Fallen Angels 01 - Covet (28 page)

Above the dresser, his mirror had various ticket stubs, pictures, and other shit tucked into its cheapo, fake-wood frame, and as he stepped forward and caught his reflection, he wanted to curse.

Yup, still the same. He was still staring at a face with bruises on it.

Of course, this trip, his father hadn't been the one who'd put them there.

Vin walked over to the window, and as he cracked the thing to let some air in, he felt like talking. So he did.

“You know, I took Devina to Montreal on our first date. Flew her there in my plane and we stayed in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton. She was as impressed as I meant her to be, and even today, she doesn't know where I come from. Most of that was my choice, but the thing was, she never cared about the past. She never asked about my parents after I told her they were both dead, and I never volunteered.”

He turned around. “I was going to marry her. Had the ring all bought—and what do you know, she even found the diamond this afternoon.”

“Oh...my God.”

“Great timing, right? After Jim dropped me off, I went up to my place, opened the door, and there she was, all thrilled, the box in her hand.”

Marie-Terese put her palm up to her mouth. “What did you do?”

Vin went over and sat on the bed. As a fine spray of dust rose up, he grimaced, stood again, and gathered the quilt in his arms. “Hold on a minute.” Out in the hall, he shook the bedspread out, turning his face away from the cloud. When it wasn't throwing off as much dust, he went back into the room, covered up the bare mattress, and sat down again.

“What did I do...” he murmured. “Well, I took her arms off my neck and stepped away. Told her that I couldn't commit to her, that I'd made a mistake and that I was sorry.”

Marie-Terese came over and sat down beside him. “What did she say?”

“She took it with a glacial calm. Which if you knew her, wouldn't be a surprise. I told her she could keep the ring and she went upstairs with it. Came back like fifteen minutes later with a bunch of her clothes packed. Said she'd move the rest of her stuff out right away and leave the key behind when she did. She was totally unfazed and in control.

Fact was, she didn't seem surprised. I wasn't in love with her and I never had been and she knew it.”

Vin pushed his ass back so he could lean against the wall. From the heat vent overhead, warm air drifted downward onto his face, a counterbalance to the cold-and-fresh ambling in across the windowsill.

After a moment, Marie-Terese followed his example, only she curled her legs up and linked her arms around her knees. “I hope you don't mind me asking...but if you didn't love her, why did you buy the ring?”

“It was one more thing to acquire. Just like she was.” He glanced over. “I'm not proud of it, by the way. I just didn't care before....”

“Before?”

He looked away from her. “Before now.”

There was a long silence as the two sources of air mixed together, the heated and the cool blending into a comfortable temperature.

“My son's name is Robbie,” she said abruptly.

As he glanced over, he saw that on her knees, her knuckles were white from tension.

“It doesn't have to be a quid pro quo,” he murmured. “Just because I tell you things doesn't mean you have to return the favor.”

She smiled a little. “Oh. I know. It's just...I'm not used to talking.”

“That makes two of us.”

Her eyes moved around the room and then stayed on the open door.

“Your parents argued a lot?”

“All the time.”

“Did they...fight? As in more than just verbal...you know.”

“Yup. Most of the time my mother's face looked like a Rorschach test...although she gave as -good as she got—not that that excused in anyway my father's punches.” Vin shook his head. “I don't give a shit what goes down, a man should never, ever raise a hand to a woman.”

Marie-Terese laid her cheek down on top of her knees, and stared over at him. “Some men don't share that philosophy. And some women don't fight back like your mother did.”

When a growl sounded out in the room, she sat up in surprise...which confirmed that, yeah, the low, dangerous sound had come from him.

“Tell me that wasn't your experience,” Vin said darkly.

“Oh, no...” she replied quickly. “But it was rough getting out of my marriage. After I told my now ex-husband that I was leaving him, he took our son and went all around the country. I didn't know where my child was or what had happened...three months. Three months and a private investigator and then lawyers to get free of the marriage and away from him. Everything I did was to make sure my son was and is safe.”

Now her picture was becoming clear, Vin thought. And he was relieved that however bad it had been, she hadn't been battered on top of all of that. “Must have cost a lot of money.”

She nodded and put her head down again. “My ex was a lot like you.

Very wealthy, powerful... handsome.”

Okay...shit. It was great she found him attractive, but he didn't like where this was invariably leading. How could he convince her that he wasn't—

“Mark never would have done something like this, though,” she said quietly. “He never would have let himself be this...exposed. Thank you for this.... It's actually the nicest thing a man's ever done for me, in a way.”

As Vin lifted his hand, he did it very slowly, so she knew exactly where it was. And when he brought his palm to her face, he gave her plenty of time to move back. She didn't. She just met and held his eyes.

Moments expanded into minutes, and neither of them looked away.

As the silence thickened, Vin leaned in and her lips parted, her head shifting up off her knees as if she wanted to meet his mouth as much as he wanted to meet hers.

At the last second, he just kissed her forehead, though. And then he drew her into his arms, wrapping her up close and holding her. As her head rested on his chest, he smoothed his palm over her back in slow, big circles. In response, the shudder she let out was a surrender more complete, more profound, more intimate than if she'd given her body over to him for sex, and he accepted the gift of her trust with the reverence it deserved.

Resting his chin lightly on the top of her head, Vin looked across the room...and had the answer to the question he'd been asking himself since he'd first seen her.

Tucked into the frame of the mirror, just one among the other things, was a picture of the Madonna on a stiff card. In the depiction, she had jet-black hair and brilliant blue eyes and she was beyond lovely, her face tilted down, her golden halo a circle above her head, the aura around her whole form glowing.

He'd gotten the card from one of those evangelical types who'd shown up at the door here a long, long time ago.

As usual, the only reason he'd answered the knock was because his drunken mother had been on the verge of doing so, and he couldn't bear the shame of anyone seeing her in her dirty housecoat and with all that ratty hair. The guy on the other side of the door had been dressed in a black suit and had looked like what Vin had wished his father did—neat, tidy, healthy, and calm.

Vin had lied about his parents being home, and when the man had looked beyond into the living room, Vin said that was not his mother, but a sick relative.

The evangelist's eyes had filled with sorrow, as if he weren't unfamiliar with the situation, and the guy had skipped his spiel, just handing over the card and telling Vin to use the number on the back if he needed shelter.

Vin had taken what was offered and gone upstairs to sit with it in his palms. He'd instantaneously loved the lady on the front because she'd looked as if she never got drunk and never yelled and never hit anyone. And to make sure she was protected, he'd hidden her picture from his mother and father by making it obvious and placing it in full view on the mirror—usually when his mother ransacked his room, she just went for the drawers and the closet and whatever was under the bed.

Now he had his answer.

As he stared at the card, he realized Marie-Terese looked exactly like her.

Jim worked his knife over the piece of wood with care and confidence. In front of him, on the newspaper he'd laid out on the floor at his feet, a pile of wood chips was growing and Dog was right next to the whole production, watching with those big brown eyes, appearing to understand on every level why someone would choose to behave this way toward a stick.

“It's going to be part of my chess set.” Jim nodded at a shoe box he'd been filling up over the last month. “I think I'll make this one.... Well, I'm tired of doing pawns. So this will be the queen.”

He'd gotten the wood from the oak trees on the property when branches broke off in the winds and fell to the ground, and he was slow but steady with his hobby, good for a couple of pieces every now and again. The tool he used was a hunting knife he'd been given by his commanding officer long ago and talk about oldie, but goodie.

The thing was a masterpiece of weaponry that was deceptively humble, with no identifying trademarks, serial numbers or initials, and nothing to tip off the fact that it had been handmade by an expert for use by an expert. And Jim knew the thing like the back of his own hand, the stainless-steel blade a vicious piece of work, the handle wrapped in leather that had been aged with his own sweat.

Lifting it up, he measured the flash of the overhead light on the blade's patinaed surface. Funny, he thought, here in this one-room apartment, being used to transform wood into a game piece, it was just a knife. In most other circumstances, it had been a deadly weapon.

The purpose was everything, wasn't it.

As he went back to work, the blade made a soft scraping sound as he used his thumb to pull the knife toward himself, his hand carefully guiding each stroke, reducing the wood by increments to reveal the chess piece trapped inside.

Over the last twenty years, he'd spent hours like this: By himself. No radio, no television. Just a piece of wood and a knife. He'd made birds and animals and stars and letters that spelled nothing. Carved faces and places. Trees and flowers. There were many advantages to his hobby. Cheap, portable, and he'd always had his blade wherever he'd been.

Guns had come and gone. Other kinds of weapons, too. COs as well.

But the knife had always been with him.

God, the day it had been presented to him, its flank had been mirror clear, and the first thing he'd done was take it outside of his quarters and rub dirt on both sides of it: Dulling all that bright-and-shiny, like sharpening the business edges, had been part of enhancing its utility.

The weapon had never failed him. And damn if he didn't say so himself, but it cut up a nice piece of wood, too—

His cell phone went off, ringing from over on the bedspread. As he went to go see who it was, he put the oak branch down and kept the knife with him out of habit.

Flipping open the phone, he saw that it was an untraceable number and knew exactly who it was. Pushing his thumb on the
send
button, he brought the cell to his ear. “Yeah?” Silence. And then that deep, cynical voice: “Which piece are you working on?” Fucker. Matthias the fucker always knew too much. “The queen.”

“Old habits die hard, don't they.”

As did former bosses. “Thought you said I couldn't call you anymore.”

“Your fingers didn't do the walking this time, did they.”

“And to think you wasted all that effort just to find out what I was doing.” There was a pause. “The license plate number. Why do you need to run it and why do you care about the vehicle's owner.”

Ah, so that was the
why
of the call. “None of your business.”

“We don't condone freelancing. On any level. You pull shit like that and you're not just off active duty, you're going to be retired.”

Which meant there was a pine box, not a gold watch, in his future: His bosses didn't send you off into the sunset with a Rolex. You just woke up dead one morning.

“Whatever, Matthias, I know the drill, and if you called just to double-check on that, you wasted

“So what's the plate number?”

Jim paused, and thought, Guess the debt was still owed. As he recited Marie-Terese's tag number and detailed what little he knew about the woman, he was confident the search wouldn't get flagged as inappropriate, even though it was going through government channels. Matthias was smooth, for one thing. For another, there was only one other guy with more power than he had.

And that SOB worked out of an oval office.

Yup, there were times when it didn't hurt to have the big dog owe you his life. “I'll be in touch,” Matthias said.

When the phone went dead, Jim looked down at his knife. Matthias had gotten one at the same time Jim had, and the guy had been damn good with it—but he'd also been excellent at “office” politics, whereas Jim, with all of his antisocial tendencies, had stayed in the field. One path took Matthias to the top; the other had landed Jim...in a studio over a garage.

With a new set of bosses.

Jim shook his head as he compared those four aristocratic nancies with their croquet balls and their wolfhound and their castle to Matthias and his ilk: It was like putting a bunch of ballet slippers up against hiking boots outfitted with ice spurs. No contest—at least on the surface. Jim had the distinct impression, however, that those boys on the other side had shit in their back pockets that would make all the conventional and nuclear weapons at Matthias's disposal look like toys.

He went back over and sat down on the cheapy chair next to Dog, except this time he took his cell with him. As he resumed carving, he thought about his new line of work.

Assuming that Vin followed through and broke things off with Devina, and provided the guy managed to get through Marie-Terese's shell, Jim had to wonder what the hell his own role was with the whole “crossroads” bit. Yeah, maybe he'd managed to get the pair of them in the same place on Friday night, but other than that, what had he done?

This was either the easiest gig on the planet, or he was missing something.

A little later, Jim glanced at the clock. And then a half hour after that he looked again. Matthias worked fast. Always. And on its face, the request was a simple one: Verify the registration and owner of a five-year-old Toyota Camry and perform a criminal background check. It was the kind of thing that took two sweeps of a mouse, six strokes on a keyboard, and about a nanosecond.