Armed and Dangerous (The IMA) (16 page)

I threw the washcloth in the trash—it was beyond salvaging — and washed my hands with soap and hot water. The bathroom was a nauseating blend of piña colada, stomach acid, and sweat. I wasn't looking forward to cleaning it all up.

Maybe I'd make him do it.

Make
Michael do it?
I mocked myself.
What are you going to do? Threaten him with your pepper-spray?

I dragged him into my bedroom, ignoring my turbulent thoughts. I liked that anger; it gave me something to hang on to, like a lifeboat.

I tore my sheets off the bed and replaced them with some older ones from the hall closet. The  mattress now dressed, I heaved Michael onto it, with pushes and tugs, arranging his body under the sheet so he was at least somewhat decent.

“
You are a bastard.” I rubbed antiseptic into his scraped and bloodied knuckles, nightmares of them turning septic from my unwashed bathroom floor dancing in my head like a horrid nightmare. “You stink. I should leave you outside with the trash, let you get intimate with the flies.”

Of course, he said nothing to this. Probably for the best. I highly doubt there was anything constructive he could have added to the conversation.

He had lost some of his fierceness. His eyelashes were short, thick, golden, with the texture of a fine-tipped paintbrush. I took some tissues and wiped the traces of mace carefully from the corners of his eyes. As I did, the stubble around his mouth scraped against the inside of my wrist and my stomach twisted as memories of those lips against mine hit me like a speeding freight train.

I rubbed at my wrist.

This is not good
.

Michael:

I woke up with one of the worst headaches of my life. Considering some of the hangovers I've suffered through that said something. The stabbing pain behind my eyeballs grew as I sat up. I reached for the drawer of the hotel's nightstand and my fingers closed over empty space.

What the fuck?

I dug my knuckles into my forehead. It helped. It was as if I were pushing the headache back physically, commanding it, focusing it. This worked for about a minute and then the pain spread to my hand because the back was all torn up. My knuckles had been tenderized like meat.

A small shard stuck out of the raw flesh. I pinched the white fragment out,  turning it this way and that in the moonlight. Odd. What was it? Bone? Porcelain?

I remembered the vanished nightstand. I swiveled around, regretting my haste when my neck started throbbing like a mother. I was in a bedroom. A bedroom that did not belong to the London hotel. The
mattress I was lying on was new, but cheap. The sheets were clean. I wasn't wearing anything beneath the sheet, though, and there were no clothes in sight.

I slid off the mattress and opened one of the doors. It was a closet. Mostly empty, though a few clothes of a feminine cut hung inside. That could mean nothing.

Frowning, I tried the other door. I was surprised when it gave without a catch. Unlocked.

Was this a trap, or mere oversight?

I stepped through the doorway, noting the carpeted floors. Probably not a bunker. To my left was a living room and a kitchenette. To the right, a bathroom. Could be a safe house — but where? The air here was dry, and sweltering. Not England.

A light was on in the living room. It came from the glow of an open laptop. I counted to three and braced myself for a fight I wasn't in any condition to provide.

I heard breathing, slow, even, and deep. I moved closer, then froze, unable to tear my eyes from the sleeping woman on the couch.

Christina.

They say you can't feel pain in dreams. I sure as hell was doing that. Her hair was damp, curling around her face. I touched her cheek, letting my fingers trail to the swell of her lower lip.

She opened her eyes and let out a startled scream. I saw her right arm move, reaching for a — fuck, she had a knife. I knocked it out of her hand with a chop to her wrist and the blade went skittering across the kitchen floor.

Christina turned into a spitting, writhing hellcat. It was like trying to hold onto water — water that could also scratch, and kick, and bite.

“
No!” she cried, balking when I knelt over her legs, keeping them pinned with my thighs so she couldn't kick me. “
Get off me
.”

I realized the dubiousness of our current position. “I'm not going to hurt you.”

She wasn't listening.

“
Christina
. I'm not going to fucking hurt you, all right?” I leaned back a little for emphasis. I didn't let go of her wrists, though. Not yet. “But I'm going to need you to calm the fuck down before I let you go.”

“
Calm down?” she repeated.

“
Yes. Calm. As in not screaming. That kind of calm.” She was still gorgeous, but less girlish. Her high cheekbones stood out in relief in the dim light of her laptop. Her eyes narrowed up at me.

“
Don't tell me to calm down. You destroyed my bathroom. You punched a hole in the floor — you could have done that to me. You could have
killed
me. Who do you think you are? Are you insane?”

Fuzzy images rose from the sea of drugs still
soaking my thoughts. I felt the sweat on my chest grow chilled. “
Merde
.” She watched me with a wary expression that bordered on fear. “Did I hurt you?”

My question seemed to surprise her. “You tried.”

“I don't remember any of that very clearly.” I recalled my earlier thoughts and looked away, not liking myself much. “What, exactly, did I do?”

“
You threw up on me. Said some horrible, hurtful things. You also did about three hundred dollars' worth of damage to my bathroom.”

“
I don't give a shit about your bathroom. Hell, I'll pay for the damage. What I'm asking is whether I hurt
you
.”

“
Do you really care?”

I gave her a flat look. “I'm asking, aren't I?”

Her body lost some of its tenseness but when she spoke, she was still angry. “What am I supposed to think? What happened to you? Why are you here?”

“
It isn't something we can talk about now.”

“
Can't? Or wont?”

I felt my lips curl up in spite of myself. “Can't.”

“Why
not
?”

“
Your apartment's probably bugged.”

Unsurprisingly, this statement did not make her happy. “I found one in the thermostat.”

“That's the bug you were supposed to find. The decoy. Trust me, if they don't want you to find the bugs, you're not going to find a one.” My voice broke. My throat was killing me. “Mind getting me something to drink?”

“
I don't have any alcohol.” Said sharply.

“
Cute. I meant water. You do have water, right?”

She pushed away from me. I watched her pad over to the kitchen. There was something different in her walk, something that made it hard to look away.

“Did you know you were taking PCP?”

“
I had an idea.” I thought of Hawk's speech. He was like Richardson that way, fond of the sound of his own voice. The only difference was, it had gotten my old boss killed in the end. “If you're asking it was voluntary, no; it wasn't. How did you know?”

“
I looked up the symptoms on PubMed.” She filled the water glass. “Who did it to you?”

“
I'll tell you later.” I rubbed my eyes and crusty gunk flaked into my lap. “Did you mace me?”

“
Only after you attacked me.”

“
You said I didn't hurt you.”

“
I didn't say you didn't try.” Her eyes were hot. “Everything's always so black and white with you, isn't it?”

“
Me? Your life could be a chessboard — it's so black and white.”

She sloshed the water in my face and set the glass down on an end table. I watched her storm out of the room with her laptop into the bedroom I'd just vacated. I walked over to the sink and refilled it, knocking back the water like a shot of whiskey. I drank three glasses before heading back for the bedroom I'd just vacated. I knocked first. No response. Quietly, I tried the handle. Locked.

“At least tell me where the fuck I am.”

“
Welcome to Arizona, you bastard.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “All right. Where are my clothes?”

“I threw them away.”

I let my hand fall to my side. “Why did you do that?”

“If you want them back, you can fish them out of the dumpster.”

The BN must have done a number on my head: her brusqueness was starting to turn me on. That was what had changed. She had lost that tentative, sheltered meekness. She'd learned how to harden her heart.

Just like me.

Fuck. What had I done?

“I'll be needing some new ones then,” I said. “You have any plans on procuring some for me?”

The door opened. She leaned against the doorjamb, folding her arms over her chest. “Why did they bring you to
me
? Why not kill you?”

“
I guess they want me alive.”

“
Why?”

“
I have no idea.”

“
Well, why do you
think
?”

“
Vengeance. Without going into too much detail, I was set up by a mutual friend of ours.”

“
Who?”

“
Take a wild guess. First three don't even count.”

From the look on her face, she didn't even need one.

Chapter Fourteen

Plan

There had been a time when Michael Boutilier had been the greatest evil my mind could comprehend — cold, cruel, and callous; the IMA had once considered him their best operative in the agency. Then I had been taken into custody by the IMA and realized that even among bad guys there still exists a continuum.

Staring up at him now, standing in my bedroom doorway, I was startled by how much he seemed to have shrunk. In my memories and nightmares, he was a giant. In a way, this was more imposing. Because all of that was fiction. This — this was real. This could be worse.

There were so many things I wanted to ask, I hardly knew where to begin.

In keeping with his perceptive nature, he said, “You and I need to talk.” He looked down at his sheet. “Right after you get me some new clothes.”

That snapped me out of my trance. Less than ten minutes conscious and he was already ordering me around. “No,” I said. “I'm going back to sleep.”

Michael studied me levelly, saying nothing.

“Night.”

He let me slam the door on him and lock it.

Let
.

If he had truly wanted to, he could have stopped me. We both knew it. That took some of the satisfaction out of my resolve.

I wished I had my switchblade. But no, it was still on the kitchen floor, and I was too afraid to go back out there. Not after the way he'd looked at me.

I woke up the next morning to the smell of frying butter. I stumbled to my feet, momentarily startled when I found the door locked.
Why?— oh
.

Michael was standing in front of the stove. He had the sheet draped around him like a toga. I blinked. The image did not go away. He should have looked ridiculous, and most other men would have, but
he
looked like one of those marble statues frozen in the act of preparing for battle.
Mars
, my unhelpful brain supplied.
The Roman god of war
.

I decided to chalk that lapse in judgment up to a severe lack of sleep. “What the hell are you doing?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “What it looks like.”

I peered around him. In the pan were the last of my eggs, some vegetables I'd forgotten about, and what looked like melted cheese. I didn't even know I
had
cheese. I pointed at the peppers. “I was going to throw those out. They're past the expiration date.”

“
You can cut out the bad parts, you know.” He tilted his head. “Or do you always do everything by the book?”

I turned my back on him and grabbed the coffee pot. I filled it with water from the bathroom tap and sat down at the table while I waited for it to brew. It looked like I'd have to go out today after all. Shit. He had used up the last of my fresh food and I couldn't have him walking around like that.

He set down a plate in front of me, forcing me to lift my head. I cut off a small square with the side of my fork. It was surprisingly good. Really good. “I didn't know you could cook.”