He stepped back, slowly lifted his hand.
Her face was daubed with his blood, her eyes glittering with tears. She dragged a jerky breath of air into her lungs, and nodded.
Smile, he mouthed.
She tried, lips quivering, tugging at the corners. She couldn’t quite make it, but it was good enough for him. She tried to speak.
He covered her mouth again. Leaned in close. “Whisper.”
“Can’t I just run away?” she squeaked. “I’ll never say anything. I never saw anyone. I’ll just disappear. I promise.”
He considered it. Yeah, maybe she could. And then they would rip his guts out for the security breach, like they’d done to Sergei. “Do you have your own boat?”
She shook her head. “I have to call the taxicat at Shepherd’s Bay.”
It would take the catamaran a minimum of forty minutes to get to Frakes Island from Shepherd’s Bay, assuming it had no other jobs lined up. More like an hour, realistically. He couldn’t cover her for that long.
He shook his head. “Sorry,” he whispered. “Won’t work.”
She reached out, and gently prodded his sore nose. “Are you going to be OK?” she whispered. “Is it broken?”
He was taken aback. “No,” he said, almost flustered. “No big deal.”
“It looks terrible,” she said. “All that blood. He hit you so hard.”
God, she was innocent. He’d taken worse from his dad for letting the coffee boil over. “Nah. Guy hits like a girl.” He shoved her ahead of him, herding her into the huge kitchen. “Well?” he said. “Cook, then. Impress me.”
Her green eyes narrowed. “First, wash off that blood,” she said. “It’s unhygienic, and unappetizing. Are you still leaking?”
He dabbed at his nose gingerly as he turned on the faucet, and glugged dish soap into his hand. “It’s stopped,” he said, leaning to splash and rub, splattering pink drops all over the sink. Becca joined him, scrubbing at her own blood-smeared hands and face.
“Sorry I got blood on you,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about it, though. I’m HIV negative, last I checked. Which was recently.”
He turned away before she could snag him in those big green eyes. He grasped a roll of paper towels, ripped off a wad to sponge off.
“Me, too,” she whispered.
He jerked his head around. “Huh? You’re what?”
Her face was hot red. “HIV negative. Just so you, um, know. Guess we should have had this conversation last night, but we didn’t.”
His hand tingled with sense memory, the slick heat of her pussy tight around his finger as she came. His hands clenched.
Great. Now he could walk this tightrope over the flames of hell with a hard-on, too. Just to make things a little more interesting.
“That’s great news, baby,” he growled. “Can we get to work?”
She scooped her hair back, twisted into a rope, and knotted it at the nape of her neck in a loose bun. Swirly brown bits came loose, swinging under her chin.
He dragged his eyes away. “What did you say you’d cook?”
“Soufflé, and crepes a l’orange,” she said. “I need eggs. Milk. A lot of butter. A pinch of flour, for the bechamel. Some grated nutmeg, and an assortment of good cheeses. Peccorino, parmesan, asiago, gruyère, anything flavorful. Fresh fruit to purée, prosecco to mix with it, ham to grill, and some bread, to complete the menu I proposed. For the crepes, more eggs, more flour, more butter, some sugar, orange-flower water, kirsch, Cointreau and a dash of cognac. And coffee, of course.”
Nick stared at her. “You really can cook.”
“I can do a lot of things, Mr. Big,” she said acidly. “Face down killers and whip up a tasty brunch? No problem. I do it all the time. So, what don’t you have? I can fudge some ingredients…but only some.”
Mr. Big? Right. He had never told her his name. “Ah…” He shrugged, lamely. “I’m not sure.”
She flung the fridge open. The inventory didn’t take long.
Eggs he had, because they were the type of food that he could prepare. Even scorched, they were edible. And when he was in one of his moods, he just cracked one over his open mouth and gulped down the cold, mucusy glob like a protein pill. He figured it would be a funny joke if he croaked from salmonella poisoning one day.
Butter he had, because toast was another one of those foolproof food items. Milk he had, being as how cold cereal was a third quick-n-dirty survival edible. A few more odds and ends…and that was it.
Becca made a disgusted noise, and flung open cabinets, rifling through the contents and plucking things out. There was flour but not much else. She whirled, eyes sharp. “Is this a sick joke? I cannot make a gourmet breakfast for that guy out of stale bagel chips, instant oatmeal and pimiento Cheez Whiz!”
“Don’t play diva on me, babe,” he said testily. “I didn’t come up with that fancy menu, you did. Look in the other fridge or the freezer—”
“Diva, my ass! I’ve got some decent food over at the A-frame. I’ll just, ah…go get it.”
Yeah. And try to disappear, writing both of their death warrants in one smooth move. “You can’t walk out of here,” he told her. “They’re covering the approach. I’ll go get the stuff. You just get started.”
“Here? Alone? With…them?” Her eyes widened.
“I’ll be quick,” he promised rashly. “You’ll be fine.”
She swallowed hard and he saw her back straighten up as she snapped into drill sergeant mode. “The small white boxes have specialty cakes in them,” she said briskly. “Get as many as you can. The cheese plate, the ham roast and the fruit are all in the two big white boxes in the fridge. Get both. There’s beef and vegetables. And condiments. Don’t forget the prosecco. It’s chilling in the door of the fridge. Get as many bottles of wine as you can carry. I think we’ll need all the help we can get.”
Nick pounded up the back staircase and vaulted off the deck which curved around the huge outcropping of granite that the house had been built around. Clambering down that way put him at a thirty-yard uphill slog to the Sloane house, which he covered in seconds.
Once inside, he assembled the stuff Becca had asked for, tossing it helter-skelter into the boxes, packing wine bottles into plastic bags.
A thought occurred to him. He left the kitchen, and searched through the house until he found it. A little black purse. He dumped the contents, pawed through them. House keys, lipstick, tissue, comb.
He put the lipstick in his pocket for no very good reason.
Cell phone. Wallet. He thumbed through it, plucking out the plastic, the driver’s license, everything with her name and address printed on it. The wallet he tossed into an empty drawer by the bed. The credit cards and cell phone he shoved in his pocket, to bury under a rock outside.
He loaded himself up like a donkey, and took off. Sliding and scrambling through clinging vines and thorny bushes, all to make the perfect three-cheese soufflé for the evilest scum-sucking motherfucker in the known universe. It was surreal.
A sound jerked out of his chest, so rusty, he almost didn’t recognize it. Laughter.
Mr Big? How the fuck had she come up with that?
Better not to speculate.
Chapter