Monday June 21 2004
Guantanamo Bay Naval Preserve
Detainee Camp Delta
When Wilcox arrived at the proper block of Camp Five, he found the place in something of an uproar. Three MPs and the noncom who commanded the watch this shift were clustered around one closed cell door. The block was loud with the incomprehensible shouting of detainees in nearby cells.
When Wilcox reached the group, he saw that the door's food slot was open, the door swung down to form a narrow shelf below the opening. The watch officer was calling wearily through the door, "Return the rest of your food service, detainee."
From the other side of the door came a flood of speech that the sergeant assumed was Arabic. The tone of voice, and the hooting from nearby cells, made Wilson glad he couldn't understand the words. He said, "Does he speak English?"
"He doesn't speak it," the noncom said. "At least, not to us. But he understands us just fine. Return the spoon," he said to the door in a voice turned hard. "Now. Or we'll come in and get it. We'll tear your room to pieces searching it, even if we find the spoon in the first five seconds. Then we'll do a cavity search. And I'll make sure it's one of the women sticking a finger up your ass."
Wilson raised his eyebrows. "For a spoon?" The disposable cutlery given to the detainees - spoons only, no forks or knives -was so soft and flexible that it could be bent double without breaking. To use it, you had to take tiny bites or hold it right down near the business end to avoid losing whatever was in it.
"The handle's stiff enough to stick in somebody's eye," the man said. "Not about to let this fucker keep it."
More shouted Arabic from inside the cell, then something flew through the slot to strike the shift commander's hip before falling to the floor: the spoon, coated with brown goo. The odor that filled the hallway left no doubt of the utensil's contents. The MP looked down at the small stain on his uniform and wrinkled his nose. "What brings you to the daycare?"
"Pickup. Number six forty-two."
The man looked back at the cell door, whose tray slot was now closed and secured. "What a coincidence."
With the help of another guard, Wilcox and Forstner got the big raghead shackled and bagged and into the Jeep, and rode to Camp No shoulder-to-shoulder in the little vehicle. The detainee's shouts and stiff-legged resistance quieted to mutterings once the vehicle was in motion: was it because he no longer had other detainees to perform for, or was it simple apprehension?
At the camp, the door of one of the interrogation rooms was open, and they brought the man through it to find Nicole waiting silently. She gestured at the interrogee's chair, and the three guards sat their captive down and secured him. Nicole stared down at the head-bagged figure handcuffed by both wrists to the arms of the straight chair, her eyes gone flat and empty, and Wilcox began to feel a different sort of unease at the thought of leaving them alone together.
"The sergeant speaks Arabic," he said, nodding to the MP who had helped to wrestle Six-forty-two into the room and secure him. "You may need an interpreter. This guy doesn't speak English. Or at least he pretends he doesn't, nobody's sure which."
"Thank you, Sergeant," Nicole said to the guard. "But I won't be needing an interpreter. And we won't need a third man to get him back to his cell. Corporal, take him back to his duty station and come back."
When the door closed behind the puzzled man, Wilcox asked, "You speak Arabic?"
"Just a few carefully memorized phrases. Farsi and Pashto too. But I'm not going to ask him anything."
Six-forty-two had stopped squirming in his seat and muttering in Arabic; in fact, he stilled so completely that the sergeant looked for some movement of his chest, and held his own breath until he saw it. Did the guy know English after all, Wilcox wondered, or was it hearing a woman's voice that claimed his attention? "Okay. Take off the bag now?"
"No. Leave him just as he is. And, Sergeant? I think you two should guard the door from the end of the corridor this time."
A Humvee bringing supplies from the main base to the little satellite camp in the hills – the facility used a lot of distilled water, for purposes the driver chose not to think about - was driving down the lane just outside the covered chainlink fence enclosing the compound, approaching the small rolling gate that closed off the entrance. At one point, that lane passed close by the prefab building in which detainees were interrogated. At closest approach, thirty feet from the blank concrete wall that rose above the barrier, the driver felt his attention pulled towards the structure, as if he'd seen someone he knew standing against the fence – no, not just someone he knew, someone he'd been looking for. Someone he had been looking for for a long time…
His hands followed his searching eyes, and the vehicle swerved sharply towards the building, bumping over the row of stones that formed the road's curb and nearly scraping a fender on the fence before the soldier wrenched it back on the road. For just a moment, the young man felt an awful sense of loss, as if he'd just been Dear-Johnned by his childhood sweetheart. But it passed, and he wiped absently at a single tear on his cheek and returned his full attention to his driving with no more than a bit of puzzlement at his actions.
Inside the corridor, not far from the bend near the entrance, Sergeant Wilcox heard a muffled scream from the interrogation room sixty feet away; he started forward a step before he identified the voice as male. He and Forstner had been ordered by Nicole in no uncertain terms to stay at the end of the hall until called for, but something tugged at him, something darker and more powerful than curiosity. He froze in place, listening.
The scream was followed by a series of grunts that sounded oddly nasal, as if they were being pushed past clenched teeth and closed lips. Then an animal sound that should never come from a human throat. Then silence.
Wilcox stepped back to his place, heart thumping. "Enhanced interrogation" didn't generally produce a lot of noise except from the hundred-watt speakers employed to induce sensory overload and steal the subject's sleep. What was she doing, bending his fingers back? But Six-forty-two was a man who'd been arrested more than once before he'd come here, once by the Syrians and once by the Israelis, and the sergeant was sure he'd endured his share of rough handling. There was too much horror in the man's cry for whatever physical discomfort a hundred-twenty-pound girl could possibly be inflicting with bare hands.
The man screamed again, louder and shriller. The sergeant felt that strange pull again, a dark undertow drawing him down the hall, toward the closed door waiting for him like an open maw.
He stepped back, some internal alarm making him shiver; only then did he realize he had taken three steps down the hall. Forstner, still in place at the intersection, stared at him. "Sarge, you okay?"
He ground out from between clenched teeth, "You don't feel that?"
"Feel what?" The younger man cast an uneasy glance down the hall. "Sarge, this is some weird shit."
The man's voice came again, an awful moan rising to a scream. Wilcox retreated beyond the T junction, panting, nerves singing, and discovered – what the fuck? – that his dick was stretching the front of his trousers.
He retreated even further down the hall, until his back was against the outside door. He swallowed, feeling his heartrate pick up, and took deep breaths, trying to think of something soothing. Nothing came but images of the girl: on the beach with the surf foaming around her calves; walking half-naked up the walk in that black bikini, casting a coy glance over her shoulder; her first appearance in the door of the helo, looking too fresh and innocent to be here. But the image his mind settled on was the one of her kneeling in the dust of the road, staring down that hostile reptile and bending it to her will.
"Keep your distance, Brian. Physically and emotionally."
What the hell is going on?
Forstner, still standing at the T, looked at him with growing alarm. "Sarge?"
He shook his head, concentrating on his breathing. There was something wrong with the air in here, that was it. He just needed fresh air. "Call me," he got out, and stepped outside.
A few steps from the front door, he started feeling better. The day was sunshiny and warming nicely, and he took deep breaths of the sun-warmed air. An urge to light one up came to him: strange, because he hadn't smoked in years. The only time he even thought about it anymore…
… was after sex.
The door behind him opened. Forstner said, "She wants us."
Wilcox followed the corporal inside and down the hall. The sergeant stepped through the interrogation room's door and hesitated. Six-forty-two sat slumped in the chair, held in place by his restraints. Wilcox thought the detainee was unconscious until the bagged head bobbed and the man made a small sound, and the sergeant realized he was sobbing.
The uniformed girl stood over him, hands on hips, looking down. Only, she didn't look like a girl anymore. Suddenly Wilcox was sure that this woman was decades older than she looked. She was still gorgeous, but thoughts of taking her to bed didn't make him feel guilty anymore; they made him feel the way stepping through an uncleared door in combat did. She bent and placed her mouth near the side of the man's headbag and spoke; at the first sound of her voice, he jerked upright. Whatever she said wasn't English, and the detainee understood, judging by the way he whimpered and twisted in a futile attempt to get away from her.
She straightened and gestured to Wilcox. The sergeant approached to collect his detainee. What he saw when he rounded the chair made him hesitate again. The chin of the man's headbag was sodden, as was the front of his orange jumpsuit: sweat, tears, spit, whatever. But the man's crotch was soaked as well, and despite the size of the stain, the sergeant's nose told him it wasn't piss.
She said, "I want this man returned to his cell and placed on constant watch – I know you're already looking in on him every three minutes, but he's smart, and rather more motivated right now; I don't want to take the smallest chance with him. I doubt he'll want to eat or drink. If he covers his window, don't waste time trying to talk him into clearing it – just go in after him. Keep him alive for me, and I'll be back in two days to question him."
"Does he know that?"
She met his eyes, and he felt the hairs on his neck rise. "Why do you suppose he's determined to kill himself?"
They returned the unresisting detainee to Camp Five, handling him almost like baggage, and picked up the next, housed in the same block. This time, Wilcox stepped outside immediately after securing him in the room. From there, he couldn't hear whatever noise the man might be making, and there was no porn film starring Nicole playing behind his eyes. But he still felt a deep, almost painful stirring in his loins, and a constant disquieting pull toward the door. He imagined himself as a fly in proximity to a bug zapper, drawn in by the light despite the strange humming and the smell of scorched flesh surrounding it.
Forstner stepped outside. Wilcox thought he was coming to fetch him, much earlier than the first time, until the man reached into his breast pocket for a pack of cigarettes. Having smokes on his person while on duty was against regs, but Wilcox routinely let the man slide on it. The corporal shook one out and started to put the pack away without offering one to Wilcox, and was surprised when the sergeant gestured for one. They lit up together and stared at the blank green fence ten yards away.
"I'll go back in in a minute," Forstner said. "It's just, listening to it is starting to freak me out. I don't want to know what she's doing in there, but it's like keeping your tongue out of the socket when you get a tooth pulled, you know?"
Wilcox nodded. He coughed, stubbed the cig out on the sole of his shoe, and put it in his pocket.
"So, what did you two do last night?"
"Hit Starbuck's for a bite. Then I took her shopping. I watched her sunbathing at Silt Beach for a while, and dropped her off."
"Nice." He took a puff. "I was kind of thinking-"
"No." He swallowed. Not quite.
"Okay." Another puff. "Jeri was off last night," he said, referring to his new girlfriend.
"Lucky you."
"Uh huh." Another puff. "Something happened, when we were together."
Wilcox thought he knew what was coming, but held his silence, waiting.
The corporal went on, "It was great, man, everything coming together just perfect. Ever come so hard, it seems like it's never gonna end? And your legs feel weak afterwards? It was that good. But…" He took a long drag on his cigarette, taking it almost down to the filter. "Just as I nut, I…"
"You thought about her," Wilcox said.
"No, that's when I realized I'd been thinking about her almost the whole time." He put out his butt. "She comes back, I hope they give her somebody else to run her around." He went back inside.
The third detainee was housed in the same block as the first two, and like the first required an additional guard to handle him. As soon as his cell door opened, he began babbling in whatever his native language was, and thrashed as they reached for his arms and legs. The man they had just returned seemed to be calling to him, his voice rapid and urgent. The rest of the block was eerily silent, without a single catcall from the other detainees in their cells.
While he was being put in restraints, the shift commander said, "They're all nerved up right now. We just had to send Six Forty-two to the hospital, in chains. He started crying and talking nonsense about an hour before mealtime. Then when he got his tray, the fucker turned his back to the window and shoved his Styrofoam cup down his throat." The man's eyes searched his, but he asked no question, and Wilcox offered no answers. In truth, he had none.
The whole trip to Camp No, the detainee rocked in his seat, a constant stream of muttering coming from inside his head bag – chanting or praying, it sounded like. It was unnerving, and Wilcox thought more than once about telling him to shut up, but he didn't – first, because he was feeling a strange sort of sympathy for the bound and bagged man so plainly terrified; second, because the sergeant didn't think he would obey – might be so far into his own head right now that he wouldn't even hear the order.
He glanced at the third MP in the little Jeep: Preiss, the same man who had helped them with Six Forty-two. He was watching the headbagged man with a sick expression. Wilcox caught his eye and raised his eyebrows: what's he saying? The MP shook his head and gave his attention to the passing scenery, which he'd doubtless seen a hundred times.
When the three men chained the detainee into the chair, he stopped talking as if he had been switched off. All three soldiers felt their eyes drawn to the uniformed woman on the other side of the table; Wilcox could no more have taken his eyes off her than he could have risen off the floor and flown around the room. His breath tightened, and his breath shortened. In his mind's eye, her clothing disappeared, and she was back in that black bikini. And then she was naked. He shook his head to clear it, and saw her watching him. He blushed but couldn't look away. Her eyes…
"That will be all, boys," she said softly. "Corporal Forstner, return Sergeant Preiss to his post. Sergeant Wilcox, go with him."
He squeezed out, "I, I can't…"
"I know you can't. Do it anyway. Both of you. And take your time coming back."
On the drive back to Delta, the MP looked silently from Wilson to Forstner, his eyes full of unasked questions. But the other two men kept their silence. At the gate, just before they passed in, Preiss said, "He was praying for God to take him, before he was lost forever. What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
When they passed back out the gate, the corporal hesitated, then turned away from Camp No and headed east.
They passed the helipad where they had first seen her and came to the tall wire fence that enclosed the Preserve. Forstner turned north, and they began to follow the road that paralleled it. The brush came right up to the fence in most places, a green wall that hid everything on the other side. The road climbed until they were in the hills. At the top of the ridge, Forstner brought the little vehicle to a halt, and they looked at the main base spreading out below them, and the bay beyond, busy with water traffic.
"She's cute as a boxful of puppies," Forstner said to the view. "And hot as a bikini pageant at spring break. And she's a total psycho who makes Charlie Manson look like Mister Rogers. If she's spending another night, I think you better let me run her around."
Wilcox felt an irrational twinge of jealousy. "Mind your own business, Max. You already got a woman to worry about."
The driver shrugged. "Just saying, man. You get in a situation with her, you may not like finding out what she's into."
-0-
"I know you speak English, Mahmoud," Nicole said to the bound man, who sat still as a mouse in a thicket while a hawk is circling overhead. "And yes, I know your real name." She leaned close. "And what you've done. I presume you killed the man whose ID you were carrying when you were picked up. Just bad luck that he was on a CIA wanted list as well, eh? Or maybe it was divine justice." She straightened and began to circle him as she talked. "You were praying when you were brought in. Did your prayers give you any comfort? I doubt they did. Your faith is weak, Mahmoud. It was never the real reason for the things you did, just a way of getting support. You're a hater. The people you want to hurt are the only ones you care about.
"You learned English in Iraq, from a group of young Saudis come to heed the call and defend the Faith – or bored rich kids looking for adventure, take your pick. They were blown to pieces when they tried to sneak a carload of IEDs past the Coalition pickets. They probably heard the A-10's engines, but the sound was miles away, and they had no idea how far a Warthog can see in the dark. You didn't think much of their chances when you sent them out, but they had already been with your group for three months, and you knew it wouldn't be long before they got tired of playing war and went home, so you decided to get some use out of them, as martyrs if nothing else."
The bound man stirred, making his restraints rattle. He began speaking in a low voice, a language not English.
"Shut up," Nicole said, and the man stopped as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown on his vocal chords. She stopped as well, just behind his chair. "Twenty-three people died in the mosque you bombed. You did it because one of them was a man whose politics your patron disliked. A Muslim who murders other Muslims has no claim on Allah's mercy. Did you really think God would reward you for what you did?" She leaned close. "I… am the reward He sent you for that."
She resumed pacing. "This isn't an interrogation. I'm going to talk, and you're going to listen. Any questions I ask you will just be tests of your understanding. When I'm done, you have a decision to make, and you'll make it instantly, or I'll make it for you. I think you already have some idea what I'm talking about."
She stopped again, and examined her captive. His chained hands, tightly gripping the chair arms, were his only exposed skin. She smiled when she saw that the dark hair on the backs of his hands had risen. "The men here look at me, and they see a pretty girl, too young to belong here, charming and easy to talk to. They constantly imagine having sex with me, of course. And yet, there's something about me that makes them cautious and uneasy, something they can't explain." She drew a fingertip across the erect hairs, and he jerked. "But you, with that bag on your head… you see me clearer than any of them, don't you? The first man told all of you what he met in this room, of course, but how is it you understood what he was trying to describe? Is it possible that not all your teachers were zealots and pedagogues, ranters with just enough grasp of Scripture to sound learned when they told you who your enemies were?" She leaned close again. "Was there one scholar among them, someone who could tell you stories older than the Prophet, stories of the djinn, and of demons, and stealers of souls?"
She straightened and stared at the bound man. He cried out and twisted, straining at his restraints. His hips thrust forward again and again, so violently it seemed they might break. He screamed and fell back, gasping and grunting.
Conversationally she said, "You know, if you look up 'ecstasy' in a modern dictionary, all the definitions have to do with pleasure. But if you can find an old enough one, it's defined as a glut of sensation that overwhelms the senses and steals one's sense of self, without making any distinction between pain and pleasure. That's because there was a time when people realized that, past a certain point, there is no difference."
She drew close and bent over the shivering man. In a low, intimate voice she said, "What you just felt … was me taking hold of your soul, and giving it the gentlest of tugs, to see how firmly it's anchored." She knelt beside the chair, resting a hand on the man's arm; he jerked as if shocked. "The answer is, not very. Like I said, Mahmoud, your faith is weak. I could pluck it from you like a grape from its stem. Not that it would be so easy for you. The experience defies description, truly. And the memory of it will be so powerful that it will never seem to end. And when I say 'never,' I mean never, Mahmoud. The soul never dies. But there will be no Hell for you, no Paradise. You'll be mine to do with as I please, until time itself comes to an end."
She stood. "But there is a ray of hope for you, Mahmoud. I was sent here to take you for your punishment, but on the way, I was approached by someone to whom I owe a small favor. They have an interest in you, it seems, and they bargained for you. So here's your choice, Mahmoud…"
-0-
"Someone will be coming for him in about a week," Nicole said to Wilcox. "The paperwork was started before I arrived. The agent probably won't be very talkative, Brian, and it would be best not to ask him any questions."
They were once again at the little helipad between the fence and the detention center. The sky was clear, unlike the day before when she arrived. The wind ruffled her skirt and sent her hair waving toward the sea. She was utterly beautiful, and the thought of touching her made the sergeant's mouth go dry with fear. He managed to get out, "Am I going to see you when you come back?"
"I'm not really coming back, Brian." She watched the speck of the approaching aircraft swell against the cloudless sky. "Telling you that in the first prisoner's hearing was part of the setup."
"Setup?"
"Right." She smiled. "Repeating what I had just told him, to someone else in a language he wasn't supposed to understand, confirmed it for him. Sardar confirmed that the guards don't speak Arabic, and the prisoners pass information freely. And so he told them exactly what I wanted.
"Mahmoud was the only detainee I was sent here for. The first two hardcases were just to soften him up and set the stage." She gave him a brief glance. "Torture alone was never going to break him. He knew that no matter how roughly you treated him, there was a line you wouldn't cross, and there would be an end to it eventually. If there's one thing these people have learned at Guantanamo, it's patience."
She smiled again, a different one that raised the hairs on the sergeant's neck and forearms. "So I had to threaten him with something worse than pain, even worse than death. Something that no amount of patience could overcome, because it would last forever. One of his favorite teachers was a scholar, and something of a mystic. The stories the man told him amused him, but they also planted a little seed of superstition in him, according to the dossier I had on him. So I used that to convince him that working for us was a whole lot better than the alternative."
The aircraft, a small two-seater this time, settled to the concrete, its blades slowing but still under power. They were far enough from the pad that they were clear of the dust and still able to talk. Wilcox picked up her bag from the ground. He said to her, "Who the hell are you, Nicole, really?"
She took the bag from his hand, seeming careful not to touch him. "When I figure that out, I'll let you know." She blew him a kiss and headed for the chopper.
.
Tuesday June 22 2004
Kingston Jamaica
The door to the luxury hotel suite opened to Nicole's keycard, and she passed through the foyer into the sitting room. She didn't need to call out for her brother; she knew he was near just from the faint tingle on her skin. She opened the door of his room without knocking, certain he was aware of her approach.
Matthew Callahan was sitting on the foot of his bed, dressed only in a pair of striped boxers. He didn't look up; all his attention was on the dress shoe and shoe brush in his hands. He gave its gleaming toe a final lick and bent to pick up the other at his feet.
Nicole paused to survey her brother with a woman's appreciation. Matt was tall and blond and tan and had the body of a Greek statue; his features were regular and nicely proportioned and beautiful in a square-jawed, very masculine way. He paid attention to his appearance, and kept his hair and nails clean and trimmed. He dressed expensively and well. She was sure that only his cold and disinterested manner kept women from mobbing him in the streets. But Matt had never been in a relationship, so far as Nicole knew, and seldom indulged even in casual hookups. Being alone was part of the price one paid, she supposed, for being a superman.
Nicole plopped down on the side of the bed behind him and toed off her shoes. She combed her fingers through her hair, lifting the damp strands off the back of her neck. Mid-eighties wasn't all that hot, she supposed, but she simply wasn't ready for Caribbean summer, not after spending so much time the past year in high Colorado and northern Michigan. "Are you coming in or going out?"
"Going out. I'm finally meeting with one of the gangleaders at his crib. He'll want to impress me, so all his boys will be there."
"Figures." She unbuttoned her jeans and drew down the zipper.
Matt examined the shoe critically, turning it this way and that; it already bore the dull gloss of a polish application. He picked up the shoe brush again and began cleaning off the excess, raising a shine on the leather. "Your room's next door, Nikki."
"I just want to cool down. If I leave for a shower, I'm sure you'll be gone before I step out. You haven't been much company, Matt." Nicole shrugged her hips and slid the denim down her legs and onto the floor.
"I'm working. I didn't invite you to tag along, and I certainly don't know why you thought we'd make some sort of vacation out of it." The other shoe was now gleaming. He set both of them together on the floor and admired them.
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe cuz you love me, and you like spending time with me?" She crossed her arms in front of her and gripped the hem of her shirt with both hands, and a moment later it joined her jeans on the floor, leaving her in bra, panties, and footie socks.
"Both true. But the operative word is 'spend'. Not 'waste'. My time is too important to throw away on simple-minded recreations. If you really want to spend time together, you could come with." He stood and moved to the closet.
"I'm sure you don't need my help, and watching you kill a houseful of people isn't my idea of a family outing."
"No accounting for taste." He selected slacks and a jacket, holding the hangers in one hand as he continued looking through the items on the rod. "How was Cuba?"
"Dreary. Everything worth seeing or doing is on the other side of the barbed wire. Petting a lizard was the high point of the trip. I thought I might at least mix a little pleasure with business while I was there – a place like that has to be crawling with hot guys-"
"So that's why you were looking over the personnel files as well as the dossiers?" He tsked.
"I asked for one escort, they gave me two. They were both so sweet I was thinking about a threesome. But it didn't work out."
"Actually, I was asking about the mission."
"The mission, the mission." She swung her legs up, putting her head on the pillow. She stretched, feeling the heat leach out of her. "Well enough, I suppose. Hardly seemed worth the interruption."
He added a light dress shirt and silk tie to his burden. "One would think you'd be glad to be back to work. Surely you don't miss being a sheepdog at Darwin."
"Actually, I do. Though I'm glad I wasn't there when Uncle Jack blew through." Shortly after the kids at Darwin had manifested en masse and been confined, Matt and Nicole had gone to Boulder to report; they hadn't expected anything to require their attention at Darwin for about a week, which was when Dr. Ivery had predicted that the first of the subjects in isolation would break. No one in the Research Directorate had suspected that Jack Lynch knew of Darwin's existence and his missing son's presence there. That IO's Director of Operations would stage a one-main raid on the complex, taking down the entire guard force, and arrange the escape of every Special in custody hadn't entered anyone's wildest dreams.
Matt tossed the items on the bed on the way to the dresser. "I wish I'd been there. Years of work locating them and setting up the training facility right down the drain, just as we were about to start getting a return on investment. Now we have to hunt them all down again, only this time they're hiding from us."
"You think you could have stopped him?"
He opened the top drawer. "I know I could have. So could you."
"Actually, no. My I-S doesn't work on him."
He looked back over his shoulder at her. "Nikki. Jack Lynch?"
"Just a little experiment. I wanted to see if Bobby's immunity was inherited."
"Did he realize?"
"I'm very sure he did. Speaking of the runaways, I take it the trail in New Mexico has gone cold?"
"The team hasn't turned up one clue since Jack and Kat drove off that hilltop. It's been over a week. They're in the wind again." From the drawer, Matt removed a pair of dark socks and a semi-auto pistol in a shoulder holster before returning to the bed.
Nicole scoffed. "A gun?"
He dropped the weapon on the bed next to the clothing. "I'm visiting a criminal stronghold. Gang tensions in this town are an inch from erupting into open warfare. I'm sure I'll get frisked at the door. If I'm not carrying, they'll be suspicious."
"And how, exactly, would that make any difference?"
"It would spoil the fun." He shrugged into the shirt and buttoned it up. As he hung the tie around his neck, Nicole stood and faced him, taking the ends. He said, "Nikki, I'm perfectly capable of tying my own tie."
Her forearms brushed his chest as she worked on the knot. "And I'm perfectly capable of letting you. Now shut up." She drew it tight. "I've always liked this color on you." She held on and looked up into his eyes. "You look so handsome. But you're still so obviously a tightass." Nicole reached up to touch the back of her brother's neck.
"Don't." The word cracked like a gunshot. He went on, more mildly, "Even think about it, Nicole."
Nicole let go and flopped down on the bed. "I was just trying to loosen you up before your big game."
"I'll decide how loose I need to be." He sat on the bed and drew on the socks. "Is this how you 'experimented' with good old Uncle Jack?"
She stroked his back with a sock-clad toe. "More or less. I had all my clothes on."
"The straitlaced old warhorse must have been shocked down to his shoes."
She smiled up at the ceiling. "Well, the reaction was profound. But I don't think it was shock. The poor old thing seemed almost sorry for me, like I had a terminal illness or something."
Matthew grunted. "He always was sentimental about you." He stood and stepped into the pants, tucking the shirt in.
"I suppose." She shrugged. "I guess he never got over the guilts for not 'saving' us." At her brother's scoff, she said, "Don't you wonder what it would have been like if the Shop hadn't taken us in, just waited to recruit us for Darwin with the others instead?"
He slipped on the empty holster and adjusted it. "Oh, I'm sure we'd have both ended up aces on Special Security's card deck." This was an old discussion between them, and Matt's thoughts and words settled into a well-worn groove. "We're right where we belong, Nicole. The world needs us, and if we hadn't gone through what we did, we wouldn't be who we are."
"It must be wonderful to be so sure. I just can't help wondering what it would be like to live a normal life, like the others did before Darwin."
Matt sat at the foot of the bed again and bent to slip on his shoes. "They hadn't manifested yet. Once that happens, there is no such thing as a normal life." As he tied the laces, he chuckled.
"What's so funny?"
"Imagining you with an Ethan Stills poster tacked to your bedroom wall when you were sixteen. Or going to the prom at eighteen. Or…" He chuckled again, louder. "Or letting one of your friends talk you into a blind date. Complaining about your boyfriend wanting sex all the time."
"Beast." She gently kicked him in the back. Her eyes returned to the ceiling. "Do you really think we'll find them?"
"Of course. It's just a matter of time. Slipping through our net in New Mexico was a fluke, they won't be so lucky next time." He slipped the pistol into the holster and stood. "I presume you're going out tonight."
"Why do you presume that?"
"Because you're behaving like a cat in heat."
"Actually," she said, stretching, "I was thinking of staying in and ordering room service. The boy they send up from the kitchen seems nice."
"Be careful." He shrugged into his jacket.
She smiled at the ceiling. "You're worried about me, really?"
"I'm worried about dealing with evidence that would puzzle a medical examiner."
"In the first place, I don't kill them all, for crying out loud. In the second place, that's a fine comment from somebody who makes people's brains spurt out their mouths for kicks. Can't believe you're going to soak that pretty Armani jacket in blood. I hope you're taking a change of clothes with you."
Matthew picked up an attaché case from a nearby chair. "Right here. But it's just contingency planning. They're going to appear to have been killed by a rival gang, at least if the investigators don't look closely."
"And if they do look closely?"
"Then they'll appear to have killed one another. A betrayal. No evidence I was there, either way."
"Why is IO bothering with a bunch of rasta drugrunners, anyway?"
"They have associates in Mexico and Venezuela who are into things besides drugs. Planning Directorate thinks taking out the top boys on both sides of this little turf war will goad one group or another into an indiscretion, which will in turn lead us to the men Ivana's really after."
"Wheels within wheels."
"As always." He moved toward the door. "Tomorrow, I'll be spending the day traveling all over town playing tourist, giving my next victims a good look at me. Come along? Sightseeing, some good meals, maybe a little snorkeling. I'm sure having you on my arm would do my cover no harm, and make these lecherous lowlifes a little more disposed to talk with me."
"How sentimental of you. Let's see how I feel in the morning."
"Don't pretend you need to think about it. You know you won't pass up a day of quality time with big brother." He headed for the door. "Maybe I'll even take you dancing. Some of these jerks practically live at 'da club'."
"Matt."
He turned. Nicole lay with one hand under her head, one knee raised, the other leg stretched out. She caressed her thigh with her free hand and smiled, eyes sleepy. "If I wasn't your baby sister?"
"Well, of course. By any means necessary."
She waved him away. "God. You even make sex sound like a mission."
He turned away, smiling darkly. "And in every way imaginable."