Page 23 of Nothing More

Toly said, “Maverick’s put Topino and Pongo in charge of asking around quietly. Ears to the ground, as the Americans like to say. Dixon will try to run DNA analysis on the finger and the ring without alerting the rest of the police department. And until we know anything, I’m your shadow.”

She met his gaze unflinching but clicked her nails, ping-ping-ping, on the side of her wine glass. “Aren’t you already?”

“A more consistent shadow. A darker one.”

She bit down on her lower lip, just once, and briefly, white teeth turning her pink lip pale. Then she was glacier smooth and cold again.

“Bennet will help,” Toly said. “Your brother can handle the computer stuff.”

“That sounds like a holding pattern.”

“It is,” he conceded. “But it’s the best we can do now without any more information.”

Her jaw worked side to side, as though chewing on a retort. Then she nodded, stiffly. “Fine. I’m going to take a shower.” When she left the room, she took her glass and the bottle with her.

When she was gone, Bennet said, “Look, kid, I know that you know what you’re doing when it comes to…” He drew a finger across his throat and stuck his tongue out in a stupid, exaggerated mime of killing. Then grew serious. “But you don’t exactly…and don’t take this the wrong way, ‘cause I don’t mean nothin’ by it…know how to talk to women.”

Toly stared at him, at his weathered, well-intentioned face, and thought of his mother, three-sheets to the wind and about to break her ankle in her stilettos, swaying, clutching the back of the sofa and singing in a low, slurred voice.Mama, go to bed. No, baby, don’t you worry about me. So long as I’ve got Andrei, we’ll be fine.Thought of a wriggling, too-thin call girl in his lap, with painted mouth and dead eyes; a whole string of them, year after year, pushed down to straddle him while one of Andrei’s men laughed, and egged her own. Brittle, dyed hair sliding through his fingers, and professional, disinterested heat and slick on his cock. Thought of girls crying off their mascara in the bathroom, and wiping their faces with damp cloths; sending them out into the night in a borrowed jacket clutching a fistful of cash.Don’t come back. It’s not safe here. Thought of the wives of some of the men, those battle-hardened matriarchs who’d stuck around for reasons unclear, faces prematurely lined, jaws set, shoulders bunched tight against a cold that had nothing to do with the snow building in drifts against the storefronts. Plates set before him.Eat, you’re too skinny. A warm hand, dry and cracked from the cold, from sinks full of dirty crystal, papery against his cheek, but the fingertips sure and tight on his jaw.Toly, Toly, Toly, why do you stay, little one? It’s not too late for you, not like it is for the others. Thought of milky, sightless eyes, and a snapped neck, head lolling; the thud of the corpse landing at the bottom of the hole. Someone, Sergei, probably, cursing and fuming around the stump of a cigar clenched in his teeth:that stupid motherfucker, this is the third one this month, why can’t he fuck a bitch without strangling her? Stupid fucking…

He stared at Bennet, of the three divorces, and the sullen daughters who didn’t want to be a part of his life, and he thought of women, in all their shapes, and sizes, and trials, and tragedies. He said, “I’m not ‘talking to women.’ I’m doing my job, not asking for a date.”

Whatever his face did, it had Bennet lifting both hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. Just…you don’t gotta be so hard on her.”

Toly snorted. “I don’t think anyone’s been hard on her in her life, and she’s gonna get herself killed because of it.”

~*~

Raven needed to check on Cassandra. Have a good, private conversation with her in which she stressed – yet again – the need for keeping their personal business just that, restricted to club and family. She needed to insist that she do her homework, and study, and then look over everything she had to turn in tomorrow. Needed to sort dinner for them both and then hit the Peloton before bed.

She did none of those things. Took a long, too-hot shower instead, standing under the spray until the heat of it had loosened the knot between her shoulder blades and bled the chill out of her bones. It was easier to ignore the fear under the pounding jets. Easier still because, even if their presence annoyed her, she knew that there were two dangerous, capable Dogs out in her living room, keeping watch, ready to intercept any sort of intruder.

Stop being a brat about it. She kept replaying Toly’s words in her mind, a bright chyron snagging her attention, pushing out all her other, truly more urgent thoughts. It had been an order, and no one tried to do that save her brothers. For someone unrelated to do it…and to do it with such cold, firm resolve. In that accent no less…while his gazeburnedright through her…

Stop being a brat about it. It throbbed in the headache behind her eyes. Went skipping down her spine. Twitched in her fingertips – and other places – when she soaped herself all over.

The utter impertinence of him.

The nerve of looking like a street urchin, and thenquestioningher.Orderingher around.

Andyoungerthan her. Looking at her with that flat, dead-eyed insistence. As if she was supposed toobeyhim.

She left the shower warmer, looser-limbed, but with thoughts considerably more muddled.

“Youdo not,” she whispered harshly to her reflection as she combed out her wet hair, “want to shag him. That’s not possible. You’re only stressed.”

And in need of a good shag, if she was honest. It had been awhile. And unsatisfying then, besides.

But that was a line she’d never crossed with the club. She’d had looks, and winks, plenty of offers and even had Fox attempt to point out the Dogs who weren’t “total arseholes” once, when he’d had enough vodka to go pink in the cheeks, though his poor dating advice was the only other outward sign that he was inebriated. He could hold his liquor like no one she’d ever met…certainly better than the sloppy drunk Dog who’d grabbed at her backside at Baskerville Hall that time. She’d caught him in the chin with her umbrella, and left him spluttering and his brothers shouting with laughter.

The closest she’d ever come to finding any of them actually attractive had been here in the States. Ghost. Maverick. Candy. Presidents all three, older, wiser, with that easy air of authority that wasn’t faked nor worked-at; it had been earned, through time and experience and plenty of stupid decisions that had slowly taught them how to make good decisions. Smart, well-thought-out, sexy decisions.

Sue her for having a competency kink, but charming and boyish had never been her cuppa.

But she’d not felt the urge to act on any sort of romantic impulses around those three. Maverick was free, sure, but the other two were married – one to her niece – and she hadn’t gotten hot and bothered about them anyway. It had been a pleasant ripple under her skin, a vibration like the purring of a Jaguar engine. A littlehmm, well, I wouldn’t kickhimout of bed. But nothing visceral. Nothing that grabbed her and wouldn’t let go.

Why then, now, did she have a vague stomachache over the idea of the shaggy-haired, too-young, disrespectful wraith with the lip ring brooding in her kitchen?

Too much alcohol and not enough food, she reasoned. Stress. An unexpected, alarming situation. Forced proximity. There were a dozen possible reasons; she wasn’t actually flustered and overheated about Anatoly Kobliska. No way, no how.