Kim did as he’d said he would and helped us leave the country, after taking my payment. We ended up on an emergency air flight with Grimm, all arranged via the Australian embassy.
The man was ill again, and a normal flight couldn’t take him. That they allowed Zorie on board was also courtesy of Kim, and of the health authorities. Apparently bringing an unknown prion disease back to the country was a problem.
If Mad Cow disease panicked the doctors, this thing had the potential to make doctors run in circles screaming and pretending to be chickens.
Since I wasn’t an Australian citizen, my presence on board the Medivac plane was a secret between myself and the female doctor. She wasn’t a susceptible. Her agreement puzzled me because I had no idea why she allowed it.
Once in Australia, I arranged for my passport and ID and various documents to be artfully altered in all data storage places that mattered. After a week, I was illegally a legal visitor to Australia.
Zorie’s foot was healing, as were the other smaller injuries. She was in hospital but only under observation. While Grimm was in hospital, in an induced coma, and possibly dying.
The universe seemed to have a vendetta against him.
At least Kim had done as he’d promised and limited the impact of what’d happened at the missile silo. The Thai government expressed regret that citizens of Australia had been involved in a kidnapping and sex trafficking ring, and that they’d suffered such terrible injuries. The Australian government accepted that the matter would be investigated in Thailand. Police visited to interview Zorie and then Grimm, though it did them little good.
With enough influence, quite startling matters could be swept under the carpet.
Once installed in a hotel, I attempted to visit them in hospital, but Zorie’s sister, who had flown in for a few days, and some distant relatives of Grimm’s, were the only ones allowed in.
Except for the day I suborned a susceptible nurse and sneaked in.
Their rooms were side by side. The nurses would be changing shifts soon. Since I figured Zorie might like to know how Grimm was doing, I looked in on him first.
Getting into the glassed room would make people exceptionally angry at me, and I might end up confined in quarantine myself, so I stayed on the other side of the glass.
He was lying intubated and ventilated, and being fed with fluids via drip. Things were quietly blinking, blipping, and hissing. I could barely recognize him beneath all the medical equipment. Was he dying? I’d heard no news for two days and hadn’t thought to question my pet nurse.
I decided to try something I’d never done with any mesmer before. I wasn’t sure it was possible. I shut my eyes and tried to slip into his mind and I found myself there. I detected a coiled, fierce presence that I’d never felt in women and I suspected it was something I didn’t have, and that it was the reason for his violent episodes. I had nothing to compare it to. I couldn’t tell if it was shrinking or simply dormant.
If he went back to Zorie, if it was only them, what if he became insane? If he survived, this aspect of Grimm was a reason not to let Zorie be alone with him. That thought made me grimace. I knew my true motives and they were her.
I’d spent a lot of time with him when we were chasing Zorie through Europe. Though he was a rival, we’d become comfortable with each other and we’d had deep discussions about many things. He wasn’t just muscle-bound and pretty. He knew his Freud from his Jung, his Plath from his Tolstoy, and his Einstein from his Planck.
The man had once read encyclopedias for fun.
It was only Zorie who made us competitors. I thought I could see a way past that. I would be patient and see how things developed, if he lived.
My grudges were few and far between.
I moved on to looking into Zorie’s room. She waved back and smiled then I found the intercom system. “Hi.”
“How did you get in?”
I shrugged. “A nice nurse.”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded knowingly.
“I haven’t long.” I drew a deep breath. “You look well.” She did, apart from a small red scar on her forehead and a small bandage on her foot.
“I’m okay. Nothing apart from a little surgery on my foot. The bites only bruised me. Grimm, though...have you seen him? I’m told he came through a brain MRI with flying colors and they’re waking him later today.”
“I did check him first. He looks like they buried him under equipment but otherwise good.” I had no clue how he was from looking but I wasn’t telling her that. “I thought you’d like to know.”
“Thanks. Her smile widened. “The doctors are puzzled at his recovery. He has two different varieties of prion, I was told. I have one.”
I cocked my head to the side. That seemed odd. We’d only ever detected one variety.
“So they think he’ll be fine?”
She pursed her lips. “They aren’t sure. Said he may...may have some small problems. We can only wait, and see.”
We. I liked that she used we.
“Would you be able to do some organizing for me, Mavros?”
I pulled up a chair and sat, leaned on my legs. “Tell me what you need.”
“Well. My sister’s gone home to Perth. When we get out of hospital, I’d like to go to a house I have on an island off the coast in Queensland. At a place called Hayman Island. My manager purchased it as an investment. I think it’d be good for Grimm. Somewhere quiet and beautiful.”
“Sure.” I figured I should say what I needed to here. If she said no, I had no clue as to what I’d do. I wasn’t letting her stay alone with Grimm, but, for once, the decisions had to come from the woman. “I don’t think you should be alone with Grimm. We don’t know if he’s going to be safe.”
For several seconds she simply studied me, then she said softly, “You want to be there too?”
I nodded, wondering if my heart would stop beating if she said the wrong thing.
Her mouth twitched into a smile. “I think that would be nice.”
Whatever her reasons, the result made me happy. “Thank you.”
“I’ll give you my manager’s phone number and you can organize a light plane to get us out there, when that day comes. Get the keys from her, the place cleaned, food stocked and so on? Is that too much?”
“Not a problem. It will be done.”
The three of us, on an island together. This was my opportunity to truly decide what I wanted, and for them to decide too. Another man made everything extra complicated, as did Zorie being resistant to my control. But if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be Zorie.
The funny thing was, not once had I wished for Grimm to not wake.
When they roused him from the coma, his brain was functioning well but he’d lost muscle mass and the ability to speak.
The doctors decided the mesmer prions weren’t infectious except through exchange of blood, CSF, or by someone eating Zorie or Grimm’s brains, and they relaxed the quarantine.
The doctors were wrong, of course. They couldn’t detect the shedding of any microorganism or prion, but the mesmer infection did spread in some other way.
Since my own pet scientist had tried for years to figure out how it spread, I’d begun to suspect the prion was only a side effect. Something else, something invisible to current science was causing this infection.
Then the media did catch a whiff of a story. The articles about the millionaires, caught by sex traffickers and badly beaten then rescued by some Good Samaritan in Thailand, were barely worthy of a few days in the public eye. The furore seemed to be dying fairly fast. We had elections coming. Somehow that was more fascinating. No one was spilling any beans, here or in Thailand.
Fast was too slow, for me.
I stayed away while they were hot news.
For a while, it was just me, with far too much time on my hands and too many thoughts in my head.
By the time they were released from hospital, I’d put my psychology practice on the market.
Through the glass frontage of the hospital’s reception area, I spotted the black limo I’d hired cruising into the loading zone. It would take us straight to the airport.
Everything was signed, sealed, and paid.
Grimm had been wheeled out – hospital rules. He was too big to look anything but incongruous in a wheelchair. I was waiting for him to transform it at the right moment into a fighting vehicle with spiky scythes on the wheels and jet propulsion.
Zorie abandoned her wheelchair once the nurse left and came over to help with the discharge details.
When we were done, Grimm rose, holding a walking cane.
“Good to see you.”
He nodded then limped with us to the doors, not speaking, but then I knew he couldn’t, yet.
When I opened the limo door for him so he could get in the back with Zorie, his expression shifted from annoyed, to contemplative, to something I couldn’t decipher. Then he slid into the car.
The man would get better. If he could withstand everything that’d been thrown at him, he could do this.
Chapter 38
Grimm
This house was of a simple minimalistic design – white, and gray, two stories, square corners, flat rooftop, topiary plants at the front. The back had a garden that was less formal and more ‘beachy’ – palm trees and salt resistant grass, native dune and beach-happy shrubs – due to the salt air making life difficult for most plants.
The view of the beach was panoramic and swept for a mile at least from north to south, in a big curve, or so it seemed. Our seaplane had landed and connected with a boat that’d ferried us to shore at a place I couldn’t see from the house.
Paradise and purgatory.
Mavros was here, sharing the place with Zorie and me.
The first night was agonizing in many ways. The limp meant getting about the house was difficult, as there were internal stairs. Even to access the beach, I had to negotiate a set of concrete stairs.
And I couldn’t talk. The walking and the speech problem were from glitches in my brain, side effects of the prion infecting it. The hospital therapists had sent me away with exercises to do, and advice about weekly visits to another therapist to rehabilitate.
I wasn’t doing that. Not yet. I’d give myself time. I figured the mesmer ability was unique and what the hell would a therapist know about that? An angry view, maybe a foolish one, but it was mine. I’d take the consequences.
What I couldn’t handle was having Mavros around. Not when I felt vulnerable, when he might take Zorie from me.
We sat at the perfect timber dining table in perfect chairs having a meal ordered from one of the resort restaurants and I thought about doing something bad to Mavros. I wouldn’t touch him, not really. Our lives had revolved around violence for too long.
And once upon a time I’d respected him, even liked him.
Here, however, he was a thorn.
“You don’t know how glad I am that we’re all here, alive,” Zorie said quietly. “Thank you, both of you.” She reached to left and right and squeezed both my and Mavros’s hands then raised her glass of red. “To peace. To Grimm getting well. To happy days ahead.”
“That’s a good toast.” Mavros lifted his glass also then looked to me. “To peace, happiness, and getting well again.”
I joined my glass to theirs, above the table. The clink sounded cheerful. Then I grunted and took a swig. How fucking useless. I couldn’t even say the words.
My inadequacies were tying me in knots.
The sound of the waves here was more a wash than a background roar. We were inside the protection of the Great Barrier Reef. Yet listening to it while the others talked did bring me some peace. I shouldn’t complain. I did have time to heal and I was here, beside her. I would get better.
Eating something that wasn’t hospital food was reason enough to celebrate.
I sat back and sipped the wine while Zorie went to find dessert. Mavros lay back too, and I watched him take a breath then let it out and simply...be still.
Being still, not talking, it was a talent to drop into that state so easily, when you could talk...when we had so much unresolved nasty, gut-wrenching history. I envied that part of him.
Guess I always had.
It was as if we absorbed each other’s presence and relaxed enough to have the space to be, to exist, and nothing more. A companionable silence. I raised my glass to him and took another swallow and he returned the gesture. It was a good Shiraz though a beer would’ve been my choice.
We’d been through a lot together. I might’ve been slightly wacko some of the time and I had knocked him out, but that part of me was gone.
Or mostly gone. The monster had stirred some nights.
Mavros came forward onto his elbows, pushing aside the remains of his meal to make room to lay down his hands. He was a well-made man with those Greek looks and physique, the solid curls to his black hair. He was the sort of man Zorie would like, even now that he had very little hold over her with his mesmer ability. Plus, she’d let him stay. That told me so much.
She wanted him here. The screw-hold on my gut tightened.
“I want to clear the air, Grimm.” He put his hand to his mouth, rubbing beside his chin and, clearly, thinking what to say. “I want you to know I’m not here to take her from you.”
I raised my eyebrows, kept my eyes unblinking.
Seriously?
“It’s the truth. I respect you. So, why am I here? Two main reasons. One, you’ve been erratic in the past. I don’t entirely trust you with Zorie’s safety.”
Gut punch. What could I say? Even if I could talk. It was true.
I didn’t want to hurt her either, but the monster was still inside me. I might go back to how I’d been.
I tapped my glass then nodded.
“Second reason. This one is harder to express.” He glanced back at the kitchen as if checking whether Zorie was coming. “I don’t want to take her from you. I can see what you have, or had, is special. However, I think...I know, I would like to be with her too. Us...” He waved from me to himself then seemed to lose track, lose how to say the rest.
Fuckitty fuck. Three of us.
He didn’t know though, couldn’t.
Even if I could accept this idea as a permanent thing, would Zorie? And after all that, there was the problem I thought I had.
I grunted, found myself staring at him and wishing I could punch him.
He did want her, of course. It’d been obvious.
The problem was I couldn’t.
I shoved away the chair then limped over to the sliding door section. The four glass doors were rolled back to the edges, leaving that whole wall open. It was a pretty way to let you see the outdoors, the broad vista of the ocean. At night there wasn’t a lot to admire, apart from distant lights on the shore opposite, across the blackness of the water. The moon wasn’t up yet, or maybe it was a moonless night? I’d lost track of days, weeks, seasons even.
I rested my forearms on the balcony rail – someone had paid a ton to build this house. As I’d walked here the interior lighting had picked out details of this feature. The wrought-steel-and-glass balustrade was a work of art with lilies, vines, and birds.
Zorie didn’t need me in any way. She was rich, whole...a beautiful and strong woman who’d fought through a situation that would’ve defeated most of the people on this planet.
What was I going to do?
Giving her up wasn’t possible, not yet. I would fight this tooth and claw, just...not with my dick.
I hadn’t had a lustful thought since I woke. Hadn’t had an erection. Could any man keep a woman he couldn’t satisfy?
Going from mesmer to dickless was not a nice thing for fate to serve up.
Fuck this.
And I’d left the wine inside.
Mavros arrived at my elbow, then Zorie at the other. I grimaced at them both. They’d be able to feel this lack in me, just as I could feel uncertainty and sadness in
them.
From Mavros that still roused my anger. If he began to pity me, I would punch him, or a wall. Punching him had lost its appeal a few minutes ago when he showed he could feel compassion.
Pity – I couldn’t stand pity.
Zorie turned and rested her back on the balcony rail. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking, Grimm. I just know you’re unhappy. It hasn’t been long, you know? We all need some time to get over what happened. But it is over. And you aren’t alone.”
She wanted to say more, I knew she did, but her mouth twisted and she said nothing.
I nodded, wishing I could say thanks or leave me alone, or something, anything.
“Coming to bed?” The hope in her voice, oh god, it undid me.
I shook my head. She hadn’t noticed I’d put my things in a different bedroom. I, however, had seen that. So far, Mavros wasn’t putting his things in Zorie’s bedroom either.
We were apart. All of us. I judged him likely to stay away if I didn’t go to her. That wouldn’t be forever. If I ever heard them fucking...
I stilled my anger, again, gripped the steel under my hands and watched the sea, the invisible, black sea.
Chapter 39
Grimm
The routine at the house settled into our separations, our sleeping in different rooms, becoming a part of life. Which surprised me. Whatever else had left me, my connection to others with the mesmer bug remained. On some days, Zorie and Mavros seemed about to explode from sexual attraction.
I knew she was dying to get laid and he was dying to get inside her.
What was stopping them? Me?
Those days, I went for long runs. I punctuated my footfalls on the sand or road surface with fuck this, fuck this, fuck the hell outta this.
The swearing was fucking strong in this one. That my legs were good again gave me hope. I’d thrown the cane far out to sea. I’d also tried punching a palm tree, just the once.
This sunny morning, a Tuesday, I thought it was, Mavros joined me on the beach, dressed in jogging shorts and T-shirt.
Wicked Hunt (Dark Hearts Book 3) Page 18