Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
The bed was uncomfortable. Lumpy. Saggy. It smelled faintly of old cigarettes. No bedbugs, though. Agnes was very happy that her fast and frantic search for bedbugs had yielded no results.
The room was dark. Almost pitch black, even though it was daytime. The lone window in the little room had been covered by blinds and by what had to be the thickest, roughest curtains she’d even touched in her life. They’d felt more like cardboard than fabric.
She was supposed to be sleeping. Cass had given that order in his gruff-as-hell voice. And then he’d…
Spread out on the floor.
The floor, not the bed.
She’d told him that she wanted to kill a man. Potentially, two men, and he’d responded by telling her to get her ass to sleep. She’d closed the cardboard curtains because she could not sleep with any light streaming at her, and he’d hunkered down on the floor. The floor.
The bed was bad, but the floor had to be a million times worse. “There’s room up here,” she mumbled into the silence that had stretched and stretched.
He didn’t speak.
She rolled onto her side. Inch-wormed her way to the edge of the bed so she could try peering down at him. “Did you hear me?”
Nothing.
She reached out her hand and poked at him. Her poking finger touched what felt like his shoulder. “There is room up here with me. You can sleep in the bed.” She waited a beat. “With me.” Duh, Agnes. It’s obvious you meant he could sleep in the bed with you.
But he didn’t respond.
She poked him again. “Cass?”
A long sigh.
Her lashes fluttered. “Were you sleeping?” No way. Not on the floor. Not so quickly. Not when the adrenaline from the night’s events had to be quaking through his veins. It was certainly quaking through her veins. She tipped a little closer to the edge of the bed.
He was on the floor, between her and the door. The bed was shoved up against the wall with the window.
“If I was sleeping,” came his rasping response, “then I am certainly not sleeping any longer, am I? Because you keep poking at me. Literally, poking me.”
Yes, guilty. “I’m not a murderer.”
“No?”
“No.”
“You mean you don’t just want me to help you kill for shits and giggles?”
Ah, there it was. She’d seen the anger flash in his eyes when she’d made her little confession earlier. That had been right before he told her to get her ass in bed and sleep.
“You fucked me because you wanted me to do your dirty work for you.” Anger definitely burned in every single word from Cass. Maybe not just anger. Maybe he was skating toward rage. “I don’t like being used, Agnes.”
“Pretty sure most people don’t like being used. Not like it’s one of my favorite things.” She sucked in a breath. “I fucked you because I wanted you.”
“Liar.” Almost a caress. If angry accusations of lying could be considered a caress. Oddly enough, from him, that was exactly what the single word had sounded like. A tender caress. An endearment, an—
Agnes shut off the thought. “You think I faked my response to you? Granted, I do have some fair acting talent, I thought that was on display during my dramatic performance at The Bottomless Pit. But I did not fake being turned on with you. And I certainly didn’t fake all of those orgasms.” Now she was getting angry, too.
“I hadn’t been with anyone since Max died.
You are the first person who made me yearn.
Who made me want to let go and be with a lover again.
So don’t think I faked anything. After years of not feeling anything at all, my body basically erupted for you.
No faking involved. Just feeling so much that I couldn’t control myself.
” She snatched back her poking finger. The better to grip the side of the bed.
“Who. The fuck. Is. Max?”
She blinked in the darkness. “He was my boyfriend. He, um, we were high school sweethearts.” His image flashed in her mind.
His curly hair. The dimples that appeared when he smiled, and Max had always been smiling.
Everyone had loved him. He’d been so kind and easy going.
He’d made the world a better place by being in it and then…
Then he hadn’t been in it. He’d been gone. She’d been in the hospital bed, crying for him.
“We went to college together,” she continued.
She’d moved her body so that she clung to the edge of the bed.
She was about to practically fall on Cass.
Why am I trying to get so close to him? Her fingers dug into the mattress.
“Austin, Texas,” she whispered. “That’s where we were from.
That’s where we planned to raise our future family one day.
” They’d had so many dreams. “And that’s where, one summer night, when we were coming home late from a party…
” Right after Max proposed and slid a ring on my finger.
“It was where we were attacked. The man on the motorcycle circled around us. Over and over again. Riding a big, black bike. The engine howling and growling. A black helmet and visor covered his head and face. He jumped off the bike and came slashing at us with his knife.”
“Fuck.”
Yes, yes, fuck.
“That’s why you have those scars on your stomach,” Cass said. His voice was thick and hard.
She swallowed. “That’s why I have those scars on my stomach.
” It could have been worse for her. It should have been.
“He came at me.” Agnes would never, ever forget that terrible moment.
“He was slicing directly at me. Saying he was going to cut up the pretty girl.” I will always remember his voice.
Just as she would always remember the tattoo that she’d seen peeking at her on his wrist. That lone streetlight had hit it—and him—just right.
“Max jumped in front of me. He fought with the attacker but…” Run, Agnes.
Run! Her eyes squeezed shut. “There was a lot of blood. Max went down. I couldn’t get away.
The attacker was driving the knife into me, over and over, and Max was on the ground beside me.
I thought we were both going to die right then and there. ”
Silence.
Her eyes opened. But she still didn’t see anything but the darkness.
The silence stretched. Slowly, she became aware of faint sounds, from outside the room. The distant honk of a car. The occasional sharp cry of a bird. The growl of an engine, one that was quickly cut off.
“I woke up in the hospital. Some Good Samaritan had found Max and me in the street, where the attacker had left us.”
She heard a squeak and rattle beyond the motel room door. Maybe…maybe a cleaning cart outside. Already?
The squeak stopped.
“I woke up,” she said, picking up the story and trying to ignore the pain that pierced through her with the memories. “But Max never did. He died protecting me. And ever since then—”
“All you’ve wanted to do is get revenge. To send the bastard who hurt him and you to hell.”
Yes, that summed things up nicely. “Glad you understand.”
“Aren’t Feds supposed to put bad guys in jail?”
They were.
“But you didn’t ask me to help you lock him away. You said you wanted to kill him.”
She blinked quickly because tears had filled her eyes.
You weren’t there that night. You didn’t hear me screaming and begging him to stop.
You didn’t hear him laughing. You didn’t see him kick Max as he was bleeding out and then reach down and deliberately slit Max’s throat even as I reached out to the man I loved…
Right before the bastard came at me again.
“You don’t want him locked up. You want him dead.”
She wanted him in the ground. Him and his accomplice. Because I remember the bastard making a call. As he walked away, he’d flipped up his visor. I’d seen his hand lift. He’d had a phone and he said… “I got a redhead. She’s bleeding out behind me.”
“You want him to die, don’t you, Agnes? You don’t want to catch him and put him in prison.”
She waited a beat, then replied, “You sound awful judgey for someone who told me that you were a bad guy, like, ten minutes ago. I don’t think bad guys should be so judgey.”
“It was fifteen minutes ago. You’ve been tossing and turning and sighing loudly in that bed for fifteen minutes.”
Okay. “So you…weren’t asleep when I poked you.”
“You want me to kill for you.” Rough. Flat. “Fine. Done. Tell me the bastard’s name, and I’ll have him dead before sunset. I figure fucking you is worth killing a man or two.”
“Lots and lots to unpack there.” Her heart raced in her chest. Her nervous fingers plucked at the bedding. “Let’s start at the end. The last thing you said—”
“We need sleep, Agnes. We have a lot of work to do. A lot of traveling ahead of us. A whole lot of enemies behind us because people are gonna be pissed that I hooked up with a Fed.”
“But…I chose you.” Very publicly and with lots of fanfare. “Won’t they back off now?”
“No, I’ll be tested. I have to be ready.”
Sounded to her like they had to be ready.
She caught the rattle of what she believed was the cleaning cart once more.
Then the rattling stopped. Maybe at the room next to them, on the right?
She vaguely remembered Cass slapping the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the paint-chipped door to their room before he’d slammed it shut.
“I do really appreciate you saying that fucking me was, ah, worth killing for. You were fantastic, too, by the way. Definitely exceeded any and all expectations.”
He growled.
She tensed.
“You’re doing that defensive thing,” he muttered.
Guilty as charged. She had been doing that defensive thing again. “I don’t want you to kill for me.”
“You said—”
“I’ll do the killing on my own, thanks very much.
” Not like she wanted someone else doing the dirty work for her.
She didn’t mind getting her hands dirty.
Or bloody. Besides, this was personal. Agnes sniffed.
“I know how to kill, after all. Got trained at Quantico. This may shock you to the soles of those big, black boots that you like to wear, but I can handle myself pretty damn well.”