More details, more info, more intel. Go over it all again and again and again.
Ian knew it was relevant, but he was just so damned tired. This weekend. This weekend was the last assignment he had.
Thank God.
His headache had been constant for two days. He just had to make it through this weekend.
Pete and the agency’s team of docs had been concerned, but he told them to give him some damn pills and he’d deal with it. He could crash when it was all over. And he knew he would. Crashing was simply a side effect of what he did. He knew it and accepted it.
A cell phone chirped. Rori’s new one he’d gotten her today. He glanced at her over his shoulder as she frowned and answered it.
Then a soft smile spread across those lips. Darya sat in the corner playing with a box of wooden blocks he’d decided to get her at the toy store before coming home. The glittering Barbie and accessories were opened, but sat untouched to the side. He watched as she stacked yet another block up, creating God only knew what. Other than her screams and that one time at the hotel, she still hadn’t spoken again.
Pain flashed through his head.
“You okay?” his mother asked, coming up to stand beside him.
He bit down and nodded.
She frowned. “You look like you have a headache.”
It felt that bad. No wonder people could see it. He took a deep breath and focused on his mother. Her green eyes were concerned and her hair was pulled back into some do. She wore brown woolen slacks and an off-white silk button-down.
“You look beautiful, Mom.”
As he hoped, it distracted her. “Thank you, sweetie.” She swept her hand over some imaginary spot on her shirtfront. “Did you eat enough? I noticed—”
“Yes, Mom,” he interrupted. He needed a quiet place. Just him.
“Kaitie, leave the man alone,” his father said.
“Nikko, luv, I’ve really got to go.” Rori’s laughter and words pulled his attention back to her. She stood over in the corner, talking softly.
His mother and father raised a brow.
Nikko.
“No,” her voice sharpened. “Things are fine. Just . . .” Her gaze rose to his and locked. “Complicated.” Then she shook her head. “No, Nikko, not like that. We’re fine. Yes, yes, we’re still looking for them.” She nodded. “I need to go, Nikko. Yes, luv you as well. Ciao!”
Ian cocked a brow.
Johnno said, “Nikko?”
Rori’s laughter was husky and deep as she flipped the phone shut. “You don’t want to know, John.” Her gaze rose to his. “You’d really rather be in ignorance on this one.”
They walked out of the room together, John asking, “Is this the same Nikko you mentioned in passing before?”
“No, I’ve several men I call Nikko, luv. Doesn’t everyone?”
Ian ignored that, he’d ask later. God, his head hurt.
“You let your wife call other men luv?” Jock asked him.
Ian only stared at him. “No one lets Rori do anything. She does whatever she wants to do.”
Pain shot through his brain and he hissed. The edges of his vision were blurred.
“Ian?” someone asked.
Without a word to anyone, he walked out of the room. In the hallway, Johnno raised his brow, then frowned, said something to Rori and followed him.
Ian didn’t care. He just needed to get somewhere and lie down. Chills danced over his skin.
Johnno’s arm slipped around his shoulder. “That bad, is it?”
He started to bite out at his friend, but again the pain clawed inside him and all he could do was stop and take a breath, hoping he wouldn’t be sick. “Fuck, Johnno.”
“I know. Let’s get you to bed.”
Ian could feel his vision wavering. “Bad,” he mumbled.
Johnno slung Ian’s arm over his own shoulder.
“Well, this ought to give all the family something else to talk about.”
Ian tried to smile. “They’re currently wondering about Nikko.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Right now, I don’t care.”
“Yes, well, hopefully you’ll still feel that way later.”
He should probably try and figure out what the hell that statement meant, but God’s truth. “I hate these.”
“I know.”
They were at Ian and Rori’s room. Johnno paused to open the door.
“I’ll get it,” a new voice said. Gavin. Damn.
The room was thankfully dark.
Someone grabbed his wrist and Ian flung them off.
“You really don’t want to be touching him, Gavin,” John said.
“He’s my brother.”
“That may be—”
God, why the hell wouldn’t they shut up?
He all but fell on the bed.
“Did you take anything?” Gavin asked.
Ian might have laughed if he’d had the energy or felt like it, but instead he didn’t. He just wished for quiet oblivion.
He started to push himself up and grab the pill bottle he’d tossed on the dresser from Pete’s doctor. But he hated pills.
“Stay the bloody hell there,” Johnno’s voice bounced off his eardrums. “This the bottle here on the dresser?”
He didn’t even want to nod, just mumbled a yes.
Closing his eyes, he hoped this wasn’t a trek into the dark realm, as he called it. A migraine was one thing. Even a prolonged migraine. A trek into the dark side wasn’t what he liked to experience. It was soul draining. It was judgment on past crimes and punishment paid in pain. He called those times simply the Attacks.
Ian wasn’t in the mood, even for his friend. He just wanted everyone out. Silence.
Rori looked at the man on the bed. She knew what he felt. The headaches that reached up and knifed through the skull so that all you wanted was to be left the hell alone.
She watched as Johnno gave him a glass of water and two white pills. Be lucky if he bloody kept it down and wasn’t sick off of it.
He leaned up and took a drink, swallowing the meds and laying back on the bed. His brother reached again for his wrist and Ian muttered, “Leave me the hell alone, Gav. You can’t fucking fix this.”
Gavin cocked a brow and grabbed his brother’s wrist anyway. “Be that as it may, you can either deal with me or you know Mom will be up here taking your vitals. So lay back and shut up.”
“Paybacks are hell,” Ian muttered, flinging his other arm up over his eyes. “My pulse is one thing, you try to look at my pupils and I’m liable to put a fucking bullet in you.”
Gavin chuckled.
Johnno shook his head. “I don’t know that he’s joking.”
“You get these migraines a lot?” Gavin asked, straightening. “How bad is it?”
“Ever been stabbed in the brain?”
Gavin’s lips twitched. “No, and I’ll warrant neither have you, lest you wouldn’t be here.”
Rori went to the bathroom and wet a washcloth. Coming back to the bed, she said, “I’ve always likened them to some medieval torture of hot pokers in my bloody brain.”
Ian groaned. “Thank you, love.”
She gently laid the cloth on his forehead. “You need anything?” she whispered.
“For everyone to get the hell out. And leave me alone. Yeah.”
She asked John, “Has he always been such a compliant patient?”
“Rori,” Ian warned.
“Let’s go,” John said, taking Gavin’s arm. Gavin looked as if he wanted to ask more questions. She half-assed expected him to pull a stethoscope out at any minute.
Luckily John pulled him out of the room. At the doorway, John stopped and looked at her. He nodded to her and she mouthed “Darya.” He nodded and left, closing the door softly behind him.
She didn’t move. The silence became comfortable. Ian didn’t move. She almost wondered if he was breathing.
“You get these too?” he asked, his voi
ce low and gruff.
She started to reach out and run her fingers through his hair, but decided against it, as she didn’t like anyone to touch her when her headaches were raging.
“Upon occasion.”
“With analogies of hot pokers, I don’t have to ask if they’re bad.”
Again, they lapsed into silence. She scooted up onto the bed, sitting beside his head. He lifted it and shifted so he lay on her lap.
“Our lives are screwed, Rori.”
She chuckled and gently grazed her nails along the back of his neck. “Does that hurt?”
With his eyes still closed, he said, “No.”
Barely touching him, she hoped she relieved some of his pain.
“You should be downstairs with Darya,” he mumbled.
“She’s fine. Safe and playing with the blocks you brought back for her. She noticed when you left and Jock went and sat on the floor with her, telling her he’d build her a house.”
Ian still didn’t open his eyes, just grunted. “Damn,” he whispered.
His face taut with pain, the lines around his mouth deeper, harsher, the lines around his eyes more pronounced. The skin more pale than she was used to seeing on him. Black lashes lay in short spiky crescents against his skin. She lightly traced the crooked line of his nose, the outline of his M-ed hairline.
He was right, their lives were messed up.
“Who’s Nikko?” he whispered.
Never opened his eyes. She’d hoped he’d been almost asleep. Instead of answering him she put her hand on his chest and leaned back against the headboard.
His other hand came up and laced with hers. “Nikko?” he pressed.
Rori shook her head. “What you are to Darya,” she said, choosing her words. “That’s what he is to me.”
He opened his eyes, and she could see the pain clouding the blue irises and narrowing his lids. “I’d like to meet him then.”
She grinned. “Oh, you will.”
“Sounds like he’s not very happy with me.”
She chuckled again. “He’s not. He’s thinking of killing you. I had to explain you’re just a job.” Once the words were out of her mouth, she wished she could take them back.
His eyes bore into hers with an intensity she wanted to ignore and meet straight on.
“Just a job?” he asked quietly.
She leaned further over and gently kissed his lips, the edges almost white with pain. “Well, it was either that or tell him we were lovers.”
That wicked grin of his was starting to mean way too much to her. “There is that.”
Again she kissed him, just her lips brushing his, and then sat back. “He asked about Darya.”
“Why?” he asked, frowning.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Because I’m involved. Because it’s so bloody close to my own story, I don’t know.”
“What is your story?” he asked.
She took a deep breath, the snakes slithering through her gut. She looked at him and ran her fingers over his hair, barely touching. “You certainly are chatty for one who’s in pain.”
For one long moment, he stared at her, and for whatever reason, she actually thought about telling him. But why? It was none of his concern. None of his . . .
He closed his eyes, his fingers tightening on hers. “You know a husband really should know his wife.”
She shook her head and ignored him. She watched the ceiling fan, studied the artwork on the walls. Rather impressive actually. They were probably just prints of van Gough and Mary Cassatt, but then with the Kinncaids, these could just as easily be some originals. She’d rather not find out.
She looked around. Just as she’d first thought. Someone could nick some really nice things from this house alone if someone were so inclined. She wasn’t. She couldn’t have cared less about such things. Just because people had nice things, the best of whatever . . . did not make them worthy of any respect in her book.
Actions, the people themselves made the impression on her, good or bad. Not what they owned or where they came from.
“So when will I meet him?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“You should rest,” she whispered.
“I can’t until you answer my questions.” His eyes were again closed, his face pulled tight, but still she caught the edge of humor in his words.
She sighed. “Fine. Nikko is Nikko. He raised me.”
“Where’d he get you from?” Ian whispered, not looking at her.
She remembered the fear, the blood, the man holding his head screaming at her as he hit her again and again.
She shook the thought off. Ian opened his eyes. “Who hurt you?”
She took a deep breath. “I don’t know who my parents are. All I know is someone left me at an orphanage late one night. I was about one, they think.” She shrugged and looked at his hair. “I was put in a foster home with these truly lovely people. The Rittlebaums. He worked at Cambridge as a mythology professor.” She’d almost forgotten that. The way the man, with his whiskery beard, would come in and tell her good-night stories, bringing to life the story of Odysseus, and Agamemnon, Viking stories of angry gods punishing the hero. Someone was always being punished, tested. Always the hero, to make him stronger, bring him down and make him more thankful.
“You liked him,” Ian said. “So what happened?”
On another deep breath, she figured to bloody hell with it. Just tell him. She’d told others. No different than when they asked in her psych evaluations. “He died coming home one day. Car accident on the icy roads.”
A furrow appeared between his brows. “Sorry.”
She smiled. “I am too. He was a sweet, kind man. Mrs. Rittlebaum’s life was her home. She didn’t have a job and suddenly there wasn’t an income. They took us away.”
“Us?”
“Oh. Yes, there were two others then.” She frowned. “Both older, both boys.”
“What happened to them?”
“I don’t know, never really thought about it.”
“Yes, you did.”
Just like that. He knew.
“At first. I was seven when we were put back in foster care and they were the only siblings I’d ever known for the last four years.” If she allowed herself she could still feel that fear, that horrible stomach-greasing fear of wanting her brothers and not knowing where they were. Hoping she’d see them at this next family and then the next . . . until the weeks went by and then the months. And never finding them. Then she had simply forgotten them altogether.
“So where does Nikko come in?”
“Not all homes are as secure as the Rittlebaums’, or as safe as this one.”
His eyes studied hers. “Who hurt you?”
She shook her head. “It was just me with them. I don’t know how those people were able to take children into their home. She worked two shifts, he worked at the factory, and at first everything was fine, just different.”
His thumb stroked the back of her hand. “Then his shift changed and he was home when I got in from school, then it changed again and he was home at nights while she worked.”
His chest rose on an inhale, and just for a moment his thumb paused.
“We lived in this complex, paper-thin walls, people crying, parents screaming.” She hated remembering that place. “I’d seen Nikko in the hallway a few times, this silent, dark-haired, olive-skinned man who called me Cara. I thought he didn’t know my name, but it turns out he knew it, he’s Italian and that was just his nickname for me.” She grinned, remembering. “The people I was with told me to stay away from him and I got in trouble several times for not listening.” She didn’t want to go into the details and didn’t need to with Ian.
“I still, after all this time, wonder how they were approved to sponsor and care for a child. He started abusing me on the nights his wife worked. One night I tried to hide in the coat closet. Which was a rather stupid thing to do. I don’t know why I thought he wouldn’t be able to
find me.” She slowed, the past like smoke, swirling through her brain, out and around. “I still remember that terror that doesn’t let you think straight,” she said, looking at the wall. “I could hear him slamming doors yelling for me. And I just kept thinking no more. There was a weight on the floor and I picked it up. When he grabbed me and dragged me out, I hit him with it.”
Ian’s hand ran up her arm. “Good for you, babe.”
She shook her head. “Not so good. I wasn’t very strong. Didn’t do more than bust his head open. He was bloody furious. Started hitting me. I guess I was screaming, I don’t remember.” She frowned, trying to see it. “Nikko said I was, which was why he broke in. I just remember that suddenly Nikko was there. Just there telling me to come with him.” She took a deep breath and let it slowly out. Looking down into Ian’s eyes, she said, “I did. Went with him and never looked back. Was terrified he’d either turn on me or he’d leave me somewhere, but he didn’t.”
Ian’s smile was tender. No pity, no horror. Just . . . understanding. Then he blinked and she saw it through the pain. Rage.
“Did Nikko kill him?”
“You would ask that.”
“Did he?”
“Why?”
His eyes bore into hers.
She laughed. “I never asked . . .”
“Do.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Choosing her words carefully, she said, “Nikko taught me everything I know. Everything.”
He frowned. “Nikko.” His voice was low, thoughtful.
“Leave it alone. Please, for me.”
He closed his eyes. “Do you think I care what he taught you? Or who he really might be? One, he saved you. That’s all that matters to me. Two, I’m the last man to point fingers at how a man chooses to live.”
True.
“What were their names?”
“Who?”
“Your brothers.”
She leaned over. “Go to sleep.”
“What was the foster family’s name.”
“Go to sleep,” she repeated
For a moment, he looked like he wanted to ask her more, press her for details, but then he sighed, barely shook his head and squeezed her hand. “You’ll check on Darya?”
She shook her head. “Yes, after you go to sleep.”
Deadly Games Page 24