Detect Me (12 page)

Nikki shivered. She slid a hand up to lie underneath her cheek.

“Well that’s creepy,” she said, startling an amused huff out of Mark.

"Is it this place?" Nikki asked before she could stop herself. Mark couldn't help his dreams, and she didn't want to make him feel bad. But she wanted to know. "Being around someone? Being around me?"

She heard a
shushha
noise and peered over the edge of the bed to see Mark shaking his head against the pillow. Their eyes caught and he gave her a barely-there smile. Nikki yanked her head back and kept that image in her mind's eye.

"No. It was something else," Mark said, sounding thoughtful. "I've been doing this - detective work - for a long time now. You get kind of a sixth sense about these things."

Nikki stared at the ceiling. "Really? How long?" she asked. Mark didn't look all that old. Probably she should have stopped talking and gotten some sleep, but even though the words he'd thrown at her earlier still hurt - unemployed, useless, all different shades of words she’d heard before - she didn't want this peaceful lull to end. And honestly, she was a little afraid of what would happen when he went back to sleep.

There was a pause that went on for a long time. Nikki cautiously leaned over the side of the bed again, wondering if Mark had fallen asleep.

He hadn't. His light eyes were wide open and he'd pulled his arm up with his wrist resting against his forehead like he had a headache. Nikki could tell he felt her looking, but he didn't move his gaze from where it was trained on the damp spot overhead. Stupid crummy apartment.

"Maybe too long," Mark said softly, like he was talking to himself. Then he seemed to come to his senses and pulled his hand away from his face. His expression turned guarded again. He coughed.

"Umm, so, my family died when I was pretty young." He looked uncomfortable. Nikki felt uncomfortable.

"How young?" she forced herself to say, though these were no longer the questions she really wanted to ask.

Mark screwed up his face like he was trying to remember. "Nine or ten, I guess. I don't remember them all that well. They died in a plane crash. Small planes are pretty dangerous, and this was a while back when computers weren't quite so good. I had a mother and father and a brother too, but they all died. So I went to live with my grandmother, but she was pretty old by that point, and when I was 17 she died too." He ignored Nikki's gasp of sympathy, and she didn't offer any hollow apologies. She couldn't think of anything she might say that would help.

"Was there nobody else after that? No other grandparents?" she asked as gently as she could.

Mark shrugged against the thin blanket he'd laid down between his back and the floor. "There was, but I was basically grown by then. Didn't seem much point, and they'd never had much use for me anyway. My mother and father's family didn't get along. Some kind of Romeo and Juliet situation."

"So then you... went straight into detecting?"

Mark barked out a laugh that made Nikki jump. He twisted around to stare up at her with what looked like honest amusement.

"Hell no. You serious? I was a 17-year-old moron, and I'd inherited a decent bit of cash. I did a half-semester of college - I'd graduated high school early - dropped out, screwed around for a bit until I was just about broke and even more of a mess than I'd been to start with."

Nikki's heart twisted at the thought of a younger but just as broken Mark, one that hadn't learned how to put the pieces back together on his own yet. "And then what?"

There was a brief silence and Mark's hands slid together. He pulled down his chin so that his dark hair flopped over his forehead and partially obscured his face.

"So? What then?" Nikki demanded, set on edge by the wait. If there was more, if it got worse, she wanted to hear it now. She'd always been the kid who flipped to the end of thriller novels.

"I re-read Sherlock Holmes," Mark said, words lashing out at the air defiantly. He threw his head back to glare at Nikki. "
The Sign of Four
, to be exact."

Whatever she'd been expecting, this definitely wasn't it. She stared back for a moment and then bit her lip to stifle a giggle.

"Fine, laugh," Mark said, sounding half unwillingly amused and half honestly offended. "But you asked, and that's what happened."

Nikki drew herself up on the edge of the bed to hover above him, now more comfortable with the closeness. She couldn’t fight the grin off her lips.

“I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you, really. It’s just… well, it’s cute. I like
A Scandal in Bohemia
,” she added.

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Mark said, looking bemused. He creased his forehead in a small frown. Not like he was angry, just like he couldn’t figure out her angle. “What, no comments about basing life decisions off a book, and a not particularly well-written one at that?”

Nikki crossed her arms and lay her head down on them. The edge of the mattress cut into her forearms, but she didn’t care. It was more comfortable here even so.

“First of all, don’t diss Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes is awesome. And secondly - why would I make comments about that? I mean, you said it yourself. You were a kid. And look at what you’ve done.” Nikki felt her voice turn admiring and didn’t try to stop it. “You have a successful detective agency and an office in a building I’m barely allowed into. That’s pretty amazing.”

Mark looked away. “The last person I told didn’t have that reaction,” he mumbled, which Nikki had sort of guessed.

“Sounds like the last person you told was an arse,” she said frankly, which startled a laugh out of him. Nikki smiled at the sound and hoped that someday she’d be able to make Mark laugh without having to surprise him into it.

“There might be something to that,” Mark said.

A few moments passed in silence that had turned warm and comfortable. Nikki rolled over on her back and grinned at the ceiling.

“Goodnight,” she murmured against her pillow. She was tempted to drop her arm over the edge of the bed, but she wasn’t quite brave enough to do it.

Mark didn’t answer. Nikki gave a mental shrug - though a bit of a hurt one - and snuggled down into bed. Tiredness was finally settling over her and dragging her slowly into sleep.

“Nikki.” Her name was spoken quietly, but with such force and urgency that her eyes flew open and she was instantly awake again.

She rolled onto her side and looked down at Mark. But he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring with intense concentration at the window.

Nikki followed Mark’s gaze to the window and her blood ran cold. All of the peaceful feeling drained out of her as she stared at the handwritten sign taped to the window.

SAY HELLO TO YOUR GIRLFRIEND FOR ME. TELL HER I’LL BE SEEING HER SOON TO SAY THANK YOU FOR SWITCHING THE PAINTING. GHOST.

“Guess there’s something to be scared of after all,” Nikki said grimly.

CHAPTER NINE

Mark’s back was sore the next morning.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise after sleeping on the hardwood floor of Nikki’s bedroom for the majority of the night, but he’d fallen asleep so soundly that he’d woken up feeling refreshed for the first time in a long while. So it was something of a shock to get up and be forced to limp to the bathroom like a geriatric.

When he threw this bit of trivia out in an attempt to break the stilted silence, Nikki shook her head. Mark looked at her quizzically and she said, “Actually, you started having nightmares twice last night. I woke up and nudged you, and you went back to sleep.” She gave him a tired, lopsided smile that made his insides clench with the regret and fear and disbelief all twisted together inside of him.

The words he’d said last night were unforgivable, and yet he wanted to do nothing more than try to take them back anyway. But the truth was that it would be better for Nikki if she believed him to be a hurtful, dangerous bastard. That was more likely to keep her away from him than his own rapidly failing self-control.

The fact that she had seemed so willing to forgive and forget in her bedroom last night, Mark put down to exhaustion and pity. The thought curdled in his stomach.

So he bit back the apologies on the tip of his tongue and instead forced himself to swallow down mouthfuls of cardboard cereal.

“What now?” Nikki asked when she had grimaced her way through a few spoonfuls of the cereal and finally set down the spoon in capitulation. Her surrender was oddly cute. Mark wanted to ask why she bought the stupid cereal, since it tasted like drywall.

Best not to.

He reached across the counter and pulled the sign from where he’d placed it after pulling it off and examining it earlier. Nikki had been all for removing it last night, and Mark had wanted to for her peace of mind, but he’d insisted on leaving it up. If Ghost somehow checked, it was better that she think they hadn’t noticed it until the morning. Ghost was the kind of person to want a satisfying reaction to each and every piece of cruelty. Defending themselves would be difficult enough when they weren’t exhausted and unarmed.

Nikki winced at the sight of the plain white poster board and thick black lettering. Mark pretended not to notice.

“I hate to say this, but the sign was taped to the inside of the window.” Her pretty green eyes flew open wide in horror and her hands flew to her mouth. She would have knocked over the bowl of cereal but Mark grabbed it before it could roll off the counter.

“She was inside my apartment?” Nikki squeaked. “Here?” She looked around fearfully, like she expected Ghost to jump out from a cabinet at any moment. Maybe he should have found it comical, but instead it made Mark’s heart ache. He wanted to take Nikki in his arms and comfort her, but he couldn’t get any closer to her than he already had. Everything that was happening to Nikki was his fault. To try to keep her near would be unforgivably selfish. Right now he was Nikki’s best bet for staying safe since she had nobody else, but as soon as Ghost was safely behind bars, Mark knew he had to let Nikki go before this could happen again.

Of course, once Nikki realized the whole truth about Ghost - and Mark had never had any doubts, she
would
find out eventually - none of this would even be a problem. She wouldn’t even want to look at him anymore. Cutting the cord now would just make things easier for both of them.

“I’m sorry,” he said instead of any of the things he actually wanted to say.

Nikki slowly lowered her hands and shook her head stiffly. Mark watched her face as her mouth stiffened into a determined line and her eyes grew calmer by degrees.

“No,” she shook her head. “It’s… Well, it is what it is. But are we safe here? What do we do next?”

She looked at him like he had all the answers, and Mark hated himself for wanting more of that feeling.

“There aren’t a whole lot of great options right now, but I think Ghost probably has a lot on her plate with the police actively tracking her. We’ve got to be pretty low on her list of priorities. But just to be safe we’ll sleep at my place for a couple nights.” Mark didn’t miss the way Nikki perked up with interest when he said that, and he tried not to be pleased by it.

Nikki got to her feet, wincing just a bit. Mark guessed her feet were still sore. She darted a glance at the sign and lifted her chin.

“Well, let’s get started. What street did we leave off?”

She was fierce and strong and every inch a queen and in that moment, Mark had never loved anyone more. He’d never -
damn
.

He clenched his hands into fists and stared down at the chipped surface of the counter. He couldn’t do this. He could not do this.

“You coming?” Nikki called from the door, looking over her shoulder at him curiously.

“I… yeah,” Mark said, not knowing what else to say, and followed where his heart led, guilt and desire warring inside him.

Nikki walked down the street in Mark’s wake, catching up whenever he paused to smile and chat with friendly passerby. She felt sore and slow. Waking up in the middle of the night with Mark’s agonized moans in her ears and her heart pounding in her throat had been unpleasant. She’d kept her distance and nudged him with a pillow to keep herself safe. Mark hadn’t lashed out with violence again though; he’d made unhappy noises that hurt her stomach to hear and rolled over. Nikki had ended up staring at him, willing him to sleep peacefully, until she’d caught it and forced herself to get some rest as well.

It hadn’t worked particularly well. The last time she’d felt this tired was when she’d stayed up all night painting and then gone in for thesis presentations at the end of grad school. The thought added another layer to her misery. It had been what felt like ages since she’d so much as touched paint to canvas. She missed it in a visceral way, in her blood and bone. Painting used to make her feel alive. But then rejections had worn her down and it had hurt too much to even look at her tools anymore.

Being around Mark made her feel alive in a similar kind of way, Nikki realized in her sleep-deprived haze. It wasn’t exactly the same or a replacement, but she recognized it all the same. He surprised her and kept her off-balance in a way she… not loved. It was dangerous to love things. Anything could be taken away - family, friends, even the simple joy of creation.