Fallen Angels 04 - Rapture (25 page)

He’d missed her through the night—

“Penny for your thoughts?” the nurse said softly.

Matthias looked out the window at the building across the alley. “I just realized—I don’t know your name.”

“Oh, sorry. I thought it was on the whiteboard in your room.”

“Probably was, but it could have been in neon lights and I don’t know if I’d have noticed.”

This was a lie, of course. In fact, there hadn’t been a nurse listed, just a doctor, and there hadn’t been a name tag on her scrubs.

Which seemed a little strange, come to think about it. …

She took an elegant hand and laid it on her breastbone—which seemed like an invitation to check out her cleavage. “You can call me Dee.”

He stuck with her eyes. “As in Deidre?”

“As in Devina.” She glanced away, as if she didn’t want to go into it. “My mother has always been a godly woman.”

“Which explains your dress.”

Dee shook her head ruefully and smoothed the skirt. “How did you know this getup isn’t me?”

“Well, for one thing, it looks like it belongs on a forty-year-old. The jeans and parka are more your age.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Twenty-five-ish.” And maybe that was why he didn’t like her touching him. She was so young, too young for someone like him.

“Twenty-four, as a matter of fact. It’s why my mom’s in town, actually.” She touched her sternum again. “Birthday girl.”

“Happy birthday.”

“Thanks.”

“Your father coming in, too?”

“Oh … yeah. No.” Now, she closed up completely. “No, he’s not coming.”

Damn it, the last thing he needed was to get all into her personal shit. “Why not.”

She fiddled with her coffee cup in its saucer, turning it back and forth. “You are so odd.”

“Why.”

“I don’t like to talk about myself, but here I am babbling away.”

“You haven’t told me much, if that makes you feel better.”

“But … I want to.” For a split second her eyes dipped to his lips, like she was wondering things about him she really, really didn’t need to. “I want to.”

Nope. Not going there, he thought.

Especially not after Mels.

Dee leaned in, those breasts threatening to break out of that dress. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”

Great. Wonderful. Fucking perfect.

In the tense quiet, Matthias briefly eyed the big window next to them. He’d already been out the thing once.

If things got awkward, he could do it again.

Mels hung up her office phone and leaned back in her chair. As the squeak sounded, she made a new tune out of it, rocking back and forth.

For some reason, her eyes locked on that coffee mug that had been left behind by the other reporter.

When her cell phone went off, she jumped and fumbled with the thing. Quick check of the screen and she wanted to curse—not because of who it was, but because of who it wasn’t.

Maybe Matthias was in the shower.

People took showers in the mornings.

Yeah, for, like, a half hour, though? She’d been calling every five minutes.

“Hello?” she demanded.

“Hey, Carmichael.” It was Monty the Mouth; she could tell by the cracking of his gum. “It’s me.”

Well, at least she did want to hear from the guy. “Good morning.”

“I got something.” His voice dropped, all secret-agent style. “It’s explosive.”

Mels sat up, but didn’t get too excited. With her luck, “explosive” was more hyperbole than H-bomb. “Oh, really?”

“Someone tampered with the body.”

“Excuse me?”

“Like I told you, I was first on scene, and I snapped some photographs—you know, in an official capacity.” There was a rustling over the connection, and then a muffled conversation, like he was talking to someone and had covered up the receiver. “Sorry. I’m at the station house. Let me get out of here and call you back.”

He hung up before she could say anything, and she had images of him dodging fellow officers on his way to the parking lot like he was one of Eli Manning’s receivers.

Sure enough, when he called back, he was out of breath. “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah, I got you.”

“So my photographs of the body have something on them the official ones don’t.”

That was her cue to OMG, and in this case, she didn’t have to fake it. “What’s the difference?”

“Meet me and I’ll show you.”

“Where and when.”

After she hung up, she checked her watch and dialed Matthias’s room phone again. No answer.

“Hey, Tony,” she said, leaning into the aisle between their cubicles. “Can I borrow your—”

The guy tossed the keys without missing a beat with whoever he was talking to on the phone. As she blew him a kiss, he covered his heart and gave her a little swoon.

Striding out of the newsroom, she got in Tony’s Toy and headed across town, using a route that just happened to … well, what do you know, it was the Marriott hotel.

And she was a good half an hour early for her meeting with the Mouth.

By crazy luck, she found an open, metered parking spot just across from the lobby entrance—except it took her two tries to get the car in place, her parallel-parking skills rusty from her using too many garages since she’d moved back to Caldwell.

Plus, feeling like a stalker didn’t help her at the wheel.

As she walked into the lobby, she felt like someone from security should stop her and turn her away, but no one paid her any attention—which left her wondering exactly how many other people were to’ing or fro’ing over things they felt icky about.

At the elevators, she hopped a ride to the sixth floor along with a businessman whose wilted attire and red eyes suggested he’d flown in the night before from somewhere far away.

Maybe even flapping his own arms.

Stepping free, she hung a right and went down the carpeted hall. Room service trays were set out next to doors, treacherous welcome mats with their smudged plates, half-empty coffee cups, and stained napkins. At the far end, a maid’s cart was parked in front of an open room, the light from inside spilling into the corridor and highlighting fresh toilet paper rolls, folded towels, and a lineup of spray bottles.

Matthias’s door still had the Do Not Disturb sign on it, and she took that to mean he hadn’t checked out. Putting her ear to the panels, she sent up a quick prayer that he wouldn’t pick this moment to open up.

No running water. No muttering from the TV. No deep voice on the phone.

She knocked. Knocked a little louder.

“Matthias,” she said to the door. “It’s me. Open up.”

As she waited for a response that didn’t come, she glanced over at the maid who had come out with a plastic bag full of trash. For a split second, she considered playing the whole I-forgot-my-keycard thing, but in post-9/11 Caldwell, she had a feeling that wasn’t going to work—and might end up with her getting tossed out on her hey-nanny-nanny.

Well, wasn’t this a credit to her character: The invasion of his privacy wasn’t even on her no-go radar; it was the fear of getting caught that stopped her.

Disgusted with herself, and pissed off at him, Mels hit the elevator again, and when she got to the first floor, she intended to march out to Tony’s car, get in the damn thing, and be wicked early for her meeting with Monty and his flapping gums.

Instead, she casualed her way around the lobby, peeking into the gift shop, wandering down to the spa …

Yeah, ’cuz of course he’d be buying bathrobes and getting a cucumber wrap on his face. Right.

When she came up to the main restaurant that was open, she nearly abandoned the wild-goose chase, but it only took a moment to peer in—

On the other side of the tables of diners, sitting at a window, Matthias was eating with a brunette woman in a limoncello-colored dress.

Who was she—

Was that the nurse? From the hospital?

“Would you like a table for one?” the maître d’ asked.

Ah, yeah, that would be a negative—unless the thing came equipped with an airsick bag. “No, thanks.”

Across the way, the brunette started to laugh, throwing her head back so that her hair flowed all around. She was so perfectly beautiful, it was as if she were a moving photograph that had been touched up in all the right places.

As Matthias sat accross from her, he was hard to read, and in an absurd moment of possessiveness, Mels was glad he was wearing her sunglasses. Like that was the equivalent of her pissing on his fence post.

“Are you meeting someone, then?” the maître d’ asked.

“No,” she replied. “I do believe he’s busy.”

Dee’s laughter was … well, kind of divine, as a matter of fact. To the point where it fritzed out part of Matthias’s brain, and he couldn’t think of what he’d said that was so funny.

“So how’s your memory?” she asked.

“Spotty.”

“It’ll come back. It’s only been, what, a day and a half?” She leaned to the side as her plate of eggs, sausage, toast, and hash browns arrived. “Give it time.”

His bagel looked anemic in comparison.

“Are you sure that’s all you want?” She gesticulated with her fork. “You need to put on weight. Myself, I’m a strong believer that a big breakfast is the only way to start the day.”

“It’s nice to be around a woman who doesn’t pick at her food.”

“Yup, that’s not me.” She motioned for the waitress to come back over. “He wants what I have. Thanks.”

It seemed rude to point out that if he ate that much he was going
to explode, so he just pushed the bagel aside. She was probably right. He felt out of it, sluggish and empty, the club sandwich he’d had for dinner with Mels having been long burned off thanks to that ninja motherfucker with the happy trigger finger.

“Don’t wait for me,” he said.

“I wasn’t going to.”

Matthias smiled coldly and passed some time glancing around the room. Most people were exactly what he’d expect in a hotel like this … except for one guy over in the corner who looked seriously out of place: He was wearing a suit that was cut better than everybody else’s, and seemed dated even to the fashionless eye.

Hell, the getup might have been worn to a flapper party—or maybe back in the Roaring Twenties themselves—

As if sensing he was being looked at, the man lifted his eyes with an aristocratic air.

Matthias refocused on his dining companion. Dee was going at her food with precise cuts of her fork, the thin edge pushing easily through the scrambled and the hash.

“Sometimes not remembering is a good thing,” she said.

Yeah, he thought, he had a feeling that was especially true in his case. God, if that story Jim had fed him was—

“And I didn’t mean to be evasive about my father,” she said. “It’s just … he’s nothing I like to think about.” Her fork drifted down to settle on the plate as she stared out the window. “I’d do anything to forget him. He was … a violent man—an evil, violent man.”