With Extreme Pleasure (7 page)

H
er backpack hefted over her shoulder, her hands stuffed in the pockets of the hoodie she was so glad she’d grabbed from the room, Cady paced a rut in the speckled linoleum in front of the emergency room cubicle where King was being stitched up. She’d been checked out in the cubicle adjoining, and released, no damage or dangerous smoke inhalation.

King was the one who had taken the hardest part of the hit. King was the one who’d lost what looked like half of his blood. King was the one who’d protected her when all she could think to do was sit up and scream.

If she’d taken off on her own this morning, she couldn’t imagine where she’d be now, if she’d be anywhere at all, or if she’d be dead. Because she knew without a doubt that what had happened to his SUV had nothing to do with King and everything to do with her.

And yet he’d saved her before saving himself.

She didn’t know why she was sticking around. She knew he wouldn’t want to see her. But she couldn’t make herself go without knowing he was okay.

Then again, neither one of them would be leaving until they’d talked to the authorities. The doctor who’d looked her over had relayed that order from the investigator standing near the ER door.

She was doing her best to ignore him. She knew his type, had dealt with men cut from the same cocky cloth during the investigation into Kevin’s murder. They knew it all, knew better than everyone around them, knew a lie when they heard one—even when the lie was the truth.

She was not looking forward to the grilling she knew was coming. She should’ve just stayed in New York, recovered from her beating, and moved on. Except moving on hadn’t worked in all the years she’d been doing it. Why she thought things had changed…

But then she stopped thinking about the cop who was waiting, stopped wondering whether or not she’d ever be able to move on, because the curtain to King’s cubicle opened and the doctor who’d been attending to him told him, “Good luck,” and walked out.

Cady rushed into the small partitioned room and watched as the nurse finished dressing the back of King’s head. When the other woman nodded, Cady came closer, leaning down close to King’s ear. “Hey. It’s me. Are you all right?”

“Sure,” he mumbled from where he rested facedown on an inflatable donut-shaped pillow. A four-inch circle on the back of his head had been shaved to the scalp. “As all right as a bald man can be.”

The nurse rolled her bright brown eyes, but couldn’t stop from grinning, her teeth white in her dark chocolate face. Cady didn’t even try. “You’re not bald. Just looking like a mangy dog.”

“Thanks. That helps.” He reached out a seeking hand, and she took it. “What about you? Any damage to your jugular or carotid?”

“Not even to my hair,” she said, laughing when he groaned.

“That’ll do ya, Mr. Trahan,” the nurse said, packing away the rest of her supplies. “Your discharge papers have the doctor’s orders on them. If you insist on traveling while on pain meds, you’ll have to get your girl here to do your driving for you.”

“Since my truck just blew up, that’s going to take some doing on her part,” King said, leaning more on Cady than on the nurse as they helped him to sit. “I think my face went to sleep while I was lying there. I can’t feel a thing.”

“Your face went to sleep because of the anesthetic the doctor injected before pulling that window out of your head.” The perky nurse showed them both the shard of bloody glass in the bottom of an aluminum pan.

Cady gasped. “Wow. I had no idea.”

“He’s lucky it hit where it did,” the nurse said, staring down at the huge projectile. “He jokes about your carotid and jugular. This thing could’ve sliced through either. Head wounds are big bleeders, though, so we gave up on trying to save his shirt.”

Cady didn’t know what to say. It was all she could do to meet King’s eyes and mouth, “Thank you,” without bursting into tears. But just as quickly she found herself telling him, “I’m so sorry,” and then whirling to leave before he could say a word in response.

This was all her fault, and as soon as he realized that, he was going to send her packing—unless he did worse. Why give him the chance when she could leave under her own steam before he forced her out?

She was stopped from completing her mad dash by the cop who’d been waiting. “Miss Kowalski? Mr. Trahan?”

King had been frowning at the paper scrub top he’d been given to wear, his T-shirt having been cut away during his examination, and was still frowning when he looked up. “Who wants to know?”

Cady wanted to laugh and ask him if it wasn’t obvious that they were about to be grilled and accused and covered by a blanket of suspicion and doubt.

Just because the man was wearing a designer suit, his silk tie barely askew, his white shirt gleaming, his leather shoes lacking a single scuff mark, and all of this in the middle of the night, was no reason to think otherwise.

But the cop surprised her by giving King a hand off the table and looking at her as he asked, “Are you two up for a very early breakfast?”

King gave the other man a thorough once-over. “Depends on who’s buying and what you want in return. Oh, and whether or not you can rustle me up a shirt made out of something besides paper towels.”

“I think I can do that,” the cop said with a smile.

“Good,” King said, pulling the disposable scrub top gingerly over his bandaged scalp. “Because everything I had with me just went up in flames.”

“Wait a minute,” Cady said. For King to be so compliant, his brain must’ve been deadened along with the rest of his head. Holding the strap of her bag, she demanded of the man not under the influence, “Who are you?”

His smile took on the look of molded plastic. Too shiny and fake to be worth anything. “I’ll fill you in on all of that once we’ve got a pot of coffee in front of us.”

Cady shook her head. “You’ll fill me in now, or I’m not taking another step.”

“Then let’s do this in the cafeteria at least.”

King finally came around. “Sounds like you don’t want an audience for this conversation.”

“If it is a conversation,” Cady added. “He hasn’t said a word about what he wants besides breakfast.”

The cop’s brown eyes darkened. His smile faded completely away. “You can’t think you wouldn’t have to answer questions about what just happened to your vehicle.”

“I figured I would’ve been asked a lot more of them by now, come to think of it.” King pushed by Cady and the cop, and looked up and down the ER corridor. “So where’re the troops? Where’s the bad cop to go with your good cop?”

“I’m not a cop,” the man told them. “But you are going to talk to me or I’ll bring them swarming down on this place to see that you do.”

Cady stayed silent and where she was, holding tight to her heavy backpack should she need to it as a weapon. His gaze fixed on that of the man between them, King remained in the corridor unmoving—the corridor that she realized was unnaturally quiet and absent the hustle and bustle of only minutes before.

There were no patients calling out for help, no gurney wheels rattling, no rolling crash carts or orders shouted, or pounding feet. Even the nurse who’d been attending to King had vanished, as had the doctor from before.

And where were the other victims of the explosion? It wasn’t like King had been the only one hurt, or Cady the only one who’d been transported to the ER to be seen to. Something was going on here, and she didn’t like it one bit.

She took matters into her own hands, needing to do something before King’s wooziness sent them down a path that ended in another trip to the ER—if not the morgue. “We’ll go to the cafeteria. But we’re not going anywhere else. Not without a whole lot of explanation and documentation and answers from you.”

The man-who-wasn’t-a-cop’s smile came back. “That I can do.”

“Fine. Just don’t think this is going to be the start of a beautiful friendship or anything.”

“Friendship? No. But we’ll see about the anything,” he said, then indicated she and King should go first.

She shook her head, gestured with her chin for him to get moving. “You lead. We’ll follow. I prefer having someone behind me who’s got my back, not someone waiting for a chance to stab it.”

At that, the man laughed, a strangely chilling sound that had Cady wondering if she, the peasant, should’ve left things alone, and let the royalty call the shots.

“M
y name is Fitzwilliam McKie. You can call me Fitz, Will, or Liam,” the man told them. “I answer to anything that gets close.”

King, Cady, and the ridiculously named Fitzwilliam McKie were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria that was the farthest from the door and the food service line. McKie had insisted.

King had insisted the conversation not go beyond an exchange of names until he’d downed a sausage biscuit and two cups of coffee, strong and black.

It wasn’t that he was hungry, but he was halfway to being stoned.

Thank God Cady’d had the sense to keep them inside the hospital’s walls, else who knew where the hell they’d be by now, King going along for the ride because the bright lights and sirens made the trip in his head more fun.

“Okay…Fitz.” King grabbed the first choice the other man had offered them. “Who are you? What do you want with us? And how did you manage to clear a busy hospital ER?”

“And can we see some ID?” Cady added. She’d ordered a cup of hot tea that had gone cold three times over, but had skipped ordering food. “Something that doesn’t look like it came out of an arcade machine?”

That was Cady. Suspicious to the end. And obviously still stuffed with last evening’s cheeseburgers and onion rings.

“The ER wasn’t that busy so it wasn’t hard to clear. Small town. Small emergencies.” Fitz looked from King to Cady and back. Cradling his coffee mug in one big hand, he leaned into the forearm he’d braced on the table. “Most of the explosion victims were routed elsewhere.”

“You mean
you
routed them elsewhere,” King said as he lifted his drink and finished it off. Fitz didn’t respond with a yay or a nay or a bite me, so King prodded. “You routed them elsewhere because you wanted to talk to me and Cady alone.”

The other man still didn’t acknowledge King’s accusation. What he did was say, “I know who hit your truck.”

The blow came out of nowhere and left King stunned. At his side, Cady gasped, nearly knocking over her tea, righting it with shaking hands. Fitz lifted his gaze slowly, taking in one of them then the other, as if how they responded would determine what he did or said next.

King recognized the power play, and he wasn’t having any of this man’s bullshit. He wanted to get home and gorge himself sick on crawfish. And this suit with too many names was not going to stand in his way, even if he did work for some X, Y, or Z Files government agency.

He glanced toward the empty food service line, hoping to steady his skyrocketing blood pressure, wondering if staff members used to grabbing muffins or fruit or cups of coffee on their breaks were being kept out at gunpoint, or maybe by an alien technology force field.

Then he glanced back at Fitz, pissed. “You know who hit my truck. And you’re doing what about it?”

Fitz shook his head. “Nothing yet.”

“Right. Because you’re not a cop, and you’re not sharing what you know with those running the real investigation.”

McKie didn’t say a word.

“Well, Fitz.” King paused to make sure he had the other man’s attention. “That’s a load of shit.”

“Especially because you still haven’t told us who you work for,” Cady put in, taking hold of King’s hand where his fist rested on the table beside his empty plate. “Or what you want with us.”

“Actually, Miss Kowalski, I want you.”

King felt his hackles rise. He squeezed her fingers that had gone numbingly cold. “You want her for what?”

“Wait.” She pulled her hand free, reached across the table, and grabbed McKie’s wrist, as if she needed his truth more than King’s protection. “Does this have something to do with Kevin? And the trial?”

Fitz nodded. “And the men who’ve been watching you since it ended.”

Cady pulled away, brought both hands up to cover her face, and sobbed once. King kept his fists on the table, his gaze on the crumbs scattered over his ugly beige plate. He wanted to reach for her. He wanted to offer her something.

But he didn’t do anything, because he didn’t know what to do—or know her. She was a girl who’d stowed away in his truck. That was all.

“I can’t believe it,” she finally said, dropping her hands to her lap. Her eyes were red and wet, though no tears spilled free. “After all this time. I knew it was happening. But I didn’t think anyone would ever be able to prove it. Or do anything to make it stop.”

“I can prove it,” Fitz said, and when he left it at that, turning his mug in a circle on the Formica tabletop, King picked up the gauntlet.

“But you’re not going to make it stop.” The words were hard to speak, and held the weight of very bad news.

Fitz didn’t look at King, but glanced toward Cady instead. “Not immediately, no.”

“Why not?” she cried, tears leaking at last from the corners of her eyes. “Do you know what it’s like to look over your shoulder for eight years of your life?”

“That’s why I’m here,” Fitz said. “With your cooperation, I’m going to make sure those eight years pay off.” His gaze remained locked on hers, as if he knew he had her on his hook, and was waiting to reel her in.

It was all King could do not to choke the man with his own ugly silk tie. “You’re here to make sure she keeps looking? Is that it?”

And then it hit him. His fishing analogy was off. This guy wasn’t baiting Cady with his words. He was here to use her as bait. He wanted whoever it was stalking her, and she was the easiest means to that end.

King pushed to his feet, knocking against the table hard enough that their dishes clattered. “Not happening, Fitz. Not in this lifetime. We’ll be going now.”

Cady reached for his arm, squeezed, and said, “Hang on a second. I want to hear more. I want him to tell me exactly why he’s here, and what it has to do with me looking over my shoulder.”

Spitting out a lot of nasty words, King sat. He wasn’t the one who’d been looking over his shoulder and existing day to day. Well, he had, the first part while in prison, the second for a lot of years after.

But this wasn’t about him. It was about Cady, and it was only right that she call the shots.

Hell, his only inconvenience was the loss of his ride that had been insured within an inch of its life. Good thing, since it was no longer living.

No, the only reason he was sticking around was to make sure Cady didn’t get stranded, and had someone on her side. Once they heard what the government man had to say, King would be in a better position to know if he was needed, or if he was in Cady’s way. If his being here meant extra grief.

“Does the name Nathan Tuzzi ring any bells?”

King shook his head in response to Fitz’s question, then turned his gaze on Cady to see that her face had blanched the color of bones—a pale deathly white that made her railroad track stitches seem to pull angrily at her skin, her black and blue bruises to growl.

“Who is he?” he finally asked, still watching her.

“He’s the one who pulled the trigger,” she said, her voice ringing hollow, her words flat. “The one who shot Kevin.”

Fitz took over. “He denies it, of course. To this day, he claims he was convicted on nothing but circumstantial evidence. And that his cohort who turned snitch is lying.”

King had gone to prison based on circumstantial evidence, and because the judge sitting his case wanted him there. That didn’t mean he automatically sided with this Tuzzi.

But it did mean he’d keep his opinions to himself as he dug for the facts. “The snitch cut a deal?”

“He’s serving a lesser term in another facility.”

“And he’s still alive?” King had seen more than one snitch eat the floor of the showers for his last meal.

Fitz gave him the point. “The other facility is minimum security and far far away.”

“He’s not getting out, is he?” Cady asked. “Are they? Tuzzi or Felwouk?”

“Felwouk the snitch?” King asked of Fitz.

The other man nodded. “Blake Felwouk.” And then he told Cady, “Not a chance. Felwouk’s got a number of years to go before he even comes up in front of the parole board. And Tuzzi never will. He’ll be proudly wearing the state’s colors for the rest of his life.”

King let that sink in, but knew there was more to the story. He had the man with no badge across from him as proof—not to mention the woman at his side with a face that told the truth and what remained of his Hummer blown across half of New Jersey.

So he wasn’t surprised when Cady filled in the blanks. “It’s Malling, isn’t it? He’s out.”

Fitz nodded. Cady hung her head. Since King was the only one who didn’t know shit about anything here, he asked, “Who’s Malling?”

“Jason Malling was charged as an accessory,” Fitz told him, Cady adding, “He drove the getaway car.”

“There were three of them then. Involved in the murder.” King figured he needed to level the playing field if he was going to catch up.

Fitz held up four fingers. “There was a fourth. Ryland Combs. He was the one who broke out the window on the front door and was the first one inside. Tuzzi and Felwouk told that part of the story the same way.”

Cady snorted. “Combs couldn’t argue. He was dead.”

“What happened?”

Fitz looked at Cady as if wanting her permission before he caused her to revisit the painful details of her brother’s death. She hesitated a moment, then picked up her empty cup and got to her feet.

“I’m going to get some more tea,” she said, and headed to the other side of the cafeteria and the station stocked with tea bags and sweetener packets.

It was only then, watching her walk away, her head hung low, King realized that beneath her unzipped hoodie, she was still wearing the T-shirt and sweatpants she’d put on to sleep in before wrapping up in her bedspread cocoon.

All those layers were supposed to keep her safe from him…yet because of her, he was sitting in a hospital cafeteria with a dozen stitches in his scalp and some government goon keeping him from his crawfish.

And now neither one of them had anything to wear but the clothes on their backs. They didn’t even have a toothbrush or a comb. At least he had things at home. Cady had no things. And no home.

“I’m not going to hurt her,” Fitz said, bringing King back to the moment.

He looked at the government man in his choice suit and designer haircut, his build lacking anything in the way of fat, his eyes lacking the compassion to back up his words. Flat. That’s what they were. Flat.

King was sure his own eyes were anything but. “The girl chose walking away over listening to you talk about her brother. How do you think that’s not hurting her?”

“She’s been through all of this. It’s nothing new. It’s nothing she doesn’t know or hasn’t heard.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s not hurting. Or that anything about it is easy for her.”

“And you’re such a good friend you can speak for her about what’s easy and what’s hard?”

“Not such a good friend, no.” Goddamn this man. “Just a fucking human being.”

Fitz looked down, then cast a quick glance over his shoulder at Cady before telling King the truth. “That’s one thing I can’t afford to be. I have a job to do. It’s not a pretty one. But what I’m doing is going to save lives.

“If reminding that girl over there of what happened to her brother helps me get what I need to do that, then maybe Kevin Kowalski won’t have died in vain.”