Riggs took a swallow and wiped his mouth. His pinkish eyes were watery. “Stop playing with me.”
“Oh, Edward. Since you’re already inside my den of iniquity, you might as well take advantage of some of the luxuries that I can provide for you. Look at the monitor on the far right, second from the top. Go on, take a look.”
Riggs lifted his head and looked. He leaped to his feet, snatched his glasses out of his breast pocket and slapped them onto his nose, leaning closer. “Mother of God,” he whispered.
Victor turned away to hide his smile. Sometimes it was almost painful how easy people were to manipulate. How predictable their fears and appetites made them. “Her name is Sonia,” he said. “I’ve had her in mind for you for some time. Judge Madison certainly seems to enjoy her attentions, no? She’ll be free soon, if you care to indulge. Sonia won’t mind working a double shift. His Honor isn’t known for his staying power. She’ll be available in, oh, probably less than an hour, if you care to wait. The time it will take for her to freshen up.”
Riggs scanned the other monitors, his mouth sagging. He chug-a-lugged the liquor left in his glass and cast a longing glance at the decanter. “Trying to get your claws into me even deeper, huh?”
Victor’s laugh was mirthless. “They couldn’t be any deeper than they already are. I just thought to offer you a bright spot in the midst of the daily round of lies, betrayal and self-loathing.”
Riggs’s head snapped around. The look that flashed from his eyes was one of pure, concentrated hatred. Victor registered it with a clinical sense of relief. Perhaps Riggs still had enough juice left in him for one last task. He wasn’t quite ready yet to be ground into fertilizer.
“So, Edward? What do you say? Whoops…look at that. His Honor has already finished, poor man. He’ll be asleep in minutes. Care to indulge?”
“Fuck you,” Riggs said, through gritted teeth.
“Oh, come now.” Victor picked up a silver-framed photo. It was an enlargement of the one in the library. The sunny day at the dock, with Alix, Katya, Riggs and himself. “You know that I’ve always been rather hurt that you don’t come to my parties.”
“Why do you keep that goddamn photo around? It’s dangerous!”
Victor placed the photo tenderly back on the shelf. “To keep you honest, Edward,” he said softly.
“You are one crazy, twisted son-of-a-bitch.”
Victor shrugged. “Perhaps. Since you won’t take advantage of my hospitality, let’s move on directly to the favor I want from you.”
“Yeah. Spit it out, and quit fucking with my head.”
“The task is simple enough. I want you to guard my niece.”
“What?” Riggs’s eyes widened, and the broken capillaries over his nose seemed to throb visibly. “You’re out of your mind!”
“Not at all. Don’t worry, you won’t have to deal with her personally. I don’t want her to know about our arrangement. I just want you to keep her under your eye at all times. Keep her house under surveillance. Watch her every move. Follow her wherever she goes.”
“That’s insane! The Cave—”
“You haven’t taken a vacation from the Cave in over five years, Edward,” Victor cut in. “Arrange one.”
Riggs stared at him, aghast. “But I just got promoted! I can’t—”
“Of course you can. Don’t play the victim, for God’s sake. You’re a rich man, thanks to your association with me. You have no cause to complain. And this is the last favor I will ever ask of you.”
Riggs squinted, disbelieving. “Really?”
“Absolutely the last,” Victor assured him. “With this simple task, our account will be closed. You have my word.”
“What does she need to be protected from?” Riggs demanded. “Who wants to whack her? And why the secrecy?”
“That doesn’t concern you,” Victor said.
“It’s Novak, right?” Riggs said slowly. “Novak wants to get to you. Through her.”
Every now and then the man inconvenienced him with brief flashes of genuine intelligence. “It is not necessary for you to know why,” he said coldly. “Just do as you are told. If you should be discovered, you know exactly what will happen if you mention me.”
“This is insane,” Riggs muttered. “How am I supposed to—”
“Don’t whine,” Victor snapped. “Do I have to spell out everything for you? A federal agent at the pinnacle of his career, and you need instructions from me as to how to keep your eye on an innocent young woman? Use your dirty mind, Edward. I’ve seen it at work in those videos, so I know damn well you have one.”
Hatred glowed hot in Riggs’s eyes. His hands clenched into fists. “Just watching the girl? That’s all you want from me?”
“That’s all.” Victor opened a cabinet and pulled out a handheld monitor. “Take this. It’s already keyed to the transmitters planted in her clothing and jewelry. The device is simple enough so that even you should be able to figure it out. Her identifying icon is a tiny jewel. You must stay within five kilometers for the monitor to work. This enables you to find her more easily should she slip away, but I would prefer it if you kept her physically under your eye. Do you understand?”
Riggs took the monitor, holding it as if it were a ticking bomb. “How long do I have to do this?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Riggs began to shake his head, and Victor let his voice soften. “Just this one last thing, and it will be all over,” he said. “Think of the freedom, the peace of mind. And Edward?”
Riggs turned back from the door, looking hunted.
“I do not want a hair on her head harmed.” Victor enunciated very clearly. “At your hand, or anyone else’s. If you fail me, I will destroy you completely. Completely. Do you understand?”
Riggs’s face twisted. “You’re out of your mind, Victor. Why are you doing this? That girl could destroy both of us!”
“Because that girl is worth ten of you, you miserable piece of shit. Now get out of my sight. I can’t bear to look at you for another second.”
Riggs flinched, lips drawn back in an animal snarl. The mortal hatred between the two of them flashed in the dim room, as perceptible as a drawn blade. “You hate me for doing in Peter, don’t you? You didn’t have the balls to do it yourself, you arrogant prick. And you hate me for doing your dirty work.”
Victor’s nostrils dilated in disgust. The man stank of ruin, decay, and violent, premature death. “Don’t push me, Edward,” he said, from between his clenched teeth. “I’m out of patience.”
Riggs’s mouth worked. “Remember what you said about betrayal and self-loathing? Look in the mirror, Victor. You spit on me, you’re spitting on yourself.”
“Shut up and do as you’re told. Get out.”
Victor listened to the man clump away. He was clenching his fists, almost unbearably tempted to go after Riggs and put him out of his misery, once and for all. In the dark, from behind, as he deserved.
Yes, it was past time to devise a fitting retirement gift for Edward Riggs. Something very special, to pay him back for all his years of loyal service. He had been a walking dead man ever since he had soiled his hands with Peter’s blood, but it was clear that Riggs’s life was worth nothing anyway. Victor had been squeezing every last drop of usefulness out of him before his sentence was carried out. Waste not, want not.
He knew it was hypocritical. The order to kill his younger brother had been his own, after all. But Victor had given Peter every chance. He had reasoned with him, pleaded, and finally threatened him. A lifetime of wheeling and dealing, of holding his nose and doing what had to be done for the sake of the family. Protecting their interests, insuring their future. All the dirty work he had willingly taken on so that Peter and his family could sit in the lap of luxury, serene and pampered.
After all that, betrayal.
There was no point in thinking about it. Every thought that passed through his mind he’d thought a thousand times before. He pour
ed himself a drink and gulped the liquor down, trying not to compare himself to Edward Riggs. He was not yet quite so reduced.
Ordering Peter’s murderer to protect Katya was somewhat bizarre, he thought, with a twinge of doubt. But it made a certain crazy sense. Riggs was the perfect man for the job. For all his personal failings, he was a skilled professional. Best of all, he was expendable. He would do what had to be done, and Mackey was sure to notice that his lover was being followed. His reaction would be swift and predictable.
How amusing it would be if Mackey should end up killing Riggs. So much the better. It would be a fitting end, and it would save Victor the trouble and expense of arranging it himself. And since Mackey would never know who had hired the man, he would remain on guard for Novak or anyone else that Novak might send. It was perfect. Airtight.
But sadly, Riggs had ruined the rare good mood that the party had put him in. It had given him such pleasure to see Katya’s beauty polished to a high gloss and displayed in a proper setting, out of Alix’s long shadow at last. But Riggs had pried open Pandora’s box. Ugly memories were fluttering out like bats.
The door behind him opened, and he recognized Mara’s perfume, an earthy, alluring blend of essential oils. She made no sound as she padded across the cream-colored Aubusson carpet. “I saw Riggs out,” she said. “Charlie took him back to the mainland.”
“Thank you, Mara.”
He almost dismissed her then and there. He knew from bitter experience that sex could be disastrous when his mood was so precarious, but he had his weaknesses, too. He turned and looked.
She had changed her clothing. Gone was the black evening gown slit up to the hip that had been chosen to set off an exquisite antique, a Japanese pearl and lapis headdress that she had worn over her braided coil of dark hair. She had taken down her hair. The braids had left soft ripples in it, giving her a softer, more vulnerable look. She was wearing a short tunic of white silk, simple and stark, which showed off the length of her bronze thighs. The toe ring was gone.
She met his gaze, her topaz eyes unreadable and paced silently over to stand in front of the bank of monitors. She studied them for a moment, and pointed to the blank one. “Malfunction?”
Victor shook his head. “My niece’s lover likes his privacy.”
She nodded, unsurprised, and turned her gaze back to the monitors. “Those two look good together,” she commented.
He stood up, feeling a warm shimmer of anticipatory heat. Amazing. He approached her from behind, bending down to inhale her perfume, to touch her shimmering chestnut hair. “Was it you who picked out the Dolce & Gabbana for her?”
Mara’s slender shoulders lifted in a tiny shrug. “It was the obvious choice. It wasn’t hard to make her look good. She’s stunning.”
“So are you, my dear,” Victor said. “So are you.” He lifted up her hair to admire the curve of her back, the whorl of fine dark hairs at the nape of her slender neck. “Lovely.”
Mara smiled from beneath her thick, sooty eyelashes, then turned back to the monitor. She took the mouse next to the keyboard and clicked on the icons with expert swiftness until one of the images on Monitor #17 enlarged, obscuring the other windows. She enlarged it again, until the image filled the entire screen.
It was Sergio, the curator, tangled in a complicated knot with two beautiful young Asian women and a muscular blond boy, creating a writhing configuration that Victor would have sworn was anatomically impossible for a man of Sergio’s age.
They watched it for a moment. Mara clicked onto Monitor #9. It was the celebrated cardiologist, Dr. Wade, giving his own heart a strenuous workout. They watched a lithe, coffee-colored woman in a black bustier apply a pink unguent to a certain part of the renowned doctor’s anatomy, and then, very slowly, introduce a formidable sex toy into said part. To the august doctor’s evident delight.
She clicked idly across the other centers of activity, lingering on the image of a beautiful young brunette, clad only in scraps of lingerie, rocking back and forth on her hands and knees. She was sweaty and flushed, eyes half closed, as a local software mogul belabored her vigorously from behind.
Victor had little interest in what was on the screen; he had gotten bored with it lifetimes ago. But watching Mara watch made his own sexual energy uncoil, slow and sinuous as a snake waking up from its winter sleep. “You like to watch, Mara?” he asked softly.
She shifted until she was leaning back against him, a light, warm, silken weight. “I like a lot of things,” she said.
He put his hand upon the fine-textured skin of her thigh, and slid it up beneath the short skirt. He discovered, with pleasure, that she was naked beneath it. Depilated as well; her mound was smoothly shaven with just a flirtatious little puff of hair shielding her clitoris. She widened her stance, opening for him with a sigh. He delved deeper and found that she was already aroused. She moved her body with feline grace against his hand. Hairless, silky and slick. Delicious.
He bit her neck, savoring the reaction rippling through her slender body. “You’re a naughty girl, aren’t you?”
“If I wasn’t, I certainly wouldn’t be here,” she said. Her voice choked off into a gasping moan as he thrust his hand more deeply, unfastening his trousers with the other. She braced herself against the edge of the table and arched herself open.
“True enough,” he agreed.
He drove inside her with a violence that surprised them both. She cried out and stumbled forward, catching herself against the table, and then braced herself more firmly. The room was a haze of glowing images, the bank of monitors with their assorted scenes of pleasure and depravity, Mara’s perfect buttocks, the silk tunic pushed up to her delicate ribs, his penis gleaming as it thrust in and out of her.
He barely heard the grunts and gasps, the slapping sound of contact. The cool, detached part of his mind that always watched was well aware that it was his fury at Riggs that fueled this brutal rhythm. He didn’t want to hurt Mara, but he paid lavishly enough for her services to indulge in his baser instincts without needing to ask either permission or pardon. He was so aroused. More alive and aware than he had been in years, not since his brother, Peter—
No. He pushed the thought away before it could unfurl, before it could detach him from the intensity of this delightful experience. The tight, slick depths of Mara’s perfect body exciting him beyond measure as he caressed her trembling buttocks, giving into the hard, driving rhythm.
Erotic heat roared through him and carried him over the brink. He spent himself in a long blast that blotted out every thought in his mind.
When he moved to withdraw, Mara made an inarticulate cry of protest and shoved herself back against him. “Wait,” she gasped. She came, long and shivering and totally unexpected. Delicious to watch, to feel. Her lingering pulsations milked and massaged his still-erect penis.
They were sticky and wet, but the architect had not planned the room with spontaneous sex in mind, so there was no adjoining bathroom. He withdrew himself, closed his pants and waited for his heart to slow down. Mara sank down onto the carpet, her legs sprawled out beneath her, as limp as a rag doll. She was still trembling. With her back hunched over like that, she looked fragile and vulnerable. He put his hand on her bare shoulder. It was hot and damp. She looked up at him. He felt a shock of startled recognition as their eyes met.
The sex had genuinely excited her. A fascinating discovery.
He held out his hand, pulled her up onto her feet. “Thank you, Mara. That was a revelation,” he said. “You can go.”
Her face convulsed. “Don’t dismiss me like that!”
Another moment of blank surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
Mara looked suddenly unsure of herself. “I said…don’t dismiss me,” she whispered. “Not after we’ve just had sex. Like that.”
“My dear, I can do anything I want with you,” he said gently. “You agreed to that when you were hired. Remember?”
Her wide mouth trembled. She sta
red him in the face, eyes wide and glittering with unshed tears. “Don’t,” she repeated.
He was taken aback, almost touched by her daring. Under the circumstances, that gesture took both courage and honesty. Both of which were in short supply in his life.
Ordinarily he would never permit a member of his staff to make personal demands of him. But tonight was a night for rule-breaking, for risk taking. Tonight, he would overlook this breach of protocol.
The girl was shivering. Her taut, dark nipples were clearly visible through the delicate fabric. He would not mind seeing those breasts again, he realized, with a fresh wave of lust. He saw her in his mind’s eye, naked on the bed, her hair fanned out across the white linen. Those topaz eyes, filled with genuine need.
Yes. It would be good. It would work. He was hard again. Already. He gave her a brief nod. “Come along, then. Let’s go to my suite.”
Victor stalked down the corridor, watching as Mara scurried ahead of him, her bare feet silent on the cold flagstones. She cast nervous, wide-eyed glances back over her shoulder at him, as well she should. She was an intelligent girl. She had good reason to be nervous.
He opened the door with a predatory smile and gestured for her to enter. Mara was hungry for something, too. And in appreciation for her charming honesty, he was going to see that she got it.
As much of it as she could take.
Chapter 19
Riggs swerved on the dark road, correcting just in time. It was bad tonight. Ever since Jesse Cahill’s death, his ulcers had been flaring up to the point of burning agony. Medication didn’t do much good, mixed with bourbon, but he needed booze to take the edge off the knowledge that he was an unredeemable piece of shit. Survival lay only in keeping that knowledge from Barbara and the girls for as long as he possibly could.
He thought of this morning; how she’d pressured him to see a therapist with her. “You have to face your feelings, Eddie,” she said, with that goddamn look, that anxious, furrowed-brow look that made him so crazy with rage and shame, he wanted to smack it right off her face. He hadn’t sunk that low, not yet, but it was a near thing.
Behind Closed Doors (The Mccloud Series Book 1) Page 29