Chapter 9
NINE
San Diego
Harry stood in the elevator with Ellen, going down to his apartment, concentrating on the word down because his boner was about ready to punch a hole through his pants.
He stared straight ahead, willing Ellen to stare straight ahead, too, because if she looked down, she’d understand exactly what that abrupt exit from Sam’s house really meant.
Harry was sorry for the way he acted. Or he’d be sorry tomorrow, just as soon as some blood returned to his head. Or they had sex.
Whichever came first.
He didn’t even recognize himself. He knew he could be as rude as he wanted to his two brothers, rudeness bounced right off their broad backs.
But he’d behaved abominably to Nicole, who’d arranged a nice relaxing evening for them, never expecting that it would be cut short by a maniac. Nicole deserved better.
And man, Ellen deserved better, too.
He thought his heart would explode listening to her, listening to Eve, in the flesh. Singing live, for him, something he’d never even thought of asking whoever was up there for, because it was too absurd to even contemplate.
And yet, there she’d been, in Nicole and Sam’s beautiful library, weaving her spell. Listening to her music in the dark—that had saved his life. Listening to her playing live, not five feet from him—well, that had been magic.
And it turned out that this magical voice was attached to a gorgeous face and a stunning little body that had awakened his long-dormant libido.
Sam’s wife Nicole was a beautiful woman, almost outrageously so. She had a head-turning, traffic-stopping kind of beauty. Ellen’s beauty was quieter, more delicate. She didn’t turn heads, or at least not right away. And yet, Harry had barely been able to look at Nicole when Ellen was in the room.
Everything about her fascinated him. Her delicate manners, that soft, compelling voice with a smile in it, the clear porcelain skin and uptilted green eyes.
She was a little too thin, making her look incredibly fragile.
But that was probably because she’d spent the past year in hiding with murderous thugs after her.
Harry’s fists tightened and he saw Ellen look up at him, startled. That was another thing about her, besides looks and talent. She seemed to have an extra sense, another gear to her.
That was great because it had probably saved her life, but it had also made her run from Sam and him. And now she was picking up on the violent emotions coursing through him at the thought of Gerald Montez after her.
He was emoting aggression and violence and she picked up on that. It wasn’t directed against her. God no. He’d rather shoot himself in the chest than hurt her in any way. But how could she know that?
Harry forced himself to relax, muscle by muscle. Wrenched the hatred of Gerald Montez out of his head, like ripping out a strong weed with deep roots. There would be a time to savor killing the sick fuck, but that time was not now.
Now was the time for sex, and he had to get the violence out of his system before he even thought of touching Eve. Ellen.
Killing and fucking were related. He didn’t particularly like the thought, but there it was. Soldiers needed sex after a fight—hard, fast, rough sex. Preferably not with a wife or a girlfriend, because what they were getting out of their systems was not nice and not gentle.
Harry rarely trusted himself with a woman after extreme violence because the thought of hurting a woman, even a little, even if she wanted rough sex, even if she asked for it—man, no.
Just couldn’t do it. He steered clear of the ladies when the adrenalin of violence was still sloshing around his system.
He either drank or ran or used his fist.
Unlike Sam and Mike, who were lions hitting the bars where women congregated like gazelles at the watering trough. Well, not Sam, not any more. Harry didn’t think Sam even saw other women now that he was married to Nicole.
Mike…well, Mike was a slut. He’d fuck anything female that held still long enough.
Harry had to eject every ounce of violence from his system right now. He wanted to take Ellen to his bed with a ferocity that scared him. He wanted her bad and he wanted her now.
He had to tie her to him with sex. Make her his.
Sweat trickled down his back, and it wasn’t the sweat of sexual excitement.
No, it was the greasy sweat of imagining this amazing woman with her fingernails pulled out one by one and then her fingers cut off with shears, knuckle by knuckle.
Imagining her waterboarded, gang raped…the horror was coming off him in waves.
That wasn’t going to happen. If he had to handcuff her to him, so be it. No one was going to touch her, ever again, unless it was him.
But to be absolutely certain that he could keep her safe, that nothing bad would happen to her, he had to bind her to him. Make sure she obeyed him instantly. No more bolting because he’d slanted a glance at Sam.
So she had to obey him, stay put where he put her, and not take matters into her own hands.
A year ago, she’d stepped off Earth and had landed on a vicious planet where all the inhabitants were predators.
The usual rules didn’t apply. The usual rules got you killed and you died badly.
Harry knew that planet intimately. It was where he had been born—his native land.
The best way to keep her safe, tie her to him, to make her do exactly as he said, when he said it, was sex. Hot, intense sex. And lots of it. So much she couldn’t even begin to imagine being separate from him. So much so that in danger, she’d do what he said instantly, instinctively.
Because back at that hotel, it had been so close. If she’d zigged instead of zagged, if she’d arrived one minute earlier or he’d arrived one minute later, she’d be dead right now instead of messing with his head.
The elevator pinged, the doors opened onto his floor and like a switch being thrown, the sweat of fear turned into the sweat of lust.
Approaching Sea-Tac Airport
“The pilot’s started his descent,” Montez said and Piet grunted.
Montez had slept, eaten two gourmet sandwiches downed with an excellent half-bottle of Shiraz, and watched a movie.
Piet had neither eaten nor drunk anything.
He hadn’t even used the crapper. He’d spent the entire three and a half hours tapping away at a computer, staring ferociously into the monitor.
Out of curiosity, Montez had stopped to look on his way to the bathroom but all he’d seen had been a grid and some numbers flickering on the screen.
He was sick of the silence, sick of Piet acting as if he didn’t even exist, but he didn’t dare complain. He just hoped Piet hadn’t lost his touch. He had no idea what he’d been doing for the past eight years. Crocheting for all he knew. Maybe Piet couldn’t track any more, maybe—
“Got it,” he said softly.
Montez shot up. “What? Got what?”
Piet slid the monitor around and Montez stared blankly at the screen. It looked like one of those kid games – connect the dots. There were about ten dots in a cluster and four outlying dots. All the dots were different sizes.
It made no sense to him. He lifted his eyebrows.
“She’s a woman on the run,” Piet said. “She’d keep a basic level of preparedness and I imagine that would include keeping her hands free. So if she had a cellphone I imagined she’d have Bluetooth technology. A hands-free headset and mike.”
Montez shrugged. So?
“Bluetooth emits a radio signal which can be tracked over time. It’s called snarfing.
What you’re seeing is tracks of the Bluetooth signal, over time.
So these are the places she’s been over the past three months, which presumably is when she acquired the prepaid.
The size of the dot indicates the number of times she was at a specific site and the time spent there.
The larger the dot, the closer the connection to her. ”
Christ. Montez bent forward to look at the dots. Now if only—
As if in response to his silent request, Piet punched a button and the dots were overlaid over a map. A street map, Montez saw. Of Seattle!
All of a sudden he saw it. He was looking at a map of all the places Ellen had been over the past months. She had kept her life simple, in a tight spiral around Larsen Square.
Piet tapped the dots, starting with the largest one.
“That’s where she rented a room. That’s a bar that plays jazz two nights a week, called the Blue Moon.
She’s there almost every night until recently.
Probably working, until she started selling so big.
That’s a food market, that’s a bookshop, that’s an internet cafè.
” He tapped a large dot. “And that’s a boarding house with three rooms. Two men and one woman.
One of the men is a travelling salesman who rents the room because it’s cheap by the month but he’s only there six or seven nights a month.
The other man is a sixty year old librarian.
And the woman?” He pulled up a photo from the DMV.
She was young, pretty, blonde. “Name’s Kerry Robinson, but the ID doesn’t really hold up that well, so I think we can assume it’s a fake.
And she works at the Blue Moon. I think she’s Ellen’s friend. ”
Montez looked at Piet with new eyes. Fuck, the man was good.
“So I guess we’re going straight to the woman.”
“No.” Piet shook his head. “First we resuscitate the agent, make sure he’s found. Then we pay a visit to Kerry Robinson. First her agent, then her friend. We’re going to rattle Ellen Palmer’s cage and smoke her out.”
San Diego
Ellen stepped into Harry’s apartment warily. There was a completely different vibe here, now. Something had changed up at Sam and Nicole’s place. The air had become somehow supercharged.
Harry placed a huge, warm hand to the small of her back and urged her gently forward, as if she were reluctant to enter. Well, maybe she was.