Off the Edge (The Associates) (33 page)

He and Laney exchanged triumphant glances. There it was—the
oo
.

Macmillan adjusted the levels. He was feeling faint, but not worse. He could probably stay conscious if he didn’t exert himself. “There’s no other woman like Emmaline,” Rolly droned on. “The way she sings, and the way she enjoys the little things. Her word pictures, they grab you.”

Rolly went on, delivering more phonemes. More sounds. He started ticking sounds off the list. A gold mine.

“Emmaline finds meaning and beauty in what other people pass by, but she’s the beautiful one,” Rolly continued.

Macmillan straightened. Rolly really had loved her, but he’d let that love make him small and cruel. He’d tried to lock her down. Macmillan put a hand on her arm and squeezed. He held it until she looked back.

He didn’t want to be a small man in a locked-down world—he wanted to tell her that. When he looked at Laney, he felt inspired to be big and true and reckless, to rise up to meet her.

Suddenly her pink lips spread in a cat-like smile. Rolly had used the word
beige
. The
zh
. The last of the sounds on the list.

Bingo.

He started separating the sounds while she took back the phone to speak quietly to her mother.

Ten minutes later he had a viable library. He transferred it onto the phone.

“What now?” she asked when she was off.

“I test it. Plug your ears if you don’t want to hear his voice.” He whispered
peanut butter
into the phone. The phone synthesized Rolly’s voice perfectly:
peanut butter.
Laney widened her eyes. He tried it with a few other words. Macadamia. Intentional.

“Peter—” She didn’t want him to go.

“I have to. And I’m rallying at the moment.” The truth. The pain raged on, but he wasn’t so tired anymore.

“What if they take your phone?”

“They’re only concerned with guns.”

“Let somebody else do it.”

“I trained this software for me, and I’m the only one who can get up there alive. Rolly wants to be up close and personal with me.”

“So he can hurt you.”

“Not if I take over his weapon first.”

“You think he’s going to let you waltz up to his precious weapon and play it a recording?”

“He won’t realize until it’s too late.”

“You’re not the only person who can get on that roof alive,” she said. “Let me help you.”

The thought of her up there chilled him. “Never.”

“I’ll distract Rolly while you make for the weapon with your phone.”

“I need to know you’re safe.” She’d been frightened of going back—for good reason. He just needed to get near the TZ, play the
Leetle Friend
password, beat the challenge question, and transfer control to his voice like Fedor showed him.

Simple.

His muscles fired as she helped him stand, sending merciless darts of pain through his thigh. He gritted his teeth and pulled himself together.

“You ready? Can you stand?” She let him go and he managed to keep himself upright.

“Wish me luck,” he said.

She didn’t wish him luck. Instead, she pushed aside the crates and walked out.

Damn.

He caught up to her as she was paying the boys. “What are you doing?”

“I’m thinking about grabbing a tuk-tuk to the Hotel Des Roses,” she said, “but what are the odds we’ll get a free ride? I think they’re good, don’t you?”

“Laney, no.”

“I’m done running from Rolly. We’ll do this together, Devilwell. We’re stronger together.” She headed to the main road and he limped after her, cursing. Her arm shot up in the air. A tuk-tuk stopped.

“No thanks,” he said to the driver.

“Yes, thanks.” She got in. “Hotel Des Roses on Tamroung Road.”

“You can’t,” he said, well aware that she could. Even if he wasn’t banged up, he couldn’t yank her out, not in the middle of all these people. He felt eyes on them. Probably too late already.

“You coming?”

He got in, holding tightly onto the metal bar. “Bus station,” he said to the driver, a large man with a red baseball cap.

“Hotel Des Roses.” She handed money up front. “Des Roses, got it?”

The driver looked nervous. Macmillan was the man, but Laney had the money.

As it turned out, it didn’t matter. Because a red car pulled up and squealed to a stop in front of the tuk-tuk.

South American muscle.

Macmillan’s pulse raced at they were pushed into the Hotel Des Roses lobby by their three captors, a trio of burly thugs from Venezuela led by a man in a baseball cap. The men had tied their wrists and relieved them both of weaponry and the satchel with the laptop, but Macmillan still had his phone in his pocket. And his wound wasn’t bleeding for the moment. Just blazing with pain.

Laney held herself perfectly upright, intense amber eyes fixed straight ahead, dark hair in a long braid. He’d give anything for Laney not to be there; at the same time, he was blown away by her bravery. Facing Rolly.

“Laney!” One of the girls behind the front desk called out. “What’s going on?”

“Sirikit. I’m okay.” Laney spoke in rough, rapid Thai full of affection. “Be careful. Be ready to run.”

Macmillan was surprised when the bellboy accosted them—he stepped right up to the biggest of the bunch. “You need to let her go—she works here.”

“Sujet, it’s okay.”

He wouldn’t budge; the thug pushed him away. Sujet would’ve come again if Laney hadn’t talked him down in rapid Thai. She wanted him to warn the staff that trouble was brewing. She’d worked with these people for two years, Macmillan realized. They’d be her friends. Good friends.

“Enough Thai,” one of their escorts barked. The elevator doors opened and an elegantly dressed Thai woman stepped out. Rajini Shinsurin.

The woman widened her eyes. “Laney!”

Macmillan could feel Laney stiffen beside him.

“How could you?” Laney asked. “How could you?”

Rajini Shinsurin looked on helplessly as he and Laney were pulled onto the elevator. “I had to.”

“No, you didn’t,” Laney said. “And you’re not the queen of capers.” The doors were sliding shut. Laney stuck out her foot. “I thought you were my friend,” One of the guards jerked her in— “but you’re the queen of cowardice,” she called out just before the doors shut. “Fuck it,” she said, tears in her eyes.

“She didn’t deserve you,” he said. All the guns and blood and violence, and it was her dear friend’s betrayal that made her cry. That was Laney—bravery and loyalty and fire in the heart. He wanted to tell her that and more. There was so much to say—too much to say and not enough time. Taking over this weapon could easily cost him his life.

She stared balefully at the twin columns of lights on the elevator panel. The light for floor one flashed off just as two flashed on, then two flashed off as three flashed on.

It was then that he noticed the corners of her mouth twitching, as if she’d thought of something funny.

She turned to him suddenly, eyes full of laughter. She furrowed her brow, trying to contain her smile. “Escorting guests at gunpoint. This sort of service will cost the Hotel Des Roses at least one star.”

He laughed. God, he wanted to kiss her. The man holding him gave him a violent shake, but he didn’t care. “I agree,” he said. “And binding guests’ wrists? That will cost the Hotel Des Roses yet another half star.”

Laney snorted. “It completely lacks in decorum. If the elevator operators at the Hotel Des Roses wish for the guests not to press the buttons, they should simply make that preference known. Today’s traveler does not expect to be brutally restrained.”

Macmillan laughed as the floor seven light flashed off.

“
Cállate!
Shut up!”

He was in no mood to shut up, and their captors wouldn’t do anything more to them now. The floor eight light flashed on. “The customer service techniques here are woefully out of date,” he whispered.

Laney grinned. “Zero stars. And that’s final.”

He watched her. He couldn’t believe the miracle of her, or how beautiful and brave she was.

But that wasn’t the phrase, not precisely.

She felt good and endless, and he wanted to never stop discovering her.

But that wasn’t exactly it. And then he realized. He said, “Nevertheless, I give the Bangkok Imperiale Hotel Des Roses a full five stars,” he said to her. “And I’d give more if I could.”

She looked at him in mock surprise, but he was done joking. Floor thirteen had flashed on.

“It’s because of the woman who sings here at night,” he continued. The man jerked him harder and he took a step sideways, which sent pain up and down his thigh, but nothing would stop him now. He gazed at Laney. “It’s because she made me feel passion again, and happiness, and life—everything I lost. Because you connected me back to my own heart, Laney, and finding you…”

“Devilwell,” she whispered.

“Just listen,” he said, even though what he needed to say was too big to fit into language. “I was barely alive before you, and nothing meant anything, but then these last few days—no matter what happens, this has been worth it. Because I love you. And I don’t know how much time we have—”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“I love you—I need you to know. Three days I’ve known you. I don’t care. I love you anyway. You’re amazing and beautiful, but it’s not because of that, it’s more—”

“Fuck.” Tears streamed down Laney’s face. “I love you, too, Devilwell. I love you like crazy.” Wildly she looked at the panel. Floor sixteen blinked out. Floor seventeen blinked on. She looked back at him, seeming so alone. And he loved her so much. “
Comere
,” she whispered in a tiny voice.

He surged forward, pressing his body to hers, nuzzling her cheek, finding her lips. One kiss like heaven. It was enough.

Rough hands pulled them apart as the doors slid open.
“Vamos.”

He was shoved out onto the rooftop of the hotel. He stumbled and lost his balance, managing to fall on his non-wounded thigh. It would be a disaster if that wound started bleeding again.

He lay on his side, gathering his strength, taking in the terrain.

The rooftop lounge of the Bangkok Imperiale Hotel Des Roses occupied just a portion of the rooftop, a plush oasis in a sea of buildings. Flowing white canopies stretched over the rambling cocktail area, which was fitted out with white armchairs, sleek steel tables, and potted palms, all lit by torchlight. There were maybe a hundred dealers and armed guards arrayed in and around the seating area, and they were almost all facing east, toward the helipad where three military-style helicopters formed a triangle around the TZ-5. The weapon looked small and furious with dark, blunt wings and a fat little body rife with rivets and receptors. A laser array came up out of its head. The powering laser stood on the ground next to it, beam deactivated for the moment. The ground laser would be hooked up to the hotel generator. That’s how the weapon would draw its energy.

The man in the baseball cap pulled him back up.

The excitement in the air was palpable. All these men salivating over a dangerous toy. Everybody was there—the Finns, the New Tong, even Thorne had made it. He stood next to his Hangman buddies with a cane, foot in a special boot. A sprain?

Macmillan’s heart lurched as the men pushed Laney toward Rolly. Laney was starting to resist; she couldn’t help it.

Rolly stood. “My lovely wife.”

He couldn’t see her face, but the resistance was all over her body, and Rolly was eating it up. He grabbed her shoulders and planted a hard, angry kiss on her lips that made Macmillan want to rage out of his bindings and lay waste to the earth and the sun.

Rolly pushed Laney down in a chair next to his and pointed at a spot ten feet in front of them. “Put Macmillan there where we can all look at him.”

Macmillan was made to stand in front of the assembly. Quite the reversal after spending so much time watching these men and women from the shadows. He’d endure what he had to now; he just needed to get near that weapon.

“Our Associate. I have to say, you don’t look so good, but I’m glad you’re here, I really am,” Rolly crowed.

“He’s shot!” Laney raged. “Leave him alone. I’m here. I’m who you wanted.”

Rolly waved a hand in his direction. “Somebody, untie him.”

One of the Venezuelans cut his bindings. Macmillan knew what would come next.

He removed his glasses and slipped them into his pocket, waiting, grinning. Rolly strolled up to him with murder in his eyes and slammed a fist into Macmillan’s jaw, sending him stumbling backwards and onto the ground. Macmillan sat there, gasping for breath. He’d gotten a couple of yards nearer to the TZ. Good, but not nearly enough.

As Rolly stalked toward him, Macmillan spotted the key hanging around the man’s neck by a chain. He recognized the White Crow insignia—it was the key to a workout gym locker. A chain of upscale gyms.

Bingo.

That’s where the weapon’s blueprints and plans would be stashed. It was a little ballsy to have the key visible—others could guess it, too. Then again, Rolly had a crew of thugs and the most dangerous weapon in the world at his command.

For now, anyway.

Macmillan stood again, backing up, limping badly. He’d do anything to get to that weapon, including allowing himself to look like a coward.

Rolly strolled toward him. He’d expected Macmillan to fight, of course, not back up, and a suspicious gleam appeared in his eyes. Couldn’t have that.

Macmillan spat at him.

That did it. Rolly flew at him, fists flying. Macmillan defended himself this time, getting in enough hits to stay upright and stay moving back, which he did, until Rolly got him in the balls. Macmillan crumpled to the ground, nauseated. Dirty fighter.

And he still wasn’t near enough to the TZ, dammit.

“What’s wrong?” Rolly glared down at him. “You’re just a wizard in the booth. A lot of nothing.” And with that he kicked Macmillan’s thigh, creating an explosion of pain. Macmillan’s hands flew to it.

Rolly had seen the wound. He’d meant to re-open it. And he had.

Damn.

Somewhere far off, he heard Laney screaming.