The “deputies” part wasn’t exactly true, but it wasn’t untrue either, so I ignored it and moved on. “Hey,” I said, “sorry, Marshal Jefferies, but we have to go hunt bad guys now.”
“So you just work together,” the woman said, her hand still in his. She seemed to take encouragement from the fact that he was still holding her hand.
I nodded, but he said, “Only because she refuses to date me.”
The woman glanced back at him as if to see if he was kidding her. He kept his face very carefully full of wry humor, an expression I’d never seen on his face and a set of emotions that I didn’t think he ever felt.
“Then she’s a fool,” she said, and put her arm around his waist, and he cuddled her against him, tucking her up under his arm. She couldn’t see his face anymore, and the charming humor was just gone; one minute he was a flirting man, the next he was Olaf. He let me see in his eyes, his face, that he wasn’t thinking anything safe, sane, or consensual. He let the monster show in his face with no hiding. It stopped the breath in my throat, made me hesitate between one step and the next so that I almost stumbled. That one raw look let me know that Olaf hadn’t changed at all; if anything he’d been hiding more from me.
Nicky touched my arm and kept me moving, whispering, “Don’t let him spook you; that’s what he wants.”
I nodded and kept walking. He dropped his hand away and let me walk on my own, but he stayed beside me now. Lisandro trailed us both.
“We need to rejoin Marshal Forrester and the others now, Otto,” I said; my voice was calm, very calm, trailing down to that emptiness where it would have almost no inflection at all. I was one step away from going to that empty staticky place in my head where I used to go when I killed people. Lately, I didn’t have to disassociate to pull the trigger. That probably should have worried me, but it didn’t. Olaf worried me. One monster at a time, even if one of them is yourself.
“Time to go, Marshal Jefferies,” I said, my voice that low, careful, empty sound.
He was still holding the woman’s hand. “She wants to date me.”
She was looking from one to the other of us. “Is something going on between you two?”
In unison, he said, “Yes,” and I said, “No.”
She tried to pull her hand out of his, but he held on. Without looking at her, he said, “She has refused every offer from me.” He looked at the woman, and he dredged up one of those pretend smiles again.
She looked a little hesitant, and looked at me. “You’re not his exgirlfriend?”
I shook my head. “No.”
She smiled up at him. “Great.” She even put her other hand on his arm, so she was holding on to him twice. It was sort of the girl version of the double-arm squeeze that some men use on women, except the guys always seemed aggressive and the woman just seemed like a victim clinging to his arm, or maybe the victim analogy was because I knew what he was.
“No,” I said, shaking my head, “no.”
“You had your chance,” the woman said.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She looked unsure, but said, “Karen, Karen Velazquez.”
“It won’t help,” Olaf said.
“What won’t help?” she asked.
“Giving him a name to personalize you,” I said.
“What?” Karen Velazquez asked, and she dropped the second hand from his arm.
Bernardo called out behind us. “Hey, Otto, got a call for you from Forrester. You turn your phone off again?” His voice was all cheerful, and normal. It lay on the tension between us like oil on water. It covered, but it didn’t change anything.
Bernardo kept walking up to us, as if the tension weren’t thick enough to walk on. He was smiling and pleasant and again he stood halfway between us, but not exactly between us.
“We’re supposed to join up with everybody. They found a clue.”
Edward would have called me first, I was ninety-nine percent certain of that, but I appreciated Bernardo trying to help get the woman away from Olaf. I didn’t really think he’d hurt her here and now, but if he made a date with her there was only one kind of date that Olaf wanted from a woman. One with blood and death and things done that couldn’t be repeated unless you liked the dead, and I had Olaf pegged for wanting his victims alive enough to feel pain or it was no fun.
Olaf raised Karen Velasquez’s hand up and laid a kiss on it, but stared at me while he did it. She didn’t seem to notice, just smiled, and was almost flustered in how pleased it made her.
“You are quite lovely, and I am eager to see you later.”
She nodded, grinning. “Call me.”
He smiled. “I will contact you.”
Bernardo said, “Now, let’s all go to the cars. Bad guys to catch.” He made a shooing gesture at all of us, and we began to go for the parking lot. The nurse called after Olaf, “Call me.”
He waved at her, but his face was already emptying of that good humor and flirting. By the time we got to the cars his face was its usual self except for the new beard.
I took a breath, but Bernardo beat me to it. “You know the deal, Olaf. If you do your hobby on American soil you lose everything. Your badge, both your jobs, everything, and Edward will kill you, so really everything.”
“He will try to kill me,” Olaf said.
I ignored the last comment, because Olaf had to make it, just like I’d have had to make it. We couldn’t let anyone, not even Edward, think he was automatically better. But the details of Olaf’s deal were new to me. “So, more people than just you, me, and Edward know what he is?”
“A few,” Bernardo said, “but it all hinges on him not doing his serial killer thing here.”
I looked at Olaf. “You must be really good at something for them to look the other way about the rest.”
“I am very good at many things.” He delivered the words almost flat; if it had been another man I think he’d have made it flirty, but Olaf didn’t waste flirting on anyone but his victims, apparently. If he liked you for real, you got the real deal. Normally I preferred that in my men, but since the real deal was a sexually sadistic serial killer it was sort of a mixed blessing. Flattering, since I was pretty sure it was the most he’d ever shown himself to any woman, and scary as hell all at the same time. Flattering and frightening; that was Olaf all over.
“I believe that,” I said, and meant it.
“Do you?” He looked at me, and he seemed to truly be studying me, or trying to.
“Yes,” I said.
“It bothered you to see me with the woman.”
“You let me see in your face what you wanted to do to her, Olaf; of course that would bother me.”
“That bothered all of us,” Bernardo said.
Olaf looked up and I thought he was looking at Bernardo until he said, “It didn’t bother you, did it, Nick?”
“No,” Nicky said.
I turned and looked at Nicky, standing right beside me, face peaceful as it usually was. “Do the two of you know each other?”
“Sort of,” Nicky said.
“Yes,” Olaf said.
I looked from one to the other of them. “All right, talk to me. How do you know each other?”
Olaf said, “I think we might wish to have the other men step away.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Plausible deniability,” Nicky said.
“What?” I asked.
Bernardo patted Lisandro on the shoulder. “Let’s give them some privacy.”
Lisandro looked from one to the other of us, and finally looked just at me. “You tell me to give you some room and I’ll do it, but only because Nicky is here. I won’t leave you alone with Marshal Jefferies.”
Olaf gave Lisandro a long look. “You will do what Anita tells you to do. I’ve seen it.”
Lisandro shook his head. “I’ve seen you, too. I won’t leave Anita alone with you, even if she orders me to.”
I started to say something, and Lisandro just tu
rned to me and shook his head. “We’ve all agreed, Anita, you don’t get left with him.”
“And I have no say in it,” I said.
“No,” he said.
“He does not respect you,” Olaf said.
“I respect Anita, but you”—he pointed at the bigger man—“you are not allowed to be alone with our boss.”
“If Anita truly leads, then it is up to her who is alone with her.”
“No, not on this,” Lisandro said.
Olaf looked at me. “Will you let him rule you?”
The question was a trap. If I said any man “ruled” me, it could turn me from serial killer girlfriend to serial killer victim for Olaf. As uncomfortable as it was for him to think of me as a girlfriend, it was a lot better than just being meat for him. I did not want to change categories in Olaf’s twisted little fantasies.
“Lisandro doesn’t rule me, no one does, but if you hadn’t noticed, Edward doesn’t leave us alone either.”
Olaf frowned. “But if you wanted to be alone with me, he would allow it.”
“Oh, I got this one,” Bernardo said. He did that odd almost stepping between us again. We both looked at him. He said, “No, Edward won’t. He’s given me orders that if I let the two of you go off alone and something bad happens, he’ll kill me.” He smiled while he said it, but it never reached his eyes. He was so not happy about it.
“You aren’t responsible for me, Bernardo,” I said.
“I know that, but it doesn’t matter, Edward meant it.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I said.
He shrugged. “You can try, but if the big guy here actually kills you, once Edward kills him, then we’re all dead. Me, because he said he’d do it, and the rest of the men because they were your bodyguards and they failed. He’ll kill us all, Anita, so do us a favor, stay alive; okay?”
I didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
“Yep, you can,” Bernardo said, “but Edward’s grief if you die will be a terrible thing. It will hurt him, a lot, and men like him make sure they never grieve alone. He will spread his grief all over us, not because we failed, but because it’ll give him something to focus on so he doesn’t have to feel the pain.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If he blames all the men you brought with you and has to kill them all, plus me, it’ll take time to kill us all, and there’s always a chance we’ll kill him before he gets us all. I’m good at staying alive and killing things, and the men with you are pretty damn good, too; it’s a tall order even for Edward with us knowing he’s coming.”
Nicky said, “So, killing us all will give him a goal, things to do, so he doesn’t have to feel.”
“Yeah,” Bernardo said.
“You’ve given this a lot of thought,” I said.
“When someone like Edward tells you that he’ll kill you, you give it a lot of thought.”
I couldn’t really argue with that.
“It’s also a way to risk suicide without the suicide,” Nicky said.
“I think so,” Bernardo said.
“I don’t think I’m important enough to Edward for all that. He wouldn’t risk leaving Donna and the kids.”
“He’ll do exactly what I just said, Anita. In the front of his head, no, that’s not what he’s thinking, but trust me, Anita, if you get dead, especially if he blames himself in any way, he will be a force of destruction looking for a place to be aimed. And he’s blamed himself for introducing you to Olaf here from the get-go. If Olaf did to you what he’s done to some of his other victims, Edward would drown the world in blood to try to erase those images.”
I didn’t know what to say, but I wanted to protest. I wanted to say he was wrong, but a part of me asked, What would I do if it were Edward tortured to death and I thought it was my fault? I wouldn’t kill tons of people, but anyone I thought was responsible for it—they’d be dead. I had more rules than Edward did, so if I felt that way about him, how much more would he do if it were me dead? Especially at Olaf’s not-so-tender mercies? I didn’t want Nicky and the boys dead, and I’d talk to Edward about that, and Bernardo. They didn’t deserve that, but Olaf dead at Edward’s hands, oh, hell yes. The thought that Edward would probably kill him slowly was like a warm, happy thought.
“I’ll talk to him about you, all of you. I wouldn’t want anyone else hurt just because I wasn’t here.”
“You can talk to him,” Bernardo said, “but it won’t help. I’ve known Edward for years. I’ve seen him do things that he wouldn’t do in front of you. Trust me; I’d rather have almost anyone else after my ass.”
Again, I didn’t know what to say, so I just agreed. “I wouldn’t want Edward gunning for me, either.”
“All that, and you’re going to concentrate on just that part?” Bernardo said.
I looked at him and shrugged. “What else do you want me to say?”
“God, you really are a guy, I mean you look like a girl, but that is such a guy thing. You ignore all the emotional shit and grab onto that Edward is dangerous. Shit, Anita.”
“Are you always this much of a pussy?” Nicky said.
Bernardo glared at him and set his shoulders, moving slightly forward. People think that fights begin with frowns, or shouts, but they don’t. They begin in much smaller body cues, the human version of dogs raising their hackles, but the dogs know what it means, and so do most men.
Nicky smiled, which was another way to egg the other man on. It was escalating the fight without most women realizing what he’d done, but I wasn’t most women.
“Nicky,” I said, “don’t.”
He looked at me, his face trying for innocent and failing.
Bernardo moved a little closer, and I stepped between them. “We are not fighting over stupid shit,” I said.
“You’re not my boss, not yet,” Bernardo said.
“I don’t know what you mean by the whole ‘not yet’ comment, but I do know we are not wasting time having a pissing contest.”
“Bernardo’s new,” Lisandro said. “You haven’t told Nicky that he can’t fight him for real, and Nicky’s been spoiling for a real fight for a while.”
“I don’t know what you mean by a real fight. Nicky spars with the rest of the guards.”
“Sparring isn’t real,” Lisandro said.
I turned and looked at Nicky. “What have I missed?”
“Don’t know what you mean,” Nicky said.
“Why would you want to fight Bernardo for real?”
Nicky just looked at me.
“Answer my question, Nicky.”
He frowned, sighed, and answered, because he had to; if I made it a direct question he had no choice but to answer me. “I don’t hurt people now because no one’s paying me to do it, and you’ve told me I’m not allowed to kill anyone who belongs to you even if they start the fight. You’ve got some very tough people working for you. I could kill them, but if I can’t kill them, they could hurt me, badly, so I don’t fight.”
“You spar,” I said.
He looked out past the cars, as if he were counting to ten. “It’s not the same thing, Anita. It’s so not the same thing.”
“Are you saying that you want to fight Bernardo so you can hurt or kill him?”
“I want to hurt someone, yeah.” His big hands folded into fists and a tightness ran across his shoulders and upper body like a coiled spring waiting for the switch to release all that pent-up power.
“Why?” I asked.
Nicky gave me a look that wasn’t friendly. It was the look you see sometimes in the zoo from the beasts behind the bars. No matter how much land they have to run in, how many toys they have to play with, there’s always one big cat that seems to remember running free, and knows no matter how big the cage is, it’s still a cage, and he wants out. Nicky’s lion filled his one good eye with amber, and then he blinked and it was back to his human color, but I knew it had been there, his lion pe
eking out from the cage that I’d forged for it; a cage that it, and Nicky, resented. How had I not seen it? I hadn’t wanted to see it, hadn’t wanted to understand that no matter how tame he seemed, Nicky was still the sociopath that I’d met a year ago. I hadn’t changed him; I’d just broken him to my will. Crap.
Nicky hung his head enough that the long triangle of bangs spilled forward from his face, so that the scars over the other eye socket showed stark in the sunlight. He didn’t actually like to show the scars much, so I knew he was just too upset to care. His entire body posture had changed, no longer belligerent, no longer violence waiting to happen, but something softer.
“You feel bad now, and I can feel it. You’re a little sad. I know you feel bad for what you did to me, Anita. I don’t want you to feel bad.” He raised his face and looked at me. There was something of pain in his face, a frowning effort to understand what he was feeling.
I reached out to him, and he moved closer so I could touch his face. He nestled his cheek against my small hand, and he let out a breath; something hard and unpleasant went out of him. He was my Nicky again, or what I’d begun to think of as mine. He pressed his hand against mine, pressing it closer against his face. “God,” he whispered.
“That was creepy,” Bernardo said.
“You have tamed him like a pet cat,” Olaf said.
Nicky and I both turned to him, and the tension was just back in Nicky. His beast vibrated like heat down my hand and arm. He kept my hand pressed to his face as he glared at Olaf. It’s hard to be tough when you’re cuddling, but it didn’t seem to occur to Nicky to let go of me, or maybe the desire to be near me was stronger than his desire to look tough?
“I heard you had reformed Nick, a good woman reforming a bad man, but it’s not that at all. Nick had to make you feel better. He could not abide you being even a little sad.” Olaf looked at me, and there was something I’d never seen on his face before, a soft horror.
“Do the two of you know each other?” I asked again.
Nicky moved my hand from his face and held it. I wondered, had it bothered him that I hadn’t touched him more when he first got to town? He was looking at Olaf; even as he began to rub his thumb across my knuckles, he was staring at the other man.
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