The Widow File (30 page)

He couldn’t bear to see her cry. He didn’t want her to cry.

Crying usually enraged him. Too often, begging elicited savagery from Booker, but this time was different. This time it hurt him.

He’d run her to ground. He’d pushed her too far and rather than feel pride in his prowess, he felt loss at breaking such a creature. All he could think to do was crowd up against her, to hide her tears in his body. He pressed in close, wrapping his arms around her waist and lifting her up against the fencing. The wind off the water behind her blew her hair in a
wild cloud around her head. She pushed at his shoulders but with no leverage she couldn’t budge him. Her hands burned where they touched the bunched muscles in his arms.

“Dani. If there was any other way…”

“There is. There is. You don’t have to. You don’t have to do this.”

“I have to. I have to.”

Their words poured over each other, their breaths mingling in the warm wet privacy between them. She trembled and jumped against him and he slid his left thigh between her knees, lifting her up on his leg, forcing her to lean on him. His fingers dug into the waistband of her jeans, finding the belt loops and dragging her closer to him.

“If there was any other way, Dani, I would save you. I would.” He couldn’t bear it any longer. He would use the serrated blade. He would end this now and hold her until it was over. He would hold her as long as he could. He ground his hips against her to hold her in place and heard her cry as his hand slipped between them. The knife slid from the sheath and with a whispered “I’m sorry,” he pushed the blade into her stomach.

The blade bounced back, twisting from his grip and nicking his hand before clattering to the ground.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

Dani felt as if she’d been punched. Cold air rushed in when he drew back swearing.

His wide eyes stared down at her stomach where the blade had tried and failed to puncture the Rasmund pouch. The stunned look on his face and the loosening of his grip gave Dani the chance to shove hard with both hands, pushing him back far enough to get a knee up between them. It was a brief victory because Tom responded with a backhand that snapped her face to the side, cracking her teeth together. She couldn’t hear anything but a ringing in her ear but she felt him jerk her higher onto the fence. The top bar pressed painfully into her lower back.

He jammed himself hard between her legs, forcing the air from her lungs. He chanted her name over and over in a low growl that sounded angry and relentless and something else she didn’t want to think of as she
felt what she prayed was another knife hilt pressing against her through his pants. She felt his teeth and lips and tongue at the side of her neck and Dani thought she might be screaming even though she couldn’t hear anything but hard harsh breaths.

She forced herself to go still. “Tom, please.”

He stopped pressing forward but kept his lips against her neck. “Dani.”

“You don’t have to do this. Nobody needs to know about you.”

“They’re going to be here soon. They’re going to be everywhere. If it had been anyone but the government, Dani. If it had been anyone—the mob, Wal-Mart, anyone. But the CIA? They never stop. They’ll never stop.”

“They won’t know about you.”

“You’ll know about me. They’ll know what you know.”

“I won’t tell.”

He pulled back and pressed his forehead to hers. “You won’t have a choice.”

Tears filled her eyes. “You have a choice.”

He had no choice. He knew he had to hurry. Police would be flooding the area any minute. They would never stop looking for him and nobody, not even Dani, was worth going into a cage.

“Listen to me, Dani.” He stroked his thumb along her chin. “It’s better this way. It is. If they take us, they’ll put us in the deepest darkest prison cells they can find. They’ll put us both in cages. You can’t live in a cage. You can’t. You wouldn’t.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“I know.” He did. Such a simple sentiment, one that he’d heard a hundred times in his career, but hearing it from Dani broke his heart. She should live. They should both live but the unholy truth was that only one of them could. He shifted his grip on her, lifting so her bottom rested on one of the rungs, her uninjured leg able to brace itself on the lowest rung. She took the position, her bad leg straight but not bearing her weight anymore. Her elbows hooked over the top rung. It didn’t look very comfortable but he could see her relax.

“Why don’t you just run?”

He smiled. “I’m going to. I’ll get away. Don’t worry.” He slid his hands up her collarbone, under the blue strap of the bag around her neck. He felt her pulse hammering hot beneath his thumbs and he couldn’t help but groan at the way her pupils widened. She knew what he was going to do.

She knew what he was going to do and she couldn’t believe she had to stand there and let it happen. His soft hands and muscular arms were going to strangle her, crush her throat until she couldn’t breathe. She would crumple broken onto the ground like Ev and Mrs. O’Donnell.

Fuck that.

Before she could think it through, she grabbed the strap of the Rasmund pouch and whipped it like a jump rope out from behind her head and over and behind Tom’s. Using every ounce of strength she had, she pushed off the fence twisting her body to the right, jerking Tom by the neck. She roared as she lunged and Tom faltered one step, then two. He started to drop to his knee into the corner of the alcove and Dani knew she had to get over his back to clear the alcove and reach the open sidewalk. She pushed herself up and over his dropping shoulder, her arms rigid as they shoved the pouch down and away.

She could see the space opening up before her. She felt him moving and felt herself getting distance from the fence. Fractions of seconds inched by as she forced her body to press past the muscular form pinning her in place and she was getting there. She was moving him. She twisted to the left, her arms straining to the right and she felt the balance shifting in her favor. Then she felt agony. A howl ripped from her throat as her body constricted to escape the pain that erupted from every cell in her body. She didn’t even understand it as pain. She didn’t know where she felt it. It was an agony as pure as anything in the universe and it threw her back against the fencing.

Booker punched the bullet hole in her leg. He ground his knuckle into the sloppy wet hole until he felt her skin giving way beneath his hand. He pushed and twisted and heard her wail as her back arched and her muscles tensed. He shoved his shoulder hard against her chest, knocking the air
from her lungs and silencing her scream. He pressed himself hard against her, every inch of his torso fitting against hers until he had her bent backward over the black water behind her.

“Are you going to kill me, Dani? Huh? You going to be the sledgehammer?”

He knew she couldn’t hear him, her body struggling to adjust to the trauma he’d inflicted on her leg. Her eyes rolled, whites showing bright and wide around her brown irises, and her mouth worked in a wordless cry. He watched her face, watched her blink rapidly, watched her mind come back to her body and he saw the moment she saw him. It was beautiful.

“Dani, Dani, Dani. You are perfect. Do you know that? Perfect. You want to kill me? Tell me the truth. Do you want to kill me?”

She stared at him, her mouth open, her teeth white in the dark.

“Yes.”

He grinned. “Do it.” He pulled her up so she could stabilize herself on the railing. When he was certain she wouldn’t collapse, he held her with one hand and with the other, he looped the strap of the pouch around his neck once more. He then took both of her hands from the railing and pressed them until they closed around either side of the strap. He felt the loop tighten slightly as the strap took the weight of her adjusted balance.

When she’d settled in place, he reached behind him and pulled Nugget, the little silver knife, out from the small of his back. He held it up for her to see.

“Who do you think is faster, Dani? Huh? Come on, pull.”

She bowed her head.

She knew what came next. Tension drained from her neck and shoulders and for the first time in her life, Dani understood why they called surrender sweet. It felt sweet. It felt inevitable. She knew what came next was going to hurt probably more than all of the hurt so far combined. But it was inevitable.