by Bianca Mori
The young man hesitated, standing on the docks, until a dark, bearded head appeared above the hull. The rest of this bearded stranger emerged as he climbed from the boat. A bomber jacket clad his slim frame and aviators protected his face.
"If it isn't the devil himself, Theo Karastis! Merhaba!" greeted the man with the aviators, stepping off the boat to the docks. He didn't seem much older than Theo and had a thick accent. Though he smiled, the coldness in his tone and the jittery movements of the boy called Theo told Carson how friendly they really were.
"I hope you have some good news for us?" he smiled, white teeth flashing in the sun.
"Same news as last time," he said. "I'll get the money, just not at–"
"Are you such an idiot?" hissed Aviators, pulling Theo roughly. "Inside."
"Then what happened?"
"He came out maybe thirty minutes later. No visible damage, but he was limping."
Peyton's eyes went round. "Do you think–"
"Yeah. Light application of baseball bat to knee, maybe—not enough to break, but enough to hurt," said Carson.
She chewed her lip, running over the intel. "Mob, you think?"
Carson shrugged. "Could be. All I know is, he has to cough up tonight."
Her eyes widened. "Oh, you've been holding out on me, Carson."
He smiled. "Before he left the boat. Last words Aviators told him: 'We're expecting an installment tonight.' Then Theo asked if it was at the same place, but Aviators said: 'He doesn't want your kind there anymore. You're only fit for The Bruges.'"
She glanced at her watch. "How far's that from here?"
He sat up and looked intently at her. "No, Peyton. I looked for it before coming here. It's a rough place."
"Oh please," she scoffed. "If you can find it, I don't think it's too bad."
"I don't know if I should be flattered or insulted by what you're implying," he said mildly. "But I'm serious, Peyton. I didn't find it by Googling and the person who pointed me in the right direction isn't exactly the type I'd like hanging around a good-looking woman. And you're not exactly inconspicuous, Red." He caught a strand of her hair and made to play with it, but dropped it after a second. "Better let me do it. I'll download when I get back."
There was a small TV hidden in one of the flat's closets. She pulled it out, plugged it in by the kitchen counter and puttered around, fuming dejectedly. Not a place for good-looking women, indeed. Where'd Carson get off, pulling the protective caveman act? He had no idea the scrapes she'd been in. She could take care of herself.
She settled on a random English news channel and left it as background noise as she walked around the flat, trying to shake off her nerves and boredom and irritation at Carson.
"Tonight, we speak with Anders Van Der Luyden, CEO of the start-up Agile Tech…"
She glanced at the screen to see a curly haired TV journalist face off against their painting's potential buyer. The spotlights fell straight upon her in her red chair and bounced off Van Der Luyden's high forehead, giving the illusion that his clear eyes glowed. He didn't seem to blink very much.
"Mr. Van Der Luyden," said the journalist. "Talk is that investors are jittery—you seem to be committed to so many developments at the same time."
"I am a man of many different passions and the capacity to see them all to fruition. Why should I limit myself to the narrow imagination of others?"
Peyton walked across the room and leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window, feeling out of sorts. She had to admit to that familiar thrill of putting a takedown together. Despite everything, it was there: her senses were awake and a niggling mental itch started, that old compulsion to finish a job, no matter how cocked-up Gustave was. But underneath the excitement was the dread of actually finishing and going back to Roi. At the end of the day, she had been drugged and taken against her will to do this. It was now nearly a month since she was due to return from Cosa Imbah'i, and she didn't want to imagine what her boss was thinking.
From the TV behind Peyton, the journalist's voice rose over Van Der Luyden's hectoring tone. "There are rumors of buyers keen to look into—"
"New technology attracts many investors," he snapped.
"I'm not talking about investors, Mr. Van Der Luyden. You are selling your company, piece by piece, asset by asset, technology by technology. It was what you did with AVL Digital, didn't you, before you established Agile Tech?"
There was no answer for several seconds, so Peyton looked if the program was cut. Anders Van Der Luyden was smiling like a shark onscreen.
The journalist shuffled her papers. "All right, don't answer that, Mr. Van Der Luyden, although I am sure your investors would've been interested in your answer. Isn't it true that the long-held criticism against you is that your innovations hardly keep your attention for long, and that you are always moving from one company to another? Isn't that why there are so many fears for Agile Tech's future?"
Peyton zoned out and focused on the window again. It took a while before she registered what she hadn't been seeing:
The big white van across the street from their apartment wasn't there.
Each night, whenever she had a moment alone, she had glanced out the window to find the van sitting across the street from their flat, no doubt populated by the eyes Carson had warned her about. But tonight, the stretch of cobbled street by the water was empty.
"Mr. Van Der Luyden, is it true that the tracking system your company has developed is on the market, despite warnings from security agencies of the possible threat it poses in the wrong hands?"
Heart thudding, Peyton pulled on her boots and a coat, in such a hurry that she left the TV on as she fled the flat.
Down the stairs she tiptoed, her heart in her mouth, her passport in her pocket. Carson kept the cash but that was a small thing; before Roi had found her, she had her means of making a living. Her mouth pursed in distaste as she pushed the thought away.
At the door she took a steadying breath and stepped outside.
The night was not as cold as she expected; there was a muggy stillness in the air that nearly approached warmth. A glance at the street confirmed it was still empty. There was a small sandwich shop, shuttered for the night. Even the bike stands were empty. She pushed her head down and, determined, walked down the street.
She walked fast, but did not run, affecting the hurrying tread of a typical city dweller eager to get home. She turned a corner and sped on, glad for the full dark, eager to get ahead.
At the bridge towards Haarlemmerstraat she stopped to get her bearings. Where should she head next?
The train! Central train station. Tickets to Brussels, and from there, London.
Did trains leave at this time of night? If not, where could she spend the night—and was it enough time for her to leave without getting caught?
She looked up, found the direction she ought to go, and pushed off towards Central Station, when a rough and callused hand suddenly clamped over her face. A scream tore from her throat but lodged against the suffocating hand against her mouth and nose; she struggled, not only to get away from the arms hugging her, but to breathe too. She tried to kick and flail but the attacker held on. Her attacker pushed against her, then turned and pinned her against the wall.
"Stop struggling, or I'll stick you," said a thin and reedy male voice. "Same stuff from Singapore. And you wouldn't want to fall unconscious here, would you?" Despite her terror, she mastered her impulse to fight and let her body go limp. "There's a girl."
"Mmm," he sniffed her hair, pressing heavily from behind. "Gustave did say to keep you in line, if you try'n 'scape." He transferred something from the hand embracing her to the one clamped against her mouth. After a second, there was a sharp prick on her neck. His arm pinned hers against her body while the free hand roamed over her breasts. "Yeah, that's right luv; that's a knife." The roaming hand turned insistent. "Don't scream now, pet—this'll be quick—"
Peyton gritted her teeth. She couldn't move her head
too far forward without sticking her throat against the knife, but from this angle, a crash to the nose would still hurt enough to surprise him. She shut her eyes and braced herself for the pain when there was a sudden cry of "Yopp!" from behind. The arm pinning her sprang away from her body so forcefully she pushed off the wall.
She twisted under and away from the man's knife-wielding hand and caught her breath. Carson was twisting the man's—a tall white man with long blonde dreads—arm against his back. There was a split second where she registered the frightening expression on Carson's face, when the man ducked and slash of silver arced through the evening air.
"Knife!" she yelled, and lunged to catch the man's elbow. He pulled and jerked against her—he was surprisingly strong, despite one arm twisted behind him and a 120-pound redhead hanging on the other—but Carson tackled his side and then sunk his fist into his stomach. The dreadlocked man immediately crumpled to the floor, gagging for breath. Peyton kicked the knife far from his reach.
Carson looked at her with murder in his eyes.
"H-he's one of Gustave's thugs—kept an eye on the flat—" she stammered, taking an involuntary step backward at the look on his face.
"Didn't I tell you to stay inside?" he said evenly.
"Bloody hell," wheezed the dreadlocked man on all fours between them. "Bloody hell. Y'didn't have'ta do that, mate. Just doin' me job!"
"You get the fuck out of here," Carson said. "Don't ever touch her again."
The man crawled away from them till he reached the street corner. Then he got up, eyed them balefully, and then slunk around the street before disappearing into the night.
"What the fuck is wrong with you, Peyton?" he demanded.
"I got it!" she said, feeling oddly embarrassed somehow. "I was going to head-butt him, you didn't need to—"
"I didn't?" Carson grabbed her arm and pulled it into the light. "Did you even know you were wounded?"
"Oh," said Peyton, knees going weak at the sight of the slash against the forearm of her coat and the blood seeping through the wool.
Some of the harshness left Carson's face at that. "Come on. Let's go back to the flat and get you cleaned up."
He was quiet as they walked back to the building and up to their room, his hand light on her back in case she needed help. She considered protesting but felt reassured by it. She pressed her forearm tight to stop the bleeding.
The TV was still on when they got inside. He remained quiet as he helped her ease off her coat and made her sit by the kitchen table to examine the wound. A rush of breath left through his nose.
"It's not too deep; there's that," he said, in a voice full of resentment. He rummaged in one of the drawers and pulled out a kit with cotton balls, gauze, tape, iodine and assorted pills. "I won't need to sew it."
"There's that," she agreed.
"Your coat though. Nearly ruined." He gave her such a grandmotherly expression of disapproval that she bit her cheek to keep from smiling.
He walked off to soak the coat sleeve in the bathroom. Then he filled a pan with water from the sink and began cleaning the wound with a kitchen towel. She watched him as he worked. He replaced the damp towel with cotton balls dabbed in iodine, but he kept his eyes averted, his expression still thunderous.
"Carson…" she began, but didn't know what to add to that.
He bound the wound tightly with gauze and secured it with tape. "You don't even know how close you…" He finally looked at her. "Now will you take me seriously?" He ran a hand through his curls. "I need to fix this and make sure that guy doesn't come after us. I'll fix the coat tomorrow. Will you promise me you'll stay here while I'm out?"
She was stung at his exasperated tone, but underneath her wounded pride she was still shaky at the encounter. No escape attempts were in her immediate future. "What are you going to do?"
He sighed heavily as he got to his feet and put the first aid kit away. "Something I'd rather not." He pulled his coat back on and cast her one last long look from the door. "Stay put, Peyton."
It took a long time for Peyton's nerves to stop singing and her heart to stop feeling like it was forcing its way out here mouth, but in all that time Carson remained away. She took a fortifying bath (taking care to keep her injured arm dry), changed into a nightshirt, sank into bed and then let exhaustion take her.
She was half asleep by the time she heard a key turn in the lock. The door to their flat opened and she could make out Carson's distinctive tread. From the bed she could smell him—a mix of his heady cologne and the reek of liquor and sweat. She heard him breathing heavily, too, as he walked across the room and stood in front of her.
"Peyton?" he said softly. She did not stir, feigning deep sleep.
He walked away on soft footfalls. A pause, and then fumbling and rustling: the sound of clothes being stripped and flung on the floor. Then the whine of the hinge as he opened the bathroom door. After a few more moments the sound of running water hissed through the room, and she drifted off to sleep again.
It seemed only a few moments later when she woke to feel the bed shift and her nose fill with the smell of soap and damp skin.
Carson breathed heavily as he gingerly lowered himself on the bed and settle under the duvet beside her.
Peyton tensed, still in the evening dark, willing her breathing to even out and mimic the rhythm of deep sleep. After a moment she felt the ghostly presence of his hand, wavering above her nightshirt, a centimeter above her leg. A hitch in his breath and a tentative whisper: "Peyton?"
She didn't answer and kept still, training her senses on the sound of his steady, even breathing. Then came the touch of his fingers, cold and hesitant as they walked up her thigh and stole under her nightshirt to caress her hip.
There was an ache between her legs and her body broke out in goosebumps. She felt him slide closer to her, and the warmth of his body flush against her back pitched her breath—the sleeping rhythm she'd tried to feign disappeared. Then his lips touched her ear and heat coursed through her, a fiery glow from where his mouth delicately kissed the shell of her ear.
She stirred and shifted to lay on her stomach—to quell the ache and deny him access—and she heard him sigh.
"Wish things were different between us," he whispered, before he slid off the mattress and down to the trundle bed.
Chapter 6
She woke to the sound of panting and sat up, alarmed, to find Carson vigorously doing push-ups on the floor.
"Morning," he groaned.
"Morning," she mumbled, groping for the robe she kept under her pillow and tying it over her nightclothes. She felt awkward, after the little scene that night, with her legs bare and her body naked underneath the nightshirt, but she felt thwarted, too. A part of her wished that she'd responded to him, given in to his ministrations and taken pleasure in his arms. It was all so stupid. Randomly choosing to sleep with the first hot guy who'd drooled over her bikini was exactly why she was in this mess. Never again.
And yet, watching him now, clad only in a pair of shorts and glistening with sweat as he switched from push-ups to V sit-ups, she felt that maybe there wasn't such a thing as 'never.'
"How's your arm?" he said, grunting as his outstretched fingertips met his toes over his core.
"Better, thanks," she said, successfully (on the third try) tearing her eyes away from the sight. "So what happened last night?" She went to the kitchen and busied with the kettle and a packet of instant oatmeal.
A pause in the sound of his exertions. "Last night?"
"The Bruges? You uh…never got the chance to tell me."
"Oh," and the sounds of sit-ups began once more. "Well, our theory's right. He's in big money trouble. He had to hock a watch before heading to the tables."
"The Bruges is a casino?"
"The same way a sidewalk shell game is a poker tournament."
"Ooh-kay. Did he play?" she asked, stirring in some sugar into the porridge.
"No. Just handed the money over to the ho
use man."
"And? Did you get to hear anything?"
"What do you think of me, an amateur?" He got up, dried his face with a towel, then bent to a downward dog. "He owes something huge. From what I heard, at least a quarter mil."
She nearly dropped her spoon. "That much? What is he, a moron?"
"Looks like one." He lay on the floor and began stretching his legs. She turned her eyes away from the sight of his rippling thighs. "From what I could understand, he'd had a good run, didn't have the good sense to stop, bet against the house, lost it all. Had to borrow money from some of those roving sharks on the floor. Of course, none of those guys are going to send you a strongly worded demand letter, should you be late with your payment."
She shook her head. "Poor bugger." She ate silently, brows furrowed in concentration. "I just don't know how we can work with this intel, though."
"You said you wanted leverage."
"Yeah, but this guy needs money and is therefore dependent on his girlfriend to sell a big painting. We're trying to stop the sale, remember?"
"Of course I remember."
She shook her head again and played with her porridge. "I don't know. We'll need another angle."
Carson made a noncommittal noise as he finished his stretches. "Anja could pick out a better guy." He straightened up and dried off.
"I don't know. He's kind of cute," she said, spooning porridge and chewing dreamily. "Very talented mouth."
She looked up to find him standing next to the table. Her eyes were right at the level of his shining abs, and felt her mouth literally water at the sight.
"If it's a talented mouth you want, you don't have to look far to find one," he said huskily, before heading to the shower.
They milled outside the offices of AgileTech—or at least Carson milled restlessly while Peyton settled against a discreet little alcove and watched. They were on the southern part of the city, in the middle of the business district: glass, parks, walkways teeming with people heading to the small sandwich shops and cafés on the buildings' ground floors for a meal. After a few minutes, Carson ceased pacing and returned to her spot.