Her fingers grabbed at his hair and his ears as she squirmed and shook. Squeaks of pleasure broke free from her mouth as he matched the rhythm of her hips, as he slid one finger inside her and found just the right spot. She tasted amazing, fresh and clean and just a little musky, and his excitement only grew as she got closer and closer. In a moment she came, smearing his face and chin with her wetness.
She put her hands over her face as if she was embarrassed. He climbed back up toward her and pulled her hands away and saw her mouth was open, her eyes barely focusing on him. He dug his arm under her back and pulled her to his chest. She was so wet he had no trouble sliding inside her and he thrust against her, making her gasp again, this time finding his own rhythm. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him still closer, pulled him down on top of her. Her hands grabbed the muscles of his back and squeezed as he thrust deeper.
She let out a little cry and kissed his neck, his ear. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I’m protected.”
It only took a few more strokes. He thrust deep inside her and went rigid as his body exploded, as every muscle in his back and legs tensed and then released and he came, his eyes tightly shut, his skin on fire as she kissed him again and again, everywhere she could reach.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+25:52
Julia went to the bathroom to clean up and dress. At the bathroom door she turned to look back at him. She laughed a little, her eyes studying his face.
Chapel smiled back at her.
“I can’t believe we just did that,” she said, her eyes watching his face very carefully.
“Having second thoughts?” he asked.
“Hell, no. I needed it.” She looked at him for a moment longer, then shook her head and stepped inside the bathroom.
When the door closed, he just fell back against the sheets and breathed for a while. That had burned off a lot of tension.
When she came back out, she announced she was going to go out and find them some breakfast and a few toiletries — things they hadn’t had time to acquire in the mad rush since they’d left New York City. Chapel could tell she just wanted to be alone with her thoughts for a while and he just told her to be safe.
He just lay there for a while when she was gone, reveling. Amazed at what had happened between them. The few women he’d been with since he lost his arm had all wanted him to wear the arm while he made love to them, though none of them had wanted it to touch them. They’d found ways to ignore it.
Julia hadn’t asked for that. She’d seen what he looked like with no arm, with his shirt off. It hadn’t stopped her.
It had been all about the moment, of course. The adrenaline of the last twenty-four hours. The constant threat of danger and death. It made people do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. Chapel knew all about that. He knew it couldn’t last.
But. But — wow. Damn. It had felt so right. And Julia hadn’t been creeped out. She hadn’t been thinking of him as less than whole, as part of a man. She’d simply wanted him, wanted to be with him, as he was.
It was more than he’d hoped for in a very long time.
Eventually the afterglow started to wear off. Chapel started to think about chimeras and CIA killers and the desperate situation he was in once again. He knew he had to get back to work.
Still, he let himself just be happy, just for a moment.
When he’d luxuriated in that enough, he found the hands-free unit and put it back in his ear. “Sorry about cutting you off like that, Angel.”
“No worries, sugar,” she said.
“Angel,” Chapel said carefully, because he’d just thought of something, “you weren’t — listening to any of that. Were you?”
“Of course not, Chapel. I understand when people need a little privacy.”
“Uh-huh,” he said.
“I didn’t hear a word. Though, if you want some romantic advice—”
“At the moment I’d prefer to know where Jeremy Funt is,” Chapel said, to change the subject.
“I’m ahead of you there, except I don’t have any answers,” Angel told him. “I’ve been trying to call him every five minutes, but I can’t get through. All my calls go straight to voice mail. I’ve left a bunch of messages, but there’s been no response. I thought if he knew who you were, he might be willing to come out of hiding.”
“He’s scared. He’s gone to ground. He knew, somehow, that a chimera was coming here. He knew long before the chimeras even left the Catskills.” Chapel scratched his head. “The booby trap in his house was meant to catch a chimera. But he also left a cryptic message behind, telling anyone where to find him. Does that make sense to you?”
“No, but then I’m not a paranoid FBI agent being hunted by a genetic freak,” Angel pointed out.
“Right. Me neither.” Chapel sighed. He went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face and scrubbed himself with a soapy washcloth. “I need to think like him. I need to figure out what he would do, if I’m ever going to find him. If he left that message, he wanted somebody to follow it. Maybe you have to be the right person to know what it means. Maybe it’s some kind of private joke.”
“Chapel,” Angel said, “I need to point something out to you.”
“Hmm?” Chapel asked, lost in thought.
“Despite appearances, I’m not actually omniscient,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Angel. I’m not following.”
She sighed deeply. Even her sighs sounded sexy. “You never actually told me what the message said. I am a trained intelligence analyst. I might be able to help you, if you’d like to share.”
Chapel laughed. “Angel, I sometimes forget you’re not sitting on my shoulder watching everything I do. I’m so sorry. Yeah, the message. It said ‘If you want to find me, I’ve gone under the underground.’ Does that mean anything to you, just off the top of your head?”
“No, but that’s why God invented the Internet. Let’s see.” He heard her clacking keys. “It seems like he meant for you to find him, so the answer should be obvious, right? Except what I’m turning up, it’s all really confusing. Under the underground, that sounds like a riddle. Let me search some riddle databases.”
Obvious, Chapel thought. The answer should be obvious. She was right — Funt wouldn’t make the puzzle impossible. He would make it as simple as he could. In fact, it might not be a puzzle at all.
In a flash of inspiration, he went and fetched his phone. He’d never actually bothered using it to surf the web — Angel had handled all that for him up to now. He opened up the mobile browser and pecked in a few characters with his index finger.
“Oh,” he said, because before he could even finish typing in his search, Google was already suggesting what he wanted to look up. He touched the screen and it filled up with links. “Ah,” he said.
“What’s going on?” Angel asked. “Chapel, you’re making noises like you’ve figured something out.”
“You were overthinking it,” he told her.
“What?”
“You expected it to be a riddle. So you figured it had to be a puzzle to be solved. That’s the kind of thing you’re good at. But it occurred to me, if Funt wanted to be found — and it looks like he definitely does — he wouldn’t bother making us solve a word game to know his location.”
“Now I’m really confused,” Angel admitted. “It’s not like he left you a street address to go to.”
“He kind of did,” Chapel said. “Just now, on my phone, I googled ‘Underground Atlanta.’ And now I know where Funt is.”
ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+26:15
“This is not what I expected, not at all,” Chapel said, when he and Julia climbed out of a cab downtown. Before them a massive sign read simply UNDERGROUND. A dark entrance below it led into a cavernlike space.