“About twenty miles out of White Salmon, as the crow flies,” Bruno said. “My uncle had a cabin.”
“I never saw anything about a cabin in the property records!”
“Of course you didn’t,” Bruno said. “He fixed it that way himself, thirty-five years ago. He had a checkered past, before Vietnam. Tony wanted a place where he could disappear, from the law or the Ranieris, whoever was out for his blood.” He looked around. “In fact, Kev and I don’t have a clue what the hell to do about this place. The paperwork, I mean. Who the fuck knows whose name it’s in? Tony never told.”
“That doesn’t explain what we’re doing here!” Lily’s voice shook.
Bruno frowned. “I told you I’d find you someplace safe to rest, remember? Without using my credit cards, this is the best I can do.”
“But we’re cornered here! Does this place have Internet? Phone service, taxis? Wireless?”
His face answered her. “Oh, God,” she moaned. “You’ve dropped me into the bottom of a well. This is just freaking perfect!”
Aaro edged away. “I’ll be on my way. You’ll be getting my bill soon. Not that I know where to send it, since you’re a fucking fugitive.”
Bruno grunted. “You’ll get your money.”
“You mean, you’re leaving us here?” Lily’s voice squeaked with horror. “You’re driving away, and leaving us here with no vehicle?”
“Like shit through a goose.” Aaro sidled toward the driver’s side door. “See ya, babe. Be good.”
“No! I’m coming back with you! I am not staying here!”
Aaro got into his van, eyes wary. “Keep your distance, lady.”
“Don’t you dare drive away!” She tottered toward the van.
Aaro revved the engine and rolled his window down an inch to deliver his parting shot at Bruno. “Never would have thought I’d say this, man, but your girlfriend makes celibacy look good.”
“You asshole!” Lily grabbed the handle, which locked with an audible thunk an instant befo she touched it. Tires spat dirt and pebbles. Aaro peered out his window, trying not to drive over her feet.
She hung on, but Aaro did not stop. There was no question of running in those heels. She stumbled, sliding to her knees as the van rounded the curve, roared down the hill, rattling over a narrow plank bridge laid over a dry creek bed. It turned a corner and was gone.
Oh, ouch. That knee had already taken a lot of abuse.
Bruno pulled her to her feet and tried to hug her, the sneaky son of a bitch, but she was in freak-out mode, arms windmilling, tottering on the useless shoes. She pitched and swayed in the gusts of wind.
“Calm down,” he was repeating, over and over, his tone pleading. “Calm down. Just calm down. This is a safe place.”
He looked worried, scared, gorgeous. She tried to breathe. Safe place, her milk white ass. She laughed so hard it started her crying. He ended up hugging her, and she was too far gone to fight him off.
“I just can’t be in a place like this,” she gasped out. “I’ll go crazy.”
He glanced around at the terrifying, appalling nothing around them. Trees, bugs, rocks, sky. “What’s this?” he asked. “A place that’s wild, clean? Safe? What the fuck is not to like about this place?”
“The reason I’ve survived is because I’ve stayed on the move!” she yelled. “I’m like a shark that can’t stop swimming or I’ll die! I can’t just look at the view while I wait for them to come beat me to death!”
“They won’t.” His voice was low, soothing. “I won’t let them. No one knows about it. No one saw us come. My friends will come get us. I have a plan. We can have a meal, a shower. A nap. Is a nap so terrible?”
“I don’t have time for a fucking nap!” she howled.
“You needed that one you took just now,” he said triumphantly. “And you could use another one, where someone is sitting by the bed with a loaded gun. How long has it been since you relaxed?”
She goggled at him. “Loaded gun? Excuse me? You mean to say you have one of those? On your person?”
He looked impatient. “Of course, thanks to Aaro. More than one.”
“And you know how to use them?”
His chest vibrated, plastered against hers. “Spare me, Lily.”
“When pigs fly! Loaded guns are not items that I find relaxing!”
“You are so fucking hard to please. I don’t know if it came across in your research, but I’m actually above average in intelligence. I can think my way out of a paper bag, and I can handle a gun. So chill.”
“But if I’m not doing something, I’ll go crazy!”
“So I’ll just keep you really busy,” he said.
She wasn’t sure quite how to take that statement, so she ignored it entirely. “I’m just so goddamn scared,” she whispered.
“Trust me,” he said, unexpectedly, and scooped her into his arms.
“Hey! Stop that!” She flopped and twisted.
“You can’t walk in those shoes, and you can’t go barefoot, either,” he said. “You’ll freeze your feet. Stop wiggling.”
He set her down on the small porch and fiddled with the padlocks on the doors. He’d done it again. Teased her through a screaming meltdown and out the other side. And he’d known her for, whaa few hours? They’d found their groove. He wasn’t afraid of her.
Wouldn’t last long, though. It never did. She never made it easy for guys. She eventually scared them or intimidated them or pissed them off or threatened their masculinity. She was a difficult proposition for a relationship in the best of times. And this was the very worst.
Look what a prize she’d been so far. Jerking him around, lying to him, spying on him, using him. Leading hit men to him. Getting him attacked, almost killed. Getting him in trouble with the law. Costing him shocking amounts of money. He was going to get sick of it.
How depressing. It made her guts feel sour. Hah. Like she had the requisite brain cells to stress about her romantic prospects right now.
At least, the sex was, well, incendiary. A point in her favor. Guys weighed sex heavily in the balance. It was a big priority for them.
That thought perked her right up.
Snick, the lock gave. Bruno pushed the door open into a black, stifling cave. She was blinded as she stepped inside to the scent of woodsmoke and dust. Bruno opened the shutters, jerked a curtain aside, revealing a double bed swathed in plastic. Bedding was bound up in plastic bags as well. Her eyes adjusted to see him dragging blankets out of one of the bags. Laying one down on top of the plastic bed cover.
“Lie down,” he said. “Cover yourself up while I get things going. The fire, the propane water heater. Some food.”
“I can help,” she offered.
“It’ll go quicker if I do it alone. I’ve got the choreography of this place down. You rest, get warm. Relax.”
Relax, her ass. Like she ever had, in her whole life, with her complicated baggage. And this was even before killers closed in. She sat on the bed. Bruno plucked off her shoes, scooping her legs up. He tossed another blanket on top of her.
He got to work on making the place habitable.
The blankets were fuzzy and thick, but she was stone cold from the inside. She huddled into a ball and watched him, teeth chattering.
Bruno kept looking over at her as he built a fire in the stove. When the flames were crackling, he came over to the bed, flung off his jacket, kicked off his shoes, and slid under the blanket with her.
Her glands went bananas. The bed creaked under his weight. Plastic crackled. He smelled like salt, sweat, the coppery tang of blood, and under that, his own special Bruno smell. He hugged her. The release of tension in her body was cataclysmic. It felt so good, so hot.
“You’re freezing,” he said, his voice disapproving.
“Yeah, well,” she said. “You’re helping.”
“Not fast enough.” He rolled over right on top of her, squashing the breath out of her. The bed sagged, creaked. “That bet
ter?”
A flush rose, like a hot cloud, until her whole body felt red. She wanted to say something offhand. Sure. No biggie, having a gorgeous sex god who held all the keys to her destiny, squishing her onto a bed.
He propped himself onto his elbows so that she could drag in some air. She didn’t do it consciously, but suddenly, she’d moved so he was resting the stiff bulge of his crotch against the vee of her opened thighs. The wind moaned, singing of a vast empty solitude outside that made it so much more intimate within. The last two lovers in the world.
There was no reason in the world for him not to just open his jeans, twitch the gusset of her thong aside and have her. She ached for it. A hot pull of mindless yearning that actually hurt, it was so strong.
He answered her silent call, settling into an incredibly slow, sensual pulse. Her face got hotter, her breath shallow. They couldn’t break their eye contact. It blazed out of her like light, how badly she needed him to press against that sweet ache, just like that, again . . .
She lifted herself against him. He seconded her every move with such grace, such perfect swirling pressure and the slow . . . firm pulse and push, and oh, God, yes . . . yes . . .
She exploded, energy pumping down to her fingers and toes. Beyond. Extending out into infinity, fused with him, with everything.
When she got enough presence of mind back to be mortally embarrassed, he was kissing her. Tender, coaxing kisses, wordlessly asking for something from her that she didn’t even dare put a name to. Let alone grant him. She just didn’t have it to give. She turned her face away, but Bruno was having none of that. He cupped her face, forced her gaze back until their eyes locked. “You warmed up?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I just meant to get you warm. I swear to God. I didn’t mean to dry hump you. That just sort of happened.”
He lifted himself up. Before she knew what she was doing, she’d yanked him back down. He landed on his elbows, wary. “Huh?”
“Don’t you want . . . ?” She couldn’t say it. She wound her legs around his thighs and let her body ask the question.
He gave her an are-you-kidding look. “Of course I want it. But you’ve been skating on the edge of a breakdown ever since those guys attacked us. You almost had one right outside. It’s not a good time.”
“I’d be OK,” she assured him.
He shook his head. “You can’t be sure how you’d feel. And if I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop.”
So? Who wanted him to stop? She wanted to scream, slap him, force him to stop trying so hard to be a good guy. But that would make her seem crazier. Push him further away.
“Get warmed up,” he said. “Get on your new clothes, get some food into you, then we can talk about everything you know, suspect, or guess, or fear about what’s happening to you. Then we hike up to the bluff.”
She jerked up onto her elbow. “Are you kidding? Is this a time for a flipping nature walk, Ranieri?”
“It’s the only place with cell reception,” he said. “I can use the phone Aaro gave me, with encryption software.”
“To call who?”
“My brother’s brothers. My adopted brother Kev recently hooked up with his biological family a few months ago. Real eventful, you might say. But you know all about that, right?”
She dropped her gaze. “Um. Some of it.”
His eyebrow tilted. “I figured that. Anyhow. Once I’ve talked to them, I can make some decisions.”
She blinked. “Um. Excuse me? You will make the decisions?” “Yes.” He stared her straight in the eyes. “Me. It’s your own fault, Lily, for dragging me into this. Now you have to deal with me.”
“Don’t get masterful on me, Ranieri. I don’t respond well to that.”
“You need someone to make some decisions for you, babe,” he said. “Just a few. For a little while. Just restAnd trust me.”
She shook her head. “Don’t ask me to trust you, because I can’t. It’s nothing personal, I swear to God. I just don’t have the equipment.”
“You don’t have a choice,” he said.
It was true, she realized. She’d put herself smack-dab in someone’s else’s power. Alone in a cabin in the armpit of the universe, with a guy who could pick her up and twirl her on his pinkie if he felt like it. But there was no reasoning with her urge to micromanage.
“They’ll be listening to the McClouds,” she said stubbornly.
“The phone calls will be encrypted,” he repeated. “These people run a security company, Lily. They’re ex-military, ex-special forces, ex-everything. Plus, they were raised by a paranoid survivalist freak with global conspiracy theories.” He blinked. “You know, your kind of guy.”
She bristled. “Smart-ass.”
He got back to work. Lily stared at dust motes dancing in the beam of light that sliced through the window, determined to stay alert.
Next thing she knew, the smell of coffee and frying onions was dragging her out of sleep. She forced herself up onto her elbow, trying not to wince. The shoulder hurt, a lot. The room was warm. The angle of the light had changed, moved up the wall.
Bruno stood over a gas range, stirring onions that sizzled in a cast-iron skillet. They smelled amazing. He looked different. A fresh black sweatshirt. Wet, clean hair, no bloodstains. He looked yummy.
She rubbed her eyes. “Hey.”
He gave her a smile that would bend metal with its sheer charm load. “Water’s hot in the shower tank. You like steak?”
“Wow.” Her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t been able to afford anything with that much protein in it since D-day, and rarely enough before that, either. The rich scent made her dizzy. “Where did all this food come from?”
“Aaro got some groceries for us, in Bingen. I call it ten minutes to sit-down. Can you shower in that time?”
“I’ll try.” She got to her feet, took the battered terrycloth bathrobe he offered her, and closeted herself in the miniscule bathroom.
The shower was heaven. She stayed under until it turned tepid, then chilly, then glacial. It took that much scrubbing to get the makeup off. But afterward, the face in the mirror was her own. Not Mata Hari. Or the mascara-smeared hell-hag.
When she came out, the table was set for two and loaded with fragrant, steaming food. “Sit,” he said.
She was intensely conscious of her nudity under the damp terrycloth. “Shouldn’t I dress?”
“The room’s warm. And the food’s hot. And it’s just me.”
True enough. She sat down and dug in. The steak was pan seared, pink and juicy and melting, and heaped with caramelized onions. He’d done cheesy buttered noodles, some sort of long pasta with frilly edges, dripping and rich. A heap of peppery coleslaw. Slices of hothouse tomatoes. Crisp, warty sour pickles. Fresh sourdough bread to sop up drippings. Mmm. He kept refilling her plate. She kept eating.
“I’d offer you a beer, but it’s not a great idea,” he said. “It would take the starch out of you for the hike. So it’s water, for now.”
“That’s OK,” she said. “I don’t drink.”
“Oh?” He buttered a hunk of his bread. “Not ever, or not now?”
“Not ever.” She looked down, wishing she hadn’t said anything.
“Any reason for that?”
“Does there have to be?”
His shrug was elaborately casual. “You’re the one who was flapping it in front of my face.”
She sighed. It was relevant, she supposed, in a painful, oblique sort of way, so whatever. “My dad was an alcoholic, and a junkie.”
He took it in, his face impassive. “This would be the father who—”
“Yes. The father who was murdered six weeks ago, by those guys who attacked us, I assume. Or whatever organization hired them.”
“Ah.” He got up, rummaged on the shelves. He found a plastic box and knelt in front of her, pushing the robe open over her knees.
She shrank away. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Disinfecting the scrapes on your legs. While I do that, you talk.”
“I’ll do it myself! Just give me the stuff! I can take care of it!”
“Shhh.” He batted her hands away. “Let me.”
Lily stared down at the top of his dark head and fished around for a starting point. “Well, my name is Lily Parr, not Torrance,” she began. “I guess I’ll start when my dad fell apart. I was ten. Which would have made it 1993.”
His eyes flicked up when she mentioned the year that his mother had died. “Fell apart how?”
She clenched her teeth as he swabbed with the alcohol-soaked wad of cotton. “Like I said, he started drinking heavily. Then he started in on the opiates. Heroin, mostly, I think, although one white powder looks pretty much like another to me. Ouch, goddamnit, that hurts!”
“Hold still.” He leaned in with the tweezers. “There’s grit in here.”
She hissed and cursed as he tortured her with tweezers. He was unmoved, intent upon his task. “What work did he do?” he asked.
“He was a fertility specialist,” she said. “A researcher, in IVF technology. He got early retirement not long after his breakdown. He was barely fifty, but he got a pension. A good one, but not generous enough to fund a drug habit. I started swiping the checks before he saw them. I paid the bills so they wouldn’t turn off the lights, the gas. So we could eat. Not that he was that interested in food anymore.”
He nodded, frowning in concentration as he taped gauze over her knees. His eyes flicked up, waiting while she struggled for words.
It sounded so sad, and flat, when she laid the facts out. Howard’s string of suicide attempts. The decision to commit him to an institution. The search for the perfect clinic that would keep him alive. And then, that last, awful visit. Howard’s cryptic warning, and his message, about Magda Ranieri and her son. The mysterious thing that needed to be locked, whatever it might be. Miriam’s interruption.
Then the call from Dr. Stark, and Howard’s so-called suicide. And the guys waiting outside Nina’s apartment with knives. And that was it.
It wasn’t enough for him. She could feel that in the air. Strongly.
“I tried to research you, while I was on the run,” she told him. “I tried to find out more about the nurse, Miriam Vargas, too, but she seemed to check out. At least, I found records of her going to nursing school in Baltimore. I tried to find out more about Magda, but I got nowhere with that. Just statistics, the newspaper articles, he obit. The only next step was to talk to you. So, um. I made my way here.”
Blood and Fire Page 15