Mind Games (40 page)

I rush into my bedroom and put on a fabulous red knit wraparound shirt that ties on the side. The wraparound gives the effect of a V-neck, with just a bit of a plunge. I jump into my black jeans and put on my black sandals and silver hoop earrings and pop down to the street. The first chill of fall is in the air. I consider going up for different shoes and a jacket, but then Otto’s car pulls up. Did it get here kind of fast? Was it waiting down the street?

Jimmy jumps out and opens the back door.

“Hey, Jimmy.”

“Good morning,” he says.

It’s weird to ride back there alone, like I’m this important person, but I know it would be weird for Jimmy if I rode in the front. Riding along, looking at the back of Jimmy’s head, his policeman-like cap, my paranoia about Sophia’s mocking comment rekindles. I’ve been so caught up in the threat from Packard, what about the threat from Otto? What if Sophia discovered I’m not a nurse and told Otto? If you dig hard enough, you can pierce any fake identity. And what if they got my phone records somehow? I’ve certainly placed my share of calls to Mongolian Delites. I watch the signs and storefronts flash by the window. Would Otto investigate me, and then lure me to the station like this? No, surely he’d be straightforward, as he is in all things. But what if Packard’s right, that I don’t really know Otto? Briefly I imagine asking Jimmy to pull over, like maybe I want
something at a store, and then ditching him. But where would I go? Mongolian Delites?

“You really got to my place fast,” I say. “Is there a fire at the station they need my help in dousing?”

Jimmy smiles. “I should hope not, miss.”

Jimmy’s smile calms me. Surely he’d know if I was being driven to my doom, and if nothing else, he wouldn’t smile so readily. And Otto was happy and excited; I heard it in his voice. And if a problem comes up, I’ll handle it. In the end, he’s vulnerable to me, just like the Alchemist. I sit back, hating myself for thinking that.

Police headquarters is a tall building of polished gray stone, one in a forest of stately municipal structures. Security guards flank the door, and two others attend the metal detectors.

“Are you Justine Jones?” One of guards asks as I walk through. I nod, and she clambers down from her chair. She’s a middle-aged woman who reminds me vaguely of my mother. She walks me to the elevator and explains how to get to the Sanchez office suite. That’s what she calls it.

I follow her directions, and soon I’m on the eighteenth floor knocking on a door bearing the number 1882 painted in thick black letters on wavy rain glass.

Otto opens it, and without a word he wraps his arms around me and sweeps me up into a kiss. I laugh, partly from relief, as he turns and shuts the door with his foot.

“Welcome!” He puts me down.

“Hello.” I touch his tie, taken anew by his dusky gorgeousness, and gaze into his deep brown eyes. I decide that part of what I love about his eyes are his eyebrows—rich, dark smudges that match the rich locks flowing out below his black beret. He’s wearing a smart outfit, too: a black jacket cut long in the old-time style, with a fine white shirt underneath. Really, it’s impossible
to consume his handsomeness in one glance. It’s like an endless feast, course after delectable course. “Hello,” I say again, softly.

“You”—he gives me an accusing look—”are a scoundrel.”

My stomach flips as I assemble a calm and pleasant expression. “I don’t understand.”

“I was so very disappointed. …” He pauses and regards me thoughtfully, and I have this sense he’s seeing into me somehow. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a square of paper, which he unfolds slowly and then displays to me.
XOXO
. “A note? I wanted to wake up with you yesterday. Come.”

We leave what seems to be his waiting area, full of chairs and books and a small desk in the corner—Sophia’s?—and go through another door into a large, long, wood-paneled room.

“Fancy,” I say, walking around the perimeter of the space like I’m exploring, but really, I’m buying time; my heart is racing off the “scoundrel” comment and the way he looked at me. It really did seem like he was seeing something wrong.

Otto’s inner office is adorned with plaques, framed certificates, and photos of Otto with various officials and newscasters. On the far end there’s an enormous wood desk in a kind of ornate cave of bookshelves and old lamps. On the near end, a window looks out onto the buildings across the street. I peer down at the car tops; then I inspect some photos and run my fingers over a beveled glass cabinet that encloses a wet bar. A room service-type cart, laden with juice, coffee, and delicious-looking pastries, stands by the wall opposite a plush brown couch. I’m far too nervous to eat. It was a mistake to come.

Just then Otto locks the door.

I stiffen. “So what was so urgent?”

He comes over and pours coffee. “Cream?”

“A splash.”

“Scone?”

“Maybe later.” I smile. “I’m just curious about the urgency of this meeting.”

He hands me my coffee and settles onto the couch, clopping his boots up on the coffee table, which is lit with a sliver of sun. “Is something wrong, Justine?”

“No. Well, I got some troubling news about a friend recently, that’s all.”

“Ah. Troubling news about a friend. A friend in trouble.”

“Excuse me?”

He pats the cushion next to him. “I wonder if you might be concealing the true source of your anxiety from me. Come, sit.” And he smiles his big warm smile.

“Is this an interrogation, Otto?”

“Should it be?”

My anxiety crosses over to adrenaline. I go to him, half sit next to him, curling a knee under me. I lay my arm on the soft couch back. “Are you always this suspicious?”

“Only when I know I’m being lied to.”

I sip my coffee and set it down, trying not to show the jolt. “What do you mean?” I’m waiting for him to say more, and he’s waiting for me to say more. The master interrogator. I look over at the door. The locked door.

“She glances toward the exit,” he says. “Never a good sign. At least not for the subject.”

“What?”

“Police maxim. When an interrogation subject looks at the exit, it means she feels cornered.”

“I do feel cornered. I haven’t even had my breakfast yet, and all these questions. I don’t know what this is.” I stand, feeling shaky. I go over to the cart and take a scone and a napkin. I break off a corner and stuff it in
my mouth, staring out the window, back against the wall, physically and metaphorically.

Cherry almond. Delicious, of course. Eating calms me. “I tell you I have disturbing news about a friend and you’re not satisfied with that?”

He laughs his warm laugh. “My my my.”

My my my?
What does that mean?

He stands, and I wait stupidly, partial scone in hand, unable to breathe, as he crosses the space between us. I fight not to gaze longingly at that exit. My goose bumps are now on full alert.

He looks at me straight—too close, too intimate. My blood races as he takes the scone from me, puts it down, and knits his fingers into mine. And then he presses the backs of my hands up to the wall and kisses my cheek, nuzzles my neck. And God help me, it feels fantastic.

“I know, Justine,” he mumbles into my neck, “and it’s okay.” And then he kisses me harder, presses into me, and I move against him, wantonly soaking up his body as the line between fear and arousal disintegrates completely.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says.

I pull myself back to my senses. Maybe he knows something, but he can’t know everything or he wouldn’t be touching me. “I thought you would be upset,” I whisper.

“I don’t like that you lied, but I know why you did it.” He unties my shirt. “Why should I care that you’re not a nurse?”

Okay
, I think, trying not to show the enormous relief I’m feeling.
Okay
.

“I don’t care about any of it, because when you’re away from me, I just wish you were here.” He kneels, kissing my bare stomach. “I hated it that you weren’t there yesterday morning, and all my calls went to your voice mail.”

I stroke his hair, stunned. This is why I’ve gotten away with so much: he wants to believe the best of me. Just like I wanted to believe the best of Packard. And Otto will ignore his instincts and fool himself into it. The rush of relief intoxicates me almost as much as his sand-papery whiskers on my belly, and the way he’s undoing my jeans, fingers like smart spiders. My adrenaline transmogrifies into ninety-nine percent pure delicious lust.

He yanks open my belt and undoes my fly. “None of that changes our connection. None of it.” He shoves my panties and jeans down around my ankles, and I stomp out of them. He pulls me to his conveniently large couch, and I sit on his lap. I’m all the way naked, and he’s barely out of his clothes. I go to work unbuttoning his shirt, and then I just start laughing. I can’t stop. I press my hands to my face. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m laughing.”

“You feel relieved.” The trust in his gaze breaks my heart a little, so I close my eyes, just enjoy the drag of his hand on my face. He trails his palm from my neck down my chest, to my stomach, my thigh. “I just don’t
care,”
he says again. The way he says it, it’s like he’s surprised at himself. “I don’t care.”

If he knew anything, he’d care. He’d run as far as he could, because I really ought to zing him again. That makes me incredibly sad, and suddenly I want to feel his weight on me, and for him to blot out everything. I stretch out next to him, and move my way under him. “Please,” I say. “Don’t wait. Don’t stop. Don’t hold back, just—” I pull him over me. “Please.”

Being the master detective that he is, he requires no further clues. And suddenly he has freed himself from his pants, or at least free enough to produce a condom and get it onto himself. He hooks an arm around my
thigh, pushing it up as he enters into me with a force that jars my mind loose of the snarl of guilt and worry.

I gasp and cling onto him, pulling him ever closer. I have this crazy desire to gather up more of him, gather all his muscles and skin and goodness and pull him into me.

He kisses me and bears into me and slides his hands up the tender underside of my arms, up over my head, thrusting, and I just drink him up. And when I close my eyes, I see only darkness, and feel only his solid presence. He comes some time after me, with an exuberant grunt that dissolves into panting. I’m loose and fabulously fluid in his arms.

Afterward I lie by his side, squished onto the couch with him, enjoying a catatonic feeling as I watch him watch the ceiling. I love being so dizzily connected to him, but it’s more than the physical connection; it’s like I’m connected to his breath, earnest and heavy, and to the rich tones of his voice, and the order and goodness I felt when I spelunked him—one of the many things I’ve done to him that he would hate me for. I want to stay forever, just like this.

“I want you to know, Justine,” Otto says, “though I had suspicions about your being a nurse, I never had you investigated. I never wanted that. I felt confident you would tell me if there was something to tell. Sophia, however, ignored my explicit instructions and pursued connections in Dallas. I came very close to firing her. Instead I put her on a week’s leave. A cooling-off period for us both.”

“I’m sorry I lied, Otto.”

“Don’t apologize. My God, you’ve brought so much understanding to me. Let me bring some to you, because I understand—I do—how people with our affliction can become obsessed with medical professionals. Citizens often assume I have medical training as a
law enforcement official, and I frequently allow them to think it. I sometimes give out medical advice I have no business dispensing.”

I nod, realizing if I’m serious about saving myself and my friends, this is my opportunity to zing him. He’s completely vulnerable to me now.

But I can’t do it. I won’t. The thought makes me sick.

I sit up and kneel next to his legs. His pants are around one foot, but he still has his black socks on. I draw an invisible line down from his right knee, along the indent of his calf muscle, to his right big toe under his sock, thinking about the consequences of not zinging him. Of course, if Packard made good on his threat to shut me out, I’d end up like Jarvis. And eventually Packard would find a new way to go at Otto anyhow. Even if people would be safer with Packard free, how could I not warn Otto? But that would spell death for my fellow disillusionists. And me.

I button the bottom button of Otto’s shirt. “Look at you, all rumply and sheriffy,” I say.

“Look at you, all naked and gorgeous.”

I fumble with the next button up, feeling faint. Vegetablehood and a slow ignoble death for all the disillusionists? Including me? That can’t be my choice. Shelby was right: I don’t have a choice.

I lean over to kiss his cheek, pausing to breathe in his scent, which contains the slightest hint of autumn leaves; then I straighten up and place my hands on his chest, all pillowy muscles and warm olive skin. His heart beats fierce and steady under my fingers as I close my eyes and call up my fear, picturing the photo of the Hofstader’s victim in France, just before her diagnosis:
“I thought I’d leave the clinic that day with a prescription and some free time to shop. Instead I spent the afternoon getting my head shaved for surgery.”
I
let myself float free into the fear at the edge of my awareness.

This is why Packard insists we belong together, I think. We both have this hateful ability to hurt people to get what we want. Otto’s skin is warm under my palms. Now all I have to do is dip in and graze his energy dimension. Complete the connection. Simple.

But I can’t do it.

I pull my hands away from him and fling open my eyes. Slowly I smooth the dusky whispers of hair on Otto’s chest. I should, I could, and I can’t.

“What dark thoughts, my sweet?”

“Nothing.” Again I take up the project of buttoning his shirt, slower and shakier this time, heart
whooshing
in my ears. All that stoked fear with no place to go.

“He would understand, Justine. If you told him the truth, he would understand.”