Hot Contract (26 page)

She straightened, her eyes cool. “Why don’t
you pay me if you think I’m a whore?”

“Yeah, let’s talk about that.” He followed
her around the picnic table. “Tell me why you slept with me if
you’re already banging Nick.”

Her eyes narrowed and she shifted just that
little bit forward on the balls of her feet. He looked for the
glint of her knife, but to his relief her hands were empty. She had
dropped her purse in preparation for—what? Kicking his ass?

In the end she just gave him a disgusted
look, grabbed her purse again and slung it over her shoulder.
“Don’t presume on our friendship, Padraic. You’re the one who wants
to dissolve our partnership.”

“We’re still friends? Hey, that’s a surprise.
I don’t feel the least bit friendly to you.”

She went white right down to her lips. “I
am
your friend, asshole.”

He had to get away from her. He was going to
implode. “I don’t know what we are, Liss. But we’re not
friends.”

“I thought—Volcano, that police station—”

“If you’re going to tell me that peck was a
sign of your heartfelt devotion, I’ll laugh—so don’t even go
there.”

She stopped instead, her hand fisted on the
strap of her purse. Her knuckles were almost as white as her face.
“Nick is my friend.”

“And I’m fucking nothing?”

“You’re my friend, too.”

Fallon felt sick and empty. His lungs were
still pulling, but he couldn’t feel the rest of his body, like
everything was three times removed. He reached down into his shirt
and hooked out the dog-tags. The ball-link chain slipped through
his fingers as if desperate to get away.

Corlis watched him steadily, not a flicker of
anything close to emotion in her set face.

He dropped the tags on the table and walked
away from her without a backward glance. “Don’t do me any
favors.”

****

Corlis sat on the hard plastic chair, holding
on to Fallon’s tags tight enough to hurt. The airport hummed around
her. Still too early for Nick’s flight, but—as usual, she had
nowhere else to go. She’d been alone her entire life. Even as a
kid, she’d never wanted or needed anyone or anything, except maybe
to be left alone during lunch, her one solid real-meal of the
day.

Keegan had always tried. But he’d been a kid,
just like her, and the snack he’d packed for her that day—the day
she’d first met Fallon—smelled like something scraped out of the
back of their too-bare cupboard. Corlis remembered how she’d
crumpled a piece of stale bread into the slimy green paste. How it
had smelled like mouthwash and was probably last year’s mint
jelly.

“For lamb,” Keegan had told her. Not that
they’d ever had any.

Corlis had thought about it, though, and
imagined it was soft and juicy. Like hamburger, only better. She’d
thrown her sandwich to the side and sat hunched over, much like she
was now, watching the other kids run around and do whatever it was
kids did when their bellies weren’t cramping with hunger.

An hour until lunch. She felt dizzy and
light-headed. She didn’t know if she could make it, but if she
didn’t, she wouldn’t get lunch and there was nothing in the house.
Mom had smoked it all up again and barricaded herself in her room.
Keegan said it was because she was afraid the spiders would get
her, but Corlis didn’t think he was being straight with her. Their
house was too clean for spiders, and lately there’d been something
in Keegan’s eyes. She’d seen him talking to Connor, but they always
stopped when they saw her coming.

She rested her cheek on her knee. Please God.
Don’t let her faint. She’d fainted last week, and one of the other
kids had kicked her black and blue before the teachers noticed.
Sweat trickled down her nape. Richmond wouldn’t start to cool off
for another month. There was no shelter except for a tiny patch of
shade behind the basketball hoop.

The chain-link fence behind her creaked.
“Mind if I sit?”

It was that new kid. The transfer, Padraic.
Padraic who had jeans almost as ripped as hers, shirts that didn't
fit, and a drawl that didn't sound like it came from the Gilpin
housing project.

She ignored him, hoping he’d get the hint,
but he sat anyway, eating donuts out of a little cellophane
sleeve.

“That yours?” He jerked his head at her
stupid sandwich.

She didn’t answer. Did she have to tell him
to go? How much of a hint did he need? His eyes were strange and
pale. Not gray like her own, but a blue so light they were almost
colorless. He glared down at his donuts and back up at her. “All
right,” he said. “Don’t talk to me. I don’t care! I don’t need
you—hell, I don’t need anyone.”

He’d been up on his feet, ready to go before
she said, “It’s mint jelly.”

He’d sat again. And he’d stayed. And offered
her donuts they both pretended she didn’t want.

She rubbed her thumb over the tarnished metal
of his dog tags. She’d had Fallon back for such a short time. Two
months short of a year. They’d rarely interacted in Special Forces,
despite their posting as Alpha and Bravo, field and headquarter
members of the same unit. Keegan had created DalCon in reaction to
Fallon’s disappearance. For what had felt like forever she’d hoped
her friendship with Nick and his contacts within CSO, Collateral
Special Operations, would be enough to find Fallon and bring him
home.

Apparently they had been. He’d been so thin,
trudging up the long incline near the trees, out in the parking lot
behind DalCon. She’d taken to sitting at the picnic bench behind
the building, alone, staring into space and waiting. For what, she
didn’t know.

But then she’d seen him, and she’d known. And
she’d still been unable to make a single move toward him. So she’d
waited some more, heart pounding, palms sweating. It had taken him
a long time to reach her, and when he did she still couldn’t
believe her eyes.

His worn gray duffle clinked. “Aww, fuck me—”
He threw it down and glared at the oil dripping from the thick
canvas. “I think Maggie Ann’s perfume opened in there.”

Fallon shrugged out of his heavy camouflage
jacket, his movements slow and jerky. She could see his ribs and
the bony line of his shoulders through the thin fabric of his
shirt. He’d lost weight he couldn’t afford to lose, and thick white
bandages shackled both wrists. They’d chained him to the wall.
She’d seen the pictures. Nick hadn’t wanted her to have them, but
she’d accessed Fallon’s operational detachment file, and looked
anyway.

He staggered, hands tight around the
sweat-stiffened fabric. “Dizzy.” He looked like he was going to
faint, white under the ground-in dirt.

Corlis jumped off the picnic table and eased
him to the ground. “When did you last eat?”

“Yesterday? Day before? Shit—I don’t
know—hungry so long. So damned bright...” He fell over on his back
and covered his eyes with his hands.

She pulled them away. His eyes were
purple-ringed in his exhausted face.

“Back off,” he snarled. “I don’t need your
fucking help.”

“You were out of touch for almost a year,”
she said quietly. “I was concerned.”

“Out of touch? Like I was on vacation?”
Fallon rolled on his side, away from her. “You know I can’t talk
about it, so why fucking ask?”

“Because they hurt you.”

“I’m out of it now.”

She sat down next to him and drew her knees
up. It had been cold then, autumn in the Northwest, and the holly
bushes stood out against the blaze of golden brambles.

She fished down in her pocket. “I had these
made a couple of months ago,” she said.

“Dog tags?”

She touched him carefully. He caught her
hand, the tags trapped between them. His fingers were hot, and
there was something wrong with his nails. Torture. They’d tortured
him.

“God, Liss. I—” He swallowed thickly, and
read the tags. “Return to sender?”

“Whatever happens, wherever you go,” she’d
whispered. “I want you back.”

****

Someone sat next to her and the row of chairs
creaked. Corlis looked up to find her former partner, a big man
with the ripped build of a professional wrestler and white-blond
hair he kept cropped down close to his skull. His eyes were gray
and his silence a sure sign he was thinking. Nikolai Radnov was as
emotionally volatile as an eggplant.

“You do not look well,” he said, obviously
picking his words with care.

She whispered, “I’m hell on my friends.”

Nick’s brows shot up and he smoothed a thumb
over her cheek. “So serious. I have body armor.”

“Don’t you understand? I’m...bad for him! I
can’t be around him without saying or doing the wrong thing...”

“Ahh...then we are not talking about me. We
are talking about Fallon.” Nick settled his shoulders back against
the wall and folded his arms. “Do you remember when you asked me to
find him for you?”

“Yes.”

“It was a bad place.”

Corlis shivered. “Yes.”

“South American jail. Men disappear. The
point is Fallon should have died. He came back for you, Corlis. Do
not be so quick to write him off.”

Corlis shoved the tags down in her pocket and
stood. Nick followed her up, looming over her despite her
height.

He caught her hand. “Why don’t you try
talking to Fallon?”

“Excuse me?”

“You do not talk to him the way you talk to
me. If he cares for you, he is hurting. Do not do this to him.”

She jerked free and glared at him. “It’s not
that easy!”

“I am a good matchmaker,” said Nick. “Just
the other day, I connected two people up.”

“I’m the problem. I doubt you can fix
me.”

“I can try.” Nick hefted a carry-on the size
of a small steamer trunk. “The first thing we will do,” he said,
pointing to the escalators, “is stop in Renton. I know this
boutique—”

“You shop?”

Nick gave her a long look. “I am a man,
Corlis.”

She rubbed at her reddening face. “I know
that.”

He patted her on the head. “No. You do not.
But it is okay. I am Nick. I am not Fallon.”

****

Jen swung her chair around and stared out
through the tiny window. Land slipped beneath them. Through a break
in the cloud cover, the Olympics rose like a fence around the Puget
Sound. Her heart was pounding so hard, it was a wonder Tris didn't
hear it from where he sprawled on a couch at the front of the
compartment.

Jen got to her feet, heart in her throat.
“Why couldn’t Keegan live on Maui?”

“Does anyone live on Maui?”

“You’re a funny man, Tristan.”

“Not really,” said Tris.

She kicked the crate of date wine away from
Tris for the third time in as many hours. “Do you have to drink
those?”

He threw his head back and poured the rest of
the bottle down his throat. “If you’re wondering if I’m drunk. I’m
not.”

His words had a faint sing-song slur. Jen
eyed him closely. If he wasn’t drunk, he was doing a good
imitation. “How was Singapore?” she asked, sitting down in the
chair across from him.

“Hot.”

She drew her legs up and looped her arms
around them. “Did you visit Lain? I heard your sister was staying
at Raffles while her house was being repainted. Why didn't she stay
with family?”

He gave her a long look and shut his eyes,
closing her out. “I don't know.”

The forward compartment in StallingCo’s
executive jet was wide and expansive, way too big for the two of
them. Percy kept the Boeing because it was the only business jet
with a bedroom. She suspected it was the only place her brother got
any sleep. Jen threw her head back against the cushioned neck rest,
leaned on her side and pummeled the cushions into place. The chair
instantly folded down and locked into place, turning the plush
recliner into a chaise lounge.

Her new horizontal position gave her a great
view of the armrest and made her suit pull.

“My jacket is too tight.”

Tris grunted.

“Was I really that skinny?”

Silence. Jen rolled over and eyed her cousin.
He'd changed for their trip and his jeans were riddled with what
looked like mended bullet holes.

“Want to take a picture?” he asked, abruptly
opening his eyes.

“Would you let me?”

“No.”

“Then why ask?”

“You're staring.” He cupped his palms under
his nape and stretched.

Arabic calligraphy covered both arms. He
usually kept it covered, but today he hadn't bothered, wearing an
old black t-shirt with the sleeves torn out. The aircraft began to
bank and the engines cycled down into a low roar. Jen stared out
over the heavily forested barrier islands before she pulled the
shade. Flying didn’t trigger her vertigo, but the sight of all that
water made her sick.

“I’ve never been to Seattle.”

Tris rolled on his side, and adjusted the
holster behind his hip. “Didn’t miss much.”

Keegan was down there, somewhere. “Percy
would have said something supportive.”

“If you want platitudes, you brought the
wrong Stalling.” Tris got to his feet and pulled out a pair of
sunglasses.

Jen fidgeted. “I don’t like this.”

Tris shrugged into his jacket. The chains on
his boots chimed faintly. “I’m going to check on my bike. Strap in.
We’re getting ready to land.”

***

Jen knotted her fists in the heavy leather of
her cousin’s coat as Tris banked his bike around another corner.
She hated motorcycles. The wind whipping at her clothes, her purse
banging, and the claustrophobic squeeze of the helmet. She almost
dumped them in the first mile, refusing to let Tris take the
corners at an angle. The minute the big Viper Diablo began to tip,
she started screaming.

She screamed again as they slammed through a
pothole. The hard butt of a gun, knife, or something unfamiliar but
knowing Tris—probably lethal, dug into her belly. She wanted to rub
her stomach, but was afraid to let go. Tris had no patience for
fools. He’d abandon her if she fell off.