Chapter 14
“Hold still,” Osterman growled. “I’d already be done if you would just stop that goddamn twitching. Idiot.”
His nostril flared with distaste as he swabbed the puncture wound on Gordon’s furry buttock. The man’s body stank. Yeasty and rank. This type of intimacy was repulsive to him. It was coming back to him, why he had abandoned the idea of practicing medicine, and chosen the realm of pure research. Fewer revolting odors.
He would have enjoyed the power that being a famous surgeon would have given him, but human bodies were disgusting. Particularly a sweaty animal like Gordon. He simply did not have the stomach for it.
“Spray on more anesthetic, you fucking sadist,” Gordon barked.
Osterman ignored him. The slices on Gordon’s back, the jagged puncture wound on his cheek, the teeth marks on his wrist, had been duly taken care of, but Osterman had not been gentle.
Idiot. Jerking off, at Osterman’s expense. Correction. At Osterman’s huge, crushing, exorbitant expense. He dug the needle in.
“Fuck!” Gordon hissed.
“Keep your voice down. A professional with years of experience, trounced by an unarmed research librarian. The mind boggles.”
“I told you. Sean McCloud kicked my gun out of my hand while that crazy bitch was stabbing my face and biting my arm!”
“I don’t want to hear excuses,” Osterman fumed. “I don’t understand why they aren’t just dead, damnit.”
“I don’t get it.” Gordon’s voice was a rasp of frustration. “I waited on a rock right over that goddamn road. I was going to take them out when they came down, but they never did. That road dead-ends on Garnier Crest. I checked. The only way out of that place was down. They must have taken his truck off-road, or maybe they—”
“I was paying you to think about all that before the job,” Osterman fumed. “You should have put a bullet through her eye.”
“That wouldn’t have been in character,” Gordon said grumpily. “That’s what a professional does. Not a sexually obsessed maniac.”
“Yes, and you identify so intimately with the role, hmm? You have no end of excuses for wallowing in your trough. You medicated yourself before you picked her up, too, didn’t you? I can tell from your stink.”
“I wanted to be sharp,” Gordon muttered. “I took some ZX-44.”
“It’s supposed to give you an edge in a high-stress situation,” Osterman lectured. “You may as well have popped barbiturates.”
“I didn’t think McCloud was going to turn up out of nowhere—”
“You didn’t think at all.” Osterman swabbed and bandaged as quickly as possible, trying not to inhale. “You stopped thinking a while ago. You are degenerating. As of now, our contract is null and void.”
“Shut the fuck up, Chris.” Gordon swiveled his head around. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot, the lids puffy. His face was beaded with cold sweat. “There are lots of reasons to reconsider that decision. Most of them I don’t have to say out loud. Like how popular you’d be in prison with that pretty face of yours, for instance.”
“You can’t expose me without incriminating yourself.” Osterman’s body was gripped with tension. His worst nightmare was coming true. Held hostage by a crazed, malodorous thug.
It made him so angry. That he, a gifted scientist who had given so much to humanity, who had given up all hope of a personal life, who had poured all his strength into selfless work to improve the quality of peoples’ lives, should be forced to deal with such filth. Such squalor.
He braced himself. “You’ve gone beyond any reasonable—”
“But the most important reason is one you don’t know yet.” Gordon’s voice took on an oily, insinuating tone.
Osterman set his teeth. “And what might that be?”
“I once heard you say that you made more progress in your research in those four days that you had Kevin strapped to your examining table than the rest of your entire career. Before or since.”
“I fail to see how that is relevant to—”
“The most promising lines of research. The most innovative product designs and ideas.” Gordon’s grin froze, as it pulled at the blood-spotted gauze taped to his cheek. “And you never had so much fun in your life than you did dicking around with that freak’s overdeveloped brain. You were on fire. You played him like a fine instrument.”
“Make your point, and be done with it,” Osterman snarled.
“One,” Gordon held up a thick finger. “Back off on the lectures about self-indulgence. Two,” he waggled another finger, “consider this before you have me waste Sean McCloud. He’s Kevin’s identical twin.”
Osterman’s breath froze in his lungs. “Identical…”
“Yes.” One side of Gordon’s lip curved up, in a grotesque smirk. “Are you still sure you want me to turn that brain into a bucket of pink slop before you have a chance to play with it? Think about it, Chris. An exact, identical genetic copy of your favorite toy.”
Osterman stared at him, his palms sweating. “Why didn’t you tell me he was Kevin’s twin?”
Gordon shrugged. “I didn’t know ’til now. They didn’t play up the resemblance. Sean was behind Kevin in school, because Kevin kept skipping forward and Sean kept getting expelled. I found out they were twins when I questioned the girl. When I checked my obit collection—”
“Keeping a string of scalps on your Palm Pilot is a disgusting, twisted, barbaric practice,” Osterman cut in. “Dangerous, too.”
“Sure enough,” Gordon pushed stubbornly on, “the obit said ‘survived by brothers Davy McCloud, aged 27, Connor McCloud, aged 25, and Sean McCloud, aged 21.’ Same age as Kevin. Take a look at the photographs from their file. If you study them, you can see it.”
Osterman stared at the wall, clenching down on an excitement so intense, it was like sexual lust. “I want him alive,” he said hoarsely.
He could feel Gordon’s triumphant smile behind his back.
“All right,” the other man purred. “You can strap down McCloud and play your dirty games, and I’ll have my fun with the girl. Everybody gets their rocks off. Deal?”
Osterman gave him a short nod. He swallowed the excess saliva that was pumping into his mouth. He was trembling with eagerness.
“I’ll need to hire some backup,” Gordon said.
“Of course. It’s clear you can’t handle him alone.”
Gordon’s eyes sharpened. “I thought you wanted me to play it safe,” he said slowly. “To cover your ass. To cover Helix’s soft, pimply white corporate ass, too. If you want me to go mano a mano with that crazy fucker, I’ll do it. But you’d be rolling the dice right along with me. The guy’s extremely dangerous. And he’ll be on his guard.”
“Hire whoever you need,” Osterman snapped. “Just keep it contained.”
“I’ll need people for surveillance. The McClouds would notice us watching, but the Endicotts are idiots. I’ll tap their phones…”
Gordon droned on, but Osterman was no longer listening. He was lost in the memories of those four amazing days he’d spent playing with Kevin McCloud’s brain. Released from any responsibility not to injure his subject, since thanks to Gordon’s machinations, the young man had already been officially dead. Ashes, floating on the breeze.
Which meant that the unhappy creature strapped to that chair had belonged, completely and utterly, to Christopher Osterman.
What a feeling it had been. Utter power, total freedom. Bliss.
He’d been trying ever since to repeat the experience. In vain. He hadn’t found a brain with anything near that capacity to diddle with.
This was dangerous. Gordon was nuts. Things were slipping out of control. He was risking everything he’d spent his whole life building.
But this temptation Osterman could not hope to resist.
“I can’t figure out what we’re doing wrong.” Cindy fast forwarded through the homemade audition tape to see if that wobbly wah-wah sound was constant throughout. It was. She tried not to groan.
“It sounds like I’m playing underwater,” Javier said glumly. “I can’t send in that piece of shit. They’d laugh their asses off.”
Cindy couldn’t deny it. The tape sounded horrible.
She really wanted for Javier to get into the Young Artists’ All Star Jazz Program. He was more than good enough for a scholarship, even if he was barely thirteen. He played the hell out of that sax.
It wasn’t his fault that the recording wasn’t great. Her mike sucked, the acoustics sucked, and the recording device sucked, to say nothing of what she herself might be doing wrong. She needed a decent mike, a soundproof room, a digital recording device. Someone who knew what he was doing. In short, she needed Miles.
Too freaking bad, honey. He thinks you’re a brainless snow bunny.
“I’ll ask around, see if I can find a better recording setup,” she offered. “We’ll try again. Don’t get discouraged.”
“Nah. The application said it had to be postmarked by tomorrow.” Javier was downcast. “Thanks for trying, though. Don’t sweat it.” He gave her a smile that hurt her heart. He’d been disappointed so often, he’d come to accept it, with an adult grace that put her to shame. She was ten years older. She bitched and moaned ten times as much.
“No, really. Don’t give up yet. I have a friend who’s a sound magician. I’ll see if he can help us out,” she promised rashly.
Javier gave her a “whatever” shrug as he took his sax apart and lovingly laid it in the nest of crimson fuzz inside the case.
She wanted that scholarship for him so bad, she could taste it. She’d bonded with Javier at the beginning of band camp. They were about to throw him out for fighting, and she’d taken him aside to figure out what the deal was. Turned out that the spit-shined mama’s boys in the brass section had been ragging him because his dad was in jail.
“No kidding? So’s mine,” she’d said. “Sucks the big one, huh?”
Javier’s eyes had narrowed to liquid brown slits, hyper-wary of being messed with. “No shit,” he said. “How long’s he in for?”
“Life.” Her throat still clamped down painfully on the word. It had been years, but she just couldn’t get used to the idea of Daddy in jail.
“No parole?”
She shook her head. “Not a chance. They slammed him but good.”
“What’s he in for?” Javier demanded.
“Murder, mostly. Some other stuff, but that was the biggie.”
That had impressed the hell out of Javier. “Wow,” he breathed. “Bummer. Mine’s just in for pushing dope.”
She’d won him over with that little bit of one-upmanship. She’d had a sharp word with Mike, who led the brass section, and things had evened out. She discreetly gave Javier twice as many lessons as camp curriculum called for. It was no chore. He wasn’t so hot at reading music yet, but who the hell cared? His improvisations blew her away.
She was so pleased with herself for wrangling him a great deal on a professional quality used sax. She’d used tits, mindless giggling, and judicious blackmail on Dougie, the proprieter of Doug’s Music. She’d given Dougie to understand that she knew what had gone down at his piggy bachelor party, and with who. His bride, Trish, did not know. Nor should she, ever, if Dougie knew what was good for him.
Maybe Cindy had been a bad girl, but Javier got a good instrument, Trish remained blissfully ignorant, and Dougie was an oinking piglet who deserved to be slow roasted with an apple in his mouth. So whatever.
Javier deserved that scholarship. She didn’t have time to find someone else to bully into helping her. It had to be Miles. The dojo where Miles taught was close by, and it was early evening, class time. She would just pop down there and hope he didn’t bite her head off.
Being on Miles’s shit list truly sucked.
She hopped on her bike and sped past the ruins of the bookstore. It was still shrouded with lingering smoke. What a drag. Endicott Falls had needed a good bookstore. It had been too good to be true. Typical.
Speaking of drags. Of all the things currently getting her down, Miles topped the list. It was so hard to accept, that he was definitively blowing her off. They’d been friends forever. He knew her embarrassing secrets, all the crazy shit she’d done, and he’d accepted her anyway.
Not anymore. He’d abruptly cut off the total acceptance part.
She’d known that he had a thing for her, of course, but what could she do about that? She’d never led him on. She’d been clear from the start that he wasn’t her type, that she just wanted to be friends.
Call her shallow, but when it came to romance and sex, she went for big, gorgeous, muscular guys. Like, duh. So shoot her, already.
It was so hard. She kept on wanting to talk to Miles about all her problems, all the weird stuff that happened. She missed his sarcastic, funny take on things. Life was flat, without Miles to bullshit about it with. And he was so freaking brainy, too. It had been super convenient, having a crazy smart, insanely competent best friend. Like being smart herself, but without the effort and the bother. How awesome was that.
At least she had the satisfaction of knowing he still missed her. Or why would he have used her for his Mina profile?
That had given her an idea. A favor she could offer him, in return for helping record Javier’s tape. She wasn’t asking any more free favors.
Not while she was still smarting from that crack about her being a concubine, when she was not.
That had stung. Months of working eighteen hours a day, keeping her nose clean, saving up for first, last and security on the Seattle house in September, and he thought she was just a slut any guy could buy for a couple of lines of coke. Ouch.
She peeked around to see if Miles’s new wheels were parked outside the dojo, but she didn’t see the car. She ran up the stairs, nose wrinkling at the overpowering odor of sweat. A karate class was taking place, she saw through the glass window, kids dressed in their white outfits, going through a sequence of kicks and punches.
She pushed the door open and leaned on the frame, spotting Miles off to the side, correcting the posture of a kid with a green belt knotted around his gi. Miles knocked the kid’s knees out to widen his stance, tugged his arm out, nudged the back arm higher, and said something that made the kid laugh. He held up his hand at shoulder height and jerked his chin, go. The kid swung his leg back, and kicked at Miles’s hand, over and over. Sometimes he hit, sometimes he missed. They tried it from the side, from the front, from the back again.
Cindy was startled. Miles looked different. She hadn’t gotten the full effect in the dark basement. Hair in a ponytail. No glasses. He grinned at the kid, said something encouraging. He didn’t look like the vampirish Goth geek freak she knew and loved. He looked, well, cute. He had a black belt knotted around his waist, too. Wow. Who knew?
He spun around, kicked. Tap, he touched the kid’s chest with his toe, ever so lightly. She was no expert, but that looked awfully graceful.
Then, predictably, disaster struck. He caught sight of her, and did a big fat double take just as the kid threw his leg back again.
Smack, the kid’s foot connected with Miles’s face. Down he went, on his ass. There was yelling, screaming. A bunch of people scurried towards him. Blood streamed from his nose, dripping all over his gi.
Cindy sprinted towards him, horrified. “Shit! Miles? Are you OK?”
“Get off the tatami with your shoes, Cin.” Miles’s voice was razor sharp, even burbling through the blood.
She retreated, chastened, to the door, and waited. People clustered around him. Someone brought him a towel. His eyes kept darting over to her. They did not look friendly.
Aw, shit. Shit. What was it with her? Was she cursed, or what?
Miles got up and stalked towards her, stripping the bloodstained gi off with a hiss of disgust. “What the hell are you doing here, Cin?”
“Uh…I…” She gaped at his naked torso, struck dumb.
Holy cow. Miles was, like, ripped. Big, thick, meaty deltoids that a girl could just sink her nails into. Cut pecs. Serious ab definition. She wanted him to turn around, show her his lats, his traps. His ass.
Um, no. That was asking a bit much, under the circumstances.
“Uh, Cin?” he prompted. “Hello? Why are you here?”
She opened and closed her mouth, helplessly, like a beached fish.
“Just thought you’d help me make an unforgettable first impression on my first day of teaching, huh?” His voice dripped sarcasm. “Thanks, Cin. This does great things for my credibility.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose! I was just standing there!”
“Yeah, that’s all it takes.” Miles took the towel away from his face, and grimaced at the gory smears. “Jesus. I need ice.”
“Can I go get you some?” she asked, eager to redeem herself.
“No. Just tell me why you’re here, and get it over with. Come on.”
He grabbed her arm, steered her into a room full of weight-lifting equipment. He shut the door, and dabbed at his nose. “So? Spit it out.”
“It’s really hard to talk to you while you’re glaring like that.”
Miles rolled his eyes. “A glare is the default expression of a guy who’s just gotten his nose practically broken by a twelve-year-old. So have you thought of something you want from me after all?”
She gritted her teeth and pressed on. “Actually, yes,” she admitted. “But not for me. It’s for Javier. He’s—”
“Forget it.” Miles’s scowl deepened. “I thought you said you didn’t have a boyfriend right now. In any case, I’m not doing favors for him.”
“Javier is twelve!” she snapped. “He’s one of my students. I want to make him a decent audition tape. He’s applying to the All-Star Young Artists Jazz Program, and he needs a scholarship to—”
“Bring out the violins.” Miles clapped the towel over his face, giving her another chance to ogle his awesome body. Those biceps were to die for. She wanted to palpate them so bad, her fingers twitched.
“I’m out of the business of doing sound for free,” Miles went on. “I spend all my time doing favors for my musician friends. That’s why I’m broke. I’ve got to draw the line somewhere, so here it is. Don’t cross it.”
“Please?” she wheedled. “I know you think I’m pond scum, but this isn’t about me at all. Javier’s a great kid. His uncle Bolivar is the janitor up at the Colfax building, and I’ve been giving him lessons for free for almost a year now. His dad’s in jail, and his mother—”
“I don’t want to hear about his mother,” Miles cut in. “I don’t want to hear about her working double shifts in the factory to put food on the table, and poor Tiny Tim with his crutch in the corner. I do not care.”
“It’ll take you a half an hour,” Cindy coaxed. “We’ll come to your house any time it’s convenient—as long as it’s before the post office closes tomorrow. Javier’s a really great kid. He deserves a break.”
“Who’s going to give me a break?” Miles’s voice was plaintive.
“Well. Since you mention it.” Cindy crossed her arms over her belly, pressing down on her nervous flutter. “That brings me to another thing. What do you intend to do when Mindmeld wants to meet Mina?”
Miles’s face darkened. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. And it’s none of your damn business, anyway.”
Cindy rocked back, unnerved by the anger blazing out of Miles’s brown eyes. “Well, I got to thinking last night about how the physical profile sounds, um, a lot like me.”
“Goddamnit, Cin, I told you—”
“Shh! Just hear me out!” She held up both hands. “I thought that if you needed to set up a real meeting, you could use me.”
Miles blinked at her. “Use you,” he repeated.
“Yeah!” She gave him a bright, encouraging smile. “As bait, you know? It’s, like, perfect. I’d be more than willing to help.”
He was dead silent for almost a minute, his blood streaked mouth dangling open. “Are you fucking nuts?” he finally exploded.
Cindy jerked, startled at his vehemence. “Ah…”
“Do you have any idea how dangerous that would be? Did it occur to you that we’re talking about a serial killer?”
“Uh, yes,” she said cautiously. “So? People take risks to catch guys like that, right? Why not me? I just thought—”
“Don’t think, Cin,” he snarled. “We’d all be better off.”
“I still think it’s a good idea,” she muttered, defensive.
“It’s not a good idea. It sucks. And I don’t know any polite way to tell you this, but I’ve been making like a physics whiz. Dazzling this guy with Mina’s brain. That’s what this asshole gets hot for. Understand?”
She put her hands over the hot red spots flaring in her face. “So what you’re saying is that I’m not smart enough?”
Miles looked pained. “You said it, Cin. Not me. You play a mean saxophone. I talk shop about acoustic physics. We all have our gifts.”
“Oh, shut up,” she said, through the snot bubbling in her nose. “Don’t condescend to me. How smart can these geeks be? They’re dumb enough to get nabbed, aren’t they? And when it comes to getting mixed up with the wrong kind of guy, I’m, like, unbeatable.”
“Do not mention this to anybody.” Miles’s voice had a steely tone.
“Oh, no. Don’t worry. I understand,” she babbled, through her tears. “God forbid that Connor and his brothers should find out that you talked about their big manly business to a fluff like me.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Cin. It’s a really bad habit.”
“Don’t lecture me!” she shot back. “You’re not my friend anymore, so you no longer have the right.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, sniffing angrily. “OK, never mind me and my dumb ideas. I’ll just hire you to do Javier’s tape. How much do you want?”
Miles groaned, beneath his breath. “Cut it out, Cin.”
“No, really. I’ve got some money saved. Quote me your hourly rate. Just don’t tell Javier, because he’d be really embarrassed.”
“I’m not going to let you jerk me around,” Miles said.
“I’m not jerking you around!” she yelled. “God, what do I have to do to persuade you? What do you want from me, a blow job?”
The next fraction of a second was very weird. One moment she was standing there blubbering. The next, her back was flat against the wall, with Miles’s surprisingly hard body holding her there.
Breathless. Squished. Startled…and scared.
“Do not ever, ever joke about that with me,” he said.
Miles’s hoarse whisper sent shivers up her spine. She made a sound like a rusty hinge. She noticed random, disconnected things. Like he had nice breath. A sexy mouth. And his nose was swelling up.
Yikes. Miles’s nose had been really formidable to begin with.
“Ever again,” he repeated softly. “Not. Funny. At all. Got it?”
She licked her lips, and nodded. “Sorry,” she mouthed.
He didn’t let go. Just loomed over her, vibing like crazy. Wow.
Miles was freakishly tall, but he’d never loomed before. But then again, looming was a state of mind. The McCloud guys were all loomers, every last one of them. Miles must have learned the art from them.
He’d learned it really well. Her head flopped back so far to look up at him, her neck hurt. She’d never felt this quality of energy buzzing off him before. And intense heat was radiating from the hard bulge at his crotch. She sneaked a quick peek, and almost squeaked. Gosh. The old joke about long noses must be literally true. Miles was hung.
It was like there was a volcano inside him. Her geeky old best buddy was looking at her as if he were about to grab her and kiss her.
And for one wild, crazy second, she actually wanted him to.
He stepped back, broke eye contact, broke the spell. “Sorry.” He looked away. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
Her heart thudded. Her knees felt wiggly and weak. “Oh, puhleeze. Give me a break. I wasn’t scared,” she lied.
“Bring the kid to record his thing tomorrow at noon. Don’t be late. I’ve got things to do.” He yanked the door open, and marched out.
Well, that settled that. His lats and traps were finger-licking good. And his ass was just as good as she had imagined.