Mount Hood
A gentle hand shook her shoulder. “Honey, wake up.”
Startled, Kay bolted up, heart pounding. Danger! Danger all around her! Someone had died, Mike had died…
“Whoa.” That big hand curled around the back of her head, cupped her neck, shook it lightly. “It’s okay. You’re safe now. We’re here.”
Kay looked over at Nick, ashamed of her reaction. Her heart had nearly burst out of her chest but now it was slowing down. “Sorry,” she whispered.
Nick released his seat belt and hers and bent over to kiss her cheek. His beard already had a little bite to it. It felt good, grounding. She remembered how smooth his cheeks had been against the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. There hadn’t been any whisker bite then, oh no. Just smooth skin and smooth tongue…she’d been laid out on the bed like a human sacrifice, only lashed by pleasure not pain. Writhing, holding tightly to his head between her thighs as the one solid point of stability in a hot, restless sea.
Heat filled her down to her fingertips and toes and it felt so good. It washed away the cramped chill of fear and anguish.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” he answered, moving away from her, big hands hanging over the top of the wheel. He was giving her time to come back into herself. “You needed the rest. I’m glad you had some.”
Spears of lambent light shot through a thick copse of pine trees, the kind of light only late afternoon could provide. “Where are we? Have we been driving all day?”
If it was late afternoon, they’d been driving for at least five or six hours. One could cover a lot of ground in that time. They could arguably be in Idaho or California or Washington. She’d thought they were going to Mount Hood, but clearly, she’d been wrong.
“On Mount Hood,” Nick said, and exited the vehicle.
Mount Hood? They’d driven hours to get to Mount Hood?
He was at her door, big hands up to help her down. Ordinarily Kay didn’t like or need help getting in and out of vehicles, but her muscles were stiff and unwieldly, as if she’d been hurt. Looking down, the ground seemed a long way away, like through the wrong end of the telescope. She leaned forward and Nick lifted her down with no effort at all.
It was embarrassing to feel so weak. She was a strong and healthy woman. She practiced yoga, ran over lunch hours and hiked on weekends. She barely recognized her own body. Her skin felt like a stiff hazmat suit she’d had to don. “How’d it take us hours to get here? Mount Hood is about an hour from Portland, isn’t it?”
Nick gave a half smile. “We took, um, the scenic route. One guaranteed to ensure that no one was following us. So, welcome to the Grange. Where we’ll be spending the next while until we figure out what’s going on.” He swept his arm as if presenting the castle of a fairy tale kingdom.
Hmmm. Pretty shabby as castles went. A tiny, dilapidated shack with moldy wooden siding that had turned gray with age, fronted by a rickety porch that sat forlornly on a concrete foundation that had cracks in it. There wasn’t a lawn or a garden, just this gravel apron where Nick had parked.
The idea of spending “the next while” here was daunting. Still, she was grateful for the shelter and for the thought. And for Nick standing by her side, not so tall but so very broad and so very reassuring.
They’d get through this. They’d camp out here and as soon as Felicity decrypted the flash drive, she’d go to work and figure the whole thing out. Nick had gotten her to safety and she’d take it from here. In that rundown shack. She shivered and hoped there was heat in the shack. Maybe a wood-fired stove? God knew there were enough trees around for kindling.
She pulled in a deep, pine-scented breath. The air was cool and super clean and smelled of trees for miles and miles, with no pollutants at all. It was pleasant and bracing, clearing her head. It wouldn’t be so bad. The shack looked desolate and uncomfortable, but they’d manage.
She smiled at Nick, who was watching her closely.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked. “This was Midnight’s place that he bought when he first arrived in Portland. A little hideaway.”
“Midnight”, she knew, was John Huntington, one of the owners of ASI, and Nick’s new boss. She knew Nick really liked both his bosses, John, and Douglas Kowalski.
But…John had had a couple of years to fix the shack up. Why hadn’t he? Their headquarters, which she’d visited once on a quick trip to Portland, were spectacular. Cool and elegant and very high tech. The exact opposite of this ramshackle hut. Maybe he’d been too busy building one of the biggest security companies in the country to restructure here.
“It looks, um, cozy,” she said. About the only thing she could say that wouldn’t sound whiny.
There was something wrong, and she couldn’t figure it out. Something about changing beds. Hopefully, there’d be sheets and blankets. Why was she thinking this? Because she’d had a flash where two thoughts bounced together. Nick. And bed. And…
Her eyes rounded and she brought her hand to her mouth. “Oh my gosh, Nick!”
He lifted a black eyebrow.
“My wheelie! I took it with me when I left the hotel!”
He rolled his eyes and looked pained. “Tell me about it. When I saw you’d packed your bag and took it with you, I nearly had a heart attack.”
“I left it there! Where Mike died!” She closed her eyes a second, spinning the movie in her head backward. She’d had it in the alleyway. The wheels had made a little grinding noise. But she hadn’t had it in the department store, certainly not when she’d made her way down the stairs to the garage level. Absolutely certain of that. “They’ll find my suitcase with a dead body! I mean I don’t think I have a document in it, but I definitely have a conference folder and—”
“Stop right there.” Nick shook his head. “You did, honey. You did leave your suitcase. The police have it, and they know it’s yours.”
She staggered. The blood left her head suddenly, plummeting downward. Her suitcase in the hands of the police! Was she running now from the law? Her knees trembled.
Nick flashed out a hand, steadied her.
“Easy now. Yes, they have your suitcase, yes they know it’s yours, no it’s not a problem. I talked to a good friend, Captain Bud Morrison of the Portland PD. They know everything.”
Kay couldn’t move, could barely breathe. She was shaken to her core. “They know it’s mine. Then they know I was there. They must be looking for me.”
A cold expression crossed Nick’s tough face. “They’d like to talk to you, that’s true. But I am not letting you go where you are expected. I told them you were targeted and that you’ll be in for interrogation when the danger is over. Bud said that if Felicity can establish a secure link, he’d like to talk via Skype. Felicity refrained from mentioning that there’s a secure link already. She can hold him off for a while.”
“I don’t know—”
“Exactly. We don’t know anything and we don’t know who was after Mike. It will take as long as we want for a secure link to be established. Let’s not think about that now.”
Kay nodded slowly. Nick had bought her time, time to process what had happened and what she’d seen. Time to study Priyanka’s files. “I’m going to want to see the autopsy results.”
“That can happen.” He nodded. “Either legally or illegally, if you need those results, you’ll get them.”
“Okay. I’ll do my part. When I do go in to talk to the police, I hope to have some data other than me watching him being sprayed and then watching him die.” She shuddered.
“Come on, then. Let’s get settled in.” He slanted a look at her, put one hand around her arm, walked forward up the porch. The front porch steps creaked, Kay noted with alarm. Nick was a heavy guy. It was all lean muscle but he was dense. Each step made the porch shiver.
Kay glanced down, hoping to catch the wood cracking in time so they could hop out of the way before they plunged through the porch to the ground. Watching her feet, she missed what Nick did. It wasn’t as easy as putting a key in the lock—though why anyone would lock the door to this place was beyond her. He’d used something she hadn’t quite seen, like maybe a remote control? At any rate, he was slipping something long and slender in his pocket when the door clicked and opened. Very smoothly.
Huh.
They walked into the one-room shack, Kay a little warily. The place smelled of abandonment, and where there was abandonment there could be rats, or worse. Spiders. She hated spiders.
Nick stopped her by simply tightening his hold on her arm. Okay. She stood still, taking in the sad shack. A hot plate on a counter where there was also a sink, which meant there must be some form of electricity, probably an outdoor generator. A single light bulb hanging from a wire in the middle of the ceiling. Two sagging armchairs, a rickety table with four mismatched wooden chairs, which looked like they’d barely support her weight, let alone Nick’s.
Oh, and a steel frame cot in a corner with a bare mattress that looked stained.
The flooring was splintered hardwood, except for just inside the entrance. They were standing on a steel plate.
The whole place reeked of mold and looked so desolate it hurt the heart.
She could do this. She could. So what if the place gave her the creeps? It sure beat being dead.
Nick was still holding her arm. Well, she’d seen what was here. Not much. So—what were they waiting for?
He pulled something out of his jacket pocket. A weird-looking pair of goggles. He handed them over. “Put them on,” he said quietly.
She did—and recoiled. “Whoa.”
The entire shack was crisscrossed with laser beams, invisible to the eye and visible only through the goggles, which must have been IR-enabled. The beams covered almost the entire area, from the floor up to a height of about six feet.
Suddenly, she realized what she was looking at. A very effective security measure. No one could enter without triggering the beams. An interruption in the light would doubtless be signaled to some control area.
Kay lifted her foot and put it back down. That steel plate felt very solid.
“This is a trigger plate, am I right?”
“Bingo. Give the lady a brass ring.” Nick slanted a glance at her, one corner of his mouth lifted in a half smile.
“So I guess this place isn’t quite as desolate as it looks?”
“Hmm. Yeah.” Nick reached to the side and pressed something and the laser lights blinked out. “There are a few surprises.”
Kay handed him back the goggles and they walked across the shabby, dusty floorboards to the opposite wall, where an unpainted wooden door led to another room.
Or so she thought.
When Nick opened the door, there was a stainless-steel panel behind it. A beeping sound came from his jacket pocket and the panel slid open to reveal a space the size of a small bathroom. They walked in, the panel slid shut and the ground fell beneath her feet.
An elevator.
They fell fast, but came to a surprisingly gentle halt. Kay estimated that they had fallen perhaps four or five stories. The panel slid back open and she walked out into…wow.
Nick dropped his arm as Kay turned in a full circle, trying to take everything in. It was one of the most amazing spaces she’d ever seen.
She met Nick’s amused eyes. He winked at her. “Like the Time Lord says, it’s bigger on the inside than on the outside.”
“A Mount Hood Tardis.” Kay smiled. “I see Felicity’s rubbing off on you.”
He gave a mock frown. “I liked Dr. Who before I met Felicity. I just wasn’t a nerd about it the way she is. So—what do you think about the Grange?”
“It’s—it’s amazing.”
And it was. They were in a huge open-air plaza with circular balconies connected by four transparent external elevators. The ground floor—the floor they were on—was paved with slabs of limestone, interspersed with rectangles of earth filled with thriving plants. Kay had no idea how it worked because outside it had seemed that the shack was surrounded by dense forest, but down here, there was a huge circular space seemingly open to the sky, flooding the space with light. Looking closely, she could faintly see a covering over the open area. Nothing material, more like a shimmer.
The materials were rustic-chic, in earth-tone colors. Limestone, wood, brass. Plexiglas benches everywhere giving a feeling of lightness. Across the plaza, she could see other areas clearly designated as areas for social groupings, work spaces, eating spaces. They were under the ring of balconies but somehow the place was very well lit.
“Suzanne designed the look of the place. She said she refused to have a bolt hole that technically was designed to help us survive a nuclear holocaust and have it be ugly.”
“Quite right.” Kay nodded. Suzanne Huntington’s ability to infuse beauty into everything she touched was amazing. “If you’re going to survive, you should survive in style.”
“What she said, more or less. This is also a server farm. ASI has opened a new business, keeping corporate data secure for companies. We can barely keep up with demand. I think it represents about a quarter of our revenue now.”
She smiled. Nick talked easily of “our” company, after working only a short time there. It was something she’d noted in the others, that they identified with their company. John and Douglas were excellent employers who treated everyone who worked at the company as a partner. Everyone who worked there was very well paid, very well treated and very well respected. Everyone who worked there loved it.
Her heart gave a hard, painful pulse in her chest, breaking a little. She’d loved her job, too. Going to work at the CDC every morning, she’d felt a burst of energy and, yes, even love. Everyone there was a good guy. A white hat. Everyone there had one goal—to stop disease. To heal, to cure. To make life better. To help mankind break the terrible chains that had held it in its iron grip since the dawn of time. People crippled, blinded, brought low by devastating pain, children dying young before their potential could be realized—all of these things the researchers at the CDC fought against with every ounce of energy in their bodies.
Like the FBI and CIA fought terrorists, the CDC fought disease. With no quarter and no rest. They fought the good fight.
Or so she’d thought.
Such pride she’d felt, entering the building, making the world a better place, striking a blow against evil, every single day. It hadn’t even occurred to her that evil might be right there.
She missed her job, missed it fiercely, wondered if she’d ever be able to go back. Probably not.
Nick was watching her with a frown. For such a tough guy, a guy’s guy, he was disconcertingly sensitive to moods. Damn him. “Is something wrong?” he asked. “You look—”
“Tired,” she replied quickly. Her sorrow at losing a big chunk of herself and of her reason for living wasn’t really helpful right now. Pointless burdening Nick with it. She said something that would make sense to him. “Tired and hungry.”
Nick was Italian. Italians hated the thought of someone going hungry.
“Oh yeah.” His face smoothed out. There we go. He had something concrete he could do for her. “Wait till you see the food stocks. Let’s get you settled and you can take a shower while I prepare lunch.” He checked his watch. “Early dinner.”
“I like that division of labor,” Kay replied. “Food stocks? Are you guys preparing for the zombie apocalypse up here?”
They were crossing that big open-air plaza. The air smelled glorious, as it had on the gravel apron outside the deceptively forlorn shack. Outside it had smelled of pine, but in here it smelled of exotic flowers and plants. Looking up again, she could barely see whatever it was that covered the roof. Whatever it was, it let in sunshine and fresh air but wasn’t cold. It was definitely warm inside.
Nick guided her around various plantings on a zigzagging route across the plaza. He kept a hand on her at all times and it felt wonderful. He kept her close enough so that his broad shoulders brushed hers as they walked and it almost felt like a transfer of strength and energy with each touch.
He looked up at the strange sky then over at her. “I personally believe the zombie apocalypse is coming, though sadly I seem to be alone in that. But a lot of us feel that if things ever go south, they’ll go south fast, and it’ll take time for things to get back to normal. Maybe even a generation. The place is organized to shelter at least two hundred people for a long time. It is almost completely self-sufficient in terms of energy and there are plans for growing food. Right now, it’s a useful profit center with the server farm and it’s a place where we can all celebrate holidays together. And at the moment,” he said, with a sweep of his arm, “it’s your new home.”
Her new home.
They were in an area that was meant to be communal. Various beautiful sofa and armchair groupings, cozy and inviting. A huge sofa in front of a massive horizontal gas fireplace at least fifty feet long. A billiard table, a grand piano, a bank of foosball tables. Against one wall, a 100-inch plasma curved TV that looked almost large enough for a commercial movie theater.
They might have to stay a generation but they wouldn’t be bored. If Felicity was in any way involved, there’d be ebooks, streaming movies, TV series and, above all, video games on tap, and as much music as anyone could want.
To the right was a huge kitchen and a long table that could sit the entire staff of ASI. Or the court of Henry VIII. But smaller tables were scattered around and the kitchen had a cozy breakfast nook.
They entered a long, wide corridor with pretty wrought metal sconces and plants in huge enameled pots. Even here, in the bowels of the earth, the air smelled fresh and clean.
Halfway down the corridor, Nick stopped and placed his palm against the wall to the side of a door. “My room,” he said. There was a metallic click and he pushed the door open for her, gesturing with his hand. Go on in.
Kay walked through a corridor and into a large living room area. She turned around, taking it all in. This space, too, was beautiful. Flagstone tiles, a dusky eggplant-colored couch with light gray armchairs, a fully equipped kitchenette, framed black-and-white photographs along the way. The impression was of comfort and elegance.
“Wow.” She turned back to Nick with one eyebrow raised. “I didn’t know you had a hidden talent for interior decorating.”
He lifted his hands. “Hey, I’m not responsible for the décor. My apartment in Portland was decorated in one very painful afternoon at Ikea and looks it. This is all Suzanne’s doing. Don’t ask me how but she decorated every single person’s room in a different way and we’re all delighted with what we got. I couldn’t have done this in a million years.”
She smiled. She didn’t know Suzanne Huntington well, but what she knew of her she liked. A lot. One of the country’s top decorators, she was totally unpretentious and down to earth, with a wild sense of humor. Word had it that she had her husband—a true badass tough guy, a former SEAL like Nick—totally wrapped around her little finger.
Nick’s cell pinged. “Yeah,” he answered. “She’s right here.” He held the phone out to her, switching to speakerphone. “It’s Felicity.”
Kay snatched the cell. The video function was on and she stared at her friend’s face, tears coming to her eyes. “Felicity! Oh, it’s so good to see you!”
Felicity looked tired. “Hey, Kay.” Felicity ran a finger down her screen as if touching Kay’s face. “I wish these were better circumstances.”
A deadly bio-weapon in play. Her best friend, dead. Priyanka’s colleague, dead. Mike Hammer, dead. “Yeah. I think some very bad things are happening, Felicity. I hate to say it, but I’m really scared.”
“You’re right to be scared, girlfriend, just not right now. Right this minute, you’re super secure at the Grange, or the Batcave, as the girls call it. And you have Nick. He’s not going to let anything happen to you.”
Nick gave out a low guttural sound.
“Was that a growl, Nick?” Felicity’s tinny voice asked from the speaker. “Being in the Batcave doesn’t mean you get to revert to a primitive state.”
Kay sat down, the cell cradled in her hand. “Did you get the flash drive?” she asked.
Felicity bit her lips and looked worried, which blew Kay’s mind. Felicity never looked worried. She was always serenely confident in her own abilities, and rightly so.
“Yeah, Metal got it to me right away, and I’ve been working on it ever since. It’s got some serious encryption, Kay. And a couple of traps. I’m making my way through the firewalls slowly, so I don’t accidentally trigger data destruction. Someone who knows what they’re doing encrypted this.”
Kay nodded.
“By the way, if you come across a password-based hurdle, try ‘naanisbetterthanwonderbread’. All lower case. It was our password for our secret email system.”
Felicity smiled. “Will do, great password. So…” She disappeared from the small screen for a second. She lived in her wheeled ergonomic chair, zipping from screen to screen. Her pretty face popped back up. “I’m back. My systems tell me it will be another four hours. I’ll send you the files as soon as they’re decrypted.”
“I hate to ask, honey, but are the communications systems here secure?”
Felicity cocked her head. “I really like you, Kay, and I know your head’s on the line here, so I’ll forgive you. Yes, everything is very secure there. As a matter of fact, security there is a 10-million-dollar business at the moment. Growing as we speak.”
That’s right, she’d forgotten. This place was not just a coolly elegant zombie apocalypse bug-out place, it was a cyber security business. God only knew how many Fortune 500 companies had their files backed up here. Probably billions of dollars’ worth of info. So yeah, it should be secure.
“I’ll contact you the second the files are available. Rest a little bit, though, because the data files are enormous and you have a lot of work to do. And none of us can help you, since no one here has a PhD in biochemistry or virology or genetics. You’ll have your hands full.”
Kay nodded. “I think I’ll know what to look for. But you’re right. I’ll rest. What—what happened to the drone?”
Felicity blinked. “Pass that over to the master. Metal?”
A jumble of images, and then Metal’s solid Irish face showed on the small screen. “Let’s go to the big screen,” he said, and the cell connection closed.
Nick helped her out of the armchair and they walked over to a work desk set up with a huge screen. Nick touched the top corners of the screen and two other screens popped out laterally, making for one continuous two-foot screen. He switched the system on and Metal’s face appeared, so clear she forgot for a second he was miles away. Felicity’s face appeared in a small square screen on the lower right-hand side. The screen was so wide she could see the great room at ASI behind them. One of the most impressive tech offices she’d ever seen. There too, elegance was married to efficiency.
Her own face was in a little square on the lower left-hand side. Nick appeared behind her, one big hand on her shoulder.
“Kay. Nick.” Metal nodded at them. It felt so much like he was in the room.
“Where’s the drone?” Nick asked.
“Disappeared an hour ago.” Metal’s mouth tightened. “Dipped under a covered passageway and must have had a pre-mapped route of covered exits. Or maybe went to ground. We don’t know. We were going to take it down just after nightfall, in about half an hour. Jacko was going to go up on a rooftop in stealth clothing and aim a DroneDefender. He wouldn’t have shown up on FLIR.”
“God, it could have fallen on someone’s head,” Kay said, alarmed.
“No, Jacko would have made sure it was right over Conrad’s rooftop and he’d have been able to see if anyone was there. But now that’s not gonna happen.”
Kay shuddered. She remembered all too well the mechanical creature swooping down with a faint buzzing sound, Mike collapsing to the ground, the insectoid camera lenses. She shook her head. “The drone might have photos of me. I can’t guarantee that it doesn’t. Mike tried to shield my face but it all happened so fast…” She stopped and bit her lips.
Nick’s hand tightened on her shoulder and she looked up at him in gratitude.
“The drone would have been sending intel constantly.” Felicity frowned. “We’ll look at the drone if we ever catch it, but any photos would have been sent at the time.”
“Do drones have IDs?” Kay knew next to nothing about the things. They had never caught her attention except for the large ones that sent missiles into deserts and small ones that took amazing landscape photos. “If we had caught it could we have figured out who sent the drone by looking at its innards? Like that Roman priest…”
For a second, she flashed on a book of Roman history she’d read as a child. It had been lavishly illustrated. One of the illustrations had been of a group of men in togas carefully watching one man pulling out the entrails of a sheep. The divination centered on the lobes of the liver. She’d been creeped out by liver ever since. What was the name of the guy who’d carried out the divination? Something beginning with an “h”…
“Like a haruspex,” Felicity said with a slight smile. “No liver in the drone and I suspect any identifying marks would have been eliminated.” She looked around. “What?”
“We’re all really impressed that you knew the word,” Kay answered. Metal, Jacko and the other boss, Douglas, were all looking at her.
Felicity sighed and rolled her eyes. “I guess no one here has played The Ancient Gods Return. Listen, Kay. You get some rest and I promise to send the files as soon as they’re ready. I think Metal’s got something to say.”
Metal’s sober face took center screen. “Mike Hammer’s body was autopsied. Bud said the autopsy results could not be disseminated but that he knew Felicity would just hack the coroner’s office and leave no trace, so he gave us the results anyway. He said that Hammer died of suffocation.”
Poor Mike. Kay still had the wheezing sounds he made as he’d tried to drag oxygen into his lungs in her ears. “His lungs were filled with fluid,” she said.
Metal nodded. “Yeah.”
“And the cytokine levels?”
“Through the roof, the coroner said. By the way, they don’t usually test for cytokine levels. The coroner wants to know how we knew to ask for it.”
“A hunch. But it doesn’t mean anything good. As a matter of fact, this could be devastating news.” She felt overwhelming sadness and exhaustion. And fear. “I’ll know more when I can look through the files.”
Nick had both hands on her shoulders now. It felt so good—the heat, the strong weight of his hands anchoring her. Metal in front of her on the screen; by his side, Felicity and the entire ASI crew. Nick behind her, touching her. She was surrounded by support.
She reached up and clasped Nick’s hand. He tightened his grip then loosened it.
She looked at Nick, then at the screen. “I don’t know how to thank you guys for all of this. If it weren’t for you—”
“Whoa.” Metal’s eyes widened in alarm. She knew how tough guys thought. Was she getting sentimental on him? God forbid. He’d want to cut that off stat. “We don’t need thanks. Of course we’re on your side, of course we’re going to help you. We won’t stand by with a threat like this looming. And you’re Felicity’s friend and Al’s granddaughter and Nick’s—”
He stopped suddenly, bit his lips, looked frantically to the side to Felicity to rescue him. His hand reached out, switched the camera so his face disappeared and Felicity’s face filled the screen. She rolled her eyes. “Don’t mind Metal. He suffers from foot-in-mouth disease. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”
The monitor winked off.
Nick massaged her shoulders for a moment and her head hung forward, giving him access. His strong fingers dug into stiff muscles expertly.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Shower and food.” She cracked her neck to the left then the right. “In that order.”
“Coming right up. You shower and I’ll prepare dinner, okay?”
Kay craned her neck to look up at him, so broad, so steady. He’d saved her life and he was still looking after her. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Don’t thank me yet.” He bent and brushed his mouth across hers, the contact soft but almost electric. “Not until after you’ve had dinner.”
Kay smiled. “I’m told there are food stocks.”
“Oh, the food is fabulous, but I’ve been known to ruin food in the microwave. Nuke it to death. Lucky there’s plenty of it. Oh, wait.”
He disappeared from the room and came back with folded fabric between his hands. “Women think of everything. There’s a huge stockpile of clothes, including casual wear that can double as pajamas. You’ll be comfortable in these.” He held out soft yoga pants in a light lavender jersey and a matching long-sleeved tee shirt. All of the Grange seemed to be temperature-controlled. Goldilocks climate. Not too hot, not too cold.
The outfit was pretty, casual, and looked amazingly comfortable.
“Next question. So, shower. Or bath?”
Kay thought about it. A bath sounded wonderful. She was sore and tired and a hot bath would definitely relax her muscles. But there would be work tonight, hard work, and she’d have to be alert.
“Shower,” she said on a sigh.
“Shower it is. Follow me.”
“Oh man.” The bathroom was bigger than her first apartment. It was glorious. Tiny golden-bronze tiles created a mosaic effect that looked super modern and byzantine at the same time. One wall held a huge bathtub so deep you needed to climb up three steps to get in. It was ringed with waterjets.
“At some point, I’m going to want that bath.”
“Anytime, honey.” There was a slight dent in his cheek as he sketched a smile. Those dark eyes watching her carefully were full of heat. At one point, she was going to want that, too. “You can have whatever you want.”
She met those dark eyes. “Careful what you say, Nick. What if I want something impossible?”
“Then I’ll just have to work hard to give it to you. I know how to work hard.” He did. And he knew how to say the exact perfect thing at the perfect time.
“Well lucky for you, right now all I want is a shower and some food.”
He opened the etched opaque-glass shower door and she peeked inside. It was a huge space, marble-slabbed, with multiple showerheads and a seating bench.
“Hot or cold?” he asked.
“As hot as possible.”
He reached inside the shower door and punched a few buttons. Hot water streamed from the huge rainfall showerhead. Steam rose, immediately filling the room.
Nick kissed her forehead. “Enjoy the shower. There’s soap and shampoo inside. Towels are here.” He indicated a white lacquered cabinet. The yoga outfit was on a bench near the cabinet. “Take your time.”
She smiled at him, holding the smile until he closed the bathroom door behind him. She was on her last reserves, shaking with fatigue while still charged with adrenaline.
This morning’s events popped up before her, as clear as if she were living them again. Her trek to meet up with Mike Hammer, fully expecting to disappear from her life for an unknown period of time. The drone, the spray, Mike’s sudden collapse, him drumming his heels against the ground, turning red then blue. Watching him die a terrible death.
Wondering if she was next.
Kay slowly took off her clothes. They smelled used, unclean. She wondered if evil had a stench and if this was it. Whatever had reached out to smash Mike was definitely evil.
She was so glad to have a change of clothes because she knew she could never put this outfit back on. Maybe she’d burn it. The pantsuit was pretty—a light turquoise that the saleslady said brought out the color of her eyes. She’d enjoyed buying it and she’d liked wearing it, and now it had an association that hurt her heart.
Kay had other clothes in the suitcase that was now with the police, but she was happy with the casual yoga outfit that evoked no memories. She’d thought when she’d crept out of the hotel room this morning—was it only this morning? God! It felt like days, weeks had gone by—that her life was changing forever in one direction. Well, it had changed profoundly and forever, only in an entirely different direction.
Though Mike hadn’t given specifics while they were arranging the meet-up, she knew that she’d be going underground, at least for a time. Some whistleblowers stayed underground all their lives, and she’d been prepared for that.
Mike had warned her not to pack a suitcase so large it would raise suspicions. Just what she’d normally pack for a four-day conference in another city. That had made it almost easier. No special mementos, no family heirlooms. Just outfits for four business days plus casual travel wear. Her one indulgence had been a small hard drive with all her family photos scanned and stored. That was it, what she’d be carrying into an unimaginable future.
This morning, she thought that she’d be spending the night in some kind of safe house Mike and his magazine would have arranged. No idea where.
Instead, here she was in some kind of deluxe hideout with every comfort known to man, built to survive the end of the world.
This was to be her place for the next little while, with Nick.
But first, oh man, first she needed to wash all of this off her.
Kay winced as she shrugged off her jacket. What had been a dull ache down her right side turned into sharp pain when she lifted her arms. Her entire body hurt but the pain was most focused on her right arm and shoulder.
Kay flashed again on that horrible moment this morning. The drone with its soft buzz, so alien-looking, swooping down on them. So far from anything she could recognize that for a frightening moment, she’d thought it was a huge mutant insect. It was coming so fast her lizard brain knew it would crash into them. Mike, pushing her out of the way so hard she bounced off the wall. She hadn’t even felt the pain at the time, she’d been so terrified.
It had all been in the slow motion of adrenaline overload—the hormone speeding up the frames the eye saw so that it felt as if it were happening slowly. That big black…thing swooping down, the light of recognition in Mike’s eyes, his body swiveling to push her away hard. Falling against the concrete wall, bouncing off it with her shoulder.
Her body felt every ache and pain, but there was no serious damage. She’d dislocated her shoulder once as a kid so she knew what something like that felt like. That wasn’t this. It was painful but without the deep hurt of serious bodily harm.
Still, taking off her pants hurt, bending down to slip off her flats, take off her socks—pure pain. Thank God her bra had a front clasp.
She stepped into the shower, face up to the huge showerhead, and closed her eyes, basking in the hot stream of water. Oh God, that felt so good. Turning slowly around, arms out, giving herself up to the moment.
The hot water and steam penetrated her muscles down to the bone. She emptied her mind of all thought, drifted up and away from her body like when she did her meditation practice. Time floated, carrying her on waves. She bent her head forward now, to feel the heavy stream at the base of her neck and the tops of her shoulders.
Without thinking, she reached for the shampoo, groaning as her hand grabbed the bottle. Pain shot through her, a lightning bolt from hell. Her right arm was useless; she’d have to do this one-handed with her off hand. Even opening the bottle was hard. In trying to unscrew the cap, it fell to the tile floor.
“Here,” a deep voice said in her ear, “let me help.”
Nick stepped forward against her back, taking the shampoo bottle from her hand. His hard, naked body against her increased the heat. A cold dribble on the top of her head from the shampoo, then the feel of his strong hands washing her hair. Her head fell back against his shoulder as he massaged her scalp. Amazing. Those strong fingers were scrubbing the day away.
He angled her under the showerhead, rinsed her hair and poured more shampoo on. This time the massage was long, so long she drifted in space for a little, feeling but not thinking, her body utterly happy from the top of her head down to the bottom of her feet.
That dense hot body behind her disappeared and she opened her eyes, blinking. She turned and saw him, washcloth in one hand, soap in the other. He smiled at her and she smiled back. He bowed his head. “Your valet awaits instructions, milady.”
Kay rolled her eyes, opened her hands by her sides. “You may proceed.”
“God, yeah.” Nick wasn’t able to hold that subservient expression for more than a minute. He stepped forward, cupping her neck with one hand, gliding the washcloth over her shoulder with the other. His hand was so sure, she allowed herself to relax into it, knowing he’d hold her up, knowing he wouldn’t hurt her.
He kissed her, one of those ferocious Nick kisses that were another form of sex. Tongues and lips and teeth, and when she opened her eyes, all she could see was Nick. His face and broad shoulders in the periphery of her vision. Water was pouring down over both of them. They could have been under a waterfall, like in the movies. Well, since they were both naked, probably an X-rated one.
Who cared?
Nick’s mouth moved to her neck, which last night she had discovered was a major erogenous zone, something she hadn’t known before. All it took was Nick’s mouth, his teeth nipping lightly, and she turned on like a light bulb whose switch had been thrown.
He took another step back and looked at her, really looked, head to toe. With any other man, Kay would have felt uncomfortable with that kind of scrutiny of her naked body, but it felt warm. And definitely approving. His dark eyes gleamed, a half smile on his face. He hadn’t shaved and there was a definite five o’clock shadow—or whatever time it was—thing going on. It made him look slightly scruffy, dangerous.
The washcloth slid over her shoulders, down the center of her torso, down to the center of her. She made a sound that galvanized him. He tensed, watching her closely, gaze going from her eyes to her mouth and back again.
He slid the washcloth between her legs and waggled his hand. She obeyed the unspoken order and slid her legs apart.
The washcloth slid to the floor and it was now his hand that was stroking her, right…there.
“Milady likes?” he murmured, voice so low it barely carried over the sound of the falling water. She felt it in her belly more than heard it.
Softly, gently stroking, one finger barely inside her. He reached deeper. “You like that?” he repeated.
Kay breathed out slowly as her legs started shaking. He was fully erect now. Her hand closed over his penis and she pumped once, hard, base to tip and back. Nick’s head went back and he gave a sound of pain. “I like it as much as you like this,” she said, leaning forward to lightly bite his nipple.
“Oh Jesus. I wanted to play for a while.” He picked her up with one arm and with the other hand, did something to the shower jet as he sat down on the bench with her straddled on his lap. The water continued streaming down, hot but not as hot as she felt.
“Closer,” Nick murmured. His arms brought her closer, so her breasts were crushed against his chest and her sex was open against his erect penis. “That’s it.”
That was it. Kay locked her arms around his neck, loving the feeling of touching him all along her front. He bit her ear, lifted his lips, bit her neck, rubbing his penis against her open sex. God, it was almost as good as penetration. Every nerve ending was stimulated, the slow movement like honey.
She put her mouth to his ear. “Nick.”
“Hmm?”
Another long, liquid stroke against her outer sex. Her thighs were trembling. She was close and he knew it.
“Come inside me,” she whispered directly in his ear, and felt him shudder.
“A minute, I have to do something first.”
She opened her mouth to protest and he kissed, hard and deep. If he thought he was going to win arguments by kissing her…he was probably right.
Another long, slow glide against her and she felt his finger, touching her exactly where he should be touching her, and it all coalesced. The fragrant steam, the falling water, Nick’s mouth on hers, his careful touch where she was so sensitive.
Kay gasped in his mouth as the climax rolled over her and she contracted sharply against his hand. He lifted her high, positioned himself, and let her slowly slide down him, the effect electric while she was climaxing, so deep inside her that he felt like a part of her, the best part of her, holding her hard as he kissed her and kissed her. She felt utterly possessed.
The contractions slowed, stopped. She was sprawled on his lap, legs wide over his, so close she felt his crinkly pubic hairs brush against her.
There was no more strength as she slumped against him, held up by his arms and mouth and sex.
“That,” Nick said. “That’s what I had to do first.”
And he started moving inside her.