Requiem for an Assassin (15 page)

“Has he?”

“So far, only fragments. I know he’s got Dox on a boat, and on one of our calls they were in Jakarta. He’s probably moving among various Indonesian islands, and maybe ports in nearby countries. I’m trying to narrow it down.”

She knew not to ask him whether he had already done one of the jobs. Her gut told her he had. And still it hadn’t been enough. He was going to have to do it again. God.

She took a sip of wine, thinking. “And you’re sure Dox is…”

He nodded. “I’ve spoken to him twice. The first time, Hilger did something to him to make him scream. He screamed for a long time.”

From the flatness of his tone and the stillness of his expression, he might have been describing something he’d read about in the news, not the overheard torture of a friend. What was it costing him, to recall and relate a memory like that one with such dispassion?

She took his hand and looked at him. “I’m sorry, John.”

He shook his head slightly, his eyes still on his wineglass.

“Hey,” she said. With her other hand, she reached for his chin, and gently steered his face toward hers. He met her eyes, and the flatness she saw in his actually made her flinch. She’d seen eyes like that before, on Gil, her colleague, the frighteningly efficient killer who had died in Hong Kong. But Gil’s eyes were like that all the time; it was all there was to him. It was worse to see the look on John, whom she knew so much better, whom she cared about so intimately.

He blinked, then suddenly was back, his eyes alive again. He swallowed and looked away. “You, uh, you want dessert?” he asked, glancing around for the waiter.

They finished with a Grand Marnier soufflé accompanied by glasses of an ’85 Graham’s Port, followed by French-press coffee. That look she’d seen didn’t return, but nor could she say he was being himself. It was almost as though someone was doing a good imitation of him, but the persona wasn’t quite natural, with some acting, some effort showing through it. But why? What was he hiding?

Back at the suite, Rain poured them each a healthy measure of the Glenmorangie. The fire had burned low, and she sat on the couch, the lights off, watching him kneel in the glow of the embers, moving coals, adding logs, getting it going again. After a little while, there was a good blaze, and she thought he would join her. But he didn’t. He stayed where he was, kneeling almost formally, one hand under the whiskey glass, the other on its side, watching the flames, his back to her.

“You going to come sit with me?” she asked.

After a moment, he came wordlessly to the couch and sat down a few inches away.

“What is it?” she asked, after a moment.

“I’ve just got a lot to think about.”

“You want to talk about it?”

He took a swallow of whiskey. “I don’t know how to.”

She looked at him. “Maybe that’s the problem.”

He returned the look, his eyes narrowing. “No. The problem is the problem. Not my disinclination to discuss it.”

“So you know how to, but don’t want to.”

For an instant, his face contorted in anger. He swallowed and seemed to get it under control. “What difference does it make?” he said.

“It makes a lot of difference. How is about you. Not wanting to is about me.”

He flushed and looked away, and she realized she was pushing too hard, no matter the truth of her words. She could be enormously patient and subtle when she was eliciting information from a target, but she had a habit of reverting to a more primitive, more deep-seated self with Rain. She cared too much about him; that was the problem. Her feelings made her forget herself. They brought forth all her default settings, the bad along with the good.

A little more tactical, girl,
she thought.
Not just for you. For him, too.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It just…scares me when you keep everything bottled up. It makes me feel insecure. I’m not used to feeling that way.”

He finished his Glenmorangie. Ordinarily, he savored a good single malt. Gulping it down like this, especially after a bottle of wine and a glass of port, wasn’t like him. “What do you mean?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Just…there are parts of you that you don’t let me see. And sometimes I feel like they’re the most important parts.” She was being tactical now, yes, but she wasn’t lying, either.

He refilled his glass and topped off hers. They sat quietly for a while, Delilah sipping her whiskey, Rain drinking his down, the light from the fire playing on the walls.

“I don’t know why you want to be with me,” he said, staring into the flames.

“Why do you say that?”

He kept looking away from her. “Because of what I am.”

“What are you?”

“You know.”

“I don’t. I only know how I feel about you.”

He shook his head as though saying
No, you’re missing the point,
then looked at her, his lips pursed, struggling with what he was trying to say. This time, what she saw in his eyes was utterly different from what she’d seen in the bar. She had never seen it before in him and wasn’t entirely sure what it was. But if she had to attach a word to it, the word would be…pleading.

“I’m…a…killer!” he whispered emphatically, as though simultaneously ashamed at the admission and bewildered that she couldn’t understand the point.

He looked away again. “Look at me,” he said, his voice rising. “I can’t stop. The most I can do is take breaks from the life, like an addict falling on and off the wagon. But it always finds me again. And you know why? Because it
is
me. It’s what I am.”

He drained the rest of his whiskey and slammed the empty glass down on the coffee table, then stood and started pacing, his head swiveling, his hands clenching. He was so wound up it looked like his body was fighting itself, the muscles bunched and writhing under the clothes.

She got up and intercepted him. He stopped in front of her and stood there, breathing hard, his hands balled into fists. No wonder he was working out the way he was. If he didn’t burn some of this off, it was going to consume him.

“Hey,” she said, trying to get him to meet her eyes. “Hey. I know you. As well as I’ve ever known anyone, maybe better. Don’t tell me you’re only that one thing.”

He laughed harshly. “What else matters?”

She took his face in her hands and steered it so that he was looking into her eyes. “You,” she said. “What you decide. That’s what matters.”

“I’m talking about what I am.”

She shook her head. “What you choose is what matters. Not the things you’ve done, or your abilities, or the training you’ve had, or even your inclinations. You can atone for all the rest, but your choices are what make you who you are.”

“You don’t understand….”

“I do. You’re not Gil. Don’t reduce yourself to that one thing. Find a way to be more than that. You have been, I’ve watched it happening in Paris.”

“I was fooling myself in Paris. And I guess you, too.”

“No, you’re fooling yourself now, or trying to. You’re in a bad situation and you’re terribly worried about your friend. Don’t let that…”

“I can’t!” he shouted. “I can’t be both. I have to be a certain way, or…or…”

“To save Dox, yes, you have to be that way, I understand,” she said, staying with him. “And you will. But that’s situational. It doesn’t define what you are. Don’t let it.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and drew his lips back from his teeth as though the agony he felt were physical. “I don’t know how,” he whispered.

“By the choices you make.”

He shook his head violently. “I don’t have a choice.”

“I know, and for the moment, you’re doing what you have to do. But the moment is going to pass. It’s a situation, it isn’t you.”

He looked up at the ceiling, his breath coming in short, sharp bursts, the muscles in his neck tight cords. He was fighting something, tears, terror, she didn’t know what.

“I…” he said, and then the word was choked off. He shook his head and took hold of her wrists as though preparing to cast her aside, and she sensed that whatever battle was raging inside him, he was losing it.

“Stay with me, John,” she said, trying to get him to look at her again. “Stay with me, please….”

And then he had her face in his hands and he was kissing her, ferociously, desperately, ravening her as though she was the only connection keeping him from being sucked away into some nameless horror. She kissed him back, hard, her mouth open, her hands in his hair, letting him feel her, take whatever he needed from her, making him know with her mouth and her hands and her body that she was there and she wasn’t going to let him go.

He backed her into the bedroom, his hands still on her face, his mouth not leaving hers for an instant. The feel of her jeans rubbing against her as she moved was suddenly maddening, electric, and she realized with a start that she was close to coming from nothing more than the way he was kissing her and the friction of a tight pair of jeans. For a moment, she forgot where they were, she wanted him to just keep kissing her like that, keep moving her like that, yes, just that way…

The back of her thighs bumped against the side of the bed. She was barely thinking now, she just wanted him naked, his skin against her, his weight on her, all of him inside her. He broke the kiss to lift her sweater over her head and was back before he had even tossed it aside, his tongue, his teeth, the taste of whiskey and his own taste, too. She managed to get his belt open, then his pants. She reached inside, and when she felt how hard he was, it excited her even more. She squeezed and felt his breath catch.

She pushed the jacket off his shoulders and tugged it down over his arms, then got his shirt off and threw it aside, never once letting him stop kissing her. He pushed her back on the bed and stepped out of his pants. She realized her bra was gone, she hadn’t even been aware of his doing it. Her groin ached and she was panting. Without thinking, she put her hand on herself, over her jeans, and rubbed. “Hurry,” she said.

Then he was naked, leaning over her, unbuttoning her jeans. He hooked his fingers inside the waistband and peeled the jeans and her panties down over her legs and flung them away. She scrambled back on the bed, spreading her legs and raising her knees, and Rain moved on top of her. She took hold to guide him and she was so wet that he didn’t stop or even slow but buried himself inside her with one violent stroke. She gasped with the mixed pleasure and pain of it and he moved back and thrust again and this time she cried out because she was coming, her back arching, her body shuddering, her hands moving involuntarily to his ass to pull him deeper, deeper. She felt his arms go under hers and he took her face hard in both hands and spread her legs wider with his thighs, his weight on her now, holding her, pinning her to the bed, kissing her hard again, fucking her like some primitive natural force she’d conjured but could now no longer control. He was moaning in her mouth, she could hear it and feel it both, and his movements grew faster, more brutal, and she felt another orgasm welling up from the depths of her. He groaned and squeezed his eyes shut and hammered at her harder than ever, as though enraged, or enraptured, or punishing an enemy he didn’t know how else to kill. Then the groan grew wilder and his body tensed and she felt him coming and she came, too, a shock wave of pleasure reverberating from her groin to her toes, her breasts, her fingertips, her mouth where he was kissing her still.

Slowly, gingerly, she settled back onto the bed, gasping as though she had just surfaced from the deep. Rain dropped his head next to hers and took some weight onto his elbows. She heard him mumble something, she didn’t know what, and she smiled through near delirium.

He remained like that for a few moments, the only movement the gradually slowing rise and fall of his breathing. Then he rolled off her onto his back, but close this time, so their bodies were touching, not the way it had been on the couch. They lay there, and she imagined a pair of shipwreck survivors who had just washed up exhausted onto a beach.

He came to his side to face her and put a hand on her belly. A line of sweat was trickling down his forehead, and she wiped it away with a finger.

“You okay?” he asked.

She smiled. “Okay?”

“I didn’t mean to be so…rough.”

She laughed. “I think you did.”

He dropped his eyes and a little color crept into his cheeks. “Well…”

He looked so appealing to her right then. The tousled hair…the sweat…the sudden shyness after a bout of demonic lovemaking. “Sometimes you’re a little rough, John,” she said, tracing the contours of his face with her fingertips. “It’s part of you. It’s part of what I…like about you.”

Good God, in the raw, dazed honesty of the moment, she had almost said, “What I love about you.” She had been close before to giving voice to those feelings, but had always pulled back out of fear of his reaction.

“Come sit with me in the hot tub,” she said.

He looked at her, sidelong. “I don’t know if I can move.”

She smiled and punched him on the shoulder. “If I can, you can.”

They switched off the patio lights and entered the water slowly, wincing from the heat at first, then enduring, and finally surrendering to it. They sat immersed in the near dark, steam rising into the cool air around them.

“It’s good here, isn’t it?” Delilah said. In the dim light, she could see his eyes, but not make out his expression.

He didn’t answer for a while. He was looking past her, and just as she thought she would take a chance and ask him what he was thinking, he said, “How will I know?”

“Know what?”

“How to make the right choice. Because I never have before.”

She reached through the water and took his hand. “I think you made a good one a few minutes ago. That’s a start.”

D
OX HAD BECOME
adept at reading sounds and other signals on the boat. Whose footsteps belonged to whom; whose muffled voices. The vibration of the engine when they were at sea; its silence when they were in port. The slight dip and rise of the craft when someone stepped on or off it. He knew they were in a port right now, somewhere. Hilger and the blond dude were off the boat; only Uncle Fester and the young-looking guy were still aboard.

He heard footsteps on the stairs and knew from the sound it was Fester. He glanced up a moment later and there he was, looking in through the door window. Dox smiled at him to let him know he wasn’t afraid, and turned up both his hands to offer a double middle finger salute. He heard the lock turning, and Fester poked his head in.

“How you doing, Uncle Fester?” Dox asked, smiling as though the psycho were his best friend.

“I’m good,
pendejo.
I wanted you to know, I’m going to bring you a surprise.”

“Oh, Fester, you don’t have to put yourself out for me. I know you’ve got important things to do, you know, lawns to mow, fruit to pick, things like that.”

Fester reddened and Dox felt a rush of satisfaction. He had nothing against Mexicans or anyone else for that matter. It was just a good way to push Fester’s buttons.

Fester recovered and broke out in a hundred-watt psycho smile. “Ordinarily, I’d fuck you up for that. But…I think now I’ll wait until next time I see you. I’ll bring the surprise then. I just want you to have it to think about.”

Dox shook his head. “Fester, I’m disappointed in you. It’s sad that a first-class sadist such as yourself should have to resort to such crude and obvious strategies as trying to instill dread in the prisoner. You’ve been reading too many books on interrogation, I think that’s the problem.”

Fester reddened again, and Dox thought he might be onto something. Before he could follow up, Fester said, “Oh, one more thing. You know, we’re setting up your friend. He’s doing some jobs for us, and then we’re going to kill him. Should be just another day, maybe two. When he’s dead, we won’t need you anymore. I’m telling you because I want you to wonder every time I knock on your door. ‘Is he here to give me my surprise? Or is he going to gut me and let me bleed over the side to attract sharks before throwing me in?”’

“That’s more like it, Fester! See how you put some of your own special personality into it? That time, it didn’t feel like it came from a book. Keep practicing, and soon you’ll be able to terrorize any helpless, manacled prisoner you like. You’ll be an inspiration to sadists everywhere.”

Fester smiled. “Okay,
pendejo.
See you soon.” He closed the door and Dox listened to his footsteps as he went up the stairs.

He let out a long breath. Just because Fester had read it in a book, and it was crude and obvious, didn’t make it ineffective. Knowing Fester’s tactics, and provoking the man on top of it, was helping. But when that door closed, and the sound of footsteps receded, it was hard not to be scared.

Especially after that “See you soon.” Something had kept Fester from losing his temper just now, something he was looking forward to. Dox hated to think of what it might be.