Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries) (19 page)

“You mean other than the big one-day sale at Macy’s?” It sat there for a few seconds, then she beamed at him, a jokester. “Happy to do it, boss.”

He was about to tell her to call him Frank, but Angie Stevens had already turned and walked out of his office without a good-bye. Frank thinking, There it was, the computer-nerd thing, the klutzy lack of social skills.

He buzzed Marta, told her to call their FBI liaison at the Pentagon, see if there was any more on Pauly Chee they could shake loose.

“Bottom of my list or top?”

“Tippy top,” Frank said. “Try hard, stamp your feet if you have to.”

He worked through the afternoon, running his own computer searches on the principals, hours slumped at the screen but finding nothing.

He killed his computer, shut his door, called Nicole’s cell, and it rang three times. Frank, expecting the goddamn robot again, was about to slap the receiver down when he heard her voice, husky, different.

“I catch you at a bad time?” Frank said.

She cleared her throat, sounding almost normal when she said, “Hey, Frank. How’s it going?”

Sheffield brushed aside the weirdness and asked what she was doing later.

TWENTY-THREE

“MY CALENDAR’S CLEAR,” NICOLE SAID.
“What do you have in mind?”

From the foot of the bed Claude Sellers shook his head. He wanted her to stay the night, finish what they’d started. The idiot had a few more gallons of horny juice stored up.

But, no, Nicole went on and made a date with Frank, while Claude, feeling snubbed, began to massage her right foot, then her left, working her toes, digging into the meat of her arches.

Ignoring him, Nicole was saying uh-huh and no and okay, but mainly listening, as Claude finished with her feet and started working up her right leg, kneading the knots in her calf muscles, then sliding his hand up farther, above her right knee, across the slick inner thighs, going to give her a little thrill while she listened to Sheffield.

Claude only made it a few inches before Nicole kicked him in the shoulder with her right foot, knocking him away, squinching up her pissed-off face, saying to Sheffield, “Okay, that’s strange. They’re not man-eaters?”

Claude slid off the bed and stood in her line of sight, swinging his wiener from side to side like a caveman with his club, playing around, making a pucker with his lips, trying to get Nicole to grin, but she looked at his dick and watched it going back and forth and said to Sheffield, “Sure, the Boater’s Grill at six. No, no, make it six thirty, that’s better. I have a couple of things to sort out.… Good, yeah, see you then.”

She clicked off, set the phone aside, and said to Claude, “Okay, tell me, idiot child, why the hell did you smear the goddamn ladder with gel?”

Claude stopped swinging his wiener. “Just to be sure. Probably would’ve worked without it, but, you know, electricity can be unpredictable, so I went the extra mile.”

“Jesus Christ. Conducting gel. That’s blood in the water for Sheffield. He’ll have a forensic hard-on until he has the serial number of the tube it came from.”

“Speaking of which, tell me about Sheffield’s pecker.”

She stared at him as he climbed into the broken-open sheets beside her. “Christ, I should’ve seen what a moron you were from the first.”

“But my pheromones overwhelmed you. You couldn’t help yourself.”

She pulled the sheet up to her neck, staring at the ceiling, trying to think, weigh the danger. Frank had confided in her about the gel and what he’d learned about the docile nature of crocs, his doubts about the video. Which meant he was still keeping her in the loop. Unless this was his ploy. Playing her, stringing her along until he had all the evidence he needed to come after her. She wasn’t sure. She’d thought she had a good read on him, that he was under her influence. Now not so sure.

“Listen, sweet stuff,” Claude said. “Let me remind you. You seem to have forgotten a few things about our personal interconnectivity.

“You came to me because I’m the guy with the keys to the locks. The secret codes. I’m Mr. Open Sesame who can make everything happen you want. I can plant the eco-freaks’ flash drive, I can get everyone worked up about that screen saver. I can let that guy, Wally whatever, have remote access so he can poke around the system. It was me, me and me alone, sweetheart, who set this deal in motion because that’s what you wanted.

“And sure enough, the force-on-force drill is going down. A week from today, exactly the time frame you asked for. Me, Claude Sellers, the inside guy you needed so you could score the biggest takedown of a terrorist cell in US history. So you could be a hero, strap a booster rocket on your stalled-out career. You used me and you’re still using me, which, by the way, puts me at serious risk of incarceration, but am I complaining? No, because the quid pro quo, sweet cheeks, the tit for tat, is that I get to use your sweet, tight body for my gratification. Which, I got to admit, so far is worth putting my life in serious jeopardy.

“And the gel, hey, that’s nothing. I used it because I wanted to be a hundred percent sure Bendell got zapped. So what if special asshole in charge Sheffield is suspicious? Big fucking whoop. We knew from the get-go that would happen.

“The logical deduction is the ELF guys found out they had a snitch in their midst, so they exterminated his ass. So what if there was gel? It’s ELF gel. It’s on them. Does that help explain it to you, sweetness? Does that help put your fears to rest?”

She hated to admit it, but Claude was right. Right about everything. She felt her body relax. Still anxious, still needing to sort it through one more time, make sure she had it all set perfectly in place, but not now. Later. When she was alone, when she could think. Not with this meathead grinning at her.

“Okay, good, we got that settled,” he said. “Now tell me about Sheffield’s cock.”

“You’re fourteen years old.”

“So?”

“Not even that. You’re twelve.”

“How big is it? Go on, tell me. I can take it.”

“I warned you from the beginning, Claude. I told you I’d already been with Frank once, and if things worked out, we were going to be intimate again. You said fine. You didn’t mind. So cut the jealousy shit.”

“It’s bigger, isn’t it? That’s why you don’t want to talk about it.”

“I didn’t notice his dick.”

“You were with him all night and didn’t notice the thing sliding in and out of you? The thing you had in your mouth when he was busting a nut?”

“It was normal. Average, nothing unique about it.”

“Fatter or skinnier or identical to me?”

“I’m not doing this.”

“’Cause I’m pretty thick myself, right? Fatter is better than longer. I never met a woman thought otherwise.”

“He’s a pencil dick. Okay, Claude? A pencil dick.”

“Number two pencil?”

“Yes, that’s right, superskinny. Kind you can break in one hand. And you’re thick as a German salami. Okay, you happy now?”

“Tell me you’re not sweet on him.”

“What matters is, he’s sweet on me.”

“Is he?”

“Most definitely.”

“Okay, then, I’m not jealous anymore. I’m over it. I was, but now I’m okay. I’m totally secure. I know you’re sacrificing your sexual dignity for the plan, to get the big advancement, office with a view. I know that. So I’m not jealous.”

As he cuddled beside her, pressed his cheek against her left breast, Nicole stifled a shudder, took a long breath, forced herself to stay loose because he was right, damn it, right about her needing him, even if it meant she had to endure his bungling sex, his juvenile insecurities, his rancid Old Spice smell. She’d become a pro at swallowing her disgust.

Reminding herself, as she did so often, that this degradation would be purified later. She would absolve herself, isolate these hours with Claude, keep them compartmentalized. A skill she’d begun to develop a decade earlier, on her first job out of college.

Assistant to the senior special agent at GAO, a step above a flunky. Herbert Marshall, an investigator of white-collar crimes, waste, fraud, abuse, government corruption. Less than a year into that first job, off in Las Vegas at the yearly GAO convention, she’d joined Herbert in the hotel bar. She’d expected the whole gang, but it was just the two of them. Nicole sipped a martini. She wasn’t a drinker, never had been. But after two sips the night was an ugly whirl of violent colors and music and noisy voices, and she woke in her hotel bed at ten the next morning in agony.

Remembering nothing after the second swallow, but feeling the ripping ache between her legs. She touched herself, screamed at the blood, screamed when the hotel doctor touched her, screamed again at the hospital. Herbert showed up, acting horrified, telling the female police detective that he’d helped her back to her room the night before, that she was drunk. There’d been no sex. None at all. He claimed Nicole had tried to kiss him, said she wanted to party, do the town, but he refused. A happily married man.

Her urine test was positive for roofies. Drugged and raped, the physician said, multiple times. Bruised cervix, a tear in the posterior fourchette. Injuries that would take months to heal. Others that never would.

The detective urged her to press charges against Herbert, but she didn’t want to expose herself to the public shit that was sure to follow, that would dog her forever, stain her career.

She stayed on the job, applied for promotions, transfers, but was passed over and passed over again. Her workload increased. Herbert ignored her. For a year she hung on, and then 9/11 came, the Twin Towers went down. Overnight new federal agencies were born, new opportunities. She moved to NIPC, a demotion, a pay cut. But it was work.

A month on the job, her new boss hit on her. She was aloof, simmering with fury but hiding it. When he persisted, she made a decision that altered her trajectory.

She flirted back, discreetly at first, bedroom eyes, keeping a tantalizing distance. A mirage, a temptress, beguiling insinuations that were never kept. The false promise of promiscuity. She kept him in a low-grade swoon and won a small upgrade and another.

She shifted departments. Repeated the process. The alluring word, the dangled bait, the fleeting smile, beckoning but withholding. Same thing again after that. Seduction became work. Work became seduction.

Cold inside, fueled by hate and hurt, cunning, aloof, moving ahead step by bewitching step. The look that hinted more, the quick touch on hand and arm that was almost a caress, the touch that seemed certain to lead to sex. But never did.

Her power grew. GS-9, GS-10, working up the pay grades. Her own titillating revenge. Making her giddy, a little crazy, her one and only goal was to rise so high that she was invulnerable, that she could lift her foot and grind them under her heel, any of them. All of them.

When she crossed the line, let one of them into her bed, she remained two steps removed, watching from afar. Keeping her true self sober and safe. Sex was only to close the deal, to set the hook deeper, to move up and up again. She thought of her vagina as a wound that never healed.

What shame she felt she put into boxes. She assembled one for Herbert, one for each who followed. She stacked the boxes neatly, edge to edge, shelved them in the far back corner of her history where they gathered the dust of forgetfulness. Claude now had a box. When it was time, she would seal it, set it beside the others, perfectly aligned in the airless vault. The archives of her humiliations and her triumphs.

Someday soon, Sheffield would have his, too, take his place on the shelf.

She turned to Claude. “Frank’s suspicious about the video, about Leslie Levine. He’s consulted with some croc expert. He thinks she could still be alive, the whole croc attack was staged. This isn’t good.”

“Let him be suspicious. Not a problem. What’s he going to do?”

“He could send SWAT out to Prince Key. Take down the operation.”

“I could intervene,” Claude said.

“What?”

“Distract him. I’m good at distracting.”

His lips grazed her nipple, a damp nibble. Again she suppressed a cringe, looked down at his slick scalp. She touched it with her fingertips. Knowing he liked that, stroking with her palm against the bristles.

“Distract him how?”

“Put a hurt on him. Go to his place, bash him around, send him to the emergency room. Knock that probable-cause shit right out of his head.”

Her hand stopped moving against his head.

“What do you say, Nicky? Can I do it? Bust him up?”

“We need Frank. You can’t put him out of action. Absolutely not.”

“I can modulate my behavior. I can be very nuanced.”

She considered it, then went back to stroking his head.

“So come on, Nicky, give me the green light.”

“I’m thinking.”

They lay still for a while. Nicole listening to the white noise of traffic out on Kendall Drive. Television chatter coming from the apartment above.

She nudged Claude away, reached over to the side table, and retrieved her phone and purse. She propped herself up against a pillow. Claude drawing back, watching her.

“What’re you doing?”

“Bendell told you there was another snitch on Prince Key. We need to find out who it is and remove him.”

“How you going to manage that?”

She dug through her purse, found the index card where she’d scribbled the numbers, and dialed the first one.

Got an old Cuban lady, hung up.

Dialed the second. A pizza place on Key Biscayne.

The third was a department at the FBI. She disconnected quickly. That same number appeared twelve times. Frank’s office.

“These are Sheffield’s recent calls. One of these is his guy. Bendell said the guy called Frank from out on the island, so it wasn’t long ago. I’ve got every number for the last week. Incoming and outgoing. Twenty-two of them.”

The next five numbers were from some Miami-Dade building inspector. Scratch those. Nicole dialed the next number, got a car repair shop, hung up.

The next was next to last on her list. It rang five times, then went to voice mail. A guy sounding rushed, out of breath.