Into the Fire (7 page)

Izzy nodded, trying not to feel self-conscious as she continued to look at him. “Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“I tried to stop a bullet with my chest, only my superpowers weren’t working, so I kinda got shot. Hurt like a mother, if you want to know the truth. Did I cry? Hell, no. Not one tear. But I cried a shitload when I found out a friend of mine died, in that same…event. So…”

Eden met his eyes in the dimness, and Jesus H. Christ, there was that spark again. Izzy tried to look away. And failed. “He was a good man. Frank,” he told her quietly. “He deserved to be mourned, so yes, I cried.”

“Jerry doesn’t deserve it,” Eden told him vehemently, as her tears started up again. “He deserves…He’s never touching me again. Never.”

“Good plan.”

She pulled off another length of toilet paper and forcefully blew her nose. “I hate that I can’t stop crying about him.”

“You’re not crying about him,” Izzy told her. “You’re crying for you. For…lost innocence.”

She rolled her eyes. “Lost innocence? Get real. I lost my innocence when I was fourteen. Theresa Franklin’s older brother took me for a ride in his car. Of course, I didn’t exactly say no, so…”

Holy shit. “I’m not talking sex,” Izzy said. “I’m talking about…you know, love. You said Jerry told you that you were the one. And you know, maybe, in that moment when he said it? Maybe he meant it. But you believe in something different. Something bigger and…better. Something that I think most people don’t believe exists. They give up on it, you know? After they’ve lived through too many Jerries of their own.”

She was listening to him, watching him with those luminous, tear-filled eyes, and he was unable to stop himself from reaching out and pushing her sleep-tangled hair from her face.

“But see, here’s the thing,” he told her, gently using his fingers to comb out her hair. “It does exist. I’ve seen it, Eden. It’s rare, but it’s out there. So, I’m a believer, too. People like you and me, though? We’ve got to learn to stay away from the people who don’t believe in it, so they don’t rip our hearts in two.”

She closed her eyes, and the tears that welled there ran unchecked down her cheeks, and Izzy shifted closer.

He caught himself and shifted back, because, damn, that was a bad idea. He forced himself to pull his hand back, too. “It takes work. Constant training,” he said, desperately searching for a way to lighten things up, as she opened her eyes and pulled more toilet paper from the roll to wipe her face. “Because even when you get the real deal, you don’t just float along, like, on some perfect, golden river. Like, you know,
All you need is love,
” he sang. “Works in theory. But in reality, if the guy you love isn’t Gandhi or Jesus?” He sang again:
“All you need is love and a hefty bank account and maybe even a partial lobotomy, yat da dah-dat dah…”

That got him a watery smile. “You have a good voice.”

“I also play a mean guitar,” he told her. “But, shh, don’t tell your brother. He doesn’t know.”

“Why not?” she asked, blowing her nose again.

Izzy shrugged. “No one I work with knows. It’s just…It was the path I didn’t take. I haven’t taken my guitar out of the closet in years.”

“That’s too bad,” Eden said.

“Yeah,” Izzy agreed. “But I don’t have much time, and…” He shrugged again.

And there they sat, just looking at each other.

“That felt nice,” Eden finally said. “What you were doing. If I somehow made you think I wanted you to stop—”

“Actually,” Izzy told her, “I wanted me to stop, because, um, I kind of like you, and the last thing you need is—”

“I like you, too,” she whispered, and oh damn, the look in her eyes was unmistakable.

“You’re probably…feeling vulnerable.” Izzy couldn’t seem to work the muscles in his body that would allow him to push himself to his feet and walk away, but at least his mouth was functional. “And lonely and really,
really
…”

She kissed him.

She just leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his.

She was both salty and sweet, soft and firm, and Izzy had to clench every cell in his body to keep from kissing her back the way he wanted to.

He could have been anybody—anyone besides Jerry, that is. Izzy tried to focus on that. Yeah, maybe Eden liked him, but this was entirely about payback. She wanted to screw Jerry, figuratively—by screwing, literally, someone who
wasn’t
Jerry.

He doubted it was that clear-cut-and-dried inside of Eden’s own head. It was, no doubt, mixed with a need for an exorcism of sorts. By using Izzy, she would drive the ghost of Jerry away.

Or maybe this girl who’d had her first sexual encounter when she was freaking fourteen simply didn’t know how to be friends with a guy without getting naked.

No doubt about it, it was past time to stand up, to walk away. Time to lock himself in his bedroom. To call Jenkins and scream,
Help me, for the love of God, someone help me!

Instead, Izzy sat there, on the carpet in front of his couch, and let himself get kissed. He heard himself groan as Eden licked his lips, as she deepened the kiss, her sweet tongue inside of his mouth, and then she was in his arms, in his lap, wrapping herself around him, and God damn, he was
so
fucked. He knew what this was about, he knew it wasn’t real, and he knew that he shouldn’t be doing it for so many reasons, yet he ignited anyway, kissing her back hungrily, filling his hands with the softness of the skin beneath her shirt.

Game over. He’d lost—so to speak. Of course, on the other hand, it was also true that he’d really, really,
really
won.

“Please,” she breathed between soul-sucking kisses, her body soft and supple against him, as his exploring fingers found that perfect nipple he’d glimpsed earlier. “Please…”

It was more than clear what she was after—with her legs wrapped around his waist, she was rubbing herself against the hard length of him, reaching—sweet Jay-sus—between them to grab his dick—right through his shorts—and press him more precisely where she wanted him.

She moved to unfasten her shorts, and Izzy had enough brain cells still firing to recognize what a terrible, horrible, no-good idea
that
was. Dry humping Gillman’s little sister was one thing. Full penetration sex would send him to an entirely different, much deeper level of hell.

So he rolled her up and onto the couch, pinning her onto her back as he moved between her legs, as he kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. With reluctance, he let go of that nipple he’d found and reached between them, sliding his hand up the paradise-perfect smoothness of her thigh, up the leg of her shorts. He hooked his fingers beneath the edge of her bathing suit and…

Money.

No, what he’d found was better than any paycheck he’d ever received.

She was mindblowingly soft and wet and she’d gasped, too, inside of his mouth, at the contact, then shifted to push his fingers more deeply within her.

She wasn’t done trying to take off her shorts, though. “Let me—”

“Shhh,” Izzy said, capturing her mouth again as he continued to explore. His reach and movement were both limited, but…Yeah,
there
it was. Ah, God, he wanted in. And she wanted him, too, but…Not him. She didn’t really want
him.

She was trying to guide his dick along the same route his hand had taken—which wasn’t going to work, but damn, he liked that she was willing to try. And yeah, if she kept touching him like that, even through his shorts, he was going to…

He shifted his hand, only slightly, but his move made for a bull’s-eye, and Eden exploded. She just went right over the edge.

And Izzy went, too. Right in his boxers.
Gahhhhhhd.
…

He lay there then, on top of her, catching his breath, as she tried to catch hers, as well.

But then he realized that her ragged breathing wasn’t going to end anytime soon. She was crying again.

No doubt because payback sex never really worked to make anyone feel better. It was designed to hurt the payee, but the payer usually got slammed in the process.

As for the payer’s partner…?

He was the one who usually walked away unscathed. Yet Izzy was lying there, wondering how the fuck had he let this get so totally out of control, and feeling not just uncomfortably damp, but extremely scathed.

Beating a hasty retreat to the bathroom seemed like a smart option—but it meant deserting Eden, who had gone full circle and was back to despair.

So Izzy lifted himself off of her and gathered her into his arms so that she was spooned against him, there on the couch. “It’s okay,” he reassured her. “It’s going to be okay…”

Although, for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out how.

S
MALLWOOD
, K
ANSAS

Dave woke up early, the morning after the AmLux invasion. He hadn’t brought workout gear because the hotel out here in this timewarp back to 1981 didn’t have a health club. Truth was, it barely had beds. It
did
have what the proprietor called a continental breakfast starting at 0600—provided “continental” meant stale pastries and coffee that smelled as if it had been brewed with insecticide.

He beat the hotel staff to the alcove where the food was being served, waiting while two very slow-moving elderly women unwrapped what looked like bagels and croissants. Looked like but were not—a fact Dave had learned the hard way during yesterday’s morning meal. They were, in fact, faux versions—food-like, but not quite food. The bread that granny one and granny two put out for toast was slightly more real, so Dave popped two slices into the toaster.

He was standing there, caught up in making a massive decision—peanut butter or strawberry jam—when Nash came through the hotel’s front doors.

“Hey,” Dave called to him, and Nash stopped short, clearly surprised and a little put-off at seeing him there.

“Hey.” Nash glanced at the elevators, as if gauging his escape, but then came toward Dave—or maybe just toward the coffee. “You’re up early.”

“My room doesn’t have a bed,” Dave informed the taller man, who poured himself a cup. “It has a bowl that’s bed-shaped. My back’s already spasming, so…”

“I hear you,” Nash said. He looked tired, and even slightly pale, his jacket still zipped up tight despite the hotel lobby’s heat. And yet he still managed to look like a movie star. “I don’t sleep well without Tess.”

It was more likely that Nash didn’t sleep,
period
without Tess Bailey, his fiancée.

“Is there something going on that I need to know about?” Dave asked.

Nash didn’t stop reaching for a lid for his coffee cup. He didn’t telegraph anything at all. No guilt, no nothing. His smile was completely natural as he glanced at Dave. “That’s the problem with you former CIA types. You see spooks and monsters in every shadow.”

Dave took the plunge and spread strawberry jam on his toast. “Yeah, well, I saw you leaving the hotel last night around 0200.”

Nash laughed with a flash of his perfect, white teeth. “See what I mean? I got up at sunrise, Malkoff. I went to take a walk because I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know who you thought you saw, but it wasn’t me.”

With his coffee in his hand, Nash turned toward the elevator.

And Dave realized that he’d just been conned by a master. He reached out and caught Nash by the arm—the arm that he’d kept close to his body throughout their entire conversation, elbow pressed against his side…

“Ow—Christ!”

Sure enough, Dave’s hand came away smeared with Nash’s blood.

As one of the breakfast grannies toddled out of the kitchen, Dave grabbed Nash by the jacket and hustled him over to the elevator. It wasn’t until they were safely inside, the door closed behind them that Dave dared to look at Nash. “Maybe we should try this again. Is there something going on that I need to know about?”

Nash let his head thump back against the grimy, once-elegant wall, no longer trying to hide from Dave the fact that he was in some serious pain. “No,” he said quietly. “There’s something going on that you
can’t
know about. Decker can’t either.”

“How about Tess?” Dave couldn’t peel Nash’s jacket back from him—not here. The elevator probably still had security cameras in place.

Nash shook his head. “Especially not Tess. I’m okay. Really. It’s just a ding.”

“Just a ding.” Dave had once heard Nash describe a stab wound from a KA-BAR knife as “just a ding.”

“Yeah.” The elevator opened on the third floor—Nash’s floor—and Dave helped him out and over to his room, taking his cup of coffee from him. Nash’s key card was smeared with blood, and he wiped it on his pants before pushing it into the slot. “I’m here, I’m okay, and now I need you to walk away.”

“I’m sure you think you’re okay,” Dave agreed. “But either I come in with you, or I go get Deck.”

Nash no doubt would have stood there and argued, but another of the hotel’s patrons came out of his room at the end of the hall, briefcase in hand, ready to start his day here in the land of corn.

Dave pushed Nash inside a room that was a mirror opposite of his own, but identical in every other way. Desk by the window. Absurdly uncomfortable plaid easy-chair with atrociously matching ottoman. Big mirror on the wall across from a king-sized bed-bowl—that was still neatly made up.

So okay, not identical in
every
other way…

The door closed with a thunk behind them, as Nash looked from Dave to the bed and back. “Busted,” he said.

“Yeah,” Dave said wryly as he put Nash’s coffee cup down on the desk. “You didn’t sleep in here last night.
That’s
my big clue that something’s going on. First aid kit?”

It wasn’t
just a ding,
because Nash gave in, far too quickly. “In the front zipper section of my duffle,” he directed Dave as he winced his way out of his jacket.

“Dear God,” Dave said. The entire side of Nash’s shirt was bright red with blood.

“Relax,” Nash said. “The bullet was spent.”

Bullet? “You were
shot
?” Dave clarified.

Nash unbuttoned his shirt as he went into the bathroom, leaning toward the mirror to examine what looked like an angry entry wound, just above his right hip. “It hurts,” he announced, “but it’s just a .22.”