Becker was suddenly a different man and she realized that he was guiding the flow, he was sitting astride the events now, like a man riding an avalanche, looking to all appearances as if he were controlling it.
Perhaps he had been all along and she had been so busy looking at him that she had not noticed the ground moving underneath her feet. At one point she had thought this was a Bureau investigation, a search for a felony suspect being assisted somewhat eccentrically by Becker, true, but by her as well, plus the power of the FBI, the speed of computers, the cooperation of countless police, and as with all searches, it took its own course according to leads and clues and circumstance. Now she thought it had been a one-man activity all along, and not a search but a stalk. She had not been assisting, she had been manipulated, just as the whole massive grid of Bureau procedures had been used to provide Becker with what he wanted. Had she been wrong about everything else, too? she wondered. Those qualities of his that had so fascinated her, his strange moodiness, the sense of great vulnerability that hid beneath the facade of strength like a little boy in a suit of armor, the languid, restrained sexuality that seemed to course from his eyes, his hands. Was she mistaken about all of it? One of the things that had so appealed to her was the impression that everything about Becker was under a tight but temporary control like a coiled spring held in check by a hair trigger that would release explosively if she could just find the right spot to touch. She could unleash all that power and passion, she had thought. Stupidly. Stupidly. Now she feared that he was about to blow up in her face.
She looked at herself in the mirror, a towel wrapped around her head.
She wore the boxer shorts and tank top she normally slept in, and spots of moisture from the shower had darkened areas of the tank top. Her skin seemed even pinker than usual because of the heat of the water and Pegeen cursed her luck for having inherited none of the olive tone of the original Haddad.
She glanced again at the door with the sense that something was outside.
She had heard nothing that she was aware of, but still there was the feeling of something waiting there, something large and dangerous. It frightened her first, and then it angered her. Fuck this, she thought, I'm a special agent of the FBI, I'm not supposed to be afraid of unknown creatures in the dark. She pulled her pistol from its holster atop the dresser and opened the door.
Becker stood several feet away on the concrete porch, leaning against a wooden column, his arms folded across his chest. He was staring at her door, now at her.
"Don't shoot," he said laconically, not moving.
Pegeen moved the gun behind her back, feeling foolish.
"What are you doing?" she demanded.
"Waiting."
"What for?"
Becker said nothing, moved nothing. Even slouching against the column, even in the languid pose of a drugstore cowboy, he looked coiled and ready to strike. Pegeen could make out his features only dimly in the light shining from her window, but she thought he was smiling.
It's creepy, she thought. What the hell is he up to now?
What is he doing, what am I supposed to make of it?
"How long have you been standing there?" she asked.
He still didn't answer and she could feel his eyes boring into her. She was aware suddenly of what she was wearing, of how her heavy breasts would be showing dark against the tank top, of how her legs would look, too pink and speckled by the heat. The anger of a moment before returned, only now it was directed at him. To hell with how I look, she thought. I'm tired of caring, I'm tired of trying to guess what he's thinking and how I should react to it, I'm tired of the whole damned game, the elaborate tease, for that is what she now realized it had been, his holding back, never saying quite enough to be clear but just enough to keep her guessing, or hoping; that was the problem, the meaner he got to her, the more he withheld from her, the more she trailed hopelessly after him. Classic, she thought. Classic dim-witted behavior, chasing someone inaccessible, it was no, better than that, however she had tried to dress it up with imagination. Well,lfuck it, fuck the game, fuck him.
"What?" he said.
"What what?"
"You should see your face. You look all worked up about something."
Damn his eyes, too, she thought. He never missed anything.
"I'm fine," she said.
"You usually come to the door with a gun in your hand?"
"When I feel like it. Did you want something? Or are you just hanging around outside my door for fun?"
She knew for certain that he was smiling now. He turned his head slightly to indicate the door of the adjoining room.
"I thought I was outside my door."
Wrong again, Pegeen thought, but now she was too angry to care. Let him have another victory, let her make a fool of herself, it didn't matter anyway.
Pegeen closed the door and rammed the gun back into its holster. She whipped the towel off her head and glared at her reflection. Sure enough, her ears were fiery red.
Well, fuck them, too, she thought.
She flounced onto the bed and stared at the ceiling, trying with all her might to think of something other than Becker. He was an asshole, anyway, and not worthy of her time. He was probably a psycho of some kind-she should have paid attention to the warnings given to her by the agents in the office. Tomorrow she would have to go with him and do God-knew-what under the guise of law enforcement. Think about the woman, Aural McKesson, she told herself.
Pegeen glanced at the clock on the radio-alarm beside her bed. Think about the woman for the next five minutes, she demanded of herself.
Think about how you can help her, it's what you're here for, it's why you joined the Bureau. If Becker is right about the way all of this is falling down, you should get to her by tomorrow. If Becker is right, and he seems so confident that he is… shit, she was thinking of Becker.
She glanced at the clock again, didn't notice what time it said, and crossed to the door. If he's still slouching against that column, I'll fuck him, she thought, but if he's not there, if he's gone into his room, I'll go to bed and never think of him again.
He was not leaning against the column, he was standing right outside her door, looking as if he were prepared to eat his way through it if necessary.
Those eyes, Christ those eyes, she thought. They were blazing at her, into her, burning through her.
She placed her hand on his face and he jerked back slightly as if surprised by the contact. As she ran her fingers from his cheek to the side of his head he shivered like an animal but made no move towards her. It was like stroking the flank of a tiger or a wolf, something wild and dangerous and unaccustomed to human touch, something that tolerated her, uncertain whether to flee, bite, or give itself over to the pleasure.
She kept her gaze on her hand, watching the fingers as they moved across his flesh, afraid to look directly at him.
Afraid to look into those eyes again for fear they might devour her.
When she touched the rim of his ear he jerked again, and gasped. He was quivering all over, his whole body trembling with the effort to hold still.
"Shhh," she said, not realizing what she was saying.
It was a sound she would have made to calm an animal.
She ran her hand along his shoulder, feeling the muscles tense under her touch, then slowly trailed her fingers down his arm. She watched her fingers work, saw his bare skin tighten and spring into gooseflesh. When she reached his hand, she caressed the back of his fingers first, seeing him shiver once more, then gently intertwined her fingers with his. Only then, with their joined hands forming a fist, did she look at his face again.
God, the intensity of his eyes. So deep and dark, a tumultuous brown sea of emotion with his whole soul riding on it, begging her, beseeching her, but unable to speak, or unheard over the tumultuous roar of his passions.