"Come with me," she said, aware that it was most likely that mistake Eidolon had been jeering about in the first place, the one she couldn't help but make because she simply needed it as much as Ben did.
She stepped off the elevator and walked a few steps away before she heard his footfalls behind her. "I'm just making sure you get in bed," he said, and then, a beat later, "To rest. I meant, to rest."
"Of course," she murmured. Her whole body was on fire, jittering with tension, pulling itself apart with need and denial and caution and wild, ungovernable desire. She couldn't keep a grip on her keys. They fell to the floor, and McCarthy was there ahead of her, reaching down to scoop them up, one hand on her arm to steady her. Even through her clothes, she could feel the slightest nuances of his touch, the firm way his fingertips pressed, the heat of his palm.
She looked at him. He stared straight ahead, his face gone blank again. She couldn't see what he was feeling or thinking, but he didn't let go of her arm. It wasn't a possessive grip, just a light touch. Caring. Distant, almost.
"Ben?" she asked in a low voice. They were at her door. He slid the keys into the first lock and turned it, then the second. He pulled them out and handed them back to her, and looked straight into her eyes.
"You can get the alarm?" he asked.
"Of course. But—"
"Promise me you're going to bed. Promise me."
She reached out, grabbed him by the lapel of his jacket and dragged him one step forward, and then he was kissing her. It was a long, feverish dream of a kiss, and she was against the hallway wall, his body pressed tight against her, his hands doing things inappropriate in a public space, and she didn't care, didn't care…
He pulled back from her with a gasp, and those blue eyes were wild and even more alarmed than they'd been in the elevator.
"Come inside," she said, and opened the door.
He didn't follow her. She could see how much he wanted to, needed to, but he put one hand on the wood of the doorway and braced himself, as if there was some invisible force pulling him toward her. He shook his head. "Get the alarm," he told her in a hoarse, low voice. "Go to bed, Lucia. Please."
He reached in, grasped the doorknob and pulled the door shut with a quiet snick.
She felt it like a physical shock, and a healthy component of disbelief came with it. He turned me down? Twice? Lucia Garza had never in her life been turned down by a man she really wanted, not once. Not even the one who'd later turned out to be latently gay.
That bothered her a great deal.
She muttered imprecations in Spanish under her breath, and heard the accelerated beeping of the alarm. In thirty seconds it would sound, and for all she knew, the National Guard would be mobilized. She punched in the code with vicious precision, went to the door and stepped out into the hall.
The elevator doors were closing, and he was gone.
Slamming the door helped. So did violently kicking off her shoes. She felt hot and giddy, and terribly sore, and anger only intensified the feeling of disconnection. She tossed the red envelope—yes, it was neatly lettered with her name—onto the kitchen counter and went around to pour herself a drink.
She paused with the bottle of wine over the fine belled glass, and remembered McCarthy's hand on hers, holding her back from the beer. Antibiotics.
Jazz would have cursed and thrown a glass across the room and probably gotten drunk out of spite.
Lucia put the cork back in the bottle, replaced it in its holder, and was extraordinarily careful with the glass, just to be sure she didn't give in to her temper. Then she poured herself a large sparkling water, and took a long, hot bath. Careful not to get the bandage wet.
When she came out, dressed in a thick, white, fluffy robe with her small.38 in the pocket, she settled on the couch, sipping water, stealing glances at the red envelope.
Some days she believed. Some she didn't. Today, having been at the right place at the right time to save uncounted numbers of lives, she was just angry at the entire world for having the gall to do this to her. Haven't I been through enough? She had. Beyond any question.
She put the water aside, walked to the counter and dug the UV light that Borden had given her out of her purse. There, on the face of the envelope, was Milo Laskins's bold, flowing signature.
She tore open the envelope to slide the thin sheet of paper out. No powder in it, but that didn't mean it wasn't deadly in its own way.
It read, THANK YOU.
That was all.
She ran the UV flashlight over the note.
The signature wasn't Laskins's. It was a different name, spiky and difficult to read, driven in straight-up-and-down strokes of the pen.
When she finally made it out, she felt a chill bolt down her spine.
Max Simms, psychic and serial killer, had sent her a personal thank-you note.
Chapter Ten
She fell asleep on the couch and woke up to a conviction that there was somebody in her apartment.
And she didn't move. Wait, she told herself. Listen. She heard the steady, near-silent tick of the silver clock on the table, the whisper of the air conditioner, indistinct ghosts of noises from outside the windows…
And there, the scuff of shoes on carpet. The creak of leather as someone shifted weight.
She opened her eyes and stared hard at the window in front of her, focusing on reflections. Something dark moving behind the couch.
Lucia slid the.38 out of her robe pocket with a slow, gentle pull, trying to make it look like the natural movement of a sleeper. He hadn't come closer yet, but she couldn't let him see the gun. If he shot first…
She made her decision and rolled off the couch, gun held flat, aiming up at an angle where she knew his head would be. Her injured arm screamed in pain, and she flinched, nearly dropped the gun.
Nearly.
"Easy, my lovely. I'm not armed."
A male voice, low and faintly accented. Eastern European. She recognized it a split second before the moonlight revealed a pale face, thick dark hair, a goatee and mustache. Gregory Valentin Ivanovich. Madre de Dios…
The last time she'd seen Gregory had been outside a rundown, abandoned factory near Prague, and he'd been shooting over her head to make her escape look good. She'd been barely alive, barely together…and some of that had been his doing, too. She couldn't forget the cold purpose when he'd told her to run for her life Or he'd have no choice but to make his shots count.
"Gregory," she said, and tried to slow down the panicked hammering of her heart. "If you start off with a lie, that just continues the same old cycle of disappointment between us." Her voice shook only a little.
He smiled and leaned on the back of the couch. His hands were empty. Gregory had always favored black, and he was drowning in it today—a black knit shirt under a black leather jacket, black slacks. The only hint of color to him was his hazel eyes, and a thin red scar along one high cheekbone.
She remembered the scar. She remembered giving it to him, a wild and lucky swing with a piece of broken glass in the dark. And he'd looked down at her, chambered a round in his Glock, and said, "Dorogaya, you must still have fight left in you, if you can do that. Good. You will need it."
He smiled at her now, and she remembered that, too.
"Very well," he acknowledged. "I am armed. But, my lovely, we're both always armed. It's understood. It would be impolite to assume anything else."
"Wouldn't want that." Was she having some kind of fever dream? It would make sense. Half of her worst nightmares featured glimpses of Gregory Valentin Ivanovich. The trouble was, so did half of her other dreams. It was…complicated, yes. Very complicated.