“And I’ll tell you the rest of what I want when we get inside the house. Okay? Please just be patient.”
Within two hundred yards, the gravel drive twisted and turned its way up a ledge to a Swiss-style chalet built into the side of the hill beneath trees ablaze with autumn leaves. It was a house out of Hans Christian Andersen. It was a gingerbread house of earth colors and elaborate latticework. There were oculus windows, parapets, arched doorways, and bay windows that looked out onto what must have been one of the most spectacular views possible of the city of Denver.
The woman got out of the car, her whole spirit seemingly brightened by just being near the house. “Like it?” she asked, making an embracing gesture with her arms.
“Very pretty,” said Hawker. “I like it very much.” It was his first real look at the woman. In her black ski sweater and designer jeans, she could have been any one of a hundred thousand of Colorado’s interchangeable ski bunny beauties. But there was something frail and wild about the pale skin of her perfect face, about the soft and shining platinum blond hair, about the glittering, haunted blue eyes. Her nervousness reminded Hawker of an expensive Thoroughbred, one that had been bred a little too finely and suffered its beauty through delicacy.
“It’s mine,” the woman said. “All mine. Bill Nek doesn’t even know anything about it. This house is the only thing in this entire world that has ever been completely mine. I had it built with money that I damn well deserved and took for myself. I designed it myself, too.”
“I like it,” said Hawker. “But if we drove all the way out here just to see—”
“Come on,” the woman said anxiously. “Hold your questions till we get inside. Then I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
The vigilante followed her up the steps to the broad porch that overlooked the hot tub, the well-groomed Oriental garden, the fountain, and the bird feeders. Inside, the house was chilly from disuse, but a stone fireplace covered one entire wall.
“Could you get a fire going?” the woman asked. “I’ll pour some wine, get the upstairs hot tub going, and the two of us can get to know each other better—”
“Why don’t you just tell me what you want, Melissa?”
The woman looked hurt, then evasive, then a glossy expression of defiance came into her eyes that was touchingly childlike. “For all that money, Hawker, I do want something else from you. It’s strictly business. Nothing personal; even so, it may sound like a strange request. I decided on you because you must be very, very good at—it, and I want someone who is very, very good at it.”
“What the hell is ‘it,’ Melissa?”
The woman’s voice softened with nervousness. She took a deep breath. “I want you to take me.… I want you to show me—to make me feel good as a woman. I will pay you the money if you take care of my husband, and if you can help me to experience what it is like to enjoy being with a man in bed …”
nine
The woman had offered him more than three hundred thousand dollars to kill her husband and to take her to bed. What could she do if he refused? Judging by the way she held the revolver, it looked as if she might shoot him.
Hawker shook his head wearily.
He had heard that the ski craze had brought some awfully weird people into Colorado.
In the space of just a few days, it seemed he had already met a fair portion of them.
Hawker sighed and began to crumple newspapers and lay on tinder and logs, constructing a fire. “Look, lady,” he began, “I really don’t want to get involved in all this—”
“But didn’t you come to Denver to kill my husband? I’m not asking that much more, am I?” Her chin drooped slightly and her eyes became shy, puppy-size.
“I’m not an assassin, Melissa. I didn’t come to Colorado as a killer, I came because there are some people here who need help. I can’t accept an assignment to kill someone in cold blood. And as far as the other thing—”
“Don’t you find me attractive?” said the young blond woman. She had taken off her down vest and shaken her hair down over her shoulders.
Hawker lighted the fire. “It’s not that I don’t find you attractive. You know it’s not that. You know damn well how pretty you are—”
“Oh? And how would I know that? Bill Nek rarely lets me out of the house. When I do leave, it has to be with a chauffeur. All the chauffeurs are Bill’s personal spies. It’s like being a prisoner.”
“But you must have been with men before you married Nek—”
“Never! Never once! He would never have stood for it. He’s crazy, I’m telling you. When he wants something, he has to have it. And when he owns something, he has to own it completely. It was the same with me. I have no idea what other men think about me, because Bill Nek has had control over me since I was much younger. And I have no idea what it is like to be with other men in bed, because I’ve only been with that disgusting old creature. The things he makes me do are terrible. He makes me want to vomit. But he can’t do anything to me because his—thing doesn’t work. And he could never ever make me feel good, because the touch of his hands makes me cringe.”
The woman made a face of passionate distaste that was somehow mixed with a pathetic wanting. “I used to think that I would never want to be with a man. Ever. But in the last year or so, something inside me has begun to change. I began to imagine things—how it would feel, what it would be like. I’d fantasize about some man coming and taking me away to show me. But I knew that I couldn’t let myself fall in love with the man. And I knew he couldn’t be in love with me. It would be too painful because Nek would make our lives living hell. I knew that, if I found the right man, it would have to be handled as a business deal.”
The woman took three slow steps closer to the vigilante. The fire was crackling now, and she looked frail and pretty and very young. “So now I’m offering you the deal, Mr. Hawker. True, I brought you here at the point of a gun. But I don’t often get the chance to escape from Nek’s prison for a day without one of his chauffeurs, so I couldn’t take the chance of your just telling me to get lost. In fairness to me, though, you have to admit that I’ve been very open and honest since we got to my house. So now I want your answer. Is it yes or is it no?”
The vigilante took a deep breath. The woman saw the negative expression on his face and said quickly, “You can’t be expected to make up your mind until you’ve seen what you’re getting. How thoughtless of me.” In a reluctant gesture of touching uncertainty, Melissa Nek pulled the black ski sweater over her head and shook her silver hair back into place. “I’m not big,” she said, “but I’ve kept myself in good shape. Don’t you think?”
Hawker stood looking at one of the most perfect female bodies he had ever seen. She had small, full upturned breasts with long, pale pink nipples. The accent of her ribs disappeared smoothly in the tight swell of her jeans. “I’ll take off my pants now, too, if you like—”
Hawker reached out and took her by the hand and pulled her to him. “You’re trembling,” he said quietly.
“It’s—it’s cold.”
“Why don’t you just admit that you’re afraid, Melissa? There’s nothing wrong with being afraid.”
“Because I’m not afraid. This is just a sort of business transaction. You’re being well-paid. You’re a teacher, nothing more. Why should I be afraid of a teacher in my own employ?”
Hawker held the shivering woman close to him, feeling sorry for this strange beauty who had been crippled by a man who, more and more, seemed like a monster. “I haven’t accepted your offer yet.”
The woman tried to pull away from him. “Is it because I’m not pretty enough? I know you must have had many women a lot prettier than I—”
“You’re beautiful,” Hawker said. “You really are. But I’m not a paid assassin. I can’t accept money for killing Bill Nek. I’ll try to help you get away from him, though. I’ll do anything I can to help you.”
“And the other thing?” the woman asked i
n a small voice. “What about the other part of our business deal?”
The vigilante laughed. “I don’t accept money for doing that, either.”
“Then you won’t help me?”
Hawker nuzzled his face into the woman’s silk-soft hair. “If you have a swimsuit around this doll house of yours, go put it on. I’ll meet you in the hot tub. We’ll discuss it there.”
“And wine? Can we have wine?”
The vigilante nodded. “You can have all the wine you want. But first, please put that damned gun away. You’re beginning to make me nervous.”
The indoor hot tub was on the exercise patio. There was a sauna, a steam room, an ice-water plunge pool, an exercise bar, and mirrors. The patio provided another fantasy view of Denver and the foothills of the Colorado Rockies. It was after five P.M., and the Mile High City was getting a misty autumn late-afternoon look.
Hawker stood leaning against the rail looking out when he heard the door behind him whoosh open.
The woman carried a bottle of champagne in one hand and two glasses in the other. The swimsuit she wore was really a sheer gray body stocking through which the outlines of her lithe body were traced in silver. Her legs were long and trim, and a bit of pale body hair escaped from the crotch seam.
“Did you bring a suit for me?” Hawker asked.
“Don’t be silly. What would I be doing with a man’s swimsuit? I’m afraid you’ll just have to improvise. Do you want to open the champagne, or shall I?” A chill mountain wind swept across the porch, and the woman shivered slightly. Hawker took the magnum and the glasses. He nodded toward the bubbling, boiling, steaming hot tub. “Why don’t you get in there before you catch cold?”
“But I thought I would take a steam first—”
“Hot tub first,” he insisted. “The sun will be going down soon. We can sit and watch it and enjoy the wine.”
The woman smiled, relaxing a little. “Like going to the theater, huh?”
“In Key West, they have toasts and applaud the sunset. It would be nice if you had a stereo—”
“I have a full Boise system! Everything built into the walls, the very best money can buy.”
“I should have known. Poor little rich girl.”
“What kind of music do you like?”
Hawker thought for a moment, actually enjoying himself. The woman might be a little crazy, but the idea of sitting in a hot tub and watching the sun set while listening to good music was attractive enough to make him forget the craziness of his day. “Sunset in the Rockies demands something kind of grand and instrumental, doesn’t it? I don’t suppose you have Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, do you?”
The woman snapped her fingers. “That’s the one they play a lot in the movies when the stagecoaches are headed across the prairie, right? The one with all the brass and timpani.”
“I’m surprised you know it. But do you have it?”
She nodded. “I had my entire collection duplicated and brought out here—something like five thousand albums. It should be around someplace. It may take me awhile to find it—”
“It’ll give me time to pour the wine and find a swimsuit.”
“Such modesty!” The woman went swishing off, firm buttocks wagging, fingers finding the rim of her tights and pulling them down—the self-conscious action of a teen-age girl.
Christ, thought Hawker, as she disappeared into the house. How old can she be? Absolutely no older than twenty-seven, but probably closer to twenty-four. What kind of weird bastard is this Bill Nek to force a beautiful young creature like that to marry him? And what kind of parents could the girl have to let her go through with such a monstrous deal?
Hawker shook his head as he stripped off his shirt and slacks and unbuckled the empty holster and knife scabbard attached to his calves. It was only then that he remembered that Nek’s goons still had his handgun and his Randall knife. The handgun he didn’t care about. He had plenty of weaponry available. He was prepared for anything this mission to Colorado might demand. But he hated like hell to lose his Randall survival knife. It had been made especially for him by old Bo Randall of Orlando, Florida, one of the world’s great knifemakers and a great American as well.
Hawker made a mental note to get the knife back if he ever found himself back inside Bill Nek’s complex.
He had a feeling he would sometime soon.
Wearing only his beige jockey shorts, Hawker found the timer knobs on the sauna room and the steam room and switched them both on high. If the woman had only had Bill Nek as a lover, then she might demand a great deal of thawing before he could give her any pleasure.
He opened the champagne and watched the cork disappear over the precipice, arching toward Denver. He poured two glasses of the golden liquid, then stepped into the hot tub, feeling his scrotum contract upon contact with the steaming water.
From some unseen speakers came the first tentative trumpet calls of a symphony orchestra. At first it was too loud, then too soft, then the music was just loud enough to blend in with the sound of the wind as it filtered down off the mountaintop, through the trees.
Hawker took a sip of his champagne, made a face, and sighed. He would have preferred beer. He would have preferred to be with a woman he knew and liked. He would have preferred not to be in Colorado on a mission. But life, he knew, rarely deals out things that are preferred. The trick, he had learned, was not to expect the preferred deal, but to prefer the deal you happened to get.
All considered, things could have been a lot worse.
Melissa came wagging through the door, her left hand brushing nervously at her hair. The sun was growing gold and low over the mountains, and the pearly light showed goosebumps on her legs and the large erect eyes of her nipples beneath the thin silver fabric of the body stocking.
“Getting cold out,” Hawker said. He patted the water. “Better get in.”
“Are you—did you—are all of your clothes off?” She was peering down into the water, suddenly looking like a child afraid of snakes.
Hawker laughed. “Don’t worry so much, Melissa. I’m wearing good American-made underwear. They’d pass for a swimsuit just about anyplace.”
The woman touched her toe to the water experimentally. Hawker said, “You’re having second thoughts, aren’t you? You think that because you came on so strong, so businesslike, I’m going to feel obligated to ravish you. Well, I’m not. Frankly, I’d be just as happy if we skipped the sex part and just had a nice long talk. There’s a lot I’d like to know about your husband—”
“I won’t talk about Bill Nek,” she interrupted firmly.
“Then we can talk about you,” Hawker continued. “The point is, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. And I’m sure as hell not going to do anything I don’t want to do.” He raised the glass to her. “Here, take your wine. Get in here before you freeze.”
Melissa took a sip of the wine, shivered, then slid into the water. “Hoo! This feels good!” She was grinning.
Hawker reached out and touched his glass to hers. “To the relaxation of a beautiful woman.”
“To my relaxation,” Melissa said, looking at him over the rim of the glass, then stretching her arms back and sliding her foot over to rest on the vigilante’s.
ten
Hawker spent a heart-pounding hour going from the hot tub to the icy water of the plunge pool, then to the sauna, then to the steam room, then back to the plunge pool, then once again to the hot tub.
He began to wonder if his body would ever need to sweat again.
They kept sipping at the wine, kept drifting off into the reverie of music that matched the silver-tanged afterglow of sunset in the mountains, kept exchanging easy conversation. Hawker was aware that the woman was yawning more, stretching more, allowing more eye and body contact. He knew that she was coming around and would soon be ready to bed. The trick would be for him to keep from passing out before the time came.
“Steam room time!” Melissa c
alled gaily, pouring the last few drops from the empty champagne bottle. She looked at the bottle with a pouting expression, then looked at Hawker. It was their second bottle, and she obviously wanted more.
“Hit the cold water, then the steam room. I’ll get another bottle and meet you in there,” Hawker said.
The vigilante walked barefoot and wet, his feet slapping, into the house. The fire was burning low, and he added more wood. In the kitchen, he found another magnum of wine, and a single lone Coors for himself. Seeing a beer in this house of expensive furnishings and in-crowd gismos was like seeing an old friend. He stopped in the bathroom, urinated, and noticed a bottle of coconut oil on the shelf. He took it outside with him.
Melissa was stretched out on the top deck of the cedarwood-and-rock steam room. Her hands were locked behind her head so that the bone structure of her hips and pelvis was arched toward the ceiling. She opened one eye briefly as Hawker came in. “Umm, where’s the wine?”
“Outside in the plunge pool chilling. Why do you keep that thing so cold? One more trip to that place, and my scrotum may just crawl to cover and decide not to come back out.”
“It’s good for your skin. It closes the pores, silly.”
“I found something here that’s supposed to be good for the skin, too.” The vigilante held up the bottle of oil for inspection. “Care for a backrub, lady?”
“I’m not sure, James,” she said in a small voice. “This has been so much fun, and now if you touch me and I can’t make myself like it, it would spoil—”
“Nothing is going to be spoiled,” Hawker” said, “and I don’t want you to make yourself do anything. Just lie there. If you don’t like it, tell me to stop. That’s all there is to it. Okay?”
The woman took a deep breath. “Okay, dear. But I’m warning you, this is a first for me. I know hardly anything about—about loving a man.”
Hawker opened the coconut oil, poured some into his hand, and smeared it on her legs. He began to massage the oil into her skin, enjoying the scent of it, enjoying the sleepy, faraway look on the woman’s perfect face.
Denver Strike Page 7