Out of Control (43 page)
She kissed him. Her lips were soft and warm and tasted faintly of the pseudo-tomato sauce mixture used in an MRE. She got him right on the mouth, which had to be an accident. If he hadn’t turned his head, she would have kissed him chastely on the cheek.
“Sorry,” he practically shouted at her, pulling back from her, forcing himself not to grab her and jam his tongue down her throat. God, he wanted to kiss her. He made himself laugh instead. “Christ. That’s the last thing we need here, right? First you try to keep me up all night talking and then, well . . . Jesus.”
Jesus, indeed.
He’d always thought that a woodie should’ve been like Pinocchio’s nose, but instead of growing with each lie, it should by all rights shrink with stupidity. But no. Despite his total flaming idiot comments, it raged mindlessly on, at full happy salute.
Savannah settled back down against his shoulder, thank God.
“Good night,” she said again.
“Yeah,” he said. “Good night.”
As if he was going to get any sleep.
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Thirteen
As usual, following Heinrich was an exercise in futility.
I lost him four short blocks from the hotel.
I must confess that I didn’t go straight back there and finagle my way into his room so I could search it at my leisure.
No, instead I went shopping.
And it was in the dress shop, as I tried on an exceedingly gorgeous and very spicy red evening gown, that I realized I didn’t need another dress to wear out on the town.
What I needed was a night gown.
Something diaphanous and sexy. Something I wouldn’t be able to wear outside of the privacy of a hotel room. Something that would broadcast my intentions loud and clear. Something Hank wouldn’t be able to misread. Or ignore.
I squared my shoulders and went into the lingerie department. And I couldn’t do it.
The prices were exorbitant, silk was scarce, but my biggest hurdle was me. I couldn’t even get up the nerve to ask the salesclerk (who looked a little too much like my mother) to show me what they had in my size. Perhaps if I had a wedding ring on my finger . . . But no. Even then I think I would have been too embarrassed.
There was only one thing to do, one place to go for help.
“You want to borrow what?”
“You heard me.” I turned to face Evelyn, forcing myself to meet her eyes. I’m sure my face was flaming. “You know I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t vitally important.”
I’d caught her coming back from lunch, and she set her hat down on a table in the magnificent entry hall of her penthouse suite.
She was looking at me intently, studying me. It was quite a few moments before she spoke. “Do you love him? Whoever it is that you want to borrow this dressing gown for?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
Her expression softened then. “Oh, Rose. All right then. For a minute there, I was afraid you were intending to seduce some suspected Nazi. I wouldn’t help you do that, but for love . . .”
She led the way up the stairs to her dressing room, gesturing for me to follow. “Who is he?” she asked.
“Would you mind very much if I didn’t go into details?”
“Please tell me it’s not the Euro-God. Hank what’s-his-name?”
I followed her into her bedroom, toward the first of a row of dressing room doors. “I really am quite uncomfortable discussing this.”
“Oh, dear, it is Hank, isn’t it?” Evelyn turned to face me. “Darling, he’s some kind of prince. A man like that’s not going to marry you.”
“I could really do without a lecture—”
“Sorry.” She threw open the door. “But if you want the gown, you’ve got to take the lecture, too. It’s a package deal.” She took a deep breath. “Rose, sweetheart, I know it must seem horribly romantic. He’s about to leave, to go fight the war, right? He may die, it’s true. But live or die, either way, this one is not going to come back to you.”
It was a good-sized room, dedicated to holding clothes, and as she pulled me inside, I saw she had a selection of night gowns that would have put most of the major department stores to shame. Black, white, red, pink, purple, violet, blue, in various substances of silk and lace.
“Do you really want to be his American mistress?” she asked me. “Is that honestly enough for you?”
“Yes.” I pulled a red one from the bunch and found that it was completely sheer. I gaped and Evelyn gently took it from me and hung it back among the others.
“Do you actually wear that? In front of Jon?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
Evelyn laughed softly. “Do you remember when we first met, and you were so worried that I might be afraid Jon would try to cheat on me with you?”
I nodded. Yes. I had known neither of them all that well at the time.
“Trust me when I tell you that I was never worried,” Evelyn said with a smile. “I think white,” she decided. “With your fair skin and blond hair, you’ll look like an angel.”
“I’ll look like a virgin,” I countered. “And I don’t want him thinking about that. He’ll pack me up and pat me on the head and push me out the door. He’s very good at that.”
“He’s been keeping you at arm’s length, has he?” Evelyn realized. “Good boy, princey, I wouldn’t’ve thought you had it in you. Rose, darling, hasn’t it occurred to you that he’s doing the right thing?”
“I want something red,” I told her. “Or black.” I pulled out a black silk gown that was slightly more substantial, except for the back, which was completely open and held together by laces. It had a slit up the side that looked to go well past the wearer’s hip. Dear me.
“Has it occurred to you that he might be right about doing the right thing?”
“He’s not.”
“Rose—”
“I know he’s not going to marry me,” I told her, fighting the urge to burst into tears. “I know he’s not coming back. These next few days are all the time we’ll ever have together, and I want every minute of it. I want it all.”
There were tears in her eyes, too. “Oh, Rose.”
I held the gown up to me, looked in the mirror. Willed myself not to cry. “What do you think?”
Evelyn became brisk, businesslike as well. “That one’s way too hard to get out of. Kills the mood. And black’s not your color, dear. It washes you out. I think royal blue, instead.” She laughed as she searched through her gowns. It was shaky, but it was definitely laughter. “If Jon finds out I helped you, he’ll kill me.”
“Not while you’re wearing one of these.”
She held up a silk gown of the deepest blue. It was almost demure in its simplicity, and yet I could see light passing through it. “This is the one,” she said. “Trust me.”
She had slippers to match, of course, and we wrapped up both gown and slippers and I headed back to the hotel. I didn’t try the gown on at Evelyn’s house—I knew if I did, I’d chicken out. No, I had to put it on for the first and only time in Heinrich’s hotel room. I had to have it on and be there, waiting for him to return from wherever it was he’d gone.
But first I had to get into his room.
It was simple enough to do. I used the house phone in the hallway to call down to the front desk.
“This is Mrs. Sally West in room 5412.” I gave the false name under which I’d registered for the room across from Heinrich’s. “Silly me, I’m afraid I’ve locked my key in my room. Could you send someone up to unlock the door for me?”
A bellboy stepped off the elevator in a matter of minutes, eager to help. (I’d tipped him most generously when I’d checked in.)
He quickly unlocked the door to my room with his pass key—except it was not my room. It was Heinrich’s, right across the hall. But it was indeed the door I was standing in front of when the young man approached, and of course he didn’t think to check the numbers.
“Thank you so much.” I gave him a smile and one of my few remaining five-dollar bills, and slipped into the room, locking the door behind me.
It was that easy.
The hotel suite was dim and cool with the curtains closed. It smelled like Hank—like the soap he used, like his expensive cologne.
The sitting room was undisturbed—the only sign it was being used was a copy of that morning’s New York Times out on a breakfast table.
It wasn’t a promising start, but then again, I didn’t truly expect to find Nazi files and lists of informants scattered about the room.
Still, his bed chamber wasn’t much different. His personal items were few. His clothes were hung in the wardrobe, shoes neatly below. A few toiletries were out on a dresser, everything precisely lined up.
I went through it all methodically, careful not to touch anything until I examined it closely. And yes, there were hairs strategically placed across dresser drawers, even across his leather toilet kit in the bathroom. I was careful to replace them all so that he wouldn’t know his belongings had been searched.
Of course I found nothing. No miniature cameras, no great sums of money hidden behind mirrors or taped to the bottom of drawers. No intricate Nazi instructions to cripple the United States war effort. No list of underlings in Heinrich’s spy network.
There was, however, a safe. It was in the wall, in the bedroom, beneath a rather dull oil painting of a meadow. The safe didn’t have tumblers and a combination, but rather a lock that could be opened with a key.
I set to work immediately, attempting to pick it.
No, that’s not as crazy as it sounds. Remember, my father was a carpenter and he had taught me a thing or two about installing (and getting past) all sorts of locks.
But this was not the kind of flimsy lock one could pop open using a hat pin. And I was still there, still trying rather futilely, some time later when I heard the sound of a key in the door to the suite.
Hank was back.
Early.
Jones turned to find Molly awake and watching him reading by candlelight.
“Good book, huh?” she said. That was all she said. She didn’t tease him about it, didn’t try to embarrass him. She didn’t even ask what the hell he was doing still wide awake at this time of night.
“Yeah, actually, it’s not what I’d normally choose to read, but . . .” He shrugged.
Molly stretched and reached out a hand to run her fingers through the hair on his chest. “Maybe you should think about writing your memoirs.”
He laughed. “Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious. There’s got to be a reason a man changes his name, his entire identity . . .”
“Yeah, it’s called survival of the smartest. If I don’t change who I am, I’m too stupid to live and deserve whatever they can throw at me.”
“Who’s they?”
“Anyone’s who’s seen the wanted posters.” Jones kissed her. “Want to fly back to Iowa first class? I’m your ticket, baby. Just whisper my real name into the right set of ears and—”
She sat up, all playfulness gone. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“Hey, I was just kidding.”
“Well, don’t kid. Not about that. I would never betray you. Never. And if you think otherwise . . .” She started looking for her clothes. Shit. He didn’t want her to go. “What time is it?”
Jones’s watch was on a crate next to the bed. He leaned forward to check the time. “Oh-two eleven.”
“I have to get back to the village.” She slipped out from the mosquito netting and found her panties, pulled them on. Her dress was nearby. She’d wrap it around herself and be out the door before he could stop her.
“I double-crossed the biggest drug lord in Thailand.” Holy fuck, had he actually said that aloud? The look on her face told him, yes, he had.
“Nang-Klao Chai?” she asked.
“You heard of Chai, huh?”
“Yes.” She came back in, under the netting. “Yes, I have.”
She sat on the bed and gazed at him, eyes wide, waiting for him to tell her more.
Jesus. Was he actually going to do this?
“This story starts a long time ago. When I was a medic with . . . Well, never mind who I was with. U.S. Special Forces. That’s all you need to know,” he told her, and he knew from looking into her eyes that she knew damn well he was going to tell her about the scars on his back. “You want to hear it, you’ve got to promise to stay until dawn. Because I’m going to need about four hours of sex afterwards.”
She didn’t crack a smile, didn’t assume he was kidding, didn’t hesitate. “I’ll stay as long as you need me to stay.”
Great. But what was he going to do in a month, to keep her from leaving for good?
“Chapter one,” he said. “In which I join the U.S. Army, train to become a medic, get accepted into an elite Special Forces unit, train my ass off even more, and get sent overseas on clandestine operations designed to help the U.S. fight the war against drugs. Which, by the way, I think we lost.
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