Chapter 10:
"Angels and Demons"
Will knew he was hurt. He just didn't know how badly.
He tried to open his eyes, but the lids seemed sealed shut. He tried to raise his arms, but they seemed weighted to his sides. Panic began to set in as he fought against the enveloping blackness.
There – eyes open. Will breathed a quick sigh of relief, then instantly began to cough as thick, acrid smoke filled his lungs. His eyes burned as he strained to see through the dense haze, but he could make out little more than blurry shapes, nothing to tell him what might have happened, or where he was.
An explosion, he thought, not knowing how he could possibly know that. An explosion, and then a fire, and now he was hurt, he was trapped, he couldn't move – and the smoke was choking him…
Will forced himself to remain calm, to assess the situation. Turning his head, he could just distinguish a mangled form lying beside him: Red tee-shirt, muscular arm, dark curls, Cubs cap.
Oh no. Jay.
Reaching for his friend, Will caught sight of his own hand and froze. The flesh on his fingers appeared to have been boiled; it was lobster-red and blistered. His stomach churned with fear as he forced his body into a sitting position; in horror, he stared down at what remained of himself: twisted legs ending in bloody splinters, guts spilling onto his lap from a shredded torso.
Will tried to scream and realized he couldn't open his mouth. His fingers flew to his face and pressed against burnt, blackened skin, came away bloody.
He was maimed, Will thought desperately, maimed and probably dying. And Jay was already dead beside him. Somewhere inside this smoky hell, Tyler was screaming, screaming for help that would never come. Will tried to call back, to tell Tyler to get Jay and get out, but he couldn't force his lips apart; they seemed to have melted together.
This was all his fault, Will knew. All his fault for leading them here when he should have gotten them to safety –
I'm sorry – Jay, Tyler, I'm so sorry – please get out, just leave me, just go…
Will awoke with a start to find himself tangled in the covers of the hotel room's king-sized bed, his hair and skin soaked with sweat. He clutched at his stomach, ran a hand over his face, reassuring himself that he was, after all, still in one piece, that he had not been blown to bits and burned beyond recognition in some terrible explosion. As the vividness of the nightmare slowly faded, leaving him chilled and trembling, Will repeated over and over to himself, It was just a dream; it was just a dream; it was just a dream…
They weren't "just dreams," though, not really. Night terrors, the psychology books called them: Dreams so horrifyingly real, the dreamer would often wake screaming and kicking and fighting against imaginary horrors. A common side-effect of severe depression, schizophrenia, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The devil within, Alex had called them when Will started having the dreams during his first phase of Hometown training. He would wake in the middle of the night shrieking, tears streaming down his face, sweat rolling off him in buckets; Alex would rush in to sit calmly beside him, stroking his forehead, bringing him back to the present, to reality. She had seen this before, she had assured him, when he had worried that he was weak, unfit for this sort of work. It happened to most new operatives, she had said, especially those who were as young as Will (barely nineteen) when they began working as assassins.
In time, Alex had taught Will how to compartmentalize, how to shut down essential parts of himself while carrying out his orders. Oh, she'd had other ways of easing him back into peaceful dreams, too, ways Will was fairly certain were not listed amongst the approved curriculum for training Hometown agents; Alex was one of those sensuous women who enjoyed love-making and eschewed turning what was nothing more than a sexual encounter into a romance, which Will assumed was why the Partners had turned a blind eye to their sweet, uncomplicated nighttime escapades. Either that, or Seduction 101 was actually part of the training process.
But Alex had offered much more than physical solace: She had equipped Will with the necessary objectivity to do his job, and do it well, without losing his mind.
Eventually, the dreams had tapered off. In fact, Will hadn't experienced a night terror in more than two years, so it unsettled him that the dreams should resume now. He was already concerned about his ability to remain objective while framing two men he genuinely liked for terrorism and while becoming more and more infatuated with his asset. That the demons in his mind should fight their way free to torment him now struck Will as ominous, as more evidence that he was in over his head.
But what could he do? Will had puzzled over this question dozens of times in the past twelve weeks. He could not disobey his orders; not only would the Partners kill him, he also couldn't bring himself to betray his country – in his real childhood, the young man had been raised to believe that duty always came first. He could not break his vows to Hometown. At the same time, he could not deny that he disagreed with what he had been ordered to do to Jay and Tyler.
Had it not been for his determination to secure a future for himself with Maya, Will wondered if he would have been quite so conscientious in ensuring that the frame job against his roommates would hold up. Doing a bad job wasn't quite the same thing as disobeying orders, he reasoned. Yet if he wanted enough standing within Hometown to ask the Partners' permission to make Maya a permanent part of his life, he had to do an excellent job – the best job, in fact, that he had ever done.
Feeling steadier the longer he was awake, Will glanced at the bedside clock and noted that at least his internal alarm had not been disturbed by the nightmare: The clock read precisely five-thirty. He rolled over to find Maya still sleeping peacefully. She must have been exhausted, he thought, not to have awoken during his thrashing about; he suspected the ordeal with her brother had drained her physically as well as emotionally. He remembered with a pang how truly ill she had seemed the night before, when he had so stupidly and inconsiderately drug her into that crazy hag's tent. Will was still angry with himself over that decision. Not to mention unnerved by how spot-on the old lady's reading of their situation had proven.
Maya looked deceptively peaceful while asleep, but Will understood that she had been facing her own private hell these last three months. She was a good sport about their circumstances, no doubt; on his first visit, she had gamely ignored the despicable work Will performed while sitting on her couch, and she had not once resurrected their argument over whether or not he should follow the Partners' orders. Nevertheless, whether she said it or not, Will saw the revulsion in her eyes. It shamed him, to be so unworthy in Maya's estimation; with any other woman, he might have been dismissive of her opinion, but he respected Maya's integrity and intelligence too much not to give significant weight to her take on things.
If Will himself was finding the New Haven assignment difficult to complete, in spite of his commitment to Hometown and its ideals, what, he asked himself, must Maya have been experiencing as she was forced to sit idly by while this great injustice was carried out right in front of her?
And as if that weren't enough, Will reflected sourly (enjoying, despite his dark thoughts, the opportunity to study Maya's beauty without interruption while she slept), another demon had to appear on her doorstep, in the form of her junkie brother.
Will had not been totally up-front with Maya about Joseph's reaction to the news of Jericho's prison break. Actually, Joseph had intimated that if the brother became too much of a problem – if his escape attracted too much attention from the press or the authorities – Maya might no longer be a viable asset for Will on this mission. Reading between the lines, Will understood that Maya's very life was in danger here: She was in too deeply to simply be cut loose, yet she couldn't be tied to Will in even the most peripheral way if her life was about to come under the microscope. The only solution, Will had decided while listening to Joseph, was for Jericho Sanders to disappear permanently – and fast.
Joseph had assured him (though Will had wisely not asked for such assurances, not wanting to betray the fact that he cared one way or the other what happened to Maya) that he would try to arrange things so that Maya's role in the operation would not be affected. He didn't was, Joseph had said, to "derail the efficiency" of Will's assignment, which had been up to that point progressing remarkably well so far as the Partners were concerned. Will fully intended to make an impassioned case for Maya's continued involvement if Joseph made any more concrete allusions to "terminating" her; as the primary operative, Will knew that he would be given a considerable amount of deference when it came to deciding how the mission proceeded logistically, since he was the one in the trenches on a daily basis and thereby best-placed to determine how the operation should be carried off.
And if he couldn't persuade Joseph? Well, Will was determined not to let it come to that point, anyway. Maya had demons in her past, to be sure, but she was Will's angel – Madame Morphea had certainly hit the jackpot on that score – and he would not let her fall into the devil's clutches.
So what am I in Maya's life – her angel or another one of her demons?
Will shook off those thoughts. He reminded himself that if he refused to accept defeat, he could secure his success: Jericho Sanders would not interfere with Will's future with Maya, because Will simply would not allow that to happen; Will would forge a happy-ever-after for them, because he simply would not allow himself to fail on this mission.
As if on cue, the cell phone in Will's backpack began to ring. Grabbing it before the noise could disturb Maya, Will whispered into the receiver, "Hello?"
"Will?" Joseph sounded puzzled. "Why are you whispering?"
"Just a sec."
Will eased off the bed – Maya never moved, she was so deeply asleep – and hurried into the bathroom, closing the door softly behind him. Speaking normally, he said, "Sorry, the girl's asleep and I didn't want to wake her. What's the news?"
"Pretty good," Joseph replied cheerfully, sending a wave of relief washing over Will. He plopped down on the edge of the tub to listen. "I was able to arrange for one of our assets in the Augusta FBI field office to take point on the prison escape. He's seeing to it that the press are not informed of Sanders' family ties to Deer Harbor.
"We've also arranged for the press coverage to be kept to a minimum, period," Joseph continued. "The only thing that's been reported so far is that there was a disturbance at the minimum security facility near Augusta. Now, I'm sure the residents of Deer Harbor are going to catch wind of this sooner or later – Maine isn't that big of a state, after all – but we're hoping to have the situation cleaned up before that happens. Then we can control the girl's exposure, make sure this blows over quickly without bringing too bright of a spotlight onto her."
Or, more to the point, onto her involvement with Hometown, Will understood Joseph to be saying.
The news was good – not perfect, but good. With an FBI agent in their pockets, Hometown could both control the flow of information and ensure that Maya was not heckled by the authorities. "So right now, things are staying the same where the girl is concerned?" Will prompted, careful to sound as if he cared only about protecting the mission. As always, Joseph might have been calling him by his current alias, but he expected to be speaking to Daniel Taft – and Daniel Taft wouldn't have given a damn whether Maya went to prison right along with her brother so long as the New Haven operation wasn't affected.
"For the moment, yes," Joseph confirmed. "Hopefully it won't come to this, because our FBI asset has taken care of coordinating the law enforcement response, but at some point it may become necessary for the girl to speak to the authorities. You may want to prep her on what to say if that does happen."
"No problem," Will responded readily, before moving on to the most pressing question of the day. "And Sanders? What are we doing about the guy himself?"
"So far he hasn't popped up on or over the Canadian border," Joseph replied, sounding grim.
Will knew that was not such good news. For Maya to truly be safe, Jericho needed to be neutralized as a threat, either by being carted back off to prison or…
Well, the other option was obvious.
"Listen, Will," Joseph's voice took on an apologetic note. "I realize this is a distraction you don't need right now, and if you'd prefer, we can simply cut our losses and find you a new asset. But I spoke to Director Freed last night, and he thinks if we can find a way to continue on as we have been, we should. The Partners are very pleased with your work so far, I thought you should know that. But before I make my recommendation to them, I wanted to know two things from you.
"The first is: How much effort do you think we should be putting into maintaining the girl as your asset?"
You touch one hair on her head, Joseph, and I'll kill the whole lot of you.
Smoothing the instantaneous fury out of his voice, Will answered coolly, "The girl has been pivotal in the operation's success so far, in my opinion. She's given me a tremendous perspective on life in this place, and she's proven to be completely trustworthy. She and I work well together," he added, wanting to emphasize that without Maya, the Partners wouldn't have so many successes to celebrate about this assignment, yet at the same time taking care not to suggest that he was personally invested in her safety. "I can do this with another asset if I have to, obviously, but if at all possible, I'd like to maintain the status quo."
"That was the impression I'd gotten from your reports, but I wanted to be sure." Joseph's casual response reassured Will that he had achieved the necessary balance between arguing for Maya's continued involvement and seeming unconcerned for her well-being in general; had his reply set off warning bells for his handler, Will knew Joseph would have pressed the issue. This operation was too important for him to ignore a complication like an operative falling for an asset.
"The other thing I wanted to know," Joseph continued, "is how likely you think it is that Sanders ever headed for Canada in the first place."
Not very, knowing this piece of shit.
From the moment Maya had told him about Jericho's escape the previous evening, Will's spy-instincts had warned him that Jericho Sanders would not run off alone and unaided into the unknown – he was too selfish and cowardly for that. Spending a year amongst crackheads and heroine addicts had taught Will that selflessness and compassion were not in their vocabularies. Just because Jericho had not been able to persuade Maya to help him on his first attempt did not mean that he wouldn't try again; in all likelihood, Will suspected, the fugitive was hanging around somewhere near Deer Harbor, waiting for another crack at his sister's better nature, or at least for an opportunity to rob her blind of what little she had left.
Will didn't actually give a damn what happened to Jericho Sanders, only in as much as his fate concerned Maya's. If Hometown caught up to him and blew his junkie head off, well, Will would dry Maya's tears and privately bid the worthless bastard good riddance. If he made it to Canada and never surfaced again, Will would accept that outcome, too, though he couldn't see it coming to fruition. In either event, however, Maya's survival depended on Hometown knowing Jericho's status (dead and buried or alive and sufficiently hidden). Therefore Will answered Joseph honestly, "I'm almost positive he's still around here somewhere. I have a feeling he'll poke his head up before long."
"I don't have to tell you, Will, that that could cause a problem for you continuing to work with the girl."
"I understand." Will chose his next words carefully. "Do I have authorization to secure the situation if the opportunity presents itself?"
Joseph chuckled. "I had a feeling you'd ask me that. Director Freed gave the green light for you to do whatever you deem necessary to protect the integrity of your mission. But remember," Joseph cautioned, "your primary focus is New Haven. Don't let this complication distract you, Will. You're doing too well."
From his foothold inside Will's consciousness, Daniel Taft cheered over the clear implication that a place in the inner circle was already waiting for him at the end of this operation.
Just a little longer, Daniel lectured Will. Hang in there a while longer, see this thing through even though it sucks, and you're set for life.
Will promised Joseph that he would not take any extraordinary measures nor allow himself to be sidetracked from his primary goal in order to remove Jericho Sanders as a threat. Even as he said it, though, Will knew it would never become an issue: He had two days left in Deer Harbor, and if he understood anything about drug addicts, it was that they were not the patient sort. Jericho would make an appearance again, and soon.
Only this time, he wouldn't be dealing with his frightened sister. He would be facing a highly-trained and deadly operative, Will intended to see to that.
By the time he bid Joseph good-bye after innocently inquiring after Sela, Sam and Darian (whenever he spoke to his handler, Will always tried to feel out if Darian's secret was still safe, and so far it had seemed to be if Joseph's normal "family man" reaction was a reliable indicator), the sun had risen and the clock was ticking toward six-thirty. Much as he hated to wake her, Will knew he and Maya had to head back to Deer Harbor; the stack of video footage and other materials in Will's suitcase still needed to be sorted through and carefully edited, despite the current disaster.
Maya had thrown off the covers while Will was in the bathroom talking to Joseph. He did a double-take when he saw that she was wearing nothing besides his Yale tee-shirt, which normally fell to her knees but which had in her sleep become twisted up to her navel, and a silky pair of red panties that left even less to the imagination than her little black bikini.
How the hell did I sleep next to that all night without attacking her?
Will decided it was for the best that he had fallen asleep before Maya emerged from her bath, or otherwise his dreams would have been of a very different sort – and his carefully-cultivated self-control might not have stood up to the challenge of staying on his side of the bed with a half-naked Maya lying beside him.
Reminding himself that today of all days was not the time to throw caution to the wind where his relationship with Maya was concerned, Will knelt beside the bed and shook her shoulder gently.
"Maya," he said softly, loving how her long eyelashes rested on her high cheekbones when her eyes were closed. "Maya, hey. Hey, it's time to wake up."
Sleepily, Maya blinked at him. Will's heart fluttered, an overwhelming sense of tenderness enveloping him as he watched her slowly swim up from the depths of dreamland to greet a new day.
"Will." She smiled around his name. "Your hair's all messed up."
Without a hint of self-consciousness – Will Traveler couldn't have cared less what his hair looked like – Will made a half-hearted attempt to comb his sandy locks into place with his fingers. "You, on the other hand," he replied, returning her smile, "look absolutely perfect."
"I'll bet," Maya answered sarcastically.
She did, though. Will didn't understand how Maya could not realize what a knock-out she was. He rather liked that about her, though; girls like Kim Doherty who knew they were gorgeous and carried that knowledge with ease were attractive in a certain way, no doubt, yet Will was more partial to girls like Maya who seemed oblivious to the effect their beauty had on men. Or, in Maya's case, oblivious to the fact that they were beautiful at all.
"C'mon, we've gotta get moving," Will told her, standing and crossing to his side of the bed. He pulled a clean pair of jeans and a long-sleeved black tee-shirt out of his bag. "You want first shower?"
Thirty minutes later, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Lincoln had checked out of their hotel and departed Caseyville in the direction of Deer Harbor. Will thought it a testament to how much he loved Maya, to how determined he was to make a future for them together, that they had not consummated their fictitious "marriage." Heaven knew he had wanted to at several points during the evening and that morning, but he had restrained himself with the knowledge that following the rules for now could mean the difference between a happy life together and a life spent on the run from his employers.
They rode in companionable silence back to Maya's house, Will behind the wheel and Maya staring out the window at the red-and-gold leaves floating to the muddy ground on the cool autumn breeze. Will knew she was worried about her brother. Just because she hadn't wanted to be told what Will's employers planned to do with Jericho if he returned didn't mean she didn't care; Will was acutely aware of this, especially as a plan for removing Jericho Sanders as a threat to his mission and to his Maya began to form in Will's mind.
Since it was a Saturday, Maya normally would have been headed to the shop by the time Will drove her Jeep up the driveway. But they needed to lay low for a couple of days, Will had decided, so Maya had phoned Margot from the hotel to ask if she could check the store that day, claiming a bad case of the flu would prevent her from opening. Will had suggested this ruse for two reasons: One, if Jericho was hiding out in "Have Books, Will Travel" (unlikely, yet possible), Margot would certainly not hesitate to report him to the authorities, and then the problem of Jericho's whereabouts would be solved; two, Maya's "flu" would give her an excuse not to leave the house for a few days without people wondering why her store remained closed.
When Maya unlocked her back door around eight, Will saw her pause on the threshold, her entire body attuned for the slightest rustle or creak, anything to indicate that the house wasn't empty. He waited patiently behind her until she turned and confessed sheepishly, "I was sort of afraid he'd be here."
Privately seething with rage at the turmoil her brother was putting her through, Will answered evenly, "That's a perfectly valid concern, Maya. But I told you," he lied through his teeth, determined to eradicate the fear from her eyes, "Jericho will be halfway to Toronto by now. He's not an idiot."
Maya offered him a shaky smile. Her determination to be brave while her world crashed around her made Will want to gather her into his arms and steal her away somewhere that no one could ever hurt her again, where nothing sad or unpleasant could ever touch her life.
Instead, he got to work.
Will spent the morning sorting out which of his chemical engineering papers would be most damning when copied over into Jay's handwriting by Hometown's skilled graphologists. He tried to block from his mind the memory of how truly grief-stricken he had been when he saw Jay dead in his dream. Joseph had been right – framing innocent people, especially people who had shown Will honest affection, was harder than it had sounded when he had asked for the assignment.
But I'm not going to kill them. I'm just…
Just ruining their lives so I have my own happy ending.
The demon in their midst, that's what Will was to Jay and Tyler. The silver-tongued devil leading them straight to hell.
A crisis of conscience was a luxury Will couldn't afford at the moment, however. So while Maya puttered around in the kitchen baking an apple pie, he focused on producing results for the New Haven op that would have the Partners rubbing their grubby palms together in greedy pleasure.
Yet Will's thoughts were not, as he had promised Joseph they would be, totally devoted to his current mission. Splicing together a six-minute episode of Tyler bemoaning the deplorable state of government welfare programs into a two-minute diatribe that made the billionaire's son sound frighteningly fanatical in his views on Congress "abandoning the poor," Will simultaneously mulled over the options for dealing with Maya's brother.
The most straight-forward solution would be to kill him. Will liked predictability: If Jericho was dead, he couldn't cause more trouble. Besides, even if the authorities managed to recapture Jericho, Will still saw him as a potential threat to Maya. For one thing, the press would surely pounce on the dramatic tale of an escaped inmate being tracked down through the wintery northern woods, regardless of how Hometown tried to control the flow of information about the prison break; knowing how nervous the Partners got over any type of exposure, he feared they might decide to do away with Maya just to be on the safe side if Jericho's return to prison received too much news coverage.
For another, so long as he was alive Jericho would keep popping up in Maya's life. Will doubted the other man would manage a second escape; he would be shipped off to a super-max prison now, no more rinky-dink minimum security facilities, and guarded much more closely. Nevertheless, someday he would be released – probably not in the next decade, although the guard he had stabbed looked likely to survive, but someday – and then Maya would have to deal with him all over again.
Will assumed that Maya loved her brother, because Maya was a good, forgiving person. He didn't want to cause her further pain by ripping yet another person she loved out of her life; he didn't want to be connected in her mind with even more sorrow and suffering than he already was, either. None of that, though, swayed Will from his conviction that Maya would ultimately be safer and happier once her brother was permanently removed from the picture.
So Will would kill Jericho Sanders, then, and be done with it. The question was, how to carry off the assassination so that the Partners were pleased with the outcome (meaning the sanctity and secrecy of Hometown were absolutely protected) and so that Maya never learned of Will's involvement in her brother's death?
It took Will most of the day to work it out. He mentally rifled through dozens of scenarios, some fantastic and some plausible, but he finally hit on the solution thanks to a rather mundane event.
His compilation of "evidence" against Jay and Tyler finished for another six weeks, around five o'clock, as Maya prepared to put a delicious-smelling dinner of pumpkin soup and homemade potato bread on the table, Will carted the materials down to her basement. There he filed them away in the fire-proof boxes where they would be stored until he had time to take them to Joseph in New York, probably over Yale's month-long winter break. Turning to head back upstairs, Will banged his shin hard against the corner of the lowest shelf beneath the stairs.
Will winced. Almost immediately, he felt a warm trickle of blood slide down his leg; lifting the cuff of his jeans, he saw that the shelf's sharp, splintery edge had cut a gash across his shin-bone, slicing through a long, thin scar that already ran vertically from his knee to his ankle on that leg.
Fifteen stitches, Will recalled with a grimace, slipping off his sock and using it to staunch the flow of blood. He had put fifteen stitches into that leg after falling (like a klutz) onto an old rusted piece of metal out by Maya's lake back in July. And then he had, later that same night after Maya went to bed, sewn seven stitches back in where the fight with the Pruitt brothers had torn them open –
Andrew Pruitt. Of course.
Will's amazing brain spiraled through a rapid-fire series of connections, which came together in such a neat, elegant web that Will couldn't believe he hadn't seen what was right in front of his eyes this entire time. Andrew Pruitt had been arrested less than two weeks after Jericho and Maya; he had blamed Maya for turning state's evidence on him because she had been released without charges, but obviously, Will knew she hadn't told the cops anything. Jericho, on the other hand, had ended up with a six-year sentence to a minimum security facility, with the possibility of early release for good behavior in as little as two years, despite being charged with a rather serious felony (possession with intent to distribute). Practically a slap on the wrist for a twenty-five-year-old with four previous drug-related convictions, plus a rap sheet of offenses like assault and DUI that he had begun accruing at the tender age of sixteen.
Jericho, not Maya, had directed the police to his good buddy Pruitt's meth lab in exchange for a reduced sentence to a minimum, not a maximum, security prison.
Will forgot about the pain in his leg as a plot formed in his mind. Andy Pruitt had made no secret of the fact that he intended to take revenge on whoever had been responsible for sending him to jail. Everyone in this little town knew how crazy and violent the Pruitts were; they knew they made good on their threats whenever possible. If Andy Pruitt were to figure out that Jericho had ratted him out (which the state police could confirm that he had, if anyone questioned the theory), and if he were to find out that Jericho was hiding in the woods near Deer Harbor following a prison break, well, no one would be surprised if Pruitt killed him.
And Will had leverage over Andy Pruitt, seeing as how the ignorant hick believed Will worked for the Fernandez-Suarez drug cartel. If Will were to corner Pruitt and recruit him to help take out Jericho, and if in the heat of battle Pruitt were to be shot and killed right along with the other man, then nobody would ever need to be the wiser that Will had played a hand in the double-murder at all. It would simply be two good-for-nothing, small-time hoods blowing one another away over a criminal allegiance gone south.
Nothing to create a fuss over. Nothing to devote more than a bit of local press to (and no one the Partners cared about read the Deer Harbor Times-Commoner). Nothing for the authorities to investigate very thoroughly (and anyway, Will had the FBI on his side).
Will experienced a rush of cagey excitement that told him this plan would work. Jericho would no longer be a problem for Maya. Pruitt would shoulder the blame for the murder and thereby mask Hometown's involvement, since he wouldn't be around to bring up Will's name. Everyone would be satisfied.
Everyone being the Partners, in this instance.
Maya, of course, would mourn for her brother. Knowing that nearly caused Will to chuck the plan. He slowly climbed the steps, thinking it over, turning the scheme every which way in his mind to determine if it was, after all, the best option.
Maya did not hear Will step into the kitchen doorway. Nor did she realize that he was watching her set the table, humming and smiling to herself as she anticipated how much he would enjoy the meal she had prepared. In that moment, Will knew the truth.
He loved her.
God, he loved her more than he had ever thought it possible to love anything, Will realized, the force of his emotions nearly doubling him over. Could he really take away someone Maya loved, knowing how badly it would hurt her? Could he be responsible for another tragedy in her life?
She's strong. She'll recover. And she'll be safer this way, I know she will.
In truth, Will wondered if Maya might even secretly be relieved (after the initial grief wore away, that was) that her brother would never trouble her again. He had seen the conflict in her eyes the night before when she had hesitated before deciding that she did not really want to know what Will's employers could do to her brother. Regardless of how much she loved Jericho, Will understood – and sympathized with – what in all likelihood was Maya's private wish that her brother would simply leave her alone, for good.
Will could make that happen. This problem he could solve for her.
If he could carry off his plan as intended, Will thought, Maya would probably even be able to accept the manner of Jericho's death as the inevitable consequence of the life her brother had chosen. And that, Will recognized, would go a long way in helping her put the loss of her last remaining family member behind her, because Maya was remarkably resilient in the face of cold, harsh reality.
She looked up then to find him watching her from the doorway. Will wondered if his feelings for her were written all over his face – she had caught him in a rare unguarded moment.
Me, too, Maya seemed to wordlessly convey with her lovely, pale-grey eyes. It's the same for me, too, having you here – wonderful and painful at the same time.
"Smells good," Will said lightly, walking over to the table while inhaling the rich, aromatic scents rising from the hot dishes. "I do miss your cooking."
Maya grinned at the reminder of the game they had played on Will's last evening in Deer Harbor before the official start of the New Haven op. "And I do miss cooking for you," she replied, settling into her chair. "But right now I'm starving, so you'd better eat fast or there may not be anything left for seconds."
They shared a pleasant, relaxed meal, Will, as Alex had taught him, compartmentalizing the awful thing he meant to do in a few hours' time so that he could laugh and joke and flirt with Maya. She filled him in on the gossip around town (apparently, the mayor had been caught in bed with the county clerk, a woman half his age at that) and he regaled her with stories of his adventures at Yale, most involving Jay and Tyler. Like him, Maya seemed to be becoming proficient at separating their lives into two halves: Despite the fact that they both knew Will was going to eventually betray his roommates, Maya pretended right along with him that they were really his best friends, and she honestly seemed to like hearing about them and about Will's life at school.
She was his angel, Will thought again later, drying the last of the dishes and putting them away in the cabinets. His sweet, beautiful angel. He wouldn't let anyone, including her brother, take her away from him.
His mind made up, Will set his plan into motion immediately following dinner. First, while Maya called Margot to ask if she could open the store in the morning long enough to receive a shipment of new books that were due to be delivered, Will slipped into her parents' bedroom (upstairs, at the far end of the hall) and lifted a Colt .45 revolver from Thomas Sanders' nightstand. Over the summer, Will had explored the house while Maya was at work – okay, so he had snooped, but he'd needed to know all he could about her since they were working together. Poking about in Thomas and Lorelei's bedroom (which did not appear to have changed since the day Thomas died – even an empty IV pump, no doubt used to administer pain medicine in Thomas' last days, still stood beside the bed), Will had discovered the gun and decided straightaway that he and Maya's father would have gotten along famously: Any man who believed in shooting to kill where his family's safety was concerned earned Will's respect.
Now, Will tucked the gun into his backpack and proceeded to his own room, where he retrieved the .9 millimeter and combat knife he had hidden on the top shelf of the closet. Will believed in preparing for the worst in every situation; having a weapon at hand made him sleep easier at night.
His excuse for stepping out that evening was perfectly plausible: He told Maya, when he joined her in the living room after her phone call to Margot, that he needed to meet with his handler. The fact that his excuse was a bold-faced lie did not make it any less credible.
"Is something wrong? Has something happened?" Maya automatically asked, an all-too-familiar anxiety returning to her expression, drawing her mouth into a taut line.
Will resisted the urge to kiss her until her lips softened into a smile. "Everything's fine," he assured her, donning his black trench coat and picking her car keys up off the counter. Mindful that the most convincing lies contained some truth, he continued, "My handler wants me to prep you in case the police come by with questions – which I don't think they will, but just in case. We're going to go over what you need to say, that's all. We're just more comfortable not having this kind of conversation over the phone."
Maya accepted that. Seeing Will to the back door, she hugged him goodbye; they both held on a bit longer than was strictly necessary, attraction crackling between them despite everything that was happening.
"Do you want me to wait up?" she whispered in his ear.
"No," Will said back, drinking in her delicious, soapy scent. "I may be late, and you need to rest."
"Okay." Maya stepped back and tucked her hair behind her ears, regarding him with such a trusting smile that Will almost confessed his true intentions right then and there. "Be careful, Will."
He promised that he would be. Reminding himself that what he was about to do was for Maya's own good, he was soon in her Jeep and on his way into the night.
Will drove deserted back roads to Ray's, the hole-in-the-wall beer joint Margot had mentioned Pruitt frequenting when Will had met her for the first time that summer. Given that it was a Saturday night, Will hedged his bets that a redneck like Pruitt would be at the honky-tonk throwing darts and slapping back shots of Wild Turkey. He parked a fair distance from the bar (more of a pole-barn, really, wired with a stereo system and rigged with neon lights and surrounded by a gravel lot) down a dead-end utility access road; sneaking up to the back of the building, he peered through the grime-encrusted window and spotted his target shooting pool with a group of greasy-looking youths. He did not see anyone who appeared to be a Pruitt brother or cousin, to his relief – Will wanted Pruitt to himself for this assignment, though he was willing to take out a few more family members if need be.
Will settled down on an overturned ten-gallon bucket to wait for Pruitt to emerge. He could be infinitely patient while on a mission; he could ignore cold, hunger, rain, any sort of discomfort. Being an assassin had taught him to endure physical hardship while staking out a mark.
Around midnight, Pruitt at last stumbled from the front door and made for an enormous black Chevrolet Silverado pick-up at the edge of the parking lot. Will debated the best way to approach Pruitt without attracting attention to himself. For his plan to work, no one could see them together; everyone had to believe Pruitt had acted alone.
Ultimately, Will decided not to make his move at Ray's. Instead, while Pruitt bid good night to his friends, Will crawled into the truck bed and covered up with a tarp Pruitt had draped over a short stack of firewood. Now, if his prey would just head out of the parking lot alone, Will's night would be a lot easier…
For once, Will's luck held: Pruitt climbed unaccompanied behind the wheel and peeled out down the lonely back roads toward his family's "compound," as Maya had referred to the Pruitts' spread.
After two miles, Will raised up and tapped the back glass with the muzzle of his .9 millimeter. Yelping in fear and surprise, Pruitt nearly drove them straight into a ditch; somehow, he managed to recover and steer the truck safely off to the side of the road.
Will's feet hit the ground the instant they came to a stop. Jerking open the passenger's side door, he trained the gun on Pruitt's forehead as he lifted himself smoothly inside. The absolute terror on the bullying coward's face stirred Will's innate cockiness. With a wicked grin, he quipped, "Hi, Andy. Not glad to see me?"
Pruitt's terrified, whiskey-hazed eyes darted frantically around the cab of the truck, seemingly in search of someplace to hide his bulk. Finding none, he settled for cowering against the door with his hands raised above his head in surrender.
"I ain't touched Maya, man, I swear to God I ain't."
"I'm aware of that, Andy," Will responded silkily, tracking the gun down toward Pruitt's midsection. The bigger man tried to shrink into himself. "If this was about Maya, you'd already have a bullet in your gut."
Pruitt paled. "So whatta you want?" He didn't sound challenging, just scared.
"Actually, I'm here to see if you'd like some work." Will let this sink into Pruitt's thick, alcohol-fogged brain for a moment. "Oh, by the way, I found out something interesting about your arrest, Andy. It seems you were right about someone giving up you and your little meth-making operation to the cops. You just got the wrong member of the Sanders family when you accused Maya."
A spark of fury ignited behind the fear in Pruitt's eyes. Will smirked to see it; hooking this idiot was almost too easy.
Regarding Will warily, Pruitt demanded, "Why bother tellin' me that? I thought they was under your boss's protection."
"Maya is. Her brother…"
Will shrugged, as if to say, Hasn't Jericho always been a bad apple?
"Her brother is a different story," Will went on. "Doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut – obviously, since he sent you away. And now he's gone and busted himself out of prison," Will went in for the kill, seeing the desire for revenge firing up full-force inside of Pruitt. "That poses a problem for my employers. And I'm a problem-solver, Andy. D'ya know what I mean?"
Pruitt nodded. He still looked frightened of Will, yet he also appeared to be slowly catching on to the possibility that, for the present, Will wasn't his enemy.
Sucker.
"You need any help solvin' this here problem?" Pruitt offered, his piggy little eyes gleaming malevolently.
Here it came, Will thought, the big finish: The fish was on the hook, waiting to be reeled in. Pruitt was walking eagerly into the trap Will had lain, never for one second suspecting the danger he was in.
Ready – set – go…
"I thought you might like a piece of the action, yeah," Will responded evenly, returning Pruitt's malicious grin. Just in case Pruitt wasn't as stupid as he looked and might question why the man who had beaten the living daylights out of him a few months ago would now be coming to him for help, Will clarified for good measure, "Sort of a good-faith gesture, you know? You see, Andy, my employers, they're always looking to expand their business opportunities into new areas. So you might even look at this evening as a job interview."
Like Austin, the Miami-based gangster wannabe Will had found so laughably easy to manipulate, Pruitt's response to the prospect of increasing his stature in the criminal community was virtually Pavlovian. "Let's do this, bro," he cheered, slapping his hands against the steering wheel. "Where is the little son of a bitch?"
I'm going to enjoy killing you, you ignorant sack of shit, you really have no idea…
Will directed Pruitt back toward Maya's house. He was following a hunch regarding Jericho's next move; as they so often did, Will's instincts proved to be dead-on.
He instructed Pruitt to park a quarter-mile from the house. They crept through the chilly night to the shed near Maya's lake, from which the shaky beam of a flashlight could be seen through the small, dirty windows. Will shook his head, amazed by people's predictability. He had known the motorcycle – the one he had restored over the summer – would prove too great a temptation for Jericho. Not only would it be a hell of a lot more expedient to ride rather than walk to Canada, but it was also a beautiful piece of machinery that stood to fetch a fair price once he crossed the border.
"How're we gon' do this?" Pruitt wanted to know, crouching in the thick underbrush near the lake, inches from Will.
"We grab him, quick and quiet, and get him back to your truck," Will replied. His fingers closed around the hilt of the combat knife secreted in the waistband of his jeans; if Pruitt messed with the plan, he was a dead man, right then and there, though Will couldn't very well fire a gun within Maya's hearing range. "Then we drive him out in the boondocks and kill him."
"Sounds good to me," Pruitt grunted.
At that moment, the door to the shed opened, and Will saw a tall, stick-thin figure wearing a ridiculously oversized raincoat steer the motorcycle out into the yard. He nodded at Pruitt – now – and together they leapt from the bushes onto a thoroughly unsuspecting Jericho Sanders.
Will let his weight fall directly on top of Jericho as they crashed to the ground, winding his opponent but also protecting him from the kick Pruitt aimed at their prey's face. With one blunt chop to the neck, Will knocked Jericho out cold.
He had determined to execute Maya's brother, but he did not intend for him to suffer.
"Not here," Will said to Pruitt's disappointed scowl. "We get out in the middle of nowhere, he's all yours, but not here. I'm under orders not to let the girl know what we're doing."
Invoking the specter of the Colombian drug lords he supposedly worked for achieved the effect Will had desired: Pruitt swallowed any arguments and helped him carry Jericho back to the truck, where they placed him in the bed and bound his wrists and ankles with a length of twine.
Will took Pruitt via a circuitous route back to not far from where he had hidden Maya's Jeep, just over a mile from Ray's. Pruitt didn't seem to notice where they were since they had come by such a long, winding path; besides, he was too focused on describing to Will all of the ingenious torments he wanted to inflict on their captive to notice much of anything.
"You got a gun?" Will asked, interrupting Pruitt's disgusting monologue as the truck rolled to a stop beneath a large sycamore tree.
In response, Pruitt produced a .9 millimeter from beneath his seat. "This baby oughtta do the job, hadn't she?" He fingered the gun lovingly, adding, "Once we've had our fun, of course."
Imagining Pruitt's beefy, sweaty hands squeezing Maya's slender wrists with enough force to leave finger-shaped bruises, Will smiled back cruelly. Fun? Oh yes, he planned to show Pruitt some "fun" before the night ended.
Together, they lifted Jericho's wasted form out of the truck and deposited him on the brown grass in front of the headlights. Will took a half-empty bottle of Jim Bean from Pruitt's glove compartment and splashed the amber liquid onto Jericho's face to bring him around. He almost hated to wake the man, whom he would soon have to kill, but Will needed Pruitt distracted while he took Thomas Sanders' Colt .45 from his backpack.
"Wakey, wakey," Pruitt crooned, kneeling in the dirt beside Jericho, who blinked slowly awake in a way that reminded Will forcibly of his sister. "Hello there, Jericho. Long time no see."
As he registered that his hands and feet were bound, Jericho's gaunt face paled beneath its sallow tint. "Andy," he rasped, his voice trembling. "How-how did I get here?"
If Will had entertained any lingering doubts about Jericho's role in Pruitt's arrest, they were dispelled by the terror in his hollow addict's eyes as he stared up at the bigger man. Taking a few silent steps toward the truck, Will reached in the front seat, slid his hand into his backpack and felt around until his fingers brushed cold steel.
Pruitt had just delivered a vicious kick to Jericho's side when Will came up with the gun. "You lyin', back-stabbin', cunt-sniffin' son of a whore!" Pruitt howled, drawing back his booted foot for another kick, oblivious to Will circling around Jericho, who was desperately trying to curl in on himself for some protection against his attacker. "I'm gonna stomp you to death, you stupid shit – "
Will cleared his throat. Pruitt stopped with his foot in mid-air, his ugly face caught in a furious sneer until he noticed the revolver aimed at his stomach.
"What the – " he started.
The single, perfectly-placed shot obliterated his words. Jericho screamed and began frantically slithering off into the tall weeds as Pruitt stumbled backwards into the grill of his truck, clutching at a quarter-sized hole above his belly button.
Will pointed the gun at Jericho, who stilled instantly. "Don't move," he warned. Jericho nodded hastily to show he would comply.
Pruitt was gasping and groaning, trying to drag himself along the front bumper and into the cab of his truck. Will calmly leveled the Colt again and blew out the wounded man's kneecap.
Pruitt collapsed in a screaming, squirming heap at the edge of the truck.
Having fun yet, are we?
Will squatted beside the dying man, ignoring the stench of blood and bowel, the squeals and gasps of agony. Grabbing a fistful of Pruitt's hair, he forced his victim to look up at him.
"This is for touching Maya, you worthless fuck," he informed Pruitt, whose eyes were rapidly glazing over as his life bled out onto the muddy earth. "Did you really think I'd let you off with a few broken teeth for that?"
"Go to hell," Pruitt grated out, his voice a reedy whisper.
Will patted Pruitt's cheek before letting his head drop back into the mud. "You first, my friend."
Tonight, Will felt like the devil – fittingly so, since it was, after all, Halloween.
And the devil had one more soul to collect, though this one Will did not relish.
Up to this point in his life, Will did not consider himself to have committed murder. He had taken lives, obviously. He was actually quite good at taking lives, as he was so often ordered to do by Hometown, because he knew that each act of violence was committed in service of a higher purpose – even though Will, not knowing the Partners' "master plan," couldn't attest to what that purpose was. In a way, Pruitt's death and Jericho's would also serve the Partners. But killing them felt different to Will.
Pruitt he didn't so much care about. Pruitt was less than human in Will's eyes, a would-be rapist and murder who had earned his ending. Jericho, however, was another story, not only because he was Maya's brother – someone Will knew, someone whose death he would have to experience beyond the moment of actual killing – but also because Will had personal reasons for wanting him dead. Deep down inside, Will knew he wouldn't be killing Jericho for Hometown, anymore than he had just killed Andy Pruitt for Hometown.
He was killing for himself, for his own gain.
So this is what they've made me. All this time I've been worrying about Maya changing, I haven't even looked in the mirror to see what I've become…
Will considered walking away right then, putting Jericho in Pruitt's truck, pressing some cash in his hand, sending him to Canada with strict instructions to never, ever come back. What was Jericho guilty of, really? Selfishness? Inconsideration? Posing a danger to his sister that he couldn't even know he posed, oblivious as he was to her involvement with Hometown?
Were any of those offenses worthy of death?
Will felt his earlier confidence in his plan wavering, in effect crumbling, as he turned to face Maya's brother. Jericho had not moved from where Will had left him crouched on the ground while he went to deal with Pruitt; he looked terrified, paralyzed by fear, which did nothing to persuade Will that killing the other man was the right move.
Tucking Pruitt's .9 millimeter into the waistband of his jeans, Will drew his combat knife as he approached the cowering fugitive. Jericho flinched away until he realized Will only meant to cut his bonds with it.
The Colt .45 Will dropped casually on the ground near Jericho, who glanced at it once before apparently deciding he didn't have a prayer against this stranger.
If it came down to it, for Maya's sake Will did not want Jericho's last moments to be horrifying. He saw no reason for her brother to even know he was in danger; he could kill him quickly, mercifully, without Jericho ever expecting the fatal blow – if he decided to go through with his plan to kill Jericho, which Will suddenly wasn't certain he could.
A little gruffly, angered by what he perceived as his own emotional weakness, Will demanded of Jericho, "You okay? He kicked you pretty good back there."
Jericho nodded, feeling along his ribs. "I-I think so." He gazed up fearfully at Will. "Listen, who are you, anyway?"
"My name's Will. I'm a friend of your sister's."
"Maya sent you to look after me?" Jericho appeared stunned by his sister's change of heart.
Will shook his head. "Not exactly. I'm a friend of hers, you see, and I want you to get the hell out of here and stop screwing around with her life. That's why I'm here – to make sure you get away. And that's why he's not beating the shit out of you right now," he added, pointing at Pruitt's lifeless body.
Jericho looked grateful but also a little perturbed that Maya had not sent someone to check on his well-being after all. Massaging his wrists where the twine had indented his skin, he offered sulkily, "That's what I was trying to do – leave, get outta her life. I just wanted my bike, man. I swear that's all."
Will studied Jericho for a long moment. He had not expected the man to look so much like Maya, right down to his soulful gray eyes; he had not expected to find anything endearing in the other man's vulnerable, steady gaze. What was it Maya had said about her mother? That she could be sweet, almost childlike, when she wasn't using? Will could see the same disposition in Jericho. It made the idea of killing him even more distasteful than it already was.
Part of Will – the part of him that thought and acted as Will Traveler, not the operative portraying him – wanted to believe that if he let Jericho go, the other man would simply disappear, that he would do right by his younger sister and never barge back into her life to make a mess of her world. If he could convince himself of that, Will thought, he would do his best to persuade the Partners of it so that Maya's brother could live.
So that he, Will, wouldn't have to shoulder the burden of yet another awful secret, this one, he feared, dark enough to destroy Maya's love for him.
Even as he toyed with the idea of setting Jericho free, however, Will knew, with a certainty of instinct he had learned over the past four years to trust, that he had no choice but to follow through with his original plan. Will had lived too long and too closely with men like Jericho, men whose addictions were only the outward manifestations of their inner darkness, to be convinced that Jericho would not one day seek out his sister again, regardless of the consequences for her.
Demons always returned.
She'll never be safe, she'll never be free, as long as he's alive.
His mind made up, Will stood, turned his back on Jericho, and walked over to Pruitt's body, silently easing the dead man's .9 millimeter into his hand. Jericho was looking down, busying himself with the effort of getting to his feet, asking if they would be taking Pruitt's truck back to the house or heading straight for the border, when Will pointed the gun at his victim's temple.
I'm sorry I had to do this, Will wanted to say, but didn't.
Instead, he pulled the trigger.
Will's aim was true: Jericho was dead before he hit the ground, dead without ever seeing the gun that killed him, dead in less than a second. Yet the shot seemed to echo on and on within Will's soul; he experienced a wave of crushing doubt so powerful it nearly knocked him to his knees.
What had he just done? Had he acted out of love or selfishness? Had he protected Maya or damaged her irrevocably?
Am I her angel or her demon?
Will relied on his training to carry him through what came next. He shut off his confused emotions, blocked out the horror of his actions, and concentrated on arranging the scene so that it appeared Pruitt had kidnapped Jericho, brought him to this deserted spot in order to torture and kill him, but having not reckoned on Jericho carrying his father's pistol, had found himself in a firefight. The authorities would no doubt surmise that Jericho had gotten off two shots before Pruitt fired his own killing round; whatever inconsistencies turned up in the evidence – and Will tried diligently to ensure that those would be few, if any, placing Thomas' gun in Jericho's hand and Pruitt's gun back in his – the FBI agent Joseph had mentioned could take care of them.
It was done. Finished. Time to walk away.
Will did just that, cutting through the short distance through the nighttime woods to where Maya's Jeep waited. On the drive back to her house, he phoned Joseph – it was nearly one-thirty in the morning, but Will's news couldn't wait – and filled him in on what had transpired, including what their FBI asset should conclude about Pruitt and Jericho's falling out.
"Good work, Will," Joseph congratulated him, sounding truly relieved by how his operative had circumvented the potential crisis. "The Partners will be pleased this has all been wrapped up so neatly. And we shouldn't need to make any changes to your asset's status now, I wouldn't think."
Flipping his cell phone shut, Will closed his eyes, trying not to dwell on the possibility that he had just become the kind of man who would kill without hesitation, without remorse, to achieve his own selfish ends. Right or wrong, at least his plan had worked – Maya was safe.
At one time, that knowledge would have been enough – "the ends justify the means" was another one of Will's tried-and-true life philosophies. Strange, he reflected, how falling in love with a woman who refused to see things on such a simple, black-and-white level had made it impossible for him to continue to do so.
The house was dark and silent when he returned. Will crept upstairs, stowing the gun and knife back in his closet; when he looked at the empty bed, however, his mind revolted against lying down on it alone. He knew what awaited him in sleep: dreams, dreams of Jericho dying, of Maya crying, of Jay and Tyler screaming. Dreams of all the pain and suffering he had caused and was yet to cause.
So, based partially on the desire to confirm for Maya that he had been home when her brother was killed (he knew she wouldn't be able to help questioning whether or not he had been involved in Jericho's death, it was only natural given the circumstances) but mostly on the desire to be close to the woman he loved, Will decided not to sleep alone that night. He swiftly changed into the black sweatpants he wore to bed and padded barefoot down the hall to Maya's room, where he found her sleeping soundly and peacefully, blissfully ignorant of the grief that would soon envelope her.
Will eased onto the bed, drawing the covers up around them. Maya stirred when his head hit the pillow. She opened her eyes sleepily, seeming for a moment to think she must have been dreaming.
"Will?" she murmured, stretching out her fingertips to brush his cheek, apparently convincing herself that he was really there. "Is everything okay?"
"Couldn't sleep," Will answered honestly, adding, "Bad dreams."
"Come here."
Maya opened her arms and drew his head down onto her chest. Will stiffened; he knew he did not deserve to be held, to be loved, after the terrible thing he had just done. But he couldn't keep his distance from Maya, not tonight – he was too hollowed-out inside, too desperate for human contact, for Maya.
So he snuggled against her, for one rare moment allowing himself to be vulnerable, to admit that he needed someone else.
Maya stroked his hair, appearing to sense the sorrow in him. "It's okay, Will. Whatever it was, it was just a dream. It's okay."
If only that were true. If only all of this had only been a dream, except for you…
Will gently kissed the underside of Maya's jaw, wanting to comfort her, wishing he could kiss away the hurt she would endure the next day when news of Jericho's death reached her. But the attraction that always sizzled between them was still present, regardless of Will's tortured conscience; the instant his lips touched her skin, he felt a current of electricity move through him. From the way Maya sighed and shifted against him, Will knew she had felt it, too.
You just murdered her brother. You have no right to want her or to be wanted by her…
Will's better nature and better judgment told him to stop, told him that if he had ever needed proof that the world he currently inhabited was not a good or safe place for Maya, shooting her brother in the head in a twisted attempt to protect her from the Partners should have been more than sufficient. For once, though, Will was tired of being strong. He was tired of trying to do the "right thing," whatever that seemed to be at the moment in his morally relativistic world.
He was tired of being a spy. He wanted to be Will, just Will: Will, who loved Maya; Will, whom Maya loved.
Raising himself onto one elbow, Will gazed down into Maya's sleep-hazy eyes. He traced the outline of her lips with his fingertip, savoring the delicious anticipation of a kiss he had been thinking about, dreaming about, for months.
Ever so slowly, he lowered his lips to hers.
It was one long, sweet, lingering kiss that became a series of smaller, hungrier kisses. Maya pressed her flat palms to Will's bare skin and slid her hands down the length of his chest, curling her fingers into the waistband of his pants and urging him closer; Will slipped one hand behind her head, tilting her chin up toward him, coaxing her lips apart with his tongue. She tasted of sleep, of warmth and salt, of passion and need.
Maya made a fierce, hungry sound against his mouth when Will, completely caught up in the kiss and acting according to the dictates of desire, laid his body out over hers. Feeling her slender form molding itself to his, Will nearly lost all self-control right then. Had she been anyone but Maya, the woman he loved more than life itself, he would have given himself over totally to passion.
But, Will told himself, struggling to think clearly, they were not any other couple, free to go wherever their desires carried them. They were still under the Partners' sway, and Will knew he could not afford to forget that entirely if he wanted them both to stay alive.
You've waited this long. You can wait some more.
Sealing Maya's lips in a final, almost bruising kiss, Will tried to memorize the silky-softness of her mouth. Such memories, he knew, would be all he had to carry him through what the new dawn would bring.
Everything he had done since the end of July, Will understood, had been for Maya. He did not expect her to approve of those actions; he hoped against hope she would never learn about most of the things he had done, for Hometown and for them. But what was done was done; regret and remorse did not change the fact that the only way out for either of them was for Will to keep moving them forward. To do so effectively, he needed to remember why he was doing these horrible things – and the memory of his first kiss with Maya, Will knew, would be the best reminder he could ever have.
Maya smiled up at him as he leaned back. Cat-like, she stretched, giving Will a thoroughly scintillating view of her long, bare legs.
"I've been wanting you to do that forever, you know," she fairly purred.
"Yeah?" Will, still a little breathless from their kiss, pushed his guilt aside to enjoy the moment. "Well, I could be persuaded to do it again sometime, I think."
Giggling, Maya challenged, "You think?"
"Okay, okay." Will grinned, some of the heaviness lifting from his soul, even as he knew he was a heartless bastard for allowing himself to be happy after what he had done that night. "I could be persuaded to do that all the time."
"That's more like it. But for now, come to bed."
Maya opened her arms to him again, and Will gratefully sank into them, closing his eyes and reveling in her warmth and softness. He tucked his nose into the side of her neck, shifting so that their bodies were molded together, close as second skin. He wished they could do more than hold one another, of course; he longed to kiss her, touch her, taste her, move inside of her. But for tonight, it was enough for Will to simply to lie in Maya's arms, where he could, for at least a little while, hide from his own demons.