Mr. Real (Code of Shadows #1) (6 page)

“How can you tell the leather’s Italian?” she asked.

“How do you think I can tell?”

She eyed him warily. “I don’t know how you can tell,” she whispered.

“By the exquisite and supple feel, of course.”

He could see by her dimples that she was suppressing a grin. At least her chaotic focus had finally rested somewhere—on the continuing slide of his hand, up and down, up and down. Imagining it on her body, no doubt. His for the taking, this girl.

“Were you expecting somebody?” he asked.

“Me? No.”

Terrible liar, too.
Maybe
.

“Oh.” She sprung up. “I bet you’d like a drink.”

“Only if you’re having one.”

She shrugged, putting on a casual attitude. “I might have a beer. But, I have pretty much everything here.”

“I’ll join you in a beer.”

“Really? Nothing special, or…” her hands flitted, bracelets jangled. “I have lots of other options…liqueurs, even. What do you usually—”

“A beer,” he cut in, holding her with his eyes, “would be splendid.”

“Okay.” Dimples again. She responded to his sternness, this one. Liked it, even. “Beer it is.” She walked off.

Had she expected him to ask for a Denali, as if he were in a bar for God’s sake? What did Hyko tell his people about him, anyway? He sighed. Something wasn’t adding up here. The launch—his man on the inside still hadn’t determined its precise location—was just days away. Hyko apparently imagined this woman was capable of distracting him and detaining him, which was Hyko’s only option at the moment; Hyko wouldn’t dare kill or imprison him—not now, with the Falcon letters hanging out there. Beautiful bit of insurance, those Falcon letters.

Sir Kendall walked across the room to the fireplace. The home was quintessential Victorian, with a brick exterior, white wood trim, and a white wood wrap-around porch. Dental molding, fluted pillars, all with a fresh coat of paint. He traced a vertical line of the maple surround with his finger. Likely a hotel in an earlier incarnation. The interior was mostly original. The faint smell of solvent told him the real Alix had been fixing the place up, and that they had gotten to her within the last twenty-four hours. The corpse of Alexis Gordon would be buried out in the woods, no doubt. Or maybe they’d sent it down the Mississippi. He kneeled to scratch the dog’s head and fed her another piece of beef jerky. At least he wouldn’t have to kill the dog.

Perhaps Hyko had overestimated this girl’s ability to play the naïve who’d stumbled into danger. Criminal organizations like Hyko’s were more vulnerable to incompetence than one might imagine. Indeed, most criminals were mentally defective in some way.

Another possibility was that Hyko had purposely sent somebody inept, armed with just enough information to make her ineffective, simply to confuse him. It made a certain twisted sense: Sir Kendall was a master puzzle solver; what better way to confound him than with nonsense? Only Hyko would think of something like that; he was a great fan of the Surrealists. An entirely decadent and debauched individual.

The third possibility, of course, was that she was a preternaturally clever spy playing the nervous, coquettish lightweight.

He sank back down into the chair. He’d see what was to be seen here, then interrogate her, and kill her, ideally before the weekend was up. Pity. He enjoyed women and truly hated to kill them. He’d only killed three women in his life.

Three that he knew of, anyway.

Not expecting anyone, indeed. Women home alone at night didn’t wear outfits like that. And he’d give a hundred to one that her underwear matched. Probably lace; she didn’t strike him as a satin girl. He heard her turn on the oven, but he hadn’t heard an oven door open. Something waiting, all set to heat. Expecting him. For dinner. Had Hyko’s organization learned of his reassignment even before he had?

This gave him pause. A leak in his organization would be disastrous at a time like this.

She came in with two bottles of beer. No glasses.

“Are you hungry? I’m baking a giant pan of eggplant parmesan.”

“I don’t want to intrude.” He stood, went to her. “Allow me.” He took both bottles from her, brushing her fingers in the process of the exchange; the jolt that went through her was nearly palpable. There were some things women couldn’t fake. Odds on those lace panties being ever so slightly moist. He smiled.

“You like olives?” she asked, apropos of nothing.

“I love them,” he said, twisting off a cap and handing her one of the bottles.

She smiled, ecstatic, it seemed, that he liked olives. “I’ll be right back.”

She jangled out of the room as he opened the other bottle. At least she’d brought the bottles for him to open. It was customary for the guest or captive to open the bottles himself, so that he could feel confident the beverages weren’t drugged. A kind of rule of war their set typically didn’t depart from, and especially handy when the beverage in question was a vintage wine or champagne. One hated to waste those.

Back when Hyko had held him prisoner, Hyko would open the bottles himself, but in front of Sir Kendall. Hyko had done this to demonstrate he wasn’t affected by the loss of his thumbs, which Sir Kendall had severed from Hyko’s hands ten years before. A dramatic, bloody affair. Monstrous, even.

But Sir Kendall was a monster.

One couldn’t be anything but a monster, not in his line of work. It often amused him how so few people truly recognized one when they saw one. It was because they expected a monster to have monstrous qualities, of course, when monstrousness was more about what qualities were missing from a person. Qualities like compassion and compunction. Vulnerabilities. Aversion to pain. One needed to be unbreakable, after all. Immune to torture.

The girl was excited about the olives. They would be drugged, but why be so obvious? No, nothing was certain in this place. Except that he’d bed the girl before the night was through, and kill her before the weekend was up. A master of sex and death. Best for Hyko not to forget it.

She returned with a platter of olives speared with colorful toothpicks.

He held up his beer. “Could I trouble you for a glass?”

She snorted. “Dude, you already have the perfect glass right there. Beer out of the bottle stays colder. And I think it tastes better, don’t you?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Far be it from me to impugn a lady’s decorum.”

Dimples.

He settled back down in his chair. “Now, I’m going to tell you about how I’ll extract you from this mess you seem to have got yourself into, but only after you tell me about this meal you have cooking.” He sipped his beer, which tasted quite refreshing, much to his surprise. Delicious, in fact. Was this regular beer?

She was listing the ingredients of her dish. She liked to bake a casserole of some sort on the weekend, she explained, and she’d freeze half and eat the other half over the ensuing days. On and on she went, supplying far too many details for the clearly suspicious timing. A preternaturally clever spy pretending incompetence would hardly make such ham-handed acting choices. Unless she was the clever spy playing the average spy playing the imbecilic spy.

His sipped his beer. How was it possible that it tasted so very delicious? And everything in this place seemed…more intense, somehow.

Focus on what you know
, he told himself.

He knew that this imposter Alix surely hadn’t killed the real Alix; she didn’t have the
gravitas
. She reminded him more of the dissipated snow bunnies who trolled the Swiss chalets than any assassin he’d known.

A cell phone sounded from the direction of the kitchen. She looked at the clock. The
clock
. Sir Kendall could barely believe it.

“Excuse me,” she said.

He lifted a hand. “Please.”

The girl smiled and walked off.

The fact that she’d looked at the clock when the phone rang told him it was a pre-arranged call. The fact that the call was pre-arranged for 8:00 pm sharp told him it had been pre-arranged by amateurs.

He sipped his beer. Beer with eggplant parmesan. The eight o’clock check-in. Was this Hyko’s idea of a joke?

So be it. He would enjoy this Alix as a sacrificial lamb, extract what she knew, and then he would kill her. He shuffled the olives around on the plate, switching the colored toothpicks so that she wouldn’t be able to recognize the drugged ones.

Tragic, but, a certain percentage of people who joined their game got weeded out. Being killed by him was the best end she could hope for, really. Much better than if she failed her mission and Hyko got hold of her. Hyko punished failure in the most Medieval of ways.

Sir Kendall sipped his beer, assessing the sturdiness of the furniture. None of it was ideal for sex, though the couch was a Mission knock-off. A good piece to tie somebody up on: the wood slats would be weak but the frame would hold just fine.

CHAPTER FOUR

Paul Reinhardt, better known to the mixed martial arts world as “Puma Reinhardt,” one of the most promising fighters in the UFL, stared out the passenger window at the blur of roadside reflectors, wishing he could kill Sir Kendall once and for all.

Except you couldn’t kill somebody who didn’t technically exist.

He shut his eyes, told himself to pull it together, if only because Tonio, who looked up to him as a role model, counted on his guidance. That kind of trust meant a lot to Paul, and he’d worked hard over the last year to help the newbie hone his skills and avoid pro circuit pitfalls: steroids, swagger, trash talk, empty sex, puffed-up ego. “You work hard and be a good man—that’s how you win,” Paul always told Tonio.

Some role model he’d turned out to be. A man who lost his shit over a character from a TV ad wasn’t fit to be a role model for anybody. Hell, you had only to mention the name of Sir Kendall and Paul would lose it.

Just a stupid character!

Yeah. Understatement of the year. Well, Paul had only himself to blame.

Without a word, Tonio headed north on I-25 at Albuquerque. Yes, it was official. He and Tonio “Kid Smash” Reynoso were now taking a massive detour. They’d started in Los Angeles, and instead of driving directly east to their destination in West Virginia, they were heading north to loop through Malcolmsberg, Minnesota, of all places.

Paul stared at the back of the truck in front of them, a mothership of lights and reflectors in the night, feeling adrift in a roiling sea of emotions.

Why was it so important to get to Malcolmsberg? He’d never even heard of the place until last night. They’d stopped at a roadside place a bit before eight, and Paul had grabbed a map and opened it up. He spotted Malcolmsberg, Minnesota—it was as if he knew it would be there, as if it called to him. It was more than a feeling; it was a compulsion, stronger than any compulsion he’d ever known, almost a force outside of himself. Like gravity. What was Malcolmsberg? A tiny dot on the map. Paul was seized with this need to get there.

Maybe he was going crazy.

Tonio acted enthusiastic about the new plan, joking about the scenic route along the Mississippi, asking Paul if he was sure they let Latinos into Minnesota.

Christ, after all that had happened, the younger fighter still stuck with him. If Paul had suggested a scenic route through Siberia, Tonio would’ve gone for it, found a joke to make about it. Tonio’s sense of fun and lightness was something Paul appreciated to no end. Especially now.

He should find Tonio a new mentor and training partner after this. Tonio was only twenty—a very young twenty, at that—he needed somebody trustworthy to watch out for him.

And Paul…what did he need for himself? To get away. To get away from Sir Kendall.

Maybe he would find some peace in Malcolmsberg. Maybe that’s why he was drawn there.

Twelve hours on the road and Tonio hadn’t mentioned Sir Kendall. And he wouldn’t. The subject of Sir Kendall made all the fighters on the team nervous. They couldn’t understand how the mere mention of a name at the start of a fight could transform Puma Reinhardt from up-and-coming legend to loser.

Paul had overheard one of the fighters describe the name
Sir Kendall
as Paul’s kryptonite.

Wrong. Kryptonite would be way easier to deal with. Kryptonite sapped your strength, it didn’t twist you up with terror and horror and shame and darkness.

“Twenty hours,” Tonio said, ripping into a bag of red licorice. “Man, if Coach Walton saw us eating this shit—” He stopped. Because Coach Walton was no longer Paul’s coach. Coach Walton had kicked Paul out of the Eagle’s Cove, the most elite training team in the league.

“Don’t worry about it,” Paul said.

“It’s temporary,” Tonio replied.

Paul could hear the lack of conviction in his voice. Tonio was no fool; he’d been around the martial arts scene long enough to know that the best fighters got there through talent, discipline, and a heavy dose of demons, and sometimes those demons brought a fighter down.

“Coach’ll come crawling when you bounce back,” Tonio tried.

Paul nodded. Coach Walton had been right to dump him. Paul was damaged beyond repair.

He stared out the window, wishing he could talk to Master Veecha. Master Veecha would know what to do, what to say. The crazy old Brazilian had saved his life, practically raised him from the age of 11, when Paul had run away from home—raised him in his martial arts school in a seedy section of Oakland. Master Veecha had let him live there, and later, teach classes there. Paul owed Veecha everything.
Always just train,
Veecha would say. But all the training in the world couldn’t help you in some struggles.

CHAPTER FIVE

The girl returned from the kitchen and her secretive phone call, all sexy smiles. “Silly…” she waved her hand at the kitchen. “Just somebody wanting to talk.”

Sir Kendall settled into his seat. “Ms. Gordon, can you think of any reason you’d be a person of interest to somebody with, shall we say, gray-area international business concerns?”

“No, I can’t think how that could be at all!” A flick of the eyes sideways. “It’s weird.”