"You think I won't kill a woman?"
Ryan wasn't expecting it, but he saw the fact in her wet eyes: yes, she did think that. He is the law, after all. There are procedures, expectations. Reprimands.
But he's not the law, not anymore.
"Va te faire foutre," she said. "J'n'ai pas peur de mourir."
"I'm going to take that as a 'no,'" Ryan said. "And you should, too. I should have broken your fucking neck while I had the chance. Know what that would have made you? Lucky." He leaned in, almost nose-to-nose with the girl, smelling sweat and blood. "Because, see, you hurt Max." Ryan swallowed the lump in his throat. "And now you're going to feel it. For a long time before you check out."
He backed up before she could spit again, and backhanded her for good measure. The wound at her scalp oozed a sluggish line of new blood, bright over dark.
"I heard one of your little buddies call you Gisele before I gunned his ass down," Ryan said, "Is that your name? Gisele?"
"Fuck you," she said.
Ryan pushed the crate that was serving as a chair closer to the floor-to-ceiling industrial shelving unit where Gisele was bound with what amounted to a roll and a half of duct tape. "Well, I'm going to call you that, because we're about to get really close, you and me."
"Ma famille va te tuer," she said. "Ils vont couper tes couilles et les brûler."
"I'm sure that's some pretty nasty shit you're saying," Ryan told her. "You can speak French or English now, but when I start in with the knife I guarantee you: everybody knows that language." Ryan flipped open the tactical blade.
Gisele said nothing. To her credit, she didn't even blink. But Ryan thought he could see a change in her eyes, ever-so-slight. Even those who deal in death don't really believe they're going to die.
"I dragged you all the way back from that house after your friend bailed on you," Ryan said. "So much for family loyalty, right?" His smile was more of a leer, humorless. "I went to some serious trouble, so I hope you'll keep that in mind. You can help me out or not, Gisele. Up to you. Nothing's going to change what goes down here. But I'm going to ask you one more time: Where is Joe Carroll?"
Joe Carroll is making the first incision.
Down the long, white neck of Wendy Porter; a slice just shy of the carotid, straight as a ruler. If he peeled the anterior flap away just a little he could see the artery. She barely moves. The drugs are still heavy in her system and that won't do.
He'll just have to take a little more time.
It's difficult, though. So fucking difficult. This, after all, excites him most. Joe can't remember the number of times he came home from a kill and took Claire-hard-in the blood-hued afterglow.
When the curtain of red slides over Wendy's pale flesh and collides with the curls of her blonde hair on the steel table, Joe knows instantly that when he's done here he's going to go upstairs and fuck the blonde woman. Lily. It can't be helped. If she takes it as a sign of compliance, it'll be all the worse for her in the end. Everything has an end.
Except for Joe; he is eternal.
There is a polished stiletto in the leather kit. Joe slips it out of its stays and twirls the bright point on Wendy Porter's sternum. Thin trails of blood spiderweb above and below her breasts. Suddenly the room is stifling, and the music (Shostakovich now) rides the waves of heat that bend around him.
Wendy-pretty Wendy-is waking up. When Joe pushes the length of the stiletto below her skin from ribs to navel, she groans. In a moment, when he's done savoring, he'll lift the blade and tear a bright red rift in her belly. Then she'll scream.
Gisele was screaming now, after biting her lip bloody trying not to. It filled the spaces in the warehouse, ringing off metal and whistling through rusted machinery.
Kneeling beside Gisele, Ryan had pinned her hand to the concrete and sawed off her middle finger at the second knuckle. A sort of "fuck you" in reverse. It was pretty damn funny when he thought about it.
He had to give a little grudging respect. She'd held out admirably as he broke her nose and then cut a long crescent along her hairline to the point of her jaw. The cut bloomed with a layer of yellow subcutaneous fat. She was very young, younger than she seemed.
Ryan had almost hesitated then, but he thought of Max lying sightless as her blood soaked into the cheap carpet of the hotel room. That was when he'd gone for the finger.
"I can end it for you right now. Put you out of your misery," Ryan said. "If you tell me where Lily Gray is hiding Joe. If you don't, let's put it this way: I've got all fucking day."
Gisele was breathing hard, tears falling into the corners of her mouth. "Tu te profites de ceci."
"English, bitch."
"You enjoy this," she said. "Sick fuck."
Ryan laughed. Blood slid along the edge of the blade in his hand, exploding into droplets and pattering across the concrete. "I'm the sick fuck? Oh, that's rich. The thing with you people is that you never expect what you do to come back around. Well, I've got news for you, Gisele. I turned the tables on your friend over there, and I'm doing the same to you. I am the thing that comes back and bites you."
She laughed, high, forced and hysterical. "Yes, you can bite me. Putain."
Ryan shook his head. "Wrong answer." The blood from her severed finger had slowed to a trickle, but it fanned out across the pitted floor again as Ryan slammed a fist onto the damaged hand and started working on her thumb.
It is clear from her glazed eyes, shallow breath, and cool skin that dear Wendy has slipped into shock. Her ripe lips are already turning blue. A shame.
The blood that soaks the front of Joe's work shirt makes the fabric cling to his skin. Incredible how quickly it goes cold. He thinks about peeling the shirt off, but it keeps the blood wet on his skin. He's seriously entertaining the thought of knotting a sticky hand in Lily Gray's long, blonde hair and not letting her free until she licks every trace of Wendy Porter's blood from his skin.
She'll do it, too. That thought brings around the first physical signs of the excitement that is inevitable after a kill. While Joe works, bound inside a whirring bowl of sound-woodwinds and strings and screams-the arousal is all cerebral.
When Wendy's heart mutters to a stop below his hand, that final connection tethers him back to earth, grounds him in the room once again. Joe pushes the lids down over eyes shot with burst capillaries. He bends over Wendy's face, closes his own eyes and presses on her chest, letting the last breath ruffle his hair. It smells like copper and early decay; there is a thick, fountain-like sound as the blood that has crept into Wendy's lungs bubbles up through the pinpoint holes between her ribs to cover Joe's hand. There it is-the power she gives him. The final gift.
He stays only a moment longer. Not giving thanks, necessarily. But feeling the privilege, taking it in. Part of him makes an absent wish that Mandy might have been here. It would have been a good illustration of the power and reverence inherent in death. Another very small corner of his mind serves him up an image of Mandy on that table, her long and still-growing limbs now lax with death. He pushes the thought away.
Of all the factors that decide whether one is a dealer of death or a receiver, circumstance is by far the most prevalent. At least for most people.
As Joe closes the heavy door on the sight of Wendy's remains and takes the stairs two at a time, following the scent of too much perfume, he considers the only other person he knows who has chosen to greet every turn of his path with a weapon in his hand.
Ryan Hardy.
Ryan had blood on his hands. He had avoided a good deal of it, but now-with the tactical knife sunk to the hilt in the French girl's belly-it exploded hot on his fingers and washed over his arms to the elbow.
He'd have to ditch the shirt. Either now, or after he'd held Max's body for a while in the hotel room. Grief was good. Grief drew eyes elsewhere. Still, Ryan gave up a little "thanks" to the powers that be that his brother wasn't alive to see the end Max had come to. The girl was ballsy; she knew the dangers going in and had insisted on following, on helping. Ryan could identify. He would have done the same. Truly, the only reason their places weren't reversed was circumstance.
Even so, it was hard to imagine Max here, doing exactly what the situation called for. If it were Ryan left bleeding out on the hotel carpet, things would be playing out much differently. And Joe would disappear back into the dust cloud drummed up by his club of murderous ass-kissers. That much was certain.
Ryan would at least ensure Max's death meant something, if only to him.
Gisele made a sound in the back of her throat. Her lips were turning blue.
Ryan heaved upward, elbows locked and forearms tense, tearing a ragged valley through Gisele's gut until the blade lodged in the cartilage of her sternum. The volume of blood doubled, pouring from the cut and from her mouth. She was dead before he pulled the knife out.
Despite the warmth of the day, the slick of blood running from his chin to his thighs was cool. He winced as he stood. With the side of his boot, he kicked Gisele's two severed fingers into the dusty cranny below a steel shelf.
Ryan started looking around for a place to hide his gun. Close to the back entrance of the building, he zeroed in on a long-unused piece of machinery. The large panel facing the door had collected a thick, even layer of dirt from outside, but there were relatively protected sections behind the plate. He used his knife to remove two screws holding the top onto a small stainless steel drum and dropped the pistol inside. It was difficult to find a section of shirt untouched by Gisele's blood to scrub his fingerprints from the metal afterward.
Outside the factory, his chest chilled and the top of his head practically steaming, Ryan wiped both sides of the blade in the white cement dust beside the building and tossed the knife into the brush.
Ryan was perched on the back of an open ambulance parked in front of the motel. The lookie-lous had been shooed back into their rooms, but a few faces still peeked from curtained windows.
The bloodied shirt that he'd clutched to the wound in his side (hoping like hell in retrospect that the French girl didn't have some sort of Christ-awful disease) lay in a stiffening ball on the pavement. But Ryan wasn't the real show.
Inside the bus behind him, two blood-stippled sheets covered the bodies of Gisele and the other boy Ryan had shot. That was one upside to Max's insistence on calling in the feds: dragging off two of her psycho kids to be dumped in unmarked graves on Hart Island would have Lily Gray absolutely steaming. Pissed off people make mistakes, and people who are grieving make bigger ones.
This time, Ryan didn't have to grieve. Max had been alive in the hotel room. Gisele had knocked her out but she was awake when Ryan returned, demanding to know where he'd been. He hugged her tight, leaving spots of Gisele's still-wet blood blooming on her shirt. Sort of an inadvertent gift.
Fighting measure for measure with relief in Ryan's mind was a new disdain for the French girl. These murder flunkies were always overconfident. So sure they were sending Ryan into certain death and paying so little attention that they walked into it themselves.
Or, at the heart of it, maybe it was because they were soft. Gisele had been taken by the oldest one in the book: good cop, bad cop. She would have gutted Ryan (that made him laugh a little) without a second thought, but she spared Max because of their little song and dance.
Ryan had insisted that Max leave in the other ambulance. It was a remote possibility that she had a concussion, but Ryan wanted her away, wanted her safe. Wanted to be alone, because he sure as hell wasn't going back to New York. He had to catch up with Joe before the group went on the run again.
Alone was a long way away, though. Agent Gina Mendez, all five-foot-threatening-four of her, stood in front of him, arms crossed.
"Like I told you," Ryan said, "it was a lead."
"A lead you tortured that girl to get?" Mendez asked. Her expression was as sharp as the toes of her ridiculous, impractical shoes.
"We didn't do anything to her," Ryan said. He neglected to mention the punch in the face; it was obscured by the damage his knife had done, anyway. "She gave up the location right away. Almost before Max cuffed her."
Mendez looked unimpressed.
Ryan gestured to the gauze wrapped around his waist, where a few lazy droplets of blood were already leaking through. The scrubbing he'd given the wound with the shirt before heading back up into the hotel room had hurt like a bitch, but it was necessary cover. "Obviously, the tip was a setup," he said.
"There was only the one follower at the factory?" asked Mendez.
"So we're acknowledging they're followers now?"
Even if he didn't give a shit about any of his new 'family,' Joe would be livid about their bumbling. Leaving a trail of their own blood all the way to his door, wherever that may be. It was easy to sell the idea that someone-Lily Gray, perhaps-sent the Murder Twins back to the factory on punishment detail. Ordered them to shoot the other kid for screwing up, but letting them take their time on Gisele for the sin of getting caught. There was no honor among killers.
It was sad, really. Joe raised whole armies of worker ants with a flourish of his hand but in the end he was the only one of them who could really get things done. Pathetic that he had to drag around baggage like that. Ryan could identify completely.
"Generic term," Mendez said. "It applies to the case."
Ryan had to give in to a tiny smile. Needling the lead investigator on the Lily Gray case was so easy it almost wasn't fun anymore. "Well, gee, it sounded like you were warming up to the idea of Joe Carroll coming out of the woodwork," he said.
The leather soles of Mendez's high heels scraped on concrete as she shifted her weight, almost like she was preparing to plant one of those shoes square on the gauze covering Ryan's bullet wound. "Say that name again, Hardy, and so help me-"
"Well, I could help you," Ryan said, "but what you're doing is like walking into a crime scene and ignoring the body." He jumped when the EMT prodded a strip of peeling tape around the wound. "Can you stop that?"
Mendez waved the tech away. "That's because there is no body. We're working on actual evidence, not insane hunches."
"You said it," Ryan told her. "There is no body."
Mendez leaned in closer to him, the curls falling off her shoulders brushing the smell of some powdery perfume his way. "You know, Mike Weston tells me you have some sort of...fucked up shrine to Joe Carroll in your apartment. What you do on your own time is fine by me. Write a book, for chrissakes." She shook a red-tipped finger in his face. "But do it on my time, and I'm going to have something to say about it."
"You've said it. Over and over," Ryan said. "Can I go?"
"No. You haven't told me anything. What about the kid you shot?"
Ryan winked, and shook a finger at Mendez. "Very sneaky. I never said I shot him. I said he shot me. Max is the one with the gun."
"I find that hard to believe," said Mendez.
"Which part?"
"All of it," Mendez said. "You came unarmed to an unknown location on a tip from a dangerous fugitive."
"I had my wits," said Ryan, with a cold, white, brilliant smile.
"So somebody from Lily Gray's crew shot the boy," Mendez said. "That's what you're saying?"
"That's all I can imagine," said Ryan. "I was running through the woods bleeding at the time."
"What about the girl?"
"I told you everything I know," Ryan said. "Ask Max."
"I did."
"Ask her again. I have no idea what went on after I left for the factory."
"Your niece says you two arrested the girl and cuffed her to a bed in the hotel room," said Mendez.
"That's right."
"That's unorthodox at best. Criminal at worst. You have no jurisdiction, Hardy," she said. "You're not investigating anything."
"Max is. She's an officer of the law, entitled to detain a suspect, especially on suspicion of murder."
"Max isn't exactly impartial here," Mendez said.
Ryan scowled. "I think she'd fight you on that. And so would her captain."
"Fine," Mendez said. "She's tailing the girl. Gets on the train, intercepts her at the station. Why not bring her in with NYPD? Remand her to federal custody?"
"I'm pretty sure it's because Max is not investigating the same case you are."
"Again with Joe Carroll," said Mendez.
"You said it," Ryan told her, "not me."
"Well, it might have been smart to involve a few more people, considering that your niece obviously couldn't handle the girl on her own."
It was a jab, but Ryan decided not to take the bait. "Not many suspects break their own fingers to get out of a pair of cuffs."
"Well, these people are extraordinary cases," Mendez said, letting a little self-satisfaction creep in through her hard-ass façade. "You should know that better than anyone. But what I'm really curious about is whether you think they're extraordinary enough to come back on one of their own and gut her like a fish on the tiniest chance that she might have talked to you."
"If they're protecting a secret as huge as Joe Carroll, hell yes I do," Ryan said.
"And if not?"
"Who knows what they're capable of? They're insane."
"All I know," Mendez said, "is that somebody carved up that girl. Duct taped her to a pole, sliced up her face, cut off two of her fingers."
"Like I said. Nutjobs," said Ryan. "And in case you don't remember, 'that girl' helped knife five people on the subway."
Mendez shook her head. Another burst of perfume, mingled with nervous sweat this time. "She could have been our ticket to finding Lily Gray."
"That's not my problem."
"That's right, because you don't care about Lily Gray. You're riding this make-believe vendetta against a dead man. Now, instead of a witness, I have to deal with your niece. She's another rogue element making it harder for me to do my job. For all I know, she's in your pocket and covering you."
"Get fucked, Mendez," Ryan said. He was gratified to see her recoil a little at the vulgarity. "Max is a good cop."
Mendez narrowed her eyes to slits. "Good cop, bad cop-doesn't matter. She's in my way. And she's not immune to prosecution for interfering with a federal investigation. If you care about her, you'll push her off this case." Mendez leaned in again, lowering her voice until it was just above a whisper. "As for you, I'm going to make sure you take the fall for that kid."
"I didn't touch the girl. I didn't even see her," he said. "Get that through your head."
"I mean the other one," said Mendez.
Ryan laughed so hard he could feel the sticky web of scabbing over the bullet track separate from the gauze. "What are you going to do? Tell Max to arrest me?"
"I'll have ballistics run the bullets in the kid's body."
"And match them to what gun?" Ryan asked. "Here," he held out his bloodied hands, "test me for GSR. Go ahead. If you want to wrap yourself and your department up in red tape over some homicidal fucks who got themselves killed, be my guest. It should be about as useful as what you're already doing." Ryan leaned back, scratching the skin around the bandage. It was tight with dried blood that had begun to flake off. "Maybe you should just be grateful two of the bastards are out of your way," he said. "I need a shower. And a drink."
Ryan eased off the bumper of the ambulance and started to walk toward his car.
"You know something, Hardy," Mendez called. "There's something you're not telling me about what we found in that factory."
"I know what you didn't find," said Ryan. "Lily Gray. So go ahead and tell me how great your case is going." All he heard until he started the engine was the scrape-scrape-scrape of Mendez's shoes on the concrete.
Ryan drove only a couple of miles, then pulled off onto a gravel access road until he couldn't see pavement through the thick trees. He pulled his jacket out of the trunk and put it on. He had no spare shirts, and he wasn't willing to drive anywhere to find one. After a couple of hours, he did wish he'd thought to stop by the liquor store, though. Booze didn't make time fly, but it made dragging time more tolerable.
It was almost sunset when he swung back by the factory to grab his Glock. The squat building was dark, filled with twilight-traced shapes that had shrugged off the memory of gunshots and screams. Ryan hated abandoned places in the same way he hated everything that had given up.
Later that night, he was propped up against the peeling headboard of the motel's crappy bed.
The gun lay on the bedside table, alongside a fifth of Jack Daniel's-for irony-and a logo tumbler. Usually, slugging right out of the bottle didn't bother him, but Ryan felt this time, for no reason he could pin down, that it was a little undignified.
The whiskey swirled in a miniature vortex as Ryan unconsciously tipped the glass back and forth, back and forth. His mind was swirling, too.
It wasn't Gisele-she was an afterthought, dead and gone. Or Max, his relief at her survival solid and strong but somehow an abstraction, with currents of urgent reflection breaking against it.
When he closed his eyes, Ryan saw the stinging white daylight that had surrounded him when he'd stumbled out of Joe's cabin all those months ago. The storm had let up before dawn, and the sloping snow drifts sucked up the sun on the east-facing door to blast Ryan's face.
Joe hadn't come out again after wandering into the back bedroom the night before, sweatpants tugged low around his hips. A taunt. Ryan had sat on the couch, determined to stay awake until sunrise. He could smell Joe on his skin, and his nerves had been jangling as if on a caffeine high. Keeping watch should have been easy. Even so, he woke in the morning with a stiff neck and a ratty afghan draped over his chest and shoulders. His feet were freezing, marinating in the melted snow that had seeped over the tops of his boots.
He'd gone down the creaking steps and into the blinding morning, wading through hip-deep drifts. Digging his car out with bare, numbed hands, Ryan had been shocked by the calm with which he had accepted Joe's terms. Without protest-without a thought, even. Let the game begin anew.
It was, well…inevitable.
A week or so after he'd gotten back and shrugged off the haze of Joe's strange, secluded new world, he'd had a dream. In it he'd found Joe standing in his darkened living room, a smile of welcome on his lips.
Dream-Ryan had drawn his gun and fired a tight circle of three shots into dream-Joe's chest. It only made his smile widen. "You can't kill me," the vision of Joe had said. Then he repeated what he'd told Ryan in the cabin: "If I die, you die."
Ryan had woken with a hiccupping pacemaker and an erection so insistent he barely had time to shove his hand down his boxers before he was coming.
The insistent buzzing of his phone scattered his thoughts. "Jesus Christ," Ryan said. Ten to one-hell, fifty to one-it was Mike Weston, with his tone of concern that was at least half condescension.
Ryan put the glass on the bedside table and picked up the phone. "Hardy."
"Ryan. It's me."
Ding ding! Tell him what he's won!
"Aww, Mikey. Are you working after hours?" Ryan asked.
"In case you didn't notice, something pretty big went down today," said Mike. "We're still mopping up." He left off the "after you."
"Huh."
"We talked to Max again," said Mike. "She's fine, by the way. She's backing you up."
Passive aggressive bullshit. That seemed to be Weston's M.O. since he started consulting. "Why wouldn't she?"
"I'm just saying, now you're filling her head with all this crazy 'Joe Carroll is alive' stuff," said Mike. "She respects you. She looks up to you. And because of that, she could have been killed."
Ryan sniffed. "Why does everyone talk about her like she's a child? Max does her own thing, regardless of what I say."
"But she's covering for you."
Ryan had to remind himself to unclench his jaw before responding. "I see. And what, exactly, would she be covering for?"
Mike said nothing.
"Her story is the same as mine, Mike," Ryan said. "Up until the time I left her in the hotel room." He shifted on the bed. The damn bullet wound throbbed.
"With a dangerous fugitive."
"With a gun. And a shitload of training," said Ryan. "Come on, Mike. Why the sudden concern? You aren't by any chance trying to sleep with my niece, are you?"
"What? No. I'm concerned about you. And her. Both of you," Mike said, tripping over his words trying to cover his ass. "But you keep turning away my offer to help. I've got a lot more leeway than Mendez does."
"In what universe do you have more leeway?" Ryan asked. "They can boot you at any time."
"Unlike you."
"That's right."
"If you think Mendez is going to back off, you're wrong," Mike said.
"Oh, no," Ryan said. "She's made that perfectly clear. The thing is, I don't care. I can't afford to."
"What I'm saying, Ryan, is that she won't back off Max, either, if she thinks she's in the way."
Ryan had to laugh. "Yeah, she said that, too. Not to mention her helpful reminder that the case is strictly about Lily Gray and her family."
"She's right," said Mike. "You're out of the loop, and the truth is if you keep going like this, it's not just a risk that these killers are going to walk away. It's a fact."
Ryan shook his head. He remembered what he'd told Gisele about Lily-about all of them. It wasn't any less true. Gisele didn't have to die the way she did...if she'd only given up Joe. She could have walked. Taken her shitty little ragtag band of killers and scurried back to Europe for all it mattered.
As long as Joe was his.
"I'm going to let you in on a little secret, Mike," said Ryan. "You don't know thing one about Lily Gray, or you would have gotten to that girl before we did."
"We know that her people tortured her for what could have been hours," said Mike. "They're not fucking around."
"You just figured this out? I mean, I knew things were behind over at the Bureau, but this is...wow." He leaned over to the bedside table and picked up the glass again. "Go get a drink, Mikey. I know I'd want one."
"Shut up, Ryan," Mike said. "Just shut up. Okay? I didn't want it to go like this, but you're not giving me much of a choice."
"You're really enjoying this role reversal, aren't you, Consultant Weston?" Ryan said. "Your little power play. The shoe on the other foot. Whatever you want to call it."
"It's always a goddamn game with you," said Mike. "This isn't a game. People are dying."
"Tell me something I don't know," Ryan told him. "No, really. Tell me something I don't know about this case. Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like I'm two steps ahead."
"I'm telling you this is going to come down on your head. You're dangerous, Ryan."
Ryan sat up, ignoring the bolt of pain across his abdomen. "You're goddamn right I am." His voice was a hiss. "And when-not if-when Joe crops up again, you're going to need someone dangerous. Because he's going to roll right over Gina Mendez before she knows what hit her. And you, if you're not ready. In case you forgot, have a look at those scars you're hiding. He almost got you last time. Joe is smart."
"You sound like you're defending him," Mike said, after a couple seconds' pause.
"Would you listen to yourself?" Ryan said. "I mean, seriously. Because I feel like I'm the only one with some perspective here. I don't want you to get broadsided, but that's the road you're headed down."
Mike didn't respond.
"That's what I thought," Ryan said. "Now if you're done, I'd like to get some sleep."
"Tell me you didn't hurt that girl, Ryan."
"What did you say to me?"
"The girl in the factory. Just say you didn't hurt her."
"I have the balls to pull the trigger when it counts, Mike," Ryan said. He waited a few beats, savoring what he could only imagine was appalled expectation. "But I'm not a psychopath. You're barking up the wrong tree, and it's going to come back to you in the end. Now leave me the hell alone."
"Fine, Ryan. Fine." Mike said. "But if Joe Carroll doesn't surface, you've got a lot to answer for. And I can't protect you."
"Goodbye, Mike."
Ryan unclenched his fists when Mike hung up. He tossed the phone on the bed and brought the tumbler of whiskey about halfway to his lips. Instead of drinking, though, he pulled his arm back and hurled the glass as hard as he could against the far wall, where it exploded in a constellation of shards.
With the dregs sloshing in the bottom of the bottle of Jack, Ryan finally dozed off with a mind just hazy enough to take the edge off. The drink rounded the corners of his agitation: a mix of excitement and disappointment. The potent combination formed the basis of his daily routine-shuddering up the hills and screaming down into the troughs. The unending adrenaline would kill him, oh yes, but it would be the death he planned for. He had only one condition: that he went out close enough to Joe to feel his murderous warmth, whether it was he or Joe who had a blade buried deep in his gut. Or if it was both.
In the middle of his flowery, romantic declamations about death, Joe had been spot-on about one thing: it was a terribly intimate act, or at least it should be. Soaked with Gisele's blood, Ryan hadn't felt closer to her but closer to Joe, even though she gave away nothing.
Now he hovered in that breathless state that could send him either up or down. Before the cabin, it would have rattled him almost to pieces, but this time what gripped him tightest in that state was want. Though he couldn't put it into words, Ryan craved a translation of those ups and downs into the physical. He wanted to wrestle with Joe, hold him, subdue him. To examine his own responses when Joe took the upper hand. That was the strangest and most shocking part. Sure, thinking about Joe lying open to him was arousing, but it wouldn't be half as powerful without the possibility of reversal; Joe pinning him with the same mesmeric power that he once used in the classroom, drawing forward even those who resisted.
Ryan laughed, then reached over and drained the bottle. He'd never actually hoped for whiskey dick before.
As soon as the empty bottle hit the top of the pressboard bedside stand, his phone rang. Unavailable number, which probably meant it was coming from the headquarters back in New York.
Ryan took the call. "Come on. I'm staying out of trouble."
"Not for long."
The smooth voice trickled into Ryan's ear and suddenly he was so alert his muscles cramped. "Joe." The next question was so instinctual, Ryan almost didn't realize he'd said it. "Where are you?"
Joe's laugh was rich, genuine. "Just like old times. I do cherish these little connections."
"Are you with Lily Gray's family?"
"Not at the moment. I have my old and trusted friends close to hand, though."
"Mandy?" Ryan asked.
"And Emma," said Joe.
"Christ. Emma," Ryan said. "Where is Lily Gray?"
"She and her homicidal Brady Bunch are out on a little hunting expedition," Joe said. "It's been rather tense around here of late. They're quite upset about the girl, Gisele, and...whatever his name was."
The dismissive talk about Lily flooded Ryan with inexplicable gratitude. "Good," he said.
"You do like to stir the hornet's nest," Joe told him. "By the way, I have to tell you that was lovely work."
"What?"
"Your interlude with Gisele," Joe said. "Dare I say it was inspired? You flatter me, Ryan."
"How do you know about that?" Ryan asked.
"Oh, Lily sent her henchmen to drag your bleeding corpse back from the factory," Joe said. "Imagine her surprise. I wish I could have been there to see their faces. Then the cavalry showed up before they could collect their own. Poor sick bastards were shouting bloody vengeance all over the house."
"Vengeance?"
"Oh, did I forget to mention?" Joe said with affected shock. "They're coming for you."
"Jesus fuck!" Ryan vaulted out of bed. Opaque gray mist crept into the corners of his vision as he scrambled for the gun. Unsteady on his feet, he pinched the bridge of his nose until the brown-out subsided, then grabbed the pistol and tucked it in his belt. "How do they know I'm here?"
Joe chuckled. Ryan could hear the clink of ice cubes. He shut off the table lamp and went to the window, opening the curtain on a dark sliver of glass showing an empty parking lot.
"I don't think they know where you are, exactly," said Joe. "But they have an idea. Your FBI friends were very helpful, I imagine, in pointing them in the right direction. Though come to think of it, Lily did take a phone call earlier."
"A phone call?" Ryan asked, fielding a spike of juddering excitement. A door slammed on the lower level of the hotel. "Why are you telling me this?"
There was menace and promise alike in Joe's tone. "Because you're mine, Ryan. No gang of murdering prep schoolers is allowed to lay hands on you."
Another door slammed. No…it was a gunshot. Two? Ryan shook his head to clear the residual whiskey fog and slid the chain lock free. "Someone's here," he said.
"I think you'd better come over, then, shouldn't you?" Joe said.
A man's voice floated up from below, shouting something unintelligible.
"Where?" Ryan asked.
"Take Route 14 seven miles south-"
"Seven miles?"
Joe's laughter rang out over the line so loudly that Ryan flinched. "You're not walking, are you?"
Ryan cracked the door. There was a lull in the noise from below his balcony. "Blowing out of here in my car is going to be pretty noticeable, Joe."
"Oh, I think you're up to the challenge," Joe said. "I have faith in you, Ryan. Pull off at the mile marker. Twenty-four, I believe. There's a trail that leads to a natural gas well. I'll meet you there."
"Yeah? What about Emma? Mandy?"
There was no response from the other end.
"Joe?" A click in Ryan's ear signaled the broken connection. "Shit."
He pocketed the phone, put his hand on the grip of the gun (finger inside the trigger guard, as usual), and slipped out the door.
There was no chance of going down the front staircase; it led straight to the portico where the motel owners kept their grubby little office. The block of yellow light that stretched onto the tarmac from the glass door writhed with moving shapes. Ryan pulled the gun and walked out toward the other end of the building, moving in the shadow of the balcony overhang. He tried one door after another, finally finding one that was unlocked.
He winced at the cracking sound the door made as its shredded weather seal scraped the frame. The air conditioning was lowered to Arctic levels. An obese man snored on the far bed, and a smaller lump was buried underneath the covers in the bed nearest the door. It stirred as Ryan passed, but did not wake.
He prayed the window wasn't painted shut. Its track must have been recently greased, because the glass whispered upward. Ryan pushed the screen out, catching it by the frame just before it tipped over onto the shallow ledge and clattered to the pavement.
Light from the sallow lamp in the parking lot outside caught two wide, bright eyes in the bed by the door. Ryan tucked the gun behind his thigh and put a finger to his lips.
No sound came from inside the room as he stepped out onto the ledge, but a low wail began, rising rapidly in volume and pitch, as he shut the window behind him.
"Dammit, kid."
With no other choice, Ryan leapt toward the pavement, realizing only when he hit with a jolt that sent agony shooting up from his heels to his collarbones that he wasn't wearing any shoes. Out of habit, he'd parked his car far away from either of the two weak lamps illuminating tiny patches of the lot. Ryan limped out of the circle of light toward it, hearing voices now from the upper level. The stupid brat was still howling.
There was no way he'd be able to exit at the road and avoid notice, but in one corner of the lot the tarmac had crumbled over a shallow incline bordered by a small copse of trees. Ryan yanked the gear shift into neutral, putting his full weight behind the frame to push the car toward it. Another bout of shouting covered the sound of the tires groaning down the slick hill and into the clearing.
At that point, Ryan had no choice. He had to start the car. With the driver's side door still open, he listened for another burst of activity that might mask the sound. Ten seconds, twenty seconds.
"Ryan Hardy!" someone shouted. A man.
He cranked the engine and the car tore out into the clearing. At the last minute, instead of swerving right into the trees he swung left into the patch of rubble behind a Dumpster. The car's rear wheels sent small rocks winging into the container's metal flank with a machine-gun stutter. The noise didn't die out when Ryan cleared the patch and bumped into the weedy lot beside the motel. He laughed out loud, hands tight on the wheel.
They had an actual machine gun, and were making liberal use of it.
When the rattle of the gun died, silence roared in. There were no cries-at least not that Ryan could hear over the agonizing creep of tires on the grass. He would have to gun it, regardless. Stopping when the tires caught a little better, he hesitated one second with his foot over the gas, then slammed the pedal to the floor.
There was a hiss, but no squealing, and he was almost over the little ridge before he realized it. One, two, three gunshots sounded but the bullets went wide over his disappearing tail lights. They'd be in pursuit soon, though. He had to ditch the car.
At mile marker 22, Ryan smashed the brakes and jumped out, leaving the car in gear. It picked up speed and trundled over the shoulder, smashing down into the ditch at enough speed to deploy the airbag and set the horn shrieking. By then, Ryan was already on the run.
The wreck might hold them a little while-time Ryan would need. His heart was already thudding with adrenaline, and a two-mile breakneck dash would do it no favors. But the pain, the shortness of breath, the rough branches breaking under his unprotected feet faded to background noise.
Joe. Joe was ahead of him. Not fleeing, but waiting.
Knowing Ryan would come running like an errand boy.
The indignity did not even register. Ryan felt the pull of the dark shape by the gas well long before he saw it, keeping his feet pounding through the woods even after his body was begging him to stop. Nearly a mile down the access road, he caught the pale, intermittent flicker of a flashlight beam, and rushed toward it.
He was too breathless to speak when the dim silhouette of Joe Carroll resolved from amid the trees. Joe did not swing the light into Ryan's eyes, presumably out of courtesy.
Ryan was in no mood to be courteous. He slapped the flashlight from Joe's hand as their bodies collided, tangled his fingers in Joe's thick hair and pulled him in for a kiss that was all teeth, pressure, pain. Ryan was almost bent double, searching for air to fill his searing lungs. Joe held him steady and breathed against his lips when he had to gasp.
"Ryan," Joe chided, "If you kill yourself, I'll be very disappointed."
"Not a chance," Ryan said, his throat still burning.
Joe thumped Ryan's chest with the heel of his hand, probably harder than was necessary, but his tone was mirthful. "You must take care of this heart, yes?"
Ryan tried to laugh and coughed instead. The hand he clapped to his side came away wet.
"You're bleeding," said Joe.
"Little souvenir from my run-in with Lily's people."
"Seems to me you left them in much worse shape," Joe said, "so I figure it's even." He brought Ryan's bloody hand to his lips and licked one of his fingertips. "And now I know what your blood tastes like. Come on," he said, picking up the flashlight. "Let's get you stitched up."
The house, which turned out to be far too close to both the main and the access roads for true safety, was huge and dark. Ryan could make out the fuzz of ivy against the slice of northward sky that was polluted by the glow from Hartford proper. Buttery light spilled from the frame of an old-fashioned levered window, then the light snapped off again.
"This house hides many more secrets than mine," Joe said, ushering Ryan in through an archway. At the end of a short covered arcade was a nondescript door. Harsh blue fluorescence flooded the space as Joe pushed the door open. He led Ryan down a short hallway. The white tile work on the walls and floors made it look like a morgue.
As it turned out, Ryan's first impression of the place was not far off. Through a door set in a slight recess on the left-hand side of the hall, sterility gave way to carnage. Or at least its remnants.
The centerpiece of the room was a steel-top table, though almost the entire surface was obscured by a wash of burgundy blood. The smell of it was strong and nauseating, making Ryan flinch back. Only after he gave the altar a second look did he see four leather restraints, also splashed and blackening.
Joe gave him an apologetic look. "I wish you could have seen this place in a more pristine state," he said. "In my opinion, it's the loveliest room in the house."
"You would think so, wouldn't you?" Ryan said.
"Lily made it for me," said Joe. "It was a gift."
Ryan pointed to the bloody table. "And that? Was that a gift, too?"
Joe smiled and rubbed his thumb across his lower lip, an unconscious but alluring tic. "It was. Here. Put your gun down."
Ryan pulled the Glock out of his waistband and set it on the counter behind him. "Did you sleep with her?" he asked.
Joe arched an eyebrow and scolded Ryan, "Jealous lover."
"Did you?"
"I did."
"Was it good?" Ryan asked.
"It was what I needed at the time," Joe said, opening a cupboard above the steel counter fixed to the far wall and pulling out a small black bag.
"Not anymore," said Ryan. It wasn't a question.
"No," Joe said. He flicked the clasp at the top of the bag and extracted several small bundles. "What I would have preferred to do," he said, "is watch you pull apart little Gisele, bit by bit. Did she scream, Ryan?"
Ryan didn't answer.
"Did you do it for me?" Joe asked.
"I did it to get to you," said Ryan.
"Do I take that to mean she told you nothing?"
Ryan nodded.
"Brave girl. Not all of them are." Joe held something between his thumb and forefinger. The bright light caught the curve of a wire-thin needle. He turned to look at Ryan. "Did she see you?"
"What do you mean? Yeah, she saw me," Ryan said. "Not that she can tell anyone."
Joe smiled and shook his head. "No, did she see you? See what you are?"
"Why don't you tell me 'what I am,' Joe," said Ryan.
Joe paused a moment, threading stiff surgical thread through the eye of the needle. "I don't need to. What I do need you to do is take off your jacket."
Ryan smirked.
"I wasn't joking when I said we'd get you stitched up." Joe curled his fingers lightly around Ryan's throat and brushed his lips along Ryan's jaw line.
Ryan caught the sharp scent of rubbing alcohol only a second before pain bloomed in his side and reached fiery fingers across his body. He cried out and tried to dodge away, but Joe, ever expectant, tightened his grip.
"Shh," Joe whispered. "We don't want it infected."
Ryan sucked in a breath. "They patched me up back at the hotel."
"Not very well," said Joe. He pulled the alcohol pad away, but the pain failed to subside.
"I think you just want to see me hurt," Ryan said.
"I do, Ryan. I want to watch you in every emotional state. Pain, fury, pleasure…"
"You've seen it all," said Ryan. Seeing Joe pick up the threaded suture needle with delicate fingers, he closed his eyes.
"Not on display only for me," said Joe. His breath was cool on the wound before the first bee-sting puncture set it afire again.
Walking out of the room, trying not to stretch against the strange constraint of the sutures, Ryan could imagine what screams might have sounded like rebounding through the tiny room. He wondered about the girl. The boy? Joe preferred female victims, but he'd murmured a soothing monologue to Ryan as he sewed: how he would have carved up the boy who'd shot him-dug out his eyes, sliced out his throat, opened his chest like wings and drawn the lungs out piece by piece.
In a haze of sensation, Ryan followed Joe up a stone stairway and into a suite so richly decorated it was bordering on tasteless. He caught the scent of a strange perfume: floral and feminine.
"Lily's room?" Ryan asked.
"Yes," Joe said. "An especially intimate violation."
"For me or for her?" Ryan asked.
Joe laughed. He walked to the bedside table and picked up a decanter half-filled with an amber liquid. Crazed shards of light from the table lamp shivered outward, reflected by the decanter's sharp facets. "Cognac?"
It made Ryan think of the shattered glass and the empty bottle of Jack he left in the motel room. People-maybe even a kid-had died there to buy him time. But in his mind they had no faces. He couldn't conjure anything but indistinct gray shapes. He could, however, picture the faces of the people behind the guns, or at least some of them. The sharp cheekbones and empty eyes of the twins. Did the kid who shot him have a brother? A sister? Were there others like Gisele or Emma-small, wide-eyed, lethal?
"A drink before violation?" Ryan asked, trying to smile.
"No, no," Joe said. "You mistake me. I don't plan to hurt you." He tipped the decanter over, spilling a splash of cognac into a short tumbler. "Our initial tryst began in a less-than-pleasant way, but first explorations are always...uncomfortable."
"I wish you wouldn't call it a 'tryst.'" Ryan took the glass that Joe extended toward him.
"What is this if not the very definition of the word?" asked Joe, pouring a couple of fingers for himself. "Unobserved. Illicit, even. The idea of it thrills you, or you would not have answered my invitation."
"If not for your invitation, I might be dead right now," said Ryan, taking a sip of the liquid. It was thick, a little warmer than the room, and of a quality he wasn't used to.
"True," said Joe. "As such, I'd like to turn the tables a bit this time."
"I guess it's only fair."
"All's fair in love and war, as they say," Joe told him, the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. "And by the way, I don't think the two-love and war-are so distinct as all that, do you?"
Ryan sniffed, running a hand through his hair. "Not many people are on board with your idea of love, Joe."
"A pity," he said. "It is an old concept, chivalric. A poet's love, if you will. Utter devotion, sacrifice in the name of one's beloved. The notion that one cannot carry on without the other."
"Sacrifice is pretty big for you," said Ryan. "You've got people willing to lay down on the tracks if you snap your fingers. That has to feel good."
Joe laughed, running his thumb across his lower lip again. "It's the devotion I prize most of all."
"You took a big risk bringing me here," said Ryan. He downed the rest of the cognac all at once.
"The risk is to the others here," said Joe. "Not to me."
"That's a hell of a reward for devotion."
"These people have no devotion to me, nor I to them. Except for Emma and Mandy." Joe sipped at the liquor almost demurely, then set the tumbler back on the bedside table. He walked to Ryan's side and plucked the glass from his hand. Voice low and lilting, Joe whispered into Ryan's ear. "But either of them would gladly die for me. And so I offer them in sacrifice to you."
The offer was inexplicable, terrifying, dizzying, gorgeous. A seduction. Ryan felt an invisible hand clutching his throat from the inside; the breath burned in his strained lungs. His fingers twitched, repeating the practiced patterns with which he had sliced through Gisele's skin.
"What do you want from me, Joe?" He could barely force the words out.
"I want you to let me give you a demonstration," Joe said, "of things you don't believe I'm capable of. Tenderness, concern…"
"Love?"
Joe only smiled. With a firm finger at his chin, he turned Ryan's face toward him and pressed his lips to Ryan's. The kiss wasn't deep, but it was slow, exploratory. An act of discovery for both, emerging in stark counterpoint to the wild and desire-fueled violence of their meeting in Joe's cabin.
In spite of the painful tug of the stitches-in spite of itself-Ryan's body responded to the touches, a prickling heat washing down from his constricted throat to his groin. He felt shameful, not because of his pliancy but because of how unashamed he was to let Joe guide him. Maybe Joe was right; the forbiddenness of it spurred him on. Ryan, always a rule-breaker, an iconoclast. He gave no quarter in his quests for satisfaction, and if he was honest with himself, submission was just another path to that satisfaction. He held nothing sacred.
And Joe's tongue in his mouth was profanity, not an enticement to sin but its consequence. Ryan raised his hand to Joe's face and brushed his thumb across the cheekbone.
Joe broke away to set the empty glass on the bureau. "Take off the rest," he said.
Ryan obeyed-though "obey" was never the word he'd use. Under Joe's appraising stare, he shed his pants and boxers all at once with no attempt to conceal his growing erection.
Joe let out a small sigh. Without condescension, he said, "You are fine specimen of manhood, Ryan Hardy."
"I try," Ryan said.
Joe stepped in behind him, the rough scratch of his sweater lighting up the nerves on Ryan's back. He kissed one shoulder blade, then the other, then the prominent vertebra at the base of Ryan's neck.
"I know your scent so well," said Joe. "It is the only trace of yourself you leave with me."
"I seem to recall leaving something else last time."
Joe curled his hand around Ryan's cock. "You're vulgar, Ryan. Oddly, it's one of the reasons I like you. Of course, there are times when vulgarity is called for." Joe tightened his grip and bit down on Ryan's earlobe. "I'd like to fuck you."
The mix of want and shame stole Ryan's breath.
"It will be very, very good," said Joe, ever the narcissist. "I promise." He pulled Ryan closer, pressing his own hardness against the cleft of Ryan's ass.
Trying not to seem skittish, Ryan nonetheless wriggled a little, putting space between their bodies. But it was a space that only filled with expectation. "Not evening the odds this time?"
The heave of Joe's ribs as he laughed rocked Ryan forward onto the balls of his feet. "I'll undress. Lie down," Joe said. "You can watch if you like."
Ryan had to suppress a groan at that. He lowered himself face down on the bed, which turned out to be surprisingly firm. The same perfume that suffused the room was concentrated on the pillows and sheets. Imagining covering that scent, rubbing it out with Joe's sweat and his own, drove his arousal to an ache. The coolness of the raw silk coverlet gave him only a little relief. It was pathetic, but he thought if he watched Joe shed his clothes he'd just go off right there, like a horny high school freshman.
It wasn't the fact of nakedness that turned Ryan on so insistently, but the offering. Even though Joe had let himself be stripped in the cabin's grimy kitchen, his willingness had been obscured by Ryan's knee-jerk reluctance. This time-in this place-it was different. Joe was not only putting his own body on offer, but blithely giving up two lives if Ryan wanted them. It was almost selfless, which is not something that Ryan felt could ever be said about Joe Carroll.
Ryan had nearly begun to consider what Joe might demand in return when he decided he didn't care.
Beside the bed, Joe took off his sweater, letting it whisper to the floor next to his feet. He pushed up the sleeves of his shirt. Tracing one finger down the line of Ryan's spine, he said, "I want you to know I forgive you."
Ryan started. "For what?"
"For the things you said about Claire," Joe said. "At the cabin. As I've said, Ryan, you can be vulgar at times."
"Jesus, Joe. You bring up Claire at a time like this?"
"I was musing," Joe said, now trailing his hand from the small of Ryan's back over the slight swell of his buttocks, his fingertips points of sensation at the tops of Ryan's thighs. "Looking at you now, seeing what she must have seen. Magnificent."
"Keep talking about me like I'm a painting and I may start to get a big head," Ryan said, resting his chin on his curled fist.
"Oh, Ryan. You certainly are a singular work. A chef d'oeuvre," Joe said. "I would congratulate myself if it weren't for the fact that I feel you've had as much of a hand in creating me as I've had in making you." Joe splayed his fingers, pressing into Ryan's skin and spreading him open, only slightly.
That exposure, the very suggestion of invasion, made Ryan so painfully hard he had to bite down on the inside of his cheek to stave off the hypnotic roll of arousal. "I kept you guessing. Kept you on your toes," he said. The featherlight swipe of a finger made Ryan shudder.
"You shaped our narrative," Joe said, pressing his lips to the middle of Ryan's back. "This is a dialogue." He laughed. "Let's be honest. I never was a very good novelist. Perhaps I should have been a playwright."
The hand was removed, leaving behind a warm impression. Ryan had to shut his eyes when Joe shrugged off the shirt, the scent of cologne and that sweet-sour underlying smell that was Joe's alone billowing across the bed. He heard Joe give a long, contented exhale and the hand returned, fingers slick and cool this time. Ryan hadn't even heard a drawer open or the snap of a bottle's cap. "You planned ahead," he said, voice strained.
"You talk too much," said Joe, massaging with the pad of one blunt finger.
Ryan felt he had to fight the urge to push up into the touch. "This is a dialogue, remember?" he said, choking on the words. Joe slid a fingertip inside him and speech ran away.
"Relax, Ryan," Joe said.
His broad hand scraping along the expanse of Ryan's back played counterpoint to the slow, shallow stroke of the finger, edging deeper. It had never before occurred to Ryan that Joe's hand would be callused instead of soft. Workman's hands, not teacher's hands. But of course he had wielded over and over again the tools of his real trade: scalpels, saws, long-bladed knives happily sharpened by unsuspecting clerks in chef's supply stores. Ryan was feeling the evidence of each, built up over years of practice.
This time he couldn't stop the sound from escaping his lips.
"Yes," Joe said, a reverent whisper.
Ryan opened to the pressure of another finger, and soon the slow and deliberate rhythm was both too much and not nearly enough. The bristles on Joe's chin and cheeks set little trails on Ryan's skin alight as Joe kissed along his flank.
"Joe…" he said.
In any conversation there are as many things said as unsaid. Joe took the cue, stepping back and shedding the rest of his clothing. Ryan couldn't bring himself to turn his head and look, though. He wanted badly to look.
Joe's sudden weight on the bed was an intimacy Ryan had missed: the warm insistence of another body, moving with intent. For only a moment it made him think of Claire. With her it had almost always been restrained, a reflection of fear and failure even with her husband behind the steel door of a supermax cell.
And then there was a firm hand on Ryan's back, knees pushing his own apart, the slide of a cock against his skin, and everything was Joe, Joe, Joe.
"Tell me if-" Joe began.
"Do it," Ryan said.
Even using the same gentle deliberation, the sensation of Joe pushing inside him was painful and suffocatingly alien.
'Shhh," Joe said, though Ryan hadn't made a sound. Or maybe he only thought he hadn't.
Ryan let out long, measured breaths through his nose. Between the steadying breaths, he caught the first sound of pleasure he'd ever heard from Joe. It was low, brief, and all-destroying. Ryan raised his hips without even realizing it at first, taking all of Joe's warm weight for a moment. It also drew another groan unchecked from Joe's throat; he clearly did not intend to hold back.
Joe settled over his back, fitting himself against Ryan, all pressure and stunning heat. "Ryan," he said, barely louder than a whisper. Then, "Oh, God. You feel so good."
Said by anyone else it would be an awful porn cliché, but from Joe's mouth it was a benediction. Ryan was closer to coming than he had been at any other point that night. He squeezed his eyes shut, letting the disappearing shreds of pain focus him.
Joe began with shallow thrusts, using the press of their bodies as reassurance, breath hot on the back of Ryan's neck. A film of sweat had already begun to rise on his chest; Ryan could feel the coolness of the transfer as Joe levered himself up and pushed in deeper, hands braced on either side of Ryan's back. At the next press of Joe's hips, a line of buzzing electricity danced up Ryan's spine. He couldn't help crying out that time.
"Is it good?" Joe asked. "I want to make you feel good."
Again, Ryan felt like it should have been strange, hearing Joe speak like that. As if he should start spouting poetry rather than the mundane things that lovers say to one another in bed. But this way it almost seemed more honest.
"Yeah," Ryan said. He waited a few beats to make sure he didn't feel like an idiot saying it, then told Joe, "Don't stop."
What did shock Ryan was how that simple admission seemed to drive Joe over some unseen edge. He made a sound a little like a drawn-out sob, and lengthened his thrusts. Ryan negotiated the new sensations almost clinically for a moment: the slide and the friction, degrees of fullness. He adjusted to it all with a speed that was frightening, seeking now instead of just submitting.
"Shall I tell you how long I've wanted this?" Joe asked, his breath breaking cool over Ryan's superheated skin. "How long I've wanted you?"
Ryan didn't know what to say, especially with the little barbs of white lightning climbing up his back once again. But he knew, he knew. His hands had itched for Joe's skin since nearly the first time they met.
"You break me apart, Ryan," Joe said, "You're the only one who's seen inside me. The falling apart, I needed it. You taught me."
The world was growing dim at the corners of Ryan's vision. He felt rubbed raw, pushing his cock against the bedspread, still wanting more. He managed to grind out a few words. "You talk too much."
"I'm sorry," Joe said.
Ryan thought it might have been the first time Joe had said those words in his life. At least with sincerity.
"You-" Joe started again.
"It's fine," Ryan breathed. "Joe. It's fine. It's good."
Joe bent to place a kiss in the hollow between Ryan's straining shoulder blades. "Tell me what you need," he said, muttering into Ryan's skin. "Tell me."
The question hung between them for a few seconds as Ryan struggled against the haze rising in his mind. It only took that short span of time for him to realize it was futile. He would sink eventually, wrapped up and blinded. "I need you to touch me," he said.
"Of course," said Joe. "Anything."
The last word was muttered in passing, half-considered, but it still struck Ryan dumb for a second; he was slow to follow when Joe hauled up on his hips. But he leaned into the touch when Joe wrapped a hand around his cock.
"Yeah, like that," Ryan said, and surprised himself by adding, "Please."
Joe kept his thrusts long and slow, stroking Ryan's cock in time. Again, it was both too much and not enough.
"Joe," Ryan said, trailing off. He wasn't certain Joe had heard. He steadied himself and reached down to wrap his own hand around Joe's.
"Faster?" Joe asked, close to breathless now.
Ryan could only nod.
For a man infamous for his brutality, Joe seemed to be holding back is if he were afraid Ryan would break. It was endearing in a way, but Ryan was getting too impatient to indulge it.
"I'm fine," he said. "The stitches are holding. Come on."
Joe pushed in deeper. Good, yes. But not enough.
"Joe," Ryan finally said, nudging the wide hand away from his cock. "I need you-" He took a deep breath. "Joe, please. Fuck me."
Joe groaned so low in his chest it was nearly a growl. He had the permission he needed. He gripped Ryan's hips, pulling him backward and slamming the breath out of him with the first thrust.
"Yeah," Ryan said when he could breathe again. "Like that."
It was the truth; Joe and restraint weren't concepts Ryan could make fit together in his mind. It was better like this, so much better. And once again he was right on the edge, tense and heavy and painful but unwilling to topple over.
"Touch yourself, Ryan" Joe said. "I want you to come for me."
He gave in, of course. And for the second before Ryan came hard on the bedspread beneath him, he knew with perfect clarity that all the resistance he had given Joe was only ever a way of giving in.
"Fuck, Ryan," Joe said, his body tensing in anticipation. "Fuck. Yes. Oh, God. Yes. I'm coming."
"Come on," Ryan said, still riding out the waves of his own orgasm.
Joe did, shuddering and shouting and pulling Ryan close.
Even when they toppled over onto the bed, breathing hard in counterpoint, Joe clutched him. Suddenly broiling, Ryan tried to struggle away toward cooler air, but Joe whispered, "Don't. Don't," his lips sliding through the sweat on Ryan's back.
"They'll be back, Joe," Ryan said. "Soon."
Joe's hold relaxed and he laughed softly. "You'll have to settle for a little death."
"What?"
"Nothing. I'll get you a shirt and shoes."
Joe moved carefully away, but the feeling of his softening cock sliding free left Ryan with a curious sense of loss for a split second. "Joe," he said.
"Mm?"
"Come here."
An indulgent smile (one Ryan suspected Joe saved only for him) softening his features, Joe walked around the bed, and stroked his hair as Ryan cleaned them both with a corner of Lily Gray's sheet.
They dressed in silence, enjoying the slight simmer of adolescent glee in leaving the room stinking of sex. The woven silk shirt and loafers that Joe had given Ryan were a little big. It was for the best; this kind of fine clothing was the type he would ruin within a week. Booze, sweat, blood...something.
"Come on," Joe said. "I know a better way out."
The "better way," as it turned out, was down the grand marble staircase in the front foyer. Joe sauntered while Ryan hugged the wall, his eyes wide. Even exposed under the brilliant light from the huge chandelier, no one crossed their path or raised an alarm. It truly was an enormous house.
When they were outside on the lawn, Ryan understood why Joe had brought them out that way. With the two of them framed by the falling light of a wide, semicircular window, Joe flicked a glance back up at the house, then with a possessive hand on the back of his neck drew Ryan in for a deep kiss.
When he turned, Ryan saw the shadow of a figure that had been standing at the window slipping out of sight. He couldn't tell who it had been, but he was pretty sure it wasn't Lily Gray.
Joe was smiling when he looked back. "Do take care, Ryan. Until we meet again."
Ryan shook his head. At the last moment he indulged Joe with a lopsided smile, just a twitch at the corner of his mouth. Then he was off and running.
It was hours later, close to dawn, when he finally found himself on the New Haven Line back to the city, that he realized he'd left his gun.
What was being labeled a "massacre" at the Rest Easy Motel outside Hartford, Connecticut was blowing up the news channels by the time Ryan got home. He pounded two full glasses of water but didn't bother to change his clothes before flopping down in front of the TV. He could still smell Joe on his hands, in the folds of the shirt. Absently, he stroked the ridge of uneven sutures through the fabric.
Six people dead, including the night clerk, the motel owner, a janitor, and three guests-one of whom was a seven-year-old child. Drowsiness combined with the memory of sensations much more immediate made Ryan's recollection of the panicked escape from the motel fade in and out of his mind. He'd stepped into a slice of sharp, true reality when he'd joined Joe in the gloom at the old gas well. Inside the manor house, everything had been hyper-real: brighter lights, greater contrasts-all the pain and pleasure turned up almost past the point of tolerance.
The hazy curtain fell again when he turned away from Joe, his lips still wet from the kiss.
Ryan was dozing off, lulled by the interchangeable voices of the news anchors, when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out.
Number Restricted.
"No. No, fuck you," he said aloud to the empty condo.
He let the phone ring twice more.
"What?"
"Ryan, it's Mike."
"Surprise, surprise."
"Listen," Mike said. "Last night-"
"You have two seconds to qualify that before I hang up."
"It's not about the motel," Mike said, running the words together all in a rush. "We know it was Lily's people. I mean, Mendez is pissed, but it could just as easily have been because the feds showed up as the fact that you and Max had been there."
"Okay," Ryan said. "I'm listening."
"Well, here's the thing," Mike spoke in a near-whisper.
There was a pause. Ryan could almost see him looking around the room, wherever he was, checking for listeners. He had to suppress a laugh.
"I think someone here might know more about the attack than they're letting on," said Mike.
"'Here?'" Ryan asked. "You mean the Bureau? Someone inside?" Ryan asked.
"Possibly," Mike said. "More than possibly."
"Wait. Shit," Ryan said, getting up from the couch, all exhaustion forgotten. "Joe-" He stopped.
"Ryan-"
"Nothing. It's just...Mike, I was there last night," Ryan said. "At the motel."
"You went back?"
"Yeah. I knew they were close. I was there when Lily's people came. And they knew I was there. I heard someone call my name."
"Jesus," said Mike. "I'd ask why you didn't contact us, but now I'm glad you didn't."
"Any idea who our mole is?" Ryan asked.
"No. But," Mike said, "I found surveillance footage. Somebody buried it deep."
"Of what? The motel?"
"No," Mike said. "Of Joe Carroll. You were right, Ryan. He's alive."
Ryan was glad no one could see the smile-wide, wicked, triumphant-that rose on his face. "Yes, he is," he said. "Very much so."