Echo of Redemption (28 page)

Ignoring the weapon she has pointed at my heart, I make a move, stroking the back of her head. We both have guns cocked and ready, but I want to kiss her. Absurd? Sure. But it’s been over a month since I’ve known a woman’s touch…and she’s here.

“What are you doing?”

I lick my lips and keep stroking her long blond hair. “I was just wondering why we never, you know.”

She laughs. “You think you have a chance in hell of fucking me now?”

I waggle my eyebrows, moving closer. “You tell me.”

She brings the gun to under my chin. “The only way I’d even consider letting you fuck me is if I have this gun to your head.”

She doesn’t trust me. That’s okay, I don’t trust myself. I kiss her, though it is more a ravishment. I feel like I am raping her with my tongue. I push my Glock into her temple. “You act like a woman with a price on her head.”

She pushes her gun harder into my jaw, reminding me I am not the only one threatening death. She bites my cheek and starts to pull my t-shirt up by the tail with the hand not holding a gun. “There’s one thing I want you to do before I kill you.”

“Only one?” I tease. “And if there’s still killing to be done, I’ll be killing you, sweetheart, not the other way around.”

I unbutton the front of her shirt, exposing her bra. “You wore black lace to kill me?”

She smiles against my lips. “I always wear black lace. Never know when it might be a tactical advantage.”

I laugh into her open mouth, using the revolver to pull her head closer. I take what I want from her mouth, kissing her with savage intensity. If she notices my gun is no longer pointed directly at her brain she doesn’t take the advantage to blow my brains out. Our teeth scrape, our tongues feud for control, and somehow, even armed, we both end up naked on the floor. True to her word she keeps her weapon aimed at my head. Should I have a hard time maintaining an erection? Probably. I’m not. If anything, the gun play, the danger, makes me even more aroused.

I roll onto my back, pulling her to straddle me. She breathes heavy, demanding, “Condom?”

I laugh. “Lady, you intend for us to kill each other, are we really going to not do this just because we don’t have a condom between us?”

She slides down over my unsheathed dick, answering that question.

“God, Eva.”

She rides me, slowly, killing me with the perfect rhythm of her hips. She says what I’m thinking, “We should have done this years ago.”

* * * *

The room has grown dark and we’re still tangled together when we both react to a creak on the staircase outside the door. Weapons aimed, crouching low, we’re ready when six armed intruders enter. If they were hoping to have an advantage by surprising us, they were sadly mistaken. Killing them is too easy and we wait for a second wave, but nothing happens and soon sirens alert us to get out.

Dressing fast, we leave. I manage to trigger the self-destruct on the way out.

Eva drives, taking us west toward the bay, and I hope this wasn’t a very elaborate ploy to set me up and get me away from the loft. She grabs my crotch and laughs, finding me hard as a rock. “You too? I always get horny as hell during gunfights.”

“Only gunfights or will any fight do?”

We look at each other, knowing we both feel the same way. It is a huge aphrodisiac any time we walk away from death.

“Pull over.”

She drives into a crowded parking lot, yet as we grab for each other, neither of us cares we’re in a public place. An empty strip mall sprawls in front of us. She unzips my pants and my hard dick springs free. Climbing over the gear shift, she straddles me.

“I think the pants are going to have to come off, or this isn’t going to work.”

She looks at her legs, seeming to realize only then the predicament. Shifting, she shimmies, pulling down her pants enough to straddle me and impale herself. “Good enough?”

I grab her hips and force her down tighter. “Good enough.”

Moving forward and back, she brings me quick, coming herself as I start to spurt. “God, oh God. Definitely good enough.” Laughing, I echo her sentiment.

Too late, I realize we aren’t alone in the parking lot. The car door opens, and she is jerked off my lap.

I react while they are still struggling, turning the key to the engine and pushing my left leg around the gear shift to hit the accelerator hard. I drive, watching their struggle with Eva in the rearview mirror. I’m outnumbered and there’s no going back. Helpless to do anything, I watch them jab her with a hypodermic. They push her into a black SUV as I swerve out of the parking lot and into traffic. I drive for miles, not having a clue where I’m at or where I’m going.

Seeing her cellphone on the floorboard, I grab it and call Ari, saying only “Trouble.”

“The bed is for lascivious toyings meet; there use all tricks and tread shame under feet.”

Ovid,
Seeing Thou Art Fair

Thomas

There is a hotel in the desert I sometimes use for emergencies. It isn’t the kind of place one goes to for comfort or cleanliness but rather because it is off the beaten path. It isn’t pretty and, having been built in the sixties, maybe earlier, has seen better days. It is a long, one-story row of small rooms, a place that should have been torn down in the name of progress two decades ago. Lucky for me it wasn’t. I
own
room fourteen. It is the last room of the row and farthest from the street.

Nikos is already inside, waiting. I take my time going in, making certain I wasn’t followed, he wasn’t followed, or that there is even a solitary person I might deem out of place in a three mile radius.

When I finally decide to enter the room, I find him sitting on the bed watching Oprah, but as soon as I enter he turns the television off. I’m not happy and he knows it. A week hasn’t even passed since I set him up with a new identity and already the loft is burned to the ground and SFFD is recovering bodies. “Tell me what happened and don’t leave out a single detail.”

His face doesn’t betray any emotion. “Where would you like me to start?”

“How about from the moment the first bullet was fired.”

“I was in bed. There were six of them. I killed them.”

I nod.
That
at least matches my intel. “What aren’t you telling me?”

His gaze never leaves mine. “There was a woman in my bed with me.”

The look I give him must say it all because he starts spilling his guts. “She was following me and I evaded but then she was here and we both had our weapons drawn. Next thing you know, we’re in bed fucking like bunnies in the springtime.”

My mouth opens and closes before I start bellowing. “They sent a lead man and you decided it was a good idea to have sex?”

“Lead woman,” he interrupts.

I lift my hand impatiently, and he shuts up. Shaking my head, I don’t know whether to put a bullet through his head myself or if I want to try to figure this out. My Intel tells me no one is looking for him in the United States. Not a single solitary soul. So why the attack? And better question: who?

“She wasn’t one of them.”

“I know you aren’t that naïve, brother.”

“She shot at least three of them, and they had to tranquilize her to take her down.”

I stare at him, not believing what I’m hearing. “What part of ‘don’t leave out a single detail’ didn’t you understand? You had a fucking woman with you and between the two of you six assailants were gunned down, but then backup arrived, tranqued
her
, and left
you
?”

“Not exactly.” His shoulders slump and he lets out the breath he’s been holding. I’m afraid to ask what he isn’t telling me, and so I wait patiently for him to finish spilling his guts. It doesn’t take long. “We took off at the speed of light after we confirmed all six were dead, I triggered the self-destruct, and we went off the main roads to regroup. The secondary team kind of took us by surprise.”

“How in the fuck did they take you by surprise?” I grit out each word slowly, my jaw tight. None of this makes sense.

“Sex,” he answers like he’s surprised it happened. “The whole ‘fucking like bunnies’ thing. We were in the front seat of her car. Tight quarters to move around in—”

“You were fucking when they took
her
? And
you
managed to get away?” I pull my Browning and stick the barrel in the center of his forehead. “Are you an absolute moron?”

“Yes.”

I cock the gun. “Tell me what you aren’t telling me.”

“The woman was Eva.”

I spin away from him fast enough that I don’t blow off his head. I slam the gun back into its holster under my arm and stomp across the room to put distance between us. Scrubbing my face with my hands, I try to make sense of it all, but only one name comes to mind.
Glorianna
.
I will never forget the day we met. I was well hidden from my enemies on US soil. Every agency in every country that I had ever worked for thought me dead, but I had underestimated the cunningness of the clandestine agencies of the United States. It was this woman who found me. This woman who would have made my life a living hell had I not accepted her proposal. By becoming a guardian of US interests, a safe-keeper of her interests, I would have her protection. In the years since, I have had many instances to protect her, and she has honored her promise to protect me. She controls me. It isn’t something I like to dwell on. The Guardians aren’t recognized as a world power, their existence is the stuff of urban legends, but exist they do, and this woman controls their every move.

If I had to guess, I would say Glorianna discovered Eva was in the middle of her turf without permission.

“Damn it!” I punch a wall, but it doesn’t help.

She asked me to bring her my brother. That was the assignment that took me to Paris in the first place. If she has Eva it will only be a matter of time before she knows about Nikos. So, this is it, I’ve done all I can do for him.
Fuck!

Using the hotel’s land line, I call Garrett at Lewd Larry’s. My stomach sinks when he answers, because even though I have to make this phone call, I don’t want to.

“Is Celia Brentwood near?” By using Kitten’s real-life name I alert him that something is wrong. It is part of our ménage arrangement. If I leave the state or the country, I at least let them know I am going to be away. Before I would come and go, sometimes being gone for months with no word, only to return alive and well and ready for work—with no excuse for my absence. Garrett dealt with it and accepted my life as it was for more than a decade. Celia refused to adapt to the unknown. Now I use code to alleviate her fears.

“She’s right here.”

“Could you put it on speaker phone?”

“Hello?” She doesn’t use my name, and I realize Garrett has alerted her that something is amiss. I smile, hearing her voice.

“Hi, sweetheart.” My voice is force-filled with lightness. She translates sweetheart as
something is horribly wrong
.

I don’t have to see her face to know the color has drained from it.

“I’m afraid I won’t be home for dinner.”
I’m leaving.
There isn’t anything more I can tell her, and I’ve trained her to understand that this first call must be short and sweet. When I tell her, “I love you,” it is not code, it is truth.

“I love you,” she whispers.

I hang up before anything else can be said and hustle Nikos to my car before I change my mind about doing what I know I need to do. Driving down the road, I make a series of three phone calls, a sequenced code that will trigger an alert for Glorianna. Predictably she calls my cell a few moments later. “Do you have my package?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Bring it to me.”

“You know I can’t do that, not without certain assurances.”

“The contents of the package are insured for a huge sum, I will protect it with my life.” She hangs up on me but I breathe a little easier, knowing my brother won’t face eminent death. Facing him, I can tell by the look on his face that he thinks I just sold him out.

He shakes his head and buries his face in his hands. “A new life was too good to be true.”

He is in a fragile mental state, George warned me as much. Keeping one hand on the wheel, I pull his hand away so that I can look into his eyes and see that he is crying.

“So, brother, blood of my blood, who did you sell me out to?”

I shake my head. “It isn’t like that.”
God, I hope it isn’t like that
.
“I work for her agency. Black ops. US based. She wants to meet with you. She has for several months. I’d hoped I could keep you hidden from her.”

He sighs. “She has Eva and will force her to tell her the name of the man she was with.”

“Yes.” They’ve probably been following her for weeks.

“She said as much. She thought it was me.”

“Wrong place, wrong time. Big mix up. You said they tranquilized her instead of executing her?”

“Yes,” he answers, wrapping his fingers around his head, understanding filling his eyes. Eva is in a much worse predicament than he.

My jaw tightens. If Eva isn’t dead already, I think she’s praying she soon will be, but I won’t tell him that. I can’t take the chance he might run.

* * * *

Glorianna doesn’t keep a poker face, leaving me surprised she ever attained the level of power she has. Shock. Dismay. Irritation. All directed at Nikos and she hasn’t even said a word yet. For the moment we’re sitting, a small desk separating us. Two guards block the door. We could be in any executive office, but this isn’t any office, this is her office, Abigail Wainwright-Fuller, United States Senator.

She finally manages to comment, “You were a stronger force when you were identical.” Standing, she walks around her desk to face Nikos. “Remove your shirt.”

He doesn’t stand. He pulls the tight black turtleneck he is wearing over his head and earns a gasp as the senator takes in the full depth of his body modification.

Silently, she returns to her seat. Disgusted, she demands, “Put it back on.”

While Nikos pulls on his shirt, she directs her irritation at me. “You
could
be identical again.”