looking down, saying nothing.
A moment went by. He felt a little delirious.
“Thank you,” he said. “That was nice.”
She nodded but still didn’t look at him.
“I’d even do it again, if you promised not to squeeze my throat so hard this time.”
She glanced at him and gave him that reluctant laugh. Damn, he could get used to making her laugh. He really could.
“You know,” he said, easing off the condom and securing the robe so he could talk to her without a big deflating dick distracting anyone, “I usually like to hold the person I just made love to. But I can see it’s not that way for you, and I don’t want my advances to be unwelcome, even though that concept strikes me as somewhat paradoxical at the moment.”
She looked down again. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? For what?”
“For not . . . For the way I am.”
“Don’t you dare apologize for that. I wouldn’t change one thing about you.”
She wiped her eyes. He thought she looked exhausted. Probably he did, too.
“So, look,” he said. “I get that you prefer not to be touched. But what about my needs? I like to be held after lovemaking.”
She shook her head and laughed.
Damn, but he liked that laugh. “Okay, how about this—you just hold me and I won’t hold you back.”
He’d really only been trying to get her to
laugh again, but she got up, walked over, and sat next to him. Then, with the air of someone about to do something not only dangerous but also maybe distasteful, she reached out and touched his cheek.
The gesture moved him so much that he covered her hand with his own.
She pulled her hand back. “Don’t push it.”
He laughed, not sure if she was serious or joking, and held up his palms like someone surrendering to a gunman. “My bad, my bad.”
She nodded. “Maybe I’ll . . . shower now.”
“Sure. And when you’re done, why don’t you take the bed.”
“No, the couch is fine. You take the bed.”
“The only way I’m getting in that bed is if you do, too.”
“Looks like you’ll be sleeping on the couch.”
“That’s fine. I’ve slept on plenty worse. Gonna miss you, though.”
She got up and started to head to the bathroom, then turned back. She looked at him. “Was that really . . . nice for you?”
“Hell yes, it was. Couldn’t you tell?”
“I guess.”
“I mean, it was a little unusual from my perspective. But I meant it when I said I’d do it again.”
She nodded, but her face turned sad. “I’m glad. I think . . .”
But she didn’t finish the thought. She just shook her head, picked up the Glock, and walked off. He watched her go, wondering what she’d been about to say, and wishing she’d said it.
23
Livia turned the shower temperature as hot as she could stand. She used a washcloth to scrub herself with soap, then stood under the scalding water, letting it wash everything off her.
She felt confused, and she wasn’t sure why. She’d had boyfriends, and though she’d tried to accommodate them by being more normal, the only way she could get off other than by herself was the way she’d just done it with Carl. She was good at trolling for the kind of man who wanted to get rough with her and who she could turn the tables on. But Carl wasn’t rough. He was accommodating. And kind. But still, it had worked. That was what was confusing her.