Off the Edge (The Associates) (7 page)

“I thought you were linguistics,” she said. “Not English lit.”

“You don’t get to linguistics by way of math. You get there through language. Some people get there through poetry.”

“Like you?”

He scanned the area, ignoring her question. He seemed to be always on alert, this guy. Had he sensed somebody watching them? He pointed to a line of stalls that stretched up to the right. “This way.”

“Not answering the question?”

“No, I’m getting ready to savor the moment of your capitulation.” His gaze sent a bolt through her. “You can’t imagine how I’ll enjoy it.”

“You think I’ll roll over that easy?”

“I do,” he said simply.

Her belly tightened. She wanted to roll over for him. Preferably naked.

“Where to?”

“The dragon,” he said. “We have a mission to complete.”

Oh.
Complete the mission. Get on with it. She felt a pang of disappointment, because she wanted this birthday to last. He made her feel big and bold, like her old self. She was tired of being small.

After she found a sturdy travel backpack she insisted they stop at a booth full of strange little wind-up toys. She wound one up and watched him track its movements. She decided that the lovely icy luster in his gaze came from his eyes being—okay, gorgeous—but also from being curious.

After that, she insisted they buy ices and eat them at the little patch of tables at the lit edge of the bazaar. She got lime and he got kiwi, but then they tasted each other’s and traded.

His was tastier, and also, it was his. “I would’ve never gotten kiwi,” she said. “Who the hell gets kiwi?”

He turned to her slowly, gravely, as if in warning, and she laughed. And right there, the moment expanded. It gave her shivers to feel it, like a song changing key or deepening in an unexpected way. Or the world getting bigger and taking on magic.

A fellow traveler on the moon.

Suddenly she wanted to tell him everything about herself. Not hide anything. “You never asked me the question,” she said. “Business or pleasure.”

“Do you want me to?”

“I’m here for neither,” she said. “I just thought you should know. I’m hiding out from a crazy ex and his guys. They’re a pretty bad bunch. I just thought you should know. Two years I’ve been fine. I’m not saying we’re in danger—”

“Don’t worry about that,” he said, forehead furrowed. “Are you okay? Do you need help?”

“Oh, I’ve got lots of help. More help than I need. Just thought I’d tell you.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. She could feel the sorry in him. He meant it.

“Thanks.”

“What happened? You don’t have to tell if you don’t want, but…”

“No,” she said. She wanted to tell him. She’d always been one to bare herself. “I married the guy when I was 18. Stupid. Dazzled by a whole lot of shiny hoo-hah.”

“That’s very young.”

“Not the time of life known for good judgment, that’s for sure. I was singing in this shed bar up in the Florida panhandle. I was too young to be in a bar, but you know. And this guy comes in, all charm and polish and money. I didn’t have much of a home situation at the time. And the next thing I know, we’re flying around on planes and he’s fixing up my mama’s house and putting my brother through college.” She licked her ice. “I guess I felt like I was doing that for my people. It felt good.”

“Heady, for an 18-year-old girl.”

She loved the quality of his attention, as if he listened with his whole being. “Yup. And suddenly I’m married to him. Rolly. It was nice at first, everything so lovely, and people looking at me like I’m somebody. But little trade-offs, they have a way of growing into bigger trade-offs. It was like he wanted to scrub everything off me. He broke me of smoking and drinking and swearing.”

Maxwell’s lips quirked. “That didn’t quite take, did it? The swearing.”

“Hell, no.” She smiled. “But it sure took while I was with him, believe me.” She picked at the hem of her dress. “Life went way easier when I bent. Like a coward.”

He gaze darkened. “You’re no coward.”

“I
felt
like a coward. The first five years, it wasn’t bad. Certainly not enough to leave and make my way in life as an unskilled, uneducated person. But then he started turning, and little by little it got to be where I had less rights than a poodle.”

A dangerous glint appeared in his eyes. “And you’re okay now?”

“Only because he’s doing a 10-20 year bid in an Arkansas prison.” Thanks to evidence she’d collected. “Prison only made him madder and meaner.”

Maxwell asked a lot of questions—he seemed really to want to know about her plight. She found herself telling him about the scary messages Rolly would send from inside.
You’re mine. Only mine.
She’d moved deep into the panhandle, staying with distant cousins, but Rolly’s men found her all the same and tried to bring her to him—in prison—and it was only luck that she slipped away. She told him about all the woman-on-the-run tricks she developed, even back in the States. She fled to D.C. and they found her again. She told him how she finally traveled to Bangkok with the help of a dear friend.

“That’s not the story of a coward,” he said. “It’s the story of a fighter.”

She looked up at him. She could tell he had something more to say. “What?”

“The hat…I can’t say the hat is the best disguise ever.”

She frowned. “It’s a great disguise.”

“No,” he said simply. “It’s not.”

“Is the linguist suddenly an expert on disguises?”

“It’s obviously a disguise. You need to change the look of your face, not hide it. Hiding invites speculation.”

“Trust me, it’s under control,” she said. “It’s a 1940s look. A torch singer thing.”

“Laney—”

“You’re just very perceptive. You’re the only one on the planet who got the dragon thing. And hey, it’s worked for two years, hasn’t it?”

And bottom line, the Shinsurin brothers would’ve said something if they thought the disguise was bad. Who better to know disguises than shady characters like the Shinsurin brothers? Not that she said that to Maxwell.

Something changed in him then—he seemed almost to disengage. He took her paper cone from her fingers and tossed it in the trash bin with a charming smile. “Come on, then. Dragon’s this way.”

The mission. Back to the mission.

On they went, out of the night market on the restaurant side. Maxwell was still very aware of their surroundings; she might not have noticed if she wasn’t the same way. She might not have noticed their circuitous route, either, if she didn’t take those, too. Maybe not wanting to meet up with Rolly’s thugs. That wouldn’t turn out well.

He stopped at the opening to an alley that dead-ended at a cement wall covered in graffiti. “Can you see it?”

“No,” she said.

He pointed at a convex mirror mounted high on the side of a building. And there it was, the dragon, reflected in the mirror. Which would mean it was behind the wall at the end. Visible from the street.

“Cheater,” she said.

“Can you not see it?” he asked. “Is it not the best?”

He was right on both counts, and he knew it. This one was far more amazing than any of the others. You could see that even from the mirror.

He extended his hand, palm up. Cool, remote, charming Maxwell. “Pay up.”

“I want to see it,” she said. “Up close.”

He hesitated. Was he so eager to get her back? “Okay.” He led her in and pulled up a cement block.

She eyed the wall. “Yeah, that might work for somebody who’s six feet tall.” Like him.

“Get up there and grab the top. I’ll lift you.”

She hesitated only a moment. Then she looped her purse over her neck and shoulder and stepped up. She felt his solid body draw close, felt strong hands grab her waist. He lifted her easily and she scrambled up to the top.

And there it was, a plaster dragon the size of a small car, fierce and wild and colorful. He hoisted himself up and sat next to her.

“I love how he’s guarding the collapsed building parts behind him. Loyally guarding the ruined slabs,” she said.

Maxwell looked at her strangely. “Yes,” he said simply.

She snapped a photo. There was a misshapen block of concrete next to the dragon’s crumbly shoulder. Like a tilted table for the dragon. Scrub trees peeked out from behind discarded doors leaning on the far wall. Somebody had gone to town with spray paint, but they’d left the dragon. “Can we go in?”

“There are spiders in the rocks,” he said. “You don’t have the best leg covering.”

So he’d gone in himself once before. Maxwell. So damn mysterious. “I’ll stick to the clear parts.” She swung a leg over and hopped down.

He dropped down right behind her, alighting with muscular grace in his crisp tropical suit. No, not an egghead at all.

“What do you think he was for?” she asked.

“I think a restaurant was here,” he said. “I suppose they hauled off the big stuff.”

Reverently, she approached the dragon, so wide and thick, with a body that seemed to curve in and out of the earth, as though the earth was nothing but water. His wide mouth was open in a silent battle cry.

“So amazing. And just hidden here. Nobody knows.”

“I’m sure the neighborhood people know,” he said, somewhat remotely, like he was holding himself off from her.

You could see there had been colorful scales all over the dragon’s back
, but now it was bits of color broken up by dirty gray patches where the plaster showed through.

She turned and caught him looking at her stockings. “How’d you find him?”

“Observant.” He strolled up to the beast, like he wanted to get away from her. Maybe avoid the question. Even the way he’d said the word—
observant—
it was designed to end the conversation.

But words and images were her domain. The secret little flourishes at the margins of life. Why did he explore like that? “Looking over walls, it’s more than observant.”

“Why should looking over a wall be unusual?” he asked. “Is it because of the information age? We’re only supposed to accept the presented surface now?”

She smiled. It was a tasty tidbit he’d thrown out. But she wasn’t biting. “Accept only the presented surface?” she asked. “Like you want me to do with you?”

He turned to her with that strange light back in his eyes. The linguist was used to running circles around people with language. He wasn’t used to being busted.

“
Presented surface
,” she said. “That’s a whole lot of non-answer. I’d expect a smee such as yourself to do so much better.”

“Did you just call me
smee
?”

“Why won’t you tell me? What aren’t you saying?”

He came to her. “Did you just call me
smee
?”

“I certainly did,” she whispered, enjoying the heat of him up close.

“Words like that spread, you know.”

She gave him a level look. “Report me to the CDC.”

He smiled, seeming to forget himself.

Her heart banged in her chest. “So secretive,” she said. “With the walls and the dragons.”

“And you owe me a thousand bhat.”

“I’m not paying until you tell me,” she said.

“Tell you what?”

“Why you didn’t stop with simply spotting the dragon. You came over the wall.”

“What makes you think there’s something to tell?”

She cocked her head. This guy was like a fortress, and if there was one thing she didn’t like, it was fortresses around people. Did he let anybody in? “Isn’t there?”

She saw the moment he decided to tell. Or decided the truth wasn’t important enough to conceal. “It’s nothing, really,” he said. “Poking around in a new city is habitual. Because when I was young my family moved all over the world—25 countries in 18 years.” He turned and picked a rock up off the ground. When he flipped it over she saw it was a divot from the dragon’s back. He went over and fit it back into place. “I started this habit of seeking out three secret wonders, I suppose you’d call them, in every new city. Three hidden things to make my own. It made me feel less alone.”

She felt a rush of triumph. “And you still do it. To feel less alone.”

He seemed to weigh his words. “It’s only force of habit now,” he said.

Like hell,
she thought. He was still a stranger. Still seeking connection. “More than force of habit got you over this wall.”

His blue-gray gaze felt heavy in her body. “Is that so?”

“I think you got some slabs of stone of your own you’re guarding,” she said.

He came to her and touched her cheek. It was just a fingertip, but it felt electric. “Clever Miss Callback.” He’d seemed remote before, but now he was very much with her, breath warm on her nose. He slid the finger on down her cheek.

Wild heat bloomed through her. “What made you climb over?”

“I’m not telling,” he said.

“I want to know.”

He held her with that heavy gaze, turning his attention slowly to her lips, which caused her belly to do a flip-flop. He would kiss her, and he meant her to know it, but it still came as a surprise, the way he slid his hands along her cheeks, coming to a stop at the back of her head. He pulled her to him, crushing his mouth over hers. The rough, confident strength of his kiss made her feel warm and glowy, like heated honey.

“I want to know where your other places are,” she said into the kiss. But more, she wanted to know him. Hell, she just wanted him.

“I have something better.” He yanked off her hat, seeming to forget his program of leaving this place.

“Something better to
show
me?” she asked, voice husky. Her voice was actually
husky
. She put her hand on his chest, feeling the uneven rise and fall of his breath. Cool Maxwell being not so cool. She liked this Maxwell. Maybe she’d get that hair disheveled, too, now.

“Yes, but not like that.”

“You have something to show me, but not
like that
?” she teased, like her heart wasn’t jackhammering. “You would—”

He kissed her again before she could finish the question, roughly, all whiskers and heat and invading tongue. Like a gate opened. Strong hands gripped her waist, fitting her crassly and perfectly against him. The kiss felt wild. Disordered. She reached up and untucked his hair, mashing her fingers through it as he walked her back to the chunk of stone. The dragon’s table.