Hot Contract

by Jodi Henley

  “I’m drunk and fucking miserable,” said Keegan. “Not stupid.” He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

  Fallon snagged the trash can with a sour grimace. “Aww, man. It’s sloshing. You’re damned lucky you’re my friend.”

  ****

  The big dumpster at the foot of the parking lot didn’t look like it saw much action. Fallon flipped the trash can over the top. It was small and easy to replace. Not that he cared. No way was he cleaning that puppy out.

  He stopped with one hand on the heavy redwood gate and watched the trees that bordered the lot behind the small office complex. Corlis walked out through the front door, and stopped at the picnic table they’d put in adjacent to the planters.

  Looking for her keys.

  She had a damned big purse, and her keys had a tendency to get lost in the bottom. He’d meant to talk to her, try to work things out. God knew, it couldn’t hurt—he didn’t want to end up alone like Keegan. But Maggie had handed him the flight number and acted surprised he didn’t know Nick was flying in. Apparently it was common knowledge Nick and Corlis were sleeping together.

  “You have a fucking date?” he roared.

  Shit. He hadn’t meant to blurt that out. He’d meant to work up to it, smooth and easy. Pain made him vicious. Jesus, he was fucked-up. He couldn’t stop; he just kept going, screwing himself, walking across the parking lot to where she stood with one hand still in her purse.

  “Are you going to fuck him?” Fallon asked. “Are you taking numbers? Because if you are—y’know, I could get in line.”

  She straightened, her eyes cool. “Why don’t you pay me if you think I’m a whore?”

  “Yeah, let’s talk about that.” He followed her around the picnic table. “Tell me why you slept with me if you’re already banging Nick.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she shifted just that little bit forward on the balls of her feet. He looked for the glint of her knife, but to his relief her hands were empty. She had dropped her purse in preparation for—what? Kicking his ass?

  In the end she just gave him a disgusted look, grabbed her purse again and slung it over her shoulder. “Don’t presume on our friendship, Padraic. You’re the one who wants to dissolve our partnership.”

  “We’re still friends? Hey, that’s a surprise. I don’t feel the least bit friendly to you.”

  She went white right down to her lips. “I am your friend, asshole.”

  He had to get away from her. He was going to implode. “I don’t know what we are, Liss. But we’re not friends.”

  “I thought—Volcano, that police station—”

  “If you’re going to tell me that peck was a sign of your heartfelt devotion, I’ll laugh—so don’t even go there.”

  She stopped instead, her hand fisted on the strap of her purse. Her knuckles were almost as white as her face. “Nick is my friend.”

  “And I’m fucking nothing?”

  “You’re my friend, too.”

  Fallon felt sick and empty. His lungs were still pulling, but he couldn’t feel the rest of his body, like everything was three times removed. He reached down into his shirt and hooked out the dog-tags. The ball-link chain slipped through his fingers as if desperate to get away.

  Corlis watched him steadily, not a flicker of anything close to emotion in her set face.

  He dropped the tags on the table and walked away from her without a backward glance. “Don’t do me any favors.”

  ****

  Corlis sat on the hard plastic chair, holding on to Fallon’s tags tight enough to hurt. The airport hummed around her. Still too early for Nick’s flight, but—as usual, she had nowhere else to go. She’d been alone her entire life. Even as a kid, she’d never wanted or needed anyone or anything, except maybe to be left alone during lunch, her one solid real-meal of the day.

  Keegan had always tried. But he’d been a kid, just like her, and the snack he’d packed for her that day—the day she’d first met Fallon—smelled like something scraped out of the back of their too-bare cupboard. Corlis remembered how she’d crumpled a piece of stale bread into the slimy green paste. How it had smelled like mouthwash and was probably last year’s mint jelly.

  “For lamb,” Keegan had told her. Not that they’d ever had any.

  Corlis had thought about it, though, and imagined it was soft and juicy. Like hamburger, only better. She’d thrown her sandwich to the side and sat hunched over, much like she was now, watching the other kids run around and do whatever it was kids did when their bellies weren’t cramping with hunger.

  An hour until lunch. She felt dizzy and light-headed. She didn’t know if she could make it, but if she didn’t, she wouldn’t get lunch and there was nothing in the house. Mom had smoked it all up again and barricaded herself in her room. Keegan said it was because she was afraid the spiders would get her, but Corlis didn’t think he was being straight with her. Their house was too clean for spiders, and lately there’d been something in Keegan’s eyes. She’d seen him talking to Connor, but they always stopped when they saw her coming.

  She rested her cheek on her knee. Please God. Don’t let her faint. She’d fainted last week, and one of the other kids had kicked her black and blue before the teachers noticed. Sweat trickled down her nape. Richmond wouldn’t start to cool off for another month. There was no shelter except for a tiny patch of shade behind the basketball hoop.

  The chain-link fence behind her creaked. “Mind if I sit?”

  It was that new kid. The transfer, Padraic. Padraic who had jeans almost as ripped as hers, shirts that didn't fit, and a drawl that didn't sound like it came from the Gilpin housing project.

  She ignored him, hoping he’d get the hint, but he sat anyway, eating donuts out of a little cellophane sleeve.

  “That yours?” He jerked his head at her stupid sandwich.

  She didn’t answer. Did she have to tell him to go? How much of a hint did he need? His eyes were strange and pale. Not gray like her own, but a blue so light they were almost colorless. He glared down at his donuts and back up at her. “All right,” he said. “Don’t talk to me. I don’t care! I don’t need you—hell, I don’t need anyone.”

  He’d been up on his feet, ready to go before she said, “It’s mint jelly.”

  He’d sat again. And he’d stayed. And offered her donuts they both pretended she didn’t want.

  She rubbed her thumb over the tarnished metal of his dog tags. She’d had Fallon back for such a short time. Two months short of a year. They’d rarely interacted in Special Forces, despite their posting as Alpha and Bravo, field and headquarter members of the same unit. Keegan had created DalCon in reaction to Fallon’s disappearance. For what had felt like forever she’d hoped her friendship with Nick and his contacts within CSO, Collateral Special Operations, would be enough to find Fallon and bring him home.

  Apparently they had been. He’d been so thin, trudging up the long incline near the trees, out in the parking lot behind DalCon. She’d taken to sitting at the picnic bench behind the building, alone, staring into space and waiting. For what, she didn’t know.

  But then she’d seen him, and she’d known. And she’d still been unable to make a single move toward him. So she’d waited some more, heart pounding, palms sweating. It had taken him a long time to reach her, and when he did she still couldn’t believe her eyes.

  His worn gray duffle clinked. “Aww, fuck me—” He threw it down and glared at the oil dripping from the thick canvas. “I think Maggie Ann’s perfume opened in there.”

  Fallon shrugged out of his heavy camouflage jacket, his movements slow and jerky. She could see his ribs and the bony line of his shoulders through the thin fabric of his shirt. He’d lost weight he couldn’t afford to lose, and thick white bandages shackled both wrists. They’d chained him to the wall. She’d seen the pictures. Nick hadn’t wanted her to have them, but she’d accessed Fallon’s operational detachment file, and looked anyway.

  He staggered, hands tight arou
nd the sweat-stiffened fabric. “Dizzy.” He looked like he was going to faint, white under the ground-in dirt.

  Corlis jumped off the picnic table and eased him to the ground. “When did you last eat?”

  “Yesterday? Day before? Shit—I don’t know—hungry so long. So damned bright...” He fell over on his back and covered his eyes with his hands.

  She pulled them away. His eyes were purple-ringed in his exhausted face.

  “Back off,” he snarled. “I don’t need your fucking help.”

  “You were out of touch for almost a year,” she said quietly. “I was concerned.”

  “Out of touch? Like I was on vacation?” Fallon rolled on his side, away from her. “You know I can’t talk about it, so why fucking ask?”

  “Because they hurt you.”

  “I’m out of it now.”

  She sat down next to him and drew her knees up. It had been cold then, autumn in the Northwest, and the holly bushes stood out against the blaze of golden brambles.

  She fished down in her pocket. “I had these made a couple of months ago,” she said.

  “Dog tags?”

  She touched him carefully. He caught her hand, the tags trapped between them. His fingers were hot, and there was something wrong with his nails. Torture. They’d tortured him.

  “God, Liss. I—” He swallowed thickly, and read the tags. “Return to sender?”

  “Whatever happens, wherever you go,” she’d whispered. “I want you back.”

  ****

  Someone sat next to her and the row of chairs creaked. Corlis looked up to find her former partner, a big man with the ripped build of a professional wrestler and white-blond hair he kept cropped down close to his skull. His eyes were gray and his silence a sure sign he was thinking. Nikolai Radnov was as emotionally volatile as an eggplant.

  “You do not look well,” he said, obviously picking his words with care.

  She whispered, “I’m hell on my friends.”

  Nick’s brows shot up and he smoothed a thumb over her cheek. “So serious. I have body armor.”

  “Don’t you understand? I’m...bad for him! I can’t be around him without saying or doing the wrong thing...”

  “Ahh...then we are not talking about me. We are talking about Fallon.” Nick settled his shoulders back against the wall and folded his arms. “Do you remember when you asked me to find him for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was a bad place.”

  Corlis shivered. “Yes.”

  “South American jail. Men disappear. The point is Fallon should have died. He came back for you, Corlis. Do not be so quick to write him off.”

  Corlis shoved the tags down in her pocket and stood. Nick followed her up, looming over her despite her height.

  He caught her hand. “Why don’t you try talking to Fallon?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You do not talk to him the way you talk to me. If he cares for you, he is hurting. Do not do this to him.”

  She jerked free and glared at him. “It’s not that easy!”

  “I am a good matchmaker,” said Nick. “Just the other day, I connected two people up.”

  “I’m the problem. I doubt you can fix me.”

  “I can try.” Nick hefted a carry-on the size of a small steamer trunk. “The first thing we will do,” he said, pointing to the escalators, “is stop in Renton. I know this boutique—”

  “You shop?”

  Nick gave her a long look. “I am a man, Corlis.”

  She rubbed at her reddening face. “I know that.”

  He patted her on the head. “No. You do not. But it is okay. I am Nick. I am not Fallon.”

  ****

  Jen swung her chair around and stared out through the tiny window. Land slipped beneath them. Through a break in the cloud cover, the Olympics rose like a fence around the Puget Sound. Her heart was pounding so hard, it was a wonder Tris didn't hear it from where he sprawled on a couch at the front of the compartment.

  Jen got to her feet, heart in her throat. “Why couldn’t Keegan live on Maui?”

  “Does anyone live on Maui?”

  “You’re a funny man, Tristan.”

  “Not really,” said Tris.

  She kicked the crate of date wine away from Tris for the third time in as many hours. “Do you have to drink those?”

  He threw his head back and poured the rest of the bottle down his throat. “If you’re wondering if I’m drunk. I’m not.”

  His words had a faint sing-song slur. Jen eyed him closely. If he wasn’t drunk, he was doing a good imitation. “How was Singapore?” she asked, sitting down in the chair across from him.

  “Hot.”

  She drew her legs up and looped her arms around them. “Did you visit Lain? I heard your sister was staying at Raffles while her house was being repainted. Why didn't she stay with family?”

  He gave her a long look and shut his eyes, closing her out. “I don't know.”

  The forward compartment in StallingCo’s executive jet was wide and expansive, way too big for the two of them. Percy kept the Boeing because it was the only business jet with a bedroom. She suspected it was the only place her brother got any sleep. Jen threw her head back against the cushioned neck rest, leaned on her side and pummeled the cushions into place. The chair instantly folded down and locked into place, turning the plush recliner into a chaise lounge.

  Her new horizontal position gave her a great view of the armrest and made her suit pull.

  “My jacket is too tight.”

  Tris grunted.

  “Was I really that skinny?”

  Silence. Jen rolled over and eyed her cousin. He'd changed for their trip and his jeans were riddled with what looked like mended bullet holes.

  “Want to take a picture?” he asked, abruptly opening his eyes.

  “Would you let me?”

  “No.”

  “Then why ask?”

  “You're staring.” He cupped his palms under his nape and stretched.

  Arabic calligraphy covered both arms. He usually kept it covered, but today he hadn't bothered, wearing an old black t-shirt with the sleeves torn out. The aircraft began to bank and the engines cycled down into a low roar. Jen stared out over the heavily forested barrier islands before she pulled the shade. Flying didn’t trigger her vertigo, but the sight of all that water made her sick.

  “I’ve never been to Seattle.”

  Tris rolled on his side, and adjusted the holster behind his hip. “Didn’t miss much.”

  Keegan was down there, somewhere. “Percy would have said something supportive.”

  “If you want platitudes, you brought the wrong Stalling.” Tris got to his feet and pulled out a pair of sunglasses.

  Jen fidgeted. “I don’t like this.”

  Tris shrugged into his jacket. The chains on his boots chimed faintly. “I’m going to check on my bike. Strap in. We’re getting ready to land.”

  ***

  Jen knotted her fists in the heavy leather of her cousin’s coat as Tris banked his bike around another corner. She hated motorcycles. The wind whipping at her clothes, her purse banging, and the claustrophobic squeeze of the helmet. She almost dumped them in the first mile, refusing to let Tris take the corners at an angle. The minute the big Viper Diablo began to tip, she started screaming.

  She screamed again as they slammed through a pothole. The hard butt of a gun, knife, or something unfamiliar but knowing Tris—probably lethal, dug into her belly. She wanted to rub her stomach, but was afraid to let go. Tris had no patience for fools. He’d abandon her if she fell off.

  “How many weapons do you have anyway?”

  The helmet clicked and Tris said in her ear, “Enough.”

  “How much longer?”

  “Couple of miles.” He stopped at a light and put his feet down.

  “Tris? What do you call these long pipe things? They’re burning my legs.”

  She felt a sigh rumble up through h
is chest. “Put your feet up on the pegs, Jen.”

  “But my legs will cramp.”

  Tris kicked his bike into gear. “I should have brought the Spyder—"

  “You have an Aston-Martin, and you didn’t—omigod, look out for that—hey! You did that on purpose!"

  ****

  DalCon Security and Risk Management took up the back of a sprawling redwood office building. The other tenants were gone for the day, and except for a solid block of cars near the rear entrance, the parking lot was deserted.

  Jen slid down off Tris’s bike, wobbled for a second and grabbed at the black leather seat. “I didn’t think anyone else would be here.”

  Tris swung his leg over the sleek, black motorcycle. “DalCon Security has over twenty operatives, eight support staff. A satellite office in D.C. with three rapid response teams, negligible assets—”

  “You had them investigated.”

  The head of StallingCo Intelligence unstrapped his helmet. “I did the original report at Art's request.”

  Jen hooked her helmet on the seat and grimaced, brushing at her crumpled linen skirt. “I’m scared.”

  “Yeah,” said Tris. “Something about this place I don’t like...something...” He spun in a slow circle, eyes raking the trees at the far edge of the parking lot. “Like we’re being watched.”

  Jen spared a quick glance at the umbrella-like pines. “Nothing there.”

  “Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “Could be anything. Could be I’m paranoid.” He gestured her in front of him. “Let’s get inside.” Under cover.

  The impression Jen got from him was so strong, she gave the parking lot another once over. Empty asphalt. A spill of trees leading down to a busy thoroughfare.

  “Is paranoia contagious?”

  Tris loosened his jacket. “Don’t know. I got mine from my dad.”

  They walked up to the entrance, Tris acting like he expected an attack to come out of nowhere. Jen pushed at the lacquered wooden doors. Whatever she’d expected of DalCon, this elegant marble and glass reception room wasn’t it. Her pink heels clicked on the faux Roman mosaic. Two men sat in chairs near the window, and a small cluster of people waited near a stack of architectural magazines.