Mr. Real (Code of Shadows #1) (11 page)

He retrieved his suitcase from the trunk of his car. What did the Denali man keep in his suitcase?

“There’d better not be any Denali in there,” she said.

He smiled. “I assure you, there is not.”

She climbed up the porch steps and held the front door for him. “I was thinking, if you want a place to set up a base of operations, one of my guest rooms is finished and ready. You could lay out your clothes and spy things there. Your own room.”

“My
spy things
?” he asked.

“No…well, you know.” She didn’t mean to insult him.

He followed her up to the small room that overlooked the back area and the carriage house. It even had a small desk. He set his suitcase on the bed and opened it, revealing a laptop and a bundle of cash nestled in some clothes. He pulled out the laptop and closed the suitcase.

A laptop.

“Bet you don’t use your pet name as a password,” she joked.

He turned to her, looking slightly flushed from the hike and so handsome. “Do you?” He lowered his voice. “Will I type Lindy into your computer and gain access to all your secrets?”

She stifled a smile. “I’ll never tell.”

He took a step toward her. She took a step back and hit the desk. He took another step, and then he lifted her onto the desk, kissing her gently. He was warm and smelled of rosemary. He pulled away and traced a line down her neck. She felt sure he could feel her excited pulse drumming. Well, she
was
excited. They were having fun. What was the crime in that?

He slipped a finger between buttons on the front of her dress. “It’s only a matter of time, you know.” He flicked open a button. His touch felt electric on her skin.

“A matter of time ‘til what?” she whispered, hooking her hands over his belt, enjoying the feel of his lean, hard stomach against the backs of her fingers.

“It’s only a matter of time until I know all your secrets.” He smiled his confident, suave smile. He seemed to enjoy himself most when they were doing this sexy spy banter. She couldn’t blame him—she enjoyed it, too. And, anyway, the spy thing provided him continuity with his true home, the Denali commercial, right?

He undid another button, then another, and caressed her neck with his other hand. Lord help her, she wanted him. “All of your secrets.”

She smiled happily. “We’ll see about
that
.”

He pulled his gun from his pants back, reached around her, and set it with a deep clack on the desk behind her. “Oh!” The gun never failed to startle her. He’d had a gun that whole time?

He threaded his fingers up through the back of her hair, pulled her to him, and kissed her with new force, his cock like steel against the cushion of her belly.

“Mmm-
hmm
,” she said, melting into him.

“I will know all your secrets,” he whispered, moving his lips to her ear, words warm and soft. “Even the ones you keep from yourself.”

She snorted. “That’s a lot of secrets.”

He unzipped the back of her dress and slid the straps over her shoulders, pushing the garment down and creating a little nest around where she sat. She pulled his shirt out of his pants.

“I like to be thorough when I’m on a case.”

Oh, the spy game was hot. She racked her brains for a spy role-play thing to say back to him. “A pity,” she said sadly. “Because you
will
fail, you know.”

His eyes twinkled. “I doubt that.”

“You’ll never get anything out of me, Nick.” She sat up straight and cool, casually inspecting her fingernails, as she’d seen a gangster moll do in the movies. “I’m surprised you haven’t noticed that yet.”

He watched her, expression unreadable, and then, as though moved by a force, he kissed her, pushing her gently onto her back, covering her with his body. He kissed her everywhere in that madly erotic way of his—her neck, her shoulders, the inside of her ankles, and then up her thighs, setting her quite on fire. Sometimes his moves involved light kisses, sometimes rough whiskers. Feather or sandpaper, she never knew which she would get. She gasped as he reached her moist sex.

“I will penetrate you completely,” he said.

“Please do,” she panted, feeling his hot breath on her pussy.

She gasped when he licked her. He did it again, and again, slowly, until she teetered on the edge of oblivion. Then he did as he promised, penetrating her fully, completely, and deliciously.

Later, washing dishes in the kitchen, she wondered if she’d taken the spy banter too far. Yes, there was the whole continuity-with-his-true-home thing. But also, it was the fun thing in the moment. Just what she wanted to do. Was she being dangerously selfish? Had she ruined a man’s entire existence with her selfishness? Was she damaging Sir Kendall every moment she kept him in the world? But now that he was here, how could she let him dissolve? She felt paralyzed. She wished Karen would come home early and meet Sir Kendall and tell her what to do.

No, she needed to think about what to do. She needed to make a decision. Before she could decide anything further, Sir Kendall strolled in. He suggested a jaunt into town in order to take his shirt to a drycleaner for repair.

“Downtown Malcolmsberg isn’t the most exciting place, I’m afraid,” she said. “Pretty boring, actually. Sometimes, I think I’ll go stir crazy living here.” She raised a finger. “But there
is
a dry cleaner.”

He smiled. “And, there could be some questionable characters lurking about that you’ll be able to identify. Having lived in the town for all these months.” He said this in a joking manner, like she really hadn’t.

“I don’t really know that many people,” she said. “But what the heck. And we could pick up food. I’m sure I’ve been feeding you girl food.”

He smoothed his thumb along her jawbone. “And it’s been bloody delicious.”

CHAPTER NINE

An hour later, Sir Kendall parked in front of Bean Central, the town coffee shop. Alix had dressed for the occasion in ridiculous white boots, which were decorated around the tops and front with small white tassels. She paired those with pink short-shorts and a sleeveless white top with pink bra straps showing. Bra-straps-showing seemed to be one of her favorite fashion statements. He’d worn nice slacks and the spare white shirt he always kept in the suitcase in the Alfa Romeo.

He’d insisted on peeking in at the coffee shop, and was surprised that she knew the barista by name. A young fellow named Benji. Seems she’d spent at least some time establishing herself. Had the real Alix been some sort of a hermit, perhaps?

According to the quick Googling he had done, the real Alix had moved to Malcolmsberg roughly four months ago, in the spring. Annoying to have to do his own research, but connections were down all over, his email as well as his phone. He’d had to hack her wireless to get her password, which turned out to be Lindy after all. The emails were exceedingly inane; certainly the account had belonged to the real Alix.

“Benji, this is my friend, Sir Kendall—Nick,” she corrected herself.

“Pleased to meet you,” Sir Kendall said, shaking the boy’s hand.

“So you’re a Sir? Like Sir Paul McCartney?” the boy asked.

“Not quite. Sir Paul is a knight. I’m a baronet. It’s a hereditary title. Below a knight, but above a baron.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “Wow.”

“Luck of the draw, really. And the good favor of King James the second some three hundred years ago.”

Alix stared at him, lips zipped, dimples on her cheeks.

The boy looked back and forth between them. “You’re pulling my leg,” he said.

“Hardly.” Sir Kendall turned to Alix. “Something amusing?”

“No!” She seemed flustered. “Just, wow. You hadn’t told me. I mean,
King James.”

“The second,” he bit out, feeling unaccountably irritated.

“You have a whole family tree.”

“One tends to.”

Alix fell silent.

Sir Kendall was unused to women finding him amusing, unused to women toying with him as she seemed to do…between bouts of ineptitude. The woman didn’t add up. First, there was the Denali bottle incident, which had frankly shocked him, and he wasn’t easily shocked. In breaking the bottle, she’d declared herself a friend or, at least, not an enemy. But then this afternoon in his room, she’d chosen to reveal a certain strategic opposition to him, yet in such a…clichéd manner.
A pity, because you will fail,
she’d said, inspecting her ridiculous blue nails. A person who had the heft to say such things would never put it that way. Was she being naïve? Clumsy? Ironic? Was she working her own agenda, off-roading from Hyko’s plan? Or following it exactly? He typically felt energized when people presented as puzzles, usually savored the challenge.

No so much here.

It wasn’t just this case; something about the whole place made him uneasy. The surreal quality of it. The vague sense of chaos and vulnerability. There was something he needed to worry about, but what? When he tried to get to the root of his uneasiness, it shifted and fled like a fragment left over from a dream.

He bought them a cookie to share and they walked out.

If Hyko’s people were watching, they’d assume he’d taken the bait and thought the woman an innocent. Perhaps they’d interpret this visit to town as a signal:
Poor innocent Alexis Gordon is under my protection now.

Dry cleaners next. He introduced himself to Norm Stapleton, proprietor of Stapleton’s Dry Cleaner. Norm didn’t appear to know Alix; to her credit, this didn’t seem to make her nervous.

Norm’s eyes lit up as Sir Kendall pushed the shirt across the counter, along with a hundred dollar bill. “I’ll pay you ten times your usual rate to restore this to a pristine condition as soon as possible,” he said.

Norm examined Sir Kendall’s button-less shirt.

“Lady gets a bit excited.” Sir Kendall mimicked her ripping open his shirt. This in retaliation for the family tree bit.

“Oh, my,” Norm said, eyes wide with amusement.

Alix’s face went bright red and she hit him in the shoulder. “Wasn’t me!”

“Don’t be bashful, my pet.”

Her mouth fell open.

Norm assumed a businesslike tone and assured Sir Kendall that the buttons would be restored by Monday morning. It would normally be the next morning, he explained, but tomorrow was Sunday, and they were closed Sundays.

“Monday’s fine,” Sir Kendall said.

They passed a drug store; Alix wanted to run in and get soap for the guest bathroom. “I’m all out up there. What do you use?”

What soap did he use? He took showers, but… “Just soap,” he said.

“Like…Ivory? Irish Spring?”

Was that a soap? “Any soap.”

She looked at him strangely. “You don’t have a brand?” And then something stopped her. “Right. Never mind.”

He smiled sunnily. “Whatever is the finest soap, that’s the brand I prefer. I’ll wait out here.”

She hurried in.

She’d expected him to name a brand of soap and had seemed baffled when he hadn’t. What was the significance of a brand of soap?

Usually when he noted a mundane detail, such as a rock in his shoe or a brand of soap, it would relate to the larger mystery and become a clue in some fashion. But so many such details were accruing here, and they couldn’t
all
be clues. What was the significance of the sound of his own chewing he’d noticed this morning? Of squirrels, chasing each other around a tree?

He’d noticed something else, too: time itself felt different. Things took longer. Was this simply a quality of the American Midwest? A slower pace of life and all that? Could the slower pace of life be making insignificant details seem more vivid than usual? Or was
every
detail here significant? Or conversely, was the abundance of details itself the clue?

And there was the old computer lab he’d found the basement. Vintage computers hooked up in a strange configuration. Somebody had taken a sledgehammer to the machines years ago, judging from the dust patterns. There was something about it, something he wasn’t seeing.

Certain things felt unusually weighty, like the fact that he’d killed so many, or the way he’d severed Hyko’s thumbs. And his plans to torture Alix seemed a bit much. But then, that’s what separated the men from the boys—you did a thing even when it was distasteful.

He reminded himself of the so-called dog cage behind Alix’s carriage house. Galvanized steel, maybe titanium. It had been created to hold something more powerful than a man, than a gorilla, even an elephant. He’d end up there, or worse, if he didn’t act with steely decision.

He strolled down the block toward the mailbox he’d seen on the corner—the only one he’d seen in all of Malcolmsberg. Such a tiny town, and so different than the foreign capitals and remote outposts he was used to. He thought wistfully of his vacation chateau in Luxembourg. He’d go there as soon as he learned what there was to learn here. He needed a rest. Maybe that was it.

He opened the mailbox and dropped in the package he’d stamped and addressed. It contained a sample of the broken Denali bottle along with the sample of Alix’s hair, which he’d snipped off just before she’d woken up that morning.

She’d snuck off to make a phone call in the yard. He’d heard bits of it. She’d argued with somebody on the other line. If she was, indeed, off-roading from Hyko’s plan, was she foolish enough to let his people know it? He’d heard her mention Pinocchio. Had somebody in their organization lied? Had Hyko caught their mole, Henry? That would be disastrous.

At any rate, the lab would tell him whether the Denali had been drugged or poisoned, though it couldn’t be anything too powerful—Hyko would never have him killed, not with the Falcon letters still out there. Had an enemy of Hyko’s wanted him killed so that the Falcon letters would get out? If that were true, it would suggest that Alix could be a high-ranking spy in Hyko’s organization, doing damage control while playing the slattern.

It was Saturday. He’d have the results by Tuesday. He went back to wait outside the store.

It was then he saw Hyko, ducking around a corner.