“You would have bet on me and won,” he said. “You really think that I’d be capable of hurting you? How could you think that?”
The hurt in his eyes twisted in her chest like a knife. “I didn’t want it to be true,” she said. “But if I ran, I could always leave open the chance that it wasn’t you. My fantasies could stay intact.”
“You’d rather just wonder for the rest of your life than know for sure?” He shook his head, wondering. “That’s fucked, Margot.”
“So’s the rest of my life.” She pressed her fist against her mouth and breathed down the urge to cry. “In case it means anything to you, I’m not wondering anymore. I know everything I need to know.”
“Yeah, me too,” he said wearily. “More than I ever wanted to.” He pulled out his wallet, and peeled out a wad of bills, flinging them so that they fanned out across the rumpled bedspread. “Take it.”
“Put that money away,” she said.
“Shut up and take it. Pride makes you stupid, and stupid will get you dead. I only followed you because I didn’t want you to deal with Snakey alone. And I wanted you to know that it wasn’t me who tried to hurt you. It was real important to me that you know that. That’s it, that’s why, that’s all. OK?”
“OK,” she whispered.
“Don’t worry, I got the hint,” he added. “I won’t bug you again. But I suggest you get your ass in gear. Snakey strikes me as real focused.” He stopped. His chest jerked in a mirthless bark of laughter. “If you believe that he’s real, that is. It could all be theater, of course.” He lifted the wet towel from his nose and stared at the gory stain against the white cloth. “Could be fake blood, I suppose.”
She couldn’t stand the look on his face. “Stop it, Davy.”
“Why should I? I might as well take this last chance to get all my dumb-ass hurt feelings off my chest before I leave. It’s not every day a guy’s girlfriend accuses him of being a psycho maniac. It kind of takes your breath away.” He wiped his face one last time with the towel, and flung it into the bathroom, where it splatted on the floor. “You are a huge pain in the ass, Margot Vetter. But I still wish you luck. Try not to get killed. If you can possibly manage it.” He walked out the door.
Margot followed him out into the parking lot on her bare feet and watched his slow, measured strides towards the truck. She ached to call him back, but her voice was stuck behind a burning lump.
She’d waived the right. He was through with her, and rightly so. She’d screwed things up beyond repair.
He stopped by the cab of the truck, and just stood there, immobile. Seconds ticked by.
Wild hope flared inside her. Maybe this move was hers to make after all. Her feet moved before she even knew they were moving, first timid steps, then a wild dash across the asphalt to reach him before the moment was lost. Before he changed his mind and disappeared.
She grabbed him from behind and wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her face against his back.
His body shook in her embrace. He spun around to face her. They came together, in a furious, consuming kiss.
He demanded her surrender and she demanded his, but somehow the wild clash fused magically into something perfect and wild and exquisitely right. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her emotion so heightened by her own desperation that his could not frighten her.
He wrenched her slip down, snapping the fragile shoulder straps.
“I want to fuck you,” he said.
“Do it,” she replied.
He lifted her up, his hands under her bottom. She wrapped her legs around his waist. He carried her back to the room, glass crunching beneath his boots as he made to lay her down on the rumpled bed.
She pulled away from his kiss. “Not on the bed. I just can’t.”
He looked at the mess of broken glass on the ground, and carried her back to the door. He slammed it shut, pulled his gun from the back of his jeans. He laid it on the table and flipped off the light.
“Forget this room exists,” he said. “Forget that guy exists.”
“Make me,” she flung back at him.
He wrenched the slip down. Her deadening apathy was gone, swept away by a blaze of feeling. Pinned in the dark between the door and the man she wanted more than anything else in the world.
They weren’t gentle with each other. She dug her nails into him as he wrenched his jeans open. He probed his way inside her, driving against the resistance of her body in one hard, relentless shove.
She let her head drop back with a gasp. He arranged her legs so they draped over his arms, and pulsed against her, sliding deeper. She softened for him, a hot liquid rush, and she could move, clenching and undulating around him. The power and energy of his body flooded into her. She was strong enough to take it all and give it back to him transformed. He was so beautiful when he gave himself to her, nothing held back. The vulnerability beneath his mask broke her heart.
The door rattled and thudded with the force of his thrusts. They cried out as they hurtled straight into the heart of the explosion.
He held her there for a long time. She could have stayed in his powerful embrace forever, but he finally straightened up, withdrawing from the clasp of her body. “Time to face reality,” he said.
She shivered. “I’d rather stay where we were.”
“Too bad. Brace yourself. I’m turning the light on.”
She flinched as he did. It was so harsh to her tear-blinded eyes.
Davy’s face was closed again. The magical fusion and understanding they had during sex had vanished. It wasn’t the first time, but still, it hurt. “Davy?” she started timidly. “Do you—”
“We don’t have time to talk about our feelings. We’ve indulged ourselves way too long already. The cops could be here any minute, if anyone called in about those shots I fired. Which is probable.”
She hadn’t even thought of that. “Ah…what are we—”
“We’re getting that rental car out of this lot and dumping it somewhere. I don’t want this identity compromised. Did you put the license plate number down when you registered here?”
“I scribbled down a bogus one.”
“Good. Get dressed. Now.”
“But I—”
“In case you’re wondering, you just lost your chance to get rid of me. It’s too late to ditch me now.”
“I don’t want to ditch you,” she said.
Subtle tension eased around his eyes. He made an impatient gesture. “Then move your ass.”
Something else intruded upon her consciousness as she picked through the rubble for her scattered things. The hot trickle of fluid between her legs. Oh, Lord. She hadn’t given so much as a fleeting thought to latex. “Davy,” she said. “We didn’t use anything.”
He waited by the door, gun in hand. “Yeah,” he said. “So? What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry? I’m not, particularly.”
She tugged the slip up over her breasts. “You’re still furious.”
“It’s been a tough day,” he said. “It’s going to take more than one amazing fuck up against the wall to iron this one out.”
It was always this way. The more completely he let down his guard during sex, the more impenetrable his barriers were afterwards.
She tied the broken straps together across one shoulder to keep the slip on, pulled on her high-tops and crunched through broken glass to the bathroom. “A second in here, and I’ll be ready,” she promised.
“Hurry,” he growled.
She frantically calculated the days of her cycle as she dampened a washcloth and sponged herself off. Problem was, she’d been so stressed out and eating so little, her period had been irregular for months.
A sharp knock on the bathroom door interrupted her frantic reflections. “Margot.” His voice had a harsh warning tone.
“I’m ready, I’m ready,” she muttered.
No point in worrying about it now. What would be, would be.
They left the rental car
in a mall parking lot a couple of towns further down the highway. Davy watched as she locked the car and walked towards him, the faraway streetlights outlining every curve of her body with swathes of light and shadow. Amazing, that he could still think about sex, the way his body ached.
He was still wonky and stupid from the fight and the sex, shaking with a combination of fear and anger and lust. He hadn’t been this far off the deep end in years. No, not ever. The goatfuck with Fleur had been kid stuff in comparison.
He started in on her as soon as she climbed into the Chevy. “You were heading to San Cataldo, then?”
“I couldn’t think of a better plan,” she said.
“Staying on Stone Island was a much better plan,” he snarled.
“Let’s let it go, OK? It’s old news.”
He took a slow breath. “Learn anything useful from Snakey?”
She rubbed her eyes. “He thinks that I’m his soul mate. And he answers to a guy named Marcus. It was Marcus who arranged to have Craig killed. Snakey and his boss Marcus are convinced that I have this…this mold, he called it. Oh, and Craig’s murder was supposed to look like a murder-suicide, but Snakey decided he wanted me for himself.” She shuddered. “So that’s why he didn’t kill me. Brrr.”
“You don’t know anybody named Marcus?” he asked.
She shook her head. “At least I know that it’s a physical object that they want. If I knew what the hell it was, I’d just give it to them.”
“Did you keep any of Craig’s stuff?”
“He was practically living in my house on the lake. A lot of his stuff was there. But I got rid of it all that morning after I came back early from the conference and found…you know. The panties. God. It seems so silly and insignificant, now.”
“Got rid of it how?”
She winced. “The usual pissed-off girlfriend way,” she said uncomfortably. “I admit, I behaved childishly. I shoved all his stuff into a big garbage bag and dumped it off my dock into the lake. I meant to say, you want your junk, buddy? Go fish for it.” She went on in a smaller voice. “But I never got the chance.”
“Do you remember what was in the bag?”
Her brow furrowed. “The usual stuff. Clothes, shoes, toiletries, computer equipment. His mail. There was at least one box that day, I think. He had lots of packages sent to my address. He was working on patenting some of his engineering designs.”
They looked at each other. “Looks like we’re going swimming, huh?” Margot said slowly.
“Looks that way,” he replied.
“But whatever it is, if it’s there…it’ll be ruined, after eight months under water.”
“We’ll see. All this happened on a single day? First the panties, then you dumped his stuff, and then you found him strung up?”
“Right,” Margot said.
“Snakey said it was supposed to be a murder-suicide,” he mused. “How did they know you’d show up?”
“I had a lunch date with Craig that day,” she said. “I was going to stand him up, but he called my office, and Dougie said he sounded flipped out and desperate. A matter of life and death, he said. So I went to his studio. My big plan was to fling the panties in his face.”
“So Snakey coerced Craig into calling you. It was all planned.”
Margot stared out the windshield, eyes frozen wide with ugly memories. “But how could he have known I had a gun in my—”
“Maybe Craig told him. Or maybe the killer had another plan ready, and your gun was just a happy accident for him.”
Margot pulled her legs up tight to her chest, pressing her face against her knees. “Could we not talk about this for a while?”
“Do you want to solve this problem, or don’t you?”
She didn’t respond, or even make a sound, but he knew that vibration in her shoulders all too well. Time to shut the hell up before he made her cry. God forbid. He was dangerously close to it himelf.
They got to her ex-house on Parson’s Lake right before dawn. The air was damp and chill. Davy wished she had a jacket when they got out of the truck. He was buying her clothes today. It was distracting, the way her tits bounced all over the place in that raggedy thing.
She looked sad and lost as she wandered up the walkway to her former house. The lawn was forlorn and overgrown. She peered into the uncurtained windows. The interior was dusty and bare. “Come on,” she said quietly. “There’s nothing left for me here. Let’s go around back.”
He followed her around the house, gun in hand. He would have followed her anywhere. This crazy feeling was getting steadily worse. She looked like something out of her flower fairy calendar in that brief, tattered slip, the wet weeds and flowers clinging to her beautiful legs. More erotic and dangerous than the flower fairies, though. More like a hot, feverish dream of wild sex with a silkie or a forest nymph. He could have forgotten his anger, forgotten the danger. Just shoved her down onto the long wet grass and taken her again, right there.
In back, a deck overlooked a length of pebbly beach. Neighbors’ lots were fenced off on either side. A narrow wooden walkway led out from the beach to a floating dock that rocked softly on the waves. Margot walked out onto it and knelt to undo the laces of her sneakers.
“Hey. What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
She yanked both shoes off and gave him a bright, challenging smile. “I put that bag there, and I’ll be the one to retrieve it.”
“I’ll do it,” he said. “Put your shoes back on.”
“Davy. Be reasonable. Snakey could be expecting us here. You’ve got more clothes on, you’ve got a gun, and you know how to use it. I would much rather you cover me than have clueless, clumsy me trying to defend you from evil bad guys while you’re underwater. OK?”
She had a point, but it still took his breath away when she peeled off her slip and stood poised on the edge of the deck stark naked.
“Jesus, Margot! What the fuck are you doing?”
“Plus, I’ve had that not-so-fresh feeling ever since our wild crazy sex last night.” She winked impishly. “I could use a bit of a wash.”
“This is a residential neighborhood!” he hissed.
“Oh dear. Have I scandalized you?” She grinned. “You big ol’ prude. Panther woman can’t be bothered with society’s silly rules.”
She leaped, in a clean, shallow dive off the end of the dock.
He knelt down and peered through the water for her pale, wavering form. Seconds ticked by. He started unlacing his boots.
She burst up suddenly in a shower of drops, gasping for breath.
“You got it?” he asked.
“I found it,” she said, gasping. “Oh, this water is freaking cold! I had to kick off a lot of slime, but it’s there. Now I just have to get it.”
A flash of her pale, round ass and down she went, for another interminable wait. She burst up, clutching the dock, and pulled a handful of plastic to the surface. “It’s full of water. It’ll be super heavy.”
It was. He hauled the thing up onto the deck, and leaned down to grab Margot’s arms. He yanked her up onto her feet.
God, she was so gorgeous dripping wet, grinning triumphantly. She wrung out her hair, sticking her tits out just for his benefit.
“Cover yourself, for God’s sake,” he begged.
Her eyes sparkled. Big mistake, to let her know she’d gotten under his skin. “Don’t you like me this way?” She spun around, lifting her arms over her head, flinging her head back in sensuous abandon.
He grabbed the slip off the deck and dragged it over her, tugging it down until her head emerged, locks of hair clinging to her face.
Before he knew it, he was kissing her cool wet face like a starving man. He dragged himself away. “We don’t have time for this.”
“Hey, buddy. Take responsibility. You’re the one who kissed me!”
This was a dead end argument if ever there was one. He abandoned it, and crouched down to open the bag. Margot knelt beside hi
m, and together they picked through silt, disintegrated fabric, paper that had turned to slime, toothbrushes, razors, shoes and belts.
They found the box at the bottom. The waxed carton had somehow retained its shape, though it fell to pieces under Margot’s touch. Inside were two objects sealed in heavy plastic, coated with pale brown mud. He brushed away the silt, prodding at them gently.
The first was a metal box, the shape and size of a large book. The second was pale, irregularly shaped, yielding to the touch like rubber. It was difficult to figure out what those things protruding from the—oh.
Fingers. The thing was a human hand.
Chapter
23
Margot jerked back with a cry. She would have fallen into the water if Davy hadn’t grabbed her. If there had been anything in her stomach, it would have come up. As it was, she doubled over, retching.
“Hey. Margot.” Davy’s voice was gentle. “It’s not real.”
“Huh?” She looked up at him, wild-eyed.
He put a warm arm over her shoulder. “The hand. It’s fake. It’s made out of some kind of gummy rubber stuff. Relax.”
“Oh.” Her butt thudded hard onto the dock. “Marcus’s mold.”
How silly. After all the grisly stuff she’d seen, a rubber hand threw her into a tizzy. Next she would start screaming at plastic dog poo.
Davy rinsed the silt off the bags with a few handfuls of lakewater, and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s get the hell out of here. I’m getting nervous. And I want to find a place where you can get warm and dry.”
That, as it turned out, was easier said than done. It took a tediously long time to find a hotel. Every place they stopped had some fatal security flaw, according to Davy. Finally they pulled into Bob’s Motel and RV Park, where he promptly made it clear that her job would be to huddle in a heavily curtained room like an animal in a cave.
“I can’t have you running into ex-boyfriends in hotel lobbies,” he said, in response to her protests.
“So I have to hide under the bed?” she said crabbily. “Just let me get some makeup and a pair of glasses, and I—hey!”
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