Out of Control (32 page)

“I scribbled down a bogus one.”

“Good. Get dressed. Now.”

“But I—”

“In case you're wondering, you just lost your chance to get rid of me. It's too late to ditch me now.”

“I don't want to ditch you,” she said.

Subtle tension eased around his eyes. He made an impatient gesture. “Then move your ass.”

Something else intruded upon her consciousness as she picked through the rubble for her scattered things. The hot trickle of fluid between her legs. Oh, Lord. She hadn't given so much as a fleeting thought to latex. “Davy,” she said. “We didn't use anything.”

He waited by the door, gun in hand. “Yeah,” he said. “So? What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry? I'm not, particularly.”

She tugged the slip up over her breasts. “You're still furious.”

“It's been a tough day,” he said. “It's going to take more than one amazing fuck up against the wall to iron this one out.”

It was always this way. The more completely he let down his guard during sex, the more impenetrable his barriers were afterwards.

She tied the broken straps together across one shoulder to keep the slip on, pulled on her high-tops and crunched through broken glass to the bathroom. “A second in here, and I'll be ready,” she promised.

“Hurry,” he growled.

She frantically calculated the days of her cycle as she dampened a washcloth and sponged herself off. Problem was, she'd been so stressed out and eating so little, her period had been irregular for months.

A sharp knock on the bathroom door interrupted her frantic reflections. “Margot.” His voice had a harsh warning tone.

“I'm ready, I'm ready,” she muttered.

No point in worrying about it now. What would be, would be.

 

They left the rental car in a mall parking lot a couple of towns further down the highway. Davy watched as she locked the car and walked towards him, the faraway streetlights outlining every curve of her body with swathes of light and shadow. Amazing, that he could still think about sex, the way his body ached.

He was still wonky and stupid from the fight and the sex, shaking with a combination of fear and anger and lust. He hadn't been this far off the deep end in years. No, not ever. The goatfuck with Fleur had been kid stuff in comparison.

He started in on her as soon as she climbed into the Chevy. “You were heading to San Cataldo, then?”

“I couldn't think of a better plan,” she said.

“Staying on Stone Island was a
much
better plan,” he snarled.

“Let's let it go, OK? It's old news.”

He took a slow breath. “Learn anything useful from Snakey?”

She rubbed her eyes. “He thinks that I'm his soul mate. And he answers to a guy named Marcus. It was Marcus who arranged to have Craig killed. Snakey and his boss Marcus are convinced that I have this…this mold, he called it. Oh, and Craig's murder was supposed to look like a murder-suicide, but Snakey decided he wanted me for himself.” She shuddered. “So that's why he didn't kill me. Brrr.”

“You don't know anybody named Marcus?” he asked.

She shook her head. “At least I know that it's a physical object that they want. If I knew what the hell it was, I'd just give it to them.”

“Did you keep any of Craig's stuff?”

“He was practically living in my house on the lake. A lot of his stuff was there. But I got rid of it all that morning after I came back early from the conference and found…you know. The panties. God. It seems so silly and insignificant, now.”

“Got rid of it how?”

She winced. “The usual pissed-off girlfriend way,” she said uncomfortably. “I admit, I behaved childishly. I shoved all his stuff into a big garbage bag and dumped it off my dock into the lake. I meant to say, you want your junk, buddy? Go fish for it.” She went on in a smaller voice. “But I never got the chance.”

“Do you remember what was in the bag?”

Her brow furrowed. “The usual stuff. Clothes, shoes, toiletries, computer equipment. His mail. There was at least one box that day, I think. He had lots of packages sent to my address. He was working on patenting some of his engineering designs.”

They looked at each other. “Looks like we're going swimming, huh?” Margot said slowly.

“Looks that way,” he replied.

“But whatever it is, if it's there…it'll be ruined, after eight months under water.”

“We'll see. All this happened on a single day? First the panties, then you dumped his stuff, and then you found him strung up?”

“Right,” Margot said.

“Snakey said it was supposed to be a murder-suicide,” he mused. “How did they know you'd show up?”

“I had a lunch date with Craig that day,” she said. “I was going to stand him up, but he called my office, and Dougie said he sounded flipped out and desperate. A matter of life and death, he said. So I went to his studio. My big plan was to fling the panties in his face.”

“So Snakey coerced Craig into calling you. It was all planned.”

Margot stared out the windshield, eyes frozen wide with ugly memories. “But how could he have known I had a gun in my—”

“Maybe Craig told him. Or maybe the killer had another plan ready, and your gun was just a happy accident for him.”

Margot pulled her legs up tight to her chest, pressing her face against her knees. “Could we not talk about this for a while?”

“Do you want to solve this problem, or don't you?”

She didn't respond, or even make a sound, but he knew that vibration in her shoulders all too well. Time to shut the hell up before he made her cry. God forbid. He was dangerously close to it himelf.

They got to her ex-house on Parson's Lake right before dawn. The air was damp and chill. Davy wished she had a jacket when they got out of the truck. He was buying her clothes today. It was distracting, the way her tits bounced all over the place in that raggedy thing.

She looked sad and lost as she wandered up the walkway to her former house. The lawn was forlorn and overgrown. She peered into the uncurtained windows. The interior was dusty and bare. “Come on,” she said quietly. “There's nothing left for me here. Let's go around back.”

He followed her around the house, gun in hand. He would have followed her anywhere. This crazy feeling was getting steadily worse. She looked like something out of her flower fairy calendar in that brief, tattered slip, the wet weeds and flowers clinging to her beautiful legs. More erotic and dangerous than the flower fairies, though. More like a hot, feverish dream of wild sex with a silkie or a forest nymph. He could have forgotten his anger, forgotten the danger. Just shoved her down onto the long wet grass and taken her again, right there.

In back, a deck overlooked a length of pebbly beach. Neighbors' lots were fenced off on either side. A narrow wooden walkway led out from the beach to a floating dock that rocked softly on the waves. Margot walked out onto it and knelt to undo the laces of her sneakers.

“Hey. What the hell do you think you're doing?” he demanded.

She yanked both shoes off and gave him a bright, challenging smile. “I put that bag there, and I'll be the one to retrieve it.”

“I'll do it,” he said. “Put your shoes back on.”

“Davy. Be reasonable. Snakey could be expecting us here. You've got more clothes on, you've got a gun, and you know how to use it. I would much rather you cover me than have clueless, clumsy me trying to defend you from evil bad guys while you're underwater. OK?”

She had a point, but it still took his breath away when she peeled off her slip and stood poised on the edge of the deck stark naked.

“Jesus, Margot! What the fuck are you doing?”

“Plus, I've had that not-so-fresh feeling ever since our wild crazy sex last night.” She winked impishly. “I could use a bit of a wash.”

“This is a residential neighborhood!” he hissed.

“Oh dear. Have I scandalized you?” She grinned. “You big ol' prude. Panther woman can't be bothered with society's silly rules.”

She leaped, in a clean, shallow dive off the end of the dock.

He knelt down and peered through the water for her pale, wavering form. Seconds ticked by. He started unlacing his boots.

She burst up suddenly in a shower of drops, gasping for breath.

“You got it?” he asked.

“I found it,” she said, gasping. “Oh, this water is freaking cold! I had to kick off a lot of slime, but it's there. Now I just have to get it.”

A flash of her pale, round ass and down she went, for another interminable wait. She burst up, clutching the dock, and pulled a handful of plastic to the surface. “It's full of water. It'll be super heavy.”

It was. He hauled the thing up onto the deck, and leaned down to grab Margot's arms. He yanked her up onto her feet.

God, she was so gorgeous dripping wet, grinning triumphantly. She wrung out her hair, sticking her tits out just for his benefit.

“Cover yourself, for God's sake,” he begged.

Her eyes sparkled. Big mistake, to let her know she'd gotten under his skin. “Don't you like me this way?” She spun around, lifting her arms over her head, flinging her head back in sensuous abandon.

He grabbed the slip off the deck and dragged it over her, tugging it down until her head emerged, locks of hair clinging to her face.

Before he knew it, he was kissing her cool wet face like a starving man. He dragged himself away. “We don't have time for this.”

“Hey, buddy. Take responsibility. You're the one who kissed me!”

This was a dead end argument if ever there was one. He abandoned it, and crouched down to open the bag. Margot knelt beside him, and together they picked through silt, disintegrated fabric, paper that had turned to slime, toothbrushes, razors, shoes and belts.

They found the box at the bottom. The waxed carton had somehow retained its shape, though it fell to pieces under Margot's touch. Inside were two objects sealed in heavy plastic, coated with pale brown mud. He brushed away the silt, prodding at them gently.

The first was a metal box, the shape and size of a large book. The second was pale, irregularly shaped, yielding to the touch like rubber. It was difficult to figure out what those things protruding from the—oh.

Fingers. The thing was a human hand.

M
argot jerked back with a cry. She would have fallen into the water if Davy hadn't grabbed her. If there had been anything in her stomach, it would have come up. As it was, she doubled over, retching.

“Hey. Margot.” Davy's voice was gentle. “It's not real.”

“Huh?” She looked up at him, wild-eyed.

He put a warm arm over her shoulder. “The hand. It's fake. It's made out of some kind of gummy rubber stuff. Relax.”

“Oh.” Her butt thudded hard onto the dock. “Marcus's mold.”

How silly. After all the grisly stuff she'd seen, a rubber hand threw her into a tizzy. Next she would start screaming at plastic dog poo.

Davy rinsed the silt off the bags with a few handfuls of lakewater, and pulled her to her feet. “Let's get the hell out of here. I'm getting nervous. And I want to find a place where you can get warm and dry.”

That, as it turned out, was easier said than done. It took a tediously long time to find a hotel. Every place they stopped had some fatal security flaw, according to Davy. Finally they pulled into Bob's Motel and RV Park, where he promptly made it clear that her job would be to huddle in a heavily curtained room like an animal in a cave.

“I can't have you running into ex-boyfriends in hotel lobbies,” he said, in response to her protests.

“So I have to hide under the bed?” she said crabbily. “Just let me get some makeup and a pair of glasses, and I—hey!”

He shoved her head down as a car drove into the lot next to them, leaned over her, and tangled his fingers into her hair, painfully tight.

“Do not whine, and do not fuck with me.” His voice was soft with menace. “You would have been safer, more comfortable and less of a liability to me if you'd trusted me and gone to Stone Island. Remember the state you were in last night when I found you.”

That effectively cut off all protests. He waited for a cowed nod from her, got out and locked the doors as he headed off to check in.

She huddled against the fragrant leather of the seat, her insides churning with anger. Davy hadn't calmed down in the least. His fury flared up to singe her every time she let down her guard.

Once inside their suite, he dumped the contents of a paper bag across the table. Crackers, smoked oysters, a small loaf of cheese, sausage, sardines, and a six pack of fruit juices in a box. “Breakfast.”

Margot was too wound up and jittery to get any food down, a problem which Davy did not share. He got to work as soon as he'd finished, opening the grimy plastic bag and removing the case, which proved to have a negative impression of a hand set in a plastic claylike substance inside. Then he extracted the ghastly rubber hand.

She knew it was fake, and it still made her shudder.

Davy peered at it. “Craig specialized in biometric security?”

She nodded. “Fingerprint technology, in particular.”

“He must've been developing techniques to beat his own machines,” he said. “And then he tried to double-cross whoever paid him to do it. This Marcus, maybe.”

Margaret pressed her hands to her eyes. “That idiot,” she whispered. “All this violence, just for money. How empty and stupid.”

“It usually is.” Davy slung a metal briefcase up onto the table and started rummaging through the contents.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He pulled out something that looked like a button, and compared it to the one on his jacket. “I want to talk to the people at Craig's old job. This is one of Seth's recording devices. Digital, undetectable, voice-activated.” He pulled out a sewing kit, and ripped a button off his jacket. He threaded a needle and deftly sewed on the new button.

“I would never have thought you were the type that could sew,” she said. “You are a continual surprise.”

His mouth twitched. “I had three little brothers and no mom. If I wanted their clothes to stay on their bodies, I had to make it happen.”

He held the jacket up, inspected the result and tossed it aside, apparently satisfied. Then he pulled a laptop out of the case, hooking it up to the room phone and dialing up an Internet connection. “Who did Craig work most closely with at Krell?”

She thought about it for a moment. “You should start with Mike Wainwright,” she said. “He's the CEO. And Bob Kraus, too, the head of marketing. Oh, wow. That's Krell,” she said. “I designed that web site.”

He nodded, clicking through the pages. He grabbed his cell phone and dialed the number on the home page. “Yes, may I speak to Mr. Wainwright? My name is Michael Evan.” He listened for a moment. “How about Mr. Kraus…certainly. I'm a security consultant at BioGen Laboratories in Salt Lake City. We're upgrading our security system, and I've been researching the best the market has to offer in terms of biometric technologies. Krell is on my short list. I just happen to be passing through town today, so I thought…yes, sure, I'll wait.” He clicked slowly through web pages as he waited.

Memorizing everything he saw, no doubt.

It was strange, to see work she'd done a lifetime ago glowing brightly on the screen. A relic of a time when her world was so different. Safer, better behaved, more predictable.

Smaller, too. She looked at Davy. His face was faraway, lost in a trance of fierce concentration. His brush of dark blond hair stuck straight up in spikes when it was neglected. She loved every detail. The bruises purpling beneath his eyes just emphasized their brilliant color.

He fascinated her. Opened up the horizons of her world until they felt limitless. That feeling would have terrified her once. Not anymore.

“Yes? Excellent. That would be great.” Davy's voice jerked her out of her reverie. He snapped the computer shut. “Yes, I can be there at two. The address…? OK. Thank you. I'll see you then.”

He snapped the phone closed and turned to her, frowning. “I'm going to talk to Kraus. I don't like leaving you alone. I'll leave my gun.”

“No!” She winced. “Bad idea. Look what happened the last time I had a gun. Guns are nothing but trouble for me.”

“I'll teach you to use—”

“You will do no such thing,” she said hastily. “Keep it. I promise, I'll lay low. I'll be so good. I won't move a muscle.”

“I'm going to call Seth and Sean to come down,” he said. “Once they get here, there's going to be somebody with you at all times.”

“Gee, thanks,” she murmured. “That's sweet of you.”

His brows drew together. “No, it isn't. I just don't want to come back and find you filleted. That would seriously bum me out.”

Margot's stomach rolled at the image his words invoked. They both needed to get off this uncomfortable line of thought, and the quickest, surest way to change the subject was always near to hand.

“May I use that sewing kit to fix my slip?” she asked.

“Be my guest,” he said.

She threaded the needle from the spool of black thread, then pulled her slip off over her head. She was naked, but for her high-tops.

“Oh, Christ,” he muttered. “Margot. Don't.”

She gave him an innocent, fluttering-lashes glance as she struggled to undo the knots she'd made in the straps. “Something wrong?”

“I'm in the wrong mind-set for this. If you want me to fuck you, say so. Don't play games.”

“What manners,” she said. “You do know how to sweet-talk a girl.”

“I keep telling you, I'm not sweet. Particularly not today.”

“That's for sure,” she said. “You're in a foul, horrendous mood, and you're not making the slightest effort to control your behavior. So why should I control mine?” She finally worked the knots loose, and carefully sewed the frayed strap back onto the stretchy fabric.

Davy got up and jerked the drapes closed with a violent tug that threatened to snap the curtain rod right off the wall. “This exhibitionist routine of yours is starting to seriously bug me.”

She knotted the thread and snapped it with her teeth. “Just what doesn't bug you about me, Davy? You started the no-panties trend in my life. If I'm turning into an exhibitionist nymphomaniac, it's your fault. And it's time you got over your mad, because I am sick of it.”

He sat back down. “You got some strategy in mind for that?”

A beam of sun that made its way through the slit in the drapes fell across his face, lighting up his eyes. He was so gorgeous, it made her breath squeeze in her lungs. “I'm open to suggestion,” she said. “Go ahead, Davy. Inspire me.”

He leaned back in the chair, lacing his fingers together behind his head so that his golden, muscular torso rippled and flexed. His body was so long and beautiful stretched out like that, his erection pressing against his jeans. “I love the way you suck my cock,” he said.

His cool, taunting eyes challenged her.

He knew exactly what made her angry, what scared her, what excited her, and how to mix them up. She resisted being dominated, but couldn't seem to stop goading him into doing exactly that. It turned them both on, the constant push and pull.

The only problem was the anger that simmered in his eyes.

Davy unbuckled his belt, his gaze locked onto hers. He undid the buttons, and slid them down over his hips. His erection sprang out, flushed and heavy. He stroked it slowly, dragging his big fist up and down the thick shaft. “Suck me, Margot,” he said. “Go on, make all this crazy, overwrought bullshit worth my time.”

“You're trying to make me mad,” she told him.

“Sure. You love when I push you into the danger zone. The farther I push, the wilder you get. It's hard to stop.”

Margot sank onto her knees. “I've been in the danger zone ever since I met you.” She pried his hands away and stroked him, delighting in his velvet soft skin sliding over the solid heat of his erection. “I'm getting used to the danger zone. It's starting to feel like home.” She licked him, savoring the salty taste. “I've felt that way ever since you made me fall in love with you.”

He stiffened. His hands clenched into fists on the arms of the chair. “What?”

“I said, ever since you made me fall in love—”

“I heard that part.”

She swirled her tongue around him. “Good,” she murmured. “A little reality in our fun and games is a good thing.”

He pushed her head away. “Are you punishing me?”

“Just telling you the truth,” she said. “Don't worry, I don't have any pathetic fantasies about my love melting your icy cold heart or anything like that. All I'm saying is, if you didn't want me to fall in love with you, you shouldn't have seduced me. You shouldn't try to save me like an avenging angel. You shouldn't tantalize me like you do.”

He passed his hand through his rumpled hair, and yanked his jeans up, tucking his hard, flushed erection back inside them as best he could. “I don't know how to give you what you want,” he muttered.

It was all there, blazing out of his tormented eyes, shimmering hot and vital and real in the air between them. Everything she could ever need or want, whole and complete. Her wildest dreams. But he was so damn stubborn, he couldn't give in to it.

She touched his face. “Yes, you do. Why are you so set on protecting me? Why did you sneak into my house? Why did you follow me when I ran off? Why won't you admit you feel something for me?”

He shook his head.

“You don't have to keep such a tight lid on yourself,” she said. “If you could just let yourself go—
”

“What the
fuck
do you know about letting go?”

She lost her balance and tumbled back onto the carpet, she was so startled. “Davy?” she faltered. “I—”

“When you let go, things get broken.” His voice was like a whip cracking. “Shit blows up. People you care about get hurt. People can die. I have spent my entire life making sure that does not happen.”

“Oh, Davy,” she murmured. “I didn't mean—”

“My dad went crazy, did you know that? Completely whacked by the time I was fourteen. I raised three brothers on my own while protecting them from him. I have
never
had the luxury of letting go.”

She shook her head frantically. “I didn't mean—”

“And now, when we're both murder suspects and you've got a maniac assassin stalking you, you decide that
this
is the opportune moment to dismantle my entire fucking personality structure?”

“Davy—”

“No. I will not rip myself into pieces to suit your whim, Margot.”

“I'm sorry,” she whispered. “I didn't want to rip you into pieces. Never mind. I just love you. I can't help it.”

“Shut up. I don't want to hear it.” He got up, stalked across the room to look out the window, his back to her. He sank down into the kitchen chair, and hunched over, hiding his face in his hands.