Fade To Midnight (53 page)

When she finally snapped, the strength of the orgasm wrenched her into a blinding red oblivion that she had not asked for but could not resist. It stampeded over her, practically knocking her unconscious.

When she oriented herself in time and space once again, he'd thrust two of his fingers deeper. They made wet, silky sounds as he petted and stroked. “You're melting,” he whispered. “You're ready.”

She reached out for him with her mind, but he wasn't letting her in. He was still jamming the frequency.

“You're not,” she replied. “You're still as hard as ice.”

He nudged his cockhead deeper, rocking, pressing. “I'm supposed to be hard,” he said. “Just like you're supposed to melt. Biology.”

“Don't play word games. You know damn well what I mean.”

He caught her clit between his fingers, squeezing tenderly, and swirled his cock against her sweet spots, making her light up, squirming and shimmering for him. “Let me in.” His voice was rough, like a command, but she could feel the rigid control of his body. He wouldn't move until she opened for him. And she was dying to give in.

He knew it. He was counting on it. Arrogant, complacent bastard.

She turned, looked over her shoulder. “Let me in, too.”

His eyes narrowed. The air hummed with tension.

“You, first,” he whispered. “Then we'll see.”

A final instant of resistance, and hell with it. They didn't have a chance in hell of a future together, and she wanted this. Pride and dignity be damned. They wouldn't do her much good in the grave.

But he had to look her in the face. “Let me turn around.”

He let her flip onto her back, and settled himself between her legs. He paused, as he ran his hand down her body, from throat to thigh. His face was grim and tense. He reached out, switched off the lamp.

“Hey!” Edie jerked up in protest. “That's a dirty trick! I wanted to see your eyes! Turn that back on, right now!”

“No.” He folded her legs up, high and wide. “I can't look at your bruises while I fuck you. It bothers me.”

She propped herself onto her elbows. “They're not your fault!”

He nudged himself against her tender folds, easing inside. “No? The day I met you, you didn't have a single bruise. I know, because I inspected every last goddamn square inch of your body myself. You hang out with me for four days, and now you're covered with them. Conclusion?”

“But I—”

Her voice cut off as he surged inside her, in one hard thrust.

She forgot what she was going to say, clutching at his chest, wiggling to find the perfect angle that let him slide deeper.

He began to move, arching over her. He started slow, but not for long. They were both too desperate for that. They picked up speed, force. Heaving and rocking. It wan't their usual shining fusion of souls. He was so far from her, but his desire and hunger were no less because of that. If anything, he was more desperate.

They fought to get closer, clawing for each other on every level. Thunder and lightning. Pounding and gasping. He drove deep and hard. Her nails dug into him, lifting herself. Slamming thrusts, frenzied kisses, clutching hands, whimpering and gasping.

Both earned more bruises. Neither cared. She turned herself inside out for him as the blinding orgasm blasted through them—

He cracked open. His guard fell, and she saw everything.

This time it really was a kick in the head, like the early, bad old days, when the unwanted visions would blindside her. Images, impressions, shocking and horrible. Merely the echoes of what he'd been through that day, but they jolted her to the bedrock of her being.

Fear, horror, grief. A dead girl, staring out of a plastic bag. A live one cuffed to a wheelchair, weeping. A hideous, bulbous black widow spider with a woman's gloating face and long black hair, laughing as she wrapped sticky fibers around her prey, strangling it to immobility.

Then, the breaking of that ancient inner fortress. Memories flooding in. Faces, places, feelings. So vivid, the tears flooded her eyes.

Brothers, bullets, bombs. It had all exploded in his face. He'd been broken to pieces, again and again that day. And still, amazingly, he was whole. Shining and whole. And so beautiful. God, she loved him.

She wound her arms around his shaking, sweaty shoulders. Holding him as close as she could. Tears flooding down her face.

She tried to make him turn his face, but he resisted, pulling out of her. He fished around on the floor for his clothes, pulled on his jeans. She shivered in the wall of cold air that rushed between them.

“Kev?” She reached for the bedside lamp.

He batted her hand away so violently, the lamp fell off the table. It broke against the floor. “Don't,” he said savagely.

She sat up startled. “Kev? What's wrong?”

“If you have to ask. I'm finally getting it.”

“Getting what?”

“The disadvantages of having a psychic girlfriend.”

She was bewildered. “But…but I thought you wanted—”

“I changed my mind,” he said. “Or came to my senses, more like.”

She shrank in on herself. “You mean, you're ashamed?” she whispered. “At what I saw? What you let me see?”

“I just mean I want some space.” He picked up the gun, shoved it into the back of his pants. “You stay here. I'll go out, keep watch—”

“That's not fair!” she yelled. “You asked me to! You bullied me!”

“Life's not fair. Haven't you noticed that? Look, Edie. I'm sorry about this crazy shit. I'm sorry about…what just happened.” He gestured toward the bed. “I shouldn't have done that to you. I won't do it again. You and Liv and Tony and Zia Rosa will go up to that island in the San Juans with my brothers' friend Seth today. I'll get the fuck out of your face. And who knows, maybe you'll have a chance at survival.”

She launched herself at him, and swatted at his shoulder. “I don't want you out of my face! You bastard!”

“Too bad. I'm going out,” he repeated, stonily. “Stay here.”

Cold air swirled and gusted in as he jerked the door open. It swung shut behind him, shutting out air, noise, the night. And him.

Edie sat down on the bed, her hands pressed to her face. She wanted to find him. Start slapping and screaming like a fishwife, but it would be childish and embarrassing. He was counting on her natural horror of making a scene in front of his newfound family. She was Charles and Linda Parrish's daughter, after all.

Let him have his precious space, then. Let him choke on it.

It occurred to her, as she washed herself up again, that neither of them had thought about contraception. That edge-of-doom vibe. Neither of them expected to live long enough to deal with consequences.

She dressed, and fished the cell phone out of her pocket. The sky was getting lighter. She stared at the phone that one of Kev's brothers had lent her, thumbing it on just to see if Ronnie had managed to steal her phone back and send a message. She should go see if Aaro would help her call Ronnie again with his magic signal bouncer.

It rang the instant she turned it on. She stared at the display, heart leaping into her throat. It sank back down immediately, when she saw the number. Not Ronnie's. And so? There was no one else on earth she wanted to hear from. Not on this telephone.

But the ringtone jabbed, like a needle in her brain.
Who?

She answered. “Yes?” she whispered.

“Good morning, Edie.” Des's voice. There was an oily smile in it that made her stomach flop horribly. “Do you want to live?”

She sank down onto the bed again. “Yes,” she said.

“How lucky for you that you answered this call,” he said. “Do you want your lover and his band of merry men to live, too?”

“Yes,” she said again.

“We know where you are. We're looking at you, out there in the forest. There's a clear vantage point for our thermal imaging. You and Larsen were fucking in the cabin about, oh, twenty minutes ago. The rest of them are in the big house. My finger is resting on a button that will blow you all instantly into fine, vaporous particles. Unless you do exactly…and I mean,
exactly
…what I say. Understand?”

She swallowed over a knot of terror. “Tell me what you want.”

“I'm going to give you simple, clear instructions, Edie. If you disobey any one of them, I will push the button. Is that clear?”

“Yes. Listen, Des—”

“The first instruction is to say only ‘yes.' Say it in a low, obedient tone of voice. If you say anything else, I push the button. Got that?”

She swallowed. “Yes.”

“The second direction is that you keep this phone connection open at all times. If you should drop the phone, push the wrong button with your cheek, if we should suddenly lose coverage…I cut my losses, and push the button. Bye-bye. Ka-boom.”

“But Des, I don't know if—”

“Remember the first instruction, you stupid bitch,” he snarled.

She bit her lip, forced it out. “Yes.”

“The third instruction is to make no unneccesary movements. I'm looking at your cabin wall through a powerful thermal imaging device. You're sitting at the foot of the bed. You need to work on your posture.”

Pride and anger stiffened her spine, involuntarily.

“Ah, that's better! And watching you screw Larsen, whew! I had no idea you were so passionate! It was like watching a forest fire.” He chuckled. “Did you come? You can tell me.” He hesitated. “Say it, Edie.”

Her gorge rose. She steeled herself and whispered. “Yes.”

“That's good! So. Do anything I didn't tell you to do, and I will see you do it. And I will push that button. Understand?”

“Yes.” Tears flashed out of her squeezed shut eyes. She reached up to brush them away.

“Get that fucking hand down until I tell you to raise it!”

Edie stood, hand in midair, and slowly lowered it. “Yes,” she said.

“Get up. Come out the door,” Des said. “Act natural. Walk directly in front of the house.”

She stared down at the ballpoint pen that lay on the floor. The crumpled piece of paper that had wafted to the carpet when Kev left the room. “Can I put on my shoes?” she whispered.

Des hesitated. “Be quick,” he said. “And no more questions.”

Edie slid to her knees. She scooped up the pen with one shoe, the paper as she grabbed the other, and sat down on the bed again, the paper spread out on the floor between her feet. She held the pen as she did up the laces of the high-tops, and scrawled in huge letters,

BOMB

“You're done tying your shoes,” Des said.

“Yes.” Edie stood, and stepped outside the cabin door, leaving it gaping wide. The icy wind whipped at her wet eyes, her still-damp hair. She let the piece of paper flutter out of her hands, to the frosty ground.

Des said nothing. He had not seen it. Tears of relief trickled out of her eyes.
Please, Kev. Or someone. Anyone. See it. Find it.

“Now what?” she asked.

T
he wind swept up the canyon, sharp and raw, hitting Kev's face like a slap. He welcomed it. He deserved a slap.

He slogged through the undergrowth up to the craggy cliff face that was upslope from the drafty, half-built house. The house was perched on that same cliff, he now saw. The foundation was sunk into a chunk of volcanic rock. A big bank of picture windows had already been put in on the floor above the basement where Aaro lived now, probably to block the weather from the slow, one-man construction site. They would look out over a stunning view, over a sheer cliff to a riverbed canyon below. Very dramatic.

Kev couldn't believe how far things had gone. It was bad enough that he'd used her for two decades as a talisman and navigation device, before even knowing who or what she was. And now that he knew her, he was using her even more. He craved her. He was strung out on her, out of his head. Her body, her mind, her way of talking. The way she made him feel. Being seen by her. Being known.

He'd put her life in danger repeatedly. He'd known, in his skin, his guts, his balls, that he couldn't have this. That being with him was a death sentence for that girl. And he'd pretended not to know it.

And tonight, Jesus. He was appalled at himself. Bullying, scolding, blustering. Coercing her into rough sex, after a day like today.

And now she could end up doing time. If she survived at all.

He had to muzzle this beast. Damage control. If he had to confess to a crime he didn't commit, murder and rape and brainwashing and abuse and God knows what else to clear her, he would. He would.

It would have to be enough, that Edie existed someplace, safe and whole, even if she was not happy. Maybe he could read her graphic novels to pass the time while he rotted in prison. It was exactly what he deserved, he reflected grimly. Let the fucking punishment fit the crime.

“Hey. Kid.”

He turned. It was Tony. He'd aged ten years in the last twenty-four hours. His lines were seamed even deeper, the pouches heavier.

He cupped his hand against the wind to light a hand-rolled cigarette. It glowed as he sucked in smoke. His grizzled stubble glinted silver in the pale half-light of dawn.

Kev couldn't make his voice work. The thought of Edie hating him, after what he'd said. It compressed his larynx to the hardness of a diamond. “What are you doing out here?” he finally said.

“Came out to take a piss,” was Tony's laconic reply.

Kev tilted his eyebrow. “Aaro had indoor plumbing, last I looked.”

“Don't get mouthy with me,” Tony said. His eyes were slitted, measuring. “Thought you'd be in with your lady, makin' the best possible use of your time. What you doing out here in the cold?”

Kev coughed, to clear the way for words. “She's not my lady.”

Tony blinked. “What the fuck? You're head-up-the-ass in love.”

“She keeps narrowly escaping death. Now she's looking at prison time, if they pin Parrish on me. I'm bad for her health. And reputation.”

Tony folded his arms over his chest. “What does she think?”

Kev looked back out over the canyon. “It doesn't matter what she thinks,” he said. “My decision's made.”

Tony coughed. “You haven't had much to do with women, kid.”

Kev grunted. Like he needed love advice from Tony Ranieri. Every woman Tony had ever been involved with hated his guts.

“Shouldn't you be inside, getting some sleep?” he asked.

“Hard to sleep in that place,” Tony said. “Temperature's subzero.”

“It's got to be warmer than it is out here.”

“I'm talkin' about your brothers,” Tony said. “They think I'm lower than dirt, for sitting on you for eighteen years. Like a fuckin' hen.”

Kev shrugged. “Well. It is what it is. Can't change it now.”

Tony smoked, and waited. Kev felt the weight of his expectant pause, and turned his head, staring at the old man.

“Let me get this straight,” Kev said. “You want me to tell you that it's all perfectly OK? That I understand?”

Tony's nostrils flared. “I had my fucking reasons for what I did.”

Right. Like getting unpaid slave labor, twelve hours a day for years. “Sure you did, Tony,” he said sourly.

“You can't tell me that if I'd gone off looking for these McClouds Osterman and his goons wouldn't have gone for you. Back when you was practically a drooling vegetable,” Tony growled. “They would've gone for all four of you! You'd have been meat, kid.”

“Maybe,” Kev said. “We also might have exposed that bastard and finished it back then, eighteen years ago. Before he went on to murder and brain damage dozens of innocent teenagers.”

“You're blaming me for that, now, too?” Tony hunched his head down into his shoulders.

“I'm just saying that we can't know. So cut the pronouncements and the justifications. It's a waste of time. What's done is done.”

“You are one righteous hard-ass.” Tony pinched the cigarette, and sucked in the last drag. “You think I fucked you up bad, huh?”

Aw, Christ. Tony was wanking away at the self-torture. Kev sighed, watching his breath curl. “No,” he said wearily.

“You think I shoulda taken you to specialists, at two hundred bucks a pop? Sold some crack cocaine to pay for it, maybe? You think I shoulda got a bunch of candy-ass social workers to fuss over you, feel sorry for you? Jerk you off?”

“No, Tony,” he said, tonelessly.

“Or shelled out money for private speech therapy? I had to take care of Bruno, too, goddamnit! Nobody ever gave me a fucking dime to pay for that kid's expenses, and you expect me to—”

“I didn't expect a goddamn thing, Tony. You could have left me at the warehouse to die if you felt like it,” Kev said. “It was your choice.”

Tony hawked and spat over the cliff. “So I'm an ice cold, egoistic, opportunistic bastard, huh? Right? Go ahead. Say it.”

Kev shrugged, mercilessly. “You said it, not me.”

Tony wiped his mouth, scratching the stubble under his chin. “Just keep in mind,” he said. “If I had a son of my own, I'd have treated him the exact same goddamn way. And he'd be just as pissed as you.”

Kev was startled. He stared at the old man, bemused. Trying, and failing, to decode that cryptic statement.

“You get me?” Tony demanded. “You get what I'm saying?”

Kev cleared his throat. “Ah. I think so.”

“So don't take it personal.”

“OK,” Kev said. At a total loss.

Tony stubbed out his cigarette on the rock, muttering. He dug in his pocket, and pulled something out. Small, tarnished oblong discs that dangled on a chain. He handed it to Kev. “Better late than never.”

Kev took it, stared at the tags.
Eamon McCloud.
His chest hurt.

Tony turned, and stumped away.

“Tony,” Kev said, on impulse.

Tony did not turn. Kev groped for something coherent to say. Something to answer that backhhanded, rough moment of grace.

“Thanks for saving me,” he said.

Tony didn't look around. “You're worth saving, kid.” His voice sounded heavy and sad. He walked back to the house.

Kev's hands closed around the dog tags, looking inward as the memory unfurled. Of that day his overblown hero complex had convinced him it was his job to singlehandedly get proof for the cops that the Midnight Project was something foul and criminal. He knew more kids would die if he asked someone else to do the job. There had been no one to ask for help. Davy was in Iraq, Connor off on a stakeout for his new cop job. Sean had been out of his mind in love with Liv Endicott, and her dad had gotten him locked up in jail to keep him away from her. So no back-up from that quarter. He was on his own.

But it couldn't wait. He'd gone to his father's bedroom, which none of them had touched since his death eight years before. The room was thick with dust, but the bed was still made up with military neatness, the drab green wool blanket pulled as tight as a drum. He'd taken the dog tags out of a tin cup that sat next to a photograph of his mother, and sat on the bed, holding the metal discs in his hand, staring at Mom's smiling face. Silently begging for courage. To do the hard thing.

Then he'd shoved them into his pocket—and gone off to fucking Armageddon, all alone. His head shoved six miles up his ass.

Only eighteen years later was he finally even physically capable of pondering the massive consequences of that decision. His stupidity, his arrogance, it took his breath away. But he'd paid for it. Paid in full.

Sean came out on the porch. He caught sight of Kev up on the bluff, and gestured him down. As soon as his voice would carry over the scream of the canyon wind, his twin shouted, “What's with Edie?”

Kev's guts locked up. “What do you mean?”

“You have no idea why she would suddenly decide to take an early morning stroll and walk out of the security perimeter?”

Dread slammed into him. He looked at the cabin. The door hung open, banging on its hinges. A piece of paper fluttered and danced on wind gusts. “Oh, shit,” he whispered.

“Aaro saw her, but she was in front of the house, so he thought nothing of it. Then he poured himself a cup of coffee, went over to the door, and she was gone. Halfway across the meadow already. She's not even wearing a coat. It's fucking freezing out here.”

“Which way?” he demanded.

Sean pointed. “Straight north, toward the highway.”

Kev leaped off the rock and onto the path, across the clearing—

Bam. Bam.
Guns blasted, woodchips flew. Kev hit the ground and started crawling for cover. The piece of paper swirled and spun in the wind, closer to him. He snagged it out of midair.

His own grim face stared out of the paper. A line drawing. Grim features, flat mouth, fulminating eyes. And above it, a scrawled word.

BOMB

Then he heard her scream.

 

Edie hugged herself in the frigid dawn. She clutched the phone to her ear under damp, half-frozen hair. Her ear burned with the toxic contact of that falsely gentle voice.

“Look down, Edie. There's a beam sunk into concrete, in the foundation of this building. Do you see something?”

She jerked back in revulsion. “Oh, God, it's a—”

“Shut up! No sudden movements! Look again, you idiot.”

She looked again. She did not like snakes, but she forced herself to stare at the thing, until…Wait. This was not a real snake.

A mechanical snake. A robotic thing. Dark, metallic. Wound around a beam that supported the house. The narrow end of its tail was lifted, like a rattlesnake's. The robotic snake slowly, gracefully lifted its head, and looked at her, cocking its head rakishly.

She recoiled. Its face was a recessed camera lens. It looked like a wide-open, voracious silver mouth, like a gigantic tapeworm.

“Isn't it amazing?” Des asked, in a conversational tone. “Two meters long, and it can get anywhere. Past a thermal imager, a motion detector, infrared. It slithers through rocks, rubble. Sends back sounds and images. Even thermal images. That's how we saw you through the cabin wall, see? And best of all…it carries ordnance. It's less maneuverable with a load of explosives, but it manages fine.”

The snake unwound from the four-by-four beam and slithered in a smooth, back-and-forth swishing S movement over to Edie's foot.

It lifted its head, wound itself around her ankle, and squeezed. The camera snake head looked up, wagging. Taunting her.

“Aw,” Des murmured. “It likes you. Don't move, Edie.”

Edie fought to stay still. “Stop it,” she whispered.

“Listen carefully.” The snake detached from her leg, and coiled itself up. “Turn your back to the house. Lean down, pick up the snake.”

She hesitated. Des clicked his tongue.

“Edie,” he chided. “You're being thick and slow. That snake is a bomb. If I push the button, you will all die. Is that what you want?”

“No,” she whispered, in a tiny voice.

“Well, then. Pick up the snake.”

Edie clenched her gut, and did so. The robot snake was extremely heavy. It writhed in her grip like a living thing.

“Stroll away from the house…slower. Straight ahead. Slow down, Edie. Yes, that's the pace. Slow and steady. Casual. Look up at the trees. Enjoy the beauty of nature, hmm? Keep going.”

Her feet crunched over the frosted pine needles. One mudstained red high-top in front of the other, staring down so she wouldn't trip. Clutching that abominable thing in one hand.

Out of the trees. Into a meadow. Pushing through long, folded wads of frosted dead grass. She shuffled forward, her arm burning with the effort of holding that awful thing out.

She reached the end of the clearing. Men rose up silently at the edge of the trees, like pale shadows in white and gray winter camo, bristling with guns and hardware, thick with body armor, faces hidden by ski masks. Guns, pointing at her. A lot of guns.

She stopped, shivering violently. Waited. Six, seven…eight men.

One of them jerked the snake away from her. She let her burning arm drop. Her other arm, too. She slid the phone into her pocket.

The one who had grabbed the snake tossed it over his beefy shoulder, and cuffed her arms in front of her with plastic bonds, ratcheting them brutally tight. He grabbed her by the arm, made a signal to the other seven men. They dropped to the ground, started slinking towards Aaro's house. She turned to watch, but the man wrenched her along beside him. “Not a sound,” he hissed.

They stopped at a clearing. She could hear the highway not far away. Logging trucks roaring by. Several cars were parked there. One was the car that Kev's Zia Rosa had rented. The one Kev had driven to the Helix complex the day before. The yellow Nissan Xterra.

Des sat next to a stump with a laptop. He held his phone to his ear, but when he saw them, he made a show of closing the connection. His smile was so normal. As if they were meeting for coffee.