“Where are you going?!” I ask, alarmed.
“To find an empty house.”
He runs up the shore, into the rocks that border the sand.
I have nothing else to do, so I look inside the backpack. The money is soaked, but 45 grand spends just as well wet or dry. I know it’s not local currency, which is a problem if we need to buy food or get a cab, but that’s a bridge we can cross when we come to it.
I’m sure the computer is toast. So is the cell phone, not that we could have used it. The passport and credit cards are worthless by default, since using them would trigger an online alert. I doubt the rest – the metal tools, the putty, the switchblade – was affected by the saltwater one way or the other.
Yay.
I stand there, chilled to the bone and miserable, speculating on all the terrible choices that led me here: cold and wet on a foreign beach, an international fugitive hunted by both the authorities and a serial killer.
I remember some of the things that had run through my head when Grant hired me a thousand years ago, just this past Monday morning:
You would think that telling a girl that Hannibal Lecter is in the mix would scare her away.
If I were smarter, it probably would.
But I’m not smart like that. Just book/computer code/programming smart.
Not ‘avoid the possible homicidal maniac job at all costs’ smart.
This might just be the coolest internet security job I’ve ever had.
Five times the money…
Danger…
A Hannibal Lecter type in the mix…
And quite possibly more of the best sex I’ve ever had in my life.
Idiot, idiot, IDIOT.
When you lead a quiet, boring life, danger seems exotic and exciting and fun.
Then, when you actually experience the danger, you realize you were absolutely insane to want it, and that you’d do just about anything to go back to your nice, quiet, boring life.
Do just about anything.
That was the question: WOULD I do just about anything?
If somebody offered me a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card right now – if I knew for a certainty that Epicurus would never come after me again, and that the authorities would pretend I had never run afoul of the law – if I could walk away from Grant without any repercussions, and never look back – would I?
…no.
No, I wouldn’t.
Last night in the New York brownstone we broke into, I was scared as hell that maybe I was falling in love with Grant, and maybe that was why I was sticking by his side.
This moment right now – standing here, wet, cold, hunted, and in danger, yet refusing to leave him – this just confirms that fear even more.
And it terrifies me.
I can’t fall in love with him.
I won’t fall in love with him.
He doesn’t love me. How can he? We’ve known each other less than a week.
All I am to him is hot sex. That, and a computer hacker who’s helping him evade death.
He cares about me, sure. He wants me safe. But that just shows he’s a good human being, not that he loves me.
He’ll leave me when this is all over.
I can’t fall for this man. I can’t. I have to protect myself.
I have to protect my heart.
I start to cry silently. Hot tears run down my face.
It’s really fucked up that I’ve been hunted by a killer, jumped out of both a skyscraper and an airplane, and forced to flee my own country, but the thing that’s got me most upset is a man.
A man I’m falling in love with, and I can’t deny it anymore.
I look out at the ocean, wondering if the jet plane has gone in the Channel yet. I can’t see the lights anymore, and it’s been at least ten minutes since we landed in the water. It has to have crashed by now.
Just like YOU’RE going to crash, if you’re not careful.
I hope that Mike made it out in one piece.
Just like I hope that I make it out in one piece.
From Epicurus…
From the authorities…
From Grant Carlson.
“Hey!” a voice whispers, and I about jump out of my skin.
I turn around and see Grant in the darkness, looking like an excited little boy.
“I found an empty one,” he says.
9
The beach house is a snap for Grant. No alarm, just a deadbolt. Within 45 seconds we’re inside.
It’s deserted. There is evidence of a family – pictures on the walls of smiling parents with three small children – but the house feels vacant. There is a chill everywhere: the cold, damp staleness of salty air bottled up for weeks on end.
Grant leads me to a laundry room off the kitchen and snaps on the light. “We have to hurry,” he says as dumps the parachute on the linoleum floor. “A shower to warm up, then we need to hit the road.”
“In what? There’s no car.”
“There’s an old Mercedes a quarter mile away that I can definitely hotwire. I’d like to be a couple hundred miles from here when the owner gets up and reports it stolen.”
“What about our clothes? They’re sopping wet.”
He points to the dryer. “Voilà.”
I arch an eyebrow. “You’re going to put your $5,000 suit in a regular dryer?”
“We’re on the run from the police and a serial killer, we just parachuted out of an airplane into the English Channel – ”
“Okay, okay,” I interrupt. I get it: what I just said was thoroughly ridiculous. We have problems ten thousand times worse than him ruining an Armani jacket and pants.
“Besides, I don’t have a lot of options at the moment. I already checked out the clothes of the guy who owns the place, and he’s about a foot shorter than me and skinny as a rail. But you’re welcome to inspect the lady of the house’s wardrobe, if you want.”
That feels… weird, for some reason. Which is funny, considering that breaking into other people’s houses has become a daily habit for me now.
“No, my stuff isn’t worth nearly as much as yours. It’ll be just fine.”
“Okay, then – strip.”
“What?”
He takes off his wet jacket and starts unbuttoning his shirt. “Give me your clothes. I need to put them in the dryer.”
I stand there, taken aback and a little shy. All that moping out on the beach about how I can’t fall in love with this guy, and here I am getting naked with him again.
To escape the police, I remind myself.
But it’s hard to remember that as I watch the shirt come off of his gorgeous, sculpted chest, revealing his rock-hard abs and bulging biceps.
He grins. “I realize you’re enjoying the show, Eve, but we need to hustle.”
I blush a little, and begin unbuttoning my blouse.
But I can’t stop watching him.
He pulls off his shoes, peels off his wet socks, then shucks off his pants and pulls down his boxers so he’s standing there naked.
God, he takes my breath away.
Those muscles in his legs… the way his abs curve down to the hair below his navel…
His cock, soft but thick and full as it dangles and sways with every movement he makes…
“Don’t judge,” he says in a playful voice.
“…judge?” I say, awakened as though from a trance. I realize I don’t even have my blouse halfway unbuttoned yet.