by Julie Beard
Or, if you preferred to snuff out your enemy, a jolt of silent ultrasound could slice open a carotid artery as easily as a surgeon’s scalpel, but without external bleeding. No muss, no fuss. At least for the assassin. If you were caught with one on your person, though, it was an instant no-excuses, ten-year sentence without parole.
Marco extended his arm as he aimed the U-saber, taking wide, steady strides toward me until the weapon’s tiny snout pressed against my forehead. His muscular chest heaved for breath in the silence. He smelled of sweat, fury, even a hint of desperation. Finally, he had me where he wanted me—completely at his mercy.
“Why am I not surprised by this?” I asked rhetorically, careful to stand very still. I didn’t want his finger accidentally pulling the trigger. “And how could I have been so damned wrong about you? You’re an assassin, aren’t you? Naturally, you have an assassin’s weapon.”
His eyes fluttered as rage swelled in them. “Shut the fuck up, Angel.”
“Too close to the mark?” I asked, unable to keep my bloody mouth shut. “Go ahead and shoot me, Marco. You’ll be doing us both a favor.”
He smiled grimly. “That would be too easy.”
“For you?”
“For both of us.”
For the first time, fear began to pound unsteadily in my chest. I shouldn’t be playing with fire when he had just poured the equivalent of gasoline all around us. Just because I’d made love with this man didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill me. In fact, I’d lay odds that he was planning on it. Pulling this weapon was tantamount to an admission of his true profession. He would have nothing to lose if all his covers were blown.
“Are you going to kill me?” I whispered through my tight throat, afraid to look in his eyes.
“No. I just wanted you to let me talk.”
“Then lower the gun. I promise I’ll be quiet, for once in my life.”
When he did, I heaved a huge sigh of relief and looked around to see Mike’s reaction. He was gone. He’d retreated to his shed. Damn him! Why did he always have faith in Marco? I just didn’t get it.
“Angel,” Marco began, shaking his head as he searched for the right words, “I’m not an assassin. I never have been.”
I crossed my arms, my body language more than adequately expressing my doubt.
He tossed the weapon on the ground. “I picked that up earlier today when I made an arrest.”
“Do you always pocket the contraband that you apprehend in arrests?”
“Okay, I didn’t make the arrest. It was my cousin. I just frisked him, confiscated his weapon and sent him home.”
“How comforting. Did you also pat him on the head and give him cookies and milk?”
“He’s family, Angel.”
“And that makes it okay to be an assassin? Is Vladimir Gorky family, too?”
“No.”
His face went intriguingly dead, and I sensed I was close to the heart of what made this elusive man tick. “What exactly is your relationship with Gorky?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I most certainly do. I also want to know why you betrayed me in that television interview.”
“I was speaking for my committee, Angel. I didn’t say anything in public that I haven’t already said to you in private. My opposition to your profession has nothing to do with you.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“Even if I had wanted to mince words, it would raise suspicion in the police department. You need me on your murder case.”
“Oh, yeah, you’ve done wonders for me so far.”
His eyes glinted with a suppressed smile. “You’re damned stubborn, you know that?”
I suppressed a smile in return. “Thanks.”
He reached out and ran his fingers through my hair, spiking it up on top. “There. You can’t look too tame. It would ruin your reputation.”
I endured the coiffing with a stoic frown, refusing to acknowledge the delicious tickling sensation his touch sent cascading down my arms.
Satisfied, he crossed his arms and regarded me with perplexity. “You know, Miss Baker, that you’re being awfully one-sided in this whole matter.”
“How so?”
“Don’t I get any credit for the good I’ve done in my profession?” He loomed over me with a dangerous I want to make love look. He cupped a cheek, brushing my moist lips with a thumb.
I gently but firmly pulled his hand away. “Which profession would that be? Psychologist? Cop? Assassin?”
He wasn’t listening. He focused with unusual intensity on my mouth. Now cupping both cheeks, he dipped his head down, kissing me softly, almost reverently, like a bee paying homage to the flower. Could an assassin kiss this tenderly? I wondered. Or was kissing this tenderly just part of his cover?
His hands skimmed down my shoulders, arcing down my silken teddy until they reached the small of my back. His electric fingertips inched beneath the waistband of my low-rise briefs, hot against my flesh. That sizzling gesture brought all my senses to a peak and my breathing went shallow.
I so wanted him to reach lower and cup my derriere, but he was tantalizingly circumspect. I was practically panting. What more invitation did he need? Could he doubt my desire? It was possible. So I gave him a kiss that left no questions unanswered.
He groaned appreciatively, then pulled away, seemingly unable to take any more.
“Ah, you’re good, Angel Baker. Very good,” he murmured in my ear as he intimately lifted one of my arms over his shoulders, then the other. “But let me ask you something.”
“Yes?” I said breathlessly. I wrapped my arms tight around his neck and nuzzled against his square, whiskered jaw. “Ask me what?”
He reached under my loose teddy and ran his hands slowly up my sides. They molded over my ribs until they cupped my breasts. Lifting, he kneaded the full flesh in his warm palms, thumbs rotating erotically over the beaded nipples, all the while eyeing me intensely. “What profession do you think I’m talking about?”
“I don’t know,” I said on a moan as I tossed my head back and dug my nails into his shoulders.
“Is there anything I could do to make you stop wanting me?”
I shook my head, heedless of the moral implications. I had to tell him the truth. If he didn’t make love to me now, I’d go mad. “No. I want you. I thought I’d made that more than clear.”
“You want me no matter what?”
“Yes, damn it.” I gripped his head in my hands and glared at him. “What do you want? A signed affidavit?”
Chuckling deeply, he cocooned me in his arms and fused to me with a hot, deep kiss. He kissed with his whole body, including his slowly rocking pelvis and a hard-on that wouldn’t quit, straining like a tent pole against his thin, military green jogging pants. It was a heady experience. The musky scent of him alone was enough to make me drunk, like a sniff of potent brandy.
Marco was all over me in his uniquely skilled way—caressing all the right curves, laving all the right indentations, scratching my tender skin with his five-o’clock shadow, then soothing with his tongue. I didn’t want to know how many women this man had made love to. I was just grateful he was putting all that practice to good use on me.
Finally, finally, he reached down and slipped a hand inside my briefs, inching down until his skillful touch found the swollen, moist firecracker that was ready to explode. He smiled as he began to rub.
“I believe you do want me, Angel Baker,” he murmured in my ear. “I don’t know why, but I do.”
“I’m gla—” I couldn’t even finish the sentence. My own personal Fourth of July fireworks exploded in early September this year, and it was well worth the wait.
“Give me a whiskey,” Marco said two hours later to the bartender at Rick’s Café Americain, the reality bar down the street from Angel’s two-flat.
“We have a special on Vivante tonight, sir,” the polite, neatly dressed man behind the smoky bar said. Marco couldn’t tell if h
e was a compubot or an actor. Either way, he looked like the bartender in the movie Casablanca. “Every Vivante is a double tonight, sir.”
Vivante was a clear alcohol engineered to assume the taste of whiskey or any other liquor that Marco cared to imagine. But somehow he doubted it would burn his throat enough to suit him tonight. He aimed to get seriously drunk, with all that that entailed, including the punishing hangover in the morning. So he was more than willing to pay ten times the price for the real thing.
Marco pulled out a paychip and slapped the small square plastic on the counter. “Thanks, but not tonight. I want your best. And leave the bottle.”
The bartender turned to his rows of old-fashioned liquor bottles—there was Black Jack, Beefeaters, and Glenlivet. He returned with an amber-colored bottle, uncorked it and poured two fingers of the powerful liquid into the glass. Marco lifted it to his nose and inhaled. The scent nearly scorched his nostrils.
“Perfect.” He raised the glass in a salute. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure, sir.” The bartender reached for the paychip, but a strong and graceful hand interceded, gripping his wrist.
“That won’t be necessary,” came a familiar, unsentimental voice. “Detective Marco’s money is no good here.”
Marco looked up at the Humphrey Bogart compubot that had just spoken. Angel called him Bogie, but the patrons knew him as Rick Blaine. Every night Rick and Ilsa Laszlo, played by an Ingrid Bergman compubot, played out various scenes in no particular order from the classic 1940s film. The bar and restaurant perfectly replicated the movie’s sultry and tense setting in Nazi-occupied French Morocco, which was the backdrop to their doomed but noble love affair.
“Whatever he drinks is on the house,” Bogie said to the bartender.
Marco tossed back the whiskey in one shot, then wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. “I can afford it.”
“I know you can. That’s not the point,” Bogie replied. He added in an unemphatic, rat-a-tat rejoinder, “Look, Detective, I think we understand each other rather well. I don’t like you and you don’t like me. But I like to think we respect each other. And we certainly respect Angel Baker.”
Marco poured another three fingers of whiskey. He’d only spoken with this compubot once before, when Angel was flirting with it to make him jealous. Marco had thought it was absurd and said so at the time. Angel had thought Marco was being rude to the compubot, which was even more absurd.
“You’re right,” Marco said at last. “I don’t like you.”
Bogie gave him a tight, short smile and pulled a cigarette from a flat holder in his tuxedo jacket. He offered one to Marco, who shook his head, then lit up. Compubots were exempt from the antismoking laws.
“But I don’t dislike you, either,” Marco added. “I have no feelings for a mechanized computer that has no feelings.”
Sam, a robust, black compubot, began to play the piano and sing “As Time Goes By.”
“I had feelings for Angel Baker,” Bogie said morosely. “But she ended our affair. For you.”
Marco slanted him a grudging look. Compubots didn’t need sleep, and this one had moonlighted after hours as Angel’s lover. Nice of him to rub it in.
“Right now she has Jimmy Stewart in her apartment,” Marco said morosely.
Bogie’s tough-guy demeanor melted momentarily as he registered surprise. “You’re joking.”
“I’m afraid not,” Marco said with an ironic smile. “But I don’t think we have much to worry about with him. He’s…disabled.”
“Rear Window?” Bogie asked.
Marco nodded.
“Poor sap. He’s got to get another gig,” Bogie replied. He took a long drag on his unfiltered Turkish cigarette. “Detective, I can tell you still have feelings for Angel, too. You just won’t admit it because old-time heroes don’t talk about their feelings. Am I right?”
He was right about Marco’s feelings for Angel. The way she’d given herself to him tonight had reminded him just how human he was. That he needed love, and his life was empty without it. Angel was unlike any woman he’d ever met. She accepted him, though her instincts knew better, asking so little in return. She was willing to risk it all for him. But if he gave her the one thing she needed most—commitment—she’d be forced to learn everything about him, including his past. And the reality of that would be far worse than anything she’d imagined so far.
Marco poured another drink.
“If you plan on drinking that entire bottle, Detective, then you’d better get something to eat.”
Carl, the plump, white-haired Austro-Hungarian waiter, set up a meal for Marco at a private table. Bogie sat with him and gave terse greetings to any customer rude enough to interrupt their tête-à-tête. “Rick” was famous for refusing to drink with his patrons, so his presence at Marco’s table drew stares.
By the time Bogie and Marco had finished off two bottles of wine, they were in complete agreement on one subject—women.
“You can’t live with them,” Bogie said, “and you can’t live without them.”
“No!” Marco said, grabbing his arm, “You can’t live with them and you can’t live with them.”
They both laughed.
“I’ll drink to that.” Bogie swilled the last of his wine. He loosened his bow tie and stared morosely at the candle burning in the table’s centerpiece. “Still, some women are hard to forget.”
“Hello, Rick,” came a soft, emotion-laden voice with a slight Swedish accent.
Marco looked up in his quasi-drunk state and found the Ingrid Bergman compubot staring longingly at her co-star. She wore a trim cap and conservative suit—very much a lady, but vulnerable in a touching way. Her large, innocent eyes were swollen with unshed tears. Her soft, pretty mouth was moist with a ready kiss.
“What do you want?” Bogie replied with surprising venom. He slammed a fist on the table so hard the silverware jumped. “Why don’t you go find Victor Laszlo? He’s the one you married. Not me. You left me in Paris, remember?”
Marco watched the lovebirds argue, wondering if true love always ended this way.
When she finally walked away, Bogie ran a hand through his hair, bemoaning, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns—”
“Let’s cut to the chase,” Marco said dismissively. “You know by the end of the movie you’re going to sacrifice everything for her—including her love for you. And all you get, in the end, is the guy. You walk off into the sunset with that little French detective.”
“He’s a captain. And we walk off on a foggy tarmac.”
“Whatever.”
“I have no regrets about how my story ends because I did what was right. If Ilsa didn’t get on that plane with Victor Laszlo, she would have regretted it the rest of her life. Sometimes you have to make tough decisions because they’re the right ones for everyone involved.”
Marco wiped a cloth napkin over his mouth and pushed aside his plate. “You’re right. I have to figure out what’s best for everyone in my situation. I’ve just learned that Angel’s life is in grave danger.”
“If she’s in danger, you have to protect her.”
“It’s not that simple. I’m hip-deep in crocodiles. She might be better off without me. Maybe I should just disappear from her life.”
“Don’t ever do that,” Bogie admonished him. “Do you know what kind of pain that causes to the one left behind?”
“Not as much pain as I’ll cause when she finds out who I really am. And what I’ve done.”
“We all have pasts we’d like to run from, Detective. But few of us have that privilege. My advice to you is to stick around and protect the dame no matter what. It’s in the movie-hero code of honor. You’re now an unofficial member of the club.” He raised a glass. “Here’s to doing the right thing.”
Chapter 12
Picture This
When I woke the next morning, I wanted to pinch myself, but I didn’t dare. There wasn’t an inch of skin that Marco hadn’
t rubbed to the point of tenderness in our marathon of lovemaking. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so contented.
He was amazing. The only reason he’d stopped was because I couldn’t take anymore. And he’d intimated that he didn’t use any of the new ever-ready erectile dysfunction drugs endlessly advertised on television. He had to be telling the truth, because the men who took the once-a-month pills usually had to resort to wearing codpieces, which looked like decorative athletic cups sewn on the outside crotch area of pants. Nothing like a thirty-day stiffie to bring back twelfth-century fashion.
I couldn’t bask in the afterglow for long, though. I had to get ready for the CRS meeting. Meanwhile, Mel Goldman called with a report on the bank. Administrators found no records of my safety deposit box contract. They didn’t even acknowledge that I was a customer.
This confirmed what I already knew, that I was being framed by someone with incredibly powerful connections. Someone powerful enough to tamper with a national bank’s database. I didn’t expect the branch employees to remember me. Hell, most of them were automated tellers anyway. But my name should have at least popped up on somebody’s computer.
I thanked Mel and went down to apologize to Mike for my tirade. Normally, I found apologies difficult, but I was eager to beg his forgiveness. Mike deserved better than I’d given him last night. I went to his shed and heard the soft droning of his Chinese chanting. I hesitated in the doorway. He sat in a lotus position on his straw floor mat. I must have made a sound, because he opened his eyes, though he didn’t stop his Om mane padme hum. He gave me a quick wink, then lowered his eyelids, falling back into his meditative trance.
Mike’s ready forgiveness left me grinning in amazement and relief. After spending three years as an indentured servant, very little rattled him. In gratitude, I said a silent Hail Mary, followed by a quick thanks to Kuan Yin to cover all the bases, and headed back to the house.
I heard Lola rattling around in her downstairs bedroom, so I knew she was okay. But I wasn’t ready for a mother-daughter heart-to-heart. Frankly, I found them excruciating. I’d grown to appreciate Lola’s strengths in recent weeks and had tried very hard to overlook her weaknesses. But it didn’t seem like she was according me the same favor. I always felt as if I were letting her down.