Off the Edge (The Associates) (18 page)

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“What does it look like?” She did her best to project cheerful confidence even though he didn’t seem at all happy to see her. “I brought paperclips. Assorted sizes. Those’ll work better than the hairpins, right?” She unlocked the cage.

“You’re supposed to be gone. You need to be gone, dammit!”

“Lucky for you I’m not. We have to get you out of here. We’ll help each other.”

“No. Laney…” He sat awkwardly, feet tucked behind him. “I’m fine.”

“Right. I don’t think so.” She entered the gloomy cage, knelt in front of him, and started digging in her pack.

“You have to get out of here.”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

He grabbed her wrist. “Go. I don’t need your help. You understand?”

“Save it for someone who might believe it.” She yanked her hand away and pulled out the paperclips. “We need to hurry, so don’t fight me on this. Everybody’s lying to me but you. So you’re getting out whether you want it or not.” She extracted two of the best-looking paperclips and extended them to him on her palm. “Start your picking, Devilwell,” she whispered.

He stared down at them for a long time, saying nothing.

“I’m not leaving you here again. Nothing you say’ll change that.”

A bit more time passed, and then he looked up at her. And her blood froze. He wore that empty smile he’d had on when she held him at gunpoint. The smile that put a wall between them. “Unbelievable,” he said.

“What?” she asked, hating the waver in her voice.

“I use you in every way possible,” he began smoothly. “And then I decide to give you one decent bit of advice about being on the run and you can’t quite go with it, can you? Here you are, bothering me and dabbling in things you don’t understand. Trying to help me when I neither need nor want your help. You really are a fool.”

She paused only a moment. “I get it.” She began to unbend a paperclip. “You don’t want me in danger or something, so you’re being jerky. Chivalry noted and rejected.”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“I think it is.”

She felt his eyes on her. “And this is the expert assessment from the woman who thinks a cornpone hee-haw singing show is a capital way to hide?”

His words were a punch in the gut. “Excuse me?”

“Cornpone hee-haw singing show,” he repeated. “It’s rather precise, don’t you think? Hardly needs a supporting cast.”

“I know what you’re doing,” she said.

“You don’t know the first thing about me.”

“I know you think words are your bitch. Just some shell game for you to play. Making things real that aren’t, or putting a new face on things you don’t like. But guess what?” She fixed him with a good glare. They were close enough to kiss, but that wasn’t in the air now. “When a man is chained up in a cage like a circus tiger, then it’s the right thing to help him. And doing the right thing is always the right thing. And I’ll tell you something else: when a dog gets run over by a car, it’s a goddamn tragedy, not an exercise in phonemes. So take the fucking paperclip and unlock yourself.”

He laughed that beautiful laugh.

“You think it’s funny?”

“Oh it’s not funny so much as delicious,” he said. “I see you read my book.”

“That’s right. A whole lot of bunk designed to hornswoggle folks.”

“What a coincidence,” he said. “That’s what I was planning on calling my next book.
A Whole Lot of Bunk Designed to Hornswoggle Folks Two.
What do you think?”

She didn’t like his tone. “Sounds about right.”

“Feel free to leave a one-star review on your way out.”

She worked on unbending the other paperclip. “You’re coming with me.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Why not? You think you can’t get out of those leg cuffs with the paperclip? ‘Cause if you can’t, the guards are asleep right now. I’ll go in and find the leg keys.”

“Don’t,” he growled. “Do you have any idea what Dok would do to you if he found you down here?”

A chill went over her. Niwat wouldn’t hurt her, but Dok…he had a point about Dok. “Get picking then, Devilwell.” She held the paperclip out to him, willing her hand not to shake. What if she’d been wrong about everything? What if she was really and truly alone?

He just looked at it. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Then I’m not, either.” She set it on the ground in front of him and stood, pulling the candy bar from her backpack. Casual as could be, she slung the pack over her shoulder, leaned against the bars, tore off the wrapper, and took a bite. “Mmm.”

Maxwell watched her eat with a strange expression—she couldn’t tell if it was hunger or loathing.

Please
, she thought.
Don’t make me go alone.

She took another bite.

She was killing him. Just like that first night.

She’d called herself cowardly, but she was nothing less than a warrior, standing over him, waiting for him to free himself even though she was scared shitless. Laney and her supplies and her attitude and her unshakeable moral compass. It was perfect that she’d insulted his book. Of course she’d hate that chapter. She had no time for his various reductions, just like Rio. She thrived on emotion. Connection.

He wished he could tell her the truth—he was a spy, and all he wanted was to get back to the console room before the drugged guards woke up.

He couldn’t. The truth would endanger them both.

The farther she got from him and the hotel, the safer she’d be.

He swallowed, steeled himself. He had to make her run.

Do it,
he told himself.

“Question, Laney. Has it ever occurred to you to wonder why I never asked you to go to the police?”

“I figure the Shinsurins are buddies with them.”

He closed his eyes. He wanted to move his feet into a position that wouldn’t make his toes feel like they were on fire, but he couldn’t let her see them. The last thing he needed was her pity.

“Or maybe I have more to fear from the law than from the Shinsurins,” he said.

She simply took another bite. “We both need to get out of here. You’re coming with me.”

“How do you know I’m not a killer?” he asked.

“Because I know.”

He gave her a cold smile. “It’s sad. You’re pretty, but you’re not very well-educated. Though I do love the socks.”

She just looked down at him. She had to be nervous. “I’m not buying what you’re selling, Devilwell. I’m done being fooled by people.”

He didn’t have to fool her—that was the grim truth. He’d died in that train. He’d lost everything that made him human.

“Come here,” he said.

She frowned.

“Come
here
.” Before she could move away, he lunged up on his knees, grabbed her wrists, and yanked her down to him. Her candy bar flew.

“Hey!” she tried to pull away.

He forced himself to tighten his grip, hating that he might be hurting her. Everything in him raged in protest. “Look in my eyes. Ask me if I’ve killed.”

She struggled. “Let me go.”

He gave her a shake. “Ask me. You say I’m not a liar. Don’t you want to know?”

Fear in her eyes. “Please—”

“Ask me!”

She glared. “Have you?”

“Yes. I’ve killed fourteen men. Eight by gunshot and three by slitting their jugulars. Did you know that slicing a man’s neck takes roughly the same amount of pressure as slicing into a papaya? I bet you didn’t know that.”

Fear in her eyes. He could see what he’d become reflected there; he was a hunter, a killer, a tool of the Association.

“I know what you’re thinking, Laney. That’s only eleven. And you’d be right. There was another man I killed by smashing his skull with a twenty-pound free weight. Then there was the time I jammed a wooden spear clear through a man’s neck. I whittled the thing myself. I even shot a man in the back of the head once.”

“I don’t believe you,” she whispered, glancing at the door.

“I think you do.”

The man he’d shot in the back of the head had been dying painfully. It had been a mercy killing, but the others hadn’t been about mercy.

He transferred her wrists to one hand and grabbed her hair into a ponytail, forcing her to look into his eyes and see the truth of his words, the bleakness in his soul. It made him want to die.

“Let me go,” she whispered in a small voice.

He twisted his fist in her hair, using it to control her head like reins on a horse. She drove a knee into his thigh, sending bolts of pain up and down him.

He barely noticed. He couldn’t be deeper in hell.

“Please,” she whispered.

He twisted harder, pulse racing. “There was a whole stretch of my life—weeks on end—when I sat awake at night fantasizing about killing a man by ripping out his throat with my teeth.” The truth. It was how he’d thought to kill Mero, way back when he was imprisoned in the terrorist’s compound. “I visualized it in my mind just like an athlete would—the way I’d angle my head for the best canine penetration.”

Her eyes changed. Turning away from him finally.

“I thought that would be poetic for somebody as linguistically inclined as myself,” he continued. “What do you think?”

She tried to push away.

He held her more tightly. “I could do it to you right now.”

She stiffened as he kissed her throat. She’d find it creepy. Well, she should. This brave, beautiful woman—she should think twice before asking a man like him to run with her. Before opening her heart to him. Before clawing down his defenses. She finally found her devil in the well.

“You’re right about words being my bitch. About my using them to cover unpleasantness. It’s how I fooled you.”

Pain shot through his groin as her knee connected with his balls. He let her go and she sprung away.

“Go to hell.” She picked up her pack and backed out of the cell, keeping a wary eye on him. She pulled the door shut. “You can go to hell.”

He was grateful for her anger. Grateful it was over.

She hung the keys up on the nail. Even from where he sat, he could see her hands shaking. She left without a backward glance.

Macmillan quickly unlocked his leg irons and stole out after her, shadowing her through the tunnels, past the drugged guards, and all the way up to the hatch, just to make sure she didn’t get caught on her way out.

He quickly unlocked the hatch after she closed it, peeking out, watching her walk down the side street, shoulders slumped.

He spotted a van on the corner. That’s where the Associate’s admin would be, ready to tail her.
Leave,
he pleaded in his mind. Get away from this place.

Everything he’d said to her would be worth it if she’d get away from the menace of her ex-husband and the looming danger with Jazzman. And stopped visiting him!

She reached the main road and turned out of sight. He lowered the hatch, locked it, and made his way back, toes like fire.

She’d wanted him to leave with her.
It was like having a first class plane ticket somewhere beautiful that he could never use. But he could take it out and look at it sometimes, run his finger over the flight number, the seat number and think,
what if.

He entered the console room and sat next to a drugged guard, grateful for the weight off his feet. Beyond the toes, he had an egg of a bump where Dok had smashed the side of his head, possible concussion, bruised and possibly broken ribs, and the cut eyebrow. And her gunshot graze. But at least his fever was gone, thanks to Douglas’s shot.

All in all, he was holding up. He didn’t like to think what condition he’d be in if Niwat hadn’t arrived to pull Dok off him.

He checked the files. Still compressing and downloading. He’d been downloading the files when he saw her coming—a mile off, of course. He’d had to scramble back into his cage and wait for her. He’d had to do that two times over the course of the night when people walked through. He’d lain in his cell, holding his breath both times, sure somebody would try to wake the guards.

Nobody had.

He clicked through the video feeds until he spotted her at the front desk, talking to the night clerks. She looked agitated. Did she know how her eyes gave her away? The Shinsurins would see her growing distrust there.

“Leave!”
he whispered at the screen.

He’d find a way to protect her if things got ugly with Jazzman, but she’d be far safer if she’d leave. She probably had everything she needed in that little backpack.

Laney stepped onto the lobby elevator. He switched cameras to the elevator interior. The defeated look on her face broke his heart.

“I can’t go with you,”
he whispered to the screen.
“I can’t let more people die.”

She hit the button for the third floor. Back to her room.

“
No
,” he whispered.
“Don’t go to bed!”

She got off on the third floor. He watched until the elevators doors shut behind her. There were no cameras in the staff wing—not much money in blackmailing maids.

He didn’t need a camera to know she was in for the night.

He told himself she’d leave tomorrow, in the daytime. Even that would be hard for her. It’s why she wanted him with her. She’d trusted him and he threw it in her face. God, it had been years since he’d felt so wrecked over a woman.

A decade, to be precise.

Forcing his mind back onto the mission, he slipped a phone from a guard’s pocket and called the Associates at the Sawadee Palace Hotel with an update. It felt good to talk to his guys. They were restless—heaven knew what their room service bill was coming to. They were planning an excursion to record the few arms dealers who weren’t at the Hotel Des Roses. They’d play the recordings for him over the phone tomorrow night if he hadn’t found Jazzman by then.

Good.

He erased his tracks, slipped the phone back, and started reviewing the audio files. The dealers at lunch, the dealers in the elevator, the dealers in the sauna. The Indian gentleman who sat in the lobby for hours on end, vaguely familiar but his speech patterns were nothing like Jazzman’s. One by one, he ruled out the guests of the Hotel Des Roses.

It took just two hours for him to conclude that Jazzman hadn’t yet arrived.