Brutally Beautiful (11 page)

A smaller TV on the counter was turned on, the sound low. A tennis match was just coming to an end. “You like sports?”

“Yes.” He glanced at the screen and grimaced at the tennis. “I turned it on for the results. Probably not the sport you’re thinking of. Football.”

“Soccer? What team do you support?”

He paused. “Football. And Liverpool.”

“I thought you were from London.”

He busied himself, setting two white coffee cups on the counter. “You don’t have to live in a place to owe your loyalty to its football team. And they say that most Manchester United fans live outside the city. You’ll find fans all over the world. So I use sites that let me watch the footie.” A lilt entered his voice, but he paused to pour the coffee and when he spoke again, his voice had its familiar tones again. “Toast? Or I have cereal. Or maybe an omelet?”

The TV turned to the news. Someone talked about the president’s visit to Dallas, and inevitably, the tragic events there half a century ago. Maybe a president might one day visit that city without the word
Kennedy
being associated with it. Gen turned her attention to something much more interesting; namely her lover. He was dressed in jeans and a DUNY T-shirt, but his hair was still pushed straight back. A kind of hybrid of the two looks he rocked.

“Toast, please. So you cook?”

“The basics. I had to.”

When he met her eyes, she recalled what he’d told her last night, so easily she’d almost passed it by. His mom had walked out when he was eleven. Fuck, she couldn’t imagine what that had been like. Or she could. She just didn’t want to. “I’m sorry, Nick. I shouldn’t have pushed.”

“You didn’t. I told you.” He turned away on the pretext of dropping bread into the toaster, but she got the feeling he was avoiding looking at her.

“I have to go to work.”

“I guessed. I’ll drop you off.”

She raised a brow. “You drive?”

“And ride. I have a bike and a car. I’m guessing you’d prefer the car. But usually I just get a cab.”

“Just take me home.” She wasn’t ready to tell him where she worked. Fear clutched her when she realized that telling him might drive him away.
You think?
a sarcastic voice in her head echoed. Telling her new lover that she was there to investigate his application for a green card might not go down well with this intensely private man. She’d already guessed he’d done the tidying and wondered if he let housekeeping in at all. “Thanks. I need to pick up some things, and then I can get the subway.”

He shuddered. “I don’t have to be in until noon. I can get you to work.”

She’d have to tell him. Drawing a breath and her courage, she opened her mouth.

Her attention flicked to the TV, and what she saw stopped her stone-dead. “That’s the guy who dropped the date-rape drug in my drink!”

He spun around, saw the picture, and swore. “Fuck. I wanted to tell you myself.” He leaned over and turned up the volume, leaving her puzzling over his last remark.

The newsreader’s voice boomed into the space, echoing around the walls.
“Mr. Anderson was found in his apartment last night. Although the autopsy isn’t yet completed, sources close to the case say it appears the man was poisoned. The police are asking the public for any information they might have. Mr. Anderson had a wife and family in Columbia. He worked as a courier at Queens Science Laboratories.”

That was all. When the cameras had returned to the studio and the newscasters began to talk about something else, Nick picked up a remote and switched off the TV. He dropped it on the counter and turned to Gen, covering her hand with his, engulfing it completely. “I brought you back here to talk to you about it, but we got carried away, and then you freaked out, and it wasn’t the time to make it worse.”

She nodded, her attention fixed on their hands, his bronzed one covering her paler skin. “Poison?” She lifted her gaze to meet his hard, unflinching attention.

“Strychnine.”

“Strychnine?” She couldn’t get past the word.

“Yeah, it’s a bit Agatha Christie.”

The information ran around her brain, making her ears ring. She sat, pressed the cool tile counter under her hand. “He wanted to kill me?” It was one thing to encounter a man trying to drop a date-rape drug into her drink, quite another to process the fact that someone wanted to see her dead. “Why?”

“I don’t know, but I mean to find out.”

From the deadly note in his voice, she knew he meant what he said. But he was a poetry teacher. A badass one, sure, but still an academic. What could he do? “How?”

“I have friends.” He turned away, dropped the toast on a plate, and brought it to her before rummaging in a well-stocked refrigerator and coming up with butter and marmalade. Marmalade, for Christ’s sake. “Odell is helping. Eat your breakfast.”

“What?” She pushed the plate away, bile rising at the thought of eating. “This man, Anderson, he tried to kill me?”

“It might not have been you.”

She snorted in derision. “The only other explanation is mistaken identity, but the bar was the best-lit spot in the place.” That was why she’d chosen to sit there, albeit in the darkest corner. She needed to see the clientele, and in any case, most people came to the bar sooner or later. As it happened, she’d found her quarry almost immediately. Him, Nick Taylor.

The most likely explanation was that it had something to do with her job. More than ever she needed to consult with her boss and report the incident. Anderson was from Columbia, they’d said. What if he was an illegal? He might have a grudge against her, but the name didn’t sound familiar, and she didn’t recognize the face when she’d seen him in the club.

“I want you to move in here,” he said as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “Your place isn’t safe.”

“And this is?” She motioned toward the open space, the huge windows. If ever a place was exposed, this was it.

“I told you all the glass is one-way. I don’t employ housekeeping on a regular basis. The elevator is mine, and there’s a concierge and security cameras downstairs. Your place has one front door with inadequate locks, no guard at the door, and bad lighting in the public areas.”

Of course she knew, but she pushed the information to the back of her mind, preferring to live in peace and take the risk. She took reasonable precautions, and that was all she could do. “This area isn’t completely converted. It’s not safe either.”

“It’s a fuck sight safer than Flatbush.”

“Some of the residents might resent that.”

“Fuck them. They aren’t you.”

Jesus, how did he do that? He made her feel like the most important person in the world when he looked at her that way, with banked-down desire and single-minded intent. Not that his intent was sex right now. It was protection. His voice softened. “Listen, it doesn’t have to be for long. We don’t even have to share a room. This is a three-bedroom apartment, although I use one of the rooms as a study. The other one’s yours if you want it. I just want you safe while I look into it.”

“And we need to talk to the police.”

“Of course,” he said smoothly.

Gen was independently minded, but she was no idiot. When this handsome stranger offered her shelter in his palace, she should take it. Except for that word—stranger. She didn’t kid herself that Nick wasn’t dangerous, but he’d shown her respect and tenderness. The only time he’d treated her roughly was when they both wanted it. Their relationship was just beginning. Did she want to risk it by moving in?

Or did she want to sit in her studio apartment, wondering when someone would come up those stairs for her? Break in and kill her? “Do you think he could have been insane? Psychopathic or something?”

“Fuck, I hope so,” he said, “because if he was, the problem solved itself, and we don’t have to worry. Nobody else involved. Until we know for sure, I want you safe. I want you here, if you’ll agree.”

It was the last three words that decided her. “Okay.”

He drove her to her apartment and waited until she changed and threw some stuff into her suitcase, the one she used to store her spare clothes in. Then he took her to the subway station. She only managed to persuade him not to take her the whole way to work by telling him the station at the other end was across the street from her workplace. Because she still hadn’t told him where she worked, and she wanted to do that in her own time, not when she was running late.

Scared, but knowing there was safety in numbers, she ensured she was never alone. Besides, the guy wasn’t coming after her now. She couldn’t believe anyone really wanted her dead, but she needed to investigate Anderson herself before she told anyone outside the department.

The guy had worked at a science lab. Perhaps he just grabbed the first drug he could find, and wasn’t strychnine clear? Couldn’t he have substituted it for something else? Water, maybe?

The thought of an immigrant with a grudge sent chills through her.

The thought nagged at her that she should have told Nick, but it was too late now. She’d tell him tonight. Certainly not over the phone.

* * * *

He’d let her go in to work on her own, but it was a close-run thing. His to do list was growing, and he wanted some of it sorted before she finished. Trouble was, his sense of honor was kicking in. People thought that scum who ran gangs didn’t have a sense of honor, but they were wrong. The system depended on it. When contracts couldn’t be inked, a handshake and a demonstration of power worked just as well until someone arrived to mix things up. When the newcomers had warned Nick that he would face a full-scale war if he didn’t comply, he did the right thing.

Ran.

So far it was working, and he was so close to respectability, to trading in counterfeit papers for legal ones, that he could taste it. Then this happened, something he couldn’t walk away from because it involved somebody he cared for. Yes, okay, after this short time he cared for her. Gen’s life meant much more than his, and he wouldn’t rest until he knew for sure nobody was coming after her.

He went in to the university early, stopping at a pharmacy on the way. Once in the library, in the place that he’d always claimed as his but now had even fonder memories of, he allowed himself one glance at the alcove where he’d fucked her yesterday. Madness, but nobody had caught them, and the library security cameras didn’t monitor that spot. He’d lived on calculated risk once upon a time. His day-to-day existence had depended on his ability to work on risk factors, and he knew, more than any financier, how to work them and balance them so at the end of every day he came out on top.

His laptop booted up. He engaged the proxy server and went into the security system. After cruising for a while, he found that someone had fenced her in, and the signature, the style, wasn’t one he was familiar with, and it didn’t jive with the way everything else was set up.

Why?

The suspicion that Gen was a spy, set on him by someone or something, legal or no, emerged again to eat at him. No way he could do more on his own without alerting somebody. Chances were the alert would be ignored, but he didn’t want to take that risk, because the consequences could be bad. For both of them.

So he packed up his stuff and took a walk on the grounds, stopping at a bench situated so people sitting there could study a sculpture of three cranes in a pond that Nick had always considered derivative and frankly tacky. But he liked the bench. He took out the package he’d bought at the pharmacy and set up the phone, dialing a number he’d committed to memory a long time ago and never thought to use again.

“Hello?” The voice sounded annoyed. “Who is this?”

“I’m looking for your colleague, Lawrence Cavendish.”

The voice sounded more alert. “I recognize you. Wait. Call me immediately back on this number.”

He made note of the number Jim rattled off, and he redialed. A US number. When he reconnected, the first question he asked was, “Are you in the States?”

“Texas, at company HQ. Lawrence and I are going to New York soon to check out a new venue for the retail section. You’re in the States too, aren’t you?”

Nick didn’t bother to ask Jim how he knew. Jim was a computer genius, which was why Nick was calling him. He worked for Symbiotics, once a smallish computer company that Jim had helped grow into a worldwide power, moving from hardware to software and unbreakable security systems that companies ate up. “I’m on an unsecured line.”

“If you tell me where you are, I can take care of that.”

“Don’t bother. I just need some advice.” Swiftly, he outlined his problem, not glossing over the fact that Gen meant more to him than most people did. “So how do I get further up the chain without alerting anyone?”

“Simple.” Jim’s voice sounded like he was smiling. Sometimes Nick could tell. “Ask her. Won’t she tell you?”

“I—” Why hadn’t he thought of that? Starting with Gen? Because he was used to people who didn’t tell him everything. People who never told the truth unless there was something in it for them. There was no reason she shouldn’t tell him, and if she didn’t, then he’d come back and start again. “Yeah. Thanks, man. Sometimes I need reminding.”

“Of what?”

“That not everyone is out for what they can get. Gen has an honesty she can’t fake, not with someone like me. I’ll get back to you.”

“Will you?” The smile had gone now. “Lawrence has never forgotten you, like you asked him to. He’s desperate to get in touch, to find out how you are. Will you be around New York next week?”

He’d asked because he suspected it. Nick had reason to trust Jim, and he’d called him, knowing he might expose himself. “I could be. Listen, I’m close, Jim. I’m going straight, and I have a job. I won’t be British for much longer, if I can help it, and then I’ll be totally legit. As much as I’ll ever be.”

“Putting your past behind you? Well, Lawrence did it.” Jim sounded so much more than the slightly awkward computer tech he’d met five years ago. He wondered if the man matched his firmer, more confident tone. He’d look him up, see how he’d changed. Since Jim was probably a director by now—if he wasn’t, a man of his talents would have moved on—there’d be plenty of information about him on the Net. “We’re staying at the Normal.”