This story is based on the 'Gunsmith Cats' manga by Kenichi Sonoda, with a few elements from the 'Riding Bean' OAV (1989). It is set after the last published manga in English as of March 2005.
Tell me what you thought of it, no matter what you have to say. I'm a big girl. :) I always welcome reader reactions, especially ones that go into detail. Please email me at MmeManga "at" aol dot com (address spelled out because this site strips all email addys and URLS) or leave your comments here.
NOTE: The complete version of this story is housed at my Livejournal, which is linked on my main page on this site. I have removed large sections of chapters Two, Eight and Thirty from the postings here because of the current site rules, although this story existed on the site long before those rules went into effect. I am sorry for any inconvenience to readers; this factor is unfortunately not under my control. The complete version will also be posted at Mediaminer. My former dedicated Gunsmith Cats site no longer exists.
DISCLAIMER: Characters of RALLY VINCENT, BEAN BANDIT, MAY HOPKINS, ROY COLEMAN, KEN TAKI copyright Kenichi Sonoda. All other characters, and story, copyright 2000--2005 by Madame Manga. Contact by email at MmeManga Do not sell or print for sale without the express written permission of the author. Do not archive. Permission is granted to circulate this text in electronic form, free of charge and with this disclaimer and the author's name attached. Do not plagiarize, alter, or appropriate this text in any way. This story is intended for personal entertainment purposes only. No infringement of any copyrights or other rights is intended.
ADULT CONTENT WARNING IN BOLD CAPS!
This story is not for kids or the easily offended. It contains explicit violence and extreme profanity. If you object to reading such things, do not read this story.
Chasing the Dragon
by Madame Manga
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The sunset bathed the tree-covered slopes and rocky coast in beautiful rosy-orange light, but to Rally's eyes the view was ashes and rust.
Bean drove in dead silence, never looking anywhere but directly ahead or over his left shoulder. She might not have existed to him, except for the pain she knew she had caused him. Bean had never meant to use her the way she had used him; she'd assigned the weight of her own sins to him so she wouldn't have to bear them herself. He had carried this for her so long, concealing his own burden. When a man displayed a giant's strength, the whole world only tried to hitch a free ride on his back…
All the way up the winding road that climbed the hill, a heavy consciousness that she had wronged him grew heavier and turned blacker. Rally shrank into a tight, protective ball, gripping her upper arms so hard it hurt. Little Miss Perfect, righteous and well-read and looking down at the whole world from her high horse. Patronizing and dismissing anything and anyone who didn't meet her impossible standards. She'd been far more pleasant and charitable to the man she didn't want than to the only man she had ever imagined wanting.
What she had thought was her greatest mistake of all—asking Bean for his comfort—seemed to her now like her only honest action in all her dealings with him. Whether they meant to or not, together they had brought something almost tangible into existence that night. He knew that much better than she did; he could recognize the truth when he saw it.
Or when the truth filled him with exultation, made him rejoice like a little kid at Christmas just because Rally Vincent had made love with him. And she had pushed him away as far as she could, terrified of that enormous reality.
She had thought she knew what love was. Neediness, slavery to something outside herself that would forever cripple her. An addiction that ate away at mind and body. Her mother and father had loved each other, and each of them, handsome, talented and passionate, had destroyed the other's spirit in the wreckage. Her mother had become a vicious shrew, her father a grim, defeated man, doomed to an existence in the shadows because of his crimes.
Tears crept down Rally's cheeks and she wiped them away, trying to hide them from Bean. All of that misery had been her fault; she had known that since she was three years old. To a young girl, an only child and the focus of their unrestrained battles, love was fear, frantic sobbing, cringing at the foot of the stairs while the two people she adored most in the world tore each other apart.
If she had never been born, maybe her parents would still be happy. And together. Her mother had died hating everything about the husband she was still hooked on, including fifteen-year-old Irene's intense attachment to him. But without a thought he had abandoned his daughter, his protégé, his worshipper, to carry out a savage revenge for his wife's murder.
Though she was gone, he had longed only to follow her, even to the gates of hell. Wasn't that love?
She turned to gaze at the stern profile of the man next to her. He did look a little like her father, didn't he? Tall, broad-shouldered, black-haired. Taciturn, always straight to the point when he did speak, with a deep current underlying his unyielding self-control. Both of them, the most important men in her life, had an enormous capacity for violence—and maybe for a violent kind of love. Something that eclipsed all other considerations: something that led to the point of death and beyond.
Bean had died for her, or the next thing to dying, and for her he had come back from the darkness. Something hot and sharp seemed to penetrate her vitals. Did Bean love her the way her father still loved her mother?
Rally hugged herself even tighter, trying to disappear. If he did, it was all her fault...
But Bean wasn't her father, even if the superficial resemblance might have had something to do with her initial feelings towards him: a mixture of fascination and resentment. Where could she find anyone so steadfast in her defense and support? Rejection after rejection, he still worked to earn her good opinion. What on earth did she think she had to do before she could give the smallest thing to someone who had given her so much? Punish him for the sins of someone else as well as his own? Grind down and destroy the best qualities in him to prove she'd been right all along?
She had her own capacity for striking at the heart of a man, trying to chop him off at the roots just to bring him down with her. That capacity for chilling a man to death, sending bitterness through his blood until he froze to the roots—Rally came by it honestly. She'd tried so hard to be her father's darling, but at heart she knew was her mother's daughter.
For crying out loud, she'd gotten plastered and let someone she'd known for a few weeks get into her pants in a toilet stall! While at the same time she shuddered at the thought of allowing a man who cared for her to return to her not-so-chaste bed. In his hands she had never received anything but passion and warmth. More than that—respect and consideration. And something larger that encompassed all those, something in him that reached out to her and brought her always nearer, to come at last to shelter within the great circle of his arms.
Just short of the city limits, the Corvette stopped at a red light.
Believing she was about to breathe her last in the dead grasp of Sylvester Brown had hurt her less than the look on Bean's face right now. How could blankness speak so plainly? Yet still holding firm under every passing mood was the bedrock of his nature: a primal strength and deep intelligence she knew she barely comprehended. Which she didn't deserve, but he had given to her anyway, the most precious thing ever put into her hands. Which she had come to depend on in a way so profound that at the thought of losing him her breath suddenly came painfully, like stabs to her very center.
"I'm sorry, Bean." The words fell into her lap like stones. "I've treated you like crap, and it's all my fault. I was afraid. I'm a coward. You don't want me—I'd cut your balls off in an instant if I could. I AM a bitch." She smothered a sob and hung her head low. "You should have told me so before. I knew it anyway. I guess I would have denied it and called you names. But at least you'd be rid of me."
The sob would not be suppressed. Rally put one hand to her forehead and dug it into her hair with a painful grip. "Dear God, Bean…it would take a thousand years to say everything I ought to say to you. You know better than anyone just how stupid I've been. I'm sorry."
He took the turn without speaking and headed up towards 19th Avenue. Daring a glance at his face while he concentrated on the next left, she saw his windblown hair haloed in the last rays of the sun, an aureole around his face. A strange image, but one that shot the lesson home like an arrow to her heart. Bean turned his eyes to her and slowed in the heavy traffic on 19th. It took him a moment to form his lips around what he meant to say.
"Guess you an' me got a few things in common, then."
He couldn't mean that he was a coward too. What could ever frighten Bean Bandit?
"Rally…Irene…I…well, that's just words. I'm not mad, OK? Not really. Not like I was when I thought you stole that money." He shifted his posture a little in his seat. "You don't owe me nothing on that score or any other."
"You don't owe me anything either."
"Nah, that's not so. But I don't want to get rid of you, woman." He closed his eyes and smiled ruefully. "I can't do that anyhow. Just treat me like a man. That's all any man can ask."
She nodded slowly. "Thank you, Bean."
"No problem." He shook his head and let out a deep breath.
"You know…"
"What, sweetheart?"
"I had a big speech prepared. For when I saw you again after the rescue—I thought about it for days. It was all about how wonderful and brave you were, and how grateful I am for what you did for me, and for Larry and Agent Bui. I am grateful—I've never been more grateful to anyone. But I wonder if I ever would have said it to you even if you'd shown up at the hospital as soon as I was able to talk. I might have been looking for an excuse not to. I know I was looking for an excuse when I decided to get mad at you just now."
"That so? Well, I ain't surprised." Bean smiled slightly. "Like you said, I've learned somethin' about you."
"Yes." Rally fiddled with her hands. "Um…well, they have your Buff in crates in the FBI evidence warehouse. It wasn't just the fire damage—May kind of blew it up some more with a grenade. While throwing it at 426, that is. Did you hear...?"
"Yeah, that bang carried pretty well. I figured that had to be her, though I wasn't sure why she'd hauled out the artillery."
"I'm glad she was there and on her toes. I didn't have much left in me. It didn't look like you did either."
"Yeah, I might've been more shell-shocked than I knew." He made a face. "Didn't realize ol' Four got out of the fire with us till I heard it later. Shouldn't've been a stretch to figure out it was his crazy ass ridin' in my trunk that screwed up the landing. He almost got us fried, though I dunno if that was what he was after." Bean glanced at her. "But I guess he decided that was how he wanted to go after all."
Rally gave a little shivering twitch.
"Vincent?"
"It's a funny thing to say about a psychopathic murderer, but in some ways he was a lot more than that." She rubbed her arms for warmth. The sun had gone and the evening breeze was coming up. "He handed me his Sig and called me a worthy opponent. I'm not sure why I even care that a Triad assassin decided he approved of me in some weird respect. I turned the gun over to the FBI for ballistics analysis—it's not like I wanted a memento of that guy. But I don't need anything to remind me." She pulled in her lips and glanced up at the sky. "I don't think I'm ever going to forget watching him fly through that wall of flame."
Bean chuckled. "Not like I wanted to stick around with every cop in the city coming down, but I kinda wish I had. Must've been a sight."
"Yes, well…are you all right, Bean? I finally figured out why your voice was so bad last night. It was just like mine while I was in the hospital. You sound much better today, though."
"Yeah, I dumped my cigs." Bean made a self-deprecating shrug. "Damn cough kept coming back whenever I took a drag. Didn't want to put two and two together, but it was getting too obvious to ignore."
"That's right. You haven't lit up once all afternoon." Rally's brows went up. "Is it permanent?"
"I dunno. Just thought I'd knock off on the cancer sticks for a while and see how it goes. Might buy a pack or two by accident."
"Whatever it takes." She smiled.
When they neared Golden Gate Park in the bright traffic stream of white and red lights, the dusk gathering under the trees, she turned to him again.
"Can I ask you a really personal question? I mean, another one?"
"What you want to know?"
"There's just one thing—other than money, I mean—that seems to be able to get right under your skin. Every time it turns up, whether for real or just in talk, you go nuclear. Can you tell me why you hate it so much? I mean…the whole subject…of rape."
A dreadful wave of emotion passed over his face. The car actually wandered into the next lane before he jerked the wheel straight again. A couple of drivers honked peevishly at him, but Bean only stared at her. "Christ, woman. Why the hell you want to know that?"
"Be-because it's important. To you, I mean." She had a horrific thought—that he spoke from some kind of experience. How young had he been when he hit the streets? "That's why you felt you had to s-say what you said to Roy and the agents, and…I guess I can understand that. If you c-can't tell me why, I'll understand that too. I wanted you to know…that I care about that. What's important to you."
Once again he pulled to the right, took a small side road into the park forest and stopped the car away from the few streetlights. No one was around, and the city seemed suddenly to have vanished behind ranks of tall trees. In the growing darkness she had a little trouble reading Bean's face.
"'Scuse me. I got to get out for a sec." He pushed himself up and swung his legs over the door. Rally couldn't tell what he meant until he walked into the bushes and unzipped his fly with his back to her. All right, he'd had a lot of beer. When he returned, he stood in front of the Corvette with his hands in his pockets, obviously thinking something over.
"Let's clear one thing up. It never happened to me, you got that?"
She couldn't help a smile of relief. "I understand."
"But I ain't so sure you want to know the answer."
"I don't know. That's…really up to you."
He turned at a slight angle away from her and was silent for a little while. "Once or twice you as good as called me that to my face."
"I know. I'm sorry. I realized it was a sore spot and I wanted to jab you where it hurt. There aren't all that many ways to get to you, you know..."
"More'n you think. I ain't going to advertise 'em."
"That's probably wise. But please, Bean, I never really thought you—" She pushed up in her seat as well and jumped out of the car.
"Yeah, yeah." He waved a hand at the trees and lawns around them. "I think this joint closes at sundown, and I sure don't want to meet any cops right now...for the sake of the cops, that is. But the hell with it—I gotta take a walk."
"Do you want me to come with you?"
"Yeah, whatever. I'm not leavin' you here on yer own anyway."
They chose a path that led through the trees and walked slowly by necessity, since there were no lights and the darkness was now thick. But the path was smooth and fairly straight, so they covered a reasonable distance in fifteen minutes. Emerging from the forest, they walked past a statue on a high pedestal and found a bench to sit on. Bean leaned back with his hands behind his head, looking at the sky.
A few stars had come out, more than she usually saw in San Francisco because of the city lights and the fog. But this night was clear as crystal, and the park was a wide slice of manicured wilderness in the middle of the city. She didn't know any constellations well enough to name them, but invented her own from the points of light she could see. A chilly wind blew over the grass, and Rally edged closer to Bean until she felt the aura of his warmth. He seemed aware of her nearness, but did nothing about it. His features were almost invisible now.
Perhaps he had been waiting for the darkness to hide him, because he cleared his throat. "You're asking me a lot of questions today, lady."
"Yes, I am. Maybe that's a good sign."
"Could be." He drew several deep breaths, reinforcing himself, and planted his hands on the bench to each side of his thighs, making a fence of his arms. She heard the wood creak under his grip. "You wanted to know why I beat the shit out've anybody who tries to do a rape."
"You don't have to tell me, Bean. It's OK." She reached up and touched his shoulder. "I know you're doing it for the right reasons."
He ground his teeth so hard she heard them rasp. "You know that, do you?"
"What?" Her skin prickled all over.
"That's right. That's why I'd like to kill any guy that pulls that sort of thing." Bean held his breath, let it out. "Because I did it once, that's why."
"You—did it once?"
"I helped rape a girl," said Bean with deliberation, as if wanting to make sure she understood him. "Sixteen years ago, almost, and I've never forgotten the way she cried, and I've never done it again." He took another deep, shaking breath and sagged forward, elbows on his knees and his hands locked together before him.
Rally felt a strange cold calm, the blood seeming to drain out of her heart. "You must…have been a teenager."
"Yeah. I was fifteen and even stupider than that sounds."
"That's pretty young to do something like that. There were other people with you?"
"Some other guys, yeah."
"Friends of yours?"
"No."
"Then what...?"
Bean was silent.
"Bean...this m-may not be something you want to give me details about. But if you don't tell me something, it's going to be pretty hard not to fill in the rest from my—"
"Go ahead." His voice stung her. "You already know how it went. You know how my whole damn life went. I'm just some bag of meat with a pair of fists and a dick. I don't have any rep or any rules or even half a spoonful of brains. There ain't any other way I could operate but like the dirtiest scumbag you ever hauled into jail. That's the kind of man you know best, I figure."
"That's not true. You know Roy. You've even met my father. I don't believe that men are dirt! I don't believe that you're—"
"Then fill it in from there, woman." He straightened up and stiffened his shoulders. "What the hell do you want from me? You keep asking me to slice my fucking guts out and hand 'em to you! Do I got to cut myself to bits before you think you know me good enough?"
"Bean, I have to drag even the smallest things out of you with a team of wild horses. You want something that's pretty darn important to ME, but you hate it when I ask for anything that might shed a little light on you. Just for instance, you've never even told me your real name!" Oh, that was a cheap shot…
He gave a disgusted snarl. "I use the one that fits me. It don't matter what's on a piece of paper somewhere."
He was right—paper meant nothing. But she ached to hear this from him: anything at all. "But why that name? How did you get it and what's your theory on how it fits you? How am I supposed to learn anything about you unless you tell me? Bean, I want to know!"
"How about how I do things? Don't that tell you anything?"
"You mean like walking off with half a million dollars? With TWELVE million dollars? Like running me and May off the road and threatening Larry just to see him shake? What kind of character can I build out of that?"
"Pretty Larry, huh? You like admirin' a nice wax 'n' polish job, is that it?"
"Like I'm too blind to see anything beyond that? Speaking of the fanciest wax job I've ever seen, would you kindly recall that I threatened to shoot off Sly Brown's balls?"
Bean huffed and sat back hard.
"You do seem to be trying to make a good impression on me today, Bean. Dusting off your best manners and letting me drive your drop-dead gorgeous L-88? Sure, that's a lot better than getting drunk at someone else's party and being about as nasty as you can manage without actually inflicting permanent physical harm. But civilized behavior for one afternoon isn't going to make any difference to how I think about you, and you know it."
For about ten minutes, the silence was deafening. Bean got up and walked out into the meadow. She saw him as a tall dark shape in the lighter grass, pacing back and forth under the stars. He came back again and stood near her, his posture tense and defensive.
Finally he began to speak in a low voice, flat and emotionless, staring straight ahead at the dim bronze figure by the path. His sentences came in uneven lengths, with long halts between many phrases as if he had to gather his strength for each detail of recollection.
"It was August of '83. Real hot night and a lot of trouble going down. I didn't know these guys. I might've seen 'em around before but I didn't know their names. I caught a ride with 'em when my car threw a rod drag-racing, and it was a Saturday night and we were all drunk as hell. I had a six-pack of Bull in me at least. Four of us in all, and I think the guy with the car was about twenty-five—I was the youngest, but I didn't look it. I was a beanpole when I was still in grade school. Not a whole lot of meat on me back then, but I could already bust up guys a few years older."
His voice died out in a whisper and he paused a long time before resuming. Rally sat motionless, willing herself not to scream or cry or run away from him no matter what she heard next. She had asked him for this. God, she had asked for it…
"We saw a girl walking along the road and we stopped and got her in the car, in the back seat, and the two back there ripped all her clothes off and took turns at her while the other guy drove and I sat in the front and watched it happen. I didn't do nothing to stop it and I didn't say nothing to stop it. She was crying like hell and she puked on the seats, and they wiped it up with her shirt and kept going. They raped her, they made her suck 'em, they beat her till her eyes were swelled shut and one of 'em did it to her in the ass."
Rally nearly threw up herself. She rocked back and forth on the bench with her hands clamped to her mouth, dizzy and sick, feeling the pain and tragedy of that night in Bean's dry, dull intonation. How many times had he repeated this to himself with no one to hear?
"They switched drivers at a light and the guy who owned the car worked her over some more. The other guys sat there laughing an' drinking beer and callin' it like a wrestling match. Then they said there was some left and it was my turn now, and I got in the back seat, but it smelled like puke and she was a mess and I wasn't feeling as horny as I thought I was supposed to, so I just kinda fooled around with her a little and quit. We dumped her out of the car behind an all-night gas station and took off."
"Oh."
"That's the whole goddamn story. Shoot my balls off, bounty hunter." He put his index finger to his head and cocked the hammer with his thumb. "You want to know anything else?"
"How old was she?"
"A kid. Maybe a year older'n me. Probably a runaway too."
"What did you do to her? You, not them."
"Felt her up, mostly. Her chest. That was about the only part of her that wasn't covered with blood. Or somethin' else."
She might have heard of this kind of thing from Roy or other cops; a gang-rape with a reluctant participant. But she'd never heard of such a violent one in such close quarters that didn't involve every attacker to the maximum degree of his ability. Could a young teenager really have avoided being swept up in the brutality of the mob? "That's all? You didn't...?"
"You don't have to believe me if you don't want to. It's not like it makes all that much difference—I was there. But no. I didn't rape her."
She did believe him, however unlikely it seemed. "Did you get a charge out of it?"
"I got kind of turned on watching, at first." His voice thickened with sullen shame. "Then they started smacking her around and calling her a slut and telling her she wanted it, and when that guy butt-fucked her she was screaming and begging him to stop 'cause it hurt so much, and she started bleeding down her legs. Made me freakin' sick."
Rally nearly fell from her seat, into a cold dark fog of her own making. "And when you touched her? Did you like that?"
"No damn fun at all. I'd made it with some gals already and it'd been a whole lot friendlier and I couldn't figure out why these guys thought this was such a great way to do it. They were watching me and eggin' me on to do just what they did. I put my hands on her but I just didn't have the balls to..." Bean forced a hard breath through his teeth, something like a sob. "I knew she was hurt because by then she just laid there moaning and didn't even try to fight me. I grabbed her clothes and gave 'em back to her but I knew that wasn't going to help."
He slowly wiped his face with one hand. "I felt like…like somebody a lot bigger'n me was staring me right in the eyes and all the way through to the back of my head, and I didn't like that one bit."
"Do you know what happened to her?"
"Nope. Never saw those guys again either."
"You remember that pretty well, Bean. Do you think about it a lot?"
"Once in a while."
"I see." She felt cold, gray, lost. Who was this strange man standing here in the dark? Why was he telling her this terrible story?
"Look, Vincent, I knew it was a shit thing to do, even if I didn't know what to do to stop it or even that I should do something to stop it. It took me a few years before I got it through my head just how shit it was. Every time I spot anything like that going on, I see red. I don't know how many times I've kicked ass on punks who were up to the same kind of crap. It don't make up for that girl and it never will. I wish somebody had stomped me into dogmeat for going along on that ride." His voice cracked and went rough. "I should've done something to stop 'em, and I didn't."
She seemed to recognize him again, a little. "Three against one? What do you think you could have done?"
"You think that matters a damn, Vincent?" His tone was harsh, but she could have sworn he was crying. "I didn't have to get in that back seat with her. I could have said no thanks."
"Why didn't you? Were you afraid they'd beat you up too?"
He turned his head to the side, and then lowered it. "Naw." His voice fell quiet so that she had to strain to hear. "I was afraid...they'd laugh at me."
Oh, God. A shudder went over her, but it was equal parts horror and sympathy. He'd been a boy, not a man. A child trapped in a nightmare, knowing he couldn't escape what was happening to that girl, and believing he couldn't show any sign of weakness to the filthy scumbags responsible. Could it be right to imagine there were two actual victims of this crime? Suddenly she realized just how much of a child Bean had been; he hadn't corrected this old memory with new information, just as he hadn't done the math when he had told her how he'd received his facial scar.
Rally cleared her tightened throat. "Did they laugh at you for not raping her?"
"Some. But I think they figured I didn't want to be fourth in line—like goin' first was some kinda freakin' prize. That guy got her cherry and he was whoopin' and hollerin' about it while she was crying buckets. God, I hate hearing women cry."
"Good God, Bean." Chills ran down her neck. "Is that why you stopped the first time we had sex? When I told you I was a virgin?"
Bean let his head roll back and lowered it again, blowing out his cheeks with a noisy puff of air. "Yeah, partly. I guess."
"Partly?"
He shrugged and made a low sound, like a farewell to an unattainable delusion. "Surprised the livin' shit out of me that a hard-boiled gal like you would still have it. I figured anyone who'd rent a room with a guy would have to know the whole score and not give a damn. Didn't realize even when you got so antsy that it was the other way round. Then when you told me, it all made sense, I felt like a damn fool, and I had to get the hell out of that bed."
"So you never slept with a virgin before me?"
Bean gave a dry, humorless chuckle, then another.
"OK. Dumb question…"
"I never messed around with any girl who knew her firearms that well. I was awake half the night regrettin' I'd ever had a dirty thought in my head. The other half I spent worrying about whether I'd got you mad enough to call the whole thing off or just leave me with a bullet up my ass by way of farewell."
"I might have at that."
"Well, there you go."
"All right, Bean. Thank you for telling me that. It's horrible, but it explains a lot." Sympathy, yes. She could feel sympathy for that child along with her sorrow for that nameless girl. But the massive presence of the grown man still seemed oppressive.
"Yeah, maybe." Quiet, fatalistic—he thought she had written him off for good.
Had she? Rally wondered if she could ever bear to let him touch her again. Bean wandered off a little way and leaned on the pedestal of the bronze statue. Barely visible, his face was a pale shape in the gloom. He glanced at the insensible figure above him, lowered his head and scuffed one boot at the earth. Turning, he put his back against the pedestal and stared out into the meadow, arms folded.
Perhaps he would have liked always to have been as unbending as metal and granite, an incorruptible image of himself. Had she made him believe that was what she wanted? No, he was flesh and blood: fallible, wounded. Like herself.
And he had just given her the rock she needed. An indelible piece of his character, rooted deep in his past, scarred on his heart. The filth he had lived in so long had not truly stained him; he had an instinctive sense of right and a conscience so stern he could never leave a debt of any kind unpaid. She knew she had no idea what he had suffered for so many of his twenty-nine years. It wasn't fair of her to punish him for something for which he had already excoriated himself to the bone.
Rally got up and approached Bean halfway. His face tilted towards her.
"Bean, I…I don't actually think worse of you for it—"
"Yeah, you had your mind made up about me already." He looked away.
"That isn't what I meant." Warmth began to wake in her heart again. "You made a bad mistake, but you learned from it. And you've brought that lesson home to some other people who needed the benefits. You saved May from something like that. I know she's grateful, and so am I." To emphasize the point, she walked up to him and put her arms around him from the side.
When she laid her cheek against his coat, Bean took a deep breath. Rally held him with a strange sense of comfort: both from him and from her. As if he were an almost-grown boy who still needed his mother's hugs once in a while.
"Bean...if you hadn't been there, if you hadn't put the brakes on the whole thing, it might have become even worse for that girl. They might have kept on beating her and doing...anything. They might have taken her somewhere she wouldn't be found and left her there to die. Were you the one who told them to drop her off in a place where someone could help her?"
Bean made a faint shrug. "I guess."
"You were a kid with no one looking out for you. They were the scum of the earth, and they were trying to teach you to be just like them. You didn't learn that. You've never learned that."
"I dunno." His arm moved out to encircle her, then dropped to his side. "I'm always going to remember that I joined in. It's always ridin' along in my back seat..."
The bedrock of him, firm under her feet, warm and strong in her arms. "I guess it should. It's probably always going to stay there." She stepped back and brushed her hair out of her face.
"Yeah." He straightened and looked down at her. She wished she could see his eyes. "No one ever said doin' the right thing was going to be comfortable."
"That's so true it's not funny. There's one more thing you ought to take into consideration, though."
"What?"
"You weren't fifteen in 1983. You were thirteen."
"Shit, that's right." Bean shook his head. "Thirteen?"
"So can't you chalk at least some of it up to youth?"
He shook his head again. "Not all of it."
"Well, I suppose only babies can get away with anything."
He snorted. "Mostly 'cause they can't do anything anyway."
Rally laughed with a shaky overtone, her stomach finally untwisting from its knots. She fished a tissue out of her purse and wiped her eyes, then blew her nose. How she had kept from sobbing outright she had no idea. But she was glad she hadn't inflicted that on him.
"Vincent…" Bean began.
"I forgive you. Not on that girl's behalf—that's not in my power. Only God can do that, I think. You're going to have to ask that on your own."
"Yeah?" He looked up at the stars. "Think I did that already. Lots of times."
"You don't believe you've been forgiven?"
"I dunno. I felt like I had to earn it somehow."
"By beating up anyone you saw doing the same thing? Bean, don't you know what forgiveness means? It's something you don't earn but that you receive anyway. If you had to buy it, it wouldn't be forgiveness; it would be a business transaction."
"Huh." Bean scratched the back of his neck. "Guess I like to keep the scales even."
"But that doesn't work with something you can't pay back!"
He laughed with cynical humor. "Most things you can, darlin'. One way or another." The path lay a little way from them, and Rally followed Bean when he turned to walk in the direction of the car.
"Oh good grief." She laughed a little—there was his philosophy in a nutshell. "It all comes down to money for you?"
"Not everything."
"You know, Pete Smith said something. Right after you had come back to life in the hospital. He asked if that didn't wipe the slate clean."
Bean grunted, inquiring but not derisive, and Rally continued, frowning in thought, trying to pierce a veil she had once thought she saw through, if only for a moment. "Maybe that's what…I…I asked if you could have a second chance. While I thought you were dead."
"Another chance?" Here under the trees he was almost invisible to her.
"I wasn't thinking about another chance at life. Just a chance to ask for forgiveness, before…that was all. Before it was too late. I thought…that you were capable of that."
"Like how I asked you to forgive me?"
"Maybe. Somehow I got a lot more than I asked for, I think. Bean…where were you while you weren't breathing?"
"Dunno." He wandered a little farther ahead on the path, though he didn't seem to mean it as a brush-off. "Dreaming, I think. Old dreams I used to have."
"It seemed like you were in the past while you were delirious."
"Yeah, I guess." He chuckled in the dark. "Probably blabbed about all kinds of stuff, huh?"
"Some, yes. But as far as I'm concerned, the slate was wiped clean, OK? I'm glad you felt able to confess…that…to me, and I promise I won't keep looking in that back seat—blaming you for your past, I mean. When I think about what O'Toole and his friends might have done to me, you look as innocent as a newborn baby."
Bean fell silent and remained thoughtful for a while as they neared the car. She noticed something moving around it and tugged on Bean's sleeve. He stopped with her just under the eaves of the trees and looked.
Two men were examining the Corvette, one holding a flashlight. They certainly weren't cops. The man with the flashlight climbed in and started trying to pry a panel free from the dash.
Rally drew her CZ75 and got her tactical light out of her purse. "But it's your car, of course, so after you." She gestured with the muzzle of her gun.
Bean chuckled quietly. "Ladies first."
"Now honestly. Do you see any ladies around here?"
"If ya put it that way, then I guess not." He chuckled again. "Just as well."
They walked forward; the car thieves spun around at their approach. The one behind the wheel aimed the light at them. "Hey, fuck off if you know what's good for you!"
Rally leveled her gun and clicked on her own high-power light, which made the flashlight look like a match flame. "Nope, don't feel like it."
The thieves shielded their eyes. "Hey, bitch! Turn that fucking thing off!" The one behind the wheel jumped out and drew a knife, trying to dodge the bright white beam. Rally tracked their every move with both gun and light. The steady green dots of the luminous sights tracked along with them.
"Gosh, this is such a nice new toy." She giggled while circling to keep them in view. "Thanks, guys! I was just itching to see how these cool night sights test out under field conditions."
"Call your dibs, sweetheart." Bean cracked his knuckles. "I'm gettin' impatient here."
"Oh, I'll take the guy with the knife. I promise not to damage that gorgeous car, but I'm afraid a little blood and gristle may get spattered on the finish when I blow out his kneecaps. What do you want to do with yours? Break his legs, or fracture his spine?"
"I dunno. Let's see what I feel like when I get my hands on him." Bean chuckled. "No, I got it—I'll break his legs, then I'll throw him up in the air as far as I can, and you see if you can plug him before he hits the ground."
"Ooh, I like your way of thinking. Extra points if I call the shot?" She flicked off the safety.
The thieves dropped the flashlight with a smash and ran for it.
Bean and Rally got into the Corvette together, laughing in comradely fashion, and Bean drove out. "Penny for 'em," she said when they had reached the main road and she could see Bean's thoughtful face in the streetlights.
"Innocent as a baby, huh?" He smiled to himself.
"Well, that was just a metaphor."
"Naw, I was thinking about those dreams of mine."
"What do you mean?"
Bean made an odd face, as if he wasn't sure himself. "Well, ol' Coleman picked me up out've that parking lot, I guess. Some assholes dumped me like trash, or maybe I ran off 'cause they weren't treatin' me so well. But before that." He paused. "That's when somebody took care of me, when I was a baby. Kinda hard to imagine..."
Rally felt a peculiar warmth steal through her. "Somebody?" She bit her lip, hoping he wouldn't clam up. But something in him seemed to have thawed entirely, if only for the occasion, and she could feel no barrier at all between them.
"You said somebody adopted me right after I was born."
"Yes. Bean...I have Brown's file on you."
"You do? How the hell'd you get it?" Bean stared at her and made a right turn without looking at the road.
"He gave it to the FBI, and...uh...May and I stole it from them."
He smiled in genuine amusement. "You read it? Then you already know what some paper-jockey in the state kid warehouse named me."
"Uh, I guess…but you're right. That's not your real name."
"Huh?"
"Your parents would have named you first. Your adoptive parents."
"Parents?" There was an odd tone to that. He wasn't about to blow up at her for venturing on the subject the way he had at Brown, was he? "What's that thing got in it about…them?"
"Well…there was a picture in there...of a woman and a baby. She's holding a baby boy."
"...Me?" Bean had trouble getting the word out.
"I don't know for sure. There wasn't any information with the photo. But the baby has black hair and he's big and husky. He looks happy."
"Could be me, huh?"
"Well, it is in his folder. It seems logical...that it is you. Bean, you know...when we get back to my hotel, come up to my room, and I'll give that folder to you. There just isn't any point in anyone else having it."
"Thanks," he said, with a smile that threatened to disintegrate into something else. "That's solid of ya."
"It's nothing."
"Lot more than that, Vincent. Somethin' like...a piece of my memory. Some of my life that I don't know about. That's a thing anybody'd want to have." He stopped at a light.
"Do you have any memory...?"
"You asked me that once before."
Yes, she had, and he'd told her to stay out of his head. "Sorry...I don't mean to..."
"It's OK. I thought about it since then. You got me started thinkin', and I do remember something...or else it's a dream I had again. I'm not sure."
"Will you tell me? Maybe I can confirm something."
"There was a woman..." Bean began. "Naw, it's not a memory. It's just a feeling."
"What feeling?"
"She held me...she picked me up out've my bed and took me downstairs and gave me something to eat. She was kind of sad, but she smiled when she was around me."
"Sad?"
"Yeah. Like, slow and tired, and when she smiled at me I knew she was happy, but there was somethin' sad about her that never really went away."
"Was she sick?" Rally's voice was small and almost whispering.
"Maybe. I'm just a tiny kid in this dream, or whatever it is. I don't know from nothin', but I can feel what she's feelin' like she's inside my head. I can see her too—her face. I think her eyes were blue." He smiled as if he had found something precious he had misplaced for a long time. "She sang to me...yeah, I was in her lap and she was rocking her chair and singing. Somebody came and took me off her because I was too heavy for her to lift any more."
Rally put a hand over her mouth. The light changed and the car moved forward.
"I dunno. It's all run together into one thing. Like one day, but it's got to be months. I know she got sadder and stayed in bed all the time. I crawled up in the bed with her and I fell asleep. When I woke up she was gone. Nobody told me where she was and I was too little to ask." His mouth worked oddly, a silent call to someone who didn't answer. "She didn't come back."
The lump in her throat was difficult to speak around. "That doesn't sound like someone who beat you and abandoned you."
"Sound like anything in that folder?"
"Your adoptive mother died from cancer when you were two and a half years old." Rally started crying, suddenly, sharply, and Bean looked at her in shock.
"Hey there, woman! What'd I say?"
"Not...not your fault," she gasped into her hands. She pulled her face back under control and rapidly wiped the tears away. "I just got sentimental all of a sudden—sorry."
"Gettin' sentimental over me? Things are lookin' up." Bean chortled, and Rally blushed.
"Um...oh...I just...well, I think you're on to something. The woman in the picture has dark hair, and it does look like she has blue eyes—it's in black and white. You'll just have to look at it." They pulled into the hotel's parking garage. "Do you really want to leave your car here?"
"Ahh, it's just for a few minutes. Fuzz won't make me that quick, not in this podunk town." He grinned, parked the car and went to the elevator with her.
Bean took the folder from her as if it would burn him. "You read it, huh?"
"I skimmed it. I wanted to corroborate the things Brown told me, but aside from that…well, I guess I was already thinking of it as yours. Some of it seems pretty obscure. If you study it maybe you can add it all up. I think a lot of what Brown found out he never wrote down."
"Figures." He opened it gingerly and laid it out on her table. "Where's that photograph?"
"The mother and child?" She flipped through the contents and found it.
Bean picked it up reverently, holding it in both hands as if it were fragile. "Dunno if that's me. Babies all kind of look the same." He put it flat on the table to study it.
"Well...now that I look at it again..." It was him. No question about it. Something about the set of the features, the strong personality budding in the robust little body. Rally put a finger to her lips, a tremulous smile forming.
Bean touched the baby's face with one finger, then moved it to the woman's hair. For a long time he said nothing, staring at the mother's face with the look of a lost child. Rally moved a few steps away and looked out the window.
What was it about this photograph? The mother's obvious love, or the fact that it had only existed for a little while after the picture had been taken? The baby's happy trust in her love, his expectation that it would always be like this, his life filled with cuddles and kisses and meals and toys? How cruelly that child had been disappointed.
Tears threatened again and Rally shook her head to suppress them, not knowing for whom she wanted to mourn. A child who no longer existed? An adult who barely recalled feeling real love for another human being? He remembered his mother, somewhere in the deepest recesses of his mind and heart, and now he could learn what her name had been. He had a photograph of her face.
Finally Bean closed the folder and put it back in the zipperlock bag. "Thanks, Vincent. You…you're a good pal, you know that? A hell of a lot better than I deserve." He sighed and tucked the folder under his arm.
"Oh, bullshit." She smiled at him. "You said once…you didn't want to know this stuff, if it came from Brown."
"It don't come from him. He didn't make it and it wasn't his to give. Nothin' he bought with his dough was his for real, though he did his best to get his sleaze all over it and make it like it was his. You're the one's giving this thing to me now. That makes it as clean as clean."
"Oh…now, I'm no angel, Bean. You just told me that in no uncertain terms!"
"You don't got to be any angel. All you got to be is Rally Irene Vincent."
Something rose in his eyes, so quickly there and gone that she had no time to evaluate it. It occurred to her again that she had no photographs of Bean, that indeed she had never even seen one aside from the unrecognizable face on his false driver's license. The closest thing she had to a picture was the composite drawing stuffed in her suitcase, and there was nothing in the eyes on the paper that she had not put there herself.
If his eyes would only speak for his soul…and if she could somehow catch the expression before he suppressed it. He didn't even know he was doing it, did he? An automatic guard against exposing any possible weakness...
"Guess I better split, huh? Gettin' late and you haven't had your dinner."
"I guess so. But I'm not hungry at all, not after that lunch, so I don't think I'll go out or anything…"
He didn't take the hint, heading through the entryway and opening the door. "Figure I'm goin' back home tomorrow bright and early. Hit the highway for the mountains and head straight into the sunrise for a while."
So they wouldn't meet along the way. She had spun an idle fantasy about an encounter on the road, maybe somewhere in the Midwest, stopping at the same motel by chance. May wouldn't be traveling with her any more, and she would offer to share her room with him and then replay that whole scene, but with a different ending. Well, that wasn't going to happen now…
"So are we." Rally trailed after him into the entryway. "I mean, we're leaving, but we're going south, of course, and I was thinking we'd leave this evening, but I don't know. It keeps slipping later and later. Maybe I'll just, um, sleep over one more night." Her cheeks warmed, her heart fluttered. Please let him ask me, right now, let him hold me and kiss me and say that he—
Bean paused just outside her room with his hand still on the doorknob. "Yeah? Well, there's something I guess I still got to do before I go."
"What's that?" Rally leaned against the door frame a few feet from him, praying for the courage to ask him to stay a little longer. A little longer was much the same thing as asking him to stay all night…and what would he think? He might even refuse. How did you tell a man he was welcome without making it look like either a tease or a demand? She'd never wanted to know so badly. Bean had seemed so reachable and open, even vulnerable, while he told her his memories. Give him the refuge he needed, the corporeal love he wanted, and soothe her own longing for him. After that, who knew?
"I got an obligation to pay off. To you."
"Hmm?"
Bean looked down, then up. "I owe you something important. You gave it to me and it's gone now. You know what I mean. I can't give it back to you. But maybe I can make it up in kind. I still got a debt in regard to you and I don't like carryin' debts."
Rally flinched and held up a hand. "Please, not that one again. It was bad enough when you were bleeding to death! Don't talk to me as if you owe me money!"
"I owe you some respect, Vincent. Don't slam it!"
"Respect?"
"Damn straight. You got a helluva lot more honor than I showed you, and that's still eatin' me. I tried apologizin', but it ain't ever come out right. Figures, since I went wrong the first time runnin' off my mouth. You said you forgave me, but I didn't earn that nohow. One more thing to wipe off that slate before it's clean." Bean wedged his hip against the open door and folded his arms.
"Is that…why you stayed in San Francisco so long? Even after you had paid off every cent of the money you owed me and nearly been killed helping me out? Because…"
"Well, sure it was." He shrugged as if this should be obvious. "Like you said, it can't get settled in money. An' I know you still got that thing on my tab. You taxed me with it just last night."
"I did?"
"You that drunk when you said it? You'd lost something and you couldn't give it to the guy who wanted to marry you. What the hell else did ya mean?"
"Um…uh…" Oh, nothing in particular. Only her heart. How much did that weigh on his scales?
"Look, I told ya I wanted to pay this whole thing off. Doesn't seem to me like that's taken care of yet, no matter what I've done. That's just 'cause I haven't done the right thing. I always knew how I was gonna have to do it, I guess. I tried before and you weren't having any of it. No wonder, 'cause I didn't go about it right and I didn't explain my intentions. So I'm askin' you straight out to let me take care of it once and for all."
"How, exactly?"
"In kind, like I said. Let me...do it again, and do it right this time." He nodded into the room and towards her bed. "I promise you, I'll pay off that debt."
Bean's expression, cool and businesslike, betrayed nothing that acknowledged what he had just proposed.
"What?"
"C'mon, Vincent. I got to spell that out?"
She snapped her head up and stared him right in the eyes. This was just a gambit, wasn't it? He couldn't possibly mean this the way it sounded!
He tilted his face and raised his brows at her. The unconscious barrier he'd lowered for a little while separated them again like a wall of steel; Bean had regained his equilibrium and simultaneously his full professional armor. All vestige of vulnerability was gone as if it had never been.
Rally's mouth opened and closed for a few seconds before she could speak. "Let me…get this…straight." Her voice was a high squeak. "Because you took—no, because I gave you my virginity, which is not much more than a negative state anyway, and because you said a few nasty things regarding the act immediately afterwards, you think you still owe me something? And this peculiar sense of honor you cultivate can only be appeased by making lo—by having sex with me again in such a way that I won't hate you...when you leave. Is that it?"
"Close enough."
"But…but…you don't…" Her throat closed. That was it? A handshake deal over her body? Compensation for a fragment of broken tissue? "You don't want…?"
"What?"
"Any reason at all that I should agree to this...exercise?" Rally felt her face turn hot. God, she'd been ready to melt into his arms! "Seems to me that the main person to benefit from it would be YOU. You've got this nagging sense of guilt you'd like to get rid of, and as one minor point in the transaction, you'd get to sleep with me."
"Well—" Something might have been trying to struggle to the surface under Bean's air of self-command, but she was too upset for analysis.
"So where do I sign? Do we need it notarized? Should my lawyer go over the contract to see if there are any clauses that mention MY feelings?"
"You tellin' me you don't feel it too?"
"Feel what?"
"Kind of a black cloud followin' me around ever since it happened. I think you're standing under it too. I know it's there because I can feel it, and because I can see it when you look at me."
"What are you talking about?"
Bean shrugged in a significant way. "You're picking fights with me on purpose? Don't want to tell me something you were workin' on for a week? That's what I'd call something hanging over yer head, darlin'. You want it to take up permanent residence?"
Rally blinked at him. "...No."
"Then let me get rid of it. Chase those clouds away."
"You're the weatherman, huh?"
Bean smiled crookedly. "I know which way the wind's blowin'."
"All right, maybe I see your point. But I don't think your solution is an ideal one. There's a few too many things that could go...wrong."
"Wrong?" He straight-armed the door a little wider open and kept his palm jammed against it, looking insulted. "Don't go telling me you didn't like it. I know that's a lie."
"You know perfectly well I liked it." Rally clamped her thighs together and quickly glanced away. "It's the conditions around it I'm having a little trouble…negotiating."
He cocked a brow at her with the ghost of a smile. "I wasn't thinking about doin' it in the damn car."
"Did you have to bring that up?" She made a face at him. "I was just getting to the point where I don't smell you every time I get into the driver's seat."
"You been thinking about it?"
"Of course I have."
"Yeah?" His eyes dipped as if he was reluctant to release what was in them. "What do you think about?"
"Oh...uh, I don't know."
"Maybe you think about...kissin' me?" Bean looked up at her under hooded lids. His mouth twitched. Rally felt a quick hot pressure in her face and groin. "Maybe you think about the way you grabbed me and wouldn't let go. Maybe you think about how good it was, once I made up my damn mind." He moved towards her and backed her into her room. The door swung shut behind him with a heavy thud.
She bumped into the table, halted and looked up at him, her eyes huge. "B-Bean?"
What had just broken through that professional carapace? What was he about to do?
Nothing, apparently, because he checked himself and made an apologetic gesture. "Sorry. That's not what this is about, is it? It's about makin' good on a debt." A quick sharp grimace crossed his face and vanished.
"I told you, I don't see it that way. It's not necessary and I wish you wouldn't bring it up again. That's not what sex is all about."
"Oh, yeah, darlin', you're an expert." Bean looked mildly amused. "It gets used for a lot of different stuff, in case you hadn't noticed."
"I guess I have. This particular use has got to be unique."
"Hey, I'm not gonna try to pull something on you here, if that's what you don't like about it."
"Pull what on me?"
"I told you before, I'm not askin' for another chance. I'm talking just one time, see?" He held up an index finger. "That's it. No strings attached or nothin'. Do it proper once and get the whole damn thing out of our systems, ya know?" Bean let the folder fall on the table and spread his hands with an inquiring air.
"I don't...think so." Rally gulped hard. No strings attached? He believed that was possible? Maybe for Bean Bandit it could be...
"OK, I'll drop it if you say so." Bean shrugged as if the outcome didn't matter much one way or the other. "You have another idea?"
"About how to expiate your sins? Sorry, that's a little beyond me."
"So you don't mind? You're not gonna be remembering what I said every time you look at me?"
"Bean, I'm not quite that sensitive to insults, OK? Even when I deserve them. Didn't I prove that today?" She extended her hand. "Call it square and shake on it. I hope we can just be friends now?"
"Well, sure. That's what I mean." He took her hand and gave it a firm clasp. "Friends—I like the sound of that. How about...partners?"
"That was temporary." Rally dropped Bean's hand. Where was this going to lead? Probably to more than just a business proposal; this didn't feel much like a genuine change of subject.
"You're gonna be out your regular partner in not too long, ya know. That little gal's gonna pop by Thanksgiving. You going to go it alone?"
"I don't know. I haven't made plans."
"I got one for you. Stick with me. I think we got a lot of the bugs worked out." Bean gave her a bantering smile; she blushed. "Just keep in touch. You can even move in with me—I got lots of room."
"Huh?" Live together? He hadn't given up yet, not by a long shot. "What basis of cohabitation are we talking about? You do recall that I have a perfectly nice house of my own?"
"So rent it out or somethin'. Let that gal—what's her name, Misty?—let her run yer gun shop and take care of the joint. There's plenty of vacant apartments in my building. You take some of 'em and fix up a place for yourself. I'll help ya knock out the walls and whatever. Be nice to have a neighbor."
"Oh...I don't...no, Bean. I can't, and you know it. It's just not possible." Apparently he'd thought this gambit out in detail too. Living in adjacent quarters and working together every day? If that wasn't a business arrangement with conspicuous side benefits, she'd never heard of one.
He looked down again, chewing his lip in thought, then looked up sharply. "OK, I know what it is, huh? It's because I said I'd kill you, ain't it? And I told you it was according to the rules."
"Isn't it?"
"I guess it is…if rules are all you care about." A sudden, satisfied light broke over his face.
"But—"
"I'm apologizing for that now. I shouldn't've said it—both 'cause I should've known better that you weren't a thief, and 'cause...hell, what kind've rule is that? Kill someone for money? Don't think I'm real fond of people who do that on a routine basis." He shrugged, not quite with contrition, because his expression filled with anticipation. "There you go. Let's be partners, Vincent. I promise you, I won't ever let you down."
"Bean..."
"Didn't think I'd ever admit I was wrong, did ya?" He smiled half-diffidently, apparently bursting with self-congratulation but attempting to keep a lid on it. "I ain't that small."
"I know you aren't. But—"
"OK, great." He rubbed his hands together. "Let's go catch a little dinner. Drink to it, and maybe—hey, you want to ride back to Chicago with me? I'll ship your GT-500, and you can put the squirt on the plane to L.A. That oughta work out just—"
"No," Rally managed to say. "Stop it."
"Huh?"
"Bean, I can't be your partner. Going into business with you would be my worst nightmare."
All the happy expectancy drained out of his face; she had to take a deep steadying breath to keep a firm gaze into his eyes. "Huh? What's the hitch now?"
"Once I take a step like that, I won't ever be able to go back."
"I ain't gonna burn my goddamn name on your chest, Vincent! What do you think I am—some kinda monster?"
"No. I know you're a...not a bad person, somewhere under it all, but you're not the kind of operator I can ever hook up with. I know I've sometimes been a little careless with it myself, but you have no respect at all for the law—that's just a word for other people's rules. If I crossed that line, I'd be what you are. A criminal."
"Hey! Criminal? I ain't nothing like Brown, or O'Toole!"
Rally put her fists on her hips. "You want to tell me about some of the jobs you did in the last ten or twelve months, Bean? No, really. Give me an idea of just what it is you do that you don't think makes you quite as bad as a couple of the worst human beings I've ever encountered."
His face twitched and he looked away.
"Go on. If we were partners, this is exactly what you'd be asking me to plan with you and come along to ride shotgun. I want the job description."
Scanning his eyes back and forth, he seemed to be compiling a list on the fly. It looked as if he'd rather not mention most of the items he was totaling up. "Well…uh…" Suddenly she saw another thought cross his face—his eyes lit up. "OK. Let me tell you about a run I did last January."
"Oh? This looks like something you're proud of."
"You remember that big storm that hit right after New Year's? Smack in the middle of it, I got a call from a doc I know. Real crappy night. Snowing like hell. Not much was flying in or out of any airport from Minneapolis to Pittsburgh and not a lot could move on the roads either. Except me, of course." He lifted his eyebrows at her and grinned.
Rally laughed and groaned at the same time. "It would be just like you to go tooling around in the snowstorm of the century! Of course I remember it. I was stuck in the house for two days."
"Yeah, that one." Bean nodded. "So when the doc called me, I went to a hospital and I picked up a cooler to take to another hospital, in Michigan. Chicago to Detroit in a freakin' blizzard at two in the morning. There were spinouts and rear-enders every mile or two and even the cops and the tow trucks were going in the ditch. Nearly wiped out myself a couple of times. But I had to get that cooler there in under six hours or it was all for nothing." He gave her a glance full of suppressed glee. "You getting what that was, Vincent?"
"An organ for transplant, you mean."
"Yeah. A new heart for an eight-year-old kid." He nodded at her with a brilliant smile. "I got it there in four hours, twenty-six minutes, and I did it free. The doc forwarded me a thank-you letter from her mom and dad, and the kid drew a picture of a car for me and put pink hearts an' flowers all over it. I'm gonna get 'em framed."
"Wow." Rally couldn't help but be impressed; that was a two hundred and fifty-mile trip and she knew he wasn't embroidering his account in the least. What really gave her a lump in the throat was Bean's expression: he looked practically radiant.
"I'd be pretty proud of that one too..." She swallowed and found her voice. "You know what—you haven't mentioned that emergency blood donation that made you pass out while driving, or how you helped get my father out of Goldie's clutches, but I'll put all of those on the right side of the balance sheet." Her heart rose somewhat. She'd known he had this kind of generosity in him. "What are some jobs you'd do in an average month?"
His satisfied air yielded to neutrality. "Well, I carry plenty of stuff that's small and expensive. Coins and gems and bundles of cash. They know I won't skim the load like most drivers, so I get the real valuables."
"Stolen goods, you mean."
Bean shrugged. "If they're hiring me in the first place, it's not like they're callin' around for the lowest bidder. With me, you get the best, and that means I don't open the packages and I don't get curious about stuff that's not real important."
"I suppose in your line that's what passes for honest business practices. How about passenger runs? I assume you have plenty of those."
"Yeah, I take lots of people across the state line or to Canada. Sometimes all the way to Mexico. Generally I pick up troopers on my ass, so that's pretty entertainin' work. Sometimes these guys are people you're lookin' for." Bean smiled half-heartedly when she made a small sound of exasperation. "Hey, they're always scared out've their skulls when they know Rally Vincent's on their tail."
"I'm so glad I've helped to drum up business for you. Anything else you'd like to mention?"
Suppressed annoyance emerged in his manner. "The bank jobs and the prison breaks are the worst clients I get. There was a pair of scumbags a little while ago that wanted me to drive them all over hell and then decided they weren't gonna pay for the ride once it was done. Tried to hold me up and they're regrettin' it now." He gestured at her. "See, that's why I need someone watchin' my back. If there were two of us, lots've problems would get solved right off the bat."
"Yes, I see your point. Vlad and his late colleague probably operated on the same principle."
Bean rolled his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck. "Look, if all you want to do is take shots at me, I get the picture already."
"I'm not sure I have the picture, though. Bean, it's not you I'm taking shots at. It's your work. They're not the same thing."
"What do you mean?" He looked suspicious and even somewhat offended. "I've been in business ten years. Every racket from here to New York knows the Roadbuster. I got a rep I spent a long time and a lotta work building up, and if that ain't what I am, I don't know what is."
"Don't you?" Her voice trembled a little. "I know you deserve that rep, Bean. When I've been in a jam, you've done wonders just to help me. No one else could have done as much. But isn't there anything else about you that you think is important?"
The quaver was pretty obvious now; she swallowed hard and looked away for a moment. Bean took a different stance, his weight on one leg and his arms akimbo, and frowned.
Where had the real man gone when he'd closed the door on her? He was capable of lowering the barrier, and she ached to reach him again. Rally held her hands out to him, her palms turned up. "No matter what kind of jobs you took, you'd still be the same person at heart. You don't need to prove that to anyone. Bean, I know who you are now. I...I could have realized that a long time ago if I'd just let myself—"
"Come on, Vincent! Skip the touchy-feely crap." Bean gave a short, contemptuous laugh. "Guess you've been hangin' out in freakin' California too long. I swear, yer startin' to sound like Brown."
"What?"
"A man is what he does, got that?" He pointed to himself. "All the rest of it's just words. Too goddamn many of 'em."
"You think I sound like SLY?" She was less angry than simply wounded. "Bean, I'm trying to talk to you about some things I think are really important. I wish I'd had the sense to do it weeks ago. Please, if you'll let me—"
"Look, I know how it goes. I got the morals lecture already. I'm just a freakin' mercenary. I'm a barbarian, I'm an animal—I'm a God-damned idiot, that's what I am." He cast a scornful look at his clothes. "I got jerked around so many times I forgot which way is up. If I had any brain cells left, I'd've blown back to Chicago weeks ago. Hell, I never would have left home!"
"Oh." Rally hung her head, quivering. Her throat was so tight that for the moment she couldn't speak. Was Bean just going to walk out on her? She edged over to a chair, gripped the back of it with trembling hands and sat down sideways on the seat so she could face the wall and not him.
Yes, she'd hurt him that much. She'd called him terrible names and dismissed his greatest concerns. This was nothing but payback for her own sins. Saying she was sorry wasn't going to wash away one harsh word she'd spoken, one misleading or downright unkind thing she'd done to him. Why on earth would he say that he didn't want to be rid of her?
But she wouldn't cry. She'd never cry in front of him again...
Behind her, Bean let out a long, unhappy sigh. He shifted, took a step towards her and backtracked. Then he sat down—the creak of the box spring told her it was on her bed.
"Ain'tcha going to chew me out, Vincent?"
She slightly shook her head without looking around.
"OK." He didn't sound like he thought he deserved it, but he seemed to be on his guard, as if she might now be trying to get into his head some other way. "So, uh, did you want to hear any more about the jobs? Y'know, Vincent, I don't mind hearin' what you think. You just give me your honest opinion, OK? Don't go lookin' to score points on me. It ain't that hard to accomplish. You, uh, you talk a little better than I do."
Rally turned around on the chair. Bean sat hunched over on the very edge of the bed, elbows on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him. His face was neutral, but not frozen. Her heart eased somewhat.
"Bean...were you thinking that was one way I would help you? I mean, if we actually were partners."
"Yeah, maybe. I dunno. Some clients might think they can put one over on me 'cause I don't sound like I got a Ph.D." He emphasized his street inflection.
"I don't even have a college degree, Bean. And you're extraordinary at what you do—you know that."
"Yeah, but you know some stuff that's not my specialty."
"Oh. Well, maybe I do, but not through any fault of my own!" She gave a self-deprecating laugh and groaned. "My mother always insisted on tutors for every darn subject. I mean, literature and physics and history and music—those stinking violin lessons, God, I hated those—and algebra and geography and biology and civics and even lame-o deportment classes—really useful stuff, huh?" Rally rolled her eyes, and then caught Bean's glance.
He gave her a level but almost resentful stare for a moment and looked away. Too late, she realized what she'd just implied, and that it probably cut pretty close to the bone. Raw brainpower and experience counted for a lot no matter what you did for a living, and he had plenty of both. But when she made backhand brags about her erudition, the fact that he'd left school in the middle of eighth grade couldn't sit very well with him.
"Um…I mean…I'm sorry, Bean, I didn't intend to—" She was making it worse, as usual, so she lowered her head and cursed herself.
Bean heaved a put-upon sigh. "What I was sayin' was, if I told you about a couple of jobs I had not too long back, you could tell me what you're thinkin' about 'em. Just the facts. Like, if some client wanted these jobs done and we were thinking whether we wanted to do 'em or not. Whether anything smells funny to you."
"All right."
He paused a moment and seemed to consider. "About four months back, I got my biggest job so far this year—heck, one of my biggest ever. Took more'n a month off and on and I charged hazard rates, so I cleared more than a half mil on that one gig after expenses."
"Wow. Hazard rates run how much these days?"
"Three times normal. This one was kind of up your alley." He quirked his mouth. "You might've liked working that job for real."
"Oh?"
"It was loads of rifles and ammo and lots of other stuff. Shoulder-launchers, mines, anti-tank grenades, you name it. Millions of dollars worth. All of it got lifted from a bunch of National Guard armories—I'd pull the car through the gates and go straight to the storage warehouses. They'd have the goods waiting on dollies."
"Who had it waiting? Who the hell was ripping off armories?"
"My clients, of course." He looked at her with an air of stating the obvious. "I never met 'em. They did it all by phone and paid for the guards to look the other way and arranged for the guys to pick out the merchandise and load me up. Hey, I got my cash right on time for every delivery. That's all I wanted to know about 'em."
Oh, this was a big job, all right. "Bean...I think I would have asked a few more questions than that. Such as who they were and just how they managed to get past security. That couldn't have been just a matter of a few bucks slipped to guards—it had to have come from higher up."
"OK, I guess you would have. But hey, it went great. I got chased a bunch of times and I even got shot at, but that wasn't any big problem. Planned my routes careful and I always used the Buff. When the stuff was all together in a warehouse, I loaded up panel trucks and took 'em to the drop-off point. That was it. Nice efficient job—I'd have to say I'm kinda proud of that one too."
"But you're wondering what these people wanted with truckloads of American military ordnance. That sounds like enough hardware for a small army."
"Yeah, just about. The drop-off point was right near the docks. I guess it was going on a ship."
"Oh, my God." Rally's eyes went wide. "Once they'd sailed it up the Great Lakes, they could have taken it anywhere in the world."
"Well, sure they had something planned for that stuff." Bean looked a little sullen, as if he now regretted asking for opinions. "Otherwise it'd be pretty dumb to pay me that much money for fetchin' it."
"Like overthrowing a government, maybe? Or equipping terrorists? Holy shit."
Now he was downright defensive. "Or, y'know, maybe just sell it retail? Like how the squirt buys her frag grenades and detonators and stuff? Somebody diverted that stuff to the street or she'd never get her little paws on it."
"I suppose you're right about that. But I think May needs her little pineapples to have half a chance against people who can buy the big stuff you were so instrumental in helping to rip off. The Dragons' arsenal must have come from a source pretty similar to your big job...if not that exact one." Her heart suddenly pounded and her lungs felt constricted—maybe this wasn't such a good thing to mention. "I…I think you told me you saw the flash on the way over to the pier..." She seemed to feel the shock wave again and flinched.
"When Four hit the Coast Guard chopper." He closed his eyes for a moment. "Yeah, I saw it. And you told me he'd been screwing around with a Claymore."
She couldn't reply; her eyes saw only flames and torn bodies, her brain echoed with explosions and screams. Hands clamped over her ears and her rapid breaths rasping through her nose, she hunkered down in her chair and clenched her teeth.
"Hey, what's up?" Bean rose to his feet, his voice filled with alarm. "Vincent?"
Rally raised her head with a gasp and looked straight up into his eyes. Yes, he had been there too. In the driver's seat just beside her. Behind him was a dark warehouse filled with smoke and blood. And fire. This time they weren't going to get out. 426 had returned as a demonic ghost and he had completed his revenge. This time they were going to die together...
Her terror must have been plain, because Bean instantly dropped to one knee beside her chair and put his arms around her.
The shock of his real, warm touch brought her halfway out of the nightmare. She closed her eyes and dug her face into his shoulder, breathing hard. Her hands clutched at his coat.
"Baby, tell me what's wrong?" Bean stroked her head and shifted a little nearer. "Something about that night, sweetheart?"
She made an inarticulate sound with her face buried. Most of the way out of it now, but her whole body shook. Dizzy from hyperventilation, but solid ground and safety was right here at her side. Rally grabbed Bean, wrapped both of her arms around his torso and pulled him as close as she could, choking as if she had breathed in a miasma of smoke.
"Don't leave me here. Please. Don't leave me..."
Bean's arms cradled her, slowly rocking her. His voice was low and husky. "Nothing's gonna hurt you with me around, Rally Irene. I'm not goin' anywhere."
Gradually her breathing slowed. She grew aware that she was holding him for dear life, that her nose and lips were pressed into his bare throat, that his embrace was subtly different than it had been when he had first touched her. Comforting, yes, but also caressing. His pulse beat hard under her cheek. Bean moved back and loosened his hold just enough to remove his chin from the top of her head and look her in the face.
He hadn't quite formed the intention, but it took shape behind his gaze while their noses almost brushed. Strong and hungry and a little gloomy. The longing, mingled with desire but going even deeper, that he never seemed to be able to put into words. Eyes focused on her mouth, Bean slowly angled his face. Although she was still quivering and the aftereffects of the terrible images had not quite faded, Rally realized he meant to move in and kiss her. Helplessly her lips parted for him; she let her head tilt back.
Bean stopped a couple of inches away with his eyes half closed. He hung there a moment, a conflict disturbing his brows and the set of his lips. Then he clenched his jaw, his gloom grew darker and he turned his head away. His arms relaxed and dropped.
She knew why—because by his strict rules this was taking advantage of her. He didn't want to mix consolation and sex again, and considering the outcome the first time he was probably right.
Bean settled back on his haunches and placed his hands on his thighs. "You OK, darlin'?"
"It's nothing." Rally sat up straight and tried to smooth her hair. "I'm still getting flashbacks sometimes, that's all. Sorry." She'd never been so grateful for Bean's iron self-control; a lesser man handed such an opening would have had her stripped and on the bed now.
"That's all, huh?" He still looked concerned, but stood up and put a hand on the back of her chair.
She took a few deep breaths and tried to get her mind back on topic. Thinking about Bean and beds—were they ever going to have a candid discussion about their feelings, or just keep having near-misses until there was another spectacular collision? How could she even get near the real subject again without having him slam the door on her even more emphatically? She longed for him, for a shadowy operator who didn't care who hired him for what kind of dirty work as long as he got paid. Almost any other man would have rotted through and through in ten years of such work. Bean? He stood above it all somehow, his own man in everything. That armor he wore had many purposes.
Her ankles locked together and her thighs pressed hard against each other. Rally closed her eyes; emotions roiled through her body and curled into a hot ball in her abdomen. Burning for him alone, stripped of any consideration but himself. This above all told her that her love for him was sealed. Nothing he told her about what he had done could make a difference any more.
But he wouldn't let her divest him of any part of his well-earned reputation. She could not accept him clothed in those garments. He would not come to her naked, so he wouldn't come at all...
"Vincent?"
She abruptly looked up at him. "So there was another job you wanted to tell me about? Sounds like you keep pretty busy even without taking drug work."
"I dunno. Business is up some lately, but I'm not anywhere near where I used to be on profits. My base expenses stay about the same and the drug runs paid more than most of this shit did." Throwing her a veiled glance, he stuck his hands in his pants pockets and moved a little way across the room. "You cost me plenty, darlin'. That's why I'm doin' more of the hazard stuff."
"You're doing lots of dangerous jobs to make up the difference?" So much for calming down; her heart thumped.
"You worried about me, Vincent?" Bean gave her a faint smile.
"Good grief, I know you can take care of yourself. But yes, I'd worry about something going wrong that wasn't under your control."
"Yeah, well, there's always that." He scratched the back of his head and ran one hand through his rumpled hair. It wasn't lying down at all by now; he looked almost as shaggy as he usually did while wearing his working gear and headband.
"What exactly do you charge hazard rates for, anyway?"
"Other than explosives? Well, the last work I did before Brown called me for his damn job, I collected a load of scrap. That's the one I was gonna mention."
"Scrap? You don't mean precious metal."
"Nope, it was mostly steel. Machines and parts."
"What's so hazardous about steel scrap? What did the client say about it?"
"He said it wasn't dangerous the way it was, so I didn't have to take precautions. He rode along on the run anyway, so I wasn't exactly worrying. Said he knew better than to go misleadin' the Roadbuster about a cargo and he'd rather just pay extra up front and not have me find something out later." Bean cracked a smile and sat down on the edge of the bed again. "Smart guy."
"Smarter than Gray, anyway...but that's a little weird, don't you think? Machine parts? What kind of machines?"
"Lots of different kinds. All of it was from closed-down factories and junkyards. The addresses were in Chicago and out east. Took a four-day tour of the Rust Belt in a trailer truck to pick it all up. He had a tool chest and an acetylene torch along and he'd cut gauges off rusty old rolling mills and pipelines, and some of the smaller stuff we'd cart off whole. Just junk, far as I could tell. Filled that truck as full as it would go."
Something about this bothered her, but she couldn't put her finger on it. "Gauges? So where did he have you go with this load?"
"Took it to a place he had—like a lab. I pulled the truck into a warehouse, and there was just one other guy there waiting for us. Not a hell of a lot of equipment there, but there was one room with a really thick glass window in it and a big-ass ventilation system attached. The client had to run over to a bank a few miles away to get the money to pay me. I knew he was OK by then—I didn't have to keep an eye on him. They look at me kinda funny in banks, anyhow. So I was waiting for him at the lab. The other guy put on a haz-mat suit and took some of the stuff from the truck into that room through a sort of airlock. He was in a rush to get started on something."
"What was he doing in there?"
"Well, the client came back with my money not too long after that. I checked it out and closed up the case, and I was leavin', and I took a look through the window on the way out. The guy in the suit had taken some of the gauges apart and he had some metal tubes lined up on his workbench. He took some powder out of 'em. Goin' sort of slow and cautious and putting it into a metal can with these long tongs. My client put on a suit too, and that's when I left. Seemed like even though they had to be real careful with this powder stuff, they needed to get the job finished fast and get the hell out of there." Bean frowned at her. "You know what a curry is, when it means something you'd use in a lab? I was gonna try lookin' that up, but I didn't get a chance."
"Curry?" Chills stiffened Rally's spine. Now she knew exactly what had bothered her about this. "Did they use that word?"
"Yeah, when we got to the lab. My client said something to the other guy about probably getting a couple hundred thousand currys out've the load. Don't think he was talkin' about spicy food, 'cause we didn't stop for take-out."
"You're right, Bean. A curie is a unit of radioactivity."
Bean clenched his jaw. "Yeah, I thought it had to be somethin' like that. When I looked through that window...I thought my eyes were playing tricks, but that shit looked like it was glowing." He frowned more deeply. "You know what that was?"
"Probably cesium-137—it's a radioactive metal, but it's usually a powder. Now that I think about it, a lot of industrial gauges use radiation for measuring and flow through pipes—all sorts of things."
"Well, damn. No wonder he told me he'd pay my highest rate right off the bat." He looked at his hand and closed the fist. "So when do I start glowin' in the dark?"
"The radioactive stuff is all sealed up inside the gauges, so until you open them up it's not dangerous. He didn't lie to you about that."
"Good for him. Then I don't need to go teach him any lessons before I mutate into Godzilla." Bean let out a small chuckle.
"Not by your rules, I guess. Though I think the US government might have a different opinion—you need a permit to have that stuff. Those gauges are supposed to be disposed of properly when you junk the machine, but that costs a lot and way too many people don't bother. I'm not surprised he located a lot of places where he could find what he wanted."
"He sure wanted a lot of it." Bean shrugged. "No skin off my nose. I got my cash." But he looked at her as if he knew something more was coming.
Rally felt almost sicker than when she had heard about that long-ago gang-rape. She put a hand to her throat. "Bean, I'll tell you more about that stuff if you want to hear it. But I'm not sure you do."
"Why? You figure it's for somethin' like a dirty bomb?"
"Maybe. If someone spread such a large amount of it in a populated place...it could be pretty awful."
His lips curled back from his teeth. "Quit hinting."
Rally took a deep breath. "There was an accident with a container of cesium-137, a dozen years ago. In Brazil. One of those radiation machines for cancer therapy got left in an abandoned clinic. Someone took the canister out and pried it open. The stuff was glowing blue. The kids in the neighborhood thought it was pretty. They played with it..." She lowered her head.
"Kids?" Bean stood up.
"They rubbed the powder on themselves. They passed it around to their friends. I don't remember how many of them died."
"What the fuck?"
"Bean, that stuff is incredibly poisonous. If you breathe it in or it gets directly on you, you'll probably die. In agony."
"Kids died just 'cause they played with it?" She glanced up at the rasp in Bean's voice; he had clenched his fists so hard his knuckles were ridged and white. "What the hell was that guy going to do with that shit?"
"God only knows. Maybe he's just a maverick scientist doing his own experiments and he didn't want to go through official channels to get his materials. I almost hope nobody finds out. But you don't need to tell me any more of this." Rally slumped back in the chair. "I think I'm getting a pretty good idea how a day on the job with you would go."
Deep disquiet passed over his face. He turned away and walked a few steps to the sliding glass door. A cool draft entered the room when he left the door open, went out on the balcony and leaned on the railing. City lights shone all around his dark outline. Apparently he needed some air, or some distance. She wasn't sure if he was actually thinking about the possible consequences of his work or only reacting to her dismay.
Rally put her palms over her eyes and exhaled hard. "Oh, God..."
"What?" Bean's tone was neutral.
She hadn't really meant that for his ears. "Oh…nothing. It's just…when I imagine what you could do with talents like yours if you applied them to something other than getting as much cash as possible in almost any way possible, I think I want to...well, never mind." She had been about to say 'burst out crying'. "I guess I know better than that..."
"You know better than to think I'd do anything different?" Bean turned his head to look at her over his shoulder, but stayed where he was.
She didn't correct him, because that was perfectly true. "If you've been driving straight ahead on the same road for ten years...I doubt you're going to turn off it any time soon." He'd keep going, all right. Then crash and burn at the end of that road, sooner or later. Bean had only put off the inevitable so far. One day his great strength and cunning would fail him; he wouldn't get away in the nick of time. Rally closed her eyes and put her hands over them again. When he hit the last obstacle in that road, who would mourn the Roadbuster?
"I said I wanted to hear what you thought, Vincent."
"What do I think?" She flung her arms wide and let them drop limp to her sides. "So you've squeezed in a little good-Samaritan work alongside all those jobs you apparently fished straight out of the gutter. Now I may not do everything pro bono myself and you're perfectly aware of what corners I tend to cut in the interest of getting things done—"
"If it weren't for ol' Coleman, you'd probably have done some time, sweetheart." Bean sneered slightly.
Rally sat up very straight and folded her arms. "Sure, that's not impossible. He's not the only person who's helped get me out of some pretty serious trouble. But you—you're a one-man pipeline for just about every kind of bad shit I can think of. When the Roadbuster retires, crime statistics in the Midwest are going to take a real nosedive."
"Naw." Bean gave her a sour grin. "Not much of that's gonna be on anybody's charts, 'cause I never got caught in the first place."
But to his credit, he had certainly grasped her logic; the line of his shoulders sagged and he let out a long, resigned breath. "Criminal? OK, whatever." He turned away and looked out at the night.
Rally rose and came to the open door. "That's the word for it, Bean." She didn't feel triumphant or as if she had proved a point at his expense. It felt like this came at the expense of both of them. She looked at her shoes and spoke quietly. "I put criminals in jail. I don't go into business with them."
"So," said Bean after another long silence. "You gonna put me in jail someday?"
"I don't know. If I have to try, I'll give it my best shot."
"OK. I got you. You ain't joinin' up with this particular piece of gutter trash." He stopped, stood up straight and stared at the dark sky. "So I guess a business arrangement ain't in the cards, but I got to mention—" He turned around. "I mean, what if—if we—" Bean stopped again, with a look emerging on his face that struck her very strangely. He didn't meet her eyes; he seemed almost unable to do so.
"One thing. Just one little thing I need to get cleared." With a distracted air, he headed back inside.
"What is it?" Rally moved away from the door to let Bean exit the balcony. "If you want to ask me a question, I'll do my best to answer it."
"Nah, it's nothing." He loosened his shirt collar, though it wasn't tight, and shut the door behind him. "Hell, it's settled…I dunno, it ain't going to stay where it's put." The latch clicked. He seemed to be thinking aloud, and walked past without seeming to notice her. "Where the hell's it gonna get put, anyway? Geography...my ass."
She followed him at a little distance and halted by the table—she had the impression that he wanted to leave now, and at the very least she meant to see him out. Should she try to stop him or not? Would he ever understand her distinction between the person and the profession?
Maybe he was right; maybe the Roadbuster and this tall, scarred, black-haired man with wide shoulders and a very big jaw were completely inseparable. She didn't want to pull him out by the roots even if the impossible could be done. His skill and audacity, his self-reliance and strength of mind: a law unto himself—those were him, those were things she knew she loved in him. Where could anyone draw a firm line in his being between the good and the bad?
Bean seemed even more conflicted than she was. Something odd certainly was operating on him, because he didn't head for the entryway. He wandered in a vague circle to the far side of the bed, stopped there for a moment and came back to the table, still muttering to himself.
"...never gonna know. Come on, ya moron. Get yer ass in gear, 'cause it's now or it's never." Picking up the folder, he stared at it and turned it over. "Yes…or no."
Rally shook her head in confusion. "Bean, are you talking to me or not, and if you are, what's it about? I don't have ESP."
"You want to know? Here." He threw the folder down on the table with a loud smack.
When she looked at it, startled, Bean took a step towards her, swiftly scooped his arm around her shoulders and yanked her around to face him. Then he clamped his other hand on her waist, pulled her right up against his body and crushed his mouth to hers. Not a gentle kiss or even seductive—rough, close to desperate. His arms trembled, his chest heaved.
Rally stiffened in shock. It was like being mauled by a wounded grizzly bear. The butt of her gun jammed into her ribs and left breast. Her lips almost split under the fierce pressure of his and she made a strangled protest in her throat. Before she could move or do anything else, Bean let go of her.
"OK, I guess I got my answer. See ya." He stuck the folder under his arm, banged open the door of her room and disappeared into the hallway.
"Wait a second!" Rally ran out the door after him before it shut. He didn't mean the debt, he didn't mean some side-saddle benefit of partnership, and the only thing that left was—
He halted, but didn't turn around. "Yeah?"
"That was an answer? What was your question?" Her mouth still felt bruised; she put her hand to her face.
"Seems pretty damn clear to me." Bean's tone was distinctly irritated. "What do ya want?"
"Some...some discussion of this? Talk to me!"
"I'm not a talker, Vincent. I don't do things that way. Hell, ain't there been enough yap for one day?"
"This can't get resolved by any other means!"
"Can't it? Figure it just did. You don't want me kissing you. End of story."
"Bean, please!" She held out her hands to him, shaking. "How am I supposed to know if I want you kissing me if you won't talk to me?"
"Well, hell, woman, I know what I want without lookin' it up in the dictionary." He swung around to look at her, his face naked of either hope or calculation. "I want to hear you moanin' my name real sweet, that's what I want. I want to feel your sweat all over my skin and I want to get your taste back in my mouth. I want to be in you all the way and I want to know you like it. Not because you'd tell me so—though you could tell me all you want—but because I'd see it in your pretty face."
Bean shrugged with a resigned grimace while Rally trembled with incredible, unimagined responses. From him, that was a Shakespearean sonnet!
"I just want to screw you blind 'n' dumb, Rally Irene. Once more in my life before I die. Don't figure that's what you're wantin' to hear, but that's the score."
Her knees would hardly hold her upright; waves of heat softened her whole body and all of her most sensitive parts cried out for his touch. "You...you try just about any angle other than simply kissing me and telling me you want me? What else do you think I want to hear? Dear God, Bean—"
"I dunno...begging, maybe. Fancy speeches and crap, and gettin' down on my knees and makin' promises and tellin' every goddamn lie in the universe if I could just cop a feel." Bean's eyes fixed on the ceiling, his expression uncomfortable and derisory. "I see guys doing that all the time. Go into any bar you like and it's all over any broad who's still got most of her teeth like fleas on a dog. It's bullshit. I'd rather drink alone."
"And they say romance is dead." Rally slumped and put a hand on her forehead, uncertain whether to laugh or weep.
"Aw, hell. I am not the romance type, Vincent. I ain't got the words."
She did have the words. Didn't she? He meant that she should speak for both of them? Then she would have to do it now, while her battered nerves still retained the strength she needed. Her heart raced, overflowing.
She only had to speak what she had suppressed so long, and the words would finally set them both free. What would he say to her in return? Ecstatic images leaped in her mind, painting perfect bliss in glorious hues. Small and muffled at the back of her mind, one part of her consciousness still asked inconvenient questions: how exactly was this supposed to work, again?
It didn't matter. All that mattered was this huge bright burning thing she had to reveal to him. Now.
"Bean...uh..." She covered her mouth for a moment, took her hand away. She was about to speed straight over a cliff with nothing to hold her up. But surely this time there wouldn't be a crash to the earth below. Instead she felt a floating sensation, as if she were magically lifting into the air. "Bean, I think I'm...I...I'm in love with you."
Rally squeezed her eyes shut. Then immediately opened them again, because she had to see Bean's expression.
Blank, then wide-eyed. "What...the fucking...hell?"
He didn't look overjoyed. He didn't even look happy. A wave of something like agonized temptation passed over his features. Then just agony. As if what he wanted most stood right before him holding out a promise of paradise—as a cruel taunt. Growing anguish, as if that paradise had just been snatched forever beyond his grasp.
Everything his face told her was quickly overwhelmed by another emotion—he gritted his teeth and his eyes blazed. "Aw, crap."
Her floating fantasies hit the ground with a tremendous smash. Rally jumped, almost panicked by the degree of his fury. "Bean?"
"So this is what it's all about. All the hot and cold, all the shit you like to toss my way. That's yer big secret? That's supposed to get me beggin' on my knees?" He leaned in closer, but he didn't look at all like he meant to kiss her. Stunned beyond comprehension, she stood absolutely still, her eyes wide open and turned up to his.
Bean jabbed a finger at her face. "Maybe you didn't hear me too good the first time. I said I was kinda tired of gettin' jerked around."
He wheeled and headed towards the elevators again.
"Bean. Please. I'm telling you the truth!"
"Like hell." He hit the elevator button hard enough to dent the metal panel around it. Then he slammed one hand against the wall and bent double. An arm clamped around his stomach as if he was going to be sick. "That's it. That's enough. That's a few truckloads more than enough. I'm done with you."
"Bean, I love—"
"Shut up! You're the last gal I ever thought would pull that shit on—" His voice choked off in a horrible rasping moan. Rally couldn't see his face, but she knew exactly what its expression was like. No matter what she did, she stabbed him where it hurt most. Silence and denial had injured him, she knew. But speaking was far worse. Another wound, and this one looked like the deepest yet. Why?
A chime sounded and a group of people came out of one of the elevators, talking loudly. Bean didn't move. Another passenger glanced at him with obvious trepidation, closed the elevator doors and sent it down.
Rally's legs felt unsteady and her insides roiled and cramped. She dodged through the advancing group and worked her way down the hall towards Bean. She paused at the corner of the wall and clung there, a little way behind him. He still hunched by the elevator panel; his back was turned to her.
"Why don't you believe me, Bean?"
His shoulders heaved. It was several moments before he spoke.
"You know some reason I should?"
She couldn't think of any. No rational man could have believed her; she kept on reaping what she had sowed. The group chattered by an open door. One or two of its members cast curious glances her way.
"All right, I deserve that. I'm sor—" She stopped and swallowed hard. "Can we please work this out in private? Come back to my room, and..."
"Don't you invite me in there unless you got your mind made up—about something. Anything. It don't matter what." His tone was viciously sarcastic, but again he was covering something else. "I'm not sure I'm gonna survive any more working it out."
"I...I do have my mind made up. But I want to talk to you...please, Bean?" She jammed a hand to her mouth and gulped back tears. "Won't you say anything about it? Won't you tell me how you feel about me? I've just told you how I—"
"Bullshit. Look, maybe you think—you don't got to pretend that's why you screwed me."
"What?"
Bean straightened up, but still kept his face turned to the wall. "That ain't the kind of gal you are, Rally. You don't got to think you can't jump into bed with a guy unless you say things like that. You didn't have any trouble requestin' me to do the nasty before. Don't go makin' up fairy tales about it."
"But I didn't know why I was asking!"
"Yeah, that's my point. This whole thing was just an accident, right? So stuff the how's-everybody-feeling garbage." He waved a dismissive hand at her and whacked the elevator button again. "I ain't doing jack-shit under false pretenses."
So she was inventing a fairy tale for her own benefit? Yet the mere mention of that silly fantasy nearly knocked the giant from his feet. Rally closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath that mixed pain and conviction. Bean must know exactly how he felt about her. He loved her. He had never denied that to himself even though he would never admit it. Because he believed there was no hope and never had been.
He had been dead right about that. Every time she gave him reason to anticipate some small return of his feelings, violent emotions as huge and powerful as he was, she destroyed it in the next stroke. He expected her to come to her senses soon and cut him open again.
Was there any point at all in repeating it? She wanted to say it again, over and over. Love of him filled her now. Her whole being ached for him; his distance from her was a physical pain. But every word she said seemed to drive him further away.
Rally came to Bean, put a trembling hand on his arm. He shook her off and backed away.
"What the hell are you doing? You know what I am. You just got through findin' that out, right?" He made a wide gesture with both hands, brandishing the folder. "You oughta know better'n this, and you do. You shouldn't be forgetting three times in a row that you don't want to fool around with a dirty hood like Bean Bandit. A woman like you ain't never gonna fall for me. Not in a thousand years!"
It didn't matter that he was a long way from an angel. Or that he couldn't bring himself to speak what she was increasingly certain he truly meant. It only mattered that he was himself.
"Maybe in a thousand...and one? Bean, it's me. Not anyone else. If anyone on earth doesn't deserve a man like you...it's me."
Bean stopped in the middle of the hallway. He looked upwards and his lips tightened in an apparent effort to keep his expression under control. "Just words. Words don't mean nothing." Again he turned his back on her.
"OK, maybe they're more important to me than they are to you. Maybe we don't really speak each other's language anyway. But I'm not asking you to say anything at all to me. Just, please, come back to my room."
He was silent for many seconds. The tension in his posture gradually eased by an almost imperceptible amount.
"If…that's…what you got to think…to get yourself in the mood or something, what the fuck, that's yer call. But don't you say one more word to me. Not unless it's understood that we're gonna make—that I'm gonna get laid."
Bean took a few deep, shaking breaths and spoke a little more calmly, even with a note of cynical humor. "I must've...fried all my brain cells...a long time ago. 'Cause I guess I'll listen to bullshit from here to the moon if that's what it takes."
Rally said nothing, but not for lack of wanting to. She covered her mouth with both hands to muffle a cry. If she could heal just one of the wounds she'd inflicted, maybe he'd forgive her. Whether she could forgive herself for so abusing his generous nature was another question...
"Just don't disguise the load as something it ain't." He turned halfway towards her and his voice almost cracked. "Don't try to play me like a freakin' violin and then take off for the other side of the country. Gimme the terms up front. Do the deed or don't."
The doors of the elevator opened. Bean faced her squarely and gave her a look: one last look, it felt like, and his expression had broken free from all control.
What was she waiting for? A message from God?
"All right, Bean. Fair is fair." She clapped her hands palm to palm and gripped them together. "Come in my room with me. I'll close the door, I'll say just a few more words, and then you are going to get laid. If you still want to."
The folder slipped from his hand and hit the floor. "You serious?"
"Yes."
He made a sudden move towards her, then stopped and gave her a skeptical frown. "For real? No second thoughts once I get going?"
"For real, Bean."
"OK." His expression wasn't very readable now, but he picked up the folder and followed her back down the hallway. The spectators had retreated at some point; that didn't surprise her. She got the key from her jacket to let him in and shut the door behind him.
Bean walked into the center of the room, paused, then laid the folder on the table once more and pulled out the chair. He had a wary air about him, as if he still didn't quite know what to make of this.
"So…you want me to pay attention, or just sit here and nod once in a while?" He checked his watch and sighed. "I guess talk ain't quite killed me yet, so maybe I can stand it for a little bit longer."
"Actually..." Rally still stood in the entryway. "I want you to come over here and kiss me." Bean looked up at her as she took off her jacket and holster and hung both in the coat closet. "Unless you have something to say to me first."
"Nope," said Bean, and took her into his arms.
