Fatal Strike (18 page)

Lara could hear the shrill, tinny lecture from across the room.

He turned, gave her a dismayed look.

Lara felt her lips twitch. “She wants to talk to me?”

“You don’t have to, for God’s sake,” he said. “Don’t sweat it.”

“What’s her name?” Lara asked.

“Helen Davenport,” he said.

“Is she nice?” she asked.

He looked puzzled. “Of course she’s nice. She’s my mom.”

Lara held out her hand, on impulse. “I haven’t heard a nice woman’s voice in months,” she said. “Give me that phone.”

Miles handed it to her without a word.

She held it to her ear, marveling at how familiar and unfamiliar the heavy little device felt in her hand. “This is Lara. Mrs. Davenport?”

“Lara?” The older woman’s voice was distorted with tears. “Hello. I’m sorry to put you on the spot like this, honey.”

“That’s okay,” she said.

“I just can’t seem to stop crying. I’m so emotional right now. It’s been so long since I heard his voice, you see.”

“Of course,” she said. “I’ve been doing a lot of that myself today.”

Helen Davenport forced brightness into her tone. “So. Miles tells me you’re an artist.”

“Yes, that’s right,” she said. “A sculptor.”

“That’s wonderful! How creative of you. And you go to art school?”

“Not lately,” she said. “I was in some really bad trouble. But Miles saved me.”

“Did he, now?” The woman’s voice sharpened.

“Yes, he did. He was incredibly brave,” Lara told her. “And so smart. He was amazing. You should be very proud.”

“Oh, I am. I am.” The woman’s voice dissolved again.

“Oh, please. That is enough of that shit,” Miles snapped, twitching the phone out of her hand. He held it to his ear. “Me again, Mom . . . no way! You cannot talk to her anymore . . . as soon as I know what’s going on. Hanging up now, Mom. I love you. Hanging up, okay? Yes . . of course I’ll call again. Yeah. Love you, too. Give Dad a hug. Yeah . . . hanging up for real, Mom. Yeah. Bye.”

Hs hand dropped. He blew out a long breath, and sat down heavily onto the bed. “Wow,” he said. “That was intense.”

“Pretty much,” she agreed.

He set the phone down on the bedside table. “Thanks,” he said.

She shook her head, tried to smile. Mostly failing.

“She can’t wait to meet you,” he added. “She’s going to love you. My dad, too.”

That did it. Too much cheerful normalcy on an empty stomach.

“My mother would have loved you, too.” Her voice cracked.

Miles’ gaze whipped over to her, alarmed. She looked down at her lap. Her face was shaking. About to melt right off.

“Uh, Lara?” he said, warily. “Are you okay?”

“And my dad,” she said. “He was such a snob about all the guys I dated. None of them were smart enough for him. But if he’d ever met you, I don’t think he would have been able to think of a single thing to complain about. Not after what you did for me.”

“Lara,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“But you’ll never meet him. Or her. They’re gone. There’s nobody left to pass judgment on the men I sleep with. No impossible parental standard to live up to. It’s so simple for me, from now on.”

“Aw, shit.” He scooted to sit next to her, touching her shoulder.

She flinched away. “I’m the one who’s sorry. Somebody put a blow torch to my life, and it’s not your fault, but there’s nothing left that’s normal for me anymore. A phone call like that one, for instance. Never again. And I’m so fucking jealous of you. And that’s so unfair.” Her voice was shaking to pieces. She stopped, breathed, tried to still it. “You’ve done so much for me. I’m such a bitch to feel this way.”

“No, you’re not!” he said. “Just feel the way you feel.”

“That’s very generous of you.” She hated the words the instant they flew out of her mouth. Hated herself for saying them. She was on her feet, running toward the bathroom. Miles called out behind her, but she slammed the door on him. Sank onto the floor, hiding the shaking, agonized grimace her face had become against her knees.

So ashamed. She’d tried not to let the ugliness into herself, but she was steeped in it. Stained by it. She was toxic, bitter, ruined. She shouldn’t inflict that on anyone. Particularly not someone like him.

The bathroom door opened. It had not occurred to her to lock it. It had been so long since she’d had any sense of autonomy about when doors opened or closed. Or maybe she’d been hoping to be followed.

He crouched down beside her on the cold bathroom tiles, and then sat next to her, crosslegged. Put his warm hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I set you up for that. I told you not to treat me like I was broken. You took me at my word.”

“I should have known better,” he said. “I was just thinking about myself.”

“And your mom,” she said, sniffing hard. “You were thinking about your mom, and that’s great. I applaud that. Really, I do. It’s just hitting me all at once. My parents. I tried not to think about what happened to them, but . . .” She shook her head. “He was so afraid of pain. My dad. Even a headache made him panic. He was afraid of a lot of things. You’d never know it to look at him. He was this confident, successful professor, handsome, smart, popular. But underneath, he was scared. Anxious. To think of him going through that . . .” She pounded her fists on the hard tiles, as hard as she could. Bruising her knuckles, but she didn’t care. The pain helped, in a weird way.

Miles caught her fists in his, and stilled them. “He was brave that day,” he said. “He was a goddamn superman that day, in my book.”

She dared for a moment to look up at his face. “Why do you say that? How could you know that?”

Miles was silent. Considering his words carefully. Nervous about touching off a full-out nervous breakdown from the crazy girl.

“I knew that he’d gotten a letter from your mother, giving him certain information,” he said slowly. “Matilda told me about it. It had a rendezvous point, a date, to meet up and save you. When I found him, I also found a ticket to Denver to the rendezvous point. He’d planned to go. They hurt him, and killed him, but afterward, the bad guys still didn’t know about the letter, or the date, or the rendezvous point. They didn’t know about them because he did not tell them, Lara.”

She just looked at him, openmouthed. “Oh.”

He lifted both of her clenched fists to his lips, and kissed one, then the other. “Love makes you strong,” he said.

She came apart. Was a total shaking mess for a long while.

He pulled her into his lap and held her in his strong arms until the storm passed through and left her soft and limp.

It was chilly. When he felt her shiver, he muscled her onto her feet, set the shower running, and shucked his jeans.

He guided her into the stream of hot water, and joined her in there. They stared at each other, hands twined, as the water poured down over them and steam fogged the glass. It was like floating in a bubble, a magic place outside time and space.

He was so gentle. He had water tangled in his long, thick eyelashes, dripping from the ends of his long, shaggy locks. Naked emotion blazed from his eyes. She put her hands on his chest, blocking the rushing pattern of water racing down his chest, down his treasure trail, flowing around the turgid cock. Wow.

On impulse, she seized his thick, veined shaft, stroking it. He gasped, shuddering, and abruptly she was desperate for more. She wanted him to feel as vulnerable as she felt.

She put her arms around his neck, lifted her leg to curl it around his thigh, pressing his cock against her sensitive folds. “Hold me.”

He frowned, shaking his head. “Lara, I—”

“Hold me, goddamnit! I need this! I
need
you!”

He muttered something obscene under his breath, but he cupped her ass and lifted her to that perfect height where she could take him inside. Wide open, pressed to the wet, tile wall, her knees draped over the crook of his arms. She was still wet from the last time, so he entered her in one deep, smooth lunge. She clutched his shoulders, sobbing at the perfection of that thick club caressing her inside. Her tears mixed with the water from above, sluicing them down.

It was so good to cling to him, to give herself up. She didn’t have to do a thing but hang on, be caressed by his strong arms, his big body, the deep aching slide and shove of his cock. Each slow stroke was a shimmering glide of pleasure, turning her liquid, molten and soft.

This time, he didn’t have to ask. He looked at her, and she knew exactly what to do. It was almost automatic, shaking loose, dancing through the barrier until she was inside, in that safe, beautiful place. It was lit up, blindingly bright and wonderful, and she could hardly tell what was inside, what was out, what was analogous, what was real.

It was the sweetest, realest thing she’d ever felt, his powerful body thudding into hers. So raw, so hot, so incredibly right.

He came, pouring himself into her, and she followed along, in a sweet shivering rush of utter surrender.

Neither of them could bear to break the panting clinch. She could have stayed locked together with him in the pounding water forever.

M
iles set her gently down on her wobbly feet. He was too abashed to look her in the face. She made his eyes ache, she was so beautiful. Those thick, twisting wet cables of dark hair, clinging to her shoulders, eyelashes wet and tangled.

He reached for the bottle of shower gel, just to have something to do, and got to work on her, caressing her with the slippery suds. He could do this for the rest of time, particularly when he slid his hand between her legs. Soaping, rinsing, delving, until she sighed and squirmed, clenching tight around his fingers. He loved those soft silky tender bits, hidden in her wet thatch. His cock was already thickening. Even after all their inappropriate excesses.

He toweled her off when they stepped out, and scooped her into his arms, carrying her back into the bedroom. Too light. She had to eat. He wasn’t going to stop bullying her about it. Probably ever.

He tucked her in, lifting her wet hair, squeezing the towel around it again and again before spreading it out onto the pillow. He wanted to know everything about her, every moment she’d ever lived. To punish everyone who’d ever injured her. He was enthralled. Utterly fucked up.

He tucked the comforter up under her chin, and used the towel to dry himself. Dragged on the jeans, again, and the shirt, which he did not even bother to button, since who the fuck was he was fooling, anyway. “Try to rest,” he said. “I’m going to see what’s happening downstairs.”

She gave him that shy smile that revealed nothing. He wondered if she knew how he felt. That she had the keys to the Citadel. And he loved having her in there. As much as it freaked him out.

But then, he’d never claimed to have any damn sense.

He ran down the stairs. The kitchen was deserted, dishes washed. Aaro was out near the car, talking into his cell. Davy sat out on the huge deck, reassembling one of his guns.

Miles walked out onto the deck. The cold wind chilled his wet hair, whipped the unbuttoned shirt back from his bare chest. Davy’s eyes flicked over him, registering it.

Miles met his eyes, straight on. Fuck it. He’d done what he had done, and he wasn’t apologizing. They could all just kiss his ass.

Davy’s eyes narrowed. “So?” he said.

“I’m keeping her,” Miles said.

Davy’s face froze, for a long moment. Then he turned, looked away, as if he were admiring the view. But Miles knew the guy well enough to know that he was trying not to grin.

The grin won. “Ah,” he said. “Well, then. Good luck with that.”

“I’m sure I’ll need it.”

Davy slid the reassembled pistol into the side holster inside his jeans. “Come on inside,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because the beer’s in the fridge, and this calls for a toast.”

Miles followed the other guy inside. “Alcohol? Now? What about, ‘lack of vigilance will get you killed,’ and all that?”

“Bite your tongue, punk. Don’t you quote Eamon McCloud to me after rolling around in bed with your woman for two hours.”

The guy had a point, Miles conceded, as he watched Davy pop open two bottles of amber ale. They clinked bottles, drank.

His augmented senses were now able to embrace the flavors of whatever he put into his mouth, rather than being overwhelmed by them. The beer went down, sharp and salty and excellent.

Aaro walked in, scowling. “Drinking, now, too? Loser.”

“Shut it, and have one,” Davy suggested calmly.

Aaro accepted the beer that Davy handed to him. “Just talked to Nina,” he said. “She and Edie and Tam will be here tomorrow. I told them to wait, let her get a night’s sleep.” He looked at Miles, eyes slitted. “If that’s gonna happen.”

Miles stared back. “I’m glad they’re coming,” he said evenly. “Lara will be happy to see Nina. She needs her people.”

“She has you, doesn’t she?” Aaro said. “She has you all over her.”

Miles smiled, lifted his bottle in a silent toast, and drank. A mass of intricate sensory information started to crunch in his mind.

Fuck this. He couldn’t just drink a damn beer, like a normal guy. The micro-analysis happened automatically. He felt every increment of the changes the sugar and alcohol made inside his body. Changing his perceptions, relaxing his muscles, lowering his defenses.

His enjoyment of the beer drained instantly away, like a plug had been pulled. What the fuck was he doing, beer in hand, like a normal guy chilling after work? Who the fuck had given him permission to relax? He could not degrade his capacity to protect her.

He stared at the sweating bottle in his hand. The McClouds were tougher than boot leather, all four of them, and so was Aaro, but they were no match for Greaves. That was definitively proven. It was a hard fact to swallow, but there it was, in his face.

It was up to him. It was all on him.
I’m keeping her.
Was he, now? What manic shit-for-brains actually dared to say something like that? What had felt like steely confidence now rang in his ears like swaggering arrogance. Keep her, would he? Keep her where, in a pumpkin shell? He had fuck-all to fight Greaves with, other than a good mind shield, and a gun. The gun was useless against an opponent like that. His other assets were all defensive in nature.

Unless he counted his brain. Which was currently flash-fried.

Until he took out Greaves, he couldn’t keep her. Alive, maybe, but not living. What did she have to look forward to? Living on the run, eating crap strip-mall food, sleeping on lumpy, sagging beds in cheap hotels and rentals, tense and terrified, looking over her shoulder every second, jumping at every sound? No work, no art, no friends or family or children—or life. No ripening, no hope for the future, no peace. Just him, trotting along beside her like a hopeful hound dog, happy to be needed.

Until she started to hate him for it.

He’d find a way for her to be free. He had to. Just not free of him.

He set the bottle down on the kitchen counter with a decisive thud, all impulse to drink it gone, and answered the question in Davy’s eyes. “Lack of vigilance will get you killed,” he said.

Davy nodded sagely. “Whatever.”

“I can help keep guard,” Miles said. “Where are you guys posted?”

“Go guard her,” Davy said. “Do your mind-shield thing. That’s the best way to be vigilant right now, since none of us can do it.”

That made sense, though he had to be suspicious of his reasoning, being how there was nothing on earth he wanted to do more than wrap himself around that girl’s naked body.

Crazy. As completely fucked up as he had been, he’d suddenly found this vast geyser of sexual energy. He’d always had a lusty appetite for sex whenever he could get it, and granted, it had been a while since Cindy had gone on the fateful tour with the rock star and subsequently dumped him. He’d been celibate for over a year now.

But the feelings assaulting him were so far removed for his mournful adolescent pining for Cindy, he needed a whole new unit of measure for it.

Maybe it was the dreams. Her visits to his brain, all those weeks in the mountains. She’d imprinted on his brain somehow, and now he was helplessly programmed to nail her every chance he got. Out-of-control, like the rest of his life. It was like living in a fucking centrifuge.

He didn’t knock, not wanting to wake her if she slept. She was such a slight bump underneath the fluffy white comforter. He tried to close the door without making a sound, but the door latch clicked, and she exploded into movement, sitting bolt upright.

He froze. The cover flew back. Her hair was wildly tangled over her face, her eyes wide and staring. She was staring at him, but did not see him. Her heart raced. He could hear it, stuttering in a desperate skip-hop.

Stress flashback, maybe, or a nightmare. He was afraid to move, for fear of scaring her. Something flickered in her eyes. She blinked.

“You okay?” he ventured.

She hid her face in her hands and shook her head, violently.

He still hesitated to approach the bed. “Bad dream?”

She shook her head again. “Tripping,” she whispered. “I took off the moment I started to drift off to sleep. Got sucked right down into the vortex.”

“Vortex,” he repeated, letting his silence be the prompt.

She nodded. “When I trip. That’s how it feels. Like I’m being sucked down into another dimension. Oh, God. Is this going to happen to me now, all the time, at random? Am I going to start seeing alternate realities while I’m in line at the grocery store? I might need to be locked back up in a cell after all.”

“No!” His voice was savage, as if the force of his declaration could make it so. “No, that’s not going to be your life.”

She just shook her head back and forth.

He ached to sit down next to her, take her in his arms, but he’d had enough stress flashbacks to know that she probably wouldn’t be able to stand the contact. “You’re shaking,” he said. “What did you see?”

She shuddered. “My two favorites, you might say. Or anti-favorites. I saw these visions almost every time they injected me. Now I’m seeing them even when they don’t. Disaster and doom.”

Dread mounted in his belly, but he didn’t want her to be all alone with it. “What did you see?”

“The first one is like a recurring nightmare,” she said slowly. “I see a park, but it’s overgrown, and the people in it look listless, vacant. Sometimes a man is collapsed on the sidewalk, and two people are sitting on the park bench next to him, staring into nowhere. They don’t even seem to see him. People are lying on the grass, and it’s not clear if they’re dead or alive. Garbage is blowing everywhere. Then I see a woman, staring out the window, and behind her a baby in a crib is screaming, but she doesn’t hear him. I have no idea what it all means.”

He shivered, too. “Creepy,” he commented.

“Oh, yeah. And I saw the bomb one, too, like always. The Tokyo train station. A terrorist attack. Four hundred and seventy-eight people dead. Every time I saw that, I begged Hu and Anabel to do something about it, but they ignored me.”

“That’s awful,” he said quietly.

She looked up at him, lip caught tight and bloodless between her teeth. “Did it happen? The bomb?”

“I haven’t heard about it,” he said. “I’ve been in the mountains, but I think someone would have mentioned a disaster as big as that. Let me do a search.” He crouched down, pulled the laptop and router out of the bag that one of his friends had pulled from his vehicle and left outside the bedroom door. He ran a check for bombs, terrorists, Tokyo.

Nothing relevant or current jumped out. He shook his head.

The look of dawning excitement on her face scared him, in some obscure way. “What’s today’s date, Miles?” Her voice was shaking.

He glanced at the computer and told her.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “It hasn’t happened yet. I remember, in one of the trips, I saw the digital clock. It happened on the seventh. At afternoon rush hour.”

“That’s tomorrow,” he said. The clenching sense of dread grew.

“But it’s a day later there! It’s morning, nine hours later, but tomorrow! Miles, if it hasn’t happened yet, then I can stop it! I can call someone about the bomb before it goes off!”

“Yeah, but call who? Tell them what?”

Her eyes were feverishly bright. “The police! It’s a big green rucksack, packed full of explosives, left in the luggage compartment of a commuter train that’s coming into Tokyo Station at five in the afternoon. But there’s still time. Oh, God, Miles.”

She grabbed the burner phone that Aaro had bought for her, and stared at it, helplessly, like she was trying to remember how it worked.

He couldn’t say no, but he felt the doom, like a distant drumbeat.

“Who are you going to call?” he said. “The police? Do you speak Japanese?”

Her excitement shifted to anxiety. “No. I speak some European languages, but no Asian ones. Do you?”

He shook his head.

“There will be someone there who speaks English,” she said.

“They’ll want you to explain your source,” he said. “It’s going to be a hard sell. Even without the language barrier.”

“I have to tell someone!”

He lifted his hands. “Just as you say,” he said quietly. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t. I’m just saying it’s not going to be easy, and you’re not in a good position to make them believe you.”

She hunched over, pressing her fists to her mouth, thinking furiously with her eyes squeezed shut. “Wait. I know a guy,” she said. “We were in high school together, in New York. He’s an art director for an online magazine in Seattle, but he grew up in Kyoto. He can call for me. He’ll help me sell it to them.”

“You know his phone number?” he asked. “You’re going to call him, right now? It’s midnight.”

“Yes.” She started to punch in a number.

He watched, with dread building in his body. Any way he looked at it, this call was a bad idea security wise, for so many compelling reasons, he didn’t even want to start listing them. But it was an untraceable burner phone, and they were sure to be gone from here tomorrow. Sooner rather than later, if he had his way.

He could not discourage her from making this call. It was an immediate way for her to turn some of the badness into good. To make some sense of the madness, the pain she’d been through. To strike a blow for righteousness, the light. He couldn’t take that away from her.

And yet, for some reason, it was scaring the shit out of him.

“Hey, Keiko? . . . it’s Lara . . . yes, I know. I know . . . yeah, not yet, but I will. I can’t tell you now. I was in trouble, but I’m okay. But I have to tell . . . no, really, Keiko. Listen to me. I have to ask you to do something for me. You need to call the police in Tokyo. There’s going to be a bomb in the main train station. It’s coming in on a commuter train that arrives at five
P.M.
That’s when it will go off today, if someone doesn’t stop it. Could you call the . . . no, I’m sorry, I can’t, but . . . it doesn’t matter how I know. All that matters is that I
do
know! . . . I’m talking hundreds of people, Keiko! . . . yes! Tell them it’s an anonymous tip . . . do I seem like a person who plays practical jokes? . . . Just do this for me, and I swear, I’ll . . . thank you. Yes, I’ll take all the blame if it . . . yes. Yes. Thank you . . . and I—”