Black As Night (Quentin Black Mystery #2) (24 page)

I stared at them numbly.

Then a hand extended towards me.

The person attached to it stepped closer, blocking my view.

I flinched back, but the hand didn’t try to touch me. When I looked up, I saw Black standing there, his face utterly unreadable. He didn’t move, but continued to offer his hand. I could feel him, so much of him it made my eyes close. He felt more open than I’d ever felt him, but I couldn’t tell if that was because of me or because of him. Despite that openness, the main thing I felt off him was caution, along with a very deliberate distance.

He was afraid to get too close to me.

Biting my tongue, I averted my gaze from his face. I took his hand though. I let him pull me to my feet, even as my cut hand clutched the blanket around me.

Once I stood there, wincing from my weight resting on my feet on the pavement, I looked down at the blanket.

I cleared my throat, glancing back at the taxi. Someone I vaguely recognized as one of Black’s employees was speaking rapidly to the driver in Thai. I’d only ever seen the man once before, and that had been in San Francisco, flying a helicopter.

I wondered how long he’d been out here.

Gripping the blanket tighter, I looked up at Black. “Can someone...” I cleared my throat when he met my gaze, seeing him flinch. “The blanket. I can get it back to him...”

“Don’t worry about the fucking blanket, Miriam.”

I felt my jaw harden, but I didn’t answer.

“Will you come?” he said then. His voice was polite, and I felt him kicking himself for swearing at me. Fear expanded off his light, nearly suffocating me all over again. “Miri,” he said, softer. “Will you come? Please?”

I looked down, and saw him holding out a hand.

I felt him wanting to get me inside, off the street.

It was the middle of the night, still dark out, but he felt we were too visible out here, too exposed, even though I sensed that a lot more of his employees were around than the handful I could see.

Realizing I agreed with him, I took his hand, making him jump. It occurred to me only then that he’d meant the gesture to shepherd me towards the doors––he hadn’t actually expected me to take his hand. When I started to release him though, he gripped my fingers, clasping me with an intensity that I found myself relaxing into for some reason.

I let him lead me to the front of the hotel.

Then I came to a stop.

“Pete,” I said. I looked up when I felt Black’s stare. “I might know where Pete is. I don’t know if they’re going to wait for the full two weeks, Black. It felt like it would be over sooner than that. A few days, at most.”

Black stiffened, gripping my hand tighter. “You’re sure?”

I nodded, not meeting his gaze. “Pretty sure.”

“Do you know where he is?” Black said. “Do they plan to kill him?”

I focused on my feet, which didn’t even look like mine. I didn’t recognize them at all. Hearing his question then, after that odd delay, I nodded again.

“I don’t know. If they plan to kill him,” I clarified. “But he’s on a barge. In the lower levels.” I looked up, and flinched a little, finding Black’s gold eyes on mine. “It smells like fish...and garbage. It’s near the
wats
. Near where the bodies have been found. I think maybe the killer’s been leaving the bodies there, too. When he...finishes with them.”

Black renewed his grip on my hand. I could feel him thinking, standing this close.

“Miri,” he said, hesitating. “I hate to ask. I hate to ask this so much, but––”

“Yes,” I said, not letting him finish. “Whatever you need. Whatever I can do to help you find him.” I looked up. “We shouldn’t wait, Black. Solonik...”

I felt Black stiffen as I said the name.

I couldn’t tell if he recognized it.

“...he’s not going to be happy I left,” I finished, fighting to ignore whatever I’d felt. “He might take it out on Pete. Or he might move him. He might know I have some idea of where he’s being kept. I asked him questions...about Pete...”

Black nodded, but that time he didn’t speak.

He began tugging me gently towards the glass doors, that fear back in his hands about me being visible from the street. He didn’t slow his steps as he clicked his fingers at two more black-clad soldier types standing to one side of the doormen. Black gestured a series of hand-signals to them, but I didn’t try to interpret those either.

“I want Wu,” he said, his voice low. “Have him follow me up. Dex and Kiks on the door. Get Jasey. We might need her to do a sketch...tell B-team I want them ready. One hour. We need a forward unit to do a search prior to full engagement. Extraction scenario, but dress civilian...it’s in the middle of town. We’ll feed them intel as we get it.”

I heard murmurs of acknowledgement, even as I glanced behind me a last time, right before I walked through the glass doors ahead of Black. When I did, I saw the taxi driver who’d brought me here, a man I didn’t even know by name, watching me, sadness in his eyes.

He raised his hand to me in a silent wave, then placed it over his heart.

I didn’t look back again.

HIS VOICE WAS low, but I felt the tension there, the forced patience.

“You need to let someone look at you, Miri,” he said. He sat next to me on the bed, and I could feel that was deliberate too, that he felt uncomfortable standing over me.

He didn’t try to touch me.

“You need to let someone clean and stitch up the cuts, before they get infected,” he said, softer. “Please, Miri. Please. I can bring anyone you want. Anyone.”

His people had just left.

Black and another soldier-type, the same man Black had called Wu, asked me a lot of questions. Another man took notes. A sketch artist, Jasey, drew everything I could remember in my answers––everything I’d seen about that barge, inside and out.

Most of it had been useless, I suspected.

Animal-type cages. Buckets for toilets. Long gas tanks of some kind, red with rust and black with oil and dirt. The smell of rotting fish and dead rats and excrement. The outside of the barge had been more or less nondescript. I hadn’t seen a name on the side, just tires hanging all along the edge, high curved sides, ropes tying it to a dock. The lower part had been dark green.
 

I described everything about the dock I could see, my eyes closed as I recounted all of it.

I asked to describe Solonik to Jasey too, so they’d know what he looked like. Black seemed to want to wave me off that for some reason, maybe to wait until tomorrow, or until they could get Pete back perhaps. When I insisted, he didn’t argue, though.

After another twenty or so minutes, Jasey had a detailed sketch of Solonik, too. It was so accurate it unnerved me. Black stared at it for a long time.

“Do you know him?” I asked finally.

He shook his head, once. “No,” he said.

Eventually, the rest of his people left.

It was just me and Black now, which was both a relief and kind of a let-down. The last of my adrenaline spent itself working with Black’s team and with Jasey to save Pete and warn them about Solonik. Now I had nothing left outside of me to focus on.

Nothing apart from Black himself.

That heavier feeling washed over me again.

I looked down at my bare feet, which were black with dirt and crusted with blood. The top of my right big toe had a deep laceration, making it a strange shape. I knew Black was right, that I needed to get them cleaned up and stitched and bandaged, but the thought of seeing anyone else right then made me sick to my stomach. I still held the dog-smelling blanket tightly around me. I knew there were other things I could have wrapped around myself by then, but I found I didn’t want to let that particular blanket go.

“Can you do it?” I said finally.

Relief washed over him, bringing a hard pain to his chest...and mine, by extension.

“Yes,” he said. The relief was audible in his voice. “Of course. I can do it, Miri. I’d be happy to do it.”

I nodded, strangely relieved too. Then something else occurred to me.

“I should...” I looked down at myself, feeling another coil of...was it shame? I didn’t really want to think about that, either. “I should take a shower.”

“Do you want to do that first?” he said.

I gave him a blank look. Then, thinking about his words, I nodded. “Yes.”

Again, relief plumed off him. I felt him wanting to help, desperately wanting to help me, but for some reason it only made that sick feeling in my gut worse. I bit my lip, suddenly having to fight not to yell at him.

“You can yell at me, Miri,” he said at once.

For some reason, him saying that almost made me smile. I didn’t feel a lot of real humor behind the impulse, though. I didn’t feel anything really.

He still didn’t touch me, but I felt him wanting to.

“You can do whatever you want,” he said, quieter.

I nodded, trying to make sense of his words. Then I stood up. Gripping the blanket around me, I walked towards the bathroom. I felt him watch me go from the bed, felt the unsureness on him. I made it to the bathroom door before I realized he wasn’t going to follow me. I turned, staring at him.

“Aren’t you coming?” I said, my voice a little cold.

He flinched, staring at me. Then he rose abruptly to his feet. Walking towards me with his cat-like strides, he didn’t take his eyes off my face, but caution still radiated out of him almost cloyingly. I didn’t wait for him to reach me but walked the rest of the way into the bathroom and then just stood there. I watched him walk to the shower, which was huge, a glass-enclosed fishbowl with a sunflower shower head above, along with two silver-headed nozzles on the sides with detachable hoses. He turned on the main shower head and stepped back, using his hand to gauge the temperature. When he glanced at me, his face was unreadable again.

“Do you want me to wait in here?” he said. “Or outside the door?”

I shook my head, feeling my jaw harden. “I want you to come in with me.”

I felt Black tense. Pain coiled off him in a cloud, confusion. I felt both things intensify, even as he tried to pull them away from me, to lock them behind a shield.

“Miri,” he began. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

I didn’t return his gaze. Instead I let the blanket drop, walking past him and directly into the shower. I winced as soon as the hot water touched my skin, gritting my teeth at the pain as it hit my cut shoulder and scalp. I honestly couldn’t decide if it felt more good than bad in those first few seconds.

Black just stood there, not looking at me. The shower door remained open.

“Are you coming in?” I said. “Or not?”

I felt indecision waver off him, more confusion.

Then he seemed to make up his mind. Turning away from me, he kicked off his shoes, which I only noticed then that he still wore. I stood under the hot water, slowly feeling the good outweighing the bad as he shed his watch, then his belt, laying both on the counter. I noticed only then that he wore another of his black, form-fitting T-shirts and black dress pants. He turned towards me, but he didn’t shed the rest of his clothes, like I expected.

Instead he walked directly into the shower, exactly like that, and shut the door.