Deadly Games (25 page)

Dinner was as strained as he knew it would be. Ian rubbed the back of his neck as he stood alone at the windows. Probably stupid to be standing in front of one, but he really didn’t care at present. He hated debriefings with Pete. There was never enough.

More details, more info, more intel. Go over it all again and again and again.

Ian knew it was relevant, but he was just so damned tired. This weekend. This weekend was the last assignment he had.

Thank God.

His headache had been constant for two days. He just had to make it through this weekend.

Pete and the agency’s team of docs had been concerned, but he told them to give him some damn pills and he’d deal with it. He could crash when it was all over. And he knew he would. Crashing was simply a side effect of what he did. He knew it and accepted it.

A cell phone chirped. Rori’s new one he’d gotten her today. He glanced at her over his shoulder as she frowned and answered it.

Then a soft smile spread across those lips. Darya sat in the corner playing with a box of wooden blocks he’d decided to get her at the toy store before coming home. The glittering Barbie and accessories were opened, but sat untouched to the side. He watched as she stacked yet another block up, creating God only knew what. Other than her screams and that one time at the hotel, she still hadn’t spoken again.

Pain flashed through his head.

“You okay?” his mother asked coming up to stand beside him.

He bit down and nodded.

She frowned. “You look like you have a headache.”

It felt that bad. No wonder people could see it. He took a deep breath and focused on his mother. Her green eyes were concerned and her hair was pulled back into some do.

She wore brown woolen slacks and an off white silk button down.

“You look beautiful, Mom.”

As he hoped, it distracted her. “Thank you, sweetie.” She swept her hand over some imaginary spot on her shirt front. “Did you eat enough? I noticed --”

“Yes, Mom,” he interrupted. He needed a quiet place. Just him.

“Kaitie, leave the man alone,” his father said.

“Nikko, luv, I’ve really got to go.” Rori’s laughter and words pulled his attention back to her. She stood over in the corner, talking softly.

His mother and father raised a brow.

Nikko.

“No,” her voice sharpened. “Things are fine. Just….” Her gaze rose to his and locked. “Complicated.” Then she shook her head. “No, Nikko, not like that. We’re fine.

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Yes, yes, we’re still looking for them.” She nodded. “I need to go, Nikko. Yes, luv you as well. Ciao!”

Ian cocked a brow.

Johnno said, “Nikko?”

Rori’s laughter was husky and deep as she flipped the phone shut. “You don’t want to know, John.” Her gaze rose to John’s. “You’d really rather be in ignorance on this one.”

They walked out of the room together, John asking, “Is this the same Nikko you mentioned in passing before.”

“No, I’ve several men I call Nikko, luv. Doesn’t everyone?”

He ignored them, he’d ask later. God his head hurt.

“You let your wife call other men luv?” Jock asked him.

Ian only stared at him. “No one let’s Rori do anything. She does whatever she wants to do.”

Pain shot through his brain and he hissed. The edges of his vision were blurred.

“Ian?” someone asked.

Without a word to anyone, he walked out of the room. In the hallway, Johnno raised his brow, then frowned, said something to Rori and followed him.

Ian didn’t care. He just needed to get somewhere and lie down. Chills danced over his skin.J

ohnno’s arm slipped around his shoulder. “That bad is it?”

He started to bite out at his friend, but again the pain clawed inside him and all he could do was stop and take a breath, hoping he wouldn’t be sick. “Fuck, Johnno.”

“I know. Let’s get you to bed.”

Ian could feel his vision wavering. “Bad,” he mumbled.

Johnno slung Ian’s arm over his own shoulder.

“Well, this ought to give all the family something else to talk about.”

Ian tried to smile. “They’re currently wondering about Nikko.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Right now, don’t care.”

“Yes, well, hopefully, you’ll still feel that way later.”

He should probably try and figure out what the hell that statement meant, but God’s truth. “I hate these.”

“I know.”

They were at Ian and Rori’s room. Johnno paused to open the door.

“I’ll get it,” a new voice said. Gavin. Damn.

The room was thankfully dark.

Someone grabbed his wrist and Ian flung them off.

“You really don’t want to be touching him, Gavin,” John said.

“He’s my brother.”

“That may be --”

God why the hell wouldn’t they shut up?

He all but fell on the bed and moaned as pain knifed through his skull.

“Did you take anything?” Gavin asked.

Ian might have laughed if he’d had the energy or felt like it, but instead he didn’t.

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He just wished for quiet oblivion.

He started to push himself up and grab the pill bottle he’d tossed on the dresser from Pete’s doctor’s. But he hated pills.

“Stay the bloody hell there,” Johnno’s voice bounced off his eardrums. “This the bottle here on the dresser?”

He didn’t even want to nod, just mumbled a yes.

Closing his eyes, he hoped this wasn’t a trek into the dark realm as he called it. A migraine was one thing. Even a prolonged migraine. A trek into the dark side wasn’t what he liked to experience. It was soul draining. It was judgment on past crimes and punishment paid in pain. He called those times, simply the Attacks.

Ian wasn’t in the mood even for his friend. He just wanted everyone out. Silence.

Rori looked at the man on the bed. She knew what he felt. The headaches that reached up and knifed through the skull so that all you wanted was to be left the hell alone.

She watched as Johnno gave him a glass of water and two white pills. Be lucky if he bloody kept it down and wasn’t sick off of it.

He leaned up and took a drink, swallowing the meds and laying back on the bed.

His brother reached again for his wrist and Ian muttered, “Leave me the hell alone, Gav.

You can’t fucking fix this.”

Gavin cocked a brow and grabbed his brother’s wrist anyway. “Be that as it may, you can either deal with me or you know Mom will be up here taking your vitals. So lay back and shut up.”

“Pay backs are hell,” Ian muttered, flinging his other arm up over his eyes. “My pulse is one thing, you try to look at my pupils and I’m libel to put a fucking bullet in you.”

Gavin chuckled.

Johnno shook his head. “I don’t know whether he’s joking.”

“You get these migraines a lot?” Gavin asked straightening. “How bad is it?”

“Ever been stabbed in the brain?”

Gavin’s lips twitched. “No, and I’ll warrant neither have you, lest you wouldn’t be here.”

Rori went to the bathroom and wet a washcloth. Coming back to the bed, she said,

“I’ve always likened them to some medieval torture of hot pokers in my bloody brain.”

Ian groaned. “Thank you, love.”

She gently laid the cloth on his forehead. “You need anything?” she whispered.

“For everyone to get the hell out. And leave me alone. Yeah.”

She asked John, “Has he always been such a compliant patient.”

“Rori,” Ian warned.

“Let’s go,” John said, taking Gavin’s arm. Gavin looked as if he wanted to ask more questions. She half-assed expected him to pull a stethoscope out at any minute.

Luckily John pulled him out of the room. At the doorway, John stopped and looked at her. He nodded to her and she mouthed ‘Darya’. He nodded and left, closing the door softly behind him.

She didn’t move. The silence became comfortable. Ian didn’t move. She almost wondered if he was breathing.

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“You get these too?” he asked, his voice low and gruff.

She started to reach out and run her fingers through his hair, but decided against it as she didn’t like anyone to touch her when her headaches were raging.

“Upon occasions.”

“With analogies of hot pokers, I don’t have to ask if they’re bad.”

Again, they lapsed into silence. She scooted up onto the bed, sitting beside his head. He lifted it and shifted so that he lay on her lap.

“Our lives are screwed, Rori.”

She chuckled and gently grazed her nails along the back of his neck. “Does that hurt?”

With his eyes still closed, he said, “No.”

Barely touching him, she hoped she relieved some of his pain.

“You should be downstairs with Darya,” he mumbled.

“She’s fine. Safe and playing with the blocks you brought back for her. She’d noticed when you left and Jock went and sat on the floor with her, telling her he’d build her a house.”

Ian still didn’t open his eyes, just grunted. “Damn,” he whispered.

His face taut with pain, the lines around his mouth deeper, harsher, the lines around his eyes more pronounced. The skin more pale than she was used to seeing on him. Black lashes lay in short spiky crescents against his skin. She lightly traced the crooked line of his nose, the outline of his ‘M’-ed hairline.

He was right, their lives were messed up.

“Who’s Nikko?” he whispered.

Never opened his eyes. She’d hoped he’d been almost asleep. Instead of answering him she put her hand on his chest and leaned back against the headboard.

His other hand came up and laced with hers. “Nikko?” he pressed.

Rori shook her head. “What you are to Darya,” she said, choosing her words.

“That’s what he is to me.”

He opened his eyes, and she could see the pain clouding the blue irises and narrowing his lids. “I’d like to meet him then.”

She grinned. “Oh, you will.”

“Sounds like he’s not very happy with me.”

She chuckled again. “He’s not. He’s thinking of killing you. I had to explain you’re just a job.” Once the words were out of her mouth, she wished she could take them back.

His eyes bore into her with an intensity she wanted to ignore and meet straight on.

“Just a job?” he asked, quietly.

She leaned further over and gently kissed his lips, the edges almost white with pain. “Well, it was either that or tell him we were lovers.”

That wicked grin of his was starting to mean way too much to her. “There is that.”

Again she kissed him, just her lips brushing his, and then sat back. “He asked about Darya.”

“Why?” he asked, frowning.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Because I’m involved. Because it’s so bloody close to my own story, I don’t know.”

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“What is your story?” he asked.

She took a deep breath, the snakes slithering through her gut. She looked at him and ran her fingers over his hair, barely touching. “You certainly are chatty for one who’s in pain.”

For one long moment, he stared at her, and for whatever reason, she actually thought about telling him. But why? It was none of his concern. None of his….

He closed his eyes. His fingers tightening on hers. “You know a husband really should know his wife.”

She shook her head and ignored him. She watched the ceiling fan, studied the art work on the walls. Rather impressive actually. They were probably just prints of Van Gough and Mary Cassett, but then with the Kinncaids, these could just as easily be some originals. She’d rather not find out.

She looked around. Just as she’d first thought. Someone could nick some really nice things from this house alone if someone were so inclined. She wasn’t. She could have cared less about such things. Just because people had nice things, the best of whatever… Did not make them worthy of any respect in her book.

Actions, the person themselves made the impression on her, good or bad. Not what they owned or where they came from.

“So when will I meet him?” he asked, breaking the silence.

“You should rest,” she whispered.

“I can’t until you answer my questions.” His eyes were again closed, his face pulled tight, but still she caught the edge of humor in his words.

She sighed. “Fine. Nikko is Nikko. He raised me.”

“Where’d he get you from?” Ian whispered, not looking at her.

She remembered the fear, the blood, the man holding his head screaming at her as he hit her again and again.

She shook the thought off. Ian opened his eyes. “Who hurt you?”

She took a deep breath. “I don’t know who my parents are. All I know is that someone left me at an orphanage late one night. I was about one, they think.” She shrugged and looked at his hair. “I was put in a foster home with these truly lovely people. The Rittlebaums. He worked at Cambridge as a mythology professor.” She’d almost forgotten that. The way the man, with his whiskery beard would come in and tell her good night stories, bringing to life the story of Odesius, and Agamemnon, Viking stories of angry gods punishing the hero. Someone was always being punished, tested.