Authors: Elizabeth Bevarly
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Suspense
Overnight Male (19 page)
Adrian thought again about what Chuck and his two friends had tried to do to Lila. And he thought about someone else—three someone elses—trying to do the same thing to Iris, and succeeding. But where Adrian had been outraged by the act committed against Lila, he was enraged by the thought of it happening to Iris. Lila could take care of herself, as evidenced by the outcome of her own episode, even if she’d had a bit of help from the alleged boyfriend, who was doubtless another OPUS operative. Had Iris been cornered in the same way…
“Chuck,” Adrian said softly, “get the hell out of my suite.”
“What?” the other man said, clearly surprised by the sudden command.
Adrian looked him full in the eye. “I said, ‘Get out.’ You need to locate Jenny Sturgis and this boyfriend of hers. And you need to do it now. And then you need to let me know where they are.” Not to mention he was making the air in the room stink.
“B-but how am I supposed to do that?” he asked. “If she’s who you say she is, she’s not gonna be in the Waverly directory. Why don’t you get your secret agent contact to find out where she’s staying?”
“Because I suspect at this point that my contact will find the amount of available information is limited.”
Which, alas, Adrian thought, was doubtless true. Otherwise, he would have been notified long ago by said contact that Lila specifically was in the area, and precisely where she could be found at any given moment. Which could only mean OPUS was being very, very careful in dispensing information these days, deliberately revealing only enough to make Adrian’s contact—and Adrian—feel as if they were still on top of things. Which could likewise only mean that he and his contact were
not
on top of things. At least not as much as they had thought. That in turn could only mean that the end was in sight.
If Lila had gotten this close to him without his even knowing it was she who was this close, then he’d definitely lost his edge. And his advantage. And, quite possibly, the game.
He waited for that to sink into his brain, waited, too, for the trickle of anger and frustration that should start seeping in right on its heels. But all he felt seeping was a mild sort of disappointment and resigned kind of fatigue. And then maybe, just maybe, a hint of relief.
Interesting.
“Oh, you’re a smart little prick,” he told Chuck in his mock fatherly voice. “I’m sure you’ll think of something. Now, get out.”
Chuck sputtered a few more things about how he always got saddled with all the work and how was he supposed to even know where to start looking and other such whiny complaints, but he finally picked himself up and left the suite. Adrian continued to look at Iris, but after one final, inscrutable look at him, she returned her attention to the images on the TV screen, again just driving her game car through the game countryside, enjoying the game scenery, as if she were trying to find a spot to have a game picnic.
She was still smarting, he supposed, from his thoughtless comment about the female student body of Waverly not consisting of any attractive female bodies. And for the second time in mere moments, Adrian found himself experiencing a reaction he’d never experienced before. He felt bad about hurting Iris’s feelings. Even though he hadn’t done it deliberately. He, a man who had gone out of his way in the past to hurt some people’s feelings, suddenly found himself feeling guilty about having done so inadvertently.
Just what the devil was going on?
He told himself Iris was a nice person who didn’t deserve to have her feelings hurt. But so were a lot of other people he didn’t give a damn about. He told himself it was because she was his partner in crime, and partners in crime owed it to each other to watch each other’s backs and take care of each other. But he knew that was ridiculous. There truly was no honor among thieves, and one’s partners in crime were no more trustworthy than one’s most mistrusted enemies. Besides, he’d screwed over partners in the past—one of whom had been his best friend once upon a time. And he’d done it without remorse. Well, without
too
much remorse. What made Iris any different?
Aside from her being a virgin, he meant.
Oh, he’d really been trying not to think about that since she’d told him. And he’d
really
been trying not to think about why she’d told him in the first place. And he’d really,
really
been trying not to think about why he found the idea of her being a virgin so incredibly attractive.
Normally, Adrian wouldn’t have wanted to be bothered with a virgin. He was an uninhibited, adventurous, enthusiastic lover, and he expected his partner to be his equal in that regard. He liked his sex earthy and fierce and prolonged. He didn’t want to be an instructor. Nor did he want to be a gentleman. And he certainly didn’t want to be patient.
With Iris, though, somehow the prospect of being all those things was rather…intriguing. And although he considered himself a thoroughly enlightened male of the twenty-first century, he’d be lying if he didn’t admit to feeling a primitive—but not at all unpleasant—thrill at the prospect of being the first man to make love to her. Perhaps even the only man to make love to her. Which was beyond madness, because Adrian had never wanted to be anyone’s only.
So why did he rather like the idea of being Iris’s? Even more astonishing, why did he find himself rather liking the idea of Iris being the only one for him, too?
If he’d had more time, he could have wondered about all that at length, but time was a luxury he could no longer afford. Lila Moreau—who, he was surprised to realize, wasn’t haunting him nearly as much as she used to when he thought about her—was closing in on him and his merry band of…
He sighed. His merry band of assholes, he had to admit. Good God, what had he been reduced to? When had he ceased to be the one in charge of his own destiny and started having to rely on the work of—he sighed again—assholes to build his empire? And just what kind of empire was it going to be, anyway, if it was built by—he sighed a third time—assholes?
Later, he told himself. He’d think about that later. Right now he had other, more important things to think about.
Strangely, though, instead of mapping out a strategy to deal with Lila and whoever her current partner happened to be—since Adrian knew her regular partner was currently in the Hamptons with his fiancée, planning his wedding to a woman who was completely neurotic—Adrian’s thoughts turned again to Iris. And the next thing he knew, he was sitting beside her on the floor, picking up a second joystick—or whatever the hell joysticks were called these days, since Adrian was too unhip by his cohorts’ standards to know—and joining her for a drive in the game-generated countryside.
For a long time neither of them said a word to each other, only enjoyed the virtual scenery as their cars drove along, side by side, neither moving ahead, neither falling behind.
Finally, though, still watching the screen, Iris said, “That was nice, what you said to Chuck.”
“About him being a pig?” Adrian asked. “He’d beg to differ, I’m sure.”
She laughed softly, and there was something in the sound that sent a thrill of heat through his entire body. Strange. He hadn’t felt something like that since…Well, he didn’t think he’d ever felt anything like that.
“No, I mean about some women being stronger than men.”
“Ah.”
“Do you believe that?”
Adrian sighed, but continued to watch the cars on the TV. “There was a time when I would have laughed myself silly had someone said the same thing to me. Now, though…” He looked over at Iris, meeting her gaze unflinchingly. “Now I absolutely believe it.”
She studied him in silence for a moment, her car having stopped moving on the screen. “Sometimes the things you say make me think your life growing up wasn’t so great.” His bark of laughter must have been all the response she needed. Because she continued, “That bad, huh?”
“My mother was a prostitute,” he told her without hesitation, not even questioning why he did. He was reasonably certain he knew what his motivation was. He just didn’t understand it. Nor did he bother to try. “I didn’t know it when I was very young, but by the time I was a teenager, I figured it out. Thanks in large part to my treatment by other people in town and some not particularly nice things said by the other boys at school. I never knew my father,” he added matter-of-factly. “We were very poor. Our house was ugly. I never got the dog I wanted for my birthday. Someone stole my bicycle when I was eight and I never got another one. Shall I go on?”
He waited for Iris to give him one of those oh-you-poor-baby pouts, but she only shook her head. “No. That’s okay. It’s probably not the kind of thing you want to talk about, huh?”
Her response surprised him. Most women who’d found out considerably less about him wanted to, in effect, kiss his boo-boo and make it all better. As if his past were something that could be improved by the proper placement of a woman’s mouth. There were, actually, many things that could be improved with that. Alas, one’s past wasn’t one of them.
“As a matter of fact, no,” he said. “I’d just as soon not.”
“That’s cool,” Iris said. Then she perked up some. “You want to play the new Xenosaga?”
Whatever the hell that was, Adrian thought. He started to decline, then decided what the hell. It might be fun. “Sure,” he told Iris. “Why not? Why don’t you see if you can’t, in fact, teach an old dog like me some new tricks?”
J
OEL WAS IN HIS BEDROOM
at his computer, still trying to decipher the finer points of Hobie’s virus—and doing his best
not
to think about what had happened with Lila the night before, which was probably why he was having so much trouble trying to decipher the finer points of Hobie’s virus—when he heard the knock at the front door. Lila had gone to the Waverly library, where Chuck had been scheduled to work a Sunday-afternoon shift, and it was too early for her to be back. Besides which, she wouldn’t bother knocking. Unless, of course, she was feeling as tentative as he was about what had happened last night. Not that there had been anything tentative about what had happened last night, he couldn’t help thinking further.
And just what
had
happened last night? Other than that he’d broken a five-year-old promise to himself. And other than that he didn’t even give a damn that he’d broken that five-year-old promise. And that he’d had the most incredible sex of his life. And that he’d awoken in the morning with the realization that he wanted to have more nights like that one. Lots and lots of nights, in fact. Countless nights. Endless nights. Nights that lasted the rest of his life.
Oh, man, was he in it. Deep. If he kept this up, he was going to start thinking he was in love. With Lila. Who was anything but a rest-of-his-life kind of woman.
The knock sounded again, louder this time, with more urgency, demanding a reply. Joel started to rise, then hesitated. Considering the velocity at which developments in the case had progressed over the past twenty-four hours, he decided it would probably be best to err on the side of caution. Would that he had been more cautious about the quickness with which things had developed between him and Lila during the same period, he might not be having so much trouble deciphering Hobie’s virus. Or his own emotions, for that matter.
Withdrawing his 9 mm from the desk drawer, Joel stood, tucked it into the waistband of his jeans near his hip and rearranged the shirt tail of his baggy dark blue T-shirt to hide it. Then he crept in his stocking feet to the front door, never making a sound. He was just about to put his eye to the peephole when a third knock sounded, thundering this time as if the person on the other side of the door was using the side of his fist as hard as he could. A glimpse through the peephole revealed Chuck Miller standing on the other side, hands on hips, weight shifted to one foot, as if he were getting tired of waiting for a response.
What the hell?
How had the other man found out where he and Lila were staying? And what the hell was he doing here now? Why wasn’t he at work?
“Hey, Ned!” Chuck called almost amiably through the door. “I know you’re in there, dude. And I know you’re right on the other side. C’mon, man, open the door. We need to talk about what happened the other night. I wanna apologize to you and Jenny. And I need to know there’s no hard feelings and that you guys aren’t gonna, you know, call the cops on me.”
Joel told himself to keep pretending there was no one home. He knew better than to believe a guy like Chuck, who couldn’t possibly have an apologetic bone in his body. Still, he had the 9 mm, he reasoned, and there was a chance, however small, that having a little chat with the guy might help further the investigation somehow. In spite of his reassurances to himself, however, he hesitated.
What would Lila do? he asked himself.
Oh, well, that was easy. She’d open the door and beat the hell out of Chuck.
Or maybe not, he thought further. She wasn’t one for reacting blindly. When she kicked someone’s ass it was as a last resort. Or because, you know, the ass in question deserved it. Which, of course, Chuck did, but if there was some potential, however questionable, that the guy might be able to provide any new info—whether voluntarily or otherwise—maybe Joel should try talking to him. If it looked as if Chuck was going to be a problem, then Joel could just beat the hell out of him.
Figuring his dilemma was solved, he opened the door.
And immediately realized that not only was Chuck going to be a problem, but Joel’s problems had just begun. Because, like an idiot, he hadn’t thought about the possibility that Chuck might not be alone. It hadn’t occurred to him that both Hobie and Donny might be with him, hiding on each side of the front door so they couldn’t be seen through the peephole. Therefore he hadn’t considered the fact that he could potentially be overcome when the three of them forced their way into the apartment and surrounded him. Which, it went without saying, they did. Then they closed the door behind them and gazed at him as if they resented having had to come over in the first place.
So Joel, being the gracious host, took the initiative and demanded, “What the hell is this about?”
Chuck evidently realized then that Joel towered over him by a good eight inches, because he straightened out of his bored slump and squared his shoulders. Not that that helped much, but if it made Chuck feel better, who was Joel to criticize?
“You and I need to talk,” Chuck repeated.
“So you’ve said. But I’m guessing it’s not because you want to apologize, as you claimed.”
Chuck grinned at that, a toothy, menacing grin that made Joel want to hit him even more than he already wanted to hit him. “Apologize for what?” he asked. “Not only was that bitch asking for it, but if you hadn’t interrupted, she would have had the night of her life.”
Joel’s fingers curled reflexively into fists, but he forced himself not to react. Yet.
“Is she home?” Chuck asked when Joel remained silent. “’Cause me and the guys were thinking maybe we could give her another go. And this time you could watch and see how it’s supposed to be done.”
Joel’s fingers curled tighter, but he somehow managed to keep himself in check. “She’s not here, Chuck,” he said, surprised he was able to keep his voice level and bland. “Lucky you, since if she was here, you’d have your dick in a cast by now.” He smiled as he added, “Course, they’d have to go to the pediatric wing to find one small enough to fit a baby’s pinkie first.”
Chuck’s smile fell, and he took a swing at Joel, but Joel easily dodged it by taking a step back. Hobie and Donny, however, stepped in, each grabbing one of Joel’s arms and holding tight. When they did, his shirttail lifted just enough to reveal the 9 mm nestled at his waist, which Chuck naturally noticed.
“Well, well, well,” he said with delight as he withdrew it and held it aloft for the others to see. “What have we here?” He eyed Joel with something akin to glee. “Who the hell walks around their own apartment packing? The only guys who do that, I figure, are either up to something they shouldn’t be or else they’re big pussies.” His smile went lethal. “So which are you, Ned?”
Joel figured it would probably be best at this point to just keep his mouth shut and figure out how to turn the situation around. Chuck wanted to get a rise out of him, and if Joel reacted, he’d be giving the guy what he wanted. So he said nothing, only continued to meet Chuck’s gaze levelly, keeping his expression bland. Sure enough, Chuck’s smile fell again, and he didn’t try to provoke Joel any further.
He did, however, tuck the gun into his own waistband and say, “I think I’ll have a little look around.”
Joel remembered then that his computer screen was currently filled with the particulars of the virus he’d downloaded from Hobie’s computer. He had no idea if Chuck would be able to discern that by looking at it, but if Hobie saw it, he doubtless would. There were other things in Joel’s room, too, that might indicate to Chuck what he and Lila were doing, and he hastily scanned his memory to recall what he’d been working on earlier in the day. He’d had Sorcerer’s dossier out, but he was pretty sure he’d put that back in his briefcase and locked it. But—damn—he hadn’t returned Iris Daugherty’s school records to his briefcase. The file was closed, but it was sitting on his desk beside the computer.
Joel dug frantically into his brain, trying to think of something to say that would keep Chuck from entering his bedroom. But God help him, his mind was a complete blank. So he did what millions of brainless men before him had done. He began to fight. Hard. Hobie and Donny were both shorter and more wiry than Joel, but there were two of them. And although Joel caught them by enough surprise that he was able to free himself and get in a few punches, it wasn’t long before they had him by the arms again, this time twisting them behind his back in a way that, if they pushed much harder, could have broken some bones.
The sound of the scuffle brought Chuck out of the bedroom, and he was carrying Iris’s file, open now, when he returned. He scanned the contents—which really weren’t incriminating, except for the fact that if Joel was a student, he shouldn’t have access to them—then looked up at Joel with a smile.
“Got a thing for Iris, Ned?” he asked. “That smokin’-hot Jenny’s not enough for you? Ya ask me, once a guy had a piece ’a that, he wouldn’t need the other white meat.”
Joel kept his tone level as he replied, “Yeah, well, you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Chuck? Since the time you tried to taste her, she left your meat out for a whole party to enjoy.”
Instead of reacting angrily to the remark, Chuck said, “Yeah, well, next time I taste her, she’s gonna melt in my mouth. And if you’re nice, there might be a little piece of her left for you. After Hobie and Donny get their turn. And maybe some ’a the guys at the frat house. They’re still pretty disappointed about how that whole thing turned out.”
“Gee, if they thought they were disappointed not to get a turn with Jenny,” Joel said, “imagine how they’re going to feel when she serves them their own nuts on a silver platter.”
“If she can still walk after we’re through with her,” Chuck said.
Okay, so much for being self-contained and stoic, Joel thought. That was for pussies. Harnessing all the rage he’d been tamping down ever since that night at the frat party, he heaved himself forward, out of Hobie’s and Donny’s grasp, and lunged at Chuck.
Never in his life had he tried to fight three men all by himself. Even that night at the frat house, he’d had Lila fighting by his side. And before that night at the frat house, Joel had never engaged in physical combat with even one man before. Since Lila had come into his life, though, he’d gotten seriously in touch with his inner caveman. And not just when it came to fighting. Truth be told, he’d kind of liked getting to know the guy, too. Which was good, because he really needed his primitive side at the moment.
Even so, Joel struggled as he fought the three men. But whenever he felt himself beginning to succumb, he thought again about how Lila had looked when he’d burst into the room at the frat house, and about what Chuck had threatened to do just now, and the rage came again, and the power came again, and Joel let the caveman take over, and was suddenly perfectly willing and completely able to tear apart and disembowel anyone who threatened his mate.
He had no idea how long he fought like that, nor did he realize how much damage he did. Not until the sound of a single gunshot penetrated his frenzy enough that he was able to realize what was going on. And what was going on was that Joel had Hobie pinned beneath Donny and Donny pinned beneath himself. He had a vague recollection of having had Chuck by the hair a moment ago, too, and having slammed his head into the floor. The evidence of that was clear when he looked up to see Chuck gazing back at him with a bloodied lip and a huge red contusion on his forehead. Unfortunately Chuck also had the gun trained on Joel, and his hand was shaking, as if even he wasn’t sure whether or not he would shoot again.
“What the hell is the matter with you?”
he shouted at the pile of men on the floor. Though the question, Joel thought, was probably directed at him in particular.
“Nothing’s…the matter…with me,” he panted, surprised to realize how much trouble he was having catching his breath. “But I imagine…at least a handful…of my neighbors…have called the police by now…about that gunshot. And once they get here…there might be one or two things…the matter with you.”
The understanding of what he’d done dawned on Chuck like a rabid badger at his groin. “Grab ’im,” he said to Hobie and Donny, evidently not thinking about how hard that was going to be since they were both still pinned under the guy they were supposed to be grabbing. Once he did, he shook the gun at Joel again. “Get up. Get up, or I swear to God, I’ll blow your head off.”
Until that moment, Joel would have sworn Chuck was incapable of carrying out such a threat. But there was terror in his eyes, and he’d taken a fairly decent blow to his head. Maybe more than one—Joel honestly couldn’t remember. Hell, just the way the guy’s hand was shaking could potentially cause the gun to go off. So he did what Chuck told him to, rising slowly and stepping away from the other two men, hoping he was right and that at least one of his neighbors had called the police. Provided one of his neighbors was home. And provided they recognized the sound as a gunshot and didn’t assume it was a car backfiring or an out-of-season firecracker.
“Grab ’im,” Chuck told his friends again, once they were standing.
They were almost as dazed as he was, but they did as Chuck instructed. And all the while, he kept the gun pointed at Joel’s forehead, his hand in no way steady.
“Look, Chuck, just take it easy,” Joel said, trying to both calm him down and buy some time.
Chuck tightened his grip on the gun and steadied his hand a little. But Joel wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. “Don’t tell me what to do, man. Do
not
tell me what to do.”
“Fine. I won’t tell you what to do. But it might be a good idea if you guys left.”
“Oh, we will,” Chuck assured him. “We’re heading out right now. And you, you dick, are going with us.”
I
F HE HAD TO BE HELD
hostage, Joel thought an hour later as he worked at the leather belts binding each of his wrists to the arms of a chair, he supposed he could do a lot worse than the Four Seasons Hotel. Escape was as close as the telephone. All he had to do was dial room service and ask them to send up a rescue party and a bottle of Dom Pérignon, and add it to the tab of his host, since he knew his host so well. It was, after all, a logical assumption to conclude that his host was Adrian Padgett. No way could Chuck and his loser friends afford the Four Seasons. And no way would they have kidnapped Joel unless it was because his and Lila’s cover was blown.
