The Second Lie (Immortal Vikings Book 2) (8 page)

“No.”
Yes.
She straightened and tried to move away, but holding a stiff pose against the swaying of the little wagon was a losing battle when last night’s tackle made itself felt in her aching shoulders and left knee, which throbbed in time to the rotations of the steel wheels.

“You must be sore.” His hand squeezed the clenched triangle of muscle where her neck and shoulder met. The rhythmic pressure and release made the motor’s whine recede enough to feel more like white noise. It was much warmer in the small tunnel than it had been in the larger platform space. A lack of ventilation, she assumed.

“Close your eyes.” He spoke so close to her ear that she could feel his breath move her hair. “We’re about to reach Bird Street station and another flash.”

She saw the flicker of bright colors through her eyelids, but instead of worrying about cameras, her head bobbed forward. As they reentered another section of dark tunnel, he used both hands on her shoulders and rearranged her position. Instead of sitting side by side, she was turned at an angle so his hands could access more of her back.

Heavenly.

“Wimpole Street, next stop.” If his murmur was played for bus stop announcements, females between fifteen and ninety-five would ride transit just to listen. Especially if the ride included a massage. The rhythmic motion was lulling her into forgetting why she should move away from him and bringing up thoughts of what would happen if she turned to face him. His hands took her to the world of not-quite-sleep, the point where she could sense events happening around her, but through a veil.

“The total ride takes less than twenty-five minutes.”

“That’s—” Her mind was a blank, the sibilant final sound stretching between them as she wondered what she’d intended to say, her words all chased away by the overwhelming urge to sink deeper into his arms.

“Not enough time.” Then he turned her around and his lips replaced the questions she might have asked with one simple need: him.

She arched toward him, wanting to press herself harder against his chest, but she couldn’t untwist her legs. Their bodies touched at only a few points, each of those connections clocking overtime to send sensation to the untouched places that yearned for more. The stubble on his cheek was intoxicating. She stroked his jaw to feel the rasp of his skin, so different from hers. Her other hand traced his shoulder through the smooth shirt fabric, the contrast of textures making her melt.

Colors flashed behind her eyelids, the sensor-triggered lights exactly mirroring her desire. Her breasts grew heavy and she pushed her body closer to him at the same time she pulled his head and shoulders lower, but the yearned-for friction eluded her, blocked by clothing.

As if he sensed her need, either from her moan or her movements, he laid a hand at the exact spot where she wanted pressure.

“Yes.” Her voice was small, but he must have heard it over the churning of the train because he rubbed her nipple hard enough to be felt through the remaining layers of fabric, sending her deeper into the dark forbidden place. What they were doing was illicit and sexy, wicked and yet as necessary as breathing, all at the same time. She’d been too busy with competitions to be a defiant teenager, and then in her twenties she’d raised her half brother and started her business, but suddenly she understood the allure of making mistakes. Of jumping.

“Christina.” He trailed kisses down her neck and murmured her name in that perfect voice. Her head grew too heavy for her weakened muscles, so she let it slip to the side. Which exposed more skin for his mouth. His mouth came, hot and wet, sucking lightly at a spot on her neck that immediately connected with every frisson running across her skin. She could feel the touch of his lips in her throbbing breasts, even in her clenched thighs, but she needed more. She yearned to be unrestrained. To be free. To be greedy.

He understood and his skillful fingers went for her chest zipper. The rush as he slipped his hand inside, past the jacket to the flimsy obstacle of her T-shirt and bra, was exquisite. She moaned and threw her head back as yet another strobe of light pounded her eyelids. This flash couldn’t possibly be a station. It must be caused by the push and tug of his fingers through the thin covering. This light was him.

She was hanging from his shoulders, opened, ready, as he ran both hands on her body. One still at her breasts, the other tracing the curve of her waist to her hip, pushing aside her purse and thrusting her jacket higher so he could touch her skin, her hot skin, damp with sweat and desire but not as hot as the fingers that stroked her waist. She was about to get what her breasts, so heavy and aching, wanted. His touch.

Their ride jerked to a stop, knocking her forward and then back. She opened her eyes. Another station, bigger, brightly lit.

The end. The enclosed space had been a respite between what had happened before and what would happen next, giving them freedom to exist only in the now, but the ride had finished.

“Time to move on.” Shallow, panting breaths interrupted his usual smooth delivery. He seemed distracted and looked away from her as he stood to step out of the mail car. “That’s the price, I’m afraid.”

Somehow she’d ended up stretched across the wagon floor on one hip. Without his body for support, the position was uncomfortable and a hard object dug into her side below her ribcage. The phone she’d taken from the junkie’s backpack. It brought her back to reality. She sat up.

“Price of what?” Hot kisser or not, when they got out of this tunnel, she’d find a way to use the phone and call Elaine Johnson. Probably better to ask the older lady for help than to approach the police, given her own status. Maybe she could ride back to California on the Johnsons’ private jet. She bet immigration never looked closely at people who arrived that way.

“Our profession.” He held a hand to help her rise. His eyes looked sad, not like a man who’d been passionately kissing her.

“Yours. Not mine.” She didn’t have energy to spare dissecting their embrace, not until she’d slept for ten hours, so if he was going to pretend that kiss didn’t happen, she’d gratefully ignore it too.

“Where are we?” Away from the heat of his body, she felt cold standing on the platform with her coveralls gaping open.

“Whitechapel Eastern Delivery Office,” he said. “A short walk from Traitor’s Gate.”

She shuddered as she tucked her purse into place and pulled up her zipper. “That wasn’t supposed to reassure me, was it?”

“It was a bit of self-loathing aimed more at myself, I fear.” He brushed dirt off his dark pants. “Look lively. We have to get out of here without being spotted. No time to waste.”

“I know. I have an auction to stop, remember?”

Her words caused a chill that must have dropped the temperature on the platform ten degrees. She huddled inside what felt like meager clothing, waiting for his reply.

“Give me three days of your time, and I’ll call it off for you.”

Chapter Eight

“Why should I believe that?” Christina faced him, her hand protectively cradled around the bag holding the wine, and her loose hair crackling with static energy from their embrace.

“Because I’m the only person in the last twenty-four hours who’s helped you.” Stig wanted to remain here to argue and make up, but their movements had turned on the lights in nine separate stations, including where they stood under a still-operating facility. He shooed her toward the end of the platform and a small catwalk that led past the buffer stop.

She snorted but obeyed. “You’re the source of my problems.”

She didn’t know the half of it.

“I apologize for all my previous transgressions, known and unknown.” As soon as she realized what he’d taken from her handbag, and what they’d been doing when he’d filched it, all chance of repeating those kisses would disappear. “But today is Thursday, and the auction is scheduled for Sunday. Come to France with me, and I promise, Saturday morning I’ll call Bodeby’s.”

Wend and Skafe would pass Ivar the message to be at the Greek’s tomorrow night, so he had a destination and a deadline. The Viking leader always paid promptly. Depending on Ivar’s proposition, Stig might be in a position to be similarly generous, but leaving Christina on the loose to report fake wine, fake shootings and hidden art would be counterproductive. “I’ll pull the fakes, all the Morrison and Mancini wines, whatever you say. I’ll purchase them personally so Lady Seymour has no complaints.” A quick sleight of accounting hand, but doable. “I’ll put the word out that she chose to withdraw those particular lots for family reasons.”

“No.”

He gripped the rusted rungs of the ladder below another grate and held up three fingers of his free hand, making sure his empty wrist was even with her eye level. “Three days. Then I’ll fix the auction and kill off Geoffrey Morrison. As gruesomely as you wish.”

Her lips twitched, their tight line dangerously close to becoming a curve. “That last part sounds perfect, but I won’t—
We
won’t—”

“I need your assistance, not sex.” He detected a softening from her hesitation, so time to give her a bit of space. He turned to scale the ladder, fully aware that she watched every move of his arms and legs. Indifferent she was not. “However, if you are completely bowled over by my irresistible charm, I’m happy to fulfill all requests ranging from toffee to latex.”

Below him, one corner of her mouth indented as she fought a smile.

Swaying her with humor meant he wouldn’t have to use blackmail. “For the record, I prefer chocolate sauce to rough trade.”

This time her smile was the full monty.

“Come on then,” he said.

She reached the top as he shifted the grate. They weren’t destined to be as lucky here as at St. Mary’s. Three men loitered, talking and smoking down the alley to the left.

He whispered, “Soon as we’re out, go to the right. Act like you’re reading meters. You’ve got the coveralls for the job.”

“Someone’s there?”

“They don’t look like they’ll care, but we shouldn’t hang about. We can continue this discussion when we’re far from the scene of our illegal entry of government property. Agreed?”

Her eye roll had the same relationship to agreement as skimmed milk had to butter, but it was good enough. Out they went, turned right, hit the bustle and traffic of Whitechapel Road and crossed to the left. After the black-and-white isolation of the Mail Rail tunnel, the blend of colorful jeweled fabrics, burqas and jeans that filled one of London’s vibrant immigrant communities made him want to grab Christina’s hand and twirl in the street.

But then they’d be hit by a bus. He didn’t have a second hospital escape in him.

“There.” He guided her to a small park to where two men lounged with rucks and bags on a bench. “Give them your coveralls.”

She nodded her immediate understanding of the need to change appearance, wiggled out of them, and they were walking with the late morning crowd again.

“I still don’t understand why you want me to go to France if you’re willing to cancel the auction anyway.”

He spotted one of the ubiquitous bike rental stations where the grass met the pavement. “I need a partner.”

“For what?”

“First, to help me get off this island.” He fished a prepaid, untraceable debit card from his wallet and inserted it into the hire bicycle rental terminal. “You’re quite handy.”

“Sounds like there’s a next.” When her hands readjusted the strap of the messenger bag and the chain of her purse, he willed her not to open the smaller bag, not yet. “What are you doing?”

“What’s it look like?” Nobody noticed idiots on Boris bikes, so day access would give them unobtrusive transport to his flat. “You heard my former associates. Their boss wants to see me. He’s going to demand I do a job, and I might need a partner.” The last time he’d shared a drink with Ivar at the Greek’s, the leader of the Vikings had given him a decoded schedule for Nazi art trains out of Paris and ordered him to save the contents. Seventy years, and the word
ask
still hadn’t entered Ivar’s vocabulary.

She leaned closer and dropped her voice. “You want me to help you commit a crime? In France? No thanks. No. And there’s nothing you can do to make me.”

“What if I say please?” They had a bit more than twenty-four hours to reach Calais and drive to the far corner of Belgium. Hopefully Stavros’s pub was still serving that corner of the Ardennes Forest, although the big Greek himself was presumably worm fodder.

“The begging eyes are a nice touch, but no.”

As he secured bicycle release codes, he tilted his head toward two men in their distinctive black uniforms and caps walking across the park. They’d reach the homeless gentlemen with the overalls in about twenty paces. “If that’s your last word.”

Her eyes flicked to the cops, and back to him. “It is.” She sounded less certain.

“Then hop on. I’m in a hurry to get out of here.” He could see her indecision, so he pressed hard on his advantage. “I can’t count high enough to enumerate all the laws we’ve broken in the past twelve hours, and the main word you should hear in that sentence is the pronoun
we.
So please, get on this bloody bike and pedal your arse off.”

Her lips pulled away from her teeth, but she threw her leg over and settled that delicious bottom on the saddle, so he knew she was in. She just didn’t know quite how deep yet.

* * *

Thirty minutes later, Christina realized she might have preferred jail. “Don’t know why you chose bikes.” Her butt ached to holy hell from bouncing over cobblestones and bricks perched on the hardest, smallest seat imaginable. Stig apparently had no problems getting his bike to move as fast as he wanted, but hers probably weighed more than she did. “Freaking subway in this city, you know.”

“Cameras, my dear. The Tube is highly monitored.”

“A boat. Don’t tell me they have cameras watching those Thames river cruises.” Her legs kept pumping and the pedals kept circling, but they never seemed to arrive at their destination. The futility mirrored her fatigue. First an all-nighter. Maybe two, if this was more than thirty-six hours since she’d left home. But she couldn’t stop here, on the road. “We could have been resting. On a wide seat.” In the oversized combat boots, her feet slammed up and down and she felt the hot spot of a blister on her right heel. “If we’d taken a boat.”

“Did you know eight hundred and fifty people died when the Baltic ferry Estonia sank in 1994? The bow doors to the vehicle deck broke open and it flooded. Bloody thing flipped ninety degrees in thirty minutes.”

She watched his calves piston, his legs and back creating her only point of reference since her brain had stopped processing signs about two blocks into the ride. “I wasn’t talking about a freaking ferry.” Banging her words out with each downward pedal push felt like an accomplishment. The self-assessing voice in her head warned that all she was achieving was a world-class whine, but she didn’t have the energy left to edit herself. “I was talking about that motorboat I saw five minutes ago that looks like a school bus on the river.”

“Fifty-two percent of the water-related deaths in Britain occur on inland waterways. Rivers and lakes. Your American school buses must have a slightly better record.”

“What are you, an encyclopedia of drowning?” Why did tourists take bike tours of the Napa Valley when they could hire a limo, and then their asses wouldn’t be killing them?

“I do not enjoy boating.” His words were as clipped as her temper.

“You have cuff links from the—”

“Precisely.”

She could sense the revolutions of her legs on the pedals slowing, like a wind-up toy on its last jittering, jerky rotations when the buzz of gears devolved into separate mechanical clicks. She was disconnecting, clicking, no longer shifting thoughts and actions into smooth motions.

A block later, she tipped over.

His tires skidded as he stopped. “For fuck’s sake. You fell off the bike.”

“No, I went on strike.” She hadn’t been going fast enough when she fell over for any serious injury, but being tangled with the metal machine on the wet ground made her want to cry. Held at knifepoint, tackled by kidnappers, at the scene of a shooting, and the thing that brought her to tears was a bicycle. At least she’d wrapped her prize bottle of Perlus securely in its bag and it hadn’t shattered when she tumbled, although she was close to breaking.

“There you are now.” He kneeled beside her and shifted her leg to untangle her boot from the wheel spokes. “You’re quite alright.”

No, she wasn’t. “Did Sherlock Holmes ever maim Watson?” So what if he was careful and gentle and handsome and occasionally funny? He was responsible for all of this, everything that had happened to her. “You’re the worst partner ever.”

Her brain knew the edge of the road was littered and puddled, but it was flat and her neck couldn’t keep her head up. The sky above was gray, a puffy gray she never saw in Napa. The clouds seemed to be so full of moisture and low to the surrounding buildings that she knew if she was on a roof she could wrap herself in them like a blanket. The street, however, wasn’t much of a mattress.

“It occurs to me that you’re probably famished.” His head and shoulders blocked her view of the sky and his hands were careful as he lifted the bicycle and removed the pedal from her knee.

Predictably, his care made her hate him more. He wouldn’t have to be helping her if he hadn’t caused her to be lying here in the first place.

“Did you know the vole eats constantly, up to its body weight every day?” He turned her palms up, and she realized she’d scraped the right one on the pavement. “I’ve shamefully neglected to feed you.”

Her brain stuttered for a moment when he pressed his lips to the scrape on her hand, then started with a kick that matched the feeling in her stomach. The softness of his lips brushing her palm contrasted with the rough scrape of his unshaven chin on her fingertips.

“I think you just compared me to a rodent.” Drat her husky voice. It was tears of pain, exacerbated by tiredness and hunger. That was the only reason she sounded throaty. “On top of everything else, you’re going to insult me in such a lame way? You are clearly history’s worst criminal mastermind.”

He threw back his head and laughed at her. “And there was me, thinking I was clever.”

“Jerk,” she said, but it didn’t even sound to her like she meant it.

“Guilty.” He pulled her to her feet. “I generally suck, absolutely.” He looked at the sky. “Let’s get to my flat before it rains, shall we?”

“How far?” Kicking the damn bike would not solve her problems.

“A few more blocks to the cycle return, then we can walk.”

“We’re returning the bikes? Not abandoning them?”

“That would be disorderly, not to mention a crime.”

“You’re serious?”

He placed a hand over his heart. “Henceforth, no lies shall issue from these lips.” His slight bow and outstretched arm undermined his sincerity, but his theatrical performance gave her the spark to lift her feet and move.

Ten minutes later, she conceded that Stig hadn’t lied to her about the distance to his apartment, although the method of getting in was more complicated than unlocking the front door. She glanced along the cobblestone alley but saw no one else in the dim afternoon, perhaps because it was a quiet dead end in a gentrified neighborhood of three-and four-story brick buildings.

He unlocked an ornate black iron gate in a matching fence and motioned her down a short flight of steps to a flagstone-paved landing about four feet below street level. Potted tulips were only days away from blooming around the door.

“Another basement?” she asked.

“This used to be a violin factory with connected below-ground storage. When they divided the building into flats, they left one utility access here for the whole block, although the front façade looks like separate buildings. If the situation requires discretion, I use this route.”

“Discretion. So that’s what weaseling through a locked basement window is called in this country.”

As they climbed an interior staircase of black-stained hardwood and steel fittings against white walls, watery sunshine from the skylight filtered to them. Thin and gray, it matched her mood.

His apartment was on the top floor. The sleek furniture, white walls and oversized abstract paintings made her more aware of her grubby clothes and the two days of dirt clogging every pore.

“Don’t touch it!”

Her hand froze over the light switch.

“No lights yet. Nor opened curtains.”

She dropped her hand to her side. It was dirty anyway and probably would have left a gray smudge on his immaculate white controls.

“I don’t rent under the name Geoffrey Morrison, but in case Geoffrey’s identity was connected to this address, we shouldn’t announce our presence.” From the living room, he pointed to the left and the right. His apartment was at least twice the size of hers, and the cost and style of the furnishings proclaimed his lifestyle to be on the side of the ledger where she put clients. “Food or shower?”