Brain (12 page)

Ice

Brain wasn’t the kind of guy to let my panic attack go with stupid explanations. First, he was too smart, and second, he was too damned nosy.

The truth was, I knew he’d take care of me, and I liked the idea of going to sleep and letting him keep an eye on me. I hadn’t slept soundly since I’d arrived in Atlanta.

And he’d held me close in my sleep before, and even though I’d wanted to hate it… he’d gotten under my skin, too.

So now, I put on some loose black shorts and a black tee, and slid between the sheets.

Brain came in a few minutes later, put his gun, keys, and wallet on the bedside table, took his jeans off, and slid into bed behind me.

I didn’t look at him, didn’t need to see him without his pants on. The boxer briefs had practically made me drool before, and we weren’t having sex tonight so I didn’t need to start lusting after him.

I was tired, but within a few minutes I realized sleep wasn’t going to happen right away, and I resituated the pillow, closed my eyes, and tried to empty my mind.

“What did the Russians do to you?”

His voice was a soft request, not a demand, and my eyes watered before I could process an answer. “It’s in the past. Doesn’t matter.”

“When you freeze after I kiss you? It matters.”

“Then don’t kiss me again.” Not like
that
, anyway.

“You said you’d had relationships. Did you not kiss them?”

“Yeah. Exactly. I kissed them, not the other way around.” He didn’t say anything, and I squeezed my eyes shut and took a centering breath to try to get a handle on my emotions. “You said you’d go away if we weren’t compatible. I’m pretty sure this proves we aren’t.”

“No. It proves you haven’t dealt with your baggage.”

I didn’t respond, and five minutes later he asked, “Are the men who hurt you dead?”

“No. I had to kill a few during my escape, but I’m sure at least most of the rest are still alive. It’s a rough life, some are bound to have died, but I haven’t kept close track of most of them. Like I said, ancient history.”

“And keeping tabs on them might put you at risk of being found, because they’re the kind of guys who want to know who’s looking into them.”

I shook my head, but admitted, “Yeah.”

His hand touched my shoulder, caressed my arm, and I felt the loss of him as he withdrew it. I didn’t have the nerve to tell him it was okay, much less to ask him to touch me again.

I took a breath and said, “Because you’ll find out eventually, I’ll tell you they cut my clit hood off, and that’s why I have a piercing holding my labia together — to protect it. I don’t want to talk about it, and I don’t intend to tell you the other things they did to me. I just want you to leave it the hell alone.”

“Thanks for telling me. I don’t know if you need to be held, but I need to hold you. Would that be okay?”

* * * *

Brain

She shocked me by turning towards me and snuggling into me. My arms went around her, gentle at first, worried she’d freak out again if I held her tight, but as my arms went firm around her, she relaxed into me even more.

God, she
trusted
me.

Someone had hurt her, likely tortured her for days or possibly weeks, and then I’d captured her and held her captive… and she still trusted me.

If Duke had been in the room, I’d have punched him in the face again. My wolf wholeheartedly agreed. We wanted to find everyone who’d ever hurt her and rend them into a million pieces.

I was awake long after her breathing told me she was asleep. This called for a new game plan, another way to bring her to me, to make her mine.

Ice

I awoke in Brain’s arms, snuggled in as if I belonged there. I’d fallen asleep with my face towards his chest, but now my back was to his front, his arms around me. I should’ve felt trapped, but I felt safe. As if I was finally where I belonged.

But I didn’t belong in anyone’s arms, and never would.

If I could find someone of Brain’s caliber to hire as a bodyguard, to take care of me for the paycheck, but somehow instill enough loyalty so I knew they could be trusted… but that was a pipe dream.

I’d taken care of myself for years, and I would continue to do so. Perhaps it would work to give myself a few days of having Brain around, but he’d soon find out how fucked up I am, and I’d be on my own again.

My IQ puts me in the top one percent of the planet, and I’d venture to say Brain is in the same league. I’d dated a few people nearly as smart as me in college, but Brain was just as smart, and possibly even smarter in some areas. I couldn’t lie to him, and couldn’t divert his attention when he asked questions I’d rather not answer, which made having him around impossible if I intended to keep my secrets.

I needed men around me I could control, men who’d do as they were told… No. I needed men who
wanted
me to tell them what to do.

But
fuck
, it felt so good to let Brain hold me and take care of me.

Goose bumps erupted on my entire body as his lips brushed the spot where my shoulder and neck join. He kissed up to my ear, back down my neck. Lazy, slow, as if he intended to do this all day, and nothing else.

I tensed at first, but then relaxed into it and let him work my body. As always, painful memories surfaced when blood surged into my clit, but I brushed them to the side, intent on relishing my time with Brain.

He caressed my arm, then skated his hand to the top of my hip, over my shorts. I took a breath and concentrated on his mouth at my throat, and everything was fine until his other hand went through my hair, and my body froze as my heart beat against my rib cage and adrenaline flooded my system. I still had my wits about me, though barely, and I tried to make light of it as I rolled forward and away from him.

“I’m just growing my hair out so I’ll look more like Harmony, trying to become her. Might not work out, though.”

“I need to know everything they did to you, so I know what to avoid.”

I shook my head and rolled out of bed. “No, you don’t.”

When I came out of the bathroom he was on the phone, ordering waffles, eggs, bacon, biscuits, gravy, fresh fruit, and a few other things.

“I’m starved, you can eat what you want of it, and I’ll finish off the rest. You slept good?”

Thankful he wasn’t pushing the other conversation, I nodded, but instead of asking how he slept, I told him, “I’m meeting Harmony at one today. I can stay here another hour, but then I need to go. I’ll need to sneak into the other hotel, put fingernail polish on and girlify my hair, change into different clothes.”

“Where are you meeting her?”

“I’m picking her up from a doctor’s appointment and taking her out to eat. She’s leaving for her bucket list trip in four days. Tomorrow, she’ll oversee the movers packing her things and taking them to her new, secluded house on the outskirts of Marietta. Since I’ll be taking over her car and driver’s license, staying in the same county makes it simpler in the short run. She’ll get the utilities and such turned on at the house before she goes, and there are no neighbors close enough to see either of us. The day after she leaves, I go in for surgery, and then I’ll have a nurse staying with me at the house while I recover.”

I shrugged. “For all intents and purposes, I become her in a few days, though I can’t move anywhere that’ll involve a picture ID for a few months — enough time for me to have lost weight since I was last seen. Her car is listed as blue on the title, and while I’m in surgery, the dings will be fixed, and the bright-assed blue will be painted over with powder blue, so people won’t recognize her car. I’ll use cash for groceries and stuff, so I don’t chance using one of her credit cards and having someone know I’m not her. But, since she shopped a lot on her cards, I’ll use them to keep buying stuff online, and at gas stations, so the activity doesn’t drastically change.”

Why was I telling him all of this? I shook my head and went back to the bathroom to brush my teeth.

He followed me in, leaned against the door, and watched.

I ignored him, but when I finished, he said, “I’ll stay away during the day, so the original Harmony doesn’t see me, but you’ll stay with me at night until you move into the new house. My hotel will be safer than this one, for both of us.” He had a point, but I wasn’t ready to agree to it. Before I could say anything, he added, “Once Harmony’s gone, I’m with you. I’ll take you to wherever the surgery is happening, stay with you until they send you home, and help the nurse take care of you while you recuperate. I’ll dress so I match however you’re dressing, and I have an older model BMW I can drive to keep from drawing attention to us, like my bike will.”

I shook my head. This was too much. All I could come up with to say, though, was, “You aren’t part of the plan, Brain.”

“I wasn’t, now I am. We’ll brainstorm, make sure I don’t open any loopholes, but it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Brain

I checked out of my hotel and into another, as I didn’t want my Buttercup to know I’d been able to see into her room from mine. I got the penthouse, dressed in socially acceptable clothes, and swapped out my bike for the BMW. We were both going to be incognito for a few months, and as much as I’d miss my bike, having Ice in my life was more important. People remembered a roaring Harley, and it was important she manage to be as invisible as possible for a few months. I couldn’t do anything to draw attention to her.

I’d brought her luggage to my suite, but I resisted the urge to look through it. I knew she’d likely done something so she could tell if I’d snooped, and I was trying to gain her trust.

A trip to the liquor store netted me the ingredients for Long Island Iced Tea, and I procured fancy bar glasses, a beautiful shaker, and some shot glasses at a high-dollar kitchen supply store. The suite had a full-sized fridge with a freezer, so I also bought a bag of ice, just in case. I talked to room service, planned our meal, and the snacks for later, and worked it out so they’d start bringing snacks two hours after they delivered dinner.

Tonight, I was going to woo her with food, drink, flirting, and intelligent conversation. Tomorrow, she was going to tell me what the bastards had done to her.

* * * *

Ice

Harmony was pathetic — and not just because she happened to be dying.

I’d come close enough to death, or rather, wanting to die, and being certain I would, soon, to have to evaluate my life. Not just
my
life, but life in general, and what it meant. It’d changed me, made me grow up in a way I don’t think most adults do until they’re middle aged. Or, in some cases, even older.

But Harmony didn’t appear to be smart enough for the insight I’d assumed most people gained when faced with the end of their life. For her, nineteen thousand dollars was nineteen million dollars — so much money she thought it would last forever. She had no idea how fast she was going to go through it.

Spending the better part of the day with her exhausted me, and I was happy to hide behind my oversized sunglasses on the bus ride from her apartment to Brain’s hotel.

Okay, so I didn’t go straight from one place to another. I rode the bus to the hotel my alter ego was staying, opened the door, grabbed a larger bag from just inside, and closed the door without going in, so it would look like I went in and stayed. I hugged the side wall as I walked around a corner, so no cameras would pick up on the fact I hadn’t gone in, and made my way down the hall the other direction.

While still out of shot of the cameras, I put my outer blouse in my bag, revealing a different colored tee. I removed the sunglasses, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and pulled a smartphone from my pocket, so I’d have a reason to keep my face down as I walked through the hotel. My purse went into the larger bag, and I moved to the middle of the hall and walked to the elevator.

I went out a different entrance, and put huge pink sparkly sunglasses on this time, instead of the brown leopard ones I’d worn earlier. A quick taxi ride four blocks over, and then a two block walk, going into and out of a few stores to be sure I wasn’t followed, and I finally made it to the hotel Brain was staying.

I couldn’t wait for the plastic surgeon to rearrange my face enough so I didn’t have to worry about facial recognition picking me up on random street cameras.

Also, I was debating the merits of living in the sticks where a stranger following you is immediately noticed, but it would be harder for me to disappear. I had a few months to decide where I’d want to settle down. I’d never considered it a true possibility, but now… the idea appealed to me. Of course, if I was going to follow through with my restaurant idea, I’d need to live near a population large enough to support it. And if I was going to go all the way to the strip club, I’d have to be in a large city. One preferably not in the bible belt.

I was still playing around with ways I could plausibly put Harmony on a horse farm, though.

Brain was waiting for me in the lobby, and he handed me a key card as we walked to the elevator. “So you can come and go as you please. How was your day?”

“Exhausting, even though we only sat around and talked most of the day. How was yours?”

“Great, since I knew I’d see you this evening. There’s a workout room in the hotel, if you need to burn some energy off.”

He wasn’t touching me, and I wanted a hug. I’d gone years not allowing my boyfriends to hug me, insisting I hug them first, and now I was mentally bitching because Brain was keeping his hands to himself.

“If no one’s in the indoor pool, I think I’d rather swim laps.”

He waited until we were in his suite to tell me, “I’m hacked into the hotel’s security, we can see how crowded the pool is from here. Also, I have my car, and I wouldn’t be opposed to heading to Piedmont Park for a run, there’s a nice four mile loop trail.”

“That’s perfect, though I’m certain you can run eight miles in the time it’ll take me to run four.” The only way I’d been able to outrun him had been by taking turns into tight places, where I could fit and he had to stop to figure out how to get through.

Now, finally, he bent down and brushed his lips across my forehead. “I didn’t spend the day talking to a woman under a death sentence. I don’t mind running at your pace, whatever it is. You can change in the bedroom, I’ll take the bathroom.”

Damn, was I really doing this? Spending time with him, giving him a chance? It appeared I was.

The park was awesome, and a four mile run was exactly what I needed. I requested we stop for shakes at The Varsity on the way back, and he indulged me with a smile.

I’d worn a ballcap while we ran, and I swapped it out for sunglasses when we got back in his car. As we pulled out of The Varsity, he asked, “You’re sure the minor changes will be enough to keep facial recognition from picking you up?”

I nodded. “Yeah. The surgeon gave me mock ups of how my face will look, and I also played around with some images, based on what he says he’s doing.” I looked out the window and considered how much to tell him. He needed to know the danger, what we were up against if I was recognized. “Twice now, I’ve tested cams to see if they’re still looking for me.”

“Kind of a risk, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, but I needed to know, and I planned it carefully.”

He glanced at me, back at the road. “Tell me?”

This was a test, and we both knew it. How many of my secrets was I willing to tell him? He already knew a good bit about how I operated, as he’d learned me pretty well when he chased me down.

I took a breath and started the story. “The first time was a few blocks from Times Square, and I planned it to the minute. I walked through wearing a red and white dress, a wig with nearly black shoulder length hair, red heels, with my face showing. I went into a theater and to a bathroom I knew didn’t have a camera on the door, and changed into a black dress with low black heels. My small purse had barely held the black dress and shoes. It was reversible, so I flipped it inside out, turning it from white to black, and put the red dress and heels in, then crammed the wig into the shoes. My short hair was dyed blonde at the time, and I’d gelled it to look stylish, but formal, which meant my hair color
and
length changed. I went from bright red lipstick to pale pink, put some heavy designer glasses on, and made my way through the theater and out the side door, to a restaurant across the street where I was supposed to meet someone for dinner.”

I paused, wondering how much of this next part to tell him. It didn’t put me in a good light, wouldn’t make me good girlfriend material. Did I want to run him away, or did I want to hold onto him a few more weeks? I didn’t know, but decided to give him the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

“I watched government agents arrive and scour the place. We had tickets for a different theater later, then we spent the night at his apartment, and he drove us to Connecticut to a lovely bed and breakfast the next day. Everything in his name, of course. We had a nice day and evening on vacation, and I told him I was going for a run the next morning.”

I shrugged, uncomfortable with the next part, as I knew it hadn’t been nice, but then, the person I’d turned into wasn’t especially nice. “I stole a motorcycle, rode twenty miles back towards New York, and stopped to call him and tell him I’d had a nice time with him, but we just weren’t going to work out. I told him I was headed back home on my own, hung up, destroyed the phone, and then drove to another large city, went to a mall, bought some shit, changed clothes, with layers so I could easily strip down and look different, took three busses to the airport, rented a car, and drove several hundred miles to another city with a storage unit with my stuff. I turned the car in, took a few busses to my storage unit, got on my motorcycle, and made my way to Chicago.”

He smiled, tilted his head, and said, “I’m guessing the second time was in a smaller city, and you had your own transportation out of town this time, with a computer set up to monitor and record activity, so you could watch later. Too much of a risk to stay around and watch the second time, especially since you wouldn’t have a huge crowd to get lost in.”

No judgmental crap from him, and he’d guessed my game plan for the second test. I couldn’t analyze my feelings for him now, though, with him sitting right here, so I nodded and said, “Yes, exactly. Medium sized city in Mississippi. I walked by the county courthouse in broad daylight, let the cameras see my face, and got on a bicycle, rode it four miles to a wooded trail, turned onto the trail and went another couple of miles to where I’d stashed a dirt bike. I rode it over a few mountains, using jeep trails and old logging roads, until I came to another town, where I had another storage unit, this one with a car. I drove to New Orleans, got lost in the crowds.”

“How long did it take them to show up?”

“The feeds showed local police activity within fifteen minutes — uniforms looking around and showing pictures to bystanders and asking questions. Feds took two hours to arrive.” I shrugged. “I tried it at a mall, once, and nothing happened. It’s possible they’re only jacked into government owned cams — traffic, parks, courthouses, whatever. I make sure I’m always camouflaged in some way, though. A huge chunk of hair over one eye, sunglasses, or a hat with a visor. The latest algorithms measure the ratios between your eyes, as well as eyes to lips, lips to chin, and eyes to chin. Law enforcement believes these are infallible, since you can’t move your eyes around in your face, but I’ve played around with the algorithms and discovered changing the eyebrows and eyelids is enough to trick the software into thinking the eyes are slightly higher. This, combined with a chin implant, throws the facial recognition off. Having my nose tweaked, and the cheekbone implants as well, will make me look different enough to the naked eye so people who’ve seen pictures of me won’t recognize me visually.”

“I think you’re beautiful, now, but it’s your brain and your courage I’ve fallen for, so it won’t matter what you look like.”

* * * *

Brain

She seemed to have decided to open up and let me in, but I knew she’d shut down the instant I mentioned the Russians, so I moved the conversation everywhere else. She drank slower tonight, but was still three sheets to the wind when she climbed on my lap and kissed me.

It took every ounce of willpower I had to let her control the kiss, but when she went to take my shirt off, I put my hands on hers and gave a soft, “No.”

Her eyes looked incredulous, then pissed, then hurt — all in the space of five seconds.

“I want you more than words can express, but we need to talk about some things before we go there, Buttercup.”

I expected her to storm off, or perhaps hit me, or tell me to go fuck myself. Instead, she gave a single nod, went to her laptop, and became engrossed in something. My instincts told me to let her do whatever this was without interrupting, and five minutes later she went to her bag, retrieved a USB drive, plugged it into her computer, hit a few more keys, and pulled the thumb drive from her laptop.

She walked to me, put the thumb drive on the table beside the sofa, and said, “Details of everything that happened, including the names I picked up, all conversations I heard, and the location I was held prisoner. I’m never going to talk to you about it, so don’t try. Password to access it is butter dot cup, but use an 8 for the B, 3 for the E.”

She walked to the bedroom door, turned, looked at me a few seconds, her eyes dark. “If you ever look at me with pity in your eyes, you’re history. That’s my past, not my present. I’m in control of sex now. No one fucks me, I fuck them. If you can’t deal with that, you should leave.”

I watched her walk into the other room, and only spent a few seconds debating whether to go to her or not.

She was in bed when I got there, and I crawled in with her. “You aren’t going to read it?”

“I am, but I’m going to hold you until you go to sleep, then I’ll read it.”

She didn’t know my night vision let me see her expression, and the vulnerability I saw in her face made me want to hold her and never let go.

I stroked and petted her until she was asleep, and then went to the living room to read.

Ice had put every detail she could remember in, and it took me nearly five hours to go through it. She’d also included pictures of people and places, as well as maps. She may not claim to want revenge, but she’d kept up with the main players enough so, if she had to, she could go after them with little further research.

I uploaded the files to my own encrypted server, and then sent an email to Kirsten. I’d met her a few times and liked her. She was a therapist, she knew about supernaturals, and a close friend of mine trusted her completely, which was enough to make me trust her, as well.

I asked her if she could give me an appointment for a session via phone or video chat, and let her know I had Aaron’s encryption software, and was assuming she did, as well.