Page 27 of Nothing More

Petty parting shot delivered, she turned, and marched off to bed.

Where sleep came on reluctantly, and was then filled with heated, complicated dreams about wolves, and crows, and dark eyes piercing her across a graveyard.

Seven

Toly could function on very little sleep. His longest record was four nights awake, and then he’d crashed for twelve hours and been good as new…save the gunshot wound in his upper arm, but that had eventually healed without complication. He could have easily stayed up all night, sitting vigil in Raven’s apartment, and then fixed himself up with a few cigarettes, coffee, and a cold shower the next morning for another day at the office. But in this instance, it wasn’t necessary.

Smiling inwardly over her display of temper before she retreated to her bedroom – she’d all but stomped her foot at him – he did a perimeter check of the place, ensured all the windows were locked, set a phone alarm, and then stretched out on the sofa. He was a light sleeper, and knew that anything untoward would wake him.

It turned out to be the chugging of the fancy coffee maker that did it.

He opened his eyes to find that it was still dark out, only a light on above the stove in the next room to see by. A moment later Bennet appeared, steaming mug held out in offering.

“Thanks.” He sat up, swung his socked feet down to the floor, and inhaled the heat rising out of the cup. The coffeesmelledexpensive; the first sip ruined gas station coffee for him forever. “I’m guessing she doesn’t let you smoke in here?”

Bennet chuckled. “Nah. Gotta use the balcony.”

Toly fetched his jacket, and his smokes, and they both went out the slider to stand at the rail and look down on the city.

Up high, the sky had lightened to a smudged purple, threads of pink delineating clouds. Down on the street, though, it was still blackest night, pinprick headlines crawling along, windows glowing bright like Tetris blocks down the sides of buildings. The cold dampened some of the more unsavory scents, but even at this height, the fug of exhaust was strong; the metallic, concrete, smoke smells of an urban setting packed with people and all the mechanics they kept them living and working.

Toly had never known what to do in a rural setting. Flat open plains, wide skies, encroaching forests…they had always brought old Slavic fairy stories to mind. The kind in which children were eaten at the end. The countryside was woefully honest, hard to hide in, in its way. Sure, no one could find you in an out of the way cabin in the thick of the woods…but they couldn’t find you in a scuzzy apartment, either, or the back of a restaurant; an abandoned warehouse. He’d been born in Moscow, and lived in New York since he left Russia, and cities were where he felt comfortable; where he felt at his best and strongest.

“Damn,” Bennet muttered beside him, zipping up his jacket. “Cold as balls out here.”

It was – the cold was leeching through his socks and into his feet, turning his toes numb – but Toly had been colder. He sipped his coffee and rested his elbows on the rail, leaning into the wind. It was always windy up high like this, even on a calm day. “Did you sleep at all?”

“A little. There’s a futon in the office. I usually grab a couple hours. There’s an alarm system that’ll trip and wake the dead if anybody comes in the front door.” He pulled his hands from his pockets, cupped them in front of his face and breathed steam into his palms. Checked over his shoulder that the slider was shut. “Okay.” His voice went conspiratorial. “I’m not saying that getting a finger mailed to you isn’t something to freak out about, but…I’m kinda worried about our girl in there.”

Ourgirl. It was beginning to feel like that word was chasing him.

“Raven’s a tough one,” Bennet continued. “Helluva lot tougher than any of my wives – uh, ‘cept for Joanna, obviously. The second things looked a little dicey – hell, with my first wife, I smashed my hand with a hammer working on the clubhouse roof, and she was convinced I’d been in what she called a ‘gang war.’” He snorted. “But Raven didn’t seem like herself last night. This is really bothering her.”

“Hm. Yeah.” What Toly didn’t say was that he’d begun working on a theory. It had sparked to life yesterday at the office, and then slowly strengthened as the day went on, had solidified last night during dinner, when the way Raven reacted to him, and to Bennet, had been made starkly clear in her darted gazes and small, unhappy frowns. Something about him put her hackles up…and, maybe he was being egotistical, but he thought it had a lot to do with the way her gaze would skate down his body. He’d noticed her scoping out what she could see of his tats. Had locked gazes with her more than a few times and watched her pupils dilate, an unspoken tell she wasn’t able to hide.

He didn’t know the ins and outs of her mind, not exactly, didn’t know what sort of personal history was hiding behind her flawless makeup and fitted dresses – but he could guess. It was easy to form a mental picture of the sort of man she usually dated: nothing like him.

And he knew what it meant when a woman looked at him the way she did, even if she was clearly trying to suppress her body’s automatic, unconscious reaction to his proximity. She wanted him.

It was a little amusing.

A little more flattering.

Left the back of his brain itching in an unfamiliar way. In his life, the circles in which he’d traveled, he’d not ever had to work for a woman’s attention. Had never pursued anyone. Dating didn’t exist. There was no tension, no circling one another; no dance. He didn’t know how to do that and wasn’t going to bother learning now.

But things were…interesting. Unsettling.

“It’s not just yesterday,” he said, and felt as if he was betraying Raven’s confidence. He wasn’t, because she’d never admitted to anything like fear, but he could read it in every leap of her throat and flutter of her fingertips when she thought no one was looking. Yesterday had been a culmination, and not a birth of disquiet. “She’s been spooked from the start. Since the hotel,” he clarified. “When she and Ian first got to New York.”

“I wasn’t there for that,” Bennet said, a frown in his voice. “Their room got trashed, right?”

“Yeah. One of Cass’s friends was in on it.”

“Shit. Poor kid.”

“Yeah.”

“You think they’ll pack it up and go back to London?” Bennet asked, and Toly lit a fresh cigarette rather than examine the way his stomach twisted at the thought.