Gone Too Far (41 page)

Alyssa exploded. There was no other way to describe it. One moment she was looking into his eyes, and the next she was shattering. He was right with her, all the way, shouting something she couldn’t hear because she didn’t have ears anymore.

And then she was in little fragments, floating around him, settling back down so that her arms that were holding him so tightly were once again attached to her shoulders.

“It’s good to know,” Sam murmured into her re-formed ear, “that we’re finally both on the same page.”

And Max had been wrong—how often did
that
happen?—about both his age and his status as a brand-new detective. Alvarado had been a detective for seven long years. The man was thirty-one years old. Either he was like Jules Cassidy and had a baby face, or as Max got older, anyone under thirty-five was starting to look like a child.

Max had watched as Gina and Ric came out into the parking lot. He’d watched them talk, watched Gina smile and laugh, watched Alvarado kiss her. He should have left. He should have driven away right then.

Instead, he sat there. Torturing himself. Hating the idea of her taking Alvarado home with her. That wasn’t what she needed—casual sex with some near stranger. Except, as he sat there, watching Gina, he had to face the honest truth. Max really hated the idea of her taking Alvarado home not because it wasn’t what
she
needed, but because it wasn’t what
he wanted
.

He could pretend that he’d come here tonight—a night when he should have been flying to San Diego—to protect Gina from herself. To make sure she didn’t put herself into any real danger. But that wasn’t the only reason he was here.

Out on the sidewalk, Alvarado had his arms around Gina, and damn it, now she pushed him away and started running, this time in earnest. Alvarado gave chase, but Gina just ran faster.

All right, this bullshit wasn’t going any farther. Max switched on his headlights and pulled out of the shadows, driving swiftly toward them.

Alvarado caught Gina’s arm, and she pulled hard to get away, only, son of a bitch, he tripped and they both went down onto somebody’s lawn.

Max screeched to a stop with his front tires on the sidewalk and jumped out of the car.

Gina was scrambling away from Alvarado. It was to his credit that he didn’t try to stop her, didn’t try to hang on to her or pin her down.

“That’s enough,” Max said. “Gina, get in the car.” He looked at Alvarado. “Thanks for your help. I’ll take it from here.”

The detective pulled himself to his feet. “I wasn’t trying to—”

“Note that you’re still alive,” Max said. “If I thought your intention was to hurt her, that wouldn’t be the case. Go home, Detective.”

Alvarado looked past him to Gina, who was standing now, breathing hard, one arm wrapped around herself as she wiped tears from her face with the heel of her other hand.

“Are you going to be all right with him?” he asked her, refusing to be bullied, gaining another point or two in Max’s scorebook.

Gina nodded. “I’m so sorry, Ric.”

He nodded, too, as he brushed off his pants, giving its torn knee barely a glance. “She needs some serious help, man,” he told Max in a low voice as he walked back toward the parking lot.

Max looked at Gina. She was watching him, her eyes huge, her pale face eerily lit by the streetlight. “I think he’s probably right,” he said.

She didn’t say anything. She just looked at him. “Get in the car,” he said again, adding, “Please.” Gina did. Her eyes still on him, she moved around to the passenger’s side and opened the door. And climbed in.

Max got behind the wheel, extremely aware that she was still watching him, extremely aware of the hope that was in her eyes. Oh, no, Gina, that was
not
why he was here.

“Did you like the music tonight?” she asked.

It didn’t seem worth the effort to lie and say he wasn’t there. He’d seen her looking in the corner where he’d stood. “It was . . . Well, I’ve never paid much attention to jazz, but it was . . . interesting.”

“That good, huh?”

“It’s not my thing,” he admitted. “It’s so chaotic and out there.”

“You know, it’s not that different from Hendrix,” she said.

She remembered that he’d once told her that Jimi Hendrix was one of his guilty pleasures.

“I think there’s actually
more
chaos in Hendrix’s music,” Gina continued. “I mean, he’s always on the verge of a meltdown. There’s such wildness and, I don’t know, a desperation to his guitar playing. The big difference is that, for you, it’s familiar desperation.”

“Yeah, maybe.” God
damn
it. Wildness and desperation. No wonder he loved Hendrix. He could relate so completely. He put the car into gear. “Where are you staying?”

“It’s not far,” she said. “You can drop me at the corner.”

Max just looked at her.

“So even though jazz isn’t your thing, didn’t you think I was good?” she asked.

She was sitting there with her nose red, with her makeup smudged and smeared around eyes that still looked as if she might start crying again any second, looking impossibly beautiful. She was wearing some kind of sports top, in a style that Alyssa had once told him was called a racerback. It had really showed off her incredible body as she’d played.

There was something about a healthy woman playing the drums that was a total turn-on. The few times she’d really cut loose, hair and arms flying, legs working, breasts moving, he’d had a definite physical reaction. Except
Yeah, you gave me a real hard-on,
was probably not the response she was looking for.

Max smiled despite himself. Although, knowing Gina, she would probably laugh. And then she would be all over him. His smile faded.
All
over him.

“What were you thinking just then?” she asked softly.

“I was thinking that you’re as talented as you are beautiful, and that I wish I’d never had to meet you.”

She understood what he meant. “Well, you did,” she said. “And here we are. Sitting in your car again, in the middle of the night.” She laughed, but it was only to cover up the fact that she had tears back in her eyes. “If I tell you where I’m staying, will you come in for a little while?”

He started to protest, but Gina cut him off.

“Just to talk,” she said. “Please, Max. You don’t know how much I miss talking to you.”

Oh yes, he did. It was probably just about as much as he missed talking to her. Sometimes it manifested itself in a physical ache in his chest or his throat.

“I’m at the Siesta Beach House,” she told him. “Take a right at the stop sign, fourth driveway on the left. My room is down by the water. Number 21.”

It
was
close. It was so close, Max hadn’t yet figured out what the hell he was going to do before he was there and putting the car into park.

He couldn’t go into her room with her. That would be a huge mistake.

“Please come in,” she whispered.

“I can’t,” he said just as quietly.

“Just to talk.”

“Really.” He looked at her.

“Yes.” She was lying. If he went in there, he wasn’t coming out until morning.

Some of his frustration escaped. “Are you going to tell me what happened tonight? Why you ended up running down the street, with some stranger you
picked up in a bar
chasing you?”

“Ric’s a police detective and you know it,” she responded just as hotly. “He’s not just some stranger.”

Max nodded. “Great. So you got lucky.
This
time.”

“You want to know what happened?” she said. “I got scared. He was all ready to come home with me, and I got
scared
. So I told him. Everything. And then he got . . . you know. The way guys get when it’s too heavy and they’d rather go home and watch Comedy Central. But he was going to do it anyway. I was going to be his pity fuck for the month—I’m real
lucky
, huh? But it felt really,
really
wrong, and I knew that it’s
always
going to feel wrong, unless you change your mind, because the only time
any
thing feels right is when you’re with me. But I know you’re not going to, so God! Why do I even bother?”

Max felt his insides ripping open as she started to cry, as she got out of the car.

“Gina, wait—”

But she slammed the door and hurried toward the building.

Don’t follow. He couldn’t follow. But he also couldn’t let her go. He couldn’t leave her like this. He got out of the car, too, and followed her, because it seemed like the lesser of two evils. “Gina.”

“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m so sorry, Max.” She was standing there, trying to unlock the door to her room, fumbling with the key. She dropped it, and he cracked heads with her as he tried to pick it up.

“Sorry!” He moved her aside. “Let me get it.”

He picked up the key, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. Her room was dark, and he stepped inside, looking for the light switch.

He found it, but when he flipped it, only one lamp went on. It must’ve had a twenty-five watt bulb in it, because it barely lit the shabby room. Which was probably just as well, since the last time this place had been redecorated was back in 1975, and seeing it in bright light would have been too awful.

“Oh, Christ, Gina,” he said. “You sure know how to pick ’em.”

“I
am
sorry, Max,” she said. “Because I do understand. I
do
.”

The door closed behind her, and Max realized that he’d somehow ended up exactly the last place he should be. In Gina’s room. He had to get out of here.

“I know you blame yourself for what happened to me,” she told him, “and I wish you wouldn’t, because, really, the fault was mine. I pushed them—Babur and Al—on the plane. You told me not to. You told me to be careful, not to go too far. But I was trying to be Wonder Woman. I was trying to save the day.”

“No,” Max said. Damn it, did she really think . . .?

“I was trying to give you as much information about them as I could,” Gina told him, tears running down her face. “I thought they were asleep, but they weren’t and they heard me, and I gave away the fact that there were microphones planted and that you didn’t need the radio to hear me. It was
my
fault—”

“No.” He reached for her, but she pulled back.

“Yes. You told me not to provoke them, but I did. I
provoked
them, so they raped me, and the captain tried to stop them, so they killed him and it was
my fault
.”

She sank to the floor, and he followed her there, afraid to touch her, afraid not to. “No, Gina, you can’t think that way!”

“You told me,” she said, looking at him with such heartbreaking grief in her eyes. “You warned me. But I didn’t listen. And now you can’t even look at me without being haunted by it, by my mistake. It was
my
mistake,
my
fault, Max, not yours.”

Oh, God. Oh, almighty, vengeful, terrible God. Had she really been carrying this around for
years
?

“Gina, it was
not
your fault. Do you honestly think that?”

She did. She honestly did.

He put his arms around her and this time she didn’t resist. This time she clung to him, still sobbing that she was sorry. She was
sorry
for
provoking
her
rape
. It was all Max could do not to cry, too. But he’d wait and do that later. Right now, as quickly as possible, he had to correct this terrible misconception Gina had been living with for so long.

“Listen to me,” he said, working hard to make his voice calm. Soothing. Christ, he’d managed to sound matter-of-fact and unperturbed when he’d talked to the terrorists on the plane while they were raping her. Surely he could do it again now. But his voice broke. “Gina, you
need
to listen to me.”

“Don’t leave me,” she sobbed. “Please, Max . . .”

He would have promised her anything. “I’m not going anywhere,” he told her, holding her tightly, his cheek against the top of her head. “I’ll stay as long as you need me.”

He heard the words leaving his lips, and part of him stood off to the side and lifted his eyebrows at such an obvious error in judgment. But the rest of him took note in the fact that his promise seemed to work quite well in calming Gina down, and he actually said it again. “I’ll stay as long as you want me to. You just have to take a couple of deep breaths and listen to me. Really listen, okay?”

She nodded and breathed.

“Okay,” he said, smoothing her hair back from her face. “I’m going to tell you something that I’ve learned from years of negotiating and from years of dealing with people who are as desperate as the terrorists were who hijacked flight 232. I need you to listen carefully, and I need you to believe me. You trust me, right?”

Gina nodded again.

“I was straight with you about the jazz, right?”

Another nod. This one came with half of a laugh, too. Okay, good. She
was
listening.

“Can you sit up a little?” he asked. “I want you to look into my eyes when I tell you what I’m going to tell you. Can you do that?”

She lifted her head, and the sight of her face, pale and tear-streaked and weary with grief and the weight of responsibility she’d been carrying for so long, broke his heart.